Cannonruminations

Herman Cain and his regressive 9-9-9 tax plan

2011-10-14T11:26:00.001-07:00

Herman Cain and his regressive 9-9-9 tax plan
**********

POTUS wannabe Herman Cain seems to be gaining support among the GOP activists; and among those planning to vote in the caucuses/primaries.

As Gov. Perry’s numbers have declined, Cain’s have risen.

The tea partiers and evangelicals are shopping around; kicking the candidates' tires.
Bachmann is perceived as a non-winner in Nov. 2012.
Ron Paul has his libertarian army, a fervent group. But he will not get the GOP nomination.
Gingrich,Santorum, and Huntsman have not caught fire.

Mitt Romney leads the wannabes, but his Mormonism has again become an issue.
To a large percentage of the GOP activist base, his religion is a cult; not really a Christian theology.

That brings us to Cain.
He has the black minister’s evangelical persona.
He is a non-politician in a non-political age.
He is an unapologic capitalist.

He is also very conservative; extreme rightwing in his economic beliefs.

Focusing on his now famous, infamous 9-9-9 plan.
One humorist used Cain’s background as the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and suggested 9-9-9 meant a pizza at $9.99, and delivered in 9 minutes.

But going to his website, Cain’s real proposal is outlined for scruity.
It supposedly combines a fair tax, with a flat tax.
“Achieves the broadest possible tax base along with the lowest possible rate of 9%.
• It ends the Payroll Tax completely – a permanent holiday!
• Zero capital gains tax
• Ends the Death Tax.
• Eliminates double taxation of dividends
• Business Flat Tax – 9%
o Gross income less all investments, all purchases from other businesses and all dividends paid to shareholders.
o Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for payroll employed in the zone.
• Individual Flat Tax – 9%.
o Gross income less charitable deductions.
o Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for those living and/or working in the zone.
• National Sales Tax – 9%.
o This gets the Fair Tax off the sidelines and into the game.”
•
http://www.hermancain.com/999plan

The very wealthy, the top 5% in income/wealth, will like the flat 9%.
That’s attractive, even with eliminating most of the deductions and credits that have been encrusted into the tax code, like barnacles on a ship.

The 9% sales tax is a user tax, a value added tax.
It's a regressive idea that will be passed straight through to consumers.

And these empowerment zones.
We have been there, done that; with very little success in the urban centers.

Rupert Murdoch, the Fox's Roger Ailes, and House GOP Rep. Darrell Issa need to take the USACoffee Party pledge.

2011-10-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Rupert Murdoch, the Fox's Roger Ailes, and House GOP Rep. Darrell Issa need to take the USACoffee Party pledge.
**********

It's always good to keep tabs on the most rancid outbursts from the rightwing in our country.

The NY Post has vilified the Occupy Wall Street protesters...painting them as dirty,hippy Woodstock scum.
In today's Post, in a seeming objective press story, one reads:

"..Zuccotti Park smelled like an open sewer -- with people urinating and defecating in public.

And some couples have taken advantage of the free condoms distributed by organizers to do the nasty in full view of other protesters..."
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manha...

I assume the "urinating and defecating" in Zuccotti Park is a Murdoch hyperbole..a common debating tactic to personally attack the protesters, while ignoring the issues they are protesting.

And just what does "doing the nasty.." mean?
I suppose it depends on where sex takes place, but with consenting adults,in proper settings, it's not nasty. It's a puritan joke to describe sex as nasty.

And in the same NY Post, the rancid rightwing lady, Andrea Peyser, laments the freeing of Amanda Knox, claiming both AK and Casey Anthony were too attractive to be considered murderers by the "liberal" press.
Shame, shame on you, Peyser...such a cheap, sleezy column.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/ga...

And House GOP Rep. Darrell Issa is moving his investigations into the Attorney General's and WH offices.
Issa is a wealthy Joe McCarthy.
His goal is to ramp up the investigations to use in the 2012 elections.
The Fast and Furious issue certainly needs review.
But Issa's goal is to bring down Eric Holder, and in turn, Obama.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrati...

May I humbly suggest that the rightwing fear mongers, like Peyser,Murdoch, and the Fox's Roger Ailes join the CoffeePartyUSA; and take its' pledge of civility.

http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/

Ohio's Gov. John Kasich, and the state's GOP are in for the kill against two major progressives.

2011-10-14T11:22:00.001-07:00

Ohio's Gov. John Kasich, and the state's GOP are in for the kill against two major progressives.

Ohio is an important state in Presidential politics; and in the mid-west battle between progressive and tea party politics.

The new governor,John Kasich, is a former House budget cmt. chair;Fox talkinghead; and a fervent rightwing bomb thrower.

Ohio also has two of the most effective,and long serving, progessives in the House: Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur.

Through very partisan re-districting machinations, Kucinich's and Kaptur's districts have been fused together.
Unless Kucinich or Kaptur decide to retire, they will be forced to primary each other.
The result will produce a loss of a good,effective progressive.

The Ohio GOP machine is also promoting Joe the Plumber to run against Kucinich or Kaptur in the new 10th district.

This same machine is actively working to suppress the Dem. vote in 2012 through voter id. laws;cutting the days allowed for early voting; and moving to disallow college students to vote in their Ohio college districts.

Politics ain't beanbag;not a Sunday school picnic.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcy_Kaptu...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kuci...

We buy too much Chinese made stuff!!

2011-10-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

We buy too much Chinese made stuff!!
**********

Below is an interesting email I just received.
Whenever I go into Wal-mart, and have to return stuff, I tell the clerk to return it to China:

Email:

"Well over 50 yrs ago I knew a lady who would not buy Christmas gifts if they were
made in China. Her daughter will recognize her in the following.

Did y'all see Diane Sawyer's special report? They removed ALL items from a
typical, middle class family's home that were not made in the USA or CANADA.

There was hardly anything left besides the kitchen sink. Literally. During the
special they showed truckloads of items - USA and CANADIAN made - being brought in
to replace everything and talked about how to find these items and the difference in price etc..

It was interesting that Diane said if every American OR Canada spent just $64
more than normal on USA OR Canadian made items this year, it would create something
like 200,000 new jobs!

I WAS BUYING FOOD THE OTHER DAY AT WALMART
and ON THE LABEL OF SOME PRODUCTS IT SAID 'FROM CHINA '

FOR EXAMPLE THE "OUR FAMILY" BRAND OF THE
MANDARIN ORANGES SAYS RIGHT ON THE CAN 'FROM CHINA '

I WAS SHOCKED SO FOR A FEW MORE CENTS I BOUGHT
THE LIBERTY GOLD BRAND OR THE DOLE SINCE IT'S FROM CALIF.

Are we Americans and Canadians as dumb as we appear --- or --- is it that we just do
not think. The Chinese, knowingly and intentionally, export inferior and even
toxic products and dangerous toys and goods to be sold in American and Canadians markets.

70% of Americans and Canadians believe that the trading privileges afforded to
the Chinese should be suspended.

Why do you need the government to suspend trading privileges?
DO IT YOURSELF, AMERICA and CANADA.!!

Simply look on the bottom of every product you buy, and if it says 'Made in China '
or 'PRC' (and that now includes Hong Kong), simply choose another product, or none
at all. You will be amazed at how dependent you are on Chinese products, and
you will be equally amazed at what you can do without.

Who needs plastic eggs to celebrate Easter?
If you must have eggs, use real ones and benefit some Canadian or American
farmer. Easter is just an example. The point is do not wait for the government to
act. Just go ahead and assume control on your own.

THINK ABOUT THIS: If 200 million Americans and Canadians each refuse to buy just $20
of Chinese goods, that's a billion dollar trade imbalance resolved in our favor ... fast!!

Most of the people who have been reading about this matter are planning on
implementing this on sept. 1st and continue it until OCT. 1st. That is only
one month of trading losses, but it will hit the Chinese for 1/12th of the total,
or 8%, of their American and Canadian exports. Then they might have to ask
themselves if the benefits of their arrogance and lawlessness were worth it.

Remember, OCT. 1st to Nov 1st !!!!!!
START NOW.

Send this to everybody you know. Let's show them that we are Americans and
Canadians and NOBODY can take us for granted.

If we can't live without cheap Chinese goods for one month out of our lives, WE
DESERVE WHAT WE GET!

Pass it on, America and Canada ...

Well instead of doing it for just 1 month why not try to do it all the time..."

Gov. Chris Christie will announce his POTUS run decision by Monday. Is this a joke?

2011-10-01T09:11:00.001-07:00

Gov. Chris Christie will announce his POTUS run decision by Monday. Is this a joke?
*****

NJ Governor Chris Christie will announce by Monday whether he will become a GOP POTUS candidate.
His speech at the Reagan Library Tuesday nite is a hit on YouTube. Link 1
The rightwing NY Post has a second editorial urging him to run. Link 2.
Heavy hitters like Nancy Reagan, Henry Kissinger and G.W. Bush are pushing him to enter.
Hidden money men are behind the curtain, like David Koch, of Koch Industries.
Koch is the power behind many rightwing, libertarian crusades throughout the country.

This big mo for Christie seems to reflect GOP establishment discontent with the existing GOP lineup.
Perry’s Marboro macho image has been tarnished.
Romney is too moderate, too embedded in the NE Rockefeller money nexis.

And Herman Cain has shot up into the top 3, top tier of the announced candidates.
Is the country ready for his 9-9-9 plan of economic survival? His Chileization (sp?) of Social Security?

Christie would be a terrible candidate, and a weak one to boot.
The man failed his Dale Carnegie's “How to win friends and influence people” introductory course.
The State of New Jersey has a Snookie reputation.
He is Catholic. No Catholic has ever been nominated by the GOP.
He is mean spirited, and seems to lack empathy.
And he is very overweight..a bad image among the influencial millennials.

As a progressive liberal, I would not support Christie under any scenario.
I would even go so far as support a boycott of Koch Industries’ products. Link 3.
I get my paper goods at the local dollar store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN-ishUQw...

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/chris...

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.ph...

In addition to Christie, another,more important decision will come down Monday.

2011-10-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

In addition to Christie, another,more important decision will come down Monday.

In addition to Christie, another,more important decision will come down Monday.
It will be the day that Amanda Knox is set free from prison in Perugia, Italy.

The appeal decision in the Knox case is expected to be announced late Monday, Italian time.

Knox will be allowed to speak, in her own defense, and she will speak in Italian ( a positive approach to the jury and judges).

And the reports are that the decision will come shortly after, later Monday.

The fact that the decision will come so quickly appears to be a positive sign for Knox..that the two judges and the jurers do not need to ponder the evidence, and the prosecutors case, in detail.

But who really knows for sure.

As I have followed this case, read details of the murder scene, and read a few books on the case, I believe it is clear that Knox is innocent.
This has been a trumped up, miscarriage of justice that has served the corrupt prosecutors’ office in Perugia.
In this appeal trial, the prosecution has vilified Knox in very negative, personal terms.
It is strong evidence that they feel the forensic evidence is now very weak.

Let us pray for Knox’s release, and when proper justice is served on Monday, welcome her home to the State of Washington.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/2...

After midnight negative affect Twitters are full of distress, fear, anger, guilt, and disgust. It's because of Christie.

2011-10-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

After midnight negative affect Twitters are full of distress, fear, anger, guilt, and disgust. It's because of Christie.
*****

A story today reports on a Cornell U. study of millions of Tweets,by millions, over a 3 year period.
The positive Tweets are in the early morning, and the negative affect tweets are after midnight.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/internation...

These after midnight negatives are what I feel as the Chris Christie POTUS nonsense continues.

Christie will announce his decision by Monday.
You can feel the tension, from Trenton,NJ; through the Holland Tunnel (which he won’t financially support); to Murdoch’s NY Post Manhattan building; to the doorstep of the Koch Industries corp. hq.

To have Christie as a serious POTUS wannabe is a tragic commentary on the role of the uber-wealthy elite in the US, and the media-virtual conglomerates they control.

Christie’s persona has been imprinted by millions of views on Google’s YouTube. It is a pushy,confrontational, in-your-face local prosecutor’s persona. It is a hot style for the hot virtual community of millennials.

Murdoch’s NY Post is yelling “run,Christie, run.”
Uber-rich Mayor Bloomberg wants him to jump in.
Politicians like former NY Gov. George Pataki, Sen. D’Amato, etc. are urging him to enter.
Billionaire David Koch is pulling the strings in the Christie bloomlet.

We have reached a systemic crisis in our country.

Christie is a bull-in-a-china shop; a pushy, anti-intellectual; an inexperienced, former local prosecutor presiding over a corrupt state.

We are in trouble; and I fear for my country.
And after midnight, my tweets reek of distress, fear, anger, guilt and disgust.

Amanda Knox, Kafka's The Trial and Camus's The Rebel

2011-10-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

Franz Kafka's The Trial is a metaphorical novel of a man caught in a bureaucratic maze of a totalitarian criminal justice system.

It's an old metaphore on bureaucracies, and how these impersonal, top-down organizations smother the human spirit.

Albert Camus's The Rebel is an existiential essay on what forces a man to revolt; to proclaim his humanity in the midst of total subservience to the state, or state bureaucracies.

As the appeal trial of Amanda Knox winds down by Monday, the Kafka and Camus writings bear reflection.

A young British student, Meredith Kercher, was murdered. That is a tragedy.

And an American attending college in Italy, Amanda Knox, was accused, and sentenced to 25 years for the murder.

In a surreal Kafka-like tale, Knox was accused of being a sex-obessed, drug-addled murderer.
The Peruiga prosecutor, Minini(?), is a character out of Kafka's bureaucractic nighmare.
He needed to find the killers, or killer, and he focused in on Knox and her boyfriend.

Under normal circumstances, Amanda Knox should have revolted, Camus-like, as she faced this ordeal.
Instead, the past 3 years in the Italian prison has shown her to be the opposite of the prosecutor's protrait of a femme fatale, a she-devil.

How many of us would have reacted in such a calm manner?

The appeal decision is expected Monday.
The odds seem to be more than 50% that Knox will be found not guilty; and allowed to return home to the State of Washington.

That would be a victory for the human spirit; and a defeat for the deary, dark bureaucracies that make up our lives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_(book)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial

Rick Perry believes in the Rapture-religious and political. And if we don't believe in the Texas model, we will be left behind.

2011-08-18T09:03:00.000-07:00

Rick Perry believes in the Rapture-religious and political. And if we don't believe in the Texas model, we will be left behind.
**********

Gov. Rick Perry believes in the Rapture, political and religious.
The Texas economic/political model is our future, and those who don’t believe, or live in the Midwest/Northeast, will be left behind.

The Texas model has very low taxes (no income tax); minimalist private sector regulations; no labor unions in a right-to-work oasis; and a shredding of the traditional, and already fragile, safety net.

Obama ended his Midwest bus tour yesterday.
Few observers like his aesthetically-challenged Secret Service bus, that hugh monster left from the Matrix movie set.
But apparently a few people like his informal public meetings. On a personal level, he’s a likeable dude.
One who didn’t like this tour, Mitt Romney, labeled it a “magical misery tour.”

Obama’s leadership style is also being attacked from the left.
Drew Weston’s NYT op.ed. continues to get much buzz.
Weston is disappointed with Obama. To Weston, the Obama 2008 mantra of hope and change has transformed into a bus tour stressing the need for patience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinio...

Lost in all this political chatter and blather is an understanding of the cosmic forces at work.

Recently, Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria debated Weston on Charlie Rose.
To Zakaria , our economic woes have little to do with a lack of Obama leadership; and a lot to do with the global international corporate economy.
Capital is mobile and labor is not.
The millions of US middle-class jobs lost to India, China etc. will not come back to the US.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/intervie...

Conservative analyst Micheal Barone makes the same argument. He argues that the old Midwest model is obsolete.
The Michigan model of big companies and big unions is not longer viable.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...

To Barone, it is the Texas model that is our future.
And we should all accept the future Texas Rapture; or we will be left behind.
This is the Texas model that has 10% of the total jobs at minimum wage; the Rick Perry model that produces jobs with the ringing futurist call “Would you like fries with that?”

If this is our future, I may buy a used bus and tour the beautiful neighboring state of Vermont, where a single-payer universal health payment system is the future.

The GOP POTUS New Hampshire debate. Be afraid, be really afraid.

2011-06-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

The declared GOP POTUS candidates met for the first 2012 debate.

All of the gentlemen were well dressed and articulate.
Michelle Bachmann looked elegant and beautiful. She announced she is in the race.

Mitt was at the center podium. But the energy force from the others kept pulling him to the political right.

I watched the first half, mostly devoted to domestic issues.

The mantra on stage was right-wing populism. They all want to save us from Obama’s big government. All want to unleash what they believe is a shackled private sector. All want to privatize, or voucherize, the big entitlements- SS, and M & M. With the possible exception of Mitt, all of these candidates will throw the entitlements into the trash.

They all want to devolve tremendous power to the 50 states.
We fought a civil war over this issue.
Their states-rights position would have preserved the Southern Jim Crow apartheid system.

All of the candidates appeared to have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge to reduce the federal government to a size that it “could be drowned in a bathtub..”

None of these candidates believe health care is a right. All of them would vacate, or sign an appeal of Obamacare (ACA).
All of them would watch the 50 states slowly evolve their own health care policies, if they do it at all.

As a liberal-progressive, I am afraid…really afraid.
Eugene Robinson has a good column on Mitt and Tim Pawlenty:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/w...

Mitt Romney declares for POTUS

2011-06-05T10:39:00.001-07:00

Mitt Romney declares for POTUS

Mitt Romney declared for POTUS yesterday, using New Hampshire as the launging site.

In terms of executive experience, he is perhaps the most qualified of the GOP lineup.
Ron Paul is on the fringe.
Tim Pawlenty has the executive experience, but is devoid of charisma.
Herman Cain is not viable in the GOP primaries. He is articulate, as a good black American preacher.
And Bachmann and Palin are jokes. This is not said as sexist.
Gingrich is smart as a whip, but he scares the children.
Santorum? Who's he?

The economic reports issued this morning are not very good. The economy is still sluggish, and there is still the real danger of a double dip recession.
Like Japan, we could be dwelling in a decade-long big slog.

The economy is the issue, and Romney is the strongest GOP candidate to do battle on this issue.

Romneycare has not been a failure, and the recent NYT editorial outlining the successes of Romneycare is strong. Link 1.

Romney wants to repeal Obamacare, and leave it to the 50 states to experiment.
If so, he should be asked about the recent Vermont law, signed by the Dem. Gov., to move to a universal single-payer model. Link 2.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/opinio...

http://www.vermontforsinglepayer.org/

A cold-blooded killer, or is it Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

2011-06-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

Is Casey Anthony (CA) a cold-blooded killer, or a girl-child who has displayed symptoms of PTSD?

If CA was indeed sexually abused by her father and/or brother, she would have lived her life by suppressing the trauma, and concocting a different reality. Or at least, that can be one psychological symptom.
http://www.healing-arts.org/tir/n-r-roth...

And if her daughter, Caylee, did drown, she would have suppressed that trauma, and created a spin of lies, an alternative reality.

I really doubt she was sexually abused by her father. Would she allow him to be alone with Caylee?
Her brother is another matter.
And who can believe anything this girl-child says?

I expect she will be found guilty, likely of aggravated manslaughter. And no death penalty.

If I was on the jury (and I never would have been allowed), and all the evidence pointed to a cold-blooded premediated murder, I would still demur on the penalties the State is asking.
I would argue that neither the death penalty, or life w/o parole are reasonable penalities.

The South Carolina jury gave Susan Smith a 30-yr. sentence, with possibility of parole.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/01/opinio...

There are already several grounds for vacating the jury decisions on appeal.

She was not “Mirandaized” early on. You can hate this girl-child, but she has protected Constitutional rights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_war...

In the Universal room meeting, she faced a tirade by Detective Yuri Melich. It was very rough language. Melich also was later reprimanded for blogging on this case, and defense attorney Baez tried to raise this issue in Court.
http://www.justicequest.net/forums/showt...

By any reasonable measure, she was a suspect and should have been Mirandaized.
She was put in a police car “cage”, and questioned. She was a suspect, and could not have opened the cage from the inside.

Judge Perry has also made several decisions that stretch forensic evidence standards.
Hair banding has no scientific consensus on its’ validity; and has also never been allowed as evidence in Court.
Ditto air-samples.
Extra ditto on cadaver dogs testifying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_dog

I cannot get my head around the “death smelling” Firebird car.
If CA is a cold-blooded murderer, she would have made plans on disposing of the body quickly.
If it was, in fact, a drowning with coverup, then having her dead daughter in the trunk would be part of an alternative reality, of keeping her daughter close to her.

PTSD will, no doubt, be used in the penalty phase, with it being used as the most important mitigating factor against the death penalty.

As I have watched some of the trial proceedings, it is clear that this girl-child should be in a metal facility, not prison.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s...

Our indispensable, but worthless, stuff

2011-04-27T14:47:00.001-07:00

Our indispensable ,but worthless, stuff; Steve Jobs: 1984-type personal tracking; and Foxconn.
*****
George Carlin declared that we have too much "stuff". The stuff takes over our house, and we have to buy a second house just to store our stuff.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuL...).

The WSJ, a strong marketing and free-enterprise paper, wrote about census data that shows that US consumers spend at least $1.2 trillion annually on worthless stuff.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/04/2...

Monologuist Mike Daisey recently had a show titled "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs".
Daisey humorously suggested that Jobs has no qualms about "killing"..killing small tech. stuff to make way for a newer,more technically advanced product.
It used to be called "Planned obsolescence "....replacing, and upgrading stuff to keep us buying.

Jobs has recently announced that Apple will release at least $11 billion of its cash stash of close to $70 billion to guarantee his products have parts inventory worldwide.

What Jobs has not talked about is why his IPhones are tracking our movements, making 1984 totalitarian control look like amateur snooping.

What Jobs does not talk about is Apple's,and other major electronic manufacturers', concentrating their manufacturing in the Twainese-owned China factory city called Foxconn .(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn).

In this economic free-enterprise zone, almost 60% of our personal tech. stuff is manufactured by about 400,000 Chinese who have migrated from the rural land to the hugh factory complex.
These factory workers work very,very long hours,at very,very low pay.
Chinese management has to maintain constant suicide watches as the workers find the long hours intolerable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/techno...

But you all, don't bore me with chat about IPhone tracking, landfill environmental electronic hazards,Foxconn suicides, and worthless stuff. I don't care. What I do care about is getting all those apps. for my IPhone and future IPad.

Email to Donald Trump

2011-04-27T14:43:00.000-07:00

“Mr. Trump, The Donald if I may.
I understand you answer your emails personally; and hope that is the case with mine.
I want to join your crusade;your Presidental campaign.
I will volunteer my services ,go anywhere, and even buy Trump chocolates at Macys. If I wore ties, I’d also buy some of your ties at Macys.

I like your idea of building a $100 million ballroom in the White House. It will be the grandest display of wealth,splendor,hubris and greed ever. It will make Jackie's remake of the WH look like children's play. I will even help to build the ballroom, lifting those bricks,plastering the walls.

A new Gallop poll has 43% of respondents saying they are not sure where you were born. I say that is fuddle duddle. Release your birth certificate, the long form. That will keep those unbelievers quiet.

And stay with your claim that Obama's birth place is still unknown, and don't be distracted just because he released his long form birth certificate this morning.
Is it forged?
And why isn't his father's name on the certificate?

Is it because Bill Ayers is his father?
Ayers can fake his age easily; and if Ayers is Obama's father, that would explain why he likely ghostwrote Obama's Dreams of My Father.

I will gladly be your investigator on these issues.
I will go to Hawaii (can I stay in your Trump Hotel on the islands?)
Where are your Trump hotels over there?
Do they have Trump labeled towels?
Can I bring one or two back?

I will go to Columbia U. and Harvard and demand to see Obama's admission records and school reports.
Your yelling that Obama never attended college, and never left Kenya before the age of 40, is resonating with the voters. Or at least with me.

I will personally investigate Obama's claim that he is the Messiah, and doesn't need a birth certificate.

I don't care what the conservative talkingheads are calling you.
They can say you are a "tornado of noise and hair...that you are a malignant narcissist...an unembarrassable self-love machine."

Again,that is all fuddle duddle.

I can't wait to hear what these talkingheads say when, as POTUS, you go in and take Iraq's,Iran's and Libya's oil.

I would,however, urge you to agree to have Oprah redo your hair.

Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity-Part 1

2011-04-09T07:17:00.001-07:00

Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity-Part 1

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference"
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
*****
GOP House Budget Chair Paul Ryan wants us to the take the road (path) less traveled.
His Path to Prosperity was released this week.
He gave the GOP radio address this morning, proclaiming gloom and doom if his path is not taken.
His plan is the opening salvo in what will be a contentious, bitter debate on the future of our “welfare” state.

And I say, bring it on.

The tax proposals should be put aside for now. But, in short, he is a supply-sider par excellance.
He makes Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand into flaming moderates. It is the ol’ horse and sparrow theory. If you feed the horse enough oats, some will fall to the ground to feed the sparrows.

He wants to cut the to personal tax rate to 25%; and ditto the corporate rate.

To Ryan, if you release the entrepreneurial spirit, jobs will be aplenty; a 1000 flowers will bloom.

But unlike Friedman, Ryan is not interested in these lower taxes bringing in more revenue. Instead, Ryan wants a small federal government, and to get there, he advocates cutting $7 trillion over 10 years.

Let’s get to the “entitlements” in Ryan’s path, beginning with Medicare.

Right now, Medicare is a rather efficient single-payer system. It is a defined-benefit program. And users pay about 25% of their medical costs. It needs cost controls; and evaluations of outcomes. But it is popular. All polls,among all age groups, show strong majority support for Medicare.

The young budget guru, number geek Ryan wants to make Medicare a defined-contribution system.

He wants to convert it from a single-payer to a for-profit insurance voucher system.
If his plan existed now, those reaching 65 would go into a private insurance menu (exchange) and choose coverage. The for-profit insurance provider would get a fed. voucher worth $8,000-10,000. There are about 48 million now on Medicare. A 10k voucher for each would give the for-profits 480 billion dollars (if my math is correct).

Assuming the 65 yr. could find an affordable policy.
Assuming the carrier could agree to take the patient.
Assuming there was some requirement to ignor preexisting conditions.
Then the 65 yr. old could enroll.
Once the voucher money is exhausted, the patient is on his(her) own.
Estimates suggest the patient could pay up to 65-70% out of pocket.
But the plan would satisfy Ryan’s,the Cato Institute’s, and the Heritage Foundation’s ideological requirements for patient choice.

The Ryan plan is ludicrous ,laughable, and lamentable.

Let’s get the debate on. And then let’s continue to walk down the path of existing Medicare, with cost controls.

NPR’s Need to Know had a good segment last night on Ryan’s Medicare and Medicaid path, complete with graphics.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/hea...
.reply

The Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines brings out the potential POTUS GOP candidates. It is scary.

2011-03-27T10:47:00.001-07:00

The Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines brings out the potential POTUS GOP candidates. It is scary.

The Iowan Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines winds up today.
I have watched some of the speeches on CSpan, and I am afraid for our country.
The GOP POTUS lineup are a weak group of radicals.

Newt Gingrich wants to " “defeat Gadhafi as rapidly as possible.I would do it by using Egyptian, Moroccan, Jordanian and Iraqi ground forces as advisers and as air controllers with the rebels using all of Western air power as decisively as possible. Once you get involved, I believe you get involved decisively, you win quickly, you minimize casualties, you get it over with.”

Newt makes the neo-conservative empire warriors resemble Mother Theresa.
How do you move the Egypitan army into Libya?
Newt will scare the children, as well as all us adults.

The mashioed John Bolton spoke, and his speech was scary. He is a neo-con warrior excelsior. As POTUS, all the major powers in the world would be put on a enemies list, including Russia and China. We would have troops in wars everywhere.

Miss.Governor Haley Barbour spoke, and he was boring. He seems to seriously believe he will do well in the GOP primaries.

Former Pa. Senator Rick Santorum spoke, and gave big portions of red meat to the cultural conservatives in Iowa. If he lost a Senate re-election bid in Pa., what would make him believe he can win the POTUS race?

Herman Cain, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and black conservative, spoke. If he were to become POTUS (not likely), would pizza delivery trucks be able to drive up to the White House east portico every night?

And, of course, Michele Bachmann wowed the cultural conservatives. They like her, and she likely would do well in the Iowian caucuses where these cultural rightwingers dominant.
If Mike Huckabee and Palin dont't come in, the Iowian caucus may be Michele's to lose.

I continue to be amazed that the media give Bachmann serious attention as a POTUS candidate. There is something wrong with our political scene. We are in serious trouble as a nation if Michele becomes a serious candidate.

I have taken the coffeepartyusa pledge of civility, but Michele stretches my civility sensabilities to the limit. And I have no qualms in applying George Burns' quip of long ago, describing the then young singer John Davidson,"how can such an attractive face be attached to such an empty head?"

http://kgoradio.com/rssItem.asp?feedid=1...

The world in 2100. I can't wait.

2011-03-20T10:23:00.001-07:00

The world in 2100. I can't wait.
**********
Michio Kaku has a stimulating op.ed. in today’s NY Post. It describes what the world will look like in a 100 years, 2100.
Now, some of the obvious events we would predict are not described.
Such as:
.the last battalion of US troops will withdraw from Afghan.
.the West’s Libyan “Operation Odyssey Dawn” will be winding down.
.Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann will be putting the finishing touches on their Presidential libraries.
.Glenn Beck will lament,and cry, over the fact that the world did not end in 2012; and that we are still functioning in 2100. He blames George Soros.
.many cable channels will still be showing reruns of “2 and ½ Men”. Hey, it brings in the ad. puhtaytuhs.
. Lindsay Lohan will be ending her community service and parole requirements.

Instead, Kaku predicts:
.the Internet will be in our contact lenses. To navigate the net, we would just blink.
Can you imagine this? In all the offices worldwide, all employees will no longer be hogtied to desktop computers;no longer ignoring human interaction. Instead, millions of bureaucratic trolls will wear contacts, and pretend to look at other humans. But, in reality, they will be using the net.
And if blinking will navigate the net, what happens to congential lyiers. Lyiers blink when lying.
They will crash the net as they spin their fictional tales.

.Computers,cell phones,clocks,watches, and MP3 players will disappear. Instead, there will be millions of chips,costing just one penny, everywhere.
Kaku writes that we will be able to command these chips with our brains…we will be able to move furniture, brew coffee, and bring to life anything with the chips and our brain waves.
The chips will be in everything. We know they have been put in new clothing, and have been used to track us wearing the clothes. Lohan’s necklace,borrowed of course, will be loaded with penny chips tracking her everywhere.

.”Cars will be driverless and will fly through the air”. I drive up and down the Northway from Albany to Saratoga Springs. And believe me, cars on this highway are already driverless and fly through the air.

.”spare parts” for our body organs will be instantly available. By 2100, I’ll need many, quite quickly.

.”the human life span will be extended”. All of us will have 30 year old bodies forever, as far as the contact lense can see. When I was 30 (not too long ago,methinks), I could walk from the upper 50ies to Greenwich Village in Manhattan. In 2100, I’ll still be able to do that, but I’ll have to dodge the penny chips everywhere.
And we’ll be able to groom “designer children”. Martin Sheen and Dina Lohan will proclaim it can’t come soon enough.

.Robots will be everywhere. And millions of blue- and white-collar jobs will no longer use humans.

.There will be a space elevator. Pushing the up button will move us on a long carbon fiber cable. But only the wealthy Donald Trumps will be able to use the elevator. This is a good argument for more equal distribution of wealth and income, so more of us can travel to Mars. Right now, The Donald could land on Mars, but he still wouldn’t get many primary votes for POTUS.

.And of course there are dangers. As the GOP House climate change deniers hold power, 2100 will see disasters only the robotic mind can now imagine. NYC will be “surrounded by seawalls” and Silicone Valley will become a dead zone.

Linked below is the Kaku op.ed., and it makes for exciting reading.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/ope...

"Many aspects of Japanese culture are condensed in the cosmological triad of Heaven, Earth, and Man."

2011-03-17T09:54:00.001-07:00

"Many aspects of Japanese culture are condensed in the cosmological triad of Heaven, Earth, and Man."

The Japanese will recover, and their resilence in the face of this terrible tragedy will make their country and culture stronger than ever.

We are concerned that Japanese electronic parts will not be supplied to Best Buy. We worry that Apple's IPad may not have the parts and accessories supplied by Japan factories. We worry about paying more for gasoline to fill our SUV's. We wonder if Lohan will go to prison, wearing her diamond necklace. And Charlie Sheen's concert tour is sold out on Ticketmaster within 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, we can watch PBS's News Hour and BBC as a Japanese young father searches a long list of dead and missing, hoping not to see his wife's name. The wife was caught in the tsunami,grapped her two young children, got them to a safe house, and then was swept away in the tsunami landslide.

We watch as the Japanese fight to prevent the total meltdown in the nuclear reactors, as the squad of fighters go into the reactors, knowing that the radiation will kill them.

The Japanese know about nuclear dangers.
It may not be the appropriate time to discuss our dropping of two military atomic bombs on Japan, ending WW2.
But the Japanese live with that history.
Was it necessary for us to use those two bombs?
It's a question still being debated.
If we had agreed to have the Japanese keep their Emperor in place, which we eventually did, would the Japanese have surrended earlier.
When Truman was told that an invasion of the island could cost up to a million US soldier lives, was it accurate?
So many questions, and few real final answers.

Earthquakes,climate change,the Koch Brothers,and the House GOP majority of climate change deniers.

2011-03-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

Earthquakes,climate change,the Koch Brothers,and the House GOP majority of climate change deniers.

Our condolences go out to the Japanese that suffered the onslaught of the very large earthquake, and subsequent tsunamies.

Nostrodomous predicted 20th-21st century proliferation of earthquakes..but what did he really know and predict?

We do know that climate change,ice melting,warming,and human gashouse emissions can trigger earthquakes. See link 1 below.

And the majority of House GOP no-nothings are gutting the EPA in budget cuts; and the majority are climate change deniers.
The irresponsible behavior of the GOP House conference is a threat to our future survival on this planet.

One of my favorite climate change activists is Bill McKibben. He writes well (see his most recent book The Eaarth); and he is very gloomy on our prospects to save the earth.

He is directly taking on the Koch brothers, and also the National Chamber of Commerce. The latter is a very rightwing lobbyiest representing the interests of, at most, two dozen very large corporations.

McKibben has started a new website, http://chamber.350.org/(The US Chamber doesn't speak for me).

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-11-...

http://www.wbur.org/npr/134237203/gop-bu...

http://chamber.350.org/

Gingrich and Trump

2011-03-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump
**********

Gingrich traveled to Georgia yesterday, his original political base.
He is exploring running for POTUS.
It's assumed he is going to go full throttle into the 2012 ocean.
The Wash. Post's Dan Balz has a good writeup on Gingrich.(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...)

He has the network,and very likely could raise the money.
He is a Southern-based politico,and has the strong Southern GOP base to cultivate.
The question is whether his persona will sell elsewhere.
Our system has little tolerance,or appreciation, for intellectualism among our politicos.
He has 100 ideas each minute, and one or two may be worth considering.
He also,as Eugene Robinson wrote, will frighten the children.

Donald Trump also continues to tease us with the possibility of running. Responding to his well known germaphobia, he promises to shake every hand in Iowa. LOL.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/031...

2011-03-11T11:13:00.000-08:00

Mike Huckabee, Obama and Natalie Portman
**********

Huckabee may dive into the 2012 POTUS water.
On the other hand, he may not.
If he announces, he quickly loses $500,000-$1 million in income.
He has strong support among social conservatives, and likely would do well in the Southern primaries.
He is also a good communicator, with an “ol’ shucks” Southern persona.
He constantly attacks Obama, and went further than usual last week.
He borrowed Dinesh D’Souza’s thesis (in The Roots of Obama’s Rage) that the best way to understand Obama’s mindset is through his anti-colonial African heritage.
But Huck mistakenly stated that Obama grew up in Kenya, and is strongly influenced by his Mau Mau (anti-colonial) grandfather.
Neither is true.
The rightwing has grabbed D’Souza’s book, and is using it to put Obama into a narrow ideological box.. that Obama is not one of us; that he is foreign; and that he is an alien agent in control of our government.
It is so tiresome. I don’t know where Huck and the rightwing sees rage in Obama. To progressives, the POTUS lacks sufficient rage; is too smooth and nice; and as one suggests, it is a question of finding Waldo in Obama.

Huck also attacked the actress Natalie Portman, for being (at least now) a single pregnant mother-to-be.
Huck cleverly framed his argument in rightwing populist terms. Portman is wealthy, and will have no problem supporting her child.
But , as Huck proclaimed, millions of women are single, poor, and having children out-of-wedlock.
This is true.
But Huck becomes hypocritical when he allegedly opposes birth control ,sex education and other programs that help single women. He also supports federal de-funding of Planned Parenthood.

I predict Huck will NOT enter the 2012 race.

Happenings at the Chat N Chew

2011-03-11T11:12:00.001-08:00

The Chat N Chew group had a good round of chatter in our recent gathering.
***********
The Chat N Chew group met last night, and warmed up over steaming lattes.
And the conversation got even steamier.
When given the phrase "they love me", more than half the group said it was Charlie Sheen and the other half guessed it was Moammar Gadhafi. It was the latter.
The entire group agreed that both had to go, and go quickly. But where will Gadhafi find exile?
Gadhafi has ruled without a constitution, a parliment, or any political parties. His overthrow will need some post-Gadhafi political structuring.

Gadhafi's turmoil is allegedly raising gasoline prices domestically. The group's rightwingers,and libertarians, held their lattes' high as they cheered that gasoline prices will be the issue that will defeat Obama in 2012.
Liberals like myself agreed, although it is the oil speculators,the Wall Streeters, that are the hidden hand behind the gasoline rises.
If gas goes to $4 gallon, Obama will be Carter redux.
And the sad part is that this gas rise is not an environmental tax, and it will do nothing to move us to a post-petroleum world.

The group's libertarians are looking forward to the possible shutdown of the fed. government.
Us liberals see that as a disaster.
This scenario may be delayed for a least a couple of weeks.

The rightwingers,tea party activists all, want primaries against 3 (RINO) Senators, Maine's Snowne,Indiana's Luger, and Utah's Hatch.
Hatch is moving so far to the right, he might be excommunicated from the Mormon Church.

And, finally the group lowered the chat a notch, and all concurred that the Academy Awards show sucked. It took a 94-yr. old stroke victim, Kirk Douglas, to save it.

Maureen Dowd

2011-03-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

Maureen Dowd
____________

It was a packed SUNY-Albany Page Hall last night.SUNY-Albany’s writers institute founder,Pulitizer prize winner William Kennedy, attended.

The Albany Times Union’s Casey Seiler asked the audience to give it up for newspapers…which we all did.

He then introduced Maureen Dowd. She read two of her opinion columns, and then went directly to Q & A.

She was articulate, funny, and candid in her views of politicos.
Of all the Bushes, she admires G.W. (41) the most. It’s a positive feeling I don’t share, but then I haven’t met the man.
She at least twice mentioned Jerry Brown, whom she recently interviewed and opined about.
Her take on Brown is that he, along with Andrew Cuomo, offers a “middle” way between the traditional blue liberalism and the GOP scorched earth bomb throwers.

Again, I’m rather skeptical about Brown. Her column on Brown’s interview (linked above) conveyed the feeling that he was playing with her..using cryptic Buddhist,new-agey rhetoric. Brown was very elusive…like attempting to pin jello to the wall.

The DC scripe cognescenti, and the political class like Dowd, with most of them reading her first over morning coffee.

She writes well, and is now at the peak of her influence.

It was an enjoyable evening.

Addendum: she believes the repealing of Obamacare by the GOP House is really dumb. I concure

The gang at the chat 'n chew really attacked me.

2011-02-10T11:26:00.000-08:00

a little bit of this, and a little bit of that from the gang at the chat 'n chew

A little bit of this and a little bit of that from the gang that gathers at the chat 'n chew this week. This is a bummer Jan. in the NE, but the gang of rightwingers,leftwingers,libertarians and even one or two anarchists gathered to warm their souls over cappuccino frappes and hot discussion.

Nobody in the group really likes Newt Gingrich. He's too much of an intellectual rightwing elitist.
He appeared with George Step. on the Morning Show this Monday. He grinned like a Cheshire Cat when George asked about his POTUS interest. Newt said he will decide by the end of March.
Newt has so many ideas, but with one of 10 worthy of consideration.
He is smart as a whip (as they say), but his personal baggage will not sell to the GOP evangelical base.
The tea partiers at the chat believe he should just twitter away his days,increasing his twitter network, and flooding them with new ideas every 30 minutes.

I brought printouts of two recent articles. One by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi and the other by the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza. Both are linked below.
The rightwingers wanted to throw both into the cafe's fireplace.
The liberals, like myself, argued for the relevance of these articles.
The Rolling Stone's political writer Matt Taibbi has a venomous pen. He writes well and pulls no punches on his opinions..left wing all the way.
His latest article is a vivid description of John Boehner.
I am uncomfortable with his personal attacks on the man, and I would expect Boehner will file libel or defamation charges against Taibbi and the magazine. He is a public figure, and will not succeed in that legal effort.
Taibbi writes that Boehner is :
".. a lazy, double-talking shill for corporate interests. So how's he going to fare with the Tea Party?

John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich.."

It certainly is colorful.
But getting beyond Taibbi's scurrilous personal attacks, the article is informative for political junkies.

The New Yorker article is more cerebral, describing Issa as a recovering crook and arsonist.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/new......

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/...

We also pivoted from politics and talked about Sunday's Golden Globe awards.
I caught some of the Golden Globe awards Sunday nite.
The ladies were dressed to the nines (as they say), and it was good to see some of the Hollywood elite appear.
Michael Douglas got a standup ovation. And kudos to his apparent successful battle with the big C.
Robert DiNero was funny and deserved his award.
Even Jane Fonda went to the podium.
Annette Benning won an award, and her hubby Warren Beatty was by her side. The rumors of their breakup over the alleged movement of their daughter to a transgender status seems to be overblown.
In Hollywood, dressing the opposite sex is considered de rigueur .
The real issue is that all these votes were from a total of 87 foreign correspondents..yes 87.
The Golden Globes are overhyped.
And Ricky Gervais is one sick puppy.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

2011-02-10T11:24:00.000-08:00

A little bit of this and a little bit of that
Posted 3 days 2 hours ago by gecannonphd

1)The NY Post has a story this am that Hosni Mubarak is likely the richest man in the world...beating Gates and Buffet. It's all stuffed in Swiss secret accounts and real estate. We are talking perhaps $70 billion.
Power , for a short period of time, can provide a high. But hanging on for 30 years smacks of an addiction.
And the reason he has held on is that he is money greedy.
Fortune mag. has long speculated that Fidel Castro is also a billionaire.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/internation...

2) The Super Bowl will always be with us, deep into the 22th century. It so drips with money, it's intoxicating.
I usually ignor pro football, although I watched some of the 3rd quarter.
The ads, at a million for 30 secs., appear to be less than funny.
Missed the half-time show, and the National Anthem, but I see there were some bad vibes.
I may start a blog site, Ending the Super Bowl (there may already be one),
Perhaps one idea to decrease the ferver for the violent game would be to have a half-time show where all the past NFL players who suffered concussions,and later brain damage, are brought out and lined up on the field.

3)I watched Bill O'Reilly's 12 minute interview with Obama. Obama converted mr. bill's bullying persona into a whimpering pool of jello.

4.It was all about Ronald Reagan's 100 birthday celebration. For several days, it was RR's world, and we just were allowed to live in it.
CSPAN had back to back book signings and interviews with Ron and Michael Reagan. Ron's was funny, and entertaining. He remained aloof from deep politics, and concentrated on the his father's light side, his youth, and all those swimmers he saved from drowning at Rock Lake in Ilinois.
.
Re the Alzheimer's controvesary, Ron explained that the early stages of the disease can start in the brain decades before the full-blown evidence is visible.

Michael got into politics, and attempted to make a case that RR"s legacy and conservative revolution still resonates. I don't agree.

Also as part of the RR celebration, Sarah Palin made another speech, for big bucks, in Cal. ,and I caught some of it. Most of the time, I have no idea what she is talking about. And her vocalisms and voice are grating.
To even suggest she could be POTUS, brings back to mind the line (perhaps from Mort Sahl), that we have gone from Tom Jefferson,George Washington,Adams etc. to Palin. Darwin was wrong.

Vermont and single-payer

2011-02-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

My neighbor state Vermont, home of Ben and Jerrys and Bernie Sanders, is seriously moving to a single payer health system.
**********

Obamacare is in trouble on many levels.
The legal challenges will reach the Supremes before the 2012 election; and, if the mandate remains in the law, the Court may strike it down.
The House GOP has already repealed the law.
The Senate GOP tried to do the same, but was temporarily defeated. McConnell and his GOP Conference will attack the bill in 100 different ways, mainly through the budget and regulatory process.
Politico also has a story today that some Senate Dem. moderates, up for reelection in 2012, may work with the Senate GOP to repeal, or change, the mandate part of the bill. See first link below.

It's important to keep in mind that a good slice of the public that opposes the bill oppose it because it does not have a public option..in short, the bill gave too much away to the for-profit insurance corporations.

I've long felt that a single-payer system is the only model that will bring universal,affordable, and efficient health care to all Americans. It is the model,with variations, that is working in almost all advanced,post-industrialized nations.

And my neighbor Vermont may be the first state to actually achieve a single-payer model. The Gov. and Legislature had earlier paid for a consultant study on how to get there, and the outline for the plan was given to the Legislature on Monday.

Kudos to my neighbor.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/021...

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/artic...

The red/blue coalition and the Patriot Act

2011-02-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

The RB coalition has bridged the gap,temporarily when the House voted down 3 elements of the dangerous Patriot Act.
*****
Tea partiers and Dem. liberal civil-libertarians joined forces yesterday on NOT extending 3 dangerous parts of the Bush Patriot Act:
The 3 provisions that were set to expire were:
"... the "roving" wiretaps, the authority to surveil individuals with no connection to Terrorist groups (the "lone wolf" provision), and the power to obtain "any tangible items" (the "library records" power).."

The red/blue, left/right coalition voted them down because the procedual vote needed 2/3rds approval. So this victory is only temporary.

The library records intrusion had many examples, and the librarians fought back. A basic civil right is to be able to borrow books,and use the public libraries' resources, without fear of retribution from the State.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011...

And our upstate new GOP Congressman Gibson voted with the RB coalition and here is his statement:

“The federal government’s foremost responsibility is the safety of its citizens. I have spent a lifetime defending our cherished way of life, and we must always remain vigilant in our mission to protect our freedoms. Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist networks remain an existential threat to the United States and all freedom-loving nations around the world. From my seat on the Armed Services Committee, I will work tirelessly to better organize to neutralize and defeat that threat.

“I have long been critical of the PATRIOT Act, because I believe that in the process of defending our liberties, we should not step on them. We must stay within the confines of the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights and the 4th Amendment. Going forward, the PATRIOT Act must be revised to ensure US citizens are protected by our constitutional rights. The Executive Branch must be checked, and I believe the provisions of this Act must fall within the jurisdiction of the FISA Court and the process for obtaining warrants should comply with the Constitution.

“I also strongly believe that our intelligence agencies and defense establishment could benefit from a reorganization to consolidate headquarters and streamline procedures to better ensure that information on potential threats is processed quickly, appropriately, and effectively. Doing more with less is a central mission of this Congress, and we are capable of a more effective national security at less cost.”

gecannonphd's blog Email Blog

The Donald for POTUS

2011-02-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

This has to be in one of Nostradamus's verses: The Donald continues to seriously flirt with running for POTUS
**********

Donald Trump has a big ego. Well, we knew that.
Obviously, this type of ego needs constant care and attention; and threatening to run for POTUS is one way to do that.
Appearing on CNN's Piers Morgan yesterday, The Donald proclaims his very serious interest in running. He ruminates that Palin can win some primaries, but not the election. Obama relishes the possibility of Palin as the GOP rival.
The Donald takes Romney more seriously, but doesn't believe he is resonating.
The Donald will appear, and me thinks, speak later today at the annual CPAC in DC. All the potential GOP POTUS wannabees will be seen and heard at this 11,000-strong gathering.
His secret advisor pushing him to run, and to appear at CPAC, is the nefarious consultant Roger Stone. Stone is known to all of us NYers as the advisor to Carl Paladino. Stone also claims to have brought down Eliot Spitzer. He was part of gestapo squad that invaded Miami in 2000, trying to stop the Gore-Bush recount.
For most of the year Stone lives under a rock. Once a year, a crowd gathers near his underground dwelling; he emerges; and if he sees his shadow, our electoral politics can expect at least 6 more months of dirty tricks.

The Donald has long ruminated on living in the White House. There was speculation that he married his second wife, Marla Maples, because she was a Georgia "peach" who could help him win votes in the South.

In his interview with Morgan, The Donald repeated his long held mantra that China is an enemy. As POTUS, he would begin a serious trade and tax war with this country.He could be a very dangerous POTUS.

He has some baggage. Married three times. His wealth is really unknown. He claims to be a multi-billionaire, but he has bankruptcies and lawsuits ongoing up the his strange head of hair.

Then, of course, there would be speculation on what The Donald would do with the White House. Would he convert it into a casino? a country club?
or demolish it, replacing it with a condo,hotel complex?

So many questions, and so few answers.

Trump says we will all know his position by June.
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Trump...

2010-12-22T09:57:00.002-08:00

Brian Williams warns us that the video may be uncomfortable to watch.
Posted 5 days 28 min ago by gecannonphd

Williams was referring to the crazed man who came to the Florida Board of Education,and began shooting,in revenge for the firing of his wife.
Kudos to the Board lady who came back into the room,and tried to disarm the man with her purse;and to the safety officer who finally brought the man down.
Gun violence is endemic in the US.
A similar event takes place almost every week somewhere.
The gun advocates,and the NRA, really have won the good fight.
We are a heavily armed citizenry,with perhaps over 300 million guns owned by Americans.
I've often thought that perhaps there should be a Barney Fife law,,the Don Knotts deputy sheriff,who could carry a gun but had to keep the bullet in his pocket.

This is the time of joy and happiness and we should keep that in mind this season:

"Remember the reason we celebrate at all, to cherish our families and communities, to pray for peace, to bring warmth and grace to this cold world, and to honor the God that made this world. As hectic and crazy, emotional and confusing, as celebratory or downright pain-filled as the month of December can be, let us remember why we dash through the snow, dash off to the mall, or spend any time spreading some sort of cheer. It is because we believe that there is peace to be found in this world, that in all the chaos that is our lives, there is a moment that shines in the darkness. There are the arms of friends and the embrace of community and the love of God whose very son was born on Christmas Day to keep us going. When we focus on that we are instantly “green.” We spend less time in stress and the mall and more time on the couch with that cup of coffee and warm conversation. Keep focused."

http://go.sojo.net/site/R?i=jxoMTw7lcXxZ.....

2010-12-22T09:57:00.001-08:00

Do we need a paradigm shift,or is the real dominant paradigm the way to go?
Posted 5 days 21 hours ago by gecannonphd

Last night I attended a book review at a regional library.
The book reviewed was American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by Robert D. Putnam.
( http://www.amazon.com/American-Grace-Rel...).

The session was led by a Catholic priest,Richard Shaw.
It was informative and interesting.

I asked two questions.
The first described our POTUS's meeting yesterday with 20 CEO's of our nation's largest private corporations.
I asked if he would favor the POTUS holding a similiar meeting with members of the US Bishop's Council,Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun,and Jim Wallis,of the Sojourners.

We are a great nation,with a laudible history,but we are in trouble.
40 million in poverty.
40 million on food stamps.
millions unemployed.
30-40 million chronically without health insurance.

The Church's social gospel has long been a message of hope;a message that does not accept the prevailing international corporate dominance.

Meeting with Lerner,Wallis,and the Catholic Bishops would be a counterweight to the corporate CEO session.

The POTUS needs to walk the talk on liberal/populist rhetoric.

Rev. Shaw skipped over this question.

My second question dealth with the decline of religious belief and practice during the 196oies.
I asked about the murder of JFK..and how this began the 1960ies alienation...the rejection of establishment religion and a belief in authority.
I asked why the Church,and American Bishops, have never strongly called for an answer to the question of why JFK,the first and only Catholic POTUS,was murdered?
The good Rev. Shaw said he was really concerned about Obama's safety.

At the end, I gave Rev. Shaw the book description of Jesuit James Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable:Why He died and why it matters.
This book is a spirtual journey. It deals with Dallas and Dealy Plaze,but then elevates to the cosmic. It describes in detail how JFK,following the Cuban missile crisis, was working closely with Pope John and the Kremlin to end the military Cold War. This was done with small steps,day by day.
(http://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Wh...).

If the liberal Lerner,Wallis,and the Bishops were to meet with the POTUS, they could describe to him the real dominant paradigm that exists in the country,not necessarily with corporate CEOs

"These include: a belief in the virtues of community; a desire to be part of something greater than oneself; a reciprocal relationship with nature and life's essential resources; an aversion to open hostilities and devastating warfare; an interest in the wellbeing of others as a precondition of personal prosperity; an adherence to culturally-transcendent principles such as the Golden Rule; and a willingness to work hard in return for an equitable existence..."

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12097

2010-12-22T09:54:00.002-08:00

DADT will be repealed in a few hours. Now let's move on to more significant matters.
Posted 3 days 23 hours ago by gecannonphd

As of this moment, the Senate has voted to clear the deck for a vote this afternoon to repeal DADT.
This would be good for everyone.
This is what the majority of Americans want,the top military supports repeal, and the politicos are following the democratic wishes of the people,and the most conservative bureaucracy in our country,the military.

So let's get beyond this, and focus on more important issues.

The Hearst's cartoonist and writer David Horsey has a strong column describing why DADT and gay marriage are the right things to do,and will not cause a crisis in our country,our values,or our culture.
http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/articl...

and Sen. McCain will vote against repeal.
Here's a good take on his position.
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/polit...

And Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury has a good few strips on McCain and DADT,starting with Dec. 12th.

http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2010/...

2010-12-22T09:54:00.001-08:00

Oprah's giveaway of her favorites.
Posted 1 day 48 min ago by gecannonphd

“Actually this is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all, a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!..”
George Carlin, On Stuff
http://www.writers-free-reference.com/fu...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuL...
**********

Family members DVRed Oprah’s “my favorite things” show yesterday. I gazed at it last night.
This is the show in which Oprah swims,showers, and shimmers with unlimited stuff. The audience is screened,and made up of good people doing positive,unlifting things
Oprah gave away stuff,ranging from Hope in a Jar (which promises to bath your skin in the youth fountain) to the 2012 new,revamped VW.
The audience yelled,cried and danced in the aisle.
Oprah’s persona on this show was excited euphoria,casting this spell over the audience.
Kudos to Oprah for gifting this stuff for the attendees. Kudos to the corporate givers for this holiday positive PR.
However,I do believe it’s a crass blasphemy on what should be a spiritual celebration.
For the Christians in Oprah’s audience, they should be reminded that Jesus was a populist; a preacher admonishing the people to give all their stuff away to the poor.
As the humorist Fred Allen said: “I don’t want to own anything that won’t fit into a coffin.”
Right now, I’m heading to Macys,looking for Hope in the Jar. It will take a miracle in a big jar to help my skin.
And here is a counter to Oprah’s unadulterated commercialism:

"Remember the reason we celebrate at all, to cherish our families and communities, to pray for peace, to bring warmth and grace to this cold world, and to honor the God that made this world. As hectic and crazy, emotional and confusing, as celebratory or downright pain-filled as the month of December can be, let us remember why we dash through the snow, dash off to the mall, or spend any time spreading some sort of cheer. It is because we believe that there is peace to be found in this world, that in all the chaos that is our lives, there is a moment that shines in the darkness. There are the arms of friends and the embrace of community and the love of God whose very son was born on Christmas Day to keep us going. When we focus on that we are instantly “green.” We spend less time in stress and the mall and more time on the couch with that cup of coffee and warm conversation. Keep focused."

2010-12-22T09:53:00.001-08:00

"When Fat Cats TALK-Team O listens-at last" writes Charles Gasparino
Posted 14 min 16 sec ago by gecannonphd

I'm a strong believer in "deep politics",the existence of hidden,and often dark, forces that really make policy outside the view of the public.

And Business Fox writer Charles Gasparino describes a recent example of the deep politics model.

In today's NY Post, he describes a secret meeting in NYC held at hedge funder John Levin's house.
Attending from the White House were Valerie Jarret and Austan Goolsbee,two close Obama advisors.
Jarret and Goolsbee wanted to assure the monied class that Obama is a friend,not an enemy.
And Jarret tells them that Obama's public opposition to extending the Bush tax cuts to the rich was only rhetorical redmeat to satisfy the Dem. liberal base. It was not what he really believed.

Say what?

Obama is a Bill Clinton triangulator,not a "give them hell" Harry Truman.

All of this is a bit disconcerning to the Dem. liberal/progressive base.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/ope...

The 65+ voters were 23% of the total last Tuesday. And they went GOP by a wide margin.

2010-11-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

The 65+ voters were 23% of the total last Tuesday. And they went GOP by a wide margin.
*****
And it is all about Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACT).

The older voters have health insurance,Medicare mostly.
And the 30 second attack ads against the House Dems. created fear,misinformation,and motivation for these voters to vote.

The losing Bluedog up here in Sarataga Springs,Scott Murphy, was hit savagely with the ad "He voted to cut Medicare by $500 billion..."

Of course, the ad. was misleading because the ACT,if fully implemented, would reduce Medicare cost increases by $500 billion over 10 years...or $50 billion yearly. Not a big amount,easily doable just by eliminating waste and fraud,and would make Medicare a stronger program.

But the 65+ voters have no interest in having Medicare "cut" to provided insurance to the "others"..the poor,younger,and largely minority Medicaid recepients.

Now the GOP in the House will likely pass H.R.1,in January,repealing ACT totally. Harry Reid and the Senate Dems. will bury it.

The House GOP will then attack ACT with a 1000 cuts...hold weekly hearings on all aspects of the bill;cut funding;subpoena HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to appear in the House;and will force a shutdown of the government, if required.

Meanwhile, the GOP governors and AG's will work at the state levels to undercut ACA and bury it.

The AG's will persue the ACA legal angles in the courts.

And this ACA will be a major issue in the 2012 campaigns.

There are many good aspects to ACA,but it is destroying civility and any small chance of bipartisanship in DC.

The tragedy is that if ACA goes down completely, major health care and insurance reform will not come around for 50 years.

Decision,Decisions, all day long. George Bush semi-memoir Decision Points will hit the bookstores this week

2010-11-07T09:37:00.000-08:00

Decision,Decisions, all day long. George Bush semi-memoir Decision Points will hit the bookstores this week.
*****

(Decisions, decisions, decisions all day long
Will my decisions work out right or wrong
The Dems.media,liberals,and Olbermann don’t like anything I do-o-o
Laura seems to feel the same way too

Worries, worries pile up on my head
Woe is me I should have stayed in bed
Can’t get the the book advance that the Clintons got,
my decisions ain’t been so go-o-ood
My legacy is just ain’t swingin’ like it shou-ou-ould

Decisions, decisions, decisions
They’re all on account-a my lovin' you all the way I do
Problems, problems, pro-o-o-o-blems
They wouldn’t have been solved until I’m sure of you-o-ou
You can solve my problems with by buying my book;that’s tru-u-e

Problems, problems, problems all day long

FADE: Problems, problems, problems all day long "
*****
Adopted from the Everly Brothers, Problems,Problems All Day Long

________________________

Pres. George Bush is reappearing.
He,and his father, threw out a baseball pitch at the Ranger Stadium during the World Series.
One late night comedian suggested that Bush sold his interest in the Rangers a decade ago,and it took that long for the Rangers to recover.

I don't think the sales will be high on this book. Could be wrong.
I never liked the Bush family..too Texas,too drenched in oil.

Bush writes about how he got to feeling that Cheney was getting too much media attention,and the public was beginning to feel Cheney was too powerful. And Bush explored with Cheney the possibility of not being on the ticket in 2004.
Another comedian suggested that Cheney told the POTUS that I will get back to you on that.

Bush writes that his biggest disappointment was not privitizing Social Security. In short, not being able to give Wall Street and the hedge funds billions of dollars in new retirement money.
Is he serious?

Not disappointment in 9/11 happening;not in stopping the Wall Street financial meltdown;not in invading Iraq; not in downplaying Afgan.;and not in failing to capture Osama.

It will take decades for historians to make a final decision on Bush 2 legacy. I don't believe it will be favorable.

In a satirial look at Bush's decisions, Vanity Fair's Craig Brown outlines Bush's rules for decisionmaking:

1.Leap before you look
2.Never skate on thin water
3.Stare hard at a map and you'll see yourself waving back.
4.A big deal is no big deal
5.Mind up how I may made
6.Always do what your daddy torture.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/featu...

Carl Paladino..is he alright in the head?

2010-09-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

“New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino: “I’m not intimidatable. I’m not politically correct. I’m an outsider. I plan on really restructuring our government. I plan on taking out these bad guys. And Andrew Cuomo’s at the top of the list. He’s a despicable character, he’s an angry man, he’s got an ego that’s bigger than this city, he’s got an arrogance about him — he wants to be President of the United States. He made a bad decision running for governor of the state of New York because we’re going to vet him out to the people. We’re going to show the people what a despicable character he is.”http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/09/29/ny-gov_paladino_im_not_intimidatable.html
**********
Having these two stand together on the same stage will be the ninth wonder of the world.

Is Paladino ok in the head?
He should go to coffeepartyusa.com and sign the coffee party pledge of civility.(http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6500/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2097)

And he should read Tom Friedman’s NYT column this am.
He says the tea party is a tea kettle that is just letting out steam…it doesn’t attempt to deal with the real issues for our future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/opinion/29friedman.html?_r=1&ref=columnists

Welcome to Boehner Land. The land of big money,open lobbying,jet rides,and cigarettes.

2010-09-13T06:34:00.000-07:00

John Boehner wants to return to the Speaker position in the House.
All the prosnosticators say it likely will happen. U.of Vir.Larry Sabato (a GOP leaner);the Cook Report;and my graduate school friend,Stuart Rothenberg, and others all see a tsunami wave washing over Congress in Nov. The above seers all see the GOP taking 35-60 seats in the House. 39 are needed to flip to the GOP.

The NYT's front page story today describes Boehner as a corporate lobbys best friend..big check contributions,jet rides,open access for the corporate,Chamber of Commerce, agenda. It is similiar to the Tom DeLay K Street machine.

So how is Boehner different than any Congressional pol,and the lobbyists that buy them?

Well,as a liberal progressive, it is different? The agenda that Boehner and his GOP caucus will promote is reactionary. It is NO,NO,NO to any policies that are opposed to the corporate agenda.
It is moving back to policies of de-regulation,low taxes,and repeal of health care, financial,and energy reform.

It will bring to real power Boehner's young guns..the really rightwing bomb throwers in his caucus, the Paul Ryans and Eric Cantors.

I like to say that when Boehner goes out fundraising and campaigning, he tells people that his GOP caucus is a good American diverse group...a group of diverse white men and women,who also are members of a diverse group of country clubs.

And Boehner has responded to the NYT article. Second link below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/us/pol...

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinio...

Obama walking on water.

2010-08-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

There is the super New Yorker cover cartoon of Obama walking on water. Link below.
The reports are that he liked it enough to hang it in the WH where the bust of Winston Churchill used to be. Obama returned the Churchill bust to London.

Obama was elected because he promised hope and change;and he was a rock star type persona.
Now,like Palin tweeks, how is that hopey and changing thing going?

Well, there are limits to power,even with the POTUS.
He came in with very deep,deep problems.
We have avoided a depression,a bank,financial failure. But our $14 trillion GNP economy is moving slowly. Perhaps Reserve Chair Bernancke should be fired.
We have passed a semi-universal health reform bill. It took 60 years to do it; and if it didn't happen in March, it would take another 60 years to even come close. It is not a perfect reform;it is a work in progress.
There are other significant reforms that Obama and the Dems. have achieved in the last 18 months.

Not the change and hope is done.
Pronosticators,the pollsters,the rightwingers, are saying the GOP will flip both Houses in Nov.
Pelosi will have to hand the Speaker's gavel back to Boehner. What a sad day that will be.

Politico has a good read on how, if the good GOP rightwingers take Congress, the next two years will be filled with investigations of the WH;with repealing and defunding health,financial and energy reform. (Link below)
What a sad two years that will be.

The POTUS's change and hope is done. It was unrealistic to begin with. Washington's institutions don't change.

Obama should spend the next two years on two major issues: climate change and energy independence; and the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The earth is burning,and flooding.
Military nukes are useless,and should be eliminated by everyone.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/081...

"The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. "

2010-08-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

That is a quote from George Bush's 2nd Inaugural Address.
Links below have the address and video of same.

The address is the strongest outline of the neo-conservative belief in the unlimited US power..unlimited to promote "democracy",engage in long military wars if necessary,and to engage in a world wide,long, and unending struggle.

It was a speech to justify the preemptive invasion of Iraq.
None of the pr justifications for the invasion were valid (i.e Saddam's possession of wmd's). But the Bush/Cheney neo-cons could justify it through the "democracy" crusade.

POTUS Obama will speak to us on Tuesday,describing the "drawdown" of our engagement troops in Iraq.

I would like him to outline a conservative,realistic policy of limited engagement in the world.
I would like him to describe how converting a billion Muslims to Western style "democracy" is an unending call for perpetual military wars in many different places.
I would like him to describe how the US,faced with deficits,debt,overextended military,and domestic crises, will adopt a containment,limited,police action against a small criminal gang of al queda.

That is what I would like to him to say, but,somehow, I don't think that is the direction he will go.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/art...

http://www.hulu.com/watch/52747/inaugura...

Glenn Beck and Sara Palin would not want MLK Jr. speaking at their rally tomorrow. How sad! How tragic!

2010-08-27T11:14:00.001-07:00

Beck's brigades will gather at the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow,calling for the "restoration of America."
It is deliberately being held on the anniversity of the March on Washington and the MLK Jr. "dream" speech of 1963.
The irony is that Beck would not allow King to speak at the rally tomorrow. King preached social justice and inter-racial harmony.
Beck rejects social justice, and favors instead "social equality".
Beck calls on his brigades to walk out of any church where a pastor calls for "social justice".
If MLK were to speak at Beck's rally,even for a short moment, he would revise his dream. His dream would call for racial harmony,the end of poverty,and the end of unnecessary wars.
Beck would ask MLK to leave the stage quickly, and Palin would run up and say "I refudiate that."
Beck should take his chalkboard and go back to the Fox studios.

and Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. attacks Beck's pretentions:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/25/17...

Another good blog re Beck's gathering tomorrow:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s

Dr. Laura:Don't retreat....reload!

2010-08-21T08:08:00.001-07:00

Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't America
*****

The heading is from a tweet from Sara Palin to Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
As the whole world knows, Dr. Laura used the n word 11 times during a recent call in from a black American woman.

11 times!!! Perhaps once or twice within a dialogue,to stress liberal compassion, would have been sufficient. Dr. Laura reminds me of the castrating therapist on 2 and 1/2 Men.

Palin believes Laura's 1st Amendment rights are being violated. Sara believes the good doc. had the right to use public airwaves to yell racist gibberish.

Sara is part of the problem,and not a part of the solution.

We are in a dangerous divisive period in our country. Civil war is building. And Sara's call to "re-load" feeds the most rancid,racist rightwing ramblings (how's that for alliteration?).

By,by dr. laura.
and hopefully, the same to Sara soon.

In Cheryl Crow's new cd, 100 miles from Memphis, she has her own tune,Say What You Want, she takes on good ole' re-loadem Sara:

"I saw you ranting on TV today
I heard you tell me to reload
You got a lot of nerve to talk that way
Someone unplug the microphone
I'm tired of all the fighting
Cynicism and back biting
Can't even hear myself think
You pour the Kool-Aid and then we drink."

If WWE matron Linda McMahon wins the Senate seat in Connecticut, will she crotch kick Franken and Sanders on the Senate floor?

2010-08-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

If WWE matron Linda McMahon wins the Senate seat in Connecticut, will she crotch kick Franken and Sanders on the Senate floor?
*****

These billionaires are climbing off their yachts; walking out of their gated community mansions;stepping from their limos.; and running for office.They have mucho dough to finance their own campaigns.

In my great state of NY, a Buffalo multi-millionaire Carl Paladino is pouring big bucks to win the gov.'s GOP primary in Sept.,and then to take on Andrew Cuomo in the Fall.
He calls the Albany politicos "rodents", and says he will take a baseball bat to them . He has several little ducks standing around areas of NY, with a sign "Cuomo ducks Obamacare". Get it?
a duck accusing Cuomo of ducking.

In the great state of Cal.,two rich ladies are running for the Senate and Gov., and may win.

In Connecticut, the WWE madam Linda McMahon won the GOP Senate primary, and will take on Richard Blumenthau in Nov. She spent $20
million of her money on the primary, and promises to spend another $30 million to dispatch Blumie.

She wants to repeal Obamacare, and may borrow Paladino's ducks for her campaign. She expresses concern about the many uninsured,but wants no mandate for insurance. Her WWE wrestlers are contract employees, who must pay for their own health insurance. Is that what she wants for all of us?
If she wins, will Franken and Sanders wear protective armor on the Senate floor?

A good read on McMahon is in today's NY Post:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/ope...

As I make my way back from Woodstock, I say vote "YES" on California Prop. 19

2010-08-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

As I make my way back from Woodstock, I say vote "YES" on California Prop. 19

I'm still making my way back from Woodstock (that's hyperbole, and a metaphor).

When my sister enmeshed herself in the born again Christian zeitziest, she gave me her vinal Joan Baez albums. I've always liked Joanie.

I don't smoke pot. I may have once,in a previous life, but I didn't inhale.
But if I was in California, I woud vote "YES" in Nov. on Prop. 19, legalizing pot.

The drug war is an expensive failure. It has cost us billions, w/o making a dent in drug use. Even Bill Buckley, the non-libertarian conservative, long supported legalizing drugs.

So what would Prop. 19 do, if passed?
It, very likely, would:
1.provide Cal. with $2 billion in revenue and savings..$1 b. in taxes and $1b in court/prison cost savings;
2.regulate the use of pot;
3.promote hemp, which can be used in many eco-friendly ways..ie, it can save cutting trees for paper;
4.and would de-regulate low level use of pot, rather than the current prohibition which encourages escalating "up" on more powerful drugs.
This is, as I understand it, because speed,coke and herion remain in a person's blood for 72 hours, while pot can remain for 30 days. If someone has to take a drug test on a Monday, and wants to party on Fri., than the incentive is to escalate drug choice upward.

Judge Joe Grey,Orange Cty., is a leading advocate for ending the existing drug war. He says we have 5% of the world's population,and 25% of its' prisoners (largely because of the drug war). And the war is highly racist.

He wants a "YES" victory on Prop. 19, but feels the industrial-prison complex, and the prison guard lobby, will likely defeat it.

You can see some speeches by Grey on C-span and YouTube.
His book on this topic is:
http://www.judgejimgray.com/whyourdrugla...

"“They come here to drop a child. It’s called drop and leave” So let's amend the 14th Amendment

2010-08-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

The GOP/Tea Party "no nothings" are stirring the anti-immigrant pot.
There are rumblings in Congress and the states to amend the 14th Amendment,the post-Civil War amendment. The original Amendment was to twart the Dred Scott decision. It was to counter the Southern white move to dismantle Reconstruction and make Lincoln's Emancipation Proclaimation moot.

The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The calls for repealing,or amending,the 14th Amendment are political fear mongering at its' worse.

The proponents suggest illegal pregnant women swim across the Rio Grande. park in the shopping mall parking lots,wait to dilate,and then head to the ER's. The new baby would be a US citizen,and would be qualified to receive all the welfare benefits of a citizen.

All of these outrageous claims are not true.
What do the mothers do after delivery? Swim back across the Rio Grande,and leave the baby here? And then the mother waits 10 years to try to reunite with the child as she moves her way,slowly,to adult citizenship?

It's all horse pucky! It's all fuddle duddle!!

A good article in the current Nation refutes all these righwing nativist claims.
http://www.thenation.com/article/38035/b...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/081...

The GOP Tea Party Contract. The Dems. should use Hubert Humphrey's litany against the GOP.

2010-08-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

The GOP Tea Party Contract. The Dems. should use Hubert Humphrey's litany against the GOP.
*****
The Dem. National Committee has unveiled their GOP Tea Party Contract, to be used to attack the GOP in the Fall campaign.
The contract can be seen at the link below.
It is a good approach. It is a realistic summary of what can happen if the GOP flips the House and/or Senate.
The Dem. House candidates should take this contract, and use Hubert Humphrey’s great litany of GOP dangers in his 1968 convention acceptance speech.

Who favors implementing the the affordable health care act and making it effective?
Not the GOP.

Who favors saving Social Security and not privitizing it?
Not the GOP.

Who favors improving Medicare, and not privitizing it?
Not the GOP.

Who favors ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and Big Oil?
Not the GOP.

Who favors the Wall Street reform and consumer protections, and not repealing it?
Not the GOP.

Who wants to make the those responsible for the oil spill pay?
Not the GOP.

Who favors the Depts. of Education, Energy,and EPA and does not want to abolish them?
Not the GOP.

And who wants to preserve the 17th Amendment right to directly elect our Senators?
Not the GOP.

http://my.democrats.org/page/content/tpg...

The House Tea Party caucus has 51 members. And the pretty lady Michele Bachmann may be working too hard.

2010-08-01T10:20:00.001-07:00

Michele Bachmann entered the hospital Friday, and is now home in Minn. resting.
Wish you well, pretty lady.
Bachmann has been as busy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
She is going around campaigning for GOP and tea partier candidates.
She is,of course, also running for re-election.
And she has organized the Congressional Tea Party caucus.
This new caucus raises several questions.
Is the tea party movement being coopted by the GOP?
or the reverse?
If the GOP flips the House in Nov., what policies and platforms will the Tea Party caucus push?
I notice that Paul Ryan,the author of the Plan to privatize Medicare and SS,is not a member of the caucus.
Will the caucus support his Plan?
And won't that Plan alienate the elderly,retired,SS recepients of the Tea Party?

So many questions and so few answers!

http://bachmann.house.gov/News/DocumentS...

The Congressional Black Caucus has 43 members and the black unemployment rate is double the white rate

2010-08-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

There is discontent among the Congressional Black Caucus. Caucus members believe the House Ethics committee is racially bias. It has investigated at least 8 black Congresspeople since 2009.

Charlie Rangel should resign. But his ego won't allow it.
Maxine Walters' apparently had a conflict of interest on a bank bailout,involving her husband.

Rangel's ethics violations are long and serious.
Part of the remedy is to reform and reconfigure the Ways and Means committee. It is too powerful,and deals with a combination of taxation and revenue. These functions should be separated.

The Black Caucus needs to get in touch with their constitutents,and clean up their public act.

We have a black POTUS, but one million blacks are in prison.
The crisis of the black community and black families is acute.

"Seven out of every 10 African-American children are born out of wedlock, according to testimony given by a leading social policy researcher during a Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

In what is being called "the nation's worst crisis in the history of the Black family," hearing participants attributed the degenerating situation to the particularly disturbing plight of young African-American men, half of whom are now unemployed, and have 30 percent chance of serving time in prison before age 30.

And among Black men who drop out of high school-which is estimated at 40 percent--the situation is worse. Of those, 72 percent are jobless, and the likelihood of being incarcerated jumps to 60 percent..."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1...

Nixon,the enemies list, Daniel Schorr and the Smothers Brothers

2010-07-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

JFK during 1960 campaign: "I carry a great deal of responsibility. I'm the only person standing between Nixon and the WH"
**********
On this super Summer weekend, it is good to reflect on the past.
If you think our current political environment is toxic, the past was little different.

Daniel Schorr died yesterday.
He was a good investigative reporter who spent decades working to "drain the swamp" of Wash.DC.

He was #17 on Richard Nixon's WH "enemies list". The list was a result of RN's fertile paranoiac mindset,and was produced by little trolls in the WH (like Chuck Colson,the Germans, and then troll John Dean).

Paul Newman also made the list.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I'm also reading David Bianculli's new book on the Smothers Brothers,"Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'.

The show was on CBS for three years, and was cancelled by CBS suits after three years. The censorship war was rift by the 3rd year,and was centered on anti-Nam war skits and humor used on the show.
There are videos of the 3rd season shows available, and a video,Smothered, that deals with the censorship war.
The show is used in many college classes as an example of good writing and the political toxic atmosphere of the late 1960ies.

The show offered a venue for 1960ies new age talent,writers like Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, Pat Paulson, and Dave Steinberg.
All of these creative writers moved the Smothers Brothers to the political left...perhaps Tom Smothers was always there.

The Johnson WH,CBS suits, and the Cold War intelligence apparatus moved to silence the Smothers Brothers.
And succeeded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon's_Enemies_List

ElRushbo

2010-07-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

Re El Rushbo: "If character were elastic, he wouldn't have enough to make a parakeet suspenders."

Or re Rush, from Fred Allen,describing another person long ago:
"You could fit his heart in a flea's navel, and still have room for dozens of caraway seeds."

El Rushbo has sold his NYC condo. He pledged to leave NY entirely when Albany imposed a temporary millionaires surtax.

He resides in Florida,which has no income tax. He also hides mucho greenbacks in the Cayman Islands.

LeBron James is going to Miami. And Huckabee says it's because of the NY high taxes.James will have no Florida tax on his $15 million annual salary. And being a legal Florida resident,he'll have no tax on his endorsement $s.

There could be a race to the bottom. Ohio could become the Florida North by eliminating its' top 6.24% income tax rate. NY could eliminate its' top rate of 12.62%

The better option is to have Florida impose an income tax.

There should be a race to the top of El Rushbo and James' mansions to collect taxes on their obscene income.

And we should get the IRS down to the Caymans.

A good read by a teapartier tax cutter is:
http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opini...

Former Sen. Alan Simpson tells a joke re ElRushbo and he talks to the governors

2010-07-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

Ole' Al Simpson is a humorist,but he is also dangerous.
He is the co-chair of the POTUS's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform ,along with Erskine Bowles,the businessman accountant-type.
Their commission,composed of 18, including 6 Dems.and 6 GOPers from Congress,and Andy Stern, must report their recommendations by Dec.
Congressional leaders suggest they will allow an up or down vote on the recommendations. Simpson knows Congress, and says that is huey,lol.

Simpson is obsessed by SS and believes it has an untenable future. Bowles is less of a flamethrower on SS.
They take the SS acturials and agree that by 2039, SS will only have enough to pay out 75% of required payment levels.
But that leaves time for tweaking...raising retirement age (talk is 70yrs);making SS payments based on need;raising the SS wage tax;using a value added tax to contribute to SS;taxing all income etc.
I don't trust Simpson on SS.
He has never liked the entitlement.

In their talk with the governers Sat. in Boston, they didn't mention two cost-cutting suggestions.

Ron Paul and Barney Frank are co-sponsoring a defense budget cut of $1 trillion over 10 years...$100b annually.
And some health care reformers suggest that our entire health care costs can be cut 50%..half of the health care costs are wasted.

Simpson and Bowles displayed very little real humor in their description of the deficit/debt crisis.

But at the governor's conference, Simpson told a ElRusbo joke.

"A guy is looking to buy an expensive car, tests it out, and comes back to the dealer to complain, 'This is an expensive car, but the radio doesn't work.' The dealer explains, 'No, no, this is a high-tech state of the art car radio. All you have to do is say what you want to hear. Say 'country music' and country music comes on. Say 'rock n' roll' and rock 'n roll comes on." The guy says, "Great, I'll take it." The guy is driving it off the lot and turns into the street when another motorist cuts him off. "JerK!' he mutters—and Rush Limbaugh comes on."

The mattress economy

2010-07-14T11:00:00.002-07:00

The conservative Michael Barone calls Obamaeconomics "the mattress economy". And I say trickle-down is sleeping in a bunk bed.

Conservative analyst,writer Michael Barone paints a very dark portrait of the current economy and recovery.
He accuses Obama and the WH of creating a mattress economy,

"Government policies designed to stimulate the economy seem to be having the opposite effect. Consumers aren't buying, businesses aren't hiring, and those fortunate enough to have some cash on hand don't seem to be investing.

I call it the mattress economy. People seem to be following this investment strategy: 1) Go to Mattress Discounters and buy the biggest mattress you can find. 2) Take it home, and stuff all your money in it. 3) Lie down, and get some rest..."

I don't agree.
The Great Recession continues unabated.
But even as Barone admits, the private corporate sector is sitting on $2 trillion in cash.
Reports on corporate earnings this week will show robust profits.
So there is something going on,but I don't blame Obama.
The POTUS, and his conservative economic team, have a bunk bed strategy.
Build the top bunk with juicy greenbacks,bailouts to the banks and Detroit etc., and let the bottom bunk,the middle and lower class, scramble for scraps.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/ope...

2010-07-14T11:00:00.001-07:00

The Blue Dogs, and particularily the Blue pups, are in the political fight of their lives.

FDR moved to expand the Supreme Court because the conservatives there were undercutting much of his new deal.
He attempted to purge the Southern Congressional barons from the party.
And unemployment remained stubbornly above 15%.
It's the economy,folks.
The GOP won 75 House seats in 1938, and that essentially halted the New Deal.

There is very little the POTUS,Dems.or the WH can do about the unemployment rate by Nov. It will remain,nationally, at 10%. Black American unemployment will remain at 15%,and Hispanic rates a little lower.

This will hurt in Nov.

There are 54 Blue Dog Dems. in the House,with about half Blue pups..those elected since 2006.
They are from marginal Dem. districts, or GOP dominant districts.
The fate of these Blue Dogs will depend on voter turnout, and the movement of the independents.
And the independents are discontended.

The GOP would like to flip the House. If they do, expect them to move to repeal Obamacare,and generally make the POTUS life miserable. But Obama will still have the veto to stop the most outrageous actions of the GOP.

Short of flipping the House,the GOP could pick up 30-40 House seats.

Little or nothing can be done about the continuation of the Great Recession by Nov.
The POTUS and his cadre in the WH missed their opportunity a year ago...a much greater stimulus was needed.

Some random ruminations

2010-07-14T10:58:00.001-07:00

Some random thoughts
*****
The iPhone4 and duct tape
_________________________

Consumer Reports says there definitely is a problem with the iPhone4 reception.
It recommends covering a small gap in the antenna with DUCT TAPE.
Does Steve Jobs have a financial interest in duct tape sales?
Wasn't duct tape recommended for protecting our houses during the early Homeland Security recommendations?
And how many millenial users of the iPhone4 know what duct tape is?
And we all thought GH 40 could cure everything,including arthritis. It has nothing over duct tape.
***
Mel Gibson's current movie ,in production, is titled "The Beaver".
He "plays an emotionally troubled man who talks through a beaver puppet".
The mad Mel's best defense will be that it was the beaver ranting to Oksan Grigorieva, and he wasn't even on the phone.
The paranoic mad Mel will also likely accuse Oksana of working undercover for Putin's spy agency.
*****
"A geezer carrying an oxygen tank and wielding a cane went on a shooting spree during a botched robbery in a high-end NYC Midtown clothing store.."
And he got away.
And we wonder how 6'4" Osama, carrying a dialysis machine, eludes capture

Get smart, all you agent 99s

2010-07-01T11:24:00.001-07:00

Get smart, all you agent 99s
***

The photo. op. with Bill Clinton and Valdimar Putin in Moscow was intriguing.
Putin, the ole' KGB spymaster, lectured Bill on the US cops rumming amuck, arresting the alleged spies.
Bill, laughing nervously, perhaps worried that he would be arrested for intelligence gathering.

Low level spying takes place everyday in every government and corporation.
This entire spy episode smacks of Get Smart Agent 99 capers. The "spies" were asked to smooze and cuddle with high level mucky mucks. The goal was to get government/corp. info.

The stunning NYC redhead was to party up to the mucky mucks, but she was not a prostitute.

What's the point of all this spying? Information is readily available online. Just buy an IPhone4,but don't tilt it so the phone disconnects.

The group has been charged with money laundering and conspiracy. But not with.espionage.

Let's get over our Cold War mindset. During the height of the Cold War, the Rosenbergs were executed for espionage. Ike was enamered with the U2 spy plane, and ordered U2 flights over the USSR. He knew it violated international law,and could have led to war with the Soviets, but the photos obtained convinced Ike that the Soviet claims of advanced missiles and tech. were lies.

Our side also had a "defector" program where we would send "defectors" into the USSR to gather info. Lee Harvey Oswald was one.

I say send these "spies" back to Putin and let it go.
Flag Like ReplyReply

The fortune 400 and public libraries

2010-07-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

$600 billion would keep alot of public libraries open over the weekend.
*****
David Rockefeller is 95, but he attended a high level billionaires secret meeting in May 2009.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet asked him to organize the meeting.
They met at the gorgeous Presidential House at Rockefeller University.
Billionaire NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg was there.
Ted Turner showed up.
Gates and Buffet have a plan. They want billionaires to pledge half their net worth to charity, either during their lifetimes or at their death.
It sounds like a super idea.
The Fortune 400's net worth is estimated to be $1.2 trillion.
50% of that is $600 billion.
This elite money group has met several times subsequent to this first confam,and the group has expanded at each meeting.
As cities,states close parks,libraries,senior centers etc., $600b. would be super shot from the super elite of our country.
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/20...

2010-06-20T10:37:00.001-07:00

"BP is a corporate criminal" or that is what the good populist Jim Hightower thinks.
(..From the time it was known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and set out to grab and control the rich petroleum reserves owned by what is now Iran, BP has been a recidivist global criminal. In the past three decades, it grew huge by swallowing such competitors as Standard Oil of Ohio, Amoco and Arco. Along the way, it has been implicated in bribery, overthrowing governments, plunder and money laundering, plus having established one of the worst safety and environmental records in an industry that is notoriously reckless on both counts...)

http://www.creators.com/opinion/jim-high...

RINOS and DINOS

2010-06-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

RINOs and DINOs
(Sharron Angle,(Nevada GOP senate candidate).. wants to abolish social security, the department of education and the income tax. Reid did his best to make Angle his opponent, spending heavily to undermine the more moderate GOP frontrunner, Sue Lowden. It seems to have worked. Angle is the perfect symbol of the Republican base in 2010: She's a fresh face; she enjoys grassroots support, and she wants to repeal the handiwork not just of Franklin Roosevelt, but of Theodore Roosevelt.)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s...
**********

The tea partyiers want to purge the RINO's from their party.
Up here in NY, the rightwing has already done that in the GOP.
Our Dem. governor candidate,Andrew Cuomo,son of strong liberal Mario Cuomo, doesn't need to cater to the Dem. progressive/liberal base. They have nowhere to go in November.

But the progressives are replicating the tea partiers. They want to purgh the DINOs (Democrats in name only).
The Democratic party is a broad coalition,and purghing DINOs and blue dogs is a recipe for defeat in November.

2010-06-20T10:34:00.001-07:00

"People say we don't care about the small people.But we care.We care about the small people"
That's what the BP Chairman of the Board Carl-Henric Svanberg,a Swede, said yesterday outside the White House.
He also said "(Obama) is frustrated because he cares about the small people"
NYT Gail Collins says the man is talking in Munchkinland.
The BP pr man says its a language interpretation problem.
Svanberg does not speak English,as a first language.
Hopefully, Svanberg is at the Congressional hearings today.
If he calls Henry Waxman a small person, little Waxman will slice and dice him, and cut him down to his size.
Tony Hayward will,or is, in front of Waxman today.
Waxman will slice and dice this bloke,and hand him his head.
That will surely make Hayward a small, or smaller, person.

2010-06-20T10:33:00.001-07:00

Monica Lewinsky saved Social Security. Yes, it's true. Goodness gracious.
In 1997, Pres. Bill Clinton and House GOP Speaker Newt(rightwing bomb thrower) Gingrich supposedly signed a secret agreement to destroy Social Security.
The "real deal",so to speak, was that Clinton would support Newt's idea of having individual savings accounts be allowed as a substitute,or alternative, to SS.
In short,the current SS would be converted into a voluntary program.
And it would have destroyed SS as we know it now.
This is the same program Bush 2 tried to ram through Congress for 4 years, unsuccessfully.
The Clinton-Gingrich pact dissolved when the Lewinsky scandal broke,and impeachment proceedings took center stage.
Thank you Monica for saving SS, at least for now.
The details of the Clinton-Gingrich pact can be found in the good read:
The Pact, by Steven Gillon.

2010-06-20T10:32:00.001-07:00

Michele Bachmann labeled the $20 billion for gulf victims a “redistribution-of-wealth fund" and extortion.

It must be something in the water in Minnesota.
Here's the pretty lady's appearance on O'Reilly.
Again, the bumper sticker needed in her district is "
Turn off Fox;raise your IQ.
http://therichmonder.blogspot.com/2010

2010-06-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

"I want my life back" says the oil-soaked pelican; and Tony's "prelapsarian state of blithe indifference"

Cartoonists can cut to the chase quickly. One of the best of last week:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LxHYD_8IsV4/TB...

If the POTUS has lost Rolling Stone, he's in trouble.
The magazine's Tim Dickerson has a searing critique of BP,Interior Sec. Salazar, and Obama in the current issue.

Dickerson describes Salazar: "when the oil industry squeaks, he retreats.
The quote above in the heading is describing BP's Tony,but I don't really understand what it means, except it is negative.
Dickerson writes that the Gulf disaster resulted from the failure of 2 blowout preventors.
One was the regulatory..the corruption of the Interior's MMS and Salazar's failure to clean house.
The second was mechanical. BP deployed a blow-out preventor without a remote control trigger. BP also went with cheap single-way piping; and installed only 6 of the 21 cement spacers recommended for safety.
In addition, the Obama-Salazer approval of off-shore deep drilling in March of this year was a serious mistake.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/new...

2010-06-12T07:52:00.001-07:00

2012-lottery winning number or another presidential race?
**********

The pudnits and talking heads are speculating on 2012 presidential candidates.
I’m a Dem.,leaning independent,and will not be voting in any GOP presidential primary.

The GOP is smelling Obama blood in the water, and is circulating like sharks.
If I was a GOP voter, I would not be riding with Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, and former Bush 2 budget slasher (Bush called him “the blade”).
Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standard editor Andrew Ferguson wants him to run,and campaign by riding his motorcycle across the country.
Kristol and Ferguson like him because he has described Obama’s policies as “shock and awe statism”.
Nonsense.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/r...

Newt Gingrich would like to run, and his twitter network is in the thousands.
Stop twittering me,Newt. I want out of your network.

Mitt Romney has his own money, and he is visible everywhere.
He was in Cal.,standing beside Carly in her victory.
He was in South Carolina, standing beside the Indian-American lady in her primary victory.
Mitt is easier to find than Waldo.

Our own former NY governor George Pataki is working to repeal Obamacare and calling for all Americans to be Paul Reveres.
I know George, and he is no Paul Revere.
He was described as Rip Van Winkle during his last two terms as governor.
Pataki will not be President.
http://revereamerica.org/

2010-06-08T10:37:00.001-07:00

“It’s incredibly sexy” and “I’m in complete awe” say the geeks re the iPhone 4; and China tells the 440k workers making the iPhone4 to work harder,stop the suicides and you will be paid higher wages.
*****
Steve Jobs revealed the new iPhone4 yesterday. The geeks are in a tsunami-type ecstasy.
It is faster and thinner than the iPhone3.
It has 16 or 32 gigabytes.
It has a camera of 3-5 megapixels.
The video has a retina display,making it sharper to see.
It is ultra thin, 9.33 millimeters.
And men will find that women are more attracted to them if they have the iPhone4, the gigabytes,and the megapixels (or say the surveys on this topic).

Let’s hope the video feed will allow us to see the 400,000 Chinese factory workers,sub-contracted by Foxconn TYech in Twaiwan,that toil to make this phone.
They work under high stress,there have been recent suicides, and China has recently been forced to increase their wages,to about $300 a month.
It’s all part of what Tom Friedman calls the new flat world,the globalization under the rubric of private corporations.

2010-06-04T07:56:00.001-07:00

(Rep. Scott Murphy got an earful from frustrated NY-20 residents)

Scott Murphy is going to have a tough go in Nov.
But it is important to re-elect him.
First, he has only had a few months in office. In that time, he has been visible in his district and is listening.
Second, the House Dem. majority needs to be maintained.
The majority of the House GOP caucus is hard diamond rightwing.
If they were to take over the House, there are events that will happen.
As in the 1990ies, under Gingrich, they will try to shut down the government..based on spending,deficits and and long term debt.
They will move to again make Social Security voluntary, through ira’s, and that will destroy SS. This is outlined clearly in GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s agenda.
They will attempt to build a case for impeachment of Obama. They will take the slurs,seditious statements, and lies of the Fox obergruppenfuhers,Hannity,Beck and O’Reilley; and Limbaugh; and use these slurs to build an impeachment case.
They will attempt to repeal the health reform act.
The House Dem. majority needs to be maintained.

2010-06-02T12:32:00.001-07:00

Jay Gallaher and speaking truth to power
**********

Humorist Mort Sahl once said that he was getting nervous. Unitarians were moving into his neighborhood; and burning question marks on his lawn.

One of those Unitarians would have been Jay Gallagher, Albany Ganett news chief. Jay was a long-time Unitarian and asked many questions.

His family,peers, and friends came out last night to celebrate Jay’s life. I attended, and it strengthens one’s spirituality.

The AlbanyWestminster Presbyterian Church was full.
Susan Arbetter used good humor to describe Jay’s professionalism.
Times-Union Rex Smith, in good voice, gave a poignant rendition of Roy Orbinson’s Crying.
Jay’s daughters lauded their father’s humor,intellectual curiosity, and love.

Life is not fair. Jay was too young to die. His talking truth to power will be missed. His humor while toiling in the Capital political environment will be missed. In a mileau awash with power and fear, Jay had a detached appreciation of what is important.

What is important is family, truth, humor, and the Boston Red Sox.

Jay believed in democracy, even though it is messy. Just look at the current state GOP convention.

As the mud and muck of our state’s political campaigns approach levels of the Gulf oil spill, it’s important to keep in mind Jay’s favorite question to politicos: how are you going to pay for it?

2010-05-26T12:49:00.001-07:00

We have a hugh water footprint

You've heard of a carbon footprint.
There is also a water footprint.
Water is a finite resource.
We,in the US, have the largest water footprint in the world...655+K gallons per capita per year.
The UK has a 328K footprint.
France has 304K.
India has 258K
China has 285K.
There are many useful,small,suggestions to reduce our water footprint:
*take 5 minute showers, rather than 8 minutes
*soap up before turning on the shower
*change shower head to a lower pressure one
*stop drinking bottled water
any other suggestions.
Yes magazine is a good read, and its' Summer issue deals with water.
It has a good water footprint chart.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/water-...

2010-05-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

Rand Paul, Barry Goldwater, Rachel Maddow, and the 20 state Attorney Generals

I just paid my car insurance bill. I’ve never liked that car insurance is legally mandated. But the overall social good car insurance provides is a positive.
20 state Attorney Generals, all Republicans except one, are filing suit against Obamacare.
They don’t like the mandate to buy health insurance. They say it violates the Constitution.
How is this mandate different than car insurance?
Most of these AG’s are, or will be, seeking higher office.
They also don’t like the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.
I don’t like Medicaid either, but for different reasons.
It should be phased out, and Medicare should be expanded to younger groups.
Rand Paul has met Rachel Maddow and George Stephanopoulos.
They are attacking Paul for positions on the 1964 Civil Rights act and the Fair Housing act.
Paul is being consistent with his libertarian ideology. Private business should not be hindered, even if they want to discriminate.
Barry Goldwater was a libertarian Republican, and voted against the Civil Rights act. He ended up winning 5 states in the Deep South in 1964, white votes to boot.
Rand Paul will likely win in Kentucky, but he sounds silly defending his positions.
We are beyond the Civil Rights act of 1964.

2010-05-21T07:49:00.001-07:00

Alpha males, nerds, 215 million sexually active women, 50 million unwanted pregnancies, and 25 million fewer abortions
*****
CBS has just announced their prime time schedule for next year.
Charley Sheen, the alpha male, has signed for 2 more years (if he doesn’t go to jail).
And his show, 2 ½ Men, will stay on Mon. nites.
The show with the nerds, Big Bang Theory, will move to Thurs. And the CBS suits hope the viewers will follow the day change.
Sheen, as the alpha adolescent male who thinks with his genitals, instead of his brain, never changes. His take on female/male relationships remains so 20th century.
Sheldon and Leonard, the Big Bang nerds, caress their tech. toys, but can’t relate to females.
According to NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, the world needs more nerds, and fewer alpha males.
In todays column, he is writing from Africa, and talks about overpopulation.
He quotes the Guttmacher Institute that estimates that there are 215 sexually active women in the world who don’t want to get pregnant. But birth control is rejected;or not understood.
Kristof argues that birth control in the 3rd world could prevent 50 million unwanted pregnancies yearly, and 25 fewer abortions.
The rightwing evangelicals preach abstinence.
It doesn’t work.

2010-05-17T07:47:00.001-07:00

(Three primaries tomorrow in Kentucky, Arkansas and Pennsylvania will offer insight on just how mad voters are with incumbents this year. )
**********
Sen. Arlen Spector may pull out a squeaker.
The Phil. Dem. machine may save him; and Gov. Rendall’s machine may also help.
Spector is part of the inner club of the Senate, and is respected. But he is a Republican.
Even if Spector loses, he may do a Liberman and run as an independent. It would depend on the money. In any case, the Dems. should hold this Senate seat in Nov.
I don’t know about Sen.Lincoln in Ark. She has served two terms in the Senate, but seems to have left few footprints there.
I saw cable Fox’s special on these elections, and it included clips on Michelle Bachman’s rally in Minnesota,with Sara Palin.
With Bachman, how could such an attractive lady have such adhorrent political views

Casey Anthony and the death penalty

2010-05-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Casey Anthony and the death penalty
___________________________________

“..and as far as Casey is concerned, this PIG is crying for one reason, because she finally has realized that she will never again slide down a pole at Fusions, but instead will spend the next 50 years in a 10 by 10 cell like the animal that she really is. Unless of course she has a date with good old SPARKY .Fry the PIG…”
Post in Orlando Sentinel
**********

Florida is a glorious state in its’ natural attributes…the miles of pristine coastline, the Keys, the Everglades. For Northern retirees, it has been labeled God’s waiting room.

It also has elements of dark barbarism.

It has the death penalty, one of 37 states.

The death penalty is barbaric, and the reasons are well known:

“It is not a deterrent; is unfair,irreversible,barbarous,unjustified retribution, very expensive; and is inhumane and anachronistic..” (ACLU).

Local prosecutors in Orlando, with the approval of the state’s AG, are asking for the death penalty against “tot mom”, Casey Anthony.

Last week, her death-penalty expert lawyer, Andrea Lyon, argued that the death penalty can also be gender bias, against young single women.

The current local judge, Belvin Perry, listened, and asked the prosecutors if they had gender bias. After hearing their denial, Perry immediately rejected the defense motion. IMMEDIATELY, not taking a week to decide.

Lyon then asked the prosecutors to reveal their “aggravating factors” for seeking the dealth penalty. Florida, in its’ humane justice system, has 15 factors (that’s 15) that could be used to press for the death penalty.

Judge Perry looked at the prosecutors and said (paraphrasing): “You want to put this 23-year old to death, but, golly, you haven’t told us what factors you’re using. Give us that within 10 days..”

The next day, the prosecutors revealed their 5 factors: aggravated child abuse; heinous,atrocious or cruel crime; it was cold, calculated and premeditated; the child, Caylee, was under 12; and was in family custody at the time.

Judge Perry wants to move the trial outside Orlando, and sequester the jury, for 4-8 weeks likely. The strange Judge believes unbiased jurers can be picked in a week.

Anthony’s lawyers laughed.

You’ve got to find jurers who have no opinion on the case; never watched Nancy Grace ; and believe in the death penalty. That’s one heck of an assignment.
I carry no water for Casey Anthony. The whole case is tragic; and the judicial events are a travesty.

I’ve long assumed it was an accident that was covered up by this 22-yr. old immature girl.

But she does not deserve the death penalty; and the State of Florida should be ashamed

Andrew Cuomo and the sub-prime mortgages

2010-05-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

(AG Andrew Cuomo is investigating eight banks to see if they misled rating agencies to inflate the grades of mortgage securities in the years before the collapse of the housing market.

GOP gubernatorial hopeful Rick Lazio says Cuomo has “the personality of Eliot Spitzer” and “an ambition that’s out of control.”)
**********
The NYT best selling non-fiction books has Michael Lewis’s The Big Short as #1.
It’s a good read, and I’m half way through it.
Lewis personalizes the sub-prime crisis.
He focuses on Wall Street honchos who saw the profit to be made in the sub-prime disaster, through the bundling of these mortgages into bonds,and then buying insurance called credit default swaps. It was a Ponzi scheme writ large.
Lazio will claim that Cuomo,at HUD, pushed the sub-prime homebuying.
But Lazio will ignore what Lewis describes as the reason for sub-primes-the great inequality that was created in the 80s and 90s.
Yes, and Lewis also describes the rating agencies rubber-stamping these mortgage bundles.
Go get them, AG.
**********
The NYT best-seller nonfiction list has Oprah’s bio. at #2. Not tempted to read this. Don’s watch daytime tv.Oprah is a billionaire and good luck to her.
#3 is Chelsea Handler’s Chelsea,Chelsea Bang Bang. Read this, and not impressed with her humor. It’s mostly adolescent put-downs. She is overrated.
#4 is Carol Burnett’s autobio. Good read. Good to see her still being relevant.
Good because almost everyone else is gone.
Surfing cable finds a commercial for the old Dean Martin Celebrity Roast dvds.
It’s totally depressing. Everyone on these DVDs have left their physical bodies and their souls are in a much better place.
Everone of them-Martin,Sinatra,Davis,Jack Benny,Hope,John Wayne,Gleason,Red Buttons,Carson,Michael Landon ad infinitum.

It's all fuddle duddle

2010-05-12T08:07:00.001-07:00

It’s all fuddle duddle
______________________
Gov. Paterson locks his Lieutenant Governor Ravitch out of budget talks, rejecting his realistic proposal to borrow $2 billion to balance the budget.
Instead, the Gov. pushes employee furloughs..
It’s all fuddle duddle.
The Gov. has no power or credibility.
The Legislature votes for the furloughs in order to keep the government operating.
It’s all fuddle duddle.
The legislature should have allowed the State to close down. Then the leaders would get serious about a budget.
New York is now “Californiaized”. Paterson is our Arnold….a lameduck, politically impotent shell of a leader.
There needs to be transformational leadership in Albany.
It’s not Paladino.
He’s a wild and crazy guy, full of duddle duddle.
He wants to cut taxes by 10%, and spending by 20%.
Is it only state taxes he wants to cut, or local school taxes?
20% cut in spending is $30 billion. How’s he going to do that?
It’s all fuddle duddle.
Lazio is a Wall Street lackey. There is nothing transformational about him.
His campaign is all fuddle duddle.
Mayor Koch wants non-partisan reapportionment. It’s a good issue, but won’t happen.
His lobbying on this issue is all fuddle duddle.
I liked Mario Cuomo. I liked his intellectualism, his Jesuit method of thinking, and his Catholic social liberalism.
He always reminded me of Canada’s Pierre Trudeau, who had all the above traits.
Mario could never campaign wearing a red rose. It was never his style.
Is his son a transformational leader?
We will find out soon.
Andrew could easily wear a red rose during the coming campa

Carl Palidino wants to be governor

2010-05-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

Let’s say Mr. Paladino becomes governor, and I say that with a grin.
Let’s say he cuts taxes 10%, and spending 20%, He will still have multi-year deficits of $10-20 billion per year.
Let this strange man explain how he will deal with that.
Let him also explain how he will cut 20%..where, what programs?

He is fighting the “liberal elites”!! Where are these elites? In the NYC media? Andrew Cuomo? But Cuomo will not run as a traditional liberal..he won’t even classify himself as a liberal, much to his father’s chagrin.

He wants Tea Party support.
In short, Paladino wants the NYS GOP to be very rightwing..further to the right than the Buckleys wanted to move it. He wants to purge any Rockefeller elements from the party. How sad!!
On Saturday, the Utah rightwingers purged long-time conservative Sen. Robert Bennett. The Utah teabaggers want a pure,hard right candidate.
The Florida teabaggers forced Gov. Christie out of the GOP.
The Arizona teabaggers want to purge McCain.
The Penn. teabaggers forced Sen.Spector out of the GOP.
I say bring it on. What could be better for the Dems. than to have an extreme GOP candidate.

Garrrison Keillor's description of Times Square

2010-05-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

Humorist Garrison Keillor was in Times Square last Sat. and was actually unaware of the car bomb hullabullo.
His description of Times Square is worth reading:

" I'm fond of Times Square, which is an out-of-body experience offered for free to the general public, the colossal flash and razzmatazz of 10-story LED hi-def imagery rolling and bouncing among the JumboTrons and billboards in the glass canyons above the statue of Father Duffy by the TKTS booth. It is pure hullabaloo, millions in advertising canceling itself out by sheer overload, and one block away is beautiful Bryant Park and the serene reading rooms of the New York Public Library, where, for all you know, the scholarly gentleman across the table from you may be studying the art of explosives. It's a free country...."
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/columns/political/liberal/garrison-keillor/Garrison-Keillor.html?articleURL=http://rss.tmsfeatures.com/websvc-bin/rss_story_read.cgi?resid=201005041354TMS_____GKEILLOR_ctngk-a_20100504

Happy Mother's day weekend and other ruminations

2010-05-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day weekend to all.
The tulips are in bloom in the capital city.
The legislature is out of town.
The great city of Saratoga is booming.
Hopefully the sun will shine on all of us later today.
I caught PBS's "Need to Know" premier last night. It replaces NOW and Bill Moyers Journal.
I liked it.
Co-hosts Alison Stewart and Jon Meacham did a good job.
I'd give it a B+. 4 of 5 stars.
They seem to have some money for this series; and the producers traveled to different locations.
It is sorta of a more hip 60 minutes.
The segments on Gulf oil exporation;gun advocates; and the 50th anniversary of the Pill were well done.
The interviews with Mayor Bloomberg and Pres. Clinton added a nice touch.
They even have humorist Andy Borowitz giving a preview of next week's news. His online report is generally funny; and he repeated many of the themes he has originally used.
Humor has a big appetite.
Borowitz is a hip Andy Rooney.
As they say, Rooney is 150 yrs. old; and he keeps talking about his desk stapler.
Kudos to all for a good start.

2010-05-08T07:34:00.001-07:00

There is a lot of rudeness in our society.
A lot of pushing and shoving.
Garrison Keillor also has described traditional middle-age virtues that is very good:

"These little lessons seem to push a person toward a modest, pragmatic view of life and those dull virtues that we rebelled against back in our salad days -- don't run in the dark, don't be a jerk, get over yourself, do your work, avoid self-pity, pay attention, know that the law of gravity applies to you too, and hang onto your old friends because there may come a day when there's no good reason for people to like you except out of habit. These are sensible virtues of middle-class people that strike you in middle age as vital to the preservation of life. You don't have to be so smart to make your way through adult life, but you should know the basic rules..."
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/columns/political/liberal/garrison-keillor/Garrison-Keillor.html?articleURL=http://rss.tmsfeatures.com/websvc-bin/rss_story_read.cgi?resid=201004131455TMS_____GKEILLOR_ctngk-a_20100413

The British election and Albany politics

2010-05-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

The British election has produced what the Brits call a “hung parliament”.
No party has a majority of the 635 seats in House of Commons.
You might call our Albany situation a “hung legislature”..with no budget in sight.
The Brit Tories want the minority Liberal Democrats to join them in a majority government. BUT, the libs want a different electoral system…a proportional system, rather than winner take all. The Tories would lose many districts if they agreed to that.
Perhaps we need a proportional system in NYS. It would bring down the two-party monoply.

Sen. Bruno's sentence and the "honest-services" statute

2010-05-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

(“You committed a crime. The jury told you that. You can’t accept it. You have blinders on. You simply can’t see it,” Judge Gary Sharpe told ex-Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno before sentencing him to two years in prison on federal corruption charges.)
**********
(“I know you don’t believe you did anything wrong,” U.S. District Judge Gary L. Sharpe told Bruno. “You’re not sorry because you don’t believe you did anything wrong. … (But) you trampled on the integrity of the state Legislature.”)
**********
The TU has it right this morning that ethics reform is needed for the Legislature.
Judge Sharpe’s comment is silly.
I can say this because I don’t ever expect to come before the judge. If I do, I am toast.
Someone has said that the Empire State Egg is really a UFO. And once a UFO lands, it doesn’t leave.
When it did land, it may have transported Judge Sharpe into Albany. His feeling that Bruno’s travail will put the fear of God into the Legislature is alien thinking.
Federal judges should not have life tenure.
I went down to the courthouse yesterday and was there when Bruno arrived.
Not having a press badge, or being an invited guess, I could not go inside.
The surprise is that there were few, if any, public outside the courthouse.
Sharpe’s sentence lacked creativity. There were many alternative sentence possibilities for Bruno, short of prison.
Based on the media reports, Sharpe did not address the vague,unconstitutional “honest-services fraud statute”; and the Torquemada-type role of the fed. prosecutors in using this statute against Bruno.
The Supreme Court heard three cases based on this “honest-services” statute; and all 9 seem to agree it is vague and likely unconstitutional.
They will issue their opinion soon.
The fed. prosecutors in Chicago were so afraid that this statute would allow Gov.Blago to go free that they decided not to use it against him.
The assistant US attorney Eliz Coombe likely should be charged with violating the “honest-services” statute.Her role has been intellectually,morally and legally corrupt.
She’s the one that wanted to take away Bruno’s passport, citing a flight risk.She’s the one advocating the draconian 8 years sentence.And she is perhaps brain dead.

Sen. Joe Bruno and consciousness cleanse

2010-05-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

(Former state Sen. Joe Bruno is to be sentenced tomorrow.)

Judge Sharpe has a very wide discretion in sentencing.
The Justice Dept. regional office used the "theft of public services" rubric to present a wide-ranging case.
They succeeded in getting conviction on 2 counts, out of 8.
If the Judge applied democractic decision-making, he would bring the jury back today, and let them decide on the punishment.
I suspect the jury would not recommend that Bruno go to prison.

There are many alternative sentencing possibilities.

I would recommend the good Senator attending Debbie Ford's clinic,partaking in her effective 21-day consciousness cleanse program. That would be followed by local community service. And then the money restitution.

Ford's program is described in her book, The 21-day consciousness cleanse. It's a program that moves a person from being ego-centric to connecting to the inner soul. All politicians, or recovering politicians, are ego centered.
Ford's program shifts the outer ego life style to the deeper inner soul style..a consciousness shift.
And it could work even for an 81 year old.
As Ford describes it:
"..the ego judges and rejects with disdain and aggressiveness. The soul takes responsibility. The ego blames and transfers responsibility. The soul moves through life with grace. The ego moves through life with recklessness, chaos, and drama. The soul feels good about who it is and what it wants..The ego never has enough, it can never leave well enough alone..the ego swims against the current, while the soul sits back and floats in the the direction that life is moving in.You're either being guided by your soul or driven by your ego..."

I've sent this post to Judge Sharpe.

Predator drones

2010-05-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

“Jonas Brothers are here, they’re out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking?”
Pres. Obama at WH correspondents dinner
**********

The POTUS is under attack for this joke.
It seems our predator drones have killed civilians.
Actually, Obama could have used a variance of this joke re many in the audience Sat. evening: Rupert Murdoch;the cable Fox talkingheads;Larry King ad.nauseum.

It’s easy for any POTUS to take a power trip with his(her) military toys.
There is the gem of a story about LBJ. He was leaving the WH, to board the execuitve helicopter. A Marine told him that heli. was not his. LBJ told him: “Son, they are all my helicopters.”

A little bit of this, and a little bit of that

2010-05-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

[Former state Sen. Joe Bruno will learn his prison fate on Thursday)
*********

I continue to feel that mr. bruno should get probation and pay resitution.
The feds. want 8 years. That is prosecution overkill..a possible reaction to their origninal weak case under the “thief of public service” rubric.

Let’s remember that the feds. spent 2+ years on the investigation; and charged Bruno with 8 felonies. He was acquitted on 5,hung jury on one, and guilty on 2 (one involving a horse).

In addition, Bruno will appeal whatever sentence he receives (except probation); and the Supremes are expected to strike down the the over broad “thief” rubric before August.

In some ways, Bruno’s tenure leading the State Senate was a golden era. Yes, power went to his head, including a regional personality cult. But we did have budgets before June, most years.
**********
(Sen. Kevin Parker apologized for calling his colleagues white supremacists)

Running with this story last night, the local tube news (Ch.6 especially) ran, and reran, a short video of Parker walking in the Senate chamber, passing Espada, who smiled and appeared to give him the heart/hand greeting; and shaking hands with the former Senator Hiram Monserrate.

Parker then reached the back; turned to the camera; and gave a hugh smile.
His ego has outgrown his intelligence. His hubris has no boundries.

I’m a Dem., with independent inclinations.
I would like to see a functioning state Dem. Senate.
But, Parker and his friends make that very difficult.
**********

"But we can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. (Applause.) You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question somebody’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. (Applause.) Throwing around phrases like “socialists” and “Soviet-style takeover” and “fascist” and “right-wing nut” -- (laughter) -- that may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian, even murderous regimes."
**********

The POTUS's University of Michigan commencement address is a super call for tolerance in our public discourse.
In the cable age, the strident discordant voice of cable Fox is sowing seditious seeds in our fragile democracy.

Obama's speech is worth reading:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-university-michigan-spring-commencement

2010-05-02T10:50:00.001-07:00

The DrudgeReport,National Enquirer, and Roger Stone
___________________________________________________
I do try to skim the links at the Drudgereport. Mr. Drudge is a strange conservative blogger.
He recently had a link story on a robber who disguised himself by wrapping his head in toilet paper.
The robber was so stupid that he used single-ply, rather than double-ply.
Drudge has a current link to an uncoming National Enquirer cover story about an alleged Obama affair.
It had to happen, and the surprise is that these tales were not written earlier.
According to the surrilious National Enquirer, someone is offering $1 million for a video from a hotel security camera.
Why do I suspect that Roger Stone's dirty fingerprints are all over this?

The White House Correspondents dinner

2010-05-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

The WH Correspondents Dinner
___________________________

It was Mayor Bloomberg’s night.
He was there, of course.
And his Bloomberg News top honchos were in charge.
I’m not sure the POTUS enjoyed sitting between them during dinner.
How do you make small talk to these money gurus?
I thought the POTUS’s monologue was weak..few really strong jabs.
The Politico slides were not funny.
Leno’s gig was also weak. Most of his jokes didn’t work. He read off index cards, as though his writers stuck them in his pocket during dinner. The writers had months to prepare.
If you want to see a funny gig, go to CSpan’s streaming of VP Biden’s monologue at the March 17th Radio and TV correspondents dinner.
None of Leno’s cards matched Wanda Sykes topper last year:
“Whenever my daughter sees two cars, one with a stranger and another with Dick Cheney, I tell her to always get in the one with the stranger.”
Both Leno and the POTUS could have used some old, after-dinner humor by Adali Stevenson and Fred Allen.
Allen got up first, and as always, brought down the house.
Gov. Stevenson followed, and told the audience: “I met Fred in the hallway before dinner, and he told me he had no speech prepared. So, I gave him mine. You just heard it.” The Gov. then sat down.
I posted yesterday that Bill Maher should have been the comic meister.
He actually was there, with Adrianna Huffington as his date. These two seem to have some strange karma.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brez. were there..they seem also to have some strange karma.
They both have evolved into sometimes narcissistic talkingheads.
I’m glad the IMan is starting to take Scarborough on..it’s overdue.

Suicide bombers

2010-05-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

"Al Quada is short on cash. Do you know what an insurance premium costs for a suicide bomber?"
Jay Leno, WH Correspondents Dinner last night.
----------------------
Look, it was a joke.
Except for perhaps Mayor Bloomberg, nobody was aware of the lethal car bomb left in Times Square.
It was going to happen, and it likely will happen again.
Security will be increased;ore public cameras will besetup; and N residents will lose some freedom.
The balance between freedom and security is alwasy delicate

conspiracies there, conspiracies here, conspiracies everywhere

2010-05-01T09:59:00.001-07:00

I recently watched three DVDs from the History channel:
Conspiracies?
This stuff is cool..somewhat eyepopping..always stimulating.
The show covered alleged conspiracy theories re the JFK,RFK,MLK JR. murders...all conspiracies methinks involving the secret state within a state.
Others covered are ufos,Princess Diana,FDR and Pearl Harbor,the Okla.fed. building bombing and others.
How about a current conspiracy?
How about the national Chamber of Commerce?
It is the most powerful lobby in DC, and is a major part of our invisible government.
As Marvin Gaye asks: "What's going on".
Below is a summary of the C of C shenagians.

"Washington, D.C.--StopTheChamber.com, a network of national organizations dedicated to corporate accountability, has been calling for months for a full criminal investigation into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its top staff, including CEO Tom Donohue, for racketeering, fraud, false reporting, and campaign finance violations. Now the network is adding obstruction of justice to that list. In the past two weeks, the United States has been hit with three major disasters, all tied to the polices and practices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. First, 29 miners were killed in a Massey Energy coal mine explosion, second, 11 oil workers were killed in an British Petroleum oil rig fire, and third, Goldman Sachs was charged with a massive billion dollar fraud enterprise. Each of these companies uses the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with its army of lobbyists and lawyers, as its first line of defense, corruptly influencing politicians and judges to protect corporations and thwart investigations, and spinning public relations to justify criminal conduct...
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/51903

Jim Hightower quotes

2010-05-01T08:07:00.001-07:00

A couple of quotes from Jim Hightower on last night's Moyers Journal:

"As Hightower's fond of saying, the water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek. "I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power," he reiterated. "Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they're the top dogs, and we're a bunch of fire hydrants, you know?"

Of President Obama he said, "It's odd to me that we've got a president who ran from the outside and won, and now is trying to govern from the inside. You can't do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force... Our heavyweight is the people themselves. They've got the fat cats, but we've got the alley cats..."

White House Correspondents Dinner, Jay Leno, and Bill Maher

2010-05-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

The White House correspondents dinner is this evening.
I will likely catch it on YouTube, rather than live on CSpan.
Jay Leno will be the laugh meister.
He is safe...no insults to the Establishment.
Actually, I'd like to see Bill Maher as the laugh host.
It won't happen, but one can dream the impossible dream.
Maher, on his HBO show last night, suggests that the teabaggers,including Sarah Palin, should wear their "drill,baby,drill" shirts down to the Gulf, and help clean the oil off the birds from the BP disaster.

Andrew Cuomo and Albany dysfunction

2010-05-01T07:19:00.001-07:00

“We have to clean up the gridlock. We have to clean up the dysfunction. We have to clean up the waste. We have to clean up the delay. Enough is enough, my friends. The state government works for the people, and the people have been failed by this state government.”
Andrew Cuomo at Dem. Rural Conference last night.
*****
Nobody can disagree with the AG on this.
But it does sound like Eliot Spitzer in 2006.
There is a system problem in Albany.
There is a need for a transforming leader on the Capitol's 2nd floor.
Mario Cuomo was (is) a New Deal liberal, but governed as a pragmatic triangular. As he often said, campaigning is poetry, and governing is prose.
There are some basic reforms that are doable.
Make a June 1st budget the legal Constitutional (if required) norm. It is, unofficially, now.
Make it a two year budget cycle, with a new budget required in off-election years.
Deal with Medicaid...it is the monster eating New York.
At least two commissions have recommended that the local school property tax be replaced by a real progressive state income tax.
Lazio's mantra will be less government, low taxes.
It's not less government that is needed, but rather making the existing government responsive and transparent.
It is tax reform that is needed, including the above change in the local property taxes.

Goodby, Bill Moyers

2010-05-01T07:06:00.001-07:00

(plutocracy and oligarchy is called “plutarchy” …)
_________________________________________

Goodby, Bill Moyers
___________________

The PBS’s Moyers Journal ended last night. It was a good run, almost always stimulating, and will be missed.
Moyers admonished listeners that he was forced off the schedule, but that it was his decision. At 76 years, he still has mountains to climb.

Last night, he described his approach on the Journal. He sees a US that has evolved into a plutocracy..rule by the very wealthy and Wall Street. For almost 5 yrs., his goal was to give voice to the other 95% of the people, and main street.

Last night, he had Jim Hightower, the funny populist blogger,writer and critic of the plutocracy. Hightower is a populist who sees the large corporations occupying most of our public realm. To him, liberals want to regulate these corporations. Populists want to give power back to main street.
I’m an old liberal. Large corporations will not be eliminated. But there needs to be a three-legged stool for stablity..one leg is the corporations,one is the public main street, and one is government. It is the government and main street legs that have been cut off by the corporate leg. The stool needs to re-stablized.

Arizona and apartied

2010-04-30T13:04:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, Pat Bertroche, an Iowa Republican congressional candidate also compared illegal immigrants to animals and suggested capturing them and embedding them with microchips.
"I think we should catch 'em, we should document 'em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going," Bertroche said. "I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can't I microchip an illegal?"
*****

"Abominations such as apartheid do not start with an entire population suddenly becoming inhumane....

However, when you strip a man or a woman of their basic human rights, you strip them of their dignity in the eyes of their family and their community, and even in their own eyes. An immigrant who is charged with the crime of trespassing for simply being in a community without his papers on him is being told he is committing a crime by simply being. He or she feels degraded and feels they are of less worth than others of a different color skin. These are the seeds of resentment, hostilities and in extreme cases, conflict...."
Desmond Tutu1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner
*****

Boycott Arizona.

Facebook and the POTUS assassination site

2010-04-30T12:10:00.001-07:00

A Facebook group “praying” for President Obama’s death has surpassed one million members.)

There has been a hugh spike in rightwing white supremacist activity.
Many, but not all, advocate violence.
The Feds. claim that the POTUS has not received more violent threats than other presidents.
I don’t believe that.
I would recommend a re-reading of JFK’s planned speech at the Dallas TradeMart on Nov.22,’63.
He went into the strongest bastion of rightwing activity, including the violent Minutemen, as well as the John Birch Society (which still functions,even in the Capitol district).
And in the Trademart speech, JFK preached tolerance, and the acceptance of ambiguity on public issues.
At that time, the most extreme rightwing did not have a cable channel outlet.
Today, they have cable Fox, and the surriculus Beck,Hannity and O’Reilley.
Time’s Joe Klein suggests these three should be charged with sedition…advocating the overthrow of our govt.
2nd. Amendment gun lovers march just outside DC, with guns unloaded (at least for now).
We are in the midst of a dangerous, polarizing,time.
Recently,Bob Dylan played at the White House.
The times are achanging,but perhaps not in the direction Dylan, and sane, rational people want.
If the POTUS is shot, or shot at, civil war could erupt.
The Secret Service operates with what has been described as 1950s computer technology.
We should all pray for the safety of the POTUS

Sen. Parker,Cornel West,David Horowitz,black studies and white supremacy

2010-04-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

(Sen. Kevin Parker was unapologetic about calling his GOP colleagues “white supremacists.”

Parker was overheard shouting about the fallout from the episode by Times reporter Jeremy Peters. He lowered his voice when told Peters was waiting outside his office door.

The DN says Parker harbors a “bizarre racial paranoia)
———-
My comment:
Parker, Cornel West, David Horowitz, black studies and white supremacy
_________________________

Sen. Parker has taught (does teach) in the CUNY Black Studies programs (Wikipedia:
In addition to his work in the State Senate, Parker is also a professor of African-American Studies and Political Science at several colleges within the City University of New York system, primarily Brooklyn College, where he is also a faculty advisor to student organizations.)

In spite of my liberalism, I essentially agree with the hard-rightist David Horowitz. Black studies, like women studies, are not traditional academic studies.
There is a rich African-American heritage that should be taught. But it should be taught within a a broader, integrated liberal arts curriculum.
Black studies segrate, rather than integrate.
Black studies teachers can very easily become black supremacists as they protray US history one of white supremacy.
Cornel West is the leading figure in black studies, first at Harvard, and now Princeton.
He began, perhaps, as a black supremacist. But has now evolved as more of an integrated leader…referring to us all as “brothers and sisters”..regardless of skin color.
We are all spiritual beings.
While I don’t agree with West’s socialist orientation, I do think Parker could productivly dialogue with West.

the first post yesterday on ny senator kevin parker

2010-04-28T13:12:00.000-07:00

Sen.Parker was wearing a matching red tie and hankerchief.
It’s a nice touch.
When I used to wear ties and jackets, I had a multi-colored hankerchief that I could use on any color tie and shirt. The multi-color is so cool, as it can be adjusted for any coordinated tie. Now, being 150 yrs. old, I not only don’t wear ties, but I use the colored hanki. to wipe up the dribble.
Hopefully that tie of yours is the multi-type.
According to Taylor Hartman,Ph.D., in The Color Code, red is the power color.
Although it could be psychobabble, you could be on a power trip.
Keep it in check. You seem to have a propensity for violent talk and action.
Anyone could easily get a negative impression of the NY Senate.
By the way., doesn’t Sen. Espada wear coordinated ties and hankies.?
Not that there is anything wrong with you doing it.
As long as you are the “master of your domaine”.

State Sen. Kevin Parker's tirade

2010-04-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

I went to the 20 minute mark here on this video, and listened to Parker’s titrade.
Sen. Kruger seemed to be sitting there, a little man, with a gavel he doesn’t know how to use.
And Kruger is the leader we’re looking for to pass a budget?
Parker is a schoolyard bully, using street terror tactics.
Where was the Capitol security to pick Parker up, and throw him out of the hearing?
Parker allegedly was wearing a red tie, and matching hankerchief.
I posted on that earlier.
Actually, Parker apparently was weaned on the worse hip hop music…the genre that has promoted violence and degradation of women.
I may be 150 yrs,but if I was at the hearing, I would have gone to Parker, grapped him by his red tie, stuffed his red hankie into his mouth, and physically kicked him out of the room.
As I quoted Dr. Taylor Harmon earlier, the color we like determines our personality type.
In his book, The Color Code, Harmon describes the Reds’ obession with power:
“Reds want their own way. .when they have gotten their way for too long, Reds find it almost impossible to relinquish their power and freedom when they meet authorities in society who refuse to grant them the total control they demand..” p.45.

2010-04-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

Sen. Espada, we're almost over you

2010-04-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

‘I saw an old friend of our’s today
We asked about him, but didn’t quite know what to say
heard youv’e been making the rounds ’round here
while w’ve been trying to make you disapear

Chorus:
Now we’re almost over you
we’ve almost shook these blues
so when you come back around
after painting the town
you’ll see we’re almost over you…

you’re such a sly one with a cold cold heart
maybe leavin came easy, but it tore us apart
time heals all wounds they say and we should know
coz it seems like forever,
but we’re letting you go..”
Dedicated to Sen. Padro Espada, and adopted from Sheena Easton’s Almost Over You
———————–
Today is Sheena’s 51st birthday.
Ah, yes, Sheena. Being 150 years old myself, I barely remember the great 50.
Remember, ms. easton, whereever you are, age is just a number, and you should keep your number unlisted.

The Plague Year

2010-04-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

The Plague Year
________________

Mr.Lloyd Constantine’s book, “Journal of the Plague Year,” is an insider’s account of the fall of Eliot Spitzer.
This weekend CSpan Book Review showed his appearance at a private book store in Albany.
Mr.Lloyd is a very bright, type A, energenic lawyer who was,in many ways, Eliot’s alter ego.
But his personality,I believe, is grating;confrontational;and moralistic..a Spitzer soulmate; an Eliot clone.
Lloyd argues that Eliot was a transforming,reformist leader..someone who could have changed the cesspool that is Albany.
In spite of Lloyd’s hubris, he admits that Eliot insulting Bruno,Shelly and Pataki in the first inaugural speech was a mistake.
You need to break eggs to make an omelette, but you also have to deal and broker with Bruno and Shelly.
The confrontational hubris that worked well in attacking Wall Street was counterproductive with Bruno and Shelly.
Directly trying to bring Bruno down, leading to Troopergate, was silly hubris from lawyer mindsets.
Eliot’s attempt to flip the Senate backfired. Mario Cuomo never tried that; and survived for 12 years.
The great tragedy is that Eliot could have been a positive transforming leader. His downfall has made the Capitol worse than ever.
In his strange self-centered hubris, Lloyd suggests that Eliot became Client 9 because he had stopped playing tennis with Lloyd. Eliot had too much energy stored.
Right!

2010-04-26T07:01:00.001-07:00

"Shine a little light", corporate murder, and robots
______________________________________________________

The W.Virginia coalminer's memorial service was poignant and sad.
Kudos for the POTUS and VP for attending.
Kudos for the POTUS for staying through the entire service, and standing as each of the 29 names were called.
The real sadness is that coal mine safety gutted under Bush2.
Massey Energy, and its' president Blankenship, have long been willing to pay the small fines; or appealing same; and then allowing the mines to operate unsafely.
Hopefully the POTUS told the miners' family, privately, that safety will be paramount.
The mine safety division of the Labor Dept. has been captured by the regulated mine owners.
That should end.
Massey Corp., and Blankenship, should perhaps be indicted for murder.
The "shine a little light" spiritual should be taken seriously..shine a good deal of light on Massey Energy.
Our goal should be a coal-free energy model; or,at least,clean coal.
Can nucear power plants totally replace the coal-fired power plants?
And can the Cave Dweller and Groundhog robots do the dirty work of coal mining?
See the ABC story:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/coal-mining-robots-humans-dirty-work/story?id=10303050

"Are we listening? And if we are, what are we going to do about it?"

2010-04-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

"Are we listening? And if we are, what are we going to do about it?"
Congressman Alan Grayson
________________________________
The DN's Bramhall's World this morning has a good cartoon...Obama is pulling the ears of a Wall Street tycoon, and in the next room SEC staffers are watching net porn.

There will be some sort of financial reform bill voted out of the Senate.
But it will not deal with the most important issue..breaking up the TBTF (too big to fail)financial giants.
In the good read, 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson and James Kwak argue that if the 6 megabanks are not broken up, the next financial crisis, which will happen, will destroy the entire world's finance.
The big six( Bank of America,JP Morgan,Chase,Citicorp,Wells Fargo, Goldman-Sachs, and Morgan Stanley), have a total wealth equal to 60% of the US GDP.
They want to "reconfigure the megas to be small enough to fail."
How small? Well, NO bank should have wealth that is larger than 4% of the US GDP. The goal should be 2-4% of GDP as the maximum size.
And we, on main street, should move our money into the community banks and local credit unions.

Rocky Mountain High, Leaving Albany and the old Albany handshake

2010-04-25T09:58:00.001-07:00

Rocky Mountain High, Leaving Albany and the old Albany handshake.
______________________
(I hate to wake you up to say goodbye.
But the dawn is breaking, it’s early morn.
The taxi’s waiting, he’s blowing his horn,
Already I’m so lonesome I could cry.
.
‘Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane
Don’t know when I’ll be back again -
Oh Babe, I hate to go.

There’s so many times I’ve let you down,
So many times I’ve played around,
I tell you now, they don’t mean a thing.
Every place I go, I’ll think of Albany
Every song I sing, I’ll sing for Albany)
(Adopted from John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane)

He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below,
saw everything as far as you can see.
And they say that he got crazy once and that he
tried to touch the sun,
And the Colorado Rocky Mountain High,
I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky
You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply.
Rocky Mountain High, ….in Colorado….
Rocky Mountain High.
(John Denver)
__________
The Colorado legislature had to debate whether to make Rocky Mountain High the state
song. The politicos thought Denver was celebrating a drug high.
At least the Colorado legislature appeared to be working.
Our state legislature appears to be mummified.

In May’s Harper’s, Chrisopher Ketchum describes the Albany handshake: “the laziness, the corruption, the shameless posturing…”
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/05/0082944

Liz Benjamin asked Assembley majority leader Ron Canestrari when there will be a budget; and he said ,without smiling, probably never.

Ketchum says a radical solution is needed..abolish the legislature.
That’s not going to happen.
What can, and should, happen is Pedro Espada should leave Albany on a jet plane,asap.
State budgets should be two years, off-election years.
And perhaps the next governor should adopt emergency-like dictatorial power.

.
.