Category Archives: Brain Vacuuming

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There’s a Scandal Alright–Just Not Where You Think

committee I’ve long wondered at the seeming inability of the GOP to remember that we actually keep records of  “that stuff”. They continue to forget that. I give a pass to the typical TeaPotter who is so ill-informed that they are left with nothing but misspelled phrases that they either paint on cardboard signs or attempt to regurgitate from memory. They can’t be expected to actually, you know, KNOW history.

As you know doubt know, the GOP has been looking for a way for five long years now to bury this president. All of their schemes have come to naught for quite obvious reasons, but even when we thought things might, just might, return to some semblance of normalcy after their debacle of 2012, well, sadly they learned nothing.

Some of their own kind (Pat Toomey)  even admit, that their membership so hates this man that they will vote NO on legislation as publicly supported as universal background checks. So of course we expected that rottweiler of a thug, Darrell Issa to continue his determination to find SOMETHING that can bring down this administration.

Benghazi was their choice, aided and abetted by one John S. McCain, who had a personal vendetta and was more than willing to rattle the sabre of “coverup” at least as it pertained to Susan Rice, a woman we can now categorically say was unfairly maligned and mistreated by Johnny and his misogynist guy pal, Ms. Lindsey.

Let me just say this simply. The Benghazi “scandal” is nothing more than a witch hunt. And history explains it all to us.

Darrell “my brother did it” Issa is chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. That is, innocent as it sounds, a very powerful committee, and one Issa has used since 2010 when he assumed chairmanship, to conduct endless hearings into the Obama administration, hoping to find ANYTHING that can be used to harass and drive from office the Negro in the White House.

It is also the only committee that is allowed to issue subpoenas under the chairman’s signature only. However, this has seldom been the practice. Normally, given that grave power, the Chairman has sought the agreement of a full committee vote before so proceeding. This has been  the case except for only two occasions in modern times. Hint: this is where the history gets important.

The most notable occasion when the Chairman took sole control over subpoenas was under the chairmanship of Dan Burton, (R-IN). Mr. Burton had a serious case of the ass against one William J. Clinton. Like Darrell, Dan fairly lit up the committee with his constant and outlandish claims of wrongdoing.

This resulted in a scandal of course–Mr. Burton spend years, over 1,000 subpoenas, and 7 million bucks of taxpayer money, trying to prove that there was scandal to be found in the fund-raising practices of the Democratic Campaign organization. Copies of audio tapes from a “witness” were released. Later it was determined that the tapes had been severely “edited” to appear quite different from their original content. Burton fired committee staff man David Bossie, the supposed “editor”.

However, the scandal went further, and finally, there were calls for Burton to step down himself. He never did of course.

Well, here we go again.

Mr. Issa decided that Burton’s sole possessor of the subpoena was a good thing,  and re-instituted the practice again. This brought a rather lengthy and well-reasoned letter from Elijah Cummings, ranking minority leader on the committee, and a man with a memory. He pointed out that unilateral usage of the power of subpoena had gotten the GOP into serious trouble once before, and it was better to return to the normal and regular practice of bipartisan issuance of these orders.

Of course, Mr. Issa declined rational behavior and has as we all know run a one-man-show of Obama attack. And the expected result has occurred.

For weeks the GOP has harped that the Obama White House was engaged in a cover-up regarding Benghazi. That cover-up has never been spelled out well, but it seems to have revolved around the White House changing the talking points (which implicated Rice somehow), to protect the State Department (and Hillary Clinton) from being accused of malfeasance.

This claim was bolstered by information from e-mails circulated between the  parties involved. We were told this by the GOP. Jonathan Karl broke the story for ABC, claiming as the GOP had alleged, that State Department officials had participated in changing the talking points, along with the White House. Karl implied that he had seen the emails himself and “quoted” from them.

When the true emails were brought forth, they told a different story–one that indicated that neither the White House nor the State Department had played a part in the versions discussed and finally issued by the CIA for distribution (i.e. to Susan Rice).  Now of course Karl claims he never actually saw any e-mails but his “source” shared “notes” with him of what he/she read.

The fair meaning  of what Karl claimed and the actual truth leave little doubt that there was a deliberate attempt to portray the White House and State Department in a bad light and to provide proof that they had acted politically with the intent to deceive. Since the e-mails were the subject of subpoenas, the likely “source” is undoubtedly someone on Issa’s committee.

It is ironic in the end that all this Benghazi “scandal” has been in part to dirty the White House, but also to begin the long process of discrediting Mrs. Clinton. While nobody is all that surprised by the GOP’s doing that, it must be remembered that when all efforts were directed toward destroying the President, the GOP actually held Mrs. Clinton up as the “ray of sunshine” in the otherwise dismal Obama landscape.

Now that the President seems invincible to their machinations, Clinton, the new threat, became the new target.

It’s all so predictable.

And that is what needs be investigated it seems–why are my tax monies being used to manufacture scandals for Republican political gain?

Riddle me that Batman.

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The Running of the Bulls. . .hit

irs3Okay, get your outrage ready followed by your thinking caps. It, to pare a Bette Davis phrase, “is going to be a bumpy ride.”

Let’s get rid of the outrage first.

  1. It’s bad to target identifiable public groups of people for special scrutiny unless they are promoting pedophilia or making Adolph Hitler’s birthday a national holiday.
  2. A man as smart as President Obama is, is surely very good at getting elected and surely very bad at managing his Administration–at least he has a lot of really incompetent people working for him that aren’t doing him any favors.
  3. Anything that gives Tea Potters the ability to dance in the street in glee is just wrong on so many levels–mostly because they dress like idiots who missed the bus to the Super Bowl tailgate party.
  4. Fourth, Jon Stewart already said it better than you could anyway with this:

“Well, congratulations, President Barack Obama, Conspiracy theorists who generally can survive in anaerobic environments have just had an algae bloom dropped on their fucking heads, thus removing the last arrow in your pro-governance quiver: skepticism about your opponents.”

TeaPotters should of course get somebody to explain to them what he said meant.

Okay, outrage over.

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Now, let’s examine the facts, which are still fairly small in number, which allows me the joyous whimsy of speculating all over the place about both what might have happened and why. Given that I’m reputed worldwide to be a fairly decent prognosticator (if you don’t count the times I was wrong), I’m sure you will find my analysis spot on as they say or don’t say. You choose. (We are not getting into the DOJ “new” scandal today, so relax, you won’t go into brain overheating).

Okay, let’s begin.

This goes back, in my humble opinion, and with a tiny bit of help from the ever bubbly Contrarian, to *drum roll* Citizens United. That amazingly short-sighted, ill-thought-out, and all around stupid decision opened the floodgates as you no doubt recall to all kinds of bad things. Corporations could give unlimited amounts of money to elect those persons who would support their cause that the only good dollar is one in the pocket of a rich person, for only they know what to do with it.

Okay, okay, so it also allowed all sorts of other “groups” to also gather and spend tons of dough to influence the minds of mostly mind-numbingly stupid voters.

With me so far?

So a lot, and I do mean a lot, of folks figured out that they wanted to get in on the action.

In the world of the IRS is a thing called a 501 (c) 4. This is a tax-exempt status, not quite as pure as a 501 (c)3 status. It allows you to collect money and not pay taxes on it, but the donor can’t claim it as a tax-exempt donation. The status is reserved for groups who operate “for the promotion of the public welfare.”

mack

See the truck? See the truck drive through the gigantic hole in the wall?

What the hell is public welfare?

Well, I knew you would ask that.

The ACLU is considered to do so. But so is the NRA.

See the more rigorous status, the 501 (c) 3 status requires that you stay the hell out of politics in any way shape or form. The 501 (c) 4 status is a bit more lenient. It allows one to lobby for legislation and also to engage in political activities as “long as their primary activity is the promotion of social welfare.” The mack truck as you can see is still driving right on through.

So a whole bunch of organizations pop up, all claiming they are for the public welfare, when in reality they are really about promoting candidates and issues. Enter the TeaPotters and various other right-wing groups.  To be fair, and we aim for fair,  there are (although to lesser number) plenty of left-wing organizations who also are trying to do the same thing.

Now Cincinnati is the office that apparently is the hub of the IRS operation to approve or deny applications for this status. One can assume that following Citizens United in 2010, there was a general flood of applications as everybody including grandma wanted to get in on the action. (I’m told something like 60,000 would not be far off the mark) The status is valuable since, some of the money is tax exempt which allows more of it be used as the organization desires, whether it be to “public welfare” or quite frankly in some case to allow for bigger salaries to those who run the things. Hint: you can make a good living by setting up and running one.  Also donor lists are not required to be publicized.

What to do with this flood of applications which may well have driven the wait time up many additional months?

I figure that some mid-level bureaucrats, who were told in no uncertain terms to clear the backlog, and “no you were not getting any more workers” because the GOP just says NO!, dreamed up this computer program to sort through applications and flag those that would in all cases require further scrutiny–i.e., were they actually doing “public welfare” or only a front for a political agenda. (It’s fairly hard to argue that any Tea party group or any Occupy Wall street group could be anything but political.) The program used words like tea party, phrases like government not working, taxes, and so forth.

As I understand it, of the numbers of kicked out applications (requiring further scrutiny and action) 25% involved right-wing organizations. The rest involved either left-wing or other groups who did not meet the criteria, being not fraternal organizations of chickadee lovers, chocolate addicts anonymous, or things of similar ilk.

At some point, higher-ups learned of the practice. Discussions were had, and all seemed convinced that it was not aimed at “enemies” so much, as to simply weed out by computer rather than by hand, those applications that would require more time. The normal applications could thus be passed through within a reasonable time.

Of course, it became known up the chain of command what was going on. But apparently this raised no red flag (as it should have) as it was discussed and explained to them.

This is born out by the fact that during this entire episode, one Doug Shulman was head of the IRS. Now Mr. Shulman was appointed and began his leadership of the IRS in March of 2008, having been appointed by George W. Bush. He completed his term in November of 2012. He testified that there was no such thing going on in the IRS, as late as March of 2012. While it is still unknown whether he was aware of the practice, it is now thought that he probably did.

This suggests to me, that he did not consider it aimed at suppressing right-wing groups so much as helping to alleviate the backlog and limited to pulling out those applications that would otherwise require additional scrutiny anyway. It appears that the agency’s interests had turned to increasing revenue since the early 2000′s, and it was felt that as much as 1.2 billions were being lost to tax exempt groups in the 2012 election alone. Clearly some of this, if not most of it, should not be tax exempt under the current laws.

Shulman is and has never been a politico. His entire career has been spent in the business arena. That suggests that while his political affiliation is unknown,  he probably supports business interests and it seems unlikely to me that he would deliberately turn a blind eye to some deliberate effort to damage conservative groups, which typically favor business interests. Thus we can take him at this word I think that there was not attempt to “target” conservative groups per se.

This suggests that the real problem here is not one of an “enemies list” so much as what you get when you try so hard to depoliticize an organization that none within it have the political nose to see a HUGE problem for what was probably created as a benign process to speed up the process for legitimate applications while leaving more problematical ones for later.

In other words, any political junkie would have seen this immediately as “DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!”,  but they were not so seen by your average apolitical bureaucrat.

So that’s my initial take on it.

3stooges_face_palm

Of course weigh in.

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Stupid Keeps Chasing Me!

drink-coffee-do-stupid-things-fasterSeriously, this is getting dumb. I mean I really don’t have time to spend every day dealing with all this stupidity. I used to figure that we got along pretty darn fine if there was five stupid to every ninety-five normally intelligent people.

I’m beginning to be shocked that humanity can evolve at all, given that I think the ratio is nearly 45 to 55 by now. How does the planet survive this heavy weight of just god-awful stupid?

Case in point.

Now David Brooks is not stupid all the time. He has fits and starts of actual intelligence that float to the surface of his cerebellum now and again. Which is the down side of the scale of brains, since the upside is having the stupid float to the surface now and them, and the intelligence being the norm.

Anyway, the stupid Brooks did one of his pieces in the NYTimes, and had a few things to say about gays and the marriage issue. Brooks decided that by requesting the SCOTUS to recognize the absolute right of gay folks to marry like anyone else, they were taking a step backward when it comes to freedom.

What you say?

Yes, after scrambling his brain sells with a bit of spinach and a wad of chewing gum, David determines that since marriage is giving up freedom, well, gays made a serious mistake. They have given up their hedonism for the restrictions of marriage–you know, obligations and commitments. In the same breath he then reminds us that unfettered freedom leads to utter decay and licentiousness the likes not seen since the bawdy days of Caligula’s Rome.

David seems confused.

Marriage is one of those institutions — along with religion and military service — that restricts freedom. Marriage is about making a commitment that binds you for decades to come. It narrows your options on how you will spend your time, money and attention.

Whether they understood it or not, the gays and lesbians represented at the court committed themselves to a certain agenda. They committed themselves to an institution that involves surrendering autonomy. They committed themselves to the idea that these self-restrictions should be reinforced by the state. They committed themselves to the idea that lifestyle choices are not just private affairs but work better when they are embedded in law.

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. … Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” (Edmund Burke).

If one gets past the utter condescension toward the gay community and “perhaps you really haven’t thought this through,” mentality, you get the distinct notion that Brooks is more about having come up with an interesting counterpoint rather than having a clear message here.

Yes David, you made a lovely poopoo, now flush the toilet and get to your nap. Brooks seems to be riding the fence in the best tradition of the conservative movement. By the by, Matt Taibbi has a great take down on Brook’s post, here at Rolling Stone.

I’m pretty sure that if you are having trouble dribbling the toothpaste out of the tube in the morning, it’s probably one of your “off” days in terms of being intelligent and smart. Take my advice–eat ice cream and watch cartoons until your intellect kicks in again. Please don’t bore us with stupid.

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Are You Ready?

Clay Bennett editorial cartoonHave you been keeping up on CPAC, the GOP answer to absolutely nothing? It’s been a “business as usual” kinda thing so far. Trump gets up there and trashes Jindal, and babbles about himself and how great he is. Rick Perry says they have to reach out to Latinos and is booed. Rubio says just because he supports traditional marriage doesn’t make him a bigot. (yeah actually it does).

My favorite was a clip from a “workshop” wherein a younger type white dude talked about being proud of his “demographic” (code for white supremacist) and claiming that the federal government was disenfranchising same, and that he thought his “demographic” had a great culture to be preserved.

When the moderator who was black, noted that Frederick Douglass sent a letter to his “owner” many years after he had escaped, and forgave him, the young man piped up and said, “for what? For receiving food and a home?” This was met with a couple audible gasps, but far too much applause. He was heard to utter under his breath, “we just need to go back to segregation.”

Yes, that’s the state of the GOP.

NRAYou have all heard the stories in the press. As the President and rational folks in the Democratic Party responded to the upswell of opinion that favored background checks for gun buyers and at least some restrictions on the types of guns available and large capacity clips, the gun stores have been doing a booming business.

It is now an undeniable fact that a significant majority of our fellow citizens are building up arsenals for the coming Armageddon that they are sure is on the way.

Given that these people are mentally unstable and delusional, it should come as no surprise that they actually think they can fend off the American military with their pretend assault weapons. They are so effectual against tanks and drones. What they do is pose a significant danger to the poor neighbors who unbeknownst, live near them.

Dow No doubt you noted that the Dow has hit an all-time high. That is certainly cause for much celebration.

Business feels good about itself apparently. Business is good. During the recession they spent their money on ways to improve productivity with a smaller work force.

They were successful.

They aren’t hiring much because they don’t have to.

The fools believed that they were “job creators.”

They are profit creators dummy. Always were. The last thing they want to do is hire workers. Workers are much more expensive to keep than a robot riveter.

Yet the Right continues the mantra, and the kool-aid drinkers keep repeating it.

minimum wageNeed I say more?

The mantra for this one is that it depresses employment because business lays off workers rather than pay them a living wage.

Yeah, business is usually known for cutting of its nose to spite its face. I can just hear them now.

“Sorry Ms Customer, you will have to wait an extra 45 minutes for service. If you don’t like it leave. I’m not going to hire another worker at $10 an hour. So take your $150 dress and rehang it. I have principles you know.”

Yeah, I’m sure that’s what they will do.

Actual studies show they do lay off workers, for a hot minute, and then hire them back when, you know, they have more customers than their current work force can handle.

And guess what? That happens across the country. And guess what? All that extra cash earned by workers? It’s SPENT for goods and services, and that causes more demand, and more hiring. Amazing how that happens.

budgetWe’ve been hearing this whine for a long time from the Right.

And under rational and normal circumstances, it might just have some validity.

Of course it doesn’t have any validity today and everybody who bothers to be alive knows that.

Why?

Because Mitch McConnell will prevent any budget bill offered by the Democrats from reaching the floor of the Senate for actual debate.

He will filibuster.

He promised he wouldn’t do that.

He lied.

What’s new?

gaysForgive me if I’m not suitably impressed.

Rob Portman was against it before he was for it.

Seems his personal situation, impressed him enough to consider a change of mind.

Now, I’m glad that Portman has seen the light. I really am.

But as I said, forgive me if it’s just a bit too self-serving.

As a few have said, perhaps it would help if Portman woke up with a poor son, or a senior son. Maybe then he would be in favor of SNAP, and Pell grants, and Medicare, and well, you get the idea.

His hopes of being nominated are shall we say, in trouble?

It’s a glorious day here, with the high going into the mid 80′s. Sun is shining. Time to get busy in the yard with clean up. Diego is a messy boy. He has pieces of wood and bits of things he’s torn up scattered everywhere. To day nothing of poo. Saturday is poo clean up day.

I’m cooking my corned beef today in a slow-cooker kinda way, bathed in beer. I made a couple of loaves of soda bread. I made a white cake that I will trim with green lime frosting. Tomorrow when I get home from church I can make the colcannon. It’s a St. Paddy’s Day kinda meal!

Have a great one yourselves.

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The World Is Just Plain Weird

laf-stats-grafI had gotten, finally to that happy place. The place where I no longer obsessed about how many people were visiting my blog every day. I was content, having found my place.

Yeah, well that good time feeling didn’t last for long. There has been a significant drop in the last two or three months which is startling and inexplicable. It’s dropped by half at least, and that while subscriptions to this blog have steadily increased.

I have no idea what it means. Did I say something offensive? I surely meant to, but gosh, you don’t have to be so harsh. Wait, I’m talking to people who are still reading so that won’t do any good. How do I reach out to all the unknowns who have found a happier place to tuck into the news and explain that I’m only trying to offend nearly everyone and no one singularly?

To top this off, if you have Google reader you were met with the announcement out of the clear blue sky they are not shutting down their reader. Now I live by mine. I do. I mean dang, can’t you leave shit alone? I have enough on my plate most days without now having to do all that transfery stuff of which I am not all that good. Is there no God?

Speaking of which, God chose his earthly successor yesterday in the guise of one Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. now known as Pope Francis I. Lots of nice things are being said about him, and I’m sure he is a fine fellow. He has lived out the preferential preference for the poor that the liberation theologists have called as the Church’s primary mission, while at the same time decrying the Marxist influence that permeates some of the that same rhetoric. He is a Jesuit, while at the same time decrying their more liberal and progressive leanings. He is a traditionalist when it comes to the Church’s teachings on social issues relating to sexual matters. He is a prayerful humble individual who decries the pomp and ceremony and trappings of office, preferring a small apartment and taking public transportation back and forth to work.

It is of course utterly unclear how all this will play out in the coming months and years. I remain realistic but hopeful that  something new is afoot, and trust that the Holy Spirit, may have rushed in once again to save this wonderful institution from itself. It usually does.

If there was any doubt that the bought-and-paid for jackasses called the GOP in Congress cares not one whit about the public sentiments no matter how overwhelming they are, one need only look at the bill that passed in Congress the other day relating to background checks for gun purchasers.

While a healthy 91% of all citizens across the land, and 76% of all NRA members favor such minimum legislation, the Senate GOP could not manage to screw up the most minimum of guts to vote yes. Not a SINGLE GOP member of the Senate voted yes. I mean even Susan Collins voted no. I mean have you people NO SHAME AT ALL? I really do think we would be better off; if at a minimum, Senate chairs in the chamber were required to carry the logos of those corporate interests who have bought these people and OWN them.

If you are worried that our political system is in danger of being subverted by corporate interests to the point of being the actual POLITICAL POWER in American, now would be the time to decide what you are going to do about it. Time is short I fear before “we the people” is nothing more than a quaint historical blip on the books. Since they already write all the “regulatory laws” that apply to them as it is, and own the SCOTUS by a vote of nearly 5 on most any issue, what the hell left is there for them to grab?

Stay tuned for the inevitable change in the national anthem.

Oh, say can you see, by the dawns early light,
what so proudly we hailed at the twilights last gleaming.
Whose bright office buildings, and nifty logos, through the perilous fight,
O’er the fences we watched were so neoned gleaming,
And the stock market’s big bull, profits shot through the roof,
gave proof through the night, that our CEO’s were still there.
Oh say does that mega corporation yet stand,
O’er the land of the poor and the home of the privileged.
 

Get your copy, no doubt you will soon be forced to sing it every morning before the work bell rings. That goes for retirees, because there will be no rest for the weary in the poor house, just a faint, “can I have more please, sir” in the soup line.

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Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Don'tcomeinNO!

We can’t.

And some days, I do get powerfully tired of discussing why you’re wrong and I’m right.

Because I am right. Truly. I mean it would shatter my entire persona should I discover that I’ve been wrong all these years.

Makes life an entire waste of time, being wrong. You clearly see that.

So do me the kindness to play into my delusion that I am right about EVERYTHING. For I get awfully nervous when I’m wrong about ANYTHING.

That pretty much sums up the state of affairs in America today. Can I get an Amen?  Yeah, okay, a tepid uhuh will do.

Some days I am purely not up to the task of yammering on and on about all the stupid people and stupid stuff they do. I mean, my sanity is at stake here too you know. I have a right to peace and quiet don’t I? I was reduced to calling a woman a bitch today at the pool. I mean is there no place where general common sense rules can’t abide without resort to that?

I mean we are paying a paltry buck to swim, you don’t own the damn lane woman! She said I was “unprofessional”. Since I’m not a professional lap swimmer nor do I portray one, I don’t know what that meant. If she doesn’t want to be called a bitch, she should stop being insufferably selfishly bitchy. Seems obvious to me.

I don’t think I’ve called a woman to her face that in 25-30 years. Truly I don’t. Maybe since I was a teenager. It’s not my normal sort of language.

I figure the GOP made me do it. They are always riling me up with stupid.

So in the name of sanity, I shall not go on and on about the state of the freakin’ly screwed up world. A word or two will suffice.

  • GOP: still in denial that they lost, and still lying about everything.
  • “New Ryan Budget”: same old same old Ayn Randian crap designed to weed out the weak in favor of the “fittest.”
  • Fundamentalists: still abusing the bible for their own self-comfort, making it hate who they hate, and love who they love.
  • Democrats: still living in denial that GOP cares about what the public thinks about anything.
  • Corporations: still raking in the profits and laughing as they sit sipping fine cognac after an afternoon of schussing at the chalet in Switzerland, or drinking Pernod at their villa along the Cote d’Azur.
  • Survivalists/conspiracists/Teabibbers: still actively drinking the kool-aid and waiting in the dark with their assault rifles for the coming of “that Negro’s” Blackhawk copters.
  • Republican state governments: still wasting taxpayer money on beating up on Planned Parenthood, and stupid laws to protect “our freedoms”.
  • Congress: still spending ninety percent of their time raising money from their masters, and using the other ten percent to spew platitudes that even bore them now.
  • Professional Athletes: still engaged in efforts to get away with doping, since sports are now the way to become a multimillionaire in one easy contract.
  • Professional actors: still plying their trade all the while believing that their opinions on anything other than their trade matter to anybody else.
  • School system in America: still lousy and getting worse.
  • Business in general: still laughing that anyone thinks their major goal in life is to “create” jobs.
  • Media: still trapped in the notion that presenting both sides is their job, when one side is one neuron short of a brain.
  • Health care: still great if you are rich, increasingly lousy if you are not.
  • Dental care: still great if you are rich, almost non-existent if you are not.
  • Public transportation: great if you like buses. Lousy if you dream of high-speed rail or non-polluting vehicles.
  • Religion in General: still missing the call to en mass call for justice and social reform in America. Jesus does not recognize most of them as following Him, surely.
  • Dogs and Cats: still offering the best and sanest alternative to human interaction around, and they are cheap too!
  • The rest of the Animal Kingdom: still holding on, hoping to survive the insane human invasion.
  • Planet Earth: still coughing and hoping that humans will come to their senses before it must eradicate them forever.
  • Reactionary Republicans: still happy because they have God on their side, and don’t care about anybody else anyway.
  • Progressive Democrats: still unhappy because they care that everybody isn’t  getting their fair share.
  • The Aliens among Us: still more interested in the poker game at the Galactic club house on Saturday night.

I rest my case. You have all the news you need. Perhaps I shall find something of actual interest tomorrow. Hope as they say, springs eternal.

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dvd_commandingheightsThe jobs numbers came out this morning. Everything is on the uptick. The upturn in the economy continues unabated. This in spite of the naysayers who of course claim that things would be even better if we would do things their way (the business way). They offer no proof of this, but they assure you that if you would just lower corporate taxes to zero and remove all regulations, boards of directors across the country would be voting to “hire as many as will fit in the building” and things will be rosy in no time.

This engenders the usual arguments between Keynesians and Hayekians. If you are not so sure you know who these men are, or what they stand for, well, I have a good place to start.

I am not sure when this came out on PBS, but it is based on the book of the same name written by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. That came out in around 2003 I believe.

It is not for the faint of heart. It’s a six-hour committment. But on the upside, it’s well done and satisfies all the usual desires of one watching a documentary. You can get the DVD or you can watch the entire thing online, and I’ll provide the links at the bottom.

Let me caution you that I don’t at all agree with much of what they say, or at least the inferences they, I think deliberately, urge you to draw. They have a very definite point of view and they avoid a few facts that might cut against their opinion. (Pay especial attention to who is promoting the show at the beginning). That said, it provides a pretty good explanation of what Hayek believed and what Keynes believed. It provides a good foundation to understanding the basics that you will need should you choose to really try to get a handle on what the Krugman’s of the world believe is best for the economy versus the now deceased Milton Friedman.

We’ve only watched the first part, so I’m leaving off any further comments lest I influence your viewing. I’ll post a piece on my views in a couple of weeks or so. So if you are interested, put your feet up and grab a beer or cuppa joe and begin watching. It is entertaining and informative, just not accurate in all respects in my view. Links at the bottom of the page.

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Republicans continue to waste taxpayer money on crap that has nothing to do with economic recovery. Over the Governor’s veto, Arkansas just passed a law making it illegal to abort a fetus after twelve weeks. That’s of course unconstitutional on its face and seems destined to offer the SCOTUS an opportunity to either overturn Roe or restrict it. Idaho’s twenty week law was just struck down by a federal district court.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, another bastion of free thought, the senate has just passed a bill that would allow school prayer again, most especially before classes start (during morning announcements) and before athletic events. Students would also be allowed to freely discuss religious faith issues during class time. This is also unconstitutional on its face.

What is ironic here, is that the very people who support this crap are the same folks who are hellbent to tell you that Democrats and the present administration have no faith let allow adherence to the Constitution and are violating it every day. Of course, they are not. They are just redressing their grievances that the damn document doesn’t say what they want, and making sure that it’s altered to accomplish that.

It all depends, is their answer to “do you believe we should follow the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court?”

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The water pressure dropped severely yesterday in Washington D.C. as John McCain and Lindsey Graham both spend a long time washing off the icky after finding themselves supporting the black guy in the White House against the strange man from Kentucky, Ru Paul, I mean Randy Paul on the drones issue. Two finer hawks were never born than McCain the man who continually drove planes into the ground, and the Lindsey, a man who one can’t begin to imagine in a uniform except as part of a sexual liaison in the bedroom.

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The best response to anyone who tries to tell you that homosexuality is a “choice” is to ask them what was the date when they “chose” to be heterosexual. What them sputter and try to get out of that dilemma.

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I think Romney’s the right choice for speechifying at CPAC. After watching his interview with Wallace the other night, it appears he’s still living in the delusions that caused his defeat. That should be right up the alley of the teabibbers doncha think?

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This just tickled me. John McCain was quoted as saying this:

“It’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone.”

I mean I hear the Oxford Dictionary calling to get that photo of John to place next to the word: IRONY.

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From Don of Massachusetts:

Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it. Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.

- The Buddha

This seems a good place to say, HAVE A GOOD DAY!

Commanding Heights Pt 1

Commanding Heights Pt 2

Commanding Heights Pt 3

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