CV Rick

Political Violence In America

Remember back in school when you had to deal with a bully?  The bully's pattern was predictable: first taunting and insults, second violence. 

It works the same on a national scale.  First taunts and insults, then violence. 

Today in a political act of violence, the head of the Democratic Party in Arkansas was gunned down.  Two weeks ago a man walked into a Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee and killed two and wounded seven during a children's music program.

Taunted by talk radio, egged on by pundits, these people are the weapons in the right-wing's bullying.  Were they mentally ill?  Sure they were, but they still were doing what they thought was right, what they thought would help their cause. 

Remember this: political violence in this country is almost always Conservative on Progressive:
JFK
Bobby Kennedy
Dr. Martin Luther King
Kent State
Matthew Shepard
just to name a few . . .

 - rick, disgusted

Administration Crimes

This diagram puts it all nicely into perspective. Most wanted: Alberto Gonzalez.

The Struggling Economy is Not Fictional

Another way a McCain Presidency would be another Bush term is on the economy.  Things are grim and both McCain and Bush refuse to admit that it's bad.  They're just going on the same old trickle-down pay for it later Republican failures that have tanked the dollar and put us in multi-trillion dollar debt with a large chunk of that obligation to China.  Not smart from the self-admitted economic amateurs.

Bank Stocks are tanking and that's prompting a run on banks which includes violence.  The police are coming to bank lines to keep people from harming each other which would trigger riots.  Meanwhile the president thinks everything's a-ok! The chairman of the fed thinks we've got some serious problems.  The dollar's at its lowest point ever with respect to the Euro, the housing market is in a freefall, foreclosures are putting people on the streets along with maladjusted war veterans, unemployment is up and now the Dow Jones Average is showing the effects finally of what the average person has been feeling. Someone needs to tell Grampy McSame and his advisers that these economic woes are real and for those of us who didn't commit adultery with heiresses, it's serious. 

You know how to tell when things are really bad, it's when the administration tells us that everything's okay.  Like in Katrina when the administration was assuring everyone that they had it handled - meanwhile people were drowning or living in squalid conditions without any chance to escape the horror and Brownie was doing a great job - remember that?  Well the other day we were assured that the government wasn't going to have to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and now they are going to do just that.  Guess what they're doing now?  They're assuring us that the banking system is perfectly safe and that your money is insured.  That means I'm taking all I can out of the bank as soon as possible.

Obama might not be able to fix all these problems and they might overwhelm him, but at least he'll step up to a podium and give it to us straight.  All we need as Americans is a dose of the truth.  That's something we haven't had from the government my entire adult life.

 - rick, off to work.

Obama is a Very Popular Man

Here's a montage done by Gawker.

I believe this election is going to be too lopsided to be turned by Diebold or other voter fraud.

 - rick, Obama Supporter

I'm Voting Republican

I'm voting Republican for all these reasons:

rick, reaching across the aisle

Obama For President

Economics - the Financial Sector

Rose posted this last week and I'd read the article as well.  It's interesting, but the last paragraph stuck in my mind. 

Three years ago, when Daggle bought the Gainesville station, a share of Exxon stock was about $50. Buying and fixing up the station has cost him $800,000, and he hasn't yet drawn a profit from it. "If I had bought the stock," he said, he would have nearly doubled his money and would have "never lifted a finger."

There are a lot of ways to make money in America, but the path to extraordinary wealth is through the financial sector - stocks, bonds, funds, insurance, and credit instruments.  The old money in this country, the extreme money handed down generation to generation from Railroad, oil, and property fortunes is tied up in the finance sector. 

I think that's bad because this country ought to be structured based on what people do and what people make, not where they gamble and how to control the house money in a national casino.  Look at the credit crisis for example and see what happens when too many people get in the game of deregulated finance - there's a bubble and then a crunch and a lot of people got obscenely wealthy and a lot of people lost their ass.  In the meantime nothing was made, nothing was created, no new technologies were developed and no real jobs were created.  It's an imaginary business manipulating digital money in a computer system.  It's divorced from anything in the real world.

This is the lesson from Enron that we still haven't learned yet.  Enron ran a commodities company without any view that there was a commodity at the end.  To them it was just imaginary blips in a computer system to manipulate, free of oversight, for the maximum potential profit.  A tailored video game where money is the score.  Enron however, was just the first commodity in this wave.  Now agriculture, oil, and water are being played the same way - to the same ends.  Just you watch and see. 

Diagnosis Bad for Ted Kennedy

He loves his country and he's tirelessly worked for it, for his constituents, and for the less fortunate.  He's known as the Lion of the Senate and he's never backed down from what he thinks is right.  For that, he's made some enemies but more, far more, friends and admirers.  Count me as one. 

When my good friend, Bill, went in to be treated for Cancer, it was in a facility which is the best in the world because of the tireless research and funding work that Ted Kennedy brought to the facility.  Senator Kennedy is in that facility now as I understand it.  No one I know from Massachusetts speaks ill of the man's work, his commitment, or his dedication. 

But there are plenty of people who do not like him.  I perused some right-wing sites today and here's a sampling from the comments.  (I'm not going to link them, because I don't want to give them any more traffic than they deserve.)  I left all typos as I found them.

He is scum…….pond scum.
I don’t wish him cancer or pain, but this pig has bloviated and demogogued in the Senate for FORTY SIX FRIGGIN YEARS. Mary Jo Kopechne would be 65 now. She’s been dead for 40 years. Meanwhile back at the SCOTCH and WATER.

Nice, huh?

Prayers for the woman he left to die, Mary Jo Kopechne. Ted Kennedy has already received all the breaks in the world. He got away with vehicular homicide and afterwards has spent his life showing no mercy to and villifying Republcans. I cry for the millions of aborted babies and the rest of the victims of Liberal insanity like his.

and some poetry of sorts:

I am a conservative, so I believe in moral absolutes. A bad man is still a bad man, even if he gets a disease. Bad things happening to bad men is good.

I am a conservative, so I don’t eulogize criminals. It’s another assault on their victims.

I am a Christian, so I know that God is also not warm and fuzzy all of the time. If you believe He is, you should read about Ninevah, Sodom & Gomorrah, Jericho, and Noah & the Flood.

So please, stop with the self-righteous “we should be better than this” talk.

Mass Appeal

This is a crowd.  75,000 people assembled to hear one man speak - not to see a rock star play guitar, not for a trippy psychodelic sixties drug fest, but one man speak honestly about that which will make this country better, that which can return this country to greatness.  He speaks honestly about the work and gives reasonable time frames.  He doesn't say that he'll accomplish his objectives on day one or by day one hundred.  He says what he'll propose and then what it will take to get it through Congress and what compromises that might entail.  He's a realist and a dreamer both.  He does embody hope because he's an optimist.

People stood in line and went through checkpoints and waited over an hour.  Old and young people both.  Rich and poor people.  Working class, middle class, lower class and upper.  He brings an energy to the campaign that is unmatched in my lifetime.  He's as good an orator as Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy, but neither of them moved out from the establishment enough to generate this kind of personal appeal - appeal that draws people from their homes and offices and assembles them to hear a speech. 

He's as inspirational as Martin Luther King, and as temperate.  He paints a picture of the America in which I want to live where there aren't two teams and two sides but instead one people with some disagreements but whose agreements are larger and more profound than the disagreements. 

Today he's going to win Oregon and lose Kentucky and I wonder why people in Kentucky can't see what I see in Barack Obama.  I wonder what it's going to take for one man to personally touch three hundred million people. 

Good luck, Senator Obama.  I hope to call you president soon.

- rick, inspired.

Election News - Mississippi Special Election

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Democrat Travis Childers has won a north Mississippi congressional race, claiming a seat the Republicans have held since 1994. Childers defeated Republican Greg Davis today (Tuesday) in a special election runoff. That makes it three seats in a row in heavy Republican districts that have gone to Democrats. The first was former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert's seat in Illinois 14th district. The second was in In Louisiana where Democrat Don Cazayoux won a special election May 3 and took a seat Republicans had held since 1974. In all three elections the Republicans tried to tie the Democrat challenger to Barack Obama and liberalism. In all three this strategy backfired. It's going to be a long, tough year for Republicans.  They're going to hemorrhage seats this fall.

Does George W. Bush Support Barack Obama?

Last weekend President Bush's daughter was married in Crawford, Texas.  The man who officiated over the ceremony was Reverend Kirbyjon Caldwell, a  senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church. 

Why is this important? For weeks those on the right (and Hillary's surrogates of course) have told us that Barack Obama has been influenced and shares the beliefs of his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  The possibility that one's relationship with one's pastor can be spiritual and that one can have serious differences in personal and political arenas has been dismissed and scoffed away as the dwadlings of weak minds. 

So, if one's pastor, one's spiritual adviser has that much sway then it's only natural that the man described as Bush's spiritual adviser much also have influence over the President, his daughter and the rest of the Bush family.

Allow me to quote:

Caldwell has long been a spiritual advisor to George W. Bush. The evangelical convictions of both Caldwell and Bush are well-known.

And,

An influential Houston minister who has long been a spiritual adviser to President George W. Bush says he will endorse Barack Obama's bid for the presidency.

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church, said Saturday that he's backing the Illinois senator because of Obama's "character, confidence and courage."

Obama, a Democrat, is electable and "would do a wonderful job to bring people together to pursue a common vision we all have," said Caldwell

But that's different, they'll say.

Why?  Because Rev. Wright says things that are specifically afro-centric?  That's a more sinister message?  That's something that HAS TO transcend from the pulpit to the mind of the congregate whereas other political ideals will not?  Think about that for a minute and then laugh with me at the hypocrisy of that particular rationale.

Obviously, Bush doesn't have to believe all of what his pastor says yet Obama must have.  Why would anyone draw the line in the sand at this ridiculous point unless it were purely to attempt to tear Obama down?   Is someone out there so delusional that they give Bush more mental control, more self-confidence than they do Obama?  Someone who says Bush is a stronger person - this drug and alcohol addicted AWOL frat boy up against the president of the Harvard Law Review?

Set aside the message for one minute and let's go back to my original assertion - that a person can have a pastor, an aunt, a crazy old uncle, or even a cult-following father (as I do) and have a long-term relationship with that person and not necessarily accept their views.  See? My assertion stands the test of hypocrisy.  Does yours? 

Personally I don't care who supervised Jenna Bush's marriage.  I am not the one who ascribed such importance to the convictions of religious leaders.  But that's why I'm not a nutty, freaky, "anything to win" theocon windbag. 

- rick, drawing parallels. 

Growing Up Mormon - A Conversation With a Client

Normally on Thursdays I write some vignette or an episode from a longer story of my childhood in the Mormon Religion.  Today however, I had a conversation with a client that stayed with me and I'd like to share it with you.

We were talking about how he had become an attorney.

"I was a field agent with the F.B.I. for five years.  But when I found out that there was no chance for advancement I decided to apply to law school."

I said, "Were all the positions filled or were they just not promoting?"

"I don't suppose you know anything about Mormons," he said.  I remained silent at that.  "The FBI had a very high number of Mormons and in my office advancement was dependent on how well you got along with them.  Since I wasn't about to pretend to be interested in their religion and I wasn't interested in changing my supposed bad habits, I was far down the list."

"Really?  It was about the Mormons?" I asked.

"They are a very cliquish people.  They take care of their own first and foremost.  My partner wouldn't follow orders from our direct supervisor unless he cleared it with the highest ranking Mormon in our office.  He'd call him at home and talk about what he'd been told to do.  He said it was a matter of respecting his priesthood leaders.  To me it all seemed like some weird cult.  I could imagine them in robes around a dark altar offering blood oaths to each other." 

At that I laughed openly. 

He continued.  "I had to get out of there and law school seemed like a good place to make my own advancement."

"It really turned you off to Mormons, didn't it?" I asked.

"Yes, it did."

At that I told him a bit about my story, Alma the Lamanite, and my experiences growing up.  I also explained the doctrinal reasons why Mormons believe darker skin color is punishment delivered by God on his more unworthy children. 

My client is African American.  At the explanation he shook his head and sighed.

- rick, atheist

The Limbaugh Effect

In Indiana Hillary Clinton won by less than 25,000 votes.  This comes during a concerted campaign by Rush Limbaugh who encouraged his listeners, all conservative Hillary haters, to register as democrats and vote for Clinton.  He calls this strategy Operation Chaos.  His theory is that the longer the democrats fight each other and the nastier the fighting gets the more damage will be done and McCain will be able to sail through the general election. 

This tactic seemed to work in Texas where Hillary received the press as being the state's winner but after all the votes were counted from primaries and caucuses Obama ended up winning the state and the majority of its delegates. 

Now exit polling shows that Limbaugh's call to his Republican listeners produced far more than the 2% margin of victory.  This is an example of dirty politics, probably illegal, from the "anything-to-win" disgusting side of the American political spectrum - the conservatives.

Before you decry my pronouncement with typical "liberals will do it to" ca-cawing, please find me one example of any Republican primary election swayed by actions from Democratic voters.  Just one.  It isn't true that both sides of the political aisle are the same when it comes to corruption.  One side is just wrong and this is another example.

- rick, disgusted

Obama - Is this the Day?

If he sweeps North Carolina and Indiana then maybe we can put all this primary crap behind us. 

Here's two great videos - the first is an example of how to take the right wing's most effective tactic and use it against John McCain.  Brought to us by the folks at Mad TV.

And here's The Empire Strikes Barack:

rick, weary of the primary season

Yes He Can

A Critical Response to Atheism

The following is an excerpt from God and the New Atheism by John Haught

I must confess that it has been disappointing for me to have witnessed the recent surge of interest in atheism. It’s not that my own livelihood, that of a theologian, is at stake—although the authors in question would fervently wish that it were so. Nor is it that the treatment of religion in these tracts consists mostly of breezy over-generalizations that leave out almost everything that theologians would want to highlight in their own contemporary discussion of God. Rather, the new atheism is simply unchallenging theologically. Its engagement with theology lies at about the same level of reflection on faith that one can find in contemporary creationist and fundamentalist literature.

Clearly the new atheists’ strategy is to suppress in effect any significant theological voices that might wish to join in conversation with them. As a result of this exclusion, the intellectual quality of their atheism is unnecessarily diminished. Their understanding of religious faith remains consistently at the same unscholarly level as the unreflective, superstitious, and literalist religiosity of those they criticize. Even though the new atheists reject the God of creationists, fundamentalists, terrorists, and “intelligent design” (ID) advocates, it is not without interest that they have decided to debate with these extremists rather than with any major theologians.

This choice of antagonists betrays their unconscious privileging of literalist and conservative versions of religious thought over the more traditionally mainstream types. The new atheists are saying in effect that if God exists at all, we should allow this God’s identity to be determined once and for all by the fundamentalists of the Abrahamic religious traditions. I believe they have chosen this strategy not only to make their job of demolition easier, but also because they have a barely disguised admiration for the simplicity of their opponents’ views of reality.

Great Button

From Flimsy Sanity.

Clinton Compares Herself to Rocky Balboa

She did:

Recalling a famous scene on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Clinton said that ending her presidential campaign now would be as if "Rocky Balboa had gotten halfway up those art museum steps and said, 'Well, I guess that's about far enough.'"

"Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people," Clinton said.

But the problem is  . . .

In the end of that film, Rocky got his ass beat by a black man.

- CV Rick

ps.  thanks for falling for the April Fool's post . . . those of you who did.  You don't have to admit it.  We all know.

CV Rick Endorses Hillary Clinton

After long and thoughtful soul searching I've reached a change of mind on this political campaign.  Senator Clinton has shown heart by not giving up, by not giving in, and by fighting to the end.  What we need to have in order to win the presidency is that kind of full will to fight.  Against the political machine the Republicans will bring to bear with negative campaigning, angry attacks, media manipulation, and billions of corporate dollars; a candidate who will stand up to that without flinching and without giving a grandiose, if impotent, speech every time someone criticizes her. 

We don't need a candidate who bends over - we need one who will attack and attack, every single day.  One to take the battle to them.  One who will punish Republicans for the humiliations and degradations of the last three decades. 

Let's get them.

Go Hillary!

Great Art - An American Self-Potrait

Cherise emailed me a link to this artist.

Chris Jordan is an artist who uses statistics and representational art to make political statements.  From his artist statement:

This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

Here's an example:

Cans Seurat, 2007
60x92"

Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

Click on these images for the close-ups.

more after the jump

Obama and the Politics of Racism

I'm putting my Apartheid Billy conclusion on hold for a week.  Right now I really want to talk about Obama's Religion Speech.  If you haven't watched it or read it, please do so. 

What I've encountered on a discussion board saddens me, because the slander and the onslaught against Barack Obama is really getting into full swing.  It's based on mischaracterizations and lazy talking points. 

Here's my part of this exchange, what's in quotes is what I'm responding to:

 

Quote:

I think that Rev. Wright preaches hate, and that Obama should not have taken his children to listen to that. I think Obama should have denounced Wright completely, not excused his more recent actions because he "grew up during segregation."

I don't think anyone should ever take their children to the Mormon church. I think it's child abuse to subject children to a doctrine that has never disavowed its earliest teachings that dark-skinned people were not brave and honorable during the heavenly "pre-existence" war. However, when I brought this up on Conservative websites before Romney dropped out of the race I was universally derided for being a bigot. Where Obama explained that he did not accept these inflammatory preachings of Rev. Wright, Romney never addressed this uncomfortable but still doctrinal precept of his own religion. Romney's speech on religion was a poor shadow to Obama's in what it revealed about character, truth, and integrity.

I think you should disavow everyone in your life who believes such racist rubbish. I think you should tell them they are racists and I think you should never speak to them again. I think you should put a sign in your front yard saying that your Mormon friends and relatives are not welcome in your lives until they specifically disavow every racist word Brigham Young, Joe Smith Jr, et al ever said from the pulpit or during doctrinal lessons/writings.

How far do you want me to go with this?  How prominent does the double standard have to be before you recognize it? 

Whatever happened to the maxim "condemn the sin but love the sinner." That's what we do for our family, our friends, our associates. None of us accept every belief of all the people in our lives, but that doesn't mean we reject those people for political expediency.

Obsessing About Obama

Post titles from the main blog page of the most highly trafficked Conservative Blog:

The new Barack Obama logo: Agent of left-wing same old; Update: Let’s change…the subject

Say goodbye to the Glowbama mystique

Jeremiah Wright to be honored

Hate-filled sermons were just “snippets;”

Now you see it, now you don’t, now you do! : Glowbama to recapture the glow with a “major speech” on race

Jeremiah Wright’s Greatest Hits

Jeremiah-gate: Glowbama’s losing his glow

Report: Obama nodded in agreement last summer

Obamessiah: Signs And Wonders

The audacity of earmarks

Now we know where Michelle Obama’s resentment of America comes from

From a Conservative Blog I look at, seven of the first 20 Headlines are about Obama:

‘Obama Is A Mac Daddy’

Obama The Poser

Barack Obama To Be Keynote Speaker At North Dakota Democrat Convention  (Yawn)

Obama: Declaration of Independence was “was stained by the nation’s original sin of slavery.”

Barack Obama’s Campaign Website Sends Black Panther Endorsement Down The Memory Hole

Obama A Nappy-Headed Hypocrite?

Obama’s Social Security Plan

Think they're worried?

Clinton Compromises

The other day I was in Costco buying paper towels and bottled water when I overheard two women talking about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  The taller woman was in her fifties and wore a green Safari coat plastered with pro-Hillary pins.  The other wore a smock and was handing out free samples of toaster pastries.  She was much older and nodded in agreement with the talking points:

"We need a president who is a leader, not someone who just gives speeches.  This isn't a pep rally, it's the most important election of our time.  We need someone with experience."

I approached and picked up the free sample.

"He has no chance of winning because he's never done anything," she continued.  "This country needs someone who knows what she's doing."

Not being able to keep quiet, I said, "Exactly what experience does Senator Clinton have?"

Both women turned to me.  The campaigner started her assault, "She's got foreign policy experience all over the . .. "

I interrupted, "Not experience her husband has.  What experience does she have?  What has she done?"

She stopped.  I got the glare.  So, I continued.

"The person I like isn't Hillary.  I prefer someone with a lot of legislative experience, like in the state house of Illinois.  I like the fact that he's been a lawyer who's practiced and taught extensively.  I'm also confident that he understands the Constitution.  Even though he only served in Congress a couple years, he's a leader and a motivator, a great orator and a reasonable, thoughtful man."

"Barack Obama doesn't have the experience," she said.

"I wasn't talking about Obama.  I just described Abraham Lincoln."

I took my tasty sample and walked away.

1 in 200 U.S. Adults are Terrorists

This post over at the ACLU is about the number of people in the United States who are on the Terrorist Watch List.

In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 - and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.¹

At that rate, our list will have a million names on it by July.

A million people in the U.S. are on this watch list.  What fucking good is it then? 

Let's think about this for a moment.  Throwing out children and the elderly, there are approximately 181,000,000 people in this country, men and women.  That means by July the government will suspect one out of every one hundred eighty one people of being a terrorist. 

Those people are going to stopped at airports, investigated, watched and monitored.  How many Department of Homeland Security people is it going to take to monitor the activities of a million people?  How fucking big do you morons want that department to get?

In order for a watch list to be effective, it has to be small and targeted.  It has to include known terrorists and their acquaintances.  Putting everyone on the list named Alan Rowley isn't really going to help us if there's only one of those people who likes throwing plastic explosive Frisbees at commuter trains. 

What's more, the Bush Administration wants the right to warrantless wiretap these terrorist subjects because they're on this fucking million-person list.  Coincidentally, most of his political enemies and quite a few Democratic Congressman are on the list.  It'd sure be handy to eavesdrop on their phone conversations, e-mails, and office conversations without their knowledge. It'd be handy to do that without permission from a judge, which means a traceable paper trail.

These nitwits have to be stopped. 

Here's the question - - who do you want administering a Million-Person Terrorist Watch List?  Who do you trust tapping the phones of 1 in 181 adult Americans? 

- rick, awaiting the gestapo.

Fear And Dirty Tactics Work in America

You know why I won't live in a Red State again?  It's because you people in Red States have nothing in common with me.  You like being scared and you believe the world is divided into two teams and yours has to win at all costs. 

Texas and Ohio are Red States . . .  nutters from those states voted overwhelmingly for Bush and yesterday they revived Hillary Clinton. 

She went dirty and pandered to fear.  It worked.  I can't believe that it worked, but it did. 

Hillary claims to be experienced . . . what I want to know is what is she experienced in?  Being first lady doesn't count for anything unless you also want to claim that being married to Donald Trump makes you a real estate expert and being married to Bill Gates makes you an expert on software development. 

You want to know what Hillary Clinton's really an expert at? 

• She's an expert at slashing American jobs and stripping any protections from American workers while raping our economic protections.  That's what being a board member of Wal-Mart gives her for expertise. 
• She's an expert at selling political favors to lobbyists and mortgaging our political will to the highest corporate bidder.  Or am I just reading her corporate support from people like Rupert Murdoch wrong? 
• She's an expert at jumping the gun and preemptively invading sovereign nations against international law - or at least that's what her voting record says.  And she's perfectly willing to give immunity to her corporate buddies who aided Bush in spying on American citizens.

She's not a diplomat - she's never negotiating any peace.  She's never negotiated a hostage release.  She's never signed a treaty.  If you wanted a negotiator, you'd have elected Bill Richardson.  Hillary doesn't believe in compromise - she has no history of it - at all.  She's a winner-take-all authoritarian - JUST.LIKE.BUSH.  In fact, she's more like Bush than any Republican Candidate who ran in the primaries.  She's secretive, she's sleazy, and she's not to be trusted with power. 

Women - - you voted for her because you wanted to vote for a woman.  You voted for a woman who whines and cries when she's slighted and who turns to her husband when things get hard.  You think you voted for a fighter, but you really voted for a crier.  You think you voted for a leader, but the person who's leading her campaign down the road of dirty politics is her husband, Bill.

You're not getting change with Hillary - you're getting more of the same.

She can't win because no Republican on earth will vote for her.  Obama can win.  He can bring more voters and he can run a positive campaign which relies on reaching out to the opposition.  He can bring Republicans and Independents and Democrats together to vote for him. 

You people in Texas and Ohio who thought race was important voted for Hillary - - - that only can possibly mean that you didn't vote for Barack because he's black.  That's another reason I won't live in your backward red states.

If you want to split the Democratic party and galvanize Republicans, keep voting for that divisive person.  If you want to win the election and bring America back together, vote for Obama. 

Texas, Ohio - you've disappointed me and I didn't expect much.

- rick, saddened.

The Differences Between the Democratic Candidates

(NOTE:  Today's Growing Up Mormon post is delayed.  I realized that I have to add another character to my Growing Up Mormon memoir and I'm frantically writing him into the story.  So, his tale will appear here next week - Billy, the South African Mormon.)

Change - Change - Change . . .

and not all change is good.

The three top Democratic Candidates are all claiming that they are going to bring about change.  What concerns me is the method to their madness.  Three Candidates - three different kinds of change.

Hillary Clinton

Her message is that Bush needs to go, that he's been bad for the country and that the Republicans in both the administration and Congress need to go.  In her opinion, it's all about the Republicans and life will be a whole lot better when Democrats live in the White House and hold significant majorities in Congress. 

Her Change:  Party Politics with her Party Winning.

John Edwards

His message is that special interests and corporate money have corrupted the system too much.  He says that citizens are the losers in the process, regardless party affiliation.  He seems to believe that once you remove lobbyists and special interest money from the equation, both Republicans and Democrats will be able to govern more effectively.

His Change:  Class politics with  corporations bowing to the will of the people.

Barack Obama

His message is that this country is too divided and that he is in a position to bridge the chasm between Republicans and Democrats, bringing us all together to succeed at all those things in which we agree.

His Change:  Put divisive issues on the back burner and work toward goals which are inspirational, possible and beneficial.

Based on that, I'm happy with Edwards and Obama.  Clinton's change is a road we've been down before.

- rick, political.

The Candidates Compared

Let me qualify this by saying the graphic is deceptive.  Only the height of the candidates are the measure of their net wealth.  The deceptive part is the person who created the image rendered it in two dimensions instead of one which makes Romney appear to have 49 times the wealth of the next wealthiest presidential candidate (John Edwards) instead of 7 times since he occupies 7x7 times the area that we see.  And since we presume human beings to be 3 dimensional creatures, then the mind tricks us into believing that Romney's 343 times as wealthy as Edwards.  With all that in mind, here's a graphic showing the comparative wealth of the candidates, misleadings notwithstanding.

Click for the full version.

- rick, destitute by comparison

What Is Fascism?

In which Jonah Goldberg waters down meaning even farther and attempts to paint Fascism as a liberal ideal, John Scalzi shows him that history, original intent, and fact do matter.

Fox vs Barack Obama

If Fox News is trying hard to smear any particular candidate, that candidate is probably a threat to the status-quo, pro-war, pro-corporate agenda of Fox News. 

What follows is the best actual evidence of Fox's deliberate and dishonest campaign to undermine Senator Obama.  He's also been boycotting Fox News for a year.  I respect that he's been doing it quietly, yet successfully.  Please watch the video - the part about O'Reilly's altercation ends at 1:07.

Fox vs. Barack Obama

- rick, appalled.

Obama - Pile-On

Barack Obama is getting hit from all quarters.  He's got a good shot at winning, because of that people will lie to stop him. 

Hillary has stooped to using surrogates, including Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, who is one of Clinton's most prominent African-American supporters.  He pandered to the basest stereotypes to invoke fear:

"To  me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood - and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book - when they have been involved."

Don't tell me that Bill and Hillary, the most able campaigners in a century, the most apt at controlling the message, didn't know what Johnson was going to say - didn't feed it to him to say.  But because he said it, their hands are clean, they have deniability.  Plausible deniability as Reagan's people would so proudly say.

Democracy For Sale, Diebold to be the Auctioneer

No Private Corporation should ever be counting the vote of a free nation.  That shouldn't happen.  This is the public purview, it's a matter of securing the vote and counting that vote and it's not a profit center.  Not everything is a profit center, nor should everything be.  Law Enforcement, Military "defense," Public Safety, Public Schools, and Elections are not profit centers.

Diebold and others have moved into elections in a big way over the past decade.  They are supplying the machines that are supposed to count the vote, but they refuse to show anyone the code they use.  Their machines have been hacked easily, have been shown to be fraudulent, and have been the source of unending questions.  They are not to be trusted.

Then what happens?  Well, in New Hampshire where the machines counted the votes, Hillary Clinton got more than a 5% bump and Barack Obama got more than a 2% reduction.  Where votes were counted by hand, the results came in with Barack on top as had been predicted by polls. 

What if it's not a conspiracy?  What if it's not a dishonest company picking our leaders for us?  Well, why in the hell are we still using them anyway with all the problems they've already caused.  Come on people . . . they aren't good for our Democracy.

Alan posted about this last night.  His post talks about a man, Albert Howard, who might request a real recount.  If he does it could uncover discrepancies.

After the jump you can see a video of how easily the Diebold machines can be tampered with and controlled.

I Support Barack Obama

I should've written this a while ago. I even promised Alan that I would, but time constraints prevented me and now it's going to seem like I'm jumping on the bandwagon. 

I Support Barack Obama for President of the United States of America.

I support Senator Obama because his message is transcendent.  For the first time in my life a strong candidate is running on a message for the future.  He's not running against George Bush or Ronald Reagan.  He's not running against the punditry from the opposing side.  He's not even running against Senator Clinton or John Edwards.  He is running for the Presidency and he believes he can lead America to be better than it has been in a long, long time.  Hope.  Not hope that it doesn't get worse, or hope that we can fix things, or hope that we can stem the tide of right-wing influence.  When you listen to his speeches or read his writing, it's not a message of blame, it's not an indictment of how we got to where we are, it's a step-by-step call to action - “We're here, and we're going to get there.”  Hope isn't just a political slogan, it's a valid offer of betterment for a nation and its individuals. 

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama cuts through the cynicism of our time with simplicity. It's okay to want to be better and it's okay to require that people are responsible for themselves and it's okay to call upon the government to fulfill its role to help those less fortunate or unable but also to force that same government aside when it stands to block individuals and their individual success.  It's not dumb to have hope for without it we are only left with despair.

Of all the people out their who want the Republicans to pay for their misdeeds, to suffer for giving us Bush and Cheney and scandal after scandal, corruption after corruption, hypocrisy after hypocrisy, you'll find me at the forefront.  But you won't find Senator Obama in that line.  There's work to be done and punishing Americans for the past, for their previous choices, for their associations won't free us to become better.  I don't completely agree, but behind Obama, I can support a policy of moving on.  Senator Obama of all people, has the ability to reach out to reasonable citizens from both the parties and from the partyless, the unrepresented, and make that promise to work together, to heal that animosity chasm that's separated us for decades. 

President Abraham Lincoln wanted to forgive the South and welcome them with open arms.  He wanted to free them for commerce and fully fund a reconstruction after the devastating Civil War.  He was assassinated before his plans could take hold.  In Obama I see reflections of Lincoln's message of unity, forgiveness, and repair.  In Obama I hear the words that come from the heart of a leader with Lincoln's presence and from the mouth of an orator with Lincoln's skill.

President Obama would be able to bring an international community a new message from America, we're going to work with you to improve the world.  We're no longer going to shake your hand and smile at your face while our agents are selling your nations out from under you.  We're no longer going to enforce peace with violence.  We're no longer going to spread freedom militantly. In a President Obama I see diplomacy in our future, and yours.  I see an end to perpetual war and the hope of a sustainable peace.  That isn't to say that a President Obama would be afraid of a dangerous world.  In a President Obama I see shadows of Roosevelt and Truman, men not afraid to win convincingly when winning is required, but also men who saw the end of conflict within reach and honestly strove for that end.

He's been compared with JFK, but I don't know if that's valid.  He's young, true.  He's handsome, true. He's intelligent and charismatic, true.  His wife is talented, intelligent, and beautiful, true.  But when it comes to questions of policy Obama is untainted by powerful, corrupt influences.  His money is a matter of public record and his support is from the people in the light, not from those in dark rooms with favors traded.  He doesn't come with that baggage hovering over him and those debts unspoken but required.  He's a free man and only from that freedom can his message of hope resonate truthfully. 

I support hope, and with that hope I support Senator Barack Obama. 

the Democratic Leadership has Betrayed Us

Christmas is over and so is the time of good cheer.  Well and good because I'm fucking pissed.  I have good reason.

Why were you elected, Democrats?  Why the hell were you lame-asses put into office? 

You replaced the Republicans so that you could make a change in the way we are doing things.  We didn't send you to Washington to do every goddamned thing Bush wants you to do.  If we wanted cowards afraid of Bush and Cheney's every word, we'd have sent a bunch of College Republicans, afraid to go and fight but perfectly suited to be cheerleaders in suits, ties, skirts and pom-poms.  But we didn't want cowards and cowtowing lameasses in Washington.  We wanted men and women with backbones . . . and we didn't get them.

Nancy Pelosi is the worst of the fucking bunch.  You people in San Francisco ought to be damned ashamed of yourselves for giving us that spineless administration minion.  For Fuck's sake, what's the first thing she did?  She took impeachment off the table.  And there is no good reason for it .  . . she gave those criminals a free pass, giving them free reign to continue doing whatever the hell they pleased, from taking more civil rights from citizens to creating a phony case to invade yet another nation.  They don't have to look over their shoulder, watch their actions, or even worry about an investigation because what's going to happen?  The only real power Congress has over the Executive has been removed as an option.  Fuck her and you spineless whimps in San Francisco who elected that useless miscreant and infected the rest of the country with her uselessness.  You people ought to be ashamed.

When  the Bush administration wants some money or immunity for their corporate cronies, or a free pass to spy on us or take more liberties, the opposition party turns around, bends over and takes it up the ass lubeless, and thanks Bush for the violation.  What are you thinking?  What kind of way is that to sell out?  At least have a little self respect and meet him in public for your fucking.  At least give us voters a little courtesy of saying right up front, “We're going to be violated in every way a rape victim can possibly be violated, but at least we'll smile for you.”

I hate this party.  I hate them with a passion.  No, I don't like the Corrupt Republicans any better, but at least they aren't lying about selling us out to multinational corporations and Bible carrying hypocrites.  At least they're parading up front with their evil.  Our Democrats are the trojan horse of the enemy, hollowed out, soulless, and ready to sell us out for the promise of what?  Nothing, not a damned thing. 

Great Music, Great Art, Great Artist - Buffy St. Marie

Rose inspired me to write about Buffy St. Marie.

She exploded upon the American Scene in the early sixties.  She was before the hippies, they wanted to be like her.  She was the voice of Native America, she sang the anthem of the anti-war movement, she was one of the first artists blacklisted by the Johnson administration and her albums disappeared from the United States.  Undeterred, she became an international phenomena and still attracts enormous crowds wherever she performs. 

She's Buffy St. Marie and she's one of my all-time favorites.  Most people here in the states know her as the protest singer, notable for Universal Soldier.  But she's so much more than one song:

She's an educator with degrees in Oriental Studies and teaching as well as a PhD in Fine Arts.  She's an accomplished artist, and she appeared for five years with her son on Sesame Street to let kids know that Indians still exist.  She's a composer - look who's recorded her music: Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamon, Arthur Fiedler, Boston Pops Orchestra, Roberta Flack, Cher, Bobby Darin, Bobby Bare, Donovan, Joe Cocker, and Anne Murray. 

She founded educational partnerships between Native American students and non-Native classes.  She produced a multimedia curriculum CD, Science: Through Native American Eyes.

My all time favorite Buffy St. Marie song is after the jump.

Conservative Obsessions

The conservatives have an alternative to Wikipedia.  It's called Conservapedia.  On the day that I'm writing this post, the top statistics on this page are:

1. Main Page‎ [1,934,026]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,624,627]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [518,072]
4. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [434,434]
5. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [422,162]
6. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [401,595]
7. Homosexual Couples‎ [374,040]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [332,093]
9. Homosexuality and Anal Cancer‎ [294,407]
10. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [293,745]

This isn't surprising.  They are so obsessed with elements of sexuality and what happens in other people's bedrooms that it's natural that they'd be looking at this stuff most of all.  I'd say it's hypocritical, but it's not really.  It's not because they are obsessed with this stuff and most of them are trying to figure out how to stop it, how to combat it, and how to take pleasure in the cessations of other people's pleasure, not how to do it themselves.  Oh, there's plenty of repressed homosexuals in their ranks, but the majority are so unhappy and afraid of their made-up punishing, vindictive God that they want all other people to be miserable also.

Top Ten Secret Identities - NonFiction

Some people lead Double Lives.  I was listening to this episode of This American Life and it got me thinking about people with Secret Identities.  Not all hidden identities belong to people trying to hide major hypocritical embarrassments, like Larry Craig (thanks, Ken).  Some are valid and reasonable.

Here's my list of the best.

10. George F Kennan / Mr. X 

Arguably, Kennan was the godfather of the Cold War.  He was at least it's architect. 

He published an article in Foreign Affairs in July 1947 (under the name "Mr. X") that clearly laid out a policy of containment. He urged that "the United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies" and called for the defense and support of key regions in the world, such as Western Europe. The article, which created quite a stir in Washington, laid the groundwork for much subsequent foreign policy.

In other words, he said that the Soviet Union was only interested in expansion, violent or not, and wouldn't listen to reason.  So, he argued that threatening them with imminent destruction and subsequently Mutually Assured Destruction was the most rational course. 

For a long time, no one knew who Mr. X was.  Eventually the press narrowed it down and exposed him.

9. W. Mark Felt, Sr. / Deep Throat

The main source of information that Woodward and Bernstein relied on for their investigative piece was only known as Deep Throat.  Knowing that his president and his president's advisers had crossed the line, disregarding the law, he leaked important information that made the case against Nixon, causing him to resign. 

Where is the informant who's going to tell us about Bush?  Where is the inside source?  I think we've had dozens, but the press just ignores them and tells us that the president can do any damned thing he wants.  If we found out that he was spying on Democratic Candidates, I'm sure the American public would just say, "So what?  At least he has a phony Texas drawl.  I think I want to have a beer with him."

8.  The Residents

This is an avant-garde concept band that's released over sixty albums.  They keep their identities secret, and have for decades.  On top of their albums, they've designed three CD-ROM projects, and performed six world tours.  All public relations, interviews and promotions go through the management group, The Cryptic Corporation.  All of the members of The Cryptic Corporation deny ever having been members of the band.

Here's a video . . . take a look for yourself.

 

The Disappearing Middle Class

Where did the middle class come from? 

That's not a dumb question.  The middle class is a relatively new innovation in society.  Throughout civilized time very few people could own property, instead living on land and in homes owned in part or whole by the local royalty – Lord, Duke, King.  Before that we lived in tribes or clans where ownership wasn't much of a concept, since all property was communal and land wasn't a possession.

In American history wealth has been concentrated in the hands of the few and those without wealth were exploited, indentured, and even owned.  Those who wanted to escape the cycle of their lives and strike out to create their own wealth had to head West, to the wild frontier where they fought for bits of land to farm or raise cattle, they searched for gold, or they supported those who were farming, ranching, or prospecting. 

Prior to World War I, American attitudes began to change.  The workers gained some rights to safety in the workplace and to improved compensation.  These gains came at great expense and massive movements of workers, journalists, and organizers.  Strikes were crushed, people were hurt and killed, but slowly the rights were wrested from the wealthy.  This isn't to say there was a middle class, because there wasn't, not really.  What was happening is the poor were becoming not quite so impoverished. 

Then World War I happened and this nation sent it's poor young men off to Europe to fight.  When they returned, they returned to a nation with a booming economy and low unemployment.  Men could find work and more gains were made because employers struggled to attract skilled and unskilled employees.  And the markets ruled, went on a speculative frenzy, and eventually crashed.  Then the jobs vanished.  And what might have been a burgeoning middle class vanished with them. 

Not Hillary and Here's Why!

Hillary is even more a part of a calculated political machine than all the others.  Yes, I know they all use focus groups, advisors, and tailored messages designed to offend the fewest and commit to the least, but Hillary is bought and paid for.  She has received more campaign money from defense contractors than from any other candidate, including all the Republicans in the field.  She's funded by the ultra-wealthy and by corporations more than any other candidate. 

Conversely, while the Defense Contractors are giving Hillary boatloads of money, the soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines are contributing to Ron Paul and Barack Obama.  Who would know better what's good for the military and for the country: those who profit from decisions to engage in violence and destruction or those who bear the brunt of the those decisions.

If she becomes president we have no chance of ending the war.  Look at her voting record, not the words she's spewing on the campaign trail.  She's a war hawk, just as beholden to the perpetual conflict desired by weapons manufacturers as Bush and Cheney are.  That's where her true base is. 

As opposed to Obama, Hillary's supporters are mostly wealthy and are giving the maximums allowed.  Obama has broad support, gathering contributions from three times as many people as Hillary has, but his supporters can't just write $2,000 checks whenever they want - they're working people who have contributed less than the maximums because they have less to give.  Who do you want running the country?  The top pick of the wealthiest who stand to benefit most from a Clinton Presidency, or the top pick of the middle classes who see someone who will work to unite the country, end the war, and start healing our deeply divided wounds from a couple decades of polarization.

Monsters at Play

Have you ever imagined what kind of people the worst monsters of the Third Reich were like?  I never did.  I couldn't wrap my brain around the concept of genocidal maniacs having lives, families, fun.  I didn't want to, until I saw this amazing photo essay in the Times.  These photos are from an album donated by a retired U.S. spy.  He found the album in a German apartment a year after the war was over. 

These people were horrible monsters who were killing thousands of Jews a week - starving them, gassing them, enslaving them, and treating them like animals, no worse than animals.  But when not at work, they were at sing-a-longs, and picnics, and decorating Christmas trees.  These were men and women who had families and personal lives, who took vacations and played with their kids, who drank together.  And, as I looked at the photos and discussed this with people (Tim, Reg), I realized that they probably volunteered for Concentration Camp duty.  It was close to home and safe at a time when Germany was ruining hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the Russian front and taking considerable beatings to the West.  The alternatives for these Nazis weren't good. 

You know what it made me think?  It made me think that our own men and women in Iraq and at Guantanamo aren't far removed from these soldiers.  They're just doing their jobs and collecting a paycheck.  They write home to their families and count down the days until they get to return to the States.  Yet, when asked to do something inhuman like torture or terrorize their charges, they do it.  They do it because that's the job and their just doing what they feel is the right thing because it came down from a higher authority.  How far are we from those monsters in Nazi Germany?  How easy is it to convince our men and women that the enemy is below humanity?  To convince them that their charges are really the monsters, are really the potential oppressors and need to be eliminated?

These photos show some of the worst men at play - Josef Mengele is shown singing along to an accordionist.  He's the monster who performed awful experiments on Jewish captives, brutally killing them like lab rats.  Karl Höcker was the owner of the album, who claimed to be a simple soldier when he was caught, but turned out to be camp adjutant intimately involved in the deaths of Jews with exclusive knowledge of all of the camp's atrocities.  He was only sentenced to seven years in prison after his 1961 trial and after his release he lived out his life working in a bank.  Rudolf Hess, Hitler's Nazi Party deputy is also in the photos.  He was the last man in Spandau prison, and after his suicide the prison was demolished to prevent it from becoming a sick shrine to the worst elements of German society. 

Veteran's Day used to be Armistice Day

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 1918 all guns went silent on the European Western Front.  It'd been years of shelling and fighting, and the silence was eerie, spooky.  It was deafening.  The end of the war, the end of hostilities (fighting did continue the former Russian Empire and parts of the Ottoman Empire) and the Great War concluded. 

To mark this important moment, an international holiday was declared.  Every November 11th at 11:00 AM, two minutes of silence would mark the memory of eight million dead and a continent scarred by war. 

But once World War II broke out, the promise of peace dashed, Armistice Day went out of favor.  Who wants to remember a cease fire that didn't last?  In fact, the second Great War was degrees more devastating than the first, and more worldwide. 

In 1954, the U.S. Congress changed Armistice Day to Veteran's Day in memory of those who are alive and fought this nation's wars.  It's for us, the veterans, while Memorial Day is for those of us who didn't survive. 

But I ask you, is it better to remember and honor those who survived the battles or to remember that day when the promise of peace was fresh and the silence from guns, bombs, blasts caused tears of joy to millions of people? 

Today, I'm going to honor that forgotten silence with two minutes of my own, at eleven o'clock.

- rick, honoring the end of war

Wildfires, Hurricanes, and Tornadoes are Great for the Economy

California burned up last week.  Great! 

No, not great for those poor people, rousted from their beds and evacuated with nothing to their names, no money, no possessions, no clothing, no homes.  No, not for the even more unfortunate people who died.  No, not for the pets abandoned and burned. 

But great for the stock market.  Great for the economy.

Hear me out. 

What happens is that thousands of commercial buildings are destroyed and thousands of houses are destroyed.  Tens of thousands more have fire damage or smoke damage.  These buildings need to be rebuilt or repaired.  Since the government and financial sectors don't keep track of the total number of structures that exist, every building remade becomes a fresh start - on the books it's a construction project started and that's great.  With the numbers, this might just pull us right out of the housing slump because all those people are going to have to rebuild or buy houses listed on the market. 

Yeah, that's stupid, right?

But it's the way things work.

It's my unconfirmed suspicion that we entered the housing slump more than a year ago, but the rebuilding all across the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Katrina artificially boosted the numbers.  Fiction reported as financial statistics. 

Economics Lesson - Supply Side

A Simple Economics Lesson

The way it works is that people have needs – food, shelter, clothing – and they attempt to meet those needs by expending resources – work, money, barter.  This is called Demand Side economics.  It's the way it's always worked.  When people have more resources than they require to meet their needs, then they start obtaining luxuries.  Again, luxuries are desired, purchased . . . and voila, more demand dictating the markets.

When demand is greater than supply, the prices go up.  When demand is less than supply, the prices go down. In the former case, there's a shortage, and in the latter, you have a surplus.  Demand is still in control. 

This is the way it worked for thousands of years. 

Until Reagan came along and his advisors started mucking around in the economic works, deciding that what we really needed was a Supply Side economy.  The idea was that the markets would be glutted with cheap goods (cheaply made, as well) . . . many more than are desired.  But in order to encourage people to consume these cheap items, they had to create the demand, based on the supply.  So they dropped the prices and advertised, branded, advertised and cajoled .  . creating the demand out of thin air. 

A Speech by Al Gore

This is the speech I wish Al Gore would make.  It'd be on National Television, during Prime Time.  He'd simulcast it on the Internet and upload it to YouTube immediately.

My fellow Americans,

I'm speaking to you from my home in Carthage, Tennessee.  After much consideration, weighing all my options and discussing all possibilities with my family, friends, and advisors, I've decided to once again run for the office of President of the United States of America. 

My goals as President will be many.  I will bring our troops home and extricate this nation from it's military entanglements in a responsible and careful manner.  We've done some good and some bad in the places where we've deployed our military and while we don't want to erase the good things, like removing a heartless dictator and not replacing him with another heartless dictator, we also need to repair the damage we've created.  We're going to do that with international support and with the involvement of the United Nations.   I will put the United States back in a leadership role in Science and Technology which will create well paying jobs.  I will improve our education at all levels which will give our children and young people the best opportunity to succeed in a competitive world.  I will work to repair the health care industry and under my administration we will have health care for all Americans, not just those fortunate enough to be able to afford it. 

With me here in Carthage is a very familiar face, Barack Obama.  I have met with him and his lovely wife, Michelle.  Senator Obama has generously agreed to end his presidential campaign and to join my team as running mate.  In return for this sacrifice we are going to work together to make the office of Vice President a truly important position in the American political system.  I am giving him control of the direction and implementation of our domestic agenda.  Senator Obama will make a great Vice President and will do fantastic things for the nation in his Constitutional role as President of the Senate where I will expect him to lead the Senate in implementing an agenda of progress that this nation truly needs. 

The decision to include Senator Obama in my campaign was a difficult one.  This year's field of Democratic hopefuls is the strongest group of candidates in my lifetime.  Recognizing this talent and leadership I have the utmost confidence in each and every one of them.  Right now, and at any time in the future I would be honored to work with each of these remarkable men and women.  Consequently, I extend a position in my cabinet to each one of these tremendous people.

As you know, my focus for the past several years has been in the area of Global Climate Change.  We are going to make significant progress reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases and developing plans to deal with the major issues that will be facing humanity in the coming years.  From mass migrations causing refugee crisis to the inevitable battles over limited land and resources we have our work cut out for us.  But there is tremendous hope.  We are a resilient people and we're innovative.  Remember, we fought and won World Wars against ruthless totalitarian powers, we faced and defeated a crippling global depression, we built the world's most extensive interstate transportation system,  we cured polio and eliminated smallpox, and we flew astronauts to the moon and brought them home safely.  All of these things we did as a nation, not as privatized enterprises.  And as a nation we're going to combat global warming by developing alternative technologies, methods for cleansing the air and environment, and by educating and aiding the rest of the world as they enter their own periods of prosperity and comfort. 

I'm marshaling in a new era of advancement.  We're going to replace the profit motive in medical technology with the people motive.  We're going to make this world a better place to live, for us, for our children, and for their children. 

Join me and make these next decades the best we've ever had.

(feel free to forward this as text or a link to anyone you want.  also feel free to Digg this speech.)

You May Have Heard of Me . . .

You may have heard of me.  I'm one of the 47 million . . .

without health insurance.  I'm educated, with skills, and I work very hard.  I want the best for myself and my family.  I'm not one to shirk my responsibilities or live my life as one risk after another.  I served my country, paid my taxes, worked all the way through college.  I'm not an alcoholic, I don't take drugs, I don't even smoke cigarettes.  Getting ill scares me.

You may have heard of me.  I'm one of the 47 million . . .

who dread getting a cough, or seeing an odd blemish that wasn't there last time I looked.  I wonder what I'm going to do if I see blood, or if I can't work because of an accident.  I've looked into insurance, I really have.  I even bought a catastrophic policy, which means that if something really bad happens, someone will take care of me for a little while, until I'm bankrupt, and destitute.  They want more for insurance than it costs me to both feed and clothe my family every month plus what I spend on transportation.   Can you believe it?  I have to choose to give my family food, clothing, and opportunity over keeping them healthy.    Have you, who have health insurance, ever thought about the horrors of “what if?”  Have you considered, like I have, the reality that I might die because of that choice and take away every opportunity I'm trying to give them?

You may have heard of me.  I'm one of the 47 million . . .

Science Friday - Northwest Passage

Explorers long searched for an elusive Northwest passage - a northern open water shipping route around North America - only to find that it didn't exist.  Now it does.  For the first time in history there is open water from Greenland to the Bering Strait.  This is disturbing news, not for the shipping or commerce mind you, but for the increasing rate of melting at the Pole.

According to Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre, the ice-covered area (light green in this image) is currently around 3 million sq km, which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minimum levels recorded in 2005/6. Over the last ten years the sea ice coverage has shrunk by around 100,000 sq km per year, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is an enormous change.

This is the image - the orange line shows open water and the green shaded area is the ice.

Now can we please stop arguing about whether global warming is real or whose fault it is?  Let's just do something about it.

- rick, shaking his head.

"My Pet Goat" - the Conservative Reader

Unsurprisingly, Conservatives don't read as much as liberals.  Also, more conservatives than liberals haven't read a single book in more than a year. 

Before I link the article, I'd like to talk about my own experiences with this.  I see the insides of a lot of people's homes.  When I'm there I see every room and I notice things that give me prime indications of their habits and political preferences.  Being sensitive to the issues, I do pay careful attention. 

When I see books and artwork, I can be nearly 100% sure that they vote Democrat.  By artwork I mean paintings not prints, sculptures not knick-knacks.  When there are few books and no art that didn't come from a mall-store poster box or from the Christmas section of a department store, I can be sure that they vote Republican.  The few books I find in Conservative homes are limited to non-fiction like self-help and prominent Conservative propaganda like Bill O'LYEly, Sean Wannabe, and Adam's Apple Coulter and mega-selling fiction by Conservative authors like Vince Flynn and Tom Clancy.  That's it.  I find no classics and no range of thought.  On the bookshelves of my more liberal clients I'll see books with a wide range of views, from William Buckley to Noam Chomsky.  I'll see classics, all kinds of fiction, and poetry (I've never seen a book of poetry in any house with a W bumper sticker on their vehicles).

I think this is an indication of the truth of my hypothesis that Conservatives want things simple.  They don't want to put too much thought into their beliefs.  They need an enemy, they need to hate that enemy and they need to be assured that this enemy is being dealt with harshly.  That enemy can be Al Queda, Iraq, Iran, the French, Anarchists, protesters, liberals, or even the poor.  This makes them feel good about themselves and alleviates their fears.  All else is immaterial.  Liberals don't need such coddling.

From the article:

The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives.

"The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,'" Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. "It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page."

- rick, reader

Larry Craig, the Cruising Senator Resigns, Unresigns

My father, bless his heart, thinks all Democrats are evil and weak and without moral fiber.  He constantly goes on about their deviancy and their lying cheating ways.  But he is essentially a talker . . . he's not a doer . . . he doesn't donate money or time to campaigns and he doesn't participate in the political process in any more involved way than voting, with one exception.  There is a politician my father likes - likes enough to have gone door-knocking and telephone calling.  There is a politician that my father likes enough to know on a personal basis.  There is a politician he's eaten dinner with on more than one occasion.  Any guesses?  Any idea who he feels is a rock-solid example of moral integrity?  Any idea who my father considers a fine man, and a friend?

Watch the video for some help in this quiz:

More after the jump.

PRD

I recently found out that I suffer from a psychological disorder from which there may be no cure. 

Hi, I'm Rick and I have PRD.

Personal Responsibility Disorder.  It's a malady that greatly handicaps my ability to function in society. It's probably incurable, and it's undoubtedly fatal.

I have this compulsion to take responsibility for everything in my life.  I'm unable to blame my problems on you, or on nature or even on God.  Oh to be a believer and have faith that upon my imminent death I could just repent for all my urges and I'd be absolved and whooshed up to live with that guy in the sky who put me here to suffer in the first place.  Alas, I'm no believer and every choice I make is mine to own.

I wasted six and a half years in the military – a fact I'm sure you already know – learning how to kill people and break things in spectacular fashion.  These are not useful skills in civilized society.  Well, not often anyway.  They sent me places where other people were interested in shooting at me. I didn't like it.  But as a sufferer from PRD, I tend to return to that fateful day when I said to my recruiter, Tsgt Saki Kawasaki (I kid you not), “Sign me up.”  I did that.  Those were my words and a few days later I was raising my right hand and swearing an oath. Whatever happened in those years, things that I may blog about when the time comes that I want to discuss it in public, whatever those things were – they were mine.  I own them because I made the choice to be there and I made the choice to obey orders and I made the choice to execute my oath honorably.  I was involuntarily extended twice while I was in the service . . . twice.  And I was angry about it, because I wanted out . . . but the contract I signed gave them the right to keep me on active duty for up to eight years at the discretion of the U.S. Military.  It was my signature on that form . . . I own that because I suffer from this awful disease – PRD.

Political Leanings

I just want to get an idea and not go strictly with my assumptions.