The Forkes Report - NEWS and POLITICS

CONSERVACON

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:01:00 -0700

Thank God it’s Friday.

What does that even mean anymore? Most Americans work a six-day workweek, seven if they have two or three jobs. And then you have people like me who don’t go to a job and one day feels like any other day. Oh yeah, Friday, big deal.

Don’t even know what to write about. Just watched Mit Romney’s speech to CPAC in Washington, D.C. CPAC, the convention called, “CONSERVACON” by Martin Bashir of MSNBC (I thought it was clever), is always an entertaining event. Historically it’s been put together and sponsored by the American Conservative Union and just in the past few years, co-sponsored by the TheTeaparty.net.

What happens at CONSERVACON is Republicans and other conservatives get up on a stage and publicly spout the most insane nonsense, all in an effort to woo the base of the base of the Republican Party, the people who believe the president is a secret Muslim Manchurian Candidate, a Palestinian Candidate if you will, who was born in Kenya, installed in the United States by secret Muslim operatives to turn the U.S. into a Socialist-Fascist Muslim nation that follows Sharia Law, while remaining a Socialist-Fascist nation. How all of that is logically possible eludes me, but who am I to question.
 To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out how President Obama can be a Socialist and a Fascist at the same time.

For the most part, the speakers follow that lead and the basic message is, “OBAMA IS DESTROYING AMERICA!” End quote. The challenge for them is to come up with the most unique, creative way to say that and therefore get the biggest, loudest applause.

Romney threw out some red meat, as pundits like to call it, but he is by no means the most conservative — and outlandish — of the lot, he just wanted to play one on TV. He didn’t get the biggest, loudest applause. He got some decent attaboys, but others got more.

Like Herman Cain. He got a huge ovation when he said, “… we have to outsmart the stupid people!”

Okay, let’s go with that for a moment. If stupid people are … err … stupid, how hard is it to outsmart them? And if the stupid people are currently winning this fight, what does that say about you, the one being outsmarted by stupid people? Just asking.

The real treat for the comically minded are the workshops. They even have one for dating, including how to infiltrate Socialist-type gatherings for picking up and then taking advantage of, socialist-minded girls. Seriously.

The featured speaker is the so-called “pick-up artist,” Wayne Elise. In his defense, Elise says he’s in a very monogamous marriage and only trains people to communicate with each other, but what made him famous was teaching men how to approach and talk to women in order to get laid. Some would probably question that philosophy …
 Also in his defense, he’s also been a juggler, escape artist magician and stand-up comic.

Other workshops include The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity. Well, what’s that all about? Judging from the speakers, it’s about making the United States an English-only nation. But the title of the workshop attacks diversity, as if recognizing the many cultures that are now active in the United States is a bad thing.

“Most especially this Mexican thing. They speak a foreign language and everyone knows they got here illegally. And then they have the temerity to speak that language around me. Don’t you just hate it when you’re on the bus and a couple of Mexicans in the seat behind you are speaking Mexican?”

Part of the English-only agenda is to make government forms available in English only, that phone message trees be available in English only. This would somehow save money and maybe it would in the short term, but what of the consequences? There’s a reason governments — and businesses — started providing their services and products in more than one language: it made good sense.

For government purposes, being multi-lingual helped immigrants get out of poverty faster and for businesses, it opened their U.S. markets to millions more customers who might otherwise avoid their products or services because they can’t understand English.

But this isn’t about racism, I mean, the Right’s attack on “diversity.” But it begs the question: what do African-Americans, Hispanics and other non-Caucasian ethnicities, not to mention women, see in the Republican Party? They’ve been against equal rights for women and African-Americans and now they are passing laws that will allow law enforcement to stop Hispanics just for being Hispanic, so the police can check their papers. Sort of like Nazi Germany did as it began its genocide of European Jews.

Anyway, back to CPAC. Anne Coulter — The Harpy — had a panel on Friday titled, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America. The “liberal mob!” That’s just a wonderfully funny visual! Does take much imagination to figure out what she had to say; it’s the same crap she’s been spewing for the past 15 years.

Chris Christie spoke on the main stage, as did the forgotten Sarah Palin. Apparently she is still relevant to someone. The usual nutcrackers were featured: Brent Bozell, Al Cardenas and Senator Jim DeMint. He’s a real legislator. His idea on governance: don’t compromise with the other side. DeMint used the Super Bowl for an analogy: “I can guarantee you that coach Tom Coughlin did not tell his Giants to go out on the field and work with those other guys …”

No, but he did tell them to play ball with the Patriots.

Other speakers included a host of Teabagger favorites: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, fresh from her failed campaign for president, Andrew Breitbart, the man behind the goofy kid and his sidekick acting like a pimp and ho to bust ACORN, big mouth radio host Laura Ingraham, former presidential aspirant and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Governor Bobby Jindal — wait, wasn’t he all smiles when he accepted the stimulus money in 2009? I guess President Obama’s ideas aren’t all bad for the man who gave the goofiest response to a State of the Union Address.

Even Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who will probably get kicked out of office when Wisconsin holds its recall election later this year. He’s been getting a lot of money from the Koch Brothers to fight the recall, but that may not be enough.

Another Wisconsinite, Representative Paul Ryan who put together a budget plan the did away with Medicare and laid the groundwork for eliminating Social Security.

So many other speakers worth mentioning, like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, but so little time or space. Hell, I didn’t even get this finished for Friday. It’s Saturday already, but like I said, nothing much to note of note. CONSERVACON 2012 was really no different than it has been since its inception. If CPAC is the most entertaining part of my week, then thank God for the weekend.

Our Next Mayor

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:01:00 -0700

Twice I’ve written something to fill this space, since January 30, and rejected both, although to be honest, the second bit was a rewrite of the first. Politics really feels so futile. It doesn’t change anything and we’re labeled the “blogosphere” and relegated to the heap of voices that don’t matter in this world.

Right at this moment on the other side of the political aisle someone is tap-tap-tapping away at their device of choice with something equally is passionate as anything I’ve written. It’s all bullshit no doubt. Just the other day someone posted a bullshit article by a retired Marine Corps officer who claims President Obama only role in the killing of Usama bin Laden was to say “yes” to the order. That kind of bullshit doesn’t even warrant a response. In fact, it’s such bullshit not even FOX News tries to peddle it.

Sure, the Republican Primaries have been quite entertaining so far, and we’ve only been through three primaries and one caucus. As of this moment a second caucus election is taking place in Nevada.

Who doesn’t love watching and listening to Newt Gingrich bloviate? His speech after the Florida Primary was priceless. His fellow Republicans were calling it everything from crazy and wacky to “off the wall.”

Not to be outdone with funny things to say, Chuck Todd of NBC referred to the likes of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh as the “Tea Party Intelligentsia.” As oxymorons go, that’s funny.

Thanks to the advent of unlimited amounts of money being spent on our elections, the real tragedy is a handful of extremely wealthy individuals will control most of our election process. Regardless of your political persuasion, that isn’t good for our economy or our soul.

Just wait until the general election rolls around when the two sides of the presidential race each have a billion dollars to spend. Expect more than half the commercials we see on TV to be political ads, from the campaigns themselves and from the Super Pacs supporting them.

Here in San Diego we’re picking a new mayor. Although our current mayor, Jerry Sanders, has his critics, the general feeling is that he has been successful. When Sanders was first elected six years ago, the office of mayor was given more power and authority over the city’s business.

Sanders got to the mayor’s office due to the resignation of his predecessor, Dick Murphy, who resigned over the scandal involving the city’s pension program. The scandal being city workers get better benefits than people who work in the private sector. Explain to me why that’s a bad thing?

Thirty years ago people working in the private sector received the same kind of benefits: fully funded pensions and health coverage that didn’t eat up the family budget.

Sanders’ plan is to make city workers get the same kinds of benefits as the private sector, which means they will be as fucked as the rest of us. Why?

Why not work to bring the fortunes of the private sector up to that of the public service employees? The simple answer is it would interfere with the corporations making record profits, as they are doing now. By turning pensions into 401(k)-type accounts, the city—or state as the case may be—turns billions of dollars over to the big investment bankers. In other words, they will tie the retirement fortunes to the vagaries and risks of the stock market and we saw how well that worked in 2001 and 2008.

People who thought they could retire are now looking at working until they die. Good-bye Yellow Brick Road. In 2001 I was working for the giant multinational corporation, AOL-Time Warner. In 2000-2001 the Internet giant America Online (AOL) merged with Time Warner to take advantage of that big broadband market. Little did anyone know AOL’s stock was over-valued by as much as 40%.

In 2001 the “Dot-Com” bubble burst and voila! All of a sudden all those 401 (k) accounts were worth half of what they had been the day before. At best.

As a new employee, the guy in charge of Human Resources was convincing all the new employees to invest most of their 401(k) accounts in AOL-Time Warner stock because it was going to go through the roof! I had to think about that and it just didn’t seem to make sense, so I didn’t. I did put more into AOL-Time Warner than what anyone would consider prudent, but my thinking was, “What if this guy is right?”

Well, he wasn’t and as investments were collapsing, most especially the worth of AOL-Time Warner, my fellow employees would walk around the workplace in shock, holding the statements from their 401(k) accounts trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

There was a couple I remember in particular, husband and wife, both of whom had planned to retire within a year. During a lunch break one day I happened to share a table with them and both had rescinded their retirement papers because they could no longer afford to retire. I’ll never forget the woman fighting back tears. I felt like a real dick though, because I had been bragging about not putting so much of my 401(k) into AOL-Time Warner so my account didn’t take such a big hit. This couple, they lost over 50% of their investments.

Yeah, put public sector employees into the same boat so they can be just as fucked as everyone else.

Mayor Sanders has been glorified as the great savior of San Diego. What did he do? He went after the city employees first … primarily. First off Sanders put 1,500 city employees on the unemployment rolls. Then he went after the pension and benefits.

At no time did he try to increase the revenue coming into the city’s treasury by attracting new business to San Diego. His entire policy was based on a slash and burn of the city employees. Now, for new city hires, there’s no pension and they have to pay more for the reduced benefits, unlike employees who have been with the city before 2009. They get their full pensions and benefits.

When Sanders became mayor he said he would take a significantly reduced salary, just over $36,000 a year. When he was re-elected he chose to accept the full salary, just over $109,000.

As a retired police officer, Mayor Sanders gets pension and benefits from that job. According to records, the mayor has waived his pension and benefits associated with his position as mayor. Well, kudos to him for that.

Has Mayor Sanders been good for San Diego? The city’s debt has gone down significantly since he took office, but at the expense of city employees. Anyone can fire employees and take away their benefits. Just ask Donald Trump and Mit Romney. Hell, Mit likes firing people.

What’s next for San Diego? At the moment there are four people running for the job: District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, Representative Bob Filner, Councilman Carl DeMaio and Nathan Fletcher. DeMaio and Fletcher are for the pension initiative that’s moving city employees from pensions to the high risk of 401(k) accounts; Filner and Dumanis oppose that initiative.

Our primary comes June 5 when the field will be winnowed down to two candidates. My guess is the race will be between Dumanis and DeMaio. Fletcher is not that well known and Filner has too high of a negative rating plus, he doesn’t have the money to compete. He should stay a member of the House of Representatives.

The deciding factor for me will be who will speak for the working class. Right now that isn’t clear. The public sentiment is to screw public sector employees instead of trying to raise the standards for all. This might be as interesting a race as the one for president.

The Ship of State

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:09:00 -0700

Tuesday was a quiet night after an equally quiet day. As workdays go, Tuesday was no different than any others. The news programs were talking about the performance of the candidates in Monday’s debate that took place in Tampa, Florida.

The two frontrunners, Newt Gingrich and Mit Romney, went after each other with a fury of a dogfight between a Dachshund and a Jack Russell. Newt had answers for most of Mit’s accusations and contempt for the ones he couldn’t answer.

The other two, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, well who really cares about their debate performance anymore. They know the nomination isn’t theirs, although Santorum still harbors the fantasy that he could win the prize because he won the Iowa Caucuses.

His moment of regret came during the day on Tuesday when a birther-slash-Muslimer confronted him about why no one was trying to unseat President Obama, a man, this elderly woman claimed, was an avowed Muslim and not legally qualified to be president. He didn’t correct her. Santorum’s reason for not doing so: she was elderly and he wasn’t going to upset the old woman.

That was the state of the race for the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

Right in the middle of the circus called the Republican Primaries, the president gave his State of the Union Address. He started with a hurrah to the troops, highlighting the fact that he had brought the troops home from Iraq, that troops were coming home from Afghanistan and that for the first time in two decades Usama bin Laden was no longer a threat to the United States.

Everyone in the chamber stood and cheered. How do you not cheer the troops?

It was perhaps President Obama’s best speech in his short three years in the Oval Office. It shouldn’t be a surprise though, because it was also his kick-off speech for his re-election campaign. Let’s be real. In stating for us his view of how the Ship of State is doing, he laid out challenges to his Republican opponents in Congress that they will have to respond to, by either keeping to their obstructionist path or by capitulating and agreeing to the president’s plans for the future. I’m betting it won’t be the latter.

Highlights of the speech, the highest of the night: Gabrielle Gifford’s entrance into the chamber for her last State of the Union Address. On Tuesday the Democratic Representative from Tucson, AZ announced she would be resigning her seat in the House of Representatives today.
 The official moment of Giffords’ resignation was an emotional moment as her friend, Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, read the letter of resignation to the assembled House, just after the body unanimously passed a bill she co-sponsored that made penalties for ultralight aircraft for smuggling drugs across the U.S.-Mexican border heavier.

As for the president’s speech: The recession has been stopped and a recovery started. Over three million jobs have been created in the past two years despite the Republican obstructionism. On top of that, American corporations have had some of the most successful years in history and to top it off, General Motors is once again the number one automaker in the world.

And despite that little fact, and that Chrysler is the fastest growing automaker in America, there are those — Mit Romney — who still insist we should have let America’s biggest private employers fail in 2009.
 Here’s the irony of Mit Romney’s animosity towards Detroit: not only his father was once the governor of Michigan, he was also CEO of General Motors.

Of course the president reminded everyone this economic crisis started during the Republicans’ watch. So he was going to stand firm against all attempts to return to the policies that set the recession in motion. President Obama made a big point of introducing Richard Cordray, the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, appointed during the recess because the Republicans in the Senate were not going to appoint someone to head an agency they are fiercely opposed to.

So now we have an agency that will oversee the money-lending business. Who would be against that? Oh yeah, the Republicans who think any regulation is too much regulation of the financial industry.

Now it’s no secret that in 2007 Mit Romney lobbied against any regulations of the financial industry, especially any that would raise the tax rate on capital gains from 15% to 30%. Congress, both houses and both major parties, tried to pass that legislation. But, as Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa stated in 2007, the financial industry had flooded the capitol with lobbyists to stop the regulations and his prediction of passage at the time: it was too risky for him to speculate.

In 2011, having learned their lesson from 2007 and having stated their number one priority was to make Barack Obama a one-term president, Congressional Republicans were firmly against any regulations of the financial industry. Including raising the taxes of those poor, put upon millionaires and billionaires. And of course Mit Romney was on the record, on tape no less, opposing raising his tax rate.

Foreign policy was part of the speech, as it is every year. Tuesday’s State of the Union had a little more significance that anyone realized until hours after it was over. On his way to the dais, the president made a point of congratulating Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for a job well done. That sent news hounds scurrying to find out what that was all about.

As you may recall, back in May 2011 the president was appearing at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, our military, spear-headed by Navy Seal Team Six, was in the process of disposing of Usama bin Laden. We didn’t know that until the following night when the president held a press conference to announce the news that bin Laden was buried at sea.

Tuesday, shortly before the president’s speech, a similar operation was taking place in Somalia. Navy Seals were rescuing two aid workers, one an American. We didn’t know that until the news broke several hours after the speech.

While Republicans are criticizing the president’s foreign policy, the president is getting things done the previous president was either unwilling or incapable of doing. And clearly, the current Secretary of State is more popular around the world and at home than her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice. In fact, Hillary Clinton is far more popular here in the United States than the president, who still has a pretty good favorability rating.

The official Republican response came from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. We need only one word to describe his speech: grim. Nothing is going right in America, somehow all the president’s policies have failed, despite all the evidence to the contrary; Daniels, once thought of as one of the people who could beat the president in the 2012 general election, was basically making a campaign speech for the Republican nominee, whomever that might be.

The way it stands at the moment, the 2012 presidential election is President Obama’s to lose and it doesn’t look too likely that will happen. But you never know. As good as the Republican primary race has been so far, now we’re hoping Newt Gingrich starts winning the delegates just to see if the Republicans have a brokered convention and choose someone other than anyone in the field at the moment.

Yes Mr. President, we are hopeful!

Battle Royale of the South

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:01:00 -0700

In professional wrestling they call this type of thing a Battle Royale. That wasn’t a debate, they were all there to knock each other out, in particular the two frontrunners, Mit Romney and Newt Gingrich. The former Speaker said as much about the Liberal from Massachusetts, “I don’t want to bloody his nose, I want to knock him out.”

In the beginning there were nine combatants on the stage, all vying for the semi-final crown, the opportunity, the chance, the privilege of taking on the champion, that Evil Socialist-Muslim-Extremist-Fascist — and Black man, don’t forget that — Barack Hussein Obama.

They battled on stage and off; all were in then out — and then maybe in again. Some were humiliated and some ignored the humiliation, at least in public until they couldn’t bear the scorn no more. Nine individuals, one of whom is a woman, all hoping to lead their team, their party to the Promised Land of Tampa, Florida and beyond.

It started with the bought and paid for Des Moines, Iowa Straw Poll. The woman, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, won that battle. She bought up over six thousand votes, feted all who cared to participate with lavish barbeques and A-List entertainment in hopes that they would reward her by using the votes she gave them to vote for her. Sound confusing? You have to pay to vote in the Iowa Straw Poll. So all the candidates paid the cost for the voters and Bachmann paid more than the others.

Unfortunately for her, the Great White (Conservative) Hope announced his candidacy on the same day as the Iowa Straw Poll. All of a sudden the Straw Poll no longer mattered, the team had their star quarterback in the game and she was relegated to the far end of the bench.
 And we had our first casualty: former Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. He brought up the rear in the Straw Poll and the entry of Governor Perry made it appear like the reasonable guy didn’t have a chance, so he dropped out.

But then he began to talk into the microphones and like many a Heisman Trophy winner, he proved to be not up to the task. They wanted that other guy, the big one from the Jersey Shore. He talked tough and told voters and others to go fuck themselves if they challenged him on nearly any issue.

But he was a no-go, Governor Chris Christie wasn’t going to leave the minor leagues.

The race before the voting dragged on and we had an entertainer in the race, the Pizza Man Herman Cain! He was up in the polls, people loved him and his gaffes were so funny late night comedians were begging him to stay in the race. But alas, the onslaught of allegations of extra-marital affairs and sexual assault forced him to resign his position as funniest clown in the clown car.
 Thanks to Stephen Colbert, he made another appearance Friday in South Carolina. He endorsed the People!

As the best reality show on TV carried on, there were more casualties dropping off the trail. Jon Huntsman, the former Governor of Utah and former Ambassador to China. He had the temerity to say nice things about that president he last served.

Then Michele Bachmann, who had so much promise in August as she was buying the Iowa Straw Poll. She held her own in the debates at times, but could never get more than the minimum required to participate.

And finally the Great White (Conservative) Hope, with a wave to Newt Gingrich as he made his way back to Texas. At least in Texas he could take comfort in having a job.

And that left four remaining on stage as the curtain went up on the debate Thursday Night in Charleston, South Carolina.

Newt Gingrich came out swinging at the media, his favorite punching bag for the past 30 years, ever since he got into political office. Despite inviting the media to talk about his personal life, it was off limits once one of he ex-wives started talking. Newt’s first rule of campaigning: if you don’t have an answer to a question, at least one that makes him look good, then turn it around and attack the media — especially if you’re in a room of hard core Tea Party Republicans who are angry and love that red meat.

More than any other candidate, Gingrich has tapped into that anger; he knows the buttons to push, especially race. The Tea Party is angry Liberals control the Senate and the White House and worse yet, the Liberal in the White House is a Black Man. So, when Gingrich calls President Obama the “Food Stamp President” the White People in that audience rise up in jubilation.

When Gingrich puts African-American moderator Juan Williams “in his place” and the crowd roars their approval, Gingrich thanks them and makes a campaign ad out of the moment.

Then, on Thursday Night, Gingrich rode that wave of anger and turned his wrath from African-Americans to the media. First by attacking John King of CNN for taking Gingrich up on his invitation to ask about his personal life. And then, in the same rant, this little chestnut of a line that nearly brought the assembled crowd to their feet: “I’m tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.”

Here’s something to watch when Gingrich gets on stage in these debates. He says these red meat lines sincerely enough you almost think he believes what he says. The crowd roars and Gingrich pauses a bit to let his followers vent their emotions — and then he has that little smile, the one that acknowledges their approval and confirms for him, he’s pushed the right buttons. He loved it!

Forget about Rick Santorum and Doctor Paul. They may be in the Final Four of this round, but they won’t finish in the top two. Nope, that next level now belongs to Gingrich and … oh yeah … Mit Romney.

Poor Mit. Just a week ago all the pundits said the Republican nomination was all but wrapped up, that Mit was going to go three-for-three: Iowa, New Hampshire and then South Carolina. His poll numbers were so far above the others, there was, logically, no way any of the others could unseat Romney. And he had the money and ground game to go the distance.

But everyone keeps asking about his income and how much he pays in taxes. Not just the media, but his opponents in the primaries as well. More so even. That’s Mit’s Achilles’ Heel: he’s one of the 1% and doesn’t know how to deal with it.

And Gingrich was unleashed on the South Carolina crowd Monday Night and then again Thursday Night.

If that wasn’t bad enough for Mit Romney, before the debate started the Republican Party of Iowa called to say that oops, Governor Romney didn’t win the Iowa Caucuses, Senator Santorum won. What? What about his three-for-three plan? Romney handled the disappointment okay, he was still a close second, but dammit! A week ago everyone was patting him on the back for doing what no candidate had done before: win both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary.

Now, on the day of the Republican Primary in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich was leading in most of the polls in South Carolina — some by double digits — and nationally, Romney’s lead over Gingrich was cut in half. Romney’s no doubt thinking, “What’s a rich White guy gotta do to win the nomination? Can’t a brother get a break?”
 Either way, a rich White guy will win this primary.

Who let the dogs out, woof-woof.

By the end of the workday Friday the top Romney staff were telling their supporters their guy, their once three-for-three sure thing, was not expected to win. That honor was going to go to the man with three wives. Seriously, who is more of a Mormon in this race? The guy who tithed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or the Protestant-Turned-Catholic with three marriages under his belt — both the belt and marriages by now hidden by that big flopping over hanging belly?

And what has everyone been saying about the South Carolina Primary? Whichever candidate wins the Palmetto State goes on to win the nomination. Mit, some of us are truly starting to feel sorry for you dude! Seriously! The guy has spent most of five years and millions of his own money to be president and it looks like it just ain’t gonna happen.

Four years ago two Democratic senators went at it like pit bulls, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s once philandering husband even pulled out the race card in South Carolina, to no avail. Eventually Obama won the nomination and finally the presidency.

What’s going on this cycle in the Republican Primaries is not without precedent. The only difference: the viciousness of the fight has been elevated, due in no small part to the Citizens United decision that allows anyone to spend any amount of undisclosed money on these campaigns.

This says a lot about that decision; the largest crowd to gather on Friday was for the rally set up by Stephen Colbert for he and Herman Cain. You know they will get more than 5% of the vote. Since anyone can vote there will be more than a few Democrats and wisenheimers voting for Cain, who is still on the ballot.

This has been the best reality show on TV. Florida is next, with a debate on Monday. Click This Link for the debate schedule and if you missed any of the debates, you can watch the entire debates that have taken place, sans commercials. Enjoy the show!

Hmmm, I mixed a lot of sports metaphors ... did I miss any?

The Great Hope — Gone

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:01:00 -0700

The Great White (Conservative) Hope has dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination for president. Rick Perry, the Texas governor who once threatened to secede from the union, taking his state with him; the man who, in August 2011, was hailed as the Great White (Conservative) Hope of the Republican Party and had millions … well, maybe hundreds … of Republicans practically begging him to get in the race so the party would not have to field the Massachusetts Liberal Mitt Romney as their (cover your ears kids) nominee for President of the United States.

Before he declared his intentions, Perry’s poll numbers were through the roof. He was almost as popular as Katy Perry! He held his gigantua prayer-palooza in that big stadium in Houston, TX and then declared his candidacy to be the Republican Nominee for President of the United States of America.

Hallelujah and Praise be to Jesus! Conservative voices rose up in prayer to rejoice: here was the Christian Conservative they needed to represent them, the only man (if you didn’t include New Jersey Governor Chris Christie) who could possibly be capable of beating that evil, Socialist Muslim Extremist Fascist, Barack Hussein Obama.
 Psst! Hey! You know, none of us really wants to say this, but let’s get real: this Obama character is Black! Let’s be honest, no good White Christian wants a Black man for president! Remember the good ole days when we didn’t have to see’em in the same restaurants as us? And now we got one as president!
 Psst! I know at least one conservative who doesn’t hold the color of the president’s skin against him and I would guess there are many more, but from the anti-Obama spam e-mails I get, that racism is obviously real.

Then, once he got in, Governor Perry began to speak and the news outlets began to pay attention when he did. Pollsters could take polls twice a day and mark the decline of Perry’s popularity. His performances in the debates became the fodder for any comedian, late night or otherwise. It got so bad even his competitors were feeling sorry for Perry, giving him cover whenever the press asked them about Perry’s newest gaffe.

In the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primaries, Perry did just good enough to stay eligible for the debates and like many a Republican candidate before him, Perry pinned his hopes on the ultra-conservative state of South Carolina. History has proven that the person who wins the Republican Primaries in the Palmetto State becomes the nominee for the Republican Party.

Alas, even after his performance in the debate this past Monday, January 16, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when he had the gathered South Carolinians standing and cheering for his call to arms against the federal government, Governor Rick Perry couldn’t get a bump from the voters, at least not in the polls.
 During the debate Perry said South Carolina was at war with the federal government and got the loudest applause, including from Republican Governor Nikki Haley who nodded her head in agreement.

So Thursday, January 19, 2012, the rootin’ shootin’ governor of Texas, once the Great White (Conservative) Hope, bowed out of the presidential race, just two days before the South Carolina Primary.

What could have been the ultimate slap in the face, the penultimate insult to Perry, was that Social Conservative leaders gathered in his state to pick a nominee they would support in opposition to that Massachusetts Liberal Mit Romney. Did they choose the man who hosted that Prayer-Palooza in Houston? He is, without question, a good Social Conservative Protestant Christian; he looked like the obvious choice. But no, those Social Conservatives chose a Catholic, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, to represent them!

Are you shittin’ me? One of those effin’ papists who pray to more than one god, one of which is that guy in the Vatican? Now that’s gotta hurt, if you’re Rick Perry.

Until he dropped out of the race, Perry’s efforts to unseat that Massachusetts Liberal Mit Romney were matched by those from the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Both Perry and Gingrich attacked Romney over his wealth and how Romney’s former employer, Bain Capital, did business.

My God! Perry and Gingrich were leveling Obama-esque charges against the front-runner. But it was having the effect they were hoping for: Romney’s support was falling.

So it should come as little surprise that as he bowed out Perry threw his support behind the former Speaker. And as Perry said, Newt isn’t perfect, “but who among us is?”

The childish grammar aside, confirming Perry’s assertion about Gingrich’s frailties, is the former Speaker’s second wife Marianne, who told ABC news that when she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis her then-husband Newt was already fucking his current wife Callista and he was asking her if it would be okay to have an open marriage so he could have at least two women.
 Do you remember when Gingrich explained his cheating ways were the result of his deep patriotism?

So Newt Gingrich marches on, carrying the standard for Rick Perry and all those Social Conservatives who can’t believe they will be stuck with another liberal (Senator John McCain was the first one) as their party’s nominee for president, come November 6, 2012. And the Liberal this time ain’t even a Christian — he’s a Mormon!

Just an aside here; I was just looking up Callista Gingrich on the World Wide Internets to be sure her name is spelled correctly here and found this out: the third Mrs. Newt Gingrich was born and raised in Whitehall, WI and worked as a Congressional Aide for Wisconsin Republican Representative Steve Gunderson. I wonder if Gunderson considers himself somewhat of a matchmaker?

But what of the front-runner, former Governor of Massachusetts, Mit Romney? Well, he fights back, through his Super Pac, but besides his murky history with Bain Capital and once liberal views as governor, we now know Romney is firmly a part of the 1%, paying 15% of his income to taxes because most of it is capital gains income. On top of that there’s an undetermined amount parked in Cayman Island banks to avoid the IRS.

Should the Republican Party be worried about the 2012 Presidential Elections? Nearly six months ago the Harpy (Ann Coulter) said that if the GOP didn’t nominate New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as their presidential candidate, they would be stuck with Romney and lose the election to President Obama.

You know, this time she might be right.
•••• •••• •••• ••••
Thursday the four remaining combatants went at it again, this time in Charleston, SC. The fur flew from the very first question from debate moderator, John King of CNN. The question was for the former Speaker of the House and it was about the allegations from his first ... no, his second ... wife Marianne. Did he really ask her if they could have an open marriage?

Tomorrow comes the answer.

Stephen Colbert For President!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:01:00 -0700

This just in: Stephen Colbert is running for president! If you watched his show on Comedy Central Wednesday Night, you’ll remember his segment about him having 5% support in polls taken of Republicans in South Carolina, the next state on the primary calendar. He told his loyal viewers — his “Nation” — to tune in Thursday Night to find out if he would actually enter the race, at least in the Palmetto State.

Well he has, sort of, in a non-committal, let’s start an exploratory committee kind of way. If you’ve been watching The Colbert Report for the past 12 months, you know he started a PAC, a Super Pac that allows the donors to remain anonymous. Just for unfettered disclosure, I donated to his PAC when donors had to be identified, just to see my name flash across the screen in the crawl at the bottom of the picture.

Colbert, or maybe his show, hired a Republican attorney and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Trevor Potter, to get his Super PAC started and then Thursday Night Potter helped Colbert legally hand over his Super PAC to his fellow Comedy Central host, Jon Stewart.

If you haven’t seen it then click on Colbert’s Website and watch it online. The episode is hilarious. Well, most of his shows are funny. There was that one show when Potter told Colbert he could make his PAC the type that could keep all if its donors secret and Colbert was almost speechless — and it looked absolutely genuine. And then Potter pulled the necessary paper work out of his brief case and Colbert promptly signed it.

Shortly thereafter Colbert asked how the secret PAC was different from money laundering. To his credit, Potter said it wasn’t much different, if at all.

What does it say about the Republican field if a comedian, who is actually a moderate, if not a liberal, out-polls most of the party’s declared candidates? How will it impact the race? It’s unlikely Colbert will have a serious impact politically, but what it will do is provide his fans with months of comedic material other comics (i.e. Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Craig Ferguson and his pal, Jon Stewart) can only comment on during their shows.

In a larger scope, Colbert’s entry into the South Carolina Republican Primaries brings his mockery of the system to a far bigger audience than what he has on The Colbert Report. For at least the past six months pundits on both sides of the aisle have been shocked, humored, dumfounded and disappointed by the field, often at the same time.

The money being spent to keep the most unviable of candidates in the race has angered many people, pundits and public alike. A year ago conservatives were beside themselves with glee at the Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court that essentially said money equals free speech—well, free in the “you can’t shut me up” sort of way.

That’s how Colbert’s Super Pac, “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow,” came about; Colbert set out to show the world just how easy and immoral the current political system is now that unlimited money can corrupt any federal election, in particular, the presidential election.

People have been crabbing about money in our political system for decades. Years ago Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) authored a campaign finance bill that was passed and signed into law. Well, actually, it wasn’t that bill George W. Bush signed into law in 2002. Instead, the version presented by the House of Representatives was signed — but it still got to keep the more impressive moniker, “McCain-Feingold.”
 Don’t you just love politics!

Okay, like any bill that might have a great good for the American populace, before it could get to the president’s signing pen it had to be changed, or in the case of any campaign finance bill, rendered toothless. You seriously think most, or even half, of 535 members of Congress are in favor of turning off their money spigot? Come here, my naïve little friend. Have I got a deal for you!

But watering down McCain-Feingold wasn’t enough. Nooooo … my dear friends! The parts that weren’t watered down or eliminated actually restricted “Big Business” and Labor from spending unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns. So, various entities started taking the government to court over the bill, culminating in the 2010 decision by the Supreme Court affectionately titled, “Citizens United.”

Now, corporations are people too and money equals free speech.

Enter the best satirist of our time, and maybe all time: Stephen Colbert. Not only is he mocking the sale of our political system, but he’s exposing the biggest lie of all: the Super PAC’s are independent from the candidates. It’s hard to believe anyone actually believes that lie, but Colbert and now Stewart, can put it on display, as only a couple of serious satirists can. Now I’m anxious to see how Colbert skewers “exploratory committees.”

Until Colbert and Stewart came along, the joke was on us. Maybe they can reverse that punchline.

As a donor I actually received a press release via e-mail:

Under New Management!

BASIC CABLE, USA – Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, an FEC registered Super PAC, today announced the addition of Jon Stewart to its executive board (along with the subtraction of Stephen Colbert).

With this change the group, which had been known colloquially as Colbert Super PAC, can now be referred to as The Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC. They have already begun updating all of their letterhead with sharpie.

“I am excited to take the reins of this completely independent organization, and begin to air ads in South Carolina,” said New President and Noncommunication Director Jon Stewart. “But I want to be clear: Stephen and I have in no way have worked out a series of Morse-code blinks to convey information with each other on our respective shows.”

Colbert is currently exploring a run for President of the United States of South Carolina. Because of this, he cannot be associated with any Super PACs, although he has asked Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow to forward any periodicals of an “adult nature.” *

Americans A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow is an independent, expenditure-only committee founded by Stephen Colbert in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, then handed down to Jon Stewart like a pair of old dungarees.

###

Thank you Stephen for pointing out what ought to be obvious. Let’s hope the American public can tear itself away from the Kardashians and Dancing With The Stars long enough to find out why this issue matters and why they ought to do something about it.

World of Witchcraft

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:01:00 -0700

Okay, this is political. Lately I’ve been staying away from politics. Some of my friends and family members are on the opposite — for some, the far opposite — end of the political spectrum and quite frankly, I value their friendship and love more than my right to shoot my keyboard off with my political views. But, this is just too funny not to talk about. Seriously, it would be funny regardless of the political affiliation!

So, what is funnier: Herman Cain was named in Barbara Walters’ list of 10 Most Fascinating People of 2011. That’s not the funny part, but go ahead and laugh if you feel the need. In the course of her interview of Cain, Walters asked the one-time Republican presidential candidate if he could choose to be a secretary in a presidential cabinet, which would he like to be? His answer: Secretary of Defense. That’s not the funny part, but go ahead and laugh if you feel the need.

No, the funny part is Walters’ reaction: “WHAT?!”

As Jon Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show Wednesday Night, in her nearly 50 years of television experience Barbara Walters has never been shocked by any interview and she’s done’em all, every despot, once living and now dead, some of the sleaziest characters in politics and business and the strange ones in life and entertainment.

So, when Herman Cain can get Barbara Walters’ jaw to drop and her eyes to pop out, that’s a big deal — and funny. Now, Herman Cain, in his short rise and fall in presidential politics, has had some humorous moments, most, if not all, of them unintentional. We’d wait each day for the latest Hermanism, from his not knowing Uzbekistan to the “Smoking Man” TV ad to the “… umm … President Obama was for the rebels, right? …” in Libya.

None of that mattered to his supporters of course, apparently ignorance is a sign of strength, but what brought down the Hermanizer was his being a womanizer — or a masher. This is kind of odd: when women were coming out of the wood work accusing Cain of sexual harassment and assault, his supporters were okay with that, but as soon as a woman stepped forward with evidence they she and Cain carried on a consensual sex affair for 13 years, that’s when Cain’s support began to falter.

So, is that the funniest thing that happened this week in the world of politics, or is it this: Mit Romney got a very public, and laughable, endorsement from failed senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell. That’s not the funny part, but if you remember who she is and feel the need to laugh, please do!

If you don’t remember, she was the Teabagger favorite in Delaware who tanked a legitimate Republican candidate for the Senate seat now filled by Democrat Christopher Coons and once filled by Vice President Joe Biden.

O’Donnell’s bid for the Senate seat was filled with mirth, from the moment she announced ’til the moment she conceded defeat. She was going to lead the new Tea Party Revolution! 2010 was the year of the Tea Party, when a large number of ultra-conservative Republican candidates identified themselves as being Tea Party affiliated.

In a very public primary race, Republican O’Donnell defeated Republican Establishment candidate Mike Castle, who would have almost surely beat Coons, the Democrat, in the general election. O’Donnell’s Tea Party confederates thoroughly trashed Castle in the primary campaign, bringing outrage and tears from the establishment of the Republican Party. Karl Rove wanted to cry.

O’Donnell was one of the Tea Party’s favorites, making the news every night as her tide swept the beach heads of the primary landscape. She was leading Mike Castle in the polls, the Tea Party giddy with the fantasy that they, the true patriots of America, would wrest control of this great nation away from the forces of evil that had gripped it around the throat — them evil Democrats led by that Muslim, extremist, Socialist, Fascist Obama.

Oh, the Teabaggers could feel it coursing through their every fiber, their anticipation building to that climax when they would know, when that would feel, when they would erupt in an orgasmic explosion of ideological triumph, their prayers to take back their country answered in one hallowed blessing of an erection … I mean election. Their democratically elected offspring, they fantasized, was near at hand.

And when O’Donnell emerged victorious on that primary evening, they all leaned back against the headboard of history and reached for that congratulatory cigarette, their appetites momentarily satisfied, until they could once again feel the rush and excitement of electoral supremacy, as they vanquished yet one more foe, that evil Democrat, Chris Coons, in the general election. Why, even his name sounded Black! Christine O’Donnell was a virgin no more; she had finally won an election.

But it was not to be. Throughout her adult life, when running for public office, O’Donnell made the mistake of opening her mouth to state her platforms and agendas and to answer questions. Tea Party candidates should have learned from watching Sarah Palin: never take questions from the media!

O’Donnell must have felt immune because she talked. Maybe her confidence was buttressed by the fact she had appeared on that Satanic TV show, Politically Incorrect years earlier. She had survived hours on TV with Bill Maher so how tough could running for the Senate get? That’s when the trail of videos began to form, leading inexorably, to her political demise.

“I’m not a witch,” O’Donnell told the voters of Delaware, but it was too late. The weight of her past held her candidacy down in the muck and grime of her own bubble-headed words.
 “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and now we have mice with fully functioning human brains!” O Dear!
 From her anti-masturbation campaign in the mid-’90’s when she was part of MTV’s Sex in the ’90’s series. “If he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, than why am I in the picture?” Good point! What the fuck are you doing here?
 On that subject, she told the Wilmington News-Journal, “Sex is a covenant between a man and a woman and God. … Your job is to satisfy the other, the giving of oneself to another. Porn turns that around.” Well, porn is big on doing it doggy style.
 Then there were her moments on Politically Incorrect. “I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do.” And, “One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s a little blood there and stuff like that. We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.” Oh no …

The air of victory was sucked out of the rooms of the Republican elite. The retaking of the Senate was near at hand and here was this nincompoop about to scuttle the ship in Delaware. Karl Rove raged on Fox, George Will wrote and wrote and wrote until his fingers got numb and then regurgitated it all on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. But to no avail.

Cue the Doors classic, “The End.”

Who could have imagined there was more to come?

And there was. This past week Christine O’Donnell, in a very public fashion, came out and endorsed Republican faux frontrunner Mit Romney. O’Donnell said she trusted Mitt to do the right thing and one of the traits she admired about him was his consistency. The interviewer on CNN, Carol Costello, said Mitt was known for his inconsistency on important issues. In that not-of-this-world fashion of hers, O’Donnell replied, “He’s been consistent ever since he changed his mind.”

And of course Mitt gratefully accepted O’Donnell’s support, very publicly, calling Christine O’Donnell a great conservative leader. You just can’t make this stuff up and have it be as funny!

Just think: there’s at least six more months of this to come! Poor Karl Rove, he must be looking for an empty grave so he can turn over in it.

Laughter is the best medicine.

Tune In, Turn On And Get Real

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:01:00 -0700

Medical Marijuana. Why is it still illegal to grow, distribute, own and use marijuana at all?

“But wait Tim, it’s legal in California,” you exclaim!

Yes, California state law makes medical marijuana legal, but as anyone with even a smidgen of Civics education knows, federal law supersedes state law — always.

Just for the record, I’ve been for the legalization of all drugs since smoking that first joint at the age of 13. That’s a few decades. But, I didn’t become firmly convinced about legalization of all drugs until I stopped using all street drugs, including alcohol, over 27 years ago.

The rationale is so basic, it’s baffling to me more people don’t agree. As adults of (relatively) sound mind, we should have the choice of ingesting whatever substances we deem necessary for our betterment and/or enjoyment. If you want to snort that line of cocaine or methamphetamine, by all means, do so. Same with heroin. Just go buy some clean needles and shoot away.

“Why that’s a pretty cavalier attitude Tim!”

Yeah, but really, who am I to tell another adult they cannot do something, even if it may be injurious to their health and wellbeing? And who the Hell is the federal government to take that role?

About 90 years ago we proved prohibition doesn’t work when alcohol was banned in the U.S. The only effects of banning alcohol was to make 90% of the population criminals and give a vehicle to organized criminal enterprises to gain widespread control and influence in society.

The ban on alcohol was reversed in 1932, much to the joy of all, especially the distilleries and breweries around the nation. But, in 1936 the film Reefer Madness was released and the national hysteria surrounding other psychoactive drugs was on.

Marijuana was the focus of the film and it showed young people being lured into a life of addiction and debauchery — and murder!— simply for smoking a joint. It was the cautionary lesson of all morality tales; young people becoming insane from smoking weed. Why, your daughter could wind up having illicit sex while smoking marijuana!

Well, okay, that much is true, but more than likely she’d wind up having illicit sex anyway. Smoking pot just made it all that much more enjoyable. This is a curious note: as I recall, smoking pot tended to dampen my libido although the right circumstances could easily overcome that unfortunate side effect.

One day, while attending classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee I attended a noon showing of the film in the Student Union. And while there, in the darkened room I lit up a one hitter of pot. I felt so rebellious!

Many drugs were used in the spiritual rituals of tribal religions not Christian so they were declared to be the work of Satan by Christian religious leaders. That’s what was initially behind the effort to ban drugs in this country. Had Christian religions figured out a way to incorporate drugs into their own rituals and make money from it, all drugs would be legal today.

Cocaine was actually legal until a little over 100 years ago. It was the active ingredient in Coca-Cola. In fact one could buy opiates in medicinal elixirs like Laudanum, but it was all eventually banned.

After prohibition ended, organized crime had to find another cash cow and that turned out to be heroin. If you can recall the scene from the movie The Godfather, the heads of the crime families agreed to sell heroin, but they would keep it in the “colored neighborhoods. They all live like animals anyway.”

And that’s how it was treated for the next 15-20 years: marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and other drugs were primarily things found in the ghetto neighborhoods of the racial minorities. Occasionally some White person would venture uptown and get high … but he or she was probably listening to Black music so they were lost anyway.

The hipsters in the mostly White Beat generation found drugs by way of the be-bop jazz emanating from the Black nightclubs. Some of be-bop’s biggest names were junkies as were some of the biggest names in the Beat movement: Miles Davis, Charlie “Bird” Parker and William S. Burroughs topping those lists.

The masterpiece written by Burroughs, Naked Lunch, is the story of his life as a heroin junkie and Jack Kerouac’s counter culture anthem On the Road celebrates the life style of jazz, alcohol and drugs. Just a few years ago I was astounded to learn Kerouac was extremely popular with college students, 50 years after On the Road was published. My niece had read it and then turned her dad, my brother, on to it.

Then the hippie counter culture came in the 1960’s and drugs were being used all across the social and racial spectrum. White kids celebrated the freedom of smoking and using cannabis products; drugs were beginning to go mainstream. Musicians wrote songs about it, Jimi Hendrix did “Purple Haze” and “Spanish Castle Magic” to name just two. The most famous song was by the Beatles: “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” an homage to LSD.
 Do you celebrate Bicycle Day?

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, LSD, had been legal until 1966 and was widely studied throughout the world. Most famous of these researchers, outside of the man who first created it, Dr. Albert Hoffmann, a Swiss chemist working for the Sandoz laboratories, were Doctors Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary. Both were psychologists working for Harvard University in the 1950’s and did widely celebrated — or denounced — studies of LSD, which was legal at the time.

Both Alpert and Leary were eventually fired, but Leary carried on his “work” spreading the good news of LSD. The hippie culture loved it and him, so much so people thought LSD ought to be illegal too, even though it has no adverse side effects like physical addiction or physical or psychological deterioration. People were just enjoying it too much. That was the problem.
 There were “bad trips” of course, but for the vast majority of users there were no side effects and most users of LSD credit the drug for opening their minds and giving them a new freedom to think for themselves.

So here we are, nearly 50 years after the hippie counter culture burst on to the scene and we have the largest prison population (per capita) of any industrialized nation, second only to China. Well over half those people in our prisons are there because of drug or drug-related crimes.

The drug cartels are shipping in drugs as fast as “we” can use them and in fact, are destroying some of our national forests to grow their “homegrown” marijuana in places like Humboldt and Mendocino Counties, California.

Then there are new drugs I’ve never used, like Exstacy. Apparently it makes you want to dance and have sex. I don’t really need that to want sex, I just do, but that’s beside the point.

All of this plus our European allies looking to decriminalize all drugs, or they already have done so, and we still fight a drug war costing us hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Talk about wasting tax dollars. No one who looks at the so-called “Drug War” objectively says we’re “winning.” We’ve been officially fighting it for 40 years, ever since President Nixon declared a War on Drugs. About ten years later President Reagan appointed the nation’s first “Drug Czar.”

To what end? Put more people in prison? It’s time to end the insanity and we can start by legalizing cannabis. In a recent poll conducted by CBS, 77% of Americans think marijuana should be legal. That’s across all political and social strata. A start has been made in California where we can find quasi-legal growers and distributors in business selling medicinal marijuana.

It can be regulated and have taxes collected, as we do for alcohol and tobacco. People who actually need it for medicinal purposes can have it and those who use it purely for recreational purposes, let them have the same freedom and responsibilities as those afforded the use of alcohol. Operating a motor vehicle while under the influence should be treated the same way we treat people busted for driving while intoxicated on alcohol.

The big push against legalization comes down to two reasons: the religious demonization and the drug war industry that gets all those tax dollars. Billions of dollars in cash and property are confiscated every year and that money doesn’t go to victims, it goes into the coffers of the various state, local and federal governments.

Cannabis has no real side effects like opiates and cocaine, although, just from an anecdotal note, i.e., personal experience, one can become psychologically hooked on marijuana and hashish.

This not so short rant is getting epic in nature, so we’ll stop, but I’ll say this: our various governments could be collecting billions in tax revenues regulating the cultivation and sale of cannabis products, including clothing and rope. Instead, we are spending billions on citizens who have been incarcerated for dealing and using marijuana not to mention the billions spent trying to eradicate the industry. We could be using a portion of those tax dollars to fund more drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs. There are plenty of well researched studies that support this idea.

Instead, we keep losing ground in this so-called “War on Drugs” and keep adding to our prison population! It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense!

It’s time to legalize cannabis.

The Funniest Reality Show

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 06:01:00 -0700

“I’ve got all this stuff twirling around in my head.”

Probably the most damaging — and humorous — statement from former Republican frontrunner, Herman Cain. He got one of those “gotcha” questions from the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, my hometown paper. The question: “Do you agree with President Obama’s policy on Libya?”

Cain paused, shifting in his seat, as things got uncomfortable. He moved his bottle of water a few inches on the table as a cloud of fear and doubt crossed over his face. He glanced to the ceiling, as if there might be a plausible answer taped up there somewhere.

Then, in real Herman Cain fashion, he began making it up as he went along with his reply. “I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reasons. Umm. No that’s a different one.”

That’s when all that stuff was twirling in his head. “It was a pause, that’s all it was! Good grief!”

The Republican field is, for comedians, the gift that keeps on giving. Saturday Night Live, known for it’s great parodies of political figures, doesn’t even have to write its material this election cycle. They just need to use the transcripts from the various debates, interviews and other gaffe-filled moments on the campaign trail.

Michele Bachmann; even her former campaign manager, Ed Rollins, thinks she’s an idiot. And from the looks of the polls, so do Republican voters. She hasn’t had double-digit popularity since she won the Iowa Straw Poll in August. That’s when I learned how someone actually earns that title: they pay for it.

To vote in the Iowa Straw Poll you have to buy a ballot for $35. What she did was buy well over 6,000 ballots and give them away to people who promised to vote for Bachmann as she was feeding them barbecue and treating them to free concerts featuring big name country acts. And she had chairs in her tent so people could sit down.

But then she started talking … and talking and talking, mostly about repealing the Affordable Health Care Act and making sure Barack Obama is a one-term president and if elected she would build a double fence along the border with Mexico because dammit! Only one just wouldn’t do!

And then she said a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer caused mental retardation. Oops.

This is the woman who compared going to Iraq during the heat of the insurrection to going to the huge Mall of America in the Twin Cities; the woman who claims there is no scientific evidence that proves carbon dioxide is harmful; that Melissa Etheridge got cancer because she’s a lesbian and that the founders of this nation worked tirelessly to end slavery — despite the fact that nearly half the founders owned slaves and fought vigorously to keep anti-slavery language out of the Constitution when it was first written. And the list goes on.
 I was reading things about Bachmann on the Internets and found a site that is chockfull of Bachmann and Palin supporters. These people really, truly believe Michele Bachmann is the answer to America’s ills.

When Texas Governor Rick Perry got into the race, Republicans far and wide rejoiced! A Tea Party guy who wasn’t Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann. He had all the great sound bites and he threatened to have Texas secede from the Union! Hell, he packs a gun when he jogs and he shot a coyote that might have threatened his Pomeranian! And then there was that prayer party he held in Houston right before he announced his candidacy. Had I been a Teabagger at the time I would have had a boner too!

And then Rick Perry started to speak in paragraphs … or at least he tried. His first debate was a disaster, but people thought he would get better, or at least prepare for debates. But his performances in the second and third debates were worse than the first. He couldn’t articulate on Romney’s flip-flopping and then he couldn’t name the three agencies he would get rid of if he were elected president.
 You know, I’m giving Perry a pass on that one. How many times have I forgotten something that is usually so obvious? Too many to count.
 But then you gotta wonder: if the Department of Energy were abolished who would oversee the nuclear industry?

Newt Gingrich is the latest “I’m not Mitt,” candidate. He’s jumped in the polls, but coming to light as of Wednesday: he worked for the mortgage giant Freddie Mac for eight years as a “consultant,” i.e. lobbyist.

At first he said Freddie Mac hired him as a historian, and then a consultant for strategic advice. But, the management of Freddie Mac said he was hired to help lobby Congressional Republicans to favor the mortgage giant — to the tune of nearly two million dollars. And this is the guy who has been bashing President Obama for taking campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This man has no shame. And he flip-flops as much as any candidate, including his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. He did an interview on Meet the Press lambasting the fringes of the Left and Right, especially Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. The Tea Party reacted immediately and within 48 hours Newt was apologizing and calling Ryan’s budget, which called for the end to Medicare, courageous.

Speaking of Mitt Romney, who can forget him telling people there are a lot of reasons not to vote for him? Then he starts giving us reasons not to vote for him — and this is after he’s proven to be more of a flip-flopper than John McCain!
 Let the foreclosure crisis play itself out so investors can buy all those foreclosed properties and have the former homeowners return to being renters! Yeah! Make it a windfall for the One Percent!
 We can’t forget “Corporations are people too!”
 Oh yeah, he told unemployed Florida residents, “I’m unemployed too!”
 And of course: “Anderson! Anderson! Rick isn’t playing fair!’

Mitt isn’t liked by the Republican faithful, never gets more than 25% of the popular support in the polls, but he could, by default, wind up with the nomination. Right now he is even with Gingrich and Cain in the polls, but there aren’t many people who think either of them have any staying power. Gingrich is too insincere and Cain is so ill prepared for holding any office, especially the presidency, neither could be seriously considered for the nomination once the actual voting begins.

There are a couple of candidates in the race who could be serious challengers to president Obama, former governors Buddy Roemer and Jon Huntsman, but they are so unpopular with Republican primary voters they aren’t even considered serious challengers for the Republican nomination. For primary voters, Huntsman and Roemer are far too moderate. They’re almost liberals!

One thing each that I like about Roemer and Huntsman: Buddy Roemer supports the Occupy Wall Street Movement and Huntsman, the son of a billionaire, dropped out of high school to be a rock band keyboardist. That’s probably not a good reason to vote for the former governor of Utah, but it makes him cooler than the other candidates.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Hell, I watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report every night to see it, besides my daily doses of the news networks. Remember how we all were shocked and then laughed when Sarah Palin was picked to be John McCain’s running mate? Well, this is the same thing — times eight.

We’re going to need more popcorn.

Going Off The Rails

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:01:00 -0600

Did the Harpy, Ann Coulter, really say, “Our Blacks are so much better than their Blacks.”? She did! You have to watch the video, from FOXNews, it’s so unbelievable. The specter of race has entered the political debate and it all has to do with Herman Cain being accused of sexual harassment, not by one, not by two, but three women who worked with him for the National Restaurant Association.

It’s funny too, some of the things the righties say. Herman Cain himself. When asked if race was behind the scandal, Cain said, “Yes, but we don’t have any proof of that.”

For the righties the best defense is pulling the race card. The media — mouthpiece for the DNC! — is engaging in a high tech lynching, just like they did to Clarence Thomas. O Dear, that Clarence Thomas hearing.

In 1991 Thomas had just completed hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. Then someone leaked to the press there was an FBI interview of someone, Anita Hill, who said Thomas had sexually harassed her. So, the hearings were re-opened and Anita Hill was subpoenaed to testify before the committee.

As the hearings continued, Justice Thomas accused the Senate Democrats of a “…high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks …” The charge had a ring to it because the Senate Judiciary Committee was made up of White men.

Thanks to that little exchange, conservatives now have a rallying cry whenever a Black Conservative is questioned about something that could be damaging to their career or aspirations, like becoming President of the United States. To be a racist in the rightie eye, you just need to question a Black conservative about the facts from their past, like “Were you, or were you not, accused of sexual harassment?”

Probably the most egregious of the hypocrites is Rush Limbaugh. In the past he’s mocked Asians on air, Hispanics and of course Blacks, especially when Barack Obama was running for president. So, how does he handle the scandal growing around Herman Cain? By calling liberals and Democrats racists! Claiming that accusing a Black man of sexual harassment is using the worst of racial stereotypes. It is “… gutter partisan politics.”

Which is pretty funny considering the male politicians in the news because of their sexual peccadilloes have all been White men, beginning with former President Bill Clinton right up to Anthony Weiner, both of whom are very popular Democrats. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The other great tactic for the right is to blame the media. As Rush Limbaugh put it, this is a hit job by the website Politico, a tool of the left wing media! Apparently we White liberals are threatened by a popular Black Conservative so we instigate a smear campaign based on the racial stereotype of Black men being prone to harassing women. Something I didn’t know existed until Rush Limbaugh mentioned it.
 And call me crazy, but I always got the impression Politico is a right-leaning news organization.

This would all be a good story: left wing media bias at its worst, except that the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) did in fact agree to terms on two separate cases of sexual harassment, giving the two women five-figure payments in exchange for them to leave the association and remain silent on the matters.

Leaving Herman Cain the only one free to talk about it, although he was bound by the confidentiality agreement as well. But that doesn’t stop Cain from talking. Each new day brings more comment from the presidential contender, often conflicting with the comments he made the day before — or even just hours before.

The timeline on Herman Cain’s comments started with him flatly denying the claims, to vaguely remembering there were claims, to remembering there were settlements to at least one claim, to him explaining to Judy Woodruff (of PBS) that it was all a misunderstanding about how tall Cain’s wife is in comparison to one of the women getting a settlement.

But then on Wednesday the story took a turn when Cain started blaming political opponents for leaking the story. The Cain Campaign blamed the Perry Campaign, who in turn blamed the Romney Campaign, which took an Eddie Haskell defense.
 I guess you have to be of a certain age to remember the character Eddie Haskell from the TV show Leave It To Beaver. He was famous for his bemused protestations of innocence, especially when he wasn’t so innocent.

Now it’s back to blaming the media. For the Right, blaming the media is always a good tactic. It doesn’t involve dragging down other Republicans, especially the guilty parties, and the Republican base loves to hate the “Lame Stream Media.” And right now that media is engaged in another high-tech lynching! They love using that term, one that is so entwined with the history of racial discrimination the two are synonymous.

Except that it isn’t anymore true for Herman Cain than it was for Clarence Thomas. The tactic of accusing the media and liberals of racism was designed to deflect the spotlight from the public figure back onto the media.

If the Right can make the story about the media, instead of Herman Cain in this case, then their man (Cain) might be able to skate the real issues, in this case, what are the particulars of these two claims of sexual harassment that were so significant other members of the National Restaurant Association were troubled by them.

Currently we are waiting to see a written statement from one of the women claiming to have been harassed by Cain. Until now Cain has been able to say anything he wants, impugning the character of his accusers. But, if Cain has broken the confidentiality agreement, does that give the two women the right to speak out on the matter?

The beauty of Herman Cain is he says whatever’s on his mind, regardless of the facts or even how ignorant he appears to be when he says something. In fact, his base has gotten so fired up Cain has had his best week for fund raising, well over a million dollars.

The downside is, Cain digs himself a deeper hole every time he speaks on the matter. The Republican base is keeping him high in the polls, neck-and-neck with Mit Romney, but how is it playing beyond the Republican primary voters?

More directly, if Cain has broken the confidentiality agreements, especially because he claims the two women weren’t very good employees, does that give the two women in those agreements grounds to go on the record just to defend themselves? If they start divulging the details of their claims, then Cain has a whole new category of topics to start responding to and if he continues to shoot from the hip and speak before thinking, which could get very interesting.

It’s not just the two women either. There are a number of anonymous sources that not only confirmed the existence of the two sexual harassment claims, but also were witnesses to some of Cain’s sexually charged comments and actions towards these women. If one or both women come forward, it’s a good bet some of those anonymous sources will come out of the shadows.

This just in: Herman Cain just proudly declared himself to be a “brother of the Koch Brothers; a Brother from another mother!” He was in front of a Tea Party crowd at an Americans For Prosperity event. Now, with the questions of how that organization, through a Wisconsin proxy, funded Cain’s campaign, which could be a very damaging declaration.

As for the Harpy, even the FOX host (Sean Hannity) she was speaking to thought her comments were too outrageous. But she’s out trying to sell her latest book and that’s her M.O. When she has a book to sell she goes on TV and radio and makes outrageous statements, like she did in 2004 when she referred to the wives of 9/11 victims as “harpies.”

We’ll see what next week brings. Hell, we’ll see what happens later today! to paraphrase Ozzy Osbourne: Herman’s going off the rails like the Cain Train!

The End

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:01:00 -0600

Picking up from where we left off Saturday … Oh yes, there was a slight problem with the blog, which is why there were no photos on the last one. But, as you can see the problem has been corrected.

So last week was historic. Thursday Muammar el-Qaddafi was found and executed, by a 20-year old wearing a New York Yankees cap, his bloody corpse paraded around his hometown of Surt, all to the joyous satisfaction of the Libyan people.

After 40-plus years of a brutal dictatorship, the people of Libya got their revenge. Was it justice? He got no less than what his opponents (and those unlucky enough to be in his way) got: an execution without the pleasantries of a judicial system.

There was a video, shot with someone’s cell-phone camera, showing Qaddafi being pulled from the drainage pipe, pushed around and punched and then shot. And then shot some more as the jubilant crowd pumped bullets into his lifeless body.

You know I understand why people kill other people in these situations, the joy of knowing a brutal tyrant is dead is understandable, but to revel in the actual act of killing someone, I’ve never comprehended that.

This is different than the crowd of freaks cheering Texas Governor Rick Perry for executing over 280 prisoners. The people in that audience didn’t actually have to pull the trigger, so to speak, so they are about as far removed from killing someone as a person watching a shoot’em up movie at the local cinema. It’s a lot different from being the person in the death chamber who actually pushes the buttons.

In Libya, Qaddafi’s killers took pleasure in the act and that is just appalling. As is the crowd that cheered Rick Perry. Years ago while I was still living in Milwaukee, I met a man who had survived a lynch mob in Marion, Indiana, James Cameron.

In 1982 his autobiography was published and the cover photo was of the lynching itself, showing two Black men, Cameron’s friends Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith hanging from a tree and the crowd of white people smiling and cheering, one man gleefully pointing to the hanging tree. Pictures of crowds joyfully participating in lynchings are always disturbing. I don’t get it. Why would anyone consider the killing of another person something to celebrate?

Back to Qaddafi. After the United States, along with NATO (Britain and France in particular), intervened and became the rebels’ air force. President Obama chose to lead from behind, forcing France and Great Britain to take the lead. But our troops, piloting either manned or unmanned aircraft, flew more missions over Libya than any other nation. And it was our forces that provided the intelligence to get the mission done correctly.

Interestingly enough, despite the victory in defeating the Qaddafi regime, Republicans here insulted the president, one, Marco Rubio, most directly. None of them wanted to credit the president on his leadership in Libya and Rubio went so far as to thank France and Great Britain while slamming President Obama. Ironically, Rubio and his Republican colleagues consider themselves to be patriotic.
 Reminds me of when the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted just for saying they were embarrassed to be from the same state as President Bush after he started the war in Iraq. I wonder why the same people aren’t up in arms over Rubio’s comments. Weren’t his comments unpatriotic? Actually, I don’t wonder why that is; their opinions on patriotism (and many other subjects) only apply when they are criticizing people with different political views.
 And this little nugget: As it turns out, Marco Rubio fudged his family history to advance his political career. He claimed his family were exiles from Castro’s Cuba. Turns out, his family left Cuba two and a half years before Castro came to power. They were actually fleeing Bautista’s Cuba.

On Friday, just as the news of Rubio lying about his family’s history hit the news wire, President Obama pre-empted that story by announcing all troops in Iraq would be home by Christmas, fulfilling one of his campaign promises. I never really thought Obama should take much credit for it because all he had done was sign off on a plan first put into action by President Bush in 2008.

My opinion changed though when after he had announced the plan Republicans started criticizing him for pulling out too early, for letting our enemies know our troops movements and leaving Iraq open to a take over by Iran. The harshest criticism came from Arizona Senator John McCain, one of the chief proponents of the Iraq War and one of the very few who thinks our troops should remain in Iraq indefinitely.

Long before Bush started the war in March 2003, Middle East experts were warning us that Iran would gain influence in the region and Iraq in particular if Saddam Hussein were removed from power. Even Middle East advisors from the Bush 41 Administration were warning of severe repercussions if we undertook a war with Iraq. Not to mention a civil war could occur as a result. But the neocons charged on anyway, claiming we would be greeted as liberators and our troops would only be engaged for six months.

Now, eight years and nine months later—and over 4,400 America lives lost, over 32,000 wounded Americans severely wounded, and close to a trillion dollars spent directly on this war (no one is counting the cost of care for the wounded warriors) — it is finally over. Now we can finally say Mission Accomplished.

So, after hearing Republicans criticizing President Obama for announcing the end of our involvement in Iraq, in essence completing the plan started by his predecessor, it seemed logical to give Obama all the credit. He is after all following through on the plan as he promised. And if the Republicans want to give Obama all the credit, well by golly, I’ll join them.

Senator McCain, Obama’s rival in the 2008 presidential elections, put out a press release that started: “Today marks a harmful and sad setback for the United States in the world. I respectfully disagree with the President: this decision will be viewed as a strategic victory for our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime, which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It is a consequential failure of both the Obama Administration — which has been more focused on withdrawing from Iraq than succeeding in Iraq since it came into office — as well as the Iraqi government.”

There’s more to it, but he never mentions this was originally President Bush’s plan for withdrawal. Nor does he address the analysis of Middle East experts who all say there is nothing more American troops can do, it’s now up to the Iraqis to decide their future. He makes the claim that no senior military officers agree with the withdrawal.

Senator McCain has been wrong about Iraq since Bush announced his intentions to start a war with that nation. The Daily Kos has a partial list of McCain’s errors and contradictions. Click Here if you’d like to read it.

But there is this lingering question: where were the Republicans when President Bush and his staff created the plan and signed the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq? I don’t recall them being so vocal three and a half years ago.

It’s about time this war ended, this war that should have never been. It begins to close one of the worst chapters in American history, when “we” used an attack on our soil as the precept for attacking a nation that had never attacked us. Our troops suffered and died for a lie, or more accurately, a string of lies.

There were no weapons of mass destruction; the pre-war intelligence had told us that. There were no links to Al Queda, pre war intelligence told us that too. It wasn’t a short war with minimal casualties, as promised by Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, John McCain, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others. It has lasted almost nine years, not six months. Twice as long as World War II.

Most egregiously, the responsibility and weight of this war has fallen to a very few in this nation: the men and women who served and their families. The rest of us were told to go shopping!

One memory I cherish though is my lovely niece Nancy, now married and expecting a second child. She is a Navy Corpsman in the Reserves, but in 2003 she went to war with the U.S. Marines. She made me proud once again to have worn the uniform … and humbled. She represents everything that is good about America. We disagree on many things, but that doesn’t get in the way of my admiration, respect and love.

Friday the president told us the end was finally in sight; welcome news for most everyone, especially the men and women who served. Let history remember them as our nation’s greatest heroes; they earned it.

Greatest Show on Earth!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 08:01:00 -0600

This has been an historic week. On Friday President Obama promised all of our troops in Iraq would be home for the Holidays. On Thursday Moammar Ghadaffi was captured and killed by the rebels who overthrew his government. And on Tuesday the two presumptive frontrunners — not the actual frontrunner — in the Republican Clusterfuck to the White House, Mit Romney and Rick Perry, nearly came to blows during the latest CNN debate.

Okay, that last one isn’t even remotely momentous historically, but it was entertaining! “Anderson? Anderson! Rick Perry isn’t playing fair!” Boo-hoo-hoo!

And of course the good governor of Texas was acting like a petulant child who didn’t have a clear argument so his only recourse was to interrupt his more popular opponent and try and yell louder! Remember in junior (or middle) school having the “fights’ where you and your mortal enemy (at least for that week) would yell at each other and slap box each other’s arms? That was the Republican debate!

Funnier still, the camera panned over to the moderator, Anderson Cooper, and he was smiling when Mit Romney tried to get Cooper to intervene. Much to everyone’s pleasure, Gloria Vanderbilt’s son wasn’t having any of it! That was good TV! It’s not much of a surprise the Republican presidential debates are getting higher ratings than just about everything else on the boob tube.

All the commentators were pointing to Romney’s comment about “running for office, for god’s sake,” as the most telling moment for Romney in this debate. I beg to differ. The most telling moment of Romney’s character, or at least as revealing, was his instinct to get someone to intercede on his behalf.

Should he become president and things get tough, who is he going to call on to intercede on his behalf? The vice president? We saw how that worked with President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Most Americans, even those on the fringes of the political spectrum, are looking for a leader and a leader isn’t going to ask mom or dad — or a debate moderator — to jump in and help him with the fight.

It’s a trait of the gilded class. The rich kids never have much to worry about because mom and dad will always be there to bail them out. Often literally. So they get used to having someone there who is almost obligated to have their back when the going gets tough. Not just have their back, but to bail them out and fix the problem. That’s Mit Romney’s biggest failing and the reason he won’t be the president of the United States in 2013.

The fact that his reason for not employing undocumented workers had to do with his own selfish interests and not for any moral or legal reasons is really not such a big deal. Most of us understand that. At least he’s not knowingly employing illegal immigrants. Who really cares about his motives? Would he be a better person if his objections to undocumented workers were for moral and legal reasons? Yeah, but short of that, not hiring them for selfish reasons works too.

We elected Bill Clinton knowing he had a penchant for women not his wife. And then re-elected him, knowing he was lying when he said he didn’t fool around. And when Republicans failed to put him out of office for it — please! The perjury was just a ruse! — we gave President Clinton the highest approval ratings of any president in decades. As a nation, we’re okay with slightly flawed leaders. Most of us don’t approve of people cheating on their spouses, but we’ll overlook it if the cheaters are doing the country good.

Just like we’ll overlook Romney’s selfish reason for not hiring undocumented workers. But we won’t hire someone to be president if he can’t hold his own in a fight. Good job Anderson Cooper for exposing Romney’s real weakness.

President Obama is lucky Ambassador Jon Huntsman isn’t anywhere near the top of the Republican leader board — yet.

As for the actual frontrunner in the Republican Clusterfuck to the White House; he just insulted about a billion people in the area of Asia that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kurdistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — especially Uzbekistan — with his insulting comment, “…when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm going to say, you know, I don't know. Do you know?”

Well done Herman! Now that’s proactive foreign policy. Do I know? No, but I’m not running for president and won’t carry the responsibility of leading this nation in a world the continually gets smaller. Someone running for president ought to have a better answer than “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan.” At least President Bush had a better answer when he was running for president 11 years ago. He just admitted he didn’t know. Rather cavalierly, but he didn’t try to insult anyone in the process.
 The president of Uzbekistan is Islam Karimov and the prime minister is Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev. Had to consult Wikipedia.

Then of course he says he’s pro-life but believes it should be up to the woman on whether or not to have an abortion — but abortion shouldn’t be legal. He wasn’t getting peppered with “gotcha” questions on CNN or MSNBC when he contradicted himself, often in the same sentence. He was on FOXNews.

Cain has no interest in being president. He doesn’t have the money raised or the staff hired for a national campaign. He’s just out to sell his books and bump up his speaking fees and apparently he’s doing real well as a motivational speaker.

Now we can say the Republican Clusterfuck to the White House is the greatest show on Earth.

*Part 2 tomorrow.

Bridge of Sighs

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:01:00 -0600

It’s no mystery to me why people go off the deep end. I mean, it’s understandable. It really is. When someone finally gets to a point when they can’t take it anymore, whatever “it” is, and they react in a violent explosion of some sort, I understand that. In fact the question for me is this: who really are the insane ones? The ones who explode and vent all their frustration, anger and fear on the nearest undeserving targets, or those of us who keep it all in, accepting everything as being just the way it’s supposed to be, for good or ill?

At some point it just seems logical to explode … but then you think it through and what does an emotional meltdown gain? Certainly not satisfaction for all of our ills and worries, the source of all our frustration, anger and fear.

The people who do explode and commit some horrific crime, what happens to them? If they don’t put the last bullet in their own brains, they generally end up imprisoned for the rest of their lives and that sad, graphically tragic end is their final solution. And no one is left happy by it, least of all the one who took the leap of faith that lashing out would somehow change things for the better. It just made things worse, which is why 99% of suicides are lonely acts. Either way, the tragic explosion or the lonely suicide, both are quite understandable.

So, the first thought is: “Tim is contemplating suicide.” No. I don’t own a firearm and I’m not really disposed to jumping off a bridge. Tried that once in 1982. Got up on the bottom rail, looked down at the parking lot below, worried about falling on the car of an unsuspecting motorist, thereby ruining their day and had a change of heart. Looked around me and saw the Vet Center a block away and decided to give them a try. If that didn’t work then by god, I’d screw the unsuspecting motorist and take the leap. Apparently it worked.

The bullshit saying is: “Money can’t buy happiness.” Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always been happier having money than not having enough. At the very least money can buy peace of mind. If there are no worries about having a roof over my head, having transportation, the basic necessities of food and a place to bathe — and a phone — what else is there?

A lot, if you’re a normal human being. Independence is a big deal. It’s not a nice feeling being dependent on others for rides when public transit just won’t do. Mass transit in America sucks. Outside of places like New York and Milwaukee, it seems like the mass transit systems were designed to punish those of us who don’t own automobiles.

Most bus lines here in San Diego run intermittently throughout the week and some don’t run at all on the weekends. For instance: in San Diego the #20 runs either from Downtown to Mira Mesa and back, or from Downtown to Escondido and back, alternating the route every half hour. That means, if you have to go north of Mira Mesa, that bus only runs once an hour. Very inconvenient. So inconvenient as a matter of fact, people think twice about taking jobs that depend on that irregular bus route. What’s more, it’s the only bus route going north to Escondido.

More directly, a trip that would take 20 minutes by car will take no less than an hour and, depending on the number of connections needed, can take more than two hours. There is no convenience to public transportation, at least not in San Diego. It’s cheap and all that’s available to the population that can’t afford private transportation.

And a personal slight: the closest bus stop to my place is just over a mile, if I’m heading south on that #20 line and I catch the bus coming from north of Mira Mesa. But, if I’m catching the one from Mira Mesa, that stop is nearly a mile and a half.

Back in Milwaukee I was never more than two blocks from a bus stop and often just a few steps. Having a car was convenient, but being able to use the bus was more convenient, especially going Downtown. Bus trips to the Westside ’burbs would be long, but not prohibitively so.

But this isn’t about the crappy mass transit system in San Diego, although I do give kudos to our light rail — trolley — system. This is about that feeling of despair. If you’re looking for a job with a decent pay check, good luck. If you’re out of work, well, too bad.

All the metrics measuring income for the past 30 years show the top 10% getting richer exponentially, while the rest of us either flat line or decline in real wages. Then we hear these dicks on the TV and radio defending the income disparity and a presidential candidate dissing the people who are out of work. Hell yeah, going off the hook is not only understandable, it seems the most reasonable response.

Until you see the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. No violence, no off the hook behavior, except by the police, just a mass demonstration of people from all walks of life (not just young people) protesting the injustice of the economic system that controls our nation.

What isn’t understandable are those who dismiss or denounce the demonstrations, especially if they are just as squeezed as the rest of us. The fact is, the major banks are hoarding the money, well over two trillion dollars and, just three years after we bailed them out, are recording record profits — as much as 29% for Wells Fargo. That’s $4,100,000,000 or an increase of more than a billion dollars over 2010. And the year ain’t even over!
 Citibank had an increase of 74%, or $3,8000,000,000.

The banks don’t want to lend to small businesses, so they go out of business, they don’t want to lend to consumers or renegotiate home loans, so people are still losing their homes in mind-boggling numbers; they, in fact, want even less regulation and more of our tax dollars in the way of less taxes for them!

Well, enough is enough and the people of America are marching on the source of this injustice: Wall Street. Not only that, this movement has gone viral and can now be seen in over 1,500 cities around the globe. Not to mention, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, CA, Chicago, IL and countless other localities, big and small, around the nation.

When this movement first got mentioned in the media, Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) called them a “mob.” Now he’s walking that back, almost sprinting, saying the “mobs” are rightly angered. His solution (and this is so obvious), less regulation and lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans and the banks! Basically, create the same conditions that brought about this current recession. Sound economic policy there, you dipshit!

And I read this from Paul Joseph Watson on The Hive Daily: “Despite their honest intentions, many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being suckered into a trap and calling for the very ‘solutions’ that are part of the financial elite’s agenda to torpedo the American middle class – higher taxes and more big government.”

What? Wall Street, the nesting area of the “financial elites,” is calling for higher taxes and more regulation? Well, Watson is a conspiracy theorist so who knows how he came to that conclusion, but he has a couple web sites so his twisted ideas get attention.

So, millions of Americans are beyond frustrated, they’re on the edge and all they get is rhetoric. Nothing gets done. The president proposes an actual jobs plan and the Republicans block it. Republicans block higher taxes for the financial elites and want to further deregulate the financial industry.

Instead of going postal or eating a bullet, here’s what you can do: join one of those “mobs” protesting against Wall Street. There’s at least one in each state. Why let the bastards win? Yeah, right now they have the upper hand, but as many people have pointed out, our demonstrations, in the streets and the voting booths, can beat Big Money in the next elections.

MSNBC commentator Dylan Ratigan is heavily promoting the Get the Money Out campaign, promoting an Amendment to the Constitution that would make all political campaigns publicly financed. I would suggest signing his petition, which now has over 200,000 signers.

Protesting Wall Street is one step in the campaign for justice, but getting the money out of politics is equally important, maybe more so because those financial mega-giants who control Wall Street … also control government at all levels. Along with the oil, insurance and pharmaceutical industries. And the NRA. Get all the money out!

Sure beats jumping off that bridge and possibly ruining someone else’s day.

Pizza Rut

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:01:00 -0600

Just heard Chris Matthews use the term, “dicking around” on Hardball Thursday. Yowza! It’s not the first time Matthews has been vulgar on his program, but that’s probably the most vulgar he’s ever been and I watch just about every day. Matthews has been getting back in touch with his working class Catholic upbringing in the past few years. And we working class Catholics can be pretty fuckin’ vulgar! Makes me proud!

Most of the day here has been spent dicking around with … err … more personal and vulgar pursuits. Sure the TV’s have been on, watching CNN and MSNBC, but mostly they have been a backdrop to the online tasks like commiserating with Tigers fans about the poor showing of the Detroit and Milwaukee teams in the MLB playoffs.

Damn Brewers … damn Tigers … how could the Brew Crew lose two in a row to those effin’ Cardinals? And now their down in the series, 3-2? C’mon Brewers! Win the last two games in Milwaukee!

Well, that’s a distraction, I guess.

So, the new jobs plan from Republican Congressmen was introduced in the House of Representatives. It’s an anti-abortion bill. That’s been their main focus since taking over that body of government; the House Republicans have introduced anti-abortions bills at least six times since January. And of course the bill will pass in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and that’s all that will happen.

Speaker of the House John Boehner knows it will not become law; it won’t even come up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate, let alone get passed. And even if it did the president would veto the anti-abortion legislation.

All the Republicans are doing is stalling. They don’t want to give the president and the Democrats a victory, regardless of how much it hurts the economy and the middle class. They are banking on the public sticking the president with the responsibility for the failed economy. You can hear it with their snide remark about “Blaming Bush.”

The fact is, because of the unrestricted gambling with the financial markets, unfettered by regulations and any real enforcement, for the eight years the Republican Party controlled government Bush and company ran this country into the ground.

People seem to forget: the financial crisis started coming to a head in early 2008 — when George W. Bush was still president. Republicans like to make a big deal about the 15 trillion dollar national debt. What they don’t like to mention is that 12 trillion was on the books before President Obama took the oath of office.

But god forbid anyone mentions Bush (43) and the Republican-controlled Congress that got us into this mess. Even if the president had a cooperative Congress we would still be in the recession. Lest anyone forget, this is the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Hell yeah, blame Bush!

So, the remedy, as the Republicans see it, is to go back to the policies that started this recession. In fact, they don’t have to go back to it because not much has really changed. What they want to do is go back to the 19th Century when corporations could do anything — literally — and the Supreme Court ruled child labor laws were unjust.

Rick Perry, the forgotten candidate, has been campaigning on opening up all federal lands for oil exploration. His claim is that there is enough oil under the ground to satisfy America’s needs for the next 300 years. Not surprisingly, his claim is false, but if Herman Cain can gain traction and attention with that “9-9-9” plan, then why not go with something equally outrageous?

The similarities don’t end there. Both Cain and Perry, like the rest of the GOP field, want to get rid of regulations and the EPA. But that’s not all. Perry and Cain want to end Medicare and Social Security. Perry is now famous for calling Social Security a “Ponzi” scheme and in Cain’s famous plan, he writes:
 “The federal government has imposed expensive and often counter-productive social and welfare programs on the states and the people. It is time to admit the mistakes, and get the federal government out of the way. This will allow states, cities, churches, charities and businesses to offer a helping hand instead of a handout where they live. People closest to the problems are the best ones to solve the problems effectively.”

The Pizzaman doesn’t come right out and say “end Social Security,” but what does the phrase “… get the federal government out of the way …” mean? In several spots on his website, especially in his “9-9-9 Plan,” Cain mentions ending the payroll taxes that pay for Social Security and Medicare. Well, if we don’t have funding for Social Security and Medicare, doesn’t that end Social Security and Medicare?

Herman Cain is right about one thing in his plans to end Social Security and Medicare: we did pay for it and we are most certainly entitled to it. Explain to me again Mr. Cain: how and why are you ending the social safety net I and 50 million-plus Americans will be depending on in the next two decades?

Cain uses his experience as a businessman in much of his website, but one item I found quite entertaining. It’s in his economic plan: “I have served as an executive of several major corporations. When times were tough and money was tight, I asked our employees to cut back drastically, and explained why it was necessary, and they did.”

Of course they did Herman! If they didn’t, they would soon be out of a job! Has anyone ever experienced a democracy in a non-union shop? The boss comes in and says, “Okay everyone! All in favor of a 20% cut in wages, please raise your hands.”

Cain’s one (and only) economic advisor is a bank clerk, Rich Lowrie, a guy with no training in economics, no degrees; his only experience in economics coming from his employment in a bank. My nephew is an assistant manager of a bank and he’s a pretty smart guy. In fact, he could probably figure out the particulars of our recession and viable solutions. But I doubt he would do what Lowrie is suggesting as a solution: copying the default tax plan from the video game SimCity.

Yeah! I had the same reaction! Apparently Cain’s financial advisor saw how well the 9-9-9 Plan worked in a video game so he just assumed it would work in real life! That’s keeping it simple! And, I’ll have to admit, another level of financial/economic experience.

Makes you wonder if Cain will have to pay any kind of royalties to the makers of SimCity, Maxis, for plagiarizing their plan.

Here we are, pushing 1,200 words and we haven’t even gotten to the fun stuff, like Rick Perry’s wife crying about how her husband has been attacked by their own party and persecuted for their faith — after one of Perry’s major supporters attacked Mit Romney’s religion. That’s rich.

It gets better though. When asked about his wife’s tearful turn at the microphone, Perry brushed it off saying she gets too emotional and takes things too personally. He didn’t even defend his wife! What a douchebag!

Then there’s Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. Instead of putting people to work, he wants to cut 440,000 jobs. He just introduced a bill that mandates cutting 10% of the federal workforce, even though over 600,000 government employees have already lost their jobs since the start of this recession in 2008.That’s the Republican jobs bill, the Senate version, right there.
- Rubio also said Social Security and Medicare make Americans weak and lazy. You work hard all your life, earning a little something to retire on and Rubio says you’re lazy? And he represents Florida? What were they thinking?

Okay, now that we’ve crossed the 1,300-word threshold, it’s time to close. Sadly, I haven’t even mentioned the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations! They have sprung up in over 1,400 communities and continue to grow! So, despite what the pundits and Republicans are claiming, the OWS crowd is succeeding! The fact that the protest expanded from that one little park on Wall Street to every corner of American proves it.

More on them another day. It’s the weekend, let’s go crazy!

Fixing the Elections

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 06:01:00 -0600

There are two big changes in the elections that will most certainly change the outcomes of the 2012 general elections, both fueled by Republican greed.

For the past 50 years, the primaries have been a four-year tradition that began in the snowy confines of Iowa and New Hampshire. Everything that could be possibly said or written about the voting wisdom, peculiarities or idiocy of the Iowans and New Hampshire Yankees had been written or said over and over again.

In fact, the commentary on the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire primaries had its own narrative, based pretty much on the predictability of what reporters and pundits would say about the Iowans who showed up at the caucuses in the cornfields and the voting booths by the sea. Every four years every news outlet would have a story about a caucus in the living room or barn of an Iowa farmer and a story about the first and last people to cast votes in New Hampshire.

With both, we saw citizens tramping through blizzards and sub-zero temperatures to take part in this great tradition of being the first to make an impression on the coming presidential general elections, which were 10 months away. And of course, to see these images, whether in pictures and video or through our minds’ eyes as they ingested the words on a printed page, there had to be reporters and pundits tramping through the blizzards and sub-zero temperatures to get those stories.

Without question, going to the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primaries was a right of passage for every political reporter, at least in the past 60 years. To even get to the point of being able to suffer through the grueling primary season, the ambitious reporter had to pay his or her dues covering the police beat and/or the human-interest desk. That’s where the reporter hones his skills collecting facts and information and putting it all into short, concise sentences. Unlike this space.

Then, as a reporter, you would get promoted to local politics with the local news outlet and then, back in the day, your newspaper might let you cover national politics and send you out on the road … sounds so romantic — until you’re standing in the driveway of a farm in Iowa, in the middle of February, in the middle of a blizzard with temperatures so cold you can feel your eyeballs turning into ice cubes.

And then you get a job with one of the Big Boys; a national television network or maybe the Old Gray Lady or WaPo. The amenities are a little nicer. You can stay at a Hyatt or Westin Hotel instead of Motel 6 and the Holiday Inn. And you might actually get a voucher to rent a car and a bigger budget for food. And maybe, just maybe, the candidate and his front person would know you by name and invite you to have dinner because, by golly, as a reporter you had arrived.

And off through the primary season you would go, from Iowa to New Hampshire, to South Carolina, Nevada, Texas, and “Super Tuesday” when a whole bunch of states would have primaries, finally ending in the big enchilada — California. By then, conventional wisdom dictates, the nominee would be, for all intents and purposes, selected. Although in 2008, we didn’t know until July if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee.

But all that is changing for 2012. Iowa has so few people and New Hampshire is so frickin’ small, none of the other states want to have the issues dictated to them by these two miniscule blips on the electoral map. Everybody knows ethanol is a losing proposition, but because Iowa is the first state to have a primary anything, the candidates have to suck up to the citizens who grow all that corn, promising government subsidies so they can continue to make a fuel that cost at least twice as much as petroleum.

So, with the Republican field so undecided the Republican parties in the other major primary states hungry to gain the spotlight, they are now jockeying to get their primaries moved to January, before Iowa and New Hampshire.

Well, that just upsets the apple cart! Tradition says Iowa and New Hampshire come first! Not Florida and Nevada! And South Carolina? Honky please! So, to one up the three states that have decided to move their primaries to January, Iowa and New Hampshire are moving theirs accordingly. We could conceivably see the Iowa Caucuses take place in December of this year and the New Hampshire Primary on the same day as the bowl game to decide the NCAA national championship. Seriously.

Who in their right mind would pass up that game to go vote? And this gets even weirder. Because the last day of the NFL regular season will be January 1, 2012, there won’t be any major bowl games played on that day. No Rose Bowl on New Years Day? That’s a fuckin’ outrage! And on Tuesday January 3, 2012, the Allstate Sugar Bowl takes place, on the only Tuesday available for Iowa and/or New Hampshire to have their primaries before the interloping states of Florida, Nevada and South Carolina.

Everybody wants to be relevant in this election. If a candidate is so popular he (or she, if you really want to include Michele Bachmann) wraps up the nomination on or before Super Tuesday, which is March 6, 2012, then all the primaries that follow really don’t matter and which states want to be irrelevant? That’s a rhetorical question of course. So states are hurrying to get their primaries placed on the schedule in February, which means, for Iowa and New Hampshire, they have to move theirs up to remain the leaders of the pack.

In fact, New Hampshire has a law that says their primary has to be at least seven days ahead of all other primary elections. The silly season just gets sillier. Let’s see how the issues fall in the coming months. Already we’ve seen the … eight, or is it nine … Republican Candidates suck up to the CPAC Convention and the Values Voters convention, with Mit Romney taking it on the chin for being a Mormon.

And of course President Obama remains the enemy, just ask Hank Williams, Jr.

The other thing that will have a big impact on the 2012 elections: Republican-controlled states have now enacted the new generation of Jim Crow laws designed to suppress voter turn-out. In essence, people have to provide state-issued photo I.D.’s to vote.

The argument being we have to have photo I.D.’s to get on planes, drive cars, buy alcohol and tobacco products — although I’ve never been carded for either — and of course the big reason: to avoid voter fraud. Which is a whopping … .004%? Point Oh Oh Four Percent?

According to statistics the odds of voter fraud occurring is less than the odds of being hit by lightening. In other words, the possibility of someone voting who is not legally capable of voting is so rare as to not be consequential to any elections. In fact, out of approximately 120 million votes cast in the 2004 elections, the Bush Justice Department found only 86 cases of actual voter fraud.

The fact is, American citizens, native born or naturalized, have a right to vote, whether they drive a car or not, whether they own a registered firearm or not. In Texas you can use a gun permit as I.D., but not a college I.D. from the University of Texas (or other colleges).
 One 92 year old woman was denied the right to vote because she didn’t have her marriage certificate!
 One congressman, Steve King, a Republican (naturally) from Iowa, said he would like to restrict voting to property owners. Well, he said he missed the good ole days when only White male property owners could vote.

The true reason for the new voter I.D. laws is to suppress the votes of minorities, young people and the poor, many of whom do not own photo I.D.’s. And getting a state-issued I.D. requires money. Ask a person living in poverty what’s more important: being able to vote or putting food on the table. And, in many states students can vote in the municipalities where they attend school. Many of the new laws say students can’t do that anymore, unless their parents live in that locality, even though the students live in the communities where they attend college.

Here’s what really upsets me is that no one is trying to challenge these laws in court. Fifty years ago laws in the South that were designed to prevent African-Americans from voting were overturned. It’s time to do the same with the 21st Century version of these laws.

A Nip and a Grizzley

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:01:00 -0600

It’s finally happened! The Daily Show With Jon Stewart put me off! Really, after all the stuff they have shown, all the jokes and funny segments like “Baracknophobia,” “Clusterf**k to the White House,” “Mess O' Potamia” and this particularly disturbing segment: “Areola 51.”

With that segment I was forced to not only see a segment from a TV show I never watch, Dancing With the Stars, I had to watch the Angry Lady from Headline News (HLN), Nancy Fuckin’ Grace! Dancing! Good grief! After seeing that segment, with Grace’s massive chest heaving after the exertion of dancing, we now know to what lengths HLN goes to make Nancy Grace look good for her TV show. DWTS didn’t go that far.

The big deal wasn’t transgender man Chazz Bono, which is an entirely different story unto itself, but no, this segment was about Nancy Grace’s Nip Slip.

Let’s be honest, I’m always hoping to see “wardrobe malfunctions” on these types of shows and for a few brief segments, I watched it. Like when Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend Holly Madison was a contestant. She got booted on the first episode of her season — with no wardrobe malfunctions.

In the very first season, which I didn’t see, Playmate and General Hospital star Kelly Monaco won, but then, was forced into a do-over because so many people wanted some other guy, now long forgotten, to win. Anyway, Monaco had a wardrobe malfunction. Being the consummate professional that she is, nothing was exposed as Monaco’s quick hands saved the day — DAMMIT!

Thankfully, she has several hundred photos, and a few videos, from her Playboy Playmate days we can gleefully peruse, but still, what’s the point of a show like Dancing With the Stars? Maybe I’m just too jaded. And to get a nip slip from the likes of Nancy Grace, that’s like seeing your own Mom naked.

A situation that did happen for my brother Rick and I, oh so many years ago. If I could be permitted a short tangent here, as if anyone could possibly stop me. Here’s how it occurred. Dear Old Dad had a workshop in the basement, complete with a workbench filled with drawers. Being inquisitive types — nosey — Rick and I often investigated the drawers.

Well one day Rick finds a stash of old photos from the 1940’s, when Dear Old Dad was serving our nation as a Sailor during WWII. There were two photos of a dark-haired beauty dressed in a hula grass skirt — topless. Jackpot! But then we saw a portrait of Dear Old Mom from the same era: same woman! Cue that screechy scary noise from the movie Psycho!

Rick probably won’t admit it, but I can safely say both of us have been scarred for life. Anyway, that was the same reaction to seeing Nancy Grace’s nip slip. Now she claims there wasn’t any such incident, but screen caps don’t lie!

Speaking of people we see on TV that I don’t like: when is Sarah Palin going to shut the fuck up? Not seriously, she’s too entertaining and I just wanted to use the phrase “shut the fuck up.” Momma Grizzly continues to stoke the fires of her dwindling base, which is just a small part of the Teabagger base, getting the faithful to hope and rekindle hope she will throw her hunter’s cap into the Republican presidential race.

“Please Sarah, Please! We’re suckling at your Momma Grizzly teat! We gave you money to think about running! Please, oh please, run for president!”

So, Madame Grizzly gets on FOXNews, with Greta Van Susteren, to explain why she wasn’t rushing to join the clusterfuck to the White House. Skip the realities like a large majority of Republicans think she is unfit to be president, or that to do so means getting off her gravy train, although she nearly admitting as much. Her reason? It would shackle her to a title! “I’m a maverick, I go rogue when I need to.”

Palin doesn’t want to be tied to what political handlers tell her to say and do (and wear), she wants to be free! FREE! To be who she is: a media whore cashing in on her 15 minutes of fame, which to be honest, has lasted a lot longer than 15 minutes. And I don’t blame her! Get another million Madame Grizzley!

The funniest part of the interview though is when she said she was “out there” finding solutions to the nation’s problems. What solution for any problem has she come up with? She’s parroted a lot of Republican talking points and come up with cutesy terms like “Momma Grizzlies,” but what solutions has she put forth?
 To her credit, Palin is correct about one thing: she is out there!

Oh, here’s one. He family was woefully Middle Class on her salary as a governor and her hubby’s salary as a … I’m not sure he even had a career, other than riding snowmobiles. So, Momma Grizzley’s solution: quit her job as Alaska’s governor and start making millions of dollars as a highly paid speaker, pundit and author, stoking her fans’ fantasy that she will run for president, just to keep the gravy train — her Super Pac — rolling.

You know, after watching and more distressingly, listening to her for the past two years, she’s no longer fuckable. Okay, get offended by that, but truly, every guy who has made positive comments about Sarah Palin has always made reference to her appearance — in other words, she was “fuckable,” or, if you want to be less vulgar: “Do-able.” When she first hit the scene even her political opposites made snide comments about her being do-able.

Not any more. She opened her yapper, becoming a celebrity in the process. And although she is entertaining, the yappy lapdog sounding voice is so annoying, the horror of the fantasy-turned-nightmare is of waking up next to her the next morning, as she starts yapping about something she has absolutely no knowledge of, like American History. Which is probably why retired NBA star Glen Rice only had a one-night stand with her. That, or she was dating or even married to Todd Palin at the time.

Oh wait, she and Todd eloped about seven months before their first child was born and the tryst with Rice happened about a month before that. So, we’ll assume Glen Rice just couldn’t get past that voice.
 Ever the gentleman, Rice admitted spending “some time” with Sarah Heath (Palin’s maiden name), but didn’t divulge the naughty details. He said Palin was a nice woman.

But enough about Sarah Palin. She isn’t running for president in 2012 or any other year and neither is New Jersey governor Chris Christie. At least not in 2012. He still wants to be the governor and feels he owes it to the people who voted for him to serve a full term. In his press conference Tuesday, October 4, 2011, Christie even admitted he agreed with President Obama on some issues. Sounds like a somewhat principled guy, even if most of his principles are opposed to mine.

So I’ll close with this: Howard Fineman, once a columnist and political reporter for Newsweek and now the same for HuffPo (The Huffington Post) coined a new term last week, one that had me rolling with laughter when he said it on Hardball: while talking about Rupert Murdoch’s publishing empire Fineman called it “Murdochistan.” Okay, I thought it was funny at the time.

Okay, one last thing: businessman Herman Cain leads the polls in the Republican clusterfuck to the White House! He actually shares the lead with Mit Romney, but still, who would have thought! And I guess we can thank Rick Perry’s hunting lodge in Texas — and that’s a whole new line of thought, so I’ll stop now.

Do Unto Others

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:01:00 -0600

Michele Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll, sending the Republican Party into a tizzy, such a tizzy in fact, they couldn’t wait to have Texas governor Rick Perry enter the race. And so he did, on the same day as the Iowa Straw Poll, stealing Bachmann’s thunder and giving the Republican faithful — or at least the Teabagger faithful — a viable alternative to that Obamalite, Mit Romney.

That tough talking, Texas drawling, former Air Force pilot and perennial C student, Rick Perry. Everything you could want in an unimaginative, somewhat ignorant public servant and less! By golly, like his predecessor in the Texas State Governor’s Mansion, he could brag about his scholastic mediocrity and get applause doing it! “I finished in the top ten of my class! Of 13!”
 Kind of makes you wonder what kind of standards the military has for getting into flight school and then flying our most advanced aircraft.

Mit Romney: one-term governor of Massachusetts and former supporter of Roe-v-Wade, architect of the health care plan that became the federal Affordable Health Care Act and most recently, a convert to the ranks of the most ardent firearms advocates. Mit even went hunting, he claims.

What the Teabagger faithful see in him is a guy who will say anything and flip-flop on any position to get the nomination to be the Republican Party’s standard-bearer in the 2012 presidential elections. He ain’t one of them, regardless of what he says on the campaign trail.

You look at these other characters in the primaries; the one time Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, his entire campaign crew took a powder when they realized he wasn’t serious. Then there’s the other Mormon, John Huntsman. He was the governor of Utah and an ambassador to China. Speaks Chinese, can’t remember which dialect, but he could negotiate … well, there’s nothing to negotiate, but he can make the Chinese feel real welcome.

Then there’s the old man from Texas, Representative Ron Paul. The kids love him! He’s been against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the beginning and he’s for legalizing drugs, especially marijuana. But he’s one of these total libertarians. He wants to keep the health care system completely free market and if you don’t have health insurance, well, too bad. Die motherfucker!

And the new guy from New Mexico (I forget his name) he wants to legalize pot. But when you examine the rest of his ideas on federal government, he’s almost as crazy as any of the others. And talk about a lack of experience, he’s never held office of any kind until he ran for governor and served two terms; Gary Johnson, the handyman turned politician.

Then there is the Godfather pizza man who wants to use the Chilean Model for Social Security. He doesn’t want to tell Americans what it really is: privatizing the social safety net and turning everyone’s contributions into personal investment accounts in the stock market. It’s working so well for Chile … except that it isn’t. The World Bank, once a proponent of privatizing pensions like Social Security, says privatizing has cost Chile more than if they had just kept their Social Security system the way it was before privatization in 1981.

But Herman will deliver! He won the Florida Straw Poll!

And what about Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann? Well, Santorum wants to send a big “Fuck You” to all gays serving in the military (A gay soldier in Iraq was booed when his video was aired) and Michele Bachmann said what every Republican believes: they don’t want the federal government to be involved in the education of America’s children so she would get rid of the Department of Education — among others.

Teabaggers everywhere love Rick Perry for killing more people than any other candidate; at one debate he was wildly cheered for doing so. The Teabaggers went wild for Ron Paul’s inference that those people without health insurance should be left to die. “You take your chances,” he said.

Front runner Rick Perry took two big hits from the other candidates and the Teabagger faithful for A: mandating (with an opt out clause) girls get the vaccine for the HPVC virus, the one that causes cervical cancer, and B: giving children of illegal immigrants instate school tuition benefits if they have lived in Texas for more than three years — the Dream Act.

And then the Teabagger faithful booed that soldier serving in Iraq for being a homosexual. This is the Republican Party today: cold, heartless and mean. Some in the GOP will claim that’s not the Republican Party, but no high profile Republicans will rebuke any of the hatred spewed by the extremists, certainly none of the candidates for president, and in fact, all the candidates are playing to the worst of their party’s dark core.

The vast majority claim to be followers of Christ. That’s enough contradiction there. Although, in their defense, the Bible is quite vague about Jesus’s attitude towards the poor. His example of course was to be charitable to the poor. He stopped his travels to minister to a blind beggar, restoring his sight. Jesus said the beggar saved himself with his faith.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus is asked which of the Ten Commandments are most important and he answers: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Matthew 22:37)

Love is the central theme of Jesus Christ’s message, but to listen to some of these so-called Christians in the Republican Party, that means to love the poor as they starve, love the uninsured as they die from curable illness, love the homeless as they sit shivering in the rain and love the condemned as the executioner pumps poison into their bodies.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m not a Christian, but the message of Jesus is undeniably the most virtuous, or at least as virtuous as any other. He tells us to help the poor, to share with those who are not as “blessed” materially, to turn the other cheek when we are insulted or injured; he admonishes the Pharisees when they want to humiliate and stone to death a woman who was accused of adultery: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7)

But this crowd cheers death and killing, cheers the poor dying instead of getting health care, rebuking — loudly — the teachings of the person they profess to worship. They are bloodthirsty, selfish and self-centered and that appears to be the political philosophy of the Republican Party. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wants to deny funding for FEMA unless funding for some other needed projects is cut. We’re not talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, more like 2-3 billion.

That will be the Republican philosophy competing for our votes come November 2012. Up against the philosophy of the president and his party who think the richest of our nation should pay as much in taxes (percentage-wise) as the Middle Class, that there should be no question about whether we help those devastated by natural disasters; that we shouldn’t celebrate killing others. That everyone is entitled to health care.

Stephen Colbert said it best: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

It’s About Time

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:01:00 -0600

Tuesday, September 20, 2011, marked the end of institutionalized discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was signed into law 18 years ago by President Bill Clinton and since then some 13,000 people have been drummed out of the military because of their sexual orientation. As of Tuesday, that is all over.

Before “DADT,” not only where homosexuals kicked out of the military, they were given an “Undesirable” discharge at best. The irony being that gays and lesbians have been serving in the military since the beginning of our nation. Until Tuesday, they’ve been doing it in secret.

It wasn’t always a big secret. For instance, I can think of two people I served with in the Marine Corps who all but admitted they were gay, in those drunken moments when the tongue was loose and the inhibitions looser. As buzzed as I may have been, their statements stopped my thoughts in their weaving paths.

There might have been other things they were trying to hide, but given the situations, it really pointed to them being homosexuals. Both did their jobs very well and neither had any disciplinary problems of note. In all respects, both were pretty good Marines.

Now, anyone with a desire to serve has the opportunity, provided they are physically capable. In the Marine Corps you still have to do the PFT — the Physical Fitness Test. That ain’t no joke. Gotta do at least three pull-ups and really, if you don’t do at least ten you’re gonna get some seriously concerned looks, then you have to do at least 40 sit-ups in two minutes, and really, if you don’t do at least 60 you’ll raise the Drill Instructors eyebrows, and then to finish off the test you have to complete a three mile run in less than 27 minutes and really, if you’re doing it in more than 24 minutes you’re in trouble.

There is an aggregate score you have to get and at the moment I can’t recall what it is, but that’s why we have the Internets. You get five points for each pull-up, up to 100 points, 1 point for each sit-up, up to 100, and one point for each ten seconds on the run, up to 100 for completing it in 18 minutes or less. A Third Class PFT, the minimum, is 135 points, a Second Class is 175 and the First Class is 225.

Getting a perfect score of 300 is pretty remarkable. I never did it; my best score was in the 260’s, which is still a respectable score. But that was in days of old when Marines were cold and Sailors were cabbies and toads. Today I couldn’t run a half-mile, a quarter-mile even and the sit-ups, maybe 40. As for pull-ups, maybe the minimum of three. But then, I’m probably stretching credulity here.
 One of the funnier things I’ve seen while a Marine: when we were doing the three mile run on our PFT test, some of the diehard smokers would light up and smoke while we were running. Ya gotta love the Marine Corps!

So, if a gay man or woman wants to be one of the few and the proud, as long as they can complete that physical fitness test, they are good to go, as long as they satisfy a few other little requirements. The first rule of being a Marine is this: every Marine is a rifleman first, regardless of Military Occupational Specialty — MOS.
 “What’s your MOS man?”
 “1341. What’s yours?”
 “0311.”
 “Dude!”

That short conversation happened a lot, especially before bar brawls, but that’s an entirely different topic … well, maybe not entirely different. Fighting is what Marines do and a lot of Marines, if not all Marines, are proud of their fighting prowess.

Once drunk of course we forget all that handy dandy hand-to-hand combat stuff we learned and just get down and dirty, throwing punches and wrestling each other around on the floor, although once I got hit in the back with a bar stool. It glanced off my noggin a bit, and then I was punched in the eye, it was all a mess and a couple of us ended up at sick bay the next morning, but it was all good — eventually.

Anyway, every Marine is a rifleman first so to become a Marine you have to qualify with the M-16. In my day it was the M-16A1. I have no idea what it is these days, but that’s why we have the Internets. Take a pause for the cause while we cue the Google.

It’s the M-16A4. Then there is the M-4A1, which is another version of the M-16, just much more cinematic looking.

Getting back to the topic: If a gay man or woman wishes to become a Marine, they need to successfully complete that PFT and then qualify with the M-16. As I recall, the minimum score you need is 190 out of a possible 250. I always shot expert, 216 or higher, and my best was an astounding 247.

Here’s the back-story behind that near perfect 247 (out of 250): When it comes time to make your annual qualification on the M-16 you get a week off from your regular duties. Sounds good! But, you have to report to the rifle range at like six fuckin’ A.M.! And it’s a serious offense if you’re late. At the very least, it looks really bad in your service record, which is what the military uses to recommend or deny promotions.

Anyway, it’s five days, Monday through Friday and all the shooters show up at six fuckin’ A.M. The first three days are instruction and practice and to be honest, if you’ve qualified in the past there’s a certain amount of fuckin’ around that takes place.
 “With loaded weapons?”
 “Yeah. What could go wrong?”
 “What kind of fucking around?”
 “Like on this particular occasion, the Gunnery Sergeant next to me on the firing line taking a shot at a Border Patrol plane flying over head. We were in Yuma, AZ. The Range Officer was not amused.”

The last two days are given over to qualification and you can get a total of four tries at qualifying. So, on the eve of the first day of qualification I was out with the boys, tying yet another one on and to make it really special, I had taken a good hit of LSD.

So, at six fuckin’ A.M., with no sleep, I arrived at the Rifle Range primed and ready to have a loaded weapon in my hands; in other words I was still a bit drunk and tripping. There are four positions to shoot from and three distances: 200, 300 and 500 meters, in four different positions: standing, kneeling, sitting and (at 500 meters) prone. A total of 50 rounds being fired.

A shooter can score a 5-0 with each shot, five being the bull’s-eye and a point off for each concentric circle around it. Or zero if you miss entirely. So, on this day I shot bulls eyes with all but three of the rounds, hitting “fours” with the other three.

The gunny next to me suggested I just start shooting at planes and birds and things once I had hit 216, the level needed for the expert qualification, which was about the time he took the shot at the Border Patrol. The gunny explained the plane wasn’t supposed to be there as it was a distraction and … anyway, alls well that ends well.

So I shot my 247 — tripping on LSD. Ya gotta love the Marine Corps! Just a short tangent: a few years ago the Marine Corps added a second, “combat” phase to the rifle qualification so it’s completely different.

Getting back to the premise of this little trip down memory lane, it’s about time the military let homosexuals serve openly. Anyone who has ever served will tell you they are certain they served with gays, although back in the day they really stayed in the closet. Since this debate really picked up steam, military personnel have been talking openly about gays in their units, especially combat troops where esprit de corps is the strongest.

Most, if not all, troops forget about things like sexuality when the shit hits the fan because life depends on that esprit de corps.

All but one of the Joint Chiefs agreed with the repeal of DADT, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Amos, being the lone objection. Fuckin’ Marines; always gotta be different. Within five years it won’t even be a topic of conversation. But for now, it’s the biggest change in the military since President Truman ended racial segregation in 1948.

Welcome to the 21st Century America.

Brokedown Palace

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:01:00 -0600

How many different ways have you seen “Moammar Gadhafi'” spelled? There have been three; of course FOX News has their own spelling for Arabic words and names. They even call themselves “fair and balanced.” But that’s beside the point.

Hell, the spelling of his name isn’t even the point.
 “WHAT’S THE POINT!”
 “The point is we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.”
 Okay, only the Friends of Bill will get the joke.

Well, above it’s spelled as we find it on CNN and other sites, but the New York Times spells the dictator’s name this: Muammar el-Gaddafi. Which is easier to spell? Here’s the deciding criterion: which does MS Word recognize? Ah! The New York Times, the newspaper of record, wins!

As most people know, Gaddafi has been removed from power and is on the run. The rebels, once a rag-tag gang that couldn’t shoot straight, is searching every door and every rat hole in Libya for the former dictator and his family. Judging from how Gaddafi’s supporters are being treated, I’d say the Gaddafi family will be brutally murdered and put on display as trophies: every man, woman and child that has any connection to Gaddafi.

If Gaddafi and the men of his family have any sense, or compassion and mercy, they will have put their families on a boat to … on a boat to … hmmm … hard to think of any country that would harbor the family of Muammar el-Gaddafi. Venezuela, he could send them to Venezuela! Hugo Chavez likes Gaddafi.

The old dictator has enough money to buy freedom and life for his family, despite the sanctions and restrictions and Hugo Chavez would do it just to piss off the U.S. government. And all those right wing extremists who look for anything to blame on President Obama.

Here’s the fascinating thing about Gaddafi: he had a huge stash of porn — gay porn! But he appeared to be heterosexual. He had those women bodyguards and a thing for Condoleezza Rice! The rebels found Gaddafi’s homage to our former Secretary of State, a photo album. Who knows what else they found that our media might be too embarrassed to report. Or maybe, they want to save Rice any further embarrassment.

Seven years ago the Bush Administration began normalizing relations with Gaddafi and five years ago Rice met with the brutal dictator in Tripoli; everyone shaking hands and smiling. There was a Congressional delegation as well that included several Republican members of Congress and then Senator Barack Obama.

Those crazed right-wingers like to circulate that photo when talking about the fall of Gaddafi — but they conveniently forget to mention how and why Obama was in Tripoli. As usual, it was all about the oil. Europe and China had their hooks into the Libyan government for oil and our government leaders wanted our slice of the big gooey pie.

Which reminds me: remember back in 2002-03 when the neo-cons pulling Bush’s strings said with absolute certainty all of Iraq’s oil would pay for the war we started in that country? Of course they also said we would be in and out of Iraq in five months. Here it is eight and a half years later and we’re still pulling troops out of Iraq.

Had President Obama did what Bush did, what crazy fools like Senator McCain advocated, sending ground troops into Libya, we would be looking at years of involvement and who knows how many American troops killed or wounded. Again.

Thankfully, President Obama only committed air power to a no-fly zone slash let’s help the rebels intervention. We lost one drone. It was a really expensive drone, all tricked out with all the latest electronics, but no Americans injured or killed.

But of course Republicans aren’t giving President Obama any credit; they say Obama didn’t commit enough U.S. force to the effort and it dragged on longer than it should have.

What Republicans don’t want to admit is that President Obama is far more successful “war” president than Bush. He’s ending the two wars Bush started, he got Usama bin Laden, no thanks to the Bush Administration, and now he’s successfully navigated the hairy road of rebellion in Libya without getting any U.S. troops involved on the ground — although I’m willing to bet there are some special operators in Libya, sort of helping things along, teaching the gang that couldn’t shoot straight how to shoot straight.

Republicans don’t want to give President Obama any credit for anything because, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has stated many times, their number one goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

Not the economy — no. Not jobs — no. Definitely not the environment or health care — no. Ousting President Obama is their top priority. But that’s a rant for another day.

What we have to wonder about is what will Libya look like in the coming years, three, four and five years from now. Some non-partisan foreign policy analysts said that the transitional government (loosely defined) in Libya is looking to be pro-Western, but that is not settled by any means. All one has to do is look at what’s happening in Egypt to see how things can change.

One of the first things Egypt did when the government of Hosni Mubarek was toppled was forbid women from having any meaningful involvement in governing. Then of course there is the spectacle of Mubarek being put on trial. The guy is in court on a gurney.

Here’s the thing about these rebels in Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. They think like they’re still in the 12th Century. They get into a battle with Gaddafi and his forces in Tripoli, Libya’s capital if you weren’t aware. And what do they do once they drive the dictator out? They start trashing the place, stealing weapons and ammunition along with everything else that can be pried off the walls, leaving the compound unlivable.

From the description of Gaddafi’s last stronghold, it was a well-built place and could have served any new regime well. Yeah, there was definitely opulence beyond opulence and that could have been sold with the proceeds going to pay costs or help those in need — and Libya has a lot of people in need — but instead, they destroy it.

Granted, a lot of the damage is from NATO bombing, but the endless celebratory firing of weapons, shooting at buildings for no other reason than impromptu target practice and the wanton brutality of people deemed to be supporters of Gaddafi — it just doesn’t give me a lot of hope for Libya’s future.

Vengeance is the name of the game in many parts of the world, not just the Middle East and we certainly engage in it here — the death penalty. There’s no other reason for it, except to exact vengeance.

 “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” — Romans 12:19
 Most of the people, if not all of the people, who favor the death penalty claim to be Christians. I guess their religious beliefs stop at Death Row.

But I could be too cynical and harsh. The people are exuberant about the dictator being gone. Many Libyans have never lived without Gaddafi as their supreme leader. Changing 42 years of one of the ugliest dictatorships won’t be easy and isn’t going to come over night. It will no doubt be developing for decades to come. Our democracy is still developing 235 years later.

So, maybe it’s time to let go of the yoke of cynicism and have a little faith and good cheer, at least for a little while. In just a few hours the worst hurricane to hit in decades will be drenching friends on the East Coast. Our response to Irene will be the true measure of our national character. We’ll see the national character of Libya in the months and years to come.

The Wisconsin Referendum

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:01:00 -0600

Today Wisconsin voters are getting the opportunity to take on Republican Governor Scott Walker’s anti-worker agenda as they recall six Republican state senators in a special election.

Wisconsin, home of Fightin’ Bob LaFollette and birthplace of the American Socialist Party (Janesville). Coincidentally, and not so parenthetically, Janesville is also the home of Congressman Paul Ryan — that Paul Ryan — the guy who introduced a budget bill that would have, if passed, ended Medicare.

On one hand Wisconsin is one of the most progressive states in the Union, having promoted workers rights and equality long before most other states.

On the other, it’s one of the most conservative on social issues. In fact, Milwaukee, WI is considered one of the most segregated cities in America — but most voters, historically, vote Democrat. Hell, from the beginning of the 20th Century until 1988 we had Socialist mayors, although at the end of his career, Mayor Meier sort of downplayed that Socialist angle.
 Sadly, it was a hotbed of “Reagan Democrats” in the 1980’s.

So, it is kind of a mixed up fuckin’ place, switching parties for governor and legislative control all too frequently in recent decades. In 1986 Wisconsin voters elected Tommy Thompson governor and man, did that raise a ruckus! At least for some of us. At the time there was a big battle brewing over control of the Northern third of the state, which is under control of the Ojibwa Nation. Two 19th Century treaties ceded control of that area’s natural resources to the Native Americans. Part of Tommy Thompson’s 1986 platform was to abrogate the treaties with the Indian nations.

In their culture, the Ojibwa spear fish for walleyed pike in the spring. All of a sudden White sportsman started protesting this, claiming the Indians were killing off all the fish, despite the fact that the Ojibwa took less than 50,000 fish a year while sports fishermen took around 800,000. White people were quite openly using all kinds of racial slurs in this years long struggle.

Then Tommy Thompson came to the governor’s mansion and tried to be conciliatory. Why, he’d give the Ojibwa $50,000,000 dollars to give up their control of the resources! Wow! What a deal!

As it turns out, the deal had little — if anything — to do with walleyed pike or any other fish. Wisconsin’s northern tier is loaded with vast reserves of mineral resources and a bunch of multinational energy and mineral companies wanted to get their drills and excavating equipment to work.

The two main groups battling the Ojibwa over fishing rights were Protect America’s Rights and Resources (PARR) and Stop Treaty Rights Abuse (STA). They organized violent protests against Indians at boat landings and other places and some of their members even fired shots at the Indians.

As it turns out, these anti-Indian groups were secretly funded by the mining and energy companies, in particular Kerr-McGee and Exxon, two companies looking to mine in Northern Wisconsin for things like uranium. Tommy Thompson, after winning the governorship, appointed the lead lobbyist for the mining industry, James Klauser, as the Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration. It was Klauser who took the lead for the State and the mining companies to break the Indian treaties.

Eventually the state lost all its battles and declared it would stop trying to overturn the 1982 Voigt Decision that affirmed the legality of the two treaties in question. Thompson and his masters in the mining industry lost.

The point is, 25 years ago we had a governor instigating violent opposition to the rights of Wisconsin’s indigenous people, through his proxies. One of the highlights of Thompson’s campaign against the Indians: Thompson appealed to the judge in the case to end the treaties to avoid any further violence against the Ojibwa. The judge thought it was ludicrous to punish the Ojibwa for the violence of the White people opposing them.

Now, 25 years after that reign of political terror by a Republican governor, Wisconsinites have yet another Republican governor who decided to strip unions of their rights to collective bargaining.

That was in February of this year and as soon as he announced it, Wisconsin’s public employees, from the state mechanics to the teachers, police and firefighters, descended upon the state capital by the hundreds of thousands to protest. Fourteen Democrat State Senators went into hiding so the State Senate couldn’t get a quorum, thereby preventing the legislature from passing Scott Walker’s budget that eliminated workers rights.

Walker and his Republican cronies in the legislature jiggered it around so a quorum wasn’t needed to pass the laws, prompting the “Wisconsin 14” to return, but that wasn’t the end of the fight.

The next course of action was to organize a recall. Now, by Wisconsin law Walker can’t be recalled because he hasn’t been in office for a year. But, some of his Republican cronies in the legislature could and that is what’s happening in Wisconsin today.

The battle has been contentious and between the two sides, over 40 million dollars have been poured into this recall election — seven times the amount spent on the state’s elections last year.

Walker and the Republicans have been supported by the Tea party gurus, the Koch Brothers. Besides pouring millions into the campaign, they have been shipping in Tea Party supporters by the busloads, not to mention, their dirty tricks. They went so far as to send absentee ballot applications to Democrat voters with a return address to their party’s office in Madison and a deadline of August 11 — two days after the special election.
 “It was just a typo.”

The violent rhetoric of the Right hasn’t subsided a bit. In fact, unlike Tommy Thompson who sent his underlings to connect his proxies with corporate money to do his bidding, the backers of Walker have engaged Democrats with some of those most violent language ever used in a political campaign.

Judson Phillips, Supreme Leader of the Tea Party Nation, said on Sunday liberals were responsible for over a billion deaths in the 20th Century. He also said he despised liberals. On Saturday he called those who oppose Governor Walker “Brown shirts,” equating the protestors to Adolph Hitler’s Storm Troopers.
 Phillips believes that only landowners should have the right to vote.

Not to be outdone, Ozaukee Patriot Tea Party leader Vince Schmuki called the Democrats terrorists, proclaiming Wisconsin to be “ground zero.”

“You remember what the term ground zero means? We have been attacked,” Schmuki said. “Tuesday is going to be the beginning of our takeover. And we’re going to follow it up the following week, and then we’re going to polish off the enemy in November 2012. Who’s with me?”

His fellow Americans are enemies?

Nineteen years ago I moved from the center of the political universe to the Left Coast of Southern California. What a culture shock. But that’s a whole different bag of worms that one day will be explored here. Right now though, as the referendum on Scott Walker unfolds, I’m feeling a little home sick.

Some of my friends, now connected through Facebook, have been marching on Madison for six months. I’ve felt envious. Seriously. Seeing a grass-roots movement rise up against a dictatorial Republican governor and challenge the power structure, that’s humbling and makes me proud to call Wisconsin my place of birth.

I just wish the winters weren’t so long and cold!

Thank You Tea Party!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 12:09:00 -0600

Isn’t this the shits! Since the day Barack Obama was sworn in as President, Speaker of the House John Boehner has been shouting, into every microphone he could find, “Mr. President! Where are the jobs?”

Then, in 2010 Boehner and his Teabagger masters took control of the House of Representatives. How many jobs bills did they introduce? Nada. They introduced bills to restrict women’s health care and stood in the way of all the jobs initiatives the president and Democrats put forth.

Every economist agrees that if and when the private sector is unable or unwilling to hire employees and put people to work, then the federal government needs to do it just to stimulate the economy. Add to that our nation’s needs as far as roads, bridges, dams, levees (does anyone remember Hurricane Katrina and the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis?), waste, air and water quality, parks and recreation and transportation, including rail (high speed and conventional) and air travel, there is a lot our government can do to stimulate the economy and fix, at the very least, our roads, bridges and airports.

In 2010, the American Society of Civil Engineers put out a report called, “Report Card: America’s Infrastructure.” In it they addressed all of those concerns and then some, grading each: A, B, C, D and F. The highest score for any area of concern was a “C+” for solid waste. Of the entire 15 areas of concern, 11 received a “D,” “D-” or a “D+.”
 Thankfully, none of them got an “F.”

Our nation is in desperate need of infrastructure repairs and upgrades and the ASCE says that to fund all the things they say require fixing, we would need to spend 2.2 trillion dollars over a five-year period. That’s a lot of money, but, the revenue coming back to the federal government, in the forms of taxes and fees, could be as much as 10 dollars for every dollar spent. That’s one hell of an investment, even if it were only a five for one deal.

Anyone with half a brain understands only the government can take care of certain projects, be it the federal, state or local governments. It was the federal government that built the Hoover Dam (among others) and the Golden Gate Bridge (among others). When the government starts a project, it hires a few (thousand) new employees, but it also hires contractors who do the bulk of the work. They, in turn, hire the employees to work on these projects and those workers pay taxes on their incomes.

Not to mention they also hire other contractors to do different parts of the project who in turn hire more employees and so on down the line. The Hoover Dam, through its cascading contractors, employed tens of thousands of workers.

It’s called Keynesian Economics. In a nutshell paragraph by someone who is only slightly fluent in economic theory (me) Keynesian Economics suggests that the government (and public sector) needs to play a larger role in the economy when there is a downturn in the private sector. This is achieved through two avenues: incentives through tax policy (tax breaks, tax holidays and the like) and then government investment in the nation’s infrastructure.

To put it more directly in today’s economic reality, the government should begin to fund those infrastructure projects and continue funding them until they are completed and the private sector is back on productive footing and growing. It’s the economic philosophy that started bringing the world out of the Great Depression and brought us some of the great technological wonders of the 20th century, like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore and the Tennessee Valley Authority, not to mention many of the monuments that populate our nation’s capital.

In the 1950’s it was the economic philosophy behind our Interstate system and in the 1960’s, the space program — NASA. We can go on and on about all the practical applications we received from our exploration of space, which is an indirect result of the space program, but directly, the space program ultimately employed hundreds of thousands of workers around the country making everything from the rockets to the decals and clothing patches created for each manned space flight.

Companies were contracted to make those little patches, which any of us can buy, and those companies employed workers to make them. I had a friend who worked for a company that made some sort of little doohickeys for the solid rocket boosters used in the shuttle program. That company made other things for the space program and the military, not to mention doohickeys for civilian use in other industries.

Government investment, what Republicans like to call spending, spurs economic growth and ever since John Maynard Keynes came up with his philosophy, there have been countless studies that have proven it works. In fact, the only to time Keynesian Economics appears to have failed is when government cut back on those investments too early.

The GOP, the party of the rich and powerful, has convinced people the federal government is bad. Ronald Reagan got the ball rolling when he famously said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Unfortunately too many people bought into that lie and the GOP has been riding it for 30-plus years, despite the facts that Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times, raised taxes 17 times and expanded the national debt by 300%.
 It was during Reagan’s presidency that the national debt broke the trillion-dollar mark.

Getting back to our current state of affairs … when John Boehner and his Teabag masters holler, “Where are the jobs Mr. President,” it rings pretty hollow, especially because the Tea Bag crowd left Washington before passing a bill to authorize money for construction and improvement projects for our aviation infrastructure. That little stunt left nearly 80,000 workers idle for a few days until Congress came back and passed a bill that would fund the projects through September.

The Republicans have stood in the way of progress the entire time Obama has been president, claiming if we just cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans — the job creators as they like to call them — job growth would grow, despite all the evidence that proves otherwise. In the nearly ten years since the Bush tax cuts were put in place, the country has lost over three million jobs.

And the so-called job creators are sitting on over three trillion dollars in capital and have been since late 2009. They haven’t created any jobs to speak of, other than some low wage temporary work. Why? They and their lap dogs in Congress claim it’s due to uncertainty. That isn’t the least bit true; it’s due to greed.

We had this debt-ceiling crisis, manufactured by the Tea Party, which caused a lot of uncertainty in business, including the financial institutions that set credit ratings. Even though Congress finally settled it before the deadline, it has had ramifications. There are members of Congress who called for the destruction of the financial system by defaulting on our financial promises and this scares the financial community, normally a strong ally of the Republican Party. There probably wasn’t any uncertainty before the Teabaggers decided to fuck with the system.

The result of the Teabaggers’ fucking around: our nation’s credit rating has been lowered for the first time in our nation’s history. Our nation’s leaders chose to punt all decisions on the debt, putting it off to a group called a super Congress.

This could have been averted with a full-scale recovery (or stimulus) plan. Taken over a course of five years, our roads, bridges, dams, power plants, communications (including internet), water; all of this could be getting fixed, improved or updated. We could be watching the construction of high-speed rail across the country.

Instead, we have knucklehead Republican governors, looking to suck the sac of the Teabaggers, refusing federal stimulus money to fix the roads and bridges and keep teachers, nurses and first responders employed. And we will get higher rates on our credit cards, loans and mortgages, a tax of a different sort that will affect every American, especially those who will now lose their jobs as a result.

Thank you, Teabaggers.

Spinning Eyeballs

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:01:00 -0600

Saw something on Facebook yesterday that was pretty funny: “Raising the Dept ceiling is kind of like increasing Blood Alcohol levels to solve Drunk Driving.”

Okay, that’s funny. I’m sure with all the people posting that comment on Facebook it’s gotten a lot of laughs. Sadly though, there are more than a few people who actually think it’s an accurate description of raising the debt ceiling.

Since the days of Dwight D. Eisenhower (at least) our government has been raising the debt ceiling to pay for the debts “we” have incurred as a result of government functions. We can have an entirely different debate on those government functions and bringing down spending and increasing revenues, but the debt ceiling is all about paying for the bills we have already created.

The president with the most debt limit increases to his credit would be President Ronald Reagan. In his eight-year term he raised it 18 times.

George W. Bush (43) raised it seven times with near unanimous support from the Republicans controlling Congress. And he took a quarter trillion dollar surplus and turned it into a 12 trillion dollar deficit.

President Bill Clinton raised it four times. In fact, our government has never failed to raise the debt ceiling — ever. We, as a nation, have always been responsible and paid our debts.

Now, with a Democrat in the White House — more accurately, because there is a Democrat in the White House (and a Black one at that) — the Republicans have all of a sudden become deficit hawks and have decided to not honor our debts by not raising the debt ceiling.

A band of ignorant Teabagger Congressmen and women who are holding their party by the short hairs are determined to hurl the nation over the cliff into default. They are advocating we not pay our bills. These are the same people who say our government should operate within its budget just like responsible families do. Yeah, well, responsible families, when they run up their debts, like credit cards, car loans and mortgages, also pay their bills.
 Just heard this on Hardball with Chris Matthews, a description of Republicans currently in Congress, from former Reagan budget advisor Bruce Bartlett: “Stupid, crazy, craven or cowards” afraid of the tea party.
 Bartlett also said, providing the numbers to back it up, that 40% of the debt is due to the Bush tax cuts. But Bartlett is a Republican! Apparently he didn’t get any of the Kool-Aid. Watch the video clip at the bottom of this screed. Bartlett explains how Bush (43) turned the surplus into a huge deficit.

What we have in Congress now are people who think, or at least want “us” to believe, there will be no great consequences should the debt ceiling not be raised. They don’t take as serious the fact that the bond rating companies, usually staunch allies of the Republican Party, guarantee the U.S. bond rating will be lowered and that, every economist agrees, will raise taxes on everyone in the form of increased interest on every form of credit, from credit cards to home mortgages.

That, every economist agrees, will cause some companies to lay off employees because other companies won’t be able to afford doing any business at all. They will close their doors.

The usual rightwing nutbags are out there telling anyone who will listen killing the U.S. credit rating won’t have any seriously bad effects: Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin chief among them. Then there is the Illinois freshman congressman, Joe Walsh (not the legendary guitarist) who called the president a liar in a Youtube video and claimed, against all evidence to the contrary, nothing bad will happen if the debt ceiling isn’t increased.

And, despite the evidence to the contrary, much of it felt by the entire nation three years ago, Walsh insists it is President Obama who “bankrupted this nation and destroyed job creation.”

Congressman, you are full of it. By the time Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, the previous administration had run up the debt to 12 trillion dollars, as noted earlier, and the nation had been losing half a million jobs per month for over a year. But Walsh is just plain crazy. Listening to him in those videos on Youtube will make your eyeballs spin. Seriously Congressman Walsh, even some Republicans admit Obama inherited a bad recession, including a massive hemorrhaging of jobs.
 Congressman Walsh’s ideas aren’t even the craziest. That distinction belongs to Georgia Republican and Teabagger, Paul Broun who says we should lower the debt ceiling.
 Let’s not only drive this puppy off a cliff, let’s do it even faster!

Here’s the rub: should the U.S. default, our economy will fall deeper into a recession as more people lose their jobs. This, some Republicans hope, will make the president look bad and therefore easier to beat in the 2012 general election. Really? Are there people so cynical they are willing and eager to cause yet another financial meltdown just in order to win an election?

A couple weeks ago Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell said something very prescient. He offered a plan that would separate the debt ceiling bill from any budget negotiations just so the debt ceiling could be raised. He said that if the nation defaulted it would look bad for Republicans and the GOP would pay the price come November 2012. But, Republicans aren’t listening to McConnell or Speaker of the House John Boehner and many of these Tea Party people consider McConnell and Boehner to be part of the problem in Washington.

Getting back to what started today’s rant, here is an accurate analogy for raising the debt ceiling: “Raising the debt ceiling is exactly like telling the bank you are going to pay for all the charges you’ve rung up on that credit card for the past 10 years.”

Ronald Reagan put it this way in 1987 when Democrats were playing politics with the debt ceiling: “Congress consistently brings the Government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans’ benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations. It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility – two things that set us apart from much of the world.”

Who knew I would one day be agreeing with Ronald Reagan! That just blew my mind. Time to lie down and absorb that factoid, my eyeballs are spinning.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Indebted

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 05:01:00 -0600

What’s bigger news? The debt ceiling is probably the most pressing issue for us in the United States. Seniors and the poor will be taking it on the chin — again — and the big banks that started this recession we’re in: they don’t lose anything. Nothing. Even though their profits are now through the roof and their executives are getting billions in bonuses.

If President Obama gets a deal, the one he seems to be backing, we can immediately see folks collecting Social Security and those dependent on Medicare and Medicaid getting less. For Social Security, it could be cuts of 100 dollars a month or more. There’s a sneaky reason Obama hasn’t taken Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s offer to raise the debt ceiling independent of budget negotiations: he wants to tie Republicans to votes and policies to cut these social programs.

In the House of Representatives, they just passed a bill that has the deepest cuts to social programs and actually does more to put people deeper into poverty than even Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget bill. It’s called the “Cut, Cap and Balance Act” and among other things, requires the nation to pass a balanced budget amendment before the debt ceiling is raised.

The last amendment considered for the Constitution, the Equal Rights Amendment, was being considered for 60 years. It had to be ratified by the 50 states before 1982, but didn’t make the deadline.
 This is just a side note: the first president to call for the ratification of the ERA was none other than Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Who most vociferously opposed it going into the deadline: Republicans. Apparently they don’t believe women deserve equal rights.

The big deal about that “plan,” if one wants to be generous in their description, is that it guts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by over a third — each — at a time when more people are being pushed into poverty or growing into retirement age. There’s some fiscally responsible planning!

Oh, and it gives more tax breaks to the richest one per cent of citizens. Can you imagine? This is funny: on one of the opinion shows, can’t remember if it was FOX or MSNBC (doesn’t matter) one guy was bemoaning the president and other Democrats going after Americans who own private jets, as if the tax policy is or will be based on whether someone owns a private jet.

So, before I get too far off on another tangent, the guy is whining about how these poor people, the über wealthy, some of whom own private jets, were paying more of the tax burden than poor people! My God! They pay over 2/3 of all the taxes collected by government! O Dear! And, the average über wealthy person pays over 25% in federal taxes alone and poor people — POOR PEOPLE WHO WORK — don’t pay any taxes at all! Which is kind of a lie.

Actually, it’s a complete lie. In my most recent shit job I was paying about 14% in federal tax on top of the SSI and FICA deductions. Truly, I was working for a poverty-level wage. Below poverty actually. Employers have no problem paying poverty-level wages because the employment market is such that they can get away with this type of employee abuse. If you don’t want the job, ten more are standing in line to get it. But that’s a whole different bucket of worms.
 A shit job can be described as: one you don’t like but have because good jobs are not available and (this is important) the pay sucks.

The über wealthy indeed pay far more of the total taxes than the rest of us. That’s because the top 1% of wage earners, I’m sorry, let me rephrase that — income earners — have incomes that are roughly 500% higher than the average American worker, who makes an average of $50,000 per year. Gimme a moment, I’m doing the math … yep, $250,000 per year and the people who own the private jets, they earn five times that, or more.

So, the debt limit. In years past, especially with the previous president, it was passed without notice. No one cared, certainly not the Republican-controlled Congress that raised the national debt by five trillion dollars. They passed debt limit increase bills seven times and President Bush signed all seven without hesitation.

What’s the difference? Well, it’s a Democrat in the White House. So now the Republicans want to become fiscal conservatives. And in their sights are the Big Three social programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The upshot is, Social Security hasn’t added anything to the deficit. It is separately funded, just look on your pay stub and you’ll see the deduction, and it has a surplus of over two trillion dollars, enough to fund every eligible citizen at current levels for the next 25 years.

Republicans have been trying to kill the Big Three social programs since their inceptions and they see this as an opportune moment to do it. The problem with President Obama is he appears to be willing to go back on his campaign promise to not cut the Big Three and do exactly that.

On Friday Speaker of the House Boehner said he was suspending talks with the President and working with the Senate on a plan, even though the deal he had with the president gave his party cuts to the social and domestic programs. His sticking point: tax loopholes and some deductions would be eliminated to raise revenue.

Then the president had an impromptu press conference in the White House Briefing Room Friday. He wasn’t a happy camper. The tone of his voice was higher and rose as he explained his frustration. It was one of the few times I can think of that the president’s rhetoric got partisan. He said the Republicans will have to ask themselves if they can say “Yes” to anything. He said the Republicans, led by the radio and TV talk show hosts and beholding to a pledge that boxed them into a corner, were being irresponsible.

No kidding. They declared themselves to be the Party of No the day President Obama took the oath of office. And instead of living up to the oaths they took when they took office, they are kowtowing to the few on their side who are controlling the strings of the Republican Party, including Grover Norquist with his pledge to not raise taxes.

By the time anyone reads this, there should be a meeting taking place in the White House between all Congressional leaders: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

My guess is, they will do a variation on the Mitch McConnell plan and separate the budget from the bill to raise the debt ceiling. The question is, will House Republicans, or at least enough of them for a majority vote, go along? The Tea Party is calling the shots and they insanely think there will be no significant consequences if we default on our debt.

The debt limit will be raised before the deadline, there’s no doubt about that and the way it’s starting to look, the president will look like the smart one, keeping us from defaulting on our debts and standing up for the average Americans as well. President Obama may have played this perfectly.

That was the big story right there, the debt ceiling negotiations.

Then on Friday, terrorists hit Oslo, Norway with two bombs. An otherwise sedate city known mostly for the Nobel Awards, they have fallen victim to terrorists. On top of the bombs, a terrorist dressed as a policeman killed at least 84 teenagers in a youth camp right outside of the Norwegian capital.

Police took into custody a man who is responsible for both the bombings and the shootings. Apparently he has fundamentalist Christian views. The latest total death toll stands at 91, but authorities expect that to rise as they find more bodies at the island camp and as some victims die from their wounds.

Upping the Ante

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:01:00 -0600

In about three weeks our nation is going to default on its debt. Well, what does that mean? It means the government — we — will be unable to pay our debts. People receiving government payments for things like Social Security and Medicare won’t be receiving their checks, although that won’t be felt until the September checks are scheduled for delivery. It also means those of us receiving pensions or V.A. disability checks will be stiffed.

But that isn’t even the worst of it for the country as a whole. For those of us who receive those kinds of payments it will be a problem, but the larger issue will be what the default does to the economy: interest rates on every conceivable type credit will go up. From mortgages to car loans to credit cards. Should the U.S. default on its debt, the credit rating will go down and the entities that set the credit ratings will lower the rating for the United States and that will instantly cost the U.S. about a trillion more dollars in interest.

In other words, not raising the debt ceiling before the August 2 deadline will instantly increase the debt by nearly 25%.

The main sticking point: for only the second time in our nation’s history one group of legislators has decided to link the raising of the debt ceiling to budget negotiations. That group of legislators is of course the Republican Party. Not coincidentally, they were the party that did it in 1995 when the government actually did shut down.

It would appear to be an insane plan. For nearly 100 years, legislators and presidents alike have known that the debt ceiling applies to current debt, the commitments we have already agreed to pay so whenever there was a need to raise the debt ceiling, Congress past a bill to raise it. In fact, it has been such a routine procedure the news organizations barely covered it.

When George W. Bush was in the White House and Republicans controlled the Congress, the debt ceiling was raised seven times without note. Well, one freshman Senator from Ill-Annoyus voted no to raising the debt limit in 2006. And then he didn’t bother to vote on it again until 2008 when it was tied to the TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

That fuckin’ Obama! Just recently in a television interview the president described his vote in 2006 as basically a rookie mistake. He was an idealistic idiot. Well, he probably was, even when he was running for president, but he’s gotten real now. He knows what catastrophe will follow if that debt limit isn’t raised.

So, now the rookie senator is in the middle of his first term as president and he let’s Congress know the debt limit needs to be raised, as it has been done routinely since … forever. Well, actually, since 1917. Ninety-four years.

But, the Republican Party, recently changed to the Tea Party, decided raising the debt ceiling went against their party’s ideals and the Constitution. I won’t go into the twisted logic behind that notion, mainly because it hasn’t been against the Republican Party’s ideals until a Democrat, a Black one at that, occupied the White House.

Right from the beginning the Republicans vowed to be the Party of No and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said his party’s number one priority was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. So, they voted “No” on everything so very little could be accomplished and then won control of the House of Representatives beholding to the insanity of the Teabaggers.

That development has backed the Republican Party into a corner on several occasions now since the new Congress was seated January 4th of this year, but none so acutely as the debt ceiling.

The Tea Party has taken the Republican Party not just far, far to the right, but off the edge with insane ideas. No Republican has been a more enthusiastic champion of the Teabaggers than the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary field, Michele Bachmann. She’s out there on the stump telling the primary voters exactly what they want to hear: no taxes and no increase in the debt limit. The scary thing is, she firmly believes in these ideas. Scarier still, that’s what the Tea Party believes.

What some of these Tea Party advocates are saying is that defaulting on our national debt won’t have any adverse effects, or only minor effect. Bachmann, and two of her Teabagger colleagues in the House, have called the president a liar in one way or another, Bachmann calling for the president to “tell the truth” about payments to Medicare and Social Security recipients as well as members of the military and their families.

Well, the truth is, if the money isn’t there, the payments can’t be made and that’s what most of the members of Congress know, especially Mitch McConnell who remembers which party took the blame for the government shut down in 1995.

Freshman Republican Congressman from Ill-Annoyus, Joe Walsh (not the great guitarist), actually put out a video calling the president a liar. He said.
 “President Obama, quit lying. You know darn well that if August 2nd comes and goes there is plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all social security obligations. And you also know that you and only you have the discretion to make those payments.”
 “I know you have a willing media that protects everything you say and do, but have you no shame sir? In three short years you have bankrupted this country and destroyed job creation. You are either in over your head, don’t understand what makes this country great, or are hell-bent in turning us into some European big government wasteland.”
 "Come on President Obama. Quit scaring the American people and quit talking about band-aids and peas. Lead for a change. Get members of your own party to support a Balanced Budget Amendment."

A willing media that protects everything the president says or does? When did that ever happen? This is the same media the questions every decision the president makes and gave equal credibility to the lies told by those opposing health care reform. And Walsh seems to forget what happened before November 2, 2008. The economic system collapsed causing millions of people to lose their jobs. That was before Obama won the election and well before Obama took his oath of office.

And hell-bent on turning the United States into “… some European big government wasteland”? Well, Walsh knows how to be a drama queen. These Teabaggers are off the hook!

Republican Steve King, along with Bachmann and Texas Republican Louie Gohmert presented a bill to Congress that would require the president to pay the interest on the debt first, if the debt limit isn’t raised by August 2. It won’t pass, even if Speaker of the House Boehner allowed it to go to a vote.

But all of this speaks to the power the Teabaggers have over the Republican Party. Last week Republican Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor of Virginia, walked out on the debt ceiling/budget negotiations. Wednesday, the president said “enough is enough” and ended negotiations after Cantor reiterated his refusal to put taxes on the table and his insistence on draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, among other aid programs.

Much to the pleasure of the Teabagger base of the Republican Party. But the so-called “responsible” members of the party know this is dangerous; they have a good idea of what happens on August 3rd if the debt limit isn’t increased.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell knows this. Hell, even Speaker Boehner knows it, the reason for his strained efforts to show some unity with his House colleague. But both also know the Teabagger wing of their party has them by the short hairs so they can’t reign in the crazies of the party, like Bachmann and Walsh—and certainly not Eric Cantor.

McConnell put forth a plan that would separate the budget from the debt limit vote, a plan that brought praise from the president, but those Teabaggers, they don’t like it. Newt Gingrich, hoping to gain some support for his presidential ambitions, said of McConnell’s plan, “… is an irresponsible surrender to big government, big deficits and continued over-spending.”

And that’s about the nicest thing Teabaggers and those currying their favor has said about McConnell

You see, even if these Tea Bag loving legislators know what will happen if the U.S. defaults, they have this notion they can score political points, at least with their base, by letting the U.S. default. That’s what’s so disturbing. They are willing to run us off the cliff just to gain the vote of a small minority of the American public.

On the other hand, as McConnell admitted; “If we go into default, [President Obama] will say that Republicans are making the economy worse and try to convince the public — maybe with some merit, if people stop getting their Social Security checks and military families start getting letters saying service people overseas don’t get paid. It’s an argument he could have a good chance of winning, and all of the sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy. That is very bad positioning going into an election.”

And really, that is the priority of the Republican Party’s leadership. It isn’t the nation and our economy; it’s winning elections.

The End of Weiner and Other News

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:01:00 -0600

All of that drama at the Playboy Mansion was overshadowed by a bigger news story. Bigger even than the Republican debate and the subsequent fall out.

This is interesting. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who thought Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann won that debate. Nearly every commentator on TV thought so as well. In fact, Chris Matthews thinks she has a very good chance of winning the nomination. Mit Romney, whom everyone agrees is about the only candidate who can beat President Obama in a general election, has one big, glaring problem: he’s a phony. Everyone sees it, everyone knows it, including Republican primary voters.

Bachmann, on the other hand, has the gift shared by paranoid schizophrenics and delusional zealots alike: she truly believes what she says. Not only that, since first making a fool of herself on national TV, she — unlike Sarah Palin — has done her homework. Michele Bachmann is a genuine Teabagger and she’s not afraid to say what she means into a microphone.

Unlike Tim Pawlenty, who couldn’t look Romney in the eye and criticize him for the Massachusetts health care plan, “Obamneycare.” Besides exposing himself as a phony, Pawlenty showed his true nature: he’s a pussy. He should get out of the race now and save he and his few followers the time and what little money they have left.

This is what really sold Bachmann to the Republican primary voters: when she said she has like a gazillion foster children, plus five of her own, people just loved her obvious and genuine compassion for the less fortunate. Add that to all her extreme views on the usual conservative wedge issues, god, guns, gays — and abortion — not to mention her extreme views on everything else, and Michele Bachmann emerges as the Republican front runner.

That debate in New Hampshire will not only win her the Iowa Caucuses, but I’ll bet she wins the New Hampshire primary as well, Mit Romney’s backyard.

The only bump in that road would be the emergence of another kook, someone like that fat boy from New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, or that cowboy savant from Texas, Governor Rick Perry. Seriously, how does one vote for a guy to be president who once suggested his state secede from the Union?

If either of those two Republican governors gets in the race Bachmann will have a serious challenge. Barring that — or a serious faux pas or scandal — it’s hard to see any of the other seven candidates winning the nomination.

For the longest time people referred to Bachmann as “Palin-lite.” Well, people will have to start referring to Palin and “Bachmann-lite.”

The half term governor won’t be giving up her multi-million dollar lifestyle any time soon. She has a sweet deal. Just found this out not too long ago: she has her SarahPac, which collects millions of dollars from the wealthy elite who support the Republican Party. She doles out a bit of it now and then to political candidates around the country, but, she can keep the rest of it for herself and use it as she pleases. Like to buy a home in Arizona! As long as she doesn’t declare herself a political candidate for anything, that money is hers! How effin’ cool is that!

So, if she were to get into the presidential race now, she would lose access to all that money, except for political purposes. And the laws are fairly specific about what qualifies as political activity. Her bus trip in May might have qualified; she kept dogging Romney, upstaging him at every opportunity, especially on the day he officially announced his candidacy.

None of that was the BIG news last week. No!

Oh of course we’re talking Weiner. New York Congressman — oops, now former New York Congressman — Anthony Weiner. He resigned Thursday, giving in to the full court press from the members of his own party.

That is why the Democratic Party will never be the force it was for so many decades: they eat their own. You don’t see the hypocritical Republicans calling for the resignations of their members when they get caught in sex scandals. Hell no! Not even if the person is arrested, as Senator Larry Craig was after soliciting sex from an undercover sheriff’s deputy in a Twin Cities Airport men’s room. The Idaho Republican served out his term.

Governor Mark Sanford served out his term as governor of South Carolina after it was revealed he was flying off to Argentina to be with his girlfriend — despite having a wife and kids. Gave new meaning to hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Then there’s Nevada’s Republican Senator John Ensign. Never heard any Republicans demanding he resign after he admitted to having an affair with a staffer who was also married — to another of Ensign’s staffers. This all first came to light in 2007.

He did resign though, in April of this year, when an investigation revealed he broke various campaign laws trying to cover up the whole sordid affair in order to prevent the Senate ethics committee from making details of his affair public. It all might become public anyway because the F.B.I. is investigating to see what, if any, laws were broken.

Now we come to David Vitter, the Louisiana Senator who admitted to breaking local laws when he hired prostitutes from the “DC Madame.” That was just about four years ago, July of 2007. People made a big deal about how his wife stood next to him, sharing the humiliation as he explained and apologized for his actions with prostitutes. But no one in the Republican Party publicly called for his resignation and Vitter still serves in the U.S. Senate.

The point is, there are a lot of Republicans and conservatives dancing on Anthony Wiener’s political grave, making all the salacious jokes one can make with Wiener’s name and none of them will denounce their Republican colleagues who have been involved in sexual scandals. And none have demanded David Vitter resign. Not one.

Anthony Weiner shouldn’t have resigned. he didn’t break any laws, didn’t even get his dick wet in some other woman! He just “sexted” and tweeted naughty talk and pictures of his dick to women he had never met. He cheated on his wife to be sure, but not like the afore-mentioned Republicans. Even Republican commentator Pat Buchanan was sticking up for Weiner, but the guy has few friends in the Democratic Caucus. Still, his party, the Democrats, screwed him. They should have stood behind him. Chastise him royally in private, take away some prized committee assignments maybe, but not force him out of Congress. This is why they may never gain control of the House of Representatives any time soon. They have no backbone or discipline when it comes to partisan politics.

If you’re a conservative having fun at the expense of Anthony Weiner and were demanding he resign, then you are a hypocrite. Weiner should have pushed back against his party leadership and told his Republican critics to go fuck themselves.

Decline to Respond

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:01:00 -0600

You knew someone was going to say it, it was a Republican presidential debate after all, but the question was: who would be the first to say it. The “it” being, “President Obama is un-American.” The most likely to say it first, by most estimations, was Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and then Rick Santorum. But it wasn’t either of them. Nope, it was Newt Gingrich. In his opening statement.

Newt went on an anti-worker, anti-Obama rant, as they all did, but Newt’s rant had a little more fire than the others. And once Gingrich got the demonize Obama ball rolling, he didn’t go it alone. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said of the president: “He’s turned his back on our allies and embraced our enemies.” To be sure, on this night, Obama was the punching bag, and all seven candidates piled on.

But the president wasn’t the only target of the seven. The second most prevalent theme was: unions are anti-American. Everyone of the candidates went on ad nauseum about making the entire United States “right to work,” which is just a euphemism for “give more power to the corporations.”

For those who do not understand what “right to work” means, here’s a brief description: It undermines employees who have voted to be part of a union. When a majority of employees vote to make their workplace union, it usually means that to work at the place every employee has to join the union. The union negotiates for the wages and benefits of all the employees. If someone does not wish to be a union member they can always find a non-union shop to work.

“Right to work” laws say that a person does not have to join a union if he or she applies to for a job in a union shop. For the past 100 years corporations have been looking for legal ways of killing unions because unions make the work life of employees better, meaning, better work conditions, more and better benefits and higher wages.

Someone who gets hired at a union shop gets the benefits of the union’s negotiations whether he or she pays union dues or not. The hope of the corporations and their paid cronies in government, federal, state and local, is that people will opt out of the union thereby weakening the union’s collective power, which in turn weakens the support the union gives its paid cronies in government: the Democratic Party.

Picking up on that line of thought, Mit Romney went so far as to say President Obama gave the Big Three Automakers to the United Auto Workers (UAW) with the loans given to the automakers in 2009. Well, that’s a bit of a rewrite, considering the workers took huge cuts in wages and benefits to get the loans to the auto industry. But the rewrite sounded so good Rick Santorum jumped on it and echoed Romney.

For those who might be interested in the truth of what took place, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker held up the auto loans until the union gave up major concessions, especially in benefits in their pensions and medical coverage. I don’t know why, but Republicans are against the rank and file having decent wages, good health care and livable retirement.
 Here’s a test for those who agree with the Republicans and corporations about wages and pensions. Ask anyone who retired from a union shop if he or she would give up his or her pension. And then ask if they are happy the union worked so hard to ensure the retiree would have that pension.

Here’s a really funny thing said during the debate. Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty commented on President Obama’s foreign policy with this line: “This president is a declinist.” What? What the fuck is a “declinist”? Had to go look up that new word.

“Declinism” is the new philosophy neo-cons and Teabaggers have created to describe Democrats and liberals in general. It’s the opposite of “American Exceptionalism,” another made-up term every good Republican politician uses to get noticed by the extreme right. Now, there is some history behind that term, going back to 1831 when French writer Alexis de Tocqueville first used it to describe the relatively new nation. And it wasn’t entirely complimentary.
 “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.”

In the 1920’s the American Communist Party picked up on “American Exceptionalism” and used it to promote their agenda, so it’s a bit ironic the neo-cons and Republicans are using it to promote their agenda!

The Republicans are a funny bunch!

So, they created a counter to their “exceptionalism,” something they could hang on their political rivals: “Declinism.” It’s a pessimistic belief that things are in decline. Wow, that’s deep.

Here’s the irony, and I don’t believe it’s hypocrisy because it doesn’t appear the politicians using these terms understand what the Hell they are saying, but if you watched the debate last night and viewed it even a little objectively you’ll agree: every one of the candidates on that stage was quite pessimistic in their views of the future. By the definition of the neocon created word “declinism,” all seven were declinists.

But that’s the way of Republicans and conservatives in general: words and appearance over substance. It’s no surprise none of them had any specific ideas on what to do to correct the ills of America, other than repeal the new health care law. Then what?

Create new jobs. How?

In foreign policy we need to lead and the president isn’t a leader. How do we lead? By not getting involved!

But I have to admit this: Michele Bachmann won this debate, hands down. She was poised, never stumbled over her words and never had to be told to speed up her answers.

Tim Pawlenty, on the other hand, he’s toast. When given the opportunity to publicly tie frontrunner Mit Romney to “Obamacare,” as he did the day before when he referred to the health care law as “Obamneycare” on Fox News Sunday, the former Minnesota governor looked scared when moderator John King of CNN asked him that question. King even pointed out Pawlenty had his rival standing right next to him — the perfect opportunity to make his point, but Pawlenty couldn’t do it.

Romney is a cool character. He stood there staring at Pawlenty — smiling. And his rival? He couldn’t even look at Romney, let alone attack him, as he did Sunday on Fox. At that moment we learned the true character of Tim Pawlenty, and it pains me to write this about another guy named Tim: he’s a coward! He’s chicken! He’s a pussy.

In fact, Pawlenty blamed President Obama for using the term “Obamneycare.” You gotta be shittin’ us governor! Tim Pawlenty won’t be the Republican nominee in November 2012. Hell, I doubt he will be in it after the Iowa Caucuses. Nobody votes for a pussy.

•••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• ••••
Speaking of pussy … “Oh Tim, you’re so crude” … yes, but damn! It’s such a sweet segue!

So, Hugh M. Hefner was all set to marry San Diego girl Crystal Harris in a few days, but the couple had a tumultuous argument over the weekend and voila! She has called off the wedding and moved all of her things out of the Playboy Mansion. I doubt there are more than a handful of people feeling sorry for either one. Most people thought it was creepy, an 80-something man marrying a 20-something woman.

Not me. If they actually love each other, or, at the very least they each are getting what they want from the relationship, why not. Americans are so stuck in these outdated ideas of what is acceptable when it comes to love and marriage. But, it isn’t going to happen now.

Bon Chance Hef and Crystal!

Sex, Sex, Sex!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:01:00 -0600

Wednesday on MSNBC Cenk Uygur had two people on his program discussing whether or not Anthony Weiner should resign. One was a Republican and the other a Democrat. What was interesting about it, and many may know exactly where this is going, the Republican was all fire and brimstone, Weiner must resign, but when the subject was Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, well, that was comparing apples to oranges.

You see Vitter, just as married as Weiner, actually consorted with prostitutes in Washington, DC and New Orleans, LA while Weiner engaged in electronic sexual play. So therefore Vitter’s transgression didn’t rise to the level of him needing to resign, but Weiner — why that fuckin’ scumbag! What’s he still doin’ in office?

The hypocrisy coming from the Republican Party/Conservatives is astounding in it’s consistency. Pick an issue!

For instance, this morning Republican Senator Bob Corker was on with Andrea Mitchell talking about the action taking place in Libya. According to Corker the president consulted with the United Nations, but not with the U.S. Congress. Well okay, that’s not really true, the president did inform Congress he would be joining our allies in NATO to provide a no-fly zone over parts of Libya. They all had a meeting on St Patrick’s Day in the Situation Room — the White House Situation Room — not the CNN show with Wolf Blitzer.

When our resources are committed to armed conflict, whether it includes “boots on the ground” or just missile and air strikes, Congress must always be consulted. It’s required as part of the War Powers Act and the president says he is in full compliance with the law. But, Republican leaders, for some crazy reason, insist there wasn’t any consultation.

So, Corker went on to explain, he sent a list of five questions to the administration asking about the Libyan action. Corker said he didn’t receive a reply for nearly 80 days and then it was from an under-secretary, not from the president or the Secretaries of Defense and State.

Andrea Mitchell was shocked — SHOCKED — that the Tennessee Senator didn’t get a reply directly from either Secretary Clinton or Gates. Okay, that’s somewhat eyebrow raising, but really, she didn’t follow up with the obvious question: what were Corker’s five questions? The resolution Corker and Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat, sponsored on Wednesday, has 21 questions.

On the whole, requiring some clear-cut direction for our involvement in Libya is important, really can’t argue with Corker and Webb on that. But then, when talking to Andrea Mitchell, Corker says we know how easy it is to get into an armed conflict and how hard it is to get out of it. Ya think Senator?

Where you in 2002-03 when the president from your party was starting a war — with ground troops — in Iraq? When that same president let an armed conflict in Afghanistan basically fall by the wayside to launch that war in Iraq?

The resolution is the right thing to do at this point, but it’s galling to hear these hypocrites attacking the president and other Democrats for things Republicans have done with impunity in years past. And not so long ago.

Former Republican Senator from Idaho, Larry Craig, was busted, arrested, for soliciting sex from other men in a Minneapolis, MN airport restroom. Did Craig, a married man, resign? No. He served out his term and chose not to run again. There wasn’t any outcry from Republicans over that, even though Craig pleaded guilty

Then there was Newt Gingrich who, while trying to prosecute President Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, was having an affair himself with the woman who is now his wife. And David Vitter, also a member of the House of Representatives at the time and prosecuting President Clinton, had been consorting with the “DC Madame” the entire time. Now Vitter is a U.S. Senator and no one, not one Republican, has demanded Vitter resign. And he has admitted to breaking the law!

Then there was South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Lied to everyone, like Congressman Anthony Weiner did, about an affair he was having with a women in Argentina. “A good friend,” Sanford described the woman, Maria Belen Chapur. Sanford didn’t resign, even after it was shown that he used some state resources to cover up the affair when he claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Sanford let his term run out and then, after his wife left him and he left the Governor’s Mansion, he skedaddled off to South America to be with his new woman. Peace and happiness to Sanford and Chapur, but the hypocrisy exhibited by the GOP here is … well, it’s been going on so long it’s no longer disgusting.
 Gotta be honest though, Chapur has a nice ass!

The problem the Democrats have, and we’ve seen it over and over again, from the loans to the Big Three automakers, to the new Health Care Reform Law, is that Democrats let the Republicans frame the discussion on every story. It didn’t help that Weiner lied to everyone close to him, but the Democrats need to close ranks around Weiner and bring up every Republican caught in a sex scandal.

Now, after watching this all play out since Weiner’s admission of guilt, I’m firmly in the camp that says the New York Congressman should not resign. He needs to pay a price to his fellow Democrats, the ones he made fools of when he lied to them, and of course his wife, but don’t resign.

Republicans have been getting away with the same behavior for decades and quite frankly, Weiner, as far as we know, didn’t break any laws. He cheated on his wife using Twitter and apparently Facebook. Big deal. It’s really between Weiner and his wife. It doesn’t really matter to me what a legislator does on his or her personal time, as long as that behavior doesn’t affect me directly. Hell, we don’t even keep a log of what they are doing when they are on the job. If Weiner’s constituents want to get rid of him, they can vote him out in 2012.

But I’m guessing come January 2013 Anthony Weiner will be taking the oath of office once again and his bulging undies will be long forgotten.

Just an aside: I’m all for sex between consenting adults be legal, even if that sex includes someone getting paid for the experience, so I really have no problem with Senator Vitter paying for sex. Good for him, too bad for his wife. Can’t believe she’s still with him.

The hypocrisy here though is that Vitter continues to promote abstinence only sex education and his allegedly high moral standard all of us should live down to — while he himself cheats on his wife, breaking the law to do it. The holier-than-thou attitude, the hubris, hasn’t ceased. If anything, it has grown.

Republicans, give us a break.
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A little quote I got from my friend Keith from his page on Facebook: “Above all else, be yourself … Unless you happen to be a complete asshole. In which case you might want to consider changing your crappy attitude!”

Politics Slightly Unusual

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:01:00 -0600

HOLY CRAP!
Anthony Weiner admitted he sent the photo of his undie wrapped dick to the woman in Seattle! Is she sleepless? Judging from the interview she did, the woman is amused. She doesn’t think the New York Congressman is a bad person, just weird.

Okay, admittedly, I’m a weird person and find absolutely nothing wrong with people sending each other texts and tweets featuring sex talk and sexual photos. Shit, high school kids have been “sexting” for years already and I’d bet high schoolers started the fad Twitter sexting. Just guessing. The younger generations always tend to come up with the new ideas.

Hell, it was young people who started MySpace, Facebook and Twitter and young people who figured out how to use those mediums to hook up with people that want to have sex with — for real.
 Does anyone still use MySpace? I have a profile, but rarely log on anymore.

But here’s the thing with Anthony Weiner: he lied about it, for days. One thing all the past scandals have taught us and should have taught Anthony Weiner: when you get caught, don’t lie, just admit it. For most people it isn’t the sexual conduct that’s so wrong, it’s the cover-up. No one likes being lied to and over and over again, the voters have said that at the ballot box.

Should Weiner resign? He’s given the Democratic Caucus a huge headache and the leader of the Dems in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has called for an ethics investigation, but should he resign? Hard to say. I didn’t think Bill Clinton should resign when he finally admitted to having sex with Monica Lewinsky.

Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter didn’t resign after admitting he consorts with prostitutes, nor did Republican Nevada Senator John Ensign when he divulged his affair with a staffer who was the wife of his chief advisor— until he was faced with legal problems and was about to be ejected from the Senate.

Then of course there’s former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. He didn’t resign after admitting he wasn’t hiking the Appalachian Trail. He was flying down to Argentina to have sex with his mistress.

All of these guys, really, had/have only one person to answer to for their sexual dalliances — their wives. But it never ends there of course. All of them tried to cover up their affairs and that’s when it becomes public interest. Do we want professed liars representing us in Congress, or the White House?

Well, actually, that might be better than all the unprofessed liars, like Speaker of the House John Boehner who daily claims the policies of President Obama haven’t created any jobs. They have actually, hundreds of thousands of jobs. It’s still a bleak economy though.

Or how about the lie of “death panels” used by Republicans in 2009 to scare senior citizens over the Democrats’ new health care law. And then, in what has to be the biggest hypocrisy in decades, these same Republicans proposed a budget plan that would end Medicare!

So, Anthony Weiner lied about sexting with women not his wife. I’d say, if Weiner doesn’t resign, leave it to the voters in New York’s 9th Congressional District. But even I gotta admit, the photos look pretty bad! Creepy even.

That even knocked Sarah Palin’s rewrite of the American Revolution off the top slot in the news! And she worked so hard at stepping on Republican presidential hopeful Mit Romney’s official announcement that he was running for president.

It’s pretty funny though. While Palin was at Boston’s North Church on a sight-seeing media tour, a local reporter asked Palin a “gotcha” question: “What have you seen so far today [in Boston], and what are you going to take away from your visit?”

Palin’s answer: On his midnight ride that fateful night of April 18, 1775 Paul Revere warned the British! Actually, that’s not far off the mark, but that really wasn’t Paul Revere’s ride. The patriot rode from Boston to Lexington to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock the British regulars were coming to arrest them and possibly raid the military stores of the rebels in Concord.

Because of his ride, and that of several other couriers, colonists were able to mount a defense of Lexington and Concord, hence the famous battle from the Revolutionary War.

Now, not being far off the mark, well, Palin’s answer was still way off the mark, but Revere was captured by the British and he told his captors they would be met with heavy resistance if they continued on to Concord. And when the British patrol holding Revere heard shots being fired, they let him go and turned back to meet the main force.

So anyway, back to Palin. She was talking to Chris Wallace on Foxnews over the weekend and when Wallace gently suggested she messed up on her history of Paul Revere, she insisted she hadn’t and that she was once again the victim of the Lame Stream Media and a “gotcha” question. It seems every question asked of her in which she gives a completely bone-headed answer is a “gotcha” question.

Here’s where Palin, and by extension, her employer Foxnews, wins. The media is following around this media figure who works for this one network, giving her and Fox free publicity. For over a week she was playing hide and seek with the press, showing up at historical sites like Gettysburg uttering really stupid things and the press was eating it up!

She stepped on Mit Romney at every opportunity and the press ate it up! Romney announced his candidacy and was overshadowed by Palin’s bus trip!

In the end Sarah Palin got all the media attention she wanted and her employer got a lot of coverage as well since she is employed by Foxnews. The question has to be: why did the media spend all that time covering a competitor? Everyone agrees she is more interested in the millions she can make as a political gadfly, not in becoming president.

Just stop covering her as if she’s a political contender and treat like we treat Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck: As the crazy idiots in the lighter, more humorous segments of the news.

Makes you wonder though: why didn’t anyone ask her if she remembered any of his songs from the 1960’s? D’OH!
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This just in: Austan Goolsbee, President Obama’s top economic advisor, is unexpectedly leaving the Council of Economic Advisors. Administration officials come and go all the time, but Goolsbee’s departure was completely out of the blue. The question isn’t who will replace him as Obama’s top economic advisor, but will Goolsbee’s replacement get confirmed?

Republicans in the Senate have been blocking the president’s appointments since the inauguration and the speculation is that Republicans will continue that policy with this post as well. And they accuse the president of not working with Republicans.

Pegging the Stupid Meter

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 19 May 2011 08:01:00 -0600

Sometimes, someone says something that is so extreme, so clearly ignorant, so stupid, you think it’s a joke of some kind. It has to be! Why would anyone say something that is so profoundly wrong? Well, actually, there is an answer to that question.

Some have agendas and they figure there are at least a few lost souls who will believe and agree with the stupid statement. Like the claim, by many Republicans who are enacting Jim Crow style voter laws, that there is wide-spread voter fraud taking place all over America. There actually hasn’t been any instances of wide spread voter fraud uncovered anywhere, either by Republican or Democratic led Justice Departments, not in at least 50 years, but that is the claim Republicans use to disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters. Let’s hope the Supreme Court starts shooting down those new Jim Crow laws — soon! Before the 2012 elections.

These Republican-held legislatures are doing something so wrong it seems inconceivable, yet they are doing it. But wait, the stupid meter hasn’t been pegged yet, not by a long shot.

Step aside for Newt Gingrich. Now that he’s in the running to be the Republican nominee for president, he’s walking back — no, running back — comments he made on Meet the Press this past Sunday when he said the individual mandate in the federal health insurance law was a good thing and Rep Paul Ryan’s budget plan — with its plan to end Medicare — extreme.

So, on Wednesday Newt made a declaration on FoxNews that no one could quote anything he said on Meet the Press in TV commercials because it is all falsehoods. All of it? Everything he said? And if people use clips from his interview with David Gregory, what does Mr. Gingrich propose to do? Gingrich can’t keep people from quoting his statements made on a TV show broadcast on the airways!

That’s a pretty stupid thing to say, Mr. Gingrich, but thanks to your campaign’s press secretary, Rick Tyler, the stupid meter gets cranked up a little more.

In a reply to the Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone, Tyler wrote this: “The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.”

Is it possible Tyler meant “intimidated” instead of “intimated”? Doesn’t matter really, after reading that I had to wonder if Rick Tyler had a previous career writing graphic novels — comic books in essence. There’s a blaring and melodramatic metaphor … wait … no, there are at least two blaring and melodramatic metaphors in every sentence.

“Out of the billowing smoke …” You got to admit, if you like action movies and the graphic novels that are their inspiration, that is a great line! I’d bet Gingrich loves this guy.

On the other hand, Rick Tyler comes close to pegging the stupid meter, if you’re the type of adult who left comic books behind when you graduated into Junior High or Middle School.

Ah, but Rick Tyler and his boss Newt Gingrich don’t quite get that needle past the red zone. On just about any other day, barring an appearance by Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck and Donald Trump, those are about the dumbest, most stupid things a politician and his flunky could say publicly.

But not on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. Nope. Neither the Republican-run state legislatures nor Newt Gingrich and his lackey Rick Tyler, could possibly out-stupid what was said by another hopeful candidate for the Republican nomination: former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum.
 Just an aside here: a couple weeks ago, right after Santorum announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, Jon Stewart suggested we Google the name — the word — “Santorum” on the Internets. So I did. O Dear!

Back to Rick Santorum and his really, really stupid statement. It was a frothy appeal to the neo-con Teabagger element in the Republican Party, that very vocal part that believes President George W. Bush is responsible for getting Usama bin Laden.

Despite the facts to the contrary, as presented the C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta, these people believe torture was the key reason we were finally able to locate and kill the terrorist leader. Rick Santorum quite publicly came out and echoed that sentiment.
 You might be scratching your head wondering who Santorum is, although, if you Googled his last name you might have a rather frothy image of what Santorum is …

And Santorum insists torture is not only okay, it works. While on Hugh Hewitt’s radio program Tuesday Santorum defended using torture and insisted waterboarding is how intelligence agents got information on the courier that led to Usama bin Laden. And then he said the most stupid thing anyone in public office has said, at least in recent years. Santorum pegged the stupid meter.

“Everything I’ve read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation,” Santorum said, in reference to the courier that led U.S. intelligence to Usama bin Laden. “And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he [McCain] doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative.”
 The italics are mine to emphasize the most stupid part of that statement.

John McCain, who has often spoken of his years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, doesn’t understand how “enhanced interrogation” — torture — works? Really? From a guy who has never been tortured, never even been in an interrogation when torture was being used — a guy who hasn’t served in the military — wants us to believe a guy who was tortured doesn’t understand how it works?

To any rational person, Republican or otherwise, someone who has been subjected to torture would understand it all too painfully well. But in the fantasy world people like Santorum populate, facts are not real.
 Remember during Bush’s (43) first term when Karl Rove told reporter Ron Susskind guys like him were proud members of the reality-based community? People who “believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

McCain’s long-time aid Mark Salter responded on Facebook, saying, “For pure, blind stupidity, nobody beats Santorum. In my 20 years in the Senate, I never met a dumber member, which he reminded me of today.”

McCain’s daughter put it in even more entertaining terms in this tweet: “Rick Santorum telling my father doesn’t know about torture is like Carrot Top telling LeBron James he doesn’t know about basketball.”

There’s not much in which Senator McCain and I agree, but this I do know: when it comes to torture, or “enhanced interrogation” if that’s what you want to call it, there’s no more experienced expert than the senator from Arizona. Saying John McCain doesn’t understand torture is the most stupid thing anyone, especially a political candidate, could possibly say.

Well, maybe not. The stupid just got deeper when Santorum said his comments shouldn’t be taken as an insult to Senator McCain and his service as a Naval aviator. Really? Santorum just diminished McCain’s five years as a POW, inferred it has no relevance. How do people like Santorum think? Well, maybe that’s it, he doesn’t, at least not before he speaks.

Dude, if you’re not going to apologize to Senator McCain for the insult, then shut the fuck up! Or not. This can only get more entertaining! We may need a new stupid meter.

The Big Oil Show

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 14 May 2011 00:01:00 -0600

Man! I had this idea to write about the corporate welfare the big oil and gas companies receive in the form of annual subsidies courtesy of our tax dollars and … Rachel Maddow devotes about a half hour to the same topic Thursday Night! Damn that Maddow!

Okay, she did bring up this little factoid that I didn’t know: in 2005 when the price for a barrel of oil was about half of what it is today, and big oil was making huge profits, the big oil companies said they no longer needed the subsidies. I didn’t know that!

Big Oil has been receiving these subsidies for decades, for, they say, the need to do more exploring for oil. But the fact is, it’s mostly used for transportation costs. But, not according to Jim Mulva. He’s the Chairman of the Board of Conoco Phillips, the guy who stated in a press release, asking for the repeal of the subsidies is un-American. Huh … un-American. He just called 28 senators, two Republican congressmen (Boehner and Ryan) and the president un-American.

Chevron CEO John Watson pleaded, “don’t punish our industry for doing our job well.” Really? Can you say Gulf of Mexico?

Rex Tillerson of Exxon-Mobil didn’t go quite that far, but he calls repealing the subsidies discrimination and those of us who want to end the oil subsidies are misinformed. Well, okay, I’m not the most educated guy, so how am I misinformed?

Back to Jim Mulva and why Big Oil needs that two billion a year of our tax dollars: all the easy to get oil has been gotten so the cost of finding more and then getting it out of the ground is more expensive. But we heard that line six years ago when you guys said you didn’t need the subsidies.

Thankfully for the men representing the five big oil companies, they had a few allies in the Senate, like Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. He said that the hearings were not only a dog and pony show — he produced a large poster to prove it — he also said taking away the subsidies would mean the oil industry would lose jobs.

Well, in the last five years, when the oil companies were collecting about 125 billion every year in profits — not revenue, profits — the oil industry was laying off tens of thousands of employees.

Now let’s get this straight: the oil companies get two billion a year in subsidies, along with sweetheart leases to explore and remove oil from U.S. land and waterways and the price of gas keeps going up. The Republican argument is that if the oil subsidies are ended and the oil companies are forced to pay their fair share of taxes, then the price of gas will go up — and the industry will lose jobs?

Well, the oil companies are getting all of that and price of gas at the pump keeps going up and the oil companies are laying off tens of thousands of workers as well … eh … I think, as long as gas prices are going to go up and people will lose their jobs no matter which course we take, then I say end the subsidies and force the oil companies to pay their fair share in taxes.

The best bit of information to come out of the hearings is that one of the oil company executives, Mr. Tillerson I think, admitted that Wall Street speculators add as much as 30% to the cost of your gas. At four bucks a gallon, that’s $1.20 per gallon we’re paying for … nothing! Well, not for nothing. It really fattens the bottom line of the oil companies.

If, and this is a big “if” since Republicans are loathe to do such things, if government regulated the speculation going on in the energy markets then the price of gas could be under $3.00 a gallon.

Ah, the good old days, when I thought $2.80 was way too high for a gallon of gas. Shoot, and I almost hate admitting I’m old enough to remember this, but there was a time when we all looked in shock and awe when the price of a gallon of gas topped a dollar.

The price of gas has gone up 400% in about 30 years and in that time the oil companies have been allowed to metastasize (you might call it merging) into these large, big five conglomerates, and they’ve been getting tax breaks and subsidies for that entire time — remember, the vice president in the 1980’s, besides becoming our 41st president, was once an oil industry executive — and the price of a gallon of gas has gone up 400%.

In comparison, the median household income has only gone up about 25%

And of course the man who was sworn in as Vice President in January 2001 had not only thick ties to the oil industry, as his president did, he held secret meetings in the White House to discuss energy policy — with the heads of the big five oil companies and other related business interests.

Think about that as you pump $60.00 worth of gasoline into your car the next time you fill up. And think about this: we’ve been giving these same oil companies sweetheart leases, tax breaks and subsidies all in the hope of keeping the price of gasoline “cheap,” yet it has gone up 400%.

Oil industry apologists will tell you there are a lot of reasons for that: wars in the Middle East chief among them, but it comes down to two reasons; Wall Street speculation and plain old greed. If the oil companies can get away with it, as they are doing, then they will continue to jack up the price of gas.

A good idea for those tax breaks and subsidies that are now going to the oil companies would be research and development in renewable energy, especially our modes of transportation. Get rid of the demand for oil.

You know what really got my hackles up on this? Those TV commercials the oil industry has been using the past few months. You know the ones; a fairly attractive blonde woman of say, 35-45 years of age, dressed very business-like, telling us that the energy industry employs over three million people in America, that 75% of our oil products are from domestic sources and gosh darn it, don’t you know we should be supporting the oil industry?

And then there are those Chevron ads: “We Agree.” Agree to this: Pay your fair share!
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Here’s an interesting bit of information from the bin Laden raid: the SEALs retrieved some porn from bin Laden’s stash of videos. I’d like to know what he was watching … not that I would … err … go out buy any of it.
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Just want to remind everyone my friend Claudia is vying to become the Hooters Octagon Girl for UFC 132. Vote for Claudia once a day, every day. Can’t remember exactly when the contest ends, it’s sometime in June, so just click her photo on the right!

Credit Where It isn’t Due

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 12 May 2011 00:01:00 -0600

This is pretty funny. Well, politics can be entertaining, except this isn’t all that funny considering the topic, but it sort of makes one smile.

As we all know the president gave Special Operations Command the green light to kill or capture Usama bin Laden and the team, with all of its support, succeeded on May 1. Politicians from both sides of the aisle were congratulating the president and our military for the mission and Americans of every stripe were celebrating.

Not everyone actually. There are a very few who don’t consider killing someone a reason to celebrate, even if that person is Usama bin Laden. That’s reasonable. While watching people dance and cheer in the streets Sunday Night, I found myself a little uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating death. Yes, there was — and is — some satisfaction knowing the man behind 9/11 was gone, dead and laying at the bottom of the Arabian Sea, but to celebrate, that didn’t seem appropriate.

Americans have been like that since the beginning, which is why executions used to be public. “We” like to see people get killed. War movies and violent westerns are popular because in the end, usually, the bad guys get killed in dramatic and cinematic fashion.

That usually isn’t the case in real life. People who take on daring raids like the one that got bin Laden don’t get in the headlines, don’t get their names and pictures in the newspapers or on the news — they just don’t go out for the limelight.
 Of course there will be made-for-TV movies within a month, from competing networks — guarantee it!

Most people who die at the hand of our government in such public fashion do so on a gurney in a prison, or in a short gun battle outside a home. There was the guy here in San Diego years ago who stole a Sherman tank from the local armory and got it stuck on the lane dividers of the 163 Freeway. Cops just opened the top hatch and shot him pointblank.

But dramatic raids like the one that got bin Laden are the exception, not the rule. The fact that it was Usama bin Laden, a man that has been on our Most Wanted List since 1998 and responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 Americans, when you add up all the terrorist acts he and his group committed, this was big, bigger than watching Saddam Hussein being hung. Bigger than Hussein’s two sons being killed in that shootout in 2003. Much bigger than the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the first guy to be declared the leader of Al Qa’ida in Iraq.

Usama bin Laden was the main target for every American, even if President Bush claimed he wasn’t high on his list of priorities. So when he was killed people rejoiced and that is understandable. Usama bin Laden has been a cloud hanging over America since September 11, 2001. I imagine it was the same type of elation when Americans were told Adolph Hitler was dead, coincidently, 66 years earlier to the day.

What makes it even more dramatic than finding out Hitler killed himself is that bin Laden died at the hand of our agents, Navy SEAL Team 6. “We” took his life. In other words, “we” got to exact revenge.

And there are some who don’t believe we should celebrate vengeance, even if the one killed is as ruthless a person as Usama bin Laden. It’s a bit conflicting for some of us. Yes, we’re happy bin Laden is dead, but we find no solace in the taking of another person’s life.

Kudos though to the operators, from the intelligence people to SEAL Team 6, and all the support and back-up personnel that had a hand in this, for carrying out the mission so successfully, the only hitch being the loss of a top secret helicopter.

Usama bin Laden had to be got, one way or another and he was got. But then there are those who are criticizing President Obama for authorizing the killing of bin Laden. Muslims in other countries? Surely, especially from inside Pakistan. Western reporters have been ejected from the town of Abottabad due to the action, but certainly no one in America … eh?

Oh yeah, here is where this post starts to get funny, i.e. the mouthpieces on the right : Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Dick Morris and Andrew Napolitano. Really! Maybe it’s just a coincidence three of the four listed work for FoxNews. Anyway, on Napolitano’s blog he writes: “Usama bin Laden assassinated. Killed on the illegal whim of the president.” Seriously.

On Monday May 2, Napolitano wrote in his Freedom Watch blog for Fox Business: “But last night a little before midnight here on the East Coast, President Obama, with an eye on his lagging poll numbers and the sickening economy over which he presides, announced in a quick 40 minutes of time, 40 of America’s best Navy SEALs found bin Laden, asked him to surrender and when he declined, blew his brains out. And then he told us after bin Laden’s remains were identified they were dumped at sea, in accordance with Muslim tradition. No photos, no testimony from eyewitnesses, just the president’s word that he’s dead and, to repeat a famous phrase, now sleeps with the fishes.

Of course, the burial at sea is new to most Americans. It is new to many Muslims as well. Bin Laden belonged to a Muslim sect that believes in anonymous burial in the earth. Beyond the issue of whether the government is telling us the truth or pulling a fast one to save Obama’s lousy presidency, is the issue of the lawful power of the president to order someone killed, no matter how monstrous, how dangerous, or how unpopular.”

Wow, that’s deep. Three presidents have wanted to get Usama bin Laden, including — at least for a little while— Napolitano’s man, George W. Bush. “Dead or alive” is what President Bush said in September 2001.

What’s interesting about Napolitano is that he questions whether the assault even took place — like the people who doubt we actually landed on the Moon or the ones who don’t believe bin Laden and Al Qa’ida were responsible for 9/11. They of course believe it was a plan hatched by the Bush Administration to give them cover to enact some of the worst assaults on our civil liberties since World War II. As conspiracy theories go, that one is pretty crazy.

This is funny though: Napolitano says burial at sea is new for Americans. No, it isn’t. People have been buried at sea since before, long before, this country became a nation. It’s a common practice, especially for warriors killed at sea.

Then there were Glenn Beck and Dick Morris discussing how the president broke the laws by sending our troops into a sovereign nation that was not at war with us. That’s rich! In 2003 their man Bush sent our troops into a country that had never attacked us.

Funnier still, in the same discussion Beck and Morris (sort of) came to approve of the raid on bin Laden but claimed President Obama owed America an apology for taking so long to get the terrorist leader!

President Bush doesn’t owe us an apology for not getting bin Laden for over seven years, but President Obama owes us an apology for getting the terrorist leader in less than two years? Makes my brain wobble.

The news media bought into some of the right-wing nonsense, well, not the nonsense listed above. The Sunday talking head shows all featured right-wing figures, most of whom were Bush Administration officials, trying to make the case that it was the policies of President Bush (43) Usama bin Laden was killed and President Obama had little to do with it.

Oh, and it was due to torture — enhanced interrogation techniques — that Usama bin Laden was found and killed. Despite what many former interrogators have said to the contrary ever since the killing of bin Laden.

There were eleven Bush apologizers on the air Sunday Morning — including Liz Cheney — and only three representing what actually happened. All of the Bush supporters insisted on taking credit for getting bin Laden and Karl Rove, Bush’s Brain, actually claimed he had personal relationships with several members of Seal Team 6.

Like Jon Stewart pointed out the other night, if you, the Bush Administration were the people truly responsible for the success of getting Usama bin Laden … Well, Stewart put it so much better: “If you were the guys who were going to kill bin Laden, you would have killed bin Laden!”

And to echo Stewart: that is the first uncool thing we’ve heard about Seal Team 6.

End the Debate

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 05 May 2011 08:01:00 -0600

This would be funny, if it wasn’t such a serious issue. Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama launches a quest to find and kill the mastermind of Al Qa’ida, Osama bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world, and 18 months later, under his direction, bin Laden is found and killed in Pakistan. America cheers.

But, on the fringes of reality there are these right-wing types who either ignore the president’s participation in the mission or, worse yet downplay or claim President Obama paid no part in it.

“Oh, that’s ridiculous, “ you might say and I heartily agree — and yet there are those who or so completely out to lunch when it comes to reality, they claim and desperately want to believe this was all due to the efforts of the previous administration. In fact, 81% of Republicans believe the credit for getting bin Laden should go to George W. Bush, Obama’s predecessor.

More astonishing, there are those who claim the information that led to the discovery of bin Laden’s hiding place was the result of “enhanced” interrogation techniques — torture.
 Let’s call it what it is.

It was in March 2002 when then President Bush said finding Osama bin Laden was not a priority, repeating that several times in later interviews and press conferences. And then in 2005 President Bush had the C.I.A. bureau created just to hunt for bin Laden dismantled and shut down, a bureau started by President Clinton in 1996 once it was clear Osama bin Laden was a major figure in world wide terrorism.

It’s perilous to claim the Bush Administration played no part in the killing of bin Laden, their efforts must have had some influence or even impact on the search for bin Laden, but the Bush Administration really had no direct part in this mission.

Some of this apparatus was already in place long before Bush was president, even before his father occupied the Oval Office. The Special Forces used to kill bin Laden were first created during the Carter Administration; special units specifically designed for search and kill missions — assassinations — like this one. Before that even we had the Army Rangers and Green Berets, the Navy SEALs and Marine Recon, not to mention the Air Force Special Ops; these groups, SEAL Team Six in particular, have been training for this moment for decades.

Even though President Bush (43) had stopped the C.I.A. from focusing on bin Laden, the intelligence agencies in the U.S. continued to get information on Al Qa’ida; for years now we’ve had news reports about bin Laden and his group being in Pakistan. It’s one of the reasons people have been calling for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, Al Qa’ida is no longer there.

The truth is, right after President Obama took office he instructed his national security team to redouble efforts to find bin Laden. One of Obama’s campaign promises was to find bin Laden, even if it meant going into Pakistan without their knowledge and approval.

If you remember that October 2008 debate Obama had with Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate chastised Obama for that train of thought, claiming it would start another war, this one with Pakistan and furthermore, Obama was telling military secrets to the world.

Really? Reaffirming our commitment to finding and bringing justice to bin Laden was a secret? Maybe to McCain it was a secret. He was one of the leading Congressional supporters of invading Iraq, the war that had absolutely nothing to do with combating Al Qa’ida, other than giving the terrorists another place to set up a headquarters.

One of the best voices in all of this has been former President George W. Bush. He immediately released a statement congratulating President Obama and the team that got Osama bin Laden and then, when invited to join the president today at “Ground Zero” to commemorate those who died at the hands of Al Qa’ida, Bush declined, choosing to remain out of the limelight. The man has been at the very least a class act.

President Obama referenced, several times now, how the nation came together, at least for a few days, when President Bush stood atop the rubble of the World Trade Center and vowed to bring the killers to justice. There are those who claim to have counted the number of times President Obama used the words “I” and “me” in his speech Sunday Night. Really?

Now, as President Obama stands on the Sacred Ground of “Ground Zero,” let’s take a moment to reflect that this is not just a blue and red America; it’s the United States of America.

•••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• ••••
And a shout out to the Nation of Mexico on this, Cinco de Mayo! Enjoy your Patron and cervesa! Or, at least, your carne asada burritos! Or whatever it is of Mexico you indulge in when going Mexican! I’m kinda partial to tacos el pescador. There’s nothing like a winning taco!
•••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• ••••
Also:
My friend Claudia is competing in the West Coast Hooters Regional Finals Friday at the Icon nightclub that is conveniently located right above the franchise’s newest location in Downtown Los Angeles — 1248 Figueroa. Conveniently across the street from the Staples Center, home of the Lakers!
 C’mon Lakers! Losing two consecutive games in the Staples Center? You need to do better!

Part of the competition is winning the Viewers Choice Award, which is taking place on Facebook. If you have a profile, click on her photo. It takes you to her photo in the contest. You have to “Like” the West Coast Hooters FB fan page first.

Claudia is hoping to take a trip to Miami to compete in the International Hooters Bikini Pageant this summer. Make her dream come true!

The Don Goes Down

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 03 May 2011 00:01:00 -0600

This was set to post Monday Morning, but with the news of our troops killing Osama bin Laden, it was bumped for a day.
The White House Correspondents Association dinner took place Saturday Night. Did you see it? Seth Meyers killed! President wasn’t too bad either. Last one of these I watched was with President Bush. It was the one with the look-a-like guy, President Bush would say something and then his double would say what the president was actually thinking. That was a funny bit at times.

Then there was the year Stephen Colbert lit up the soirée with his dead-on, often hilarious scorching of the president, his staff and every news agency he could pack into his 24-minute routine. At the time Colbert didn’t seem that funny, but five years later it’s funny as Hell!
 His dig on the Washington press corps: “Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know — fiction!”

President Obama’s shtick, this time, started with a video introduction, featuring a photo of his long form birth certificate pulsating to some generic and patriotic rock song. I could look up the title of it, but who cares. The president took shots at all of his adversaries, most especially FoxNews, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump.

The real estate tycoon and shameless self-promoter who made a bigger name for himself recently by jumping on the birther bandwagon didn’t like the attention. Not from the president or Seth Meyers.
 “Donald Trump said that he was running for president as a Republican. That's funny, because I thought he was running as a joke.”
 “Donald Trump said he’s friends with the Blacks, but unless the Blacks are a family of White people, I think he is mistaken.”
 D’OH!

As if Donald Trump needed to make BIGGER name for himself. He’s promoting his TV show and no one actually believes Trump will run for president.

So Trump goes out, announces he might run for president and then picks up the tools of fast and quick self-promotion, in this case the birther story. After reading poll after poll that says a majority of Republican voters either don’t believe or are not sure the president is a natural born citizen, announcing his campaign with his attack on the president’s legitimacy was a sure fire way to ensure he got to the top of the polls quick. Mission accomplished.

Meanwhile, serious candidates-in-waiting like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are left trying to gain some traction without alienating the primary voters that decide who will lead the party against President Obama. They read the same polls as Trump.

Neither Pawlenty or Romney actually come out and chastise the Republican voters for being so ignorant on the birth certificate issue nor do they denounce media types who continue to promote the birther and other nonsensical conspiracy theories. But both call it a non-issue.

Pawlenty said on Sean Hannity’s FoxNews program that he was satisfied the president has a valid birth certificate after watching commentators on CNN say they saw it. Hannity’s response: “Never trust CNN.”

How do you get past that kind of intransigence? “These are the facts.”
“I don’t believe the facts!”

You don’t. Some people just insist on being stupid, or contrarian to the point of being a joke — like Trump and Hannity with their birther claims.

As many of you might recall, as it was only a few days ago, there were people on FOX Business trying to discredit the birth certificate the same day the president released the long form of his birth certificate. Pam Geller was a guest on Follow the Money with Eric Bolling. Instead of following the money, Bolling and Geller were nitpicking the birth certificate — including the handwriting from Obama’s mother and the attending doctor who signed their names and had to write the date they signed the document — like we have to with just about every official document we sign.

We can watch Bolling picking at the handwriting, “We have these numbers here, we don’t what they are …” Well, you idiot, the document tells you what they are: the dates Ann Obama and the attendant signed the document. If there were a prize for being a moron these two would be competing against each other.

Geller though doesn’t miss a beat. With the release of the birth certificate taking the wind out of those sails, she starts questioning the president’s educational records and whether it’s true he was the president of the Harvard Law Review, the same claims Trump was making on that airport tarmac when he was congratulating himself for forcing the president to release the document.
 On February 6, 1990, the New York Times printed a short blurb on Obama being the first African-American elected to the position of the Harvard Law Review President.
 At the time his mother was an anthropologist working in Indonesia and his father was listed as a finance minister in Kenya.

Now they are demanding the president release his educational records. Trump was there on the tarmac of that airport, claiming he heard that President Obama was a “terrible” student at Occidental College, so how could Obama get into two Ivy League schools: Columbia and Harvard?

Well, “terrible” students don’t get into the Ivy League and “terrible” students don’t graduate from Harvard Law Magna Cum Laude. Geez, the conspiracy just seems to gain more wheels. They get one set of wheels run off the tracks, but stay on the tracks with a different set of wheels.

But that claim really isn’t about some vast conspiracy to put a Muslim of Kenyan descent in the White House (just typing that is funny) it’s about Affirmative Action and a supposedly unworthy Black Man getting a place in a college that should have “rightfully” gone to a qualified White person.

Trump has no shame. From the birther issue to this bullshit about how Obama got into the Ivy League, it’s all about race. Commentators often talk about the “Big Three” conservative issues Republicans like to pull out of the closet at election time: Guns, Gays and God. Well, there's a fourth issue Republicans like to pull out, but only with code words so it isn’t so apparent: Race.

When Trump promotes these conspiracy theories he’s playing to the unspoken racist attitudes still found in the Republican Party. They did it to Michael Dukakis in 1988, John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary, Representative Harold Ford of Tennessee when he ran for the Senate in 2006 and now with President Obama, only this time they didn’t succeed, at least not in 2008.

There Donald Trump was Saturday Night at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, listening to the president and a comedian rip him and his alleged candidacy. Issues that Trump made sure were top-of-the-fold news and leads on every TV news program came back to bite him, in a big way, with millions of people watching. If you watch it, C-SPAN will run it late at night for a while, Trump has a tight smile now and then when the president skewers him, but for Seth Meyers Trump just had an ugly glare.

Sunday Trump said some of it was inappropriate and that Meyers wasn’t very good; that Meyers is a “stutterer.” No, Meyers didn’t really stutter and he killed. The rest of the audience loved it, including his hosts at the Washington Post table.

Trump can dish it out but he can’t take it. He talks tough, like he did the night before in Las Vegas when he dropped F-bombs almost as frequently as I do when dealing with java scripting issues, but at heart the guy is a pussy.

You really want to get into the presidential race Mr. Trump? Let’s look at your history of deferments during the Vietnam War. Let’s examine your past support for a woman’s right to choose and universal health care and how you conveniently flip-flopped on those issues once you decided to start your faux candidacy.

On the other hand, that gives Trump a lot in common with the other Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney. But, with Trump at the top of the polls with Republican voters, maybe he will actually mount a campaign, but I’m guessing that when the news media starts asking the tough questions the same way Trump went after President Obama’s birth certificate, the pussy will drop out.

But he is entertaining!

Osama bin Laden is Dead

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 01 May 2011 20:31:12 -0600

The al Qaeda leader who has orchestrated terrorist attacks against the United States since 1993 has been killed in Pakistan. He was killed by U.S. forces in a ground operation, not an unmanned drone, today (Sunday, May 1, 2011).

Pakistani officials have confirmed bin Laden’s death and U.S. officials said they have his body in their custody. At about 11:30 Eastern time, the president made the official announcement from the East Room of the White House.

This is the end of an era and comes just months before the scheduled withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. President Bush sent troops into battle to find Obama and break up al Qaeda in Afghanistan in November, 2001, just months after the worst attack on the United States, September 11, 2001.

Finding and killing al Qaeda isn’t over by any means, but the symbolic head of that terrorist organization is dead and that has significant meaning, not just for those who have suffered at his behest and blessing, but for his followers. He will be revered as a martyr by those same followers, but the fact that bin Laden was targeted and killed by U.S. Special Forces means that any and all terrorists can be found and killed.

This is the most monumental news since 9/11.

Voting Fraud?

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:01:00 -0600

Thursday, a guy on Hardball, Horace Cooper, said, “Washington Democrats are not the same as Americans …” Really? Okay, there are a few news reporters who are Canadian by birth, or even British, but the politicians should all be Americans, whether by birth or naturalization. But, because they work in Washington they’re not American? Well, what nationality are they?

This is the whole basis of the “us versus them” hysteria that was once the fringe of the Republican Party but now IS the GOP. “We (the Republicans) are Americans, everyone else is not.” Remember shortly after Barack Obama won the 2008 election, the video that went viral of the woman crying, “We want our country back!”

Back from who? The people who aren’t Americans, but were elected to manage the nation’s business of course, starting with that Black guy in the White House.

The “We want our country back!” crowd became the birthers and then the Teabaggers, who, when they found out what that really meant changed it to the Tea Party, and then during the debate on health care became the pawns of the health insurance companies and right wing machines like the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey’s Freedom Works.

Then, in 2010, “they” won enough seats in Congress to control the House of Representatives, as well as the legislatures and governorships of several states — including Wisconsin — and then came face-to-face with reality: the Teabagger-controlled Republicans began their true agenda: stripping workers of their rights to collective bargaining and now, with Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan, eliminating Medicare and Social Security.

“What? That’s not what we voted for!” Well, you did. “You” just chose to remain ignorant on the issues and, like “you” have now for over 30 years, “you” chose to vote against your best interests — our best interests.

Back to Horace Cooper, who was advocating for the new voting laws many states are trying to enact which require voters to show ID before they can cast their ballot. In the 30-plus years I’ve voted, in two states, no one ever asked me for an ID, picture or otherwise.

Now, this is interesting: in 2008 I went to register to vote in my current locality. While at the voting office filling out the necessary forms, the woman behind the counter asked me if I wanted an absentee ballot. Sure! So, after registering in my district I took the absentee ballot, filled it out and gave it to the woman behind the counter. She put it where it needed to be and off I went. To work, as I recall.

Fast forward to November 2010. The voting station for my district was right on my way to work so I stopped in to cast my ballot. Yes, I was on the rolls, but, because I had used an absentee ballot in 2008, they weren’t sure if I had already voted, so, instead of a regular ballot, I was given a provisional ballot that would then be cross-referenced against the absentee ballots.
 On closer review of the mail, the absentee ballot was in the stack. I need to keep a closer eye on my mail.

It’s the state’s way of insuring a scalawag like me doesn’t commit voter fraud by voting twice. But I still got to vote and no one asked for my I.D.

What Republicans now want to do in 17 states is require voters to provide an I.D. — proof of citizenship. Why is that? New voters generally vote Democrat and eliminating them is part of the Karl Rove Republican fantasy of dominating elections.

Okay, their publicly stated reasons have to do with voter fraud — although there hasn’t been any recorded cases of voter fraud anywhere in the United States. There have been cases of voting error, or, in the case of Waukesha County, WI County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus who conveniently found enough votes on her personal computer to have her guy win a judgeship …
… Wait a minute! Hold the fuckin’ phone! The Republican County Clerk, who once was an aid to Governor Scott Walker, got to take the election software off of state and county systems and put them on personal computers in her office — and possibly her home computer(s)? But don’t worry, they’re backed up with redundant systems …

Okay, in a nutshell, Wisconsin Governor Walker got legislation passed that will remove unions from the public sector, using chicanery dished up by his Republican cronies in the Wisconsin Legislature. Hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites went on the march (and are still marching) and the unions and others groups took the governor and his legislature to court.

Well, in Wisconsin, like many other states, the State Supreme Court judges are elected and one of those judges, David Prosser, was up for re-election earlier this month. Because of his friendship and allegiance to Governor Walker, Prosser faced a tough challenge from Assistant District Attorney JoAnne Kloppenburg.

At first, the poll results showed the election going to Kloppenburg. But then, the next day, Waukesha County Clerk Nickolaus “found” over 7,000 votes from her county that hadn’t been recorded because she hadn’t “saved” them. On her personal computer … that isn’t online with the county or state computer systems. Those “found” votes gave the election to Prosser, the incumbent.

Is that election fraud? We don’t know because County Clerk Nickolaus has been resisting any and all efforts to have her unconnected computers checked by information technology professionals. Or anyone else for that matter. At the moment, the state is going through a recount of all the precincts in the state, 3,000-plus.

Back to the 17 states that are looking to rescind voting rights for thousands of voters.

So, college students wouldn’t be able to vote in the districts where they live while going to school, people wouldn’t be able to register on election day and when voters show up at the polls, they will have to produce a photo I.D. A government issued photo I.D. Like a drivers License or, in one state (Alabama I think) a gun registration card. Really? A student at Ole Miss couldn’t use his or her university I.D., but if they’re a registered gun owner then can use that document? Boggles the mind.

Ah yes, only in America could voter suppression — election fraud — be institutionalized. Question is, will the U.S. Supreme Court strike down all these new laws before the 2012 election? We almost had a disaster in Arizona when their legislature passed a law requiring presidential candidates to present birth certificates to get on that state’s ballots. Republican Governor Jan Brewer — extremely conservative governor Jan Brewer — vetoed that bill as well as one that would have allowed students, faculty and staff to carry firearms on campus.

There go her conservative credentials.

The intention for this blog (at first) was to talk about the president releasing his “long form” birth certificate and the resulting hubbub, especially that of Donald Trump. But that will have to wait a day.

One Year Later

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 06:01:00 -0600

Today marks the one year anniversary of the BP Oil SPill in the Gulf of Mexico. What’s changed? Same as it ever was. The government — with Barack Obama as president — has started issuing new drilling permits to the oil companies, including British Petroleum! Eleven so far.

The popular spin is that the Gulf of Mexico is in much better shape today than anyone expected, yet hundreds of thousands of miles of fishing area is still closed and oil continues to wash up on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. The makings of another oil disaster in the Gulf are underway.

Here’s a replay of my first blog about the BP Oil Disaster.

It will go down as the worst environmental disaster in the history of our nation, the effects of which will far exceed those of Hurricane Katrina. And it will affect the same area of our nation as Hurricane Katrina — and then some.

Several hundred thousand gallons of crude oil a day is gushing from the ocean floor where the oilrig platform, Deepwater Horizon, blew up, caught fire and sank, killing 11 oilrig workers as it went. Once it sank the tube that brought the oil to the surface collapsed and the safety equipment that was supposed to prevent the type of leak that is taking place now, a blowout preventer, failed.

The oilrig is (was?) owned by British Petroleum and the well operator, Transocean, Ltd, both of which are foreign companies. Isn’t that ironic? The funnier part is BP is claiming responsibility for the oil spill, but claims they aren’t responsible for the explosion that sank the oilrig or for the blowout preventer that failed and caused this disaster. It’s the fault of Transocean, who BP says own and operates the oilrig.

As the cleanup and recovery mounts into the billions, just how much responsibility is BP willing to accept? Of course, they make 3-4 billion dollars in profit every quarter, so maybe it won’t be a big hit on them, but a corporation hates to lose any profit, especially if it’s a half year’s profit.

Just a month before the Lefty world was rocked when President Obama said he would support and encourage more off shore drilling, following Sarah Palin’s campaign call to “Drill, baby drill!” Despite two major oil catastrophes just in my lifetime: Santa Barbara in 1969 and then just 20 years later, the Exxon Valdez, the president decided to remove the ban on further exploration and drilling off our shores—despite the fact that effects of both are still being felt in both locations.

Oil is still found in the sand and gravel of Prince William Sound, where the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in Alaska, spilling almost 11 million gallons of crude. Twenty-one years after the disaster occurred. All of the wild life of that area has been affected and continues to be; salmon and other fish species have had low hatching rates and the growth of sea mammals have been stunted as well.

In Santa Barbara, the beach communities advise visitors to buy and wear disposable sandals because the oil is still seeping from the ocean floor where Union Oil’s Platform A in the Dos Cuadras Off Shore Oil Field, located in the Santa Barbara Channel, had a blow out 41 years ago. The oil seeps from the floor and gets washed to shore, turning the once brown sand black.

Hawaii has a black sand beach, Punaluʻu Beach, but volcanoes naturally created it. Lava flows into the ocean, explodes into little bits of basalt that washes to shore and voila! Black sand beach!

Not so on the beaches of Santa Barbara. The oil seeping from the spot on the ocean floor where the blowout occurred creates the black sand. My friend, Christina Smith, Playboy’s Miss March 1978 told me about the oil on the Santa Barbara beaches because part of her pictorial was shot there. In several photos the sand is clearly black, which I thought was cool — at first. Then I found out why that sand is black and will remain black for millennia.

Christina said that during the shoot much of their gear, clothing and props were covered with oil from being laid down on the sand. Back in October 2007 I wrote about it (Here) and how the explosion from the blowout created cracks in the ocean floor. Authorities used a specialized cement to seal those cracks, but what man creates, nature eventually subverts and it didn’t take long for nature to get around the cement sealing off the cracks in the ocean floor. Sadly, sea life in the area continues to ingest petroleum and will be affected for millennia.

And now we have the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, with another blowout of an oil well head on the floor of the ocean, this one a mile below the surface. Millions of gallons, maybe millions of barrels will be spilled into the Gulf of Mexico before British Petroleum, Transocean, Ltd. and the U.S. government get this tragedy under control.

Oh yes, American taxpayers will be on the hook for at least part of the bill and you can bet BP will ask for some sort of assistance from the government to make up for some of the cost of fixing the problem and cleaning up the mess.

BP and others tried putting a four-story hood type thing over the leaking oil head, but water pressure created crystals that clogged the 100 million ton contraption. So, it sits while oil spills into the gulf.

Oil has now washed up on shores in Louisiana and Mississippi and it is expected on the beaches of Alabama and Florida soon. And then meteorologists expect the prevailing weather patterns will push the oil into a current that will take some of the oil around the horn of Florida and up the East Coast.

This is by far the worst man-made environmental disaster in our nation’s history and it will only get worse in the foreseeable future. And President Obama wanted to lift the ban on expanding off shore oil drilling. I’m guessing he’s changed his opinion on that — let’s hope.

Here’s the funnier part of this story: Rush Limbaugh and some of his ilk, like President Bush’s last press secretary, Dana Perino, want us to believe this disaster was the result of sabotage by environmentalists, because the president was in favor of lifting the off shore drilling ban.

Then of course there are people who want us to believe the president and his administration delayed response to allow an environmental disaster to occur — even though the Coast Guard was on site the day it happened and officials from the Department of the Interior and the Department of Homeland Security were onsite two days later. Some people are crazy in their partisan zealotry.

And the real truth is, this disaster won’t be going away any time soon, even when the oil leak—if the leak—is stopped. Like the Santa Barbara and Exxon Valdez disasters, this one will be with us for decades to come.

Think about it: if you have a small child, they will be seeing black-tinted sand on the beaches of the Gulf Coast when they are in their 30’s and 40’s. Maybe longer. More off shore oil drilling? I think not.

Stepping Up!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 06:01:00 -0600

Did you see, hear or read about the president’s speech Wednesday Afternoon? Man! Who knew the guy was a Democrat! Many say it was the first speech of his 2012 re-election campaign, which is probably true. Formally, it was a response to Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, the one that ends Medicare and Medicaid, among other social programs.

Some Republicans, especially those who don’t hold office or don’t have significant populations of elderly folks, love Ryan’s budget. But, if you gotta go out and get votes, telling a large part of you constituency you are all for eliminating one of their most cherished government programs, well, good luck with that!

Everyone, including Democrats, say entitlements are the major expense in the budget, but Social Security was never meant to be a part of the federal budget. Lat year Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nearly admitted as much when he said Social Security was not in trouble financially.

You see, currently Social Security is taking in more than it needs to pay retirees, those on disability and their survivors. So, the excess goes into a trust fund. Which is supposed to be separate from the federal government. What the government does is “borrow” from the Social Security Trust, giving the SSI securities that can be redeemed when the SSI trust needs them to pay of its obligations.

Social Security was the biggest program of Roosevelt’s New Deal, a program to keep poor elderly people from falling deeper into poverty and having to live on the streets. Conservatives — Republicans — have been trying to get rid of it ever since.

Medicare is a bit different. Definitely an entitlement program, it does not have an independent trust like that of Social Security, but it relies on contributions that are separate from the federal tax: FICA. We pay roughly 1.5% of our income to finance our future enrollment in Medicare. Theoretically, Medicare should not be a part of budget negotiations — like Social Security.

But, both are a part of that debate and by design as well. It’s through the budget process that Republicans feel they can best achieve their goals of eliminating both programs. Republicans have always referred to both as socialism.

The biggest expense to Americans continues to be the cost of health care. We pay more in health care costs than any other industrialized nation, yet our level of care isn’t even in the top five. This is the health care system Republicans want to keep, one that leaves 50 million American without health care. Those without health care are a big reason so much of our GDP goes to health care.

Now, in Congressman Ryan’s budget plan, he wants to eliminate Medicare and the 2009 Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, as Republicans like to call the plan. Funny how the Republican Party’s biggest targets in the Ryan plan are health care related.

Then there are the cuts to plans for fixing our infrastructure, like roads and bridges, schools and hospitals. Cuts in education and law enforcement. Deep cuts into FEMA first responders and the EPA and specifically eliminating funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood.

And, if that weren’t enough of an attack on the working class, Ryan’s budget plan gave even more tax cuts to the wealthy — paid for by the increased financial burden put on the poor and elderly.

In his speech Wednesday the president said that would not happen. I’m glad to hear it. Each year, as I get closer to that magic age when I can start collecting Social Security, the rhetoric of the budgetary debates gets more interesting, as one side discusses how to eliminate Social Security while the other talks of reforming it.

Republicans don’t say they’re eliminating Social Security, that would be political suicide, but their most popular idea, privatizing it, has been exposed for what it is: a replacement program for Social Security and the vast majority of Americans reject it.

Yet this is the plan the Republicans have trotted out for Medicare: privatizing it and giving Americans coupons they can use to purchase health insurance. In the end, seniors would have to pay an additional $6,600 per year for their health care. Once again, the wealthiest Americans getting a tax cut funded by the most vulnerable in our nation.

But just how do the Democrats want to reform Medicare and Social Security? The most common plan is to raise the retirement age. For those of us who, by past family history, don’t see living much past 65, that idea sucks.

How about we stop taking the surpluses from Medicare and Social Security to pay budget shortfalls? That would mean raising taxes, at least for the millionaires and billionaires and corporations. People like Paul Ryan like to say we don’t have a revenue problem in Washington, we have a spending problem and that’s their rationale for giving tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and poor.

The income for that top 1% of earners in this country has gone up in the past 10 years. For the rest of us, it has gone down. In 1993 the richest 1% were paying about 33% of their income in taxes. As of 2010, they are paying less than 17%. That’s a tax break of 47%. Don’t know about you, but I didn’t get a tax break, let alone one that large.

I sit here, writing away after spending a day at a shit job that doesn’t pay nearly what I was making just six years ago, struggling with my reality. I actually make less than half what I once made. Instead of a tax cut of 47% I have an income reduction of 50% and the job sucks. Now the Republicans want to take away what little I have left?

Well, finally the president has stepped up to the plate to be a champion of the people. Let’s hope he follows through.

We All Have a Piece

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:03:00 -0600

Here’s some cheery news: Japan has just upped the category of its nuclear crisis from a “5” rating to a 7 — the most severe rating, equal to Chernobyl. Not exactly equal to the 1986 disaster, but pretty dang close. According to the Japanese government, radiation has contaminated everything; the air, ground, ocean, the food supply and drinking water.

With a startling level of honesty, Japanese officials said that so far the disaster at their Fukushima nuclear plant has emitted just 10% of the radiation emitted from the Chernobyl plant, but that their catastrophe could easily exceed that if the crisis continues.

In what we could call an understated attempt at hyperbole, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said, “This reconfirms that this is an extremely major disaster.”

“Extremely major.” As in, this is really fucked. Well, as the disaster continues, the edge of extreme will continue to become, well, more extreme. All joking aside, and that was just a rather lame attempt at humor, this is really, really bad. There’s no silver lining to this cloud of radiation. We’d like a lead lining, or whatever it is they use nowadays to contain radioactive material, but there’s no positive spin anyone can put on this disaster.

The towns within a 25-mile radius of the nuclear plant have been evacuated and there is no likelihood the residents will be coming back any time soon, if ever. Any food supplies produced within hundreds of miles — especially seafood and milk/dairy — is unfit for consumption. The water supply in Tokyo, which is about 150 miles away, has been contaminated.

It’s “safe” levels of contamination. Well, what’s considered safe? Nothing about this disaster is safe. The health hazard continues to grow. Even the Japanese government admits to that. Makes you wonder about their level of honesty in this. The government is admitting it can get much, much worse; is it much worse than what they’re telling us? The I.A.E.A. is on the ground in Fukushima, so let’s home the International Atomic Energy Agency is keeping the Japanese honest.

The point is nuclear power isn’t safe. We don’t know how to dispose of the used fuel rods safely — they just sit in spent fuel pools for the rest of eternity — and when a major natural disaster like the earthquake and tsunami hit, we’ve seen these systems fail. Japan was considered to have the safest and most secure nuclear energy industry in the world. Maybe that wasn’t true, but worse still is that it could be true and that means every other nuclear power plant in the world is just as likely to contaminate the Earth. Actually, they are more likely to contaminate the planet.
 Is it “safe” for the United States? According to scientists who study the atmosphere, 30% of California’s pollution comes from across the Pacific Ocean.

Proponents of nuclear energy are keeping quiet during this crisis. Don’t want to be out there pressing to build more nuclear power plants as the purported safest plant in the world continues its melt down and contamination of the environment.

But we know they’ll make that bid eventually, at least here in the United States. President Obama said he wasn’t opposed to nuclear energy and just like the oil industry did with offshore, deep-water drilling, pressure to expand nuclear energy here in the U.S. will mount until building permits are issued.

And now that we’ve mentioned it, there have now been nearly a dozen permits issued for more deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This, after the worst oil-related disaster in history took place almost exactly a year ago! Even though the cleanup of that disaster continues and scientists are still stumped on how to clean up the millions of gallons of oil parked on the Gulf’s sea floor.

Even after the president said we would not continue deep water drilling until the oil companies could prove they could contain such disasters. Even after the government — our government — admits in formal documents the oil companies are no more prepared and able to prevent or contain an off shore oil disaster than they were a year ago.
 But you know, the guy in charge of issuing the permits, Michael Bromwich, said, on the Rachel Maddow Show, the oil companies could contain a blowout like the BP disaster in 17 days, which is much better than 87 days! Well, that’s a relief!
 They are supposed to prevent blowouts, but now we officially know the blowout preventers are not reliable.

So, being the cynical bastard that I am, I’m willing and ready to bet the energy industry will get permits to build new nuclear power plants in the United States. We already know the energy companies have lobbied successfully to stop the U.S. from adopting the same levels of safety standards as the Japanese. When it comes to dangerous and risky technologies, like oil exploration and nuclear power, the United States is woefully under-regulated.

Recently, a friend sent me one of those chain e-mails that continue to contaminate our in-boxes and it was 45 quotes from a 90 year-old columnist from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Don’t know if this is a true column or not, but number 26 on the list of cute sayings was this: “Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’ ”

Umm, yeah, in five years this will still matter. After five years, Hurricane Katrina still matters. At least half of that city’s residents are still refugees or have just transplanted completely. The Tsunami that hit the south and central Pacific Ocean in 2005 still matters. Whole communities were wiped off the map and haven’t been rebuilt, let alone repopulated. Just a year later the waters and coastline spoiled by the BP oil disaster are still contaminated.

Hell, the oil disaster that took place in 1969 off the coast of Santa Barbara still matters. People have to wear disposable footwear when going to the beach because the oil that continues to leak from the cracked ocean floor covers the sand in black tar.
 Who can forget the words of Union Oil CEO Fred Hartley on the bad publicity his company received after his oil well all but destroyed the California coastline: “I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.”
 Over 3,500 dead birds were found, many more were undoubtedly not found. Thousands of marine mammals were killed, including whales and dolphins. What’s amazing is that such arrogance continues; i.e. British Petroleum’s Tony Hayward: “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”
 No wonder he wanted his life back, every time he opened his yapper he made an ass of himself.

Twenty-five years later, Chernobyl still matters. Theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku said on MSNBC (can’t remember which program) that “… following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, radiation circled the earth three times, and that we all have a piece of Chernobyl inside of us.”

Deep water drilling—Hell, off shore drilling—isn’t safe and we need to end it now. Nuclear energy isn’t safe. We need to face reality on these issues and figure out different ways to fuel our vehicles and power our society.

We’ve polluted the planet enough; it’s time to evolve. We can’t bury our heads in the sand and act like it won’t matter in a few years. We will carry a piece of Fukushima with us forever, as will every generation that follows.

Just a Rant

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:01:00 -0600

Been watching the news, as usual, and it almost seems like the disaster in Japan is over. What with the current budget fight between Democrats and Republicans, i.e. the Teabaggers, sucking up nearly all the air in the media, the nuclear disaster in Japan is out of sight and out of mind.

The budget battle is a real deal, with real ramifications for people who depend on government the most: the poor, elderly and children — and let’s not forget the men and women in our military. Rank and file Democrats don’t agree with the president and Democrat leaders in Congress caving on the $33 billion in cuts, which cuts into Medicaid, Pell Grants, meal programs for under-privileged school kids — ad nauseum — and gives more tax breaks to the wealthy while raising taxes on the Middle and Poverty classes.

In fact, if you read Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, he all but eliminates Medicare and severely cuts Social Security. And now, after the president and Congressional Democrats caved on the $33 billion, Republicans — the Teabaggers — have decided they want even more cuts and so, instead of having a deal on the budget, we might have a government shut down come Friday.
-- Paul Ryan’s budget wasn’t even written and created by him and his staff, let alone his committee, it was written by the Heritage Foundation. And then he put a Democrat’s name on it, Alice Rivlin (Rivlin-Ryan Bill), and she denounced his budget

That’s pretty important information. Once again the Republicans are willing to stop government in their effort to advance their extreme agenda, which is anti-poor, anti-disadvantaged, anti-elderly, anti-military and anti-veteran.
 It’s anti-military in that they want to strip funding for programs for the men and women who serve and their families. The Republicans are all for military in that they are glad to send money to the corporations in the military-industrial complex, not the men and women who serve and the veterans who have already served.

And this so-called pro-military political party is willing, no eager, to tell the men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan that they must still do their jobs, but they won’t be getting paid. Not to mention, they want to tell Social Security recipients and people waiting for their tax refunds they ain’t getting their checks and nearly a million government workers they will be furloughed — without pay.
 Wednesday Night, after his meeting in the White House with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama, Speaker of the House John Boehner looked like a man who just saw his ghost—maybe they were watching Ghost Hunters while talking about the budget.

All to promote their extreme agenda. That’s pretty important news, no doubt, and it affects us as Americans directly. In fact, the first 400 words here are devoted to this. Shoot, it might even be more than that considering that in Wisconsin, special elections held Tuesday to fill Scott Walker’s seat as Milwaukee County Executive the Republican candidate who was considered a shoe-in four months ago was soundly beaten by the Democrat and a Republican State Supreme Court judge, who handily won 55% of the vote ins a four-way primary there — has lost by 200-plus votes.

The extreme Republican agenda and then the backlash to the extreme Republican agenda. That’s pretty important news. But, what’s big news, bigger, considering its global implications, is what’s happening to those tsunami and earthquake-ravaged nuclear reactors in Japan.

For weeks now the news leaking out of Japan has been grim to grimmer. Leaking, in that radioactive water from the reactors has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean by the hundreds if gallons. Apparently, cracks were detected in and around the reactor housings and water had been steadily leaking into the ocean since the earthquake.

Fall out from the nuclear disaster has been registered here on the West Coast, but get this: fall out from Japan has now been detected in Tennessee! No kidding. America’s nuclear authorities assure us that the levels being detected are not a health hazard … but then, when this nuclear disaster in Japan was first reported Japanese authorities told us the problem with the reactors wasn’t a significant health hazard.

And reported less than two weeks ago, and a fact I hadn’t considered until it was reported, it isn’t just the nuclear fuel in the reactors themselves, but the spent fuel being stored on site that could be, and most likely is, a problem.

Back to the leaking reactor. Workers tried filling it twice without success and finally with the third attempt, using a specialized concrete, they were successful. But their assessment didn’t fill anyone with warm fuzzies, quite the contrary. Everyone was glad the radioactive water was no longer spilling into the ocean but, nuclear authorities have no idea where the contaminated water is going! They actually admitted it could be seeping into the ground water.

It’s been nearly a month after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami and the bad news continues to flow from the nuclear power site. Jeez, just from the region in general. The death toll is now over 10,000 and more than 17,000 people are still missing. And then to find out much of their food and water supply is contaminated by radioactivity, the Japanese are going through Hell right now.

Not far in my thoughts is the fact the Japan is the only nation to have been the target of a nuclear attack, two of them to be exact. That was over 65 years ago, but it’s probably, most likely, something that never leaves the Japanese zeitgeist. It’s surprising Japan even has a nuclear power program.

But they do and like nuclear power advocates and businesses around the world, the company running the damaged power plant hasn’t been completely honest or completely dedicated to the safe use of nuclear power.

Proponents of nuclear power here in the United States have been working overtime at either keeping below the radar or defending nuclear power, trying desperately to maintain the myth nuclear energy is safe. It isn’t. What happened in Japan can happen here and independent sources, even the government, agree we are not ready or equipped to handle such a catastrophe.

Not that it needs to happen here. The catastrophe continues in Japan and radioactive water and other material continues to contaminate the air and water. But if it did, on the same scale as Japan, we’d be screwed. Look at San Diego County’s nuclear power plant. What happened in Japan could easily happen there and living 40 miles away as I do — in the path of prevailing wind patterns — this would not be a safe place.

Now, set along side that the British Petroleum oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that occurred just about a year ago. With millions and millions of barrels of crude oil spread out over the gulf and the oil companies still unable to produce a failsafe plan that could prevent such a disaster from happening again (we are still dependent upon the blowout preventer which failed a year ago), permits have been approved for new drilling — by the same companies responsible for the disaster! No shit!

Neither deep-water drilling or nuclear power are safe, both facts have been proven over and over again and yet we continue to allow both. In fact, like deep water drilling, the U.S. government, with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, is looking to expand nuclear energy.

We are slowly destroying our environment and allowing our government to authorize it. No one believes the oil industry is adequately regulated and it’s apparent the nuclear energy industry isn’t either. And yet we’re going forward with both.

Just shows who really controls government: energy companies. Not to mention the health insurance industry, but don’t get me started on that one.

And it appears we won’t have Glenn Beck to kick around, at least on TV. He is leaving Fox. How bad to you have to be to get kicked off FoxNEWS? I guess when you lose over 200 sponsors and all the ad revenue they bring … or it could be a conspiracy!

Seven Deadly Sins, One In Particular

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:01:00 -0600

Been thinking of writing something all day, but got trapped in the AMC zone. First it was the Shawshank Redemption, which I’ve seen a million times — well, maybe not a million times, but you get the drift — and then the oft forgotten Se7en.

“What movie is that,” you ask? Released in 1995, it stars Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt as police detectives on the trail of a serial killer who uses the Seven Deadly Sins as the basis for his murders.

Well, maybe you’re one of the millions who saw it. Se7en grossed nearly $350 million worldwide and received some good reviews.

Another famous actor turns out to be the killer, but I won’t be a spoiler in the likely event you haven’t seen this movie, a film Denzel Washington considered too dark and evil for his oeuvre. Actually, it is extremely dark; the movie broods like the Detective Lieutenant William Somerset, played by Freeman. He’s waiting to retire and this is the case that ends his career. Se7en is film noir on heroin.

Other actors: Gwyneth Paltrow, as Brad’s wife, R. Lee Ermey, Reginald E. Cathey (if you saw the last two seasons of The Wire he was the chief advisor for the White mayoral candidate), Richard Roundtree, Richard Shiff and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a forensics investigator. She gets no credit, but she comes out of a door at a crime scene, says something to detective Brad and that’s her moment in the film. Not even a credit on IMDb.
 Hard to forget her role in Secretary!

The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth. Seven, hmmm, really? Okay, pride can be deadly, I learned the hard way gluttony is a deadly sin, anger — wrath — can certainly become deadly, but Sloth, Lust and Envy? Well, I don’t know.

If someone is obsessed with sexual desire he or she could most definitely commit the most heinous of crimes just to have that sexual release, but really, most people just wanna fuck a lot with as many sex partners as they can get away with. Is that really a sin? I think not.

The real reason people commit the most heinous sex crimes has less to do with sexual desire and more to do with sexual repression. The ones who commit these acts are generally imprisoned psychologically by these out-dated and unrealistic strictures on sexual conduct. These people act out in defiance of the religious teachings, or, in the case of some, to “atone” for their own perceived sins.

Millions of we men in the country see extremely sexual photos or film of women and have lust-filled thoughts, but we don’t act out on them inappropriately; we go do the wife or girlfriend or have sex with another consenting adult.
 Or, we put those images on our computer monitors and pleasure ourselves.
 In his Playboy interview, musician John Mayer said he preferred masturbation to having sex with real women. Dude, are you kidding? He’s had Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston! Well, maybe they’re lousy in bed, who knows. Maybe he is.
 Being able to perform, like a god, in bed is a real fear for men. Couple that with a fear of trying new things in bed and a man can be positively paralyzed! I was going to write “stiff,’ but that’s … whatever …

And Envy, well, I’d like to have a really nice car. Nearly every day I pass an Audi dealership and long for one of their R8’s, with the 5.2 litre engine. You might see some on the road now and then and if you watched the movie Date Night, starring Tina Fey, Steve Carrell and Mark Wahlberg. The R8 is the car they trash and then dump in the East River. Or maybe it’s the Hudson River. I hate it when they do that to really nice cars!
 Here’s something to really be envious of: Mark Wahlberg’s body! DAMN! That man is ripped! “Why do you need muscles on your shoulders?” I don’t know dude, but I wish I had’em! Yeah, I’m envious! Wahlberg looks like Adonis and I … well … resemble an over-ripe pear.
 I don’t know, maybe Envy can be deadly.[insert crying smilie here].

And Sloth? Eh … I don’t even want to take the time to write about it.

Pride can be deadly. Who among us really wants our doctor to stick a finger up our butt to check for lumps? It’s pride that keeps millions of people from seeing doctors and it’s that Deadly Sin that eventually kills them with undetected cancer.

Wrath, now that is a deadly sin. A person comes home, finds her spouse in bed with another and BAM! That Glock 9mm they bought for home protection is now the weapon in a double homicide and possible suicide. In that scenario we have three Deadly Sins! Anger, Lust and Envy! A woman (or man) envies another’s spouse, gets her (or his) freak on and … well, there you have it; Envy can be a Deadly Sin. I stand corrected.

And then there’s Greed. The character Gordon Gekko famously said, in the film Wall Street, “The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

Michael Douglas, who played Gekko in the movie, said he was baffled when people responded favorably to Gekko. He was surprised people thought Gekko was right and greed is good. As it happens, the ideal behind the character’s economic Darwinism affirmed what was going on (and is still going on) in the real world of finance and the people in that industry thought Gekko was telling them to march on, despite seeing their real-life heroes Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken going to prison.

Anyway, greed is still with us and one could easily argue greed is our true national religion. The zealots who are opposing mosques around the country don’t represent the majority of Americans, not by a long shot. The majority of Americans are looking out for themselves, which is why so many greedy politicians are elected into office: they appeal to our baser instinct of greed. Sometimes they just use religion to justify it.

In San Diego County, a rather conservative place, we have several people representing us in Congress, including Darrel Issa, of North County. He’s the Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and vowed that if the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, he would tie the Obama Administration up with an investigation every week, whether it was warranted or not.

As it turns out, Representative Issa has been asking for and getting earmarks for his district, California’s 49th. Most recently, his district received nearly $800,000 to widen and improve West Vista Way in Vista, CA. No big deal, the streets and highways ought to be improved. But, once the earmark was approved, Issa bought a property on West Vista Way. To be fair, Issa has other properties on that same stretch of road, so maybe there is no connection between the earmark and Issa’s real estate deal, but immediately the red flags go up.

Issa was a self-made millionaire before he made it to Congress, having developed a very popular car alarm and then investing in real estate all over Southern California. It’s hard to imagine anything Issa does in Congress can substantially raise his personal fortune, but greed knows no limits, be they a little or a lot.

The Congressman has a checkered past. He has been indicted several times, with his brother, for auto theft and arson — really! Although none of the cases were ever brought to trial or elicited a guilty plea from the Congressman, he was the prime suspect in those indictments. Issa was accused of torching his own property for the insurance! The first auto theft occurred when Issa was in the Army! He gave the car back (sort of) and was never charged.

He lied about being on a presidential bomb detail while in the Army to enhance his political resume. He was in a bomb disposal unit outside of Pittsburgh, PA, but no one remembers Issa going on any Secret Service details.

In 1972 the congressman was charged and convicted of a misdemeanor weapons charge in Michigan, was fined $100 and put on probation. Don’t really know the details of that incident, but it bears repeating 39 years later. It speaks to the character of the man.

Is it possible Issa is a changed man and the West Vista Way earmarks and Issa’s property purchase are just a coincidence? Oh yeah, absolutely! But what do you really think?

Greed is good — if you can get away with it.

Flippers!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:01:00 -0600

Don’t know if you saw it, since many of us on the West Coast were probably working, or on our way home from the J.O.B. when it took place, but Monday President Obama gave a speech from the White House explaining the hows and whys of getting involved in a no-fly zone in Libya.

It was an excellent speech in that the president laid out the goals of the no-fly zone and our reasons for getting involved in the coalition that is enforcing it. We, in fact, have been leading, despite the fact that the French fired the first shots.

This is where it gets crazy. Republicans have been blistering the president because he didn’t consult Congress first. Seriously. Even though both the White House and Congress agree both the House of Representatives and the Senate were briefed before our missiles and planes began firing on Libyan installations and armor. In fact, the U.S. Senate past a resolution calling on the president to create a no-fly zone, unanimously. That means every Independent, every Democrat and every Republican in the Senate voted to have a no-fly zone over Libya. That was on March 1st — including newly minted Kentucky Republican Rand Paul.

On March 7 Newt Gingrich called for the president to employ, unilaterally, a no-fly zone over Libya — immediately. That’s what he, Newt Gingrich, would do. And all the right-wing talkers followed suit, calling on the president, whom they consider a weak commander-in-chief, to get in there, do that no-fly zone thing and send in troops to topple the brutal dictator, Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi! They weren’t fooling around!

So, the president goes to the United Nations, gets a unanimous resolution calling on Gaddafi to resign and to put actions in place to attack the dictator, materially, financially and militarily. The French and British were on board weeks before the president. And then, on March 19th the no-fly zone action started.

All of a sudden, every Republican who was for it before the president took action was (and is) against it, including Rand Paul who accused the president of acting like a king. Gingrich did the biggest flip-flop, telling everyone who would listen, he wouldn’t have gotten involved in any action against Gaddafi. Hope he didn’t hurt himself.

Now, there have been some Democrats against taking action against Libya, like Dennis Kucinich. The Ohio Democrat even put it out there that the president’s decision might even be an impeachable offense. Well, Congress hasn’t declared war since December 8, 1941 — World War II. Since then we’ve been in so many military actions, including the two current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of Congress actually declaring war sounds quaint.

Kucinich has a point though, maybe we should get back to the Constitutional requirement for Congress to declare war, but the thing is, presidents can get around that law by calling these actions anything but wars. Not to mention, the Constitution does not forbid the president from sending troops into harm’s way, either domestically or abroad. I did not realize that until Monday Night!

And it’s partly why Congress took action at the end of the Vietnam War.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973, passed over the veto of President Richard M. Nixon, requires the president to report to Congress when troops are to be sent into hostile situations. Since enactment of the resolution, 111 reports have been filed.

The president says we won’t be sending ground troops into Libya, citing the failure of Iraq as an example of regime change gone awry. Yeah, the regime has changed, but it’s taken eight years (and counting) and the regime in charge is politically aligned with Iran. Oops.

And of course we’re still in Afghanistan, more than nine years after first sending troops to topple the Taliban regime and find and kill Osama bin Laden and his Al Queda buddies. That regime has been changed, but Afghanistan has become such a quagmire and, every expert concedes, the Taliban is back and controls much of the country.

Let’s not forget President Obama inherited both of these undeclared wars.

Dennis Kucinich has been consistent on this issue of what the president — any president — can do in regards to sending troops into battle. The Republicans, not so much. For them, it depends on who the president is and, more importantly, what party he or she belongs to when sending troops to war.

We do know the president isn’t going to try to force regime change in Libya with our troops, but he is tying to making it easier for Libyan opponents of Gaddafi to change the regime. Kind of a fuzzy objective, can’t deny that.

There are C.I.A. agents on the ground in Libya, but that could backfire, as it did in Lebanon when C.I.A. station chief William F. Buckley was captured and tortured for 444 days, dying around June 5, 1985. Not to mention, dictators like to grab American journalists and accuse them of spying.

The Agency personnel, we are told by anonymous sources, are trying to help foment a coup d'état in Libya’s capital. Sort of reminds us of Chile in 1973 and before that, Iran in 1953. Who remembers how that eventually turned out for the world?

How will this unfold? No one really knows. Unlike his predecessor, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted there will be a power struggle once Gaddafi is gone and there is no way to predict how that will end. We saw what happened when the government of Afghanistan was toppled after the Soviets were chased out in the 1980’s; the Taliban took power and gave Usama bin Laden a safe haven for his terrorist organization.

This mess really brings into clarity the old saying: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. But, I’m not there, under the rule of a despot like Gaddafi. Maybe we should leave this to the Libyans.

Back to our gymnastics team known as the Republican Party. They have been consistent on one point: anything Obama is for, they are against, except for a rare few, like John McCain. He got on the Senate floor and said every Republican should be supporting the president. And on Friday he said the president should be doing more … or, more exactly, not doing what he is doing: turning control of the operation over to NATO. An organization primarily funded and directed by the United States.

Did you know the NATO commander in charge of the Libyan operation is a Canadian? How embarrassing is that for U.S. military types? America should lead! America should act unilaterally! Eh … we saw how that worked out in Iraq.

With a number of Libyan ministers defecting, including Foreign Minister Musa Kusa, maybe this will all be a moot issue. Rumor is there’s a minister in London trying to get terms for Gaddafi to leave Libya, with his family and a nice diamond-studded golden parachute. In other words, let’s bribe Gaddafi to leave. That might be the best solution, at least to end the bloodshed.

All we can really do is let the chips fall where they may. Regardless of how it turns out, the Republicans will try to make the president look bad and if it works out in our favor, I’m willing to bet Newt Gingrich will tell you how right he was all along! That’s almost as entertaining as Donald Trump becoming a birther!

No Joke!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 09:01:00 -0600

Sunday morning my friend (he shall remain anonymous to protect his guilt) and I were discussing our national ignorance and American politics, the catalyst being Bill Maher’s assertion that Americans are dumb. Hard to disagree with Bill, especially since Newsweek came out with Its Story about a survey it conducted, asking Americans to take the test immigrants have to pass to become citizens. Thirty-eight per cent failed the test. Twenty-nine per cent didn’t know the name of our vice president (Joe Biden).

Ignorance is the rule in America, not the exception. While many of us can quote lyrics from popular songs and dialogue from favorite TV shows or films, a large number of us couldn’t find our nation’s capital on a map, let alone name all 50 states. Thirty-three percent don’t know when Independence Day happens and 67% don’t know what took place at our Constitutional Convention. Those stats are astounding — fully 86% do not know how many voting members are in the House of Representatives (435) and 63% don’t know how many justices are on the Supreme Court. As much as it is in the news, you’d think …

Back to Sunday morning. My friend and I were talking about this, how Bill Maher has it right and how this willful ignorance has been promoted and exploited by the Teabagger movement and its ignorant leaders, like Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann. And its not so ignorant leaders, the people behind the scenes pulling the strings of the Teabaggers: Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers in particular.
 To the delight of the Teabaggers, Bachmann will no doubt enter the Republican primary to be president and with any luck she’ll win the nomination.

Sadly for the half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, her star appears to be falling in the Republican-Tea Bag world. Maher got into a bit of controversy recently when he called Palin a “dumb twat.” Oh Bill, getting a bit misogynist — but his audience thought it was funny.

It was over the line, there was even a Facebook thingy people were posting on their walls denouncing Maher. The irony, no, the hypocrisy, is that some of these same people crabbing at Bill Maher have no problem spreading racially derogatory remarks and jokes about President Obama, even questioning — still — whether or not he was born in the United States. Hell, Donald Trump has even gotten into the act, trying to out birther the original birthers. Just watching the three clowns from the FOXNews morning show sit in rapt attention as Trump blabbered on about the president’s birth certificate is priceless! Gretchen Carlson, with that wide-eyed Stepford stare!

Poor Sarah Palin, the half-term governor, quit her job so she could make millions as a faux author, reality show star and on the speaking tour. Everyone is always picking on her and Bill Maher had to call her a dumb twat.

We all thought Palin brought national politics to a new low with her lack of qualification and knowledge to be a vice presidential candidate, but thankfully, up popped Michele Bachmann who is proving no person is too ignorant to run for president and with any luck, the equally ignorant who make up a big segment of the Teabagger crowd will have enough power to put either Bachmann or Palin at the top of the Republican ticket. Where can I help that cause, to paraphrase Bill Maher?

But yeah, you don’t want to call women politicians of the Republican-Teabag persuasion names like twat. Their followers get so vexed.
 Sorry I take that back. It’s the comedian’s job to cross the line, especially with politics.

Returning to the rest of the ignorant crowd … so, my friend (who is NOT one of the ignorant crowd) says, somewhat sarcastically, that one of these clowns running for office might put forth a bill to change pi to 3. For those who may have failed the citizenship test, along with every math test you’ve ever taken since the eighth grade, “pi” is the mathematical constant of 3.14159265-ad infinitum. It’s an irrational number, which means it has no end, the most recent verifiable calculation having over five trillion digits. It is transcendent, meaning it cannot be equaled by any algebraic functions. Basically, pi is the ratio of a Euclidean plane circle’s circumference to its radius. If you’re looking for more on pi, go to Wikipedia.

“So, why is pi, pi,” I ask my friend? And the above information came tumbling out of his mouth with typical (i.e. dry) engineering finality. You see, mathematicians, scientists and engineers just accept that pi is, so why would anyone question or even try to change it?

John, John, John, this is America and as Bill Maher stated, and we both agree, in America we’ve been busy dumbing down society, and education in particular, so more of us can pass the test. Except that, more of us are now failing the test than ever before. Nevertheless, we’ll dumb down everything. Why not change pi as well?
 Sorry John, I couldn’t help myself.

There is a large segment of our population that believes evolution is false and instead believes in a deity first created over 5,000 years ago to explain the functions of the world (and universe) around us. And there are some locally powerful folks forcing public schools to teach that lie. And we wonder why U.S. students rank 26th in math and science education in the industrialized world, even though we spend more on education than any other nation.

It isn’t the teachers, although there aren’t enough of them and there will be fewer still after Republicans (like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin) cut state education budgets. That’s the paradox of this ignorance epidemic. For some reason (politics), Republicans think making the situation worse will somehow improve the situation. Basically, what conservatives want to do is end all public education and channel all that money to private schools, in particular, religious schools, a part of the community where the Republicans-Teabaggers find their political base.

The Teabagger-Republican crowd claims education should be left up to the individual states and the U.S. Department of Education should be abolished. But, if you ask any experts who actually study education policy and its trends, that is exactly opposite what we should be doing. According to experts who study education, both here in the U.S. and abroad, the main reason nations like Sweden, Great Britain, France, et al spend less on education per capita, but rank much higher than the U.S. in all categories is that all those countries have centralized education systems. In other words, the national government sets the curricula.

What do we do in this nation? We turn the education system into a test-passing system, void of intellectual curiosity. And then of course we have the nincompoops in states like Texas that mandate students are taught lies instead of science and, hard to believe, write Thomas Jefferson — the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence — out of American history! That’s his penance for coining the phrase, “separation of church and state.” The conservative idiots in Texas who wrote Jefferson out replaced him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. Huh?

Thomas Aquinas promoted the Catholic Church as the ruling political institution; i.e. he promoted a system of government similar to that of Iran, but with a Christian bent. Aquinas never made it to the New World, having died in 1274. Neither did John Calvin, whose claim to fame is starting another Christian cult that bears his name and for being the ruthless, brutal dictator of the Christian-based theocracy that was Geneva, Switzerland in the 16th Century. He employed the most horrific tortures on anyone who dared to question his teachings and authority.
 This is ironic! Calvin was French and we know what conservatives think of the French and Aquinas was a Papist! Maybe Texas conservatives are more open-minded than we give them credit for.

William Blackstone did have some influence on the United States. His writing on British Common Law was inspiration for many countries to adopt similar laws, the United States being the first. But, as far as I can tell, he never made it to the New World and, quite frankly, he was a Tory — a strict monarchist. That sort of flies in the face of what our Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, were accomplishing in the American Revolution.

It’s no wonder U.S. students and, consequently, our nation, are ignorant.

And then of course there are the parents, over-worked and too stressed to pay as much attention to their children’s education as they should. For some, just spending the time they do with their kids’ educational needs is heroic, considering their lifestyle! If it isn’t a single mother trying to raise a family on too little money, then it’s a two-income family with both parents working, sometimes with one of them working two jobs to make ends meet; in essence, a three-income family.
 And, let’s not forget, many of those single moms are two-income breadwinners.

So, my friend, no, it really isn’t beyond possibility that someone could and would propose to change pi through political fiat. Don’t even joke about it!

Meltdown

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:01:00 -0600

There have always been people defending nuclear power, claiming it is safe. Well, in my lifetime anyway. Nuclear reactors can be seen around the world, including the United States. Just about 40 miles away, bordering on Camp Pendleton is the San Onofre nuclear power plant. It still has two operating units.

While temporarily stationed at Camp Pendleton in the 1970’s, I saw the power plant for the first time and had a chill. That was my first encounter with nuclear energy. In the decades since, especially since living here in San Diego, there hasn’t been much thought given to the plant, and that being reserved for the time when driving past on the I-5. But the thought lingering below the surface has never gone away: something could happen at San Onofre and destroy this part of California.

There are people who want us to believe nuclear energy is clean and safe, including some good friends, but it is neither. States and municipalities have had pitched legal battles over where to store spent fuel rods because it isn’t clean. The waste can easily contaminate an entire community.

In the past 32 years since Reactor 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility had a partial meltdown, we have been reminded twice now about the dangers of nuclear power. It isn’t a small thing. One accident can wipe an entire area, and in the case of Chernobyl, the facility in the Ukraine that suffered massive explosions that released radiation and radioactive material into the atmosphere in April 1986, that accident covered most of Europe with at least some nuclear fallout.

Now, just a few days ago, after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan hit, we started to find out two nuclear power plants in that country were damaged. And then one was leaking radiation. Then the Japanese authorities were releasing pressure from the contained reactors to avoid any explosions. And then there was an explosion, but the Japanese authorities wanted us to believe a meltdown wasn’t taking place.

But now everyone agrees at least a partial meltdown has taken place, at the reactor that had the explosion. And instead of two, we now have a total of six nuclear reactors that are having trouble with cooling mechanisms

The Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said it was the worst crisis for Japan since World War II.

If the earthquake and devastating tsunami that followed were not bad enough, now that country has to battle to keep the damaged nuclear facilities from melting down and causing the worst environmental tragedy in human history.

Everyone is focused on the tragedy from the tsunami, and rightly so. Tens of thousands of people have perished as a result and whole towns have been literally wiped from the face of the earth. And while search and rescue operations take place, Japan is continually rocked by after shocks that cause more damage and could possibly set off new tsunamis.
 The tsunami hit the California Coast early Friday, causing significant damage in the Bay Area.

The fact remains though that a strong enough earthquake can trigger a nuclear disaster. We have our share of quakes here on Southern California and the San Onofre nuclear power plant is not immune from them. It was built to withstand a 7.0 magnitude quake taking place right beneath it, but would that be enough? San Onofre sits right atop the Cristianitos Fault, which is considered inactive. Well okay, let’s hope the experts are right about that.

Just saw this on CNN (Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time): a new blast has been reported at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima Daiichi power plant and another tsunami has been spotted. The crisis in Japan continues to unfold. No doubt, this will be updated before it publishes at midnight.

Pride of Wisconsin

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:01:00 -0700

For more than a week it’s been a source of pride to be from the state of Wisconsin! Fourteen state senators left Wisconsin to block a vote that would eliminate collective bargaining rights and last weekend, over 80,000 Wisconsin teachers, firefighters, police officers, paramedics, and other state and local government workers picketed the state capital after Republican Governor Scott Walker proposed cutting the workers’ rights with his controversial budget bill.

It was well below freezing in Madtown Saturday, but the movement was expecting a bigger demonstration than the one last weekend. Employee givebacks are not in question, as all the public sector unions involved agreed to the parts of the bill that reduce the benefits packages, thereby lowering the cost to the state. The only issues now are those concerning the elimination of the collective bargaining rights, which include forcing unions to recertify every year, letting employees opt out of unions and

One Republican, State Rep. Dean Kaufert, of Neenah, voted against Walker’s bill saying the proposals in the bill that would eliminate collective bargaining were an overreach. He does support requiring state workers to contribute to their health and pension benefits, but said that collective bargaining has been a proud tradition in Wisconsin for over 50 years and didn’t want that to be changed.

The demonstrations so far have been peaceful, and both the police chief and mayor of Madison applauded the demonstrators for their demeanor. What Mayor David J. Cieslewicz and Police Chief Noble Wray found disturbing were the governor’s remarks about hiring goon squads to disrupt the otherwise peaceful demonstrations.

In what turned out to be a prank phone call, Governor Walker said he and his “team” thought about planting troublemakers in the demonstrations but decided against it, his only fear being, “…if there was a ruckus caused, is that that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor’s got to settle to avoid all these problems.”

That was the governor’s only concern? A political calculation? He wasn’t concerned about the ethical, moral or legal issues involved? He wasn’t worried about public safety or that of local law enforcement? Rhetorical questions because obviously he was not. The governor never mentioned any of these concerns in a phone call he thought was from one of his biggest campaign contributors, David Koch. You know, of the infamous oil barons the Koch Brothers.

These are the billionaire brothers funding the Tea Party; they organized and paid for the so-called “grassroots” demonstrations we all witnessed in the past 18 months. Well okay, the Kochs paid others, like Dick Armey’s group, FreedomWorks, to organize the Teabaggers.

What these knuckleheads are really after has nothing to do with balancing budgets. Were that the case, this kerfuffle would be over. The Democrats and unions have already ceded everything financial the governor asked for in his budget bill. Nope, what the Koch Brothers and their Republican lackeys want is to break the unions. Reagan’s assault 30 years ago didn’t go far enough,

Now, three decades after Reagan fired the air traffic controllers — PATCO — less than 9% of America’s workers are unionized, the lowest number since 1932. Only 40% of public sector employees are unionized.

The rap on public sector union workers is that they make way more than private sector employees and they get “rich” benefits packages, both not true. On average, government workers who belong to unions pay approximately 5% of their wages to pensions and benefits and average $18,000 per year in pension benefits. Not even close to the five figure a year pensions some anti-worker hacks claim and certainly not rich.

As for wages, many public sector jobs require higher education, or, in the case of public safety, put the employees in harm’s way so those workers do and should get compensated accordingly. But the average government worker is paid less than his or her private sector counterpart by as much as 20%, depending on the level of education. For instance, government employees with high school diplomas make about 5% less than their private sector peers, while government doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc are paid 20% less than their private sector peers. That’s the statistics from the Labor Department and those stats have been the same for decades.

What government employees lose in actual salaries they make up for with health and pension benefits.

The governor of New Jersey, himself a lackey of the Koch Brothers, got into the act a few days ago in Trenton, NJ, saying, “In Wisconsin and Ohio, they have decided there can no longer be two classes of citizens: one that receives rich health and pension benefits, and all the rest who are left to pay for them.”

Since the beginning of the Labor Movement, Big Business has been doing its best to undercut unions, and Christie’s gambit is to pit the middle class against itself; those not in public sector jobs and those who are government workers. The fact is, union workers are the Middle Class.

The real trouble for people like Chris Christie and Scott Walker is that the unions overwhelmingly back Democrats in elections. The union dues pays for many things, including political activism so if the Republican governors can break the unions and either shot off or slow down that flow of money, they can out compete their Democratic challengers when elections roll around.

When the Supreme Court shot down the law limiting corporate donations to politicians, the “Citizens United” case, people were justifiably upset because it means any business or industry can now donate as much money as it wants—anonymously—to any politician without any disclosure or oversight. The flipside to that is: so can the unions and you can bet that if the goose is gonna do it, the gander will as well.

The corporations have far more money to put into elections, but the unions have not just a lot of money to put into elections, they have the manpower to handle the footwork required to win elections. Fifty-one years ago my parents volunteered in the Kennedy campaign, mainly because we grew up Catholic and the Kennedy family is as well. But my dad was a dues-paying member of the IBEW — the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 494 — and John F. Kennedy was the candidate looking out for the workingman. My dad was Democrat, through-and-through.

Thanks to the union, my dad was able to retire from the city of Milwaukee with a decent pension that kept my parents living comfortably until they passed away. What Republican candidates want to do is take that away from all government employees, just as they have with so many private sector jobs. What they want to do is force you and me, if you’re not one of the elites, into deeper poverty. They want to create, once again, a two-class society, like what we had before unions came into existence. A society with the vast majority living in abject poverty, an extremely small minority at the top with all the money and control of government and society.

That’s what they demonstrations in Madison are all about: protecting and preserving the Middle Class.

The Republican Agenda — Control

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:01:00 -0700

On Monday Chris Matthews referred to the CPAC Convention, the ultra-conservative, ultra-Republican convention that features the most virulent and hate-filled members of American society, as “The Far Side.”

At the end of the segment, which featured David Korn of Mother Jones and Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, Matthews said the CPAC Convention was the first Republican primary and it was in Crazyland. Now, that was funny!
 Okay, disclosure, both Korn and Marshall are lefties, Korn probably more so.

The reason being all the speakers at the convention, a list that includes Michele Bachmann, Andrew Breitbart and the Harpy (Ann Coulter) didn’t just attacked the President’s policies, they attacked him personally.
 When talking about the revolution in Egypt, that saw journalists being physically attacked and jailed, the Harpy said more journalists should be jailed. She’s just as crazy as ever.

Because the convention is for the most fringe element of the Republican Party, the birthers, the Obama is a Secret Socialist Muslim crowd, the potential Republican candidates who show up to speak have to speak to the fringe, which means questioning, in back-handed ways, the president’s citizenship and religious affiliation.

On the Sunday news program Meet the Press, Speaker of the House John Boehner refused to stand up to the crazies now in control of his party, the ones who question the president’s status as a citizen. He said it’s not his job to tell the people what to think. Really? Then what are you doing when you tell people your views about the president’s policies? I was surprised David Gregory didn’t challenge Boehner on that point.

The truth is, the crazies in control of the Republican Party put John Boehner in the Speaker’s chair, second in line to the presidency. He ain’t about to run afoul of them. If they want to believe President Obama was born in Kenya (or wherever), not in Hawaii, he will publicly claim he doesn’t agree with that notion, but he won’t reproach them either. Boehner needs the 40% of Republicans who believe the president is a secret Socialist Muslim that hates America and is trying to destroy our Nation from within.

Contrast that with President Obama. The president has distanced himself from the liberal side of the Democratic Party, even though the Far Left worked the hardest to get him elected to the highest office in the land. To get the Democratic nomination, the president embraced the causes and ideals of the Democratic base, but once elected he became the pragmatic, centrist he’s always been, at least since becoming the junior senator from Illinois in 2006.

Let’s see where “we,” the Democratic base, part company with the president: the prison on Gitmo is still in operation; we’re still holding people prisoners without charges being filed. We still use rendition. Ironically, Egypt is one of those places where we send people to be tortured. We still don’t have health care for all Americans, and instead of raising more money for the treasury by returning to the Clinton-era tax rates for the wealthiest 2% of the American population, in his most recent budget proposal, the president is slashing funding for Pell Grants and money for people who need help heating their homes in winter.

And the crazies on the right want you to believe President Obama is a Socialist. Oh dear.

But here’s an interesting tidbit of news: the Republicans, flush with the support of the Teabaggers — who really believes the Tea Party is anything other than the most extreme wing of the Republican Party? — Republicans campaigned as fiscally responsible and ready to tackle the real problems facing the United States: the national debt and high unemployment chief among those concerns.
 When told his proposed budget cuts put at least a million people out of work, Speaker Boehner said, “So be it.” So much for his commitment to job creation.

So, what is the second thing on the Republican agenda after taking control of the House of Representatives? Remember, the first was to hold a useless vote to repeal the recent health care bill. The second item on their agenda, and the Republicans are pushing it a lot harder than their useless vote on health care, that second item was their renewed attack on women’s health issues.

New Jersey Republican Christopher Smith introduced a bill that would cut off the services provided by Planned Parenthood and other health organizations. We already have the Hyde Amendment preventing federal money from being used for abortions, since 1977, but Smith’s bill would stop people from purchasing health insurance, with federal subsidies, that covers certain health procedures, in particular abortions.

What could this do? Well, health insurance carriers could start limiting what they cover when it comes to women’s health issues, for starters. It would deny any funding to organizations that provide abortion services, like Planned Parenthood, the leading advocate for family planning, reproductive services and contraception.

Not to be outdone, Indiana Republican Mike Spence introduced a bill that almost singles out Planned Parenthood. His bill would strip funding for Title X, a program begun by President Richard M. Nixon over 40 years ago to provide funding for organizations that provide women’s health services. And Pence’s bill would go even further by denying any funding — if any funding were available — to organizations that provide any kind of abortion services, including counseling, which is the primary abortion service provided by Planned Parenthood.

The Republicans get out on the campaign trail and swear to fiscal responsibility and what do they hold as their primary legislative goals? Attacking women’s health issues. Of course, the Democrats who control the Senate won’t move on any such legislation, but it does show the Republican Party’s true colors.

As stated earlier, Republicans aren’t really concerned with reducing any deficits or creating jobs. They forego collecting nearly a trillion dollars from the top 1% of American wage earners and the GOP is willing to cut funding that would eliminate nearly a million jobs immediately and who know how many after that.

But, they are standing firm in their attacks on women’s health and the unions; Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, wants to strip from state workers their right to collective bargaining. On Wednesday tens of thousands of Wisconsinites converged on Madison, the capital, to protest — in the snow and near freezing temperatures — Walker’s proposal.

Why would Walker, and other Republicans, want to do this? The public service unions that represent government workers are some of the most powerful advocacy lobbies in Washington and the state houses and these lobbies overwhelmingly support Democrats. Break the backs of the public service unions and that cuts out a major source of support for Democrats. It has nothing to do with budget deficits and everything to do with politics.

If a million or more people lose their jobs in Boehner’s bid to control government, well, so be it. We’ll see how that cavalier attitude plays out in 2012.

Tale of the Red Dress

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:01:00 -0700

Here’s something that’s pretty funny, but a sad commentary on the fringe of our society. Well, not the fringe itself, but that we actually have to give it coverage. Maybe we don’t have to give these lunatics coverage, but with the Internets and the crazy profiles on the various social networks and other sites, these crackpots go viral. And that becomes news.

But it isn’t just the anonymous bloggers that get crazy. Commentators we see on FOXNews go off the rails all the time and that gets passed off as news, not just commentary.

President Obama and his wife hosted a state dinner over the weekend, both looked very elegant and the First Lady, always applauded for her fashion sense, wore a lovely red gown.

Well, the dinner was to honor Chinese president Hu Jintao. Presidents have always hosted state dinners to honor visiting dignitaries. As it turns out, Mrs. Obama’s dress was anti-American. Matt Drudge actually referred to it as “China Red.” Get it? And then everyone from Michelle Malkin to … I don’t know, Bob the wiener boy, went off on how Michelle Obama was signaling that she was and is — A COMMUNIST!

Or at least a communist sympathizer! Really! Oh yeah, and she slipped one strap off her shoulder to (wink-wink) sway the Chinese president. Actually, the dress was designed that way, but why let facts get in the way of a good story.

And then FOXNews did this opinion group led by Frank Luntz, the Republican wordmeister and advisor who coined terms like “Death Tax”, for the Inheritance Tax,” pushed to get the term “Global Warming” changed to “Climate Change,” which sounds less severe. Even though the global climate is warming, a fact Luntz doesn’t dispute. More recently there was the use of the term “Government Takeover” he created for the debate on Health Care Reform bill because “… takeovers are like coups. They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.”

Luntz changed “Orwellian” from a negative description to a positive description, against the popular understanding of the term.

Enough about Luntz’s record. You have to admire the guy’s abilities.

In his most recent opinion group on FOX, on Sean Hannity’s program, Luntz asked a selected group of Iowa Republicans a number of questions about President Obama. One woman said the president’s religion guides his decisions. Luntz asked her to expand on that and she said President Obama was a Muslim. Then Luntz asked the entire group how many of them believed the president is a Muslim. Nearly half raised their hands.

That reflects what the national Republican sentiment is in regard to the president’s religious convictions. Forty-six per cent of Republicans believe President Obama is a Muslim. And even more believe Obama is secretly a Socialist at least, if not an outright Communist.

Which fits right in with what the kooks believe about Michelle Obama’s red gown: it’s a subtle message to all the other good communists around the world. The Republican Party exploited these kooks for their votes this past November, especially the Teabaggers, but now, the party would like to hide them away.

That didn’t happen. Twenty-six Republicans in the House of Representatives voted “nay” on renewing the Patriot Act, citing all the infringements on our personal liberties in the bill. And it wasn’t just affirmed Teabaggers who voted against it. Some were “establishment” Republicans.

These same Teabaggers were on Hardball Wednesday vowing to promote candidates opposing established Republicans like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in the 2012 primaries. They believe Graham — and Orrin Hatch of all senators — isn’t conservative enough for them. They plan to oppose these established Republicans in the primaries come 2012.

Two Tea Party spokespersons, Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks and Philip Dennis, were on Hardball Wednesday talking about the coming (they hope) takeover of the Republican Party by the Teabagger crowd.

Matt Kibbe claimed Senator Hatch has been too liberal for the past 35 years. Orrin Hatch. Apparently, Hatch’s long time friendship with Ted Kennedy has doomed him. Seems so because Kibbe made an off-hand remark about Hatch writing love letters to Pat Kennedy.

Phillip Dennis, a Dallas, TX-based Tea Party organizer, went way off the rails by first claiming President Obama had a “soft spot” for Islam because he gave a speech in Cairo about two years ago and has reached out to the Muslim world like no presidents have before him.

What? How about the previous president (Bush) cementing ties with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, among other Muslim nations? And then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice making a speech in Cairo just a few years before President Obama? In fact, some Republicans were claiming it was Rice’s speech that was the catalyst for the revolution taking place in Egypt! But, why let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Getting back to the Teabagger revolution going on in the Republican Party, both Dennis and Kibbe said the Republicans who are targeted for primary challenges, including Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, are just too liberal. Kibbe actually said the Republican Party is now controlled by the Teabagger crowd.

It really appears the patients are taking control of the asylum.
•••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• •••• ••••
As I type, Egyptians are waiting for their president, Hosni Mubarek, to step down. By the time this gets posted, Mubarek should be out of office, or at least he should have officially announced he is leaving in the next 24 hours.

Other leaders in the region, like King Abdullah of Jordan and even Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya, are a bit nervous; this could happen in their countries as well. Egypt has always been the center of the Arab world. It is the most prosperous, even though nearly half of Egypt’s population lives at or below the poverty line. As Egypt goes, so goes the rest of the Arab countries.

This is a momentous moment in world history. What happens in Egypt will affect every nation in the region and the ripples, which will be big, will be felt across the globe, especially here in the United States. Can “we” influence what happens in Egypt (and the Middle East) once Mubarek steps down? Better question; should “we” try to influence what takes place?

Some people think we have paid to have influence with the billions in aid we’ve given Egypt over the years. It’s that kind of arrogance that has helped tarnish our nation’s reputation around the world. The people of Egypt want to chart their own destiny, without any interference from other nation’s, most especially the United States.

President Obama has walked a fine line with Egypt, professing his allegiance to the people and democracy, but at the same time trying to maintain stability, such as it is in the Middle East.

The removal of Hosni Mubarek, as earth-shaking as that will be, is only the beginning. From that point, the future of Egypt will begin to evolve, and at times we might not like what we see taking place. My guess is Egypt will remain largely secular, but there’s always a chance it won’t. Thirty-three years ago, as the Iran revolution was forming, very few thought Iran, one of the most Western of all Islamic nations, would become a theocracy. There were bars, nightclubs and women wearing mini-skirts in Teheran in 1978-79

Something to think about as the history of the world shifts.

Full Mooners!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:01:00 -0700

Okay, the last two posts have been quite heavy, serious, with some dark humor about the crazies on our side of the globe. Well, they are funny, except that there are a number of people who listen to them and some of those people actually believe the shit the crazies are saying, on the radio, TV and Internets — especially this World Wide Web.

Chris Matthews, he’s MSNBC’s best known personality and the guy with the longest-running political commentary program on cable TV. Well, I can’t think of anyone else who has had a program on a cable news network as long as Hardball With Chris Matthews.
 I’m sure Cross Fire was on CNN longer, probably 20 years, but it has since left the air.

Thirteen years ago I was dating this woman in Oceanside and she loved watching Matthews everyday. She got me hooked. This was back when Matthews was hammering President Clinton for having his affair with Monica Lewinksy and then getting caught and lying about the affair, which is why Clinton was impeached. He lied — under oath — about getting a blowjob (or two) from Miss Monica. Really Republicans?

Since then, we’ve one Republican after another getting caught up in sex scandals; two senators, David Vitter from Louisiana and John Ensign of Nevada, the congressman from Florida who was picking up young male Congressional Pages, gotta look him up in the WWW [pause] Mark Foley.

Oh yeah, not a Washington scandal per se, but pretty spectacular nonetheless! Here was a guy, like Vitter and Ensign, who campaigned on personal ethics, honor and dignity for all, but especially public servants. He had the perfect wife who was also his campaign manager. He went from being a Congressman from South Carolina to that state’s governor. He would be a dignified and honorable governor for the great state of South Carolina.

Well, not so much. As we found out, Governor Mark Sanford went hiking on the Appalachian Trail one day, got sidetracked at the Atlanta airport and found himself carrying out an affair with a lover in Argentina. A woman to be sure — that must have been a relief to all his conservative friends — but not his wife.

Sex scandals are nothing new in Washington, D.C. or politics in general. Democrats have had their fair share, the most prominent being former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. His Good Bar Girl was Ashley Dupré. Fortunately for us, she decided to pose for Playboy!
 So, I’m asking myself: did she have all those tattoos while having the affair with Spitzer? And just to be accurate, it wasn’t actually an affair, Dupré was working. Spitzer paid Dupré for her companionship. Good for her. Sex between consenting adults ought to be legal.
 Bad for Spitzer because he was married. You took a vow buddy.

So, back to Matthews.
 Over 450 words and the point of this rant hasn’t even been approached, let alone stated.

Wait! Before we get back to Chris Matthews, I forgot the Republican from Idaho, Senator Larry Craig! He’s the best one! How could anyone forget Larry Craig? A super conservative, super anti-fun, super anti-gay senator who, in 1999, said on national TV, Meet the Press specifically, “The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy — a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.”

And then on June 11, 2007, Senator Craig was busted in a restroom at the Minneapolis-St, Paul International airport soliciting sex from an under cover police officer. The good senator pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, but then regretted it, explaining that when he sat down on the pot, he just had a “wide stance.”

Call me crazy, but ever since then, if I ever need to take a dump in a public restroom stall, I try to see just how wide a stance could be needed, without it being uncomfortable. Now, just to be clear, if I’m sitting in a public restroom stall with my pants around my ankles, I’m there to take a dump, not get a blowjob. Not even from a woman! Those places are so stinky, who finds them … sexually enticing?

Okay, now we can get back to Chris Matthews. The past few days on his program Hardball, Matthews has been using the term “Full Mooners” when talking about Frank Gaffney, Rush Limbaugh, the Teabagger boy Glenn Beck and people like them. Full Mooners, as in, when the moon is full these crazy people come out and howl at the moon, you get the idea.

That’s a great term, almost as good as “Teabaggers.” Since the demonstrations began in Egypt, Glenn Beck has been going off on a rant about a Muslim Caliphate. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, there are radical Muslims who do want to create this New Caliphate encompassing the entire globe.

So, Beck takes that bit of truth and then expounds on it, claiming that not only is the Obama Administration being directed by the Muslim Brotherhood, but that the two Presidents Bush were being controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood as well.

Now, I haven’t had much to say about either Bush that is complimentary, but one thing I’m sure of, neither one wants or wanted to turn the United States into a Muslim theocracy. Maybe a Christian theocracy, but that’s even doubtful.

Beck’s evidence of this: when our nation went to war against Iraq, our troops wee told to avoid damaging various historical places, like the site of ancient Babylon. That wasn’t the only area, but that’s the one Beck used to indict the Bush’s for being in cahoots with Muslim extremists. It’s almost funny.

Then there’s Frank Gaffney: The Obama Administration is getting advice on how to bring Sharia Law to the U.S. through influence operations by the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.; that indirectly President Obama is taking his cues from this same Islamic organization on how to deal with the situation in Egypt.

Gaffney also claims the preeminent Republican political action committee, CPAC, has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Now and then we can catch Frank Gaffney spewing his comedy on FOXNews. Trouble is, some people take him — and Beck and Limbaugh — seriously.

Full Mooners. Oh, and just heard this: Congressional Full Mooner from Minnesota Michele Bachmann will be seeking Glenn Beck’s advice on running for president in 2012. Can you imagine Bachmann going head-to-head with Sarah Palin for the Republican nomination? Who can out crazy the other!

This ought to be good!

The Ripples

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:54:00 -0700

It appears everyone wants Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek to go immediately. Some want him to leave Egypt immediately. Including, according to unidentified sources, our own president. Well, not everyone.

As mentioned Monday, we have our own crazies here in America and some of them are actually elected officials! One was an appointed ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, who criticized President Obama for not standing by Mubarek and helping the Egyptian dictator retain power.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who would like to be president himself one day, criticized President Obama for “quickly” abandoning a 30-year ally. But here’s the funnier part; Huckabee, like several other Republicans, is worried about the cascading effect that could occur if Egyptians win their right to a representative government, rejecting the current autocratic dictatorship.

Funny because one of the rationales President Bush used for starting the war in Iraq was to spread democracy across the Middle East. For the longest time it was one of the main talking points used by Republicans when defending Bush’s decision to start the war. Bush’s legacy would be bringing democracy to the Arab/Muslim nations of the area.

Well, now Democracy is spreading across the region and all of a sudden, the wing nuts on the extreme right of the Republican Party — the fringe that is the Teabaggers — is against it. Now that it’s a Democrat in the White House, the most important thing with the Middle East is stability, not democracy and human rights. Most Republicans have been against human rights anyway; they supported the Bush Administration’s use of torture.

It should be noted here, the Republican leaders in Congress have so far supported the actions taken by President Obama. Everyone knows, or should know, dealing with this situation is delicate. We want to support democracy, but we also want the region to remain stable. We want to see Mubarek leave sooner than later, but we don’t want to look like we’re abandoning a long time ally.

Personally, I don’t get that one, entirely. Are we allies of the country, Egypt, or of its longest ruling dictator, Mubarek? Both, really, so maybe the tack to take would be to recognize Mubarek as a friend but reaffirm Egypt is our long time ally.

Tuesday Night Mubarek went on Egyptian television and told his people he would not seek re-election in September nor would he have his son seek the office of president. A transition government would be formed, with all parties represented. But, Mubarek insisted, he would not leave office before his term was finished in September. That did nothing to mollify the demonstrators who not only want Mubarek to step down as president, they want him to leave Egypt altogether.

Although peaceful, the demonstrators in Tahrir Square were angry.

Something needs to be done soon. As Wednesday darkened into night, things in Tahrir Square (in Cairo) the mood turned dark when pro-Mubarek men, by many accounts, police in plain clothes, began entering the Square to beat the pro-Democracy protestors.

All the news organizations, from Al Jazeera to FoxNews, reported the pro-Mubarek men entered the Square from several directions on foot, horseback and camels; wielding everything from whips and clubs to automatic weapons. Until the pro-Mubarek men arrived, the demonstration had remained peaceful.

In Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city, there has been less news, but there have been demonstrations and violence. On January 1 of this year, a Christian Coptic church was bombed. The city is a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood, but that fact could be no more than coincidence in the current demonstrations and violence.

The epicenter of the demonstration, which drew 2 million people on Tuesday, is Tahrir Square in Cairo. After Tuesday’s epic demonstration, the largest ever in an Arab or Muslim country and probably the entire world, organizers called for an even bigger demonstration on Monday, after noon prayers. It was the demonstrators’ deadline for Mubarek to leave.

Presidential Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gave a briefing early this morning and said now was the time for President Mubarek to make a change, i.e., leave office.

The ripple effect has started in the Middle East. The president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, announced he would not run for office again, nor would his son succeed him. He in fact said he would not serve out his current term. He has been the leader there since 1978, nearly 33 years. Saleh is considered the most vulnerable leader in the Middle East because his nation is the poorest in the region.

King Abdullah II of Jordan fired his entire cabinet, installing a new one. He instructed his new Prime Minister to “correct the mistakes of the past.”

Leaders in Syria and Saudi Arabia are looking on closely. Just ten years ago, and certainly 20-30 years ago, Egypt was the crown jewel of Arab Nations. It was Muslim and Western without much conflict. Egypt had wealth, it has the Suez Canal; under the leadership of Anwar Sadat, they became the only Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Sadat paid with his life for that. His own bodyguards killed him. Can what is happening to Mubarek in Egypt happen to the leaders in Syria and Saudi Arabia? Certainly in Syria and they don’t have the Soviet Union to depend on, as Mubarek does with the United States.

Of course, Israel is keeping a close eye on what’s happening. Any instability is really perilous for Israel. Many Arabs consider the State of Israel and Jews in general, the enemy. For many Arabs, the Israelis are occupiers in Palestine. So, as Egypt goes, so goes the Arab World.

What lit this time bomb that started in Tunisia? Well, the people are getting tired of their despotic leaders, but more importantly, the rise of food prices, in particular, wheat.

Climate change and the price of oil are the reasons most used to explain — or justify — the rise in food prices. But then there’s the American commodities market. Speculators have artificially driven the prices up and when Arab countries tried to buy wheat from Russia, they couldn’t — the U.S. commodities market convinced the Russians not to sell their wheat to the Middle East.

We in America see wheat as a loaf of bread, or maybe the cereal in our bowl of Wheaties. But around the world, people buy wheat in bulk, much like we buy sugar and salt. Those people notice the rise in wheat prices, as they see the price of rice go up, as it has.

In 1991, when George H.W. Bush was president (41), Goldman-Sachs asked for waivers from the limitations in commodities speculation and got them. In 1999 and 2000, President Clinton signed laws that did away with the regulations that prevented wild speculation on commodities. Since then, food prices have been rising exponentially around the world.

Often, when shopping, I’m amazed at the price of a loaf of bread. Four dollars? But I digress.

What happens in Egypt will affect us here. Most important to our interests in the Middle East is stability and if the countries there begin to wobble, the price of oil, the real god in our existence, will rise and the availability will decrease. And then there is the Suez Canal. A large percentage of our oil comes through that canal. That is why what happens in Egypt is so important to us.

The world, our world, revolves around Middle East oil. Remember that as gas and fuel oil prices spike in the next few weeks.

The Rise of Democracy

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:01:00 -0700

Been watching the news from Egypt the last few days. The 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarek is probably over; even the Egyptian ambassador to the U.S. appeared to concede as much.

The protests against Mubarek have been taking place for five days and CNN reported earlier about 1,000 prisoners escaped from a prison just north of Cairo. I wonder if any of the bookies are putting odds on which day President Mubarek resigns. He can’t last much longer. The police and army won’t stand much for hurting or killing their friends and families.

Well, that might not be true. Men have a high capacity for inhumanity to man. Egypt is notorious for its methods of incarceration and interrogation.

Mubarek may be a notorious, ruthless dictator, but, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, what’s the alternative? Some Western-style democracy aligned with the United States? Half the signs in those “democracy” demonstrations are anti-American. We might get lucky and have a post-Mubarek government that isn’t openly hostile to the U.S., sort of like we have in Iraq.

There’s a bust if we ever got involved in one. The current government is most aligned with Iran. But, the whitewash of the Iraq tragedy began the day President Obama declared there wouldn’t be any justice for the crime of starting that war. Whenever someone in the media brings up how the war was sold to the American public — how we were lied to — they get slapped down for bringing up the past and not focusing on the future.

Hell, it isn’t even a topic of debate on shows like Real Time With Bill Maher. Right now there is a generation of young people growing up not knowing how or why we got into a war in Iraq.

There’s an entire generation that actually fought in that war and have no idea that 21 years before we started the war in Iraq we made Saddam Hussein an ally after he started a war with Iran.

But I digress. Egypt is exploding and democracy, Middle East style, is about to take place. The old guard will leave the country, or, if they’re unlucky, they’ll be put on trial and convicted of all types of crimes and get put to death in a most hideous fashion. A la Saddam Hussein. His sons and grandson got off easy when they were killed in a spectacular shootout in July 2003.

Oh, those were exciting time! These were two seriously bad men who, by any accounts, deserved the most lethal justice. Hussein the Elder was hanged many months later after his frenzied defense in what passed for a court of law in Iraq.

Sounds like I’m defending the Husseins, seriously bad individuals, but what is the alternative in Iraq today? The government — our government — wants to paint a rosy picture so that when our troops do finally leave, we will have at least an illusion of success. It’s a hard thing to swallow, sending our sons and daughters to fight and die in a futile war. We been there and done that in Vietnam. But, before 2020, Iraq will be fully aligned with Iran and there will be continuing sectarian warfare between the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds.

The Iraqi Kurds might even have an official state, just like they have today, except with official recognition. That wouldn’t sit too well with the Turks who have been fighting a Kurdish rebellion on that border for decades, maybe longer.

Everyone wants self-determination, including the Middle East. It’s just that, for some that means becoming an Islamic State, like Iran or Saudi Arabia. There is a large segment of Egypt’s population that wants to create an Islamic state and if that be the will of the people, who are we to stand in the way.

That doesn’t sit too well with many Westerners, especially those who hold extremist views in their respective religions: Christianity and Judaism. Fundamentalist Christians want to believe Armageddon is on the way just as surely as the sun will rise in the East tomorrow so they vigorously defend Israel against every and all threats, including perceived threats from the Islamic movement in Egypt. And that movement just might gain control of the Egyptian government.

On the other hand, there are quite a few pro-Western people in Egypt as well, as there were in Iran in 1979, but the most vocal, the most violent tend to get their way, as happened in Iran. But, most analysts say there is, at most, a third of the population aligned with the “Muslim Brotherhood,” hardly a majority, but certainly a large and vocal block — and the most organized. Our own president proved what a well-organized political machine could do in an election.

Many of the same analysts tell us the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t even want to control government, just have a strong hand in a strong parliamentary system. Right now, the president of Egypt has all the control, enforced by the military.

Along with all that political ramifications, there is the loss of all law and order. Citizens are arming themselves to protect their neighborhoods and businesses from looters. In that Northern Egyptian town where the large prison break occurred, a NBC news team said it passed a dozen or more police stations that had been abandoned, looted and then burned.

When the prisoners escaped from that prison, they also broke into the armory and took most, if not all, of the weapons too.

Egypt is truly on the brink of profound and fundamental change. Hosni Mubarek is all but done. He may officially carry the title of President, but he no longer has overall authority, if any authority at all.

Early Monday the Egyptian military released a statement saying they would not turn their guns on the Egyptian people. In other words, Mubarek no longer has control over the military.

Here’s where this gets crazy in our neck of the woods: Friday I was headed out to dinner with a friend and he was listening to a right wing radio nut talking about the demonstrations in Egypt. According to this radio wing nut, what is happening over there is, of course, all the fault of President Obama. The reason: President Obama said it would no longer be the business of the U.S. to meddle in the affairs of other countries.

The radio wing nut went on to talk about how the Internets, cell phones and other means of communication had been shut down by the Egyptian government. Then my friend suggested we might lose the Internets here as well, to terrorist attack or the government shutting it down, just like the Egyptian government did in that country. Really?

The crazies are still afoot here. We hardly have room to throw stones at other countries and their crazies. This is off topic, but the birthers are about to get a law passed in Arizona (of course) saying anyone who runs for president must have an original birth certificate to get on Arizona’s ballot. I wonder how many people can actually produce an original birth certificate — not a copy.

And then there are the various state attorneys general who have filed suit against the health care law and the federal judge in Pensacola, FL who said in a court decision the individual mandate is unconstitutional because the federal government does not have the authority to force citizens to purchase anything.

Democracy … are the Egyptians sure they really want it?

In Service

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:01:00 -0700

Once again what to write for this blog remains a mystery. I’m tired of talking about how the Democrats blew their time as controllers of the government. We can read it in countless blogs and opinion pieces across the world. Yeah, even European columnists are writing about Obama’s failures.

And it really is Obama’s failure. What he forgot, or overlooked, ignored or possibly never knew, he is not only the leader of the free world, but he’s also the leader of our government and probably more important — or at least just as important — he is the leader of his party. It is his job to not just set the agenda, but to define and frame the debate. Do that first and then try your kumbaya routine.

The big failure of the moment for the Obama Administration is their inability to get “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed. They have a report from surveys done with thousands of active duty military personnel and their families that says an overwhelming majority now serving—and their families—are okay with gays and lesbians openly serving in the military.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense both have strongly stated the military should drop the law that requires some members of our Armed Forces to lie, to live a lie. All but one member of the Joint Chiefs, Commandant of the Marine Corps James F. Amos (Semper Fi) recommend over-turning the terrible policy.

On the flipside though, like his fellow members of the Joint Chiefs, General Amos said the Marine Corps could implement a repeal of DADT.
 Everything is reduced to an acronym, making it easier when writing about it. Let’s thank the younger generation and their instant messaging and texting styles and skills. They’re turning life into an abbreviation.

The guy who lost the presidential election two years ago has more influence than the president? Doesn’t matter if Senator John McCain has had military experience and president Obama hasn’t, the latter is the president — that trumps everything.

True to form, McCain flip-flopped on DADT. Four years ago he said he would vote to repeal if the leaders of the military were for the change. When the military leaders said it was time to change, the Arizona senator said he needed to hear from the troops. After the report was made public (and official) Senator McCain changed his goal posts once again, even suggesting the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense weren’t qualified to render an opinion because they aren’t directly commanding troops at the moment.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, answered the old senator with a brief recitation of his resume, one that includes well over 20 years of directly commanding sailors. Even McCain’s good buddy, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, supports repeal of DADT. As do McCain’s wife and daughter.

McCain is out of bullshit; everything he’s requested so far has been provided, every roadblock he’s placed in the way of DADT has been dismantled by facts and logic — by those directly involved — and still Senator McCain hangs on to his lie. I guess he wants to be a maverick again.

Lucky for him and his small cadre of fellow believers, President Obama and the Democrats aren’t willing to step up to the plate and get the job done.

Back in my Marine Corps days, there were two guys I knew of who were probably gay. They did their jobs as well as anyone, probably better than most and even when we were out getting hammered, we never had a “problem.” Nor did anyone in that unit think of harassing those two guys, let alone getting them kicked out.

Of course neither one flaunted their sexuality, or even spoke about it, but we can tell. When my subscriptions for Playboy and Penthouse would arrive, they were the only two not interested. They didn’t even feign an overly enthusiastic interest. They didn’t want to go pick up girls or visit strip clubs. When we had 72 or 96-hour liberty, both took off alone.

Both were good guys to serve with and both served their country admirably. If they were (are) gay, then it’s too bad they had to serve in the closet.

Mr. President, take a cue from President Truman: use an executive order to do away with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell if Congress can’t get the job done. Maybe integrating the military as he did in 1948 had a hand in Truman losing his bid for re-election in 1952, but everyone agrees it was the right thing to do at the time.

Funny, none of that has been on my mind today (Sunday). This actually started out in a totally different, deeply personal confession, but that’s all been deleted. Wish it were that easy to delete the parts of our lives we don’t like. Instead, we just pick ourselves up and do the next indicated thing and move on. Then time takes over and covers the hurt with yet another scab.

Maybe I’ll take a cue from Heather Rae Young, Playboy’s Miss February 2010. She went to visit veterans today (Sunday), presumably at a V.A. medical facility. Be of service to others. That has always been a remedy for the blues.