The New American Aurora™

Newtie and the Blowhards in Y2K+12

2012-01-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

Last night, GOP presidential candidates debated in South Carolina ahead of Saturday's primary election.

Earlier in the day, candidate and former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich, got some bad news. His former wife (wife # 2) alleged he approached her about having an "open" marriage. For you youngsters, and open marriage is one in which spouses remain married while, in most cases, the husband was free to screw a mistress or boyfriend.

The first question directed at old Newt involved this alleged affair, and he came unhitched.

You know, it's amazing. This is the piece of shit of a man who presided over the US House of Representatives that drew up articles of impeachment against President Clinton. Why? Clinton had lied about an affair with an intern.

Now, this same piece of shit of a man, Gingrich, has the nerve to be outraged by John King's question?

You know what? I wonder. Was Gingrich envious of Clinton's alleged arrangement with Hillary? Did Newt retaliate against Clinton because wife #2 (with whom he cheated on wife #1) said no? There's your question, King!

And to wife #2, you knew he cheated on wives in the first place. After all, you were there when he cheated on wife #1. You saw Newt hit wife #1, Jacqueline, with a divorce petition while she was fighting cancer. She contested the divorce, and he had the nerve to confront her about it as she recovered from cancer surgery.

Damn, Republicans have short memories. And damn if they have no sense of hypocrisy.

And, Newt doth protest too much.

He is a bad, unrepentant hypocrite. Republicans, run!

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

SOPA, PIPA, and Mickey

2012-01-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

I love to read original laws, especially those offered by the first few congresses. This tells you just how crazy our laws have gotten with intellectual property. The original congress thought it was reasonable to secure rights to the creator of writings or discoveries for 14 years, with a one-time renewal within six months of the first term expiring. Now, it's 95 years in some cases (thank you Disney and Sonny Bono).

Here is a link to the original Copyright Act of 1790.

http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf

See, the problem at the core of the proposed SOPA and PIPA laws is the length of time they secure intellectual rights for their owners/creators, how long these works are held OUT of the public domain.

The Constitutional Convention had a good reason for securing these rights for a term, but not forever. James Madison explained it best in Federalist 43. His explanation seems reasonable to me.

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa43.htm

Now, about Mickey Mouse. The first time we saw Mickey Mouse on film was in 1928. Under the Copyright Act of 1790, assuming Disney paid its $0.60 for one renewal, this character would have been in the public domain in 1956. Under the most recent act, he remains the property of Disney until 2023. That's 11 years away. Who wants to bet Congress will extent that term of ownership under a new copyright for, oh say 150 years, between now and then? Clearly based on what Mr. Madison wrote, the Constitution's Article 1, Section 8 was never intended to allow for a 95-year term, let alone something onerously longer.

It's time to free the creative spirit and let others benefit from earlier works, to, as the Constitution directs, promote the progress of science and useful arts. It is time to free that creative spirit even if that includes something as seemingly superfluous as the gold-mine character of Mickey Mouse.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Occupy, Schmoccupy!

2011-11-16T08:02:00.003-07:00

I came to the conclusion yesterday, after Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said she was coordinating anti-Occupy-movement actions with 18 other cities, that the mayors of America are laughing at the Occupy Movement.

The mayors know movement members are incapable of doing anything more than sitting or standing in a park and bitching. They know the Occupy members will not challenge them politically with, say, a recall drive. They know members are not threatening their jobs. So, they know they are as safe as a babe in its mother's arms.

So, the mayors laugh, in coordinated fashion (see, they can organize too) in the movement's face, their laughter coming in the form of police, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and flash grenades.

Unless you do something else peaceful to threaten these mayors' jobs, like starting a recall petition drive (ala Wisconsin), you're about to be stuffed and served for dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving, Occupy turkeys!

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Going Along to Get Along Got Us Here

2011-11-07T10:38:00.003-07:00

Progress is a dialectical process. Opposites confront each other until eventually creating a synthesis of the opposites. A new thing takes the place of the opposites. Then, a new opposite arises to confront the synthesis, and the process begins again.

In government, the opposites arise around how to use government to support society. Traditionally, one side seeks to empower plutocrats, aristocrats, monarchs, families, senators, or dictators. The other seeks to empower people (small "d" democratic).

In the 1950s, 60s, and even for part of the 70s, the synthesis was built around the small "d" model, specifically around needs of the middle class. As a result, the free world prospered like at no other period of history.

Since 1976, when the first year in a string of 35 years of trade deficits began, a synthesis has formed around the needs of banksters and MNCs, the plutocrats. This synthesis was similar to what happened after the Wilson administration, beginning in the 1920s. As a result, prosperity began to falter.

What most people don't understand is, we are living the results of that synthesis begun in 1976. This is what both the Dems and GOP decided was the right way to go, with most of the compromise coming in one direction, from Dems to GOP.

What's more, this synthesis has happened all over the free world. The only point of dispute now seems to be just how much to eviscerate the rest of society to support the banksters and MNCs.

The politicians have decided this will be the model for life in the 21st century.
Not having real opposition to elitism is what got us here. Going along to get along got us here.

---What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

In 2001, there was no space odyssey

2011-09-10T11:33:00.004-06:00

In 2001, there was no space odyssey.
There was only hatred's idiocy.

Don't be lost in the insanity of anger.
Don't seethe anymore over
the graves of thousands brutally murdered
because of a religious idea conceived in idiocy.

Ideas are things both wondrous and dangerous.
They can raise up our hearts
or dash our souls against the rocks.

Love is the best idea of all.
Love even if you don't like.
I re-learn this idea's lesson
again and again each day,
as I reach for a rock
with which to bash
my fake enemies head
to a pulp.

I realize
at that moment,
the real enemy
is
me.

So, I return quickly to the idea of love.
I must.

Love is the savior of us all.
Love unceasingly. Love unfailingly.
But above all, love the idea of love.
In that idea is true religion.
If there is God,
That idea relinks us to its divinity.
And, we are saved.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

The Burden of a Date

2011-09-09T22:13:00.003-06:00

The Burden of a Date (a poem)

I was born on Pearl Habor Day in 1959.

I no longer celebrate my birthday because of the weight

of that date.

I can't.

My uncle Julio (Dad's brother) fought in the Pacific during that war.

My uncle Henry (my maternal grandmother's brother) and other relatives fought in Europe.

The date is seared on my soul.

It is not my date.

I no longer celebrate.

I can't.

My nephew was born on Sept 10

only a few years before 2001.

I fear that his birthday will become the same,

with September 11 so close.

For me, 9/11 has the same gravity

as 12/7.

I fear it will for him as well,

that he will no longer be able to

play and celebrate

the most important

date of his life

because of the weight of the next day.

Yet, I hope he can.

If an American can forget the significance of 9/11,

he or she was not likely born on or before that date.

He or she did not work in their careers

with people in those towers, as I did.

He or she did not date in high school

someone who worked in those towers,

who mercifully was fired a few months earlier,

from Citibank,

who sent an e-mail and hoped

beyond hope she had survived,

who did not receive reply for four days,

as I did.

There is likely no direct memory of the date.

There is no burden in the weight of the date.

There is no connection to a personally significant day,

one a family should celebrate with a joyous heart,

but cannot because of the date.

And, that may be a good thing.

Bearing a burden like that

is almost more than a soul can bear.

I now hide on my birthday

to avoid the emotional connection.

I revile in wishes for a happy day,

knowing thousands of corpses lay beneath the waves

in Pearl Harbor,

drowned or incinerated by

the horrors of insanity.

I wish with all my heart

that the people who don't feel

the burden of a date,

like 12/7 or 9/11,

because they have no personal connection

to it,

enjoy that grace-filled mercy,

the peace-filled mercy,

of the date,

and stay that way.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Saved: A short story

2011-08-07T15:54:00.002-06:00

Saved

A short story by Robert J.F. Sampron

All characters appearing in this work are ficticious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or

dead, is purely coincidental

Saved
So tired. So cold. So wet. This stuff on me, covering my right ear, my right side. I should be sleeping, but I heard coyotes deep in the woods, and have to keep moving.

Why did the big, two-legged animal, the one with that strange, continuous bark, bring me into its warren to play with its pups? Why did it take me out into the woods and throw me out when I was not yet fully grown? I have been walking ever since, always looking for food and water. Food and water. I’m really hungry now. And, I am cold. Then, there is this stuff on me! I have to get this stuff off because it is making it really tough to see, tough to walk.

What was that? What was that? Oh, it is one of those huge animals with the blazing eyes. They move so fast. They are really scary because their eyes only blaze after the sun goes down. I do not like them! Maybe they are angrier at night? Owls are that way. They hunt at night. I am glad I am too big for an owl to eat. I would probably eat an owl right now if I could, I am so hungry. Oh, but those fluffy things that the owls have, that all sky animals have. When I tear open a sky animal to eat, those fluffies get stuck between my teeth. I hate that.

Those poor animals that pop out of the ground. Even though they are tiny, those animals bark, just like me. I like them and would never kill and eat one. Owls do, though. I even saw an eye-blazer run over one of them, but the blazer never looked back. It just kept on running. At least when I kill, I eat. But, not the eye-blazers. It is as though they do not see the animals they crush to death. Even so, the eye-blazer gives other animals something to eat, especially those big, black sky animals with the high, shrill bark.

“I did not mean to cover you.”

“Who barked that?”

“Me. I am what is covering you. I am called Tar. I never meant to cover you.”

“What are you? And, how come I can hear and understand you. I can barely understand others like me. I only learned to understand the bark in that place."

"What place?"

"It is the place with other animals like me, the place with the two-legged animals, and the hard bars, and the barking that never stops. I was there for what seemed like forever. But, I was so young, and had no idea what forever looked like until that big two-legs, the one with the pups, took me to its warren from there. I was at that warren for many sunrises. But when I got bigger, the biggest two-legs took me out into the woods and let me go. I have been walking ever since. Walking is forever. Running too, sometimes. I hate walking! I hate running! I hate forever! But, I also hate being hunted, so I walk, and I run. I like to eat, so I have to scrounge and hunt. That means, I have to sneak, walk, and run. Do you know what I liked?"

"No, what?"

"I really liked it when the two-leg's pups laid their paws on me and rubbed my back, my head, and
especially my belly."

“I am laying on you. Yet, you do not like it?”

“No. I do not! You are laying all over my right side, clogging my face,. You are clogging my ear, my tail, and my paws. You make it harder to walk, harder to hear, and much harder to see. And, you are heavy. You lay on me, but you do not rub me like they did. The rubbing was nice. It made me feel good and peaceful. No! Instead, you are just a sticky burden!”

“Well, those two-legs, as you call them, use me to keep the rain out of a, what did you call it, warren. I do not mind that. The rain just rolls off my back. The snow does not bother me either. I am glad to be helpful. But, I do not like the wind. Over time, wind wears me down. I am Tar because that is what the two-legs call me.”

“So, your job is to cover things. Is that why you are covering me?”

“No, I am covering you because you walked through some of me after a two-legs had spilled me. I did not do anything. It is you who chose to walk through me. I laid where I was spilled. See, I lay n whatever they put me on top of. That is what I do. And yes, I am heavy: thick and heavy. Thick and heavy is perfect for keeping out the rain, the snow.”

“Well, how do I get you off of me?”

“Sorry to say, I do not know. We may be stuck together for a very long time; so, we had best get used to it. We had best learn to stick together and like it.”

“I do not like that idea one bit. Maybe if I roll around, dirt will remove you!”

"I do not think that is a good idea," Tar cautioned. "Remember, I stick to things. And sometimes, things stick to me."

Not really caring what Tar thought, I found a patch of dirt and grass, and rolled over and through it, squirming and hoping it would help. It did not. If anything, it made matters worse. Now, Tar had dirt and grass stuck all over it and all over me. Oh, I wish I had stayed away from Tar. I was so hungry, though, and needed something. My first lick told me it was just so bad, told me that I could not eat it. "Grrrrr!” Oh, this rolling around, it is of no use!

“What are you doing?" Tar asked. "Now, you have attached all sorts of other things to me. Tar is sticky. I told you that. Yet, you roll around in things anyway? What as the matter with you!”

“Look, I am getting desperate! That is the matter with me! Maybe, I should just let the coyotes eat me. It would only hurt a little bit, but at least I would be out of this misery. No more misery. I would be dead, just like that animal that pops out of the ground, the ones run over all the time by the eye-blazers. Maybe I could just run out in front of one of the blazers, sit down, and let it crush me. That might be even faster than the coyotes. I cannot take this anymore, Tar. I just cannot.”

“Then, maybe that is what you should do,” Tar replied, a look of complete conviction fixed on its
dark complexion.

So, I sat and waited until nightfall. Not many of the blazers run out here in the woods, but some do. Some have warrens here, and I know of one who goes and comes fairly often. When it comes, it stops and stays at one of the warrens. It stays sometimes for what seems like the sunset to long after the sunrise. That is many flea bites of time. One of the two-legs somehow escapes the eye-blazer and walks into the warren. All sorts of suns go on inside the warren, like that animal can control them. After the sunrise, two-legs gets back into the eye-blazer, and the blazer runs way until after sunset. It is really strange, and the two animals do this for sunrise after sunrise, and sunset after sunset. It is hard to believe. I just hope it runs here tonight. Then, I can dash out and let the blazer kill me.

Oh, wait. There it is! There it is! It looks so angry in the dark. Don’t run just yet. Wait. Wait. Okay! Now! Run!

"Skreeeeeeeeech!"

Somehow, the eye-blazer stopped right before it ran on top of me. The two-legs escaped from inside it, and began barking in a low, gentle manner. I like this. I remember this. You could see in its eyes, the two-legs was both sad and frightened. I could smell its fear, too. I did not want it touching me, so I began to move away. It then went back to the eye-blazer and pulled out a long thing with a loop on the end.

What? What is this? It has me by the throat. I have to shake it off. I have to fight. No! Stop! No! Just kill me! Do not capture me! Do not eat me! Just kill me! One of you caught me once! It hurt me! But, I got away! No! Do not!

I began snarling and snapping at the two-legs. Oh, now I cannot move my feet. Something is tangling them together. I cannot bite. Something is tangling my mouth shut. No! Stop!

Two-legs put me in the back of the beastly eye-blazer. Then, it got inside , and we ran all the way to the warren. Eye-blazer then stopped running and growling. Two-legs escaped from inside again, like it always does, and walked into the warren. Suns came on inside like they do after every sunset. As a few flea bites passed, I tried to get loose. Just then, two-legs came back out with, strangely enough, things filled with food and water.

What? What is this?

I stopped fighting so much and just laid there. At this point, I was more thirsty and hungry than frightened. I had not eaten anything other than grass and had no water for at least four sunrises. Oh, I cannot fight this two-legs. I am too weak. Just end it now, two-legs. Get it over with. But then, something even stranger happened. Two-legs took me down from the eye-blazer's back and set me beside me the things filled with food and water. Then, two-legs somehow released my feet and, best of all, my mouth. I was so frightened, so hungry, so thirsty that I ignored two-legs and dove right into the food and water.

Oh! So good! So delicious! So wet! Maybe, the wet can help get Tar off of me? Oh, please, two-legs, please! Do you have some more food and water? Can you take Tar off of me? Please? Do you? Can you? Oh, wait! Wait! Why am I suddenly so sl-sleepy? I c-can’t keep my h-head up. I, uh…

I awoke to find two-legs gently rubbing Tar with something wet. Then, I noticed it. Tar was coming off. Two-legs saw I was awake, and it barked gently, almost like the animal that purrs, the one with the pointy ears. I like the purr, though this animal also yowls and attacks with claws. Will two-legs attack with its claws?

Oh, no! Two-legs has something in its paw. It looks sharp, like claw. Will it scratch me? Even if it does, I cannot move. I am still too tired to move, too hungry. I will just lay here until it has killed me.

Wait! Somehow two-legs is using claw to cut off big clumps of Tar from my face. Oh, now Tar is off of my ear. Oh, that feels so good. I love this. The water, the purr, the touch. "Good bye, Tar!"

"Good bye," Tar replied, not really caring one way or the other.

I suddenly remembered the little two-legged pups, the ones in that other warren. They also were nice to me, just like this. I loved that very much. But then, the big two-legs, I think it was the sire of the smaller ones, took me deep into the woods and just let me go. I wonder? Will this nice two-legs do the same thing? Why did the other two-legs do that? I loved that warren so much. I loved the pups who lived there so much. Remembering them makes me cry. They were so nice until that bad day in the woods.

"Woooooooo! Wooooooo!" I howled.

This nice two-legs became alarmed at my tears. I could hear real concern in his purr. Suddenly, it stroked the top of my head with its big paw. That felt nice, and I stopped crying mostly.

Two-legs kept barking something that sounded like Kahellen. I couldn’t make that sound in a million suns, even if I tried. It then put more things of food and water on the ground. I sensed it was the food and water that had made me sleepy before, and thought I had better not touch it. Yet, I was so hungry and thirsty. Well, if all this did was make me sleepy, that would be okay. I am tired anyway, and need to sleep.

This two-legs does not seem like it is going to hurt me, though, not like the coyotes, not like the two-legs that put me in the woods, and not like that other two-legs that tried to capture me. I mean, why would it harm me after removing Tar and bringing me food and water? Okay, I decided. I will eat.

And, I did. And though I am sleepy, I did not fall asleep this time.

Suddenly, I had to go outside. I mean, I really had to go. So, I walked over to the place in the side of the warren where we had entered. But, the opening was gone. Where, where did it go? Is there no way out? Is this a trick? I looked up at Kahellen, hoping it was not going to hurt me, that it had not played a trick me.

Kahellen seemed to understand what I meant, and walked over. Somehow, it made the opening reappear, and I walked outside. Oh, it felt so good to be outside again. I was now clean, had food in my belly, and the water was so refreshing.

Then, I thought of something. I can either run off into the woods right now, or maybe I can stay with Kahellen inside the warm warren, with the food and water. I looked at the woods. Then, I looked at Kahellen, who was standing in the opening of the warren watching me. No! No more woods! Not if a nice animal like Kahellen is willing to be so nice to me. I am clean, and I am fed. Kahellen did this for me, and it did not have to.

So, I made the hot water and the stink over by a tree, and trotted back over to Kahellen and looked up into its face. It showed its teeth, but not in an angry way. It was in more of a playful way, in the way the little two-leg's pups had done long ago. I looked then at the opening and then up into Kahellen's face, my tail wagging. It stood aside and let me back in, where I saw the things with food and water had been filled again.

Oh, what did I do to earn this blessing? I wandered for so many sunrises and sunsets, fought so many animals with my wile, claws, and teeth that I lost count. So many times, I had found myself covered from head to foot with stuff from the woods until the next, long rain, and went for long walks without food or water. Yet here, they are given to me without hunting, without scrounging, without begging.

How does this animal know what I need? All I know is, it does. It truly does. Kahellen willingly gives me all these things and more.

It has been many, many sunrises and sunsets later. Even though we are both older, Kahellen still gives me all these things. It does so out of love, which is something I have learned even more about over the years. For this kindness, for this love, I know from experience I am truly blessed.

For this kindness, I am truly grateful. I am glad I stayed here. We are a pack of two, and I am glad I let Kahellen be in charge. I am happy. This is now my home. My tail wags all the time. I am at peace.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

The Debt Limit Debacle and What It Means

2011-07-26T09:41:00.000-06:00

If the federal government does not increase the debt limit, that means it can no longer borrow money. If it cannot borrow money, the only money it can spend is what it takes in through taxes and excise fees.

Because congress and our two presidents cut taxes so much since 2001, and because tax collections are way down because of the recession and high unemployment (less $ in income taxes being collected), there would not be enough money to both pay the debt and present expenses. Those present expenses include things like:

military pay and on-base housing expenses
veterans benefits (including the Veterans Administration hospitals and cemeteries)
FAA, including the air traffic control system
TSA (I wonder if the airports will stay open for long)
the costs of two wars and all military bases around the world
the costs of replacing military weapons and equipment
Social Security
Medicare
Medicaid
interstate highways and other construction (including projects already under way)
national parks
FBI
CIA
DEA
FDA food inspection
food stamps
welfare programs of any kind
unemployment insurance benefits
student loans and grants
funding of existing educational grants for research
and so on

In one week, Obama must decide which things get paid and which don't. He must continue to make payments on the debt, and that could be 100% or a fraction of all tax money collected. It all depends on how badly he wants the nation's credit rating to fall.

But I can almost guarantee big cuts in SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. What happens if SS, Medicare, and Medicaid are cut?

Here is a small glimpse.

There are 1.9 million people 65+ years of age who live in nursing homes (in group quarters) according to the recent US census (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0034.pdf). They receive Social Security, which they use to buy food and necessities, and Medicare, which they use to pay the costs of living in a nursing home, being treated by doctors, going to the hospital, and receiving medicines. There are also people under 65 who live in nursing homes (roughly 200,000; my Mom was one, beginning at age 51 with a brain aneurysm and lasting until her death from a drug-resistant infection at 69). The vast majority, from coma patients to those made invalid through accident or disease, receives Medicaid to pay for their housing, medicines, doctor's visits, and hospital stays (and if you're under 65 and in a nursing home, chances are you will go to the hospital a number of times). Getting old is a hell of an expensive thing.

Then there are the 37.8 million total (including the 1.9 million above) who are 65+. Each receives both Social Security and Medicare. With that, they pay for medicines, doctor's and hospital visists, food, rent, electric and gas, water, trash, gasoline, clothing, recreation, and anything else.

It is possible that none of these people are likely to receive any more help or money after next week. That means Mom, Dad, and/or the grandparents currently living in nursing homes will need a place to live, and will need the same level of care they received in that facility.

What is the economic impact of bringing home 2.1 million people from nursing homes?

Within a few months, most nursing home systems around the country, and there were 16,100 according to a survey conducted in 2004 by the Centers for Disease Control (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0034.pdf) will collapse and go bankrupt. That number is likely higher since the CDC's 2004 survey, with group living populations for those 65+ increasing from 1.5 to 1.9 million during that time according to Census.

Other than the handful that remain open due to the residents' ability to pay out of pocket, this will result in over 936,000 people (as of the 2004 CDC survey and likely more), being thrown out of work. These people include registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, certified nursing assistants, nursse's aids, and orderlies. This does not include the kitchen workers (easly 10 per facility) who would lose their jobs, nor does it include cleaning staff, pharmacists, physicians (especially geriatric specialists) who service the facilities and their residents.

Then there are those people whose jobs depend on the money spent by the nursing homes and their employees. This includes pharmaceutical companies, medical instrument manufacturers (probably most are not foreign), uniform anufacturers and cleaners), automobile manufacturers, gas station attendants, oil refinery workers, grocers and their employees, farmers, ranchers, railway workers, truck drivers, providers of housing, the doctors and dentists they see for personal illness and such, ALL will lose the as customers (at least half of their normal business, if not more).

When they are laid off in the next few months, these people will be out of work with NO unemployment insurance and nowhere else to go to work.

Then, comes the tax results.

Suddenly, over 1 million people (not to mention the secondary and tertiery employment lost because they're out of work), easily 1 percentage point in the national unemployment statistic, are no longer paying federal, state, and in some cases city income taxes. All of that tax money stops being collected, meaning the president, state governors, and local mayors and city councils have less money to work with. That means MORE government cuts in jobs and services.

Sounding like a house of cards to you? See how much primary, secondary, and tertiery employment the government creates by supplying so many dollars to just in this one sector?

One sector should do a booming business, though: funeral homes.

I mean, how many of you have tried to keep a goldfish alive on your own let alone a 65+ year old human being who needs 24.7 care? How are you going to go to work and see to it that Mom, Dad, Grandma, and/or Grandpa receive medicines on time, sleep without rolling out of bed (gotta' get a hospital bed with a railing so they don't fall out), oxygen (when needed, including buying it, changing out the tanks, etc.), go to doctor visits, eat properly and in conjunction with their medicines, get enough fluids (not too little or too much), bathe, or use the bathroom (yes, you will have to put them on, take them off, and wipe their bottoms).

And that's just the impact of 2.1 million people who need round-the-clock care suddenly being home, not to mention the million+ people suddenly out of work.

And that's not even my biggest concern. My biggest concern is what happens when the military, many of whom are walking wounded with PTSD, many of whom have family being thrown off base with no means of support, suddenly don't get paid? Will there be a coup?

Now, that's certainly something to think about over the next few weeks. That's what it means in a very real sense. And, that does not include what happens to us in an international fiscal sense.

Are you sure this is what you want, Tea Party members? Really?

Economy Fall Down Go Boom!

2011-07-22T09:42:00.001-06:00

The GOP and Dems say to the people,
"Cut taxes for the rich and cut your
Social Security checks, or the dog gets it!"

Here is why the economy is in the shape it's in.

As long as $500 to $750 billion more in capital leaves our national economy each year than we take in, the United States will grow poorer and poorer. Today will be viewed as an employment high point in 50 years.

The economy is like a bathtub. The water is capital. Except, the tub has a crack in the side (the trade deficit). You can try to refill the tub as many times as you want with tax cuts, spending cuts, or new spending on jobs, but as long as the crack remains in the side of the tub, the water will continue to drain out. And what will happen in time? It will all run out. All. Economy fall down go boom.

And without water, without capital, we cannot grow the economy. All we can do is shift jobs from one place to another, as Hickenlooper is attempting to do with his program. He wants to take businesses and jobs from other parts of the country and transplant them here, making other places more poor than Colorado.

Now, we could change all this, but it won't happen overnight. It will take restoring tariffs to the levels they were at before the trade deficit's crack appeared with Reagan's cuts. That will encourage foreign producers to build manufacturing capacity in the US... that is if they want to sell anything here.

In other words, they will then have to invest capital here. That means a gain in capital for the domestic economy.

If we don't do this, we will continue down the road of the economic theory called Development-Dependency. It's in-part how the US became so wealthy in the 19th and early 20th centuries, by taking capital from Africa and South America. Now, it's being done TO us, as our former communist enemies sell us the TVs and, to quote Kruschev, "rope" with which we will economically hang ourselves.

We can fix this. But clearly, nobody in D.C. has the political cojones to do so. They simply will not do what is right. They'd rather continue down the path of a failed economic policy called "free" trade that is not now nor ever has been free, let alone fair.

And as the late historian, Will Durant once said, every civilization collapses by relying too much on its founding principle. Will US civilization now fall down go boom?

Saved: A short story

2011-06-05T17:23:00.000-06:00

A while ago, I published a short story through Amazon.com. Having folks buy it was never the point. Sadly, Amazon does not let us post them for free download. However, I did find a Web site that lets me do exactly that.

The name of the piece is Saved: A short story. Click on the title to the left, and then follow the instructions to download the story. Hopefully, you enjoy it. If you do enjoy it, I would be honored if you would pass it on to others who may also enjoy it.

Thank you!

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Controlling the Kids: The Kids are Alright - A Review

2011-02-16T17:19:00.001-07:00

Control.

Control of one's life, one's environment, one's decisions are all considered the hallmarks of adulthood, that one is no longer a kid.

Nietzsche preaches in various essays that control is the true and proper objective of both a moral and physical life, that one should rise above conventional (his word is slave) morality and control all.

So, why does an attempt to control by gaining knowledge, in this case of a secret identity, drive a wedge between members of an unconventional family?

In the film, The Kids are Alright, every character seeks to control the others by using various social devices, from cursory displays of affection, to feigned ignorance, to acts of rebellion.

Rather than raise consciousness, each controlling act does the opposite. Whether each egomaniacal effort was intended, it nevertheless damages the souls of all concerned, and especially the heart of a family's already-troubled unity.

It becomes clear right off there is a dis-ease in this family. The daughter of two lesbians, conceived through artificial insemination, has just turned 18. Added to this rite of passage, and there are many similar symbols offered in the film, is the daughter’s pending move away from home to college, out of the ultimate controlling environment, the family, to one of near anarchy.

The daugther Mia, played by Mia Wasikowska, wants to know a fundamental fact from her past: Who is my father? Revealing his identity also reveals the dis-ease beginning to control the family's destiny: the push-pull between control and complacency.

Father, daughter, and, as it turns out, a similarly-conceived son Laser (one mother bore the daughter, one mother bore the son, and all from the same sperm donor) meet. Laser is played by Josh Hutcherson.

Mia hits it off with dad Paul, played with a nonchalant coyness by Mark Ruffalo, while Laser is more cautious, warning his sister the man seems ego-centered.

Eventually, their mothers learn of the meeting.

Nic, one mother played to turgid perfection by Annette Bening, goes through the ceiling. An OBGYN and the more controlling of the two parents, she forbids her adult daughter from seeing the man again. Of course, her daughter ignores the order.

At the same time, the other mother, Jules, played with a gentle innocence by Julianne Moore, learns she is barely satisfying Nic, what with her whimsical, unfocused lifestyle and sudden inability to hit the G spot in bed.

Jules ultimately meets Paul, and... well, I dare go no further and risk spoiling the rest.

What I take away from this film, written by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, and directed by Cholodenko, is nobody in this unconventional family is terribly grown up at the start. They’re all still a bunch of controlling kids, with Jules the least controlling of all. The one who acts most mature, Nic, turns out to be the least so of all among the adults, including her teenage daughter.

It becomes no surprise when Jules grows up the most, beginning a new business as a landscape architect and contractor, an adultish role that looks destined to take root and flourish despite all else. In the end, she is the only one able to weed out her emotions and explain the bigger picture at stake in a marriage, how ultimately difficult a marriage is to tend. She is the only one able to fully, genuinely apologize without prompting for her secret, really the family's weed-infested dis-ease, now revealed. Yet, she too has much farther to go.

This is a good film. Based on those I’ve seen nominated for the Best Picture Oscar®, it is the best so far. It is provocative, probing, honest, and makes quite clear that the Kids, meaning every character in the film, are NOT Alright. Perhaps the daughter, newly delivered to college and separated from her family, will become the most evolved of all. Maybe she will flourish in the university's fertile soil. Only time will tell.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Lifting the Fog: The King's Speech Reviewed

2011-02-10T11:43:00.006-07:00

The King's Speech

Fog.

Everywhere.

On the tongue.

In the soul.

Alienating.

Discouraging.

Yet, the inevitable comes.

Regardless.

How many people do you know who stutter? I don’t mean the verbal kind, necessarily. I mean those people who start something, then stop. Then start again, then stop. They never quite get their lives going, never quite commit to any one thing, never quite rise above the fears preventing their ascent to higher things.

Last week, I saw the Oscar-nominated film, The King’s Speech. I’ve hesitated to review it because I was not sure how I felt about it. Is it as great a film as depicted in the popular press?

It comes off very much like a Masterpiece program on PBS. It’s a classic rise-above-one’s-shortcomings film, a thematic genre at which British filmmakers excel. Its hero, who would become King George VI, rises above a vocal stutter to take his rightful place in history.

I hesitated to write this review because something nagged at me. The film could not be this pedestrian. It could not be so seemingly bland a Masterpiece program, except one with great actors, including Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter, and a great director, Tom Hooper, topping the bill, could it?

And so, I puzzled and puzzled until my puzzler was sore.

It seems this film’s theme is not so much about a man overcoming a vocal stutter as one overcoming a lifestyle of stuttering: one that prevents the personal expression of a human soul. Perhaps that symbolism even extends to the Chamberlain parliament of the era, with its many attempts at appeasing rather than crushing the threat that would soon consume the world?

Bertie, the nickname used by the royal family for its younger son, has arranged his life so it makes no statement of any kind. His life is guarded, it is essentially without expression. That’s not to say he does not feel or enjoy things. For example, though not favored by older royals, he enjoys American jazz music. However, he listens to it on a gramophone at low volume, in a small sitting room in his palace, in private, hiding his joy from the rest of the world.

Though he is affected by geopolitics and political economy, diligently reading the newspaper and lamenting the plight of Depression-era Britains, he makes no personal statement, either in words or actions, to engage or arrest the suffering of others. He has made himself into a guarded ghost, hidden from life, sharing nothing of his considerable wisdom with the world.

Except, life will not let Bertie be. He has a threatening date with destiny, one brought on by an obstinate, profligate brother (who becomes King Edward VII and then resigns to continue a lifestyle right out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel), and a peculiar, loud German, with a Charlie Chaplin mustache, and the power of dramatic, extemporaneous speech. To rise to the needs of his people and allies, Bertie must rise above his own stutter— not merely the stutter of his tongue, but the stutter of his soul.

The question is does the film really work? If this is the thematic message, does the film readily bring it out? I’m not sure. Usually, themes emerge easily for me from fiction and always have. This theme seems deeply buried. Despite the use of many visual metaphors, like the ever thinning fog or therapist Logue's suggestion that Bertie glue the upper wing onto a World War I model airplane, one being built by Logue’s son and something his father, the King, would never allow, I didn’t get the meaning at first.

It turns out I am still a bit puzzled.

Is it a good film? Yes. Is it a great film? Possibly. However, for as accessibly played as the characters were, Bertie’s character remains somewhat remote and guarded to me. The man has a full-blown threshold moment, literally crossing the doorway from one era in his and the nation’s life to another; yet, despite all the handshakes (including Winston Churchill as played brilliantly by Timothy Spall) as he walks through a number of palace rooms, I don’t feel that moment of triumph.

Perhaps that has to do with the war that followed? Though Bertie’s personal victory and its national impact were monumental, bolstering a terrified nation, they signaled the beginning of the hell to come. Perhaps that is it. Perhaps it was Europe’s perpetual stutter, it’s, until then, unending wars of conquest and aggression, which disallow my sense of joy at Bertie’s triumph.

That is not the scriptwriter’s or filmmaker’s fault. That is mine. Perhaps in this regard, I must overcome a stutter of my own. Perhaps the best films are those not at first accessible, those that take a bit of time to consider, those for which the fog must first lift so we can see what lies within?

Blue Valentine: A Film Review

2011-01-28T17:21:00.001-07:00

Grade: B

The most well-intentioned words and gestures can extinguish a love that never fully sparked. Opposing ambitions and, especially, a lack of ambition by one partner can often lead intimates apart, with one and often both resenting the bonds that constrain flight.

Resentment builds, not against the circumstance, though it should, but against the other person. A villain is cast in the minds of one or both partners. The two, though still together, grow emotionally and intimately distant. Add alcohol to the dead romance, and no matter how bad a beating one takes for the other, if one partner is remotely, psychologically healthy, that partner's integrity survives while the relationship dies.

Blue Valentine is the story of Dean and Cindy, played by Ryan Gosling and Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams. The film shows us the rise and fall of a marriage, one that is no more or less extraordinary than any other.

This film makes us voyeurs, forcing us to watch the processes that led to the death of this marriage. The director sequences the film so we first see a scene related to the end of their marriage and then a scene related to the beginning. Scenes from both stories are edited together, side by side, until both come together.

Most shots in the film are so smotheringly close to their subjects, in time we hope for physical distance. The point is driven home most vividly when the couple, on the husband’s suggestion, take a trip to an area theme hotel. Their room, which Dean refers to as a robot's vagina, resembles a tiny space capsule’s bridge. The last thing these spouses need is to be physically closer than they already are. The last thing she needs is him invading her shower or her body. The last thing he needs is for more alcohol invading his body.

The film looks grainy. Although we know something is seriously fuzzy within the marriage, the details are kept blurry and pale to our eyes. We know very quickly their marriage will not survive. There is no way it could; yet, we search for the point of no return, we search for a villain on whom to blame the failure.

Though Dean grows emotionally unstable at one point, throwing a punch at her employer, the alcohol flaming his rage, he isn’t the villain. He’s not clever enough to be the villain. They've both had enough. She knows this. He does not.

No, Dean and Cindy are the opposite of star-struck lovers. They, like so many couples, conceived a child out of wedlock, married for what they thought was love, but failed to build a family because no amount of commitment could rescue her from his alcoholism and him from her indifference.

In the end, if there is a villain at all, it is context. It is these morally numbing times, times in which people can't really perceive reality beyond a paycheck, a beer or something stronger, and a quick fuck. If anything, the circumstances of the lives they fell into through compromise is the villain, not anything they intended.

Gosling and Williams are spot-on perfect in their performances. I have met these characters in real life. So have you. You may be one. I am shocked Gosling was not considered for an Oscar. Though she is good, William’s part feels more like a supporting role. Even so, her nomination for Best Actress was well earned.

To the director, Derek Cianfrance, goes much credit. His time studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder, under avant-garde film greats Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon, clearly shows in the film’s shot selections, pace, documentary look, and concurrent edit. I have no clue how he and cinematographer Andrij Parekh got the camera so close without getting a wide-angled, fish-eye effect. Shooting in the hotel room must have been hell. The edit, by Jim Helton and Ron Patane, is sparce and, frankly, amazing considering how disjointedly the plot unfolds.

One warning. When originally rated, the film received an NC-17 for its sex scenes. It was re-edited to a hard R. The odd part is, the sex scenes didn't feel remotely sexy. Considering the context, the sex bordered on repugnant, desperate, and pitiful, which was likely the filmmaker's point.

This is a depressing, love-was-never-there independent for our numbing times. In addition to the Oscar nomination, Williams also received a Spirit Award nomination for Best Actress. I have not seen the other nominated films yet; so, I can only imagine how good the other nominees are in all Spirit Awards categories.

Being a small film, made for a reported $1 million, Blue Valentine probably will leave the local cinemas quickly. I doubt it will surface on one of the cable movie channels other than IFC or the Sundance Channel. So, this weekend may be your only opportunity to see it. It’s easily worth the price of a matinee.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Pain: The Remedy for Middle-class Sleepwalkers?

2011-01-04T11:48:00.001-07:00

Today, we began a discussion on Facebook about what progressives must do next to prevent a further slide to the right.

Robin Van Ausdall began the discussion with this statement:

"The very wealthy and Wall Street elites continually complain that they are subjected to an unfair and unwarranted degree of malice by the working class...my question--"What'd you THINK was gonna happen?"

I cracked that if they thought this was an assault on their class, they should read up on Russia in 1917. Most of the remarks that followed were humorous, following my vein.

I then said:

"And yet we keep voting for them (the Dems who turn their backs on progressive causes). I have one question for that. Why?"

Andrea Merida, a member of the Denver Public Schools board, answered:

"Because we don't have pipeline and base builders in the state party seats. And we still don't have any in the running."

See, to me this is always the issue with Democrats. We always seek somebody "out there" to begin building the coalition.

So, I wrote the following reply.

Andrea, it sounds like we're hoping for someone to save us. Wouldn't it be something if that someone was us?

Look, the pendulum is swinging as far to the right as it has since the 1930s. That means we have to keep agitating from the left. That's how dialectical materialism works. The question is, what message should we be arguing with.

It seems to me we need to reintroduce the notion of social responsibility, that the rich (and everyone else) has a duty to strengthen American society and the nation. That means strengthening all rungs of society and working to restore the economy.

Of course, there is Jerry Brown's way, too: pain. He believes the enablers of the wealthy right now come from the ever dwindling middle class. Why? Because of their sheer numbers, the middle class has the power to move policy. For the most part, the middle class feels comfortable. If a member of that class has a job, he/she really doesn't care about someone who doesn't, at least not enough to do something politically about it. That, and the middle class keeps demanding more services, often through the initiative process, without paying for them.

Brown feels it's time for the middle class to grow a sense of responsibility, meaning to either stop demanding services or start paying for them. If they do neither, they must suffer the consequences: the cut-off of those services. To do that, it appears he will devolve many programs formerly paid for and administered by the state to city, county, and municipal levels. And in some cases, we are talking counties with populations bigger than the whole state of Colorado.

The bottom line is if the middle class wants to benefit from programs, it has to put up the money or shut up. That's no longer a political issue. That's a moral, common-sense issue.

Back in 2000, I was talking with Ed Perlmutter, the then state senate minority leader, at a Jeffco Second Saturday breakfast. He was explaining the then new (now perennial) budget problems, wondering how the Democrats could help the Republican leaders balance the budget and take care of all service needs.

I looked at Ed and asked, "Why the hell are you trying to help them succeed? It's a house of cards, Ed. Let it fall. But, have your ducks in a row, so you can blame the responsible parties. That just might put us in power in a few election cycles."

He said, "By golly (and yes he talks like that), Bob, that's it! We'll do it!" And they did. And in a few election cycles, we held both the senate and house. Then, we forgot who we were, got personally ambitious, and lost the house last year. Ahh, well. As Nietzsche suggested, pain is the best teacher, even for Democrats.

It's up to us on the left to begin stressing social responsibility as part of a citizen's moral responsibility. We have to stress that either we pay for programs or don't have them. Maybe the day has come when the only thing that will get through to the middle class is profound economic pain? Maybe we need to take the attitude that we either pay for services, Medicaid for example, or kill those services? Maybe we need to resurrect Gov. Lamm's idea that if we don't pay for these services, then everybody, including the baby boomers now graduating to SS and Medicare, have a "duty to die." Maybe the baby boomers' mothers and/or fathers in nursing homes need to come home and be cared for by their senior children? Maybe the baby boomers need to change a few of their parents' diapers for a change or pay out of their pockets for the nursing homes? How long do you think that would last?

Andrea won't like this, but maybe the real solution to the education crisis is to close the public schools? Pay for them as a society or close them. Period. That will seriously hurt the middle class, which is a good thing. It will be like smelling salts: a pungent thing that wakes up the sleepwalkers.

I think a new take-it-or-leave-it attitude by the left may just force the middle class to becoming reasonable. At first, they'll leave it. Then, they'll start suffering. Then, they'll take it at any cost-- just like their grandparents did in the 30s.

A Commentary on Community in Jerry Brown's Inaugural Speech

2011-01-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

In his third gubernatorial speech, made today, Jerry Brown said something profound:

"Many of these issues have confronted the State of California for decades, at least back to Governor Earl Warren. And, it's sobering and enlightening to read through the inaugural addresses of past governors..."

"They each start on a high note of grandeur and then focus on the same reoccurring issues: education, crime, budgets, water. I've thought a lot about this, and it strikes me that we face together, as Californians, are not so much problems, but, rather, conditions, life's inherent difficulties."

"A problem can be solved or forgotten, but a condition always remains. It remains to elicit the best from each of us, to show us how we depend on one another, and how we have to work together."

Now, that's a hell of a point. In making it, Gov. Brown introduces a fairly-well ignored concept in contemporary politics: Communitarianism. This is not Communism. Rather, it seeks to balance personal rights with communal responsibilities.

Communitarianism was a very hot topic in political science back in the 1990s. Sadly, many of the warnings delivered by its theorists, like Amatai Etzioni and Susan Tolchin, have come to pass because we ignored our responsibilities, our loyalties to community.

We seem to be on a tipping point, in which concerns for personal rights are so tremendous that they seem to be breeding almost, if not in fact, a desire for anarchy.

Strangely, in what seems to be a new, third leg of politics, the Tea Party insists on rights for plutocrats and responsibilities, loyalties really, to the plutocrats' agenda, rather than to the community's welfare. Their attitude seems to be, "Ask not what our plutocrats can do for you; ask what you can do for our plutocrats!"

And, herein lies our tipping point.

What is the risk?

I think historian Will Durant put it best when he wrote, "Every form of government seems to perish by excess of its basic principle."

By ignoring responsibility and favoring anarchy or plutocracy, are we to perish next?

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Superman Will Save Us: The Proposed Social Security Rollbacks

2010-11-10T16:35:00.000-07:00

Superman will save us.

Maybe if we just had the right candidate, the right congressman or senator, the right president, or the right brand of breakfast cereal, we could stop (fill in the blank) and accomplish something progressive, something helpful, something life-affirming.

Forgive me, reader, but when I woke up today and read the Denver Post's article about Obama "backing away" from his pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq next year, I gave up looking for "the right person." I gave up expecting the president to do much more than draw an unearned paycheck.

You want the right person? Everybody who reads this should look in the mirror. If that person is not willing to act, there is no right person.

It's time to SLAM the House, Senate, and White House with millions of letters saying to continue plans to re-tax the capital vacuums (the top 1%), stop the proposed Social Security and Medicare insurance rollbacks, and continue plans to withdraw from Afghanistan.

But, do you think the Dems will figure that out? Hell no. They'll be too busy deciding what they stand for while blaming the GOP and looking for somebody else to save us.

Let's try an experiment. Let's start a drive to collect 5 million signatures on a petition to Congress and the president to re-tax the top 1% (rather than those making more than $250,000/year; there's a compromise) and not slash SS or Medicare. First, we'll concentrate on the Dems. Think we can get the signatures?

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Riots Break Out in London over Cuts in Education

2010-11-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

The US could very well see similar citizen action in the coming years as the president further retreats in fear and the fascist wing of the GOP take advantage of the political power gap.

Have a look at the following videos. This could be your city in about a year.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Democrats: the Let Somebody Else Do It ADHD Party?

2010-11-10T10:35:00.000-07:00

It was funny. Listening to David Sirota's talk show this morning on AM 760 Progressive Talk, he heard what I did from one caller. She said, "We need someone..."

This translates out to, "We can't motivate ourselves; so, we need somebody palatable enough to everybody to do it."

This is why Democrats rarely win elections. This is why Democrats rarely enforce effective policy. This is why Democrats are regarded by the right as weak (and I think justifiably so).

The truth is both the GOP and Dems are motivated by fear. It's sad, but true.

When the GOP are afraid, they organize and fight back against that fear, real or imagined. And, they can imagine a LOT of fearful things, many of which do not exist.

When the Dems are afraid, however, most simply whimper and complain. They rarely act. They look for somebody else to act, to lead the flock (as long as it doesn't interfere with other activities, like mountain biking, having meetings about other things, standing on street corners waving signs, [as if that ever changed anything], etc.).

For all the accusing Dems do about the GOP, that they're sheeple who walk in lockstep, the Dems sure don't act unless they see somebody with a shepherd's crook standing in front of them. The truth is before Dems agree to follow, a person must first show he/she is not too pushy, not too far to the left, and not too this way or that. By the time they Dems decide this person is the right shepherd, something else comes along to occupy their attention, and they walk away.

I'm beginning to think the Democrats are the Let Somebody Else DO It-ADHD party.

Pathetic.

An Election Reminder

2010-10-25T19:43:00.000-06:00

Let's remember if we retain both houses of congress, many of the people we are working to reelect don't deserve it. They go against what activists want simply to extend their careers. See, the truth is many of these Dem candidates for reelection are narcissists, not progressives. They cynically know we would work to reelect the Devil in an election like this if he had a D after his name.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Don't Listen to What Americans Say; Watch What We Do

2010-10-15T22:51:00.000-06:00

This is the first in a series of lessons titled, "Don't Listen to What Americans Say; Watch What We Do."

What Americans say: We want children to have the best education in the world.
What Americans do: We make sausages, with 30+ per students per teacher and acceptably high drop-out rates for the buck.
What Americans should do (minimally): Position qualified teachers as mentors, with only a handful of students per class, maybe 10, and no more than 5 in places with high drop-out rates.

Why the latter? It's called the Hawthorne Effect. Read up, friends. Read up.

What Malcom and the Dog Saw

2010-10-05T11:46:00.000-06:00

I read what may the most fascinating of sociology books hiding deceptively within the journalism of Malcom Gladwell. It's called, What the Dog Saw.

Though Gladwell's chapters seem disconnected, a theme emerges about the forces that create order and disorder in large and small societies, including groups. Whether it's dogs or people, he argues most social problems are caused by small groups. Yet, people tend to generalize the problem, projecting it onto the broader group or society. This, of course, is an unfair assessment. And when we generalize the problem, we also generalize the "solution" to that problem. Essentially, it's like trying to pick up a dropped penny with a steam shovel, taking up a plot of soil five feet by five feet to get the penny.

Think about it this way. What if, in a public school system, the chronic "troublemakers" from any one graduating class number maybe 10 kids? The other several hundred may have a few behavioral issues in their 12 years of school, but are relatively stable and peaceful compared to these 10. Yet, how often do we treat the problems of the 10 as if they applied to the hundreds? This is not only an incredibly expensive way to "solve" the problems generated by the 10, it doesn't really get at the heart of the problems. It doesn't really solve the problems at all.

Gladwell uses the example of a homeless man from Nevada. He was called Million Dollar Murray. Drunk, drugged, and injured, he would show up at various hospitals in desperate need of help. Within one year, he had racked up over $1 million in medical care received through state-funded emergency room services. He alone consumed a large proportion of all dollars spent by the state that year on indigent health care.

The few times the state put him through rehab, he did great. He cleaned up his act, lived the structured life required, and all-but resurrected from the death of alcoholism. But just as soon as he went out on the street again, he would end up back on death's doorstep, meaning the Emergency Room.

Now, wouldn't it be better for Murray and less expensive for Nevadans to simply have him live full-time in a rehab center? Sure, it would go against the American norm of the self-made man, simply being given a structured life to live rather than create one. But, wouldn't it be a lot cheaper than spending $1 million a year on his medical treatments, some of which involved life-saving surgeries. Wouldn't we get a potentially useful member of society again? See, once he was rehabbed to a point, this center would send Murray out on work release. He became useful again. Yet, one night long after the rehab center dollars had given out, the police found Murray dead. It's no surprise.

And here's the thing. Most homeless people are that way for only a few days. They soon find a new place to live and get on with their lives, even in these trying times. Yet, there is a small nucleus of homeless people who present the generalized face of the problem. The chronic problems of a few people stigmatize all homeless people, the vast majority of which are only homeless for a day or so. To remedy the chronic face of homelessness presented by this small group, meaning the kind of lives lived by this small group, we apply a generalized approach that costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year but really does not help this small group or society. Yet, we may remedy the problem and spend a whole lot less money by simply focusing most resources (not all, of course, because some still need the short-term help) on this small group.

And, don't we apply a generalized solution to a specific problem for so many other issues, from "viscous" pit bull dogs (most of which are not pit bulls... we falsely generalize here) to school test scores?

Ultimately, Gladwell argues that generalized approaches to social instability don't work. Rather, society should focus on the small group that really needs the focus. It would not only prove less expensive, it may actually remedy the social ills. I love this idea, and am willing to try it.
--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Michael Moore and Rights v. Responsibilities

2010-09-11T09:54:00.000-06:00

This is a first. I am going to disagree with Michael Moore about something. His article "If the Mosque Isn't Built, This is No Longer America" is way over the top.

I respect Moore. I respect his films and his politics. He's a polemicist of the finest order. However, this time he went too far.

But, sometimes we on the left romanticize the hell out of our ideals. This is one of those times.
Just because you have a right to do something, that doesn't always mean you SHOULD do it. that doesn't mean you should exercise that right.

That's the point.

If Islam is about creating peace, and the purpose of this Islamic mission (if you will) is to create peace, does the building of this Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero actually achieve this objective? Will it create peace?

That is a very simple question to answer. At this point in time, the answer is no.

As I wrote the other day, sometimes an issue comes down to civil rights v. civic responsibilities. Just because you have a civil right, you must still consider whether it is the moral, responsible thing to do. Then, you must double-check your answer, asking why this is moral and responsible.

For example, was it moral or responsible for the Catholic Church to set up its mission system in California in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, disturbing the peace of the natives living there? Was it moral or responsible for the protestant churches, in particular the Methodist church, to set up Indian schools in the late 19th century, virtually kidnapping children from the reservations, cutting their hair, and forcing white, Protestant culture on them?

Asking whether our exercise of rights is responsible is something we've learned to do over time in America. It has become part of our social contract with each other for living in peace.

We ask ourselves all sorts of questions, now. Will the exercise of my rights harm someone else? Will speaking my mind, like calling someone the "N" word, or throwing my Starbucks coffee cup out the window of my car harm someone else? What should I do to serve the greater good and keep the civil peace? How should I act? Which exercise of my rights will do more harm than good?

Those questions are harder to answer, but I think we must still answer them before acting. Wouldn't you agree?

For example, going back to Michael's classic film, Roger and Me, did GM have the right to close its plant in Flint, MI? Sure! Absolutely! No question! But, should it have? Was it the responsible thing to do for the community or, in retrospect, the stockholders? Absolutely not! It decimated a whole community, and it didn't help GM in the long-run one bit. In the long-run, GM went bankrupt. It proved immoral, irresponsible, and bad business at the same time. (Funny how that happened.)

Rights v. responsibilities. It's a fine line sometimes. We should acknowledge our duty to preserve the former, for all, including Imam Rauf and his congregation, while being mindful of the latter. And, we should never let personal, religious, or group pride stand in the way of a caring, loving, and peacemaking answer.

To quote from a good book, but not the only book, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God" Matthew 5:9. I think they got that one right.

From your obedient servant...

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Update to Yesterday's Blog Article

2010-09-10T13:06:00.000-06:00

You've no doubt learned that cult leader Terry Jones, who said yesterday he would not burn the Qur'ans and had worked out a deal with Imam Rauf in New York about building the mosque near Ground Zero, was talking through is delusion. That's a nice way of saying he was talking out his ass.

The Imam said he never heard from the man and had not agreed with anyone to move the mosque.

Evidently, civic responsibility has lost again. It's a shame. And shame on men whose pride or, perhaps, delusions are stronger than their sense of a broader need, a broader community.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Of Mosques, Burning Qur'ans, and Rights v. Responsibilities

2010-09-09T17:33:00.000-06:00

This will be an odd article. Usually, I discuss economics and rights, here, and how they intersect. Today, however, I'm going to discuss something unusual, especially for Americans. Instead of civil rights, I'm going to discuss civic responsibilities.

At the moment, you are undoubtedly aware of two issues in the news: the proposed controversial mosque to be built near Ground Zero (9/11) in Manhattan by Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, and the proposed burning of the Qur'an by radical cult leader Rev. Terry Jones.

Just moments ago, I learned from ABC News that cult leader Jones has called off his planned book burning. It also reports that Jones, as he reports, has spoken with Imam Rauf, who has agreed to not build the mosque near Ground Zero. Jones says he and Rauf will meet in Manhattan on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11 massacres, and talk.

First, if the ABC story is true, this is a significant moment in US history. Cooler heads have prevailed. I'm not sure why or how they came to this sensible choice, but they have.

This brings me to the original intention of this discussion.

The choice for both men and their respective congregations was seemingly paradoxical. It was between the exercise of civil rights and civic responsibilities. The issue at hand is that, at times, we must choose between civil rights and doing what is right. And, these are not always the same thing.

Civil rights include things like speaking freely, voting, being safe in our papers and persons (including civil peace and personal privacy), and worshiping a deity or not as we see fit.

Civic responsibilities include things like each of us keeping the peace, going to war to preserve our nation, not polluting, and not using our rights when it serves a greater good.

The civically responsible thing for cult leader Jones to do is not burn the Qur'an. Though he and his flock have the right to do so, they have a responsibility to the greater good not to do so. The civically responsible thing for Imam Rauf to do is not build the mosque near Ground Zero. Though he and his flock have the right to do so, as NY city zoning laws tell us they do, they have a responsibility to the greater good not to do so.

In the US, though, the line between rights and responsibilities has always been skewed. It usually veers off, at least philosophically if not in reality, in favor of personal rights. This bias comes from the flames of tyranny in which our nation was born and reborn, Phoenix-like, out of the ashes of Europeans subjugated by a king, Indian nations conquered by federal troops, Africans enslaved by Massachusettans and southern whites, a whole nation enslaved by the 10th amendment, and the majority of people continually repressed by industrialists.

These rights are considered so important, we and our forebears have spelled them out as best we could in our federal and state constitutions.

However, for these rights to be preserved, for these rights to continue to exist, each of us must defend them.

Ah ha!

With written-down rights come written-down, but, more rightly, implied responsibilities. We find them written down in the preamble to the Constitution. Government must provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity (future generations).

Yet in order for government to do these things and for the Bill of Rights to be in force at all in our democratic republic, the people must provide and defend them. The latter, defense of rights, flows naturally from the former, the existence of rights. It is just common sense.

Next, for government of the people to be secure, prosperous, and rights-bearing, we must defend the government that defends the rights. In a democratic republic, the people are supposed to both form and defend the government. So, here we find a second implied responsibility: national defense.

Let's look at a few other written-down rights. We are told our bodies, stuff (papers), homes, and privacy have a right to be secure. In other words, we have a right to have peace within our country, within our lives. And, common sense tells us we are responsible for providing and keeping the peace.

The how for keeping the peace, however, is not spelled out. Perhaps the founders thought that each new generation would figure that out for themselves, based on their needs. Perhaps they thought we would understand that, at times, peace is created by forgoing the exercise of our rights, that we have a responsibility to consider and work for the greater good, bypassing use of these rights when they will not create the greater good.

Regardless of what the founders thought, on a practical level, we have to find a way to be at peace with each other. And, as the Buddha supposedly said, "To move forward, one must always give up something." I think he meant that in a karmic sense, but I think it works in the physical world, too.

It seems the way to be at peace in society is sometimes found by not exercising civil rights when it is the civically responsible thing to do. Not always, but sometimes.

And, this is most definitely one of those sometimes.

If the ABC story is true, I am glad. It seems these two men put aside their pride and rights claims, and yielded to a greater responsibility. They found the proper balance between rights and responsibilities, and the world and our nation are better for it.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

An Open Letter to Moderate and Blue Dog Democrats

2010-09-07T08:37:00.010-06:00

So, here we are. Though voters profoundly distrust the GOP and any possibility it can rescue the economy, the NBC News-Wall Street Journal Poll released this morning shows, if the November election were held today, GOP candidates would win with a nine point lead.

I'm sure moderate and Blue Dog Democrats are sitting out there at the head of the Democratic Party wondering, "what happened?" As a member of the democratic wing of the Democratic Party, let me tell you what happened.

In an attempt to be all things to all people, you chose to live through a hurricane by standing on the middle ground. Despite all the power you held, you chose to be ineffectual and, thus, inconsequential. Rather than heroes, you chose to be caretakers.

Why?

You wanted to win reelection. That was more important than doing what you were elected to do.

Though it's never meant to be malicious, incompetence rarely is, when Democrats are carried by weak leadership, they get their clocks cleaned in mid-term elections.

It's a fact of history. Think about the mid-term election in 1946, when Republicans joked, "I wonder what Truman would do if he were alive?" We suddenly had a Republican congress.

Remember 1994, when Newtie and the Blowhards unveiled their Contract "on" (my word) America to topple the "Billary" Administration? Again, you got your clock cleaned! (Fortunately, Bill got the message and had some measure of success after.)

See, people interpret the lack of action as indifference. As Plato taught us, the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. And, people always see indifference as hostile and arrogant.

And how do voters react to indifference?

They punish!

So, for all you moderates and Blue Dogs who think the democratic wing of the Democratic party is too radical and, as a result, ineffectual, remember this. To create real, measurable progressive change:

We helped you win huge in 2008.
We helped you win all that good will and hope (remember hope?).
We went along with your policy initiatives, despite disagreeing with their lack of depth or breadth, rationalizing our actions by saying, "It's better to get something than nothing."

Well, maybe not. (And, maybe this will teach the left to stick to its guns in the future.)

And, what did you do?

You squandered it!

You began every policy initiative from the point of compromise, and you negotiated your caucus into making half-assed GOP policy.

The result?

First, the economy continues plodding along in, as Paul Krugman suggests, a depression, not a recession. (Adopting GOP-like policies, it's no wonder!)
Next, unemployment continues to rise despite the contortions of statistical logic called the "unemployment index," which tells only about 55% of the unemployment and underemployment story.
Worst of all, the trade deficit continues unabated, with all that capital flowing endlessly out of our national economy.

To make jobs, we need to KEEP capital here. Without capital, there is no stuff to create jobs with. It's like the flour for a cake. If there is no flour of some kind, there is no cake!

How do you respond?

In the last few weeks, to express the severity of our GOP-induced economic downfall and persisting coma, the president decided to use a middling, mitigated metaphor, saying, "The Republicans drove the economy into a ditch."

Into a ditch!!! Are you nuts?

Driving us into a ditch is something we call AAA for. They come out with the tow truck, pull us out, maybe change a blown tire or two, and send us on our way. It's not something we spend a trillion-dollar shot of adrenaline on to restart the economy's heart.

No, the truth is, in true Roadrunner and Coyote fashion, the GOP used an ACME Corp contraption, the tax cut for the rich, to catapult the economy off a cliff into a seemingly bottomless pit, and they won't even let us deploy a parachute or grappling hook to try and stop the descent!!!

There's your metaphor!

Bush, Boehner, and McConnell blew up the economy with a budget-obliterating nuclear bomb! They're pumping the middle class for every last blood-like dollar and sticking it into the pockets of their corporate fat-cat buddies. They want to be the lords and us the peasant workers!

But, no. Our president chooses to squeak like a mouse rather than clang like a klaxon.

Despite the successes of 2008, won with Dr. Dean's 50-state strategy, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the PAC moderates and Blue Dogs control and to which I will not contribute a dime, is now working to save their own candidates while abandoning progressives and the liberal reforms we support, saying, "Oh, they simply cannot win in this environment."

My interpretation is simple. They opt to save the power they hold within the party while losing the country. They choose to save their own asses rather than our jobs.

And, I got news for you, moderates and Blue Dogs! You sure as hell can't win in the environment you helped create, not without our help!

What the heck do you expect voters to do, Conserv-o-Dems, but throw you and your parochial politics of self-preserving pablum out of office?

There is no effective moderate position. There is no way to move forward from the middle of the road. Indeed, the only recognizable things we find in the middle of any road are live weeds and dead animals.

This year, because moderate and Blue Dog Democrats ignored voters' desperate pleas since November 2008, one of those dying animals appears to be a right-leaning donkey.

Only, it wasn't hit by a motor vehicle headed for a ditch. It was hit by a ballot box thrown by an angry voter reacting to its obstinate, self-serving indifference, as he or she plunged off a bridge into unemployment's abyss.

So, if you thought voters were angry in 2008, now they want to kill the wabbit. And, dear moderate and Blue Dog Dems, this year you're the wabbit!

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Rhetoric, Thurgood Marshall, and the Elaine Kagan Hearings

2010-06-30T10:49:00.000-06:00

Word came down from the Senate today that the Republicans may filibuster Elaine Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Why?

Because she clerked for Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, now dead for 17 years. And, of course, she shares political views with Barack Obama.

I think it's time to start calling people like Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) what they are: racists. Jeff Sessions might as well have worn a Klansman's sheet in the Senate hearing rooom yesterday. Who the hell does he think he is, and why did the chairman allow him to continue his racist rant against Thurgood Marshall?

See, each time Sessions used the word "activist" in his questioning, he meant the N word. Right? Watch the video. See this sneaky bastard in action.

If the Democrats' plan is to show just how socially out-of-step people like Sessions are, their rhetorical plan won't work, certainly not the way it's being deployed.

To work, Democrats must first set up the expectation that Republicans will say and do racist things during their questioning, that these Republicans are radical racists who want to re-establish white sovereignty over America (as if it isn't already the case!). Then, after the Republicans say what is expected, the Democrats should tie those words to the expectations.

It's good old-fashioned rhetoric. Posit the rhetorical hypothesis, test it (ie., let Sessions and the good old boys ask their radical questions), and then connect their words to the expectations (draw a conclusion for the people). That's how rhetoric works.

I am very perplexed that the Lame-o-crats are not drawing these conclusions for the body of reasonable Americans who are essentially unaware of what happened yesterday.

Now, the racist Republicans are threatening a filibuster because she worked for Thurgood Marshall and she shares political views with President Obama, and rumor has it both of these men are and were, egad, black! That's what it comes down to.

I think it's time for the Lame-o-crats to take this Independence Day holiday and tell the story of Thurgood Marshall, who he was, what he did for our country, and why one of the airports they may fly in and out of, Baltimore-Washington airport, has his name on it.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Imagine Each Municipality Generating 100% of Its Energy Needs Using Renewable Resources

2010-05-23T13:59:00.003-06:00

Marin County, California Supervisor Charles McGlashen will give a talk about Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) at Unity Church of Boulder on Monday evening, from 6:30 to 8:45 PM. CCA is a process through which municipalities take over generating and delivering power to residents and businesses. The Marin program went live in early May, and now generates 78% of the county's energy needs using renewable resources, including hydroelectric, biomass, and solar electric. The only fossil fuel still used is natural gas (22%). Marin aims to generate all power using renewable resources within in five years.

Oh, and Marin has done all this without costing energy consumers or county taxpayers a dime more than they already were paying for energy. That's right! There was none of this, "Oh, we don't have the technology; oh, it's too expensive right now" bullshit. It took two years to build out and run, negotiating with and buying the technology from green tech companies!

However as one would expect, capitalist nightmare Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is playing the nemesis of this new county enterprise. It has sponsored and pumped over $30 million into a statewide anti-municipal utility June ballot proposition.

Called the Two-Thirds Requirement for Local Public Electricity Providers Act, and ostensibly declared by PG&E as a pro-consumer-choice initiative, Proposition 16 would require a two-thirds vote of both the municipality's citizens and those affected by a decision that creates a new municipal utility. In other words, it would make it damned near impossible to create a CCA.

If a CCA like Marin's does not receive a two-thirds "yes" vote from both groups in a CCA election, the CCA would be dead and PG&E would continue to monopolize that market and generate power using fossil fuels.

You can imagine what I think about this Proposition. If I still lived in California, I'd vote F#@% NO if that was an option. The only way to contain cost and switch to renewable energy sources is through municiple ownership of this means of production and delivery.

I urge all California friends to vote no on this proposition.

That said, imagine if Colorado kicked out or significantly reduced Xcel Energy's operations, generating 78% or more of our power needs using renewable sources. Imagine forming CCAs, community by community, and bringing good, clean energy into our homes. Imagine how many lungs it would save and how many jobs it would create.

I hope all candidates for governor, senate, and state office attend tomorrow night's talk. I plan on being there.

If you want to hear Supervisor MCGlashen, he will speak at Unity Church of Boulder, 2855 Folsom Street, Boulder. That's at the corner of Folsom and Valmont. 6:30 to 8:45 PM. See you there.
--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Demand That Your Senators Support Blanche Lincoln's Derivatives Ban

2010-05-19T09:48:00.001-06:00

Though I'm not a fan of the Senator in general, I do support Blanche Lincoln's attempt to end the trading of derivatives altogether.

Evidently, many in the Senate do not share our desire, as stated in this NY Times article.

See, I was compliance/customer accounting rep at Merrill Lynch for many years. The best thing the Senate could do is ban the trading of intangibles, like derivatives, altogether.

The truth is the value of derivatives now exceeds the world's annual GDP by at least 300%. If these derivatives failed, there would be no way the world could bail out either the holders or banksters. It's simply not possible. The world's economic system would collapse far worse than in the 1920s.

The trading of derivatives actually threatens international economic security. It is a greater immediate threat to security and human life than the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons, than the threat of North Korea using its nuclear weapons, or the threat of Iran making a bomb. Yet, how much time, effort, and money are spent to prevent all that compared to preventing a derivatives meltdown?

This is an extremely dangerous situation. The Senate must prevent derivatives from threatening national, let alone international security again. This will not happen as long as Chris Dodd has Citi in his pocket.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

The Oil-Banker Administration

2010-05-12T09:32:00.000-06:00

It seems the Obama Administration has earned a new name: The Oil-Banker Administration.

Why?

Well, we all know about President Obama's magic trick that made billions of bank bailout dollars disappear, some of which were likely used to destabilize the Eurozone, including the economies of Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. Now, we learn the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) continues to approve offshore drilling in the gulf, based on "categorical exclusions," — including for BP!

So, explain to me again why I should vote in 2012 for Obama? What an embarrassment! From now on for me, this ceases to be the Obama Administration. Now and forever, I shall call it the Oil-Banker Administration: corruption you can be bankrupted in!

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Derivative Trading: A Threat to International Security

2010-05-12T09:01:00.000-06:00

Testimony before Congress into the cause of last week's profound drop in the world's stock markets yesterday tells me one thing. If one person can make this mess by trading in ONE stock index derivative contract, the securities markets have turned into the worse sucker's bet ever conceived.

Anybody investing real money against people who can create such a calamity in five minutes, understanding the potential downside risk, just may be insane.

I also think this will affect how corporate Boards spend their money in the near future. Rather than hiring new employees as the economy shows signs of life, they will buy back shares of common stock to retain the corporation's true value. If too many individual shares are owned and divided fractionally within various derivative contracts, that may be impossible.

If we didn't understand the dangers of derivative trading from the banking and Euro crises, we now know it has the potential to destroy all wealth on Earth in moments. If that is not a threat to national and international security, nothing is.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Fine Us for Not Voting? Really?

2010-05-07T10:12:00.000-06:00

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a social-democrat in the Democratic Party. I'm one of the far lefties (having once been a far rightie), though I don't think mine is an extreme position—indeed we know it is not when we poll voters on what they want done issue by issue. The label affixed to the fix seems more of an negative than the fix itself.

Mr. Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, laments the fall of centrist politics in the US. However, upon reading his opinion, it is easy to see he thinks in bifurcated, extremist terms.

Mr. Ornstein thinks increasingly there are only two groups in America's political continuum: extremist Democrats on one side and extremist Republicans on the other. He seems to ignore, however, the very large segment of Americans unaffiliated with any party.

In most states, the number of unaffiliated voters is as large or larger than the two major parties. This is certainly the case in Colorado. They are either centrists or even farther to the extremes than the extremists in the major parties. Unaffiliated voters also are considered swing voters. When they choose to participate in elections, they have a profound effect on the ultimate outcome.

The problem with unaffiliated voters is they are less likely to vote. They are politically lazy, which is the mark of centrism. Centrists are not as concerned with politics as extremists. Extremists vote almost all of the time. Centrists do not. Yet, Mr. Ornstein seems to believe centrists are the saviors of our political system.

Next, Mr. Ornstein seems to think extreme positions are necessarily bad. I dare say if extremists had been absent in 1776, he would be writing today about the impact of yesterday's parliamentary election on us Colonials rather than us Americans.

Also, one must ask Mr. Ornstein whether extreme positions do not help define the political center? I mean, without extremes, how would we know where it is?

Mr Ornstein finally talks about America's notoriously low voter turnout and how a similar problem was solved in Australia, favoring that solution here. He fails to address the real problem in low American voter turnout: a general lack of enthusiasm by unaffiliated voters for any candidate.

Each voter holds one issue and one solution more emotionally important than any other. When voters do not find a candidate who embraces that favored solution, they do not vote. No agreement, no vote. At all. In any race in the election.

Mr. Ornstein suggests Americans institute a fine for not voting. He wants us, under penalty of law, to vote for the lesser of two evils or else literally pay the price. What's next? Fining us for not announcing for office at least once in our lives? Arresting us for not having at least one political bumpersticker on our cars? Talk about an extremist position!

The article is simplistic and never considers the effects of dialectical materialism on policy. That theory holds that, as in all nature, there are always extremes in politics. Nature abhors extremes and, in time, creates balance through synthesis. It's sort of like solving the imbalance a la carte, picking bits and pieces of solutions from both extremes to form the solution. The same thing happens in America when politics becomes polarized

Of course, Americans sometimes prefer extreme points of view as a way to solve problems. We did so when electing Reagan in 1980 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. The former didn't work out so well, with 43 million people losing jobs due to downsizing, while the latter saved the world from an economic depression and Fascism.

However, in time, Americans almost always find the political center, and they do it quickly. We find it a la carte, through dialectical materialism.

Is Mr. Ornstein's article based on ignorance or willful myopia? Did he mean what he wrote, or was he pulling our collective leg? All I know is by not considering these factors, his point of view and solution to the imbalance seems more extreme than anything he laments.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Save a Forest - Stop Junk Mail

2010-04-22T09:53:00.000-06:00

After sorting the junk mail for recycling today, a task I seem to do daily because we get about 10 pounds of it a week, I finally had enough. I started researching how to eliminate the bulk of it and found this article at the MSNBC site.

The instructions help eliminate most unwanted phone and junk mail.

We've already eliminated most unwanted phone calls from telemarketers by being on the National Do Not Call List (the charities and political organizations can still call however). It works really well, and I've actually turned in a few companies who managed to break through the filter.

These instructions also supposedly eliminate most of the junk mail. I don't see how it can hurt to try.

The one that really got my attention was the opt-out instruction that goes to credit reporting agencies. This should should stop the insane credit card solicitations. I get about six a week.

If it works, be sure to pass the word to family, friends, and associates.

Maybe we can save a few forests each year.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/16531776/

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What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Why Does the Press Lie?

2010-04-19T12:18:00.005-06:00

A week or so ago, the Gallup organization published a poll that suggested Tea Party members were fairly mainstream in their demographics. When it comes to their income levels and age, this is so. When it comes to their politics, this is an abject lie. Let's have a look.

(Note. If the graphs below are too small to read on your computer screen, click on them. You will open a much bigger image.)

First, only 28% of Americans identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party. Whether or not that numbers is significant, I leave for you to decided. However, if you notice in most elections when a candidate wins by a landslide, the losing candidate almost always gains in the neighborhood of 30% of the overall vote. This number is below that.

Second, 26% of Americans self0identify as opposing the Tea Party, 38% as neither a supporter nor opposer, and 8% had no opinion.

Now, let's consider just how "mainstream" the Tea Party is.

Understand, these numbers do NOT represent membership in the Tea Party. It represents SUPPORTERS of the Tea Party. Gallup did not ask how many Americans were members of the Tea Party, a glaring omission in my opinion.

First, Democrats account for 32% of all US adults (in the overall population). Yet, only 8% of Tea Party supporters are Democrats. That is twice the poll's margin of error of +/- 4%. This is not a parallel percentage.

Second, Republicans account for 28% of all US adults. However, 49% of Tea Party supporters are Republicans. That is almost twice as many Republicans as in the general population. That is not a parallel percentage. If we are to accept that Republicans are relatively more conservative than Democrats and Independents, this suggests the Tea Party is more conservative than it is not. We will see in a moment this is a correct assumption.

Third, Independents account for 40% of all US adults. However, 43% of Tea Party Supporters are Independents. The difference is less than the margin of error. Unlike for the other groups, this is the only part of the poll that shows parallel numbers with the general population.

Now, let's see whether Tea Party supporters are representative of the overall population based on political party affiliation or philosophy.

According to Gallup, 40% of US adults self-identify as conservative. Among Tea Party supporters, 70% self-identify as conservative. That is 175% above the norm, a significant divergence.

Next, 38% of US adults self-identify as moderate. Among Tea Party supporters, 22% say they are moderate. So, they are 57% below the norm, again a significant divergence.

Finally, 21% of US adults self-identify as liberal. Among Tea Party supporters, only 7% say they are liberals. This means they are 66% below the norm, again a significant divergence.

I think it is safe to say, looking at these numbers alone, Tea Party supporters are not the norm in America. They express an unusually high tendency to be conservative and an unusually low tendency to be moderate or liberal.

Next, let's look at the health care bill to see whether or not Tea Party supporters stand with the political norm in the US.

As a percent of US adults, 47% believe the bill is a good thing. Among Tea Party supporters, only 12% believe it is a good thing. Not judging who is right or wrong, this means 391% more US adults it is a good bill than Tea Party supporters do. That makes this a non-mainstream (normative) view.

As a percent of US adults, 50% believe it is a bad thing. Among Tea Party supporters, 87% believe it is a bad thing. Again, not judging who is right or wrong, this means 174% more Tea Party supporters believe it is a bad thing compared to US adults. This is a non-mainstream view.

As strange as it may seem, for controversial legislation it is not unusual to see high "bad thing" numbers following the Congress's vote. In time as a program proves itself, as Medicare and Unemployment Insurance have, US adults become accepting of the program and the "bad thing" numbers fall.

Question number 10 in the study also shows the overwhelming non-mainstream nature of support for the Tea Party.

The question asks whether respondents had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of "people" in the news. One group of "people" asked about was the Tea Party.

The table is a bit complex. Going left to right, we begin with the percentage of US Adults who have a favorable view of the Tea party. That comes in at 37%.

Then we compare how favorably US adults view the Tea Party by party identification. Self-identified Republicans answering "favorable" were 167% of all US adults (62% / 37%). Among Independents, the percentages were equal with all US adults (37% / 37%). Self-identifying Democrats answering "favorable" were 46% of all US adults (14% / 37%).

Continuing down the graph, we compare how favorable US adults view the Tea Party by political philosophy. Self-identified conservatives answering "favorable" were 170% of all US adults (63% / 37%). Self-identified moderates answering "favorable" were about 65% (24% / 37%). And those self-identified as liberals answering "favorable" were at about 30% (11% / 37%).

That this all means is these numbers are not remotely comparable to the mainstream, not even among moderates. These are very Republican, very conservative folks.

From this poll, one can only come to one conclusion: 28% of the US adult population supports the Tea Party. Only 37% of the US adult population holds a favorable view of the Tea Party. One might hypothesize that the 28% calling themselves supporters, give or take a few percent, probably consider themselves members of the Tea Party. However, as discussed earlier, Gallup did not ask this question, and that is too bad.

For the press to remotely suggest that 28% of US adults represents the mainstream is abjectly false. Supporters and even those who hold a favorable view deviate from the norm by large numbers. It is unreasonable for the press or anybody else to publish this misrepresentation without first understanding whether or not Gallup's or the press's analysis is correct. As you can see, it not only is not, it cannot be!

Remember, the press wants a political fight. Why? The press wants to sell our eyes and ears to advertisers. They learned a long time ago that touting conflict is the best way to drum up a political fight where there was none to begin.

I charge the press, here and now, with trying to manufacture a fight by giving the label "mainstream" to an organization that is clearly not. In its politics, the Tea Party is not mainstream by any stretch of the imagination.

I ask respectfully that you resist this cynicism.

---
What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

Another Day Filled with Fearfilled Debilitating Negatives

2010-03-30T14:11:00.001-06:00

You would not believe my Facebook Wall today. You would think the world was ending 100 times over. Nothing is ever good enough. There is nothing positive in the world.

Know what I have to say to that? Bollocks!

Do you know what is really hard-wired into people? The will to power. Nietzsche was right. This desire to dominate others and conditions will never go away. Ever. Why? Because we believe that by focusing on the negatives, we gain power over them. This focus keeps us safe and alive. It's baloney, of course. But, that's what people believe.

We believe that by writing books, FB posts, and paying attention to negatives, we can control them. That is magical thinking, of course, like prayers, chants, hex signs, and incantations. We believe our negative focus will give us ultimate power over what threaten us.

That's probably why people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder behave compulsively. Somewhere in their brains, I think there is a belief that, by doing the same thing over and over, these severely debilitated people can control the negatives, they can control the world.

But, can they? Can anybody? Doesn't this focus on negatives, this rotation of rot like clothes going around and around in a dryer, simply wear down our characters, our perspectives, our lives?

The fact is, negative thinking, continually looking for the horrors in the world, is as debilitating for "normal" people as it is for those wretches with OCD. It makes us less able to deal with anything because it causes mental confusion. It prevents people from seeing alternatives. It crushes our abilities to see the light in the world. It often makes life unlivable.

You know what I think the best defense is against the negatives of the world? Focusing on the positives! Gravitating towards the positives. Working to create positives.

If everybody's focus was on the positives rather than on, in most cases, irrational fears, I think we'd make a paradise of this multi-billion-year-old dust ball we call Earth.

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What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

A Cheap Political Stunt? Say It Ain't So Sen. Michael Bennet!

2010-03-25T14:11:00.006-06:00

"Freedom lies in being bold." – Robert Frost

Was Sen. Bennet's letter on the public health care option just another cheap, political stunt?

Yesterday, the Senate began to consider the health care reconciliation bill, passed late last week by the House of Representatives. Senate Democrats would neither accept nor offer amendments to the bill because that would force it back to the House for a second vote. That was considered dangerous to the fate of the bill. So, the Democrats wanted to vote on the House bill as is.

The Republicans, on the other hand, worked all day to stop the bill from proceeding. Early Thursday morning, they succeeded, finding technical defects in the House bill that prevented a Senate vote. So, despite the best attempts of Senate Democratic leadership, the bill must go back to the House.

The Opportunity

Now, wouldn't this be the PERFECT opportunity for Democrats to amend the bill, right now, adding the public option amendment? Then, the Senate could send it back to the House where, we are assured, it will pass. And, wouldn't the most appropriate person to introduce this amendment be Sen. Michael Bennet?

The Insult

Sen. Bennet was presented with a petition signed by 35,000-plus Americans on Wednesday morning calling on him to advance the public option, as promised in his letter.

What was Sen. Bennet's response? Rather than decline politely or, God forbid, actually advance the amendment, he chose to insult the petitioners. He said they, insisting they were all bloggers (whatever that means in this context), were not real people or real voters.This was reported by Fox 31 news at the end of the following video clip.

Now, I don't know about you, but I laughed. I know I'm a "real" voter. I've voted in every election since I turned 18 in 1977. I've been a Colorado Democrat since 1995 and voted in every Colorado election since 1983. I've been Communications Director for many campaigns. I've served as an elected Democratic Party county secretary, county Central and Executive Committee member, and state Central Committee member. Hell, I've run for state senate. I wonder if that's real enough for our appointed senator, who has never run for anything that I know of in his life.

My question for Sen. Bennet is are you a real senator? Not so far, you're not.

The Lie

Further, he accused his opponent in the Democratic nomination race, former State House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, of never being in favor of health care reform, saying:

"As final, critical health care reforms are considered in the Senate, Former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff — who has consistently refused to support Democratic health care reform efforts — continues stand with Republicans in Washington in opposition to real health care reforms."

This, of course, was bullshit. Speaker Romanoff has made it very clear during the campaign he favors a single-payer, public health insurance option. Sen. Bennet owes Speaker Romanoff an apology. This wasn't merely campaign puffery. This was a blatant lie.

The Conclusion
Yes, I think Sen. Bennet's public option letter is a cheap, political stunt. As a senator, when your talk doesn't match your actions, what other conclusion can real people and real voters reach?

Colorado's Democratic Party assemblies begin this weekend. I encourage delegates to consider Mr. Bennet's words and lack of actions at these assemblies. Should this man receive a threshold of 15% of delegate votes? Should he be allowed to qualify for the primary? Should he be the party nominee, knowing he holds you, a real person and real voter, in such low esteem? Finally, should he, at the end of this long process, be our real, elected U.S. senator?

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What was the original American Aurora? It was the newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia when it was our nation's capitol.
The original American Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist administrations of Washington and Adams.
The result? John Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition. He languished there until his untimely death at age 29 from yellow fever, while awaiting trial.

There's Nothing Like a Fine Colorado Whine!

2010-03-24T17:17:00.002-06:00

Poor Sen. Bennet. He's working so hard for Coloradoans.

And yet, there seems to be one small problem.

Sen. Bennet seems to think bitching is acting.

Watch him complain in the following video clip. "Boo hoo hoo," he cries about attempts by Republicans to derail the Reconciliation Bill. Yet, despite his promises to pursue a public option, I didn't hear him offer an amendment to do so. Did you? If anything, he's treating amendments in general as always bad.

Hmm. That seems odd, doesn't it?

Now, how can the Senate possibly consider the public option without someone, namly Sen. Bennet, introducing an amendment?

It can't!

So, this cold, snowy Denver morning, David Sirota, a national progressive political columnist, activist, and local talk show host, delivered a petition to the senator's office. The petition, signed by 35,000-plus of us, suggests that the good senator pursue the public option as he promised.

Watch the video:

I have a suggestion for the good senator. If you want a better national health care policy, stop bitching and start amending.

Introduce a public option amendment to the Reconciliation Bill.

The House will pass it, and probably by a larger margin than the Buy-Corporate-Health Insurance-or-else bill.

I also have a suggestion, only this is for my gentle readers.

Be sure to call and write Senator Bennet. Be sure to send a letter, delivered either by US mail or fax, and not an email. There's nothing like seeing THOUSANDS of letters show up in a week. Insist really, really hard that our good senator pursue the public option as he promised.

If Sen. Bennet doesn't carry through, perhaps his TV ads and great-big senate letter on the public option may have been little more than the usual stunts we see in an election campaign. I sure hope that's not the case, but I'm kinda' wondering at this point.

The good senator's contact information follows:

Washington, D.C. Office

Hon. Sen. Michael Bennet
702 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Office Phone: (202) 224-5852
Office Fax: (202) 228-5036

Denver Metro Office

Hon. Sen. Michael Bennet
2300 15th St., # 450
Denver, Colorado 80202
Office Phone: (303) 455-7600
Toll Free: (866) 455-9866
Fax: (303) 455-8851

Stay warm, Colorado!

---
What was the original American Aurora? It was the newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia when it was our nation's capitol.
The original American Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist administrations of Washington and Adams.
The result? John Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition. He languished there until his untimely death at age 29 from yellow fever, while awaiting trial.

Oh! California!

2010-03-02T14:04:00.003-07:00

You may have heard former Gov. Jerry Brown is running for his old job in California. He is seeking to be governor of the Golden State again.

This is an excerpt of his announcement from today's San Jose Mercury News:

"Some people say that if you've been around the process you can't handle the job, that we need to go out and find an outsider who know virtually nothing about state government," he said. "Well, we tried that and it doesn't work. We found out that not knowing is not good. What we need is not a scripted plan cooked up by consultants or mere ambition to be governor. We need someone with an insider's knowledge but an outsider's mind."

...At this stage of his life, he said, "I'm prepared to focus on nothing else but fixing the state I love."

..."I'll tell you the truth," he said. "No more smoke and mirrors, no more puffy slogans and platitudes. You deserve the truth and that's what you'll get from me."

I'm almost in tears. It breaks my heart to see what happened to California since I left in 1983. Even the street signs are faded in my old hometown of Whittier.

Brown was the last governor with a budget surplus. Under his administration, California became one of the strongest economies on earth, ranking above most countries. He was such a visionary, he imagined California would benefit from the coming telecommunications revolution if it had its own space communications satellite (which earned him the ridiculous moniker "Governor Moonbeam"... he proved to be a frickin' prophet with that one!).

Why don't people want to take care of their civic inheritance anymore? Please, California. Show some pride. Hire Jerry Brown for governor and fix up the state!

The New American Aurora officially endorses Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. for governor of California. You go, Jerry!

The following are a few links to Jerry Brown's election campaign.

1. Campaign Web Site

2. Facebook site

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What was the original American Aurora? It was the newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia when it was our nation's capitol.

The original American Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist administrations of Washington and Adams.

The result? John Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition. He languished there until his untimely death at age 29 from yellow fever, while awaiting trial.

WPA/Workfare New Way to Restore Enthusiasm

2010-03-01T14:06:00.004-07:00

This message was written in response to an editorial in the Huffington Post by Robert Reich, called The Enthusiasm Gap.

--

If government is the only effective countervailing force, then we are so messed up it's almost impossible to reckon.

Government works for whomever controls it. At the moment, the plutocrats control it. For us to ultimately use government to move away from the abyss, we must first wrestle government from the plutocrats and their useful idiot followers.

I'd appreciate Reich's insight on how to do this, how to wrestle control of government from the plutocrats?

It also seems to me the Democrats are testing a theory of political economy. They are testing the moderate theory that places responsibility for the recovery in the hands of state and local governments. Obama is entrusting them to dole out stimulus package and unemployment insurance bucks. Yet, many withhold the stimulus bucks. When they do spend the money, gobs find its way into the pockets of CEOs and corporate boards. And though unemployment keeps people from starving--maybe--it yields few benefits to the macro economy.

Obama ran smack dab into a problem anticipated by FDR and Keynes: state governments are not terribly progressive, even when they're drowning economically. They would rather go down than give in to all that socialism-lite stuff.

How did FDR get around that? With the WPA! We could do something similar with Workfare, to use a term from the 70s and 80s. Put people on unemployment to work on the infrastructure. We derive all sorts of benefits from it, from teaching people new skills to building out new-energy transportation systems. And, the program must be administered by government. No more states hiring multi-billion dollar contractor buddies

But first, we must win the social battle within the political economy. We must wrestle control of government from plutocrats. Government CANNOT help unless we first do this.

Sadly, throughout the last 200 years when countries come to this point, they tend to choose two political-economy pathways: authoritar

ian-totalitarian or socialist. In the 30s, the US chose socialism-lite. It worked. I fear, based on the actions of Dick Armey's useful idiots, we may give authoritarianism a try first.

Oh, wait! We did that from 2001 - 2010. And, look what we got out of it. The shambles of a political economy! And, we're going to choose it again? Probably. There's nothing like a bad idea whose time has come!

I suggest we try reviving the WPA. Take all that money away from the states, put it in the hands of the Department of Labor, and let's put people back to work. Jobs will help bridge the enthusiasm gap.

---

What was the original American Aurora? It was the newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia when it was our nation's capitol.

The original American Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist administrations of Washington and Adams.

The result? John Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition. He languished there until his untimely death at age 29 from yellow fever, while awaiting trial.

Money in Politics: Romanoff v. Bennet

2010-02-12T11:59:00.003-07:00

I read and participated in a discussion earlier today on The Huffington Post. Participants offered thoughts about "issues vs. the sources of campaign contributions" for the Romanoff-Bennet US Senate primary race. Both are Democrats vying for the party's nomination.

Sen. Michael Bennet, the former superintendent of Denver Public Schools, was selected by Gov. Bill Ritter to serve out the term of Ken Salazar. Salazar became Secretary of the Interior for the Obama Administration. Bennet has yet to be elected to any public office of any kind.

Speaker Andrew Romanoff was elected four times to the Colorado General Assembly, and most recently served as Speaker of the House from 2005 to 2009, ushering in back-to-back wins for House Democrats.

My comments concern the notion that there is a difference between issues and campaign contributions.

The influence money buys IS a major election issue, and may be the central issue in whether or not our republican-democracy survives.

Think back to Enron, circa 2002. They bought so much influence with the Bush Administration and Congress, they were essentially allowed to bankrupt California's families and government with astronomical electric rates.

Think back to when United Healthcare used influence with committee chair Max Baucus to stop the public health care option, while UH continued (and continues) bankrupting the country bit by bit every day.

Think about how financial corporations, like AIG, even now buy influence through lobbying to kill banking reform, using bailout money we gave them to do so.

This thinking makes it clear the use of money in elections has become the most important issue facing the nation. It makes it even more important, given the recent ruling by the USSC's conservative justices, which potentially opens the flood gates of corporate cash into elections. There is nothing now to prevent corporations owned by The People's Army in China or the Republican Guard in Iran from buying ads in our federal elections.

In Colorado, we've passed constitutional amendments to limit the amounts and sources of campaign contributions for state and local elections. This is an undeniable fact, and on this point Colordoans have been consistent.

We don't want corporations or labor unions to buy influence. Simply because we make the leap to federal elected officials, this doesn't change. The only difference is which body of campaign finance laws governs who may or may not make and in what amounts they may make donations.

Now, I need to make a full disclosure. I was a Democratic activist from 1995 until last year, serving as elected secretary in Jefferson County and running for state senate in 2002.

I have met Michael Bennet at party events. He often avoided me for some reason. Can't figure out why.

It is difficult to hear Sen. Bennet's thoughts on much of anything, because he is rarely accessible to the press (though he was on the Mario Solis-Marich show on AM 760 this week). I have also listened to his supporters, and to their inability to articulate a reason for voting for him other than he's already our senator and that makes it easier for him to win. Finally, I have watched Sen. Bennet's often ambling, uncertain actions in D.C. This lead me to conclude he is not ready to continue on as Colorado's junior senate.

I met and talked with Andrew Romanoff many times over the years. His words and deeds are consistent. He understands the basic issue of our day is how the influence of money is destroying our political system. I know where his loyalties lie. And though I am now an unaffiliated voter, I fully support Andrew Romanoff for US Senate.

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What was the original American Aurora? It was the newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache, a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia when it was our nation's capitol.

The original American Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist administrations of Washington and Adams.

The result? John Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition. He languished there until his untimely death at age 29 from yellow fever, while awaiting trial.

Hey, Ayatollah! Leave Them Kids Alone!

2010-02-08T13:42:00.008-07:00

A Facebook friend passed along a link to this video. It's a cover of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall," only set in Iran. This is truly inspiring.

Free Iran!

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What was the original American Aurora? It was the newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia when it was our nation's capitol.

The original American Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist administrations of Washington and Adams.

The result? John Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition. He languished there until his untimely death at age 29 from yellow fever, while awaiting trial.

An Answer to Gary Hart

2010-02-08T11:42:00.001-07:00

In his blog, Matters of Principle, former U.S. Senator Gary Hart (D-Colorado)questions the increasing loss of civility in government and society.

I answered his blog with the following thoughts.

--

I think the answer to your question is found in the work of late historian Will Durant. He wrote, “Every form of government seems to perish by excess of its basic principle.” I think Madison invoked our founding principle in Federalist 10, in his assault on the “violence of faction.”

Our basic principle is that the violence of faction will undo our government as it has so many other democracies. So, we contrived all sorts of government controls to prevent factions from gaining the upper hand, including the constitutionally questionable filibuster.

Even so, the controls, and especially this one, support one faction over all others. It may support that faction over survival of the nation.

This faction is a parasite sucking the life out of our nation, transferring our wealth and placing claims on our future labor to and for itself. This faction does so simply because we cannot move legislation through the Senate to stop it… all because of the filibuster…all because of this founding principle that fears the violence of faction.

Because we fear the violence of faction, because we have a filibuster to prevent faction, we created the most dangerous faction of all: a plutocratic class.

Alexander Hamilton has won it seems. We have an aristocracy calling the shots. Maybe we always have but didn’t know it until the Web 2.0-New Media generation. Maybe we now have the medium Marx predicted would allow the people of the world come to know they share a common interest. Hmm. I wonder.

I think the cracks to civility radiate from a growing volcano of poverty. Remember, poverty creates powerlessness. When people have or perceive they have nothing left to lose, people rebel against whatever they perceive as mollifying forces used to keep them down. Civility may be perceived as one of those mollifying forces. I would be really worried if, quite suddenly, we saw a drop in church attendance over several months, religion being a primary mollifying force.

These cracks to civility should caution us about the potential, devastating eruption that could follow if we sufficiently anger the volcano god called Revolution.

When people perceive they have nothing left to lose, that’s when the monsters come out. And, I think we saw a few at the Tea Party convention this past weekend.

We should be thankful the bullets are not flying yet… yet. And, we must do something to undo the filibuster… lest the filibuster undo what civility and resulting peace we have left in our land.
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What was the original American Aurora? It was the newspaper published by Benjamin Beech, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia. The paper was highly critical of what Beech felt was the tyrannous Federalist administrations of Washington and Adams. Click this link to learn more.

Give Him a Chance!

2010-01-27T13:56:00.003-07:00

The State of the Union speech is upon us. You all know my position regarding the President's performance to date. It's abysmal.

Yet when I raise my voice or type my dissatisfaction into the Aurora or on my social media sites, I get flack. That is okay. I am used to it.

I also find the criticism interesting because it follows a pattern. Two arguments arise: 1) the president hasn't had enough time in office, and/or 2) it's unpatriotic or a shirk to the party to criticize the president. It's the same stuff the Republicans said to us when we criticized G.W. Bush.

The following is an actual comment I saw today. The stylistics remain unaltered, though I did fix some spelling. The author shall remain anonymous because I did not post this to embarrass the person. It is here to illustrate the meme I discovered.

One major difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, from what I've seen, is that the Republicans remain loyal NO MATTER WHAT. "My country right or wrong!" or "My President right or wrong!" The Democrats are very fickle and turn their backs on each other, rip each other to shreds, the minute one decision is made that they don't like. I guess Republicans are unconditional and Democrats are VERY conditional! This presidency is incomplete, just 1/4 of the way through. As someone said recently, he's not a magician. Anyone who thought he'd walk into the oval office and everything would be fixed instantly was unrealistic. He has to work within the parameters of our system of government, and the problems he inherited were FAR greater than any of us imagined. Maybe we should wait til after he's been in office a while before trashing him?

I replied to this person with the following, which I also offer to you.

"My country, right or wrong" is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying "My mother, drunk or sober." ~ G.K. Chesterton

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." ~ President Theodore Roosevelt.

Obama has completed over 25% of his term. This leads me to ask you the following questions. I ask them so you can persuade me I made the right decision to campaign for him in 2008.

1. Based on what you've seen, has he attempted to fulfill his campaign pledges? If so, I'd appreciate a list of 10.

2. Is that agenda now even possible? If so, why? If not, why not?

3. Based on the methods he's used to date, why (not how, but why) will these methods work to achieve his agenda? Why have they worked/not worked so far?

4. Based on what you've seen, is his currently-stated agenda possible to achieve? If so, why? If not why not?

5. Based on the methods he's used to date, why (not how, but why) will they work to achieve his new agenda? Why have they worked, not worked so far?

See, I think we now have a pretty good idea of who he is and how he operates. I'm sorry. I no longer see a progressive working for the middle class and poor. He appears co-opted by the plutocrats who have owned this country's government since at least 2001. Maybe even sooner, beginning with Clinton's repeal of Glass-Stegall. Or was it his adoption of NAFTA?

If we do not light a fire beneath our elected officials, threatening them with no re-election, why should they ever do what they said they would do?

Is it not reasonable, when the person whom we've entrusted with the ship of state begins to steer towards the rocky shore, to make him/her aware of the danger before we run aground?

If you wish to answer these questions or make general comments in the Comments section below for this article, I would greatly appreciate it.

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Barack "Ronald Reagan Jr" Obama

2010-01-26T13:55:00.006-07:00

Yesterday, President Obama announced he intended to freeze all discretionary spending to lower the budget deficit. That means freezing all social, safety net spending while continuing to spend like a drunken "bankster" (banker+gangster) to build up the military-industrial complex even more.

I disagree with the President. We do not have a budget deficit. We have a revenue deficit caused by our employment depression. Right now, 20% of all men of working age are unemployed. They are paying relatively less tax of any kind. When employment goes down, income and spending go down. When income and spending go down, tax revenues go down. You get the picture

We need to return fully to Keynesian economics, the variety used by Franklin Roosevelt to end the Great Depression. That means deficit spending should focus on on increasing the demand for labor, or as economists say, shifting the Demand Curve for labor to the right. And, that takes a lot of deficit spending.

Instead, Obama decided yesterday to shift the Supply Curve of military hardware compared to jobs, as Reagan did. As in supply-side economics. As in Reaganomics. As in the Reganomics that resulted in 43 million people being laid off from their jobs from 1981 to 1993.

I now anticipate that we will go from 10% national unemployment (which is a fiction) to a much higher amount, with all the misery that implies, and without the safety net programs in place because Obama cut them.

President Obama sealed his presidency's fate yesterday. He appears to be a man of deliberate action. But, in action, he appears to be a pushover for fiscal conservatives.

The President seems easy to manipulate. And, the advocates of Reganomics did just that. They and the Senate election in Massachusetts manipulated him into being Ronald Reagan Jr (with all due respect to the real Ronald Reagan Jr, otherwise known as liberal talk show host Ron Reagan).

I don't know about you, but I didn't vote for Ronald Reagan in 2008. I voted for Franklin Roosevelt. Now that the president is lost in Reganomics, I say it's time to lose him from the progressive agenda. I feel certain he will be a one term president.

Instead, let's concentrate on Congress. They have the real power for the next three years-- especially the Senate. Whatever Congress passes, President Obama is more than likely to sign.

Work to turn the Congress completely blue in 2010! To do so, don't listen to what the politicians say. Don't assume that the "D" after their names means liberal. Instead, watch what they do. What they do is what they believe.
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Love and Haiti

2010-01-22T19:17:00.003-07:00

I dedicate my poem of love in honor of Haiti.

Love

Love.
How shall we love each other today?
Much more than yesterday?
Yet more tomorrow?
Love divided is not less, but more.
Love is the only thing that, when divided,
grows.
Infinitely divided,
infinitely grows.
Go!
Divide and conquer with
Love!

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Take Off the Rose-colored Glasses, Dr. Pangloss

2009-11-10T12:43:00.002-07:00

The king, or president, or other exalted fetish figure has no clothes.

I knew this as a teenager. Those of you who remember me from then know I knew this. I always could see through lies. I never had much faith in the group or, for that matter, individuals. They will always do something to profoundly disappoint you. Always. I suppose this is why, as animals, we evolved the ethic of forgiveness. So, we could continue to move on until we turned to ashes.

Somewhere along the line, though, I became persuaded we could change the world. But, now I'm cured. I was cured when I began to learn with you, bit by bit, that we were duped. Again. All credibility is shot. Want an example? Read the story at this link.

Ignore calls to reform or change the world. We cannot. Any attempts will merely disappoint, discourage, discombobulate your good heart and soul.

For all we know, too much will come apart if we succeed. Perhaps civilization itself, assuming of course this is civilization (which I doubt, most of the time).

Instead, remove the rose-colored glasses from your eyes, Dr. Pangloss. This is NOT the best of all possible worlds. Nor can it be, probably.

Instead, tend your own garden. Instead, make your corner of the world as sane and happy as possible.

And know this. In a world like this, lived far beyond the looking glass, your and my respective fantasies are as valid as any. And that, dear friends, holds the most optimistic of promises.

Let the world tend to itself. Dream for you. Live for you. Be grateful for what you have, and especially for the people who love you and whom you love.

And, to Hell with the world!

Have a nice day!

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The Unrepresentatives

2009-11-08T13:48:00.003-07:00

I love to be right. I love to get my way. I love to win. And, so do you. There is something wrong with you if you don't. Seriously! There is something psychologically wrong with you that psychiatrists can measure if you don't want to win.

Each of us has a different definition of what it means to be right, to get our way, to win. Part of that definition comes from biology. Part comes from sociology. Finally, part comes from that unique mixture of the two that takes place in each of our souls.

If we are honest about it, to be right, to get our way, to win become religion for each of us. We worship at its altar. We pursue these as an acolyte does God, on our knees if need be, even if it means committing suicide to preserve our integrity.

This fervor was one element used by Emile Durkheim to classify types of suicide. It was a clever observation from the first person formally to study suicide as a social phenomenon. He was also the first to similarly study religion.

Why do we turn this into religion?

I think we do so, because we believe this is the best way to survive. Isn't that also why we turn to God? To live? Even beyond physical life?

None of us knows, however, whether our interpretation of being right, getting our way, or winning is the best way to survive. Sometimes, retreat is the better option. Live to fight another day. But, how often do we take this tact in life? Not very, I’ll wager.

I bring this up because last night, despite an October 20 ABC-Washington Post poll showing that 57% of Americans want a public option, the House of Representatives barely voted to adopt one. The vote was almost 50-50, with 64 Democrats voting no.

Like you and me, politicians are self-interested people. They want to be right. They want to get their way. They want to win. So, they do things in their own rational self-interests to be right, to get their way, to win. That’s okay. We all do this.

But when most of us make a poor choice in pursuit self-interest, the rest of the world is all too delighted to make us pay the price. Our fellow earthly voyagers revel in our wrongness. They kick us out of the way. They cheer our loss.

And, we all learn from this. We all learn how to adapt, to do things differently so we may, once again, be right, get our way, and win. If we don't, we won't be around too much longer.

Except in Democratic Party politics.

In Democratic politics, leaders plead with members always to support Democratic representatives and executives, no matter how they vote. We must vote for them even when they vote against us and what we want.

Leaders argue that it is all right for our representatives to act in career self-interest, but not us. They argue if we make these representatives pay the price, we could lose their seats. Losing their seats would create a greater catastrophe than losing their votes on any one issue, or, in some cases, a lifetime of issues. Think Zell Miller.

Do you know what I think? I think these Democratic leaders are nuts.

These 64 Democratic congresspeople believed wrongly about how to survive in politics. They made the wrong choice. If we validate a wrong choice even once, like rewarding a child with a cookie for seriously beating a sibling, we distort cause and effect. We tell our representatives that this is exactly what it takes to survive politically. We pervert our representative’s view of life itself.

When we reward their poor choices, we tell our representatives they did the right thing. What happens when you do this to a child? What happens when you tell a child that doing wrong is really doing right? You end up with a sociopath on your hands. You end up with a monster.

The same is no less true for a representative. You end up with someone who acts against the people’s interests from then on, just so he or she may survive politically.

If we reward representatives who choose poorly, we create an even greater catastrophe in the future than not holding their seats: we create a completely unrepresentative democracy. We end up living in a horror movie.

So, we must punish them. We must make the Democrats who serve us, from local to national office, including the presidency itself, understand that there are consequences to their actions. There are rewards and sanctions. These rewards and sanctions mean the difference between gaining greater support to survive politically and losing enough support to end a career.

If Democratic voters, on the other hand, continue to reward these “unrepresentatives” with volunteer work, campaign contributions, and reelection votes, they make the wrong choice. Because they make the wrong choice, they (and the whole country) will suffer the consequences.

Whom do you think will support poor-choice voters when they’re wrong, when they don’t get their way, when they lose? I will bet you a dollar to donuts it won’t be the unrepresentative Democrats they just rewarded with re-election.

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Capitalism Hits the Fan

2009-11-05T11:49:00.006-07:00

May I suggest you view the videos about our current economic situation at the following links. I think you will find them fascinating.

1.

2.

3.

4. This is the best version of the lecture. Keep clicking the ascending chapter number links on the right.

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The New Normal is Unacceptable

2009-11-01T12:29:00.003-07:00

Last night on Saturday Night Live, the opening skit showed President Obama giving a speech to the nation in which he uses a report card to debunk the teabagger notion that he's a Nazi or communist. The theme of the skit is, "I can't be either of these, because I haven't done anything yet."

The actor then goes point-by-point through his campaign promises, from closing Gitmo to withdrawing troops from Iraq, and puts check marks in one of two boxes: "Done" or "Did not do." Everything ends up "Did not do," which, of course, is a spot-on fact.

I commented on Facebook that when a person runs as a progressive populist and ends up governing as a conservative corporatist, that person should not be surprised by a sudden lack of confidence or respect. That president is lucky to still have a better than 55% approval, frankly. Six months from now, if President Obama doesn't wake up, I predict his numbers will approach those of President Bush in November 2008.

A friend then genuinely replied that we should not expect miracles so quickly, that we should be patient and give Obama more time before criticizing his presidency. I love this person, but felt I had to reply and give the other side's argument. This is that argument.
---

No, no, no, no, no. I won't play this game. This is not patience. President Obama is playing a symbolic game to show he's really The Great Compromiser. It's a sucker's game that people did not vote for. They voted for results, not symbols.

President Obama made distinct promises and statements throughout his political career, and especially during the presidential campaign. Watch the SNL skit. They go through the list. These were statements Obama made at one point or another. I don't accept that "pragmatism" means beginning with the compromise and accepting the lowest possible outcome, simply to say that Olympia Snowe's vote constitutes bipartisan consensus. That is a bold-faced lie told by politicians. I was one, and I know one one of these lies when I hear one.

Next, I think after 11 months it is safe to say we know two facts about the Obama Administration: 1) the general policy objectives of this administration, and 2) the methodology for creating this policy.

Do you honestly think based on what we've seen, his methods will achieve these policy objectives within four years? How can they, unless we are saved by a deux ex machina device?

I don't EVER see us leaving Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other "tar baby" we're stuck to in my lifetime (I'm 50 next month).

I don't EVER see him using anti-corporatist methods to defeat fascism in the global economic system. Look up the definition for fascism, as coined by its creator Mussolini, and how he used it as a synonym for "corporatism."

I don't see him bringing about a single-payer national health care system.

I don't see unemployment receding beneath 8% between now and 2012. This alone will get him "fired." Then he can stand on the breadlines and see the real difference between Wall Street and Main Street.

I think we've seen President Obama's version of the New Normal. And, I think, voters will simply reject it.

The New Normal will lead to the rise of independent populists or alternative party candidates will clobber the two-party system. I made that prediction a few weeks ago on Facebook before I knew about the challenges to the GOP in New York and New Jersey.

Take a look at what happened in New York today. It happened while I was typing this editorial. Next, watch what happens in New Jersey on Tuesday. The independent and third party candidates may not win, but they will significantly impact the results.

Republicrats and Demicans take heed! The people will not put up with this for much longer. When moderates vote like they did last year, they are no longer moderates.

---
My friend then wrote:

You are very optimistic. Here's what I fear, Bob. That instead of bringing about a new coalition or a new party, we're going to see the far-right Republicans take over the White House in 2012 in part because the Dems became so fractured and didn't support Obama, in spite of his mistakes. If you think things are bad now, just wait until then.

---
I replied:

I already saw eight years of that, Cara. What are the Republicans going to do next? Start beheading people in the streets and forcing women to wear berkas?

Well, Obama's policies allow exactly that in Iraq, a place where, under Saddam, religious militias never forced people to do any of that.

I appreciate what you're saying. It seems that by looking the other way, at least things won't be as bad as under the Republicans. The truth is, there isn't a damn's worth of difference between the Demicans and Republicrats. Despite the different faces, we have the same results. That should tell everybody, the system is corrupt beyond the abilities of partisan politics to fix.

I am not looking for a new party. I think party politics is archaic and corrupt. Remember, I had a front row seat in Colorado.

Look at how fast party politics corrupted our president. He had all of a cup of coffee in the Illinois General Assembly, a refill in the US Senate, 11 months as President, and suddenly his policies are as corporatist as those of Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan. Maybe moreso.

If we settle for Obama's New Normal, we are suckers. Plain and simple. To hope for anything but corporatism from this lot is a pipe dream. You dance with the one who brought you to the dance. Because of that, these days I half expect to hear,

"This presidential address about the future of American military presence in the Indian subcontinent is brought to you by General Dynamics."

Or, "this presidential press conference on health care is brought to you by United Healthcare."

Or on C-SPAN, "This investment bank reform bill hearing is brought to you by Goldman-Sachs."

Democratic legislators nationwide have shown us in the last year exactly where they stand on everything. That's the beauty of handing full power to a political party. You get to see what they're made of. They can no longer hide behind and blame bad policy on the "big, bad majority wolf." They ARE the majority. And, the bills look the same coming out of their committees as during Bush's administration. And, Joe Lieberman still has his committee chairmanship. These Democrats are a bunch of saps!

You think TARP was a bad idea? Read this from Colorado's own David Sirota. You ain't seen nothing yet.

The Democrats should be held to the same standards they held Republicans to the last eight years. If they don't like the reflection of the world they see in the mirror, they have one of two choices: change the world, or smash the mirror and pretend the world is different than its reflection. It sounds to me like many Democratic apologists are picking up the hammer and walking towards the mirror.

I'm not having it. I won't abide a double standard, not when the stakes are so high. That is why I am now an independent, populist, social-democrat. I refuse to be played for a sucker.

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Then and Now, Eugenics is Murder.

2009-10-20T17:16:00.002-06:00

Yes, that was me on the Mario Solis Marich Show accusing United Healthcare Golden Rule plan of eugenics.

I called in response to the story on 7 News about the underweight two-year old who was denied health insurance because she was underweight, or as they say in medical euphemism, she is failing to "thrive."

What is eugenics? In its original state, eugenics proposed that, to strengthen the human species, inherited "weaknesses" must be eliminated. All sorts of schemes were devised to do so, from preventing "mentally retarded" people from marrying, to denying social welfare for the poor. Through these methods, inherited weakness would be removed from the human species. (All this was about a hundred years before Krick and Watson discovered DNA.)

This insanity had proponents among industrialists, like Andrew Carnegie who had his own pro-eugenics think tank, and progressives, like Margaret Sanger. Eugenics found its ultimate expression in Germany in the 1930s. After the Holocaust, most belief in eugenics ended. People finally saw it for what it was: selective genocide.

But today, health insurance companies, like United Healthcare, appear to have given eugenics a new spin. Based on undisclosed factors, like a child's "failure to thrive," insurance companies now decide who lives or who dies. Why? I believe it is because, over a lifetime based on these undisclosed factors, some people undoubtedly cost more to keep alive through medical treatment than others. To eliminate the cost, we eliminate the risk? How do we eliminate the risk? We eliminate health insurance for the people who carry that relatively higher level of risk. We let nature take its course.

So, the new eugenics of health insurance companies appears to have one core theme: profits before people.

It was genocide in the 1930s. It is genocide now. It is murder, plain and simple. But, it's legal.

That is why we need universal health insurance. I say we need socialized medicine. You may think we need single-payer insurance. What we must have is a system that, under no circumstance, denies a postpartum person the right to life. Anything less is murder.

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The USA: A third-world education?

2009-10-09T17:06:00.002-06:00

Paul Krugman's new editorial is a must read.

This is what I mean when I say the United States faces a slide into third-world status. Those potholes and crumbling streets we drive on each day are metaphors for the potholes and crumbling state of public higher education.

As goes public higher education, so goes the economy. The decimation of public higher education decimates upward mobility. This is a fact long known among those who study social stratification, traditionally the study of economic differentials in society.

I argue in my sociology work that stratification comes from power differentials. Capital is merely one artifact of power, though an important artifact. The artifacts can be earned through personal effort or received due to no fault of one's one. Some are real, like capital, houses, cars, money, and physical disabilities. Some are symbolic, like college degrees, titles of heraldry, family names, and job titles. Some open pathways to other artifacts. Add the positive and subtract the negative artifacts, and one can pretty well tell how much power a person or group has in society.

If one is a plutocrat, for whom a relatively large capital reserve is vital to gain and/or preserve power, you know full well higher public education MUST GO! It threatens your power. Any threats to your power are unacceptable.

If we want to preserve upward mobility and keep America economically viable, we must crush the plutocrats. They are following the same path that destroyed Latin American economies during the 20th century.

Write to your Senator, Congressperson, state assembly members, and governor. Demand proper, full funding for public higher education. Then, organize and make your demands stick!

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A Thought for the Day

2009-10-05T14:03:00.000-06:00

Be inclined towards an open kindness, one that bears no grudges, disparages no character, always forgives, and unconditionally loves. Barring that, crush the bastards.

Have a nice day.

;o)

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Capitalist Junk

2009-10-02T16:32:00.007-06:00

I have no idea whether Michael Moore's new movie is worth seeing. I can tell you, however, that the film review of Capitalism: A Love Story, by Ella Taylor, an out-of-town reviewer Westword outsourced this film review to, is a political conservative.

Normally, that would not matter. However, Taylor and and Westword should apologize for not delivering a film review but a political tract, and a misleading one at that.

Taylor reveals her politics early in the "review" by making a classic mistake. She equates the free market with capitalism. It's part of the conservative mantra, but it could not be further from the facts.

In a free market, entrepreneurs compete to provide goods and services to consumers. Consumers then compete to buy those goods and services. Competitors use the free market to determine price. Competition is the key. Without competition, supply sinks and prices soar... sort of like health insurance in our capitalist system.

In a capitalist system, however, capitalists seek to control all capital in one, several, or all markets. Capitalists want to be the sole source of goods and/or services. Capitalists want to create unregulated, unfettered monopolies. So, capitalism is the antithesis of free market competition.

As far as the film goes, again I have no idea whether it's worth seeing or not. But as political or economic commentary goes, because of the error of Taylor's premise, I can say her clearly biased political review isn't worth the paper or digital bits it's written on.

Let us have an apology, Westword, shall we?

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Chaos, Anarchy, and Colorado as a Failed State?

2009-09-27T14:00:00.007-06:00

The Denver Post published a frightening story this morning. Douglas Bruce is back with a slew of new initiatives dedicated to strangling state government in the bathtub.

The time has come to stop declaring Bruce an oddity or nut. The time has come to take him quite seriously, just as one would the anarchists who killed President McKinley in 1903.

Late historian Will Durant once wrote that every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle. Colorado as a state is "on the ropes," to use a boxing term. Colorado verges on being a third-world state, and all because of TABOR and Gallagher. Will our over-reliance on Douglas Bruce's "lassiez-faire" vision of government finally topple Colorado? I think we stand perched on this abyss right now. It won't take much to send us over for good.

If these pass, how will the Metro area and other parts of the state provide even the most basic services? As it is, Denver may have to cut back radically on police and fire services. If these pass, you can certainly kiss parks and recreation, Medicaid, public libraries, and public schools goodbye, at least as we now know them. Wherever will those who work send their kids each day if we cut the public school week to, say, three or four days? Won't that cost far more than a few hundred dollars a year in taxes?

Neither private industry or nonprofits provide these services in anything approaching abundance. These are things that civilization provides to spread and preserve civilization. This notion leads me another of Durant's quotes. He wrote that, "Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos." Is Douglas Bruce a closet anarchist, using the ballot box rather than bombs and guns to destroy our civilization and the state of Colorado through chaos?

Adam Smith, the grandfather of capitalism, believed the commonwealth, meaning people working as a government, should provide the goods and services demanded by people, yet that the free market cannot or will not provide. Even he would question Bruce's direction for Colorado.

Do we really want to be the ones history remembers as responsible for Colorado becoming a failed state?

Constitutions and the initiative system are not suicide notes or pacts. We need to reconsider the whole initiative process, but not until TABOR is dead and buried. Then, I propose we go to a system requiring supermajorities to enact initiatives. Several years ago, my opponent in the 2002 senate district 22 election, Norma Anderson, made this proposal. Today, I couldn't agree more.

Direct democracy has proven itself seriously dangerous to civilization, just as James Madison proposed in Federalist 10. Direct democracy ignores history, evidence, and reason, and instead relies on fear, unproven beliefs, and tradition to enact permanent, civilization-altering policies. Many of these policies, especially those in the vein of Proposition 13 in California and TABOR in Colorado, favor the romance of chaos over the liberty of civilization.

The romance of chaos seemingly favored by Douglas Bruce is an assassin. It kills liberty every time. Just ask your average Somali.

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The Blue Dog Who Chased and Caught the Car

2009-08-07T17:43:00.004-06:00

Once upon a time, there was a little doggie who loved to chase cars. He thought it was the most fun thing in the world. To this doggie, cars were nothing more than really big rabbits. Heck, some of the cars WERE rabbits (of the Volkswagen variety).

One day, much to the doggie's surprise, he caught one. It didn't hurt that the car was parked at the time. But, that didn't matter. The little doggie now had a car firmly in his teeth.

This left the doggie with a problem. Now that he'd caught one, he didn't know what to do with it.

Why do the Democrats in Congress and the White House remind me of this little doggie? How long did the Democrats chase the car called Power before catching it? Now that they have caught it, they also don't seem to know what to do with it.

Which brings us to the Health care townhall meetings. Why, oh why, did the Democrats in Congress and the White House get caught with their pants so proverbially down?

The move deployed by the useful idiots of the reich wing and their insurance company masters comes right out of Mussolini's playbook. I'm wondering when the teabagging, birther fascists will don their brown and black shirts and come a marching down Pennsylvania Ave, up to the doors of the White House, and into President Obama's lap?

The at-first tepid campaign by the White House makes me wonder whether or not they knew what to do with this power when they caught it? They also have me wondering whether they really wanted to pursue health care reform, or whether it was merely a ploy to gain support last year from the farther left-leaning progressives among Democrats, Greens, and Independents?

As far as I can see, the White House still is not leading on the issue. Nor is the DNC. Why is Fox News publishing the locations of Democratic town hall meetings while the DNC sits on its hands? Where is a similar list of Republican town hall meetings? Why are Democrats not prevaricating a bit of fun-loving mayhem upon their Republican detractors? Where are the lefty, dancing-and-singing flash mobs to answer the reich-wing's wailing and gnashing of teeth? Why isn't the Democratic Party laying into CNN for refusing to run this TV ad?

Nowhere. That's where.

And so, our little doggie finally caught the car. He clearly has no idea what to do with it. Nor, evidently, does the Democratic Party leadership. Something tells me us partisans will change that leadership next year. Until then, let's band together and do some good-natured jabbing back at Mussolini Limbaugh's children at local Democratic town hall meetings.

Oh, and for the bluest of blue dogs? How much IS that doggie in the window? I'm sure the insurance companies know the price.

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Testing Some Logos

2009-07-22T23:45:00.003-06:00

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Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-23T13:03:00.002-06:00

Each year I post a link to this tribute to my men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us free.

It is an illustrated version of Walt Whitman's immortal poem, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.

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A Primer on Public Debt

2009-03-24T18:03:00.002-06:00

So, you think Obama's increase in the national debt is unprecidented? You think Fox News is telling you the truth? Think again!

Here are the public debt numbers by presidential administration.

The information comes from the US Treasury at Treasurydirect.com.

I went to the end of the fiscal year in which a president left office. Why? Because that deficit is still the result of that president's budget. The new president's budget did not go into effect until the fiscal year following his inauguration.

For example, Obama's first budget year begins in July 09.

Eisenhower (53-61): $266.1 - $288.9 billion, up 9%;

Kennedy (61-63): $288.9 - $311.7 billion, up 8%;

Johnson (63-69): $311.7 - $398.7 billion, up 30% (not bad, considering it includes Vietnam and the Great Society programs);

Nixon (69-74): $398.7 - $475.0, up 19%;

Ford (74 - 77): $475 - $698.8, up 47% (in only 3 years!);

Carter (77 - 81): $698.8 - $997.8, up 43%;

Reagan (81 - 89) [Are you sitting down, folks?]: $997.8 billion - $2.867 TRILLION, up 187%;

Bush I (89 - 93) [Are you sitting down again, folks?]: $2.867 to $4.411 TRILLION, up 83%;

Clinton (93 - 01): $4.411 to $5.807 Trillion, up 31%;

Bush II (01 - 08 - 09 is not yet in the chart): 5.807 - 10.024 Trillion, up 73%. When his contribution from 09 is added, it will likely be close to a 100% increase.

So there you have it. With the exception of Eisenhower and Nixon, the largest deficit increase under the Democrats, that of Jimmy Carter, at 43%, didn't come close to the increases under the Republicans.

Ford: up 47%.
Reagan: up 187%.
Bush I: up 83%.
Bush II: up 73+%.

Fiscal conservatism. The Republicans should try it some time.

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Betrayed

2009-03-22T09:16:00.002-06:00

Sent today to the Denver Post:

Dear Editor,

In 2002, I ran for state senate. My job was to challenge strongly enough so my opponent would not divert campaign funds against Sen. Moe Keller. Imagine my disgust when I learned Sen. Keller did not support in-state tuition for children of undocumented aliens.

If I wanted Tancredo-lite, I would support it. I withdraw all support for Sen. Keller. I urge fellow Jefferson County Democrats to do the same.

I also apologize to the children who could benefit from the in-state tuition rates. She fooled me, kids. What can I say?

---

Optimism

2009-03-16T17:31:00.002-06:00

I have to share this video with you, today. Just awesome.

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Al Lewis is Wrong, Again!

2009-03-08T10:44:00.011-06:00

I just finished reading a snippy bit of junk offered by business journalist, Al Lewis. It is about "Marketing the Recovery."

I think Mr. Lewis treated the symbols in the Obama Administration's new Recovery logo like a bit of a Rorshach test. Where he sees a weed, I see reinvigorated agriculture. Where he see a cog, I see re-industrialization. Is something wrong with those ideas, Al?

I also just finished watching today's Meet the Press. If the Take Two section of the show is what passes for a "bi-partisan" discussion, we are doomed!

Billionaire Mort Zuckerman, the owner-publisher of US News and World Reports, was acting the part of, get this, the LIBERAL! And Erin Burnett from CNBC is a nice bit of eye candy, but they continue to present her as an expert on the economy. You gotta' be kidding!

And, I never cease to marvel at how Newt Gingrich can know so much but understand so little. Newtie and the Blowhards helped tank the economy with their approach to economics. He may run for president. It sure has Mother Jones magazine nervous.

I have some questions for Al, Erin, Mort, and Newter.

Must we continue to ride the Kondratiev Wave on a banana boat down the failed river of conservative economics? Must we ride a on boom-and-bust wave that guarantees plenty of rapids, waterfalls, and rocks forever and ever?

Must we continue to have capital ripped from our shores like a life preserver from our shoulders by the trade policies elaborated on by the late economist, Andre Gunder Franke, in his theory of dependency?

Must we become a banana boat republic at the hands of the Banana Boat Republicans, simply to satisfy a failed conservative belief that never leads to prosperity for all but a few plutocrats, that leads time and again to poverty and, in the end, revolution? Yes! Revolution!

I'm beginning to think that the Republicans should change their logo from the elephant to Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Jesus Christ walking arm-in-arm. The new slogan: Survival of the Fittest on Earth as It is in Heaven!

Spencer? He's a mid-19th-century British sociologist and friend of Darwin. He coined the term "survival of the fittest," not Charles. He was also the father of eugenics to some extent.

I'm sure that, at this point, Spencer would call to make it illegal for the poor to procreate. After all, this economic contraction proves only one thing: we have an oversupply of labor.

Adam Smith wrote that the market solved this problem through death of the unemployed as they starve. Spencer opined that governments should do nothing to prevent this, or else it would make the human species weaker. And Spencer would no doubt offer compassion to the poor with jail time for an illegal act of pregnancy.

Or perhaps we could let the poor sell their babies to the top five percent, those who don't have enough sycophants stroking their egos? Like Bernie Madoff, for example. Oh, that's right! They'd never buy black babies! At least that's what FAO Schwartz in New York learned from an odd bit of marketing. The seemingly disabled baby doll sold before the black ones.

Listening to the chat shows and reading Al's blog for today annoys the hell out of me. It's like listening to the last wails of a dying dinosaur. It's time to kill it, cook it, and eat it!

I think the neo-conmen need to have a look at Malcom Gladwell's new book, Outliers: The Story of Success. It is no doubt available at that socialist institution we call the Public Library.

With his usual fascinating look at statistics, he pretty much eviscerates the notion of the self-made anyone or anything. For the last 200 years without the help of family, friends, and government, we would have no great success stories. None. Something for all to consider.

Especially Al, Erin, Mort, and Newter.

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Bulletin: "Buy American" Provision of Economic Stimulus in Danger

2009-02-03T10:10:00.004-07:00

Today, I sent the following letter to my Senators. I urge you to contact your Senators to keep them from stripping the "Buy American" provision from the economic stimulus package. Without it, the package will not work.

If you can avoid it, please do not contact your Senator by e-mail. We learned through endless experience, the e-mailed messages tend to end up in a black hole somewhere. Instead, call them directly or send a letter by fax, as I did.

If you send it by fax and are in Colorado, Sen. Udall's fax number is incorrect. It actually dials into Sen. Thad Cochran's office. Doris, a staffer in Sen. Cochran's office, was kind enough to explain that, once upon a time, somebody from the Allard office incorrectly keypunched the fax number into the Senate web site, which Sen. Udall inherited.. When I contacted Sen. Udall's office, they seemed unaware of the problem and said they would address it. We'll see.

For Udall's office, call directly to their voice phone line at 202-224-5941. See if the staffer will accept your letter by e-mail and get it where it needs to go.

UPDATE: Sen. Udall's fax number now appears to be working at, 202-224-6471.

For Sen. Bennet's office though not listed on his web site, the fax numbers is 202-228-5036. It appears to be working.

I write this letter about the Economic Stimulus Package, and specifically its “Buy American” provision.

Please do not allow the Senate to strip the "Buy America" provision from the Economic Stimulus package. This provision is vital. As President Franklin Roosevelt new in the 1930s, the American economy will not recover without it.

Let me use a bathtub as a metaphor for the capital in our economy. We have a trade deficit, which hovers in the $750 billion per year range. Continuing with the metaphor, it is as though there is a hole in the bottom of our economic bathtub, and that hole leaking capital. Unless we plug up that leak, no matter how much government stimulus we use to refill the bathtub, all of that capital will eventually leak out. This will leave no capital with which to grow our job base and industrial capacity.

The late economist, Dr. Andre Gunder Frank, developed a theory for why the United States and the western European democracies developed economically, but the Latin American economies did not.

His theory, called Development-Dependency, holds that the Latin American countries sold primary goods, timber, metals, and such, to the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. and Europe then applied labor to those primary goods and turned them into finished goods. The U.S. and Europe then sold those finished goods back to the Latin American countries. In each round of the trade cycle, the U.S. and Europe grew richer, while the Latin American countries grew poorer. They grew so poor at the time that, in fact, they could not economically develop. They became fully dependent on the US and Europe for the things they needed to live.

Eventually, their trade deficits and debts caused bankruptcy. This led in some cases to the rise of military juntas, leading the people to live, as you are no doubt aware, in the most desperate of circumstances.

Some do not agree with Dr. Frank. Even he had doubts about his theory at the time of his death. However, it seems that events in the US and European economies over the last year show that, in the long run, Dr. Frank was exactly right. Increasingly, the United States is now a dependent country. We are dependent on Asian economies to produce most of what we need to live. And it's led us into our greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.

It took nearly forty years of trade deficits to cause our economy to collapse. If we use the stimulus to increase that trade deficit, following Dr. Frank’s theory by buying finished capital goods and supplies from abroad to rebuild our infrastructure, our economy will likely never recover. I don’t see how we can then prevent the United States from becoming an economic third world nation.

Do you really want the history books to show that the American economy collapsed on your watch?

To stand a chance of reviving our economy, we must produce at home in the United States the cranes, earthmovers, bulldozers, and other finished capital goods and supplies needed to rebuild our infrastructure. We must hire American and not foreign workers. We must not go the route of the banana boat republics.

With the “Buy American” provision, this domestic capital spending when put to the money multiplier is the economic dynamo that creates the jobs that lead to the recovery. That’s basic Keynesian economic theory, the same theory that ended America’s Great Depression and rebuilt Europe and Japan after World War II. Consequently, the "Buy American" provision must survive within the Economic Stimulus package.

Without the "Buy American" provision, capital will continue to leak out of hole in the nation's economic bathtub. Applying the money multiplier in reverse, each dollar that leaks out of the bathtub will have the effect of far more than one dollar leaving the economy. Eventually, this will leave the nation without the capital needed to recover.

The point of the stimulus program is to grow America's economy by growing its job base, not those of foreign nations. American job growth spurs America's capital growth. This creates the economic recovery. If we strip the "Buy America" provision from the stimulus bill, all of that capital will eventually leak its way into the capital markets of our competitor nations. And make no mistake about it. They are our competitors.

Do we really want to create jobs in Canada or China, enriching their treasuries with the bounty of our own?

I urge you to vote no to stripping the “Buy American” provision from the Economic Stimulus package. If the Senate does strip provision from the stimulus, I urge you to vote no to the Economic Stimulus package. Foreign economies don't need our Treasury’s capital. We do.

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Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss?

2009-01-19T10:38:00.007-07:00

In today's New York Times, Op-Ed columnist and Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Paul Krugman, reveals that the Obama Administration appears set to try a hair-brained scheme.

They will buy up the bad assets of our failed banks at fair value, whatever the hell that is, and let the largess continue to roll. This will supposedly make the banks and the failed banking system viable again.

I think Krugman should be our next Treasury Secretary and not Timothy Geithner, the former head of the New York Federal Reserve, who will be in charge of the IRS.

If you didn't hear the story last week, it appears Mr. Geithner is incapable of doing his own income taxes. Frankly, if this guy can't do his own taxes, we're all screwed. I think his admission makes it official: the tax code needs to be blown up, and we need to start all over again with a FLAT tax. No deductions, just a flat tax on income - period! Put the accountants out of business. And let's scrap the sales and federal excise taxes and, instead, institute a Value-added tax. They seem to work quite well in Europe for funding things like, oh, national health care.

Krugman, and his fellow NY Times Op-Ed economist, Thomas Friedman, actually agree on how to handle this bank debacle. Surely, that is a sign of the Apocalypse.

Paul and Tom say we should do what worked in the past. We should follow what FDR did with the bank failures in the 1930s and what the first Bush Administration did with the savings and loan failures of the 1980s. We should nationalize and liquidate the failed banks, putting their bad accounts receivables into an institution like the Resolution Trust Corp. We should then wait for their full value to return. Then, we should sell the assets. Wrapping up this process, to go from nationalization of the banks to sale of the assets at full value took about 20 and 10 years respectively. But it got the bad banks and bad assets out of the money system and allowed the good banks to start growing the money supply through deposit-expansion.

Based on what Krugman wrote, I must conclude that the Obama approach is similar to the Bush approach: it's faith-based banking, pure and simple. And that's too bad, because we live in a material world. (Cue Madonna!)

When do you suppose these genius economists in the Bush and Obama Administrations, people who are supposed to be scientists, will abandon their belief in the metaphys? When will they ignore the ghost of an idea, the "invisible hand of the market place," and instead deal with the economy as it is: a physical force of nature? After all, is it not a bunch of levers that, based on how we push them, move all of the other levers?

The way the Obama Administration wants to deal with the banking crisis sounds very much like how the Bush Administration dealt with (or didn't deal with) Katrina. Just as Bush was content not to nationalize the failed bailing out New Orleans, Obama appears content not to nationalize the failed bailout of the banks fouling up the entire banking system.

The scary part in all of this is, it looks like the corporate bankers already got to Obama. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars in non-corporate campaign contributions and millions of hours of volunteer work from people like you and me, the corporate bankers got to him all the same. It appears as though he pursues their interests rather than out common interests. That is why I applaud Nancy Pelosi for putting her foot down last week.

According to Friedman, Pelosi said there will be no more bailouts until oversight reigns and Congress repeals the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent before they automatically expire next year.

My prediction is, when Obama's plan also fails, and rewarding bad business practices always leads to profound failure, he will have no course left but to nationalize and liquidate these poorly managed and capitalized banks. The good news is, this will only take a few months. After all, the same idiot bankers who got us into this trouble ran through the last $350 billion in about three months. And they're still in their jobs!

As Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." The question is when Barack Obama comes to this fork in the road, will he take it?

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Wolves in Sheeps' Clothing?

2009-01-13T12:46:00.014-07:00

I received this excerpt from Lee Iacocca's new book, today. The book is called Where Have All the Leaders Gone.

According to Snopes.com, which monitors for urban myths, this is correctly attributed. http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/iacocca.asp

Already, I am profoundly concerned by the appointments and apparent direction of the Congress and, to a lesser extent, the Obama Administration.

They ran on a ticket of change. Now, they talk about "getting along" and creating "bi-partisan" solutions with their GOP rivals.

This leads me to ask the following questions:

Isn't that what we've already been doing over the last eight years?
How is this supposed to be big "C" Change?
Did the Democrats run this year as progressives so they could legislate as conservatives, thinking we supporters were a bunch of saps?
Have the Democrats become the victims of Stockholm Syndrome, in which an abducted hostage begins to identify with his or her captor regardless of the risk posed to the hostage?
Don't these Democrats realize that the Obama campaign taught us how to depose them at the ballot box by using technology?
Don't these Democrats realize that the threat of a GOP Congress is no longer a threat when they, the Democrats, legislate AS Republicans?

Hell, I've already come up with a new party name, should it be needed: The American Progressive Labor Party. Should I register the domain name already in anticipation of the web site?

Some would say, oh, with "labor" in the title, people will reject it as radical. I say for three months the Republicans alleged Obama was a "socialist." And guess what? It didn't matter. People voted overwhelmingly for the alleged socialist. Surprise!

The biggest test for me will be whether or not the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, will at least look into preferring charges against Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. If he doesn't at least begin the process, then screw him and Obama. How about that!

Mr. Obama says he wants to look forward. That's fine. But I think we have the capacity to do both. I also think that if we don't at least attempt to lock up these two war criminals, this may become business-as-usual for America. Do we really want the conspiracy theories that proliferate the TV show "24" to become our reality? If not, then prosecute, prosecute, prosecute!

Frankly after Mr. Obama takes his oath of office on January 20, the millions of witnesses ringing the Capitol building should stand up straight and tall and chant at the top of their lungs, "Prosecute Bush and Cheney!" Keep that up for five minutes, and you will get the attention of Mr. Obama, Congress, and the world.

As the national, state and, local parties reorganize over the next two months, I think it is time to put our party's leadership on notice. We will no longer accept candidates who are wolves in sheeps' clothing. Push back very hard. Run for office yourself, if necessary. But make it clear if Holder doesn't at least begin the investigation, if the Democrats don't at least begin to legislate from the progressive side of the political divide, you will see that they don't return to office next time.

Pragmatism is fine. But Democrats elected to office had best begin their compromises with the convictions on which they ran. Otherwise, they can and will be replaced by someone who will. Maybe that someone is you. Maybe that someone is me.

Here is a link to the excerpt from Lee Iacocca's book.

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Sight, Insight, Ephiphany, and Baracka

2008-11-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

Just because we see, we do not necessarily comprehend. Sight is a great gift. Insight is a greater gift. One moment all is dark. The next, all is light. Insight impels us to act, if only to share that insight with the Earth and Eternity.

Sometimes that is good enough. But now is not sometimes. Now is a threshold moment. Together or separately, we can move from the dark to the light. It is up to us collectively or individually to decide when and how.

Something of interest. The name Barack (or Baraka) is Hebrew / Egyptian in origin.

Ba means Soul. Ra means Sun. Ka means Manifestation.

The most direct translations mean "soul double of the sun" or "lightening/thunder." (I guess the ancients did not distinguish between the two.)

In either event, to have sight or insight requires illumination, enlightenment, epiphany. And epiphany is most certainly like lightening and thunder.

Let us all now move together into the light of a new, better time.

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Thoughts on the Election in Colorado

2008-11-05T07:43:00.002-07:00

Here are a few thoughts on the election in Colorado.

Colorado voted to empower a very progressive legislative team at the federal level. It looks, though, as if we lost some ground in the state house. And the progressive appeal on Amendments and Referenda were summarily rejected. The progressives running for county office in Jeffco, including a two-term state senator, were rebuffed, in one case re-electing a commissioner embroiled in scandal and controversy.

If Jesus and Barabbas were on the ballot in some parts of Jefferson County and Barabbas had an R after his name, we could no doubt hear "Give us Barabbas" from the conservatives, and especially from the Christian right.

And for the people who created the ad campaign for Amendment 58, what was the matter with you? Are you kidding me? Didn't you read Marshall McLuhan? The media is the message (or massage, as he once wrote). Television is television. It is only capable of delivering a television-based message. You watch and listen to television. It is not paper media. You don't READ IT! And yet the largest part of your ad campaign was TV-based and all about READING ALL BOLDED, CAPITAL LETTERS ON A TV SCREEN. How dumb!

I want to try again with 58, only I want to shift the subsidy from oil companies to new energy companies. I want to attract them to Colorado, to attract the jobs they bring. And I need your help organizing this.

Please contact me here and help me get this going.

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Promised Land

2008-11-04T23:38:00.008-07:00

To dream the biggest dreams of all.

To have power of Imagination unbounded.

The gods bow their heads

To such a human gift.

Oh, We Got Trouble...

2008-09-26T05:50:00.003-06:00

It is a real challenge to be a Democrat. The level of incompetence in managing the media is beyond reckoning. And the best example of this incompetence can be seen in the so-called bank bailout fiasco.

On Thursday afternoon, the Republicans and Democrats supposedly arrived at a bi-partisan agreement for handling the crisis. Let's call that Plan A. Then in yesterday's meeting at the White House, the House Republicans supposedly backed out of the deal for Plan A, instead offering their own plan. Let's call that Plan B.

I'm not here to debate the merits of either plan. There are some aspects I like and some I don't for each. But after listening to the blather on TV this morning coming primarily from CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC, I feel like flying to DC and kicking the crap out of Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank.

How come?

Because for all the years these clowns have been in DC, they still don't know how to sell an idea to America. Their media approach might work in New England, where literacy rates and the amount of education is relatively high, but it doesn't work in Bugtussle, USA.

It became clear this week that Bugtussle doesn't like any plan that helps the banks. This is bad news. Because if the banks go, everybody goes.

Bugtussle doesn't like that its tax money will bail out a bunch of fat cat corporatists, the same corporatists Bugtussle supported by sending pro-capitalist GOP elected officials to Washington. Bugtussle doesn't realize it, but the politics of Bugtussle is the political reason for the economic mess we are in. Bugtussle don't want no Socialism. Fine. But the pending collapse of the entire monetary system is simply the unfolding of Bugtussle's market solution for investment banking.

And it is up to the Democrats to persuade Bugtussle of this and that Plan A will in part solve the problem.

Apparently Bugtussle still wants a market solution to the problem. Why? Because it doesn't know any better. Many in Bugtussle barely graduated high school, so they believe what Faux News and the GOP tell them. Why? Because for the better part of 40 years, the GOP experimented with the rhetorical techniques that now allow it to sell to Bugtussle lipstick for pigs in all the porcine pigments of the rainbow.

This is why the Democrats keep losing elections and issues. They don't have a clue about how to talk to Bugtussle.

The GOP's Rhetorical Assault

While you were asleep, here is the message the Republicans are trying to sell to Bugtussle today.

1. Plan A is nothing more than the Bush-Paulson plan with a few tweeks. In other words just like kids play "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" at birthday parties, the GOP is pinning the Bush-Paulson plan on the Democrats. It's nothing short of brilliant. It takes the disquiet felt in Bugtussle with the original plan and plants it square on the asses of the Democratic donkeys.

2. Plan A is like winning the Powerball Lotto for the bankers and businesspeople who run Wall Street. It's nothing more than a big, Socialist payoff. And no wonder. It comes from the elitist Democrats who think they're better than Bugtussle, what with their fancy Ivy League educations... and Bugtussle knows you simply can't trust them educated fellers, caus'n that what that feller O'Reilly says.

3. The Republicans had no real input into the process for drawing up Plan A. According to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-GA), only five people made the decision and, outside of the White House, they were Democrats. (It's funny that this happened after all the deal was announced and not before, and especially after the criticism of McCain for coming to DC an hour AFTER the announcement.) If this is true, then the Democrats screwed up on this, too.

4. Plan B is panacea. The banking system and money markets cannot collapse and hurt Bugtussle under it because it is a so-called market-based solution. Of course the whole notion, with its lack of oversight, is absurd. It lets the same bankers who caused the mess keep on going, insuring them for their losses on a case-by-case basis. But when you know how to talk to Bugtussle, and the Democrats don't, you can tell them pretty much anything. You can tell them that Porcine Pink lipstick makes your prized pig look lke Paris Hilton.

5. It's all Obama's fault. (This is inferred, not stated.)

And you know what? Bugtussle is probably going to believe every bit of it. Due to the 40 years of GOP experiments in rhetoric, Bugtussle has no skeptical filters through which to process these messages. And it doesn't hurt that there is some truth behind the charges, especially in # 3 above.

The Plans

As I said, I'm not a fan of either plan. Two weeks ago, Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke told us the economy was running on greased grooves, that every thing was fine. Then came the run on the money market funds last week. And now, those same fellows are telling us there is only one way to bail out the economy.

How could the same men who were so wrong two weeks ago be so correct today? It is unlikely.

And because of that, I think we need to look at multiple means for solving each problem contributing to the overall collapse of the economy. This includes addressing the forces that contribute to the trade deficit that continues to pump capital out of the US like a patient bleeding out from a punctured aorta.

Solving the Crises

My friend Chris had an interesting idea for the mortgage crisis. Why not have the government simply pay the interest and principle on the bad loans for primary residences until those people are back on their economic feet?

I think he has a great idea, here. I have a few ideas of my own to add.

A bit of background first. We need jobs. Badly. If people have good paying jobs, they can pretty much deal with the debt. But good paying jobs are fleeting. They are fleeting because capital bleeds out of our ports at the rate of $746 billion per year (at the monthly rate posed in July 2008), which is roughly the amount of bailout money proposed under Plan A (a coincidence?).

Put this $746 billion to the money multiplier, and the national trade deficit has the effect of trillions of dollars of capital gushing out of the US every year. And this money ain't coming back, Bugtussle, thanks to the so-called bi-partisan free trade deals of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Apparently those free trade deals have quite a price tag for America.

The trade deficit created the job crisis. The job crisis, the lack of money in the pockets of Americans, created the mortgage crisis. To solve the mortgage crisis and job crisis, we must solve the trade deficit. If we don't do that, we can throw all the money in the world at the banking system and not solve the mortgage crisis.

In addition to Chris's idea, here are a few of mine:

1) Roll all unsecured debt into the bailout. The debt was clearly issued by fraud. How many solicitations do you get each week for credit cards? I get five. Further, we have $50 trillion of mortgage debt outstanding for homes not worth nearly that amount. The restructuring must involve the damping down of interest rates and monthly payments. It must also mean that the government cancel the credit cards of those

2) Implement strong, protective tariffs on imports. The tariffs must exceed the cost of labor for producing the goods and services in the US. Yes, this means goods and services will cost more at first. It will create inflation. But it also means that if manufacturers want to sell their stuff in the US, they might as well make it in the US.

3) Create a Works Projects Administration (WPA)-style program to put Americans back to work. It gets local economies going again. By creating short-term jobs for displaced workers, money again begins to flow through local economies. This generates enough local economic activity to create self-sustaining economies. In time, the people in the WPA programs go back to work in the private sector.

4) Repeal state balanced budget amendments. During economic crises, it is vital that governments be able to deficit spend. Like the federal WPA program, The deficit spending focuses on creating short-term jobs for displaced workers. Once the local economies become self-sustaining, the debt is paid off through taxes. More people will make more money. This means collecting more tax revenue without having to raise the rates. Combined with #2, we can use these programs to rebuild the nation's infrastructure, just like the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations did.

5) Remove and ban the executives who caused this mess from working in financial services for at least five years. They gotta go. They are too dangerous.

6) Recreate free, public colleges and pay off all outstanding college debt. This encourages Americans to keep educating themselves, so Bugtussle becomes an anomaly and America again becomes the consistent creator of the new ideas and technologies that benefit humanity.

Rapping it up

I could go on for hours, but you get the idea. The problem is complex. The Democrats have again failed to properly sell their idea to Bugtussle. And they need Bugtussle to really make any idea work.

In the meantime now that the Republicans have made the process political, the Democrats should rightly accuse the Republicans in the House and John McCain of leading the American banking system into utter collapse. They need to persuade Bugtussle that if we do as the House Republicans want, everyone likely will be wiped out, including both Bugtussle and the fat cats (the top 1%).

The Democrats must also persuade Bugtussle that no deal means no future for America. The Democrats must make it clear that if the US goes, Bugtussle goes, too.

And for God sakes, do it like adults. John McCain clearly demonstrated that he lacks the maturity to be president. Don't you Democrats descend to the level of his shrill immaturity during this process.

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The ABC Interview with Sarah Palin

2008-09-12T12:56:00.008-06:00

You have likely seen or heard the interview by Charles Gibson of ABC news, conducted with Gov. Sarah Palin, Republican candidate for vice president.

If not, here is the video and a transcript I made of their exchange from a certain point in the interview. I've inserted a few comments, based on what I saw and heard.

My conclusion is that the Republican party could not have acted more cynically, more deludedly, or more irresponsibly in picking this person to be their VP candidate. She has no clue what she is talking about.

And I wish her son and her division great success and safety on their deployment. Godspeed!

Here is the video:

And here is the transcript:

Gibson: "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?"

She pauses, hoping to gather her thoughts but finding none. An Alaskan caribou caught in the headlights.

Palin: "In what respect, Charlie?"

Gibson: "What do you interpret it (Bush Doctrine) to be?"

Palin: "His world view?"

She asks it like a question, and then leans to the right so proud of her clever answer!!!!!

I am in tears, laughing so hard.

This is like an oral exam with a person who never even read the textbook! And with that answer, Gibson goes on the attack...

Gibson: "No, the Bush Doctrine-- enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq War."

She continues to bluff, shifting into a rehearsed answer.

Palin: "I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists Hell-bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders (suddenly lowers her voice, like it's a secret!!!! LOL!!!) along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. (Clicks her tongue!!!) And with new leadership, and that's the (emphasis) beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better."

But Gibson won't let it go! He GIVES HER THE ANSWER!!!! (I'm about to pee my pants at this point!)

Gibson: "The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a pre-emptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?""

Palin: "Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend out country."

Gibson: "Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Paksitan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?"

Palin: "As for our right to invade, we're gonna' to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be a military strike, a last option.

Gibson: "But governor, I'm asking you, we have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?"

Here, she reverts to a stock answer. It has the cadence of music, which suggests it was memorized like a phrase of music.

Palin: "In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies. We must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and, even who we target."

Gibson: "Let me finish with this. I'm just, I get (sic) lost in a blizzard of words, there.

Is that a yes, that you think we have the right to go across the border, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the the Wiseristan area?"

Here, she repeats almost word-for-word an earlier answer.

Palin: "I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists, who are Hell-bent on destroying America and our allies. We gave got to have all options out there on the table."

Let's hope the following film clips do not foretell our nation's fate come January.

---

9/11 & Snarky Giuliani

2008-09-12T05:55:00.007-06:00

This morning, Joe Scarborough is interviewing Rudy "Noun + verb + 9/11" Giuliani about the election.

This smug bastard is so snarky.

I have a question for him and his GOP cohorts, George Pataki and George W. Bush about 9/11.

How come you geniuses didn't have the presence of mind to order the

slurry bombing of the World Trade Center?

You know, like the do with forest fires.

How come you didn't order planes and helicopters to drop tons of water and fire-retardant on those two buildings?

How come you didn't try to put out the damned fires or, at the very least, slow down the damage so more people could get out alive?

It's not like nobody thought of this before! Ever seen the movie The Towering Inferno?

Sure, it was a bad movie. Typical Irwin Allen mega-star crap. But the idea was sound. You put out the fire by attacking it from above.

For Heaven's sake, the Hudson freaking River is only a few blocks away! There was plenty of water to scoop and drop.

Where the Hell was NORAD?

Oh, and Mr. Bush, where the hell was NORAD?

For over 50 years, the US and NATO invested trillions of dollars in taxpayer money and tens of thousands of lives to fight the Cold War, to primarly fight an attack from THE AIR.

And when it came... bupkiss. Hell, NATO from Canada had to come to our defense. Apparently even days later, we had trouble activitating our domestic air defenses. It makes me wonder if we really had them to begin with?

The only agencies that kept their heads on 9/11 were the NYPD Fire and Police, whom Giuliani and Bloomberg rewarded with a kick in the ass come contract time, and the air traffic controllers. The air traffic controllers and NOT the FAA had the truly brilliant idea to land all planes and close air traffic over the US. Awesome, ladies and gentlemen. Who knows how many more deaths you prevented that day.

So, where do I go to get my money back? How do we

get back all the people who died in your place in Viet Nam, Mr. Bush, while you were falling off a barstool and snorting coke in God-knows-where America?

Where does John McCain go to get back the use of his shoulders a

nd upper back?

So frigging smug, these lipstick-wearing elephants.

And you can see in the image on the right, Rudy Giuliani knows a little something about wearing lipstick.

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Did Rudy and Sarah Call Average Folk a Bunch of Saps?

2008-09-05T15:02:00.001-06:00

This guy has it right. I couldn't agree more, and thought I'd share his thoughts.

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What if Tomorrow was a Yesterday that Never Happened?

2008-09-05T09:11:00.006-06:00

As if there isn't enough to worry about...

The Large Hadron Supercollider is set for a major test on Wednesday 10 September. On that day, physicists will attempt to circulate a beam of light through the entire device. Today, they are in the process of cooling the device to 1.9 K, or -271.25 degrees C.

Then on 21 October, they collide the first particles.

What will happen? Nobody knows.

There is a high probability that, when switched on, it could confirm the Standard Model of physics. It could confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, aka the God Particle, and how elementary particles gained mass at the time of the Big Bang. (I may have this wrong. I'm not a physicist, of course.)

But there is a slight probability that we will all cease to exist. There is a slight probability that they will create a black hole and flush down it or open a rift in time, ala the TV show Torchwood.

As Torchwood's Capt. Jack Harkness says, "The 21st century is when everything changes, and you've gotta' be ready."

Let's all hope there is a Thursday 11 September and Wednesday 22 October, eh?

If not, that'll be a fine trick-or-treat.

---

Amy Goodman Arrested in Minneapolis

2008-09-02T08:50:00.003-06:00

Correction: The mainstream media got the location of the story wrong.

Amy Goodman was arrested in St. Paul. The mayor of St. Paul is Chris Coleman. You can contact him at: (651) 266-8510

We offer our apologies.
---

Amy Goodman, journalist and host of Democracy Now, a Pacifica Radio program, was arrested for conspiracy to riot on Monday in Minneapolis.

Here is the video.

The police released Amy and her producers later in the day.

May I suggest that supporters of democracy and our free press contact Mayor R.T. Rybak today and voice anger at these illegal arrests.

Suggest that Mayor Rybak place his police department on a shorter leash and give protesters their democratic due, just as the city of Denver did the week before.

Mayor Rybak's phone number is (612) 673-2100 and (612) 673-3000. The office fax number is (612) 673-2305.

Insist on Democracy Now!

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Is Sarah Palin a Secessionist Nutburger?

2008-09-02T08:33:00.004-06:00

In Alaska, there is a political party that seeks independence from the United States. That's right. It is a secessionist party.

Called the Alaskan Independence Party, it contends that Alaska's statehood process was invalid and that Alaskans have a right to secede from the Union. As in the Civil War.

And according to Dexter Clark, the Vice-chair of the Alaskan Independence Party, Sarah Palin was a member before her election as mayor.

She even addressed its convention earlier this year, saying she agreed with much of its agenda. Here are three videos of the event concerning Sarah Palin. Is she a patriot? I think these videos and her former affiliation call that into question.

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Acting Out

2008-09-02T08:19:00.002-06:00

Here is a follow-up to yesterday's opinion.

Overnight, I had a few more thoughts about Sarah and Bristol.

Teenagers are vain people. They look at themselves in the mirror more than Narcissus ever did himself in the lake. The universe should revolve around them. And so it must be quite a jolt to the ego when, at the age of 15, your mother becomes governor of Alaska. It must be an even bigger jolt when your over-40 mother becomes pregnant.

Can you imagine how much everybody fawned over Sarah Palin during the last two years? Why, it's enough to send a vain teenager over the top and into the arms someone who will bring her the kind of attention Mom got when she was preggers.

Now, Bristol is preggers. Today, she is center stage in her family and American politics. Imagine what happens to Bristol in that dysfunctional family if her quest for loving attention costs Sarah a chance at being Vice President.

That's right. Sarah Palin believes that Alaska

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Sarah Palin, the VP Nomination, and Teenage Pre-marital Pregnancy

2008-09-01T22:19:00.014-06:00

I never cease to be amazed at how people talk themselves into believing utter horse shit.

Sarah Palin is qualified to be VP? She is fit to be an advocate for family values? She is skilled enough to negotiate with Vladimir Putin?

Republican social conservatives, a kind term for Christian Fascists, are talking themselves into loving Sarah for VP.

You know what I think?

I think faith sometimes borders on psychosis.

Family Values

Regarding Sarah Palin's family life, four months ago, Sarah gave birth to a child. Not any child, mind you, but a child with Down Syndrome.

Bless this poor, poor child. I'm glad Sarah had the baby. Not every woman would have.

The problem is this child will need a great deal of care if, in time, he is to become a functioning adult.

It's not an easy job for parents to raise an unaffected child. It is even more so for a child with such a mountain to climb as Down Syndrome. This child will need extraordinary amounts of attention to learn how to walk, talk, dress, feed himself, bathe himself, work, and develop a full personality.

How could Sarah abandon her desperate, still-nursing baby to go out on the road with McCain? I would say the same if her husband was the nominee.

Their decision to have her run doesn't say much for their parenting skills.

A Mutha of a Mother?

Which brings me to the subject of their 17-year-old pregnant, unwed daughter, Bristol.

We learned about Bristol's pregnancy today because a blogger at Daily Kos suggested the baby was not Sarah's. The blogger alleged that Bristol was the mother, and that Sarah and her husband, Todd, sought to cover up the child's alleged parentage. Todd and Sarah had to spill the beans about Bristol's pregnancy before her growing belly did.

(Sarah, Todd, and Bristol... sounds like the names you'd find on a reunion list of Animal House's Omega fraternity! And you know that Dean Wormer must be slithering about somewhere!)

Though Bristol is a minor, Alaskan law says anyone 16 and over can have consensual sex with anyone else 16 and over. Both parties to a marriage must be 18-years old. To marry before that age, they need parental consent. So, there is no statutory rap involved.

We are assured by a Palin spokesperson that Bristol and the sperm donor will marry soon. Maybe the McCains and Palins will throw Bristol a nice Rose Garden wedding! Maybe they can have the ceremony on Inauguration Day! A two-birds-with-one-stone soirée!

After all, the baby should be due about then.

Put a Cork in It!

Sarah Palin is a staunch advocate of the "Abstinence Only" method of contraception. She has more faith in the word "no" than a few millimeters of plastic.

Oh well! Better luck next time, Sarah... for you AND your profligate daughter.

No wonder Alaska has the highest rate of chlamydia in the US! The state has absolutely no mandatory school instruction to prevent STDs.

You are a first-rate political hypocrite, Gov. Palin. I normally don't care about this sort of thing, except when the pregnancy is unwanted and somebody decides to go the "snip-snip" route to get rid of the problem.

Women have the right to choose it. I will defend that right. We own our own bodies. That is the basic argument for liberty going back to St. Augustine's City of God. However, the practice itself is still morally questionable.

Other than that if you're of age, fuck your brains out! Have fun! But, don't be stupid!

In this case, though, I take exception to all of it. The sex, the age, the babies, the job. Who the hell do you people think you are to tell other people how to live their lives? Your fucking family makes "The Young and Restless" look like Dick and Jane. You make Spanish tele-novellas look like Ozzie and Harriet.

The Addams Family was more honest and moral than you.

I don't believe in sin. I do believe in tort. I do believe in unethical behavior. I do believe in crime. To me, they are civil and criminal forms of sin.

I often wonder why those who are the biggest breachers of civil and criminal sin are blind to their own sins, why they are the first ones to cast stones at others who barely commit sin, who may only think of committing sin?

Maybe it is because when they throw the stones, they divert attention from themselves. Are they simply behavioral magicians who deploy smoke and mirrors to disappear from blame?

Is the reason really that simple?

---

Two words...

2008-08-30T15:25:00.002-06:00

Holy Shit!

---

One word...

2008-08-28T22:42:00.002-06:00

Wow!

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Gone, Gone, Gone

2008-08-27T10:59:00.004-06:00

In her speech before the DNC last night, Hillary Clinton called for party unity to defeat John McCain. She questioned the motives of her followers. Did they support her? Or did they support her stand on the issues? The answer is neither.

She then insisted they support Obama. Yet this morning, we hear that a segment of her supporters are still not on board. They feel her candidacy is more important than her issues or the election.

How come? What does this mean?

It's simple, really.

They turned Hillary into a symbol. She represents the lack of political power for women in America. At the point they turned her into this symbol, Hillary ceased to be a real person for them.

This issue is very real. Women still don't make a fair wage compared to men. Discrimination runs rampant in the workplace for all manner of minorities, including women. It is stunning that in the 21st century, a woman still cannot win the nomination. It is surprising how the party's rules conspired to stop her, rules that must change.

But because the real issue is the lack of political power for women in America, there is no way that these supporters will ever unify with the party.

Hillary the symbol transcends Hillary the person.

And symbols are always far more important to human psychology and motivation than reality. Don't think so? Then go have a look at the cross that sits atop the average church in America. Those buildings still have altars on which a bloodless sacrifice takes place every Sunday. And that symbolic practice is ancient, going back to the myth of Exodus, in which Moses charges his brother, Aaron, with making appeasement sacrifices of animals to the Lord.

Based on political science studies conducted in the 1990s, we have a good idea about what these supporters of Hillary the symbol will do in November. People vote based on issue saliency, the value of certain issues to them. Most people have one make-or-break issue. If they don't find a candidate who exactly embraces their point of view on this issue, they don't vote. It's not that they don't vote for that particular office. It's not that they will vote for another candidate, like McCain. It's that they don't vote at all. Period.

Historically based on the science, for the Obama campaign to chase after these symbolic Hillary supporters is a waste of time and money. They are better off plumbing for votes among the ranks of dissatisfied unaffiliated voters.

If the pattern holds true, these Hillary supporters are gone from the election after tonight. A few may write her name into the ballot in November. But the vast majority will simply not vote.

They are gone, gone, gone.

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A Video That Made Me Cry and Wonder

2008-07-30T18:52:00.002-06:00

This video made me cry and wonder.

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A Video that Made Me Smile

2008-07-30T14:34:00.001-06:00

This video made me smile. Enjoy.

---

Mike Coffman's Binge-and-Purge Politics

2008-07-28T09:33:00.007-06:00

I am concerned about Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman's candidacy for Congress from the 6th District.

We must remember that, as part of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, he is partly responsible for Iraq’s political mess. His system created overwhelming victories for the Shiites and the rise of Iran’s influence in Iraqi politics. This resulted in no representation for and, in some cases, deadly persecution of Sunnis.

This sounds similar to what he's recently done here in Colorado.

Investigative journalist Greg Palast (www.gregpalast.com) reports that Mr. Coffman purged 20% of voters from Colorado's rolls. Palast alleges that these were mostly minority voters. Republican Secretaries of State use this tactic to influence elections, like the fiasco in Florida in 2000.

Voting is the bedrock of American representative democracy. Without it, the US is just another petty dictatorship.

This sounds like the act of a Soviet-era apparatchik, doing all he can to prevent the reckoning that is coming to Republican government officials for malfeasance and mismanagement—for stunts just like this!

Perhaps one way to punish Mr. Coffman is for each Colorado voter to call his office and ask to confirm the validity of his or her registration. After all, what happens when 1 million+ voters call in a week?

It behooves Mr. Coffman to both explain and justify this most desperate, unpatriotic, and un-American act.

What was the American Aurora? Click this link to learn more.

Dr. Randy Pausch is Dead

2008-07-25T09:57:00.008-06:00

Dr. Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon computer science professor whose book, The Last Lecture, is still number two on the New York Times best seller "hardcover advice" list and whose You Tube lecture video was viewed over three million times, has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 47.

A story of his passing is available here. His Wikipedia biography is here. And I've embedded the video of his Last Lecture from You Tube below.

I consider this one of the ten most important videos of the You Tube era. I hope you can find some time to view it.

Randy, how you lived and died is an inspiration to millions. You are an inspiration to me. Rest well. You've earned it. See you on the other side. Godspeed!

What was the American Aurora? Click this link to learn more.

The Greatest Internet Video Ever

2008-07-23T22:53:00.006-06:00

I present to you the greatest Internet video I have ever seen. Here is the story. You will note the translation of the lyrics of the song on the right. Caution: this video packs the strongest emotional punch of anything I've ever seen. I started out smiling and then laughing. And then I cried like a baby.

Get the tissues ready.

Here is the video. And here is the website for the production company. You will be able to download the video in various versions on August 1. I want to meet these people. They are amazing.

This version is in high definition.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

This version is in standard definition.

What was the American Aurora? Click this link to learn more.

Identity Theft Prevention Guide

2008-07-23T10:07:00.004-06:00

A close friend sent this Identity Theft Prevention Guide by e-mail today. I wish it had a real attribution, because the advice is so good.

I know I'm following its guidelines beginning today.

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Identity Theft Prevention Guide

This advice was offered by an attorney to his employees.

The Basics

1. Write 'PHOTO ID REQUIRED' in the signature space on the back of the card. Never write your signature.

2. DO NOT put the complete account number on the 'For' line When writing checks to pay your credit cards. Instead, write only the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and those who handle your check through check processing channels won't have access to it.

3. Use your work phone number instead of your home phone number for checks. Use a P.O. Box address if you have one instead of your home address. If not, use your work address. Never print your Social Security number on your checks. You can always add it by hand if necessary. But if you have it printed, anyone can get it.

4. Photocopy both sides of every card or document in your wallet: your drivers license, credit cards, health insurance cards, etc. That way if your wallet is stolen, you will know exactly what you had in your wallet. You will have all of he account numbers and phone numbers as they appear on the documents to call and cancel accounts. Keep the photocopies in a safe place, and preferably in the same place.

5. Carry a photocopy of your passport and leave a one at home with the photocopies of the contents of your wallet. Do this when traveling both at home and abroad. We've all heard horror stories about fraud that's committed on us in stealing a Name, address, Social Security number, credit cards. (Comment from Bob: a woman I worked with had this happen when, sadly, she lost her passport in Central America. It created considerable problems with credit agencies which vexed her horribly nearly 10 years later.)

Critical Information to Limit the Damage

1. Keep all toll-free phone, ID, and credit card numbers where you can find them. That way, you will immediately know whom to call and what information to give them when reporting the theft.

2. Immediately file a police report in the jurisdiction in which your cards and/or documents were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent. This is also the first step in an investigation, if authorities ever conduct one.

The Most Important Step of All

1. Call and report the theft immediately to the three national credit reporting organizations and the Social Security fraud line.

Their phone numbers are:

Equifax: 800-525-6285
Experian (formerly TRW): 888-397-3742
Trans Union: 800-680-7289
Social Security Administration Fraud Line:800-269-0271

What was the American Aurora? Click this link to learn more.

Bits and Pieces

2008-07-22T14:15:00.006-06:00

Try not to get worried
Try not to turn on to
Problems that upset you
oh Don't you know
Everything's alright
Yes everything's fine
And we want you to sleep well tonight
Let the world turn without you tonight
If we try
We'll get by
So forget all about us tonight

~ from "Everything's Alright" by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice,
as sung by Mary Magdalene in "Jesus Christ Superstar."

You may recall this lyric from the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar." Mary Magdalene sings it to Jesus shortly before he is crucified, adding a bit of unsettling irony to the play.

The lyric seems oddly appropriate today. Let me fill you in.

FDIC Bank Insurance

If you have more than $100,000 in a bank, read this document and follow it to the T. Many people involved in the IndyMac Bank failure are learning that they may not be insured to the extent they thought, and all for the want of filling out one form.

This seems especially relevant after earnings news stories from Wachovia and Washington Mutual banks.

Is Martial Law Coming if the Economic System Collapses?

First, read this story from the London Telegraph from today.

Next, did you know that back in March, when Congress was debating the FISA bill, they met in a secret session?

Congress has only met in secret five times in the country's entire history. The only member of Congress and former Presidential candidate to object to the meeting was Dennis Kucinich.

Rumors are running rampant on liberal talk radio that, as part of this session, Congress discussed and, possibly, approved the President's use of martial law if the economy collapsed.

Now, let's be really, really careful about this. There is NO substantiation from any source other than talk radio, which is a notorious cesspool of disinformation.

Perhaps this weekend we should all find either a Congressperson or a major party candidate running for Congress at a public event. At that event, ask them about this article (hell, bring it) and the secret session of Congress. Ask them if this was the real reason why they voted for FISA.

Leaving the Country for Good? Then Leave Your Cash Behind!

The Heroes Act of 2008, passed by Congress on June 17, contains an interesting tidbit. If you leave the country and give up your citizenship, the government will tax ALL of your assets. They'll take every nickle, every paperclip, everything.

Hmm. An economic collapse leads to martial law. The new FISA law leads to warrantless government listening of any offshore communications. And if you choose to go offshore for good, as in leaving the country and renouncing your citizenship, they keep your dough.

When do we begin to sing the Internationale, the national anthem of the former Soviet Union?

H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007

Is the Democratic Congress getting ready to turn off the Internet? Maybe. If a "Commission" feels that this lowly little blog is inciting violence, not only is it gone, but so am I.

It's passed the House. It's now in the Senate.

Here is what I will incite: a call to your Senators to demand that this thing be put down or amended so that the exercise of Free Speech is not decimated in the same way the Fourth Amendment was by the FISA bill.

It's the Jalapeños

The FDA reports today that it looks like jalapeños are the cause of the salmonella outbreak that has sickened and killed so many people.

Don't eat any jalapeños or any foods made with them until the FDA sorts this out.

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends...

~ Karn Evil 9, by Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Peter Sinfield

What was the American Aurora? Click this link to learn more.

Video on the Electric Mini

2008-07-22T11:26:00.001-06:00

I Have Seen the Future of Automobiles

2008-07-22T11:08:00.004-06:00

I have seen the future of automobiles. It is the Electric Mini.

How about going 200 miles on a six to eight hour charge, just like the Tesla.

Right now for a guy like me, the cost is prohibitive for one of these vehicles. Apparently these have been available in Europe for a while. Popular Mechanics tested one on the streets of New York in 2007 and wrote it would cost about $50,000 to import one, or about $20,000 more than a gas-powered Mini.

But I think, as with all things, the price will come down, especially when Mini begins to see competition.

And what would it cost to drive 200 miles? 3 to 5 bucks a charge? What does it cost you now to drive 200 miles? For me, that's 10 gallons, about a gallon a day, at $4 each. I'd save about $35 a fill up. Over a year, I'd save about $1277. And that doesn't include money saved on oil changes and normal engine wear-and-tear. If the price of gas went up to $6 or more per gallon, the savings grows tremendously.

And, I'm not pumping carbon monoxide into the air.

To dwell on the negative for a second, anybody with money in General Motors' stock might want to think about their investment. The Volt will only get 40 miles on a charge. And the Mini will do 120 mph off the line, and go from 0 to 60 in four seconds! Fast!

A video of the vehicle follows in the next article. Enjoy

What was the American Aurora? Click this link to learn more.

Something Funny for Monday: The Root of All Evil - YouTube v. Porn

2008-07-21T16:11:00.002-06:00

One of my favorite shows returns this Wednesday on Comedy Central. It's Lewis Black's "The Root of All Evil.

The show pits two comedians against each other to plead his or her case to Judge Black to determine which of two things is the root of all evil.

The following video is from the program titled "The Root of All Evil: YouTube v. Porn." It's hilarious.

Enjoy!

What was the American Aurora? Click this link to learn more.

Happy 90th Birthday Nelson Mandela

2008-07-17T23:04:00.003-06:00

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. ~ Nelson Mandela

Happy Birthday to one of the great people of the 20th and 21st centuries, and perhaps of all time. May his light continue to guide us.

Happy 90th Birthday, Nelson! And many more!

What was the American Aurora? Click this link to learn more.