DeRosaWorld

Obama-Wan Kenobi, You're Our Only Hope. Homeland Security Is Coming Home

"The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement."

What have we done to ourselves and to the world?

Sunday Morning Music: Willie Nelson - She Is Gone

Willie Nelson performs She Is Gone from his Spirit album. This version includes the instrumental intro Matador.

Saturday Musings: Holiday Shopping In The 21st Century Edition

Mumbai joins the coalition of the fucked along with New York City, Madrid and London as terrorism stomps its nightmarish footprint on the daily routine of 21st century cities.

Now comes the 24/7 cable news coverage of ‘who?’ and ‘why?' The answer will most likely be in the name of god.

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In strange world of modern American holiday seasonal festivities, a man was trampled to death at a Wal-Mart during Black Friday, the start of ‘shopping season’.  Even with folks losing their homes, credit cards and local banks, participation in the front door orgies at shopping centers still seems important to people.

What were they trying to buy this year?

My advice for the 21st century is shop on-line. Fuck the malls. Remake the suburban landscape. Knock down the malls and build giant parks. It will save gas and traffic congestion and now, lives too.

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Watched The Godfather and The Godfather Part II this weekend, on some commercial cable station and there were not only commercial breaks but the film was ‘sped-up’ in some strange way when the characters were not talking. Kay would be listening to Michael and her face would blur and then she would deliver her line. The cable station was too impatient with the pace of the movie I guess.

Four Christmases was the number one movie at the box office this weekend.

Are there still film schools? Is it still a popular major in college? If so, what are they teaching nowadays? And if it is the old classic movies and directors, where do students apply it in the industry?

I guess cinema is a thing of the past, a 20th century past-time that is not healthy and surviving into the 21st century...like shopping malls and the Republican Party.

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And on that same thought, music, popular music is wheezing its last breath. The industry doesn’t know which way is up and is drowning in a swamp of one-shit wonders.

Diversity is the key to mass appeal. It is completely wrong to try and make it all sound as one. I can’t tell the difference between Justin Timberlake, Beyonce’, Ludacris or the latest Disney Movie soundtrack…and that makes the record executives very happy. Now that is ludicrous.

In my snobbishness, I have been listening to Willie Nelson’s Spirit album. I guess if a commercial radio stations played this album, they would speed up the instrumentals to get to the singing.

Put this record on and sit back, give yourself an hour to relax and get into the groove. It will be good for your stress levels.

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DeRosaWorld Family Member SPOILER warning:

I’m putting my on-line shopping list together for my family.

We have the K.C. Constantine mysteries: Grievance (Rugs) and Brushback (Mario) this year for my brother.  I'm not doing these novels justice by labeling them mysteries.

One of my sisters requested Robert Wagner’s Autobiography Pieces of My Heart. Yeah, why not.

Another sister dreams of traveling to Paris so she is getting On Paris by Ernest Hemingway and Paris by Julian Green, two collections of essays by two very different writers who were in Paris at the same time.

One of my nephews recently graduated from Temple University with a degree in History so he is getting From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford History of the United States) by George C. Herring. The most expensive book on the list, but I'm his Godfather....seriously.

My niece loves a spooky mystery so she is getting Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House.

And my Republican brother-in-law is always difficult. It was almost Pat Conroy's My Losing Season, but I figured I'd be magnanimous and this year it is Richard Reeves’ President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination.

The youngest boy in the family is getting The Boxer and the Spy by Robert B. Parker.

My sister-in-law asked for 'Irish Music". I don't know what that means exactly, she didn't specify, so she is getting Black 47's Fire Of Freedom. I hope she isn't expecting Three Irish Tenors.

Frances Perkins Where AreYou?

As President-elect Obama assembles his economic team to begin toiling through the wreckage of the Bush, Jr. years. I am anxiously awaiting his choice for Secretary of Labor.

This will be a telling appointment. We have had a shareholders vs. workers class war being waged in Washington since Ronald Reagan became President. Sometimes it seemed that the working class was their own worst enemy.

However, the working class woke up and spoke up during this last election and supported both Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primariesand Barack Obama for President. They voted for a change they can believe in.

The working class practically made the Republican Party a thing of the past in the northeast and 'labor belt'.

I hope for a Department of Labor that appreciates this.

Happy Thanksgiving Day

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving Day.

 

Why Leave The Pentagon In The Hands Of Republicans? Ask Veterans What They Think

 

I don't think the Pentagon needs any bipartisanship. I think the Pentagon needs a bureaucracy of Democratic, progressive leadership.

Bipartisanship seems to be the Obama mantra, but does it have to be everywhere?

Was the 2008 election not about throwing the bums out?

The Republican track record on Vets is atrocious. That's what you get when the President was a deserter and the Vice President had 'better things to do than go to Vietnam'.

 "In a little-noticed regulation change in March, the military's definition of combat-related disabilities was narrowed, costing some injured veterans thousands of dollars in lost benefits -- and triggering outrage from veterans' advocacy groups.

The Pentagon said the change was consistent with Congress' intent when it passed a "wounded warrior" law in January. Narrowing the combat-related definition was necessary to preserve the "special distinction for those who incur disabilities while participating in the risk of combat, in contrast with those injured otherwise," William J. Carr, deputy undersecretary of Defense, wrote in a letter to the 1.3-million-member Disabled American Veterans.

The group, which has called the policy revision a "shocking level of disrespect for those who stood in harm's way," is lobbying to have the change rescinded.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the Pentagon's "more conservative definition" limited benefits for some veterans. "That was not our intent," Levin said in a statement.

He added: "When the disability is the same, the impact on the service member should be the same no matter whether the disability was incurred while training for combat at Ft. Hood or participating in actual combat in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Pentagon officials argue that benefits should be greater for veterans wounded in combat than for "members with disabilities incurred in other situations (e.g., simulation of war, instrumentality of war, or participation in hazardous duties, not related to combat)," Carr wrote...."

Wes Clark? John Kerry? Max Cleland? John Murtha? Pat J. Murphy? There is a wide spectrum of Democrats that could help out at the Pentagon.

If It Weren't For Liberal Blogs, There Would Be No 'News' At All

And by 'News' I guess I mean reporting.

John Brennan may not like both sides of a story to come out about his track record with the CIA and torture, but that's what journalists are supposed to do.

The Networks and most cable news are still circling their wagons after the election of Barack Obama as President and the Democratic majority in the Senate and the House.

A good example of what 'fair & balanced' will mean to the Democratic Administration and more importantly to the people of the United States, is the Citigroup bailout television coverage. (via Media Matters, god bless them.)

The News Media is such a corporate propaganda tool that they don't see a problem with showing Americans a Saudi prince instead of an American economists to explain why American tax payers need to pay-up and shut-up for Citigroup.

Imagine this country without liberal blogs.

Hmm...

"Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has agreed to stay on at the Pentagon well into next year, providing some continuity as the nation fights two wars and putting a Republican face on President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the transition team's deliberations.

The announcement that President Bush's Pentagon chief will keep his job is slated for next week when Obama plans to roll out his national security team -- which is also expected to include Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, the officials said."

Okay Obamamaniacs, let's here it. Let the justifications begin...I hope you are right.

Change you can believe in.

Change I Can't Quite Believe In, Yet. An 'Old Deal' For America?

 

Instant punditry is as annoying to me as I'm sure it is to everyone else who has had cable television since 1992. But President-elect Obama's economic team, unveiled yesterday to media fanfare makes me a little uneasy.

Lawrence Summers is just wrong. The wrong man at the wrong time.

Timothy Geithner is just wrong. The wrong ideas at the wrong time.

Keeping the Bush, Jr. Tax Cuts is just wrong. Progressive tax reform is a change I can believe in...and I voted for.

I know it is not exactly the 1930s anymore. But it is also not exactly the 1990s anymore, either.

January 20, 2009 seems a long way off when I see Jr. standing on the steps of the New York Stock Exchange.

"President Bush came to the Big Apple yesterday to buck up Wall Street, applaud the city and give a rousing defense of the free-market system.

"There are may reasons for confidence, and one of the greatest is the spirit of New York City," the commander-in-chief said."

Commander-in-Chief? Is that really appropriate when he is overseeing the taxpayer funded bailout of our nation's financial system?

Anyway...rebuilding the nation's infrastructure requires deeper thought than adding public transportation out to future suburban shopping malls, linked together by fast food restaurant pit stops.

That only makes real estate moguls rich. And puts us further in debt if the money does not come from new taxes.

Just some things I'm thinking about as I reach for the TUMS as the former, not quite one-term Senator from Illinois moves more to the center as he prepares to move into the White House.

All Politics Is Local: Lifting The Rock On Republican Party Grassroots

 

From Calitics:

"Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has a long article on the failure of Proposition A, a $52 parcel tax for all of San Diego County that would have funded a regional fire authority and help provide badly needed additional resources at local fire departments.Interestingly, it was the most fire-prone areas of San Diego County - towns like Ramona, which nearly burned down in the 2003 fire - that turned in the strongest No votes. Why would they vote against protecting their own property?

"I think the people don't believe the government," said Peter Jorgenson, a Ramona resident who voted for the tax. "They don't believe that they're actually going to do anything with the money."...

It did not win the support of Mary Eaker, 59, a clerk at a Circle K in Ramona.

"With the economy so bad, everybody's voting against anything with taxes," Eaker said. "Nobody wants more taxes. Forget it."

The article describes many other possible reasons for Prop A's failure, including poor leadership from San Diego County Supervisors, but the distrust of government does seem to be at the core of the problem.

Of course, this isn't just some random development. Conservatives have had as a primary focus creating and capitalizing on distrust of government. Conservative politicians, activists, and editorial pages like those at the U-T (which did endorse Prop A) have frequently accused government of being wasteful and reckless with tax money as a way to ensure voters never do support a tax increase.They cried wolf so often that when the wolf finally appeared in the form of a catastrophic firestorm, the good people of San Diego County did what they had been trained to do - be skeptical of government and vote against a tax for services they desperately need.

It dates back to 1978:..."

The Republican Party decided, very successfully for them, to burrow beneath the rocks and develop their grassroots with the worms.

Their grassroots politics did not grow to enrich the nation. They brought the nation down into the mud with them.