DeRosaWorld

Happy Halloween

Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven performed by Vincent Price.

The Health Care Bills: Who Pays & The Nitty Gritty

We have a House Bill and a Senate Bill and where-oh-where will they meet?

Do we tax the rich? Do we tax the working man? Do we tax unions?

What do we do about generic drugs? What about abortions and heavy smokers?

Are you ready to rumble?

The left ain't all too happy. The right is mad as hell. The middle have their pet peeves and their pet projects.

Time for our Congress and Senate to show their stripes.

Not Exactly Something To Celebrate, But We Do Need To Understand: The Wall Street Crash of 1929 Turns 80 Years Old

 

Black Thursday, Black Friday, then Black Monday, and Black Tuesday

Modern America is too complex a society to even attempt un-regulated political and business practices.

Our economic, social, financial, education and health care system are all interdependent.

Regulate, watch, legislate and penalize those that break the law.

We are all in this together or it should be considered treason.

"The banking lobby is as powerful and deeply entrenched as ever, but it was powerful in the 1930s, too. Nonetheless, the New Dealers learned the Great Lesson: Powerful insiders cannot be permitted to write the rules, and prosperity and security depend on a playing field that supports a vibrant middle class. Today, we face a similar set of questions as we faced then. Will the institutions that created the crisis continue calling the shots and writing the rules, or will Washington take the side of families? Have we learned the Great Lesson?" -  Elizabeth Warren

A History Lesson For President Obama

Parallels to Vietnam are obvious, but the enemy is different, the times are different and the President is different.

I can't begin to get into the mind of Lyndon Johnson, but John Kennedy's political journey is much easier to read. It was a clear and logical progression away from war.

He learned he had nothing to prove and no one to prove it to... and he ended up in the shooting gallery of Dallas, Texas because of it.

But the endless war for peace is a lie. There never is to be a peace.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the French Government faced the War of Algerian Independence. A colonial war, but with something different, something new... the Islamic Revolution was in the mix.

President Obama and his team should take a look at A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne. A history of France's Algerian War. Supposedly a bestseller in the U.S. military during the disastrous Bush, Jr./Cheney years as the military searched for an understanding of what they were facing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Each war is unique in its time, its landscape, its leaders and its soldiers. But each war teaches the next set of warriors lessons. Afghanistan is a war zone that has had many lessons to teach over the centuries, but those lessons are eventually forgotten or ignored by succeeding generations.

President Obama stands at a crossroads in history, a crossroads in this war and a crossroads in his Presidency. He faces a dust storm. He can take cover or he can enter the blinding sand.

It is hard to offer this President the advice that he should heed the lessons of President Kennedy. President Kennedy ended up dead for his decisions. Leaving Afghanistan will blow a dust storm of hate and fear around President Obama... but it is time for a new profile in courage.

We voted for a change.

President Obama should turn away from Afghanistan and take refuge from the storm.

Anyone For Tea?

 

This is how you do it, my fellow Americans. Make the bad guys feel like bad guys.

"The American Bankers Association has helped loosen the rules that protect us, allowing the unfettered greed that has brought us to the brink of a recession. And for those bankers who are members and support the ABA's war against the working and middle class, shame on you!"

Because this protest is real, it scares the shit out of the Bankers.

Sunday Morning Music: Malcom McLaren - Madame Butterfly

Malcom McLaren exploding with experimentation in the 1980s. Here is his Madame Butterfly.

Ann Coulter Wants To Be A Conspiracy Theorist Now?

“…every Presidential assassination or attempted Presidential assassination was committed by some sort of left wing loon, communist, anarchist, communitarians—yes they were—or they had no politics at all...

...Lee Harvey Oswald tried to move to the Soviet Union. He was on his way to Cuba. He was a communist. You have one after another of all these guys. So it isn’t…it isn’t because Obama is liberal…if something happens to him it’s going to be MoveOn.org."

So we have a famous and revered right-wing pundit, Ann Coulter bringing up the Kennedy Assassination on national television… okay bitch… game on.

First of all, Lee Harvey Oswald did move to the Soviet Union. He renounced his American citizenship and moved to Russia. He lived, worked and fell in love and got married… then very easily moved back to America with his Russian wife. Now how did that happen? You brought it up!

So can the full force of your connections and FOX News help us regular Americans understand how a U.S. marine could defect to the Soviet Union in the 1950s and then move back to the United States with his Russian wife no questions asked? Did the CIA or FBI know he was back? He gave up his passport! When he came back to the States, he ate, slept and dreamt CIA up to 1963.

As for getting into Cuba, someone going by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald went to the Mexican Embassy not long before the JFK assassination asking for a visa to Cuba, but the embassy had cameras and the photos of that person coming and going was not Lee Harvey Oswald… you brought this up, bitch!

Lee Harvey Oswald could speak Russian well enough to move to Moscow and work in the 1950s. Where did he learn Russian? In the military? While working at Atsugi airbase with Gary Powers and the U-2 flights?
 
If you want to bring this shit up on the national news, lady, then be ready to bring it on. You want crazy, I’ll shove crazy so far down your throat on the JFK assassination you will be shitting tin foil.

Now, do you want to continue and discuss James Earl Ray’s politics? Or Sirhan Sirhan and the RFK autopsy? Does dining with the Bushes give your family liberal street cred? What exactly was liberal about John Wilkes Booth? 

Are you ready to rumble on national television about Presidental assassins and would-be assassins? I'd love it.

Saturday Musings: 'What The Fuck Is John McCain Doing On TV, Again?' Edition

It took less than a month for the U.S. military to strike Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The troops were amazing, even trapping Osama Bin Laden, but the Commanders-in-Chief, Cheney and Bush, Jr. were very bad warriors.

Iraq became their focus, and oil. Afghanistan didn’t really matter, they said over and over on FOX News and the pundits rallied to that cause, even shouting down Senator John Kerry as he tried to focus attention back onto that war in 2004.

But the Republicans and their Press would hear none of it. They mocked anyone who questioned them.

Now we have the neo-coward bastards all steaming about how the Obama Administration does not know how to conduct the war in Afghanistan.

They should all shut up or be sent to the front, like the German Army threat of the Russian Front during World War Two for those who disagreed with their current military policy... after all... Obama is the new Hitler, right?

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Health Care Reform. I am sick and tired of this nonsense. I do not care what the Insurance industry wants any more. Having the majority in both Houses means we should have went for the single-payer option and be disappointed with a robust public option (their words not mine) instead of going for a public option and being disappointed with the Insurance industry maybe not raising our premiums, but accepting no oversight.

I know the fight ain’t over, Obama is playing long-ball and all that shit, but the Republicans don’t even have a bloody nose, yet. Maybe that is coming in 2010 and then a knockout blow in 2012, but I’d like to see intelligent, humane public policy again. We haven’t had it since 1980.

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The Media in America... it should not be a war against FOX News alone. Pundits and news readers should be afraid to let their children go to school.  They should be intimidated when out to restaurants or at the movies. They should be branded TRAITORS and their heads should be shaved.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tools for thee.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Hamlet Act 3, scene 2

When it comes to covering the Democratic Party, and Hillary Clinton especially, the BBC on line NEWS site seems to run their stories by FOX News before posting.

That was how it was during the 2008 Presidential campaign and now most stories about President Obama have a conservative rightward, superior mocking tone...

...and now Secretary of State Clinton gets the full monty from the Loyalists across the pond. It is all dressed up like high-tea, but it is a sour mash.

Did they really like being slapped around by Bush, Jr. better?

Robert Capa - October 22, 1913

On May 25, 1954, the career of Robert Capa, whose exploits as a war photographer had made him a legend in modern photography, came to an abrupt end when he stepped on a land mine on an obscure battlefield in Indochina.