DeRosaWorld

Saturday Musings: 'What's A President To Do' Edition

The story of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan (D-Kenya) is a horrific one. What would lead a man to such an outburst?

Well, he lives in a nation where guns are worn to Presidential events. He lives in a nation of serial-killer TV junkies. He lives in a nation where the TV news spews hatred of politicians that work for the common good. He lives in a nation where the TV news covers shooting by someone like him, but not by acts of violence against doctors and patients at abortion clinics.

Maj. Hasan has been delving into the minds of the modern American soldiers… what do you think he found there?

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The stupidity of the modern Republican is astounding. The latest Tea-Party against healthcare parades the crazies out in front of the nation and is proudly covered by the national media. I trust the American people, despite the assault on their reason over the last 30 years.

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2010 is going to be an election year in which the media takes the gloves off and tries to put the blindfolds on the America people. Does America really want to be run by the Michele Bachmanns of this country? Do we really want leaders who will do anything to let the financial giants raid the U.S. Treasury over and over again? I don’t think so.

And President Obama needs to look around the Oval Office and re-think some of his financial advisors. Voters may not switch Parties because of a Afghanistan, we are grown numb to our small foreign wars,  but they sure as hell will based on being unemployed and seeing a gang in the White House who really don’t seem to care.

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The United States needs to pull out of Afghanistan and fight the war on terror, or whatever we need to call it, Homeland Security or world peace… on a much different battlefield.

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The black ash of the Bush, Jr./Cheney administration is still reigning down on our heads with the U.S. unemployment rate hitting double digits. The solution is in the voting booth folks. Liberal politicians will solve our problems. Conservative and moderate politicians will not.

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A note to President Obama and the Democratic Party Leadership: If all your momentum is in the health care bill to carry you into the 2010 elections… you better have Plan B or Mariano Rivera ready to go.

Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls, It Tolls For Lou

So someone took a shot a Lou Dobbs. I'm surprised that more celebrity conservative pundits have not been shot at... or at least attacked with pitch forks. The American left is so passive-aggressive.

How many Americans own guns? How many of them are liberals?

"I now - it's become part of a way of life - the anger, the hate, the vitriol, but it's taken a different tone where they've threatened my wife," Dobbs said on the radio show earlier this week.

"They've now fired a shot at my house while my wife was standing next to the car. It's become something else."

Yes Lou, actions have consequences.

You are lucky they didn't just beat the shit out of you and make your wife watch.

More like this please.

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.

Saturday Musings: 'Coast To Coast' Edition

Taking a quick coast-to-coast tour of issues between Philadelphia and  Los Angeles...

First up, MLB, the National League Playoffs... Dodgers and Joe Torre vs. Phillies…

The series is tied at one game apiece…what to do, what to do… Go Phillies!

Cliff Lee takes the mound for The Phillies Sunday.

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Some other comparisons between the two cities;  we can see that both public school systems are still screwed up by people mostly at the city and state level who have no idea, no interest and no investment in the future of the public school system. There will be hell to pay.

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Back east, it looks like Senator Arlen Specter (D?-PA) is going to get his ass kicked in his re-election bid. That magic-bullet theory coming back to haunt him?

My California Congresswoman, Jane Harman, a died-in-the-wool Blue Dog is painting herself pink down to her underwear by supporting a public-option in any health care reform bill.

And I quote:

"Far from being an option of last resort or a government-funded takeover of the country's health care system, we see the public option as a critical market mechanism that will drive down costs, foster competition and expand Americans' insurance choices.

This is not just smart health care policy, it is smart economic policy."

A man works from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done.

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In Philadelphia this past week, Dawn Smith’s mini van arrived at CIGNA’s headquarters and she was joined in the lobby by a group of nurses to ask the CEO why the insurance company had rejected her daughter’s brain tumor treatment needs. It wasn’t pretty and some CIGNA folks were seen looking down at them in the lobby and giving her the finger.  Now that is bad karma.

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Meanwhile, in the rest of the country… Is the Health Care Debate over now that Olympia Snowe is Sicko Czar?

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How’s that surge idea in Afghanistan coming?

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Is it just me or are there too many vampires in our pop culture right now.

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Did I see it right? Were there actually friends of Lou Dobbs Banksters arrested this week… it is hard to get the real story from CNNMoney, or FOX News. I heard they were going to put them in front of a firing squad for treason against Capitalism.

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So the big question going into the next round of health care reform seems to revolve around the bulge in Senator Harry Reid’s pants… who exactly is on his Underoos? Captain America or Wonder Woman?

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"Flow backward to your sources, sacred rivers,
And let the world's great order be reversed.
It is the thoughts of men that are deceitful,
Their pledges that are loose."
- Euripides, Medea

At What Point Do You Just Stop?

 

KPFK in Los Angeles has been in the midst of a Beg-A-Thon fundraiser for weeks. Look folks, I love you all, and support you, but maybe people can't afford to give this year.

I can't listen to the pleading anymore. It becomes pointless after a while. Maybe...obviously... no one is listening and that is what you should be concentrating on.

Sorry.

Monty Python's Flying Circus' First Episode Aired 40 Years Ago Today

Monty Python's Flying Circus turns 40 years old today.

Saturday Musings: 'What If They Gave A Summit And Everyone Came' Edition

This is not a snarky or facetious question… Why was it better that banks that we were told were too big to fail receive billions of tax payer dollars… no questions asked… so they could put money bank into the lending pool… as opposed to them failing.

They failed in opening up lines of credit with the money.

Where is the corporate media and birther, teabag outrage at TARP?

Can some one convince me that Bush, JR. didn’t simply loot the U.S. Treasury at the end of his term?

And convince me that President Obama didn’t know any better and his advisers were bankers, so instead of being FDR… he may end up being Herbert Hoover?

I would like to hear the President (Obama or Bush, Jr.) explain TARP to me again…where the bailout money came from and where it went and why.

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Our news cycle if quick and this morning’s news is yesterday’s news… but I would like to go back a few weeks to President Obama’s State of the Union speech… yeah the one where a Republican Congressman shouted ‘you lie!’

Obama took a swipe at the left wing blogs… not sure why… maybe he thought it would prevent Republican Congressmen from interrupting his speech… but I have this to say… and it is a bold statement… can anyone, including President Obama imagine him winning the election without the progressive blogosphere?

What would the Democratic message have been…after being filtered through the corporate, Republican media?

If it weren’t for the progressive blogosphere…maybe doing noting more that yelling ‘you lie’ to the media, then we probably would be living under a McCain/Palin Administration.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

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TV’s new season sucks. Teenage vampires and fuck-buddies with no parental supervision, retard-reality shows plus some wise-ass sitcoms where all characters snark with the same voice. (Sons of Anarchy excluded).

Whatever happened to shows written with the wit of The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

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Hey, finally Gordon Brown was allowed to speak at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh. You know Brown being all working class, miners dust and Pittsburgh being all…all former steel and working class and stuff. Workers of the World, Unite! If you dare.

Saturday Musings: 'Having A Cuppa' Edition

It would be nice if all the progressive blogs, especially the A-list ones, simply didn’t report on what FOX News and Glen Beck said that day.

That way only the people who watched FOX News would know. We can start by picking one day a week for not telling everyone what FOX News said. Then try expanding that to one week of not relaying FOX News headlines, them maybe FOX News will wither on the vine or go to just being what the Republican Party actually is, a side-lined, fringe group.

I’ve been trying it on this blog and my traffic has increased. I thought it would go down if I wasn’t always on the Republicans and their Media, but there are other ways of presenting liberal views while not raising the opposition to a position of authority by making them the only alternative voice.

For example, instead of reporting what Chris Wallace thinks, here are some statistics from President Franklin Roosevelt’s’ Works Progress Administration or WPA: The breadth of WPA public works and social programs was enormous: It built 65 0,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, 125,000 civilian and military buildings, 800 airports (built or improved), and 7 00 miles of airport runways. It also served almost 900 million hot lunches to school children, and operated 1,500 nursery schools. It presented 225,000 concerts to audiences totaling 150 million people, performed plays and circuses before another 30 million, and created 475, 000 works of art.

That’s something people can sink their teeth into. Their Government doing good things for them when Democrats are in control. Arguments against ring hollow.

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And I wouldn’t mind hearing a speech from Secretary of State Clinton now and again, maybe interrupt the news cycle or games shows and show Americans their State Department in action. She made a good one at the UN General Assembly last week.

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I do hope President Obama hasn’t completely missed his ‘New Deal’ moment. They don’t come along very often.

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Well, the summer is over. That was quick.  Rush hour traffic is back to full capacity. It’s getting dark earlier and earlier. I needed a hoodie the other night when I went out.

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Music: I somehow fell into a time warp and am exploring the early Abbey Road Studios. The Pretty Things and Pink Floyd are getting a work out.

Books:
In the Bathroom: Nothing To Fear (FDR’s Inner Circle And The Hundred Days That Created Modern America) by Adam Cohen.

On the Night Stand: The Turnaround by George Pelecanos and The Peppered Moth by Margaret Drabble.

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And right now I am enjoying a strong cup of Scottish Breakfast Tea from Taylors of Harrogate… with a splash of milk.

Some Thoughts On The President's Speech To The Joint Session of Congress

First of all, you only have Progressive friends. That is how you won the election.

Second, Republicans hate you and will never support you. If you can't get a public option out of your electoral mandate, Jeb Bush is going to kick your ass in 2012.

Third, after Congressman Wilson (R-SC) interrupted your speech and called you a liar, that was the time to roll up your prepared text, go off book and declare yourself dedicated to a single-payer, nationalized health care plan and thanks to the obvious insidiousness of the insurance companies and the Republican Party, you and your Democratic Majority were going to shove national health care down their throats.

Change you can believe in.

Saturday Musings: 'Becoming Part Of The Din' Edition

“Shit... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500.”  -Captain Benjamin L. Willard - Apocalypse Now.

William Calley apologized for the Mai Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. He was convicted of 22 counts of murder. Forgiveness is a hard place to get to sometimes, but by going there, maybe we can also forgive ourselves... See, I did learn something in Catholic School.

None of Calley’s’ superiors went to prison.

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Don Hewitt died. The man who tried to make TV news better. 60 Minutes was better than most news shows, but it was on once a week  for an hour. Now look at us. 24/7 TV news and what have we created?

Did it bring us together? Hell, no (see Town Hall Meetings)

Did it make us smarter? Hell, no. (See President Bush, Jr. and Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin)

So what has TV News done for us? It made us hate ourselves and each other more.

I worked with Don Hewitt on a short-lived project back in 1993. I was transitioning from being the earnest, starving artist living in New York City with roommates, to being an independent adult earning a living in the Advertising world, with my own apartment.

He was a very interesting and smart person to watch and listen to. For only about a week, it was me, my boss, a video editor and Don Hewitt in a small cutting room together editing a sales pitch for this new cable network that never got off the ground. Don Hewitt knew exactly what visuals should and should not be included in the video that he was going to introduce and that was going to be distributed to the media:

Every picture tells a story. Two pictures make the argument, three pictures and you are done. You either catch them or they turn the channel.

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The Health Care Tennis Match is still going on. The Democrats are serving.

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So,, what about former Pennsylvania Governor and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge accusing the Bush, Jr. Administration of … what exactly….? Gross mismanagement of the war on terror?  Manipulating the news? Manipulating the Nation? Treason?  The story is not getting much traction. We’ll see if it plays past this weekend.

Of course no one has stuck a microphone in Jr.’s or Cheney’s face and dared ask them about it. 

Ridge did resign over the incident, but is only talking about it now.

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If most Americans don’t care about the fighting in Afghanistan, why would  we care about a Presidential election? Presidential elections are so over-rated.

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The violence in Iraq is still being reported and ignored by just about everyone here in the States. It’s just part of the din.

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Books: Summer reading should be wrapping up, back to some non-fiction. Some history (a new Kennedy book) and Iraqi war memoirs are waiting.

Music: There is a malaise in America. I can't find the energy to get out of the 1970s, man.