DeRosaWorld

Speaking Of The Working Class...

Nick Hanauer's Ted Talk that was originally banned: 

Where's My 25¢ A Gallon Gas? 10 Years Since The Bush, Jr. Invasion of Iraq

President Obama is spending the 10 anniversary of the Bush, Jr./Cheney invasion of Iraq visiting Israel. I don’t blame him for wanting to be out of the country. At least he is not in Oslo, Norway reminiscing about his Nobel Peace Prize.

If we think back and try to write an accurate history of the war, we will be lost in a quagmire similar to trying to explain the Vietnam War to ourselves. For the most part, Americans don’t want to hear it. And for those that do, it is very difficult to research the truth, because American foreign policy has very rarely been about the truth.

So, as your typical spoiled American, I ask:  Where is my 25¢ a gallon gas?  If that was a benefit I could see and feel in my wallet, then maybe I would be okay. But instead, I don’t pay 25¢ a gallon. I don’t pay $1 or $2 or $3 or $4 a gallon.

And all I am sure about is that somewhere between the collapse of the World Trade Centers in 2001 and now, I have lost most of the Bill of Rights under the Constitution.  The Federal Government can do whatever it wants, to whomever it wants, whenever it wants and doesn’t have to tell justify it or even tell anyone about it… and this includes killing Americans.

So what do I have ten years after the start of the Iraq War? Not much and a lot less of it.

Post-2012 Election Musings: Entrepreneurial Implosions

Post Election internet surfing has been so much fun. 

Watching the realization that they have drunk their own poison at FOX News and in the Conservative Pundit world on Election Night is worth hitting the ‘Replay’ at least a dozen times.

What makes it so delicious is watching the poor conservative foot soldiers stunned that the heavens above America have not opened and  God himself has not stolen the election for the 65 year old, rich, Mormon Mitt Romney and police sketch of a date rapist, Little Pauly Ryan.

The Republican Party and their Entrepreneurial Master Class have just spent four years hating women, poor folk, unions, seniors, veterans, scientists, doctors, nurses, teachers, anyone with Latino blood in them no matter what country they are from…including this one, African-Americans, college students, smart people… and did I mention WOMEN.

So if they are wondering why, how, when and where did they lose this election… look in the mirror. Turn on the TV. Read The Drudge Report… then kill yourselves; one massive serial kill.

Some clear simple sentences:

-President Clinton left the country with a surplus.

-President Bush, Jr. left the country bankrupt.

-President Obama has been trying to clean the Republican Entrepreneurs mess up.

-The Republicans in Congress have been trying to stop President Obama from cleaning the mess up.

-Mitt Romney lied his ass off all summer sucking up to Republican voters and spewing hate.

-Then Mitt Romney lied his ass off to the American Electorate in general and stopped spewing hate.

-FOX News helped Mitt Romney lie and spewed hate for him.

-FOX News viewers voted for Mitt Romney.

-Everyone else voted for President Obama.

And if you doubt what I say and want to see for yourself not only WHY Mitt Romney and the Entrepreneurs lost... but why I say Thank God! Mitt Romney and the Entrepreneurs lost... just watch this precious video.

 

A Good Short Story and A Great Short Story: The Professor vs General Mouse

Our college literature professors teach us that a good short story has a strong descriptive narrative about one event or moment in time. There are plenty of Hemingway short stories that can prove that theory.

But occasionally a writer can break that mold and you get Dorothy Parker’s The Big Blonde which seems to capture a novel-sized life in a few pages.

I read two short stories last week that also go for the ‘Hail Mary’ pass in terms of story arch. Roberto Bolano has a story in Harper’s Magazine this month The Ruin of Amalfitano (log-in required) which manages to track the downfall of a writing professor (Amalfitano) once he has met a young writing student named Padillo, as they share a demolition derby ride through life.

The other story is General Mouse, a tour de force written my Mark Zipoli. This story sets out to cover the life of a man who we meet bemoaning the super-sized dietary habits of Americans as he works keeping a Los Angeles Farmers' Market clean of garbage and trash.

The story unravels General Mouse’s amazing personal history overlaid with remembrances of things past from our shared history of Vietnam.

Bolano’s story is the ‘good’ story here, and is as wild as we would except from the author of The Savage Detectives. The highs, lows, sex and drugs of a Bolano story are on display as the trajectory of the professor's life changes after meeting the student who changes everything. It is a richly drawn character study that captures the fallout as the men's passions collide and mix to create a toxic nectar of which both men drink.

It is the scope of the story that is impressive. The reverberations of the friendship of these two men’s lives require Bolano to write of the aftermath of the final parting of Amalfitano and Padillo on the other minor characters in the story. We too, as readers are left changed after sharing the experience of their lives, and we are left wanting to know more.

The ‘great’ story here, is General Mouse, a story different in every way possible from Bolano’s except for the impact and the scope of what it attempts to achieve, a man's life story.

Mr. Zipoli manages to create a complete biography of a very complex, secretive and important person in the short story form, and we are lacking nothing at the end. We have experienced an epic novel.

General Mouse, whose real name is Anh Dung Tran, a 70 year old worker at the Los Angeles Farmers’ Market,  empties the overflow of trash and garbage throughout the day passing judgment on the customers as he slips in and out of memories from his past; memories intertwined with the history of his home country.

...Nobody knew that he’d read history in Hanoi and studied at the Sorbonne; that he’d taken courses at Moscow University and learned Russian, English, French, and Chinese; that he read maps and had built bridges and swing traps, and dug tunnels; and launched spiked tree trunks into the air against the French and the Americans.

Nobody knew that he’d helped to make a French regiment disappear without a trace in the forests of Cao Bang province. The French colonialists, they never put their backs into it, he thought; we were just savages to those heirs of Voltaire and Danton...

All the revolutionary promises, betrayals and failures experienced by the East vs West satellite nations of the Cold War are played out in the mind, minefields and on the back of Anh Dung Tran.

The writing is truly mesmerizing as we are swept through a biographical, psychological and historical journey of General Mouse.

Tran's present and past, haunt the Farmers’ Market. This is truly a great American short Story.

Mark Zipoli is the author the novel The Long Habit of Living as well as other short stories. Please look him up, he may not be as easy to find as the ghost of Roberto Bolano, but his work is rich in texture and nuance of character. Mr. Zipoli is an author who lets you into the minds of his characters and what they share with the reader is worth volumes.

DeRosaWorld Celebrates Its 6th Blogiversary

Best Piece of Writing On The Internet This Week... And It Starts In Pennsylvania

From The Politics Blog by Charlie Pierce at Esquire.com

The Republican Party is shot through now with an impulse to disunion that is almost an autonomic reflex at this point. Every solution they can offer has behind it the iron certainty that we are better off as individuals, that the nation best operates as a simple, loose framework within which those individuals can operate, and not as something we create together so that our individual achievements can be rooted in something greater than ourselves...

Saturday Musings: Victims of The Culture Wars

“Attempting to debate with a person who has abandoned reason is like giving medicine to the dead.”
― Thomas Paine

One of Andrew Breitbart's nemeses, (and there were many) Max Blumenthal wrote once of The Powell Memo (a smoking gun of Hilary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy") ...

"...To roll back the surge of democracy that supposedly threatened corporate predominance, Powell urged the Chamber of Commerce to finance the creation of a new political and cultural infrastructure — a “counter-establishment” capable of unraveling the liberal establishment. The infrastructure would consist of pseudo-scholarly journals, “experts” promoted through speakers bureaus, campus pressure groups, publishing houses, lobbyists and partisan idea factories masquerading as think tanks. He wrote that operatives of the network would have to affect a “more aggressive attitude,” leveling relentless personal attacks against the perceived enemies of big business. By the last days of the Nixon administration, Attorney General John Mitchell was boasting that his conservative friends were going to take the country “so far to the right we won’t recognize it.”

This is of course the exact opposite of what Breitbart wailed about for the last twenty years of his life... the left-leaning conspiracy of modern media... his personal justification for pushing and bullying a right-wing agenda that he believed was being held back from the American people...

Well, the right seems to have captured the podium and where has it gotten the United States? How is our financial situation? How is our health? How is our environment? How is the education system? How is the global empire faring?

Conservatism in this country has done more damage to America that the Empire of Japan, Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union and International Terrorism combined.

Where is our manufacturing infrastructure?

Where have pensions, and unemployment compensation gone?

Where are the Savings & Loans institutions?

Why has our military spent twice as long fighting in Afghanistan than it did in World War Two?

The list goes on. What made America great in the eyes of the world and in the lives of Americans has been attacked, beaten, derided and bombed.

Who polluted the Susquehanna River?

Who stole the consumer's money from MF Global?

The answers to questions like these and what we do about them, will determine if we survive as a free nation this century. And this is precisely where the right-wing media is betraying us.

If terrorist attacks made as many people homeless in the United States as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we would have nuked Saudi Arabia by now.

Conservatives are wrong. Republicans, yes even your neighbors, friends and family members are right-wing enablers and enemies of the American way of life. Sadly, most aren't even aware of their role in the end of the American Republic. They are dupes of the media, Breibart's media, but he doesn't have to live with the consequences anymore. He left that to us.

 

Let God Sort It Out

Andrew Breitbart died on the streets of Los Angeles.

Saturday Musings: "When Was The Last TIme We Had A President With A Beer-Belly?" Edition

What is up with Andrew Breitbart? Didn’t he ever watch Berkeley In The Sixties ? He looks and sounds ridiculous; frothing at the mouth and screaming at kids who are doing exactly the right thing, expressing their right to free speech in protest against their government leaders.

Andrew, dude… I know you are trying to be cool and all, but you look old.

Matt Drudge’s bitch, indeed.  Oh, and you were trying to take down the wrong guy… still are.

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So, what is it about the Republican Party? One the one hand, they don’t want Mitt Romney telling them what to do either, but Rick Santorum? That guy is not only nuts, but really, really stupid.

To the State of Pennsylvania’s shame, they once replaced Senator Harris Wofford with Senator  Rick Santorum back in the 1990’s when the Corporate Media finally got their shit together and started to realize  their dream of destroying United States Constitution… remember Newt Gingrich? See Andrew Breibart's conversion...

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It’s too late, but it would have been interesting to see what kind of President Barack Obama would have been had he had a real progressive candidate run against him in the primaries and force him to the left. As it is, he could appoint Dick Cheney to the Supreme Court and Democrats would still have to vote for him in November.  He knows he can piss on the Unions and kick women into the gutter and he still has their support… amazing… they should give this guy the Nobel Peace Prize… oh, wait, they already did.

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It looks like now that St. Santorum has risen from the dead, Newt Gingrich may have to drop out of the race… do you think he will finally go get a real job? Maybe he can apply for that high school janitorial position he thinks is so great.

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The Oscars have nine nominees (?) for Best Pciture again this year... hehehe, yeah, I know. I haven't seen any of them either.

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When Etta James passed away this year, she left us with one last studio album: The Dreamer, with an incredible version of MIsty Blue. Treat yourself.

Saturday Musings From Around The Blogosphere - 2011 Review

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2011 (The Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves) from Vagabond Scholar

What Tina Said...

from Tina Dupuy's fabulous website:

"...The hurdle for Occupy Wall Street is that it was not birthed on cable news. Cable news doesn’t own it so it can’t show it off like they have the tea party.

But the Arab Spring revolution wasn’t televised; it was re-tweeted."

DeRosaWorld Celebrates 5 Years

Let's dance.

Saturday Musings From Around The Nation: Blogging In 50 States

Here is a list of blogs from all 50 United States of America.

I got some on this list from Daily Kos and listed some that I found on Left Blogs. Just do a Google search for Lefty Blogs and the name of a State and you will be taken to a list of local blog posts and news stories.

A great way to spend a weekend exploring our nation from your computer.

-Alabama: Left in Alabama notes that the state is in a race to the bottom in terms of getting rid of jobs.

-Alaska: Mudflats points out that the state of Alaska is supporting efforts to silence Alaskans.

-Arizona: Arizona Netroots asks where the green jobs are.

-Arkansas: Blue Arkansas questions who the AFL-CIO supporots in state senate races.

-California: Calitics isn't surprised that Republicans are attacking the Democratic-proposed redistricting maps.

-Colorado: Square State introduced progressive legislative candidate Tracy Kraft-Tharp.

-Connecticut: CT News Junkie says there is a move to decertify AFSCME in the state.

-Delaware: Delaware Liberal gives a rundown of legislative candidates for 2012.

-Florida: Beach Peanuts lists the latest horrors from Gov. Rick Scott.

-Georgia: Blog For Democracy says that the Georgia Republican Party is planning to purge white Democrats.

-Hawaii: A list of lists for Hawaii-cenrtric news.

-Idaho: 43rd State Blues notes that Sen. Jim Risch compared Barack Obama to Casey Anthony.

-Illinois: Progress Illinois says that unions are calling on Gov. Pat Quinn to keep his word.

-Indiana: Blue Indiana Network applauds John Gregg's run for governor.

-Iowa: Bleeding Heartland points to a story of environmental groups going after the Iowa Farm Bureau for harassment and intimidation.

-Kansas: The Kansas Free Press says that unions are not happy about Gov. Sam Brownback's proposed voluntary retirement incentives.

-Kentucky: Page One notes Rand Paul's flip-flopping on military spending cuts.

-Louisiana: Daily Kingfish says that taxpayers are on the hook for $81,000 to defend the House redistricting map.

-Maine: Dirigo Blue says that Republicans are up to their same old tricks in redistricting the state.

-Maryland: a list of lists of local news... this ain't no tea party.

-Massachusetts: Blue Mass Group points out that Elizabeth Warren wants to talk to the voters and that the media isn't happy about it.

-Michigan: Michigan Liberal is skeptical about using volunteers to gather petitions for recall efforts.

-Minnesota: The Minnesota Independent notes that same-sex couples are suing to overturn the state's Defense of Marriage Act.

-Mississippi: a link to a list of links including Gulf Watchers Diaries on DKOS.

-Missouri: Fired Up Missouri says that establishment Republicans are pulling away from scandal-plagued Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder.

-Montana: Left in the West links to commentary that Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) is getting himself in trouble with veterans.

-Nebraska: New Nebraska Network says that Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Jon Bruning has declared war on the poor and working class.

-Nevada: Las Vegas Gleaner wishes prominent candidates would talk about the real issues we face like lesser knwon candidates do.

-New Hampshire: Blue Hampshire shows Rep. Fank Guinta getting schooled by a constituent.

-New Jersey: Blue Jersey notes that Olympic hero Carl Lewis is running for state senate.

-New Mexico: Democracy of New Mexico sayd five AFSCME locals in the state are bucking the national to endorse a grassroots candidate.

-New York: The Albany Project says that State Sen. Greg Ball is an unlikely hero in the battle against fracking.

-North Carolina: BlueNC applauds the courts stopping the state's attack on Planned Parenthood.

-North Dakota: North Decoder calls out state Republicans for focusing on state college nicknames instead of important issues.

-Ohio: Plunderbund shoots down John Kasich's claim that unions are divided in the state.

-Oklahoma: Blue Oklahoma notes that the state's child poverty rate has gone up.

-Oregon: BlueOregon applauds Sen. Ron Wyden for his 600th town hall meeting.

-Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania Progressive isn't excited about Sen. Pat Toomey being named to the supercommittee.

-Pennsylvania: Young Philly Politics needs their own link... Philadelphia is not like the rest of the State.

-Rhode Island: RI Future mourns the passing of state progressive leader Miguel C. Luna.

-South Carolina: Another list of lists of local blogs and news.

-South Dakota: A list of lists of news and blogs including who is boinking whom.

-Tennessee: KnoxViews asks Gov. Bill Halsem where the jobs are.

-Texas: Burnt Orange Report gathers the research on Rick Perry.

-Utah: The new Sheriff ain't drinking no tea.

-Vermont: Green Mountain Daily thanks Gov. Peter Shumlin for meeting with progressives in the state.

-Virginia: VB Dems says Gov. Bob McDonnell is auditioning to be vice president.

-Washington: HorsesAss makes the case that unions are more grassroots than corporations and the wealthy.

-West Virginia: West Virginia Blue links to a poll that sayd the majority of residents oppose mountain-top removal mining.

-Wisconsin: Uppity Wisconsin says that finishing the job of taking control of the State Senate is more important than recalling Scott Walker.

-Wyoming: Bitching about Dick Cheney's memoirs missing Vietnam War chapter

Law Enforcement On Obama’s Watch Rounded Up 393,000 Illegal Immigrants Last Year And Zero Bankers...

In case you miseed Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article, Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

"...The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

Instead, federal regulators and prosecutors have let the banks and finance companies that tried to burn the world economy to the ground get off with carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the people who actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines themselves; banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder money to foot the tab of justice. "If the allegations in these settlements are true," says Jed Rakoff, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, "it's management buying its way off cheap, from the pockets of their victims..."

Saturday Musings: 'Faye Dunaway Is Restless' Edition

Faye Dunaway awoke this morning weighed down in a sudden attack of ennui. Glenn Beck was off the air, nothing to watch before seeking refuge in Turner Classic Movies with the hope of maybe seeing William Holden, young in Picnic or Sunset Boulevard. 

All the televisions have been smashed in the street. The monkey is dead and Williams Holden floats, dead in a pool of black and white... Diana Christensen roams the corridors of the mansion...

The American corporate media took a few hits this week. As an industry it has been on a death spiral rivaled only by the 9/11 hijackers. I am not sure who caused more damage, but our media’s terror attack on our nation is not over, so they still have time to catch up.

One of the elite super-pundits, a man whose stance bridges both broadcast and print, the upper echelons of American journalism… called the President of The United States a ‘dick’ on television. Now if he had a picture of the President’s dick, that would be an outstanding scoop, but alas… We are left with Greta Van Susteren to fill our large, 16x9 aspect ratio television screens and therefore our living rooms with the strange rantings of the intelligentsia.

Remember, she is the one who guided us through the endless hours of the OJ Simpson TV season season.

Politicians from both political Parties are arguing over who can take away your pensions, social security, health care, Medicare and Medicaid and public education more efficiently. It is down to a compromise of numbers and sound bites that will make one Party look tough or the other Party look somewhat compassionate… COMpassionate, not to be confused with passionate.

And there is the President, a man who refuses to use the power of his office. He keeps it in his desk drawer and refuses to bring it out… why? What could his reasoning be at this point in, not only his Administration, but in history?

If ever there was a time for a President to act audaciously and courageously for the cause of protecting the American people it is now. Hell, it was two years ago.

The Democrats have no power, even when they are in power. The Republicans and the Media set the agenda, frame and edit the argument. The Democrats can only try to defend their position and it always seems to come from a position of weakness.

There is  no passion in the Democratic Party’s message.  That is because the Democrats do no act on their passion… they may have it, but we don’t see it.

And the people, suddenly for the first time in a generation, have to take to the streets after it is too late.

In New Jersey, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan… to try to get back what Republicans… yes Republicans they voted for… have taken from them… their Americanism... their American nationality.

These are the people who have to turn their televisions off… open their windows and shout. “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  And throw the televisions out. Turn FOX News and MSNBC and CNN off. Get local. Find the websites and blogs and political groups in your neighborhood or town and visit them.  Get involved in your future, the future of your kids and grand kids and this country. Because if you don’t it is obvious that someone else will.

Help Faye Dunaway put Diana Christensen to sleep.

Three Chords And The Truth...

First-World Problems Rap

Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

BREAKING:

It seems the A-list liberal progressive blogs that wanted Dominique Strauss-Kahn's head (both of them) on a platter are having trouble dealing journalistically with the facts of the case.

The rush to judgement was awesome. So much for a Socialist French President... the bastard... but wait... could the 24/7 news machine have jumped the gun?

Now what?

Digby and Jane Hamsher are choosing to ignore the story this morning... Josh Marshall and Arianna Huffington have it 'below the fold' on their websites.

Interesting lessons in journalism developing before our eyes with the new media and social networks exploding around us and instana-pundits in our living rooms. Fact-checking is a thing of the past.

Never apologize... it's a sign of weakness.

The story is not over... there are many questions to be answered and much to be answered for.

This is much more fun that Beck's last show.

Something Other Than Lame-Assed American Politics... Technolgy Review, an all-science fiction special issue!

The stories within will be hard-science fiction tales set in the near future, loosely organized around the areas that Technology Review  covers: computing, the Web, communications, energy, materials, and biomedicine. We are currently finalizing our slate of authors, which are a mixture of celebrated and emerging authors; stay tuned for more announcements. We're still ironing out the distribution details too, but TR:SF will be on U.S. and Canadian newsstands and available for mail-order purchase internationally (we're also looking at how we might distribute the issue electronically.)

In Other Worlds: Republican Youth - "80% Of The Books I Put A Star On I Don't Read"

Why is this kid not fighting in the hills of Afghanistan protecting American Freedoms?

JFK On Twitter... No, Really...

The John F Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston has begun chronicling the former US president's 1,000 days in office on the micro-blogging website Twitter.

The account @Kennedy1961 began posting tweets on Thursday about the former president's actions and words as they unfolded 50 years ago.

I wonder how far they are going to go with this... will we get tweets from The Warren Commission after the assassination?

I would think following the Lee Harvey Oswald time-line during the Kennedy Administration would be helpful, too.

For example, that curtain rod' carrying son-of-a-bitch was in Minsk when Kennedy gave his Inaugural Address.

Our little, home grown, lone-gunman, ex-Marine was getting home sick after defecting to the Soviet Union and he began taking the steps that would bring him back into the United States.. no questions asked... and on a collision course in Dallas, Texas.

Follow a Lee Harvey Oswald timeline here:

January 4, 1961: LHO rejects Soviet citizenship, but asks that his residence permit be extended. In his diary, he confides thoughts of leaving Russia for the first time.

American Media Through The Looking Glass

"The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class.  Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S.  Indeed, I don't quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has:  as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon."

Our mainstream media has stood by and watched the ruling class wreck this nation.

They cheered when the Republican House voted to impeach President Clinton.

They turned their backs on the Presidential election of 2000 and just wanted Al Gore to go away.

They worshipped the ground post-9/11 President Bush, Jr. walked on.

They cheered on two wars.

They got down on their knees for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

They have not lifted a pen to criticize the looting of the Treasury in 2008.

But when WikiLeaks does their job for them?  They are so offended that someone would dare report on the misdeeds of their beloved government leaders and friends.

I'm ashamed of our Press and embarrassed for them.

DeRosaWorld's 2000th POST!!!

The JFK University of Michigan 'Peace Corps' Speech post is my 2000th post!

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting. It has been a challenging, and fun four years.

We live in interesting times. Keep the faith.

Saturday Musings: 'Like' Edition

There is just too much crazy in the news right now. 

America is coming apart at the seams. 

Our elections take on a freak-show circus quality anyway. We don’t know or trust the results on Election Day. Add to that our society and our dialogue is literally being infested with the insane.

People took to the social networking sites like Face Book to connect with friends and family at some other more personal and controllable level… but now that is turned on its head.

C-list celebrities vie for recognition with their 'private' sexual encounter-tapes becoming our new Top-Forty playlist… taken to the extreme where college freshmen think it is okay to secretly broadcast their roommate’s truly private sexual encounters.

Well, actions have consequences and sometimes those consequences result in uncontrollable results.

The poor kid from Rutgers who killed himself this week, the most private of moments imaginable, took the time to update his Face Bok account in a suicide note for the social network… just in case no one noticed?

I can’t watch the TV or even turn to my alternative internet news sources without learning what offensive thing Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Sarah Palin, Lindsay Lohan or Carl Paladino did today.

In the last decade, I voted for Al Gore and he won, but didn’t get to take the top prize. I voted for Gray Davis in California, he won, too, but wasn’t allowed to stay Governor… I still don’t understand.

The choice between adding to the Democratic majority in 2010 or losing the House and possibly the Senate (if not now, in 2012) is unthinkable. Who the fuck would vote for a Republican… do we forget our own history this easily?  Well the answer is obviously, YES.

From 1946 to 1948 the United States government intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission… when were Americans the good guys?

Were we ever? 

The movies I grew up on told me were the good guys. It's all too confusing.

It seems that President Franklin Roosevelt was truly a good guy… but our current leaders are doing everything possible to erase him and his achievements.  President Kennedy seemed like one of the good guys. He was shot in the head and a year doesn’t go buy in which a book about how many woman he fucked doesn’t reach the top 10. Who publishes these books?

Have we really studied FDR's or JFK's policies of what worked for our society… and why opposing Republican policies did’t work.

Modern Democratic Presidents have to compromise with the right-wing so much that it is hard sometimes to see the point in having them. Republican Presidents don't compromise with the left-wing.

Americans don’t seem to vote for their own best interests.  What do we really want to do with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?  I know what Republicans want to do… and some corporate sponsored Democrats, too. So we, as voters better decide pretty fast... because we will be living with the consequences of our votes.

What history is taught in school today?

What are our future leaders learning?

Our current President’s achievements are so mediocre, but he and his staff truly believe he should already be having his head carved on Mount Rushmore. Gold Stars for everyone. Nobel Prizes for all. No thoughtful, knowledgeable critical analysis. Just 'Like' or 'Don't Like'.

It's DeRosaWorld's 4th Blogiversary!

DeRosaWorld is celebrating it's fourth anniversary today. I started the blog on September 14, 2006 in hopes of helping, if even just by a little, tiny bit, with the Democrats taking back the reigns of power in Washington, D.C. 

Yes, I have been mostly disappointed. But today... I'm dancing.

Saturday Musings: 'That Quayle Boy Was Raised Right' Edition

How do the Democrats always end up spending so much time arguing for issues that are no-win situations at the polls?

Are the Republicans that good or are Democrats innately idiots?

Remember Jimmy Carter’s decision not to go to the Moscow Olympics? It just pissed everybody off.

I don’t want my Congressional Representative wasting time defending marijuana, gay marriage or mosques being built at Ground Zero.

I would like to hear my Congresswoman (Jane Harman for Christ’s sake) taking the Republicans’ knees out with the unemployment rate, their votes against health care and jobs and veterans benefits.

I want liberal solutions to the ills that are killing American society... mostly brought to us by Republican and non-progressive Democrats.

Every newspaper, every cable news pundit, every network news show, and every liberal progressive blog updates me daily on what Gingrich, Palin, Beck and now Rand Paul… have to say... and I’m sure this Quayle kid will be hosting a FOXNews show after losing his election in November.

Legal marijuana is a fool’s issue.

Gay marriage is like denying you beat your wife on TV, you don’t, even if you don’t care or are all for it… the issue is not something that should be argued over every fucking day.

And as for the mosque at Ground Zero, of course they have the legal right to build a mosque there; they own the property… but should they? And even the dumbest Republican (Rick Lazio) does win the TV sound bite argument with when he says… why can’t people build churches and synagogues in Mecca?… the argument may be stupid, but it rings true… most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, so wouldn’t it be an amazing gesture if Mecca dedicated a church and a synagogue in Mecca for all the world to see and worship in… including women…

Look, I want to smoke pot with lesbians just like the next guy, and hell, mosques are pretty… but let’s focus like a laser beam on the economy, like one of my favorite modern Presidents once said. That is a winning issue for Democrats if they play it right and can get air-time.

Because here is another truth that shouldn't be... the reason to vote Democratic in November? Dan Quayle and Ron Paul have kids... and they're rich and mean.

Saturday Musings: Guest Blogger - Glenn Greenwald's 'What Collapsing Empires Look Like'

A very good article with important and relevant links on Salon from Glenn Greenwald:

"Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?"

Instead of the daily regurgitation of the right wing pundits and Presidential wannabees, national journalists should follow up this story with 24/7 coverage. The Republicans led us here... the Democrats can't get us out... they have about three months until November and then it's game-over America.

nuff said:

"On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn't want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives."   - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg - August 3, 2010

Porn, FOX News or Liberal Blogs? Who Will Get Our Money?

"A non-neutral Internet means that companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Google can turn the Net into cable TV and pick winners and losers online. A problem just for Internet geeks? You wish. All video, radio, phone and other services will soon be delivered through an Internet connection. Ending Net Neutrality would end the revolutionary potential that any website can act as a television or radio network. It would spell the end of our opportunity to wrest access and distribution of media content away from the handful of massive media corporations that currently control the television and radio dial.

So the Google-Verizon deal can be summed up as this: "FCC, you have no authority over us and you're not going to do anything about it. Congress, we own you, and we'll get whatever legislation we want. And American people, you can't stop us."

Nothing is going to stop corporate media giants from doing with us whatever they want to. We are addicted to the Internet, like we were addicted to television. Some of us have managed to turn the TV off, but spend even more time on-line... and what about our cell phones? Can we put them down?

Workers Of The World, Unite!

"...And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality."

For some reason beyond reasoning... the Obama Administration doesn't like reading Paul Krugman or just plain disagrees with him... but look who the President has put in charge of bringing him the Wall Street Journal each morning with his orange juice.

Some Democrat, with the conscience of a liberal, needs to step up, shaking a Paul Krugman editorial in his or her fist and let this Administration know that to ignore progressive, job-creating legislation that helps working class Americans... the vast majority of Americans... is to turn the Legislative Branch of our government back over to the neo-cons and banksters and the walking insane...probably for good...and probably in about three months.

And when 2012 hits... we all get taken down.

"...We’re told that we can’t afford to help the unemployed — that we must get budget deficits down immediately or the “bond vigilantes” will send U.S. borrowing costs sky-high. Some of us have tried to point out that those bond vigilantes are, as far as anyone can tell, figments of the deficit hawks’ imagination — far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have been buying it eagerly, driving interest rates to historic lows. But the fearmongers are unmoved: fighting deficits, they insist, must take priority over everything else — everything else, that is, except tax cuts for the rich, which must be extended, no matter how much red ink they create.

The point is that a large part of Congress — large enough to block any action on jobs — cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can’t find work.

Well, if Congress won’t act, what about the Federal Reserve? The Fed, after all, is supposed to pursue two goals: full employment and price stability, usually defined in practice as an inflation rate of about 2 percent. Since unemployment is very high and inflation well below target, you might expect the Fed to be taking aggressive action to boost the economy. But it isn’t."

The Un-Reported War. What Happened To Journalism?

The images in this video were shocking to me and almost unbelievable. I am angry at not seeing this imagery on television, a television that is 24/7 news and pundits. What are they talking about if not this?

I guess our leaders learned their lessons from the Vietnam Era television news. No bad images and no dissenting opinions.

We are so co-opted.

Get Into This House. Stop All That Yackity Yack!

The American media machine that brings you the daily thoughts of Newt Gingrich and Rand Paul is losing its shit over the WikiLeaks Afghan War Diary papers.

Candy Crowley isn't controlling the message? Brit Hume has some opposition to his point of view?

The American way has bound the world tighter than the Gordian Knot and some folks, not paid by or afraid of Roger Ailes are taking a sword to it and attempting to cut themselves free.

A Serious Look At Joe Biden

"...Joe Biden is doing these things - and in my book - all jokes aside about his gaffes and loquaciousness is the person on Obama's team who has surpassed expectations far more than any other Cabinet Member."

Steve Clemons at The Washington Note takes an interesting look at the work of Vice-President Joe Biden and his position in the Obama White House.

"...I have watched Biden build behind the scenes the relationships that have mattered in keeping Iraq from blowing up again - not only getting a good fix on the nuances and power aspirations of political contenders in many fragmented factions of Iraq's parties and politically system but also working out the kinks in relations between the rival US diplomatic and defense chiefs working in Iraq. And Biden has also built what is probably the single best working relationship between the US government and a UN operation in his regular communications with UN Special Representative to Iraq Ad Melkert."

Thoughtful analysis from a blog that you won't find on the network news or cable TV.

A Euro-Journalist In Teddy Roosevelt's Court

The BBC's Franz Strasser travels to Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, NY as part of his documentary about immigrant populations in today's America.

I spent a lot of time in Queens when I lived in New York and the changes that can take place in a decade are astounding.

I sure would like to be able to go to lunch up and down Roosevelt Avenue today.

Saturday Musings: 'Greed. If You Know What's Good For You.' Edition

Filmmaker Oliver Stone debuted his new movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps at the Cannes film festival this week.

I can't wait to see this one. Once again, Stone is there holding a mirror up to America and making us take that long, critical look at ourselves.

The most important thing that has happened in American finance in this young century, the American Banks meltdown and US Government bailout decision, is on our television sets everyday, but not many in Holly wood seem interested or capable of delivering a topical film on the grand, society changing scale that only movies can bring to us.

Once again, Oliver Stone stands tall in the land of the tiny and the art of film for him is made to seem like going to war.

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Speaking of going to war... How the hell did the US Senate have the balls to vote on debit card usage fee cuts?

Something that really helps small businesses around the country and not the corporate banking system?

The Banksters have already threatened Senators who voted for the bill with holding out on corporate donations to their future campaigns... remember guys, these same politicians bailed you out... no questions asked... don't bite the hand that feeds.

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Some of my favorite progressive political blogs are taking swipes at President Obama's progressive street-cred.

These same blogs chastised the likes of little old me for supporting Senator Clinton in 2008 and not totally buying into the Game-Changer.

NOW all I read are FDL, TPM, Digby and such lecturing us liberal followers of their blogs on how uninformed we were to think Obama was a super-duper liberal. What were we thinking? What did we base that notion on? Certainly not his lack of record? Certainly not his lack of experience? Certainly not the color of his skin?

Certainly not by reading your blogs.

Disingenuous, ladies and gentleman… to put it kindly. And now most of Obama’s progressive support comes from liberals who have no choice.

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Music and Books. Books and Music. Two topics I haven’t wrote about here lately. My expatriate New York friends reminded me the other night what an intellectual wasteland Los Angeles can be.

Here is a town that holds the reigns to the entertainment business and all we get is Disney Channel intellect and Reality TV emotions. So once again, thank you Oliver Stone.

I came away from dinner last week with a gift bag of books. The best thing about it is the authors I haven’t read. (James Purdy, John Casey and Clyde Edgerton) I recently discovered Orhan Pamuk through My Name Is Red and now I get to read Snow.

I have Pete Dexter (The Paper Boy), Jim Harrison (Dalva). I have an autobiography of Samuel Fuller!!!

But what really excites me is The Just and the Unjust, a novel by James Gould Cozzens.

I discovered Cozzens only a couple of years ago. For some reason, we tend to bury our best and brightest and I had never come across his books on any list or even in the library. He is one of America’s great Post World War Two writers.

And hidden at the bottom of the bag, the book I have been avoiding. Norman Mailer’s last novel The Castle In The Forrest. I just didn’t think I wanted to go there with him.

As I pulled each book out of the when I got home and paged through them. I decided to read the first paragraph. Suddenly I was 15 pages in and turning the page to start the next chapter.

Mailer is a wonder. His prose are a powerhouse of the English language, his own intellect and psyche, his sense and sensibility of history.

Some of this book is gross and some is so engrossing that I want, but hesitate to recommend it to friends, because I’m not sure most folks would want to spend so much time with the young Adolf Hitler. I think I will just treasure it, hate it and marvel at it like I have so many other of Mailer’s books. (Harlot’s Ghost for example). Where do American prose go without Norman Mailer?

So we hit the movies and books, so all I got left is Santana’s Abraxas. “We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it: We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas...”

I downloaded this second Santana album after hearing "Samba Pa Ti" on the radio as I drove to work the other day. I remember this album being at the top of the list of my oldest sister’s favorite albums of all time. So this weekend will consist of a bottle of Spanish roja and some Santana... and a young Adolf Hitler... sweet dreams.

Saturday Musings: 'October Surprise' Edition.... no seriously... Long Live Barbara Honegger!

I’ve been kind of hard on President Obama lately. I wanted an activist, liberal President after the eight torturous years of Bush, Jr/Cheney and I didn’t get one.

The bipartisanship actually makes me physically ill. You should not make deals with the Republican Party because they are evil. They always have been.

The previous Republican administration brought this country, even the people they work for, Banks, Insurance Companies, Wall Street to their knees and a Democratic Administration had a duty to clean up, re-regulate and punish. None of that happened. After a year a really bad health care reform bill was passed.

2012 is right around the corner and the Republicans own the airwaves and our only hope as Democrats is that the other side runs a nut job.

So yeah, I’m hard on President Obama because we need him.

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Then you wake up on a Saturday morning to see what evil news stories slip out on Friday night and there it is... the 1980 October Surprise. And then you think of all the shit that has been thrown at Obama from the vast right wing media conspiracy and you got to hand it to the guy for even running in 2008.

After 30 years some in the press are finally, actually allowed to mention the October Surprise of the 1980 election. George Bush, Sr., Bill Casey and Robert Gates (yes, that Robert Gates) committed treason and negotiated a deal with the Iranian Government to hold Americans hostages longer so Ronald Reagan would be sure to win the election…. And they hate us because of our freedom?

The Russians are ratting them out?

Remember how the Iran Contra hearings would not cover anything that happened prior to 1984? So Lee Hamilton would have ignored this Russian Report anyway.

It’s tough being a Democratic President. The Republicans can shoot you, impeach you, commit treason against you, steal an election from you and now even carry guns around you.

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Has anyone been arrested yet for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

Has anyone been arrested yet for all the bank failures and mortgage foreclosure?

I mean it seems pretty dangerous and anti-American, especially during a time of war.

War? You ask. What war?

Sad, isn’t it.

'The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh' by Gore Vidal (Hey, what's the internet for? Get it while you can.)

Americans were fed the story of Timothy McVeigh’s trial and execution as a simple, unquestionable narrative: he was guilty, he was evil, and he acted largely alone. Gore Vidal’s 1998 Vanity Fair essay on the erosion of the U.S. Bill of Rights caused McVeigh to begin a three-year correspondence with Vidal, prompting an examination of certain evidence that points to darker truths—a conspiracy willfully ignored by F.B.I. investigators, and a possible cover-up by a government waging a secret war on the liberty of its citizens...

The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh by Gore Vidal (from Vanity Fair, 1998)

...Although McVeigh was soon to indicate that he had acted in retaliation for what had happened at Waco (he had even picked the second anniversary of the slaughter, April 19, for his act of retribution), our government’s secret police, together with its allies in the Media, put, as it were, a heavy fist upon the scales. There was to be only one story: one man of incredible innate evil wanted to destroy innocent lives for no reason other than a spontaneous joy in evildoing. From the beginning, it was ordained that McVeigh was to have no coherent motive for what he had done other than a Shakespearean motiveless malignity. Iago is now back in town, with a bomb, not a handkerchief. More to the point, he and the prosecution agreed that he had no serious accomplices...

Some April Thoughts... Spring Has Sprung

Just some random thoughts as April is here and Spring is budding and Summer is in the air...

American Media is useless, pathetic and really quite disturbing. The irony is we are recording our downfall and fiddling all the way.

TV news is unwatchable, especially the Sunday shows where we just let these pundits lie to us and we do nothing about it. (Bill Kristol on my TV... really?)

And as far as newspapers go... fuck them, too. If you can't produce real significant content then wither on the vine.

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I have been liking The Pacific on HBO. It keeps getting better each week, but I think the ratings get worse each week. Reality TV, man, that is were it's at. What are the children of celebrities up to?

Anyway, keep digging and reading the progressive blogs and try to find some truth before the 2010 elections. We may not have many more of those left in us.

Saturday Musings: 'Old Europe Screws The Pooch' Edition

So I’m digging what I’m reading about Long-Term Care (CLASS Act) in the new left-wing, Kenyan, socialist health insurance plan, because some day I am going to be old and I am sure there will be no Social Security money available then, so either I work until I die or I get some long-term care for when I get Alzheimer’s... because this is America baby, and nobody rides for free.

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Is President Obama’s Blue-Dog Democrat stand on the issues just a transition to a future more liberal Presidency?

I can’t believe that America will slip into the FOX News utopia of Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck…. Oh and Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney. The vast right wing conspiracy has been uncovered. They stand naked before us, mouths dripping with blood and other precious bodily fluids.

And if it weren’t for the alternate media found on the Internet, blogs and foreign press sites, we would all be Republicans by now.

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Here is a link to ACTBLUE, this is a start for 2010 and 2012. I know it’s hard to trust elections in America, I’m still angry over voting for Gore and getting Bush, Jr. and voting for Gray Davis and getting Schwarzenegger and voting for Kerry and getting Bush, Jr. again… I mean this is embarrassing. 

We should be embarrassed.

Here is an example of what I hope for: because the Republicans in Congress have held up the extension of unemployment benefits and the National Flood Insurance Program out of spite and hatred of all things Democratic, when the worst flooding in 100 years hit Rhode Island and other parts of the Northeast last week, the people are screwed… They are Katrina screwed. 

I expect, I dream, I hope that every Republican running for office in these districts is thrown out of office in 2010. Will they be?  Will the national, corporate media cover this story as a Republican Congressional failure?  Progressive blogs will.

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And what is Easter without a look at the state of the Catholic Church...

Pope Bends-for-dick XVI (aka: Joey Ratz) is up to his miter in boy-butt trouble with a global round of child sex abuse cover-up charges AND complaints of Gestapo-like strong-arm tactics by his shepherds on the youthful flock. Catholic Priests just can’t keep their hands or other appendages off the kids. Maybe it’s time for a nice African or South American Pope. 'Old Europe' just can't handle the duties anymore.

And so on this holy of Holy Days,let's go to the videotape: (and check out #4... it has been debated on FOX News a lot lately.)

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,
for they shall possess the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice,
for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Age Appropriate Content

So the Pope likes a little underage boy-butt story now and again, he is the infallible one.

The Huffington Post makes no excuses for Papal indiscretions or for some guy from KC & The Sunshine Band doing the nasty with kids... but on the same page they are reporting on some guy playing That's The Way (I Like It) with a teenage boy and getting arrested in New Jersey, they also have a link for their visitors to enjoy a video of teenage boy singer Justin Bieber blow-drying his hair.

What tween-age girl is reading The Huffington Post?  Who the fuck do you think is going to be linking on the video to a teen age boy blow-drying his hair?

The Huffington Post sometimes does as much harm to our culture as good.

Saturday Musings: 'Who's In Charge' Edition

Until we Americans ride every one of our Media Elite out of town on a rail, there will never be peace in America. To see CPAC covered as if it was a double bill of Jesus Christ and Elvis at Madison Square Garden just sickens me.

It doesn’t help, and can’t be helped I guess, that even the liberal progressive blogs cover every fucking word, albeit snarkily, that these buffoons have to say.

Don’t blame the buffoons for trying to be famous or rich or powerful, blame the media for putting them on television and for lying to us all… and blame them hard.

A good example, David Broder… need I say more?

The folks you see on TV everyday need to be pelted with garbage every time they show their faces in public. Their children should be ashamed of them. Their heads should be shaved.

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Okay, so Al Haig is dead. Who’s in charge?

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So after President Obama dick-slapped the entire Republican Congress on national television, in their own ballpark without a teleprompter or even notes… the new criticism of BHO is that he reads from a teleprompter too much?

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DeRosaWorld whole-heartedly supports the 'Secession II' of the Southern States of America. I think it should be mandatory and then lets build a Mexican-border-type wall around it all and put windows in it so we can all watch the freedom.

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Speaking of President Obama, so are the rumors true? Did the Administration finally get around, after a year, to writing its own Health Care Reform Bill? Will a public option be dangled before us again full of hope and change? Oh, please don’t say it if it isn’t true. We love you, Mister President!

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Remember Evan Bayh from last week? Me neither.

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Flying airplanes into buildings to kill people and make a political point is terrorism. Anyone who jokes about it, supports it or tries to dismiss it are supporters of terrorism and spit in the face of all who died in the hijacked airliners, the WTC, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

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The FBI and Justice Department has officially closed their investigation into the 2001 mailings of anthrax-contaminated letters to Capitol Hill and journalists in New York and Florida, concluding that lone gunmen and suicide victim, U.S. Army medical researcher Bruce E. Ivins was solely responsible for the five deaths that resulted.

Hmm... can I poke around in this story for a while longer?

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Although I am a liberal Democrat, I am off to do something very all-American. I am going into the wilderness for a few days, heading up into the snowy mountains of California. I plan to commute with the gods and nature. Don’t worry; I am not taking a small plane. I am going to walk among the eagles and tree tops and breath clean air and think. 

Saturday Musings: 'So Sad' Edition

So is the first 'Year Two' compromise from the Administration on Health Care that The Republicans won’t whip Obama on Health Care Reform if he quietly kills it?

Sad.

My fellow Americans, that body arrived D.O.A.

I am beginning to see the vast amount of corporate donations to the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign paying off nicely. I wonder where this will leave us in 2012.

If the Democrats really do have the self-fulfilling prophecy of losing the Senate and the large majority in the House… will Obama move more to the left? Or is the only reaction to opposition for a Democratic a move to the right.

Someday… maybe someday a Democratic President will move left and bring the country along with it… someday.

Maybe the President read a little history this past year and realized the last time a Democratic President moved from right to left during his first term his popularity grew and grew… but then we shot him… and we never did get to see how that leftward acceleration would have turned out… because it never happened again.

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Sadly, whenever Jane Hamsher threatens a United States Senator with oblivion, they just get mean and move to the right, too. I wished she’d stop. It’s not working… see, Lieberman and Lincoln.

What is really pathetic about American politics right now is that the Republican Party is at its lowest point in decades. It is a Party full of fruitcakes, dangerous, old, choking-kind of fruitcakes, but fruitcakes just the same. They should be such an out of power minority that vast areas of this nation should not even be represented by a Republican… but sadly, no. They dominate or TV screens and our news cycles. they dominate this Democratic Administration.

And Left wing blogs repeat every word they say, you can’t escape Republicans.

I liked the SOTU Address and loved the Republican Q&A session later in the week, but I don’t trust that the momentum from those events will translate into any change in this most-compromising of Administrations. There seems to be a real fear behind closed doors of the Republican Party and the Right.

Sad.

Saturday Musings: 'Corporatism Makes Its Move' Edition

Sarah Palin made her journalistic, pundit, FOX News debut last week and it was covered in the media and in the progressive blogosphere like Elvis was having another Comeback Special.

Has anyone run for higher office from the pundit chair? I know some are threatening to do it. We might get a couple of truly TV-generation races in 2010 and 2012.

It is sad to watch Palin go through the painful act of trying to sound as reasonable and smart as Newt Gingrich or Lou Dobbs for the FOX News and Progressive Blogosphere audience. (Yes… they have become the same audience…) This will eventually work and I will hear some college educated adult say…’you know, she actually made sense last night”

The few people that run things, the “They” who control our corporate generated lives do not respect Sarah Palin. She is their court jester and she may think “They” want her, but they really just want her to dance for them to entertain us. And we are watching and laughing and putting dollars in her underwear. I can’t avoid it and I don’t even have a working TV in my house.

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So this Health Care Tax Reform thing the Democrats have been jerking off for a year now may go down the tubes because of one special election to fill a Senate Seat?  How many times does this game show have to crash before we just cancel it. It's embarrassing.

The Corporations have won. The Republicans kicked the Democrats ass in the Democrats own stadium. They won when Single Payer was not put on the table by President Obama. They won again when abortion amendments in both houses pissed on the law and the Democrats let it happen. It ended when a public option of any kind was taken off the table.

Well, we will see on Tuesday if God’s will struck Senator Kennedy down so a Republican can take his seat to stop Obamacare.

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Speaking of God’s will. Good Lord, did that pact will Satin turn around and bite those anti-colonial, anti-slavery Haitians on the ass. This coming week is going to see a new level of Hell created. The Devil is not done with Haiti... and we are going to be forced to watch.

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I would like to see a reality show where Jay Leno, David Letterman, that read-headed, skinny guy, Jimmy Kimmel, that other guy from SNL all have to get 9-5 day jobs… for thirty years.

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I’ve bailed out the Airline Industry, The Automobile Industry and the Banking Industry. Why are they still the three headaches in my life?

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Oh, the war in Afghanistan is not going well, but the new government in Iraq is acting just like the American government. So I guess Mission Accomplished?

Saturday Musings: "Resolutions" Edition

Musings on 2010 resolutions:

Support Progressive Democrats running in this 2010 election cycle. It is important to increase the Democratic majority in both Houses, especially the Senate beyond the margin of having to deal with the Republican Party at all… except on television of course.

No matter what the press says, I can not believe my fellow Americans would vote for any Republican running for Congress or Senate in 2010… not after the last 10 years.

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Reduce American Corporatism in my life...

Eliminate my living room television viewing. If an entertainment show comes on that I want to see, I'll catch it online when I have the time; same with movies. I have gone TV-less in my house since December 1st, 2009. It has made the evenings more pleasant: More conversation and music. I spend a more time online reading the news and blogs. And I cook more.

Change to a smaller, local bank. I tried this last year, but that Bank got eaten by CHASE and I can not stand even seeing their logo on a piece of mail or having to go online to their site for any transaction.

Lose weight not by dieting for a short time, but by eating less meat and more fish and veggies daily.

Walk more. I have one of the most beautiful walking paths on the planet at both sunrise and sunset. I resolve to use it more.

Drive slower and use my drive time to listen to music and not news.

Listen more. This will probably be the first resolution to go out the window. When I listen to other people I usually realize they are fucking idiots and I lose my patience… see. This will be a tough one.

Oh, and drink more wine.

President Obama's Long Game Moves Into Its Second Year

So here we are approaching the end of the first year of Change We Can Believe In.

How's the Hope holding up?

We were told this was a transformative Presidency. (Remember the Cairo Speech!?)  But it seems more of a slow transformation out of the clutches of certain death into a choking grip around our throat.

Bush, Jr./Cheney must be very pleased with their replacement. We know Wall Street is... for now.

So, my biggest problems with the Obama Administration are not his Nobel Peace Prize winning Afghanistan War and War on Terror policies. If he is really going over there to crush, kill, destroy, clean up and get out, great... go Long Game.

My really big problem with the President is his economic policy and actions so far. They scare and frustrate me.

He lost the greatest opportunity for fundamental, sane, fair, christian, 21st century, Democratic, economic change in American history since 1932. He blew it. If there is a Long Game, our team is behind by 100 points in the 4th Quarter.

Obama needed to start affecting a cigarette holder and slapping a New Deal on Wall Street instead of creating a living memorial to Robert Rubin.

If there is not a Long Game for economic regulation by the Federal Government then the Obama Administration will have FAILED miserably in this area.

Also, The Obama Administration's Health Care Reform Long Game is a sad, cowardly affair full of lies and total miscalculation of the political landscape of Washington, D.C.

Obama's critics who worried about his lack of experience had real reason to worry. He was either played or he is playing the voters of this nation.

If there is no Long Game for further, furious and far reaching Health Care Reform, then his Administration has FAILED miserably here.

Climate Change seemed like a combination of lack of expertise on the subject and outright cowardice of the issue. If there is no Long Game by this Administration on Global Climate Change, the Game may be over and none of the other policy issues really matter. It will be the End Times, brought to you by The United States of America.

We have three (maybe seven) more years with President Obama's Long Game. Both he and the Democratic Congress have tripped over each other in trying to take the mantle of power away from thirty years of Republican Party/Media ass-kicking. But we are all grown-ups and have the political scars to prove it. It has always been an uphill battle for the modern Democratic Party.

Nothing they throw at us should be a surprise. Isn't that what Rahm Emanuel is for?

The only way to win the Game is to play to win...or you will lose.

The best defense is a good offense and we need to see some offense from this Administration.

Get in the game, Mr. President, you're embarrassing us.

There And Back... LAX To PHL Holiday

Flying out of LAX on the red-eye, I was still that good, post-9/11 American who showed up at the airport two-hours early. There was NO ONE in the security line and I breezed right through, shoes -off, belt off... was at the gate, bored, sitting for two hours before a 5 hour plane ride. I was asleep before we reached cruising altitude.

PHL had long security lines for the first flight out of their day before Christmas Eve, I stood on the moving floor and watched the miserable faces as I glided by. I was shivering. It was 27 degrees and there was two feet of snow on the ground all the way back into New Jersey.

Christmas Eve was cold and the snow hadn't budged. We traveled back into Philadelphia to visit some ancient relatives who still live in the 'old neighborhood'. The old neighborhood looks kind of like Baghdad. The driving was rough because Philadelphia can't afford to plow the streets anymore, but there was plenty of Italian food waiting: a pot of sausage, a pot of pepperoni, a pot of Aunt Rose's meatballs and plenty of lasagna and ravioli.

The Christmas Eve drive back into New Jersey was a little dicey with all the snow and ice that late at night, but it was Christmas Eve and the heat was set on maximum and Christmas songs were on the radio.

Christmas Day was nice. Everyone was coming over and I didn't have to move. It was my Mother's turn to present the pot of sausage, pot of pepperoni, pot of Aunt Kitty's meatballs with lasagna and ravioli. (Mom can't cook anymore, so the sisters did all the work to perfection).

Presents for the kids. Paper ripping, Wii games. Food coma.

Next day: Rain, 50 degrees, no more snow, but flooding.

A tradition that started with the release of The Godfather Part 3 is to go to the movies as a group on the day after Christmas. This year it was Avatar. I some how managed to skip it with the promise to mind Mom while everyone was away. We watched cooking shows. She likes Chef Ming.

Chinese Food take out feast that night. (egg rolls!!!!!! with duck sauce and hot mustard).

Final day: Cheesesteaks for lunch and the night flight back to LAX. Security, even after Amsterdam declared war on us, was minimal and easy. Sat and watched a Terrorism Special on CNN with my fellow travelers. The flight was six hours of which I slept five.

Got home midnight. Watered the Christmas tree. Opened a bottle of wine. Drank it and passed out.

I post this as I am about to go pick up the preciouses from The Holiday Hotel For Cats.

My Christmas presents consisted of a flannel shirt, bedroom slippers, a map of the Allied Invasion fleet into Normandy, June 6, 1944 (love it), an art print from an Etsy artist and two lovely books: my history major nephew gave me In The President's Secret Service by Ronald Kessler and my younger sister gave me Genoa and the Sea 1559-1684 (Lo amo).

The Somerset Maugham novels didn't seem to cause the hysteria among the family as did the Wii. Maybe as they read them, they will appreciate them more than the Wii games that they all distributed among themselves.

I need a salad.

Chris Matthews Can Suck My Left Nut

As a matter fact... double suck.

Chris Matthews may be a Democrat... I don't know. Most adult liberals I know voted for AL Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008. I'm not sure I can look at Chris Matthew's record and say for sure that is how he voted... but that's his business... or is it?

Chris Matthews is fun to watch when he gets on a liberal rant, and he has had a few, but I can't get the taste out of my mouth (and I'm sure he can't either) of his prostrating before George Bush, Jr. I mean this grown man had a hard-on on Hardball on more than one occasion.

I'm a Democrat. I'm a liberal. I'm a grown up. I vote. I post to this blog. I give money to candidates. I read bills. I listen to debate. I hated the Bush, Jr./Cheney Administration. I was getting ready to move back to Pennsylvania and declare for the U.S. Senate if Chris Matthews decided to run.

There are a plenty of bad guys out there today Chris, enemies of Democratic Party, most of them are on TV and in the Republican Party. Some, obviously are Democrats themselves.

Iam not one of them nor are the net-roots or bloggers or progressive blogosphere or whatever you want to call us... (back-benchers, bitchers, children.)

Chris Matthews has been a recipient in the past of a ...Sucks Big Fat Elephant Dick headline for sucking up to the Republican Party... he has created a new category all together. Your stupid is starting to become unforgivable.

"fighting with shadows in the streets": American Media Fails In Its Coverage Of Iran

The American Media and its right wing enablers are having trouble reporting on Iran. They want Iran to be another bogeyman for Americans, but the people of Iran are fighting that same bogeyman.

The Iranians are taking to the streets like Americans never do. In fact, Iran's taking to the streets against Americans in 1979 effected politics in America to this day, ushering in Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Republican John McCain was singing songs about bombing Iran, and then peace protests broke out in the streets of Iran. Wouldn't that have been a mess if Republicans has their way and bombed Iran?

So when you have the Republican Party and the right wing Media misreading and misleading Americans about Iran... you get more coverage of celebrity sex lives.

What the Iranians are using the on-line social networks for should humble Americans, who are sending pictures of their asses to each other.

The BBC has kept up with the latest events in Iran.

In the capital Tehran, police and militiamen used batons and teargas, and witnesses said there had been gunfire.

The protests, led by Iranian students, were over the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and suppression of academic freedom.

It appears to be the most widespread unrest in Iran for months.

Foreign journalists were banned from reporting on the rallies, and the Iranian authorities closed down mobile phone networks and severely restricted internet access.

STFU Already

Can the progressive blogs please stop reporting on every word, move and bowel movement of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich.

It's bad enough the networks still worship Joe Lieberman and John McCain, but at least they hold office.

I'm surprised there isn't a live blog of Senator Vitter that I have to SKIP before reading some of the A-List progressives.

Here is what Senator Al Franken has been up to?

Saturday Musings 'Too Much Time On My Hands' Edition

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Whenever the Crazy gets turned up too high for me to deal with, I re-read some Hunter S. Thompson to put my life in perspective. The man knew how to cope.

I work all the time and having four days off in a row over this Thanksgiving holiday has given me time to think... which means it has given me time to worry...My thoughts on the week that just passed.

We have terrorists blowing up trains in Russia.

We have non-terrorists killing soldiers in America.

Tiger Woods wife is taking a golf club to his head.

Glenn Beck is on my TV, my radio and my computer every day. Even the progressive blogs feature every utterance of that man.

Sarah Palin is back and bigger than ever. She even has a porn-side show with her little hockey player.

Oprah is quitting.

Joss Wedon’s new show was canceled.

The dollar is falling.

CHASE bank keeps chasing me around like a fucking PAC MAN eating my banks as fast as I can open a new checking account. Don’t you guys get it. I do not want a CHASE account!

I thought I voted in a liberal President, hell, he was even half black! But instead I get a Republican who happens to not be a neo-con. Is that the best I can expect from the Democratic Party?

I didn’t do any shopping on Black Friday.

I recycle.

I have two fucking 15 year old cats.

I donate to KPFK.

I don’t eat as much red-meat as I want used to.

I grow my own fucking tomatoes.

I fly three thousand miles to see my mother at Christmas and the holiday costs me about $1,500 each year. I've already got the tickets and they cost over $1,200... so I'll be over my limit by 12/24/09.

I buy expensive health care through my job and I can only get one pair of glasses per year.

I don't understand Obamacare.

I’ve had the same three Netflix movies sitting on my TV for two months.

Everyone is getting Frank Sinatra's A Man Alone for Christmas.

I’ve read fewer books this year than anytime since I was 6 years old...

It was at this point I decided to find Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

Saturday Musings: 'Does President Obama Like Chinese Food?' Edition

A bunch of old rich white men, and maybe a few women, but they probably won’t speak, are debating whether or not to debate the future of American health care. This ought to be a real treat.

The United States Senate… what a pack of losers, bought, sold and scared. Not scared of their constituents, but of the lobbyist and the media. Whatever they come up with, I probably don’t want, because it is not in my interests they meet today.

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I heard that President Obama visited China last week. I saw it on the BBC. I tried to find some wall-to-wall coverage of the President abroad, but American TV didn’t  cover it. I wonder what the President and those 2 billion Chinese talked about?

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I wish the progressive blogs would write more posts featuring progressive people and less time on what conservative and crazy-right pundits had to say. I really don’t need a re-cap of what Glenn Beck said every day. I don’t watch him for a reason. I don’t want to hear what he has to say. A strange cycle some blogs have found themselves in… recapping the stupid.

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I have a good idea for health care… Medicare… and extend it to every U.S. citizen. How do we pay for it? Let’s try not fighting a foreign war for maybe like a decade and see how much money we save… or maybe only just fight one, you know, to keep us in shape.

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Can you imagine if President Obama announced the end of military activities in Afghanistan, effective immediately. And then he puts the 9/11 left-over terrorists on trial  in Manhattan and kind of just wraps up the Bush, Jr/Cheney era war on terror… you know, starts his own version of peace and security instead of trying to prop up what previous administrations have done…and starting in 2010 we have the Obama Doctrine. I wonder what that would look like.

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My television is dying. I have the last fat, really heavy, tube TV in the United  States. Last night it started to fade to black and then slowly fade back up to picture again. I thought it was just the movie I was watching, some strange film editing trick, but then the picture would turn purple and only fill half the screen, then bounce back. I guess it’s time to go flat screen, LCD, LED, HD and all that. I don’t watch any weekly series. I don’t have TIVO... I wonder if I can get by with just my computer.

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I broke my two month on-line book buying fast. I bought a birthday present that had to be shipped across the country. I bought my nephew Philip Caputo’s The Voyage.