Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - The House Is Rockin'

Matchbox - Carl Perkins - Live TV performance 1957

Carl Perkins - Honey don't

Maceo Parker plays Marvin Gaye "Let's Get It On"

Louisiana GOP Poll

This from Joe.My.God.  --  follow link to original.

This poll tells you how INSANE Republicans are.  It also tell you how STUPID they are. 

If you think about it, it tells you why I'm just sick and tired of "political discourse" in the USA.  We have become a nation of idiots, pretending to know what we are talking about.  Doesn't matter if it's the "left" when it comes to guns, or the "right" about everything else.

Uneducated, insane people, where "faith" trumps facts and truth.
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http://joemygod.blogspot.com/

Louisiana GOP Poll

I'm sure YOU don't need to be reminded that Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005.

Victims’ Dilemma: 911 Calls Can Bring Eviction

Now you can't even call the cops if you are a victim - or a woman in a bad domestic "situation".  We are reaching a point where the ONLY one who can protect you is YOU.  The Police no longer seem to have any interest in the old "Protect and Serve" thing.  Now it seems to be about protecting the property of rich folks and corporations.  In America today a poor person is a NON-PERSON!

Learn to protect yourself.  If it's legal buy a pistol and learn to use it.  Train with it as much as you can  --  especially if you're a woman.  The cops today don't give a damn about you  --  especially if you are unmarried, a single mother, a woman of color, a lesbian, or not someone they would "hit on".

We have become the same mean spirited country we were back in the 1850's.  We no longer even PRETEND to worry about the poor, women, minorities, or children.   Heck during the last presidential election cycle some Republican candidates suggested we roll back limits on child labor  --  as a "reform".  We are thoughtless, greedy, nasty, mean spirited, uneducated, near illiterate assholes.  Overly entitled, without a clue.

Again, if you are not one of the new chosen few of America  --  please learn how to protect yourself.

This from "The New York Times"  ==  follow link to original
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NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The police had warned Lakisha Briggs: one more altercation at her rented row house here, one more call to 911, and they would force her landlord to evict her

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The police had warned Lakisha Briggs: one more altercation at her rented row house here, one more call to 911, and they would force her landlord to evict her

They could do so under the town’s “nuisance property” ordinance, a law intended to protect neighborhoods from seriously disruptive households. Officials can invoke the measure and pressure landlords to act if the police have been called to a rental home three times within four months.

So she faced a fearful dilemma, Ms. Briggs recalled, when her volatile boyfriend showed up last summer, fresh out of a jail stint for their previous fight, and demanded to move in.

“I had no choice but to let him stay,” said Ms. Briggs, 34, a certified nursing assistant, even though, she said in an interview, she worried about the safety of her 3-year-old daughter as well as her own.

“If I called the police to get him out of my house, I’d get evicted,” she said. “If I physically tried to remove him, somebody would call 911 and I’d be evicted.”

Over the last 25 years, in a trend still growing, hundreds of cities and towns across the country have adopted nuisance property or “crime-free housing” ordinances. Putting responsibility on landlords to weed out drug dealers and disruptive tenants, the laws aim to save neighborhoods from blight as well as ease burdens on the police.

But the laws are sometimes forcing victims, especially women facing domestic violence, to choose between calling the police and holding on to their homes, according to legal aid groups and experts on housing and the poor.

“These laws threaten citizens’ fundamental right to call on the police for help,” said Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at Harvard.

In a study of citations issued to landlords in Milwaukee, conducted with Nicol Valdez of Columbia University, Mr. Desmond found that domestic violence was involved in nearly one-third of the cases and that rentals in largely black areas were disproportionately singled out.

Legal experts say the laws can give tenants the lasting stain of an eviction record without due process.

In a federal lawsuit being watched by legal aid groups elsewhere, Ms. Briggs has challenged the Norristown ordinance as unconstitutional.

She did so after her fears were realized.

In June 2012, days after her ex-boyfriend, Wilbert Bennett, moved into her house in this struggling town northwest of Philadelphia, he started another drunken, late-night argument. Then came his most violent attack yet: an assault with a broken ashtray that left a gash on her head and a four-inch stab wound in her neck.

Before she passed out, Ms. Briggs begged her neighbor not to call 911 because of the eviction threat, according to the suit, which is being argued by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The neighbor called anyway. Ms. Briggs was taken by helicopter to Philadelphia for emergency treatment. Mr. Bennett is now serving a sentence of one to two years for aggravated assault.

And Norristown officials instructed her landlord to evict her within 10 days or lose his rental license.

“I was afraid I’d lose my house, my job and, what’s next, my daughter?” Ms. Briggs recalled.

A legal aid lawyer put her in touch with the A.C.L.U., and the city backed away from the eviction demand. Ms. Briggs moved anyway, to a location she hopes Mr. Bennett will not discover when he is released.

Responding to the lawsuit, Norristown officials stressed that they had policies to protect victims of domestic abuse. They said Ms. Briggs had failed to comply with an instruction to obtain protection orders against Mr. Bennett and also against her troubled older daughter, then 19, with whom she had repeated arguments. The police had been called to her home 10 times in the first five months of 2012 and said they had seen no evidence of physical injury.

The suit “fails to take into consideration the health, safety and welfare of all neighbors who live in proximity to a disorderly house,” the town said.

This kind of ordinance began to spread in the 1980s as communities sought to banish drug centers. They continued to proliferate as large cities like Phoenix and Dallas, and suburban towns like Norristown also sought to halt the flight of residents from crumbling neighborhoods.

Since rental properties account for a large share of 911 calls, more cities began to license landlords and press them to control disruptive tenants, said Michael Buerger, professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

The impetus was understandable, he said, as cities like Minneapolis, where he did research, saw good people driven out by the uncivil behavior of a few.

“It’s a form of mission creep, I suspect,” Mr. Buerger said, of the negative consequences now gaining attention. “I don’t think anyone believes that landlords should be able to ignore a crack house. But after three visits for disorderly conduct — it’s less clear.”

Evicting disruptive tenants may help one block but shuffles the problem elsewhere, say advocates for the poor.

“I really doubt this policy ends up saving the city money,” said April A. Hartman, a lawyer with Legal Action of Wisconsin. “Milwaukee spends a significant amount of money dealing with the consequences of homelessness and housing instability.”

Potentially unfair consequences are not confined to battered women.

William Zarnoth, 62, a bartender in Milwaukee, said he worked late and was not involved in disputes between his roommates and a downstairs neighbor that led to 911 calls.

“I wasn’t named in any of the police reports,” he said. But he was ejected with the others in June. He is living in an $80-a-week room and has been turned down for apartments because of the eviction record.

“Now I’m trying to get my name cleared so I can rent a place where I can cook,” Mr. Zarnoth said.

More than 100 municipalities in Illinois have adopted nuisance property or crime-free property ordinances, said Emily Werth, a lawyer with the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law in Chicago and author of a new report on the effects.

Gwen Kaitis, director of the Illinois Domestic Violence Helpline, said her group received several calls a month from women facing a choice between safety and housing. On a recent day, she said, a woman with five children called to say that her boyfriend had choked her and she was trying to end their relationship, but that her landlord had told her that if the police were called one more time, he would evict her.

In Minnesota and, after a recent revision, Milwaukee, laws specify that domestic violence cannot be grounds for eviction. But counselors for battered women warn that, as happened with Ms. Briggs, the police do not always perceive the abusive aspects of conflicts and the victims — often scared, financially vulnerable and in emotional knots — may not speak up.

Many critics of the laws call them “fundamentally flawed,” in the words of Sandra S. Park, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U. who is helping to represent Ms. Briggs.

The critics, including landlords who say they are caught in the middle, argue that the police, not landlords, should deal with criminal activity and severe disorderly behavior.

“The problem with these ordinances is that they turn victims of crime who are pleading for emergency assistance into ‘nuisances’ in the eyes of the city,” Ms. Park said. “They limit people’s ability to seek help from police and punish victims for criminal activity committed against them.”

18

Nicolet National Bank, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Assumes All of the Deposits of Bank of Wausau, Wausau, Wisconsin

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 9, 2013

Media Contact: Greg Hernandez (202) 898-6984 Cell: (202) 340-4922 Email: ghernandez@fdic.gov

Bank of Wausau, Wausau, Wisconsin, was closed today by the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Nicolet National Bank, Green Bay, Wisconsin, to assume all of the deposits of Bank of Wausau.
The sole branch of Bank of Wausau will reopen on Saturday as a branch of Nicolet National Bank during its normal business hours. Depositors of Bank of Wausau will automatically become depositors of Nicolet National Bank. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage up to applicable limits. Customers of Bank of Wausau should continue to use their existing branch until they receive notice from Nicolet National Bank that it has completed systems changes to allow other Nicolet National Bank branches to process their accounts as well.
This evening and over the weekend, depositors of Bank of Wausau can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.
As of June 30, 2013, Bank of Wausau had approximately $43.6 million in total assets and $40.7 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Nicolet National Bank agreed to purchase approximately $29.9 million of the failed bank's assets. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition.
Customers with questions about today's transaction should call the FDIC toll-free at 1-800-517-1846. The phone number will be operational this evening until 9:00 p.m., Central Daylight Time (CDT); on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., CDT; on Sunday from noon to 6:00 p.m., CDT; on Monday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., CDT; and thereafter from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., CDT. Interested parties also can visit the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/bankofwausau.html.
The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $13.5 million. Compared to other alternatives, Nicolet National Bank's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Bank of Wausau is the 18^th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the second in Wisconsin. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Banks of Wisconsin, Kenosha, on May 31, 2013.

# # #

17

C1 Bank, Saint Petersburg, Florida, Assumes All of the Deposits of First Community Bank of Southwest Florida, Fort Myers, Florida

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 2, 2013

Media Contact: LaJuan Williams-Young (202) 898-3876 Cell: (571) 215-6027 Email: lwilliams-young@fdic.gov

First Community Bank of Southwest Florida, Fort Myers, Florida, also operating as Community Bank of Cape Coral, was closed today by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with C1 Bank, Saint Petersburg, Florida, to assume all of the deposits of First Community Bank of Southwest Florida.
The seven former branches of First Community Bank of Southwest Florida will reopen as branches of C1 Bank during their normal business hours. Depositors of First Community Bank of Southwest Florida will automatically become depositors of C1 Bank. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage up to applicable limits. Customers of First Community Bank of Southwest Florida should continue to use their current branch until they receive notice from C1 Bank that systems conversions have been completed to allow full-service banking at all branches of C1 Bank.
This evening and over the weekend, depositors of First Community Bank of Southwest Florida can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.
As of March 31, 2013, First Community Bank of Southwest Florida had approximately $265.7 million in total assets and $254.2 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, C1 Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the failed bank's assets.
Customers with questions about today's transaction should call the FDIC toll-free at 1-800-591-2916. The phone number will be operational this evening until 9:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time (EDT); on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., EDT; on Sunday from noon to 6:00 p.m., EDT; on Monday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., EDT; and thereafter from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., EDT. Interested parties also can visit the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/firstcommswb.html.
The FDIC estimates that cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund will be $27.1 million. Compared to other alternatives, C1 Bank's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. First Community Bank of Southwest Florida is the 17th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the third in Florida. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Chipola Community Bank, Marianna, on April 19, 2013.

Dave Brubeck Trio spec. Guest Paul Desmond & Gerry Mulligan

Gerry Mulligan - Night Lights

Gerry Mulligan - piano, baritone sax
Art Farmer - trumpet and fluegelhorn
Bob Brookmeyer - trombone
Jim Hall - guitar
Bill Crow - bass
Dave Bailey - drums

Paul Desmond - Gerry Mulligan Quartet 1962 ~ All The Things You Are

Gerry Mulligan Quartet ~ My Funny Valentine

vacation

Am on vacation.  Will return fairly soon.  This time I really need a break from the insanity that grips our nation. 

Pride And Joy (Live at Montreux 1982)

US singer-songwriter JJ Cale dies, aged 74

We lost another 60's icon  :
 

US singer-songwriter JJ Cale has died of heart attack at the age of 74.

An announcement on his personal website said he had passed away at a hospital in La Jolla, California, on Friday.
Born in Oklahoma, Cale helped create the Tulsa Sound, which combined blues, rockabilly, and country. He became famous in 1970, when Eric Clapton covered his song After Midnight.
In 1977 Clapton also popularised Cale's Cocaine. The two worked together on an album which won a Grammy award in 2008.
Born in 1938, John Weldon Cale adopted the name JJ Cale to avoid being confused with John Cale of the Velvet Underground.
Building up on the success of After Midnight, he recorded Naturally - the first of his 14 studio albums.
He pioneered the use of drum machines, and was famous for his personal laid-back singing style.
However Cale always described himself as a songwriter rather than a singer, and his songs tended to enjoy greater success when performed by others - notably Tom Petty, Santana and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

This from Ted Rall --

http://rall.com/

No Banks Go Belly Up

Well, at least we have not had any more bank failures.  That's a good thing  --  I think.

Shocking 'Extermination' Fantasies By the People Running America's Empire on Full Display at Aspen Summit Security Forum participants expressed total confidence in American empire, but could not contain their panic at the mention of Snowden.

Here is just part of an article on "Alternet".  Please go to the original and read the rest.  Follow link.

It speaks for itself.  It merely tells you how low we have fallen, how we no longer trust ANY of our "Citizens", how these fantasies of "security" have morphed into those of both "total information" and TOTAL CONTROL.

In today's American Empire YOU (and I) are SUBJECTS. 

I liked being a citizen better.
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http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/shocking-extermination-fantasies-people-running-americas-empire-full-display?paging=off

 

Seated on a stool before an audience packed with spooks, lawmakers, lawyers and mercenaries, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer introduced recently retired CENTCOM chief General James Mattis. “I’ve worked with him and I’ve worked with his predecessors,” Blitzer said of Mattis. “I know how hard it is to run an operation like this.”
Reminding the crowd that CENTCOM is “really, really important,” Blitzer urged them to celebrate Mattis: “Let’s give the general a round of applause.”
Following the gales of cheering that resounded from the room, Mattis, the gruff 40-year Marine veteran who once volunteered his opinion that “it’s fun to shoot some people,” outlined the challenge ahead. The “war on terror” that began on 9/11 has no discernable end, he said, likening it to the “the constant skirmishing between [the US cavalry] and the Indians” during the genocidal Indian Wars of the 19th century.
“The skirmishing will go on likely for a generation,” Mattis declared.
Mattis’ remarks, made beside a cable news personality who acted more like a sidekick than a journalist, set the tone for the entire 2013 Aspen Security Forum this July. A project of the Aspen Institute, the Security Forum brought together the key figures behind America’s vast national security state, from military chieftains like Mattis to embattled National Security Agency Chief General Keith Alexander to top FBI and CIA officials, along with the bookish functionaries attempting to establish legal groundwork for expanding the war on terror.
Partisan lines and ideological disagreements faded away inside the darkened conference hall, as a parade of American securitocrats from administrations both past and present appeared on stage to defend endless global warfare and total information awareness while uniting in a single voice of condemnation against a single whistleblower bunkered inside the waiting room of Moscow International Airport: Edward Snowden.  ..................................................

Exterminating People'
John Ashcroft, the former Attorney General who prosecuted the war on terror under the administration of George W. Bush, appeared at Aspen as a board member of Academi. Responding to a question about U.S. over-reliance on the “kinetic” approach of drone strikes and special forces, Ashcroft reminded the audience that the U.S. also likes to torture terror suspects, not just “exterminate” them.
“It's not true that we have relied solely on the kinetic option,” Ashcroft insisted. “We wouldn't have so many detainees if we'd relied on the ability to exterminate people…We've had a blended and nuanced approach and for the guy who's on the other end of a Hellfire missile he doesn't see that as a nuance.”
Hearty laughs erupted from the crowd and fellow panelists. With a broad smile on her face, moderator Catherine Herridge of Fox News joked to Ashcroft, “You have a way with words.”
But Ashcroft was not done. He proceeded to boast about the pain inflicted on detainees during long CIA torture sessions: “And maybe there are people who wish they were on the end of one of those missiles.”
Competing with Ashcroft for the High Authoritarian prize was former NSA chief Michael Hayden, who emphasized the importance of Obama’s drone assassinations, at least in countries the U.S. has deemed to be Al Qaeda havens. “Here's the strategic question,” Hayden said. “People in Pakistan? I think that's very clear. Kill 'em. People in Yemen? The same. Kill 'em.”
“We don’t smoke [drug] cartel leaders but personally I’d support it,” remarked Philip Mudd, the former deputy director of Bush’s Counterterrorism Center, earning more guffaws from his fellow panelists and from Herridge. Ironically, Mudd was attempting to argue that counter-terror should no longer be a top U.S. security priority because it poses less of a threat to Americans than synthetic drugs and child obesity.
Reflection was not on the agenda for most of the Security Forum’s participants. When asked by a former US ambassador to Denmark the seminal question “This is a great country, why are we always the bad guy?,” Mudd replied, “They think that anything the U.S. does [in the Middle East], even though we helped Muslim communities in Bosnia and Kuwait, everything is rewritten to make us the bad guys.”..................................................................
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There's a lot more  --  please go there.

Detroit, and the Bankruptcy of America’s Social Contract

This from Robert Reich
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http://robertreich.org/

One way to view Detroit’s bankruptcy — the largest bankruptcy of any American city — is as a failure of political negotiations over how financial sacrifices should be divided among the city’s creditors, city workers, and municipal retirees — requiring a court to decide instead. It could also be seen as the inevitable culmination of decades of union agreements offering unaffordable pension and health benefits to city workers.

But there’s a more basic story here, and it’s being replicated across America: Americans are segregating by income more than ever before. Forty years ago, most cities (including Detroit) had a mixture of wealthy, middle-class, and poor residents. Now, each income group tends to lives separately, in its own city — with its own tax bases and philanthropies that support, at one extreme, excellent schools, resplendent parks, rapid-response security, efficient transportation, and other first-rate services; or, at the opposite extreme, terrible schools, dilapidated parks, high crime, and third-rate services.
The geo-political divide has become so palpable that being wealthy in America today means not having to come across anyone who isn’t.

Detroit is a devastatingly poor, mostly black, increasingly abandoned island in the midst of a sea of comparative affluence that’s mostly white. Its suburbs are among the richest in the nation. Oakland County, for example, is the fourth wealthiest county in the United States, of counties with a million or more residents. Greater Detroit — which includes the suburbs — is among the nation’s top five financial centers, the top four centers of high-technology employment, and the second-biggest source of engineering and architectural talent. Not everyone is wealthy, to be sure, but the median household in the region earns close to $50,000 a year, and unemployment is no higher than the nation’s average. The median household in Birmingham, Michigan, just across the border that delineates the city of Detroit, earned more than $94,000 last year; in nearby Bloomfield Hills — still within the Detroit metropolitan area — the median was more than $150,000.

The median household income within the city of Detroit is around $26,000, and unemployment is staggeringly high. One out of 3 residents is in poverty; more than half of all children in the city are impoverished. Between 2000 and 2010, Detroit lost a quarter of its population as the middle-class and whites fled to the suburbs. That left it with depressed property values, abandoned neighborhoods, empty buildings, lousy schools, high crime, and a dramatically-shrinking tax base. More than half of its parks have closed in the last five years. Forty percent of its streetlights don’t work.

In other words, much in modern America depends on where you draw boundaries, and who’s inside and who’s outside. Who is included in the social contract? If “Detroit" is defined as the larger metropolitan area that includes its suburbs, “Detroit" has enough money to provide all its residents with adequate if not good public services, without falling into bankruptcy. Politically, it would come down to a question of whether the more affluent areas of this “Detroit" were willing to subsidize the poor inner-city through their tax dollars, and help it rebound. That’s an awkward question that the more affluent areas would probably rather not have to face.
In drawing the relevant boundary to include just the poor inner city, and requiring those within that boundary to take care of their compounded problems by themselves, the whiter and more affluent suburbs are off the hook. “Their" city isn’t in trouble. It’s that other one — called “Detroit."
It’s roughly analogous to a Wall Street bank drawing a boundary around its bad assets, selling them off at a fire-sale price, and writing off the loss.  Only here we’re dealing with human beings rather than financial capital. And the upcoming fire sale will likely result in even worse municipal services, lousier schools, and more crime for those left behind in the city of Detroit. In an era of widening inequality, this is how wealthier Americans are quietly writing off the poor.

A visit to "Some Assembly Required"

It's time to visit "Some Assembly Required" again.  After you read what I've put up  --  go to the original and read the rest.  If you then choose to go back to bed, pull the covers over your head and cry  --  I can not blame you.  If you decide to try and start a NEW political party  --  I can't blame you for that either.  Just don't believe what our "news" organizations "report". 

Oh yeah  --  go out there and learn some REAL history. 

In any case, please follow link to original.
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http://ckm3.blogspot.com/

Twas Always So: "Black criminality is more than myth; it is socially engineered prophecy. If you believe a people to be inhuman, you confine them to inhuman quarters and inhuman labor, and subject them to inhuman policy. When they then behave inhumanely to each other, you take it is as proof of your original thesis. The game is rigged. Because it must be." Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Waste Not, Want: Those who want to terrify us with the specter of death by debt have seized Detroit as their new rallying cry - it was the greedy unionized government workers who brought down the city and, they warn, will bring down cities across this great nation unless their pension rights are destroyed. That's the game plan. That and selling off the art to the usual suspects. Disaster capitalism at it's best. 

No Interest: Turkey's rebellion is spreading throughout the country. Not just that park in Istanbul, nor just a few major cities - it has spread throughout the southeast, with heavy clashes between the police and government troops and the protesters. No, you didn't see it on the evening news. 


Noted: Chicago schools are laying off 2,100 employees while the city puts $55 million into a college basketball arena. Priorities.


Ah, Those Guys Again: The Lemmings have decided not to even pretend to care about the environment, the earth, or the future and announced they plan to cut the EPA budget by 34% and to prohibit any federal rules that would limit carbon emissions from power plants, no matter how high the temperature or the tides rise.
  
Fairness Doctrine: All those CEOs making 468 times their average employee's wage write their compensation off their companies' taxes, driving our taxes up by $120 billion a year.    

One More Once

Why were all the "Liberals", and so many "Progressives" so damn pro-Obama when ALL his words told me he was, at BEST, a "liberal republican", and most likely to the right of Dwight Eisenhower? 

Why were they "snowed" by his qualities as an orator?  Why didn't they actually LISTEN to what he said?

Why didn't they LOOK at Hillary's record  --  esp as a Senator? 

Why are so many so disappointed by Obama when he is who he said he was?  Also, did they really expect him to act as if he had 10 or 20 years experience on "Capitol Hill" when he just plain didn't?  Why did they expect him to forgo his "Joe Cool" act, and suddenly become a fighter?

Why can't the Republicans accept the fact Obama is NOT a "Socialist"?  Is their racism so overwhelming that they are totally blind to reality?  Do they know what a "Socialist" is?

Why are so many folks willing to vote against THEIR self interest when those pro0grams might actually help some of "THEM" (whoever "THEM" happens to be at any given time)?

How long will we continue to listen to those who wear the flag, proclaim their "patriotism", yet act as if they HATE everything the USA has accomplished, everything it stands for?

Will we EVER educate our people?

One more time

Once again, I'm taking a break.  I can't do it any more.


Just read what the "non-racist" right wing "Patriots" say when it comes to Zimmermen or Trayvon Martin. 

Listen to what folks are saying about "hoodies". 


Now, listen to some of our "Christian leaders" when it is about women, abortion, LGBT folks, and everything else they seem not to approve of.  Compare that with the words of Jesus. 

Now, take a look at how Orthodox Jews treat women IN BROOKLYN! 
Next check out how quite a few Muslims treat women.

Next, tell me why so many "liberals" are apologists for Muslims, while at the same time appearing to be anti-Semites?


Oh yeah  --  explain why the CHILDREN of Union members, who owe their decent life and education to the fact UNIONS allowed their fathers to earn a middle class income, are so damn anti-Union?

Explain why so many folks seem to LOVE Bloomberg?  Isn't he just an old fashioned Fascist?

How has it worked out that "lefties" are anti-gun, while right-wing folks are anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-GOVERNMENT  --  except when it requires keeping track of women's behavior, their sex lives, their need for contraception, and the fact they often try to act as if they are actual human beings?

Why do so many supposed "Democrats" appear to want to support various and sundry anti-abortion measures?  Have they too succumbed to the "Patriarchy Rules" party?

Who can I support?  Who can I trust?  When I do trust someone, and they are brought down by some minor sex scandal, why do I think they were set up?  Why is Senator Vitter still a Senator?  Why did Weiner resign when he didn't really show his "weiner"?  Why can't I believe ANYTHING on the "News"  --  be it CBS, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, or even Current?

Am I just going to write about Baseball, or my Cats?

I think not.  Time to recharge. 

More Batshit Crazy Burmese Buddhists: Mobbing The Muslims

Then we have more of this crap.  Please remember ALL religions are (as "they" say) "batshit crazy".  Gee-golly-gosh, don't you just LOVE these "religions of peace", the age old "wisdom of the East"?

Please follow link to original at "Atheist Oasis".
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http://atheistoasis.wordpress.com/

Lately, more Buddhists have been in the news – and the press is none too good.

Burma jails 25 Buddhists for mob killings of 36 Muslims in Meikhtila

A Burmese court has sentenced 25 Buddhists to up to 15 years in prison for murder and other crimes during a night of rioting, burning and killing in central Burma, after weeks in which it seemed only Muslims were being punished for sectarian violence aimed largely at them.
But the sentences handed down on Wednesday and Thursday did not erase a sense of unequal justice: a day earlier, a Muslim received a life sentence for murdering one of 43 people killed in March in the central Burmese town of Meikhtila.
A wave of violence in the past year in the largely Buddhist country has left more than 250 people dead and 140,000 others fleeing their homes, most of them Muslim. The attacks, and the government’s inability to stop them, have marred the south-east Asian country’s image abroad as it moves toward democracy and greater freedom after nearly five decades of military rule.
Many of the sentences were handed down on Wednesday, and the toughest stemmed from the deadliest incident of the Meikhtila riots: a brutal mob attack on an Islamic school, its students and teachers that killed 36 people.
Buddhist mobs torched Mingalar Zayone Islamic boarding school, Muslim firms and all but one of the city’s 13 mosques after a row between a Muslim and a Buddhist at a gold shop and the burning to death of a Buddhist monk by four Muslim men.

Although among the least associated religious traditions with violence, there is a robust history of Buddhist-related self-flagellation, suicides, torture, and wars.
Buddhism often promotes unproven nonsense concepts such as reincarnation and karma –again proving my repeated insistence that the idea of an afterlife – and as a transient factor the comic book idea that all deeds are written down in some invisible ledger to be paid off at some indeterminate point in the future – only pours gasoline on the fire.
The afterlife poisons all that it touches – regardless of which culture it hails from.
Till the next post, then.

John Galt and the Theory of the Firm

This from Prof. Krugman  --  it's a few days old, but I finally realized it's a must post.

Please follow link to original
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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/john-galt-and-the-theory-of-the-firm/

Via David Atkins at Digby’s place, Bloomberg Businessweek has a great piece about how an Ayn Rand-loving hedge fund guy is driving Sears into the ground.
One quirk, by the way, is that he doesn’t meet with his division heads in person; it’s all by video link. And look, I’ve seen that movie — probably a Syfy original, but I don’t remember (better than Sharknado, anyway); clearly, this guy doesn’t even exist, he’s a computer-generated hologram being manipulated by an evil IT guy.
But back to the economics: Eddie Lampert’s big idea is that markets and competition rool, so he’s forcing the different parts of Sears to compete for resources just as if they were independent firms, with individual division profitability the only criterion for success. According to BB, it’s not going well; but they don’t get much into the broader issues.
The first issue that should pop into anyone’s head here is, if the different divisions of Sears have no common interests, if the best model is competition red in tooth and claw, why should Sears exist at all? Why not just break it up into units that have no reason not to compete?
For that matter, why should any large firm exist? Why not just have small firms, or maybe just individuals, who make deals for whatever they need?
Of course, that’s not how we do things. We may live in a market sea, but that sea is dotted with many islands that we call firms, some of them quite large, within which decisions are made not via markets but via hierarchy — even, you might say, via central planning. Clearly, there are some things you don’t want to leave up to the market — the market itself is telling us that, by creating those islands of planning and hierarchy.
Now, why exactly that’s true — why some things are better done through market mechanisms, while others are better done through at least a bit of command-and-control — is a deep issue. Oliver Williamson (pdf) got a Nobel for helping elucidate some aspects of that issue (although that may not mean much to you, considering some of the people who’ve gotten Nobels).
The thing is, however, that for a free-market true believer the recognition that some things are best not left up to markets should be a disturbing notion. If the limitations of markets in providing certain kinds of shared services are important enough to justify the creation of command-and-control entities with hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers, might there not even be some goods and services (*cough* health care *cough*) best provided by non-market means even at the level of the economy as a whole?
So in a way Eddie Lampert is being consistent: he’s putting his money (or actually his investors’ money) where his ideology is, and applying market-worship to the internal management of his own company.
Of course, the purity of the experiment is sort of spoiled by the likelihood that there isn’t actually any such person, that he’s just a hologram. But still.

Obamacare Is the Right’s Worst Nightmare

Here's an interesting post from Prof. Krugman - please follow link to original
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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

News from New York: it looks as if insurance premiums on the individual market are going to plunge thanks to Obamacare. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; in fact, the New York experience perfectly illustrates why Obamacare had to look the way it does. And it also illustrates why conservatives should be terrified about this legislation, as it takes effect. Americans may have had a lot of misgivings in advance, thanks to vast, deliberately spread misinformation. But I agree with Matt Yglesias — unless the GOP finds even more ways to sabotage the plan, this thing is going to work, it’s going to be extremely popular, and it’s going to wreak havoc with conservative ideology.
To understand what’s happening in New York, you have to start with what almost everyone at least pretends to believe: Americans shouldn’t find it impossible to get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions that aren’t their fault. Two decades ago, New York tried to deal with this by imposing community rating: insurance is available to everyone, and the price doesn’t depend on your medical history.
The problem was that this created a death spiral: young, healthy people didn’t buy insurance, worsening the risk pool, driving up premiums, driving out more relatively healthy people, etc., until you were left with a rump of very ill people paying very high rates.
How do you deal with this? Well, ideally, Medicare for all. But since that wasn’t going to happen, you improve the risk pool by requiring everyone to buy insurance — the individual mandate. And since some people won’t be able to afford that, you also offer subsidies. Voila! ObamaRomneycare!
Where does the money for the subsidies come from? Partly by reducing corporate welfare: reducing overpayments for Medicare Advantage, reducing tax breaks for very generous insurance plans; partly with new taxes on the wealthy.
And while a few people will be hurt — young, healthy individuals too affluent to qualify for subsidies, wealthy taxpayers, etc. — a much larger number of people will be helped, some of them enormously.
Does this amount to “redistribution”? Well, yes — not as an end in itself, but yes, a lot of people will be made better off at the expense of an affluent few.
And Yglesias is right: there will be bobbles along the way, but this is going to become an immensely popular program. By the time Liz Cheney challenges Hillary Clinton’s reelection campaign, there will be signs at the rallies declaring “Don’t let the government get its hands on Obamacare!”
Conservatives are right to be hysterical about this: it’s an attack on everything they believe — and it’s going to make Americans’ lives better. What could be worse?

Metallica - Enter Sandman

Even though I'm not exactly a "metal" fan, this is a tribute to the LAST #42, Mariano Rivera.    A great pitcher, a great Yankee, on his last (of 13) All Star Games.  The following is his entrance theme..

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Bad Moon Rising

An Impertinent Question

The latest from Robert Reich  --  please follow link to original
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http://robertreich.org/

Permit me an impertinent question (or three).
Suppose a small group of extremely wealthy people sought to systematically destroy the U.S. government by (1) finding and bankrolling new candidates pledged to shrinking and dismembering it; (2) intimidating or bribing many current senators and representatives to block all proposed legislation, prevent the appointment of presidential nominees, eliminate funds to implement and enforce laws, and threaten to default on the nation’s debt; (3) taking over state governments in order to redistrict, gerrymander, require voter IDs, purge voter rolls, and otherwise suppress the votes of the majority in federal elections; (4) running a vast PR campaign designed to convince the American public of certain big lies, such as climate change is a hoax, and (5) buying up the media so the public cannot know the truth.
Would you call this treason?
If not, what would you call it?
And what would you do about it?

Hunger Games, U.S.A. By PAUL KRUGMAN

The latest column from Dr. Krugman.  Please follow link to original
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/opinion/krugman-hunger-games-usa.html?ref=paulkrugman&_r=0


Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.

The occasion for these observations is, as you may have guessed, the monstrous farm bill the House passed last week.

For decades, farm bills have had two major pieces. One piece offers subsidies to farmers; the other offers nutritional aid to Americans in distress, mainly in the form of food stamps (these days officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP).

Long ago, when subsidies helped many poor farmers, you could defend the whole package as a form of support for those in need. Over the years, however, the two pieces diverged. Farm subsidies became a fraud-ridden program that mainly benefits corporations and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile food stamps became a crucial part of the social safety net.

So House Republicans voted to maintain farm subsidies — at a higher level than either the Senate or the White House proposed — while completely eliminating food stamps from the bill.

To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You’re personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people’s money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”

It is, however, apparently perfectly O.K. to take people’s money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.

Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.

Given this awesome double standard — I don’t think the word “hypocrisy” does it justice — it seems almost anti-climactic to talk about facts and figures. But I guess we must.

So: Food stamp usage has indeed soared in recent years, with the percentage of the population receiving stamps rising from 8.7 in 2007 to 15.2 in the most recent data. There is, however, no mystery here. SNAP is supposed to help families in distress, and lately a lot of families have been in distress.

In fact, SNAP usage tends to track broad measures of unemployment, like U6, which includes the underemployed and workers who have temporarily given up active job search. And U6 more than doubled in the crisis, from about 8 percent before the Great Recession to 17 percent in early 2010. It’s true that broad unemployment has since declined slightly, while food stamp numbers have continued to rise — but there’s normally some lag in the relationship, and it’s probably also true that some families have been forced to take food stamps by sharp cuts in unemployment benefits.

What about the theory, common on the right, that it’s the other way around — that we have so much unemployment thanks to government programs that, in effect, pay people not to work? (Soup kitchens caused the Great Depression!) The basic answer is, you have to be kidding. Do you really believe that Americans are living lives of leisure on $134 a month, the average SNAP benefit?

Still, let’s pretend to take this seriously. If employment is down because government aid is inducing people to stay home, reducing the labor force, then the law of supply and demand should apply: withdrawing all those workers should be causing labor shortages and rising wages, especially among the low-paid workers most likely to receive aid. In reality, of course, wages are stagnant or declining — and that’s especially true for the groups that benefit most from food stamps.

So what’s going on here? Is it just racism? No doubt the old racist canards — like Ronald Reagan’s image of the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy a T-bone steak — still have some traction. But these days almost half of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites; in Tennessee, home of the Bible-quoting Mr. Fincher, the number is 63 percent. So it’s not all about race.

What is it about, then? Somehow, one of our nation’s two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness, a contempt for what CNBC’s Rick Santelli, in the famous rant that launched the Tea Party, called “losers.” If you’re an American, and you’re down on your luck, these people don’t want to help; they want to give you an extra kick. I don’t fully understand it, but it’s a terrible thing to behold.

Mark Almond - New York State of Mind - Return to the City