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Reading through much, and reading what others have read, I can say I’ve seen nothing much to be concerned.
People are people, and always will be. If someone acts pompously, expect to get called out on it. Learn from it and move on.
What is funny, is that I’m sure they have opinions of individuals within our state department, that are far more condescending of us, than anything so far leaked about them.
There is a lot to read, but so far, nothing drastic has hit the fan. It makes little difference whether they were published, or kept in secret forever.
Just like a marriage, when secrets come out, it’s a good thing. Things unsaid and therefore never acted upon, can now be fixed.
Were these leaks about hardware, that would be different entirely. They are only about people, and opinions people have about other people. And as everyone who reads this knows, opinions are worth a bag of crap.
Still reading.. Will let you know if something changes. But right now, it’s as if all the hoopla lead up to the release of The Lord of the Rings, only to get The Last Airbender.
Like having bad farts locked up in the bathroom, it’s about time we opened the door and cleared the air.
It started out with a simple question:
If cutting taxes was good for the economy, why were the Bush years lousy with a net loss of jobs, and the Clinton years, where he raised taxes, so wonderful to all income levels?
If cutting taxes is good for the economy, how can that be?
This goes against common sense, until you see the details. The republican argument is simple: if you cut taxes, businesses have money to invest and grow jobs.
Sounds good… but we tried it.. and lost jobs. WTF
The other side of the argument goes like this: when you raise corporate taxes, they have less money and invest less. If taxes squeeze out the profits entirely, they won’t bother to invest. The money will go to China.
Sounds good. really if I was going to lose money, I’d invest in China too…
Again, we tried it, and the economy mushroomed. Everybody made more money… The top one percent! The bottom 10 percent! All count the Clinton years as the best in their lives.
Now if I have a theory that sounds good but doesn’t work, like using leaches whenever I get sick, and I keep doing the same thing over and over, what does that make me?
So why this strange twist? Where what should work, doesn’t, and what should fail, becomes a thriving success?
The answer is in human nature. When you cut taxes, people have more money. Obviously they would want to receive the highest investment on that extra money possible. It goes overseas and creates not one new job. I invested overseas during the Bush years, often to 25-30 percent rates back… Really, why wouldn’t I?
When you raise taxes on corporate income, it pays to reinvest as much money as possible back into your business, so it does not get taxed. That money creates jobs, whether it is in your expanded R&D department, you new office building, or taking your employees out to eat, simply to keep Uncle Sam from taking that piece of your money..
Here’s the part that cracks me up. The Democrat plan causes domestic investment to soar, just what the Republican plan was supposed to do. The Democrat plan actually cause less tax to be paid per business, because they reinvest a lot of their profit; they report less income, they pay less tax.
So if you want to get the economy rolling, remove the Bush Tax cuts. Let them expire. As they do, it becomes imperative for each business hide some money back into their upkeep.
One of the widgets buried in our blogs tells us with which title, a search engine pulled up our blog. Today was the first time i happened to catch someone searching under “Steven Newton Whiskey” . I’m sure there are millions of searches daily for that title..
Thankfully, for those searching, Google has placed my name at the top of searches for that elusive title…
To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, “find out what brand of whiskey Steven Newton drinks, and send a barrel out to all our (Delaware’s) bloggers.”
Wherever you are Steve.. Happy Thanksgiving. 
After tremendous backups up and down Interstate 95 at the Delaware border, Delaware took the courageous step to waive the $4 toll and allow cars to pass unimpeded.
Courtesy of Delaware’s finest News Station.
On the most heavily traveled day of the year, when over 100,000 cars are expected to pass.though that sector, waiving that money for the ease of each motorist, is worthy of a commendation.
Someone put people’s sanity and welfare, over money.
it is a courageous act and should be held in high esteem. Should any Republican politician lampoon that decision, you can trust they will soon exactly learn who, and who not to lampoon.
Rick Jensen on WDEL, among others, has given much airplay to the invasive procedures implemented by the TSA..
Triple A, (AAA), is estimating 1.62 million people will fly this holiday.
There is no data on the number of complaints that will happen this weekend coming up.. But there were 877 complaints for the month of September.
877 divided by 1.62 million, is 0.054% of travelers. In other words, 99.946% had no complaints about the procedures being used this weekend.
And it’s not just Rick Jensen. It’s the entire media. A quick scan at the airport showed all major paper leading with the man who sat in urine theme.
Rick Jensen makes it official. American journalism has officially descanted to the level of Supermarket Tabloids.
But if I were a Muslim, with all these reports of x rays and groping my privates….. no one could pay me enough to fly this season to kill Americans… To hell with dying, but the groping of my privates? That sends me straight to hell! Ben Laden’s trust fund couldn’t pay me to bear that….
The real news travelers, is that 99. 95% people flew hassle free… If no planes go down in flight… one can conclude it is a successful policy.
Out of every 10,000 who flew, 9994 had no problem. What’s the chance you won’t be the one having a problem?
99.9%
Go fly…
Go fly.
I’ll be brief.
A change occurred because of Tea Partiers. Their frustration centered around a failing America.
Now when I talk the tea party, I don’t mean what you hear from the media. I’m sure, (in fact we know it), that Samuel Adams himself sounded a little crazy when he first began touting independence from Great Britain. Fortunately one sticks around when someone is handing out free beer, and …. well…. here we are.
What’s gone wrong with this country?
In a previous post below I have a character who says: “I fear for my country when it’s citizens believe my Healh Insurance Company has my own best interests at heart.” Of course the health industry doesn’t.
But you would never know it from what is being said in the media.
Bottom line is: our whole lives are determined by “marketing.” (Just curious… which toothpaste do you buy? Why? Next time in the aisle, read the labels of twenty or more.. Same ingredients: same percentages.)
It’s same with political candidates. The campaigns are full of promise, but when in power…. who do they deliver to?
Whereas our lives two hundred years were controlled by a king, and court over 3000 miles away….. today, we are being controlled by a similar handful of powerful people. They own governments. The politicians work for them, if they can of course, get past us and our votes…
The fault is therefore ours. We put them in. Case in point. Coons just voted for blocking any internet site that had copyright infringement…. As a freshman walking in I admit, I would have done the same. There is no way I would have stuck by neck out to be the sole dissenting vote. After all, just starting out, I wouldn’t know any details and would assume that if both parties were in favor, it was a slam dunk decision.
However if it passes both houses, we one day will regret this bill. We all know, had we blocked the VCR, the MP3, the DVr, or cable companies “on demand” services, our lives would be less rich today. Each of these technological advances had a bill initiated to block their use, again because of perceived copyright infringements. (Those bills were supported by the same interests as is this one.) Can you imagine growing up or raising kids without a VCR?
So exactly why should the internet be allowed to be blocked as well?
Next statement: we are actually in the age of disinformation because with such a wealth of mankind’s knowledge at our fingertips, are we totally dependent on being told what is out there.
One can see it anytime one compares reporting from our media, MSNBC, CNN, or others against the world’s news media. We don’t get even half of the full picture of what is happening.
Bottom line, is what we hear is bunk. Americans have no trustworthy source of information.
Consider new plans of action.
1) Corporate political advertising needs to be tagged as such. ” This political message was made up and paid for by BP Oil. There is no law that says we have to be truthful in anything we say.”
2) Any politician accepting corporate money and voting on any bill that affects that company’s welfare, can be prosecuted for violating the public’s interest. The impossibility of one politician being able to keep up with all the intricacies, and the number of people out there looking for “gotcha” moments to pin him to a wall, should make politicians quick to say “no thank you” to corporate bribes currently disguised as political donations.
And … bottom line. is that if companies have this much money to throw away, ….. we should be taxing them to use that money currently wasted on goods and services that should either be growing our economy, or buying down our debt…. Obviously our tax structure is set far too low if it allows this biannual waste of money.
So.. bottom line: Our nation will not get off the ground until we as did Teddy Roosevelt, put corporations back into the corral.
From this point on our political conflicts are no longer Democrat versus Republican. They are corporate versus people… As Coons just showed, it is hard to draw a line isolating one party as pro corporate and the other party as pro people…. Once you understand that, you begin to understand the attraction that the Tea Partiers have with Americans living on the outside of the beltway.
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I’ve always enjoyed Frank’s pieces. We may have differed on some subjects, but he says what he thinks.
Yesterday he impressed me. Because it is exactly what I’ve been saying for two years. I just never put it as bluntly as did he….
Here is his lead up:
Even after the recent loss of Michele Rollins and Mike Castle in the GOP primary, both were the GOP endorsed candidates, the NCC GOP Committee chooses another left leaning “MODERATE”. Moderate has become code speak for someone the GOP hopes will appeal to Democrat voters. In the press release Mr. Kovak is described as a “FISCAL CONSERVATIVE”, this is code speak for moderate and someone who the GOP hopes will appeal to Democrats.
And here is the left jab:
“As a fiscal conservative with a proven record of fighting excessive government spending and higher taxes, Tom knows how to hold government accountable. Tom’s candidacy will offer voters a clear and unmistakable choice between someone who will challenge the tired status quo that has led to conflicts of interest, shortsighted planning, higher taxes and a systemic budget deficit, and the forces that have been part of the problem.”
This is exactly why I’ve said the Tea Partier’s have more of America’s heart than do the Republicans. And I would have to say, that Frank’s message, applies to Democrats as well.
It is time for real patriots, on both the left and right, to unite and fight the real enemy: corporate checks. This is what has been slowly killing off America, no matter whose party is in power. This is why we haven’t gotten the change this nation needs if it is to survive: both sides are bought out.
This headline would have cracked me up before November 2nd. But the results of that election raised some interesting questions.
1) Why does the election really say?
2) Who are the Tea Partiers, really?
3) Why was Delaware different?
To get the answer, one had to ignore the media (and those sycophants of causes who butter up to that media). To get the answer one has to go to the people who voted and find out exactly why they felt the frustration and voted the way they did.. The answer, if one takes the time to listen, is that they wanted change. Ironically, as some of you may remember, that was Obama’s message from the last election. 2 years ago we voted Obama in for a change. 2 weeks ago we voted tea partiers in… for a change..
The common denominator between both elections, is that the electorate is unhappy with the status quo.
The common denominator between both elections, is that the Republicans lost big.. first to the Democrats, then to the Tea Partiers.
The Republican Party is in crises. They may lose party leadership battles, adopt or absorb the Tea Party’s doctrine, but from what Tea Partiers are saying, they want nothing to do with Republicans. Here locally, Mike Castle’s and Tom Ross’s bashing proves it. Party activists on the ground floor, see the Republican party only lip syncs to their libertarian streak; then turns a blind eye, tending to keep things locked down in status quo.
Funny thing was, when Tea Partiers talked after the election, as I listened I was agreeing. I was saying to myself, ” Hey, that sounds like me 2007-2008… the exact same thing.’.. For one, Tea Partiers are infuriated that costs for small businesses are climbing, while multinational corporations are able to buy their congressmen to slip in a waver so they can import specialty chemicals duty free. Is that fair? NO. For two, Tea Partiers are infuriated that they had to scrape and scrimp to pay their tax obligations, and Exxon-Mobile was given a $23 Billion dollar tax break during a period when gas was $4.25 a gallon. Is that fair? NO. For three, Tea Partiers are infuriated that the Republican Party, diligently undercut, undermined, and underfunded their candidates, thereby pushing them to independent status. Only after smashing party endorsed candidates, did the Republican Party cold heartedly endorse who ever it was they had on the ballot… Is that fair? NO.
If one looks at the political landscape. .. .. The two parties out there, are the Tea Party and the Democrats. The Republicans are non existent, except in name and corporate donors… Only because of the financing laws as they are today is the Republican organization still a player. Were this the 1850′s, they would be as dead as the Whigs.
Secondly. The wave of Democrats elected to Congress in 2008, meant that some very Republican districts, dismayed with everything the Republicans had done under George W Bush, went blue with the Democrats.
Therefore, during this past session even though their representative was Democrat in name, they were answerable to their conservative electorate. It would he suicidal for those congresspersons to vote for any liberal causes. It appears the restraint of the Blue Dogs wasn’t enough; each of those went back Republican this time around.
Of course Republicans would be fools not to spin this as an indictment of Obama Healthcare and Economic Salvage. After all, they have nothing else going for them. We should expect they spin something positive out of their own collapse, and point out to all that is exactly what they are doing. Though they do so, not everyone out there agrees with them. After all, the electorate remembers the havoc Republicans did to our economy. After all, the electorate remember that Clinton actually helped all five quintiles of America grow richer over his tenure…
They don’t have faith in Republicans. Their faith is in America, ie, as in American values. What they saw over the past two years is that the Democrats were ineffective in making a dent against Republican stall techniques. And so, … they pushed back and made change happen within the party.
So what did the election really say? It says the GOP failing streak has continued. It says the population has no confidence in their leadership. Ironically, the old time Republican values are alive and well. They are in Tea Partiers instead. Those possessing them, are disillusioned that Michael Steele’s official Republican Party, as it stood Nov. 2nd, could deliver.
So who are the Tea Partiers? Most are new at politics. Most came to politics in 2009 as their incomes shrunk back, and tales of stimulus corruption spread rampant. Most are small business persons, either running a family business or a small corporation. From their viewpoint, they see a government still cut back from the Bush years, unable to deliver services while asking for more and more money. And they didn’t see results coming from Democrats.
And Tea Partiers were furious at corporate meddling in the election process. All of them had to plow through tremendous amounts for corporate money thrown against them. All had to overcome big bucks coming from just a few people. All of them are cynical as to how the election process works. I took some comfort, in how in almost every post election interview, the Tea Party candidate emphatically made a point to scold the Republican Party. The Republican party is corrupt. It is bought and owned by corporate interests. It only pretends to want to alleviate peoples pain and suffering, until it gets their votes. Then, it is about assuaging the large corporations who keep their campaigns afloat.
The Tea Partiers realized that money doesn’t vote. People do. And whether for a Tea Partier, or for a Democrat, overwhelmingly, people voted anti-Republican which loosely translated, means they voted anti corporate.
So this is the crystal. Americans are fed up with the corporate takeover of our government. Leave small businesses alone, both Tea Partiers and Democrats say. But stick it to the corporations. They are fed up that a conservative court can scuttle the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. They are fed up with robo calls, fed up with character smearing literature appearing daily in their mailbox, fed up with talk-show blathering ad nauseum, and they know,… they know.. that the only reason that stuff is getting spit out, is because someone with a lot of money is paying someone else to do so.
Money is ruining our politics.
On this Tea Partiers and Liberals agree. They were attacking the exact same problem: the corporate political takeover; just tackling it from two different directions.
Why didn’t Delaware follow this same trend?
Delaware is different. But in a certain way, it did follow the same trend as the nation. Delaware supported Christine O’Donnell while she was an outsider. But as soon as the Republicans stepped in …. she lost that support. Republicans told her not to speak to reporters. She did what they said and lost. Republicans told her not to talk to the media. She did what they said and lost. Had Christine done a full court press with the entire media immediately after her win, and personally engaged in all the attacks with which she was presented, the electorate would have been tired of all that witch stuff by election day and would have begun to listen to her message: that its the people who matter.. In the general election, the voters voted for the anti-Republican: which in this case was Coons.
Vance Phillips lashed out at the Republican leadership. He won. Winners don’t attack their own party unless something is seriously wrong. With Delaware’s Republican party, something is seriously wrong. Vance Phillips is not a corporate sponge. He’s a candidate in touch with his electorate.
Delawareans gave their vote to Coons because he is the better guy. Christine is great, but seeing her standing next to Coons it was obvious to all but her most ardent supporters, that he was simply a better fit for Delaware. Nothing against Christine. Had Tony DeLuca been the Democrat’s choice, she might be sitting in Congress right now..
Likewise, Delawareans gave Flowers the treasurer’s spot because they saw through what Bonini was. Everything bad about the Republican party… he exuded from foot to toe… and it stunk. Against two unknowns, they went for the one which smelled like flowers.
Korn just did not win. Wagner is not a Republican despite whatever political party is attached to his name. He is a good guy, and though very few people know the details of what he does, they do know that he hasn’t messed up anything so far, and therefore between two unknowns, the one currently doing ok appeared to be the safer choice. No doubt, Korn would have made the better auditor. He didn’t make his case out where it could be seen by most of the electorate.
But had Wagner come out like Bonini, spitting Republicanisms left and right.. … Korn would have won.
What’s different in Delaware is that with it’s small size, it has a rather active blogging community. A citizen’s news-rag so to speak, made up of many individuals that simply talk about what they know. In that environment it is hard to spread lies. “Obama is a Socialist”? I don’t think even Urquhart muttered as such. Yet such statements were commonly printed in red state’s editorials, where there is no independent source to discredit that slant. The News Journal tried to spin royally up through the primaries, but Christine O’Donnell flatly put them in their place with her win. They licked their wounds all the way past Nov. 2nd, afraid to get caught propagandizing again….
If you have an outlet for truth to be heard, it usually rises to the top. That is why totalitarian governments work so hard to suppress truth anywhere they find it. If you don’t kill it.. it kills you. In Delaware the electorate had a balanced opinion. They were able to listen to both educated citizens and corporate shills.
They chose wisely.
To succeed this next session. Tea Partiers and Liberals will need to kill corporate money influencing elections. After all, it goes against one of the values instilled by our founding fathers, that our nation would rise, or fall, upon the principal of one man… one vote. We desperately need campaign finance reform eliminating all corporate sponsors from donating to campaigns; so our elected officials can return to worry about what ‘We, the People’ think, and not the thoughts of just a handful of their campaign donors.
Every Geek and computer buff in America needs to be watching the Delaware Election website between 8:00 and 9:00 today on Election Night… with his finger on the screen shot button…
Delaware is only a state of 878,000 people… The highest turnout ever was the election 2008 when 390,962 went to the polls… If Christine wins, the Republican’s nationally take control of the Senate. That is what is at stake. Currently, publicly her website is stating that she has 1.7 million in the bank, though the last time I checked she was boasting that they’d crossed 4 million…
There is a lot of money riding on whether she wins… Oil money, Insurance money, pharmaceutical money, mining money, wall street bankers, investment brokers, all who stand to again make windfall profits should she be elected… And she might be… The race is tight..
But with so much on the line and so much at stake, who could blame someone for trying to buy the election… By buy, I mean spending some money to change the voter talleys so they match what is wanted, … not what we ..the voters of Delaware wanted…
This happened in Ohio, when Ken Stackwell was the Commissioner of Elections, and right in the middle of a very closely contested Presidential Election hinging on Ohio’s votes… The webserver for Ohio’s Department of Elections, was mysteriously swapped to Smarttech, a web hosting center in Chattanooga, Tennessee which hosts many Republican State websites…
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/11/7/115314/922
That website currently hosts this state’s GOP now that we have a nationally contested election… Hmmm. This is a rather new development.
The Delaware website will experience excessive traffic… (and will probably crash) Every election website in America will be featuring that link on their page, as well as every political junkie in America, irregardless of political affiliation; all will be impatiently awaiting the results…
What we should be looking for is in the address bar, is this… http://elections.delaware.gov/results/html/unofresl.shtml
But if we see anything like this……NS1.CHA SMARTECHCORP.NET anywhere around the address bar… then our data was transferred to that Chattanooga site, where it could possibly be manipulated and then returned to us in it’s new form…
Delaware has a fail safe. On the back of every machine, a total is made of each voter’s transaction. The actual data units are packed up and sent to Dover where they remain sealed until inspected later during canvas. The area of opportunity exists, … where the official elections results are modified during the interim, when someone slipped inside the Department of Elections, can open the units and change the actual tallies to reflect the new data downloaded by SMARTECHCORP. NET.. from Chattanooga Tennessee.. After all, $4 million dollars IS a lot of money.
But, Delawareans are smarter than Ohioians. (That is why Ohio people in our honor, named one of their counties after us… It gives them hope they may aspire to one day become as great as we are…)
if this is slated to get done, then there is nothing we can do to stop it.. The question is … whether it gets done and we catch it? Or it gets done and we don’t.
That is the question. So, all geeks, open your tabs and be ready. After all, it’s only an hour. Be extremely vigilant if the system crashes…
Government only works when it is aligned with the will of its people… When it goes out of alignment, all those wheels turning government, .. fall off…
But if enough people are watching,… it can’t happen. One of you, could be the individual who saves this nation.
