It Could Be Worse….

Today it is depicted as sml.  Or fml.  Loosely translated, it means “I’m screwed”….

When I was young, grandparents were very sympathetic.  So we milked them for it.  However to all my problems they had one answer. “Well, it could be worse.”  i always felt that was a cop-out, like “hey, really man?  I come to you for aged wisdom and guidance and all you can tell me is that… hey dude, you know man, it could be worse?”

Funny.

Only now I am fully comprehending what it must have been like living through the Great Depression.  Only now can I fully realize what it was like to lose your house, your farm, and actually have nothing.  Only now can I fully realize the true horror of having evil tear apart your world, and land a sucker punch out of the blue with an unprovoked Pearl Harbor or an invasion through the Ardennes.  Only now, can I appreciate what it truly meant, that zero ships made it up the coast from Florida to New York in quite a few months. Only now can I fully realize what it meant to watch evil take out civilization like shutting off light switches and there was nothing we could do about it except read of the defeats in the newspaper….  Only now, can I fully realize what it meant to put your life and job and family’s future welfare on the gambling table and agree to strike your employer, until he agreed to pay you a little more than the starvation wages you were stuck in…

What my grandparents were telling me was this:  “That’s not really that bad;  try hard and you can dig yourself out of it… “

What was unsaid, probably because they hated bragging, was this……. “We did, and it was much, much worse than what you face today.”

Quit complaining, and do.

Captive Audience Reacts To John Carney’s TelaTownhall

Image Courtesy of HannaBarbara Productions.

Delaware Liberal has running commentary here…… 

One Year Ago….

I’m a little late, but I wanted to mark down mostly for myself but sharing it as well, the accomplishments being made as a direct result of last year’s elections….  Some of the conclusions are superfluous, but are perceived to be a result of the election’s consequences, and since perception is nine tenths of reality, they too are a force with which to be reckoned..

Remember this is general and is being painted with a broad brush….

The economy is number one.  Some taxes were raised which boosted the economy almost immediately.  This has been the most consistent trend over the past year.  The economy has benefited the same people it benefited before. It has not seemed to help those who were not helped before.   If you are an investor, this has been a great year.  Stock Market has never been higher.

The number of private sector jobs has consistently grown across 2013…..

One of the marvelous trends is the fact that once the solid line is crossed in the year 2010, it never drops below…  That means we have consistently been growing private sector jobs… Since 2010 we have never had a negative month… one where we actually lost jobs.  However Unemployment has not fared so well.  Even though we are growing jobs, we still have a ways to go.  In one of the most amazing graphs… so amazing I’m rather surprise it has not been featured until now, one sees all employment across this century….

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What is fascinating is first, the constant rate of growth.  the pitch of the line never changes.   But what is freaky, is exactly how that pitch mirrors the employment growth of the Bush years…  Not even Republicans can fault George W. Bush’s employment growth up until 2007.  Obama’s rate mirrors his rate exactly.

It needs more quantified research, but initial speculation would be that since the tax rates were similar (The Bush Cuts were carried over) that factor pretty well determines the maximum rate at which our nation’s economy is able to grow.  Furthermore it shows us that if consistency prevails, and since it has for the past 10 years there is little likelihood it wouldn’t, then we will have grown into employment levels which we had just before the crash in fall of 2014……

So investors have done well; the middle class hasn’t.

Consumer spending is exactly the same level as of the first of the year.  It’s low was reached during the sequester fight (Jan 28) and its high, was on August 18th.  As for now, we are were we were Christmas Day 2012.

Consumer Confidence is right where it was in January.  We had some peaks over summer, but he shutdown lowered us back to where the threat of a shutdown held us hostage as the year began…..

Only since 2013 have we made progress on hammering down the deficit.  The national debt is still huge.  it will take multiple budget surpluses to whittle it down, and to achieve that, we need to again tax more than we spend.  But we are not spending a trillion dollars in deficits anymore. we are only over spending by 600 billion which may become less by years end than 2003’s deficit….

 

Enough economics.

On the world front:

• We have a possible solution to Iran’s giving up on being a nuclear power.
• We have Syria dismantling their chemical weapons.
• We are on course to leave Afghanistan.
• We have Iraq begging us to please, please come back.

All of these would have gone completely the opposite way if you remember what Romney was promising during the debates.

• Attack Iran with shock and awe.
• Attack Syria with shock and awe,
• Attack Iraq with shock and awe… oh wait, that was Rumsfeld.  Instead, Iraq was that we should never leave, and we should also stay in Afghanistan indefinitely.  But we should have never gone into Libya. My goodness, can you image the shambles the world would be in if he had ever been elected?

Not to mention,  his pushing of tightening up the money supply.  Just the anticipation of such, sends our stock market into a panic.

Domestically we have weathered Benghazi, more a Republican talking point than anything important.  We worked through the IRS scandal which it was revealed to be a forward thinking sound policy and not a scandal after all..  Political groups friendly to the president were swept up in the nets as well.

The Common Core package fortunately seems to have stalled.  It was always a low priority, and with the drying up of TARP and Stimulus funding, it seems like most state’s enthusiasm is drying up as well.   The program does not seem to be able to get past the roadblock that the tests themselves create.  There is enough opposition  by enough parents so that this program maybe salvageable in part, but dead in the water as a whole.

It would be nice to have a viable program in its place.  One that aims to put an 11:1 student/teacher ratio in troubled public schools.

But, the most notable event and the one with the biggest blowout, was the revelations by one Edward Snowden which were made last July. America is collecting huge amounts of data.  Since then the leaks have only become worse.  Americans have compromised the entire Internet.  They have broken into banks, they have spied on foreign competitors, they have become a service offering  “information for hire…. ”  And although too early to tell, implications are that is may have been done secretly even keeping the president and his officers completely in the dark….

Which is really scary.  Cheney’s shadow government is alive and well……

If true, this is our greatest threat.  Simply because unlike the economy, unlike unemployment, unlike Syria, Iran, or Israel, unlike the Republican yellow journalistic scandals…. this one is against us.  It violates our Constitution.  It is against all we purport to be…..

One interesting parallel…. Long, long, long ago, the city state of Rome was also a viable democracy, and like us, it too expanded its empire across the known world…  Until Julius Caesar marched his armies into Rome, took over the reins as dictator, done in order to bypass the quagmire in which it’s Congress had become bogged down…  It was originally supposed to be a temporary solution….  For the next 400 odd years, Rome never went back… Instead one bad Caesar followed another, often at the point of a sword (there was no NRA back then)…

Looking the other way at a scandal of this proportion, especially if it was done as a rogue element of which the White House now even barely has a clue as to how deep it goes… and what is has been doing,  then we already have a Caesar, and whoever it is, they are not elected by us, We, The People….

This can be fixed quietly, internally, and we may never hear of its resolution.  Or it could get worse.  Much worse…

The final solution is to cut off the NSA from its unlimited sources of money…. Even shut it down, or better, let a more porous government agency, even that of the CIA take it over….

Spying on American citizens is simply put…. un American.  It has never been who we are.  We’ve always chose the other way.  It does not represent what we want ourselves to be….   Any person could spy on their neighbor if they wished.  Any person could hide in his neighbor’s bushes and watch them get undressed… Most of us would be so creeped out at just the idea, we would never, ever consider doing such a thing.

The fact that most of us would never consider something that creepy, has always been what has made Americans so special, so likable, and so loved the world around…. We were different from those Communists….  Well, not any more.

As each new NSA revelation comes out, one just can’t shake the creepy feeling that somewhere Voldermort,  somehow is pulling all the strings……

The War On Women

Photo courtesy of Big Girl In A Straight World

There is no war on women… War is what’s going on in Syria. War on women, is what the Taliban did to that poor Pakistani girl.

But that said, this whole binder thing, has opened my eyes like no other. I can remember when we women had things much worse. For example, if we refused sex, we’d get fired and had no recourse to sue. “Shouldn’t have asked for it was all the police would say.” So from that perspective I’d have to say I was intrigued, but a little distant from all the angst todays Republicans were bringing to bear….

Delaware Liberal had a conversation about Morning Joe after the debate, when the female brought up the binder issue, and Joe Scarborough and his male friend, jumped all over her… Don’t bring up that slip of the tongue, it has no relevance to this election.” In a sense, they dismissed her as stupid, right there on national television.

If they’d thought about it beforehand, I’m sure they’d phrase it differently. Obviously there were major items that the male mind was still struggling to grasp from the night before. Like who was the tougher guy? Who won? Who had the best offense, best defense? They couldn’t be bothered by a joke about binders when the candidate probably didn’t even know how funny what came out of his mouth was…..

But what Mitt said, burns with a hot flame in the consciousness of every woman that hears it. Because we’ve heard it all before. It’s not the words being spoken; it is the hidden disdain lurking underneath what is being said….

Here is how Mitt came across… “Wait, there are women voters too. Do we have any women on our staff? We need some women as window dressing. Bring me some binders of women. I want to pick a couple out…. so I can say I have one working hard under me… ha ha…nudge, nudge. (and while you’re out there, pick up a couple of knee pads, will you?)… We’ve heard it all before. Sometimes to our faces, thinking they are funny and we are just like them so we will approve, but usually we hear about it second hand, and act like it comes with the job…

It does come with the job.

Not saying we don’t have fun with it too. We’re human. But most men we work with have more harassment nooses around their neck than a drunk queen on Bourbon Street has beads… They are so lucky we haven’t hit the button for that trap door….

Here is what you men don’t get. Mitt Romney ran the Olympics, worked at Bain Capital, campaigned for Governor and won all before this incident. Are we to assume no women were involved in “trustworthy” positions during the previously 20 years, so now, he had to study binders full of women, to find one to hire?

That is the anger behind this women in binders. It has nothing to do with binders, or resumes, or diminutive women living out in plastic cover cardboard with three silver rings inside….

It is that Mitt Romney, at that point in time, did not feel women were equal to men. They were flawed, they had periods, they had children, they couldn’t stay late but had to be home by 5! Sheesh. How can a government run, when it’s workers have to be home by 5? Oh well, she’s just window dressing, we’ll humor her and let her dally home each day. I’ll count on my men for the real work I’ll need…

Then, you compare this glaring example of someone who pays lip service to women, who understands he needs “window dressing” when it comes to women, and you realize that even if you made the company twice as much profit as did any man, this Mitt Romney guy, would pocket it, dismiss your contribution, and reward someone else for the work you did…..

It happens to every woman. Mitt Romney is THAT guy.

So when you compare it with his answer to the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and he said he would not support it, and several weeks ago, when asked if he’d rescind the act when he got into office, the answer, .. after looks back and forth between staffers, was literally… “Uhhh, we’ll get back to you on that one.”…. when all those are taken into account, Mitt Romney is THAT Guy… Oh, I’m glad to have some women in the office, it seems like home, can you get me some coffee, I’d like two sugars, and one cream please, and then you can dust those shelves over there. They get dusty when I’m out campaigning… ”

And that is why the binders are so important. They show us he is THAT guy. The one we trade departments to get out from underneath, the one we look for new employment, because opportunity has stopped at HIS desk, the one that in the middle of the night, upsets our whole family routine, because he infuriates with his smug condescending nature….

Women work twice as hard as men. Men can’t keep a house running for shit. I know a lot of men. As soon as they get home, they are done. Window dressing here or there. But food needs fixed, kids need bathed, floors need mopped, the bills need paid…. “Honey, the Eagles are playing tonight… you got this… ok?”

So, is there a war on women? If you mean like Syria… of course not. But America when it saw the psychological tools that were used to keep blacks down in the South, was appalled. American (except for Southern Radicals) collectively said, “you can’t treat people like that.”

Would you have called that a war on blacks? You could have and explained you were speaking metaphorically. And that’s what we women are doing now. Speaking metaphorically. There IS a war on women. It is meant to keep us in our place.

“You tell, anyone, … you are fired, got that lady?”

For Those Who Follow DelawarePolitics.Net

I’m trying to put all your ideas together into one package. So, let me get this right… All you are asking is for, is a country where:

1) There is no universal healthcare.
2) Few entitlement programs.
3) Low Flat Tax System.
4) Faith based Government.
5) A deep reverence for God.
6) Extremely strict rules against abortion.
7) Marriage has already been strictly defined as between man and woman.
8) Homosexuality is a sin, and illegal.
9) Dress Codes are strictly enforced.
10) Tattoos, piercings, baggy pants, are banned.
11) Has the Death Penalty which they aren’t shy about using.
12) Strong private school system with religious focus.
13) Widespread dependency on oil and natural gas drilling.
14) Growing nuclear program
15) Nonexistent environmental nuisances
16) Culture that promotes family and stereotyped roles for men and women.

I’ve endeavored to put all your values on one page. I share your frustration because today, ever since 2008, it seems like America is moving further and further away from these values.

But you don’t have to be frustrated anymore. I have looked far and wide and have discovered a place already in existence that has those values in place, and more. If you sorely long for those values above, it is sincerely a place where you and your family would be very happy.

It is Iran.

You don’t have to pay me. I don’t need any commission. Just glad to help a fellow Delawarean out…. No problem.

Then There’s Newt Gingrich….

Again, lifted from Der Spiegal

The current favorite? He’s a political dinosaur, dishonored and discredited. Or so we thought. Yet just because he studied history and speaks in more complex sentences than his rivals, the US media now reflexively hails him as a “Man of Ideas” (The Washington Post) — even though most of these ideas are lousy if not downright offensive, such as firing unionized school janitors, so poor children could do their jobs.

Pompous and blustering, Gingrich gets away with this humdinger as well as with selling himself as a Washington outsider — despite having made millions of dollars as a lobbyist in Washington. At least the man’s got chutzpah.

The hypocrisy doesn’t end here. Gingrich claims moral authority on issues such as the “sanctity of marriage,” yet he’s been divorced twice. He sprang the divorce on his first wife while she was sick with cancer. (His supporters’ excuse: It’s been 31 years, and she’s still alive.) He cheated on his second wife just as he was pressing ahead with Bill Clinton’s impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky affair, unaware of the irony. The woman he cheated with, by the way, was one of his House aides and 23 years his junior — and is now his perpetually smiling third wife.

Americans have a short memory. They forget, too, that Gingrich was driven out of Congress in disgrace, the first speaker of the house to be disciplined for ethical wrongdoing. Or that he consistently flirts with racism when he speaks of Barack Obama. Or that he enjoyed a $500,000 credit line at Tiffany’s just as his campaign was financially in the toilet and he ranted about the national debt. Chutzpah, indeed.

Yet the US media rewards him with a daily kowtow. And the Republicans reward him too, by having put him on top in the latest polls. Mr. Hypocrisy, the bearer of his party’s hope.

“I think he’s doing well just because he’s thinking,” former President Clinton told the conservative online magazine NewsMax. “People are hungry for ideas that make some sense.” Sense? Apparently it’s not just the Republicans who have lost their minds here.

Taxes and The Wealthy

Right click to open full image… Pictograph Courtesy of Viral..

So, can someone tell me again, why we shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead, balance the budget on the backs of everyone else?…….

I seem to be missing that little detail where that all makes sense……

Isn’t She Lovely?

Isn’t she lovely?

Before picking on a young Christine, one has to remember what those times were like. Back in the 1980’s, she really wasn’t that far out….

AID’s had just come out of nowhere. Today we don’t fear it; but back then, there was fear. Have sex with the wrong person, and you’d be dead in two years… Morte!.

Some people who were deeply religious, thought it was their responsibility to make the world safer if not healthier. Especially when MTV was promoting masturbation as the safe substitute for sexual intercourse.

Self-Masturbation could lead to mutual masturbation which could lead to group masturbation which could lead to leaky seminal fluids which could then be passed around….. indiscriminately. One could die from AIDS. And to set the stage correctly, quite a few people did die!

If one could die from masturbation, then it is best not to get started. So warning others about masturbation, could indeed, save lives… I know, wild and crazy sex may not seem like a crises now, but back then, AIDS was indeed rather scary…. Of course, the press played it up big that we were all going to die unless we became monogamous with another safe partner….

Christine O’Donnell was saving lives; That is a good thing. So don’t knock our lady.

Republicans Cost to the World Today….. $1.2 Trillion

The global markets lost 1% today… Actually that is pretty good. The losses stemmed over the fact that Republicans won’t allow new revenue to enhance our failing budget…….

Like George Washington, they want to apply more leeches (tax cuts) which eventually will bleed the father of our country dry, and kill him dead.

There are great ideas to get around the impasse……

One was so close last week in which Obama and Boehner had come almost to a 4$ Trillion Deal… It was so, so close. Boehner was about to become the Alexander Hamilton of the 21st Century: Historians would forever know him as the man who brought America back from economic ruin…….

But Boehner’s owner, jerked hard on his leash… cracking Boehner’s trachea. He then spun Boehner to the ground, and applied zip strips to his wrists and ankles. He then tazed Boehner repeatedly. For the first time in his life, Boehner did not cry. He was then strapped to a board, tilted backwards into a tank of water, and held for 45 seconds, over 111 times. He was then blindfolded and pummelled with cans of Pepsi, embedded in old cotton socks, leaving no evidence. He then poked with a tube, in his (you know where) and the other end was attached to a fire hydrant.

The next morning, Boehner said the deal was off; he refused to return Obama’s calls.

Leaks from those working for his owners, tell us the taxes on the wealthy 1% were the sole reason Boehner was given “the treatment”… It’s a damn shame; for a package of $3 trillion in cuts, (yes, includes modifications to SS and Medicare) and a Trillion in tax increases on the top 1%… would shake the dynamics of our economy.

It would spur investment here in America.
It would therefore create jobs.
It would stop the uncertainty where America was financially headed.
It would prevent the immediate loss to our economy of $4 billion a day.
It would reduce the deficit over time, and save money spent paying interest, which could then be used for services.
It would be the proper step at this time in the direction we need to go.

But, if the US defaults on its debt, nothing in the financial markets is sacred, and when nothing is sacred, that… causes panics…

And a panic in 1929… caused the Great Depression. A panic in 2008, caused the mess we’re in right now.

The world’s managed wealth is $122 trillion… A one percent drop.. is $1.2 trillion. That is the amount, that one half, of one third our government,… cost the world today.

They are kids, playing with a live junction box… Sticking a screwdriver in the wrong hole, burns down the entire house……

(At $50,000 a job, today’s loss is the financial equivalent of putting 24 million human beings out of work)

Religion Grows In Sussex County; It’s Just Not the Religion Our Backwood’s Preachers Envisioned

The story goes that Warren Buffet, rather worried about his investments early 2008, wanted to talk to God… God told him to use his phone and he’d send him the bill… He got and paid the $333 million dollar charge. His investments flourished, too… That would be the end of the story, except he was down in Sussex County recently, following up first hand on a corporate case being processed out of Georgetown… once again, he asked God for the right to call, and agreed to accept the charges… When he got his bill, he was fuming… He was only charged 25 cents… “God”, he said, “you ripped me off on that first call, big time!”… God said, “Warren, don’t you get it? In Sussex County, that’s a local call…”

Local call or not, Sussex County is weighing in on whether to say a prayer before County meetings or to not… Here are a few takes on that policy: one, two, three, four……

As someone who grew up where prayers were always said before football games and county meetings, it isn’t a big deal…… That is, as long as everyone agrees it isn’t a big deal. You don’t see prayers before meetings conducted in New York.

Not because New Yorkers are heathens, but because in New York, you have a multiplicity of religions, so praying a prayer from one of them, is a slap in the face for all others…

Why it’s even an issue in Sussex County is because the Positive Growth Alliance, has been building condo’s like ants, and lots of people who did not grow up in Sussex County, now live there. Many have different ideas of religion than those who’ve always been there all their lives…

If everyone believe in the same version of God as does David Anderson, then of course, duh, why are we even arguing about it… Of course we’re going to pray to God to guide us through this meeting.. That’s what He’s for!

Suddenly, thanks to Rich Collins and the Positive Growth Alliance, we have tons of people who do object to having David Anderson’s version of God, one who dislikes Homosexuals, and one who casts pox on Democrats, one who believes married people should have sex only when they have children, one who believes sex between animals is immoral, one who believes taxes are caused by the devil, one who believes that nature was made to bulldoze and pave with a combination of petroleum and gravel. … one who believes that oil companies have the divine right to pollute oceans, one who believes that animals were made for us to kill. … one who believes a national religious holiday should fall on the first day of deer season.. one who believes pick up trucks and baseball caps are proof that homosexuality is a sin,… on who believes killing someone with a gun is not a sin, but taking that gun away for the safety of others is…

(yes, I’m having fun and talking tongue in cheek)…

The point I’m making is that Sussex County is changing; and it is changing mostly thanks to Rich Collins and the Positive Growth Alliance.

Can you make new citizens join the current religion? If so, then by all means, just like the days of old, they will see no qualms in having a tiny prayer before the meeting.

But if they don’t want to join that religion, then, to force one group of religious people to impose their prayers on others, is not American…In fact, it’s kinda creepy…

If in an effort to show fairness, the Sussex County decided they would do prayers from all religions in alphabetical order, when they came to “B” and hit Buddahism, giving an Buddahist prayer before the session, most of those in the audience would be saying WTF! This is our nation, why do we have to listen to such crap…

Which is… exactly what those Buddahists think, who have opened a business in Millsboro, and have come before the county to ask for a variance on something or other that is in their antiqued code….

So… If it is unnatural for a Baptist to suffer a Buddahist prayer, it is equally unnatural for a Buddahist to sit through a Baptist prayer…

It’s not about one religion being right and the other wrong. It’s about who the citizens are that make up Sussex County. If you want to blame anyone over this controversy, the blame solely lies with those who built up Sussex County and brought in all these new people to begin with… Now that they are here, we have to make Sussex County as fair to them as New York, is fair to us, when we take our business up there……

Positive Growth, huh? Depends on your version of positive I guess………….