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The plural of Vanilla Ice would be pronounced ….. Vanilla Ice’s (or ISIS)…
They ran out of Vanilla in the Syrian desert….

Tough group, aren’t they? If they walked down my street like this, I too would hide….

As one progresses through life one becomes more humble.  When young, one believes it is his own actions that create his or her success.  Old age tells us it was just luck.  We see others come later, more talented, smarter, better looking, not achieving what we once did.  We have to accept we were just simply in the right place at the right time to grasp an opportunity.

Being thoughtful people, as one sees more, one ponders more.  Similarities do take place on opposite sides of the globe.  Similarities that perhaps could be random, but for them to occur in non random frequencies, belies something else might be in play.

It is with that in mind, I notice that across the red states of the United States, primarily a bastion of fundamentalist conservative theocracy, the weather is changing. Basically, there is no rain…. Secondly I have noticed that the weather in Oklahoma is every year, corresponding more and more like those dry, hot , sandy climes on the other side of our planet, which coincidentally, are also occupied by a bastion of fundamentalist conservative theocracies, practicing something very similar to Oklahoma policy but over there it is called Shara Law…

The unproven theory, one derived deeply out of the forges of possibility from quantum mechanics, is that as we evolve to think like Muslims, our weather evolves to behave like we are Muslims.

Currently there is no difference between those thought processes and actions of  legislatures of Oklahoma, and those existing in Muslim countries like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen…

The climate is racing to catch up to the Middle East with this three year drought in Oklahoma…. 

As any follower of monotheism well knows, when a people sin and go the wrong way, the weather catches up to punish them.   I simply am offering that is what is happening in Oklahoma…. 

 

With just ten minutes left for one Senator to possibly scramble upstairs and cast a vote that would not change the outcome, Chuck Hagel’s secretary of defense nomination was sent to the Floor….

One of the more surprising moments was the very Senatorial response given by Mazie Hirono, the replacement for Dan Inouye, who passed away after the election.

In a brief statement she noted (at exactly the 2:00 mark) that the national security need for an immediate Secretary of Defense was necessary, and to abort the process and begin anew was irresponsible, for with sequestration, budget reductions, downsizing after Afghanistan, re-pivoting to the Pacific, challenges of North Korea, Syria, North Africa, cyber attacks to our data systems, power grid, infrastructure, all requiring immediate attention. Chuck Hagel exemplified himself in war, as a CEO, and in the chambers of the Senate itself. That puts him as equally qualified as anyone else in that room. Simply put, we need someone now, this man is capable, he has my vote.

The New Kaufman?
Courtesy of C Span
I guess she hasn’t learned to be long winded yet.

Which brings up the Republicans… What on earth is wrong with them? Are they nuts?

Every unbiased report confirms they are nuts.

Republican foreign policy is farce, not even worthy of Shakespeare.

So Republicans have decided that Afghanistan doesn’t exist. At last summer’s Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney never mentioned the Afghan War (that was left up to Clint Eastwood).

During Hagel’s seven and a half hours of questioning by the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, the country where 66,000 American troops are still fighting, and dying, was mentioned 27 times. How many mentions did it receive from the Armed Service Committee’s 12 Republican members combined? Four.

Drones, Zero mentions.

Cyber warfare, two came from Committee Republicans..

China, only one mention came from a Senate Republican. (and that occured when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz asked Hagel if he had traveled to China with Chas Freeman, a former American diplomat known for critical views toward, you guessed it, Israel.)

Israel (178 Republican mentions)

America must help Israel prevent the development of Iran’s nuclear weapon. (171 mentions)

The GOP campaign against him has descended even deeper into triviality. Republicans on the Armed Services Committee are now refusing to vote on Hagel’s nomination until he provides evidence that no organization he was affiliated with received foreign funding over the past decade? WTF? Every Republican on that committed gets foreign political funding from AIPAC….

His answer: no.

Republicans stoop even lower.

Republicans are demanding that he prove that no company or non-profit he has been involved in has received any foreign funding either!

Chuck Hagel’s answer? “That information…is legally controlled by the individual entities and not mine to disclose.”

This is “unprecedented,” as well as “ridiculous and outrageous,” especially since there’s zero evidence that Hagel—a decorated Vietnam veteran—has ever subverted the interests of the United States in service of a foreign power.

One senses Chuck Hagel’s ridiculous farcical hearing process, brought to its knees by these Republicans, has not one iota of relevance to Mr. Hagel’s qualifications, and every bit of relevancy to fending off a potential evangelical Tea Party primary challenger chomping for a run against these Republicans in the next election season….

It is actually pretty simple…..

You announce from this point forward, official policy is that we burn a Quran for every American killed…. And we will do it here on television, in absolute defiance, perhaps on the Capitol’s steps…….You announce the survivors of  any future killed, will burn a Quran every day this day henceforth, in remembrance of that person.

 

I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before… We know how much it means to that particular sect … One book means so much more than human life over there…My guess is one book has the relative value of a million souls over there. So instead of losing American flesh and blood by trying to do the right thing, we could just simply burn one of their books whenever they failed to live up to our expectation.  We could also do it for retaliation…..

And if they retaliated by burning Bibles, I don’t think any of us would mind.  We could print more.

Bottom line, instantly, the killings would stop….

Al Qaida to Afghan Police of Soldier:  “Sneak in and then turn your gun on Americans.  Allah will reward you in heaven.”

Man to self:   ” Oh, no. My killing will cause a Quran to be burned in my name because of my actions. These guys are liars. I will rot in hell if I follow through and do what they want…”  

If an EMP went off right now, what would happen? Let’s say it was caused naturally, and not from an earthly application… Just stop for a second and imagine if in one split second, all electronics got fried…

What could you do? You would initially do just what you do when the power goes out. You would get up, open the door, look at all your neighbors opening the door looking back at you, say a few words, and go back into wait for the power to come on…

You might get suspicious when your cell phone wouldn’t turn on, or not being primed to consider what the possibilities were, you might just think your battery picked that interlude to die…. You might likewise get suspicious when your car wouldn’t show life. You might curse your luck that the power went off, your cellphone battery died, and your car now needs a new battery, all in the same afternoon… You couldn’t get a hold of anyone to help, and so you walk over to your neighbor. He’s out back trying to get his generator started. It won’t work either. He’s mad as hell and is taking it back to Lowes where he bought it.. and he finds his Ford Pickup battery has died too… Oh the terrible luck …

So you walk to the store and see no one is open, everything is temporarily closed until the power kicks back on….

Only it won’t come on… ever.. I mean ever… Well at least in your life time…

Why? simply put, every electrical component, every magnet, every fuse, every connector, will have to be replaced from your house to the nearest power plant. .. Even if somewhere a power plant opened, and produced, that would leak all over the country unless someone actually got up and cut the wires to keep that power from dissipating and becoming too weak to do any good…

So new power plants would have to be built. New wires strung, new transformers built, forget about the ones on the shelf for emergencies, they’re shot too. Everything would need to be rebuilt from scratch…

And we would have no access to the information that told us how to rebuild….

This is how civilizations disappear rather quickly.. They become so specialized, that no one can put everything back together. It mimics the Tower of Babel accounting.. “There once was a great civilization, that evaporated instantly” is how most scholars view the accounting of that story today…

To survive, you would have no heat.. unless you had either a fireplace of wood stove. Everything else is electrical unless your unit dates back before 1990…. You would have no transportation. You couldn’t buy a working car. The first cars to be made would have to be created from scratch, at a factory, that unfortunately had no power.

Your world would shrink to where you could walk. There would be no news, unless someone walked to tell you what they saw in Wilmington. And what someone from Philadelphia had told them when they had walked from there, and rumors that had been told from those who had walked from New York, and from New Jersey, and up south from Washington and Baltimore…

Was any of America working? NO one knew… Once a military fighter roared overhead, and it was the first sound heard since the event, and all raced outside to cheer… But that was it.. Hope was that someone, somewhere out there, was in charge, and was working to make our lives return to normal…

But years went by…. Most people moved from the cities. Many died of disease, and starvation, and life became involved of defending oneself and ones property from those that wanted to take it… To live, you really had to sell yourself to an Overlord, who was intimidating enough that no one moved into your neighborhood because of him.. Most of what you made, he took as payment for protecting you. It included your children.

The once great civilization, was erased. No one knew about Rome. No one knew about Babylon. No one knew about Greece… unless it was from the old Bibles kept in decorative cabinets. Some books existed, but most had been burned to keep warm that first winter…
Just like that… Our huge skyscrapers, began to fall, one by one, each time covering the streets with an overbearing dust cloud.

Nature began to reclaim her own. The ice caps grew back. The seas lowered. The flora and fauna multiplied as people perished. The children heard stories, about the world being round, and names like China and Japan that could be found on old artifacts. But, without any reinforcement, they gradually faded from all knowledge…

The question I want to raise is this. Is our education system as it stands now, capable of continuing civilization as we know it, in and if, such a natural event were to occur? Or non natural event?

Do we currently teach enough basics so anyone can build a computer, build a electronics kit, and repair cars, generators, home electrical appliances, were such an event to occur?

It is not hard; the hard part is that no one knows how to do it.

If everyone knew simple basic electricity, and how things worked, we’d have power in some places within a week, and withing three months, we’d be 50% back to normal. We would be back to normal within three years.

Our current educational system is teaching us the wrong things…. We are focused on the wrong items. We test for the wrong items. We do not teach the basic knowledge our life needs right now…

It should be: A: fixing your phone/ and or computer.
B: fixing your generator.
C: fixing your vehicle.

This knowledge is vital for national security. It needs to be taught to every man, woman, and child… 3 x 6 equaling 18 doesn’t do much.. Nor does Black History Month, or proper English Grammer, or American History, or Economics, or ………….

Our first grade needs to begin…. “Ok, kids…. this is a 1… this is a 0…… All of life revolves around those two numbers…”

Fact, Alambama’s law is just the first.
Fact, Right to Work States are also anti-foreigner states.
Fact, Union states, have a more balanced approach to business.
Fact, laws passed by Alabama, Arizona, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and Utah, will apply to your executives as well as Mexican farm workers.
Fact, in Alabama, one German executive was detained from a Mercedes Plant, and one Japanese executive visiting a Honda plant, was picked up in a dragnet.. Because they couldn’t prove they were citizens (they weren’t), they were incarcerated.. In both those cases hush money and calls from the state executive, took care of the issues, putting the executives out of jail.

If you are a foreign company, thinking of building in any redneck state to save labor, there is a good chance you might find yourself in jail the next time you visit…

As they currently say in Alabama (while the crops rot in the fields…). “The Law… is the Law.” You would be safer building a plant in Venezuela where, yes, it could be nationalized, than you are in building in Alabama where you can’t visit… or find decent workers who will work for the prices you want to pay.

Move North. Safest place? Delaware.

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.

It is such a great time. The cold front has passed, warm moist air flowing in, misty rain, not enough to get you wet, but enough to wake you up as it dances across the face. In it one can feel the snow coming two days early… For a weekend night, outside it’s peaceful… Those with money, have finished shopping. Those without, are waiting for that last check before the holidays…

The annual tradition of trading favorite YouTube’d carols over the internet, has begun in earnest… Strains of Mozart, Celtic Women, Cat Stevens, Bon Jovi, Metallica, and tons of favorite carols by assorted artists, have caused all the stress, pain, heart attacks, symptoms of short breathing,……….. to melt away somewhere into the distant future, as we float back into all those happier times as we remember fond memories of our past……..

Happy Holidays.. Happy Holidays
Courtesy of All American Patriots

AFghanistan
Courtesy of Pat Dollard

Afghanistan: like walking on the moon
Courtesy of Theodore’s World

Things aren’t so nice for 100,000 plus Americans now fighting in Afghanistan. Things aren’t so nice for their families, friends, and lovers back home,… now that things have really heated up over there….

Take a second: Imagine you’re a Taliban fighting this foe invading from a very distant land. Imagine the hope, and shot in the arm a headline like this from the United States, would instill in you upon having it read to you. Imagine how quickly its words would resonate in your blood, and how less inclined you would be to throw in the towel against overwhelming odds? Imagine if you had rounds of waterproofed AK 47 ammo hidden in your well, how inclined you must now be to pull them up, and lay in wait for an American serviceman, any American serviceman, to come close enough to fire a killing shot.

That Headline….

Republicans Shoot Down $700 Military Appropriations Bill Funding War in Afghanistan. Bill Not Passed.

Republicans just aided and comforted our enemy…. Can you hear the Taliban cheering?

It’s the holiday season;  I’ll be honest.

David Anderson: you served. How can you stomach supporting the Republican Party when they refuse to fund American servicemen in combat?

Frank Knotts: How can someone with your passion for all that America has stood for, still call yourself a Republican when they play games with Americans living and dying for our shared values?

Hube:  What gives?  Where is the line across which the Republican Party stops supporting America, and the Tea Party begins to represent the Conservative’s cause?

Tyler Nixon: How can any ex service man, support the party that is so self centered, they have no clue of how their vote to, not fund the war, emboldens our enemies?

Kilroy of Delaware: What kind of political party would play with funding for troops in active combat? How can that be tolerated?

Oh, well, it’s not skin off my teeth. It’s your party… do what you want. I don’t care… But I’ll tell you this… This nation needs a little old one horse Tea Party for this one reason alone: so conservatives have somewhere else to go without crawling on their knees to suck up to the moral backruptiveness of the Republican Party, that’s why…

Oh, well, I’ve said too much already. It’s not my problem. I just think that:

Our servicemen deserve better.
Conservatives deserve better.
Our republic, the United States of America, deserves better.

Conservatives: isn’t it way past time to switch your parties affiliation?  It’s the holiday season!  What better gift to your kids and grand-kids  could you possibly give?

Republicans Screw You So This Dog Keeps It's Money
Photo Courtesy of xoxobook.com

The House of Representatives just voted to extend the Bush era tax cuts to all those making less than $250,000. Also included in the bill were the two-year delay of the Alternative Minimum Tax, the elimination of the marriage penalty tax, and the permanent increases to the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit.

And all but three Republicans… that is 168 Republicans to be exact, voted against it!….We told you they were lying when they pretended to offer you a tax cut! And we were absolutely, unequivocally, irrevocably … right…

Republicans just voted to raise taxes on every single working man, women, and child making less than $250,000 a year…

REPUBLICANS WANT TO RAISE TAXES ON EVERY SINGLE WORKING MAN, WOMEN, AND CHILD MAKING LESS THAN $250,000 A YEAR.

REPUBLICANS WANT TO RAISE TAXES ON EVERY SINGLE WORKING MAN, WOMEN, AND CHILD MAKING LESS THAN $250,000 A YEAR.

REPUBLICANS WANT TO RAISE TAXES ON EVERY SINGLE WORKING MAN, WOMEN, AND CHILD MAKING LESS THAN $250,000 A YEAR.

David Anderson: What do you say to that?
Duffy: What do you say to that?
Hube: What do you say to that?
Cato: What do you say to that?
Kilroy: What do you say to that?
Anyone with a grain of character making less than $250,000, who considers themselves a Republican, needs to change their party affiliation tomorrow morning…

Oh, what did we hear from the Republicans?

We heard one Republican after another said they would vote for middle-class tax cuts, only if they could also vote to extend tax cuts for higher incomes at the same time.

All I can say, is for 10 years…

WE TOLD YOU SO!

and adding insult to injury…..Just earlier, Republicans blocked extended unemployment insurance, insisting that it not add to the deficit, but not one single Republican whimpered the same demand of the monstrous tax cuts they want to continue.

We told you so… How do you feel now Republican voters.. like vomiting, perhaps? Republicans care more for Helmsley’s dog, than they do for all those making less than $250,000 a year….

I dare any Republican to offer a credible explanation. So far the only one offered was: the rich didn’t get their fair break so we voted against it…

Remember: we had a surplus when the rich were taxed correctly. As soon as we stopped taxing the real money makers, our government racked up the worst deficit ever. As soon as the Bush tax cuts went into effect for the wealthy, our nation went downhill. It is so obvious what we need to do. Tax, tax, tax, those making ALL the money… It’s our money anyway they got rich off of; they took our money; they should pay our taxes… 🙂 Right?

As the logo suggests:  A good thing for the environment
Photo courtesy of the Telegraph

George Bush was considered a good leader after we had just gotten socked by 17 people in four hijacked airliners, when he picked up a megaphone and set the war against terrorism in motion…

They'll hear this

Fact: that war has diminished terrorism.

Today we are fighting in Afghanistan against Afghanistan people who think we and what we offer, are not the best thing for their future…

They have that right, just like you or I would have that right if an uncertain future were being imposed on us, as say 30 years ago, was portrayed in the movie Red Dawn…. But although the words terrorism get thrown about, …. most of us honestly think far less of terrorists now, than we did even during the most glorious days of the Clinton reign…..

I will say that is a success, one which can be measured by a quantified analysis of results. The US achieved success by diminishing global terrorism. Pretty unbelievable, based on the paradigm of the world we had 10 years ago….

But where I’m going with this,…. is that an event happened that impacted American prosperity, and everyone got together to overcome it…

Today, dead plant and animal material of 250 million years ago, is being forced out at high pressure into an underwater basin. Oil is washing up on shore; oil is creating a desert of life where once life thrived…

The equivalent of 9/11 would to not just simply go after BP, but to go after all of terrorism or in this case… dirty energy…. A real leader doesn’t solve a problem. He changes the paradigm….

What we need to do, is to leverage this unfortunate blemish upon the practices of the past, into a understanding and movement towards weaning ourselves off “dirty energy”….

Today, Obama did just that…

“We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny. ”

The time to embrace a clean energy future is now……

Sunrise on offshore Wind Farm

Two years ago, Delaware was poised to be the first state to have off shore wind… Legislation was passed, signed… the investment firm was pumped up… and then…. Babcock and Brown… collapsed.

The tragedy in the Gulf ….like a boot camp bugle too early in the morning, means that at this moment… we need to jump up, and go forward with upgrading the plans and building a 600 MWh wind farm off the Delaware coast…

Since private investors can’t handle it… we need a government who can…

We set a very similar precedent seventy five years ago…

Between July 1933 and March 1939 the PWA funded and administered the construction of more than 34,000 projects including airports, electricity-generating dams, aircraft carriers, and bridges, as well as 70% of the new schools and 1/3 of the hospitals built between 1933-1939. Some of the most famous PWA projects are the Triborough Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City, the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington, and the Key West Highway in Florida.The PWA also electrified the Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Washington, DC. The PWA did not create as much affordable housing as supporters would have hoped, building only 25,000 units of in 4½ years.

Those necessary structures today, would not be there without the Publc Works Adminstration. Simply put… It’s goal was to spread big bucks, on big projects… There is some argument that these expenditure did little to alleviate the Great Depression. The geography of the problem was too great: the solutions too small.. Only with the outbreak of WWII and Roosevelt’s realization that deficit spending was now mandated, did this nation begin to work its way out of the Great Depression.

Now try to imagine getting into New York today without either the Lincoln Tunnel or the Tribourough Bridge… Try imagine Boeing in the Northwest developing without the cheap power off the Columbia River…. Try imagine the US developing the atomic bomb without Oak Ridge, a subsidiary of the TVA…. Try imagining the Empire State, without the public funded Niagara Power Project, which held the price of power consistently from 1961 to 1981…

In each case, the long term benefits to the community far outweighed the benefits caused by just the new jobs alone…

Therefore it is time for us to do the same with Wind and Solar…

Private investment is stalemated; the active engine of the economy is (like it or not), the federal government…

For as little as 2 billion, we could begin construction within a year. The dreams of developing a wind farm construction-center right here in New Castle County, would again take wing. The dreams of importing the brains of energy to set up homes in Delaware, would once again become reality…

$2 Billion spread over 20 years… averages out at $100 million a year… Getting a return on that investment with wind energy, would be fairly simple… Between jobs, economic growth, full governmental coffers, and very cheap electricity for all… we could easily show that investment to be worthwhile…. And not to mention, were we to clear a little of our air, who can guess how much of a medical saving each household would garner?

But dreams mean little without action.. Now is the time to begin the pursuit of landing a large government contract to begin off the coast of Rehoboth as soon as possible..

We all know it works. Evidence as been there in the above structures… all our lives… We just need to do it….

So…

Do it.

……. and if that happens…. this BP disaster will have been a good thing in the long run…..