Conservatives: Voting For Hillary Is Not The End Of The World

As a conservative you have the same duty as every other American to vote for the chief executive you feel is most fit to run the country.

With the meltdown currently going on in the Republican Party after just 3 months post convention, having similar meltdowns spread throughout the entire governmental apparatus during the next four years, seems not like a good idea.

But what happens if you vote for Hillary?

One, you become part of a huge pool of voters she is responsible to and for…

Two, you vote for someone though she may have liberal ideas, has a very conservative morality deeply rooted in family and religious values.

Three, you have voted for the most qualified candidate we have ever had for our chief executive.  John Quincy Adams comes the closest as to being equally qualified based on experience for the challenges the Oval Office throws at its newest inhabitant.

Four, you have voted for a person who’s deepest concern, on which all her convictions lie, is centered upon our children.  From her book 10 years ago she lays down the claim that it is children who in raising, are what makes us civilized.  It is the interests of our children in the future,  which is her North Star, against which she bases all decisions…

Five, you have voted for someone who when not running against Conservatives, is well respected, well liked, and well appreciated by Conservatives who personally know her..

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So you see, despite what you may have been told, despite all the anger fostered against her, she is really not that bad… She is similar to the current president and we have done ok economically under him, we’ve done ok internationally under him, we’ve done ok morally under him…

All the stories of massive upheaval and disruption that would occur when Obama took over, (remember one Congressperson calling him a liar in his first address to Congress?) failed to materialize. Nor will they materialize under Hillary.

With Hillary you know that in four years, or maybe eight, you will have a good chance to run again, perhaps winning the White House… If you can’t, then you obviously need to realign your party in order to do so….  By now, there is no doubt where the problem with your party lies.

Your real enemy are the “crazies” you harbor.  You turned your heads, you looked away, you used them because they gave you votes,  and with Priebus allowing way too many candidates for president (27), you let them consolidate in numbers strong enough to name your chief… To win in the future it should now be obvious, you need to cut them away, then cull Democrats who are only Democratic because they aren’t crazy like your party was, reinstall them back into the fold, and work yourselves back to a majority…

You need Hillary as President to do this.   If you have Trump, or even let him come close, or even give him more than Ross Perot got as a 3rd party,. you will have to contend with crazy and it will kill you…

Vote Hillary,  kick out the crazies, let them become the 3rd party, not you, and try again in four years… It won’t be that bad and you know as well as I, it could have been ALOT worse…

There should be no shame in voting for the best person available… With Hillary, that is all you are doing…

(Plus, if you live in the 8th Senatorial District of Delaware, you need to get out and vote for Republican Meredith Chapman for State Senate….. One of the best things you can do for your future, is to put a non-crazy Republican in office.)

Life is not over; thank goodness this election almost is.. 🙂

 

The Passage of Times

The more with which time passes, the more one sees how some things always stay the same.

This is something unrealized by youth… I certainly couldn’t see it, though many elderly tried to project their insight into me.. I simply lacked enough background to understand.

But seeing the return of things you fought to vanquish and were once successful, as well as expanding ones knowledge-base across many cultures, times, and distances, one tends to see a larger pattern in effect that probably is conducive to our survival…

Here is how it relates to conservatives and liberals, democracy and our ultimate survival…. .

No matter who you are, when you are, or where you are, if you are comfortable in your position, you tend to lean towards conservatism… Why wouldn’t you?  It’s what enabled you to get and keep what you have… On the other hand, when you have nothing but dreams listed as your assets, you’ll insist on change, or newness, or something better than what you have.. Why shouldn’t you?  Who would want to stay in the same decrepit conditions one finds themselves when they don’t have to?

And so democracy is simply a mechanism that allows for the ebb and flow of fortunes to change policy so parity is maintained for the most part…

When a majority of people are doing better than those who are not, then keeping what is working now is best for that society as a whole.  On the other hand if it it not working, then changing ones course is better for that society.  That makes so much sense, does it not?

So being a liberal in a time of economic well being is, how should we say politely, being “very forward thinking”?… Likewise being a conservative in a time of turmoil, could be rather dangerous, being so outnumbered so… you better hope you are “well liked”….

It is rare that events outside the human experience impact us on a large scale. Most of what affects us drastically (wars, Depressions, power grabs) usually comes from mankind’s own doing:… acts where we consciously chose to go a certain route, and more or less, damned all the torpedoes that got in the way.

Today we are in a bru-ha-ha of our own making…. Most of it directly came from our choosing to go towards giving the top 1% all of our money and keeping less for ourselves… It was a conscious decision on our parts.  We elected enough Republicans to allow them to do what they told us they would do.  It was no secret. We made a bad decision.

The experiment failed.  They kept all the money and none trickled down, at least here within our borders… Our wealth actually built up China, which is great for them, but that hasn’t helped us much.

When one finds out one is losing something important, one hangs onto it harder… Which means someone has to try harder to take it away, right?… This gives insight into the harshness and lack of decorum in politics today… The ugliness we see today in Conservatives, and the hard clenching tenacity we see in Liberals, we’ve seen before in this country.  We had it in the 1820’s between the old guard wealth of the Eastern Seaboard, and the wide individualistic wealth newly available across our national heartland.  We saw it in the 1850’s as slavery hit the hot button and both sides became bitterly entrenched as support for slavery evaporated into a cauldron of gunpowder.  It only took one spark.  We saw it in the 1890’s as the capitalists grabbed up more and more companies, crushed workers rights, and the workers in cities became less and less empowered. Finally Republican Progressivism broke out of the chokehold. Then WWI flipped the scales back to big business and an investment boom followed by a Great Depression again created the necessary environment for another total sweep of old for new.  That “new” lasted 60 years until it succumbed to having been so successful so that so many numbers who had previously benefited from liberal policies switched allegiances to keep their assets to themselves… And that leads to today, where our individualistic efforts to improve ourselves simply were not enough to balance ourselves comfortably against wealth and power and we are again looking at more government interaction…

So rawness and candor have always been part of politics.  Always will be. Some things never change. (Some of us love it, btw.)

So what is happening today is that the post Republican Depression economy has made mockery out of those “traditional” Republican values and the only thing they have to hold on to power right now, is their appeal to the prejudiced.  Against this direct solicitation, Progressives continue to offer a new vision of hope to millennials, or the return to the old vision of what actually worked well for 60 years to those still alive who actually lived it.

The conservatives count the votes and know their time is numbered.  Population trends have pointed this out for many years. Which readily explains why they focus on ways and methods to limit large numbers of those voting, and have vacated all plans to appeal to new members… No surprise here.

In this election conservative policy has been reduced to stem complete annihilation of their party… For whereas they have failed over the past 16 years, Progressives have succeed across that same time. By going hog-wild on bigotry, they are using the only tactic with which they know how to keep some members in their party from flipping…

Bigotry is a “thing” unfortunately… And right now…. it is the only “thing” Republicans have to garner one single vote this November…  Unless of course, it is ….. “wild hair”…

 

ATTN: Bonini, Reigle, La Mar Gunn, Lawson, Pettyjohn, Hocker, Hudson, Smyk, Lopez, Miro, Ramone, Short, Grey, Dukes, and Collins! Your Candidate Is A Racist and So Is Your Party! You Still With Them? IF SO, Don’t Expect To Stay With Us, You Racist!!!!! Get The Hell Outta’ Here !!!

 

My original plan for this article was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This week I’d planned to propose new steps to cut red tape and taxes, and make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire.

Because I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it.

I’ll be talking a lot more about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.

But today, I want to address something I hear from Americans all over our country.

Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.

It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.

He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.

His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

In just the past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in insulting and ignorant terms:

“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership.

Crime at levels nobody has seen… Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”

Those are his words.

Donald Trump misses so much.

He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field…

The vibrancy of black-owned businesses…Or the strength of the black church… He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive…And he certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color.

It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is everything!

Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.

But what he’s doing here is more sinister.

Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.

This is what I want to make clear today:

A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.

If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.

After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.

But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.

Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.

When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants.

Their applications would be marked with a “C” – “C” for “colored” – and then rejected.

Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed.

The pattern continued through the decades.

State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called “Birthers.”

He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.

In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.

And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.

Oh, and by the way, Mexico’s not paying for his wall either.

If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Since then, there’s been a steady stream of bigotry.

We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, “He’s a Mexican.”

Think about that.

The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage.

Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel.

But for Trump, that’s just par for the course.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.” Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on a white supremacist website.

The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.

Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on.

This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel.

It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.

Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

This man wants to be President of the United States.

I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief ever has to make.

In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership… clear thinking… and calm judgment… because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death.

The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors.

Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

It’s another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

Now, some people will say that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention.

But look at the policies Trump has proposed. They would put prejudice into practice.

And don’t be distracted by his latest attempts to muddy the waters.

He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth… but we know where he stands.

He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.

He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, “anchor babies” and should be deported.

Millions of them.

And he’d ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children –from entering our country just because of their religion.

Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now.

But in Trump’s America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, “What is your religion?”

And then what?

What if someone says, “I’m a Christian,” but the agent doesn’t believe them.

Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?

Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution.

Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead.

Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses.

So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will be there to convince him not to.

Maybe.

But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign.

Trump likes to say he only hires the “best people.” But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice.

The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published:

“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

“Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”

“Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.”

That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.

Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: “this is what I need more of in my campaign.”

Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone.

This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.”

No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas.

Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”

Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story — the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders,Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.

Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race — that’s who Trump wants by his side.

The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs.

Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee.

Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embrace pro-Russian policies.

He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.

American presidents from Truman to Reagan have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia.

We should, too.

All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.

Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.

On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant.

“We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,” one white supremacist said.

Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.

No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright.

And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. Don’t be fooled.

There’s an old Mexican proverb that says “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.”

We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.

He says he wants to “make America great again,” but his real message remains “Make America hate again.”

This isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation.

It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.

Next time you watch Donald Trump rant on television, think about all the kids listening across our country. They hear a lot more than we think.

Parents and teachers are already worried about what they’re calling the “Trump Effect.”

Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.

At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of “Build the wall!” and “Speak English.”

After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, “They see it in a presidential campaign and now it’s OK for everyone to say this.”

We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president?

This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.

Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out.

The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims “love America just as much as I do.”

In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama is an American citizen and “a decent person.”

We need that kind of leadership again.

Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying “enough is enough” – including a lot of Republicans. I’m honored to have their support.

And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For those who vote for me and those who don’t.

For all Americans.

Because I believe we are stronger together.

It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.

Just look at our fabulous Olympic team.

Like Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey who won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America?

When I was growing up, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. Now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates.

So let’s keep moving forward together.

Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia.

Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good.

Thank you, and may God bless the United States.

How I Avoided The First Day Of The Republican Convention….

I was distracted by something more interesting… No, it wasn’t Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift… (but you should look into that if you don’t know what I’m saying right now…)

I found a toy, that explains a lot….

Buy clicking onto the picture one can interactively move each of the graphs below and understand our electorate much better after the outcome…. This is guaranteed to give hours of lost time, distracted viewing, and overextended neurons.  Not only that, but it is fun; much, much more fun than what’s going on in Cleveland…which hasn’t been fun since Drew Carey left…

In fact, it explains a lot of what’s going on in Cleveland…

The above is my fiddling with the graph to discern what might happen if all college educated whites, all Blacks, all Hispanics, and all Asians voted 50% of their group for Hillary and the rest did not participate, AND if all non-college-educated whites were fired up and voted at rates higher than normal for them and all voted for Trump.

As you can see above, there are enough Trump voters to win the Presidency for Trump if just 4 out of 5 of them vote… .

To counter that, you would need 98% of Hispanics to vote for Hillary with all being equal; you would need 61% of Blacks to vote for Hillary with all being equal….

So it is pretty obvious that Trump does not need educated Whites. He does not need Black, Hispanics, OR Asians to win…

But he does need his base of uneducated Whites to turn out in numbers similar to how Blacks came out of the woodwork for Obama…  Which means, he has to whip them up.

So all the Jerry Springer shenanigans the rest of America dismisses and laughs, points, and makes fun of, are what his audience eats up and drives them to the polls… The crazier he is, the higher his ratings go in this select group and it is not a matter of how many of those people support him…. They are there… It IS a matter of by how much they will support him in November…and will they come out of the woodwork to vote for him?

If you are an American who believes in fairness, democracy, and justice for all, or are color blind to racial slurs and hot-buttons, this makes the things Donald Trump says or doesn’t say, very scary for you.  But dumb, he is not…  He has only one shot of  taking the Presidency and this tactic is just that… There are not enough other voters to stop him if his supporters become galvanized and show up en masse.

This toy quickly shows that straight up…..

And there is a lesson here.  As the election comes forward your social media is going to light up with political memes… Guaranteed and there will be little you can do to stop it, (which you won’t because you’ll be too curious to stop being entertained).

But the tactic most taken, (that of belittling, bashing, condemning, taking the moral high ground, dismissing, and deprecating,) is absolutely pointless in convincing this audience. You will just lose friends… The only option you have to stop Donald Trump (if that is your goal), is to stop those first time voters for Donald from taking the plunge and going to the polls. You can do this by raising questions… Not answering.  But raising them… here are some examples…

 

• How much will it cost to send all Mexicans back?  Who will pay for it?  Won’t taxes have to go up.
• If you ban Shara law then all terrorists look just like us.  How will you tell them apart?
• If you give the wealthy large tax breaks, and they aren’t using it to create new jobs now, how will giving them even more next year make them do what they can do now, but aren’t?
• If you ban all abortion, and your wife gets knocked up in your old age, what are you going to do?  Have a kid younger than your grandkids?

 

The way to stop argument in confused minds is to raise questions, lots of them… never offer answers, just raise questions… And that is what you should be doing, nicely, in all your interactions with non-college-educated whites from now till November..

Who knows, maybe they may have an answer YOU’ve never thought of and will change your perspective too…. But if not, at least they will become a little smarter and if non-college-educated whites all become smarter, that has to be good for America… right?

So make it “great” again…

.

Lying Polls

Country Appears Headed In the Wrong Direction Polls say……

*The Conference Board said Tuesday that its confidence index climbed to 94.5, the strongest reading since October 2007 before the start of the Great Republican Depression….

*The National Retail Federation said this morning that it expects holiday retail sales to grow 4.1% to $617 billion. That would mark a substantial increase in the rate of growth over both the 3.1% growth seen in 2013 and the 2.9% ten year average.

*Gasoline is averaging $3.01 a gallon nationally—down 8.2 percent from an average $3.28 a year ago, according to AAA figures. Lowest levels in 5 years….(2009)

* Retail sales among private companies with less than $5 million (small businesses)  in annual revenue have seen 4.5 percent growth in annual sales through September of this year. That’s up 5.5 percent from the same period a year ago.

*Today, more Americans have health insurance than ever! before.

* 10 million people who would have previously had to pay full price for any health treatment can now afford an annual checkup, eye glasses, or birth control pills.

*In the (Democratic) states that embraced the ACA’s planned expansion of Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, the number of uninsured fell by nearly 40%.

*Unemployment hits a six-year low (2008) at 5.9 percent.

*The US economy added 248,000 jobs in September and in an unexpectedly strong report.

* The GDP report was broadly constructive, with the gains broadly based and pointing to positive underlying momentum in the U.S. economy going into the last stretch of 2014.

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Since polls are made up, created, and have little bearing in reality as do real things, jobs, salary, hours worked, balance sheets, no out of pocket medical bills, …. one must assume, as would any person possessing their reasonable facilities, that these polls are were either blatantly lying, or were deceptively created through cherry picking the prospects, in order to create the illusion its authors “wanted” to create……..

If someone tells you the sky is green outside, do you stay in your cubicle and say “oh wow” … or do you take a break and go outside to see …. it’s as blue as it ever was?

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We finally got hard working America back on its feet after the last Republican Congress and Republican president gave us the largest economic Depression since the Great Depression of 1929:  Properly known as “The Republican Depression of 2008”! …..  Are you truly going to put them back in power to do it all over again?

If you don’t vote…. then you just did…  It all comes down to that… If every single one of you votes, then the real results like these will continue “AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE”….

No matter what the “lying” polls say…..

New Branches In Education Reform Give Hope

Anyone who has ever grown fruit trees knows that you HAVE to prune branches that have borne fruit several years in a row to make new growth available that will produce at higher levels than tired old branches…

The same is with the reform movement…

It appears that a small branch budding out from the fiasco of corporate driven reform may take American education up to the next level of learning…  It just poked out its head this year, and is causing a stir among those in the top of the corporate movement who are frustrated their investments have gone sour….

It looks promising, but with that we should also take note that when Common Core was rolled out, it too look promising…. And still is, if it hadn’t been hijacked by others with not-so-hot agendas…..

But IF handled right, and IF teachers are given the entire responsibility of driving the educational process, this new technological advancement could indeed revolutionize the results of educational success……

It is called “individualized learning”….  I have at times mentioned that is what we need in classes and that was the driving force between an 11:1 student teacher ratio… So the teacher and student had a educational relationship that drove learning across the board… Individual attention pays off….

What the fiasco of Common Core and the two national tests have done, is drive broadband into all schools…  This will be the prime achievement of Common Core when viewed backwards from the future… All those fiber-optics laid, those pieces of hardware purchased, even if for the wrong agendas, are still there and can be now used, for “individualized” or “personalized learning”…  The lessons are catered and based on the progress of each individual student…..  Smarter students can pass the bars quickly and move on; students challenged by poverty can get individualized instructions on the individual pieces missing, and meet those standards set for them….  Teachers have computers track all so they don’t waste their personal time grading sheafs of papers… All testing will be done electronically… spitting out grades, printed results, rankings, and custom needs each student could use….

I should mention that this movement is being fueled from the ground up; not like Common Core from the Exec’s down…. Educators and entrepreneurs are applying their teaching experience into making this next generation of products, which in turn will be bought by individual districts across this country….

In the end, it will be teachers to transform learning… student by student…..

Today’s reality is that we are in the “early days.”  Things are confusing.  Marketers are hawking but no Consumer Reports type ranking has yet tested and rated these wares upon their effectiveness….  But if we can indeed move ourselves in this direction, we can truly be pioneers in education….

But it really isn’t hard with today’s testing, and it could come from AIR, or Pearson, or someone we’ve never heard of who comes up with the right feedback system…. But we can see which questions are being missed, and if we can program our software to know which pieces of knowledge that question covered, we can quickly see what is missing in that child’s development….

Likewise any gifted child, as soon as he has met his standard, can advance up into the next level quickly mastering that and moving forwards…  With such a wealth of knowledge detailing the educational needs and abilities of each child, the necessity of going to an 11:1 student teacher ratio is even more acute….

As with any Big 10 Football Program concerned with achieving the National Championship…. we simply have to disassociate ourselves from concern over cost.   Instead we like them need to focus on results….  With football it is measured in … wins.   In eduction…. it will also be measured in…. wins….

Allan West Questions Tammy Duckworth’s Patriotism

If this doesn’t make you turn off Fox News permanently, which is paying Allan West to comment, then you are sick, demented and you are truly an embarrassment to the United States of America….

Allan West:  current Fox commentator: former Tea Party Congressman: brutally tortured, prodded, beat and simulated the execution of an Iraqi police officer. Iraqi police officer! They were supposed to be our allies!  We were paying their salaries! He was declared guilty as charged when all evidence was decided. In other words, his behavior was deemed criminal in view of a military court of justice beholden to the rules set up by the Department of Defense of the United States of America. He is the equivalent of Milosevic.  In a democratic administration, he would have been shot, quickly buried in the sand somewhere. But, unfortunately for America, Cheney was running the war.

Tammy Duckworth:  Duckworth served as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot and suffered severe combat wounds, losing both of her legs and damaging her right arm. She was the first female double amputee from the war.  She continues to serve as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard along with her husband, Major Bryan W. Bowlsbey, a signal officer and fellow Iraq War veteran….

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But what happened…. was that the above Allan West questioned the patriotic loyalties of the above Tammy Duckworth….

If you ever watch Fox News after this, you DESERVE  the hell you wrought to this country.  We are better than this.  We need to stop rewarding Fox for bad behavior, and we need to punish those exec’s foisting this bad behavior upon us…..   Time to renew the boycott of every single business advertising upon the shows upon which he comments.  It is truly un-American NOT to do so!  After all, we go all out at no limit of expense to celebrate Memorial Day.  And against that, we have someone, being paid to trash veterans for entertainment? Veterans still serving in the National Guard, despite losing both legs?  (It’s an entertainment network, not real news, you know….)   And YOU… you accept this?  As normal?  As right?  As ok?

Here is your guide on how to navigate through their phone labyrinth.

Using All of His Bluster, Cause His Facts Don’t Pass the Muster…..

Ken Grant, formerly with the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Koch Brothers’ mouthpiece, is now spokesperson for the TDC (The “Data” Center)…  Granted, one would think also a former employee of AnalTech, would be technically more anal about throwing around facts.  At least one would expect a lot less bluster…

Here is his take in the News Journal…. 

If you should choose to read it, you will find it to be mostly a lambasting of Newarks’ citizens and very little defense of the Data Center…  Very little.  Reminds one of when Caesar Rodney declared global warming was a hoax. It would attack all the scientific knowledge in the world, because it found one glacier out of 400,000 that was growing….   Of course in the readers head would pop this question… But what about the other 399,999?  But the Caesar Rodney Institute was simply too unconcerned with 399,999 other pieces of evidence to even care…

Anyway…  back to what he said….

He said:  there are 4000 CHP’s scattered across the US… Here is the data sheet he pulled up to write his piece….. (pdf)

Here are his 4000 units.   Here is what he doesn’t show…

Any little business that has a generator that also produces heat is included in his file.  Even the original presentation made to the Newark zoning commission, that the data center would need an auxiliary power source like one might find on an IKEA, is included on the map….  I think it would be safe to assume that were such a small power plant going in at the Data Center, there would be no controversy as we speak…

The problem is the size… Ken Grant in his op-ed makes no mention of his size…   The difference in size is like you took the penises of 5 horses, sewed them together and then attached that to a person…  Saying he has a penis, so does every male… is disingenuous and dishonest…  You are technically correct he has a penis… But …. who would want him in an arranged marriage with their daughter?

It may be true there are 8 people in Manhattan with penises.  Bet none of them spew 10 horse testicle’s full of discharge, do they?

The one he touts in Austin is 52-75 MW. The award winning Texas A and M, is a paltry 60MW.  Delaware will host a 248 MW generator.

Size does matter….

Let us talk water…..   At minimum, the Christina River flows 6 cubic feet per second.  The data center will use  ~34.7 gallons per second (~3 million gal/day). There are 7.48 gallons per cubic foot.  Rounding out the conversion, the data center will use 4.64 cubic feet per second of water flow out of the 6 cubic feet per second one usually finds every August.   Obviously 1.36 cubic feet are left to fulfill all the needs downstream…  The flow levels back in 2003 would leave dry river bed.

That is just not right. And Ken Grant (of course) makes no mention of that….

Let us talk air quality.  Currently there is no radon in the air over Newark and Northern Delaware.  There will be a lot. Radon as you know, kills. Currently there are no particles raining down on Newark Proper.  These particles cause cancer… There will be a lot.. So these people that Ken Grant dismisses will be wheezing, coughing, hacking, and spitting up blood.

It is estimated that now after facts have matriculated into the community of Newark proper, that 98% of its residents are against the power plant.  One is certain, that as these health facts get matriculated as well, that would be a guaranteed total…. For who wants to die a needless painful death?

So when Ken Grant calls 98% of Newark’s citizens who are sincerely worried about dying prematurely, ” a small group of very sincere but very wrong people”, perhaps he is correct in his assumption but just needs to turn that designation…  the other way around…..

It is very tiny minority of the the Koch Brothers’ minions who deserve the ridicule and derision, not normal hard working Americans, who loved Newark so much, they bought a home here…..

 

 

 

 

Understanding Putin; Understanding Ukraine; Understanding Us

Sometimes one of the exercises one must go through in executive training is a workshop where one puts oneself in another’s shoes.  This exercise broadens the perspective of a budding young exec and gives them the rare view not often allowed, of seeing his own problems from his adversaries’ perspective…

Since one is too often, too deep in one’s own crises to think objectively, the formula is to take one’s own fears, correlate them in a fabricated  parallel situation,  and then role play….  The lesson is that things are often not as simple and clear cut as one naturally assumes, where one sees themselves as good, thereby making all against them,  evil…

So, with your indulgence….

May 1st, 2014….

A flash mob of armed farmers stormed the Capitol building in Harrisburg today and took control of the building.  The police officers were disarmed and allowed to leave.  Hostages are still inside.

May 2nd.

The police of Harrisburg have surround the capitol, but are dwarfed as crowds approaching a million have spontaneously  poured in from across Pennsylvania’s countryside in support of the demonstrators inside.  The police are taunted and are awaiting reinforcements.

Late afternoon riot police from Philadelphia, with heavy machinery, have arrived. They are expected to  storm the building at dawn.  The Governor of PA has now officially called this an illegal takeover and has stressed that the supporters give up and go home.

May 3rd.  At dawn the Philadelphia police storm the building and with guns blazing, meet fierce resistance. They pull back. The crowds have grown larger as Patriot Groups across the nation have sounded the alarm. Volunteers are pouring in from all over the United States.  The Tea Party is now calling for the overthrow of the entire government of PA  and the formulation of a new one, more closely aligned to the needs of the country music loving people of rural Pennsylvania….

May 4th.  The governor again calls the meeting illegal but the crowds are bigger than the police. It is a stalemate.

May 5th.  The federal government has negotiated an agreement between the governor and the demonstrators.  The demonstration will be dismissed, and the governor will listen to the needs of the Tea Party and the patriots.

Late afternoon, Sheriff Arapao  from Hokey, Dokey Arizona, has called for the elimination of the governor, to be replaced by a constitutional sheriff as head of an interim government.

May 6th.  Shots were fired into the crowd by unknown assailants. 100 demonstrators were killed. In the morning the crowd, angered, stormed the capitol to find it empty, doors and files all unlocked, and computer running.   No one has seen the governor or his officers.

May 7th.  Still no sign of the governor.  The head of the Harrisburg Patriot Group declared himself as head of the interim government.  and his followers to be the legislative body.  In rapid succession they passed several measures….  Taxes were abolished. Slavery of the Negro reinstated. Government welfare abolished.  English only could be spoken. No restrictions on buying or selling weaponry of any kind.  All questions of legality would be handled by the interim government.  And it was also deemed legal to kill any man, woman, or child,  for not going to what was considered a “true Christian” church on Sunday morning…

May 8th.  Rejoicing erupts spontaneously in the mountains and  countryside of  PA… South-eastern PA is in shock.  Particularly among the dominant Afro-American population, Hispanics, Asians and Muslims.   City leaders governing Philadelphia and surrounding counties,  say they will respect the interim government’s authority as being that of the state, and try to hold Pennsylvania together… “We are still one state” they say “and will work within the framework provided.”.. There is considerable angst among the blacks however…

May 9th.  The US  Navy pulls into the Philadelphia Shipyard, where hundreds of mothballed ships lie.   The US says it is simply protecting its assets.   Civic groups call for the US to send in additional troops to protect Philadelpians.  They say they would rather remain in the US than become part of this new Pennsylvania run by Tea Partiers gone amok.

Sheriff Arapao calls on the US not to interfere or intervene and says doing so will be seen as an act of aggression toward the patriots and the US will suffer dire consequences if they do.

The US responds that an Arizona Sheriff has no jurisdiction in Philadelphia.

May 11th.  Reports that multiple convoys of armored personal carriers have crossed the Walt Whitman and Ben Franklin bridges and have now entered Philadelphia.  Conveys were also reported seen along I 95 in Delaware and heading north upwards  through Chester, and also up from Maryland along Route 1….

May 12th… The US reports it is not acquiring Philadelphia, but is merely setting a perimeter to protect its new base in the shipyard.  Sheriff Arapao is calling on the complete removal of all troops except for the original ones originally located in the shipyard.  The US responds that given the violent antics of the Tea Party in Harrisburg, they simply don’t have the trust factor with this new regime to do so.

May 12th.  The ousted governor  of PA surfaces and holds a press conference in Washington DC and calls for the reinstatement of  his government,  calling the coup an illegal use of force and an action condoned by no laws or precedents.

Citizens in Philadelphia hold massive demonstrations along the Ben Franklin Parkway in support of a future US occupation.  Tea Partiers are holed up in their militia armories,  blockaded and surrounded by US forces.  There has been no bloodshed reported.

May 13th.  The interim government of Tea Partiers has called on the US to leave.  The US now has said it is there to stay….  Sheriff Arapao contends that the US is planning to take over all of Eastern PA.  The US says that should be decided by referendum,  the people have the right to choose with whom they wish to be governed.   Sheriff Arapao says that is unfair because everyone knows that in such a vote, most of urban PA would side with staying in the US and not elect to be under the rowdy independence of a sheriff and his posse….

May 14th.  Local Tea Party citizens not affiliated with the interim government descend upon the Mexican community of Hazelton and set fire to houses of Mexicans and burn their cars…

May 15th… African communities across the state of PA, and particularly in Pittsburgh, reported sightings of armed men in white robes and several crosses were burned in Three Rivers Point.  There were also reported incidents of bricks thrown through windows of minority businesses.

May 16th.  Breaking. The interim government just issued a proclamation on sheepskin that declares that no Afro-Americans, no low income, and no Mexicans will be hither allowed in public schools or public buildings. They use is only for white people.

The US immediately calls on them to change, staying those with colored skin that is darker than white, also have rights as well.  Sheriff Arapao says the posse do, what the posse do. That is what freedom is… sometimes.

May 17th.  The US puts 40,000 troops along the extended border of PA.  Is says it is for field training  Sheriff Arapao calls it provocative and sends out a call for patriots everywhere to matriculate into PA to fight the US imperialists.

May 18th.  Armed  personal waving US flags occupy the West Chester Courthouse this morning . There was no blood shed.  All participants appearing to be afro-Americans, were masked, well organized and said wore American flags on their logos.

The interim government called it an act of war, and from a hill top of Arizona, Sheriff Arapao called upon Americans to abandon their diets and all drink milkshakes, to apply pressure by shaming the ineffectiveness of Michelle Obama’s healthy diet plan.   The US laughed at that retaliation, but Sheriff Arapao claimed it would be highly effective  for it would piss off the real power inside the White House…

Meanwhile the interim Tea Party government said it was in a financial crisis.  It had no money to pay anyone, it was unable to maintain any governmental services.

May 19th —  Early this morning Delaware County courthouse was stormed by what they said were local separatists but all had the same markings as did those in West Chester.  The courthouse was quietly taken over, as well as the water plant and sewer.

In West Chester, members of the wealthy neighborhoods who tended to support the Tea Party’s call of no taxes, demonstrated in front of the occupied West Chester courthouse… They were soon outmatched, and overrun by counter demonstrations of relatively poorer African Americans who quickly took control of the street.

May 20th  Demonstrators took over the city building in Montgomery PA today.  Tea partiers with the help of the PA national guard surrounded the building and set fire to it, after boarding the doors to prevent escape.  48  pro US demonstrators died.

Sheriff Arapao blamed the deaths on the US, saying they were creating the demonstrations and thus forced these 48 to die.  The US countered saying most Afro Americans are very concerned that the official potion of the Pennsylvania  government is to have them enslaved, and has already banned them from public schools and public buildings, and in this case who were basically doing what was done by the Tea Party originally at the capitol building in Harrisburg.

Sheriff Arapao called the US a liar and called upon all Americans to punish the US by not eating broccoli this time… (Take that Michelle)….

Meanwhile the neighboring states of New York, Ohio, and New Jersey have been working on a deal with the Tea Partiers and the US government.   It would involve PA’s borders remaining intact, but give autonomy over each region to that regions’ inhabitants, based on their choices in that election.  It would give US control over Philadelphia.

The Tea Party says no deal on elections or future government will be made until the US is completely removed from their territory.  The US replies that they will stay until the Tea Party can show they are responsible citizens, willing to let others have rights too.

May 21– The Tea Party with the help of their patriot Vietnam vets flying confiscated national guard helicopters,  attacked the strongholds in eastern PA taking over all.  8 people died in the gun battles, several innocent bystanders hit by stray fire.  The total dead is over 50.  The separatists loyal to the US, quickly retake the buildings after the air power has left.

May 22 — Sheriff Arapao and the interim government call upon the US to move its troops back from the border.  The US replies it has, but Sheriff Arapao says his patriots tell him it is not so….

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And that is where Ukraine as seen by Russia is today… It is ironic and sad that due to normal human nature, simply because we Americans been told that Putin is “bad” by people (Sarah Palin) who we don’t really know well, or don’t know if we can trust even at all (Fox News) , how quickly it taints us to jump to that very conclusion, with no supporting facts… Anyone who states an cautionary opinion otherwise, quickly gets pooh-poo’d by the tiny little minds here in the US..

But when roles are reversed, Putin’s own account seems very plausible.  As we go forward, we must ask ourselves why the US today in our real world is now playing the role of Sheriff Arapao in the pretend one above…  Is it because there are many moles of Sheriff Arapao replicated and buried within our real government, today?  People who perhaps, don’t really care about being right or wrong, … but just want a war they’ve been planning in such detail all these years… to finally happen?

 

Did you ever notice how a fight starts on a elementary school playground? A stare down, and obviously neither wants to do it. but neither wants to hear the taunts of “chicken” either…  It starts with one bystander… “Fight, fight, fight, fight,” and gets picked up by his accomplice, “fight, fight, fight, fight,”,,, and then his toady joins in… “fight, fight, fight, fight,” and then innocent bystanders flocking to the sudden outburst, who really have nothing to win or lose but just want some relief from their boredom, find themselves captured and joining in… “fight, fight, fight, fight,,,”…

Maybe they will fight; maybe they won’t… but usually when they don’t…. it is only because an adult stepped into the fight zone and took control…..

The real problem today, is those yelling “fight, fight, fight, fight” inside our nation’s beltway….  They will always be there too.  Whether to push Kennedy into the Bay of Pigs, or the US and NATO into a war with Russia.

For them, it is all the same.

 

 

Finally! Relief From Benghazi

To those who’ve been  insufferable to all others… Ha, ha. Treat yourselves..   Number 37,449.

(And if anyone wants to know the next fact up the trivial ladder of relevance it is this….)

Number 37,450:  The Hittites domesticated asses, horses, cows and raised honey bees.