An explanation

In a previous post on election fraud I used the term "unwed mother" to describe a dance contestant.  This is because I refuse to use her name.  A couple of readers have pointed out what they think is some kind of attack on motherhood.  While I have no animous against unwed mothers in general, this one is a spokesperson for abstinance, which makes her a hypocrite and willfully ignorant of reality.  It's simply a case of IOIYAR.  It's okay if you're a Republican. 

1-800-Its-Fraud

     I've been vicariously following a TV competition show. One of those where the in-studio audience and the one at home can call in to vote for their favorite performer. I don't watch these kinds of shows, because I don't care about a bunch of wannabes or has-beens.

     One show in particular has had several scandals involving the voting process. It is always interesting when one of the worst performers keeps getting enough votes each week to survive while the much better performers get bumped off the stage. In one case a mop-headed goof stayed on for a few weeks longer than he deserved, and in another, a group got together and gamed the system in favor of a dull, if talented, guy who went nowhere. The “loser” was a better showman and really put a lot of energy into his performances. In other words, he was an entertainer. The other guy, not so much.

     Now another show is suffering a voting scandal. This one involves dancers. This show has strained the definition of “star” to ridiculous extremes. Since when is an unwed mother whose own mother is a famous quitter a star? Well, it seems the show's producers were asking for it. The unwed mother went on through the show's entire run until she finally finished in 3rd place. It seems that Sarah Palin supporters discovered a “glitch” in DWTS' voting system and exploited it to telephonically “stuff the ballot box”. It was, in effect, election fraud.

     The Reich wing will claim voter fraud whenever they are on the losing side. While there has been evidence produced indicating false registration, ie: Mickey Mouse, those “fraudulent voters” don't show up to vote because they don't exist. One famous Reich wing hack was being investigated herself because she was registered in one state and voted in another. Means she was registered in two states at the same time. Can't do that.

     What is far more dangerous and is happening far more frequently is election fraud. Diebold voting machines, those produced by ESS and others, are notorious for losing or switching votes. They have touch-screens. Seems easy, right? Just put your finger on the screen to indicate your choices. The problem comes when you select the Democratic Candidate. The machine may indicate you voted for the Republican. If you try to correct it, which supposedly is possible on these machines, you might succeed, or you might not. But it doesn't matter anyway. These machines are not owned by the state. They are leased for the election.

     These machines run on proprietary software which can be programmed to switch a certain number of votes internally without the user's knowledge. They can also be hacked by outside sources which may then change the voting numbers. And here's the kicker...there is no paper record to confirm your choices. There is no paper trail to follow.

     The explanation from Diebold rings the most hollow of all: there is no way to print out the voter's record. Excuse me? No way? This is from Diebold who also makes ATM machines. ATM machines can print a variety of reports linked to your balance. You can get a record of the last 10 to the last 30 transactions, just by putting your card in the slot and using your PIN. But they can't make one that prints poll results?

     Further, the CEO of Diebold vowed to deliver the state of Ohio to G.W. Bush in 2004. I was in Ohio in 2004. I took a friend to vote that evening before the polls closed. It was dark and cold and rainy. I sat in the car, waiting for him to finish. The polls that night were so screwed up that they had to stay open for an extra two or three hours. That was because there were too few machines in the minority dominant neighborhoods while the more affluent ones had plenty.

     This was the plot of the criminal Secretary of State who was a Republican. Now normally, a Republican SoS is not a problem, but this one was also the state Chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio. There should be a solid wall between being an elected official and being the Chairman of the Party in one's state. You should be able to be one or the other, not both.

     Bush took Ohio by deception. People did not stand for hours in the dark and rain to vote for George Bush. I am convinced that Bush was never legitimately elected President. There are lots of others convinced of that, too.

     Any illusions you may harbor concerning Democracy in America are inoperable. Election fraud gives us terrible leaders in undeserved offices and an unwed mother an undeserved 3rd place in a dance contest.

Jeeze! Not Again!

I got the following e-mail from my right-wing friend.  I have posted about this before, but thought it might be fun to post the whole thing and include my responses. My responses are in larger type and separated by a line.   



According to sources who watch the inner workings of the federal government, a smackdown of Barack Obama by the U.S. Supreme Court may be inevitable.

 Ever since Obama assumed the office of President, critics have hammered him on a number of Constitutional issues.

 Critics have complained that much, if not all of Obama's major initiatives run headlong into Constitutional roadblocks on the power of the federal government.

Obama certainly did not help himself in the eyes of the Court when he used the venue of the State of the Union address early in the year to publicly flog the Court over its ruling that the First Amendment grants the right to various organizations to run political ads during the time of an election.

The tongue-lashing clearly did not sit well with the Court, as demonstrated by Justice Sam Alito, who publicly shook his head and stated under his breath, 'That's not true.' when Obama told a flat-out lie concerning the Court's ruling.
_______________ 
What lie?  That corporations would spend millions running ads for or against candidates in State and Federal races?  Guess what...they did!
Corporate sponsored Rethugs and teabaggers were rampant this season, just as Obama warned they would be.   

As it has turned out, this was a watershed moment in the relationship between the executive and the judicial branches of the federal government.  Obama publicly declared war on the court, even as he blatantly continued to propose legislation that flies in the face of every known Constitutional principle upon which this nation has stood for over 200 years.
_______________
The court did that in its ruling on the Citizens United case.  They overturned major case law, ignored precedent, and LEGISLATED FROM THE BENCH, by granting Corporations the same rights of free speech as People. And while people use words, Corporations use money.  Do you think money is the same as words?  Do you think it's okay for a Corporation with unlimited funds to speak louder than you or me or any of us people? 

Obama has even identified Chief Justice John Roberts as his number one enemy, that is, apart from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, and so on.
_______________
Obama has never publicly stated that CJ J Bob is his number one enemy.
He has never called any of the others his enemy either.  He has simply stated that you can't make an informed choice if all you listen to is the Right-wing.  And he's right again!

And it is no accident that the one swing-vote on the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy, stated recently that he has no intention of retiring until Obama is gone.
______________
Actually, he said he doesn't plan to retire until 2012. If Obama gets a second term, Kennedy will be gone and Obama can appoint whomever he wants. Kennedy is 74. He'll be 77 in 2012. The dementia should have a firm grip by then. 

Apparently, the Court has had enough.

The Roberts Court has signaled, in a very subtle manner, of course, that it intends to address the issues about which Obama critics have been screaming to high heaven.

A ruling against Obama on any one of these important issues could potentially cripple the Administration.

Such a thing would be long overdue.

First, there is ObamaCare, which violates the Constitutional principle barring the federal government from forcing citizens to purchase something.

And no, this is not the same thing as states requiring drivers to purchase car insurance, as some of the intellectually-impaired claim.

The Constitution limits FEDERAL government, not state governments, from such things, and further, not everyone has to drive, and thus, a citizen could opt not to purchase car insurance by simply deciding not to drive a vehicle.

In the ObamaCare world, however, no citizen can 'opt out.'
_______________

States can choose to Opt-out, so if your state doesn't want you to have affordable health care, you're in luck.  But some states with Republican administrations have complained that their states are too broke to implement Health Insurance reform so they will let the Federal government pay for it...Republicans are relying on the federal government to cover the uninsured population, helping bring about the very thing they fear — greater government involvement in the health care sector — while Democrats are employing state-based solutions.

Moreover, the idea of the high-risk pool was first proposed by then-presidential candidate John McCain, who believed that he could cover everyone with a pre-existing condition for just $10 billion. Conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation supported the idea, but Democrats saw it as an incredibly inefficient way of expanding coverage. Now that Obama has accepted the idea into health reform, Republicans are opposing it and opting out of McCain’s idea.

Second, sources state that the Roberts court has quietly accepted information concerning discrepancies in Obama's history that raise serious questions about his eligibility for the office of President.

The charge goes far beyond the birth certificate issue.  This information involves possible fraudulent use of a Social Security number in  Connecticut , while Obama was a high school student in  Hawaii .
_______________
Hmmm, who was a student in Connecticut? BUSH. Obama was in Hawaii. over 3000 miles away.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

Third, several cases involving possible criminal activity, conflicts of interest, and pay-for-play cronyism could potentially land many Administration officials, if not Obama himself, in hot water with the Court.

Frankly, in the years this writer has observed politics, nothing comes close to comparing with the rampant corruption of this Administration, not even during the Nixon years. 

Nixon and the Watergate conspirators look like choirboys compared to the jokers that populate this Administration.

_______________
The Supreme Court does not accept information concerning people
for the purposes of prosecution.  The court has no authority in that sense.
The Supreme Court is supposed to be the highest APPEALS court.  You case goes there only after appeals in State Supreme Courts fail.  And the Court has already rejected hearing any law suits concerning Obama's legitimacy to be President.
For corruption that makes Nixon and his cronies look like choirboys see the Bush Crime Family...Cheney was in Nixon's administration, too.  And he learned from Tricky Dicky's mistakes.

In addition, the Court will eventually be forced to rule on the dreadful decision of the Obama DOJ suing the state of  Arizona . 

That, too, could send the Obama doctrine of open borders to an early grave, given that the Administration refuses to enforce federal law on illegal aliens.
_______________
The FEDERAL GOVERNMENT sets immigration law, not states.  Arizona's law is Unconstitutional on that basis.  If the Supreme Court hears the case, and it can choose no to, it will have to find FOR the Federal Government and AGAINST Arizona.   
Further, the Obama administration is enforcing immigration law.  His administration has deported more illegal immigrants in two years than Bush did in eight.
And Bush proposed giving them all amnesty, like Reagan did. 

And finally, the biggie that could potentially send the entire house of cards tumbling in a free-fall is the latest revelation concerning the Obama-Holder Department of Justice and its refusal to pursue the New Black Panther Party.

The group was caught on tape committing felonies by attempting to intimidate White voters into staying away from the polls. 
_______________
Really...The New Black Panthers...really?  Do you mean the same New Black Panthers, whose membership could fit into a VW microbus, that the BUSH administration investigated and did not consider a threat?  The same ones who didn't intimidate anybody (several people who voted that day said they weren't scared of them and no one tried to stop them from voting)?  THOSE NEW BLACK PANTHERS?
They weren't even armed!  No shotguns or handguns were brandished or found.   

A whistle-blower who resigned from the DOJ is now charging Holder with the deliberate refusal to pursue cases against Blacks, particularly those who are involved in radical hate-groups, such as the New Black Panthers, who have been caught on tape  calling for the murder of white people and their babies.
_______________
This particular whistle-blower has been discredited and his claims debunked.  As for the taped call for murder...this was done by a member of the group years ago, not during the voting thing. That member was suspended for a year.

 
This one is a biggie that could send the entire Administration crumbling--that is, if the Justices have the guts to draw a line in the sand at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
_______________
Again, for the court to do anything, a case has to be brought before it that has already been ruled on by a lower court.  Therefore, they can't do anything because there have been no cases in lower courts concerning these issues. 
That could be because most of these claims are false, they are based on Right-wing fantasies and talking points (more lies). 


GOOD NEWS IS WORTH PASSING ON TO THOSE ON YOUR E-MAIL LIST!!!
_______________
BUT LIES AREN'T WORTH THE TIME TO READ!!! 

With apologies to Dante

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Vote Here

I have just about had it with the Democratic Party. We had better get ready for a very tough two years or more. With Teabagger wins in the House of Representatives, and a razor thin Senate Majority, Democrats had better wake up and smell the napalm.

The Republican Majority in the House is going to devastate the country. The Boner has already said they plan to cut government, which means social programs are going to disappear. Medicare - pah -gone private, Social Security - pah- gone private, VA health and benefits - pah- gone private, Department of Education, - pah - eliminated. They are going to take the country apart piece by piece and then take the pieces apart and crush them under the fascist boots they all march lockstep in.

Our only hope this cycle was for the Senate to remain blue, but Reid is already talking compromise. When are they going to get it through their heads? The right-wing has no interest in anything the Democrats suggest or want. They want to destroy this country, destroy the President, destroy the middle class, so they, the super rich, can rule and the rest of us may as well be slaves.

We Democrats have been saying for years, that if the Politicians on our side of the aisle would stand up for us, we'd have their backs. We would see to it that they got elected again and again, if they had the guts and determination to do something to benefit the country. But it's like they're Charlie Brown and we're Lucy, holding the football. They just don't trust us. What they don't understand is we, the base, know what we're up against. We hear the way the right-wing and Teabaggers lie and trick their followers and foment hatred, anger, and murderous intent, among the faithful. We see the Christofascists with their misspelled signs and their wild eyes, and their ugly, intolerant ideas and attitudes. We're fighting for our very lives here, and yet the Dems in the Senate and the President want to compromise.

While on the the right, they say, “Compromise? We don't need no stinking compromise.”

That's why I've just about had it. We were lucky in California that Meg “Moneybags” Whitman and Carly “Outsource 'em” Fiorina both spent a great deal of their personal fortunes and still lost their respective races. Meg spent a whopping 161 Million dollars of her own money on her disastrous campaign. She started mean and she started early with the attack ads, and Jerry Brown was silent at first. The Jerry stepped up, ran ads that touted his accomplishments and what he planned to do for the state, and even showed an ad that showed Whitman saying she moved her company E-bay to California 30 years ago because the state was so “business friendly”. Thirty years ago, the governor was Jerry Brown.

Fiorina was a little more frugal spending a little over 3 million of her own and getting 4.9 million from the Chamber of Commerce. This isn't your local C of C, or even her local C of C, this is the American Chamber of Commerce, which has pumped a lot of money into Republican coffers this year. Despite the fact that most of that money is from foreign sources. She was defeated because Barbara Boxer pointed out that Fiorina had laid off 30,000 Californians and outsourced their jobs to China and India and a few other countries, and driven Hewlett Packard into the ground. That and the fact that her campaign photos showed a rather glassy-eyed Carly smiling out at the camera. It was creepy.

But back to the national scene...

Over the next two years, America as we have known it will cease to exist. Some will say it hasn't really been the same since Reagan took over, and it hasn't, but this will be worse, much worse. And the Democrats have only themselves to blame. Nothing they have done has been enough. Oh, sure, they accomplished a lot and it was going to take a generation at least to undo the damage wrought in the last ten years, but now they've lost more time and the power to do something. They let us down. They didn't fight, they didn't tell the President, “We've tried it your way, now it's time to do it our way,” and crush the opposition.

Partisan Politics is all there is anymore. It's here to stay. But I don't know if I am.

I hear New Zealand is nice this time of year.

Boo! I'm the GOP

For Halloween, I'm going as a GOPer

The Republicans held a Halloween party and invited all the infamous to attend. The following is the guest list.

Dick Cheney - a zombie (no beating heart)

George Bush - Pinocchio (as a puppet)

John Boener - The Great Pumpkin

Michelle Bachman - The Mad Hatter

Christine O'Donnell - Dorothy from the Wizard of OZ (I'm not a witch, at all)

Sarah Palin - A Mama Grizzley

Michael Steele - The invisible man

Mitch McConnell - a turtle

Sharon Angle - a geisha

Meg Whitman - a money bag

Carly Fiorino - a golden parachutist

Carl Paladino - a Mafia hitman

Joe Miller - a hobo

Rush Limbaugh - Jabba the Hut

David Vitter - the New Year's Baby (diaper included)

Sean Hannity - Barney Rubble

Rich Iott - a nazi SS soldier

Rand Paul - Aqua Buddah

Glen Beck - himself

Karl Rove - Benedict Arnold

The crowd was entertained by the Musical Stylings of John Ashcroft.

Refreshments were provided by the Tea Party including Right-wing Kool-ade

and a particularly noxious brew.

The party was funded by American middle class taxes (“Because really rich people don't pay any taxes.”).

Reason vs Unreason

A Republican friend of mine sent me an email listing the Top 10 reasons a person would vote Democratic in the up coming election. It was, as usual, full of right-wing talking points and lies.

I rarely respond to these, but I did this one because it was so easy to point out the fallacies of his arguments.

I have included it below:

Here are the top 10 reasons a person votes for Republicans.

10. I vote Republican because I believe that all the oil companies making record profits and paying NO taxes is OK as long as they only gouge us at $4.00 a gallon, and the government only gets 15% of that.

9. I voted Republican because I like paying more in income taxes than GE, Bank of America and CitiBank combined, and many others who all paid exactly $0.00 in taxes last year.

8. I voted Republican because Freedom of Speech should be confined to areas far away from any Republican person or gathering is taking place.

7. I vote Republican because I like the right to openly carry a firearm to a Presidential Rally, a National Park, a church, a bar, you name it, as long as all those poor people in New Orleans have their guns taken away.

6. I vote Republican because I don't believe in climate change even though the Winters are colder and the Summers are hotter than they were 10 years ago and the polar ice caps are melting and glaciers are shrinking. And I like getting 8 miles to the gallon in my 2 ton SUV.

5. I vote Republican because I don't believe in a woman's right to choose but do believe in the Death Penalty so I'm only pro-some life.

4. I vote Republican because I believe that all illegal immigrants should be deported, except the millions Saint Reagan gave amnesty to and the ones George W. Bush wanted to give amnesty to.

3. I vote Republican because I believe that Big Business ought to be able to privatize their profits and socialize their losses, so that the US Taxpayer in on the hook for billions in bailouts when these businesses become too big to fail.

3A. I vote Republican because I believe that Social Security and Medicare ought to be privatized so that Wall Street can get its hands on all that money and lose it all on bad investments so we are left destitute, bailing them out with our taxes again.

2. I vote Republican because I I believe that the Supreme Court should be able to legislate from the bench, overturn a hundred years of precedent, and choose the President, as long as it favors Republicans.

1. I vote Republican because I am so appallingly ignorant and hateful that I want the country to be destroyed by following the same failed policies it has for the last 30 years.

So, Yeah! Vote November 2, 2010, or do the country a favor and stay home.

It may be that last line went a little too far, but if we can cause an “enthusiasm gap” on their side, We Win!

Rambling Down a Broken Road

According to world census data, by the end of 2011, the Earth will be home to 7 billion human beings. When I was in High School, the world had only about 5 billion, and in the late '50s there were 3 billion. The census takers project an average increase of about 6 to 7 million births a year worldwide, while deaths will be fewer than half that number.

It is a testament to advances in medical science and a recipe for disaster.

The Earth is finite. Resources are finite. Even though there are organizations all over the US and the world trying to encourage people to recycle, reclaim, re-use everything that is not consumed, it is currently not enough.

Climate change is a controversial subject. Many people have simply called it global warming, but it is more than that. The science on this is sound. The Earth's climate is changing. It is hotter in Summer and colder in Winter. In the 57 years I've been around I've seen record temperatures in both directions, but the records are being broken and new averages are being calculated.

The environmental scientists and knowledgeable amateurs state “greenhouse gasses” are to blame for most of this. Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide, and Fluorinated

gasses are the most common. The last 3 are all created by industrial processes like mining, oil drilling cement manufacturing, and electricity generation, to name only a few. But the biggie is CO2. Carbon dioxide is created by industrial processes and human activity. Actually, anything with lungs contributes CO2 to the atmosphere by simply breathing.

Plants absorb CO2 through something called the carbon cycle. They also produce oxygen to varying degrees, with trees being the biggest producers for obvious reasons.

But we are destroying them, too. Deforestation is going on in Africa, South America, the US and Canada. I'm sure Europe and Asia have their forests being cut down to make way for human expansion or use in paper, furniture, construction, toothpicks, fires in stoves or open burning, sculpture; think of something made of wood. A tree died for that.

Which brings me back to the first subject. When there were only 3 billion people, there were plenty of trees to make oxygen for us. At 5 billion, there was a strain on the system, but it was still healthy and reforestation helped. At 7 billion the system will be strained again. At current rates, the world will have about 8 billion people in just over 13

years. What kind of strain will that have?

Remember the Earth is finite? There are great areas of the planet that are uninhabitable. Mountain tops and Antarctica, the driest deserts and the deepest oceans. The human population can't spread to every corner of the Earth, we're already cornered.

I fear, I mean really fear, that we are heading toward a real global disaster. The form it will take may be up to us, or it may be up to nature. Nuclear war, plague, famine, drought; none of these is pleasant to contemplate.

I am not in favor of compulsory birth control, forced sterilization or abortions. Hell, I have two grandchildren and would like to see a couple more. But the resources that will have to be there for any children born in the next decade or so are going to be fewer and fewer as time goes on, and it won't matter how much money you have in the bank or stuffed in your mattress, you can't buy what isn't there.

I don't think I'm alone in this rather grim view, but hey, maybe someone is seeing a silver lining, a way out of the gloom. A scientist or engineer may be designing new ways to use resources more efficiently . Maybe one of the children already running around today will discover a way to revitalize the planet and save the human race. I have my doubts, but also my hope that there will be a balance that can be achieved between man and our shrinking planet.

It's Alive! Alive!

It's 1931. You're sitting in a darkened movie theater. On the screen, a doctor has just noticed signs of life in the creature he has sewn together from disparate parts. He faces the camera and manically screams, “It's alive! Alive!"  And Boris Karloff as the monster rose from his slab.   

The modern Republican party has made the same discovery. The creature they have sewn together from several parts is alive. The Tea Party, The John Birch Society, The KKK, The American-Nazi Party, The Religious Right, and on and on. From the most extreme to the least intelligent, they have cobbled together a creature that has broken it's chains and threatens to smash its way out of the castle, and onto the political stage. They have sown the seeds of their own destruction.

From Christine O'Donnell, the wicked witch of the East Coast in Delaware, Rand Paul, civil rights opponent, and Sharon Angle who wants to eliminate alcohol in Nevada, have come the most radical and anti-American speech since Joe McCarthy.

But they don't think they're anti-American. They say they're anti-Big Government. And they can't make government smaller unless they get elected. And if they do, then they'll make Government smaller by cutting taxes on the rich and deregulating industries that really should be regulated, like banking or Big Oil. Not by cutting waste, mind you, but by laying waste to the only protections Americans have against destructive, predatory businesses who will do anything they want without consequence.

They cry, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” or Social Security, not seeing the reality that Social Security and Medicare are government programs. They are for cutting VA benefits for our soldiers and privatizing their medical care, but claim they support the troops.

Now the Republicans have a problem on their hands. They have promoted and supported, and shown up at rallies for these crazies, and the crazies are winning in Republican primaries. They are splitting the electorate on the right. The base that the right could always count on is having different ideas. They're all bad, but they're ideas.

Voter turnout is the key. Some right-wing nut famously said “When voter turnout is small, we win.” That's because the reliable voters, who turn out for every election, are predominantly Republicans, and Democrats face an uphill battle to get people out. Well, in 2008, the Democratic base was energized, and voted in large numbers for Barack Obama and several progressive Democratic candidates to take back Congress and try to fix the country. And if the Democrats are smart, they'll bring out the pitchforks and torches, and force the monster back. They'll attack with everything they've got to make sure the voters know just what is at stake, and how the crazies will screw everything up in DC.

We have to show that the conventional wisdom – that the party in control always loses seats in the mid-term – is wrong. Democrats have to come out to vote in large numbers and keep the teabaggers out or

in the minority so their influence is minimized. We have the chance here to destroy the monster...but maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should only convince it to turn on its creators and destroy them.

If we can convince sane people that the inmates shouldn't be running the asylum, if we point out the positive developments since January 2009, maybe we'll have enough chain to rein in the monster, and keep him locked up until we need him again in 2012. VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

The Speed of Light and Darkness

Keep Those Electrons and

Pixels Coming In

Email. We all use it, communicate thru it, tear our hair out over it, and delete it. It brings news from friends and family; births, deaths, marriages, divorces. It has become ubiquitous.

For those of us of a certain age, we remember getting letters, handwritten or typed, that we held in our hands, brought by the mail carrier, and put in a box by the door. The carrier still comes, but most of the mail now is bills or catalogs, or ads. The junk mail we complained about has largely been replaced by spam. The Hormel people really don't like that.

I have a friend...let's call him John...who sends me scads of email. John is a Republican. He listens to Rush Limbaugh and watches FOX news, and while he doesn't believe everything he sees or hears, he does believe the worst bits.

John forwards a lot. He sends links to videos, photos of nature, heart-warming stories about dogs and kittens and deer. He sends funny jokes, cartoons and photoshopped stuff that'll make me laugh. I get an urgent warning about twice a year about the latest computer virus that is sweeping the net. The virus is usually about 7 years old or was a hoax to begin with. It is no longer a threat. I'm not sure he even reads some of the stuff he forwards. I have received things forwarded to me that I have sent him.

But he sends other stuff too. Dark stuff. Political stuff. And therein lies the problem.

Being a Republican, he's on a list somewhere that has his address for every crack-pot theory, birther conspiracy, teabagger nonsense, and anything else the right-wing talking points authors want to come up with. He sends dire if dated references to the Health Care Insurance Reform Act, warnings that the Democrats are coming to take your guns away, that Obama is a Muslim Communist, Marxist, Nazi, apologist who doesn't like white people and bows to foreign leaders.

If the email is a short one, I'll reply debunking it. Snopes.com is good for this or factcheck.org, or even truthorfiction.com. The really annoying thing is when the email says Snopes or one of the others supports this stuff, and when you check it out, the site actually refutes the claims. They conveniently omit that part. But John sends it on anyway, because I don't think he bothers to check it out. He just believes it.

If the email is a long one, like a letter or an article I try to find out where it came from. World Net Daily?, FOX?, News Busters? Right-wing lie factories, the lot. The lies and misstatements are too numerous to count and debunk. Who has the time? To these I reply, “Why bother? None of it's true”.

He has also sent signs seen at rabid right rallies, bumper stickers that make you want to gag, tee shirts that are offensive to anyone who has a brain. These range from outright racism to appalling ignorance, to just mindless hate and rage. Some people think these are clever or funny. They are not.

Irony and satire are lost on these people. The right isn't really into humor. You see, a joke has to have a basis in truth. The truth is not in them.

Right-wingers lap up the smears sent by email like thirsty dogs. Email travels around the world in an eye-blink. But who would suspect something that travels at the speed of light of spreading so much darkness?

NO GUN LEFT BEHIND

  There has been an increase in gun sales since November 2008. This is in response to the election of our first mixed race President. He happens to be a Democrat and as the right-wing likes to lie, “The Dems want to take away our guns.”

  Teabaggers like Sarah Palin saying “Don't retreat, reload.”, and Sharon Angle saying if the elections don't go the way she'd like a “second amendment solution” may be necessary are inflamatory.

Ginning up the base is what pols are supposed to do, but encouraging violence from the nut-jobs is dangerous to all of us. Nut-jobs don't discriminate.

  Despite the fact that President Obama has signed more pro-gun laws in his first two years than G.W. did in eight, the lies persist. The only bright spot here is there is a shortage of ammunition. The bullet makers can't keep up with the demand.

  The nut-job who killed three police officers in Pittsburgh, PA was convinced Obama was coming to take his guns. Well, the President didn't show up to take his guns. The Pittsburgh Police Department did. And now, because he couldn't think in a straight line, he has lost his guns.

Most domestic violence where a wife and children are killed is committed by a gun owner. For example:

JACKSON, Ky. – For months, Stanley Neace had shown increasing hostility to his neighbors in rural eastern Kentucky, to the point his landlord started eviction proceedings. On Saturday, Neace snapped over how his wife cooked his eggs, and killed her and four others with a shotgun before shooting himself. September 11, 2010

Metro Police say a domestic disturbance apparently led a man to shoot a woman and a preteen child before killing himself Tuesday night.
The man and woman were killed. The child was taken to a nearby hospital in extremely critical condition, police said. September 8, 2010

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A gunman opened fire at an Albuquerque fiber optics manufacturer on Monday, killing two people and wounding four others before turning the gun on himself in what police said was a domestic violence dispute. July 12, 2010

  The list goes on and on. The only justice anyone can find in these sad events is the shooter killed himself as well. I say, if you want to kill yourself, do so, but don't take other people with you, they don't want to go.

  The NRA will tell you they represent lawful gun owners and promote shooting safety. And, for the most part, they do. But their emphasis on the second part of the Second Amendment, and their insistence that Thomas Jefferson and several other framers of the Constitution supported gun ownership, is disingenuous.

  The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state....They conveniently forget about the well regulated militia part. Today, that would be the State National Guard. And the Founders had just fought a revolution against England, which was determined to keep it's colonies in North America. So much so that they had to do it all over again in 1812 to 1814. So, of course the men who lead the United States at that time wanted an armed citizenry to fight off invaders.

  We are no longer in danger of being invaded. Yes, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and terrorists crashed planes into the Twin Towers, but these were not invasions. I have no doubt that if we were facing invasion from a hostile nation, we would have the power to repel them and eliminate the threat. But “gunner Joe” won't be on the front lines.

  Although I am a Liberal, I am not anti-gun. I have owned guns, I probably will again. But, I don't want your guns. No one wants to take them away. No one is going to protest in front of a gun shop, or go nuts if you have 12 rifles, two shotguns and a Glock or two. Why you think you need an arsenal may be a question for your therapist, but if you got them legally, no problem.

  What I am against is gun violence. I don't think a gun is the answer to anything except self-defense. No one is worth killing over. No one. No job, no woman, no man, no child, no money, is ever worth it.

  Rage, passion, hatred, and depression are powerful emotions and can lead to violence. Maybe if you are subject to any of these, you should not have an easily accessed firearm. If you have to work at getting a hold of it, you'll have time to think and maybe calm down before you act. The waiting period in some states is aimed directly at this.

  The rest of the Second Amendment says “...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” I'm only worried about people on the fringe bearing arms.

Storytelling

Stories come to us from all kinds of places. Most are told by our parents or other relatives. Some come from books, and some come from memory. When my children would ask for a “Story without a book”, the ones I told most often were ones I remembered from my own childhood. Later, I wrote them down so I could pass them on to them to learn for their children.

Many stories for children owe their success to repetition. Repetition, and simple stories with simple plots or doggerel entrance children. They are learning about their world every waking minute, and repetition makes that easier.

Adults often find repetition monotonous and boring. Consider re-runs on TV. But when a parent reads a story to his or her child, it's not boring at all, because, deep down, we are passing on a time-honored tradition, Storytelling.

For thousands of years before writing was invented, the duty of passing down history and lore about a people and their place in the world, usually fell to one man: The Storyteller.

These were no ordinary stories. They were of creation and destruction, of great battles and victorious heroes, of journeys taken and fantastic miracles witnessed or related, told again and again.

Over the centuries, as storytellers became more sophisticated, they refined their stories to fit with contemporary society. Court Jesters were often storytellers, and sometimes those stories had a point. Although they were often labeled fools, it has been said that the jester was the only man who could tell a king an unpleasant truth and not suffer consequences. It's where the phrase “Speaking truth to power” originated.

As literacy became more common, stories were at last written down and standardized. More people could read a single story than a storyteller could reach in a lifetime. Publishing stories became big business. Books, newspapers, magazines, gazettes, tabloids, were all printed for the express purpose of telling stories. Some were true, some were not. The same thing goes on today.

Lately though, newspapers seem to be shrinking. Fewer papers are being bought and read, and some have folded. Trying to cut costs, some newspapers have narrowed the paper they are printed on. They have hired fewer reporters and subscribed to syndicated content providers, simply reprinting stories submitted elsewhere. Think of that e-mail you got that had been forwarded so many times, you had to scroll through a dozen pages of e-mail addresses to find the message.

E-mail is another reason for the decline in printed media. But a story spread by e-mail can go around the world at the speed of light and be read by more people than any book or newspaper. Whether that's a good thing is a subject for another day.

Over the last dozen years or so, storytelling has been going through a renaissance. Men and women have taken up the art in an effort to reconnect people with our shared past and oral tradition. Their costumes are as varied as their stories. There are storytellers who dress like hippies, or fairy queens, or harlequins, but they all share a love for telling stories for children and grownups, too.

If you can make up stories that are entertaining and fun, then you are lucky, indeed. But if you can't, there are plenty of printed stories you can use. However, if you are a parent, you should learn one story, one short simple tale with a little action and a little repetition,and some humor, so when your child says, “Read a story without a book,” you'll be ready. And your child will be amazed.

                                                                            Hatriots



The political atmosphere in which we find ourselves is the worst it's ever been. Thanks to the wide range of right-wing talk radio, propaganda TV, eight years of a criminal administration, the Republicans in Congress, and media celebrities whose stock-in-trade is hate speech, Democrats, liberals and progressives have been demonized.

The Republicans seem determined to deconstruct the framework of a working representative government. They want to eliminate social programs that millions of Americans rely on, they want to shutter schools and are attacking Universities as hot-beds of radical and communist thought and indoctrination. They want to cut Social Security benefits, cut taxes for the top 1 percent of wage earners, and to be ruthless in their goal of destroying the Presidency of Barack Obama.

The goal therefore, is to keep you dumb, poor, and scared.

Dumb because the more education a person has, the more likely he or she will choose wisely when voting.

Poor because the more money a person has, the less they have to worry about putting food on the table or paying for gas or electricity, or any of the necessities. They have time to think about their own best interests.

Scared because people who are fearful are easily led. And if one is given a very strong reason to do a very bad thing because doing that will make them “safe”, they'll do it. Even if the reason makes no sense, or is based on lies.

Republicans are liars. The entire right-wing are liars. And they don't care. A Republican will stand up in front of a group of people, large or small, and tell provable lies and keep a straight face. They know they are lying, the leadership knows they are lying. Anyone not tethered to the right-wing knows they are lying, and yet, the lies many times go unchallenged.

Why do you suppose that is?

It can't all be laid at the feet of the media, although they certainly share in the blame. There are few reporters left. The press has abdicated its role as a seeker of the truth for the cushy job of a stenographer.

The so-called liberal media is a myth. Obama has had more negative stories written about him than positive ones. More than George W. Bush had in eight years. The press doesn't seem to criticize Republican wrong-doing, but let a Democrat make a mistake or misspeak and the press are all over it. And when one doesn't make a mistake, the press will misquote him.

Another place to lay blame is with the White House for not taking the necessary steps to expose and disgrace the liars. They should have swept in, crushed the opposition, and left them bleeding in a corner somewhere. They seem to think that if they just play nice, the other guys will, too.

But they won't. They will go on lying, cheating and trying to destroy the President. They have said, publicly, that they will not work with this President. They oppose every proposal, even when the Democrats try to include their ideas. In fact, when a Republican advances an idea, and the President says he will support it, the Republicans oppose it. The House of Representatives has passed a number of bills, without a single Republican vote, but when the bill goes to the Senate, it languishes in committee after committee and gets nowhere because of Republican obstructionism. Filibusters, once used only to block legislation that the minority party opposed on principle, is now used routinely on any legislation proposed by the Democratic Majority.

They have been dubbed the Party of No. No ideas, no truth, no morals, no love of country, no support of voters, no shame.

So, whats a Democrat to do? There are a few who have called the Republicans out. Rep. Alan Grayson from (FL) and Barney Frank (MA) are the most outspoken on the House side, While Senators Al, Franken (MN) and Charles Schumer (NY) have voiced disapproval of their stalling tactics. There are others too, but these stand out.

What the Democrats, as a party, and the White House have to do is wise up to the fact that the Republicans are never going to be helpful or cooperative. They won't compromise, they won't negotiate, they want everything their way, and if they can't get that, no one can. They would shut down the Government, if they could, because that is just what they want.

They are anti-American. There is no other way to put it. They are the dis-loyal opposition. There is no stand too hypocritical, no lie too big, no irony too twisted.

It is time for us to stand up and say no to them. No, we won't take this anymore, no, we won't let you lie and get away with it, no we won't let you drive this country back into the ditch when we've only recently pulled back on the road, no we won't go back to the failed Republican policies of the past. No, No, No.

I recently heard Sarah Quitter Palin speaking to a group of teabaggers and Beckerheads at a rally dishonoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As she stood there in front of the fawning crowd, spewing her particular form of venom, she called them Patriots. But I heard a different word. I heard a word that perfectly describes the right-wing and the current crop of crazies who lead the GOP,

Hatriots.