There was a discussion, recently, of Carly Fiorina and her place is in the Republican election plans for 2016. It was intelligently pointed out, by a GOP spokesman, that she is a huge improvement over Michele Bachman, who was the female attack dog in 2012. Really? And that’s supposed to be a big improvement? Adopting a sick dog over a dead dog; that’s an improvement?
Carly , who always points out that she was a successful businesswoman who ran a major corporation, just as often forgets to include that under her stewardship, Hewlett -Packard fired thousands and thousands of workers, that she was kicked out by the board of directors and that on the news of her firing, the stock rose by 7.5%. This may be Carly’s idea of a successful corporate leader but I don’t think it fills the bill for anyone else.
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Watched the right-wingers on Fox discussing the deal with Iran and was amazed on how naïve they all seemed. They don’t seem to understand that the Ayatollah’s comments were made for his people; not for us or the rest of the world. He is very busy saving face, not arguing about the facts of the deal. Iran doesn’t want a nuclear weapon. They have noting to gain by acquiring one anymore. They understand that one weapon developed will make them the target of thousands of weapons from Israel and the U.S. It would take almost nothing to turn the sands of Iran into glass.
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Bernie Sanders has joined the presidential race. It would be very surprising is Bernie won the primary from Hillary but Bernie is definitely welcome and needed in the race. I say that because Bernie is the voice of humanity. Bernie is the guy who tells it like it is about fiscal equality or the lack of it, about the environment, and about a lengthy list of ills that this country needs to address and solve. Bernie is one of those political anomalies, a guy who doesn’t change his tune to get a vote. Bernie knows what’s right and he isn’t going to abandon that position just to please some turkey who doesn’t like his position.
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Mike Hukabee was on the tube lately with a lot of dumb thoughts about what he perceived as being wrong with Hillary and what has been wrong with our various policies under Obama. Like the rest of his GOP opponents he came out, big time, for helping the American middle class via better wages. Like the rest of his GOP opponents he always votes against that position. This just proves that they are all liars.
What he did get right, however, was his rant against politicians who run for office while holding another office. He’s right when he says that governor, senator, or congressman are all full time jobs and when a candidate starts running that is more than a full time job and no one can do both, that when someone tries, he is cheating the taxpayers by taking their money and not doing the job they are getting paid for.
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The Right has been attacking Obama for trying to get something done in this hemisphere with his call to relax sanctions on Cuba. Strangely enough or maybe it isn’t so strange, the Right’s main complaint against what Obama is doing there is that we didn’t get enough back for his gesture. That’s always the right’s stance. What can we get out of it? Not is it a good idea but how can we profit, The other big complaint from the Right, is that Cuba has a totalitarian government. So what? So do half the people we are allied with or do business with around the world. Do Bob Menendez or Marco Rubio want us to cut off relations with Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan and about thirty other countries that don’t provide our freedoms to their citizens?
My family was engaged in Cuba at the time of the revolution. My father did business with the Batista government and we had friends on both sides of the conflict. Castro tried to elicit support from our government but between the mob run casinos and United Sugar he never had a chance. So he turned to the Soviets who ere more than eager to create havoc, 90 miles off the shores of Florida.
The common thread is that the Cubans who fled to Miami did so as refugees and that is true in many cases but in just as many they came here for financial reasons or because they had been members of Batista’s dreaded secret police. Once they got here the Batisteros created a well financed voting and lobbyist block in Miami that has fought any acceptance of Cuba by us. What has gone on for sixty years is farcical and helps no one. The Castro’s are old men and will soon die. When they do, if we are in there and have established spheres of influence, we will be able to maneuver the country into a functioning democracy.
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In a discussion with Mike Lee over his book on the constitution, Chuck Todd made the most intelligent suggestion I have heard from network news in years. “Maybe we need a constitutional convention.” Oh boy, do we. There are so many problems with this country that can be best addressed, only, by a constitutional convention that it is the closest thing to a “must” that can be conceived.
Our government as it is now conceived will never consider changing many of our problematic political structures because those changes will hurt the very men who run the government. Attacking campaign financing, will take money from the pockets of those members of congress who get the money that is actually a legal bribe from rich benefactors who always want something back for their donation. So the idea of government financed, regulated, elections, paid for by tax dollars, is off the board as long as it is up to congress to make it happen. That means that the biggest threat to a true democracy, corporate dominance of government through corporate financed elections is taking over our government and we are doing nothing to stop it, have in fact, through the Supreme Court’s, Citizen’s United decision, done everything possible to advance it.
What congressman will vote a bill to change gerrymandered districts when it is those very gerrymandered districts that put him in office and are keeping him there?
But these problems aren’t alone and all the problems we have with government can’t be solved by just a constitutional convention. It would be, however, a good start.
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John Boehner says that we send more money on antacids than we do on politics. Maybe John, but that’s because we have all the idiots like you, who can’t think logically, screwing up the country and giving us acid stomachs. He was on meet the press this Sunday and for ten minutes he said absolutely nothing. He has no viable opinions, no idea how to fix any problems, in fact no idea that the obvious problems are even problems. This is a buffoon without an intelligent position or idea. And he is running the House. Is it any wonder that no one in congress can get anything done? Boehner’s only position is that he wants to keep getting paid for doing nothing. He is the ultimate loser.
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I’m watching the McLaughlin Group, as John McLaughlin reads polling statistics on Hillary versus different GOP candidates He is repeating the same stats over and over as the rest of the group bravely tries to save the program by taking the discussion on themselves. It appears that McLaughlin has surrendered to senility and having seen this performance before, I’m wondering why the network is allowing him to continue on with this farce. There are intelligent people on the show, often making good points but they struggle, each week, to save it from the host, as he sits like the Pope of Fools, making pronouncements that make no sense as the others jump in to explain him or to change the embarrassing subject. What the hell is going on with this show and what does McLaughlin have on the network executives that makes them let him sit there and disintegrate before our eyes.
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I watched Judith Miller on Bill Maher’s show the other night and she came up with the scariest piece of information I have heard in a long time. Her point was that it wasn’t Bush and Cheney selling the country down the drain to invade Iraq, although they did cherry pick certain bits of information to sell their war, but that it was our complete intelligence complex that got it wrong and their information is what led Bush/Cheney to think they could legitimately invade that country. $16 billion a year worth of intelligence was dead wrong then and is still dead wrong on almost every current situation.
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I’ve done a lot of bashing of the media in this blog and today I saw why. A location reporter on MSNBC covering Chris Christie‘s New Hampshire vote grab, did a whole loud spiel, over a rendition of the national anthem, sung by a group of school children. Steve Kornacki, the host of the show, UP, realized what was happening but neither he nor any of the producers saw fit to stop her or even tell her what was going on until after she had finished making a fool of herself. Then, as if that wasn’t crass enough, she went right into her next piece, drowning out speakers at the event, who tried to go ahead with their material. She was so loud that members of the audience angrily turned to object to the interruption, but she kept right on going and no one on the production team came to her aid.
It was hard to tell if this unfortunate child was so worried about her face time, that she was completely oblivious to the fact that she was getting in the way of everything that was going on, or if the crew and producers were too stupid or intimidated to stop her? Was this a terrible choice by production as to where to shoot this segment? Yes. Did MSNBC prove that they are a bunch of useless amateurs? Yes. Did UP host Steve Kornacki prove that at least in this instance he acted like a senseless boob? Absolutely, and this is one of the best stations on the air