What is wrong with the NYC police? Overnight they have gone from a respected, model organization to a bunch of stupid thugs. The arrest of Naomi Wolf the other night is just outrageous and must reflect badly on the department. Ray Kelly is too savvy to let this go on. He is making martyrs out of the demonstrators when all they are doing is pointing out, very peaceably, I may add, that there are evils in our society that need desperately to be addressed.
Has someone put something in the water at the First and Seventh Precincts? Is this why our honored police are acting like paid mercenaries for the Wall Street fat cats? Let the people demonstrate. It’s their First Amendment right. Doesn’t the NYPD believe in the law of the land?
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Saw Ken Burns new documentary about Prohibition. Is it really just about Prohibition? Not a chance. Is it a metaphor for something else? You bet. Is that something else the drug wars? On the nose!
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My Republican friends are constantly whining about my coverage being unbalanced, about my attacking them more than I do the Democrats. Well, it just seems to me that they have more to attack then the Democrats. But now it seems I have an ally. Ronald Reagan’s (yes the God of the Right) director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, has come out with the proclamation, “How my GOP destroyed the US economy.” And he’s serious.
“If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians,” Stockman declares, “the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.”
He continues, “Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts – in government, in international trade, on the legers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too.”
None of this, he goes on to say, is now true. He points first to Nixon’s monetary policies that removed gold as a basis of the paper money we printed and left us with an un-backed printing press full of paper but with no underlying strength.
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Meanwhile, as demonstrators are busy taking over Wall Street and others are doing the same in many American & European cities, up in Canada they are all in a tizzy trying to arrest and indict Bush for crimes against humanity. I think it’s a great idea. We have too many problems right now to waste time on the likes of little Dubya but the Canadians have nothing better to do so why not let them try him and hang him.
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In a landmark decision the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban on road building on 50 million acres of national forests. This is good for the environment and also good for those who love to experience the outdoors. This move had been fought not only by logging and commercial interests but also off- road enthusiasts. I understand the position of the commercial interests opposing the ban, they’re looking to make a buck no matter what they destroy or whom they offend but the off-roaders? These are the people who are supposed to love nature. They really do, it’s just that they’re too lazy to walk into it.
I want to be able to drive on a good smooth road that cuts through the forests and then park my off-road vehicle right next to a stream so it can leak gas & oil into it. That’s the credo of these phony outdoorsmen. What happened to hiking in and actually camping? What happened to not having to get home that night to get on the iPhone? These pantywaists don’t deserve to be allowed to use our national forests since they don’t seem to worry about destroying them.
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I’m watching Ron Paul on Meet the Press. That this guy was a practicing doctor and a senator boggles the mind. He isn’t even close to lucid. He’s asked a question and he raves like a maniac; logic and organization of thoughts are completely out the window. I watch him and try to understand what he is raving about and it’s impossible to follow any logical thread. He jumps around like a four-year-old child, his mind flicking from one idea to another with no rhyme or reason. Who is giving this nut case money and what do they expect to get from it. If, in some other universe, he were elected president, it would be his keeper who would have to make all logical decisions. The Republicans already have too many nutty candidates. Can’t they find anyone to run against Romney who can think logically?
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With all the problems with Wall Street that have been plaguing our economy and our personal wealth a new option seems to be appearing on the scene. This writer has already suggested taking your dough out of big banks and putting it into smaller local banks or credit unions but the people of Germany seem to have created another option. It’s a Public Option. Public Banks owned by the depositors. It works for the people by reducing the power of commercial & investment banks and by making the normal business of banking more available to the public than it is here. It also makes banking services like business loans, much easier to apply for and receive. One half the total banking assets in Germany are in public banks. It’s time for us to get into this preferred service.
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The Evangelical rejection of reason, which denies all scientific knowledge except when it’s convenient for them, makes them look awfully cynical when they bring it up in connection with abortion. What’s going on here worshipers?
Contrary to the phony preaching of David Barton, the founders of the nation and the framers of the constitution were not Evangelicals who saw this as a Christian nation. In fact they wrote The First Amendment of the Constitution just to keep that from happening.
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The corporations say a tax holiday will help jobs. Bullshit! Big corporations are holding $2 trillion in cash. If they need money to create jobs why don’t they dip into that? The real reason corporations aren’t spending any money on creating jobs is that consumerism is off and no one is buying their current products giving no indication that additional products will sell. Giving them tax cuts won’t cure this problem. Raising their taxes and using that money for the government to create infrastructure will help the problem because by creating employment we are creating consumers.
Two bills are now before congress to cut rates on repatriated money that corporations are holding in foreign countries. This is ridiculous. Are we supposed to give the corporations a break for bringing back money they made by moving American jobs overseas? Better we should add a tax to any American company that creates jobs and income overseas at the cost of jobs here.
Tax holidays are a horrible idea because they encourage corporations to hold their money in foreign countries and even move more there to wait for the next tax holiday. Chick Schumer wants to pass this tax holiday bill. I thought he was smarter than that.