Bits & Pieces #38

You really can’t make this stuff up.

 

Yesterday the Obama White House told Russia that they must not persecute individuals and groups seeking to expose corruption in their country even as Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and Barrett Brown are being harassed, prosecuted and railroaded by our own DOJ. It would be a joke if it weren’t so horribly wrong. The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined and Barry boy is telling Putin how to run an open and transparent country? Check yourself out Pres.

 

Even while Obama was making that statement and our country was prosecuting any and all whistleblowers the FISA rubber stamp was affixed to the administrations request for renewal of the order compelling Verizon to turn over to NSA all phone records of all Americans.

 

Now if you read the Constitution, this means that either all Americans are engaged in some kind of sabotage or terrorist activity or that the national government is involved in an unconstitutional activity.  Which do you think it is?

 

 

****

 

 

Watched the talk on NSA problem on This Week and Congressman Saxby Chamblis. Boy what a cliché dumb southern red neck this guy is. He just swallows whatever NSA shoves down his throat and regurgitates it back at us.

 

On Meet the Press. Maria Bartoromo, Phil Ford and Mike Murphy, not people I always agree with but people whose opinions I often respect, all mentioned the Keysrone Pipeline as an answer to our fiscal problems. HOW?  Creating jobs was mentioned more than once. Adding taxes was mentioned as was as a solution to our energy problem. What is wrong with these people? I can expect to hear the Keystone people spewing out these lies but to hear normal supposedly intelligent people mouthing them is unconscionable.

 

We will never be able to solve any of our problems if those we look to for leadership and intelligent counsel sell us drivel.

 

***

 

And just when we need it, the final count is in on the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline project and the real number of temporary, two year limit construction jobs as now agreed on by everyone except TransCanada is between 2000 and 2500, many of which will not be local hires but will come to us from Canada the home of the project. As for permanent jobs, how does 35 sound? That’s right 35. So not only has TransCanada/Keystone lied about the safety of the project, even as their pipelines are failing all over Canada and the US but they also lied about how many jobs they would produce.

 

This is an outfit that we really don’t need in our country. Let them lie to their own people, but keep them off U.S. soil.

 

 

 

***

 

 

The right has already set the standard by which they will cooperate with the left in trying to help the country. They want the head of Barak Obama. They don’t care if Obama’s proposed legislation is good, bad or indifferent. They will not back it as long as he is president. Why? Because they want to prove that a black president cannot lead this country. They want to establish, once and for all that we can never again elect a black man to lead us because we did it once and he failed. It was proved on This Week With Whoever Shows U, when George Will, no longer able to resist, despite being one of the right’s most erudite spokesmen, spewed out a gut full of venom on Detroit and those that inhabit it. Bigotry isn’t dead folks, it’s governing the right and they will follow its demands to the end of the earth to prove that the governing white man isn’t ready to give up his sword. What Will said about Detroit was disgusting, not because it revealed him to be the closet bigot we always suspected, but because it illustrates the position of his entire party. If the smartest among them feel this way, how else can we expect the dumb red necks to feel?

 

There is only one endgame to this scenario, People of color and I mean every color, are now in the majority in this county and they must prove their numbers at the ballot box. They must throw out anyone without a progressive platform or they will be kept in slavery for as long as they fail to do so.

 

The right is threatening to make abortion the banner item on this year’s election trail. Why make such an insignificant problem your headliner? Because it is a situation fraught with emotion and it will be used to distract voters from the real problems like joblessness, health care, the budget, failing infrastructure and the environment.

 

****

 

 

It isn’t bad enough that our education system is falling behind the rest of the world just as we need it to forge ahead. Now the idiots in congress are trying their best to screw our students into lifelong debt. Even though the Democrats had enough votes o keep the student loan rates low, the Republicans filibustered and the rate jumped from 3.4% to 6.8% on July 1.

 

The system was scheduled to make $184 billion over the next ten years before the rate hike. Wasn’t that enough for the right?  Aren’t they satisfied when a plan that is supposed to enable kids to go to college straps them with loans the rest of their life while millionaires and billionaires, make even more money because of the special low rate of .05% that the Fed charges the biggest banks.

 

We need the government to stop trying to retire the debt on the backs of our kids. We need the government to make that money they are trying to squeeze out of students by stopping billionaires from evading their taxes and to make them pay realistic interest on the loans they get from our already criminal banks.

 

***

 

And back to you can’t make this shit up. In a meeting of the State Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task Force, Colorado ® Senator Vicki Mable, actually said out loud that the reason for poverty among certain minority groups was that they ate too much fried chicken and barbecue. What more can you say?

 

 

 

***

 

Watched an interesting debate on This Week with Whoever Shows Up.  The Republican contingent was trying to sell the idea that their recent, very turbulent, get together had been a good thing, despite the vitriolic contention that spilled out the doors and stained everyone’s tie; and it probably was. Interior party debate is always good, but the problem with the Republicans is that no matter how much they debate and how nasty they fight, they always came out of it with the same old ideas .

 

They are still trying to sell the idea that Obamacare is a bad thing. How the hell is trying to get medical care for three million uncovered people a bad thing? How the hell is trying to get coverage for a sick child a bad thing?  How the hell is getting insurance for people with existing conditions a bad thing? They are so involved in trying to cut down the size of government that they don’t see the areas where it would make sense. They only want it smaller, not more functional.

 

Democratic congressman Keith Ellison tried to point out that the best way for the government to create new jobs is to enable it to expand work on our crumbling infrastructure. This would create jobs for a sector of the unemployed that need them most. For some inexplicable reason arch conservative Bill Krystol sees putting people back to work as increasing the size of government.  So what, a job is a job and if it happens to be in an area where it also does some good, like rebuilding unsafe bridges, so much the better. Is this really so hard to understand? The Right just doesn’t get that if we want to shrink government the obvious place to do so is in the universally bloated military budget. Of course that would not sit well with the military industrial complex that pays for congresses second homes.

 

****

 

Then I watched a commercial for BP that spoke to their commitment to the gulf, which they claim has never been stronger, even as these lying slime are trying to cut back on the amount they have to shell out for the damage they have already done.

 

 

***

NSA has decided that they are “overwhelmed” by the attempt to find out just what Edward Snowden managed to get out of their files.  This after a statement by the agency’s director Keith Alexander that :

“We have tremendous oversight over these programs. We can audit the actions of our people 100 percent and we do that.”

 

Sure you do Keith, and that’s exactly why you guys have your balls in an uproar about not knowing what Snowden took.

 

This is an agency that is setting a new low in stupidity and inefficiency, exactly the kind of group that we want to be collecting all our phone information and invading our privacy.

 

***

 

And once again we are back to you can’t make this shit up.

It seems that Senator Jeremy Hutchinson ® Arkansas, an active campaigner for having armed teachers or cops in all schools to protect against the occasional crazed shooter has managed to shoot a teacher with a rubber bullet during one of the “active shooter” training sessions. Way to make your point Jeremy. This is a man who is actually dumb enough to be twins.