Zone of Free Thought

The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

2018-08-21T10:49:00.001-07:00

The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

2018-08-12T22:20:00.001-07:00

Outraging the outrageous outrageousness with the outraged Republicans and Tea Partiers. Redux.

2018-01-15T15:14:00.000-08:00

Below is how I described things 7 long years ago. I couldn't then have thought things could get much worse. I guess I was wrong.

No one was paying attention. Do I have your attention now? Or better put, do these facts and conclusions have your attention now.

I wrote this at a time when I thought if you explained things to people you could change their minds. I turned out to be so completely wrong about that. Confronting people with the facts and Truth makes them feel cornered. For far more people than I would have believed have their opinions ruled by their emotions. Especially the ones that are, can I say, have less gifted brains than others. Often you can't explain things to them that they can understand. Conspiracy becomes their fall back. Once somebody's headed down the road to thinking that facts themselves are corrupted by conspiracy, well what can you do? They think it makes them smarter than you because that they figured out this conspiracy that everybody in the world has to be part of, except for them and a few other people, and you haven't.

Sometimes who's in charge of this conspiracy change to fit the circumstance but it comes down to the same kinds of conspiracies that have been promoted for a couple of centuries at least that at their core are anti-Semitic and opens the door to racism.

I've been thinking for several years that the Republican Party was on its way out just based on sheer demographics. I didn't expect that convulsions of their death throes would be this violent.

After having been wrong couple hot times it's hard to make predictions. I was wrong about Reagan (Back to the Future Doc is asked "who's president?" Ronald Reagan " the actor? Nawwwwwwww!" in his best Jim Ignatowski voice.) and of course now with Trump. In fairness to me even Trump couldn't believe it. Ivanka's tears were not tears of joy.

But I just cannot see how 2018 doesn't just turn into a democratic route. I know, gerrymandering. Still, with all the people that aren't running on the Republican side and the likelihood the Republican nomination process is likely to somebody even crazier than Trump it's hard to imagine we don't get both houses back. But still it's going to be Race by race seat-by-seat grunt work to get it done. They will have lots and lots of money and I know Democrats are still facing a fundraising backlash from Working Class People who coughed up money to Hillary's campaign and ended up wondering what they got for it. I know because I'm one of them. I remember being told in the fundraising calls in the last month that money contributed to her campaign might be spent on down-ticket campaigns because her campaign had so much money they didn't know what to do with it.

But then things get a little harder to figure. It's impossible to predict to what the lengths Trump would go to to retain the presidency. When the Republican Party came to Nixon and said it's time to go he understood he couldn't survive the process. At least he didn't go crazy. If Republicans come to Trump the same way he may be the one that becomes intellectually cornered and doubles down and falls back to the deep state conspiracy views that Steve Bannon fed him early on.

This is what I wrote seven years ago.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I sometimes like to hang around Fox News websites and check out the silly things they manufacture outrage about. Ok, not really. I follow a link to a story there and can’t resist the urge to look at the comments.

Today it was a story about the T-shirts left on the chairs for the people who came to the tribute for the victims of the Arizona massacre. First of all, many seem "disgusted" because they say the behavior was "outrageous" in the memorial. Except it wasn't a memorial, it was a tribute. Words have meanings. A tribute is different than a memorial.

Then, there was a person who said they were disgusted by… they didn’t exactly say just what they were disgusted about but added something about we used to be a great country, which I guess means we aren’t anymore, which sounds less than patriotic to me. Personally, I can still make a case for American greatness, especially in the “compared to what” way of thinking.

Yes, what a great country it was; until big corporations shipped manufacturing oversees, closed thousands of factories, shipped every job they can think of to the lowest bidder while bankers took money that wasn't theirs and lost it in casino style gambles. Who could blame them? They could win, but they couldn't lose because they knew they were too big to fail and money from American taxpayers (and the Chinese) would bail them out. (Remember, TARP has Bush's signature on it. Don't get me wrong, Obama would have signed it too, there was really no choice).

Since the dot com boom, Wall Street traders had referred to themselves as "Kings of the universe". Still, they lost the bet and caused the collapse of a house of cards built on improperly rated bundles of home mortgages that caused credit lines to freeze around the world. Most people don't understand what the next month would have been like if Congress hadn't passed and Bush hadn't signed that bill. The entire capitalist trading system around the planet would have failed. Goods, including food, would have piled up on the docks in a world where everyone has adopted "just in time" flow of their stuff.

There are no warehouses holding large quantities of goods anymore, again, including food. And it's not just international trade that relies on lines of credit. We don't produce enough food to feed ourselves, (unless you're good with raw grain) and even if we did there would be the question of whether the credit freeze would have stopped the transportation industry.

The stock market tanked and the bail out money stopped a collapse. The only thing that stopped the economic collapse was the bailout bill. The only thing that separated us from the Great Depression was a run on the banks. Google that one. If you weren't nervous about money that you didn't see in green right in front of you, you weren't paying attention. By late October or November everyone would have been going to the bank to get their money, but the money wasn't there. In a bank panic the money is there one day and the next day it's gone. It wasn't yours one day and someone else's the next, it's just gone.

This is what Barack Obama inherited when he took the oath in Jan 2009.

So, this is my way of saying you have a perfect right to be upset, you're just upset at the wrong people for the wrong reason. Your anger is misplaced.

This is the information age. Information used to be hard to come by. It is not now. I implore people who are so outraged to use their search engines to find information that is outside the circle of people that are feeding your feelings, not your intelligence. If someone tells you something, ask them for a source. Sourcing information is the most critical thing there is right now because there are so many people that just stand up and say things as though they are true, when in fact they are not. Just because they may look like you or sound like you or seem like a member of your tribe, as I like to say, doesn't mean what they are saying is true.

So, again, tell me what you are disgusted about. I'll listen; just don't expect me to feed it right back to you undigested.

Attached to the USS Handcock

2017-12-26T23:57:00.001-08:00

I guess you could say I was attached in a way because my dad flew off the Hancock during this time. His jacket has that emblem on the back of it. Until recently I thought when he said he was among the first Pilots to take off with steam catapults that he was talking about World War II. But recently I discovered that the Randolph was the first carrier to use steam catapults. Maybe they use some different kind of catapult in late World War. But you can see in the footage here is of the Catapult test sleds. You also see that in some of the footage here the Skyraider being launched by the catapult off a different carrier and it's wheels are in the air before they hit in the end of the deck. There's footage from the Randolph that shows F9F cougars being catapult launched and tipping down towards the sea as they gained airspeed followed by an unassisted Skyraiders rumbling down the deck with its wheels in the air before it gets to the end. LOL maybe you could let let a Skyraider Lumber down the deck while the Catapult is getting up steam again for the next cougar launch.

So I was a three year old in 1953 and we lived in San Diego because he flew back and forth from the Handcock to Miramar. Too bad this videos not getting more attention it's very cool. I have his flight log books so I can see his Landings and takeoffs on the Hancock. I guess I didn't mention he was a Skyraider pilot then. He also flew the S2F but I'd have to look closer at the log book to see if he did carrier Landings on the Randolph or later on the Hancock in the S2F. I think most of his s2f time came 1956 through 58 when he was a flight instructor and we lived in Kingsville Tx And he flew out of NAS Kingsville. Although I know from his log books that most of his time during those years was in a T-28.

I know for a time he was in the Hell's Angel Squadron VA 54 (Angeli Inferni) and he has that very cool patch on the sleeve of the jacket and the other sleeve has the patch for the Randolph Mediterranean Cruise of 1955 but I have yet to find that Squadron number in the film footage from the Hancock or the Randolph. I keep seeing video of AD--5s both here and on the Randolph. I'm about to sell his AD-6 flight handbook That's dated October 1953. The cool thing about that handbook is it's got " restricted" blacked out and has a blue stamp that says "confidential". I haven't seen that on other Skyraider handbooks.

By the way when I was 5 in 1955 before he went off on the Randolph Cruise we were on base for what I recall they called inspections where he'd be in his dress whites. He walked me by the hand down the flight line and walked me up to an ad-5 and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. (the Skyraider had different cockpit configurations and one of them is a two seater, side by side) I said I did, and he put me in the thing strapped me up put the helmet and microphone on me hooked me so we could talk through the helmets, then he called a guy over with a Fire Bottle (which means he planned this) and started the engine. I didn't freak out or anything but he says after a few minutes Of that big engine bouncing me around at idle has he warmed it up I asked him over the headset of maybe we could go for a ride another time. She had to have been counting on cuz I don't believe for a minute that on a base inspection day with the base crawling with brass he would he be taking a five-year-old up in a Skyraider LOL.

Inside the last minute of zero hour, Republicans tap out and cry "UNCLE!" on Obama care repleal!!

2017-03-25T00:19:00.000-07:00

By Jack Warner

The fifteen million Americans that got insurance they didn't have before, and the ten million more that would have been kicked off plans, should be giving the sigh of relief heard round the world.

What a thrill it was when watching C-Span this afternoon headed for that 3:30 vote when I saw someone walk to the speaker dais and hand a note to the Pro tempore at 2:29 and I realized they were pulling the bill and Republicans were spared being forced to vote and having an opponent run against that vote no matter which way it went. Their greatest fears would have been Republican primary challengers. Now they get to crawl back in there dark dank cave or holes in the ground waiting until Trump's "no amount of money is enough money" greedmongers call them out again to shill a "Tax Reform" bill. I've heard that in some obscure ancient language "Tax" means "New" and "reform" means "Gulfstream G600" (New York to Paris at 51,000 feet at Mach 0.90, aka 700mph).

They were a bunch of cowards. (I held back on the word pussies). When LBJ needed votes for the Civil Rights act in 1964 he got democrats to vote for it because it was right. They came there to do something right and some of them new full well it would end their congressional careers. In fact we lost the south and never won it back.

When Bill Clinton needed votes to get the tax bill passed in 1963 that ended up creating a balanced budget many in the house knew it meant certain defeat in their next run. But at least they have that act of bravery in their histories.

Those were profiles in courage.

The "all hat no cattle" Republicans don't have a President they can believe in and weren't about to have their seats go down in flames to protect the blustering bloviated Mussolini lite president we now have.

The last hours of speeches by the Democrats were passionate. I'll never forget the fire in their bellies. Let those that live in Freedom Caucus districts (tea party) let it sink in that the cruelty of their insistence on total repeal kept it from getting passed.

I watched the rules committee last night as new things kept showing up in the bill while Dems waited to testify. Really, they had to keep their cell phones on so staff could feed them what was going on behind closed doors to the actual bill. I was shocked when the all war all the time, hero worshiping anyone within a country mile of a soldier, party striped the subsidies from ex-military personnel that was enabling them to buy private insurance instead of going to the VA!!

Next, in an evilgazm they must have been storing up for years, was stripping "essential services" as a requirement for all policies. And on an on all night and through the morning. The bill in the end with the elimination of the requirement to provide essential services would have allowed companies to sell insurance policies that were insurance in name only. The scam artists were salivating. No requirements to offer ambulance services, emergency room coverage, hospital coverage, outpatient coverage, being a woman becomes a preexisting condition. Get pregnant? No screening. Give birth, the hospital stay not covered. no cancer screens no to preventive care no drug treatment. If you think I'm making this up go to c span and watch the last hour of the floor debate.

The Republican Party is evidently good at unifying against something but not for being for something.

They lost this besides having a 44 vote advantage, the largest since 1928.

If anyone wonders why John Boehner resigned as speaker in Oct 2015, then resigned from Congress 2 days later here you have it in spades. I've been shouting from the rooftops for years that the tea party is the root of all evil concerning the failure of congress to do the peoples work. But I guess I just don't have the right tone of voice for it. They are the tail that has been waging the dog. And thy are rabid. The citizens of those districts need to go to the doctor, take those shots before they too start foaming at the mouth.

When the ACA was passed I just happened to be flipping past C-Span and stopped and watched the vote! This time the way they were jamming this stuff down people throat so fast I've not been able to turn C-span off for 2 days now. Fortunately, C-Span is out of reach and self-funding as a nonprofit so it will be around and there's never been a time since Watergate that gives more reason to watch.

And yet I can't celebrate because we didn't do something good, we just prevented the doing of something bad. The rabid dogs of the Tea Party continue to try to use government to destroy government.

I will say one thing to Pat Tiberi, who made some the hateful fact free speeches on the House floor over the last 6 years and voted for every repeal bill, and his staffer Andy I commonly talked to... IN YOUR FACE!

Paul Ryan was right about one thing. Doing it now and doing it fast was the only way they would ever get it done. This will not be back. It needs some changes but this or something like it is here to stay.

Republican through control of the purse combined with the underhandedness of big insurers will undermine Obama care and there are ways they can make it collapse so we can't take our eye of this for a second.

Remember, Obama care is actually Romney care. The bill gave millions of new customers to insurance companies. And those companies couldn't go all in with the Republicans passing another repeal bill every couple of weeks. Now they are going to have to deal with making it work because repeal will never happen again. In fact since there's no chance Trump wins again (without going all Putin on us and start jailing and killing his opponents) the rebound from this could be Medicare for all. The only thing that makes sense anymore because this bill has proven the private market can't be entrusted with human lives, something the rest of the industrial world learned long ago.

But wall street has bilked so much of what the middle class has left you can be sure Trumps tax plan will move even more of the tax load away from the investor class because they just lost a huge tax break.

Then they'll be coming for Medicaid, the Medicare and then because it's the only cash the can bilk out of retiring boomers, they'll try to "privatize" social security. Roads and bridges to be built by people that will make you pay to use them, which also won't pass and we descend further toward third world status.

This will have other repercussions too. Trump can put Wall money in the budget but the President doesn't make the budge the House does. Imagine now when people see the new tax plan ripping them off and someone in congress put's the wall money in the budget. The bill itself will only have a few Republican and no Democratic names on it. The wall will be hung around the neck of the sponsors and if they don't put it in some poor schmuck of a congressman is actually going have to get up and offer it as an amendment... lmao.

The real credit for defeating this bill belongs to the millions of people who after decades of apathy called their representatives and showed up at those town hall meetings and gave hell to their representatives. And where did we learn there tactics? From tax exempt organizations like TeaParty Patriots, Freedom Works and Americans for prosperity. We used their playbook.

Yes, stupid poor white bigots did get Trump elected

2017-03-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

Many are trying to claim that relatively uneducated, largly poor, most rural, almost entirely lilly white people aren't responsible for trumps election. They often claim that a broad spectrum of people who hated immigration and had overblown terrorism fears weren't addressed by Hillary so they went to trump. There right in that Hillary didn't run a campaign run on fear mongering. They also often try to make number jump through hoops.

The median income of trump voters was $72,000/year The median income of all Americans is $56,000/year. Tell me what you think that means? Some are claiming it means that large numbers of voters who were not poor voted for Trump.
To me it just means he did get almost all the votes above $250k and the poor white and rural votes pull he number downward to $72k . Of course everyone in the investor class voted for Trump. The investor class votes Republican all the time. But there are not enough of them to win an election. it IS the poor white older voters that got him elected. So those that claim the $72K median number is a good thing say it with a straight face when it is actually a negative.

That's what conservatives have always done. They get people to vote against their own self interest by misdirection plays that made people that get tired of getting dressed down because of the stupid, yes politically incorrect things they say that just prove the the fact their thinking hasn't evolved as American society has evolved. Would we be better off it people felt it was ok to be as insulting to as many people as Trump is? To Trump voters I ask, Is THAT what you want to promote as a way of making America and the world better? They voted so they could feel free to say whatever they want without rebuke even when it's bigoted and biased? Is the notion that casual conversation should go back to the days where nigger, kike , limie, spaz, and all the demeaning things women were called a good thing? Maybe many of them are the cowardly anonomys people that polute online forums and comment sections with flame wars where he who is the most insulting wins. They want to come out of the basement without fear of ridicule? If so, they'll soon learn to fear me because I have never suffered fools. They maybe don't understand that Trump gets away with it because he's not just a bully, he's a bully protected money. He surrounds himself with only those who stroke his ego. Disagree? Boom, your gone. We all knew kids like that in high school didn't we? We called them suck ups. In fact we probably remember people like the Donald in high school. The born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth rich kid with a superiority complex and a loud mouth surrounded by suck ups and could do pretty much what ever the hell they wanted because their rich well connected daddy could get them out of anything, many of which would have got us weeks of detentions or in juvenile detention or kicked out of school? I think that image is familiar to most people that grew up working class. Trump created the illusion everyone should be able to say the things he does without fear they'll get intellectually slapped around by decent people who's views evolved out of that decades ago. That was one of his major diversions. I've disowned a step brother over that issue alone because it revealed to me what I long suspected about him. Things I suspected all along were right beneath the surface. He wants the right to be just as stupid as his father was who got away with it through being loud and intimidating. This and the statistically unjustified fear of the terrorist sneaking into their neighborhood or the notion the Mexicans stole their job despite the real facts that people like Trump and Romney have long promoted moving manufacturing jobs to the lowest wage countries they can find, and the FACT Mexicans are doing jobs that these stupid mostly older white people can't hack or wouldn't want to do in the first place. If they are still bitching about the good factory job the lost long ago Trump and the whole investor class of Americans is who they should hate. The misdirection takes their eye off the ball and makes them vote for someone who in no way has their interests in mind and yet again wants to promote trickle down economics that have NEVER ever worked. "tax cuts pay for them selves" is a lie. Deficits are important only when Democrats are in charge. Clinton handed Bush a budget surplus and Bush used the lie it should to back to the working class to give it and much more back to the investor class and in 8 years exploded the budget again, just like Reagan had done before. (fact check it yourself. Federal Budget information is an easy find) And were just far enough away from the great recession to forget who was responsible for the second near failure of capitalism in less than a hundred years. Banks (=conservatives) had been allowed to become investment houses. Investment houses using other peoples money. So it's worse than calling the gambling houses because gamblers loose their own money, they don't use your money behind you back and then ask you to pay off the loss because they can't cover the bet. It would be line calling a whorehouse a gentleman's club. Obama inherited a mess (always remember it's Bush's signature on the the bailout bill (TARP), not Obama's). When he hired Tim Guitner and some others to do things, some of which were not technically legal, but were overlooked because they were don't to save the effing economy and prevent a bank run, he hire that most creative and brilliant mind he could find, not someone who agreed with him politically and definitely not someone who wanted to deconstruct government. Show me where Trump as put a single person in his cabinet that was the most qualified and brightest person for the job. Or if you try, at least try to keep a straight face. Obama put 2 republicans in his first cabinet for chisakes. So to all you working class trump voters. man, you got played for suckers big time. Trump said emphatically that a new health care plan would have to cover everybody. I knew when he said it he was to stupid to understand what that would require so we get to hear him now say .. who knew healthcare would be so complicated? I'll tell you who. The people that spent years figuring out a way to just reduce the number of uninsured to keep them out of emergency rooms where they were bankrupting small, rural and county hospitals, and just slow the growth of nation health care spending as a percentage of GDP. It did both things. It's problems are fixable. Something that didn't deter insurance companies from raising rates was the house voting to repeal over 100 times. They knew the blame wouldn't be on them. . The ACA actually gave them more customers, then they just raked them over the coals. The reason the bill may not get out of congress now is that the tea party cranks want nothing less that total repeal, not because it makes any sense, but because their constituencies are so rabid they fear getting primaried from their right. They want total repeal but want to not implement it until after they get elected. Only and ideological purist thinks it's a good idea to just go back to the good old days when the health care industry was like the wild west. And remember the ACA was almost a carbon copy of Mitt Romney's health care system he got put in place in Massachusetts. I don't really like Bernie Sanders because there are too many ways in which he never grew up from his hippy rebel rousing Birkenstock wearing youth but he's right on a couple of things. One of which is the only way out of the health care dilemma is Medicare for all. I'm on Medicare now and it's not beyond critricism but it levels the playing field and there is less fear of getting ripped of by some corporate marketing departments deceptions. It's good for the working class and if they investor class wants better they can go buy it. In selling the new bill Paul Ryan and everybody else up and down the line was handed a new buzzphrase that got repeated dozens of time the first day the bill was rolled out. The word was "death spiral". The ACA is in a death spiral. That's actually a phrase that has a real meaning and there is only one way to characterize the way Republicans used it. It is a lie. They were all lying and did it knowing it was a lie. It's something they are very good at. The notion was quickly shot down by the several non partisan health care groups AND The American Academy of Actuaries. Ryan et all effing lied. The other thing he's right about is Wall street reform. Trump is already dismantling the SEC, has fired the most effective Federal prosecutor who's distincter just happens to be Wall Street and Trump Tower, and is gutting consumer protection agencies and corporate watchdog functions that progressives fought a long fight against big money to put in place to at least give the working class a fighting chance against power of big money. We've become an oligarchy. That's why Trump likes Putin. He wan't to BE Putin... and well, you know.. Putin is vastly more wealthy than Trump claims to be in his wildest exaggerations. So I can't cotton those that try to make a silk purse out of a cow's ear with claiming the median income figure he uses is a good thing. It is not, and other things are not regardless of how many times they get repeated, sometimes in soothing reassuring tones of voice. They hisses like a snakes. To quote Bob Dylan; "Money doesn't speak, it swears".

To all Apollo moon landing hoaxers, deniers, and cranks.

2016-08-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

Used to be that if you needed information first you went to periodical publications like newspapers or magazines then your only other choice was libraries where you found drawers full of 3” by 5” index cards you had to slog through to find what you’re looking for. Or you go to the research desk where the person there would either know off the top of their head where to find it, or they would slog through the catalogs for you. It was hard for average people to check the accuracy of things they read.

Then through the mid to late 1990’s libraries and other just about every other thing in the world became networked. From then if you really wanted to know the facts all you had to do was point click and type into search engines. That’s it.

Virtually everyone born after 1985 or so has had all the information in the world at their fingertips. And yet through seemingly pure laziness many or most have squandered it!!! The world can be made safe from misinformed people and purposeful disinformation campaigns because reality is stored in zeros and ones on computers all around the world that are linked at lightning speeds. And yet lazy assed conspiracy mongers squander easy access to the truth for bullshit that can be spread a hundred forty four characters at a time in “tweets” (sic) and everywhere there is a comment section. Nobody can have a real discussion in comment sections because the adolescent minds are in charge. The newest generations of young people ignore it’s use for research and use it instead for a make-believe world based on the stupid notion something is real because you voted it real. It’s a comic book world.

By going to the moon, six times, my generation did the impossible and handed you exactly how we did it, and connected you to a network that gave you thousands of ways to confirm it. Just because how it was done is over the heads of conspiracy cranks does NOT mean it wasn't done.

They did the mathematically impossible by getting up every day and solving a little more of the problem, day after day, month after month year after year, then putting the variables in the hands of a human pilot and primitive computers in real time. They did it, and did it again, and again, and again. Your "proof" doesn't exist outside the comic book false world of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et all.

I challenge deniers to bring us your proof from outside your bubble. But you won't because it's too much effort and you have to get back to your comic books and crayon world and check Facebook to see if Lady Gaga farted this morning. Hopefully, you'll grow out of it.

You are really stupid enough to believe that these men that were all career pilots of at the top of their profession, who's life histories can be easily verified would suddenly turn into lying patsies and tools of a conspiracy and remain so the rest of their lives. No deathbed confessions, no friends or family member stepping forth and tearfully confessing that they have to finally tell the truth. You don't have any idea of how a career pilot has to live in a reality based world, or die.

Big lies like that are against their nature. They would have had to send them to acting school to lie.

As someone who read the books of the space projects as a jr high school student and at age 19 watched on TV as Armstrong stepped on the moon then walked to the front yard and stared at the full moon knowing humans were on it, then years later meeting people in the early Silicon Valley days that had actually worked for Raytheon programming the Apollo computers and now were programming for early pre-windows PC makers and chip designers, I cannot help taking it as a personal insult to hear you say I am from a generation of liars and fraudsters.

Questioning and seeking truth were the pillars of my generation. I'm a counterculture baby boomer and it's not my fault that you need to compensate for the fact your generation doesn't measure up by trying to falsify mine. I could show you literally hundreds of ways outside your bubble to verify the moon shots really happen. I can't think of anything in American history with more factual no doubt about it documentation.

Without a doubt people I've known in my life that believe in conspiracy theories have been the hardest to reason with. I don’t believe anybody that claims to have secret knowledge or inside knowledge that has been suppressed. By claiming that they have knowledge that is suppressed or hidden they hope to dodge having to defend it. That of course leaves a hole in reasoned argument big enough for the biggest bullshit artists in the world to pour though.

I give them what I think is the biggest insult you can give someone. They bore me.

Spanish Grand Prix 2016

2016-05-16T23:05:00.002-07:00

The facts are....

Rosburg has always been a nervous type. He suffers anxiety and is not really comfortable in his own skin. I thought he’d pretty much outgrown this jitteriness, but he evidently still gets stress induced anxiety that sometimes makes his brain freeze. There’s actually a clinical condition called “stress induced amnesia” most people are familiar with when the run across someone they know, and suddenly can’t remember their name. It’s a kind of panic mode, and it explains how he could have screwed up his start setting, and then the “oh my god” full blown panic you see when he’s trying to race the car, find what’s wrong with the setting, fix it, steer the car look in the mirror all at the same time. It led him to make a really bad decision. I don’t know under whose rules you’re allowed to run someone off. His indecision was obvious, Lewis saw it, went for the gap with a huge overtake advantage and was driven off the track on the right hand side of the track with a right hand turn approaching.

It can be called a blocking move only when you are clear. If you wait too long to block it’s not only stupid error it a flagrant violation of the rule. It’s exactly the thing the rule is there for. You ARE allowed a blocking move, but not if you force contact or force someone out of bounds. You can’t cut across someone's nose and expect them to disappear for you. Then, even when Nico pushed him off track he avoided the contact. If Nico had not dropped the hatchet it would have been Lewis’s job to get along side or past him by the turn it, but when Lewis’s front left reached Nico’s right rear he had a 17 Kph speed advantage. Lewis is the greatest passer I have ever seen and usually very clean. He collected Nico when the car when out of control with all 4 wheels IN THE GRASS!

Lewis, on the other hand, is as cool as the other side of the pillow. When Nico forced his way around the outside of turn one he was a gentleman and backed out enough to avoid contact. He didn’t press, he wasn’t going all in on turn one.

I’ve always found Nico annoying. He’s ingratiating and social awkward and tries too hard.

That annoyance is turning to disdain.

Arguing Bernie Sanders supporters....

2016-04-13T21:36:00.004-07:00

I meant to finish this long ago, right after the Democratic convention when I became, rightfully as it turned out, concerned that the way Bernie supporters talked about Hillary Clinton sounded alarmingly like the way Trump supporters talked.

A young woman responded to something I wrote in the comment section of a YouTube page that showed Bernie supporters leaving the arena when Hillary came on stage to speak. They had drank the same coolaid Trump supporters had with the whole false narrative about Hillary that was fact free. When I challenged her to prove she knew what she was talking about, and she couldn't defend her position, she did what Trump supporters do. She went fact free into another rant mentioning she had protested the Iraq war. I think I told her something along the line of "opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. You are entitled to your own opinion. However, you are NOT entitled to your own facts. You don't know what the "f"you are talking about".

The main part of her rant was about Hillary's role in "the US war in Libya". Of course we did not go to war in Libya. We launched some cruise missiles he first day to take out the air defenses so the no-fly zone ordered by he UN could be enforced and and offered command and control for the NATO and Arab League air campaign but most all of the air strikes were by the French and the some by the British. So she had already proven ignorance of the events that I'd been following closely. She had evidently been tweeting about every lady gaga fart at the time. She had no idea of what was happening as Qaddafi's forces surrouned Benghazi and of course ignorant of the fact this was all done through UN resolutions that had such wide support even the Russians didn't veto it. UN resolution 1973. I just pulled that out of memory, let me see if I have it right. Ok, I was mostly right. It was UN Security Counsel Resolution 1973. I remember it because it WAS a big deal. Qaddafi was tightening the noose around a huge civilian population that mostly opposed him. His generals had been saying they'd kill everyone. I'm serious. The leaders in Bengazi were pleading to stop Qaddafi's tanks and artillery from breaching the city, which they began to do and Libyan war ships were on the way to bombard the city.

I had been specifically and repeatedly asking if she actually could tell me what was happening around Benghazi before a coalition of countries launched air strikes against Qaddafi tanks and artillery.

Here reply was; "I frankly don't care if you think I know what I am talking about."

My response was,

Here you step into very dangerous ground. You can't defend your position and yet insist it's valid. That's the exact same position Donald Trump supporters have. If you can't prove you know what you're talking about, you don't. Calling Hillary right-wing is so ignorant i won't dignify it. READ A FUCKING BOOK you social media gangster! If you'd have started this conversation with that declaration I won't have wasted a minute on you. I thought I was talking with someone who was reasonable.

Again! If you were around. or knew google from a hole in the ground you know how people were duped on Iraq. She, and we, deserve credit for admitting the mistake, not scorn. You.. are.. not.. above .. reproach.

I figure you to have been in Jr high or early high school when the Iraq invasion happened. When did you protest? Then, or 5 years or more down the road? I'm done giving you history lessons. I ask your repeatedly to look into what was happening around Benghazi the week or 2 before the airstrikes. You're to lazy do do it, too immature to think facts might enlighten your opinion about what happens. You've gone over the line from opinion grounded in reason to a religious belief and Bernie is nothing more than your pope.

You don't want to get into a pissing contest over war protesting with someone who turned eighteen five months after the Tet offensive in Vietnam. Oh, you don't have a clue do you. The 4 months before I registered for the draft (a reality no young person today has to face) 5,000 Americans were KIA. That's more in 3 months than the entire Iraq war. In 68 20,000 US solders were killed. Between 68 and 72 (a far longer period than you protested) I was in a dozen protests from Chicago to DC. On Nixon's Januaray 1973 inauguration day I was one of 300,000 people that marched behind the Vietnam veterans against the war in protest. There, I heard the founder of the Vietnam Veterans against the war speak. His name was John Kerry. He would have made a great president and, like Hillary did years of maintaining the balancing act of being Secretary of State in dangerous times, without putting American boots on the ground. I heard another veteran speak who became known around the world when his life was portrayed in "Born on the 4th of July". His name is Ron Kovich. He's still alive and yes, he was born on the 4th of July 1946. In many of these protests I and others were housed by upper middle class couples who had lost a son, or had one in the fight in Vietnam. I couple in DC opened there great apartment to a dozen of us.

I was at the five year memorial of the Kent State massacur. Yes, protestors got killed in those days. Four had been killed in Jackson Miss. the day before the Kent State murders. One of the speakers was Daniel Ellsburg who leaked information about Vietnam war truth to the New York Times in what became known as "The Pentagon Papers". He came bounding across the stage waving over his head his fresh off the presses copy of the transcripts of the tape recordings of Nixon's White House conversations. His first words were "This dooms Richard Nixon". It did indeed.

In fact, in those years Hillary Clinton was a 27 year old staff attorney for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigation while the burkenstock hippy leftist intellectual Bernie Sanders, who was one of thousands of left of the left hippies moved with the expressed goal of taking over the underpoplulated Vermont State government ran for State Senate. He got 4% of the vote as a fringe 3rd party candidate. Yea, I knew about Bernie.

Nothing about Hillary has changed since then and likewise nothing has changed about Bernie. He was always an opportunist just as he was when he recently joined the Democratic party that he'd never been a part of his whole life. Bernie is a socialist. All complaint, no solutions that pass muster vs Hillary that loves to get down to the nitty gritty of how ideas become policy. Bernie is what Texans call "All hat, no cattle".

My generation brought down a President. Yours invented Facebook and Instagram so you could avoid talking face to face with people and so you post selfies of you playing war protester. Protesters got beaten to a pulp and sometime shot and killed those days. Protests nationwide counted in the millions.

After the Cambodian invasion in the Vietnam war every major campus in the western world had protests and/or riots. There were riots in 100 major cites in the US. The same year I registered for the draft 30 percent of a 500,000 strong force in Vietnam were draftees. What have you ever risked? That year King was murdered, Kennedy war murdered. The other side was ultra-violent. Go watch the tapes of the Chicago police descending by the thousands in riot gear and nightsticks into peaceful demonstrations at the 68 Democratic convention and comeback and tell me of your experience being in a protest against an unpopular war that has cost your generation roughly the same number of dead as the single 4 month period in 1968 Vietnam. I know you're not capable of imagining what it was to have the draft breathing down my neck and watching on TV, 310 dead this week, 360 another, 323 this one, week after week from January until coming back into the 100's per week in May and June.

In fact, it is those years of my life that taught me public policy is to be taken seriously. It ain't running for high school president putting up posters about crap you can never actually pull off and winning a popularity contest and the lives and well being of countless people can hang on whether you are a Jeffersonian citizen or just a Trump crank in a different hat. Your views are immature and shallow and the more your write the more you sound like a brat. you'd do the county a favor by stopping lies about your opponents and battle out the ideas in an evidence based reality.

The Musket V-Twin - Jay Leno's Garage

2015-08-29T15:33:00.001-07:00

I met this guy on at a bike night in late July. He's just like he is on
this video. Humble, smart, funny, open and fun to talk to. I originally
just wanted to say hello to him because I'd seen part of this video and
the next thing I know almost an hour had gone by and we were the last 2
bikes still there. (mine is restored as original 82 Honda Magna V-45). I
think what he did here is astounding. You don't meet someone every day
who made their own engine. You read that correctly.
He made the engine. He didn't assemble an engine out of parts
manufactured by others. He carved molds out of wood and took the molds
to a foundry that cast the parts out of aluminum. And then he did it
again but made the engine bigger. One has 13,000 miles on it, the other
has more. Reliable, clean and leak free, and the sound is just as
remarkable as he describes it here. I'd love to see him make a living at
this but he says to many people that say they are exited to have one
fizzle out when it comes time to write the check. He needs a closer.

Objectivity, conformation bias, the stork and far left knee jerk reactions to fracking and the Canadian pipleline.

2014-04-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a 64 year old liberal. But what I also try not to be on the topic of energy production is a hypocrite. As I read the responses here I’m certain that about 99% of you drive cars to your home where you turn on you lights, put your cell (made in an energy hog Chinese factory) on the charger, cook or microwave (made in an energy hog Chinese factory) something to eat, which you get from your freezer/refrigerator, (made in an energy hog Chinese factory) boot up your computer (made in an energy hog Chinese factory), hit the net, turn on a TV (made in an energy hog Chinese factory).. And on and on, yet you’d think from what’s here that you haven’t got a clue what powers it all. You can NOT live a modern life and be AGAINST energy production that is scalable to hundreds of millions, indeed billions of people. Please notice it has to be scalable. You can’t get nearly enough of it from our favorite tree hugging sources, wind, solar, hydro (most tree huggers don’t like that one) or geothermal. If some of you have homes that generate enough to take you off the grid, more power to you, so to speak, but understand the money it took is way beyond the reach of probably 95% of the people on the planet. You can be anti-drilling and NOT be naive. You can’t be knee jerk against fracking and the pipeline unless you’ve got something that nobody I bring this up to seems to have. A plan to replace them that’s workable in a way that doesn’t kill world economic growth, fragile as it is, in the process. Enacting a carbon tax or conservation plans is fine but it won’t keep your life powered tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or in the next decade.

Have you ever been home in a power outage that lasted at least a couple of hours? Have you gone into a room with your candle or flashlight and found yourself absent mindedly reaching for the light switch? That is how much we take energy for granted.

So, It also bugs me when I see bloggers that seem to have no understanding of journalistic ethic, no education in journalism or science completely mislead readers who, I believe, they know are there looking mainly for a good conformation bias fix. On the left of the left it’s getting to the point where they don’t appear to be much better at avoiding that kind of bias than is the far right. They deny climate science while we think the stork brings our electricity.

Mr. Blades of Daily Kos writes of a "study" by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project published in the periodical Reviews on Environmental Health . But this paper, or review is not a study in the way most people think of a study where researchers go in without prejudice one way or another and do science and publish their results. Astoundingly, David Brown, lead author of the SPEHP review, tells us what he wants the outcome to be. “The objective of this paper is to illustrate that current methods of collecting emissions data, as well as the analyses of these data, are not sufficient for accurately assessing risk….” He tells us up front that he’s out to prove, before he’s begun, that current methods and analyses are “not sufficient”.

Do I have to tell you that is not how good science should be done? And in what I read I found several parts where it was clear they hand brought their preconceived notions with them. In the end, it reads more like an opinion piece than objective scientific investigation. I have a feeling that if they had submitted this to the Journal of Environmental Health we'd have never heard of it. (to everyone who uses their cell all day and often, Reviews on Environmental Health also published a "study" that says cell use causes brain tumors. I guess that would explain a lot.)

If these are example of the best studies or Reviews or papers, or call them studies, then it’s little wonder the agencies looking for unbiased opinions on how to improve are having such a hard time.

Fracking is not rocket science. It can be done. And like all human endeavors we can’t expect it to be without flaws.

Why is Fracking the low hanging fruit so many young people seem to be all over instead of the real Dr. Evil of energy production? COAL! Partly it has to do with something I write about more and more. Young people have never heard the legendary John Prine song "Paradise" about Muhlenberg County the Kentucky strip mine (lyrics) that removed the town of Paradise from the face of the earth. Nor were they around to take up the cause of Appalachian coal miners or lobby the government to at least make the coal companies do some clean up and plant some trees keep what's left of the mountains from washing away.

We should all still be outraged at the amount of Coal used to power dirty eclectic generation stations in Ohio, WV, PE and KY etc. You want to go against the biggest polluters with the biggest health impact in their communities in the whole energy field, there is no bigger target than coal. I shouldn’t even have to tell you how bad mining, transporting, and burning coal for electricity is. There is much more quality science regarding the environmental and community health impacts of coal mining than there is fracking. You can see the terrible scars in the earth from active strip mines in Google satellite maps for god’s sake! You get a lot more bang for the buck by stopping coal burning and replacing it with natural gas. Just ask many states out west like say, California. CA with is huge population uses no coal for electricity. Zero, zip, nada. It gets its electricity from gas burning and a very significant amount from Hydro. They generate more than most of us in solar, and wind, even some geothermal.

To be fair to the energy industry as a whole, it’s facing steep increases in demand over a short period of time. This is the solution they think will work, and it can reduce coal burning.

And I know many of you won’t want to hear it but we need to take a serious look again a nuclear generation. It’s come a long way since the early days. Take a look a Europe.

So, I think people on the left need to step back for a moment, regain their honest skepticism and critical thinking skills and use them continually to justify the things we are against just as much as the things we are for. Honestly, you can’t be against everything. Absent from almost all discussion on fracking is what you are for if you are against it.

Murder by health care greed

2013-10-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

October 1, 2013 at 2:11pm

US Congressman Pat Tiberi is a lying son of a bitch. There in NOT broad bi-partisan support repeal of the medical device tax. If he thinks there is, let him introduce a bill and see where it goes. A one year shutdown is NOT a compromise on defunding the program. It's still a gun to the head power play that would have them back again making an end runaround how we pass laws. There will never be a clean funding bill again if we concede to this. And the delay in law given to businesses with more than 50employees is a concession given them, and the laws administrators, more time to get ready to meet reporting rules. And now for them say “what’s good for big business is should be good for all Americans” is the reward the administration gets for yielding to pressure from big business. For them to flip this on Dems is another example of what kind of humans we're talking about here. The enrollment process for people without insurance IS ready to begin, and WILL begin Oct. 1 2013 whether or not there is a government shutdown. I heard an estimate by a health insurance researcher (Kaiser Health News) who said as many as 9 million people will get insurance next year. In human terms that means,roughly, fill OSU stadium with uninsured people, each one of them an individual, all poor or working poor, and of course among them some have health problems that will kill them in the next year. They will have heart attacks,cancers, strokes, etc. that could be discovered with a simple visit to a family doctor and NOT kill them if they knew now. Now, fill the stadium again 90 times! Then you start to see how insidious it is to let people die for political advantage, or because you're a 1%er clutching onto every frigging dollar.

Right now as I write, I'm listening to Republicans in the House Chamber ranting like raving lunatics, as they always do, because, you know, he who is loudest wins. (When the law is on your side, argue the law. When the law is not on your side, POUND THE TABLE!)

How important is one year?

My wife's sister Lisa was a small farmer/horse trainer and like many small farmers she went without seeing a doctor and without health insurance because of the insane cost of insurance for self-employed people. Lisa was a very strong and independent woman who didn’t suffer fools and who even had a bit of an anti-government streak. Not Tea Party but no liberal by any means. In a world with mostly monied horse owners obviously don’t have a health insurance problem there are so many others in the stables and at the tracks that are uninsured that some tracks have free clinics. So when she had a problem that could well have been caused by so much time in a saddle, she went to the free clinic. They told her she should have a medical text that would have cost her close to 1 thousand dollars. She didn’t have the test because of the cost. One year later when the symptoms got worse she went to a hospital emergency room where they found her with eaten up with cancer. At that moment the deck was stacked against her. The oncologist said if found when it was only in one organ the odds would have been in her favor. Now it was multi-organ. Lisa was combative by nature and she fought like mad for her life. It took nine months for the cancer to kill her. It was a tragic, untimely and completely avoidable death. The way I most honesty feel about it is that Lisa was murdered by health care greed.

We MUST put an end to those kinds of stories.

Lisa and my wife Sandy took one last
Trip together.

                             You see what chemo was doing to Lisa
                              yet, amazingly, she still had a sense
                              of humor about it.

Let's Review: Romeny vs. President Obama

2012-10-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

Romney, born rich, still rich, and has done nothing his entire life but serve the rich. He's a country club stiff who walks in little stiff steps like he has a stick up his rear. He has been on OPPOSITE side of every major issue, sometimes even day to day, If he has any core values he keeps them to himself so he can try to be everything to everybody. He has no ideas other than the same old Republican ideas that predate both this depression and the Great one. His policy advisors are the same neoconservatives that had Bush's ear and got us into Iraq. Wants to privatize Social Security, which would end it the next time the market crashes, wants to give the next generation a voucher to buy private health insurance when they are too old to work anymore which would kill Medicare (protect Medicare is one of his biggest lies), He is either math challenged or will say anything about taxes and the budget to get elected even if it’s blatantly obvious what he says is nonsense, gobbledygook of the day. He is HIDING his tax returns… wants to lower taxes on those that make their money on investments, not wages, says he can lower everybody’s taxes, spend another butt load on the military that they don’t even want, but are wanted by investors in defense contracting and procurement, and through the wonders of some new kind mathematics that he has invented can balance the budget through closing tax loopholes, like nobody has tried that.

And I'm going into something most people avoid.

Have you looked at the things you have to believe to be Mormon? Sorry, I’m not attacking his religion because it is NOT a religion, it’s a cult. We’re just out of the 20th century and the Mormon founder lived in the 19th century. It’s no different than those that claimed David Koresh was the messiah. There’s someone somewhere claiming to be the messiah all the time, you don’t vote one of his followers into the Presidency of the United States. Mitt’s great grandfather left the United States because he wouldn’t give up all his wives. Yes, Mitt has five Great Grandmas. Great Grandma Hannah, Great Grandma Carrie, Great Grandma Catherine, Great Grandma Alice, and Great Grandma Millie. I have trouble imagining what thanksgiving and Christmas were like for Mitt's dad.

Oh, and another thing. TAX RETURNS!! Why on earth would you turn the most powerful country in the world over to someone who won't show you how he's been earning a living? He HIDING things he knows you won't like. His tax returns would blow him up. He wanted to see ten years of his running mates returns yet won't show more than 2 years of his own.

How the government spends money in your name is the most important thing it does. You should NEVER turn it over to someone who isn't willing to prove that he isn't a shady character, or worse.

I believe there is such a strong case for voting AGAINST Romney that you don’t need a case for voting for Obama but I’ll say a little, and could say much more.

Obama, born poor, raised barely middle class, earned every bit of his success on the power of his own achievements, brilliant student, educated for a life in public service, inherited the worst economy since the 1930’s, brought the financial system back from the brink of catastrophic world failure, and has managed an economy that is getting progressively stronger, GOT Bin Laden, the guy directly responsible for planes flying into buildings in NYC, GOT much of their high leadership, lowered federal payroll taxes on middle class wage earners, wants to keep them where they are, want those who have benefited from being Americans to pay their fair share of taxes, not less than those that work for them….

Voting machine company invested in by who?

2012-10-23T23:23:00.000-07:00

Hart InterCivic makes the voting machines being used in Hamilton County, population 833,00. *

Hart’s five corporate board members are executives of HIG Capital, a global private equity firm that made what it called a “significant” investment in Hart last year. Four HIG executives (Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman and Brian D. Schwartz) have been identified as Romney bundlers by independent watchdog groups such as the Sunlight Foundation. HIG employees as a whole have donated $338,000 to the Romney campaign this year, according to Open Secrets.

And an investor in the company that invests in voting machines? Tagg Romney!! (reality stranger than fiction?)

Couldn't be a problem there could there? sigh.

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/10/23/angst-about-counting-the-votes-in-ohio/

Ohio is NOT broke.

2011-03-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

Ohio is not broke! We the people know where the money is, we know where it goes. We're a consumer driven economy. We the working class buy stuff and it goes into the pockets of the investor class. Look at corporate profits. Look at Wall Street, look at the stock market. Look at CEO pay and you'll know who has money and who doesn't.

The Wall street is back to where it was in late 2007. How come we the people are not back to where we were in late 2007? Why are the rich continuing to get richer even in hard times and we are ask to endure the consequences of massive state budget cuts?

The answer is the same as it has been since the beginning of the industrial age, but never more emphatic than after the 2010 elections. The reason we can't ask the investor class to pay their fair share, even on a short term basis is simply because when asked, they say "no". It's as simple as that.They just say "no". They say "no" to the Republican who's political campaign they financed and then they start and finance "grassroots" organizations who turn the economic issues into social ones, and what we get is the culture wars. Working class people finger pointing at each other over bargaining rights and somehow they buy into "small government" and "cut spending" when those things will harm them, as they are now are finding out according to very recent polling. Republicans got elected saying jobs, jobs, jobs, and what we get is jobs cut in the budget. They used the phony financial crisis to end worker bargaining rights and and are trying to pass a budget that is attacks the middle class and ever increasing poor, even going as far as making prisoners pay to be in prison then putting them back on the streets flat broke, and to add insult to injury they introduce abortion bill after abortion bill. And they are far from being done.

The investor class seems to have a built in lack of respect for working class people, especially those that are really having the hardest lives, like the over 40 million Americans on food stamps, a figure that will go up if Kasich and other Republican governors succeed at adding to the misery and humiliation of life at the bottom while protecting the life at the top from any consequences whatsoever.

A compromise budget that makes some cuts and raises some taxes on the investor class, not the working class, would balance the budget. You could even make the increases limited in time so they'd have to be revisited in a few years like the federal tax cuts were last year.

And it should be clear by now that we should get rid of, or modify, the balanced budget law in Ohio. Almost everyone agrees that the greatest economic error of judgment in American history came in 1932 when Herbert Hoover insisted on balancing the budget in the face of a severe recession. It took an economy on a down slide and threw it into an abyss that created the decade we call the Great Depression. And now we have Republicans in the federal government trying to do the same thing and, to make things worse, we have about fifty Hubert Hoovers doing it to state budgets. The widely respected economist Paul Krugman wrote, "..state-level cutbacks range from small acts of cruelty to giant acts of panic..", and that was in 2008. Those small acts of cruelty are no longer small.

We need to call our State representatives who are in a state of panic, peel them down down off of the ceiling and tell them to make those that have been getting richer while the rest of us get poorer to anti up.

Here is the Paul Krugman article I quoted from.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29krugman.html?_r=1

NOT, smarter than he looks.

2011-03-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

I was worried in the beginning that Kasich might be smarter than he looks, that his plans were well thought out. Now I'm seeing evidence that he's about as smart as he looks, which is not very.

Like when he nominated Mark Kvamme as Director of the Ohio Department of Development and was forced to un-nominate him because of this pesky little thing call the Constitution of the State of Ohio that bars him from holding a public position in Ohio since he is not, nor has any intention of being, an Ohio resident.

And how did Kasich react? He bitterly blamed “partisan politics”, not his violation of the State’s charter of government.

In a statement Kasich said: "I was frustrated when some tried to raise roadblocks to his eligibility to serve based on his residency, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything in politics,"

He thinks holding him to the constitution is politics, whereas I think it was simply making him obey the law. I guess having no law degree, or any post graduate degree beyond his Bachelor of Arts degree we shouldn't expect too much out of him. But, personally, I believe that as long as there is a presumption that We The People should obey the law, I think he should too. Don't you?

And by the way, I guess Kasich is allowed to hire people in his office regardless of where they live or how much time they intend to spend here, so he created a new job for him, just like he did with his old Lehman Brothers co-worker. Kvamme will be appointed to a newly created “Director of Job Creation” post within Governor Kasich’s office, at God knows how much money.

SB5 won't survive legal challenge either. Republican Senator Tim Grendell, who voted against the law precisely because he knows the law, pointed out several legal problems with the law on the floor in final statements before the vote. In private practice Grendell had more courtroom experience than anyone in the state congress, included many cases argued before the State Supreme Court. I repeat, Grendell is a Republican. He IS a conservative. Look at his record and positions.

I think it's possible that Kasich will try to do too much too fast and will have not dug deep enough into the systems he's trying change, that he'll make mistakes that don't survive scrutiny.

Still, what we'll be left with is an ineffective Governor with no intention of doing anything that doesn't benefit the investor class first.

I don't like the idea of suffering this guy and his investor class appointees all the way to 2015.

Kasich's version of who to take from and who to give to.

2011-03-11T00:16:00.000-08:00

Along with stripping state workers of their right to fairly bargain wages, Kasich gave his chief of staff a $47,000 dollar a year raise for $122,990 to $170,000. That's more than the Attorney General, Speaker of the House, Auditor, Treasurer or Senate President.

The Communications Director will make $120,000, up from $89,003. That's more than some cabinet holders. A RAISE of nearly $31,000.

The Press Secretary will get $90,000, an increase from $69,992. A RAISE of over $20,000.

And Kasich has created a state job, that didn't exist, "special assistant", paying $145,000 for Jai Chabria who was person 2 in John Kasich’s “two person office” in Columbus when they both worked for Lehman Brothers. Remember Lehman Brothers? That company that help bring the economy down in '08, where he continued to work until they locked the doors behind him in bankruptcy?, In 2002 he made the introductions using his political connections which resulted in an investment of $480 million from the state pension fund and he was paid a bonus of $400,000 of his $587,175 '08 salary. What do you think became of that investment the state of Ohio made with Lehman through Kasich's contacts after the stock market crash?

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/...

http://www2.nbc4i.com/m/news/2011/jan/07/kasi...

http://www.forexpros.com/news/general-news/sp...

I want to ask pro SB5 working class people why they aren't outraged about this, instead of trashing a union like OAPSE, who's workers average salary is $24,000 and whose average pension is less than $900 dollars a month?

http://www.oapse.org/cgi-bin/start.cgi/news-r...

My next topic will be outsourcing.

I'll end this article and begin the next one with a reminder about his years as a member of the Board of Directors at Invacare where our dear Governor Kasich personally signed off on a policy of outsourcing jobs from Ohio to China and Mexico.

It's possible to learn about what compainies are lobbing now state contracts. It's on the Office of the Legislative Inspector General website.

http://www2.jlec-olig.state.oh.us/olac/

I also need to write about the role evangelical christianity is playing in this administration and how it is the underpinning to every thing Kasich and those he's bringing into government.

A perfect example is the uber christian oil and gas industry insider he hired to run the Department of Natural Resources.

http://ohiodnr.com/directors/tabid/10758/Default.aspx

In particular check out Near East Initiatives, VisionSynergy and The Enduring Impact Foundation,

Outraging the outrageous outrageousness with the outraged Republicans and Tea Partiers.

2011-01-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

I sometimes like to hang around Fox News websites and check out the silly things they manufacture outrage about. Ok, not really. I follow a link to a story there and can’t resist the urge to look at the comments.

Today it was a story about the T-shirts left on the chairs for the people who came to the tribute for the victims of the Arizona massacre. First of all, many seem "disgusted" because they say the behavior was "outrageous" in the memorial. Except it wasn't a memorial, it was a tribute. Words have meanings. A tribute is different than a memorial.

Then, there was a person who said they were disgusted by… they didn’t exactly say just what they were disgusted about but added something about we used to be a great country, which I guess means we aren’t anymore, which sounds less than patriotic to me. Personally, I can still make a case for American greatness, especially in the “compared to what” way of thinking.

Yes, what a great country it was; until big corporations shipped manufacturing oversees, closed thousands of factories, shipped every job they can think of to the lowest bidder while bankers took money that wasn't theirs and lost it in casino style gambles. Who could blame them? They could win, but they couldn't lose because they knew they were too big to fail and money from American taxpayers (and the Chinese) would bail them out. (Remember, TARP has Bush's signature on it. Don't get me wrong, Obama would have signed it too, there was really no choice).

Since the dot com boom, Wall Street traders had referred to themselves as "Kings of the universe". Still, they lost the bet and caused the collapse of a house of cards built on improperly rated bundles of home mortgages that caused credit lines to freeze around the world. Most people don't understand what the next month would have been like if Congress hadn't passed and Bush hadn't signed that bill. The entire capitalist trading system around the planet would have failed. Goods, including food, would have piled up on the docks in a world where everyone has adopted "just in time" flow of their stuff.

There are no warehouses holding large quantities of goods anymore, again, including food. And it's not just international trade that relies on lines of credit. We don't produce enough food to feed ourselves, (unless you're good with raw grain) and even if we did there would be the question of whether the credit freeze would have stopped the transportation industry.

The stock market tanked and the bail out money stopped a collapse. The only thing that stopped the economic collapse was the bailout bill. The only thing that separated us from the Great Depression was a run on the banks. Google that one. If you weren't nervous about money that you didn't see in green right in front of you, you weren't paying attention. By late October or November everyone would have been going to the bank to get their money, but the money wasn't there. In a bank panic the money is there one day and the next day it's gone. It wasn't yours one day and someone else's the next, it's just gone.

This is what Barack Obama inherited when he took the oath in Jan 2009.

So, this is my way of saying you have a perfect right to be upset, you're just upset at the wrong people for the wrong reason. Your anger is misplaced.

This is the information age. Information used to be hard to come by. It is not now. I implore people who are so outraged to use their search engines to find information that is outside the circle of people that are feeding your feelings, not your intelligence. If someone tells you something, ask them for a source. Sourcing information is the most critical thing there is right now because there are so many people that just stand up and say things as though they are true, when in fact they are not. Just because they may look like you or sound like you or seem like a member of your tribe, as I like to say, doesn't mean what they are saying is true.

So, again, tell me what you are disgusted about. I'll listen; just don't expect me to feed it right back to you undigested.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

2011-01-10T13:14:00.001-08:00

An instant background check didn't stop this assassin, but I've read that a substantial number of people don't return to pick up a handgun after a five day waiting period. In Arizona there are almost no gun laws. Instant background checks, not the extensive ones, no safety training requirements, no restriction on the size of magazines, (the Glock 19 the assassin used reportedly had a 19 round clip and could have been a 33 round one) not even a prohibition of carrying a concealed weapon in a bar, government buildings or inside the state Capitol.

In this case however, not having a training requirement may have worked out to the peoples advantage as he appears to have botched the loading of the second large clip of ammunition. How many more would he have killed? He had several clips.

My humble opinion is buying a lethal weapon should be just a little harder than buying a six pack of beer. But, I don't expect Arizona to budge, I don't expect the gun laws there or anywhere else to get better, and I think this is going to happen again. How about this, restrict handguns to old west style revolvers with holsters mandatory, and no smokeless powder. Tombstone style.

No wait, Tombstone had a city wide ban on all deadly weapons!!

-----------------------

November 1881

Ordinance No. 9: "To Provide against Carrying of Deadly Weapons" (effective April 19, 1881).

Section 1. "It is hereby declared to be unlawful for any person to carry deadly weapons, concealed or otherwise within the limits of the City of Tombstone.

-----------------

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened when the Earps and Doc Holiday came to enforce the above law.

This is a case of reality being stranger than fiction.

Reply posted on Washington Examiner website regarding Republican Gullibility.

2010-12-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

You still don't get it. Republicans have been making suckers out of you since the Regan days.

The only stealing going on is by banks and corporations taking money from the working class, spending it on their lifestyles, stuffing the rest of it in banks, that also are just sitting on it, and investing the rest overseas. There's no reason for them to invest it here. They've bled the American economy dry. Sucked out all the cash, all the individual credit, sucked out all of the cash people have been able to borrow against their home values, and now all that is left is pensions and the social security trust fund, and, mark my word, their are coming for that too.

The Republican Party has been making fools of you by selling you social issues, selling you lies and misinformation that make you believe things that aren't true, from the lie that the health care bill raise the deficit (10 minutes in google would show your that's not true), to convincing you that small government is better than a big one (just how small small should be is never clear, nor is it mentioned that the size of government went down under Clinton (Gore got the assignment) and got hugely bigger again under Shrub) or, and this is the big one right now, that the budget is our biggest problem. It is a problem, but not our biggest one. Clearly the economy and jobs are the problem right now and we had better hope big government can help prime the pump because the wealthy, banks and corporations are going to do what they've been doing since the collapse in 08, which is sitting on piles of cash or investing it elsewhere. Yes, spending on social programs is a problem, but it's small potatoes compared to the problems we face this very moment. Unemployment is 17 million in real terms, wages are going down as people lose high paying jobs and replace them with low paying ones, millions more are falling below the poverty line, over 40 million people are on food stamps (an obscene amount of them are children), state services are stretched to the breaking point, and if the fraud found in mortgage lending uncovered by millions of foreclosures continues to scare people away form buying foreclosed properties we'll have another dip in property values that will shock the economy into double dip and we'll see another huge round of job loss. Carry 15% (20-25% real) unemployment into the next election and you guys (Republicans) can get a ham sandwich elected president, an I know you have one ready to serve. Do I have to say her name? Just keep being gullible and that's what we'll end up with. Small, underfunded, weakened Federal government with her trying to govern through twitter and the banks and corporations getting their hands on the social security trust fund, pensions, because that's all that's left, leaving working class tax payers holding the bag. (the bag being the national debt with treasury income reduced to a trickle).

Then, you'll understand what small government really means. You'll be seeing it soon enough if you live in California, Ohio, Illinois or other states that have huge recession related deficits. States will be shifting the bill for education and services back to counties, cities and towns. Then, you'll be able to decide just how much you like your small government. Most likely, most of you that have been conned into the blame everything on government game, will yet again, blame that on the people in office instead of seeing it as the reality you've been asking for for ages. I expect you'll just go on an another binge of watercooler outrage running around like your hair is on fire, jumping up and down with your arms waiving wildly, then you'll vote out the latest bums and replace them with even less competent people than the last, until no one even remotely qualified to do the job would ever set themselves up for the abuse. We are practically at that point already.

And it's because you are the gullible. You've been conned into voting against your own financial self interest (unless you're a top 2 percenter) since Ronald Regean. You prefer politicians who's only skill is parroting back to you what you've told them you want to hear, not honest analysis of where we are, what our problems are and what will fix them for working class people, not the top 2 percent. This last election, you went with people who lied about the new health care law while the health insurance companies raised your rates again (just check), told you your taxes went up when in fact there hasn't been a middle class income tax increase since before President Clinton, or that they were about too when they were not, I could list a page of lies you believed.

Even if you argue my facts, and Republicans seldom argue facts because facts aren't on their side, I hereby force you to admit to the reality that your party, the Republican party, and your philosophy, conservatism, have been running the US government for decades. Republican Presidents, 20 of the last 28 years, both Houses of Congress for 10 of the last 12 years (up through 2008), and how has that worked out for us? You handed us a bankrupt treasury with the tax give aways of 2001 and 2003, the biggest terrorist attack since Pearl Harbor, 2 endless expensive wars, and to top it off, the culmination of let boys be boys regulatory policy and the undermining and underfunding of the Security Exchange Commission and we have what is only the SECOND biggest economic collapse in our country's history. And you wonder why the 111th Congress was so activist? Somebody had to do something. Still, you are against doing something. So naked is your grab for power that you will let people suffer rather than solve just so you can elect your ham sandwich.

You demagogues preach to the Tea Party. A demagogue being, "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act

2010-12-18T01:25:00.000-08:00

Just in case you were excited about the prospect of not being shouted at by TV commercials like a carnival barker trying to sell you Ginsu knives was trying to get your attention, I have to burst your bubble.

I see no possible reason for this. commercial producers could fix this tomorrow. The congresswoman that authored this caved in to some form of lobbying pressure is the only reason I can think of. Now they have two years to find a way out of it. It's so stupid. Most all of the time I'm either watching something recorded or behind live on my DVR. Sometimes i'm multitasking and when the commercials come on, often I would hear at least parts of it out of the corner of my ear if my attention wasn't called to it by blasting volume. Soon as that happens I grab the remote and speed through the commercials. Every time. Without exceptions. Am I way into the minority here?

I will not watch offensive commercials, and often what offends me is blaring loud music or other sounds of a commercial. I love loud music. I listen to it... often... when i CHOOSE to. I won't have someone forceing it on me in a commercial, or in a web advertisement. Not only that, but most commentary news programs I watch regularly have loud lead ins at the start of a show and then coming back from every segment. Do they really think they need to do that because people have left the room during the commercial?

How to they think these things work? Who do they ask?

Zone of Free Thought

The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

Outraging the outrageous outrageousness with the outraged Republicans and Tea Partiers. Redux.

Attached to the USS Handcock

Inside the last minute of zero hour, Republicans tap out and cry "UNCLE!" on Obama care repleal!!

Yes, stupid poor white bigots did get Trump elected

To all Apollo moon landing hoaxers, deniers, and cranks.

Spanish Grand Prix 2016

Arguing Bernie Sanders supporters....

The Musket V-Twin - Jay Leno's Garage

Objectivity, conformation bias, the stork and far left knee jerk reactions to fracking and the Canadian pipleline.

Murder by health care greed

Let's Review: Romeny vs. President Obama

Voting machine company invested in by who?

Ohio is NOT broke.

NOT, smarter than he looks.

Kasich's version of who to take from and who to give to.

Outraging the outrageous outrageousness with the outraged Republicans and Tea Partiers.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

----------------------- November 1881

Ordinance No. 9: "To Provide against Carrying of Deadly Weapons" (effective April 19, 1881). Section 1. "It is hereby declared to be unlawful for any person to carry deadly weapons, concealed or otherwise within the limits of the City of Tombstone.

-----------------

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened when the Earps and Doc Holiday came to enforce the above law. This is a case of reality being stranger than fiction.

Reply posted on Washington Examiner website regarding Republican Gullibility.

Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act

-----------------------

November 1881

Ordinance No. 9: "To Provide against Carrying of Deadly Weapons" (effective April 19, 1881).

Section 1. "It is hereby declared to be unlawful for any person to carry deadly weapons, concealed or otherwise within the limits of the City of Tombstone.

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened when the Earps and Doc Holiday came to enforce the above law.

This is a case of reality being stranger than fiction.