Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin met privately in Northern Ireland.  One of the topics they discussed was the fact that a ‘moderate’ cleric has been elected to the presidency in Iran.  This is a very big deal that could eventually lead to a draw down of nuclear tensions not only with Iran but North Korea.  The very last thing the hard-line GOP right in this country wants are:

• Better relations with Russia
• An easing of tensions with Iran over nuclear weapons
• A way out of the possible disaster with North Korea
• Not getting involved in a shooting war in Syria as a proxy war with Russia

In fact, one of the reasons Obama and Putin were meeting was to extend an agreement with Russia – the Nunn-Lugar Agreement.  If both Obama and Putin had been the fools the Koch Machine wanted them to be, we would be heading into a new version of the Cold War.

“...”I hope that after the elections in Iran there will be new opportunities to solve the Iranian nuclear problem. And we’ll be trying to do that bilaterally and in the international negotiations process,” Putin said, according to translated remarks.

Their agreement on Iran contrasted with tension over the civil war in Syria, about which both men acknowledged having differing views.

Obama and Putin met privately at the G8 summit to talk about pressing security issues and agreed to work together to protect, control and account for nuclear weapons.

“I think it is an example of the kind of constructive, cooperative relationship that moves us out of a Cold War mindset,” Obama said after meeting with Putin.

Ben Rhodes, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Russia had been reluctant to extend the agreement, which was signed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and was known as the Nunn-Lugar agreement after former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn and former Republican Senator Richard Lugar.

Rhodes said the Russians’ concerns were “well founded in some respects,” noting the Nunn-Lugar agreement had taken a “very aggressive and intrusive” approach to securing nuclear material in Russia.

On Monday, Nunn applauded the new deal, although he noted that some parts of the old one focused on chemical and biological weapons would not continue.

“We must find ways beyond this agreement to work together on these critical issues,” he said. “I believe that we will.”…”

Over the weekend, a mini-revolution occurred in Iran (we hope).  Hassan Rowhani, who claims to be a reformer, wants to reduce tensions with the US.  Sort of.  It could be a big fat hairy deal.  What it does prove is that, after awhile, idiotic extremists can’t maintain power forever.  I hope.  This is important, because became the far right extremists in this country aren’t exactly happy about the fact that they might not be going to war with Iran.  This is terribly important.  If you begin to read between the lines of what is going on here, within the Koch world, anything connected with Russia is evil, bad, and the Cold War is good.

The Pink Flamingo has been telling you this for nearly a year.  There are encouraging signs out of Iran, but we can’t possibly have this.  The Kochs don’t want it.

Evidently Russian President, Vladimir Putin is a kleptomaniac.  Nearly ten years ago he stole the Super Bowl ring of New England Patriot’s owner, Robert Kraft, or so Kraft would lead us to believe.  Kraft is now screaming and crying about the theft.  What is important is the fact that Kraft is still a huge supporter of Mitt Romney.  With Obama doing the G-8 thing, what could be better than to try to humiliate him?  Why is Kraft’s connection to Bain Capital so important?

This is yet another follow the bouncing ball kind of things.  When do we get to start pointing fingers at Edward Snowden, the adorable little traitor, who is a Ron Paul Bot, third party voter, libertarian, and all around Barack Obama hater? What could be better for the Kochs?  Obama is heading to the G-8 being humiliated and embarrassed in pubic by a scandal they created by the leak of classified documents.

1. This is where we might want to ask who actually leaked the documents?
2. How long have Greenwald & Snowden been working together?
3. Is there a House or Senate GOP leak of documents?
4. If so – just who might have leaked the material?
5. What Republican Senator recently resigned so that he could work directly for the Kochs at the Heritage Foundation?
6. Is there a connection?

Twitter Feed

When can we discuss the fact that Glenn Greenwald works for the Cato Institute, is a libertarian, and has also worked for the Koch Brothers in various and sundry ways? What Greenwald did is a federal crime.  (18 USC § 798)  This is not the first time Greenwald has stepped in it.  He has a history of not exactly being honest with his writing.

“...Why didn’t Glenn Greenwald disclose his own deep libertarian ties, and ties to the Koch-founded Cato Institute, going back several years, when Greenwald attacked our article exposing the Koch-funded libertarians leading and fronting the anti-TSA media hysteria? Why hasn’t Glenn Greenwald apologized for not disclosing his conflict-of-interest? Also, John Tyner has come out in favor of privatizing the TSA, against unions, against gay marriage, against drug legalization and as a follower of racist libertarian Murray Rothbard, promoter of David Duke’s candidacy, contradicting the progressive Jimmy Stewart image that Greenwald painted in his article defending the Koch-linked libertarians behind the anti-TSA media hysteria.

4. Glenn Greenwald claiming he only wrote “2 freelance articles” for the Cato Institute is offensive it’s so utterly absurd. We know it. Glenn knows it. For one thing, one of those “free-lance articles” was nothing resembling a “freelance article”—it was a major policy whitepaper, a one-year massive report that included numerous speaking engagements on behalf of the Koch-founded Cato Institute. And let’s not forget, the Cato Institute was originally founded as The Charles Koch Foundation of Wichita. We merely copied the phrase “Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute” from the description used by numerous mainstream media outlets across the country over the past few years….”

Snowden’s latest interview is quite self-righteous.  He has told so many different version of his story that it makes a person wonder just what his purpose it.    Much of what he says is terribly misleading.

“…“Obama’s campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantánamo, where men still sit without charge.”…”

The problem here is he never supported Obama, at all.  He’s a Ron Paul Bot.

Raw Story

The bottom line here:

• Glenn Greenwald works for the Kochs
• The Kochs are joined at the hip with Bain Capital
• Bob Kraft is part of Bain
• The Kochs supported Mitt Romney
• Bob Kraft supported Mitt Romney
• The Kochs want to instigate a new Cold War with Russia
• Mitt Romney promoted a Cold War with Russia
• Bob Kraft attempts to humiliate Putin before the G-8
• A Koch flunkie attempts to humiliate Obama before the G-8
• By extending the Nunn-Lugar Agreement Obama/Putin stopped the Koch Machine

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the entire Snowden affair was designed to humiliate Barack Obama at the G8 Summit, and cause as many problems as possible over the Nunn-Lugar Agreement.  If this is so, then it is also becoming increasingly apparent that the far right, especially those hanging around the Koch Machine do not have this nation’s best interests at heart.  They have the best interest of the Brothers’ Koch at heart.

There are those of us who also think that it is becoming increasingly obvious that Mitt Romney, the vampire candidate who won’t go away, is prepping himself for yet another run.  It is also obvious the Koch Machine is behind him.  Don’t worry, they’re working on an alternative plan – Scott Walker.

When do we get to call what they are doing treason?

It is entirely possible that this is what early Christian music sounded like.

Michael Levy wrote:

“...In my arrangement of the Hurrian Hymn, I have attempted to illustrate an interesting diversity of ancient lyre playing techniques, ranging from the use of “block and strum” improvisation at the end, glissando’s, trills & tremolos, and alternating between harp-like tones in the left hand produced by finger-plucked strings, and guitar-like tones in the right hand, produced by use of the plectrum.

I have arranged the melody in the style of a “Theme and Variations” – I first quote the unadorned melody in the first section, followed by the different lyre techniques described above in the repeat, & also featuring improvisatory passages at the end of the performance.

I am also playing the lyre horizontally – a much more authentic playing position, as depicted in ancient illustrations of Middle Eastern Lyre players…”

“…This unique video, (unfortunately authentically recorded back in 2008 on quite possibily THE world’s oldest surviving webcam!), features my first “live” arrangement of the 3400 year old “Hurrian Hymn no.6″, which was discovered in Ugarit, ancient northern Canaan (now modern Syria) in the early 1950s, and was preserved for 3400 years on a clay tablet, written in the Cuneiform text of the ancient Hurrian language – The Hurrian Hymn (catalogued as Text H6) was discovered in Ugarit, Syria, in the early 1950s, and was preserved for 3400 years on a clay tablet, written in the Cuniform text of the ancient Hurrian language – except from a few earlier Sumarian fragmentary instructional musical texts from c.1950 BCE (Musical Instructions for Lipit-Ishtar, King of Justice) the Hurrian Hymn it is the oldest written song yet known, in History!

Although about 29 musical texts were discovered at Ugarit, only this text, (text H6), was in a sufficient state of preservation to allow for modern academic musical reconstruction.

In short, the Cuneiform text clearly indicated specific names for lyre strings, and their respective musical intervals — a sort of “Guitar tablature”, for lyre!

Although discovered in modern day Syria, the Hurrians were not Syrian — they came from modern day Anatolia. The Hurrian Hymn actually dates to the very end of the Hurrian civilisation (c.1400BCE) . The Hurrian civilization dates back to at least 3000 BCE. It is an incredible thought, that just maybe, the musical texts found at Ugarit, preserved precious sacred Hurrian music which may have already been thousands of years old, prior to their inscription for posterity, on the clay tablets found at Ugarit!

My arrangement here, is based on the original transcription of the melody, as interpreted by Prof. Richard Dumbrill. Here is a link to his book, “The Archeomusicology of the Ancient Near East”:…”

This appears to be another ancient song, that may possibly be another version of the above. It has a remarkable science fiction quality, other-worldly.

It is also quite similar to several of the pieces written by Henry VIII, thousands of years later.  He was alleged to have written Greensleeves, to attract Ann Boleyn, but so-called music historians don’t think England was sophisticated enough and so isolated that Italianate style had not reached them during that time.  Please, deliver us from idiots who don’t know history.

From Ancient Egypt – Ya Rab Toba – Doesn’t sound like the music we associate with the ancient Egyptians has changed all that much over time.

Synaulia I from Rome sounds like some sort of background for a Roman Orgy! Talk about sleazy sounding. It reminds me of the old Southern version of the word ‘naked’. Depending on how it is pronounced, indicates everything. ‘Naked’ is artistic, such as a classic painting. ‘Nekked’ is up to no good, like Bubba and his step-mother were caught nekked down on the lake. This music is almost ‘Nekked’ in tone. It is also terribly modern, with a touch of Blues.

Ancient drums from the British Isles, that may have been associated with Stonehenge? It shows what the music may have sounded like, recreated on versions of the ancient instruments.

A lyre found on the Isle of Skye, dates from 300BC. It has been recreated, and is played here.

“…The aulos: Modern reconstructions of the instrument indicate that the aulos produced a low and resonant clarinet sound. Made of two wooden double reed pipes, much like an oboe, it was blown at varying intervals and speeds to produce a tune

The syrinx: Named after the nymph who turned into a reed to hide from Pan, this was the forerunner of the panpipes. A series of wooden tubes, tuned by their differing lengths were blown, creating a soothing sound popular at poetry recitals

The hydraulis: One of the more complicated musical tools used in this era, the ancient organ was powered by a supply of water and air that when combined caused a brass-like effect within the pipes. A well-preserved pottery model was found in Carthage in 1885

The monochord: Consisting of a single string stretched over a sound box with a movable bridge, this instrument was used as a scientific instrument for measuring musical intervals in Ancient Greece

The lyre: This hand-held zither has seven or more strings, each of which is tuned to a different note of one of the modes. It was a popular accompaniment to singing recitals in Ancient Greece and is still used today …”

The epigonion was a harp-like instrument.  This piece of music has been recreated on a computer.

“...An epigonion is similar to a modern harp or psaltery, and is mentioned in the works of Athenaeus, the Greek rhetorician and grammarian, in 183AD. Historians believe it was invented, or at least introduced to Greece, by Epigonus, a renowned musician from Ambracia in Epirus, a region that now straddles modern Greece and Albania.

Epigonus was given Greek citizenship as recognition of his great musical ability, having been the first person to pluck the strings of the epigonion with his fingers, instead of using a plectrum. The instrument, which Epigonus named after himself, had 40 strings of varying lengths.

The first instrument the Italian researchers worked on re-creating was a monochord, an instrument played by Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician and scientist. Monochord means “one string”, which was stretched over a soundbox. The successful remodelling of the monochord showed that the researchers could move on to re-create the sounds of other instruments.

This is done through data collected by archaeologists, engineers and historians, who help to describe the materials and shape of the ancient instrument.

This is all translated into a computer program that is run on hundreds of computers in Europe that make up the Grid. The process takes four hours to produce just 30 seconds of music. …”

Reconstructed ancient Greek music.

It’s fun and quite exciting to listen to the progression, the growth of music, the evolution.  It is also quite interesting to realize that, in many ways, that our basic sense of what constitutes music, for the Western  world, has not changed for the days of the ancients.  If you love music, history, and archaeology, the new discoveries are almost – magical!

About fifteen years ago, The Pink Flamingo met with one of the venerable western writers, Ben Traywick.  Over the years, writers have come and gone, but Ben has been there, practically forever, in Tombstone at Red Marie’s Bookstore, where he has a residence on the second floor. He is a WWII vet and a survivor.  You can learn a lot from a survivor.  I did.

Next to Larry McMurtry, and several venerable fiction writers, Ben Traywick is also one of the most financially successful writers in the field.  He told me his secret.  He does it on his own.  He was an Indy Writer, before people even knew what Indy Writers were.  In the writing game, you can sell your book – if you are lucky.  You get a stipend, if you are lucky.  Oh, you get prestige, distribution, and reviews, but that’s about it, if you are in my chosen field.

I soon discovered that 90% of all non-fiction published in the wild west genre is Indy.  (Indy is a euphemism for self-published.  It sounds better.)  Long story short, Ben almost literally wrote the book on the subject.  It takes, according to him, 4 books in order to successful market.  He’s right.  He was also right in the fact that I’ve realized more money from two of my non-fiction books about Tombstone than the dudes with the big contracts.  He was at least 25 years ahead of his time.

Now, something exciting is on the brink of occurring in the operatic world.  One of The Pink Flamingo’s fave baritones, Jonathan Estabrooks is raising money to cut a CD.  It’s a cool idea, allowing the opera fanatic and baritone junkie to participate in a little artistic history.  If you aren’t familiar with the Canadian’s work, let’s put it this way – he’s more than just a Barihunk.  Yes, he was one of the featured pin-ups in the 2013 Barihunk (tasteful) Calender.  He’s more than just a Barihunk, he’s a showman – a real showman, something very rare these days.  The Pink Flamingo would like to go on record that the man belongs on stage, headlining in Vegas.  Yes, he’s that good!

Kickstarter

THIS is a real showman!

Once upon a time,  talent like this would not be allowed into opera because of the way the ‘sport’ was managed and regulated, especially during the repressive era of Rudolph Bing.  Instead, a talent like this would have his own traveling show, and end up on television, on Saturday night, with a star-studded variety show of his own.

Unfortunately, those days are long over – not the repressive years of Bing, but the fact that truly good entertainers no longer have a venue on television.  That’s a shame, because Estabrooks is a throw-back to the era of Frank, Bing, Andy and Perry.

Yes – he’s that good.

And, this Barihunk really does do opera, quite well, BTW.  Anyone who knows The Pink Flamingo, knows that I am a total and absolute bitch when it comes to my music and my opera.  I’m such a total snot I don’t bother going to hear many people, or even attending many productions.  Like a cousin once told me, why waste your money when you have recordings of the greats.

I would go out of my way to see this particular Barihunk.

The Pink Flamingo is quite positive that the Barihunk in question will not mind a little exploitation if it helps raise money for his CD!  (And, yes, this is all in good fun).  We’re talking about a nice guy, friendly, with a great sense of humor.  He needs a break!

Barihunks

So, now it’s time for the money pitch, right?  That’s what they do on PBS to raise money.  The great thing about this project, is that everything is planned and budgeted.  It’s not like donating money to some bawling TV preacher with mascara running, or some dorky dope sobbing as he writes dribble on his chalk board.  You will know where every cent is going in this project.

Kickstarter

That’s cool. It’s honest.  I don’t know about you, but The Pink Flamingo likes honest even more than I like my Barihunks!

If you’re a little concerned about an artist taking charge of his own CD including the distribution, The Pink Flamingo thinks it is a wonderful idea.  Like the Indy writer, I suspect this is a an idea whose time is coming, quickly.  Gone are the days when someone like your humble scribbler would send out a million letters to a publisher and be rejected a million and one times. That’s over.  We’re now controlling our future.

The Pink Flamingo has been watching things around the opera world.  It looks like there are a few courageous souls who are ready to venture out and take control of their lives.  When this happens, let’s face it, we the Baritone Junkies of the world are the ones who are going to benefit most.

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited about this project!  I suspect this is going to be the future for opera.  If it is, it may take a little time, but Estabrooks could be the Ben Traywick of opera, breaking new ground, doing it himself.  And,  yes, like doing it yourself with a book, there are risks. My first book went to the publisher without the corrected galley proofs being exchanged for the original manuscript. That also happens to a major publisher and author, so I didn’t sweat it.  Once you learn where the traps are, you don’t make that mistake again.

It’s not going to be easy for him, but my gosh I’m excited. By attempting to re-invent the wheel, we’re watching what I hope is a pathfinder paving the way for others.  The truly important part of doing it yourself is YOU retain the rights to your work.  This day and age, when everything is going digital, this is terribly important.

We’re watching the beginning of really incredible new operatic stars.  If they are truly the future of opera, then, instead of the end being neigh as some snobs suggest, the genre is just getting stared, heading in a brave new direction.   Yes, The Pink Flamingo is gushing, but I know what happens when you decide to take control of your own career.  No, it isn’t easy, trust me.  I think it takes longer, but, and this is the most important part – you own it.

Way to go!

NOTE:  No baritones were harmed in the creation of this post.  There may be some gratuitous exploitation, but it is for a good cause.

“…”…and there’s another problem is the number of married mothers who out-earn their husbands… I don’t think that’s a healthy dynamic to have a wife out-earn her husband because so much of his sense of worth as a male is tied up in what he does vocationally and providing for his family. That’s his calling.”…” Bryan Fischer

Yes, they are that insecure.  Fischer thinks if a woman out-earns a man, it is going to put some stress on their marriage.  Marsha Blackburn thinks that women don’t need equal pay laws.

When do we get to state that this is officially funny.  After putting up with their misogynistic you know what for years, The Pink Flamingo is beginning to realize the alleged Neanderthals of the far right have a wonderful sense of humor. There is no other logical explanation for the reaction the usual suspects are having over the information that 40% of working mothers are now the primary breadwinners for households with children.  79% of Americans reject the idea that women should return to traditional submissive roles.  Only 21% of Americans think the trend of women having to do all the work is a good thing for children and society as a whole.  The Pink Flamingo is among those numbers.  It’s not a good thing, when women are required to do everything.  It’s not a good thing when single parent homes bring in an average of $23,000 a year, compared to the $80,000 of working couples.  In other words, women still earn $81.00 for every $100 men earn.  If you don’t think employers prefer paying less for women, you are not living in reality.

LGF

“...Erick Erickson, in his continually futile quest to make himself feel like a big, tough manly man by shitting on women, has decided to respond to the howls of laughter at his impotent quaking in fear at the possibility that women’s financial pull is giving them decision-making power in the home. Because everything—literally everything—with him is about pretending his fantasies about being powerful and intimidating are reality, he’s trying to pretend that he teed people off with his comments about women’s natural subservience….”

All The Pink Flamingo can say about dudes like Rush Limbaugh, Erick Erickson, Bryan Fischer is that they have weird fantasies about the role of women in the world.  If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.  Fortunately, they lave lost so much credibility, they are laughable.  Jonathan Alter wrote:

Politicususa

Erickson is a piece of work.

TPM

This is MUST SEE TV!  I didn’t think Megyn Kelly had it in her.  If you could get her away from Roger Ailes and his manipulation, she might have a chance.  This also shows what a total ass Lou Dobbs is.

Think Progress

Bryan Fischer thinks that Kelly is a resentful, hostile ‘dragon lady’.  I guess that’s because she’s a normal American woman who had a brain and knows how to use it.  Having a brain would cause one to abjectly thumb one’s nose at the idiocy of jerks like Fischer, Erickson and Dobbs.

“...Calling Kelly a “feminist on steroids,” Fischer said she was “resentful,” “angry,” “hostile,” and “bitter” to these “poor guys” who were just trying to defend the biblical view of the gender roles. Fischer went on to say that Kelly was driven by an unhealthy, bitter “angry feminist energy” before finally just calling her a “dragon lady.”…”

Alternet

According to Fischer, Neanderthal:

“…”Husbands are to use their stamina and their strength and their brain power — not that they’re smarter than women, I’m not saying that — but God’s given them a brain, and the purpose for using their mental ability is to provide for their families, to use their physical strength to work hard, to work long hours, to use their physical strength to protect their wives and protect their children. The biblical pattern is for a wife and a mother to focus her energies, devote her energies on making a home for her children and for her husband.”…”

Do we laugh or cry?

I think we need to recognize the real problem here is the fact that little men like Dobbs, Erickson, Fischer, and Limbaugh are absolutely terrified of women.

Bill Kintner, a GOP Senator in Nebraska says that women don’t even understand themselves. The Pink Flamingo thinks that single interview describes the whole problem within the GOP and what is budding throughout the country. For some strange reason men are losing respect for women. The more subservient they become, the more they try to be dutiful little wives, chaste, modest, with eyes downcast like some inbred Amish woman, the less respect the men of the right have for them.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/2011/03/the-beautiful-girlhood-doll-introduction/

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/20/2035411/virginia-gop-nominee-for-attorney-general-would-force-women-to-report-their-miscarriages-to-police/

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/24/2059141/virginia-gop-official-im-not-a-big-fan-of-contraception-frankly/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/24/gohmert-force-women-to-give-birth-to-fetuses-with-no-brain-activity/

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0504/Elizabeth-Smart-speaks-on-human-trafficking

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/13/2003771/no-you-cannot-substitute-sex-rape/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/09/purity-culture-bad-for-women-worse-for-survivors-of-sexual-assault/

http://www.alternet.org/gender/why-sexually-pure-good-girl-bs-myth-screws-both-women-and-men?paging=off

In California, a woman was forced to pay support to her ex, who was convicted of raping her daughter, many times, over a period of years.

The other day, The Pink Flamingo came across a headline from the Huffington Post email. The headline had nothing to do with how absolutely atrocious the red carpet gowns were, but about some slut’s boobs hanging out – half way. (If you want to know how bad the costumes were, check out the slide show. Just don’t eat anything before you do, or you will gag, it was that bad, and the shoes were even worse).

Hiffington Post

Evidently the US is now part of some rape culture. There’s no other way to define what is going on in the military. According to one report, there is an average of 70 sexual assaults in the military per day.

“… The number of reported sexual assaults rose to 3,374 last year, the Defense Department study will show, up from 3,192 in 2011. That’s the highest number of reported cases since the Pentagon began submitting annual reports to Congress on sexual assault in 2004. Including unreported cases, the Pentagon estimates 26,000 sexual assaults took place across the armed forces in 2012. The Pentagon’s estimate of 26,000 reported and unreported sexual assaults is an increase from 2010, when the department estimated 19,000 total cases. The department did not produce a total estimate of sexual assaults for 2011. The Pentagon estimates the total number of sexual assaults based on an anonymous survey of service members. The data indicate that most victims do not report the crime to their superiors. The 2010 survey, for instance, estimated that 86 percent of sexual assaults went unreported, which the military says is similar to the rate for civilian sexual assault crimes….”

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/06/1969001/slut-shaming-dress-codes/

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/06/1967591/elizabeth-smart-abstinence-ed/

Yada Yada Yada…. and I believed it all to the point where I had no self-assurance at all.  In our crazy mixed-up world, we must all be the same.  Popular culture is so strong that, if you do not conform to society, you are looked down upon to the point where women are literally dying to be thin. American women have a problem with eating disorders:

“…Thus, in all, 75% of women–that’s three out of every four women in the United States between the ages of 25 and 45 years—have an eating disorder or have symptoms related to an eating disorder.

The Bulik survey, performed by SELF Magazine along with the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), exposes the high percentage of women in the United States that have negative thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to eating food and/or the state of their figures (bodies).

Bulik and Reba-Harrelson found that these unhealthy eating habits are found in all racial and ethnic groups of women.

In fact, Bulik stated, “Our survey found that these behaviors cut across racial and ethnic lines and are not limited to any one group. Women who identified their ethnic backgrounds as Hispanic or Latina, white, black or African American and Asian were all represented among the women who reported unhealthy eating behaviors.” [UNC School of Public Health: “Survey finds disordered eating behaviors among three out of four American women”]

Bulik also reported what she considered an “unexpectedly high number” of women with such problems.

She stated, “What we found most surprising was the unexpectedly high number of women who engage in unhealthy purging activities. More than 31 percent of women in the survey reported that in an attempt to lose weight they had induced vomiting or had taken laxatives, diuretics or diet pills at some point in their life. Among these women, more than 50 percent engaged in purging activities at least a few times a week and many did so every day.”…”

If Barbie were a real woman she would be seriously anorexic. Never mind the worst thing you can do to an overweight child is harp on their size. I know. I spent my entire life from the time I was in the 2nd grade being judged by my size. My first high protein diet began when I was eight years old. I gained ten pounds. When I started the 9th grade, I walked into the high school wearing a size nine dress. It was not good enough for those around me.

It is called yo-yo dieting.  It is a destroyer.  I ought to know.  It destroyed me, that, along with the fact that in my family, you’re lucky if you are thin.  My mother, who has been thin to the point of almost being anorexic all her life (she swears she is not) is suffering form agonizing osteoporosis.  It killed her mother.  In my family it is a death sentence if you are thin.  Thing is, it is extremely rare for anyone who has been overweight their entire life to ever even develop osteoporosis.  In my family, the odds tell me I’m better off being overweight.  Believe it or not.

“…”A BMI of under 17 is considered underweight or anorexic,” she tells CBS News. “That puts you at high risk for negative side effects like osteoporosis, amenorrhea (not being able to menstruate) and low heart rate.”

As many as 10 million Americans are now struggling with eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, according to the National Eating Disorder Association. A recent study found that teens are hit hard – as many as 500,000 have had an eating disorder. People with eating disorders are at high risk for depression, suicide and substance abuse. The condition can lead to sudden death.

“There are so many misconceptions,” says Slayen. “Eating disorders are are not a choice. They are not a thing of vanity. They are disease and they are really serious.”…”

Emrah Mevsimler is one of the youngest people in the UK to receive the lap band surgery.  He was 13 at the time.  Five years later he is begging to have it removed.  Unfortunately, he can’t afford to have the reversal surgery to correct the problem that is literally ruining his life. The big lie is about surgery.

“…With glowing media reports of its health benefits and a roster of celebrity success stories, weight loss surgery is beginning to feel like the miracle cure of the moment. Last year, doctors performed 205,000 bariatric surgeries, marking an 800 percent increase from a decade ago. As of 2004, 82 percent of patients are women, according to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, Maryland. Weight loss surgeries are poised to become even more popular in the wake of findings that gastric bypass and banding can send type 2 diabetes into remission in many people. A 2007 report from the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City found that obese patients who had bypass surgery had a 40 percent reduced risk of dying in the seven years after the procedure, compared with obese people who didn’t have the surgery. Bariatric surgeons are using results like those to make the case for surgery as a preventive measure against cancer, heart disease and diabetes in patients who are severely obese.

But despite the growing popularity of obesity surgery — and the general perception that it’s a shortcut to thinness and good health — it’s no easy path. The American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) in Gainesville, Florida, puts gastric-bypass surgery’s death rate at between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 200. In one AHRQ study, 4 in 10 patients developed complications within the first six months, including vomiting, diarrhea, infections, hernias and respiratory failure. Up to 40 percent of gastric-bypass patients can suffer nutritional deficiency, potentially resulting in anemia and osteoporosis; seizures and paralysis have been reported in extreme cases. Some of these malnourished patients experience bizarre neurological problems….”

Guess what – we live longer than thin people! You may not like the way we look, but deal with it, you’re a bigot. You fear ‘fat’.   Sure, you’re a bigot and won’t like the way I look, BUT…. Women in my family who were my size live well into their mid 90s, and are basically healthy, save for arthritis, primarily in their fingers and hands.  (That’s one reason I type for hours, every day).  The women who are thin are the one who end up dying of cancer, heart failure, and rarely survive past their early 70s.  We’re talking a 20 year difference here!  That’s twenty years of additional living, just due to weight – on both sides of my family.

And that body mass thingie…

“…There is no medical evidence that fat by itself causes any disease; instead there are putative links to mortality based solely on statistical models and flawed data. School based anti-fat campaigns conducted in various states in the 1990′s involving thousands of elementary school children failed to reduce the children’s weight. The much quoted BMI (Body Mass Index) was not invented by a medical doctor but by the Belgian astronomer Adolphe Quetelet who attempted to mathematically characterize human physiognomy in 1830. The definitions of overweight and obesity nevertheless are based on arbitrary BMI values. The belief that an obesity epidemic which began in 1980 is threatening our health is unfounded. Similar warnings were issued in the early 1950′s. While much is said about our increasing fatness it is fact that Americans today are taller on average than their grandparents, yet this is not seen as a health problem…”

Truthout

I’ve been saying this for years,

Nature

I’m loving this.  Evidently being thin is a health risk!

“…Andres’s ideas were roundly rejected by the mainstream medical community. In an often-cited JAMA paper4 published in 1987, for example, Willett and JoAnn Manson, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, analysed 25 studies of weight–death relationships and claimed that most were tainted by two confounders: smoking and sickness. Smokers tend to be leaner and die earlier than non-smokers, and many people who are chronically ill also lose weight. These effects could make thinness itself seem to be a risk.

Manson and Willett backed up that idea in a 1995 report that analysed body-mass index (BMI) — the ‘gold-standard’ measure of weight, defined as weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared — in more than 115,000 female nurses enrolled in a long-term health study5. When the researchers excluded women who had ever smoked and those who died during the first four years of the study (reasoning that these women may have had disease-related weight loss), they found a direct linear relationship between BMI and death, with the lowest mortality at BMIs below 19. (That is about 50 kilograms for a woman who is 1.63 metres tall.)

“It didn’t seem to be biologically plausible that overweight and obesity could both increase the risk of life-threatening diseases and yet lower mortality rates,” Manson says. The study proved, she says, that this idea “was more artefact than fact”.

Around the same time, the world was waking up to obesity. Since 1980, rates of overweight and obesity had begun to rocket6, 7, 8, and in 1997, the World Health Organization (WHO) held its first meeting on the subject, in Geneva, Switzerland. That meeting resulted in the introduction of new criteria for ‘normal weight’ (BMI of 18.5–24.9), ‘overweight’ (BMI of 25–29.9) and ‘obese’ (BMI of 30 or higher). In 1998, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lowered its BMI cut-offs to match the WHO’s classifications. “We used to call [obesity] the Cinderella of risk factors, because nobody was paying attention to it,” says Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a cardiac physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. They were now….”

“…6. Fat helps you survive some diseases. The JAMA editorial points out that among people suffering “a wasting disease, heart disease, diabetes, renal dialysis, or older age,” higher BMI correlates with a lower mortality rate. “Even in the absence of chronic disease, small excess amounts of adipose tissue may provide needed energy reserves during acute catabolic illnesses.” That doesn’t mean fat makes you healthy. It means that once you’re unhealthy, fat might keep you alive, at least for a while…”

If you are overweight, jurors look at you differently.

“...Objective:To investigate the influence of a defendant’s weight on simulated jurors’ perceptions of guilt.Design and methods:Participants were 471 lean and overweight adults (mean body mass index: 25.34±5.91) who read a vignette describing a case of check fraud while viewing one of four images of the alleged defendant (a lean male, a lean female, an obese male or an obese female). Participants rated the defendant’s culpability on a 5-point Likert scale and completed measures of anti-fat attitudes.Results:Male respondents endorsed greater overall weight bias than females (F (1470)=23.815, P<0.01, η(2)=0.048).

A three-way interaction was detected between participant sex, defendant sex and defendant weight on perceptions of guilt such that when the defendant was female, male participants were significantly more likely to find her guilty if she was obese than if she was lean (guilt ratings=4.05±0.83; 3.31±1.03, respectively; F(1467)=5.935, P=0.015, R(2)=0.060). In addition, lean male participants were significantly more likely to believe that the obese female defendant met criteria for check fraud, and indicated greater belief she would be a repeat offender, compared with the lean female defendant (t(90)=2.081, P=0.040; t(90)=2.395 P=0.019, respectively).

There were no differences in perceptions of guilt or responsibility between the obese male and the lean male defendants.Conclusion:The results of this novel study indicate that both weight and gender of a defendant may affect juror perceptions of guilt and responsibility.International Journal of Obesity advance online publication, 8 January 2013; doi:10.1038/ijo.2012.211….”

If you are overweight, you are treated differently.  The hatred is always there, simmering under the surface.

“…“You big fat pig” is all Marsha Coupe heard before she was kicked in the stomach and punched in the face. The 53-year-old businesswoman says she was sitting in an almost empty train carriage in the early evening when she was kicked, punched and shouted at for taking up two seats. Her attacker was pulled off by another passenger and restrained, but got off at the next stop before the police arrived….Fat people are fair game for everyone,” says Ms Coupe, who weighs 22 stone (139kg). “Yes, I’ve had beer cans thrown at me by youngsters, but the abuse doesn’t just come from the obvious places. “The normal rules about behaviour, respect and common courtesy don’t apply to us.”

The rise of what could be called “fattism” is being met with a backlash from those who are affected, triggering a nascent rights movement. The unprovoked attack was not an isolated incident, say weight equality campaigners. And when it comes to verbal attacks, they are part of daily life for some of the overweight. From people commenting on the contents of their shopping trolleys to shouting abuse at them in the street….”We’re simply not all built to be slim, our genetic make-ups are all different.”

Another reason for people’s intolerance is the “mass-moral outrage” whipped up by the media and the government over the issue of weight, say campaigners. They question much of the information and “scare stories” surrounding increasing obesity, but they don’t doubt the everyday consequences of them for larger people….One study in America found attitudes towards overweight people are more negative than other types of stigma often seized on by children, such as wearing glasses or having a physical disability. That doesn’t mean they can’t control their actions toward overweight people. But the more fat people are portrayed as social pariahs, the more justified people feel in attacking them.

“Society’s increasing hatred of fat and obsession with thin is creating appalling prejudice,” says Ms Orbach. “It is allowing people to feel justified about abusing fat people….“

What if what we are told to do to protect our health is really killing us?  The Pink Flamingo’s mother has a serious non diabetic blood sugar problem. She must almost live on sweets, carbs, and protein in order to survive.  Contrary to what is the norm, for her sort of problem, she can easily slip into a fatal coma because she’s not eating enough sugar.  She’s been told that is the way she will probably die, not from her serious heart condition, but because she is eating too healthy!

“…But Dr Campbell-McBride believes these ‘bad’ fats and cholesterol are used by the body to repair artery walls damaged by infection and off fight ‘alien’ bodies in the blood. People who have low-fat diets can’t make these repairs, which leads to significant scarring, narrowing of the arteries and increases the risk of dangerous blockages. This in turn increases the chances of heart conditions and can also lead to degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Low fat diets can actually increase the risk of heart disease – and balance is crucial, scientists claim. Dr Campbell-McBride’s research is supported by American scientists who found that strict vegetarians are at a ‘substantial risk’ of heart disease. She believes people can ‘greatly reduce’ risks by following a balanced diet, which incorporates fat and LDL cholesterol.

She added: ‘Heart disease is now the number one killer in the UK despite a concerted effort by doctors and the NHS to improve the public’s cardiovascular health. ‘It’s now time to re-examine things and at the centre of that must be the foods we eat. ‘By doing this we can better protect our bodies and help the horrific situation we are faced with today. ‘This mistaken view has only been around for 50 or so years while humans have prized fat as the most valuable and nutritious food for millennia.’

Dr Mike Knapton, a Cambridge GP who also works for the British Heart Foundation, also said that red meat can help prevent heart disease….”

Because The Pink Flamingo has been on every diet there is, at one time or another, since I was in the 4th grade, I know a thing or two about eating.  Fads don’t work.  I remember, years ago, when eggs were the root of all evil.  Now they are a miracle food.  Red meat was good, evil, good, perfect, not so good, and now is looked upon as neither good nor evil.  When diet sodas first came out, they were just everything wonderful.

When I was a kid, my grandmother Froehlich decided to go on the Metrocal Milk Shake diet.  The chocolate packets contained everything you  needed for a ‘healthy’ meal.  You put them in cold skim milk, would shake them, and voila, a magical lo cal milk shake.  The problem is, they just didn’t taste like a milk shake to my normal size maternal grandmother who loved her fudge flavored ice cream.

Nana decided it would be better to add some chocolate ice cream in with the mix, and make a better tasting milk shake.  She put some chocolate syrup in it.  And, every day for two weeks, twice a day, she religiously enjoyed her milk shake diet.

She gained ten pounds!

(She also never heard the end of it!)

“...There are rumors that the Tea Parties and the CofCC have merged. I cannot confirm this. If so, then anyone who is decent should immediately denounce the entire Tea Party movement. Once again, I cannot confirm this rumor. I have found plenty of evidence that the CofCC and Stormfront are actively participating in the Tea Party movement. I am also finding evidence that certain Tea Party groups are quickly denouncing them. This is NOT happening in South Carolina, where one Roan Garcia-Quintana is active in both the GOP and the Tea Parties. I am finding evidence that he is a major mover and shaker in the whole SC Tea Party world. I also have evidence below that he is associated with the CofCC, Stormfront, and at least one notorious Neo-Nazi organizer….”

The Pink Flamingo

Santelli, who is now being investigated by the Secret Service for threatening to shoot Hillary Clinton, was bought and paid for by Charles & David Koch, in their bid to start taking over the GOP.

“…Even the Sam Adams’ January 31 announcement that Odom’s fake-grassroots group was “no longer sponsored by the Alliance” was shortly afterwards scrubbed.But it’s the Alliance’s scrubbing of their link to Koch that is most telling. A cached page, erased on February 16, just three days before Santelli’s rant, shows that the Alliance also wanted to cover up its ties to the Koch family.

The missing link was an announcement that students interested in applying for internships to the Sam Adams Alliance could also apply through the “Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program” through the Institute for Humane Studies, a Koch-funded rightwing institute designed to scout and nurture future leaders of corporate libertarian ideology. (See hi-resolution screenshots here.)

The top two board directors at the Sam Adams Alliance include two figures with deep ties to Koch-funded programs: Eric O’Keefe, who previously served in Koch’s Institute for Humane Studies and the Club For Growth; and Joseph Lehman, a former communications VP at Koch’s Cato Institute.All of these are ultimately linked up to Koch’s Freedom Works mega-beast. Freedomworks.org has drawn fire in the past for using fake grassroots internet campaigns, called “astroturfing,” to push for pet Koch projects such as privatizing social security.

A New York Times investigation in 2005 revealed that a “regular single mom” paraded by Bush’s White House to advocate for privatizing social security was in fact FreedomWorks’ Iowa state director. The woman, Sandra Jacques, also fronted another Iowa fake-grassroots group called “For Our Grandchildren,” even though privatizing social security was really “For Koch And Wall Street Fat Cats.”…”

The State

Nikki Haley is a Koch Whore. She recently appointed one of the worst racists in SC to be on her re-election steering committee. Why?

Huffington Post

This is just the tip of the iceberg. When you keep going back to the Koch Machine, you keep coming up with a very particular kind of racism. It isn’t there all the time, but the Kochs and their John Birch background don’t seem to mind climbing into bed with white supremacists, KKKers, vote fraud, and anything else that is unsavory. It’s all about them getting their own nasty way and destroying the country in the process. People like Nikki Haley and Catherine Englebrecht are willing whores, shills in the process. So is the conservative media who appears to no longer be able to tell the difference between right and wrong, moral and immoral, legal and illegal.

It’s all about the billions and worshiping those who have them. It’s about people like Rush Limbaugh who continue to spread the gospel of lies. It’s also about people stupid enough to fall for his lies. He is absolutely delusional with this one!

Rush Limbaugh

Their main canard is tax relief.

“…“The poll results show a clear desire for bold tax relief and reform that gets North Carolina back in the game for jobs and business,” said Dallas Woodhouse, state director of Americans for Prosperity in North Carolina.

The legislative effort has mobilized liberals who see North Carolina as a laboratory for conservative ideas propelled nationwide by the money of a handful of key patrons. They note that many of the initiatives being pursued by legislators here have long been championed by a network of conservative organizations supported by Pope and billionaire activists Charles and David Koch, including Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council….”

Muckety

The man issue is Charles & David Koch getting what they want. They are so wealthy that they are able to do exactly what they want. They own the GOP. They own the RNC. They are trying to own the country.

This is the documentary that exposes the Koch Brothers. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.

These are the groups controlled and founded by Charles and David Koch.

Koch Family Foundations
American Commitment (CPI)
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
Americans for Prosperity (formerly Citizens For A Sound Economy)
American Highway Users Alliance
American Energy Alliance
American Future Fund
American Tradition Institute
Americans for Job Security
Americans for Tax Reform
Association for American Innovation (sourcewatch)
Bill of Rights Insitute
Cato Institute
Center to Protect Patient Rights
CitizenLink
Citizens For A Sound Economy Foundation
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Concerned Women for America
Democratic Leadership Council
Federalist Society
Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
Fraser Institute (Canada)
Freedom Works (formerly Citizens For A Sound Economy)
Galen Institute
Generation Opportunity
Goldwater Institute (sourcewatch)
Heartland Institute
Institute for Human Studies
Institute for Policy Innovation
Knowledge and Progress Fund (Charles Koch)
Manhattan Institute
Mercatus Center
National Petrochemical and Refiners Association (Koch Industries is a member)
National Taxpayers Union
Natural Gas Supply Association (Koch Industries is a member)
Reason Foundation (and Reason.com)
State Policy Network
Texas Prosperity Project
Washington Legal Foundation
Action Institute
Beacon Hill Institute
Bill of Rights Institute
Brookings Institution
Citizens For Congressional Reform Foundation
Ethics and Public Policy Center, Inc.
Federalist Society
George Mason University
Heritage Foundation
Institute for Energy Research
Institute For Justice
National Center For Policy Analysis
Pacific Research Institute For Public Policy
The Fund for American Studies
The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation

 And then there is ALEC:

Boycott Koch

The Pink Flamingo began this series, on Monday, with a link to Bob Dole’s illuminating comments about Ronald Reagan.   I’m going to end it that way.

Salon

 ”...On the strength of that showing, Clark became the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president at the party’s September 1979 national convention in Los Angeles. To fill out his ticket, Clark turned to an heir to a massive oil fortune and the president of a New York-based chemical company: 39-year-old David Koch. The pairing was a smart one for the Libertarians: As a candidate himself, Koch could sink his personal fortune into the Clark-Koch effort. With his money, the party would be able to afford a 50-state ballot drive, television ads, and a full-fledged national organization.

Hopes were high. In their inaugural national effort, the Libertarians had attracted fewer than 5,000 votes nationally in the 1972 presidential election (though a faithless elector defected from Richard Nixon and voted for Libertarian John Hospers). In 1976, they’d jumped to nearly 175,000. But now they had serious money to reach the millions of angry, anti-government voters who were growing louder everyday. This energy helped the party field 550 candidates for office across the country. It was only the beginning, Clark and Koch promised.Their goal for the ’80 campaign was to break ten percent in the presidential race, a feat that would give the party momentum and automatic ballot status in most states. By 1982, Libertarian candidates for Congress would begin winning elections, and by the end of the decade, the Libertarians would eclipse the GOP as the nation’s second major political party.

The Libertarians’ massive ’80 push was no small concern to the Republican Party and its candidate, Ronald Reagan.  The general election was supposed to be close. It was still assumed that Carter, the peanut farmer from Georgia, would sweep the South, making it critical for Reagan to win elsewhere. But by the summer and early fall, Clark began moving into double-digits in polls in some Western states; in Alaska, his support reached over 20 percent. Pundits had long assumed that the race’s other third party candidate, John Anderson, might play the spoiler role. But now Anderson’s numbers were fading, and while Reagan was scrambling to moderate his own image for the masses, Clark was winning new fans on the right. It seemed entirely possible that the the upstart Libertarian nominee would deny Reagan just enough votes in just enough key states to prevent him from unseating Carter.

Of course, that’s not how it worked out. In the race’s closing weeks, support for Clark and Anderson — and, for that matter, for Barry Commoner, the other other third party candidate — cratered and Reagan rolled to a 44-state landslide. Anderson finished with 5,7 percent of the vote, while the Clark-Koch ticket tallied 1.1 percent, or just over 900,000 votes. It wasn’t quite the breakthrough showing they’d envisioned, but it still stands as the best performance — by far — for a Libertarian national ticket. (Running in an election that attracted nearly 40 million more total voters, for instance, Libertarian Bob Barr attracted just 523,000 votes in 2008.) After ’80, the Libertarians fell victim to infighting. No members of Congress were ever elected on the Libertarian line and the party ended the ’80s nowhere near Clark’s goal of major party status. For Libertarians, the Clark-Koch campaign still represents the glory days…”

I guess it all begins and ends with Reagan.  If this were something new with the Kochs you would fob it off as just more rich guys with more time on their hands than good sense.  The problem, though, is that they have been at this since the mid-1980s.  There’s no coincidence here.

In 2009, a little known CNBC reporter fired the shot heard round the world, starting the tea party movement.

“…But was Santelli’s rant really so spontaneous? How did a minor-league TV figure, whose contract with CNBC is due this summer, get so quickly launched into a nationwide rightwing blog sensation? Why were there so many sites and organizations online and live within minutes or hours after his rant, leading to a nationwide protest just a week after his rant?

What hasn’t been reported until now is evidence linking Santelli’s “tea party” rant with some very familiar names in the Republican rightwing machine, from PR operatives who specialize in imitation-grassroots PR campaigns (called “astroturfing”) to bigwig politicians and notorious billionaire funders. As veteran Russia reporters, both of us spent years watching the Kremlin use fake grassroots movements to influence and control the political landscape. To us, the uncanny speed and direction the movement took and the players involved in promoting it had a strangely forced quality to it. If it seemed scripted, that’s because it was.

What we discovered is that Santelli’s “rant” was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a “Chicago Tea Party” was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society….”

Politicus USA

What do you call one of the richest men in the world who only gives his bellman a fifty buck tip for Christmas? This is the same man who has donated over $23 million to public television. He gives to the American Ballet Theater, and to cancer research, but the man doesn’t appear to do a damn thing to help those in need.

“...Koch also was featured in the November 2012 PBS documentary Park Avenue, which contrasted the extreme wealth of Koch’s residence at 740 Park Avenue with the stark poverty less than a mile north in East Harlem. In the documentary, a former doorman noted that Koch, with a net worth of about $45 billion, gives only $50 holiday tips….”

New Yorker

This is where The Pink Flamingo gets a little annoyed. I call someone like that a cheap SOB, plain and simple, a total and complete jerk who has no regard for anyone around him. I can’t stand people like this.

“…Among the wealthiest residents of 740 Park is David Koch, the billionaire industrialist, who, with his brother Charles, owns Koch Industries, a huge energy-and-chemical conglomerate. The Koch brothers are known for their strongly conservative politics and for their efforts to finance a network of advocacy groups whose goal is to move the country to the right. David Koch is a major philanthropist, contributing to cultural and medical institutions that include Lincoln Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. In the nineteen-eighties, he began expanding his charitable contributions to the media, donating twenty-three million dollars to public television over the years. In 1997, he began serving as a trustee of Boston’s public-broadcasting operation, WGBH, and in 2006 he joined the board of New York’s public-television outlet, WNET. Recent news reports have suggested that the Koch brothers are considering buying eight daily newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, one of the country’s largest media empires, raising concerns that its publications—which include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times—might slant news coverage to serve the interests of their new owners, either through executive mandates or through self-censorship. Clarence Page, a liberal Tribune columnist, recently said that the Kochs appeared intent on using a media company “as a vehicle for their political voice.”…”

Politicus USA

They own the right, the GOP, the tea parties, and the libertarian right. They’ve spent millions purchasing them. They are now trying to own the media. WNET just dumped David Koch from its board. What is terribly fascinating is that, not only do the Kochs own the conservative media, but they appear to have bought and paid for the liberal end of things – PBS.

“…Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are quite entrepreneurial in their attempts to influence public policy in their favor. They don’t just donate to a few like-minded politicians: They have long funded libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute. They helped fund the Tea Party movement. In the 2012 election, they funded groups like Americans for Prosperity to air campaign ads attacking Barack Obama during the last presidential campaign. While their reported interest in buying the Tribune Company’s eight newspapers, which includes the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, has stirred up fears from journalists and activists in those cities that the Koch brothers would extend their influence into media, their limited involvement with the media has already yielded success….”

Andy Kroll described the very real problem with people like the Kochs.

“...Increasingly, it looks like before the rest of us even have our say, before you enter the voting booth, issues, politics, and the politicians will have been winnowed, vetted, and predetermined by the wealthiest Americans. Think of it as a new definition of politics: the democracy of the wealthy, who can fight it out with each other inside and outside the political parties with little reference to you.

In the meantime, the more those of modest means feel drowned out by the money of a tiny minority, the less connected they will feel to the work of government, and the less they will trust elected officials and government as an institution. It’s a formula for tuning out, staying home, and starving whatever’s left of our democracy.

I caught a glimpse of this last November, when I spoke to a class of students at Radford University in Virginia, a state blanketed with super PAC attack ads and dark money in 2012. Over and over, students told me how disgusted they were by all the vitriol they heard when they turned on the TV or the radio. Most said that they ended up ignoring the campaigns; a few were so put off they didn’t bother to vote. “They’re all bought and sold anyway,” one student told me in front of the entire class. “Why would my vote make any difference?”…”

They are not nice people when it comes to dealing, honesty, with the public. Their industries are among the worst polluters there are. They are behind legislative initiatives to do away with:

• minimum wage
• unions
• EPA
• environmental regulations
• worker safety
• public police, fire, EMS
• taxes
• unemployment funds
• anything that gets in their way of a profit

“…Cash from groups backed by the Koch brothers and others helped North Carolina Republicans build a robust conservative infrastructure and fundraising network, leading to the GOP winning both the governor’s mansion and the state legislature in the same year for the first time since Reconstruction….“Getting dramatic economic change at the federal level is very difficult,” said Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity. “A few years ago, the idea we had was to create model states. North Carolina was a great opportunity to do that – more so than any other state in the region. If you could turn around a state like that, you could get real reform.” Since November, change has come quickly. Gov. Pat McCrory appointed a Koch ally and major Republican donor, Art Pope, as the state’s budget director….”

Politico

Pete Santilli may have proved just what the real tea partiers are all about. He is being investigated by the Secret Service for suggesting that Hillary Clinton be shot. Pete Santilli isn’t just any right wing, libertarian, Koch Machine shill. He allegedly began the whole movement with his anti-Obama rant in Chicago, lo those many years ago, becoming a national hero, brought to you by FOX Tabloid News.

Another tea party stalwart is Alec Jones, whose latest stupidity suggests Obama is to blame for the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.

Trey Gowdy is a disgrace to the state of South Carolina and the 4th District, where the late, great, Carroll Campbell once held that office. What Gowdy did to Lois Lerner on Wednesday, was the rudest thing The Pink Flamingo has ever seen an official in Congress do – on record.

There are times when it just goes from bad to worse.  The Koch Machine basically controls the conservative media today.  They control the non-profit organizations that spew forth blast faxes, endless emails, and pay talking heads like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck to lie to a willing listening audience, ready to hate anything ‘liberal’.

Are the Koch Brothers behind the latest poll numbers that state that 20% of the American people think we will need to have an armed rebellion against the US government?

“...The idea of using violent force to prevent democratically elected government from operating according to the will of the people began when the Koch brothers’ funded teabaggers brought signs to rallies claiming “we came unarmed this time” during the healthcare reform debate throughout 2009. Republicans and conservative pundits inflamed conservatives with claims their liberties were being infringed up to the time the U.S. Congress passed a law helping 40 million Americans have access to healthcare insurance, and despite the Supreme Court ruling the Affordable Care Act was Constitutional, Republicans are angrier than ever that democracy worked and 44% of them think “armed revolution might be necessary” to protect their liberty. However, healthcare for millions is not the only Republican claim of an assault on their liberties as evidenced by Republican claims their liberties are infringed because the Constitution prevents them from imposing religious edicts on the people. Nearly half of Republicans believe armed revolution might be necessary to enforce Christianity on the population. In Republican-controlled states, the loss in two general elections enraged Republicans who tasked the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to write template legislation restricting Democratic-leaning voters from exercising their right to vote, and because the Department of Justice enforces the right to vote it is interpreted as an infringement of Republicans’ liberties; their solution is “armed revolution” to “protect their liberty” to eliminate voting rights.

Republican politicians are the primary drivers of the rise in threats of “armed revolution” against the government because if they cannot rule by religious and Koch brother edict, or get their way through the electoral process, then violent insurrection is their solution. The idea of using gun violence reared its ugly head when failed senatorial candidate Sharon Angles said the “public would bring down the out-of-control (Democratic) Congress with Second Amendment remedies” because they were part of “the tyrannical U.S. government,” and made particular mention of her opponent, Majority Leader Harry Reid. Michelle Bachmann said she wanted residents of her state “armed and dangerous” to oppose President Obama’s “because we need to fight back and do everything we can to thwart Democrats at every turn to make sure they aren’t able to secure a power base.” Last year, the Virginia Republican Party called for “armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November,” because they claimed President Obama was a “political socialist ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized.” Republicans began claiming everything associated with the Obama Administration was a “government takeover” and infringement on Republicans’ liberties beginning in 2009, and it is close to bearing fruit now that half of Republicans support armed revolution against the democratically elected government, and it is all because Republicans are not allowed to rule….”

Ed Kilgore got it right:

Washington Montly

LGF

And then some….!

5th Marine Division
November 4, 1916 – February 19, 1945

While the enemy was hammering at the Marines’ defensive positions, Sgt. Basilone, in charge of 2 sections of heavy machine guns, fought valiantly to check the savage and determined assault.

In a fierce frontal attack with the Japanese blasting his guns with grenades and mortar fire, one of Sgt. Basilone’s sections, with its gun crews, was put out of action, leaving only 2 men able to carry on.

Moving an extra gun into position, he placed it in action, then, under continual fire, repaired another and personally manned it, gallantly holding his line until replacements arrived.

A little later, with ammunition critically low and the supply lines cut off, Sgt. Basilone, at great risk of his life and in the face of continued enemy attack, battled his way through hostile lines with urgently needed shells for his gunners, thereby contributing in large measure to the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment.

His great personal valor and courageous initiative were in keeping with the highest traditions of
the U.S. Naval Service.

GySgt. Basilone was killed helping to guide a tank to safety that was trapped in a mine field under heavy mortar and artillery barrages during the invasion of Iwo Jima.

You can read more about GySgt. Basilone and his amazing bravery here

This Post Was Suggested By Michael

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives just so others may get to enjoy freedom. For that I am proud to call them Hero.

Those Who Say That We’re In A Time When
There Are No Heroes, They Just Don’t Know Where To Look

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

My father has Alzheimer’s Disease.  All my life, he has been the Birthday Boy.  His birthday was always followed by Father’s Day, thus requiring a week long celebration of him. It was all in good clean fun.  Every year there was a huge picnic, with no fewer than 50 guests.  The menu was always the same:  BBQ, corn, scalloped potatoes, baked beans, garlic bread, cole slaw, and the chocolate cake with white icing that my mother has always made.

My Father & His Brother
(this is my favorite photo)

Always….

In May, of 2006, while my mother lay in ICU, hooked up to everything, after suffering from massive heart failure, my father sat there, wondering what we were going to do about his birthday party.  I was a little annoyed at the time, but looking back, I should have realized something was wrong.

That’s the problem with our parents, the elderly and Alzheimer’s Disease.  We don’t want to see the warning signs.  We tell ourselves that uncharacteristic chattyness is normal. We fob off the memory lapses as old age.  We ignore the lost keys or wallet by saying he always did it.  Then you notice that something is terribly wrong with the family finances – and it is too late.

What no one bothers to tell you about Alzheimer’s Disease is that there are very specific physical markers, signs, that, when put into context with the little things, is a flashing stop light!  It’s all about physical coordination.  The ability to stand up after sitting at a table is one of the earliest signs of the disease.  The mind and body just can’t put it together.  My father has had difficulties standing up after sitting at a table for almost a decade.  He also had a strange way of going up and down stairs, with the back of his heel rubbing the back of the step.

It was weird. He couldn’t explain it, and he was extremely lucid, with no other real symptoms other than becoming a little confused with directions, and constantly losing his wallet (while we were traveling).

If I had known then, what I know now, things would be a heck of a lot different for our family.  We could have caught the lying scumbag of a broker who cheated him out of over half a million bucks, cold cash.  We could have caught the man’s assistant when she appropriated a quarter of a million in cash for her own personal use.  But, we didn’t know to watch – I didn’t know to watch out for the finances.

That is the worst part of Alzheimer’s Disease, not catching it in time.  If you do, early enough, and start B-12 injections every three weeks, there is a 46% chance you can either slow the development of the disease or even stop it in its tracks.  I swear we managed to slow the development of the disease by several years with the injections.  He’s just now going into early Stage 5.

2011

It’s so simple.  All that is needed is a special color imaging CT scan that literally layers the brain.  It can catch the development of the disease a good 10 to 15 years before symptoms began showing.  This is critical in stopping and slowing the onset of the disease.

Having lived with this for three years, now, I swear the worst part of Alzheimer’s Disease is the fear that someone you know has it, and then avoiding the diagnosis of it, until it is too late.  There’s going to be hope in the future.  By the time we Baby Boomers are entering that phase of our lives, there are going to be exciting new treatments.  We already know enough, that, if you have a genetic pre-disposition to the disease (and only about 6% of the population does), you have hope.  You can’t fight it if you remain ignorant.

2010

My father’s is the only case we can find in our family.  I’ve been doing genealogy for nearly 25 years, and have his family literally back to Adam on all but his great-grandmother Miller’s side.  There is no sign of it, at all.  My father had the first diagnosed case of Lyme Disease in South Carolina.  That was the year before my oldest niece, Rachel, was born.  There are now major indicators that those who have had Lyme Disease will most likely contract Alzheimer’s.  The indicators are so strong, I have a friend whose 23 year old daughter is already on the B-12 injections and the anti-Alzheimer’s medications.

There are such stupid assumptions out there about the causes of the disease.  It is not caused by:

• Obesity
• Diabetes
• Blood pressure
• Heart disease
• Lack of exercise
• Poor diet

1952

I think we’re probably going to find that there is a chemical component to the disease, the same way there are now indicators that some cases of Parkinson’s Disease may be caused by exposure to certain agricultural and petro chemical components.   It is also caused by brain injuries.

I hear people lament the fact that their loved one has the disease, how they hate it.  I don’t hate it.  The real problem we have with Alzheimer’s Disease is approaching it like it is some shameful condition to be hidden with the sufferer put away in an institution, to simply wait to fall, break a hip, and die.

It’s a disease, no different from cancer.  People who have it should not be locked-up, unless they are violent. My father, when told that he had it, said he wanted to go out and do things until he started drooling.  So, he goes out and does things. There is one specific restaurant here in town that he likes.  The meal process now takes 2 hours.  He would once wolf down his food.  Now it is agony, sitting there, putting up with the slow pace.  If a server takes our plates, he will stop eating.  This has led for the most tense moments we’ve had with the disease.  You keep your plate, and pretend to still be eating.

No, that’s my sister, not Jan Brady!

My sister, her 3 children, and the baby arrived on Monday.  We will all be together this one last time.  That’s the best part of this.  We know the end is coming.  We know that this is the last year he can easily and readily participate in his birthday.  We have the blessing of knowing that every moment counts. There will be lots and lots of photos.  I’ll be castigated for not downloading the last set of baby photos out of my camera.  (I found a way to get around that one – saving them for Rachel to put in her lap-top).

We’re lucky.  We know what is coming.  You count your blessings, and know that it’s not going to get any easier.  My mother is the one who is having the difficult time of things.  She’s the one living with it, day in and day out.

I think she’s learning how to laugh – I hope.

Heading to the South Pacific

It’s not easy, but neither would be cancer.  I swear I don’t know what the difference is with this and

any other debilitating disease.  There is no reason for shame, or to hide my father from the world.  He interacts so well with people.  It stimulates his brain.  He is happy.  I’m not going to take that away from him.

Funny, I’m writing this a few days ahead of time so I can do other things.  I’m not even crying about it. The difference in his appearance is startling.  The photo with him in the red shirt was taken on the parent’s 60th, 2  years ago.  He’s now developing that look of what is going on here.  It’s sad.  Then, he comes up with something hilarious, showing us that he’s still there.

We know what tomorrow brings.  We know this will be his last real birthday.  Very few families are blessed enough to know to treasure that last time.  We are.

We have learned that the Brother’s Koch aren’t very nice people at times.  They are rude to those who are beneath them.  One brother has a record of abuse when it comes to women.  They bully people, and yet can be quite charming when they want to.  The Pink Flamingo truly believes the far right is taking their mannerisms from them.  There is no other explanation.

Oh, and we’re also dealing with a bunch of people who have never been involved in politics in their lives.  They don’t know how to act, don’t know their history, or even how government works.  I suspect they either flunked or barely passed high school government.

Let’s face it, no matter what a political ideology is, a person doesn’t need to be treated the way Lois Lerner was, last week by the right.  It was wrong.

Lois Lerner has been placed on administrative leave. No matter what you think of her, it is quite obvious the poor woman was in over her head.

Email

Memeorandum

The same people who are defending Englebrecht are trying to destroy Lerner. What’s going on here? Is The Pink Flamingo missing something? You bet I am! I’m missing the fact that this is about destroying the IRS so that the billionaires who control the far right won’t be paying normal taxes like we the little people. Like the legend of Robin Hood, the new rulers of America are exempt from paying more than a pittance of taxes, while we the little people are being soaked and destroyed. No one should be paying over 20% in income taxes, billionaire or surf. It’s that simple. We should all be paying the same tax rate, same percentage, with the same deductions. There should be a minimum earning amount to be taxed, then that’s it. No deduction, no tax shelters, no hiding your money elsewhere.

What did Darrell Issa know and when did he know it? Just a little FYI: Conservative non profits outspent liberals 34-1.

“...Furthermore, their analysis showed, “Of the 21 organizations that received rulings from the IRS after January 1, 2010, and filed FEC reports in 2010 or 2012, 13 were conservative. They outspent the liberal groups in that category by a factor of nearly 34-to-1.”..”

Trey Gowdy, the vile tea party disgrace who now fills the same office once held by the legendary, and gentlemanly late Carroll Campbell, proved, on Wednesday, why the tea parties are deplorable, ruining the GOP and why the whole IRS scandal is a total and complete joke. The way he treated Lois Lerner was over the top, and beyond belief. Granted, the woman doesn’t appear to be the brightest bulb in the marquis, but the way Gowdy and Darrell Issa (who has unresolved criminal issues of his own) treated this woman was beyond political. Those two legal geniuses state that she has waved her Fifth Amendment rights, but that’s a crock and they know it.

“…“Mr. Cummings just said we should run this hearing like a courtroom, and I agree with him,” Gowdy thundered. “[Lerner] just testified. She just waived her Fifth Amendment right. You don’t get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross examination — that’s not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement. She ought to stand here and answer our questions.”

Gowdy’s outraged objection was met with applause in the courtroom. But James Duane, a Fifth Amendment expert at Regent University, says Gowdy’s claim was “extremely imaginative” but “mistaken.”

Had this been an actual criminal trial, in an actual courtroom, and had Lerner been an actual defendant, then yes, it would not have been permissible for her to testify in her own defense and then refuse cross-examination on Fifth Amendment grounds. But a congressional hearing is not a criminal trial in two important ways, Duane tells Daily Intelligencer….”

It’s quite simple. Rush Limbaugh first said that she had no Fifth Amendment rights. After all, Limbaugh’s a bastion of scholarly learning.

“...The application for recognition as a social welfare nonprofit, 1024 Form, explicitly asks a group whether it has spent, or plans to spend, “any money attempting to influence the selection, nomination, election, or appointment of any person to any Federal, state, or local public office or to an office in a political organization,” and the conservative groups said no. Karl Rove’s “social welfare” organization, Crossroads GPS, complained it is among the conservative groups “targeted” by the IRS, and it should have been for spending more than $70 million in federal races in 2012. However, Crossroads GPS has not been granted tax-exemption, and yet claimed it was exempt under 501(c) on its tax return. The Koch brothers’ non-profit “social welfare,” Americans for Prosperity, spent more than $36 million despite saying it did not spend on political campaigns. Besides Rove’s group, most conservative “social welfare” non-profits applied to the IRS and were recognized as tax-exempt, and despite the IRS code rule that “promoting social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office” the groups poured millions into Republican candidates’ coffers. They are guilty of perjury and it may explain why Republicans knew about the IRS scrutiny during the 2012 election and remained silent.

As reported here on Tuesday, Darrell Issa was aware of the Treasury Department investigating the IRS in 2012, and yesterday an MSNBC host asked why Willard Romney failed to bring up the alleged scandal during the 2012 election. One can only conclude it was either because Bush appointees were responsible for the so-called persecution of conservative groups, or because they were mortified the illegal “tax-exempt” status and dark money groups would be exposed in the heat of a presidential campaign. After a judge found that teabagger non-profit True the Vote violated their tax-exempt non-profit status and illegally aided Republicans, it is hardly a stretch to believe Republicans and their “social welfare” political action committees were anxious to keep their perjury-laden applications under the radar. However, now that they are crying foul and claiming they were treated unfairly by Bush appointees and blaming the White House, it is time for a thorough FEC, IRS, and Justice Department investigation of all conservative groups that applied for, or were granted, tax-exempt status by the ….”

Why on earth, with their history of astroturfing, would you even think the tea parties qualified for IRS non-profit status?

It’s quite simple. The GOP wants to do away with the IRS. No red-blooded American should want to pay taxes. The IRS is our natural enemy. They also keep us honest as a nation, or at least they did, before the Bush tax cuts and the ability for the wealthiest among us to move their cash overseas to avoid paying taxes.

The Pink Flamingo has heard numerous rumors that the Koch Brothers are under IRS investigation. It would sure explain the hysteria against the IRS. The GOP does do their bidding.  And… bingo!

Weekly Standard

“…Even if there were no obligation to help solve the world’s problems, there IS an obligation to pay for global energy consumption and infrastructure usage and industrial pollution. Yet a review of 25 multinational companies shows clear negligence in meeting that responsibility. The 25 companies, with almost a half-trillion dollars in 2011-12 income, paid just 8% in taxes to the U.S. and 9% to foreign countries. A 35% tax — paid to ANY country or countries — would have generated another $90 billion over two years, four times the amount needed to battle malnutrition….”

The GOP now wants prevent the IRS from doing audits. Guess that’s a Koch problem also? Ed Kilgore wrote:

“…I hate to keep confusing the “narrative” with facts, but when it comes to the 501(c)(4s), we aren’t talking about tax audits. These were reviews of applications that nobody was required to submit, and that nobody needed to submit unless they were pretty sure they were on the borders of political activities incompatible with tax-exempt status (otherwise, they could just file their tax returns like anyone else and claim tax-exempt status). As for the Graham “charities,” these were 501(c)(3)s that are subject to much stricter scrutiny, and were gearing up for a massive political ad campaign in North Carolina in favor of a same-sex marriage ban. Even then, nobody was kicking down Billy Graham’s door and seizing his files or assets; it was a review of the organizations’ status, which was quickly concluded.

What Fleming is transparently doing is conflating this activity with IRS tax return audits, and suggesting conservatives are in dire danger of all getting hauled into tax court or off to prison (much as is colleague Mike Kelley did in his inflammatory line of questioning—or more accurately speechmaking—in the House Ways & Means Committee on Friday. It’s all based on a lie bordering on a Big Lie. But if Republicans are going to go in that direction, they should at least let us know how they intend to make up the revenue lost if they insist on paralyzing all IRS tax enforcement actions….”

Media Matters

They think they are better than we are.

“...WASHINGTON — Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth, recently said his conservative advocacy group’s “effectiveness lies in our uncompromising adherence to our mission,” which is to promote lower government spending, lower taxes and less regulation. “Our job is not to elect Republicans; that’s not what we do,” he said.

But as the Club for Growth prepares to spend millions of dollars in the coming months — much of it from a relatively small group of ultra-wealthy donors — attacking Republicans who fail its ideological purity exam, several of the club’s leaders would fail a similar test.

A number of its board members have sought millions of dollars in government spending for the companies they control, while advocating for policies, like ultra-low taxes, that help them keep more of the fortunes they have made. Despite the group’s free-market rhetoric, three of the seven directors of the Club for Growth, who are also some of its biggest donors, have profited from federal contracts and special earmarks in recent years, according to public records.

Indeed, the reliance on government largesse says less about the purity of the principles of the group’s leaders than it does about a central truth of American and global capitalism: Trying to separate the government from the free market is a fool’s errand. Markets, and the companies and executives that operate within them, depend on the state for their very existence. Recognizing government’s central role in facilitating well-functioning markets flips the Club for Growth’s ideology upside down, but it helps explain why the group’s top officials have such a close relationship with the government….”

Mitch McConnell has made a fool, protesting way too much. Ed Kilgore nails the problem. One of the real problems here is that the GOP has built up this fantasy of being oppressed to the point where they no longer know fiction from reality.

Washington Monthly

It’s all about doing what ever is necessary to defend the Koch Machine. If they must use someone like Catherine Englebrecht to prove how evil the Obama Administration is, and how Lois Lerner should be destroyed, then they are proving how intellectually dishonest they are. They have proved just how corrupt they are. They are proving that no one counts but the Koch Machine. The fact that people still fall for their duplicity is proof that the far right has been so brainwashed that they no longer know how to think for themselves. When this happens, our country is in very bad shape.

If Catherine Englebrecht is someone the far right considered innocent, they are as corrupt as she is. If the far right is embracing Englebrecht it proves how few standards they have. Either that, or they are so stupid it is laughable. Vote fraud is a myth, at least when it comes to the left. The real voter fraud is being instigated by the far right. Englebrecht is allegedly part of the corrupt problem. This is a woman who tried to rob, steal, and cheat honest people out of their right to vote. She tried to remove them from the voter rolls, and have them declared less than real American citizens. What she did was unethical at best. At worst, it was corrupt and illegal.

Chron.com

It’s a long and convoluted story, but there is no way this woman should be the poster child for what the IRS has allegedly done wrong. Instead, she should be the poster child for voter intimidation, ballot fraud, harassment, and what it is like to be a Koch Machine whore. That’s all she is – a whore for the Kochs.

Left Wing Nut Job

At the forefront of so-called voter fraud, her organization had been at the cusp of trying to help Mitt Romney steal the 2012 election – any way possible. The political kabuki theater going on in DC is now payback with the Koch whores in the House and Senate trying to destroy anyone who gets in the Koch’s way.

Broward Palm Beach New times

“...Leading up to what promises to be a very close presidential election, the Right has been working hard to lay the groundwork for blaming an Obama victory on “voter fraud.” The same strategy worked wonders last time around, when, one year after President Obama’s decisive victory a full half of Republicans believed that the community organizing group ACORN had stolen the election. In-person voter fraud, as John McCain strategist Steve Schmidt admitted today, is a convenient part of “the mythology now in the Republican Party,” one that as Josh noted earlier has helped to fuel decades of voter suppression measures.At an Eagle Forum conference in September – attended by Todd Akin, among others – two speakers addressed the issue of voter fraud: Catherine Engelbrecht, whose group True the Vote has been challenging registered voters across the country, and John Fund, a conservative columnist and author of a recent book on the issue.Fund claimed that President Obama wants the election to go to the Supreme Court, and that in a close election, the president would use the now-defunct ACORN to change the outcome: “The election is close, and he puts his thumb on the scale of democracy, and he sends his old ACORN friends the signal, you know what’s going to happen.”…“

Propublica

Engelbrecht’s group, True the Vote, was involved in the Ohio purge of voters, especially those who were not white, Democrat, and voted their way.

New Yorker

“...A year before the conference, Gov. Perry was the guest speaker when the King Street Patriots opened their new headquarters, an upgrade from their mall office. The King Street Patriots were working so closely with the Republican Party—hosting fundraisers and providing resources for their candidates—that a judge ruled this year that the group’s electioneering violated its 501c4 status and declared them a political action committee.

But the relationship with the Republican Party goes beyond Texas.

At a Heritage Foundation-sponsored panel in July, Engelbrecht shared the stage with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, both of whom are involved in a multi-state program Kobach created for purging voters using dubious methods. Under the Interstate Cross Check Project, 15 states (not including Texas) have been enlisted to share voter registration data under the premise that they will root out “non-citizen” voters. It’s an outgrowth of Kobach’s Secure and Fair Elections [SAFE] law, one of the strictest voter ID laws passed in 2011, particularly for its requirement that voters show proof of their citizenship when they first register. It was fueled by claims that felons, dead people and “illegal aliens” were voting and stealing elections. There is scant evidence for any of those claims. But Engelbrecht told the Heritage crowd that Kobach’s SAFE was “the model” the rest of the nation should follow.

Englebrecht’s Heritage Foundation panel was actually a rogue’s gallery of election administrators. The same week of the panel, Colorado’s Gessler tried to force local elected officials to accept changes to poll monitoring and canvassing rules; the locals protested loudly. At the panel Gessler, who’s embroiled in lawsuits over a directive to county clerks not to mail ballots to people who skipped the 2010 elections, said he is busy checking databases for “illegal immigrants” on ICE holds, and asserted he found 185 of them were registered to vote.

“We have to confirm that,” said Gessler, “but that is the likelihood.” Critics of Gessler’s tactic, which has been been deployed in other states as well, point out that even if an undocumented person’s name ended up on a voter registration card, it’s highly unlikely that person would actually cast a vote. Last week, Gessler joined his state’s Deputy Attorney General Cynthia Coffman as featured speakers at True the Vote’s summit in Colorado.

In Florida, when Gov. Rick Scott was hammered with lawsuits for a controversial “non-citizen” purge program—similar to what Kobach’s multi-state project is carrying out—True the Vote rallied their troops to support him. In Wisconsin, the group sent thousands of recruits to audit Gov. Scott Walker’s recall petition, which netted almost a million signatures. True the Vote’s audit claimed only half of the signatures were eligible. However, the official audit by the Government Accountability Board said that over 900,000 were eligible, and that only five fictitious names were added.

This week the Republican National Committee expanded the party’s voter ID platform to include an endorsement of “proof of citizenship” laws for first-time registered voters, along with tougher immigration language like building a border fence. All of it was submitted by Kansas’ Kobach. The law that Engelbrecht endorsed as “the model” for the nation is now the Republican Party’s official agenda….”

If you want The Pink Flamingo’s honest opinion, this woman needs to be on trial for what she tried to do to people. When you excel at voter intimidation and trying to rob people of their Constitutional rights to vote, and harass them in the process, if you are liberal, you go to jail. If you are Koch whore like Englebrecht, you are hailed as a heroine. She is too well organized and has far too much money to spend. Anyone with the connections to the Koch Machine that she has is not an innocent victim. She deserves to be investigated by the IRS and the DOJ for voter intimidation. When you specialize in voter suppression, you deserve to have the keys to the high security prison tossed into the sewer, after you’re put away for awhile. This is what people like Englebrecht deserve.

Yet….

“…In 2010, the Department of Justice launched a probe of alleged voter intimidation efforts by True the Vote poll watchers during the midterm elections in districts near Houston. That year, a national voter hotline received more than 200 calls alleging voter intimidation – as well as other election snafus – from several states, Texas included. It’s unclear to what extent True the Vote was responsible for those complaints. The Justice Department investigation didn’t proceed any further. True the Vote didn’t respond to our questions about the episode.

Update 11/6: True the Vote won’t be watching the polls in Franklin County, Ohio, during today’s election. The group was denied status as official poll watchers after the local board of elections determined they had misused candidates’ signatures on their application to be election-watchers.

Ohio law says five candidates must endorse a poll-watching effort. According to the Columbus Dispatch, “at least most” of the six candidates whose signatures True the Vote had obtained withdrew their support. One Democratic candidate for judge told MSNBC that she had been misled about the group’s intentions when she initially signed their application. She sent a withdrawal letter to the board of elections on Oct. 1.

But True the Vote submitted another application with the same signatures. Local elections officials have said they will investigate whether forms were intentionally falsified. True the Vote released a statement saying that they filled out the forms according to instructions and that neither the group nor any of its volunteers did anything “that was illegal or unethical.”…”

Daily Kos

“…When Harris tells Engelbrecht that cases of “Voter Fraud” are more rare than prosecutions of “migratory bird violations” and “virtually nonexistent”, Engelbrecht responds that that means “there’s room for improvement.”

Actual cases of “in-person voter fraud” in Ohio is 0.00004% [ibid]. That means that for every four people that these groups might actually stop from voting illegally, TEN MILLION “legal” voters are potentially disenfranchised. The very idea that stopping ONE person from fraudulently voting… which would have NO discernible effect on the outcome of an election, justifies potentially disenfranchising 2,500,000 legitimate voters… which WOULD unquestionably have a catastrophic impact on our elections… is an absolute farce, and should be prosecuted proportionately.

Racist far-right partisan Republicans think they have found a cloak of respectability in challenging the rights of the poor and minorities, who typically vote Democratic, on the grounds of “protecting our elections from voter fraud”. What justification is there to believe the poor and minorities are any more likely to commit “voter fraud” than rich white suburbanites that typically vote Republican? None. Yet for some odd coinky-dink, those just always seems to be groups they focus on….”

Fire Dog Lake

Either that – or she is like 90% of the patriotic tea party movement. She’s a fraud and con artist. She is not some poor little housewife, who is terrified over how the country is now ruled by an incompetent non-white POTUS. This is a woman with a major connection to the Koch Machine, the oil industry, and Americans for Prosperity. Even better is the fact that her cause was embraced and endorsed by no less that white supremacist, hater James Edwards of the Political Cesspool. That alone tells The Pink Flamingo she is dirty as you know what.

Dog Canyon

You want dirty?

NY Times

“...One group that has drawn considerable negative attention on this score is True the Vote. Its leaders say they will have a million monitors on precinct-watching and voter-challening duty on election day. That’s a bold claim for an organization that has raised less than $200,000. It also makes claims to non-partisanship. But it associates with Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Bros.-funded advocacy group that had a tremendous impact on the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives. It also has strong ties to various tea party operations in several states.

In Houston, where it is based, True the Vote in 2010 went after supposed voter fraud in the 18th congressional district represented by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, an African American. Two-thirds of her constituents are black or Latino, and the median income is 60 percent of the national average. The district was chosen because it has thousands of addresses where six or more people are registered to vote. That is evidence of possible fraud, according to True the Vote. This conveniently ignores the fact that financial circumstances and cultural traditions encourage “doubling up” and the practice of extended families living under one roof. Out of 3,800 supposedly suspicious situations, True the Vote ultimately settled on 500, most of which did not pan out when officials reviewed them. In one case, they found eight to 10 persons registered at a vacant lot. Aha! Turned out that the building had been bulldozed and the inhabitants had moved.

From its base in Houston to Florida, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and other states. True the Vote has been implicated in several efforts to intimidate voters, particularly college students, minorities and immigrants or people perceived to be immigrants. The research and policy group Demos and “good-government” advocacy organization Common Cause took issue with a number of True the Vote’s alleged actions in its report, Bullies at the Ballot Box.

The report noted that True the Vote’s leaders seem to have a special affinity for the work of Matthew Vadum. He wrote an op-ed last year titled, Registering the Poor is unAmerican. “[H]ow else can you justify a law that mandates that welfare recipients be given — be encouraged — to vote when they’re there in the cheese line picking up their check?…You shouldn’t be encouraging people to destroy the country, you shouldn’t be encouraging people to vote themselves benefits from the government.”

Is there an echo in here? Does that sound a little bit like Mitt Romney speaking to donors when he thought he was unplugged?…”

Ulster County Cloak Room

Every once in awhile, The Pink Flamingo reaches the point where I find that Peggy Noonan is not even a useful idiot. This is one of those times. On May 23 she basically surrendered what little basis she had to be considered a rational writer by standing up for Catherine Engelbrecht. The poor woman has been harassed by the IRS, and every other alphabet soup agency, for simply being a patriot. Never mind that she is a shill for the Koch Machine. This is the tale of her woes.

“...In December 2010 the FBI came to ask about a person who’d attended a King Street Patriots function. In January 2011 the FBI had more questions. The same month the IRS audited her business tax returns. In May 2011 the FBI called again for a general inquiry about King Street Patriots. In June 2011 Engelbrecht’s personal tax returns were audited and the FBI called again. In October 2011 a round of questions on True the Vote. In November 2011 another call from the FBI. The next month, more questions from the FBI. In February 2012 a third round of IRS questions on True the Vote. In February 2012 a first round of questions on King Street Patriots. The same month the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms did an unscheduled audit of her business. (It had a license to make firearms but didn’t make them.) In July 2012 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration did an unscheduled audit. In November 2012 more IRS questions on True the Vote. In March 2013, more questions. In April 2013 a second ATF audit.

All this because she requested tax-exempt status for a local conservative group and for one that registers voters and tries to get dead people off the rolls. Her attorney, Cleta Mitchell, who provided the timeline above, told me: “These people, they are just regular Americans. They try to get dead people off the voter rolls, you would think that they are serial killers.”…”

AFP

Every instinct The Pink Flamingo has tells me that Engelbrecht is dirty as you know what. Guess what? Once again The Pink Flamingo is right.

“…Like Americans for Prosperity, King Street Patriots has long asserted its work is non-partisan. King Street Patriots originally claimed it was applying for 501c3 nonprofit status, which prohibits partisan activity. This past March, Engelbrecht herself told a True the Vote gathering that “this is not a partisan thing.”…”

Bob Dole has always been one of The Pink Flamingo’s favorite Republicans. I even visited the house where he was born in Kansas. On Sunday, he proved why he’s still one of my favorites. He said what most normal, logical, right thinking Republicans have been saying for years. The GOP has strayed so far right not even Ronald Reagan could get the nomination today! Naturally, the right, couldn’t wait to pounce.

“…“It seems almost unreal that we can’t get together on a budget, or legislation,” said Dole, who served in the Senate from 1969 to 1996. “We weren’t perfect by a long shot, but at least we got our work done.” Dole came back to the Senate last December to support a United Nations treaty to bar discrimination against people with disabilities, which failed after a vast majority of Republicans declined to support it.Dole said in his Fox News interview that he isn’t sure there would be a place for him and other big-time Republicans of his generation, like Presidents Reagan and Nixon, in the current GOP.

“Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly, Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it,” said Dole, who called himself a “mainstream conservative Republican.”“I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says closed for repairs, until New Year’s Day next year, and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas,” Dole said about the current state of his party….”

On the Sunday after those horrific tornadoes ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, the US Senator from that state, expressed concern that those who will be receiving financial aid will do something wasteful with it – they won’t be responsible with the Koch’s money.

“...Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn (R) on Sunday said that the federal government had “created kind of a predicate, that you don’t have to be responsible for what goes on in your state” by providing aid after disasters like the tornado that hit the Oklahoma City area last week.

Less than a week after the monster tornado did billions of dollars worth of damage to his state, CBS News host Bob Schieffer asked Coburn if now was the time to reform the way the federal government budgeted for disaster aid.

“I really do,” the Oklahoma Republican agreed. “We ought to have priorities about how we fund it instead of borrowing the money, and we ought to make sure the money is actually for the emergency at hand, not for four or five years later. And not allow to bill to be actually loaded up with things that have nothing to do with the emergency at hand.”…”

Yes, The Pink Flamingo is delving into hyperbole with the epitaph “Koch Money”, but I am doing it for a reason. For some strange reason the GOP has become the party of the worship of the ultra wealthy. No, they’re not worshiping money. I could deal with that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having wealthy, wanting wealth, and attempting to achieve it – legally. There is something almost evil, in fact it violates one of the Ten Big Ones the far right wants to ram down the throats of those they deem to be heathens. It’s all about idolatry = making a graven image, this sort of thing. They’re worshiping, not God, but the ultra wealthy. They are the new sacred ones – those who must be accommodated, adored, and bowed down to, in hopes of getting some of their walking around money.

“…Republicans in Congress have attempted to assist their state-level cohorts in their slow-death eugenics programs for the past two years with their persistent calls for giving states block grants for healthcare, food stamps, and housing assistance and allowing Republican governors and legislatures to use the federal funds as they see fit which is usually more tax cuts for the rich and corporations. It is why high-value corporate donors are pouring money into campaign coffers to elect more Republican governors and state legislatures, because what they cannot accomplish at the federal level, they will achieve in the states as evidence by Republican-controlled states refusing to expand Medicaid as well as cutting every other type of assistance for the 47%….”

If you are ultra wealthy, then you are not to be questioned. You are above suspicion. Nothing you can do will ever be investigated, doubted, or even censored. You are so far above the little people of this nation, that you can step on them at will. Your groveling worshipers, the Limbaughs, Medveds, Coulters, Hannities, Ryans, Becks, Cantors, Boehners, Pauls (both), McConnells, and Cruzes of this world demand that everyone else bow down and worship their golden idols.

Politicus USA

North Carolina is the perfect example of how the far right machine has bought and paid for the GOP legislature. In doing so, they are doing tremendous damage to those in need, and even worse damage to the GOP, itself. Oh, there’s also a Koch in the woodpile.

“...Legislators have slashed jobless benefits. They have also repealed a tax credit that supplemented the wages of low-income people, while moving to eliminate the estate tax. They have voted against expanding Medicaid to comply with the 2010 federal health-care law. The expansion would have added 500,000 poor North Carolinians to the Medicaid rolls.

“Before considering Medicaid expansion, we must reform the current system to make sure people currently enrolled receive the services they need and more taxpayer dollars are not put at risk,” McCrory said in a written statement after signing a bill blocking the expansion.

Lawmakers are also considering proposals to reduce and flatten income tax rates while expanding the sales tax, perhaps to even include groceries and prescription drugs — which some advocates see as a first step toward eliminating the state income tax….There are also measures pending to require drug testing for low-income people applying for job training and welfare benefits.

Other GOP-controlled legislatures have passed or considered similar measures in the wake of the recession. Florida, Missouri and Michigan are among the states that have slashed jobless benefits. Texas, Louisiana and Wisconsin are among at least 15 states not participating in the Medicaid expansion called for in the Affordable Care Act. And West Virginia, Kansas and Texas are among the states where legislators have proposed bills requiring drug testing for welfare recipients….”

Once again, this is another of The Pink Flamingo’s long winded posts.  This one is so long, it will take a few days, so just sit back and deal with it.

We live in a ‘so’ called “christian” nation where our laws are based on the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. Deal with it.  All of western society is based on those relative values.  Indeed, you will find that most civilized cultures throughout history have basically come up with the same basic list of what is socially, culturally, and morally acceptable.  There are some variables, but it is a general given that we aren’t to steal, cheat, lie, and murder. You don’t give false witness in a trial.  You don’t take innocent life. These are cultural norms that have been in place, more or less, since the beginning of time.  For purposes of this discussion, The Pink Flamingo is limiting my discussion to the Judeo-Christian values of Western Civilization.  That is what our laws are based.  Our laws are based on the laws that came out of England.  That is, for all intents and purposes who we are.  Those laws are now, so ingrained in the consciousness of civilized individuals, that they are generally accepted as the status-quo throughout the civilized world.

This said, there are things which are not evil.  To constantly harp on them as evil detracts from the true nature of evil.

• Liberals are not evil.
• Conservatives are not evil.
• Liberalism is not evil.
• Conservatism is not evil.
• Moderates are not evil.
• Democrats are not evil.
• Republicans are not evil.
• Libertarians are not evil.
• Christianity is not evil.
• Islam is not evil.
• Immigrants are not evil.
• Guns are not evil.
• Global Warming is not evil.
• Tea Parties are not evil.
• Code Pink is not evil.
• Barack Obama is not evil.
• Atheists are not evil.
• Muslims are not evil.
• People of color are not evil.
• Hispanics are not evil.
• Immigrants, no matter what there status, are not evil.
• Homosexuals are not evil.
• Lesbians are not evil.
• Patriots are not evil.
• Pacifists are not evil.
• Drones are not evil.
• Taxes are not evil.
• Video games are not evil.
• Laws are not evil.
• Regulations are not evil.
• Obamacare is not evil.
• The ACLU is not evil.
• Etc. etc. etc.

Strange how no one wants to use the “E” word anymore.  They’re quite willing to constantly drop an “F” bomb, but no one wants to use the “E” word.  Oh, they do, but it is more of a political epitaph than a discussion of what ‘evil’ truly is.  Probably the best definition I know comes from the Catholic Encyclopedia.  “that suffering is the penal consequence of willful disobedience to the law of God.”  Oh, there is a much longer explanation, but I think this one suffices.  For Pink Flamingo readers who don’t want to deal with a religious definition, here’s another from Wikipedia.  “Evil is Profound Immorality“.  Either definition works for me.  Webster defines it as “morally reprehensible“.  Same thing.

Related words include:

adverse, bad, baleful, baneful, damaging, dangerous, deleterious, detrimental, harmful, hurtful, ill, injurious, mischievous, nocuous, noxious, pernicious, prejudicial, wicked ,hostile, inimical, unfriendly; contagious, deadly, infectious, infective, pestiferous, pestilent, pestilential, poisonous, venomous; insidious, menacing, ominous, sinister, threatening; hazardous, imperiling (or imperilling), jeopardizing, parlous, perilous, risky, unsafe, unsound; nasty, noisome, unhealthful, unhealthy, unwholesome; destructive, fatal, killer, lethal, malignant, ruinous, atrociousness, atrocity, badness, balefulness, darkness, depravedness, devilishness, diabolism, enormity, evilness, heinousness, iniquitousness, satanism, sinfulness, vileness, wickedness; devilry (or deviltry), fiendishness; cancer, canker, decay, rot, squalor; corruption, debauchery, degeneracy, depravity, indecency, malefaction, perversion, pervertedness, scurrility, scurrilousness; abomination, anathema, taboo

Evil is an insidious thing.  In the NY Daily News, Rabbi Yaakov Spivak wrote:

NY Daily News

For the most part, nations are not evil.  Ideologies are usually not evil, neither are leaders.  There are exceptions, such as North Korea, and the brutality in Africa.  It may not even be useful to state that the problems in Chechnya, from which this entire disaster sprang, are ‘evil’ – yet.  They are getting there, with a potential dictator in the making.  The gold standard one just who and what was evil will probably always be Adolf Hitler.

What happened in Texas was not evil.  If the owners of the fertilizer company intentionally lied about their product, what they had, and how much, and intentionally avoided regulators, then yes, that was evil. There are times when you don’t quite know when someone and something crosses the line.  The Pink Flamingo thinks the libertarian extremist views promoted by Ron Paul are walking a thin line between good and evil.  They could go either way.  Right now, I’m not optomistic.

What is evil?  In many ways, the term is relative.  The Pink Flamingo thinks that evil is intrinsic. Many good things can be manipulated and turned into something that is evil.  One of the real problems we have in this country dealing with evil, is the fact that, for the most part, the American people are the most generous, bleeding-heart, bladder in back of the eyes, kindest rag-tag bunch of just ordinary folk the world has ever known.  We are so opposite of evil, than when we are faced with it, in many ways, we don’t know quite how to react.  We are so good, so decent, that manipulators on both political sides have a tendency to use the “E” word to try and destroy their opposition, knowing full well, neither side is evil.

When this happens, then something that isn’t nice can morph into something that is truly evil.  The very nature of ‘evil’ is something dark, malevolent.  It needs help getting started and making in-roads into a population, organization, or a life.  It’s just like Michele Bachmann.  She is not an evil person.  What she did to her staff is not evil.  It wasn’t nice, but it isn’t evil.  For anyone to even make the assumption that is is evil, is dumbing down ‘evil’.

Michele Bachmann is stupid. Being stupid is not being evil.  An evil person can be stupid, but most stupid people aren’t evil. They’re just stupid. There are times when their stupidity can be so abjectly, well, stupid, that it rises to the definition of ‘evil’, but that is indeed rare.   Glenn Beck is quickly crossing the line from stupid to evil.  He is knowing lying and manipulating for his personal gain.  That’s greed, and greed is good, right?  That’s like the Koch Brothers.  They aren’t evil.  They are greedy, and extreme greed leads to evil.  If they are allowed to purchase 8 major newspapers in this country, then their plans then morph from ‘greed’ to what could become truly evil in nature.   It’s like capitalism.  It is not evil, but can become an instrument of evil. It’s like basing an entire political and financial ideology on a lie, such as austerity.  When the promoters of the ideology know it is a lie and continue with it  – then it becomes evil.

Stupid is when we fail to comprehend that anything can become evil, if it is taken to the extreme.  Evil is when something is used to destroy another.  Patriotism can morph into something evil.  So can the desire to save money.  Religion can quickly turn into something evil.  The Pink Flamingo is quickly coming to believe that in moderation there is restraint.  I suspect that it is very difficult for evil to fester and flourish in a moderate climate. Let’s face it, zealotry in any form (other than baseball fanaticism) can quickly become nothing but pure evil.

It is up to the wise among us to know the difference and begin sounding the clarion call when this happens.

And then there is stupidity….!

That’s another rant and rave.

When it comes to someone being impoverished, they’re just plain old out of luck.  After all, the poor are Takers.  They’re not Makers.  They don’t pay taxes and take from those who are paying them… right?

“…The distribution of tax expenditures across the income scale varies considerably among the different tax expenditures. For example, CBO estimates that more than 90 percent of the benefits of reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends will accrue to households in the highest income quintile in 2013, with almost 70 percent going to households in the top percentile. Those benefits will equal 2 percent of after-tax income for the highest quintile and 5 percent of after-tax income for households in the top percentile. In contrast, about half of the benefits of the earned income tax credit will accrue to households in the lowest income quintile, equaling 6 percent of after-tax income for households in that group…”

I wonder just who are the real welfare queens in this country.

The Impolitic

“...One of the problems with conservative thinking is that it cannot account for nuance or complexity. They think that giving a starving person some free food will disincentivize them to go find work. They’ll become complacent moochers, happy with their lot in life. But to whatever pitifully small degree that is true, we’re making a good financial decision when we allow some of our tax dollars to go to these moochers. They will be less sick, their children will do better in school and then in life, paying more money in taxes into the system. The money they spend now will help create jobs in agriculture and throughout the food distribution system….”

Politicus USA

According to GA Congressman Rob Woodall, if you don’t pay taxes, evidently you should not be taking part in the political process.  It’s gone that far.

Huffington Post

“...That’s true, but there’s a simpler explanation for the upward pressure on Disability certification, best described by the constant issue in all government programs of “takeup rates.” For any given “entitlement,” there are millions of Americans who qualify but would prefer to secure benefits via employment. When jobs become scare, the “takeup rate”—the percentage of people who apply—goes up. That doesn’t mean there is “fraud” involved or that these people are “takers;” they’re just pursuing entirely legitimate public options for keeping themselves alive that they wouldn’t necessarily pursue in better times. That’s an entirely separate issue from claims that standards of eligibility are being deliberately relaxed because we don’t know what else to do with these folks.

It’s all the more reason to stay focused on creating jobs, and to continue the hard, slow slog of efforts to help more people qualify for the jobs that do exist via improved education and training measures. But conservatives have a really hard time accepting chronic unemployment as anything other than (a) the product of policies that persecute the poor job-creator, or (b) reflecting a moral collapse of the working class, or (c) both. Or perhaps it’s just that keeping alive the boogeyman of the “welfare queens” who are laugh-laugh-laughing as they and liberal elites conspire to rob virtuous hard-working Americans is a political weapon on which conservatives have become all too dependent….”

Paul Krugman wrote:

NY Times

The near depression that we have endured, had started to come out of, and are now heading back into because of the far right, is creating debtor’s prisons.

“...Courts in Cuyahoga, Erie and Huron counties were singled out in the report as the “worst offenders.” The ACLU said a survey of booking statistics for Huron County Jail revealed that 22 percent of the 1,171 people booked between May and October 2012 were incarcerated for not being able to pay their fines. And municipal courts in Parma and Sandusky counties jailed 45 and 75 people, respectively, between July 15 and August 31, 2012.“Based on the ACLU of Ohio’s investigation, there is no evidence that any of these people were given hearings to determine whether or not they were financially able to pay their fines, as required by the law,” the report said….”

Media Matters

The problem with this picture is the fact that the ultra wealthy, people like Rush Limbaugh’s handlers, are the single largest collection of welfare queens in the country.  If they were required to pay their fair percentage of their earnings, the way we the little people do, we would not be in this economic mess.

Why are the rich considered ‘better’, more moral, more worthy of the good things in life?  Is there some dreadful disease called poverty that squeezed anything admirable out of people?

“…What’s interesting about both sides of this debate is that they assume a public policy problem (“what grows the economy?”) needs to be discussed in terms of the moral character of the rich. This isn’t because economists have a yen for judging people; rather, it’s that when you have the amount of accumulated capital and power that rich do, the way in which one spend one’s money ends up having an extraordinary impact on everyone else in society. Invariably, assessing the desirability of rich people’s consumption choices will take on a moral cast, as what a person chooses to spend their money on says a lot about the person. Especially when they’re rich enough to spend it on anything.

It’s impossible to imagine that this point escapes wealthy people who follow the news. My guess (and I can’t prove this, but statements like Romney’s are certainly suggestive) is that when they hear that the one percent “should pay its fair share,” they hear the public calling the way they choose to live their lives unfair and unjust. No one likes being judged as a bad person, especially by the world’s most powerful politicians and in the pages of the world’s most-read newspapers. The wealthy, then, react negatively to public debates about inequality for the same reason many meat-eaters don’t like debating vegetarianism.

Uncomfortability, of course, isn’t a defense. The power wielded by America’s wealthy means that, like it or not, the rich can’t and shouldn’t be allowed to escape public scrutiny. Moreover, they often bring on themselves: see the pretty nasty things some wealthier folk say about poor and middle class Americans and the lengths to which others go to sing the praises of the “productive class.” But hypocrisy aside, the moral anxiety of the wealthy is both an interesting psychological fact and a neat window into the little, surprising ways in which the personal can’t be detached from the political….”

Far right loons are pissed because the Secret Service has cut off the White House tours for their wonderful, precious sequestration.  Brietbart has this absurd article you must see to believe.  Don’t get me wrong, I think the waste should be cut, right now.  But, what I find interesting is their value system.

Breitbart

That waste could also fund homeless shelters, SNAP, WIC, and help those in need.  Because there is logical waste, everyone who receives any form of assistance must be punished?  Children must be allowed to go without, because their parents might benefit?

Paul Krugman wrote:

“...Part of the answer surely lies in the widespread desire to see economics as a morality play, to make it a tale of excess and its consequences. We lived beyond our means, the story goes, and now we’re paying the inevitable price. Economists can explain ad nauseam that this is wrong, that the reason we have mass unemployment isn’t that we spent too much in the past but that we’re spending too little now, and that this problem can and should be solved. No matter; many people have a visceral sense that we sinned and must seek redemption through suffering — and neither economic argument nor the observation that the people now suffering aren’t at all the same people who sinned during the bubble years makes much of a dent.

But it’s not just a matter of emotion versus logic. You can’t understand the influence of austerity doctrine without talking about class and inequality.

What, after all, do people want from economic policy? The answer, it turns out, is that it depends on which people you ask — a point documented in a recent research paper by the political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright. The paper compares the policy preferences of ordinary Americans with those of the very wealthy, and the results are eye-opening.

Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face. And how should the budget deficit be brought down? The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is, “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.

You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do….”

The Pink Flamingo found a column that says it all.  They are conservative rules for people who lose their jobs.

“...If /when you lose your job, be sure to sell all your nice electronics and luxury goods immediately and make sure you are always dressed well in public (but not too well, because then you are clearly not in need of any financial assistance and will be judged for not immediately selling all your nice clothing, too).

Cover up your tattoos, or people will snark that you are spending your welfare money on body art, even if you have had those tattoos for years, or you have a friend who is a tattoo artist who did them for free.

Are your shoes nice? Better not wear them in public, especially while at the grocery store paying for food with food stamps, because you MUST have somehow magically converted those food stamps into enough expendable income to buy those shoes. Never mind that they were a gift, or you bought them years ago, or that they actually have huge holes in the soles and tattered insoles because you can’t afford to replace them.

As a bonus, be sure not to have a job with flexible hours or work from home or work as a stay-at-home parent, because judgmental people will be on your ass and assume you are on welfare based on limited or non-existent evidence (even if you are not) and whine bitterly about having to contribute to social safety nets for the needy. That is right: You don’t even have to be on welfare at all, you can simply be out in public with your kid(s) during normal business hours and have total strangers assume you are on government assistance if you don’t look prosperous. Isn’t that cute?

But, hey, you know who will also be first in line with a hand out for benefits when they lose a job or fall on hard times, have family to house and feed, and qualify to receive them? That’s right: The same people who spend a hell of a lot of time claiming that people on government assistance are all undeserving and grifting the system and not really in need because they are, say, clean and are not wearing rags or being extra-careful to only appear in public while exhibiting visible signs of long-term poverty like, say, neglected teeth or unkempt hair and tattered sackcloth outfits.

Oh, you might also want to (5.) sell your car, too, unless it is a Piece Of Shit, because clearly no one receiving unemployment benefits or welfare could possibly have purchased a decent vehicle long prior to losing a job, getting a divorce, having unexpected healthcare expenses that devastated their finances, or just generally falling on hard times. You also don’t ever want to borrow a friend or family member’s car if you DO sell yours to make ends meet, because if it is even slightly nice or of recent vintage, you will be judged as not being needy enough for assistance of any sort.

Think this is an exaggeration? Some Republicans are busily trying to make it a law that if you own a car of any description, you will be unable to receive SNAP benefits (that’s food for the poor, if you aren’t familiar with the term) until you sell that car. This plan is Rush Limbaugh-approved, so you know it is empathetic and fair and kind-hearted and rational. (Yeah…no.) So while you are struggling to find work, and being told that you need reliable transportation to be hired (try to find a decently compensated job that does not require employees to have their own transportation), and being scorned for being unemployed, Republicans want to take your personal transportation away (while blocking any public transportation-related programs, mind you) or deny you help with food. Nice people.

Yes, you must sell everything you own that is even remotely nice, you must dress nicely (but not TOO nicely) when you are out in public, and you need to feel like a complete and utter failure before seeking help. Never mind that it is nearly impossible to get by without a mobile phone or reliable transportation these days.

Hey, poor person; hey, you unemployed person: your phone is too nice and isn’t there public transportation you could be using instead? Of course, anyone who has ever had to rely on public transportation realizes that it is unreliable, often late, sometimes fails to arrive at all, is almost always dirty and smelly and unpleasant, and if you need to get to work or home from work using it, then you get to hang out in unsafe places (often in the dark, and rarely covered to protect you from rain or heat or wind) by yourself (enjoy your mugging).

Of course, if you do wind up sitting on a sidewalk with a cup, these same assholes will walk past you like you are invisible or hiss “get a job” at you.

Also, if you are not white, these rules apply double to you. Because the majority of welfare recipients in the United States are white….”

The Rush Limbaughs of this world want us to hate those who need assistance.  They consider them wasteful, unworthy of respect, and worthy of losing all rights – because they need help. In Wisconsin, there is a GOP based bill that would allow those receiving public assistance to have their checking accounts spied on, and even frozen if those owning them, who are on any sort of public assistance, are deemed unworthy.  In West Virginia, Republicans want school kids who need food assistance be required to work for it.  Nothing is wrong with a school job, that actually pays kids for working.  The idea of forcing children who have nothing to do with the fact that their parents cannot afford to properly feed them, to pay for their mistakes of their parents is well, it’s UnAmerican!

You know, after living through three years of fighting just to survive and make sure my elderly parents have food, medication, and are kept warm and safe, I no longer see the world the same way.  I have a tremendous amount of compassion for those who are in need.  I’ve also learned that there is nothing more humiliating that localized public assistance.  I no longer believe in food banks, clothes closets, and things where those in need must be required to grovel for the tools of survival.  The only way to do this is through the mask of the government.

Just because a person needs help is no reason to destroy who and what they are.  I will never be the same person I once was.  I’ve learned what it is to truly be in need.  I’ve also learned how truly cruel and unthinking people can be.  I’ve been humiliated in front of people I know, when I couldn’t pay a bill.  The person doing it seemed to enjoy every moment of the humiliation.  I’ve been there and done that, and wouldn’t give anything for what I’ve learned.  We are all one major incident away from losing what we have, and being one of the lowest of the low.  We should be so lucky.

On Memorial Day his family shared some of his letters that he wrote to them while deployed.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives just so others may get to enjoy freedom. For that I am proud to call them Hero.

Those Who Say That We’re In A Time When
There Are No Heroes, They Just Don’t Know Where To Look

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more
information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on
your site, you can go here.

Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he’s just a fool,
And he never gives an answer,

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.

Well on the way,
Head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him,
or the sound he appears to make,
and he never seems to notice…

They are fools.

The GOP is spending millions to investigate the Obama Administration and hinder any sort of legislation that would make him look good.  They talk this huge game of saving money, but that’s only for things they want to eliminate, or harm.  If they can destroy Obama, they would break the country doing it.

Sorry, that’s not my idea of being very bright.

It’s not my idea of saving money.

An audit in Mass. recently saw dead people, when it was discovered that 1,164 dead people were still receiving welfare benefits.  The Boston Herald reports that a “stunning” $2.39 million in benefits have been paid out anywhere from 6 to 27 months after the death of these individuals.  When you do the math (and The Pink Flamingo always puts a dyslexia caveat on anything with numbers) that averages out to about $2000 or so per dead person.  It also paid out $532K to 40 people who were scamming for the dead.  That’s about $13,000.  Yes, that’s the bad news.

Don’t you see the good news?

There were only 1,1164 people deceased on the rolls and only $2.39 million had been paid out.  Sure, that’s a heck of a lot of money, but my gosh it could have been much, much worse.  The population is around 6.6 million, ranking it 14th in the nation.  If this is the case, and only 1,164 were found on the rolls who were dead, that’s a remarkable number.  Instead of slamming the state, the Boston Herald should be quite impressed with those numbers.  If they were to reflect the rest of the nation, then maybe we’re not in bad shape, that way.  One of the great myths of the far right is that people who don’t need help or those who are dead are sucking the life-blood out of the nation.  if the study in Mass is any indication, they’re just plain wrong.  That’s not going to stop the far right from cutting programs that people in need must have to survive, these days.

The far right loons of CNS News is lamenting the fact that there are  10,978,040 Takers on disability. The total population of the US is 313.9 million.

Politicus USA

Nothing more perfectly exemplifies the Republicans in the House and Senate than one of the least popular Beatles songs, ever. They are fools.  A fool, in the classic sense, is someone who is completely lacking in wisdom.  They have none.  It has all been drained from the swamp of Washington, probably never to return.  If it does not return, like Bob Dole said, the GOP needs to be closed for business for awhile.  It needs to be shut down for their own good, and for the good of the rest of the nation at large.

The Pink Flamingo’s economic hero, Paul Krugman recently wrote:

“...First, as millions of workers lost their jobs through no fault of their own, many families turned to food stamps to help them get by — and while food aid is no substitute for a good job, it did significantly mitigate their misery. Food stamps were especially helpful to children who would otherwise be living in extreme poverty, defined as an income less than half the official poverty line.But there’s more. Why is our economy depressed? Because many players in the economy slashed spending at the same time, while relatively few players were willing to spend more. And because the economy is not like an individual household — your spending is my income, my spending is your income — the result was a general fall in incomes and plunge in employment. We desperately needed (and still need) public policies to promote higher spending on a temporary basis — and the expansion of food stamps, which helps families living on the edge and let them spend more on other necessities, is just such a policy.Indeed, estimates from the consulting firm Moody’s Analytics suggest that each dollar spent on food stamps in a depressed economy raises G.D.P. by about $1.70 — which means, by the way, that much of the money laid out to help families in need actually comes right back to the government in the form of higher revenue….”

The Pink Flamingo did not want to turn on the GOP.  It is the last thing I ever expected, but I can’t associate with idiots.  And – they are idiots.  They are the most foolish bunch of sounding brash and clashing cymbals since those words were first written two thousand years ago.  If the numbers are correct, or even half right, the rise in poverty in this nation, a goodly portion of it because of foolish austerity and the misguided devotion to Ayn Rand’s foolish and abjectly evil religion of personal selfishness.

“…While ideology has an impact on who approves of the cuts, with conservatives approving more than liberals, once the cuts hit them personally, ideology goes out the window, with 65% of conservatives impacted by the cuts disapproving of them: “Ideology has an effect: Forty-seven percent of “very” conservative Americans approve of the cuts, as do 42 percent of those who call themselves “somewhat” conservative. It’s 36 percent among moderates and 24 percent among liberals. But again, impacts of the cuts are a bigger factor in views on the issue. Among conservatives hurt by the cuts, 65 percent disapprove of them; among those unhurt, just 34 percent disapprove.”…”

There is nothing wrong with trying to save money.

My real problem is that this misplaced devotion to Ayn Rand is harming not only the country, but ruining the GOP.  It is making them look like fools.  There was a piece in Politicus USA that reflects what The Pink Flamingo is starting to hear, not just online, but out in the trenches, on the street, from people who were once Republicans.

“...The service members who perished probably never imagined they fought and died to protect a major party and large segment of the population that wants to transform America into the John Birch Society’s vision for America. It is doubtful that any soldier would fight and die to protect people who deny other Americans their constitutionally guaranteed equal rights, or make the ultimate sacrifice for people who deliberately keep millions of Americans living in poverty to enrich the wealthy. It is a sad commentary, but what America’s war dead defended was the current group of Americans who oppose freedom of religion, the right to vote, economic freedom, American values of citizenship, Civil Rights, women’s rights, and nearly all of the provisions in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The ultimate irony is that those fighting hardest to destroy America have to audacity to claim to be true patriotic Americans, but that is who the soldiers fought and died for and it is utterly shameful.

Those who made the ultimate sacrifice defended a different America than exists today and it is heart-rending that today’s soldiers are willing to die for a nation, and group of Americans, who cannot separate religion from politics, hate the Constitution (save the 2nd), threaten Civil War, race war, and revolution, and pass nullification laws that started the Civil War. Current soldiers are prepared to die for Republicans who will take their parent’s pensions away, hand power and Americans’ assets to corporations, and promote a culture of hate and bigotry towards all manner of Americans. Conservatives not only dishonor past service members sacrifice, they could not even help returning  Veterans find work because they claimed America was too broke to afford $5 billion for a jobs program while they fought to maintain oil industry subsidies and tax cuts for the rich. The same conservatives scream for more wars and more American service members’ sacrifices to profit the corporate defense industry, and their supporters could not care less if it is war against a foreign country or against other Americans based on their race, religion, sexual preference and political ideology….”

“...Our infrastructure is literally falling while 31 corporations and banks have dodged $128 billion in federal taxes. The fact that Republicans were apologizing to Apple showcased the silent killer at work in our political system. Money is destroying our political representation. Senate Republicans were acting like they work for Apple, because they do.” The people who were thrown into the water when the bridge collapsed in Washington don’t have lobbyists. They aren’t making big campaign contributions, so they don’t exist….”

Popsci

We have a serious infrastructure problem.  The funds are already there to fix much of the problem.  But, the Republicans in the House can’t be bothered doing something that might not only put people to work but make Obama look good.  They are throwing money down the drain.  You fix it now and it’s cheaper than waiting for another day, when you deal with abject disaster.

“…“We cannot hope to have an A+ economy with a C-level infrastructure,” said James Chae, president of the engineering society’s Seattle section.

A bridge may hold up for decades after its design life is reached. Despite rust, shorn connecting bolts, spalling concrete foundations, and the erosion of its base by flowing water, it may bear the loads from vehicles, winds, and rivers. But as shown by the collapse of the Skagit bridge, which carries 67,000 vehicles each day, a bridge can fail without warning. And that instant may not always be at 7 in the evening when traffic is light. It could be at rush hour.

Close to one in three American highway bridges has surpassed its designed life. One in nine is rated structurally deficient, meaning major repairs or replacement are needed—yesterday.

Newer bridges are designed so one broken part does not mean catastrophic loss. Instead of just falling into a waterway like the Skagit bridge, newer bridges shift the load to backup structures—what engineers call redundancy. This principle is used in jetliners, where multiple systems allow a plane to land safely after one or even two or three systems fail.

Experts estimate bridge spending at $10 billion to $13 billion, far short of the $17 billion to $21 billion needed to replace outdated and dangerous bridges within two decades.

State and local governments spent $156 billion on highways in 2010, roughly a penny out of each dollar of America’s gross domestic product.

Right now, governments can borrow at the lowest interest rates in 700 years. Roughly 25 million people are involuntarily forced into part-time work, are looking for work, or have given up because they cannot find a job.

We must either update our infrastructure or face a future that is both more dangerous and poorer, as more bridges collapse, pipelines leak and explode, and the movement of goods and people becomes less efficient. We could increase our spending and reap big dividends in jobs and the taxes they generate, improved safety, and a more efficient economy….”

A wise person, wise elected officials do their very best to save money when they can. By ignoring our infrastructure, the austerity fixated GOP is showing how abjectly foolish they really are.

What is wrong with these people?

Think Progress

What is wrong with this picture?

Politicus USA

“...Several Republican lawmakers are trying to claim that Obama’s $50 billion plan to invest in infrastructure is too expensive, at the same time that they’re pushing for an $830 billion tax cut for the richest two percent of Americans. If these lawmakers succeed in blocking the investment, they’ll definitively prove their deficit peacockery, while also perpetuating an ongoing neglect of the country’s infrastructure, which is rapidly deteriorating….”

Media Matters

Then there are those pesky things called taxes.

The Atlantic

“…The distribution of tax expenditures across the income scale varies considerably among the different tax expenditures. For example, CBO estimates that more than 90 percent of the benefits of reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends will accrue to households in the highest income quintile in 2013, with almost 70 percent going to households in the top percentile. Those benefits will equal 2 percent of after-tax income for the highest quintile and 5 percent of after-tax income for households in the top percentile. In contrast, about half of the benefits of the earned income tax credit will accrue to households in the lowest income quintile, equaling 6 percent of after-tax income for households in that group….”

It doesn’t matter what your political inclination is, smart is smart and dumb is dumb.  What is going on within the GOP, today, is just plain dumb.  The Fools on the Hill are truly harming our economy for an agenda that is designed to keep them in power by feeding of the corporate tit of the Koch Machine.  I think, if the left were doing this, the argument could be made that I would be enjoying every minute of their downfall.  The problem is, I’m still a Republican at heart, even if that heart is broken by what I see.  I’m not enjoying their downfall.  It hurts.  Watching formerly rational and reasonable men and women do their best to truly harm this nation is sickening.

I think the kindest thing they can be called are fools.  Case in point:  Marsha Blackburn.  Lord Have Mercy!

“…My fellow writer RMuse wrote yesterday about the U.S. Constitution and Republican nullification laws designed to undermine the Constitution. This is all very funny of course because, speaking of ignorance, corruption, and injustice, the Republicans claim to be the defenders of the Constitution; this while wishing to do away with every amendment save the Second and the Tenth- narrowing Republican goals to guns and secession.

And thinking about the Constitution got me thinking about the Declaration of Independence, that other all-important Founding document. We think now of the Declaration as the document that got the ball rolling; that laid out the ideological and philosophical framework of the country-to-be….”

Today’s tea partier is an ill-educated lout who doesn’t give a damn about what this country is all about.  To him/her it is all about them, I want I want, I need I need.  They have some good ideas about holding the line on spending, cutting corruption, and trying to get government out of our lives, when reasonable.  Their problem is they can only see their side of things.  Typical of all extremists, only their wishes matter. Only their opinion matters.  They are no different from the far left nut cases.

They are so full of themselves, and so certain they are the be all and end all of all knowledge, that they are making fools of themselves and everyone else.  In making fools of themselves, they are doing great damage to our country, and truly, in an ironic fashion, doing more to limit freedom than the most socialist liberal ever dreamed of doing.

Case in point.  In Mississippi, if a woman has a miscarriage she could go to prison if the GOP has its way.  Yes, they are so zealous of protecting the rights of the unborn that they are abjectly ignorant of the fact that miscarriages are a part of nature.  It’s nature’s way of preventing a birth that should not happen.  Yet, tea party legislatures are so stupid, so ill educated, and so anti-abortion they are now trying to make illegal that which is a part of the natural process of life.

Or, how about Tom Cotton of Arkansas.  He wants to have even family members of anyone who violates sanctions against Iran sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.  Never mind that…

“…Article III of the Constitution explicitly bans Congress from punishing treason based on “corruption of blood” — meaning that relatives of those convicted of treason cannot be punished based only on a familial tie…”

One of the reasons this nation was founded was to prevent such atrocities from happening.  Evidently in his self-righteous zealotry, Cotton would rather throw out the Constitution.

Did you know that Grover Norquist is a secret Muslim.  Why?  He has a beard.  Yes, that is what came out of the mouth of Cathie Adams, at the Far North Dallas Tea Party.  Adams is the president of the Texas Eagle Forum and former chair of the Texas GOP.

“…“As you see, he has a beard,” she pointed out. “He’s married a Muslim woman. But he denies that he has converted himself. He denies that.” “He and Karl Rove are very good friends. I don’t like Karl Rove, and I certainly don’t like Grover Norquist.” Adams went on to suggest that CIA Director John Brennan could also be a secret Muslim. “Where is the outcry?” she asked. “Thank God that Ted Cruz is now in the United States Senate!” Norquist, along with conservative activist Suhail Khan, are often labeled as stealth Muslims by Islamaphobic conservative activists led by Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney and Robert Spencer, most recently at at 2013 CPAC panel…”

Yes, the woman is that stupid.

Then, there is the tea party calling for Susan Collins to be assassinated.  Yes, they think she should be shot.  Isn’t that a crime?

PoliticusUSA

Like Paul Krugman says, today’s conservative movement leaves no room for independent thinking.  If you are an independent thinker, and dares to question the current, irrational status quo, like The Pink Flamingo, you are branded a liberal, socialist, baby-killer, and are basically cast into the bowels of hell the way Don Giovanni was at the end of the opera of the same name.  We’re useless because we dare think.

I like this, better:

“...Teabaggers are not patriots; they are the Tea Party Taliban. No other group in America openly threatens violent insurrection against the legally elected government of the United States, passes nullifications laws, supports theocracy, and no patriot calls for assassinating elected representatives for their votes. Republicans are just as culpable for not tamping down threats and calls for revolution or civil war, and openly advocating for armed revolution “if President Obama won re-election.” There is a reason teabag leaders advocate for armed resistance against the federal government and it is because they know their followers are bound to take them seriously and begin an uprising to overthrow the government evident in gun zealots stockpiling weapons and ammunition to defend themselves against government tyranny they never claimed during the Bush Administration, and it exposes their real anti-American bent is racial animus. Teabaggers were content with millions of jobs lost, a decimated economy, and unnecessary wars so long as a white man was president, but they became uber-patriots fighting tyranny when an African American was elected President.

The tea party is no more patriotic to America than Osama bin Laden was, and their desire to see this government fail is only matched by their incessant threats to “take America back” to the 1770s when the country was under tyrannical English rule. Teabaggers feel strong support for America, but it is an America that never existed and unrelated to 2008 when their worst nightmare came true; the people elected an African American President. After he saved the economy, cut spending, created jobs, and cut taxes that most Americans believed earned him a second term, the Tea Party Taliban threatened more violence, stocked their armories, and prepare for revolutionary war….”

I consider myself a patriotic American.  I detest people who try to destroy this nation, and attempt to crumble the very bedrock of our society, no matter what political inclination they are.  I truly detest the tea party patriots.  They are doing far more damage to this nation than any liberal ever thought of doing. I don’t consider them patriots at all.  I consider the tea party movement an unwitting and brainwashed tool to help destroy the country.  I consider Republicans and Conservatives who allow this situation to continue to be just as bad.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of the Kate Hunt Melodrama.  It is a train-wreck.  It is also a sociological paradise, with societal questions and implications that the Hunts and their brutal supporters cannot even comprehend.  This is NOT about gay/lesbian issues.  This is about a parent’s right to protect their minor children.

• Do parents have a right to say just who their minor children should or should not associate with?
• Do parents have a right to prevent certain people from being near their children?
• Do parents have a right to attempt to impose rational societal values on their children?
• Do parents have the right to do these things and not be damned by society?
• Do parents have a right to protect their child and not be harassed while doing just that?

We’re not talking about people in a cult, or some strange life-style.  We’re talking about an average, run of the mill, socially liberal, Obama supporting, mixed race couple who goes to church, believes in Christ, and just wants the best for their child.  Do they have any rights? The way you see them being portrayed, they’re some sort of extreme weird right wing religious cult who want to destroy anyone who is even remotely ‘liberal’.

This is not a liberal or conservative issue.
It is not a Democrat or Republican issue.
It is not a religious issue.
It is not about gay/lesbian rights.

This is about the law, and about parents having a say about what their 14-year-old child can and cannot do. Bottom line, they pay the bills, they tell her what she is and isn’t going to do.

Have you ever watched the Dan Aykroyd – Tom Hanks Dragnet?  The premise behind it was that a nationally known TV preacher was really a bad guy.  His ‘evil’ organization was all about destroying innocence and killing the good.  That’s what Steven Hunt and Kelley Hunt Smith’s family life seems to be, destroying innocence.  What Kate Hunt did to the 14-year-old Smith girl was just that.  It is becoming more and more obvious that she deliberately stalked the innocent child, in order to corrupt her.  It is possible that Hunt had a thing on her.  She could have been obsessed.  Teenage obsession is a very dangerous thing.  It usually has a bad ending.  If she wasn’t obsessed, and did what she did out of cold blooded, narcissistic self will, then it is nothing sort of evil.

“…Shows clearly she was eighteen before a relationship began, and that the younger girl was fourteen.The press conference today stated very clearly that the younger girl is a cooperating complaining witness and actively cooperated with the police to press charges, not under duress.There has been a ton of misinformation spread around. This clears some of it up. Moreover, the parents tried to get the girls to stop dating and only moved forward with charges when they found out the two had sex and the younger girl was so emotionally screwed up that she was acting out, running away, and in constant emotional upset. The kid was too young to have sex, period. (That tidbit came directly from the family of the younger girl. I used to live very near there. They live next door to my best friend).And Kate Hunt was never expelled. Rather, because of the criminal charges and the admission to sex on campus, she was brought before an administrative expulsion hearing officer who ruled that she go to the Alternative School rather than be expelled. I personally know all of the expulsion officers in Indian River County. Up until we moved, my husband was one of them. None are bigoted or biased and most are actually criminal defense attorneys, family law or children’s rights attorneys or education attorneys who volunteer their time. And the ruling that she attend the alternative school was lenient. My husband has stated that given the facts of the case (the sex on campus twice, the enticing the younger girl to run away, and the persistence to carry on the relationship knowing the younger girl’s parents disapproved, she was warned by others, including, apparently, school administration, and was aware that the relationship was illegal if it became sexual, the younger girl has had some very rough emotional issues) that he would have reluctantly ruled to expel her.He also pointed out that she is lucky they aren’t pursuing charges relating to the overnight run away incident as according to the law, she committed at least two felonies by picking up the younger girl and taking her to her house while knowing that the parents did not consent to the younger girl leaving/going to her home….”

The Hunt family is not the sort of family I would want to have anything to do with.  To put it succinctly, they are what my mother calls South Florida low-life white trash.  Sorry, but sometimes the truth can be brutal.  I don’t know about you, but I have standards when it comes to my friends and associates.  When my sister and I were growing up, our parents were very careful about who we could associate with.  My sister was the same way with her children.  If I had children, I would be a total bitch about it.

Parents still, in this country, have a right to say just who their children can associate with or not.  In public school you take your chances and hope your child emerges unscathed.  When one considers that, next to parental abuse, a child is more likely to be molested by a teacher or in a school setting, the prospect of even sending a child to school is terrifying.

If I had kids, I would not want them anywhere near the likes of the Hunt family or their off-spring. You are playing with Ebola with people like that.  They have no boundaries.  There are no rules except for self-gratification.  Their behavior is little more than a step above the way animals live. A parent has a right to keep their children away from people like that, and not be damned and harassed for it.

The local chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, as reported by R. S. McCain, don’t think ‘discrimination’ is applicable to the Hunt Case.

Twitter Feed

Amber of Amber’s Cove has a strange version of reality.

“…Laurie Smith made all of these statements you see above, and she wants the public to believe that she had no part in lying about her homophobia, and that her daughter actually made these statements against Kaitlyn voluntarily? At this juncture, one can’t help but believe that Laurie might very well be acting out on her own insecurities in regards to sex and sexuality. Jim, it would be nice of you two would answer this: Does Laurie act frigid in bed? Does Laurie have fears of doing intimate things with you that most women usually don’t have any problems with? Does Laurie force her religious and moral views on your daughter, and / or force her to attend church or other religious activities? Why did you delete your Facebook account? Is there something there you are hiding…hmm?

Here’s another bombshell…the Smith’s didn’t start coming forward with their version of having spoken with Kate and / or her family until AFTER Kelley Hunt, Kate’s mother, made the allegation that the Smith’s went to the law first and they obviously saw the argument made by Kelley that the Smith’s never contacted her or Kate at all. Why does the AFTER THE FACT statement made by the Smith’s directly speak to the allegation made by Kelley Hunt in the exact way it was made in public?…”

Amber’s Cove

“...There is a ton of misinformation out there being spread by the family of the older girl. Many people are up in arms claiming that the reaction was unreasonable, that the younger girl is refusing to cooperate and her parents went ahead with charges, etc. But my best friend knows this girl personally. She has babysat for her while my friend does yard work and things around the house. My friend has known her and the family for years. And according to her, the girl was fine, well behaved, good grades, etc. up until mid December of last year. Then she started to go off course. By January she was running away.

The only place that anybody has heard that the younger girl’s parents are pursuing this because they blame Kate Hunt for making their child gay, is the Hunts. It has not been repeated by anyone else, nor verified by any neutral party. The parents maintain that the older girl manipulated their daughter into doing things she was not ready for, regardless of whether it was homosexual or heterosexual. Not only that, but their daughter is now being leered at at school and teased by the boys, getting invites for threesomes, etc. because the entire school knows something very personal: that her first sexual encounters were with a girl, which, to teenage boys, is very attention grabbing.

And the girl who has been charged does not have as pristine of a reputation/history as the family and supporters would have you believe. I am not privy to the details, but am aware that Kate Hunt is not what her parents are painting her to be, which is obvious to anybody with any familiarity with the case or the local area. It is a pretty small town….”

Amber thinks this is damning to the Smiths.

“…This author personally observed Laurie Smith’s Facebook page and took screen shots of what is clearly character evidence that damns the Smith / State of Florida case in court…”

Amber’s Cove

The Pink Flamingo has redacted part of this tweet.  I don’t use language like that and will not allow it used near me.

Twitter

Twitter Feed

Twitter Feed

http://supporthonesty.net

Twitter

Twitter

Twitter

Perhaps the most ironic part of this is that the Hunts are asking for people to pray for their daughter.  They are going all religions all of a sudden, but, the Smiths are ____ (I don’t use that word) Bible Thumpers, then that doesn’t say much for them, does it?  It’s all about merchandising, selling a product, and trying to bully and harass decent people into letting a terribly disturbed child with terribly disturbed family values go free.  It is about refusing to acknowledge that a young person Kate’s age can be a pedophile.

It looks to me like the whole tawdry movement is starting to stall.  If you check out the #FreeKate twitter feed, you can see how pathetic it is.  It makes me wonder just how many actual signatures they actually have on actual petitions, etc.   I’m also not seeing much in the way of real support for the Hunt family, aside from a bunch of foul mouth bullies on Twitter.

Maybe it’s time that we start evaluating manners, standards, rules, and behavior.  For too long, people have been allowed to get away with just about anything.  We can’t hurt anyone’s feelings.  You can’t have a dress code, and can’t tell a kid to sit down and shut up. That’s a shame.  This is the end game.  We’re dealing with people who are truly not socially acceptable in any society but that of abject low-life.

I’m sorry, but The Pink Flamingo has standards.  I have manners, and I know how to use them.  To me, the sign of a well-educated person is to know how to behave properly, at all times.  When you’re hanging out with friends, and want to get into a belching contest, no problem.  When you’re out in real society, no way.  People are slobs.  Their table manners are repulsive.  Now, even in nice restaurants people, well dressed, seemingly professional people have the table manners of a bunch of grunting hogs. A young lady Kate Hunt’s age should know how to dine at McDonalds and how to do the same at the White House and Buckingham Palace.  One should know which fork to use, not to lean over the table and lap one’s food like a dog, and the rudiments of proper behavior.  A young lady does not spout four letter expletives, fight on a beach, and whore around with anyone and anything.

Deliver me from having to associate with people like the Hunts. I never have and I never will.  We live in a free country where people have a right to associate where they want.  Parents have a right to keep their 14-year-old daughter away from low-life white trash, and not be bullied and harassed by associates of low-life, white trash, for having standards.

These people are disgusting and repulsive, at least to me.  It isn’t a social class thing.  Someone who truly knows how to behave in public, should know how to be comfortable with all social classes, without adopting their behavior.  I would not want my children associating with theirs.

There’s something else about this.  The Pink Flamingo has a very real problem with any parent who allows their minor child to get a tattoo.  No, it’s not because I find them absolutely repulsive, but because they’re going to change their mind.  If it were up to me, I would make it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to get one.  For the same reason.  What I would have wanted when i was 21 is something I would not want today.  So what if a 50 year old man wants to get one as part of his mid-life crises.  He’s 50.  He knows what he’s doing, even if he is disfiguring one of the most beautiful bodies this side of Olympus.

As for the fact that Kate Hunt’s supporters are suggesting that Christians be reprogrammed, then, if they don’t do what they want we should be burned at the stake until well done. That’s a fine so-called liberal attitude that I’ve never really heard any real liberals ever express.  I’ve only heard it out of the mouths of extremely immature individuals who are probably guilty of the same behavior they are endorsing.

It seems to that, if they don’t approve of the way parents are raising their minor children, which they have every right to do as long as those minor children are not being abused, maybe they need to volunteer to raise them.  I do seem to remember, unless a minor has been emancipated, or custody of the minor has been given to another party, what a parent says, goes.  it’s also the law.  The problem with the Hunts and their supporters is that they don’t appear to give a damn about the law.

Cutie Catie!

The Pink Flamingo does not have children. I never wanted any.  If I can’t make my toy poodle mind, how on earth could I properly raise a kid.  This said, I have always thought that we adults have a responsibility to keep children safe and preserve their innocence as long as possible.  In our society, we are dependent upon one another, to a large degree.  If we would stop someone from harming another, robbing, murder, cheating, then why would we not stop someone who was trying to destroy the innocence of a child.

I have two nieces and a nephew, all grown.  In November I became a great aunt.  There is nothing more precious than a child, no greater gift.  There is something right with the world in their happy laughter and adorable innocence, eyes wide with the zeal to explore the world around them.  There is nothing more tragic and cruel than to destroy that innocence.

I know.  It happened to me when I was eight years old.  One moment I was a happy, loud, gregarious outgoing child who loved singing and performing in public.  The next minute, I was terrified of everything.  My life was filled with night terrors.  Little did I know that the monster who molested and tried to kill me was prowling around my home, trying to break in and kidnap me.  I would wake up screaming, terrified of the noises at my window, and the shapes I could see.  One end result was the fact that I did not raise the blinds or open the curtains of any bedroom, until I was in my early forties.  I still do not like looking outside at night.  Still, if I hear a noise, I cower, making myself as small as possible, not making a sound.

One of the things that truly angers me, breaks my heart more, today, is the fact that I had an operatic voice, something which ran in the family.  I was to study opera.  Because I was so terrified of even standing out in public, I hid from it.  Now, there is nothing more in life I would have wished than to be able to stand on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera and sing Tosca.  Once upon a time, I could even keep up with and sing, in key, Brunhilda’s part in the The Ride of the Valkyries.  I had a voice like Leontyne Price, now stolen from me, when my childhood was ruined.

Any possibility of ever even attempting to pursue a operatic career was robbed, taken from me.  I was never able to become what I could have been.  I couldn’t.  I was too terrified of the world around me, of being harmed, of someone looking at me and seeing what had happened.  This is what happens to children when their innocence is stolen.

Nothing enrages me more than learning of a child who has had their life ruined by their innocence being robed from them by people who don’t give a damn about anything but their own selfish interests.  It need not be by a pedophile, or by a sexual encounter.  Innocence can be robbed by adults who don’t bother tempering their language or by exposing a child to media content that is far to old for them to comprehend.  Innocence can be robbed by tragic circumstances that may not be prevented.  But, innocence is usually robbed by cruel, unthinking, selfish adults who are incapable of comprehending that their actions can have consequences far beyond their limited ability contemplate.

As far as what Kaithlyn Hunt did to the Smith child, it will have consequences that will have repercussions for the remainder of the Smith child’s life.  I know.  I am still dealing with the consequences of what happened to me.  For any adult to say that the sex was consensual and there will be no consequences is to be abjectly incapable of comprehending what has happened to this child.

I no longer have any tolerance for anyone who legitimizes the fact that an extremely worldly 18-year-old chose to corrupt an innocent 14-year-old.  Gender makes no difference here.  The actions do.  This was not an act of love.  This was the behavior of a person who had been subjected to innocence ending behavior in her own home.  The tweets of her younger sister, Emily prove how abjectly worldly and literally pornographic their lives were.  No child should be raised in such an environment.  Steven and Kelley Hunt Smith are guilty of corrupting and destroying the innocence of their children.  Kelley Hunt Smith is further guilty of setting up a situation where a minor was corrupted.

I keep thinking about little Cate.  If someone did to her what Kate Hunt did to the 14-year-old Smith girl, I would be part of the crowd trying to force every possible consequence on her.  I would also be seeking to utterly destroy her parents with every possible lawsuit I could think of.  If someone were to tell me that it was just innocent teen sex, I would probably have no compassion as I verbally destroyed them.

There is no excuse for what happened to the Smith child.  There is no excuse for the ‘well meaning’ adults who think there is nothing wrong with what went on.  Anyone who tells me there is nothing wrong, in my estimation, was probably guilty of the same thing when they were children.  Any adult who cannot comprehend that when a child’s innocence is stolen, it can never be regained, has no right to even be near them, or in a position of authority over them.

The excuse is that teens just need to have sexual experimentation.  Guess what?  Only about 46% of all teens under the age of 18 have engaged in sexual behavior.  That is less than half.

The dirty little statistic for the current generation of young people is that 1 in 5 will be sexually abused by the time they are 18.  In other words 20% of all young people under the age of 18 will be sexually abused.

In other words, we’re dealing with a generation where 46% or so have had sex be the age of 18.  Of those 20% will have experienced sex by being molested and raped.

Now – you want to deal with the numbers of those teens who are having sex because they want to?  Let’s try about 26% of all teens.

Want to try and legitimize those numbers, now?

Anyone who corrupts and destroys the innocence of a minor, no matter what the age, should be destroyed, financially.  If that corruption includes sex, they should be registered as a sex offender and suffer the consequences of a life-time – no exceptions.  I don’t care what the gender is.  I don’t care what the race or social status is.  All that matters is protecting a child.

If a society cannot protect and insure the innocence of its youth, does that society deserve to continue?