I try and learn what I can to keep these blogs new and interesting - - and not repetitive. Often I think my research doesn't dig enough for juicy facts. I
watched most of “Ring of Fire” this morning.
They had a thing on arsnic in cheap wines that they had on TV. Then they went into Scott Walker in
depth. President Obama has taken to
taking personal pot shots at both Scott Walker and Shawn Hannity. It would appear that Scott Walker is the man
to beat right now. Ted Cruz is like the University of Kentucky - - . He has a lot of people routing for him right now but in the end he'll lose. Cruz isn't used to losing and I know that. But it's that very smug assurance that will do him in. I don’t
intend for my postings to have a shelf life of twelve hours like a piece of pastry in a
donut shop. The author of Washington’s
Blog makes frequent references and links to articles that go back years. The attention span of the average reader is
far too short nowadays. My numbers of
the past few days in “Skeletons” are nearly nonexistent. I have thought one good name
for a political party is “The Constitutional Union Party”. It’s been done before- just before the Civil
War- as an attempt to resurrect the Whig party.
I have also toyed with the idea of the name “Reform Libertarian Party”
since I believe the whole topic of libertarianism needs reform. We need to think of libertarians as
protectors first and foremost of Civil Liberties. There used to be a saying “My right to swing
my fist ends at the tip of your nose”.
It used to be that libertarians believed in “first of all- - do no harm
to thy neighbor” but you can’t say that these days. So they turn a blind eye to Wall Street
crooks, and allow industrial pollution and worker’s safety violations on a
massive scale. It used to be according
to Jefferson, that with rights- we had responsabilities, but these seem to have
flown out the window. And the word “Freedom”
to some people means “The freedom to take YOUR rights away” and that isn’t
right.
There have been two
major police shootings in the news. It's starting to become a way of life- - and the thing is - each one is more outrageous than the last in terms of innocence of the party being shot and killed - - - with the mandentory emptying of the clip. One
involved a high speed car chase where the car was stopped- - and one officer
stood on the hood of another car- - and fired ten rounds into the rear window
of the car they were after. The other
was in the Carolinas. It involved a
small town that was only 37% white but the police force was eighty percent
white. Initially the officer reported
that there was a struggle for the officer’s taser. There was a man on a routine traffic stop (?)
running away from the police that was shot eight times and died. Then the officer threw down his taser as
though the suspect hat stolen it. One Norman Goldman caller says a "throw down weapon" is SOP for dealing with dead suspects. There
was a video of this- - so the police couldn’t lie their way out of it. Swift disciplinary action was taken in this
case. However according to this same Norman Goldman caller- - that a dozen Federal Civil Rights violation actions have been filed by families of victims in this small town. He says "the smaller the town - the tighter the clique". Maybe we’re hearing about these
cases because of cell phone videos now. Keep in mind this whole thing began as a routine traffic stop involving a busted tail light. And the guy also was deliquent in his back child support payments. Videos that shock us now might be so routine nobody cares- - after a few more years after we become apathetic and jaded. But at least the media is still showing them. They could become so common that the media
might just STOP showing them at some point.
To me this should be a civil libertarian issue. Mike Papentonio says there is a “Death in
custody- - while under arrest” problem with police. And it’s pointed out that while shootings of
police officers have always been well documented- - I was stunned to learn that
there ARE no good records on how many unarmed people are shot by police
officers in this country. Police
shootings of civilians are a growing problem and were up 44% in one year! Ramsey Orta was the guy who videoed the death
of Eric Garner on Staten Island. He was
arrested seemingly for an unregistered firearm (where if it had been a white
guy I doubt they would have even cared) and thrown in a prison where they admit
feeding rat poison to prisoners. So
really this is some kind of major war by police against Black people in this
country. So now whistle blowers are in
jeopardy of their lives for doing the right thing.
Rom Emanuel won in
yesterday’s Chicago mayoral election. I know a lot of people on the left hate Rom Emanuel and one of these days I'll need to investigate why. One woman got a ballot at the voting place, and her ballot was already
pre marked for Rom Emanuel. There were
wide spread reports of this going on yesterday.
The press has all these reports- - but of course the news isn’t being
broadcast on the news. You haven’t heard much out of Republicans
lately about “Chicago thuggishness” lately.
Whatever it is about Rom Emanuel, he strikes a chord that a lot of
Republicans like. You’d think in any
other setting that pre market ballots would be the source of a major investigation-
- but people in Chicago seemingly just shrug their shoulders.
Libertarianism in
Europe is a left wing ideology. But in
this country Libertarianism was “founded” by a right wing lobbyist in 1946
pushing back against the New Deal, and was funded by a lot of the big
corporations of the day - - basically giving some sort of philosophical
respectability to their extreme pro business views. Of course now the infrastructure of America
is all going to Hell in a hand basket. Areas
of Washington DC including government buildings and the White House- - lost
electric power because one line was down.
Apparently there are certain areas of the country where the electric
grid is antiquated- - and power failures occur more than ten times as often as
they do in Europe or Japan, for instance.
They are also shutting off the water to Baltimore, just like they did in
Detroit in poor areas last year. Water
is considered a “basic human right” by the UN but not with the powers that be
here in America. Thom Hartman rips of labels of items he buys in department
stores – and never fears being arrested for shoplifting, when a Black person in
the same situation would never dream of doing that- - -or making darned sure he
had the receipt. I wouldn’t walk out of
a store with an item that I didn’t have the sales receipt for. This is what’s different about the gay lobby
in that gay people earn on average more income than the rest of us- - so there
is almost a thing called “gay privilege”.
Rand Paul is not a
libertarian if he buys into this Sheldon Addelson theory that we have to adopt
the Lecud party’s foreign policy on Iran.
Apparently Rand Paul has bowed to pressure from the Neo Cons and now
wants to balloon the defense budget and scuttle the treaty with Iran. He made it a point to get the “Radical Islam”
theme out there in his speech yesterday.
He has to give up his senate seat if he runs for President because
Kentucky law says you can’t do both. But
now Rand Paul wants to change the law just for him. Rand Paul would wipe out the whole state
exchange of Kennect - - the ACA version in Kentucky. There are a lot of poor people who are
grateful to the Governor for having that.
It makes no sense to say “I want to restrain government and let Freedom
loose”, because “government” ought to be “the will of the people through the
democratic process”. It isn’t government
these people are against but democracy and voting rights. And as you know when any of them talks about
“Freedom” or “letting freedom loose” or “unleashing the economy” they mean
cutting taxes on rich people. Thom
Hartman says these rich people are so obsessed with “things” they might have
some kind of a “hoarder’s syndrome”. I
don’t know about that, because what they are REALLY after is the taking away of
power from the rest of us and oppressing the poor and the doing away with the
REST of the Bill of Rights- - and not obsessing on just the second amendment. So the bottom line is that Rand Paul really
is bogus as any kind of “libertarian”.
And I guess once he figures out that Black felons won’t be rushing to
vote for him- - he’ll abandon those people too.
It’s absurd to say “My solution for fixing the inner ghetto is- - -
cutting taxes and keeping THAT money at home”.
I’ve heard he isn’t REALLY in favor of marijuana legalization, either.
[Yesterday} I listened to Rand Paul’s speech throwing
his hat in the Presidential ring. Most
of the speech was bullshit with the same tired republican platitudes. You don't cut the deficet by slashing Federal income taxes any more than you economize in a personal household by saying 'You know what? I think I'm quitting my job. I don't feel like working". About the only thing he said that made sense
was the idea of main streaming black youth in the inner ghetto, and that we
should given the choice, prefer Peace to War. I wish Rand- - short for Randell - - would take a cue from Pat Buchannon and argue that our security is NOT compromised by this deal with Iran. Pat's been around a number of years. A whole hell of a lot longer than you have. I’m surprised as hell this crowd even applauded for such a bold statement as saying "Peace is better than war". It kind of flies in the face of the whole Gospel of Dick Chaney thing. Because most of what Rand Paul said was the
same cliché right wing bat crap crazy stuff. Norman Goldman thought Rand
Paul was bogus but for other reasons.
The thing is that Rand Paul did not say one word on abortion or gay life
styles, so I don’t know why Norman is so upset. There are two classes of what I'd call "priveleged minorities" today - - Jews and Gays. Both have well equipped media attack dogs that can pretty much set their own agenda and make the rest of us adopt to it- - as it were "You'll see things MY way and like it" kind of thing. Certainly people with - - shall we say – personality aberrations like
wanting to be homosexual- - or kill their own offspring- - I would not welcome
a political party that said “Oh we want psychologically disturbed people
setting the moral tone of our party’.
Rand Paul’s commitment to NOT involving us in overseas wars- - was weak
to non existant. This used to be a primary selling point of that wing of the Republican Party. Now that stuff is deleted from his political agenda - just like Hillary's E mails. And Rand Paul didn’t
say one word about legalizing marijuana.
His remarks condemning NSA abuses were tepid at best. I wasn’t convinced. And of course he said nothing about the
corruption and abuses of Big Money and Wall Street banksters. In other words, the speech was tailored to
just want the average tea party minions out there wanted to hear.
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