Michael D’Antuono’s painting“The Truth,”

I love this painting below and think the artist has great talent. I think this painting has merit as political commentary. It is in my opinion, excellent. I agree with the artist. The president has received the most heinous criticism and even worse from a right wing extremist Republican base and beyond. The president must at times feel like he is crucified. 

I say it is FREE SPEECH. How does the religious right like it when THEY think it's "blasphemy" about THEIR religion? 

I do not. I do NOT think it about Christianity.  I think it is about things political and I think it valid empathy for a president like no other in American history who has received a critical onslaught no matter what he does!

Bunker Hill Community College displays controversial painting depicting Obama as Jesus

Print | Comments (97)Posted by Your Town  November 27, 2012 01:16 PM

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"The Truth" by Michael D’Antuono

A Method to Their Madness -- The bulldozing of Susan Rice

Republicans blathering against Susan Rice is utterly ridiculous and immoral. To attack an innocent qualified person who WILL be Secretary of State over NOTHING is deplorable.   There, however, is a method to their madness. Republicans want John Kerry's Senate seat for Scott Brown if Kerry leaves it to become Secretary of State if Susan Rice has a problem securing it. Scott Brown though will NEVER get that seat. He is THROUGH! McCain, Graham and Ayotte want to block Rice by any means necessary no matter if they run over her with a bulldozer. 

McCain is aged, mean and a shadow of what he was. He is full of anger and revenge because his attempts at the presidency were foiled at every turn. He is washed up and knows it. Graham is a remnant from the Confederacy or tries to be. He is a HYPOCRITE. Bush's Condoleza Rice advocates for a phony war killing THOUSANDS and destabilizing a region but he had no problem with that. 

PAAAHLEESE give me a break. We are NOT stupid. They sock it to the eminently qualified black woman because they THINK Republican Scott Brown (remember him?) can get Kerry's seat if Kerry becomes Secretary of State. NO WAY! WE MUST NEVER LET THAT HAPPEN. Mass. hopefully came its senses since the 2010 fluke election of Brown because Democrats were not paying attention. We will NOT NOT NOT be asleep again.

Write or contact John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte and tell them they look like bullies in their attempt to crush Susan Rice. They will NOT be successful as the president has said. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire as Santas's helper looks like a Stepford Wife token female in support of her men. Tell them to LEAVE SUSAN RICE ALONE. Tell them NOT to hope for Scott Brown. I thought we just had an election telling him he is THROUGH! WE NEED TO MAKE SURE HE IS!

Nailed to a Cross

What I want to know is HOW MUCH are they going to take out of the hide of the little guy -- ME -- as to Social Security and Medicare. My goodness these so called "Christian" Republicans want to back humongous corporations so THEY do not have to be the ones to shoulder the main tax burden. Taxing them an extra minuscule percent to them will mean NOTHING. They will NOT I assure you be in a soup line but those of us who are part of the 99% if there are significant cuts to Soc. Sec., Medicare or Medicaid then it WILL mean something placing our lives at risk.

As one whose family's life was saved by Social Security and Medicare I KNOW how wonderful these programs are and they were NOT free. We paid into them for decades. The president should NOT budge on the social safety nets.

I bet Jesus Christ himself would want to sock it to the behemoth corporations, Wall Street and the big guys who will NOT suffer one inch by a slight increase in taxes and closed loopholes, shutting off incentives to tax evade but the poor will be nailed to the proverbial cross that WILL kill us!

WRITE TO CONGRESS, SPEAKER BOEHNER AND THE PRESIDENT TELLING THEM NO TO DECREASES IN SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE!

The Real Apocalypse

I urge you to read and heed this excellent article Stand Still for the Apocalypse by Chris Hedges in TruthDig on climate change if not for you then for future generations and URGE power everywhere to act and act NOW before it is too late!

here or below.

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/54-54/14730-focus-stand-still-for-the-apocalypse 

Thanksgiving

I labored long as to how I would write this opinion. I decided to merely write that which I think about often and am thankful for every day. I think about how lucky I am through accident of birth to enjoy a warm shower, to brush my teeth, and to have indoor plumbing. I am thankful for these simple things which much of the world does not have and things we often take for granted. These things keep us safe, clean and free from disease. In another time or place this would not be so.

Yes, I am thankful, too, for the garbage collectors, for selfless firemen and police who like doctors keep us safe from that which could destroy us. I am thankful for a country which, although divided, manages to still govern transferring power bloodlessly. I am thankful for our country’s Founding Fathers who wrote documents so prescient and so well written that we still celebrate their genius centuries after our nation’s birth. I am thankful for Lady Liberty symbolically lighting the way for ships carrying men and women like my grandfathers and grandmothers who would have died with all the other Jews of Nazi-infected Europe.

How lucky I am that in my extended family there are two doctors, one speech therapist, one Harvard graduate, one Wellesley graduate, one Stanford Medical and Johns Hopkins graduate, one in the White House, and others whose successes are too numerous to mention. I am lucky to have wonderful family and friends whose intellect I value and whose advice I cherish. I am lucky to have family who continued the line of my grandparents by raising wonderful children some of whom have had their own children extending the line further still.

I am lucky to have been born in a nation where even sixty years ago accorded me excellent treatment for polio, a disease which often deforms avoiding that deformity by receiving the best care even without a national healthcare plan. I am thankful for that. I am thankful that my father went to law school, made a living, bought a house, bought many cars and never could have dreamed that life possible for a Jew anywhere else on earth. I am thankful for all those things.

I am thankful my father bestowed upon me a love of history, a love of FDR, and a love of country. Although we had many policy disagreements we both shared a love of that. I am so thankful for the education I received, for the colleges I attended, for the many teaches and professors who shaped my education and my political views. I am thankful I can write and say most anything I please without the fear of a knock at the door or prison without trial. I am thankful for all those things. I am thankful to live in a nation blessed by geography which has allowed it to prosper and which allows me to hope a warless nation continues to be its fate. I am thankful that change of policy is possible without violence and that I can continue to hope for the change of its foreign policy as well.

I am thankful I bore witness to the election and then the re-election of the first African American president along with Massachusetts’s first brilliant woman senator. I am thankful for all the civil liberties I enjoy that allowed me to find a partner of my choice and realize things which were once beyond my capacity to hope. I am thankful for fate giving me a window to the beauty of the planet and the span of man’s history upon it. I hope that I, in some small way, can contribute to the easing of suffering through political policy that can make it so.

For all these things I am eternally grateful and why the national holiday of Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of all.

Israel -- Swords into Plowshares – The Eternal Spring of Hope

How many times have we seen competing volleys of violence between Palestinians and Jews in Israel? Each side has its unyielding truths. That is the problem as I see it. It is why this issue has been so intractable even to the most seasoned foreign policy genius. Peace has been attempted by many USpresidents and international others over decades and yet even when close to it violence erupts to foil once again the efforts of the makers of that peace.

I believe in not returning to ancient history to buttress either one side or the other’s claims on this land. That is futile. I believe in (forgive the cliché) playing the ball where it lies. It does not matter now who had the land first as we know it has had many occupiers over centuries. The questions are what do we have to do now and what will it take for each side to give a little bit up to stop the endless rounds of recriminations, violence and the deaths of innocents.

I always believed the president does, indeed, have Israel's back but is not unmindful of the suffering of the Palestinian people. The fact that others disparage him means that they do not, as I see it, know what they are talking about. All presidents must endure a democracy’s natural opposition but this president suffers the slings and arrows of opposition the vitriol of which has not been seen since the Civil War and we, too often, know why. Though he is pilloried he takes the onslaught and plods on much like his historical mentor, Lincoln, did and in this difficult moment with hope in the crosshairs of despair I hope he can help create what no one ever has.

I am yearning for this foreign policy magician who caught Bin Laden, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at his side, to help perfect an Israeli/Palestinian peace carving it out on tablets of stone which now seem like a molten mass of distant hope.

Perhaps, I am naïve, wrong and too idealistic out of a strong desire to simply stop the killing. Maybe the situation is in reality impossible and ultimately hopeless. I think though, truly, nothing is impossible in the course of human events which are, after all, shaped by humans themselves. It will take some to bend a little bit and eschew policy aversions to peace cemented in their brain over time. I hope the belligerents give up some of their steadfast long-held positions and lay down their violent opposition giving up a little for all the innocents seemingly plunged into war’s eternal darkness. It will take acceptance of that which has heretofore been unacceptable.

Instead of the bellicosity of war let us hope, no matter the difficulty, peace prevails despite the allusiveness of its intractable history. I am betting on the president, as he shows time and again he can do what has been thought impossible and go where none has gone before. He above anyone else can help secure a peace with Secretary Clinton at his side. With Secretary Clinton’s genius and the president’s imprimatur, together, I believe, they can help do the impossible for both sides whose innocents have suffered so much and for so long. I hope the eternal spring of hope helps them turn the weapons of swords into the plowshares of peace for everyone and in our time.

Lincoln

Stephen Spielberg's film "Lincoln" is yet another masterpiece from the master. It is one of the best snapshots of our 16th president and the social milieu in which he lived that I have ever seen. It concentrates on Lincoln as president toward the end of the Civil War and the machinations between Congress and him to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution eliminating slavery from our national reality.

Daniel Day Lewis as President Lincoln and Sally Fields as Mary Todd Lincoln are brilliant as is Tommy Lee Jones in the part of Thaddeus Stevens the great orator of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania and fierce proponent of abolition.

A refresher course on the 13th Amendment content:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

One can understand by attempts to pass present-day legislation how difficult it actually is and the compromises it takes to pass it as events on the ground unfold. Outlawing slavery by passing the 13th Constitutional Amendment was, to say the least, a Herculean task. Our racist past still even now digs its heels into the cement of our national architectural construct. It lives on in generational perpetuity gumming up the works in our attempt to create a more perfect union. Through this excellent film one can see the nature of our racist roots, the brilliance of Lincoln as he overrules many in his own party to force Congress into passing the 13th Amendment. One can see that which divided us then still divides us now albeit in different form through a quite different Republican Party hardly, now, the party of Lincoln.

This is a must see for those who love watching the arc of history as it bends, slowly, towards justice. The film's creators spared us the view of Lincoln's assassination but rather cut to an announcement of its occurrence at another Washington theater. We hear Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, at the president's bedside uttering history's memorable quote: "Now he belongs to the ages." And so he does as history marches forward from then to now and our election of the first African American president not once but twice resoundingly so. Not surprisingly it made me cry as I thought about my own efforts to support our first African American president and how thrilled I am to be apart of this nation's efforts to perfect this union.

This film presented the Civil War era and the Lincoln presidency as a reflective mirror of our nation's past that lives today and is not only relegated to the south but occupies a major wing of a major party continually seeking immense power in every state taking advantage of the lesser angels of our nature to do so. It is up to us, in my view, to make sure they do not attain power so as Lincoln in his Gettysburg address so artfully said about the massive amount of Civil War dead … "that these dead shall not have died in vain!"

The Bottom of Benghazi

The Republican onslaught at "getting to the bottom" of Benghazi is so hypocritically ridiculous it begs credibility and to indict Susan Rice is theater of the absurd. She CLEARLY observed the rules of no public disclosure of classified intelligence. Susan Rice is guilty of one thing: she is a Democrat nominated to her position by President Obama whom Republicans are simply dying to dust off the old word impeachment to Constitutionally destroy. Their actions are a scandal in and of themselves.

Their intransigence against whatever the president does or whomever the president nominates for high position will ultimately serve one thing and that is to drive them nationally into a more significantly irrelevant party. It is a losing strategy for them. Is there not someone in that party who can entertain rational thought?

What Susan Rice could have done to jeopardize her nomination as Secretary of State was to have revealed classified information which she did not possess. Thank God she did NOT possess it since if she did call it Al Qaeda driven, Republicans would be calling her out for treason. One wonders where they were when the fake mushroom cloud comment of Republican Condoleezza Rice ruled the day, propelled us into the Iraq war based on lies, ultimately cost thousands of lives, and destabilized an entire region we see in colossal upheaval today.

Republicans, Matthew 7:3 "Why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own?"

The Instruction of Nuremburg

As if the tumultuous seemingly never-ending presidential election of 2012 were not enough; as if the lies and now the Republican accusations against the president for everything from whom General Petraeus decided he wanted to share a bed to assigning blame against the administration for an attack on an embassy in the fog of war for which more protection was asked by Democrats but stymied yet again by Republicans hell bent on unseating this president were not enough; despite all of this and more, yet again, I have to bear eyewitness to another gut wrenching visual emblem of hateful Republican racist opposition out of control.

On my way through an affluent northeastern suburb I drove down a main street en route to my destination. I began to approach a two-sided sign on the road which took up a parking spot near a Dunkin Donuts. As I came closer to it I could see the sign had a large poster of President Obama. At first I wondered if it was a leftover from the campaign until I drove a bit nearer to it. I noticed on the president’s lip was drawn in magic marker a Hitlerian mustache. Beside the sign were the words in large letters "FAST AND FURIOUSLY IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT" and below that it said "Benghazigate." I could feel my blood pressure soar as if an IED were embedded in my veins. There was traffic all around so I could not address the insult personally.

A comment on something I wrote waxed critical saying Republicans are not racist they are merely critical of policy. Yes, and I have a bridge in Alaska I would like to sell you. That there is a rancid vein of hateful racist hypocrisy running like a cancer throughout the Republican body politic cannot be denied. Our president has received hundreds of threats more than any other president in the modern era. Because he is African American the verbal insults that assault him on a daily basis are voluminous and insufferable. The Republican Party is ringing its own funereal death knell if it does not vociferously object to that significant part of its party.

There will soon be an effort waged by Democrats NOT ONLY for the presidential election of 2016 but for every state and local election throughout the land so that this malevolent Republican Party does not further infect our body politic. Eventually, demographics will do the job for us but in the interim our efforts WILL see to it that Republicans lose state legislatures, lose governorships, lose the House, lose the Senate and, hopefully, keep the presidency. I urge those who feel as I support this effort any way they can. It will happen but it is true, it cannot happen fast enough for me. The Republican Party is dying and they know it. I hope that party reflecting that historically cancerous part of the American electorate is cut out and returns to the depths of the sea from which that part of the Republican Party morphed and emerged onto the national scene in its present form.

A physical or angry verbal reaction by me to what I saw was impossible and even dangerous so I decided to write about it because I believe it is one’s obligation in the face of racist hateful immorality to say SOMETHING. If Nuremberg taught us anything it taught us this.

WHY WE MUST CONTINUE TO ELECT DEMOCRATS THROUGHOUT THE NATION!

Hazardous to Our Health – Why I am so Vociferously Against the Republican Party

Some during the election were worried about the intensity of my opposition to Mitt Romney and all things Republican.  They thought it hazardous to my health.  In reality though, the Republican Party, as it has evolved over decades, is not the same Republican Party of which my own father was a part. To be vociferously against it, I aver, is NOT hazardous to my health but allowing that party to flourish and become a part of the nation’s DNA surely is.

 

When one buys into the Republican brand one buys more than an economic belief system. One must buy into the other social issues attendant to it and that means huge numbers of human beings will be denied rights which should justly be theirs. The Republican Party forces conformity -- total conformity -- to certain social policies that leave out millions from the joys of what their own life dictates.  It accedes women and their bodies to male control and establishes a white male-dominant world. 

The Republican Party’s belief system is insidious.  It destroys lives because in order to sign up to attain power one must strip one’s self of humanity and obediently adhere to particular beliefs – immutable and extreme – etched in stone demanding complete ideological unquestioning loyalty to them. Grover Norquist’s no tax pledge that he demands all Republican lawmakers sign is a metaphor for the admittance nationally into the larger party.  A uniformity and purity of belief is a pledge one must symbolically make to gain admittance to the club.  Moreover, it demands its adherents give vast sums of money they often do not have.   It makes some who promote Republican politics and its sidecar religious fanaticism on TV, film, books, DVS's and in churches very very rich mostly off the backs of the gullible millions who are not. 

The Republican Party is about money and its conjoined religious adherence is about money too. They dupe unquestioning millions and make a fortune. It is imperative that we try to stop this sickening, stifling, uncompromising and extreme movement which has morphed and gained power over time. Power is an aphrodisiac to those who seek it but in Republican land that power it is NOT about acknowledging human diversity; it is about stifling it.  It requires a repressed sexless world existing within the rigid confines of its made up Biblical rules.

 

The Republican Party is tyrannical in nature and dangerous in the extreme to our democratic way of life.  Those of us who understand the facts of science, those of us who eschew magical thinking, and those of us who make room for the diversity of human species MUST STOP the Republican Party and its extremist social agenda from gaining control.  That Party if it assumes great power again will relegate MILLIONS in our nation to an unsustainable life and usher in an Aldous Huxleyian Brave New World dystopia that would make even him cringe!

WHY IT IS NEVER OVER AND IMPORTANT TO SUPPORT DEMOCRATS HERE AND ALL OVER THE NATION, TURN STATE LEGISLATURES BLUE AND TRY TO RETAKE THE HOUSE, KEEP THE SENATE TO HELP OUR PRESIDENT NOT HAVE TO FIGHT FOR EVERY SINGLE THING THAT WOULD CREATE JOBS, HEAL OUR NATION TO ECONOMIC PROSPERITY AND KEEP US SAFE!

AGAIN, COMMENTS I GET WILL NOT...LET ME SAY THAT AGAIN WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED IF THEY ARE RUDE, PROFANE OR INTELLECTUALLY BANKRUPT.  IF CONSERVATIVES OR OTHER OPPOSITION WANTS TO COMMENT FINE.  I WILL ACCEPT THAT AND HAVE AN INTELLIGENT DISCOURSE OR DIFFERING OPINION BUT I WILL NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT PUBLISH INSULTING DIALOG SO DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.  WRITE SOMETHING COGENT, INTELLIGENT AND PROFOUND AND IT WILL GET A HEARING FROM ME BUT PROFANITY WILL NOT!

The Fight Goes On

Sometimes if we forget history we may be condemned to repeat it. Those of us who care about the protection of the civil rights of minorities, those of us who empathize when any of us is treated unfairly, those of us who CRINGED at Republican attempts in swing states to pass and implement laws in a clear attempt to suppress the African American and other minorities’ right to vote must ensure not only the maintenance of the 1965 Voting Rights Act but the expansion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act prevail.  

 

Thankfully, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was used by attorneys across the nation to fight these dastardly attempts at voter suppression.  The happy news is in most cases those who fought these unfair laws won. Not only did that law stop a suppression of the vote in our time it ensured an even larger minority turnout in 2012 than it did even in 2008.  Yes, thank God for the 1965 Civil Rights Act.

 

HOWEVER, understanding US history where its people of color are concerned is to be aware that discrimination on the basis of one's minority status did not end with the Civil War.  Indeed, it did not even end with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act mandating those states of the Confederacy stop Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, and literacy tests which were meant to significantly undermine the most basic right of African Americans or any American, the right to vote.   We can see, though, even now that very necessary law is in danger of erosion.

 

The Supreme Court with its conservative five members has accepted a challenge to this all important law.  It is ironic that the Court accepted this case because of the vicious attempts by the Republican Party in this 2012 presidential election to do that which the Confederacy could not do and that is suppress the minority vote in northern so called swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and others in order to deny the nation's first African American president a second term and to ensure a win for the Republican Party of White’s pawn Mitt Romney.

 

A negation of the 1965 Civil Rights Act is unthinkable and MUST NOT happen.  I urge you to STRONGLY object to this ugly attempt by Republicans to subvert our democratic process.  Make your voice heard by any means necessary to ensure that the Supreme Court not only re-affirm the 1965 Voting Rights Act but EXPAND it to ensure ALL 50 states comply with it. 

 

Be VIGILANT, NEVER surrender and NEVER acquiesce to this evil attempt to deny any person his/her right to vote.  

 

Fall from Grace

Mr. Bruni of the NYT yet again offers a fabulously written opinion entitled "The Siren and the Spook" here and below. I shake my head in dismay that powerful men who could have had such a positive impact on national policy ruin their own legacies. The list is endless.  Some, too, never could have gotten away with now with what they did sexually in their time. Now we are a media soaked nation insatiable in its quest for the next big sex scandal. It is why the musical "Chicago" to me had so much appeal. It spoke the truth. One day's headline is tomorrow's trash then on to the next story. In several months the present one will be if not meaningless then forgotten.

When looking to assign blame, if one who has not sinned can be found to assign it, I place it at both participants' feet. I place it at the Director's feet for having the temerity to think he is above playing by the rules of fidelity in marriage making himself vulnerable to blackmail or worse if his location or travels through the emails is revealed to the enemy. I assign blame to Paula Broadwell because it appears she went to great lengths anonymously to harass a women she, perhaps, thought her rival. She is NOT an extension of former Director Petraeus and appears to have delusions of grandeur that she is. 

Paula Broadwell had no right to be near classified information nor should she be talking to a University of Colorado audience about what the CIA knew or did not know about the attack on the American Libyan embassy in Benghazi. Shame on both of them. They SHOULD have known better. Like man's symbolic fall from grace in Eden clearly they did not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/opinion/bruni-the-siren-and-the-spook.html?hp#h[PcsSbh,1]

AFTER OBAMA

The Republican extremist brand lost and badly so.  It has been tainted by its national reality and its national identity of cruel, hardened, often nativistically racist and extreme religious right ideologues. It is the party of ridiculous stances on social issues which if one is a Republican and especially if one seeks national office one must face and worse of which one must be a part.  It taints Republican would be office-holders everywhere.

The Republican economic philosophy, if one can manage to see it through all the rest of the side issue noise, is understandable. Even I, a staunch Democrat, can see that certain spending must be curtailed. The question becomes WHICH spending but that is another issue.   The albatross around Republican necks everywhere is a Republican national minority that controls it through the nation’s primary system.  Candidates, especially those for high office, MUST swing extreme right to have success.  Its backward stances in science and human rights has lassoed, hog tied and imprisoned the rest of the Republican Party that is somewhat saner.  It makes it irrelevant to sustain a nation or, in a larger sense, even to save human existence.   Yes, the acknowledging of climate change, man's fossil fuel gluttonous contribution to global warming and science in general CANNOT be denied if one wants a nation let alone a world to survive.

In a modern culture one cannot be anti choice, anti birth control, anti stem cell research, anti evolution, anti all the things progressives have won for human rights and think that the Republican Party is the party of the future.  It is NOT.  It is the party of reactionary regression and IF given majorities will inflict primarily one thing upon the nation – death – the death of those who have fallen victim to economic forces and other realities over which they had no control.  They find themselves lost, dispossessed and poor.  Moreover, without the realities that science offers those who do not accept it, in Darwinian fashion, will not survive.  Thankfully, it seems, at least for now, nationally, many have seen the light.

One cannot go backwards rendering the American people to a dumbed down laughing stock nation threatening its very survival and, perhaps, indeed, the survival of man.  Yes, it is an existential choice. 

AFTER Obama we the party of science and human rights, the party which elected the first African American president in two landslides must NEVER become complacent, must ALWAYS be vigilant and see to it the Republican Party which makes no room for the diversity of the human condition NEVER gets majorities again.  That IS our mandate and THAT should be our goal. In this we must not falter and we must not fail.  The Republican Party of the academically challenged LOST big and I am supremely happy about that!

WHY WE MUST CONTINUE TO ELECT DEMOCRATS TO NATIONAL, STATE AND LOCAL OFFICE AS OUR VERY SURVIVAL DEPENDS UPON IT!

In Case You Haven't Heard

FLORIDA -- GONE TO THE PRESIDENT --  Total:  332 electoral votes!

The president took Florida and Romney conceded it.  332 electoral votes!!!  WOW, I am elated now let's get to work and take the House back so the president can get his agenda done without pulling teeth especially if the Republican House is there only to obstruct and send us off the so called "fiscal cliff."

BTW -- Speaker Boehner and Mitch McConnell BOTH refused a call from the president after the election saying they were "asleep."  DESPICABLE! Suffice it to say PUT THEIR JOBS to sleep by giving them the boot to Siberia.   Let's work for Democrats to RETAKE the House!

ECSTASY -- and ME

The Democrats' recent out-of-the-park home run election victory of the president made me feel ECSTASY. The Republicans were not only defeated but CRUSHED. The glee I feel cannot be calculated. The story below and here is about a "day of reckoning" that Republican MEGA wealthy donors and super pacs want for the blow-out Republican failure costing them over a billion bucks. I imagine after spending over a billion bucks on something one might be slightly angry if the Secretariat-like stud you spent it on not only lost the “ horse-race” but then broke nearly all of his legs in the process!

It could not, of course, from my point of view, happen to a nicer -- errr rather more RANCID group of immoral slugs. Poetic justice perhaps? I do not believe in a cosmic justice but I do believe in people-sponsored justice and I know, personally, how those on our Democratic side of the political divide with tremendous spirit and passion went in for the kill and we did it. We SLEW the dragon and none too soon for me.

Like Mitt's cute saying "I LOVE to fire people" in my case I LOVE to fire Republicans who are unethical, cruel, and unprincipled Neanderthals. They simply could not win fair and square but had to attack persons of color any way they could to stop minorities from voting returning, in different form, to the era of the Jim Crow voter suppression south. But the people in the voting line FOUGHT the Party of White BACK non-violently standing in line for as much as eight hours to vote. THAT is democracy!

Rethuglican Governor Rick Scott State of Florida slug supreme cut early voting days/hours down and closed other polling places in minority areas to help deliver Florida to the Republicrats. He did all he could to confuse the Democratic voter as the Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted dittoed in the all important swing-state Ohio. Persons, mostly of color, stopped these Republican low lifes from subverting the most precious power we all possess in a democracy – the non-violent weapon of choice - the right to vote.

The Republican Party of racist Know Nothings will NOT live to see another Congressional sweep as they did in 2010 especially if they try to subvert the nation driving it off the extremist fiscal cliff. We as progressive Democrats now must concentrate on taking back the US HOUSE in the next two year election cycle and we just may if the House Republican Party becomes the party that throws the entire nation into economic chaos. Perhaps the super rich simply want the nation to fall off a cliff anyway especially if it is becoming a majority non white nation. One would hope there are a few patriots left in Republican land so that they do not dare do that.

The country's demographics have changed as we who know about things political expected it would and it is beginning now. The country of white will ULTIMATELY lose its majority. White conservative anti humans and religious extremist stupids have held this place MUCH TOO LONG anyway. Some Republican wingnuts say they want a war. So be it but I would NOT give that a try as whites will soon NOT have the numbers. So go ahead, as Republican darling Clint Eastwood might say to a chair “make my day.” I suspect Ann No Heart Coulter might respond in pertinent part you WILL LOSE!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/republican-reckoning-defeat_n_2090510.html

Is the GOP stealing Ohio?

Uncertified, "experimental" software patches have been installed on machines in 39 counties of the key swing state.  Read here or below.

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/

Why we MUST get the vote out for the re-election of the President!

Fired Up -- Ready to Go!

What I wrote last evening.

If you did not get a chance to see President Barack Obama's GORGEOUS campaign speech tonight in Iowa, his last speech as a candidate for re-election to the presidency where it all began four years ago, I suggest you Google it and listen to his magnificent oratory. He flicked a tear from his eye and so did I because I have just witnessed history.


I said four years ago to all who know me, that I did not care what fate had in store for me. I wanted ONLY to see our first African American president in my lifetime and my heart would sit easy as the change I so desperately wanted in the late 60's as a convert to progressive politics had occurred IN MY TIME! 

I think now, I am not quite ready to say I have neared the end of my time because I MUST see, yet again, this amazing man Barack Obama win a second term for me, for my country and, indeed, for the world.

I LOVE you, Barack Obama. You are MY amazing grace and I thank fate, or god or whatever it is that allowed me to see that which I thought I never would see. NOW I want to see it ONE MORE TIME as we all as a nation go to the polls tomorrow, drive others to the polls tomorrow, and HOPEFULLY help win the re-election of Barack Obama tomorrow so I can say FINALLY I have seen what seemed impossible just a few short years ago.

Let us make it work for the president, make it work for our state, let us make it work for the nation and the world so that as John Kennedy in my youth so poetically said:

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

 —President John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address (1961)


LET US AGAIN GO TOMORROW TO VOTE AND TO HELP RE-ELECT BARACK OBAMA AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND ELECT ELIZABETH WARREN TO THE US SENATE FROM MASSACHUSETTS! 

Ohio Secretary of State accused of installing suspicious software on voting machines

I get comments that are nasty.  If I deem them nasty I do not publish them but if they are not insulting then I will.  I have published some but I do not know if they appear.  It would be nice if someone left a connection so I could respond.  Oh well, the truth hurts!

Ohio Secretary of State accused of installing suspicious software on voting machines

by Ugonna Okpalaoka | November 2, 2012 at 12:14 PM

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Voters cast their ballots, during early voting at the Wood County Court House October 2, 2012 in Bowling Green, Ohio. Early voting began October 2 in the battleground state of Ohio, five weeks before election day on November 6. (Photo by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images)

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The Columbus Free Press is reporting that the Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted allegedly ordered for“experimental software patches” to be installed on vote-counting machines in a number of Ohio counties.

According to the newspaper, voting rights activists are concerned that the software patches, which are usually used to update or change existing software, could potentially affect over 4 million registered voters, including those who live in Columbus and Cleveland.

Ohio law allows for the experimental use of voting equipment as long as it’s restricted to a limited number of precincts, and under the experimental label, equipment can legally be used without certification.

The Free Press revealed the contract between Husted’s office and the contracted vendor Election Systems and Solutions reads that the software has not been and does not need to be reviewed by any testing authority at the state or federal level.

Election Counsel Brandi Laser Seske sent out a memo to Secretary of State personnel yesterday, detailing the software. In the memo, she explains the software did not require review because it is not “involved in the tabulation or casting of ballots … or a modification to a certified system.”

Matt McClellan, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office, told theGrio that no patches were installed, describing instead a reporting tool software meant to “assist counties and to help them simplify the process by which they report the results to our system.”

McClellan said the tool serves to cut down on the amount of information precinct workers would have to key in by hand by allowing the results to be output onto a thumbdrive and uploaded at once into the Secretary of State’s system.

“It basically just creates a one-way flow of information — and that is simply from their system, out,” McClellan said. “So at no point in time are we going into their system and messing with anything.”

When asked why the reporting tool was labeled experimental, McClellan responded, “It is a pilot project that we’re doing with about 25 counties or so. So it’s not statewide, but it is a pilot project we’re trying.”

And when asked why a pilot project is being launched so soon before the election, he said, “I’m not sure the exact timeline of that, but I know we’ve been working with the counties for the past couple of months on getting these in place, testing them to make sure they work properly, and working with the vendors as well.”

There are only days left until Election Day and the fear of voter suppression is only increasing. McClellan said there should be no concerns that the new reporting tool will jeopardize the voting results or voter information, but voting rights activists remain far from reassured.

Civil rights organizations like the Advancement Project plan to be on the lookout for any voting rights violations in Columbus and Cincinnati, among other cities in the nation.

Follow Ugonna on Twitter at @ugonnaokpalaoka

The Fix

If the election were fair the president would win in a landslide.  All the polls have him ahead and the electoral vote HUGE UNLESS the fix is in. 

Obama is leading in nearly every poll on the planet. Nate Silver of the NYT has him WAY ahead.   The worry for me has always been the fix in Ohio because of the mendacious Tag Romney and the liar Willard Mitt Romney owning the machines and there will not be a way to find out even though the Dems have armies of lawyers there and computer experts.  The fix is what I have always been afraid of. If the election were above board then Obama would win in a landslide.  Even Intrade one of the most reputable yardsticks has him at 66% favorabilty to win which is great for Intrade.  The NYT brilliant Nate Silver has him at 80 or so percent to win with over 300 electoral votes.  

Who on God's earth let's a candidate's son control the voting machines in a so called "close" election in a crucial state?   If Obama did it can you imagine the Republican outcry.

I'm worried about nothing but the illegal fix there are no words horrible enough to describe this empty suit Romney.  He is simply AWFUL with NO ethics whatsoever.  God help this nation if he tries to steal the presidency!!

Coming into Focus

OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD QUICKLY. FORGIVE THE IMPERFECT SYNTAX.

Things SEEM to be coming into focus but we cannot stop working for the president's victory. WE MUST GET OUT THE VOTE. I still worry about Republican fixed machines. Armies of our lawyers are on the scene and I am sure we have our computer geniuses too. They CANNOT get away with the voter suppression Republicans have sickeningly done to subvert our democracy. WE ARE ON TO THOSE bastards (pardon the profanity) but think about what Republicans are trying to do--subvert the country. It makes you sickened if you love this country.

My prediction: Scott Brown is going down and he did it himself. POOR personal attacks that meant nothing in the face of people in economic trouble!! He looked shallow and of course he surely is. Compared to the brilliant Elizabeth Warren he looks like an utterly inferior teenager trying to get a date. The people of Massachusetts know the brilliance of Elizabeth Warren and are smarter than to make that mistake again! He's DONE! -- I hope. Still MUST work hard and VOTE VOTE VOTE!

As for the president: Several things are and have FAILED for Romneybot. No. 1 he is an UNLIKABLE, shallow and utterly EMPTY suit pathological liar and flip flopper candidate. NO ONE knows what the hell the guy stands for even in his own Republican base. He bold faced lied about the auto bailout that saved an industry and the industry told him that. The president is a VERY likable candidate by far. 

2. The economic figures were actually good this month and more jobs added proving his policy is working (but he needs more of it see Stiglitz article here and below.) 

3. Chris Christie most emphatically my hat goes off to this man whom I used to hate now I love -- the guy has a magnetism; look for him in 2016. I wish he were a Democrat! 

4. The Obama ground game is excellent.

5. Very important October surprise SANDY!!! As horrible as this event was/is the president looks utterly presidential AND they are delivering. Democratic policies WORK! What a far cry from Bush. When the country is in trouble Democrats pull us out. Think FDR!

When the news reported the cries out of Staten Island it reminded me of Katrina. I got on the phone called the White House which was accessible at 7:00 pm. usually is not but they must have been open because of Sandy. I went on one of my tirades pleading with them to get the supplies to Staten Island there and fast. I said if we can supply Afghanistan we can supply Staten Island. I went on and on pleading NOT angrily but emotionally and said the president MUST NOT look like heckva job Brownie jerk. He must secure his presidency by getting the supplies to these people in the form of FEMA and the Red Cross.

My heart goes out to Staten Island. I said he said call and you will get a response in 15 minutes. The 15 minute rule now as he said was in effect. HE HAS BEEN STELLAR. Next day BAM -- supplies rolled in like it was the WWII Marshall plan reconstructing Europe. The people there who lost so much were crying "THANK YOU FEMA!!" Did my phone call (and online email) do it? OF COURSE NOT as I am sure there were hundreds but the point is we must try and I did. Presto -- something worked because we have a VERY capable president who is a REAL LEADER. From bin Laden to Sandy to the economy, using a Romneybot word, GOLLY, the president gets it done!


WE WHO SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT (and Elizabeth Warren too) MUST NEVER GIVE UP BECAUSE ONE NEVER KNOWS. WORK THE HARDEST we can and I think or at least I HOPE he WILL win.


HERE is the Stiglitz article or this link http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/14324-joseph-stiglitz-qromneys-plan-is-based-on-magicq

Man, woman, birth, life, death, infinity--Yes on Question 2

My family since I was very young was inundated with illness and tragedy. The suffering if one could put a price tag on it would have been in the millions. I am voting yes, on the question of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. I know there are many arguments against it. I know I get a lot of glances that tell me they are not utterly for this option but I know how I feel and how I think.

I am not tied into any religious dogma or magical thinking. I do not think bad things happen to good people for any purpose nor do I think a magical being intervenes when he saves your child but lets an equally good child of someone else die. I am not torn by this question because I believe in the laws of nature, nature's DNA and nature's laws of physics. Even the Biblical Ecclesiastes says there is a time for every season; a time to be born and a time to die. Of that we are in agreement.

If an animal is euthanized when the suffering becomes enormous and incapable to reverse then we as animals should be able to do no less. I understand it is not always that simple BUT it is simple enough for me. Suffering and pain with no chance of amelioration is suffering for no purpose.

Remember the show Ben Casey from the 1960’s? It began with the wise aged Dr. Zorba played by Sam Jaffe writing symbols on a blackboard saying: Man, woman, birth, life, death, infinity. That is pretty much how I see it. There is a beginning and there is an end and we know it will happen to us all. Why not enjoy the life one has and when it ceases to be enjoyable but is inextricably lived with never-ending excruciating pain, end it. I am voting yes on Question 2.

Elizabeth Warren for US Senate

I loved Elizabeth Warren when first interviewed by Bill Moyers. She explained how the richest 1% joined with Congress to perpetrate one of the greatest economic frauds in US history turning the American Dream into a middle class nightmare. I call her my price above rubies candidate for the middle class because Proverbs 31:10 describes her best:

“Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. Strength and honor are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.”