A Good Explanation--Over There

This opinion by editorialist Alex Kingsbury "Why the 2007 surge in Iraq Actually Failed" linked here and below in the Globe explains in detail why the original "surge" in Iraq failed and why it is doomed to failure now under this president.

It is an excellent editorial and presents me with details I would and could not have otherwise known. How can we the majority understand what really happened if the "news" does not relay it to us or if we get the truth only if we happen to fall upon a text or an article which does explain it. Few do go looking for it when the many need to. Only those who experienced it and who are not shackled by the fear of speaking about it can really tell us what happened.

This article presents more than most I have read why we should not re-enter the Iraq quagmire and why a re-immersion into the quicksand that is Iraq fighting ISIS probably will not work either. Every bestial action by ISIS provokes our population to acquiesce to more war and feeds into the ISIS desire to have us do that in perpetuity to waste our blood, resources and energy to continue a futile effort.
 

What a simply horrendous condition in which Bush, et al placed us. With American memory short and its attention to the details of the few who fight this battle, the majority will go along with anything because it is not most of our necks on the line. Now every commander in chief will follow the yellow brick road the same as the president before him/her did. We will expend even more resources, blood of our soldiers and raid on our treasury so that the nation cannot spend for the necessary things we desperately need here because we have spent so much over there.

I simply do not know what the answer is now that we have broken all the china. We own it still but cannot fix it. I worry all is too late.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/…/0NaI9JrbtSs1pAZvgzG…/story.html

Why the 2007 surge in Iraq actually failed, and what that means today - The Boston Globe

The goalsof the Iraq surge were spelled out explicitly by the White House in Jan. 2007: Stop the raging sectarian bloodletting and reconcile Sunnis, Shiites, and...

bostonglobe.com

The Great Divide

The link below is a wonderful interview by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now with whistle-blower Alayne Fleishman and the chronicler of the big bank frauds of the Great Recession, Matt Taibbi, who knows more about the financial 2008 Great Recession debacle and crime emanating from it than anyone I have read.

Again, read it and weep better still get angry.  KNOW those you elect ESPECIALLY Republicans but some Democrats too will NEVER EVER exact justice for YOU the taxpayer while the creators of the Great Recession CEO's of the big banks walk away with MILLIONS. It is an incredible interview!

Amy Goodman & Juan González interview Matt Taibbi and a bank Whistle blower on How JPMorgan Chase Helped Wreck the Economy and Avoid Prosecution.  See the interview here

On that site read an excerpt of Matt Taibbi's book entitled "The Great Divide -- Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap."

• 

  READ: Matt Taibbi on "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap"

"A year ago this month the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the banking giant JPMorgan Chase would avoid criminal charges by agreeing to pay $13 billion to settle claims that it had routinely overstated the quality of mortgages it was selling to investors. But how did the bank avoid prosecution for committing fraud that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis? Today we speak to JPMorgan Chase whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann in her first televised interview discussing how she witnessed "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank’s mortgage operations. She is profiled in Matt Taibbi’s new Rolling Stone investigation, "The $9 Billion Witness: Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking."

Progressives keep not voting like you did in 2014 and see how this nation saves its 1% richest and how the rest of us are relegated to hell.

--

Richard Engel -- The War Against ISIS

I paste this incredible Richard Engel report below on the above referenced programming. The invasion of Iraq, historians will no doubt say, was the greatest blunder in US History. Go ahead, put another nationalist know nothing Republican, say a Jeb Bush, into office or put a whole Congress of Republican know nothings into high office and see what you get. You will get and probably now have eternal war; never ending, trillions of bucks war killing thousands more as far into the future as the eye can see capturing your children and even your children's children for a "mission UNACCOMPLISHED" Bush did not envision. As Engel says "No Iraq, No ISIS" it is as simple as that. He destabilized an entire region. The forces of slaughter that George W. Bush and his henchmen unleashed has engaged this nation in an eternal war we better win.

Richard Engel's reporting is UNBELIEVABLE about the war against ISIS which I have linked below. It is well worth your time not to stay ignorant of that which your country has done in your name. Weep, America, because you do not know enough to keep ignorant Cretans out of office. As Engel says "The US stayed in Iraq and it did no good; the US left Iraq and it did no good." Now as the president ups the forces again turning it into probably another ground war the US will be there in perpetuity way beyond Obama's term in office. The president really has no other choice.

If we stay out ISIS may surely establish their caliphate. They are strong and getting stronger drawing religious fanatical converts by the hundreds from even the west and making alliances with even Al Qaeda and other groups; establishing their own currency. It is truly amazing. Can they do it with the many disparate groups with whom they have often fought? Who knows? Do you want to risk turning the clock back to the 8th century to find out?

Watch this hour long program which I link here and below learn what your country has done to you!

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/richard-engel-special-isis-report-airs-friday-357802051985

If you want to know why it is important to get the gd vote out across the nation.  Scroll down.  You get the government you deserve if you don't!

Matt Taibbi and Bank Whistleblower on How JPMorgan Chase Helped Wreck the Economy, Avoid Prosecution

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• "Silencing the Whistleblowers": How Will Financial Reform Prevent Another Crash If Banks Subvert Their Warning Systems?

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  READ: Matt Taibbi on "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap"

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Financial Meltdown, Economy, Whistleblowers

Guests

Alayne Fleischmann, JPMorgan Chase whistleblower. She was a deal manager at the bank, where she says she witnessed "massive criminal securities fraud" in its mortgage operations during the period leading up to the financial crisis.

Matt Taibbi, award-winning journalist with Rolling Stone magazine. His latest article is headlined "The $9 Billion Witness." He is author of the book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.

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Noam Chomsky: 2012 GOP Candidates Views are "Off the International Spectrum of Sane Behavior"

Sep 19, 2011 | Story

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A year ago this month the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the banking giant JPMorgan Chase would avoid criminal charges by agreeing to pay $13 billion to settle claims that it had routinely overstated the quality of mortgages it was selling to investors. But how did the bank avoid prosecution for committing fraud that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis? Today we speak to JPMorgan Chase whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann in her first televised interview discussing how she witnessed "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank’s mortgage operations. She is profiled in Matt Taibbi’s new Rolling Stone investigation, "The $9 Billion Witness: Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A year ago this month, the Justice Department announced the banking giant JPMorgan Chase would avoid criminal charges by agreeing to pay $13 billion to settle claims that it had routinely overstated the quality of mortgages it was selling to investors. When the toxic mortgage securities started turning bad, investors lost faith in the banking system, and a housing crisis turned into the 2008 financial crisis that led to millions of home foreclosures. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman unveiled the settlement last November.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Not only will Chase have to pay the largest settlement ever levied against a financial institution, but it has admitted in our statement of facts that its own employees, employees of Bear Stearns and employees of Washington Mutual made material misrepresentations to the investing public about a large number of residential mortgage-backed securities that they issued prior to the crash in 2008. This settlement is a major victory in the fight to hold accountable those who were responsible for that crash.

AMY GOODMAN: Soon after the JPMorgan Chase deal was reached, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder discussed the bank’s misdeeds during an interview with NBC News’ Pete Williams.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: It packaged loans that it knew did not pass its own stated due diligence test. We have a whistleblower who indicated that she expressed concerns about what the strength of these mortgage-backed securities were, and they put them out there to the market and said that they were perfectly fine, when in fact they were not.

PETE WILLIAMS: So, to be clear, you’re saying that JPMorgan’s conduct here contributed to the housing collapse?

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: Not only the conduct of JPMorgan, it was the conduct of other banks doing similar kinds of things that led directly to the collapse of our economy in 2008 and in 2009.

Show Full Transcript


http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/…/matt-taibbi-alayne-fleisch…

My Broken Heart

Republicons wining as much as they did in the 2014 midterms will make the president's life and those of us who support those things for which the Democratic Party stands miserable.  So what else is new?  Republicons vow to block the president no matter what he proposes.  The epic China/US treaty deal on climate change just forged by the president will be blocked by these obstructionist mendacious nincompoops. Who could have predicted that?
 

I feel now like I was hit by a truck.  Ending the Obama presidency with a Congress worse than any other obstructionist one since the Civil War is beyond my ability to comprehend and therefore successfully write anything in exegesis of it.  How does one explain the massive electoral myocardial infarction that happened one week ago and make sense of it?  How rational is it for a nation to usher into office the same Party that obstructed the President at every turn insulting him, shut the government down and refused to raise the debt ceiling?  The refusal to raise the debt ceiling alone would have sent this nation and the world into a gran mal economic seizure.  

The difference between the 2008, 2012 elections when the president was swept into office and the midterms of 2010 and 2014 when he was not on the ballot is that persons of color including Hispanics and the Democratic base sat the election out.  2/3rds who were registered to vote in 2014 did not do so.  It was the lowest voter turnout in decades.  Democrats win when voters vote.  The majority of the electorate is on the side of the 98% and not the side of the 1% millionaires and billionaires but if the 98% do not vote they are not counted.

Perhaps, they sat it out, too, because of unconstitutional Republicon Jim Crow-like tricks requiring certain difficult-to-obtain and costly IDs needed to vote or perhaps they sat it out because, clearly, we live in two different Americas -- a racist half and the other half.  Moreover, Obama cannot be elected anymore.  Or perhaps it was the fact that Democrats like Alison Lundergan Grimes, who gave that chinless McConnell beast a bit of a scare, thought it better to run away from the many successes of the president and simply not answer the question posed to her: "Did you vote for President Obama?"  She SHOULD have said a resounding YES and then screamed out the differences, the wide differences, between a Democrat and a Republicon of this era.  She should have stood tall and proud that she is a Democrat instead of denying it and not answering the obvious.

After the president's rise to the presidency I thought all that hard work, all the freedom rides, all the marches against segregation, all the voter registration and Supreme Court decisions paid off and that all the bombings of black churches, all the racist killings, all the segregation and all of the strange fruit hanging from the Poplar Trees were made right.  I thought the wrongs of a nation were addressed and in the process made the arc of the universe, indeed, bend toward justice and not away from it.  I am not so sure anymore that the arc of justice has not retreated and bent the other way. My heart is broken and I weep.  I hope someday in my lifetime I will see a land that does not deliver "a bad check marked insufficient funds" as MLK said it had.

Race has been the albatross around the necks of our national historical experience from its beginning.  The president to me looks sad, he looks lonely and he waxes baffled by a Republicon Party that should have been relegated to the ash bin of our history a long time ago.  But it has not been relegated to the ash bin of our history.  In fact, the racist Republican Party of Harpies is stronger than at any other post Civil War time in our history.

I used to love Malcolm X's response when he was asked "Are you violent?"  He said no, he was not violent and that he was nonviolent BUT he was NOT nonviolent against people who were violent to him.  I am not advocating violence but I always could understand why Malcolm X said what he did.

US, China strike groundbreaking agreement

My question to this hopeful story is how will the Republicons ruin it? Keep electing them and see what catastrophes they bring.  Bush II the failure wasn't enough for the nation killing hundreds of thousand including thousands of Americans for a trumped up phony war based on lies.  Keep it going, sit back and enjoy the view IF we get out alive. 

AP: Josh Leder

US, China strike groundbreaking agreement

-- A groundbreaking agreement struck by the United States and China is putting the world's two worst polluters on a faster track to curbing the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming. With the clock ticking on a worldwide climate treaty, the two countries are seeking to put their troubled history as environmental adversaries behind them in hopes that other nations will be spurred to take equally aggressive action.

The U.S., a chief proponent of the prospective treaty, is setting an ambitious new goal to stop pumping as much carbon dioxide into the air. China, whose appetite for cheap energy has grown along with its burgeoning economy, agreed for the first time to a self-imposed deadline for when its emissions will top out.

The dual announcements from President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, unveiled Wednesday in Beijing, came as a shock to environmentalists who had pined for such action but suspected China's reluctance and Obama's weakened political standing might interfere. In Washington, Republicans were equally taken aback, accusing Obama of dumping an unrealistic obligation on the next president.

In fact, the deal had been hashed out behind the scenes for months. U.S. officials said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry floated the idea during a visit to China in February, and Obama followed up by writing Xi in the spring to suggest that the world's two largest economies join forces.

Obama pressed the issue again during a meeting with China's vice premier on the sidelines of a U.N. climate summit in September, and the two countries finally sealed the deal late Tuesday - just in time to announce it in grand fashion at the Great Hall of the People as Obama's trip to China was coning to an end.

"This is a major milestone in the U.S.-China relationship," Obama said, with Xi at his side. "It shows what's possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge."

Under the agreement, Obama set a goal to cut U.S. emissions between 26 and 28 percent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. Officials have said the U.S. is already on track to meet Obama's earlier goal to lower emissions 17 percent by 2020, and that the revised goal meant the U.S. would be cutting pollution roughly twice as fast during a five-year period starting in 2020.

China, whose emissions are growing as it builds new coal plants, set a target for its emissions to peak by about 2030 - earlier if possible - with the idea being that its emissions would then start falling. Although that goal still allows China to keep pumping more carbon dioxide for the next 16 years, it marked an unprecedented step for Beijing, which has been reluctant to be boxed in on climate by the global community.

"This is, in my view, the most important bilateral climate announcement ever," said David Sandalow, a former top environmental official at the White House and the Energy Department.

World leaders who have been pressing for a global climate treaty heralded the deal, with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging all other nations to follow Obama's and Xi's lead by announcing their own emissions targets by early next year. Former Vice President Al Gore, a prominent environmentalist, called the Chinese move "a signal of groundbreaking progress from the world's largest polluter."

Scientists have pointed to the budding climate treaty, intended to be finalized next year in Paris, as a final opportunity to get emissions in check before the worst effects of climate change become unavoidable. The goal is for each nation to pledge to cut emissions by a specific amount, although negotiators are still haggling over whether those contributions should be binding.

Developing nations like India and China have long balked at being on the hook for climate change as much as wealthy nations like the U.S. that have been polluting for much longer. But China analysts said Beijing's willingness to cap its future emissions and to put Xi front and center signaled a significant turnaround.

Yet it wasn't clear how either the U.S. or China would meet their goals, nor whether China's growing emissions until 2030 would negate any reductions in the U.S. And in Washington, Republicans were sure to launch a renewed effort to block Obama's plans out of concern they could overly burden U.S. businesses and taxpayers.

"This unrealistic plan that the president would dump on his successor would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is set to become the majority leader early next year.

For Obama, the fight against climate change has become a central facet of the legacy he hopes to leave. Facing negligible prospects for major legislative victories during his final two years, he has sought to bypass Congress by using regulations on power plants and vehicles to cut emissions, and his aides say his audacity on those fronts has boosted his credibility on the issue when he meets with world leaders.

In China, the smog-laden skies over its cities have become a source of embarrassment that the government has sought to obscure. Ahead of the economic summit that brought Obama and other leaders to Beijing, authorities shut down factories, banned wood fires and kept half the cars off the road.

There is HOPE: "In Germany, a Jewish community now thrives" by Mike Ross

There is hope!

In Germany, a Jewish community now thrives

By Mike Ross

 |  

TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images

A member of the World Jewish Congress lights a candle at the Gleis 17 (Track 17) memorial of the deportation of Jews from Berlin to concentration camps during World War II, in Berlin Sept. 16.

BERLIN Since first arriving in what would become Germany more than 1,800 years ago, Jews have searched for acceptance. No matter how desperate their attempts to demonstrate their standing as good German citizens — in some cases converting to Christianity, enlisting to fight in World War I, even trying to persuade their American counterparts to be less critical of the rising new leader Adolf Hitler — nothing brought them acceptance by their countrymen.

That, however, may be changing. Seventy years after the Holocaust, as anti-Semitism churns across Europe, the Jewish population on the continent is plummeting to record lows. New strands of hatred foment seemingly justified by the policies of Israel — a sovereign country thousands of miles away. And yet Germany has suddenly reemerged as a home for Jews.

Ask Cilly Kugelmann, the vice director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. Kugelmann is the daughter of two Polish Holocaust survivors who, as it is said, “grew up sitting on packed suitcases.” Today, she says she can’t think of anywhere else she’d rather live than Germany. “Germany is one of the safest places for Jews worldwide,” Kugelmann said.

In preparing to visit Germany for the first time, nothing was further from my own beliefs. In the place where my father’s family was slaughtered, I assumed that no Jew would ever again see Germany as their home. How could they?

After all, a walk down a narrow Berlin street takes one to where the city’s Jewish population was routinely rounded up to be sent to concentration camps — and to the windows of homes filled with complicit onlookers. Nazis used the familiar settings of a Jewish school and community center to lull their victims into a false sense of security, even though by then, many knew they were being sent to their deaths. German residents knew full well the fate of their Jewish neighbors — this street was commonly referred to as “Todes Straße” or “Death Street.”

After the war, the once thriving Jewish community of Berlin, which at its high point reached 180,000, was left with only 7,000. In East Berlin — the section controlled by the former Soviet Union — its population was down to several hundred and predicted to reach zero in a matter of years.

In the late 1960s my father returned to Germany to visit for the first time since being liberated by American soldiers. Despite the celebrated triumphs of Simon Wiesenthal the Nazi hunter, and the prosecutions that were the result of the Nuremberg trials, he found his homeland awash in Nazis, many of whom were back in positions of power in government. When an attempt was made to finally prosecute high-ranking Nazis residing in Germany, it failed miserably. Of 400 perpetrators who were prosecuted, 13 would be convicted, and only six would go to jail.

As the civil rights era drew to a close in the United States, a movement of German students, known as the 68ers, was just beginning. These young people demanded answers from their parents and grandparents.

It took the next generation to demand change. As the civil rights era drew to a close in the United States, a movement of German students, known as the 68ers, was just beginning. These young people demanded answers from their parents and grandparents — generations who started two world wars and were responsible for humankind’s greatest atrocities.

Teaching a new generation: A mother walked her son at the Berlin train station memorial where Jews were sent to their death.

Gradually, Germany began to confront its past. Public schools were required to teach about the Holocaust and make mandated visits to former concentration camps. Reparation payments were made to victims, and laws were enacted to make it a crime to deny the Holocaust or to display Nazi symbols. Immigration laws were finally liberalized to no longer require German blood as a precondition to becoming a citizen.

The Germany of today is a different place, particularly in Berlin, where 45,000 Jewish residents now live. Waves of immigrants have arrived every decade since the war ended. Most recently large numbers of young Israelis are moving here, attracted by arts, culture, and a more reasonable cost of living. Ironically they live quite peaceably in the same emerging neighborhoods as young Muslim emigres. And for the first time since the war, German-speaking rabbis are being trained in seminaries.

Two years ago, one of those rabbis, Daniel Alter, was viciously attacked in front of his 7-year-old daughter as he prepared for the Jewish High Holy Days. I asked him if he believes that Jews will ever be home in Germany. He answered by saying, “My suitcase is definitely unpacked, but I know where it is.”

Today the gilded dome of Berlin’s New Synagogue rises over the Spree River as a prominent landmark announcing that a Jewish community thrives. And it does. For now, it does.

Ugliness of anti-Semitism Marks Paris--the world's longest hatred!

The longest hatred never ends!  The article below by Mike Ross sent a chill down my spine!

Ugliness of anti-Semitism marks Paris

By Mike Ross

AFP/Getty Images

Marine Le Pen, president of the French far-right party National Front, poses beside a young girl dressed as Marianne, a personification of the French Republic, in northern France on Sept. 14.

PARIS — Paris is justly lauded as the most beautiful city in the world. Nowhere else is there a greater collection of talent across the spectrum of architecture, art, literature, food, and culture. But French society also has a nasty underbelly – of growing ugliness – that should give pause to those who live amid the sparkle of “The City of Light.” 
 

That ugliness is an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism since the Holocaust. It comes in the form of increasing violent attacks on Jewish people, the emerging popularity of a growing right-wing political party, and a perfect storm of converging ideologies that has distinguished France from its European counterparts.

Anti-Semitic incidents in France are up stratospherically, according to information provided by Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, the director of the American Jewish Committee in Paris. As recently as 1999 the number of recorded acts — ranging from graffiti to targeted arson and homicide — against Jews countrywide was, at just over 80, relatively small. Yet each of the last 15 years saw no fewer than 400 individual episodes. The methodology for reporting such incidents has remained precisely the same — only the volume of hatred has changed.

A Jewish cafe in Paris, now closed, signals a fading community.

In just the first seven months of 2014, there have already been some 600 anti-Semitic incidents. Rodan-Benzaquen expects a total of about 1,500 by the end of the year. In fact, of all the crimes classified by French authorities as racist against minorities, Jewish victims represent 50 percent — even though Jews account for less than 1 percent of the country’s population.

The seriousness of these attacks can’t be downplayed. People have lost their lives.

In 2006, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Paris. A similar incident followed two years later — both motivated by anti-Semitism. In 2012, Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old French citizen claiming ties to al Qaeda, killed four people — including three children, ages 3, 6, and 8 — in an attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse. And earlier this year, a young French jihadist murdered three people in a Jewish museum in nearby Brussels.

All the more worrying is that, alongside this increase in violence, France’s National Front — a nationalistic, anti-immigration political party with a history of Jewish hatred — has gained ground. The party is now led by Marine Le Pen, and while Le Pen is far more politically savvy than her father, who founded and ran the party as an avowed anti-Semite, her allegiances remain coy. She has failed to distance herself from commentators like Alain Soral who loudly castigate Jews, gays, and feminists as well as the “comedian” Dieudonné, whose hate of Jews comes complete with a reverse Nazi salute that he popularized called the “quenelle.”

Across France, National Front’s popularity is at its peak. The party this year received nearly 25 percent of the total vote in the election for European Parliament — more than any other political party.

And then there are the jihadists. No European country has had more recruits signing up with the Islamic State terrorist group than France, today estimated to be around 1000. Once radicalized and trained, the danger that they pose upon their return to the country is very real.

All of the threats, taken together, bring real fear to France’s Jewish community, presently the largest in Europe. One example: Until recently, it was commonplace for Jewish families to send their children to public school. Today those same schools have few if any Jewish students. Families are choosing Jewish and even Catholic schools instead.

Many Jews are leaving France altogether. The number of emigres to Israel alone so far has doubled in 2014 from last year to about 5,500.

Upon my return to the melting pot that is the United States, I couldn’t help but realize how lucky we all are. For all our problems — and there are many — there is something that works here to connect our disparate communities to a shared goal that seems absent in Europe. For all the sparkle of Paris, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

A Letter to my Fellow Democrat

A fellow Democrat in my locale wrote a lovely email to me about the 2014 election disaster.  I responded to her.

Yes, Elsa, people like you give me hope.  We need to do EXACTLY what Republicans WOULD do to us, hit them when there is proof below the belt.  We MUST turn hard even though Democrats are reticent at times to do that.  If someone is running for office and lies then it MUST be told over and over and over again especially by the Democrat who is running for office.

MSNBC I love especially Rachel and Larry O'Donnell BUT they are broadcasting to the choir.  Influential Democrats of whom we have many, too, MUST figure out a way to get these Republican bastards and pound the immoral things they do into the ground.  I am usually not like that and a forgiving person BUT politics just like Chris Christie said is NOT bean bag.  So let's give him and them a taste of NOT bean bag and pull on them what they Machiavellian pull on us.

Yes, I'm mad but I am scared even more than mad.  Sink or swim; live or die Republican way of governing kills a LOT of people and Republicans will be happy to see all of us die.  They do not care about any of us if they can fight health care which is working for soon 25 million more.  Health care, deny health care?  What would Jesus have said about that?  In their twisted way they could make a stupid case like they do about our vicious weather man made by the burning of fossil fuels and climate change induced.  No irrational religious myth will fix it only science can but Republicans are NOT about science just look at whom they put on the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee chair -- Oklahoma's Republican Senator Inhofe who just wrote a letter urging the EPA to withdraw its proposed new control requirements for petroleum refineries.  These are the brainless wonders with whom we must "get along."

The goal is to get that part of their base to see what Democrats say applies to them when they are not the 1%.  Somehow they just don't get it if they can elect by a wide margin those who created the rancid obstructionist Congress in the first place. It makes NO sense.  Republicans are NOT the ones to fix anything.  They will let government die on the vine and us with it while their corporate cronies who fund their campaigns and who McConnell and Boehner have fought for all their political lives reap billions more. Those 2/3rds of us who did not vote must see their own lives and their children's lives at stake and carted out to vote.

You and others who are young fight like hell as you say.  YOU and people like you are our biggest hope!

Best and with love to all my fellow local Democrats and in particular to Elsa my biggest supporter and positive reinforcement for the words I write!  

"Olive Kittridge" -- A Must See

I attach below a link to the review from the Boston Globe by Matthew Gilbert of "Olive Kittridge."  He loved this film series on HBO as much as I did and describes its essence well.

For me, there have been few film series that approach this film's excellence. It is one of the most uniquely cast and expertly played works of art I have experienced. The performances were staggeringly riveting. Frances McDormand was made for this role and the rest of her supporting cast were magnificent. I did not want it to end and I surely will not describe the minutiae of it for fear I would give away its plot.

Brava to Frances McDormand acting in and producing a film made for her and Bravo to Richard Jenkins, with whom I fell in love. Three cheers to all the other actors who made this film series great.

This series brings the complexities of living to the screen. Life, as Olive says, confounds her as it does me sometimes as well. I'll bet most of us in our small worlds can say that too as life does not always live up to one's expectations of it and we are often trapped by those who first came into our lives through no fault of our own and visited upon us eternal nightmares from which we cannot escape. There were in this film wonderful performances all around. See it. It is a must.

Here or below

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2014/10/30/olive-kitteridge-ordinary-life-extraordinarily-rendered/3isbC6uUO8Suhetzk65pNJ/story.html

In a Nutshell -- The Dance of Division

The base of the Democratic Party eschewing the president should NEVER EVER have abandoned him. No one should have walked away from him. His achievements have been many and some even wonderful in view of how intractable and insulting the opposition anti-patriot Republican Party was/is to him.

I am utterly devastated by what happened on Tuesday, 2014 because this is serious. Koch Brothers and other billionaire money control it all.Yes, my mind is consumed with things political. I try not to worry about it but there it is it's there and I cannot pretend to be someone I'm not. It's important very important because I do not have the billionaire money nor the type of morality it takes to think it doesn't matter. It does matter for people like I, so many others, and I would aver, for people like you too.

It is the money, of course, the base abandonment of the president, and an electorate who simply do not understand that the Republicans are the ones who brought us to the dance of division but they gave these Republican hijackers a significant 2014 victory anyway.

Red governors for the most part held onto their seats and I could give many examples like LePage, a total fascist blowhard, of Maine who is one. This is how entrenched they are as I am sure he got Koch brother money and other billionaire money, too, coupled with RNC money and, of course, dark money hidden from view. The Republican scheme goes on and on and on even in states which are in the economic red because of Republican governors but they re-elected these beasts anyway. The media too is corporately tied. They have it all even mayoralities, state houses, school boards, universities and many other lesser offices.

Worse than that, if it can be worse, are the courts: What happened in Kentucky with gay marriage? A federal court just said Kentucky along with other states like Michigan and Ohio can, if they want, make it illegal. So what does that mean? It means it will go to SCOTUS which will side with that court, I betcha, on 10th Amendment grounds that states can do anything the Constitution does not permit and the Constitution says nothing about marriage, naturally. There goes over 30 states that have it now which, in the near future, may not if the court decides, as it often does now, in civil rights cases against the aggrieved minority. States righters loved that argument for slavery and we fought a Civil War over it killing 600,000 that's how racist this nation is. SCOTUS already eradicated things achieved by the 1965 Civil Rights Act. They decimated the important part of it saying the nation is not racist anymore doncha know. Yeah right tell that to the voters who had to endure voter suppression last Tuesday and not vote because of it.

There you have it in a nutshell.  These unfeeling Republican and Tea Bag Cretans want to dismantle the federal government brick by hard won brick and leave the people defenseless against the climate change storms certain to come.  Lucky are those whose position in life means they do not have to worry about any of it but I, personally, do and I bet so do you!

ONWARD? I HOPE SO!

The Headline. Attention Must Be Paid

This is the Huffington Post headline today (scroll below my opinion and feast your eyes.) It reminded me of the German WWII promise of a Thousand Year Reich.  The content of these extremist know nothings' philosophy is nearly just as bad as any we have known.  They simply put on a more polished face from the tea bags that hung on their hats in 2010, waving their "Do Not Tread On Me" signs with loaded guns in tote to young clean faces who represent them looking better, younger, less crazy and have a person of color (not many) sprinkled in for effect.  In reality these Republicans are worse than any conservative Congress we have ever known ... MUCH worse and they are 87% white!

Unlike the 1000 year the Hitlerian Reich which lasted short of a dozen years these extremist Tea Bag groups actually might last a hundred years or more UNLESS progressives, Democrats, Independents and other humanitarian leaning persons and groups get their act together and fight like hell.  Then do what you must to VOTE! 2/3rds of voters sat this one out -- shameful!

Fight the gargantuan corporate money which controls EVERYTHING -- the Congress, the courts, the media, the print media, the state houses, governors galore, local mayors, town councils, school boards, even colleges and, perhaps, soon, the Internet.  But they want the icing on the political cake -- the presidency.  In other words, these callous oligarchic 1% inhumane heaps of Orwellian uncaring humanity control most of it but want it all.  They and their Republican side car lackeys of hate do not give a damn about you!

How did this happen?  Easy answer:  MONEY and gobs of it made simple by the US Supreme Court Republican extremist five granting corporations unlimited cash access to power though its noxious Citizen's United decision. 

This mid term election rang up a total spent of about 4.7 BILLION yes, with a "B" bucks 2.7 BILLION of which was spent on the media onslaught.  This is the highest total ever spent on a mid-term election.  And it's often contributed in secret with dark money the donors of which you cannot see.  Even a foreign country can contribute if it wants.

Add to this toxic mix the gerrymandering of districts, the SUPPRESSION of the minority and other votes that usually go to Democrats plus people who pay no attention to politics or the history of it and worse do not vote and presto a right wing nationalist extremist party of hate and indifference to human suffering is born.

It cannot take place without you -- the 98%.  Attention must be paid!!  Here is the headline:

'100 YEAR MAJORITY

House GOP On Track For Largest Delegation Since Truman Administration... Even A Disgraced Incumbent Rep. Comes Out A Winner... 87% White Men... New Crop Of Right-Leaning Firebrands... Rough Road Ahead For Obama... White House Aide: GOP 'Crazies' Will Prevent Any Collaboration...

The Morning After by Tom Degan

The Morning After

On Sunday evening the American people set their clocks back one hour. Last evening they set them back two centuries. Ain't politics oodles of fun?

Rick Scott - reelected

I was tempted to call this piece "Stupid Fucking Americans", then thought better of the idea. The sad truth of the matter is that I know quite a few people - a heck of a lot smarter than I - who voted the straight GOP line yesterday. While it would be grossly inaccurate for me to imply that all Republicans are idiots, it is beyond dispute that most idiots are Republicans. You don't believe that? I'll tell you what: The next time someone in your general proximity says something rib-ticklingly stupid, ask him or her what political party they're registered with. Get back to me. 

No, in many cases it has a lot less to do with stupidity and a whole lot to do with a deplorable lack of information. If the electorate had so-much-as a remedial knowledge of American history, they wouldn't be casting their lots with that disgusting party. Consider these unconscionable facts: There were more Republicans elected yesterday than any Election Day since 1946. Come January, there will be more Republican representatives in Washington than at any time since 1928! Is that a kicker or what?

Early in the evening when the trending was pitifully obvious, I had a couple of very strong drinks and went to bed. What would be the use of waiting up to view the political carnage? When I woke up at 2:30 and got the official word from broadcast news, I went outside for a smoke. Noticing the little flag that I fly to the left of my doorway, I quietly and unceremoniously took it down. Even at that late hour, in the dark of night, I was a embarrassed having it there. I'm not kidding.

There were pockets of good news here and there. My representative, Sean Maloney, barely squeaked by in a close race against former congresswoman and Tea Party robot, Nan Hayworth. As of this hour poor old Nan has yet to concede. She wants to wait until all of the absentee ballots are counted. Fine, let her wait. But other than that and a handful of other little oases in the national desert, most of the news this morning was devastatingly bad. One Republican congressman - under felony indictment - was able to keep his seat. What does that tell you?

Hideous Mitch

Most depressing of all was in my ancestral homeland, Kentucky. I've written before how proud-as-freaking-peacock I was to be connected with the place. Those days are over. A people moronic enough to send a corrupt, hideous gasbag like Mitch McConnell back to Washington as their representative deserve everything that happens to them. For thirty years Mitch has been nothing more than a handmaiden to corporate wealth and plutocratic greed. You would think - you would hope and pray - that his utterly clueless constituency would have caught on by now, wouldn't you? They haven't. It really is kinda funny when you think about it - a dark comedy.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over what transpired yesterday. In fact, I have been handed - on a silver platter - at least two years worth of dynamite material - possibly as many as six years! I'll be fine. As I've mentioned too many times to count, for people who blog about politics and politicians, these extremist freaks are the gift that won't stop giving. There is most definitely a silver lining behind this horrifically dark cloud. To tell you the awful truth, I can't believe my luck.

Hunter

"There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment."

-Hunter Thompson

It sure is sad. Any possibility of Barack Obama having a successful administration went into the toilet evening last. My prediction of a Democratic victory in two years are now "inoperative" (as Nixon's press secretary would have said). Between January and the election of 2016 you can count on them passing more-and-more restrictive voter suppression laws that will seal their power for possibly decades. Kiss this country goodbye....and get used to living in a nation in ruins.

Mah! Mah! The ol' plantation sho' has changed!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

The Sun

America gets the government for which it votes and then deserves.  Thank God for the blue Houses of the Massachusetts delegation with sterling senators and representatives and thank God for the President.  One hopes it is a veto proof Congress which I think it is.

Some good things occurred last night if one is a strong Democrat:  The concession speech of the charlatan carpetbagger Brown was ear music, the all blue Congress especially Seth Moulton in the Congressional 6th District whom I adore makes my love for Massachusetts stronger.  Watch Representative-elect Seth Moulton and help keep him in office. He is brilliant, his military record is spotless with two medals of valor, he is humble, and his Harvard academic record is excellent.  For the cameras (excuse the looksist comment) he is handsome!  He has it all and I call him Kennedyesque except he does not have the personal destructive baggage so many Kennedys had.

Two other good things: Republican governor Corbett of Pennsylvania was unseated and Mark Warner won the Senate in Virginia.  I am sure there are some more good things but I cannot think of them and, clearly, the bad at this moment with a 7 seat pickup by Republicans in the Senate and an increase of 12 Republican seats from 2010 in the House prevails.

A quote from NECN:

A majority of Americans who took to the ballot box Tuesday disapprove of Congress and of President Barack Obama, an initial wave of national exit polling suggests. Exit polls showed 54 percent of voters disapprove of Obama, while 44 percent approve. A whopping 79 percent of voters say they disapprove of the job Congress is doing, with just 19 percent saying they "somewhat" or "strongly" approve of the job performance of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Just 31 percent of voters say they believe the nation is headed in the right direction, versus 65 percent who say the country is on the wrong track.

How voters can disapprove of Congress so thoroughly and then elect more of those responsible for its obstruction and impotence I will never on planet earth know.  I can only conclude that the American memory is shorter than I ever before thought and its understanding of national history is perilously flawed.

Michael Moore in his documentary “Bowling for Columbine” tried to assess the difference in levels of violence between Canada and the US when Canadians possess just as many guns but the US death rate from them reaches the heights of Everest.  In his documentary "Sicko" Canadian single payer health care is reality.  His conclusion, I think, in part, was that Canadians have the feeling that government cares and its people care about each other.  They care whether one lives or dies, that it is not a sink or swim nation and in times of national peril they will unite.  Its neighbor to the south, us, has an Ayn Randian spirit of selfishness that courses through our body politic–almost tribal isolationist in nature.  It makes for a very violent, lonely and insecure nation where each of us plays a survival-of-the-fittest game and military might takes the place of social safety nets to protect us as there is little else that will.

Howard Zinn said change comes from the bottom up and Noam Chomsky asked me if there is an alternative to action.  No, I suppose there is not and the Nirvana election of 2008 showed good through people power can happen here.

We keep on going, play the ball where it lies and know there are decent people who, in our nation, care. As Little Orphan Annie the musical said: "The sun will come out tomorrow."  It has come out before in times of great national peril and we simply hope it will again but as President Kennedy said “God's work must truly be our own!”

Rigged

The predictions are dire right down to Brown the carpetbagger who is not even from New Hampshire winning and Shaheen who is such a good candidate and a native NH person losing and Baker with his fake crying winning. If a dem did what he did they would be blown out of the water.

It is why I think the whole goddamn thing is bought, rigged and we don't have a chance....it cannot be possible that an electorate which does not like the intractable congress and it's obstructionist division would think it a good idea to elect the gd party that is responsible for the obstruction. It's the Party that shut down the government for Christ's sake. It would be like a person having an obstructed intestine blocked by a rock and so to unobstructed it the surgeon puts more rocks in.

I am an inconsolable person. I just cannot stand the injustice that billionaires control it all and fix elections. They got more personable candidates than Sharon Engel in say Jodi Ernst who LOOKS better but is selling the same poison times 10. These Republicrats are utterly right wing extremist on the political scale next to fascist. They are wolves dressed in the proverbial sheep's clothing -- a Trojan Horse!

As to foreign policy where Obama lost his base let's hold Bush's feet to the fire and indict him. If Obama did what he did conduct a phoney war killing hundreds of thousands and destabilizing the entire Middle East he would have been impeached in a heart beat.

It's got to be that it is fixed the whole goddamn thing is rigged. It's got to be no one who is in th 98% could think Republicans give a shit about them. I am speechless for the first time in my life.

ONE MORE TIME -- BIG!

If you want to keep Social Security, Medicare, Healthcare and so many other vital social programs INCLUDING action on climate change and if you do not want ad nauseam waste of time and money investigations by Republicans and a possible impeachment of the President then you MUST vote DEMOCRAT ACROSS THE LAND AND GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE!

SEND THIS TO ANYONE YOU CHOOSE.

My Migraines

I am prone to migraine headaches that make me very ill.  Sometimes politics gives me one.  I had one at work, I remember, in 2000 as Bush was poised to take the presidency.  It made me sick.

Yesterday, while at Coakley campaign headquarters awaiting her appearance, I was asking a politico why Democrats do not pounce on Republicans when they are so (forgive the newly created word) pounceable.  He said because Democrats do not do that.  I felt my blood pressure soar and anger fill my veins and guess who that hurt?  Well, it did NOT hurt Charlie Baker.  It hurt me.  After 2 years of being migraine free I had one and never did get to see the, I HOPE, next governor of Massachusetts, Martha Coakley.

I am vowing this election cycle will not make me sick again.  I cannot do that to myself because no one is getting any younger and some point, I could make myself very ill. 

My final opinion until after the Tuesday possible Republican Senate take over will, I hope, show you what the President has done for us and what a Republican control of the Senate and the House will mean.

There is a lot to lose if Democrats do not win and if you do not mind losing every social safety net, every scientific advancement forged by a government agency and every help that our government has given to sustain all of us then you will love a Republican win.  The truth is WE ALL HAVE A LOT TO LOSE IF DEMOCRATS LOSE ON NOVEMBER 4, 2014. If you do not think so here is a lot-to-lose list I have drawn up:

The President with the Democrats has:

·        Expanded health care coverage for millions;      

·        The President and Democrats have pulled the country out of the Great Recession and reduced the deficit; 

·        They have reduced unemployment to 4.9% from a Republican induced high of nearly 10.0%;

·        The Democrats and the President have Repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell;

·        The Democrats and the President have passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act for women;

·        The Democrats and the President support a woman’s freedom to her own healthcare and birth control;

·        The Democrats and the President have repealed DOMA

·        The president has tried to end two wars;

·        The president has captured and killed Bin Laden

·        The President has taken nearly 30 Executive Actions favoring prevention of gun violence;

·        The President and the Democrats have supported a huge boost to Science, Technology & Engineering;

·        The President has taken landmark action on environmental protection and climate change;

·        The President has nominated and the Senate confirmed two women and progressives to the Supreme Court;

·        The President WANTS the “Dream Act” to pass and for the undocumented to have a path to citizenship;

·       Hispanics should know if the President could get a Congress with which he could work instead of Congressional Republicans obstructing everything against him, he would do MORE for immigrants and the children of them who have come to this nation and made a life. The Dream Act would pass!

The president did all of this DESPITE the obstructionist Republicans in the Senate & the House by their heinous agreement with each other, before the President ever took the oath of office, to block him to make his presidency fail.

Here is what Republicans have done: 

Shut down the government, threatened to not pay the nation’s bills which would have sent the nation and the world into convulsions and, finally, voted to sue President Obama over healthcare.

How much more evidence does one need to know TO ENSURE THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE BY GETTING OUT TO VOTE DEMOCRATIC BOTH HERE AND ACROSS THE NATION?

If Republican lies on Obamacare win it all for the Republicans and if the Koch Brothers with other bottomless money pits wrest control of the entire country for them and if Republicans take it all and you do not mind losing your rights to an endurable life making the 1% richer and the 98% poorer then pay no attention to the 2014 election and simply let Republicans win. 

Here is what Republicans will do to you if they win:

Eradication of the Affordable Care Act which is bringing health insurance to those who had none and saving lives Republicans do not care to save;

Privatization of Social Security, begun by FDR and a program most love;

They will deform Medicare with vouchers—kiss your life saving health care goodbye;

The eradication of Medicaid;

Private Enterprise rights over civil rights—they want each state to decide if they want to discriminate even if it means not serving minorities at a lunch counter or restaurant with the ultimate elimination of the 1965 Civil Rights Act;

The reversal of Roe v. Wade eliminating a woman’s right to choose her own family planning and medical fate relegating them to the back alley butchers of yesteryear that killed thousands and reduced women sometimes even to sterility;

Returning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy to the military so gays must live in fear of Putin-like policy and, yes, even elimination from society at large by imprisonment;

Codifying Constitutionally-based discrimination;

Re-instituting the Defense of Marriage Act;

Capturing the judiciary with extremist right wing judges;

Promoting a culture of guns even for 5 year olds and even in our schools;

Ad infinitum eternal war and a bloated military budget;

Relegating women to second class pay status;

Eradicating unions that protect workers;

More tax cuts for the rich which will NEVER trickle down to you;

Deregulating the economy-crushing Wall Street and returning business to a pre Great Depression and Great Recession status;

Never passing a minimum wage;

Eradicating unemployment benefits;

Denying science, climate change and the catastrophes we already have suffered from man-induced global climate change including severe drought, severe storms, tornadoes, floods, fire, ice and snow;

Denying the fact of evolution so that new biological discoveries which will save lives will not happen; teaching the mythological creationism as fact-based non science;

Severe cuts to the NIH eliminating government’s disease fighting and disease tracking efforts;

Diminishing regulatory agencies like the EPA;

Eliminating mental health government-sponsored studies;

Proliferating dirty oil and fracking that have polluted so much of the nation and setting it literally on fire;

De-emphasizing alternative clean energy;

Negligence in repairing Infrastructure that has decayed all over the nation.

Our nation, if Republicans are given total power, will end programs that have helped sustain it over decades even centuries.  They have done so in states where Republicans reign.

We MUST work hard to tell the Koch Brothers and their ilk that they CANNOT buy America.  We must work HARD to elect, contribute to and advocate for Democrats everywhere.  MOST OF ALL GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE in every state and for each branch of Congress in 2014 and beyond!

OF COURSE SEND THIS TO ANYONE YOU CHOOSE.

ONWARD!