tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15381105271313492792024-03-13T18:49:11.549-07:00Patriot's QuillPatriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.comBlogger588125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-13051850135166877082020-04-09T11:58:00.001-07:002020-04-09T12:00:42.935-07:00No One Could Have Seen This Coming<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;">No One Could Have Seen This Coming</span></h2>
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So here's an angle that I haven't seen posted anywhere (you read it here first). One of Trump's favorite talking points these days as he seeks to deflect blame for is ill-preparedness in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic (when he's not blaming President Obama or the WHO) is that no one could have seen the coronavirus pandemic coming. The Washington Post, among others, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/19/trump-keeps-saying-nobody-could-have-foreseen-coronavirus-we-keep-finding-out-about-new-warning-signs/">has examined this claim</a> and found it to be lacking.<br />
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We know, for instance, that in 2018 Trump and his team <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-trump-closed/2020/03/13/a70de09c-6491-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html">dismantled the Global Pandemic Office</a> of the National Security Council. We also know that in early 2017, before Trump was sworn into office, Obama administration officials <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-appointees-trained-pandemic-response-in-2016-2020-3">briefed a group of restive, incoming Trump</a> cabinet members on how to respond to a global pandemic.<br />
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But one thing few people have noted is that in addition to all that the year 2017, the very year that Trump took office, was notable because that flu season was the worst, in terms of the number of fatalities, that the US had experience in over 4 decades. At the time <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/">the <i>Associated Press</i> reported</a>:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Last fall and winter, the U.S. went through one of the most severe flu seasons in recent memory. It was driven by a kind of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths, particularly among young children and the elderly....<br />
Fatal complications from the flu can include pneumonia, stroke and heart attack.<br />
CDC officials called the 80,000 figure preliminary, and it may be slightly revised. But they said it is not expected to go down.<br />
It eclipses the estimates for every flu season going back to the winter of 1976-1977. Estimates for many earlier seasons were not readily available.<br />
Last winter was not the worst flu season on record, however. The 1918 flu pandemic, which lasted nearly two years, killed more than 500,000 Americans, historians estimate.</blockquote>
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So not only was the Trump administration handed a bureaucracy, tools and playbooks to deal with a global pandemic like the one we are now experiencing (which they either dismantled or ignored) but Trump's first year in office saw the worst flu season in 40 years. A particularly virulent flu strain triggered over 80,000 deaths in the US. Yet even that wasn't enough to shake Team trump out of their deep slumber and cause them to consider that maybe we ought to be a little better prepared for when the "big one" comes.Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-25238643106931671622020-04-04T03:55:00.001-07:002020-04-04T03:57:21.403-07:00Another Trump Administration Failure<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;">Another Trump Administration Failure</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One of the biggest lies that Trump keeps repeating is that he "inherited a broken system" for dealing with pandemics. Yet every day we find out about another Obama administration pandemic mitigation initiative that the Trump administration either dismantled or failed to implement. Today the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/federal-government-spent-millions-to-ramp-up-mask-readiness-but-that-isnt-helping-now/2020/04/03/d62dda5c-74fa-11ea-a9bd-9f8b593300d0_story.html#comments-wrapper"><i>Washington Pos</i>t reports</a> that following the H1N1 swine-flu virus, the Obama Administration put in place an initiative to speed the production of N95 protective gear. A completed proposal was presented to the Trump administration in 2018, and then was promptly shelved:</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In September 2018, the Trump administration received detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The plans, submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by medical manufacturer O&M Halyard, were the culmination of a venture unveiled almost three years earlier by the Obama administration.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But HHS did not proceed with making the machine.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The project was one of two N95 mask ventures — totaling $9.8 million — that the federal government embarked on over the past five years to better prepare for pandemics.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The other involves the development of reusable masks to replace the single-use variety currently so scarce that medical professionals are using theirs over and over. Expert panels have advised the government for at least 14 years that reusable masks were vital.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That effort, like the quick mask machine, has not led to a single new mask for the government’s response.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet he takes no responsibility.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-21592744782266601202020-04-02T10:31:00.001-07:002020-04-02T10:33:28.281-07:00The Impeachment lie<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;">The Impeachment Lie:</span></h2>
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The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-white-house-projects-up-to-240000-coronavirus-deaths-in-us-even-with-mitigation-efforts/2020/03/31/62df5344-7367-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html">reports</a>:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that Trump’s impeachment distracted the administration’s attention from the emerging crisis, seeming to lay blame on the congressional Democrats who led the effort. </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">In fact, Trump was so distracted by impeachment he was only able to hold the following political rallies during that time period:</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Jan 9 - Toledo Ohio</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Jan 14 - Milwaukee, Wisconsin</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Jan 28 - Wildwood, NJ</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Jan 30 - Des Moines, Iowa</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Feb 10 - Manchester, New Hampshire</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Feb 19 - Phoenix, AZ</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Feb 20 - Colorado Springs, Co</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Feb 21 - Las Vegas, Nevada</span><br style="color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Feb 28 - Charleston, SC</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Yeah... that's a man who's so distracted by impeachment he doesn't have time to focus on a deadly disease that's right at the nation's doorstep. </span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I mean, the list of events reads like a Rolling Stones concert schedule... you know... if the Rolling Stones were some crappy, no talent, White Power Death Metal band</span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "franklinitcprolight" , "helveticaneue" , "helvetica neue light" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">.</span>Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-8502023755286290462020-04-02T10:14:00.004-07:002020-04-02T10:20:18.499-07:00<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;">Dumber even than Donald Trump?</span></h2>
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Perhaps, if you are Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/02/georgia-gov-brian-kemp-who-resisted-strict-coronavirus-measures-says-he-just-learned-it-transmitted-asymptomatically/">reports</a>:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
After resisting a statewide stay-at-home order for days, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) succumbed to the pressure and issued one on Wednesday. Part of the reason, he said, was that he had just learned some new information.<br />Kemp said he was “finding out that this virus is now transmitting before people see signs.”<br />“Those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad, but we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours,” he said. He added that the state’s top doctor told him that “this is a game-changer.”</blockquote>
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So, yeah. Kemp just learned something that the news, the CDC and the WHO have been warning us for <b><i>months</i></b>.</div>
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Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-39856192581184593712020-04-02T07:08:00.001-07:002020-04-02T07:14:15.573-07:00Time to start blogging again...<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: white;">
These are the worst of times,</span></span><span style="color: blue;"><br />and we're being led <br />by the worst of men. <br /><br />Case in point</span><span style="background-color: white;">:</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "franklinitcprobold" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif "important";"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><b>“</b></i></span><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #293340; font-family: "source sans pro" , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "oxygen" , "ubuntu" , "cantarell" , "fira sans" , "droid sans" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #293340; font-family: "source sans pro" , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "oxygen" , "ubuntu" , "cantarell" , "fira sans" , "droid sans" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;">Wait. No, I don’t want [the states] to compete because all they’re going to do is drive up the price. I don’t want them to compete. They should be calling us. And we can work it so they get the ventilators and they get shipped directly.</span><span style="font-family: "franklinitcprobold" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif "important";"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #293340; font-family: "source sans pro" , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "oxygen" , "ubuntu" , "cantarell" , "fira sans" , "droid sans" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;">If they’re competing, if they’re calling — even if there’s only two of them calling, they’re going to just drive up the price. Because as nice as some of the people that do ventilators, they do want to make money. Okay?</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "franklinitcprobold" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif "important";"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><b>”</b></i></span><br />
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-<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-15/">Donald Trump on March 31, 2020</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "franklinitcprobold" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif "important";"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><b>“</b></i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #293340; font-family: "source sans pro" , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "oxygen" , "ubuntu" , "cantarell" , "fira sans" , "droid sans" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><b><i>First of all, governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work, and they are doing a lot of this work. The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk. The governors are supposed to be — as with testing, the governors are supposed — are supposed to be doing it</i></b>.</span><span style="font-family: "franklinitcprobold" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif "important";"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><b>”</b></i></span><br />
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-<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-6/">Donald Trump on March 18, 2020</a></div>
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Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-52615928177284838082016-03-06T06:41:00.002-08:002020-04-02T07:08:56.268-07:00On Taking Responsibility<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pt0WzJ-Xe-o/VtwWSslEjGI/AAAAAAAAAqc/snjAdMriqpM/s1600/Truman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pt0WzJ-Xe-o/VtwWSslEjGI/AAAAAAAAAqc/snjAdMriqpM/s320/Truman.jpg" /></a></div>
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Flipping through the digital pages of the online edition of the <i>Washington Post</i> the other day, I chanced upon a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/05/clintons-claim-that-flint-was-poisoned-because-the-gop-governor-wanted-to-save-a-little-money/">"Fact Checker" piece</a> that examined accusations of complicity of the Michigan Governor's office in the poisoning of the water supply that feeds the city of Flint. It's not much of a surprise to see such a piece, after all the incident is much in the news these days and being that this is the political season the trading of accusations of malfeasance, corruption and incompetence, always a popular subject of conversation in political circles, is, if anything, amplified in both frequency and volume of late.</div>
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This piece looked in particular at the charge leveled by Hillary Clinton that the tainting of the water supply in the aforementioned Michigan town was a result of the governor "wanting to save a little money." Ultimately the charge was awarded a score "two Pinocchios" out of a possible four, meaning, I suppose, that the glass is either half full for the claim, or half empty, depending on what side of the political spectrum your allegiances happen to reside.</div>
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But aside from the accusations and counter-accusations, the damning and the mitigating evidence, the punches laded and the punches blocked, what struck me as most curious about the piece was the juxtaposition of the following two statements. </div>
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The first, early in the piece, is a nutshell summary of the Fact Checker's findings:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
"There are signs pointing to decisions possibly being made in the governor’s office, but a direct link to the governor himself is hard to find."</blockquote>
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The second, is taken from a statement read by Ari Adler, Governor Rick Snyder's communications director:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
"Gov. Snyder has apologized, taken responsibility for what happened and has begun a top to bottom culture change in Michigan state government,”</blockquote>
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Harry Truman, 33rd President of the United States, famously kept a sign on his desk at the Oval Office that read "<a href="http://www.trumanlibrary.org/buckstop.htm">The Buck Stops Here</a>." It was meant to reassure voters and the public that in his administration there would be no shirking of responsibility, no "passing of the buck" as it were. The failures of the administration would be acknowledged as failures of the President himself. The phrase is as iconic to and colors popular perceptions of the Truman administration as the legend of the cherry tree informs popular views of George Washington and his upright moral fiber. It has also become a kind of litmus test of an administration's trustworthiness and willingness to claim responsibility for its failures. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/George_W._Bush:_Hurricane_Katrina">The following exchange</a> delivered by George W. Bush press secretary Scott McClellan in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina fiasco is just one such example of the many we could produce:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both;">
<b>Q</b> ... First, just to get you on the record, where does the buck stop in this administration?<br /><b>MR. McCLELLAN</b>: The President.<br /><b>Q</b> All right. So he will be held accountable as the head of the government for the federal response that he's already acknowledged was inadequate and unacceptable?<br /><b>MR. McCLELLAN</b>: The President's most important responsibility is the safety and security of the American people. He talks about that often. That is his most important responsibility. ..."</blockquote>
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George W. Bush paid an enormous political price for the Federal Government's bungling of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, perhaps no further proof is needed than the various attempts that Republicans have made over the years to label some incident or other "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/07/11/which-of-these-tk-things-was-the-most-obamas-katrinas-moment/">Obama's Katrina</a>." But the truth is, that President Bush didn't pay that price because he accepted responsibility for Katrina, but rather because the aid effort his administration undertook was so woefully inadequate to the task and his <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1230-01.htm">initial response to the disaster so inadequate</a> that any attempt to deflect responsibility would have been met with disdainful laughter by all but the most sycophantic of supporters.</div>
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Indeed, there's a good case to be made that the formal acceptance of responsibility is more often an attempt deflect actual responsibility than embrace it, as when, for instance, John Pointdexter echoed Harry Truman's famous phrase in an attempt to <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-07-17/news/8702220389_1_john-poindexter-first-arms-shipment-buck">shield Ronald Reagan</a> from responsibility for the Iran/Contra scandal.</div>
Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-70531700886326851912016-02-16T11:18:00.003-08:002016-02-16T11:24:10.015-08:00July Forecast: Storm Clouds Over Cleveland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A pair of articles are worth considering side by side today. The first comes via Politico and deals with the likelyhood that the GOP nomination race will reach its climax in <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/brokered-republican-convention-cleveland-219306">a brokered convention</a>:<br />
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Republicans are waging a shadow primary for control of delegates in anticipation of what one senior party official called “the white whale of politics”: a contested national convention.<br />
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The endgame for the most sophisticated campaigns is an inconclusive first ballot leading to a free-for-all power struggle on the floor in Cleveland.<br />
“This is going to be a convention like I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” said veteran operative Barry Bennett, who managed Ben Carson’s campaign until December and is now advising Trump. “It’s going to be contentious from Day One.</blockquote>
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The rules of the GOP convention require a candidate to carry a majority of delegates coming in to the convention to win the thing outright. Failing that, it becomes a high-stakes game of horse trading as leading candidates attempt to convince delegates to switch to their side. And given that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz seem in this thing for the long-haul, and that at least one establishment candidate (Rubio? Kasich?) is bound to tag along, there's a very good chance this race comes down to the wire.<br />
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Which leads to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/11020370/donald-trump-3rd-party">the second article</a>, this time via Vox, where Jeff Stein notes that twice in as many days, Donald Trump has threatened to mount an independent campaign for the presidency if he feels that the party has slighted him:<br />
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In September 2015, Trump signed a pledge not to launch an independent bid for president if he lost the GOP primary. There was a catch: He added an exception to the pledge that made it invalid if the Republicans mistreated him — "a loophole so enormous it could mean anything Trump wants," as New York magazine's Jonathan Chait pointed out.
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Trump affirmed his willingness to exploit that crater-size exception during a town hall in South Carolina on Monday, in which he criticized the GOP for allegedly packing the last Republican debate audience with Trump opponents.
<br><br>
"The RNC better get its act together because, you know, I signed a pledge. The pledge isn’t being honored by the RNC," Trump said, according to ABC News. "I signed a pledge, but it’s a double-edged pledge. As far as I’m concerned, they’re in default on their pledge."</blockquote>
The pressing question now is this: if Donald Trump heads into the GOP convention holding a plurality of delegates, but loses to Cruz, Rubio or Kasich through bartering and back-room deals, what comes next? Does Trump swallow his pride, shake hands with the other men in the room, congratulate them on a race well run and then go home? Or does he stage a press conference, point an accusatory finger at the RNC and announce that he will make good on his pledge to run as an independent as a result of what he decrees as the Republican Party's failure to abide by its pledge to treat him fairly?<br />
<br />
Stay tuned...Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-63716416887409023572016-02-09T04:37:00.000-08:002016-02-09T04:37:49.935-08:00You May Have Already Won!!!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uoD02fL2_Mw/VrnbXb3iIkI/AAAAAAAAApE/E5eoh_lHMb0/s1600/FreeMoney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uoD02fL2_Mw/VrnbXb3iIkI/AAAAAAAAApE/E5eoh_lHMb0/s400/FreeMoney.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Looks like Ted Cruz is targeting the "keep the government's hands off my Medicare crowd" with his latest mailer which promises free money from the government. The <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-mailer-2016-election_us_56b7fa37e4b08069c7a7c48c">Huffington Post reports</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is out with a deceptive new mailer that masquerades as official government business and promises people there's a "check enclosed" when it's actually asking for money instead.
A New Jersey resident sent The Huffington Post the latest piece of mail he received from Cruz's campaign. The envelope appears to have come from Cruz's Senate office and has his name printed the same way it often is for Senate business. In small type the mailer clarifies that it is for "personal" matters and was not sent at taxpayers' expense. It also promises a check.</blockquote>
And here's an image of the mailer:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6714kXzMsWk/VrncUp6jw8I/AAAAAAAAApM/gf_wS637FZ0/s1600/checkenclosed.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6714kXzMsWk/VrncUp6jw8I/AAAAAAAAApM/gf_wS637FZ0/s400/checkenclosed.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I wonder if he'll find a way to <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/2016/02/cnn-responds-cruz-fabrications-ted-cruz">blame CNN</a> for this one, too...Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-43455605944065868852016-01-28T20:27:00.000-08:002016-01-29T03:11:06.660-08:00Being Ted Cruz Means You Never Have to Apologize for Lying.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-K_hwQH4Zhpg/Vqrp-LS3PTI/AAAAAAAAAoY/SmFQALInNNE/s1600/CruzPinnoccio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-K_hwQH4Zhpg/Vqrp-LS3PTI/AAAAAAAAAoY/SmFQALInNNE/s400/CruzPinnoccio.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/liveblog/gop-debate-live-blog-trump/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_gop-debate-liveblog-730pm%3Aliveblog%2Fpromo#d9702727-096a-454b-a696-b8d6cc68ef45">quotes Ted Cruz</a> from tonight's GOP primary debate:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em style="background-color: #f9f9f9; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; line-height: 32px;">“First of all we have seen how in 6 years of Obamacare that it’s been a disaster. It is the biggest job killer in this country. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, have been forced into part time work, have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have seen their premiums sky rocket.”</em></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
What do we make of Cruz's claim that millions of Americans have lost their jobs? This is what the <a href="https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PAYEMS">U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics</a> tells us about job growth in the Obama era:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zMHqXzL8-w0/VqrgsnAJ-EI/AAAAAAAAAn8/1SASd-n-_HQ/s1600/10-Year-Jobs.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zMHqXzL8-w0/VqrgsnAJ-EI/AAAAAAAAAn8/1SASd-n-_HQ/s400/10-Year-Jobs.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The truth, of course, is that under President Obama the nation has seen <a href="http://www.politicususa.com/2015/11/06/obama-economy-sets-record-job-growth-streak-surges.html">69 straight months of private sector job growth</a>, with over 1/4 million new jobs in November alone and a net increase of well over 13 1/2 million new jobs over that span.<br />
<br />
What do we make of Cruz's claim that millions of Americans have lost their health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act? The truth is the current rate of 9.2% uninsured is the <a href="http://obamacarefacts.com/uninsured-rates/">lowest it has ever been in this country</a>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0IWo9fIaFiw/Vqrh1A0li2I/AAAAAAAAAoI/-H-sSKwqrpA/s1600/uninsured.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0IWo9fIaFiw/Vqrh1A0li2I/AAAAAAAAAoI/-H-sSKwqrpA/s400/uninsured.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
Cruz's rather tenuous grasp of the facts when it comes to health care reform should perhaps not surprise us. After all, this is a man so clueless on health insurance issues he mistakenly claimed to have lost insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, only to have to walk the claim back when it was revealed that, despite his claims to the contrary, <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-health-insurance-questions">Cruz in fact had it all along</a>.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In a reversal from claims made on the campaign trail, Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is now saying the senator and his family do have health insurance and never lost coverage. The late night Friday revelation came more than 24 hours after Cruz had told a New Hampshire audience that he and his family were without health insurance and were scrambling to obtain new coverage--and used the claim to slam Obamacare for the mess he was in. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In statements to Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal, campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier blamed Cruz's false assertion that his family had lost their health insurance on a misunderstanding... </blockquote>
<br />
I guess "misunderstanding" is one way of putting it, another might be to say that he was "caught in another lie."Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-84359306624482565382016-01-08T04:16:00.001-08:002016-01-08T04:32:08.336-08:00The Problem With Being A Racist, Nativist Party...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fktpb2_jL20/Vo-oFqCFUHI/AAAAAAAAAnM/PN7OLqodKms/s1600/CruzCertificate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fktpb2_jL20/Vo-oFqCFUHI/AAAAAAAAAnM/PN7OLqodKms/s320/CruzCertificate.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
I guess it was only a matter of time beforeTed Cruz, presidential candidate and <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/09/ted_cruz_is_despised_by_senate_republicans_a_list_of_the_reasons_gop_senators.html">most hated man in the U.S. senate</a>, would fall victim to his own party's anti-immigrant fervor. Climbing in the polls and threatening the Trump campaign in Iowa, Cruz has become the target of accusations and insinuations that the conservative firebrand, born of a Cuban father and American mother on Canadian soil (Calgary), does not meet the Constitutional requirement that a president be a "natural born citizen."<br />
<br />
From the left, it's deliciously ironic to see this sort of comeuppance for man who sought to reassure GOP voters of his anti-immigrant bonafides by <a href="http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/johnwright/ted_cruz_channels_george_wallace_vows_to_oppose_amnesty_today_tomorrow_forever">paraphrasing George Wallace's</a> "segregation forever speech" for <i>The New York Times</i>. And of course, there's more than just a little satisfaction to be gained by watching the party that spawned an industry of nutty conspiracy theorists dedicated to casting doubt on Barack Obama's eligibility now setting its sights on destroying one of its own.<br />
<br />
While questions about Cruz's eligibility have popped up now and again <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/ted-cruz-birth-certificate-095668">for years</a>, this latest round of doubt sowing started with Donald Trump, who in his typically disingenuos, trademarked passive-aggressive way <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-cruzs-canadian-birth-could-be-very-precarious-for-gop/2016/01/05/5ce69764-b3f8-11e5-9388-466021d971de_story.html">insisted </a>that he was only looking out for the good of the Republican Party:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem. It’d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head. I’d hate to see something like that get in his way. But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”</blockquote>
<br />
Not long after Trump lobbed his non-accusation accusation right-wing harpy Ann Coulter <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/264930-coulter-cruz-is-not-a-natural-born-citizen">chimed in</a> in more direct fashion, explicitly proclaiming through her twitter account that Cruz was not at natural born citizen.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
NYT: Cruz was born outside the U.S. to 1 American parent: "Under the Constitution this makes him a 'natural born citizen.'” Absolutely false</div>
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/684753905842917377">January 6, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
And now the floodgates seem to be opening with <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/rand-paul-says-hes-not-sure-if-ted-cruz-is-eligible-to-be-pr#.fmDgdXWkdK">Rand Paul</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/06/mccain-questions-cruzs-eligibility-to-run-for-president/">John McCain</a> questioning the Texas senator's eligibility to hold the highest office in the land. The McCain attack is particularly amusing, given that the Arizona senator was himself born abroad and ran for president nonetheless. The distinction, <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/john-mccain-questions-about-ted-cruzs-eligibility-are-legitimate/">as McCain sees it</a>, is that he was born in a U.S. Territory (a military base in the Panama Canal zone):<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Barry Goldwater ran for president; was born in Arizona when it was a territory. The Panama Canal was a territory of the United States of America. That’s different than being born on foreign soil. I think there is a question. I am not a constitutional scholar on that, but I think it’s worth looking into. I don’t think its illegitimate to look into it.”</blockquote>
<br />
In 2008, when John McCain decided to seek the presidency, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/04/11/clinton-obama-agree-mccains-a-natural-born-citizen/">co-sponsored a Senate resolution affirming</a> the Arizona senator's eligibility to run for president. Today, Texas senator Ted Cruz is seeing questions about his eligibility being raised within his own party. I guess that's what happens when you set out to promote your personal career by trashing everyone around you, then cynically shut down the government to establish your own "holier than thou" ideological purity, while forcing others in your party to do the thankless work of keeping the country from a disastrous default.<br />
<br />
I think I'll just sit back an enjoy the show.<br />
<br />
<br />Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-79179781258078546552015-11-17T18:54:00.000-08:002015-11-17T18:54:04.763-08:00The Freedom of Other People<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Early the morning of March 24, 1944
a German patrol pulled up to a home on the outskirts of in the Polish town of
Markowa. The Germans had been alerted by
a local police constable to the fact that eight Jews, comprising members of two
different families, had secretly been given shelter by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_and_Wiktoria_Ulma">Josef Ulma</a>,
a prominent citizen and the town librarian. The Germans surrounded the home,
and after extracting the Jews shot all eight of them in the head on the spot.
Not satisfied with this bloody deed, the Germans turned to the Ulma family
themselves. For hiding Jews in defiance of German martial law, Joseph was
shot. The fact that Jospeh’s wife
Wiktoria was his eight months pregnant, failed to soften the Soldier’s hearts
and she was shot as well. Finally, the Nazis turned their attention to the UIma’s
six children, now weeping loudly and profusely at the sight of their dead parents.
Methodically, mercilessly and in cold
blood they were shot as well. The eldest of the Ulma children was eight years
old. The youngest was but two.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In the aftermath of Friday’s
terrorist attacks in Paris, that left some 129 mostly young Parisians dead, there
is a great deal of talk on the Right of sealing borders and of turning would-be
refugees away to seek asylum elsewhere. The fact that the attacks were carried
out by citizens of North African decent, and perhaps by Islamic radicals who
may have infiltrated Europe via the Syrian refugee route underlies this logic.
And the horrific nature of the attacks makes these calls appealing even to
people who would ordinarily be repelled by Europe’s xenophobic nationalist
parties. In America the calls to seal borders are at least as loud, and just as
indiscriminate. To cite just one example, yesterday New Jersey Governor Chris
Christie announced that if it were up to him, the United States would turn away
even a boat filled with <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/chris-christie-syria-orphans-215952#ixzz3rhepa7c4">orphaned
toddlers</a>. The wealthiest nation in
the world, he explained, does not have the resources to care for them.
Meanwhile, as of this count, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/governors-refugees/?hpid=hp_no-name_graphic-story-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">28
governors</a> (all but one headed by Republicans) have made it clear that
Syrian refugees are not welcomed in their states, and, perhaps pressured by the
dynamics of a rather unusual and unpredictable presidential contest, even “moderate”
Republican canidates like Jeb Bush are suggesting that if America is to take in
any refugees, then we should turn separate the the Muslims from the Christians,
and provide shelter only to the latter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Left of center pundits, meanwhile,
are appalled at this sort of talk, and hardly an article is written that doesn’t
reference the SS St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish Refugees fleeing Hitler’s
Germany that in 1939 was first turned away by Cuban authorities and then U.S.
authorities in Florida. The passengers, many of whom have <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/stlouis.html">heartbreaking
tales</a> of scraping every penny they could find to buy a ticket, and leaving
family behind in hopes that they might be able to earn enough money in their
new homes to send for them, were forced to return to Europe where scores
perished in Hitler’s concentration camps. The analogy is an apt one, since the
horrors that families fleeing ISIS and the Civil War that has enveloped Bashir
Al Assad’s Syria are not unlike those that Jews experienced in the dark days of
World War II. Atrocities from all quarters in that conflict are appalling.
Indiscriminate bombing and shelling of populated areas by the Assad regime is a
daily occurrence, and life under ISIS’ cruel implementation of Sharia law is a
harrowing existence. Torture and executions are every day affairs, bodies fill
the streets and mass graves are common. ISIS is a Sunni extremist organization,
and despite American news reports of a genocidal campaign against Christians, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/">the
true target of ISIS’ wrath</a> are Shia Muslims and followers of other non-Sunni
sects who ISIS view as apostates deserving of death.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
There is one problem with the SS
St. Louis analogy, however, that liberals largely fail to mention and that
seems to animate much of the antipathy to refugees on the Right. Popular
antagonism to accepting large numbers of Jewish refugees during the Second
World war was largely economic in nature. As Ishaan Tharoor, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/17/what-americans-thought-of-jewish-refugees-on-the-eve-of-world-war-ii/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_wv-jewishrefugees-1255pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">writing
in the Washington Post</a> notes, surveys of American attitudes towards Jewish refugees
in 1938 revealed that 67% of Americans did not want to accept large numbers of refugees
largely because in depression era America, economic resources were already
stretched thin. But Republican opposition to admitting Syrian refugees seems
more concerned with the possibility that in admitting thousands of Muslims we
might be admitting scores of potential future terrorists as well (to be sure,
the GOP has a long history of xenophobia and a blanket skepticism of non-European
immigration, but I think it would be a mistake to conclude that concerns over
potential future terrorism are a red-herring, or just an excuse to justify the
party’s perennial anti-immigrant policies. At worst, such concerns are just one
more reason why Republicans as a whole dislike immigrants). In 1939, no one wanted to bar Jews entry into
the United States because they feared that these scores of Jewish refugees
might include secret Nazi sympathizers among them. But the worry that current
or potential future militant Islamists might be nestled among Syrian refugees
is a not wholly unwarranted concern.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
It is for this reason that I have
begun this piece by citing the sad case of Joseph and Wikctoria Ulma and their
six children. Not only does this awful moment in European history remind us
that radical, Wahhabist Islam hardly holds a monopoly on unspeakable evil, but
it seems to me that the Ulma family’s terrible sacrifice for a just and noble cause carries a hopeful lesson that should
speak to us just as loudly as the shameful legacy of the SS St. Louis. It is a
message that we hear time and time again, in popular media, in academic lectures,
in Churches and Synagogues throughout the country. It is a message so common
that it’s become trite. We hear it. We mouth it. We pretend to agree and
acknowledge it. But when the time comes to live it, we all too often fail. And
that message is this: <b><i>doing the right thing is not always easy</i></b>.
It often carries risk. It can go against our selfish interests, and can even run
counter to our natural instinct for self preservation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
When he was seeking the GOP
nomination in 2008 Senator Fred Thompson had a proposition he liked to repeat,
that he felt showed the greatness of this nation: “This country,” Thompson
said, “has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other
nations in the history of the world combined, and I’m tired of people feeling
like they’ve got to apologize for America.” Thompson’s statement is a tribute
to an America that is built on the bedrock principle of sacrifice in the name
of freedom and justice, not just for our-selves and our own, but also for the
well being even of our distant neighbors. It is also a stamen that, in the
context of our current debate over Syrian immigrants, one has to wonder just
how much of it still holds true. For really, just how much sacrifice is the
average American willing to make if he refuses to give shelter and succor to
the homeless victims of a genocidal regime, women, children, weak and elderly, on the off chance that a small handful among
them might want to do this nation harm? </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Josef Ulma did the right thing. He
sheltered eight Jews and paid for his brave and principled actins with his
life, as well as that of his whole family. We celebrate the Ulmas, and rightly
regard them as heroes and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_Among_the_Nations">Righteous
Among the Nations</a>. If you have ever wondered how you might have acted had
you lived in Germany during the second World War and been faced with the opportunity
to shelter a Jewish family, then this moment in history is bestowing on you the
opportunity to provide some semblance of an answer to that question. Oh, it’s
an imperfect answer to be sure. For even if you find the courage to agree that
we should take in the desperate Syrian refugees who huddle at our borders, objectively
and statistically, the personal risk that you are undertaking is infinitely
smaller than the risk that the Ulma’s took. Even if there are future terrorists
among the 10,000 refugees that the Obama Administration has committed to
accepting, the truth is that in a nation of 300 million, your chances of being
killed or wounded in an attack are, for all intents and purposes, negligible.
So answering “yes” to the question of whether we should accept these miserable
souls is no guarantee that you would have shown the courage of the Ulmas under
similar circumstances. But the converse does not hold. If you can’t even find
the courage to offer aid and succor these miserable souls, given the infinitely
low risk, then I think that there is very little question how you would have
answered your Jewish neighbors when they came knocking on your door, in harried
desperation, seeking shelter from the Nazi militants who sought to do them harm.</div>
Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-2075650558027581622015-10-24T06:11:00.002-07:002015-10-24T06:11:43.025-07:00Without further comment:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O929vHda4Nw/ViuDhjMHYUI/AAAAAAAAAlM/hUPQvNai-OI/s1600/Hillary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O929vHda4Nw/ViuDhjMHYUI/AAAAAAAAAlM/hUPQvNai-OI/s320/Hillary.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-11440082255279948652015-10-04T07:09:00.002-07:002016-01-29T03:12:26.089-08:00The House that the NRA Built.<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
In pondering the significance of the Umpqua Community college tragedy, one of a seemingly unbroken string of mass killings to shake the nation since the shocking Columbine massacre 16 years ago, the first and perhaps most distasteful truth we have to acknowledge is that this shooting will not change anything. I’m sorry to be so blunt. I’m sorry if this sounds defeatist. But any honest assessment of the politics and the culture of firearms in America must come to the simple and inescapable conclusion that thanks to our nation’s out-sized love of firearms, at this very moment somewhere in the Midwest a mother is preparing dinner for a daughter who won’t live to see her 21st birthday, somewhere down South a father and son are restoring an old car that will be completed by just one of them under a somber cloud of loss, somewhere in New England a young couple are planning for a future life together in a world that has a place set aside for only one of them, and this is a scene that is being replayed hundreds, if not thousands of times this very moment all across our country.<br />
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I’d like to believe I’m wrong in this, I’d like to believe that at some point the nation will find itself confronted by a situation so horrendous and unthinkable in its implications that we’ll be shocked out of our placid lethargy and apathetic response to the slow but steady drip, drip, drip of gun murders. I'd like to think that at that point the politicians who write our laws will realize that the tired slogans, the dishonest dissembling and the sophistries and hypocrisies of the past will no longer see them secure in their jobs (the only thing they really care about). I’d like to believe that the day will come when we’ve truly had enough and our legislators understand that *We The People* will only be satisfied with real change and that we won’t rest until they have delivered it. My problem with this line of wishful thinking is that a situation this horrendous has <i>already come to pass</i>. It has come to pass a dozen times, a hundred times, a thousand times even, but if I had to choose just one example to put forth I should have to look at the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown Connecticut. In December of 2012, a 20 year old, disturbed young man named Adam Lanza entered an elementary school building armed with Bushmaster semi-automatic assault rifle and gunned down 6 teachers and 20 toddlers whose only miscue that day was having the temerity to step down from the school bus their parents had placed them on and attend grammar school as they had on many previous occasions. If you can conjure a more horrendous, senseless and despicable act violence, then I’d like to hear it, but I strongly suspect that Sandy Hook damn near well represents the non-plus ultra for gun violence. Almost as shocking is the fact that nearly three years later Congress has not yet taken any action even to close the so-called “gun-show loophole” or to require that private sales of firearms go through a licensed broker. As a result, <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/25/michael-bloomberg/mayor-michael-bloomberg-says-40-percent-guns-are-s/">as many as 40% of all gun sales</a> and transfers in the United States occur in circumstances that legally require no criminal background check on the purchaser. If in the wake of Sandy Hook our politicians can’t make an effort so minimal, so widely supported and so uncontroversial as to ensure that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/17/politics/senate-guns-vote/">all gun sales are subject to criminal background checks</a>, then forget it. It’s over. There’s little sense in asking ourselves what needs to happen for there to be tangible, positive change in this country. The NRA has won the day and you, me and everyone you see around you is living in the NRA’s America.</div>
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To understand how we’ve go to the point where we are, you really have to delve into the corrosive absolutism of contemporary gun culture, the noxious intersection of firearms ownership and partisan politics, and the toxic spread of an attitude of wholesale contempt for the very notion of empathy and concern for the suffering of others that has become the hallmark of contemporary conservative American politics. The notion that the unbridled pursuit of self interest is and should remain the paramount civic virtue manifests itself, not just in an acerbic contempt for government assistance to the needy, not just in the Right’s unhinged reaction to President Obama’s attempt to extent health insurance coverage to those Americans who cannot afford it, but also in any attempt to place restrictions on firearms ownership, whether it be in limiting the types of firearms that can he held in private hands, or the sale of ammunition and high capacity of magazines. When we freely allow the sale of 30, 40, 50 round capacity clips the notion that firearms equip the citizenry with the means to hunt and provide effective home protection can be safely discounted as a quaint and mildly amusing vestige of a bygone era. Today you can certainly walk into a sporting goods store and purchase a 38 caliber revolver that will provide you with all the firepower you will ever realistically need to defend your family from a home intruder, but you can also walk out with an AR-15, a 30 round magazine and 1000 rounds of ammunition. If you really want to give in to your inner Rambo you can even buy magazines for these weapons with capacities of <a href="http://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/100-rd-ar-15-drum-mag-black?a=1150085">100 rounds or more</a>. What you have in your possession at this point isn’t a tool for home defense, it’s is a weapon that was designed for the express purpose of killing as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, in a theater of war. Ask a gun enthusiast why he would ever need such a weapon, and why its public sale should be allowed and he will almost inevitably reply with something along the lines of: “Why would anyone ever need to own a car that can travel at more than 100 miles per hour. Maybe we should ban those, too?” The military style assault rifle is seen as a hobby item, an expensive toy like a motorcycle or fast car whose prohibition is an unacceptable form of nanny state paternalism, much like Michael Bloomberg banning Big Gulps in a misguided attempt to combat obesity. Never mind that these things are all too often used by psychopaths to murder children, or college students, or even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-guy-who-killed-two-firemen-was-also-using-a-bushmaster-223-rifle-2012-12">firefighters responding to a blaze</a> that was intentionally set to lure them to their deaths. Why should all those lives cut short impact me in a negative way when it’s so much fun to bring my Bushmaster to the shooting range and live-out my action hero fantasies by filling a target full of 30 holes in 15 seconds?</div>
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And here I’m merely referencing the arguments and mindset of the “responsible gun owner.” I haven’t touched on the paranoid survivalist who’s hoarding assault rifles, K rations and ammunition in preparation for the coming race war, or the New World Order, the United Nations invasion, or the day that all good, patriotic citizens rise up in anger and finally overthrow the Zionist Occupation Government that is the cause of all our nation’s ills and all of her woes. These folks’ reasons for opposing restrictions on these sorts of weapons are, perhaps in a sense less selfish, but they’re much, much more frightening by a very wide margin. These are the people who snap, one day, and blow up Federal office buildings packed with men, women and children, or in less grandiose fashion buy two tickets for an Amy Schumer movie and vent their hatred of feminists by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/us/lafayette-theater-shooting-john-houser.html?_r=0">gunning down the pair of young women</a> who had the misfortune of taking seats a row or two down from him.</div>
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Perhaps a wave of Islamist terrorist operations would change public opinion. We’ve certainly made such a scenario as easy as possible to carry out. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when Uncle Sam was busy setting up the Department of Homeland Security and granting the NSA unprecedented access to our phone records and online data, the NRA worked swiftly and effectively to nip in the bud any movement toward including firearms purchasing restrictions. Boarding a plane with nail clippers or an 11 ounce bottle of shampoo was strictly forbidden, but as for buying an AK47 at the gun show without passing a background check? Of course! I mean, why needlessly gum up the wheels and cogs of commerce by imposing onerous regulations on private party exchanges of durable goods?! Never mind that a pair of ne’er do wells by the name of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo shortly afterwards demonstrated just how simple and cost effective it would be to terrorize America when they set about murdering 16 people and wounding another 7 with<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks"> a Bushmaster rifle and a hole cut in the trunk of an old sedan</a>, all while holding the city of Washington DC paralyzed in fear for weeks.</div>
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But then, who are we kidding? A wave of Islamist terror shootings, far from effecting the implementation of sensible firearms restrictions would almost certainly result, instead, in rush to stock up on guns and ammunition and a xenophobic backlash against American Moslems, Hindus, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Sikh_temple_shooting">Sikhs</a>… anyone whose accent, dress and religion seems suspect to the guy who obtained his doctorate in comparative religious studies from the University of that bar down the street with the topless waitresses and $3.00 tap beer on Tuesday. If anything, the unbelievable ease with which military grade weaponry <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/how_roseburg_newtown_and_other_mass_shooters_got_their_guns.html">can be acquired</a> in the U.S. should serve as a pretty good counter-argument to those who fear that this nation is under grave threat from Islamist sympathizers living among us. If these folks are here and plotting to do us harm, then what are they waiting for? There are business districts in this country where you could practically drive down the street slowly with your windows rolled down, toss out a $100 bill and have someone toss a semi-automatic pistol right back in. Maybe it’s just that the radical Islamists don’t really see the point in it given that red-blooded Americans seem to be doing a pretty good job of killing other red-blooded Americans without the need for any pesky, logistically complex, coordinated, foreign intervention.</div>
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We’re living in the NRA’s America, you see, and we live by that organization’s rhetoric, we live by its logic and we live by its rules. “Guns don’t kill people,” we’re informed, “people kill people” and thus any attempt to stem the flow of violence by restricting firearms sales is misguided. Instead we should be focusing on the people side of the equation. Of course, this argument becomes a bit problematic when we’re dealing, not with a convicted criminal who was prematurely released back into society by some bleeding heart, liberal judge, but as is so often the case in these mass killings, an individual with no substantial criminal record but a documented history of mental illness. And so it has become fashionable for the NRA and its defenders to instead lament the “wholly inadequate manner” in which we deal with and treat mental illness in this country. Now, the cynic might suspect that this purported concern for our nation’s sorry mental health treatment options is little more than an insincere red-herring tossed out to draw attention away from guns. The cynic would be wrong, however, as evidenced by the whole hearted and full throated support that the NRA and gun enthusiasts threw behind President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation that not only extended health insurance coverage to millions of Americans who didn’t have it, but that for the first time in history mandated at the Federal level that private health insurance<a href="https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage/mental-health-substance-abuse-coverage/"> also cover mental illness</a>. Are you laughing yet? You should be... at least insofar as it's possible to laugh at these sorts of things. The cynics are, of course absolutely correct, and the NRA's new found “concern” for mental health betrays all the sincerity of a jaded 50 year old prostitute’s theatrical undulations in the moments just prior to the bill coming due.</div>
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2nd amendment absolutists and NRA apologists are often fond of pointing out and ridiculing the fact that mass shootings so often seem to occur in so-called “gun-free zones.” The murder of 20 toddlers at Sandy Hook elementary took place in a “gun-free school zone.” The murder of 9 parishoners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina occurred in a venue in which the octogenarian ladies and their pastors who had gathered to pray to the Almighty for Peace on Earth had been so unjustly forbidden by the state from also bringing along their firearms. The murders at Umpqua Community college? Gun free zone. And here, for once, the NRA and its friends do have something of a point, for in contemporary America there really isn’t such a thing as a gun free *anything* zone. Decades and decades of devil may care firearms sales have so flooded our streets , neighborhoods and schools with guns that, even though the United States comprises a just 4.4% of the world’s population, we boast of<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/17/2310941/american-gun-ownership/"> nearly half of the world’s stock of privately owned firearms</a>. Now, according to the NRA’s Alice in Wonderland logic of “more guns, less crime” these figures surely indicate that we should be the safest nation on earth. Yet statistics simply do not bear this notion out. When <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9443917/united-states-gun-death-europe">comparing the USA</a> against the advanced, industrialized democracies of Western Europe we find that the U.S. suffers from anywhere from 40 times the per-capita rate of firearms death (for the UK), to a low of about 3 times the per-capita rate (for Finland). More guns, more crime would seem to be the norm in places where the standard rules of logic apply. Nonetheless, you can rest assured that the NRA will continue to push the convenient fiction that America’s biggest problem, so far as gun violence is concerned, isn’t that we’ve got too many guns in circulation, it’s that we don’t have enough. The Wayne LaPierre's of this world will continue to insist that the reason gun murder rates are so high in America is that we simply haven’t reached a critical mass of gun ownership. We haven’t yet got to the point where no matter what the situation, no matter what the gathering, no matter what the occasion, when a crazed maniac shows up dressed to the nines in bullet-proof vests and wielding multiple semi-automatic weapons (as<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Eagan_Holmes#Shooting_and_arrest"> James Egan Holmes did</a> when he murdered 12 people at a Colorado movie theater) an armed citizen will be ready and waiting to take him out before he can cause much harm. Don’t bet on it, though. Not in the real world, in any case. This white-hatted gun-slinger fantasy is as much Hollywood action-movie hero fan fiction as it is implausible, bizzarro-world wishful thinking social engineering experiment. The notion that we’re going to turn into a nation of Wyatt Earps (or more likely, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Goetz">Bernhard Goetzs</a>) parading through life with pistol strapped to our side because the NRA wants us to is as improbable a work of science fiction as anything to spring from the imagination of George Lucas. That’s just not who most of us are, or want to be.</div>
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A far more likely scenario is that things will simply continue to churn and churn as they have for the past several decades. Almost every day <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/oct/02/mass-shootings-america-gun-violence">a mass shooting will take place somewhere in America</a>. Local papers will report on most of these (an estranged husband murders his wife and two kids, a disgruntled employee kills his boss and several other co-workers, etc.) but every eight or nine months or so, a killing so brutal, so senseless and so heart-wrenching will take place that it will have the whole nation talking and soul searching. Politicians will hold press conferences. Gun control organizations will hold press conferences. The NRA will hold press conferences. And then, slowly but surely, life will return to its slow, lazy pace. The good news is that you, personally, as well as you immediate family, are more likely than not to remain safe throughout all of this. Yes nearly 10,000 people died from gunshot wounds last year alone, but don’t forget, we’re a nation of 300,000+ million so the odds are still very much in your favor. I guess one might feel concern for the victims, but in this nation of rugged individualists where <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/01/obama-pushes-empathetic-supreme-court-justices/">“empathy” is little more than a sign of weakness, of bleeding heart, muddle-headed thinking</a>, that sort of thing is definitely not encouraged. We live in the NRA’s America, you see.</div>
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I’ll close these rambling and disjointed thoughts by<a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/19/8807851/mass-shootings-gun-control-charleston"> echoing Vox’s Max Fisher</a>, and quoting a paragraph from a <a href="http://archives.newyorker.com/?iid=15102&startpage=page0000004#folio=C1">New Yorker piece</a>, written by Adam Gopnik in the wake of the 2006 Virginia Tech massacre:</div>
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“The cell phones in the pockets of the dead students were still ringing when we were told that it was wrong to ask why. As the police cleared the bodies from the Virginia Tech engineering building, the cell phones rang, in the eccentric varieties of ring tones, as parents kept trying to see if their children were OK. To imagine the feelings of the police as they carried the bodies and heard the ringing is heartrending; to imagine the feelings of the parents who were calling — dread, desperate hope for a sudden answer and the bliss of reassurance, dawning grief — is unbearable. But the parents, and the rest of us, were told that it was not the right moment to ask how the shooting had happened — specifically, why an obviously disturbed student, with a history of mental illness, was able to buy guns whose essential purpose is to kill people — and why it happens over and over again in America. At a press conference, Virginia's governor, Tim Kaine, said, ‘People who want to ... make it their political hobby horse to ride, I've got nothing but loathing for them. ... At this point, what it's about is comforting family members ... and helping this community heal. And so to those who want to try to make this into some little crusade, I say take that elsewhere.’”</div>
Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-87197274630047335052015-08-29T14:14:00.002-07:002015-08-29T14:14:22.430-07:00He's a blowhard, a liar and a racist, but a stopped clock, as they say...<br />
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I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers. Puppets?</div>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/627841345789558788">August 2, 2015</a></blockquote>
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<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-30982820359603701652015-08-29T14:00:00.001-07:002015-08-29T14:00:07.049-07:00<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">“I think it’s a great country, there are a lot of great families, and it’s not just four families or whatever. There are other people out there that are very qualified, and we’ve had enough Bushes.”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">--Barbara Bush, in a <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/barbara-bush-on-son-jeb-in-2016-weve-had-enough-bushes/">2013 Today Show interview</a>, responding to the question of whether Jeb Bush should run for president in 2016. </span>Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-53613722013818669192015-08-28T04:11:00.001-07:002015-08-29T13:57:21.661-07:00Of Guns and News Organizations...Took a vacation day and a trip down to D.C. yesterday. As I toured the museums and monuments I passed by the Newseum, a private museum dedicated to cataloguing journalism's contribution to our nation's development and discourse. Outside, the <i>Newseum</i> has an exhibit that consists of front pages from newspaper around the country and some from around the world. Yesterday the great majority of U.S. newspapers included a front page story on the slayings of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, two CBS television journalists who were murdered by a disgruntled ex-coworker while performing a live on-air interview. The coverage raged the gamut from shock, to outrage, to sensationalist... with a special category reserved for the New York Post's <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/27/new_york_daily_news_shooting_cover_why_the_paper_s_front_page_crosses_the.html">unbelievably tasteless front page comic-strip style photomontage</a> of Parker's last moments.<br />
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The Nebraska paper was a bit different, however. I don't at the moment recall whether they covered this crime on their front page (they likely did, along with most news outlets) but the headline story concerned a <a href="http://www.kearneyhub.com/news/regional/death-penalty-supporters-turn-in-enough-signatures-to-put-issue/article_91c74332-4cc6-11e5-b264-7fdd7d559818.html">voter initiative to retain the death penalty</a> in that state.<br />
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The juxtaposition of these two events, it seems to me, is telling. I have long been an opponent of the death penalty and one of the principal reasons for my opposition is the firmly held belief that, far from acting as a deterrent to the sorts of violent crimes the nation witnessed on Wednesday, the existence of a Death penalty perversely legitimizes them. In enshrining the notion that Justice is served when the State puts a man to death for the commission of a heinous crime, the criminal justice system in some sense legitimizes the crimes of those who kill others in response to a perceived slight or wrong. For these individuals seem to see themselves as instruments of justice meeting out punishment on their own terms. Let us not forget that we live in a nation governed by deep suspicion of government monopolies and of government in general. Time and time again we are told that anything the government does would be more efficiently and more expertly executed by the private sector. This<i> laissez faire</i> ideology extends not only to functions traditionally performed by the private sector in a capitalist society (manufacture and delivery of consumer goods and services) but even to functions that are traditionally the province of government in most developed societies (witness the proliferation of private prisons, for instance, or the use, by the U.S. military of private security contracting firms such as Blackwater). In a very real sense, taking "justice" into one's own hands, up to and including execution, is a logical extension of this sort of thinking.<br />
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Now, of course, it's impossible to state categorically that a justice system that enshrines the notion that the taking of a human life is never a justified response to crime would have prevented this or any other crime. There has never been a human society so perfect where murder is non-existent, and certainly, when the objective of a murder is the securing of material benefit (as would be the case in a robbery, for instance, or murder in the course of perpetuating insurance fraud) the State's views on life, death and justice are largely irrelevant to the criminal who commits the act. But I do believe that a society that promotion the notion that it is never right for the State or any individual to end the life of another (excepting, or course, un-avoidable, immediate self-defense or the protection of others in similar immediate danger) is a society claims for itself a certain moral authority and in so doing ennobles its citizenry by promoting this principle of inviolability. The net effect would likely be a long-term lessening of these sorts of despicable acts of unjustifiable vengeance (a description that could equally apply to the death penalty itself).Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-13793675325808279622015-08-13T18:23:00.004-07:002015-08-13T18:23:53.635-07:00Remember when...Got annoyed at those "remember when" Reagan idolatry pics, so I decided to do one of my own. Enjoy:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XQqy0qLC5og/Vc1DHUVMipI/AAAAAAAAAjo/qb814g8FNTM/s1600/negotiate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XQqy0qLC5og/Vc1DHUVMipI/AAAAAAAAAjo/qb814g8FNTM/s320/negotiate.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-90013221118739248512015-06-19T06:54:00.000-07:002015-06-19T06:55:04.423-07:00Back From the Dead?<div class="tr_bq">
Haven't posted in ages... can't say I'm going to make this a regular thing (maybe, maybe not). Nonetheless, I recently wrote a comment for the ZDNet website that I though worth sharing here (no it wasn't a post or commentary, just a comment in the comments section of an article, LOL).</div>
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In any case, my comment was in response to <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/h-1b-visa-fracas-flares-up-again-as-us-probes-infosys-tcs/">an article that was discussing layoffs in the tech sector</a> (where I happen to work). Recently two large companies, Con Edison in California and the Disney corporation have dismissed large numbers of IT staff in favor of foreign born replacements brought in under the H1B Visa program, that supposedly is meant to allow companies to hire foreign workers for positions that are difficult to fill with native born workers (who may, for instance, lack the necessary tech skills).<br />
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But the actions of Disney and Con Edison make a mockery of this program. How possibly, one might ask, are companies filling difficult to fill positions when they're replacing American born workers who already fill those positions?<br />
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That this is even possible, is due many factors, but in no small part to the death of organized labor in this nation. Here is what I wrote:<br />
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This is just another example of the woefully uneven power dynamic between employers and their employees that has resulted from and been exacerbated by the slow death of organized labor in this country. A union shop would never have stood by for something like this, watching passively as a large contingent of their co-workers were replaced by cheaper, foreign labor while being forced to train their replacements (shades of digging your own grave). Had these folks been represented by a union, they could have walked off en masse, and paralyzed the company, forcing it to rethink its plans. Instead, these workers can only lament their fate, and train their replacements like dogs with their tails between their legs, begging for whatever scraps might fall off their master's table. They are cowed, and pliant in hopes of a good reference that might allow them to find another job, and a few months severance that might keep them from losing their homes.</blockquote>
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<span style="line-height: 19.3846797943115px;">The death of the labor movement has been accompanied by huge disparities in wealth and income between the most wealthy (the 1%, if you will) and the rest of us. It is no accident. And with this mounting wealth disparity, the moneyed classes have also gained untold influence in government. A conservative Supreme Court is busy codifying the notion that the wealthy are entitled to an outsized degree of influence in the political process, and acts that one would have been derided as bribery are now enshrined as "free speech" by Judges appointed by politicians who themselves were bought and paid for by billionaires who know a good investment when they see one. What I'm saying is this: don't look to Congress to "fix" the problem of H1B abuse. The whole point of the program is to make the country more "competitive" by driving down wages and producing a more docile work force. What happened at Con Edison and Walt Disney isn't a "bug"... it's a "feature" of the program. It's the whole point of the program. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="line-height: 19.3846797943115px;">The whole notion that U.S. workers, who are chomping at the bit for decent paying jobs, and were reared in the nation with the best higher-education system in the world cannot be trained, and must instead make way for engineers trained in a third world country is simply ludicrous, and the fact that these employees were made to *train their replacements* puts the lie to even that foolishness. This is all about the bottom line, plain and simple. And until IT professionals realize that they are dispensable, disposable pawns, and get over their innate Libertarian ideological tendencies and start seriously contemplating solidarity and mass action, everyone's job is at risk.</span></blockquote>
Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-48912707968628657312012-08-07T03:00:00.001-07:002012-08-07T03:04:49.919-07:00An Election That's About Pure, Undistilled Loathing?<div>
an-email I sent to Andrew Sullivan's blog:<br />
A personal observation on Mitt Romney's likeability problem: I live in Maryland and have yet to see a single Mitt Romney bumper sticker. Oh, don't get me wrong, I see plenty of NObama stickers (often poorly executed designs that appear, on first glance, to be pro-Obama signs, and I suspect are frequently mistaken as such) but I have yet to find myself behind a single vehicle sporting a sticker affirming support for Mitt Romney's presidential run. To be fair, most (but not all) of the Obama stickers I see are from the 2008 campaign, but I have, at least, seen a handful of Obama 2012 signs. It's pretty clear to me that, while many Republicans loathe Obama, they have little regard for Romney (yes, Maryland is a Democratic leaning state, but isn't that where you'd expect to find the greatest support for a moderate Republican?) So then, it would seem that this is a contest that, perhaps more than any previous one, will answer the question: is it possible to defeat a candidate on pure loathing alone, with no positive alternative vision to counter-balance it?</div>Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-77281382930808035362012-03-04T07:01:00.012-08:002012-03-06T02:23:37.038-08:00Montana had Ted Kaczinsky, Wyoming has... well... Wyoming.<span style="font-style: normal; "><span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">With Governor Rick Perry in Texas threatening secession on an almost daily basis, Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona announcing that a panel of volunteer investigators have determined that President Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake, and Newt Gingrich in Georgia promising to build a manned lunar colony in the next eight years (never mind that NASA doesn't even have a vehicle capable of carrying an astronaut into orbit at this time) it takes a lot of effort for a state to stand out from the run-of-the-mill, right-wing, lunatic fringe, clown circus that is today's GOP. But the Montana Legislature may have figured out how to do just that. A new bill has passed the state legislature on a voice vote that would study the ways on which the state would cope with a </span></span><a href="http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/wyoming-house-advances-doomsday-bill/article_af6e1b2b-0ca4-553f-85e9-92c0f58c00bd.html" style="font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; ">hypothetical financial and economic collapse of the Federal government</a><span><span style="font-size: 100%;">:</span></span><br /></span><blockquote style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; "><span>House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.<br /></span><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br />The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and </span><b style="font-size: 100%; "><i>an aircraft carrier</i></b><span style="font-size: 100%; "> (emphasis mine).</span></blockquote><span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">As far as garden-variety right-wing paranoid krayzee goes, this is all standard stuff... until we reach the bit about Wyoming possibly needing to acquire an aircraft carrier, that is. Then it becomes <i style="font-style: normal; ">inspired </i>right-ring nuttiness. Because let's face it: it's not truly inspired right-wing nuttiness until it crosses over into the territory of "stuff that's impossible to parody because it is <i>already </i>its own parody."</span></span><div style="font-style: normal; "><span><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">And this bill is impossible to parody because --and I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of geography can be sketchy at times (is Uzbekistan to the east or west of Tajikistan?)-- I'm pretty sure I remember learning in 5th grade that Wyoming is a land-locked state:</span></span><div style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; "><span><br /></span></div><span style="font-style: normal; "><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dc794tktAXc/T1OMGINMGCI/AAAAAAAAAYs/Cq1srj50vyg/s1600/wyoming.jpg" style="font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; "><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 206px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dc794tktAXc/T1OMGINMGCI/AAAAAAAAAYs/Cq1srj50vyg/s400/wyoming.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5716066388973197346" /></a><br /><span><span style="font-size: 100%;">And as you can see from the above image, I am more or less correct in my recollection.</span></span></span><div style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; "><span>So why exactly would a land-locked state like Wyoming be studying the feasibility of acquiring an aircraft carrier? I'm not entirely sure, but if I were a member of the legislatures of Idaho or Oregon I might seek to introduce a bill to look into putting together our own standing army just in case the Wyoming's gotten some nutty ideas into its head about westward expansion.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; "><span>That said, there is reason to question the seriousness with which Wyoming is undertaking this most important investigation. The <i>Wyoming Tribune</i> notes:</span></div><span style="font-style: normal; "><blockquote>The bill must pass two more House votes before it would head to the Senate for consideration. The original bill appropriated $32,000 for the task force, though the Joint Appropriations Committee slashed that number in half earlier this week.</blockquote>So yeah, Wyoming's task force on surviving financial Armageddon and the complete collapse of Western Civilization is being funded to the tune of $16,000. That's just a few hundred dollars more than what it would cost to walk into a Hyundai dealership and drive a way in a brand new Elantra:<br /></span><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D-XHM2BDGkA/T1OQCxgHdbI/AAAAAAAAAY4/eL_842KiEO4/s1600/Elantra.jpg" style="font-style: normal; "><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D-XHM2BDGkA/T1OQCxgHdbI/AAAAAAAAAY4/eL_842KiEO4/s400/Elantra.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5716070729385473458" /></a><div style="font-style: normal; ">I guess that tells you something about just how pressing the concern is, right now.</div><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">Could it be that this bill is simply a way to further rile up the the paranoid, gold hoarding, survival shelter stocking, gun toting, end-of-times believing, loonies who make up the base of the Republican party these days and do so without spending the kind of money that might lead to questions about why the Wyoming legislature is wasting so much money investigating paranoid right-wing fantasies?</div><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">Maybe. Probably. OK, surely.</div><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">(Hat Tip: <a href="http://wonkette.com/465545/wyoming-house-on-the-road-to-crisis-plan-for-zombiehippie-uprising">Wonkette</a>)</div></div>Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-37095080768177784932012-02-28T16:18:00.007-08:002012-03-02T12:38:29.265-08:00Thoughts.Just a quick couple of thoughts. First I'd like to note my latest posting which is up at Stinque, and which notes the hypocrisy of Mitt Romney's protestations against crossover Democratic voters in Michigan who might potentially cost him a nomination victory in his home state. It seems that for Romney, what's good for the goose <a href="http://www.stinque.com/2012/02/28/oh-what-a-tangled-web-we-weave/"> isn't necessarily good for the gander</a>.<br /><br />Secondly, I'd like to comment on the controversy surrouinding Rick Santorum's recent disparaging comments directed at President Obama's stated desire to see more Americans pursue higher education:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NkjbJOSwq3A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />For sheer vulgarity this attack is not easily surpassed. And with unemployment rates for high school educated workers more than twice as high as those of Americans who are possessed of a college degree, Santorum's comments are mystifyingly stupid. And coming from a man who boasts three college degrees of his own, the hypocrisy is glaring. But then, Santorum has demonstrated time and time again that there is no position so knee jerk reactionary that he won't rush to it if he thinks it will help secure him the votes of the Tea Party ignoramuses who make up such a large percentage of GOP primary voters these days.<br /><br />But as disgusting as Santorum's remarks are, the reaction of the crowd is, to me, equally jarring. Why are these people clapping and cheering? Do they really think it snobbish to promote universal college education? Or are they clapping because Santorum insulted the President, regardless of what it was occasioned the insult. I suspect that many in attendance would have cheered any insul directed at Barack Obama, no matter how incongruous or undeserved. Had Santorum called Obama an "asshole" for preferring boxers to briefs, many in thecrowd would likely have given him a standing ovation.<br /><br />But what about the ones who cheered the comment, having fully digested it, knowing full and well what Santorum was getting at? Why we they cheering? Do they think Santorum's comments have the ring of truth? That it is "snobbish" to promote a college education as a desirable goal? And more tellingly, how many of those who were cheering Santorum's comments believe that a college education is not right for <I>their children</I>? How many believe that their kids would be better off as plumbers or auto mechanics, rather than striding the halls of a hostpital with stethoscope in hand, or arguing a case before the Supreme Court?<br /><br />My suspicion is that few of them feel that way about <I>their children</I>. Oh, doubtless there are a couple who have given up on an unruly child who's always getting into some fix or another and seems singularly unintereseted in learning. But I would wager that the significant majority of those who cheered Santorum and have school aged children still harbor high hopes for them and dream of the day their own child walks up the aisle to take the college diploma in hand that he has earned through hard work and long nights of arduous study. To these folks it's only "those other children" who should be thinking about trade school, or an apprenticeship with a master plumber.<br /><br />So what we have is a group of people who are, themselves, decidedly snobbish, cheering a highly educated Senator who accuses the president of snobbishness for wanting to encourage higher education for as many people as possible.<br /><br />Welcome to the absurdity and shamefully hypocritical world of GOP politics.Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-31090286843266783102012-02-15T02:21:00.000-08:002012-02-15T02:51:24.511-08:00Of Demons and DemagogueryMaureen Dowd has <a beef=" www.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/opinion/dowd-that-old-black-magic.html?_r=1&ref=opinion">an excellent Op Ed in the New York Times</a> today in which she reminds us that the same Church that is up in arms about President Obama's mandate that health insurance plans cover contraceptives for women, has recently trained dozens of "Exorcists" to purge possessed souls of their literal demons. In so many ways this is an institution that exemplifies pre-Enlightenment thought. And I might add that, in this absurd sidestepping of psychiatric medicine, they also resemble the cult of Scientology.<br /><br />It is telling that just days ago, <a beef="www.connecticutmag.com/Connecticut-Magazine/Web-Exclusive-Content/February-2012/Egan-Ten-Years-After/"> in an interview in Connecticut Magazine</a>, Cardinal Edward Egan, a central figure in the Catholic Church's scandalous cover-up of hundreds of incidents of child sexual abuse and rape by priests recently withdrew the apology he offered on the subject in 2002:<br /><br /> <blockquote><b>CT Magazine: In 2002, you wrote a letter to parishioners in which you said, “If in hindsight we discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.”</b><br /><br />EGAN: First of all, I should never have said that. I did say if we did anything wrong, I’m sorry, but I don’t think we did anything wrong. But I hate to go back over this. I think there’s more to life than that one issue, especially when I had no cases</blockquote><br /><br />It is truly astonishing that an institution that was guilty of the cover-up of hundreds (if not thousands) of incidents of child rape by hundreds of its top employees could survive such a scandal, let alone rise up a few years later (while the results of these crimes are still making their way through the legal system) and attempt to claim a moral mandate to oppose the practice of contraception. My feeling is that this institution should shut its piehole for the next 50 or so years, butt our of the culture wars, and spend its every waking minute atoning for its sins by ministering exclusively to the poor. Andrew Sullivan has rightly pointed out, on his blog, that the same Catholic Cardinals who raged from the pulpit in righteous fury when President Obama decreed that businesses aligned with the Catholic church should cover contraceptives for their employees, were largely silent when the President was pushing a plan for universal health coverage that would mostly benefit the neediest in society.<br /><br />In an odd way, I suspect that the fury that greeted the ciontraceptive coverage mandate from the pulpit was a direct result of the priestly child sexual abuse scandal of recent years. What led me to this conclusion was a radio interview I was listening to recently in which a person sympathetic to the church (I've forgotten pretty much all the details of the show, even the name of the show) stated that the church has been battered over the last 10 year's, and this is the last straw. Now, it's common hyperbole (and lies frankly) among Evangelical figures to claim that Obama is mounting a "war on religion", so at first I didn't really give this statement a second thought. But sometime later it dawned on me that the 10 years battering this guest was referring to probably involves the justified criticism the church leadership has endured for its handling of the child sexual abuse scandal.<br /><br />So I suspect that, as much as anything, the violent reaction we have seen to the health insurance mandate from the Catholic hierarchy is as much a cynical move to put the child sexual abuse behind them by attempting to claim some high ground in the culture wars.<br /><br />Of course this shallow move has backfired. In their continued opposition to the president's newly modified coverage proposal (where the Church affiliated institutions are no longer required to offer such coverage, but insurers themselves are required to offer it separately and for free) the leadership has demonstrated not just that it opposes being forced to pay for contraceptives, but that it would use its power over employees to demand that they adhere to an outdated, medieval morality that is rejected by even 98% of its own parishioners.<br /><br />Nothing brings out the Pharisee in men like a desire to cover up the hideousness of their own sins.Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-33786915344665881912012-01-24T04:19:00.000-08:002012-01-24T04:35:33.536-08:00Florida debate reduxI've mostly confined my blogging to Stinque, but I thought I'd drop by and share some peronal observations about last night's Florida GOP presidential debate, mostly just to point out what I felt were the event's most risible moments. Haven't been able to find a transcript online yet, so I'll quote from memory.<br /><br />Hands down, the biggest howler of the evening belongs to Newt Gingrich who, when pressed on his lobbying business with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac insisted that he had not been hired as a lobbyist, but rather as a "historian of Washington." I haven't heard such a hilarious euphemism since South Carolina governor Mark Sanford was said to be "hiking the Appalacchian Trail" when he was, in fact cavorting in Argentina with his mistress. Newt is amazing in his shamelessness and ability to argue that black is white and up is down.<br /><br />An eye popping moment, for me, at least, came when Mitt Romney, attempting to fend off Newt Gingrich's criticism of the favorable tax treatment he receives under current law noted that under Gingrich's tax plan he, Mitt Romney, would have paid no taxes at all. Not a dime. It's obvious and shouldn't have shaken me, but for some reason it did. Really gets to the essense of just how unfair the tax proposals floated by the GOP really are.<br /><br />I did enjoy the moment when Brian Williams asked Mitt Romney to predict what people would be talking about "tomorrow" when his tax records were released. Among the things Romney said people would be talking about is just how "complicated" the tax code can be. I suspect that was Romney's way of saying that people will be surprised at the lengths to which his accountants have gone to game the tax code and shelter as much of his wealth from taxation as possible.<br /><br />Ron Paul's insistence that Iran's threat to block the Straits of Hormuz is merely as response to a previous U.S. act of war (the blockade) shows just how outside the mainstream of the Republican party that guy really is. It's mind blowing to see stuff like that said on the GOP stage. These arguments will be missed when Paul is no longer able to run his Quixotic presidential campaigns (guy's age is starting to show).<br /><br />Meanwhile, Ron Paul's ludicrous claim that the Community Reinvestment Act caused the 2008 financial meltdown shows just how childish his economic views can be. The CRA as root cause of the crash simply fails the laugh test on every conceivable level. But for a free market absolutist like Paul, everything bad that happens in the economy must be the fault of some "market distorting" government policy somewhere.<br /><br />OK, that's it for now. I've got much more that could be said, but have run out of time.Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-83499555158663324602011-12-20T04:45:00.000-08:002011-12-20T04:50:03.825-08:00My Activities of LateThough I have written very little here over the pasy few weeks, I continue to blog for Stinque. To that end, I'd like to direct anyone who might drop by to two of my most recent pieces: <a href="http://www.stinque.com/2011/12/15/department-of-false-equivalences/">here</a> and <a href="http://www.stinque.com/2011/12/19/sic-semper-tyrannis/">here</a>.Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538110527131349279.post-53149299270675112722011-11-10T04:50:00.000-08:002011-11-10T05:02:00.990-08:00Just Give Up Already...We're to the point where it's just sad, really. Hard to believe that a couple of months ago this guy was a frontrunner for the GOP nomination based solely on speculation that he'd announce.<br /><br /><br /><br /> <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zUA2rDVrmNg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Patriot's Quillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00188140772869253532noreply@blogger.com0