Give or Take 50-thousand

Out of Iraq

 

President Obama told the Marines and, by-the-way, my son today he was ending the war in Iraq.  The date Obama tapped is August of 2010.  The oddest thing though, he is getting great reviews on this announcement from Republicans, his more liberal colleagues are giving him the “stink-eye” on the details.    Even John McCain seems to be solidly behind the President on this.  The sticking point for the more liberal crowd is the stated fact that 50-troops will remain behind in Iraq.  Here is the announcement and another gem of a speech from a President who can speak well:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29430928#29430728

The more left side of liberal movement does not like the fact so many troops will remain.  Many are suggesting this will remain a quagmire, another Viet Nam.  I think Obama is playing it close to the vest.  He has hedged his bets and listened to the military leaders on the ground, such as General Petraeus.  He has to be able to move the troops quickly and effectively because the Middle East has been so unstable and fluid for centuries.  He is taking a big gamble in announcing troop withdrawal timetable that coincide with election cycles.  This is feeling more like the war that never ends.  My opinion is that he will end it though.  If the troop withdrawals do go as scheduled, you will see a cessation of significant troops in Iraq by the time 2012 and the Presidential election rolls around.  This is my cynical side talking, I do think Obama is a shrewd politician, but I also believe he has a good heart and good intentions…and is a fantastic leader.

More on Kenneth the Page

 

After Governor Bobby Jindal’s disastrous reply to Obama’s address to Congress, even more embarrassing news has come out.  The story he told of helping a Sheriff fight big government appears to have been a lie:  http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/jindal_admits_katrina_story_was_false.php

Here is the same account from Politico.com, a much more conservative source, which buried the story but ran it none-the-less:  http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0209/Jindal_aide_Story_was_set_after_Katrina.html

Things are moving fast in Washington.  We have a real President and I’m just not this used to real action being taken by a thoughtful, articulate balanced leader.  See you next time.

The True Cost of War

Showing the Cost of War

 

President Barrack Obama addressed both Houses of Congress and the American People this week.  His speech was inspiring and sobering, realistic and hopeful.   It was a hit pretty much across the board, except perhaps for the many GOP dead-enders in Congress (you know who you/they are). We are referring, of course, to Tuesday night's State of the Unionish speech by President Obama to Congress. Polls have revealed an uptick in Obama's approval ratings.  One of the subtle but important points the Main Stream Media (MSM) missed is the distinction he outline in how the budget is presented. 

President Obama is going to SHOW the cost of fighting wars in his budgets.  The misleading practice of the Bush Administration was to show the cost of wars as a separate budget issue, not tied to the main budget.  Wow!  It’s nice to have a President with some integrity.  Can Bush have been much creepier as President, well, I mean not Dick Cheney creepy, but he was very scary.

Now to matters less weighty.  Did you see the Republican response to the Obama speech by Governor Bobby Jindal?  Now that was some funny stuff.  I don’t watch Thirty Rock, but I understand fans of that show all over the nation saw Jindal and THOUGHT: Kenneth the Page.   http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2009/02/the-jack-mcbrayer-response-to-the-internet-response-to-the-republican-response-to-the-presidents-add/#more

Worse perhaps than his presentation was his message.  First to have the bad sense to tell a story about failed government as it related to Hurricane Katrina...gah…whose watch was that failed action on?   But he offered zero new ideas.  More “taxes are bad, tax-cuts are good, government is bad” parroting of the Republican talking points.

Important program note:  Today the C-PAC convention was in full swing in New York.  Featuring the finest in conservative Republican thinkers such as Joe the Plumber.  Mitt Romney, and that one guy.  Rush Limbaugh will be the key-note speaker this weekend.  Is that a party or what? 

What is telling about the conservative convention is that neither Bobby Jindal, nor Sarah Palin are attending.  These are considered two of the strong front runners for the Republican nomination for President next time around.  It’s also with some interest I note Utah Governor Jon Huntsman’s name is now being bandied about as a legitimate candidate.  Personally, I think he is head and shoulders above Mitt Romney, but he just belongs to the wrong party.  I’ll tell you what he would be good at in my opinion…serving on Obama’s Cabinet.  That’s my surprise to myself this week.

Have a good one, enjoy your weekend.

We Have a Budget Proposal

 

President Obama’s first.  It doesn’t sound communistic to me, despite some recent allegations by Conservative talk show host Alan Keyes.  According to the Washington Post, “President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan”.     Cutting the deficit?  That sounds downright “Republicanesque”, although as you can gather from this;  http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/files/uploads/2009/02/Natl_Debt_Chart_367c0.jpg the Republicans can hardly have much to say.  But they will.  The GOP is so disorganized right now the only thing they can unite against is the President.  They can’t even turn to their base, because they have voted against helping them in the recent Stimulus plan.  But even rich conservatives don’t believe their own blather anymore.

*June 28, 2007
(Warren) Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary

"Mr. (Warren) Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent. Mr. Buffett told his audience, which included John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Alan Patricof, the founder of the US branch of Apax Partners, that US government policy had accentuated a disparity of wealth that hurt the economy by stifling opportunity and motivation. "

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article1996735.ece

 

Finally, to follow up on the very dim Republican State Senator in Utah, Chris Buttars…please check out this link:

http://www.sltrib.com/Salt%20Lake%20Tribune%20Home%20Page/ci_11757628

 Good luck.  

We always have HOPE.

But First a word from….

 

I’m back from my Qwest imposed exile, please try to contain yourselves.  Today’s topic will be Mortgage Savings from the Obama Administration (the group that abolished torture).  Since I don’t have big-time math skills or any real estate sense you can take it for what it’s worth.  So instead of diving right in I’m going to touch on a Utah Politician.

http://www.sltrib.com/Salt%20Lake%20Tribune%20Home%20Page/ci_11731577

Utah Republican Representative Chris Buttars is a total embarrassment to our State.  He is the winner, which is saying something.  I’ll let you read the article.  He basically says Gays “greatest threat to America” .  I’m not making this stuff up, he said it on videotape.    This mess will most likely end up being shown at next year’s Sundance film festival.

Here is the film-maker take by reporter Derek P. Jensen: If Reed Cowan needed extra buzz to get his documentary, "8: The Mormon Proposition," into the Sundance Film Festival, he found it in Chris Buttars.

But the openly gay former Channel 4 reporter was unprepared for both the Republican lawmaker's "hate-mongering" rhetoric and the interview's ensuing furor.

"I had no idea this would get worldwide reaction," Cowan said Wednesday from the Miami TV station where he now works.

Cowan says he sought out Buttars for the Jan. 30 interview in his Senate office since the Utah senator has long been "the wall" between gay people and legal rights as well as a former LDS bishop who played a role in excommunicating gay Mormons.

"He signed a very cogent release that gave me the right to use this in the promotion of the film and the film," Cowan said, noting that no moviemaker would turn down the opportunity to use the material. "He was on the people's time. He was at the people's desk. He was sitting in the people's building."

In a blog Wednesday, Buttars said Cowan told him he would be able to approve his part of the film before it was released. "I took Reed at his word and am disappointed."

Cowan, who says Buttars "would have had to be under a rock to not know" he is gay, rejects any notion this was a "gotcha interview."

"That couldn't be more incorrect," he said. "It couldn't be more duck and cover, and it's shameful. Any attempt to throw an arrow at me is cheap and cowardly. He said what he said."

Cowan notes the obituary for his son refers to Cowan and his partner, while a Salt Lake City magazine recently chronicled the gay filmmaker's' documentary.

Cowan plans to wrap the project this summer in time for film festivals, including Sundance.

 

Now, onto real estate, mortgages etc.  President Obama rolled out his ideas for TARP funding and how he plans to use it to help troubled American Families with their house mortgages.  If  you will remember last week, the Republicans were hammering him for not saying enough or committing enough money to the housing crisis.  This week of course, they are saying “Obama is spending too much, too much detail, too many people left out”.  Can you see the trend?

The Republicans are going to block, oppose, ridicule…everything the President does and root for him to fail, root for the Nation to fail.  Meantime they are marginalizing themselves.  They have become as stale as politician (not hero) John McCain and dim-bulb Sarah Palin. 

I told you I knew nothing of mortgages and real estate.  Talk to your lender and good luck and God Bless.  I’m rooting for you, even if the Republicans are not.  Even if you are gay.

One final laugh for you, listen to a Republican Leader, Senator Michelle Bachman of Minnesota:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/17/michele-bachmann-were-run_n_167650.html

Please laugh to avoid crying.

Internet Down

*written 2/16/09

The internet service provider for four States and about 63-thousand customers is down this afternoon.  You can imagine the ramifications.  Dirty, gray haired men cannot stream live porn into their homes and onto their computer sitting below the picture of the Temple they were married in.  Thousands who work in offices not shut down by President’s Day are actually working or trying to be creative to appear they are working.  People like me are waiting on phone call to the technical support of Qwest, being told they are busy and wait is over ten minutes to talk to a human being, and then having the human being tell them (after 45 minutes) they will just have to be patient and wait a few hours.

I’m forced to watch live cable news channels much to my chagrin.  Please don’t be silly and assume Fox News is one of them. Faux New, Fixed News, whatever you want to call it might just have Glenn Beck crying and telling lies and my fragile psyche cannot handle that today.  MSNBC is tilted as much to the left with Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow, but their catch-phrase is not “Fair and Balanced”.  I enjoy Fox’s sense of humor using this slogan.  They are so far right they’ve gone right out of the country.  (That was funny, wasn’t it?  Didn’t it remind you of President Regan saying “so far left, they’ve left the country”?) 

CNN seems to be more balanced to me on reporting, but once they start interviewing, they always bring on a Republican to begin telling us how dumping trillions of dollars into a trumped-up war in Iraq is so much more righteous than dumping trillions of dollars into our economy so we don’t have to live under the crumpling overpass. 

Speaking of annoying Republicans, I have a plea for Senator John McCain.  Shut up!  You realize, sir, that you lost the election and you can quit pushing your tax-cut strategy that was Bush’s answer to everything…don’t you…don’t you?  Please let us build a statue in your honor, with heat seeking missiles defending it against pigeons that would unpatriotically poop on it, and then you can rest on your laurels and occasionally vote rationally and help move the country forward. 

I just realized, at this very minute, the internet being down might be a VAST right wing conspiracy to stop bloggers from writing naughty bits about John McCain or Sarah Palin…or even John Boehner.  (He wants it be pronounced “Bay-ner” so he won’t be tittered at when he opposes birth control measures proposed by left wing socialists in the House of Representatives.  It should be pronounce “Boner” but, you can see his point.  People wouldn’t take him seriously.  They would just make fun of his fake tan and public crying and his voting no to anything progressive.  What a bonehead.  By the way, I enjoyed writing “naughty bits” in my sentence with Sarah Palin. 

On this sad day of no internet I would like to publically thank Sarah Palin on this word document no one can see for losing the election and perhaps, uniting her miniscule base to the point that the Republicans will be forced to have Tanya Harding break her shin or face losing the next several election cycles until she disappears into the wilds of Alaska, or secedes from the States with her unpatriotic first-dude.  If you stumble on this and you watch Fox News, please try another news station and some newspapers for a change.  Then you might get my jokes and you might start having some hope for our Country again.   I really think we have a chance to do some good things with the positive leadership we have now.  President Obama is coherent, can do several things at once and he doesn’t say “nucular”.  Anyway, that is my internet is down column today.  It's short on substance like Faux News, but long on style, like our First Family.  If it’s ever published, I hope you enjoyed it.

Stim Edition

By now everyone on the connected planet knows the (pick one: stimulus, spending, jobs, recovery, pork) Bill has passed the House and Senate and merely waits a pen stroke away by President Obama from becoming law.  Some interesting reaction and anticipation coming from both parties now on what it all means and where do we go from here.

The Republicans, save three Senators, laid a goose-egg on the Stim bill.  They knew it would pass eventually, so it was a shrewd? gesture.  In one sense, they could rail against it all they wanted, vote now, and leave it sans Republican fingerprints.  This was a fine idea for Utah’s Senator Bob Bennett, who tried to tack on a 50-Billion dollar addition that would have had some impact on Utah’s coal industry and lots of impact on Nuclear energy and the resultant waste it creates. 

You see, Republican Senator Bennett gets considerable support from Energy Solutions, and that rider would have been a nice windfall for Energy Solutions.  Bennett knew the bill was going to pass anyway, so if he snuck it on, he could vote AGAINST stimulus, and get HIS pork added in.  Sneaky bugger.  Of course in his campaign later he could assert righteously he voted against Democratic pork legislation.  What a hypocrite, what a liar! 

Now Republican leader Lindsey Graham is talking about bank Nationalization.   If President Obama mentioned this he would be a communist, Marxist, socialist, liberal. 

Isn’t it amazing how one man’s fiscal conservatism is another’s socialism?  Like welfare for example.  It’s ok to give corporate welfare to top business executives in the form of tax breaks, but try to extend food stamp benefits to the truly poor and you are a pinko-liberal.   

Does anyone else see the double-standard hypocritical posturing of the neo-conservatives or am I alone in this very red State?    If I can point out something stated very clearly on MediaMatters.com, the media is NOT liberal.  It is in fact slanted conservatively:

“On any given day during the current congressional debate over the economic recovery plan, chances are good that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity will say something false about the administration's or congressional Democrats' efforts to pass a bill. And they do not promote these falsehoods in isolation; they are often promoted concurrently with each other and with Republican members of Congress. President Obama reportedly chastised congressional Republicans for "listen[ing] to Rush Limbaugh," and, as Media Matters for America has pointed out, Limbaugh has also demonstrated a proclivity for listening to -- and parroting -- congressional Republicans. For his part, in consecutive shows on January 30 and February 2, Hannity hosted Sens. Mitch McConnell, Tom Coburn and John McCain on his radio show, and on February 4 he hosted Rep. Mike Pence on Fox News. As a result, Hannity and Limbaugh have created an echo chamber of Republican talking points and misinformation criticizing the economic recovery plan. And given the acknowledgment by some national journalists that they pay attention to Limbaugh and Hannity, it follows that they care what the two are saying about the stimulus -- CNBC anchor Erin Burnett said as much about Limbaugh, touting his op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on that topic as "serious."

I guess the most galling part is that the Republicans, who cling to conservative Christian values and ethics play the dirty game of politics better than anyone.  They play them much better than liberals, who actually live the open mindedness they espouse.

Media blahs

So today the talking heads are talking about the stimulus package or the spending package if you listen to Republicans.  But what is stimulus if it is not spending?  But the Mainstream media keep rolling out the Republicans one by one. 

I think that the Obama administration expected a better deal from the media but they are only interested in driving up ratings and the stimulus fracas does just that. I was shocked when Wolf Blitzer asked a Republican why they were so eager to bail out Wall Street but seem reluctant to bail out
Main Street. It was the first time I heard someone challenge the opposition as opposed to those in favor of the legislation. This debate has been decidedly one-sided with a pro-opposition approach. Instead of trying to frame this debate as an Obama failure they should be focused on what happens if it fails. It seems that Jack Cafferty is one of the only people asking that question. Perhaps the media thinks that they are immune to economic disaster but they do us all a disservice with their inside the beltway drivel.

Locally, KUTV-2 has been my choice of news programs, but they are parading one republican after another to slam the stimulus bill.  Isn’t it supposed to be balanced to be news?  Or is it more propaganda?

Where is all the outrage about the serious criminal tax crimes? Like the elitist and corporations having the illegal accounts overseas and pay NO taxes.

How about Exxon getting all this tax welfare along with stealing our public oil resources at prices before 1960 and selling it at today's prices.

Why are the crimes of Bush, Cheney Rumsfeld, Rove, Ashcroft and the rest of the republican criminals shoved into a closet and hidden while they talk of sex lie of Clinton, and some democratic governor’s stupid comments?

We need to take the news media back for the republican-corporate leaders and turn it back into a real live news media,,, which gives the American citizens the true fact , picture and let the government be transparent again.

Firstly

I never considered blogging until the last Presidential election. I have to say I found a new addiction. As much as I admired John McCain, war hero, I was drawn to the new young and hopeful message of one Barrack Hussein Obama.

 

Let me flashback to my former life as a radio personality at a very small radio station in Central Utah. Among my other duties was to be a newsman (there are very few duties at a small radio station you -don't- have including vacuuming the floor).  The fall of 1980 was a heady time.  Jimmy Carter’s economy (stupid) nearly had us in the coal age and the hot new idea was “Trickle Down”, with the ultimate communicator, Ronald Reagan running for President.

The message a’ la mode was a commercial from the RNC about the bloated, white haired politician, tax and spend incarnate, who’s time had come and gone.  It was about sweeping change and smaller government.  Utah even had this VERY buy, Congressman Gunn McKay, who was a older, white haired, hefty Democrat.  He was the guy.  Lean up-and-comer Jim Hansen was running against him as a fiscal conservative, term limit advocate, Republican.

It was exciting to interview both of these men, compare and contrast and get a feel for them in person.  Jim Hansen even petted a stray dog that materialized out of nowhere in front of the radio station, and I thought, “what a great, common man”.  He insisted he was going to make sure Congressmen had term limits too.  Career politicians=bad. 

Too bad he was lying.   He hung around for multiple terms, and after the euphoria of Reaganomics dissolved we gradually morphed into the conservative nation that lead us to one George W. Bush.   In hindsight, it appears Reagan’s revolution was a façade. 

http://www.amazon.com/Tear-Down-This-Myth-Distorted/dp/141659762X

Tax cuts do benefit some.  Just not we regular folks.  Oh sure, the very wealthy have done, well,  you tell me how they’ve done.  Which brings us to the election of 2008 and me deciding to get really “into” politics.