Friday, October 20, 2006

Elections 2006: Over the Cliff and into the Abyss

Tom DeLay. Duke Cunningham. Mark Foley. Denny Hastert, John Boehner, Tom Reynolds, George Allen (the non-Jew Jew, racist Senator from Virginia). The Republican-led congress now has an approval rating of less than 20%.

That's right, four out of five people in America do not approve of the job this sleazy, clandestine, corrupt-to-the-core, hypocritical congress has done. Meanwhile, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and just about every other right wing lunatic broadcaster wants to do what?

They want to villify Nancy Pelosi, that's what, and apparently that's the best strategy these one-trick Republicans can come up with. They want to scare their listeners and viewers into thinking that Nancy Pelosi will destroy America, give in to terrorists, stomp on traditional values. Yes, fear the little lady from San Francisco who may become the next Speaker of the House. She's the bogey-woman of the week.

If you want to witness the destruction of America, look no further than the current crop of Republicans and vote them back into power again. The previous Majority Leader, the not-so-honorable Tom DeLay, is facing criminal charges. Mark Foley is a pervert, and Hastert, Boehner and Reynolds knew all about him, buried the truth and coerced Foley into running again in 2006. They needed the seat more than they felt the need to protect teenage pages - the targets of Foley's sick predatory constitution.

How about the foibles of our linguistically-challenged, dry drunk Liar-in-Chief president and his cohorts - Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, primarily - who lead us into a war of choice based on cooked, unreliable intelligence and their bold-faced lies about WMDs, Iraq's connection to Al Queda and mushroom cloud scenarios? They're still lying, and Iraq is a complete wreck, a failure of monstrous proportions which will take a generation or more to correct, if ever.

And then there's the unanswered questions about 9/11. Instead of going into all the theories and myriad scenarios about what really happened that day, and the events leading up to it, one long, disturbing question: Why would anyone object to an investigation and/or testifying under oath? Cheney, Bush and Condi all did. Maybe because the truth would incriminate them? Just maybe? Let's hear the other reasons for not wanting to testify under oath other than an intention to LIE.

These Republicans have proven not to be the paragons of morality and keepers of liberty they purported to be. They lied to Congress and the American people, stole from the nation's bounty, and perverted the laws that made and keep us all free. And then they tried to cover it up... with more lies.

Now, if you support these people, you're either an idiot or you just can't stand the idea that you might have been wrong in trusting them. For most people, the latter is probably the case. For some, it's tough to admit defeat, or admit that their views and understanding of the world is incorrect, but now, today, and for the next three weeks, these people have to search their souls and come into the light. We've all been led astray by the Republicans in power, and it's time to cut them loose.

On November 7, Americans will go to the polls in the most important election in most of our lifetimes. It's time to get it straight: Democrats by and large are not give-away-liberals, or evil or somehow soft. They love America. Most of them have good ideas, plans, intentions and visions for the future of our nation, but any Republican who gets elected this time around is another threat to our nation, our liberty, our way of life, because their only want is the power of the majority and more graft and riches for themselves, their friends, families and cronies.

The only way to fix the problems we have - most of them created by the Republicans - is to end the Republican stranglehold on Congress and replace it with a Democratic majority that will hold hearings and investigations, make the administration accountable to the American people, overturn the bad laws enacted over the last 6 years and restore America to its rightful place as the leading nation of the free world.

Most thinking people have already made up their minds. They're voting straight Democrat in any congressional race. Hordes of undecided or independent voters are voting for Democrats. And we need the Repubicans of conscience and morality and intelligence to come to their senses and do the same. Why? Read on.

The polls suggest that there's going to be a Democrat landslide in the coming elections, so what's my worry? It looks like the Dems will win majorities in both the House and the Senate. So, why am I panicked?

Because, just like in 2000, 2002 and 2004, the Republicans are going to manipulate the elections. If they can't purge enough Democrats from the voting rolls, they have the ability to rig the machines which count the votes. Nearly 80 million Americans will be casting their choices on machines which have been proven, over and over again, to be hackable before, during and after elections, supply no paper trail, and thus cannot produce a verifiable recount.

Consider the words of Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, who have been delving into the Ohio election results for nearly two years:

In the two years since the fraudulent defeat of John Kerry, we've unearthed an unholy arsenal by which that election was stolen. They include: outright intimidation, wrongful elimination of registered voters, theft, selective deployment of (often faulty) voting machines, absentee ballots without Kerry's name on them, absentee ballots pre-punched for Bush, absentee ballots never mailed, touch screens that lit up for Bush when Kerry was chosen, lines for black voters five hours long while white voters a mile away voted in fifteen minutes, tens of thousands of provisional ballots pitched summarily in the trash, alleged ex-felons illegally told they could not vote, Hispanic precincts with no Spanish-speaking poll workers, deliberate misinformation on official web sites…and that's not even the tip of an iceberg whose bottom we may never see.

Thanks to a federal lawsuit, we have finally been able to look at some of the actual ballots from Ohio 2004. Just for starters, researchers Stuart Wright and Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips have found a precinct in Delaware County where 359 consecutive voters allegedly cast ballots for Bush. Dr. Ron Baiman found another precinct in Clermont County where a random inspection found 36 straight replacement ballots, a phenomenon that can be accomplished only by divine intervention or outright fraud.



The Republicans very well may return after these elections to majorities in both houses, and if that's the case, the results will almost surely be the work of nefarious theives and crooks. So, beware, and vote for a Democrat, any Democrat.

For those of you who don't believe that the machines can, have been and will be hacked, despite the overwhelming mountains of evidence, I part company with you here, because there is no good reason to engage in dialogue with anybody who is either misinformed or simply uninformed and chooses ignorance over truth.

Try educating yourself on the issue by following some of these links:

Black Box Voting - a great resource for understanding how elections are hacked by use of electronic voting machines. Bev Harris wrote the book on how elections are stolen and the intent of the public debased.

The Brad Blog - Nobody has done more to expose the underhanded tactics and hacking methods than Brad Freidman. If you read nothing else, Brad's archives are invaluable. There's so much information there, it will take months just to read Brad's posts, plus he links to thousands of related articles.

Velvet Revolution - an amalgam of voter's rights groups, citizen advocacy groups and ordinary people who support free and fair elections with thousands of stories about vote suppression and election machine hacking.

If anyone can spend the time to read these articles and still not believe that there are election problems which need to be investigated and repaired, then you are probably just lying to yourself and thus, on your own. Good luck to you. I and other patriots will be working to preserve our democracy, even for you, in your slumbering ignorance.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

The Gnashing of Teeth and Tearing of Flesh

The ongoing saga of Representative Mark Foley (R-Florida) continues to spin out of the control of even the most determined Republican spin doctors. What began as the outing of a sexual predator targeting teen-aged House pages, has turned into a full-blown scandal which has the potential to take down the leadership of the party.

While the wheels of Congress ground to a halt last week, the turbine of power politics was just getting started. To update where matters stand today (Thursday, October 5), Foley resigned on Friday, September 29, shortly after ABC News' release of salacious emails sent by the congressman to pages. The emails were from 2005, and shortly thereafter, even more disturbing instant messages were made public.

Sometime over the following three days, Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, denied knowledge of more than just a few transcript pages of the original "naughty emails." Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Republican majority leader, has changed his story twice since Foley's emails surfaced last Friday, initially (Friday) telling the Washington Post that he had spoken to Hastert about the sleazy messages, then calling the paper back later in the day to say that he didn't recall such a meeting.

But on Tuesday, Boehner told a Cincinnati radio station that he had indeed spoken to the Speaker and that Hastert told him the matter had been handled.

Tom Reynolds (R-NY) has admitted he knew about Foley and his behavior and reported such to Hastert, and on Monday night appeared at a press conference surrounded by children - at which no questions were allowed.

It was a rather creepy scene, of which there's video aplenty available all over the web. Some of the reporters asked that the children (all of whom supposedly kids of Reynolds' supporters) be removed from the room so they could grill Reynolds about the Foley correspondence. Reynolds declined to allow the children to leave.

Wonderful! Now we have Republicans using children as human shields - to keep them safe from the probing queries of the bullet-pointed press.

Then on Wednesday night, Laura Bush appeared at a rally - fund raiser for Reynolds in an obvious ploy to sweep the crud on him off his lapel and under any convenient rug. The First Lady wasn't previously scheduled for the event, so it's plain that she was rushed into action to aid the beleaguered chairman of the National Republican Congressional Campaign (NRCC) who is facing a stiff challenge this fall from challenger Jack Davis.

Surprise, surprise, Mr. Reynolds. An internal poll conducted for Davis shows Davis beating Reynolds 50%-42%.

Not to worry, John McCain is reportedly on the way to upstate NY to stump for Reynolds. One should assume that Mr. Clean McCain is going to have a very, very busy travel schedule this month. Trouble is, for McCain, he's going to be backing a lot of losers and questionable characters along the way and there will be photos and quotes and links and all kinds of implications tying McCain to all kinds of human garbage.

The Democrats couldn't have planned it any better. Thanks to Foley and the Republican attempts at cover-up (has it occurred to anybody besides me that these Republican leaders, from Bush on down, are probably the most inept, moronic bunglers ever to step foot on Capitol grounds?) the leading Republican candidate for president in 2008 is going to impale himself on the stump right here in '06. Bye-bye John. Stay a Senator. It's a safe job... for now.

OK, that should get us all caught up on the unfolding scandal here at just after 8:00 pm EDT. Now for the good stuff.

Reynolds has more problems than even Hastert and is looking more and more like he'll end up in a political body bag in November. Not only is he losing his own race, as chair of the RNCC he's likely to have too many fires erupting across the landscape to control. Reynolds will burn out in the heat of the campaign. Burn, baby, burn...

His problems will grow in depth and intensity as his own campaign turns uglier. Not only did Reynolds' recently-retired-in-disgrace chief of staff Kirk Fordham serve as Foley's CofS, but Reynolds also accepted a $100,000 contribution to the RNCC from Foley. That's now tainted money and the robust hue of putrid, foul, rank enterprise is all over Reynolds, just like his brethren, Abramoff, Scanlon, Cunningham, and DeLay.

Tom Reynolds is in it up to his eyeballs. Losing the election to Davis may actually be his best exit strategy.

Political junkies and activists take note: Anyone wishing for a complete and total Dem whitewash this fall should hope and pray that Lumpy (Hastert) fights for his political life as hard as his bloated body will allow. The longer this seedy saga strolls, the closer we all get to our date with destiny...

I'll be here daily, blogging the life out of the evil, corrupt and anti-democracy Republicans this fall. I make no bones about my political leanings. I was a Republican most of my life, though leaning away as I grew older, but since George W. Bush won in 2000, I've gotten religion, and it's known as love for democracy and faith in the rule of law.

The current regime is more corrupt than any I have ever seen in our country and I place the blame for our country's current malaise squarely on the heads and shoulders of the President and his Republican lackeys in the Congress. This entire crew has to be swept completely out of the body politic and kept out. They have trampled on the constitution with impunity and are the greatest threat to liberty in this country and around the world.

Just so you know where I stand, I hope my position is plain enough.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Mediocrity ends sadly

Just a quick note to point out that sellyouritem.com, a website I had exposed as being somewhat worthless in a previous blog post -
The Sadness of Mediocrity - has indeed bitten the dry dust. The site, which had attracted a fair number of ebay sellers, but relatively few active buyers, seems to have ended its short and miserable existence on or about January 25, 2005 according to the last date on Google's cache. So, I have been in the dark for over a year. Boo-hoo.

I should point out that I had engaged in some rather boisterous site policy disputes with the site's customer service and marketing rep - a woman I knew only as Sheila - to no avail (she had a nasty habit of deleting my posts). Thus, this is the fate of those who generally disagree with me on PR and marketing matters: death of web site.


I'm not sorry to see them go. The site basically sucked.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Blog as a guide to the Downtown Magazine web site

After toying with the idea of being a full-time blogger, I concluded that do so would actually be a self-demotion, since I'm already a reporter, editor and publisher, so I left the blog alone and didn't link it to my regular site pages while I decided what to do with it.

Finally, it occurred to me that I could actually help myself and my readers out by using the blog as a kind of guide to the site, and that's what I'm planning to do, use this space to promote the articles that are appearing on the site, so let me get right to that.

And maybe some day, I'll actually start writing like a PR person, rather than a war-worn editor with too much on his plate... Maybe not.

Articles of note appearing this week on the dtmagazine.com web site include, as usual, Business Editor Don Bravo's excellent daily musings on the world of investment and finance. You can find links to his daily briefings in archival form on the Business page.

Naturally, I kept busy writing nock-ups on the World Series (congrats to the White Sox). You can read the daily post-game recaps and notes working backwards from game 4, here.

For sports junkies who follow collage football as madly as I do, the news this week that Texas had moved past USC in the BCS poll came as no surprise around these parts. I had moved Texas into the #1 spot three weeks ago on the Downtown Magazine College Football Top 25 rankings and now find myself in the unusual position of actually being in agreement with the BCS. How weird!

It being Friday, you might want to get your sports fix ready with some action for the weekend, and there's plenty of it. Check out my college football picks, NFL picks and for those of you who love the ponies, I put together a package of Breeders' Cup picks, including my analysis of the win, place and show horses in each race, plus exacta, trifecta and multi-race parlays.

That's it for today. I'll be updating this space more frequently from now on.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Storms rising: Wilma and Fitzgerald

With the World Series scheduled to begin on Saturday, and hurricane Wilma set to hit the west coast of Florida on Sunday, the best time for prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to hand down indictments in the CIA leak case would be... hmmmm, Monday. It will be a slow news day and Fitzgerald would get prime exposure. Well, that's assuming the supine mainstream press decides to cover it and if Wilma doesn't do much damage to the Treasure Coast.

I can see Brian Williams now, "reporting from Ft. Meyers, Florida, where a couple of mobile home parks are closed today by FEMA for damage assessment. Wilma didn't hit here, but FEMA officials thought maybe the bird flu might have snuck in on the winds. In Washington, the President, Vice President, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Judy Miller, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Tim Russert, Katie Couric, Tom Cruz, Michael Chertoff and the entire Navy Marching Band have been indicted for conspiracy to commit treason. Donald Rumsfeld will be sworn in as president on Tuesday. John Bolton is rumored to be named Secretary of State."

"Now back to our studios in New York for important news on the World Series and our special 'Bringing the War Home' series on a man who has installed anti-tank guns on his roof in rural Oshkosh."

Yeah, I'm dreaming. But Fitzgerald will be handing down indictments shortly. My wish list is: Karl Rove, Libby, Rice, Powell (no bad act should go unpunished), Dick Cheney.

I would be happy to see those five be indicted. Any more, I'll be dancing in the street 'til dawn. If Cheney isn't included, I'll live. But please, please, get Condi on the list.

Monday, Monday, Washington, D.C....

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Social Security, Democracy and your money

I have to admit to being a little less than enthusiastic about faux-president Bush's ideas on Social Security reform. Basically, the imposter wants to take 4% of what we make - roughly a third of the total SSI contributions as it now stands, and allow us to make investments in stocks, bonds and other so-called "safe" investments.

Excuse me while I flush the rest of my money down the toilet...

Let's say you make 40K a year, 4% of that is $1600. Now, just putting that money in a jar in a closet will net you $48,000 after 30 years. If you inflate that $1600 contribution by 3% annually, it comes up to $76,000 and change. If you invest it, and you make an average of 4% per year (we're talking 30-year Treasury Bills here) you boost it to over 130,000.

You can slice and dice the numbers any way you like. Personally, I'd prefer that the government "allow" me to keep more of my income, even at the risk of a much lower retirement benefit at their predetermined time. I might be able to do much more with that 12.4% they scam from me every paycheck.

What the hell am I talking about. I haven't had a real job in 7 years. When I get to 67 (that's the new retirement age for us late boomers) I'll probably owe them money - according to them. If I ever see a Social Security check made out to me, I'll likely die from shock. Big deal.

Maybe you can see where this is going? Some people might want to get a little more out of their money, as in riskier investments. They don't always go up. Sometimes they even loss most or all of their value. Permanently, as in forever. Flush!

The faux-pres is taking a small step toward the complete bankruptcy and slavery of the US population with this scheme. No doubt, if we allow personal accounts to become part of the Social Security aparatus, the rules and structure will become so complex, not even the government's own accountants will fully understand it, much less the average wage-earner.

I suppose investing for yor retirement, instead of blowing your paycheck on the lottery - the hidden tax, completely voluntary, mind you - probably is an idea worthy of some merit. Doing it with money previously earmarked for the retirment fund of others, older than you, creates a deficit on one side of the equation, precisely, on the payout end, the most important element and the sole purpose of the program. It's not a good set-up.

The worst part of this scenario is the windfall it is for the banks, mutual funds, insurance companies and brokerages who will be handling an additional 4% of the total US payroll. Naturally, that would create a flood of new money and regular infusions of capital, forever. If the investments are limited to certain government choices, it is completely unfair to every other investment vehicle and create imbalances and market distortions, which is, quite possibly, the whole idea, anyway. For instance, will Americans be allowed to invest thse funds in gold futures, or currency swaps, or options trading? If not, why not? Some people are more adept at investing than others and more expert. Some could, if given the opportunity, make excellent investment choices and large profits. Others may not.

The idea of private accounts is a good one, just not within the bounds of the Social Security system. The introduction of private accounts into a system that has, since its inception, been, a model of simplicity, is simply irresponsible and far too risky. The faux-president wants to spend some of that "political capital" he boasted about after his recent win in the mock election. Unfortunately, that real capital is going to be ours and it's headed right for the rich slobs who helped put this bozo in office in the first place - the fat city fat cats of Wall Street.

Outstanding!

Monday, October 18, 2004

It's Over, Except for the Vote-Counting

An article in the October edition of SFO Magazine (http://sfomag.com) caught my attention recently. It outlined, with charts, graphs, and text, the stock market scenarios for Octobers leading up to elections and offered the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a prediction tool.

In six out of eight presidential election years in which the Dow was down for the month of October - and it is down this month and heading lower today - the incumbent (that would be George Bush this year) lost. Not only is that a solid 75% hit rate, but the greater the loss on the Dow, the more reliable the indication.

According to one chart in the article, the only times the incumbent won when the Dow was down were the two smallest declines (1944, Roosevelt defeated Dewey, Dow down 0.1%; and, 1964, Johnson defeated Goldwater, Dow down 0.3%). The other six times in which the Dow slipped were greater losses, spelling defeat for the incumbent.

The most recent incarnations of this phenomenon are 1976 (Carter defeated Ford), 1980 (Reagan over Carter) and 1992 (Clinton defeated Bush). The 2000 election, in which Republican challenger George W. Bush won a narrow victory over Al Gore and the incumbent-party democrats, the Dow was up a solid 3% in October, one of only four times out of seventeen in which the Dow was up and the incumbent party lost. No system is perfect, but this one hits at a 75% or better rate and there are still plenty who believe Gore actually won in 2000, so there's more grist for that grindstone.

It does make some rational sense that the markets would turn lower sensing a change in the White House. Markets hate uncertainty, and even suspected change at the top, might engender some selling and profit taking. Juxtaposing the argument, the markets being down, i.e., a slowing or sluggish economy, may prompt a dumping of the chief executive.

Conversely, if the markets are strong and the economy flourishing, there's no need to make a change at the top, ergo, the incumbent sits pretty.

So, is the stock market telling us something many already suspect: that the economy is not so hot, that there are concerns over the current administration's ability to lead? Looks like it, and if the downward trend of the Dow continues (around 9870 at noon on Oct. 18, just over a 2% decline from the closing price of 10080.27 on Sept. 30), we may be waving another president bye-bye after a single term.

Forget the polls, just keep an eye on the Dow.

For more on the election and other fascinating topics, visit my web site.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Is there a Clod in our Future?

I have to admit, after watching the first Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, that, of the four men, George W. Bush not only performed the worst, but actually had to be rescued by Dr. Nasty, otherwise known as Dick Cheney.

Cheney, it seems to me, is the kind of guy our parents warned us about. He always seems to be aloof, distant and untouchable. Maybe it comes from being in a secure bunker for so long, but this guy is the archetypical fat-cat Republican, with connections out the ying-yang.

I could be wrong, as I am not privy to the inner workings of Washington, D. C., but Dick has gotten plenty of press on the topics of secrecy, Haliburton, arm-twisting, etc., but back to the overview of the debates...

Bush just seemed to be not very well-rehearsed or informed in his debate with John Kerry. His answers were right off the script and he seemed to have a hard time thinking on his feet (speaking of which, why were John Edwards and Cheney seated - is Cheney's health that bad?). Somebody suggested that having been in office for nearly four years has taken its toll on George W. If so, then maybe it really is time for him to go - and take that nasty VP with him.

Prior to the debate, I was certain that we'd be better off with the current administration winning re-election. Now, I am not so sure. The problems I have with Kerry/Edwards are that they are the epitome of the Democratic Party liberal ideal. My fear is that they'll tax and spend us to death, though, come to think of it, the Republicans are doing a pretty good job of that already.

Will we be safer from terrorism with George and Dick at the controls? This question is the height of stupidity in elections. I am convinced that about 99.7% of the American public will never be touched by terrorism as it is, no matter who is in the White House. And I really don't think the current administration has done such a bang-up job of it after all. We're spending billions of our money to secure peace in Iraq and it does not appear to be working, and Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, I guess.

The terrorists, for all the fear we're supposed to have of them, haven't changed much about how life in America is constituted, unless you're flying, of course. I don't think they're as large a threat to our way of life as, say, the World Bank, or maybe China. Sure, they'd like to blow our brains out, but there are many more of us than them, so if it ever comes down to it, we can and will simply obliterate them, either singularly, or en masse, a la nuke.

In any case, George W., of all four contestants in the debates, seemed the least intelligent, least informed, least able to make snap decisions. Overall, he looked rather cloddish. But, more than half the people in America still want to vote for him in November, probably because half the people in America are clods, too, when it comes to picking leaders.

It reminds me of pick-up football games on the playground. The biggest jerk always got to be quarterback and then he chose the lesser clods to be on his team. In essence, the smart kids always got pounded. This is not to say that all Republicans are clods and/or bullies, but the way things are going, it looks like the inner clod network is alive and well.

I haven't been so sure of Bush/Cheney from the start. As it is, and this should be pointed out, 9/11 DID happen on their watch and the war in Iraq probably could have been over a long time ago or never started in the first place. At least Kerry is putting up a fight and making people think about what this administration HAS done thus far. As elections go, this one will probably be pretty close, now that the Dems are pointing fingers and making strong points. Bush looks defenseless on a variety of issues.