Unions, Thrift, P*ssed-off Octogenarians... Nothing much has changed...

This is long, but it's worth it.  It's an eye witness to the Great Depression venting about what he views as the cause of it.  It's classic crusty New England... so I love it.  The guy sounds just like my father does today... Who, as it happens... is also 80 years old. 

God Bless them both.

"...Life histories were compiled and transcribed by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The Library of Congress collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents consist of drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. Pseudonyms are often substituted for individuals and places named in the narrative texts."

The United States Library of Congress, American Life Histories - Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 - Manuscript Division Library of Congress ~ http://lcweb2.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html

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12/22/38

NAME OF (WPA) WORKER Christabel Kidder

NAME AND ADDRESS OF INFORMANT: Frederick Savage-Harvard, Massachusetts

Mr. Frederick Savage... is eighty years old, but as strong and vigorous in appearance and manner as a man thirty years his junior. He is a handsome old man, tall, well-built with a keen eye that misses nothing, and a decisive manner tempered by a delightful sense of humour. Although his formal education stopped at the age of ten, Mr. Savage is a student, spending much of his time studying and reading. He is keenly interested in world and local affairs and is constantly writing diatribes on various and sundry subjects for the local papers. He has written and privately printed several books including the History of the Town of Harvard, where he spent his early life and where he has now returned after years of living in the West and South. He is a Yankee from way back and proud of it.

There is nothing wishy-washy about Mr. Savage. He says what he thinks and says it with decision. There is no reluctance or fear on his part of expressing opinions and giving advice. He knows all the answers and doesn't mind telling you so. His favorite theme is the "good old days" which he thinks had it all over the present when life is lived too fast and in too much of a muddle. Notwithstanding his decisive manner Mr. Savage is extremely personable. As a raconteur he has few rivals for his fund of anecdotes seem inexhaustible and his manner of telling the tales fascinating. ...He is very friendly, and eager to make you at home. There is little difficulty in interviewing him for he just talks and talks and talks , not always on subjects desired, but anyhow he talks.

Mr. Savage has had three wives. His present one is a native Californian, a dainty little creature with a soft voice and a gentle manner, who is completely dominated by her big husband. Her apologetic looks when "Frederick" cusses, only eggs him on to more frequent and more colorful phrases. At eighty and in the presence of his wife, Mr. Savage doesn't mind saying he likes the ladies and they like him. There's not a doubt that if the present Mrs. Savage were to follow her predecessors to the grave, Mr. Savage would be "on the market" for a fourth.

Mr. Frederick Savage settled himself in a deep armchair and started to talk. There was little need to ask questions, and to attempt to guide the conversation was impossible. Mr. Savage wouldn't be "steered." He said what he wanted to say, in the way he wanted to say it. His wife's various attempts to make him "conform" were brushed aside with bellows of impatience and the command to "quit jabbering and keep quiet."

He looked at me with keen eyes and announced:

"I can tell you the cause of this Depression. Don't know why everyone says, 'My, Goodness! How did this depression happen.' Easy to see how it came. Don't know why it didn't come sooner. In the first place I don't think that people today know the meaning of the word economy. At any rate, there's only a very few in the world who know how to practice it. The depression really began along in the early nineteen hundreds when these damned unions began to form. Most of the men employed in large manufacturing plants, including the railroads, joined in with some union so they could compel the companies they worked for to pay them higher wages. Right there, the good feeling was destroyed between the men that did the hiring and the men that worked for them. They commenced to have strikes, stand up strikes and sit down strikes. That wasn't good either for labor or for the owners of the mills, who had millions invested in their buildings and railroads. Both the laboring man and the financier spent their time figuring how they could beat each other instead of having good feeling. The owners began to pay out their money for all kinds of new machinery to do away with having so many men working. Then, you see, there were more men to work than there was work for them to do.. And things kept getting worse..and the bad feeling kept getting worse. And, as I say, no one practises economy today. And people aren't self reliant the way they used to be. There's the damn story in a nutshell.

Now there's lots of men who have the brains to think up plans, but they fail because they can't put them through. People are pleasure crazy today. A man lets his best thought-out-schemes come to nothing just because he puts them on one side because he wants to play golf or go to some fool shindig. I've travelled a lot in this country and I can tell you the majority of people are living beyond their income. They don't think they're living unless they have every damned thing hitched to them either by cash payment or the installment plan. When I was young, back in the sixties (1860‘s), there was no such thing as a 'standard of living.' Each man set his own standard of what he could afford in running his household or business. Course there were business failures once in a while but you didn't often hear of the average working man making a failure of life.

[Mr. Savage paused for breath but before I could get a word in, he was off.]

In this modern age people think they're progressing but they're not. No sir, not by a damn sight. The people in the towns, the cities and the states ain't so well off financially, morally physically or mentally as they were in the sixties (1860‘s) or seventies (1870‘s) when common sense was used in regulating everything.

Most people today are looking for someone to support them without work and if they keep that idea in their heads much longer most of us'll have to live in a cave or a dug-out or old shacks. A crust of bread and a handful of corn meal will look good to us. Work, work, work and hard work from sun-rise to sun-set, mixed with common sense, supports the people and the Government. And if they don't follow that rule, they're going soft and they'll decay. It ain't that human nature's changed much. Folks are just the same inside..just the same as when Adam met Eve in the Garden of Eden. It doesn't make any difference whether a woman wears wool, cottons or silk stockings, short or long dresses, hoop skirts or bustles or earrings, or diamonds, or has her dress held together with hooks and eyes or buttons or a lot of safety pins, she's just the same inside as she ever was. The only difference is she wants more because there's more in the world to want. The men are just the same, too. They all look, dress, and shave alike, their coats and pants and shoes and hats are all alike...but they want more, too. They don't want to work so hard and they want more for what they do. "Children should be taught to be self-reliant but they ain't. And they ain't taught to mind, either. I've heard a lot of damn fool mothers bribe their children to be good with candy. They're rude, too. A child should be taught to be kind and considerate to his father and mother and all elderly people. Kind words to elderly people is like candy to children. They appreciate it. Young people ought to remember that they'll be old, too, sometime. Most children are coddled too much and so they grow up expecting it. They ought to be made more self-reliant.

[Mrs. Savage, as tiny and quiet as her husband is tall and loquacious, broke in with the remark, "Yes, self-reliance is really the answer to most of our problems, don't you think."

“Hell, no," her husband let out a bellow (and continued)]

You got to have somethin' else. You got to have honesty, too. Honesty in dealing pays better than trickery in the end. It's funny but the meanest trickster in the world gets by because he pretends he's honest. We can't get away from honesty. It's the standard of living today just as it always was. My grandfather, Captain Charles Tyler Savage always told me that no one can serve you as well as you can serve yourself, and that you've got to learn everything that you expect to know. I was taught to be truthful and self-reliant and all the people I ever worked for were. I went to work on a farm when I was ten years old at five dollars a month. I worked sixteen hours a day, from four in the morning till eight at night and I never thought I was abused...

A man today would think he was killed if he worked as hard as I did... but what I'm getting at by all this, is that no one I ever worked for expected anyone to help them out of a tough spot. Men and women, worked hard, made long days and each and everyone of them had learned by hard experience that if they got stuck in the mud or a snowdrift they bad to dig themselves out or they could stay there. The Government wasn't cuddling people and giving to them and making them spineless then. In 1870 the farmers in Ohio had a wonderful crop of wheat. And they needed every cent they could get. They worked hard. Even the women and children cutting and setting up the wheat in stocks of twelve bundles each.

Then came most two weeks of rainy weather. The whole crop was almost a total loss for every kernel of wheat had a sprout on it. They never asked or expected the Government or anyone else to help them out. In 1873, when I was in Akron working on a large farm the crops were entirely eaten up by grasshoppers. They even ate the cotton lining all out of my vest when I left it on a rail fence. Not a farmer thought of the Government helping him out. In 1876 I was working on a large tobacco farm in Northfield, Massachusetts, side of the Connecticut river. The man I worked for had sixteen acres. He kept four men by the month and several more by the day. It cost a lot of money to raise and care for and fertilize sixteen acres of tobacco. It was already to harvest in one or two days. Then came a hail storm and every leaf of that tobacco was riddled. The loss was ten thousand dollars but the man took it and didn't

expect the Government to help him. [Mr. Savage paused, then pounding the table dramatically, shouted,] There's just three things that make men great, intuition, honesty and initiative and our Government has taken those virtues away from millions of laboring men and from thousands of business men. Now you take this Social Security thing and the Old Age Pension. It ain't right. It'll take all the initiative and git-up-and-git out of young folks. If they know they'll have something to lean on when they're old, they won't work and believe me, a man who doesn't work for it, shouldn't get it.

There's an old saying that a man is the architect of his life and believe me, it's the truth. For a long contented life, first of all you have to work hard, be honest, honest to yourself, toward others and to God. The success of life isn't just accumulating the almighty dollar, but to be independent and able to look every man in the face and say, 'I don't need anybody's help. I can do it myself.' That's what's the matter with the young people today. They can't do it and they don't seem to care.

[“But Frederick there's a great many people today who can't help being in the position they're in. It isn't their fault if they're out of work and have to depend on others. We should be sorry...." little Mrs. Savage's quiet refined voice was drowned out by a blast from her husband.]

Hell, who said I wasn't sorry for them. Course I'm sorry for the poor fools. I don't mean its their fault -- that is not entirely. They just didn't use their heads getting tied up with unions and crying for government aid. I don't believe in unions -- never saw any good in 'em and never belonged to one in my life. And Hell, I don't believe in the Government feeding the men and their families when they're out of work by their own will. It's got so no man can sell his labor for what its worth without joining a union. You hear a lot of talk about things being un-American. By God, that's un-American if anything is. And it's un-American for Washington to be telling the business men what to do and how to do it. America isn't a free country anymore like it was when I was young and when people not only supported themselves but the Government too. I tell you if a man will work and not avoid it and will economize, he'll get along.

...Now you take a woman moving into a new house. Ninety-nine out of a hundred wouldn't think of moving into a house unless it has hard wood floors. Then what do they do -- Hell, they rush out like the devil's after them to buy fancy rugs to cover the floors all up. And they're always bellowing about lots of air and sunshine and then they put draperies up and pull down the shades for fear the sun'll fade the-rugs and the curtains. Hell! And they all belong to a lot of clubs where they're supposed to do a lot of intellectual talking and listening and what do they do when they get home. Discuss the latest world situation or how to bring up their kids? Not on your life. The damn fools can only tell you what some other woman had on and how they wish they could have the same thing.

...I try to live right each day look to God for guidance. I tell you you may be smart enough to fool people but you can't fool yourself or God, for he's given each one of us a conscience, and for your own good and the good of others, use it. Travel made me see God much clearer than I ever did before. Only a great Power that we can't comprehend could make the Grand Canyon... When I used to sit up on (a) cliff... and see the Pacific all so blue and look up Mission Valley for some forty miles and across the valley to the mountains, I knew there was a God and he was a good God. I sit for hours sometimes and think of God -- and I'm thankful for his Loving care..."

[Mr. Savage's rapid transition from dogmatic blustering to this solemn thoughtfulness left us gasping. Before we could collect our wits, a neighbor drove into the yard with a load of wood. In an instant Mr. Savage was on hip feet and out the door swearing a streak. Mrs. Savage running after him with a warm coat and hat was lost in the bedlam. The interview was apparently over for this time.]

Dangerous Precedents. "Desert is not a right." "Backyard gardens."

We all knew it was a tax, so it's really no surprise Obama would have Holder argue it as such in his legal defense of the monstrous health care law, but take that together with Kagan's refusal to answer "No" when asked whether the Supreme Court had the right to tell you what to eat added to Michelle telling us "Desert is not a right." through the lens of what follows and you get a sense of how much smarter this crowd thinks they are than you...

...and how dangerous this much power is for them (or anyone) to have over you.


Let me introduce you to a gentleman farmer, one Roscoe Filburn, from the Depression Era. His Supreme Court case is *exactly* the one Obama's DOJ is using to argue the legality of the health care law. (It's one of ten precedents they cite.) 


From the Austin Free Press, an article opposing a farming bill, HR875, lays out Wickard V. Filburn. It makes reference to an article the Huffington Post had published in favor it:


"... Looking at the case of Wickard V. Filburn, we can see how a seemingly innocuous bill (like HR 875) can (lead to) draconian (food) circumstances ...

The summary of the case of Wickard V. Filburn is really quite simple. The Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938 (AAA) set quotas on the amount of wheat that could enter interstate commerce and created penalties for overproduction. Farmer, Roscoe Filburn, met his quota for wheat but failed to include in his quota the amount of wheat that he grew for his own consumption. Secretary of Agriculture, Wickard, ordered Filburn to destroy his excess crops and pay a fine. Filburn refused to pay and filed suit claiming that AAA was acting unconstitutionally seeking to limit local commercial activity, which went beyond the purview of Congress under the Commerce Clause....Shockingly, the Supreme Court held (in Wickard V. Filburn) that “wheat not intended in any part for commerce but wholly for consumption on the farm, are within the commerce power of Congress.” The Supreme Court reasoned that although the amount of wheat that Filburn would not purchase from the market (because he had provided for his own needs) may be trivial in this particular circumstance, it does not remove him from the scope of federal regulation because, his circumstance, when taken with similar others, could be far from trivial. This basically set the precedent that, under the act, the government is legally entitled to prevent individuals from growing wheat for their own consumption (beyond the designated quota) because, if too many people were to do this, it would negatively impact the interstate wheat market – which was precisely the fear outlined by the concerned citizen in the Huffington Post..."

"...One of the main arguments in the Huffington Post in support of HR 875 is that it... could not possibly affect small (family or even backyard) farms and farmer’s markets..."

Now let's extrapolate this out to what these kinds of powers could actually mean in the wrong hands.  This is not to say that anyone would do this, just that this would give our federal government the legal right to do it. From a December 29, 2009 article from Associated Content:

The specific wording in the bill defines a "food production facility" as any "farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal feeding facility" with the possibility (regardless of how remote) that it could be expanded to include any place that grows food, even a backyard garden... Proponents of the H.R.875 bill state there is nothing in the wording that would lead to making backyard gardens illegal. On the opposite side, it is believed that the wording is so broad that opponents to the bill insist this will also include all organic farms, small or family farms, and including backyard gardens at any location - even if it is not considered a typical farm.

Now here we are to this morning's New York Times article where Obama's DOJ is preparing its constitutional defense of health care on  Wickard v. Filburn:

In its legal briefs, the Obama administration points to a famous New Deal case, Wickard v. Filburn, in which the Supreme Court upheld a penalty imposed on an Ohio farmer who had grown a small amount of wheat, in excess of his production quota, purely for his own use.

The wheat grown by Roscoe Filburn “may be trivial by itself,” the court said, but when combined with the output of other small farmers, it significantly affected interstate commerce and could therefore be regulated by the government as part of a broad scheme regulating interstate commerce.

Spooked yet?  I don't think Madison and Jefferson, when crafting our founding documents throwing off the tyranny of King George III had in mind that America would allow even a whisper of constitutional language that would even hint at powers so broad that the federal government could have this kind of power of you.  In fact, reasonable people would argue that it was exactly that kind of power our 18th century ancestors were fleeing, yes?

God help us all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/health/policy/18health.html?_r=1&ref=politics

http://theaustinfreepress.com/AreSmallFarmsinDanger3F.aspx

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2523695/will_your_backyard_garden_become_illegal.html?singlepage=true&cat=17

Chairman of National Black Panther Party's Version of DOJ's Case

The Chairman of the National Black Panther Party explains what happened, as only he can, with the voter intimidation charges we've heard so much about of late (not on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, New York Times etc... but from media with stones, Fox, talk radio, and Drudge.)  Oh, and even though Canada denied him entry because they regarded him a merchant of hate in May of 2009, he was welcomed into the White House on July 25, 2009, visitor records show.

This is a partial transcript of the video below:

"... We decided that on election day that we would go out to the polls because of what?  Because they said they was goin' be stoppin' black people from comin' to vote.  We knew that they didn't want a black man in office ... We wanted to make sure that the police wasn't harrassin' our people ...It's just that the New Black Panther Party sometimes... we tend to do it kinda strong... and sometimes it can even be too black and too strong ... King Samir Shabaaz ... just was a little bit too strong and he was caught out there at the polling place with a nightstick ... and the John McCain campaign ...jumped all over the issue and all over the brother ...The United States Justice Department still under George Bush ...immediately charged (us) ...The Justice Department leadership changed into the hands of a black man ...Eric Holder ...and they threw most of everything out ...They said King Samir can't go back to the polling place until two thousand twelve and I'm sure King Samir don't give a damn (laughter) whether he go back (laughter) he say he don't believe in the white man's votin' system anyway so he don't give a damn... and for the record... King Samir is welcome back in the New Black Panther Party..."


Here's a link to the video at The Daily Caller:


http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/10/not-only-are-the-new-black-panthers-above-the-law-apparently-they-are-the-law/

Another First Amendment Skeever in the White House

"...Radio jamming, which was proposed to try to suppress these hateful broadcasts ...something as seemingly innocuous as radio jamming ...Knowing that even talking about radio jamming, there's a clog-up; that you're not going to get very far ...There was no noise clamoring for anything other than radio jamming from the rest of us ...It's not enough simply to be passively in favor of a value-driven U.S. foreign policy ...Tony Lake ...National Security Adviser of the United States ...said, 'Look, I hear you, I hear about radio jamming...' ...So radio jamming gets debated, and the response is, 'Well, you know, if we actually jam hate radio, it violates freedom of speech...'"

Samantha Power in a 2003 PBS interview about African genocide.  Yet another liberal whose first instinct is to CRUSH free speech as though the exchange of ideas is TOXIC rather than the essential DNA of liberty.


Who's Samantha Power?  She's the one who called Hillary Clinton a "monster" during the campaign, which got her canned, then immediately hired once Obama won, on the National Security Council.


Bonus? She's married to Cass Sunstein. Who's he? The last stop before law touches you. He's the regulatory czar. He crosses the t's and dots the i's on law before it leave the door and actually starts functioning in real life.  He takes the laws and says "Okay. The law says we have to do this... How?"  He's the nuts and bolts guy. So if the legislation is full of squishy language like "may" or "fair" or "reasonable" HE DECIDES what that means.  Sunstein's the guy that thinks all sites on the internet should be FORCED to link to opposing opinion.  Know what that means?  If you don't do it, the federal government would have the power to act on that... Do you *really* want the federal government to have that much power over you? REALLY?


God help us all. 


Link to the entire interview is here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/power.html

'Now you will see what it means to be ruled by the black man, cracker'

This is a transcript I just took directly off Fox Morning News of an interview with Bartle Bull, a man with big, huge, massive credibility and direct involvement in the actual events of Philadelphia Black Panther incident November 2008.  It is not complete with every syllable, but below is about 90% of what he said, fairly and accurately represented. I *triple* checked that I got every word right, down to the littlest preposition. I didn't leave anything important out, just sort of "warm up" words as he got to his major points that were either repetitive or just kind of "filler" if you know what I mean.


"... (Black Panther) King Shabir Shabaaz, as he is now calling himself, said to me 'Now you will see what it means to be ruled by the black man, cracker' ...Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King did not die to have uniformed thugs dressed like storm-troopers carrying weapons block the doors of polling places... The critical thing here was that the previous week on October 27, the New York Times reported that ACORN had registered over 400,000 illegal fraudulent voters so what these guys were doing was they were protecting the illegal ACORN voters... The difference in this election was it's the first time in our lifetime that the Department of Justice and the Federal Government put the weight of the Government is not being used to support voters and poll watchers now the weight of the Federal Government is being used to support the intimidators.  That has never happened before, even in the darkest days of the 1960's..."

July 8, 2010, Bartle Bull, New York State Campaign Manager for both Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, Civil Rights attorney, and Election Day 2008 Poll-Watcher at Philadelphia precinct where Black Panthers were present.  Bush DOJ filed charges of voter intimidation in January 2009.  In the spring of 2010, just prior to sentencing, the charges were, for all intents and purposes, completely dropped.

Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe on MSNBC & I have a Twitter Exchange

I wake up this morning and someone has tweeted that Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's Morning Joe has called Nevada senate candidate Sharon Angle a "jackass." Given how much arrogance & contempt we've seen coming from politicians and media for the American people lately, and knowing what a noxious ideological bubble Joe lives in in Manhattan in general and MSNBC in particular, this struck me as plausible that he would let that fly. Having been a broadcaster for twenty years (just music, not news/talk, but I get the concept of hours spent day after day with a hot mic) I understand that a career ending remark can happen at any time. God knows, this does not rise to the level of career ending, but it's at the very least, ungentlemanly, and at most, a momentary lapse in his responsibility as a "credible" analyst of political news. Let me state for the record, I have no particular interest, nor have I closely followed the Nevada senate race except that I hope Harry Reid is sent packing. I imply no endorsement of Angle here. Don't know. Don't care, except to the extent as just stated. So! I tweet the first tweet listed below out, purposely putting "@JoeNBC" in it so that, if he hasn't blocked me (I don't know, don't particularly care who blocks me, so I figure, what the heck. It's like throwing spaghetti at the ceiling. He might see it. Might not. But I know he's an active twitterer because I follow him and other people who are themselves or are affiliated with "liberal" media so that I can, as always, learn something new and fact check my own assertions/beliefs/philosophies.) Then the gauntlet, such as it is, is evidently thrown down, then shortly, picked up by our pal, Joe Scarborough...


ANNIE: Did @JoeNBC *really* call Angle "jackass"? Has he been getting PR lessons from Pete Stark? C that h20 going down drain? LAST of MSNBC's cred


A little later, presumably having seen the previous tweet, and now on a different subject, Joe sends out the following tweet, then I reply and that starts the exchange:


JOE: Politicians in both parties continue to pursue a Wilsonian foreign policy that is radical and dangerous for America's future.


ANNIE: Uh... #GlennBeck's been on Woodrow Wilson's toxic policies for nearly 2 years now Joe. Welcome, again, late, to the party. Gawd...


JOE: So Beck's been talking about Wilsonian policies for 2 whole years?Gee Whiz! He's only 14 years late. You too, cowgirl.


Then Joe sends out another tweet to all (not just me) that I see and I reply again:


JOE: When the US changed it's Afghanistan goal from killing al Qaeda members to building a country, our leaders guaranteed an endless war.


ANNIE: Uh... again... Nation building, what Obama likes to call "colonialism" is EXACTLY what O is doing w/his p*ssy ROE. He's a COWARD.


JOE: Read your tweets ang realize that arrogance combined with ignorance is an unbecoming combination. "Gawd"? Really?


Now we're having Mitt Romney moment when the lady is "unbecoming." Granted, I admit, using the word "p*ssy" even with an asterisk, is, indeed, un ladylike. My bad. But I beg the mercy of the court that I am confined to 140 characters in twitter so a little shorthand, softened with an asterisk, is allowed.  Again, he's now shifted the argument from the matter at hand, to trying to discredit me, personally.  This is standard in liberal circles. They do it all the time when out of factual gas.  I will admit to being viciously sarcastic, but I have never, ever called Joe "ignorant." I don't regard him such. I just think he's wrong. Also, it's well known in Twitter circles that complaints on spelling are the last refuge of scoundrels. It's a complete waste of time, and again, a diversionary tactic. Twitter allows 140 characters, so the usual rules of spelling are not in play. Additionally, I explain my purposeful misspelling of the word "God" for "Gawd" in a later tweet, which you will see.  So! I fire off four tweets in quick succession then he tweets back again:


ANNIE: Once, just ONCE, could you tweet something with a clue in it? You are monolithically late, wrong, out of touch. Get out of Manhattan


ANNIE: Start reading ALL the London papers EVERY DAY, because your MSM ISN'T DOING VETTING/REPORTING. they ARE.


ANNIE: Read the Financial Times (of London, too). Read Business Insider. Read Investors Biz Daily. DO YOU GODDAMNED JOB, JOE!!!!!!!!!


ANNIE: This isn't about PARTY Joe. Bush's policies were *functionally* progressive. He was a DISASTER on MOST levels. PLEASE PLEASE WAKE UP


JOE: See Annie, that's your problem. You hate Obama's Wilsonian policies but toucans Beck went along with Bush's adventurism.


ANNIE: "Bush's adventurism"? What? There's a euphemism. STOP THINKING ABOUT PARTY. Think PRINCIPLES-strip away ALL NOISE-THINK PRINCIPLES


JOE: Unlike you and talk show right wing extremists hacks, I oppose Wilsonian policies regardless of who is in power. #consistent


That was his last tweet to me. I replied with the following few more and, thus, it was over...


ANNIE: I don't CARE who is in power. The GEICO lizard would get my vote if he would bring a bill of enumerated powers to the floor!


ANNIE: I listen 2all sides, CLEARLY. watch MSNBC regularly (as much as I can stomach) I read EXTENSIVESLY-transcripts/unexpurgated sources


ANNIE: Stop stop stop thinking of Republican or Democrat. THEY ARE ALL ONE BIG NOISE NOW. Look at their ACTIONS... ACTIONS, Joe. ACTIONS.


ANNIE: BTW: I hv been harshly sarcastic w/my characterizations of u but I never, ever, ever, called u "ignorant"/*insulted* u way u did me.


ANNIE: ...Last thing... "Gawd" is meant to be an effort not to take the Lord's name in vain... Though I am NOT affiliated with ANY church.

Oil Spill Assessment You Haven't Heard Before

Must see video via Bloomberg. This guy is like my Dad, who is a bottom-line, no nonsense Yankee pragmatist.  Matt Simmons is a 30 year vet of the oil industry and tells it like it is here that the Deepwater Horizon's "casing" is blown, thus the relief well will not work, the well is spewing 120,000 barrels per day, and that the only option to stop it is to blow a small nuke, as has been done successfully before. (You have to sit through a vapid one minute promo on self-referential Manhattan narcissists and then it begins.)

"barack petroleum"

It's his mess now... Feel free to use this at will, if you like it.

Congressman ASSAULTS Peaceful College Student!

Revisiting Obama's Words from October 2008

I read the transcript of the 10.07.08 CNN Presidential Debate, (Nashville, TN, Tom Brokaw, Moderator) this morning, and was struck by how creepy some of these statements of Obama's seem now that we know his world view.


10.07.08 CNN, Presidential Debate, Nashville, TN, Tom Brokaw, Moderator
Obama Excerpts:


"...When George Bush came into office, our debt -- national debt was around $5 trillion. It's now over $10 trillion. We've almost doubled it ...What I've proposed, (is) cutting more than I'm spending so that it will be a net spending cut ..We've got to show that we've got good habits, because if we're running up trillion dollar debts that we're passing on to the next generation, then a lot of people are going to think, 'Well, you know what? There's easy money out there.'" (I don't even need to elaborate, do I?)


"...You are going to have to make sure that your child has health care, because children are relatively cheap (emphasis added) to insure..."
(Speaking about mandates... damned chilling knowing he is a devotee of the Complete Lives System)


"...There has never been a nation in the history of the world that saw its economy decline and maintained its military superiority..." (So that's why he's trashing the economy...)


"...We can't coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants..." (Speaking about Pakistan, but could just as easily apply to some of his despot buddies...)


"...We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region. Not only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. And so it's unacceptable. And I will do everything that's required to prevent it..." (He's really on that one, huh?)

Obama World Citizen

Duxbury Beach (MA) Driftwood

I actually took this in July of 2001... but was reminded of it recently. It's part of a series of pictures of a fantastically large piece of driftwood on a fantastically perfect summer day in New England... In those last innocent days before 9.11.01.  I'll post some more in the series later, but for now, appreciate the skin like quality of the wrinkling at the base of the curve not only on the left which is obvious, but on the right as well.  Let the calming colors of the soft sands and blues, and leggy sensuality of the shape and feel the (unusually dry, not humid) warmth of the day...

Awake, Asleep

1."My job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands, this is what I wake to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about."
05.27.10 President Obama on Oil Disaster


2."President Obama wakes up in the morning and he goes to bed at night thinking about how to make people's lives better- how to create that enivronment for creating jobs..."
01.20.10 White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs regarding President Obama & Employment


3.“As President, my greatest responsibility is the security of the American people. It is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. It’s the last thing I think about when I go to sleep at night. “
09.11.09 President Obama marking 8th Anniversary of September 11 attacks.


4."As President, my greatest responsibility is the security and safety of the American people. As I've said before, that is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, it's the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night. And I will not hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests."
08.17.09 President Obama on Afghanistan & Pakistan


5."... I read your letters. The stories I hear are the first thing that I think about in the morning; they're the last thing I think about at night. They're the focus of my attention every waking minute of every day."
07.23.09 President Obama on Employment


6."In the midst of all these challenges, however, my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe.  It's the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning.  It's the last thing I think about when I go to sleep at night."
05.21.09 President Obama on Guantanamo


7."I will be judged as commander-in-chief on how safe I'm keeping the American people. That's the responsibility I wake up with and it's the responsibility I go to sleep with."
04.29.09 President Obama on Enhanced Interrogation


8."I come here as a Mom whose girls are the heart of my heart and the center of my world -- they're the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night."
08.25.08 Michelle Obama at Democrat National Convention


Thanks to Sean Hannity, Brett Baier, and Free Republic for their excellent reporting on this, from which I shamelessly borrowed!

Obama's Green Mafia Gets More Ink

Wednesday 05/06/10 Investors Business Daily getting even closer to an outright charge of criminal abuse of power in this piece on Obama's $10 trillion "green" corruption scheme. Complete text below & in screenshot at bottom. Highlights are mine.

Original link to article: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=532610

Europe's Carbon Mafia, and Ours
Corruption: The carbon trading system being pushed here has spawned crime and fraud across the pond. Cap-and-trade is not about saving the planet. It's about money and power, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

All across Europe authorities have been conducting raids, rounding up individuals involved in a new version of Climate-gate. This time the data aren't corrupted. Europe's Emissions Trading System is. The system is so sick, it's turned out to be a scam built upon a scam.

Twenty-five people have been arrested in raids by British and German authorities as part of a pan-European crackdown on carbon credit VAT tax fraud.

U.K. officials announced raids on 81 offices and homes, nabbing 13 people in England and eight in Scotland. The operation involved 450 investigators from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs office.

German authorities raided 230 locations, including the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and the offices of RWE, one of the largest energy firms in Europe. The German operation involved 1,000 investigators targeting 50 companies and 150 suspects.

The amount of money involved in carbon trading is huge and the temptations vast. While our Congress demagogues about banks and their "complex financial instruments," they are simple compared to cap-and-trade, which as we have noted involves essentially the buying and selling of air. Throw in an oppressive value-added tax and you have a recipe for corruption and fraud.

Last December, Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trading System fraud had resulted in about 5 billion euros in lost revenues as Europe's carbon traders schemed to avoid paying Europe's VAT and pocket the difference. In announcing the raids, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe's carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.

"Carbon markets are highly susceptible to fraud, given their complexity and the fact that it's not always clear what is being traded," says Oscar Reyes of Carbon Trade Watch.

Climate change has been found to be a fraud. Now the system to fight it has been. Yet it's that system the administration and others want to establish here through cap-and-trade legislation such as Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer.

As we also have noted, the mechanism for such phantom carbon trading here has already been established in the form of the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start CCX when Barack Obama sat on its board.

CCX founder Richard Sandor estimates the climate trading market could be "a $10 trillion dollar market." It is an invitation to fraud that would make Europe's ETS scandal seem like petty theft.

In 2000, according to Joyce Foundation records, $347,600 was allocated to Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where Sandor was a research professor, "to design a Midwestern pilot program for the voluntary trading of carbon dioxide and other emissions that cause climate change."

Now President Obama would make such carbon trading mandatory, limit total emissions and make carbon as valuable a commodity as booze during Prohibition.

The Joyce Foundation's two grants totaled just over $1 million. CCX has proved very lucrative for Sandor, whose 8 million shares in the exchange has grown to more than $260 million even before a national cap-and-trade system like Europe's is established.

Al Gore, who recently increased his carbon footprint by spending $8.9 million on an oceanview villa near Santa Barbara, Calif., sitting on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa, fountains, five bedrooms, nine bathrooms and no fewer than six fireplaces, is co-founder of Generation Investment Management LLP, the fifth largest shareholder in CCX.

The largest shareholder is, uh, Goldman Sachs. Other CCX founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs. Presumably they know a lot about playing shell games with other people's money.

What has happened in Europe is going to happen here and may already have begun. We, too, can save the earth for fun and profit.