23 posts tagged “politics”

This bit if amusement is brought to you by my pal Dave, an ER trauma nurse I use to work night shift with at a small hospital here in Portland:

A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator. At a morning press conference, the Attorney General said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a problem for us," the Attorney General said. "They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns,' but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'There are 3 sides to every triangle.'"

When asked to comment on the arrest, Senator McCain said, "If God had wanted us to have better Weapons of Math Instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes." Republican leaders told Fox reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the Senator.

Chuckle....

BTW, has anyone besides me wondered why Fox News is not connecting the terrorist dots of Osama bin Laudin vs Obama-Biden..... ( change the b to a s, add and n and a Lau between the i and the d and.... OMG you almost have a terrorist)!  Their so called "reporters" must be napping. Surely this is better proof of a need to fear Obama than the terrorist fist gab they over-dramatized was....

I worked an extra, and very last minute night shift last night ( without sleep), so I am feeling like death warmed over right now. Karina is at work and Keegan is at his other grandmother's house till tonight, so I am going to take a nap and hope to get up in time to hit the post office later today. If I miss it I am going the first thing tomorrow. I believe only 2 people on Vox are waiting for packages from me, they will be in route by morning, and then I am square with everyone and can start some new projects. Yay!

Do not panic, I have not gone mad, I'm not voting for McCain, it's satire....

I don't care if you wear a flag on your lapel,( in fact I don't care if you have lapels at all). Nor do I care if your minister is a wack-job, if you are black, purple, or green, if you can play basketball or work a hoola hoop, or if you do what the morons at Fox refer to as "terrorist fist gabs" with your wife. I have to say I find it amusing Fox goes out of their way to say you are "trying" to seem viable.  ( silently implying that a semi-senile, hundred year old pal of GW's is more viable somehow). Har-har. Bottom line is I and a lot of full brain functioning voters do not care about any of the media crap. What I DO care about is the fact you voted yea on FISA, and your announcement about planning to increase federal (aka taxpayer support) of religious non-profits (apparently to prove you are indeed spiritual). See there is this little thing called separation of church and state.... so you handing my money to any non-profit simply because they are religiously connected...bothers me. No accountability for results, putting religious groups above those without religious affiliation apparently even if the non-religious groups do more good things with their money... REALLY bothers me. (For a good example, look up Stan Brock and his outreach called Rural Area Medical and see what can be done by a non-profit with no religious connection claims and only $250K a year that they raised $5 at a time, sound familiar?). I would hope you already know you cannot buy your way into heaven Senator Obama.  I admit that you might be able to buy your way into the Whitehouse, in fact lots of politicians before you have done so, problem is....  I suspect heaven has standards Washington has never heard of, and you might want to keep that in mind.

You promised me (and all of us) CHANGE and a new kind of politics. Since I changed myself from the Independent voter status I had held proudly since 1976 to a democrat to be able to vote for you in the primary,  I'd like to see some of that change right now, how about delivering that and only that. Stop chasing the silly rumors, I know it is tempting to try to gain the respect of all the voters, but you cannot do that by playing basketball, wearing a lapel pin, throwing money at religious groups or chugging alcohol with factory workers. Just tell us who you are, what you stand for... tell us what you will try to do and be honest about what you will not even attempt to change. IOW,  just can the media rhetoric and get real for even a minute. When it surfaces, just call bullshit what it is and move on... but move on being true to who you are, not to feed the media insanity. Even blue collar workers respect straight talk if there is NO doubt it is indeed straight talk, trust me.

Frankly, as it now stands, I just see a skinny guy from Chicago trying to be all things to all people and "acting" like what he "thinks" everyone wants him to be. In my book it makes you increasingly unbelievable and I have no idea who you really are. From where I sit you are starting to smell like just another guy willing to do or say whatever it takes to get elected, and that makes me more than a little sad. I reverted to an Independent voter status yesterday... now let's see you earn my vote. I have to say, the way things are going right now, I may just stay home in November because when I said I was tired of the same old, same old, I MEANT it.

I am very disappointed in Senator Obama, and I don't want to be. I wanted to believe him capable of being our great hope for change but he is acting more and more like a hundred years of lying politicians before him. Dammit all to hell.
He supports expanding federal funding of religiously based non profits ( what in the hell happened to separation of church and state???)
Obama now supports the FISA legislation that would grant immunity to telecommunications companies for Illegal wiretaps

Who knows what else he is gonna change his mind about?  He promised to be real and I'm not seeing it.

The experts (whoever they are) now claim he is doing this to prove he is a man of deep faith, that he is a man who loves this country even though he didn't wear a flag lapel pin or something equally insane. I want to hurl... it's like being served a political latte with religious cream added and being forced to drink it against my will. I like my coffee and my politics neat, nothing added. I want to taste them both for what they are. I am tired of all this say anything to get elected crap. Senator Obama pull on your big boy pants, tell me who you are and why you won't disappoint me or I am staying home on election day. If you can't pull it together, figure out what you really stand for, claim it and stick to it, I have to assume that what we are in for is just another year of picking between the same old crap and some dressed up crap... and me...well, I'm over 50 and it's safe to assume I've had enough crap.

Stumbled onto this this morning:
http://www.blueoregon.com/2008/05/this-morning-in.html

What made Obama's crowd turnout in Portland and his win in Oregon both monumental is the fact that Oregon is overall a fairly ethnic unfriendly state. I moved to southern Oregon in 1990, Coos Bay to be exact, and I lived there for several months before I figured out there were very few non-white residents there. How this escaped me for so long is beyond me... but when I asked about it, someone informed me the KKK was still active in Oregon, especially southern and coastal Oregon. Hmph, how did I miss THAT? This explains why Hillary campaigned heavily in southern Oregon. Let's face it,  she's an Arkanas girl & she knows how things work, so she headed straight for the largely uneducated, bigoted small town Oregonians to seek her supporters. What Obama pulled off here means more than people know. Admittedly things are slightly better in Portland, it holds more educated people, and that opens doors for non-whites on some levels, but things are not equal here no matter how much people want to claim that they are. For a black man to attract 75,000 people to hear him speak... falls into the witnessing a miracle category in this state.

Consider this a public service announcement.... and share the info in it with others at will please.

Pay attention people, Adsense is posting unrelated political ads bashing Barack Obama by implying he is a racist to pages focused on gardening and art... how they make that connection to politics and justify it as being related somehow is beyond me. I have only seen the Obama bashing ad, but there might be others focusing on other people running in state level elections.

My daughter uses Adsense ads on her blogs to generate money, or should I say she did until yesterday when she spotted one of these ads on her blog and got angry. She is not alone in her dismay: http://tinyurl.com/6nf69t

Just another reason to not vote for Hillary IMHO. She made have calmed down on the mud slinging but she has other people doing it for her apparently. Looks like her pals at Technet, or one of their board members, Goggle bigshot John Doerr, is apparently giving her a boost.... I suspect but have not proven yet that the Technet folks, or at least Mr. Doerr and his gazillions is somehow behind the Orphan Works Bill push, since the geeky big shots, their family members, and their employees are endorsing several politicians with some rather BIG lobbying bucks as long as they support another bill to basically remove the penalties on patent infringements. My personal assumption is since the bills are so similar in their intent to trash other people's rights to protection, then the perps almost have to be related. It's a simple system that works for me right now since I am too busy to do the needed digging to connect the dots ;)

Special Interest Lobbists claim they are not a part of the problem in DC... the hell they aren't. Personally I am sick of all the big money crap, people have been buying this country for years, and most people know it, (hell, even those with brain damage have seats on the clue bus on this one). PLEASE do NOT click on ANY Adsense ads you see on blogs and pass the word. Sorry to hurt the little guys trying to make money with these things, but a message needs to be sent that THIS is not okay.

And closer to 100 tomorrow, let the carnage begin..... I do not DO heat.

I am NOT going to be amused if we do. 90 outside means 110 or more inside when you live in a 1970's Mobile Home. I don;t even want to try to explain what happens when it hits 100 around here. There is not an A/C on the market that will not trip the circuit breaker and also keep it comfortable, trust me. I need to sell enough of the stuff in storage to be able to put a deck along full length of the front door side of the house so I can sleep outside this summer. After a full winter of $400 heating bills, I am NOT running the A/C until we hit critical mass!

I get paid tomorrow and this means I get to start my anti-cholesterol medication. I can hardly wait to see what side effects it provokes. The last week or so has been hard on me, I am still loopy, hoping that gets much better once I get my B12 built up. I voted in the Oregon democratic primary the day after I got my vote by mail because I was afraid of misplacing my ballot.

I'm not convinced the vote counting in Oregon is authentic because you can never find anyone who voted for the winners, but what the heck, I'm a thrill seeker. Most interesting thing on the ballot is ballot measure 53... the arguments for it say it's for the cats and dogs who get confiscated in drug raids, to free them up to be adopted....  to fix an error made in 2000 that stopped the cops from selling a person's assets before they were convicted of a crime. The facts are that is one paragraph of a quietly involved measure that if passed will reopen the doors to allow the cops to confiscate everything belonging to an arrested suspect and let it to be sold BEFORE a conviction. What the hell happened to innocent until proven guilty in Oregon? This is a prime example of the issues I have with Oregon politics... the voters info booklet chats up the poor doggies and kitties...and not one letter against in the booklet...all of them are FOR this piece of poop. Oregon has a large portion of uneducated, uninvolved voters, obviously someone is counting on that. I may start voting no on every damn thing they turn out here just to be spiteful.

I want to sell, and do the RV move but 11 homes have gone onto the market since they announced the space rent hikes, so I have to wait till some sell or get taken off the market to list, ( I figure it would be counter productive to add another home to the mass exodus) and I might as well be comfy while I wait....

BTW in my quest to season food with limited sodium I have discovered the joys that are called Wishbone Salad Spritzers! 15 sprays = 15-20 cal, and 10-80mg sodium. Veggies, meats, sandwiches and rice get quite tasty with 3-5 sprays...skip the margarine and salt. Most of us really do inhale too much added salt, I dare you to track your intake some time. It's scary even if you eat healthy, or think you do.

I have some spicy beans in the crockpot. I baked some Tilapia last night (if you do not like fishy fish, you would LOVE Tilapia), and I am making my world famous 3 bean Tabouli, well...okay so it's not world famous, but everyone who has tried it has loved it. For dessert I am making my no bake Chocolate mousse.

Chocolate Mousse

1 container Cool Whip
12 ounces quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup espresso or strong coffee
1 tablespoon Kaluha (optional)

In top of a double boiler, combine chocolate chips, coffee. Melt over barely simmering water, stirring constantly. Remove from heat while a couple of chunks are still visible. Cool, stirring occasionally to just above body temperature.

Fold the cool whip into the cooled chocolate.
Do not over work the mousse.

Spoon into bowls or martini glasses and chill for at least 1 hour. Garnish with fruit and serve.

(If mousses are to be refrigerated overnight, chill for one hour and then cover each with plastic wrap) WARNING: THIS STUFF IS RICH!

---------------------------------

3 Bean Tabouli

1 cup bulk Tabouli mix or 1/2 box of prepackaged
Mix with equal amount boiling water and let set til the water is absorbed

Open and drain 1 can each: Pinto or Piquinto beans, garbanzo beans, baby corn pieces, olives of choice. Mix into the tabouli once it is hydrated. Add diced onion to taste, 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, and toss. Add 1/4+ cup of your favorite Vinegar and oil dressing, toss to coat, chill at least an hour before serving.

Obama and Clinton are wading through Oregon. So far Obama has mentioned Hillary only once, when discussing the gas tax vacation she and McCain endorsed to try to get votes, and only while explaining why he is not for it. Good for him, he stayed focused on who he has to beat, McCain, and much older man, a friend of GW Bush, and oldtimer in DC politics who offers more of the same old same old.

Clinton is promising Oregonians everything but a blow job, I guess that's Bill's job (insert a silent giggle here).... I'm sorry, but Hill looks mean, calculating and desperate. I assume she is all of these, I have never seen her in another light. I do not like her health care policy, forcing Americans to buy insurance the government has fixed the price on, with no outline of what it will be fixed at, also no justification on how forcing the insurance companies to lower prices is fair but forcing gas companies to limit at the pump prices is not.

My ideas on solving the health care crisis are rather different. The short version of the fix: I think the best bet is to offer education grants to medical students, and we pay the medical training costs of doctors, BSNs, PAs, NPs. radiologists, lab techs, and pharmacists in exchange for 1 year of public service for every year of paid education, then open government funded clinics and roaming rural service vans, place a doc and nurse in every one of them. First of all this would open higher education to thousands of talented people who cannot afford to go, secondly it would revive the pool of care providers, third it would provide care to those who do not have access to it now. This plan could be started immediately by offering to pay off student loans on those set to graduate in exchange for public service. The people seen pay $25 per office call, they pay flat rates labs and flat rate med costs.... pay set salaries to the staff while they get valuable on the job experience and we turn out seasoned medical care staff that can be hired in at a higher rate of paid to train newly graduated doctors. This is a win/win/win/win for all concerned because it opens up education, and health care access. It also encourages people to consider a medical education, rebuilding our supply of trained providers. I am betting it would make providers outside the clinic be more competitive on their pricing. OTW no one gets forced to do anything, with a low cost option for care in place, the others would HAVE to lower pricing to compete. Plus it would not be a bottomless hole, it would generate money to help fund it's self.... throwing money at insurance companies will never do that.

No one running has come up with anything like this, but there is more than one way to fix what is wrong. This way we would fix more than health care access, we would educate trained professionals who might otherwise wind up as fast food servers because of financial restraints regardless of how brilliant they are. And while we are at it, let's offer dental services in the clinics under the same kind of program too, dental health goes hand in hand with medical health and it is sometimes even more expensive.

The 2008 Orphaned Works Bills are creating a battle that wages on all over the internet, an excellent sample of this can be found here: http://mollykleinman.com/2008/04/16/wonks-and-librarians/

To amuse myself I've been researching the Orphaned Works legislation everyone is wetting their pants over, people are drafting letters and poised, ready to fight. I personally decided to take a different route, I went looking for where it might have come from, looking for who might have pushed for it, and who might be owed favors that might help get it over the hump before I write any letters. This is probably the most important thing I learned while battling politicians down in Coos Bay Oregon, "follow the money". It's a good lesson to learn. Anyway I ran into some interesting data while looking into contributions made to the politicians involved in the senate bill, don't you just love the internet?

First of all the senate version is also called "The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 (S. 2913)  It was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and lists Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as a backer, I find this odd because Hatch appears to have drafted this originally. It's named after Shawn Bentley, who was an intellectual property counselor for Hatch for several years before he died from cancer.
Interestingly enough he also worked for years for AOL/Time Warner... who happens to be a major contributor to most of the people heavily involved in both versions.... $41,100 to Leahy alone, they might very well be interested in this passing, but they were not the biggest contributor.
 Other major contributors include a litigation attorney who defends naughty people who seem to infringe on patents and copyrights, Disney, and then there is "TechNet", an interesting little group of tech moguls, who do a lot of big money lobbying for "causes" that tend to make their members lots of money....  on the record, $81,491 went from Technet to Leahy alone last year, (John Doerr is at the top of the Technet heap), that's a lot of freaking gerbil food in my book. I find it interesting that Technet members are already profiting nicely from registries for health care, real estate and financial information, so IMHO they would be crazy to not be interested in making a bundle by creating a art registry. Technet is endorsing a move to lower patent violation penalties by Leahy and Hatch... info on that here . Now, if you read the OW legislation, both versions seek to lower and limit fines on copyright violations...in fact they read quit a bit like Technet's outline of the need to limit patent infringement lawsuits " for the good of humanity" of course. Ahem.... can I prove their donations to Leahy or Hatch are to encourage a push to get the Orphaned Works through and make money as a result? No, but it looks suspicious on a major scale to me.
I feel some deja-vue coming on.... and I suspect people are gonna need to do more than write letters to stop this, in fact I doubt it can be stopped. I haven't finished digging but there appears to be some major money going to the politician behind making these bills resurface, and some major players have to be involved, it could be Technet, or someone else who doesn't matter, not really. I doubt whoever it is, that they are use to investing large amounts of money and getting nothing in return. Maybe artists better start taking down their art and locking it up now.

I do have to say I haven't had this much fun since I tracked down the skinny on one particularly powerful Environmental Impact Study company in the mid-90's that was up to their elbows in obtaining way too much Federal grant money for performing environmental impact studies (prior to public works projects that seldom actually ever occurred) in financially depressed areas, especially along the west coast. I also found a link from them to suddenly appearing HIGH interest home loans in those areas that were defaulted on at a very high percentage rate, leaving them in control of large amounts of property, some of which they sold off at a loss to local small town politicians, some they kept... the value of all of it rose dramatically within a very short period of time after they got control of it. No one cared then and I doubt they do now, so I imagine that is still going on. I haven't seen anyone mention potential lobbyists for these bills yet so maybe no one but me cares about that either.

BTW, It's impossible to ignore the fact that Technet CEO John Doerr sits on the board of Amazon, Google, Intuit (quickbooks), and the investment company he is a partner in is the primary funding behind Zazzle, (sorta like cafepress). I also discovered that additional donations were also made separately from those by Technet to many of the politicians involved, in the name of John, his wife Ann, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers ( the venture capital group where John is a partner)... and under the name of everyone I have tracked so far that sits in power at Technet. The contribution numbers coming from this general direction will soar much higher than it appears on the surface..... Leahy may never need to buy gerbil food again.

It is always about following the moola, either where it's going to wind up, or who it's being taken from who has friends in the highest places, or who wants to make more. I'm just a nobody, finding this took info me a little over an hour, if I had the time and the desire to create a spread sheet and to cross reference contributions, names and connections the picture would get much scarier and clearer...and it might even lead in further reaching directions, but it is definitely food for thought and something to keep an eye on.

I am sure my daughter Ramie would admire the fact that John and his wife have shoveled a ton of money into backing stem cell research and lobbying for it. That is going to make someone a lot of money some day too.

Anyway I need to get some stuff done here at home.... more on yesterday after I accomplish something productive on the home front.

Okay so, first off...
Obama can't bowl worth a crap... few people in Illinois can, trust me I know, I was born there... I nearly killed a superior court judge myself with a bowling ball once... on accident (grin) True story, in fact when someone from Illinois tells you they cannot bowl, do not bully them into being a fill-in on your damn bowling team unless you want someone killed....remember you heard it here first, write it down so you do not forget it, it's important!

Secondly we have....
Royal Crown drinking, "blue collar" Hillary who can't work a simple jiffy mart vending machine but she has assured us she is not an elitist and she can run this country.... (cough)

And now, without a doubt, we ALL know  for SURE that neither Hillary nor McCain knows a thing about economics....

This is me, slapping myself on the forehead.... I just got one daughter straightened out about Clinton related things... and now the other one has gone mad on me.... and become a Hillary supporter. I have no idea where I went wrong, I promise never to do it again, and it may come down to me killing her to keep her from voting to cancel my well thought out vote in the Oregon primary. I did not change my registration from a card carrying independent since 1979 to (cough) a democrat (cough) to have a person I gave birth to negate my vote..... as the saying goes, I brought her into this world and by gawd I'll take her out of it if she insists on being a brain-dead moron.

Okay so I won't kill her, but I may be investing in some duct tape and a gag....she'll forgive me eventually....and if she doesn't Keegan will at least be amused by seeing his mom tied up and gagged on our primary voting day.

I really do think the world has gone mad, and the worst part is usually rational thinking people are willing participants in the craziness. I am utterly stupefied by the number of card carrying democrats who do not yet realize Hillary is a republican in a democrat suit. I suspect she and McCain are MUCH closer than even Bill realizes...  I am also quite sure it's "strickly business" and she is not having sexual relations with that old man.... heh, ewwww, I just got a visual that almost made me go blind!

Okay, back on track....
So we will be seeing McCain in Nov even though he wants to line the pockets of the oil guys with more profits this summer, (because dropping taxes does not insure prices will drop, in fact demand will rise and so will prices , so when the tax comes back on we will be paying more than ever, so this plan is not helpful) Let's say Hillary somehow manages to get the Democratic nomination slot, we will have our first republican vs republican presidential race in history! Not only that but if she loses to McCain she'll slime her way into the VP slot somehow, and wait for John to drop dead or help him get there if she gets tired of waiting, and that will be the ball game.

 Buenos dias mi amigos, Como esta?   ....just practicing, in case.... I'm beginning to think my 4th grade teacher was right she assured me that my ability to sing 10 Little Indians in Spanish would come in handy someday, maybe she was psychic.

Anyway, my hat's off to Obama for showing he has both common sense and an "elitist" understanding of basic economics, I don't want to trust either McCain or Hillary to balance the US budget after today. I sure would love to talk to Obama about some easy steps I and my 31 years of health care experience think he should consider in order to truly fix health care for everyone, but I imagine he is pretty busy these days dodging bullets from the two republicans he is running against.... ( I'd outline them here but Hillary would probably steal them and claim them as her own).

I will say one thing :
Life was a whole lot easier when I was an Independent, because I hated everyone running for office that had even a shot at winning.