"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Archive for the ‘– Politics… that "dirty" little "game" that first begins in the home.’ Category
Politics is the art of compromise, and politics first begins in the home, because no one always gets their own way all the time. Sometimes, Daddy gets his way, sometimes Mama gets hers. And by mutual consent, on occasion, the children get theirs. But NOBODY gets their way all the time!
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 20, 2020
Ukraine, schmookraine.
Who gives a rats rip what Trump did, eh?
Seriously.
And yet, that is precisely the attitude that some have about the matter in which the President has found himself placed, which has also led to his impeachment.
Some say, “Ukraine got their money. What’s the big deal?”
Yet others say, it’s all water under the bridge, or worse.
So, let’s examine the matter more fully in order to understand exactly what’s going on, and what’s at stake.
And, for the most part, we’re going to ignore many remarks the Democrats have been making. Well, at least much of them. We’re concerned with the basis for the claim. As it turns out, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is also concerned with that matter – that matter being the question, “Did the President of the United States violate any law in the Ukraine affair?”
But before we proceed further, let’s first answer a couple of important questions about the Government Accountability Office:
What is the GAO, what do they do, and what authority do they have?
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, January 17, 2020
Abby Phillip, CNN
To anyone watching, it was as plain as the nose on your face.
I’m neither a CNN fan, nor a CNN hater.
But this is blatant, and inexcusable.
It demonstrates an utter lack, and wholesale abandonment of professional journalistic integrity.
It wasn’t merely the Democrats or Progressives who noticed, either.
In fact, voices from the Conservative Right Wing were the loudest to decry the moderator Abby Phillip’s action.
I mean to refer to the 7th Democratic Debate held at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa this past Tuesday evening, 14 January 2020.
For some, it was analogously like the 7th Level of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, which was also full of violence toward individuals, and the Earth.
Though there were no fisticuffs, no bomb threats, no armed shooters, and no physical violence of any kind, there was another killing – two, in fact.
One, was CNN, which along with Moderator Abby Phillip, burned her journalism career, and the last shred of respectability or integrity CNN had remaining.
The other was Bernie Sanders.
It was obvious from the get-go.
Corporate interests in America do NOT want to see him win the Democratic Nomination for President.
Brianne Pfannenstiel, Chief Politics Reporter, The Des Moines Register, Iowa
“During the seventh round of Democrat debates Tuesday, CNN moderator Abby Phillip asked a shameful question that accused Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., of saying a woman could not win the 2020 election.”
The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass, another conservative columnist, also laid into CNN and Abby Phillip over her unethical journalistic behavior.
His remarks from his column, in part, are found below.
Even Rolling Stone magazine’s Matt Taibbi found Abby Phillip’s disrespectful treatment of Bernie Sanders to be not merely a cheap shot, but a calculated and active interference to sway viewers’ opinion.
The 24-hour network combines a naked political hit with a cynical ploy for ratings.
“This time, the whole network tossed the mud. Over a 24-hour period before, during, and after the debate, CNN bid farewell to what remained of its reputation as a nonpolitical actor via a remarkable stretch of factually dubious reporting, bent commentary, and heavy-handed messaging.
“The cycle began with a “bombshell” exposé by CNN reporter MJ Lee. Released on the eve of the debate, Lee reported Warren’s claim that Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win in a December 2018 meeting.
[These banal meanderings] “continued during the debate, with the chryon featuring questions like, “How will [Sanders] avoid bankrupting the country?” Or: “Does Sanders owe voters an explanation of how much his health plan will cost them and the country?””
CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent, Dana Bash, carried the ball over the line for the anti-Bernie Corporate Democrats – who were all assembled at CNN, including former DNC chair and commentator Terry McAuliffe, Clinton communications person Jess McIntosh, and former senior adviser to Barack Obama David Axelrod – and immediately after the debate concluded she said, “Do [voters] want a Bernie Sanders anti-interventionist, or do they want somebody who has experience and who has — as I’m sure you will hear behind us — voted for things like the Iraq war and maybe has made other decisions that he doesn’t regret and has been a leader on national security, but also has some that he does?”
Then McIntosh said this: “I think what Bernie forgot was that this isn’t a he said/she said story. This is a reported-out story that CNN was part of breaking. So, to have him just flat-out say no, I think wasn’t — wasn’t nearly enough to address that for the women watching.”
In her story for the Examiner, Breaking News Reporter Madison Dibble wrote in part that, “A moderator from the CNN/Des Moines Register debate sided with Elizabeth Warren in the he-said-she-said dispute over whether Bernie Sanders said a woman couldn’t be president.
“Abby Phillip, a CNN reporter, phrased her questions in defense of Warren, who claimed that Sanders told her he didn’t think a woman could be president during a meeting in 2018. The Vermont senator has denied that he ever said such a thing, but Phillip worded the questions as though there were evidence backing up Warren’s claim.”
Even POTUS Trump sees it.
They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even more obviously. They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial. Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong edge to Sleepy…
POS45’s follow-up Tweet read, “….Joe Biden, and Bernie is shut out again. Very unfair, but that’s the way the Democrats play the game. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to watch!”
Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile, who helped Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, was later discovered to have been pilfering debate questions ahead of time, and sharing them with Hillary, with the intent to defeat Bernie. Like Roger Stone, she remains unrepentant for her misdeeds. CNN also fired her for that activity. But CNN wasn’t the only one.
Fox News also showed Brazile the door with the left foot of fellowship.
Vice-President of Fox Ethics, Satya Martin, described Brazile’s firing:
“Donna Brazile is the worst reporter or commentator or whatever she is that I’ve ever known.
Her only goal, it seems, is to be contrary.
She literally claims opposite supposed ‘facts’ to everything that we report in the news. And her opinions are over the top in their opposition.
She’s like a child who just screams in tantrums against us for attention.
“She was fired from CNN for fabricating stories so she was already known as a purveyor of fake news.
The brass had their reasons for taking a chance on her.
I’m sure they wanted to attract a liberal audience just to show that we mean it when we say we’re fair and balanced.
But there’s fair and balanced and then there’s off her rocker crazy train journalism.
That’s Brazile.
Nuts.”
It wasn’t long after she was fired by CNN that Donna Brazile quickly wrote a tell-all which fingered Hillary as the brainchild behind an unethically-appearing fundraising bargain with the Democratic National Committee, in which the DNC was rigged in Clinton’s favor because her campaign was largely financing the party early on in the presidential election. And Donna Brazile, who knew about it from the get-go said the agreement “was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical.”
Of course,
as Bernie has long said,
it’s all about the Benjamins,
and a
Corporate System
legally rigged
AGAINST
the
Average American.
“What CNN did to Bernie Sanders in the Iowa Democratic presidential debate — stabbing him with the gender card on behalf of a weakened Elizabeth Warren — was cheap and unfair.
“And it was shameful.
“I’m probably the last guy to defend Sanders. He is a man of the far left and I most certainly am not.
“But even a conservative like me can see that Sanders was cheated out of the Democratic presidential nomination the last time, with the Democratic National Committee rigging the whole thing for Hillary Clinton. And now it’s happening again.
“No wonder the Sanders supporters are angry.
“What happened on CNN in Iowa was bad for journalism. But it sure was good for Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.
“Sanders, the authentic candidate on the left in this cycle, as he was in the last, was surging in the Iowa polls. Warren, also on the left, was fading, desperate and in full panic. She began waving her gender card on that dangerous Intersectionality Highway where Democrats, addicted to identity politics, often crack up.
…
“And Joe? With Bernie on Trump jury duty in Washington, Biden is left to wander around Iowa with (former) Mayor Pete — who also was not challenged by CNN — and that radical billionaire environmentalist who made his gold in fossil fuels.
“No wonder Sanders’ supporters are upset. They’ve seen this before. They watched the same game play out three years ago, when the Democratic nomination was almost his, and establishment media handmaidens of the Democratic National Committee protected Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump.
“A Sanders vs. Trump campaign in 2016 would have been a clash of populist titans. Sanders could have won. We might see this matchup in 2020. Establishment Democrats are panicked, and conventional wisdom suggests Trump would smash him, but I’m not so sure.
“The electorate has been primed by relentless media attacks on Trump, who attacks them back. Americans are unsettled and worried about their future in a world undergoing economic upheaval. Bernie could win.
“The Democratic base is energized for 2020. Sanders, who suffered a heart attack weeks ago, looks positively vital when compared to Biden. Conventional wisdom also once said Republican Jeb Bush couldn’t be beat. How did that turn out?
“Joe is the new Jeb.
“I suppose it would be much easier to focus instead on Trump impeachment theater in Washington. But the script has been written, the Senate won’t convict Trump. It’s all posture and gesture and fundraising.
“I disagree with Sanders’ policies, but at least he’s honest about what he wants to do. Establishment Democrats see Sanders’ base as full of energy and know they must stop him in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“They feed Warren so Sanders doesn’t defeat Biden. And they’ll use friendly media to shape a stiletto and slip it between Bernie’s ribs.
“Sanders’ voters have seen this one before.”
And that is precisely what Bernie has been saying all along.
I think we’re living in an extraordinarily stupid era.
Sure, there are ~some~ smart folks, and some genuinely genius things have been, and are being done. But, on the whole, this age is small-minded, and inordinately consumed with a desire to make, by force of law, others behave according to the privately-held sacrosanct tenets of select individuals or groups who are, in effect, writing private law, instead of public law.
Most such individuals and groups are ultra right-wing religious radicals, zealots of the First Order, who, legally mandate others to behave according to their private principles. The ostensible effect is impressing casual observers that the adherent/practitioner believes, because their behavior demonstrates adherence and obedience to those rules and regulations. It also thereby gives automatic imprimatur to them. In such tenets, they see themselves as performing the will of their god/ess, and by extension, being pleasing to the same. It is a form of wholesale cultural appropriation and subjugation.
It is, in effect, a hypocrisy, a type of lip service which has been ridiculed and mocked via memes such as “Jesus is coming. Quick! Look busy!,” and others similarly.
In essence, in its simplest, purest form, it boils down to one group of people wanting to control another group of people, and to force them into submitting to their privately held beliefs, most of which are religiously motivated, and often predicated upon a “thou shalt not” type law.
However, the highest, if not entire, notion of religion is not only freedom, but of self-improvement and self-regulation. Religion ostensibly seeks the betterment of the individual, and by natural extension, the whole, the collective, the corporate, the community.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, January 9, 2020
Of the Democrats, who do you think stands the BEST chance of getting elected?
There are now 4 top-polling candidates:
1.) Joe Biden, former Vice President to Barack Obama
2.) Bernie Sanders, current Senator from Vermont
3.) Elizabeth Warren, current Senator from Massachusetts
4.) Pete Buttigieg, former Mayor of South Bend, IN
No, I do NOT mean a “play it safe,” middle of the road” candidate like the Democrats chose in 2016.
And no, I do ~not~ mean ‘who do you think or hope will get elected,’ but rather instead mean to ask, ‘who do you think has the statistically best chance of being elected?’
Let’s look to history to help us answer that question.
In our nation’s 243-year history, there have been 57 Presidential Elections, 45 POTUSes, 9 of whom ran for second terms and lost, and only 3 since WWII – Ford, Carter, and Bush I.
The most recent one, George H.W. Bush, was Vice President during Reagan’s two terms, and lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Historically, since our nation’s founding, 7 of 9 one-term POTUSes who lost re-election have been Republican. The Federalist Party was a forerunner of the modern Republican party, as was the Democrat-Republican and National Republican.
In reverse chronological order, term in office, and party during office, they are:
1.) George H.W. Bush – 1989-93 – R
2.) Jimmy Carter – 1977-81 – D
3.) Gerald R. Ford – 1974-77 – R
4.) Herbert Hoover – 1929-33 – R
5.) William Howard Taft – 1909-13 – R
6.) Benjamin Harrison – 1889-93 – R
7.) Martin Van Buren – 1837-41 – D
8.) John Quincy Adams – 1825-29 – Democratic-Republican/National Republican
9.) John Adams – 1797-1801 – Federalist
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren – D
Historically as well, Vice Presidents do not get elected as President in their own right.
That means, apart from succession, when VPs have campaigned for the Office of the President, they have not won.
Only 13 former Vice Presidents have ever been POTUS, and arrived in office either through Read the rest of this entry »
First, let it be known that I am exceedingly glad that Soleimani is dead.
-and-
The Twidiot in Chief is 100% correct when when he tweeted (in part) that “He should have been taken out many years ago!”
Qasem Soleimani, late commander of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force
Qasem Soleimani, late commander of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day, right?
Look, Soleimani was a terrorist – plain and simple.
“Qasem Soleimani [was] the
head of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force,
a
U.S.-designated
Foreign Terrorist Organization.”
“General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the
deaths of hundreds of American and
coalition service members and the
wounding of thousands more.”
“The U.S. government, the United Nations, and the European Union have all sanction-designated Soleimani for involvement in either Iran’s nuclear program or the Syrian civil war in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.¹ Furthermore, U.S. Central Command documents declassified in 2015 reveal that Iraqi Shiite militants under Soleimani’s command killed more than 500 U.S. service members in Iraq between 2005 and 2011.² U.S. intelligence has also linked Soleimani to a 2011 assassination attempt of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.C.³
“Soleimani was banned from international travel because of his 2007 U.N. designation for his role in Iran’s nuclear program.⁴ Nonetheless, he reportedly flew to Moscow at least three times—in July 2015, April 2016, and February 2017—for meetings with Russian officials.⁵ After Soleimani reportedly traveled to Russia for military discussions in April 2016, the U.S. State Department confirmed that U.N. travel sanctions on Soleimani remained in effect despite the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1.⁵
“Soleimani’s influence extended to Syria as well. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Soleimani oversaw Iran’s military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.⁶ One Free Syrian Army commander told the Wall Street Journal in 2013 that Soleimani was “running Syria. [President] Bashar [al-Assad] is just his mayor.”⁷ During the October 2016 funeral of IRGC Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani, Soleimani justified Iran’s role in Syria as repayment for Syria’s support during the Iran-Iraq War. He further argued that it was in Iran’s interests to intervene on Assad’s behalf.”⁸
⁴ “Security Council Toughens Sanctions Against Iran, Adds Arms Embargo, With Unanimous Adoption of Resolution 1747 (2007), United Nations, March 24, 2007, http://www.un.org/press/en/2007/sc8980.doc.htm.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 1, 2020
Y’know what the Democrats need to do?
I mean to refer to Bernie and Liz.
STOP DISSING Donald Trump!!!
Seriously.
Folks who are gonna’ vote for him are gonna’ vote for him.
What Democrats need is VISION –– CLEAR 2020 VISION, and beyond for America!
Allentown, PA – and manufacturing… is not coming back.
Detroit, MI – and automobile manufacturing… is not coming back.
Pittsburgh, PA – and steel… is not coming back.
Rochester, NY – and Kodak… is not coming back.
Flint, MI – with General Motors, and Ford… is not coming back.
The Rustbelt’s “Big Eight” cities:
Akron, Canton, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown – which ALL owe their existence – except Columbus, the capital city – to manufacturing’s phenomenal rise in the 19th and early 20th century… are not coming back.
In short, America’s factories aren’t coming back.
And coal?
Coal – along with its toxic ash sludge’s inability to be safely or permanently stored anywhere – is DOA.
We all know it.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots are taking our jobs – even in medicine – telehealth, robotic surgery… it’s ALL OVER!
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, December 30, 2019
Where in America can you, I, or anyone, go to be immune from the law?
It’s a “trick question,” or… is it?
And yes, it’s a VERY serious question; in fact, it is an argument of which – believe it, or not – Federal Appeals Court Judges are considering the merits.
POTUS John Adams (1735-1826) c.1800-1815, painting by Gilbert Stuart (175-1828)
One simply can’t imagine the notion – that in our nation, a nation of laws, and not of men, that anyone could be above the law – and yet… here we are.
In February 1775, John Adams published a collection of essays entitled “Novanglus” – popularly known as the Novanglus Essays – where the idea that foundling nation which became “The United States of America” was a nation of laws, and not of men – was first known to be expressed.
James Harrington, oil on canvas, feigned oval, circa 1635, on display at Gawthorpe Hall, Burnley
Historians argue that the idea, or thought, was almost certainly derived from James Harrington (1611-1677), an English political philosopher, whose most renown work, “The Commonwealth of Oceana” (1656) was owned by Adams (3rd edition-1747), contains his signature on the title page, and is found in The John Adams Library of Boston Public Library, and may found online here: https://archive.org/details/oceanaotherworks00harr/page/n5
On page 38 of the work, in the essay entitled “Oceana,” Harrington wrote in part that,
“Government, according to the Ancients, and their learned Disciple Machiavelli, the only Politician of later Ages is of three kinds: The Government of One Man, or of the Better Sort, or of the Whole People: which by their more learned names are called Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy. These they hold, though their proponents to degenerate, to be all evil. For whereas they that govern, should govern according to Reason, if they govern according to Passion, they do that which they should not do. Wherefore as Reason and Passion are two things, so Government by Reason is one thing, and the corruption of Government by Passion is another thing, but not always another Government: as a Body that is alive is one thing, and a Body that is dead is another thing, but not always another Creature, though the corruption of one comes at length to be the Generation of another. The Corruption then of Monarchy is called Tyranny; that of Aristocracy, Oligarchy; and that of Democracy, Anarchy. But Legislators having found these three Governments at the best to be naught, have invented another consisting of a mixture of them all, which only is good. This is the Doctrine of the Ancients.”
So it seems almost certain that Adams derived that idea from James Harrington, but it was Adams’s use of the phrase which popularized it. Of note, Adams also wrote the clause “government of laws, and not of men” in the Declaration of Rights drafted for the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780.
“If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was,
the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire.
They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. [emphasis added]
If this definition be just,
the British constitution is nothing more nor less than a republic,
in which the king is first magistrate.
This office being hereditary,
and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives,
is no objection to the government’s being a republic,
as long as it is bound by fixed laws,
which the people have a voice in making,
and a right to defend.
An empire is a despotism,
and an emperor a despot,
bound by no law or limitation but his own will;
it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy.
For,
although the will of an absolute monarch is law,
yet his edicts must be registered by parliaments.
Even this formality is not necessary in an empire.
There the maxim is quod principi placuit legis habet rigorem,
even without having that will and pleasure recorded.
There are but three empires now in Europe,
the German or Holy Roman,
the Russian,
and the Ottoman.”
George Santayana
The aphorism written in 1905 by philosopher/author George Santayana in The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense, seems apropos here:
“Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.”
And so, that begs the question…
How could we have possibly gotten to this so very corrupted point?
Samuel Johnson
Again, let the words of the wise guide us, because when ideas or thoughts are repeated, it re-emphasizes their importance.
Renown lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709–84) expressed that idea as much in Rambler No. 2 (24 March 1750) when he wrote in part that,
“Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”
It is of unimaginable necessity that it is incumbent upon us to recollect this saying made by a GOP Presidential nominee candidate upon the campaign trail heading toward the Republican national convention:
“I could
stand in the middle of 5th Avenue
and shoot somebody,
and wouldn’t lose any voters…
okay?
It’s, like, incredible.”
POS45
–– Donald J. Trump, then-candidate for the Republican nomination as President, at a campaign rally 23 January 2016 at Dordt College, in Sioux Center, Iowa
On October 23, 2019, WilliamS.Consovoy, an attorney defending Trump against a suit filed by the House of Representatives seeking his tax returns, told the three-judge panel (en banc) of the Second United States Circuit Court of Appeals that Trump was LITERALLY immune from ANY type of prosecution.
Judge Denny Chin asked Mr. Consovoy, “What’s your view on the Fifth Avenue example? Local authorities couldn’t investigate, they couldn’t do anything about it?”
And, just to be certain… tariffs are taxes (duties) one nation places upon certain imported goods from another nation(s) which are NOT paid by the nation from where the goods originate (exporting nation), but are paid by the ultimate consumer of the importing nation.
Trump’s little “trade wars” with China, Mexico, Canada, and goodness knows who else, have now been proven to have harmed the American Economy, and the American Employee.
Yes, it’s official – the Federal Reserve published findings of their research “Disentangling the Effects of the 2018-2019 Tariffs on a Globally Connected U.S. Manufacturing Sector” and concluded in part that:
“Since the beginning of 2018,
the United States has undertaken unprecedented tariff increases,
with one goal of these actions being
to boost the manufacturing sector.
In this paper, we estimate the effect of the tariffs
—including retaliatory tariffs by U.S.trading partners—
on manufacturing employment, output, and producer prices.”
“Higher tariffs are also associated with relative increases in producer prices via rising input costs.” – Abstract; p.1
“We find that tariff increases enacted in 2018 are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices.” – Section 1; p.3
“Since the end of 2018, however, manufacturing output has declined noticeably and manufacturing employment growth has stalled.” – Section 2.1; p.5 Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, December 28, 2019
But, we’ve known that for quite some time.
WYSIWYG.
It wasn’t as if he was participating in a “bait and switch.”
We’ve seen and heard his errant behavior live, 24-7-365 via satellite, cable, and network news, radio and television, for many years, and now, the cash-strapped media for whom he has been a practical godsend – a true answer to prayer for increased ratings and advertising rates – is obliquely questioning his legitimate fitness for office?
So OF COURSE they’re covering him like white on rice!
Once he was impeached, the media scrambled to find out if impeachment had affected his bowel habits – if he was becoming excessively gassy – especially in public; or if instead of smoothly flowing stools, he was experiencing slight constipation.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, December 28, 2019
“Witching for water” is the colloquial term given to the use of an-often Y-shaped “divining rod” by a “witcher,” someone with allegedly special skill to find hidden underground water sources.
So, to “witch” for something is to employ an alleged skill with a simple, and readily-available tool (often as a common, everyday item with no seeming special qualities) to search for something hidden, and find it.
Sometimes also called “dousing,” “divining,” or “witching” for water is considered a fraudulent practice, also known as a pseudoscience, which has not and cannot withstand the rigors of independent scientific testing to validate the claims made by adherents, practitioners, and supporters.
Despite the overwhelming evidence contrary to the claims made by adherents, practitioners, and supporters, the practice remains somewhat popular today, especially among farmers who need water to irrigate their crops.
So again, to “witch” for something is to use readily-available common tools to find something hidden.
In this case, it’s polling data, and the Top Four Democratic Candidates for Party Nominee: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg.
A former VP, two U.S. Senators, and one Mayor of South Bend, IN, with an estimated population of 101,000, it’s a modest-sized college town (the University of Notre Dame is nearby) – the 306th most populous city in America – about half the size of Huntsville, AL, are contending to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in July.
The charts are telling, and from the outset, while demonstrating normal and up-and-down weekly chart, over the long-haul, the trends haven’t changed significantly.
What’s fascinating is Biden’s trend down, Bernie’s trend down, while Liz’s trend is up, along with Buttigieg’s trend. Again, that trend has been established from the outset.
The early chart is Polling: To 9-17-19.
The most recent chart is beneath, and is dated 12-27-19.
Notice something interesting: Only TWO candidates’ lines show positive movement– Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg. All others show downward, or largely static trends: Bernie, Biden, and Harris, who has now dropped out of the race.
Note also the prospective intersecting dates, the points in time at which the candidates would overtake another in popularity, or support.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, December 20, 2019
Imagine… being seated at an exclusively small underground club, with a polished onyx table, reflecting a chandelier with 1500 Swarovski crystals, and being served some of the finest cabernet sauvignon wine which sells for $900 a bottle, with only your closest 20 to 30 billionaire and multi-millionaire friends present.
If that sounds too far-fetched, think again.
That was a recent closed-door Pete Buttigieg fundraiser in Napa Valley, California.
No, it’s not a joke.
Here are a couple screenshot images of an Instagram posting which has now been removed which shows the South Bend, Indiana Mayor rubbing elbows with the filthy rich and powerful.
THIS was the reason “wine caves, $900-dollar-per-bottle wine, and $5000 selfies” were mentioned in the Democrat’s December debate.
And, no, it’s NOT a joke when he’s called “Wall Street Pete.”
Turns out, there’s a good reason for it.
According to Fortune magazine’s October 4, 2019 article entitled “Pete Buttigieg Takes Lead as Big Business Candidate in 2020 Field,” “Buttigieg caused controversy this week when Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that he had emailed the mayor and his team resumes for campaign positions. The pair overlapped during their time at Harvard and have a number of mutual friends.
“In Silicon Valley, the former McKinsey consultant has attended fundraisers hosted on his behalf by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Nest Labs co-founder Matt Rogers, and Chelsea Kohler, director of product communications at Uber.
“Buttigieg has also racked up donations from a number of top Facebook executives, as well as Scott Belsky, chief product officer at Adobe, and Wendy Schmidt, the wife of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He leads the 2020 field in the amount of online donations he’s received online from California tech employees. Biden, meanwhile, didn’t crack the top five.
“Buttigieg, meanwhile, has been making himself known to the Wall Street set. The combat veteran out-raised all of his political rivals in Connecticut during the third quarter of this year, according to Federal Elections Commission filings. Connecticut is the wealthiest state in the U.S., largely because of its large concentration of Wall Street and Hedge Fund luminaries.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, December 20, 2019
MA Senator Elizabeth Warren – D
The Democrats’ 6th debate Thursday, 19 December 2019 at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA proved to be their best yet.
With just days before the Christmas holidays, Democrats continued their appeals to voters by touting their prospective policies, doubling down on defeating the President, and realigning core American values which have sorely suffered under the incumbent Trump.
Despite the fact that the Democratic field had been winnowed considerably from the initial 20 candidates spread over 2 nights of debate, the 7 remaining on the island were up for the match, with plenty of interaction between front-runners Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Bernie Sanders.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders -I
Candidates Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang, and Amy Klobuchar certainly had their moments, and for the most part, Steyer and Yang steered clear of any attacks directed at other candidates, while Klobuchar proved herself up to the task and took a mediator’s role to redirect candidate’s passions away from each others’ prospective policy ideas and campaign practices, and toward the Democratic party’s goal – make Donald Trump a one-term President.
All the candidates expressed a disheartening sense that there was not more ethnic, racial, and sexual diversity among them, with only 2 women, and candidate Andrew Yang being the only non-Anglo candidate on stage.
Debate participation rules established by the party included escalating demonstrations of public support as evidenced by by public polling and campaign finance contributions. Neither California Senator Kamala Harris nor New Jersey Senator Cory Booker appeared on stage, though Booker remained in the race, while Harris had announced the end of her bid in November.
Former Vice President Joe Biden – D
Much like a football game, most of the lively exchanges occurred in the last quarter of the debate, with candidates Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Steyer in that order, weighing in on disagreements over campaign finance reform. Candidate Yang remained completely silent on that subject, and no moderator invited his remarks.
Bernie and Biden had their moments, as one might expect, though it was congenial, rather than adversarial.
Toward the conclusion of the debate, candidate Biden had been asked by Moderator Alberta about Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Hardly a day goes by without at least one story about firearm violence in America.
Senator Joe Biden as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when he helped write the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, which overturned 6 Supreme Court rulings, popularized the modern gun show, created the “Gun Show Loophole,” and facilitated mass shootings by allowing guns to be sold through the U.S. Postal Service and Internet.
It would be darkly funny only if it weren’t so true.
But, on the day after Friday the 13th, this past Saturday, December 14th, 2019, while shoppers thronged the Cumberland Mall in search of Christmas gifts in the Atlanta, GA area, the Cobb County Police Department said that, at 1:18PM EST (local time), following an argument, 18-year old Ethan Green was shot in the neck and shoulder while in the food court by 18-year-old Zaire Dhanoolal and accomplice 19-year-old Joweer Ponce.
Both the accused young men are from nearby Marietta, GA, and Dhanoolal was charged with two counts of aggravated assault, while his accomplice Ponce was charged with reckless conduct and carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.
Police relied upon surveillance video to identify the suspects, which showed that the suspects first pointed their pistols at 21-year-old Anthony Ezell who wasn’t injured, but was considered a victim of aggravated assault because the suspects pointed a gun at him before Green was shot.
That is nothing but purely shameful. Firearms are killing us.
“But,” counter some people, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
Yes, that’s true, but we don’t have to ignore the “elephant in the room” which is the alarming number of injuries and deaths from firearms – deliberate and accident – including mass shootings. It’s nothing short of inexcusable.
Firearm-related violence is at catastrophic proportions in our nation, and gun sickness is the root cause.
In 1981 Gil Scott-Heron prophetically sang a song entitled simply as “Gun,” from his album “Reflections” which lyrics are in part as follows:
“Everybody got a pistol, everybody got a .45
And the philosophy seem to be,
At least as near as I can see,
When other folks give up theirs, I’ll give up mine.
This is a violent civilization;
If civilization’s where I am.
Every channel that I stop on
Got a different kind of cop on
Killing them by the million for Uncle Sam.
Saturday night just ain’t that special.
Yeah, I got the Constitution on the run.
‘Cause even though we’ve got the right
To defend our home, to defend our life,
Got to understand to get it in hand about the guns.
Everybody got a pistol, this mosty be the NRA
Yeah ’cause when it’s time to line up
You know damn well they’re gonna shine up
Everybody…
Point being, that it wasn’t always like this.
And, sad to say,
then-Senator Joe Biden had a direct hand in
relaxing and eradicating hundreds of laws, and
vacating at least 6 Supreme Court decisions by
his advocacy of the
Firearm Owners’ Protection Act (FOPA).
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, December 18, 2019
It has begun.
Debate will last 6 hours – 3 hours each for Democrats -and- Republicans.
This is SERIOUS stuff.
It is NOT a “witch hunt,” “fake news,” or any other absurd claim which Trump, his GOP sycophants, or his other blind supporters have made.
AND… “YES!”
Michigan’s U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (13-D) said, “And when your son looks at you and says, ‘Mama, look, you won. Bullies don’t win,’ and I said, ‘Baby, they don’t’ – because we’re gonna go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”
Why would she ever say such a thing?
Because our nation’s Intelligence and Investigative services ALL KNEW that the Russians had interfered in our election to aid Trump and get him elected.
Her remarks were made AFTER the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the CIA, and ALL 17 Intelligence Services concluded the exact same thing – Russians directly interfered in the 2016 General Election to elect Donald Trump.
They – the Russians – were successful.
And WHY?!?
Why did the Russians do that?
Precisely to bring about division and confusion in our nation which is now painfully present.
The Russians have won Phase One of their War Against Freedom – destroy your enemy from within, get them to destroy themselves. Bullets need not be fired, troops need not be dispatched.
The only bomb that been dropped is not just Trump’s election, but the revelations that the man who has long been known to be a skilled and chronically habitual liar – Donald John Trump – lied about what he did, despite overwhelming testimony to the contrary from numerous honorable men and women who have faithfully served in various offices – ranging from our Armed Services, Intelligence Services, to the Diplomatic Corps, and more – in our nation for decades.
Some say that the “Cold War” is over, since the Communists are now apparently gone from Russian government. They claim that since Russia is no longer called the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), that Vladimir Putin, who for many years was the head of the KGB – their Secret Police – (now known as the GRU) and is now “President” of Russia, is some benign benefactor or friendly power to which we should bow.
The lyrics of British rock group “The Who” in their 1971 song “Won’t Get Fooled Again” perfectly and succinctly express the present condition in Russia:
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, December 16, 2019
Some Republicans and Trump voters/supporters have realized something that the Democrats, in large part, have not:
Their chosen candidate is not perfect – no, far from it.
And, that’s okay.
As I consider Mayor Pete, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, former VP Joe Biden, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders — the top four Democratic nominee contender-candidates — each one of them has increasingly been attacked, either by another candidate (though not by name), or by the media/press who pointedly critique their ideas and prospective policy platforms as if they were already done, set in stone, or otherwise enacted into law, though those same media critics neither offer, nor point to, nor counter any idea, or offer with any prospective alternative solution(s) themselves.
In other words, rather than offer constructive criticism, the press just bitches, gripes, moans, groans, and complains.
That’s not good.
Somehow, over the years (and more so in recent history), the “media,” as it’s called nowadays, has come to think of, and present themselves as, impartial arbiters, seemingly non-critical thinking, individuals who are neither opinionated, nor fraught with their own biases, however hidden (or not) they may want others to believe that they are. That somehow, they — and only they — know the truth, and only they can be trusted to always tell the truth at all times, in all circumstances, forever and ever… amen.
That’s just simply not the case, nor has it ever been.
The “Fourth Estate,” as it has long been known (though it’s now often simply monikered as “the media”), consists of the Press which Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, December 14, 2019
It IS possible for Republicans and Democrats to cooperate, collaborate, and otherwise get along with each other to get things done For The People.
For the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any political party.
I am the proverbial GDI – God Damn Independent – and always have been. I’ve never been a part of any “Greek” or social fraternity, exclusive club, nor secret society, neither before, during, nor after university graduation. And, I have always sought to support, advocate, and do the thing that would benefit the most – if not all – people… and still do.
Many, if not most, people do not have the interest in participating in political process, because, in large part, they feel alienated, isolated, and ignored, despite their history of voting. Thus, they feel, and are effectively, disenfranchised from participating in Constitutionally-mandated self-governance practices.
When asked by a friend, “Why do we tolerate any of them?” (“them” being politicians), I replied:
“Because we need government, but are too complacent to act, we have thus become prisoners here, of our own device, thus perpetuating the worst, most egregious examples of self-governing behavior.”
I answered the follow-up question, “How are to act against it?,” thusly:
“Become ACTIVE in self-governance, not only by regularly voting, but by advocating for/against issues, for candidates, and encouraging other to do similarly.
“That includes making voting easier, and inclusive, establishing term limits for public elected offices, and limiting the inevitable corrupting influence of money by mandating widespread public reporting, and changing other rules governing money in politics to provide openness and transparency.
“Tennessee, for example, is to be commended for enacting law mandating early voting, and allowing voting at any polling location for a full week in the voter’s county of residence, and by enacting paid leave of 3 hours to vote, which cannot be denied by the employer.” (Tennessee Code Annotated, §2-1-106, was enacted in 1972.)
“However, Tennesseans and other states – notably in the Southeast – could do more, as could the nation, by requiring Voter Registration in High School, enacting Balloting by Mail, and other forms of voting participation, such as making General Election Days paid holidays.
“Some, I know, do not vote for religious conscience reasons, such as our Jehovah’s Witnesses brethren, but mandating Voter Registration is NOT mandating voting, and thus, they and others like them with such religious compunctions, would not be violated.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, December 13, 2019
Recently, the Washington Post published the results of a lengthy, in-depth, years-long investigation into the War in Afghanistan, which were published only after even more years of prolonged court battles.
See: The Afghanistan Papers A secret history of the war
At war with the truth
U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.
“A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.
“The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.
“The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.
“It took three years and two federal lawsuits for The Post to pry loose 2,000 pages of interview records.
“In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.
“With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
News of the Washington Post’s news was widespread, and numerous news reporting outlets and agencies reported on and shared the Post’s findings. One such outlet was The Guardian.
See:
Afghanistan papers reveal US public were misled about unwinnable war
“Hundreds of confidential interviews with key figures involved in prosecuting the 18-year US war in Afghanistan have revealed that the US public has been consistently misled about an unwinnable conflict.
“Transcripts of the interviews, published by the Washington Post after a three-year legal battle, were collected for a Lessons Learned project by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar), a federal agency whose main task is eliminating corruption and inefficiency in the US war effort.
“The 2,000 pages of documents reveal the bleak and unvarnished views of many insiders in a war that has cost $1tn (£760bn) and killed more than 2,300 US servicemen and women, with more than 20,000 injured. Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have died in the conflict.” …
Imagine that… ONE TRILLION dollars wasted down a rat hole, and being lied to about it all. What could we have done with that money? What would an extra $20 Billion looked like to each of the 50 states? That’s how much they would’ve had were it divvied up that way. Or, expressed another way, that’s a little over $3000 for every man, woman, and child now residing in the United States.
Oh… how about improved our national infrastructure?
Or, how about improved delivery of healthcare to our citizen-residents, their families, children, and elderly?
Or, how about improving and shoring up Social Security Trust Fund? That one could be more easily and readily accomplished by making it a “HANDS OFF!” account, and forbidding use/disbursement of its money for any other purpose than for claims upon it, thus making is solvent into perpetuity. But, Congress likes to use that money as a practical “slush fund” to pay for things that they don’t have the guts to raise taxes to pay for. THAT MUST CHANGE!!
But, nearly 20 years ago, exactly one day BEFORE the now-infamous day of September 11, 2001, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delivered an address which was broadcast live throughout all DOD installations worldwide, was published on the DOD website, and was entitled “Bureaucracy to Battlefield.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, December 13, 2019
As the chart below shows, Elizabeth Warren is the Democratic candidate most likely to be chosen as the party’s Presidential nominee.
Warren and Buttigieg are the only two candidates who have an upward trajectory, while Biden and Sanders both show a downward trajectory, with Biden’s downward trajectory more pronounced than Bernie’s.
California Senator Kamala Harris has announced that she has dropped out of the race.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker has announced that he won’t be in the 6th Democratic Debate December 19 debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where PBS NewsHour and POLITICO will be the sponsors, with Moderators Read the rest of this entry »
Article 1 – Abuse of Power: 23 Ayes, 17 Noes
Article 2 – Obstruction of Congress: 23 Ayes, 17 Noes
As expected, based upon the evidence, the Democrats have voted to impeach POS45, and the GOP denies anything ever happened.
To be reported to the House.
Committee is adjourned.
The House, with 235 Democratic members, has the majority over Republicans’ 199. Presumably, all Democrats will vote to approve the Articles of Impeachment.
From there (the House), if approved by the House, the Articles of Impeachment would go to the Senate for a Trial, which would be presided over by SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts.
Senate votes to watch:
1.) Mitt Romney-UT, R
2.) Cory Gardner-CO, R, Class 2, up for re-election
3.) Tim Scott-SC, R,
4.) Susan Collins-ME, R, Class 2, up for re-election
5.) Angus King-ME, I
6.) Rand Paul-KY, R
7.) John Kennedy-LA, R
8.) Lisa Murkowski-AK, R, Class 2, up for re-election
9.) Martha McSally-AZ, R, up for Special Election in 2020, appointed to fulfill John McCain’s (Class 3) term, following John Kyl’s resignation. General Election will be in 2022.
10.) Lamar Alexander-TN, R, Class 2, retiring
Senator Alexander issued a written statement about impeachment October 8, 2019 as follows:
“It’s inappropriate for the president to be talking with foreign governments about investigating his political opponents, but impeachment would be a mistake. An election, which is just around the corner, is the right way to decide who should be president. Impeachment has never removed a president. It will only divide the country further.
“If the House impeaches the president, the Senate would be the jury. There would be many twists and turns between now and a Senate trial. Therefore, as a potential juror, I will have nothing more to say about impeachment until all the evidence is presented and all the arguments are made.”
All are GOPers, save Angus King, who defected from the Democrats to become independent in 1993, though like Bernie Sanders, he caucuses with them.
There are 53 GOP Senators, and to convict, and thereby remove from office, requires a Constitutionally-mandated ⅔ vote of members present (Article I, section 3). The VP CANNOT participate.
I sincerely doubt the Senate will vote to convict
– even on Obstruction of Congress charges –
despite overwhelming open evidence that he did,
and his own public admissions that he did.
The Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of all Senators present to convict. If all 100 are present, that’s 67 votes.
There are 53 GOPers in the Senate (and 2 Independents, who caucus with the 45 Democrats), which would mean that, in order to obtain the 67 necessary votes, 20 GOPers would have to vote with the Democrats and Independents (who presumably will vote to convict). And, there are 4 GOP Senators retiring in 2020 – which is important, because they could vote their conscience to convict, and not be concerned about re-election.
Even if all 10 votes to watch (as mentioned above) voted with the Democrats, there’d still be 10 more GOP votes needed to convict, and that most likely ain’t gonna’ happen.
This is STRICTLY a power play, and the ONLY reason the GOP tolerates Trump is because of a line in the Bob Seger song “Night Moves”:
“I used her, she used me; neither one cared.”
However, come November, there’ll be several Senators up for re-election, and five announced retirements, and in at least one Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, December 13, 2019
Thus read Friday the 13th’s headline in the December 2019 edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky.
Why such a votriolic headline?
Shitbag former KY GOP Governor Matt Bevin did this on his way out the door following his re-re-election loss, as reported by NPR:
“Bevin, a Republican who narrowly lost a bid for a second term last month, issued pardons to hundreds of people, including convicted rapists, murderers and drug offenders.
“In one case, Bevin pardoned a man convicted of homicide. That man’s family raised more than $20,000 at a political fundraiser to help Bevin pay off a debt owed from his 2015 gubernatorial campaign.
“In all, the former governor signed off on 428 pardons and commutations since his loss to Democrat Andy Beshear, according to The Courier-Journal. The paper notes, “The beneficiaries include one offender convicted of raping a child, another who hired a hit man to kill his business partner and a third who killed his parents.””
“The Republican pardoned a convicted child rapist as well as a convicted murderer whose brother raised money for Mr Bevin’s election campaign.
“Mr Bevin was defeated by Democrat Andy Beshear in November after a contentious election.
“The flurry of pardons sent shockwaves through the state’s legal system. State prosecutors told local media they had not been consulted on Mr Bevin’s decision, and families of the victims were not notified in advance.
“”I’m a big believer in second chances,” Mr Bevin said in a statement to the Washington Post newspaper. “I think this is a nation that was founded on the concept of redemption and second chances and new pages in life.””
Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) on Friday night defendedhis controversial pardonsas reflections of America’s foundational “support for redemption,” a statement that followed a Republican state leader’s call for a federal investigation into Bevin’s actions.
The former governor, who lost his bid for reelection in November, made national headlines this week after he pardoned hundreds of people during his final days in office, including a man convicted of reckless homicide,a child rapistand a woman who threw her newborn in the trash. In one case, Bevin pardoned a man convicted of homicide who wasthe brother of one of the former governor’s campaign donors.
The pardonsoutraged local attorneys and prosecutors, who said they were not consulted during the process. As the backlash continued to build Friday, Republicans in the Kentucky state Senate issued a statement blasting Bevin.
And, as reported by the Courier-Journal, “.”
Kentuckians are outraged, and even his most ardent former supporters are shocked. “Nonplussed” is far too diplomatic a word to describe their thoughts of his actions.
“Bevin was known to issue pardons on July Fourth and Christmas Day during his time in office as a way to mark the country’s independence and holiday season. The individuals who were pardoned in those situations typically were Kentuckians who committed minor crimes and had demonstrated good behavior while incarcerated.
“But before leaving office, Bevin’s pardons included many violent and sexual offenders such as a man convicted of raping a 9-year-old, another who hired a hit man to kill his business partner, a man who killed his parents and a man who beheaded a woman before stuffing her in a barrel.”
While pardons, sentence commutations, and other types of clemency are within executive privilege, they should be righteously and judiciously wielded with wisdom, rather than wantonly abused as returned favors, or reckless examples of personal vendetta, and should be targeted to include resolution of actual or possible miscarriages of justice, such as restoration of voting rights following conviction, or other realistic social/civic benefits.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, December 8, 2019
Well… duh!
CNN is reporting that “President Donald Trump has continued to use his personal cell phone to make calls, despite repeated warnings from his staff that the practice could leave him vulnerable to foreign surveillance.
“The Democratic impeachment inquiry has resurrected concerns about the security and potential vulnerability of the President’s communications. Witness testimony revealed some top officials repeatedly failed to follow protocol intended to prevent sensitive phone conversations, including those involving the President, from being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.
“Several former US officials have told CNN it is highly likely that US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland’s cell phone call to Trump from a restaurant in Ukraine over the summer was picked up by intelligence agencies from numerous foreign countries, including Russia.
“CNN previously reported that Trump has given his personal number to foreign leaders on multiple occasions, outright ignoring security protocols. According to The Washington Post, Trump handing out his personal line led to one-on-one calls that even top White House aides did not know about.
“The New York Times reported last year that Chinese and Russian spies have listened in on Trump’s calls on his personal cell phone and the President’s aides have told him that Russian spies were listening in on a regular basis.
“Senior officials view moving Trump away from unsecure lines as a lost cause at this point, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, December 8, 2019
“Jewish groups criticized President Trump for using anti-Semitic tropes while speaking to the Israeli-American Council on Saturday night.
“The Jewish Democratic Council of America and J Street were among groups to condemn Trump in August when he said American Jews who vote for Democrats are disloyal.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, December 8, 2019
“President Trump on Sunday renewed his criticism of Fox News, claiming that the network was pandering to the Democratic Party by repeatedly hosting liberal lawmakers to discuss the impeachment inquiry.”
“Don’t get why @FoxNews puts losers on like @RepSwalwell (who got ZERO as presidential candidate before quitting), Pramila Jayapal, David Cicilline and others who are Radical Left Haters? The Dems wouldn’t let @FoxNews get near their bad ratings debates, yet Fox panders. Pathetic!”
Definition: pander – to provide gratification for, or indulgence of others’ desires, especially of distasteful, or base passions, emotions, or vices
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, December 7, 2019
“You all just got a lot richer.”
– POTUS Donald Trump, to friends Friday night, December 22, 2017 at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, FL, after signing his tax cut bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (P.L. 115-97)
In response, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders Tweeted that “At least Trump is finally telling the truth about his tax bill.”
The Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan, objective investigative branch of Congress, reported that the Trump tax cuts did not benefit the average American worker. Only $28 Read the rest of this entry »
“Another approach would be to have term limits. You know, Supreme Court justices, they used to just retire like everybody else. But now, we have these strange scenarios of people clinging, almost seeming to cling on for dear life because they want to make sure that they leave the bench under the right presidency. And this would help deal with that issue. Someone suggested that we rotate judges on and off the appellate bench.”
“Chief Justice John Roberts (appointed by George W. Bush) and Justice Stephen Breyer (appointed by Bill Clinton) have both indicated support for the idea. In a 1983 memo written when he served in the Reagan White House, Roberts wrote: “Setting a term of, say, 15 years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence.”
Superficially, one might say that “Mayor Pete,” as he’s known, and “Mr. Chief Justice,” as CJ Roberts is known, are Read the rest of this entry »
Jim Jordan is a Republican who has represented Ohio’s 4th Congressional District since 2007.
It – the blatant hypocrisy – would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.
Representative Jordan continues to be an outspoken critic of the Impeachment Investigation which the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (aka the House Intelligence Committee) has been conducting over the past couple weeks. The committee has been investigating allegations that President Trump abused the office of the President and betrayed the American people, and possibly even violated law, by withholding Congressionally-mandated and approved monies specifically appropriated for Ukrainian defense against our common enemy, Russia.
In 2014, Russia invaded Crimea, an independent autonomous territory in the Southern Ukraine bordering the Black Sea, following civil unrest there. At the time, Ukraine was in the midst of socio-political turmoil as a national revolution was under way.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Recently, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the once-and-former White House mouthpiece-Press Secretary for the Liar in Chief, Current White House Occupant Donald J. Trumpanzee, and daughter of Arkansas Preacher-Governor POTUS-wannabe Mike Huckabee, a Republican, had a sit-down interview with the Associated Press and New York Times in the quaint little state capitol town of Little Rock.
As described by New York Times writer Annie Karnie, (aka “the failing New York Times,” as POS45 says – of course, this is all “fake news, folks… fake news”) she and Sanders had breakfast tacos, and obliquely suggested at what she has plans to do in 2023 when current Republican Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson’s term is complete.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Jesus warned against false prophets promising salvation to those who heed their call, yet each age seems to produce its own crop of misguided messiahs. In our own time, many will remember the tragedies associated with delusional figures such as Charles Manson, David Koresh, Yahweh ben Yahweh, and Jim Jones. Be cautious with those who promise much but demand unquestioning loyalty in return. If the fruits of humility, compassion, respect, and integrity are not visible in the message, don’t trust the messenger.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, November 23, 2019
After weeks of public hearings, bipartisan political theatrics, and Tweets, POTUS Trump’s “ass is in a sling” after Gordon Sondland, his Ambassador to the European Union, and political donor who gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, testified before the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and said that “I know that members of this committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a ‘quid pro quo?’ As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is ‘yes’.”
Ambassador Sondland further testified that, “They knew what we were doing and why. Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret.”
Regarding any official explanation for why POS45 held up the Congressionally-mandated money for Ukraine, he said, “I tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended, but I never received a clear answer.”
Of course, POS45 had to deny it all and had the unmitigated gall and audacity to say of Sondland – again, whom he appointed as Ambassador to the European Union after Sondland donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee – that, “This is not a man I know well.”
Aside from the obvious bomb drops which’ve occurred this week in the Impeachment Investigation being conducted by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence – which include testimony by:
• Gordon Sondland, Ambassador to the European Union,
that “yes,” there was “a quid pro quo.”
• Dr. Fiona Hill, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia and Senior Director for Europe and Russia, National Security Council,
that “It is a fiction that the Ukrainian Government was launching an effort to upend our election, upend our election to mess with our Democratic systems.”
• Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman, Director for European Affairs, National Security Council,
that “supposed Ukrainian involvement in partisan support of candidate Clinton and in opposition to President Trump,” was a “key element of that particular narrative that developed… that the Ukrainians would have to deliver an investigation into the Bidens,”
-and- that, “in the President asking for something, it became — there was — in return for a White House meeting, because that’s what this was about. This was about getting a White House meeting. It was a demand for him to fulfill his — fulfill this particular prerequisite in order to get the meeting.”
• Ambassador P. Michael McKinley, Former Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,
that, “I was concerned about what I saw as the lack of public support for Department employees,”
and that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s continued refusal to interact, or respond to him on the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, or of his own intent to resign,
“indicated a lack of support that was broader than simply a question of statements.”
• William B. Taylor, Jr., Chargé d’Affaires Ad Interim for U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine,
that “That was my clear understanding, security assistance money would not come until the President [of Ukraine] committed to pursue the investigation,”
and “that President Trump would like to hear about the investigations” of the Bidens, that “it was becoming clear to the Ukrainians that, in order to get this meeting that they wanted, they would have to commit to pursuing these investigations. And Mr. Danyliuk, at least, understood — and I’m sure that he briefed President Zelensky, I’m sure they had this conversation — believed that openingthose investigations, in particular on Burisma, would have involved Ukraine in the 2020 election campaign. He did not want to do that,”
-and- that “In a regular, NSC secure video conference call on July 18th, I heard a staff person from the Office of Management and Budget say that there was a hold on security assistance to Ukraine but could not say why. Toward the end of this otherwise normal meeting, a voice on the call, the person who was off screen, said that she was from OMB and her boss had instructed her not to approve any additional spending of security assistance for Ukraine until further notice,”
-and- that “President Trump did insist that President Zelensky go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelensky should want to do this himself. Mr. Morrison said that he told Ambassador Bolton and the NSC lawyers of this phone call between President Trump and Ambassador Sondland.”
And then, there’s this – though it’s not now receiving much press – which recently happened:
Lev Parnas Helped Rep. Devin Nunes’ Investigations
“The indicted Giuliani associate helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for the Republican congressman in 2018.”
“Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Rep. Devin Nunes in 2018, Parnas’ lawyer Ed MacMahon told The Daily Beast.
“Nunes aide Derek Harvey participated in the meetings, the lawyer said, which were arranged to help Nunes’ Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, November 21, 2019
Last night, at the 5th Democratic Debate held at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, Hawaiian Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard (2) – whose polling numbers are consistently “tanked,” and has announced that she will not seek reelection to the House – attacked South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, mischaracterizing his remarks made in response to a question at an earlier forum in which 5 of the “Democratic presidential candidates addressed issues impacting the nation’s Latino population at a forum held at Cal State Los Angeles on Sunday.”
The question asked him at that LA forum was, “Mr. Mayor, after a number of Americans were murdered in northern Mexico, President Trump suggested sending U.S. troops to help Mexico deal with the cartels. With your military experience, is there a way to deal with the cartels that doesn’t violate Mexico’s sovereignty?”
The YouTube video link below shows the question and his answer, uninterrupted, and in context.
At last night’s debate in Atlanta, in response to a question asked by a moderator, Representative Gabbard said that, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, November 19, 2019
During his times speaking at the impeachment inquiry, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan (R-4) continues characterizing Trump’s Electoral College (EC) victory as a “landslide.”
Winning 304 (56.5%) to 227 of 538 total EC votes is hardly a “landslide.”
Winning 30 states (60%) to 20 is hardly a “landslide.”
And losing 62,984,828 (46.1%) to 65,853,514 (48.2%) popular votes is by no means a “landslide.”
Nixon’s 1972 re-election, however, was a landslide, with 520 EC votes (96.65%), 49 states carried (98%) -and- 60.7% of the popular vote.
Of course, you know what happened during Nixon’s second term.
Ambassador William Taylor’s opening statement UNAMBIGUOUSLY and WITHOUT QUESTION detailed EVERY Criminal Act which President Trump committed – extortion, bribery, etc. -and- in excruciating detail, dates, times, quotes… the whole 9 yards. Giuliani, and Ambassador Sondland (a Trump donor & appointee) in those activities.
I have concluded that the ONLY reason that partisan GOPers are supporting Trump (even though they may privately loathe him) is for Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, November 19, 2019
“Dad, my sitting here today, in the US Capitol talking to our elected officials is proof that you made the right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.”
Alexander S. Vindman, LEFT, (who was born 9 minutes before his brother) with his twin brother, Yevgeny, at the Pentagon in 2016. They are both Lieutenant Colonels in the Army. Yevgeny, who goes by Eugene, also serves on POTUS Trump’s National Security Council, as an attorney handling ethics issues. (Credit Carol Kitman)
— Lt. Col Alexander Vindman (US Army), concluding opening comment 19 November 2019 in the impeachment investigation. LTC Vindman and his family emigrated to the United States from Ukraine, then part of Russia, when his father was aged 47, and he was then-aged 3-and-a-half in 1979. LTC Vindman has shed blood for our nation, having been awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in an October 2004 Iraqi roadside attack. He previously served on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff from September 2015 to July 2018, and is currently assigned to the National Security Council as a foreign area officer specializing in Eurasian political-military operations, specifically including Ukraine. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University, and his Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard.
The Army records LTC Vindman’s awards, which include:
Purple Heart, Defense Meritorious Service Medal (2nd award), Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, November 18, 2019
Those who encourage tax cuts on the wealthy & corporations are misguided.
Here’s why:
They mistakenly believe that by reducing taxes upon the wealthy, it will increase their consumption – or, that in their benevolence, they’ll “create jobs” for the masses. (Which is also why they’re treated like “sacred cow job-creators.”)
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The wealthy already consume more. They consume more conspicuously, and they consume more governmental services.
No one “hates” the wealthy.
At least I don’t.
But, we ALL expect them to pull their fair share, not shirk their responsibilities, and we expect them NOT push their fair share onto others who are less capable.
I continue to analogize the matter this way:
There are THREE people who MUST move an 800-pound boulder: 1.) A Strongman body builder; 2.) An 80-year old, 80-pound Granny, and; 3.) An Average man.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, November 18, 2019
Let’s not mince words: I believe in a STRONG Federal government.
Period.
While no government is perfect, ours is becoming “a more perfect union” because of the Federal government, which is comprised of “we the people.”
It has rarely become more perfect because of states’ actions. It has been Federal actions which have unified the 50 states under a common banner – the Constitution.
As evidence of that, one only need look to history for examples.
It was the Federal government that abolished Slavery.
It was the Federal government that gave women the Right to Vote.
It was the Federal government that gave 18-year-olds the Right to Vote.
It was the Federal government that gave Blacks the Right to Vote, and the Civil Rights Act.
It was the Federal government that gave same sex partners the Right to Marry.
It was the Federal government that struck down anti-miscegenation laws.
It was the Federal government that protected children from sexual predators worldwide.
It was the Federal government that protected underage women from sexual exploitation in pornography.
It was the Federal government that protected Prisoners from sexual abuse.
For if government was the problem, then the solution to that problem would be the abolition of it – and that is anarchy, the absence of government.
So, the Federal government is not your enemy.
Because YOU are the Federal government.
YOU are “we the people.”
And in our nation, the people have the power, so… power to the people – right on!
Again, our nation is by no means perfect, but we are becoming a more perfect union because of what we do.
One of our nation’s enduring principles is equality under law, as ensconced in the 14th Amendment which states in pertinent part that in Section 1, that,
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“Due process of law…” and “equal protection of the laws.”
Those two clauses have been instrumental in bringing equality and the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity since the 14th Amendment was ratified July 9, 1868.
So tell me, please why it is that blatant injustices like this still exist?
Until Tiana Caldwell was diagnosed with a second bout of ovarian cancer last year, her family’s finances and housing were stable. She had no idea they would be homeless within months.
She started treatment, and the bills piled up quickly. She and her husband, Derek, fell behind on their rent, and that summer they were evicted.
Tiana Caldwell and her family were evicted while they struggled to pay the rent as well as her medical bills from her ovarian cancer treatments. Because of that eviction, landlords refused to rent to them. Finally they have found a stable home. Jill Toyoshiba JToyoshiba@kcstar.com
“At one point, I did maybe think it would be better if I didn’t make it,” said Caldwell, who is now in remission. “I just couldn’t stop fighting, even when I thought that maybe that was what was best.”
After the eviction, the family was marked. The blemish on their record made landlords wary of renting to them, even though she and her husband held full-time jobs. After months of searching, they found a home and moved in, but on their first night, sewage backed up into the bathtub and toilet. Caldwell said the house was declared uninhabitable. The family was homeless once again.
For about six months, they lived in cheap hotels or stayed with her husband’s relatives. They tried to keep life as normal as possible for their 12-year-old son, AJ, but some things — like having his friends over — weren’t possible.
“He wasn’t able to do any of that, and he couldn’t tell anybody why because he was ashamed,” Caldwell said. “He didn’t want his friends to know.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, November 16, 2019
“Oh! What a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!”
– from the play “Marmion,” Canto VI Stanza 17, by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Scottish author & novelist
Rudy Giuliani (RIGHT) at the James J. Fox cigar bar in London, with Lev Parnas (lower LEFT) and, Igor Fruman (speaking on the phone), and a third, unnamed associate. (Obtained by ProPublica)
Yesterday, Friday, 15 November 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported around noon Eastern Time, that Federal prosecutors in Manhattan were investigating whether Rudy Giuliani – a former Federal Prosecutor who is Trump’s personal lawyer – stood to profit personally from a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) venture in Ukraine, which has been linked to corrupt oligarchs, and other corrupt officials, some of whom may have been, or may be yet, associated with the Ukrainian government – including two Naturalized American Citizens, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman.
Lev Parnas was born in Ukraine to Jewish parents who emigrated with him to the United States when he was aged three, while Igor Fruman was born in Belarus to Jewish parents, and later moved to Detroit.
Federal authorities arrested the two men October 9, 2019 at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C. as they both sought to leave the United States with one-way flight tickets on Lufthansa Airlines flight to Frankfurt, and charged them with illegally contributing to Trump’s election campaign. Deeming them flight risks, a Federal Judge in Northern Virginia set bail at $1 million each, and the pair are still in custody.
Lev Parnas (left) and Igor Fruman are shown after their arrest on Oct. 9 at Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, D.C.
The Federal indictment said Parnas acted “at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials,” and though none were named, it was well known that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s primary critic in the Ukrainian government was Yuriy Lutsenko, who at the time was the Ukraine’s Prosecutor General and well-known to use the law as a weapon for his own personal political fights.
Federal Prosecutors indicted two other men, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin, along with Parnas and Fruman, and accused them of funneling money to state and federal candidates in exchange for potential influence, noting that the four men wanted to set up recreational marijuana businesses in Nevada and other states, and sought political help to obtain the necessary licenses.
NPR reported 23 October 2019 that, “a company called Global Energy Producers (GEP) gave $325,000 to America First Action, the superPAC supporting Trump.” GEP is a shell company created by Parnas and Fruman.
According to Trevor Potter, a Republican former Commissioner and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), General Counsel to the now-late Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain in his 2000, and 2008 presidential campaigns, who is now an investigator and founder of Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a non-partisan, non-profit legal advocacy group which monitors money and political campaigns, CLC found that the campaign contribution came from GEP which appeared to be a shell company, and as he described, was “a blank slate.”
As Potter recalled, “The company hadn’t existed. It had been formed literally a couple weeks before the contribution. It had no website, no history of political activity, so you’re thinking this is most likely a company created to make this contribution. You have to disclose on the FEC reports the true source of the money, who the contributor actually is.”
Establishing a shell company to donate political contributions is an illegal act under Federal law.
As CLC further investigated, they found that GEP – through Parnas and Fruman – had donated to then-Representative Pete Sessions, a Republican who represented Texas’ 32nd Congressional District. Sessions was defeated by Colin Allred, his Democratic challenger in the November 2018 election.
In his official capacity, then-Representative Sessions, who was Chairman of the House Rules Committee, wrote a letter in 2018 to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stating that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch should be fired, and accused her of expressing “disdain” for the President and administration.
In July 2018, CLC notified the FEC of possible campaign finance violations by Parnas and Fruman.
Interestingly, in a totally separate, and seemingly unrelated turn of events, Dale W. Perry, the American owner of a large energy company doing business in Ukraine, first got wind of Parnas and Fruman after they’d met with one of his former business partners in March 2019, and described an unusual plan.
Perry characterized Parnas and Fruman’s scheme saying, “What was so troubling was, it was basically the presentation of the intent to take the gas sector back to where it was during the Yanukovych regime.”
Viktor Yanukovych is the former Ukrainian President, who, as Perry said, was “a heck of a lot more corrupt,” was friendly with Russian president Vladimir Putin, in office 2010-2014, was removed from office by the Ukrainian parliament February 2014, went into self-imposed exile in southern Russia that same month, and in January 2019 was tried and convicted in absentia of treason by Ukrainian court after it was discovered he had written a letter to Putin March 1, 2014 asking him to use Russian army and police forces to restore order in Ukraine, which in turn, led to the Russian invasion of Crimea. He has been in exile since 2014.
Petro Poroshenko, considered a Ukrainian oligarch, succeeded Yanukovych, who in turn was defeated May 2019 by Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, and won with 73.22% of votes cast.
In May, as part of the celebration and acknowledgement of Zelenskiy’s election victory, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry traveled to Kiev, Ukraine to serve as the senior U.S. government representative at his inauguration. While there, in a private meeting with Zelenskiy, Perry pressed him to fire members of the Naftogaz advisory board. Those in attendance left with the impression that Perry wanted to replace the American representative, Amos Hochstein, a former Diplomat and Energy Representative who served in the Obama administration, with someone “reputable in Republican circles.”
Rick Perry, Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy – official portrait
During that same trip, a second meeting occurred at a Kyiv hotel, which included Ukrainian government officials and energy sector business individuals. At that meeting, Secretary Perry was explicitly clear that Trump wanted to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, November 8, 2019
I considered naming this entry “It’s All Bad: Bridges, Schools, Roads, Dams, Aviation, Drinking Water, Energy, Inland Waterways, Ports, Schools, Wastewater, Solid Waste, Transit, Public Parks, Hazardous Waste, etc.,” but decided to change it.
Perhaps the initial title was some help to guide the reader in the direction the entry would go.
Eventually, it’ll cost you money… but it’s already doing that.
Read on to see how.
Bluntly, America’s Economic Infrastructure sucks, and blows gnarly chunks.
What’s “Economic Infrastructure”?
Glad you asked.
Broadly, “Economic Infrastructure” refers to several categories of physical improvements which facilitate civil society, providing it an opportunity to grow.
Sometimes also simply called “infrastructure,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines 16 categories, or Critical Infrastructure Sectors, including (in alphabetical order):
1.) Chemical – converts various raw materials into over 70,000 different products essential to modern life, including Basic, Specialty, and Agricultural chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Consumer products
2.) Commercial Facilities – diverse sites that draw large crowds of people for shopping, business, entertainment, or lodging.
3.) Communications – provides a critical, enabling function and integral component of the U.S. economy, underlying the operations of all businesses, public safety organizations, and government via terrestrial, satellite, wireline and wireless transmission systems
5.) Dams – dam projects, navigation locks, levees, hurricane barriers, mine tailings impoundments, and other similar water retention and/or control facilities.
6.) Defense Industrial Base – enables research, development, design, production, delivery, and maintenance of military weapons systems, subsystems, and components or parts to meet U.S. military requirements.
7.) Emergency Services – paid and volunteer at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels of government, including city police departments and fire stations, county sheriff’s offices, Department of Defense police and fire departments, and town public works departments, including private sector resources, such as industrial fire departments, private security organizations, and private emergency medical services providers
8.) Energy – provides an “enabling function” across all critical infrastructure sectors. More than 80% of the country’s energy infrastructure is owned by the private sector, supplying fuels to the transportation industry, electricity to households and businesses, and other sources of energy integral to growth and production across the nation.
9.) Financial Services – depository institutions, investment products providers, insurance companies, other credit and financing organizations, and providers of the critical financial utilities and services that support these functions, and allow customers to: Deposit funds and make payments to other parties, Provide credit and liquidity to customers, Invest funds for long and short periods, Transfer financial risks between customers
10.) Food and Agriculture – composed of an estimated 2.1 million farms, 935,000 restaurants, and more than 200,000 registered food manufacturing, processing, and storage facilities. This sector accounts for roughly one-fifth of the nation’s economic activity.
11.) Government Facilities – a wide variety of buildings, located in the United States and overseas, owned or leased by federal, state, local, and tribal governments. Many government facilities are open to the public for business activities, commercial transactions, or recreational activities while others not open to the public contain highly sensitive information, materials, processes, and equipment. These facilities include general-use office buildings and special-use military installations, embassies, courthouses, national laboratories, and structures that may house critical equipment, systems, networks, and functions. In addition to physical structures, the sector includes cyber elements that contribute to the protection of sector assets (e.g., access control systems and closed-circuit television systems) as well as individuals who perform essential functions or possess tactical, operational, or strategic knowledge.
12.) Healthcare and Public Health – protects all sectors of the economy from hazards such as terrorism, infectious disease outbreaks, and natural disasters. While healthcare tends to be delivered and managed locally, the public health component of the sector, focused primarily on population health, is managed across all levels of government: national, state, regional, local, tribal, and territorial.
13.) Information Technology – operated by a combination of entities — often owners and operators and their respective associations — that maintain and reconstitute the network, including the Internet, central to the nation’s security, economy, and public health and safety as businesses, governments, academia, and private citizens
14.) Nuclear Reactors Materials and Waste – provide electricity to millions of Americans, to the medical isotopes used to treat cancer patients.
15.) Transportation Systems – moves people and goods quickly, safely, and securely through the country and overseas. Includes Aviation, Highway and Motor Carrier, Maritime Transportation System, Mass Transit and Passenger Rail, Pipeline Systems, Freight Rail, Postal and Shipping.
16.) Water and Wastewater – Safe drinking water is a prerequisite for protecting public health and all human activity. Properly treated wastewater is vital for preventing disease and protecting the environment. Thus, ensuring the supply of drinking water and wastewater treatment and service is essential to modern life and the Nation’s economy.
Altogether, every item in those categories all facilitate commerce, private enterprise, are component parts of a local, and state economy, and as a whole, comprise the national economy. Some of the sectors, such as Food and Agriculture, and Communications, are almost wholly owned by private enterprise. In fact, the only publicly owned, i.e., governmentally-owned, are Government Facilities. There are perhaps a few others, but there are very few, and very far in-between.
Each sector is interconnected; there is not one sector which stands alone, self-sufficient and isolated. Some sectors are more interconnected than others, such as the Communications sector, while others, such as Dams, may not have as many connections. But each one is interdependent upon the others. What affects one, affects all others. It is like a line from the John Donne poem Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, most often called “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” which states in pertinent part that, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
All of that brings us to our next point.
As it pertains to common use by all, Economic Infrastructure is considered by Engineers, Architects, Urban Planners, Politicians, and even Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders as being – at the most fundamental level – those faculties and facilities which enable and promote commerce, and improve the lives of residents.
Before going further, let me interrupt that train of thought to say this about socialism.
Properly defined, socialism is a condition in which the government controls the means and the method of production – such as with a government-owned factory. The former Soviet Union (now known as “Russia”) had many such government-owned factories.
The United States has NEVER had any such thing.
And, if one considered the coinage and currency in their pockets
– minted and printed by the United States Treasury Department on government-owned machines –
it is STILL not considered an example of socialism.
Why not?
The raw materials – the paper, ink, metals, and machines to make it – all came from the Private Sector via publicly bid contracts.
The ASCE identifies some 16 very similar categories of capital improvements as being (in alphabetical order):
1.) Aviation
2.) Bridges
3.) Dams
4.) Drinking Water
5.) Energy
6.) Hazardous Waste
7.) Inland Waterways
8.) Levees
9.) Ports
10.) Public Parks
11.) Rail
12.) Roads
13.) Schools
14.) Solid Waste
15.) Transit
16.) Wastewater
About the report, they wrote in part that “Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publishes The Infrastructure Report Card, which grades the current state of national infrastructure categories on a scale of A through F. Since 1998, America’s infrastructure has earned persistent D averages, and the failure to close the investment gap with needed maintenance and improvements has continued. But the larger question at stake is the implication of D+ infrastructure on America’s economic future. The 2017 Infrastructure Report Card found the national grade for infrastructure remains at a “D+” — the same grade the United States received in 2013 — suggesting only incremental progress was made over the last four years toward restoring America’s infrastructure. ASCE evaluated 16 categories of infrastructure in the 2017 Report Card, with grades ranging from a “B” for Rail to a “D-” for Transit.
Consider also this: “The need for wastewater infrastructure exceeds $271 Billion.”
“The cost of deteriorating infrastructure takes a toll on families’ disposable household income and impacts the quality and quantity of jobs in the U.S. economy. With deteriorating infrastructure, higher business costs will be incurred in terms of charges for services and efficiency, which will lead to higher costs incurred by households for goods and services due to the rising prices passed on by businesses.
“As a consequence, U.S. businesses will be more inefficient. As costs rise, business productivity falls, causing GDP to drop, cutting employment, and ultimately reducing personal income.
“From 2016 to 2025, each household will lose $3,400 each year in disposable income due to infrastructure deficiencies; and if not addressed, the loss will grow to an average of $5,100 annually from 2026 to 2040, resulting in cumulative losses up to almost $34,000 per household from 2016 to 2025 and almost $111,000 from 2016 to 2040 (all dollars in 2015 value).
“Over time, these impacts will also affect businesses’ ability to provide well-paying jobs, further reducing incomes. If this investment gap is not addressed throughout the nation’s infrastructure sectors by 2025, the economy is expected to lose almost $4 trillion in GDP, resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs in 2025.
“Moreover, workers who are employed will earn lower wages, and in the long term, many higher paying jobs in technology and other leading sectors will be replaced by jobs that fulfill needs brought on by the inefficiencies of deteriorating infrastructure.
“Closing each infrastructure investment gap is possible, and the economic consequences caused by these gaps are avoidable with investment.”
Does that hit home hard enough?
And yet, we’re almost there.
What about the roads in your town, city, state, and nationwide? Are they in pristine condition? I sincerely doubt it. Pothole-filled roads tear up your car, don’t they? That costs you money, and time, because you gotta’ find another way around the rotten roads so your car won’t be destroyed by traveling upon them. But, what if you can’t?
Reckon what it’d cost to fix ’em ALL? Not just to fill every pothole, or fix every cracked roadway, but to (if necessary) rebuild EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY road in the United States? And while you’re at it, expand and build more – and add to it coast-to-coast high-speed, mag-lev monorail trains. China, Germany, England, France, Japan, and other nations already have high-speed trains, and monorail trains are even in Disneyland.
WHY CAN’T WE BUILD A BETTER SYSTEM FOR EVERYONE TO USE?
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, November 7, 2019
Whether one “believes” Climate Change is “real,” or not, is totally a specious argument.
Specious means “superficially plausible, but actually wrong.”
Why is it specious?
Arguing about what causes rain while your roof is leaking is pretty stupid, don’t you think?
And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening.
This map shows federal flood damage claims from 2008 to 2018. Flood risk in many parts of the U.S. is on the rise, in part because climate change is driving more frequent and intense storms, higher seas and extreme rain. Extreme rain in 2013 caused catastrophic flooding in Boulder County, CO, including dangerous flash floods. Similar storms in 2011, 2014 and 2019 flooded much of Holt County, MO. –– Flood Insurance Claims Per 1,000 People, 2010-2018
Some people (Climate Change Science deniers) are arguing about the causes, while the devastation it wreaks continues UNABATED.
Instead, what we NEED TO DO is REBUILD -and- EXPAND our crumbling national Economic Infrastructure to – as much as possible – reduce the influence these events have upon us.
Even BIG INSURANCE companies all agree that the economic losses our nation is suffering CANNOT be sustained without serious lasting damage to our national economy.
The Geneva Association (properly, The “International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics”) is a leading international think tank of the insurance industry, which detects early ideas and emerging debates on political, economic and societal issues concerning the insurance industry.
“Over the last three and a half decades, we have observed a trend of rising economic losses from extreme events globally. Between 1980 and 2017, Munich Re’s NatCatSERVICE reported 17,320 disaster loss events. Of those, 91.2% were caused by weather-related extremes (meteorological, hydrological and climatological events), accounting for 49.2% of the total of 1,723,738 lives lost, 79.8% of the total USD 4,615 billion in reported economic losses and 90.1% of total insured losses of USD 1,269 bn.
“In 2017, weather-related extremes accounted for 97% of total reported economic losses and 98.2% of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Here’s the lowdown on the latest horrific murder of a Mormon family with USA/Mexico dual citizenship.
The LDS church (Latter Day Saint) denies association with them, i.e., they’ve already been “thrown under the bus” by their leaders because they were “fundamentalist” and practiced polygamy – an historical Mormon practice, which they now deny… because of historical political pressure.
The modern Republican party has pushed the “one man, one woman” Evangelical version of marriage, despite the fact that historically, Mormons went West to practice their faith without intrusion by government.
And yet… in 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act to prohibit that exclusively religious practice by Mormons.
You just DO NOT have what it takes, your ideas are NOT what America needs now, and
• Your campaign treasury is low,
• POS45 actually ~wants~ to campaign against you (then who’ll be beaten “like a drum,” eh? Seriously!), and
• You’re clearly running on Obama’s coat-tails.
And, that’s beside the fact that history is AGAINST you.
It’s important to consider the historical record, Joe, because, well… because we learn from history.
Since our nation’s founding, ONLY 5ive former VPs have ~ever~ been independently elected to the Presidency – on their own – apart from succession.
The last one was George H. W. “Poppa” Bush.
Perhaps you recall Mr. “Read My Lips, ‘no new taxes'”?
I think everyone does.
That singular promise was what charted the course of his presidency, trying to fix what Reagan messed up after tripling America’s national deficit with his tax cuts, which the Department of the Treasury warned him in advance that the economy and budgeted revenue would take a 9% hit.
He ignored them.
And, to his everlasting credit, Poppa Bush attempted to remedy the problem after taking office, and seeing the devastation which Reagan caused Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, November 2, 2019
UPDATE 08 December 2019: On Tuesday, December 3, 2019, California Senator Kamala Harris announced that she was dropping out of the race as a contender to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President. See also her announcement as a candidate at the close of this article.
Ad hominem attacks are only valid on, and for, reprobates like Donald Trump.
BTW, for the record, I’m not a Democrat – I’m a GDI, and always have been.
But, when a candidate seeking the party’s nomination says to attendees at an early voting state’s event that, “We’re gonna’ need a nominee on that stage with Donald Trump, who has the ability to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump. And Iowa, you’re lookin’ at ‘er.,” it just doesn’t bode well as an answer to the question “what will you do ‘for the people?'”
Criticizing her political campaign, no one has heard what her plans are for rural America, Economic Infrastructure, tax policy, international relations, or any other intermediate or long-range economic policy. Or, at least she’s not made them the centerpiece or cornerstone of her campaign.
Almost every Democratic candidate is in practical philosophical agreement with almost every issue in this election cycle: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, November 1, 2019
Apparently, literacy is way overrated.
At least, that seems how some see it.
</sarcasm>
“There had been a whistleblower complaint and a partial transcript of a phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine. Both could be read as damning, even dramatically so. But both were documents. To be outraged, you probably had to read them. Most people didn’t.“
Impeachment May Gain Momentum From First Big Moment
“There had been nothing like the thunderclap in September 1998. That’s when a flotilla of black SUVs came to the Capitol bearing the report of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, with 18 boxes of evidence, and President Bill Clinton’s impeachment became all but inevitable.”
Gotta’ hand it to the Republicans.
They know how to manipulate public opinion using media and showmanship.
That’s a somewhat diplomatic phrase meaning to pull the wool over your eyes, or “fool you.”
Just look at their current president.
He’s a goddamned Liar in Chief.
And a true scumbag, if ever there was one.
Democrats gotta’ feel the outrage and get emotional.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, November 1, 2019
Trump selects a billionairess (Betsy DeVos) to be the Secretary of Education – a woman who has:
• Only attended elite private schools her entire life, has
• Never stepped foot in a public school, and has
• Never even once been a teacher, teacher’s aide, or in any administrative capacity of any school whatsoever, and
• Doesn’t have an advanced degree, and her 1979 Bachelor of Arts undergraduate degree is in Business Economics from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Then, reading scores “suddenly” dropped.
What’d you expect?
Seriously.
At least she was honest about what she wants to do to you with her money.
“But DeVos understands political interests, and that money is the mother’s milk of politics. And she does expect something in return.
“In a 1997 op-ed for RollCall, she wrote, “My family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party … I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence,” the piece reads. “Now, I simply concede the point. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment; we expect a good and honest government. Furthermore, we expect the Republican Party to use the money to promote these policies and, yes, to win elections.”
Of course, her only “solution” to the problem is to increase school vouchers which purposely drain public tax dollars AWAY from public schools to private schools.
Yeah, that’ll fix it.
Starve the monster.
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Reading Scores on National Exam Decline in Half the States
The results of the test, which assesses a sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students, will inevitably prompt demands for policy change.
By Erica L. Green and Dana Goldstein
Oct. 30, 2019
WASHINGTON — America’s fourth and eighth graders are losing ground in their ability to read literature and academic texts, according to a rigorous national assessment released Wednesday that is likely to fuel concerns over student achievement after decades of tumult on the educational landscape.
Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, 30 October 2019. Photo by Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times.
Two out of three children did not meet the standards for reading proficiency set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the Education Department.
The dismal results reflected the performance of about 600,000 students in reading and math, whose scores made up what is called the “nation’s report card.” The average eighth-grade reading score declined in more than half of the states compared with 2017, the last time the test was given. The average score in fourth-grade reading declined in 17 states. Math scores remained relatively flat in most states.
Only 35 percent of fourth graders were proficient in reading in 2019, down from 37 percent in 2017; Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Democratic Presidential nominee candidates Senators Bernie Sanders (VT) and Elizabeth Warren (MA) continue to make the case that corporate America has harmed, and continues harming, the very field upon which they sow the seeds of their profit.
They further make the case that such governmentally-approved behavior is not merely injurious, but is unsustainable – if not fatal – to those same corporations, and ultimately, to the American economy upon which it feeds.
Citing examples of such greed and rapacious corporate profiteering by their über-wealthy owners and Wall Street overlords (to whom they are fiscally accountable and must share profits), and in conjunction with misguided Federal tax policy (led almost in whole part by Republicans), Senators Warren and Sanders show how overseas and foreign “outsourcing” – all in the name of increased corporate profits – have damaged average American families, including the cities, towns, and states wherein they reside, whom have all witnessed and suffered from wholesale corporate abandonment to foreign soil.
Slow learners are discovering that America’s narsicisstic wealthy “businessman” president – whom they elected, hoping he would be their knight in shining armor coming to their economic rescue – has also sold them out for his own self interests, exactly like his party’s predecessors. They were merely expendable pawns whom he deceived in his egocentric reality show/chess game. They’re merely the red-capped collateral damage in his monkey-business trade war.
Nowhere are the result of such policies more
plainly and painfully evident than in middle America,
where once-thriving factories have become hollowed-out shells
–
the veritable rotting skeletal corporate detritus which has
fostered and driven
the Opioid Epidemic in many states.
Once-renown industrial cities like Detroit, where the Big Three of the automobile industry – Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors – reigned since the early 1900’s, and supplied high-paying Labor Union wages with genuine, and significant healthcare and retirement benefits to generations of families. Children attended well-funded public schools, states and cities prospered, thrived and expanded exponentially. Teens who chose to attend college or university did so without incurring debt, and training for technically-skilled jobs and labor was supported by almost all secondary schools.
Then, as if seemingly unnoticed, small things began to change. It was if America’s hard-working men and women, and middle-class families had become the proverbial frogs in a pot of water, never noticing the water temperature was increasing, until they were boiled to death… while yet alive.
Life-saving medications like insulin for diabetics, antibiotics to treat and cure once-deadly infections, blood pressure medications which reduced strokes and many other hypertension-associated health problems, even the plastic bags which contained Normal Saline – typically given as adjunctive intravenous therapy in hospitals – began to be manufactured overseas, and along with it, came precipitous price hikes. So-called “pharma bros” took shockingly unjust and unimaginably avaricious pecuniary advantage of old-line medications – which had for years been off-patent – and jacked up their prices 5000%, or more, which placed them out of reach for many whose very lives depended upon them.
The giant, sloppy, wet kiss given to the Pharmaceutical Industry by Republicans under President George W. Bush in Medicare Part D didn’t help. Pharmaceutical companies were allowed to, and did, raise their prices, and Medicare – the single largest purchaser of medications in the world – was forbidden from negotiating for better, lower prices by that same law, which in turn, passed the price increases along to the insured, most of whom live on nominal, and fixed incomes.
Exorbitant pharmaceuticals hold patients hostage to disease,
as hapless physicians and feckless regulators are
paralyzed to become
Wall Street extortionists’ socioeconomic ransom.
The Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” which solidified corporate personhood, and essentially said that “money is free speech” has neither helped. For if money was free speech, then the poor man would have none (thus violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and the First Amendment which guarantees Freedom of Speech), and our laws were, and are, written for all equally.
And yet, that is precisely the attitude that some have about the matter in which the President has found himself placed, which has also led to his impeachment.
