"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 Thursday, July 2, 2020
John C. Calhoun…
The very name brings chills to those who hear it mentioned.
And it should.
Calhoun was not merely a segregationist, but an open and unashamed advocate of slavery.
On Monday, February 6, 1837, on the floor of the United States Senate, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina delivered a speech in which he characterized slavery as “a positive good.”
However, Senator Calhoun’s speech before the Senate is largely absent from the official record, even though there are some extant authenticating sources.
That is, the official record of the proceedings in that era was called “Congressional Globe” and as the predecessor to the modern “Congressional Record” (a verbatim document which succeeded the Globe) it is substantially different, insofar as the Globe’s contents are NOT a verbatim source (like the Record is today), and instead, are the characterizations of a recorder(s), and read much like the minutes of a meeting.
Today, in the Congressional Record, one can read the exact words spoken by any person from the floor of either chamber – House, or Senate.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 29, 2020
Donald Trump was never serious about becoming president, and campaigned exclusively as a lark, in order to better position himself in upcoming contract negotiations with NBC.
Thus said Howard Stern at least 3 years ago.
While it may have been a topic of some minor discussion earlier – and therefore not discussed much at all – Howard Stern, radio “shock jock” and self-described “King of All Media” – has been a long-time friend of the Current White House Occupant, the Liar in Chief himself, Donald J. “DJ” Trump.
As such, when Trump told Stern his plans, Stern said he advised Trump not to run, and later, again advised him to drop out of the running to become the Republican party’s nominee.
Trump has been a guest on Stern’s eponymous “The Howard Stern Show” many, many, many times. And socially, away from the microphone, Stern and Trump have enjoyed a long-running friendly relationship. Suffice it to say, Trump and Stern are intertwined – not quite inexplicably, or even inexorably, but definitely inescapably.
With over 24 appearances over 20 years, it would be reasonable to say that Trump has some level of relationship with Stern.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, June 26, 2020
The Great American Boogeyman – “socialism” – has long been used as a political punching bag LONG before either the Soviet Union -or- Nazi Germany came along.
Yeah.
LONG, LONG before.
Que viene el Coco, Lu (Here Comes the Bogey-Man, Lu), 1799 etching and burnished aquatint by Francisco Goya (1746–1828)
So just bear that in mind anytime any political moron (like Republicans) use the term to attempt to scare (ignorant) people.
Yeah, IGNORANT.
Because they DELIBERATELY use your ignorance AGAINST you.
It’s even in the Miranda Warning – “anything you’ve say can, and will, be used against you in a court of law.”
And that’s PRECISELY WHY the American voter MUST BE well-informed.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 22, 2020
Republican Kim Reynolds is Iowa’s first female governor. So far, not good. As Lieutenant Governor, she succeeded to the office upon the resignation of Governor Terry Branstad to become U.S. Ambassador to China in May 2017. She won the 2018 election with a narrow plurality of votes – 50.26%, over Democratic challenger Fred Hubbell with 47.53%.
When I read the headline
“Smokable Hemp Possession Or Sale In Iowa Punishable With Fines, Jail In State’s New Hemp And CBD Regulations,”
the VERYFIRSTTHOUGHT I had was…
I’ll bet “Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds” is a Republican.
Yep.
Sho’ nuff!
What the hell is it with these goddamned GOPers these days, eh?
Stupid mofos!
Seriously.
Stupid.
Kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
They could fuck up a wet dream.
Iowans are NOT happy with her… or with Republicans.
“Very bad news this week for both Governor Kim Reynolds and the Republican-controlled Iowa Legislature. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported the second quarter economic growth by state (GDP). Iowa’s economic growth was a negative .7%, dead last among all 50 states. Of the 50 states, 48 had positive growth in this period. Only Iowa (-.7%) and South Dakota (-.3%) had a negative growth rate.
“While one quarter’s performance doesn’t predict future growth, it’s a huge embarrassment for the Iowa Republican Party. The Republican Governor and the GOP control majorities in both branches of the Legislature and have driven Iowa’s economy to last place in the nation. They can’t blame the Democrats for this economic disaster.”
Look what Republicans did to the Voting Rights Act.
Look what they did to money in politics.
Look what they did in Citizens United.
Look what they did to the PPACA, aka “Obamacare.”
Look what they’ve done to Voting access in the various states, through purges and reductions in polling locations.
Look what they did to the economy with a fouled-up practically non-existent Federal response to COVID-19.
Look what they’ve NOT done for American protectorate “shit hole” countries like Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
Look what they did to minority communities of almost every variety.
Look what they’ve done to healthcare and the disastrously abysmal lack of healthcare for Americans.
Look what they’ve done to Social Security.
Look what they’ve NOT DONE for the nation’s Economic Infrastructure!
Look what they’ve done to the tax system.
Look what they’ve done to schools and public education.
Look what they’ve done to our Law Enforcement, Justice, and Corrections/Penal systems.
Look at what’s NOT happening to online monoliths like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
Look at what’s happening to your privacy.
If you’re not wealthy and White, you’re trash.
At least that’s how they see it.
It’s time to get those pieces of garbage OUT of the nation’s and states’ capitols.
Smokable hemp possession or sale in Iowa punishable with fines, jail in state’s new hemp and CBD regulations
Published June 19, 2020
New regulations clarifying the types of hemp and CBD products that are legal to sell and purchase in Iowa took effect with the enactment of the Hemp Consumer and Public Safety law on Wednesday.The law changes certain provisions of the Iowa Hemp Act, which Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed to legalize hemp production in the state in May 2019.
Until now, products containing CBD were illegal to be sold or purchased over the counter in Iowa, as CBD still qualified as a controlled substance in the state.
CBD could only legally be sold in a small number of approved pharmacies.
Smokable hemp remains illegal in Iowa and the new rules impose penalties and restrictions on any harvested hemp used for inhalation such as cigarettes, vaporizers and others.Retailers caught selling smokable hemp products and consumers found using them could face “a serious misdemeanor” punishable by up to a year of confinement and a fine of $315-$1,875. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 22, 2020
On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army Major General Gordon Granger, along with his command, arrived in Galveston, in the then-District of Texas, he issued General Orders No. 3, and that day read aloud the following:
“The people of Texas are informed that,
in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States,
all slaves are free.
This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves,
and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.
The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.
They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
This past Friday, 19 June 2020, marked the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth, a holiday celebrated in 46 states, and the District of Columbia, commemorating the abolition of slavery which occurs annually on June 19.
The date actually refers not to the end of legal slavery in the United States, but to the gap in time after the Emancipation Proclamation, and refers to the date the U.S. Army’s Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, in the then-District of Texas and made an official proclamation of the news that Lincoln had freed slaves in the 10 secessionist rebel Confederate states through the Emancipation Proclamation (EP).
To be certain, as a societal evil, slavery was and remains despicably abhorrent, and had long been practiced by humanity throughout history. Efforts to eradicate slavery in the United States were fraught with legal difficulties, most which seriously complicated matters, and placed the status of the newly emerging and growing nation known as the United States in perilous jeopardy.
A statue depicts a man holding the state law that made Juneteenth a state holiday is shown Wednesday, June 17, 2020, in Galveston, Texas. The inscription on the statue reads “On June 19, 1865, at the close of the Civil War, U.S. Army General Gordon Granger issued an order in Galveston stating that the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was in effect. That event, later known as “Juneteenth,” marked the end of slavery in Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
An interesting feature, is the date and timing of General Orders No. 3, which reinforced, and supported the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Emancipation Proclamation – also known as “Proclamation 95” – was initially issued by Read the rest of this entry »
Again, his typical tirade is exclusively demonstrative of a cult of personality, rather than expertise, and is in no way based upon any remote semblance of competence.
That is his and his administration’s hallmark – utter incompetence.
Whether the SCOTUS “doesn’t like [you]” – or not – is NOT the matter under consideration you blithering dolt.
Yet again, you play the Straw Man Fallacy Argument, by attempting to divert the subject to your liking.
There’s a thing called “THE RULE OF LAW” which is obviously something of which you are blatantly ignorant.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, June 18, 2020
The scars of slavery are apparent, and are in this nation everywhere one looks.
Most are plainly evident, some not so much.
It’s like that with mental illness.
It’s not clearly visible from the outside, and that’s because of where the damage has occurred… on the inside – of the brain.
It’s a way of thinking which sets apart mental illness from mental health.
Eventually, of course, the illness is reflected in the behavior, and that includes speech, which is an activity.
Such scars are evident ESPECIALLY and particularly in the South, where Slavery once occurred, and where states seceded from the Union in order to preserve the status quo, rather than change.
The damage is reflected in whom the majority White population votes for, and elects, to rule over them.
Again, it’s NOT plainly visible, but clearly, something IS drastically wrong, and it’s evidenced by poor policy, and bad laws.
Following are excerpts of dialogue with friends about the matter.
To Friend:
“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”
–– U.S. Idiot in Chief Donald J. Trump to Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 15, 2020
When it’s all over, said and done, this ENTIRE COVID-19 disaster and ALL its deaths will be justifiably and rightfully laid at the feet of the POTUS, the GOP and this utterly inept, and corruptly incompetent administration.
How to Track COVID-19 Nursing Home Cases and Deaths in Your State
Harrowing blame game over COVID-19 toll in nursing homes
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Monday, June 15, 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — A grim blame game with partisan overtones is breaking out over COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents, a tiny slice of the population that represents a shockingly high proportion of Americans who have perished in the pandemic.
The Trump administration has been pointing to a segment of the industry — facilities with low federal ratings for infection control — and to some Democratic governors who required nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients.
Homes that followed federal infection control guidelines were largely able to contain the virus, asserts Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, which sets standards and pays the bills. “Trying to finger-point and blame the federal government is absolutely ridiculous,” she says.
Verma says data collected by her agency suggest a connection between low ratings on safety inspections and COVID-19 outbreaks. But several academic researchers say their own work has found no such link.
Advocates for older people say the federal government hasn’t provided needed virus testing and sufficient protective gear to allow nursing homes to operate safely. A White House directive to test all residents and staff has been met with an uneven response.
“The lack of federal coordination certainly has impeded facilities’ ability to identify infected persons and to provide care,” Eric Carlson, a long-term care expert with the advocacy group Justice in Aging, told lawmakers. “That absence remains important as facilities are attempting to open up, which requires an extensive reliance on testing.”
Democrats are critical of the Trump administration response.
“We need action,” says Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. “We need a plan from CMS and we need resources to stop the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes.”
Nationwide, more than 45,500 residents and staff have died from coronavirus outbreaks at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to a running count by The Associated Press. That’s about 40% of more than 115,000 total deaths. Nursing home residents are less than 1% of the U.S. population.
It’s a sensitive election year issue for President Donald Trump, who’s trying to hang on to support from older voters. A recent CNN poll found that 54% of adults 65 and older said they disapproved of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 44% approved.
With more coronavirus legislation possible this year, congressional Democrats are pressing for a national testing plan and additional resources for nursing homes. Republicans are mainly seconding the administration’s arguments.
During a recent briefing for lawmakers, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, blamed New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the high numbers of deaths in his state. A since-rescinded state directive that nursing homes had to accept recovering coronavirus patients “ended up being a death sentence” in New York and several states with similar policies, Scalise said.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 15, 2020
America’s historical laxity on DWI/DUI is infamous.
In some nations, as recently as 1978/9, anecdote suggests that DUI offenders in some nations may have been summarily executed… without trial.
But civilization, you know.
And due process.
There’s something to be said for them both.
And yet, due process is NOT laxity on law.
Consider some contemporary penalties for inebriated drivers in other nations:
In Australia, the names of intoxicated drivers are sent to the local paper and are printed under the heading: “He’s drunk and in jail”.
In England, drunk drivers face a one-year suspension of license, a $250 fine, and one year in jail.
In France, there is a three-year loss of license, one year in jail, and a $1,000 fine.
In Malaysia, the driver is jailed. If he is married, his wife is jailed, too.
In Norway, the penalty is three weeks in jail at hard labor and one year loss of license. With a second offense within five years, the license is revoked for life.In Russia, the license is revoked for life.
In South Africa, the penalty is a ten-year prison sentence and the equivalent of $10,000 fine, or both.
In Turkey, drunks are taken ten miles from town by the police and forced to walk back under escort.
Nevertheless, that I’m aware, there’s little-to-no evidence to suggest that DUI is a capital offense – at least in America.
Or, is there?
There’s the late Rayshard Brooks of Atlanta, you know.
He was summarily executed – shot in the back – by Atlanta police officers for DUI.
Yeah.
And he wasn’t even driving.
That’s an “inconvenient truth” which some don’t want to talk about.
And then, I think about what John Adams (1735 – 1826) – American Diplomat, 2nd POTUS, father of John Quincy Adams, and “founding father” of the United States – said at a December 1770 mass murder trial in which he was the Attorney for the Defense.
“Facts are stubborn things;
and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations,
or the dictates of our passion,
they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
They were British soldiers of the 29th Regiment under the command an Irishman, Captain Thomas Preston.
Along with 4 civilians, the soldiers accused of murder were William Wemms, James Hartigan, William McCauley, Hugh White, Matthew Kilroy, William Warren, John Carrol and Hugh Montgomery.
The deceased victims of the event colloquially known as the “Boston Massacre” were Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Coldwell and Crispus Attucks, all who died immediately. Patrick Carr, who was wounded, died 9 days later.
The circumstances of the situation were that, late on the night of Monday, March 5, 1770, a crowd had gathered in front of the Customs House and confronted 8 British soldiers and Captain Preston. The soldiers, armed with muskets fitted with bayonets, formed a semi-circle as the crowd dared them to shoot. The scene was tense, and an unknown man in the crowd threw a club which struck a soldier, whereupon a shot was fired, which was followed by about 6 seconds of silence, followed by a volley of several shots. Many were wounded, including some who died instantly.
Enraged that troops under his command had fired without his order, Captain Preston commanded them to cease fire. Upon restoration of order, the troops departed the scene unscathed, leaving the peaceful civilian protesters feeling powerless.
Shortly, additional reinforcement British troops arrived on scene, which again escalated tensions, which had been significantly reduced following Captain Preston’s orders. Violence again seemed impending, but when Thomas Hutchinson made a quick speech from the balcony of the Town House guaranteeing that Captain Preston and his troops would be tried in court, the peaceful protesters were assuaged, the situation was thereby de-escalated, and the crowd dispersed.
According to the magistrate’s order, Captain Preston and the eight soldiers were to be tried separately.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 8, 2020
There’s been much “water under the bridge” in the last 50 years, or so.
Like it, or not, America has changed.
And frankly, not all change is good. Not all change is for the better. And we all recognize that fact, whether we voted, and voted for Trump, or someone else.
That’s a common unifier among us all regardless of what political affiliation – if any – we may have. We know that change has come, and some of it hasn’t produced the good it was purported to bring about.
Some of the change has been oblique, some of it has been blatant, some of it may have been justified, and some of it may have been a handout, or a head on a silver platter as a political favor.
Again, not all change is good, nor has all change been good. But neither is it all bad.
Change is necessary. We change diapers on babies regularly, and (should) change politicians regularly for the same reason – when they’re full of poop, they’re stinky, and dirty, and if left in place too long, will irritate the skin, and lead to infection.
In an interview article entitled “How Much Do We Need The Police?” by Leah Donnella, published June 6, 2020 on the NPR website, she spoke with Dr. Alex S. Vitale, PhD, Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, and is a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. For the past 25 years, he has consulted with police departments and international human rights organizations, served on numerous boards, conducted research, and authored numerous books, scholarly articles, and articles of public interest on matters of law enforcement.
In the interview, his observations were not merely prescient, but keen, some of which were, quite frankly, obvious – although at the time, we may not have noticed what would have occurred. But after problems did begin to emerge, we did nothing.
It’s the “Frosted Lucky Charms” mindset – thinking that if we do nothing, it’ll all be “magically delicious,” or miraculously go away… like the POTUS said of COVID-19 at a New Hampshire rally, February 10, 2020 when he said in part, that, “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
And now, as the saying goes, “the chickens have come home to roost.”
The fruit borne of the changes which have been made in many matters that do NOT pertain to police, that do NOT pertain to law enforcement, that do NOT require law enforcement intervention, that are merely either civil, health, or social matters, have been unfairly and unjustly thrust upon police whom have been tasked with responding to them.
In a very real way, they’ve been unjustifiably overburdened, and have by default, commanded to do many things OUTSIDE the scope of law enforcement. It’d be like asking a groundskeeper to also be a nanny. It’s also patently and preposterously absurd.
And, I’ve been saying that what we TRULY need to reinvigorate the economy since the onset of economic woes via the novel coronavirus, aka COVID-19, began to take its toll on our nation’s economy, is a wholesale reinvestment – top to bottom – in a repair, and expansion of our nation’s economic infrastructure.
While the “bailouts” for the individual citizens was good, and some of the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses was also good, we STILL need to do MUCH, MUCH MORE!
And there’s something else which – of necessity – must be done. And that is, to CHANGE the Income Tax structure for ALL Americans, to expand and increase the Personal and Corporate Income Tax brackets (which since about 1980 has been compressed and reduced, so that now, the net effect is a flat tax), and to increase the rates upon the rich, wealthy, and well-to-do, and to lower, or eliminate them upon the impoverished, and disabled. And that includes ELIMINATING the Income Taxes Reagan imposed upon Social Security, and the “Paris Hilton Tax Cuts.”
Such a measure WILL “pay for itself” through enhanced, and expanded economic capability and capacity, and will prepare America for the next 50 or more years.
“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.”
We aren’t out of the woods yet… not by a long shot. Such economic prognostication is shared by many within, and without various universities, educational institutions, economic think-tanks, governmental, and non-governmental agencies throughout this, and other nations. And economic infrastructure spending would be like putting the country on a defibrillator, and giving it steroids, all at the same time.
By Scott Paul Scott Paul is president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
There are two discussion topics that federal policymakers should be having right now: relief and recovery. Relief, for the estimated 40 million people this pandemic has put out of work as well as the millions of others impacted by the steps taken to slow its spread. Recovery, for the day when it’s safe to return to work but the demand for goods and services is still missing.
Some economists predict many jobs will simply disappear as industries use this moment to reorganize, compounding the economic crisis our nation faces.
But, as we all know, this isn’t the first time we’ve faced an economic crisis. In the 1932 presidential election, Franklin D. Roosevelt decisively beat President Hoover because of the latter’s inability to revive the economy in the early years of the Great Depression. Democrats eschewed Hoover’s volunteerism and leveraged the power of government to spur an economic revival, passing a landmark domestic preference bill that the lame duck president signed – the Buy American Act of 1933 – and then cleared the way as FDR expanded the federal response to the crisis.
The banking system was reorganized. Labor protections were established in exchange for regulating industrial production levels and price coordination. Farms were Read the rest of this entry »
Though she mentioned a couple of her senatorial colleagues by name, she didn’t mention if the idea was exclusive or joint to the Senate, and/or the House.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Apparently, the Current White House Occupant (CWHO) thinks that he’s fooling you.
But hopefully, you know the saying:
Fool me once, shame on you;
fool me twice, shame on me.
The origin of the “fooled me once, shame on you…” adage is from an 1817 book entitled “The Court and Character of King James, Written and Taken by Sir A. W., Being an Eye and Ear Witness,” p52 (Sir Anthony Weldon)
“There’s a lot of talk about Iraq on our TV screens, and there should be, because we’re trying to figure out how best to make the world a peaceful place. There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.You’ve got to understand the nature of the regime we’re dealing with. This is a man who has delayed, denied, deceived the world. For the sake of liberty and justice for all, the United Nations Security Council must act, must act in way to hold this regime to account, must not be fooled, must be relevant to keep the peace.
Part of the American history teaches us that we must lead toward a more peaceful world. Part of the history of the world shows that as threats develop, we must deal with them before they become too acute, unmanageable. Part of our history is, is that we’re a peaceful people. We love and long for peace, that we want peace for generations to come. But sometimes we must act in order to achieve the peace.”
It should be noted as well, that there is SIGNIFICANTLY IMMENSE irony in those remarks which are entirely apropos and befittingly descriptive of this POTUS – the Current White House Occupant.
The CHWO is without question “… a man who has delayed, denied, and deceived the world” – AND the American people.
The self-congratulatory whitewashed video POS45 had made of himself in that act was more like
“The Alabama Monuments Preservation Act provides a singular avenue for enforcement — the filing of a civil complaint in pursuit of a fine, which the Alabama Supreme Court has determined to be a one-time assessment of $25,000. The Act authorizes no additional relief.
“Should the City of Birmingham proceed with the removal of the monument in question, based upon multiple conversations I have had today, city leaders understand I will perform the duties assigned to me by the Act to pursue a new civil complaint against the City.
“In the aftermath of last night’s violent outbreak, I have offered the City of Birmingham the support and resources of my office to restore peace to the City.”
This evening, the City of Birmingham has deployed crews to dismantle and remove the onerous obelisk which has cast the pallor of slavery over the city since its erection in 1905 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Casting the shadowy pall of slavery over the city since 1905 after being gifted to the city by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, it has increasingly become a touchstone representing man’s inhumanity to man through the wicked institution in Alabama especially, which was the Capitol of the Confederacy.
And then, there’s an interestingly disturbing corollary to the monument in the park.
Linn Park was not always named “Linn Park.”
First named “Central Park” in 1883 by the the Elyton Land Company’s original plans for Birmingham, as drafted by William Barker, its name was changed to “Capitol Park” in 1886 after it was deeded to the city. Its name was again changed to “Woodrow Wilson Park” in 1918 to honor Wilson as President and for being the spokesman of the terms of peace which concluded World War I.
It was nearly three-quarters of a century later in October 1988 that the name was changed from Woodrow Wilson Park to Linn Park to honor Charles Linn, a Captain in the Confederate States Navy, who later became an industrialist/banker/mercantilist and city founder.
Additional details of the park’s location are enumerated in description of the 1907 historical image of the commemorative obelisk shown below.
Birmingham, Alabama area comedian Jermaine “FunnyMaine” Johnson has for many years helped lead efforts to eradicate the city’s Monument to Maleficence which honors treason against the United States and slavery in the guise of Civil War Confederates, replete with a quote from the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, upon the obelisk’s north face: “THE MANNER OF THEIR DEATH, WAS THE CROWNING GLORY OF THEIR LIVES. JEFFERSON DAVIS.”
Alabama Governess Kay Ivey (R)
Johnson’s and numerous others’ opposition to the city’s durable demonic device is unwavering, and has faced opposition from the state’s mostly White Republican legislators, and White Republican Governor Kay Ivey who signed into law a bill protecting that and other such monuments honoring slavery throughout the state.
The city’s mayor, Randall Woodfin, also a Black gentleman, is similarly unwavering in his opposition to the monument’s presence and all that it represents, and has sought on numerous occasions to have it removed, but has been thwarted by the White-dominated Republican legislature and governor. Numerous court battles have raged, and even wound up in the state’s Supreme Court which found that the greatest penalty the city could face for violation of the law forbidding its removal was a $25,000 fine.
Image circa 1907, of the Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument obelisk along with a bronze statue of Dr. William Elias B. Davis, MD an early Birmingham area physician, circa 1887, to the RIGHT. Charles Linn Park (formerly Central Park, Capitol Park, and Woodrow Wilson Park) forms the municipal center of downtown Birmingham, and is and is and is bordered on the north by 8th Avenue North, Boutwell Auditorium and the Birmingham Museum of Art, on the south by Park Place, on the east by Linn-Henley Research Library and the Jefferson County Courthouse, and by 20th Street North and the Birmingham City Hall on the west.
Carol Robinson of the website AL dot com interviewed Jermaine Johnson following a tumultuous night in the Magic City Sunday May 31 in which several unsuccessful attempts to topple the obelisk were made, and in which its inscriptions were marred, chipped, chiseled at and defaced by numerous crowd participants. Most in the city – Black and White – are willing to see it go.
They’re not for Birmingham, they’re not from Birmingham. We know, we were on the ground.
We talked with some of these people. When you have a lot of people from Birmingham, including the police and the mayor, everybody’s out here peaceful because we recognize each other. Everybody’s walking up, ‘Oh we went to Ramsay together, we went to JO together, and here comes a group of people nobody knows and we’re like, ‘Hey what’s up man’ and they’re like ‘We’re not here to talk.’ They were just rude to everybody. They were rude to reporters. They were rude to us.
If you think I incited violence, you don’t think monuments like this and the policies behind it haven’t incited violence for decades, you just need to think again.
I hate it. I hate it. I love my city. I don’t stand for that.
Y’all won’t be able to find not one video where I’m encouraging people to tear down our city. As a matter of fact, you’ll find just the opposite. I literally encouraged people to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 1, 2020
It’s Open Season on Black men and women in America.
Cops kill with impunity.
The Department of Justice (especially under this administration) does nothing.
There is NO justice in this land.
But Fortunately, Open Season on Blacks in America is Closing Soon.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020 marks the day.
That’s the day of the General Election.
And it’s time to vote OUT those with a “R” after their name, and most especially, to clean out the White House and rid it of the infestation of vermin which have afflicted it and this nation for the past 4 years.
George Floyd’s death in Minnesota is just the latest, and hopefully, the last straw – the one that proverbially broke the camel’s back in this miserably shameful and ongoing horror story.
That the POTUS has chosen to NOT address the nation during this crisis speaks volumes, none of which have any good in them.
It wasn’t too long ago that a young man in Alabama who had just entered the United States Army, and was home on leave during Thanksgiving, was shot and killed by the Hoover Police Department at the Riverchase Galleria mall in Hoover, a suburb of Birmingham on November 22, 2018.
The deceased young man was the type of person the NRA holds out as a proverbial exemplar of the “good guy with a gun” character they often tout. The only problem was, that in his case, he was Black. The fact that he was properly licensed to carry a concealed weapon – and did – made no difference.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, May 30, 2020
When I think about all those sissified wanna-be “macho men” White boys in Michigan and other places running around with their assault rifles hanging off them like penises in a porno movie talking all kinds of shit, that 2A is supposed to protect us from an oppressive government, etc…
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, May 28, 2020
As I’ve pondered the often tragic events of the past several days, weeks, and months of news items concerning the deaths and abuses of men – mostly, but of women as well – of color in our country, from states as far south as Georgia, to as far north in Minnesota, I weep.
When I see, read, and hear of deaths which would otherwise be called “murder” and “assault” at the hands of law-enforcement officials, by every day citizens, retired law enforcement officers, and even mere civilians in public parks, I not only cringe, but throw up in my mouth just a little bit.
The not-so-subtle cheapening of human life, particularly of Black lives, is not merely disgusting, it is fully and completely immoral and entirely irreligious, for it is neither pietistic, and certainly not humanistic.
“The Lost Cause” title page, 1866
And when I think about how and why we got to this point, and wonder how the demonic deification of diabolical deeds, and grandiose glorification of such evil and treachery occurred, I consider “The Lost Cause” as the root cause. It is the single-most practical perpetuation of all such wickedness which continues to live and roam among us.
In a much earlier entry entitled “Terrorism In the South,” and dated October 6, 2016, I wrote about some survivors of the American Civil War, whom have been long dead.
While I confess to not being a student of the Civil War, I do take a modest passing interest in a backgrounder of some of its lesser-known facts, such as the romanticizing efforts of “The Lost Cause” which was, and remains, an attempt to ennoble the matter of slavery, its savageries, and the war by Southerners which sought to perpetuate it.
The term “Lost Cause” emerged at the end of the Civil War when Edward Pollard, editor of the Richmond Examiner, popularized it with his book The Lost Cause, which chronicled the Confederacy’s demise. The term swiftly came into common use as a reference not only to military defeat, but defeat of the “southern way of life”—a phrase that generally referred to the South of the antebellum period, when plantationslavery was still intact. Since the late nineteenth century, historians have used the term “Lost Cause” to describe a particular belief system as well as commemorative activities that occurred in the South for decades after the Civil War. Commonly held beliefs were that the war was fought over states’ rights and not slavery, that slavery was a benevolent institution that offered Christianity to African “savages,” and that the war was a just cause in the eyes of God. Commemorative activities included erecting Confederate monuments and celebrating Confederate Memorial Day.
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy; frontispiece to author Edward A. Pollard’s 1866 book The Lost Cause
When describing the Lost Cause, historians have employed the terms “myth,” “cult,” “civil religion,” “Confederate tradition,” and “celebration” to explain this southern phenomenon. Many of these terms are used interchangeably, but they all refer to a conservative movement in the postwar South that was steeped in the agrarian traditions of the Old South and that complicated efforts to create a “New South.” For diehard believers in the Lost Cause, the term New South was repugnant and implied that there was something wrong with the values and traditions of the antebellum past. For individuals devoted to the idea of the Lost Cause, the Old South still served as a model for race relations (blacks should be deferential to whites as under slavery), gender roles (women should be deferential to their fathers, brothers, and husbands), and class interactions (poor whites should defer to wealthier whites). Moreover, individuals believed that the Confederacy, which sought to preserve the southern way of life, should be respected and its heroes, as well as its heroines, should be revered. Indeed, white southerners, for whom the Lost Cause was sacred, argued that the members of the Confederate generation fought for a just cause—states’ rights—and were to be honored for their sacrifices in defense of constitutional principle.
One could think of The Lost Cause as a “We’ve always done it this way” kind of thinking – which ironically, are also “The Last Six Words of a Dying Organization.”
Nevertheless, as many historians note, photographs of individuals from that era are exceedingly rare, as are those of the more infamous individuals such as William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson, a notoriously wicked, savagely brutal, wantonly profligate, dissolutely treacherous guerilla terrorist gang leader of Confederate mercenaries who is widely thought to have personally killed at least 52 human beings, based upon a cord he kept in his pocket, which when found upon his corpse, is reputed to have had as many number of knots in its length.
You could think of “Bloody Bill” Anderson as the “MS-13 of the Civil War.”
To describe his actions and life as reprehensibly reprobate, cravenly pusillanimous, even proliferately profligate, ignominious and pervasive is not strong enough to convey the utter depths of depravity of his darkened soul.
As a young man aged 22, he quickly became a scumbag of the First Order by making money stealing and selling horses – a type of automobile theft of the antiquated day – all along the Santa Fe Trail, as far away as New Mexico.
After “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s father’s death – he was shot in self defense by A.I. Baker, a Confederate-sympathizing judge in the Council Grove, Kansas area, after being threatened by him because the judge had issued an arrest warrant for the son for horse theft after numerous complaints by area ranchers and farmers – he doubled down and became a murdering thief, wantonly hijacking and murdering travelers, stagecoaches, United States soldiers and civilians in and around Missouri.
His loyalty was to no one but himself, and was known to have remarked that he sought to fight as a Confederate mercenary – for money, rather than for principle, or fealty.
Bloody Bill shortly became mixed up with another ne’er-do-well guerilla leader named William Clarke Quantrill around May 1863, who headed the equally infamous guerilla terrorist group Quantrill’s Raiders, to which the equally infamous criminal brother duo of Frank and Jesse James briefly belonged. They, along with Cole Younger and his brothers Jim, John and Bob Younger, another notorious criminal cabal who were also part of Quantrill’s Raiders, and following the Civil War, joined with Jesse’s brother Frank James, to rob trains.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Opinion writer Kyle Whitmire, who opines for the website AL dot com, recently wrote a damning indictment of the sad state of affairs which continues to be Alabama.
In his regularly-appearing column dated May 17, he wrote in part that three months ago, that “the Alabama Senate passed a resolution recognizing the great looming public health emergency — porn,” and that “State Sen. Dan Roberts, R-Mountain Brook, introduced the resolution moments after lawmakers gaveled in, and the Senate passed it easily on a voice vote.”
The vast majority of the state’s legislators in both chambers are Republican.
Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh (R) defended a plan to spend $200 million on a new Alabama State House but says his caucus is “not in the mood” to expand Medicaid.
He also noted that “More than half of Alabama counties don’t have hospitals where a woman can give birth to a baby.”
Alabama has 67 counties, and the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that as of July 1, 2019, the state had 4,903,185 residents, 45.2% of which are Read the rest of this entry »
Thus far, 1,354,664 American lives have been lost in the total 78 armed conflicts in our nation’s 244 year history.
That averages out to very nearly 5,552 per year.
In the past 127 days since COVID-19 disease was discovered to have invaded our nation on January 20 this year, over 97,811 deaths – that we now know of – have occurred.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, May 25, 2020
One again, Republicans are demonstrating their lackadaisical reckless attitude toward human life, and thereby proving that they care little, if anything, about Americans of any stripe.
Whether young, old, infant, geriatric, sick, healthy, able, disabled, veteran, civilian, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, well-educated, poorly-educated, gay, straight, bi, gender non-conforming, or anything of all points in between – it makes no difference. Money is their god. The Almighty Dollar rules.
They and their feckless titular leader are forcing ALL Americans to bow before the altar of Mammon, sacrificing our wise elders, children, even the unborn, to the all-consuming selfish fires of commerce.
The radicalized members of the Party of Trump are your “Death Panels.” They are the very thing Republicans warned America which would happen if the PPACA were to become enacted — which is not even anything even remotely close to Single Payer/Medicare For All.
And yet, even though they’ve continually tried their damndest to kill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), aka “ObamaCare,” and every vestige of it since the day it was enacted on March 23, 2010, they’ve still not managed to come up with any alternative whatsoever.
Nada.
Bupkis.
Not only have the GOP’s dire predictions not come true, nor have they even remotely happened, but they’re still showing America what they think is TRULY important – money, money, money… MONEY!
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, May 24, 2020
President Trump, and his Attorney General William Barr are weaponizing COVID-19.
In a conference “pastor call,” AG Barr recently said that “I think the intransigence on this makes me feel that undergirding some of this is really animus against religion.”
United States Attorney General William “Bill” Barr
However, earlier on Tuesday, April 14, at a press conference, Mr. Barr had confirmed that law, and Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decisions state explicitly that Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms are not absolute, and permit reasonable limits to them.
“In exigent circumstances, when the community as a whole faces an impending harm of this magnitude, and where the measures are tailored to meeting the imminent danger, the constitution does allow some temporary restriction on our liberties that would not be tolerated in normal circumstances.”
In that same statement, he also stated clearly that, “government may not impose special restrictions on religious activity that do not also apply to similar nonreligious activity.”
Kelly Loeffler was appointed by narrow-margin-of-victory Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp to fill the unexpired term of three-term Georgia Republican US Senator Johnny Isakson who resigned from office at the end of 2019 due to Parkinson’s disease.
The gubernatorially-appointed temporary fill-in “Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler told Politico she is not dropping out of the Georgia Senate special election despite facing scrutiny over $20 million in stock sales she made following a closed-door Senate briefing in January about the coronavirus.
““Not only am I not dropping out, but I’m gonna win,” Loeffler told the news outlet Thursday.
“Loeffler, who is married to New York Stock Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher, has said she does not control her own stock portfolio and that she was unaware of the exchanges. She has submitted documents to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, both of which are investigating trading action among senators around the coronavirus pandemic.”
Loeffloer’s net worth is reportedly well over $500,000,000, and is being investigted by the FBI and the Senate for suspicious stock sales timing in response to insider knowledge of the coronavirus obtained in the Senate.
“You know, we’ve been doing testing at a level that nobody has ever done it before. We cannot get any, and we cannot get the press to write about it or write fairly about it. And nobody has ever done. We’ve done double what anyone else — if you add up all of the countries in the world, we’ve done more testing than all of the countries in the world added up together. Nobody has ever done anything like that. And we have the best tests.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, May 12, 2020
POS45 lies to Americans about COVID-19 testing… among many other things.
The President Liar in Chief continuously falsely claims (diplomatic language meaning that “he lies“) that no other nation has done more testing for COVID-19 than the United States.
THAT IS BLATANTLY FALSE!
NUMEROUS and various sources attest that the President Liar in Chief’s
claims are unquestionably 100% pure LIES.
The Liar in Chief plays the American people for fools, that they do not, and cannot understand that a nation with a higher population could have a lower testing rate than a smaller nation, both by percentage of population tested, and by per capita testing.
For example, a nation with a 1,000,000 population which tested 100,000 people (10%), naturally has raw testing numbers higher than a nation of 10,000 people who tested all 10,000 (100%) of their residents.
The per capita ratio for the two nations would be 1 per capita for the 100% testing, and 0.1 per capita for the 100,000 people with 10% testing.
“The United States as of Sunday had completed nearly 9 million coronavirus tests, according to the Covid Tracking Project. While an enormous number, the amount is equivalent to 2.74% of the U.S. population and does not give a full representation of the virus’ reach within American society.
“There are far higher levels of per-capita testing in other parts of the world. In tiny Iceland, the figure is a 15.4%, but that amounts to about 54,000 tests across a population of 352,000 people.
“Yet major industrialized economies with large outbreaks also have fared better in testing than the United States: Italy has conducted tests equivalent to 4.31% of its population, and Germany is at 3.35%. The United States also is still behind its northern neighbor, Canada, where its 1.09 million tests are now equivalent to 2.95% of the county’s population.”
As well, Dr. Fauci, MD testified before the Senate Health Committee via online remote video teleconference today and contradicted practically everything that the Liar in Chief POS45 has claimed, that the United States is leading the way with more testing than any other nation, and that COVID-19 is “under control” in the USA.
Bluntly, that is utter bullshit.
Confirmed Coronavirus Cases and Deaths by Country and Territory
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, May 11, 2020
“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.”
There you have it!
Why focus upon repairing, rebuilding, replacing, and expanding America’s deteriorated economic infrastructure?
Because not only will YOU lose money and unemployment will increase, but American Gross Domestic Product will seriously decline, and that means reduced profitability for businesses of all types and all sizes – from Mom & Pop small and minority-owned businesses, to corporate giants, as well.
The purpose of the report was to provide a total overall analysis of the economic implications of continuing to fail to invest in multiple infrastructure categories.
Even the Central Intelligence Agency sees America’s problems for what they are. It’s as plain as the nose on one’s face. And it’s NOT a partisan, Republican versus Democrat type of issue. It’s a matter of NATIONAL SECURITY.
“Long-term problems for the US include stagnation of wages for lower-income families, inadequate investment in deteriorating infrastructure…
“…the rise of low-wage producers such as China, has put additional downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on the return to capital. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. Since 1996, dividends and capital gains have grown faster than wages or any other category of after-tax income.”
Now that we’ve identified the problem, let’s consider a workable solution.
Nothing is free in this nation, nor anywhere else, for that matter. And EVERY government runs on taxes, and has done so at least since the time of the Roman empire. And face it… if the Romans built aqueducts and roads that have lasted for at least 2000 years, we can too – and should.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, May 10, 2020
Even our spooks see it.
Why?
It’s a matter of National Security.
Period.
End of conversation.
“Long-term problems for the US include stagnation of wages for lower-income families, inadequate investment in deteriorating infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, energy shortages, and sizable current account and budget deficits.”
“But the globalization of trade, and especially the rise of low-wage producers such as China, has put additional downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on the return to capital. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. Since 1996, dividends and capital gains have grown faster than wages or any other category of after-tax income.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Your Money, or Your Life… You Choose.
Presently, there are increasing calls clamoring for our states’ and nation’s economies to be returned to a state of “normalcy” (whatever that may be, or look like). Those voices are largely cacophonous, often belligerent, threatening with violent, even lawless displays, such as in Michigan recently, when renegades and insurrectionists stormed the State Capitol building armed with loaded assault weapons, and battle accouterments such as helmets, flak jackets, and bullet-proof vests, threatening to kill the Governor, and attempted to seize the Legislative floors.
In response, some states’ Governors are “reopening” their states’ economies, which have been largely shuttered for the benefit, and protection of the Greater Good, preservation of Public Health, and the prevention of loss of life, through unwitting dissemination of a particularly insidious and occult disease for which we have no cure, neither validated, nor verified treatment, nor vaccine – the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, aka COVID-19.
It seems to me that, in essence, what is being done – not merely said – is presenting a “your money, or your life” robbery type scenario, a practical sacrificing of human life upon the altar of filthy lucre to the god of mammon, through the high priests of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, May 3, 2020
Based upon recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Governor of your state, or mayor of your town orders numerous businesses and activities to be temporarily paused, halted, or ceased. (Take your pick of the choice of words, which essentially mean the same thing. Although “temporarily paused” sounds more palatable, in my estimation.) That includes practically every type of operation, ranging from retail to warehouse, to factory, to office… including corporate worship services.
Suddenly, people lose their jobs, their health insurance, their income, maybe even their residences, either rented, or mortgaged, and their private transportation.
It seems as if the world has come to a virtual, if not practical, standstill. Many grocery stores remain open, albeit with modified hours and operations, as do gasoline and diesel fuel stations, and hardware stores because they’re considered “essential” businesses. Barber shops, beauty salons and their suppliers, however, are shuttered. Restaurants and bars have closed, some which face certain bankruptcy. Yet banks and other financial operations remain open… including the stock markets, because they too, are considered “essential.” Suffice it to say, numerous sports games are cancelled.
Other “essential” businesses, such as farms and the plant facilities that process the animals and milk, are suddenly in a bind, because the low-wage employees who work there have become infected with COVID-19 coronavirus disease, and have “spread the love” to their co-workers, most of whom were not provided with either adequate safety equipment by their employers, nor were given any modifications to provide for adequate distancing to ameliorate the chance of spreading, or contracting the disease. The President can “order” them to remain open as long as he likes, but if there’s no one to work the lines… and I sincerely doubt the suits know how to do it.
Farmers in some states, notably New York, have complained that their milk supplies are suddenly becoming stockpiled, and they are being reduced to wasting it, and other products made from it. In response, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has told farmers of that state that the state will take all of their present “excess” product, and distribute it to needy families, which have suddenly become almost too numerous to count. The farmers consented.
Idaho potato farmers are giving away their crops as well, since critical links in the food supply chain have been broken, and left them unable to deliver their products to market. It remains to be seen what the pork, poultry, egg, and beef producers will do. Fisheries will simply stop collecting their stock for harvest. Pregnant sows (female pigs) will be administered abortifacients. Fowl will be fed, eggs will be laid, cattle will be fattened, and cows will be milked.
A note on the concentrated industrialization of American farms:
That’s NOT a good idea, and inherently, not only is it a violation of anti-trust laws which promote competition, but it’s a bad idea managerially because if one hiccups or sneezes, the whole industry gets sick. There’s STRENGTH in diversification, and as the old adage goes,
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
But for all the good that many, if not most, are doing, there remain a few crybabies, whinos, and belligerents whose cacophonous voices rasp the ears of those who have the misfortune of hearing them.
Colloquially, through our nation’s Federal laws governing business practice and ownership, etc., we’ve “put all our eggs in one basket.” As a result, when one factory or industry hiccups or sneezes, the entire system gets sick. The same principle is true for many other businesses and aspects of our economy.
You’ve probably read my expressions on a topic very much like this before.
“The concentration of America’s meat packing industry is ultimately a symptom of its weakness, rather than its strength.”
Despite being the world’s second-largest meat consumer after China, the U.S. slaughters almost all of its annual production of meat in just 835 facilities.
Five decades ago (in most American’s lifetimes) there were OVER 10 times as many such facilities. Anecdotally, an Epidemiologist friend share that, “Growing up in the 50’s there were dairy farms all over the South. There are very few now.”
That’s:
🐖130 million pigs
🐄33.6 million cows
🐑2.3 million sheep
If anything, those figures significantly understate how extremely concentrated the slaughter industry is.
In fact, about 66% of America’s pork is processed through 24 giant facilities owned by just 4 companies:
1.) Smithfield Foods Inc.; 2.) JBS SA; 3.) Tyson Foods Inc., and; 4.) Clemens Family Corp.
Over 80% of beef comes from just 12 abattoirs owned by 4 companies:
1.) Tyson; 2.) JBS SA; 3.) Cargill Inc., and; 4.) Marfrig Global Foods SA.
And of the two groups of meat processors which represent 50% of the meat categories consumed in America, pork and beef, 2 companies – Tyson, and JBS SA – own or control a significant portion of that market, 25%, based upon the number of competitors in the 2 categories, pork and beef.
Tyson, which is headquartered in Arkansas, is American-owned, unlike Smithfield which is headquartered in Virginia, and owned by Chinese interests. However, a full 66% of Tyson’s operations are overseas, and the company boasts that they control 20% of the entire American market share of meat by writing that “1 in 5 pounds of chicken, beef, & pork in the U.S. is produced by Tyson Foods.”
Chicken farmers are modern-day sharecroppers, and Tyson acknowledges as much by writing that, “We supply the birds and feed, and provide technical advice, while the poultry farmer provides the labor, housing and utilities.”
The North American Meat Institute (NAMI), a Washington, D.C. based lobbying organization for the major players in the corporate-owned industrialized meat industry – NOT mom & pop-owned Family Farms, which are increasingly rare – writes this on their website about the meat industry in America: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, April 28, 2020
No surprise there.
There’s a reason why Fox News is monikered Faux Noize.
The Republican party is NO LONGER the “Grand” Old Party.
It’s NOT the “party of Lincoln,” and hasn’t been for quite some time.
Since circa 1964, it’s been the party of the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, libertarians, and other radical elements. And, it was seriously ushered in during the Reagan administration when in his first inaugural address, the B-movie actor and longtime GE mouthpiece said in part that, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
It’s easy to understand that if “government is the problem,” the solution to that problem is elimination of it. And that is anarchy. And yet, in his carefully crafted address, that was precisely what he was intimating – the abolition of government. For in his next sentence, he said, “From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule…”
It’s not difficult to see that his slashing of the Top Personal Income Tax bracket for the wealthiest Americans from 70% to 50%, and then to 28%, in conjunction with reductions in Capital Gains tax rates, and the “Paris Hilton Tax Cuts,” also monikered as the “Death Tax,” which is properly known as the Estate Tax, which only wealthy Americans have ever paid, was purposely designed to eliminate government, rather than to refine its operations, increase efficiency, or reduce fraud, waste, and abuse at any level.
When he said, “It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed,” it could not have been made any more clear that his was a “starve the monster” approach to an alleged, though imaginary, and non-existing problem, that government was too big and the “monster” was the government.” And that was despite what he said in that same address that “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government,” because it couldn’t have been made more clear what his ultimate objectives were.
He again clearly identified government as being an evil monster when he said, “It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government.” Hardly anyone could have done a better job of setting up a Straw Man Argument, for afterward, he beat that government straw man to a pulp.
Again, it is beyond the scope of the pale to imagine that a more populous nation would need fewer laws, or fewer people to efficiently and effectively conduct operations to provide for the demands and needs of more people. For that would be an inversely proportional relationship, that somehow a larger (more populous) nation, with more inventions, more businesses, more works of art, science, and other forms of creativity, would need fewer laws to govern their behavior and operations, and at some point in time, would eventually disappear.
The contradictions in his speech were blatant, and his intentions were fully uncloaked. Bluntly stating that “It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment,” he set about using his skills as an actor reassuring the people in a grandfatherly way that he had their best interests at heart, despite what he said otherwise.
The notion of “self-rule” is one which is emphasized by the ultra-radical group headquartered in Auburn, Alabama known as the Mises Institute, which promotes a heterodox economic world view, which includes anti-government sentiment, and the belief in the idea of anarchy – a world without government – and a “free market only” solution to everything as a one-size-fits-all solution to all problems.
Again, while Reagan was a B-movie actor, he was an actor nevertheless, and in his years on the stump for General Electric nationwide, he honed his public persuasion speeches to a fine edge, and was able to parlay that into a run for the White House which he won twice being monikered as the “Great Communicator.” But the language he used, while delivered quite well, was “dog whistle” language for anti-governmental radicals, all whom he welcomed into the GOP’s “Big Tent.”
The ground had earlier been ploughed at the 1964 Republican National Convention at Cow Palace in Daly City, CA (immediately adjacent and SOUTH of San Francisco) when then-NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller was granted 5 minutes to address the delegates to request adoption of language in the official party platform which would “repudiate here and now any doctrinaire, militant minority, whether Communist, Ku Klux Klan or Bircher which would subvert this party to purposes alien to the very basic tenets which gave this party birth.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 27, 2020
If you, your loved ones, or someone you know, needs, or wants to be tested for COVID-19, GO GET TESTED AT NO COST TO YOU!
THIS IS A MATTER OF PUBLIC HEALTH!!
And, EVERYONE IS AT RISK – not just the elderly, infirm, or those with other health conditions – EVERYONE!
Representative Porter questioned Dr. Redfield in committee on Capitol Hill March 12, and as a long-time consumer advocate attorney, discovered the law provides that CDC Director has FULL AUTHORITY to “authorize payment for the care and treatment of individuals subject to medical examination, quarantine, isolation, and conditional release…”
(a) The Director may authorize payment for the care and treatment of individuals subject to medical examination, quarantine, isolation, and conditional release, subject to paragraphs (b) through (h) of this section.
• United States population is very nearly 330,000,000
• COVID-19’s incubation time ranges between 2 to 14 days.
• 4,466,559 have been tested
• At least 30%–50% of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic carriers (show no signs or symptoms of infection, i.e., no fever, no chills, no loss of taste, no loss of smell, no muscle aches, no nausea, no vomiting, no upset stomach, no loss of appetite, no diarrhea, no cough, no runny nose, no sore/scratchy throat, no headache, no tiredness, no shortness of breath, no difficulty breathing, no feeling of hotness {subjective fever}, etc.)
Extrapolating, what that means is:
• Only 1.3535% of the American population has been tested for COVID-19.
• 120,932 Total have been Hospitalized
• Potentially 421,160 MORE, or AT LEAST 1,263,479 people could be infected – 50% more than have been diagnosed
• The U.S. COVID-19 Death Rate is 5.5084%
Globally, there are:
• 2,623,231 Total Confirmed COVID-19 cases
• 182,740 Total COVID-19 Deaths
The COVID-19 Global Death Rate is 6.9662%.
At this juncture, there are 707,331 known Total Recovered COVID-19 cases globally.
These figures are by no means final; they are merely preliminary good estimates, because the scenario is changing daily, and more diagnoses are being made, and autopsies which are showing COVID-19 infection as a cause of death.
The Santa Clara County California Medical Examiner’s Office recently reported that following autopsy results, TWO deaths occurred in that county February 6, and 17, both related to COVID-19, which put the dates of the first known deaths in the United States back by at least two weeks, instead of the case in Kirkland, Washington on February 29 which to date, was thought to be the first COVID-19 related death in the United States.
Essentially, the implications are precisely in keeping with what we know about COVID-19, that it is insidious – progressing inconspicuously, but harmfully – stealthily and seriously damaging before it makes its presence known with symptoms.
The experts (not the POTUS) from the CDC, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, tell us that Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 20, 2020
The parallels are eerily similar. Republican POTUS, tax cuts, rising stock market, job losses… Great Depression.
Of course, there are other markers along the way, but the primary ones are self evident.
Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase wrote no less than twice that a recession was coming in the company’s April 6, 2020 letter to shareholders. “Recognizing the extraordinary extension of new credit, mentioned above, and knowing there will be a major recession [emphasis added] mean that we are exposing ourselves to billions of dollars of additional credit losses as we help both consumer and business customers through these difficult times.” p10
-and-
“Halting buybacks was simply a very prudent action – we don’t know exactly what the future will hold – but at a minimum, we assume that it will include a bad recession [emphasis added] combined with some kind of financial stress similar to the global financial crisis of 2008.” p15
Bluntly put, it wasn’t China that started this problem.
Just like in the Great Depression, and the “Great Recession,” it was the United States.
Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, JPMorgan Chase
And the entire world suffered.
Not only did Dimon unequivocally state that we will suffer “a major recession,” and reiterated it writing “the future… will include a bad recession,” but he also identifies problems that most Democrats (Bernie Sanders notably among them) have long identified, which Republicans refuse to even hear – critical problems in health, healthcare, education, (within the purview of domestic security), infrastructure, declining wages, increased poverty, failed immigration policies, governmental inefficiency at Federal and state levels, and more.
Dimon continued by writing,
“Of course, America has always had its flaws. The current pandemic is only one example of the bad planning and management that have hurt our country: Our inner city schools don’t graduate half of their students and don’t give our children an education that leads to a livelihood; our healthcare system is increasingly costly with many of our citizens lacking any access; and nutrition and personal health aren’t even being taught at many schools. Obesity has become a national scourge. We have a litigation and regulatory system that cripples small businesses with red tape and bureaucracy; ineffective infrastructure planning and investment; and huge waste and inefficiency at both the state and federal levels. We have failed to put proper immigration policies in place; our social safety nets are poorly designed; and the share of wages for the bottom 30% of Americans has effectively been going down. We need to acknowledge these problems and the damage they have done if we are ever going to fix them.
There should have been a pandemic playbook. Likewise, every problem I noted above should have detailed and nonpartisan solutions. As we have seen in past crises of this magnitude, there will come a time when Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 20, 2020
The United States Senate is controlled by a corrupt cabal of Republicans, none of whom are racial/ethnic minority. It’s LITERALLY (at least on the GOP side) an all-White enclave.
Yesterday at his incessant bully pulpit coronavirus harping press conference, the Liar in Chief claimed to not have known about her insider trades. That, coming from a man who prides himself, and publicly boasts about having all sorts of knowledge, and whom is well-attuned to media (especially television, and Twitter) of all kinds.
Senator Kelly Loeffler, R-GA
Q Mr. President, why on that task force did you include Senator Kelly Loeffler? There’s some questions about whether she may have —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, because she’s the senator from a great state, a state that I love: Georgia.
Q But there’s some insider trading issues with her.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I — that, I don’t know. I really don’t know about that. But she’s a senator from Georgia, and she was included in the list, absolutely.
Go ahead. A couple of more. Go ahead, please. Yeah.
Most folks want to talk about Richard Burr, the first known case of Insider Trading on coronavirus information in the Senate..
But, let’s take a look at who’s shafting the American public by NOT playing fair and square and abusing their insider knowledge:
• Richard Burr, Republican North Carolina Senator – Net Worth $3M+
• Kelly Loeffler, Republican Georgia Senator – Net Worth $500M+
• James M. Inhofe, Republican Oklahoma Senator – Net Worth $9M+
• Ron Johnson, Republican Wisconsin Senator – Net Worth $30M+
Senator Richard Burr, R-NC
• Diane Feinstein, Democrat, California Senator – Net Worth $90M+
Nope, no trend or common denominators at all. Totally random. /sarcasm
All Senators,
80% Republican,
60% Male,
100% White,
100% Multi-Millionaires
• When he retires from the Senate in 2022, Burr will have been in Congress (House & Senate) a TOTAL of 27 years
• Loeffler is married to the CEO of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, and others, is a political “newbie” appointed by Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp to temporarily fill the unexpired 2016 term of Johnny Isakson who resigned 31 December 2019 to care for his Parkinson’s disease. Loeffler intends to campaign for the office during a Special Election.
• Inhofe has been in Congress 33 years, and 17 years in Oklahoma State & Local politics TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=50 years
• Johnson is a political newcomer, and was first elected in 2010 to the US Senate
TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=10 years
• Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992, before that she was 18 years in California Local politics
TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=46 years
Here’s a very simple solution:
Require all such financial assets (stocks, bonds, securities, including real estate, etc.) to be placed into a Blind Trust for the duration of their term of office.
Insider trading by Congress? It’s time to fix the law
By Patrick Augustin, Francis Cong and Marti G. Subrahmanyam, Opinion Contributors — 04/19/20 01:30 PM EDT
Is trading by Congress illegal? Should members of Congress be allowed to trade financial securities that are sensitive to private information? The “coronavirus trades” made by Sen.Richard Burr(R-N.C.) and his wife just prior to the March ’20 market crash raise these questions and signal the need for changes to the law. Some proposals go as far as banning stocktrading by members of congressoutright. The other extreme is to allow full discretion. The right solution is in between: Only allowing public officials to trade securities based on broad market indices.
Co-Chief Investment Officer & Co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, L.P.
Summary
I was fortunate enough to be raised in a middle-class family by parents who took good care of me, to go to good public schools, and to come into a job market that offered me equal opportunity. I was raised with the belief that having equal opportunity to have basic care, good education, and employment is what is fair and best for our collective well-being. To have these things and use them to build a great life is what was meant by living the American Dream.
At age 12 one might say that I became a capitalist because that’s when I took the money I earned doing various jobs, like delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, and caddying and put it in the stock market when the stock market was hot. That got me hooked on the economic investing game which I’ve played for most of the last 50 years. To succeed at this game I needed to gain a practical understanding of how economies and markets work. My exposure to most economic systems in most countries over many years taught me that the ability to make money, save it, and put it into capital (i.e., capitalism) is the most effective motivator of people and allocator of resources to raise people’s living standards. Over these many years I have also seen capitalism evolve in a way that it is not working well for the majority of Americans because it’s producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots. This is creating widening income/wealth/opportunity gaps that pose existential threats to the United States because these gaps are bringing about damaging domestic and international conflicts and weakening America’s condition.
I think that most capitalists don’t know how to divide the economic pie well and most socialists don’t know how to grow it well, yet we are now at a juncture in which either a) people of different ideological inclinations will work together to skillfully re-engineer the system so that the pie is both divided and grown well or b) we will have great conflict and some form of revolution that will hurt most everyone and will shrink the pie.
I believe that all good things taken to an extreme can be self-destructive and that everything must evolve or die. This is now true for capitalism. In this report I show why I believe that capitalism is now not working for the majority of Americans, I diagnose why it is producing these inadequate results, and I offer some suggestions for what can be done to reform it. Because this report is rather long, I will present it in two parts: part one outlining the problem and part two offering my diagnosis of it and some suggestions for reform.
Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed
Before I explain why I believe that capitalism needs to be reformed, I will explain where I’m coming from, which has shaped my perspective. I will then show the indicators that make it clear to me that the outcomes capitalism is producing are inconsistent with what I believe our goals are. Then I will give my diagnosis of why capitalism is producing these inadequate outcomes and conclude by offering some thoughts about how it can be reformed to produce better outcomes.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, April 16, 2020
Here are a few factoids for your entertainment.
• There are SO FEW people in Wyoming, that they have enough room on their automobile license plates to depict a cowboy on a bucking bronco… and STILL have plenty of room leftover for numbers & letters for EVERY car in the state.
• There are MORE people in Nashville, TN (669,053) than there are in Wyoming (578,759).
• There are MORE people in Tennessee (6,829,174) than there are in Colorado (5,758,736).
• The TOTAL number of students (13,131), faculty, and staff (9,253) at Vanderbilt University, and employees at the now-independent University Medical Center (24,039) totals 46,423, which, in effect, makes it a city unto itself, and is why the University (and MC) have the state’s ONLY state-certified police force, with full authority to perform EVERY law enforcement function of the state. They’re also voluntarily, and fully accredited by three law enforcement accrediting bodies, one international, one national, one state:
• CALEA (Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies)
• IACLEA (International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators)
• TLEA (Tennessee Law Enforcement Accreditation)
Speaking of size (because, yeah… size matters!), we’re growing! And by “we” I mean to refer to the United States.
For example, did you know that: → Population Rank
• Denver’s population is 716,492. → 19
• Atlanta, GA’s population is 498,044. → 37
(And was once called the “New York” of the South.)
• Jacksonville, FL = 903,889 → 12
• Fort Worth, TX = 895,008 → 13
• Columbus, OH = 892,533 → 14
• San Francisco, CA = 883,305 → 15
• Charlotte, NC = 872,498 → 16
• Indianapolis, IN = 867,125 → 17
• Seattle, WA = 744,955 → 18
• District of Columbia = 702,455 → 20
• Boston, MA = 694,583 → 21
• Detroit, MI = 672,662 → 23
• Portland, OR = 653,115 → 25
• Memphis, TN = 650,618 → 26
• Fresno, CA = 530,093 → 34
Comparatively, these cities’ names, while familiar, might conjure up population pictures that are not necessarily what one might imagine.
For example, who would’ve thought that San Francisco (883,305) and Charlotte (872,498) are almost identically populated? Size Rank → 15, 16
Or Denver (716,492) and Nashville (669,053)? → 19, 24
Or Boston (694,583) and El Paso (682,669)? → 21, 22
Or Las Vegas (644,644) and Louisville, KY (620,118)? → 28, 29
Or Atlanta (498,044), and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 6, 2020
The Financial Times is no slouch organization – neither are they “left-leaning,” nor “liberal,” per se – at least not in the common, modern political sense.
They’re as “conservative” as they come.
And to read that “an irregular and precarious labour market,” combined with “monetary loosening by central banks [that] will help the asset-rich,” the loss of income by ” the young and active,” multiplied by
In short, nothing but “radical reforms” – defined as “reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades” – will save individual nations’ economies, and the global economy at large.
The “laissez faire” attitude toward business, economy, and finance must be replaced by governments taking “a more active role in the economy,” including making “labour markets less insecure.”
Investing in public economic infrastructure, i.e, considering “public services as investments,” reconsidering the notion of “redistribution” of wealth, in conjunction with eliminating “the privileges of the elderly and wealthy,” and implementing “basic income and wealth taxes” will no longer be “considered eccentric.”
In short, “you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone.”
Suddenly (it seems), Bernie’s ideas aren’t so “radical,” anymore.
Suddenly (it seems), Elizabeth Warren’s ideas aren’t “way out in left field.”
Suddenly (it seems), Andrew Yang’s “Freedom Dividend” isn’t “extremist.”
Suddenly (it seems), everything old is new again.
But, you know the saying,
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The post-WWII Bretton Woods agreement, which pegged international currencies to the U.S. Dollar, which was itself based upon the “Gold Standard,” will again be in the fore of discussion, and was unilaterally abolished by then-POTUS Richard Nixon through a series of measures called the “Nixon Shock” which effectively destroyed the Agreement, which was created when the world’s nations assembled in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to establish a globally stabilizing economic system.
“The international monetary system after World War II was dubbed the Bretton Woods system after the meeting of forty-four countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. The countries agreed to keep their currencies fixed (but adjustable in exceptional situations) to the dollar, and the dollar was fixed to gold. Since 1958, when the Bretton Woods system became operational, countries settled their international balances in dollars, and US dollars were convertible to gold at a fixed exchange rate of $35 an ounce. The United States had the responsibility of keeping the dollar price of gold fixed and had to adjust the supply of dollars to maintain confidence in future gold convertibility.”
Up until the time of the “Nixon Shock,” employees’ wages in the United States had generally kept pace with increases in GDP, or economic output. But after the “Nixon Shock” in 1971, wages have essentially flat-lined, while GDP has risen.
In response to Nixon’s unilateral decision, the ten leading developed nations in the world – Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States – entered into an agreement monikered as the Smithsonian Agreement which was a temporary agreement negotiated in 1971 which adjusted the system of fixed exchange rates established under the Bretton Woods Agreement and created a new standard for the dollar, to which other industrialized nations then pegged their currencies to the U.S. dollar.
As Certified Financial Analyst Michael Lebowitz, wrote in 2016, “unshackling the U.S. monetary system from the discipline of a gold standard, allowed the Fed to play a leading role in replacing the Virtuous Cycle with an Un-Virtuous Cycle. Eliminating the risk of global redemption of U.S. dollars for gold also eliminated the discipline, the checks and balances, on deficit spending by the government and its citizens. As the debt accumulated, the requirement on the Federal Reserve to drive interest rates lower became mandatory to enable the economic system to service that debt. And this effectively changed the course of U.S. economic history.”
These observations, and others, are, and have been, borne out by others, as well, such as in February 14, 2019, by Bloomberg writer Noah Smith, who wrote about wage stagnation in part that, “Workers lost a lot of ground between 1973 and 1994, and didn’t make up enough of it between 1994 and 2009. Stronger worker representation within companies, as well as government health care, would help restore some of those losses.”
But perhaps the simplest explanation I’ve ever heard, or read, about the value of good, strong and effective regulation is one which I’ve said for many years, which is this:
Regulations strengthen markets the same way that regulations create competitive sports, and operate machinery. Remove regulations and games become a pointless free-for-all, while removing or changing regulations on an automobile engine (such as through changing timing), and it will self-destruct fairly quickly.
But again, it seems that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, March 27, 2020
I can hear it now –– the chants of the Faux Noize talking head dingbats saying loudly in unison… “We’re number 1! We’re number 1!”
According to information as of 0600 CST DST Friday, 27 March 2020, provided through Johns Hopkins University Dashboard, the United States has 85,991 active and confirmed COVID-19 coronavirus cases, while China – which has 1 BILLION MORE PEOPLE, has NOT reported any additional, or new cases – experienced 81,894 such cases.
Chinese Population is estimated to be 1,389,618,778 – that’s 1 BILLION, 389 million, 618 thousand, 778.
India’s Population is estimated to be 1,311,559,204.
The US Population is only 23.7475% that of China.
Or, expressed another way, China has 321.0965% MORE people than the United States.
So… WHY is it that the United States has 5.0028% MORE COVID-19 infection cases than China?
Seriously…
WHY!?!
WHAT has been done, or what has happend which has led us to this point?
Well… that’s an EXCELLENT question!
The POTUS – that’s Donald John Trump – has killed, slashed and burned, many biosecurity programs which would have helped protect American Public Health.
“On his second full day in office President Trump instituted a federal hiring freeze that stayed in place for nearly 90 days. In the weeks after the freeze was lifted, nearly 700 positions sat vacant at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to researchers and officials interviewed in May 2017, the freeze affected “programs supporting local and state public health emergency readiness, infectious disease control, and chronic disease prevention.
“Many of the unfilled jobs are high-level positions, at least GS-12 and above… Several positions are in the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, which regulates some of the world’s most dangerous bacteria and viruses and manages the nation’s stockpile of emergency medical countermeasures. Others include positions in the director’s office, infectious disease offices and the office for noncommunicable diseases, injury and environmental health.
”To make matters worse, the Trump administration took months to fill numerous senior positions that are critical to responding to an outbreak. A permanent Director of the CDC was not appointed until July 2017, six months after taking office, and the top position at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) remained empty for nearly eight months. Second-in-command positions also remained empty across health-related agencies: Within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), there was no Assistant Secretary for Health for over a year, no Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response for eight months, and no Director of the Office of Global Affairs for five months. USAID just received its first permanent deputy administrator last year, in 2019!
“In addition to the dissolution of global health security units, the NSC has experienced unprecedented turnover during Trump’s administration. There have been four National Security Advisors (in addition to two acting NSAs) in Trump’s three years in office. This is compared to Barack Obama’s three NSAs in eight years and two in George W. Bush’s eight years. Trump has had five Deputy National Security Advisors in 3 years, while Obama had four in eight years and W. Bush had three in eight years. Trump has had four Homeland Security Advisors (plus one acting HSA) in three years compared to two in Obama’s eight years and four in W. Bush’s eight years. “
But WAIT!
THAT’S NOT ALL!
Yeah… you guessed it.
It’s POS45’s fault.
The BUCK STOPS with him.
Or… does it?
“Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time. It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”
–– POTUS Donald John Trump, Friday, 13 March 2020, White House Rose Garden news conference
POTUS Harry Truman succeeded to the Office of the President upon the death of POTUS Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who died in his FOURTH term in office.
“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, March 22, 2020
Just in the case you’ve not figured it out by now, I loathe Republicans. They have – as history has demonstrated, time, and time, again – led America down primrose paths of destruction, while benefiting their wealthy corporate donors and clientele.
I purposely do NOT use the word “constituent” in that sentence, precisely because when someone pays a person to do their bidding – it is a Master/Servant relationship, in which someone who is paid to render services, who otherwise would not – that’s what it is, a pay-for-play quid pro quo corruption of democratic representation.
And, to be absolutely certain, I am neither a sycophant for Democrats – and there are some corrupt ones, who would better be identified as “Republican Lite,” for they do not have The People’s best interests at heart, and like Republicans, do their Corporate Masters’ bidding.
The GOP is no longer “the party of Lincoln,” and hasn’t been for well over 100 years – probably more like 150. Republicans have been the source and cause of practically every scandal and corruption which has harmed the United States, and its people.
Republicans gave us The Great Depression.
Democrats saved not only the United States, but the world as well, from the ravages of the Great Depression.
And, ever since, Republicans have been trying to TEAR DOWN, and DESTROY every vestige of public policy, law, or governmental agency which benefits The People.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, March 21, 2020
Lawmakers’ Stock Trades and Other Virus Outrages
Some lawmakers have a lot of explaining to do. Plus, punishing poor people and shaping up the cruise-ship industry.
By Joe Nocera 3/20/2020, 10:47:09 AM
Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast “The Shrink Next Door.”
————
Of the many things taking place in Washington that make your blood boil, the — how should I put this? — timely stock trades by senators during the coronavirus outbreak has to go right to the top of the list. Two of them have tried to explain them away, but the details are just so… suspicious.
At least three Republicans and one Democrat 1 sold stock before the country got serious about Covid-19, but let’s focus on one: Kelly Loeffler.
A Republican from Georgia, Loeffler has been in the Senate for less than three months; she was appointed to fill the seat of Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired early for health reasons. She has a Wall Street background — she was in investor relations at the New York Stock Exchange, where she married the boss, Jeffrey Sprecher, the Chief Executive Cfficer of Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which owns NYSE
On Jan. 24, Loeffler attended a Senate briefing on the coronavirus, which she tweeted about. That same day, she and her husband began selling stock. By the time they were finished, they had dumped 27 companies, including Exxon Mobil and AutoZone, saving millions of dollars when the market later tanked. (Senate financial disclosure forms don’t give exact numbers.)
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Humor is always good medicine.
And to be certain, this pandemic is certainly no laughing matter, per se.
But, humor has ALWAYS helped people through difficult and dark times, trials and tribulations.
And, we’ll get through this one, together – just as we always have.
So, in the process of washing your hands, maintaining social distancing, avoiding crowds, and working from home (if you’re able), enjoy a couple adult beverages… or some other item to relax.
Yes, some of us won’t make it through. That’s a given. But, hopefully, our government’s response (no thanks to the Current White House Occupant, who eliminated the White House) has been piecemeal, at best.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, March 16, 2020
If, like me, you were hoping for more with the 11th Democratic debate which was to feature a 1 on 1 with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, you were abysmally disappointed.
This Sunday’s 11th Democratic Candidate Debate featured only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in a 1 on 1, after every other candidate dropped out, and was nothing more than an opportunity for each candidate to rehash what they’d already said seemingly countless times earlier – on the stump, and on “debate” stages.
Previously scheduled to be held at Arizona Federal Theatre, 400 W Washington Street in Phoenix, AZ 85003, the debate was relocated and held at CNN’s Washington D.C. studios, before moderators only, with no live audience members, in order to limit possible exposure to COVID-19 coronavirus, which is now sweeping the country and world. Only 3 Moderators – Dana Bash, and Jake Tapper of CNN, and Ilia Calderon from Univision, who replaced Jorge Ramos, who had self-quarantined following possible COVID-19 exposure – were present.
The debate started out slowly, and even though there were only 2 candidates, the “rules” were just as before, that each candidate was allotted 90 seconds to respond to a question. I had hoped that there would be more interaction between the 2 candidates, and was only briefly satisfied with by their more free-wheeling interactions which Jake Tapper allowed, while Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, March 13, 2020
POTUS “Give ’em HELL!” Harry Truman (1884-1972) succeeded to the Office of the President in 1945 upon the death of POTUS Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), who died during his FOURTH term in office.
Speaking at the White House Rose Garden for over an an hour, Trump was also asked if he took responsibility for the lag in making tests available for the coronavirus COVID-19… despite the fact that he dismantled government-spending programs related to fighting the spread of global diseases.
Trump replied,
“I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Remember when there was accountability, responsibility, ethics, honesty, and even virtue in the White House?
Yeah.
It was a Democrat – Harry Truman – FDR’s VP, whose desk sign read,
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, March 12, 2020
Trump’s hated of “everything Obama” has already harmed America.
Now, it’s harming Public Health.
That man is a genuine threat to the security of the United States. He simply has NO understanding of the complexity of the matters placed before him on the platter of the Presidency. He is utterly out of his league.
Consider this sampling of inane things he’s said about coronavirus (COVID-19):
First, it was, “We have it all under control.”
Followed closely by, “It’s very small problem in this country.”
And on its heels was, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
Which was later accompanied by, “We have it totally under control. It’s going to be fine.”
As things progressed, and it because clear that it was only a matter of time before Americans were affected, he said in Davos, Switzerland that, “We do have a plan, and we think it’s going to be handled very well.”
Now that the fecal matter has started to hit the fan, he decided to make a rare, live, emergency telecast to address the nation, and said that, “I have decided to take several strong but necessary actions to protect the health and well-being of all Americans.”
In the same breath, he said, “To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.”
Just last year, he:
• Cut the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control, and other Public Health-related budgets,
• Firing the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including those of the
––National Security Agency,
––National Security Council,
––Health and Human Services,
––Department of Homeland Security,
• Gutting the entire management infrastructure of the White House, and
• Killing the Complex Crises Fund
…DESPITE all that budget bloodshed like Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, he had the unmitigated gall and audacity to say that, “We are at a critical time in the fight against the virus.”
And sadly, it’s highly doubtful that anyone truly believes him when he said, “I will always put the well-being of America first.”
It’s not as if anyone believes him now, anyway. Members of the Cabinet are in fear of him, that they’ll lose their jobs being fired by Tweet, so they simply turn into jelly, and keep their ideas to themselves… since he knows how to run everything, anyway. So what difference does it truly make?
The next thing is to GET HIM OUT OF OFFICE!
But, moreover, this article goes in-depth to show and explain the things he’s done which have had a horrific effect upon Public Health -and- National Security.
That is NOT how to “Make America Great Again.”
Come November, you know what to do.
VOTE HIM OUT!!!
Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response
When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared the Wuhan coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern on Thursday, he praised China for taking “unprecedented” steps to control the deadly virus. “I have never seen for myself this kind of mobilization,” he noted. “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”
The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting down a national holiday, building enormous quarantine hospitals in days’ time, and ramping up 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment—are indeed gargantuan. It’s impossible to watch them without wondering, “What would we do? How would my government respond if this virus spread across my country?”
For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is
If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response,
the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is – not just for the public but for the government itself,
which largely finds itself in the dark.
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Barack Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Ed. note: This entry was written shortly after HRC made her remarks, found transcribed herein, but remained unpublished. As of publication today, Wednesday, 11 March 2020, Tulsi Gabbard remains a candidate to be the Democratic Party’s Presidential Nominee, though her viability as a candidate is practically non-existent, while Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are the two major candidates remaining in the race.
Tulsi Gabbard, Official Portrait
In the recent edition of the podcast “Campaign HQ with David Plouffe,” (Google podcast link) the former 2008 Obama campaign adviser interviewed Hillary Clinton on a wide range of topics, primarily about strategy and tactics that Trump and Republicans will most likely use in an attempt to defeat the 2020 Democratic party presidential nominee.
In the hour-long, often-rambling podcast, guest Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom was the 2016 Democratic nominee for POTUS, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and a former United States Senator from New York, obliquely and surreptitiously accused Tulsi Gabbard, a current Major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, current Hawaii U.S. Representative (D-CD2), and Iraq War Veteran, of being a “Russian asset.”
The shocking incredulity which Hillary accuses a fellow Democrat of being – an open traitor to our nation, not merely a “faithless” candidate – could possibly be taken seriously, if not at face value – but for at least two things:
Tulsi Gabbard, Promotion to Major
1.) Tulsi Gabbard is a Major in the Hawaii National Guard, and as such, has sworn an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…”;
2.) Tulsi Gabbard is an Iraq War Veteran, and;
3.) Tulsi Gabbard is a current Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District, and in that capacity has similarly sworn an oath of fealty – fidelity to and support of the Constitution.
If what Hillary surreptitiously claimed, suggested, or intimated (she did not mention Rep. Gabbard by name) were true (which it is not), Tulsi would be an open traitor – and she is not.
The seriousness of such charges are not to be taken lightly, which is also why, in large part, that they’re incredulous. Hillary’s claims are not even specious, they are fully unjustified, and wholly unwarranted. And so, they should not, and cannot be taken seriously.
Most American journalistic and media outlets have hardly taken notice, save for a nominal categorical mention on Twitter, and a CBS Evening News report by Norah O’Donnell, and one, or two other stories, including Fox News Tucker Carlson’s brief interview with Tulsi Gabbard about the ordeal shortly after it came to light.
Even Chuck Todd, the marshmallow-soft replacement for the late, take-no-prisoners attorney/host Tim Russert on NBC’s once-revered Sunday newsmaker program Meet the Press, only had a passing interaction on the subject with South Bend, Indiana “Mayor Pete” Buttegieg, who is also a Navy Iraq War Veteran and Democratic candidate to be the party’s Presidential Nominee. Their brief exchange follows:
CHUCKTODD: Before I let you go, I was curious if you had any reaction to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implying that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard might be a Russian asset.
MAYORPETEBUTTIGIEG: What I’ll say is, I’m not going to get into their dispute. What I will say is we know right now –
TODD: Is that appropriate?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, I suppose when you become a private citizen you can say whatever you want. But…
TODD: I understand that, but she’s a sitting member of Congress. She served.
BUTTIGIEG: Well, I certainly honor her service. As we saw in the debate, I also have strong disagreements with her on topics like Syria. But the bigger issue here is Russia is working to interfere with our elections right now. And we know a big part of how they’re going to do it is exploiting divisions among the American people, with their information operations. We’ve got to become a harder target and as president, I will make sure using all of our tools, diplomatic, economic, and security there is enough deterrence that Russia, or any country, would never again calculate that it is in their interest to mess with our democracy.
TODD: I just wonder if you are comfortable at all – I mean, throw a charge out there making her deny it. That’s a Trumpian move.
BUTTIGIEG: Well, we got to focus on the task at hand right now. And that includes making sure that this presidency comes to an end. That is my focus. That, and what happens after this presidency comes to an end.
TODD: So, you’re comfortable with Hillary Clinton’s critique of Tulsi Gabbard and how she went about it?
BUTTIGIEG: No, I’m not. I’m also not getting in the middle of it because we as a party and as a country have to focus on the future.
NBC’s Chuck Todd was asking “Mayor Pete” Buttegieg about the exchange with David Plouffe and Hillary Clinton in which she spoke about the possibility of another unexpected potential outcome like 2016 (in which the Vladimir Putin-run Russian government significantly meddled online using false narratives and “bots” to alter the outcome according to their wants, thereby getting Donald Trump elected), and the likelihood of Trump’s re-election in conjunction with the possible strategy and tactics they’ll use against the Democratic nomine.
The pertinent part comes about 35 minutes into the one-hour interview. After her controversial remarks, the podcast took a break. In context, and in pertinent part, she said the following: Read the rest of this entry »
Today, in the Congressional Record, one can read the exact words spoken by any person from the floor of either chamber – House, or Senate.
One again, Republicans are demonstrating their lackadaisical reckless attitude toward human life, and thereby proving that they care little, if anything, about Americans of any stripe.
