Happy birthday, Julia Child

Born 100 years ago today.

Topsy-turvy Summer

It seems like we had August in June and July and we're having--what?--June in August?

I'll take this, for sure.

Here's hoping on that rain for Thursday.

Here's a switch: TKC in the Star instead of the Star all over TKC

It's now old news but a whole bunch of people are enjoying this from the Star today:

Tony's Kansas City blogger retracts posts, apologizes to former head of KC firefighters union

The former head of Kansas City’s firefighters union has settled his defamation suit with a Kansas City blogger, who posted a retraction and an apology Monday morning.

Tony Botello posted the statement on his website, Tony’s Kansas City, also known as TKC, at 9 a.m. According to the terms of the settlement, filed earlier this month in Jackson County Circuit Court, TKC’s readers will be able to find the posting through a prominent link on the blog for 30 days. The statement “shall at all times be closed to comments,” according to the settlement.

Botello also agreed to remove the original posts that prompted Louie Wright, former president of Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, to file the defamation suit in August 2011.

The lawsuit focused on three posts that Botello published, two from May 2011 addressing an anonymous YouTube video that accused Wright of criminal activity in the merger of the MAST ambulance service into the Fire Department. The other post, from August 2009, claimed that Wright received “at least six figures” from the United Way for directing firefighter donations to the charity, according to the original suit.

“TKC acknowledges that the claims were not verified and that such claims should be viewed as baseless,” according to the statement published on the blog. “TKC agrees with, recognizes, respects and acknowledges Mr. Wright’s assertion that he has never profited from any charity work for the United Way or any other charitable or not-for-profit organization with which he is or has been affiliated.

“Moreover, TKC would like to apologize to Mr. Wright for any distress caused by the posts.”

According to paperwork filed in court, Botello denied that he was liable for anything related to the posts but only agreed to the settlement “to avoid the cost of further legal proceedings.”

Wright and Botello also agreed not to disparage each other or members of their immediate families.

I wouldn't have thought that last part was necessary, would you?

Link: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/13/3760414/blogger-retracts-posts-apologizes.html

Look up "career politician" in the dictionary

Chances are good they should have Paul Ryan's picture there:

"Born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan earned a B.A. degree from Miami University in Ohio. Following his studies, he worked as an aide to United States Senator Bob Kasten of Wisconsin, as legislative director for Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, and as a speechwriter for former U.S. Representative and 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp of New York. In 1998, Ryan won election to the United States House of Representatives, succeeding Republican Mark Neumann. He is now in his seventh term."

He's only 42 years old and already he's in his 7th term in government.

And he's going to bring us new, good things for and to Congress and the Vice Presidency and America?

I'm not betting on it.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ryan

Pres. Reagan's OMB Director, on Paul Ryan

Not coming from anyone on the Left, here's Former President Ronald Reagan's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, on Mitt Romney's pick for Vice President on his presidential run right now:

Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan

PAUL D. RYAN is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon.

Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.

Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neoconconservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion “defense” budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.

Indeed, adjusted for inflation, today’s national security budget is nearly double Eisenhower’s when he left office in 1961 (about $400 billion in today’s dollars) — a level Ike deemed sufficient to contain the very real Soviet nuclear threat in the era just after Sputnik. By contrast, the Romney-Ryan version of shrinking Big Government is to increase our already outlandish warfare-state budget and risk even more spending by saber-rattling at a benighted but irrelevant Iran.

Similarly, there can be no hope of a return to vibrant capitalism unless there is a sweeping housecleaning at the Federal Reserve and a thorough renunciation of its interest-rate fixing, bond buying and recurring bailouts of Wall Street speculators. The Greenspan-Bernanke campaigns to repress interest rates have crushed savers, mocked thrift and fueled enormous overconsumption and trade deficits.

The greatest regulatory problem — far more urgent that the environmental marginalia Mitt Romney has fumed about — is that the giant Wall Street banks remain dangerous quasi-wards of the state and are inexorably prone to speculative abuse of taxpayer-insured deposits and the Fed’s cheap money. Forget about “too big to fail.” These banks are too big to exist — too big to manage internally and to regulate externally. They need to be broken up by regulatory decree. Instead, the Romney-Ryan ticket attacks the pointless Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, when what’s needed is a restoration of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era legislation that separated commercial and investment banking.

Mr. Ryan showed his conservative mettle in 2008 when he folded like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout. But the greater hypocrisy is his phony “plan” to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade.

A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing. Yet the supposedly courageous Ryan plan would not cut one dime over the next decade from the $1.3 trillion-per-year cost of Social Security and Medicare.

Instead, it shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting more Medicaid costs to the states will be mere make-believe if federal financing is drastically cut.

Likewise, hacking away at the roughly $400 billion domestic discretionary budget (what’s left of the federal budget after defense, Social Security, health and safety-net spending and interest on the national debt) will yield only a rounding error’s worth of savings after popular programs (which Republicans heartily favor) like cancer research, national parks, veterans’ benefits, farm aid, highway subsidies, education grants and small-business loans are accommodated.

Like his new boss, Mr. Ryan has no serious plan to create jobs. America has some of the highest labor costs in the world, and saddles workers and businesses with $1 trillion per year in job-destroying payroll taxes. We need a national sales tax — a consumption tax, like the dreaded but efficient value-added tax — but Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan don’t have the gumption to support it.

The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for “job creators” — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station.

In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn’t pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation’s fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity — just empty sermons.

David A. Stockman, who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy.”

Conservative Republicans aren't even for this guy's budget proposal.

What's that tell you?

Links: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/paul-ryans-fairy-tale-budget-plan.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stockman

Quote of the day

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.

It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -Buckminster Fuller, 1895-1983. American systems theorist, architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

The crap that passes for local news

I've said this before and each time it comes up in its most ugly way, I'll point it out again. It is nearly inconceivable what passes for news on the local, evening news. This is just one more pathetic example.

If it isn't this kind of pointless, "infotainment", it's some YouTube clip from some far-flung part of the world about some other ridiculous, meaningless tripe.

Pitiful.

I would think these people--all of them at the local "news" stations--would be embarrassed.

Additional side question: What is it about local news talent that is supposed to now hold iPads while reading the news, anyway? Is that supposed to make them look more important or up-to-date or both, or what?

Link: http://fox4kc.com/2012/08/13/picture-of-dog-and-his-owner-gains-international-attention/

Of the wealthy, for the wealthy

I love that the Republican Party has put up two wealthy, white men for the top jobs in the nation.

Outstanding.

And one of them, for the presidency, owned and ran a company that stripped American companies of jobs and whole companies...

while the 2nd, the one for vice president is against government but has been a career politician for 14 years--virtually his entire adult life.

I also love, love, love that the head of the Republican Party, the Republican Party Chair, is named Reince Preibus.

But elitists?

Rich, white elitists?

Perish the thought.

"Can't we all just get along?"

Can't we all just be Americans, stop the name-calling and ugliness and stupidity and address our problems, instead?

Together?

Vote Republican

Breaking news: Yet another shooting

Breaking just now:

Police officers among 'multiple casualties' as gunman opens fire near Texas A&M

By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

Updated at 2:40 p.m. ET: "Multiple" people, including an undetermined number of police officers, were shot when a gunman opened fire Monday near the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, police and university officials said.

The gunman was in custody, College Station police said.

Few details were immediately available. A College Station police spokeswoman told The Dallas Morning News that there were multiple injuries" at the scene, "including officers."

Campus officials issued an alert to faculty and students for an "active shooter" two blocks southeast of the university, which houses the library of former President George W. Bush.

I say/ask again, when will we ever learn?

Link: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/13/13261291-police-officers-among-multiple-casualties-as-gunman-opens-fire-near-texas-am

On Paul Ryan (guest post)

"More than any other politician today, Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today's Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog eat dog.

"Ryan's views are crystallized in the budget he produced for House Republicans last March as chairman of the House Budget committee. That budget would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over the next decade. The biggest cuts would be in Medicaid, which provides healthcare for the nation's poor -- forcing states to drop coverage for an estimated 14 million to 28 million low-income people, according to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

"Ryan's budget would also reduce food stamps for poor families by 17 percent ($135 billion) over the decade, leading to a significant increase in hunger -- particularly among children. It would also reduce housing assistance, job training, and Pell grants for college tuition.

"In all, 62 percent of the budget cuts proposed by Ryan would come from low-income programs.

"The Ryan plan would also turn Medicare into vouchers whose value won't possibly keep up with rising health-care costs -- thereby shifting those costs on to seniors.

"At the same time, Ryan would provide a substantial tax cut to the very rich -- who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation's total income. Today's 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together."

— Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration

(Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/paul-ryan-social-darwinism_b_1769827.html)

On humankind

We're great at spectacle, we humans.

Aren't we?

We'll spend thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on big, beautiful, dazzling, even decadent ceremonies and celebrations.

We aren't worth a damn at clothing, feeding, housing or seeing to the health of the poor, though, are we?

Tragic.

Damn shame.

It would be nice if we cared.

Timely video of the day

In case you don't have the patience to listen to the song:

Cain slew Abel Seth knew not why
For if the children of Israel were to multiply
Why must any of the children die?
So he asked the Lord
And the Lord said:

"Man means nothing he means less to me
than the lowiliest cactus flower
or the humblest yucca tree
he chases round this desert
cause he thinks that's where i'll be
that's why i love mankind

I recoil in horror from the foulness of thee
from the squalor and the filth and the misery
How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me
That's why i love mankind"

The Christians and the Jews were having a jamboree
The Buddhists and the Hindus joined on satellite TV
They picked their four greatest priests
And they began to speak
They said "Lord the plague is on the world
Lord no man is free
The temples that we built to you
Have tumbled into the sea
Lord, if you won't take care of us
Won't you please please let us be?"

And the Lord said
And the Lord said

"I burn down your cities--how blind you must be
I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we
You must all be crazy to put your faith in me
That's why i love mankind
You really need me
That's why i love mankind"

More evidence of why we love, love, love Mittens

He'll say anything, anything to anyone to be president and he's so fun to watch.

I can hardly wait for the debates.

Republicans: Two rich white guys. Who'da' thunk it, huh?

No woman. No minority. No gays. Nope.

Just two rich white guys.

I tell you, that political party is SO inclusive, aren't they?

Oh, and they're for the middle- and lower-classes, too.

Right.

And Mr. Romney, we still want to see your tax returns. so you know.

Romney picks his VP candidate

Click on picture for larger, better viewing.

"Mr. Politics" and "Mr. Politician"--Mr. Lifelong Politician, who also hates government--but who has full healthcare benefits and a big, fat, juicy government pension for himself but wants to slash your government and spending, to boot.

He wants to cut social spending but doesn't want to touch the biggest share of spending in the Federal government--that is, defense spending where all the big money as well as waste, is.

Paul Ryan has never done anything outside his government job, folks. It's great for him but no one else.

The bloody hypocrite.

Once again, thank you, Mitt Romney.

You just keep doing our work for us.

What doesn't make me laugh about this appointment, nearly makes me wretch.

Side note to Mr. Romney: We still want to see your tax returns. sir.

What Kansas City needs to do with Google fiber (if we can)

This occurred to me some time ago, when there was only still just talk of Google Fiber coming to town. I mentioned it to a Google employee earlier today at the Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library.

Wouldn't it be great if the area cities in our Kansas City metropolitan area could use this technology to reduce their costs mightily and coordinate the traffic lights across the city from Blue Springs to at least Olathe and from Platte City to Harrisonville?

Wow.

We could do so much for the city:

--increase productivity;

--reduce traffic jams and congestion;

--cut down on pollution;

--reduce the amount of gasoline we waste;

--possibly cut down or "road rage"

That's a lot, right there.

The city's always looking for ways to cut down on the amount of pollution and ozone we collectively put into the air as it is and we all look for ways to cut time out of our commutes.

Hopeully Google Fiber could reduce greatly the expense and complications of making this happen.

Here's hoping. Think happy thoughts.

And have a great weekend, ya'll.

On the contrary, the Keystone XL Pipeline must NOT be built

A young woman--one Sarah Mceuen of Maysville, Missouri who also happens to be a "helper" from UA Pipeliners Local Union 798 in Missouri wrote in an op/ed piece in the Star this week that "For jobs and energy, Keystone pipeline must be built."

To which I and a great deal of us across the nation say nonsense.

There is every reason in the world to not build this environmental nightmare in waiting and precious few good, positive reasons for doing so.

More than anything, this pipeline is merely for transporting Canadian oil from Canada, through the US, through our country, down to the Gulf of Mexico so it can be exported to other world markets--likely China--so the TransCanada oil company can make more money.

All America would get out of it is some temporary construction jobs and then far fewer maintenance jobs, once it was up and running.

Along with it, we would get the inevitability of oil pipeline spills, time and again, repeatedly, over time, which would further ruin our environment and which would cost untold amounts to clean up.

Want proof?

Here you go.

Here's the first one, from 2010:

Pipeline leak pollutes major Michigan river

More than 800,000 gallons of oil flow into Kalamazoo River, coating birds and fish

Here's a second, more recent one, from Canada itself:

This 2nd rupture happened at the beginning of June, this year, only weeks ago.

Don't say it can't happen here or that it won't. They've already been happening and there can be no guarantees they won't happen in the future.

Here's yet another reason the Keystone XL pipeline shouldn't be built: the American people don't want it. They--we--don't want it on our land, on our soil. Americans from the Northern border of the country, down to Texas are saying they don't want to sell their land to Transcanada for the pipeline.

So have you seen or heard what's happening instead?

Transcanada is getting with our national and state governments to have the land seized by eminent domain. Here is just one article on it:

Texas farmer fights Keystone XL route

A Texas farmer is back in court today in her continuing challenge of Calgary-based TransCanada’s right to expropriate a part of her farm to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

Julia Trigg Crawford’s hearing before a county court judge in Paris, Texas, is the beginning of a process to challenge TransCanada’s claim to be a common carrier, which in Texas gives it what lawyers call the power of eminent domain, or the right to seize property.

Canada's crude oil pipelines Charting TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipelineThe $12-billion, 36-inch diameter pipeline would carry up to 1.1 million barrels of oilsands crude a day more than 2,700 kilometers from Alberta to refineries in south Texas, crossing six states, including Crawford’s farm in northeast Texas. The farm has been in her family for 64 years.

The farm has been in her family for 64 years yet some young woman in Missouri or someone else in a corporation in Canada or some union or some government is going to tell this woman in Texas, this farmer, this citizen that she must sell her land for an oil company's pipeline?

No.

No, this Keystone XL pipeline should NOT be built and it shouldn't be strung across the country.

There are too many reasons we shouldn't, not the least of which is the fact that oil is a dirty, polluting, carbon-emitting "fossil fuel" of the past that we need to wean ourselves from and the profits from this would go out of the country anyway.

It would not only be a short-sighted idea but a wrong one, too, in far too many ways.

Link: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/07/3748769/as-i-see-it-the-urgency-of-keystone.html#storylink=rss

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38435210/ns/us_news-environment/t/pipeline-leak-pollutes-major-michigan-river/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2012/08/10/transcanada-keystone-texas-hearing.html

Irony: Maybe the robots will get it right

How would that be for irony?

We--humankind--created computers. Computers, therefore, enabled us to also create robots. At first, they were to do our work for us and that's where we are today.

It has been projected by some scientists--futurist scientists--that robots with their own artifical intelligence will, yes, take over the world.

If given enough time, it rather makes sense.

They already reprogram themselves and make themselves smarter and smarter. Smarter than we humans can make them.

So let's go with that thought--that is, robots "take over" the world. They then:

--do away with pollution since they realize it makes them work worse (sick) and eventually kills them;

--never experience any form of racism or discrimination of any kind because, after all, they're all just machines and therefore, equal;

--do away with war, wars and all warring weapons since it occurs to them that a) they need to work together and b) that logic, reasoning and communication are the way to handle problems and solve differences.

If it only stopped right there, the robots would be far, far ahead of humankind, to date.

Kind of sad, isn't it?

Goldman Sachs: Getting away with grand larceny, lies and lying about it all

It's been widely reported now that Goldman Sachs is, indeed and in fact, getting away with theft--large scale theft, at that:

Goldman Sachs Won't Be Prosecuted In Fraud Probe

A Senate panel found last year that Goldman Sachs marketed four sets of complex mortgage securities to banks and other investors, but failed to tell clients the securities were very risky. The Justice Department said the "burden of proof to bring a criminal case" could not be met.

And while this should surprise no one, however much it dissappoints us, the following has to be acknowleded:

First, Goldman Sachs is in the White House and has been for some years. Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, comes from there as former CEO, no less, in one of the worst examples and there are plenty of others.

Second, it's an election year and this president--and all candidates for that office--want and need the big Wall Street firms on their side, if not also putting money in their campaign coffers. It seems clear nothing was going to happen here, no matter what the SEC found.

That said, perhaps the people examining this huge firm should go back and read even just some of writer Matt Taibbi's articles and columns over at Rolling Stone. It seems there's enough evidence in them alone to indict the company in general and specific employees of the firm. (See links below).

Forget that Goldman Sachs paid a $550 million fine (that's a little over one-half billion dollars, folks) to the SEC in 2010 for fraud in the subprime mortgage debacle. Forget that. That doesn't really mean they're guilty, right?

As if this all isn't enough to make you cynical, get this, from the New York Times: "News of the settlement sent Goldman’s shares 5 percent higher in after-hours trading, adding far more to the firm’s market value than the amount it will have to pay in the settlement."

So not only did Goldman steal millions of dollars from people and not only did they then also lie about it but when their fine of $550 million dollars was handed out, since it was such a small share of the $13.35 billion profits they made the previous year, their stock actually went up on that news.

They won.

They won big and they keep winning.

Why wouldn't you keep winning when, after all, you virtually--if not actually--own the government?

We have to also forget that the financial collapse that Goldman Sachs and Countrywide Mortgage and Citibank (or Sh*ttybank, as Bill Maher refers to them, rather appropriately) and others nearly brought the nation--and the world, actually--to very near total financial collapse back in 2008 with their lies and theft. Forget that.

The government says we don't have enough to prosecute.

Right.

Got it.

Links: http://www.npr.org/2012/08/10/158547458/business-news

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/business/16goldman.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405

Quote of the day

"We can solve problems. We can solve really big, really scary and really impossible problems. We can do amazing things. But we can only do these things when, collectively, we step up and take on the mantle of adulthood. We can only do these amazing things when we set aside the childish pleasures of fits and tantrums and rise to the level of responsibility that maturity demands.

The challenges we face — from climate change to resource depletion — have appeared just now because we are at a turning point in our evolution. You don't alter you planet's atmospheric chemistry unless you have reached a certain level of, let's say, "ability". But to paraphrase Spiderman's uncle, abilities come with responsibility and responsibility demands maturity. As a species, we are called to new kinds of behaviors never before seen in the entire history of our evolution. Curiosity shows that, perhaps, we are ready. It shows us that we can face impossible challenges and find real, successful solutions.

We can do anything if we are creative, if we are responsible in our collaborations, if we step up to the demands of our families, our communities, our nation and our planet as adults." --Adam Frank, Astrophysicist, from an NPR guest post. Link below.

And to do this, we must work together, as one.

Link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/08/07/158342268/curiosity-signals-from-mars-that-we-can-solve-our-problems-on-earth

Quote of the day

"You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others." --Henry Rollins, American spoken word artist, writer, journalist, publisher, actor, radio DJ, activist and former singer-songwriter.

Here's your American health care system

Here's the latest on our American health care system:

U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study

(Reuters) - Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.

The highest cost in the world with the least, worst results for what we pay for in that same health care.

Yet so many of us are pushing back on the attempt at a fix that was and is the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

Maddening.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/23/us-usa-healthcare-last-idUSTRE65M0SU20100623

Kansas and Missouri, down the rabbit hole

So, yesterday, with the elections in their respective states, Missouri and Kansas went farther, still farther, off the Right Wing end.

In Missouri, Amendment 2 was voted in which "lets parents and children opt out of any curriculum they feel contradicts their religious teachings."

Isn't that just terrific?

Forget the goal of teaching the children, the students--the person's individual religious interpretations takes priority, instead.

Then, as if that weren't bad enough, Kansas voted in the deeply Right Wingers to support Governor Brownback's agenda and goals.

And trust me, believe me when I say, it isn't just because they're Right Wing that I say this, either. It's because it's all so extreme. Honestly, if it were Left Wing extremism, I'd be saying the same thing. There would be less concern about it, I'll grant you that, since it would be from the left, but I'd still be concerned. Extremes just aren't good for people and states and nations.

Where does all this end, anyway?

Links: http://www.americablog.com/2012/08/ready-light-years-beween-mo-mars.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Americablog+%28AMERICAblog%29

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/08/3749775/conservatives-seize-control-of.html

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/07/3749376/right-to-pray-passing-easily-in.html

The coming election

What concerns me most about the coming November election is that both sides, if we must assume there are only two--either Democratic vs. Republican or Right Wing vs. Left Wing or whatever--seem to be predicting the same thing.

That is, both sides seem to be thinking and then saying aloud or writing publicly (on Facebook or their blog or as a comment somewhere out on the internet) that if the opponent's leader is elected (Romney or Obama), that it's somehow "the end" or that they'll leave the country or we've lost all hope or some such.

It reminds me of the quote from the movie, "The Big Chill" at the beginning, at the recently-deceased character, Alex's, funeral when the minister asks "Where did our hope go?"

Why are so many of us expecting an apocalypse?

Can we not have hope?

Can't we see any way forward?

Is that no longer possible?

Isn't this America? Are we not Americans? Can we not work together? Can we not address and solve our problems? Together?

It needn't be the end of the world as we know it.

Not unless we give up and give in, anyway.

I don't think so, for what it's worth.

Quote of the day

"The words used by statesmen in our day no longer have a common meaning. Perhaps they never had. Freedom, democracy, human rights, international morality, peace itself, mean different things to different men. Words, in a constant flow of propaganda - itself an instrument of war - are employed to confuse, mislead, and debase the common man. Democracy is prostituted to dignify enslavement; freedom and equality are held good for some men but withheld from others by and in allegedly "democratic" societies; in "free" societies, so-called, individual human rights are severely denied; aggressive adventures are launched under the guise of "liberation". Truth and morality are subverted by propaganda, on the cynical assumption that truth is whatever propaganda can induce people to believe. Truth and morality, therefore, become gravely weakened as defences against injustice and war. With what great insight did Voltaire, hating war enormously, declare: 'War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not colour his crime with the pretext of justice.'" --Ralph Bunche, Nobel Lecture, 1950

Jax County Court Administrator blows through $25.000?

Here's an excellent and simple case showing how a government office could and should, frankly and easily, be run like a business so things are done right, first of all, but secondly, so people don't just out-and-out steal.

Here's the article from the Star Monday:

Former court administrator used funds to buy $25,000 in gift cards

Jackson County's former court administrator used her court-supplied credit cards to purchase more than $25,000 in gift cards in the last 18 months of her service.

The thing about it is, I've worked for plenty of companies where someone--someone--was always put in a position to evaluate expenses as they come through in an obvious and clear effort to keep expenses down and under control.

For someone to charge an office for "...spa visits and purchases at a women's clothing store and an area optical shop..." and not be caught seems nearly unfathomable.

Was there NO ONE doing any oversight on their costs and expenses and charges?

That's the question now, for the past.

But for the future, has this been handled, now?

Is there now, for pity's sake, someone in place to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again and no one can put through expenses for virtually anything and we find out months or years later?

Would someone--anyone--answer me this?

Please?

Link: http://midwestdemocracy.com/articles/former-court-administrator-used-funds-to-buy-25000-in-gift-cards/

An open invitation to Senator Blunt

With this being the US Senate's annual Summer break for 5 weeks, this seems like the perfect time to extend an invitation to our own Senator Roy Blunt to come up to Kansas City to see constituents and hear what may be on our minds, politically, governmentally and otherwise.

Since Senator Blunt doesn't open up his "Listening Posts" to Kansas Citians--as I've pointed out here before a few times, at least--this seems like the perfect time for him to make the 2-1/2 hour drive or one hour flight up here from Sprinfield so he can have conversations with us.

If nothing else, we'd love to show him what parts of Interstate 70 that need attention he might help us with, let alone our other infrastructure, in case he and his political party and the rest of the Senate show decide to actually make movement on any true jobs program.

Here's hoping.

Election night results--and likely results

I see on the news just now that, of the Republican challengers to US House of Representatives Emanuel Cleaver, one Nick Nolte is shown to have 51% of the vote with 10% reporting while Jacob Turk holds 37% of the vote.

If this holds--and there's every expectation and likelihood that it will, this means two things.

First, this means that Emanuel Cleaver will be re-elected to represent Kansas City Missouri in his district.

Second? It means Representative Cleaver's longtime challenger, that same Jacob Turk, will likely then, now and fovever give up on his trying to unseat Mr. Cleaver.

At least, that looks highly like exactly what will happen in both cases.

Stay tuned.

Other issues: It looks as though it is highly likely Jay Nixon will be returned to the governor's office as relatively unknown Dave Spence was elected to be his challenger. Unless he and the Republicans can and do spends loads of money in advertising, Mr. Nixon will be returned to office.

Finally, it looks really bad for Kansas as the far right wing Republicans were strengthened tonight while the moderates were fairly well trounced.

I feel nearly sick for Kansas.

Links: http://fox4kc.com/2012/08/06/fox-4-for-election-coverage-results/

http://midwestdemocracy.com/articles/spence-wins-right-to-challenge-nixon-for-missouri-governor/