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What has happened to this country…
I met a fairy today who said she would grant me one wish.
“I want to live forever,” I said.
“Sorry,” said the fairy, “I’m not allowed to grant wishes like that!”
“Fine,” I said, “then I want to die after the U.S. Congress gets their heads out of their asses.”
“You crafty bastard,” said the fairy.
We were sitting around the table the other night playing cards (well Phase 10 – which is almost a card game). For some reason the question came up as what the difference was between strategy and tactic. We hashed it around a while, and we came to a consensus.
A few days later I was listening to NPR and they were doing a story on Newt Gingrich. They said of an exchange he had with a reporter that it was “a strategy masquerading as a tactic’. He was turning the tables on the political press. The reporter asked him a long winded question that was essentially of the type “so how long since you stopped beating your wife.” Mr. Gingrich flipped it on the reporter and asked him when he was going to stop asking “gotcha” questions.
From the NPR print version of the story I heard By Attacking The Media, Gingrich Built A Following here is the actual exchange: Continue reading “Strategy Masquerading as a Tactic”
As I touched on in Banks, Boobs, Bamboozled I moved my checking account. I had been with Bank of America. I initially signed up with them when I moved to a new town and I was in hurry to get a bank. The more I learned about BoA, the unhappier I became with banking there. I stayed with BoA much too long due to inertia. It is a pain changing banks. But I finally bit the bullet and made the change. I chose Regions as they have branches in both St. Louis and Memphis. I had only been with them a few months when they decided they just had to charge their customers for use of their debit cards. (They have since reversed that decision, but they have lost my trust) I immediately started the process of changing banks. I went with the local company credit union. Much to my surprise there is a network of ATMs that I can use free of charge available to credit unions. Continue reading “Vote with your $$, Vote with your feet, Move your bank accounts”
Rick Perry –Do we really want a President who wants to eliminate Federal agencies, and cannot even remember the names of the agencies he wants to axe? This is the same man who believes global warming/climate change to be a myth and we should not be addressing the issue. I want a President with intelligence who does not believe in fairy tales.
Herman Cain – He keeps repeating that we need a businessman in the White House. Pardon me, but was it not business that has gotten us into this current economic morass? There are multiple allegations of sexual harassment of women by Mr. Cain. I tend to think where there is this much smoke, there must be fire. Do we really want a President that does not respect women anymore than this? It is one thing to be a cad like Clinton. It is quite another thing to attempt to force trading sexual favors for a job. We need a President with a moral center.
Michele Bachman – All I can say is that she lives in a delusional world.
Ron Paul – The America that this man envisions is not an America I want to live in. Continue reading “Presidential Candidates”
Follow this link to buy this bumper sticker: Common Dreams | Bumper Sticker
To me this explains the point of the OWS movement.
Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes I’ve heard in all this drama about the debt ceiling:
“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told Becky Quick. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”
I do have a question for presidential candidate Herman Cain with his 9-9-9 tax proposal.
If we institute a 9% Federal tax is that to be added on top of state and city taxes? In Tennessee very little is excluded from sales tax. That would have citizens in this part of the world paying close to a 20% sales tax every time they buy anything.
Can you say regressive, and let’s tax the poor a bigger percentage of their incomes. I suppose his argument would be to point to the 9% income tax, but many of the our poorest citizens pay little or no taxes now. There is another whammy on this group. Especially so since many of these folks are the hard core unemployable, uneducated, disabled, or facing other life circumstances keeping them down. ( I know a lot of folks will argue with me, but I do not believe that the percentage of folks willing to not work and live hand to mouth is that large.)
Could there be some meaning to 9-9-9. If you turn it upside down it is 6-6-6.
I ran across this little tidbit after I posted this article:
“Without bold alternatives, Americans desperate for big solutions are attracted to bold crackpot ideas like Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” proposal, which would raise taxes on the poor and cut them for the rich.”
The above quote is from an article by Robert Reich at commondreams.org
To see the whole article follow this link: The Meagerness of the Republican Debates, the Smallness of the President’s Solutions, and the Need for a Progressive Alternative
“War is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, in 1935
Who is Smedley Butler? Wikipedia starts off as follows: “…nicknamed ‘The Fighting Quaker’ and ‘Old Gimlet Eye’, was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. By the end of his career he had received 16 medals, five of which were for heroism. He is one of 19 people to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.”
If there ever was a man that knew war he has to be among the elite. The quote is the start of his book, War is a Racket, published in 1935. Continue reading “War is a Racket”