Those Filthy Rich Politicians

Tonight’s Mc Laughlin group could be called “All those filthy rich politicians.  In the senate in the top ten richest senators you have your Senator Corker of Tennessee, and John Mc Cain, and Dianne Feinstein of California.  In the house Daryl Eisa is your richest house member, in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  I heard he was a convicted felon just like Rick Scott of Florida.  And there is this former Republican mayor of Providence, who has been to prison twice, once for assault, and once for racketeering- and the man is in his seventies and wants another chance from the voters.  He claims he’s “learned from his mistakes”.   But also on the House side you have Nancy Pelosi, who had some shady banking deal that she would squash all talk of with reporters, so average voters like me got to see a darker side to her we didn’t know existed.  Pat points out that these congressmen pull a salary of $200,000 which would be living high on the hog for most people, and is approaching four times the median household income.  We won’t even mention the expense account these people have.  Mort Zuckerman has bragged how rich he is, on the Mc Laughlin panel.  Mort is still saying that we need to revamp our tax structure because we aren’t giving away ENOUGH to the ultra rich, and in like manner are letting the poor off “too easy” so to speak.  He also stated that rich people are troubled by the “rising deficets and liberal monetary policies’ of our government.  Of course this economic genious knows that deficets have been falling- - DRASTICALLY recently.  And the whole bit with the so called “stimulus of the Fed” is a major crock, as Washington’s blog has gone into much detail on.  It’s welfare for the banks and a way to literally suck capital out of the rest of the economy into the hands of rich money horders.  My plan would be to pull the plug on all of this welfare for the banks instantly.  Some would say “It would collapse the bond market and cause total chaos”.  No it wouldn’t.  Stock gains are based on percentage gain OVER the inflation rate and this would not change.  And even if we had bonds that paid ten percent, this would only pose a MAXIMUM downside risk of a mere nine percent.  Contrast this with a possible 36% drop in stock prices- - four times the amount, in a major bear market, which won’t happen anyway.  But what it WOULD do is help people with retirement accounts- - - those with some “safe” investment instruments.  Wouldn’t you like to have a “Safe” bond that yielded ten percent year in and year out?  You’d have it with my plan.  But what it would do would be to bring an immediate end to this legalized larceny we’ve been seeing from the rich Wall Street financiers.

One feature of modern politics, if I may use that euphemism, is that voter surpression is a key factor in any republican platform.  And they are up front about it too.  They openly admit that is the GOAL of what they do.  Nobody ever passes a voter ID bill and then goes “Thank God our elections are safe now from the massive voter fraud we were experiencing”.  No, no.  It’s just another check-off mark on their main agenda.  So when a Texas judge calls them on it and specifically accuses the Texas legislators of doing just that- - taking steps to deprive minorities of their civil rights- - it had to have caught Texas republicans off guard.  Now Texas will bote a little more, shall we say “purple” then they were anticipating.  In North Carolina the situation is blatant and provable.  Because in 2008 North Carolina was well on the road to becoming a blue state with instituted electoral reforms.  But in 2011 they passed a bunch of repressive laws and in 2012 North Carolina was much more red and republican, and there has been a juggernaut of right wing measures passed in that state lately.  But apparently, according to Norman Goldman, there was another court ruling favorable to democrats and this one voided voter suppression laws Scott Walker got passed.  Meanwhile in Kentucky- - a democratic candidate is in hot water merely because she couldn’t bring herself to state that she voted for President Obama in 2012.  Certainly there are people in Kentucky who could excuse her for not liking Mormon, Mitt Romney.  Many democrats have said “If we could just get single women to come out in droves to vote next month- - we could not only keep the Senate democratic, but also flip the house democratic”.  That’s the most optimistic proclamation I’ve heard in weeks.

Rand Paul was the other topic on the Mc Laughlin group.  It used to be that the tea party set was more libertarian.  But that isn't the politics "the establishment" wants them to have.  We need to run on the "All Fear All the Time" platform.  So you've got these Latinos coming from the border smuggling pot with knees the size of cantalopes or something- - or else it's ISIS accidentally leaving their prayer rugs on the Texas side of the Rio Grand, or maybe it's children from Guatamala with Ebola or something.  And these people can still gin up a lot of fear talking about "The month long baroge of rockets the residents of Israel suffered- - ignoring the 19,000 Palestinians that lost their lives in a very confined geographical area with nowhere to run - - like shooting fish in a bowl.  A favorite slogan of mine about the Republicans is "We have nothing to Offer but Fear Itself".  And it gets truer every day.  I doubt these same conservative organizations would vote for Rand Paul so forthrightly if such a poll were conducted today.  And Rand Paul knows this and has adjusted his stance on interventionist policies in foreign wars accordingly.  The war lobby is a major plank is the republican platform.  But the overriding thing about the republicans - - above their hatred of women, gays, minorities, the elderly,  students, the disabled - - and that is their transcendent hatred of the Poor.  The Republican party and platform of 2016 will truly be The Platform of the One Percent.  (Selah)

  I had Leo Le Port on and he states that “sound bars” are good for disapproving spouces who hate a lot of wires strung around the house because there aren’t a lot of speaker connections.  I think sound bars are Wi Fi in many cases, anyhow.  Leo was talking about flash drives with “zero access time”.  Who do they think they are- - the Federation?   The advantage of these solid state drives was immediately apparent to me when I first heard about them four or five years ago.  Unfortunately- - I still don’t have the vaguest idea when I’ll be getting a new computer and here it is four or five years later.  Leo says that I phones were the undisputed leaders in phones till 2011 or just about the time that Steve Jobs died.  But since then- - Leo has had high praise for other systems, though he says that I Phones still have the best cameras “which is a key thing for what people buy phones for now”.

 I was looking up early references to Barock Obama because I was just curious how far back the references went.  Google found scads of them and there were plenty in the year 2007.  I picked late July 2007 to look at more closely.  I remarked that Sylvia Brown’s prediction of lots of weather action during hurricane season would prove false.  I also said that one of the major candidates for President would drop out in a strange manner, or possibly because they were assassinated.  I also predicted that there would be “some international incident” in October causing the stock market jitters.  But it was also the line in there I had looked for for years predicting that “A recession will start at the turn of the year 2008 (just after the Holidays) which “The housing crisis would kick it off”.  This was pretty dead on accurate, truthfully.  I also noted that many of my observations about the media and the lack of “hard news” were prevalent even then.  So I was smarter than I thought I was.

[Friday night] - - - and then “Bones” and some kid was talking about “sexing up” his girlfriend.  As to that Black girl going out with the Black guy- - Booth was playing the part of the possessive parent, and I don’t know where he gets off the way he was hasseling the boyfriend with all of these barbed remarks.  If it were me in his shoes I’d say something like ‘You know- forget it.  It’s just a movie.  Come back sometime after you get a new set of parents.”  It was one of those things where even if you do nothing wrong you’ll be accused of something anyhow so why bother?  The second episode of “Bones” was about this luau stile pig in a pit which was lifted out because of some strange popping sounds- - and there were body parts in the pit.  Apparently this was not any tropical island but just a very close nit cul-di-sac type “housing association” group.