Too Many Liberals Are Cowardly Slaves to Mediocraty

I had a dilemma at three o clock.  Do I continue to listen to Senator Inhofe lecture us on so called scientists debunking global warming or do I switch to Norman Goldman, knowing so much of what he does is either self promotion of upcoming stuff you won’t probably see, or else talk about this or that contest?   I was learning more in a perverse sense from Senator Inhofe because at least he made substantive statements that could be challenged one way or the other.  He said that there has been (for instance) no increase in the number of tornadoes or floods or droughts.  Tell that to us people living here in California.  By all measurement, what we are experiencing now is unprecedented in climatic history of this state.  Our lawmakers have faced situations they’ve never faced before.  Tornadoes are more likely now to be severe and way out of “season”.  You see reports of severe flooding on the network news all the time.  Senator Inhof did not come out and deny that 97% of scientists subscribe to global warming.  What he said was “well there are a lot of scientists who don’t”.  Define “lot”.  He will point to this or that scientist who makes a statement.  You hear constantly the theme that we are in a seventeen year “hiatus’ of global warming.  Sometimes it’s 15 or sometime it’s 18 but you get the picture.  These people loudly claim that these gigantic sheets if ice melting we’ve seem somehow aren’t happening.  And they say it’s all a part of a major conspiracy to “gain control and regulate the economy like it’s never been regulated before”.  People are programmed to fear change.

   But anyhow I switched to Norman Goldman, who speaks disparagingly of Senator Sanders as being “too marrow” in his political appeal.  I’ll tell you this.  Hillary Clinton is very broad- - in the number of people who can’t stand her and will never vote for her, period.  Clearly Hillary is the ultimate retread, from 23 years ago.  That’s a major chunk out of people’s lives.  Tell me when a candidate- - the LOSER in a primary eight years previous ever came back to win the nomination.  Did it, for instance, happen with Ed Musky in 1976.  No?  What about Ted Kennedy in 1984, or Gary Harte in 1988.  Still batting zero.  OK, we’ll keep going.  How about knowing that either George HW Bush or Michael Dukakis would be the nominees in May of 1987?   Nobody had heard of the Clintons in May of 1991.  In fact nobody was even running for President in 1991; we were too busy celebrating our great victory in Gulf War I with parades and such in May of 1991.  Was Jesse Jackson the nominee in 1992?   Jesse in the 1988 convention got more prominence than Hillary did in the 2008 convention.  Who would have guessed Bob Dole would be the nominee in May of 1995 or that an obscure Texas governor would be president in May of 1999?   People attack Bernie Sanders because he makes a fleeting reference or two to people being happier in Denmark or Sweden than people in this country are.  Is that so horrible?   The things Bernie Sanders stands for are things which time after time in polls, people state that they are for.  How come Norman Goldman is seemingly not aware of these polls?  He states “Would you rather have a flawed winner or a dedicated loser with personal integrity?”  Do you really want me to answer that?  We’ve gotten to a very pathetic state of affairs when the best a candidate can offer the public is “Well, at least I’m not Scott Walker or Ted Cruz”.  We as Americans can do better than that.  We are running this campaign as though election day were next month rather than a year from November.  Why is that?   But what I’m even sicker of hearing is how “Oh the tea party is a fringe group- - and appeals to a very small minority”.  FOX news along with a lot of others- - appeal to this same “narrow” minority of not young, not minority, not gay, way above median income, not infirm, not single women - - group of the population.  The fastest way to lose an election is to count the tea party out.  After the tea party is responsible for the convressional Republican landslides of 2010 and 2014.  And don’t get all high and mighty about Obama’s 2012 victory.  The victory wasn’t by that much and the President could have EASILY lost that race if two things had been different.  One was that kissy-kiss fest with Governor Christy during Hurricane Sandy.  The other was that secret recording about Romney and the 47%.  Take away those two factors and Romney wins the race.  If it has been a real democratic victory- - the democrats would have retaken the House, and they didn’t.  This argument of “Well yes I’m a total sell out ant betrayer of my political base, but hey- at least I’m not a tea bagger” just won’t fly with me.  We’ll have to do a lot better.

This past Saturday may have seen the end of a nearly year long jinx, both for me and perhaps for others.  Maybe we can get something good from the Stars.  Maybe we can get in touch with Joan Rivers and get her take on her own death.  Sometimes it's a good idea to go straight to the horse's mouth to get a unique take on a subject.  It is my contention that Islam in general will be under favorable astrological vibes a month from now.  We'll have to see what that means or just how that plays itself out.

Americans feel abused by "The System".  In terms of getting dinged by fees and such- - if you fly a lot or deal with the banks, and everybody does, you know about getting dinged for fees.  They’ll ding you if you want to stop payment on a check.  They’ll ding you if a friend’s check doesn’t clear- -even if there’s already a thousand in your account- - they’ll act as though you did something wrong.  The banks claim that “Well you can go after your friend for the loss you incurred from US - - in civil court”.  Yeah, and who is going to go to all the trouble to do that?  Nobody.  I think there are only about six banks left.  This may be a really dumb question but why can’t some upstart start up his OWN bank and begin offering customers a square deal?   But alas we are told that small businesses are failing left and right.  Judy told us she has decided to get out of the nutritional supplement business because it’s too much of a hassle working with government regulations.  There is only a distinct minority of businesses that even pull down fifty thousand dollar in income.  Many would consider that to minimally live comfortably.  There is a significant number of businesses that are so marginal they only garner ten thousand dollars or less in income for a whole year.  So it’s no wonder why big corporate interests feel so confident and secure that they can treat us all like crap.

THE MORAL CESSPOOL

 THAT IS OUR GOVERNMENT TODAY

• Senior SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day surfing porn sites instead of cracking down on financial crimes

• Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers watch porn instead of cracking down on unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

• An EPA employee who downloaded 7,000 porn files, then spent 2-6 hours each workdaywatching porn. He’s been doing it for years … but the EPA never fired him. Another EPA employeeharassed 16 women co-workers … and then was promoted to a higher-paying job with more responsibility, where he harassed more women

• NSA spies pass around homemade sexual videos and pictures they’ve collected from spying on the American people

• NSA employees have also been caught using their mass surveillance powers to spy on love interests, such as girlfriends, obsessions or former wives … and to eavesdrop on American soldiers’ intimate conversations with their wives back home. And see this (“routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted” … “‘Hey, check this out … there’s good phone sex’”)

• An employee of the Transportation Security Administration admitted that TSA agents share – and laugh at – nude scans of passengers.  Another TSA employee says that screeners make excuses so they can grope and fondle travelers that they’re attracted to

• Investigators from the Treasury’s Office of the Inspector General found that some of the regulator’s employees surfed erotic websites, hired prostitutes and accepted gifts from bank executives … instead of actually working to help the economy

• The Minerals Management Service – the regulator charged with overseeing BP and other oil companies to ensure that oil spills don’t occur – was riddled with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity”, which included “sex with industry contacts”

• Agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency had dozens of sex parties with prostitutes hired by the drug cartels they were supposed to stop (they also received money, gifts and weapons from drug cartel members)

• Pentagon employees used government credit cards to pay for adult “escorts” (i.e. prostitutes) and to gamble

• Federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Secret Service investigating Bitcoin money laundering extorted and stole over $1 million in Bitcoin

• The IRS gave promotions to employees who were themselves tax cheats

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has conspired with big banks to manipulate commodities prices for decades

• The government-sponsored rating agencies committed massive fraud (and see this)

• The Treasury department allowed banks to “cook their books”

• Regulators knew of and allowed the use of debt-hiding accounting tricks by the big banks

• The Secretary of Treasury (Tim Geithner) was complicit in Lehman’s accounting fraud, (and see this)

• The former chief accountant for the SEC says that Bernanke and Paulson broke the law and should be prosecuted

• The government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing. See this and this. For example, the Federal Reserve turned its cheek and allowed massive fraud, and the SEC has repeatedly ignored accounting fraud. Indeed, Alan Greenspan took the position that fraud could never happen

• Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy, when they were not. The Treasury Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely

• A high-level Federal Reserve official says quantitative easing is “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time”

• The SEC has been shredding Wall Street documents for decades to help the big banks cover up their fraud

• The non-partisan Government Accountability Office calls the Fed corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest. Nobel prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz says the World Bank would view any country which had a banking structure like the Fed as being corrupt and untrustworthy. The former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said said he worried that the failure of the government to provide more information about its rescue spending could signal corruption. “Nontransparency in government programs is always associated with corruption in other countries, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be here,” he said

• Arguably, both the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by refusing to close insolvent banks

• Congress may have covered up illegal tax breaks for the big banks

• Police have been busted framing innocent people

• Warmongerers in the U.S. government knowingly and intentionally lied us into a war of aggression in Iraq. The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest ranking military officer in the United States – said that the Iraq war was “based on a series of lies”. The same is true in Libya and other wars

• The government lied when it said it doesn’t conduct mass surveillance on Americans, and then lied again when it said that spying was aimed at protecting America against terrorists

• The government also lied when it said American doesn’t torture (and see this), and then lied once again when it said torture was aimed at protecting America against terrorists

• The government made sure that false claims were made about the amount of oil spilled by BP in the Gulf

• The government has framed whistleblowers with false evidence

• The Pentagon falsely smeared USA Today reporters because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda

• When one of the most respected radiologists in America – the former head of the radiology department at Yale University – attempted to blow the whistle on the fact that the FDA had approved a medical device manufactured by General Electric because it put out massive amounts of radiation, the FDA installed spyware to record his private emails and surfing activities (including installing cameras to snap pictures of his screen), and then used the information to smear him and other whistleblowers

• In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of wrongdoing – theDepartment of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)

• The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers, bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war

• Corruption at the FBI lab led to the execution of scores of innocent people

• The FBI smeared top scientists who pointed out the numerous holes in its anthrax case. Indeed, the head of the FBI’s investigation agrees that corruption was rampant
• Terror attacks such as 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Texas shooting allhappened because of pervasive corruption in our intelligence agencies
• Fracking companies dumped 3 billion gallons of highly-toxic waste into California’s drinking water supply. Fracking is polluting water all over the country. A study published in the journal Ground Water predicts that the highly-toxic fluids used in fracking can migrate to aquifers within a few short years. In addition, it is now official that fracking can cause earthquakes
• Yet fracking companies are using military psychological operations techniques to discredit opponents(and see this)
• Monsanto has claimed for decades that Roundup is safe, but the World Health Organization just said that it probably causes cancer. Monsanto forbids independent scientists from testing its GMO crops for safety, and attacks the computers of people who oppose GMO foods, sue small farmers when Monsanto GMO crops drift onto their fields
• Big farmers are drenching their crops with Roundup right before harvest … to save a buck
• Big food companies work hand-in-glove with the government to dish up unhealthy food
• BP’s criminal negligence led to the giant Gulf oil spill