Sanders?

So for the last few weeks all I've been hearing is if Sanders is the nominee, he loses. The Sanders supporters have been saying, "look at the poll numbers, Sanders is better than Biden across the board!" Meanwhile, the people who are so interested in poll numbers when they agree with them, totally blow them off when they don't, and with Sanders, they don't.

Does any of this mean anything? Well yes. If you're a Sanders supporter, right now, you're pretty happy, it looks like he's going to win the primaries if not the nomination outright (does he get enough for the first ballot?). If you're anti-Sanders, you've got a problem because right now none of the other candidates are holding with him (Pete is closest, but does that hold?) and none of them are in position to catch him with all these people still in. So moving from right to left center, here are the others still in and what I think they need to get the nomination.

Joe Biden needs an act of God. He doesn't look good out there, and while he doesn't have the same mileage at Bernie (the oldest guy running) Joe's trip has been a lot rougher.  Bernie looks like he did a decade ago, Biden looks like a cousin of the Crypt Keeper. Joe Wins if everyone else drops out.

Mike Bloomberg also needs an act of God. As the next oldest guy running, he's also got some baggage from New York he's hauling around and looked like he was in an excitement contest with Fritz Mondale and Al Gore at the Vegas debate. The part going for him is his commercials are great. I don't think that's close to enough. He's too early to pull a Jesse the Governor Ventura. Bottom line, he' already spent over $100 million, and has high single digits in response.

Pete Buttigieg is closer, but needs a larger group to get back in this. He needs a couple dropouts, and maybe he can get somewhere. He also has a negative politically, he's gay, and that's going to turn people away. Fortunately, the vast majority of those people won't vote Blue anyway, so mostly irrelevant.

Amy Klobuchar is in serious trouble and needs drop outs to stick around. She may be the best option to Bernie, but right now, isn't there.

Elizabeth Warren is done. The only way she wins is if Bernie drops, then his support (most of it) goes right to her. Without that, I don't see she has a chance.

(note, Amy and Pete may be out of order, they're pretty close)

All that out of the way, can Bernie beat Trump?  Yes. and if you doubt that idea, turn your clock back 4 years and tell me if you thought Trump had a chance. Most Democrats didn't. He was a joke in the primaries, then started winning those, then was a joke for the general election until he won.

That's my current prediction for the primaries.

Decapitation

(acronyms at the bottom)

Okay!  Richard Grenell is the new acting DNI. Why is he the acting one? Because he wouldn't get confirmed. He was close on approval for Ambassador to Germany, and you're going to tap a guy with zero intel work and his diplomatic work consists of being ambassador and pissing off members of the host nation to the point he's hovering about the edge of the warning track to get PiNGed. Just like at Wrigley, a stiff breeze either keeps the ball in, or sends it onto Waveland, Grenell is a decent gust from landing in the bleachers.

So maybe this is a way to keep him in government after the Germans kick him out for goosestepping, but that doesn't sound like a good reason to give him not a plum, but a live grenade, so why would Hair Furor hand it to this guy? I mean aside from him being a convert to the Orange. How about, he has asked for the CIA files about the Russians and the election and he can either get all of the people who worked them RIFed out, fired, or even burned.






That last one stands out, and damn well should, burned. Everyone who has watched a Mission Impossible movie knows what getting burned means. It means you get retired (Valerie Plame) or you get killed (William Buckley), and those are OUR guys. Those aren't the guys they got info from, they're the ones working the contacts like an operator is supposed to.

The guys they were getting their info from? They're gone, never trusting us because their handler just got tossed. Or gone, never hearing from us again after their handler got tossed. Or dead, because their handler got tossed and their government had no idea the guy they went fishing with worked for the CIA.

If anything SQUEAKS from Grenell/Patel (Patel is Grenell's new right hand, sent to him via Devin "I'm suing a cow" Nunes), then we know that scenario just went into play. And this is something I 100% expect. Grenell is going to use the job to get rid of the "disloyal people." Either himself or by sending names over to the White House. They will decapitate our ability to obtain and process information in any area where someone has done something to upset, or say something that Trump doesn't like.




They are actively weakening the security of the United States to further Trump's personal agenda.


Acronyms!
DNI - Director of National Intelligence, the job was specifically created to deal with things like inter-agency fights (CIA vs FBI vs ATF vs NSA vs ETC) after 9-11. The CIA had pieces and the FBI had pieces, this position and surrounding Office (ODNI) were created to put those kinds of things together and hopefully stop the next attack.

PiNGed - Persona Non Grata-ed. Told by the host country, "We don't accept you as the Ambassador, or member of their staff at the embassy, get the hell out of our country." It isn't common. After the 2016 election and the Russian interference, Obama shut down two Russian missions, ejecting their staffs. I'm not sure when the last time before that we did it, and ejecting the Ambassador specifically is a doozy.

RIFed - Reduction In Force. Think government layoffs and you've got it in one.

Time Killers

Since I've got a lot of it, and not much I can do that doesn't put me on the ground in pain, things that occupy time are of some import.

Music is a nice one, there's so much, and so much out there that's fantastic, that it's hard to pick individual things. That said, the Grateful Dead music archive is one of those things that's great. Why?
Because a) the Dead was primarily a touring group. They'd go out for a couple months, take one off, rinse repeat. The number of shows they did is enormous.
Because b) the Dead allowed a "taping section" where people would come in and record the show. They LET people do this!
Because c) all that stuff has been getting digitized, and the band is still saying, yeah, trade the stuff, cool.
It is here. https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead

What else can I do without going very far. I'm playing Magic online. The company has finally built a stable expandable platform, so now I can play, even if I can't shuffle cards well anymore. That one can be, but probably wouldn't be, free. It's an addictive card game and has made Hasbro into the absolute kings of the games world. That one can be found here.  https://magic.wizards.com/en/mtgarena

It's been a long week.

Treason

The Constitution says the following about treason, one of the few crimes mentioned:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

Here then is the question. If a foreign power is attempting to change election results, is that levying war or not? And, if a foreign power is attempting to change election results, and a citizen aids them, is that "aid and comfort"? I'm not certain on the first part, but the second is not as ambiguous, yes, if a foreign body is changing the results and you help them do it, that's treason.

The suggestion has been made that the new Acting DNI, Richard Grenell, was placed there to continue to block any action on election security. The intelligence services are in uniform agreement that the Russians are gearing to interfere again. Bluntly, Grenell was placed there to ensure the Russians succeed.

This matters. Grenell is far from an experienced diplomat, there are entire parties of the German government who want his standing as ambassador revoked and him sent on the next plane out of Berlin. The rest of them want him gone, but don't want to piss us off showing him the door. He has no intel background at all. In short he comes nowhere near the background or ability the position asks for. So what is he doing there?

Well, the outgoing DNI Joseph Maguire a week ago went to the Hill and gave a committee a briefing in the SCIF room, just like all of these guys are supposed to do from time to time. Think of it like the State of the Union, but in this case, it's State of the Intelligence Community. That's not quite it, but it's close enough. So as part of this meeting, he flat out said, yes the Russians interfered in the 2016 election. They've been saying that for years now.

I think we all know who has an electoral college map with him everywhere he goes, and hearing that about the Russians? He was done with that with Mueller! One pissed off Orange Ogre later, and Maguire is gone to be replaced by Grenell. Except Grenell has no idea what he's doing other than smooching said Ogre's morbidly obese ass.

Result, the election systems continue to be un-upgraded, and Vlad's minions are getting ready to run rampant because Donnie made sure it wouldn't get fixed. If a foreign body, Russia, is changing the results, and Trump and Grenell are ensuring that nothing happens to stop that (they've only had three years), and the bill dealing with it from the House is being used as toilet paper by Mitch Mc🐢.

The level of mendacity from the White House makes this a real question. As Grenell is not stepping down from his Ambassadorship to take DNI, it leaves the entire community without the rudder that was supposed to prevent the next 9-11, and says he's not looking at security at all, he's busy at a revival of Cabaret.

Trump Sucks

Let's start with the first thing. Guys? Do you wear makeup? I mean if you're going on TV, in the studio, sure. You're doing community theater (or you're a pro). yep. You're going golfing? uhhhh. When you make Hulk Hogan look a normal color, you've done something wrong, and folks, the Hulkster is looking pretty normal colored next to this guy.

Next, I can't wear one of my baseball hats anymore. Red hats are the new White Hood. Any questions? I don't care. The people wearing those and their "fuck the libs" shirts to this guys rallies have something wrong. If your enjoyment is the suffering of others, well, this ain't a place for you. You've abandoned being human.


By the way, when you abandon being human, well, that sky dude pulls out the Sodom and Gomorrah smiting crap. Also by the way, they didn't get blown up for buggery, they got blown up for refusing to help their fellow human (and I don't mean beggars, I mean Jim Crow). Also by the way, the expression "by the way" was originally a reference to the way of the Lord, so I'm using it quite correctly here, referencing the actions of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God (also correct, it all comes out of Abraham, so all the same God, just different angles on the topic, and no, you're not going to change my mind, so don't even try).






And man I haven't even gotten to the guy aside from the makeup. Where to start with The Donald. How about with this. Donald Trump was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and when they pulled it back for his first bottle, he'd turned it to lead. He blew through billions of his fathers bankrupting casinos, and turned Atlantic City into a wasteland doing it.

He's pretty much every single thing you don't want your kids to be when they grew up. He's a loudmouthed idiot, who even when he probably knows what he's talking about (rarely), lies like a rug. You can't take a single word out of his mouth as true, sometimes it's going to be, but that's going to be happenstance.

I keep wondering who he's going to start a war with and nuke. My guess is Iran. He's already tried once (and while I don't miss Sulemani, let's call it what it was, a premeditated hit), and I'm sure he's going to try again. He's the most dangerous man on the planet because he has both the means and temperament to open Pandora's box back up. No one else has both.

I could keep rolling on this, but frankly, Rick Wilson is funnier, so go read his Twitter feed. And that's a lifelong Republican skewering Trump like he's making kabobs.

Have a good night, and I'm still pissed about my hat.

The Editor

The sun was shining brightly. It was a September morning and Jeffery Taylor was on his way to work. Sadly, neither Jeffery Taylor, nor his job exist anymore. His job was editor. And it would be much appreciated had word processors with spell checkers and grammar checkers not driven them to extinction.

So what the hell am I talking about now? Well, for you fiction writers out there, this is someone you're going to want to know well, it's someone who is more than a proof reader, but not like the editors of old, those guys got paid. It's also not something you can do as a qriter.

It's not what? We'll get back to that in a second, but what you see there is something I typoed, the spell checker caught it, and I could have fixed it, but didn't so I could make this point. This is the kind of thing a proof reader used to catch (another extinct job), and something your guys will catch too, but that's not what you want/need them for.

Back to why it's not something you can do as a writer. There are very few people on the face of the planet who can write something, then read it as if they were looking at it for the first time, and are functional humans. As the writer, you're going to be trying to edit it, and at the same time, you're going to be remembering what was going on when you wrote it., and that's going to have a huge impact on what hits the final cut.

I'm not saying don't go back after your drafts, do. There will be things you put it in that don't work. Spots where you had a word you were searching for and couldn't remember. Whole sections that make you think, "and this is why I shouldn't try to drink like Faulkner." Those you can fix in draft revision. What you can't do is that part about the fresh eyes.

That used to be part the friends/family (who are still important, even more so now) but if you were getting published, the publishing house had editors who would tell you, "This section is slow, that section is good, and I don't think you should drink like Faulkner because this section? This is just... Tell you what. Throw this whole crap section out, now you figure out how to connect the ends."

You need that guy. That guy is extinct. Like I said earlier, somebody just got more important.


And none of this deals with the most important guy for getting published, an agent. I haven't been published but know a couple people who have, and they are universal, if you want to get published, you need an agent, without one, you won't even find the door in.

Wherin I don't have Writer's Block.

The topic of writer's block is a frequent one, with people staring at a blank page and no idea what to do. My uncle, a published writer, says just start something. Anything. Once things start moving, they tend to gather a bit of life of their own and keep going. So a shopping list, the dinner party invitations, cousin Judy's birthday card. Anything.


My version of this is a simple sentence that could go anywhere. The classic Bulwer-Lytton line, "It was a dark and stormy night." is one of these, but sets a mood going in, and oh yeah, it's the tag line for the worst opening sentence annual contest so that's out. That doesn't mean the idea is without value.

The sun was shining that Saturday. It was crisp, actually outright cold, and windy. Those two factors combined such that the church attendance for the funeral of Eldon Miller was a decent crowd, 143 people showed, but by the time the procession reached the cemetery for the burial, only 18 remained, including the pastor, pall bearers, his daughter by his first marriage, and a few of his old ex-co-workers. And one person none of the others recognized.

So I used "The sun was shining that Saturday." When I started the paragaph, I knew I was going to have it be the funeral of  some guy (Eldon), but I didn't know I'd toss in the pall bearers or Mystery Person until I did. So where does it go? Anywhere. I could go with Eldon, or Mystery Person, or the daughter, or... how old was this guy? The daughter? By this time though, you should be unclogged and able to get to what you want.

Let us write

I've been told the act of writing depends on the act of doing so (and based on my blog, I obviously haven't). So, I bookmark here and write today and do some more the day after. And the day after that.

Why? Don't I have anything better to do? No, I don't, and if you go read the thing before this about pain, you'd get an idea why.

Right, I'm planning to do longer bits than this, but I'm a combination of frazzled and exhausted stacked on a constant 4 on the pain scale (you wrenched your ankle, not quite sprained but not good, and have to walk two miles on it), and I'm flat outta gas.

Tomorrow.

Pain

I’m deliberately NOT editing this because I want it to be as stream of conciousness as I can type.  This is about pain, so if you don’t want to read it, stop.  I’m also likely to swear, a lot, so be prepared.

A friend of mine who recently had a heart attack described chronic pain this way.  It hurts.  Always.  “Hi, how ya doin?” “Pretty good” (hurts). “Have a good night?” “Not too bad,” (still hurts). Take a shower?  Hurts. Laundry?  Hurts.  Watching TV. Hurts.

And that’s a good way to describe it, but doesn’t get at the heart. Get a hammer.  Now from an inch, drop it on the back of your hand. Do it again. And again. Again. Again. Again. Again. By now your hand should hurt like hell even though no real damage has been done.  Those last couple of drops you’d be saying fuck this.

You get to stop dropping the hammer.

That’s it in a nutshell. Something is going wrong for us, that fortunately isn’t going wrong for you. And so I’m on so many painkillers I lose track of them (this is what my emergency box is for, it’s got the second line drugs in there, and I made damn sure I kept it below daily OD for any of them).

What did I use to be able to do?  Do this coherently (Ithink I’m doing ok), bike, ruhn, play golf, play catch, That’s the physical side, the mental side, I could tell you what I did yesterday.  Now I don’t have a clue. I could read books and talk about them.  Now I barely remember picking them up, and when I do, I have to read the same section repeatedly so I can remember what’s going on, and I don’t.

Nearly every day I’m in so much pain at some point I’m in tears. Most days I ask myself why haven’t I killed myself. Yet. Now none of that makes sense.

Go back to the hammer.  The hammer is still dropping.  It will be half an hour from now, it was half an hour ago.

I can’t eat. The pain makes me constantly nauseous. Guys will understand this one, mostly of them anyway.  Most guys have been racked badly enough they want to puke.  I don’t get racked, but have puked, not ffelt like it, puked. It doesn’t help.

The hammer is still dropping.

For some people, there’s something actively wrong. A bone that never healed right. Arthitis for something simple, ubt where that will make you wince and drop thijngs and really hurt, it’s something you can do something with.  A pinched nerve in the spine, a slipped disc, hey here’s one!  Toothache!  That one is going and going until you get to the dentist and he does something.

For some of us, it’s not something you’ll see.  I’ve got MS, and for me, there are all kinds of things going on (see before) but the big one is murderous pain.  I’m not killed about that one, when the lillte hammer which is still dropping, get traded for THE BIG HAMMER, the 16 poudn sledge getting dropped from three feet over and over, you hand me a button and say:

If you presss that button it will stop your pai… no, you have to wait for me to finish, stop pressing the button! (ahhh… it worked) Fuck! What’d he just do?

Sir? Bakerfield California is reporting a mass casualty event.

Shit. What I was going to tell you was, press that button and the pain stops, but it kills 100 people every time you press it.  How many times did he press it?

Sir? We’re not sure, after the 42^nd press he was hitting it so hard our tracking software stopped registering. He broke the sensor.

Well do you feel bad about killing Bakersfield?”

After the fact, yeah, I’m sure I would.

The hammer is still dropping. I’m glad it’s not the big one.

Reasonably Pissed.

So I made the mistake of going to take a look at RedState (if you're reading this don't, you'll want to go shoot some crackers), and here's what I found.

"Darrell Issa gets clever against SOPA, Internet Sales Tax Looms" First, us liberal HATE SOPA, we're also not a fan of the Internet Sales Tax. Gee, we agree with the loonies, but no we don't. They don't like it because they're talking sales tax. We don't like it because of 1st and 4th Amendment issues. We'll agree on hating it, but so far as why, you're brick stupid.

"Why is Ron Paul Allowed to Continue Participating in Debates?" Are you imbeciles fucking serious? It's because he has 25% support from you assholes. Do us a favor and go shoot yourselves.

Who are the Democratic gun-grabbers in the US Senate? Let's find out!" Having been too damn close to a mass killing, I'd be right there with the gun grabbers. Someone pulls a gun? Let's make it so EVERYONE is packing heat. Well done you morons, you've recreated the movie version of the wild west. which didn't even happen in the actual wild west. Save us the trouble and again, go shoot yourselves.

"The Choice" OOOOhhhh, big government vs small government. See the second paragraph prior where you were inveighing against the only guy actually talking smaller government. You're stealing oxygen, go shoot yourselves.

"The 2012 Elec..." Oh lets get real. You're less than worthless drains on society and we'd be better off if you walked to the middle of I80 and shot yourselves. Yes, you'd cause a traffic jam and slow down transit, but who gives a shit? What you're doing to the country now is even worse. Fine the trucks are stopped for a day, but you're not screwing this up daily for the next 5 years? I can live with that. Honestly? Me and the 300 million people in this country who think you're full of crap would all do so.

The Economy: A Worst Case Scenario

I have a few questions for the GOP and their followers.

When has a tax cut created jobs, and when has a tax increase killed them?

When you force the government into a budget lock, and there are TRILLIONS of dollars held by private citizens, what do you think the markets are going to do when people can't cash that paper?

When the securities industry downgrades the rating of that paper, and the Social Security Administration is forced to sell it because it can't hold it (by law) what will happen? That's more that a trillion dollars hitting the bond market in one shot.


There will not be a deal on the debt ceiling. John Boehner doesn't have control over his own party in the house, and no one can control people like Rand Paul who can block everything in the Senate, so this is dead and buried. That said, here are my expectations for the next few weeks.

The Dow is currently around 12,6-7. By Thursday it will be around 11,2 and Friday, as people look forward to the week to come, with still no deal in sight, the wheels will come all the way off. By 10:30 Friday morning it will have dropped 500 points, triggering the safety system, giving about a 10-15 minute break, then it will continue to plummet dropping another 1000 or more as people try to get out and protect their money. The problem is, the normal fallbacks will fail. The bond market will be crashing even harder and faster, no one wants to hold them when they can't be liquidated, so that will make a run on precious metals.

Over the weekend, the GOP and Fox will be blaming the Democrats for not listening to them (that part is true, they're not listening, but they shouldn't be) and the Democrats will be blaming the Republicans for blocking everything and driving the country off a cliff (also entirely true).

Black Monday. The markets open and everyone wants out. They don't want to trade, they want cash. Everyone is selling, no one is buying, and the markets close at noon having lost another 2000 points. Full scale panic. People are debating if they should stay closed on Tuesday.

Black Tuesday. 1-800-RUN takes over. The markets are not going to open until 10am after the debacle the day before and some of the hardest hit are the banks. They're all players in the financial markets, so they took an absolute beating on Friday and Monday, and people who don't pay attention and just caught this coming home from work Monday night all stop by the bank to get out some cash. Except the ATMs are all empty and the tellers don't have any either. Bank of America, never the most stable institution, calls the FDIC for help.

Which is too bad, because BoA is bigger than the FDIC, and before they can even cover BoA, the FDIC is wiped out. Now the panic is real. The biggest bank in the country, maybe the world, just went belly up. The panic spreads to other banks and like a cascade of dominoes, banks nationwide close their doors.

Tuesday night on the talking box, everyone is collectively crapping their pants. No one knows what's going on, over on Fox News, they're still blaming the Democrats and still talking about getting a debt ceiling deal done if the White House just does what they're asking. Over on CNN, they're showing pictures from Atlanta of a supermarket on fire after things got out of hand. MSNBC is showing the same thing from a Wal-Mart in Kansas City, but that one isn't on fire, it was a shootout because someone thought conceal-carry was a good idea, and since everyone is scared, everyone with the ability to carry, was. When the first person flew off the handle and pulled his gun, so did everyone else.

Bloody Wednesday. After the disasters the day before, there's a new run. Not on the banks, they're still closed, and not on the stock market, that's flushed and gone down the sewer, the guys at Goldman Sachs looking around wondering what the hell happened, but everyone's IRA and 401k just went up in smoke (not theirs, they made money on every sale). Wednesday, the run is at the grocery stores. People are trying to stock up, but like the day before, in too many places, things get weird. LA, Detroit, Memphis and Philadelphia burn after arguments turn to fights then brawls then full blown riots. There are similar stories coast to coast. At the close of business, most stores are bare. The President says he'll address the country Thursday but it's far too late. The banks are done, the stores are empty, the markets are toast, the economy worldwide is in complete free fall, and no one has a parachute.

It's 1929, only worse. 78 years ago, there wasn't a "technology industry" that completely depends on things working in other areas. When all of those lock up, that whole world closes. I might be off by two weeks, when there isn't a deal and the SSA forced bond sale makes it all happen, but there's your destination.

A Note on the "Conversation" at the University of Iowa

A few days ago I became aware of a situation at my alma mater, noted here. A member of the Women's Studies faculty sent a response to an email from the College Republicans touting "Conservative Coming Out Week" that consisted of three words. "FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANS."

That's quite an angry response, and would seem to be either a very poor decision or something close. So I went looking for the email that prompted this. That took a bit more doing, but it can be found here.

Conservatives "coming out?" Yes, that's going to piss off a person in women's studies, especially one part of the Society of Gay and Lesbian Anthropologists. Co-opting part of their lexicon, when your group is the one blocking the Matthew Sheppard law and trying to impeach the State Supreme Court because they said blocking gay marriage unconstitutional in Iowa, isn't going to endear you. Having a movie in honor of W isn't going to help either. Giving out doctor's notes supporting the governor's side of the Madison protests is another bad move, but capping it off with an "Animal Rights BBQ?" Well now you're veering well off into the exact territory of her response.

The courts have a term for this, it's called fighting words. While the Republicans are right, what they did is "protected speech," that does not mean they are free from response. By that standard, Professor Lewin was dead on, and if the University takes action against Professor Lewin, then they are the ones stifling speech.

The Republicans did something designed to provoke and all they got was a three word email. That they then have the temerity to start screaming it was inappropriate, when they're the ones who complain about "political correctness," is hypocritical at best. Fuck you, Republicans.

A Note on Puff Pieces

As it states in the general topic heading, I said I would do the occasional puff piece on movies or good meals. Unfortunately, I haven't been to a movie in a year or out for a good meal in even longer. I haven't been been able to afford one since the GOP and their litany of supply side lies and deregulation horseshit crashed the economy.

And I was one of the lucky ones and didn't get laid off.

Not A Damned Dime!

It seems the White House thinks the "deal" is a good one. It is nothing of the sort. In order to get a few random members of the disloyal opposition on board, the deal guts what the rich pay, and manages to increase what the poor pay.

Mr. President, for someone who has such a way with words, you don't seem to know jack shit about numbers, and the clowns you have surrounded yourself with show their knowledge every time they bend over, a gaping nothingness.

But since you do seem to understand politics, let me try this on you. This pile of dung will increase the deficit. There's no question there. So in two years, it will be presidential season again, and they will be back screaming about no jobs, no jobs, no jobs, taxes, taxes, taxes and deficits, deficits, deficits. And they will be laying the blame for that on you, and they will point to this bill, with its tax cuts about to expire as proof you don't care about any of it. And you're trying to push this pile of crap? What are you? A complete fucking moron?

The next two years are going to be complete and utter paralysis. In your State of the Union speech you should tell the country the truth, that the GOP is the Sheriff of Nottingham, and are doing all they can to steal from the poor to give to the rich. That the state of the Government is a complete damn shambles, and if anyone anywhere thinks their government is going to do a damn thing, they're wrong because nothing is going to get through Congress.

No, this plan should die, and should do so immediately. The GOP has taken the nation hostage for their delusions and are doing their absolute best to turn this nation into a kleptocracy. You cannot make deals with them, and that you made this deal and were blindsided the next day by them should have showed you that.

The story you're in is "The Dog and the Scorpion" and they're not the dog.

And Now a Note for Todd Akin (language)

Last week, Mr. Akin said a few things, and I think they need to be commented on.

"It might be helpful to think back and say, there’s more to Thanksgiving than the Pilgrims."
Yeah, like how if the indians didn't come and bail their asses out they would have starved to death (or at least been an earlier version of the Donner party).

"They were a group of people who were willing to change the system, to think of different ideas. They came here and separated civil and church governments."
Really? Seems to me their civil and church governments were pretty much one and the same, they just didn't like the one in England because they were stick up their butts Puritans and the English had their own church. They didn't separate anything, and if the indians didn't bail them out, we might remember them along with Jim Jones and David Koresh as just another failed cult (if we remembered them at all).

"They came here and created the model of a written constitution, the idea that the government should be the servant of the people."
Uh, no. They did nothing of the sort. That's why, Willaims split from them and founded Providence. To be really blunt about it, the Puritans were such a bunch of assholes that they'd moved for a while to Amsterdam and not even the Dutch could stand them.

"They came here with the idea that after trying socialism that it wasn’t going to work. They realized that it was unbiblical, that it was a form of theft, so they pitched socialism out. They learned that in the early 1620’s."
Wait, what??? Socialism? In feudal England? In the England of King James? Did you fail high school American history, cut class, or are you just this stupid?
One, no socialism in England than. None. Zero.
Two, "socialism" in the form of the indians bailing them out is the only reason they lived to see 1621.
Three, have you been reading "Supply Side Jesus" again, because I'm pretty sure what you're talking about ain't in the King James Bible.

Mr. Akin, RESIGN. I can understand misstating or not knowing everything, but we're talking about BASIC US HISTORY and you're so far off the mark you wouldn't get out of the class. What's next? Next week you're going to give a speech about how we didn't give up when the Russians bombed Pearl Harbor?

A Note for John McCain.

Today, the man from Arizona said, "We think they're mature enough to fight and die. I think they're mature enough to make a judgment on who they want to serve with and the impact on their battle effectiveness."

That sir, is the same argument used to keep blacks, hispanics and jews out of units. Now I don't think the senator has a secret flap in the back of his closet where he stores the white robes with the pointy hat, that would be politically unwise. A few more statements like this though, and they may give him an honorary one.