Dakota Today

*** John Edwards

At one time I was very interested in John Edwards as a presidential candidate even if I believed Dr. Howard Dean was the best candidate for several election cycles.  Edwards was certainly aware of the problems facing the unrich and probably generated fear in the hearts of those with obscene profits in their pockets.  Unfortunately, Edwards could not keep his own pants on and got into an unfortunate and disgusting entanglement..not with his wife.

Despite that, I have never believed that his disgusting personal behavior was justification for a government political prosecution campaign that required something like 40 government lawyers diverted from anything important to scratch in the dirt as if looking for cat shit.  This has been a tremendous waste of taxpayers money.  It seemed unwarranted from day one, but after Citizen's United SCOTUS decision it seemed ever more insignificant and inappropriate.

Money contributed to Edwards campaign and also given to him for personal uses pales into insignificance and never influenced legislation or government policy unlike the $400,000,000 or so that insurance, fossil fuels, and financial interests have kicked under the doors of our Congress critters.  Ruth Marcus hits this nail squarely on the head.

Ruth Marcus "Is John Edwards a criminal? May 15 Washington Post

Another writer writer believes the prosecution springs from Puritanism inappropriately injected into governance.  John Edwards, Victim of Political Puritanism USA Today--Dwayne Wickham

I suspect all of the above might be factors, but also believe that John Edwards was viewed as a serious threat to the very, very rich and their tax breaks and slop trough of federal money.  His fall from virtue has been a good excuse for making his life hell and threatening him with prison for something that was never intended to be covered by campaign contribution restrictions.

I have little remaining respect for Edwards as a man or a politician, but I also do not believe his indescretion warrants the equivalent of  burning at the stake by zealous lawyers doing the work the big corporations could not do. Communication companies amplified Howard Dean's scream into a reason to keep him from raining on their parade, but that is another story.

*** Stay tuned even if Edwards always seemed just a bit too smooth to you--- Doug Wiken

 

*** Bile and snake excrement

PBS and SDPB-TV have broadcast a program on Bill Clinton and his enemies.  So good to see Ken Starr and that collection of partisan snake excrement again.  Makes it easy to solidify my belief that Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr and the rest of the hypocrites will be howling in the wilderness for the rest of their unnatural lives.  Those SOBs get my bile boiling again.

Even if Clinton's sexually-challenged eithics pissed me off to no end, his enemies made and still make him look good by comparison.  No doubt more on this later when I watch this again.

*** Stay tuned even if Newt Gingrich lights your fire---- Doug Wiken

 

*** Consistency for the GOP Tax Cutters

We keep hearing the GOP mythology about cutting taxes to increase tax revenue. We got a dose of that nonsense on ABC this morning from Carly Fiorina and George Will.  Paul Krugman made them look mighty silly. But, if they think that their tax mythology is such a good idea, they could save the Post Office by forcing it to reduce postage rates..and while they are at it, return to Nixonian price controls and force pricing cutting in order to increase sales tax revenues..

Ok, that was a friend's funny point.  Both he and I are aware of the apples and oranges mixtures of elasticity and inelasticity in consumer demand and compared with the liquidity "elasticity" of the very, very rich.  They want more, more, and more even if they just sit on it or spend all day counting it or finding ways to dump it out of the country and our tax system.  See Mitt Romney for examples of that.

While we are wasting away in Mitt Romney Ville, we might also consider their perspective on entitlements for the unrich, and their perspective on government largesse entitlements  for the rich and their plutocrat pandering congress critters.

*** Stay tuned even if you have switched all your reading and mailing to pixels--- Doug Wiken

 

*** More Noemsense. Kristi goes 1 hour with students and.....

The Mitchell Daily Republic has a front-page story on US Congressman Kristi Noem giving a short speech and answering  student questions at Chamberlain for about an hour. For a day or two, the story may be found here MDR Noem says Congress Broken

The actual double headline in the snail mail version of the paper was titled: ' I feel there's a lack of respect for the process' and Noem tells of finding her way in Washington.

After reading the story, I don't think it is inappropriate to wonder if Noem could find her own butt in the dark with a flashlight. She can't give a speech and answer questions without being internally inconsistent or irrelevant.  But first, she tells us how little gets accomplished in Washington and that her "biggest challenge was figuring out how I was going to get anything done".  Later on, it appears she still doesn't know how to get anything done beyond playing partisan games for headlines.  Her gettin it done appears to be her nonsense legislation to prevent regulation of farm dust..which nobody has any intentions of regulating. She said in general, Congress appears to be ruled by "chaos" and there is no real discussion and she "thinks we're undisciplined".

After fussing about "chaos", she answers student questions suggesting that the way to fix Congress is to get more turnover in Congress.  I think it is fair to suggest to Noem that much of the chaos in Congress is due to the freshman TEA party obstructionists wedded to irrelevant mythology.

Right after discussing her silly farm dust bill which is really a protect the miners from responsibility for poisonous or dangerous dust bill, she indicates that even though it was passed in the House, it likely would not get through the Senate and if it did would be vetoed by President Obama.   She then suggests that Congress should be more like the South Dakota legislature where every bill gets a hearing in a transparent process. (We might note that some rebel Republicans in the legislature are not convinced of that).  Then she says that "If everybody knew their bill was going to get a hearing, things would change a lot in Washington."...because a lot of bills would never be introduced then.  We might wonder about her fairly dust bill and what category of non-existence into which it would fit.

And then in a claim that should bring tears to nearly everybody, she says that she loves to get home to visit her family and South Dakota (OK so far).  Then she says that talking to people in the grocery store, at the gas station, and in church, she claims people "struggling with regulations" talk to her and keep her grounded.  She says she thus keeps focused on government spending and waste.

Frankly, I have yet to hear anybody in South Dakota discussing any serious problems with regulations in everyday conversation.  Noem must live in a very peculiar neighborhood.

Noem then talks about privatizing Social Security but noting that her plan would not apply to anybody already 55 years or older.  Whew, that is so reassuring...but also indicates her idea is total nonsense or those of us getting SS would be flocking to change our registrations and sending money by the truckload to Noem for her next campaign.

Then, a Congress person who has probably never voted for a single job creation bill or worked in anyway to prevent job loss says that "the best way to lower the poverty rate is to get everybody a job."  Yah, you bettcha.  banks and investors are awash in liquidity and aren't loaning money to do anything to increase jobs.  What does she think will turn around the lemmings in the bank and broker system.  My guess is less regulation of the buccaneer bankers and the bunko brokers.

Noem can't talk for even an hour without putting together nonsense (Noemsense) and inconsistency and contradiction.  Is it fair to suggest that she is essentially clueless and capable only of parrotting GOP mythology?

*** Stay tuned, even Noemsense will pass, but perhaps not soon enough--- Doug Wiken. 

*** Earthly confluence

Really not much of a confluence, but somewhat interesting anyway.  This morning I got an Esquire magazine and read the politics column on page 80 of the May issue. The conclusion of the article laid heavy responsibility on Democrats to save the country from current GOP insanity.

The Democratic party has an obligation to beat the Republican party so badly, over and over again, that rationality once again becomes a quality to be desired. It must be done by persuading the country of this simple fact. It cannot be done by reasoning with the Republicans, because the next two generations of them are too far gone. The state legislators now passing all manner of crazy laws represent the next generation of national Republican leaders. They are proudly unknowing. They are certain, because it is impossible.

Read the whole column here Esquire Democrats' Duty: Bring Back the GOP from Crazy by Charles P. Pierce.  Of course I like that because I have probably written something too similar for several years..only more in the injunction form of "Send the GOP howling in the Wilderness for the next 50 years.".

And, Pierce wrote a paragraph that fit right in with PBS  "Earth: The Operator's Manual today on SDPB-TV

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels, has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to survive what we wrought upon ourselves. It is now impossible to become an elected Republican politician in this country if, for example, you believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that exists behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Just recently, birth control, an issue most people thought pretty well had been settled in the 1960s, became yet another litmus test for Republican candidates, as did the Keystone XL pipeline, to which every Republican presidential candidate pledged unyielding fealty despite the fact that several prairie Republicans and an army of conservative farmers and ranchers are scared to death of the thing. ( And another link not in above text to Pierce concerning unnecessary voter ID restrictions. )

The PBS "Earth Manual" seemed at least to make a rather scientific case that man-made factors have greatly influenced our climate..which Pierce calls "The concept of anthropogenic global warming".   Buy the DVD at PBS Store.

Years ago in another context, the slogan was "Stop the Insanity".  That phrase applies well to the current collection of retrograde Republicans including John Thune, Kristi Noem, Willard "Mitt" Romney, Sarah Palin, ...oh, and sadly the list could go on and on.

The current GOP party view of their ideal American can be summed up by "Government of the Patriots, by the theocrats and hack Mythologists, and for the Plutocrats.".

Sorry (well not really) if this did not meet your high standards for "confluence".

*** Stay tuned. There is enough GOP insanity to write a modern bible--- Doug Wiken

 

 

 

*** The new guns and butter debate

[[[ Note of April 18, 2012.  John, ever vigilant, noted a serious error in my math regarding the Romney fortune.  My per second calculated income is off by a factor of 60.  The aprox "$40 per second" should be "$40 per minute" instead.  Actual per second income would be something like "67 cents per second" before taxes.  Thanks John, and I hope that nobody has used those erroneous numbers in a way that might embarass them as much as I am. The entry is corrected below-- Doug Wiken ]]]]

Hillary Rosen makes a too broad statement without a necessary qualifier for those unable to grasp her actual intent and the GOP mighty Wurlitzer mythology mill goes ballistic.  Democrats run like rabbits aiding the GOP misinterpretation of Rosen.  Obama says what the hell, let's toss Hillary Rosen under the bus and the campaigns roll along.

The national GOP and the intentioanlly blind, reality-deprived South Dakota Republicans following them have so few actual issues they fire up another pseudo issue...Hillary Rosen deprecates working women..who mostly work both in home and out of home. Did she really do that?

What Hillary Rosen was trying so inelegantly to say was that Ann Romney has no experience remotely like that of most working women.  Ann Romney says she "made a choice to stay home and do the hard work of raising 5 boys."  The problem with that is not the hard work, but that she actually had to made a choice. She did not have to make a choice. 

Most women working also have not been able to make a choice.  They have one choice-- work in their home raising a family and work outside their home as well so they can stay alive.  South Dakota has one of the highest percentages of working women in the US. 

Just a few minutes ago (10:35 PM CDT, Monday April 16, 2012), Romney and Ann were on ABC-TV answering questions about this tempest in a teacup..or A,B, C cup for that matter.  Ann Romney said she was thrilled to be discussing this issue which she then defined as women being interested in the deficit.  That is interesting spin that again indicates their total disconnect from the real world.

Remember that Romney is getting $57,000 per day from investments.  That is about $2375 per hour or about forty bucks per minute or 67 cents per second (note the correction).  Three minutes elapse and Ann Romney has enough money to buy family groceries for a week or two.  That is not the situation for 99.99 percent of the population including both men and women.  The only choice Ann Romney has to make is not between working inside the home and outside the home or just inside the home, it is more like how much caviar they should order.

And, what are those GOP congress critters doing about all this?  Well, they are pandering to the NRA and the corporations behind ALEC and the TEA party.  These GOP congress critters have their and your priorities turned upside down. Here is the new guns and butter question: do you need a concealed weapon to get your groceries, or do you need fair pay for your work in order to keep your family fed and clothed? 

Will cutting taxes on the 0.01 percent of the very richest make your life better or just increase the deficit that really, really, really  concerns housewife Ann Romney every time she fries an egg or washes a plate?  Do you smell the stink of class warfare when you hear Obama discuss the "Buffet rule", or do you smell it when you hear GOP laying seige on the middle class and advocating  for corporations, buccaneering bankers, and bunko brokers claiming the richest one percent should not pay taxes because they stimulate they economy.?.  And just to make that side clear, poor undeseriving people should never, ever have any valid reason to envy the very, very rich or question the social inequality..

*** Stay tuned even if groceries or health care are never concerns of yours--- Doug Wiken

 

 

*** Reality bites SCOTUS conservatives and the healthcare only for the rich mythology

Paul Begala has been a Democratic operative of some variety and now writes a politics column for Newsweek magazine.  In the April 9, 2012 issue he dumps in an interesting fact in a column which argues that "the Founding Fathers lived in the real world, not the rarefied world of bloodless abstractions preferred by the court's right-wing majority."  Begala might better have used "factless mythology" than "abstractions".

But here is the fact. A woman named Mary Brown, who was a small businesswoman, filed the initial lawsuit asserting her right not to buy health insurance which has turned into a case for the SCOTUS as Karen Harned, of the NFIB legal center, said two years ago when NFIB filed the lawsuit on Brown's behalf.  But, Brown is no longer named as a plaintiff.

Why drop Mary Brown from the suit?  Well she got very sick.  The bills rolled in.  Without health insurance, she went bankrupt.  She had to shutdown her auto-repair shop.  She stiffed her doctors and hospital leaving her uncovered bills for those of us who pick up the tab for the parasites who generate uncompensated care bills.  Begala says that  such freeriders or freeloaders tack on about $1,017 per year to your health insurance costs if you are responsible and do your best to cover your own health care by buying health insurance.

Showing his disconnect from the real world, Justice Alito (Who collects about $213,000 each year from taxpayers) said, A thousand bucks a year "is a very small part of what the mandate is doing".  There are two obvious problems with that. For many of us, making a $1000 gift each year to freeloaders is a big aggravation added to the fact we pay the most in the world for less than the best medical system.  The other problem with that statement is that the mandate is not doing anything.  It has not happened yet.  The court is meddling in a premptive war against the middle class as misplaced and arrogantly ignorant as another premptive war that sent our military on a fool's errand chasing non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Read Begala's original article to increase your blood pressure a bit more. A similar perspective is available at Truthdig.com by Editor Robert Scheer March 29, 20112

Scheer's column was also in the Rapid City Journal snail mail version Tuesday April 3, 2012 Opinion page A5.

As indicated by both these columns, we and Barack Obama would have been better off with the Medicare for all option pushed months ago by George McGovern.  McGovern has more foresight than a couple hundred Repubican retrogressives spewing mythology.

** Stay tuned, but don't try to use as a tax deduction $1,027 of your health insurance premiums as a donation to the poor--- Doug Wiken

 

*** A liberal, moderate, conservative walk into a bar.....

Time magazine put in a joke this week that is both funny and telling.

A moderate, a liberal, and a conservative walk into a bar.

The bartender says, ”Hello Mitt.”

An older description of Romney by another candidate, “Romney is a well-oiled weather vane.”

And close enough to April Fool's day, Dick Cheney gets a new heart.  He wanted a heart from a woman so he could feel closer to his gay daughter.  The real Cheney legacy won't be known until the proceedings of his secret White House energy group are released.  It is bad enough as it is, but is likely to get worse.  I doubt he will visit any country outside the US.

Well, I better quit typing. Gotta get my dog off the top of the car.

*** About that crushed ice

SDPB2 is running Nova-- Extreme Ice.  It concerns attempts to scientifically measure the melting of arctic ice. 

Got me thinking that we are burning fossil fuels which generate  waste products which may be  factors in the arctic and antarctic ice melting so that we can generate electricity used to  keep food cold and make ice cubes and crushed ice.  Some kind of irony someplace in that.

Also a bit ironical is that politicians in bed with the fossil fuels industries claim to be "conservatives" but may in fact be part of wasting our earth and environment.

Today however we are using some of those fossil fuels to keep warm.  A chilly rain and fog perhaps have turned unseasonably warm into nearly normal weather.

And irony of ironies, I just heard US Rep. John Boehner attacking Obama for not approving the whole XL Pipeline.  Boehner thinks it will lessen our dependence on "foreign" oil.  Canada better watch out.  Another Republican president may decide to attack Canada and make that oil non-foreign.   You can also check another post here with refers to the Bloomberg business news story indicating that the real purpose of the XL pipeline is to raise the price of midwest gasoline 10 to 20 cents a gallon since there is already "a glut of oil" in the midwest (defined there ast the area from Chicago to Denver and north apparently).

Check on how many gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel you burn in a year and add 20 cents a gallon.   That price increase for even only all South Dakotans will make the property tax likely to result from the construction of the XL Pipeline a pittance by comparision.

Just on the oil proposed to move through the XL pipeline, the extra profit would amount to 40 cents per gallon of crude oil on 42 gallons times 830,000 barrels of oil per day or about $11 or $12 million extra profit per day.  Did you really think that Boehner would actually support anything that reduced profits of big oil?

*** Stay tuned even if you could care less if coastal California and most of Florida end up under water--- Doug Wiken

 

 

*** We get letters....From Rep. Noem

Not that we are special or anything, but we got a letter from US Rep Noem.  Of course, I suspect practically everybody in SD gets these...at least anybody in that "Senior" category. This one asks, "1.Do you agree with the House plan to save Medicare that Rep. Noems supports?"

Noem is reassuring those of us old enough to qualify for Medicare, Medicade, and Social Security that the GOP has no intention of destroying these programs for those of us already in the programs, but, if you are younger, watch out.  The GOP plan is to convert these programs to private enterprise to provide "competition" to drive down costs.  These new systems are supposed to be "guaranteed".

Now, I do wonder how guaranteed anything that depends on free enterprise and insurance, bank, or brokerage outfits can possibly be.guaranteed.  Even though the Obama Administration has managed to get us out of much of the Bush broken bubble big hole, we should not forget that too soon.  Congress in its infinitely finite bought-and-paid-for attitude has failed to produce anything close to replacing the Glass-Steagall Act.  

GOP retrograde obstruction has actually prevented real reform or even regression back to a better form of regulation.   Do we want a guarantee from a private form of Medicare.  Do we want our government to guarantee some more "interesting" investment/insurance schemes?

So, perhaps to surprice nobody, I am suggesting that if you got one of these letters from Noem and it has a card you can use to reply to her question, checkl her "NO" option.  Give her a short comment to let her know you are not at all interested in giving your OK to another form of failed GOP mythology that fits with their obstructionist failed ideology and contempt for the same government that provides our congress critters with very cheap very good health insurance.

Start thinking seriously about sending Noem and fellow "trickle-down" Goppers back howling in the wilderness.....for the next 40 years.

They seem separated from reality by their own divide and conquer ideological, theocratic issues.  It is time Rep. Noem and fellows get a serious dose of serious reality.

*** Stay tuned, but take time to send Rep. Noem a message--- Doug Wiken