Putting Money Where My Mouth Is...

I finally signed up with ActBlue.  There are Republican alternatives, most notably RedSlate.  Looking at RedSlate's list, it's not likely I'll be sending money that way, but you never know.

Right now all I've got is a recurring $10/month donation to an as yet unnamed Democratic candidate against Randy Neugebauer.

Not much, but it's a start.

Lemme get out my violin...

"There is fury...Absolute fury."

This is in regards to Executive Order #13490* (up from 13476), which an order that "bars anyone appointed by the President who has been a federally-registered lobbyist within the past two years from working on particular matters or in the specific areas in which they lobbied or from serving in agencies they had lobbied."

Pity poor K street, which for the last 8 years, had been pretty much given free rein over all aspects of the legislative and executive processes. 

I'm not shedding any tears. The less lobbyists have to do with government, the better. 

Now the big problem is this. The CQ article mentioned that small businesses and groups wouldn't be able to afford to staff the lobbying firms and the panels.  So the panels aren't going away, and big business will have the same if not more access to lawmakers. 

My answer is to ban lobbyists alltogether, but that may be a little too much fire applied to the forrest. 


*signed waaay back in January.

My Hero

I first caught Eddie Izzard on late night HBO.  They were showing "Dress to Kill" and I just about died laughing.  Now I have almost all of his DVDs and some audio from his earlier days.

Recently I saw a headling on Fark regarding him running for political office.  I thought, "but what can he do here?  We've already got the Governator".

Turns out he was on a listening gig in his home district to try to become a Member of Parliament - the EU, to be precise.

He's always been a fan of countries and peoples getting together.  I'm sure it's from his background: born in Yemen, lived in Wales, Ireland, and five or six other places.  He's learned other languages in order to do his gig in the native language of whatever country he's in. 

He's also got strong opinions on poverty:

I believe in a level playing field for humanity. If I could tell the politicians one thing, it would be: drop the debt. Nigeria borrowed £5bn, it's paid back £16bn, and it still owes £32bn. That's not debt, that's loan sharking.

So here's to Eddie Izzard.  May all your dreams come true.

Eddie's marathon site
 
News about the marathon:
start
finish

Checking out that Tea B*gger thing...

Man, c-span, you used to be cool. What is it with this awful internet feed?

I loves me some Ray Charles

Looking at the signs: "Less Taxes! More Freedom!"  Well, that might as well read: "Less Services! More Chaos!"

Ha!    "Should you trust the government? Ask an Indian!"

"End the Federal Reserve" and then what?

Wow, already? "Impeach Obama?" He just got here!  Give him some time to really screw up!

Don't know who's speaking now, (James Anderer, Linderhust New York) talking about bankruptcy and oh - his chrysler dealerships being 'stolen' and given to another.  Corporate politics and a compliant government.  "I am an angry american"

Invoking the Founding Fathren, and call & response. 

Obama wants to pass all these changes before we wake up and understand what he's done.

Amens and shouts from the crowd.

Oh no! Our taxes are so high, it's destroying our way of life!  Reps represent special interest groups who give them money! NO! REALLY? You've been too busy making a living and raising your kids to pay attention to this?  I call bullshit.  My parents made aliving and paid attention. I'm doing the same.  Screw you.

Yeah, totalitarianism is only good if your guy's doing it, right.  Please.

Hey, you wanna organize, you wanna vote them out, I'm with you.  Just vote for folks who're gonna acutally do campaign finance reform.

"Vote them out! vote them out!"

Wait, what about the terrorits?  What?

Wow! Actual facts about the mortgage/derivative disaster!  And unelected ppl generating the rules.  Well, hey.  Whaddya know?

Dog wistle!  10th amendment!  Drink!  Oh, damn, no alcohol.

Um, this crowd looks kind of sparse.

Professional video by the American TaxPayers Union.  Introducing Andrew Moylan

Ok, I'm seeing titles of "Government Affairs Director" and "Federal State Head" and stuff like this.  There's a lot more money than people involved in this.  Must look these orgs up later.  "FreedomWorks" indeed.

Oh, NOW you're worried about the deficit.  Right.  Welcome to the party.

Huh. "Take your your cellphone right now and call your congressman"  "Na Na Na Hey Hay Hay, Goodbye" cute.  Straight from the Obama playbook.  Nicely done.

Are they singing on their phones? To congresscritters? I can't tell. Stupid c-span feed.

Tea party Patriots - more dog whistle!

Another national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin

Kellen Giuda Park bench Blog Founder
Talking about New York Tea Parties.  I'm not understanding. Oh.  Tea Bagging is not a Fox news thing because punk rockers are talking about tea parties. Mkay.  They may not be running the engine but they sure provided kindling.  And gasoline now, from what I can tell.

Modern pop culture - we're taking it on!  Rolling Stone Magazine!  They're the establishment! we have our own counter culture now!
We need a pop culture base?  Who knew?

Pop culture is dissing you!  Join the pop culture counter revolution! 

Oh! lost kid!  Good on y'all.  Hope he's ok.

More professional video.

High Caliber? The only conservative hip hop artist? Ok.  Oh, sorry, misspelled:  Hi-Caliber

Vince Venom

Are there any right wing extremists in the house today?

Rap shout out to Rick Perry.  Well, who saw that coming! 

Well, that was cute.

Oh, there's more.  My speakers can't make the words intelligible. I'll have to check it out later.

Oh, please. "where's the birth certificate"

Huh, so it's not that the crowd is sparse, but the area directly in front of the stage is kept pretty clear.

Great, parading the troops as human sheilds so you can stand behind them to critize the president.  Everyone supports the damned troops. What most of us DON'T support is stupid wars.

Dog whistle "blood and treasure"

Hey, I can get behind that "vote out all incumbents" sign

A sign quoting St. Reagan about "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" Except Reagan increased the government, dear.

Checking out trafficland.  I'm not seeing people.  Well ok, people but not crowds.

Deneen Borelli National Center for Public Policy Research, Project 21 Fellow

Oh, again about freedoms being looted by elected officials.  We could have used you eight years ago, dear.

Opposing Obamacare because of principal, not race!  What's the drill? "Pay your taxes? Is Rangel not doing that? Whoops, guess not.  Bad boy

Conyers.  "read the bill". That's your job!  Heh, can't argue with that.

Diane Boxer admires CASTRO!

Waters - nationalize oil companies!

Something about raising the cost of energy so we use less.  CAP & TAX = BALL & CHAIN. Nice meme. I don't buy it, but  I can recognize a good tactic.

Bruce Webster. 
Seldom is liberty lost all at once
Lincoln: america is the last best hope of earth.

Yes, well, again, we could have used you 8 years ago.

Deploying those human sheilds again.

i've got family and had family in the thick of this too. I don't parade them around. Screw you.

"last full measure of devotion" finally remembering you're the party of Lincoln?

Government by the congress?  Fool, it's government of the corporate donors.  Man, I'm gonna be looking up your opensecrets page. Whoops, you're not a pol.  Dude, you're a geek?  Eh, I'll check out your Systems Design stuff, but man, where were you during the Bush years?

On the system design - really? You're just now finding out how laws are written?  I cut my teeth on the "Patriot" Act.  You kind of redeem yourself in part 2.  If you have solutions in Part 3, I'll listen. 

ABC news says 1.5 million people are here.  Hey, you made it*.

ROFLMAO!  TEXT FREEDOM TO ME!  This is going to get you an accurate count?

Well, I've had enough.  Like the peace marches at the conventions, this is mostly harmless. 

I'll pointout: no shock troops, no "freedom areas", no SWAT teams.

Laterz

===========================
*turns out they didn't

Well, now, the game's afoot.

Governer Hair(R-eally, Texas) is sending the Rangers to the border to get "boots on the ground" to deal with the increasing violence.

Well, on the surface that sounds good. El Paso/Juarez, especially, has been getting more violent, though other Texas are running close seconds. But now that the drug trade is emperilling 'legitimate' bizniz, well, we gotta Do Sumpin'.

And here we find that our beloved governor is very good at laying traps. First, he requests 'MOAR PLZ' from National Security - the very government he'd like to secede from. Then, for some reason, it all gets hung up on who's payin' fer it? Really, sir? This is a difficult question? So now he gets to blame Warshington for the delays. Except that, maybe, all this ain't needed, and might even be harmful.

But wait! Let's not analyze this situation with actual facts! We have the Challenger! In this corner, Kay Bailey Hutchison (hereafter to be called "Hutch" because I liked Starsky and Hutch as a wee lass). She's the fightin' Texas Lady, here to save us all from Do Nuthin' Perry.

Well, she too fell into the trap. "she's been in Warshington 16 years and she thinks she's done enough for you?!" was the gist of the response. Oh, dear me. After all she's done for veterans, too.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Gov. Hair has announced this on a national day of "oh, $deity, it's that day again." People are distracted by mourning, remembering, raging, and other such. For reasons that are good, bad, and awful, people are reminded of The Other, and are afraid. So someone finally standing up and appearing to Do Something about Something that Makes Us Afraid is going to score points.

But look at what's happening. Gov. Perry has a very good reason to use the Rangers instead of the National Guard. The Guard could be nationalized and used against him. The Rangers cannot. However expensive, however harmful, whoever dies because of this, it will all be his doing, under his control. He's using the Rangers' well deserved reputation to bolster his own stature: gilt by association.

Not everything that glitters is gold, Governor. We'll be watching

Joe Wilson's War

You don't win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his.

-Gen. Patton

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country.

Gen. Sherman

We really can't keep this up. Joe Wilson has been sacrificed at the altar of partisanship - thrown to the wolves as red meat to distract the masses. He's a sideshow, no more important to the real work of governing the nation than the color of a newscaster's tie.

Let's get back to work, shall we?

How many policiticans does it take to drive a joke off a bridge?

Oh, I have to weep at the sheer number of electrons and pixels that died in the making of this outrage. And by "this outrage" I mean "this fake outrage that the butt of our jokes actually might have laughed at them, now that we know about it".

Go ahead, google "chappaquidick jokes". After the site corrects your spelling, you get multiple tens of thousands of hits of people shocked, yes SHOCKED that he would seek out jokes and maybe even laugh at them. It was if a billion voices cried out the same damn five lines of text and then wouldn't shut up about it.

Now I had a number of feelings and thoughts when I first read about this. The first one was "Well, that's a dumb thing to be coming out now.", then "Jackass move". Then it was, "how do you joke about this thing that is so serious?" I found out quickly enough - after, of course - limiting my searches to articles written before the now infamous Diane Rheme Show*.

http://www.outbursts.org/2006/05/05/kennedy-jokes/

http://web.archive.org/web/20060625220635/http://www.outbursts.org/archive/2005/09/08/chappaquiddick-jokes-never-get-old/

http://garywolff.com/subdir/humor.htm

http://www.thehumorarchives.com/joke/The_Top_15_Rejected_Christmas_Movies

So they're not unheard of, they're definitely not in good taste, but they do exist.

I don't get the impression that this was an every day thing for him. We heard more about his sailings habit the last few days than anything else. His biographer would be in a position to know what he did and didn't think or do with the jokes. I expect a column/apologia from him any day. It probably will just provide more grist for the mill.

And the mill is the story here. This is just what the mad dogs were looking for - something, anything, to counter the near cannonization going on. No matter how many people he helped, no matter how much goodwill he cultivated over the decades, he is to be ignored, demonized, and deemed worthless because, well, simply because.

Other people have done worse. I can think of one president responsible for far more death and dismemberment than Ted Kennedy - Barack Obama. How many soldiers have died since he took office? And he didn't even start it. It was that one.

This is about who owns history, and therefore the future. Anything, anything that can discredit Kennedy or any other target is fair game. Anything that makes someone not be associated with the target will be pulled out, magnified, dissected and made into fat pies for those hungry to see whatever it is they want to see.

We have to know the messenger. We have to know the message. Everyone who has brought messages of hope and progress has been flawed in some way or another. Martin Luther King, Jr. is believed to have been an adulterer. Does that make the struggle for civil rights any less right? M. Scott Peck had a messy private life, but brought millions peace and insights they'd never had, including me. His message isn't any less right because he couldn't always live up to it.

There are more, far more examples. There always will be. The point is to know what you're following, who you're following, and why. Letting spitballs get in the way of a battleship is always a loser.

Let's keep our eyes on the prize.

=================

* I will forever be amused at the right-minded blogosphere taking "liberal" NPR's broadcasting as gospel. "I read that she heard it from someone who accidentally had NPR on!"