Person of the year

Hatred slips through the metal detector

I'm struggling to understand the shooting here in Oregon and in Connecticut, both having occurred within the  span of a week, and I'm also wondering how to deal with them,  as I'm sure you are as well. For once, I am grateful I don't have any school-age children, because I wouldn't know what to say to assure them  that they're in a safe environment when I can't even assure myself of my own safety.  I thought of my brother, his wife and my 8 year-old Goddaughter, and my friend Luke and his 4 yr-old daughter  and friends at work with their school-age children, and my eyes have been watery all day.  That's what makes it really hard. It's the children. The grief and the anger is overwhelming. I'll admit that I have cried a couple times today when no one was around.

Two unimaginable tragedies. Here is a fact: Video cameras, Buzzers on doors, People sitting at desks in the hallways of schools, even metal detectors are not security against an armed attacker. The people maintaining these items could very well be the first victims of the assault. These measures and methods taken by schools are to give an illusion of safety to caring parents and teachers. It is an assurance that schools are seemingly doing something to protect children. None of these measures however, protect children from an armed intruder bent on killing as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. In terms of schools, we must understand the people we refer to are children.

 How do you make sense of the senseless? In my lifetime these tragic attacks have occurred at the college, high school, middle school and now at the elementary school level. Most recently, they also occurred at a movie theater  shopping mall and a political open air, town hall gathering complete with a congresswoman.
The Terrorists of 911 have changed how we all travel today. Measures are taken to prevent weapons being taken aboard planes. Yes we are inconvenienced and many of us complain every time we go through those long lines. We comply, because it is reasonable, and it insures our right and freedom to travel. One imbecilic terrorist made an unsuccessful attempt to use a shoe bomb and today, and every day, any American boarding a plane takes off his/her shoes. We all complain about that, but it is a reasonable sacrifice for safety. The cost of us learning this lesson of reasonableness about safety and security in the air came at a huge price to our country. It took well over 3,000 lives in NYC, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C.

What is the total number of dead children that we need to get to before we can begin discussions to change what we are doing now? Obviously, what we are doing is not working. We need to have a discussion based on facts and not rhetoric. Too many of the facts about guns and their control have been distorted by too many people and a few organizations, well healed with the ability to put out misinformation and propaganda. We need critical thinking skills to sort through all of the BS. We need honesty, clarity and focus. We cannot start from a position stating that “nothing can be done”.  If we ask, how do we prevent another incident where 20 children, ages 5-10, and 8 adults being killed in an elementary school in a matter of minutes. How can an educated civilized culture accept that “nothing can be done” as an answer? If the solution doesn’t begin NOW with US, when will it begin? Is there an actual number of dead children that is a tipping point? More importantly, are my kids going to be in that number? Are yours? I believe in the constitution, and I believe in the Second amendment. I believe that citizens have the right too own guns. I also believe that right comes with a very big responsibility. Not everyone is responsible. Not everyone is mentally stable enough to be held responsible. I believe that we can regulate guns with commonsense laws in consideration of the facts, and not the rhetoric. I believe that reasonable people can look at real facts and come to reasonable conclusions that can lead to reasonable controls. The process however must begin with discussion. That almost never happens after these horrific events. There will be blog posts like this, editorials, documentaries, and maybe a “60 Minutes” segment, but probably no real substantive, focused meaningful discussion to protect kids will ever take place in the political arena. Politicians need to put the right to life for our kids first. The discussions will move to protect the rights of people who may not capable of responsibility to hold in their hands the lives of our children. If not now, when? If not us, who?

Throwback Pic of the week

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama with baby Malia

Well done, America!

Well done America, we choose hope over hate and we showed the world that we would rather build bridges than start wars. This is a victory for equality and doing right by our fellow man. We have showed  what's in our hearts. 

 Republicans, with all their threats to help Wrongney win the election by making it difficult for Democrats to vote, failed miserably. As my mother always says,  God don't like ugly.

 

he said what?---Former FEMA director Michael Brown says New Yorkers should just ‘chill’ over Sandy

Michael Brown is doing a heckuva job – sounding completely tone-deaf on superstorm Sandy.

The former FEMA director, who famously resigned from his role in 2005 over his disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, took the opportunity on Wednesday to tell New Yorkers reeling from the hurricane this week that everyone should just “chill.”

 

“Hurricane Sandy should teach us to be prepared, willing to live without the modern conveniences of elevators, computers and refrigerators,” he wrote in an editorial for Canada’s Globe and Mail. “Hurricane Sandy should teach us all to chill.”

 

It’s the second time in two days that Brown -- better known as “Brownie,” the nickname given to him by George W. Bush – has told city dwellers to relax in the wake of a storm that devastated the East Coast and New York. In New York City the storm caused nearly 2 million people to lose power, 22 were killed, and 100 homes burned to the ground.

 

Brown, who became a household name and punchline when Bush told him “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job,” while he was widely seen to have botched the emergency response to Katrina, first offered his advice in an interview with Fox Business yesterday. 

“People are going to get frustrated – I’d just encourage people to just kind of chill out over this whole situation,” he told host Charles Payne.

 

“When you say chill out – what do you mean when you say chill out?” Payne asked, laughing, to which Brown reiterated that it can take a long time to restore power to certain areas and “If you’re the guy at the end of the line, you’re the guy at the end of the line and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

 

Brown defended his words in his editorial on Wednesday, arguing that New Yorkers need to take the natural disaster as a sign to unwind and learn to live without technology.

 

“Hurricane Sandy proved once again you can’t beat Mother Nature,” he wrote, listing the effects of the massive outages that hit the East Coast. “Seven million people didn’t have access to laptops, microwaves, ATM machines, televisions, forced-air heating, subways and commuter trains, and all the thousands of modern conveniences we have come to depend upon in this hyper-technological society...So I would ask New Yorkers and you: How long can you go without all of those conveniences? A couple of days? A week? Two weeks?”

 

Brown has spent several days weighing in on Sandy, criticizing Obama early this week for responding too quickly to the storm – accusing the President of drawing too much attention to the federal response efforts. 

 

“One thing [Obama]’s going to be asked is, why did he jump on this so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly,” Brown told the Denver Westword on Monday. “My guess is, he wants to get ahead of it – he doesn’t want anybody to accuse him of not being on top of it or not paying attention or playing politics in the middle of it.”

 

The disgraced FEMA chief stood by his comments on Tuesday,telling Politico “In the context of the election, I simply said he should have waited … The storm was still forming, people were debating whether it was going to be as bad as expected, or not, and I noted that the President should have let the governors and mayors deal with the storm until it got closer to hitting the coastal areas along the Washington, D.C.-New York City corridor.”

 

Brown also stated that while agencies like FEMA can provide aid during these kinds of crises, the federal government is not as important as other entities when it comes to disaster response.

 

“State and local governments are, as always, the true first-responders,” he wrote. “So while the President goes to the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to show he’s on top of the situation, governors and mayors are making the real, life-saving, politically difficult decisions: who to evacuate and when.”

 

Obama’s handling to the storm drew praise from Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday, who said at a press conference that the President’s response had been “outstanding.”

  

Meanwhile, a senior Obama campaign aide slammed Brown for his comments on Wednesday in light of his own botched performance during Katrina.

 

“It’s pretty rich coming from somebody who has an abysmal record on management of emergencies,” campaign press secretary Jen Psak told CNN “I think the people of New Jersey, the people of Pennsylvania, the people of Connecticut, where I’m from – my family was evacuated – are happy that the President jumped in and moved quickly in response to this storm.”

--courtesy the ny daily news

 

 The nerve of  The President to respond too quickly to what people have called the storm of the century, Our President can't do anything right.

 

(you can't see me right now, but I'm rolling my eyes)

Imagine this

Mitt Wrongney is President of the United States, and he's debating Barack Obama, and Mr Obama's son  says about Mitt Wrongney what Mitt Wrongney's son said about President Obama. What would be the reaction/response of Fox News and the rest of the Rethug Party?

‘Offensive’ Obama photos pulled from Virginia GOP county committee Facebook page

A tiny Republican Party unit in southside Virginia appears to have given in to state GOP leaders’ demands that it remove “offensive” photos of President Obama from its Facebook page.

R. Wallace “Wally” Hudson, chairman of the Mecklenburg County Republican Committee, had vowed on Tuesday to ignore calls from the Republican Party of Virginia to take down doctored photos portraying Obama as a witch doctor, caveman and thug. He defended the images as harmless spoofs — and as a matter of free speech.
State party Chairman Pat Mullins had strongly condemned the photos, saying that posting them on the unit’s Web site was “unacceptable behavior from any local unit associated with our party.” The matter appeared to be at a stalemate Wednesday, when the pictures remained on the site for most of the day. At some point that day, the witch doctor photo was yanked, but the others were still up.
But by Thursday morning, all of three images had been removed and about 100 new, less controversial images had been added to the site. By afternoon, the site was “temporarily unavailable.”
Hudson and state party officials declined to comment.

--courtesy, The Washington Post

Excuse my french, but fuck freedom of speech. This is some bullshit

Thank you, Supreme Court, I get to keep my job

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling upholding the health care law championed by President Barack Obama reignited an intense debate, with Democrats celebrating millions of Americans getting access to insurance while Republicans railed against what they contend is a dangerous expansion of government.

Thursday's narrow 5-4 ruling was a victory for Obama, causing elation at the White House, according to an administration official.

"Today's decision was a victory for people all over this country whose lives are more secure because of this law," Obama said in a televised White House statement.

 Emotions high after Supreme Court upholds health care law

 As a medical underwriter  for small companies, I get to keep my job!  I'm glad about that!

The President Obama at White House Correspondents Dinner

President Obama: 'If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon'

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

De Niro's first lady remarks draw rebuke: Gingrich insists that Obama apologize

Showbiz figures venturing into presidential politics are getting a reminder that jokes and stray gestures can draw laughs one minute and polarization the next.
Click Here

The latest such figure is Robert De Niro who along with his wife, Grace Hightower, hosted first lady Michelle Obama for a fund-raiser at their Manhattan eatery on Monday evening.
In introductions to the first lady before she addressed the crowd of about 85 people, De Niro quipped, "Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?" According to a pool report from the evening, the line drew a roar of laughs, and De Niro added, "Too soon, right?"

The joke, coming from a figure who's normally reticent in media interviews, drew a sharp rebuke from Newt Gingrich, who has staked part of his campaign on railing against media and Washington elites.

He charged that De Niro's remark was divisive and called on President Obama to apologize.
"What De Niro said last night was inexcusable, and the president should apologize for him. It was at an Obama fund-raiser. It is exactly wrong; it divides the country," Gingrich said, according to CNN.
He also drew a comparison to the flap over Rush Limbaugh's remarks, suggesting that those on the left are quick to criticize conservative figures yet do not do so when it comes to liberals. But he went on to seize on De Niro as an out-of-touch movie star, familiar territory for many Republicans who have long targeted Hollywood's embrace of Democrats. Others who attended all or part of the De Niros' event included Starr Jones, Angela Bassett  and Ben Stiller. Beyonce and Harvey Weinstein also were spotted.

"De Niro is rich enough he probably doesn't notice the price of gasoline," Gingrich said, per CNN. "He's successful enough he probably doesn't notice the unemployment rate. As the Hollywood actor, he might well be shortsighted enough he doesn't understand what it might do to our children and our grandchildren."
A campaign spokeswoman for the first lady called De Niro's joke "inappropriate."
A spokesman for De Niro had no immediate comment.
Last week, Cee Lo performed at a fund-raiser for President Obama in Atlanta and, somewhat humorously, gave the audience the finger. That triggered an entire segment on Sean Hannerty's Fox News show in which commentators talked of how appropriate that was for a performance where the president was appearing.
It won't be the last time a showbiz figure steps into the partisan fray, particularly as Obama's campaign taps entertainment figures to draw crowds at fund-raisers and campaign appearances. One co-chair of his re-election campaigns, Eva Longoria, who is focusing on women and Latino voters, appeared on MSNBC on Monday and slammed Mitt Romney's contention that his decisive victory in Puerto Rico means he has a shot at drawing heavily from the Hispanic vote. Showbiz figures on the right, such as  Ted Nugent, who is endorsing Romney, also have drawn their share of criticism.

Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up (feat. President Obama)

'The Road We've Traveled': Trailer For New Documentary Highlights President Obama's First-Term Accomplishments

Picture of the day

Obama team celebrates Obama announcement 5 years ago in Springfield

Pciture of the day

President Obama

Unemployment Rate for African-Americans Fell in January

Monthly jobs reports featuring mixed results are becoming a trend and January 2012 was no different. The African-American unemployment rate declined significantly to 13.6 percent  from 15.8 percent in December. The overall unemployment rate also fell from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent.

In other good news, employers added 243,000 jobs, which was substantially more than the 170,000 projected by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. And, according to a report from the Labor Department, the four-week average of unemployment claims fell to 375,750, the lowest since June 2008.

“Over the last 22 months, we’ve had consecutive private sector job growth — over three million jobs created. It’s another indication that private sector job growth is going well, but we’ll probably see public-sector jobs retreat in the wrong direction,” said Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pennsylvania).

The government did in fact shed 14,000 jobs in January. The private sector gains included 70,000 professional and business services jobs, 50,000 manufacturing jobs and 44,000 leisure and hospitality jobs. The health care and social assistance industry added 29,700, while the construction sector added 21,000.

"Today’s employment report provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the recession that began at the end of 2007," said Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "Most importantly, we need to extend the payroll tax cut and continue to provide emergency unemployment benefits through the end of this year, and take the additional steps that President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address to create an economy built to last."

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday projected that the national jobless rate would rise to 8.9 percent by the end of 2012 and to 9.2 percent in 2013, and that the deficit will go up to $1.08 trillion this year. Such a dismal forecast could dampen President Obama’s re-election effort.

“The projection is why it’s so important that we pass the remaining parts of the president’s jobs bill,” Fattah said. “We can cut into that [high unemployment figure], but have to take aggressive action.”

That won't be easy. Despite the positive jobs report, Republicans continued to have a pessimistic take on Obama's policy agenda.

“While any sign of job creation is positive, the economy is still in need of relief from those failed policies which have weighed down economic opportunities by drastically increasing the burden of debt, growing the size of government, and threatening more taxes on job creators and American families,” said Georgia Rep. Tom Price, who chairs the House Republican Policy Committee.

--courtesy BET.com

Comments, anyone?

Picture of the Day

The soul is healed by being with children.

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Picture of the day

The U.S.S. Obamaship....?

Republican Releases Slave-Ship Ad

Everyone knows it's hard to talk about fiscal responsibility without referring to a slave ship with President Obama at the helm.
OK, so that's not true at all. But it is the bizarre approach a Republican congressional candidate has chosen to communicate his campaign's message.
The Huffington Post reports:
Mark Oxner, a  Republican congressional candidate from Florida, released a 39-second spot this week depicting the Obama administration as a slave ship.
The video features several men and woman on a boat -- "The U.S.S. Obamaship" -- discussing how "this ship" has given them various benefits, such as a bank bailout and "free health care for life."
The video also includes shots of children rowing the boat while a man holding a whip watches closely. 

Not-so-subtle subtext: "African-American people may have come here on ships, but now things have changed, and this black president is trying to enslave your children with all his crazy policies. Vote for me."
Unfortunately, we're not expecting emancipation from this type of transparent effort to harness racial anxiety anytime in the near future.

--Huffington Post