"I Hope Obama Can Keep Some of His Promises."

Qoute from person I respect.

Nevertheless to look at US from what Obama can do for us misses the point.

On election night, he told us rebuilding this country will amount to a long and difficult task, accomplished by calloused hands, brick by brick, stone by stone, weld by weld, by all citizens.

Food banks all over the country need food because demand has soared.

The # of people receiving food stamps will reach an all time high.

So each 1 of us needs to DO something. While respecting volunteers working on Thanksgiving to feed the hungry, this ain't a 1 day deal. Poverty has moved into the suburbs. The US and the world faces a depression, and we must individually help each other. (Link from Suburban Guerilla.)

Each 1 teach 1 someone once said. Tutoring for the Adult Literacy league taught me more than my student ever learned; God bless you Katie Mae McGee, a student who dropped out of school at 14 to take care of siblings in Ga.

Give canned goods at local food bank.

Give $.

Volunteer; local papers usually list opportunities. Local Red Cross branches need people power as well as money.

Live the words, "In as much you did it for the least of My brethern, you have done it for Me." Matthew 25:44
(Words slightly diff in this translation but thought, and the song, remains the same.)


[We have seen a 100% increase in demand in the last year … and food donations have dropped precipitously," says Dana Wilkie, CEO of the Community Food Bank in Fresno, Calif.]

[Fueled by rising unemployment and food prices, the number of Americans on food stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.

The figures will put the spotlight on hunger when Congress begins deliberations on a new economic stimulus package, said legislators and anti-hunger advocates, predicting that any stimulus bill will include a boost in food stamp benefits. Advocates are also optimistic that President-elect Barack Obama, who made campaign promises to end childhood hunger and whose mother once briefly received food stamps, will make the issue a priority next year.]

["Poverty is spreading and may be re-clustering in suburbs, where a majority of America's metropolitan poor now live."

The study was released ahead of next week's conference on concentrated poverty at the Fed. It shied away from explaining the causes of poverty, but past research have linked the phenomenon to loss of jobs in manufacturing, agriculture and mining.

With the U.S. economic outlook rapidly deteriorating, poverty could get worse.

The U.S. housing market collapse has unleashed the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, forcing business to scale back on investments and driving the unemployment rate to a 14-year high.]

Christmas Cards for Geeks

Found link at Americablog: "Because every nation need a great blog."

Consumer Fervor Runs Rampant: Kills Human Beings

In the orgy of consumerism known as Black Friday, '08, shoppers trampled a Wal Mart worker to death when the doors to the store opened.

Yes, that has become Thanksgiving in the US, originally a day to celebrate the harvest and bounty provided by the Almighty (whatever you call Her) but now a weekend of gluttony, football, buying consumer products at marked down rates--marked down from inflated prices so "bargains" still produce profits--and trampling to death.

We have become a nation of "Restless Consumers."




[CNN) -- Three violent deaths in two stores marred the opening of the Christmas shopping season Friday.

In the first, a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in a rush of thousands of early morning shoppers as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m., police said.

In the second, unrelated incident, two men were shot dead in a Toys "R" Us in Palm Desert, California, after they argued in the store, police said.]

[Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like "savages."

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling `I've been on line since yesterday morning,'" she said. "They kept shopping."] emphasis added

Obama Backlash Begins

[LA Times By Howard Witt
November 23, 2008
Reporting from Bogalusa, La. -- Barely three weeks since America elected its first black president, noose hangings, racist graffiti and death threats have struck dozens of towns across the country.

More than 200 such incidents -- including cross burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect Barack Obama -- have been reported, according to law enforcement authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.

Racist websites have been boasting that their servers have been crashing because of an exponential increase in traffic.

And America's most potent symbol of racial hatred, the Ku Klux Klan, is reasserting itself in a spate of recent violence, after decades of disorganization and obscurity.

Nearly two weeks ago, the leader of a cell based in Bogalusa, La. -- a backwoods town once known as the Klan capital -- was charged with second-degree murder in the shooting of a woman who allegedly sought to become a member but then changed her mind.


Late last month, two men with ties to a notoriously violent Klan chapter in Kentucky were charged in a bizarre plot to kill 88 black students and then decapitate an additional 14 students -- and then assassinate Obama by shooting him from a speeding car while wearing white tuxedos and top hats.]

Fl Drug Rehab Options

A kind comment to my post on "Drug Rehab or 31 Car Police Chase," gave a great link for Florida Addiction Rehabilitation options.

Struggling with my own doomed liquor love affair, pouring vodka into the hole in my soul, did not mean to make light of personal tragedies and addictions.

Beyond the social costs inherent in building more jails but failing to fund treatment for those seeking help, those who've decided they want to live, everyone please understand you can't put anything into your bloodstream to cure all ills.

Whatever the circumstance, something good lies out there for everyone.

You gotta have faith.

Plant a good seed and something good will grow.

Email me if you need personal support.

Good luck and God bless.

Leopards CAN Changer Their Spots/ Bab West's Biden interview

Local Orlando health reporter and "news anchor" Barbara West's interview with Joe Biden had her quoting Marx and using other RNC talking points to the point where Joe asked, "Are you joking?

Buried at the bottom of a story on the interview in the Orlando Sentinel we find out that the inquisitioner had married Wade West, a Republikkkan media consultant: "Several readers questioned how objective West could be because her husband, Wade West, was a Republican strategist, who contributed $2,250 to Republican candidates from 2000 to 2006. Barbara West said he was no longer a strategist and instead runs America Fundraising Auctions, which stages charity auctions."

Earlier in the piece, the Sentinel TV critic, Hal Bodeker, did quote from person at the independen Poynter Institute on journalim: [Jill Geisler, who teaches ethics and management at the Poynter Institute journalism school, said West has a right to ask any question she wants. "Depending on where you sit, you may say, 'Somebody finally asked the question I had,'. " Geisler said. "Others would say it's loaded language."

Geisler found some of West's language hyperbolic and described the anchor as coming from a point of view similar to talk radio hosts Sean Hannity's or Rush Limbaugh's.

"I can ask you 'Have you stopped beating your wife?' and say it's just a question, but there's an assumption embedded in it," Geisler said. "There was a world view in those questions."][emphasis added]

Limbaugh and Hannity, journalists who call it right down te middle. She went on O'Reilly first to defend herself, kind of says it all there.

Later today I'm going to sprout wings and fly AND change my spots.

Down Ballot Effect Pushing Obama Up in Central Florida?

For those unfamiliar with the cesspool of central FL politics, we have 2 real Repukkklican cretis in Ric Keller, FL US Rep. district 8, and Tom Feeney, FL-24, the latter named one of the most as ethically challenged four years in a row, both from slightly republikkkan districts.

Feeney has come in for great ridcule from FL columnists, including Mike Thomas of the Orlando Sentinel and Dave Senior of the Examiner papers.

This pissed people off so badly the cretin had to open tv ads with an apology.

Golfing with Abramoff, MasterCard.
Apolgizing in campaign ads, Priceless!

People usually start at top of the ballot but, possibly planning on pitching out these crooks, could this possiblyy influence the top of the ballot?

Pray it does.

peace.

"Back in the Saddle Again"

Well not exsctly, but did return homw from hospital healthy as usual--3 squares a day I didn't have to cook or clean after, which minor miracle occurred with me with no medical insurance, must have had to do with me passing out in apartment parking lot with impossibly high blood pressure-- to find door locked with deadbolt but 'puter and peripherals gone.

Stupid thieves, had taken out hard drive prior to sending to HP so they got door stop and printer and flat screen.

At my church using SMALL monitor and really miss my flat screen but Galveston got hammered while I have rest of my stuff.

Blessings abound for all.

Drug Treatment or 31 Car Police Chase?

Local tv news reports featured the father of the suspect and his tearful reports of trying to get his junky son invluntarily committed or into drug treatment.
http://www.wftv.com/news/17521782/detail.html

Looking for video.
http://www.wftv.com/news/17526766/detail.html

Check out the vid; OJ got nuthin' on JM.

Which makes more sense or costs less $, treatment or pursuit and incarceration?

"[Jason] Morse was arrested in April in connection with two thefts of OxyContin in Seminole County."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/seminole/orl-chase2108sep21,0,1678850.story

I blog therefore I am

Going cold turkey hurts.

Without a 'puter, could not read newslinks and fave FL newspapers or int'l ones.

Newslink.org, a project of American Journalism Reveiew, has links to newspapers from all over the world, save for the London Independent with the esteemed Robert Fisk reporting on Mideast affairs.

Sheesh, hard to start my day with coffee but no Orlando Sentinel, Miami Herald, or St Petersburg Times (the one in FL). It did renew my appreciction of the printed paper, however, so nice to hold it in your hands and jot notes down rather than bookmarking articles that disappear into the ether in a week.

Missed those bloggers I've come to know as friends, 1 sided admiration surely as titans of blogs barely notice my humble little empire of dirt, but reading people daily lets me know something of the individual bloggers: Atrios, Field Negro, Suburban Guerilla, and America Blog. Even have had a few emails from the last 3, honoring me greatly.

Yet, I started this blog for me, not as narcissism but to publish thoughts in my head before it exploded from the crushing craziness of the Cheney administration.

Pres. Skippy even had the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to say on camera after Russia invaded Georgia that violence and intimidation has no place in international affairs in the 21st century.

By the goddess, how could he dare say that? Give me some of the drugs he gets, Prozac probably.

You see, that happens when US invades a country for no reason save oil and hubris; any fleabag country with a flag and a few tanks feels it can invade when it wants to.

If it weren't so absolutely absurd, I'd cry.

Peace out, y'all.

Pop Goes the Compaq Presario Power Supply

Honestly, while sitting on my couch 18 August with the computer turned off, heard a pop from area where it sat. No lightning, computer off, and thing blew.

Still under warranty so it lies in hands of tevh gods to get it back to me.

Spoke with customer service, and nice lady told me their ofc located in Argentina: nice weather, no hutticanes, hopefully that fascist stuff has gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Hurricane supplies: "food, water, whiskey"

While having their priorities out of order--you always have to get more booze and beer than you think 'cause with power out what else can you do but get hammered?--nevertheless these folk got it covered:

[Willie Dykes, 58, and friend Essy Pastrana, 48, live on a sailboat in Key West, and said they weren't going anywhere. The pair was filling up gas cans Monday morning and buying supplies like food, water and whiskey.

"We're gonna ride it out," Dykes said, his fluffy white beard blowing sideways in the wind. "We're not worried about it. We've seen this movie before."]

Woodstock ended 39 years ago today; peace and love; I miss Nixon

Woodstock may mark the height of the counterculture and rock and roll of the 60's.



Sure the US had a "No good lying SOB"--Truman's words in Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman--as President who won with a secret plan to end the Second Indochinese War.

Surprise, Surprise, secret plan escalated conflict with thousands more American troops dead and wounded, illegal exspansion of war into Cambodia and Laos, tens of thousands more Vietnamese civilians dead and maimed, US troops and civilians still poisoned over 40 years later by dioxin, some vets now homeless, and Nixon still got the same terms to get out 3 years later: "peace with honor."

Extra side of surge with your escalation anyone? Depleted Uranium for dessert?

"There is nothing new under the sun," wrote the preacher in Ecclesiastes. Then, US supported a small Catholic military minority in a mostly Buddhist country. Now our troops sit amidst a religious civil war, sparked anew by President Cheney, of longer duration than the 100 years war.

At least then we had a media that questioned rather than caved and legislators like Senator Sam Ervin who defended the Constitution rather than cravenly crush it to fight a "global war on terror."

Now we have a presidential candidate who preaches "victory" in the Iraqi war but can't define it,

Peace with honor indeed.

What a fascist, cowardly crock! Like Vidal wrote, "You can't declare war on a noun."

May the Lord have mercy on my soul. I actually miss Nixon!

Lest you think this frivolous ar nostalgic, read a contemporary account by NY Times reporter quoted at Wikipeda saying: ""Every major Times editor up to and including executive editor James Reston insisted that the tenor of the story must be a social catastrophe in the making. It was difficult to persuade them that the relative lack of serious mischief and the fascinating cooperation, caring and politeness among so many people was the significant point. I had to resort to refusing to write the story unless it reflected to a great extent my on-the-scene conviction that 'peace' and 'love' was the actual emphasis, not the preconceived opinions of Manhattan-bound editors. After many acrimonious telephone exchanges, the editors agreed to publish the story as I saw it, and although the nuts-and-bolts matters of gridlock and minor lawbreaking were put close to the lead of the stories, the real flavor of the gathering was permitted to get across. After the first day's Times story appeared on page 1, the event was widely recognized for the amazing and beautiful accident it was."

Woodstock: Country Joe and the Fish (Language Warning)

Hendrix at Woodstock: "Purple Haze"

"By the Time We Got to Woodstock, We Were Half a Million Strong"

Senator Nelson Hates Democratic Congress of Today

Just watched tv campaign commercial for US Rep Fl Distict 08 Dem candidate Charlie Stuart and former FL senator Bob Graham says he's "very dissappointed in today's Congress."

Since this comes in a US House primary campaign, one presumes he means the US House of Representatives rather than "Congress" denoting both legislative branches.

So alleged Dem Stuart runs for US Rep by running against the Democrat controlled House.

Last cycle, he ran a tv ad where he literally wrapped himself in an American flag.

Why do I get the feeling he would vote with Blue Dog Democrats, apostates who've enabled much of the Cheney adminstration legislation?

Oh kill me now: Charles Samuel Stewart wants a new politics based on seeing things through the eyes of a child.

WTF?

Of course, he wants to end the "old" politics such as "Protecting partisan positions over sensible compromise," endorsing the pathetic impotence of the spineless Democratic majority in the House.

If it barks like a blue dog, grandma sez pobably 'tis.

Makes me wish I cared enough to go to 1 of the primary debates.

At least 1 of his opponents, Alan Grayson has run a tv ad decrying corrupt Iraq contractors costing the US 100's of billions of dollars.

Golly, Charlie, do you think the Republikkkns will run this ad against you?

George Bush Tour of Destruction of US

Found at America Blog, because a great nation needs a great blog.

NASA Outsourcing Space Travel to Russia

"Dismantling of the shuttle program is right on track." Replacement not so much.

Unfortunately with a clueles Cheney administration, NASA has no replacement ready and needs a waiver to law to buy Russian launch vehicles, [A little-known law intended to prevent the sale of nuclear technology to Iran would also bar NASA from buying Russian Soyuz spacecraft after 2011..."

"It takes 36 months to fulfill an order," said Yevgeny Khorishko, the Russian Embassy spokesman in Washington. "So if U.S. Congress does not grant a waiver by the end of September, it means your astronauts in 2012 will be preparing for their missions on the ground and will not be flying."](emphasis added)

So after 50 years of NASA exploring space and making Americans proud, Pres. Cheney has reduced the US to paying Russia for reaching orbit.

One can argue the US space shuttle program has become broken beyond repair and requires replacing, basically because it got built for unrealistic aims: building a totally reuseable spacecraft.

So what does NASA do to replace the shuttle? Retire it before any US made alternative becomes ready and try to privatize US space travel.

This administration tried privatizing US space travel..

So while jobs at NASA and contractors get cut, taxpayers pay millions of $ to private companies to try to develop spacecraft, including 1 company, SpaceX that built a rocket that "fizzled" on the third test rather than reach orbit.

At least that company, Space X, launched and failed. Planet Space hasn't actually built a damn thing.

Let's lay it out: Tried to privatize US space flight.

Failed.

(For irony, SpaceX launches from U.S. Army's Reagan Test Site in the central Pacific Ocean.}

Americans get laid off and the US has to pay Russia to fly to space

For those too young too remember, the space race with Russia became one of the dominant themes in the 60's and 70's, not just for the US but the civilized world.

Now we gotta pay the godless commies to fly. Despicable

[In April, NASA said more than 8,000 space contractor jobs -- including 1,300 at Michoud and 6,400 at KSC -- could be eliminated after the shuttle is retired to make way for the Constellation program, which is developing the next-generation rockets to go to the moon and later to Mars.

But whereas the Constellation program is encountering technical problems and some schedule delays, the dismantling of the shuttle program is right on track.]http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2008/08/a-taste-of-thin.html

[(Former astronaut and senator John)Glenn used the hearing as chance to lash out at the Bush administration for failing to provide leadership on space, and failing to request adequate funding for his Vision for Space Exploration. He accused the administration of “cannibalizing” research on the international space station to pay for NASA’s next generation moon program, called Constellation.

Glenn, who has expressed his anger before at various events, said he was deeply upset by the administration permitting a gap between the end of the shuttle program in 2010 and the first launch of the Constellation program, now scheduled for 2015 at the earliest. He said the decision made America dependent on the Russians to get American astronauts to the space station until Constellation was ready. He said he never thought “we’d have to pay for a ticket to fly on a Russian vehicle.”]emphasis added
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2008/07/glenn-bush-moon.html

Cheney Administration and War with Iran

Despite President Cheney allowing a senior US diplomat to attend talks with Iran and subsequent drop in oil and gas prices, US officials have "not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran," reported the LA Times.

[WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials reassured Israel's defense minister this week that the United States has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran, despite widespread Israeli concern that Washington has begun softening its position toward Tehran.

In meetings Monday and Tuesday, administration officials told Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the option of attacking Iran over its nuclear program remains on the table, though U.S. officials are primarily seeking a diplomatic solution.]

While reasonable people pray the Cheney administration to pursue negotiations rather than war which would drive gas prices astronomically high, why should they start using reason now with just over 172 days left before inauguration day 2009?

"In recent months, several major developments have strengthened the case for dealing with Iran diplomatically rather than militarily. The U.S. military is more overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan than ever. The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan has required a significant increase in the number of U.S. and NATO troops during the past year. Iranian proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan could easily target U.S. bases with Katyusha rockets in retaliation for any U.S. strike on the nuclear research facilities at Natanz near Isfahan," wrote professor Juan Cole in Salon (Last para page 1).

Even professional military men like chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff Admiral Mullen, "Mullen seemed to warn hawks in the U.S. and Israel against a strike on Iran of the sort Cheney had earlier envisaged, saying that in light of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, "opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us." Mullen admitted when pressed that the Iranians "have capabilities which could certainly hazard the Strait of Hormuz," though he was confident that the U.S. could reopen it. Despite that confidence, Mullen said that he was worried about instability in the Middle East, and about anything that might contribute to it."

"Both the U.S. and its European allies know that the negative fallout from a war could be immense. Its effect on the world oil supply would be catastrophic. Iran's perennial threats to close the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in the event that it is attacked have to be taken especially seriously when oil supplies are as tight as they are now. Some 40 percent of the world's petroleum flows through that choke point, and any significant interruption of supply under today's conditions could send prices skyrocketing so far as to threaten the world with another Great Depression. In short, Iran is far more powerful when petroleum is $127 a barrel than when it is $25 a barrel, and that power makes it more prudent to negotiate with it than to rattle sabers. The opening to Iran was not a victory of the realists, but of realism."

Let's all hope professor Cole wrote rightly about return to realism.

Nevertheless if Obama does win the election, let's expect an attack on Iran.

"You can depend on the worst always happening/You need a busload of fatih to get by."
Lou Reed