Snow in The Keystone State

Snowjob in Pennsylvania

Hershey, PA

January 27, 2015

Well, most of us on the East Coast dodged a bullet as the winter storm named Juno at least spared Philadelphia and New York on its way to pounding Boston and Rhode Island. However, a week earlier Pennsylvania got a serious snow job in the form of John Boehner and the recent Republican’t retreat in Hershey, PA, the first joint GOP House and Senate retreat in 10 years. Spoiler alert: they decided they really don’t like Obama.

When asked at the retreat, House Speaker John Boehner wouldn't say if he believes the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change. The Ohio Republican’t told reporters, "Certainly we've had changes in our climate. I'll let the scientists debate the sources in their opinion of that change. But I think the real question is that every proposal we see out of the administration with regard to climate change means killing American jobs." Not surprisingly this is utter nonsense, which is Boehner’s forte. Boehner of course is alluding to the environmental-disaster-in-waiting rebranded by Republican’ts as the “Keystone Jobs Bill.” 

Fighting the effects of climate change provides for approximately infinitely more jobs than the climate killing Keystone XL Poopline, which is expected to provide 35 permanent jobs. Speaking of poop, Boehner continued, "The American people are still asking the question: where are the jobs? Jobs and the economy are still the number one issue in the country. And I just don't understand why every proposal that comes out of this administration is just going to kill thousands and thousands of more American jobs." Boehner’s lack of understanding on this issue alone could fill the XL with dirty crude for decades. And just for the record, though still pretty crappy for the average American, both the jobs and economic situations are the best they’ve been since Bush’s Great Recession. 

Terrapin American and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-XL) was also asked if he believes in climate change science and at least had the courtesy to not answer. It also appears that McConnell has finally given up trying to make Obama a one-term president.

Republican’ts are obsessed with Keystone XL as one of their signature jobs bills and, when oil prices are high, like to imply that it would mean cheap oil flowing free in America. Last Tuesday they voted down two Democratic amendments aimed at providing at least some advantage to actual Americans from a pipeline designed to primarily benefit Canadian oil companies and China, and quite possibly definitely a considerable number of our elected officials (on both sides of the aisle) who owe their victories at the polls to promises of shoving this pipeline through. 

From the Natural Resources Defense Council, “By skipping over refineries and U.S. consumers in the Midwest, tar sands producers will be able to send Canadian crude to the Gulf Coast refineries in tax-free Foreign Trade Zones, where it can be refined and then sold to international buyers—at a higher profit to Big Oil.” While at the same time leaking untold amounts of filthy, unrecoverable tar sands all over the Midwest. I guess that’s where all the Keystone XL jobs are - sopping up tar sands by hand with paper towels, which is how the oil companies actually clean up oil spills. With paper towels. I kid you not.

Exxon’s Keystone XL clean-up efforts in Arkansas included the use of paper towels

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey's amendment to the Keystone bill would have prohibited oil shipped through the pipeline from being exported. After all, they keep telling us the XL will keep gas prices low here at home. Markey’s amendment was killed by a 57 to 42 vote. Minnesota Sen. Al Franken's amendment would have required that the pipeline be built with American steel. Buy American! It was killed by a 53 to 46 vote. 

Exxon Hates Your Children 

I. Mangrey (not exactly) snowed in, reporting.

Lame Duck Prez vs. Lame Brain Congress

Makes Me Wonder Why I Stopped Not Voting

Our Nation’s Capital

January 10, 2015

Don’t vote, it only encourages them. That was my motto for many years. I stopped voting after the unsuccessful attempt to recall long-time-racist, quintessential thug and Philadelphia mayor, Frank Rizzo. For decades I alternately watched and ignored the goings on of politics in America. There was no one I actually wanted to vote for had I been so inclined. I decided to try again after the unsuccessful election and subsequent Supreme Court appointment of George W. Bush. I still have great difficulty finding someone I actually want to help put in office, but for some bizarre reason I’ve decided to keep trying.

Despite my (and very few others’) best efforts, the 114^th Congress is now in session. It seems that the fewer people who vote, the more pathetic our elected officials get. Who knew? Now that the Republican’ts own the House and the Senate they’re not wasting any time. On their first day in power they lobbed a grenade at Social Security and reproductive rights. But not before challenging John Boehner’s speakership with one of the world’s biggest idiots – Tea Party darling, Louis Buller "Louie" Gohmert, Jr. If you’re not familiar with Louie, Google him - if you have some time to kill. Suffice it to say that he has the IQ of a sock and all the appeal of a deer tick.

Also, on day one of the new Congress the Repugnants stood up for their new number-three man – the man slated to replace super-loser Eric Cantor, who was ousted by a Tea Party zealot in a primary no one ever thought Cantor could lose. Cantor was the only Jewish Republican’t serving in Congress at the time and the guy replacing him - Steve Scalise - once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” Scalise spoke to a group founded by David Duke, ex-Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in 2002. Scalise now claims he had no idea the group was a bunch of neo-Nazis and racists. He also said he had no idea the Pope was Catholic. I believe him, why shouldn’t I?

The 114^th Congress wants corporations and the very rich to trickle down on you. Republican’ts refuse to give up pretending to believe in their repeatedly disproven philosophy, which holds that if you give the richest members of society more money they will piss gold onto the wretched refuse below. As many times as they’ve tried this approach it has never worked. It never will. They keep trying to sell the idea that Obama is a socialist/communist who is ruining our economy by pushing the stimulus, killing jobs, crushing Wall Street, Obamacare and whatever else Obama puts his hand to. Right now the American economy is showing the fastest growth in over a decade, unemployment rates fell in 41 states in November, the dollar is gaining strength faster than a pro athlete on steroids, GDP is rising faster than Dick Cheney’s pecker when he talks about torture, Obamacare has relieved millions of the chronic trauma of being uninsured, while at the same time stimulating the economy and the stock market is hovering around 18,000 for the first time in forever. Socialism!

Newly installed Senate Majority Leader and (according to Jon Stewart) human-turtle hybrid, Mitch McConnell claims that it is the mere anticipation of a new Republican’t controlled House and Senate that has brought about all this economic exuberance.  McConnell, Senate Minority Leader at the time of Barack Obama’s election said, “My number one priority is making sure president Obama’s a one-term president.” He went on to obstruct every single thing Obama tried to do, overseeing the most filibuster-happy six years in the history of our nation. McTurtle and his do-less-than-nothing Congress buddies in the House could not obstruct enough to stop Obamacare, which however lacking it may be, is still better than what preceded it. McConnell and his fellow travelers were also incapable of stopping the country’s greatly improved economic situation. Practically on his own, Obama has presided over an amazing economic recovery after George W. Bush practically burned the place to the ground thanks to his considerable efforts to redistribute the wealth from the 99% to the 1%. What is the opposite of Socialism?

Say what you will about Barack Obama, I’m not a big fan, but at least he’s no Mitch McConnell, or Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Louie Gohmert, Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio…need I go on?

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. It’s been a hard day’s night.  

Down Home Kookin’

How Could You Do This Toomey? 

Pennsylvania

December 27, 2014

It is often said that Pennsylvania has Philadelphia at one end, Pittsburgh at the other and Kentucky in the middle. Or maybe it’s Montana. Either way, this is why my home state elects so many anti-intellectual, anti-union, anti-science, anti-woman, anti-gay, kill-the-poor, bomb-Iran, knuckle-draggers to office. We are in the process of evicting the least popular governor in the nation, Tom Corbett in favor of millionaire Tom Wolfe - we’ll see how that goes, but losing Corbett can’t be a bad thing. And, lest we forget, the last senator we jettisoned was the very frothy Rick Santorum. Unfortunately, we still have Pat Toomey, purported to be the fourth most conservative member of the senate, as our junior senator. 

Pat Toomey (R-Wall Street) looking very serious…or something

Pat Toomey rode in on the 2010 wave of Tea Party psychosis fervor and huge money. He is a pre-sex-scandal radical Christian, virulently anti-choice and pro-corporation. He wants personhood for fetuses, but no gun control for protecting the lives of those actually born. Toomey wants to protect the rights of the flag, but not the rights of people to marry who they choose, or to adopt children if they do not meet his criteria. He is in favor of more prosecution and sentencing for juvenile crime, but against alternative sentencing instead of more prisons.  He opposes campaign finance reform and any attempts to protect the environment. Just an all-around great guy. 

Pat Toomey is very upset that there are regulations affecting the ability of Wall Street criminals to run roughshod over real people. Wall Street should instead be permitted to do anything they want and crash our economy as they see fit. As often as they like. To this end he’s going after a senator who seriously disagrees with him, one who knows what she’s talking about when she warns the American people about what Wall Street has done and is poised to do again if left to their own, and Toomey’s, devices.

Toomey, referring to a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law - the swaps rule - which requires banks to have certain derivatives in units outside the government’s safety net said, “I hope you’re not going to fall for Elizabeth Warren’s nonsense.” The House passed a 1.1 trillion spending bill with the provision to roll back the swaps rule recently. The Senate must now consider the bill, which Senator Warren has vigorously opposed. The Pennsylvania Republican’t suggested Warren’s outrage came out of personal ambition adding, “This is Elizabeth Warren ginning up the leftwing of the Democratic Party who are professional haters of business. This is absolute nonsense.” If there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about absolute nonsense, it’s Pat Toomey. Well, he may or may not know a thing or two about it, but he is its personification.

Elizabeth Warren, not taking any Toomey from anyone

Toomey added, “There is a tiny provision in Dodd-Frank that forces banks do something that is counter-productive, it forces, in fact it increases taxpayer risk because it forces them to do some of their risk management outside the bank in a separate subsidiary where they can’t manage their risk as well. Nobody thinks this is a good idea. No regulators do, nobody who understands banking does, nobody who understands risk management. So all it does is it says banks can conduct their ordinary risk management processes within the institution itself.”  Now there’s some quality absolute nonsense for you.

Toomey is not only shill for Wall Street and former investment banker, he is the former president of the Club for Growth, a super PAC which has been accused of driving all the moderates out of the Republican’t party. An ad opposing Toomey’s 2010 election said, “In Congress, Toomey voted to give China special trade status. Toomey's vote for China helped cost us 2.4 million jobs. Maybe he ought to run for Senate in China.” Toomey claims nobody thinks the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept regular folks’ money out of the risky investment business, is a good idea. Glass-Steagall demands that banks keep our money (which now earns us a whopping 0.1% or so, while they make millions using it) safe while they’re out creating phony investment products that will eventually blow up, which they already did in 2007, leaving the banks in need of taxpayer-funded bail-outs, which they already got in 2008. It was Bill Clinton (husband of presidential wannabe Hillary) who dismantled Glass-Steagall; he now claims this is one of his major regrets.

Mr. Toomey, after leaving Wall Street and before moving to Allentown to help operate a chain of restaurants, spent a year in Hong Kong doing financial markets research for a billionaire named Ronnie Chan. So Pat Toomey is probably not the guy you want to listen to about our economy.

I. Mangrey, staying in touch, so you don’t have to.

Vetoes welcome.

Happy New Year.

Cheney's Last Stand

Tortured Logic Logic Tortured

Where The Wired Things Are

December 12, 2014

“This government does not torture people.”

The above caption quotes George Bush lying to the American people. He had been told 18 months earlier that we were, in fact, torturing people. He and his boss, Dick Cheney were, as everyone knows, directly responsible for these depredations since it was they who ordered their people to find a way to make torture seem legal. They did this by torturing the law of the land. They rebranded torture as “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” to make it sound thoughtful and pleasant. C’mon, it’s just some old techniques that we decided to enhance. How bad could that be? Who doesn’t want some enhancement? Like botox or lap-band surgery or fracking? It’s all good. Quit your whining. Or you might get enhanced.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released its long awaited report on torture, which included letting Bush off the hook. “I think he knew everything he wanted to know and needed to know,” Cheney told Fux News’ Brett Baier. “He was in fact an integral part of the program; he had to approve it before we moved forward with it.” One can’t help but wonder how Cheney managed to persuade Bush to sign off. He probably gave him a pretzel to chew on.

According to the report, “...the president of the United States had directed that he not be informed of the locations of the CIA detention facilities to ensure he would not accidentally disclose the information.” I can just imagine the conversation. “Hey, Uncle Dick, make sure that those guys we told to start torturing, heh, heh…I mean, enhansively interrogating, not to tell me where they’re gonna do it. You know what a moron I am. I’d probably just start tellin’ ever’one where to go watch the fun. But make sure I get to watch the videos before we destroy the evidence.”

To give Bush his due, Cheney was running the show on this. Cheney circumvented the CIA when he didn’t like what they were saying, especially regarding Iraq and WMD. Cheney created his own secret agency to create the intelligence he needed. He took the phony info to the press, planted it there and then used what he planted to reap an illegal, unnecessary war in Iraq. The rest of course, is history heavily redacted.

Bush, in Cheney’s shadow,

even while standing in front of him

Cheney called the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report “a terrible piece of work” and “deeply flawed.” Then he called it “a piece of crap.” It was interesting to hear Cheney compare the report to the terrible job done during the Iran-Contra hearings, which Cheney described as another case where politicians “sort of throw the professionals under the bus.” You may recall that a record-breaking number of high-level Reagan administration officials were convicted of felonies back then. Some non-Cheney individuals describe events like this as JUSTICE. Cheney said of his plan to torture, “What happened here was we asked the agency to go take steps and put in place programs that were designed to catch the bastards that killed 3 thousand of us on 9/11.” Cheney said he’d “do it again in a minute.” And he’s in good company. According to Antonin Scalia, the Constitution does not appear to prohibit torture. He’s on the Supreme Court. Does that count as torture?

Ronald Reagan called torture, “an abhorrent practice.” Current CIA chief John Brennan agrees, even as he tries to torture the truth about what went on and how well it worked. Torturing people was Cheney’s idea. He is a war criminal. John McCain had to remind torture-loving Bill O’Reilly that after World War II we sentenced Japanese to death for waterboarding American prisoners. Dick Cheney said those who carried out the torture policy that he initiated deserve a lot of credit. After all they were just following orders. Cheney’s orders. And lord knows, we shouldn’t fault anyone for just following orders. Where would that leave us a nation?

I. Mangrey reporting. I’ll tell you anything you want to hear.

A Turkey For All Seasons

Reality Is In The Eye Of The Decider

Bush Country

November 27, 2014

George W. Bush, America’s favorite worst-president^*-ever has emerged once more from the soothing, inspirational confines of his bathroom to deliver another painting as well as another book. The subject of both efforts is his father…and of course, himself. I suppose it’s difficult for someone to write a book about his father without including himself, but it’s probably much easier to paint the man’s portrait without putting yourself in the foreground.

A picture not worth anything

In his new book, 41: A Portrait Of My Father, George W. describes how George H.W. agonized over running for a second term because he felt his high profile was causing undue scrutiny of his son, Neil Bush, who was facing a federal lawsuit. "It killed him to see Neil singled out because he was the President's son," according to Junior’s book. Hmmmm, could be. But he might also have been singled out because he was COMMITTING A CRIME, which tends to get you into trouble if you’re not a Bush.

Neil Bush was on the board of directors of Silverado Savings and Loan during the 1980s' Savings and Loan crisis. The US Office of Thrift Supervision determined that Bush had engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." That seems like a possible reason he was singled out, though clearly not a point of consideration in the phantasmagorical mind of George W. Bush, and apparently throughout the Bush household. Neil Bush was not indicted on criminal charges, though he did end up coughing up half a million in a civil suit. I guess his father’s notoriety really hurt poor Neil.

Who will ever forget George W’s stunning return to the public eye with his inimitable self portrait – Dickless In Tub? Many find Bush 43’s artistic talents surprisingly palatable. I find them predictably self-absorbed and uninteresting. It’s difficult to get excited by the hobby of a man who was responsible for so much unnecessary death and destruction. Let’s be clear, his legacy will not be in the oil he put on canvas, but on the oil that was the essence of his life. From his years as a failed oil magnate, to his family’s long history with the bin Laden and Saud families (Saudi prince Bandar bin Sultan was affectionately nick-named Bandar Bush), to facilitating the getaway of dozens of Saudis in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (Lest we forget, 16 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis…not Iraqis.) and the invasion of Iraq for control of their oil.

Bush finally got his head out of his ass long

enough to take a good long look…at his feet.

During a recent interview Bush fantasized, "I went in there [Iraq] as a result of a very changed environment because of September the 11^th. And the danger we were concerned about was that the weapons...would be put into the hands of terrorist groups that would come and make the attacks of 9/11 pale in comparison." The environment in Iraq did not change because of September the 11^th; it changed because of the Bush/Cheney invasion-for-no-good-reason. The environment in Iraq changed when it was completely destabilized after the removal of our old buddy Saddam. That’s when al Queda moved into Iraq - exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted. A crusade - exactly what George W. Bush called it. That’s what caused the “very changed environment” in Iraq.

I don’t know anyone who thinks Saddam Hussein was a good guy, with the exception of Donald Rumsfeld, who helped Saddam obtain biological weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s. However, the illegal-invasion-based-on-lies and subsequent displacement of the Butcher of Baghdad initiated by Bush/Cheney in 2003 has proven to be an unmitigated disaster. And the danger they were allegedly concerned about, has materialized in spades. Al Queda spin-off ISIL is now using American weapons to wreak havoc throughout the Middle East. 

Resolute as ever, the Clod Who Would Be King holds fast to his fabrication fantasy. Whether by ignorance or deceit, Bush II will take his disastrous escapade to his grave claiming it was a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. No amount of factual data can shake a lick of sense or sensibility into George W’s thick skull. Heckuva job Bushie. How can we miss you if you won’t go away?

*not elected to first term; lost at least the popular vote; ultimately appointed by Supreme Court; nonetheless, allowed to run for second term after starting illegal war, instituting torture and collapsing American economy. 

I. Mangrey reporting. Happy Thanksgiving.

The Natives are restless. Me too.