Writing

Perhaps I should have been paying more attention to Mr. Vonnegut's instructions then I have been.

Full Press Godwin

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY.”

Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials.  

Who would have thought that this would be the political theorist most listened to by our rulers.

A BLAST FROM MY PAST

Now this is a blast from my past.  I remember being upstairs in a bedroom my uncle's and listening to this over and over (and over and over).  I suspect that the old place was so well built and insulated that they really couldn't hear the record down stairs.  There is also the fact that it was a farm and most everybody else was probably out working while I was inside goofing off.

I'd have probably been six, seven, or eight at the time and in that time and place the adults were out working and  the kids, even at those ages, were left on their own.  The only basic rule was that we not burn down the farm or cut off a major body part while the adults were out working.

Otherwise, we were pretty much on our own.  They did expect to see us during meals, and I would guess if one of us hadn't shown up they'd have begun to wonder.  But I suspect that we would have had to miss more than one for them to start worrying.  Closer to Huck then I could imagine when I was growing up.  I do feel sorry for kids now a days.

Bugger The Bankers THE OFFICIAL VIDEO

The Endless Night: A Valentine to Film Noir

Just Say Meow.

The Pogues - The band played waltzing matilda

Light Show

DECEMBER 29, 2012:  So the pop-up says I should mention people to get more traffic?  I think. I exed out before I bothered to completely read it.  A bad habit I have of closing out a page while I am still reading things at the sides and going "WAIT, WHAT?"  One can flip back when one is reading a book or a newspaper, not so much on line.

I was waiting to post until I saw just how badly Obama and the democrats sold us out, and I suspect that although I'm starting this on the 29th I won't be publishing it until the thirty-first, so I should get the chance to say I told you so, but we will see.

My wife had a good friend over yesterday who explained how we are all going to go bankrupt (as both a country and individuals, I think) because of the undeserving poor who get food stamps and Social Security Disability and all the other magnificent goodies our state and federal governments dole out to those who are below the poverty level.  So we must cut benefits, but not raise taxes.  She saw it on TV so it must be true, I guess.  She is also a millionaire so there is that also.  Most aren't Mr. Field after all.  Most of us do not over come our very limited up bringings, (that includes marrying into wealth or earning it with a single bright idea).

DECEMBER 31, 2012:  Last day of the year.  I'm glad to see 2012 go.  It was not a particularly easy year.   With our Chow so sick early in the year and then getting my Mother up here and finding out how seriously her mind had deteriorated.  She at least has a sense of humor left although no short term memory at all.  We go back in the "ward" although that is not what they call it and see the others there.  My Mother doesn't leave her room except to go to and a very few other things.  We take her out regularly, but still.

I wonder if one notices one's mind going before it gets so far along that one has no ability to do anything about it?  I suspect that I shall see.

On a brighter note went to Cambridge last night and saw the display at the Court House, but no horsey ride, no horseys.  At a local restaurant and managed to get several Jack Chick tracts, oh boy.

The Pogues Featuring Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale Of New York (Official V...

How about a Pogues Xmas and how about another drink?

Gremlins - There is no Santa!

And why not?  A little Xmas cheer.

History of Festivus, A Holiday Built on Seinfeld, Grievances

DeFazio explains the "chained CPI" and Gang of Six Plan

Happy Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's Day or if you lived in the first half of the Twentieth century Armistice Day.

So the big military news is that the bestest general ever got caught with his pants down and had to quit his new job at the CIA.  Apparently Lincoln's advice to McClellan is wrong.  Generals no longer have to win wars or even battles to set themselves up as dictators.  Or at least to be considered by all the serious people as the next candidate for the top spot.

I no longer comment on people's Facebook posts when they tell me that I need to thank a soldier for my freedoms.  The reason being that they may have a family member who is a soldier.  Probably a higher percentage around here then nationally.  At least more then the Romneys who apparently are too busy with other matters like converting the heathens in Paris, I guess.

The point is that since the end of World War II, all those of us who served in the military have been are the muscle (as General Butler said in an earlier time) for our neo-colonialist corporate empire.  That's it.  Kind of sad really,

If Your Election Lasts More Then Four Months You Should See a Doctor

Ah, yes so the candidate I voted for for president (the socialist who some how managed to get on the ballot in Ohio) got less then 1% of the vote, which in a manner of speaking makes me part of a (not THE) 1 %.  Fewer votes even then the Green candidate.  Not that I expected that he would get many, but although I live in a "battle ground" state I could simply not bring myself to vote for one of the two corporate candidates.

So Obama won and we are now hoping against hope that Boehner prevents a "grand bargain" during the lame duck session of congress (although I'm not sure who will be able to do so in the new congress).  Lucky us.  I have waited a couple of days to post this, but Greenwald came out with his the day after the election.  Unfortunately, I think that he is probably correct.  We will of course be told by the usual suspects that whatever way we are sold out, it is all Obama and the democrats can possibly do, and also to when we voted for him we knew that he wasn't liberal or progressive, but rather a centrist, so I guess we shouldn't be shocked[?], disappointed[?], disgusted[?], or whatever.

One of the fascinating things for me is the reaction of the conservative/reactionary/christian base to the loss by Romney.  It is amazing.  Because my wife is a christian of the Beatitudes  type she seems to have more Facebook friends who are shall we say of the crazy persuasion then I do and she has been reading me their hysterical take on this election.  It is essentially "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," or alternatively we forsaken God our traditions and christian beliefs to follow the Kenyan socialist with some variations on that.  TBogg, I must admit, is fun when he deals with that sort of thing.

I simply cannot understand the incredible hatred of Obama by people who claim he is a socialist or communist Muslim who wants to introduce the homosexual agenda with Sharia law followed up with a socialist (by which I think they mean communist) program.  I do understand that there is some racism involved, but then that doesn't explain why most of these people held the same beliefs concerning Clinton.  If anything, Obama has it a little easier then Clinton.  Neither Obama nor his wife have been accused of having a kill list of their enemies (well excepting those who happen to be poor brown people

living in various third world countries), of loading cocaine on planes in small air fields in third world states in the U.S. and having their gay lovers killed (or do I repeat myself?).

Nor do I understand the willingness of the very wealthy to spend massive amounts of money on defeating Obama, unless it is as Counterpunch suggests some sort of strange convoluted double reverse incredibly long game.

What Obama is is a "moderate" democrat which means he is conservative, which means he is to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon and the first Bush and not much if at all to the left of Reagan.  He joins a long line of democratic presidents that includes Cleveland and Carter and Clinton who really aren't all that into unions or working people.  They just don't consider them totally sub human.  So why is he hated with such a white hot intense hatred?

The simple answer for the very wealthy is that they always want MORE, without a lot of consideration as to where that will leave things for even their own great grand children.  I generally do not like those kind of basic simple explanations, but I really have no other.  Perhaps there is the added thought by the very wealthy that this time they and their descendants will make sure that the riff raff do not push them off their piles of money. Not this time.  This time it will be different.  And since it is only rarely that they get over thrown:  think France once and Russia once; they are playing the odds.

But where do the rest come from?  I've taken to suggesting that people actually look up the definitions of communism and socialism in even a cheap dictionary, but that doesn't seem to help.  There is the old joke that half of us all are below average in intelligence, or the mandatory Blazing Saddles reference.  Still?

To reiterate  there isn't much difference between the two so why the intense hatred?  Why the huge amounts of money invested?  Interesting questions Guy?  Why don't you provide some answers.

Jethro Tull - Thick as a brick - live - 1978 - DVD

Damn the 40th anniversary edition comes out in three days.  God damn I'm old.

Henri - Politique

Whedon On Romney

o

I wondered what Buffy's position on this years election would be.

We're Fucked (Why be creative?)

"There might be a difference between Obama and Romney, but no matter who gets elected things are going to get worse."  Not me, but a friend of my wife's (no not a cab driver).  Just an average middle class middle aged woman.  Although she may not actually be average since she can clearly see which way the wind blows.

So I re-posted this thing from Daniel Ellsberg on Facebook about how one, if one lives in a "swing state" needs to cast a vote for Obama.to make sure that Romney doesn't get in, not because you want Obama, but because Romney is too bad to contemplate.  Chomsky made essentially the same point in 2008 about McCain.  Although to be fair to Chomsky we had not seen specifically how Obama would govern right then, there were his promises, and I suspect that even Chomsky couldn't believe just how much Obama was lying at that time.  We all expected him to be somewhat more conservative then he talked, but to have him nearly completely turn his back on everything he said was a little much (okay maybe only a 165 degree swing as opposed to a 180).

It is a hard choice, although to be fair to leftists like myself in all probability it doesn't matter.  It would be the red necks and the low information voters and those who thought they were going to get help from a democratic administration who didn't who will decide the election if Romney does win.  But it will be us loud mouthed leftists who will get the blame.  I've said it before, but it is interesting that people who complain and who point out that the emperor has no clothes who will get the blame if Obama loses, not the naked emperor himself.  Left wingers are constantly being blamed for Gore's loss, even though Gore ran to the right and backed everything that Clinton did including NAFTA and gutting welfare. But apparently, I wasn't supposed to believe him.  Silly me.  At any rate how one governs should really have no consequences as far a getting votes from the left if you are a democrat because if you are left you gotta vote for him (or her) no matter what  because the republican will be so much worse.

There are a couple of areas on which Obama seems to be better then Romney:  LGTB issues and the right of women to control their bodies.  Neither of  those issues will affect the money men.  And the LGTB issues will only peripherally benefit those who are being helped.  With women's issues, as Sanger said the ability to regulate pregnancies is absolutely necessary to ensure freedom for women.

Otherwise we march forward inexorably with our permanent war on just about anybody we feel like.  And as for various economic issues, oh hell.  ACA is better then what existed a couple of years ago, but the way we do it is to pour money into the pockets of the wealthiest insurance companies now, so it is another means of transfering money from the poor and middle class to the wealthy and as a side effect some people get medical care, who wouldn't have otherwise.

The Grand Bargain is still out there and watch, what happens after the election, no matter who wins.  Bye bye social security as we know it.

I would guess that the worst will take a little longer under Obama then under Romney, there is a value of having bad things happen twn years from now as opposed to five years from now.  We all rejoice that Tiny Tim survives even though we all know that he's long dead by now (and yes I do know that it is a novella).

"Eye Of The Sparrow" — A Bad Lip Reading of the First 2012 Presidential ...

Another vid.

Help I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

It appears as though I've been doing nothing but posting videos here for awhile.  There is a reason or is it an excuse?  Well whatever.  I've had two major (for me at least) trials.

One of the things that make my job more difficult is when I begin to like my clients and care about them as people and begin to believe their stories no matter how unbelievable others find them.

One of the cases was the one I call my "Dog Lady."  She was busted with 70+ dogs.  Not because she had 70+ dogs, but because the dog warden insisted that she wasn't properly caring for them.  After meeting with her several times and seeing what the end results of the dog wardens investigation was, I don't think I agree.  All of the dogs are healthy and living happy lives in foster families.  None except one had to be put down an that one had cancer.

My client is a poor woman who simply didn't have the money to have a nice sparkling clean dog kennel facility.  We she have been busted if she wasn't a little weird and gotten into arguments with her neighbors?  I'm not sure.  She was able to get food for the dogs from the Dollar General warehouse which is located near hear.  Apparently they give away a very large amount of pet food to people who are rescue people.  My client would come away with a heaping full sized pick up truck full of dry dog fool every approximately four to six weeks.  That was how she fed them.

However, the dog warden said that the place wasn't clean and the judge bought it.  I'm not sure I'm in agreement.  The place was a mess, whether or not it was clean was another matter.  All the dogs had names and they all had time on a rotating basis inside the home (in numbers of approximately twenty to thirty at at time) they were all socialized.

One of the things I've noticed in this job over the years (and I started out in Legal Aid) is that very poor people seem to have a lot of time to conspire against each other and do so on a regular basis.  The second point is that I've been to the homes of a couple of the people who were testifying on behalf of the state and saw how many dogs they had and how they were kept.  Trying to keep on the good side of the dog warden was also I suspect a significant part or their desire to testify.  Kind of like the Russian woman throwing out her kids to the chasing wolves.

At any rate the judge found her guilty and sentencing will be in a couple of weeks.

The second case and the more serious of the two is a rape case.  A husband was accused of committing forcible oral sex on his wife.  The husband is my client and we had filed for divorce and he had custody of the kids and exclusive use of the martial residence.  Wife had filed no Answer and did not have a lawyer.  A week before the final hearing is when this alleged incident came down.

Understand that you can't commit rape on your spouse in Ohio unless you are living apart. Further, insertion of anything into the body of another however slight, even a tongue is defined as rape.  Also, my guy claimed to the cops that what they did was consensual.  The cops told him they were investigating and would let him know their decision about prosecuting in about a week. They prosecute an F1 rape.

Couldn't keep his statements out (perhaps more on that another time).  But we ended up negotiating a plea to a non-sex offense F4, down from a rape which is an F1 and carries mandatory prison time and a life time of registration every 90 days.  An F4 of this type is a non-jailable offense.  He has also agreed to plead to a misdemeanor which requires registration for 15 years once a year.

My guy might have won had we gone to trial, but he might have lost and if he lost his life would essentially have been over.  I thought and he agreed with me (eventually) that it was better not to take the chance.  Plea is on November 1 and sentencing will probably be about a month later.

Now to paperwork that has piled up, argh.

Town Hall Debate Songified

This is the way to watch it.

One Million Lawyers

Ok, now I don't understand why I don't remember this.

The Ohio State University's Video Game Tribute

Xaiu

I opened a snail mail from my brother and found this photograph of my first chow in it.  It looks like its at my parents house at some family thing.  Although, it might not be since during my father's final illness which lasted for several years I would drive up there every other weekend and usually bring Xaiu along with me.  He was always a hit with the folks at home and especially the kids because he looked like a teddy bear.  The trouble with that was that he didn't like people, especially kids.  He was never mean, but miserable when the kids tried to get him to play with them.  Once about four of them chased him down the hall and caught him in the corner.  He didn't bite or growl, but his tail uncurled and he looked more miserable then I've ever seen him look.  He was always a gentleman with people though.

He was one of the most dominate dogs I've ever had and he was more then willing to point this out to other male dogs many times his size (he weighed about 45 pounds).  In the end that is what killed him getting in a fight with another dog that was many times his size.  I wasn't there at the time.  I still miss him and that was over ten years ago.

Well this mail came and this photo dropped out and I couldn't believe it.  I walked away from it at least three times before I could actually come back and look at it.  I"m glad I've got it, but it was a shock to first see it.without a warning.

(I'm playing with a scanner and I experimented with this to see if I could scan it and cut the edges so there was nothing other then the photo.  I think it worked well.)

Just finished a really good thriller:  Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo.  The first in a series about a former Amish woman who is the chief of police in a small Ohio town trying to catch a serial killer.  Read it for Booked to Death, the mystery book club I go to at the Newark library.

It has got to be one of the better books like that I've read in some time.  The crimes are incredibly explicit and graphic.  I usually don't like them that graphic, but it seems to work here.

The main character and narrator is an Amish woman (Kate) who is the police chief of this small town in Holmes County, Ohio, with a secondary hero/guy/love interest who is a drunken pill popping BCI agent from Columbus, Ohio.  One of the things that caught my eye was the place names (at least the ones that are real).  Kind of fun, places I spend my work days in.  I guess that people who live in California have the same kind of response to the mysteries coming from there, but it is unusual for one to be set around here.

A lot of spoilers from this point on.

The book was just fun in a creepy way.  It carried me along and I was able to ignore the inaccuracies.  Mainly the jurisdictional issues.  The hero is a town cop, but her people seem to patrol the entire county even though there is a sheriff's department in the book and another character who is the county sheriff (not, it turns out a nice man at all).

"If you accept the set up you accept the bit."  At least according to Johnny Carson, and that is what one has to do to really enjoy the book.  Kate has left the Amish faith because of a horrific incident in her teen age years and ended up as a cop in Columbus.   She then came home for her mother's final illness and was asked to stay and become the chief of police in the small town in the book.  I'd say the woman's history really isn't that hard to believe, a rape and a killing of her rapist and a life time of hiding the story and stumbling into a job.  Her description of the lifestyle of the Amish and their relationship to the surrounding society makes the actions of hiding the killing very believable.   The BCI guy's is a little more difficult to buy into, that of a mafia type murdering his family as pay back.  On the other hand it is nice to see an unapologetic drunken pill popping cop.

The small police force does seem to have nothing but first class officers, something that is shall we say a little bit of exaggeration, but they are nicely drawn.

Kate is the narrator, but there are also different third party points of view.  One third party point of view is limited to the BCI guy and then there is a more omniscient one.  That is the one that starts the book with a description of one of the murders more or less from the point of view of the victim and it is incredible creepy and violent and sad.  I didn't particularly like the climax, but it was certainly handled well.  That might of been the least successful part of the book, but it was still pretty strong.

Post Debate Thoughts

So once again I am proven right in not having either cable T.V., nor even the other kind whatever that is now called.

One of the severe difficulties I run across is that when I point out to people that their critiques of Obama(or back in the day Clinton) are based on bullshit, is that I am now defending and supporting Obama (or Clinton).  Not so much, I just hate to see people telling me that my lickspittle of an apologist for any corporation president is a socialist or communist.  There as Shakespeare said is the rub.  I am not saying that you should vote for Obama.  I am saying that you are an asshole for claiming that Obama (or Clinton, either of them) is to the left of Grover Cleveland or William McKinley.

So apparently Obama didn't show up to play last night.  He opted instead to be the kindly accountant who is explaining to you that he doesn't want to see you eating dry dog food, but rather canned cat food.  For some reason this didn't go over well with the viewing public.  I do enjoy LGM  (linked to the most recent post, you can follow that to the others, I think) freaking out and spending about half a dozen posts explaining why this doesn't matter.  I'll give him this, Tbogg did apparently recognize this (which I haven't watched and refuse to, so I'll have to believe what people tell me, just like they told me how I should look at the 1960 debates, thank you).

I would like to point out that I have been saying for about four or perhaps more years that Obama never won a close and truly contested election.  First one he lost.  Second one the more popular candidate was forced out by the Chicago democratic machine.  Next contested one he won after the original republican was forced out because of a very interesting divorce complaint and the replacement was bat shit crazy.  Third one, the primaries against Clinton, Clinton managed to hire people (and pay them millions of dollars) who apparently didn't know that since 1970 the democratic party has assigned delegates pursuant to the percentage of the vote you receive.  So you don't receive all the delegate votes if you win 55% to 45%, but rather you receive 55% of the delegates.  Finally, the 2008 election Jesus Christ couldn't have won, had he run on a republican ticket.

So now he is running his first really contested election in at least 20 some years and he lost the last one.

In the mean time I keep looking at the world as I currently know it and seeing that both the republicans and democrats have been heading in exactly the same direction for at least the last thirty years as far as domestic policies are concerned.  The difference is that the republicans have been wanting to get to those Gilded Ages a lot faster then then democrats.  So I guess that I should vote democrat because there is better a chance that I'll be dead before we are completely fucked.

Arghhhh

Well, managed to tear myself away from the Facebook before I became:

The ignorance of the average American about history and economics make me feel like a genius.

UPDATE:  Several people in that thread, which I've stopped commenting on have insisted that their relatives accepted no government help during the Depression.  That would have been impossible if you were any kind of a less then wealthy family or individual, they would have almost not been able to have gotten by without some sort of government help.   Farmers of course got price supports, workers got unemployment insurance, everybody got Social Security.  People lower down the income level got to live in the subsidized housing here.  The WPA built the auditorium that is still in use in this town and the baseball field, also still in use.  So we know that people who lived here in the 30s were employed by the government in construction projects (which would of course include the subsidized housing which is still in use).

Once again I guess I shouldn't be so disgusted about people believing the idea that we can't spend ourselves out of a recession since almost without exception that appears to be what the governments and the opposition parties all over the world now believe.  

There were a couple of comments that disturbed me greatly:  first, people who said that we didn't spend ourselves out of the Depression because we didn't get out of the Depression until we we started spending on WWII.  Spending on war doesn't count as government spending apparently. Second, that G.I.s coming out of WWII got busy without help to speed the economy forward, completely ignoring the G.I. Bill.  

Dedicated to Mittens

Fantasy Land

OK so now I am thinking in a kind of follow up to what I posted yesterday, is what in the fuck are people on the right thinking?

I am continuously amazed at what people who call themselves republicans or conservative seem to believe.  Not so much: that Obama is not eligible to be president because he wasn't born in the United States, although that is kind of weird.

It is why are right wingers to pissed at him.  I had the same trouble with the republican hatred of Clinton and I still haven't been able to figure that out.  But I am told by people who are conservative (and some of whom are not stupid) that Obama is a socialist or communist.  I particularly like that he is one because of his mother although he was raised mostly by his grandmother, a bank vice-president.   My normal response is:  "You need to reread that definition in the dictionary if you think that he is a one of those."  Beyond just that are the attacks on him for cutting military spending and for abandoning Israel (neither of which he has done, of course).

It does not require a great deal of study or research to look and see that the facts are just the opposite of these claims.  One doesn't even have to jump into the Way Back Machine and go back  to either of the Bushs' presidencies or even the Gipper's to see these arguments aren't true.

I suppose I shouldn't knock the average American who thinks that it is necessary to cut government spending to cut the deficit, since apparently everybody in every government in every country in Europe also believes this, but still it is so very strange that they all seem to have forgotten the little period of history that started around 1929 and continued for some time thereafter.

I don't really think that the hatred of Obama is any more intense or nasty than that of the Clintons.  I haven't heard anyone saying that Obama himself loaded cocaine onto planes out of Illinois or that Michelle has had people killed because of........I can't really remember why Hilliary had people killed, not that it matters.  But still the irrational hate seems to be there.

It is not as if there aren't a lot of things to dislike about what Obama has done, still I guess if you attacked him for these things you couldn't attack him from the right, it would have to be from the left.  Still, it becomes a fantasy world of hate for the opponents.  Very strange.

Although it doesn't matter in the long term I guess it does make the end of the Roman republic and the battles among the would be rulers a little more comprehensible.  It is almost as though the fewer differences the more violent the battles for control of the lstate become.

There is definitely a full court press on right now by many of the major "left" wing blogs to attack those of us who have serious questions about voting for Obama.  We are being told over and over that we are just too much into our white male privileged selves and that we don't care about women, LGBT people, or about sick or old people because Obama got us something that FDR and LBJ couldn't get us together (although it hasn't completely started yet, but you just wait and see cause when it does it will be awesome and even though it isn't great it was the best he could do and ignore that he didn't try anything better, so there, also ponies).  Even Firedoglake (if you count Tbogg).  Although in reality Firedoglake or at least the front page seems to be kind of skitsofrantic (which appears to be the way that word is really spelled, who knew?) what with one or another front pager posting things about the awful stuff Obama does and then the ones just before and after them talking about how much worse things will be if Romney gets in.

 When serious matters are raised:  the drone attacks, Obama's attempt to crush dissent, the burgeoning police state, the gifts to Wall Street, and the Cat Food Commission, among other things.  We are told that Romney is going to be a disaster and Obama did many nearly great things: ACA, the end of DADT, and his refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act.   Most of these good things don't involve money being removed from the pockets of the wealthy, in fact I don't think any of the wonderful things Obama has done involved redistributing money in any direction except towards the wealthy.  So my deal breakers are not good enough, but theirs are.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be a lot of reliance on certain of Obama's campaign "promises or statements," but not all.  The very same thing they make fun of me for what they say I did back in 2008.  Although I didn't.  I was just scared of Sarah Palin and didn't think that Obama could be this reactionary and politically incompetent.  As an aside how can the first African American elected president be so politically incompetent?

So any way Obama has done great things for women's rights (or at least he hasn't gutted them like Romney says he will do) and LGBT rights, after he was dragged kicking and screaming into the positions he finally, kind of, took.  And, and what then?  A "stimulus" that was one of every four dollars as tax breaks to the wealthy, something I suspect the republican would have been forced into in one form or another.  A bail out of Wall Street to save our banks something we know the republican would have been happy to do and would have done.  The use of the feds to crack down of medical marijuana and whistle blowers, I wonder if there is anyone who thinks that the republican would have done it differently?

Past is prologue.  What will probably be the main domestic goal will be to deal with the deficit with cuts to spending with "everything on the table."  Including things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  So where does that leave us?

Damned if I know, no that isn't true.  I do think that I know.  Unfortunately choosing between Mr. Plutocrat and Mr. I Am A Happy Employee Of The Plutocracy doesn't strike me as much of a choice.

Updated in a couple of places to remove the incoherent parts, I hope.