SoCalDem
SoCalDem's JournalNo one can "give" democracy to another country
anymore than give a couple a happy marriage if the two people have grown to loathe each other.
The US has wasted so much money and blood trying to create democracies around the world.
The Middle East has NEVER had true democracies, and probably never will, because they are (and have been for thousands of years) a society of factions. Long ago they decided to stick to "their own kind", and chose to marginalize others whenever possible, and to do so in brutal ways.
I am so saddened every time we try to democratize others, when our own democracy barely functions anymore.
ISIS is a problem that Middle Easterners have to solve..or not. We have no business meddling anymore.
What probably needs to happen is for there to be a serious conference held, where any and all Middle Eastern countries send envoys who will get some "tough love"...namely.. "Get your act together, or perish".
Either have a mass "sorting" of population and move people into their own regions or have a massive knock down drag-out battle and settle this once and for all. Westerners have wasted too much time, energy, money and blood trying to sort things out.
Maria Shriver Erased
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/09/11/schwarzeneggers-estranged-wife-maria-shriver-erased-from-former-governors-official-portrait/Politics
Schwarzenegger’s Estranged Wife Maria Shriver Erased From Former Governor’s Official Portrait
by Carlos E. Castañeda September 11, 2014 1:00 PM
SACRAMENTO (CBS SF) — Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appears to have had an alteration to the official portrait unveiled in Sacramento earlier this week – the removal of an image of his estranged wife Maria Shriver .Thursday’s online San Francisco Chronicle Matier & Ross blog cites unnamed sources as saying the painting was done years ago and originally featured a lapel pin depicting Shriver.
The photograph-like portrait by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein shows a visible smudge on the left lapel.According to the column, Helnwein told Barbara Gasser of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association there was “one little interesting detail” in the portrait – “which I cannot give away because I am not allowed to tell, but it was very important and meaningful to the governor.”
A few months after Schwarzenegger left office in 2011, he and Shriver separated after 25 years of marriage. Days later it was revealed Schwarzenegger had fathered a son 14 years earlier during an ongoing affair he had with his household maid.
100 homes burned in Weed, CA ( a very cute little mountain town)
We stopped there for lunch on our way to Washington state.. and ended up spending a few hours wandering around their quaint downtown area..
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/09/15/wildfire-in-northern-california-town-of-weed-burns-100-homes-at-least-1500-evacuated-siskiyou-county-oregon-mount-shasta-fire-interstate-5-cal-fire/
WEED, Siskiyou County (CBS / AP) — A fire driven by fierce winds raced through a small town near the Oregon border on Monday, burning a church to the ground, damaging or destroying 100 homes and prompting evacuation orders for at least 1,500 people, authorities said.
This tiny town near the base of Mount Shasta in the Cascade Mountains was under siege from a 350-acre blaze that surged toward and through it through timberland.
The town sawmill caught fire, and a Catholic church was destroyed.
The blaze erupted at around 1:30 p.m. south of Weed, a scenic town of nearly 3,000 located about 50 miles south of the Oregon border and about half way between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.
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What on earth was the Colombian cycling team thinking???
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/sep/15/colombian-women-cycling-flesh-coloured-kit-unacceptable-uciclick the link for the "inappropriate" picture
The design of a new flesh-coloured kit that makes a Colombian women’s cycling team look naked below the waist has been described as unacceptable by Brian Cookson, the president of the UCI.
Photographs of the Bogota Humana team were taken at the Tour of Tuscany, showing six women wearing red and yellow kit with flesh-coloured material immediately above and below the waist. It is unclear if the team intend to wear a similar uniform next week while representing Colombia at the road world championships in Ponferrada, Spain.
After the pictures went viral on social media, Cookson tweeted: “To the many who have raised the issue of a certain women’s team kit, we are on the case. It is unacceptable by any standards of decency.”
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The US needs a "permanent" war tax
The congress needs to make law that cannot "expire".. The law needs to say that whenever a new "war/military action/whatever they want to call it" is taken on, an IMMEDIATE 10% tax is levied on EVERY financial transaction...by EVERYONE..
We used to have a luxury tax on non-essentials like leather goods, furs, jewelry, perfumes, cosmetics, etc.
We need a war tax, so that when people see their receipts, they see WAR TAX on it, so they know they are paying extra for everything they buy..and I do mean EVERYTHING... every stock transaction,., every dividend check...even social security checks/pension checks.
When enough people realize that THEY are paying for adventurism so military contractors can get wealthier, perhaps they will start electing more responsible people.
Goodell's pasty white face betrayed him
Watch the interview he did recently.. When it starts, his color is "normal"..as he lies again and again, he flushes and becomes more and more red-faced.. OF COURSE THEY HAD THE ENTIRE TAPE.. THEY DID NOT KNOW THAT TMZ HAD THE WHOLE TAPE..
I don't understand why he didn't just say, I screwed up, and should have suspended him immediately, ..I am sorry and you can rest assured that it will never happen again.
The hydrocarbon middle-class family
Saturday, Aug 30, 2014 02:00 PM PST
Cataclysm in suburbia: The dark, twisted history of America’s oil-addicted middle class
How the same things that contributed to the rise of the middle class are also now leading to its downfall
Robert O. Self
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/30/cataclysm_in_suburbia_the_dark_twisted_history_of_americas_oil_addicted_middle_class/
Houses, cars, and children. For a century, they have defined the family economy, and they have driven the national economy. They organize our lives and shape our debts.
Their presence all around us seems so natural, and they are so tightly bound together in how we measure personal milestones and record family stories, we can forget just how recent and fragile their combination is, historically speaking. Developments in the last decade have served to remind us.
When the housing market and the automobile industry crashed between 2007 and 2008, signaling the onset of the Great Recession, two pillars of the national economy crumbled simultaneously. American households lost $16 trillion in net worth, and the federal government rescued major banks and automakers, to ward off an even greater collapse.
That shock came amidst the slow burn of the decades-long flatlining of blue-collar and pink-collar wages, and a mounting college affordability crisis. By 2013, working-class wages had not grown meaningfully against inflation for 40 years, while the average individual’s college debt had climbed to just below $30,000. Children, whether from the laboring or professional class, no longer imagine they’ll do better than their parents.
When President Obama promised to “build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class” in his 2014 State of the Union message, he as much as admitted that such ladders barely exist any longer.
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Anyone watching "An Honorable Woman" ?
I watched ep. 1 and other than their HORRIBLE timing, it looks like it will be a great mini-series..
It's on Sundance
Artists change bomb blast pics
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?pageID=447&GalleryID=2204&gpid=1Some of them are amazing...
Turkish women stage a "laughing" protest
What started the protest:
32 pf the fantastic pics:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?pageID=447&GalleryID=2205
............................................................
and he responds to their protest in Ted Cruz fashion..
the pic is NSFW but a truly in-your-face bonanza
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-deputy-pm-slams-women-having-vacation-without-husbands.aspx?pageID=238&nID=69797&NewsCatID=338
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