July 1, 2014

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August 3, 2013

A Simple Question

Would you give up your right to vote in exchange for guaranteed economic security - ie health care, food, housing for you and your family. It would involve employment and a strong safety net.

Please explain your answer.

June 25, 2013

My friend, all the capabilities that you mention, any relatively capable

hacker can do without too many problems. And if they can do it, what do you think the NSA can do. The question is do they chose to do it , at this time. Would Nixon have done it if he could? So many things that were illegal for Nixon, and he was impeached for are now legal. I'm afraid to say, the terrorist have won, America land of the free, died on 9-11.

June 25, 2013

This was a comment on CNN about Snowden, I thought it was to the point.

It's not so simple as hero or.... This is not about a person or personalities it is about defining ourselves as a society. What sort of world do we really want to live in? Do we trust the government to do the right thing? In my view people ought to look at the history of the last several decades and what the trends are and make their own judgments. In theory, I would support the right of government to insure what it believes are the needs, security of otherwise, of the people. In practice I do not believe the current system exists for any other reason than to enrich the already rich and to make sure the status-quo never changes. I don't believe the government has an interest in my needs or my welfare--it promotes policies and systems that are bad for me personally and appear to harm most people. This, in the end, is what this issue is about.

The "secrets" the government holds are so great and so immense that we know very little about what actually goes on unless we do our own research. The mainstream media is utterly useless in my view in getting at the truth for a variety of reasons that go back, to Walter Lippman's notions on how public opinion ought to be shaped--I leave it to the reader to look into that.

March 20, 2013

There is reason to worry

The current presidential line of succession, as specified by the United States Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 is: Vice President of the United States Joe Biden (D), and secondly Speaker of the House John Boehner (R). Very few times are the President and Vice President together in a non-tightly controlled environment, the presidential inauguration is one such occasion in which this is true. If the unthinkable happened, and both President Obama and Vice President Biden should die, a Republican, John Boehner would be our President. John Boehner's policies would be the exact opposite of those of President Obama and Vice President Biden's. The presidential line of succession should be changed so that the presidency would not switch parties if there was a co-ordinated attack by madmen on both the President and Vice President.

March 2, 2013

Give Them Hell

The 80th Congress was nicknamed the "Do Nothing Congress" by President Harry Truman. The Congress opposed many of the bills passed during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. They also opposed most of Truman's Fair Deal bills. Yet they passed many pro-business bills. During the 1948 election Truman campaigned as much against the "Do Nothing Congress" as against his formal opponent, Thomas Dewey.

Truman won that election.

It is pretty apparent that the *Do Nothing Congress* has returned for the last four years. It is time that President Obama take a page from Harry Truman's play book and campaign beginning now against this do nothing congress so that people are as interested in the 2014 election as they were in 2012.

Obama's case in this campaign is simple, the deficit must be cut. If you do not want necessary government services cut, tax loopholes must be eliminated to help pay for those services. This is the start of a tax reform program, to make our tax system fairer. Worried about Social Security in the future, simple answer is to remove the cap, which will protect the program until the 22th century. It will also make the FICA payroll tax fairer, and maybe enable us to reduce the tax rate. Worried about Medicare and Obamacare, replace it with a single payer Medicare for all system. This would replace Medicare as the high risk pool insurance program, and replace it as a regular insurance program that also covers young healthy people and uses their premiums to help lower cost for all people by removing the middleman for profit insurance companies.

Keep the campaign simple, but make it about important things. A high turnout will produce a congress that the president can work with for the good of all the american people.

January 31, 2013

The root of all problems with guns

I was doing a reply to the post about "Cops handcuff and interrogate boy, 7, for hours over missing $5: family" http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022285356 when I realized I had presented the perfect case why assault rifles should be banned. I was talking about my son:

I do not believe in corporal punishment. I take away things he wants and send him to his room, but he still does not listen, or attend school if he feels he has something better to do. He is now 15 and I am very worried about him. He hits his *girlfriend* and always gets in fights that are *never his fault*. What can I do. I have sent him to psychiatrist but he will not talk to them. He knows I will never hit him, so he has no respect for me or anyone. A little police terror might get his attention.

I have been dealing with this for five years. He knows that I love him, and he is not a bad kid. He just loses his temper rapidly when he feels he is disrespected. Why he hits his girlfriend, I do not know, he certainly did not learn that from me. He is a good looking, even handsome, boy and she gets jealous when he talks with other girls. He says she has to know her place. I tell them both, they are too young to be more then friends, but it goes in one ear and out the other and never stops in the brain. I think I have spoken to every therapist in town. He is smart and he knows it, gets straight A's in school, although he does not attend half the time, and dismisses therapy as just being mumbo-jumbo. If you take every bad thing you heard about Mitt bossing people around when he was young, that is my son. The world has to follow his rules, he does not have to follow the world's rules. This is why I wish the police would put a little respect and terror in him. I do not know what I can do!!!

I have never been a gun owner and have no weapons in my home. My son has never shown an interest in guns. But what kind of fear would I live in if I had weapons in my home and my son had an interest in guns. This is something we should think about. My son is not crazy, he gets into a lot of fights but it has never been something bad enough to involve the police. He does not fight on school grounds. Right now it only involves bloody noses and black eyes, but what if he had access to an AR-15.

December 29, 2012

It is time that progressives on the left talked to crazies on the right

Ever since 9-11 and the start of "the War on Terror" we have seen the slow loss of our freedoms and rights. And we have become more and more willing to accept this loss of freedom and personal liberty. Not all paranoia is crazy, sometimes they (big brother) really are watching you. What is our right to privacy, for it lies at the core of all individual freedom, whether it is in the bedroom, what we smoke, or any other area of our lives. When does government become too big?