"The Hardest Vote I've Taken"

I happen to like Al Franken. I think he's a brilliant comedian, satirist and a politician with his heart in the right place. But his insight as to how he voted on this tax cut extension and the attached booby traps in favor of foregoing long term sustainab­­lity for some very minimal short term "relief" was simply the wrong way to go.
This was a bad vote.
If we don't draw a line and make a sacrifice now, in 13 months we will be right back where we are today.
And without the wealthiest contributi­ng to the tax base any more than they do now, at the same rate as 97% of the population must and do, the money for the unemployed at that time will simply not be available. It will suely be a case of "Deja vu all over again".
Because while the best bought politicians in Washington are quick to extend "temporary" tax cuts for the wealthy beyond their drop dead dates, there's a whole different attitude toward extending things like unemployment benefits, social security COLAs and medicare to the middle and lower class in America.

Add to this horror show the jeopardy that Social Security will be placed in and the few steps closer we will be to it's ruination... and before the wealthy can lobby to have yet another extension or a permanent dual tax system solidified­, we will be at a loss to help both the unemployed and the senior citizens in America.

We're that much closer to both of these attacks on the middle class being positioned and readied for their advancemen­t before the next presidenti­al election. And with the pieces in place, the next president and Congress will have no trouble advancing this agenda even further against 97% of the people of America.

Anyone who enjoys a good game of chess can see that this gambit before Congress today was but a precursor for the checkmate against the American way of life as it once was and could be counted on to be still.
Sure this was a tough vote. But it would have been better to be tough now, than powerless later.

Read the original article at HuffingtonPost

Norm Coleman Returns To Senate As Non Sequitur

OK. Get these guys to agree to and the state to approve of a run off, already.
This thing can go on for another 6 to 12 months as it is with Coleman using it for photo ops and lobbying his buddies in the Senate or we could be done with it in a matter of weeks.
Of course, how likely is it that the GOP is going to agree to anything of the kind without a third party candidate (such as Barkley was) involved to bleed votes from Franken in another round of voting? It would be a massive landslide with a race only involving Coleman and Franken to the tune of a double digit percentage final count by the time the sun came up the next day.
Perhaps someone should get a court ruling on holding a run off in this situation to begin with and resolve this then move forward with having one.

I still can't believe that this is the same guy that wanted Franken to throw in the towel on the eve of the election for expediency and the "good of the state of Minnesota". And now he's the main impediment to resolving this issue by not accepting the results of the law driven recount.

No. Wait. What am I saying? It's Coleman and the GOP. I can believe double speak all too well. We've been living with it as policy for 8 years now.

Come to think about it...since when were people who aren't Senators allowed to just mosey in and visit the Senate??
Try it sometime and let me know how that works for you, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public. I'll start scraping together the bail.

About Senate Races
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Franken Race: Minnesota Court Deals Coleman New Blow

Well, it appears that the guy who would be Senator on the night of the election and belly ached that Franken should accept the initial counts as accurate and "throw in the towel" for the benefit of Minnesota politics, obviously has no intention of taking his advised high road now that the tables have turned. If that isn't par for the course... And now there's the likelihood that he (Coleman) will be filing for suit, which will tie up the courts and the Senatorial appointment for several more weeks. In order to declare so much as a tie at this point, he (Coleman) would need to win the decision on 225 of those 630 ballots in question and pose the assumption that Franken would win none of them or any of the remainder. The original recount was not a matter of Franken's insistance. It was a legal mandate based on the election outcome in Minnesota. Any suit brought about by Coleman is an exercise of choice based solely on wishful thinking. Perhaps he should be publicly reminded of his earlier concerns for Minnesota politics and follow his own suggestion made to Franken in November to accept the results and "throw in the towel".
About Al Franken
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac

Greetings all, from the "fly over" states in the great Midwest where even the summer doesn't care to spend the season!
Le'see, here...

FDA says, "Trust us!"
The FDA today approved the use of baby bottles that are manufactured using a substance that goes by the name of bisphenol A. You know. The very same FDA that approves the big question mark pharmaceuticals such as Aspartame, and Rofecoxib…(AKA Vioxx) which stayed on the market for almost five years until the manufacturer, the Merck Company voluntarily called it back. They did this because it was not only relieving pain…as it was meant to, but it was also allegedly responsible for relieving some people of life itself. In all, 80 million people were prescribed this drug before it was pulled in by Merck…and the FDA never took a stand on it one way or the other until the millions were made and the issue was eliminated by someone else. Sometime I really have to tell ya about the anti-depressants that have been the "coincidental" prescription of choice for so many of the people who have gone postal for no known reason from Virginia Tech to Columbine. Hey…I didn't break these stories! But then neither did the main stream media at the time.

The Big Guys: (another) 1, The little Guys:0
The Right Side of the political aisle defeated the Left Side today on the almost corporate tax on Big Oil. So while Big Oil keeps racking up 41 Billion dollar profits per quarter, the American taxpayer can continue to provide 17 million of it in the form of breaks and cuts for the people who have their hand in keeping us at the 30 MPH combustible ceiling. Mean while Europe averages 45 MPH and that's as of today as a gallon of gas goes beyond $4 per gallon. It's hard to get excited about the prospect of having a national standard of 35 MPH by 2012 when you look at the larger, Euro picture. This is somehow supposed to make sense. But it doesn't.
More importantly to the average Joe and Jane, I heard last week that the cost of hops…one of the essential ingredients used in the fermentation and production of beer has gone up in price from approximately $4 per pound to nearly $45 per pound. Perhaps the gas crisis and the prices won’t get anyone off the couch to demand representation from the politicians, but you let a case of beer become as dear as $40 or $50 bucks and you'll have a revolution reminiscent of 1776 against the King!

Forty years on...
One of RFK's assassins showed up in the news today…Interesting how 40 years changes the way people look. I wonder what Eugene Thane Caesar looks like after all this time? (Pssst. If you have to ask…you haven't been paying attention!)

"I can call you Betty." Betty, you can call him, Al!
Kudos to Al Franken for sewing up the DFL nomination in Minnesota over the weekend in spite of the opposition he has had to face from the press and his own sour grape party. It appears the best campaign against him thus far is coming from the U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, who was instrumental in the campaign of another DFL hopeful, who didn't fare so well as Franken in the primaries, Mike Ciresi. It appears people have had their sensibilities shaken over something Franken wrote 8 years ago and appeared in a Playboy magazine. Of course none of these people bothered to explain why, if that sort of thing offended them, they were reading and referencing Playboy in the first place…but hey. It was something to hang on to in hopes of changing the primaries rather than accepting the given outcome. Has there been a lot of this going on this year across the Democratic party, or what? Don't blame Hillary. You have free will.

Who is this "chick" and who cares??
Can anyone tell me what the hell Elizabeth Hasselbeck has ever accomplished that makes her worthy of pontificating on everything from soup to nuts on The View each day that compels ABC to fairly much, exclusively feature her vapid opinions in video and print on anything ABC/Disney on the internet day in and day out?? What the hell are her credentials that make her the Wizardess of OZ, anyway? Oh, she's pretty, you bet! But she is as irritating as a mound of fire ants. C'mon, how authentically worldly can she possibly be at, what(?) less than 30?? Fer chrissake, I have jeans that have seen more of life than she has, ear hair that's older and there are over 90 million Americans who have spent as much time sleeping at night as she has sucking in oxygen all together in this life time. Humble it up, Lizzie. You too can be wrong some times. From my View...it's more often than you can even fathom.

ABC online, it's like I hardly knew ya!
And finally, while I'm on the subject of ABC…particularly ABCnews online…let me get this off my chest. Why? Because I wrote them more than one email over the course of time and told them I would. So here it is.
I have spent hours and days and nights enjoying posting to ABC's comment boards and discussing things with other readers at that site for literally years. I have with no exception, respected the terms of use and have in spite of all temptation avoided using obscenities, profanity, spamming, trolling or hate speech of any kind. Still, and also without exception, the censors have seen it eventually appropriate to delete whatever account I had registered under, prohibit my involvement and banish me to the vast internet lands beyond ABCnews, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Internet Group.
Should anyone with whom I may have held intercourse with (not HAD intercourse with!) on ABCnews' comment boards stumble across this blog and read this, allow me to me re-introduce myself under the assortment of handles I have used for as long as I was allowed to maintain them. I have been, "Zenandnow", "Yasgarsfarm", "25or6to4" and "Kiddcharlemagne" to just name a few of my more current favorites.
I would not want to imply that I and I alone have faced the wrath of the gatekeepers at ABCnews exclusively. Many people who were invited by ABC to participate have been quite arbitrarily removed under less than the good faith invitation made ("Welcome to the ABCNEWS.com message boards. This is the forum where we're harnessing the power of our user community. We encourage you to talk back, discuss and debate, and make your voice heard. And, of course, we welcome your feedback both on our newly redesigned web site -- and on our reporting.") Bullshit, all!
There is and appears to have always been a policy in place at ABCnews that is based on readers and writers being accepted or rejected based solely on political ideology and involves nothing any more complicated than that and the whim of whomever is monitoring public input at any given time.
If you can add something inciting and reactionary that propels the particular story you are commenting on further into a mindless, knee jerk, vigilantism that expresses the view or opinion that appear to be followed or supported by corporate America (as seen by ABC and WDIG) then you are left relatively unfettered and unimpaired even to the point of declaring verbal warfare on other people submitting posts and comments.
If on the other hand you pose questions that counter the promoted political policies or the group propagated assumptions of ABC and the Walt Disney Internet Group, you will surely be posting on borrowed time, for at some point without so much as a howdy-do you will find that your posts have been deleted and you can no longer log in to so much as post a ditto.
Don't take my word for it. Ask around. Google the phenomena. See what others are saying. Register and attempt to promote a conversation that is not usable for the corporate cause/main stream media that is ABC, as a bludgeon to an opposing line of reasoning or other than the mass accepted hive minded rationale.
You may find as I and others have that they are a total waste of time for anyone that might choose to follow an online discourse or debate to its logical conclusion or mutual understanding.
Then…if you actually are interested in freedom of speech and a place to voice and share your outlook…avoid these guys and other sites like them as you would any brain-flesh eating plague.
I know I certainly will.
Even I catch on, eventually.