WHOM CAN WE TRUST?

It is about to be spring but someone forgot to mention it to Mother Nature.  In the Northeast, the six inches of snow struck a feeling of deja vu.  There is something about that kind of unpleasant repeat calling for action (like shoveling snow) that just weighs one down with the added overload of information.

It is unclear to me whether we are finally hearing about the lies of G W Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the others that seem not to care or feel any responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of lives lost because of them and, worse, the 32,000 maimed for life military personnel returned to the US while our Republican house majority is making their lives uselessly miserable for them and their families so they can continue to have the backing of the powers that pay them campaign funds, or some other equally shameful impetus.

When people have such little human empathy for their fellow men, they are viewed suspiciously as sociopaths.  The same can be said about CEOs of huge corporations whose salaries have expanded three hundredfold while minimum wage remains just that, as little as they can get away with paying.  More people should be educated in the signs and symptoms to look for in people not to be trusted.  It amazes me constantly that people seem so little able to put together people's behaviors and character as somehow not being connected.  Not so, my friends.  How people behave and judgements they make definitely indicates what you may except from them in other situations.  Romney's taped talk to his $50,000 a plate contributors tells much about his pleasure at telling about the conditions of young women in his factories in China.

Would he want one of his granddaughters to work in such conditions.  He likely would never consider it because his family is so moneyed that such conditions would never occur.  How did he think he could be President when he is hiding his money off shore to save his taxes so that the poor people (now the former middle class) can pay it all while he build 5 story elevators for his cars.

At last, we have been hearing media admits they were not doing their job when the Iraq Was was being pushed through.  I hope they will realize they are not supposed to run the country but simply hold elected  politicians to truth and their jobs being honestly and competently performed.  In today's world that seems to be more to ask from them than for which they have prepared.

CHANGE IS NECESSARY BUT NOT ALWAYS DESIRABLE

Without a doubt, parts of the country reflect the terrible economy more than others. In Eastern Massachusetts, unlike the mid-West there are fewer large factories and plants that can close, leaving total desolation. When a military base or such closes, all the peripheral businesses that supported them also die. Locally where I live, more likely, now restaurants have instant seating available most of the time, theaters are frequently less crowded, and merchants complain about the lack of business. Prices have been raised to help balance the shortfall. Pretty soon, the added prices will keep customers away, thus insuring the demise of the business.

Luxury items are suffering. Malls are seeing many shop closings. For Rent or Lease signs are sprouting like grass in the springtime. Many Massachusetts smokers go to New Hampshire even after the additional $1.00 tax hike MA levied per pack. New Hampshire then raised the tax on theirs but kept it just under the MA hike.

It is my belief that the current administration is doing its best to handle the situation. Jobs in other areas are starting as infrastructure is finally being attended to in many states. People are normally impatient and forget who put us into this economic quagmire. It was not Obama though the short-sighted and politically ignorant will still blame whoever is currently in charge.

Indeed, most of us have lost 1/3 of our on-paper wealth. It ids axiomatic that people place their losses from whatever the top value of their portfolio might have reached at one time. They certainly didn't sell then or they wouldn't be complaining now. When people did sell at that time and put their money in liquid or more stable positions they be whining less than those who trusted the 'Cramers' and others who denied that the country and its financial system were in such difficulty.

Once again, Obama's promise to break the country financially rather than do more bombing worked for him. Cheney can say all he wants to say about having protected the United States from another 9/11 attack, he only killed hundreds of thousands of people and ruined more lives with his war. Bush, who never seemed invested in the people anyway, remains silent in his new home, protected by Secret Service for life, and now has his permanent vacation like many of the CEOs who left their companies, taking millions for themselves while the stockholders lost everything and the employees were left destitute. A blind man may not see it but he can certainly hear it.

ODDS AND TIDBITS: MORE ON ABUSE OF FREE SPEECH

Bill O'Reilly, Sexist and Proud of It Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films at 3:00 PM on May 7, 2009. It will always puzzle me how so many people are unable to see through the lies and nastiness that people like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, among others, get rich on while poor people stay poor and misinformed by listening to them. Limbaugh can enjoy his 24,000 sq foot house while he makes the common man's life more of a problem, having done so much to support the terrible choices the past Administration made in the last eight years.

Another One Bites the Dust: Joe the Plumber Is Quitting the GOP Posted by Staff, Huffington Post at 11:12 AM on May 7, 2009. Time Magazine is reporting - burying rather - the news that Joe the Plumber, also known as Samuel Wurzelbacher, is quitting the GOP.

The Secret Right-Wing Strategy on Health Care—Exposed! Posted by Bernie Horn at 10:13 AM on May 7, 2009. If conservatives make the debate about what is good and bad in the Obama plan - they will win.

While Cheney goes around bragging that we have not had a terrorist attack since he and Bush used torture and kept us all safe. Well, I for onr, do not consider us safe at all. We may have not been attacked from the outside, but the dangers within the country still persist. When a sports announcer talks about about shooting Nancy Pelosi twice and strangling Harry Reid and Osama ben Laden, Olbermann's term 'abuse of free speech' says it all for me.

DO NOT LISTEN TO PREDICTIONS

For as many years as I believed my parents knew better than I. I believed that TV political pundits also knew more than I. Indeed they do have more information. However, they are mostly unable to use that information to predict the entire political system. Beyond that, they are hampered by their own wish to appear ‘pundit-like’, to please their bosses, and like the legislature, to assure their continued employment.

To that end, also like the legislators, they pretend to speak for the average American with whom they long ago lost any contact they may have once had before they became victims of the Peter Principle. (“In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.") from Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in a humorous book which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology" "inadvertently founded" by Peter, their book in 1968 The Peter Principle, the principle has real validity.

The Audacity of Hope could better have been written about the predictions made publicly on the McLaughlin Hour for years, few of which came to pass. Those made by the self-described 'experts' for all major media outlets on newspaper, air or TV fare no better. There was a time when they could say anything and get away with it, but no more. Today there is a visual and audio recording of everything uttered. McCain has tried to lie his way out of things denying he has said what the media can play back, almost instantaneously, that which they accurately claim he said, leaving his denial a mere flap of his lips. So far, that fact has not quite sunk into the brains of some of the politicians and pundits. Cheney seems to be one of the worst at maintaining he never said what he did say, with abounding proof on archived TV files to the contrary. For those schooled in never admitting they lied and never taking responsibility for their actions, technology seems to be catching up to them.

If we assume that McCain actually has forgotten what he has predicted, promised or said, we enter another sphere of confusion. McCain's brain is 72 years of age while Obama's is 46 or so. In either case, whether he is fabricating that he never said something or indeed has actually forgotten, it is not a positive sign for the brain functioning of the President of the most powerful nation in the world.

So I am left with a real question. Will the pundits be as anxious to make a prediction with such vehemence in face of the likelihood that it may not come to pass if they know it will be played over and over to the country at large, win or lose?