Category: Politics Page 26 of 35

Presidential caucuses have been Connie’s specialty in Iowa as she followed the elections of 2004, 2008, 2012 and wrote the 2 books “Obama’s Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House.” She also continues to follow politics by avidly reading everything she can get her hands on, including “Rolling Stone,” “Mother Jones,” “Newsmax,” “Time,” etc.

Spelling Bees I Have Known and Loved—Or Not

By Connie Wilson

On March 23, 2014

In Editorial, Humor and Weird Wilson-isms, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Spelling Bees have always had a special significance for me going back to 1979, when, as I completed a decade in the public schools in Silvis, Illinois at the junior high school level, a “new gun in town” swept into our district and began barking orders like a drill sergeant about how all of the English department (all 3 of us) were going to be participating in the Big Deal Spelling Bee sponsored by our local newspaper, and about how SHE was going to be attending meetings to facilitate same (while the Principal of our Junior High School covered her classes) so she could be absent from the drudgery of teaching, blah, blah, blah.

The teacher—I’ll call her Jill St. John, (although that was not her real name)—did not even have a valid 4-year teaching certificate at the time, but was working to secure it. Why, then, was she being positioned as the Queen Bee of the Spelling Bee and bossing others around, which included calling several meetings at the crack of dawn at least one hour before school was even scheduled to start? [I am happy to report that I did not attend a single early-morning meeting; I’d rather be shot at dawn than have to go to such a meeting at 7 a.m. The very thought made me sick, so that’s what I was on those days.]

Why, she was married to the Superintendent of Schools of a very small nearby community, which I will call White Cliffs, for the purpose of this rehash of my deep-seated resentment of Spelling Bee Oh-So-Proper mentality. Ultimately, Jill and her husband left town under a very dark cloud that smacks of some of the abuses of the Catholic Church. But, during that school year, the Queen Bee was riding high and riding herd.

It seemed intrinsically unfair, to me, that a teacher who had just arrived on the scene (and wasn’t even fully certified) had suddenly been named Big Cheese, with all the rest of the English department (i.e., all 2 of us) supposed to kiss the Papal ring. I had even been named one of the “Ten Most Creative Teachers in America” in a TAB Scholastic Magazine contest shortly before this.

While I had (and have) nothing against spelling bees, up to that point, and would have enjoyed participating in one when a young girl, the pages and pages of directions for procedures on HOW we were to go about selecting our contestant of choice for the entire school were ludicrous, impractical and so time-consuming as to be virtually useless.

I was already supposed to be teaching Language Arts: Literature, Grammar, Composition and, (in a separate report card grade), Spelling in one 45-minute period. I barely had time to work in FOUR separate disciplines daily, giving 10 minutes per day to each. I was very “high” on writing/composition in my classes, and I also volunteered my time to run two different speech competitions (Modern Woodmen Oratorical Contest and Optimists Oratorical Competition) after school, as well as being the school newspaper supervisor, so running interminable “spell offs” in my classroom during the ordinary classroom day, in addition to the tasks described here, was not in the cards. When I saw the “recommendations” for HOW we were to come up with our contestants, I quickly realized that my best method would be to check the highest I.Q.’s in my study hall (which was held last hour of the day) and see if the two brightest students I had at that time of day would be willing to “spell” each other during the hour, which was an hour given over to doing one’s homework and otherwise taxing the patience of the study hall supervisor. Therefore, Chris Thompson and Fred Cernetisch became my duly selected contestants, and life went on as usual, with my students, at least, receiving a balanced diet of Literature, Composition, Grammar and Spelling. We had our “contestants” and all was right with the Language Arts World in my classroom, but things were rapidly going downhill in Jill St. John’s classroom right next door.

Mrs. St. John plunged into her new-found prominence with great gusto and began doing things exactly the way the myriad sheets of directions from our local newspaper described, which meant that she had no time to actually teach anything else. It also meant that there were upsets aplenty during her “Spell offs.”

The smartest and best and most motivated students did not, like cream, rise to the top of the Spelling Bee food chain in her numerous and never-ending elimination(s). As can happen in the real deal, chance and luck played a big part, and she did not care for the contestants who ended up as the “winners” of her never-ending spelling bee preliminaries. In fact, she disliked their odds of winning anything beyond a prison sentence so much (when compared to Chris and Fred’s odds, anyway) that she ran in a ringer—a boy who had been out with a broken leg but was among the smartest in the school, who hobbled onstage with his leg in a cast, never having taken part in any of her charade of “Spell Offs.” (That student is now a physician and almost certainly was among the highest I.Q.’s in the entire school).

The budding doctor, however, was a bit of a problem child. He didn’t really care that much for sitting through classes that did not challenge his superior abilities, and he had recently been disciplined at the school picnic for bringing a giant jam box and blasting hip hop music with obscene lyrics. (All in a day’s work for the school’s budding genius.)

This student—I’ll call him “Mike”—could not be counted on to apply himself with any diligence to the task of actually studying a bunch of dry spelling words. He wasn’t of the ethnic strains that “home school” their child and do NOTHING but study spelling words for months. (Now THERE’S a well-rounded child…if all you want him or her to be able to do is spell “antidisestablishmentarianism!”)

So, during the REAL spell-off in our school gym several things happened that were unexpected.

First, all of my teaching colleagues whom I had considered good friends and with whom I had stormed the barricades to achieve recognition for our teachers’ group over a three-year period, went to work setting up chairs and helping Jill St. John out, which I considered, then and now, a real slap in the face.

Second, during the actual Spell-off to determine who would be our junior high school’s contestant, the judges, under the leadership of Jill St. John, seemed oblivious to the fact that “Mike” had just misspelled a word and eliminated himself. I was upstairs in the overlooking band balcony and actually had to stand up and yell down at the assembled PTB, “What about ‘predestination’?” (or whatever the offending word was). The judges finally had to acknowledge that Mr. Future Surgeon had missed his word and the contestant from my homeroom (Chris) was the winner of the “Spell off.”

Third: the fact that the contestant from my homeroom won and hers did not so enraged Jill St. John that she totally lost it in the hallway after school. With plenty of students within earshot, she began swearing a blue streak at me (as it turned out, Jill St. John had the vocabulary of a sailor). And let’s not forget that she had gone back on her own many and numerous “directives.” After countless hours wasted having “spell offs” in her classroom, she had adopted my strategy and simply selected her smartest study hall student to compete, rather than abiding by the rather lengthy and capricious results she obtained while following the directions of the local newspaper.

“Next year,” she screamed, “this will be televised!”

I barely managed to keep from saying Big Whoop.

I maintained my calm (just barely) and asked her if she’d mind accompanying me to the office to repeat everything she had just said (screamed, actually) for our esteemed Principal, Mr. DoNothing.

We marched down to the office, me determined to have all the wrongs I had suffered for months set right, but the Principal (Mr. Do-Nothing, as opposed to Dr. DoLittle) did his usual straddling of the fence. He ushered me, solo, into his office, keeping the salty-tongued Jill in his outer office.

I remember asking him, “Just exactly who IS the Chairman of the English department? I’ve been here 10 years and have a Master’s degree plus 30 hours. Why is this woman bossing everyone around, calling early morning meetings, and swearing at me in the halls, to boot?”

Mr. Do-Nothing answered that we didn’t HAVE “Chairmen” of our departments, [which was a crock], and ushered me out a side door that exited outside, suggesting that I leave early for the day. I was pissed and likely to remain so, since I still am, 34 years later. He then ushered Jill St. John into his office where they, no doubt, commiserated on how difficult Mrs. Wilson was and how wonderful her behavior had been, because, after all, SHE was married to the Superintendent of White Cliff School District, [which he would soon leave under a very black cloud].

However, the “right” student won (and, later, went to work for me at Sylvan for 15 years) but, as luck would have it, her grandparents offered her a trip to Hawaii that was to take place at exactly the same time as the aforementioned Spelling Bee Finals, which were to be held at Augustana College during Easter break.

So, “Mike”—as runner-up—-with his cast now off his leg—is shown in the official school yearbook front and center with the TRUE winner (Chris) stuck somewhere in the back of the photo. I was never issued an apology by the woman who swore a blue streak at me in the halls, and, at the end of that school year, I took one entire year off from teaching to ponder a school district that valued my efforts so little and kissed ass so much.

Did I quit?

No, I did not. I returned after one year away (spent looking for work at a higher level) and taught 5 more years before quitting for good. to take a job writing for Performance Learning Systems, Inc.

But now you have the background of my disdain for Spelling Bees, with which I preface a review of “Bad Words” to follow. While I think Spelling Bees can be fun and useful, I don’t think that staying home and doing NOTHING but studying spelling words has much to recommend it as being the best possible educational course of action, and I still remember the injustice(s) of the first one held at my school in school year 1979-1980.

Fifty Years Ago Today (Feb. 25, 1964): Muhammad Ali Fought Sonny Liston

By Connie Wilson

On February 25, 2014

In Editorial, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Pop Culture, Sports, Television

Fifty years ago today (February 25, 1964), Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay) defeated Sonny Liston (aka, “the Big Bear”) to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World. It was “the Scowl” versus “the Mouth” in Miami.

Muhammad Ali and me: Iowa City, 1968:

When I read that today was the 50-year anniversary of the Clay/Liston fight (Ali was still known as Cassius Clay, what he called his “slave name,” until after the fight), I remembered the day Muhammad Ali visited Iowa City, Iowa and spoke at the Iowa Memorial Union. I was there. I was one of many students crowded into the room.

His anti-war message against the war in Vietnam was what drew me to his speech. At the time, it did not make Muhammad Ali popular, just as the student protests at Berkeley had made student protest leader Mario Savio much reviled in 1965, three years earlier, when I was a student on campus at the University of California at Berkeley. Today, there is a statue of the (now-deceased) Mario Savio on the campus grounds, and Muhammad Ali’s name is known and revered around the world. And, yes, perhaps reviled by some for being “mouthy” and proving he was as “good” and as “pretty” and as “fast” and as “great” as he always claimed to be. [It’s amazing the insights that time gives to events happening in the immediacy of the present.]

Like many young people of the sixties, I thought it was unfair that speaking out against the war might land the heavyweight champ in prison. (He was facing 5 years in jail and a $10,000 fine for refusing to serve in Vietnam). Ali was also denied the opportunity to do what he did best—box— and 4 of his prime athletic years were taken from him. He was stripped of his title and banned from fighting from age 25 until he was 29. (March of 1967 until October of 1970). Many sports experts have speculated about how that might have affected his legacy, since he did mount a comeback and fought well past his prime, winning the coveted heavyweight boxing crown three times.

Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay)

Ali’s standing up and speaking out on principle emboldened even Martin Luther King, Jr. to push more strenuously for human rights and racial justice and equality for African-American citizens. Ultimately, the Supreme Court overthrew the previous court decision that denied Ali conscientious objector status, and he was able to return to boxing in 1970, beating Jerry Quarry on October 26, 1970. But when I heard him speak, “live,” his future was very much up in the air. Soon after his return to the ring, Ali lost to Joe Frazier in what has been dubbed the Fight of the Century on March 8, 1971, in Madison Square Garden. I still remember my husband’s excitement when he came home from the closed circuit grainy televised match.

Time frame of Ali’s Iowa City Speech

Ali’s speech on campus happened between March of 1967 and March of 1968, although the University archives say it was 1969. I am fairly certain this is wrong. (I was married and living in the Quad Cities by March of 1968. Ali’s appearance in Iowa City had to have taken place during the first semester of 1967-1968 when I was still on campus and living at 229 Iowa Avenue. I remember being present. I am certain I didn’t drive BACK to campus from East Moline, so it was in the fall semester of school year 1967-1968). I always tried to take in speeches and concerts by any Big Name speaking on campus, which led me to hear Saul Bellow speak, and the Ramsey Lewis Trio play, and Booker T and the MGs perform “Green Onions” and Johnny Mathis (remember him?) sing in the Union. Many years later, I did drive back, to hear former President Bill Clinton speak and to hear Ben Folds (without the Ben Folds Five).

I remember Ali’s message, which was characteristic of the anti-war message he was delivering at a number of colleges across the nation during the time he was not allowed to fight in the ring, but was fighting in court to stay out of jail, be allowed to resume his career, and urging equality for citizens of color. His rhetoric, which sounded very anti-white, was scary to his elders, but the students of the sixties on campus at Iowa, anyway, embraced his message of liberty and justice for all, just as our forefathers had embraced such radical notions in 1776. It’s unclear whether Ali’s reception was as warm and fuzzy in the South, but I can tell you that it was a very closely packed, interested, respectful and enthusiastic crowd that listened to him speak at the Iowa Memorial Union that day. I remember the room was crowded with students who turned out en masse to see the fighter we saw on television “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”

Ali’s Legacy

Young Cassius Clay, later to be renamed Muhammad Ali.

His strong suit not being humility, Ali had self-described himself as “the Greatest.” He wasn’t far off in this early self-assessment of his own boxing prowess. Muhammad Ali was named one of the most recognizable sports figures of the past 100 years, with only Babe Ruth coming close to the universal recognition that Muhammad Ali earned. Ali was also crowned “Sportsman of the Century” by Sports Illustrated magazine and “Sports Personality of the Century” by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It’s safe to say that boxing will never see a fighter so good who was so controversial, entertaining and larger-than-life than Mohammed Ali/Cassius Clay, and whose stance on so many important issues of the day resonated in such important ways. He was a showman. The sport will not see his equal and, in fact, seems to have withered and died in favor of WWC and cage matches and other televised fare.
History changed forever when the 6’ 2” good-looking, outspoken fighter with the 80 inch reach bested the rough-and-tough gangster-related Sonny Liston [who would later be found dead from a possible heroin drug overdose on December 30, 1970.] The intimidating Liston was heavily favored to knock Cassius Clay’s block off. I remember thinking that Clay probably didn’t have a chance against a thug like Liston and hoping he wouldn’t get hurt too badly. Some even wondered if the brash youngster would even show up for the fight. Clay took pride in his good looks; the general feeling going into the fight was that Clay might have a hard time preserving his handsome good looks against the brutal beating Liston was about to administer.

The Fight

Liston was a 7 to 1 favorite. Clay had not really beaten any professional boxers of note, but, instead, had won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division in the 1960 Rome Olympics. In his 1975 autobiography, Ali claimed he threw the gold medal into the Ohio River after being refused service in a white diner in Louisville. Others dispute that version of events, saying he merely lost the medal. [Ali was issued a replacement medal 36 years after the fact, and it was presented to him during a basketball intermission at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, an Olympics where Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic torch. Talk about a national change of heart!].
Clay, prior to the fight that would launch his career as the only heavyweight to win 3 lineal World Heavyweight Championships (1964, 1974, 1978) on his way to becoming one of the most recognizable figures in the world, in a typical display of the psychological trash talk for which he became known, said that Liston “smelled like a bear” and that he was “going to donate him to a zoo” after defeating him In the ring. Prior to the fight, he recited this poem: “Clay comes out to meet Liston and Liston starts to retreat. If Liston goes back an inch farther, he’ll end up in a ringside seat…”

At the time, nobody thought the good-looking 22-year-old kid from Louisville, Kentucky, had a chance against the hardened ex-con, who learned to write his name while in a Missouri prison— a career criminal who had been arrested at least 19 times. Liston told Sports Illustrated, “I had nothing when I was a kid but a lot of brothers and sisters, a helpless mother, and a father who didn’t care about any of us. We grew up with few clothes, no shoes, little to eat. My father worked me hard and whupped me hard.”

Ali’s pattern of confidence and taunting his opponents before fights would continue in his career as he took on other fighters, like George Foreman. Ali was also confident and colorful before the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974. He told interviewer David Frost, “If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait ’til I whup Foreman’s behind!” He told the press, “I’ve done something new for this fight. I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.” Ali was wildly popular in Zaire, with crowds chanting “Ali, bomaye” (“Ali, kill him”) wherever he went.

The Boxer and the Beatles

When Liston was offered a chance to pose with a new British band touring the United States at the time (and causing a sensation) Liston refused to pose with “those sissies,” meaning John, Paul, George and Ringo, who were appearing on Ed Sullivan’s TV show on February 16th and February 23rd. Cassius Clay (who would change his religious affiliation and his name to Muhammad Ali after the fight) DID accept boxing promoter Harold Conrad’s offer to pose with the Beatles, bursting through the door of his 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach and shouting to the mop-topped group, “Come on, Beatles! Let’s go make some money!”

The Conscientious Objector Issue

Then came the difficult years. As an outspoken black man advocating black pride and opposition to the unpopular war in Vietnam, Muhammed Ali’s topics of choice were not popular. He spoke at the Memorial Union, attired in a suit. He had just been denied status as a conscientious objector and stripped of his heavyweight title (1967). He did not fight between March 22 of 1967 and October of 1970, years when he was 26 to 29 years old. That was the period of time when I heard him speak at the Iowa Memorial Union. Every state denied him a license to fight.

After his title defense against Zora Folley on March 22, Ali’s title was stripped following his refusal to be drafted into Army service (on April 28, 1967). His boxing license was immediately suspended by the state of New York and he was convicted on June 20, 1967 (by an all-white jury) and sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for draft evasion. While his case was on appeal, he was free on posted bond, traveling the country giving speeches like the one I attended, in which he made statements against the Vietnam War and urged that blacks be given racial equality in America. Ali’s conviction was overturned on appeal and, (as he was out on bond despite the threat of 5 years in jail), he served no jail time. He did, however, lose 4 crucial years of boxing eligibility during his athletic prime.

Among statements Muhammad Ali made, woven into his college addresses, were these:

“Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” (He would add that no Vietnamese had ever called him the “n” word)…No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people simply to continue the domination of white slave-masters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end…Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?..My enemy is the white people, not the Vietcong…You’re my opposer when I want freedom. You’re my opposer when I want justice. You’re my opposer when I want equality. You won’t even stand up for me in America because of my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight, when you won’t stand up for my religious beliefs at home?”

In 2014, fifty years later, when the film Twelve Years a Slave is a major Oscar contender for Best Picture at the March 2nd Academy Awards, these words ring as true as ever.

Boxing Talent

Ali probably had the fastest hand and foot speed ever for a big fighter. Jimmy Jacobs, who co-managed Mike Tyson, measured young Ali’s punching speed (using a synchronizer) versus Sugar Ray Robinson, a welter/middleweight often considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in history. Ali was 25% faster than Robinson, even though Ali was 45 to 50 pounds heavier. (Ali had once asked Sugar Ray to manage him, but the former champion declined.) “No matter what his opponents heard about him, they didn’t realize how fast he was until they got in the ring with him,” Jacobs said.
The effect of Ali’s punches was cumulative. “Ali would rub you out,” said Floyd Patterson, who fought Ali on November 22, 1965, right after his two fights with Liston. “He would hit you 14,000 times and he wouldn’t knock you out; he rubbed you out. It’s very hard to hit a moving target, and (Ali) moved all the time, with such grace: three minutes of every round for fifteen rounds. He never stopped. It was extraordinary.”

Of his later career, Arthur Mercante, (boxing announcer), said: “Ali knew all the tricks. He was the best fighter I ever saw in terms of clinching. Not only did he use it to rest, but he was big and strong and knew how to lean on opponents and push and shove and pull to tire them out. Ali was so smart. Most guys are just in there fighting, but Ali had a sense of everything that was happening, almost as though he was sitting at ringside analyzing the fight while he fought it.”

Taunting: the Louisville Lip

Speaking of how Ali stoked Liston’s anger and overconfidence before their first fight, a sports writer commented that “the most brilliant fight strategy in boxing history was devised by a teenager who had graduated 376 in a class of 391.” Ali knew that what he said outside the ring, taunting his opponents as “ignorant” (Frazier) or comparing them to an animal (Liston) did psychological damage to his opponents when they were in the ring. Ai got under their skin, and that was his intention. When Ali referred to Joe Frazier as “ignorant” on national TV, Frasier wrestled Ali to the ground while live television cameras broadcast the unexpected outburst. The animosity towards Ali, from Frasier, lasted until Frazier’s death on November 7, 2011.

Considering that I’m a small-town Iowa girl from a hometown of not quite 5,000 people, I’ve had the good fortune to be in several places when events were taking place that would turn out to be turning points in history—or, at least, important historic events that one might even call a milestone. Among them were events such as the beginning of the Free Speech movement on campus at Berkeley in 1965 and the student riots that year; Ted Kennedy’s last speech inside the DNC in Denver in 2008 nominating Barack Obama; in Grant Park in 2008 when Obama spoke to a cheering crowd on election night; at Invesco Field in Denver when Obama accepted the nomination for president from his party; at the very beginnings of the Tea Party movement inside Ron Paul’s Rally for America in Minneapolis in 2008; at a concert at the Savoy Hotel in Birmingham, England by a band (using a light show) which would go on to become Pink Floyd; in the 7th row of the Beatles concert at the Cow Palace near San Francisco in 1964; at a concert in Paris given by James Brown and the Famous Flames in 1965; at the Howard Dean Scream Heard ‘Round the World at the Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines in 2004; at concerts by the Rolling Stones, Prince, Dave Matthews Band, John Cougar Mellencamp, U2, and a host of other memorable live acts, including Taylor Swift on May 8, 2010, at the IWireless Center (formerly the Mark of the Quad Cities) when my daughter worked for 13 Management, Ms. Swift’s organization.

And I was also at the Iowa Memorial Union in Iowa City, Iowa, when Muhammed Ali stood up and spoke out for his beliefs in 1968.

Was the BailOut A Good Thing? Matt Taibbi of “Rolling Stone” Weighs In

By Connie Wilson

On February 10, 2013

In Editorial, Politics

The excerpts below are from an article entitled “Secrets and Lies of the Bailout” by Matt Taibbi which appeared in the January 17, 2013, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Taibbi has been a guest on Jon Stewart’s show and his investigative journalism is among the best in today’s business. Some of the points he makes deserve wider distribution, so here are a few quotes from the article that is subtitled: “The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy—it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come.”
Read on, Gentle Reader—if you dare! But buckle your seatbelts: it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
As Taibbi begins the article about the $700 billion in taxpayer money used to bail out Wall Street: “To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you’d think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we’ve been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul—right! Wrong!
It was all a lie—one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in—only temporarily, mind you—to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citi-Group to increase risk rather than reduce it.” As Taibbi puts it, “We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days, but we ended up with a family of hillbillies that moved in sleeping 9 to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.”
Taibbi says, “Money wasn’t the only thing the government gave Wall Street” and cites the omnipresent lying and quotes former bailout Inspector General Neil Barofsky as calling it “the ultimate bait-and-switch.” The lies, he says, were the most important part of the mechanism. “The only reason investors haven’t run screaming from an obviously corrupt financial marketplace is because the government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to sell the narrative that the problems of 2008 have been fixed.” Says Taibbi, “Investors may not actually believe the lie, but they are impressed by how totally committed the government has been, from the very beginning, to selling itl”
Under the sub-heading: “They lied to pass the bail-out,” Taibbi mentions that George W. Bush ludicrously warned that Saddam was planning to send drones to spray poison over New York City to sell the Iraq War resolution. And, of course, anyone who has seen the Sean Penn movie about the “outing” of CIA agent Valeria Plane will remember the infamous plutonium rods used by the Republican administration as proof that Iraq had nuclear capability (or soon would have). Cautioning that, “it wasn’t like (Henry) Paulson could just go out and unilaterally commit trillions of public dollars to rescue Goldman Sachs and Citigroup from their own stupidity and bad management (although the government ended up doing just that, later on.”
Says Taibbi, on page 36 of his article, “At one meeting to discuss the original bailout bill—at 11 a.m. on September 18th, 2008, —Paulson actually told members of Congress that $5.5 trillion in wealth would disappear by 2 p.m. that day unless members took immediate action.” He added that the world economy would collapse “within 24 hours.” Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, “We need $700 billion, and we need it in 3 days.” The plan stipulated that Paulson could spend the money any way he chose without review “by any court or law or any administrative agency.” So, carte blanche, essentially, to do as he wished with the money.
The provision that got the bill passed (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008) was that the Treasury would buy up $700 billion of troubled mortgages from banks and modify them to help struggling homeowners. “That provision,” said Barofsky,” is what got the bill passed” on October 3, 2008. But, says Taibbi, “within days Section 109 was “unceremoniously ditched” and what was pitched as a bail-out of both banks and homeowners became a banks only operation.
Congress, feeling it had been lied to, put together a movement to cancel the remaining $350 billion of the TARP bailout. So, says Taibbi, “Bailout officials put together a proposal full of even bigger deceptions to get it passed a second time” beginning on January 12 and 15, 2009. Says Taibbi (and I’m skipping over portions of this long and detailed article), “A small slice of TARP was earmarked for foreclosure relief, but the resultant aid programs for homeowners turned out to be riddled with problems, for the perfectly logical reason that none of the bailout’s architects gave a shit about them.” Says Taibbi, “The promise of housing aid, in particular, turned out to be a paper tiger.”
As a person who attempted to use the TARP program to refinance a Chicago condo, I can attest to this. There are so many rules and regulations in place as to make the program virtually useless. After one full year (where I was assured it wasn’t MY credit that was the problem), I gave up and slunk away without a refinance in place and never heard from the eager Florida fellow again. Says Taibbi, “In fact, the amount of money that eventually got spent on homeowner aid now stands as a kind of grotesque joke compared to the Himalayan mountain range of cash that got moved onto the balance sheets of the big banks more or less instantly in the first months of the bailout.” For actual figures, at first, $50 billion was to help homeowners through HAMP; by 2010, the amount had shrunk to $30 billion and as of November, 2012, a mere $4 billion had been used for homeowner aid.
However, says Taibbi, “Obama’s HAMP program turns out to be one of the few bail-out promises that was even partially fulfilled. Virtually every other promise (Larry) Summers made in his letters turned out to be total bullshit.” (Larry Summers, you may remember, was the Harvard President who made some unfortunate remarks about women not being as able in math and the sciences as men that cost him his job; he subsequently became an economic advisor to Obama.) There was no monitoring attached to any aspect of the bailout and there never would be, says Taibbi:
“But even before Summers promised Congress that banks would be required to increase lending as a condition for receiving bailout funds, officials had already decided not to even ask the banks to use the money to increase lending. IN fact, they’d decided not to even ask banks to monitor what they did with the bailout money. Barofsky, the TARP inspector, asked Treasury to include a requirement forcing recipients to explain what they did with the taxpayer money. He was stunned when TARP administrator Kashkari rejected his proposal, telling him lenders would walk away from the program if they had to deal with too many conditions. ‘The banks won’t participate,’ Kashkari said.”
The first 9 bailout recipients were picked because of their size, not because of their economic “health” as was represented. Taibbi suggests that they have become, like AIG, “too big to fail.” The banks in question include all the Big Boys, even though Citi-Bank was deemed “likely to fail” at one point, and many could not pass the CAMELS test of solvency, which refers to Capital, Assets, Management, Earnings, Liquidity and Sensitivity to risk.
A telling paragraph:
“A month or so after the bailout team called the top 9 banks ‘healthy,’ it became clear that the biggest recipient, Citigroup, had actually flat-lined on the ER table. Only weeks after Paulson and Co. gave the firm $25 billion in TARP funds, Citi—which was in the midst of posting a quarterly loss of more than $17 billion—came back begging for more. In November, 2009, Citi received another $20 billion in cash and more than $300 billion in guarantees.”
Stress tests of the banks were then announced, and this telling passage results:
“Now, instead of using the bailouts as a clear-the-air moment, the government decided to double down on such fraud, awarding healthy ratings to these failing banks and even twisting its numerical audits and assessments to fit the cooked-up narrative. A major component of the original TARP bailout was a promise to ensure ‘full and regular stress tests’ of the bailout recipients. When Geithner announced his stress test plan in February, 2009, a reporter instantly blasted him with an obvious and damning question: Doesn’t the fact that you have to conduct these tests prove that bank regulators—who should know who is solvent and who isn’t—actually have no idea of who is solvent and who isn’t?”
From this point on, Taibbi outlines “meaningless parodies of oversight,” even citing a “SNL” skit. Bank of America (my bank) had a $50 billion dollar hole cut to $15 billion. Citigroup got its number slashed from $35 billion to $5.5 billion. Regulating the banks that took the bailout money, in other words, is a joke.
Quote:
“Through behavior like this, the government has turned the entire financial system into a kind of vast confidence game—a Ponzi-like scam in which the value of just about everything in the system is inflated because of the widespread belief that the government will now step in to prevent losses. Clearly, a government that’s already in debt over its eyes for the next million years does not have enough capital on hand to rescue every Citigroup or Regions Bank in the land should they all go bust tomorrow.”
Lies About Bonuses
“That executive bonuses on Wall Street were a political hot potato was obvious from the start. That’s why Summers, in saving the bailout from the ire of Congress, vowed to “limit executive compensation’ and devote public money to prevent another financial crisis And it’s true. TARP did bar recipients from a whole range of exorbitant pay practices, which is one reason the biggest banks, like Goldman Sachs, worked so quickly to repay their TARP loans. But there were all sorts of ways to get around the restrictions.”
Taibbi goes on to say that, “In one of the worst episodes, the notorious lenders Fannie Mae and Feddie Mac paid out more than $200 million in bonuses between 2008 and 2010, even though the firms (a) lost more than $100 billion in 2008 alone, and (b) required nearly $400 billion in federal assistance during the bailout period. One of the ways around the TARP bonus restrictions was to give executives long-term stock options. ‘An independent research firm asked to analyze the stock options for the New York Times found that the top 5 executives of each of the 18 biggest bailout recipients, received a total of $142 million in stocks and options.”…The value of these options has soared to $457 million, an average of $4 million per executive.
Lies About the Bailout Being Temporary
“What’s more, some parts of the bailout were designed to extend far into the future Companies like AIG, GM and Citigroup, for instance, were given tens of billions of deferred tax assets, allowing them to carry losses from 2008 forward to offset future profits and keep future tax bills down…Citigroup, all by itself, boasts more than $50 billion in deferred tax credits—which is how the firm managed to pay less in taxes in 2011 (it actually received a $144 million credit) than it paid in compensation that year to its since-ousted dingbat CEO, Vikram Pandit, who pocketed $14.9 million The bailout, in short, enabled the very banks and financial institutions that cratered the global economy to write off the losses from their toxic deals for years to come—further depriving the government of much-needed tax revenues it could have used to help homeowners and small businesses who were screwed over by the banks in the first place.”
“There is also the matter of the $7.7 trillion in secret emergency lending that the Fed okayed to Wall Street—loans that were only revealed to the public after Congress forced a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve. The result of this ‘secret audit’ did not come out until November, 2011, when Bloomberg Markets—which went to court to win the right to publish the data—revealed how the country’s biggest firms secretly received trillions in near-free money throughout the crisis.”
“By the end of 2008, Goldman Sachs had snarfed up $34 billion in loans and was paying an interest rate as low as just 0.01% for the cash infusion. Barofsky in his book Bailout: Paulson told him that Goldman was just ‘days from collapse” before the government’s gigantic infusion. Bernanke later admitted that “Goldman would have been the next to fall.”
Bank Executive Use Unfair Insider Trading Advantage
“Meanwhile, while officials were taking trillions in secret loans from the Feds, top officials were using their positions of influence and insider knowledge to buy up stock in their companies:
“Steven Friedman, a Goldman director who was chairman of the New York Fed, bought more than $4 million in Goldman stock in 5 weeks between Dec., 2008 and Jan., 2009. Vikram Pandit, Citigroup CEO, bought nearly $7 million in Citigroup stock, just as his bank was taking $99.5 billion in Fed loans. Jamie Dimon bought more than $11 million in Chase stock in early 2009, at a time when his firm was receiving as much as $60 billion in secret Fed loans.” (p. 40) In fact, at the end of 2011, the SEC sent letters to executives of: Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Chase and Bank of America asking them why they were not revealing their large purchases of stock at a time when their banks were receiving such large public bailouts. All 5 replied, absurdly, that this was “not material.”
Taibbi paragraph, p. 42:
“The implications here go far beyond the question of whether Dimon and Co. committed insider trading by buying and selling stock while they had access to material nonpublic information about the bailouts. The broader and more pressing concern is the clear implication that by failing to act, federal regulators have tacitly approved the nondisclosure. Instead of trusting the markets to do the right thing when provided with accurate information, the government has instead channeled Jack Nicholson and decided that the public ‘just can’t handle the truth.’”
“Bailout officials have spent years building the government’s great Implicit Guarantee to the biggest companies on Wall Street: we will be there for you always, no matter how much you screw up.”
Also, says Taibbi, “The big banks have grown even bigger and more unmanageable, making the economy far more concentrated and dangerous than it was before. America’s 6 largest banks: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citi-Group, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, now have a combined 14,420 subsidiaries, making them so big as to be effectively beyond regulation.” Says Taibbi, “A recent study by the Kansas City Fed found that it would take 70,000 bank examiners to inspect such trillion-dollar banks with the same level of attention normally given to a community bank. (And, daughter of a community bank President, I remember how daunting the Bank Examiners’ visit always was.)
“The complexity is so overwhelming that no regulator can follow it well enough to regulate the way we need to,” says Senator Brown, who is drafting a bill to break up the megabanks (but also announced he is not running again since this article appeared in January, 2013).
Therefore, says Taibbi, “banks have made a dramatic move into riskier and more speculative investments, including everything from high-risk corporate bonds to mortgage-backed securities to payday loans, the sleaziest and most disreputable end of the financial system.”..The bailouts have brought us right back to where we started. Says World Bank Consultant Klaus Schaeck, “Government intervention has definitely resulted in increased risk.”
The closing paragraphs (3) of the article say this:
“And while the economy still mostly sucks overall, there’s never been a better time to be a Too Big to Fail bank. Wells Fargo reported a 3rd quarter profit of $5 billion last year. J.P. Morgan: $5.3 billion—roughly double what both banks earned in the 3rd quarter of 2006, at the height of the mortgage bubble. As the driver of their success, both banks cite strong performance in, you guessed it, the mortgage market.
So, what, exactly, did the bailout accomplish?
It built a banking system that discriminates against community banks, makes Too Big to Fail banks even Too Bigger to Failer, increases risk, discourages sound business lending and punishes savings by making it even easier and more profitable to chase high-yield investments than to compete for small depositors. The bailout has also made lying on behalf of our biggest and most corrupt banks the official policy of the U.S. government. And if any one of those banks fails, it will cause another financial crisis, meaning we’re essentially wedded to that policy for the rest of eternity—or at least until the markets call our bluff, which could happen any minute now.
Other than that, the bailout was a smashing success,” says Taibbi.

Thought for the Day

By Connie Wilson

On January 4, 2013

In Editorial, Humor and Weird Wilson-isms, Politics

Me, pondering thoughts like these while listening to Ron Paul at the Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis’ Target Center, with Barry Goldwater Jr., Jessie Ventura and Tucker Carlson all onstage at once. After that, the German Libertarians libertarianism and legalizing hemp to me. In German. So, I’m thinking this little aphorism about life can be illustrated with just about anything, and this is it.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnais…e jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles roll
ed into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand.The students laughed..

‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—-your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—-and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else—-the small stuff.

‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.

Take care of the golf balls first—-the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’ The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.

Reasons Why Obama Won & Mitt Lost: Two Liberals Discuss, Post-Election

By Connie Wilson

On November 13, 2012

In Editorial, Interviews, News, Politics, Pop Culture

1) The technical wizardry and knowledge of the young Obama workers far outstripped the more pedestrian team working for Romney, just as it overpowered the Clinton candidacy in 2008. (Look for Obama to “help” Hillary to run, should she gear up, in 2016, and that will be all it will take, even if we don’t “like” Hillary as well. She has proven herself competent and that Ryan runt will be all over the next nomination for the Republicans as will Christie and Rubio.)

Rubio has the charisma factor. Ryan, for me, does not.He failed to carry his home state and his own home town (Janesville, WI). Nor did Ryan “work” for the millions of baby-boomers who feared what he would do to what have been dubbed “entitlement programs.” Hillary’s choice of a VP will be crucial in 2016. It will have to be a man with singular experience in government and someone relatively young, in order to corral the youth vote. (If not Hillary, who?)

2) Sandy, the storm: Was there ever a luckier event in terms of politics, for showing across-the-aisle bi-partisan working together-ness? When the Republican Governor comes out and embraces the Democratic President, how sweet is that? Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, personifies the dug-in prejudices that have mired us in stasis for half of Obama’s first term. I look for him to find a way around this aggravation, as much as he can.

3) Obama is a once-in-a-generation figure. He has “it,” that indefinable charismatic cool. He is calm under pressure, smart, and he was voted as being more “in touch” by 53% of the nation (as opposed to 43% for Romney).

Dear Connie (from friend Pam), in response:

1) I do think that barring anything really unusual happening, Hilary has an excellent change to become president in 2016. I don’t think the Republicans will run anyone who can match her. They have good candidates, Chris Christie for one. However, I think he is too independent and moderate for the Republican hierarchy (Think of his recent praise for President Obama after super storm Sandy. What real conservative would have said one kind word about our president?)

I don’t think Paul Ryan has broad enough appeal to win a national election. His budget was a give-away to the rich and a complete take- away for the poor. There are more poor people in this country than there are rich people— WAY more. Will the Republicans really run a Hispanic candidate? An Indian? Maybe, but how would that play in the Deep South and the border states? (What would Rush say? Or do, he’d probably have a melt-down not unlike his poor treatment of the young woman who attempted to testify before Congress about a woman’s right to choose.

2) I agree that the choice of VP for Hillary is critical. It has to be someone with a lot going for him (definitely a man). However, he can’t overshadow Hillary. If he does, that would make her look weak. She certainly is not weak, but remember how the press pounced on her tearing up during the primary campaign in 2008? That hurt her a lot, I thought. (*Note: I thought it humanized her, but this is a good friend and fellow political junkie’s opinion)

People, especially men, are always ready to think a woman is weak or too emotional. Actually, I think she should find someone who is moderate and acceptable to many moderate Republicans. It’s too bad Huntsman is a Republican; I thought he was very credible. I think Huntsman would have been a far better candidate for the Republicans than Romney. (*On the Sunday morning news talk shows, Joe Scarborough, et. al., described Romney as “a flawed candidate.”)

3) President Obama definitely has the “it” factor. The future is hard to predict but if he has any luck at all, I think he will go down as one of our most important, transformational and influential presidents. It’s not just because he is African-American; he’s smart and he sticks to his principles. True, he gave in on the Bush tax cuts once, but not until he was backed into a nearly impossible corner. Obama’s health care bill is not perfect; the Republicans are responsible for watering it down and making it less effective than it could have been. Still, as Biden said at the time, “This is a big f***** deal.”

4)I am hoping that Mitch McConnell is beaten in a primary fight; I’m hoping that instead his district is represented by an Aiken or a Murdock. It would be fitting. What an &***&& McConnell is!
________________

(Me again, the Associated Content Content Producer of the Year 2008 for Politics, if you wondered where this woman gets off, I’ve followed the primaries, in particular, closely since 2004 and also reported from inside the DNC, RNC, Ron Paul Rally for the Republic, Belmont Town Hall Meeting, and Rudy’s race in Florida (which was more of a stroll, really,) in 2008:

5) Where was I? Oh, yes, the relatability factor: Who could EVER think that a rich millionaire was more like “us?” There was a HILARIOUS clip from Letterman that showed Mitt commenting and it was devastatingly funny and devastatingly on target. There was also a very funny skit on Jimmy Fallon where Obama says to Mitt (Fallon) something like, “At least you created one job, Mitt…for me.”

6) Let us also not forget that Mitt never did release all of his tax returns, despite his own FATHER saying you had to release at least 10 to 12 years of same. This is a man who doesn’t even support his country to the extent that his vast wealth would allow him to do, through taxation. Yet he wanted us to elect him President of that country. He gave a good concession speech, but claimed he had not even written one, prior to election night.

I do hope this stunning defeat for Karl Rove puts him out of politics forever. He was 1 for 10. Sheldon Adelman lost $60 mill on the election. I LOVED the tape where Obama thanked the Chicago workers and teared up. [I only wish I had had the stamina and youth and know-how to HAVE BEEN one of them.]

7) Women: as we have discussed. Women in America like Obama and, while they might also have liked Romney as a person, the things he wanted to do were not in the best interests of modern women. I read that women went for Obama by a wide margin of something like 11% points. I think that people who are right-thinking people just really “liked” Obama, when compared to Mitt.

8) Did you read the piece about Ted Kennedy’s game plan when he ran against Romney in Massachusetts being resurrected again in this race? Take Mitt’s so-called “strength” (i.e., his business expertise) and find the people whose jobs he outsourced and let THEM tell it like it was! [I heard they found eighteen of them and some of them were so vehement that they couldn’t use the remarks on the air in the TV spots. (lol… And so it goes.]

6) They are predicting that AZ, that bastion of nut cases, may well become a blue state as it becomes more Hispanic. [Get ready, AZ.] And get rid of that woman Governor! Who did she think she was, shaking her finger in the face of the President of the United States like a scolding schoolmarm.

7) I feel we have “saved” the Supreme Court and it will now (potentially) re-address this ridiculous ruling about pouring $ into races. In case people didn’t notice, it didn’t work…although I did shell out a standard amount of his contributions for Obama, when asked. Most of Obama’s donors were in the $50 range. Doesn’t sound like much compared to $60 million of the $1 billion Rove and the gang raised and spent, but it’s still money out of my pocket. I also have, framed, the very first Obamacare announcement he made in Iowa City, the declaration of this now “law of the land.” I’m going to get it out and hang it up somewhere, since Obamacare is now here to stay. Did you see the “Newsweek,” that declared Obama to be “this generation’s Lincoln?” I hope that does not extend to Lincoln’s demise. I fear it. Some nutty female employee of a Cold Stone Creamery posted a rant with the “n” word and a veiled threat and lost her job, as well she should, for articulating such threats, idle or no. Then there are the petitions to secede from the South. (Maybe they could have Texas, with “W” there?) Sounds like Lincoln’s “a nation divided cannot stand” Civil War years 1861-1865.

Antonio Villaraigosa, the Mayor of Los Angeles since 2005 and Chairman of the Democratic Party.

One person who has not been mentioned much in the political talk for 2016 is the Mayor of LA, with whom I posed back in 2008 inside the Pepsi Center in Denver, Antonio Villaraigosa. He is a good-looking Latino male, charming and handsome and has just completed a term as Chairperson of the DNC. On the downside, not unlike Bill Clinton, he has had a wandering eye. [Got caught in a scandal with a TV newswoman while in office.]

I listened to a woman on a Sunday talk show describe being inside McCormick Place on election night and I felt so bad that I could not pull that off. (Started too late to request passes after the Film Festival). She said that when it went up on the board that Ohio had broken for Obama, the place just was electric. How I wish I had been there! It was history in the making.

Instead, I went out, camera in hand, and tried to capture a few images of people in the city and spoke to some of these people anonymously. (Shopgirls, cabbies, people in a bar). And then I went on my merry way, because I WAS merry and happy and watching the returns in Chicago.

I was relatively quiescent in politics for years, because I was completely disillusioned by the death of JFK ; Howard Dean brought me back into politics, so, ostensibly, that makes me a liberal and proud of it. BUT, I voted for 2 Republicans on the local ballot, so maybe I’m a raging Independent?

From My Friend, Pam:

Mitt was a very weak candidate for many reasons, not the least of which was that he was completely out of touch with ordinary Americans. He made many, many gaffes. (Olympics, anyone?) Having previously thought him smart, I began to wonder about his intelligence.

It’s incredible to me that the Republicans seemed to think that Mitt could completely change his thinking on big, basic issues and no one would care or remember. The Reps thought Mitt’s business smarts would trump everything but Mitt never gave any specifics about how he was going to put everybody back to work. He never gave any specifics about how his budget plan could give tax cuts and still reduce the deficit. I think a lot of people feared he would take away the mortgage deduction and he probably would have. [After all, that is probably not very important to an ultra rich person.]

I am also very glad that all the billions spent by the Republicans did not get them very much. I’m glad that Karl Rove failed. I hope “Turd Blossom” (“W’s” nickname for him) goes away and stays away. 1 for 10 is NOT a good average. So much for his much-vaunted expertise and the whining that Rush has done on the radio and the accusations that the pollsters were “oversampling” Democrats. The pollsters got it right. The Republican party got it wrong.

Women are over half of the population and they are in the ascendancy. I just read in the paper now that more women have driver’s licenses than men. Women demand safe, fuel efficient cars and that will be good for the environment.

The Republicans whom Obama reached out to on election night (Boehner and McConnell) would not even come to the phone. The message to the newly re-elected president was that “they were asleep,” despite the fact that the election was called for Obama fairly early in the evening (8:30-ish).

They were asleep, all right. Old and asleep.

As a party they did not even recognize that a freight train of change was bearing down on them until it ran over them. Women. Minorities. The regular guy. The changing face of America. Charisma of the candidate. Smart tactics. Superior strategical advantage(s). A nod to Hurricane Sandy.

There goes 2012. And I hope someone burns that piece-of-trash movie “Obama’s America” for the smear job it was.

Go see Stephen Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” instead. It’s closer to what Obama faces now.

Schilling vs. Bustos Race: Most $$$ in Super Pac Spending in Illinois

By Connie Wilson

On November 2, 2012

In Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

If you are a resident of the Quad Cities, you might find it interesting to learn that the Schilling/Bustos race in the 17th Congressional District in Illinois has attracted $9.2 million in Super Pac spending.

The closest to it is the 11th District (Biggert vs. Foster).

After that the money comes out in this order in the Congressional races in Illinois:

$6.6 million in 12th District involving Plummer vs. Enyart

$6.4 million in 10th District involving Dold vs. Schneider.

$6.3 million in 13th District involving David vs. Gill.

And, last, and, surprisingly least, $5.5 million in 8th district with amputee veteran Tammy Duckworth running against the bombastic Joe Walsh.

Of course, all of this pales next to the 333 ads a day now running in Ohio. Still, without all that SuperPac money, which has surpassed $2 million in Illinois’ top 6 competitive Congressional races and has allowed Tea Party incumbent Bobby Schilling to send out a newsletter that makes him look like a Democrat, angering many true Democrats who received it, and, also, to put out a false ad accusing candidate Cheri Bustos of having anything to do with a road to Short Hills Country Club (to which she does not even belong).

And so it goes.

Economy Set to Improve Regardless of Who is President, Says Aug., 2012, “Esquire”

By Connie Wilson

On September 5, 2012

In Editorial, Politics

I’d like to give full credit to the August issue of “Esquire” magazine with Jeremy Renner on the cover for these words about our economy and what we can expect post November, 2012. The original article appeared on page 44, with the title “But, Soft! What Light Through Yonder Widow Breaks!”
The basic contention is that our economy is going to improve no matter what happens this election season. To wit:
“I am convinced that the markets are poised to soar in November, as soon as the uncertainty about the political direction of our country is settled. Regardless of who wins the presidency and whether either house changes hands, regardless of Europe’s woes, the unprecedented amount of cash sitting on corporate sidelines will be deployed and will set in motion a growth spurt unseen since Monica Lewinsky, the peace dividend and the Internet.”
The article goes on to quote Jimmy Lee, a Texan who is the founder of one of the first online brokerages and also the former chairman of the Texas teachers’ pension fund, as administrator of which he invested $100 billion. Another expert quoted was Mickey Gooch, founder and CEO of GFI, a brokerage that trades in credit default swaps (CDs).

Here was Gooch’s argument for the contention above:
“The uncertainty will be taken out of the market (regardless of who wins the presidential election). Investors may not like an Obama re-election, but at least they will know what to anticipate in the tax code and will deal with it. The Bush tax cuts not being renewed is already priced into the market.” Gooch’s only caveat is in regards to Europe blowing up, which he views as having only a 20% likelihood of occurring.
“The bottom line is that capital has been accumulating at corporations at a never-before-seen pace. Companies have been stuffing this cash in the mattress because they don’t trust the government. But that’s an unnatural state of affairs. Companies need to grow like sharks need to swim. Whatever happens in November, expect the American economy to surge to life.”

“2016: Obama’s America” A Complete Hatchet Job- Read This And Learn the Truth!

By Connie Wilson

On August 26, 2012

In Editorial, Local, Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Reviews

Mitt Romney spoke with “Time” magazine’s Rick Stengel and Michael Crowley in an interview on August 21st (September 3, 2012) and said, “I will not waste a campaign attacking him (President Obama) as an individual.”

Imagine my surprise, then, to see the movie “2016: Obama’s America,” supposedly a documentary (I use the term loosely), which was playing at my local Cineplex and rated a big notice in our right-leaning newspaper (The Small family which owns the paper, in decades past, contributed the most corrupt Republican Governor in Illinois history, eclipsing even the recent Rod Blagojovic).

Written by an Indian intellectual (Dinesh D’Souza) who is the president of New York City’s Kings’ College and produced by the semi-retired Gerald R. Molen, who divides his time between Montana and Las Vegas now, but once produced movies for Spielberg (and others) such as “Rain Man,” “Days of Thunder,” “Hook,” “Schindler’s List,” “Jurassic Park,” “Twister” and “Minority Report,” Molen is an ardent member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He was once denied the opportunity to address high school students in his hometown because the principal of the school pronounced him to be “a right wing conservative” zealot.

That label goes double for D’Souza, who has written many books, served in Reagan’s White House, and had no less an authority than the “Washington Post” (5/1/2010) pronounce his book about 9/11 “The worst nonfiction book about terrorism published by a major house since 9/11.” (Whose fault was 9/11 according to Dinesh D’Souza? Why, liberals, of course! The “New York Times” in reviewing the book called it “a national disgrace.”)

So, how’s the movie/”documentary”?

Well, it’s about what you’d expect from this darling of shows like Hannity & Colmes on Fox News or Glenn Beck’s program. D’Souza has debated other intellectuals (among them the late Christopher Hitchens at Notre Dame) and admitted at the end of an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report” that he shares some of the same negative beliefs about liberal Americans as Islamic militants.

The film is a real hatchet job.

For instance, a segment is produced claiming to be an interview with a member of Obama’s distantly related relatives in Kenya (Sarah Obama), but the voice is that of Onekie Smallwood. You actually feel sorry for Obama’s distant relatives (his father was much-married and fathered many children by at least three different women, one of them, son George, not born until 6 months after his death). They obviously didn’t know what D’Souza was really up to when they spoke with the man.
What D’Souza was really up to was to try to use fear (cue the spooky music) and the Karl Rove-generated fear tactics used to elect “W” (“Love him or hate him, you don’t know him”—which can more accurately be claimed of their Republican nominee) technique that drove us into 2 disastrous wars under George W. Bush. This “make up any falsehood/ tell any lie” technique is used to blacken the reputation of the sitting president, who has been kept from helping the country pull out of the mess “W” left us in by what is dubbed “The Party of No” in another of the articles in this issue of “Time.”

As Mitch McConnell, the architect of this obstructionist tactic that would sacrifice the national interest of the United States at the altar of partisan politics designed the Republican tactic, “He wanted everyone to hold the fort. All he cared about was making sure Obama could never have a clean victory. (The words of Ohio Senator George Volnovich in the article, who further said, “If Obama was for it, we had to be against it”, p. 44, “Time,” September 3, 2012).

So, exactly what is D’Souza—whose reputation for fair play is not high—-up to with this “documentary”? (I use the term loosely.)With sweeping shots of Lady Liberty in New York City, D’Souza contrasts that with a journey to the most squalid places and people on earth, it would seem, dwelling on Obama’s trip to Kenya and trying to make the case that Obama “wears a mask” and making a big deal over Obama’s returning a bust of Winston Churchill to Great Britain.

D’Souza would have naive viewers believe it was some sort of repudiation of Churchill, when the reality, checked out by “New York Times” reporter Jake Tapper, is that there are TWO busts of Churchill. One was loaned to “W” as a show of solidarity after 9/11 and was scheduled to be returned before Obama was even elected. However, there is a second bust of Churchill still on the premises. Read about it here
Is the Churchill Bust Controversy a Total Bust? – ABC News abcnews.go.com/…/is-the-churchill-bust-controversy-a-total in an article written on July 27, 2012. There were at least 2 additional articles concerning this tempest-in-a-teapot, and it turned out that there were TWO busts of Churchill, one of which was returned, as previously scheduled, and one of which remains.

But is this really the most important issue this country faces in this day and age? [I didn’t think so.]

George Obama: Half-Brother of Barack Obama

D’Souza seems to think so, as he claims returning the statue shows that President Obama thought colonial countries who settled in far-flung empires like Indonesia or D’Souza’s native India, were simply there for the loot and that he is, therefore, “anti-colonial.” In an interview with Obama’s half-brother several times removed (a man over 21 named George), the obviously intelligent Kenya native expressed his opinion that colonialism was not responsible for Kenya’s bad luck, and that “Maybe if we’d let the whites stay a little while longer” the country would have done better, economically-speaking. George also expressed the opinion that he was “over age” and, when asked if Barack Obama should be helping support him, said, “Go ask him. I think he has a family of his own.” This remark was then shown with side-by-side shots of the White House and the hovel in which young George, [the half-brother who was born 6 months after their mutual father was killed in a car accident], now lives. The message for viewers was quite blatant: Obama doesn’t care about his own family members. D’Souza even made a reference to the Biblical story of Cain and Able. It’s ironic, considering that all articles on the Romney/Ryan ticket suggest (see “Time,” page 40) that the Republican duo’s “budget math is coldhearted towards the poor and the elderly.” It’s no News Flash that Paul Ryan is not Medicare’s friend.

DRINKING:

There were also repeated references to excessive drinking by Obama’s birth father and by Obama’s Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soltoro. (“We drank with him”). More tribal music. More shots of squalor. Cue to old guy with bad teeth (Kogelio Oto). Kogelia tells us he had been drinking with Obama’s father “until 1:30 p.m.” before the senior Obama was killed in an auto accident on November 24, 1982. The narrator even works in lines like, “This father (Soltoro) is an abusive alcoholic. He kills a man in a car accident” and distorts the statements of a former professor of Stanley Ann Dunham’s (stressing that the couple met “in Russian class”). I felt sorry for Dr. Alice Dewey, Professor Emeritus of Hawaii, who obviously was “conned” into making statements that are twisted and misconstrued; it was like a bad version of “Borat.”

So, one message that the movie underhandedly attempts to convey is:

1) Obama doesn’t care about his relatives. Does anybody really believe this? And does anybody really believe he owes a family half a world away, whose relationship to him is tenuous at best (different mothers, never knew each other growing up, etc.) support and assistance when even the young man who is his half-brother says differently?

COLONIALISM:

2) Another message from D’Souza: “Colonialism was good.” (D’Souza is the author of an article with the title “Two Cheers for Colonialism”). We could debate this one for a long time. There certainly is a case to be made for some good things that came out of colonialism. But it is just as true that the colonial countries (England, Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, et. al.) journeyed to far-flung lands to bring back the wealth of those lands. Doesn’t anyone remember why the United States of America fought the Revolutionary War? (Hello?) Does the Boston Tea Party ring any bells? Colonialism may have helped educate and improve the standard of living of some countries (India comes to mind) but it certainly was NOT all “Days of wine and roses” for the countries being stripped of their riches and any high school history class in any classroom in this country touches on that salient fact. So, message number 2 from D’Souza, is that Obama—like his father(s) before him—is anti-colonialism, which seems like a fairly reasonable position in this day and age. [D’Souza uses as his most telling point the fact that Obama supposedly wants to give the Falkland Islands back to Argentina. (Does anybody really care about the Falkland Islands during this election season— except possibly the people who live there? And wasn’t that one-day wonder war fought when Reagan was in office? Sheesh. And is THAT statement even true, since so many of the other “truths” of this documentary are falsehoods? I’ll leave the research on that one to someone else. Let me know.)

3) With statements like this one: “Other presidents were known figures. Obama came out of nowhere,” and “What is Obama’s dream?” and “The son is realizing his father’s dream” D’Souza tries to connect Obama’s hopes/plans for our country to a man Barack Obama only met once in his life and never lived with. It is true that Barack had to deal with an absent father who was, as the movie puts it, “air brushed” in a positive way by his white mother, but it is more true that he never really knew the man. I do believe that Obama probably was driven to achieve so much because he wanted to prove his worth and, possibly, earn the love of his always-absent father, but that just makes me like him and feel empathy for him. It doesn’t make him a bad person, a Communist (implied), a person who hates whites (stated) or a person who wants our country to fail, as the Tea Party Congress seems willing to let happen. The words of Obama’s book about visiting his father’s grave in Kenya are used against him (DId Mitt ever write anything worth reading?). D’Souza quotes from Obama’s book “Dreams From My Father:” “Everything I was doing carried the full weight of my life. I sat between 2 graves and wept. The circle closed.”( Is there any person on the planet who is not a product of his or her parenting and upbringing, including D’Souza?)

Stanley Dunham, Obama’s Grandfather

Even more disgusting, the Grandfather (Stanley Dunham) who provided a positive male role model for Obama in his growing up years in Kansas is slandered in several ways, with statements like, “We got drunk and hammered together” and comments about how he was “on the left,” which, to D’Souza, is a little like saying he is from Hell, since D’Souza is so far to the right he makes Rush Limbaugh seem liberal.

4) Among other things that D’Souza suggests (without a shred of proof) is that Obama “hates whites,” that his plan is to spend the U.S. into oblivion (while cutting our nuclear arsenal), and that he’d like to see us reconcile more with Muslim countries (which, actually, sounds reasonable; do we HAVE to be the “most hated country in the world?”).

“The usual suspects” are trotted out to smear our sitting President, including Bill Ayers (the Weather Underground bomber who became an academic at the University of Chicago); the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (I think we all remember that flap, which ended in total repudiation of the pastor by the president); Frank Marshall Davis, who, because he was a Communist, obviously had to be his best friend (Here, D’Souza uses Paul Kengor to talk abut 22 references to Frank in “Dreams From My Father”), a little-known Brazilian economist and Edward Said of Columbia, who, claims D’Souza, is a leading critic of Israel. (D’Souza is trying very hard to lose Obama the Jewish vote and the votes of those who frown on drinking in any form, as Mormons do.—Mormons don’t even drink coffee or pop, so you can imagine how much support alcohol gets.)

GUANTANAMO

Another statement by D’Souza: Obama is “weirdly sympathetic” to those who want to close down Guantanamo. I’m sympathetic to closing down Guantanamo and it’s not “weird” at all. It would have been a great idea to bring those prisoners to the brand-new prison sitting idle in Illinois. The conditions in Guantanamo should not be visited upon another human being, and their suicide rate is extraordinarily high. (See “Mother Jones” issue for a more full description of the terrible living conditions there and many who were innocents detained for years without due process, from a variety of foreign countries. Apparently, the country from which they were taken used the sweep to get rid of many undesirables, including mental defectives and one person who was actually known as “Halfhead,” as I recall the article. A few were very young boys. Many were guilty and have been found guilty in courts, now, but many were not even involved in the war but were undesirables the country of origin wanted to deport.)

OUT OF CONTEXT

Brokaw at the DNC in Denver in 2008.

There is a brief shot of Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw talking at the familiar round table, where Charlie mentions, “We don’t really know what he stands for, do we?” and Brokaw agrees in a two-second clip. I saw that program. Complete misrepresentation of the entire content of the program. I couldn’t help but think of how little we know about Mitt Romney, who won’t even release his tax returns for any but ONE year. A Brian Williams piece this past Sunday on the Mormon Church certainly showed a denomination that has turned the clock back on equality for women and has some other odd ideas, including equating blacks with “the devil” until quite recently, as was pointed out by comedian Chris Rock when a guest on a late-night talk show. ( And they like to baptize you after you’re dead, as they did with Ann Romney’s atheist father.)

1. The sad thing about a “documentary” like this is that many people believe implicitly what they are told, if it is told skillfully enough, even though most of it is total hogwash. For one thing, the space program was being dismantled by Obama’s predecessor (“W”) before Obama was even elected, because it wasn’t the money-maker that George the second thought it would be. (See article here on NASA, from a visit there: President Obama Vows Support for a New, Improved NASA Space …

voices.yahoo.com/president-obama-vows-support-improved-nasa-58…Cached

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Apr 15, 2010 – “I Am 100% Committed to the Mission of NASA and Its Future…” Connie Wilson, Yahoo! Contributor Network Apr 16, 2010 “Share your voice on …

2. Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Challenger Explosion – Yahoo! Voices

voices.yahoo.com/twenty-fifth-anniversary-challenger-explosion-77…Cached

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Jan 26, 2011 – The next 5 years saw increases in budgeting for NASA. …. Connie Wilson has written for five newspapers and taught writing at six Iowa/Illinois …

When I read the log-line (short for a scriptwriter’s one-line summary of a film’s plot): “Love him or hate him, you don’t know him!” I couldn’t help but think how much more we know about Barack Obama than we do about Mitt Romney, who lives the life of a millionaire member of an unusual religious group not given to openness. The sad truth is that Romney won’t tell us whether he supported the United States with many tax dollars and has absolutely refused to release more than ONE year of his tax returns, despite his own father (Michigan Governor George Romney) pointing out, when he was Governor, that it takes several years to get a good idea of a person’s finances.

At the end of this total hatchet job, which suggests without factual basis that Obama would cut our military superiority and WANTS to spend us into debt, as well as many other misrepresentations about him, this travesty ends with, “The future is in your hands.”

A rather large woman in the audience, as the lights went up, began chanting, “NObama!” I stood up and said, equally loudly, “Let’s not forget who got us into two totally unnecessary wars to spend us into this debt.” This caused the rather large—okay, fat—-woman to say, “Oh, come off it!” and I thought we were going to have an old-fashioned donnybrook right there in the aisle of the Great Escape Theater in Moline, Illinois.

This film is nothing but (more) Karl Rove fear-mongering (see previous article on how Rove has his finger in all Romney pies). It is a disgrace to have an interview statement from Romney in “Time” in which the candidate CLAIMS he is not going to go after Obama personally but then lets the campaign (or the PACS, with their $1.8 BILLION dollars collected!) paint Obama’s biological father (whom he barely knew) as a no-good-nik, and also slam his paternal grandfather, who really raised him, and declare the president (who had a white mother, after all) to be anti-white, anti-colonialism (good for him) and state that he wants to close down Guantanamo (so do I).

It is unfortunate that the REAL important issues are either glossed over or are presented in such a ridiculous and unfair and untruthful light (witness the Winston Churchill bust stupidity).

The final line (“The future is in your hands”) makes me want to point a finger on one of those hands at Dinesh D’Souza and John Sullivan and say, “Shame on BOTH of you!” (And that goes double for the fat Tea Party woman who wanted to hit me.)

I did a piece on “Influential Figures in the Life of Barack Obama” by request for Yahoo. Here is a link to it. It is far more accurate than this smear job. Read it if you want to know the truth about the real influences on Barack Obama’s life. (And, no, I didn’t do it for this election cycle, but I thoroughly researched it and it is the truth, not a smear job like “2016: Obama’s America.”

1. Influential People in Barack Obama’s Life – Yahoo! Voices – voices …

voices.yahoo.com/influential–people–barack–obamas–life-1539933.ht…Cached

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Jun 6, 2008 – Influential People in Barack Obama’s Life. Who Are Some of the People Who Helped Form Barack Obama’s Life and Career? Connie Wilson …

The 2012 Presidential Campaign & How It’s Being Financed: Read It and Weep

By Connie Wilson

On August 22, 2012

In Editorial, Health/Medicine, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

As Yeats wrote

The closest I’ve come to meeting Barack Obama (DNC, 2008)

, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

Let me immediately give credit where credit is due and say that this information comes from the newest issue of “Vanity Fair,” which did not hit newsstands until today. It is a capsule “Cliff Notes,” if you will, summarizing the article “Boss Rove” that runs in the newest issue (Craig Unger, pp. 228-234). If you have issues with the content, take it up with “Vanity Fair,” which has done the nation a service by tracking down the unfettered spending that is going on in the 2012 presidential election and ferreting out who is behind this massive spending spree. I thought I’d save all of you a bit of time and shorten the essential facts, so read on, if you dare.

In this unsettling issue, you will learn to what extent Pillsbury Doughboy Karl Rove—once known as “Bush’s Brain—-is involved in this year’s Republican presidential race. As former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said on one of the late-night talk shows where she was a guest, “Democrats are the party of the many—not the party of the money.” (Ain’t it the truth?)

I’m going to excerpt just a few startling facts from “Boss Rove” so you will at least be aware of them, in regards to the astounding amounts of money being spent this election season (by both parties.) First the article (which begins on page 228 of the September issue) re

Rush Limbaugh & Sandra Fluke,
whom Limbaugh insulted during her Senate testimony.

Pillsbury Doughboy (aka Turd Blossom)

I saw Karl Rove in person once. He came out on a balcony in Denver in 2004 at the Coors Amphitheater with the woman from Texas named “Karen” who was “W’s” other big favorite. Rove, DID, indeed, look like the Pillsbury Doughboy. In fact, George W. Bush, himself, who was a fan of giving everyone a demeaning nickname, called him ‘Turd Blossom.” Aptly named.

Rove left public view briefly in 2007 under a cloud and barely escaped indictment, as the article states ( page 229.) The president he served (George W. Bush) left office with the lowest rating in the history of the presidency (22%). The Supreme Court, in December 2000, handed down the notorious decision placing George W. Bush in the White House (“Bush v. Gore). Then, the Supreme Court appointees of our least favorite president of all time (Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito) joined forces on “Citizens United” recently to allow the electoral process to be subverted forever by allowing corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money, much of it anonymous and untraceable. It overthrew the previous campaign finance bill, McCain-Feingold, which was actually known as the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

In American elections now, anything goes. Money talks (and bullshit walks). And don’t let those complete commercial misstatements about how Obama doesn’t think people receiving welfare should work bother you, either; both the “New York Times” and the “Washington Post” completely debunked the ad that is running non-stop in swing states (and on TV Channel 6 in the Quad Cities of IA/IL).

So, Karl Rove (aka “Bush’s Brain”) immediately met with Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee Chairperson (who had also served in the Bush administration) and they became a dynamic duo, with Gillespie eventually sent over to work with Romney’s people. One wag said, “Ed’s got the better rap and Karl’s got the better Rolodex,” referencing Rove’s prodigious fund-raising ability.

Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, a longtime donor to Rove’s causes was recruited. Within three weeks of the Supreme Courts’ controversial decision in “Citizens United,” American Crossroads, a new 527 advocacy group, had a web-site up and running. Very shortly after its inception, the group had commitments of $30 million, which was 4 times what the RNC had on hand. Four OTHER groups were formed: American Action Network, the American Action Forum, Resurgent Republican and the Republican State Leadership Committee. None of these groups had to disclose the identity of their contributors because they were nonprofits. American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS planned to spend $300 million to help GOP congressional candidates in battleground states like Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Iowa. Their anti-Democratic ads would run thousands of times and “Under the new laws, all of this could take place with virtually no oversight.” (p. 230).

The war chest the GOP amassed now approaches $1 billion. John McCain spent only $370 million on his entire presidential campaign in 2008. American Crossroads was considered to be an alternative to the RNC, which more-or-less collapsed under the leadership of its token black leader, Michael Steele.

A telling quote: “The center of energy will always be where the money is. Karl is playing for control of the party. That’s where the power and the money are.” WABC radio host John Batchelor (a Republican) is quoted this way: “American is a two-party state. There are the Democrats. Then, there’s Karl Rove.”

All of us, by now, are aware that Rove turned up on Fox News and “The Wall Street Journal” also gave him a bully pulpit.

Mitt Romney on the campaign trail in Davenport, IA.

On April 5^th, Ed Gillespie left American Crossroads and joined the Mitt Romney campaign as a senior adviser. This was well before Romney had locked up the nomination. Through Gillespie, Rove now had oversight of Romney’s campaign for the presidency of the United States. Rove became the gatekeeper over who would contribute how much to whom. Quote from Wayne Slater, (reporter for the “Dallas Morning News”): “When Karl put his imprimatur on you, it was clear that the money was going to go to you.”

Here’s a sobering paragraph from page 232: “The only way Romney can get back into the race quickly will be through the expenditures of substantial Super PAC dollars,” said Doug Schoen in “Forbes” magazine. “Specifically, the key actors in this process will be Karl Rove, whose Super PAC American Crossroads has raised $300 million, as well as the pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore Our Future. But make no mistake about it: the 2012 campaign now is not Obama versus Romney. It is Obama versus Karl Rove, American Crossroads, and Restore Our Future.”

And so, goes the article on page 232, “The great consolidation began between Rove’s super-PACS and Romney’s operation.” Beth Myers, who was so close to her boss that “The Washington Post” called her his “office wife” would be in charge of the selection of Paul Ryan as VP.

Rove then began bringing in those who had strayed from the cause, like Sheldon Adelson, the seventh-richest man in America ($24.9 billion) who had given $21.5 million to Newt Gingrich’s book tour-cum-campaign. After some hemming and hawing, Adelson gave $10 million to Restore Our Future” and said, “He (Rove ) is going to be the Republican Party’s 800-pound gorilla in defeating Barack Obama.” (this from an Adelson friend to CNN.)

Then there are the multi-billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, who recently threw so much money into keeping Wisconsin’s Scott Walker in office as Governor when he began dismantling all unions and faced a recall. By early spring, Marc Short, a Koch operative, had begun attending the Weaver Terrace gatherings of Romney’s people. They had initially planned to steer $200 million to conservative groups and causes in 2012, but they doubled that to $400 million. Former “W” consultants” put that figure in context: “Think the $$ political system is screwed up? Koch brothers alone are planning to spend more money than McCain’s entire presidential budget.”

So, we have Grover Norquist’s “Americans for Tax Reform;’’ the National Right to Life committee; Ralph Reed’s “Faith & Freedom Coalition,” the National Rifle Association and the “American Future Fund,” all allied to spend money on Tea Party candidates and against Obama. Peter Stone (journalist) wrote: “By spreading their wealth throughout the conservative ecosystem the Kochs can exploit trusted brands with passionate followings that reach beyond the Tea Party base,” while at the same time leaving no trace of their involvement.

Romney now has a total of $1.8 billion dollars, with the RNC commanding another $800 million. In Virginia, Tim Kaine who was running for the Senate, was outspent 3 to 1. On Kaine’s behalf, as of late March, 380 ads ran, while Crossroads GPS and the Chamber of Commerce aired 1,980 attack ads against him. And it was a well-known fact that the Wisconsin recall effort was funded by the Koch Brothers and outspent those who wanted a new Governor about 4 to 1. Fox News, always glad to air an attack ad against the president, aired an attack ad on no fewer than 7 separate news shows in one 24-hour period, which means, as RNC strategist Brad Blakeman said, “Karl has gotten more earned media than the amount he invested in the ad.”

With Wall Street deserting Obama over some presidential feeble attempts to rein in the circumstances that caused the near-collapse of the country (no banker has yet gone to jail), Brent Budowsky wrote in “The Hill:”

“The inability of the Democrats to play in the same league as Karl Rove financially is a humiliating debacle that might be unprecedented, (measured by comparing wealthy donors of one party to wealthy donors of the other), in the history of presidential politics. The president and Democrats seem befuddled by how to react to the Citizens United decision, while Karl Rove understands with crystal clarity. Rove mobilizes his army, rallies his wealthy, organizes his ventures and puts his money in the bank.”

In 2008, more than 550,000 people gave more than $200 to Obama. In so doing they created the longest list of individual donors in American political history. According to BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith & Rebecca Elliott, at this point in 2012, nearly 90% of people had NOT come back to donate that amount again. Bush is gone and so are the donors Barack Obama needs to defeat the Mittster. Furthermore, the Democratic Super PACS are feeble. By mid-April, 4 of the biggest and 2 allied nonprofits had only $8.3 million on hand. Bill Maher and James H. Simons were responsible for a million each. Meanwhile, Rove’s groups had spent more than $11 million on attack ads against Obama.

George Soros.

At this point, George Soros, the famously liberal Democratic donor, tried to put together a strategy to combat Rove’s onslaught. He prepared to invest $100 million in Democratic super PACS and nonprofits, focusing on grassroots organizing, voter registration and turn out, rather than negative advertising. As Michael Vachon (a Soros adviser) told the “Huffington Post,” “Culturally, the left doesn’t do Swift Boat. It’s not what we do well.”

Rove’s strategy with all that cash is this: All Romney has to do is take 3 states: Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia—states that McCain and Palin lost in 2008, and recapture 2 big battleground states that Bush won in 2004 (Ohio and Florida) and—beyond that—-win just ONE swing state. It could be Iowa, where both Obama (his 13^th visit) and Romney are visiting repeatedly. Rove wrote it up this way: “The self-portrait the president has painted is of a weak liberal, buffeted by events. That will make this election more like 1980 when Ronald Reagan defeated an ineffectual Jimmy Carter than like 2004.”

Said Roger Stone: “No one else can construct a power center like he (Rove) can.” Rove has been the brains behind one of—if not THE—-worst presidents in U.S. history, who started 2 horribly expensive wars and, having inherited a booming economy from Clinton, left the nation in near economic collapse. But now that the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson have fallen into line, Rove has consolidated the warring factions within the Republican Party and is in command, with complete control.

Running for the Republicans is a team (Romney/Ryan) with the thinnest foreign policy background since 1944 (Dewey/Bricker) and the man who wants to dismantle Medicare and deny all abortions, even for rape and incest, and deny women many basic health care needs,, (Paul Ryan), the VP candidate. Ryan spent 14 years in Congress and never ran anything other than his House office. Ryan’s slashing of Medicaid (by $800 billion over 10 years) would reward the strong and abandon the needy, balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class while the rich are spared and protected. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, in “Time’s” August 27^th issue, called Ryan’ budget “an uncompromising right-wing Tea Party manifesto that provides big tax breaks to wealthy Americans at the expense of everyone and everything else.” Said the “Time” article (“Ryan’s Hope”), “Ryan is to budget math what Carl Sagan was to the science of the cosmos.” Said Joe Klein in the same issue, “Mitt Romney has effectively outsourced his job as intellectual leader of the ticket to his occasionally specific junior partner” (which Romney once called “marvelous.”)

Even worse, many of Ryan’s most prized ideas have already been tried and have already failed. The drastic cutting of taxes was tried under Reagan and did not work. Even the stupidest American can understand that, when bills are mounting, it is necessary to get more money. Maybe the average American takes a second job, but he or she tries to get more money to pay the mounting bills, and the nation needs to get more money to pay both our horrendous debt (Thanks, “W”!) and to pay for social programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and such things as infrastructure improvements.

In Ryan’s plan (quote from “Time”) “Average folks are taxed because they haven’t had the good sense to become wealthy.” Ryan’s budget is balanced on the backs of the poor and elderly. It would eviscerate medical help for the elderly poor and force those who are addled, decrepit and elderly to wade through the complicated market choices of private insurance, as their benefits would almost certainly not cover their medical needs under Ryan’s “voucher” plan.

What the Democrats have going for them, at this point, is a candidate who is genuinely likeable and not just a Gumby doll, some signs that economic unrest is at least under control for the moment in Europe (as well as somewhat stable in the Middle East, save for Syria), and a slowly improving economy. Obama was in Ohio today, but Mitt will be hitting the Quad Cities again tomorrow, at 12:30 p.m., while Ryan is going to Pennsylvania.

(Gallup Poll of 8/21): Twenty-two% of registered voter s like Ryan; 23% say they don’t like Ryan. 54% say it doesn’t make any difference in their vote, if they are registered Republicans.

Now if Barack Obama only had an educated, informed electorate that read, he’d be home free! But I’m watching an attack ad right now, paid for by Americans for Prosperity and, during Obama’s recent visit, the ratio of Republican ads to Democratic ads was 4 to 1. There’s one running right now, as I write this, which claims, quite ridiculously, that the Romney/Ryan plan will “protect Medicare,” when the opposite is the truth,.

But do people read these articles and know this?

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

President Obama & Michelle Obama to Visit Village of East Davenport on Aug. 15th, 2012

By Connie Wilson

On August 15, 2012

In Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

President and Michelle Obama are welcomed to the Village of East Davenport near the site where he will speak on the evening of August 15, 2012.

President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are visiting the Village of East Davenport (in Davenport, IA) tomorrow (Aug. 15, 2012) for a speech as he swings through the state on his custom-made black bus. It is President Obama’s 13th visit to Iowa.

Those who weren’t paying close attention to the seating chart within the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver may not have realized this, but Iowa and Illinois had the 2 most prized right-down-front positions. That is because Iowa, in its first-in-the-nation primaries “gave me a chance,” as now-President Obama has put it. He has not forgotten this salient fact, and neither have I.

At the time, I was writing for Associated Content and had made it my job to go out and attend each and every campaign rally of each party. I could tell something “big” was building on the ground, just talking to the natives. I went out on a limb and predicted that Barack Obama would carry Iowa and the next thing you know, I had at least 5 or 10 people telling me how nuts I was and how they would come back AFTER the primaries to watch me eat those words.

Workers unload large vans in preparation for President Obama’s speech, which will be given outdoors in a grassy field often used for Re-enactors and/or art fairs.

I think we all know how that played out. It was not an easy victory for President Obama, running against Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary, our former First Lady, but he pulled it out. And the prominent place given Bill Clinton at this years DNC can only mean one thing: we may not have heard the last of Hillary as a candidate. (2016, anyone?)

No matter what your feelings towards the candidates, this is a Big Deal in our neck of the woods. River Drive is totally disrupted (summer construction) keeping traffic to the Village down. The Secret Service will block access from the Locust Street side. The tickets were given out starting at noon and the line was long.

I went over to Logomarcino’s Ice Cream Shoppe today and spoke with the employees, who informed me that they would be closed for business until after the president speaks, which is scheduled to be 5:30 p.m., which means it will be closer to 6:30 or 7 p.m. Some of the Logomarcino family have already been told that they will get to meet the president.

The photographers are busy taking pictures of OTHER photographers.

The woman who made me a chocolate soda told me of the day that candidate Barack Obama visited the RME (River Music Experience) when she was working there. “I was all dirty and holding a mop..a real mess. He came in with all these Secret Service people in business suits and came right over to me and shook my hand and said, ‘How are you?’ and asked my name. He was real. He was genuine. He got my vote right there.”

Meanwhile, at the Des Moines (IA) State Fair, Paul Ryan, who would dismantle Medicare in this Land of the Old and Home of the Geriatric Generation, was booed.

I’m just wondering if the Mittster has a dog on top of the bus he and Paul Ryan will now tour the swing states in. Hopefully, they’ll let the little fellow out once in a while, if they have a mascot with them.