Broken

. . . record. . .

 

Mittster says, 
"The president's campaign falls far short of the magnitude of these times. And the presidency of the last four years has fallen far short of the promises of his last campaign," Romney said. "Four years ago, America voted for a post-partisan president, but they have seen the most partisan of political of presidents, and a Washington in gridlock because of it."

Now let's look at this carefully.  Here is a man who was a one-term governor and head of a 'global management consulting firm'  who conveniently espouses positions that appeal to any particular audience to whom he is speaking at any particular time, and running as the Republican party candidate, claiming that the sitting president is the "most partisan of political of presidents"(sic) and has caused gridlock because of it. 

Clearly this man does not live in a factual world.

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Dreaming? . . .

 . . . white? . . . this ain't Christmas we're talking about here. . .

George Washington was a white man
Adams and Jefferson too
Abe Lincoln was a white man, probably
And William McKinley the whitest of them all
Was shot down by an immigrant in Buffalo
And a star fell out of heaven

I’m dreaming of a white President
Just like the ones we’ve always had
A real live white man
Who knows the score
How to handle money or start a war
Wouldn’t even have to tell me what we were fighting for
He’d be the right man
If he were a

I’m dreaming of a white President
Someone whom we can understand
Someone who knows where we’re coming from
And that the law of the jungle is not the law of this land
In deepest darkest Africa nineteen three
A little boy says, “Daddy, I just discovered relativity.
A big eclipse is coming
And I’ll prove it. Wait and see!”

“You better eclipse yourself outta here, son
And find yourself a tree
There’s a lion in the front yard
And he knows he won’t catch me.”

How many little Albert Einsteins
Cut down in their prime?
How many little Ronald Reagans
Gobbled up before their time?

I don’t believe in evolution
But it does occur to me,
What if little William Howard Taft had to face a lion
Or God forbid, climb a tree?
Where would this country be?

I’m dreaming of a white President
Buh buh buh buh
‘Cause things have never been this bad
So he won’t run the hundred in ten seconds flat
So he won’t have a pretty jump shot
Or be an Olympic acrobat
So he won’t know much about global warming
Is that really where you’re at?
He won’t be the brightest, perhaps
But he’ll be the whitest
And I’ll vote for that

Whiter than this?
Yes
Whiter than this?
Yes
Whiter than this?
Yes
Whiter than this?
Oh yeah


Music & Lyrics by Randy Newman (© Copyright unknown)

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State of the Union. . .

 . . . schmate of the union. . . sounds good. . . can it all be done? . . . I'm listening not watching. . . are all the republicans stone-faced, sitting with their arms folded? . . . I can only picture it. . .

For the Obama record, here are some facts regarding promises made and goals accomplished. . . (based upon story By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer)

'. . . Sometime this spring, the Supreme Court will determine whether Obama’s signature accomplishment – the law which expands and fundamentally redesigns health insurance in the United States – will survive. If the Supreme Court permits the law to stand, Obama will have accomplished much of what he pledged to do in his Feb. 10, 2007 speech in Springfield, Ill., when he formally launched his presidential campaign: “We will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.  But the Obama plan won’t be fully implemented until 2018. The major overhaul of the nation’s health care system stands as one of the largest legislative achievements in decades.

The presiden hasn’t closed Guantanamo Navy Base as a prison camp for al-Qaida members and other terrorist suspects, as he pledged to do in an executive order he signed on the day be took office in 2009. But this was largely to due to Republican opposition.

When Obama signed the $825 billion economic stimulus plan into law in February of 2009, there were 141.7 million Americans working and 12.5 million unemployed.By February of 2011, two years after the stimulus was enacted, there were 139.5 million Americans working and 13.7 million unemployed.

Between the month he signed the stimulus into law and February of 2011, the unemployment rate went from 8.1 percent to 8.9 percent. These numbers explain Republican criticism of the stimulus as a squandering of taxpayer money that didn’t result in increased employment. In recent months, the jobs data has improved but there were still almost one million fewer people employed last month than when Obama signed the stimulus into law. Obama’s critics on the left, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, argue the stimulus was too small, while Obama’s defenders say it prevented a far worse economic slump.

The Obama administration also decided to spend $80 billion to keep General Motors and Chrysler alive, and as of last November, according to the Congressional Budget Office, $35 billion of that money had been repaid to the Treasury, $7 billion had been written off as a loss, and $37 billion was still outstanding. The two car companies are still operating; in fact, GM reported a few days ago that it has reclaimed its title as the world’s largest seller of automobiles.

Obama himself said in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination in 2008, “We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush.” Clinton served for eight years and Obama has served so far for only three, but the Census reported that median household income, adjusted for inflation, declined by 2.3 percent between 2009 and 2010. This was part of longer-term trend that predates Obama’s presidency: since 2007, median household income has declined 6.4 percent and is 7.1 percent below the peak ($53,252) that occurred in 1999.

The Census also reports that the poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent—up from 14.3 percent in 2009, the third consecutive increase in the poverty rate. When Obama launched his candidacy in Springfield in 2007, he portrayed these economic woes as Bush Era problems, about which the Republicans were in denial: “For the past six years, we've been told that our mounting debts don't matter. We've been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion.”

One sector of the economy where Obama appears to have fallen short is housing. In his first debate with John McCain in 2008, he said: “We've got to make sure that we're helping homeowners, because the root problem here has to do with the foreclosures that are taking place all across the country.”

In the face of Republican opposition, Obama has been unable to fulfill his promise to enact legislation reducing use of tax deductions by upper-income taxpayers and raising income tax rates for those with incomes over $250,000. But as part of the health care law he did increase Medicare taxes on upper-income people. The law also other imposes other major tax increases including the penalty on people who choose to go without insurance and the tax on high-cost “Cadillac" health plans which takes effect in 2018.

Obama promised in 2008 to cut taxes for “95 percent of working families.” The 2009 stimulus included more than $300 billion in tax cuts and credits — including the Making Work Pay Credit, a big tax cut for workers earning less than $75,000 and couples making less than $150,000 a year. Making Work Pay has now been replaced by the payroll tax cut.

Although the House passed a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas bill in 2009, Obama along with Sen. John Kerry, D- Mass., Sen. Joe Lieberman, I- Conn., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., the three Senate leaders on the issue, failed to come up with the compromises needed to pass a bill. The effort died in the summer of 2010. The Obama administration has made grants and loans to alternative energy companies, but it was embarrassed when $535 million in taxpayer money was lost in a loan to Solyndra, the California solar company that went bankrupt last September.

Obama shored up the liberal wing of the Supreme Court by appointing Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to replace retiring Justices David Souter and John Paul Stevens.

And he pleased gay rights advocates when he ended the legal defense of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Obama also ended the Clinton Era “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy on gays serving in the military.

He also made recess appointments to National Labor Relations Board, which helped fulfill a campaign pledge he made in 2007 to help union organizers “lift up this country’s middle class again.”

As Obama promised to do in 2008, he has withdrawn American troops from Iraq. He has also ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden and American-born Moslem cleric and al-Qaida organizer Anwar al-Awlaki. He has continued and expanded the use of drones to kill alleged terrorists in Yemen and elsewhere.

When Obama took office there were 32,000  troops in Afghanistan. In March 2009 he announced he’d send an extra 4,000.  On Dec. 1, 2009, he increased U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan by another 30,000, bringing the total to 100,000. “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home,” he said.

He lashed out at “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.”  And on the night he won the Iowa caucuses, he said that he and his supporters had “beat back the politics of fear and doubt and cynicism … .” But the Washington reform groups Common Cause and the Center for Public Integrity have accused him of falling short of his anti-lobbyist rhetoric.

Obama signed an executive order on his first day in office which imposed limits on former lobbyists and others who worked in his administration. An ex-lobbyist working in the administration could not for two years after his appointment be involved in any policy matter on which he’d lobbied in the two years before his appointment, or work in a federal agency that he had lobbied within the two years before being appointed.

But the executive order provided a waiver from the rules if it was deemed in the national interest. Former Clinton administration Defense Department official and former Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn was given a waiver to serve as deputy secretary of defense. And the New York Times reported in 2010 that White House officials regularly met with lobbyists at the Caribou Coffee shop down the street from the White House, avoiding disclosure on the public White House visitors’ log.
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Common Cause president Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman, chided Obama last year for accepting campaign funds for his 2012 run which were raised by “bundlers” working for Washington lobbying firms. '

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Miles and Miles of quotes. . .

(Quotes from Miles Davis. . . )
"I've changed music four or five times. What have you done of any importance other than be white?"
Davis attended a reception in honor of Ray Charles at Ronald Reagan's White House in 1987. This was his reply to a Washington society lady seated next to him who had asked him what he had done to be invited.

"If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow."  During an interview, after growing aggravated about questions on the subject of race.

"A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it."  On being called a legend.

"Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin"

"Who's that motherfucker? He can't play shit!"
on Cecil Taylor

"You a motherfucker."  a compliment to Chick Corea, who thought he was about to be fired.

"He plays like somebody is standing on his foot."  on Eric Dolphy

"He could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll."  on Prince

"Why'd you put that white bitch on there?"
To George Avakian after seeing the cover chosen by Columbia for Miles Ahead.

"You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played." and "I love Pops" (Louis' nickname)
on Louis Armstrong in a Playboy magazine interview.

"I’ll play it and tell you what it is later."   During a recording session for Prestige, on the album "Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet" (1956).

"Listen baby, when I say later, I mean it! Later!"  After being approached by a relentless interviewer.

"There are no wrong notes."  My ego only needs a good rhythm section.

On being asked what he looked for in musicians.  "When you are creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit."

"Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth."  Davis was questioning the increasing length of John Coltrane solos, and Trane answered "I don't know how to stop."

"Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

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War criminal? . . .

. . . how many OTHERS are there out there Mr. Rumsfeld???

from msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 8/31/2011 5:11:31 AM ET 2011-08-31T09:11:31

"Dick Cheney was "president for all practical purposes" during George W. Bush's first term in office and "fears being tried as a war criminal," according to Colin Powell's chief of staff during his time as secretary of state.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who has known Cheney for decades, told ABC News that Cheney was a "very vindictive person." "I simply don't recognize Mr. Cheney anymore," he added.

In his memoir, "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir," which was released Tuesday, Cheney claimed Powell had undermined Bush, by criticizing policy to people outside the administration. Cheney told NBC News that the book would see "heads exploding all over Washington."

Speaking to CBS Sunday, Powell accused Cheney of taking "cheap shots" at him.
In the ABC interview, Wilkerson suggested Cheney was adopting a tough stance in an attempt to forestall criticism or even prosecution.

"What really sort of got my attention was this way in which he characterized it (the memoir): it's going to 'cause heads to explode,'" Wilkerson said. "That's quite a visual. And in fact, it's the kind of headline I would expect to come out of a gossip columnist, or the kind of headline you might see one of the supermarket tabloids write. It's not the kind of headline I would have expected to come from a former vice president of the United States of America.

"I think he's just trying to, one, assert himself so he's not in some subsequent time period tried for war crimes and, second, so that he somehow vindicates himself because he feels like he needs vindication. That in itself tells you something about him," he added.

"He's developed an angst and almost a protective cover, and now he fears being tried as a war criminal so he uses such terminology as 'exploding heads all over Washington' because that's the way someone who's decided he's not going to be prosecuted acts: boldly, let's get out in front of everybody, let's act like we are not concerned and so forth when in fact they are covering up their own fear that somebody will Pinochet him," Wilkerson added. . ."

I think the former administration failed to answer MANY questions after the events of 9/11/2001. . .




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