Mike's Memo to the GOP Faithful

Folks who've been donating bucks to the GOP from time to time got this interesting tidbit of direct mail contribution solicitation from Mikey Steele two weeks ago, before the VA and NJ governors' races. In it came this map:

The letter talked about how this map showed the extent of the problem the party faced in getting out the word via television adverts.

But there was no legend, either on the map itself or in the contents of the solicitation letter.

I was pretty much baffled.

Any Ideas?

Update: 23NovO9...

I'm now thinking that what good ol' Mikey was pointing out is the sheer number of "ADI"s, areas of dominant impact (above 50% signal strength, I think it is, something-like), and thus stations, one has to buy time on to "reach the Couch Potatoes".

As I've proposed before, what's needed is about a handful of set-aside stations that are used for political advertising, 24 hours a day, 365.25 days a year (or 365 days a year for three years and 366 days every fourth year, Leap Year).

I proposed this yesterday to a Representative now running for Senate--and got back his worry that "all kinds of Kooks" would then jam the airwaves.

Now, this is from a guy who touts himself as an absolute champion of We the People's civil rights--like, freedom of peaches, the right to wear sleeveless shirts (bare arms), freedom to sit where we want (ass-embly), freedom to...etc.

He apparently thinks that do many peaches would be a BAD thing in the political advertising arena. So, much as he claims to "hate raising money," he's actually quite happy to do it, knowing that "kooks" and other undesirables (like third, fourth and fifth party candidates, for example) might get a chance to air their views, speak their minds, exercise their freedom of speech and run for office without having to either BE a millionaire, or raise enough money to ACT like a millionaire--even if it takes you every working hour of your elected job just to raise enough money to get re-elected (or move up from the House to the Senate, where, if you get elected, you're probably good for about 18 years, or three terms. Incumbents don't lose their re-election races, much.

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Comment on Van Jones Resignation...

... and comment on the NYTimes article mentioning it (which didn't make the "moderator cut," one might say:

including his derogatory statements about Republicans and his signature on a 2004 letter suggesting that former President George W. Bush might have knowingly allowed the Sept. 11 attacks to occur in order to use them as a “pretext to war.”

Dear NYTimes:

I don't get it. Van Jones resigns because he signed a letter

"…suggesting that former President George W. Bush might have knowingly allowed the Sept. 11 attacks to occur in order to use them as a 'pretext to war'. "

I hardly find that remarkable. We already know that "high-energetics" or "nano-thermite" developed in US weapons labs was used to demolish WTC #7, #2 and #1. Even Philip Zelikow's famous novel, "The 9/11 Commission Report," mentions that the towers collapsed in "10 seconds." It did not, of course, note the significance of that speed--namely, that it's how long a bowling ball dropped from the 110th floor of a building, into thin air, would have taken to reach the ground. And bowling balls don't usually have 47 humongous steel columns (two-foot by three-foot "box" columns, with walls, I think, 4 inches thick at the base, tapering to a half-inch or quarter-inch at the 110th floor). Had a bowling ball encountered just ONE such column, its descent would have been stopped. Zelikow's novel does mention WTC 7, which collapsed in a more traditional "controlled demolition" (so as to avoid damaging the buildings to its left, right and rear, which would have cost Larry Silverstein a pretty penny, if his complicity in "pulling" the building (his word) could be established in a civil or criminal action). But in the five or so mentions, not once is the fact of its collapse mentioned. It certainly did not fit the "plane hits building, fuel explodes, fire and impact destroy 110 floors-worth of 47 humongous support columns, sending it to the ground as if it were merely falling through thin air. Of course, WTC #7 (or "7 WTC" as Phil's novel has it) had only 47 stories, and only 25 massive support columns to be blown or "cut" out of the way. But no plane hit it. No "towering inferno" of Jet A kerosene burst forth from it. Millions of folks the world over have noted Bush's certifiably strange behavior "on the day." Millions of folks the world over have wondered why our Secretary of War was out on the Pentagon lawn helping to carry stretchers of the wounded instead of being inside a command bunker, dealing with the so-called "attackers". Did he know that the Pentagon was "the last stop" of the day, perhaps?

And then, of course, we're also left with the questions of Cheney's conduct on the day--he says he got there a half an hour or more later than other folks saw him there. And what, pray tell, was the "order" that the military aide wondered if it still stood, even as the Pentagon "flying thing" drew closer and closer to D.C. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta testified as to this tet-a-tet in one of the final 9/11 Commission public hearings. But didn't fit Phil's plot-outline, so it didn't appear in his novel.

When the truth about 9/11 is finally revealed, my bet is that the Cheney/Bush administration officials, from the top on down, will likely be found to have had something to do with 9/11, whether by malfeasance or knowing nonfeasance.

So any words of Van Jones will, in hindsight, appear to have been rather namby-pamby, wishy-washy statements. Obama should re-hire the guy, and make him part of the large team taking on finding out what really happened on 9/11/2001, from the explosives that took down WTC #7, WTC #2 and WTC #1, to the follow-up anthrax terror, the London transit bombings (while the Bobbies were running a "simulation" exercise that turned out to have rather too precisely paralleled what soon became "the real thing." What are the odds that this was coincidental?) and the Madrid train bombings (where the evidence now points to the bombs having been pre-placed UNDER the train car carriages, rather than having been taken on board by "suicidal fascist Muslims." (Who, of course, attacked Spain, Britain and the US "because they hate our freedom." (Which actually begs the question, "WHAT freedom? Certainly not with universal wire-tapping in place, not with FISA being ignored, the writ of habeas corpus repealed, the repeal of Amendments 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 & 10--repealed by overt actions to the contrary (de facto repeal), by "presidential signing statements" and "presidential decision directives" etc.

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Suicide, IEDs and the Polluted Stream Media

This is what happens when Humvees are attacked by IEDs.

Was moved to write to Ed at the NYTimes concerning the Sunday Suicide Page One piece. Seems the death in Iraq by Humvee and IED of two of their buddies just days before going home preyed on the minds of three reservists and perhaps helped tip them over into suicide.

I'm thinking that the Wall Street fat-cats need to have at least half of their castles seized and converted into mental health facilities for our returning/ leaving/ returning/ leaving/ returning/ leaving/ returning soldiers. (How many tours of duty are our now All Involuntary Army folks forced to serve in Iraq & Afghanistan? And soon, Pakistan, maybe Syria, Iran, Lebanon??)

And we need to reinstate the 90% tax bracket for Richie Rich and his pals. And get our under-utilized auto-makers revved up to build blast-resistant armored personnel carriers (those V-hulled things that deflect in-road and roadside blasts instead of taking them straight on at 90° where explosives have the greatest effect). We're probably buying them from Israel, or Russia, or Iran, or China, or North Korea. Wouldn't it be a hoot if we bought them from Palestine? Set up an assembly line there 'n' everything. I hear they could use a little help with their economy, as Israel keeps refusing to pay the money it owes them, keeps stealing their land (not much has changed since 1947, has it?) It would probably be even more fun if we set up an Abrams M1-A1 tank assembly line in Gaza. It's certainly closer to Iraq than Detroit is.

You might ask your members of congress what the hell they're doing in this regard.

And ask any of them who say they don't want "government" between "you and your doctor" if they would please sign over their federal life insurance, health insurance, pensions (80% of their highest pay after vesting), dental insurance, catastrophic-illness insurance, ophthalmic insurance over to you and your family. Check out the perqs at the federal Office of Personnel Management website.

The other thing you should note when you hear "free market" bullshit about health insurance is this:

Medicare is run by the government. People like it so much that they're yelling at the members of congress to "keep government's hands off my Medicare." (Pretty funny, hunh--or would be if it didn't illustrate how pathetically ignorant this nation of Sheeple is about what's going on in their soon-to-be-getting-much-shorter lives.

The military medical services that have been saving the maimed bodies of our troops in record numbers are run by the government. Even Billy "Kill National Health Insurance" Kristol says he thinks it's the best medical care in the world, "even if it costs a little too much." (See Kristol's interview by Jon Stewart K. on The Daily Show).

That doesn't mean, of course, that he will stop spewing vile propaganda about "putting a government bureaucrat between you and your health care." Naaah, really, Billy, we lust after having some rich, overpaid insurance company bastard between us and our doctor, saying, 'We won't pay for that'--this patient can't afford to live, because he/she would drag down our profits and high salaries, don't-cha know!

Of course, We the People are pretty stupid--we've fallen for that bullshit many's the time. In 1992, with Hillarycare; in 2000 and again in 2004, letting Bush slither into office the first time and then letting Ohio's sleaze-ball secretary of state get away with election fraud in 2004.

The VA network of hospitals and clinics is run by the government. Unfortunately, they're so good at the emergency medical work they do, they even kept Dick Cheney alive. If he had died before 9/11/2001, the 3,000 lives lost that day would probably have been spared. (I'm just sayin'. Like, umm, Dickie, just what was that "order" that the military attaché kept asking you about, whether "it still stands?" as the flying thing was getting ever closer to the Pentagon, or White House, or Congress, whatever its target was--although I'm pretty sure you knew the target was the fortified wall of the Pentagon, right?)

Newish book out, George W. Bush, War Criminal? The Bush Administration's Liability for 269 War Crimes, by Michael Haas, former chief prosecutor, Nuremberg Military Tribunals. It's comforting to contemplate that many of them are capital crimes--they carry the death sentence.

Of course, Obama and the rest of the government insider circle would never let things to that far, but I think public hangings would be just the ticket to remind ALL of our Republicrat and Demican criminals that they're not above the law, as well as reminding the nation and the rest of the world that We the People have the power in this rarest of self governments, a slightly representative Republic. Even though it's on life support, with hardly a single, solitary one of our public servants honoring their oath to "support and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and Cheney, Bush, Addington, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Libby, Miers, Rove, Rice, Paulson, and now the "new" crowd.

Also, if you're feeling chilly of a morning, read Great American Hypocrites (and How Would a PATRIOT ACT, too) by Glenn Greenwald. Either one will get your blood boiling nicely. And here I thought I was the only one calling Bush our Unitary Liar-In-Chief.

What a bunch of particularly pathological liars we've had in our government from 2001-2009. And what an appallingly putrid, incompetent and lying press we've had as the icing on this ever-moist meadow-muffin cake.

9

to the NyTimes...

Dear Ed...

I sure wish the NY Times had the benefit of a memory on the matter of "improvised explosive devices" and what they've been doing to our men and women in combat.

By that I mean taking the opportunity in all IED stories to remind us all that the "military we have, not the military we'd like it to have been" was so incredibly short-handed and short-sighted that the US let Iraqis of whatever stripe loot the 1,200 or so ammo dumps Saddam had sprinkled throughout the desert and take away probably enough conventional ordnance to build IEDs for the next sixty-five years.

Of course, Bush and Rummy and Cheney--and Judith Miller, how could we forget--were "desperately seeking WMDs."

So the ammo dumps were not destroyed; the ammo dumps were not guarded. They were abandoned to the same "stuff happens" fate that the Iraq museum was abandoned to.

And here we gloriously are, six years later, with the rigged artillery shells in the roads, with the less-than-useless "Hummvee" deathtraps (shucks, could we have put all those Detroit assembly lines on-line again to build blast-resistant "MRAP"s that actually save soldiers' lives? Naaah. Probably cost too much money--money that we'd be needing to bail out the antinomian, aleatorily addicted miscreants on Wall Street).

Bill Wilt

Waltham, MA

617.851.1860

PS: Betcha $30 you can't recite, from memory, the Preamble to the US Constitution and the Ninth Amendment.

PPS: So, when are we going to read the NYTimes editorial series demanding the prosecution of Bush, et al., for war crimes and crimes against humanity and just their ordinary, run-of-the-mill violations of FISA and the US War Crimes Act? And hey, even if they get the death sentence called for by 18 USCode §2441, Obama will no doubt commute all their sentences, and they'll live on to do evil for the rest of their days. Such a heart-warming prospect, don'tcha think? (And not in a good way.)

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Reflections on Senators' "Statements" @ Sotomayor Hearing

This about the statement of John Cornyn, Tejas, probably one of the more useless members of the Senate:

Dear John...

I read with great interest your comments on the Sotomayor hearing. This, for example:

On the other hand, as you know, inventing new rights, veering off this course of enforcing the written text and pulling ideas out of the ether are pretty far from enforcing the written Constitution that the framers proposed and that the people enacted.

As you have a law degree, and as you have several times taken an oath to "support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC" [emphasis added], I hope I can assume that you've read the Constitution a time or two.

I will assert, however, that you're woefully ignorant on the topic of the Preamble and the Ninth Amendment, and the arguments from 1789 to its ratification Dec. 15, 1791, about whether there should even BE a Bill of Rights.

The Ninth, which John Madison initiated, now goes like this (I'll bet seven $2 bills that you can't recite it):

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

If you'll recall, someone might have told you that, in our Constitution, ALL RIGHTS AND POWERS RESIDE IN THE PEOPLE--with the small exception of those We the People DELEGATED to a government--which we expected, more or less, would go right straight off the rails, as it now has during a succession of DISASTROUS Republicrat American Incumbent Party maladministrations, from Eisenhower forward, pretty much (Ike gave the CIA pretty much free reign to topple governments all over the world, as I recall).

So what others--what other rights--do We the People retain as against the non-tender ministrations of government? Well, dude, you've gotta figure that out along with the rest of us regular folks--not to imply that you're a "regular folk," of course. I should have said, "along with other Princes of Washington and hoi polloi."

An obvious major right would be to be secure in, to have control over, our very own skin-sacks.

So, are there people who have problems with abortion? (Not with wars, of course, or orphaned children, abandoned children--in my view, "it's about the sperm, stupid." (That is, men, who have really no control over the reproductive cycle of the human race, still want to control it. This they do by starting wars, among other things).)

But, short of war, imagine what problems our old white-bread legislators would have with forced vasectomies of all male Americans 10 years and older--to prevent impregnation, which often leads to (ta daaa) abortions. Interesting that no male anti-abortionist or legislator has proposed such a solution to the abortion problem, isn't it? And most vasectomies can be reversed, so what's the problem with that?

I hope to see you introduce a bill on a national vasectomy policy very soon. Unless you're giving up on trying to control women's skin-sacks (and contents, of course) entirely.

Other rights? Citizens surely did not cede to power to our government to wire-tap all of our communications, the repeal of the 4th amendment in 2001 by Shrub and the other Republicrats notwithstanding. Yet we know that the NSA has put "splitter boxes" on all of the fiber-optic trunk lines in the US (and probably elsewhere, even undersea, if they can get that darned submarine cable-tapping Nautilus working). And they're spooling it all out onto disk-farms in Tejas, your home state (stolen from Mehico, of course, but who's keeping track?).

And finally, I find no evidence in the congressional debates about the Bill of Rights to support the notion that our government can blow up buildings in New York City (WTC #7, 2 & 1), just because Larry Silverstein doesn't want to pay billions of dollars to remove the asbestos from them before he can get a demolition permit, and take 2,900 or so lives in the process, merely to have a "new Pearl Harbor" to stampede the country into outlandish military expenditures and to serve as a casus belli for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq--to control oil and to get 14 permanent military bases (or "enduring" as Shrub, our Unitary Liar-In-Chief, so quaintly put it), plus the 15th, Fortress Baghdad Embassy--I assume the underground parking facility has space for 100 or so M1-A1 Abrams main battle tanks, etc.

Nope--I definitely find no instance in our history where the people delegated away their right to be told the truth by y'all, our employees in government, or delegated their right not to have criminals, likely guilty-of-capital-crimes-type-criminals, never mind just "high" crimes, remain in office, unscathed, unimpeached, unremoved, unaccountable.

Would it be "creating new rights out of the æther" to find that the Ninth Amendment recognized that We the People have retained the right not to have criminals running our government? Not to have bribe-takers like yourself running the government (all campaign contributions are bribes, Senator, as you well know, from your long experience).

One of the rights we DID retain, was to control our own airwaves--the "electromagnetic spectrum." And I say we need to set aside however many channels therein as are needed to allow for FREE POLITICAL ADVERTISING, all day, all year, every year. No more million-dollar bribes to pay for political advertising, in return for BILLION-dollar payoffs. We need a Windfall ROPI Tax (Return on Political Investment--or Bribery) to recoup the disgusting 37,851% profits (for example) being made by such folks as our Wall Street con artists.

Final comment: The matter of health and health insurance for the citizens of America is not a proper candidate for the so-called "capitalist system" (or, as it has become in this country, the US Corporate Welfare System).

Anything less than a single-payer system, such as the other industrialized nations of the world have, is unacceptable. We need to get these rapacious third-party leeches (and not in a good way) OUT of the sickness-care industry. We can retrain every last employee in these firms to watch over the military-legislative-industrial complex, and cut, cut, cut the outrageous expenses (waste, fraud and abuse) of the War Department (now that we've gone explicitly back into the business of starting wars, of going from "defense" to "offense," it's more than appropriate to rename the outfit The War Department, seems to me).

If you can't get these things done, my dear Senator, I'd urge you to pull on your boots, strap on your chaps, tighten the chinstrap of your Stetson, saddle up your pony and high-tail it back to Tejas, and get the heck out of our government, where you and your dozens of staff members are wasting our time, our money, our space, and, as I see & hear the stupid comments you make from the Senate well, you're even sucking the oxygen out of the Senate chambers and, by extension, out of the atmosphere of the entire United States of America.

best,

9

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