The CBO has confirmed most of what educated people already knew. The talk of high risk pools is BS.
Thoughts on politics, economics, life and creative works from the author including poetry
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Kompromat Penetration and Treason
Treason
Frequently, individuals on a treasonous path do not even realize they're on that path until it gets to be too late
Retired CIA Director John Brennan
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Establishing the Second Bill of Rights
The Democratic agenda is unfinished. One reason is that the GOP is explicitly against the Second Bill of Rights.
To your average right winger, we don't have any rights to any of those things. Even if we earned them or pay for them. Buried in their fearful amygdala is a compulsion to hierarchy, a fear that one person's gain threatens the privilege of another. To the "conservative" mind -- only those with hierarchy have such rights. The rest of us need to know our place.
We have to disabuse them of those notions!
Based on the past 80 years of disappointments it is clear that we still need that "Second Bill of Rights" that FDR Talked about. We've fought to implement it, but have been stymied at every turn, to a degree that some claimed our own leaders seemed to have abandoned the project. And as a result the deplorable right wing has decided to attack the very notions the Second Bill of Rights sought to establish. The effort to repeal ACA, disestablish minimum wages, de-regulate employers and cut access to health care are all based on a very explicit assertion that we the people have no rights to:
Monday, May 22, 2017
Kompromat, Hybrid Warfare & Active Measures .
War is Hell. General Smedley Butler said it was "a racket." Clausewitz said:
"War is the continuation of politics by other means" [Brainy Quotes]
Mao Tse Dong said:
"Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed." [brainyquotes also]
So it is only natural that some international tyrants see politics as a continuation of war by other means. The term "hybrid warfare" is a reformulation of an old truism to adapt to our modern information age. It's not that Vladimir Putin is pursuing a brilliant new strategy. It's that he's systematically pursuing principles of human manipulation, psi-ops and information warfare that are battle tested ones. 'Hybrid warfare' is international politics pursued with the ruthlessness of warfare. It is an effort to return the world to the Pre-World War I "great game" where coalitions were always temporary, often secret, and regularly betrayed for private, separate interest. It recognizes that we live in a world of fragile balances and asymmetrical power. It's not feasible to use atom bombs on our enemies or it would have already been done more than twice. We live downwind of each other.
And the Russians are [still] heavily involved in subverting our system.
Friday, May 19, 2017
Free Competition
Henry George, in his 1891 Populist plank, included a well crafted plank that included a definition of where the distinction between a public set of goods and services can be managed by the "market," Left up to individual initiative, and where it shouldn't. The distinction rests on the question of "where free competition becomes impossible," and his examples; "telegraph, railroads, water and gas supplies", today would include all telecomms, internet, electrical power, etc... are as valid today as in his time (1890s). And they hing on the term "free competition."
Thursday, May 18, 2017
How the Right Hacked our election - war on Voters
The primary mover in "The GOP's Stealth war on Voters" in the Rolling Stone, was a man named Kris Kobach. Back when it was first reported the original article was about voter purge software and how he was problematically purging valid voters from the voter rolls. This software played a major role in the 2016 election. Trump is rewarding Kris by naming him to head a Commission to make voter caging nationwide!
Sunday, May 14, 2017
To Mom and all our loves
Like Snowflakes
They are with US
In our souls
Even when their bodies
Have melted away
Like Snowflakes
Each unique
In their reality
In their own special way
Like Snowflakes
Born where cold air meets
Wet and warm
We fall from the sky
One day to return.
Chris
How we miss them when they leave us
And the leaving is always too soon.
It leaves an empty chasm
In the caverns of our hearts
But the echoes of their presence
The drumbeat of who they were
Is heard in our own hearts beating
Strong and steady, warm and sure.
Their voices shout within us
"Here I am, by your side!"
A friendly voice in the morning
A smile reflecting in our edges
As we awake.
And we go on as companions
Bringing them alive
In reflections
As we talk among ourselves
And remember their lives.
No more need forgiving
No more anger or silly feuds
For our loved ones
We loved them
Each in a special way.
And they pass on
Knowing that is true
Peaceful images floating
Smiling on the winds.
Chris