Displaying 1,591 To 1,620 Of 3,237 Comments WATCH AND CHAT LIVE TONIGHT @ 6:00PM PST: President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address Anyone here? I don’t know if I can rip myself away from the live coverage of a sad example of humanity who has killed innocents being (apparently) burned to a crisp after taking his own life. Wall to wall coverage for hours. Ridiculous. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On February 12, 2013 @ 5:58 pm Hey Kalima….great article. There are similar stories to be told from other countries that decided to tame the best. I have friends in Australia who tell the story of a gun wild culture turned on its head after the Port Arthur massacre. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On February 8, 2013 @ 5:40 pm Hell JM…I do not think we have met yet but I am glad to make your acquaintance. I live in rural Missouri in the midst of a thriving gun culture. That culture is both traditional and mythic. The tradition pieces is where I live. I have a handgun (in a safe in my bedroom), a rifle and a shotgun (both in gun racks with key parts separated from the bodies). The handgun is for immediate protection of life and property. If need be I could recruit the shotgun. Why? I live in an area where hundreds of miles are patrolled by a handful of sheriff’s deputies. Response times can be considerable. I also live in an area where Meth labs dot the landscape. There is a culture of lawlessness among a number of residents BUT almost everyone knows that almost anyone could be armed. And if they are armed they will be practiced in the use of their firearm. So, there are very few crimes out here. My rifle and shotgun are for hunting and target shooting. As I get older I do less of each. I have no need for any other weapons, or high capacity mags, or specialty bullets, or personal armor. Sadly, I have neighbors who live in the realm of the mythical. They believe that support for and reliance on the 2nd amendment is the first test of the true patriot. Having many weapons of as high a caliber as possible, with the largest magazines available, capable of semi-auto (and even auto operation thanks to the kits available) and outfitted in battle fatigues with body armor- marks them as loyal sons and daughters of liberty ready to stand up to bands of marauders, or a tyrannical government. Of course, they aren’t. If civil order were to break down, they would discover how dependent we all are on a social order- most of which we are barely aware of. If the government were to come for them….well think of the Branch Davidians. You present the position of those living in communities where guns are everywhere and they are in the wrong hands. In those communities guns are a blight, a plague upon the land. It is a world that most of those who live in mine do not have a chance of understanding without a lot of awareness building. Those in the historic world tend to be open to new info (which is why most of us support complete background checks, limitations on the kinds of arms and mags available, and good training). Those who dwell in the mythic world are much harder to reach. I appreciate your insights here very much. Murph » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On February 8, 2013 @ 5:37 pm In the driver’s seat of the Welcome Wagon. That pretty much captures it. Admired him as a member of the community. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 31, 2013 @ 11:12 am Thank you Kalima, Kesman and AdLib for your thoughtful, insightful and personal remembrances. Bito was among the first who welcome me to the Planet. He also helped me get “over the hump” when I first tackled the technology of posting. He did this in no small part by recalling his own tek firsts when the logic of the procedures eluded him. Bito was also one with whom you could have a “fair fight”. He argued the case. He argued the facts. No loss of passion but a recognition that opposed opinion might be correct, and even if it is not, defending one’s own position strengthens it. When he joined in at Vox Populi, he would sit back, reading, and then drop in a couple of lines that were just so spot-on, so sharp, so pithy, that they often took the conversation to a different place. I admired that. Knowing what I now know about his initially tentative forays in the blogging world, I am even more impressed. I liked Bito very much and when I learned a while back of his illness, and a bit later of how poorly it was going, I was saddened. It is good to “be” with Bito through the lens of your own experiences with him. I thank you for it. And I thank Bito. I hope that what family/friends he has and with whom “we” have contact will get a chance to see him through our eyes. As Kesman recalls, he often closed with “Peace”. It is a good place to close. It is a good place to be: Resting In Peace. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 31, 2013 @ 8:50 am The “look a like” clown is just a matter of serendipity but I was glad to have stumbled across it. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 5, 2013 @ 10:28 am That chirpy young woman undoubted thinks that the Bil of Rights contains protections for religion, when in fact it contains protections for who want to practice a religion OR want to ignore it entirely. Freedom OF religion, yes, but also, freedom FROM religion. Years under the established Church of England had taught them a hard lesson. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 5, 2013 @ 9:50 am Choice, as I suspect you recall, my voting history at the national level (president, senator, representative) with the GOP until Clinton’s 2nd term, and then against Bush for his 2nd term, and then with Obama in 2008 and 2012. On the local level I have always been Democratic. It is for this reason that the changes in the nature of the GOP really stand out for me. In the late 60’s when I first began voting, the GOP was still very much the party of IKE. But the power of religious fundamentalism, big money, the ethos of “traditional Americanism”, and an increasing love affair with big weapons systems were real and the flirtation with zealotry that the Goldwater nomination represented is a clear indicator of this. But by and large, the power of NE, Middle State and Western Moderate GOP balanced the increasing lean to the right triggered by the Republicanization of the South. Today, the trickle downers (who are nothing more than Keynesians in service to the ruling class), the neocons, the triumphalist dominionists, the hutterites, and the racialists are clearly the source of much of the energy in the power, control vast resources, and appeal to a narrow but fervent base. Hard to manage a crowd like this. And Boehner is no good at it. I think that is one of the reasons they chose him to start with. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 5, 2013 @ 9:47 am A good and decent person would not accept the Speakership under these circumstances without an agreement with the competing forces in his own caucus. He will not name them and thus cannot tame them. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 5, 2013 @ 9:30 am I have read several accounts of the Boehner/Reid Expletive Encounter. I suspect that Boehner was trying to three things in this: Typically, I suspect he missed the mark on all three. There has not been so dysfunctional a party since the GOP in the the mid and late 1920’s and early 1930’s. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 5, 2013 @ 6:23 am Cantor would have been far worse as his entire identity is wrapped up with the Tea Party radicals. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 5, 2013 @ 6:17 am “Lie” and Boehner go together like a horse and carriage. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On January 5, 2013 @ 6:16 am John McCain Demands Investigation of His Own Sanity I think you summarize this well. It is my impression as well. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 17, 2012 @ 8:17 am Most of us live our lives in a stew of mixed motivation. I do not deny that McCain has lived his life in the shadow of a very dominant father and grandfather. Oddly, I argue that a career as a U.S. Senator is certainly as important as a life as a high ranking navy officer. Yet, I doubt that McCain does. He is flawed. So was Kennedy. So is Obama. So are we all. But, I argue that McCain’s character, even his recklessness as a young pilot, made him a pilot the navy wanted to send into combat. Pushing through a bombing run as ground to air missiles track you requires quite a bit of recklessness. As a POW- he stood up in ways I cannot imagine anyone doing. I know that not all agree, but he seemed to take more than most did and to resist nearly all the time. Surgery without anesthesia….my god. In the House and Senate, he did a good job. I look at the list of other members of Congress who allied with him, supported him and praised him. It is large and bipartisan. So, just as his being shot down was a watershed that turned him in positive directions, I think his experience of running for the GOP nomination in 2002 turned him in a negative direction. He was the subject of a huge smear campaign. The smears claimed that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains’ dark-skinned daughter was adopted from Bangladesh), that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a “Manchurian Candidate” who was either a traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days. While the Bush campaign denied it had anything to do with this, the campaign did not go out of its way to make the point. That was the start. And from there it was downhill. I wish he had retired. It would have been a good time to do so. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 17, 2012 @ 8:16 am I do not know the ins and outs of the Keating Five as some do but here is what i do know. The Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of McCain and John Glenn in the scheme was minimal and that there was no intent to violate the rules of the Senate or to break the law. They were cleared of all charges against them. McCain and Glenn were both criticized by the Committee for exercising “poor judgment” when they met with the federal regulators on Keating’s behalf. The report said that McCain’s “actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him….Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate.” On his Keating Five experience, McCain has said: “The appearance of it was wrong. It’s a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.” That’s what I know. Cranston was reprimanded. Riegle and DeConcini were publicly criticized. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 17, 2012 @ 8:05 am The Guardian claimed in an article on 13 September that Stevens had been expected in the area the morning of that Wednesday to “inaugurate a landmark medical exchange project between the (Benghazi Medical) centre and Harvard Medical School” and the medical staff was surprised when he showed up early as a patient. That may have been part of the reason why he was there and it may have been a plausible innocuous reason for his presence that evening but there has been so little conversation about this that I have remaining questions. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 17, 2012 @ 7:54 am Yes, this fits into my understanding of him as a slowly but surely diminishing public figure. You might want to check out the discussion that Ad Lib and I are having. I think it supports your observations. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 16, 2012 @ 6:15 pm Yeah. I have read this story and two others that Rolling Stone published (one was call Full Metal McCain and was featured on the front cover with really disturbing art). Rolling Stone really dislikes McCain. That is pretty clear. I found all of the stories to be factual but not all that truthful. Here is what I mean….there is a lot of info and it builds a case in support of their contention that McCain is a fake, or a coward, or a partisan hack, or all of these. I know something about the military and its culture and I found the presentation in all of the articles very slanted and determined to bring down his reputation in the military. It felt a bit like Kerry’s Swiftboating. I can’t argue you this all that well, but my gut tells me that there was a concerted effort to paint him as badly as they could. As to is career in the House and the Senate….there are lots of examples of him going against the tide in his party and reaching out to Dems. Now by the time we get to the 2000’s McCain’s compass is akilter. His emotional strength is wavering and, I think, his mental capacity is diminished. Even so, in 2008, having selected Sarah Palin, an awful thing for anyone whose campaign slogan was “Country First” to do, he does not support the efforts of his campaign to go with the Wright Story, or to go full bore on the radical roots story, or to let the Muslim angle play out without challenge. He put on the brakes. I do not find him someone who I admire, stem to stern but there elements of his life that are certainly points of real honor and integrity, all of which are being tarnished in these last years. My opinion and little more. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 16, 2012 @ 6:13 pm All kidding aside (although this contribution did make me snort a bit), I find McCain’s slide into irrelevant obscurity sad. His record as a pilot and as a POW is the story of someone who was sometimes reckless but who got the job done (as horrific as it was) and who, despite years of excruciating pain (surgery without anesthesia, rough interrogation, torture and crippling long term injuries), 2 years in isolation, and one lapse when he was broken and made an obviously false confession- he showed extraordinary will and dedication. He became a model for other prisoners (in both his strength and his weakness). His career in the House and the Senate while definitely fiscally conservative, hawkish, and nationalistic was also marked by a good deal of independence, a willingness to take on his own party, a record of cooperation across the aisle and more than a little of the reforming spirit that marked his maverick label. It all changed in 2002 when he did not get his party’s Presidential nomination. From that moment on McCain has been, down deep, a hard, bitter, angry, scorned and sad man. He got the 2008 nomination because the party was happy to have anyone take it and then he was not backed by his own Party. He was soundly drubbed by Obama and cannot/will not forgive him for it. He allied himself to Romney hoping to regain some clout and has lost even more. He is about to “age out” on the two committees on which he has seniority and is trying desperately to carve out a new committee for himself. He wants Rice out as Sec of State and Kerry in so Brown can run and then owe him. It isn’t funny. Aging gracefully is not easy to do and in some cases it almost impossible to manage. That’s where McCain is. He proposed the special Benghazi committee today, and got a note from Reid this afternoon saying the Majority was going to use the current committee structure to do the work that needs doing. Not even a day of consideration. I expect McCain to be seriously challenged for his seat in 2016 frm both sides. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 16, 2012 @ 3:40 pm Election Day 2012 – Open Thread Today – Live Chat Tonight! Posting from the McCasskill HQ in my little county. We had lots of voters but no huge lines….4 incidents at polling places involving zealots from the right…all handled by well trained volunteers. We are 6 minutes from closing and then the reporting process begins. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 6, 2012 @ 4:56 pm Remember when the regulars at MSNBC kept referring to him as teh “Sage of Capital Hill”? He is 27 years old. He went from college at BU to working at MSNBC shortly after his Dad’s death. No real experience. The GOP runs over him every time he gets into an interview with one of them. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 6, 2012 @ 2:54 pm The Greatest Worsts of the 2012 Presidential Election – Vol. 1 Ad Lib Great list. Especially like the one re Bachmann and the straw poll. I had forgotten the details and they say so much about that woman. I am so glad she is in the hot seat right now (although I suspect she will still win and I have little hope that she will be chastened by the experience.) I have a few favorite worsts- Worst Lie about the First Term Worst Lie about Obama, the man Worst Lie about Obama, the President » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 3, 2012 @ 3:27 pm Periodic Table of Dangerous Elements: Final 2012 Edition I just had the time to really look this over. **** 4 Stars This is so clever and SO much work. It took me a while to break out the family groupings in the color chart in the lower left- incredibly funny and poignant. Any chance of providing a link to this so it could really be fully enlarged? Again, I thank you for the work. Imagining this and then producing it….WoW…Impressed. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 3, 2012 @ 3:34 pm Failed History of Conservatism in America Hey KQ- I have held that Conservativism had one brief period of enlightenment in U.S. History- during WWII through Ike’s 2nd term. FDR set out to recreate the American aristocracy. Patriotic Millionaires….And by the end of the war he had tied their fortunes to the nation’s fortune. Things soured a bit under Truman but it was Ike who took the next big step. The modernization of the GOP resulted in a Party that the current conservative GOP would disown. WOULD EISENHOWER BE WELCOME IN TODAYS DEMOCRATIC PARTY? Ike was a supporter of unions, concerned about the impact of corporate power on policy, and worried about the military-industrial complex. He believed in investing in the country’s infrastructure. He believed in the social safety net. (Former 5 Star General )Eisenhower warned in last address as President that: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, by the military–industrial complex which threatens to rob of us of our future if we are not vigilant”. And in first drafts of the address, IKE named it even more accurately calling it the “Congressional-Military-Industral Complex.” He ended the Korean War by settling for a truce, took a pass on both the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam, reduced the overall size of the military and supported the UN. He paid down 38 percent of the debt he inherited when he came into office from the New Deal, WWII, the Marshall Plan and the Cold War Start Up. How? With income taxes of 80 to 90 percent bracket on the top income earners and a corporate tax level of 52% gauged to reward companies that invested in the U.S. AND economic policy that supported the development of industry, manufacturing, and the service sector. He also supported both the capital gains and inheritance taxes He was responsible for some of the largest Infrastructure projects in American history (Interstate Highway System, intercoastal waterway, 24,000 miles of repaired railway track, the Gulf Coast levee system).And all of this was financed with gasoline taxes. He sent federal troops to Little Rock Arkansas so that discrimination against black school children would be ended. Followed Truman in order the desegregation of more of the Armed Forces. He expanded the Social Security System to include virtually every worker in the country. He supported full equitable funding of public education, and the minimum wage. He supported a series of regulations to oversee Wall Street, the banks and the investment sector citing the lessons learned in the Great Depression. He made the Office of Health, Education and Welfare a cabinet level positon, and elevated the importance of the Sec. of Labor. Take a look at the GOP platform from 1956. It is shocking because it is so progressive which makes sense in that Bob LaFollette, Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey were all GOP as well. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25838 » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On November 3, 2012 @ 3:50 pm What a list. I am up to my neck in alligators right now but I have set it aside to consider with care ASAP. You have a nimble mind and a wide ranging memory. Thanks for this. I am certainly going to copy and paste it into my archive. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On October 31, 2012 @ 6:47 pm It’s Not Nice to Fool (With) Mother Nature Ad Lib….I have been meaning to drop you a line to say thank you for this fine post. So many good ideas, so much wrapped up in a neat package. As you know I am up to my neck in a campaign (well, two of them) and have been making choices re. what time I have. So…..before any more time goes by…a Big Bravo..with kudos galore for a fine think piece. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On October 31, 2012 @ 6:39 pm If Romney Wins: A Look at the Impact KQ Your further extrapolation of the outcomes of MadMitt is terrifying, excellently done, but terrifying. I think I am going to copy and archive it. I need to mine it for material to use in the followups to the original post. You and ChoiceLady took my thoughts to a new level. May I do so with your permission? I am especially taken by your ideas of a nation divided by access to women’s health options, by the right to love whom one chooses in marriage, etc. It will be a return to antebellum America where slavery divided us. A powerful image and devastating. Thanks for this. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On October 27, 2012 @ 8:11 pm I think that if we are thrust into another war, or if the SS or Medicare change significantly, if DADT is renewed, if Roe V. Wade is overturned, we will likely come to a period of near revolution as was marked by the period of robust Progressive Reform (since syndicalist revolt seemed around the corner, and Populist movements were sprining up everywhere)at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century and which was continued as a result of the Great Depression. I experienced it directly during the Civil Rights and Anti War movements. I think that this may happen very quickly in an age of the internet, of cell phones and with Occupy a recent memory. The anger will make the Tea Party seem mild by comparison. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On October 27, 2012 @ 7:57 pm Apathy, laziness, a desire for simple answers, fear, anger, all feeding a world view that denies the rights of others especially when they are led by “The Other” – The GOP, the sons and daughters of Goebbels… » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On October 27, 2012 @ 7:51 pm Choice…this is brilliant (terrifying but brilliant). I cannot gild the lily here. But I can ask permission to give you my highest compliment. I intend to copy your post, as is, into my archive as a compendium for my original post. I would like to use it, as is as a followup at HP. I can do this with or without your “name” attached, with or without a reference to the Planet. I can also attribute it generally to a comment from another blogger. Really….you take my piece and you move to deeper and nastier conclusions. The pain this will cause. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On October 27, 2012 @ 7:46 pmComments Posted By MurphTheSurf3
1) Shock the very prudish Reid, who is thoroughly Mormon.
2) Express disdain for his role in the negotiations.
3) AND, oddly, demonstrate some locker room camaraderie.
a) Obama had complete control of the Congress for two years and could have done anything he wanted.
a) He is always on vacation and when he is not, he is playing golf.
a) He does not know what it means to be a real American.
YEP! He’d fit right in.
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