Existing in the Police State of New York City: Protected From Evil Muslims by the NYPD

Foto by tgw, New York City, March 2012
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Say Goodbye to: Don Mincher. Don played his whole long career as a first baseman in the American League: for the Washington Senators, Oakland As, Minnesota Twins, Seattle Pilots (before they were the Mariners), the new Washington Senators that went on to become the Texas Rangers. I recall in 1966 when Don was a part of a baseball record when he and 4 other fellow Twins hit 5 home runs in one inning--one of the other Twins being Harmon Killebrew.
Don ended his life as president of the Southern League, a minor league. Don Mincher, 73, American baseball player.
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Sittin' Here Thinkin'
My friends think I'm nuts for besmirching President Barak Obama's record during his 1st term in office. They assure me he will be better his second time around. One friend sites the following as Obama's accomplishments: Obamacare; getting the troops out of Iraq; putting the economy on a recovery track; making General Motors profitable again; and responsible for the successful assassination of bin Laden.

I can't argue with them. They ignore my cynicism (they do not read the Growler). I say, wait a minute, Obamacare is a pay-or-die healthcare scheme put together by the health-care insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical industries's lobbyists that doesn't take effect until 2014.

I banter on with my friends: Obama continued G.W. Bush's and Hank Paulsen's idea that banks are too big to fail and continued the bank bailouts when he could have stopped them dead in their tracks when he took over. I then try to tell my friends that the stock market rising to 13,000 again is good for people who have 401Ks, IRAs, bonds, or tons of mutual fund investments, but it really has nothing to do with economic recovery in a whole sense. The stock market is easily rigged by the large pool investors like state pension-plan managers and huge block investors. Like in what sense does it being at 13,000 help people who have lost their asses in the housing bubble burst (housing prices are still falling; new home construction is still on the negative side) and the bank fraud schemes that caused the bubble to burst?

As to ending the War in Iraq: there are still 100,000 contractors there; and Hillary Clinton has a State Department army of 7,000 combat troops there to protect the world's largest-ever Embassy. Why not blow that damn thing up and bring these mostly security-company-based contractors home, too, along with our worn-out, injured, and mentally fucked-up troopers?

I spout on saying Obama has continued to OK British Petroleum's going full ahead with offshore drill, drill, drilling policies, currently encouraging more offshore drilling than ever before. Obama has limited BP's "punishment" to a measly chicken-feed 7 billion or so dollars which when they pay it then their case will be closed (like a limited-liability out for them--which means the victims of the oil spill can't sue the investors (stockholders) only what the company itself is liable for)--and this pay-out punishment is like a slap on their wrists to the foreign petroleum company for wreaking god-knows-what damage on our Gulf Coast waters. You can't Google any adverse effects on the Gulf by that oil spill now several years later. There's all praise for British Petroleum on the Internet for miraculously cleaning up the worst oil spill in US history--BP says most of the spill simply evaporated. I just read a high-praise-for-BP article that says the oyster population in the Gulf is "coming back magically" due to BP's clean up efforts. Not back to the way it was before the spill, of course. Gulf Coast hotel ads rave about how responsible BP was in cleaning up the beaches--why, hell, the beaches are now even cleaner than they were before the spill. Amazing. BP is a God-blessed miracle company.

Plus, insanely in my way of thinking in terms of the devastation still being revealed by the Fukashima nuclear plant diaster, Obama has approved the building of two new nuclear power plants in Georgia without a contest. And he touts nuclear energy as clean energy. That's idiotic to me. Especially when We the People of the USA assume the brunt of the huge costs it takes to build these monsters.

Barack Obama has also taken advantage of G.W. Bush's giving himself executive privileges to give himself even more and more ruthless executive privileges, like his now being able to assassinate US citizens (he's already assassinated 3 in Yemen) if he deems them enemy combatants (a G.W. Bush invention)--all he has to do is give the word. Like the recent dumbass, truly dumbass, NATO goof of openly burning Korans in Afghanistan, a dumbass move that has gotten NATO troops including Americans killed; yet no one in the upper-room ranks have been held responsible for this. Where did the order come from? What stupid ass command person ordered it and have they been thrown in the stockade over it? President Obama is our Commander in Chief. Wouldn't you run something like that by him before you did it?

President Obama has also continued G.W. Bush's policy of now allowing U.S. Army regular forces to be active on US soil. He has also continued the Bush policy of spying wildly on US citizens. Hell, he's continued this insane War on Terror that Bush started with lies. He allowed NATO forces to bomb the bejesus out of the Libyans in the meantime ignoring the same progressive movements going on in Bahrain and Yemen. On top of this, Obama, in love with drones, has authorized 20,000 drones to fly over the USA to spy on American citizens.

And as to the car industry's recovery. One of the reasons for this recovery is in the bailout agreements of the whole bailout scheme of General Motors in which Obama reached a deal with the Auto Workers Union to where the senior workers got to keep their $23-an-hour wages BUT new hires were limited to $15-an-hour. Think about that. Just look at it and make up your own mind. And here's another fact no one knows: the average number of years people are now driving cars has risen up to 10.5 years. This year's recent spur in terms of buying new cars? Peoples's old cars are wearing out and they are being forced to buy new cars but with money they really don't have, which means in order to buy a new car, they're having to cut back in other areas, like healthcare, food, and clothing, etc. [The Marxian Economist Richard D. Wolff explains this much better than I can. Go to the The Daily Growler "My Blog List" on the right and scroll down to Richard D. Wolff's Economic Update on WBAI-FM radio--an hour program and give a listen.] Also, remember, Obama gave Chrysler to the Italian company Fiat; plus Japanese Toyota's sales are up, too.

Hype. Election year distractions. Like this current bullshit over contraception! A distraction from our REAL problems.

Obama has never blamed any of this on G.W. Bush. He never mentions the man--except remember, he did appoint this fool to co-chair the rebuilding of Haiti (something that yet has never been done) with Slick Willie Clinton. We have only two more years to legally prosecute G.W. Bush for his many heinous crimes against the American people; after two years, this little spoiled brat prick will have gotten away with lying us into two supercostly economy-wrecking wars, spying on American citizens, and this insane idea of enemy combatants and the reason for Guantanamo (by the way, didn't Obama promise to close Guantanamo?).

I could go on, but that's enough. No, I wouldn't like to see Rick Santorum as president. No, I wouldn't want to see Mitt Romney as president. And I definitely wouldn't want to see Jeb Bush, that vote-stealing little bastard, as president (the Repugs are talking him up as a convention stealer). But I still just don't trust Obama.

My friends tell me they have no choice but to back Obama. They're even donating money to him. Gary Null, one of my favorite muckrakers, has given up on trying to bring about debates with Obama this time around--he's focusing on the 2016 election year now and says progressive Americans should be putting all their energies into finding a candidate then who is a true changer and not just a man of "Yes, We Can" sloganizing.

I'm still thinking of not voting for any of these creeps.

I just noticed that Sarah "Paleface" Palin--remember, she was John "Failed Mission" McCain's VP running mate in 2008--has endorsed Allen "Hat in Hand" West. Maybe she knows something the rest of us don't know.
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Watching PBS Fundraiser Tonight
Let me tell you the music lineup PBS (our Public British Broadcasting Co.) dragged out on stage tonight. How about John Tesh! Howard Stern called this Hollywood idiot "the blond Frankenstein." But oh glory, there John was tonight, fronting a huge big orchestra, singing pop songs a wee bit lower than Harry Connick, who everyone knows I despise. And then if John Tesh was blemish enough, right after the Blond Frankenstein sung pap songs, guess who they brought out to pander subscribers for them? How 'bout the B-52s!!!! The B-52s. Where the hell did they dig them up from? They're all middle-age and sagging all over the stage now.

Don't worry, I didn't vex my achy-breaky heart listening to one note of any of these two musical American embarrassments.

thegrowlingheartlesswolf
for The Daily Growler