Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Bozeman Guilty Pleasures

  Seems to be a lot of guilt floating around the valley these days . Maybe its the commercial holiday season or just post election funk. But nobody seems particularly happy. Get over it, don't feel like you have to do anything for anybody ( like Congress ). Do something for yourself. Instead of buying something on amazon that you have no idea if the person you are sending it to will like. Write them a real letter and put it in a card. The US postal service could use the money.


Here is a funny picture I should be feeling guilty about. If I had not found it on George ( mr Sulu )  Takei 's   G+ page I would

come on that's funny

Saturday, November 24, 2012

global warming


The Sea it rises
taking back the Earth,
The melting Ice
and the disapearing shore

Friday, November 23, 2012

Surviving Thanksgiving

 Always amazed at the stress and pressure that our families and society create around these holidays. There is a great demand to preform before our family and friends. So much so that we forget what the holiday is for. It is even worse if we give in to the marketing and selling of this holiday and the commercialization of the rest of the year.  Having had to work Black Friday from 4 a.m. and seeing the pain and anger associated  with shoppers at that weird hour I feel there needs to be a change.



Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

You can't Fix Stupid




Residents petition for states to secede from union

They don't want to take their country back. They just want to leave it behind.
As the dust settles in the wake of President Obama's decisive reelection last Tuesday, the White House petition website has been flooded by a series of secession requests, with malcontents from New Jersey to North Dakota submitting petitions to allow their states to withdraw from the union.
Most of the petitions submitted thus far have come from solidly conservative states, including most of the Deep South and reliably separatist Texas. But a handful come from the heart of blue America - relatively progressive enclaves like Oregon and New York.
All told, petitions have been filed on behalf of 20 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
Many of the petitions invoke the Declaration of Independence's dramatic assertion that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government."
The petitions have been submitted through the White House's "We the People" website, which aims to give "all Americans a way to engage their government on the issues that matter to them." The White House promises that "If a petition meets the signature threshold, it will be reviewed by the Administration and we will issue a response." The threshold is 25,000 signatures in 30 days and, at the time of this article's publication, none of the secession petitions have reached the threshold (the Texas petition has received over 22,000 and needs to hit 25,000 by Dec. 9; Louisiana, with just under 15,000 signatures, needs to hit the threshold by Dec. 7.)
For some of the states represented, the secession requests are nothing novel: South Carolina, the state whose 1860 secession sparked the civil war, is hardly an unlikely locus of conservative angst in response to Mr. Obama's victory.
And in Texas, which still conceives of itself as a "republic," not a mere "state," politicians seem to make an almost annual show of flirting with secession, periodically dropping dark hints that Washington's chicanery may force the Lone Star state to flee the Union.
After repeatedly nodding at the possibility of secession in the last few years, Gov. Rick Perry, R-Tex., has more recently kept mum on the subject. But some local GOP officials in Texas have been happy to fill the void: Tom Head, a county judge from Lubbock predicted in August that Obama's reelection could lead to a second civil war. And the treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, Peter Morrison, asked in a post-election newsletter, "Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government?" Morrison's newsletter requested an "amicable divorce" from the "maggots" who reelected President Obama, many of them voting on an "ethnic basis."
The Texas petition assails the federal government's "neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending," arguing that "it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government."
But some political officials in the states involved are not so eager to hop onboard the secession bandwagon, post-election angst or not. Morrison's boss, Hardin County GOP Chairman Kent Batman, explained, "People around here are asking why Texas is so different from the rest of the country, why we see things so differently...but I don't think a lot of people here are saying we ought to leave the Union."
Asked about Morrison's newsletter comments, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Batman sighed and replied, "Wow...OK, well, I guess I need to start taking a look at his newsletters."

Monday, November 12, 2012

Lets Return the favor robo Call Washington


  For the last 14 months we got buried in bulk mail, robot calls and sound blasts on radio and TV from our political Representatives . I think its time to return the favor. I urge you to e-mail your Congress person and tell them to get off their lazy butts and get a deal done. Do y7ou know that Congress only has 14 working days till the end of the year ?




If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
                                                 Thomas Jefferson



This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
Will Rogers

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

The Right wing did not see it coming


It was sad watching the shock and dispair on Fox News last night. They were blind sided by actual results. After months of believing their Fox news polls showing a Romney victory. ( who takes Fox News polls but white male, Christian conservatives ?)

The Republican party has spent the last 4 yrs telling the rest of the country, they are stupid , lazy and unamerican, Maybe its true but that's not something you say if you want to win votes. On top of that they alienated moderate women by making it a crime for women to decide what goes into or comes out of their own Womb.



The Republican party needs to become mor inclusive and stop letting policy be set by the likes of Limbaugh, Rove ,Norquist and Fox News.


Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Election Day



Finally the 2012 Political Ads will end.
tomorrow the 2016 political ads begin


Saturday, November 3, 2012

After the election

  If we survive this vote count something needs to be done to free the voter from  being trapped in one of two camps. Not particularly fond of Gary Johnson but the idea of a third party appeals to me
 
 
Breaking the two-party stranglehold that is killing American democracy
 
We the people have the power to end this dysfunctional, corrupting duopoly of Democrats and Republicans. Vote with me
Mitt Romney, Barack Obama
Gary Johnson: 'Where is it written that voters' choices should be so limited? Certainly not in the constitution.' Photograph: David Goldman, Eric Goldman/AP
With the election only days away, it is a fair question to ask how many American voters are about to cast their votes for a candidate who doesn't really reflect their views? Why would they do that?
The answer is complex – and simple. The Republicans and Democrats have spent decades trading power back and forth between themselves, and in doing so, have managed to install a two-party duopoly that completely controls America's political process. This duopoly runs everything from how candidates qualify to get on the ballot, to who is invited to the only debates aired on national television, to, yes, the special-interest money that fuels their billion-dollar campaigns.
The consequences of this insider game? Too many voters approach Tuesday's election believing their choice is between a Republican and a Democrat, with no other real option. And why shouldn't they? The debates they have seen only included the Republican and the Democrat. The hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of TV ads they have seen are all about the Republican and the Democrat. And the news media? Well, they have bought into the whole scheme, with coverage that overwhelmingly portrays a two-party race.
There's a problem, though. This duopoly leaves tens of millions of Americans essentially disenfranchised. Polling shows that roughly one third of voters doesn't necessarily consider themselves Democrats or Republicans. Every election, they end up making a choice between what some would call the "lesser of two evils".
Where is it written that voters' choices should be so limited? Certainly not in the US constitution. Certainly not in the law. And certainly not because the voters themselves decided that the media, two massively well-funded political parties or anyone else should "preselect" their choices for them.
In Tuesday's election, the sizable portion of the American electorate that believes the time is past when our troops should have been brought home from Afghanistan doesn't have a "major-party" candidate who agrees with them. The millions who believe government is far too large and intrusive will be looking at major-party options that both support the Patriot Act and a National Defense Authorization Act, which inexplicably legalizes the indefinite detention of American citizens. And for those who care deeply about marriage equality, they won't see a major-party candidate who believes marriage discrimination violates basic constitutional rights.
On the most compelling issue of all in these difficult times, the economy, what do the two major parties offer? Vague assurances that they will balance the budget someday, years or even decades from now, quibbling over minor adjustments to a fundamentally flawed and corrupt tax system. And neither offers any real commitment to challenge monetary policies that are devaluing our currency by the day.
Where is the choice on election day for a candidate who will balance the budget now and propose the first substantial reform of the entire tax code in decades – scrapping taxes on income and replacing them with a single consumption tax that will create millions of jobs?
Giving the American people these choices is what my campaign for president is all about. Of our $16tn debt, almost equal amounts have been racked up under Republicans and Democrats. Our chronic involvement in costly and unnecessary wars has come through a progression of major-party administrations that seem to have little or no disagreements on foreign policy. Likewise, the truly alarming erosion of our civil liberties by the federal government has been an entirely bipartisan effort.
Americans deserve the opportunity to vote for a third choice: a candidate who is neither a product nor a proponent of a status quo that is clearly not working. My candidacy, the thousands of volunteer hours spent overcoming obstacles to ballot access, and the determination of our campaign to "crash the party" are all driven by the desire and, I believe, the imperative to break the two-party stranglehold.
It will not happen in one election. But like all significant movements in American history, it can start with one election if the disenfranchised "waste their votes" in significant enough numbers to become franchised again.