Watering Hole: November 20, 2014 – Brain Waves

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Can you read my mind?  Some people can.

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59 thoughts on “Watering Hole: November 20, 2014 – Brain Waves”

    • For a brief moment after I read that headline I wondered why in the world a Texas judge would approve the execution of Texas’ Governor-elect Greg
      Abbott. For a brief moment the world seemed to be a suddenly better place . . . and then, well, you know. Reality isn’t always what it might have been.

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  6. Senator [Tom Coburn} Warns Of Violence And Anarchy If Obama Signs Immigration Order

    The country’s going to go nuts, because they’re going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it’s going to be a very serious situation,” Coburn said on Capital Download. “You’re going to see — hopefully not — but you could see instances of anarchy. … You could see violence. [. . . ]

    Though he says both parties deserve some of the blame for Washington’s dysfunction, he argues that the president has the ability to chart a different path. Solid Republican control of Congress in the wake of this month’s midterm elections could make it easier to deal with an issue such as the structural problems associated with the deficit. Making the compromises necessary for that “requires divided government,” he says.

    If there were no Republicans in Washington, the immigration problem (and virtually every other problem that’s showed up since January 2009) would have already been fairly dealt with. Unfortunately for every creature on the planet with a functioning mind, such is not the case. Republicans DO exist.

    Best proof yet that there is no God nor has there ever been a god . . . at least not since the peak of the dinosaur age.

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    • The solution to the deficit problem is brain-boggling easy – raise taxes back up to where they were before Reagan. THAT’S where most of our deficit problems started. Of course, try to get Republicans to admit that.

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      • As I said, “if there were no Republicans in Washington . . . ”

        Interesting how back in the eighties, even though I thought Reagan was inept and not all that bright, I wasn’t seeing that his pro-millionaire and his anti-we-the-people policies would, in my lifetime, become the sharp tip of the stake through the nation’s heart. But that’s what’s happened. Reaganomics is the funeral dirge, the Republican Party the assassin, and we the people the figurative corpse, the remnant of their greed-based national destruction.

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  9. It only takes a week out of the country to see just how fucked up this country is …. I have gone cold turkey on it and it feels great!

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    • Oddly enough, I was here for that same entire week and yet I, too, have seen “just how fucked up this country is …. ” Of course, I don’t watch Fox News so it’s prolly unlikely that I’ve heard the real truth . . .

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      • Not to say that Britain isn’t equally screwed up… but it was refreshing completely disconnecting… I resisted the urge to recount the tales of just how the fundies and the GOP fuck with us all on a daily basis…. (and watch out they have shown how they can fuck with anyone, anywhere too)…. but I recall a discussion of comparing university tuition, the simple slavery of employer-offered health insurance and what Obama did to try and break the chains (this is such an alien concept to the average Euro… they can’t quite believe it).

        And I think I brought up Citizens United and American mid-terms (which no one in my highly-educated circle could really grasp or connect with)….

        …. and then it was time for another beer 🙂

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        • correction – how the mid-terms showed the ungovernable nature of the country – and that the electorate voted for the very people who opposed the ballot measures that also passed and the incredible contradiction of that fact.

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  11. As we all know — according to Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, John Boner, . . . [et al Republicans who’ve ever met or heard of Frank Luntz], also of course Faux News — all Obama executive orders (esp. including anything on immigration) are unconstitutional and illegal. We also should all know that when Reagan and Poppy Bush issued immigration executive orders that also gave amnesty to certain undocumented immigrants that it was fine and legal and constitutional because, as GOP “strategist” and consultant Cheri Jacobus pointed out to Neil Cavuto on Faux News,

    “. . . these were leaders that we trusted and we knew why they were doing it and that is not any comparison to what this president is doing, what President Obama is doing by trying to sort of get off on a technicality here in saying there’s a precedent.”

    I’m so glad she cleared that up.

    Anyway, a question or two: Where in the Constitution are the parameters that define the limits of executive powers? Where does it say that certain things are ok for Republican presidents but are illegal if the president is a black Democrat who does those things only because he’s “trying to sort of get off on a technicality” (which I assume is the perfect definition supporting impeachment, i.e. a clear example of such things as “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”)?

    Sometimes my curiosity gets the best of me and I (apparently) lose all capability for rational thought, and then I start NOT thinking like those who clearly never engage in anything BUT rational thought, i.e. Republicans everywhere.

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  16. The Cosby rapey deal looks more and more like a he said / she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said kinda thing.

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  17. QsOTD:

    “The framers of our Constitution, wary of the dangers of monarchy, gave the Congress tools to rein in abuses of power. They believed if the president wants to change the law, he cannot act alone; he must work with Congress. He may not get everything he wants, but the Constitution requires compromise between the branches. A monarch, however, does not compromise …” – Ted Cruz, 2014.

    “I don’t think what Washington needs is more compromise, I think what Washington needs is more common sense and more principle,” – Ted Cruz, 2012.

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  18. Now I done it! I first fell in love with the Pfalz DIII the first time I saw The Blue Max. Just now I ordered a kit to build one of my very own. I figure it’s best to weigh such issues for 40 years or so before jumping into a decision.

    It has a 41″ wing span and should, with modern radio and motor technology, weigh a couple ounce either side of two pounds and it’s supposed to be a very nice flying model. I’m going to use scale colors but will use my own personal variation of black and white on a silver background.

    Since skulls were a popular motif for personal emblems my first thought was to use a skeleton for the model pilot with a picture of me for the emblem. I figure that having a skeleton for a pilot and a real person painted on the side would be an appropriate motif for a model. But? I have already changed my mind, not for the last time, and I think I’ll go with a skeleton in the cockpit and a picture of a hand “flipping the bird” on the side of the fuselage. One thing I don’t know is if no one actually painted a “bird” on their airplane or it was just censored by Puritan types of an earlier era. Could there be a better message to send to opposing pilots trying to shoot you down? I think not.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=pfalz+dIII&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=lMH&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=WGpuVPDGOdKzyAT0mICICg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1109&bih=714

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      • If liberals really want to reform the Republican Party, all they have to do is register as Republicans.

        Imagine, if you will, that liberals switched parties en masse, in time for the 2016 primaries. Think about what havoc they could wreck on the Republican Party when they outnumber the Teaparty base of that Party….

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