Obama supported the Wall Street bailouts… So did Romney.
Obama gave us radical Obamacare… that was based on Romneycare.
Obama’s a liberal on social issues.
Romney once bragged he’s even more liberal than Ted Kennedy on social issues.
Why would we ever vote for someone who is just like Obama?
When we can unite around Rick Santorum. And beat Obama.
These are specific points and reasons why many conservatives have been against a Romney nomination, and linking Romney's own record regarding bailouts, reminding South Carolina voters that Obamacare used Romneycare as a building block, has a good chance to chip away at Romney's South Carolina numbers.
The takeaway from this ad is powerful in it's simplicity- Voting for Romney is the same as voting for Obama.
I regret that I couldn't attend one of the "tea party" demonstrations today in protest of the soaring level of government intrusion into our lives. Here are pictures of some other famous tea parties.
The Original Boston Tea Party
Alice's Tea Party
I'm delighted to see that the number and size of the parties were above and beyond anyone's expectations. And the movement appears to have launched a new political star in Texas Governor Rick Perry. According to Politico:
Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-Texas) star is rising among a new constituency — the anti-tax “tea party” crowd — in the wake of his recent endorsement of a Texas state House resolution affirming the state’s sovereignty.
The resolution urges that “all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed.”
Perry’s public embrace of that language — a thinly veiled reference toward the conditions set by the Obama administration’s financial stimulus package — and his efforts to reject some of the stimulus funds have made him popular among the big government opponents who attended Wednesday’s “tea party” events across the nation.
“I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union,” the governor said. “I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state.”
Hamp Signs
In Northampton I saw this expression of anti-government sentiment this morning on a downtown mailbox, complete with a hammer striking the statehouse - or is it the White House?
I was surprised to see this sign stuck to a tree in downtown Northampton. It says "Jesus is the King not the Latin Kings."
I hope that doesn't mean the Latin King gang is surfacing in Hamp. They've already done enough damage in Springfield.
This Bud's Not For You
And speaking of Springfield, I'm surprised to see that City Councilor Bud Williams (above) has made good on his threat to announce for mayor. I'm surprised because I thought Williams had too much baggage to mount a credible campaign, plus he's indicated a willingness to run in the past and nothing ever came of it.
Things are a little different this time. For one thing, there is ward representation for the first time since the 1950's, and the ward Bud is in already has a crowded field featuring early front-runner Claudio Concepcion. Bud would be strongest running citywide as he always has under the old system, but if that's the case then he might as well run for mayor as for an at-large Council seat. Actually that is an example of the first major weakness to surface regarding the new ward system, there is little incentive to run for the at-large seats, which come with no more power or pay than the ward seats but require much more expensive citywide campaigns to win.
I've always liked Bud on a personal level. He has never been as much of a fake as most others in Springfield politics. I remember back in the 90's when I first started hanging around the Springfield political scene Williams always made a point of saying hello to me whenever he saw me, despite the fact I didn't always say nice things about him. That was in contrast to many other pols who used to pretend they didn't know me, only to have Dan Yorke inform me that they had come up to him and asked questions about me. In a political scene dominated by plastic phonies and charming crooks, Williams has a certain refreshing down to earthness about him.
Yet despite the statement in William's announcement that "I've not played politics at all" the fact is Williams has always been a loyal foot soldier for the local political machine. It is hard to think of a single time he has challenged the status-quo on an issue that mattered, and like so many others his reputation is tarnished by his close association with disgraced former Mayor Michael Albano. Can't Springfield find leaders anywhere except among the motley crew who stood by, as Williams did, defending the political establishment as the city swirled down the drain?
Fortunately Williams is not the only candidate on the field. Others may come forward, and incumbent Mayor Dom Sarno is expected to seek re-election. Nor is Williams the first to announce, that would be newcomer David Parkhurst, who is running an outsider campaign that is starting to look like a real breath of fresh air.
It might be that Bud Williams is not the worst person that could run for mayor, but Springfield could, and should, do much better.
UMass Today
A feminist group set up these red cutouts around campus today with stories attached to them about domestic violence.
I hate domestic violence, but I'm not sure how much such displays are educational or just annoying.
These ladies were in the campus center today with a spotted cow wearing a UMass hat promoting this weekend's livestock show.
It is being held Saturday all day with free parking and free admission at the UMass Hadley Farm. If you're into farm stuff check it out.
Today was also the start of the annual Humans versus Zombies War. This well-armed humanity soldier was patrolling the campus center to protect the students from zombie attacks.
Jefferson Airplane was full of such talented people that not everyone noticed that Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassady were two of the greatest guitar players on the planet. When they went solo with their band Hot Tuna, they never gave a damn about commercial success and so got overlooked again. Hey, if you don't know Jorma you don't know Jack! Now they seem to be being rediscovered, with Jorma winning a Grammy award and Jack being praised as one of the greatest bass players of all time!
Our years of living beyond our means, of buying everything on credit and on money printed out of thin air, are over. Sure, our government will carry on with its nonsensical policy of curing indebtedness with more indebtedness, inflation with more inflation, but the game is up. It's not going to work. The resources aren't there. The more we intervene and the more we prop up economic zombies, the worse off we'll be. But the sooner we understand what has happened, assess our economic situation honestly, and rebuild our economy on a sound foundation, the sooner our fortunes will be restored.
Ideas still matter, and sound economic education has rarely been as urgently necessary as it is today. There is no better book to read on the present crisis than this one, and that is why I am delighted to endorse it.
Sincerely,
U.S. Representative Dr. Ron Paul
At Last
Over the years I've been asked by people whether there is any other area besides politics where I feel the local media coverage is inadequate. I always reply that I think someone should start a hyper-local sports publication whose specialty would be to cover indepth the Valley sports activities that usually don't rate mainstream coverage. In fact the first time I suggested that was on the Dan Yorke Show in 1997. Yet no one ever followed my suggestion, and myself I never had any interest in starting such a thing, so I just shrugged it off as one of the many good ideas I give away for free that everyone ignores.
Until now. I had absolutely nothing to do with these wise Springfield entrepreneurs stepping into this wide open media niche, but I'm glad to finally see Western Mass Sports Journal on the free paper stands these days, where its arrival is long overdue.
I predict it will be a success.
Sweet Sunshine
It was so nice today that a lot of people at the community lunch at the Amherst Survival Center ate outdoors, like Abby, Noel and Rhythom.
Today's Video
Somebody emailed me complaining that I play all this Northampton music yet ignore the Sonic Youth. Actually Sonic Youth is a transplanted to Hamp band, but we'll claim them with pride any day. That said, I'm not a huge fan, as I like a little more structure and melody than they're interested in. But I do appreciate the coolness of the weird thing they're trying to achieve.
This is a clip from 2002 at Hamp's Calvin Theater. The t-shirt at the beginning is a reference to a local controversy where Max Karson, a student at Amherst Regional High School, was expelled for writing about a sex scandal at the school. The Denver News reports:
An Amherst, Massachusetts, native, Karson started writing horror stories as a youngster, and his tradition of provocative prose continued at Amherst Regional High School, where he created and personally distributed a newsletter he called The Crux. The publication, whose entire run can be accessed online here, hit its stride with a salvo inspired by the January 2002 resignation of principal Stephen Myers, who was alleged to have made sexually provocative comments to a male student.... Karson's take on the incident was predictably off-kilter. "My response to Mr. Myers' controversial hobby of molesting children?" he asked in print. "I'm going to break up with him, and had I known he was a child molester, I never would have gone out with him in the first place."
What do all these taxpayer bailouts really add up to? Read it and weep, as reported in Politico:
As the holiday season commences, it’s worth taking stock of the last gift that President George W. Bush and the 110th Congress have left for U.S. taxpayers.
It’s a package of about $8.7 trillion dollars’ worth of potential taxpayer commitments for loans, guarantees and other bailout goodies for businesses and distressed homeowners.
Amid the tissue paper:
• More than $1.5 trillion in Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. loan guarantees, including a $139 billion assist to the lending arm of General Electric Corp.
• $1.8 trillion in cash, tax breaks and loan guarantees doled out from the Treasury Department to taxpayers, financial institutions and credit companies.
• $300 billion for homeowners from the Federal Housing Authority.
• $25 billion in assistance for auto companies from a program overseen by the Energy Department, which is separate from the bailout proposal that tanked last week in the Senate.
• And $5 trillion worth of new money, loan guarantees and loosened lending requirements from the Federal Reserve Bank.
According to Bianco Research President James Bianco, who crunched these numbers, that amounts to more government aid and assistance than nine other historic bailouts and big government outlays combined.
The New Deal, for instance, cost an estimated $32 billion in its day, which would be about $500 billion in today’s dollars. The Marshall Plan cost about $12.7 billion, which is the equivalent of a paltry $115.3 billion. The Louisiana Purchase? The French got $15 million, which would be worth about $217 billion today.
If you take those three items, add in the adjusted costs of the Race to the Moon, the savings and loan crisis, the Korean War, the Iraq war, the Vietnam War and assistance for NASA, you still get to just $3.92 trillion — not even half of the taxpayers’ exposure today, according to Bianco.
Maybe Washington is taking its cues from Springfield in the Albano era. Here is the front of the program from Albano's 1998 inaugural.
This is the full program. (click to enlarge)
A Rogue's Gallery on the back:
1998-1999 represented the peak of the Albano mayoralty. By 2000 it was all starting to unravel and would soon come tumbling down in a wave of scandal and mixed metaphors.
Here's some updates from the Stephen Geoffreys cult. Someone sent me a picture from the Fright Night reunion tour posing with Stephen Geoffreys.
Stephen is also appearing in a movie called "New Terminal Hotel" with fellow 80's has-been Corey Haim. This is Stephen in a still from the new film.
Here is Corey Haim in his adorable youth. Critics said he looked like a poodle.
Earlier this year Haim had to take out an ad in Variety begging Hollywood for a job.
I guess it worked.
Finally, here is a video about the gay life at UMass.
This morning I took the dawn express into Amherst and got off at the Big Y to do some foodstamp shopping. Afterwards I began walking down University Drive towards UMass. When I got to the University stadium, I saw there was quite a mess all over the lawn made by tailgaters.
Yesterday the UMass football team lost 30-15 to Richmond. The fans sure left behind a lot of trash.
The presence of semi-neat piles like this suggest that some attempt had been made to clean up.
UMass employees will clean the rest up, but still one would hope a better effort would be made by the students to pick up after themselves. Another discouraging sight once I got near the UMass library was to see this bunch of flowers ripped out of the pot and thrown on the lawn.
Who does this kind of mindless destruction? Drinking or a lost football game is not an excuse.
This afternoon at the Hillel House just off campus there was some kind of fundraising bike ride picnic underway.
At the 2004 Democrat Convention in Boston, I ran into Rep. Barney Frank and asked him if I could take his picture. He said yes.
Frank has been getting a lot of unfavorable publicity lately from those who have argued that as the top House Democrat on finance he should've been looking to see that the government created Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac mortgage giants had better oversight. Now its been reported that Frank's lover was a executive with Fannie Mae. Conflict of interest?
Barney Frank, an openly gay Democrat member of congress, is also the chairman of the House Banking Committee. You know, the group that's supposed to oversee government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae.
But for years Frank's gay lover, Herb Moses, was an executive at at Fannie Mae - even while Frank had the power to block real oversight of Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae was recently taken over by us, the taxpayers, because they made TRILLIONS in loans that they could not guarantee. At least $400 billion of that was to people with terrible credit profiles. And now we're on the hook because Rep. Frank vigorously defended Fannie Mae's unethical and dangerous practices.
You have to give the Republicans credit, they at least warned of impending disaster (although without doing much about it) which is at least a step above Democrats like Frank, who stubbornly denied that anything was wrong. While there's plenty of blame to go around for this economic crisis, the fact is more of the blame falls on the Democrats.
Not that the Republicans will be able to benefit at the polls - as usual they're too busy fighting among themselves, as you can see demonstrated at the local level when the Western Mass Republican group refused to endorse right-wing ideologue Mike Franco for Governor's Council.
Here's Franco's version of events, in a press release in which he refers to himself in the third person:
The Western Mass. Republicans Executive Board voted not to support Mike Franco's campaign for Governor's Council because of outside influences on their decision making. Franco, who holds a position on the board as Vice Chairman, abstained from the vote. He did, however, speak on behalf of the campaign during the meeting.
In an uncanny development, the WMR Board, under an initiative proposed by Kevin Jourdain, WMR Chair, voted to give the Republican Newspaper $500 to $1000 of advertising monies from the WMR treasury to highlight candidates in the region under its "banner", which would include Franco. Yet, the Board's earlier vote signaled they did not want the WMR name associated with Franco's campaign, which also translated to no financial support.
In an e-mail vote, which Franco objected to, calling instead for a physical assembly of its members, the Board voted 5-to-1 to give substantial advertising dollars to the Republican Newspaper. Here's the record of the vote:
Kevin Jourdain - Yes Hunter Golden - Yes Bill Caplin - Yes Bill Johnson - Yes Marcia Evans - Yes Mike Franco - No
(Note: Kevin Jourdain has let his intentions be known that he will run for Mayor of Holyoke in 2009. He has personally asked Mike Franco for Mike's direct support more than a few months ago.)
Gee, I hadn't realized that Jourdain (above) has already made the decision to run for mayor. I wonder who the Democrat nominee will be? With the incumbent Mayor Sullivan retiring, this race should be a real barnburner!
Oh well, let us close with the thought that whatever else happens in life you can always be a loyal plastic robot for a world that doesn't care.
