Citizens United Against Free Speech

Ever since the Supreme Court ruling last year in the case of Citizen's United vs. the Federal Election Commission  all pretense of an independent representative government seems to have gone out the window. Certainly campaign financing prior to the ruling had not been perfect, but with the rolling back of more than a 100 years of campaign finance restrictions and reforms started under Teddy Roosevelt, and with the prospects of a billion dollar presidential campaign heating up, the money will be flowing big time and those that can will be buying influence that could impact our laws for the next generation.

The Citizens United ruling opened the flood gates of opaque political financing in which corporations and other non human entities, who have access to almost unlimited funding to spend on elections, could be viewed as US citizens with First Amendment rights to free speech. American and multinational corporations are not humans nor can the be considered American citizens, and they often do not have the best interest of America at heart; especially if it conflicts with the corporation's interests.

The idea of allowing those with the most money to buy the most influence in our system seems un-American if the concept of  no taxation without representation really means anything. Our system can not survive if all the power resides with those with the  most money; it is antithetical to the nature of  democracy and to the ability of government to affect changes that benefits the majority of American people.

Now while both political parties use the lax campaign rules to their advantage, it is the Republicans who benefited the most from the Citizens United ruling because they have often unfettered access to corporate largess. While Republican candidates get a large chunk of their financing from their friends in the corporate world, Democrats in contrast have many smaller individual donors and a few large unions to contribute to their election campaigns.

I'm a very angry eagle.

Citizens United a conservative non profit organization with the motto, "Dedicated to restoring our government to citizen control," seems to have taken the concept of double speak to new heights. Not only didn't the Supreme Court ruling increase citizen control of the government it in effect made the votes of ordinary citizens much less valuable.

After attempting to pass legislation in 2010, that would have taken some of the bite out the Citizens United ruling, only to have it fail by one vote following unanimous opposition by Senate Republicans,  the Democrats are now looking to the President for some meager relief.

A White House plan reported this week is in the works and would use a presidential executive order to force all corporations who want or already have federal contracts, to disclose their election spending. Although relatively small potatoes,  it is non-the-less being heavily criticized by the Republicans, the US Chamber of Commerce, and other corporate mouth pieces. 

Shine a light and the cockroaches scatter.

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Contrasts in the Wind

Breezy Kate Middleton

Blowhard Donald Trump

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Ruling the World.

Trump and I share a first name and much is made of names in this country and in our culture to define who we are among our neighbors. People are usually proud of their given names and their family names.
 
Take the name Donald for instance.  As most Donalds know and as Wickapedia tells us, the name, "... is an anglicized form of the Scottish Gaelic or Irish personal name Domhnall, Dòmhnall, Dumhnuil and or Dónall. This contains the elements dumno meaning "world" and val meaning "rule" (viz. "ruler of the world").  A short form of Donald is Don; pet forms include Donnie and Donny, and in Scotland Dolly." 

It is not surprising that we Donalds are an arrogant lot considering the meaning of our name. Of course I never meet a Donald who was actually ruler of the world, but then I never meet "the Donald".
Donald is a very popular first name for men (#15 out of 1220) and also a popular

last name (#2477 out of 88799). (Taken from the 1990 
U S Census). But the popularity of the name has been going down hill for some time as the graph from http//:thinkbabynames.com, shows. 

Donald Trump's real name however is not Trump, but Drumpf which his grandfather Federick decided to change upon becoming a naturalized US Citizen and before succumbing to the flu epidemic of 1918. There is no record of a legal name change so Trump must be considerd a long time alias.

Father, Fred Christ Trump Jr. did well apart from having his eldest son commit suicide and left the remaining children 400 million to start out in life.
Barack Hussein Obama on the other hand embraced his name and brought himself up from a  middle class family to be President of the United States.  His family, (Irish and East African), like the German Drumpf akaTrump, and most of the rest of us were of foreign blood to start, but we made a place in this nation of ours.

How dare Drumpf challenge the President's right to be were he is?
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President trumps Trump

President Obama: "...if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems..." 

How sweet it is. Actually I was hoping that Obama could have waited until just before the election but you can't have everything.

Last week President Obama asked  the state of Hawaii to provide him with his long form birth certificate and they complied. 

This morning in a surreal press conference with the President expressing his frustration over  the continued focus on the  issue of his birth place, Obama pulled out his ace to 'set' Trump and the conspiratorial Birthers, once and for all.

Scolding the press for their complicity in the affair and lamenting that he  was forced to take time from  real issues Obama said, "I am speaking for the vast majority of the American people as well as for the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve. We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other..."

I agree Mr. President, but vilifying the others, especially Birthers seems appropriate somehow.

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Trump Dumb, Dumb Trump,Trump Dumb Dumb Trump. Whatever!

I don't like Trump. In fact he is what is wrong with America. His brash arrogance offends me. His opportunistic attacks on the President show a small minded and petty individual and his other ridiculous eccentricities make him the Charlie Sheen of presidential politics. No offense to Charlie Sheen. 

People who attack the President on the grounds that he is not an American, or is a Muslim, a Communist, a Kenyan, an anti British colonialist Mau Mau, or for any number of other ridiculous claims, do so for two reasons.

They desperately need to delegitimize the first president of color without sounding overtly racist. Secondly they don't have well thought out, intelligent and legitimate criticisms.

Not that Obama is perfect. He has flaws liberals will be happy to tell you about, (for another time).  But if you have to dwell on ignorance and bigotry in order to attack any intelligent man and particularly one as intelligent as Obama, you are essentially a very lame candidate.

The dumbing down of America continues apace.

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Easter Memories 

When I was a youngster, my mother, rest her soul, would stay up all night creating an Easter mystery for my siblings and me to solve.

She would artfully hide the Easter baskets someplace we would never look and then write a series of clues, each building upon the previous with riddles, maps and an assortment of encouragement for frustrated treasure hunters. By the time we finally found the Easter Baskets they meant more to us than the contents they held.

The memory of her love and  the care she took to give this extra gift to her children on this special holiday, still warms my heart and helps me care about the rest of the world; because she did.

Her memory also helps me be a liberal because she taught me no matter what we may have, we owe a certain portion to those who didn't have the advantages we did. All my five siblings are liberals as well.

Thanks Mom,

Your son, Don Joebob

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Republicans have been lowering the discourse for some time now. From yelling "you lie", to their silly birther issue ala Trump, to their lie about death panels, to the recent chimp email, the Republicans have become caricatures of themselves.

Republican World: A concept series. 0 second(s) ago
	Living in Republican World will not be a happy place. Only certain types will be allowed to vote. Women will have to fill out forms for the government concerning their reproductive activity. If Republicans don't approve those women will be considered criminals. Workers will loose all rights including fair wages, job safety, collective bargaining, child labor restriction, etc. Minorities, soon to be majorities will be harassed, rounded up and the rest of us will be controlled via new citizenship restrictions based on our parents situation alone. Everyone will be issued national identity papers with a genetic profile that all citizens will have to pay for. Wages and employment opportunities will degrade into near slavery with McDonalds being the coveted high paying employer. All levels of society will be fixed similar to the Hindu caste system. With the end of the EPA and other watchdog agencies at state and federal levels, pollution of the land, water and air will accelerate, species extinction will hit a critical tipping point with the removal of all endangered species protections. The world seeing the United States refuse blindly to accept the obvious harm done by global warming, will begin to see America as a global menace and long held allies will abandon our nation. Eventually they will be forced to attack America economically and finally militarily. By this point most of American society will have devolved into enclaves protected by all sorts of militias with thousands of different agendas fighting among themselves for dominance. Of course the EU and their Asian Tiger allies will roll over these militias in a few months and America will no longer exist. Republican World. Coming to a country dear to you.  ______________________________________