Calhoun’s Cannons for Nov 7, 2012
Ah, blessed silence.
No more political ads. No more
robocalls. Silence.
No, wait. I spoke too
soon. Can you hear it? That awful moaning, that eerie muffled
shrieking, the boiling, rumbling, growling rage thundering almost, but not
quite, out of hearing range. It’s the minions of Rush Limbaugh, old white guys,
radical anti-science, anti-modernity, anti-government wing nuts who have
hijacked the Republican party, plus the near entirety of the white South (and
who said the Confederacy was defeated?).
And I don’t think they’re very happy.
I can certainly understand that fury. When you live in a Fake Fox News/Rush
Limbaugh/Frank Luntz/Donald Trump created bubble long enough, pretty soon you
get to thinking that’s reality. Then
something like this comes along and it’s all, Woa! You mean the rest of the
country doesn’t think President Obama is the Anti-Christ Muslim Kenyan
Socialist Hitler who’s going to turn all our children gay, kill all our grannies
in his ObamaCare “death panels,” and then declare America
to be a colony of surrender-monkey France?
Guess not. Quel
shock. But Democrats shouldn’t be going
all giddy and waving big foam #1 fingers in the air. Winning an election is one thing. Governing is quite another. And there remains one HUGE question to be
answered.
In his concession speech, Governor Romney called on
Americans to “pray” for the re-elected President. While prayers are always nice, what went
missing from that speech was the exhortation to his fellow Republicans to stop
their mindless stonewalling and get back to the work they were elected to
do.
Which means that there remains One Key Question that this
election has still left unanswered: Will
the Republican leadership, Mitch McConnell and the various Young Turks, Paul
Ryan, included, once again meet
behind closed doors to swear to one another that their one overriding agenda
for the next four years is to once again
block anything the President and their Democratic colleagues propose?
In short, will the Republicans in Congress double-down as
Rocks in the Road once again or
decide to sniff the (real) air, read the (reality-based) tea leaves, and start
to engage in the hard, messy work of actually
governing?
Which involves compromise, pragmatic hold-your-nose
deal-making and, above all, requires that politicians stop believing their own
fake PR, made-up wishful thinking, and reality-free ideology. I mean, if
hurricane Sandy had one lesson to
deliver it was this: Magical thinking
and reality-free ideology doesn’t stop storm surges and howling winds.
Here in California,
there are some signs that reality is modestly returning while Grover Norquists’
blood-oath, evil-grip siren-song (We don’t need to raise taxes to pay for
anything.) seems to be lessening. As of
this writing, Governor Brown’s initiative to vote to actually tax ourselves in order
to keep our schools from bleeding out looks like it may well pass. Amazing.
And prompts another question: Is it possible that Battered
Wife Nation, Suicide Nation, a country that somehow allowed itself to be
convinced that it didn’t deserve to live in a decent society, that it was o.k.
to gut its middle-class and move its jobs offshore in order to move all that
nice profit up to the 1% while leaving the 99% with crumbs, that its kids
didn’t deserve a future, that its working poor and most vulnerable should be
tossed to the wolves since they were nothing but freeloaders and bums, has
suddenly decided that they deserve better after all?
If so, then late being better than never, maybe prayers are
in order. Prayers of thanks
Posts
17 comments:
Amen!
I am truly sorry to Proposition 30 pass. Now our wonderful State Legislature, both parties, can breathe a sigh of relef that they won't have to actually cure the school problem.
Just throw a "temporary" tax at it and magically all the problems of too many superintendants and staff can go back to patting themselves on the back and granting themselves pay raises! No more looking at the structure of school administration and insane mandated programs.
Woppie, the "schools" are saved!
BTW, didn't the lottery save the schools already?
Anon. You're right. "Solving" the school problem is so HUGE that it will take an enormous effort on the part of the entire society. You can't "cure" schools without dealing with poverty -- they inextricably linked. (So is the eway we fund schools: rich districts do fine; poor districts, well good luck to them, they get crappy schools) Can't cure poverty without a serious federal Industrial Policy to return decent jobs with decent wages and reverse the gutting of our manufacturing base and rebuilding of new 21st century jobs. Also need to deal with decent housing, decent communities, etc.etc. It's all of a piece. But we don't want to solve any of that so we think that either cutting schools to the bone and/or tossing more money at the problem will "solve" the problem. It won't.
Ahem...
Nothing has changed in DC...it will be as divisive as ever; so both side will have to compromise ....DEMOCRATS...REPUBLICANS....and the our PONTUSObama will have to get real.
But in the end, Obama has to LEAD.
If Obama continues to 'stonewall' and not achieve REAL compromise he will bear all the blame as he is the anointed leader...so lead dammit.
Ann ignores the PZLDf sharade again............
On October 25, Los Osos’ Citizens for Clean Water (the organization formerly known as the Prohibition Zone Legal Defense Fund) filed for voluntary dismissal of their seemingly never-ending appeal against the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (CCRWQCB). It’s unclear why CCW filed for voluntary dismissal, but it’s clear that Los Osos sewer construction is underway. Because the group is no longer a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and doesn’t appear to be operating under any other group’s 501(c)(3), they will have to pay the water board’s legal expenses.
Second District, Division Six of the California Courts of Appeal judge Kenneth Yegan delivered the appeal opinion on October 25, which echoed almost word-for-word the sentiments expressed by San Luis Obispo Superior Court judge Charles S. Crandall nearly two years earlier. To sum up Yegan’s 17-page opinion succinctly, Citizens for Clean Water’s arguments were unanimously dismissed as having no merit. It’s unclear what the basis of the appeal actually was because the appeal document is not public record. One could speculate that CCW’s attorney Shaunna Sullivan wanted to move the case out of the area in hopes that the appellate judges would be further removed from local politics and biases. But it appears that the appellate judges came to the same conclusions without much variation.
At the tail-end of the opinion, the judge specifically stated that the costs to the respondents (CCRWQCB) shall not be published. But the group is now responsible for paying those costs. At Razor Online, we can only speculate what those costs might be — but since the case has been around for over five years, the costs are likely staggering. There is no question that taxpayers and the district are shouldering the burden of those costs, as shared by the LOCSD. The burden will now supplement the $189-million sewer costs — arguably the byproduct of this litigation and the flawed leadership that embraced it.
For the most part, the PZLDF-CCW case was roughly assembled into a series of incomplete thoughts by blogger Ann Calhoun of Calhoun’s Cannon, who was once listed as an interested party in their legal proceedings. Calhoun occasionally posted press releases, which were written by McPherson, but information about the case itself was scarce. By 2008, updates about the case were no longer provided. Commenters repeatedly asked Calhoun for more information, but she refused to oblige. Early that year, Razor Online received an e-mail forwarded to them by a former PZLDF-CCW member. The e-mail was from McPherson, who issued a “personal gag order” to PZLDF-CCW supporters that prohibited them from discussing the case publicly. In the same e-mail, she also noted that any legal initiatives spurred by other members of the community were a “blatant distraction.” To date, Calhoun remains loyal to the gag order and has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the organization she once belonged to.
Thank you.
Copied to a Word file for future use.
Dear Razor, why are you posting as an "Anon?" When you're Phil or Aaron, aka "Razor." Interesting.
Ann....just answer the questions about PZLDF.
No bob and weave; no hem or hawing; no duck and cover.....just answer the questions.
Or are you unwilling to stand by and be responsible for your past behavior?
Quivering in fear does not become you.
Ah Fox- the election experts, it was truly delicious. Even had two billionaires frothing and wondering why their fellow billionaires (Us Americans) were not coming out in droves to vote for their (Our) interests.
Even though Cavuto was glooming from early on that Obama had 290 in the Bag, there was some speculation on an electoral win with a popular vote defeat (And what would that mean). Secretly that is also what I wanted (because it means nothing) but now that is 3 million reasons away from relevant.
Carl Rove waiting for the late returns pan handle to rush in and skillet whack Florida into redness. And his admonition at the bitter bitter end that the POTUS must now (after apologizing for winning) reach across the aisle as he has never done before out and show leadership by compromise, compromise, compromise. And sweet sassafras syrup! that Floridian Waffle isn’t yet ready to pry from the pan! (60 K votes)
The prideful “We delivered the evangelical vote” even after the end…
How sweet it is. 3 billion dollars worth of words pumped into the economy-just to get back to where we were. Colbert and Stewart were precious..
Seems that the South when looked at the county levels has a black belt in political overthrows. A map of the red-blue counties shows the thin blue line once the cotton/poverty belt. It neatly cinches Alabama’s waist, though it didn’t deliver that belle to the Obama ball. We learned so much from maps- All hail “The shapes of the states”.
Doing the aftermath there was another obligatory fox business network billionaire guest opining that the 300 point drop in the stock market was under represented at a 4 to 1 ratio as the market was already compensated due to pre election night predictions of an Obama victory- There fore by the parsing we lost 1200 points ( must had happened sometime between the second debate and now. But FiBiN (fox news business channel) will continue to scare the market with the phrase “financial cliff” – Oh if our collective coffers only had a dollar each time that phrase is uttered.
Now this remains
NO Ann!!! I am NOT whoever you think I am.... I found the post nd posted it to show eeryone that you are a fraud and PZLDF is a COMMUNIST SHAM!
The RAZOR ONLINE got some things wrong in the article. I won't innumerate what they are here as this in not the topic Ann wrote about, but if you are interested, you can read about it on my blog.
Toonces: The Razor Online got some things wrong? Really? Wait, let me put on my shocked! shocked! face. And let's all remember that this blog is an All Ochs-Free Zone.
And Anonymous 9:14 doesn't know how to cite his sources and posts excerpts from The Razor, with "things wrong," without quotation marks and proper citation so the reader could only conclude that he wrote it and was unaware that this blog is an All Ochs-Free Zone. (Wait, Anonymous 9:14 doesn't know proper citation? And thinks PZLDF is a Commie organization. (Oh, dear lord.) and thinks I"m "quivering in fear?". (More, Oh, dear lord.) Well, let me once again put on my shocked! shocked! face.)
Alon: Interesting comment on "Real Time" last night, The Red States, who went and go for the Republican mantra that Democrats are moochers who just want "stuff" i.e. government funded entitlement/poor relief programs, etc. are states that receive MORE in federal support than they pay to the Feds in taxes. In other words, the Red States are actually the moochers and sucking heavily on the government teat while screaming loudest about wicked socialism and electing candidates who will cut off their money while being clueless that that's what they're doing.
And we'll see a replay of this when southern states start refusing to sign on to create insurance pools for their citizens in order to comply with Obamacare provisions, which means that the poorest, hardest hit of our Red State citizens will continue to suffer and die when the means of relieving that suffering is inches away. (Or shall we hope that the citizens will figure out they've screwed themselves out of decent health care for themselves and their kids and change their politicians?
DRIVEN BY SMALLNESS,
The sour grapes of self inflicted wrath.
"vote for me so I can pretend to reduce the pork barrel to a size that allows only my direct contributors to take the lion's share, with some chin-trickle down to my constituents"
Nothing sinks a ship of state like an ingrained sense of entitlement amongst its vocal representers.
At some point the double edged tool of victimization turns on itself and defocuses the movement and infighting initiates between the true believers who must stick to the literality and self satisfied smugness of their outdated slogans, the emotional gratification of the "us versus them" construct and reject the path forward offered by it's philosophical thinkers and pragmatic leaders who wish for adaptability to those scenarios that have the only real world win win outcome(s).
The heightened attention to finger pointing and constant projection and smearing is a mark identifying those who would rather destroy the future then let go of what little of it they can (or could had) control, inevitably fifth columning their own shining city on the hill, fouling their own nest, betraying their own stated ideals and friends.
And as truly as that was demonstrated in the real world example of the Sewer wars of Los Egos, it must also be true of the manner in which the "base", the Tea party negative energy fueled by a sold out, cynical, rabid, baiting, biased and unbalanced press component damaged Grand Old Party Conservative Ideology.
So the end points; of States as direct representors of the best of local government, a necessary military that is "right sized" and adaptable to real world changing threats, and guidance of commerce so that it is free to find its economic equilibrium in a self sustaining manner (necessitating an educated, healthy, free, well compensated, safe, and emotionally and financially secure workforce) with a minimal and efficient level of regulation (that keeps (Internal and global)competition healthy, allows new small entrants, promotes production efficiency and natural resources conserved for perpetuity).
Only those most twisted of yucky weeds would harp on events that by 2007 were twigs on the track of the runaway train. The economic cliff is ahead and only alternative tracks not laid back at the earlier switch points could lead to a different future.
but if you are interested, you can read about it on my blog.
Just more uninformed TW opinion.
AS USUAL ANN GETS IT WRONG. SHE CANNOT FACE THE FACT THAT SHE AND GAIL ARE THE REIGN OF TERROR THAT HAS PLAGUED OUR TOWN FOR OVER 30 YEARS. THESE TERORIST TRAITORS WILL BE PUNISHED
Anon 1:03, as least I put my name to what I say unlike you.
Alon: your penultimate paragraph about says it all. It's where this country could be, if only . . .
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