The South Shall Rise Again

Have you ever had the pleasure of meeting anyone from the south?  I'm one of those New England born hot headed liberals that loves my southern friends.  They have a quality of life about them that is more common sense and passionate than people in the north.  People from the south are warm and friendly for the most part and the one thing you notice in a southerner is that they just want to say hello and be friendly.  They love children, love family, love good food, and most of all are very patriotic.  Good virtues that make for good friends and people all around. 

One of my dearest friends lives in North Carolina.  When he speaks it is almost like reading a Mark Twain book but funnier.  His words are to the point and he makes his point clear which is a true southern thing.  We could talk on the phone for hours if not interrupted.  You will always know where you stand with anyone from the south.  But that isn't true with what the southern states elect to represent them?  Why is that?

People like me look at the political actions in the south as hi-jacked.  Family values was somehow manipulated into serving the masters of the plantation or special interests rather than the child that needed food, or love, or a descent education.  Compassion in politics is no longer valid in the southern states of this country in both the Senate and the Congress.  People that live in the south no longer matter to the people they elect.  Checks to political campaigns matter.  The bigger the check the more attention you get.  That is a fact, and it goes against everything that I know of all my southern friends.  But they can not write big checks so their voice is meaningless. 

We have a government that is lost and lacks any leadership.  Us against Them mentality.  There is no longer a working function of our current government.  The congress is hi-jacked by people throwing tantrums on both sides instead of doing the job of finding the common ground.  Both political parties are guilty of it.  Who pays the price for inaction?  We do.

To all my friends in the south, I love ya bunches but ya need to get off the porch and start minding the store.  Your well respected and loved hospitality is being stolen from you by shop lifters that call themselves your representatives in the United States Congress.  Time to see if your voice can reach far enough to make a drop of dew drop off a ripe melon.  The south shall rise again.  Good people will not stand for being kicked by politicians that sold out against their personal family values. 

Franklin Roosevelt loved his time in Georgia, simply because the people were friendly to him and intensely genuine.  In turn, he invested large amounts of his own personal money to build facilities for kids with polio.  He saw the kids, he saw the people, he acted.  You don't see that in any leaders in most southern states anymore.  More for those that have too much and less and less for those that have nothing seems to be more important.  That is NOT a southern quality I would want to be associated with.  Maybe it is time for the south to rise and turn blue again where people matter first?  Just a thought.

Papamoka  

Step back in time to the problem

This post is from my friend BJ Trotter, a retired newspaper editor in the Carolina's. It is an honor for me that she has allowed me to cross post her work from DemWit.

If you are old enough, you remember those red, white and blue posters with the pointed finger and the challenge, “Uncle Sam wants you.”

I have just finished reading the transcript of President Obama’s address to the nation last night. In the wake of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, this president is pointing his finger at YOU: he wants you to help him to help America break its “addiction to fossil fuels.”

Isn’t it time?

When all the blame goes around, it ultimately comes back to YOU – for you are a citizen of a nation which consumes 20 percent of the world’s oil supply while possessing less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves.

YOU are further to blame for not demanding accountability in the wake of years of Republican deregulation of this industry.

LET US step back in time to the problem.

On Thursday, 25 May 2006, I noted in my Daily Journal:

BREAKING NEWS: Awaiting a verdict in the 53-day trial of Enron’s founder and CEO Ken Lay (charged with six counts of securities fraud and conspiracy) and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling (charged with 28 counts of the same). The jury has deliberated six days. These men allegedly bilked employees and stockholders out of life savings when the company went belly up. They are accused of reporting the company was doing great when, in fact, it was failing. Stocks plummeted from $90 a share to zero. As an MSNBC reporter stated: “Enron has come to symbolize corporate greed.” This is the biggest case of corporate fraud to date – and there have been some big ones!

Noon. Ken Lay GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS! Jeff Skilling GUILTY on 19 of 28 counts! Also, Reuters is reporting a judge has found Ken Lay GUILTY in a separate case of bank fraud.

Bush’s good buddy Lay came out to the microphone to proclaim his innocence and invoke the name of the Lord. Not once has this hypocrite admitted any guilt in bilking so many out of their life’s savings.

NOW, step into DemWit’s time machine and travel back to the year 2003 when I first wrote “The Enron Connection” - an article I have subsequently updated.

I present the crux of that article here to show how closely aligned the Bush administration – which formulated our energy policies – was to those regulated by them.

From “The Enron Connection” by B.J. Trotter:

RALPH REED - Former head of the Christian Coalition and GOP strategist. Reed was hired by Enron for $10,000 a month in 1997 on the recommendation of Bush political adviser Karl Rove as a way to keep Reed loyal to Bush and close enough not to disrupt the campaign's "compassionate conservative" spin.

DON EVANS - First, Bush's chief campaign fund-raiser, then Secretary of Commerce. Evans accepted Enron Chairman Ken Lay's campaign contributions and fielded Lay's phone calls.

KEEP READING, it gets better.

ALBERTO GONZALES - Gonzales is a White House counsel who worked at Vinson and Elkins, a Houston law firm which represented Enron and signed off on Enron's questionable accounting schemes.

PATRICK H. WOOD III - Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Wood was Ken Lay's personal choice to replace Curtis Herbert, Jr., who was forced out of office by Bush after disagreeing with Lay on regulatory policies.

SPENCER ABRAHAM - After being appointed Secretary of Energy by Bush, Abraham called Ken Lay to talk about Enron's financial difficulties and their effect on energy markets. As a senator, Abraham received substantial Enron contributions.

ROBERT ZOELLICK - U.S. Trade Representative Zoellick, who served on Enron's advisory council, provided another key source of access for Enron officials.

MARC F. RACICOT - Former Montana governor Racicot was Enron's Washington lobbyist. He dropped his client after being named Republican National Chairman.

WENDY GRAMM - As Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chairman, Gramm, wife of then Senator Phil Gramm (R. - TEXAS), pushed through a measure exempting Enron from federal oversight. She serves on Enron's audit committee.

SENATOR PHIL GRAMM - Then Senator Gramm pushed through legislation shielding Enron from government scrutiny and later decided not to seek re-election in 2002.. Thus ended a dedicated Senate career for Gramm, who, in the mid-80s, co-authored the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act with the intent of balancing the nation's budget and cutting federal deficits.

THOMAS E. WHITE - White, a 10-year Enron executive involved in market manipulation and price gouging, sold off $12 million in Enron stock after Bush appointed him Secretary of the Army. Citizen advocacy groups pushed for his resignation, and he resigned in April 2003.

KARL ROVE - Rove, chief White House political adviser, was a major Enron stockholder when he met with Ken Lay to discuss Enron's problems with federal regulators.

JOHN ASHCROFT - U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft had to recuse himself from the Justice Department's Enron investigation after revealing the company donated $61,000 to his failed 2000 Senate campaign.

OTHER BUSH POLITICAL ASSOCIATES WHO HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED BY ENRON - Former Commerce Secretary and Texas oilman Robert Mosbacher, Secretary of State James Baker, former White House economics guru Lawrence B. Lindsey, campaign adviser Ed Gillespie. Department of Commerce General Counsel Theodore W. Kassinger and Maritime Administrator William G. Schubert.

DICK CHENEY - As head of the Bush administration energy task force, which, if I recall, met behind closed doors, Vice President Cheney gave Ken Lay and other Enron executives major influence over the creation of the nation's energy policy.

KEN LAY - Enron Chairman Lay, a longtime personal friend of George W. Bush, made the company Bush's biggest campaign contributor and used his resulting influence to shape public energy policy in Enron's favor.

GEORGE W. BUSH - President Bush rewarded Enron's massive campaign contribution by refusing to intervene when the company's profiteering sparked California's energy crisis - a crisis for which California Governor Gray Davis paid the ultimate price, a recall from office by groups which succeeded in putting the responsibility of the state's energy and budget crisis on his shoulders.

I CONCLUDED the article:

The tangled web of Enron is far-reaching and under-reported. Television news is too busy covering the "flavor-of-the-day" stories - from Michael Jackson's dangling baby to the Laci Peterson murder case to the touting of Ann Coulter's new book, which hails Sen. Joe McCarthy as a great American hero - to report on REAL news. The days of great investigative journalism, when the "Fourth Estate" served a "checks and balances" function, are seemingly in the past.

And, Enron is just the tip of the iceberg. The web of corporate entanglement by the current administration clearly marks a CONFLICT OF INTEREST, a charge which in the past would have had every newspaper and TV news source in this country howling for investigation.

Halliburton, Harkin, Bechtel, Westar. All involved in a political quid pro quo resulting in massive government contracts. Halliburton, where Dick Cheney served as chairman and CEO, and its affiliates have been given the very lucrative job of rebuilding Iraq.

There is no need for an independent counsel here. No one need dig up the facts. These are the facts, reported by a few brave news outlets, citizen advocacy groups, corporate watchdogs and Internet news sites across this nation. The problem with newspapers is their reader base is localized and not as far-reaching as cable TV's CNN, MSNBC and Fox News or the major network anchor desks. These TV news outlets, all owned by major corporations, have remained eerily silent on this issue of conflict of interest.

The ultimate responsibility for righting this wrong lies in the power of the American citizen's sole possession, which cannot be bought or sold - the vote.

Questioning why nothing is being done about this issue is fair.

SOURCES OF NAMES: Common Cause and “Big Lies: The Right Wing Political Machine and How It Distorts the Truth” by Joe Conason.

TRAVELING BACK to the late 1960s:

I worked in public relations at St. Regis Paper Company’s Ferguson Mill in Monticello, Miss. – at the time the world’s largest paper mill. I know the standards in place at that time to protect the environment and ensure workplace safety. I even remember a home office memo explaining the term “ecology.” Somewhere along the way those standards have been eroded.

BACK TO THE FUTURE:

There is a lesson to be learned here. Will America seize this opportunity and accept the presidnt’s challenge?

Not if the Republican Party can help it.

BJ Trotter

Beach Front BP Property

What would you say to a deal that I could get you a beach front piece of property on the Gulf Coast for $901.60? I’m talking about 150 feet to the beach, 100 feet by 100 feet lot of prime beach front property to put your beach house up on? I have a deal that nobody else can beat for property all along the United States Gulf of Mexico. To qualify all you have to do is spill millions of gallons of oil from a botched oil well and be the CEO of BP aka British Petroleum.

If you do the math, BP is setting up a relief fund of $20 Billion for the spill. There is 1680 miles of coastline inside the Gulf of Mexico that is part of the United States. Work the numbers down and it works out to $2254 for each square foot that touches the ocean. Work the numbers out to the size lot I described above and BINGO is the end result.

I’m disgusted and the worst part of the equation is that they haven’t stopped the spill yet. All of the Gulf Coast states are so screwed. All of the fishing industry can kiss its ass goodbye, if you haven’t seen the documentaries on the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska which was 18 years ago, it decimated the entire fishing community. The population of fish never recovered and the shores are still soaked with oil 18 years later. Same goes for tourist running for the beautiful beaches all along the Gulf. The west coast of Florida is so screwed. All those northerners can save a few bucks and just go down to the basement and sit by the oil tank with a sun lamp and get the same experience. This is an environmental disaster of epic proportions and our nation should be begging for ideas from anyone and everyone.

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Papamoka

Dude’s I did it Man! Whoohooo!

Picture courtesy of the Houston Chronicle

In the gentleman’s club that is our nations capitol there appears to be a little towel snapping and high fives going on over the latest Republican Senator’s sexual adventures outside of marriage. Much like the High School locker rooms where the guys root and cheer when one of the jocks scores with a girl, apparently, they do the same thing in the Senate.

Locker room high school behavior is somewhat a right of passage to adulthood and something to be expected but in a GOP Senatorial meeting? Applauding a Senator that slept around on his wife with a prostitute is not what I would call family values. Maybe they were cheering his creating another family values?

Over at the Houston Chronicle they have this to say about the sexual exploits of Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana.

July 17, 2007, 12:58PM
Senator returns, dodges sex scandal questions

By CHARLES BABINGTON
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Louisiana Sen. David Vitter returned to the Capitol today, apologizing privately to GOP colleagues but refusing to take reporters' questions about a sex scandal that sent him into seclusion for a week.

The first-term Republican said he wanted to resume his normal Senate schedule, but that proved difficult as news crews camped outside his office and chased him down hallways.

In a private weekly luncheon for Republican senators in the Capitol, Vitter briefly spoke and received a round of applause audible outside the room. Vitter told his colleagues he was sorry for the trouble he had caused them, and thanked them for their messages of support, said a senator who heard the speech and described it on background because of the private nature of the luncheons. - Houston Chronicle

Now that the righteous dude Senator has apologized to his wife and the nation does that mean he is good to go and we can trust him with his message on family values? I honestly think we can. He was caught, he fessed up to his bad behavior and his wife forgives him.

Yup, works for me because I am not critical of people in public service that claim the highest pulpit in the church and the government. I think people are too critical because after all it was just hypothetical supposed high school type sex between a Senator and a lady of age, of the night. (Whoooohoooo!) I have to remember to delete that (Whoooohoooo!) before I post this piece.

Ummm, could he have been experimenting on the behalf of the American people with multiple partners to verify that sleeping around can cause and spread sexually transmitted disease? Maybe he was trying to prove that prostitution does exist in America and now he has video to prove it?

Maybe he was counseling the girls in the service to the DC Madame on the ills of the services they provide and that the private sector is the way to really go to make the big bucks? He could have been providing guidance to K Street agencies that could show them the light… or the green?

Then again he could have been testing the latest military night vision weapon systems on unsuspecting woman of the night. That could be why he isn’t talking to the press. Those sort of things are especially TOP SECRET ya know!

Papamoka