Tuesday, March 31, 2009

House Operating Budget Press Conference


Thanks to TVW we get to see Rep. Kelli Linville lead a press conference about the House version of the proposed Operating Budget for 2009-2011.

The cuts suck. But the revenue shortfall is not the fault of Washington State's Democrats. It's part of the global economic cluster F..k. If you want to blame someone, blame the greedy MF'er on Wall St. and their deregulating pals inside the beltway...

The Washington State House of Representatives release their proposed 2009-2011 Operating Budget (HB 1244) during a press conference in Olympia.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Democracy For America, 5th B'day Party


It's DfA's 5th Birthday. jpeg and I got together with several other DfA members and joined the birthday party conference call.

It was good to hear Dr., Governor, Chairmen Howard Dean. He introduced "Stand With Dr. Dean"


Listen to the DfA birthdya party conference call:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

"I can't believe it's not insurance."

REP. GARY ACKERMAN: AIG "SNAKE OIL SALESMEN" 03/18/09

Monday, March 16, 2009

randized again....!

Today Thom Hartmann had Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute on and he stated over and over that this economic catastrophe (yet to come, in my opinion) is because of too much regulation...
huh.... Scooby doo moment for sure.... and several repeats of that as he claimed a real free market would work it out. Bad stuff would get "flushed out of the system." and we'd "get rid of bad players".... we just need to let the market place decide.
My big question for the yaron is: when you say get rid of the "bad players" what does that mean? Does it mean they get to take the money and go away?? Do they get to immigrate to Paraguay (land of very large aquifers) and buy up some property?? And what about the State of California's retirees?

I say this is no booboo (or as i like to say..."don't you teenage boy me!!!") this is a crime and I want the "bad players" held responsible, not paid off.

still best said by Stephen Colbert linked in previous post

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Colbert nails this one....

i remember reading rand as a teenager and thinking it was wondraful....my aunt cautioned me and now as i look at our national disorder,(well, one of them) narcissitic personality disorder, it makes sense to me. i love his analysis, "Preachy and Can Be Used To Justify Anything"


Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Doug Ericksen (R-Doom & Gloom)


As we've all come to expect, Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale) once again has declared to reporters that a Bill passed by Democrats will bring on the end of the world.

But this time, Doug seems to be running on auto-pilot. Brad Shannon of the Olympian reports; "Republican Rep. Doug Ericksen of Ferndale warned it will force industry to leave the state, pushing jobs to China."

Doug's statement is really quite odd since the Bill "links grant awards from the Public Works Board and other programs to local government's progress toward state climate-change goals." and has nothing to do with 'industry' ...or any form of private enterprise, for that matter.

Doug has been in the State Legislature for quite a few years and he continually says everything Democrats do is bad for business and magazines like "Forbes" keep rating Washington State up at the top in their yearly "The Best States For Business" articles.

Friday, March 06, 2009

Does Bill O'Reilly Have The Balls To Meet The Challenge?


BillO loves to toss around those labels. He's quick to judge and even quicker to condemn. Now SEIU is challenging him to come find out who they really are. BillO's usual M.O. is to send out one of his flunkies to do an ambush 'interview'. Will he have to guts to go himself and actually learn something?


SEIU Members respond to a baseless attack from Bill O'Reilly by issuing a challenge for the "news" man to walk a day in the shoes of a union member.

Learn more and send a message to BillO: HERE

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Ericksen Alert! - Doug Sez; Damn The Homeless, Protect The NIMBY's


My GoogleNews Alert read:

Breast-feeding in public protected by Wash. bill
Seattle Times - Seattle,WA,USA
Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, said the bill was just another case of the Democratic majority in Olympia mandating what city and county councils can and can't ...

And I thought I'd struck gold... I could see my headline "Ericksen (R-Ferndale) Against Breast-feeding", but no such luck... Ericksen was being quoted about opposing a different Bill.

Even so; does Ericksen (R-NIMBY) think the homeless are a safe target? Or maybe he just thinks nobody here in the 42nd LD is watching his antics...

... House lawmakers also approved a bill that would bar city and county ordinances that unreasonably prevent churches from providing shelter or housing to the homeless. The bill also would block cities and counties from forcing churches to have liability insurance related to their homeless housing operations.

Supporters said local governments that block outreach efforts to the homeless are trampling on a church's religious rights.

But opponents of the measure, including Rep. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, said the bill was just another case of the Democratic majority in Olympia mandating what city and county councils can and can't do.

"From the big brothers in Olympia, this is an interesting piece of legislation," Ericksen said. "Nobody is against the free expression of religion, but ... there are certain groups who have tried to utilize this exemption to be able to go into certain places and exercise a political agenda."

...full article

Monday, March 02, 2009

t boone alert ....again

For some mysterious reason, as I prepared to listen to Thom Hartmann today, a segment of a David Bender show where he had t boone pickens on as his guest, started playing. I was horrified to hear David Bender singing the praises of t boone pickens. Wow!

Not one important question was asked of him. Not a single mention of hydraulic fracture drilling or the mystery chemicals used in the barbaric practice or how the big natural gas boys are planning more drilling all over the country and they don’t think it’s any of our damn business what chemicals they are using.

He says t boone has a new clean energy plan for America. No more of that “nasty foreign oil.” This man is using barbaric techniques to extract our natural gas from the earth to profit enormously selling it back to us. And he can't seem to buy up enough water in Texas. He is being adulated as our great new innovator-in-chief as the extracting of natural gas is poisoning our precious drinking water.

David went on and on about how the t boone man had been sooooo patriotic to spend $58,000,000 of his own money to help America. He couldn’t promote him enough!!! Yikes! Hey t boone…. Stop doing America your favors….

A real hero would be someone who was indeed trying to move us to solar and wind AND most importantly helping us power down, as if our lives depended on it, and preparing us to share the dwindling resources of planet earth, NOT POISONING OUR WATER! I hope our leaders and representatives don’t drink the kool aide, but I fear they will. And the marketing (lobbyists) is the slickest, most bankrolled the world has seen. Wheeee…get out your grandchildren and great….great….great….great.…great….great grandchildren’s credit cards cuz seven generations is being reinvented by some very greedy people.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies?
by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - November 13, 2008 1:00 pm EST


In July, a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyo., and pulled up a load of brown oily
water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed
to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level
safe for people.
The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies.
Sublette County is the home of one of the nation's largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing [2], which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study [3] (PDF) by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.


Cathy Behr (Credit: Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)

.........In mid-August, the Colorado debate intensified when news broke that Cathy Behr, an emergency room nurse in Durango, Colo., had almost died after treating a wildcatter who had been splashed in a fracking fluid spill at a BP natural gas rig. Behr stripped the man and stuffed his clothes into plastic bags while the hospital sounded alarms and locked down the ER. The worker was released. But a few days later Behr lay in critical condition facing multiple organ failure.

Her doctors searched for details that could save their patient. The substance was a drill stimulation fluid called ZetaFlow, but the only information the rig workers provided was a vague Material Safety Data Sheet, a form required by OSHA. Doctors wanted to know precisely what chemicals make up ZetaFlow and in what concentration. But the MSDS listed that information as proprietary. Behr’s doctor learned, weeks later, after Behr had begun to recuperate, what ZetaFlow was made of, but he was sworn to secrecy by the chemical’s manufacturer and couldn’t even share the information with his patient.

News of Behr’s case spread to New York and Pennsylvania, amplifying the cry for disclosure of drilling fluids. The energy industry braced for a fight.

........Thanks in large part to hydraulic fracturing, natural gas drilling has vastly expanded across the United States. In 2007, there were 449,000 gas wells in 32 states, thirty percent more than in 2000. By 2012 the nation could be drilling 32,000 new wells a year, including some in the watershed that provides drinking water to New York City and Philadelphia [4], some five percent of the nation's population.

The rush to drill comes in part because newly identified gas reserves offer the nation an opportunity to wean itself from oil.

Natural gas, as T. Boone Pickens said recently, is "cleaner, cheaper… abundant, and ours." Burning gas, used primarily to heat homes and make electricity, emits 23 percent less carbon dioxide than burning oil. Gas is the country's second-largest domestic energy resource, after coal.
full article


earlier t boone alert