Attended Rep. Eric Massa’s Town Hall meeting at Victor High School Auditorium this afternoon/evening. Quite a crowd! I brought fliers for our upcoming “Freedom Flicks” movie night (a 7:00 pm showing of ‘Fiat Empire’) at The German House Theatre Sept. 10 and managed to distribute about 400. Most people were receptive and I was surprised how many had already heard about it.
I arrived around 4:30, an hour before the scheduled start. Grabbing a spot by the main entrance, I found it tough sledding at first. The early arrivals were predominantly supporters of Mr. Massa and his positions. There was a tight lipped determination about them as they strode through quickly looking neither left or right. The offer of a “Free Movie” brought few smiles to their faces. Knowing that they’ve been outnumbered at these events, there seemed an effort to fill the hall as best they could before the arrival of what the media has been describing as “the angry mob”. And arrive they did. There was a steady line of cars snaking slowly onto the campus for well over an hour. When the lots were full they parked up and down High Street. These folks were generally much more receptive and smiling to my offer. Once inside people lined the hallways with no hope of gaining entrance to the overflowing room. They could not hear or see what was happening but they weren’t leaving. Through their presence alone they were willing the course of the debate.
This feels to me like there is much more than health care at play here. Lost jobs, missing pensions, cuts to Social Security, trillion dollar bailouts with no accountability, “hate crime” bills infringing on constitutionally guaranteed free speech, government takeover of the auto industry among others, a continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with looming wars in Pakistan and Iran, amnesty, spending money that we do not have saddling our children’s children with a debt burden they will never be able to repay, has energized the people in way we have not seen before.
I left at 6:45 and went back to work for a bit. Watched the news at 11:00 with footage from inside the Auditorium.
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.”
“Here it is,” Medvedev told reporters today in L’Aquila, Italy, after a summit of the Group of Eight nations. “You can see it and touch it.”
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CBS ” 60 MINUTES” documentary on the swine flu epidemics of 1976 in the U.S. It went on air only once and was never shown again. Please look at this, it speaks for itself.
“I’ve come to admire Michele Bachmann, especially since she nailed Timothy Geithner to the wall while repeatedly asking him what provision in the Constitution gave the Treasury Department the authority to manage markets and the financial services industry.”….
“Five-to-40-year-olds and Canada’s aboriginal communities should be the first to get vaccinated against human swine flu, experts say as Canadian officials decide who gets priority for the flu shots.
Under Canada’s official pandemic plan, the entire population would ultimately be immunized against the H1N1 swine flu.”
…..Over 31,478 American scientists signed a petition in the appendix citing “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
“With recovery elusive, a population doddering into old age and perhaps a decade of deflation in prospect, Japan may start mulling the most radical monetary policy of all – the abolition of cash.”
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I snagged a copy of the NY Times front section at a Starbucks’ yesterday. Turning to the Op-Ed page, I read an editorial by Nicholas Kristoff on the glorified food fight being waged by the Democratic candidates. Most of the editorial has the usual mind-numbing banality that passes for informed opinion today, but I did find one nugget that shows us yet again there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two political parties.
“Meanwhile, the big winner of the Democratic fist-fighting is Senator McCain. A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 19 percent of Mr. Obama’s supporters said they would vote for Mr. McCain in the general election if Mrs. Clinton were the nominee. More startling, 28 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said they would defect to Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama were the nominee.”
Next I suppose comes the stamping of feet and holding of breath. Sheesh. What a bunch.
Then there is this.
I can assure you all, gentle readers, this is reality in America.
……’Now think: How can the silver price drop by nearly $2/oz., when all these reports come in saying that the dealers are sold out, or nearly out, of physical silver? This is the clearest evidence of paper short selling manipulation that I’ve ever seen since I started watching the silver market back in 1999, and I’ve seen a lot of evidence!’…..
‘Sometimes I’m pretty sure I’ve unknowingly fallen into an alternate universe and more and more, I know I am a stranger in a strange land. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this odd change occurred in our society and when it became acceptable to arrest and handcuff young children, but in this brave new world we are living, it seems to be approaching the norm. I wonder where common sense has gone and I ache for the children growing up under these over-the-top rules that have become so popular these days.’
…..”In the 21st century, he said, “You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbor’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos.” …
…”In other words, gold is an inflation hedge. But that is only one of gold’s advantages. There is also another valuable reason to own gold, and significantly, this other reason is becoming increasingly important.
Gold is also a catastrophe hedge. Gold enables us to protect our wealth from a financial meltdown because it does not have counterparty risk.”…
…”Barack Obama faced potential damage to his campaign yesterday after television networks aired footage of sermons by the former pastor of Obama’s church likening the Democratic frontrunner to Jesus and declaring: “God damn America.”
A 10 minute interview with Mike Wallace and a composed defense of her positions on personal liberty and freedom.
I was always lead to believe, through my government schooling, that Ayn Rand was nuts and dangerous. Like many I did not check my government approved opinion with reality, you know like, actually reading any of her work.
‘Rumors are the Paul followers plan to flood the caucuses and will try to overturn the already established rules regarding how Missouri’s delegation will vote at the National Convention in St. Paul this summer.’
The New York Times thinks very little of it’s reader’s intelligence. A lede story most of the day was “Inflation Held Steady In February.”
The inflation model and numbers used by the Fed are hugely misleading. Their ‘core inflation’ rate excludes food and energy prices. A general inflationary statistic arrived at without those staples factored in defines useless. Unless of course one was also using it to figure the annual cost of living increases for our seniors. Hmmmm.
The impunity with which these people both issue and print misinformation is a thing to behold.
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