They had one very bad, extremely bad, day. Kind of showed all their cards. Were enough of us paying attention to be able to do anything about it? Let's hope. I think not, but I think they were slightly wounded...
http://realitybyalex.blogspot.com/2014/01/gop-on-parade.html
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Extortion
http://realitybyalex.blogspot.com/2014/01/markets-and-sotu.html
Either way, it's a win-win for the richest and most powerful, and a lose-lose for all the rest of us.
Either way, it's a win-win for the richest and most powerful, and a lose-lose for all the rest of us.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
I Predicted This
Elizabeth Warren Isn’t Running so Hillary Clinton Will Face No Dem Opposition in ’16
But it seems, not here. I'm giving myself a "win" on this one, though. My FaceBook postings will show that I said this well before this article. Warren will have much more influence in the Senate for the next 14 years or so, or as long as she wants. She is the new progressive "Lion of the Senate" as is befitting of the Ted Kennedy seat she holds.
I would like to see her get more help by Russ Feingold rejoining the Senate. We could get some shit done, there...
But it seems, not here. I'm giving myself a "win" on this one, though. My FaceBook postings will show that I said this well before this article. Warren will have much more influence in the Senate for the next 14 years or so, or as long as she wants. She is the new progressive "Lion of the Senate" as is befitting of the Ted Kennedy seat she holds.
I would like to see her get more help by Russ Feingold rejoining the Senate. We could get some shit done, there...
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Cleaning Up
It's time to check in on my "hit" record on these Wild Ass Guesses. Why? Because it's late, I'm up, and I just went through the past posts to review.
Let's see....:
Rhino Virus. Missed by a mile. My cold came and went within a week, and I had time to catch another 48 hour bug that passed with a bit of distress about a month later. I'm an old wreck of a human being, but the colds are at bay at least.
"Off" and "On". Meh. About average. I'd call it close.
Celebrity Deaths. What did you expect? Of course that one is on. That's not a guess. That's statistics (an art I'm not even close to understanding, BTW). Whatever. There's a lot of old celebs. And young reckless ones.
TV News Distraction Alert. Never heard another peep about it. Anyone else? Miss.
Next Ten Years. We have a ways to go. So far, so good.
Readership. Comes and goes depending on my diligence, which is always lacking. Mostly goes... Meh.
MacGillicuddy's Reeks. I just hope someone enjoyed the tune.
Paul Simon Was Right. Well, what did you expect? Of course he was.
Nontipping Homophobe. Screwed that one up entirely. Never expected the server to be a duplicitous psycho.
Dr. Ben Carson. Dead on.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/10/ben-carson-nazi-germany_n_4761388.html
My Right Wing Competition. I'm not doing so great, but they set the bar low. Piece of cake.
Speaking of Prognosticators. She's still dead, last I heard. The other two? We probably won't get that lucky.
THIS is Our Future. Still pending. But, yeah.
Sylvia Brown, Fraud, Con is Dead. Still dead. I'm not privy to her book sales tallies, but I'm sure her necrophiliac fans are keeping her corpse financially afloat.
Snowfall. I'm no meteorologist, that much is certain.
NCAA Football Champions. Nailed it. Still don't know or care who won.
$60,000. Nailed it. Still under-reported environmental rape going on all over the place. Still no damage to the bottom line of any company or anyone going to jail.
Death of Religion. Maybe 4 or 5. But it's coming faster than we think.
Battle for $15. Should be for $28, but no, it's not going to win. We're going to be screwed. It's the American Way.
The others are from this year. I may update or not... Thanks for watching.
Let's see....:
Rhino Virus. Missed by a mile. My cold came and went within a week, and I had time to catch another 48 hour bug that passed with a bit of distress about a month later. I'm an old wreck of a human being, but the colds are at bay at least.
"Off" and "On". Meh. About average. I'd call it close.
Celebrity Deaths. What did you expect? Of course that one is on. That's not a guess. That's statistics (an art I'm not even close to understanding, BTW). Whatever. There's a lot of old celebs. And young reckless ones.
TV News Distraction Alert. Never heard another peep about it. Anyone else? Miss.
Next Ten Years. We have a ways to go. So far, so good.
Readership. Comes and goes depending on my diligence, which is always lacking. Mostly goes... Meh.
MacGillicuddy's Reeks. I just hope someone enjoyed the tune.
Paul Simon Was Right. Well, what did you expect? Of course he was.
Nontipping Homophobe. Screwed that one up entirely. Never expected the server to be a duplicitous psycho.
Dr. Ben Carson. Dead on.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/10/ben-carson-nazi-germany_n_4761388.html
My Right Wing Competition. I'm not doing so great, but they set the bar low. Piece of cake.
Speaking of Prognosticators. She's still dead, last I heard. The other two? We probably won't get that lucky.
THIS is Our Future. Still pending. But, yeah.
Sylvia Brown, Fraud, Con is Dead. Still dead. I'm not privy to her book sales tallies, but I'm sure her necrophiliac fans are keeping her corpse financially afloat.
Snowfall. I'm no meteorologist, that much is certain.
NCAA Football Champions. Nailed it. Still don't know or care who won.
$60,000. Nailed it. Still under-reported environmental rape going on all over the place. Still no damage to the bottom line of any company or anyone going to jail.
Memo to many in West Virginia: Don't drink the water
Prison Population Will Continue to Grow and Show Profit. Well, yeah. Lobbyists will win when there's money to be made. There is no vocal opposition here of any consequence, and probably won't be.Death of Religion. Maybe 4 or 5. But it's coming faster than we think.
Battle for $15. Should be for $28, but no, it's not going to win. We're going to be screwed. It's the American Way.
The others are from this year. I may update or not... Thanks for watching.
Bridges Rethought and the GOP in '16
I'm probably overstating my case. Politics is no longer about chances. It's about money. And even a losing campaign makes a shit-ton of cash. And a cash flow that continues long after the run. Even (and here's where it gets interesting) campaigns by people that are not actually running. Think Sarah Palin. No. I can't back up a damn thing here. I may have overstated it. Call it a hunch. A working hypothesis. Another angle. We will probably never know. I'm saying Christie would not have run. And even if he ran, he would not have RUN...I could be wrong. But the math and the history, and the situation would say he would still be happy in the Jersey Governor's Mansion.
There's more coming out about the bridge story. Rachel Maddow tonight made a good case that the Mayor of Fort Lee was not the target, if there was a target, or a motive. This may be more serpentine than we can even guess yet. One way or another, Christie may not be out of the woods yet. Or we may be reading the whole thing wrong...
Perry, Santorum, and Cain...Any of them could publish a book about anything they want....Cain? A book about numerology where all the answers to everything prove Douglas Adams was wrong with "42". Everything is "999"... Perry could publish a book called "My Wonderful Summers at N*****head." Santorum? Well....fill in your own jokes... And they would all find buyers and money on a lecture tour. Santorum may be stupid enough to think he was a serious candidate. The others? ...Politics as performance art.
There is no road to the White House from anyone in the GOP that is part of the noise machine, or the clown car. The guys that really scare me are the ones just under the radar, the money guys that are not necessarily darlings of the tea baggers, but haven't pissed them off yet. Kasich and Thune come to mind. They would be the toughest. But come the general, and they will have to take on, or at least answer to, some of the wing nut baggage.
There's more coming out about the bridge story. Rachel Maddow tonight made a good case that the Mayor of Fort Lee was not the target, if there was a target, or a motive. This may be more serpentine than we can even guess yet. One way or another, Christie may not be out of the woods yet. Or we may be reading the whole thing wrong...
Perry, Santorum, and Cain...Any of them could publish a book about anything they want....Cain? A book about numerology where all the answers to everything prove Douglas Adams was wrong with "42". Everything is "999"... Perry could publish a book called "My Wonderful Summers at N*****head." Santorum? Well....fill in your own jokes... And they would all find buyers and money on a lecture tour. Santorum may be stupid enough to think he was a serious candidate. The others? ...Politics as performance art.
There is no road to the White House from anyone in the GOP that is part of the noise machine, or the clown car. The guys that really scare me are the ones just under the radar, the money guys that are not necessarily darlings of the tea baggers, but haven't pissed them off yet. Kasich and Thune come to mind. They would be the toughest. But come the general, and they will have to take on, or at least answer to, some of the wing nut baggage.
Christie's Bridge
Is it just me? No. It's the 24 hour total news cycles on far too many
networks. Laziness and cost analysis vs actual old-school journalism. A
local newspaper cracked the story, the e-mails are leaked, the Governor
is firing people and making apologies. There may possibly be more to the
story, but until there is, we'll be getting more of the same thing,
over and over and over...
But the heart of the story, the thing that makes it a story, is what affect it will have on Christie's chances in the 2016 presidential campaign. I'll tell you right now. The affect is zero. There are several reasons possible as to why.
1. The electorate, particularly the GOP, is very forgetful. By the time the political season starts heating up in anticipation of the Iowa straw polls, the details of this fiasco will be swept under the rug.
2. Those that will remember will be very forgiving considering that to them the only issue of any bearing is to defeat whatever "godless commie" the Dems will put up.
3. And most importantly, Christie never had a chance in the first place, and likely was smart enough to know not to even bother to run. He's thought of as a "moderate" among Republicans, and in the current vernacular, to the GOP, he probably is. But he isn't. Not in any real sense of the word. Yet, he's "moderate" enough to lose support from the true believers in the furthest fringes of the party. And those furthest fringes are what control the message of the party. And the bifurcation of the GOP won't let him run to the right or to the middle.
He's going to have to couch his rhetoric to different tones to different groups, and that kills his image of the shoot from the hip guy that tells it like it is. Which, BTW is nothing but image. He's both the beneficiary and the hostage of his own bluster. And I'm pretty sure he knows it. And I make this prediction. He won't run.
The bridge controversy pretty much kills any thought he may have had. But the truth is, he was never going to run in the first place. He can make his amends to the State of New Jersey, maybe. He may be able to heal the wounds and save his governorship. Even that is touch and go now. But he can do the national math. That was never in his grasp in the first place.
He may even make a play at Iowa, or New Hampshire, but it will be halfhearted. There will be financial backers that may insist he show up. He will be trounced before he gets out of the gate. The GOP is not in the mood to award or encourage "moderates" after Mitt Romney. They will go down in flames, but they will fall on their glorious sword with a true believer. Nuttiness will rule the day, and we're looking at an assured GOP defeat.
Forget the current polls. The front-runners going into Iowa will be Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan. And if the GOP decides to not go full blown "Ray Comfort" (look it up) , it will be John Kasich, who scares me more than any of the others.
Richard Cohen seems to agree:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-christies-tea-party-problem/2013/11/11/a1ffaa9c-4b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html
But the heart of the story, the thing that makes it a story, is what affect it will have on Christie's chances in the 2016 presidential campaign. I'll tell you right now. The affect is zero. There are several reasons possible as to why.
1. The electorate, particularly the GOP, is very forgetful. By the time the political season starts heating up in anticipation of the Iowa straw polls, the details of this fiasco will be swept under the rug.
2. Those that will remember will be very forgiving considering that to them the only issue of any bearing is to defeat whatever "godless commie" the Dems will put up.
3. And most importantly, Christie never had a chance in the first place, and likely was smart enough to know not to even bother to run. He's thought of as a "moderate" among Republicans, and in the current vernacular, to the GOP, he probably is. But he isn't. Not in any real sense of the word. Yet, he's "moderate" enough to lose support from the true believers in the furthest fringes of the party. And those furthest fringes are what control the message of the party. And the bifurcation of the GOP won't let him run to the right or to the middle.
He's going to have to couch his rhetoric to different tones to different groups, and that kills his image of the shoot from the hip guy that tells it like it is. Which, BTW is nothing but image. He's both the beneficiary and the hostage of his own bluster. And I'm pretty sure he knows it. And I make this prediction. He won't run.
The bridge controversy pretty much kills any thought he may have had. But the truth is, he was never going to run in the first place. He can make his amends to the State of New Jersey, maybe. He may be able to heal the wounds and save his governorship. Even that is touch and go now. But he can do the national math. That was never in his grasp in the first place.
He may even make a play at Iowa, or New Hampshire, but it will be halfhearted. There will be financial backers that may insist he show up. He will be trounced before he gets out of the gate. The GOP is not in the mood to award or encourage "moderates" after Mitt Romney. They will go down in flames, but they will fall on their glorious sword with a true believer. Nuttiness will rule the day, and we're looking at an assured GOP defeat.
Forget the current polls. The front-runners going into Iowa will be Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan. And if the GOP decides to not go full blown "Ray Comfort" (look it up) , it will be John Kasich, who scares me more than any of the others.
Richard Cohen seems to agree:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-christies-tea-party-problem/2013/11/11/a1ffaa9c-4b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
The Pseudo-pros Take on 2014
I'm just doing this as a lark, and I'm not doing so great (as expected). But here is what "professional" psychics and seers are predicting for 2014. It'll be here to check over at the end of the year...
http://paranormal.about.com/od/prophetsandprophecies/tp/Psychic-Predictions-for-2014.htm
http://paranormal.about.com/od/prophetsandprophecies/tp/Psychic-Predictions-for-2014.htm
Monday, January 6, 2014
On the Coldest Night of the Year
http://realitybyalex.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-naked-man.html
Randy Newman:
The Famous Naked Man
It's sub-zero freezing in Ohio. Not as bad as much of the country is going through. Certainly not as bad as the homeless are dealing with.
We have two, maybe three days of this to deal with in Ohio, then temps move up to more reasonable, seasonable degrees. We'll get a mid-winter thaw at the end of the month. Maybe see the mid-50's. We'll almost forget this shit-frozen wasteland. For us, it's next to nothing. Temps will dip again before the end of the season, but not this bad. We'll remember this as a mild winter, excepting this anomaly.
Thus I speak. Thus will happen. (Eh, 50/50, or worse...)
"The winter time is coming, the windows are full of frost"
Currently reading -7 according to Yahoo.
Updated at 2:45... -11.
Randy Newman:
The Famous Naked Man
It's sub-zero freezing in Ohio. Not as bad as much of the country is going through. Certainly not as bad as the homeless are dealing with.
We have two, maybe three days of this to deal with in Ohio, then temps move up to more reasonable, seasonable degrees. We'll get a mid-winter thaw at the end of the month. Maybe see the mid-50's. We'll almost forget this shit-frozen wasteland. For us, it's next to nothing. Temps will dip again before the end of the season, but not this bad. We'll remember this as a mild winter, excepting this anomaly.
Thus I speak. Thus will happen. (Eh, 50/50, or worse...)
"The winter time is coming, the windows are full of frost"
Currently reading -7 according to Yahoo.
Updated at 2:45... -11.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Predictions for the Coming Year
Seems to be about average. I have a few things I'll disagree with.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/01/what-will-happen-in-2014-a-bluffers-guide.html
1. Can he? Sure. Will he? The author hedges his bets. A lot of things are happening in the world, many out of the President's hands, but seemingly his fault. Some things he's just not going to do right. Cards on the table? I'm going to generally like what he does, but his approval numbers will be flat or down by the end of the year.
2. Nope. The economy and politicians will focus on Fed policy instead of jobs, minimum wages, and economic inequality. As the bottom and middle lose buying power, a trend I predict will continue, any economic growth will be illusory.
3. Nope. It's way too easy to attack for all the wrong reasons, and there are powers that have strong motive for such attacks. We should have single payer. No-muss, no-fuss.
4. Again. Can they, or will they? I think they can. But they will trip over their own tongues. The extremists are all that's left steering their ship. They can't shut up. So, no.
5. Yes. No brainer.
6. Whether they do or not depends less on us than we think, and more on their Arab neighbors. And the insanity that is Islam. So, I'm going to call this a coin flip that leans toward no.
7. No. For all the reasons the author states, plus, the insanity that is Islam.
8. A brief cease fire, maybe. Lasting and meaningful peace? Be serious...
9. Yes.
10. I have no idea. Never seen one. Never seen anyone buy a drink at a bar with one. Out of my realm.
11. Yes. Eventually. This year? Coin flip. But the underlying problem of speculation rather than rebuilding a viable working class will doom any real stable growth, and no one is really going to attack that. I refer you to this article:
http://www.liberalamerica.org/2014/01/02/killed-red-lobster/
12. Who knows? Most popular sport in the world. A lot of people care. I'm not one of them. Who won the last time?
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/01/what-will-happen-in-2014-a-bluffers-guide.html
1. Can he? Sure. Will he? The author hedges his bets. A lot of things are happening in the world, many out of the President's hands, but seemingly his fault. Some things he's just not going to do right. Cards on the table? I'm going to generally like what he does, but his approval numbers will be flat or down by the end of the year.
2. Nope. The economy and politicians will focus on Fed policy instead of jobs, minimum wages, and economic inequality. As the bottom and middle lose buying power, a trend I predict will continue, any economic growth will be illusory.
3. Nope. It's way too easy to attack for all the wrong reasons, and there are powers that have strong motive for such attacks. We should have single payer. No-muss, no-fuss.
4. Again. Can they, or will they? I think they can. But they will trip over their own tongues. The extremists are all that's left steering their ship. They can't shut up. So, no.
5. Yes. No brainer.
6. Whether they do or not depends less on us than we think, and more on their Arab neighbors. And the insanity that is Islam. So, I'm going to call this a coin flip that leans toward no.
7. No. For all the reasons the author states, plus, the insanity that is Islam.
8. A brief cease fire, maybe. Lasting and meaningful peace? Be serious...
9. Yes.
10. I have no idea. Never seen one. Never seen anyone buy a drink at a bar with one. Out of my realm.
11. Yes. Eventually. This year? Coin flip. But the underlying problem of speculation rather than rebuilding a viable working class will doom any real stable growth, and no one is really going to attack that. I refer you to this article:
http://www.liberalamerica.org/2014/01/02/killed-red-lobster/
12. Who knows? Most popular sport in the world. A lot of people care. I'm not one of them. Who won the last time?
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Happy New Year. I'm Going to Party Like It's 1984
http://realitybyalex.blogspot.com/2013/11/cbs-news-sells-out.html
We are sinking faster into a corporate fascist state with no protections. Happy New Year. The trend will continue to accelerate, and we won't know that we did ourselves in. Have a wonderful 1984/2014.
We are sinking faster into a corporate fascist state with no protections. Happy New Year. The trend will continue to accelerate, and we won't know that we did ourselves in. Have a wonderful 1984/2014.
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