“He wants to share his ideology with the citizens. He will make all of his proposals known in the days ahead,” said Governor Jim Gibbons press secretary, Dan Burns.
No, no Dan. I don’t need any more of Jim’s ideology.
A dose of reality and critical thinking might be better as we slide down the rat hole to bankruptcy. Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons did another standup impersonation of this man:
Delusional and deranged.
First things first: can the Governor and everybody else quit talking like the state of Nevada is some sort of Walton’s style Mom and Pop enterprise, with us all sitting down around the old kitchen table with a chewed up pencil and a scrap of paper. Ma and Pa Kettle deciding whether to cut education a little or a lot. State finances and responsibilities are, ummm, a bit more complicated than that. This homespun bullshit is designed to get our brains going in a direction other than to the heart of the matter.
If we are going to model the state after families, then I gotta tell you that although this family - here at Rancho Maven - has cut back on some non-essentials, we haven’t quit investing in our future. We continue to spend money where it has the best chance of an enhanced ROI. We continue to improve our home (the structure and systems), we get needed medical checkups and care (can’t afford to be sick due to neglect), we service our cars and continue to invest money wisely.
Pulling the plug on education or medical services would be stupid in the extreme.
This is why I can’t support the suggested rollbacks in K-12 education, higher education or Medicaid and essential social services.
Gibbons can close the prison in Carson City today, and if he has his way with education cuts, can open it back up a few years from now.
Throwing money at anything is never the right strategy. Insisting that the money which goes to each sector is a different thing.
Perhaps an audit of education and medical/social services would be in order to find out just how wisely the current funds are being spent. That’s what a wise business person would do, before they went nuts with the budget axe.
Watching the Sunday morning round of political shows, I listened to Alan Greenspan deliver his whiskered old dogma that lowering taxes would certainly help bring the economy out of its funk. Then, an ad came up for the woman who would like to replace Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, Sue Lowden.
Sue is an all American success story.
Family from the old sod that came to American to work in the coal mines. Sue bused tables in New Jersey to take the runner up place at the Miss America pagent, and fly off with Bob Hope on a USO tour.
Or something like that. It’s the same old political ad.
Her plan for success in Nevada: lowering taxes.
I wish it were that easy. Simple cause and effect.
I got an email today from a retired airline captain, miltary pilot, sort of friend. You’d think with all that experience he’d maybe do a little fact checking. But no, like too many folks these days, he takes it all at face value.
I say this knowing that he never reads blogs. They could be socialist. Only Liberals have time for that.
That’s the new style patriot for you. Gullible, intellectually lazy and ill-informed.
This guy isn’t an idiot, just another so-called ‘conservative’ - who is afraid to challenge his deeply held beliefs with five minutes - or less - of fact checking.
At issue: the old, whiskered hoax email that circulated around during the 2008 presidential campaign about that evil socialist, Obama and his flag burning wife.
It’s the email hoax that won’t die, thanks to people who don’t question anything and are too quick with the FWD button.
It’s attributed to a Dale Lindsborg of the Washington Post. Unfortunately, in less than two minutes of research, I found that there is not, nor has ever been, a Dale Lindsborg at the Washington Post.
Here’s my source, from the Washington Post- note that I give you the source material:
On this eveings KOLO-TV evening news, Tad Dunbar was doing a lead-in for his Dunbar Report show, d offering the following:
Nevada First Lady, Dawn Gibbons - First Lady until the divorce is final, that is - will be hosting her last official function at the Governor’s Mansion in Carson City, Nevada.
She will be hosting a benefit for former prostitutes. The effort is designed to help the’ ladies’ find both self respect and a path to a better life.
I sat there thinking “Wait for it.”
Tad paused artfully, and went to say what had just raced through my brain,
From reported comments by Conservative leaders regarding the ‘Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell’ policy that encouraged military gays and lesbians to stay in the closet:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in October 2009 that for a reversal of DADT to be successful, there would have to be a “buy-in by the military.”
“They should be included in this,” said Graham. “I am open-minded to what the military may suggest, but I can tell you, I’m not going to make policy based on a campaign rally.”
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — “God wanted us to come here to help children, we are convinced of that,” Laura Silsby, one of 10 Americans accused of trafficking Haitian children, said Monday through the bars of a jail cell here. “Our hearts were in the right place.”
Unfortunately, their brains were somewhere else - south and in back. Where it’s really dark. So to speak. You’d think that this group had heard about what the road to Hell was paved with.
This bunch tried to smuggle 33 children out of the country, but were detained at the Dominican Republic-Haitian border. Now they’re in a Haitian jail cell - which can’t be nice - and people are understandably upset.
The 10 missionaries are mostly from Idaho. Sorta figures.
I admit that I didn’t used to care much for Nancy Pelosi. I’ve come a long way and it’s statements like this - on bandaid fixs for health care - that did it for me:
“There are some things that sound easy, but you might as well send somebody a get well card, because they don’t have any more impact, except maybe they make you feel good for the moment,” said Pelosi, who paused and rethought her comparison.
“Maybe a get well card might be more effective, as a matter of fact, because it’s sincere,” she said.
While on the treadmill this afternoon - yes, the knee is still sensitive, so I’m taking it easy - I happened to spot the following commercial:
WTF? Are there really people out there who would actually spend money to buy an EZ Cracker? I mean that sounds like the local bar fly at Joe Bob’s Bar and Jiffy Lube Joint.
Today was my first bike ride of the year. Woo-hoo. I didn’t have time to go ski, and my knee is having issues with the treadmill suddenly. But for January, a quick 10 miles wasn’t half shabby.
It’s been a busy weekend. Between dinner and lunch engagements and a trip to the Nevada Museum of Art to see the amazing Raphael painting, ‘La Velata’. If you haven’t been to see the piece, you should. It isn’t everyday that you get an opportunity to see one of the most famous paintings in the world, by one of the three greatest masters of Rennaissance art. I hadn’t seen ‘La Velata’ for nearly 35 years, and she’s perhaps more extraordinary today. The NMA has done a wonderful job of curating the work for maximum enjoyment.
I’ve been playing around with Google maps to get a view of places that I used to live. Whoa! Is that weird. The house that I was born and raised in Hialeah, Florida (5795 East 5th Avenue) is very nice now, and has a swimming pool in the backyard. I wish we’d had that then. My mothers house- on the old Murray-Holladay Road - in Salt Lake City isn’t there any more, with fancy condominiums in its place. My old house on Fairoaks Drive in Salt Lake City is just the same, just as neat, but with some landscaping changes.
We need more of this. A whole lot more. In the following video, you can watch President Obama got at it with his Republican opponents, in what feels more like the free for all type of debate we’ve watched in the Houses of Parliament.
It’s time for Obama to stand up there and take his lumps and fight for whatever might be left of a Liberal - and no, that isn’t a dirty word - agenda. If I wanted him to take the easy road - to the center, AKA right - I would have voted for the other guy.
I had to sleep on this one. It wasn’t that we didn’t like the speech. Mr. Maven gave it an A+. I gave it an A-. As speeches go - and I’ve delivered more than a few - it was right up there. But it was more speech than substance.
We watched a State of the Union that was less about how we’re going to dig ourselves out of this mess, than a Leno-esque opening monologue - getting the applause and laughs all in the right places. Which may have been the right tack when you consider the deeply noxious and angry tone of American politics over the last year.
“We all hated the bank bailout.” (applause and laughs)
I’ve been complaining for a very long time now about how foolish local governments can be when they bend over for sports teams and promoters.
Government’s job is to govern - and to provide the essential services that we all depend on. Fire, police, roads cleared of snow, social services and that sort of thing. I just could never quite put my finger on where in government charters it said to put taxpayers on the hook for a sports team and their stadium.
You’re always made to feel like a jerk when you play the Devil’s Advocate for a deal like a baseball team. Gee, you’re a Scrooge who doesn’t want Joe Bob to spend a wonderful summer evening with the wife and kids, watching the all American pastime.
I’ve never been a fan if ie, but was simply too lazy to move. Now, however, Mozilla Firefox - the hands down choice of tech savvy users - made it simply too easy to stay.
Again, tonight, the ie browser was hanging repeatedly. Oh, so tiresome. This is also really bad when I’ve just about finished a blog post - and am so into the subject matter that I forget to repeatedly ‘save’. It’s just unnecessary anxiety to shut down the entire browser and restart it. Also, I use a particular stock art and photo service, and was constantly having issues with their incompatibility with ie.
Since I’m working with software developers on a huge web-based software start up, I had plenty of encouragement at work to make the switcheroo.
Face it:
Firefox is the model that ie was crafted from. Mozilla Firefox is far more stable - especially with videos and multiple picture downloads - and far, far more secure.
Further, Firefox simply loads pages way faster, taking advantge of it’s ability to better deal with CSS and table rendering times. Staying with slow old ie made no sense after having upgraded both my computer and going to fiberoptic AT&T Uverse internet service.
I had tried Firefox a long time ago and found it clunky and harder to deal with - fit only for geeks. Not so of the new and improved Firefox.
Within minutes I had everything from ie transferred over, and had nicely customized the page look. Firefox is way more streamlined, too, unloading the unnecessary crap that ie loads up with.
There are times, when I tend to think of Nevada as just another state, rather than Grand Central Station of the Weirdo Universe. Think of it, just at the end of last week, I blogged about seeing Itzhak Perlman live on stage here in Reno, Nevada. This week, I’m reading about the first ‘prostidude’ - or gigolo -‘ Markus’, at the Shady Lady brothel.
Here’s where it gets weird.
He says he’s doing something right on a par with Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to go to the back of the bus during the civil rights era. Really. I think his I.Q. might match his neck measurement.
If that weren’t enough, the ‘girls’ are upset that he won’t be ‘doing it’ with their male customers. And, the other legal brothel owners are afraid that it will put undue atttention on the worlds’ oldest profession, perhaps causing it be declared illegal again. Right. That’ll happen just after gambling - oops, ‘gaming’ - is declared illegal.
Oh, my! The Itzhak Perlman performance last night at the Pioneer Center was, perhaps, the highlight of my week. Perlman has still ‘got it’ in great musical abundance, as he seemed to communicate via telepathy with pianist Rohan De Silva.
My favorite piece was the 1933 Suite Italienne for violin & piano, by Igor Stravinsky. Adapted from the eighteenth century works of Giambattista Pergolesi, Stravinsky himself described it as the “the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible.” For me, it musically evokes the entire zeitgeist of modernism, much like Raymond Loewy did for industrial design.
Even better, Natacha went with me. I asked her if she’d ever been to a live classical performance before. She hadn’t. Her only previous experience with classics was hearing a Mozart CD back in Africa. I think more tickets are in order. She really loved the experience.
Furthermore, the performance was a welcome bit of time away from the Haiti overload. I feel guilty even saying that. The people there can’t escape it.
The goods news is that Haitian kids - from the Gods’ Littlest Angelsorphanage - are already with new adoptive families in the United States, and the push is on to find desperately needed medical supplies for the incoming orphans.
I know we can’t quit this effort. In fact, I’m already beginning to see the smallest stirrings of incredible potential for some many good things to come of this catastrophe - if we don’t falter.
Here’s a concept to mull over: what about putting GLA or your favorite Haitian charity in an automatic billpay, so that $25 or more goes every month for the rest of the year?
I don’t know about how you manage to piss away $25, I know I spill that much in liquor.
It’s all so bizarre … an unapologetic secular humanist atheist helping a very religiously based orphanage. Or, at least it’s weird until you see the faces of those kids. That seems to transcend philosophical differences.
So, besides Haiti, what would you say defines this week?
I say it’s the outrage that just came out of the Supreme Court in the form of a decision that, essentially, says: all bets are off, and corporate America trumps the average flesh and blood voter.
That’s right. Bloodless, artificial entities - bundles of contracts - are being given the same First Amendment speech rights as you and I. This is pure deviltry and could completely destroy our representative democracy.
As Colorado Senator, Michael Bennet says: ” This new ruling allows corporations to flood our political system with unlimited contributions, effectively drowning out any citizen’s voice opposed to corporate interests.”
The good news here: Public Citizen is mounting a campaign to stop this deliberate hijacking of democracy. I hope you will join them. Go to the Public Citizen website and learn more, then contact your representatives and senators to tell them that they need to enact immediate legislative relief from this wrongheaded decision.
Here is analysis by Shields and Brooks (in the last part of the video):
Here’s another bright spot: Just when you thought Obama had retired, he’s actually getting tough with the banking and financial industry - essentially doing what I’ve been whining about for a year now - and re-instituting the Glas-Stegall Act. This would again separate banks from outfits like Goldman-Sachs. The point here is to protect FDIC - taxpayer protected savings - from greedy highbinders who want to play games with derivatives et al.
It also looks like Elizabeth Warren might get her wish, and the American people get some protection, with a real financial consumer protection agency. I hope. I hope.
Now if Obama would get rid of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner - neither of whom wanted these reforms - and get some people in there with a more populist bent that aren’t married to Wall Street ….
And, finally a totally cool thing may happen in New Mexico.
If you’re a regular reader you may have noticed the Move Your Money campaign, started by Arianna Huffington and a few others. It’s about moving your money out of the banks that are ‘too big to fail’ like Bank of America, Wells Fargo et al.
“New Mexico state representative Brian Egolf has introduced a bill to move the state’s money out of Bank of America and into banks and credit unions chartered in New Mexico.”
And, Governor Bill Richardson is onboard, too. Luv ya, Bill ! (I was an early Richardson supporter in 2008).
Rock on!!
Well, I’m going to dive into a cold Manhattan now.
Oh, hey L. C. … sorry that I wasn’t working this afternoon and unavailable:
Have a wonderful weekend. Sunday could be an awesome morning for skiing after the snow dump we’ve had lately.
Ed Pearce of KOLO-TV, the ABC affiliate in Reno, Nevada has this interview:
These days Lori Carpenter’s thoughts rarely stray from people she knows thousands of miles away in Haiti.
Work continues at her hydrology consulting firm in south Reno, but she works the phone and computer keeping an eye on an orphanage outside Port Au Prince.
Carpenter is on the board of directors of God’s Littlest Angels orphanage and she’s been trying to get some of its children out of the country and trying to get supplies in.
Today’s news is good. Seventy eight children left for new homes in the U-S, making room for a few of the hundreds of thousands of new orphans created by the earthquake.
Just in to my mailbox from Senator Harry Reid’s office:
REID: HAITIAN TAX BENEFIT INITIATIVE PROMOTES AMERICAN SPIRIT OF GOODWILL
Washington, DC—Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement this evening after the Senate passed a measure that creates incentives for immediate charitable giving to relief efforts in Haiti following the devastating earthquake there earlier this month:
This hasn’t even reached the news media yet, but I just got a phone call that 78 Haitian children from the God’s Littlest Angels orphanage are being prepared to board a United States Air Force military transport for Miami, Florida where they will be met by their adoptive families.
Dixie Bickel, co-founder of the GLA orphanage, will accompany them and then head right back to Port-au-Prince to process 12 more ophaned children.
MEDICAL NEED UPDATE: There is, according to Dixie, an urgent need for Tetanus vaccine for the incoming children.
Even before Tuesday’s deadly magnitude-7.0 earthquake, Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, was awash in orphans, with 380,000 children living in orphanages or group homes, the United Nations Children’s Fund reported on its Web site. This was the result of repeated natural disasters like hurricanes in addition to crushing poverty unlike any other country in the hemisphere.
The number of ophaned children now in immediate need is anticipated by some agencies to grow to nearly one million.
According to GLA orphanage officials the immediate need is for Tetanus shots, and they simply don’t have the vaccine.
Since Tetanus vaccine must be kept cold during shipment, a solid plan for transport is crucial.
The call is going out from Maven&meddler to anybody with contacts in the pharmaceutical industry for donations of Tetanus vaccine in packets of 100 or 1,000, to contact me or GLA directly to arrange for pickup and transportation to Haiti.
Lori Carpenter is by profession an hydrologist. She runs a successful consulting business, Huffman and Carpenter, in Reno.
These days she’s spending a lot of time on the phone and computer seeking another kind of success, the kind measured in lives saved. Wednesday morning found her working the phone trying to get a group of Haitian children out of the disaster area to families in the U-S and Europe.
“It’s been a lot of tense days, she says. But not without success. A group of children left for Holland the day before. Now she’s waiting for word on another group hopefully headed for homes in the U-S.
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 20:16 
mavenandmeddler
