What Barack Obama Actually Said

At a campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia on 13 July 2012, what President Obama said during his sppech was:

"Somebody helped to create the unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business . . . you didn't build that [system] – somebody else made that happen . . . The point is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

What the Republican Party and the fascist media did was to intentially edit the video so that it seems as if Obama was denigrating business creation.

If the fascist Republicans had anything of value to offer the American voter, then they would not choose to lie and cheat and steal like they are doing in campaigns all across America in 2012.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

July 2012 News Factoids

BANKING & FINANCE

The top banks are 23 percent larger than they were before the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown crisis began.

52 percent of all the assets held by the entire banking industry have now become aggregated into the hands of just five companies (up from 17 percent four decades ago), and the top 10 institutions have swollen so large that they possess wealth that equates to roughly half of America’s annual G.D.P. (gross domestic product). == per Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its annual report for 2011 released March 2012

By mid-July, JPMorgan said that the bad trade in U.K. has ballooned to a loss of $5.8 billion.

GLOBAL WARNINGS

Precipitation in New Mexico from January to June this year has been 54 percent of the longterm average, and 81 percent of the state is classified as being in 'severe drought'. == per the U.S. National Weather Service

Sea levels along the coast of Virginia have risen more than a foot {30+ cm} and are still rising. Average rise along the Altantic coast of America is 4.85 inches.

"For the entire country, the first six months of 2012 were the hottest ever recorded – an amazing 4.5°F above the XXth Century average." == per U.S. National Climatic Data Center

OTHER CONCERNS

Search engine usage statistics for May 2012: Google handled 66.7 percent of searches; Bing was second with 15.4 percent (vs. 14.1 percent a year ago); Yahoo was third with 13.4 percent (vs. 15.9 percent a year ago); Ask did 3 percent; AOL did 1.5 percent.

The lingering power outages from the July storms on the East Coast are largely due to deferred maintenance on the grid by the power companies – the money not spent on needed repairs makes the bottom line seem better – including rust-damaged 'steel wire' power lines still in place from the 1940s.

Is nothing sacred? The uniforms for the U.S. Olympic Team that were announced in July were made in China.

TIME Magazine combined information from several sources into a half-page graphic about 'Where The Jobs Will Be' over the next five years. Their top ten are: social networking sites (27% growth); street traffic info providers; green construction; social network gaming; relaxation drinks; medical device recycling; green building materials; retinal-imaging machines (17% growth); internet publishing & broadcasting; and secure data storage.

For some reason, this seems like a very cool piece of equipment: the off-road wheelchair from Action Trackchair in Minnesota.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Working Minds Essay #99: Mitt Romney Got Caught

Willard Mitt Romney is a liar and a pirate, and possibly a sociopath.

Mitt professes to practice the Mormon religion, and yet he does nothing but lie and lie and lie all day long, every day since announcing his candidacy for President in April 2011.

(And this is the best that the Republican Party has to offer the American voter?)

Aside from the old news of Romney's mistreatment of his dog and his children and his employees, there are two recent scandals concerning Mitt's integrity.

The first is his refusal to disclose his financial records as is the longtime practice for presidential candidates. Romney flat refuses to be honest with the American people and make his tax returns public (not even redacted versions).

He also refuses to name his 'bundlers', the folks working to bring in the millions of dollars financing his campaign. Keeping these workers hidden from view brings up all kinds of conjecture, such as violations of employee/campaign restrictions, federal and state.

So the New York Times and the Boston Globe newspapers went looking, and soon discovered several falsities, some by ommission and some by commission.

Mitt Romney is the sole owner of a questionable (tax-dodge) corporation in the off-shore tax haven of Bermuda. Bain Capital
's corporate identity is based in a mail-drop in the Cayman Islands off-shore tax haven.

Until recently, Romney kept millions in cash in a secret Swiss bank account.

Maybe the information is being kept hidden because it will reveal dastardly deeds beyond piracy and vulture capitalism. Who is to say there isn't illegal business dealings, such as money laundering. With no data, we will never know.

But the second and most damaging part of these scandals is the revelation that Mitt Romney was running Bain Capital a full TWO YEARS after the date he has given over and over for when he left the company. He has stated many times that he left Bain in 1999, especially when accused of acts of piracy against viable companies and shipping the jobs overseas and leaving the firms bankrupt. His position was that such things happened only after he left.

Well, golly. That turns out not to be true. Mitt Romney is listed on official documents filed with the S.E.C. (Securities & Exchange Commission) as the sole owner, sole proprietor, and president and CEO of Bain Capital thru February 2001.

Ooops.

And he was paid $100,000 each year as head of the company. Probably one reason that he dares not reveal his tax returns – and what else is there in this category? (Either he did perform work for the salary and lied about it, or he performed no work for that money, which is immoral and un-American if not illegal.)

Ooops.

So Romney and the spin-doctors of his campaign team try to say that it was a formality, they had to send in the forms, it still doesn't prove that he ran the company after 1999.

Yes, it does. But wait a minute, maybe what the Romney folks mean is that Mitt signed legal documents that lied about his role at Bain Capital. Could that be his out? It was just another lie – this one delivered on official documents required by the S.E.C. from each and every American corporation.

Ooops. Violation of federal law, probably including perjury.

And all Romney's protests the last few days are on tape, uploaded to the internet a hundred places.

So Mitt Romney is in rather a pickle here: Mitt Romney either lied back then, on federal documents, under penalty of perjury – OR – Mitt Romney has been and still is lying to America on the campaign trail about his past.

* *          * *          * *          * *Given that the faux-news media is owned by the fascists of the American Oligarchy, Mitt Romney may squeak by on this one. Perhaps another decades-long child molestation scandal will divert the American people. Or a lost little girl in Georgia will pre-empt more air-time than politics altogether. The American sheeple are easily diverted.

I expect that Barack Obama will win by a landslide because I am an idealist, and cannot concieve of an American voter population that is as brain-dead as the Republicans want and expect.

But what really worries me are the three probable negative options for the November 2012 election.

One: Romney will win, a disaster for democracy and for your grandchildren's future and for the future of life on this planet.

Two: Barack Obama wins the election, but the Republicans manage to steal it once again.

Three: Romney does not win at the Republican Convention on the first ballot. Bet you forgot about that. The convention then becomes a free-for-all, with possible candidates including Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, Donald Trump, Darrell Issa – none of whom are qualified to hold public office, much less to occupy the White House.

Look again and try not to cringe: The above short list is the best that the Republican Party has to offer the American voter.

Having read all this, if you get a good night's sleep tonight you can consider yourself lucky (or maybe just another ignorant sheeple).

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

July 2012 Quotations

“How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!”
~~ Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951]

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."
~~ Bob Dylan

"The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"The things [that] we hate about ourselves aren't more real than the things [that] we like about ourselves."
~~ columnist Ellen Goodman

"You know [that] you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."
~~ Bob Hope [1903-2003]

"Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]

"Sanity is a cozy lie."
~~ Susan Sontag [1933-2004]

"There is nothing that is always or never."
~~ Maxine in Santa Fe, New Mexico

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"I've never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know."
~~ Epicurus [341–270 B.C.E.]

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishment – there are consequences."
~~ R.G. Ingersoll [1833-99]

"Everything is funny as long as it's happening to someone else."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]

"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in a cage."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]

"If pregnancy were a book, they would cut out the last two chapters."
~~ Nora Ephron [1941-2012]

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Time is the only critic without personal ambition."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."
~~ Mae West [1893-1980]

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]

"Keep your face always to the sunshine, and the shadows will fall behind you."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

"There is no such thing as bravery, only degrees of fear."
~~ John Wainwright [1921-95]

"you can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough for me."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]

"Parents are not interested in justice. They're interestded in peace and quiet."
~~ Bill Cosby

"There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient."
~~ novelist Marilynne Robinson

"The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control."
~~ Ogden Nash [1902-71]

"The only thing more destructive than a tornado is a family."
~~ Reynolds Price [1933-2011]

"To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is a reason."
~~ artist Ai Weiwei

"To be what we are, and to be what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself."
~~ Carl Gustav Jung [1875-1961]

"We now operate in a world in which we can assume neither competence nor good faith from the authorities. The consequences of this simple, devastating realization define American life."
~~ Chris Hayes

"An historian is a prophet in reverse."
~~ Friedrich von Schlegel [1772-1829]

“Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.”
~~ Frank Capra [1897-1991]

"The luxury of doing good surpasses every personal enjoyment."
~~ John Gray

"People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them."
~~ Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956]

"So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indespensible; and no man is useless while he has a friend."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Everything changes, nothing is lost."
~~ Ovid [43 B.C.E. – 17 or 18 C.E.]

"There is a limit to what you can do in politics."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"All good books have one thing in common: They are truer than if they had really happened."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one."
~~ Jerry Garcia [1942-95], of the Grateful Dead band

"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
~~ Adam Smith [1723-90]

"When a man realizes his littleness, his greatness can appear."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"It is very strange that the years teach us patience – that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting."
~~ novelist Elizabeth Taylor of U.K.

"Every life viewed from the inside is a series of defeats."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not."
~~ John Irving

"Happy people do a great deal for their friends."
~~ Willa Cather [1873-1947]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

'The Rich Are Unethical' graphic

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'iKill' graphic about Apple in China

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