larger view

Tonight boys and girls the all powerful Decider made an appearance, and a small speech. The Decider told us those Threatened Throngs of Wall Street, and the Poor Saps from Main Street who borrowed beyond their means, have us in a pickle. That is a baseball term that means the runner, which is really the American Taxpayer, is caught in a run down between a safe base. A safe base would be financial security, job security, family security, health care security, oh well, I'm sure you get the picture. We are going to be tagged out and will never get back in the game!

Yikes!!!!

When the all powerful Decider delivers a speech we know we are in deep doo-doo. We have seen not that long ago the Decider become very stern, and warn that the Wicked Witches of Jihadism would destroy our beautiful land and everyone that believed in Jesus. You may remember we went bonkers and gave the Decider nearly all of our money, and even more powers than the mighty ones he already possessed to stop those evil Wicked Witches of Jihadism.

We asked why we sent our fine and splendid army to a  place close by the Wicked Witches of Jihad ism that had not threatened us, but the Decider said this evil empire might destroy us if we didn't follow his word to the letter. We did ask why we were so broke all of the time while big palaces were being erected in the center of the Wicked Witches of Jihadism's big empire. The Decider told us this was democracy building, whatever that means. We let the Decider make our decisions.

Tonight the Decider made the decision to let us know a great panic will sweep the land if we do not save the Threatened Throng on Wall Street. The Poor Saps on Main Street do not need to be saved. The Poor Saps on Main Street have no money and no power, and therefore do not need our help. The Decider has directed us to focus our minds and energy on just saving the Threatened Throng on Wall Street.

When the Decider decides, the people of America follow. The Threatened Throng of Wall Street will be saved to build more big buildings in far away places like Dubai in the center of the Wicked Witches of Jihadism's empire to build more democracy.

Thank you, All Powerful Decider.

Here is just the most recent example of how the healthcare business fails the public today. The Republican plan to create a health savings account doesn't do squat for this type of practice. And little slaps on the wrist by overmatched and underfunded government agencies has done little to stop this practice that has been reported on for years now. Democratic candidates are the only ones arguing for real healthcare reform.

This article is from an AP wire story.

"One of the state's largest health care insurers has reached a $25 million agreement with regulators, an effort to right the wrong of dropping coverage for nearly a thousand patients when they tried to make use of their policies.

Do you want change from how our government conducts business as usual? Do you want someone who is an adversary to the oil business as it is conducted today, or do you support your tax dollars going to scam Americans out of oil royalties while allowing the energy industry to dole out drugs and kickbacks to Republican appointees in the Interior Department? Here is another story of Republican cronyism at its finest.

In 1972 Congress passed a law, the Federal Airborne Hunting Act, that made shooting animals from the air illegal. In that same year Alaska ended its cash bounty system of killing wolves, not out of humane reasons, but because the high value for wolf pelts were encouragement enough. The federal law has a loophole. What federal law doesn't have a loophole? This loophole allows for aerial hunting of predators threatening "land, water, wildlife, livestock, domesticated animals, human life, or crops." Slate.com has an interesting story on the issue, which details Sarah Palin's introduction of legislation last year to allow for more airborne hunting of wolves in Alaska. The caribou and moose must be protected for hunters, not wolves.

I have a very hard time understanding the need to go out and kill living creatures for sport, whatever the rationalization is given for the undertaking. Man has pretty well thinned out the herds, the flocks, the gaggles, the schools of most creatures on this planet to profit a few multi-national corporations in the process. If you think wolves are the problem for caribou and moose you would be mistaken. Man is the problem for the caribou, the wolf, the moose and the squirrel.

This is barbarism by any name and reprehensible policy making that flies in the face of legislation designed to protect the slaughter and maiming of wildlife. Know who you are voting for. You call this pro-life?

Just another day of failing to provide any service for the community. I no longer have any sympathy left for Kern County Animal Control. When you cannot even go and make a humane drop off at the Mount Vernon facility for an injured stray dog on your own dime and time you know this county department is a joke. Do stray dogs and cats have office hours from 8Am to 5PM four days a week with a late arrival and departure time thrown in on a fifth day for fun? Do strays take Fridays and Sundays off every week? 

KCAC might not be as big  a joke as the Kern County Board of Supervisors, who have failed to take one recommendation and run with it to improve, if only slightly, the terrible performance the community has put up with for so long by this department.  The Animal Control Commission has worked for two years with community input and involvement to suggest policy changes that might make a big difference in the way this department operated. The Board does not even listen to the Animal Control Commission, or the department head who oversees this underfunded huge target of local scorn and derision.

You have to ask yourself what it actually would take for this Board to hire enough officers and staff to comply with a modicum of humanity for the growing tide of discarded animals. Shame obviously does not work, because a lawsuit and followup inspection of the Animal Control facility by a U.C. Davis auditing group was an intense indictment of the conditions at the Mount Vernon pound. The five befuddled guys on the Board acted like this was good news and immediately dismissed any implications of continued failure by them and management in place to run the joint.

I've heard this Board already has one moniker being bandied about by dedicated followers of local politics: The Babble-on Five.  All talk and absolutely no action is a fitting description of a group which calls for study after study, and then when a real vote or decision gets close postpones action to wait for yet another group of reports to delay and deny all hope of remedy.

The Babble-on Five think hiring a career county employee with 29 years in other county trenches, but no experience with animals, law enforcement or medicine and boarding qualifies as a smart hire. I think it reflects accurately how inept and out of it these five guys are. Why won't anyone from outside this county even apply for a challenging and good paying job at the government level here? Animal Control cannot even get a veterinarian to stay longer than a few days, which is about as long as it takes to figure out what a wasteland the entire organization is, and that any place even without good benefits and little security is better than working for this crew.

What a joke.

John McCain has been very vocal for the past year about earmarks.  The OMB defines earmarks as follows:

-At the broadest level, unrequested funding is any additional funding provided by the Congress -- in either bill or report language -- for activities/projects/programs not requested by the Administration.  Earmarks are a subset of unrequested funding. The distinction between earmarks and unrequested funding is programmatic control or lack thereof of in the allocation process.-

John McCain, who just last week announced that Sarah Palin would be his running mate on the Republican ticket,  has also been a vocal critic for many years of Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska, who is now under investigation for corruption. Citizens Against Government Waste, a government watchdog organization based in Washington reports that the state of Alaska receives almost $300 per person in federal government earmarks for this year, which is almost ten times what the average state receives on a per person basis for these federal bill attachments. In Sarah Palin's first year on the job as Governor of Alaska the state received nearly $800 per person in earmarks. Here is the AP story as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle .

Is there nothing that candidate John McCain will not repudiate that were convictions of Senator John McCain?