TEA PARTY BELLYACHING

Here are pieces of a local article from the Salt Lake Tribune complete with my comments.

2,000 protest taxes, spending in Salt Lake City
Rally » Speakers say government spending threatens freedom.

Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_12149069
electronic scrapbook entry for Updated: 15 April 2009
By Robert Gehrke The Salt Lake Tribune

ARTICLE An estimated 2,000 people weathered a cold, wet snow Wednesday in downtown Salt Lake City in a vocal protest of wasteful government spending and taxes, joining a handful of similar rallies around the state and dozens of others across the country.

Protesters perched on planters or huddled under umbrellas as speakers decried federal bailouts of failing banks and companies, mounting federal debt and elected officials who are out of touch, chanting over and over, "Send them home."

Utah Democrats said that the tax protests were orchestrated by right-wing radio but ignore that the Bush administration added trillions to the national debt.

The crowd repeatedly booed Utah's senators, Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, for being part of the problem.

MY COMMENT Senator Hatch should have retired three terms ago back in 1994. Senator Bennett should retire this year. Three terms of him is quite enough to last us a lifetime, especially in a state like Utah with so much political talent ready to serve.


ARTICLE . . . . and chastised Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. for not sending back $1.6 billion of stimulus money the state is expected to receive.

MY COMMENT ANY POLITICIAN WHO SENDS MONEY BACK IN TIMES OF CRISIS IS QUITE OUT O F HIS SKULL.


ARTICLE Hatch said in a statement that he shares the protesters' outrage.

MY RESPONSE: Where would the Senator be without funds raised by taxation?


ARTICLE Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who is considering challenging Bennett for his Senate seat, said Utahns don't need government "wiping our noses and putting Band-Aids on our boo-boos."

"The time for talk is over. Now is the time for action," said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. "Don't give us your entitlement. Don't take care of us. Get out of our lives and let us take care of ourselves."

MY RESPONSE Another example of the myth of self reliance. How do we do national defense ourselves. How do we do health care ourselves without Medicaid and Medicare? How do we sustain ourselves when corruption in private enterprise wiped out our retirements and Social Security does not exist.


ARTICLE The federal budget deficit is projected to reach $1.75 trillion this year, driven to record levels by repeated stimulus and bailouts.

"I've got to tell you, I'm fired up. No more bailouts, no more stimulus!" said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. "We cannot be all things to all people in this country. We can't keep running this country on a credit card."

MY RESPONSE: The Republicans have no credibility on this subject at all. They supported Ronald Reagan who cut taxes and then increased various types of spending including wasteful military spending and who thus increased the national debt and deficit spending. They supported George Bush who cut taxes and the Bill of Rights and increased wasteful military spending and then bailed out various Wall Street companies in crisis at the end of his term.


ARTICLE Author Candace Salima warned that what she sees as a trend toward socialism would destroy the country.

"Have we had enough of high taxes? Have we had enough of big government? Have we had enough of socialism?" she called to the crowd, answered each time with cheers and shouts. "We do not apologize for being Americans. We are done having Europe telling us what to do."

MY RESPONSE: Just who in the private sector has any credibility to help out in this crisis? Just who in the private sector is in fact doing anything to stimulate the economy?


ARTICLE Utah Democrats say state residents' share of the tax cut is about $500 million.

A report issued Monday by the liberal-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said that the median tax burden for a family of four in 2006 -- the most recent data available -- had crept up slightly since 2003, when it was at the lowest level since 1955.

A Gallup poll released this week found that 48 percent of respondents thought their tax burden was about right; 46 percent said it was too high. It was the highest favorable rating since Gallup began conducting the poll in 1956.

More than half of those making less than $75,000 a year thought their burden was about right. Sixty-one percent said the tax system is fair.

But those people were not in attendance Wednesday.

"I'm just fed up with paying more taxes than I need to," said Stacey Guerra, of Salt Lake City, who attended the event with her husband and daughter.

MY RESPONSE: We all hear this sort of middle class bellyache all the time from our friends and relatives and coworkers. I find it hard to take any of this green-eyed hypocrisy seriously. Everyone has at least three favorite government programs that everyone believes must be funded to the max, except that people do not want to pay taxes themselves. So as a result, people gripe about bureaucracy – other people’s bureaucracies.

Those who preach self reliance should realize that self reliance is a myth. We cannot do national defense by ourselves. Our poor and aged cannot do health care without Medicare and Medicaid. Where would our seniors be without social security? The wicked of the financial private sector pillaged the various retirement accounts. The financial private sector certainly failed us in stock markets and retirement accounts.

Everyone has two or three pet federal programs that they insist be funded to the maximum. In practice, this means that means that government will always grow bigger.

THORNTON HAS LEFT ORBIT

TWO NEWS ARTICLES PRESERVED WITH MY COMMENTS

Billy Bob Thornton's radio rage

Preserved from Yahoo News
Printed from http://uk.news.yahoo.com/35/20090409/ten-billy-bob-thornton-s-radio-rage-764dee7.html
Thursday, April 9 04:00 pm
Bangshowbiz bangshowbiz.com


Billy Bob Thornton pretended to have amnesia and forget his own band during an interview. Skip related content

The actor-turned-musician became difficult after a Canadian radio host mentioned his Hollywood career yesterday (08.04.09).

Billy Bob was due to be interviewed and perform with his band The Boxmasters, but became upset when he was introduced as an "Oscar-winning screenwriter, actor and director".

When CBC radio DJ Jian Ghomeshi asked him how he formed the band, Billy Bob replied: "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not sure what that means."

He then proceeded to give monosyllabic or short answers to questions, or spoke about something totally unrelated.

The 53-year-old star pretended not to have met his touring partner Willie Nelson and also compared Canadian audiences to "mashed potatoes with no gravy".

Billy Bob - who was previously married to Angelina Jolie - announced he wouldn't sing with the group and would only play drums - despite the fact there were no drums in the studio.

Billy Bob said: "We don't cart those around at six o'clock in the morning."

The band then had to perform without a vocalist.

Ghomeshi said after the show: "To not answer questions because I made the apparently egregious mistake of calling him an actor as well as a musician, it just seemed a little absurd."

(C) BANG Media International

Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! All rights reserved.


THEN WHEN THE SITUATION COULD NOT GET ANY MORE WEIRD, THEY DID.

Billy Bob Thornton's band cancels Canadian tour

Yahoo! News
AP
11 April 2008 7:30 p.m. MDT

TORONTO – Billy Bob Thornton's band has canceled the rest of its Canadian tour after the actor compared the country's fans to mashed potatoes with no gravy in a testy interview that caused a sensation online.

The Boxmasters opened for Willie Nelson on Thursday in Toronto, where they reportedly were booed and met with catcalls of "Here comes the gravy."

A note posted on Nelson's Web site Friday said the Boxmasters were canceling the rest of their Canadian dates "due to one band member and several of the crew having the flu."

The cancellation came two days after Thornton made world headlines with a belligerent appearance on CBC radio's "Q."

The actor apparently didn't like that host Jian Ghomeshi started the interview with references to Thornton's Hollywood career.

Thornton refused to answer many of Ghomeshi's questions directly, mumbling: "I don't know what you're talking about." He later said Ghomeshi's producers had been told ahead of time not to talk about his film career.

Thornton also had some unkind words for Canadian crowds.

"Canadian audiences seem to be very reserved," he told Ghomeshi. "We tend to play places where people throw things at each other. Here, they just sort of sit there. And it doesn't matter what you say to 'em. ... It's mashed potatoes but no gravy."


RIGHT ASCENSION NOTES THAT THE TIME HAS COME TO HAND MR. THORNTON A VOLLEYBALL WHILE WE WAIT FOR THE THERAPISTS TO TAKE HIM IN TOW.

Billy Bob Thornton really needs to take a couple of hours out of his busy schedule next week and have his head thoroughly examined.

If mental health is the ability to correlate physical observations with the workings of the intellect, then Thornton has gone stone mad. How do any of his actions in the past week reflect sanity.

GENERAL CONFERENCE NOTES.

At first session of the recently concluded April 2009 general conference, The First presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the call of a new apostle.

The statistical report claims well over 13,500,000 members of the church. Therefore, one would think the First Presidency would have a wide variety of possible men from which to make their long and short lists.

However, the modern quorum of apostles contains rather too few men for the work load it has to do. The work that needs to be done in a 13-million-member church and the missionary work that needs to be done in a world with a population over 7 billion people probably requires an apostolic quorum with 24 or even 30 members. I suspect the First Presidency has to deal with the reality of just how few men in the Church would really willingly take an apostolic position in an undermanned quorum with way too little pay, way too big a work load – and commit to the job for life. Day in day out, year after year to the bitter end. Not many I suspect will willingly sign up for that without flinching.

This year the Second Quorum of the Seventy marks its 20th anniversary. Next year the reconstituted First Quorum of the Seventy observed its 35th anniversary. Some scripture scholars claim the number “70" really represent some sort of ancient Hebrew power symbol. Nevertheless, neither quorum have come close to a membership of 70 apiece.

In some basic way, the Second Quorum of the Seventy was the late President Hinckley’s biggest failure. Put another way, the Second Quorum of the Seventy was the preisthood’s greatest failure to fill adequately. He should have called 10-12 men to the Second Quorum every year for terms of 5 to 7 years. Only once in his ministry did he even come close to that ideal.

30 years after the 1978 priesthood and race revelation, the First Quorum of Seventy
now has a real black African member. This development definitely points the Church in general and the First Quorum of Seventy in particular in the right direction. Someday, we hope, we will all be sophisticated enough that the race of quorum members will no longer be an issue anywhere. Right now, though, it stands as a landmark in a church and in a time and place when the First Presidency managed in 2001 to call a white man (!) as the first African member of the First Quorum of Seventy.

The First Presidency called Neil L Andersen as the newest apostle of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This means the quorum of the Twelve now has three members born in Logan, Utah and has two members with connections to Pocatello, Idaho (!) of all places.

Of the 21st century’s apostles, only one has ancestors who served as past general authorities. Two have connections to California and three to places in the South of the United States. Only one has a direct connection to Provo, Utah . Well, two if you count Jeffrey Holland’s time at BYU. Provo for him was a stepping stone.

MORAL TO THE STORY
The Men of Provo have little chance of becoming general authorities.

OAKS, CHILDREN , AND PETS: A MUSING ON SUCCESS IN LIFE

LDS church elder's dog comments spark response

Preserved from the Provo Utah Daily Herald
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/305160/17/
Tuesday, 07 April 2009
Joe Pyrah - Daily Herald

It was a brief moment in the 10 hours of general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But a few words about kids and dogs drew all eyes in the room from the TV to Alison Faulkner.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was giving an example of a young couple who chose a dog over having kids.

"Dogs are less trouble, they declared. Dogs don't talk back and we never have to ground them," Oaks said of the couple's reasoning. He went on to say that many LDS couples are among that "unselfish group who are willing to surrender their personal priorities and serve the Lord by bearing and rearing the children our Heavenly Father sends to their care."

But there are also plenty choosing the dog. The American Pet Products Association estimates that Americans in 2009 will spend $45 billion on their pets -- including health care, food and doggie clothes -- up from $17 billion 15 years ago.

Faulkner, who's been married a year with no kids, takes possession of "Pony" on Friday. To be fair, the miniature Australian shepherd is more a baby warm-up than a baby replacement, she says.

Pets or family?

The humanification of pets has been a long time coming, says Michael Schaffer, author of "One Nation Under Dog." In the Victorian era, pets were known as "loyal companion." By the 1950s, they had become "man's best friend." Today they're "mommy's little girl."

Names have also gone from Spot and Spike to Jack and Chloe, "which are actually the same names in my daughter's pre-school," Schaffer said.

The movement likely comes from modern society's increased divorce rates and families moving apart for work, he said. An APPA survey shows that the percentage of households with a pet has increased from 56 in 1988 to 63 in 2007. As people move away from traditional social support systems, Schaffer said, they seek different sources of comfort, including, as he calls them, "fur babies."

That mindset was evident in Faulkner's blog. After she announced she was getting a dog, comments ranged from "Yay! Congratulations. You will be a great puppy mom." to "Oh Pony is adorable!!! You are going to be the best little mom in town, how lucky could a dog be."

First step or only step?

Facebook and several blogging sites were abuzz Monday with discussion on Oaks's comments. Faulkner, a Brigham Young University grad who lives in Salt Lake City, said she didn't rush into marriage and doesn't want to rush a child into the world. She views Pony as a sort of practice run rather than a baby replacement.


RIGHT ASCENSION GETS DEFENSIVE

I am unmarried male. I have always been an unmarried male.

I have no children . . . Or grandchildren either. I do not have any particular biases or bigotries against children. In fact, some of my best friends have children.

I dislike most dogs with a white hot intensity. On their best days, they are four-legged incubators of parasites, viruses, and bacterias that can all make us sick. I keep no pets of any kind.

It occurs to me, after reading this news report of this particular general conference controversy, that I have managed to achieved complete failure both by the definition of Orthodox Mormonism, which defines a successful person in terms of reproduction, and by the definitions of the Humane Society as well, which defines a successful person in terms of animal devotion.

I will not debate the merits of Elder Oaks’ rhetorical style or how convincing prospective parents will find him when he emphasizes the long-term unmitigated sacrifices of parenthood.

I find it sobering that –

despite all the pro- family rhetoric we get in American culture in general and in the LDS Church in particular

despite the fact that we now live in the highly-advanced super-technological twenty-first century

child bearing and child rearing are still burdens and sacrifices.

Our culture basically poses a danger both physically and spiritually to children. It is not a support.

The cultural of corporate America regards children as a nuisance to the making of profits.


RIGHT ASCENSION CONGRATULATES

those who have decided to create children and make families in a time and place when the culture discourages both.

those who treat their animals like animals instead of four- legged humans

Holy Frickin Freudian Slip!: The BYU DAILY UNIVERSE AND THE 12 APOSTATES

As Robin might say to Batman, “Holy Frikin Freudian Slip!"

I have just viewed a scan of the 6 April 2009 front page of Brigham Young University's Daily Universe. It captioned a photograph of some of the members of LDS Church Quorum of the Twelve Apostles "The 12 Apostates."

!!

{ Stage direction: Blink twice -- followed by a deep breath of utter disbelief. }

When the Universe editors learned of this error, they pulled as many printed copies they could and fixed the web edition, but not before industrious students, teachers, and staff at The Lord’s University scanned / preserved this soon to be legendary front page.

{ It rates right up there with such legendary newspaper boo-boos as “Dewey defeats Truman” and “Governor Thompson’s pen is a sword.” }

I have also read the official apology the Universe posted calling “The Twelve Apostates” a "typographical error."

I also read Carri Jenkin's damage control statement to the effect that "the typo, which replaced the intended word with a virtual antonym, was an honest mistake and that no university or church administrator has sought to punish those responsible for the blunder. She said the problem is being handled internally by newspaper and Department of Communications staff."

Typographical error my foot.

The Universe cannot get away with this outrage by trying to define it a "typographical error."

The Universe has editors. Where were they? A personal insult / Freudian slip of this magnitude takes planning, especially when a paper should have multiple errors . .. . uh, editors to catch such Freudian slip / "Typographical errors."


RIGHT ASCENSION EXTENDS THE HAND OF ENCOURAGEMENT

As a journalist, I have my own horror stories to tell about personal embarrassing typographical errors / Freudian slips. So I can speak from painful experience.

Thank heaven for the atonement. The Universe editors will need it.

Ted Stevens' Trial May Have Been Flawed, but Senator's Unusual Connections to Convicted Contributor Aren't in Doubt

Stevens Trial May Have Been Flawed, but Senator's Unusual Connections to Convicted Contributor Aren't in Doubt

Former Senator Ted Stevens might be getting the "get out of jail free" card, although it was money that nearly put him there in the first place. The U.S. Department of Justice has asked the judge in Stevens's corruption case to throw out the Alaska Republican's conviction because prosecutors withheld evidence from the senator's defense team.

Stevens had been found guilty on seven counts of lying on his Senate financial disclosure forms about thousands of dollars in improper gifts from Bill Allen, the former chief executive of multinational oil services company VECO. Among those gifts was $250,000 in home renovations that Allen said the company paid for, according to prosecutors.

While the attorney general might question the fairness of the Stevens's trial, Alaska’s senator from 1969 to 2008 had clear financial connections with Allen and VECO. Stevens, who lost his re-election race in November shortly after the conviction, collected at least $156,000 in campaign contributions from VECO through his campaign and committees he used to support fellow Republican candidates. CRP calculated the total to Stevens and other federal lawmakers in 2007 after two VECO executives, including Allen, pleaded guilty to bribery in a separate case involving Alaska state legislators. At that time Allen acknowledged rewarding VECO executives with bonuses as repayment for campaign contributions, which is illegal, and paying employees to work on renovations of Stevens's property. The company has since been sold.

OpenSecrets.org's Personal Financial Disclosures database contains the six years of reports that the federal indictment said Stevens falsified, plus his other financial disclosures back to 1995
.
Preserved on 5 April 2009
Published by Lindsay Renick Mayer on April 1, 2009 1:16 PM

SAVE THE AMERICAN BIG THREE! BUY A CAR TODAY

Right Ascension applauds the Obama Administration's dismissal of the president of General Motors and hopes that it will start encouraging a bunch of CEOs associated with the wreckage of the American Financial SuperStructure to find their swords and fall on them.

Right Ascension gives a challenge to those who decry the Obama Administration's dismissal of the President of General Motors and those who think that the Obama Administration should not either regulate the American car industry or micromanage it by fiat. No pun intended of course, though the odds are high that Fiat will pick up the pieces of what will be left of Chrysler Corporation.


RIGHT ASCENSION EXTENDS A CHALLENGE

for those who say that the free market will solve the problem: get rid of your old cars. Go out today and buy two or three GM or Chrysler automobiles.