FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
TEAMCOCO video: Conan O'Brien Show on WTBS: Triumph the Insult Comic Dog hits the last of the three U.S. presidential debates held at Lynn University in Boca Raton, and immediately heads for the media spin room in search of political nuance and intelligent discussion among the assembled media hordes and the party's surrogates...for Triumph to poop on! Uploaded October 26, 2012. http://youtu.be/I46iwLIF1Fo http://teamcoco.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph,_the_Insult_Comic_Dog http://www.vice.com/read/robert-smigel-556-v17n10 , Tvrecycled video: Robert Smigel & Louis C.K. doing a comedic bit from a 1993 appearance on the Conan O' Brien Show where they were writers. Uploaded March 15, 2010. http://youtu.be/2FFyNyfOqQQ
Fred Thompson Endorses Newt Gingrich on Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity Show, January 23, 2012. http://youtu.be/_XYzaHkpEQg
Speaking of making the case for American Exceptionalism, how great would it be to have Fred Thompson as the U.S. Secretary of State representing our interests abroad, and to know that no matter what country he visits, he is instantly recognized by both the general population on the street and the elites in power, as someone that can forcefully and articulately make the case for this country in ways that few other Americans can?
If Fred Thompson gives a foreign minister, a prime minister or some ruling general a message on behalf of the president and people of the United States instructing them that they have until a certain time to make a decision, the right decision, you DON'T have to worry about whether or not they fully understand that it's a real deadline with genuine consequences. They know.
Best part come from 10:18 on... and when he gets rolling, about 16:05, and eventually talks about his Cuban-born, cigar-smoking grandfather, born in 1899 and a lover of history, forget about it, the crowd is putty in his hand.
It's a story that resonates with anyone who really knows their American history.
Rubio sounded just like this when I saw him in Hallandale Beach in June of 2009, talking about the proper role of government, the U.S. Constitution and the Founding Fathers' principles.
Of course, that's when all the experts in the Sunshine State, especially the local ones in the South Florida news media, the same ones who write about him today, were saying that he was destined to lose to the 2010 Republican nomination to then-Governor Charlie Crist.
The very same people who still daily under-estimate in their articles, columns and TV news reports, the logical appeal of Tea Party principles in this chaotic, poorly-run and myopic state.
Rubio ardently cares about ideas more than any other politician in Florida -by far.
It's not an act, it's who he is, which is why he is so unpopular among liberal Democrats in this state, who hate that his logic and reason so easily demolishes their longstanding house-of-cards.
It's why I knew after seeing him that warm 2009 night in-person that I would vote for him and that he would win come 2010.
I never doubted it and said so at the time.
You see even in South Florida, some of us still care about the ideas and dynamic principles that make this country unique.
Fox News Channel video: Sen. Marco Rubio speaks with Sean Hannity on "Hannity. August 23, 2011. http://youtu.be/hKF4VkjFPRY
Below are some of my Marco Rubio photos from his June 23, 2009 appearance in Hallandale Beach at the Southeast Broward Republican Club meeting, which I went to thanks to my friend, Arturo O'Neill, and my February 26, 2011 blog post titled, The show is Jeopardy! and the question is: "Can I have 'Midterms' for $2,000", http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/show-is-jeopardy-and-question-is-can-i.html.
That's Anthony Man of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel at the table.
The interview with Rep. Frederica Wilson concludes at 13:04 mark.
Well, to use a phrase that nobody uses any longer, "Here's mud in your eye."
For those of you who have doubted what I've said in the past to you, whether in person somewhere in South Florida or the Washington, D.C. area, or what you've read here on the blog, about the weirdly, disconnected sense of reality lived by many though not all of South Florida's pols, almost all of whom live in gerrymandered districts that ensure their election come the general elections, Sunday morning brought forth the latest glaring example of disconnected unreality.
Did you see it, too?
Did your jaw hit the ground at the stale memorized talking points being recited like a not-so-bright Third Grader standing in front of the class?
Did you get a real sinking feeling when you heard so much prattle expressed with so little thought or insight behind it, and realized that the silly person mouthing such nonsense makes $174,000 a year?
Yes, welcome to the second decade of South Florida politics in the 21st Century.
All of this came in the form of an alternately abysmal performance by freshman Rep. Frederica Wilson (FL-17) on Channel 10's "This Week in South Florida" with Senior Political Editor Michael Putney.
As most of you blog readers know by now, I respect him more than any other media personality in South Florida -even when we disagree- in large part, because he actually remembers many of the very same people, places and events of the past that I do, good and bad, that so many people, groups and institutions consciously prefer to forget.
(So many South Florida media types I've met either know very little about this area's political history and geography, or flat-out don't care, but that's another post for another time.)
The ostensible purpose of Wilson's appearance -from Washington- in the lead-off (longest) block of the popular public affairs program, was to discuss the federal debt limit crisis, the state of the economy, and to elicit her opinion on what specific steps should be undertaken.
As she has been a cipher since getting elected, I didn't expect much, but even my low expectations were too high.
Prior to this July 31st appearance with Michael Putney, NOT a single legitimate reporter in Florida had so much as asked Wilson even a reasonably hard question about this debt limit issue and asked her to explain herself on the issue.
Trust me, I've looked at searches for her on Google News day-after-day, and even emailed that to friends, who were shocked at how asleep the South Florida news media has been all these months.
Not me.
(I was even going to post all the citations & news articles here so you could see what lapdogs the South Florida press corps has been towards Wilson since she got elected. Minus the stories on Haiti, Edison & Central High Schools getting special treatment to stay open, or her hats, there wasn't much left, which made it easy for me to read all the articles. Just saying...)
In fact, I was going to post this blog post Sunday morning until I saw that she was going to be on the show. Then I decided to wait until Channel 10 put the link up to theentire broadcast so you could see it for yourself.
To me, Wilson has held common sense and taxpayers "hostage" for months without saying anything of merit, to use a word that she twice went out of her way to use to refer to Tea Party supporters, implying, like so many disconnected liberals, that their desire to actually have a more fundamentally sound financial structure for the country was dangerous.
(Unlike Wilson, some Americans inherently know that not every single federal program deserves to live in perpetuity, or to be equated with apple pie and the Bill of Rights. But try getting Wilson to name one to cut...)
As if, somehow, liberal families and their children were somehow immune to the very negative logical consequences of a template where the U.S. government borrows 40 cents for every dollar it spends, as Sen. Marco Rubio has said any number of times lately.
It won't surprise you a whit that her prescription was the usual one of a person who reps a gerrymandered majority-minority CD in Congress: spend, spend, spend...
And tax the "rich" especially the evil oil companies, whom she says pay nothing in taxes in the same exact way that small children routinely say dumb things but nobody bothers to correct them because they are, after all, just small children.
They're entitled to their fantasy world for a while.
Small children, not congresswomen.
Despite her own past actions and words to burden small business owners with more regulation and higher fees, she demands that someone create jobs in her CD, which has the dubious distinction of having among the lowest investment rates and one of the highest murder rates in the entire congress.
After you hear Wilson, you'd almost have to ask yourself why if you were a business owner seeking to expand, why would someone invest in poorly-educated, blame-someone else FL-17?
Now there's a question.
Wilson seems unable to appreciate the changed environment that has taken over this country the past few years, nor to appreciate the difference between being in Tallahassee and Washington.
The reality is that her constituents without jobs are going to be expected to do a whole lot more for themselves in the future than they have in the past, and that includes the strong possibility that for many of them, that choice involves leaving the area, as happens in every other part of the country.
Uncle Sam is not going to be dropping pallets of money into NW Miami anytime soon.
That plane has been permanently grounded.
Time to adapt!
When Michael Putney brought this poll up, do I even have to tell you that Wilson is a fervent supporter of the minority opinion? The one that says that we just have to keep doing the same things that don't work? It's mind-boggling sometimes, almost as if she has been in a coma.
Watching her appearance on TWISF made me think of many things but none quite so strong as the sense that she's so very used to only being around people that completely agree with her, that she literally has no ability or intuition to appreciate that, for a change, she really needed to come across on the program as a serious and sober official.
Instead, because it's her shtick, and she can't help herself, she chose on the air wearing one of the dozens of ridiculous hats that she insists on wearing to distinguish herself, more fitting for a Delta Sigma Theta luncheon in the spring.
Yeah, like the weird guy with head-to-toe tats who insists on showing up at the public park every weekend with the snake around his neck, the old guy who insists on wearing a tiny Speedo swimsuit at the beach -and not being foreign!- or, the older woman who insists on showing up at the beach in a two-piece swimsuit that more closely resembles dental floss, Wilson can't figure out a way to stand out for what she knows about a given area of public policy, or being able to explain complicated issues in ways that people understsnd.
Nobody has ever said that about her.
It's sad for her, of course, but saddest of all for us,her constituents.
As I reflected on what took place in the program later on Sunday afternoon, in between watching the Marlins game and snapping some photos up in Hollywood for a future blog post here, Wilson'sjuvenile performance just really continued to irritate me, since it was about as anti-intellectual an exercise as I've seen outside of the occasional segment of MSNBC'sHardball I've come across while flipping thru the channels during a commercial of something else.
If you're not really that familiar with the show, esp. if you are reading this overseas, the Republican Elephants in the bottom LEFT are a tip-off to MSNBC's avowed liberal ideology. Fortunately, not that many people watch the show, as more people watch The Cartoon Channel than MSNBC when Hardballis on.
When she successfully repeated a few simple talking points she remembered -the ones about the number of times the debt was raised during Reagan and Bush 41's presidencies, 18 and 7 respectively- I could almost picture her staff applauding, out-of relief. Really.
So what exactly were the things that she or her predecessors, Carrie Meek and Kendrick Meek proposed that would cut the federal budget and put the country on a more sustainable basis?
She never said despite having thirteen minutes to mention it.
Thirteen minutes that revealed her for the disconnected public official she is, who thinks the old solutions of Big Government spending their way out of a problem still works.
Fox News Channel video: Sen. Marco Rubio on 'Fox News Sunday' with host Chris Wallace - April 3, 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZRDCHGMILs Speaking of being articulate and specific about what your own personal policy positions are regarding the looming federal budget battle and the national debt, so that there's no confusion or misunderstanding, as we were the other day with Marco Rubio, the opposite take on that approach causes me to ask aloud whether Sen. Bill Nelson is still among us.
The South Florida news media seems not to be too keen to actually ask Nelson where he stands on any of these things and what he wants to do or cut or anything. No, they almost seem to be going out of their way to ignore Nelson, which causes me to ask whether that's for his lack of a cogent plan, strategy or framework, or whether it's just that they know in advance that, after eleven years in the Senate, he'll say absolutely nothing noteworthy in his usual earnest, plodding style, and they don't want to waste their time doing that, knowing that it's an hour they'll never ever have again.
Which is one of the reasons that while today is April 3rd, you CAN'T find a single story in the Miami Herald this year where Bill Nelson actually talks about the federal budget and the debt ceiling, and what he thinks should be done or how he will vote. Go ahead, I dare you. It simply can't be found -there isn't one.
Yes, with every passing day, collectively, the Miami Herald and the rest of the South Florida news media just continue walking deeper-and-deeper into the black hole of utter irrelevancy...
Fox News Channel video: Rep. Paul Ryan, Chairman of U.S. House Budget Comm.: on Fox News Channel's 'Sean Hannity Show' - March 1, 2011 -"House GOP Will Lead Where the President Has Failed" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-bgVl7EhNI
Rubio is right to push for cuts to senior programs
Mike Thomas
COMMENTARY
9:49 PM EDT, April 2, 2011
Marco Rubio says he isn't interested in running for vice president in 2012. And to confirm that, he then said we have to scale back senior entitlement programs.
That got him lots of national attention, and a resounding round of silence from his Republican colleagues in Washington.
They didn't win the U.S. House this year, with an eye on the White House next year, only to risk it all by alienating the people who comprise the biggest voting bloc.
You will not see a Republican pointing to the retirees at a Tea Party gathering and saying, "You're the biggest part of the problem.''
Does anyone remember "A Roadmap for America's Future'' put out by Paul Ryan, the whiz-kid, budget-slashing congressman from Wisconsin who wanted to overhaul Medicare?
Or how about that report by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that recommended entitlement cuts?
Associate the word entitlement with the words cut or reform and off you go to the Bermuda Triangle.
I hope Marco fares better.
He says he would keep existing entitlements intact for those older than 55, an attempt to appease what former Sen. Alan Simpson calls the "greediest generation.''
This might work for Social Security, where there is time to fix it.
But Medicare is dragging us off the cliff now. It is so daunting and so complex that Washington is paralyzed.
Tackling Medicare not only means taking on the seniors, but the entire medical industrial complex that depends on Medicare's billions. Sending old folks for body scans is a huge part of the economy.
Taking money away is very hard for a political system designed to give it away.
Making matters worse, many seniors believe that since they have paid into Medicare their entire lives, they have earned their benefits. Reducing benefits equates to theft.
But the cost of medical care has risen so sharply that, on average, seniors now pay for less than half the benefits they receive.
This is what differentiates Medicare from Social Security, where workers indeed have paid for most of their benefits.
With Social Security, they get a single check each month for the same amount. That makes planning relatively easy.
But Medicare is an open checkbook that pays for an unlimited amount of services.
The medical industry has adapted by creating a system based on quantity. More specialists. More tests. More procedures. More medications.
Outcomes and cost-effectiveness do not matter.
This has driven up costs while at the same time we have an exploding population of seniors. Medicare is, by far, the biggest driver of our long-term national debt.
Medicaid, which provides care to the poor, would be right there with it but states share this burden. And a growing percent of the Medicaid budget is directed at nursing-home care.
Sure, we can cut fraud and waste, as the refrain goes. But any savings will be dwarfed by the sheer number of baby boomers entering the system.
During the next 20 years, we will add eight beneficiaries to the Medicare rolls for every new worker. And these seniors will be more obese and laden with more self-inflicted chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Help, we need more immigrants!
I am 56. And as much as I'd like Marco Rubio to include me in the existing system, I don't want to make my kids my indentured servants by having to pay for it.
A worker making $20,000 a year should not have to subsidize health care for snow birds sitting in their Palm Beach condos. We need to adjust premiums, deductibles and co-pays according to income.
People are too disconnected from the cost of their health care. And that encourages abuse of the system.
We need more gatekeepers. We need fewer specialists, and they need to make less money. We need more general practitioners and they need to make more money. We need nurses to diagnose the flu instead of doctors.
We need longer wait times for non-emergency procedures.
We need more docs in Walmart and more Solantic clinics in strip malls.
We need more end-of-life planning to avoid the onslaught of machines that only delay the inevitable.
We need more plans and cheaper options.
We need what we can afford.
We have no choice. The Chinese are going to stop buying our debt.
The longer we put this off, the worse it will be.
It is why Marco Rubio is one of the most important people in Washington right now.
Yes, Miami's Hannah Giles is back! Along with James O'Keefe, America's nerdiest pimp who still keeps it real.
This screenshot I snapped is of Hannah from the Miami studios of Fox News, appearing on Sean Hannity's Fox NewsChannelTV show last night, Nov. 16th, with some news about the Andrew Breitbart 'Big Government' crew's newest series of ACORN videotapes, from the West Coast.
Video of the appearance: http://www.freedomslighthouse.com/2009/11/sean-hannity-shows-acorn-undercover.html--------------- Los Angeles Times Young conservative activist Hannah Giles speaks in Santa Barbara The 20-year-old who rocked ACORN with a series of secret videos addresses college students about guerrilla warfare. By Kate Linthicum November 15, 2009 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-young-conservatives15-2009nov15,0,1837509.story ----------- See also http://biggovernment.com/
