Moore isn’t different from his constituents. He represents them.

So what’s all the hubbub about a pedophile running for US Senator from a state that lives off largess the hard-working people from other states, that can’t effectively educate its children, that screams about abortion yet doesn’t protect actual children?

Here are some facts about the “Heart of Dixie” state that gets lost in the blather.

NOT REALLY PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE
Alabama ranks 4^th out of 50 states when comparing what states pay in federal taxes to what they receive back in federal spending per capita.  Alabama gets nearly 150% more federal dollars than they pay in per capita when comparing to other states. 

In Alabama, residents see $2.46 in return for every dollar paid in federal income tax, which ranks third highest in the US. 36.64% of Alabama's state revenue is comprised of federal funds, which is 11th highest in the country.  From BusinessInsider.com

So, if you live, work and pay federal taxes, let’s say, NJ  and your state gets $0.61 per capita for every dollar or CT where that state pays a dollar per capita and gets $0.69 back, you got to say WTF. Especially when Alabama ranks near the bottom of the list of states when protecting its citizens and its citizens' children.  Just throwing good money after bad.

EDUCATION

• Per-pupil spending: $9,563 (14th lowest)
• High school graduation rate: 75.0% (8th lowest)
• Eighth graders proficient in math or reading: 19.7% (the lowest)

Nationwide, more than one-third of eighth-grade students were proficient in mathematics. In Alabama, however, less than one in five eighth graders did, the lowest rate nationwide. Alabama children also struggled with reading far more than their peers in other states. Just over 25% of eighth graders were proficient in reading, less than in all but three other states. Like other poorly-rated state school systems, adults in Alabama also tended to have lower incomes. Just 44.5% of working-age adults had incomes at or above the national median, one of the lower rates. Poor test scores, in addition to low statewide incomes, likely made pursuing higher education more difficult for many young Alabamians. While 55.1% of American young adults were enrolled in or had completed a post-secondary program, less than half of 18-24-year-old Alabama residents had, one of the lower rates. From wallst.com

INFANT MORTALITY
Alabama is among the worse states to give birth to a child. Comparing infant mortality rate to infant mortality worldwide, If Alabama were a country, its rate of 8.7 infant deaths per 1,000 would place it slightly behind Lebanon in the world rankings.  (From Washington Post) Geez, if I were a Muslim, I would want to be banned from Alabama.

LIFE EXPECTANCY
So, not only does Alabama rank among the worse states in infant deaths, Life expectancy compared to the rest of the country is not so good.  

Rank            (out of 51)	State	Life Expectancy, All	Life Expectancy, White	Life Expectancy, African American
		(in years)	(in years)	(in years)
49	Alabama	75.4	76	72.9

(From Wikipedia)

The average American lives to 79. That’s almost 4 years longer than the average Alabamian. So, make a note, don’t retire there.

Racism Now, Racism Tomorrow, Racism Forever

Just wanted to borrow from the famous George Wallace quote to subtitle this last section.

Here are the final facts I wish to share. Not only do the people of Alabama continue to venerate the racist slaveholding traitors of the Confederacy with their State flag and statues around the state, they honor Nazis in their public spaces – here is a clip from a NASA website (that's right NASA)

Here's a clip from Google

Some would argue, oh he really wasn’t a Nazi but the facts tell another story. He acknowledged he was a member of the Nazi party. He supervised a weapons of mass destruction program (the V2 rocket) that terrorized England, killing tens of thousands of Brits (our ally). Plus, that weapons program was reliant on concentration camp slave labor - funny, birds of a feather........

In an email from NASA historian Bill Barry, he recommended reading von Braun's official NASA biography. It doesn't gloss over his Nazi past or the issue of slave labor. It's fair. But there's more. One prisoner at the concentration camp testified in 1995 that von Braun ordered prisoners at the camp to be flogged (beaten) after an assassination attempt, and watched on as prisoners were hanged from cranes, according to the book Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race. There are other accounts that suggest this was not von Braun's order. From AL.com

Whether it was his orders or not, blood is on his hands – yet the people of Alabama honor him with busts and buildings. 

Face it. Judge Moore isn’t different from his constituents. He represents them.

Questions and some Answers

Never (I hate using such an absolute but somebody prove me wrong) in our history has a major political party been so complicit with a foreign power in the undermining of our democracy – until now.  Which Party you ask? The Republican Party

The only historical reference that comes close is the CPUSA (Communist Party USA) and the support, monetarily and otherwise that the Kremlin provided ole Gus Hall and his commies from the 1930s to the 1990s. Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave.  Funny, now the good ole GOP is sucking on the same Kremlin teat.

How has the party of Lincoln, T Roosevelt, and Eisenhower,  have taken such a turn?

The Kremlin is calling the shots for the Republican Party now.  Who do you think bailed Trump out when he didn’t have a pot to piss in? Why do you think that nearly every major appointment to the Trump administration has ties to Russia and the Fossil fuel oligarchs? Why do you think it took 18 days to fire that dog, Flynn? Why do you think that the appointment of a special prosecutor is being blocked by Commissar McConnell?

Answer: Because the Kremlin today and the GOP of today are cut from the same cloth, have the same goals, want the same things.  I know some readers right now are saying bullshit but here goes:

• Very Pro fossil fuel – gas, coal, oil
• Very Anti-gay – North Carolina wishes they could have the anti-gay statutes that Russia has
• Very anti-free press – Trump wishes he could kill journalists like Putin does
• Both hate Western Europe for a variety of reasons
• A pathological hatred of non-Christian citizens (Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, atheists, Hindus etc)
• An extremely high tolerance for the fascists, Nazis and racists
• A low tolerance for human rights, geez, we just had a woman convicted of disrupting that douchebag Sessions confirmation hearing because she laughed!

Folks, we are watching a slow roll coup by a bunch of traitors.  I hope you like borscht with your apple pie.

Quack Quack & The Right to Know

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck....

I am reminded of a couple of quotes, one, from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stuart, “I know it when I see it” when he was he was reviewing a hard-core pornography obscenity case.  The other quote was from Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”, she says she isn’t but she is.  

Well, that lady is Donald Trump. The more our President protests that there is no evidence that the Russians and his campaign had contact with one another, that Russian hacking had no effect on the outcome of the election, and the Presidential staff’s campaign of denial about the Russians, the more I am inclined to believe he and his minions are hiding something.

This thing with the Russians has been going on a long time.  You could say that it goes back to Seward’s Folly in the 19^th century when the US bought Alaska for a song. It was the diplomatic equivalent of when the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees for 100 grand so the Red Sox owners could buy into a production of a Broadway musical. The Sox were cursed for nearly a 100 years and the Russian empire began to crumble after Alaska became part of the USA.

The Russian policy elites have always had a jaundiced eye looking at us.  They have always viewed us as an existential threat. They may have had some cause or they may have misread the tea leaves. From the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the US has had a meddling hand in Russian affairs, diplomatically and militarily.  You want some facts, ok - TR’s negotiation of the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, we sent troops to fight the Reds in the Russian Civil War in the late teens and early twenties after WW1, the Russians believed the Allies let the Nazis bleed them in WWII, the Cold War/NATO, Nixon in China, the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Consequently, like a weed that won’t go away, the Russian intelligence community has deep roots in the West and very much in the good ole US of A.  Those roots go back to the 1920s maybe earlier.  To what purpose?  To gather information (industrial, political, scientific) and destabilize our nation by disinformation and compromising targeted institutions and people (like, uh, maybe Trump).  It's a long game played over generations. BTW, we do the same thing, it’s how nations exercise power without going to war (Read Sun Tzu, the Art of War). 

The Russians don’t like us, especially Putin.  We have been telling them they suck (and they do) for over 100 years. Putin has been a part of the Russian intelligence apparatus his whole career. A career that has seen the Soviet Afghanistan debacle and the political/economic collapse of his nation.   He is well versed in the trade craft of spying. He is in charge, a de facto dictator of a country with enormous resources.  And he has a history settling scores with enemies.  He is in the process of settling a score with us (US) now.

Fact, over a dozen US intelligence agencies confirmed to Trump the Russian meddling in the 2016 election in January. His distilled response, if they did, it had no effect. This tidbit is just one tip in a sea of icebergs. Some we see, some we don’t.  They are dangerous to us all the same.

Now, I am going take a play out of Donald’s own playbook, use of the possibility.  Like Ms. Huckabee Sanders said, on behalf of the President concerning the unsubstantiated Trump Obama wiretapping tweets:

(From ABC News 3/5/17) SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Look, I think he's going off of information that he's seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential. And if it is, this is the greatest overreach and the greatest abuse of power that, I think, we have ever seen and a huge attack on democracy itself. And the American people have a right to know if this took place.

Exactly.  So, to that, there should be an independent prosecutor appointed like the Watergate and Whitewater investigations. Also, Congress should convene a bipartisan select committee, made up of ranking members of both parties, from both houses to investigate.  Here is my recommended scope of these needed investigations (but not limited to): 

• Did, as President Trump alleges, President Obama order wiretapping of Trump campaign
• the complete release of the President Trumps tax returns going back 25 year
• Full disclosure of contacts between the Trump campaign, his family, Trump Companies and Russian political, economic and military and their surrogates over the last 10 years
• Full and comprehensive investigation of the Steele Trump Dossier

In an interview with Joe Scarborough last December, Trump seemed to defend Putin’s killing of dissident journalists, stating, “at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.” He went on to say that “our country does plenty of killing, too, Joe.” Trump concluded that he’s “always felt fine about Putin. He’s a strong leader. He’s a powerful leader.” (Daily Beast)

Quack Quack

Skid is back

I haven’t blogged in quite some time.  Over 10 years since my last blog, under a different pen name.   In the last decade my kids grew up into good people, my wife and I grew closer. Retirement not too far away. Saved for a rainy day.  These are good things in a world with a lot of bad. 

About two weeks ago, in the den, watching the news, my wife was extremely upset by what she was seeing and hearing.  I said don’t be so upset, this shit is making you crazy.  She turned to me, paused, and said calmly, you have to take a stand then turned back and yelled some more at the tube.

I have never been one to be shy about my beliefs.  As the saying goes, opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.  I have a lot of them.  Opinions.  There are consequences. Some people see me as a person with a lot of opinions, therefore, I am an asshole in their eyes.  So be it.

Set up my Twitter account, @SkidMarksUSA. Set up my blog. Taking a stand.