LINO – Libertarian In Name Only

ORLANDO, Florida – Barely twenty-four hours in and already the Libertarian party of two thousand and sixteen is starting to experience dissention in the ranks.

Over Memorial day weekend Libertarians came together from across the country and around the world to nominate their president and vice presidential candidates at their annual national party convention. And for many the top of the ticket for the fall and the general election season is troubling, deeply troubling.

Many Libertarians say that with the assention of former Massachusetts Governor William Weld to the vice presidency that it will just give the North American Union types and Wall Street Big Money Donors a paper tiger in a Gary Johnson administration, should he win the presidency in the fall.

Because from sun-drenched Florida and the grave of the late great Economist Harry Browne, the 1996 and 2000 Libertarian party nominee for President of the United States of America, you can hear the battle cry of LINO – Libertarian In Name Only!

No doubt the Johnson-Weld ticket will tell Libertarians and you fellow voter nothing could be further from the truth. No paper tigers here, no LINO’s allowed! And so it will go, no?

But lets look at it from this perspective for just a minute, shall we? My prediction is that the Johnson-Weld ticket will be Libertarian-lite in that they’ll run under the Libertarian party banner but will, instead, draw from the well of the Never Trump Never Hillary movements in a kind of “A Coalition of the Willing.” Or as Bill Clinton and Dick Morris did so infamously in the 1990’s, “Triangulation.”

Seeking out those disgruntled and disavowed  Democrats and Republicans who just can’t stand the idea, much less stomach it, of another Clinton or that for matter a Donald J. Trump in The White House.

Or, maybe not? Maybe just maybe it’s what they all really want, and it’s just going to be made to look like it’s not? Just so the media, talking-heads, politicos and party bosses can have something to talk about on the nightly news.

In either case I like Bill Weld and have enormous respect for Gary Johnson, ever since 2011 when he first ran for the presidency. Then as now Johnson stands for some of the same things that I do, but with Charles and David Koch, through Bill Weld, pulling on Johnson like he’s a puppet and they’re the masters even I can’t stomach that!

I hate Charles and David Koch with every fiber of my being for what they have done to this great country of ours and this beautiful world in which we all live. They are evil incarnate, in my opinion, and hell itself would be a far worse place with them in it.

I call LINO – Libertarian in Name Only! And for those disgruntled and disaffected Libertarians I offer this as your Battle Cry:

Hold fast, and as Jesse Ventura says, “Stay Vigilant…”

–Rhett.

“My name is Paul Wellstone and I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party!” – Paul Wellston, #RIP

The Honorable Paul D. Wellstone, PD-MN. (July 21, 1944 – October 25, 2002)

Years ago PD – Progressive Democrat Paul David Wellstone very famously quipped: My name is Paul Wellstone and I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party! And ever since the Democratic party has been trying to figure out what such a human qualifier like that even means?

But with the advent of Progressive firebrands like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that human qualifier is being answered.

This weekend the Libertarian party or Libertarian National Committee held its national convention in Orlando, FL. C-Span covered the live event. I pretty much watched it all the way through, making a few exceptions for normally scheduled television and “honey-dos” for my lovely wife along the way. LOL.

I live in Kentucky and a few weeks prior to this event I sat down and made this video on Kentucky primary day for 2016. Take a look:

As most of you know I am throughly disgusted  with the 2016 Democratic primary process. In particular how it is that Hillary Clinton has come so far without real question or scrutiny? Essentially, being handed my Democratic party’s nomination for the presidency of the United States of America in two thousand and sixteen.

Over this Memorial day weekend I have been thinking a lot about Mr. Wellstone and his epic qualifier and in the video above I lamented that after this Democratic primary and in particular the general election cycle for 2016 I am through with the Democratic party. Resolving to go the way of Independent or Decline to Say in terms of my voter registration thereafter.

Seemingly I’m not alone in this as many in the Republican party have followed suit. Burning their voter registration cards in effigy, like the peace nicks of the 1960’s that burned their draft cards as opposed to being drafted for service in the Vietnam War or the Women of the Women’s Liberation Movement who burned their bras and kitchen aprons as well.

But after this weekend and the last Libertarian presidential debate on C-span for 2016, and the epic opening and closing statements of Dr. Marc Allan Feldman and Mr. Darryl W. Perry my faith in humanity and the Democratic party has been renewed! Because it was both these men that managed to stir the echoes and fan the flames of democratic progressivism anew for me personally. Watch.

Hearing these men’s words and the stir of echoes from the late great Paul Wellstone in 1990 when it was first running for the United States Senate from Minnesota has renewed and restored my faith in the Democratic part of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. Renewed that there is hope. Promise. And people out there filled to overflowing with a heart for the People of America and the World.

We cannot now nor anytime in the future let up folks. Our foot must stay on the gas pedal of progress, BUT not the kind of progress we’re seeing today. Instead it should be the progress that people like Senator Wellstone and so many others have advocated for, some for years some for decades, from the very beginning.

That healthcare for all is a fundamental right and not a privilege. That people deserve and have earned the right to a livable wage and a standard of living with access to housing and public transportation that is commiserate with the times. The right to organize and unionize for representation at the table of free markets. That as Americans we have a right to expect that our government will keep its nose out of our bedrooms and off our bodies. The right to come and go as we please and do business or not do business; politically, socially or ecumenically with nation’s, Peoples and places of our choosing. And the right that when we retire medicare, Medicaid and social security will be their for us in the twilight of our ‘golden years’.

To many these ideals seem ‘high-minded’, ‘professorial’ and downright nice, BUT they are ideals ‘devoid of reality’, for now. But that through the advent of time, hard work, dedication and small ball politics we’ll get there, eventually. Afterall this is not Scandinavia or the Republic of Myanmar, we are told. “Hello. I’m earth. Have we met?” And so it goes, right?

I am all for third political parties because they keep the Republican and Democratic parties honest and accountable. They hold the two-party system in this country to a full accounting of the American people. Moving forward in 2016 third political parties can and should expect more mainstream viewership.

Not all that long ago I was reading a posting from former Independent Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura that said that there is the very real possibility that we could see the emergence of three or four [mainstream] political parties from this 2016 election cycle. Giving us, the Voters, all the more to choose from. And as a Progressive, never mind a Democrat, I’m all for that. More Voices. More Choices, and when I get elected to high office I will work to preserve, protect and defend voting and the free exercise thereof for any candidate or political party of your choice, regardless of names behind it or the money that it has in its coffers.

And speaking of, “money in politics” or the epic Citizens United Supreme Court case I have to, as a Progressive Democrat, draw a line in the sand. And push back against the idea that somehow people like Charles and David Koch, Foster Friess and Sheldon Adelson, just to name a few BIG MONEY donors, will get to dictate to Us, We the American Voters that is, how our political process or Our Future should be.

BIG MONEY politics is not a march towards progress at all, instead its a means to an end.

And if true BIG MONEY donors, like the ones I just mentioned, will, through these Never Trump and Never Hillary movements, co-opt folks, good folks at that, like former Governor of New Mexico and 2016 Libertarian presidential nominee Gary E. Johnson and former Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor  and 2016 Libertarian vice presidential nominee William F. Weld or the Johnson-Weld Campaign for 2016, all for the sake of ballot access in all fifty states and an inside tract towards the interworkings of American democracy.

That is WHY I am renewed, restored and resolved to making the Democratic party Democratic again. Progressive again. Giving people a viable alternative(s) that will speak to and do far more than  just be this candidate or a part of that political movement because its popular or politically expedient.

Because it’s not about a person or a slogan, a campaign or a dream, instead its about us, all of us together. We are, after all, all in this thing called life together and we are only as good as the person next to us. No better and no worse.

My name is Rhett E. Column (aka David Davidson) and I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party! Care to join me in the march towards progressive ideals?

–Rhett.

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton or the Turkey n Swiss Sandwich on Rye in Mr. Bernie Sanders???

PADUCAH, Kentucky – So I’m watching tonight’s primary and caucus results for West Virginia and Nebraska come in, and it looks like another case of ‘We Split That’ in terms of things on the Democratic side of the political ledger, with Bernie Sanders taking West Virginia and Hillary Clinton taking Nebraska in this kind of non-binding binding primary process there. E.g.

 

Mr. Sanders has dug his heels in and is determined to win this Democratic primary process. No concessions. No ‘asks’ politically or socially. He will accept nothing less but “absolute and total victory,” as General Douglas MacArthur said of the War in Korea way back when.

Tonight at a campaign rally in Portland, OR. – a campaign stop that felt more like a victory lap than standard campaign fare – the lovable political curmudgeon that is Bernie Sanders made CLEAR that he intends to win and win big or ‘YUGE!’ as he says.

Going on to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States in Philadelphia during the summer and in to the fall of this year winning the White House against Mr. Trump.

And as the process now turns to Oregon and my home state of Kentucky (one week from today) already the political establishment in Washington, D.C. and the political party bosses in New York, NY. have ramped up the hand-wringing and lamenting about the general election for 2016 or Donald J. Trump, Sr. vs. Hillary D. Rodham-Clinton.

“What does Bernie Sanders want? I mean we all know that the ‘numbers’ aren’t there for him to win this primary, right? So what does he want, and that’s something that he is going to have to decide going into the summer [or else]. And then who will Donald Trump be able to sucker, we mean pick for a vice presidential running mate? His unfavorables are so very high right now, he’s toxic for the GOP down ballot races later this year. My God is he ever bad! But this is who the GOP voters picked. So what can we expect?” – Is what they all say in woeful glee. 

And I can’t help but think who do I really wanna choose from out of that bunch over the Turkey and Swiss on Jewish Rye bread that is Bernie Sanders? Lemme think. Okay. Here goes…

Hands down, clear winner here: Turkey and Swiss on Jewish Rye Bread (Bernie Sanders) all day and twice on Sunday!

I mean think about it for a minute, won’t you? A guy comes up to you on the street and asks, “Hey! For this year’s presidential election cycle would you like a hot Turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich on Jewish Rye bread or Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to be your leader for the next four years?

What are you gonna say? Especially IF you’re really, really hungry, huh?

Hot turkey and Swiss or Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump?

If I’m hungry, I’m takin’ the sandwich folks!

And here’s WHY:

I know this sandwich. It’s a good sandwich. A filling sandwich. A time-tested and honored tried and true sandwich that tastes really, really good going down, if you know what I mean?

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton don’t taste good going down. I’m sorry. They don’t! And no matter how hard they try. How hard the political establishment or party bosses try to make the ham and cheese sandwiches that are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton taste good to We the Voter they never ever will taste good. Bernie Sanders. The lovable curmudgeon. Little old white-haired grandpa-pa that he is tastes good. Makes me and millions more feel good from the crown of our head to the soles of our feet. We know him like we know our favorite sandwiches.

The Western World wants to go and have a sandwich  with Mr. Bernie Sanders.

See you at the delicatessen America!

–Rhett.

Noisy cicadas prepare to emerge after 17 years — myfox8.com

It’s going to get noisy in parts of the Northeast when hordes of cicadas emerge after spending 17 years under ground. Billions of the critters will make themselves heard in Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia once the soil where they live warms up to 64 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the website…

via Noisy cicadas prepare to emerge after 17 years — myfox8.com

Wildfires Threaten Towns in Oklahoma and Kansas — TIME

(OKLAHOMA CITY) — Oklahoma authorities on Tuesday urged residents of the small town of Freedom to evacuate as a wildfire flared in the same area near the border with Kansas where blazes last month scorched hundreds of square miles. The National Weather Service warned that most of the state was under critical to extremely critical…

via Wildfires Threaten Towns in Oklahoma and Kansas — TIME

Snow Falls in Tropical Guadeloupe (Caribbean) in Extraordinary Weather Phenomenon. Global Warming is a HOAX! — Socio-Economics History Blog

via Snow Falls in Tropical Guadeloupe (Caribbean) in Extraordinary Weather Phenomenon. Global Warming is a HOAX! — Socio-Economics History Blog

Alaska, The Arctic Circle, and WHY it ALL MATTERS

JUNEAU, Alaska – Ever had dreams of going to the Great North Woods? Roughing it? Braving it in the wilderness, and the elements? Veni vidi vici – “I came. I saw. I conquered.”

Miner’s from the 1890 Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska (photo courtesy of DD’s Ranch wear)

That all-important. All-encompassing. Once in a lifetime opportunity to make a name for yourself. There have been many men, women and children who braved the elements, the plants, the animals, and their fellow-man in search for gold, peace, and adventure.

Some. Were successful. Very successful. Like that of the George Carmack clan’s discovery in 1896 along the Bonanza Creek River. Still others, not so much.

The point being is: Is that Alaska, the Arctic Circle, all of it matters a great deal, especially now. And in a time when Capitalism and Unitarianism are in this kind of push-pull battle ,like two Bull Moose fighting in the Great North Woods the greatest little Continental Nation in the World, Alaska and her Arctic Circle, of wills that matters a great deal in regards to; the peace, prosperity, and adventurous spirit that is synonymous with Alaska and her Peoples.

And sooner or later one of the two have got to give.

This week President Obama will become the first setting U.S. President to “officially,” visit the Arctic Circle. Among the things that he will do their will be to speak with Native Americans as well as Native Alaskans on the alarming effects that climate change and drilling in the Arctic Circle has had on them, and the environment there.

As you know the Environmental Protection Agency recently granted Shell Oil Company a much coveted drilling permit in the Arctic Circle, [drilling in Alaska and the Arctic circle is] something that Greenpeace USA as well as other climate change activists have been staunchly against for decades, as evidence in the video above.

And while President Obama’s trip is important, historically significant even, no doubt he will receive a chilly reception, and it won’t just be from the frozen tundra’s great north winds either.

The first ever gathering of all the Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations this September 2015

Not since the so-called “Seward’s Folly” – the purchase of the Alaskan Territory from the Russians for the sum of seven million dollars in the late 1700’s by then U.S. Secretary of State William Seward – has their been a more important time in the history of the biggest little national continent in the World.

Alaska and the Arctic Circle, for the first time, matters.

— Rhett E. Column

#SayWhatNews Approved!

“Bitterly clinging to our Coal, #KYGOV. Why Hemp & Marijuana needs to be our New Tobacco..” By Rhett E. Column; #SayWhatNews, #AXJ, #FreePress

For those that don’t know Kentucky is in the midst of deciding who its next Governor will be, and yesterday evening Republican candidates met in a first debate co-hosted by the Lexington-Herald Leader Newspaper and CN2’s Pure Politics.

To say that the debate was interesting would be an understatement, but it got particularly heated and some say down right punchy when the subjects of climate change (coal), healthcare, and education came up.

According to this report from kentucky.com: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/04/21/3812769/republican-gubernatorial-candidates.html?fb_action_ids=10155446824380582&fb_action_types=og.comments  one liners abounded.

And in a show of force Kentucky’s Grand Old Party put forth their best mantras and clanged, bitterly, to their precious coal.

Lets be honest folks! Coal is what tobacco was to Kentucky. It is, for all intents and purposes, regarded by many across the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the last best hope. Because, in their mind’s eye IF we lose coal in this State it will kill this State. (They said that about tobacco btw to!)

But what about hemp and marijuana? One of the candidates for the Republicans, Ky. Ag. Secretary James B. Comer, happens to be a proponent of hemp and marijuana being grown in our State, Safely & Legally. As Kentucky’s Agricultural Secretary he’s championed a first-rate pilot program for industrial hemp to be grown throughout the Bluegrass. In Western Kentucky we have one such pilot program in Marshall County, Ky., and its paying HUGE dividends as one of the best grows in the State! They also have one in the Central portion of the State in Davis County, Ky. and one in Eastern and Northern Kentucky near the border by Cincinnati, OH. Comer himself wrote the pilot program. The state legislature and the outgoing Governor, Steven L. Beshear, signed off on it, and praised, openly, Comer and those other epic Champions of Kentucky Hemp including the late great Gatewood Galbraith.

Kentucky Agriculture Secretary and 2015 Candidate for Kentucky Governor The Honorable James B. Comer. (picture courtesy of The Louisville Courier-Journal Newspaper, 2015)

But Comer, to my disappointment, went off the rails last night, and in my opinion, it cost him dearly. Because he got into the so-called ‘silly season’ of our politics regarding the ‘War on Coal’.

To be sure Gatewood Galbraith was a HUGE SUPPORTER of coal, the Coal Industry as we know it across the Commonwealth, he worked, tirelessly, with the Miners and the Labor Unions to insure Jobs and the Economy in the future. And they all loved Gatewood to pieces for it. And when he would run for office – federal, state or local – the Coal Industry and Coal Miners along with the Coal Unions would be the first to endorse his candidacy publicly.

Mr. Louis G. ‘Gatewood’ Galbraith, Esq. ‘perennial candidate for Kentucky’s perennial problems’…

He and I respectfully agreed to disagree on this important issue, but where we found reliable common ground was in Hemp and Marijuana. So to is the case with Secretary Comer and I. But I FAIL to see why it is so damned important for coal to be kept, bitterly, here in Kentucky? But I am sure that a lot IF not all of Kentucky’s Coal Miners would love to come out of the ‘hole’, permanently, and get into some Emerald Fields of Marijuana and Hemp Green!

From the, “Our Gift To You” Ohio Facebook Events Page, 2015…

Mr. Comer and others would do well to consider this. Coal and the coal industry will always be around, it ain’t going nowhere, but it’s time to get piratical, get healthier, cleaner, and greener. It’s time for Industrial Hemp & Cannabis to be the new tobacco of Kentucky Progress. #RIPGatewood

— Rhett.

[Weather NEWS] “The once “Golden State” is literally being fried by what can only be considered an all out weather warfare assault.”

Good afternoon. As I was reading this posting from my fellow blogger Random Candidate I couldn’t help but think about an 80’s T.V. show I use to watch when I was a kid. “The A-Team”. Remember?

I remember one episode titled, “Water! Water Everywhere!” It had to do with the team helping a group of guys, fellow Vets from the War in Vietnam, to establish a business that some group of bad guys was trying to keep them from doing. The episode involved water. And the distribution of it.

I also thought about the expression, “The times, they are a changin’…” And indeed they are. As weather and seasons change we are told, according to religious teachings, that these are the Last Days. The End Times. Armageddon gearing up. I believe that.

Believe that God himself is using climate change, global warming whatever you want to refer to it as, as a catalyst to the End.

I also believe that the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster has played a drastic role in the change of weather, especially over California.

“The once “Golden State” is literally being fried by what can only be considered an all out weather warfare assault.”.

The only question(s) is, is what are we going to do to change it? To clean it up? Right a wrong? Effect change just as the A-Team would?

As the late great George Peppard would say as Colonel John, “Hannibal” Smith, “I love it when a plan comes together…”

Peace.

–Rhett.

[White Paper Report NEWS] The Post-Sandy Resilience of Hoboken, New Jersey (2014) | Union of Concerned Scientists

HOBOKEN, New Jersey — Below is a detailed After Action Report on the Hurricane Sandy issue that hit the North Shore of the Garden State in 2013.

Resiliency. Progress. Change. Growth. Development. A MUST READ and SHARE #whitepaperreport from my friends and colleagues at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Post-Sandy Resilience of Hoboken, New Jersey (2014) | Union of Concerned Scientists.

Peace.

–Rhett.