Sooner Blue

Yep, I made it through the May tornadoes unscathed .. am so sorry for the lives and homes lost .. have trouble speaking of the 200 dead horses ...

And I'm tired of out-siders asking why we keep living in such a terrible, dangerous place.

Risk is inherent to life, after all. There's no place that's completely safe from everything. The Midwest and Southern Plains have tornadoes .. the East Coast, Florida and the Bay Coast, have hurricanes. The North East has terrible blizzards. If you live near a big river you have floods. California has earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires .. Colorado has avalanches, wildfires, Washington has volcanoes, and Arizona has wildfires. Where should people live?

Once an area is settled, the generations that live and die there, that have made all their memories there, remain for a variety of reasons .. mostly because of the proximity to family and friends. Home, basically, with everything that word implies.

And BTW -- "Why Oklahomans Don't Like Basements"

"A high water table and red clay that soaks up the moisture make dry basements an expensive and iffy proposition right in the heart of Tornado Alley. In fact, because of their reputation for leaks, abasement can actually be a barrier to a home's resale in the state. ...."

Okay .. got lotsa stuff to catch up on ...

A new bigger-than-Watergate scandal came up to end President Obama's fabulous week of Justice Department subpoenas, the IRS brouhaha, etc. .. at least Benghazi ran out of steam.

The Republicans have found new fuel to throw on the scandal bonfire .. look for another House GOP led committee investigation on umbrella holdin' ...

Because, during a drizzly Rose Garden news conference Thursday with the Turkish Prime Minister, President Obama asked for some protection from the rain.

"I am going to go ahead and ask folks, why don’t we get a couple of Marines — they’re going to look good next to us — just because I’ve got a change of suits but I don’t know about our prime minister," he said as two Marines appeared at the lecterns with umbrellas. "There we go. That’s good." He gestured to the soggy press corps, adding, "You guys I’m sorry about."

Lawd-a-mercy, seeing a trained Marine holding Obama's umbrella just rubs some Republicans the wrong way .. they started hollerin' about how Marines are not supposed to hold umbrellas.

Seriously .. if they want to get fired up about something military, why not holler about the stress and strain of endless Middle East wars, which contributes to alarming rates of suicide and rape. Where's the outrage and indignation over that!?

Just so happens that Title 10 of the U.S. Code states that members of the Marine Corps shall "perform such other duties as the President may direct."

Well, Twitter exploded with photos of previous presidents having umbrellas held by people in uniform .. also tweets claiming racial bias if R's think a different standard should be demanded of this president.

It makes you wonder if there's still something southern, a DNA memory perhaps, from the "War of Northern Aggression" days, that howls through their blood when they see just the image of a Marine holding an umbrella for a nigra .. er, black man.

More likely, for GOP leaders, it's because he's a D-d-democrat.

Remember, they went after Bill Clinton to the point of impeachment - he's not black. They went after Kerry, savaged his military service - not black. They're already starting on Hillary Clinton in case she dares to run in 2016 (to say nothing of how she was attacked while First Lady) - also not black.

But, they DO flaunt Obama's race to stir up the racists among us, especially the hunker-down-in-bunker sheeple .. who then flock to fill GOP campaign coffers.

What we have he-ah is a childish foot-stamping conservative base that's lost all sense of propriety and patriotism .. their political extremism is ruining a once great party.

I didn't want to comment on Benghazi/IRS/AP scandal fever until more facts were uncovered.

Boy howdy, it sure looked bad .. what with Republicans doing the Chicken Dance and high-fivin' all over the place. I mean, Mitch McConnell almost smiled.

First Benghazi. The R's were doing their damndest to make it a "cover up" political bombshell .. trying to discredit H. Clinton, see. They're looking down the road to 2016, and are properly nervous about her in the race .. so anything to slow her down or put her on the defensive.

A lot of money is going to be spent trying to destroy her. Count on it. They're already circulating a rumor about her blood clot really being brain cancer. That one smells like Karl Rove to me.

Yet, a new Public Policy Polling survey finds that R's aren't getting much traction with Benghazi .. voters trust Hillary Clinton over House Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49% to 39% margin .. and her 52% favorability rating is same as it was in late March.

Okay, here's what happened -- There was a leak by some congressmen who had been given access to the first emails by the White House .. congressmen who tried to reconstruct them to appeal to Fox News (talk about a breach of protocol) .. but it now turns out they over-played the part that made it look like the White House was covering up something.

Big Republican blunder. Wouldn't it be rich if the White House gave them enough rope to hang themselves .. that the high dudgeon about Benghazi is due to somebody leaking iffy info, and the R's jumping all over it.

Wouldn't it be rich if the R's were triple-reverse snookered by the White House .. the original leak starts a firestorm, then gets disproven by the White House?

Yep, that would be fiendishly, deliciously Machiavellian .. and they say this is how Obama likes to play the game ...

Ah well, Benghazi wasnt working anyway. Now the R's have the IRS and Justice Dept/AP scandal to dance around .. so we probably won't be hearing much more about Benghazi .. unless those two scandals don't have legs.

The ironic thing is that the Justice Dept/AP thing seems to be the only one with any meat .. yet it's likely to draw the least public outrage.

I will hold further comment about the other "scandals" until more facts are revealed .. when I understand better about what they`re actually accusing Obama of doing.

Dang sore-loser Teahadists. I'm so sick and dang tired of the racial animus shown by radical righties on the internet, talk radio and letters to the editor .. bitching that the only reason President Obama won is because he is black, or "the right color."

They want to dismiss his victory by saying he only won because of black voters .. which is pretty dang hard to do when blacks only account for about 13% of voters.

They like to ignore that President Obama also won over 70% of the Hispanic and Asian vote to combine with about 40% of the white vote to win the presidency .. not to mention 55% of women's vote.

Yes, blacks broke records turning out to vote for Obama .. not just because he is black, but because he was the first *viable* black presidential candidate .. ever.

I won't argue that race had something to do with it .. but it's not the whole story. You'd have to know how open bigotry feels .. see the world from inside their black skins, relive their handed-down family stories, to understand their jubilation when 'one of them' finally had a good chance to be the most powerful man in the world.

Think about it righties -- they certainly didn't show the same enthusiasm for Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Alan Keyes or Herman Caine.

Another important thing -- blacks and minorities are overwhelmingly registered as Democrats .. who normally vote for the Democratic candidate .. duh! .. the party that addresses the needs of the working class, the elderly and the poor.

LBJ got 94% of the black vote in 1964, Al Gore got 90% in 2000, and John Kerry got 88% in 2004 .. funny, no one said a dang thing about black people and race.

And it really gets my goat when righties say I only voted for Obama because I'm a 'bleeding heart white liberal.'

Yes, I am a liberal, and white, and my heart feels for my fellow humans .. but I'm also a Democrat descended from generations of Democrats, and I voted for Obama because he is a DEMOCRAT .. the added bonus was that his election could help our country evolve a little .. show the world how true Democracy works.

I can't forget the irony that slaves built the very steps President Obama stood on to take his oath of office.

One thing I know for sure -- I garran-damn-tee you I wouldn't have voted for Romney if he was as black as the Ace of Spades.

Ah well, the sore-loser radicals are just pissed because in 2012, for the first time in history, black voter turnout rate surpassed whites .. which means that many whites of both parties stayed home.

Sooo .. if people had voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004 -- when black turnout was below its current historic levels -- there's a good chance we'd be calling Romney, Mr. President.

Thank you my black friends for standing in line for 8 hours, thank you for not getting discouraged about voter ID .. or when early voting, and Sunday church bus voting were outlawed.

Racists don't seem to understand that all these 'roadblocks' only made you more determined to vote .. turning your spines into even harder steel.

You know how the Tea Party always sez

...that Obama's socialism is destroying this country?

Well, if that's true, he must be doin' it wrong. Looky here:

"Stocks closed out the week with a bang, with the Dow briefly topping 15,000 for the first time, as Wall Street cheered a better-than-expected April employment report. All three major indexes -- the Dow Jones industrials, the broader S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq -- finished sharply higher for the week, with the Dow and S&P advancing to all-time closing highs."

Yep, smells like capitalism to me .. corporate profits are at a record high, the Stock Market is shooting off the charts, and all those tax-loophole dollars will go directly back into corporate pockets.

See, these billion dollar corporations deserve tax breaks because they create jobs .. overseas.

And those tax breaks aren’t free .. they keep billions from being put back into the American public system that provided the wealthy the freedom to earn their wealth in the first place .. things like interstate highways, roads and bridges, electric power plants, water treatment plants .. the internet.

Not to mention public schools or police or fire department or street lights or universities or scientific research or medical research, etc. .. etc. .. etc.

Wall Street only cares about stuffing its pockets .. to hell with working class Main St. who struggle and carry more of the tax burden to pay for the American public system.