January 31, 2015

Jeb ‘Put Me Through Hell’...Michael Schiavo's story.

I remember this whenever Jeb starts spouting about what a moderate he is. Or when others portray him that way.

Jeb ‘Put Me Through Hell’


Michael Schiavo at home. "He should be ashamed," Schiavo said of Jeb Bush. "To bring as much pain as he did, to me and my family, that should be an issue." | Maggie Steber/Redux for POLITICO Magazine

“It was a living hell,” he said, “and I blame him.”

Michael Schiavo was the husband of Terri Schiavo, the brain-dead woman from the Tampa Bay area who ended up at the center of one of the most contentious, drawn-out conflicts in the history of America’s culture wars. The fight over her death lasted almost a decade. It started as a private legal back-and-forth between her husband and her parents. Before it ended, it moved from circuit courts to district courts to state courts to federal courts, to the U.S. Supreme Court, from the state legislature in Tallahassee to Congress in Washington. The president got involved. So did the pope.

But it never would have become what it became if not for the dogged intervention of the governor of Florida at the time, the second son of the 41st president, the younger brother of the 43rd, the man who sits near the top of the extended early list of likely 2016 Republican presidential candidates. On sustained, concentrated display, seen in thousands of pages of court records and hundreds of emails he sent, was Jeb the converted Catholic, Jeb the pro-life conservative, Jeb the hands-on workaholic, Jeb the all-hours emailer—confident, competitive, powerful, obstinate Jeb. Longtime watchers of John Ellis Bush say what he did throughout the Terri Schiavo case demonstrates how he would operate in the Oval Office. They say it’s the Jebbest thing Jeb’s ever done.

“If you want to understand Jeb Bush, he’s guided by principle over convenience....“He may be wrong about something, but he knows what he believes.”

Those are the words of Dennis Baxley who was one of the most conservative legislators ever.

SO...even though Jeb is wrong about something it is okay because he believes it strongly. That is a pathetic excuse for ignorance.

Long article, hard to limit to just a few paragraphs. The worst is how Jeb continued attacking Michael Schiavo even after Terri's death.

Today, looking back, what makes Felos, the attorney for Michael Schiavo, angriest about the case is Bush’s letter to McCabe. Even after 18 months of legal wrangling, even after her death, even after the autopsy—after all that—the governor asked a prosecutor to initiate a retroactive criminal investigation of his client. It struck Felos as “odd,” “bizarre”—“personal.”

“It was such an abuse of authority,” Felos said. “I think that really raises red flags about his character and his fitness to be president. Jeb didn’t get his way in the Schiavo case. I think he tried to take it out on Michael.”

One interesting part is that President Obama said he regrets that he did not put forth effort to stop the interference.

“It wasn’t something I was comfortable with, but it was not something I stood on the floor and stopped. And I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better.”

January 30, 2015

New Dem FL congresswoman votes with GOP 4 times 1st week. Sits with GOP at SOTU speech.

She is not from my district, nonetheless when she votes with the GOP 4 times in one week it affects all of us in the state. She said she is going to take North Florida values to DC with her. Wonder where that leaves the rest of us and our values?

North Florida is traditionally very conservative, although there are more Democrats than Republicans.

If a Democrat is going to vote with the GOP and cross the aisle to sit with them during a speech given by the president, it concerns me a lot.

I've heard all the arguments about how a Democrat in a conservative district must vote as the Republicans do. Newsflash, we have lost in a major way in 2010 and 2014 by following such a policy. It appears to be getting us nowhere.

Democrat Gwen Graham takes heat for right-leaning votes

U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham of Tallahassee, who unseated Republican Steve Southerland in November, is under fire from Democrats for votes in favor of the Keystone pipeline, to roll back Wall Street reforms and other issues, illustrating the difficulty she faces in a district with a sizable conservative base.

"I promised to bring the North Florida Way to Washington — and that means working with both parties to reach common sense solutions," Graham told the Buzz. "Now, I'm following through with that promise and focusing on creating jobs, improving education and ending the gridlock in Congress. Neither party is right 99 percent of the time, so the people of North Florida expect us to work together to get things done."

That might have been true at one time. But again here are our Democrats trying to compromise with extremists who will not give an inch. They may enjoy talking about how they love working together, but what they are doing is hurting the people.

Her moves have drawn praise, including an editorial in the News Herald of Panama City. "It seems clear that Graham is making a good faith effort to work with Republicans on the important issues of the day."

In a statement to the Buzz, Leon County Democratic state committeewoman Tabitha Frazier said: "I know that many liberal Democrats had been hoping for a party-line voter when it came to Gwen, one of the few Democratic wins in the entire country. But the majority of North Florida voters are moderate and she campaigned to victory as a moderate. Gwen's independent leadership and across-the-aisle style in Congress are exactly what she promised, and it's a refreshing change from Rep. Southerland's tea party priorities and extreme partisan ways."

Crossing the aisle to sit with David Jolly who was elected in great part by the Tea Party....I do not think she should have done that.

Gwen Graham Responds to State of the Union Address

WASHINGTON, DC – Statement from Rep. Gwen Graham on the State of the Union address:

“Bipartisanship starts with forming relationships. Tonight, I crossed the aisle to sit with my Florida colleague Representative David Jolly. The people of North Florida don’t expect Democrats and Republicans to agree on everything, but they do expect us to work together to get things done.

Good luck on that, Gwen. At least your father, though very moderate in his beliefs, put his loyalty with the Democrats....but he did stand up against them when they helped take us into a war built on lies.

Here are her first four votes.

Meet the new conservative rising star: Florida freshman "Democratic" Rep. Gwen Graham

Gwen Graham (D) won her seat in one of our rare, balanced districts of the red Northern section of Florida. Although District 2 has 16% more Democratic voters in the district than GOP, it normally leans GOP because that's how Florida voters roll.

She replaced a teabag incumbent that was so incredibly terrible, he couldn't even win in a red wave election. Steve Southerland was the guy who said that his $174,000 congressional salary "wasn't very much", that his job "didn't mean much" to him, and also justified a male-only fundraiser by saying he once went to a "lingerie shower". Really, he was that bad.

Democrats, including myself, worked hard for Gwen. She was the daughter of a popular, former Democratic governor and promised to fight for the working class. Graham won her seat.

And what has she done?

In her first week in Congress, she has voted with the GOP every single time.

She voted against ACA.
She voted for the Keystone pipeline.
She voted to gut Wall Street reform.
She voted against Nancy Pelosi as speaker.

January 29, 2015

My Trojan Killer scan last night found 6 trojans missed by Norton Internet Security, Malwarebytes..

They are all paid versions I bought since my horrible browser hijacking in Feb 2014 on my new computer.

I run Trojan Killer each evening, and very glad I did.

Norton is notoriously bad with trojans, but I was surprised that Malwarebytes missed them.

They were Trojan.U.Gamburl and Trojan.U.BlacolerRef

I looked them up and they can come from a legitimate website.

We’re seeing plenty of reports for a JavaScript redirector malware family that we call Gamburl; previous reports have called it Gumblar or Redir.

These attacks seem to be coming from legitimate Web sites with pages that have been modified to contain this malicious script. So even if you’re visiting a Web site that you trust, there’s still the possibility that you may be a victim of these so-called “drive-by attacks”.

When a user visits a site containing a Gamburl script, the browser will be redirected to a specific Web site that contains a slew of exploits and other malware. As of this writing, Gamburl is known to redirect to the following Web sites:

gumblar.cn
martuz .cn

Once connected to the above sites, Gamburl tries to download other malware into the system. From what we have observed, these malware are mostly backdoors, PDF and Shockwave exploits. However, some of the observed downloaded malware are variants of the Win32/Daonol family. Examples of MD5 of Daonol seen are 7de29e5e10adc5d90296785c89aeabce and 2131112053ed144c46277b9024bcf39f. Daonol trojans are capable of preventing access to security Web sites, and redirecting searches to sites hosting other malware. Daonol is also capable of stealing information, such as FTP credentials, and placing the information in a file in the Windows system folder called sqlsodbc.chm. Note that a file named sqlsodbc.chm exists by default when you install Windows, and so is overwritten if your system has been infected by Daonol. This may be a symptom of Gamburl/Daonol infection. In case you suspect infection, you might want to check the list of some the unique hashes and file size of a clean sqlsodbc.chm.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2009/05/27/gamburl-gone-wild.aspx

January 26, 2015

Socialist snow plows keep clearing all the roads around my house.

Love this. Seen on Twitter today.

The Baxter Bean @TheBaxterBean · 8h 8 hours ago

Socialist snow plows keep clearing all the roads around my house. Will this Obama tyranny never end? #BlizzardOf2015

Socialist snowplows.

January 26, 2015

1967 Merv Griffin show. Interviews MLK, Harry Belafonte also a guest.

Published on Aug 31, 2012

Here is an expanded and newly transferred version of Merv's interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We recently discovered the lost master tape of this show and we've had it newly transferred. This is stunning quality compared to what we had earlier and we're thrilled to have found the original master and that this important piece of American history is now preserved in pristine condition. Kudos to DC Video in L.A. for their stellar work. In this segment Dr. King shares with Merv his take on the then-current state of the Civil Rights movement in America. Merv Griffin had over 5000 guests appear on his show from 1963-1986. Footage from the Merv Griffin Show is available for licensing to all forms of media through Reelin' In The Years Productions. www.reelinintheyears.com.

Merv Griffin was one of my all time favorites.

January 24, 2015

Do you live in "healthy poverty" as defined by founder of John Birch society?

Healthy Poverty -- the Radical Right's Fantasy

The words of Claire Conner on her Facebook page in January 2014.

"A lot of folks tell me that the John Birch Society is irrelevant: their ideas are dead and they have no real influence today."

But, here are the facts, folks. The radical right (which is running the House of Representatives) has embraced so many John Birch policies that I can hardly keep count. Slashing food stamps and gutting unemployment compensation--harken back to the views of Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society.

..... Listen to Welch's description of the first decade of the 1900s. "The spirit of growth, of adventure, and of opportunity permeated the very atmosphere which everybody breathed."

"There was still plenty of poverty in many areas, of course. But it was a HEALTHY KIND OF POVERTY, where every man took for granted that relief from dire want was entirely his own problem and responsibility. . .. And even the poverty was thus offset by the enormous blessing of freedom." (John Birch Society Bulletin, July 1976).

This same Welch called Social Security "a gigantic embezzlement."
He also opined, in 1964, about the necessities of life. Listen to this: "While food, shelter and clothing are necessities for an individual in a civilized community, the guarantee that he will always have them is not."

If you've been paying attention to drumbeat against food stamps and unemployment, you're hearing Robert Welch in a new suit. He's Paul Ryan, Steve Stockman, Tim Heulskamp, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell.

More at at the link.

Claire Conner said in her book she did not believe her mother when she said the Birchers would be ready when the liberals failed.

January 24, 2015

Claire Conner on how to recognize John Birchers today. Great video.

From her book Wrapped in the Flag.

The lurch to the right in 2010 is the unholy coalition of Tea Party, libertarian, big business, the gun lobby, the religious right and the newly reborn John Birch Society. It took 50 years, but these folks are back and they are strong.

More about Claire, in case you missed her powerful book. From her website:

Claire Conner

For 32 years, my father was a national leader in the John Birch Society.
At age 13, I became a foot soldier in its anti-Communist, anti-federal government army.
I discovered the radical right’s plan for America, a plan I could not support.
Wrapped in the Flag is my story.

I highly recommend the book. You will find yourself fascinated about how many politicians you recognize.

January 23, 2015

Adam Putnam, other top Republicans call for Gov. Scott, FDLE resignation probe. Video.

Thanks to BayNews9 for covering this.

I can not understand how Floridians re-elected him. It boggles my mind.

January 22, 2015

Links on why public money should not be given to unregulated charter schools. Add yours!

(Repost from last May...there are many more reasons now and more links to add.)

Here is one from today in LBN.

Head count shows 'unusually high' discrepancies at charter schools (Ohio)

I am making a list of part of my research and links about how I believe charter schools harm public education. There are good charter schools, the idea itself is a good one. However it's an idea that was hijacked by greedy companies that manage schools for money, formulate standardized tests in secret, and companies that use charter schools to dabble in real estate with public money.

That is basically the gist of my argument....that taxpayer money is being given over to private companies which are NOT regulated and have almost no oversight. That is the reason for charters. The powers that be say that if schools are not burdened with rules they will be better schools.

So ask yourself why then are public schools regulated and have oversight? Why start a system of schools that has none. When you do that the greedy step in and take over, and there is no one willing to speak against them or stop them.

When someone tells me I don't know what I'm talking about or that I am not qualified to talk in a negative way against Arne Duncan's policies...then I can link to these articles. Not all are my posts, and there are valuable links.

And I think 33 years of teaching with new training every few years at a nearby college at least make me more qualified than the billionaire boys' club (to quote Diane Ravitch).

Unregulated charter school finances wasting taxpayer money. Rampant fraud, harm to students.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/8440

Florida charter schools get 91 million for facilities. Public school funding dwindles.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022774952

FL charter schools claim 80,000 on waiting list. Not true.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022344727

FBI raids Kenilworth charter school
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014670340

FL budget: $133 per charter student, $18 per public school student
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/30/1296034/-FL-budget-133-per-charter-student-18-per-public-school-student

"The Invasion of the Charter Schools"
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/06/invasion-of-charter-schools.html

Charter school leader pushes kids to become her personal lobbyists
http://pando.com/2014/03/06/charter-school-leader-pushes-kids-to-become-her-personal-lobbyists/

"Stand and Deliver" school, Garfield High, sadly is one of 12 public schools available to outside bidders
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/4973

2009 Some Catholic schools in Florida converting to charter schools this fall.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/5085

Charter school company hired felon on probation. He stole $202, 837.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/8537

Unregulated charter school finances wasting taxpayer money with rampant fraud.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/8532

Imagine Charter Schools sells 5 schools for 44 million...will have them leased back to them.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/5586

Compilation of charter school scandals over the past year.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6012

Charter schools are a tip of the hat to deregulation supporters.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/3753

Two FL charter schools owe half a million to Lee county. Gave wrong number of students.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/8431

NYT's investigative article about Imagine Charter Schools and Dennis Bakke.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6057

Charter school offers to give $100 to each student who recruits someone new.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6260

"Parent Revolution"? Not really. Not grassroots. Started by charter school companies.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/8098

Charter schools in TX receive $19 million from state, red flags raised in audit.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/4963

Charter school director: When "test day came, they were like little test-taking machines.”
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6707

Metro Nashville Public Schools lose $3.4 million funding for rejecting charter school. Power play.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/8481

More charter school problems in FL. Where's the oversight of taxpayer money?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024282410

Four states, 4 examples of charter schools fraud. Oversight needed badly.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024106466

Labor board decides Chicago charter school is really private, subject to private sector laws.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022121286

This is how they are declaring schools "failing" so they can be turned into charter schools.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024966712

Forcing brain damaged students to take the same test as everyone else and counting their scores with the others.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024956116

Turkish charter schools, Harmony, finalist for 30 million from Race to the Top federal money.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022131852

States are being forced by Arne to raise the number of charter schools or lose millions in federal money.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024939550

When FL charters close money doesn't get back to the public schools.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024934579

One testing company put a gag order on teachers to keep them from talking about how sorry the tests are that calls schools failures and turns them over to charters.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024882119

Florida's largest charter school under investigation.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024854017

The kind of testing that fails public schools so they can be turned into charters run by private companies.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024848990

Thank you, Raul Grijalva: Obama’s Market-Based Policies Endanger Public Education.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024843639

"we have not spoken earlier, as we are a staff that exists in fear of bullying, retaliation...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024832541

White Hat Charter schools got about 1 billion from Ohio, claimed public property as theirs

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024800260

Arne Duncan complicit as forces of privatization take over public schools.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024752043

NY legislature: Charter schools get free space in public schools. Hostile takeover of public arenas?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024751666

Build an F-Rated Charter School? WITHOUT Approval? Only in Florida. From Daily Kos today.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024694215

Eva Moskowitz moves charter school into another public school's space, boots them from classrooms.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6703

FL gave $25 million to pro-profit charter schools for non-attending students in 2006-2007

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024472708

Online charter school, K12, got 730.8 million from taxpayers in 2013. Teacher speaks out.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024291075

That's just a few things. Adding more later on.

January 22, 2015

Anyone missing a bunch of Beagles? Found roaming together, 4 of them.

According to the article they are sweet and loving. They have to belong to someone who loved them.

A Bunch of Beagles: Information Sought on 4 Dogs Found Roaming South Lakeland


Makaylee Graves, 20, and her sister Madison, 15, with four Beagles they captured running loose in the Deer Brooke subdivision in South Lakeland.
STEPHANIE ALLEN | THE LEDGER

Graves, 20, said she first spotted the pack early Monday off Pipkin Road. She thought about picking them up then but didn't want to be late for work. She spotted them again on her way home as they meandered through her neighbors' yards in the Deer Brooke subdivision off Lunn Road.

....“I can officially say I've corralled beagles. And it was about as easy as corralling cats,” Makaylee Graves said laughing.

Graves bought them dog food and extra leashes, and is keeping them in crates. She takes them on frequent bathroom breaks and gives them time to roam.

She took them to Cleveland Heights Animal Hospital to check for microchips, she said, but they don't have any. She posted their photos on Facebook, put up signs around the neighborhood and near where she spotted them off Pipkin Road.

“They're so sweet,” Graves said. “All they want to do is sit there and love on you.”

Graves said there have been many offers to take them separately, but she says they are too close to each other to split them up.