Random Thoughts For JFK Rememberence

Steve Loomis is one of the most toxic people in Cleveland.  He acted as though he was a police union member from Parma and not a mostly African American city.  He was insensitive with regard to police shootings to the taxpayers who are killed and certainly to their families.  He was horrible on this new police oversight commission and he is a big obstacle to getting bad cops off the force.  So, good riddance Mr Loomis.  I hope that you and Tom Coyne enjoy your forced retirement.  Maybe you two can retire to Alabama where white supremacists and extremists who always side with the police are more respected.

Speaking of Alabama, I firmly believe that if the people who vote in this Confederate stronghold vote for a guy accused of trolling young girls and violating children they should not be allowed to vote in future elections for 10 years.  Roy Moore freely admitted in an interview that his current wife caught his eye when she was 15 at a dance recital years before they started dating.  This did not raise any issues when the reporter was first told this story, but after all these women came forward it throws a new creepy factor into the story.

Today is the third anniversary of the killing of Tamir Rice.  We mourn the loss of this young boy who was executed by the police for pretending a gun was a real gun as children have done since the days of the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers.

Nearly everyday rational people think it can't get any lower than this, and then the leader of the free world does something even more despicable.  Yesterday, he lied saying that a former federal prosecutor  who prosecuted KKK members was "soft on crime." Then he told the people of Alabama to vote for a fellow club member of the men accused of sexually assault on women over a Democrat.  45 actually defended the creepy guy who trolled the malls, dance recitals and high schools of Alabama for "dates."  No one could have seen this coming.  It is just inconceivable that the leader of the United States would defend a man accused by 9 women of seeking a relationship with them when they were teenagers. To claim that a man accused of unthinkable things "Denied it. In fact he totally denied it" is just bizarre behavior. 

The Party of the Rich and Corporations has decided that Net Neutrality is a bad idea.  This is a link to the interview of the Chairman of the FCC telling us that up is now down and that it turns out America is in fact the center of the universe.  Good luck in selling that to rural communities without access to wireless or those citizens who trust our cable companies to do the honorable thing.   Mr. Pai told us that if there were any problems with cable companies stifling competition, the Federal Trade Commission will step to take care of the problem as they are so often known to do. 

This is going to be hard for the Congress to ignore. Are the people who cut the cable cord and stream videos on line going to be happy that they will pay more?  Google, Netflix, Hulu and Disney are not going to like having their products priced higher because they stream online.  Major universities that use a lot of band width and startups who can't compete with cable and satellite bohemoths are not going to be stand for being relegated to slow lanes.  We already have to pay an average of $50 per month for some of the slowest speeds in the world for internet access. When I was at NEOCH, we commented on the Net Neutrality rules and supported the open internet. One of our legal volunteers wrote up one of the best briefs in our 30 year history.  Here are my comments of the need for a free internet.  Here is the pdf of the brief written by Gino Scarselli.

Again, Mr. President you are not funny and you are not the Comedian in Chief.  Your speech before doing the stupidest action possible, pardoning a bird, was not funny and it only reminded us how we miss Obama.  45 said that he is known for overturning executive actions of the previous administration but was told that he could not overturn the pardon of the two turkeys from last year.  A. That just reminds us how lawless you are, Mr. President. B. It makes us think that you do not know what the hell you are doing.  Finally, we realize that you do not understand humor.  Stick to your job of getting people out of foreign prisons, helping Americans find safe drinking water and access to electricity.

If you want to do a real pardoning a turkey speech here is how it is done from the Obama 2016 speech. Sometimes a President just needs to act Presidential.

"Thanksgiving is also a reminder of the source of our national strength, that out of many we are one, and we’re not bound by any one race or religion but rather by an adherence to a common creed that all of us are created equal,” Obama told attendees assembled in the Rose Garden. And while accepting our differences and building a diverse society has never been easy, it has never been more important. We are people that look out for one another and get each other’s backs. We keep moving forward defined by values and ideals that have been a light to all humanity.”

This is one of the best columns by Paul Krugman that I have ever read. He is very clear about the continued lies of the Republican party regarding taxes.  It is always amazing how four years ago the Republicans did not want to even help Sandy survivors because it added to the deficit and now they have no problem adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit. 

by Brian Davis