Of Course, "Freedom" Is Not Free

It's Never Too Late To Start House Cleaning

On this date:

1789, The first U.S. presidential election was held. Americans voted for electors who, a month later, chose George Washington to be the nation's first president.

In 1997, Newt Gingrich became the first Republican re-elected House speaker in 68 years.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial began in the Senate.

In 2006, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, facing corruption charges, stepped down as House majority leader.

Happy birthday Rand Paul

Rand Paul, US Senator from Kentucky, was born on January 7, 1964. He is 47 today.

Say Brother, Can You Spare Me A Tax Break?

"Apparently, you and I owe an apology to the extravagantly-rich in our society. They're reported to be in a deep pout and a political funk because We the People have hurt their feelings.

This stems from the public's simmering anger over the fact that the Wall Street barons who crashed our economy are back to paying themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses, while the corporate CEOs who keep downsizing and offshoring our middle class opportunities are grabbing bigger paychecks than ever for themselves. The wealthy swells are upset by our anger and feel picked on by us riff-raff -- they don't like being blamed for our economic distress, even though they are to blame, and they certainly don't like the rising populist fervor for more economic fairness in our country. So they're mad at us for being mad at them, claiming that they are victims of our 'wealth envy.'

I'm sure you feel as badly as I do about this, so you'll be glad to know that those living in luxury seem to have found a way to soothe their bad mood: they've gone shopping! Yes, while workaday Americans are scrambling just to cover the rent and buy groceries, the well-heeled are reported to be splurging again, indulging their consumer whims with such pricey pretties as exotic automobiles.

One analyst of trends in the luxury car market concedes that sales of Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, and other ultra-priced autos had been down the past couple of years. He explained that, "It didn't feel right buying a $300,000 Rolls-Royce when people were being foreclosed out of their homes." But this year, the elites are saying, "To hell with what the public thinks, I'm gonna get me a new Ferrari 458 Italia, the people be damned!"

How nice for them. But I don't think their conspicuous consumption is going to make anyone feel better about their greed and nor will it quell the public's rising populist fervor. "

Jim Hightower

Ford Gave Minimum Wage A Boost On This Day In 1914

On this day in 1914, the Ford Motor Company rolled out a series of initiatives targeted at improving the lives of its workers. Along with boosting the company's minimum wage to five dollars per day, Ford also unveiled plans to trim its work day to eight hours. Whatever the merits of these measures, they were something of a necessary corrective, designed to offset the potentially "dehumanizing" effects of Ford's recent move to perpetually operating mode of assembly-line production. Though the company was now able to churn out 2,000 autos a day, the quicksilver pace took a severe toll on FordÝs assembly-line workers.

Have You Had Your Movement Today?

On January 5, 1968 a movement began in Czechoslovakia. On this day in 2011, the GOTea Party movement gets sworn in and takes control of the US House of Representatives.

Time will tell what the GOTea movement brings. Will it bring momenteum or just motion. Will the country move ahead or backwards? Will the debt go up or down? Will the deficits turn to surplus? Will the jobs comeback? Time will tell...


A mass movement advocating political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech, travel and an end to state censorship, began in Czechoslovakia when Alexander Dubcek came to power as the head of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. "We shall have to remove everything that strangles artistic and scientific creativeness," he said. The time later became known as “Prague Spring.”

Who Put The Sand In The Vaseline?

The Navy is expected to relieve Capt. Owen Honors as commander of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise on Tuesday afternoon, a Defense Department official said, part of an investigation into a series of videos made by Honors that use anti-gay slurs and mimic masturbation.

The videos were shown to sailors on the Enterprise’s closed-circuit television system in 2006 and 2007, when Honors was the ship’s second-in-command. They include skits laden with sexual innuendo and barbs aimed at gays and the politically correct.

Photo Shop Politics: William The Youth

Must not be too much to do in New Mexico...

Outgoing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is mulling whether to grant a pardon to Billy the Kid, the outlaw convicted of murdering a sheriff in 1878. The potential pardon has ignited a debate on this chapter of frontier history, with supporters saying state authorities reneged on a deal struck with Billy the Kid -- also known as William H. Bonney -- and opponents arguing that a pardon would sully the memories of the lawmen who tracked him down.

An unofficial poll set up by the governor's office found public support for the pardon, according to the Associated Press, with 430 respondents in favor and 379 opposed.

Pardons are a traditional goodwill gesture from departing governors but few involve convicts who died more than a century ago. Richardson, a Western history buff, first started considering a pardon for Bonney after receiving a petition from Albuquerque attorney Randi McGinn this month, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Billy the Kid was convicted of killing Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady in 1878 but the territorial governor of New Mexico, Lew Wallace, offered him a pardon if he testified in a separate murder case. The Kid agreed but was never pardoned. He escaped from prison in 1881 and killed two deputies before he was tracked down and killed on July 14, 1881.

McGinn told the Times her petition was "only to enforce one promise the governor made."

Wallace's great grandson, however, opposes the pardon. William N. Wallace said a pardon would portray the former governor as a "dishonorable liar."

Richardson has until Friday night to make up his mind. His successor, Susana Martinez, says she has better things to do with her time than argue about frontier-era outlaws.

Is Mother Earth Losing Her Balance?

"We live in a democracy and policies represent our collective will. We cannot blame others. If we allow the planet to pass tipping points...it will be hard to explain our role to our children. We cannot claim...that 'we didn’t know.'"

Jim Hansen
Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies



"...Taxes do two things. First and most obviously, they fund the operations of government. But far more importantly, taxes have been used since the founding of this country to encourage behaviors that we deem good for the nation and to discourage behaviors we consider bad..."

"...In Denmark gasoline is taxed heavily and costs nearly $10 per gallon because the government—with the consent of its citizens, the result of a public information campaign that wasn’t drowned out because there is no domestic oil industry to speak of—realized it was picking up about $3 per gallon of the real cost of gasoline.
Cars and trucks produce exhaust, which deteriorates buildings and statues, causes cancers and asthmas, and, when rain catches it on the way down, pollutes waterways and crops, with those poisons ending up in the food chain. With a national health-care system in addition to other public services, taxpayers in Denmark are picking up the cost of cleaning public areas and historic sites, treating the cancers and the asthmas, cleaning waterways, and restoring farmland that’s been polluted by gas additives, like lead and MTBE (methyl tertbutyl ether).

So they decided to recover those “externalized costs” from gasoline with an increased gas tax..."

Thom Hartmann
Cool Our Fever

The Chamber Pot Is Full Of Fraud...

On this date in 1973...

The Chamber of Commerce of Akron, OH, terminated its association with the All-American Soap Box Derby. It was stated that the race had become "a victim of cheating and fraud."

Evidently, the Chamber has had a change of heart. Now it endorses cheating and fraud, as long as it is being done by big business.

TEA Party: Return To The Bad Old Days

On December 28, 1869...

The (Noble and Holy Order of the) Knights of Labor, a labor union formed by tailors in Philadelphia, held the first Labor Day ceremonies in American history. Led by Uriah S. Stephens, they advocated and end to child and convict labor, equal pay for women, a progressive income tax and cooperative ownership of mines and factories by management and workers. They organized among the growing mass of industrial workers, their motto, “An Injury to One Is the Concern of All.”

On January 3, 2011...

Wisconsin GovenorScott Walker and the new Republican Legislature declare war on working people. They intend to abolish public employee unions and turn Wisconsin into a so-called right-to-work state, meaning no more union shops and no more dues from anyone who objects. This also means no more pressure from anywhere to keep wages at a livable level for anyone, union or not.

It’s all under the guise of cutting the state’s $3 billion budget deficit and creating 250,000 jobs. Sound familiar? Since the Reagan era, Republicans and corporate Democrats have pushed the big lie that tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and busting unions would bring jobs and prosperity. Instead we got the Great Recession. And now the people of Wisconsin have voted to cure the disease with more disease and turn our state into an economic dictatorship...


When Adolf Hitler outlawed “trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike, the German worker in the Third Reich became an industrial serf, bound to his master, the employer, much as medieval peasants had been bound to the lord of the manor,” writes William Shirer in his classic, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” This was done “democratically” when Germany’s parliament passed the 1934 Charter of Labor, which “put the worker in his place and raised the employer to his old position of absolute master.”

Read more...

Bring Back The "Savages" and "Spear Chuckers" To The "Hood"

A Republican lawmaker wants to undo a new state law aimed at eliminating Indian mascots and other race-based team names and logos in Wisconsin public schools.

Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, has drafted legislation to repeal the law, which allows any school district resident to file a complaint with the local school board over the use of offensive nicknames, logos or mascots. The state school superintendent can then order districts to stop using such symbols if they promote discrimination, harassment or stereotyping.

Read more...




On this day 1946...

The University of Tennessee refused to play Duquesne University, because they might have used a black player, Chuck Cooper, in the basketball game. Cooper went on to be the first black player drafted by the Boston Celtics, playing his first NBA game on the same day as the debut of head coach Red Auerbach, guard Bob Cousy, and center “Easy” Ed Macauley.

Those Little Red, White and Blue Lies

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue. And then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

George Orwell

Quote of Note

"Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states 'Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.' But this noble pronouncement runs smack up against the gospel of capitalism: 'Everyone has the right to a free-market economy.' The problem is, free markets don't have consciences, corporations can't really police themselves, and so loss of human life has become an acceptable by-product of business as usual.

Orion Magazine editorial in the May/June 2005 issue

The Roots of Socialized Medicine

Pen & Ink Jambs

For Local Capitalists Speaking only "eesti keel"

Eesti keel, the official language of Estonia.








For some interesting facts about where the OTBL server is located and how it was surreptitiously setup, go to http://whois.domaintools.com/ontheborderline.net. Send Mikhail our regards by phone or email. He's supposedly living in Moscow.

Local "Brilliant" Capitalists Go Broke

Point your browsers to http://www.ontheborderline.net/?lang=en
I think this says all that needs to be said!

Obama says "I'm a fighter!"

"A long political fight that carried over into next year might have been good politics, but it would be a bad deal for the economy and it would be a bad deal for the American people."

President Obama
12/7/2010 News Conference



Talk is cheap and Obama is certianly not a fighter. He's a bi-racial guy who grew up learning to get along in different worlds. He's more likely a bridge builder. Too bad he is living in a time when politics is overstaffed with demonolition experts and wrecking ball operators.

Let's face it, Obama didn't get were he is today by bitch-slapping ganstas in the 'hood. He got there by doing his homework, getting good grades and putting on his Baskin-Robbins uniform and serving up 31 different flavors of ice cream.

He ain't the big boss man...He ain't big, he's just tall. He's stuck in the middle of doing a political tap dance trying to avoid being drowned in the pissing match between the wingnuts on the right and left.

He's a political animal in a game that requires a seemly rare commodity called "compromise."

High Speed Rail Questioned in California

"The lack of a clear financial plan is a critical concern. There is an air of unreality about a plan that includes $17 (billion) to $19 billion in 'free' federal funding from programs that do not yet exist."

Report on California High Speed Rail



"As California prepares to start construction on its $43 billion high-speed railroad, another group of experts has cast doubt on whether the project can succeed.

The California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, which the Legislature and voters created to scrutinize the project, said in its first report released last week that the state's largest project suffers from the "absence of a credible financial plan."

The study -- now the fifth of its kind issued by objective analysts this year, all stinging rebukes of the project -- calls for a "thorough reassessment" of several engineering, financial and managerial issues.

The group of transportation and financial engineers and managers headed by former Caltrans chief Will Kempton said the state's plan to attract funds from both the public and private sectors seems unlikely. Bullet train planners are gambling they're wrong, and voted last week to spend $4.15 billion to start construction in the Central Valley in 2012 while hoping to secure an additional $30 billion this decade to complete the full line..."



Read Experts criticize high-speed rail financial plan@ Mercury News.