Gun insanity…state by state



Typical NRA sidearm

I am always looking for ways to explore the craziness of gun freaks who think more of their firearms than their own family. Otherwise, why would these morons leave their weapons around for children to play with? They act as if their 2nd Amendment rights are more important than their country; many of these twits can carry a concealed weapon around on the streets of their city with no permit, no background check and little if any educational training on how to use it.

Since President Obama and Congress have decided they will do nothing about more gun control enforcement, the states have decided to have a field day and pass more gun rights laws and loosen those already on the books.  The National Rifle Assn. (NRA) is licking its lips with the satisfaction of a demented fiend that is feeding off an equally demented following of losers.  If you don’t believe me, take one look at Wayne LaPierre, the “conspiracy a minute” Exec. V.P. of the NRA, when someone mentions gun control.

Wayne LaPierre befuddled

So I plan to cover the insanities of those states that seemingly make this issue a priority over education, the needy, the children, healthcare and a host of other matters that should take prominence over the idiosyncrasies of this disturbed group.  And where better to start than Arizona, the state with the loosest gun laws in the nation.

ARIZONA: State Sen. Ron Gould, a part of Arizona’s inept Republican legislature, wants to require colleges and universities to allow concealed weapons on campus…again.  Forged Gov. Jan Brewer has already shot his bill down once saying it was “poorly written.” 

FLORIDA: It is now legal to take your Glock with you to the maternity ward while giving birth so you can thrust it in the hands of your newly born to make sure he or she is fully protected when leaving the hospital.

NEW YORK: Tea Party crackpot Mark Meckler, licensed to carry a gun in California, felt he had the right to check his Glock pistol with 19 cartridges in along with himself.  He spent the day in jail and eventually left on a felony weapons charge.

WISCONSIN: 47-year-old Mark Manning from Indiana with a license to carry in Wisconsin was charged with threatening a truck driver on an Interstate highway.  Seems like muttonhead Manning cut off the semi and when the truck flashed its bright lights on the car, Manning pointed a gun back at the semi.

ARIZONA-AGAIN: a 7-year-old from Mesa was detained in school after a handgun he had brought with him in his backpack that day discharged on a loaded bus.  Fortunately, no one was injured.  The kid got the weapon from a closet at his home.

NEW YORK: Damark King was apparently trying to settle a score with someone when he blasted 5 rounds in a courtyard hitting a 21-month-old in a stroller in the face causing her to lose an eye.  I didn’t say NY-AGAIN because King had brought the 9mm handgun with him from Arizona with an expired license to sell it in New York.

ARIZONA-AGAIN: In a humorous appeal to a newspaper columnist in the rural town of Green Valley, a wife laments over the recent purchase by her 70-year-old husband of a shotgun and a .38 revolver he takes everywhere he goes.  The wife says she isn’t convinced he knows how to use the guns and fears that he will accidentally shoot her, himself or an innocent bystander.

Thanks to the Arizona Republic, The Globe and Mail, CBS News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Huffington Post, Staten Island Live and the Green Valley News/Sahuarita Sun

More fun and games with guns later.















What you can do to prevent identity theft in 2012

The Identity Theft Research Center (ITRC) has come up with 10 guidelines to help keep your personal data secure in 2012.  I’ll get to that shortly but first you should know that I worked in the junk mail industry for 35 years selling your names and private information to companies that use it to target customers.  During this time I raised red flags over the lack of security for this massive dossier on almost every American household, basically falling on deaf ears. 

I won’t get into specifics on just what junk mailers, financial institutions, corporations, and the government gather in their quest to find out everything possible about every individual in the U.S.  Suffice it to say, there is almost nothing they don’t know about you and have at their fingertips to use at will.  You probably already know about all the secret data factors available on you, yet many Americans could care less about protecting it. 

The reason junk mailers refused to listen to warnings of loose data is that this is one of the most profitable profit centers in any business.  By my calculations, selling your name and personal data grosses the junk mail industry alone over $4 billion annually.  Marketing this information has a 60 percent profit margin.  But the reason you are apathetic about protecting your private information is that you think identity theft won’t happen to you.  And then it does. 

In 2011 there were 419 breaches of private information exposing 22,918,441 personal records.  If you weren’t included in 2011 you could be in 2012. 

I was amazed recently to read a question in the newspaper directed to a consumer advocate exclaiming their surprise at finding things like their name, address, age, etc. when Googling themselves on the Internet.  All of a sudden they were concerned over how to prevent this data from being released.  There is no way to stop the flow of private information, and this made me wonder under just what rock this individual has been living.

Zappos, an online company selling shoes, is one of the largest most recent breaches where hackers may have accessed some 24 million customer records this month.  These include names, mailing and billing addresses, phone numbers, truncated credit card numbers and “cryptographically scrambled” passwords.  The company says there is little risk to the credit card numbers but a combination of everything taken can lead the crooks right to your most personal information.

My advice to those customers breached is to access their credit card and bank accounts on a daily basis to make sure there are no suspicious charges.  Look for the small amounts around $6.00 since this is where they usually start, then, with success, go on to larger amounts.  We shop with Zappos, whose service is the best in the country, and now I am checking the account we used at least once every day.  If they have your data it won’t take long for them to use it. 

Now that you are reasonably fortified with facts and advice, let’s get down to those 10 resolutions that Identity ITRC suggests you make in 2012:

1. Never carry your Social Security card in your wallet.  Best to put it in a safety deposit box but at least locked up at home.
2. Never give out your SS number unless absolutely necessary.  You can even try to deny it in some financial and medical transactions unless it is required for service.
3. Buy a good cross-cut shredder and use it on any document with SS#, birth date, medical numbers, etc.
4. Order regular credit reports from www.annualcreditreport.com or call 877-322-8228, one from each of the three credit bureaus every four months.
5. If you don’t already have a secure community mailbox, think about investing in one of your own, and take your outgoing mail to the post office.
6. Don’t use the same password for all accounts, including bank accounts and change them regularly.
7. Limit what you share online.  This has fallen on deaf hears recently as consumers give up their most private information just for convenience, like in Facebook.
8. Know who you are buying from online.  Check them out through your local BBB and make sure they have a secure payment system.  Use a credit card instead of your debit card if possible.
9. Monitor all you financial accounts regularly, particularly your bank account online if you use your debit card; I do mine twice daily.
10. Protect your checks and deposit slips like gold; they’re flush with information like your account number, usually name and address.

If you have questions about any of these tips, go to Identity Theft Resource Center for help on answering any of your questions on ID theft.  ITRC is a non-profit and lives off contributions from the public so help them out if you can.

Where were the evangelicals in So. Carolina when Santorum needed them?

Who knows?

Former senator Rick Santorum of Penn. finally won the Iowa caucuses over Mitt Romney with 34 votes when the folks in Iowa did their final count.  Sounds reasonable to me considering the high evangelical population in the state but also appears much too close when you consider Romney is a Mormon.  Like JFK’s Catholicism in the November 1960 election for President, Romney’s Mormonism has been a barrier for the religious right from the beginning.

Apparently there were missing votes in eight Iowa precincts that for some reason or other were never received and counted, blamed on the “state’s old-fashioned primary process.”  The missing votes were spread across five Iowa counties and in 2008 that area accounted for a total of 298 votes.  In one such precinct GOP chair, Karen Zander, said about the volunteers, “They had no training.  They didn’t know what they were doing.”

Pretty pathetic for an election that screams to the rest of the country each year that they are the first, and one of the most important votes in the primaries leading up to the primary nomination.  I have never understood the importance of these caucuses, and maybe the rest of the country and future presidential candidates will come to agree after this year.  But Romney’s close second does speak well of evangelical voters in that they were apparently able to put religion aside and vote with reason.



Did the same situation occur in South Carolina?  In the 2008 Republican primary there, 60 percent of the Republican voters defined themselves as “born-again-Christians,” compared with a national average of 44 percent.  Another 69 percent said that the candidate’s religious beliefs mattered in their vote.  In 2012 B-A-Cs jumped to 65 percent.  Also in 2012, religious beliefs of the candidates differed in that 59 percent said they mattered a great deal or somewhat, followed by 19 percent who said not much, 21 percent not at all.

In 2012, 97 percent were worried about the economy in South Carolina; 63 percent thought it was the most important issue compared to 8 percent for abortion.  However, 64 percent did think abortion should be illegal.  Winner Newt Gingrich was helped by the fact that 64 percent of So. Carolinians support the Tea Party and he was apparently able to garner their vote according to exit polls.  But it still isn’t clear if Gingrich can win TPers in less conservative states.

You can see the entire So. Carolina CNN Election Poll results here.

This is all somewhat perplexing since a meeting of the Christian conservative leaders in January of this year in Texas voted to back Rick Santorum, reported Family Research Council president Tony Perkins.  Some of those involved were Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Perkins, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference president Rev. Samuel Rodriguez and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer.  Members of the media were not allowed at the meeting. 

Newt Gingrich

Although the Christian conservative majority vote was for Santorum, individuals voted for other candidates, such as American Family Assn. founder Don Wildmon who voted for Gingrich.  For those of you who haven’t heard, Gingrich took So. Carolina with 41 percent of the vote, followed by Romney with 27 percent and Santorum trailing with 17 percent.  The winner of the So. Carolina primary has gone on to win the GOP nomination in each election since 1980.

The big question is, if Newt Gingrich wins the Republican nomination, will he be a more formidable candidate against President Barack Obama than Mitt Romney?  He is an excellent debater, but so is Obama.  Gingrich has personal life baggage with his ex-wife that doesn’t play well with religious conservatives where the President is squeaky-clean.  Both men are highly intelligent and there is no doubt in the separation of ideologies.

Like they have been saying for over a year now, 2012 is going to be one hell of an election!

U.S. and China Ping Pong Diplomacy revisited in recent Iran and Russia incidents

Time covers Ping Pong Diplomacy

Most Americans, and Chinese I suspect, have forgotten the occurrence when the U.S. Ping Pong team in 1971 was invited to China, all expenses paid, to play in Beijing, including tours of the Great Wall.  Time magazine called it “The ping heard around the world,” and rightfully so since American/Chinese relations were in the toilet at the time.  It was offhanded notification by the Chinese that they wanted to improve relations with the U.S.  It worked.

Richard Nixon, President at the time, felt the gesture was a good one and ended up making a trip to China later as the first American President to visit that country.  Premiere Chou En-lai even invited the Americans to a banquet in the Great Hall of the People.  Ten journalists including five from the U.S. were also invited.  In addition to visiting the Great Wall, the U.S. entourage saw the Summer Palace as well as being able to talk to Chinese students and factory workers and attend the ballet.

But what had led up to this competition between the two teams?  It was simply a chance meeting between the two stars, one from China’s team, Zhuang Zedong, the other from America’s team, Glenn Cowan, on a bus in Japan following the 31st World Table Tennis Championship in 1971.  Zedong presented Cowan with a gift, a silk-screen portrait of the Huangshan Mountains, which was unusual since we were in the midst of the cold war and China considered all Americans imperialists.

With no gift to return the favor at the time, in yet another chance meeting later, Cowan gave Zedong a T-shirt with a red, white and blue peace emblem flag with the words, "Let It Be."  This was followed by media coverage that resulted in the statement from Cowan that he would like to visit China, which eventually got to the Chinese Department of Foreign Affairs.  They, of course, declined the offer but Chou En-lai and Chairman Mao Zedong thought better of the situation and turned it into an international affair.

Find out who won the tournament in the video below:

At the time, many wondered why the major powers of the world couldn’t just turn their differences into one big ping pong game, rather than the on-going cold war and actual wars of destruction and loss of lives.  Of course it never happened but there have been incidents over the years where countries, normally at each other’s throats, have halted the conflict temporarily to come to the aid of each other.  Two such occurrences happened recently.



Iran seaman thanks US Navy



During January of this year, the U.S. Navy rescued Iranian fishermen three times.  The first, an Iranian fishing dhow that flooded, requiring the men to abandon it and board other nearby dhows.  The Navy provided them food and water.  Earlier in the month the Americans rescued 13 Iranian fishermen who had been captured by Somali pirates.  And just days later another rescue by the U.S. Coast Guard of six Iranian fishermen in waters off Iraq.  The Iranians said, "Without your help, we were dead. Thank you for all you did for us."



Russian tanker in Nome, AK



And then it was Russia that came to the aid of weathered-in Nome, Alaska, which has experienced one of the severest winters in decades with temperatures dipping more than 30 below zero.  Nome would have run out of fuel by March or April, which was long before their next delivery.  A path had to be cleared through thick ice for the Russian tanker Renda by a Coast Guard cutter for the two 700 yards long parallel hoses to unload 1.3 million gallons of fuel.

All in a day’s work you might say?  Actually, on the outset, it is an example of how world powers can work together in simple ways to come to the aid of those in need.  It’s no different than how Americans, when challenged with a crisis, pull together to help each other, no matter what race, religion or status.  It seems that we all have good intentions that we follow through on but it all eventually reverts back to business as usual.  Why? 

If blacks don’t back Occupy Movement will they back Democrats in November?

We can thank the Tea Party for repeated accusations of racism that once again reminded us of Southern bigotry and the Ku Klux Klan.  The media accused it of being “racially exclusionary, if not…racist,” according to The Washington Examiner.  Well-known African American congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, said tea partiers can “go straight to hell.”  While perhaps not quite so contentious, progressives would like to see them just gone.



Tea Party parade



The Tea Party is predominantly white but 6 percent of its supporters are black compared to only 1.6 percent for Occupy Wall Street and a total in the U.S. population of 12.6 percent.  Further, blacks represent 25 percent of New York residents.  So where were they on the first Occupy Wall Street demonstration on September 17, and thereafter across the country?  One opinion was that blacks did not participate because they have been through this before and think it’s hopeless.

I did a post back in December, “Immigrants want a part of the Occupy Movement,” including the agreement that no one is more likely to be in the Occupy “99%” than Hispanics.  Of course, wouldn’t blacks fit the same criteria?  Currently 60.7 percent of black incomes are under $50,000, compared to 40.3 for whites.  Median income for whites is $63,404 compared to that of blacks which is $38,835.  U.S. median income is $58,924.

Although 3 years old, the video below is an good example of black voting history:



The Washington Post also wonders about black inactivity in the Occupy Movement, commenting that some well known blacks like Cornel West,

Russell Simmons, Kanye West and Rep. John Lewis, (D-GA) have participated but nothing like Latino moves to join in as a group.  There was an “Occupy the Hood” faction that attempted to get more people involved that has apparently made some inroads but nothing significant.

Based on a 2011 Washington Post survey, the conclusion was made, that, in spite of their economic standing, blacks feel more optimistic than whites.  This is hard to understand when black unemployment is at 16 percent, teenagers 50 percent, compared to 8.6 percent for whites.  The survey concluded that 24 percent of blacks were “very” or “somewhat satisfied” with the economy compared to only 12 percent of whites.  Go figure.  

And here we go again.  In a recent NBC poll a huge 73 percent of Americans considered the country to be on the wrong track compared to 19 percent who thought it was.  49 percent of blacks thought the U. S. was on the right track compared to 38 percent who didn’t.  Some say there is the Obama factor.  The figures show that 86 percent of blacks approve of the President compared to 57 percent overall.

Still unanswered is why blacks have not joined the Occupy Movement with more enthusiasm.  Larry Elder, author of The Washington Examiner article thinks that if they support Occupy it might appear that blacks don’t think Obama has done his job in Washington.  But since the substance of the Occupy Movement is inequality, along with the fact that blacks have been fighting this for years with limited results, I find their detachment confusing, even alarming.

In the end, Elder says it really isn’t why so few blacks are participating in the Occupy Movement; rather, “why so many blacks still belong to the Democratic party.”  I personally believe they still understand that the Dems., no matter how many mistakes they have made and will make re. minorities, that the least they do will be gargantuan over what the GOP would offer.

Arizona can thank National Football League for Martin Luther King holiday

Russell Pearce, JT Ready

Racism is still rampant in Arizona evidenced by the anti-immigration law SB-1070 passed in 2010 by deposed State Sen. Russell Pearce.  The state finally got rid of the likes of him, surrounded by his buddy J.T. Ready, racist and neo-Nazi from Pearce’s hometown of Mesa, AZ.  Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Pearce supporter, has his own problems with racial discrimination from his raids on towns in his county for the sole purpose of harassing Hispanics.



Russell Pearce, Sheriff Arpaio



The people of Arizona must agree with this dogma because they elected Arpaio Sheriff in 1992 and he is still in office.  Pearce was elected to the Arizona legislature in 2000 and served there eleven years before he was recalled in November of 2011.  They both come from solid Arizona roots dating back to 1987 when Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded the former Governor Bruce Babbitt’s decision to honor Martin Luther King with an Arizona holiday.

That was almost 25 years ago but the Rev. Warren H. Stewart still remembers the struggle that eventually ended up with a MLK holiday in Arizona.  Stewart, a prominent Phoenix pastor who was the face of the movement then, says the state legislature viewed King as a Black hero but also as an agitator.  In those days African-Americans represented only 3 percent of the population.  But in 1990 voters went to the polls to decide whether or not King should have his holiday.  The proposition failed and Stewart felt he had done all he could.

Below is a must see video of Evan Mecham racism and other stupidity:



But then the football hit the fan.  By now Arizona had a reputation for being a racial battleground.  The state was boycotted by well know musicians and national conventions decided to take their business elsewhere.  However, it was the cancellation by the NFL of the 1993 Super Bowl scheduled to be played in Sun Devil stadium that broke the racists’ backs.  The game was moved to Pasadena, California. 

Rev. Stewart set things in motion again but didn’t like the idea that the change of the state’s attitude was due almost entirely to the loss of the Super Bowl.  Stewart took his dilemma to apartheid activist Leon Howard Sullivan who lived in Scottsdale and who said the Reverend had piqued the consciences of the business community, followed by his admonition to take their money because it was for a good cause. 

Stewart did and ran a campaign resulting in MLK Day being approved by a vote in 1992.  Arizona was the only state that had to put this holiday to a vote after a 1986 decision by President Ronald Reagan naming it as a national holiday.  On the first King Holiday in January of 1993, 19,000 Arizonans celebrated, joined by civil-rights activist Rosa Parks and musician Stevie Wonder.  Phoenix won the Super Bowl for 1996.

Rev. Stewart still believed the King Holiday was only a symbol and much still needed to be done for Arizona to move “from symbol to substance” in the treatment of all races and ethnicities.  Just recently he said that after 20 years this still has not happened.  He mentioned the anti-immigration bill SB-1070 and said the incivility of politics today is turning Martin Luther King’s dream into a nightmare. 

My gut tells me that if Arizona doesn’t wake up soon from this horrible dream and get rid of those in state government that harbor those prejudices, there won’t be enough advertising possible to draw tourists and new business back to the state.

POLITICAL ANALYSIS: The Hispanic vote and the 12 swing states

Politico says “deep voter dissatisfaction with the economy” is a real threat to President Obama and congressional incumbents in twelve swing states, according to a new Gallup poll.  If you aren’t sure what those dozen states are here is a lineup: Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.  Gallup did their survey in October 2011. 

In general, the poll says 60 percent of the residents in those states don’t think they are any better off than they were in 2008, compared to 37 percent who think they are.  Measured with non-swing states, 54 percent of respondents said they weren’t better off, while 44 percent said they were better off.  I decided to take the 12 states and evaluate them in relation to their Hispanic population to see if the President can count on a majority of this vote in 2012.

The swing state with the most electoral votes is Florida counting 29, followed by Pennsylvania with 20, Ohio 18, Michigan 16, No. Carolina 15, Virginia 13, Wisconsin 10, Colorado 9, Nevada and Iowa with 6 each, New Mexico with 5 and New Hampshire with 4.  This represents a total of 151 electoral votes; 270 are needed to win.  Eight of these states have had increases in their Latino population of over 50 percent since 2002.

Of those with electoral votes of 10 or above, Hispanics have representative percentages in their states’ populations as follows: Florida 22.5%; Penn. 5,7%; Ohio 3.1%; Michigan 4.4%; No. Carolina 8.4%; Virginia 7.9%; and Wisconsin 5.7%.  But add to that smaller electoral number states like Colorado 20.7% Latino; Nevada 26.5 %; and New Mexico 46.3%, and the question is just how much impact can the Hispanic vote have?



2008 vote



Obama won an astounding 359 electoral votes in 2008 taking all the 2012 swing states.  He also walked away with 133 votes from non-swing states like Washington, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Illinois and New York.  Adding this to the 151 swing state votes and you have 284 electoral votes, enough to win the election.  The increase in the Latino population alone could be a factor in delivering the swing states in 2012. 

The question, of course, is whether Barack Obama can convince Hispanics in the swing states he’s the one, and if the economy continues to improve and deliver other states plus the additional five above.

There were 6,646,000 Latino voters in 2010, which amounted to 31.2 percent of eligible voters.  84.2 percent of those had some college and 79.4 percent had incomes of over $50,000.  In one study, the Democrats have an advantage with Hispanics with higher educational attainment, as well as those with longer tenure in the country.  I couldn’t find duration figures on legal Latinos in the U.S. but of the unauthorized 10.2 million here, nearly two-thirds have lived here for at least 10 years suggesting many citizens could be here even longer.

Two GOP states, Arizona and Texas, have a combined 49 electoral votes and could be up for grabs in November.  The Arizona Hispanic population is 29.6 percent, Texas 37.6 percent, both significant enough to at least turn the states purple and seriously challenge Republicans.  No one knows what the impact of the Latino vote will be this November, but it does look as if with the surge in population plus increased voter turnout, Democrats could be riding a wave.



2012 Electoral votes

 As you can see from the above, the numbers are there.  And if the GOP continues its rhetoric against the Hispanic community which doesn’t seem to be letting up, the Dems are even more of a sure bet for this vote.  But since the immigration issue is consistently ranked second with Latinos, behind the economy, but ahead of jobs, health care education and taxes, President Obama still has a lot of work to do.

Bruce Springsteen’s latest studio album captures meaning of Occupy Movement

Apparently the Boss is angry again and his new album will vent some of this anger which closely parallels the emotions of the Occupy Movement.  Starting with Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, the crusade has literally moved all over the world.  But Springsteen remains grounded in his concern for the blue-collar group and liberal causes.  Although most of the album was written and recorded before the Occupy Movement started, it still reflects the sentiments of the fight for equality.

In an article where Princeton professor Cornel West describes the Occupy Movement as an “idea whose time has come,” Tea Party crackpot Michael Prell compares Occupy with the Berkeley Free Speech movement that took place in 1964-1965, “right down to the babbling incoherence of the participants.”  Now this takes the cake considering this man, who is a strategist for the TP Patriots, represents a bunch of blithering blockheads with double-digit IQs.



So what was wrong with the Berkeley demonstrations that resulted in the University backing off and allowing academic freedom with open political activity on the campus, with the Sproul Hall sit-ins eventually creating a place of open discussion?  Liberal, yes, and perhaps contrary to a conservative approach that hides its ideology behind the dogmas of religion and worship of big business.  Berkeley has gone on to represent a progressive attitude that has become a solid foundation of the left.

Sidney Tarrow, a visiting professor at Cornell Law School, believes the Occupy Movement will emerge as a “more potent national force” after cities get past the “encampment” issue.  And this may be the real connection between the Berkeley Sproul Hall sit-ins where you have to take a physical position to make your point.  Tarrow calls it the creation of a “communal basis for future social movement.”  So where do the “Occupiers” go and how do they make their voice heard without the bivouac?  Tarrow says they should “Move on” and “march to Washington.”

Bryan Boydston in The Humanist wants to know, “What Exactly Does the Occupy Movement Want?” when he refers to the Lennon/McCartney song, “Revolution.”  He also refers to the ideology “rebel without a cause” when commenting on the disorganization of the movement so far.  Boydston quotes Naomi Wolf in the Guardian asking the same question, receiving numerous responses she capsuled into the following three:

1.    Reverse the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court further allowing the influence of money in U.S. elections.

2.    The movement wants fraud and manipulation taken out of the U.S financial system.

3.    Prevent politicians from using their positions in Congress to benefit corporations they have invested in.

In addition to Wolf’s three Boydston has three of his own which he thinks may be more directly focused on what occupiers want:

1. Reversing Citizens United is good but he thinks the Movement is more about the total economic inequality that exists in the U.S.
2. He questions regulation as the “fix-all” for the financial community and thinks more of it would not have prevented the recession.
3. With little evidence of insider trading by Congress and because they are already prohibited from passing laws that impact companies in which they hold any significant interest, this problem is probably already covered.

So one might assume from all this exposition that you can boil down what the Occupy Movement wants into one simple phrase: Balance the inequity of the economic system so that a more equitable arrangement exists for all.

I’ll leave you with Boydston’s quote from the Lennon/McCartney song, “Revolution,” which is actually appropriate for the Occupy Movement.

You say you want a revolution?
Well, you know, we all want to change the world.
…You say you got a real solution?
Well, you know, we’d all love to see the plan.

New Hampshire GOP Primary 2012 compared to 2008…Obama’s opposition

Mitt Romney

Newt Gingrich said that if Mitt Romney didn’t get a 50 percent win in New Hampshire, it wouldn’t be a mandate for his nomination.  In 2008 in NH, John McCain received only 37.71 percent of the vote and went on to win.  Mike Huckabee came in third with 11.44 percent.  This week Romney came in with almost 40 percent of the NH vote compared to 32.17 in 2008.  The Iowa Caucus took place on the same date, Jan. 3^rd, both years.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire by 39.09 percent in 2008, beating Barack Obama’s 36.45 percent, but Obama went on to win the nomination.  John Edwards came in third at 16.94 percent.  There will obviously be no Democratic primary in 2012 but what this says is that New Hampshire isn’t always a clincher.  When Obama became the Democratic presumptive nominee on June 3, 2008, New Hampshire then cast all its 30 votes for him, one of only three states to do so.



For years now the New Hampshire Primary and the Iowa Caucus have received more media attention than all the other primaries combined.  This publicity and resulting momentum by a decisive frontrunner can have great impact on the future of his or her candidacy.  According to one report, a win in New Hampshire can increase that candidate’s share of the resulting primary count by 27 percent.

Former NH Gov. John Sununu said that people in Iowa pick corn, people in New Hampshire pick presidents, referring to the race to be the first primary.  From the late 1980s the NH primary has been considered an early measurement of the national attitudes toward candidates.  One of the major reasons the state is a good representation of political sentiment across the U.S. is that Independents are allowed to vote in the primary, although with some manipulations at the time of voting.

What isn’t representative in New Hampshire, and which will be a significant factor in 2012, is that the state is only 4 percent Hispanic compared to 25 percent nationwide.  If Latinos get themselves organized and continue their efforts to register qualified voters, this block could be awesome and throw the NH Primary results into a quandary.  In other words, it’s all up in the air and nothing is really certain until the fat lady sings in November.

Forty percent of voters in New Hampshire are Independent which is in keeping with their representation nationally and this is a major reason it is considered a swing state in national elections.  But as far as predictions go, Bill Clinton, Geo. W. Bush and Barack Obama came in second in the NH Primary and all went on to become President.  So go figure for November.

But does this mean that Ron Paul, who came in second this year in New Hampshire with 23 percent, has a chance at the presidency?  I think not, and this just confirms what a crazy year for politics this has been so far, and will continue to be until the November elections.  I think it is also a solid sign that voters will both register and come out in droves in November, emerging from an apathetic population that has decided it isn’t going to take it anymore. 

Of course the outcome will be heavily favored toward progressives.