Zone of Free Thought

I meant to finish this long ago, right after the Democratic convention when I became, rightfully as it turned out, concerned that the way Bernie supporters talked about Hillary Clinton sounded alarmingly like the way Trump supporters talked. A young woman responded to something I wrote in the comment section of a YouTube page that showed Bernie supporters leaving the arena when Hillary came on stage to speak. They had drank the same coolaid Trump supporters had with the whole false narrative about Hillary that was fact free. When I challenged her to prove she knew what she was talking about, and she couldn't defend her position, she did what Trump supporters do. She went fact free into another rant mentioning she had protested the Iraq war. I think I told her something along the line of "opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. You are entitled to  your own opinion. However, you are NOT entitled to your own facts. You don't know what the "f"you are talkin...

I met this guy on at a bike night in late July. He's just like he is on this video. Humble, smart, funny, open and fun to talk to. I originally just wanted to say hello to him because I'd seen part of this video and the next thing I know almost an hour had gone by and we were the last 2 bikes still there. (mine is restored as original 82 Honda Magna V-45). I think what he did here is astounding. You don't meet someone every day who made their own engine. You read that correct ly. He made the engine. He didn't assemble an engine out of parts manufactured by others. He carved molds out of wood and took the molds to a foundry that cast the parts out of aluminum. And then he did it again but made the engine bigger. One has 13,000 miles on it, the other has more. Reliable, clean and leak free, and the sound is just as remarkable as he describes it here. I'd love to see him make a living at this but he says to many people that say they are exited to have ...

  I'm a 64 year old liberal. But what I also try not to be on the topic of energy production is a hypocrite. As I read the responses here I’m certain that about 99% of you drive cars to your home where you turn on you lights, put your cell (made in an energy hog Chinese factory) on the charger, cook or microwave (made in an energy hog Chinese factory) something to eat, which you get from your freezer/refrigerator, (made in an energy hog Chinese factory) boot up your computer (made in an energy hog Chinese factory), hit the net, turn on a TV (made in an energy hog Chinese factory).. And on and on, yet you’d think from what’s here that you haven’t got a clue what powers it all. You can NOT live a modern life and be AGAINST energy production that is scalable to hundreds of millions, indeed billions of people. Please notice it has to be scalable. You can’t get nearly enough of it from our favorite tree hugging sources, wind, solar, hydro (most tree huggers don’t like that one) or ...

 October 1, 2013 at 2:11pm                           US Congressman Pat Tiberi is a lying son of a bitch. There in NOT broad bi-partisan support repeal of the medical device tax. If he thinks there is, let him introduce a bill and see where it goes. A one year shutdown is NOT a compromise on defunding the program.  It's still a gun to the head power play that would have them back again making an end runaround how we pass laws. There will never be a clean funding bill again if we concede to this. And the delay in law given to businesses with more than 50employees is a concession given them, and the laws administrators, more time to get ready to meet reporting rules. And now for them say “what’s good for big business is should be good for all Americans” is the reward the administration gets for yielding to pressure from big business. For t...

 Romney, born rich, still rich, and has done nothing his entire life but serve the rich. He's a country club stiff who walks in little stiff steps like he has a stick up his rear. He  has been on OPPOSITE side of every major issue, sometimes even day to day, If he has any core values he keeps them to himself so he can try to be everything to everybody. He has no ideas other than the same old Republican ideas that predate both this depression and the Great one. His policy advisors are the same neoconservatives that had Bush's ear and got us into Iraq. Wants to privatize Social Security, which would end it the next time the market crashes,   wants to give the next generation a voucher to buy private health insurance when they are too old to work anymore which would kill Medicare (protect Medicare is one of his biggest lies), He is either math challenged or will say anything about taxes and the budget to get elected even if it’s blatantly obvious what he says is nonsens...

Hart InterCivic makes the voting machines being used in Hamilton County, population 833,00. * Hart’s five corporate board members are executives of HIG Capital, a global private equity firm that made what it called a “significant” investment in Hart last year. Four HIG executives  (Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman and Brian D. Schwartz) have been identified as Romney bundlers by independent watchdog groups such as the Sunlight Foundation.  HIG employees as a whole have donated $338,000 to the Romney campaign this year, according to Open Secrets. And an investor in the company that invests in voting machines? Tagg Romney!! (reality stranger than fiction?) Couldn't be a problem there could there? sigh. *http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/10/23/angst-about-counting-the-votes-in-ohio/

Ohio is not broke! We the people know where the money is, we know where it goes. We're a consumer driven economy. We the working class buy stuff and it goes into the pockets of the investor class. Look at corporate profits. Look at Wall Street, look at the stock market. Look at CEO pay and you'll know who has money and who doesn't. The Wall street is back to where it was in late 2007. How come we the people are not back to where we were in late 2007? Why are the rich continuing to get richer even in hard times and we are ask to endure the consequences of massive state budget cuts? The answer is the same as it has been since the beginning of the industrial age, but never more emphatic than after the 2010 elections. The reason we can't ask the investor class to pay their fair share, even on a short term basis is simply because when asked, they say "no". It's as simple as that.They just say "no". They say "no" to the Republ...