I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

My horse's father died young, at age 6. The woman who owned him, and from whom I purchased my horse, has the ashes of his heart and hooves. She raised that horse from a bottle; HIS mother died giving birth to him. He was a very special horse, nearly a son, to her.



Time helps with the hurt but doesn't quite heal the hole left behind.



(((Cathy)))

Sunflowers....what a fantastic piece.  I was not blaming the unions on this one.  I know of another company that did basically the same thing.  Morell Meat Packing Plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  People worked for years and upheld the union and then got their money taken....so you retire and find out you won't be getting that monthy check after all.  Stolen just like the Hostess employees's was. 

I hope anyone who comes across this piece will read it.    On another note, I saw a piece in my in-box about Airhead of the year Bachmann.  Seems she has just discovered Benghazi and jumped on the bandwagon.  It is truly a wonder she didn't MISS the wagon completely......don't tell me she actually thinks something is there.  Many are hoping there is......but I guess this is the way I look at it. 

Everything she and the Regressives have dreamed of and were TOTALLY sure was going to take place did not.  On the other hand.......they keep trying to come up with spins for something which will make our President look worse than any one could --- though how you could look any worse than the fiasco year of the Regressives with good old' Romney and Ryan I wouldn't know.  Some of the Repugs are getting a sense of the disaster that took place and are searching for remedies.  One of thosde remedies I'm sure will be that people like Bachmann will have to go if the Republican party is to survive.  Many of the Regressies will have to get real and start listening to REAL facts and get their mental capacities, ( hopfully there are some left ) off of Faux Fox conspiracy's and other nebulous activities from them and their ilk and work to rebuild something decent.....if it is not already too late. 

If you keep on pounding the pavement for out-points ----  the vast majority of which won't in the end be turning up, you may be missing out on some great opportunities to actually HELP your party. 

Jackie

spell checker on vacation today.

A former Romney aide is also distancing himself from the "gifts" remark:

Carlos Gutierrez, a top Hispanic American surrogate and adviser to Mitt Romney's campaign, on Sunday expressed outrage over the former presidential candidate’s comment that minorities voted for Obama because he bribed them with “gifts.”

“I was shocked. And frankly I don’t think that’s why Republicans lost the election," Gutierrez said during an appearance on CNN’s "State of the Union." "I think we lost the election because the far right of this party has taken the party to a place that it doesn’t belong."

Romney's remarks, made last week in a post-election conference call with donors, sparked Democratic outrage, with even top Republican operatives repudiating the 2012 Republican nominee. Second-term Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal -- the first Indian-American to be elected governor -- told reporters at the Republican Governors Association annual meeting in Las Vegas that he "absolutely reject[s] that notion, that description." Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has sought distance from Romney after the controversial remarks.

Now Gutierrez, a former businessman and director of Romney's Hispanic outreach, is piling on.

"I don’t know if he understood that he was saying something that was insulting," Gutierrez told Candy Crowley. "The language, the attitude, the body language, that’s what Latinos watch."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/18/carlos-gutierrez-romney-hispanic-gifts_n_2154943.html

Belinda, that's a great graphic, but I think people are going to believe what they want to believe. It's very discouraging when people are mourning that their children won't have Twinkies but don't seem to be worried about the disappearance of the living wage job.

Mary

I too like what Gutierrez said because for me it closely aligns with so much of the entire problem with the Republicans campaign this election season.  I think some others mentioned many, many pages back about the Republican party of many years ago.....and how it could be difficult to actually choose whom was really the better person. 

I do think there is going to have to be some major revamps, but that is going to have to mean a lot of soul searching and deep, deep honestly.  Hard to say what will happen in the next two or four years and beyond.  It will be interesting to say the least. 

I also liked the graphic which helps especially when you are sorting through time-lines not always completely clear. 

Jackie

That's right, Belinda -- Bobby Jindal isn't saying, "We have to change our policies. We have to stop bring stupid." He is just saying, "We have to stop saying stupid sh*t." Big difference. They LOVE their policies and their beliefs. They just want their candidates to stop actually TALKING about them.



L

+Excellent articles Belinda.....I have about the same feelings about McCain.  At one time I actually considered possibly voting for him.....then his "party" told him what ideas to propose,and how he was going to run , and what do you know....he couldn't even get out of the primaries.  Pretty much downhill since.  You listen a a little too long to the Repugs and whoops, its all over but mopping up the tears.  They talk a good game, but the proof is in the pudding and the pudding has ended up in file 13 the majority of the last few years.  Sorry Charlie !!

Jackie

Belinda - inspired by your Hostess graphic above!

If there was one positive out of this election, atleast a part of the electorate learned about Vulture Capitalists and how they operate.  The Hostess story is exactly how Mittens made his $250 million....cannabilzing companies...not caring if they survived or died, but most assuredly, harvesting every single asset available that wasn't nailed down, including employee's pensions.  THIS MAKES ME SICK.

Throw these guys in with the Big Banks that perpetrated mortgage fraud on American's, but then getting bailed out for their crimes. 

How do we extract justice from these white collar criminals?

....yesterday, the Hostess Brands took a page right out of Republicans’ playbook and blamed a union strike as the reason they were shutting their doors and liquidating their assets costing 18,500 employees their jobs. However, much of the responsibility for Hostess shutting down lies with the company’s management and the private equity firm behind them, and yet union workers are the ones bearing the blame and subsequently will suffer the consequences of the shutdown.

Hostess Brands’ demise is a recurring story that should be well-known after Americans learned the predatory private equity tactics of Bain Capital during Willard Romney’s failed run for the White House. In fact, union president Richard Trumka pointed out that Wall Street investors that own Hostess were disinterested in the company’s success and cited similarities to the situation of Bain Capital and KB Toys in 2000. As a reminder, Bain Capital’s scheme was leveraging companies with crushing debt, cutting workers’ wages and benefits, and when the company can no longer repay their loans they go into bankruptcy, often more than once.  Hostess is in bankruptcy for the second time since 2009 and a major factor in their inability to succeed is that over the past eight years, they were owned by Wall Street investors that were restructuring experts, managers from other non-baking food companies, and now a liquidation specialist. There was no plan for Hostess to succeed and it appears that was the objective all along.

Hostess’s failure was compounded by having six CEO’s in 8 years who had no experience in the bread or cake baking industry, and despite their financial woes, the company’s CEO got a 300%  salary increase from $750,000 to $2,250,000, and other top executives received raises worth hundreds-of-thousands of dollars; all while the company was struggling.....

http://www.politicususa.com/romney-vulture-capitalist-style-management-killed-hostess-unions.html

(Worth saying over and over again.)

Sun:  Double what you said!!

You bet, those Vultures still own the Hostess brandname and will sell that too!!  In fact, George Will, on This Week, suggested the company would reemerge.  This is how they do it...steal from the employees, and maybe the shareholders, but make out like fat cats.  PURE EVIL.

On another note, I bumped into this Youtube this morning.  How prophetic was Rachel Maddow when discussing Mitt's campaign (while still running against Rick Santorum) back in March.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sETaW-yeUm0&feature=em-share_video_user

Mitt Romney is a liar, pure and simple

She noticed something different about Romney and his campaign back in March.  The frequency and willingness of Mitt Romney to lie, lying to just lie and his unwillingness to take any of the lies back or the lack of remorse on his part.

RM is one smart observer.  A gem.  We should never forget this candidate.  There are too many lessons here.

Kam - thanks for the link to Rachel Maddow - ...wow!  She sure called it early.  Again, we dodged a bullet.  So much we still have to learn about that campaign - the books to come are going to be fascinating.

Blue, thinking of you & Ray...hugs.

It is important to remember that not only were the policies of the extreme right rejects, but the tactics as well.  The entire Repub campaign was based on lies and those lies, especially when it comes to jeep, came back to bite Romney.

Blue,

Laughed out loud at the "If Jesus ran for the Republican nomination" video you posted.  It reminded me of this....