Too funny – Romney – born with a golden hell a platinum spoon in his mouth. Is it any wonder?
And the other thing to keep in mind – the connections. My god, the connections.
But the best part – where they have the old clips of Romney saying he supports a woman’s right to choose, and also support gun control and then they flash forward to 2011/2012 where he’s opposed.
He’s a world class flip-flopper, waffler and just all around not a good person to be President.
So in my search to see who my councilman and senator would be I stumbled upon the Sec of State’s directory. It lists every state official and some of their biographical.
A few things stuck out as I trolled along.
1) Classical High School and LaSalle seem to have heavy representation in the legislature. They also tend to be the movers and shakers. Speaker Gordon Fox is a Classical grad, and Nicholas Mattiello graduated from LaSalle the year before me.
2) Problem children went to OLP – Our Lady of Providence. There’s a reason they closed that school.
3) There are a number of reps and sentators (3 I’ve counted thus far) that only have the GED’s.
4) There are a fair number of reps and senators who never made it to college. That surprised me a bit.
We’re thinking about going in on a real estate venture with friends. Real estate, particularly multi family is sinking like a rock price-wise here. We’d occupy the property under a corporate charter, probably an LLP. And want to know the kicker – the monthly minimum mortgage calculated as 5 years with taxes added comes out to LESS than we’re paying right now for rent. And we would have ownership via the corporation. That’s nice because anyone dies, the corporation goes on in perpetuity. We could all be gone and the corporation will still be there.
So I went on to the RI Secretary of State’s site and plugged in the new potential address. I’d still be in the same Representative district but my Senatorial district would change to Maryellen Goodwin, and we’d be going from the 13th Ward to the 12th. Terrance Hassett is the councilman for that area.
Now this won’t stop me from trying to get a public WiFi MESH network setup in the 13th ward. There’s interest in the 15th Ward too so if I could get it to span 12, 13, 14, and 15 that’s pretty much half the city.
The zip code would change too. It would go from 02909 to 02908. Now the weird part – I grew up in the 02908 zip code area. In fact thus far in Providence I’ve lived in 02903, 02904, 02908, and 02909.
And I really want to get in the real estate game. I already ran the numbers and I figured out the group could pay the house off on 2.3 years. And then move on to buy more and more and employ the same mortgage acceleration tricks.
I am not watching any of the Republican National Convention. I’m hearing enough about it on Facebook and blogs that I really don’t even need to watch.
Beside the point, the message of the Republicans was pretty clear to me months ago. No rights for women, LGBT, immigrant or middle class folks. They’re only concerned about the 1%.
So this is all you’ll see about the RNC – I won’t write any more about it.
So I am a 1982 graduate of LaSalle Academy here in Providence, RI. It’s a hell of a school. I think my first brush at college failed because they were just repeating what I’d learned at LaSalle.
They used to bill themselves as a college prep school and there’s no doubt they are.
So I recently updated my alum info. If you look at the school alum you have a number of politicians, attorneys, doctors, and business leaders as well as ball players.
So as a result of updating my info, I now get their newsletter. And I noticed something very odd, well a few things.
First is the Class of 2012 – it reminds me I graduated 30 years ago.
But in one section of their newspaper/letter I noted all these notes on alumni. You get a solid block from the 1940’s up to the 1970’s. Then nothing in the 1980’s. It picks up again in 1993.
I cannot believe none of us reported any events to the school. I think we’re the lost generation of LaSalle. We’re the generation that got left holding the bag is one part of the explanation. You have to remember, the 80’s were an interesting time. It was the time when the United States experienced a dramatic shift, one in which the shame of having money disappeared and greed was considered good. Maybe that’s it.
And I’ll be honest, never went to any reunions. Maybe I’ll attend my 40th. Who knows.
You have to remember, when I was at LaSalle it wasn’t co-ed.
Maddow: Tea Party group will use whites to question black voters | The Raw Story.
Ok, I’ve always been aware that there was a subtle undercurrent of racism in the United States. But this just takes the cake! It’s moved from being subtle to screaming so loudly that it is now blatant.
I have to wonder – the district I live in is abotu 60% minority. I wonder if they’ll be pulling that shit even here in RI? If they are I will be the one asking exactly what they are doing in the poll on election day.
I’ve long understood that the core motivation of the Tea Baggers (Don’t get your underwear in a bunch, they called themselves that at the beginning and so I am just honoring their founding by using the name they called themselves!), anyhow the core motivation is racism, plain and simple.
That the TrueTheVote pukes get their sponsorship from the Tea Baggers is no surprise. And we have to continue to ask where the Tea Baggers get their money. It’s corporate interests. That corporations are supporting racism is no surprise either.
What is the Federal Government going to do to make sure these practices are discouraged? Sending observers is one thing, but perhaps troops with weapons may be needed too.
And with regard to Voter ID – it has the EXPRESS purpose of vote suppression. In fact here in RI our Voter ID law actually opens avenues of fraud that our ‘genius’ legislators never thought about. Anyone with an ounce of technical savvy can now commit election fraud.
And thinking back on this, when President Obama was elected I had said that it would drive the racists out of the woodwork. Sure enough – they think just because a black man is President they can say and do such horribly racists things. I hate it when I’m right with things like that. It means I understand the population of the U.S. a bit better than the next guy.
EXCLUSIVE: Undercover At NOM's Anti-Gay Student Conference | Equality Matters.
This is interesting. So beneath all NOM’s nice-nice exterior is a seriously anti-gay organization. I think we’ve all suspected this for some time.
The main theme of the conference seems to be trying to prove that same sex relationships are unstable, unhealthy, and promiscuous.
Let me discuss that a bit. I know quite a few hetero couples both dating and married that could be called unstable, unhealthy and promiscuous.
So sure, the same characteristics might show up in the LGBT community too. But let us remember that the the term ‘unhealthy’ is loaded. In fact let me give my own personal example.
In about a week we celebrate nineteen years together. I cannot imagine my life without Keyron, and he can’t imagine it without me.
Is that unhealthy? Unstable? Promiscuous? No it isn’t – and that is more the rule than the exception in all the folks I know.
And promiscuity – I’ve never seen it in a committed relationship.
So the heterosupremacists are telling lies, as the always have!
We stayed with friends this weekend and today I replaced a closet light fixture for them.
After that we had a late lunch at Nautika in East Greenwich, RI. It’s funny , the night before we were at another restaurant and heard it referred to as Green-Witch. It’s more Gren-ich.
The food at Nautika was pretty good – I had a veal sausage and pepper sandwich with balsamic onions. Not bad!
However I must say the live music was, well, interesting. It included a steel drum and one tune was seriously confused between Brazilian Jazz and Caribbean.
After that we headed to the Newport Cliff Walk. Interesting enough and we passed this neat Asian Pagoda. Now my friend Nick and I thought that Keyron and Beth were ahead of us. actually they’d ducked off to the side so Nick and I got out into the more rugged parts of the trail. Fascinating stuff. It’s interesting, RI is full of not just red clay but rocks, lots of rocks.
We were discussing re-adding a bulkhead to Nick and Beth’s place. I asked if it ever had one and indeed it had. I suggested we re-plant it in the same spot as clearing the fill and soil would be easier since the spot probably already had the boulders taken out of it. Plus if we get a little backhoe we can dig it out in no time, then lay the forms in, fill with concrete and rebar, and voila, a bulkhead again so they can get a new dryer into the basement. Yeah, the people who owned the place before them did some upgrading and eliminated the easy way to get bulky items into the basement.
Just got home not too long ago – so nice to be in my comfy recliner!
As you well know, I am reading the book “The Lavender Scare”.
Reading it gives me a glimpse into the foundation of the rights we take for granted today.
But one point shines through: most,of the rights we have came down from the judiciary.
Legislators in the U.S.and even the states are for the most part cowards and will rarely move to secure rights for any group.
In states where initiative is available, legislators have for the most part chosen referendum. They choose it to avoid the stain of bring sympathetic to the LGBT cause.
Instead ever major rights gains have been through the judiciary.
Courts insist on this little thing called scrutiny, and scrutiny demands verifiable fact.
And religious bigotry has no facts.
So it will be the courts that grant final relief in our struggle.
So over on Facebook I see that candidate for the first Congressional District of RI, Anthony Gemma had himself a press conference. A friend of mine on Facebook posted salient examples:
One was for Janette Santos – now I have a copy of the voter database and cannot find Ms. Santos in there. In addition they have one for a Ms. Chavez. They list their addresses as 583 Cranston St, and 310 Cranston St.
Now those addresses are interesting in that both are business addresses.
I should mention that I keep a copy of the RI Central Voter Registration Database on my computer. It’s sort of a relic of when I worked at the RI Sec of State’s office.
But I asked for DOB’s for one of them and managed to locate Ms. Santos – when I searched those people out I found that they were on Hartford Ave, and 340 Cranston St.
Now I’ve been posting all my findings on the Facebook post. And one comment made by someone else sums it up nicely:
“Russ Gelfuso Now, now, Tony; you’re trying to let ACTUAL facts get in the way of Gemma facts, and that’s not FAIR.”
That’s right – ACTUAL facts. They are what the real world runs on. And the Gemma campaign seems to forget that.
I also commented on WPRI’s post about it telling them they should contact me as I can handily debunk a good percentage of Gemma’s little scorched earth tactic.
You know if I didn’t know otherwise I’d say that Gemma was a Republican.
And one lesson, never raise the ire of a database professional. We can make it rather uncomfortable for you.
Spewing Truth in the face of Lies 