40 Years ago: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald with 29 dead

Just a personal note: I have no personal connection to this tragic event. But, in Michigan here, this is basically our 9/11. There has not been a more tragic event like this one. It is something that always gives me the chills to think about. May the memory of these 29 men never be forgotten and what killed them, which was greedy crony capitalists that really only cared about getting the profit made and not about the lives of these men.

The only music that I will ever play for this event:

As 11 bells tolled inside the Mariners’ Church in downtown Detroit, the family members of some of the victims of the 1975 wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald mourned but also recalled happier times for their loved ones aboard the ill-fated freighter.

Sisters Elaine Riippa Sespico and Lonnie Turner journeyed from Ashtabula, Ohio to Detroit to join more than 250 in the church at the foot of the Detroit River to remember their 22-year-old brother Paul Michael Riippa during the annual Great Lakes Memorial Service.

“It was such a devastation,” said Sespico Sunday after the service about her younger brother. Paul Riippa was a deck hand who was on the Edmund Fitzgerald during its final journey when it went down during a November gale in Lake Superior. He had taken the assignment to earn money for college. He was studying nursing.

Twenty-nine lives were lost when the freighter, carrying ore, sank in November in 1975.

Turner said her brother was an athlete and played football in high school. She said he looked like Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. She said Paul Riippa was attending Wilmington College when he lost his life aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald and was planning to attend Kent State University.

“We hope people won’t forget. We hope people will always the Edmund Fitzgerald and the 29 lives that were lost,” said Sespico. “It was such a devastation.”

Sespico said of her younger brother: “We loved him very much. ..he was such a good boy and we will always remember him. He loved God. He loved Jesus. He loved everybody.”

Both Sespico and Turner recalled Sunday the horrendous days that would pass before they learned that their brother would not be coming home.

“We waited anxiously for quite a few days for him to come back because we always knew he would be one to survive,” said Sespico. She said she talks to her children all the time about her brother.

“ We talk about him to keep his memory on,” she said. “We don’t want to forget.”

Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank to the bottom of Lake Superior during a storm. – Source Detroit News

 

Mini-Movie: The frame job against Bashar al-Assad

This comes via Conservative-Headlines.com, and I know some people might not like it that I linked to these guys. Well, you know what? Tough! This video is a eye-opener; and I really do not even like Alex Jones for some very good reasons.

https://youtu.be/pqj4WzgnxDc

Just like Al-Qaeda, ISIS was created by the United States. Our biggest threat as Americans, is not terrorism; it is our own Government.

Comcast’s futile bid for media domination fails after gov’t pushback

This is some good news.

NEW YORK (AP) — What killed Comcast’s $45 billion bid for Time Warner Cable? Regulators’ desire to protect the Internet video industry that is reshaping TV.A combination of the No. 1 and No. 2 U.S. cable companies would have put nearly 30 percent of TV and about 55 percent of broadband subscribers under one roof, along with NBCUniversal, giving the resulting behemoth unprecedented power over what Americans watch and download.Competitors, consumer groups, and politicians have criticized the deal, saying it would lead to higher prices and less choice.”The proposed merger would have posed an unacceptable risk to competition and innovation, including to the ability of online video providers to reach and serve consumers,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a written statement.The Justice Department said that Comcast dropped its bid because of regulators’ concerns that the Philadelphia-based cable giant would become an “unavoidable gatekeeper” for Internet services.One of the concerns consumer advocates and competitors had with the Comcast deal was that it could undermine the streaming video industry that is reshaping TV. Comcast could, for example, require onerous payments from new online-only video providers for connecting to its network. Dish, the satellite TV company behind the new Web video service Sling TV, and Netflix opposed the deal

Source: Associated Press

The part up there that I bolded and underlined is the reason why I glad to see that the Government stepped in. When you have one or two big companies controlling everything; that can deadly. It could also be used for partisan purposes, as in control.

Patrick J. Buchanan writes the real reason why the GOP is failing

Quote of the week:

To understand why and how the Republican Party lost Middle America, and faces demographic death, we need to go back to Bush I.

At the Cold War’s end, the GOP reached a fork in the road. The determination of Middle Americans to preserve the country they grew up in, suddenly collided with the profit motive of Corporate America.

The Fortune 500 wanted to close factories in the USA and ship production abroad — where unions did not exist, regulations were light, taxes were low, and wages were a fraction of what they were here in America.

Corporate America was going global and wanted to be rid of its American work force, the best paid on earth, and replace it with cheap foreign labor.

While manufacturing sought to move production abroad, hotels, motels, bars, restaurants, farms and construction companies that could not move abroad also wanted to replace their expensive American workers.

Thanks to the Republican Party, Corporate America got it all.

Head on over to Pat’s site and read why “The GOP lost middle America.” It is sad, but true, account about what really happened to that Grand Old Party.

 

 

Big Pharma is on the prowl for E-Cigarettes

They’ll get my E-Cig, when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

The Story: (H/T Jazz Shaw)

So, I’ll give you three guesses which industry is behind the global push to clamp down on e-cigarettes.

If you assumed concerned doctors or “consumer-rights advocates” are the driving force for regulation in Europe and the U.S., then you haven’t been paying attention to way profit and politics interact.

If you said Big Tobacco, close, but no cigar. Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Lorrillard all jumped in the e-cig game in the past two years. They’re not opposing regulation (the big guys rarely do), but they’re pushing back on the most onerous rules.

Big Pharma is the real foe of e-cigs, and Big Government is their weapon of choice — on both sides of the pond.

This fall, the European Parliament considered new rules regulating e-cigs. E-cigarette manufacturers, of course, lobbied like crazy to block the proposal, and it seems they won. But the drugmakers fought for stricter regulations, for obvious reasons: E-cigarettes compete with prescription drugs that are supposed to help people stop smoking.

GlaxoSmithKline sells Nicorette gum and Johnson & Johnson manufactures nicotine patches. The New York Times reported these companies helped lead “strong opposition” to e-cigarettes.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration is about to announce new proposed rules on e-cigarettes. Big Pharma’s shadow hangs over the rule-making.

via Big Pharma, not tobacco companies, wages war on electronic cigarettes | WashingtonExaminer.com.

Yes, I use E-cigs, and yes, I am a Christian. Judge me, I do not care. I started back smoking, after that idiotic debacle that happened with a well-known trucking company. So, I decided that I did not want to inhale all of that crap that they put in cigarettes; and I picked up a Lava e-cig. It works well, gives me the same amount of nicotine; and I might actually live to see 70 years old!

Good ol’ crony capitalism; lets deny people a healthy alternative to tobacco products; so we can pimp our pills and patches! Unreal. 🙄

From the “You gotta be kidding me” file: House just voted on 2 bills that would undercut new financial regulations

This one somehow snuck past me.

I happen to read on Populist Jim Hightower’s website about this one here and I went and looked it up and sure enough; there it was in black and white:

The story:

WASHINGTON –– To Wall Street, this town might seem like enemy territory. But even as federal regulators and prosecutors extract multibillion-dollar penalties from the nation’s biggest banks, Wall Street can rely on at least one ally here: the House of Representatives.

The House is scheduled to vote on two bills this week that would undercut new financial regulations and hand Wall Street a victory. The legislation has garnered broad bipartisan support in the House, even after lawmakers learned that Citigroup lobbyists helped write one of the bills, which would exempt a wide array of derivatives trading from new regulation.

The bills are part of a broader campaign in the House, among Republicans and business-friendly Democrats, to roll back elements of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the most comprehensive regulatory overhaul since the Depression. Of 10 recent bills that alter Dodd-Frank or other financial regulation, six have passed the House this year. This week, if the House approves Citigroup’s legislation and another bill that would delay heightened standards for firms that offer investment advice to retirees, the tally would rise to eight.

Both the Treasury Department and consumer groups have urged lawmakers to reject the bills, warning that they could leave the nation vulnerable again to excessive financial risk taking. The House proposals stand little chance of becoming law, having received a much chillier reception in the Senate and at the White Ho

via House, Set to Vote on 2 Bills, Is Seen as an Ally of Wall St. – NYTimes.com.

You believe those greedy bastards? Jim Hightower is not amused and rightly so:

Audio:

[podcast]

Partial Quote:

On the day before Halloween, the ethically-challenged members of our lobbyist-haunted House of Representatives did a perverse imitation of “Profiles in Courage,” turning that body into “Profiles in Spinelessness.”

In particular, they cravenly caved in to an outrageous and dangerous demand by Wall Street whiners. Such financial powerhouses as Citigroup just hate having their profiteering recklessness restrained by the regulatory reforms passed after their 2008 financial meltdown. Even though the shockwaves from that Wall Street collapse continue to devastate America’s middle class, the banking elite have completely recovered – including recovering their swaggering arrogance and ability to sway money-hungry congress critters with rich campaign donations. — Read the rest at Jim Hightower’s site

I am shocked that more Conservatives are not swinging from the trees on this one here! To their credit, there are some Democrat Party house members that are opposed to this bill and rightly so. This is the same idiotic crap that brought down the stock market and killed our economy; thank goodness there is some semblance of sanity up on the hill.

Sure enough the Bill passed the house, But it is not expected to make it through the Senate and the White House has said that they would veto the thing, if it made it to the President’s desk. Which in this instance is a very good thing. However, this is not the point. What is the point is this: Those same bastards who caused the great meltdown of 2008, are now lobbying our Government to put things back as they were, so that this sort of thing could happy again. That my friends is enough to make an economic populist, like myself, to want to bite a nail in two! 😡

The people that caused the Wall Street meltdown and downturn in our economy ought to be brought up on treason charges, and lined up against a wall and shot! 😡 But, instead, they are trying to buy their way back to lawlessness. This my friends, is an outrage.

Video: Migrant Farm Workers fired because they didn’t want to burn alive

More of that abusive crony capitalism that I detest…..

The Video:

The Story via NBC LA (H/T to Raw Story)

More than a dozen farm workers in Southern California were out of a job after walking out of the fields last week, forced indoors because of heavy smoke from a massive wildfire burning nearby.

“Oh, yeah, the smoke was very bad. That’s no doubt about that,” said Lauro Barrajas, of the United Farm Workers.

As the blaze, dubbed the Springs Fire, continued to grow in Camarillo May 2, farm workers 11 miles south in Oxnard said they started to feel the effects of the smoke in the strawberry fields.

The ashes were falling on top of us, one of them explained, adding “it was hard to breathe.”

Air quality in the region was at dangerously poor levels and 15 workers at Crisalida Farms decided they could not handle it any longer. They left, even though their foreman warned them they would not have a job when they returned.

When they went back to the fields May 3, the farm fired them.

Barrajas, who is a representative of the UFW, said the workers contacted him for help, even though they were not members of the union.

Union representatives met with the farm’s upper management and applied a union rule.

“No worker shall work under conditions where they feel his life or health is in danger,” Barrajas said.

In a statement to Telemundo, the farm representative said the workers left without permission while orders still needed to be filled. The company offered to pay them for the hours they’d worked.

Later, the company settled with the union and offered to rehire all 15 workers. But only one worker returned.

This is why I believe illegal immigration should be stopped. Because of stuff like this here, it is abusive and exploitative for Farm Owners to force workers to stay in a field with fire that close to them.

Furthermore, I believe it says a good deal about the Farm Workers Union to step in, even though these guys were not even union members and come to their defense. I believe it also says a good deal about the farm itself, when the workers say, “No thanks!” when offered their jobs back. Again, I believe this is one of the biggest reasons why the illegal immigration problem in this Country must be stopped. Because of stuff like this here.

I end this, with a word from one of the workers:

One worker said while it hurts to lose work, one’s health is more important.

Indeed, it is and I commend these workers for standing up against abusive employers and I commend the Farmer Workers Union for standing up for them — that is the American way.

I have often written on this blog about the good and bad of the Unions. This is the case of the good side of the labor movement.

Others: Crooks and Liars and The Informer

GM’s jobs news is nothing more than a ruse

Great and wonderful news, right? Wrong.  Just another bogus headline from a company that is about ready for bankruptcy.  This story comes via MLive.com.

General Motors Co. and the state are expected to announce today that GM will create 2,000 new jobs in Michigan, beginning with up to 1,500 at a new information technology innovation center in Warren.

The automaker and the Governor’s Office are expected to make formal announcements later today.

It’s unclear where GM would add the other 500 jobs, but the state says the innovation center is the first of three projects the company will announce.

GM will invest $300 million combined for the three. The state said GM plans no major investment spending on the information technology center; it will be housed in an existing building undergoing renovation on the Warren Tech Center campus.

The center will hire 1,500 new employees within four years and will add to information technology employment already in Warren, Randy Mott, GM’s vice president of information technology and chief information officer, said in a Friday interview.

via GM to add 2,000 jobs in Michigan | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com.

This is where I am going to get accused of sounding like a Democrat or something worse.

This headline is the biggest stinking joke, since the election Barack Obama. These jobs above here? There are not jobs that anyone could do, you know, like me? These jobs are one that would need some serious degrees —- none of which I honestly have at all. So, these are not 2000 jobs for the public, like labor jobs; as the labor jobs are protected by the unions. These are tech jobs that will end up being filled by immigrants, legal or otherwise from foreign countries; who have the degrees to get these jobs. The rest will go to protected minorities, who happen to have those degrees as well.

I just have to ask aloud; how much of this investment, came from the taxpayers dollars that ended up bailing out this failed business? I really do not know if I really want to know the answer to that or not. However, what I will say is this here; the local Detroit media needs to stop with the dishonest headlines and get out of tank for the big three.  I mean, do not get me wrong, I want to see General Motor succeed, as their success personally affects my family, namely my Father, who retired from that company after 31 years. But, when I see dishonest headlines like this, it disgusts me. People scanning through, think GM is mass hiring workers for the plants. Which they are not, they are hiring salaried employees, that they really do not need and doing this, will most likely make them go broke again.

It is time, that the local Detroit media started telling the complete truth about the big three.

The Federal Reserve Bank continues to screw America into the ground

Here is the Fed chairs announcement:

The Story via CNN.COM:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The Federal Reserve announced plans to unleash more stimulus Thursday, in its third attempt at a controversial program to rev up the U.S. economy.

The policy, known as quantitative easing and often abbreviated as QE3, entails buying $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month. The end date remains up in the air, as the Fed will re-evaluate the strength of the economy in coming months.

The Fed is wasting no time. The purchases begin Friday and are expected to add up to only $23 billion for the remainder of September.
The bond-buying policy “should put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative,” the Fed’s official statement said.

Meanwhile, the Fed will continue its existing policy known as Operation Twist. Together the two programs will add $85 billion in long-term bonds to the Fed’s balance sheet each month.

Now what effect will this have on our money supply?

Ryan W. McMaken writing over at Lew Rockwell’s blog correctly observes:

The effect of this will be:

  1. Even less saving going on than is happening now. Why do the lending institutions need more liquidity? Because there are no real life loanable funds in the first place. No one is putting money in depository institutions, for example, because interest rates are at rock-bottom levels, but also because people have no excess money to save. So, the Fed is creating fake loanable funds through the purchase of the MBSs. Much of this will probably be newly-created money.
  2. It will maintain the focus on consumer spending rather than investment. The idea is to keep people spending on real estate. Thus, less will be spent on business investment.
  3. People will incur more debt.

We’ve heard for years from some incorrigible economists that what we need is the Fed to pump up the real estate market to get people spending again. Their answer is: more debt, more spending, less savings and investment.

This is what has been happening for years to no avail, of course, and the Fed is now just turning it up a notch. I’m sure recovery is right around the corner.

The definition of insanity/Keynesianism: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

A-farking-men. This is what happens, when you elect the same very idiots, who screwed the housing markets squarely into the ground.  People that voted for this sort of Government, get exactly what is coming to them and the sort of Government that they voted for. Who the heck ever heard of printing money, that you do not even have to print? It is the textbook case of utter insanity.

I will say this; if Mitt Romney loses this election and the way recent events have turned out, he just might lose —- and this Nation goes into the crapper, because Conservatives and the Republican Party decided to pick a safe candidate. Then the Republican Party should be shut down for good and a new Conservative Party formed. Others have said it, I know and they are absolutely correct.

This stuff right here is the very reason why I hung it up with the Democratic Party and stopped voting for them and supporting them. I am not a millionaire or even someone with any sort of money at all. Hell, I have been unemployed for 8 damned years. However, I do know stupidity, when it see it; and it is on full display here.  Only insane people would do stuff like this, and try to rev up the economy. The solution is to let the free-market work and do its job, not stick a statist finger in it.

Also too; as much as I am not a big fan of weaving ads into my blog postings. I believe this one is important. This would be a good time as any to get into Gold, Silver and other metals. I deal with two companies that sell the stuff. Their banners are below and they both come highly recommended.

They are:


GoldSilver.com

and…:

Buying Gold

Current Prices:




It would be absoutely insane not to get into at least some sort of Gold or other precious metal investment.

 

Others: Michelle MalkinNewsyGuardianLewRockwell.com Blog and Real Time Economics — Blogger Roundup at Memeorandum.com

Piss poor jobs report proves that Obama’s rhetoric does not match his performance as President

I hate to be the one to say it, but I told you so. I even wrote it early this morning; that Obama’s rhetoric in his speeches does not match realities on the ground and that includes his performance.

Buzzfeed even noticed the lack of mention of the Unemployed:

CHARLOTTE, NC — President Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night didn’t include language targeted at the nation’s unemployed.

Despite boilerplate language about the job losses four years ago and his plans to create jobs, Obama did not specifically address the millions of Americans still struggling to find a job or a job that meets their needs.

Obama’s speech also avoided any mention of the unemployment rate, which is still above 8 percent and fell in August because 368,000 Americans left the workforce. Obama was briefed on the August jobs report yesterday afternoon, hours before he took the stage in Charlotte.

The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the nation created only 96,000 jobs in August, well below what analysts expected, while the previous two months of job gains were also revised downward. On the surface the jobs report is a mixed bag for Obama, but nearly every underlying statistic reveals lingering economic weakness.

Mitt Romney weighed in:

“If last night was the party, this morning is the hangover. For every net new job created, nearly four Americans gave up looking for work entirely. This is more of the same for middle-class families, who are suffering through the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. After 43 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent, it is clear that President Obama just hasn’t lived up to his promises, and his policies haven’t worked. They aren’t better off than they were four years ago. My plan for a stronger middle class will create 12 million new jobs by the end of my first term. America deserves new leadership that will get our economy moving again.”

The American Enterprise Institute weighs in with charts galore and a bit of commentary:

and….:

AEI lays out the truth in grim detail:

– Nonfarm payrolls increased by only 96,000 in August, the Labor Department said, versus expectations of 125,000 jobs or more. The manufacturing sector, much touted by the president in his convention speech, lost 15,000 jobs.

– Since the start of the year, job growth has averaged 139,000 per month vs. an average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011.

– As the chart at the top shows, the unemployment rate remains far above the rate predicted by Team Obama if Congress passed the stimulus. (This is the Romer-Bernstein chart.)

– While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% from 8.3% in July, it was due to a big drop in the labor force participation rate (the share of Americans with a job or looking for one). If fewer Americans hadn’t given up looking for work, the unemployment rate would have risen.

– Reuters notes that the participation rate is now at its lowest level since September 1981.

– If the labor force participation rate was the same as when Obama took office in January 2009, the unemployment rate would be 11.2%.

– If the participation rate had just stayed the same as last month, the unemployment rate would be 8.4%.

– The Labor Department also said that 41,000 fewer jobs were created in June and July than previously reported. The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from 64,000 to 45,000, and the change for July was revised from 163,000 to 141,000.

– The broader U-6 unemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who want full-time work, is at 14.7%.

– The employment-population ratio is perhaps the broadest measure of the health of the labor market. It just shows how many Americans — not in the military or in prison — as a share of the population actually have some sort of a job. That number fell last month to 58.3%, just off its Great Recession lows.

– Each month, The Hamilton Project examines the “jobs gap” — the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month. If we added 96,000 jobs every month, we would not close the jobs gap until after 2025, as this chart shows.

– The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.4 hours in August. The manufacturing workweek declined by 0.2 hour to 40.5 hours, and factory overtime was unchanged at 3.2 hours.

– The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.7 hours.

– In August, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged down by 1 cent to $23.52. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings rose by just 1.7 percent.

– In August, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees edged down by 1 cent to $19.75.

As President Obama likes to say on in his campaign speeches; when his supporters boo Mitt Romney or the Republicans — “Don’t Boo, VOTE!” Well, I think it is quite obvious that it is time for Americans to vote differently. Because it is quite obvious to this writer that President Obama has done nothing to match his flowing rhetoric in his speeches.

Even Jennifer Rubin over at the Washington Post, which is very liberal says the following:

We can surmise that Obama’s lackluster performance last night was due in part to an early look at a jobs report that not even his most dogged media shills can spin. Mitt Romney put out a statement that read: “If last night was the party, this morning is the hangover. For every net new job created, nearly four Americans gave up looking for work entirely. This is more of the same for middle class families who are suffering through the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. After 43 straight months of unemployment above 8%, it is clear that President Obama just hasn’t lived up to his promises and his policies haven’t worked. We aren’t better off than they were four years ago. My plan for a stronger middle class will create 12 million new jobs by the end of my first term. America deserves new leadership that will get our economy moving again.”

The job numbers will likely harden the perception that the president is in over his head. The voters do not see a “recovery.” A call for “more time” is unconvincing if one has the sense neither that four nor 40 years would make a difference under this president.

Romney will continue to hammer away at the president’s failures. But he would be wise to push (as he is doing in 15 new ads in eight states) his own plans for middle-class Americans, and most especially domestic energy development. Voters are certain things are bad; they now need to be reassured Romney will be better. With these jobs numbers the public might well conclude: How could he do any worse?

To this I can only add a very hearty Gentile Protestant Christian —- Amen. 😉 😀

Vote for Mitt Romney, because America can do much better this —– much better. 

Others: The Moderate VoiceBuzzFeedReutersJOSHUAPUNDITThe Right ScoopEd Driscoll,Questions and ObservationsInstapunditSister ToldjahLe·gal In·sur·rec· tionBlue Crab Boulevard,NewsBusters.org blogsPower LineFausta’s BlogNational Review and Patterico’s Pontifications (via Memeorandum)