DisMade in America: Where DOES this stuff come from?

The mission seemed simple enough. Walk into an auto parts store and buy a spark plug "Made in America."

I realize a lot of stuff is no longer even manufactured in this country and American workers are paying that price with a double whammy of lost wages and crappy products. I try to do my part to support the American worker every time I walk into a store or shop online. Pretty sad when the highlight of my day is pulling on my New Balance socks with "Made in America" proudly stamped inside their collars.

In a Federal Register notice announcing amendments to this provision, the Customs Service indicated that, where a product has a foreign origin, any references to the United States made in the context of a statement relating to any aspect of the production or distribution of the product (e.g., "Designed in USA," "Made for XYZ Corporation, California, U.S.A.," or "Distributed by ABC, Inc., Colorado, USA") would be considered misleading to the ultimate purchaser and would require foreign country-of-origin marking in accordance with the above provision. 

Finding goods crafted by and for fellow countrymen has become a tough slog and is something of a daily pilgrimage. Corporations work their label designers overtime trying to hide the fact that goods are produced by foreign labor. Hell, now some companies are hiding the foreigness of their stuff by leaving off the manufacturing info and subbing in the company's distribution addresses. This, of course, gives me the perfect opportunity to stand in front of their high-priced, meticulously-groomed displays while calling their handy 800 number on that label to ask a surprised call center attendant where it is produced. I do use my very best command voice so their potential customers hear the question. It's always gratifying to see how many people start picking up packages and checking that for themselves upon hearing the question.

So, back at our local auto parts store where I've just asked for a spark plug made domestically and have gotten that "Where'd you park your spaceship" look.

Heir Club 4 Growth: Orangutan Edition

In the modern world of cuckoo conservatism, too many deranged lunatics of the right-wing variety have come to the fore to name any one of them the movement's standard bearing Top Grifter. Yet, if any one of these air-sucking bimbos wins the prize for taking best advantage of his 60 minutes of idiocy-producing fame, it would be the self-promoting, mop-topped ignoramus formerly known as Donald Trump.

Trump has gone from failed presidential candidate for the Compost Tea Party, that fecal-strewn dumping ground for deranged American pseudo-politicians, to simply failed American absent the ability to differentiate between the Trump-descriptive term "joke" and "legally-binding contract."

What follows is a take-down of the idiot's judiciary-clogging frivolity by the comedian who fired up the lone cell in The Donald's brain -- Bill Maher. Hilarity follows.

Oh, Donald ...

For the love of guns

I find little so tantalizing as the sulfuric gunpowder aroma that wafts up the barrel of a freshly-fired rifle. When coupled with downing a peephole-sized silhouette 400-plus meters downrange, it is positively electrifying.

Chest-bumping an M60 as it rapid-fires a spray of 7.62 mike-mikes over an impact area is as mesmerizing as flipping grenades into a foxhole or watching a Claymore's Front Toward Enemy pepper-spray a target to pieces.

Image of soldier live-firing Colt M4 carbine

Yup, I love guns, weaponry, actually, and not merely the firing of them. I lovingly clean them, practice disassembly and assembly of them blind-folded then use them to down targets in an impact area. Yeah, I'm kind of a gun freak in my way. Much of that was born during my time in the military, as I had only sort of fired a shotgun or two prior to signing up.

Having a passion for firearms, however, doesn't mean I believe every American should have access to a tricked out assault weapon with a muzzle velocity of 3,200 fps, a muzzle energy of 2,400 ft lbs. capable of firing 50 rounds a minute.

RIP Chris Kyle: A cautionary tale

In this April 6, 2012, photo, former Navy SEAL and author of the book "American Sniper"
Chris Kyle poses in Midlothian, Texas. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Paul Moseley)

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” 

 -- NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre

Via ABC World News, a man is under arrest in connection with the killing of two men at an Erath County, Texas, gun range, police said.

One of the victims is former Navy SEAL and "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle.

Inbound reports from the scene are muddy at the moment, but this much is known: Kyle, a highly-decorated military veteran, was with a neighbor at a Texas shooting range when a gunman with a documented case of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) allegedly gunned down the two men, both presumably among LaPierre's class of "good guys with guns."

It is neither too early to mourn the loss of a fallen brother-in-arms nor too early to start the fight to ensure no others fall at the hands of an armed broken man who should be neither.

In Memoriam: Remembering Hadiya Pendleton, 15

The girl in the video denouncing gun violence is 11. A short four years later, she was gunned down just a week after performing in the inaugural ceremonies for President Obama in Washington, D.C. In a

 Hadiya had just finished her final exams at King Prep High School, where she was a sophomore, and was hanging out with friends from the school's volleyball team when she was gunned down in a park in the 4400 block of South Oakenwald Avenue. Thursday afternoon, police announced the reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting had increased to $24,000, up from $11,000 announced Wednesday.

As the face of Hadiya joins the list of children massacred by gun violence at Sandy Hook Elementary, the National Rifle Association (NRA) led by the clueless and tone-deaf Wayne LaPierre, is assembling its own rogue's gallery of poster children in the defense of massacres.

Meet Christian Philip Oberender (pictured to the right). The NRA wants him to have access to guns. All types of guns. As many as he'd like. At 14, Oberender murdered his mother in a shotgun ambush in the family rec room in 1995.

Republican economics 001

Oh, God ... if you've ever scratched your head in wonder at the depth of Stupid wandering the halls of the Republican-led US House of Representatives, search no more for the root of the nation's woes. Take a look at the National Republican Congressional Committee's response to calls for President Obama to mint a trillion-dollar coin to sidestep a second, GOP-manufactured debt ceiling debacle:

The amount of platinum needed to mint a coin worth $1 trillion would sink the Titanic nrcc.org/spending twitter.com/NRCC/status/28…
— NRCC (@NRCC) January 9, 2013

 Pithy hilarity ensues after jump ...

New GOP just like Old GOP: Of 'gaseous rhetoric' and other noxious smells

Watching the Tea Party die a slow death takes me back to our era of Free Love. Great times of in-your-face, bra-waving, van rockin' wild orgy sexual freedom looks and sounds a lot like Tea Party in-your-face, English-mangled sign waving, race baitin' wild flirtations with unfounded conspiracies and stupidity.

Yup, it's all fun and freedom until you've got exploding rates of STDs, this new thing called AIDS and kids running around named Rainbow, Sunshine and Unicorn (that latter I'm presuming is the boy). As a cultural movement, the Tea Party offered even more downsides with its clinging to blatant racism, Second Amendment remedies and all manner of rape lunacy. Sure the Summer of Love was tons more fun than our adventures in Tea Party astroturf but both faced a common threat -- reality.

Now the GOP, which previously welcomed the young insurgency supposedly under the watchful eye of trusted stalwart Dick Armey, is stuck with the stench of burned tea after losing an election that was only theirs to lose. And they're working hard to figure out what went wrong with the most well-funded campaign ever waged in the most low rent manner possible.

The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky notices the lack of genuine effort on the GOP's part. "Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio recently laid out a vision for the GOP’s future," he writes. "Too bad it shows Republicans have learned nothing at all from their historic trouncing on Election Day."

Despite upholstering their speeches with ample liberal rhetoric ... Rubio and Ryan both stuck hard to current-day GOP gospel. Raising tax rates isn’t an option. Relying on government isn’t the answer, and all the rest. ... But it was only about messaging. The substance of their positions, to them, is fine and dandy.

Neither they nor the people they’re talking to are ready to accept that they’ve been wrong about anything except messaging, and until they are, this is just gaseous rhetoric.

A USA Today editorial demonstrates how ineffective the GOP has been in matching action to its newfound rhetoric. The party's failure to meaningfully recalibrate after last month's election losses sent the GOP over the reality cliff when the usually sober Senate Republicans voted down the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in a move that "reflected the continuing influence of a fringe that gets frantic about anything involving the United Nations," the paper wrote.

The most stunning example of the New GOP's thinking remaining as muddled and convoluted as the Old GOP's came from the Senate floor in the name of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who effectively filibustered his own bluff when it was called out by Harry Reid. The Clown Car of Crazy was so bizarre, it gave Sen. Claire McCaskill, attempting to preside over the Republican asylum, a mild case of whiplash.

“This may be a moment in Senate history, when a senator made a proposal that, when given an opportunity for a vote on that proposal, filibustered his own proposal. I don’t think this has ever happened before,” quipped Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin in the wake of the fiasco.

The danger of nodding off after elections

Following the bruising President Barack Obama put on Willard Romney and his GOP minions, I was determined to not replicate my mistakes in 2008. Yes, he won that time, too, but I, like so far too many other supporters kicked back to take a break after our well-earned victory. That was a major mistake. Our President had no visible backing either from his liberal base or the ConservaDem wing of the Democratic caucus.

The rest of us got caught napping when CNBC financial analyst Rick Santelli set off a Tea Party explosion, exploited by big money backers, that set hard-working Americans into an anti-healthcare reform frenzy that masked an ugly, racially-tinged underbelly. The entire episode put these citizens on the wrong side of their own best interests and amplified the nature of their darkest angels.

It was against this tide that I found my voice, no longer willing to simply wave off the virulence as merely crazy talk. Turns out, my countrymen aren't as discerning as I'd assumed. In fact, they're not just ignorant, they wish to become moreso -- railing against education and, in my home state of Texas, slipping into their Republican platform a plank denouncing the teaching of critical reasoning.

The remaining thinking class woke up one day after a 2010 Tea Party rout horrified at what had happened to our country and determined to take back OUR country. To change our tone, our rhetoric, our patriotism. Someone was surrounded alright, as Glenn Beck posited back in 2009, but unfortunately it turned out to be us -- the sober, the sane, the REAL Americans.

I can't speak for anyone else but I can no longer afford my traditional post-electoral Tryptophan-esque stupor. There's work to be done and I've got to wake up and get to it. I will ask for help but if others around me don't feel the same urgency, fine. I'll do it myself. Don't want to, not my personality, but I will go it alone. I'll register voters. I'll start petitions. I'll educate my neighbors. I'll fight draconian Republican measures. Whatever means necessary.

It's time to get busy and move #Forward. I am.

The vacation that wasn't ... how healthcare popped onto my radar

I wanted to return home to Texas after a much-deserved two-week break -- refreshed, locked and loaded for the political fray, with some very specific goals in mind. I spelled out my top priorities in a post entitled "Starting the good fight." You'll note healthcare was nowhere on my list of priorities.

Life, the 1960s pop reference goes, is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. And so it went this year as my brothers and I stood around our mother's hospital bed Thanksgiving Day as she fought her way back from a semi-coma.

What a difference a day can make. Standing there watching100-plus years of fight take on death and win, I couldn't help but realize how much of a Thanksgiving we were getting in real time. Not only were we privileged to witness Life win over death, we did it in the only state in our Union that has comprehensive healthcare. We would not be a family bankrupted by medical bills nor one that had to stop care immediately after the emergency room. 

There would be rehab, in-home nursing and post-medical services. Sure, there will be the random bill from a lab or so, but thanks to my parents' lifelong labors in a place we jokingly called Taxachusetts, they earned coverage beyond that of their relatives living in other states.

It is inconceivable to me that there still exist families who are not this fortunate: either in the battle of Life over Death or in their choice of homestead. I know of people who have been bankrupted by such medical emergencies and it should not be so in this The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twelve. 

We need Obamacare and we need it enacted for every citizen who works hard, plays by the rules and only expects in return a modicum of dignity in times of illnes. I say we make sure they get that.

Starting the good fight

Am currently on vacation but want to start my to do list for the coming term of our Democratic presidency. Last election, the cohort of Obama supporters, the Democratic-led Congress and the Obama administration itself was blind-sided by Dick Armey's astroturfed Tea Party insurrection at the mid-terms. I will do my damnedest to make sure that doesn't happen again.

There are some critical preparations that must be attended to in advance of the 2014 mid-term elections:

1. The drive to register new voters and convince inactive Democrats to get to the voting booth; there can not be another off-year election in which the New Democratic Coalition is outnumbered at the polls by the aging, predominantly white Republicans.
2. Activists must work at the state and local levels to right all previous efforts to disenfranchise minority voters both fraudulently and strategically. We need to get ahead of efforts that, even in defeat, are regenerating new efforts to further cage out identifiable Democratic voting blocs.
3.  At the national level, we must be aware of initiatives being undertaken by the Obama Administration and remain in touch with the grassroots Dashboard tools and other partisan organizations such as MoveOn, Occupy Wall Street and congressional Democrats' messaging.
4. We must identify & prioritize the issues about which we care most deeply and form coalitions to get Congress on board with our agenda. We must be insistent without disparaging. Clear with proposed legislative ideas that can be enacted with proper push.

Among my personal goals are addressing such issues as improving Veterans' services, economic fairness, combating climate change, drug enforcement equity and prison reform. I'm sure there are many others and depending on input both on Twitter and in the comments here, they may change depending on the way our coalitions shape up.

I will update this blog after I return from a much needed rest but wanted to jot down some basics while they are on my mind.

Welcome to the good fight and I look forward to working with you stalwarts. MKSinSA

Join the #RollingJubilee: “You Are Not A Loan” ow.ly/fpfVJ via @prwatch #OWS
— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) November 19, 2012

Can't keep a good man down .. but you CAN keep a bad party in disarray. 2014 is close at hand. Are you registered? rockthevote.com
— MKSinSA (@mksinsa) November 19, 2012

SimCoach: a new way for Vets and their families to find expert help & support services for #PTSD.braveheartveterans.org/SimCoach
— Ls (@pettybooshwah) November 20, 2012