It's Monday Jan 26, 2009, and I've gotten started on the content for this new blog. If you have some insight into how best to get the blog going in a respectable way that many Clarkies and The Old Man himself will get involved, PLEASE within the next 48 hours, get in touch with me. You can send a private notification through clicking on my CCN member name, but I trust you guys and I'm going to share my own email addy, also:

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"...now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country..."

I've typed that a million times - like many of you, probably - while practicing typing skills, under my mom's tutelage. I've always liked that it ended with "country", and not the original wording of the phrase, which is "party."  

I am in the trenches assisting our veterans obtain full time employment. Our first priority is to service members that are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. I am fully aware of the problems our service members face and have decided to do something about it. Below is my press release that was posted in the Seattle and Tacoma newpapers last weeek. I can use all the help I can get. My website is www.jimvaughnforcongress.com

If you have any questions, I can be reached at 253.241.9634 (mobile)

www.jimvaughnforcongress.com

The Five-Dollar Bill will turn purple on March 13, 2008.

Honest Abe gets colorful on $5 bill to fight counterfeiting
(this link is broken - look here and here posted Mar 13, '08 -Ed.)
Dec. 13, 2007, 8:54PM By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
Associated Press via Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON — Cue the hues for the Great Emancipator.

I'm always curious what makes a Republican tick-- especially these days. What makes them stay in the dark corridors of that cold, malignant party that morphed from conservatism into... unrecognizablism. I have a casual friend that I used to work with, a very wealthy casual friend, who is regularly generous and thoughtful amongst her family, friends, and associates. But who has this... other side.

We'll call her 'Carolyn'.

ART, PHOTOGRAPHY

Environment

One of the blessings that being an Earthling brings is our view of the stars in clear skies.

This is an uncommonly lovely view showing the Milky Way, Jupiter,the star Arcturus and the Big Dipper in a beautiful and educative way than I've ever seen in a picture .

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070814.html

. [Best use: Scroll down to somewhat below
all of the mountaintops. Then slowly scroll
from left (Milky Way) to far right (Big Dipper

After viewing it all: scroll down ward to
reference identifying information.]

If you haven't yet seen this film - I strongly urge you to watch it. It's currently playing on Comcast's On Demand. You can also rent it. For more info on it and trailers, you can also go to www.whywefightmovie.com

On CNBC's "Closing Bell" just now, Gen. Clark expressed support for the proposal in Congress to raise cigarette taxes to fund universal health care for children.

Colorado did that last year, rasing the per-pack tax by another $0.64 or something similar.

These "sin taxes" (on cigarettes, liquor, and maybe gambling) are counterproductive, if they actually work. 

They're punitive, as well, and targeted at only a diminishing segment of taxpayers.

The clear message of the past 48 hours is this:

VOTERS STILL MATTER!

On November 8, 2006, we are not talking about Diebold or Sequoia.  We are not talking about Karl Rove spinning a "narrow" loss.  We are not talking about whether the Democrats who swept both houses of Congress yesterday are "new" or "old" Democrats, whether this is "really" a Democratic Party victory or a victory of "neo-Democrats" who are more Republican than Democrat in outlook.  We're not talking about dashed hopes and a resigned sense of living in the Fourth Reich, watching "the end of the American experiment in democracy."

Something roughly along these lines...

This may be one of the few times in political history when it no longer matters what party you belong to, or if you're part of the roughly 50% who don't vote. Forget about finding an issue to get behind. Let's make it a simpler:

If you agree with everything the Bush Administration has done since 2000, and want President Bush and his administration to have unfettered power to continue on their current course for the next two years - vote Republican.

Here's what will happen if President Bush's Republican Party retains control of both houses of Congress: President Bush will consider this a mandate that justifies anything and everything he wants to do - no matter what it is - and he will have two more years to carry out those plans without worrying that Congress will try to stop him. They won't. They've already demonstrated that.