Foreign Affairs: Alexander J. Motyl: Why Vladimir Putin's Days Are Numbered

Source:The New Democrat

If you look at how the Russian Federation is set up and what type of country and the government they are supposed to have on paper, it is very sound and looks very similar as the United States. They are officially a Federal Republic with checks and balances in their Federal Government. A strong executive, but independent judiciary and legislative branches. With states that they call republics who are also independent of the Federal Government. With their own governments and independently elected governors of their republics. Sounds like America, doesn’t it.

But that is not how President Vladimir Putin governs Russia and no he’s not as bad as Joe Stalin and a lot of Russian dictators from the Soviet era. Russia is a hell of a lot better off now than they were in the Soviet era as far as being able to move around the country and being able to build lives for themselves and being able to live in some type of freedom. And they do now have an independent media and access to foreign media. But this is not a liberal democracy by any stretch of the imagination and doesn’t even advertise itself as one. And if Vlad Putin is not a dictator officially, he is certainly one in practice with all of the power he’s centralized in his own office.

But it looks like President Putin may have gone too far, because as much economic progress that Russia has made in the last fifteen years or so under his leadership, that has mostly been from their energy industry that is state-owned. Russia is one of the top three energy producers in the world. This is a country that should’ve been an economic superpower sixty-years ago with their natural resources and their educated public. But of course their communist system ruined that for them and the Putin Administration hasn’t done much to develop their other industries and create other industries. That America did a long time ago and that Europe in Japan did sixty-years ago.

And now that oil prices are falling and the with the American/European economic sanctions on Russia because of their unlawful invasion of Ukraine and all of the money that Russia has spent to try to occupy parts of Ukraine which is a large country, the Russian economy is taking a big hit. And people in the Russian Government and around the country know this and have only their President Putin to blame for that. And as a result President Putin’s strong hand on that entire country of one-fifty-million people is getting a lot weaker. And hopefully his days as dictator of Russia are numbered.

The Washington Post: Jonathan Capehart: 'John Boehner Needs to Follow His Own Advice on DHS Funding'

Source:The New Democrat

It is not often that I agree with House Speaker John Boehner on anything and I’ll let you judge for yourself how often that is. But he has a point here. The House did their job at least in round one and passed a Homeland Security funding bill. They passed a bad bill with the immigration defunding and the Senate shouldn’t pass that provision. What the Senate should do is first debate the bad House bill and then try to fix it.

You may already know this if you follow me on this blog, but I hate the motion to proceed rule in the U.S. Senate. And you really need to be a Congressional junkie on Congress to know what the Senate motion to proceed rule is. But the Senate Leader can’t bring a bill up on the Senate floor without sixty votes. Which is stupid because the whole point of being in the majority in the Senate is getting to set the agenda. If the Leader can’t bring up bills on his own and needs sixty votes to do that, it really makes the role of the majority pretty weak.

Another good thing about the Senate is the role of the minority. Unlike in the House the minority can try to change or in this case fix any bill that the Senate majority brings up. They can do that with the amendment process and they can block bills if they have forty-one votes to do so. Senate Democrats having a sizable minority with forty-six votes can block bills on their own. Knowing that what they should be doing instead is saying, “we’ll debate the bad House bill, but we are going to try to fix it as well. And if we are able to strip the immigration defunding in it, we’ll vote for final passage. But if not, then we’ll block the bill on final passage”.

But to try to block a bill before it is even allowed to be debated, is a waste of time. Time that could be spent at least trying to fix the bad House bill and bringing along a few Republican Senators especially Republicans who’ll have tough races next year in the Northeast and Midwest who want to do other things in this Congress and get passed this issue. The House passed their bill a bad bill at that. Senate Republicans brought up the bill that they want. Now its the job of Senate Democrats to fix the bad bill. And if they are successful there, then they can send a clean bill back to the House. But if not then they can block the House bill and work with Senate Republicans on a compromise.

The Hill: Keith Laing: Senator Bernie Sanders: $1T Infrastructure Bill Would Be Cheaper Than Iraq War

Source:The New Democrat

Bernie Sanders wouldn’t be Bernie Sanders if we wasn’t proposing things like a trillion-dollars in infrastructure investment to rebuild America. And I agree with him as far as the amount of money that we should invest to rebuild this country and how that money would be spent. Which would to prioritize much needed infrastructure projects around the country and repairs that must be done to avoid future accidents and to put as many Americans back to work as possible.

The only areas where I disagree with Senator Sanders is how to finance this. What the Senator is talking about is funding this investment through the U.S. Government and taxing corporations’s oversees profits and eliminating tax breaks that they get at home. That part I don’t disagree with, except I would use that revenue differently. But the process is where I have the main problem, because what he’s talking about needs to go through a broader tax reform package that needs to be worked out in Congress between the House and Senate, with President Obama involved. Whatever tax reform that the President and Congress work out would probably a trillion-dollars by itself.

Tax reform and infrastructure are two different issues that should be treated separately. You could invest a trillion-dollars in infrastructure, pay for it without borrowing and not need to do tax reform to get it done. And do tax reform as a different bill. Both are important issues that have to be dealt with to get the type of investment in America that we have to have to make our economy as strong as possible. You could tax oil, you could tax gas, you could raise fees, you could tax things that aren’t very healthy for society. Like tobacco, alcohol and marijuana if it ever legalized federally. And you could bring in the private sector to invest in our infrastructure.

What we could do is to set up a National Infrastructure Bank that would work independent of the U.S. Government, but lets say owned by them. Similar to the Federal Reserve or Amtrak, that would be non-profit. And use this first trillion-dollars to get the NIB up in running and to prioritize infrastructure projects around the country. Consulting the private sector, state and local governments, as well as the Feds. And bringing in private investors to finance these projects around the country. But Senator Sanders bill is an excellent start to a critical issue for the country that has to be addressed.

The American Prospect: Paul Starr: The Crash of The New Republic

Source:The American Prospect-

Source:The New Democrat

I would put it differently and if I was writing for The American Prospect, well if I was writing for The American Prospect, they probably wouldn’t of published what I have to say about The New Republic, because I wasn’t backing the party line. But for the sake of this piece had I wrote this article at The Prospect about The New Republic I would’ve put it differently. I probably would’ve called it The Death of The New Republic: How Chris Hughes Killed a Great Liberal Magazine. And he did it a couple of ways.

Chris Hughes took a great center-left liberal magazine, not a far-left more social democratic oriented magazine like The Nation or The New Republic and turned TNR into The Nation or The Prospect ideologically. You read TNR today and it is very similar to Nation or Prospect or the AlterNet, TruthOut, Salon or any other far-left publication that struggles just to stay in business today. Because they don’t have any advertising revenue. Because they are anti-business if not anti-private enterprise all together.

When Mike Kinsley was running TNR they were still that great center-left magazine. That had solid suspicions about big government in people’s economic and personal lives. Today’s TNR now not only supports a Scandinavian social democratic high taxed welfare state to manage people’s economic affairs for them. But backs Mike Bloomberg’s nanny state and would like to regulate how Americans can eat an drink.The New Republic might not become like The Prospect or Nation financially. Because they do have wealthy backers and are entertainment and tabloid driven with what they want to cover. So that alone might keep them in business. But The Liberal Republic is gone.

The other issue has to do with Chris Hughes himself. He’s a businessman first and comes from the OMG awesome entertainment universe and politics and current affairs is not his meat and potatoes. He goes where the money is and that is probably where TNR is headed with a few political writers left over to tell people what the far-left is thinking. And why middle class Americans are under-taxed and that the Federal Government is too small, states and local governments, as well as individuals have too much power and can’t be trusted and you need a bigger government to take care of them. Which is what you get from The Prospect, The Nation and Salon today.

Foreign Affairs: Bilal Y. Saab: 'Saudi Arabia’s Way Forward'

Source:Foreign Affairs- the King of Saudi Arabia.

Source:The New Democrat

"King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz will be remembered for his relatively reformist mindset and bold foreign policy initiatives. But the Saudi leader’s passing will have little to no impact on the Kingdom’s future, especially given the set of increasingly difficult challenges the country will have to face at home and abroad.

Leadership matters, especially in the Middle East, where institutions are weak and often nonexistent. But charisma and talent, on their own, won’t be enough to dig Saudi Arabia out of the profound generational problems that go beyond Abdullah, his successor Salman, or any leader who will... 

You might be able to read the rest of this article at Foreign Affairs. 

"The 90-year old king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah Bin Abdulazziz Al Saud died today. His successor is his younger brother, King Salman who is also a veteran in governing Saudi Arabia." 

Source:ABS-CBN- the new King of Saudi Arabia.

From ABS-CBN

I’m not claiming to be an expert on Saudi Arabia and that their people and especially their government is ready for this type of government, system and constitution. Especially their government that currently benefits so much from their current makeup and setup that their oil and gas revenues provides so much for their people and that most of the country is able to live pretty well in return. That their people in return give up individual freedom, or at least a lot of bit certainly from a personal perspective, but perhaps from an economic perspective as well. Since the Saudi economy is so dependent on their oil and gas.

What I’m saying is that what I would propose for them has worked very well in other countries with similar government’s or population’s. That Britain is a democratic monarchy where their government is separated from their monarchy. That their head of state is a Prime Minister who is independent of the monarchy. And that country has done very well for about sixty-years now under that system. Turkey, one of Saudi Arabia’s neighbors in the Middle East is a very religious Muslim country. But their government is secular by in-large, even if their current government wants to change that. And their government has functioned very well the last thirty-years or so.

I believe the way forward for Saudi Arabia is not to abolish their monarchy or their form of Islam. But to separate them from their government and have those three things act independently, but in partnership with the others: 

A national government, hopefully federally under a federal system. That has checks and balances with an executive, legislature and judiciary. That again are independent of each other, but work in partnership. An executive that is led by a president or prime minister, not a king who is accountable to their legislature, judiciary, and most importantly, the Saudi people.

What Saudi Arabia will probably get instead from their new King is the status-quo. Which is very conservative at least on sense that they won’t change anything. And if anything make their current system stronger and more centralized and dictatorial. 

For Saudi to truly become a developed country and a giant in the world economically, politically and militarily, they need to diversify their government and their economy so their people have the freedom to make Saudi as strong as it can be. And not so dependent on a monarchy and energy industry doing so much for everyone else.

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Run For Doom (1963) Starring Diana Dors

Source:IMDB- English Muffin Diana playing Nikki Carrol, on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, in 1963.

Source:The New Democrat

“A young doctor continues to date a beautiful showgirl in spite of warnings that her three previous marriages ended badly for her past husbands.” 

From IMDB 

“Dr. Don Reed falls in love with a nightclub singer named Niki Carroll despite the warnings of his seriously ill father and her ex-boyfriend who both tell him she is not good for him. Niki accepts his marriage proposal, but Don’s father dies when he hears the news. The newlyweds take an exotic honeymoon cruise with the inheritance money. During the cruise, Don becomes enraged when he sees Niki kissing another man and he accidently pushes him overboard. Niki convinces Don to keep his mouth shut and since no one saw the incident he gets away with murder. Niki eventually grows tired of him. She tells him that she is going to leave him. She also wants all his money or else she will tell the police about the murder. Niki also dumps her band leader boyfriend, but instead of accepting this he strangles her. The police call Don to the scene. He examines his wife’s body in the bedroom and discovers that she is still alive. Believing that the band leader is going to take the rap for murder, Don finishes her off. When he rejoins the police he is shocked to learn that the police knew that Niki was still alive. They had told the bandleader she was dead in order to calm him down. The police then inform Don that they like to finish questioning her. (TV.com)”

Source:EBAY- Alfred Hitchcock's TV baby.

From The Hitchcock Zone

“Diana Dors – How Long Has This Been Going On” 

Source:Ramon Bautista- English Muffin Diana Doras guest-starring on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963.

From Ramon Bautista

“Diana Dors – Just One Of Those Things (The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 1963)”

Source:Mark Moyer- English Muffin Diana Dors, on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963. She plays nightclub singer and gold digger Nikki Carroll.

From Mark Moyer 

“Diana Dors: Just One of Those Things”

Source:Calango of Corona- English Muffin Diana Dors, on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963.

I think Run For Doom is Alfred Hitchcock at his best because you see the full-scale of what he wanted to give his audience. A suspense/thriller involving people who were not saints or angels and not devils either, but real people who tend to be somewhere in between. With clever writing and a lot of humor and the female lead being a goddess. A gorgeous ,sexy woman who is also very adorable and yet very clever and witty. Which is Diane Dors at her best, Jayne Mansfield who was also on this series and several other women who appeared on this series.

Run For Doom is about a nightclub singer with a bad history of marriages and relationships where the men in her life do not survive the relationship. And she walks away with a lot of money from the experiences.

Diana Dors plays Nikki Carroll the nightclub singer and she’s performing one night and is introduced to a young doctor. Dr. Don Reed played by John Gavin and they naturally hit it off. Reed being a doctor is probably Nikki’s main interest him, but he’s a young doctor who doesn’t have a lot of money yet.

Dr. Reed has an ailing very wealthy father and his relationship with Nikki goes well enough for him to want to marry Nikki. Reed has gotten several warnings about Nikki’s history with men and her dead husbands and is warned not to pursue her. But I guess he’s blinded by his love for a woman who doesn’t love him and decided to propose and marry her anyway.

Reed’s father dies after finding out that his son is going to marry Nikki and now Reed is a very wealthy man. And naturally Nikki looses personal interest in Reed and looks to get out of the marriage.

Nikki has something that she can blackmail her husband on: Dr. Reed accidentally killed someone on their honeymoon by pushing a man over the cruise boat that they were on. And they didn’t bother to report the incident. Nikki tells the doctor to give her his money or she’ll report the killing to the police.

Nikki also has a long-term on and off again boyfriend who wants her back. And knows what she is up to with her husband and decides to step in to get a piece of the action. And they have a physical struggle that leads to him strangling her and thinking he killed her.

To be honest with you: Diana Dors was the main reason why I’m so interested in this show. But it is a very entertaining and at times a pretty funny show as well. With Diana playing a woman that is so cunning personally and bright and yet she looks too sweet and cute to hurt, let alone kill anyone. And yet she has a history of dead boyfriends and husbands. But in this marriage she is the one who doesn’t survive the affair.

Queen Latifah: Jaclyn Smith- Ageless Beauty

Source:Queen Latifah- Hollywood Goddess Jaclyn Smith, talking to Queen Latifah. 

Source:The Daily Press 

"Jaclyn explained her approach to beauty is a lifestyle of healthy choices and an easy to follow routine, like her own skincare line, which she developed a collection of crèmes and lotions with clinically proven ingredients."

From Queen Latifah

The title says it all about one of the best overall looking woman of all time. Here’s a woman whose going to be 70 in October, 70 years old. A gorgeous and still baby-faced adorable red-head who if anything is actually sexier now than she was in the late 1970s when she became a star on Charlie’s Angels.

Jaclyn and Raquel Welch, they seem to refuse to age. As Raquel has put it several times, looking good is her job. That is what she does and has all the motivation to look good and take care of herself, because it is how she makes her living as a businesswomen and someone with her own fashion business now. I believe Jaclyn Smith is in the same category. That looking good and fashion is her business. And the best way I think she believes she can promote that is looking as good as she possibly can herself.

Source:The New Democrat- Ageless Beauty Jaclyn Smith 

There isn’t a better woman that could have coined Ageless Beauty, or could have had that term named for her better than Jaclyn Smith. She’s been in Hollywood , the entertainment business and fashion industry, for over forty years now. Before I was born I’m sure, which makes me feel a little younger and yet she still looks 10-15, maybe even twenty years younger than she actually is. Here’s a woman who was born at the end of World War II which was seventy years ago and she looks better today than probably most women young enough to be her daughter.

And I’m sure many women young enough to be her granddaughter as well. She’s the definition of ageless beauty and 10-15 years from now will probably still be modeling her own products, because she’ll be able to give people personal experience that they work.

This is going to sound corny, but so what, because it’s so true. You’re as young as you feel and age really is only a number. I’ve seen men and women in their late thirties and early forties who are going gray already. Men that young, going bald who look 10-15 years older than they actually are. From either drinking and smoking too much, or both, perhaps using harder drugs, not eating right, not exercising, not managing stress, etc.

And I’ve seen men women who actually are as old in years as younger people, who look as old as they actually are, who look as young as the younger people who’ve aged too fast. And why is that, because time machines haven’t been invented yet. The younger looking healthier looking people like Jackie Smith, take care of themselves. They enjoy life while actually taking care of themselves. Instead of seeing how hard they can live before they die.