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No Longer At This Address

2012-01-29T18:56:00.000-08:00

We've moved! Anyone looking to find us can do so here:

Short and Sweet

2012-01-29T09:46:00.001-08:00

Hate to be the I told you so guy but here's a tweet from KCBS radio in the Bay Area about what else went on in Oakland while the OPD... along with half the law enforcement resources of that entire region... was busy "controlling" unarmed occupiers.

Two people were killed and four others were injured in three separate shootings in Oakland late Sat. night/early Sun. morning.

I rest my case.

A Rock And A Hard Place

2012-01-28T22:03:00.000-08:00

BG's piece on drugs vs guns was excellent as usual but I thought I'd stick my two cents (adjusted for the results of Mitt Romney's tax loopholes) into the mix here.

I live in a rural area roughly halfway between Los Angeles and the Bay Area/Sacramento corridor. Yep... pretty much right on the borderline between the "turfs" claimed by the Nortenos and the Surenos. This, plus the fact that the gangs like to do a lot of their "business" these days in these rural areas where law enforcement is a bit more sparse and maybe not quite as sophisticated as in the big cities, makes these "borderlands" hotbeds of gang activity.

As a result, our little backwater county has had more than it's share of the kinds of shootings described in BG's post. In fact, the latest one was just last night. It wasn't the first time it's happened by a long shot and it won't be the last. We've had two police officers killed in recent years by gangs, one who had been deliberately targeted as part of an initiation right.

Last night's incident was in the town's biggest shopping mall. Neither of the two bangers got a scratch but three bystanders were wounded.

Dozens of others have been killed or wounded in drive by incidents, gang initiations and assassinations. In one of the most noted cases, we had a case several years ago where a young father and his small daughter entered an intersection just when two bangers on opposite corners decided to throw down on each other. Bullet came through the window, barely missing her and killing her father instantly.

When the punk that did the deed was asked by media how he felt about killing an innocent bystander, all he said was, "He shouldn't have gotten in my way." Again, none of the bangers was even scratched. Bastards can't shoot worth a damn which makes them doubly dangerous.

The problem however isn't so much just the guns, especially when we're talking about bangers. A major part of the problem these days is that these punks are on our streets doing their thing relatively unhindered because we supposedly don't have enough personnel or money to protect our citizens from actual organized crime and gang violence and actually win the "war" on gangs", the "war" on crime, the "war" on drugs, the "war" on grandma farting in church or whatever your favorite domestic "war" happens to be.

Yet in the past few years, many of our law enforcement agencies, especially those in the densely populated metro areas, have received federal grants with which they have purchased millions of dollars worth of extremely high tech weaponry up to and including armored assault vehicles and highly sophisticated assault weapons. Virtually everything our soldiers on the front lines carry has been made available to our law enforcement agencies.

At first glance, this would seem to be a good thing because you'd think that these police agencies were finally equipping themselves for some kind of all out assault on the criminals that have had law abiding citizens afraid to walk the streets in their own communities after dark for decades now.

Actually, that appears not to have been the case. After years of almost total neglect in which local and state level law enforcement agencies WERE definitely hamstrung by a lack of personnel and funding to go all out on the criminal element, we're finding that the taps have been turned on not so that they can better protect you and me from the street thugs and the gang bangers but so that they can protect the interests of the one percent from you and me. Now THAT's a sobering flipping thought, eh?

As of now, virtually all of our law enforcement resources are being used to protect the interests of the corporations against the 99.9% non-violent protests of ordinary innocent citizens. All that weaponry and ordnance, all those overtime hours? They go to support actions against people just like you and me. And the real honest to dog criminals that were the offered justification for the almost total militarization of the friendly neighborhood cop on the beat?

Hell they're out there in ever growing numbers still preying on and endangering innocent citizens with virtual impunity. Well, unless they happen to cross the line and kill or injure an officer.

What I'm trying to say is that plain old law abiding citizens are more and more finding themselves between a rock and the proverbial hard place, trapped between rampaging gangs of criminals on one side and... especially should they decide for whatever reason to assert their constitutional right to free assembly and peaceful protest... rampaging police officers on the other. Not an ideal situation and certainly not one I ever thought I'd find myself in. Not in this country.

Moving

2012-01-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

A little info for my multitude of readers... I think there what, about about 5 of you now?

I will be moving the blog over to a WordPress site over the next couple of weeks. No big changes or anything just a new location: Things That Really Piss Me Off
I'll continue to cross post here for a bit until I get settled into the new place but Google is getting to big, too chummy with Wall Street and far too intrusive for my tastes and it's definitely time for a change .

My thanks to those of you that continue to drop in from time to time and I hope to see you at the new place.
TB

Tim Geithner Slimes America

2012-01-27T18:07:00.000-08:00

Remember a couple of years back when we were told that there would be a $500k cap on pay packs for execs of companies that took massive amounts of taxpayer provided bailout dollars? Did you really believe that there was going to be a $500k cap for execs of companies that took massive amounts of taxpayer provided bailout dollars? Well, if you did, here's your sign.

According to Juan Gonzales @ the New York Daily News, what actually happened was exactly what anyone with half a brain should have known would happen and the Headline says it all... or a lot of it anyway.

Treasury Department approves huge paydays for execs at firms who received TARP bailout money.

Come on, really... is there anyone who didn't see that coming? If you didn't, then you're a major part of the flipping problem in this country and those of us with enough sense to know when our ass is on fire would be better off if you just went ahead and moved to the Confederate States of Retardia and let the Newt run your lives while we get on with trying to put out the damned fire.

Time Geithner is simply a worm, a Wall Street tool and a card carrying member of the one percent and I would bet anything the sucker has never voted Democrat in his life. Can I get an "amen" on that? Good, thank you. Moving on to the actual numbers:

The Treasury Department approved pay packages worth $5 million or more for 49 executives at a handful of firms that received the biggest taxpayer bailouts between 2009 and 2011.A scathing new audit this week by the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program blasted those payments, all of which occurred despite a $500,000 salary cap that President Obama and Congress established in 2009 at firms receiving "exceptional assistance" under TARP.

Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials joined behind the scenes with the bailed-out firms to repeatedly pressure Kenneth Feinberg, the special federal master overseeing the compensation packages, to approve higher salaries, the audit found.

You can read Timmy's bio if you don't see the significance there. He came to Treasury from... three guesses and the first two don't count... the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And I have no doubt that when he leaves... and I'm hearing now that he's leaving next year, no matter who wins... that it will only because he's sucked up every easy dollar he can reasonably expect to get for the people who actually retain his allegiance and that ain't you and me.

Feinberg had the power to allow waivers to the cash cap, but the report found the program's contradictory goals meant "he could not effectively rein in excessive compensation."The CEO of one bailed-out firm, Ally Financial, actually complained that one of his underlings, who was paying for private school for his kids, would be "cash poor" if relegated to a salary of just $500,000.

The audit looked at seven of the biggest TARP recipients - Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, General Motors, Ally, Chrysler, and Chrysler Financial.

Two of those, Citigroup and Bank of America, paid back their government loans before the end of 2009, so they would be free to pay their execs whatever they wanted.

Of the remaining companies, AIG repeatedly insisted on the biggest pay packages and represented 80% of Feinberg's "headaches," the audit said. The company received more than $180 billion in federal bailout money in 2008, and even today, after paying back billions, it is still 70% owned by the federal government.

But at the recession's height in spring 2009, AIG had the audacity to press Feinberg for raises ranging from 20% to 550% for its top employees, the report said. Backed by top Treasury aides, AIG argued that unless it got those raises, key people would leave and the government would not get its money back.

What's more, AIG wanted those salaries in cash, not stock.
Company execs confided to Feinberg that the firm's common stock was "essentially worthless," the report said.

To his credit, Feinberg resisted the most outrageous salary demands, but he still approved dozens above the government's $500,000 cash cap.

In 2009, for instance, he approved a $10.5 million package for AIG chief executive Robert Benmosch, which included $3 million in cash.
The following year, Feinberg approved another $10.5 million for Benmosch, while signing off on packages of from $3 million to $7.6 million for 17 of AIG's 22 top employees.

Ally CEO Michael Carpenter got approval for an $8.1 million package. General Motors chief Fritz Henderson got $5.1 million. AIG's Executive Vice President Michael Herr declined to comment Thursday.

As for those dire warnings that many execs would flee, it simply didn't happen. The audit found that 85% of top employees covered by the federal salary caps in 2009 were still working at the same company two years later.

All that talk about limiting pay at companies the taxpayers bailed? It was just that - talk.

Well actually, a lot stronger words than "just talk" come to mind but whatever. Not only are these people never going to be prosecuted for the crimes they've committed against this country and it's people, the bastards are being allowed to continue committing those crimes while our government "watchdogs" stand in a corner shakin' like a dog shittin' peach pits and allowing themselves to be... at best... blackmailed or extorted into helping them and Tim Geithner is the bag man for the Wall Street mob.

Mitt Romney One Of US? Bullshit!

2012-01-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

I need to get a few things off my chest about Mitt Romney and his campaign's idiotic attempts to portray him as someone in touch with the problems faced buy ordinary everyday Americans. Mitt Romney is NOT an ordinary everyday American. He's not a "man of the people" unless you count his stupid meme that declares corporations people. He's not a working class American because he's never had to work a fricking day in his life and neither he nor any of that mass of wriggling larvae he's produced over the years ever will ever have to do a fricking day's work.

He's not one of the middle class either although he's probably going to get a pretty good chunk of their votes which only makes one wonder if the middle class is even worth trying to save in the first place.

Mitt Romney's only contributions to the already sizable inheritance he received from his father... without which he'd probably never have been anything but another two bit stock broker like that sleazebag in the commercials... come mainly from his stint as a hit man for the predatory Bain Capital organization in which he got paid huge sums for outsourcing both jobs and capital and depriving American workers of decent jobs.

Mutt Romney is not only a one percenter through and through, he's a one tenth of one percenter, a man who makes up to 45 million bucks and contributes more of it to the Mormon Church than he pays taxes on it and he wants to be taxed even less than he already is as a "reward" for his part in the the financial collapse and the breakdown of everything this country ever claimed to stand for.

The only thing another noted professional liar, Newt Gingrich, is capable of telling the truth about is Mitt Romney and everything he's been saying about Mittens this past few weeks is undeniably true. He (Romney) is indeed an unmitigated liar and a flim flam artist that would put Harold Hill in the shade on any given day and anyone that votes for him is an idiot, plain and simple.

Now, all that having been said, we have this from Yahoo News which is apparently a reposted Bloomberg article by Andrew Frye and Andrea Ludtke; Buffett Blames Congress for Romney's 15% Rate:

Warren Buffett, the billionaire calling for more taxes on the rich, said Mitt Romney's U.S. tax rate of about 15 percent reflects poor laws rather than failings by the candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

"It's the wrong policy to have," Buffett told Bloomberg Television's Betty Liu in an interview today. "He's not going to pay more than the law requires, and I don't fault him for that in the least. But I do fault a law that allows him and me earning enormous sums to pay overall federal taxes at a rate that's about half what the average person in my office pays."

Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) , supports Democratic President Barack Obama and said Congress needs to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to close the budget deficit. Romney has agreed to release his 2010 tax return tomorrow, under pressure from Republican opponents, after saying he pays about 15 percent. Romney co- founded Boston-based private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC.

"He makes his money the same way I make my money," Buffett said. "He makes money by moving around big bucks, not by straining his back or going to work and cleaning toilets or whatever it may be. He makes it shoving around money."

So the next time Mittens has the fricking gall to stand in front of a group of working class folks and try to tell them that he's just one of them, I hope someone kicks him in the flipping nuts. There is no way that rat bastard is anything like one of us.

You Can't Shame These Bastards

2012-01-23T10:03:00.000-08:00

Hardly a day goes by that I don't get a half dozen or so emails wanting me to "sign" this petition or that letter so that my opinion can be delivered to (insert politician or corporation name here) so that he or she will change it's mind about screwing the country into the ground. A few I add my name to but the vast majority go straight into the recycle bin.

It's not that I don't believe in and/or support many of the issues and causes being espoused but I look at it... based largely on past experience, especially with my own member of the Whorehouse of Representatives Devin Nunes... as these people simply do not giving a thimble full of goose shit what we lowly commoners think. Public opinion has little to no effect on them as long as they feel secure in their positions.

The same applies to the rich. As long as we continue to buy their cheapjack* Chinese shit, fly in their airplanes, watch their overpriced movies/TV shows, thrill to their staged sports spectaculars, keep our money in their banks and generally bend over backwards to kiss their asses financially, we're nothing more to them than objects of scorn and ridicule.

We are constantly finding excuses not to do what needs to be done, namely stop putting money in these people's pockets. We all have certain basic necessities beyond which we are in the realm of discretionary spending and it's this realm we need to reduce greatly if not eliminate entirely from our lives but we're so loathe to give up our bread and circuses and/or our Marie Antoinette cake, we simply can't muster up the spine to get it done.

We've all seen the pictures of the Wall Street elites standing on their balconies drinking champagne and virtually... and I suspect, literally... spitting on OWS protesters. We should now by now that the people we're dealing with simply don't care what you have to go through to keep their trough full just as long as you make damned sure you do keep it full and other than that, here's what they think of you courtesy of Julianne Escobedo Shepherd @ Alternet: Disgusting: Wall Streeters Mock Occupy and Poor People at Fancy Frat Party.

One of the things that makes Wall Streeters so unsympathetic is that, even when disdain for their greed has not just spread across America but across the world, they don't seem to realize it. And if they do? Well, they don't give a flying fuck.

Last week, an exclusive Wall Street fraternity, Kappa Beta Phi, held a super-fancy black-tie dinner at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan, and a New York Times reporter was able to witness it ( Link to NYT Story Here). What he saw was behavior so appalling and unsympathetic to the plight of the poor it was almost a parody of itself:
The Occupy movement was fodder for several after-dinner skits. In one, a documentary filmed during the protests, James Lebenthal, a bond specialist, joked with a protester whose face was appeared to be tattooed.

"Go home, wash that off your face, and get back to work," Mr. Lebenthal told the protester.

Reached through his daughter on Friday, Mr. Lebenthal declined to comment.

In another skit, William Mulrow , a senior managing director at the Blackstone Group, put on raggedy clothes to play the part of an Occupy protester. Emil W. Henry Jr., a managing partner at Tiger Infrastructure Partners and a fellow new Kappa, joined him dressed as a wealthy baron.

"Bill, look at you! You're pathetic, you liberal! You need a bath!" Mr. Henry said, voice full of mock indignation.

"You callow, insensitive Republican!" Mr. Mulrow said. "Don't you know we need to create jobs?"

A Blackstone spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Mulrow's behalf. Mr. Henry was not immediately available for comment.
Kappa Beta Phi was formed in 1929 by top Wall Street barons, and the rest of the Times piece sounds like we haven't left that year. In one paragraph listing attendees, you half expect F. Scott Fitzgerald to show up on there. It's absolutely necessary reading. Another special excerpt: "Some jokes took aim at industry outsiders like Representative Barney Frank, the Democrat of Massachusetts who has been an advocate of financial regulation." It's a sneak peek into the psychology of Wall Street during this tumultuous time, and clearly they're all still telling the rest of America to fuck off.

So this gaggle of prancing inheritors was formed in 1929? Didn't something else rather significant take place that year? Something brought about by exactly the kinds of opinions and attitudes we're seeing expressed here? The fact that this "fraternity" managed to survive the Great Depression which was brought about largely by its members and especially the fact that it still continues to thrive today is telling testimony to the folly of trying to appeal to any sense of morals or ethics or any kind of principles that we would recognize as such among these people.

*cheap-jack
[cheep-jak]
noun
1. a peddler, especially of inferior articles.
adjective
2. of or suitable for a cheap-jack; cheap or inferior.
3. without scruples or principles; underhanded: using cheap-jack methods to evict tenants.

I'd say our Wall Street friends themselves have pretty much nailed #3 and that #2 covers their moral sense quite adequately. And of course #1 has the political arm of the oligarchy pegged perfectly. Just bear in mind, that as long as we enable these people with OUR money, this is the way it's going to be. Anybody willing to sacrifice their Super Bowl Sunday this year to make a point? Didn't think so.

FOX News Maven: Poverty Is Good For The Little Bastards

2012-01-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

FOX News takes the Newt's attitudes toward people who haven't had the same opportunities he has to make himself rich through graft, corruption, influence peddling and the myriad other routes to the 1% available to amoral scumbags with no morals, conscience or sense of ethics to new depths.

Bear in mind that Gingrich is just another professional politician cum influence peddler who has never held a real job since being forced out of public office in disgrace but who has nonetheless managed to become a one percenter himself by whoring his political ass to the one percent. It's no wonder he sinks to appealing the the lowest common denominators in the American voting public... the ones I refer to as the "cracker bloc"... who would rather eat Newt's shit than allow that uppity black dude to stay in "their" White House a day longer than they have to. No rational human being would want anything to do with him.

And of course, along with his overt racism... which guides his every utterance in regard to the POTUS... we have his obvious classism which, in Mr. Lizard's perfect world, poor elementary school age kids would be put to work cleaning the schools and child labor laws would be repealed and kids sent onto the factory floors and into the mines because after all, you can work kids a lot cheaper than you can adults.

The main object of concern in all this is how many people are actually expressing agreement with Gingrich and especially how many in the media are not only refusing to call him out on his racist, classist bullshit but actually starting to espouse his kind of viewpoint themselves. A case in point from Matthew Desmond @ Addicting Info:

Fox News' hosts are known for insensitive remarks, and yesterday was no exception. During Fox News' "The Five,", co-host Andrea Tantaros described why she believes the recession was a good thing for this generation of children. She explained that the millennial generation feels too entitled, and because of that kids "need an attitude adjustment."She also stated she "think[s] the recession was good for kids" because they've been "humbled a little bit."

Of course, she's not talking about children in wealthy households, like the ones her and her co-workers can afford. She's talking about the 15 million children living below the poverty line, or more than 1 in 5 total. Children living in wealthy households don't have the same hardships as children living in poverty, such as not having enough food to eat and going to bed hungry. Children in impoverished households are also more likely to suffer from stress and depression, because they often worry about their parents financial situations.

I'm sorry but I seriously challenge this bimbo's right to expound on feelings of entitlement among a demographic group she's obviously never belonged to and would remind her that it's NOT poor children who need humbling in this country but people exactly like her. I'd be willing to bet... well actually, I looked her up... that Ms. Tantaros, like many prominent conservative figures, grew up in a cozy little middle class household and "worked" in the family business, a business that allowed her parents to send her to the schools of her choice without ever having to worry about how she was going to pay for it.

It's curious how the only "job" ever held by many right wing politicians and media types consisted of "working" in the family business, innit? Almost none of the wingers shouting loudest about the "entitlement" felt by the working class have ever BEEN a member of the working class or had to go out and compete for jobs in the real world, yet they can tell the rest of us all about it.

This excerpt from her wiki tells us pretty much that she finished school after having majored in journalism and immediately became just another right wing hack in a town full of right wing hacks:

Tantaros lived in the Washington, D.C. area from 2003-2005, where she worked on Capitol Hill where she served as Press Secretary to Republican Leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives. She has worked on political campaigns for former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, District Attorney Jeanine Pirro and Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas Reynolds. Moving to New York City in 2005, she is Vice President at a public affairs firm, Sloane and Co. in Manhattan.[1] Prior to this position, she started Andrea Tantaros Media which provided crisis management and media strategy consulting Fortune 500 companies and political campaigns. [6]Before that, Tantaros worked on Capitol Hill where she served as Press Secretary to Republican Leadership and an escort in the U.S. House of Representatives. During her time with House Leadership, Tantaros was responsible for helping craft and execute the media strategy for the Republican majority. Tantaros also worked at CNN's Crossfire, for former Reagan pollster Richard Wirthlin, and as Deputy Press Secretary to then Congressman, and now Senator, Pat Toomey.

And I'll bet that she and her colleagues in the media refer to her as a "journalist" too. Whatever the case, she has made her living hacking for Republican candidates and causes and has obviously never been poor or "lower class" and would therefore have no inkling as to what poor or "lower class" kids go through on a daily basis. There's a video of her expounding on what FOX News refers to as the "self esteem scheme" at the link if you're interested. Frankly, I consider her just another FOX bimbo with an agenda and not really worth my time.

Newt Gingrich Is Simply Vermin

2012-01-19T14:26:00.000-08:00

@TomBales1
Remember when vermin were considered something to be stamped out of existence? Not that way anymore, eh? Now the Republicans run them for president.

vermin (ver-min) Plural: vermin
1 : small common harmful or objectionable animals (as lice or fleas) that are difficult to control b : birds and mammals that prey on game c : animals that at a particular time and place compete (as for food) with humans or domestic animals
2 : an offensive person
3 : Former Congresswhore and Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

I'm really getting frustrated here. I've tried to keep up with the Republicans slide into absolute depravity so that I could rant somewhat intelligently once in a while about the things they're doing to the country. But they're so far down their slippery slope now I can't even begin to fathom the depths they're headed for. Therefore I'm not even gonna try to be intelligent here, I'm just gonna rant.They've left me so far behind during their primary campaign this year I'll never catch up and I'm pretty damned sure I wouldn't want to anyway. So many times I've opined that they've finally reached rock bottom and had nowhere to go but up and they've mocked me by finding new depths to plumb, depths that decent people can't even imagine exist.

But with this years offering of potential presidential candidates they have finally got be nearing the very bowels of the earth, the dead center of our planetary mass where the most loathsome and despicable demons are spawned by the primordial evil that inhabits what we call hell and Newt Fucking Gingrich has got to be... so far at least... it's most loathsome and despicable creation.

That this scaly, bloated, belly crawling cross between a snake and a salamander who oozes venom from every fricking pore on his pasty white doughy looking body... could be seriously offered up by the Republican party as fit to lead this country is all the proof we need of the absolute depravity of the 1% that owns our goddamned government. These people... by pushing one of the most reptilian so obviously inhuman sonsofbitches in the history of the republic in our faces... are offering their ultimate "fuck you" to the American people. When it comes to simple hatefulness and poisonous blathering the closest thing Newt Gingrich has to a peer is Rush Limbaugh and at least that lardass has the fact that pigs are mammals going for him.

Even Mitt Romney... as thoroughly disgusting a human being as you would find anywhere... doesn't hold a candle to the Newt when it comes to pandering to the basest instincts of the most willfully ignorant and ill informed among us and expecting them to bully the rest of us into submission, no matter how he tries.

But then again, that debate was in South Carolina, a veritable bastion of southern ignorance. All the performance really told us was that he has the cracker vote. (For now anyway, they change their allegiance on a daily basis.) It's going to be interesting to see how he plays to those of us who can actually do things like read and make decisions based on something other than FOX News drivel and Rush's farting of lameassed 1990s rhetoric over and over again.

California: A Special Kind of Stupid

2012-01-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

Damn... I'd about given up in my argument with YD over which of our states has the looniest public officials. We had elected what I thought was a liberal democrat (turns out he's about as liberal as Barack Obama) and our state government has been tootling merrily along whacking the elderly (My monthly SSI stipend... originally $157 a month... now totals a magnificent $7 and even that is still being targeted by the Republicans who seem to think I should be sending THEM money every month), the disabled and the poor and gutting public education and public assistance programs right up there with the best of the Republican led states.

Brain Luebitz @ Calitics:

What some are calling a "ransom note" others call the terrible truth. Jerry Brown's budget proposal sets a dark scenario for the state. And yet, somehow we have gotten to the point that a dystopic future with three less school weeks is somehow optimistic. Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his new budget plan, calling for a painful $4.8-billion cut in public school funds if voters reject a proposed tax hike that he hopes to put on the ballot in November.
Despite the possible reduction - the equivalent of slashing three weeks from the school year - the spending blueprint Brown released Thursday is a relatively optimistic document. It assumes he will have to close a $9.2-billion deficit, a vast improvement over last year's $26-billion gap.
Half of the deficit would be wiped out through the temporary half-cent sales-tax hike and increased levies on the wealthy that Brown wants voters to approve - or by the schools cuts. The remainder would be eliminated with reductions in welfare, Medi-Cal and other programs. (LA Times)
The plan calls for cutting three thousand state workers at a time when jobs are already scarce. It calls for additional Medi-Cal cuts, which frankly, I didn't think possible and might end up in court. And at this point our welfare system is essentially dead. So, optimism abounds.

Hmmm... the choice is between taxing the rich and further gutting schools, public services and social programs. Imagine that. And hoiw has taxing the rich worked out SO far?
Here in CA, just for one example of how deep the crap is getting, we're closing many of our most popular state parks and talking about privatizing others and it's a pretty safe bet that those closed will wind up in the hands of developers and energy interests, becoming luxury golf courses, gated communities and mines or oilfields while many of those that remain open will be on a first come first served basis if not beyond the financial reach of most of California's working class.

Other state services continue to be privatized at an alarming rate with the result being exactly what one would expect after the Walter Reed and VA debacles, while those still provided directly by the state face huge budget cuts that will seriously impact their ability to carry out their primary missions. For example, it's going to be interesting to see what my old outfit, CAL-Fire, already deformed into just another basically top heavy bureaucracy that has traditionally made any cuts at the rank and file level while preserving the bureaucracy itself, has to cope with over the coming fire seasons.

Law enforcement agencies in the state still continue to war mightily on the OWS protesters instead of the state's real criminals... perhaps as practice for the "big one" most of them seem obsessed with these days when the entire country will rise in armed insurrection against the plutarchy. After all, our military industrial complex needs a constant war going on somewhere in order to keep selling all that neat stuff designed to kill people and take their shit. I have no problem translating that philosophy to the state and local levels since America's law enforcement agencies represent another huge market for weapons of mass... if not destruction, at least disruption.

But I suppose it isn't all doom and gloom here in the not so Golden State. There have been some positive achievements over the past two years. Here's a recent example from the Sacramento Bee:

Moody's says California no longer has worst U.S. creditWe're No. 49!
After being stuck in the ratings basement since 2009, California's credit rating now ranks better than that of Illinois, according to Moody's Investors Service. Illinois was slapped with an A2 rating last week, worse than California's A1. Moody's penalized Illinois for unresolved pension liabilities and delayed payments.

OK, so a step from dead last to next to dead last out of fifty, due to nothing we did ourselves but to something Illinois itself did, may not seem like much of an achievement but by damn it's still a step up and you gotta admit, we haven't had too many of those.And then there is this shining example of how we're still leading the way in terms of energy conservation and ensuring that even if our working class citizens can't afford a bean to cook, their betters will be able to charge their iPhones more cheaply.

California will become the first state in the nation to require greater energy efficiency in the battery chargers that millions of consumers use to power their cellphones, laptops, power tools and other electrical devices.The California Energy Commission on Thursday unanimously approved new standards for battery chargers, which the agency says waste nearly two-thirds of the energy they collect.
Thursday's decision is the latest in a series of actions by the commission imposing first-in-the-nation energy standards on appliances and consumer products. In 2009, the commission adopted new rules for flat-screen TVs.
Since 1976, the commission says, its efforts to make appliances more energy-efficient have shaved $ 36 billion from Californians' energy bills.
Energy commissioners said the new rules for chargers will save consumers roughly $ 300 million a year, conserve enough electricity to power a city the size of Bakersfield and remove 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gas from the atmosphere - the equivalent of taking about 75,000 cars off the road each year.
"Once again, California is setting the standard for energy efficiency, keeping the state's dominance as the most energy-efficient state per capita," said Energy Commission Chairman Robert Weisenmiller.

Ok now look... all that is well and good. In another time and another clime it would be great news. But when you compare it with some of the OTHER standards being set in California today... well, I'm pretty sure that if you went out in the streets and asked the average California working stiff what his or her priorities are these days, there ain't gonna be a huge gaggle of them talking about their battery chargers.

We've got schools closing, thousands of homes being foreclosed on, public lands and waters being increasingly placed in the hands of a few rich investors, people going hungry, people, including children, living in the streets, people going without medical care, dying because they can't afford our high energy bills... but by damn, those that can still afford a fancy assed phone that does everything up to and including allowing our government to track our every move and listen in to anything and everything we have to say can buy a (more expensive BTW) supposedly energy saving charger for the damned thing.

By the way, you can go HERE for the full story on these new miracle battery chargers where you'll quickly realize that the whole story is about one third fact and the rest divided about evenly between hype and bullshit. But if this is how far we have to dig for an "achievement" to hype while we're neck deep in Yacht Party caca, we're actually not only already dead, but about halfway through the decomposition process, which obviously accounts for the smell coming out of Sacramento these days.

Junkies & Pimps & Whores Oh My! That's Our Congress Alright

2012-01-09T14:21:00.000-08:00

(Thanks to Robin Williams for a line I've been using to describe congress for years now.)

Ever wonder why the average Joe can't get an even break? Ever wonder just how beholden to corporate interests your elected leaders actually are? Ever wonder what the selling price of an entire country, in the form of direct campaign contributions, might look like amortized over about 20 years? Thanks to a site called Influence|Explorer, we can finally get a few answers.

For example, I can answer that last one (kind of), because our elected officials... the ones WE elect, supposedly to represent US... have sold us out for exactly $1,201,772,978] between 1989 and the second quarter of this year. No doubt, with the advent of Citizens United, this figure will grow exponentially over the next few election cycles but as of Q2, 2011, that was the figure.

So... who's been shelling out the bucks over the years and perhaps most importantly to most of us, who's getting them?
Actually there's little in the way of surprises here. The loot appears to have been pretty equally divided amongst Republicans and Democrats with President Obama topping the list of the top eight recipients of corporate largess. No big thing there... as the nut gets bigger, of course the top dog's share is going to grow accordingly.

Contributors comprise the usual list of unindicted co-conspirators of course, with the Vampire Squid itself holding a commanding lead... having in fact, shelled out almost 2.5 times as much as the runner up, Merrill Lynch. It's obvious that the bigger the crime, the more they have to spend to keep from having to answer for it and since Goldman Sachs is the most evil entity ever spawned in the depths of hell, it's natural that it would cost them more to keep their turdminions out of jail and the money flowing in.

So just looking at the top eight... four of them Democrats, four Republicans... just what is it the corporations expect in return for their millions? Oh, nothing much. Just the total destruction of any shred of democracy in this country and a return to the "good old days" when there was no middle class and the serfs... especially those darker skinned ones... knew their place and didn't talk back like these dirty %$&king OWS hippies.

At the grass roots level a large part of it has been used to buy the elected officials and through them, the police departments and other law enforcement agencies of our major metropolitan areas and to facilitate their conversion to private armies for use in enforcing the rule of the 1% through systematic and often brutal suppression of free speech.

Take a look around you... if your police department has a bunch of different exotic weapons systems and armored vehicles, you'd better start thinking about it, because those kinds of systems are NOT needed nor are they used to fight ordinary street crime. They're used either in combat or to put down mass uprisings... even totally peaceful ones... and we've seen the willingness of mayors and governors to do that being demonstrated in the brutal attacks against peaceful occupiers all over the country since October.

A man paid to ensure public safety who would deliberately shoot you in the head... even with a rubber bullet... for simple trespass in a park... maybe even one his girlfriend has a financial interest in... is NOT there to protect and serve YOU and you'd do damned well to remember that.

Information at the link tells us that in addition to the $1.2 outright purchase of the pimps and junkies and whores in the congress, another 875 million bucks has been spent LOBBYING both them and the various appointed top level bureaucrats in the agencies that are supposed to be watching our backs.
Not the country I thought I was born in. How about you?

%$@king Romney! What a Prick!

2012-01-09T11:36:00.000-08:00

Sorry abut the headline. Tried to come up with something that would express my feelings about this lying little parasite and his total disdain for anyone he doesn't consider an occupant of his own social strata and that's the best I could do. The man might as well hire himself out as a poster boy for elitism. His sense of entitlement and his hatred for the "common" people actually exceeds that of Barbara Bush and dammit you gotta go some to beat the Quaker Oats Man's twin sister when it comes to cynical elitism.

Up until now, the total disconnect between Willard and the American people was never more apparent than during the 2008 GOP primary campaign when he spewed forth the what for a while became the most famous "We've got ours so $%#k you" statement since Barbara Bush herself opined that Katrina victims were probably just having fun at taxpayer expense. In response to questions in regard to why none of his five military age sons were serving their country during the two (known) wars we had going on at the time, Mittens coughed up the following hairball.

Romney: It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation, and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I'd be a great president. My son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife. And I respect that and respect all of those in the way they serve this great country.

Now I suppose for a blatant chicken hawk like Mittens, this makes some kind of twisted sense but I consider it a slap in the face to anyone and everyone who has... you know... actually put on a uniform and gone in harm's way in defense of our country.

We all know now that when he himself was draft age, he was staging demonstrations in favor of the Vietnam war, a conflict in which he knew he would never have to serve. He used the usual educational deferments that seemed to be available for most rich kids back in those days and spent a goodly portion of the period on a Mormon "mission" to... France(?)... where he lived as usual in the lap of luxury while doing whatever the hell it is they do on those things.

Mitt's own "support for the nation" has consisted mainly of running for president... indeed this appears to have been his sole career for the past 15-20 years. I have no doubt... especially in view of the above statement about his larvae... that if you asked him about his own service to his country, he'd look you right in the eye and tell you that trying to get himself elected because he thinks he'd make a great president IS service his country, just as much as that of the young people actually being sent out to fight and die for what he, Mittens, believes in.

And this is the man who has now issued the following:

Mitt Romney: I find it amazing that we have troops in harm's way around the world - in Afghanistan right now, in Iraq the first three years of this president's term. He doesn't go on TV every month and talk to the American people about the sacrifice being made by these men and women. I find it extraordinary that a very few number of families are paying the price of freedom in America. The hurdle to actually putting our troops in harm's way is very, very high, and the test is America's interests. Our security interests. And they have to be involved in a very significant way to deploy our troops.

My own question to you Mr. Romney: What the %$@k would a bloodsucking little parasite like you know about "the price of freedom"? Hell the only sacrifice any of YOUR family has ever made for this country has... by your own admission... consisted of riding around the country in a luxury Winnebago campaigning for dear old dada and your own slavish pursuit of high office over at least three election cycles.

Hearing you hold forth on subjects like "the price of freedom" is simply insulting Mittens... the kind of thing that if I were 30 years younger would have me calling you out in the parking lot behind the saloon. You're a perfect example of why ordinary Americans hate the rich and you couldn't fit the general public's perception of rich people any better had you actually posed for it.

William O'Brien_New Hampshire's #1 Weasel

2011-12-27T09:16:00.000-08:00

You know things in this country have pretty much gone to hell when the corporate whores in government don't even bother to lie to you anymore about how and why they're trying so hard to break it off in you every chance they get.

Sourced from an opinion by New York Times editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal

Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver's license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver's license, you still can't vote.

Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal.

In any supposedly democratic society other than this one, that would be so damned far over the line as to have people marching in the streets. But not here.

Too damned busy suckin' up the suds and watchin'
( insert applicable spectacle of choice here ) to worry about another basic right being taken away from huge blocs of American citizens. Besides, they're only targeting those groups most likely to vote... well... other than Republican so who cares, right?

William O'Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire State House, told a Tea Party group earlier this year that students are "foolish" and tend to "vote their feelings" because they lack life experience. "Voting as a liberal," he said, "that's what kids do." And that's why, he said, he supported measures to prohibit students from voting from their college addresses and to end same-day registration. New Hampshire Republicans even tried to pass a bill that would have kept students who previously lived elsewhere from voting in the state; fortunately, the measure failed, as did the others Mr. O'Brien favored.

And by the time you add this attack on college students to those on other ethnic and demographic groups you find these assholes like Mr. O'Brien sailing pretty close to simply coming right out and saying that only Republicans should have the right to vote in this country.

Message to Mr. Dumbf*ck William O'Brien: Of course young people vote their feelings... just like you and me and every other person who ever marked a ballot. That's what voters DO.

It's the very reason we have elections in the first place dumbass... so people can express their feelings toward their "leadership" by... among other things... getting rid of the low life lobby bait whores and corporate pimps bent on making them miserable for money. If you fail to grasp those simple little facts, you're not fit to hold any office in any democratic society and the honorable thing for you to do right now is to resign and plead total ignorance of the democratic process.

My own guess would be that you DO grasp those concepts perfectly and that's EXACTLY why you feel compelled to try and deny the very basic and supposedly inalienable right to vote to anyone who might see through your bullshit facade, by whatever devious means your Wall Street leash holders can devise.

If you can't beat 'em, just make sure they can't vote. You guys need to adopt that as your new party motto.

The Annual American Greed Extravaganza

2011-12-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

This is a season I would just as soon skip if I could. It's easily the most lonely time of the year for people like myself but that's only part of it.

The Solstice... at least up until the time it was coopted by the Christian sects and then taken over by the money changers... was the period when people looked back over the past year and counted their blessings, reflected on their achievements and celebrated by getting together with family and neighbors to enjoy at least some of the fruits that they labored all year to produce. Not exactly how it is today, is it? The latest national mob scene... this time prompted by a pair of sneakers... may have just snapped my final tie to the annual display of wanton greed and avarice this simple end of the year celebration has become.

I've been hearing people bitch about the commercialization of Christmas for at least 60 years now. They were doing it when I was a kid and they still do it today. And then... as soon as they're through ranting about said commercialization, they're off to the local malls to trample security guards and pepper spray their way to the toy section to get this year's "gotta have it" before anyone else can get it. We have Black Friday sales, the day AFTER Black Friday sales, Door Buster sales (which is probably why so many shoppers think it's OK to break down the mall doors), Cyber Monday sales, shoot your neighbor in the parking lot because he got the last X-Box sales... the list is endless and all of it in the name of celebrating the birth of a man who would look upon our "celebrations" in his name in awe and bewilderment.

With each succeeding year since the Wall Street Grinch stole Christmas... and it started long before many of you suspect it did... more and more people are being left out of Christmas altogether until we've reached the point where it's pretty much just a holiday for those of the the middle class who still have jobs and the rich. Millions of Americans won't have a Christmas this year.

Michael Snyder @ Blacklisted News

For millions of American families, there will be no Christmas this year. The sad truth is that an increasing number of families simply do not have money for Christmas presents or any other luxuries right now. The number of Americans that fell into poverty set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty is at the highest level ever measured in the United States. This Christmas, a lot of American families will be deciding whether to spend the little money that they do have on food, heat or medicine.

All over America, the poor are getting poorer and each year the economic pain seems to get even worse. But there are also many American families that will have no Christmas this year for other reasons. Some are just sick and tired of all of the materialism that is involved in Christmas. Others are trying to be "politically correct" and don't want to offend anyone. There are even a growing number of Americans that are Christians but that believe that Christians should not celebrate Christmas for spiritual reasons. Once upon a time, Christmas was pretty much considered to be a nearly universal holiday in the United States, but that just is not the case anymore. There are millions upon millions of Americans that simply will not be celebrating Christmas at all this year.

Perhaps you and your family are swimming in Christmas gifts this year. But when you don't have enough money for even the basics, buying Christmas gifts can be an extreme financial burden.

What some people are willing to do to buy Christmas gifts is absolutely incredible. For example, one soldier up in Michigan actually pawned his Purple Heart medal so that he could pay his Christmas bills.

Can you imagine?

Yes unfortunately, I can imagine. I'm far past the point where anything in regard to the gutting of America by the 1% is unimaginable. That soldier's story... poignant as it might be... is only one of of millions of similar stories being acted out across the nation as the end of America as we know it plays out.

Other Americans are eliminating Christmas presents altogether this year because the money simply is not there. The following story comes from a recent article in USA Today... Others have no choice but to downsize Christmas. Kate Pearson, 33, a single mom in Atlanta, lost her secretarial job in January and has told her two children that they're starting new traditions this year.

They drew a festive, 6-foot tree on craft paper and taped it to a wall. "Instead of gifts, which I can't afford, we're writing letters to each other that we will open on Christmas morning," she says. "We're going to tell each other what we love about our family. And that's it."

This year, American families are hurting more than at any other time in recent memory. An astounding 57 percent of all children in the United States now live in homes that are either considered to be "low income" or impoverished.

If the number of Americans considered to be "looking for work" was the same today as it was back in 2007, the "official" unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

And if the number of people who have simply fallen or been pushed out of the system were included estimates of those numbers run as high as 17-19 percent.

But the Obama administration does not want to report double digit unemployment numbers. They want people to feel good about the economy. Meanwhile, the number of good jobs continues to decline and incomes continue to fall.You may be doing very well right now, but there are vast numbers of families that are stretched to the limit financially. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row. A lot of people out there are having a really hard time coming up with enough money to heat their homes this winter.

And more than 46 million Americans are being fed by the federal government right now. Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point.

But you know what? NONE of this stops the middle class from engaging in one of the most disgusting annual spectacles in history when those doors... the ones they haven't already torn off their hinges... open the day after Thanksgiving. None of it keeps them from being jerked around by the Wall Street puppet masters like a bunch of marionettes on strings when that first cash register goes "ka-ching" upon that most miserable of all Friday mornings.Nope, they're right out there doing their duty as "real merkins" by spending money they don't have for shit they don't need like the perfect little consumer bots they've been programmed to be.

Last night, we saw once again how crazy Americans can get when it comes to consumer products. The rioting and fights over the new Air Jordan shoes that were just released made headlines all over the nation...
In Charlotte, WSOC-TV reported that police were called to at least three malls, including one where glass was smashed from a door and officers were ordering people out of the mall. The Louisville Courier-Journal said police were called Jefferson Mall to break up a fight that broke out among a large crowd waiting to buy the shoes.

The Fox television station in Seattle reported that police sent to Southcenter Mall used pepper spray on some combative shoppers.

Police also had problems with crowds at malls in the Washington area, San Antonio and in Spokane, Wash.
At this point, shopping has become the great American pastime. We love to buy stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of us have to go very deeply into debt to buy all this stuff. If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

All that over a pair of shoes endorsed by a has been basketball player? Damn, no wonder America is on the ropes while Wall Street closes in for the kill.

Well, I'm gonna stop here. I think the point has either been made by now or you're one of those people for whom it never will be made. Let me close by just saying... if you're one of these people with ten credit cards in his her pocket and/or one of those who works all year to pay off last year's Christmas bills so you can go out and run up this year's Christmas bills... You're not only beyond hope, you're beyond all redemption. Enjoy the life you've made for yourself.

Gingrich: Corporate Whore/Professional Hypocrite

2011-12-20T11:19:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich. What more can you say? What hasn't been said? He's never been anything but just another lying, scheming, thieving, philandering corporate whore and professional hypocrite. For the past 20 years he has wantonly displayed the worst of everything America has to offer and yet he's made the Republican A list and is now being offered to the rest of us as a person worthy of leading us to... whatever.

I thought we'd reached the bottom of the Republican Barrel when they stuck god bothering Rick "Double Dip" Perry... a man who has actually found a way to retire and start drawing a humungous taxpayer funded pension while still keeping his job and drawing a humongous taxpayer funded salary at the same time while spending 24/7 actively looking for another job... in front of our faces. I was wrong. When it comes to common ordinary down in the dirt beyond all redemption mud sucking do as I say and not as I do hypocrisy, Newt Gingrich is definitely going to be the world's champion for at least a generation to come.

When that sonofabitch threw his lying egg sucking ass into the race I said right then that he wasn't serious and that it was just another way to make some more big bucks off of gullible rubes and maintain that store mannequin he hauls around with him in the manner to which she wants to be accustomed lest she dump his fat ugly ass for someone not so... well... fat and ugly.

The latest swindle stemming from his own personal contract on America consists of personally profiting from his own campaign (Did I not tell you so?) and of course, the beltway is either ignoring it or feigning shocked surprise while those of us who have actually studied old Newtie's record over the past twenty years shrug it off with a simple "Ho-hum_what the hell did you expect?". The man is a conscienceless pig doing what conscienceless pigs do. Haven't we learned anything from Limbaugh?

Stephen Webster @ Raw Story:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich became the target on Monday of a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint filed by the non-profit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which accused the Georgia Republican of illegally profiting off his campaign.

The complaint is based on a revelation by The Washington Post's Dan Eggen, who discovered that Gingrich had personally sold a mailing list to his campaign and profited to the tune of $47,005, then failed to report the transaction on a key FEC document. That's count one, according to CREW.

That mailing list did not belong to Gingrich personally, CREW said. It instead belonged to Gingrich Productions, Inc., a private business that sells Gingrich's books. Since he paid himself instead of Gingrich Productions, CREW alleged that a second count of using campaign money for personal expenses is called for as well. The treasurer who signed off on the deal is also accused of violating campaign finance laws.

CREW explained in their complaint (PDF) that Gingrich Productions often stages events at the same time as Newt 2012, Inc., his non-profit group and principal campaign committee, which could constitute improper corporate contributions to a political campaign in that the campaign directly benefits from Gingrich Productions' events.

It goes on to note that the mailing list Gingrich moved from his book company to his campaign was actually a list of people who were waiting at Gingrich events to have their books signed, showing even further how Gingrich Productions and Newt 2012 work in tandem to help each other.

Finally, CREW alleges that the whole scheme is patently illegal under campaign finance law, in that Gingrich is personally profiting off his campaign by staging dual-purpose events. They cited The New York Times, which reported earlier this month that customers buying products at Gingrich events believe they are supporting his campaign, when the profits are really going to Gingrich personally.

Gingrich insists his campaign and private business are kept separate, as required by law.

And Gingrich is a serial liar. It is my studied opinion that anyone who would support this belly crawling reptile for anything higher than third assistant city hall janitor has to be either just like him or the most gullible human being in the flipping galaxy and alas, there seems to be a fair sized number of both among Republicans these days.

The Boston Tea Party_Our First occupy Movement

2011-12-17T13:41:00.000-08:00

I have a feeling that this next election is going to pass me right on by. Don't get me wrong, I'll cast my vote for PBO but I will once again be left with the feeling that there was nobody in the field who actually reflected my views and will therefore actively support any of the issues I feel strongest about. It's not that I have any doubts about NOT being a Republican or one of today's conservatives or voting for anyone who styles himself as such but dammit, I'm not a Democrat or a liberal either.

I take part in a political survey on a weekly/bi-weekly basis and one of the things they ask is "Do you consider yourself a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent?". I usually click "Independent" and a side window pops up and asks me if I lean toward Democrats or Republicans and I usually pick Democrats because you can't move on until you pick something. But it pisses me off because it's obvious that one way or another, these folks are insisting on trying to stuff me into one of their neat little cubbyholes.

They don't make cubbyholes my size. I don't FIT in a cubbyhole and I have no intention of ever trying to. The fact is that I still pretty much adhere to the beliefs and principles I adhered to almost fifty years ago when I first became a Republican and when I stopped being one during Bush's first term. But the pollster's insistence that you HAVE to be Dem or Repub, left or right, liberal or conservative... well, let's just say it renders most of their polls fairly useless as far as people like me are concerned.

Today, not only has the Republican party moved so far to the right... if moving in the direction of big money can actually be defined as moving right... of me as to become totally unrecognizable, the Democrats... rushing to get their share of the corporate booty before the Republicans get it all... have also moved so far right as to damned near be out of my peripheral vision. This has... no matter how you cut it... resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of choices available and the subsequent and inevitable erosion of just about everything that made this country great for a while.

When I call myself an Independent, I mean exactly that. I'm independent. I don't GIVE a rat's ass what the prevailing political philosophy is today nor do I care what YOUR particular philosophy is beyond the fact that you're just as entitled to it as I am mine.

At nearly 70 years of age, I believe the only thing that's required of me is that I maintain a mind open enough to determine the difference between right and wrong and the simple fact is that today's Republican party... from any kind of humanistic standpoint... is so wrong about so many things and on so many levels that there is no way I can ever again find common political ground with anyone who fancies himself/herself one of this era's "conservatives" and it's all about money... corporate money and the buying and selling of America. And now, the Democrats seem to be intent on hooking themselves to the same tit and our public servants of all stripes are more intent on becoming millionaires than actually serving the public. Sad, that.

As far as "Conservatives" are concerned the philosophies espoused by the Republicans and center/right Democrats today haven't got a damned thing to do with real, honest to goodness conservatism. I see people calling themselves conservatives and railing against the "evils" of liberalism, when the simple fact is that they not only don't know what the hell liberalism actually consists of, they don't even know what conservatism is either. Just ask one of them to explain either to you one of these days. It's worth it just to see them hem and haw and splutter.

And since yesterday was the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, I've got to say this... I laugh my ass off every time I hear the term "Tea Party" as it's used these days and especially to hear them refer to themselves as "conservatives". I can't help it.

The Teapers are gonna piss themselves if it ever does sink in that they have... as one tweeter put it... named themselves after a group of Massachusetts liberals and an act of civil disobedience that had not a damned thing to do with high taxes on individuals, nor did it have anything to do with "big government" nor was it even an action against their own duly elected representatives.

It was instead, an action against the British government's imposition of high taxes on a single commodity and their rank favoritism in granting no bid contracts and special considerations to a private corporation (sound familiar?) resulting in a total lack of competition and a literal stranglehold by the EIC on tea imports into the colonies and ultimately the subsidization of tea drinkers in the UK at the expense of the American colonists.

In fact, the ORIGINAL, The TRUE Tea Partiers had a lot more in common with today's Occupy protesters... who are daily being pummeled, pepper sprayed, caged, jailed and even shot... than they ever will the motley crew that so proudly but falsely claim to have taken up their mantle today.

To wit:

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He apparently did not expect that the protestors would choose to destroy the tea rather than concede the authority of a legislature in which they were not directly represented.

So rave on Teapers... those that managed to learn history before your lords and masters started revising it to suit their present day agenda know better. Those that never bothered to learn history in school or read a book or two afterward won't give a damn what really happened anyway.

Bait & Switch_On An International Scale

2011-12-14T11:20:00.000-08:00

          BG might want to rethink one of our favorite News Wrap Headlines. I've never bought into the getting out for good meme, for the most part based on the fight Panetta and others in the administration were putting up to keep from leaving at all and their desperate attempts to find some damned excuse to maintain a military presence.
          I thought at first they were going to get Iraq to agree to a "few thousand trainers and advisers" being left there to oversee American corporate interests and form a cadre for the inevitable surge that would have been required for the attack on Iran that we all know is coming eventually. The Iraqis however, had themselves some other ideas.
          So... how does our government enable Exxon/Mobil and Chevron/Texaco to maintain their footing in Iraq without our kids in the military being sent to fight and die doing it for them? What DOES happen when we elect a president balanced delicately on the point of public opinion and charged with keeping our governments word to the the Iraqis... AND to the American public... instead of shining them on like they were a bunch of backward school children and convincing or forcing them to accept the notion that the continued military occupation of a supposedly sovereign nation is right and/or unjustified? You're looking at it.
          First off, let's dispense with the notion that Iraq is now... or ever will be... a sovereign nation. No nation is a sovereign nation when it has something Wall Street wants. By the standards that exist today, about the only "sovereign" nation left in the world is Somalia and if anyone discovers any kind of wealth producing resources there, they'd better look out too.
Secondly, we have this:

With the US pulling out troops from Iraq this month, Washington plans to send Blackwater mercenaries to the Middle Eastern country under the new brand of ACADEMI.

Sorry Blackwater, it's going to take more than another name change to ever get the blood off those people off your hands. You earned your reputation under the name "Blackwater" and it's "Blackwater" you'll remain forever to any individual capable of reasoned thought. Unfortunately, thanks to your whores in our government and the massive roar of white noise that is our right wing run media, that excludes a huge portion of the voting public in this country.
WASHINGTON plans to send that pack of murderers to supplant our military personnel in Iraq. Hey, I'm glad our military will no longer be openly hired out as mercenaries to protect American private interests on foreign soil but replacing them with actual mercenaries... many if not most of whom received their training as war fighters courtesy of the taxpayers in the US and other countries... and paying them with taxpayer bucks means... at least to me... that if we're not "going back" it's because we never left in the first place.

New York-based USTC Holdings, the investment group that bought ex-Blackwater firm, Xe Services, in December 2010, announced on Monday ACADEMI as the new name for Blackwater/ Xe Services, AFP reported.          The development came as US President Barack Obama met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss the next phase of the relations between the two countries after withdrawal of US soldiers.
          "We have had a year of extraordinary changes that have resulted in a new, better company," ACADEMI president and chief executive Ted Wright said in a statement.
In an interview published on Monday, Wright said he would like to take ACADEMI's business back to Iraq and went on to say that the firm had hired an external company to help it apply for an operating license in the country.
          "I think eventually, we're going to get a license; we're going to do business in Iraq," he said.
          Blackwater adopted the name Xe Services after Iraqi authorities announced in 2009 that they would not renew the security firm's contract because of a deadly incident in 2007 in which guards protecting a US diplomatic convoy opened fire in a busy district in the capital Baghdad killing 17 civilians.
          Iraqi officials could not sue the Blackwater mercenaries as they had immunity from local prosecution and were not subjected to any Iraqi laws.
          The US State Department had reportedly announced in August 2010 that the Pentagon would replace American troops in Iraq with private mercenaries, who call themselves private security firms or security contractors, on grounds of ensuring the security in the war-torn country.
          The deployment of ACADEMI mercenaries is likely to cause outrage in Iraq where its predecessor Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries could kill civilians with impunity during their time in Iraq.
          Iraqis will also take it as America's unwillingness to end the occupation of their country where since 2003 the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation caused one million deaths, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

          Yep. That's exactly the way they take it, the way I take it and by damn, it's the way it is. Wall street has a major foothold in the Middle East and they're not going to give it up. The only reason our military is coming out is because of public sentiment against the continued occupation and the pounding of taxpayer money down the rat hole that is Iraq1, otherwise they'd still be getting their "security" services free, courtesy of the US taxpayer and by way of a a few dead American kids every week.
          As far as money down a rat hole, I have no doubt that the taxpayers will continue to foot the financial bill for the continued Wall Street occupation of Iraq and that the costs for maintaining this substantial armed presence there will greatly exceed what it was costing it to use the military.
          The sole way this could be construed as "not going back, no way, no how" is if Wall Street... or at least those companies deriving direct benefit from our continued armed presence in Iraq... had to foot the entire bill for their operations there and the only way "no way, no how" becomes a reality is that the Iraqi government remains as adamant on not allowing Blackwater or whatever it's calling itself these days to set foot in their country as they were on the December deadline for the withdrawal of American troops.

Gingrich: The Asshole's Asshole

2011-12-11T16:49:00.000-08:00

I'm just finding myself up and around and able to sit at the keyboard long enough to type more than a one liner on Twitter or a smartassed status update on Facebook and what do I see? I see Newt Gingrich leading the field in the Republican race to see who's going to get their asses kicked by Barack Obama next year.

With Gingrich, the Republicans seem to have finally run the gamut from "I Don't Know What I Think Until I Know What Day It Is" (Mitt Romney)and "I'm Counting Totally Irrelevant As A Positive" (Michele Bachmann )through "Dumber'n' a Sack of Texas Cow-pies and Proud Of It" (Rick Perry) and "Too Damned Arrogant and Stupid to Understand What Arrogant and Stupid Mean" (Herman Cain.

And what they're (so far) offering as the best they can come up down with is the one person in that entire field who is equally at home with any one or combination of the above mentioned (lack of) character traits. One who manages to add a few noxious elements of his own into the mix, producing one hell of a toxic stew that includes serial adultry, abandonment of at least one wife on her hospital sickbed, advocacy of child labor... you name it. If it's vile to the point of total drop dead toxicity to normal humans, old Newtie prolly eats it for breakfast every morning.

It's been a long journey so far and as we all know, the fat lady hasn't stepped up for her solo yet. Newt is the "anyone but Mitt" flavor of the week right now but remember, there's still eleven more months of this crap to wade through.

On a side note... for whatever unfathomable reason... they're now trying to drag twice bankrupted business mogul, Donald (I Made My Money The Old Fashioned Way, I inherited it) and (I'll do anything to get my ridiculous hairpiece in front of the public for another 15 minutes) Trump back into the mix. The Republicans seem to be stuck in some kind of buffoonery worship cycle in which every week brings a new attempt to top the week before.

The idiots at FOX and Friends were having cows yesterday because the results of an official FOX poll... which they forgot to do their usual cut and paste job on before releasing it to air... shows that 44% of respondents thought Mr. Obama would be reelected while only 16% believed Newt Gingrich would win and 15% thought Mitt Romney would. In other words more people think the prez will win than the the two Republicn front runners combined. According to some (unconfirmed) reports, Gretchen Carlson actually wet herself on national television when those figures hit her monitor screen.

But given the lineup of total buffoons being offered up by the GOP... in which the leading liner upper is arguably one of the sleaziest characters ever to tread the floors of the hallowed halls... indeed, while there have been some for whom the word sleaze might appear to have been invented, none of them have ever plumbed the depths below rock bottom to the extent Newt has... a man of so little character as to have given up all rights to be called a man... Dr. Lizardo may be one stolen election away from being President of what's left of these United States and really FOX, those poll results should surprise nobody, Ms. Carlson's histrionics not withstanding.

To FOX News in general: When all you've got is a flipping clown show, don't be surprised when nobody takes you seriously. And to Ms. Carlson specifically... if you're not going to scan the day's subject material for possible on air live surprises, might I suggest this link?

Dick Cheney: Simply An Evil Sonofabitch

2011-11-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney has been profiting and profiteering from the misery of virtually 99% of the world's population for close on to four decades now and here... in the end days for him (hopefully)... it takes a DA in some little backwater county in south Texas to finally have the balls to step up to the plate and say, "Enough's enough".

The walking, talking personification of pure undiluted evil that ruled this country for eight long years has finally been indicted by a grand jury, along with the Alpha Weasel of the Bush era Justice Department himself, Alberto "I Forgot To Remember" Gonzales, for doing what he's always done at all levels of existence, the only difference in level being how many people he can manage to kill or hurt in the process.

No... sadly it's ot for any of the crimes we might have hoped they would be indicted for and not by the jurisdiction we might have hoped would finally do the job, but by little Willacy County, Texas (pop. 22,134 YeeHaw!) on charges of Prison profiteering.

Sad to see a situation in which a... being of some sort... who is quite possibly one of the most successful war profiteers in the history of the planet... who has the blood of untold thousands, if not millions staining his off shore bank accounts... who has arguably looted, pillaged and stolen more money on the backs of more people than any other primate in history... finally brought up on charges... and this is the most we can get him for.

If anything at all, it's probably going to result in nothing but a few misdemeanor charges that will be quickly dismissed "in the interests of justice" but hey, at this point I'll take what I can get. Hell, I'll settle for merely inconveniencing the evil old bastard at every opportunity hoping to see him pop a cerebral artery or two before I do.

But the story behind the indictments goes a long way... when coupled with everything else we know and have seen in regard to this Ferengi mentoring piece of shit over the past 40 years... to help explain just what an amoral and spiritually empty sonofabitch we're talking about here.

Brenda Norrell @ The Narcosphere: Cheney indicted for prison profiteering in Texas

WILLACY COUNTY, Texas -- US Vice President Dick Cheney was indicted today for a prison profiteering scheme and charged with abuse of prisoners. Cheney invested millions in the Vanguard Group, an investment management company with interests in the prison companies in charge of detention centers. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was also indicted in the prison profiteering scheme, resulting in ongoing prisoner assaults and at least one murder.
Human rights activists urged a probe into prison profiteering after the private prison corporations GEO Group and CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) began receiving enormous federal contracts to build detention centers to imprison migrants. GEO's new migrant prisons including prisons in Laredo, Texas and Jena, Louisiana.

Human rights activists said the fever-pitched racism mounted toward immigrants at the US/Mexico border was induced for the purpose of prison profiteering by US officials reaping enormous profits. The increased arrests of migrants resulted in profits and a long list of new prison construction contracts for the GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut, both with a long history of assaults and murders in prisons.

A Texas grand jury indicted Cheney today and accused him of at least misdemeanor assaults of inmates by allowing inmates to assault fellow inmates. Gonzales was charged with having used his position to stop investigations into assaults committed in a prison for profit in Willacy County, Texas. Both Cheney and Gonzales were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity.

Last month, a Willacy County grand jury indicted the GEO Group, on a murder charge in the death of a prisoner days before his release in 2001. The indictment alleged the GEO Group allowed other inmates to beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. to death with padlocks stuffed into socks. The death happened at the Raymondville facility. A jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil judgment in 2006. The Cheney-Gonzales indictment refers to the de la Rosa case.

Human rights activists protested both Raymondville and Hutto prisons in southwestern Texas in recent years. At Hutto, migrant women and children were abused. ICE refused to allow a UN Rapporteur into Hutto.

During the Bush-Cheney regime, prisons of torture and prisons for migrants became synonymous with the name GEO, from Guantanamo to migrant prisons in the south and along the southwest border.

Cheney said Guantanamo was vital in 2005 and detainees could expect to be treated better here than "by virtually any other government on the face of the earth."

Geo was awarded a contract for the continued management of the Migrant Operations Center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Nov. 2, 2006. Recently, GEO received a contract for a migrant prison in Jena, La. GEO also received a contract for housing "criminal aliens" in the US, as stated on the GEO website.

More at the link but one thing appears certain... there's no end to the fricking crimes against humanity this miserable old goat is going to escape answering for, is there?

Sam Brownback Really DOES suck.

2011-11-26T10:47:00.000-08:00

Sam Brownback is a churlish twit.*
Need I say more?

Hell with it, I'm going to anyway. WTF is wrong with you people in Kansas? How the hell do supposedly sane normal people in the so called Heartland of America keep electing this small minded egotistical sonofabitch to anything?

What a welcome for Emma Sullivan to the world of American Politics in the Tea Party era, eh? I'm assuming that she's smarter than me and this little episode will be sufficient to convince her of something that it's taken me 70 years to realize... that the whole idea of democracy in America is and most likely always was a total fricking sham and it's only because the people actually running the country have run out of anything or anyone else to exploit and/or steal that it's coming into the open now.

Sam Brownback is a perfect example of his ilk... a pompous, self entitled asshole who thinks he's somehow above criticism by mere commoners and who's petty enough to descend from the golden throne in the Kansas state house to smite a young high school student for expressing her opinion of him in public... something that she... as an American citizen... is guaranteed the right to do by no less than the Constitution itself.

Ms. Sullivan... whatever you decide to do, make it your decision. Don't let petty little human facsimiles like Sam Brownback tell you what to do or what you can think or say. It's young people like you who are going to have to take this country back and rebuild it after his kind of dirtbags have driven it into the dirt and made it into just another third world country.

And Brownback? The young lady was right of course. You do suck. In fact, in the world of Republican politicians where one of the basic entry requirements is to suck hard, you've proved you can suck as hard as any of 'em. Be proud, Brownback, be proud. #@$king prick!

CNN Can Kiss My Ass

2011-11-21T10:57:00.001-08:00

I'm having one of those moments where I want so badly to say "I told you so". I hate being right when my being so means that 99% of us have just taken another hit from pissy, whiny little turds that either claim to be our "leaders" or want a chance to call themselves that.

But I'm going to remind everyone that on the day when the president announced that yet another goddamned committee or commission was being formed to study the deficit situation and come up with ways to keep the money flowing into the big corporation and without making them pay their fair share of the price for it, I went on record right here, stating that I knew it was just another flipping sham and that ponce again the fricking congress and the administration were urinating on our britches leg and calling it a warm tropical rain.

The so called "supercommittee" was never intended to find a solution for anything. It's only purpose was to serve as some kind of public relations gimmick to keep the 99% thinking our government really gave a rat's ass about serving the "common good" when, as Ted points out in his latest piece, not a fricking one of them has a clue as to what the phrase "common good" even means anymore.

Did anyone really think that a bunch of goddamned millionaires... most of whom have become or are in the process of doing so... by selling their very asses to the one percent, was going to come up with anything that didn't maintain the status quo or even increase the flow of wealth upward to the people who own those asses by virtue of having bought and paid for them with the money they steal daily from the rest of us?

That's probably the dumbest fricking thing I've ever heard and if you believed a syllable of the story they were peddling when they put this conglomeration of greed and evil together to supposedly serve YOUR best interests, then f**k you... you deserve exactly what you're getting for continuing to vote for the same sonsofbitches that keep doing this shit to you. Understand this: The "Supercommittee" did NOT fail. They did exactly what they were put in place to do and now they continue to do exactly what anyone with the brains of a flipping pissant expects them to do... they're covering their asses.

Patricia Murphy @ The Daily Beast puts it clearly:

Just one day before the congressional supercommittee's drop-dead deadline to come up with a plan to cut trillions of dollars from the national debt, and days after the country racked up its 15 trillionth dollar of borrowed money, panel members fanned out across Washington Sunday morning-not to negotiate a last-minute deal, but to blame the other guys for messing everything up."In Washington, there is a group of folks that will not cut a dollar unless we also raise taxes," Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican committee member, complained on NBC's Meet the Press. "The only real breakthrough here was the Republican offer to actually increase the amount of revenue through the tax code."

No sooner had Kyl finished speaking than John Kerry appeared on the same show, essentially calling Kyl a liar.
"What Jon just said is patently not true. We just cut $917 billion without one dime of new revenue. He knows it, we just did it...this is just nonsense," Kerry said. "If this weren't so serious I might laugh."

But nobody was laughing on Capitol Hill as it became increasingly clear that the latest supergroup of bipartisan dealmakers was about to go down in flames despite the high hopes in August, when Congress gave them the power to re-jigger the entire federal budget and President Obama vowed he would "stay on it until we get the job done." But four months later, they haven't gotten the job done. And according to aides, they were never even close.

And they never WERE going to be close nor did any thinking human being ever think they would be.With all DUE respect to Mr. Kyl... heavy emphasis on the word "due" since he's probably one of the few people on the DC scene who can rival Newt Gingrich for scaliness and the size of the slime trail he leaves behind him wherever he slithers... he's just doing what we all expect him to do.

Understand this also, people... politicians get rich by cutting your throat to provide a pipelined supply of blood to the fricking vampires sitting in the goddamned crypts that line both sides of Wall Street. As far they're concerned, they don't owe you a fricking thing. All you did was vote for the bastards. And the mere pittance you pay them pails in significance to the money the fourteen thousand or so registered fricking corporate lobbyists have to toss in their direction.

Cut defense spending now? Another fricking laugh. Most of the money made in this country today is made by corporations that manufacture and sell the stuff we use to travel around the world killing people and taking their shit. It's what e do better than anything else and if we had to stop doing it tomorrow half the billionaires in the country would throw themselves from window their penthouses offices and the other half would make sure they were standing under them when they hit the fricking sidewalk.

In that regard, Ill make another prediction. I predict that any significant cuts made in our defense budget will almost exclusively involve cuts in pay and benefits to the rank and file (one of the political commissars... I think it was Mullen... said so months ago when the committee was formed... and even more severe cuts in care and benefits for our veterans while items such as John Boner's totally superfluous "backup" engines for the F-35 will remain virtually unscathed.

Our "representatives" aren't about to bite the hand of the people making them rich but will go right on kissing their asses and giving them whatever the hell they want.

Wolf Blitzer and the rest of the cowardly media pricks can not only quote me on that, he and they can kiss MY ass when it comes true.

You Might Be A Fascist If...

2011-11-16T13:34:00.001-08:00

There's an email making the rounds of the Tea Party faithful these days... FALSELY attributed to Jeff Foxworthy... titled "You May Be A Muslim" in which the originator(s) lifted Mr. Foxworthy's old "You Might Be A Redneck" schtick and substituted "Muslim" for "Redneck" in a whole line of rascist and xenophobic bullshit designed solely to exploit the whole "All Muslims are terrorists" phobia that has paralyzed the thought processes of millions of "Real Americans" since September, 2001.

Stephen D. Foster #Addicting Info has countered with his own "You Might Be" self test in which those many among us who have been circulating the anti-Muslim email and attributing it to Mr. Foxworthy should be able to recognize themselves. I said should... providing that they have a number of working brain cells sufficient to allow them a basic level of cognition that would allow them to do so.

But then, if they actually HAD that many functioning brain cells, they wouldn't be falling for the pitiful maundering of some assclown(s) so desperate to have their words reach the largest possible audience that they'd use someone else's name to further their own hateful and racist agenda, would they? Damn, Teapers are such losers.

I don't know what Mr. Foxworthy's actual politics consist of, nor do I care, but according to Snopes, the claim that the email being sent under his name actually originated with him is bullshit and its only significance lies in its being typical of the manner in which right wing propaganda machine will lie to the American public and has managed to use every form of communication out there to further the interests of it's corporate controllers by doing so. Here's Mr. Foster's take

Are you a fascist? Many people are fascists and they don't even realize it. And sometimes, they know it all too well, but hide and deny it. Most of the time though, it's obvious who the fascists are. For instance, you might be a fascist if...

1. You are obsessed with national power and pride and believe your country doesn't have to follow the rules and shouldn't ever apologize for doing things that are wrong. You think your nation can do whatever it wants.

2. You believe in the rule of the few, election rigging, political decisions being made by a select group of officials behind closed doors, embrace the informal and unregulated exercise of political power, arbitrary deprivation of civil liberties, and little tolerance for meaningful opposition.

3. You believe in survival of the fittest, an every man for himself mentality that causes you to believe that poor people and sick people are weak and must be punished. You think rich people are strong because they are wealthy and that they should rule us. You also believe your race is superior to all others.

4. You use the media as a political propaganda machine to target a specific audience and to push your agenda on others. You make sure the media demonizes your opponents and takes your side on nearly every issue. You use your propaganda machine to play on the fears of others.

5. You are obsessed with security, and war. You feed this obsession by spending trillions of dollars building up a large military force and are willing to sacrifice domestic programs your people count on to keep your military huge. You start unnecessary and costly wars and you are paranoid of other nations.

6. You are driven to indoctrinate others into your way of thinking. So much so, that you try to re-write history, change the way school children are taught and you brainwash the ignorant. You use your propaganda machine as a tool to achieve this.

7. You fear and demonize intelligent people who have a higher education because they are the ones who can thwart your effort to brainwash people. You then attempt to prevent others from achieving a higher education because you want the people as ignorant as possible so you can convince them that your way is the right way.

8. You have a deep hatred and fear of communists and you instill your followers with hatred and fear of others by accusing your political opponents of being communists. This gives you an easy scapegoat to blame when things go wrong. Any person or policy you don't like is branded as communism.

9. You disrespect women and think their place is in the home. You believe women are weak and cannot do things that men do. You believe that sexual harassment or assault is no big deal and that the only thing women are good for is cooking meals and having babies.

10. You strongly align yourself with corporations and you support corporate money and influence in government. You despise government regulations that keep corporations honest because you believe everything should be controlled by the free market and that corporations should be allowed to do whatever they please.

11. You are obsessed with Christianity. You seek to declare a Christian State and to impose religious laws on all the people across the country and the world. You believe other religions are inferior and that those who practice them should either be converted or destroyed.

12. You believe your race is superior and seek to disenfranchise or humiliate other races. You believe in legalized discrimination and fantasize about a return to times when the races were separate or when those of color were enslaved. You use code words in an attempt to hide your racism and you make laws that weaken the influence of those of color. Immigration and voting laws in particular.

13. You absolutely despise unions. To you and those like you, labor unions represent the empowerment of workers. Since you believe corporations can do whatever they want, you see organized labor as a threat because they fight for higher wages, health care, safety regulations, less hours, vacations, sick days, and holidays off. This obviously threatens the amount of money corporations can give to you and your cause so you brand unions as proponents of socialism and make laws that severely weaken them so that corporations can have a cheap, mindless labor force.

14. You are obsessed with crime and a major supporter of punishing those who commit crimes. So much so, that you don't care about the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty.' You are proud of executing people and aren't bothered if an innocent person is killed. You seek to make harsher laws, especially laws that target specific groups of people such as immigrants, women, and people of color. You also oppose Miranda rights and using humane interrogation tactics and you seek to undermine the independent judiciary.

15. You believe every election should go your way and to reach that goal, you push voting laws that disenfranchise those who traditionally vote for opponents such as people of color, the elderly, college students, and the poor. You even stoop to fixing elections in some cases and complain when your opponents challenge the vote counts.

16. You believe in rewarding your friends with positions when you gain power and you reward those who support you with government contracts and money, especially corporations. You also do your best to aid your supporters in any way you can, such as repealing undesirable pieces of legislation and regulations. You often have something to gain financially from this.

17. You create scapegoats to blame when problems arise. Whether it's communists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, the poor, or non-Christians, one thing is for certain. You and your propaganda tool will blame each and every one of those groups for bad things that happen even if you were the cause of the problems in the first place.

18. You take advantage of a national disaster such as an economic collapse or an attack to demonize your opponents and push your agenda. You use these events to strike fear into the population in an attempt to scare people into voting for you and your cause. It's all about fear and scare tactics.

I'm with Mr. Foster on this one... it's an almost perfect description of the Republican... and largely,for that matter... Democratic parties in this country today, innit?

Time To Stop Buying From The Bastards

2011-10-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

The OWS protests are primed to become one of the the biggest and most widespread social movements of all time and there's nothing I like better than to see people coming together in the faces of the nonproductive bloodsucking vampires who are intent on sucking this country and the world dry.

But let's face it people... nothing is going to work until WE. STOP. BUYING. THEIR. CRAP!

I've said it before and yes, I'm going to say it again. We buy far too much junk we don't NEED and go we go far too many places we don't NEED to go. We're a nation of mindless fricking consumer bots who have been programmed since birth to put all our money in the pockets of... and get our asses kicked by... pampered lameassed parasites who wouldn't last two minutes on a level playing field.

You'll notice that not a goddamned one of the snickering motherhumpers standing on those balconies, sipping expensive wine and sneering down at the crowds under those windows has dared to come down and meet with any of the ordinary citizens who are... by their mere presence underneath those balconies... standing for all of us.

The one percent doesn't understand anything that does not impact their cash flow. Unless it makes or loses them a buck or two, it doesn't even register. And the only way were going to have any kind of impact at all is if we simply stop buying their cheap crap and start using our money for they things we and our families NEED and not what the trillion fricking dollar advertising industry tells us we need. You've got to stop worrying about keeping up with the fricking Jones family and start taking care of YOUR family. Sooner or later old Jones will come to that conclusion himself but right now, he's not your worry.

You start buying only what you need, traveling only where you need to go, maybe skipping a ball game of a car race or two... that's when the penthouse bastards will realize you mean business. Until then, as long as you keep dumping money in their pockets by the shovelful they aren't going to give a rat's ass what you think no matter how many online petitions you sign or how many letters you write your probably corrupt whore in Congress who measures who he or she is responsible to by the amount of money they can generate.

Time to put your money where your mouth is. Or at least somewhere besides in the bank accounts of the bloodsucking one percent. Start making a list of things you could probably do without... at least for a while... and start doing without them. You WILL get their attention.

Bank of America_It's Not JUST The Five Bucks

2011-10-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

Last Last Spring I received a check from Rockford Energy Partners for $5000. This was payment for leases on mineral rights I own on certain properties in Oklahoma. The check was made out to myself as follows:

THOMAS F BALES
LEONARD BALES HEIR
111 W SCHOOL AVE APT 210
VISALIA CA 93291-4927

Please note the word "heir" after my father's name. It's important to what came after.

The ATM at the downtown branch where I have my account not only rejected the check but actually confiscated it without a word being said to me. I wasn't officially notified by the bank that the money had not been placed in the account for several days. That in itself could have been disastrous had I not had enough in the bank to cover my normal bills and necessities. I found out about I was $5k short when I started to book reservations for the Memorial day weekend trip ... which had awaited the receipt of that check before being finalized... and upon checking my bank balance, found out that the money had been deposited and then immediately withdrawn from my account. Needless to say, any plans for the holiday were out the window and several other plans had to be radically altered or postponed.

What ensued was the most outrageous circus I have ever been put through in my life starting with the totally inept CSR who had no idea why the check had been rejected and who couldn't offer even a ballpark guess as to what I should do next. As I said, not only did the ATM reject the check but it actually confiscated it and I couldn't even walk into the bank and get my money back. I was finally... after another rep or two and several hassles... advised that the reason the check had been rejected was that there were two names on the check and only I had signed it. You see it had my name on it and underneath a notation that I was the legal heir of Leonard Bales who had been the owner of record of said rights until his death at which time they passed to myself and my brother.

I was told that a "facsimile" check would be issued at some future date. When I got it... too late of course for the holiday trips and theme park visits we'd promised my 9 year old grandson... it was a about a half to three quarter sized photocopy of the original check printed on plain white paper with a little blurb saying it could be deposited or cashed just like a regular check anywhere. By then I was angry enough to close my BofA account altogether and I went out (something I basically never do because of health issues) and took this little photocopy thingy to a few other financial establishments, none of which had ever heard of such a thing or would touch it with a ten foot pole.

So off I went back to BofA figuring I'd just have to deposit the thing and THEN close the account. Lo and behold, not only was the thing no good anywhere else, BofA ITSELF refused to deposit their little paper thing to my account, citing the same reason that they had cited when the ATM refused it. So what I had was a little piece of paper with a picture of a check on it and no idea who actually had my $5000. I had however, made up my mind that I was not walking out of that bank without my five thousand bucks, either in my bank account or in my pocket and finally a manager type person standing in the back of the room came up and after I had explained the situation, made a couple of quick calls, gave the approval, the money was deposited and everyone was happy... except of course yours truly but what the hey, I'm only the customer.

It should be noted that after the fiasco was over, I did receive a very nice email from a lady in their customer relations program... thanks to an email archive crash, I've lost her name and title offering to discuss the situation by phone but since I thought it had been resolved I didn't call her. Then, a couple of days later, I received a letter of apology from the bank with a $100 Amazon gift card which I thought was kind of extra out of the way and decided to keep the account open after all.

Then in August, I received another check from the same company, made out in exactly the same way, this time for $3198.34 for retroactive royalties. Not daring to trust it to the overzealous ATM robot again, I drug myself back out into the world, took it to the bank, stood in line waiting for one of the three tellers to become available, got the same reaction from the teller but was immediately referred to someone who had sense enough to refer back to the previous situation and approve the deposit. I figure OK then, I'm gonna have to resign myself to going in once a month to deposit these little checks but I suppose that's some kind of progress.

Today, I went into the bank to deposit my first regular monthly royalty check for the puny little sum of $257.51 and to try to get the situation set up so that either the ATM would take the small monthly checks or my daughter could be allowed to make my deposits for me since my health situation precludes me from leaving home all that much and guess what? Different teller, same reaction, different manager... and the whole thing has started all over again.

This time, after once again standing in line waiting for one of the three tellers, I was referred to another lady from the back of the room. This time, I was made to stand around for roughly 20-30 minutes while she talked on two different phones, made photocopies and what not, with her eventually coming back and letting me know that she was going to do me a huge "favor" and let me put my money in her bank THIS time but that I needed to call Rockford Energy and tell them they were making their checks out wrong and that my father's name either shouldn't be on the check or the word "heir" should come after MY name and not his.

So... here's the deal according to the BofA lady: In order to be able deposit my money in BofA... this ONE time... I'm supposed to call this corporation in Tulsa... at MY expense... and try to explain to them that the Visalia CA branch of Bank of America doesn't like the way they make out their checks. I'm supposed to convince them they need to get their systems people to change the program for their automatic check issuing system because out of all the hundreds, if not thousands of checks they issue to lessors, one branch of one bank doesn't like the way they identify the payee on their checks. Like yeah, I'm sure that's all it's going to take. I do NOT need to tell some corporation how to run their IT systems because the people at my BofA branch can't use a little common sense three times in a row.

This wouldn't be so ludicrous if... well, notice how I said one branch of one bank? My brother has received checks identical to the ones I got every single time, made out exactly the same way... and my sister in law has been able to deposit them in their bank via ATM in every instance without a single hitch. Their bank? Why none other than Bank of America, of course. Same bank, different branch ten miles down the road. Go figure

I intend to finish out the month because of the short notice in getting my SS direct deposit changed over in time to get my bills paid and then I'm going to have to move what's left in my little account somewhere else. I am not able to go to the bank and hassle this thing out every time I get a check and there is no way on earth I'm going to call up Rockford Energy and tell them THEY are the ones causing the problem when nobody else... including other branches of BofA... even HAVE the problem.

My family has been associate with BofA for at least 60-70 years but eventually even the laws of inertia are overcome by irresistible force and one has to make a move, whether one likes it or not. I think maybe my time has come.

As Despicable As Ever

2011-10-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

Just in case anyone had forgotten what a low down bunch of dirtbags the Tea Party leadership really is, Stephen D. Foster Jr. @ Addicting Info has a reminder for you.
As you gaze upon this "real" American, realize that he represents the group of people who criticizes the OWS protesters for somehow being unpatriotic by dressing like ordinary working class folks.

On the other hand, his own funny little hat, George Washington uniform coat (do they really think ordinary Americans dressed like that back in the day?) and his little Chinese made flag on a Chinese made stick just ooze patriotism and loyalty to America.

I don't know who this particular person is or how much money he makes by appearing in public looking like an escapee from a mental asylum but I doubt that he's a simple working class Joe trying to make ends meet like the 99% of us that have to do so on a daily basis. I do know that he epitomizes the attitude of the Wall Street parasites who wrecked this country's economy and are wrecking its political system by manipulating a bunch of ignorant boobs who are seething with rage because a black man lives in the White House.

Tea Party Nation sent a message to their members today urging businesspeople to stop hiring people in an effort to sabotage the economy and make President Obama fail. The message came from activist (and traitor) Melissa Brookstone, and reads as follows.
"Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with a global Progressive socialist movement, have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of individual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism.

Resolved that: President Obama has seized what amount to dictatorial powers to bypass our Congress, and that because the Congress is controlled by a Progressive socialist Senate that will not impeach one of their kind, they have allowed this and yielded what are rightfully congressional powers to this new dictator.

Resolved that: By their agenda and actions, those in our government who swore oaths to protect and defend our Constitution have committed treason against the United States.

Resolved that: The current administration and Democrat majority in the Senate, in conjunction with Progressive socialists from all around the country, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning news media (Indeed, most of the news media.) have worked in unison to advance an anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda.

Resolved that: Our President, the Democrats-Socialists, most of the media, and most of those from Hollywood, have now encouraged and supported "Occupy" demonstrations in our streets, which are now being perpetrated across the globe, and which are being populated by various marxists, socialists and even communists, and are protesting against business, private property ownership and capitalism, something I thought I'd never see in my country, in my lifetime.

I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped."
And there you have it. This is yet another admission from the right wing that they are willing to bring the American economy crashing down on us all in the hate inspired effort to bring down the first African-American President. This should sicken the American people.

And no, there's probably nothing overtly racist in the actual language their little "declaration" is couched in. They're simply attempting to dissuade businesses from hiring anyone at all until a Republican is once again comfortably ensconced in the WH. While the Wall Street whores won't engage openly in racist acts or rhetoric, they damned sure WILL however make sure that racism is one of the tools that will be used by their turdminions to its fullest extent to bring about their economic and political agendas.

This IS class warfare at it's most blatant and Wall Street will stop at nothing to win it including sending clowns like the one pictured into the hinterlands to make sure that the inescapable racial hatred of the most ignorant NeoConfederate rednecks among us is channeled in the right directions by heaping every other woe that has befallen the country on the head of "that black... let's see now, today's an odd numbered day... on even numbered days he's a Nazi... oh yeah, that black Socialist in the WH".

Tell me something. If there IS a God, why did he give us Wall Street... a plague that exceeds anything ever suffered by the Egyptians prior to the Exodus? Surely we haven't done anything to deserve that.

Friendly Fire Via Drone... Inevitable?

2011-10-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you reduce war to the scope of a video game. While one side of me is glad that we're able to rain hellfire (no pun intended) and brimstone on "suspected" enemies without putting our kids directly in harm's way, the other goggles at this almost total depersonalization of war... something that should always remain up close and personal lest we become so blase about it that we wander off willy nilly starting wars in all kinds of out of the way places just to have an excuse to spend more bucks on more deadly and more expensive toys with which to kill those "suspected" enemies so our corporations can take their shit... oh wait. Never mind.

Those computer gamer types sitting over there in Nevada, flying those drone strikes in the Middle East are fast becoming the favored means by which the MIC can fight its dirty little for profit wars in which officers do their fighting in air conditioned comfort and never get dirty or break a sweat, and without ever having to be within a thousand miles of a theater of operations or actually have to deal firsthand with the results of their actions. Hell, from what I've been reading, some of them have never been in an actual aircraft cockpit.

They... like any other war gamers... just sit in front of their computer monitors and manipulate their little joysticks and Wham! Another Al Qaeda (or other terrorist group) "leader" bites the dust in what has become an almost weekly ritual. Wham! Another American traitor preaching for the "other side" is off to his unfortunately virginless version of Heaven. Wham! Another American Marine and Sailor meet their end, courtesy of Lockheed in the form of a $68000 Hellfire missile from nowhere. Wait! What????

U.S. deaths in drone strike due to miscommunication, report says

A Marine and a Navy medic killed by a U.S. drone airstrike were targeted when Marine commanders in Afghanistan mistook them for Taliban fighters, even though analysts watching the Predator's video feed were uncertain whether the men were part of an enemy force.Those are the findings of a Pentagon investigation of the first known case of friendly fire deaths involving an unmanned aircraft, the April 6 attack that killed Marine Staff Sgt. Jeremy Smith, 26, and Navy Hospitalman Benjamin D. Rast, 23
.
The 381-page report, which has not been released, concludes that the Marine officers on the scene and the Air Force crew controlling the drone from half a world away were unaware that analysts watching the firefight unfold via live video at a third location had doubts about the targets' identity.

The incident closely resembles another deadly mistake involving a Predator in early 2009. In that attack, at least 15 Afghan civilians were killed after a Predator crew mistook them for a group of Taliban preparing to attack a U.S. special forces unit.

In that case, analysts located at Air Force Special Operations Command in Florida who were watching live battlefield video from the aircraft's high-altitude cameras also had doubts about the target. Their warnings that children were present were disregarded by the drone operator and by an Army captain, who authorized the airstrike.

Because names are redacted in the Pentagon report, it is unclear which Marine officer made the final decision to order the airstrike that killed Smith and Rast. But a senior Marine officer familiar with the investigation said commanders at the battalion or regimental level would have the ultimate authority, not the lieutenant who led the platoon during the battle.

Hell, even if you don't buy the notion that this constant and complete depersonalization of war just makes it easier for our corporate masters to keep starting the damned things, the potential for this kind of thing to occur is only going to increase exponentially with the increase in the use of such methods of killing people, not to mention the potential for this: (Note that this reprint of a week old story from Wired was filed in ARS Techinica's BUSINESS section,)

Computer Virus Hits Drone Fleet

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America's Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other war zones.The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military's Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the US military's most important weapons system.

"We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back," says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. "We think it's benign. But we just don't know."

Military network security specialists aren't sure whether the virus and its so-called "keylogger" payload were introduced intentionally or by accident; it may be a common piece of malware that just happened to make its way into these sensitive networks. The specialists don't know exactly how far the virus has spread. But they're sure that the infection has hit both classified and unclassified machines at Creech. That raises the possibility, at least, that secret data may have been captured by the keylogger, and then transmitted over the public internet to someone outside the military chain of command.

Drones have become America's tool of choice in both its conventional and shadow wars, allowing US forces to attack targets and spy on its foes without risking American lives. Since President Obama assumed office, a fleet of approximately 30 CIA-directed drones have hit targets in Pakistan more than 230 times; all told, these drones have killed more than 2,000 suspected militants and civilians, according to the Washington Post. More than 150 additional Predator and Reaper drones, under US Air Force control, watch over the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. American military drones struck 92 times in Libya between mid-April and late August. And late last month, an American drone killed top terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki - part of an escalating unmanned air assault in the Horn of Africa and southern Arabian peninsula.

Suspected civilians? What the hell does that mean? I suppose to people capable of thinking only in numbers in languages based on statistics, it must mean something but it's not something an ordinary human like me can grasp, I guess.

But despite their widespread use, the drone systems are known to have security flaws. Many Reapers and Predators don't encrypt the video they transmit to American troops on the ground. In the summer of 2009, US forces discovered "days and days and hours and hours" of the drone footage on the laptops of Iraqi insurgents. A $26 piece of software allowed the militants to capture the video.

Yep... war by committee in which the ones doing the shooting are thousands of miles away from where the shooting is going on and the ones directing the shooting don't know who the hell they're shooting at but only that the targets are "suspected enemies" and all this over a generally unencrypted and obviously insecure computer network with holes in it big enough to fly a Predator through. That's Wall Street's kind of war.

We Need To Dump Congress & Start From Scratch

2011-10-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

My suggestion? Get rid of the senate altogether and thoroughly clean and fumigate the House of Representatives with heavy emphasis on the fumigate part

.Why? Because for whatever reason, these people are simply not doing their jobs. To you and me, it doesn't make any difference whether they've sold us out for personal gain (and I truly believe the majority of them have done exactly that)... or whether they are simply ignorant and in way over their heads... the outcome for 99% of us is exactly the same. We flipping lose and the Wall Street parasites win.

In this piece at Raw Story by Stephen Webster Poll: Huge majority of Americans support taxing the rich you can see the disconnect between our representatives and ourselves in all its shining glory.

As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote down legislation that would raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to pay for a jobs plan that most economists believe would stop the recession, a new poll has surfaced showing just how out of touch those Senators are with mainstream America.

According to figures released by Bloomberg and The Washington Post on Tuesday, eight in 10 Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support raising taxes on households earning over $250,000 a year. A full 81 percent of Democrats were behind the plan, along with 67 percent of independents and 53 percent of Republicans.

That's a huge leap in support from December 2010, when a Bloomberg poll found that just 59 percent favored extending the Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy Americans. President Obama has since vowed to normalize tax rates between the upper and middle classes, highlighting the disparity in the percentage paid by lower income people as compared to the top earners.

Dear Senator/Congressperson:

Nobody remains that oblivious... nobody is that ignorant of the desires and indeed the demands... of the people they still depend on to keep another slickster from getting their jobs. You are WELL aware of what the majority of the people in this country want done and your refusal to do so will be something to be dealt with the next time each one of you comes up for reelection. Scores are being kept and votes are being tabulated and when you only have two excuses to offer... "I'm corrupt" or "I'm stupid"... neither of them qualifies you to ever serve in any capacity at any level of government again.

The only thing that's gonna keep your sorry asses in office is the stupidity of your constituencies (not to be underestimated by any means given the control your lords and masters exercise over any and all sources of information) or Diebold voting machines and we'll flipping know it this time.

There's also this though:

Overall, 81 percent of American adults said they believe that even the middle class will be forced to make sacrifices to reduce the nation's deficit. However, 83 percent of Americans agreed that cutting Social Security should not be an option. Another 82 percent said cutting Medicare should be off the table.

The majority's views are largely in-line with President Barack Obama's proposals, which are likely be under-cut by the "super committee" Congress agreed to form in the midst of a budget standoff earlier this year. The committee of 12 will be tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over the next 10 years: a feat nearly impossible without raising government revenues or making massive cuts to social safety nets.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Americans are evenly divided on whether re-electing President Obama, or replacing him with any of the Republican candidates, will even make a difference.

Just 24 percent said their families finances would be better if Obama wins the 2012 election, versus 24 percent who believe things will improve with a Republican in office. Nearly half, 44 percent, said either outcome would "not make much difference," according to the poll.

Full Poll Results Here:

So with the moribund economy being the biggest concern to the vast majority of voters, the Democrats and Republicans are tied for a distant second behind the huge majority of people who feel that neither of them is worth the powder it would take to blow 'em all to hell as far as fixing the economy is concerned? Damn Congress, you just don't get that damned sorry and still have the rights to call yourselves representatives of the people.

Adios Firedog Lake

2011-10-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

First off, I have a temper. Someone hits me, I hit back, often without even thinking about it. It's stood me in good stead for almost 70 years and I have no intention of even trying to change this late in life.

For one thing, I'd have to want to and I don't. I don't care if you're the POTUS himself... or one of the presidential flunkies... you start making snide assed remarks at my beliefs, talking down to me and calling me names, you're probably going to hear or at least read what I think about it.

Now... back when I was going through my thoroughly pissed off at President Obama stage... and I still maintain my right to BE pissed off... I wrote few pieces critical of some of the things I thought he was doing that hurt Social Security and Medicare recipients. I cross posted them at my site and at My Firedog Lake where most of them were picked up, front paged, and discusses by other users and I was thinking well, this isn't so bad.

Then, my anger at Mr. Obama... which had never really been about what HE did as much as what I felt he was letting the REPUBLICANS do... pretty much cooled to something like a simmer and I found other things to boil over about and started cross posting my rants regularly at TGUAR, MyFDL, and my own little place.

And all of I sudden it was as if I didn't exist at MyFDL. The minute I stopped being hypercritical of the president and moved on to the bigger picture, people simply stopped reading me altogether over there. Or at least they stopped promoting or commenting.

That's when I began to suspect that the people running FDL might not be the "progressives" a lot of people... including some in the mainstream media... make them out to be. I even ventured the opinion that FDL itself might be the "Trojan Horse" that many of their contributors... including myself... had speculated that the president might be and that if there were any DINOs or right wing moles involved then it was more likely that Jane Hamsher and her top level cronies fit that description far more than Barack Obama did.

And it's simply gotten worse over there since then. Here's a short piece by Villamar @ Political Ruminations that kinds of ties it together for me.

Jane Hamsher is a ratfucker. More, I strongly believe that Jane Hamsher is a Republican operative.
And now, Jane Hamsher has jumped the proverbial shark in her accusations that Van Jones, Move On and the Democratic Party are trying to "co-opt the energy" of OWS:
ALYONA: So, how do you get it to the point where all these groups can really unify?

JANE HAMSHER: Well, I don't think you want them unified. In fact, I think one of the silliest things to happen in the past few days is the Move On-Van Jones attempt to co-opt the energy...ah, the anger at the banks on behalf of the Democratic Party.

I'm sorry, but when you've had control of the Federal government for the past three years, it's really kind of ribald to suggest that this is all the Republicans fault and that somehow you're entitled to co-opt this energy.
First of all, I sincerely doubt that there is a single Republican in the OWS movement. Republicans love the banks. Republicans love big business.

Secondly, WHO has had "control of the Federal government" for the past three years, Jane? Do you not read? Can you not comprehend the term "filibuster"? Do you not remember 2010 when you and many of your acolytes decided to sit out the damn vote, which then cost us the House??

Third, Jane, it is mostly the fault of the Republican Party. It is they who have sold their souls to the corporations. It is the rise of the far right wing which has brought us to this impasse over the past thirty years.

I may be dense but eventually... if you hit me upside the head with something hard enough... you can usually get my attention. This one statement did it this time:

I'm sorry, but when you've had control of the Federal government for the past three years, it's really kind of ribald to suggest that this is all the Republicans fault and that somehow you're entitled to co-opt this energy

I don't want to see the Democratic party co-opt this movement either. Most Democrats sat on their hands and snickered as it got started and dismissed it out of hand and they don't deserve to benefit in any way shape or form from the efforts of the common people who have finally had enough.

But Hamsher's continuing campaign to unseat the president along with her now almost constant carping on the Democrats and her increasing tendency to place more and more blame on THEM for what's wrong than the Republicans indicate to me that she has a) finally divorced herself from reality completely or b) has a true agenda that is certainly not that of most Progressive Democrats. She certainly couldn't be doing a better job of supporting the Tea Party agenda than she's doing now.

It also makes me wonder why... other than they know they can count of her for the anti-Obama "Democrat" slant... SHE is the go-to gal for the MSM the few times they need a quote or two from a "left wing" blogger to support their own agenda.

It's not so much that Jane Hamsher stands in the way of a Democratic victory... it's that she stands in the way of our efforts to make of this country what so many of us thought we were making of it for so long.

Jane Hamsher simply does NOT stand with the common people... and in a class war like this one there are only two places you CAN stand.

IS The Constitution Just a Piece of Paper?

2011-10-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted much lately, either here or at TGUAR. The truth is that I've found myself in a bit of a quandary this past few days.

You see, I consider myself a strict constitutionalist. Yeah, I know, lots of people use that term. But I'm talking about STRICT strict. If it says it, then by damn, that's the way it is as far as I'm concerned. If it doesn't say it, then don't bother me trying to convince me it does.

Of the various clauses, articles and amendments those dealing with my basic right to fair and equitable treatment under the law are perhaps the most important to me. The concept that I have a certain inalienable right to be treated justly and impartially had been one of the basic tenets in my pride in being a citizen in what... until about 11 years ago... I had thought was the freest and most democratic country not only in the world but in the history of the world.

Finding out you've been wrong... that everything you ever believed in, staked your life on and striven to uphold has been nothing but a sham can be pretty damned heavy especially to someone who has come to that realization late in life as has happened in my case.

I remember my righteous indignation when Bush and Cheney were ripping the constitution to shreds and I remember a lot of people to my left being even more indignant than I was. We ranted about Bushco "cherry picking" the constitution, upholding the parts they liked and ignoring the parts that interfered in any way with their agenda, especially the imposition of the onerous policies and programs that together made up the "Patriot Act".

Today, we have another administration that has... for whatever reasons... chose to maintain many of those same... still onerous but suddenly not so unbearable... programs and policies that were levied upon us by the Bush administration, the ones that we ranted so indignantly about back then... even adding some new fillips of their own.

Our first and fourth amendment rights are still in the toilet, Domestic spying is still rampant, Habeas corpus has become basically non-existent as far as the federal government is concerned, we have a for profit judicial and penal system, separation of church and state has become a joke, corporations are now human beings, the goddamned banks and corporations are openly buying politicians in a public market, every vital government service and program has been, or is in line to be, privatized... hell, the list of what we have given up in order to get our corporate oligarchy to allow "our" government to "keep us safe" is endless.

And every freedom... every scrap of liberty we've been forced to give up... along with every single dime that has disappeared into privately held offshore tax shelters... every American man, woman and child that has been forced into poverty... has been a victory for the nameless, faceless bogey men... the "terrorists" who allegedly lurk in their multitudes behind every rock and tree... the ones that our new Fascist hierarchy is supposed to be protecting us against.

And now, people at BOTH ends of the political spectrum are looking at the constitution and cherry picking it for whatever interpretation they can apply to their own personal agendas and many things that are deemed horrible when it was Bush and Cheney doing them are suddenly OK or at least not so bad after all... as long as it "keeps us safe".

Had a conversation yesterday with my brother in which he pointed out to me that the constitution IS... as George Bush was falsely accused of saying... nothing but a piece of paper. Starting even before the ink was dry on the last signature, people have ALWAYS adhered to whatever principles it upholds as long as it suited their purpose to do so and worked to find ways to bypass or outright violate those provisions that didn't serve that purpose and that includes modern Democrats, Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives.

We've gone from a system of governance that once said, "If you don't like a law, then change it.", to one saying "If you don't like a law, then %$#k it, just ignore it.". And sadly, that includes the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself

War on terror, my ass. The actual terrorists out there don't need to make open war on us. By making us give up every damned principle that most of us thought we stood for, they've already flipping won that goddamned war because they've managed to drag us down to THEIR level... which just happens to be where Wall Street wants us to be also.

Explain to me how that's a good thing.

2011-10-03T19:56:00.001-07:00

Slow rebuilding my Firefox Profile and all my bookmarks and password files after a damned crash. Nothing to see here for a day or two.

Executed Wthout Trial

2011-10-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

First off, nobody's "whining" about a goddamned thing here.

I'm getting goddamned sick and tired of so called liberals and progressives claiming I'm "whining" every time I point out the fact that YOU don't have any more fricking right to cherry pick and choose which parts of the constitution you going to abide by than the fricking Teapers and the GOP do. You even use the same fricking rhetoric and talking points THEY use to defend their own disregard for the rights of others.

There's a difference between asserting that ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE ENTITLED TO DUE PROCESS UNDER THE LAW... not just the ones that you personally adjudge to be so... and whining. Yet the first shot out of the bag is that people insisting that we abide by the constitution are "whiners". Fuck that. That's EXACTLY what Bush and Cheney said when THEY were called out on violations of the Constitution.

Was this guy scum? According to the info we've been given yes, he was. According to the info we've been given. Did he actually deserve to DIE for advocatig death for Americans? For one thing, we'll never actually know now, will we? For another, who's next? Shall we start with the Westboro Baptist Church? Oh wait... they aren't Muslims and actually pretend to be Christians. Nope, we can only apply the new rules to black and brown people, right?

Are you naive enough to think you know everything you would have needed to know to sentence this man to death in a court of law? If you do, I hope to hell I'm never a defendant in any case where you're a juror.

If you're willing to kill a man only knowing one side of the story and only the parts of that side that the PTB want you to know... then our entire justice system might as well shut down right now because it isn't worth the powder it would take to blow it to hell.

You've set a precedent... opened a door that you might eventually wish had stayed closed... and not only because you lose all rights to complain about someone else... including Bush and Cheney... cherry picking the parts THEY liked and disregarding the rest.

I've already heard the exact same "logic" you're using here applied by staunch "Liberals" and Progressives to people like Manning and Assange... who, whatever your feelings in regard to what they did or didn't do... are certainly not in the same league as Mawlaki so, where's the line between "deserves protection under the law" and "deserves to be executed or imprisoned without trial".

Do you even HAVE any line at all between "us" and the dirtbags who don't deserve to live or are you just gonna take it on a case by case basis and go by your gut feeling?

And lastly, if it's totally irrelevant whether or not HE was an American citizen, then it's also totally irrelevant whether you or I or anyone else is an American citizen if we don't all get the same guarantees under the constitution.

That's why we HAVE the Constitution and why the Constitution has a due process clause in it in the first place... so individuals like you, and I... and even the fricking scum of the earth... get a fair trial by a jury of their peers.

THEN we hang 'em or shoot 'em or whatever is required but resorting to the same barbaric shit we condemn them for is NOT the goddamned answer and certainly does NOT give us the moral high ground you seem to think we're entitled to by some kind of divine right.

GOP_Party of Cruelty

2011-09-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

With cruelty having become one of the major factors in the basic makeup of the Tea Party and... by extension, the GOP... it shouldn't be surprising that we have Republicans applauding to the number of people Rick Perry has killed, including at least one that was most likely innocent and Cheebus only knows how many more that may not have been guilty of the crimes of which they were accuses.

It's no wonder that a few paid AstroTurf professional shit stirrers can incite a crowd of ignorant yokels to boo and deride an active duty soldier serving in a war zone simply because of that soldier's sexual orientation.

The spectacle of Eric Cantor denying disaster relief to victims of Hurricanes and tornadoes and leaving people to sink or swim on their own... while at the same time pushing FEMA to EXPEDITE relief for some paltry damage a few of his crony constituents claim to have suffered in that week kneed excuse for an earthquake that had the media outdoing itself in trying to make Pulitzer material out of it.

We've come to expect these people to openly advocate letting anyone who can't afford to contribute sufficiently to the offshore accounts of the major insurance companies simply crawl off in a corner and die rather then do anything that might save their life. It's simply the Republican way.

These are simply cruel and thoughtless people motivated by greed and their own self need without any capacity for concern for the rest of the human race. As far as they're concerned, the entire universe revolves around their Wall Street paymasters and... by inclusion... they themselves and the other 7 billion people in the world exist only to serve them and indeed, any more people than is absolutely necessary for that purpose are surplus and need to die or be killed off anyway.

Katrin vanden Huevel @ The Nation:Terrible Ten in Congress (Emphasis added)

According to the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey released on September 22, for too many people in Kentucky's 5th District, 2010 was not a good year: nearly 27 percent of the district's more than 175,000 people lived in poverty, including 34 percent of children and more than one in four women. Nearly 20 percent of the district's constituents had no health insurance.

You might think that the good news for residents of the 5th is that their congressman, Republican Hal Rogers, has enormous power and influence over Congress's spending decisions as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. You'd be wrong.

The widespread pain of his constituents didn't stop Rogers from voting to cut food stamps and healthcare for those same women and kids. It didn't stop him from voting for the "cut, cap and balance" proposal that would have cost this dangerously weak economy another 700,000 jobs. Nor did it stop him from voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that the only positive sign on the insurance front is the declining rate of uninsured young adults ages 18-24, now that they can stay on their parents' plan thanks to healthcare reform.

Rogers did manage to cast a "yes" vote for new tax cuts for millionaires though.
For his callousness to the suffering of his own constituents, and voting in direct opposition to their needs, Rogers was named to "The Terrible Ten" in Congress by Half in Ten, a national campaign to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years. "Its a question of accountability," says Melissa Boteach, manager of Half in Ten. "These ten members represent districts and states with some of the highest poverty rates in the country, and yet have voted for job-killing budget bills and deep cuts to our nation's safety net. Its a mismatch too stark to be ignored."

Rogers has company in the Terrible Ten that hails from the Bluegrass State-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who feigns a genteel manner as he votes time and again to gut our government's assistance to poor people and the dwindling middle-class.

Rounding out the group are: Republican Congressmen Blake Farenthold (TX), Mike Rogers (AL), Steve Pearce (NM) and Paul Gosar (AZ); and Republican Senators from the two states with the highest child poverty rates-Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby of Alabama, and Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, where 27 percent and 32 percent of kids live in poverty, respectively.

More good info at the link, including the truth about America's "War on Poverty" which... just like every other one of our now infamous "Wars" on something or other... was never meant by Wall Street to be "won". The sad fact about this one though is that we WERE actually winning it for a change. We had made MAJOR accomplishments in reducing poverty in the United States.

Not any more though. Not with people like this bunch in charge. They've managed to undo much of what we had been able to accomplish and are gnawing steadily at what's left. And remember these ten miserable little bastards are only the representative tip of the iceberg. The rest of them... and especially the Tea Party contingent... are as foaming at the mouth rabid about kicking the rest of us to the curb as they are.

It IS the party of cruelty after all.

Is The (Tea) Party Over?

2011-09-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

I've ranted long and often about the low life riffraff that make up the rank and file of the purely AstroTurf Tea Party and how they have allowed themselves to be manipulated... at their own expense and to their own detriment... by monied interests into helping destroy the basic fabric of our society in order to help a few billionaires gorge themselves on even more money and power.

Now there appears to be mounting evidence that some of them... at least the ones who have managed to jump start their brains and get them coughing and wheezing along on at least one cylinder again... are starting to realize just what it is that they've been conned into doing and that they might be starting to think about backing away from the wanton destruction and the slash and burn tactics being employed by their leaders.

From Andy Kroll @ MOJO: Americans Dislike the Tea Party More Than Ever Before

It's hard out there for a tea partier.

The upstart conservative movement was all the rage in the summer of 2009, and channeled that energy into a wave of victories in the 2010 midterm elections, sending dozens of hard-line, intransigent Republicans to Congress. However, a new CNN/ORC poll (PDF) out Tuesday shows that the pendulum of public opinion has swung away from the tea party.

Just 28 percent of Americans hold favorable views of the tea party, an all-time low in the 19 months that CNN/ORC pollsters have gauged Americans' feelings about the movement. At the same time, 53 percent of Americans think poorly of the tea party, an all-time high. According to CNN/ORC, the movement's popularity peaked in the spring of 2010, when 38 percent of Americans said they liked the tea party and only 36 percent said they didn't.

Many of the things that the Tea Party members are angry about are the same things that I myself am angry about.

The difference is that many of us... once we get past the almost inevitable initial knee jerk reaction to whatever the latest turd to roll downhill happens to be... can look at the situation objectively and start looking back up the hill and digging up empirical data to see who's actually DOING the turd rolling and channel our anger at the real perps.

The Tea Partiers on the other hand, lack the curiosity or possibly the intellectual capacity to do so and simply look for someone to TELL them who their enemies are and then react accordingly. The Wall Street sponsored Republican party... through it's 24/7 hate radio/TV totally one sided noise machine called the "mainstream media"... has been only too happy to fill that role and keep them well supplied with bullshit on that score.

The simple fact is that Tea Partiers have been duped by the very people that they should should have been raging against having... due largely to their own intellectual laziness... been lulled into a false sense of being "informed" by their unwillingness to actually look behind all the images and sound bites being poured out incessantly by the Wall Street/GOP propaganda machine.

The hope is that these numbers indicate a slowly increasing awareness of that, one that will eventually lead to the re-realization that each and every one of the other 99% of us is floating in the same small boat in a vast ocean of crap and we either get our asses together and start looking out for each other instead of the Wall Street bloodsuckers, or it's going to inundate all of us.

Optimism? You know me better than that. Hope? Always room for a little, eh?

Rush Actually Goes There

2011-09-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

Since His Porkiness has been trying to draw parallels between Nazis and the Democratic party, I though it fitting to dig up this old chestnut. It has updated graphics to make it a little more contemporary but it still remains one of the best audio pastiches ever put together.

Young GOP's Racist Bake Sale At Berkley

2011-09-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

Obviously, Republican larvae are just as racist and full of contempt for anyone not them as dear old Mumsy and daddy.

From my email feed from @couragecampaign:

Dear Tom,

Heard about the racist cupcakes at Berkeley? Yep, the Berkeley College Republicans are hosting a bake sale, with different prices for different races.
White/Caucasian: $2.00
Asian/Asian American: $1.50
Latino/Hispanic: $1.00
Black/African American: $0.75
Native American: $0.25
$0.25 OFF FOR ALL WOMEN
They call this "satire" in opposition to a bill (SB 185) that would allow public universities to consider race, gender, ethnicity and national/geographic origin in admissions. Want to take a stand?

The bill is on the governor's desk right now. Respond to the Republican youth movement and tell Governor Brown to support this bill!

Since the passage of Prop 209 (which prohibited public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity) minority admission rates have plummeted at Berkeley. The admission rate for African American students dropped from 47.8% in 1997 (before Prop 209) to 15.9% ten years later; admission rate for Latinos dropped from 44.4% to 19.3 in the same time period.It's unbelievable that young Republicans think they can get away with stunts like this.

Thanks for your work on this,
Rick, Sarah, Arisha, Caitlin, Domingo, Eddie and the rest of the Courage Team

Sure supports the theory that racism and bigotry are integral parts of whatever it is that makes a Republican a Republican, doesn't it?

Ask a Medicare Recipient

2011-09-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

If you want to know what's really going on with Medicare beneficiariesthese days, you don't need to ask analpundits or economists or politicians. Just aska Medicare beneficiary. I'll bet every one of you knows more than onesuch.

I'd like to share this email I received this morning from a reader in Florida in regard to the no cuts in medicare meme. Not only have there been cuts in services, largely due to cuts in reimbursements, there have also been fairly large increases in costs in those cases where you can still get a doctor to treat you.

One more time, when you're praising the benefits of the ACA, take the time to reflect on folks who are going without or paying through the nose to make it happen.

Thanks for your rant re Medicare cuts. I received my 'Changes to Medicare' booklets from United Healthcare (AARP Choice Plan Complete (Florida advantage plan)) just last week. Apparently, beginning January 1 2012 I will be paying specialists $40 instead of $30, 40% instead of 30% for overall, $5900 instead of $4750 for out of pockets, the medicine gap starts lower & finishes higher, $375 a day for 1st 5 days of hospitalization instead of $290, diagnostic cardiac tests from once a year to once every 5 years, and on and on.

Oh, and don't even think about riding in an ambulance! The good news is that if I just go to the emergency room my total out of pocket is $50. Utter BS, but very expensive BS for the disabled...

When my mother died, the ambulance bill for the five mile ride to the hospital was $1298 dollars (of which Medicare paid around $200) and I got billed for the rest. And THAT was 15 years ago. I shudder to think what they charge now.

This problem is simply not solvable as long as this country has a for profit model for health care. Too many people and corporations involved, all of whom think they should be millionaires and billionaires for doing something that should be done simply for the common good.

Other developed nations have learned that lesson... although I am given to understand that thanks largely to the efforts of the multinational insurance corporations, the UK is sadly unlearning at least parts of it. Obviously the insurance tentacle of the Wall Street octopus won't be happy until it controls health care in all of the first world countries and the politicians in those countries won't be happy until they're getting their share of the graft from the insurance companies.

Doesn't leave a hell of a lot for you and me, does it?

Lewis Black_Apple Juice & Chaz

2011-09-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

"We Won't Cut Benefits"_Bullshit!

2011-09-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

OK, this is totally #$@ked up. Not just #$@ked up but hugely, massively #$@ked up. I should be used to it by now but I'm not and I seriously doubt that I will ever GET used to it.There are only two possible explanations for some of the unbelievably unbelievable crap coming out of both congress and this current administration right now... either the people running this country are (A) individually and collectively suffering from terminal stupidity or (B) they think I am.

I'm talking... in this instance... about the constant repetition of the "We will not accept cuts in Medicare benefits for current beneficiaries" meme being being played like a three stringed fiddle every time the subject of Medicare comes up... at the same time cuts are BEING made in Medicare benefits for current beneficiaries.

How stupid would I have to be to accept anything these people say on the subject at face value anymore? Having never attained that level of stupid, I have no way of knowing of course, but as far as I'm concerned, only (A) applies here.

I don't know... maybe it's a case of having to be there to understand. Far too many people think that the ACA is just so blinking wonderful because more people are going to have coverage and preexisting conditions have to be covered and kids can stay on mommy and daddy's policies as long as they're in school.

These are indeed good things... wonderful things even. I'm 100% for every single one of them. But in every post or article talking up all these wonderful benefits being provided under the ACA, I've never seen anything in regard to where the money is coming from to fund them.

Here's where the money was supposed to come from: (Wikipedia)

The Act's provisions are intended to be funded by a variety of taxes and offsets. Major sources of new revenue include a much-broadened Medicare tax on incomes over $200,000 and $250,000, for individual and joint filers respectively, an annual fee on insurance providers, and a 40% tax on "Cadillac" insurance policies. There are also taxes on pharmaceuticals, high-cost diagnostic equipment, and a federal sales tax on indoor tanning services. Offsets are from intended cost savings such as improved fairness in the Medicare Advantage program relative to traditional Medicare.

How many of those new taxes have been enacted? I'm still looking for that information but right now it's beginning to look like exactly none of them. I can't find any record of any recent tax increases that would have elicited the usual howls of outrage from the GOP and then have been instituted anyway in spite of them.

So where's the money coming from to fund these new services? Well, it did say "taxes and OFFSETS" and you do have that one little sentence there at the end that mentions "offsets" and then gives one extremely ambiguous example as if that was the only area in which offsetting was going to be taking place. Not the case obviously, but as propaganda, it accomplishes its purpose.

Of course we all know that money for any new program that doesn't carry a mandate for funding and for which virtually no new taxes have been specifically levied is going to come entirely from offsets and from there it's a simple and entirely logical step to understanding that MOST of those offsets are going to take place in existing medical coverages for the elderly and poor which IS the case.

Medicaid has been pretty much gutted in regard to those services that the elderly most often require and there have been several under the table cuts in Medicare services, largely in the form of cuts in reimbursements to providers that have resulted in a loss of services that most elderly poor people depended on. I've already written about the virtual impossibility of people like me seeing specialists unless they happen to be looking for tax writeoffs at the time we get sick.

It's also getting harder and harder to even see your primary provider as the public health clinics face an increasing patient load from the increased number of unemployed and uninsured people. I'm having to currently book my regular appointments 3-4 weeks in advance and am advised that if I an acute illness or injury in the meantime to go to the emergency room or the urgent care facility for treatment.

Even now a new 11% cut in reimbursements to nursing homes and assisted care facilities... approved in July and set to take effect in less than a week is threatening seniors yet again:

Mad Floridian's Journal @ Dermocratic Underground.com:

Nursing home operators are now looking for ways to cut spending in preparation of Medicare budget cuts that will take effect Oct. 1. The 11.1% rate slash will be applied to Medicare reimbursements paid to nursing home facilities that provide post-acute care and the news is shaking industry at all levels. Industry stock prices plummeted on the news, plans for new facilities are being abandoned and large facility operators are scrambling to offset what will amount to tens of millions of dollars in unreimbursed costs. For more on this continue reading the following article from National Real Estate Investor.

Jane Adler @ NuWire:

The nursing home industry suffered a startling setback July 29 when the federal government announced that Medicare rates will be slashed by 11.1% starting Oct. 1.

The unexpected rate cut has sent nursing home operators scrambling to figure out how to pare expenses. Stocks of publicly traded nursing home companies plummeted by as much as 50% on the first day of trading after the announcement.

..""We were stunned by the announcement," says John Taylor, president and CEO at Stonegate Senior Living, a Texas-based nursing home developer and operator. "We did not expect this."

The cuts are being made to Medicare reimbursements paid to nursing facilities for seniors receiving post acute care. This care is provided to Medicare recipients recovering from surgery or an illness who require rehabilitative services before retuning home.

Mad Floridian's Journal @ Dermocratic Underground.com:

..."Large adjustments to home health payments will have a significant and alarming impact on the financial viability of home health providers, says NAHC, which could threaten access to a system of care that many seniors prefer.CMS contended in its proposal that the adjustment was warranted because there has been limited change in patient acuity in the past few years, but NAHC countered by saying there is strong evidence showing patients to be sicker than ever and in need of the extensive care that has made care costs rise significantly.

So once again the elderly and poor... at best on fixed incomes and with no way to make up the losses... are being kicked to the curb to fund services for the middle class... just as has been the case throughout what is essentially the 21st century's Great Depression.

I think right now... knowing what we're up against and that there are no quick and easy answers... that I would settle for those folks who think that the Affordable Care Act is so wonderful because it solves some problems for people in THEIR particular demographic... at least tossing in a simple acknowledgement that it's not being provided free of charge. SOMEBODY... SOMEWHERE... is paying for it and in this particular case, it's the people in MY demographic.

You're welcome.

Trash Is As Trash Does

2011-09-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

You may have seen me madder than I am right now but I guarantee you, you have NEVER seen me as disgusted as I am with the nine miserable cretins that have the fucking gall to run around publicly claiming that they're qualified to lead this country and that stood on that stage last night and let this happen.

Nine people stood on that goddamned stage. Nine people... I don't care what Mr. Frothy Q. Mixture says... heard the audience boo the gay active duty soldier that called from Iraq to ask a question. Nine people pretended NOT to have heard. One admitted LATER that he heard it but didn't speak up which means that he could at least admit that he was a #@%king coward but that doesn't redeem his ass. And if he heard it, they all heard it.

And not a swinging dick among them had the goddamned guts to even acknowledge what he or she had heard, let alone stand up for that young man who is in a place none of them have ever had to worry about being in... doing things that none of them have ever had to worry about doing... largely BECAUSE of them and all the other pimps and whores just like them.

One or two of them managed to look a little uncomfortable but not a #@%king one of them opened their mouths to defend this young man who is going way beyond his duty to a country that treated him like shit before he went and that will treat him like shit when and if he comes home, from being jeered... quite possibly for money... by a gaggle of low life white trash, most of whom wouldn't be fit to kiss this young man's ass.

Not a #@%king one. If they're going to run my country the way they run their debates and rallies, then the answer has got to be no. There is no way we can let one of these useless pimples on Wall Street's ass get his or her hands on this country.

And that means that every goddamned one of you out there who wants to primary Obama or stay home or vote third party had better goddamned well be thinking about it one more time before you make that stupid decision.

I don't give a rat's if you're not happy with some of the stuff that goes down. I'm not happy with a lot of it either, as I've said right here many times. But you let a Perry or a Bachmann or a Romney get their corporate hooks into the White House and as far as I'm concerned, you're just as much the enemy as they themselves are

As for those "audiences"... In every god damned one of these "debates" so far the crowd that turns out to watch these nine worthless little rabbit turds vie for the highest office in this land... solely by trying to drag it down to their level... has done something utterly reprehensible, something that proves just how utterly disgusting and vile the Republican "base" has become.

I'm truly starting to believe the people doing this are in fact the same little knot of low life agitators every time... being bussed from venue to venue by the Tea Party Express and actually PAID to stir up exactly the kind of shit that we've seen not once... not twice... but at every single one of the three poop slinging contests they've held so far. You know... just in case the actual locals that come out aren't low life and trashy enough.

Whatever the case, these candidates have so far refused to take a stand against this kind of behavior and for common ordinary decency and in my book, which tells me at least one of two things... that they AGREE with the attitudes displayed by these agent provocateurs... or that they simply haven't got the intestinal fortitude to stand up to them when they drag the whole process down gutter levels. Hell, I don't know, maybe both.

In my book, either case automatically disqualifies them for the office they're showing so little respect for. Trash is Trash and we don't need trash in our White House. That's right crackers... I said OUR White House.

As for all you Democrats, vote for Obama or suffer the goddamned consequences but if you let a Republican back in the White House, don't EVER whine to me about the ass kicking you're getting because I may just decide to get in a kick or two of my own.

WTF Was Perry Trying To Say?

2011-09-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

Rick Perry shows himself yet again to be George W Bush minus even W's infinitesimally small intellect. He once again demonstrates his phenomenal lack of knowledge in regard to foreign affairs and tendency to lapse into incoherent babbling and drooling when asked a question not easily answered by the standard ten second sound bytes and talking points supplied by his corporate leash holders.

And THIS is a person whom many... although fewer today that yesterday and hopefully more than tomorrow... think qualified to be the President of the United States? Perry would have to go back to school for four years to qualify as a rock.
Sourced from a Mark Thompson article in Time: Of Stupid Answers and Arms Sales

We don't dip our toes into domestic politics too much here on Battleland -- that's why TIME has Swampland. But sometimes we just can't resist. In Thursday night's debate, a questioner asked Texas Governor Rick Perry what he would do if he got a 3 a.m. phone call saying Pakistan's nukes had fallen into the hands of the Taliban. His answer, in toto:
Well, obviously before you ever get to that point, you have to build a relationship in that region. That's one of the things that this administration has not done. Just yesterday, we found out through Admiral Mullen that Haqqani has been involved with, and that's a terrorist group, directly associated with the Pakistani country. To have a relationship with India, to make sure that India knows that they are an ally of the United States. For instance, when we had the opportunity to sell India the upgraded F-16s, we chose not to do that. We did the same thing with Taiwan. The point is, our allies need to understand clearly that we are their friends, we will be standing by there with them. Today, we don't have those allies in that region that can assist us if that situation that you talked about were to become a reality.
This guy flew planes for the Air Force? He wants to be President? His baffling, incomprehensible non-answer is akin to what Winston Churchill said of Russia: it's a riddle in a mystery inside an enigma. Apparently, the only way to keep Pakistan's nukes out of Taliban hands is to sell them upgraded Texas-built F-16 jet fighters. Alas -- Pakistan already has Texas-built F-16 fighters, and they've been upgraded -- see here, here, here, and here.

What is it with Texas repubicans? They give us perhaps the most disconnected, ignorant and intellectually incurious president in the history of the country, the one that was well on his way to going down in history as the Worst. President. Ever. Then four years later, they serve up perhaps the only politician in the country even more disconnected, ignorant and intellectually incurious than Bush was... at least if we discount Michele Bachmann, which we obviously can now.

Why does every candidate the GOP presents (seriously) for our consideration... the ones they all jump up and down and cheer for, anyway... have to be thoroughly evil, terminally stupid or a combination of both?

Lest We Forget_Why We Fight

2011-09-21T21:21:00.001-07:00

THIS is why we have to have neverending wars... so we can keep blowing people's shit up. It's just too bad we have to blow so many of them up WITH their shit.
We go to foreign countries and blow all their shit up and then the billionaires running our Military Industrial Complex get richer yet by selling them replacements for the shit we blew up. Latest example? Flying machines.

U.S. to sell 18 F-16 fighter jets to Iraq: Pentagon

The United States is "very close" to sealing a deal to sell 18 F-16 fighter jets to Iraq, a top Pentagon official announced Wednesday.Iraq had frozen the $4.2 billion deal earlier this year amid the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings, but the prospects were "promising" for the contract to now move ahead, said General Russ Handy, head of the US air forces in Iraq.

"They are seeking to buy a larger number of F-16s (than) they had originally, up to 36," he told reporters.
"This first letter of offer and acceptance is for 18 of them, so we hope to hear very soon, but no final word yet on that."

The US military mission in Iraq is winding down ahead of a complete pullout of American troops by the end of the year but Washington is keen to sell as much equipment to Baghdad's fledgling security forces as possible.

The United States Department Of ~~War~~ Defense_Making the world ~~safe~~ profitable for General Dynamics.

I Don't WANT To Live In The 1850s

2011-09-21T12:33:00.001-07:00

One of the most disheartening things for me in this whole hateful, divisive Tea Party thing is that I no longer have anyone from my own generation that I can actually relate to. People that I have been lifelong friends with whose families... being mostly farm workers and ranch hands... were dirt poor forced onto the welfare rolls or to accept assistance more than once themselves when they were growing up.

People who, if not for the government surplus commodities programs would literally have had nothing to eat at times... people who depended solely on our one county hospital for free medical services at the time... people whose parents had managed to make it through the depression years prior to the war by working for the WPA and other "stimulus" programs or scrabbling a bare existence out of running a few head of horses or cows and planting a few acres of corn or wheat in parched dust bowl western Oklahoma or Kansas or Texas ... and most importantly, people who survived because back in those days people could depend on each other when times were bad.

As I say, virtually 100% of these people... my lifelong friends who grew up in the same places and under the same conditions that I did... are among the most vociferous and hateful of the Tea Party base, spewing racial, religious and class hatred as if they were something special, and busting their butts to deny to their own children the help and assistance that they themselves needed and relied on from time to time.

I could understand if it were a solely generational thing resulting from our leadership being made up mainly of mostly rich spoiled Gen Xers who never had to work for a flipping thing in their lives (it is that, of course) but I can NOT for the life of me figure out why some of the most hateful of the TP rank and file are people who might not have been here today... or at least might not have lived quite as comfortable a life as they did... had it not been for the very programs and policies their own parents worked and fought and sacrificed for and which they are now doing their best to destroy. And this pertains especially those programs from which today, many of them are drawing sustenance such as Social Security or Medicare.

This whole flipping scenario simply does not make sense to me. How does a generation like mine, whose parents survived some of the hardest times in American history mainly by working together and helping each other in times of need or sorrow... raise a generation that would throw their own children in front of a speeding train to put another dollar in the offshore bank accounts of the corporate oligarchs and Wall Street bankers?

How did we beget a generation of people who war for money, cheer at the number of people Rick Perry has condemned to death, shout out that people without insurance should simply be allowed to die, spew racial and religious hatred as if it were mainstream thought, put likely innocent (black) people to death while letting likely guilty (white) people go free or... who would deny their neighbors basic help in times of catastrophe and the myriad other examples of hatefulness, selfishness and greed we see on open display today unless there's something in it for them?

I sometimes feel like the whole country has been shoved into a time machine and shipped back to about the 1850s and while the 1850s is not a time I would have chosen in, as long as we have the GOP/TP I don't think we're gonna get a hell of a lot of choice.

Nader_The Ultimate Emo?

2011-09-20T12:13:00.000-07:00

I don't suppose there's any real connection here... or at least one that someone like me could ever find... but dammit somebody on the right is sharing their campaign booty with Wrinkled Ralph to sabotage Obama and it could as well be her as anyone else.

Wendy Gittleson @ Addicting Info: [http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/09/19/ralph-nader-a-big-fan-of-sarah-palin/ Ralph Nader A Big Fan Of Sarah Palin]

Ralph Nader, the man who is eternally praised by the professional left as a true spokesman for Progressives, has nothing but nice things to say about Sarah Palin.

“I think she’s a lot smarter than most people credit her,” says Nader. “Judging by her comments, she is squarely in the camp of conservative populism, opposed to corporatism and its corporate state.”

Conservative populism? Is that what you call it? And all this time I thought it was nothing but arrested development at about the prom queen level and an overriding desire to always be the center of attention. Silly me, eh?

According to Nader, ”When she was governor of Alaska she really did take on the oil industry, and [she also] approved a statewide referendum that resulted in the first state in the Union to regulate cruise lines and their pollution offshore. So there is a precursor to these remarks.”

Nader did say he disagreed with her on her support for wars.

Palin’s recent rhetoric could be called populist…maybe, but her history is anything but. Just last month, she agreed with Mitt Romney that corporations were people. In the exact same speech that Nader was praising, she called for an elimination of corporate income tax. Palin is the same woman who turned “Drill Baby Drill” into a campaign slogan…hardly populist.

PoliticusUSA sums it up this way:
Palin likes to take populist jabs at the “permanent political class”, but Palin has been in politics for quite some time now. In fact, she’s been making her living off of the government since 1992. Palin is 47 years old, so that means that she’s been in government for 25 years, 28 if you count making money off of the promise that you might run.
Ralph Nader is doing now what Ralph Nader does best. He is playing cat and mouse with Progressives and with our electoral system. It’s been many many years since Nader was as critical of the Republican party as the Democratic party. This seems to be no exception.

Ralph Nader is doing what Ralph Nader does best alright. He's attempting to siphon off enough votes from PBO to make it feasible... if the need arises... to steal the election, exactly as he and they did in 2000.

On The Rogue

2011-09-18T10:54:00.001-07:00

I simply can't abide the Wasilla Squidbillies or anything or anyone even remotely connected to them but in all fairness I would have to say I expected better from Joe McGinnis (in spite of the low rent hatchet job he did on the other book on the same subject).

The excerpts I've seen from his book make it appear to be little more than an extended National Enquirer series... especially it's reliance on "unnamed sources" and "anonymous insiders" as "support" for contentions and anecdotal offerings.

I'm one of those people who don't buy anything attributed to "anonymous sources". Not only does it make it impossible to verify the statement with the source that the statement was even made, I also think that if a person is afraid to stand up and own whatever statement they're making, it renders the statement null and void as far as any credibility is concerned.

Joe McGinnis is a journalist... he knows damned well that "verify" is part of the sequence leading to publication and he knows just as well that a statement from an "anonymous source" makes verification impossible.

So what we have from Joe McGinnis in the form of this "definitive" tome on the life and times of America's most famous white trash family is little more than an oversize gossip column full of the "He said" side of a he said/she said pissing contest.

If you are capable of being totally objective... which means you would have to be able to suspend already formulated opinions of the woman based on personal observations... which I'm ready to admit is totally impossible, especially in this case... there is no more compelling reason to believe the anecdotes in this book than there is to disbelieve them. Palin lovers will deny all of them while Palin haters will embrace all of them and in the end, nothing of any significance has been accomplished.

All that having been said though, as a person with nothing but contempt for the whole Palin clan... my own personal thought on the book is that even if you only believe half the stuff in the thing, it does confirm my own long held opinion that the Palins are nothing more than a Pickup load of white trash who were thrust into a position that has allowed them to cash in on Wall Street's need to play to the lowest common denominators in our society in order to stifle meaningful opposition while they complete their mayhem.

After it's all said and done,she... and all her ignorant and incurious followers... will be horrified to find out that they're just as expendable as the rest of us as far the Masters of the Universe are concerned. In our current world of bread and circuses, Ms. Palin just happens to be the most obnoxious, amoral and overpaid clown, that's all.

Watching the wingers sink in the swamp they themselves created would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it only affected those who helped Wall Street bring off the destruction of democracy in this country. Unfortunately, the fact that they will have helped destroy the rest of us first makes it seriously unfunny.

Oh Crap! NADER Again???

2011-09-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

Damn, I've been afraid this was going to happen but I figured it would be the Obama haters and that they'd at last come up with a reasonably serious challenger. Instead we get the Wrinkled Ralph Roadshow and Bomb Throwing Extravaganza again.

All this guy has ever done is screw things up for someone else. When he loses the primary, I guess we can expect him to do the damned third party thing again too, eh?

In his last foray into carrying water for the Republicans, he took Republican money and helped Bush steal the 2000 election by siphoning off enough Democratic votes to make the theft look at least plausible.

His goal has never been to actually BE president... only to stop someone else from being president. As you can see by his own statements, he has no notion that he would win this time either but with a ton of cash from corporate/Republican entities he hopes he COULD probably once again prevent the Democratic candidate from winning which is all that's actually required of him.

By the way, look where he went to make his announcement.

Eric Dolan @ RR: Ralph Nader: U.S. is a two party dictatorship

Ralph Nader appeared Thursday on Fox News to discuss a democratic primary he was organizing against President Barack Obama to "hold his feet to the fire.""The important thing here is if he's not challenged from the progressive-liberal wing of his party, that elected him, it'll be a very dull campaign, people will not be very enthusiastic, more and more people will stay home, it's not good for him," Nader said. "If he's a good debater, if he knows his facts, he'll want to be challenged because he'll come out much sharper."

When asked about the possibility of a third party candidate succeeding in the 2012 presidential election, Nader said it would be a hurdle for anyone who wasn't a billionaire.

"It's a two party dictatorship unless you're worth billions of dollars."

Well, you're right there Ralph. But with dozens of newly minted corporate "citizens" out there willing to give you a few million out of THEIR billions, I expect you'll have plenty with which to accomplish your usual train wrecking operation. After all, it worked great last time, right?

OK, Who The $%#! Is Matthew Vadum?

2011-09-15T18:19:00.000-07:00

And more to the point, why is anyone giving him a bully pulpit to spew utter nonsense like this and why is the media repeating his crap? Or do they really not know that thanks largely to them, ACORN doesn't even exist anymore.

This is so far beyond ludicrous that it's... LUDICROUS... and yet this hamster looking little dweeb... no snark intended, he does look exactly like a hamster... is all over my news feeds and popping up throughout my TTL for the last couple of days.

From R.J. Reilly @ TPM Vadum: Obama's Jobs Bill Could Give 'Un-American' ACORN $15 Billion To Help Poor People Vote

A non-existent organization that previously helped poor people "destroy the country" by voting could get up $15 billion in taxpayer money under Obama's jobs bill, according to conservative columnist Matthew Vadum.

Vadum, who previously wrote that it was "profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country," writes that a draft version of the jobs bill "makes ACORN, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), and a phalanx of leftist groups that regularly feed at the public trough eligible for funding."
"Section 261 of the bill provides $15 billion for 'Project Rebuild.' Grants would be given to 'qualified nonprofit organizations, businesses or consortia of eligible entities for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed-upon properties and for the stabilization of affected neighborhoods,'" Vadum writes.

"Radical groups like ACORN won't get the whole $15 billion, though, because they will have to compete with state and local governments for the money," he continues.

The fact that this man is attacking ACORN... apparently oblivious to the fact that ACORN ceased to exist the last time a bunch of assholes like him decided that poor people voting was a threat to the security of the nation and that only the "upper classes" should be allowed to vote... renders null and void anything he has to say about anything. Someone that stupid simply should not be paid for spreading their particularly contagious and probably terminal strain of stupidity. At least not if you live in that part of the universe that follows the normal laws of physics and where even Quantum Theory can't begin to explain that kind of apparent disconnect.

But that's SOP for the GOP these days... they say it, the media runs with it and Bubba, sucks it up like a cat at a bowl of cream never realizing that once they no longer need him, he's just as big a target as the uppity neighbor across the street who used to make more than him but then got his job shipped off to Gassyass Belchistan and who can't get another job because doesn't already have one. Guess that'll teach HIS ass, eh Bubba?

When Nobody Guards The Hen House, The Weasels Suck The Eggs

2011-09-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

One thing we need to get straight... the media is not "failing us". Failure indicates an honest effort to do something that was somehow prevented from happening by circumstances beyond our control. In the case of the mainstream media in this country and what used to be it's mandate to inform the people of the true state of affairs that govern their lives, there is no longer any mandate or effort to inform the people of the truth... indeed there is no longer any desire to do so. Indeed again, the SCOTUS has ruled that the news industry has every right to lie to its readers/viewers any time they feel it fits their agenda to do so.

Therefore failure can be excluded when contemplating the possible reasons a once noble and respected profession has turned into a nothing more than a bunch of multimillionaire rock star personalities reading scripts written in Wall Street boardrooms and behind locked doors in Washington.
In fact, our media are quite successful given their new low standards, quite good at what they do. Journalism 2.0 is a far different animal than Journalism 1 was and it shares basically none of the qualities it did back in the middle of the last century. I know because I studied Journalism 50 years ago when it was still something you could rely on to give you the straight scoop and an honest answer to an honest question.

This was before a couple of Journalists and a publisher and editor or two at what was then one of the most respected papers in the country played a huge part in bringing down the foul rat's nest that was the Nixon administration and set the Wall Street agenda back by about 40 years or so.

It was a lesson well learned by the robber barons and especially by those foul remnants of what was probably the most corrupt regime of the 20th century. People like Cheney and Rumsfeld and their ilk... hereafter referred to as "the ilk"... were prime movers in that administration and when it crumbled around their ears, their only thought was to immediately start out again on their quest for total control of America's government and to make sure they got it right this time. They've been hammering away ever since.

Continued After The Break

The lesson the ilk had learned from the Nixon Debacle was that for a coup to work in a representative republic based on democratic principals, you require half plus one percent of the population to be a certain type of individual. The people making up this demo must be almost universally ignorant and politically ill informed because ignorant and ill informed people are those most easily controlled and who can be most easily manipulated by propaganda to support causes that they lack the means to understand are not in their best interests.

It helps too if they're not only ignorant, but willfully so... in fact the ideal water carrier for the corporatocracy actually takes great pride in his ignorance and is actually scornful of people who actually take the time to read and are able to do simple sums and figures... especially in regard to things like history and civics and economics and climate. Oh, and they can only accept information if it consists of droning repetitions of right wing talking points over long periods of time and then only in about 10-20 second sound bites and one liners involving more innuendo than fact. Anything more makes their little heads hurt.

They must be super "patriotic"... even though few of them could tell you the actual meaning of the word... to the point of cultism. They have to believe that the American way... no matter what the ilk has decided that IS this week... is not only the right way but the ONLY way approved by God. They believe themselves to be the only "real" Americans and will only listen to those politicians who are able to convince them that they too are "real" Americans, just like them.

And this is almost always an easy task for the ilk, especially if you can toss in the babbling of a few right wing fundamentalist preachers who call themselves "Christians" yet follow paths that not only have nothing to do with the tenets and mores actually taught by Jesus Christ as they have come down to us in the New Testament, but often are at complete odds with them.

All you have to do to be a Christian as far as these folks is a) be ultra right wing and b) SAY you're a Christian. Never mind actually reading about Christ's life in the good book and actually conducting your own as Jesus did his. To a right winger these days, the Real Jesus Christ is not what Christianity is all about. In fact, I Sometimes, actually find myself looking for a new "American Christian" version of the Bible to appear any day now in which all of the actual teachings of Christ have been expunged because they don't fit the agenda today.

To them, the only REAL deity in this country is Bill O'Reilly's White Male Christian Power Structure which they all aspire to be a part of and anything that challenges that deity in any way is unpatriotic to the point of being treasonous and anyone espousing a different ideal for America than that they themselves hold dear "hates America" and "wants America's enemies to win".

The ilk found the core around which they would build this cult of ignorance in the middle and deep south, the old Confederacy. People who, even after a century and a half, still look upon the Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression" and who harbor every one of the same hatreds and prejudices their forebears from the 19th century did. People who are unable to accept that we're all in this together and we eitherget together and ride the tiger or the tiger eats us.

They're easily manipulated by the ilk because the ilk tells them exactly what they want to hear and since this is often the antithesis of anything remotely resembling the truth, they wind up building their entire lives around lies and false premises.

Quite simply, these are the people who can most easily be brainwashed into cheering an inordinate number of executions, celebrate letting uninsured people die, voting to deny disaster relief funds for people (except themselves, of course) who have been impacted by the various "acts of God" that plague all of us, funding for first responders or any of the myriad other failures of common human decency that amaze and dismay those of us with even a spark of humanity left in us.

The ilk couldn't have accomplished this brainwashing... even with such willing subjects... without the willing complicity of the mainstream media which includes all of the major newspapers, most of the major newswires and most especially the broadcast TV networks and the cable news networks which are where most Americans get their "news" these days. In order to control the people, they needed to control the channels of information To those people, something that couldn't happen as long as the media remained at least somewhat independent and relatively honest.

So how did they get around journalism's function as the fourth estate? The same way they get around everything else. The simply bought journalism... just like they do anything or anyone else that might get in their way and refuse to move aside, a prime example of which is the manner in which they bought all three branches of our "checks and balances" government.

Today, they own both political parties, and therefore the government itself, and they also own what used to be the only means the people had of knowing what was really going on behind all those now closed doors and the lead lined sheets that have made a mockery of transparency in government.

They... through their puppets in the government and the media... preach directly to the basest instincts of their willfully ignorant target audience of people who want to be preached to instead of informed. People who are too damned intellectually lazy to add 2+2 and would rather go on believing the ilk when they tell them the answer is 5 than be bothered looking it up for themselves.

Someday... even though it might already be too late to save America... we may reach a point where the other people of Earth can once again be truly enlightened and objective enough to weigh each case of anything on it's individual merits instead of simply assuming the position that the roaring, bleating, jingoism fueled Wall Street propaganda machine tells them they should assume.

If and when that day comes, I wonder if they'll look back at whatever might remain of the United States of America... which should surely be a total pariah nation based on tribalism and xenophobia and shunned by the truly civilized world by then... and wonder how a nation so conceived in ideals like Democracy and Liberty and Equality could have devolved so quickly into just another feudalistic system of a few haves enriching themselves from the labors of a multitude of have nots like those that have existed ever since the first man thought of picking up a rock and killing his neighbor with it just so he could take what that man had.

The answer is in large part going to be that the people were betrayed by those whose existence was once based on telling the truth but who succumbed to the same lust for money and power and fame that corrupted every other trusted institution in the country.

When nobody guards the henhouse, the weasels suck the eggs. Doesn't get much simpler than that.

Garrison Keillor's Description Of The GOP Fits Better Than Ever

2011-09-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

This quote from Garrison Keillor below is perhaps the best definition you'll find anywhere of the Tea Party movement and it was uttered in 2004, before anyone had ever heard of the Tea Party, and was meant then to describe the Conservative Republican apparatus during Bush's first term.

Obviously, even Mr. Keillor didn't realize how much worse things would become once they were out of power and a black man was in the White House.

Today, with the Tea Party having come to it's corporate financed fruition and having totally and even officially taken over the Republican party... and without the direct reference to Bush who is no longer a player... it's an even more perfect description of the GOP today than it was then. Just think about the current Republican slate of presidential candidates while you read it... toss in a McConnell, a Boner, a Ryan or a Cantor or two dozen. See what I mean?

The party of Lincoln and Liberty has been transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brown-shirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch President, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk*._Garrison Keillor 2004

Eff that "more they stay the same" tripe. In any case involving governance in America today, it would be more accurate to simply say that the more things change, the more they suck.

*And as far as I'm concerned, the description of Bush is still accurate... just no longer relevant.

Are We Really 15th In Children's Health Care?

2011-09-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Or is it even worse? Once again, the methods used to come to a statistical conclusion are questionable at best. I think they may have left California... at least the part of it I live in... out of their study altogether.

Amanda Chan @ Huffpo: Best Countries For A Child To Fall Sick In

No one ever wants to see a child become sick -- but, if he or she does, what's the No. 1 country for that to happen, based on how many health-care workers are available to take care of the child?

Not the United States, according to a ranking of 161 countries, compiled by the nonprofit Save the Children. You can find the full ranking here.

The index is based on the number of health care workers (like doctors, nurses and midwives) available for every 10,000 people in a country, as well as their reach and impact on the population. It also factors in the proportion of kids who get vaccinated, as well as mothers who are able to get emergency care during childbirth.

According to the World Health Organization, 23 health care workers per 10,000 people is optimal for mothers and kids to receive the care they need. The U.S. has about 125 health workers for every 10,000 people, coming in at No. 15, according to the Save the Children index.

The bottom-ranking countries on the list were Somalia and Chad, with an average of seven health workers for every 10,000 people.In some of these bottom-ranked countries, health workers are highly concentrated in urban or city areas, thereby making it hard for people in rural environments to get health care, Save the Children reported.

Here are the 10 countries that ranked at the top, for health worker reach and impact -- making them the best countries for a child to fall sick in, according to this scale (Slideshow @ the link) .

This whole methodology can be questioned. We may HAVE 125... or 5 times the optimal requirement... heath workers for every 10K people who can afford to PAY for their services. It certainly doesn't mean that there are 125 people out there who are going to be treating your child if you're poor or indigent and don't have private insurance.

POOR kids get to go to the public clinics where, if we're lucky, they'll get 5 or 6 minutes with a GP fresh off the boat from somewhere east of Lower BhumFhuk or a Doogie Houser type putting in his two years or whatever of treating the commoners to help pay off his student loans... most often they won't even see a doctor but instead will be seen by a PA or an FNP... and none of these people will be pediatricians or specialize in children's problems.

POOR kids may wait months for an appointment with any kind of specialist... if they can get an appointment at all. Medicaid is often a poor child's only method of payment for services and more and more doctors, especially specialists, are banding together... at least in my area... and refusing to accept Medicaid patients because the reimbursements don't "cover their costs".

Obviously, what they mean is that the time to provide definitive treatment to a poor kid could be used to make more money by treating a child whose parents have the ability to pay more but whatever, just having 125 "medical professionals" available doesn't mean that all 125 of them are going to be willing to see your child if you can't pay them what they figure their time is worth.

Most health care providers these days either work for corporations or are corporations unto themselves and corporations do NOT provide health care to people who can't pay their fees if they can possibly avoid it. Try factoring the huge difference between the health care available to the more well off kids and that received by the average child in an average working family into the rather simple minded methodology used by the authors of the above survey and you'll probably find that we rank even lower than 15 on that list.

Well Played, Mr. President

2011-09-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

I wasn't too happy with the whole Hoorah over the timing of Mr. Obama's speech and the notion of giving it on the night of the 8 ring circus that was slated to take place on Wednesday. But in the light of hindsight by damn, it turns out to possibly be one of the better decisions I've seen him make with just the kind of subtle malice aforethought and maybe that hint of nastiness I like best. Of course, the Republican fringe probably won't get it but you can damned well bet McConnell and Boner got it and for me, that's priceless all by itself.

For one thing, Boner accepting the request and then calling back and canceling it after El Puerco squealed like a ... well, like a stuck hog... about it made him (Boner) look like the fricking corporate tool we all know him to be. But BECAUSE we all knew that already, it alone wasn't enough to swing my opinion... I still thought it was a bad move, especially when it wound up with the speech being scheduled at the same time as the opening of the football season and we all know how Americans love their bread and circuses. Besides, I thought it simply made it look as if the President of the goddamned United States of America had to ask Fatass Limbaugh's permission to fart and I didn't care a lot for that.

But lo and behold, the prez actually pulled better TV ratings than the game did and the idiot Republicans that boycotted the speech... like ol' Diaper Dave... in favor of their freaking football parties wound up looking even more stupid than they had looked before they pulled their little stunt. And Broun and his Twitter Town Hall thing? Heh!

According to the LA Times...

Among the cable newsers, Fox News did the best.

. More people watched the speech on FOX than on any other outlet. Of course that was mainly because they figured their favorite analpundits were sure to be ripping it to shreds immediately afterward and it saved them a click or two on the remote but still...

Here are the box scores from Nielsen Co. ...

Broken down by cable networks, Fox News came first with close to 3.4 million (826,000 in the target Adults 25-54 demographic); CNN second, with just north of 1.8 million (645,000 in A25-54); and MSNBC third, with just over 1.6 million (430,000 in the demo).

The jobs speech was moved from Wednesday night -- where it conflicted with the GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and caused logistical problems for House Speaker John A. Boehner -- and moved to Thursday. There, it had the potential of conflicting with the kickoff game for the NFL regular season, featuring the last two Super Bowl champions, with the Green Bay Packers taking on the New Orleans Saints.

So that's what we call an outraged bellow from Boss Hogg these days? A "logistical problem"? Oh well, the simple fact is that Boner and that bunch of whiny little babies wound up with the most egg dribbling down their chins and Mr. Obama actually came off looking rather cool. And the fact that "crowding the kickoff" as the Times puts it saved us from having to listen to some smarmy official rebuttal from some Republican second stringer was gravy. In your face, Pigboy!

No Boondoggles Here... This Is Outright STEALING

2011-09-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

I was doing my usual blog patrol this morning when I ran across a piece by Adam Weinstein @ Mother Jones titled The All-Time 10 Worst Military Contracting Boondoggles.

War profiteers and our new franchised war industry have long been favorite rant subjects of mine and there is hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't uncover some new "boondoggle" that has cost the taxpayers billions of extra bucks. Today, courtesy of MoJo, we get the ten worst and a look at the report itself. Not a bad day's work, actually.

I looked up the definition of boondoggle because I wanted to see what the hell the difference was between a "boondoggle" and outright theft from the taxpayers by government contractors aided and abetted by the very people we elect and/or pay pretty good sums of money to keep that from happening.

Near as I can see, there isn't any. Boondoggle has two definitions, the primary of which has nothing to do with this subject. It's the second one that applies... at least as far as it goes:

: 2. a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft.

That doesn't begin to cover it. "Boondoggle" leaves the weasels too much wiggle room... almost like saying that the massive cost overruns and the shitty slipshod services performed by government contractors could conceivably be due be due to some kind of accident or clumsiness on the part of either or both the contractors and our own government watchdogs and that's simply not the case. And it ALWAYS involves graft of some kind. Check out Boner and the extra engines for the F-35 for a prime example.

It's been years... decades... since any major government project came in under bid and on time and didn't wind up costing the taxpayers 2-3 times the original contract bid... if indeed there were bids... or 2-3 times the original estimates if it's one of the rapidly growing number of no-bid crony contracts our government has become more and more prone to award.

When trillions of dollars worth of government contracts have been issued over a particular length of time and not a god damned one of them has failed to cost the taxpayers Xteen times what they were supposed to, that's no longer an "oopsie". That's fricking grand theft on a scale unimaginable to most normal human beings and our government is in on it right up to Eric Cantor's beady little eyeballs.

And nowhere is the graft and corruption that have become the hallmarks of government procurement and contracting more evident than in the Department of Defense , where to question the billions of dollars that disappear annually, either in cost overruns or simply disappearing off the face of the earth can result in having your patriotism and your very loyalty to your country called into question.

Mr. Weinstein bases his article largely on a report released this week by the the Commission on Wartime Contracting (PDF) that tells us that the government has lost between 31 and 60 million bucks to fraud and waste since the wars started (LINK). Any estimate with a margin of error of 100% like that one has makes me suspect that they haven't even scratched the damned surface yet and also that our government doesn't WANT to hear the truth and they damned sure don't want YOU to hear it.

The top 10 war contractor "boondoggles" in the report are detailed after the break in what Mr. Weinstein calls an "ascending order of egregiousness. Take note that in a number of them we're paying out huge amounts of money that we know damned well is falling into the hands of our enemies and being used to kill our military personnel. Are we the only damned country in the world that funds our enemies just so our freaking corporations can have wars to profiteer from?

10. Welfare for warlords: When the Pentagon hired Afghan big-rig drivers to transport supplies as part of its Host Nation Trucking program, it forgot to guarantee the truckers' safety. So the truckers spent as much as 20 percent of their contract money paying off local bad guys for protection. A 2010 congressional report titled Warlord, Inc. (PDF) concluded that "The HNT contract fuels warlordism, extortion, and corruption, and it may be a significant source of funding for insurgents."

9. The world's most expensive road: In 2007, US planners decided to pave a 64-mile mountain road between the Afghan towns of Khost and Gardez. They figured it would take $69 million to complete, but the cost swelled to $176 million. Much of that was spent on security, including a lot that went to a local big-swinger known as "Arafat," who's now believed to have been working for the insurgents. In May, the New York Times reported that "a stretch of the highway completed just six months ago is already falling apart and remains treacherous."

8. This old base: In the fall of 2007, the Air Force gave $18 million to contractor CH2M HILL for construction work at Camp Phoenix, an Army installation in Afghanistan. The firm hired a shady subcontractor who didn't pay his workers and fled the country with $2 million, which he used to build himself some villas abroad. The unpaid workers walked off with a bunch of generators and other materials. The delays left hundreds of NATO troops without suitable housing for a year and a half. When the contracting commission's Thibault visited the soldiers in their temporary digs, they alerted him (PDF) to the shoddy electrical work: "I just walked in the room and I'm talking to some of the people living there and they say, 'Sometimes when you put the plugs in, if you don't have the right extension, it's just like a sparkler.'"

7. Rent-a-ripoff: Coalition bases in Iraq and Afghanistan tend to be big and rugged, so many units rent locally owned four-wheel-drives for troops to get around the installations. A 2010 survey of US forces in Afghanistan found (PDF) that the Army was spending $119 million annually to lease about 3,000 cars-roughly $40,000 a year per car. Last year, the General Services Administration found that the military ".could lease and maintain 1,000 vehicles for about $19 million per year," or 16 percent of what it had been paying,. Nevertheless, the Army still considers paying a premium for rental cars to be strategically necessary; it's even listed as "civic support" in a manual titled "Money as a Weapon System" (PDF).

6. The Kabul bank bust: This thing's so screwed-up, we wrote a whole explainer about it. Since 2003, the US Agency for International Development has paid $92 million to the accounting giant Deloitte to train executives of the Afghanistan Central Bank. The Central Bank oversaw Kabul Bank, Afghanistan's largest private bank, which had an estimated $900 million in assets loaded with worthless loans. Unsurprisingly, the bank collapsed in 2010, taking the nascent Afghan financial system down with it. (Kabul Bank's founder and CEO explained: "What I'm doing is not proper, not exactly what I should do. But this is Afghanistan.") In effect, USAID paid a Wall Street firm beaucoup bucks to fiddle while the Afghan market burned. "USAID staff learned of serious bank problems from reading about them in the Washington Post. Deloitte never notified the agency," the contracting commission reported.

5. Never leave a mandarin behind: In 2005, the Defense Logistics Agency awarded Swiss-based Supreme Foodservice a fat contract to ship "vitally needed" food to bases in Afghanistan. By the early 2011, the company had billed the government $4.2 billion, but Pentagon investigators found that sum had been padded with hundreds of millions in possible overcharges for things like providing "premium airlift" of fresh fruits and vegetables from the United Arab Emirates. Nevertheless, the company got a two-year extension on its contract, perhaps because the Army general who used to supervise Supreme's DLA contract is now president of the company's US division.

4. Soldiers of misfortune: To keep their profit margins fat, military contractors tend to subcontract on cheap labor from poor nations, a practice that's led to "forced labor, slavery, and sexual exploitation," the commission says. In a trip to Iraq in 2009, commissioners learned about the mostly African and South American guards hired by companies like Triple Canopy, SABRE, and EODT to provide security on big US bases. Among their discoveries: Guards were often ill-equipped, worked unusually long tours with 12-hour shifts, were denied their one-month vacations, and weren't paid until their contracts were finished, essentially forcing them to endure their assignments to the end. The government paid SABRE $1,700 per guard; in turn, SABRE paid its Ugandan recruits $700 a month and pocketed the difference.

3, 2, 1. KBR, KBR, KBR: According to the contracting commission, megacontractor KBR (a.k.a. the contractor formerly known as Halliburton) was paid at least $36.3 billion to provide base support in Iraq for the past eight years. That's slightly less than the government bailouts for Bank of America and Citigroup. But then, the banks eventually returned the money. The commission report details numerous examples of waste by KBR. Where to begin?

There's the kickback from the subcontractors who were awarded a $700 million dining deal in Iraq. (The Department of Justice has filed a claim against KBR for that.) Then there's the $5 million spent on 144 KBR mechanics who worked as little as 43 minutes a month, on average. Inspectors have found that KBR can't account for $100 million worth of its government-furnished property in Iraq. Despite collecting $204 million for electrical work on Iraq bases, KBR's shoddy wiring has been blamed in as many as 12 soldiers' electrocution deaths, including a Special Forces commando who died after he was shocked in a shower stall. The company has also billed Uncle Sam a half-billion dollars to hire Blackwater to provide personal security in Iraq, a big contractor no-no.

Perhaps most troubling is the company's links to purported human trafficking. In late 2008, reporters discovered a windowless warehouse on the Camp Victory complex outside Baghdad, where about 1,000 men from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka were being held in prisonlike conditions. The men had been hired by a KBR subcontractor. Around the same time, another KBR subcontractor was sued for allegedly spiriting Asian workers into Iraq with false promises of high-paying jobs.

And the waste continues. When the troop drawdown in Iraq started, writes the commission, "KBR accounted for about half of contractor personnel in Iraq. When bases closed and its personnel left those bases, KBR merely transferred some of them to other bases and continued to bill for their support." In all, KBR has cost the government at least $193 million in pay for unnecessary personnel, and maybe as much as $300 million. However, the Pentagon is in no hurry to give KBR the boot. "We basically said that KBR is too big to fail," commission co-chair and former Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) complained last year, "so we are still going to fund them."

Think about all this next time you automatically vote your party line or the incumbent... if your congresspimp has been part of the problem, you aren't going to solve a god damned thing by voting for them again.

A Blatant Act of Chimpery

2011-09-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

In perhaps his most blatant act of chimpicity since leaving office, Americana's number one goat roping drugstore cowboy... after openly admitting more than once that he seldom thought about OBL after he got his war(s) on and that nailing OBL was not a priority or something he thought much about... this grinning goon has decided it's time to step up and take the credit for Osama finally being fish food. Like Sarah Palin, if there's a spotlight shining somewhere, this clown is going to do his damnedest to be in it.

Maybe it's watching his former ~~boss~~ vice president taking credit for everything the RWNJs think was good about his own administration giving rise to another example of turds rolling downhill, but as far as the smirky one is concerned, they never would have gotten the guy if it hadn't been for his own "relentless" pursuit of him after 9/11.
Ben Armbruster @ Think Progress:

President Bush sat down with USA Today to discuss the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and his role in shaping U.S. policy in their aftermath. During the interview, Bush thought he'd take the opportunity to pat himself on the back (LINK) for Osama bin Laden's death: Bush said the events that led to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May began during his administration.

"The work that was done by intelligence communities during my presidency was part of putting together the puzzle that enabled us to see the full picture of how bin Laden was communicating and eventually where he was hiding," he said. "It began the day after 9/11."

The reality, of course, is that Bush's attempts to capture or kill bin Laden were huge failures. While it's been well documented that the Bush administration missed an opportunity to get bin Laden in Tora Bora in 2001, Bush himself subsequently stated publicly that he wasn't spending much time thinking about getting him. "I truly am not that concerned about him. I am deeply concerned about Iraq," Bush said in 2002, "I really just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you." Bush told reporters in 2006 that hunting the al Qaeda leader was "not a top priority use of American resources."

And in 2005, Bush shut down the CIA's unit dedicated to finding bin Laden in order to shift resources to Iraq. "The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants," the New York Times reported in 2006, adding that resources "had been redirected from the hunt for Mr. bin Laden to the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in Iraq.".

For this grinning disgrace to simians everywhere to come forth now and try to take even part of the credit for the tracking down and killing of OBL doesn't stop at being merely ludicrous.

Indeed if you examine Bush's actions during the period in question you can see a pattern beginning to emerge... that he not only didn't care that much about tracking down the scion of a family that until 9/11 had been old Bush family friends... but that he actively did not WANT him caught and brought to justice and that it's quite possible that he deliberately blew his one golden opportunity to do so and having done that, did nothing but get in the way of an investigation and eventual outcome that could just as very well been carried out and achieved on his own watch.

All it took was the emergence of someone who actually... for whatever reason... wanted it to get done.

You Know It's A Shop, I KNow It's A Shop

2011-09-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

But you gotta admit, it's a damned GOOD photoshop. And besides, it's funny as hell. Pensito Review

Thanks to my friend Ken in Arkansas for the link.

The Kirkwood Amendment_Treat 'Em Like The Whiny Little Brats They Are

2011-09-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

I started out thinking, "OK, the guy is just using irony to make a point.", although there's nothing at his site to actually indicate that.". But I kept going back and rereading the thing and suddenly realized that at some weird level, it was starting to make sense to me.It's long been a tradition to send loud recalcitrant children to bed without supper for not doing their chores or homework or getting in our faces as if they somehow though THEY were in charge of the house... I'm not so sure it wouldn't work on the whiny little snots in Congress too.

Anyway, from a blog called American Conversation Group we get this proposal for a constitutional amendment that while "out there", still makes more sense than some of the wacky crap the wingers have brought forth lately.

"Kirkwood Amendment"
Constitutional Amendment to Compel Congress to Legislate
An idea put forth for discussion byDaniel Hough Jones
Kirkwood, Missouri,

August 5, 2011 (Revised September 5, 2011)(Sentences are numbered for ease of discussion.)

"(1) Either the President of the United States or any ten Governors of the States acting together may declare Congress deadlocked.

"(2) Upon said declaration, the President shall have the power and authority to sequester, and shall immediately sequester, all members of Congress continuously and without exception together in their respective legislative chambers.

"(3) The President shall cause the daily ration of food and drink for each member of Congress to decline on a non-discriminatory basis incrementally to water only by the tenth day of sequestration.

"(4) The sequestration shall end upon the earliest of (i) the date of the President's approval of legislation passed by a Majority of both Houses of Congress declaring the sequestration ended, but not earlier than the 15th day of sequestration; (ii) the date Congress passes by two-thirds majority of both Houses legislation declaring the sequestration ended; and (iii) the date the number of vacancies in either the House or the Senate equals a Majority.

"(5) Members of Congress shall be individually released from sequestration immediately upon the effective date of their resignation

"(6) Vacancies occuring during a sequestration shall be filled by citizens otherwise qualified and willing to serve under this Constitution chosen by lot from among citizens resident in the district of the State for whom the vacancy has occured; new members so chosen shall serve commencing at the end of the current sequestration until the end of the regular term of the member who vacated the office.

"(7) Consecutive sequestrations shall be separated by not less than three days."

Analysis

FIRST: The problem with the United States Congress is not that its particular members do not have the intelligence or other human qualities to work together diligently and promptly to understand and solve legislative problems and perform other Constitutional duties. The problem is that We, the American People, have set up a system where We do not require members of Congress to do so.

The way history has unfolded, We have inadvertently put into place an ordinary game for members of Congress to play with outside parties who are not elected members of Congress. Members of Congress are rewarded for playing the game however they and the outside, non-elected parties choose to conceive of it. Regular Congressional elections have become a part of the gaming process.

SECOND: The above "Kirkwood Amendment" does NOT compel the non-elected parties outside Congress to do or not do anything. It does not change the First Amendment. It does not change elections or campaigning. The game played by members of Congress along with non-elected parties outside Congress will go on however the participants choose.

THIRD: The hope and expectation of the above "Kirkwood Amendment," however, is that it will encourage members of Congress to weigh in the balance their anticipation of personal inconvenience with the interests of the non-elected, outside parties. It is the hope and expectation that members of Congress will come to believe that cooperation with their fellow legislators is in their best interest.

FOURTH: The specifics of the above "Kirkwood Amendment" determine the balance of power among the parties, which specifics and balance need discussion.

FIFTH: Constitutional scholars need to word the above Amendment appropriately.

Like I said, on some weird level, the thing actually starts to work for me. At least we'd be reasserting "by the people, for the people" and that alone is worth it.

88% To Profit-Only 1% to wages

2011-09-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

The Republicans claim their lords and masters want to create jobs and that the Republicans are truly the party of the working class? Then explain this.

Sean Savett guest blogging @ TP: Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages

After the longest recession since WWII, many Americans are still struggling while S&P 500 corporations are sitting on $800 billion in cash and making massive profits. Now, economists from Northeastern University have released a study that finds our sluggish economic recovery has almost solely benefited corporations. According to the study:
"Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%.
Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. ...The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented."
The New York Times adds, "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average real hourly earnings for all employees actually declined by 1.1 percent from June 2009, when the recovery began, to May 2011, the month for which the most recent earnings numbers are available."

So as average wages fall, and nearly 14 million people remain unemployed, America's economic recovery has almost entirely benefited corporations. This development adds another chapter to the decline of the middle class, whose incomes are shrinking and wages are stagnating. Last year, top executives' salaries increased 27 percent, while workers' salaries increased only 2 percent. At the moment, income inequality in America is the worst it's been since the 1920s, as the richest 1 percent make* nearly 25 percent of the country's income.

How's all that union killing working out for you folks who thought all they did was take your dues do nothing in return?

*One more time people... the rich don't MAKE nearly 25%, the rich merely TAKE nearly 25%. As long as we continue to use words like "make" and "earn" when referring to these parasitic bloodsuckers, we play into their rhetoric that they are the producers while American workers are the takers.

Fox News Swindles The Tea Party

2011-09-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Next time some RW friend or Fox News viewer hits you with that totally discredited "Half of American households pay no taxes" routine, just give him the url to this Article by Derek Thompson @ The Atlantic: 47% of Tea Partiers Pay No Federal Income Taxes! and ask him if he can read.

One of the striking ironies of Fox News running with the statistic that 47% of Americans might not owe federal income taxes is that Fox News also moonlights as the unofficial station of the Tea Party movement, which clamors for lower taxes. You might ask: half of the country pays no income tax, how much lower do you want? Here's a more troubling point: if the Tea Party movement has a similar share of Americans making under $50,000 as the broader population (as a recent Gallup poll suggests), then why is this movement rallying under the banner "Taxed Enough Already!" when half of them aren't taxed at all?

Forty-five percent of self-identified "Tea Partiers" make less than $50,000 per year, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll (LINK). Similarly, 50% of the total population makes less than $50,000 in the same poll. Despite this author's lack of direct access to the tax returns of the Tea Party movement, it seems safe to assume that if about half the country avoids federal income taxes, a similar percentage of the Tea Party movement gets away with the same even as they march and scream about their tax burden.

This is a gotcha point. But it's a gotcha point worth making, if only to shine light on the sad intellectual bankruptcy of the Tea Party, a political movement that has taken over the news cycle like a particularly aggressive strain of ragweed. Tea Partiers want lower income taxes. But many of them probably don't pay income taxes.

If we listen to them and bring even more Americans into the zero-income tax pool, we would only concentrate more of the tax burden on wealthy earners ... which conservatives are against. Tea Party apologists on TV will explain that what they're really asking for is lower rates and a broader tax base to diffuse America's tax responsibility. But if half the Tea Party doesn't pay income taxes today, a broader tax base -- even with minuscule rates -- would raise many of their taxes!

The party's labyrinthine position on tax policy isn't worth untangling any further. It's a Gordian Knot that deserves a guillotine. When liberals and conservatives in Congress and think tanks and conference rooms debate tax policy in the coming months, they should consider a wide buffet of reform options -- but hold the tea.

All ANY millionaire talking head on Fox News is after is to get their own taxes lowered. That is all they care about and they will have no qualms about using their influence over their loyal Tea Party viewer base to bring that about.

It's a given, and doesn't even need to be discussed. They will use any and every means in order to get lower their own obligation at the expense of someone else even if... as in this case... the 47% of the working class poor paying no taxes includes 47% of the members of the Tea Party.

The fact that almost half of their target audience... the ones carrying their water... pay no taxes at all can only mean two things if Billo and Hannity and the rest of the rich flapping mouths at Fox get their way and the tax base is broadened to include most of those not making enough to pay today... 1) that a huge chunk of the 47% of the Tea Party that pays no income tax now will actually have to start paying income taxes... and 2) that many of the rest of them will actually have to pay more than they do now in order to make up for the millionaire's cuts.

Somehow, this never makes a dent in that wall of noise that Fox sets up between its viewer base and the truth.

Not bad Fox. You've managed to con a bunch of suckers into screaming and yelling to have their own taxes raised so you and your cadre of overpaid and already undertaxed clowns can pay even less. Must be nice to have that license to lie old Roger has hanging on his office wall.

Wall Street Isn't MY Main Street

2011-09-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

If you're going to be in a public service position, you need to be able to at least pretend you have some concern for the public. From The Other 98%:

Tell Kathryn Wylde: Wall Street is not Main Street

*
Who do you think said this?

“Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”
Some Goldman Sachs executive? John Boehner? Bernie Madoff? Nope, nope and nope. It was Kathryn Wylde, a board member of the New York Federal Reserve whose job is to represent the *public* in financial matters.

Does that sound like a public advocate? Wylde is currently standing in the way of an investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that would put Bank of America and other major financial firms under the magnifying glass for mortgage fraud.

Finally we could see criminal prosecutions of those responsible for the market meltdown.

Enough is Enough! Join us in signing an emergency letter to Ms. Wylde, demanding that she step down.
1. “Attorney General of N.Y. Is Said to Face Pressure on Bank Foreclosure Deal“,” New York Times.

First off someone should tell this loon that Wall Street IS doing something indefensible... at least by any standard worth using... and has been for decades. I usually don't do letters and/or petitions and am not suggesting anyone else do so. But I do submit that this person is obviously not fit to represent the public in any capacity, let alone one in which the public finds itself in an adversarial position with the Wall Street banks that wrecked the economy. Wall Street is definitely not MY Main Street.

This person serves in the same cesspool that produced Tim Geithner so her particular turn of thought is no surprise but the sooner every self serving corporate owned bureaucrat in Washington is flushed down the toilet, the sooner we can get started trying to clean up the mess they've made of the country and she's damned sure a good one to start with.

Jon Stewart_The Poor's Free Ride Is Over

2011-09-02T17:46:00.000-07:00

Lest we somehow forget what total douches Fox news and the rest of the "mainstream" media really are, we need to post this every week or two until the election.

I almost made it through without gagging until they popped Skeletor's anorexic sister, Ann Coulter on the screen. Really, the things I endure for you people.

The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Nobody In My House Is "Celebrating" Petraeus

2011-09-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

Government in this country today is nothing more than a freak show, the likes of which would be more at home on a 1930s carnival midway than in the seat of government of a major developed country and far from receding, the tsunami of corporatism, graft, corruption and smoke and mirrors that was set in motion in the Reagan days continues to swell with every day that goes by.

In Washington's never ending game of musical chairs, a variation of the Peter Principle seems to be the sole natural law that unites all of the cheap petty thugs and grifters who have managed to convince Wall Street that they're worth buying an appointment or elected position for. All of them have managed to rise to their own level of venality. In fact, some of them even manage to exceed it on occasion.

Sourced primarily from a piece by Robert Parry @ Consortiumnews.com

Iraq continues its drift toward a failed state, amid terror bombings, sectarian violence and a devastated infrastructure. Also, the strategic winner from George W. Bush's invasion looks to be neighboring Iran. So, asks Robert Parry, why is Official Washington celebrating Gen. David Petraeus for his "successful surge"?

That's a damned good question, no matter where you come down in your opinion as to how out multitrillion for profit dollar wars have been handled militarily so far.

Actually, that's not exactly right. I can see why Official Washington and their leash holders on Wall Street and in the MIC would want to celebrate... more money for the masters means more rewards for them after all and that's the name of the game in DC these days.

But what exactly did General Petraeus accomplish for the rest of us and why should we care that Washington is dancing around him as if he were actually someone that had actually accomplished something militarily?

As Gen. David Petraeus retired from the Army on Wednesday, he received a 17-gun salute and was hailed across the U.S. news media as the strategic genius who organized the "successful surge" in Iraq and similarly achieved gains against the Taliban in Afghanistan. He is now off to run the CIA.

However, the less glorious truth about Petraeus's much-heralded "surge" in Iraq was that it cost the lives of almost 1,000 more U.S. soldiers, inflicted more violence upon the people of Iraq and will likely only have achieved a delay in a U.S. military defeat of historic proportions. Much the same could be said for Petraeus's "surge" in Afghanistan.

And for what? We obviously haven't "won" anything in IRAQ that would justify the deaths of 4474 American military personnel. Iraq's infrastructure is basically destroyed, it's government in tatters, it's people poorer than they were before and we still don't even have their oil (which may ultimately play role in Panetta's desperation to stay there beyond the withdrawal deadline).

This past month marks the first casualty free month in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 and we've gotten pretty much diddly squat for the loss of those young Americans. And we're "celebrating" this guy and rewarding him with a cabinet post?

The Iraq surge's primary accomplishment may have been to spare President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their neocon advisers the embarrassment of having invaded and occupied Iraq, only to see a bloodied U.S. army essentially kicked out by the Iraqis. The surge put off the forced withdrawal of the American military at least until President Barack Obama's watch.

Washington's still-influential neocons are now pressing for a revised "status of forces agreement" with Iraq that will allow some U.S. "advisers" to remain in Iraq after the end of the year. That way, the image of the last American troops racing to the Kuwaiti border in December 2011 - much as Soviet troops retreated from Afghanistan in 1989 - won't be so stark.

Not sure I would use exactly that verbal imagery, but I believe the author is correct in his basic premise... that once Bush and his gang realized there was going to be no "victory" in Iraq and that there never could be... their primary goal became to kick the thing down the road and let the next guy deal with it. And for that, they were willing to kill an extra thousand or so of our kids.

And let's not get into them turning right around and, with the same people... including General Petraeus... leading the effort, doing the very same thing in Afghanistan with an almost identical result. And now they're telling us well be THERE until 2024.

This is what the corporate enslaved right does when it's fucked something up beyond repair... they simply hand it off to the next guy and then do everything in their power to keep him from fixing it while blaming him because it hasn't been fixed. And guys like Petraeus are the ones who carry the water for the corporatistas while our kids get to fight and die to make it happen.

I'm sorry... this man does not deserve any respect or admiration from me for having politicked his way to a position of "leadership" in two different unjustified and unwinnable wars that have cost the lives of over 5000 American military personnel and untold thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians but from which we have derived nothing of any value to the nation as a whole.

All our government is doing is killing people so Wall Street and the corporations can make money. If that makes David Petraeus some kind of hero, then the standards have damned sure changed since I was a young man.

More at the link, including excerpts from a Washington Post op-ed by former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi (LINK) in which he describes the actual conditions in his country.

The Intern In Charge Of Remembering For Him Was Off That Day

2011-09-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

Arizona Senator John S. (for Senile) McCrankypants (R - Alzheimer's) isn't deliberately holding up President Obama's nomination of Rosemary Marquez for the US court in his state... he just forgot she'd been nominated.

Lee Fang @ Think Progress: After Blocking Nominee To Arizona District Court, McCain Claims The Nomination Was Never Made

Last week, ThinkProgress reported that Arizona's two Republican senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, are obstructing judicial nominees for their own state, which happens to be one of the most overloaded court system in America. Ian Millhiser wrote how McCain is holding up Rosemary Marquez, a defense attorney nominated by President Obama for the District Court of Arizona. Now, McCain is offering a demonstrably false explanation (LINK) of why Marquez' nomination is not moving forward:
When asked about attorney Rosemary Marquez's appointment, he said her name hadn't been submitted yet to the U.S. Judiciary Committee.
"We have not seen it submitted by the administration so neither Jon Kyl and I are blocking it. If her name is submitted we will go through the process which is our constitutional responsibility," said Senator John McCain.
In reality, Marquez's nomination was submitted to the Judiciary Committee three months ago on June 23, 2011. As the local Fox affiliate notes (LINK), Judiciary Committee staff confirmed the nomination with reporters in Arizona, and even provided Marquez's nominee number (PN724112).
The massacre this year, in which Chief Judge John Roll was murdered in the same shooting that targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), left the district court with three vacancies. The Judicial Conference of the United States believes that eight additional judges are required to keep up with the court's exploding caseload, where felony case filings alone nearly doubled (LINK) from 3,023 in 2008 to 5,219 in 2010.
Why is McCain offering false explanations for why Marquez' nomination is not moving forward? Its not clear. However, McCain has a long history of exploiting the broken rules of the Senate to in ways that benefit his corporate benefactors.
In 2009, he worked with corporate lobbyists at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to block (LINK) a key nominee to the Labor Relations Board. Chamber board members donated nearly $400,000 to his presidential campaign in 2008 (LINK), and he received renewed Chamber support shortly after he placed a hold on this nomination.

Well, that one case doesn't mean that THIS obstruction isn't just due to a little forgetfulness on his part.Come on now... SURE its just a memory lapse. You don't think a "Maverick" (Cheesus, how long as it been since we heard THAT one?) like old Grampy would sell out for mere money, do you? And after all, this IS the guy who can't even remember how many houses he owns so cut the old fart some slack.

My Candidate for 2016

2011-09-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

I got to wondering what he'd been up to since January. If he decides to run, this is the guy I'm going to support and root for in 2016 (if the wingers haven't killed me off with malignant neglect by then) in the same way that I did for Mr. Obama in 2008. Not too many Grayson and Sanders types left out there anymore but there has to be a few. If you think anything like I do, our job is to find them and get them elected to every office we possibly can.

Here's Mr. Grayson's latest Facebook note. Self serving? You Betcha! He is running for office after all... but his interests just also happen to coincide with my own in most cases and defense contractor fraud and war profiteering just happen to be two of my major interests.

Alan Grayson on Facebook:

Iraq: I Did My Part

by Alan Grayson on Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 11:43am

Yesterday, the Commission on Wartime Contracting released its final report.

The Commission reported that between $31 billion and $62 billion of the tax money spent on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has been wasted. It also said that between $10 billion and $19 billion of what contractors billed and received was fraudulent. In fact, $360 million of our tax dollars went straight to . . . the Taliban.

Wow. Who could have imagined that?

Well . . . me.

When I saw that the Bush Administration was doing nothing about fraud in Iraq, I revived a law going back to the Civil War that allowed whistleblowers to bring lawsuits in the name of the U.S. Government. I filed case after case, which were promptly greeted by the Bush Administration with gag orders – gag orders that they kept in place for years. They didn’t want any more bad news coming out of Iraq.

So I went on CNN, spoke to the New York Times and the Washington Post, and told America whatever I could say without violating those gag orders. And when the Bush Administration finally let one case out from under those gag orders – and declined to prosecute it – I took that case to trial, and won a $14 million judgment. It was the third-largest judgment for whistleblowers in the 143-year history of that law.

Those contractors built bases without hooking up the plumbing. A general testified that when he went there, he felt like throwing up.

The Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page article that I was “waging a one-man war against contractor fraud in Iraq.” The national organization Taxpayers Against Fraud named me “Lawyer of the Year.” And people started to think, “what is going on over there?”
In Congress, I spoke out against the wars, and I voted against the wars. I wrote and introduced The War is Making You Poor Act, HR 5353. My bill pointed out that you could:
Require the Pentagon to fund the wars from its own budget of over $500 billion, not supplemental appropriations;

Take all the money that would save and eliminate taxes on everyone’s first $35,000 of income, $70,000 for married couples; and

Still have over $10 billion a year left over, to cut the federal deficit.
OpenCongress’s unscientific poll showed 91% in favor of HR 5353.

After I left Congress in January, I took up the work against contractor fraud in Iraq again. And I won an $8.7 million settlement from DynCorp and the Sandi Group. The defendants paid our attorney’s fees last Friday.
Here’s some simple arithmetic. We’ve budgeted $159.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, through next month. (The true cost is much more, but let’s leave that aside.) That’s:

$159,300,000,000.00.

You could take all that money and create 5,310,000 jobs here in America paying $30,000 a year, rebuilding our bridges, our roads, our schools, instead of the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. That would immediately lower the unemployment rate from 9 percent to 5.5 percent, and get money flowing in our communities again.

Now, that’s a job program. I’ll put that up against whatever President Obama proposes next week.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed more than 8,000 Americans, and who-knows-how-many Iraqis and Afghans. War has destroyed our economy, just as the war in Afghanistan destroyed the Soviet economy. According to the calculations of Nobel Prize-winner Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the war in Iraq alone has cost us around 8% of our $50 trillion national net worth, all of the wealth that America built up over two centuries. Over $13,000 for every single American, young and old.

We’ve taken our inheritance, and dumped it into a wood chipper.

My father served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He told me once that one of the most common questions that men of his generation heard was, “what did you do in the war?” Maybe our children will ask us, “what did you do against the war?”

That’s a question I can answer.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

CEO Excesses_Where Do They Stop?

2011-08-31T14:24:00.000-07:00

This is the latest Infographic from The Other 98% which is based on an article at the Institute For Policy Studies website and even for me, who has been railing against this kind of thing on a regular basis for several years now, it's way cool to see the information presented in in graphic form this way. A picture often truly is worth a thousand words.

I also admit to never having caught the CEO Pay vs. Taxes aspect although it has been there all along. brings a whole new perspective to the discussion on filthy rich CEOs and their contributions to the destruction of America.

How has our government allowed this to happen? A lot of people still try to point at some kind of alleged ineptness on the part of elected officials and government regulators and are fond of pointing out out that the corporations can afford to hire better lawyers. They think the corporatistas are simply outsmarting the government. Poppycock!

This crap comes about because our government has become so infused with corporate dog robbers that there is no longer any actual difference. Corporations ARE the government. Corporate asswipes get themselves elected or appointed for the sole purpose of being able to influence or even originate legislation favorable to their companies and industries. In the case of many high level bureaucrats, a corporate pimp... whose company bought him an appointment with huge campaign contributions... will hold a government position long enough have the desired influence on the legislative process or whatever oversight rules and regulations are bugging their bosses and then quietly resign their government position and by the next Monday, be back in his/her old office devising a plan to take advantage of the results of that influence.

No sir, the problem here is not the ineptness of government. The problem here is the decomposition of our government as the rot... rot that used to be rooted out and disposed of when people took enough interest to notice it was going on... spreads throughout the entire process of government in this country.

Take a look at that old boy at the top of the list. Now there's you a go-getter. He didn't bother to send a mere flunky, he came himself. Note that his company not only didn't pay any taxes, they got a 3.2 billion buck REFUND on those taxes they didn't pay.

And what did old Jeff get for running the scams that made it happen? Well... what he got was an appointment as a special adviser to the President of the United States. I suppose a Medal of Freedom or some damned such will be in order when he figures he's done enough damage to the commoners and goes back to running his little empire.

If you need proof that simple graft and a corrupt government apparatus are the main reasons that Immelt and the rest of them can get away with this kind of outrage... not only without so much as a whimper from congress and the media, but with kudos and rewards for the taxpayers they're fleecing... take a look at those two boxes just above Immelt's. It's kind of hard to make out the small print but what it says is that of these 25 yoyos, 18 gave more to the campaigns of their favorite candidate than they paid the IRS in Taxes and 20 of them spent more on lobbying lawmakers than they paid in taxes.

Of the two bottom boxes just below Lundgren's, the left one tell us that the top 25 companies in the country have 556 subsidiaries between them that largely exist as a means of hiding or offshoring profits and assets to avoid US taxes.

The one on the right gives a conservative estimate of a hundred billion that could be saved simply by closing the loopholes that allow them to get away with it. Our government refuses to do anything about it since they've already done the financial "reform" thing and it's no longer an issue as far as they're concerned. That's a pretty damned sorry state of affairs right there.

But it's the state of affairs that the right wants and it's the state of affairs that they've gulled their ignorant base into thinking they want, so I suppose that barring one of those miracles from on high that the hypocrites are always chirping about, it's the state of affairs the rest of us will have to live with... at least for now.

When the day of reckoning finally comes, there are a few that are going to have to reckon a whole bunch harder than the rest of us.

Do We Really Want Another War In Iraq?

2011-08-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

It's getting pretty obvious that if we do get out of Iraq by December 31st, it won't be because government hack of all trades, Leon Panetta, didn't bust his ass trying to prevent it.

It's flipping nuts. We don't want to be there, they don't want us there but this hard little nut of corporate whores in the administration are hell bent on us being there even if it means outright war again. When are the American people going to see through this bullshit?

From an unbylined article at AlterNet this morning:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said US forces will leave Iraq as scheduled by year's end, and that there will not be any permanent US bases in the country, a statement from his office said on Tuesday.

"The agreement on the withdrawal of American forces will be implemented on schedule by the end of the year, and there will not be any bases for US forces here," Maliki told Al-Ittijah TV channel in an interview to be broadcast later, it said.

Iraqi leaders have approved negotiations with the United States on a post-2011 training mission, but no deal has yet been announced. However, an extension of the US military presence in Iraq has been strongly opposed by some, notably by radical anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who has warned of "war" if American forces stay.

Unless Baghdad and Washington reach a new accord, all of the roughly 46,000 US troops still in the country must leave by December 31, under the terms of a 2008 security agreement.

To borrow on one of the phrases used frequently at TGUAR... "not going back, no way, no how... which is true in either case. You can't go back if you haven't left and if Panetta has his way we won't be leaving. God, I hate war profiteers and our new franchised war industry.

Republicans Must Hate PolitiFact

2011-08-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

It sometimes looks as if most of the Republicans butt sniffing around the presidency have some kind of race or contest going to see who can spew the most lies on any given day. Luckily PolitiFact is there to turn the hose on them when they get too exercised. The most truthful of this particular bunch seem to be Huntsman and Willard but even Willard lets a pretty good one rip every now and then.

Here are some examples just from page one today:

Rick Perry: Texas gained 21000 doctors due to tort reform.PolitiFact: Doctors Go where the people are

Rick Perry: Scientists are "questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. … (It is) more and more being put into question."PolitiFact: Actually, consensus is solid.

Tim Pawlenty: "The weight of the evidence (on global warming) is that most of it, maybe all of it, is because of natural causes ... it’s fair to say the science is in dispute."PolitiFact: Isolated dissenters but no major disagreement

Michele Bachmann: When Standard & Poor's "dropped our credit rating, what they said is, we don't have an ability to repay our debt. ... I was proved right in my position" that the debt ceiling should not have been raised.
Politifact: S&P says lack of compromise caused the downgrade

Willard: We're inches away from no longer having a free economy.
Politifact: Pants on Fire in June, Pants on fire now]

Ron Paul In the '80s, Democrats promised spending cuts, but delivered only tax hikes.
Politifact: Tax hikes without spending cuts?]

I looked on through several more pages and if I had to pick the leading liar of the bunch it would probably be Rick Perry, not because he's any good at it... he's not... but just for the sheer number of times he's been willing to repeat a lie even after it's been shown time and again that he's lying. I have a sneaking suspicion that since we're dealing with Republicans, that's exactly why he's their front runner.

It was a tight race between him and Bachmann but I was already giving her the "Looniest Bullshit of the Bunch" lifetime achievement award and I kinda wanted to spread the goodwill around some.

In Your Face, Chabot!

2011-08-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

From Jason Easley @ Politicus USA: Court Rules Republicans Who Confiscate Cameras At Town Halls Are Violating 1st Amendment

According to a recent Federal Appeals court ruling, Republican members of Congress who confiscate citizens' cell phones or cameras and do not allow filming at town halls are violating their constituents First Amendment rights.
One of the ways that unpopular House Republicans have been trying to dodge the wrath of their angry constituents during the August recess is to not allow filming at their town halls. Last week, Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio directed on duty police officers to confiscate the cameras of citizens who tried to film his responses at a recent town hall. Chabot justified this behavior as necessary for the protection of his constituents, but a Federal Court ruling on Friday makes it clear that the Republicans who engaging in this behavior are violating the First Amendment rights of their constituents.
The case brought before the court involved a man in Boston who was arrested for filming the police with his cell phone while they were making a separate arrest of a young man in public. The man who did the filming with his cell phone filed suit alleging that his First and Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. The district court ruled in favor of the person who filmed the arrest, and the state appealed.
The judge ruled,

It is firmly established that the First Amendment's aegis extends further than the text's proscription on laws "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information.
As the Supreme Court has observed, "the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw." First Nat'l Bank v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 783 (1978); see also Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969) ("It is . . .well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas."). An important corollary to this interest in protecting the stock of public information is that "[t]here is an undoubted right to gather news 'from any source by means within the law.'" Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 11 (1978) (quoting Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 681-82 (1972)).
The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting "the free discussion of governmental affairs." Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218 (1966).
Moreover, as the Court has noted, "[f]reedom of expression has particular significance with respect to government because '[i]t is here that the state has a special incentive to repress opposition and often wields a more effective power of suppression.'" First Nat'l Bank, 435 U.S. at 777 n.11 (alteration in original) (quoting Thomas Emerson, Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment 9 (1966)).
The court found that people have the First Amendment right to film government officials in public while they are carrying out their duties. In fact, this right is necessary in our democracy to counteract attempts by those who have power to suppress the rights of citizens. The act of not allowing the public to film the carrying out of congressional duties in public is an act of First Amendment suppression.
These same members of the House who prided themselves on their knowledge of the Constitution, and made a show of beginning the new Congress with a reading of the Constitution is so willing to violate the First Amendment rights of their constituents. The House Republicans will look you in the eye and moan about "big government" and "loss of liberty" while they simultaneously violate your First Amendment rights.
If you attempt to attend a town hall at a public place, and someone tells you that you cannot film the event, let them know that they are violating your First Amendment rights. Be sure to bring a copy of the court ruling with you, and it would also be nice of you to highlight the section on filming and the First Amendment. These are your rights. Don't back down.
Most importantly, they are trying to prevent you from filming because they are afraid. These members of Congress who are trying to take away your rights are afraid of you. You should never be afraid of them.

Our Barnum & Bailey Media

2011-08-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

Anytime you hear about a disaster or potential disaster striking anywhere in the United States, there are two things you can be damned sure of. The media is going to go into three ring circus mode, sending in every clown they can scrape off the bottom of the barrel in a frenzy of hype and bombast... and the Republicans are going to make themselves look stupid trying to blame Obama or denigrate his response to it. The two are as sure as death and taxes (if you're poor enough to have to pay taxes) and linked together at the hip.

And this past week has done nothing to dissuade me of anything I just said.

This has been a week to conjure with for the mainstream media and By Ned, conjure they did. In one week the idiots at the major broadcast and cable networks have managed to put on a performance that will never... no matter how much more inept and corrupt they get... be equaled for it's puerile inanity and screaming hyperbole.

I could excuse all the screaming and yelling over the earthquake had it lasted about the hour or two the event itself might deserve but hour after hour of watching them trying to find some reason to make the thing bigger than it actually was while Wolf Blitzer alternated between flogging himself in the "Situation Room" john and asking people where they were and what were they thinking when the earth moved? Nope.

I even heard that scrotum faced old Pat Robertson was claiming that the earthquake was so small because this time because God only wanted to warn people who were just a "little bit gay", but I've been unable to confirm that so far. (it's a joke wingers, relax) Everybody else just looked for ways to blame Obama.

Luckily they were rescued from having to continue their search for something to justify all their earthquake hype by Steve Jobs quitting his job (again). Apparently that was major news to some folks and helped to serve until Irene got big enough and close enough to go apeshit over.

But then came Irene, a network news editor's wet dream. Gigantic storm taking aim at the east coast of America? Especially right after the east coast's first earthquake in umpty leven years?

I quit watching any major media coverage of the thing about a half hour in and from then on I alternated between the NOAA site and Angry Black Lady's hilarious live tweet... not of the storm itself but of the idiotic panic mongers covering it.

I did see one video of some network dude, bundled up as if he were a Bering Sea crab boat deckhand who appeared to be struggling mightily to keep from being blown off his feet... while a bunch of kids danced around him shirtless and in swim trunks, at least one of them actually mooning the camera and others streaking back and forth in front of and behind him. Obviously they were in the early stages of a rain band and the actual full force of the storm was nowhere near yet but this guy was trying his best to make us think he was putting himself in harm's way to bring us the story. I damned near fell off my chair laughing at him.

I'm wondering now if those reporters have to go to some kind of academy to learn how to pretend to be reacting to conditions that don't really exist. The most priceless part of that video was his indignation and that of the "back to you in the studio" crew. I got the impression they were more than a little pissed that someone had exposed their obviously staged "on the spot in the face of grave danger" hyperbole.

This is not to belittle the significance of this storm. People died... as more than a few of the apologists for the MSM are pointing out. That is always tragic... but as hurricanes go, we got off damned easily on this one. People die in all kinds of storms that get nowhere near the hype and coverage this one did and it was all done for ratings. Attempts to compare this storm to Katrina are laughable at best, horribly venal and self serving otherwise.

What this kind of "reporting" and hyperbole accomplishes is that the next time a Cat 4 or 5 actually DOES pop up out there and actually threatens major population centers, the public is going to lend even less credence to these buffoons in their rain gear playing obviously staged games with the public. The public would be far better served if they just stuck to telling us what's going on and shit canned the damned ratings wars, at least for the duration of any real emergency.

A desperate attempt to portray the MSM as still being relevant that once again only shows what an empty shell of their former selves they've become as the public... sick and tired of a constant river of lies, innuendo and propaganda that has become the hallmark for the MSM, turn elsewhere for the truth.

And as for the RWs who are claiming that Irene is "Obama's Katrina"? Quite a stretch until you consider the source. After that, you realize that they're so hard wired into their little BOFE (Blame Obama For Everything) program, they can't help making stupid statements like that one no matter how stupid it makes them look to anyone who has ever... hell, I don't know... read a book maybe?

Lament Of The Unread Blogger

2011-08-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

OK... gonna see if I can get though one without losing my temper for a change.

About two years ago, after several years of reading the various political blogs that dot the Internet landscape, I came to the conclusion that I could do that too. So I raffled my soul off to Google/Blogger and started my own little somewhat left leaning political blog.

Through the ensuing months I've gone to great lengths to do all the little things that Blogger says I need to do in order to make my little place as attractive as possible. Pictures, widgets, logos, news feeds, a blogroll, an open comments section... and... unfortunately for my self esteem... a visitor tracker which has come in extremely handy for knowing how few hits I'm getting on a daily basis. I had seriously considered pitching that vile device in the recycle bin on the premise that what I don't know won't hurt me but unfortunately the damage is already done.

I've tried various styles of writing ranging from the angry old fart thing... which is actually my native format because I AM an angry old fart... to what I thought were thoughtful and rather intelligent discourses on the various subjects that come up in the course of a day in the life of a crippled shutin news junky with not much else in the way of a life. If I specialize at all, it's in the area of the effects of today's politics on my particular demographic, the elderly/disabled/poor... where I've learned that not many people want to hear about the elderly/disabled/poor from someone who actually IS elderly/disabled/poor.

I've posted diaries on other blog sites such as "They Gave Us A Republic" where I have graciously been granted front page privileges and "My Firedog Lake" where I have had several recommended diaries and a few even promoted to the front page but where most go as largely unnoticed as they do at my own place.

It's not an ego thing. I know better than anyone else that I'm not a great writer, and that I never will be, but really, that's true of most of the people fielding most of the small blogs that I myself enjoy reading daily and that I have included on my site's blogroll mainly to make it easier for me to get to them since nobody else is seeing it.

But... if we were professional grade writers, I'm assuming that we would be writing professionally for audiences of thousands (maybe for money) instead of anonymously on some obscure little free page we had to put together ourselves.

Whatever the case, I get up every morning and plop myself down in front of the keyboard and fire off a rant or two, knowing that few people are going to read them and even fewer will remember anything I said beyond their next mouse click.

I usually cross post them... after an infuriating half hour or so of html editing because the people making the different blogging software can't agree on a standard format... on the other sites where they... sometimes at least... attract a few comments or even a recommendation or two, showing that someone has at least read them. And then, Other than checking once in a while to see if there have been any responses, that's pretty much it for the day.

So what drives the hundreds, even thousands of us who pound away on our keyboards daily, pumping out rant after rant that might be read by... at least in my case... 10 people a month (If it's been a good month.)?

Why do we sit here shouting the same message that the big, slick corporately financed outfits like Huffpo or the major indie operations like FDL, C&L, KOS and the others have already talked about, knowing that our chance of anything we post being noticed is roughly equal to that of Rick Perry suddenly getting a brain this week?

I obviously can't answer that question for anyone but myself but I can sum it up for me in one four letter word... RAGE.

That's R-A-G-E for all you simple minded flipping Rick Perry/Michele Bachmann types and it means don't get in my face right now if you value your teeth. It's a rage that drives me to hate and loathing, emotions that I had seldom ever experienced until you corporate cockroaches and your Neocon vampire masters started welling up out of the woodwork but which I've learned to channel quite easily since then.

Rage against what is happening to the country we love at the hands of a bunch of rampaging carrion eating hyenas bent on nothing less than reducing it to a pile of useless rubble by gorging themselves on anything and everything worth having in it.

Rage against the one percenters in this country, who are nothing but flipping mental amoebae who function solely on instinct and whose only instinct is some hardwired urge to suck up more than anyone else, whether they need it or not, just to keep someone else from having any of it.

Armageddon is going to consist not of a war between the haves and the have nots but between the haves themselves fighting it out to see who's going to have it ALL and I am enraged that they're dragging the rest of us down into their stinking primal ooze to get to that point.

If that rage wasn't there... or if I didn't have some way to express that rage... all I would have left is helplessness and I can look around me and see too god damned many scared shitless, disgusting, helpless little sheep being led off for slaughter, whining, "There's nothing we can do about it, waaahhh!", for me to ever assume that position for anybody.

When the bastards finally bring me down, I intend that the last thing that they'll of me see is my middle finger and my unread rants are the only way I have of expressing that, even if it's just for myself.

And THAT is why I blog. Sorry about the negative on not losing my temper, I really thought I could do it this time. If you've read this to the end, thank you very much. Even if you disagree with me, very word read is deeply appreciated.

Reductio Ad Absurdum

2011-08-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

Reductio ad absurdum is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence and there is nobody in America today who can do this better than Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

It was no accident... nor was it just backlash against the mewling and pandering of the so called mainstream media... when a couple of years ago, polls were showing Jon Stewart to be the most trusted name in American journalism. It was because he was one of the very few people in America who was actually practicing true journalism, the comedy spin notwithstanding. Pure and simple.

The Daily Show and it's Spinoff, The Colbert Report... which began, intentionally or not, as a masterful lampoon of Bill O'Reilly's bombastic POS, The O'Reilly Factor... are THE two news based programs on the air today where you can get the the whole, unvarnished truth... provided you're not some ignorant redneck who is incapable of gleaning the masses of truth from some of the most masterfully constructed satires ever produced. So masterful that some of those ignorant rednecks were convinced that Colbert WAS the pompous right wing buffoon (O'Reilly to the max in my opinion) he portrays on his show, totally missing the fact that they were being zapped night after night.

Even those of their targets who actually got it could do nothing but go into their usual spasms of self righteous apoplectic rage at being shown as they actually are. Some of them even got together and tried to create their own right wing "comedy" shows to their everlasting embarrassment. To say they bombed would be an understatement not worthy of the noxious cloud they produced.

That was when we found out that what passes for comedy on the right rises no higher than the adenoidal nastiness served up by "Bordello of Blood" level D list "comedian", Dennis Miller. It appears that when Right wingers had their genetic disposition to care about other people surgically removed and replaced with an overweening lust for money and power, for some reason it took any semblance of a sense of humor with it.

America's trust in Stewart and Colbert to bring them the truth is now beginning to spill over into other areas besides journalism. In a country/world where "truth" can be bought by the highest bidder, they're beginning to be regarded as the only truly reliable sources of truth anywhere.

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd had an AlterNet entry, 8 Ways Jon Stewart And Stephen Colbert Provide More Leadership Than Our Leaders a couple of days back that provides a detailed look into the reasons that so many people... those capable of reasoned thought... have made a couple of comedians into the country's most trusted purveyors of the truth.

During Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's tenure spoofing news and politics from Comedy Central (for 12 and six years, respectively), they’ve evolved into two of the most truthful, if sarcastic, journalists on television. But in recent months, they’ve graduated from their media posts and started doing what we want our lawmakers to do—speak honestly, directly and straightforwardly about the most important issues of the day without any vested (or monetary) interests.

Last week, the Nation’s Leslie Savan wrote a post titled “Jon Stewart Does Obama’s Job for Him.” The post called attention to a characteristically incisive and sarcastic Stewart speech about the right’s “Class War” freakout over Warren Buffett:

The Daily ShowGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Savan’s broader point was that Stewart’s messaging is at this point far more effective than the president’s. Frankly, if Obama sincerely wants to make things better for the American people while combating the lies the GOP perpetuates, he could take a cue from Jon Stewart, who delivered some of the most difficult and least-reported facts about US income inequality and taxes on the rich in a neat, easy-to-digest package.

It might sound absurd to think it, but when Congressional sessions sometimes feel more like a joke than Comedy Central programming (c.f. debt ceiling debate), the world’s gone just backward enough for it to work.

Besides, as vaunted journo Keith Olbermann pointed out in his pre-Current Rolling Stone interview, “Comedians are the only ones paid to tell the truth in public discourse. Everybody else—politicians, news broadcasters, religious figures—we're all paid to be oracles, when in fact we are like a good public-relations man. A good public-relations man keeps you away from the public, and if you have relations, he keeps that hidden.”

More at the link, including those eight examples promised in Ms. Shepherd's title. Good read. Whether or not you agree with her assertions and conclusions (I do) is up to you of course but it's a good read if for no other reason than it makes us think about what it is that constitutes "truth" in American politics today.

The Dick Cheney Presidency

2011-08-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've never made a secret of my absolute hate and loathing for this pitiful shell of a human being. The man is totally devoid of any quality or trait that makes a human being a human being. He has many times been called "Evil Incarnate" which doesn't do justice to his utter depravity and disdain for there are no words to describe the empty bottomless pit where the soul would normally exist.

I have always said Bush was nothing more than this man's dupe... an ignorant frat rat whose only real function was to act as a front for this power hungry but utterly unelectable sonofabitch. This is why I refer to those eight years that brought about the utter collapse of democracy in this country as the Cheney/Bush or simply the Cheney administration.

No matter what we see going on today, this heartless, soulless toad is responsible for more of it than the next ten Neocon holdover bastards from the Nixon years combined. This is the man that set the agenda and called the tune for almost 40 years as our unelected president and John Amato has an excellent piece over at his place about Cheney's new book in which he himself gives us a glimpse into the sea of depravity that churns around inside his skull... and also verifies... at least to my satisfaction... that George W. Bush never WAS the president of the United States.

John Amato @ C&L: Dick Cheney Claims That He--Not--Bush Was The Decider

Dick Cheney is once again telling everyone how much he loves waterboarding and torture. NBC is teasing an in-depth interview about Cheney's new book, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, which is being released at the end of August. Other bits and pieces are coming out to help promote the sales of the book like this article in the NY Times today: Cheney Says He Urged Bush to Bomb Syria in ’07

During George Bush's entire presidency the question of how much influence and authority VP Dick Cheney was given was always been part of the discussion. Cheney openly disdained rules, conventions and laws, pushing the concept of the Unitary Executive further than Nixon ever dreamed. Was Cheney making all the important policy decisions? Cheney once believed he was highly qualified to be president and threw out a trial balloon in 1996.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Monday he would consider a presidential run in 1996, adding that he worried about U.S. military cuts planned by President-elect Clinton in the face of instability in Russia.

The Red Scare, how predictable. However, he decided not to run after all.

Fast forward to 2000, Cheney conveniently picked himself for the office after he was named to head the search team to find a Vice President for Bush's ticket. And there was a lot of controversy about how that all went down. (h/t ThinkProgress)
The news in my book about this process is that Cheney never filled out his own questionnaire; that the heart surgeon who vouched for his health never met him or looked at his records; and that Bush and Cheney never interviewed anyone for the job until Cheney already had it nailed.

One thing is for damned sure... the American people were not being given a say nor even being considered in who was going to run the country for at least the next eight years.

It was kind of like a coup by proxy where we got to yay or nay for the puppet while the puppeteer stayed out of sight and once it was in motion not even a little thing like Al Gore winning the election could be allowed to stop it.

But what I find most fascinating in the NY Times article is that Cheney actually reveals personal conversations he had with his president as well as many other top Bush aides and advisers. Plus he's taking full credit for running the government response to the 9/11 attacks, which makes Bush look weaker than his My Pet Goat seven-minute stare.

Cheney was asked by Jamie Gangel of ABC News if Bush would be upset by these reveals, but replied with a nonchalant "no". But just think about what he is admitting to: as the 9/11 attacks were happening, Cheney has no problem revealing in his book that he was running the government response, completely against protocol.
The book opens with an account of Mr. Cheney’s experiences during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he essentially commanded the government’s response from a bunker beneath the White House while Mr. Bush — who was away from Washington and hampered by communications breakdowns — played a peripheral role. But Mr. Cheney wrote that he did not want to make any formal statement to the nation that day.

“My past government experience,” he wrote, “had prepared me to manage the crisis during those first few hours on 9/11, but I knew that if I went out and spoke to the press, it would undermine the president, and that would be bad for him and for the country. “We were at war. Our commander in chief needed to be seen as in charge, strong, and resolute — as George W. Bush was.”
Bush should have been in control that tragic day, not Cheney, since he was the elected president and was not incapacitated from doing his duties.

The one question that should be asked of George Bush by the media is did he relinquish command and control to Cheney during those precious minutes and hours after the attacks?

If yes, why? If the answer is no - also why? Because these words make it appear that Cheney was indeed much more powerful than Bush was. This was always the rumor and here it is in memoir form and corroborated by the 9/11 Commission Report

More at the link... good stuff...including excerpts from the 9/11 commission report that tend to support Cheney's account and it's powerful stuff, giving us one of our first real insights into George Bush's paper presidency.

There are other bloggers out there sourcing from this book this morning, some possibly coming to alternate conclusions and providing alternate viewpoints but it seems to leave little room for doubt that not only was the position of POTUS held for eight years by a man the people didn't elect (as we've always pretty well known) but held by a man who hadn't even run for the office and never received a single vote for it.

With the publication of this book, Dick Cheney has officially made George Bush irrelevant and his presidency not only immaterial but totally null and void. Now if we could just get those eight years back and start over.

In Case You Hadn't Noticed

2011-08-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

I'm going to step out of my usual little rant zone to address what I consider the absolute duplicity of the US Government in finding a way to break yet another promise to the American people... a promise made by an administration that displays considerably more talent for making promises than it does for keeping them.

I posted on this a few days back but the fact that Panetta is virtually foaming at the mouth to get an agreement with the Iraqi government that will allow the administration to weasel out of yet another solemn promise to the American people warrants a further look-see.

Personally, I have never once believed that our troops were going to be out of Iraq by December 31st and a few days back when Panetta made his little announcement that Iraq had "tentatively agreed to keeping US troops in country even though Maliki was denying it, that disbelief was reinforced by Panetta's obvious obsession with maintaining a military presence in that country.

And if I turn out to be wrong and our troops do come home,it's damned sure not going to be because Leon Panetta or anyone else in this administration didn't do their level best to keep it from happening. I truly believe the only point of speculation in this situation regards how the administration is going to spin it to the American public when they're finally able to coerce/bribe the Iraqis into asking us to stay.

We're not going to get out of Iraq for the same reasons that we don't break up too big to fail banks and call corporations and corporate execs to account for the broad daylight armed robbery being perpetrated against us on a daily basis. As always... FOLLOW THE MONEY!

War: Too Big To Fail by William Rivers Pitt @ Truthout

A pair of vitally important news reports were lost recently amid a blizzard of stories about the gyrating stock market and a rogue East Coast earthquake.

The first came from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who announced that a deal had been struck to keep US forces in Iraq beyond the oft-publicized December 31st withdrawal deadline and into 2012, contrary to Mr. Obama's promises. Not long after, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki came forward to say hold on, wait a minute, nothing along these lines has been agreed upon as yet, and negotiations are still ongoing.

OK, whoa up right there for a minute. Our president quite clearly said we were gonna be out by the end of the year. He spoke English,didn't stutter, stammer or equivocate. We would be out by the December 31st. So why the hell... in the third week of August... are we engaged in negotiations that could result in our staying well beyond that date and why is our SECDEF practically wetting himself in anticipation trying to bring that to pass?

Simple. Because the war profiteers like KBR and Halliburton can't make shitloads of money in a for profit war unless we have boots on the ground for them to profit off of. Got a better explanation?

Got that? Negotiations are still ongoing, which in all likelihood means that, sometime before December 31st, a deal will be struck between Al-Maliki and the US to keep American forces right where they've been for the last three thousand days.

In fact, Panetta let it be known that the Pentagon is already laying plans to do exactly that. Panetta made sure to draw a line between "combat forces," which he claims will be withdrawn, and "training forces," which appear poised to remain into the foreseeable future.

This will come as a great comfort to the troops who will not be coming home, as insurgent leaders have made it clear that any American on Iraqi soil after the withdrawal deadline will live life with a bullseye taped to their back...but won't live long, if the insurgents have anything to say about it.

As for the second item not covered by the major US media who were too busy asking people where they were when the earth moved and speculating on what color Steve Jobs' stool was... Well, wasn't there another war we were told in 2008 would be wound down and the troops brought home? You know the one I mean... where we actually have more troops in country now than we did in 2008? Luckily, the US Media's lords and masters haven't gotten control of the entire foreign press apparatus (yet) so if you care to dig a little you can actually find important news even during the bread and circuses pap that passes for earthshaking events (pun intended) in the American media.

A few days after this announcement came a report from the UK Telegraph that is nothing short of staggering:
America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain.

Both Afghan and American officials said that they hoped to sign the pact before the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December. Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed last week to escalate the negotiations and their national security advisers will meet in Washington in September.

Now... somebody look me in the eye and try to justify that in terms of what it has already cost us not only in the lives and well being of our young people in uniform... not only financially... but in our status as a civilized nation, as a people and as individual American citizens being sold down the river for no discernible motive other than making a small group of filthy rich rectal orifices even richer (and filthier come to think of it).

And then tell me why we should spend what it's going to cost us to keep an already ten year old war that has no objective(s), no clear cut goals and no set conditions for "victory" going for another thirteen flipping years. Are we simply trying to set some kind of record here, or what?

Welcome to the United States of America, the birthplace of Neocapitalism. We kill people for money... including our own.

How the Bushites Got Four More Years

2011-08-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

While I have no desire to "bash" President Obama, neither have I any desire to hide or ignore the truth. As I've said before, I speak directly to the effects of certain policies that I have seen or felt personally and, as a card carrying member of all three of the groups that get hit first and hardest by any economic policy decisions made in Washington... the elderly, the disabled, and the poor... I'm going to trust my own perspective and go with my own gut feelings over the pontifications of people who themselves have yet to be severely and negatively impacted by any of the current goings on.

Look at it as an explanation of why I.... and a multitude of others who find themselves in the same situation I'm in do not always wax enthusiastic over some of the things Mr. Obama says and does. Hell, I'm even old fashioned enough to believe that a person can be judged by the company he keeps and one thing I've noticed... among the company Mr. Obama keeps, there ARE no people like me.

It's no secret that Washington is totally %$#@ed up. It's also no secret that there are a whole lot of people out there today who think that the solution to all our problems is simply to elect a Republican. Mr. Obama couldn't get that vote in a million years and it would be stupid to try... and Mr. Obama is defintely not stupid.

After all, aren't Republicans the ones keeping us safe from the big bad terrorist bogeyman? A bogeyman by the way, that had 9/11 not occurred, would have had to have been invented and assembled piecemeal out of whole cloth in order for the Bush domestic policy agenda to be carried out.

And just think... all these Republican saviors want in return for "keeping you safe" is... well... basically every damned thing you've got... including most the freedoms and liberties that were guaranteed us in our constitution and which so many Americans fought and died to preserve over our nearly 225 year history. All you have to do is give those freedoms up while simultaneously allowing the bloodsucking parasites on Wall Street to relieve you of every dime you've got and our government will "keep you safe".

Except when they don't. And then they'll find someone else to blame. This is a pattern that came into full being during the George W. Bush adminstration and indeed formed the keystone of Mr. Bush's domestic policy for eight years.

So what does this have to do with President Obama? The following is sourced from "The Shocking Pattern of Obama Repeating Some of the Worst of George W. Bush" by David Bromwich @ AltrNet (originally appeared at tomdispatch.com)

In these August days, Americans are rubbing their eyes, still wondering what has befallen us with the president’s “debt deal” -- a shifting of tectonic plates beneath the economy of a sort Dick Cheney might have dreamed of, but which Barack Obama and the House Republicans together brought to fruition. A redistribution of wealth and power more than three decades in the making has now been carved into the system and given the stamp of permanence.

Only a Democratic president, and only one associated in the public mind (however wrongly) with the fortunes of the poor, could have accomplished such a reversal with such sickening completeness.

Now of course we can argue all day about Mr. Obama's role in this and whether or not he's a hostage/victim of, or a willing accomplice in, the whole affair but the fact is still going to remain... like it or not... it's taking place on his watch, a lot of people are going to hold him responsible for it and they aren't all "loony lefties" orTeaper/Republicans. If you have a problem with that, refer to those sub 40% approval ratings.

And Mr. Obama himself does not help his cause with those people by displays of what the author refers to as "worldly irony" but which come across to those of us who might be slightly less "worldly" as smugness or even arrogance. An example:

One of the last good times that President Obama enjoyed before the frenzy of debt negotiations began was a chuckle he shared with Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric and now head of the president’s outside panel of economic advisers. At a June 13th meeting of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, a questioner said he assumed that President Obama knew about the difficulties caused by the drawn-out process of securing permits for construction jobs. Obama leaned into the microphone and offered a breezy ad-lib: “Shovel ready wasn’t as, uh, shovel-ready as we expected” -- and Immelt got off a hearty laugh. An unguarded moment: the president of “hope and change” signifying his solidarity with the big managers whose worldly irony he had adopted.

Ok, speaking just for me... when I'm out here eating baloney and Ramen noodles and trying to decide whether I'm going to be able to afford the co-pays for my meds this month after I get the new nebulizer, I don't need to see my president making jokes at the expense of working class Americans in order to crony up to the likes of Jeff Immelt, whose very appointment was a direct slap in the face to the working class in this country and who has done as much as any elitist CEO... and a lot more than many... to create the situation in which I find myself today.

It simply obliterates the contention that the president is not part and parcel of the problem himself. If his willing complicity isn't the case, he needs to stop doing it and also to stop appointing Wall Street thugs and gangsters and Republican reactionaries to ANY position. THAT will be change I can believe in.

The philosopher William James took as a motto for practical morality: “By their fruits shall ye know them, not by their roots.”

Suppose we test the last two and a half years by the same sensible criterion. Translated into the language of presidential power -- the power of a president whose method was to field a “team of rivals” and “lead from behind” -- the motto must mean: by their appointments shall ye know them.

Let us examine Obama, then, by the standard of his cabinet members, advisers, and favored influences, and group them by the answers to two questions: Whom has he wanted to stay on longest, in order to profit from their solidity and bask in their influence? Which of them has he discarded fastest or been most eager to shed his association with? Think of them as the saved and the sacked. Obama’s taste in associates at these extremes may tell us something about the moral and political personality in the middle.

There's a ton more at the link... including several pages of complete and concise breakdowns as to each "saved" and "sacked" member of Mr Obama's team over the past 2 1/2 years and it is indeed supportive of the notion that Mr. Obama has indeed been a willing participant in the advancement of the corporate/Wall Street agenda . I'll be offering further excerpts including these individual breakdowns over the next few days and we'll also be looking at Mr. Obama's continuation of many of Mr. Bush's failed foreign policy policies in days to come.

I'm sorry if my opinions anger some people but I don't do this to reflect other people's feelings or opinions... just mine. And that's the way I see it. Chalk it up to the "Stockholm Syndrome" if that's the best you've got but do NOT try to talk down to me about his direct involvement in the hurt and misery that's being inflicted on my generation. There's just too damned much evidence out there to the contrary.

Shades of 2004

2011-08-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

One thing the Republicans have certainly succeeded in... they've managed to split the Democrats to the point that even when they win, they've lost. All the left wing pundits keep tittering and teeheeing about the "split between "traditional" or "mainstream" Republicans and their radical fringes, but the point is that when push comes to shove in November of 2012, the Republicans WILL all be on the same page.

If nothing else the Republicans want their radical fringe on board all the time and go to great lengths to keep from alienating them, while the mainstream Dems take great delight in bashing "the professonal left" and the "emo-progs"... I still don't understand what that one is supposed to mean... and otherwise only acknowledge their existence at election time.

There's also the fact that at the end of the day, mainstream Republicans and their radical... even lunatic... fringe have a common goal, even though that radical fringe might not be aware of what that goal actually is or that it represents the exact opposite of what they think it is. On the other hand, a lot of now "mainstream" Democrats share much of the same agenda and many of the same goals as their Republican counterparts and it's up to their "radical fringe"... actually, the Liberals who once upon a time WERE the mainstream Democrats... to stand against the onslaught of corporate Fascism, for which they get totally hammered not only by the Republicans but by the mainstream Democrats themselves.

Back about 2004, around the time Bush was pushing to get himself elected for the first time... yes, Virginia, Mr. Bush was only actually elected by the people once... I was being rather blunt in expressing my opinions of him as a president and as a human being and especially those of his blatant corporatism, his classism and his willingness to do anything to make his rich cronies richer at the expense of the working class. For this I was roundly thumped by the rag tag Neoconfederate wingnut band that was the predecessor to today's tea party, being called just about everything from "socialist" or "communist" to "an America hating scumbag who wanted to see our 'enemies' win" with support words like "treason" and "traitor" tossed in now and then for effect.

Well, in spite of my prodigious efforts, Bush got his second term and was able to carry out most of the rest of his destroy the American working class and tank the economy agendas. In doing so, he made the Republican party and everything it stood for so distasteful to the American voting public... especially the Independents of which I was one... that Genghis Kahn could have run on the Democratic ticket and won. I admit it... I was looking forward to a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in both houses and I wasn't even a Democrat. The long ordeal was finally over How the hell could we possibly lose?

But we didn't get Genghis Kahn of course. After an often bruising primary race, we got Barack Hussein Obama, the charismatic, silver tongued devil who could talk the balls right off a brass billy goat. Which he then proceeded to do, the result being that he got himself elected to the highest office in the land right handily, compared to the races "won" by his predecessor and the entire kingdom rejoiced. Then he found himself tasked with having to morph publicly from Candidate Obama to President Obama and, as we've learned... many of us to our regret... that 2008 campaign was definitely NOT a matter of "what you see is what you get". Oh we got the best of the two slates that were running... but that's all we got and... according to many mainstream Democrats... that's all we deserved.

So now , I find myself being bashed once again but with a twist... this time I'm being bashed by Democrats for having the audacity to say I think Mr Obama could be doing a better job for the other 98% than he's been doing and that I think that the main result of his efforts so far has been to continue the enrichment of the Masters of the Universe at the expense of the rest of us. And if I dare spoak out about what any of Mr. Obama's policies have done to me rather than for me, I'm accused of "Obama bashing".

The simple fact is that I and millions like me are actually suffering out here and while we may not be able to articulate as well as some others, we DO speak from real firsthand EXPERIENCE with the results of some of the situations we discuss, not just from having read some study or report by some partisan think tank, academician or pundit. For examples... third year of no COLA coming up but with the same inflation and price increases as everyone else; inadequate health care; increased unemployment; lowering wage and hour scales; people being turned out of their homes by the same banks who GAVE us the depression with the damned mortgage derivatives and are now packaging up FORECLOSURES and peddling the the exact same way they did the mortgages so we see banks foreclosing on homes they don't hold title to because nobody even knows who owns the damned house. And that's just6 the tip of this particular iceberg.

In short... the only change for the majority of us at the bottom of the food chain has been negative change and two and a half years into a Democratic administration... two and a half years in which the rate of negative impact on our quality of life has actually INCREASED... there is no way anyone can continue to simply lay the blame on Bush and pretend Mr. Obama has had nothing to do with it. Bush may have started it all but nobody is stopping it. It's easy enough today to blame the Tea Party/Republicans and their intransigence for a lot of it but had Mr. Obama delivered on even a fraction of his promises of change when he had a majority in both houses, THEY wouldn't have been the factor they are.

Already long story short: Mr. Obama is a corporatist through and through, having taken more money from corporate interests and "bundlers" than any of his Republican opponents and corporatists and Wall Street gamblers are the ones attempting to take over the country while Mr Obama has done virtually nothing to get them under control. For simple folks like me that's pretty much a case of, "Elementary, my dear Watson.". Mr. Obama TODAY is doing little other than making the same campaign speeches he was making in 2008 and offering up unasked for "tweaks" to Social Security (.3% "adjustment" in the formula for fixing COLAs) while the "Gang of Twelve" carves up what's left of the working class.

Now I subjected you to that long winded dissertation so I could ask you this: When does stating one's opinion on affairs that affect one negatively and the factors impacting those affairs... including ALL of the people responsible... spill over into being simple "Obama Bashing"?

If I can't talk about what I think is wrong and who's responsible, then I'm not going to talk at all. Sure Bush is the root cause... but as Mr. Obama himself is fond of saying, "We need to look forward, not back.", and if we're going to apply that to the even worse crimes that Bush/Cheney pulled during that eight years when they fucked up the entire goddamned world, then I figure it applies to everything else that happened too and we need to move on... to the current leadership.

Rick Perry Is A Troglodyte_Part 3

2011-08-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Rick Perry starts walking it back.

Nine months ago This Neanderthal goober published a book. Nothing new... all Republican politicians and pundits publish books. Note that I did not say anything about WRITING books. I seriously doubt that the ability of most of these people's ability to string words together in some kind of coherent format extends beyond the Dick and Jane level. But they do get books published under their name, all of which say pretty much the same thing, and a the few hundred Teaps who actually know how to read run out and buy the thing so they can jump on Facebook and be the first to "like" it. Then the RNC and major Republican donors buy up thousands of copies of said books in order to push them to the top of the best seller lists and a couple of weeks later they're in the bargain pile at your local bookstoreselling for $1.98.

It impresses the hell out of the gullible ignorant rubes that make up most of the grass roots section of the Republican party. True, these people don't actually... you know... READ books or even buy books, which is one of the main reasons WHY they're grass roots Republicans or Tea Partiers in the first place and also the primary reason why Republican organizations have to buy them in case lots, but it gives the "author" cred from the ignorant which is all that's needed to be a successful Republican politician.

Anyway, in order to be considered a serious Republican contender, Rick Perry had to "write" one of these things. I'm pretty sure he must have told his ghost writer to make damned sure his book contained the most outrageous narcissistic neoconfederate blather of the bunch. If so, he got his (donors') money's worth. Now that he's actually a candidate though and has to actually pay attention to all those polls and surveys that show that a huge majority of the people think that his extremist views and his slavish liplock on the ass of the corporate Masters of the Universe might be a huge part of what's wrong with the country, he's having second thoughts. So he does what any right wing snake oil salesman does when his bullshit is either exposed for what it is or otherwise falls out of favor... he denies ever spewing it in the first place and/or claims he was taken out of context. Works. every. time.

Just One Week Into Campaign, Perry Disavows His 9 Month Old Book

Last November, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) published Fed Up, a 240-page ode to tentherism, which argues that everything from child labor laws to the Clean Air Act to Medicare violates the Constitution. As it turns out, however, claiming that America’s entire social safety net is unconstitutional isn’t a very popular position — so Perry’s now trying to take it all back just one week into his presidential campaign: [Perry's] communications director, Ray Sullivan, said Thursday that he had “never heard” the governor suggest [Social Security] was unconstitutional. Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but “Fed Up!” is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program. [...]

Now I don't pretend to be fluent in Republicanese doublespeak but I THINK that would translate most nearly to, "The governor can waffle with the best of 'em and we're going to prove it.". It's kind of like "My statements were not meant to be factual.".

The fact is that he DID suggest exactly that and you can see exactly what he said by following the embedded links. That's the great thing about the internet... and probably the main reason the copororatistas want control of it... no matter how many times you waffle, your original statements are out there to see for anyone curious enough to look.

In an interview, Mr. Sullivan acknowledged that many passages in Mr. Perry’s “Fed Up!” could dog his presidential campaign. The book, Mr. Sullivan said, “is a look back, not a path forward.” It was written “as a review and critique of 50 years of federal excesses, not in any way as a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto,” Mr. Sullivan said. The campaign’s disavowal of “Fed Up!” is itself very new. On Sunday evening, at Mr. Perry’s first campaign stop in Iowa, a questioner asked the governor to talk about how he would fix the country’s rickety entitlement programs. Mr. Perry shot back: “Have you read my book, ‘Fed Up!’ Get a copy and read it.”

So obviously he was still standing by the drivel as late as this past Sunday which might support the contention that he can "waffle with the best of 'em" as this certainly must have broken the record for the fastest waffle in history.

Fed Up is not some 20-year-old graduate school thesis that Perry wrote before he served in elected office. It is a substantial, nationally published manifesto that Perry was proudly signing at book tours just a few months ago. Indeed, as recently as last Monday, Perry was on the campaign trail citing Fed Up for the unusual proposition that “I don’t think the federal government has a role in your children’s education.” (Video at the link.)

So a question arises. Why would anyone buy anything from this lying crapsack? I don't know. It would take a level of ignorance that I can't begin to fathom. But unfortunately, political ignorance is a leading commodity these day and elections go to those who can convince the most people that he has all the answers they're looking for. It worked for President Obama and if Rick Perry can keep that phony Christian populist thing going long enough, it may work for him. Don't EVEN think about staying home on election day, people. You may not be 100% with Obama... I know damned well I'm not... but Rick Perry may be the only alternative and believe me, if HE gets in, you are well and truly boned beyond ANY boning you think you've gotten so far.

Rick Perry Is A Troglodyte_Part 2

2011-08-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

Part 1 is below.

This is how Len Burman writing at Forbes.com, which is hardly, as I said, a bastion of Liberal thinking, see's Governor Coiffure's "dismay" over the fact that poor people don't always have to pay income taxes.

But back in the real world, I learn from newly minted GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry what's wrong with America-that middle income Americans don't pay enough taxes. Really.
We're dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don't even pay any income tax.
We're apparently not dismayed that more than half of all Americans have been in a 30-year recession with little or no income growth. We're apparently willing to write off Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, which are the big federal taxes for low- and middle-income Americans. A family of four earning $30,000 may pay no federal income tax, but it pays $4,590 in payroll taxes (including the employer's share, which economists believe is ultimately paid by the employee in the form of lower wages). Payroll taxes are much bigger than income taxes for most families.

Among working households, 82 percent pay more payroll tax than income tax. They also pay federal excise taxes on gasoline, beer, wine, liquor, tires, and cigarettes. And state and local taxes are notoriously regressive. Feel better, governor?

It's true that middle income people don't pay the estate tax. Nor do most rich people. Are we dismayed about that?

Here's another shocker for the governor: the recession surely caused many households to join the ranks of "lucky duckies." (This is the Wall Street Journal's term for people so poor that they don't owe income taxes. My reaction is here.) Are we dismayed that after dad lost his job due to the recession, the family can still claim the child tax credit so long as mom keeps working?

Okay, here are some facts, courtesy of the Tax Policy Center. They may not allay Mr. Perry's dismay, but they should assuage the concerns of anyone with a soul.

Of the 46% of households who don't pay income tax, nearly 2/3 pay payroll taxes.

Of the 18% who pay neither income nor payroll taxes, more than half are elderly.

More than 1/3 have incomes below $20,000. (Note: Ronald Reagan made the decision in 1986 to exempt people with incomes below the poverty line from federal income tax. Twenty-five years later, that still seems like a good call.)

Only 1% of nontaxpaying households are nonelderly with incomes over $20,000.
I'm dismayed about them too governor. Maybe we should close some of the loopholes that allowed almost 1,500 millionaires to escape income tax in 2009.

Governor Perry's dismay raises some questions about the potential tax policy implications. Does he want to raise taxes on lower-income elderly people-by far the largest category of lucky duckies? Does he want to raise income taxes on the bottom 50% of taxpayers? If so, wouldn't that trickle up to raises taxes on most if not all of the middle class?

How does that square with his pledge to never ever raise taxes? To keep his "tax reform" from being a net tax increase, he'd have to give tax cuts to high income folks.

Oh, right, we have to raise taxes on the working poor and the middle class to finance even more tax breaks for millionaires.

All in all, Rick Perry is proving himself... through ignorance and/or venality... just as unqualified to lead this country as is Michele Bachmann which means that in the Bizarro world inhabited by the Tea Party/GOP, one of them is bound to be the Republican nominee and therefore the alternative to Barack Obama in 2012.

You Liberals and Democrats think real hard about that before you decide to stay home on election day. I'm obviously not the happiest camper in the park when it comes to the Democratic leadership either but if you haven't come up with something better by then, you'd better do what you can to make sure THIS snake oil peddler never gets within 1000 miles of the White House.

Rick Perry Is A Troglodyte_Part1

2011-08-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

Perry has decided to come out with what I consider to be the lamest GOP talking point... lie...of the bunch. He's quoted in this Ruth Marcus Op Ed piece from a few days ago as saying, "We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax."

Now, let's assume for moment, that Governor Perry is indeed "dismayed" by this. I don't believe it but let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that at least in this instance, he's not lying. As a person with ordinary capacity for thought and reasoned logic, you would think that eventually, even someone as intellectually challenged as Governor Perry is reputed to be would understand that being dismayed at that particular fact simply displays a total ignorance of and an utter detachment from the situation that the non rich face in this country face on a daily basis.

Not only that but is also displays an inability to apply simple grade school arithmetic to what are not, after all, quantum level mathematical equations but simple little addition and subtraction operations that most ten year olds would be more than happy to do for Mr. Perry if neither he nor the members of that staff of high powered morons who actually do his thinking and write his speeches for him are up to the task.

Knowing it's not likely that his handlers are going to let him be publicly tutored in arithmetic by a ten year old, We've fortunately been able to find a couple dozen sources that explain the situation for him... sources that seriously, he could have found for himself had he not been so enamored of this oldest of conservative sound bites chestnuts. Hell he probably thinks he originated it. First, back to Ms. Marcus. Here's what she had to say about his "dismay".

Really? Of all the ills in the world, of all the problems with the economy, all the difficulties with the tax code, this is the one that Rick Perry chooses to lament? Perry’s statement conjures visions of America as Slacker Nation, where the overburdened wagon-pullers drag an increasingly heavy burden of freeloaders.

His number is correct but, like other conservatives who have seized on the statistic, Perry draws from it a dangerously misleading lesson. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that 46.4 percent of households will pay no federal income tax in 2011. This is, for the most part, not because people have chosen to loaf. It’s because they are working but simply don’t earn enough to owe income taxes, based on the progressive structure of the tax code and provisions designed to help the working poor and lower-income seniors.

As the Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams has explained, “a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero. The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.” Does Perry truly see this as an “injustice”? Does he believe his “dismay” should be alleviated by raising the tax burden on these households?

Consider: Of those households that do not owe income taxes, about a third earn $10,000 a year and a slightly smaller share earn between $10,000 and $20,000. More than three-fourths earn $30,000 or less.

In addition, the notion that these households pay no taxes is flat-out wrong. They pay — leaving aside state and local sales, income and property taxes — federal gasoline and other excise taxes and, most significantly, payroll taxes on every dollar they earn. These taxes are regressive. Everyone pays the same share, regardless of income, so they hit the poor hardest, and they counterbalance the progressivity of the income tax code.Indeed, factoring in payroll taxes alone, the Slacker Nation picture looks very different.

Two-thirds of the households that pay no federal income tax still ante up for payroll taxes. Fewer than one in five — 18 percent of all households — pay neither income nor payroll taxes. Nearly all of these are elderly (10 percent) or have incomes below $20,000 (7 percent.)

Assuming that Perry isn’t worked up about Slacker Grandmas, the relevant “slacker share” — people who are supposedly comfortably ensconced on that wagon the rest of us are pulling — is in single digits rather than “nearly half.”

And if that isn't plain enough for Mr. Perry, in part 2 we'll let Len Burman @ Forbes (hardly a bastion of Liberlism), explain it some more for him.

How To Win A Presidential Medal of Freedom (Under Bush)

2011-08-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia: The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States. It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform. (Emphasis Added)

In the first 8 years of the 21st century, it was apparently pretty easy to win one of the things. The prime prerequisite seems to be that you had be a certified crony of George W. Bush who seemed to hand the damned things out to his pals like Reagan did jelly beans.

The second requirement appears to be that you had to suck... really hard... at your job and that your suckosity had to advance the Cheny/Bush agenda. I mean my god, he even gave one to Michael Brown after Katrina. How valuable can the thing be if one of the biggest hack failures in history gets one? A lot of people thought it would be impossible to demean the entire concept of the award any more than that.

They'd be wrong. Fact is that Mr. Bush had already made a total farce out of the whole PMoF award in December, 2004 by awarding the medal to George Tenet... a man who, if we're to believe the information that has trickled out over the last 7 years... probably has the blood of not only the 9/11 victims on his hands but that of the thousands of US military personnel and the untold thousands of Iraqi civilians who died as a result of his manipulation of intelligence data that was seen by officials outside the immediate Bush/Cheney cabal in order to help justify support for Cheney's... think Halliburton's... war for profit in Iraq.

We never got the full story, thanks to our corporate whore press but as often happens when thieves start to fall out, the details also start to fall out and we all know that the devil is in the details. Ray McGovern @ Consortium News

Exclusive: With few exceptions – like some salacious rumor about the Kennedy family – the mainstream U.S. news media has little interest in historical stories. Such was the case when an ex-White House terrorism official accused a former CIA director of withholding information that might have prevented a 9/11 attack, Ray McGovern reports.

Bulletin for those of you who get your information only from the New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM):

Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has accused ex-CIA Director George Tenet of denying him and others access to intelligence that could have thwarted the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11. Deliberately withholding critical intelligence from those who need it, and can act on it, is — at the least — gross dereliction of duty. The more so if keeping the White House promptly and fully informed is at the top of your job jar, as it was for Director of Central Intelligence Tenet.

And yet that is precisely the charge Clarke has leveled at the former DCI. In an interview aired on Aug. 11 on a local PBS affiliate in Colorado, Clarke charges that Tenet and two other senior CIA officials, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, deliberately withheld information about two of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 — al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. The two had entered the United States more than a year before the 9/11 attacks. Clarke adds that the CIA then covered it all up by keeping relevant information away from Congress and the 9/11 Commission.

Personal opinion: I have no doubt that Mr. Tenet was capable of doing exactly what Mr. Clarke is accusing him of doing. The question is, "At the behest of whom?". Mr. Clarke scrupulously avoids that question as if he intended to give the impression that Cheney and Bush and the rest of the Secret Squirrel circle were just as ignorant and deceived by Tenet and the other two yoyos as congress and the rest of the intelligence community.

I simply do not believe this is possible. Those three guys would have had no reason to withhold that data and effectively protect the people who would eventually form the nucleus of the 9/11 attackers other than to help work a scam on the congress and the people in order to gain support a decision handed down from above.

That would have been the decision to go to war with Iraq... that we know now had already been made long before 9/11... probably before Bush even assumed office. Those guys had to be following someone's orders and if it wasn't Cheney and Bush giving those orders, who the hell was it?

And besides... perhaps the most telling point of all... if they actually HAD arbitrarily withheld information from Bush... an act which had directly resulted in the deaths of the 911 victims and indirectly in the deaths of hundreds of thousands more people... why would Bush turn around three years later, AFTER he had his Iraq invasion... and award Tenet the highest civilian honor available for doing so? Maybe for service to his ~~country~~ president below and behind the call of duty? Mr. McGovern continues:

Tenet is the same fellow who provided the “slam dunk” on the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, as well as the “artist renderings” of equally non-existent mobile laboratories for developing biological warfare agents, based on unconfirmed information from the impostor code-named (appropriately) “Curveball.”

It was Tenet who, under orders from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, ordered up and disseminated a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate on WMD in Iraq, the purpose of which was to deceive our elected representatives out of their constitutional prerogative to authorize war. No small lies.

After a five-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chairman Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence adduced under Tenet to “justify” attacking Iraq as “uncorroborated, contradicted, and non-existent.”

There's more at the link... mostly more finger pointing at tenet by Mr. McGovern and Mr.Clarke... who certainly has a vested interest in directing attention elsewhere... and it's a good read, no matter where you come down in regard to who's "guilty".

If nothing else, the story shows just how rotten to the core the entire apparatus had become in the years leading up to what amounts as a deliberate betrayal of trust by our government that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. It also tells you... even more than the case of Brown vs Katrina... what you had to do to get the country's highest civilian honor from Bush. Disgusting, innit?<br /> <br />

Op-ed: Tea Party Less Popular Than Muslims And Atheists

2011-08-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

There's a message in this somewhere but you know what? The people who need most to get that message... won't.

Cue outraged screams of denial in 3-2-1...

In an op-ed article in the New York Times, Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, and David E. Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame, say they have collected data indicating that the tea party is "less popular than much maligned groups like 'atheists' and 'Muslims.'"

But Campbell says the tea party was really an afterthought in their research. "We didn't go into this study to look at the tea party," Campbell said in an interview with The Ticket. The professors were following up on research they conducted in 2006 and 2007 for their book "American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us" and decided to add the tea party and atheists to their list of survey queries. By going back to many of the same respondents, the professors gleaned several interesting facts about the tea party.

One of their more surprising findings, Campbell concedes, (and one drawing national attention) is that the tea party drew a lower approval rating than Muslims and atheists. That put the tea party below 23 other entries--including Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Republicans and Democrats--that the professors included on their survey of "a representative sample of 3,000 Americans."

Damn... there may be hope for the country yet.

So The Democrats Aren't That Into You Either. Get Over That Too!

2011-08-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

Here is what the Obama campaign, via New Mexico state campaign director, Ray Sandoval, decided to share with its supporters earlier this month, from Amanda Terkel at Huffington Post:

Paul Krugman is a political rookie. At least he is when compared to President Obama. That's why he unleashed a screed as soon as word came about the debt ceiling compromise between President Obama and Congressional leaders - to, you know, avert an economic 9/11. Joining the ideologue spheres' pure, fanatic, indomitable hysteria, Krugman declares the deal a disaster - both political and economic - of course providing no evidence for the latter, which I find curious for this Nobel winning economist. He rides the coattails of the simplistic argument that spending cuts - any spending cuts - are bad for a fragile economy, ignoring wholeheartedly his own revious cheerleading for cutting, say, defense spending. But that was back in the day - all the way back in April of this year. [...]
No, the loudest screeching noise you hear coming from Krugman and the ideologue Left is, of course, Medicare. Oh, no, the President is agreeing to a Medicare trigger!!! Oh noes!!! Everybody freak out right now! But let's look at the deal again, shall we? [...]

Now let's get to the fun part: the triggers. The more than half-a-trillion in defense and security spending cut "trigger" for the Republicans will hardly earn a mention on the Firebagger Lefty blogosphere. Hell, it's a trigger supposedly for the Republicans, and of course, there's always It'sNotEnough-ism to cover it.
And "firebagger" is clearly a reference to "Teabagger," what we call the Tea Party. It's also likely a reference to the blog FireDogLake that has been highly critical of the President and the Dems in Congress. So this senior Obama campaign official - he heads up the entire state of New Mexico - was suggesting that Paul Krugman and the progressive Netroots were no better than Teabaggers.

I'd like to interject a word or two hundred right here. While the tone the man takes is insulting, totally simplistic, condescending and downright infuriating... leaving out or glossing over the dozens if not hundreds of concerns that 72-80% of the people in those polls everyone likes to cite are expressing... let's all remember, this is nothing new.

This is what we've been getting from the center/right Democrats in this administration and the centrist Democrats in general, since about a week after the election. "OK, we won. Thanks for all the help. Now just run along and STFU for four years until we need you again."

Believe it or not there are times when I wish I COULD just STFU and run along an be seen and not heard... I'm too damned old to be doing this. But I spent the major portion of my lifetime taking freedom and liberty and "inalienable" rights for granted just to have it jerked from under me... something that I believed could never happen as long as at least ONE of the major parties gave a rat's ass about my interests. I take NOTHING for granted anymore.

We can sit here ranting and railing at what the Conservatives are doing to this country from now until milking time and not alter the fact that they couldn't have done it... and couldn't still be doing it... without the at first covert but now outright blatant cooperation of the conservative fleas that infiltrated the Democratic Party and that now swarm all over the body politic with he rest of the paid for bloodsuckers, serving the corporate agenda just as surely and steadfastly as their actual Republican counterparts.

He also refers to the blogosphere as "the ideologue sphere," and suggests that we're "fanatic" and full of "hysteria." Funny, the Obama campaign didn't feel that way about us in 2008 when they repeatedly asked us to do their dirty work for them, and we gladly, and quietly, did. I guess this is yet another example of how no good deed goes unpunished when Barack Obama is the recipient of said deed.

Hell of a get out the vote message.

PS There seems to be some effort to claim that A) this guy is some junior staffer (in fact, he's the Obama campaign director for the entire state), and B) that he of course wasn't speaking for the campaign (except he was, officially, and it's been almost three weeks and the guy still has a job). You do the math.

I don't care who or what the guy is. He expresses the same disdain for the anyone to his own immediate left as the Republicans and Teabaggers do and he uses the same name hyperbolic unsupported sound bite innuendo that the professional Teabaggers do and... again like the Teabaggers... offers NOTHING substantive or empirical that can actually be... you know... fact checked. I came away from his little grab for his 15 minutes with the distinct impression that he A) hates Paul Krugman and he B) hates the left... about equally... and not a damned thing else. So Mr. Sandoval, whoever the hell you are... I've certainly never heard of you... who's the REAL Teabbagger wannabe, eh?

Oh by the way... here's one of the little factoids you think everyone should just ignore. It's obviously NOT just the "ideologue left" and "firebagger lefty bloggers" who are thoroughly up to here with you and weasels like you who can't get beyond the level of middle school taunts and Teabagger style rants against the left. See how this squares with your bullshit rhetoric.

(Reuters) - Approval of President Barack Obama's handling of the U.S. economy has fallen to a new low of 26 percent, according to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday in the aftermath of a bruising fight with Congress over federal spending.
Seventy-one percent of Americans said they disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy, up 11 percentage points from mid-May, when Gallup last questioned peopleabout the issue.
Approval of his handling of the economy fell by 11 percentage points from 37 percent in mid-May.
The president had similarly low approval ratings on other economic issues. Only 24 percent of Americans approved of Obama's handling of the federal budget deficit, while 29 percent approved of his efforts to create jobs.

Tell ya what Ray... get back to me when you can square that with the hype about what a great job you and your ilk are doing for the rest of us. Until then, I'll be hoping not to be subjected to anything else out of you. I hear enough of your kind of crap from the "other" side.

Sorry, I Couldn't Resist.

2011-08-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

Pic stolen from Bart. Don't know where he stole it.