Social Security is not the reason for the deficit - now tell that to Bill Maher

What follows is from Crooks & Liars:

While I agree with Bill Maher that we do have a problem with the costs of Medicare and Medicaid and defense spending and I agree that our budget should not be balanced on the backs of the poor, what the hell is it going to take to get through to Maher that Social Security is not to blame for the deficit? It's running a surplus.

Maybe someone can send him this article by Robert Reich -- Budget baloney: Social Security isn't to blame for deficit:

Social Security won't be a problem for another 26 years, and even then, the problem can be solved.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican presidential hopeful, says in order to “save” Social Security the retirement age should be raised. The media are congratulating him for his putative “courage.” Deficit hawks are proclaiming Social Security one of the big entitlements that has to be cut in order to reduce the budget deficit.

This is all baloney.

In a former life I was a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. So let me set the record straight.

Social Security isn’t responsible for the federal deficit. Just the opposite. Until last year Social Security took in more payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits. It lent the surpluses to the rest of the government.

Now that Social Security has started to pay out more than it takes in, Social Security can simply collect what the rest of the government owes it. This will keep it fully solvent for the next 26 years.

But why should there even be a problem 26 years from now? Back in 1983, Alan Greenspan’s Social Security commission was supposed to have fixed the system for good – by gradually increasing payroll taxes and raising the retirement age. (Early boomers like me can start collecting full benefits at age 66; late boomers born after 1960 will have to wait until they’re 67.)

Greenspan’s commission must have failed to predict something. But what? It fairly accurately predicted how quickly the boomers would age. It had a pretty good idea of how fast the US economy would grow. While it underestimated how many immigrants would be coming into the United States, that’s no problem. To the contrary, most new immigrants are young and their payroll-tax contributions will far exceed what they draw from Social Security for decades.

So what did Greenspan’s commission fail to see coming?

Inequality.

Remember, the Social Security payroll tax applies only to earnings up to a certain ceiling. (That ceiling is now $106,800.) The ceiling rises every year according to a formula roughly matching inflation.

Back in 1983, the ceiling was set so the Social Security payroll tax would hit 90 percent of all wages covered by Social Security. That 90 percent figure was built into the Greenspan Commission’s fixes. The Commission assumed that, as the ceiling rose with inflation, the Social Security payroll tax would continue to hit 90 percent of total income.

Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 84 percent of total income.

It went from 90 percent to 84 percent because a larger and larger portion of total income has gone to the top. In 1983, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income. Today the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent.

If we want to go back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000.

Presto. Social Security’s long-term (beyond 26 years from now) problem would be solved.

Bingo.

God and the gridiron

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Ronald Reagan and the destruction of the American dream!

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. February 6 will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan. It will be celebrated by meetings and symposiums all over the world. Now joining us to give his take on Reaganomics is Michael Hudson. Michael's a former Wall Street economist, a distinguished research professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and he runs a website: Michael-Hudson.com. Thanks for joining us, Michael.

MICHAEL HUDSON, RESEARCH PROF., UMKC: Thank you very much.

JAY: We are celebrating the successes and achievements of Ronald Reagan in, particularly, economics. What do you make of Reaganomics?

HUDSON: Well, obviously, it--a consequence was to quadruple the federal debt by cutting taxes. Most people think of him in terms of lowering income taxes, especially on the higher brackets. But one of the key things that people don't recognize is what he did with the small print of the tax code, especially in the 1981 tax revision as it affected real estate. He gave real estate double declining-balance, so that you could depreciate a building as if the building was wearing out, even as the property were gaining price, doubling, quadrupling, as if it were wearing out, and avoid paying any income tax at all. Not only did our real estate owners--absentee owners, that is--avoid paying income tax, but they had a tax loss carry forward while their building was soaring in price, while their rents were rising, while they were making more and more money. The tax code enabled them to pretend that the building was wearing out in just seven and a half years. And this was at a time when the most expensive buildings were prewar buildings, even hundred-year-old buildings, when buildings were built better. And so what Reagan did was make the FIRE sector--finance, insurance, and real estate--virtually tax-exempt. So it wasn't that he lowered income taxes; he abolished them. He replaced the regulatory commissions with deregulators, especially the group that was called "the crazies" out of Utah, who were put in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency and other environment agencies.

JAY: But the supporters of Reagan say--they may even agree with much of what you just said. They said, well, this allowed growth in the economy, it gave rise to prosperity, regulations out of the way, lowering, even elimination of taxes. I mean, a lot of his supporters would applaud all of that and say it was a positive for the economy as a whole.

HUDSON: When people talk about the economy, what do they mean? When Reagan took office in 1979, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans got 29 percent of the revenue accruing to wealth. Interest, dividends, rent, and capital gains. By 2004 they'd doubled that proportion to 59 percent of the returns to wealth. So the economic growth did not accrue to labor. Labor's living standards and real wages have not increased since 1979. During all of Reagan and Bush and Clinton, their living standards didn't go up. So the economic growth was all in the overhead of the financial sector. It was all rentier growth.

JAY: Okay, but the theory is it's supposed to trickle down. So didn't it?

HUDSON: No. There was--it was sucked up. That's the important thing. Instead of trickling down, there was a huge sucking up of wealth to the top. If it trickled down, the richest 1 percent wouldn't have doubled their share of the returns to wealth. If it had trickled down, real wages would have gone up. Instead, we have the greatest inequality of any country in the Western world. That's not trickling down.

JAY: Part of Reaganomics was the relationship to foreign debt and what happened with interest rates. That was also why it wasn't very good for Brazils and other places. It did draw a lot of money back into the US. Wasn't that good for the US economy?

HUDSON: No, because it would have been good for the economy if the money coming back to the United States would have been invested in real, tangible capital formation. But it wasn't. The money coming into the United States took the form of loans by the upper 10 percent of the population to the bottom 90 percent. So the wealth coming back in ended up indebting the bottom 90 percent. The bottom 90 percent had to go into a lifetime of debt peonage in order to afford housing. There was a huge increase in housing prices. The advocates of Reaganomics said, look, he created balance sheet wealth; look at how everybody got rich off their houses. But when you say someone got rich off the value of their houses, that means new buyers have to pay much, much more of their future income to afford housing. So what they call wealth creation is actually debt creation that impoverished the economy, laying the groundwork for the bubble economy that burst under Bush and Obama.

JAY: Now, at the end of Reagan's presidency, what was the state of the union? What the narrative is: Reagan was one of the great economic presidents of our time.

HUDSON: Including the other four years of Bush, the Reagan Bush. The effect was to quadruple America's debt. Reagan crippled the country economically. That was the objective. His backers were predators. Making an economy free for predators is not what the classical economists meant by a free market. Adam Smith talked about businessmen getting together to establish a monopoly over the economy. Adam Smith would have turned over in his grave to say the Reagan idea of free markets is to open the markets to crooks, to fraudsters, to environmental degradation, to predators, to creditors.

JAY: So how does Reagan emerge, then, as one of the great heroes of modern presidency, and particularly of free-market, small-government success story?

HUDSON: Well, if you're a predator and a wealthy Wall Street investor and you control the media, you would want to applaud him too. Remember, the people who are applauding Reagan are the people who applaud Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia as a freedom fighter when he was the biggest embezzler in Russia. These are the people who applaud criminals. For them, the criminals are economic success stories, not criminals. So if you want to call crime an economic success, then of course you're going to applaud Reagan, rightly so.

JAY: Sarah Palin--[former] governor Sarah Palin's going to be speaking at one of the events celebrating Reagan's birth. What do you make of the way that the Tea Party adopts Reagan, I guess, as one of their ideological gods?

HUDSON: I would say that the Tea Party has an agenda that is subsidized by very wealthy people whose objective is to distract the members of the Tea Party from how the economy actually works and to turn their frustration against each other, and especially against higher-paid labor. I remember once I was driving with Herman Kahn over to visit Governor Rockefeller. And we were in the car, being driven by Rockefeller's chauffeur, and Herman turned to me and said, you know, Governor Rockefeller's chauffeur is not jealous of Governor Rockefeller; he's jealous of the other chauffeurs for the Harrimans and the people who live near the estate who get paid more. That's the Tea Party strategy: get labor jealous of public sector labor who might pay more, jealous of people who've been evicted but somehow are able to keep their houses. You turn the fighting within, rather than against the people who are actually fighting them. This is class war 101.

JAY: Thanks for joining us, Michael.

HUDSON: Thank you very much.

JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.


Thanks for this to BS Alert.

Non News

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Repugnican Perfidy in Iowa

Image from here.

What follows came from Harper's Magazine, October 2010.

The article was labeled "Squawkeye State." It derives from the Iowa Republican Party's 387-plank platform which was posted on their website this year. It should give pause, I think, to President Obama and any other progressive who believes it is possible to compromise with Repugnicans.


Here it is.  Read it and weep - for Iowa, for our country!

The function of law is to protect the free exercise of a person's God-given rights:  life, liberty, and the right to property (pursuit of happiness).

We call for the repeal of all mandatory minimum-wage laws.

 We call for reinstating, with proper safeguards, the death penalty for murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and drug dealers, with a firm limit of twenty-four months for appeals and no intrusion of federal authorities.

We believe that claims of human-caused global warming are based on fraudulent, inaccurate information, and that legislation and policy based on this information are detrimental to the well-being of the United States.

We believe all individuals and business owners have the freedom to choose the quality of air in their homes and establishments.

We call for the elimination of the Iowa Department of Education and of the U.S. Department of Education.

We support abolition of the IRS.

We call for the repeal of the Federal Reserve Act, eliminating the Federal Reserve, and we support returning to the gold and/or silver standard.

We believe candidates running as Republicans for any local or state office should be required to complete and return to the Republican Party of Iowa a signed questionaire indicating whether the candidate agrees, disagrees, or is undecided about each plank of the current party platform.

That's it.  You can cry now.  The neanderthals have taken over!  Iowa, unfortunately, is just one state where this has happened.  Ignorance and self-interest rule!

Fubar

 And you get an even bigger ribbon if you become "born again" and believe in Jesus.

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Sarah Palin Tea Party Battle Hymn

You may want to have a barf bag by your side if you dare listen to this crap!  Dumb and dumber!



Found this here.

The Get together

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

News about bigots, naysayers and religious morons

1.  Rick Perry, as most people are aware (or should be) is a monumental hypocrite.  Claiming the Christian faith, he denies it at every turn, from trying to criminalize sex between gays, by taking away abortion rights for Texas women, to his desire to teach "intelligent design" in Texas schools. 

Lauren Kelley, in an article on AlterNet, notes that Perry "publicly trashed the Obama administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act while quietly begging for and accepting a much-needed bailout ... "

Perry "actually launched a 'No Government Bailouts' campaign and published an anti-bailout op-ed in the Washington Times on the same day he applied for ARRA funds.


2.  There is a cross in La Jolla, California, atop Mount Soledad.  A cross was first put up there in 1913.  The one that stands there now is supposed to be "a war memorial."  But some folks, like the Jewish War Veterans of the United States as well as the ACLU, believe it is a specifically Christian symbol and should be taken down.

The issue went to court and a U.S. Federal Judge ruled that the cross was part of a memorial that "communicates the primarily nonreligious messages of military service, death and sacrifice," and therefore could remain on public land.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in opposition to that notion and said the cross was unconstitutional - it violated the establishment clause. "[I]n adopting the First Amendment, the Founders were prescient in recognizing that, without eschewing religion, neither can the government be seen as favoring one religion over another. The balance is subtle but fundamental to our freedom of religion."

Why can't the right-wing wackos and the christianist politicos of today get that into their thick heads?


3. In Phoenix, the Roman Catholic Bishop, Thomas J. Olmstead, "has stripped St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center of its 115-year affiliation because administrators -- including a nun -- allowed doctors to remove a dying 11-week old fetus from a mother of four because she would have died without the procedure."

Here we have in bold print the absurdity of religion, in this particular case, the absolute absurdity of the Roman Catholic form of Christianity! Olmstead is the perfect Pharisee as described in the Gospel of Matthew - fussing about the letter of the law and missing completely its spirit; missing completely the teaching of his Jesus!

Well, what does Olmstead's "stripping" of St. Joseph's affiliation mean?  Not a hell of a lot. Olmstead said "The Catholic faithful are free to seek care or to offer care at St. Joseph's Hospital, but I cannot guarantee that the care provided will be in full accord with the teachings of the Church."

Heh, heh. Who the hell cares? Who the hell cares anymore what a Catholic bishop says about anything? Who cares about a church institution that served and still serves as a haven for predators of young children; whose hypocrisy is monumental, decrying homosexuality when 25-50 percent of its priestly leaders are gay?

If I was religious, I would say "Thank God for those clear-headed, compassionate people at St. Joseph's who saved the life of that mother of four children! And to hell with Olmstead and all the other sanctimonious creeps who hold positions of "authority" in that monstrous organization!


4. We all know Jim DeMint as the Jesus-smitten loony from South Carolina who is part of The Family - the organization that is working to take over the world for God and therefore believe that their ends justify just about any means.

Tracy Clark-Flory, at Salon, tells how back last fall, DeMint spoke at a church rally. What he said was reported by the Spartanburg Herald Journal. "DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried women who's sleeping with her boyfriend - she shouldn't be in the classroom."

Well, DeMint is a bigot. A big bigot! A horse's ass! Unfortunately, he is a member of our Congress.

The Charleston City Paper had this to say: "DeMint's America is one where guns and God are allowed in the classroom, but not good educators who happen to have a functioning, unwed vagina or his and his bath towels."

And I couldn't have said it better myself!


5. In Florida, the morons are out in force!

Personhood Florida represents a group of retrogrades, people of such low intelligence and morality, they should probably be sent off to a desert island where they couldn't cause any further damage to the general population. Personhood Florida believes (note that word because what they "believe" has no scientific justification whatsoever!) that a fetus become person at conception; a real, human person.

That's OK in the sense that these fruitcakes are free to believe any damn thing they want. Where it gets sticky is their insistance that their beliefs become law in the state of Florida! To that end they are "sponsoring a proposed state amendment that would grant personhood to fetuses."

Thus, their "initiative" would "ban abortion and some forms of birth control."

Now in order to achieve their objectives, they put together a weekend gathering for Florida pastors in order to obtain several thousand signatures, and they hope that the pastors will get the "word" out to people so that Personhood Florida can get enough signatures to put their initiative on the 2012 ballot!

Well, if you want to do something truly stupid and nonsensical, get the pastors in line!


6. This comes from Alex Pareene at Salon. The Tea Party, as we know, lives a world all its own; a fantasy world they have created from their own imaginations. This becomes especially evident when they talk about our country's so-called "Founding Fathers."

Up in Tennessee, where as one woman from that state told me recently, "we Tennesseans don't like Al Gore!", Tea Party crackpots are demanding that the state legislature "amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that 'No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.'"

Huh?

Well, it really comes down to racism. A Tea Party crackpot spokesman, "Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds ... said the group wants to address 'an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.'"

Huh?

As Pareene put it: "OK, but ... I mean ... those guys did a lot of 'intruding' and slave-owning, is the thing."

Jesus does standup

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

And you thought Jeb Bush was bad!

Florida voters, many of whom are as ignorant as a school of carp, voted Rick Scott to be governor last November.  Most of those probably thought Jeb Bush was the cat's meow. 

But a whole lot of us who live in Forida came to rue the day that ol' Jeb first arrived in Tallahassee.  If, however, you thought ol' Jeb was bad, wait 'til you see what Rick Scott is going to do to this state!

Scott, you may remember, spent $70 million of his own money to lie his way into the governor's seat. Which is what you might expect for Scott is the shady character who headed up Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation, as noted by Carl Hiaasen, "falsified patient's bills and gave kickbacks to doctors, among other scams.

"While the FBI was hauling away company records, Scott got the boot. Columbis/HCA later paid a $1.7 billion fine for perpetrating the largest Medicare fraud in the history of Medicare, no small feat.

"Scott was never charged with a crime ... [but] He left Columbia/HCA with a $300 million-plus severance package ..."

Scott admits that he was responsible for what went on at Columbia/HCA, but denies knowing of any illegal activity. That, of course, is laughable. As Hiaasen says, "The fraud was so massive and institutionalized that his statement can't be taken seriously. If he truly didn't know what was happening all around him, he's an incompetent fool.

"And if he did know, he's a lying crook."

Hmmm. It would appear that the second option is a more accurate choice.


Scott made some big promises during his campaign. It should come as no surprise, however, due to his ongoing inability to tell the truth, that some of those promises are going to be forgotten now that he's in the cat-bird seat.

Scott flies about in his own personal jet, and he refuses to make his flight plans public, which is a pretty good way of keeping secrets from the people of Florida. He did, however, visit a notorious gambling promoter in Vegas recently, which fueled speculation that he may be reneging on his supposed opposition to open Florida to more gambling.  He says that's not so.  They were just visiting.

We'll see.

But that's a minor promise. What about the other promises: he will, he promised over and over again on the campaign trail, "single-handedly slash property taxes, create 700,000 new jobs and shrink state government."

Right.

Or, as Hiaasen put it, "And right after that, he'll climb into a great big balloon and fly Dorothy and Toto back to Kansas."

Let us not forget:  the man who perpetrated the largest Medicare fraud ever is now the governor of Florida!

Bang went the pope!

It is always a delight to hear Roman Catholic poobahs pronounce on scientific subjects as if they knew what they were talking about, or as if anyone gave a damn.

Historically, the Roman church has been [and remains] anti-science. The Roman church bases its beliefs, not on the rigor of scientific inquiry, but on its interpretation of the Bible and its ever-changing tradition. The Church only accepts scientific truth when that truth has labeled the church's beliefs as bullshit.

So when Pope Benny came out recently to announce that his god set up the Big Bang which resulted in the creation of our universe, one cannot help but be amused, or bemused or be caught up in a non-religious hissy-fit!

For this is one more in a long line of examples of the Roman church closing a god-gap. The Roman church has believed and promoted all kinds of non-scientific claims down through the years (remember Galileo?) and persecuted, even killed those who dared challenge the "truth" set forth by the popes and their minions. When the Church could not explain a natural event or unusual circumstance, it laid the blame or the credit on god. Then when science came along to dissemble the church's stance, to cover the gap between what the church believed and reality, the church simply moved on to another gap. Its "god" became known as the "god of the gaps."

The big gap remains, however: how did the universe begin 13 billion years ago? Who, if anyone, is responsible for the beginning of the universe?

Science can answer the first question: The universe began with the Big Bang. The only people who argue against that scientific "truth," are those numbnuts in the Discovery Institute and their creationist and intelligent design cohorts, and all the ignorant people and stupid fundamentalist Christians that befoul our fair land.

Aha! But who is responsible for the Big Bang? Scientists, by and large, say no one is responsible. It was a "chance" event. It just happened. And they've got the data to back up their claims. No god shows up in that data. No god is necessary for the Big Bang.


Here cometh Pope Benny. Pope Benny, speaking to a group of Catholics at the Vatican, saith "The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe."

Pope Benny is pronouncing here, as only a pope can pronounce, so pay attention: "Contemplating it [the universe], we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God."


Sounds good; sounds nice and reassuring if you are a believer. Unfortunately, however, Pope Benny is just blowing smoke up our collective ass. He's making that up. He has absolutely no evidence for anything he said.

And, as has happened so often in the history of the Church, it continues to preach a god to cover what it assumes is a gap in scientific understanding. Benny's god is just another "god of the gaps." Sadly, however, so far as Pope Benny and his church is concerned, the gap has been closed.

There was no god present for the Big Bang and no god is needed for the Big Bang.


And that's the way it is this January, 2011.

Obama's Island

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Glenn Beck's violent rhetoric - "Shoot Them in the Head"

What follows comes from an article at AlterNet.

On his TV show back in June, 2010, Glenn Beck "told his audience that Democrats like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi had used progressive revolutionaries to gain power and that the only way to stop them would be to 'shoot them in the head.'"


We are rightly proud of our First Amendment right to speak freely in this country. But because words do have an effect (not withstanding the childhood rhyme about sticks and stones to the contrary) we have generally agreed that one cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

Glenn Beck yells "Fire!" constantly in a nation crowded with people who are feeling oppressed and distraught.


"Beck's words were such an obvious incitement to violence that it's hard to believe Fox ever allowed them on the air. But the fact is that they did, and the full context of Beck's remarks make it clear that he meant every word to be taken literally."

In the video of that show, "Beck delivers his monologue in front of a Swastika that he's put on his chalkboard earlier in the program. Beck argues that Democrats have risen to power by cynically leveraging the efforts of progressive revolutionaries who are plotting to overthrow the American government. Together they form an unholy alliance that threatens America's very existence."

Beck's targets include Obama, Pelosi, Michael Moore, Bill Maher and Rosie O'Donnell, among others.


Beck is a lunatic. He's also a moron. He's very dangerous. He's a threat to our democracy. Inciting people to violence is a crime. That makes him a criminal. He should not be on television. He should be in jail.


Read the AlterNet article here.

The video is at Daily Kos, here.

Great apes

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Suffrage and corruption plus the real deficit problem

(Photo from the New York Daily News)

In an essay titled "Speak, Money" in the October issue of Harper's, Roger D. Hodge talks of suffrage:

"Ideally," he says, "our ballots purport to be expressions of political will, which we hope and pray will be translated into legislative and executive action by our pretended representatives. ...

"Alas ... voting is the beginning of civic virtue, not its end, and as suffrage has expanded so has its value been steadily debased. The locus of real power is elsewhere. Wealth and property qualifications, poll taxes, and the like are very far from being historical curiosities; they have simply mutated."

Here's the crux of the matter, which so many of us are feeling so deeply and painfully:

"Campaign contributions and other forms of political spending have assumed that old exclusionary function [e.g. poll taxes], and only those who can afford to pay are able truly to manifest their political will. Voters still 'matter,' of course, but only as raw material to be shaped by the actual form of political influence--money--which molds the body politic be realizing itself in the ductile mass of common voters."

Now, this state of affairs, claims Mr. Hodge, has a name. It is "corruption." Here's the process and the result: "Corruption, in its institutional sense, denotes the degeneration of republican forms of government into despotism, and typically comes about when the private ends of a narrow faction of citizens succeed in capturing the engines of government ... a corrupt citizenry is one that has allowed its private and narrow personal interests to trump those of the general public."

Mr. Hodge's entire essay may be found in the October 2010 issue of Harper's, pp. 13-17.


Now to the so-called "deficit" problem, which may be a real problem, but the Republicans really do not care about the deficit. They care only that their ideology triumphs no matter the cost to the public - especially to the poorest and most needy of our citizenry.

To repeal the health care bill will increase the deficit by at least $230 billion dollars.

Thus repeal of the health care bill is not about deficit reduction. It's about petulant Republican ass-holes in Congress pushing their moldy and quite rotten views about government onto an ignorant and unsuspecting public!

If one is serious about reducing the deficit, one does not start with programs that keep people alive, but with programs that kill people. Like, say our warmongering program; by reducing the Pentagon budget.

Again, from Harper's October issue:

Thirty-eight percent "of this year's federal budget deficit [is] attributable to Bush-era tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Thirty-eight percent!!!

One does not begin reducing the deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, programs vital to the well-being of millions of our citizens. The tea party crackpots and other goofy Repugnicans like Sarah Palin have used to great effect the big lie about "death panels" in the health care reform bill. Now they are using the big lie about deficit reduction, claiming that the health care bill will send the deficit into the stratosphere.  Obviously, they know what they say is not true. But truth doesn't matter because they live only for political power. That end justifies every means available to them, no matter how low or scummy those means might be!

Honest people, people truly concerned about not only the deficit but American citizens, will start cutting the deficit by raising taxes on the rich and ultra-rich! We should not be repealing health care reform, we should repeal Bush's tax-cuts for the wealthy!

But most of our politicians are bought and paid for by the wealthy in our society. Thus, the poorest among us will necessarily bear the brunt of Republican and blue-dog Democrat machinations.

Keith Olbermann - Countdown: More death panels in Arizona

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Keith Olbermann - Countdown: Right-wing blogs demand Gifford's resignation

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Where would we be without God?

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

GOPers explain why they won't give up government health care...

h/t to Think Progress

Jon Stewart - Petty Woman (Palin)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Petty Woman
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

Holy Mary

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Bill Maher to the Teabaggers: The Founding Fathers would have hated your guts!

President Obama's statement on Religious Freedom Day, 2011

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release January 14, 2011
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM DAY, 2011

- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION

Our Nation was founded on a shared commitment to the values of justice, freedom, and equality. On Religious Freedom Day, we commemorate Virginia's 1786 Statute for Religious Freedom, in which Thomas Jefferson wrote that "all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion." The fundamental principle of religious freedom -- guarded by our Founders and enshrined in our Constitution's First Amendment -- continues to protect rich faiths flourishing within our borders.

The writ of the Founding Fathers has upheld the ability of Americans to worship and practice religion as they choose, including the right to believe in no religion at all. However, these liberties are not self-sustaining, and require a stalwart commitment by each generation to preserve and apply them.

Throughout our Nation's history, our founding ideal of religious freedom has served as an example to the world. Though our Nation has sometimes fallen short of the weighty task of ensuring freedom of religious expression and practice, we have remained a Nation in which people of different faiths coexist with mutual respect and equality under the law. America's unshakeable commitment to religious freedom binds us together as a people, and the strength of our values underpins a country that is tolerant, just, and strong.

My Administration continues to defend the cause of religious freedom in the United States and around the world. At home, we vigorously protect the civil rights of Americans, regardless of their religious beliefs. Across the globe, we also seek to uphold this human right and to foster tolerance and peace with those whose beliefs differ from our own. We bear witness to those who are persecuted or attacked because of their faith. We condemn the attacks made in recent months against Christians in Iraq and Egypt, along with attacks against people of all backgrounds and beliefs. The United States stands with those who advocate for free religious expression and works to protect the rights of all people to follow their conscience, free from persecution and discrimination.

On Religious Freedom Day, let us reflect on the principle of religious freedom that has guided our Nation forward, and recommit to upholding this universal human right both at home and around the world.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 16, 2011, as Religious Freedom Day.

I call on all Americans to commemorate this day with events and activities that teach us about this critical foundation of our Nation's liberty, and to show us how we can protect it for future generations here and around the world.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.

BARACK OBAMA

h/t to Talk2Action

A very fine commentary by Frederick Clarkson is available here.

Beyond the Palin

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Words do matter!

The right-wing pundits and prognosticators have been busy decrying any connection to their words and the recent killing and wounding in Tucson.  There is no link, they say.  Don't blame us, they say.  The shooter was mentally ill, they say.

Well, they are full of crap!  Words do matter.  A billboard like the one above which uses the word, "shooter," and includes scattered bullet holes is a powerful message.  A picture of a politician in gun sights (and Palin can whine all she wants, but everyone knows they were GUN sights and not surveyors sights!) sends a powerful message to everyone who sees it.  When someone talks about a "second amendment solution," or the need to "reload" to gain headway in a political contest, that person is using language fraught with violent imagery!

It is my understanding that the above billboard was located just a couple of miles from where Congresswoman Giffords and others were shot.  It is also my understanding that this billboard was taken down shortly after the shooting.

Why is someone like Rush Limbaugh still on the air?  Certainly he has the right to his opinions, no matter how moronic and dangerous and plain stupid they are, but to give him millions of dollars a year to spin his lies and deceit to a mult-million member audience is unconscionable.  To allow Glenn Beck a platform to rant and rave and spew his vicious racism and bitter nonsense is beyond belief.

These creeps do make a difference.  One shooter specifically took after a Glenn Beck target!

I don't see a solution at the moment so long as the Murdochs of the world care only about power and money and so long as  many of our citizens are functionally illiterate, ignorant, and dumber than doorknobs.

Better batten down the hatches, there's more to come!

Open Your Eyes

Our thanks to Crooks & Liars for this fine video

And it seems to me especially appropriate to post this today because the teapot crackpots were out in force today along one of the major thoroughfares in our city:  Old, very stupid white people carrying brightly-colored signs proclaiming Obama to be a "socialist dictator," and that he shouldn't be president, and health care is a really bad thing, blah, blah, blah.

The sons-of-bitches never get the right message or the message right. 

Rep. John Dingell (D-Michigan) recap of violent rhetoric by right-wingers

Rep. Dingell, in this speech, reviews the violence-laced comments of right-wing politicians and pundits over the past couple of years.

h/t to Alternet.org

Jon Stewart - Arizona Shootings Reaction

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The vigilant mother

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Jared Loughner not atypical in today's America

This is a guest post by my good friend, Bob Poris.



Jared Loughner, the shooter of  Representative Gabrielle Giffords, is not atypical.

He was disturbed but not enough to be institutionalized! He is not atypical at all. Many conspiracy advocates believe in a variety of wacky scenarios:  the so-called birthers insist Obama was born out of the country; others are convinced President Obama is a secret Muslim; some think that Socialists are taking over the government and that all liberals are socialists, etc. 

Many relatively respectable people either believe these things or are unsure as to their veracity. Some go too far and encourage violence by their speech or actions. We cannot arrest or isolate all of them.

Listen to Beck, Limbaugh and even Bachmann and Palin sometimes. They talk of people trying to take over the government or who have already taken it over, so WE have to take it back. What does that mean to the gullible - the ignorant and easily influenced? We saw some of them at various political rallies with their goofy signs.  We saw how they shouted down their opponents or used other means to intimidate them. 

It is reasonable to assume some of these folks have enough violence festering within them to go off the deep end. We have no way of knowing.  But what does it mean to them when they see members of the U.S. Congress encouraging mobs on camera! 

We saw this kind of intimidation in 2000 during the counting of chads in Florida.  Goons were flown in from Texas to intimidate the counters in Florida.  Someone paid them and organized them!  These people are the enemies of democracy and a danger to our country!  

There are always goons available.  Hitler had the Brown Shirts; Mussolini and Stalin had their followers ready to frighten any opposition.  Intimidation and scare tactics work! 

We must become better informed so as to be aware of dangers of organizations that have enough money to sway voters and elected officials. 

We need debate between opposing views without demonizing one side or the other.  Our politicians and our media must encourage responsible debate within reasonable boundaries.

Rachel Maddow - GOP declares war on own promises (apparently)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The commentary which follows is from Crooks & Liars:

Republicans are off to a rough start after taking control of the House of RepresentativeWednesday.  MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted Thursday that the party had only beenpower for some 33 hours when they had already made, by her count, at least eight serious missteps.

"Their initial pledges to the American people have turned out to be kind of a mess," she said.

As one of their first acts, Republicans decided to read the Constitution on the House floor Thursday, but purposefully left out some of the more embarrassing passages.

For example, the three-fifths compromise that counted slaves as part of a person was nullified by the 13th Amendment, and so it wasn't included in the reading. The 18th Amendment, which imposed prohibition on alcohol, was omitted.

In addition, Article 4 Section 4 was accidentally left out of the reading because pages in a three-ring binder "simply stuck together."

In their "Pledge to America," Republicans said they would cut $100 billion from the budget in the first year, but have recently backed away from that number. Homeland Security Committee chair Peter King (R-NY) is looking at cutting $50 billion, and a GOP aide told The Huffington Post's Howard Fineman that the bottom line is more like $30 billion.

While the Democrats were in power, Republicans complained that the open rules process -- allowing unlimited amendments and debate -- wasn't used. Politico observed Thursday that "[n]one of the bills that will be brought to the floor this week will be brought under open rules."

Republicans adopted a new rule called cut-as-you-go that requires all legislation that will increase the deficit to be offset with spending cuts. The Congressional Budget Office has said that one of the Republicans' first initiatives, repealing health care reform, would add $230 billion to the to the national debt over ten years.

Party leadership has solved this problem by exempting repeal of health care reform from the rules.

The GOP promised that all committee attendance would be publicly posted. They reversed that rule Tuesday.

In their Pledge to America, Republicans promised that all bills would be justified with a citation of the Constitution.

"The three bills that Republicans plan to introduce this week — one to cut the congressional budget, one to repeal the health care bill and another to instruct House committees to present new health care legislation — were posted on the Rules Committee website with plenty of time for review, but none had the constitutional citation for similar review," Politico reported.

"The Republican Party has wrapped itself in the Constitution at every turn for political purposes," Maddow continued. "They've outdone themselves on this matter."

Two House Republicans skipped out on the swearing-in ceremony on the House floor Wednesday. The Huffington Post reported that Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) decided to attend a fundraiser instead.

The two tried to claim they had been properly sworn in because they had raised their hands while watching the swearing in on television. Sessions and Fitzpatrick went on to cast votes in the House. Sessions even presided over the Rules Committee.

"Dude, you can't get sworn in by a TV," Maddow explained. "You have to be there in person. If you could become a congressman by raising your hand at the TV, everyone simultaneously watching C-SPAN yesterday and reaching for something on a high shelf or waving to a friend would be a congressman right now."

"These are self-inflicted things," she added. "Republicans carefully laid out these rakes on the floor inside the front door. They've been stepping on them one after the other since they got in."

Referendum on the Nature of the Tea Party

The following is a guest post from Waylon Fairbanks. Waylon writes on international politics and modern culture. He is a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog and writes on accredited online colleges for Guide to Online Schools.


The emergence of the right-wing, populist movement known as the Tea Party has drawn analysis and interpretation from every corner of the political spectrum. With interpretations ranging from the saviors of liberty to the Sturmabteilung, everyone with an opinion and a pen has weighed in. And with the Republican takeover of the 112th Congress, finally, a verdict on the Tea Party's true nature is about to be reached.

Between Fox News and other mainstream promoters of right-wing ideology openly promoting and supporting the Tea Party, and liberal pundits like Keith Olbermann denouncing it as "racist" and Christopher Hitchens characterizing it as a deep, Caucasian fear of becoming a minority, the stunning lack of consensus has dismantled any chance at an objective understanding of the Tea Party. Yet like many historical populist movements, the ambiguity lies in the fact that as the major ideological opposition to the governing party, remaining vague is key. The Tea Party's success as a movement lies in its ability to remain ill-defined, and thus attract diverse legions of disgruntled Americans. Fortunately, for us proud liberals and democratic-socialists, the party is over. On January 5th when the new Congressional session began, the truth about the Tea Party will begin to appear, in all its ugly glory.

The position the Tea Party decides to take on a series of legislative escapades led by the Republican House will quickly force the Tea Party to define itself as either the independent and deficit-minded protectors of America, or the bigoted wing of the Republican establishment. Yet already in the lame duck session, the Tea Party's silence on the large, Obama tax compromise has proven the first hypocrisy in a projected likelihood of many. Both major aspects of the compromise, one would reason, contradict the politics of the movement: the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts will add 561 billion dollars to the federal deficit, and the Keynesian, demand-sided elements of the compromise are contradictory to the so-called laissez-faire Tea Party economic ideology. So then, why did we not see Glenn Beck leading a march on Washington? Surely, if the Republicans would have unanimously opposed the legislation, the Tea Party would have been up in arms (excuse the pun) and rallying, as they have been during other major Democratic legislative victories. Regardless of whether the Tea Party views itself as an independent movement, not one voice was raised when the Republican Party stance was in contrast to the Tea Party's.

Unlike the coalition comprising the Democratic Party, which is made of a plurality of varied interests, the Republican Party is essentially the product of two factions: the pro-business and the social conservative. A shrewd Republican businessman will often throw a bone to the social conservatives in the woodwork and denounce abortion or stem cell research, and the social conservatives will embrace an economic ideology they are not intellectually fit to understand. Since the election of Reagan, this mutualistic symbiosis has worked excellently. Yet because social conservatives tend to rely on populism, and the business community on elitism, any attempt to reconcile the Tea Party with the Boehner establishment will only reveal rift in the Republican Party. This leaves the glorified Tea Party only two options: they can either become subservient to the business interests of the Republicans in the House and thus fade into ambiguity, or they can depart from the Republican agenda when the House prefers its business interests to making Christian fundamentalism the state religion. However, it is likely this decision has already been made, and the Left can sit back and witness the crumbling of one our most hated allies – the Republican Party, or the Tea Party. Anyone for tea?

 * * * *

Please check out My Dog Ate My Blog for more excellent essays.

His eye is on the sparrow - a really fishy story!

The synoptic Gospels are essentially collections of various materials attributed to a first-century Jewish itinerant by name of Jeshua, or Joshua, or more commonly known as Jesus.  It is very unlikely that this Jesus was an historical figure, but was created by one or more writers to satisfy the need of the early church to put flesh and blood on their savior, the Christ.

Cf. Earl Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God nor Man."

This becomes quite clear if one reads the Gospel of Luke, chapters 9 through 18. In this section, the Jesus figure wanders about meeting various people and groups and issuing a variety of proclamations and judgments, many of which make no sense at all.

For example, in Luke 12:4-5, the itinerant is quoted as saying (with no context): "To you who are my friends I say: Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do. I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Believe me, he is the one to fear."

What could that possibly mean? Is he referring to Yahweh, the god of Hebrew tradition? Yahweh certainly killed enough people in his heyday!

But the ensuing verse is the one I'm focusing on in this essay. It seems the Jesus figure is still talking to "his friends" and he says "Are not sparrows five for twopence? And yet not one of them is overlooked by God. More than that, even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Have no fear; you are worth more that any number of sparrows."

It goes without saying that this is a silly saying; especially to someone who has gone bald. Which hairs are numbered, the ones lost or the ones still clinging to the scalp? And the implication that God gives a flip about sparrows and takes care of sparrows is ludicrous.

In Arkansas over the past few days, "3,000 birds mysteriously dropped dead from the sky."

Not only so, but "An estimated 100,000 dead drum fish are floating along a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River and washing up on the river's banks near the town of Ozark..."


The fact that pious Christians continue to praise their god in the face of incontrovertible evidence he/she/it just doesn't give a damn is quite mind-boggling.

This god does not care about sparrows, nor fish, nor humans. Every day, millions of humans die horrible deaths from disease, hunger, medical malpractice, accident, etc. and no god intervenes to save them or ease their suffering.

Yet, Christians (and Jews and Muslims) prattle on in their houses of worship about how god's "eye is on the sparrow," so how much more he cares for you. Not true. And to hold such convictions in spite of all the evidence to the contrary reinforces the truth that no one is as blind as the one who refuses to see.

The idea that there is a personal god who cares about you and me and the rest of the world is one of the biggest religious hoaxes ever perpetrated on the human race!

His eye is not on the sparrow; nor the drum fish in Arkansas; nor you or me.

So enjoy your life and do the best you can.  As the song goes, "Imagine there's no heaven..." and live your life to the fullest.

Conservatives don't give a damn about the Constitution

There are a bunch of so-called "conservatives" in the U.S. House who are planning to "teach" the Constitution of the United States. This is really funny, because they don't give a damn about the Constitution. They care only about their perverted ideological views which hold, first and foremost, that this is a nation ordained by their god, and that it should be run under their interpretation of biblical law.

A second notion derived from their ideology is that Democrats and progressives are bad and President Obama is one of the worst. Thus, their goal for the next two years is not to help govern the nation in an intelligent and helpful manner, but to do everything they can to screw things up and then lay the blame on Obama: they want the presidency back in Repugnican hands; they want Obama to go down to defeat in 2012!

The intellectual scope of this group is laughable. Consider the fact that the Minnesota moron, Michele Bachmann, is one of its leaders. But they are still dangerous because the majority of people in the United States are woefully ignorant of the history and the government of the nation and thus susceptible to the Bachmann's of the world who lie without shame about both.

Case in point: You may recall that President Obama visited Indonesia a couple of months ago. David Gibson noted that "In his speech in Indonesia, Obama used the phrase 'E pluribus unum' to underscore that in Indonesia, as in America, 'hundreds of millions who hold different beliefs can be united in freedom under one flag.'"

That, of course, is not true today in the United States, if it ever was. Religionists of various stripes are doing everything in their power to gain control and force the rest of the nation to follow their beliefs. Racists have unified under various banners to push their causes, one of which is to get rid of Obama; another has to do with revising the truth as to the cause of the Civil War.

Nevertheless, Obama held out to the Indonesians the "truth" as we would like it to be and as our Constitution envisioned it.

Now "'E pluribus unum' [from many, one] was adopted by Congress in 1782 and was considered the nation's unofficial motto, appearing on coins and banknotes since 1795. In 1956, at the height of the Cold War, Congress passed a law establishing "In God We Trust" as the official national motto, just as Congress had added the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954."

Conservatives in Congress always want to nod to their god, even though the Constitution is quite clear that the nation has no god nor does the nation rely on any god. So, when the Soviet threat loomed, frightened conservatives played the god-card, thinking, I presume, that their god would be so impressed by their fealty, he or she or it would protect them from the Russian menace!

Stupid, yes, but typical of Repugnican conservatives in our national (and state) legislatures (along with a few "blue doggy" Dems).


Back to Obama in Indonesia. Because Obama did not use the phrase "In God We Trust" in his speech, 41 moronic Repugs and one dumbass Dem (members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus) penned a note to Obama wanting to know why he said "E Pluribus Unum" was our national motto instead of "In God We Trust."

This bunch of bozos from the Prayer Caucus also questioned Obama's failure to include the word, "creator" when "citing the second line of the Declaration of Independence."

Now, this is the kind of stuff Conservatives worry about. They don't worry about a president of their own ilk and of their own religious bent who lied over and over again (along with his appointees) in order to instigate an illegal war which isn't over yet, causing the deaths of 4,000 plus Americans, untold suffering and thousands upon thousands of Iraqi deaths at a cost of over $1 trillion!

The conservatives don't worry about climate change which threatens millions of lives worldwide at this very moment. They don't worry about the deregulation of corporate rules which has created one of the worst economic depressions in our history!

They worry about religion in government. They worry that the president of the United States might not be religious enough in their view to effectively govern the country.


Their stupidity is exceeded only by their ignorance. Even worse, the fact that they were elected by the American people gives rise to the belief that ignorance and stupidity rules throughout the land.

On the issue of religion, the Constitution and our founding fathers were quite clear (in spite of Beck and Barton's pompous and pious lies) that we are a secular nation ruled by secular law!

As to religion and politics: Article VI of the Constitution says:

"...no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any office or public Trust under the United States."

So, it doesn't matter if Obama is a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, an agnostic or an atheist or anything else! The Constitution can't be clearer than that; which proves that conservatives don't give a damn about the Constitution!

Furthermore, the First Amendment to the Constitution is very specific: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... "

What the conservatives don't get is that "the free exercise thereof" does not mean they have the right to impose their religious views on the rest of us, including the President of the United States!


They don't get it because they don't want to get it. They are ideologically driven and to hell with anything that gets in the way of their ideology!

And no matter that they establish a group to study the Constitution, no matter how loudly they protest their love for, and adherence of, the Constitution, the fact is they don't give a damn about the Constitution!

Truck stop

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

For the uninformed, all of the gods mentioned were born on December 25 (many of a virgin)...

Former senator Alan Simpson calls seniors the Greediest Generation

Photo from the CS Monitor (Credit to Larry Downing/Reuters)  Alan Simpson on left.

The following essay was sent to me by a friend who thought it was worth sharing. I agree wholeheartedly. The essay is said to have been written by a man living in Montana.

Are "seniors" the greediest generation? Or are the greedy ones really Alan Simpson and his creepy Repugnican cohorts?  It is the latter people who, through their mismanagment and ideological nonsense, have brought this country to its economic knees, not American "seniors"!


The essay follows:

Hey Alan, let's get a few thing straight...

1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY YEARS...

2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63)...

3. My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud...

4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age 67. NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to moved the goalposts YET AGAIN...

5. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills...

6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why? Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt...

To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bullshit" on your incompetence. Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for YOU...

1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career?

2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?

3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?

4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?

It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your poliltical co-conspirators who are "greedy." It is you and they who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. That's right, sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers.

You know, we know it, and you know that we know it. And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch.