The Fight Goes On

"This is a rich country that's creating billionaires by the bucketful and running history's most expensive military empire. We can afford for our elderly, disabled and sick to be decently taken care of. It's just a matter of priorities"

The end of another of Digby's great posts.

We can decide that people who need help, which is most of us at one time or another, can get it or we can continue our throwaway society and take them out with the trash.

I say lets realign our priorities back to what FDR started, what that war monger LBJ continued and join the rest of the world in providing that help when it is needed. No one gets rich off of welfare or SSDI or medicare or medicaid or unemployment, nor will they with the new healthcare law. If you are lucky those programs will allow you to survive, if you are very lucky they may allow you to pick up your life and move on.
They are opportunities, nothing more. Wonderful, absolutely necessary opportunities. But they are barely adequate most of the time, and not even that all the time.

We won a big fight on Tuesday but the war is not over. It will never be over for there are too many people who think that a hand up is wrong, that survival is only a matter of helping one's self. That may be true if you live in a cabin in the wilderness by yourself, miles from your nearest neighbor. How many of us live like that? I'll bet not even a hundredth of a percent.

To those who think we should never help anyone else, join the human race, it isn't a bad deal, sometimes it is even fun to run with the rest of us.

The Last Debate

I could wax poetic but I would just be wasting time.

Read Mr. Charles Pierce

The summary was the best(but still read the whole thing)

"There is no nation in its right mind that would put its foreign policy in the hands of the Willard Romney who showed up on stage here in Boca Raton on Monday night, particularly since he had so clearly abandoned everything else he believed on the subject for the purpose of fronting himself as a moderate in order to run out the clock over the next three weeks. He knew nothing and said less. But the debate will be scored as no better than a tie because, well, all the options are too miserable to contemplate."

Shock Me! Shock Me!

Digby has another story about people being tazered.
Like most of these stories the use of these weapons are totally unnecessary.
An old man, with a white cane, in other words someone who is blind is mistaken for someone with a samurai sword. How the hell can someone who is supposed to be an observant public servant think a blind mans white cane is a samurai sword?

That's not a mistake, that is a compete dereliction of duty.

Voting

You want to know who to vote for?
Watch this video.

This short video explains it very well.
Did you like the Bush years? The huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the wars, in general the gross stupidity and lack of adults in the room, then vote for republicans.

On the other hand if you like to have people who actually think about the results of their actions and at least try to be adults, who at least attempt to represent you and your needs, vote democratic.

Look around and see in how many of your local races does the republican candidate not state his/her affiliation. Even they are ashamed of the republican party. They are still part of it, they just don't want to be branded that way. They know that anyone who thinks about the issues won't vote for them.

H/T amk at balloon-juice

One person, One vote

Got to thinking about Citizens United and my vote. Actually Citizens United and each of our votes.
And it brought up this thought.
How is my vote that important when Sheldon Adelson can not only buy votes but can be open about it. He doesn't care if we know he is spending huge sums of money to influence an election, he's proud of it.
Does my vote even count anymore? Unfortunately, by itself it doesn't.
One individual vote has rarely changed an election. But that of course is why we vote in open elections. So that we can count as a group. The right wing crazies have been very active in voting, and that can't be changed. What we can change is getting out the vote and educating people that their vote does matter, but it takes lots of votes. It should be easy to vote in a democratic society. Or even the republic that we live in. People should want to vote. But we make it hard, Tuesday voting, registration many days out, hard to vote by mail, republicans are trying to make it harder with their voter ID bullshit. This is not what I signed up for in 1969 when I joined the military. I didn't join to make it harder to be a citizen, I joined up to help make it better. Ah the disillusion of youth. My little bit of sacrifice made no difference. The much larger sacrifice of many others made no difference. Except to the lucre stuffing the pockets of the rich. 

So it's time, well it's past time to make sure that everyone votes. Hopefully they will vote for everyone, not just the rich cocksuckers, but everyone should vote. It is one of the few things we the people have left, it is the only way we can change back to not living in a third world country completely controlled by rich cocksuckers whose only concern is them getting richer and you getting poorer.

It's About Time

Boy have I been away for a while. Life has turned the vacuum up to about 90% for me the last few months and I've been busy just eating and breathing.
Anyway....

It's Past Time

Everyone with functioning brain needs to contact their reps and senators and let them know we will not stand for the corruption of government by any religion.
And that is exactly what is happening right now. There probably some churches who are not trying to take your health care away, the catholic church is not one of them. Why is anyone listening to these old hypocritical assholes? About anything. But especially about things they know nothing about. Wait that's a pretty big collection of things. They are about living in the 5th century. I don't know about anyone else out there but my calender says quite a bit of time has passed since then.

Why are we allowing any church to tell us how to live, or more importantly how not to live?

Fun in the economy or what I'm doing with my life

I'm not getting depressed over our current congress critters, I'm getting angry. And what gets me real angry is that I know that nothing, and I mean nothing that we do will make any difference in the short or long term.
We have no money to buy these idiots assholes, no one liberal enough to run against all of them, and no hope that any of that will change.
I really feel like a chump because I joined the military with the belief that I might be helping my country. I served, got an honorable discharge and despite what JFK said, I want my country to serve me and all the rest of the people who live here. And this government is not doing that. Or even trying to fake it.
Who do I see about this?

— people are too worried about their own jobs to spend money on major purchases right now"

Own a small retail store in the sporting goods industry, and it's not just the major purchases that are not being made. Most people are cutting off all non-essential purchases. It's not getting better here in retail land and I don't expect it to for at least 6-12 months. I expect to loose my biz over this. Oh well could be worse, I could have a job with benefits and lose that, get unemployment and have that run out, then I'd really be screwed. Oh wait.....

I wrote this as a draft while back and now it has come true. My store is now closed. Maybe I'll get by, maybe not. Fuck conservatives.

Charities

Pink ribbons.

They are supposed to mean that you support or care about research concerning breast cancer. That sure sounds like a good thing. The half of the worlds population with breasts probably are very concerned, the other half should be. Breast cancer kills. Out of the seven women in my and my mothers immediate family 2 of them have died from breast cancer and another has survived 45 years after being diagnosed. That's almost 50% of them have had breast cancer and of those 2/3 have died from it.
So what does this have to do with anything?
The Susan G. Komen foundation has just withdrawn their rather large amount of support from Planned Parenthood, which was used for breast cancer screening. This is after all the people who have paid for products and events to support helping to fight and find a cure for this horrible disease. Are they being robbed? Or at least deceived? I think so. And the kicker is that this is because Planned Parenthood does exactly that, they help people (women more so than men) plan parenthood, which many religious groups don't want women to do. They want no planning when it comes to pregnancy.  These assholes wouldn't allow abortion when a woman's health is at stake or when she has been raped. They would rather she die or that her doctor would die than even a fetus that can not possibly live. This is one sick, fucked up point of view.

So I'm saying, don't support SGK. Boycott any pink ribbon products or events. Let the SGK foundation know what you think. As Tbogg writes you could make a direct donation and have a thank you card sent to the vp of SGK. Click on the link and get the details.

To summarize: Fuck these assholes.

Now That's Class Warfare

An oldie but goodie.

From Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right:

Anytime a liberal points out that the wealthy are disproportionately benefiting from Bush’s tax policies, Republicans shout, “class warfare!”

In her book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara Tuchman writes about a peasant revolt in 1358 that began in the village of St. Leu and spread throughout the Oise Valley. At one estate, the serfs sacked the manor house, killed the knight, and roasted him on a spit in front of his wife and kids. Then, after ten or twelve peasants violated the lady, with his children watching, they forced her to eat the roasted flesh of her husband and then killed her.

That is class warfare.

 Arguing over the optimum marginal tax rate for the top one percent is not. 

 I like it. Life was probably pretty hard in 1358 for most people but when it got even harder, and just for the enjoyment of the wealthy, remedies could be found.

H/T to rirr at balloon-juice

Once More

David Atkins does a spectacular takedown of libertarianism and the idea, "It works, it just has never been done correctly".
As messy as humans and their societies are, there are certain ideals that just don't work. Pure communism, libertarianism, religions as governing bodies. None of these work as open societies because they are never inclusive of all the people that live in a geographic region,  nor do they work with  human nature, rather they try to stifle it.

Vote. Always Vote.

Charles P. Pierce

Remember that name. Read whatever he writes. Pay attention to what he writes.

His post today on voting and especially on voting rights. A thing of beauty.

The line.       

Sorry, Lyndon, we overcame. And then we didn't. Let you down, big guy. (Click to see the whole post.)

Bit by Bit or the Drones Don't Fly Themselves

The world is evolving, like it always does. Our constitution and bill of rights was pretty far ahead of the curve when written but it still had and still has holes. Part of that is the imperfection of the people writing it. Part is the fact that evolution is all around us. It is in biology, it is in technology, it is in the law.
We still have the 4th amendment as our basis for personal freedom. We have tried to give it away, see act, patriot, among other methods. It's still a pretty good law but it's interpretation maybe leaves something to be desired.
I once took an oath to uphold and defend the constitution and bill of rights. I placed myself under a different set of rules, stripping me of some of those rights to defend it because I felt it was important. My little part turned out to be not so big a deal and I have frequently wondered if it was worth it, but done is done. Protecting it is done bit by bit just as losing it's power is done bit by bit.

Is civilian surveillance  by police drone one of those bits we are giving up? I think it is real possible the answer is yes.

A Nice Overview

Commentator JD Rhoades had this to say over at Balloon-Juice

After Willie Horton ads, Swiftboating, GOP convention-goers waving purple band-aids to mock a veteran’s war wounds, birtherism, Ann Coulter saying the “only choice was whether to impeach or assassinate” President Clinton, Coulter claiming 9/11 widows were “enjoying their husband’s deaths,” Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease, ads falsely claiming Barack Obama favored “comprehensive sex education for Kindergartners,” Rand Paul supporters trying to stomp the head of a protester, ads claiming Kay Hagen was “godless,” Michelle Bachmann calling for an investigation of ‘un-American views” among the Congress, “If ballots don’t work, maybe bullets will,” “Obama hates white people,” ‘GET OFF MY PHONE YOU LITTLE PINHEAD!” “YOU LIE!”, wingnuts at FreeRepublic calling 11-year old Sasha Obama a “street whore” for wearing a peace sign on her t-shirt, outright lies about “death panels,” “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy,” cheering for executions, booing soldiers in war zones for being gay, comparing poor people to stray animals you shouldn’t feed, “’we’ve got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion,” supposed “Christians” suggesting that people pray for the President using Psalm 109:8 (“May his days be few; may another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow”) as a text, Limbaugh calling the First Lady “uppity,” and on and on and on, all without a single peep from the Right…They can take their whiny-ass bullshit about liberal “rudeness” and peddle it somewhere else. We ain’t buyin’ it here.

I'm a lot less civil in my tone, his version fills in the reason why.

Thanksgiving

Charles P. Pierce is a national treasure. No doubt about it.
He does up a nice Thanksgiving post with an embedded video that should not be missed. So with a ten gallon hat tip to Charles

Enjoy.

Time is not on our side

I think it is vitally important to understand the depth and width of the problems that we face as a culture. We have come pretty far down the road of if not outright lawlessness, outright rigging of the laws by the very small, very rich minority to screw the vast majority. It may or may not have been intentional but that is irrelevant. It may have been a big plan or just coincidence for the most part and that doesn't matter. We are at a crossroads right now, not only as a nation but as a member of the world. The world has gotten smaller and much more interconnected. The ripple effect no longer stops at a nations borders.

We have to grow up and become a nation of the world, not a nation that thinks it is the world. We outsource jobs to create crap, at a price that we can afford, because we refuse to raise wages to keep people working at a reasonable rate, so the rich can get richer. At some point the poor have nothing left to lose except their miserable lives. When the poor start paying that price what do the rich think the collateral damage be?

Big Finanice is Not your friend

Unless you are one of the 1%.

If you are one of the 99% there are many stories explaining why you and I are screwed. Why we have been screwed and why we will continue to be screwed. About as bad as it gets.
Here is one that explains most all of it.
What the wall street protesters are angry about

Screw the big banks

Move your money.

It's that simple.
The big banks are going to continue to thumb their noses at the unwashed masses no matter what. They are going to continue to screw us, nickle ($5) and dime ($25) us to death. And they don't care if you go broke or die, all they want is your money.
It is not that hard to move but if enough of us do that the big banks will notice. Probably still won't care but so what. At least you won't be helping to keep them in the business of screwing their customers, one of which is you.
If you keep your money in a big bank move it to a credit union, smaller regional bank  or from what I hear USAA is pretty good, if you qualify. I'm sure there are other banks like USAA, I just don't know of them.

99%

If you have not seen We Are The 99% you should. If it does not get your blood boiling then you are part of the problem.

Here is the post that so far has gotten to me the most.

 

My name is Allison, I’m a 13 year old 8th grader. I only get a few hours of sleep at night, but I don’t tell my parents because they don’t need to know that I need sleeping pills. I’ve been showing symptoms of Schizophrenia but we can’t afford for me to go see a doctor about it. My parents get really scared when they have to pay the morage because it really cuts down on our money. I’ve stopped eating alot so there’s more food for everyone else.
My parents don’t know that I know we’re the 99%.

A play on words, but no one is playing

 Poster jon at balloon-juice comes up with a great one.


It’s a death tax when the Federal Government takes some portion of the estate before it goes to the heirs.
It’s not a death tax when the hospital takes all of it.