Monday, May 23, 2011

Republicans Good For Corporations...Humans and Other Living Things Not So Much

Congressional Budget Office and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services did the math: Republicans will double the out of pocket cost of health care for older Americans. For Tennesseans it will more than double.

Da Facts

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

They're laughing at us and they're sad for us at the same time

Listen While You Work

AS I observe four traitor Democrats support the Republican standoff to preserve the billions of tax dollars we give to big oil even in the face of massive big oil profits and high gas prices, I get upset and frustrated at ever changing things for the better in this once great nation.

AS evidence witness Newt Gingrich, bless his black little heart and soul if he has one, being publicly scorned and shamed by his own Republican party because he has actually spoken some truth to them...not much but some. He told them the Ryan budget was a monumental mistake. Apparently the rest of his party is not into actually thinking about things or they would already know this. What they are into is taking orders from the Koch Brothers and their ilk. It's like they come out at the base of the giant Easter Island head, shake their witch doctor and say...

"Behold! Destroying Medicare and Social Security will give much treasure to Wall Street and the insurance industry. This will be good for the people who used to be in the Middle Class. If a person points out the lunacy in this, he is evil and must be destroyed. The Koch Brothers have spoken!"

The Koch brothers have decided that they can now take over the USA and turn it into their own personal oligarchy, truth, facts, and common decency not withstanding. Newt's "Liberal media" are now showing clips of his own people ripping his figurative entrails out on national TV.

Watching the excoriation of Newt Gingrich by his own kind shows just how extreme and radical the Republican party has become. Any Republican who tries to stake out a moderate position will be destroyed as we can plainly see.

Remember as we watch this beggar's opera that the positions Newt is speaking of are actually the same positions staked out by all of America except for the rabid 30% on the right who still think W and Dick Cheney are saints who shouldn't have to wait until Saturday to get beamed up in the rapture.

Think about all this when you hear the obvious lies spewing from the right...

"Ending wars will help the terrorists."
"Raising taxes on the filthy rich will hurt the economy and kill jobs."
"The economy can only be improved by cutting government spending."
and on and on and on...

AS for me...I think as opposed to believe.

Cheer up. There is much theater in watching them eat their own.

Steve


"I'm going to keep living and I'm going to live well, in spite of what's happening now."

Listening for the open minded

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Thursday, May 12, 2011

"I'm Not a Very Good American...I Do My Own Thinking"

Congressman, Why Do You Hate Women?

Roane County, TN, is split by Congressional districts and therefore has to suffer the pain and disgrace of having TWO Tea Party Republicans in Congress. Rep.s Fleischman and DesJarlais have taken the rapists side in the battle against women's health. While their brothers in the Senate filibuster job creation in America, Joe and Scott are busy making sure rapists get what they want in having their victims bear rapists children. Scott DesJarlais's psychological instability is well documented and apparently makes him more attractive to the Tea Party, not less. I Mean is anybody sane who who can claim they are pro-life while forcing the 130 million Americans who want their tax money used for women's health to instead pay for the Iraq war?

Sarah Jones thinks "anti-woman" should be treated exactly the same as Michelle Bachman's "anti-American. Bachman called for an inquisition against anybody who is not Republican to see if they held anti-American ideas. Ms. Jones think this is a fine model for investigating Congressmen who hate women and might be rapists as well...

How many of those who voted YES on this (HR3) are guilty of taking advantage of a woman or girl at some point? Since 1 out 6 women have been the victim of rape or attempted rape, who is doing all of the raping? Every two minutes, a woman is sexually assaulted and 60 percent of those rapes go unreported. Since 15 out of 16 rapists will not go to jail, we know the rapists are still out there. Rapists are more likely to be serial criminals than serial rapists, which leads to the logical question, how many of them are in congress?

Sarah Jones

Saturday, May 7, 2011

To See Ourselves as Others See Us

Watch. It is enlightening...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13323060

Friday, May 6, 2011

Aftermath of the Raid...What's Left of Top Secret Helicopter Remain in Pakistani Hands

An interesting side note to the daring raid that got Osama Bin laden...Pakistan has so far refused to return the remains of the stealth helicopter left in Bin Laden's compound. The Navy Seal team destroyed the  main body of the disabled chopper with thermite grenades but the tail section remains mostly intact. Pakistan is currently working with China on a new fighter jet and there are serious concerns that the chopper remains could wind up in Chinese hands. This could give China a major helping hand in their own stealth technology development program.

If Pakistan refuses to return the helicopter remains to the USA it could turn into a major diplomatic rift at a time when there are already questions about continuing US aid to Pakistan.

The India Times story

More on the helicopter itself.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Gun Lobby Claims: For the Crazy, We Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

"All firearms owner, all hunters, all Tea Partiers, all conservatives should be demanding of the House Republicans to know why promises made are not promises kept. They should also be sternly reminded that votes in 2010 do not necessarily equal repeat votes in 2012."


I'm having trouble thinking that they can find any crazier people who can still get elected. There is a limit to the nutzoid, even here in Tennessee. All firearms owners, hunters, and Tea Partiers are NOT gun crazies. I personally meet two of the three criteria and do not want Judges and school teachers packing heat. Nor, as a business owner who has been through the deranged employee experience, do I want the state to say I have to allow guns on my property, even if it is only the parking lot. Hot heads do not need quick and ready access to firearms.

The Tennessee Firearms Association may believe more guns is the answer but that's their religion, not mine. They do not represent all hunters and gun owners, as this vote in the Legislature shows. Reason may prevail after all.

Monday, May 2, 2011

The Long Strange Trip to Osama Bin Laden's Nonexistence

I wonder if we will ever know the true relationship between George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden?

It was Salem Bin Laden who gave W the nickname of "Shrub".

Salem set W up in the oil business in a company called Arbuto, meaning shrub.

Osama Bin Laden traveled with his older brother and met W.

The neo-conservative organization, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), called for a "Pearl Harbor like incident" to be used to attack Iraq and take over the oil fields and pipelines.

PNAC  membership included Dick Cheney, and a number of prominent conservatives with dual American Israeli citizenship including William Krystal, and Bush administration officials, Paul Bremer who ran the disastrous Iraq occupation, and Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense who mongered for the Iraq war.

I should not have to remind anyone that the Bush administration was nothing if not asleep at the wheel on 9-11 even though they had been given intelligence reports warning them that Bin laden was determined to attack inside the United States using airplanes.

Other Bush administration officials who hold dual Israeli citizenship are John Bolton, Ari Fleisher, James Schlesenger, and Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff who took a bullet for him for outing a CIA agent (Valerie Plame). The list also includes W's campaign manager, Ken Melman and many others.

Immediately after 9-11 members of the Bin Laden family were flown out of the USA by the Bush Administration while there was a no fly order on all aviation in this country for three days.

For seven years Bush ceremoniously chased Osama Bin Laden around Afghanistan with amazing inability to catch him, including the imfamous Tora Bora incident.

Now, eight years to the day the Bush stood in his ill fitting flight suit and proclaimed "Mission Accomplished", the Obama Administration has actually ended that particular mission by ending Osama Bin Laden's life with a gun shot to the head. A spectacularly successful attack into a compound in Pakistan by US navy Seals lasted 40 minutes, lost no American lives, harmed no civilians, and retrieved Bin laden's body for DNA testing and ignominious burial at sea in accordance with Islamic principles.

Let us step back from the visceral rush of the moment and remember that Osama Bin Laden was not so much at war with the United States as he was at war with the conscienceless capital markets of Wall Street. Bin Laden let his religious zealotry destroy not only himself but any chance of actually accomplishing his goal, that of ending outside financial interests ability to retool the organs of a nation to their own profit at the expense of that nation's obligations to its own citizens and their quality of life. This is a goal 80 percent of Americans could have shared had Osama chosen methods other than a spectacular act of destruction aimed at who he perceived as the enemy, the World Trade Center which housed the offices of multinational financial houses, the Pentagon which served as protector for those financial interests around the globe, and probably the White House which had sold its soul to those same financial interests.

Had Bin Laden chosen to uses his wealth to wage a war of ideas would he have had a better chance of success? As the Bush administration was sunsetting, those hated financial entities threatened the shutdown of the global financial network unless they were given trillions of dollars. It was a sick parody of the Black Sheriff in Blazing Saddles  holding a gun to his own head  and demanding that Congress and Bush do what he says, "Or the N****R gets it!"  As a result, trillions of US dollars flowed out of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank in secret loans. Republican members of the House of Representatives blocked an audit of the Fed which would have found out how much was given away and who got it. had Osama Bin laden declared an information jihad instead of one of destruction and death, would Goldman Sach's and all the others have been able to steal America's piggy bank and continue to prop up the actions in the Middle East that drove Bin Laden to extremism in the first place?

Jihadist terror will not end because Bin Laden is dead, but I am gladdened by his future nonexistence even though I share an enemy of his. Like Bin Laden should have chosen to do, Americans must fight an ideological war against neo-conservative extremism in which the Neocons own the playing field, the referees, and are buying up most of the players after the Citizen's United decision allowing unlimited Corporate money into political campaigns. If America is to be run for the benefit of "We, the People" we have to learn the deeper lesson of Osama Bin Laden's misguided and destructive life.

Courage,

Steve