The American electorate is looking like a coyote with its leg caught in a trap, chewing its own leg off"

The view from Europe looks like the best analysis of what's happening here. It's the way things go when the criminally insane control your country's media.

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Must See: Inside Job

http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

Those Poor Rich People!

Dr. David Barber, Associate Professor of American History at the University of Tennessee:

American society’s fantastically skewed distribution of wealth stands as one of the main structural fault lines underpinning the Crash. America’s richest one percent of the population own over forty percent of America’s wealth — exclusive of home ownership — in this, the most opulent society history has ever known.

What you can do to get your self a piece of the pie

Inside Job

Quote of the Day

I thought it was important to put forth a proposal that says we don't have to go after the middle and lower classes in our country in order to pay for deficit and debt that they had nothing to do with creating...

A Real Deficit Reduction Plan

The Sheriff Robs the Bank

Heading up the renewed push for those controversial, clothes-penetrating scanners at airports is former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff. His consulting firm represents companies who make the scanners, but you wouldn't know it from reading the papers.

 http://gawker.com/5437499/why-is-michael-chertoff-so-excited-about-full+body-scanners

Bin Laden...You Idiot... Wrong Tower!

Thank you Ward Cammack!

So Exactly How Do I Get Me Some of that Socialized Medicine?

Want to see a doctor the same day you have a problem? Move to Great Britain, Switzerland, New Zealand, or the Netherlands.

In the USA 43% can't see a doctor the same day, 47 million people have no health insurance at all, we have the greatest likelihood of being denied treatment even if we have insurance, and we have the most expensive healthcare in the world. The best countries have a combination of a public healthcare system paid for by taxes and a private system for extra coverage if desired.

The story from Reuters

Feel Good Friday...Flashback Edition

Armistice Day

In 1954 the Congress changed the name of this day from "Armistice Day" to "Veteran's Day", thereby shifting its focus from honoring those who fought for peace to those who fought for war. Prior to that time in America, I can think of the majority of our wars as being fought for a just cause that really did involve peace or freedom, Since then I can't think of a single war that was necessary or had a just cause. (Grenada, maybe?)

This has shown itself in how we treat our veterans after they have ended their service. Ask a wounded veteran of the Iraq war how they are being treated by the Veterans Administration? Is it worthy of their sacrifice? Ask them why they fought in Iraq? What was the worthy cause for which they sacrificed? On a sub-verbal level, America is ashamed of its current wars but has no real clue how to get out of them. We were lied into them.

Why can't we simply truth our way out of them?

"Sorry! This is a big mistake. We'll be out of here as soon as we can load up."

The real reason we went into Iraq was because Saddam wouldn't let American Corporations have Iraq's oil, that and the fact that the Vice President at the time was positioned to make tens of millions through war profiteering by his old company. At the time the largest oil company and the Veep's corporation were good American companies, but since that is no longer the case, why keep fighting and sending good American troops into stupid situations with no real reachable objective?

Here's a test...Quickly...State the reason we are at war in Afghanistan and who it is that we are at war with?

I thought so.

By the way, Exxon is now a foreign corporation with headquarters in the Caribbean. Haliburton is now a foreign corporation with its headquarters in Dubai and its fingerprints all over the massive oil disaster in the Gulf coast of the USA. But that's another story...

Anyway, I have a proposal. In order to honor the men and women who fight for America, let's make sure that they are fighting for America. Why not change the name of Veteran's Day back to its original meaning? 

I'm thinking maybe "Peace Day"

Perhaps that would be the real way to honor our veterans. Honor them by making the cause for which they sacrifice just and honorable.

Peace!

Steve


In keeping with the spirit of Peace Day I suggest this for further reading.

Must Read from Ted Rall

While I don't agree with Mr. Rall on his main point of "It's too late to do anything to stop America from its descent from greatness", I do think most of his observations bear thinking about.

The Anti-American Manifesto

This is our new Speaker of the House? Proud of yourselves, Republican Voters?

Boehner:  I did it (Passed out checks from lobbyists) on the House floor which I regret and I should not have done, it's not a violation of the House rules, but it's a practice that's gone on here for a long time.

Q)....Were the checks from tobacco companies?

Boehner: Ahh, I think if my memory serves me correctly, I think it was a tobacco company, yes.

Q)....but in this case tobacco's well timed contributions helped save its subsidy. The people that were passing out the checks won.

Money for nothing and your chicks for free...(But enough about Senator Vitter)

I had a friend who votes R more often than not tell me that my local Congressman lost his race because he was unethical. When I asked for an instance he had to go make a phone call. It's one kind of sin to lie to other people but isn't it a greater sin to lie to your own self?

Except in Tennessee?

The Wall Street Journal has a breakdown of who voted for which party by income level:

• Less than 30K per year voted 58% for Dems, 40% for Repubs

• 30K - 49,999K: 52% for Dems, 45% for Repubs

• 50K-74,999K: 46% for Dems, 52% for Repubs

• 75K - 99,999K: 43% for Dems, 56% for Repubs

• 100K-1,999,999K: 43% for Dems, 56 for Repubs

• Over $200,000K: 36% for Dems, 62% for Repubs

So the working class average American understands that conservatism is the zombie virus that eats brains and kills the chances for working Americans to improve their circumstances. Why don't the rest of the people get this? I think they have too much time to watch Fox News instead of having to bust their chops running as fast as they can to stay in one place.

Link

Word for the Day..."It-Getters"

The mainstream media fawned(polite term here) all over itself to cover the Glen Beck uber-partisan rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, thereby forever tainting the legacy of tolerance given us by the only openly bisexual (look it up) president America has had to date. Even though CBS paid for an aerial flyover photo for a professional crowd estimate (87,500 wingnuts), the network never seriously called Beck on his ludicrous claim of half a million attendees. I mean, why go to the trouble of calling the biggest liar on the ether a liar when he lies? That wouldn't be true to the principle of fawning (polite term here), now would it?

Flash forward a couple of weeks and we have the One Nation Rally put on by the working men and women of America and hosted by Ed Shultz. The mainstream media made slight mention of it and refused to allow several of its biggest reporters to report on it. They said it was "partisan" (unlike the Beck rally?). The claim that it was half the size of the Beck rally was the pundit's buzz, even though the same official flyover shots actually taken when the rally was in progress (as opposed to before the rally started, i.e. the ones Fox posted)showed that there were about 125,000 working Americans there. These were people who have or had jobs, unlike the pensioned fireman on Medicare at the Beck rally with the "Take Out Country Back" (from socialism?) sign.

The Saturday we had the Restore Sanity Rally, which once again several mainstream media outlets refused to allow their reporters to cover, because it was partisan, only it specifically wasn't. The aerial shot count was roughly 250,000 people, which is about Ten Million in Glen Beck numbers. The media has been strangely quiet on this. A friend who attended the rally asked the Washington Mall cops about the crowd sizes and they said Becks was a little smaller than the One Nation rally, but that the Restore Sanity rally dwarfed them both. Fair enough.

So if feet are counted as votes, far more Americans want sanity in our system than want Sarah Palin or Glen Beck claiming a goose flyover was a message from God to vote Republican.

The absence (Failure) of our mainstream media is starkly evident in the press conference with Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert held after the event. Listen for the names of the organizations represented and learn where you should go for your news and information from now on...


National Press Club Press Conference with Stewart and Colbert

You are now an official "It-Getter".

Well done,

Steve

What times are these when our politicians are jokes and we must turn to our Comedians for the truth?

"We live in hard times, not end times."



And just in case you don't know what to say when your right wing brother makes nasty about your Democratic voting tendencies...