What Would Dubya Say?

Last Party

Sarah and Glenn, What part of first amendment don't you understand?

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Butting Heads with Reality

Beck Rally

Demonic, not divine (Pope Benedict)

well excuse me for living

I'm an AARP- card holding member of the baby boomer generation.  But I think we were badly misnamed.  We should have been called the DIYD2 generation:  damned if you do and damned if you don't.
We:

1. were drafted to fight an illegal and unnecessary war that was escalated on entirely trumped up charges.  Those who resisted the draft were branded as criminals or degenerates. those who obeyed the law and  fought came home to reduced VA benefits to deal with the illness and injury of war and were blamed by the American people for fighting an unpopular war they didn't start.
2. entered adulthood when few jobs were available. Responding to the  lack of opportunity, we adapted with alternative lifestyles.  Those alternative lifestyles, which were reasonable responses to the economic conditions of the time, to shrinking natural resources and to concern for a rapidly degrading natural environment were and are ridiculed for being far outside the mainstream. 
3. were required by law to pay into Social Security for our entire working career. That money  paid  for others' retirement needs. And the surplus our generation paid into the Social Security system was invested in our interest into US treasury bonds to pay current operating expenses of the government.  Social Security as it was originally designed should have collected that surplus and used it to cover periods when income excedes outflow.  The government owes the money to people who paid in.

Fast forward to 2010. Alan Simpson who served from 1979 to 1997 as a United States senator from Wyoming is now charged with finding a solution to the disappeared funds. 

His helpful comment: Social Security is "like a milk cow with 310 million tits."

I'd just like to remind him of the law here: 

If you work for an employer, 6.2% of your wages is withheld and your employer deposits the withholding, along with its 6.2% matching contribution, with the government for the Social Security programs. In 2010, the employee tax and matching contribution stop after the first $106,800 of wages. In addition if you work for an employer, 1.45% of your wages is withheld and the employer makes a matching 1.45% contribution to the Medicare program, making the total withholdings at 7.65% (6.2% OASDI and 1.45% Medicare). However, all wages are subject to the Medicare tax; there is no ceiling.

If you are self-employed, you pay 15.3% of your taxable income into the social security and Medicare programs, up to the first $106,800 of income. You continue to pay 2.9% of your taxable income into the Medicare program for your earnings above $106,800. Although the impact on you is greater because you pay twice the rate of employees, you can deduct half of your federal self-employment taxes from your income when it comes time to pay your federal income tax.

Some have described Social Security as a big Ponzi scheme.  And in a certain sense, it is. The young provide for the needs of the old so that they in turn will be provided for.   Ponzi schemes hold up as long as people continue to pay it forward. Here's the way that Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme.
You can't work most jobs in the USA without participating by paying into the SS system.  Whereas a real Ponzi scheme is voluntary and people invest out of greed, we have paid in for our entire lives because by law we were required to.
So greedy, deluded  cowsuckers the baby boomers are NOT.

Alan Simpson doesn't seem to have anything constructive to add to the discussion on Social Security.  The name calling isn't advancing the conversation, so  why not replace him with somebody who is up to the task.  Why again blame the DIYD2, the  people who did what was required of them and got no thanks to date?  

Simpson, the Real Lady Killer

Simpson attacks livelihood of older woman living barely above the poverty level.

Alan Simpson, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform characterized Social Security as "a milk cow with 310 million tits." He was responding to a letter from a group representing older women. The average Social Security beneficiary is the recipient of $13,900 per year, little more than the 2008 poverty level of $10,830.

Simpson blames Social Security for American's debt problems. However, it was structured to create a surplus. The surplus resulted from taxes employees and their employers paid throughout their working careers, specifically to cover this insurance. Social Security is in trouble now not because the insured are receiving the benefits they paid for but because, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has shown, the surplus was wasted paying for the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20014698-503544.html

Movement

@SarahPalin-August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial is hallowed ground to me.

 Peaceful birthers,  please refudiate the Rally for Glenn Beck's Material Wealth.

 They doubt the legitimacy of  our first African-American president.

Rocky Relationship

Elton John Concert to be Cancelled on Grounds of Blasphemy

"Monsignor Giacomo Babini, the retired Bishop of Grosseto, has said that it would be “inappropriate, blasphemous and offensive” to allow John to sing so near a church because he is “gay and depraved”."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/pope-benedict-stalled-chi_n_532073.html 
Pope Benedict has been repeatedly connected lax enforcement in cases of molestation by priests of children in their charge.


New Living Translation (©2007)
They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, "All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!

The Big Game

Things that make you go hmmm 4: McChrystal to teach at Yale

Google, did you mean....

Word Games

Don't see the reference here? Ask Bruce Willis.

the amazing disappearing oil illusion

they can take my sponsors, but they can never take....

Things that make you go hmmm 3: Senate Race in South Carolina

http://theweek.com/article/index/206140/alvin-greenes-bizarre-howling-episode

Things that make you go hmmm 2: Fox News

Things that make you go hmmm 1: John Roberts

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

Quest of the Giant Mosque

palingenesis

Pyrrhic Victors

"

Anybody think it's a bad idea to cut food stamps when reported unemployment is hovering close to 10% and real unemployment is probably closer to 25%.  The latter unemployment figure  counts the invisible people who have given up after filling out that 600th application that didn't get a call back and now  are living on somebody's couch or worse. It includes the guy standing near the off ramp whose sigh reads "will work for food."  Real unemployment also counts people who are working part time to survive, but used to have full time work.  It is a non-official statistic that could show how many of us are struggling and need the social safety net to be securely in place.

The food stamp program was cut to free money to pay for retaining teachers and the new anti-obesity programs.  But is it smart to cut funds to a program that feeds poor people during tough times? Since we are supposed to have government "for the people," some of that trillion dollar a year defense budget could be repurposed to fight hunger at home.

Or maybe  we could eliminate a major non-defense $17 billion federal program that hasn't helped to control its intended target, unfairly punishes the poor and minorities, and actually increases violent crime.   Easy decision, right? Apparently not for Washington.  Every time the vote to fund the War on Drugs comes up, it passes at great cost to the people of America.

With a million people in prison for non-violent crimes in the US, we rank as the most incarcerated people on the planet.  It's a societal choice that is costly in the sense of money -$20,000/prisoner- wasted.  It is also a horrible waste of  human potential to achieve and contribute the community.

Perhaps having draconian laws could be justified if they actually resulted in a reduction in drug use. But for all the money spent and lives interrupted,  drug use continues, apparently unabated.   In a 2006 article  Joseph Rutledge wrote,

"The most recent updates that we can receive from the government about how much money they are spending on illicit drug control is from the ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy) in 2003 which states: "combined expenditures by federal, state, and local governments exceed 30 billion dollars." In fact we have been spending that much on an annual basis since 1991, which adds up to a grand total of 450 billion dollars of taxpayers money, while the illicit drug market at production levels is around 13 billion annually. In contrast only 1 billion was spent in 1981. On top of this 1.5 million people were arrested for drug violations, almost half (736,000) arrested for marijuana (88% for possession alone). A total of 237,000 were sent to prison on drug charges, if you multiply this by the low estimate cost of housing one prisoner for one year ($20,000), you get a figure of over 948 billion. Has the money thrown at this war had any affect on illicit drug use in this country? No. An estimated 36 million people in this country, aged 12 and older, will use some form of illegal drug this year, which is up from 25 million in 1990. As added food for thought: 83 million Americans reported using marijuana regularly in their lifetime, which means more than likely, someone close to you has used marijuana on a monthly basis at some point in their lives."

One would think that a program that is so ineffective and expensive would draw opposition in Congress.  However, since it targets mainly a voiceless, powerless underclass of the poor and minorities,  it continues to be rubber stamped for passage. A Human Rights Watch report, “Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States” reveals that black men serve prison sentences for drug crimes 11.8 times more than white men. The black/white ratio for women is 4.8 to one.

If the unjust and ineffective drug war were ended, we would save the money we currently spend on enforcement and incarceration. By ending  prohibition, the government could profit  from marijuana as we now do with alcohol and tobacco. Their use is regulated, restricting use to adults, and sales are taxed. Professor Jeffrey A. Miron in The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition estimates it would bring in $5.2 billion a year.

As a nation, we are strapped for cash and ways to generate it.  Isn't ending the Drug War an idea whose time has finally arrived.

http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000230

http://www.physorg.com/news157280425.html

http://www.redding.com/news/2009/may/10/editorials/

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n667/a01.html, http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm)

(http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2007/11/09/the-longest-and-most-costly-war-in-american- history/

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=61



ttp://www.associatedcontent.com/article/52739/the_war_on_drugs_part_1_monetary_effects.html?cat=17

http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000230

http://economics.about.com/od/incometaxestaxcuts/a/legalize_pot.htm

They Hate US for Our Freedom?

Sure, the primary responsibility of our elected officials is to get re-elected, but do you ever get sick of being manipulated by politicians who have no actual jurisdiction over a situation.  Politicians and talking heads across America are focused like a laser on plans to build a mosque. Largely ignored, the widespread, actual suffering of millions of Muslims during their holiday season of Ramadan.  In a country  that remains one of our few allies in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan's worst floods in recorded history began more than two weeks ago in the mountainous northwest and have spread throughout the country. Some 20 million people and 62,000 square miles (160,000 square kilometers) of land — about one-fifth of the country — have been affected."

 http://www.keralanext.com/news/?id=789099

Instead we are inundated with a flood of competing press statements concerning the location of a proposed mosque  close to the hallowed ground of the World Trade Center.  I have to admit it was jarring to experience the great shopping available right across from the leveled World Trade Center site. (On the other hand, the amazing prices at Century 21 quickly assuage that icky feeling.)

Does the World Trade Center site deserve some extra-Constitutional status?  The first amendment is pretty clear on freedom of religion, leaving the politicians little actual power to affect the outcome of this controversy.  Or does the of 'hallowedness' of our Constitution trump the WTC area real estate? 

If our actual war with Islamic fundamentalist extremist terrorists is for the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims,  we are fighting the wrong battle.  Maybe they don't hate us for our freedoms, but rather for our obtuseness.

Poll Position

us and them

jobs, jobs, jobs

you can run, but you can't hide from....the Google

Tony Snow Saved Bush; We Need Rachel

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Republican

http://blog.waywardpoliticians.com/2007/04/newt-gingrich-speaker-of-house-1995.html
http://www.realchange.org/gingrich.htm
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Examples_of_Republican_hypocrisy_on_moral_values

REFORM MADNESS

The Economist offers an analysis of voter attitudes in 2008 vs 2010.
http://www.economist.com/node/16792868?story_id=16792868

The New South Lawn Movie: Blame Liberals

What if someone hit 600 homeruns and nobody cared?

Johny Whitehouse, The Republican Secret Agenda

They tried to make me state my program but I said 'no, no, no'
Yes I've been black but when I come back you'll know know know
I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine
He's tried to make me state my program but I won't go go go

Planet of the Becks

Dubious Distinctions

The Kids Have No Rights

Make TEA not Sense

Please get off that yellow stripe in the middle of the road.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/112795-axelrod-obama-remains-opposed-to-same-sex-marriage
In response to a question concerning the just overturned ban on gay marriage in California (Proposition 8) David Axelrod explained, "The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control."  

Stronger Than All the Armies

This summer of discontent, the hottest in recorded history, has tempers flaring over the oil spill, rising unemployment and deficits.  It's enough to make us want to drink those new 120 proof Nijboer's,  the strongest beer in the world. But maybe this would be a more  appropriate time to pop open a couple cold ones to celebrate what still makes this such a great country. While the French uphold a ban on girls wearing headscarves and the Swiss prohibit minarets,  our country is extending not denying civil liberties. And Americans  of apparently divergent ideologies and religions are finding ways to work together for what is fair.
On the west coast, the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California struck down Proposition 8, which denied gay men and lesbians the right to marry, depriving them of equal protection under the law.  The lawyers battling for the homosexual couples,  David Boies and Ted Olson, had met on opposite sides of a  famous Supreme Court case, Bush v. Gore, in 2000. Yet in 2010, they worked together to challenge the constitutionality of Proposition 8.

On the east coast, Mayor Michael Bloomberg supported granting permission to Muslims to build the Cordoba Center in lower Manhattan within blocks of Ground Zero.  His words on the mosque: 

 "I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime - as important a test - and it is critically important that we get it right."

Bloomberg, a follower of Reform Judaism, stood up to the Anti-Defamation League in his support for constructing the mosque. 

The events in Los Angeles and New York remind me an earlier civil rights battle in 1964.  Were it not for the few brave politicians who were able to overcome the pull of the past, we might still be a nation divided over race issues. House Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, a Republican,  recorded his thoughts on the cloture vote ending the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act: 

"Victor Hugo wrote in his diary substantially this sentiment, 'Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.' The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing of government, in education, and in employment. It must not be stayed or denied."

So let's cool off together with some strong ones, America. 

Flipflop Barbie

Rearranging the Seating

Correspondents' shorthand:
Bo on jet > wikileaks x 92,000
free market ≠ free press

Sale of Texas Baseball Team May Compel Name Change

Guns, God and Goldline: Glenn Beck meets Jesus in the Temple

GOP-TP Lite commercial more/less

Product Launch from GOP-TP: Batty