Did you know that 352 members of congress have left office since 1998? Did you know that 278 of them, 79%, have become lobbyists? That’s why nothing works for anyone but the rich.
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The seeming ease with which three aging peace protestors, one an 82 year-old nun, breached the security at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Nuclear facility in Tennessee on July 28th sure makes Homeland Security and the rest of our bloated security industry look like a joke. Billions for defense, not one penny for a padlock, seems to be the Homeland Security motto.
In a four-hour stroll, the trio passed around and through the fatal force zone (That’s supposed to be a daunting security phrase) to hang their anti-war posters and banners and splash human blood on the building and strung red crime tape on the scene.
The fact that these three senior citizens, were able to walk right up to a facility that holds our deadliest weaponry, through however many levels of security, none of which seemed to impede them, makes our national security system look like a huge joke. Unfortunately it’s a joke that is anything but funny. Maybe our overpaid security operations and that includes FBI, CIA, NSA and Homeland Security should stop worrying about tapping the phone and internet systems of ordinary citizens and relearn the ancient process of pulling up the drawbridge.
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A fascinating case in Sunday’s New York Times; it seems that the late Illeana Sonnabend, a famed art gallery owner left a bunch of art to her heirs. Among the art was an assemblage by Robert Rauschenberg that would have been worth a lot of money if it could have been sold. Unfortunately the piece included the stuffed carcass of a bald eagle and by law, eagles, dead or alive, cannot be sold in this country.
It was because of this law that the heirs valued the work at zero for tax purposes. That’s when the IRS stepped in and in one of its most bizarre moves on record, revalued the piece at $65 million and demanded estate taxes and penalties in the amount of $29 million – for a work that is worth zero on the market.
Now I wouldn’t begin to attempt to figure out the IRS ruling because it makes no logical sense but just for the sake of argument think about the situation this way.
A work of art has no monetary value, in and of itself. It may have tremendous inspirational or emotional value to its owner or others but until it goes on the block its only value is the cost of materials involved in making it; a few dollars worth of paint and canvas plus whatever the eagle cost (it was purchased by Rauschenberg before the 1940 law went into effect) and the wood that made up the frame. The fact that it is a seminal work by a modern master means nothing until the work is put up for sale. The amount for which the piece is sold gives it monetary value. If it cannot be sold, it has no monetary value, only inspirational and emotional.
This is not a concept, the understanding of which, demands a superior intellect. I applaud the IRS for trying to collect as many tax dollars as it can from rich people in an overburdened economy but maybe their time would be better spent in the legitimate pursuit of billionaire tax dollars hidden in overseas tax havens.
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Remember, it was teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS that crashed the stock market, wiped out half of your 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil all over the gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses from businesses that lowered dividends and paid no taxes.
Oh! You don’t remember it that way. Neither does anybody who can walk and chew gum.
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Why contraception?
More than 100 million fewer unintended pregnancies per year
Nearly 3 million fewer babies dying in first year of life per year
More than 50 million fewer abortions per year
200 thousand fewer women and girls dying in pregnancy & childbirth
So why does the Catholic Church forbid it? Probably because little boys don’t get pregnant.
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If you have any interest in justice or in an attempt to maintain transparency in our government you must read Glenn Greenwald’s brilliant article in the Guardian, UK exposing the media’s subversive coverage of the WikkiLaeks affair and particularly Julien Assange’s continued persecution by them and by Britain, the US and Sweden. You’ll need a strong stomach but Greenwald is spot on in his revelations of jealousy and petty competition among the British and American press who cynically boast of their place in keeping governments honest while viciously attacking the one man in the world who is actually, successfully doing it.
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Bob McDonnell, the Governor of Virginia, is an amazing man, a handsome, empty suit, completely lacking any personal concept of what is truth and what are lies. Watched him lying about what Charlie Christ, former Governor of Florida, said in his attack on the Republicans, then he lied about Romney raising employment in Massachusetts. Then he lied about the GOP’s platform on abortion, claiming that it allowed an exception for rape victims when none is present. Is it possible that he is too stupid to read and understand this stuff or is he just a congenital liar?
George Stephanopoulos, instead of doing his job as moderator and calling this clown on his lies turned it over to Democratic Convention Chairman Antonio Villaraigosa, whose only qualification for his job, must be his appeal to the Hispanic vote; he brings absolutely nothing else to the table. Instead of calling McDonnell on his lies this jerk stumbles around for a couple of minutes and finally tries to get the subject changed to immigration. A disaster.
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Paul Ryan, the man who wants to be Vice President of the United Sates, passed 2 bills in his fourteen years in congress. One of them had to do with the taxing of arrows. That’s right kimosabe, arrows. It’s good to see he’s into really important legislation.
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The first thing Obama should have done a couple of Sundays back was to fire David Pluff. This empty suit was asked the most important question of the day, “is the country better off now than it was when Obama took office.” Instead of answering with a resounding YES, he stumbled and bumbled and beat around the bush like a low grade moron.
We were losing 750,000 jobs a month when Obama took office. We have since added over 4 million. The stock market had lost over one third of its value, value that has now been restored. Houses were being foreclosed at a record rate and that rate has now slowed to a small fraction of what it was. We were involved in two unjust wars when Obama took office. He has ended one and is in the process of ending another, despite the fact that Romney wants to start two new ones. Gotta keep those munitions manufacturers busy making money.
Yes there are still far too may unemployed but Obama’s is working on that and would be much further along in the process if it weren’t for the Republicans, who have done everything in their power to block him in everything he as done. His jobs bill has been sitting dead in the house for over a year.
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BP is running a series of commercials about how great Louisiana and the Gulf are, now that they have killed most of the fish and wild life. They boast about how they have invested more in America then they have any other country. Maybe they should speak to how much they have cost America with their criminal spills, and match that against what they have spent, so we can see what the actual cost of having them devastate our wetlands and coastline has really been.
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During the Bush administration there was a very dark group that inhabited the White House. Often referred to as the neo coms, the group included but was not limited to; Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Scooter Libby, and Carl Rove all under the influence of Dirty Dick Cheney. They were partial to Israel and very adept at dirty tricks. They were mostly responsible for selling an uninformed Bush on the war in Iraq and tried, unsuccessfully, to sell him on a war with Iran. They were responsible for the misinformation that led to Iraq and constantly played the kinds of underhanded game that led to the Valerie Plame incident for which they should all have gone to jail.
We have heard a great deal about Manning and Assange, but why isn’t Carl Rove, the manipulator of the Valerie Plame treason in jail now? Why is he out creating a money tree for Romney? If Romney is elected these same warmongering traitors will be back in power. Rove isn’t raising hundreds of millions so he can take a back seat after the election. He will be dictating policy to Romney and Ryan if they get elected. This will represent one of the most dangerous situations for this country that can be imagined, a man who should have been executed for treason advising the president.
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Todd Akin is really too stupid to breathe. I‘m amazed that he is able to remain upright on his own. Not content to take the dumbest, most outlandish position in American politics, one that has even gained the scorn of the Republican presidential candidate, he now doubles down and makes matters worse. Every clown in the NRA must be thinking of getting his best hunting rifle, the AR-15 with the 60 round clip and the 30X scope, out of moth balls and taking a head shot at this moron before he is allowed to speak again. I haven’t been in Missouri in a long time but don’t any women live there? How did his imbecile get elected? And he just keeps on talking. Democrats, who gleefully hope he holds onto the win he achieved in the Republican primary, before opening his fetid mouth are now supporting him. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were paying his election expenses, now that the Republicans have dried him up. They figure that having him on the ticket will do nothing but strengthen Claire McCaskill’s chances of getting that seat for the Dems.
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There was a lot of carrying on this weekend among the talking heads. Everybody was yelling and screaming about whether or not the Romney tax plan was going to cost of 5 trillion or save us one trillion and what he hell was happening to the $718 billion that was either being stolen from Medicare or added to Obamacare?
But the real question, the one nobody wanted to touch was, to whom was Romney really lying? For years the Mittster has been promising that he will save the world through trickle down economics by lowering the tax rates on the top 1%. He has said, ad nauseum, that he will destroy Obamacare on day one in office and that we are spending too much on education and have to cut funds from it. Then on debate #1 he comes out and does a one eighty on all these basic questions. All of a sudden he loves Obamacare, will tax the hell out of millionaires and is all for spending on education. So is he lying to his base or is he lying to the American public? The two positions are completely opposed so he’s got to be lying to someone. The real question is who cares, the real question is, do we want that kind of liar to run the country?