Kaboodle I

 

 
"People who wish to analyze nature without using mathematics must settle for a reduced understanding."
--  Richard Feynman
 

"Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups."
 
 
 
 
 
 
In the world of mathematics it is possible to encounter an object that may be determined to belong to either one or both of two distinct classes. It is also possible to perform operations on these objects based on that knowledge. In the real world it is generally not so easy to determine if a being belongs to the class of drooling morons or the class of evil insects, or both. However, the Wyoming legislature has offered up a special opportunity to make such a determination with the passing of legislation (13LSO-0083 SF0104 COE TH) to destroy the constitutionally-mandated electoral office of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. The fact that they did this in a really big hurry to avoid any honest public discourse makes this determination even more certain. Here are the names of those legislators who are members of either one or both of those classes:

Representative(s): Barlow, Berger, Blake, Blevins, Blikre, Brown, Burkhart, Byrd, Campbell, Cannady, Coleman, Connolly, Eklund, Esquibel, K., Filer, Freeman, Goggles, Greear, Greene, Harshman, Harvey, Kasperik, Krone, Larsen, Lockhart, Lubnau, Madden, Moniz, Nicholas B, Northrup, Patton, Petroff, Stubson, Teeters, Throne, Wallis, Walters, Zwonitzer, Dn., Zwonitzer, Dv.

Senator(s): Anderson JD S02, Anderson JL S28, Barnard, Bebout, Christensen, Coe, Craft, Driskill, Emerich, Esquibel, F., Hastert, Hicks, Johnson, Landen, Nicholas P, Perkins, Ross, Rothfuss, Schiffer, Scott, Von Flatern
 
 
 
 
Dr. Oz
 
 
Matt Taibbi on "Zero Dark Thirty" (very good article):
 
 
Here's my question: if it would have been dishonest to leave torture out of the film entirely, how is it not dishonest to leave out how generally ineffective it was, how morally corrupting, how totally it enraged the entire Arab world, how often we used it on people we knew little to nothing about, how often it resulted in deaths, or a hundred other facts? Bigelow put it in, which was "honest," but it seems an eerie coincidence that she was "honest" about torture in pretty much exactly the way a CIA interrogator would have told the story, without including much else. 
 
 
 
THE SECOND COMING
 
 
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
 
 
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
 
 
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 
 
 
-- Yeats
 
 
VA funding
veteranstoday.com
politifact.com
disabledveterans.org
veteransforcommonsense.org
 
VA funding Bush
washingtonpost.com
consortiumnews.com
 
 
When cheaters prosper, honesty dies. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Does lowering top tax rates stimulate the economy?
 
 
 
 
 
"We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance."
-- Mitt Romney

Only a flaming asshole would find it possible to make such a profoundly moronic and vicious statement.

 
 
"I'm not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was."
-- Mitt Romney
 
 
-- Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

COMPARE SOME NUMBERS

        2001       2009       2012      
Budget Deficits       $236 billion SURPLUS       $1.4 trillion DEFICIT       $1.1 trillion DEFICIT      
Jobs       + 268,000       - 598,000       + 243,000      
 Unemployment    4.2%    7.6%   8.3%   
 
 
From "Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital" by Matt Taibbi
 

Take a typical Bain transaction involving an Indiana-based company called American Pad and Paper. Bain bought Ampad in 1992 for just $5 million, financing the rest of the deal with borrowed cash. Within three years, Ampad was paying $60 million in annual debt payments, plus an additional $7 million in management fees. A year later, Bain led Ampad to go public, cashed out about $50 million in stock for itself and its investors, charged the firm $2 million for arranging the IPO and pocketed another $5 million in "management" fees. Ampad wound up going bankrupt, and hundreds of workers lost their jobs, but Bain and Romney weren't crying: They'd made more than $100 million on a $5 million investment.

....

In a typical private-equity fragging, Bain put up a mere $18 million to acquire KB Toys and got big banks to finance the remaining $302 million it needed. Less than a year and a half after the purchase, Bain decided to give itself a gift known as a "dividend recapitalization." The firm induced KB Toys to redeem $121 million in stock and take out more than $66 million in bank loans – $83 million of which went directly into the pockets of Bain's owners and investors, including Romney. "The dividend recap is like borrowing someone else's credit card to take out a cash advance, and then leaving them to pay it off," says Heather Slavkin Corzo, who monitors private equity takeovers as the senior legal policy adviser for the AFL-CIO.

Bain ended up earning a return of at least 370 percent on the deal, while KB Toys fell into bankruptcy, saddled with millions in debt.

 
 
Mitt says he wants to restore "funding" to Medicare - $716 billion. The TRUTH: The plan is NOT to restore money to Medicare, but more costs. Medicare would have to pay that much more to hospitals and insurance companies. It would actually increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by hundreds of dollars. When jackasses like John Barasso claim that Obama took money from Medicare and it needs to be restored, what he really means is that the money needs to be taken from Medicare beneficiaries and restored to the pockets of (Dr.) John Barasso and the insurance companies. 
 
 
- Paul Krugman 
 
- David Stockman 
 
 

Why do Republicans hate veterans?

Ohio's new Republican-inspired voting law removes the right of qualified voters to vote early (3 days before the election) for everyone except active members of the military. Among these qualified voters are 900,000 veterans. Why do Republicans hate veterans?
 
 

Mitt Romney

"It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam." - 1994
 
"I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there..." - 2007
 
"We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them." - 2002
 
"I don't support any gun control legislation." - 2008
 
"I'm a strong believer in stating your position and not wavering." - 2002
 
"I changed my position." - 2007
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Scientology:
Inside Scientology (Rolling Stone) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
"Our research shows a link between face-to-face contact and good relationships because that’s the best way to learn to read other people’s emotions. It’s how kids learn empathy, and they have to practice. So it’s like the in-person socializing is the healthy food, and Facebook is the empty calories. It’s like junk food, and the more of it kids have, the less time they may have for the healthy stuff."
-- Stanford professor Clifford Nass
 
 
" Across the vast, rugged terrain of southern Yemen, an escalating campaign of U.S. drone strikes is stirring increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants and driving tribesmen to join a network linked to terrorist plots against the United States."
-- Washington Post - More... 
 
 
 
 
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." 
- Jeff Hammerbacher (formerly of Facebook)
 
 
These people, the .01 percent, are mostly childish idiots. Idiot children have now accumulated all of the nation’s wealth and they are terrified that someone might try to take some of it away.
-- Alex Pareene
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mary Brown, who went to court to challenge the bill and whose name was on the litigation that made it all the way to the Supreme Court, claimed at the time she filed the suit, through her attorneys, that she “doesn’t have insurance. She doesn’t want to pay for it. And she doesn’t want the government to tell her she has to have it.” Mary Brown and her husband went bankrupt, leaving behind many debts, including $4,500 in medical bills. She will not pay those bills, but we taxpayers will.
 
 
America holds 1/4 of the world's prisoners. Note that "free enterprise" prisons require more prisoners to maximize their profits. Wells Fargo makes money by imprisoning your neighbors.
 
 
 
 
"An out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid." 
-- Martin Wolf, senior economic correspondent for The Financial Times 
 
 
 
 
 
 
-- "You can avoid being targeted if you passively acquiesce to what they do..." 
 
 
 
 
 
Propaganda spigots, bullshit spewers and fake organizations:
Fox
Americans for Prosperity
Prosperity USA
Cato Institute
Heritage Foundation
Manhattan Institute
George C Marshall Institute
Reason Foundation
American Enterprise Institute
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
Concord Coalition
Club for Growth
American Legislative Exchange Council
American Energy Alliance
Institute for Energy Research
Mercatus Center
Liberty Central
Federalist Society
Americans for Tax Reform
 
Most of these bodies call themselves "free-market thinktanks", but their trick is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy that informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilise for freedom, unaware that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the dirt.
-- George Monbiot
 
 
 
CAPITAL GAINS
The ostensible purpose of the lower capital gains rate is to compensate investors for the risk they take in investing their capital. But private equity and fund managers aren’t investing their own capital. They’re investing other people’s capital. They’re simply money managers. By claiming capital gains treatment, they are passing off regular income as capital gains, simply to save themselves taxes.
 
 In the UK, an average of about $3,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year.  In the United States, an average of about $8,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year. 
 
The United States puts a higher percentage of its population in prison than any other nation on earth does. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
John Barrasso Lies Like a Rug
 
 
 
 
 
The other day a fellow told me that John Barrasso is a clickity-clackity dancing tea-party puppet who spreads lies and bullshit to further his dreams of a fear-mongering, hate-mongering fascist plutocracy. I really wanted to defend the Senator from Wyoming, but found I was unable to do so without resorting to the sort of mendacity John indulges in. 
 
 
 
 
Report on State Govenment Conduct - Wyoming Gets An F (ranking 48th among all states)
 
 
 
 ---------------------------------------------------
 
Anyone who wants to know what the Occupy Wall Street protests are all about need only look at the way Bank of America does business. It comes down to this: These guys are some of the very biggest assholes on Earth. They lie, cheat and steal as reflexively as addicts, they laugh at people who are suffering and don't have money, they pay themselves huge salaries with money stolen from old people and taxpayers – and on top of it all, they completely suck at banking. And yet the state won't let them go out of business, no matter how much they deserve it, and it won't slap them in jail, no matter what crimes they commit. That makes them not bankers or capitalists, but a class of person that was never supposed to exist in America: royalty.
 
 
Self-appointed royalty, it's true – but just as dumb and inbred as the real thing, and every bit as expensive to support. 
 
 
 
 
------------------------------------------------- 
 
Some states have tried to pass legislation requiring oil/gas companies to publicly disclose what chemicals they're pumping into the ground to do their fracking. The industry fights vehemently against such requirements. Why do they so desperately need to hide the truth? Are they engaging in "free-market" chemical terrorism against the American people in pursuit of profit? 
 
 
 
-- Greg Smith 
 
 


Thus, like most authoritarians, Fran Townsend suddenly discovers the importance of the very political liberties she’s helped assault now that those Constitutional protections are necessary to protect herself from prosecution.

 
 
The current President not only has seized the power to assassinate American citizens with no charges, but also to imprison people indefinitely with no charges, to bomb six different countries where no war is declared and where civilians are routinely killed, to invoke extreme, self-parodying levels of secrecy to hide what he does, and to prosecute wars even after Congress votes against their authorization.
...
Faced with a militarized and corporatized state and a cowardly political and media class that enables it, Kucinich did what he should have done: opposed it loudly, courageously, consistently, and passionately.
...
Thus, those who brought us the Iraq War, Endless War in general, citizen assassinations, the systematic incineration of the Constitution known as the War on Terror, the financial collapse, the destruction of the middle class, and the financial and political supremacy of banker-criminals are sane and respectable. Those who most vehemently opposed those assaults, like Dennis Kucinich, are the "wackiest."
More...
 
 
"A senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity..."
-- The New York Times (too frequent a quote to provide a link)
 
 
 
Mitt Romney Links
 
 
 
 
 
 
- The United States produced more crude oil last year than any year since 2004.
[See graph]
 
- Although the U.S. ranks third among countries in total crude oil production, it's still less than 10% of the world's total.
[See graph]

- American crude oil production declined in every year of George Bush's presidency. It has increased in every year of Barak Obama's presidency.

- Net oil imports for the United States were 45.4% of domestic consumption in 2011, down from 60% in 2005, and lower than at any time since 1995.

- Speculators drive prices up, especially when the threat of war is raised in the Middle East. Let's see... who's been screaming the loudest for war in the Middle East?

- Economic expansion in China and India have contributed significantly to world oil prices in recent years. The growing competition for the world's oil supply is just a fact.

- The supply of oil is fixed and non-renewable. The demand keeps growing. That means that no matter what, over the long run, it's going to get more expensive. The only way out is to do some conserving and find other sources of energy. "Drill here, drill now" is the chant of those who have their heads stuck in the sand up their asses.

- The United States currently consumes more than twice as much crude oil as the next largest consumer (China).
[See graph]
 
Since 2005 employment in the oil/gas industry has gone up by 50%. Sounds great, huh? That's a total of 70,000 jobs, or 0.0005% of total U.S. employment. 
 
 
Give a man a reputation as an early riser and that man can thereafter sleep until noon. 
-- Mark Twain 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Domestic crude oil production per day in 2004: 5.4 million barrels
Now: 5.59 million barrels
Today, imports are 10% less than in 2004.
The number of rigs in American oil fields has quadrupled over the past three years.
The 5 top oil companies posted $137 billion in profits last year.
But they say they need tax breaks.
Uh-huh. 
 
 
 
 
Voodoo economics is making a big comeback, with Mr. Romney, in particular, asserting that his tax cuts wouldn’t actually explode the deficit because they would promote faster economic growth and this would raise revenue.
 
And you might find this plausible if you spent the past two decades sleeping in a cave somewhere. If you didn’t, you probably remember that the same people now telling us what great things tax cuts would do for growth assured us that Bill Clinton’s tax increase in 1993 would lead to economic disaster, while George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 would create vast prosperity. Somehow, neither of those predictions worked out.
 
So the Republicans screaming about the evils of deficits would not, in fact, reduce the deficit — and, in fact, would do the opposite. What, then, would their policies accomplish? The answer is that they would achieve a major redistribution of income away from working-class Americans toward the very, very rich.
-- Paul Krugman
 
 
 
 
 
The U.S. has long had Iran virtually encircled as a result of the American occupation of Afghanistan on Iran’s Eastern border, its invasion of Iraq on its Western border, its NATO ally Turkey hovering on Iran’s Northwestern border, some degree of military relationship with Turkmenistan on Iran’s Northeastern border, and multiple U.S. client states sitting right across the Persian Gulf (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, where the massive U.S. Fifth Fleet is stationed). Additionally, some combination of the U.S. and Israel has bombarded Iran with multiple acts of war over the last year, including explosions on Iranian soil, the murder of numerous Iranian nuclear scientists (in which even one of their wives was shot), and sophisticated cyberattacks. Meanwhile, top American political officials from both parties are actively demanding that an Iranian revolutionary cult be removed from the list of Terrorist organizations (just coincidentally, they’re all on the cult’s payroll). In the past decade, the U.S. and/or Israel have invaded, air attacked, and/or occupied Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (to say nothing of the creation of a worldwide torture regime, a system of “black site” prisons around the world to which people were disappeared, and a due-process-free detention camp in the middle of the Caribbean Ocean where many people remain encaged for almost a full decade without charges). During this same time period, Iran has not invaded, occupied or air attacked anyone.
- Glenn Greenwald
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

--------------------------  

 
 
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in. 
-- Anthem, Leonard Cohen 
 
  
 
OK Organizations:

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget 

 Tax Policy Center
 
-------------------------- 
 
The Republican candidates all claim to be devout Christians. But between the compassionate teachings of Jesus and their coldhearted, mean-spirited ideology, there is a great gulf.
- Jesus Versus the GOP

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.
Matthew 19:21

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
19:24

There was a certain rich man ...
Luke 16:19

The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.
Luke 3:11
 
 
The industry that vehemently opposes a financial transactions tax charges exorbitant financial transaction fees. --  Derek McGee
 
 
 
 
 
 
One airplane:
By recent estimates the F-35 will now cost U.S. taxpayers (you and me, that is) at least $382 billion for its development and production run.  Such a sum for a single weapons system is vast enough to be hard to fathom. It would, for instance, easily fund all federal government spending on education for the next five years.
More...
 
 
 
 
Top rate for investment income: 15%
Top rate for private equity partners (carried interest): 15% (These people don't even invest their own money.)
Top rates for the 99% (people who actually work for a living): 25% - 35%
 
Jesus said a rich man has a snowball's chance in hell of staying out of hell.
 
 
Top Secret America -  a Washington Post investigation
 
 
Now you’re not naïve enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you, buddy?
-- Mitt Romney Gordon Gekko
 
 
... once the primaries are finished, we’re going to be left with one 1%-approved stooge taking on another.
- Matt Taibbi
 
 
 
 
 
TSA confiscates a butter knife from an airline pilot. TSA confiscates a teenage girl’s purse with an embroidered handgun design. TSA confiscates a 4-inch plastic rifle from a GI Joe action doll on the grounds that it’s a “replica weapon.” TSA confiscates a liquid-filled baby rattle from airline pilot’s infant daughter. TSA confiscates a plastic “Star Wars” lightsaber from a toddler.
-- Read More...
 
 
 
 
 

 

The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise. (Luke 3:11)
 
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:25)
 
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Matthew 5:5-9)
 
You have heard it said: ‘Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.’ But I say to you, Offer the wicked man no resistance. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. (Matthew 5:38-42)
 
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)
 
 
Is there a Republican anywhere who believes any of this?
 
 
 

 

 
 
9 traits of the authoritarian personality:
rigid adherence to convention; submission to the authorities of the in-group; aggression against those who deviated from convention; opposition to imaginative, subjective or soft-hearted experience; superstition and rigid belief categories; obsession with strength and powerful father figures; generalized hostility and anger at humanity; the tendency to believe that wild and dangerous things are going on in the world, a projection of repressed emotions; and an obsession with sex.
 
 

 

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home. 
   - Thomas Jefferson
 
The effective federal income tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers, representing the top 0.000258 percent, fell from about 30 percent in 1995 to 18 percent in 2008.
 - reported by the IRS
 
Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news.
 
 
"The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job as the guardian of fiscal discipline. They're on an anti-tax jihad - one that benefits the prosperous classes." - David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director
 
"I can say to you with the deepest sincerity: If this country and this legislature are in thrall to Grover Norquist, we haven't got a prayer." - Alan Simpson
 
"With 14 million Americans out of work, and with one in seven families turning to food stamps simply to feed their children, Republicans have responded to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression by slashing inheritance taxes, extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and endorsing a tax amnesty for big corporations that have hidden billions in profits in offshore tax havens." - Tim Dickinson
 
"There's no one in this country who got rich on his own." - Elizabeth Warren
 
 
The Chamber of Commerce: Enemy of America.
 
 
 
 
 
Do the arithmetic or be doomed to talk nonsense.
-- John McCarthy
 
 
 
Wells Fargo charges poor people 261% annual interest on loans. What do they charge rich people?
 
 ---------------------------------------------------
 What does OWS want?
 
They want accountability for the banks that took their money, they want to end corporate control of government. They want their jobs back. They would like to feed their children. They want—wait, no, we want—to be heard by a media that has devoted four mind-numbing years to channeling and interpreting every word uttered by a member of the Palin family while ignoring the voices of everyone else.
 -- Dahlia Lithwick (more)
 

 ---------------------------------------------------

 
 
How intellectual dishonesty works:
 
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: In California a man was using a public telephone booth to place a call. An alleged drunk driver careened down the street, lost control of her car and crashed into the phone booth. It’s no surprise that the injured man sued, but you might be startled to hear whom he sued, the telephone company and associated firms. That's right.

SUSAN SALADOFF: The telephone booth was in a very dangerous place and it had been hit several times. And the telephone company had never properly fixed the door, so even though he was trying to get out he couldn't get out until he was hit in the booth. He lost his leg. And so, it wasn’t a real - a real joke the way President Reagan had portrayed it.
 
 
 
---------------------------------------------------
 
 
America: Murder, Inc.
 
***************************************************
 
What are OWS protesters angry about?
 
What makes this inequality so infuriating (aside from the human suffering it is generating) is precisely that it is illegitimate: it is caused and bolstered by decisively unfair application of laws and rules, by undemocratic control of the political process by the nation’s oligarchs, and by a full-scale shield of immunity that allows them — and only them — to engage in the most egregious corruption and even criminality without any consequence.
-- Glenn Greenwald
 
 
I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them.
-- OWS sign
  

 
Where do iPods, iPads, and iPhones come from?
 
 
 
Undercover Report From Foxconn’s Hell Factory
 
-----------------------------------------------------
 
 
It’s a terrible thing when an individual loses his or her grip on reality. But it’s much worse when the same thing happens to a whole political party.
more ...
 
 
 
 
 
A relentless addiction to indignation may be one of the chief drivers of obstinate dogmatism.
-- David Brin
 
 
 
 

 

In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay; they'd remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world; and conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.
 
We do not believe that such human rights violation on the part of our government justify what has been done to us: not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments - including the government of Iran - to act in kind.
 
-- Josh Fattal, one of the hikers freed from Iranian prison 9/21/2011
 
 
"Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It’s a sort of crime against childhood."
- Richard Dawkins
 
Mom and Dad -> People -> Human Resources -> HR -> Something that can be converted into profit
 
 
A Call to Courage - a report on the never-ending orgy of fear-mongering
 
 
This is the true story the drooling morons have managed to twist beyond all recognition:
Bill Clinton gave George Bush a balanced budget and the largest surplus in American history. George Bush turned that into a $10.6 trillion National Debt and a $1.3 trillion annual deficit.
 
CEOs who made more than their companies paid in taxes:
 
 Name  Company  Taxes Paid  CEO Comp
 Audrey McClendon  Chesapeake Energy  $0.00  $21 million
 John Brock  Coca-Cola  $8 million  $19 million
 John Strangfeld  Prudential Financial  $722 million tax refund  $16 million
 Gregory Q. Brown  Motorola Solutions  $7 million  $14 million
 
 
 
Chickenshit chickenhawk: One who could have served his country by going to war but didn't, and actively advocated that other people go to die for their country. They prance around like tough, patriotic guys, but are actually cowards.

Rudy Giuliani, chickenshit chickenhawk:

Mitt Romney, chickenshit chickenhawk:

Newt Gingrich, chickenshit chickenhawk:

Bill O'Reilly, chickenshit chickenhawk:
- avoided service in Vietnam with successive deferments.

George Bush, chickenshit chickenhawk:
- avoided serving in Vietnam by getting his rich, white, powerful daddy to get him into the National Guard, which at that time was little else than a summer camp for the sons of rich, white, powerful daddies who didn't want their chickenshit little boys to go to Vietnam. Poor or black need not apply. And a big bonus for these chickenshit little sons of rich, white, powerful daddies was that they got to swagger around in uniforms. Then he went AWOL for a year. Anything over 30 days is called "desertion".

Dick Cheney, chickenshit chickenhawk:
- avoided serving in Vietnam by obtaining five successive deferments.

Rush Limbaugh, chickenshit chickenhawk:
- avoided serving in Vietnam by claiming that an anal boil rendered him unfit for service.

John Wayne, chickenshit chickenhawk:
- avoided serving in World War II by getting his movie studio to pressure Washington politicians to give him a deferment because he was a "symbol" of heroism needed by his country. Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, and others all volunteered while chickenshit Johnny stayed in Hollywood, rolling in dough, popping pills, boozing it up, beating on his wives, cheating on his wives, and pretending to be a hero.
 
 
 
 
"One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people's money to help prevent there to be a crisis."
George Bush —Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009
 
"I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."
George Bush —Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2008
 
 Texas: ranks 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy, 46th in average math SAT scores, 36th
in high school graduation rates
 
Texas financed $6.4 billion of its $6.6 billion budget shortfall in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 with cash from President Obama's 2009 Recovery Act. On the same day Perry accepted the funds, he set up an online petition titled "No Government Bailouts."
More...
 
 
 
Texas unemployment rate
 
 
24% of Texas kids are living in poverty... More...
 
 
The propaganda that "business needs certainty"...
 
 

 

The War on Terror is the ultimate self-perpetuating industry: it endlessly spawns its own justification.
-- Glenn Greenwald - More...
 

-------------

 
Henry Fairlie on Republicans:

"Narrow minded, book banning, truth censoring, mean spirited, ungenerous, envious, intolerant, afraid; chicken, bullying; trivially moral, falsely patriotic; family cheapening, flag cheapening, God cheapening; the common man, shallow, small, sanctimonious."
 
 
 
Do we really want to close down the American government and risk another global financial crisis to protect the tax bills of billionaires?
-- Nicholas Kristof
More...


The GOP turns its back on Reagan

Here's how President Reagan reacted to crazy talk about not raising the national debt limit in 1983: "The full consequences of a default -- or even the serious prospect of default -- by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar."

Congress gave Reagan the tax increases he wanted and lifted the debt ceiling. Anti-tax zealots predicted economic disaster. Events proved them wrong, precisely as they did after 1993 when President Bill Clinton won an increase in marginal income-tax rates that put the nation's balance sheet in order.

-- Gene Lyons
More...



  In 2010 the average American worker was taking home $752 a week.
Check out what these guys made after some nice raises:

Philippe P. Dauman Viacom $84.5 million
Leslie Moonves CBS Corporation, $56.9 million
Michael White DirecTV $32.9 million
Brian L. Roberts Comcast Corporation $28 million
Robert A. Iger Walt Disney Company $28 million
Gregg W. Steinhafel Target $23.5 million
Michael E. Szymanczyk Altria $20.77 million
Richard C. Adkerson Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold $35.3 million

 

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Matthew 19:23-25

 

The chicken-hawk report that "...exposes the selfish, self-centered and abhorrent roots of the chickenhawk ethos that now plays such an integral role in perpetuating a state of Endless War."
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Last year, Symantec discovered 286 million new and unique threats from malicious software, or about nine per second, up from 240 million in 2009. The company said that the amount of harmful software in the world passed the amount of beneficial software in 2007, and as many as one of every 10 downloads from the Web includes harmful programs.
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  "One aspect of American politics that receives insufficient attention is that a significant percentage of self-identified Republicans—around half—are complete idiots. And the candidates who wish to be elected by them must pander to them, either by being idiots themselves—see “Bachmann, Michele”—or pretending to be."
-- Eric Alterman
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Fact-check Paul Ryan

"[Bush's] invasion of Iraq caused the deaths of at least 100,000 (and almost certainly more) innocent Iraqis: vastly more than bin Laden could have dreamed of causing. It left millions of people internally and externally displaced for years. It destroyed a nation of 26 million people. It was without question an illegal war of aggression."
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May, 2011

"The nation’s major health insurers are barreling into a third year of record profits..."
"Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums..."
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Bush tax cuts for the obscenely rich: $2 trillion added to the national debt.
Bush invasion of Iraq: $1 trillion added.
Social Security: running a surplus for 25 years.

April, 2011

"The last of the Big Five oil companies announced first-quarter earnings Friday, so the totals are in. Between the five of them, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips made $34 billion in profits in the first three months of 2011 -- up 42 percent from a year ago."
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19% of children in Fremont County live in poverty. - Reported in the Riverton Ranger, 4/24/11

General Electric (NY Times 3/24/11): "The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion."

Leona Helmsley: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. A certain beggar, named Lazarus, was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. Yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. It happened that the beggar died, and that he was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried. In Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his bosom. He cried and said, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue! For I am in anguish in this flame."

But Abraham said, "Son, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in the same way, bad things. But now here he is comforted and you are in anguish. Besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that those who want to pass from here to you are not able, and that none may cross over from there to us."

Luke 16:19-26


In 1963, there was virtually no deficit and the top tax rate was 91 percent for income over $400,000. Today, the annual U.S. deficit is nearly $1.5 trillion (all created during the Bush presidency) and the top tax rate is 35 percent for income over $372,500.

The Myth of Multitasking

Dr. Edward Hallowell, in his book, CrazyBusy
Multitasking is a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.”

In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”

The Myth of Multitasking, Christine Rosen
Attached to Technology and Paying a Price, Matt Richtel
The Myth of Multitasking: How "Doing It All" Gets Nothing Done, Dave Crenshaw
The Myth of Multitasking, Dr. Jim Taylor

Ronald Reagan raised taxes, negotiated with terrorists, repeatedly sold missiles and other weapons to Iran, gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, and tripled the national debt. If Clinton`s tax policies had been left alone, there would be no such debt. Clinton gave George W. Bush the largest surplus in American history, and George W. promptly turned it into the largest deficit in American history.

"...the only way we`re going to get our economy going again and solve our budget problems is to get the economy moving."
John Boehner

"...the most profoundly retarded statement I`ve ever heard."
Jon Stewart


The Media`s Authoritarianism and Wikileaks

A Sane Republican

The proportion of conservatives who believed that President George W. Bush’s tax cuts actually increased federal revenue grew from 36 percent to 67 percent when they were provided with evidence against this claim. People seem to argue so vehemently against the corrective information that they end up strengthening the misperception in their own minds.

Jim DeMint, Republican Congressman from South Carolina: "Mr. President, get your hands off of my health care..." Let it be noted that the government pays for his health care.

Rush Limbaugh vowed to leave the United States and move to Costa Rica if healthcare reform passed. Evidently, nobody told him Costa Rica has a government-funded, single-payer healthcare system. He has since recanted.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

     ** Dwight D. Eisenhower **

Fussin` java poor townfolk inbred bankrupt up tractor. Askin` shack jug, slap down tar tractor heffer wuz java consarn chew old boobtube chitlins. Up, tar jehosephat havin` slap, wirey liniment jest if havin` kickin`. Kickin` pappy whoopin` old her wuz landlord fer cain`t him burnin` dumb havin` backwoods hauled. Gospel rent far boobtube deep-fried, gal hogjowls cowpoke heffer poor rodeo round-up.

Her, lyin` gonna, give hold woman skinny. Bible fricaseed a caught lordy cabin gospel hogs showed greasy. Hayseed skinned hootch buckshot is, yippie heapin` quarrel.

Caboose snakeoil wild wirey yeehaw no chew. Old down road, what, penny gal. Wild, fishin` chew bankrupt no rodeo tarnation heapin` fire uncle is cousin. Work fightin` preacher tax-collectors me ails. Lordy tax-collectors fixin`, cheatin` chitlins, sam-hell give, hobo. Fricaseed pickled lyin` chitlins, rockinchair caboodle jiggly boxcar go buckshot soap squalor tarnation done hospitality. Ever sam-hell hayseed frontporch rattler kinfolk.

Where that locality jail fightin` cousin jezebel rightly heffer crop fixin`.