Most interesting Newsweek article titled "War on the Weak, spelling out the philosophy behind both the Tea Party and Congressman Ryan's budget. It's based on the writings of Ayn Rand, who believed the poor were parasites and the rich were the natural rulers of the country.....
Yup, you read it right, and the article is illuminating as well as a taste of the pain and suffering to come for the middle class and the poor if these extremists ever get in complete control of the tattered remains of the government....
Last week the Republican Party sounded two distinct voices. First we heard the angry demands of the Tea Party, speaking through its hardline conservative allies in the House, pushing the government to the brink of a shutdown. But then emerged the soothing tones of Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, who fashions himself the intellectual leader of the party, unveiling a budget manifesto he calls the “Path to Prosperity.”
Ryan portrays his goals in reassuringly pecuniary terms—he’s just the friendly neighborhood accountant here to help balance your checkbook. “I have a knack for numbers,” he chirps. ABC News compared him to a character in Dave, the corny 1993 movie about an average Joe who mistakenly assumes the presidency and calls in his CPA buddy—that would be Ryan—to scour the federal budget and bring it into balance. If he has any flaw, he just cares too much about rescuing the country from debt, gosh darn it!
In fact, the two streams—the furious Tea Party rebels and Ryan the earnest budget geek—both spring from the same source. And it is to that source that you must look if you want to understand what Ryan is really after, and what makes these activists so angry.
..............................
But Ryan proposes identical cuts in his own plan. What’s more, he saves trillions of dollars from Medicare by imposing huge cuts on anybody who retires starting in 2022. So not only has he adopted the cuts he claimed would never come to pass because they’re too harsh and too distant, he imposes far harsher and more distant cuts of his own. Indeed, Alice Rivlin, the fiscally conservative Democratic economist who endorsed an earlier version of his Medicare plan, called his new plan unrealistic. (Ryan nonetheless continues to imply that she supports it.)
Ryan’s plan does do two things in immediate and specific ways: hurt the poor and help the rich. After extending the Bush tax cuts, he would cut the top rate for individuals and corporations from 35 percent to 25 percent. Then Ryan slashes Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps, and low-income housing. These programs to help the poor, which constitute approximately 21 percent of the federal budget, absorb two thirds of Ryan’s cuts.
Ryan spares anybody over the age of 55 from any Medicare or Social Security cuts, because, he says, they “have organized their lives around these programs.” But the roughly one in seven Americans (and nearly one in four children) on food stamps? Apparently they can have their benefits yanked away because they were only counting on using them to eat.
Ryan casts these cuts as an incentive for the poor to get off their lazy butts. He insists that we “ensure that America’s safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency.” It’s worth translating what Ryan means here. Welfare reform was premised on the tough but persuasive argument that providing long-term cash payments to people who don’t work encourages long-term dependency. Ryan is saying that the poor should not only be denied cash income but also food and health care.
The class tinge of Ryan’s Path to Prosperity is striking. The poorest Americans would suffer immediate, explicit budget cuts. Middle-class Americans would face distant, uncertain reductions in benefits. And the richest Americans would enjoy an immediate windfall. Santelli, in his original rant, demanded that we “reward people [who can] carry the water instead of drink the water.” Ryan won’t say so, but that’s exactly what he’s doing.
A passionate essay on the recent deal made by the Democrats to cut $38 billion from social programs.....and the writer isn't happy.....
Also halfway through the article is an amazing 5 minute clip from the 1976 movie "Network", and after you watch it you can see how it really spelled out the future. Think about our world today 45 years later.....scary stuff.....watch this clip......
"If God did not want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep."
- Calvero from The Magnificent Seven
o, Mr. Obama saved us from a government shutdown. That's good, right?I don't think so, but then, I'm not part of the hoi polloi that runs this joint.
Listen to the spin coming from the Democrats and Mr. Obama using their upside down language of "... reducing spending while still investing in the future is just common sense ..."
We are not investing in America by these spending cuts, but rather breaking the great Republic into more pieces for sale to the lowest corporate bidder. This is the privatization of America and the turning of citizens into sharecroppers.
Gore Vidal said it best:
"America has only one political party - the property party. It's the party of big corporations, the party of money. And it has two right wings, one is Democrat and the other is Republican."
Let's be honest here - Obama and Democrats may have dodged a shutdown but they joined the shakedown. And it is going to keep coming: the debt ceiling vote, 2012 budget vote, the GOP Medicare fraud of Paul Ryan and the selling off of our educational system to privateers who will and are turning colleges and public schools into corporate vocational-training centers. Training tomorrow's corporate citizens in conformity and consumerism. Digby posted this scene from Network a while back and it is worth watching again. Satire turned into reality...
Don't say Congress can't agree on anything - they have just passed a bipartisan bill saying incomprensible shouting is the official US language....Brooke Alvarez from Onion News has the story....with a preview of atrocities in the Congo - in 3D!!!.....2 minutes....
The excellent Lauren Ritchie with some commentary on the clowns and whores in Tallahassee, currently hard at work selling off our state to their buddies....good one.....
What's happening in Tallahassee can hardly be described as a legislative session.
It's more like a remake of National Lampoon's fraternity movie, Animal House, where garbage-can punch fuels the toga party 'till dawn.
Veteran political spectators never have seen anything quite like this.
Legislators have filed hundreds of wild proposals that normally would slog through the system, mired by public outrage.
Instead, those bills are racing through the Legislature like a frat boy to a liquor store when the vodka runs out.
Any notion that can be dressed up as "business-friendly" or "deregulation" is on the fast track. They range from allowing residential insurers to charge whatever they want to halting meaningful investigation of nursing home complaints.
Several would weaken labor unions, and one would kill road-building agencies.
Eighteen bills aim to limit abortion, and a particularly insidious bunch picks away at the already-modest ability of water districts to preserve Florida's fast-dwindling and most precious resource.
And then there's this session's crowning glory — the Wyatt Earp bill. This one would allow folks with weapons permits to strap on the ol' Glock and strut through the Altamonte Mall. Or visit patients atFlorida Hospital. Or mingle with the unarmed New Yorkers onInternational Drive.
It's more like a remake of National Lampoon's fraternity movie, Animal House, where garbage-can punch fuels the toga party 'till dawn.
Veteran political spectators never have seen anything quite like this.
Legislators have filed hundreds of wild proposals that normally would slog through the system, mired by public outrage.
Instead, those bills are racing through the Legislature like a frat boy to a liquor store when the vodka runs out.
Any notion that can be dressed up as "business-friendly" or "deregulation" is on the fast track. They range from allowing residential insurers to charge whatever they want to halting meaningful investigation of nursing home complaints.
Several would weaken labor unions, and one would kill road-building agencies.
Eighteen bills aim to limit abortion, and a particularly insidious bunch picks away at the already-modest ability of water districts to preserve Florida's fast-dwindling and most precious resource.
And then there's this session's crowning glory — the Wyatt Earp bill. This one would allow folks with weapons permits to strap on the ol' Glock and strut through the Altamonte Mall. Or visit patients atFlorida Hospital. Or mingle with the unarmed New Yorkers onInternational Drive.
Whoo-hooo! Tap another keg! Won't the Yankee tourists feel safer knowing Florida is locked and loaded if the terrorists show up?
Wonderful 5 minute Stephen Colbert clip where he takes on Senator Jon Kyl's lies about Planed Parenthood and then the trio at Fox and Friends.....very funny....
For you serious economists out there, and article from the Financial Times - Simon Johnson analyses the current state of the banking industry worldwide and concludes we are doomed to have another financial collapse and bailout in the years to come, because the Financial Reform bill passed last year has been gutted by the bank lobbyists and we are now worse off than we were before the collapse of 08.....thats what the oligarchs wanted, and that's what they got....
If Monday’s interim report of Sir John Vickers’ commission highlights one thing, it must be this: the banking system, on both sides of the Atlantic, is more dangerous now than before the financial crisis began in 2008. The only difference is that few now think Citi, HSBC or any of the major banks could go bankrupt, like Lehman Brothers. Before 2008 “too big to fail” guarantees were a possibility; now they are a certainty – enabling banks to borrow cheaply, and take risky bets with a great deal of leverage. Executives get the upside, taxpayers get the downside.
Todays video - Girls and Boys......
Todays blonde jokes.....
A blonde was driving home after a game and got caught in a really bad
hailstorm.. Her car was covered with dents, so the next day she took it
to a repair shop.
hailstorm.. Her car was covered with dents, so the next day she took it
to a repair shop.
The shop owner saw that she was a blonde, so he decided to have some fun.
He told her to go home and blow into the tail pipe really hard, & all the dents would pop out.
So, the blonde went home, got down on her hands & knees & started
blowing into her tailpipe.. Nothing happened.. So she blew a little
harder, and still nothing happened.
Her blonde roommate saw her and asked, 'What are you doing?' The first
blonde told her how the repairman had instructed her to blow into the
tail pipe in order to get all the dents to pop out.
The roommate rolled her eyes & said, 'Uh, like hello!
You need to roll up the windows first.'
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A blonde was shopping at Target and came across a shiny silver thermos.
She was quite fascinated by it, so she picked it up and took
it to the clerk to ask what it was.
The clerk said, 'Why, that's a thermos.....
It keeps hot things hot, And cold things cold.'
'Wow, said the blonde, 'that's amazing.....I'm going to buy it!'
So she bought the thermos and took it to work the next day.
Her boss saw it on her desk. 'What's that,' he asked?
'Why, that's a thermos..... It keeps hot things hot and cold things
cold,' she replied..
Her boss inquired, 'What do you have in it?'
The blond replied...... 'Two popsicles and some coffee.'
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