Well…just looked at the count for the month and realized that I’ve already made my goal of two per day for the month…but, I thought I’d do another one just for the hell of it..don’t know if I have very much to say but I’m going to say it anyway…I did get the papers out for recycling as I said I would but that is about it…I think I’m going to stay on this topic for a while…that the intelligence and memory of the people in the US must be questioned when polls come out that put Romney and Obama almost even in the general election….I can still remember the Bush years…the unfunded wars we were lied into, the erosion of our civil liberties, the shredding of the constitution, the continued concentration of wealth in the top 1% while the rest of the country struggles….let’s say it again…all of the problems we have now are a direct result of repub policies and they are promising more of the same if elected…they are planning to gut social security and medicare while giving tax breaks to the rich that will give them an AVERAGE of $146,000 cut while raising them on everyone else. No society can survive when one percent of the country controls everything….
I have one question to ask…why can’t ceo’s take only half of their outrageous pay and give pay raises to the people that work for them? This one move would put billions if not trillions of dollars into the hands of people who would spend it, increasing demand across the entire economy and putting people back to work….just saying….
Well…watched an interesting show on PBS last night with Bill Moyers looking into the reasons behind the financial meltdown and one of the things that I now understand is how bi-partisan the blame is….both parties were involved with the repeal of Glass-Steagall that allowed the banks to do what they did…but what I don’t understand is why no one remembers that it was the lack of regulation that led to the banks being able to monetize mortgages and make trillions in fees selling them to unsuspecting investors when they knew they were worthless. Why is no one calling out the repubs when they continue to cry deregulate, deregulate, deregulate….it is exactly the same thing they were saying in the 90′s and we all know where that left us….I do understand that regulation has costs but I don’t know of a better example of how much this deregulation nonsense costs, too….millions of homeowners losing their homes, millions of real people losing their savings, and millions of workers losing their jobs…..but that doesn’t matter to the repubs..the only thing that matters to them is to beat Obama….and that could happen if we continue to have amnesia about the near past…
Well…this is going to be a short one to comment on one of the more delusional statements made in the past few weeks by ole Mitt…his latest attack after the Sotu speech by Obama was that Obama was “out of touch” with real Americans…okay, if you’re not laughing about that comment, you have no sense of irony…let’s go back and look at some of ole Mitt’s comments…first, we have the $10,000 dollar bet with Rick Perry at one of the debates…next, we have ole Mitt saying that almost $400K of income from speeches is “not much”, and then we have the statements that he pays all of the taxes he owed under the tax code and “not a dollar more”…when it is well know that he was running Bain capital when they (and others in the venture capital business) lobbied congress and bought themselves the law that allows them to pay less a percentage of taxes on income than anyone in the 99%. So, I’ll contend here that ole Mitt is the one that is out of touch, that he is the one who has no damn idea of what it is like to be 58 years old with too much education to find a job in this economy….go back to where you came from, Mitt…this country doesn’t need silver spoon people like you telling me how to think about the state of the country and economy…geez…
Well…just wanted to elaborate on the earlier comment I made on the sotu by Obama last night…there were parts of the speech that I found interesting to some extent…the new found populism and themes that echo what the majority wants was a little refreshing but I still fault him for not learning that you can’t compromise with the repubs; that the only thing they want is less regulation, more subsidies for business, and to defeat him….they don’t give a damn about moving the country forward…but the one thing that the repubs are misreading is the people’s desire to stop the nonsense they have been pushing for the last three years….that the repubs don’t see the new emphasis on income inequality and inequality of opportunity is not a flash in the pan but a long term realization that as the top 1% take more and more, there is less left for the middle class to earn and spend and as it continues, the economy will stagnate and never return to the growth necessary for a healthy economy….geez…
Well….haven’t really done any political stuff since the repub primary in SC so I think I should at least do a couple of words…does anyone else find it ironic that in a values voter state, that ole Newt could win it? And, run as a Washington outsider when his entire adult life has been consumed with politics and has been fed by the public trough? The repubs must really hate ole Mitt to give this unethical, unprincipled idiot their votes….what else….hmmmm….oh, another funny thing happened this morning when Rand Paul was detained by the TSA for refusing a full body patdown when he was flying….I don’t agree with anything this rightie has to say but I can support his saying enough…okay…going to end here for now but will be back later…
Well…as you know, I have taken the governor here in Michigan to task on many occasions just for the fact that he screwed the middle class and retirees here with tax cuts for business while raising taxes on everyone else…and I still feel that this is wrongheaded since tax cuts for business as a means to spur job growth has never worked anywhere it has been tried….that said, I will give him his due for statements this week that tries to put a damper on the repub controlled legislatures headlong rush to attack organized labor by making Michigan a right to work state…I think he got it just right when he said that taking up this issue will end any other legislative work for the year and that Michigan can’t afford that….less than a ringing endorsement of labor but at least he seems to understand that, at least in this instance, that ideology has no place in trying to get the state moving again…so, I will applaud this stance while reserving the right to criticize when the situation merits it….
Well…You know I didn’t watch the repub debate last night, but I did read about it in the papers this morning and one of the things that I saw as the ultimate irony has to do with the outrage that ole Newt showed to Jon King when asked about his affairs. As you know, I don’t think that much of a candidates personal life should be part of the political process, but, when a politician has the track record that Newt has, it should be fair game because it goes to his character. If you remember, ole Newt was one of the repubs that was leading the impeachment charge in Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky affair, and in comparison, what ole Newt did in his life is so much worse with his serial affairs and general callousness toward the wives he was cheating on. I think this shows that Newt lacks any sliver of empathy that I feel a politician needs to be able to understand the rest of the people in the country…geez….
Well…I was laughing my butt off this morning when I read of the new defense of ole Mitt only paying 15% in taxes on his investment income with the right trying out the line that he followed the law, didn’t he? I agree he may have followed the current law, we’ll wait for the tax returns before I accept that he has, but I think the right and the media are missing the point…what makes investment income different from the income that comes from wages? Income should be treated as income no matter what the source, there should be no privileged income…and the problem as I see it is that that rich have bought themselves different treatment than the rest of us by campaign contributions and the connections of the old boy network here in the US. That is where the rich diverge from the rest of us and is why the 99%’ers are so angry…and the difference is that most of us don’t mind paying our fair share and can’t afford the cadres of lawyers that the 1%’ers use to ensure they pay the very least that the code allows….we need to fix the code that allows this kind of nonsense that makes an unemployed person pay more taxes than a millionaire…
Well…just a short one on a comment that ole Mitt made yesterday about his income from speakers fees that he made last year….when asked about the amount he replied “not much”…okay, Mitt, your not much was 374,000 dollars…374 K, which would put anyone else in the top 1% is just pocket change to ole Mitt…how can anyone who answers that 374K is “not much” ever understand what the 99% of us go through in our daily lives? This alone should disqualify Mitt form the presidency since the only people he can ever identify with are those of the silver spoon class; those that were born to wealth and have the delusion that they earned it…geez…
Okay, I’m going to add a little to this one about how out of touch many of our rich politician class is…if you remember, back in the 90′s when the elder George Bush walked into a grocery store and marveled at the price scanners that those of us that actually have to do our own grocery shopping had seen for many years…and, to be fair…there have been many of the patrician class of the dems that have done the same thing, I seem to remember one of the Kennedys who never carried money because they had people to do that for them…but the difference is that most of them really did care about the middle class and their legislative efforts showed it…none of the trickle-down nonsense that the repubs have pushed for the last 30 years…
Well…I hope you’ve been following the drama that has been going on in Wisconsin over the past year where the repub governor Scott Walker and his cronies have attacked the rights of the people and have tried to enact the Koch brothers radical view of the world that includes making the middle class go away. I was heartened yesterday when the first phase of ridding the world of this nonsense was completed by the people of Wisconsin filing over a million signatures to recall this troglodyte idiot and a few more of his extreme right wing minions. But, there is still an election to be won in phase two but you can see how concerned his owners are with Walker being in NYC to raise more money to try to lie his way into the rest of his term…there is something wrong with how the repubs do politics when the majority of the money Walker has used to get elected and to try to defeat the signature drive has come from big-money sources outside of Wisconsin…I stand with the people of Wisconsin while they take back their state from these radical outside interests…and I hope this puts the gov here on notice that the people don’t want the repubs radical nonsense….and that we remember the right of the people to freely associate and form unions is a human right that can’t be taken away by big money….nice job!