Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Wandering around in my head on Friday….

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Well….there are quite a few things going on in my head today so I thought I’d just free form it and let them come as they will…oh, free speech and the first amendment….read an article in the Detroit papers about the idiot Terry Jones and his plans to protest Islam outside a mosque in Detroit today…if you remember, he’s the one that burned a Koran in Florida that set off the rest of the idiots in Afghanistan and across the middle east and the protests there killed almost 50 people….so it’s not okay to burn a Koran, but it’s okay to kill 50 people protesting it? I just don’t understand that whole mindset….but, back to Detroit…the government there wants Mr. Jones to post a huge bond to cover the costs of security….since when does the first amendment come with a price tag? While I abhor the supposed preacher and his hate speech…we must all defend his right under the first amendment to that speech…and you do not have to pay for the privilege….so, kudos to the ACLU for defending him….

Hmmm….oh, to all of you who bitched and moaned about the bailout loans made to the auto industry in the meltdown….I have a bit of “I told you so” to throw back at you…the CEO of Chrysler today announced that they will be paying back the remaining 7.5 billion they owe 6 years early…yep, that’s right 6 years early and in full….another success story of the targeted government intervention that I advocate and it just adds to the success of the TARP programs that is going to show a 40-50 billion dollar profit for you and me…and these were things that the free market was unwilling or unable to do…take that repubs….

Anything else? Oh, another myth about taxing the rich fell today….that if their state tax rates rise, they will just move out of that state to another one that has lower taxes….doesn’t happen….the outflow and inflow of rich to those states was exactly the same as it was before the tax increases….so, let’s add this one to the myth that cutting taxes on the rich creates jobs and the corresponding one that says cutting taxes on corporations creates jobs…just doesn’t happen…..but the repubs will just keep lying about this until enough of us start paying attention and pushing back…..

That’s about it….for now, wanted to get this one out before lunch so you’d have something to kill time with when you come back from lunch….it is Friday, after all….

Politics

Still struggling…

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Well…just thought I’d get a shorty out to let you know that I am working on getting another one going in my head but this whole day has been a weird jumble of things happening and I am so far off my normal routine that I haven’t even read the online papers yet…so I’m going to do that now and then come back in a while to finish this…

Okay, I’m back…had to run an unexpected errand and still haven’t found anything to write about….maybe the hurt feelings of Paul Ryan would be appropriate…I just had to laugh after Obama attacked Ryan’s radical budget proposal, with Ryan calling the speech “overly partisan”…oh, poor baby, you should be happy he didn’t call you the idiot that you are…well…he kind of did, and as time goes by and people other that the Heritage Foundation take a close look…we’ve learned that it does nothing to lower the deficit, yep, that’s right…nope, I can’t even fake surprise at this one….these guys have taken “voodoo” economics to a new high, and I am so happy they did it, finally letting the curtain fall on their agenda to end the social contract that has existed for the past 90 years. It is a little heartening to see the same kind of thing happening here in Michigan with gov Snyder losing support even from his own party where they still have some realists…..I can’t wait to see the ads for the next election where the dismantling of Medicare is going to be the subject…and it will make it easier to believe when the left says the repubs want to end Social Security, too….going to be interesting time over the next two years…strap in and hang on…

Politics

Did you vote for this?

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Well…if there was any confusion over whose side the newly elected repubs are on here in Michigan, you only have to look at what a new bill is doing to the foreclosure process here….where the current law provides a 6 month window for people trying to save their houses, the new bill, written and paid for by the banking industry, will cut that time in half and allow the banks to make the homeowners jump through more and more paperwork hoops while they will have absolutely no requirements for timeliness for their end of the process…basically allowing them to drag the process out to “run out the clock” on the homeowners and ensuring that less and less people will be able to save their homes. I will point this at those of you who voted for these thieves: “Did you vote for this?” Did you vote to have your friends and neighbors houses stolen when they run into financial trouble? If you did, then shame on you…geez…

Politics

What’s wrong with the rich?

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Well….as I sit here and think about the news over the past few weeks a question comes to mind: “What’s wrong with the rich?” When did they become so greedy and self-centered that they lost any pretense of caring about anyone but themselves? This post was kind of spurred on by the recent report that the super rich in this country have an average tax rate that is below 17%. Let’s put that in perspective using my own situation as an example….I took 15 k out of my IRA last year just to pay my rent and keep food on the table and my tax rate was over 25%…yep, someone that is barely making ends meet is paying more percentage in taxes than billionaires, and this is on money that I earned and saved over my working career. But, you won’t hear me bitch about paying taxes; they are necessary to maintain our social contract and make this a better society for everyone…not just the rich. I find it so funny that these people will spend millions and millions of dollars buying repubs to write them favorable laws but will balk at paying for the infrastructure and military that allow them to make those outrageous sums of money. Why are they so un-American? But, it’s not just the rich that are at fault here…it’s our fault for voting for people that are nothing more than shills for business and that lie like they breathe….who don’t believe that there should be a shared responsibility for the welfare of our country…should we be surprised? Nope, most of the legislators we now have are millionaires that are there for one thing and one thing only…to line their pockets and tell us that a greater America is no longer possible; that the poor and middle class are leeches that will be better off if the safety nets that have kept millions of seniors and unemployed out of poverty are gone. Is that the vision that you or I share? I sure hope not…geez…

Politics

Nolan Finley is still an idiot…

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Well…if you’ve been here before, you know one of my favorite, recurring targets is Nolan Finley, who writes a column for the Detroit News….the right wing leaning newspaper I read every morning…yeah, I know, you ask yourself why, why do I read this paper when you know that I am a progressive? Look, I need to know what the repub talking points are and I can be sure that the point of the day will be in the News…usually led by brother Nolan. This mornings’ column is a screed that goes off on Obama’s speech yesterday that proposed letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those who make over 250 K a year, and he goes on that it would be unfair since the top 1% already pay 30% of the taxes paid in the US. He continues that the top 10% pay 73% of the taxes paid and it is unfair for them to pay more when 47% of the filers pay no taxes at all. Nolan, Nolan, Nolan….you do forget to mention that the top 10% get over 90% of the total income in this country…do the math….that means that the rich are not paying their fair share but are finding ways to buy a favorable tax code through donations to the repubs…..and to your second point, the reason that 47% of the people pay no taxes is the repubs policies from Saint Reagan to now have decimated the middle class and incomes for all of the middle class and poor have dropped to the point that they are now approaching the poverty level.

I don’t think Nolan and his repub cronies will be happy until they steal all of America…it is a question of fairness and of vision, what kind of country do we want? Where the repubs can excoriate the middle class for becoming poor and not paying taxes while our richest corporations use their power and money to do the same? Geez….I may be back to add to this one later…but I am so irritated by this idiots ramblings that I am having trouble being lucid….

Politics

Breathtaking lies and other stuff….

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Well….I know this is kind of obscure since not many of you know who Senator John Kyl is…oh, you do? Good, that might put this more in context….okay, a couple of days ago Senator Kyl went on the floor of the senate and made the assertion that 90% of the funding that Planned Parenthood gets is used for abortions; no matter that the the real number is around 3%, since you know that facts don’t mean much to the repubs…but, the breathtaking part is not the lie…nope, even better than that, the statement that his office put out later is….they put out a press statement saying that what he said on the senate floor was not meant to be factual…not meant to be factual? Then what was it meant to be? A recipe for cornbread? C’mon senator Kyl….at least try to hide your lies for a little while longer…you can use page 84 of the repub playbook, chapter 15 entitled “Say anything, it doesn’t matter”. Geez….

Just a short one for the other stuff….read an article this morning that dissected the Ryan budget proposal and it’s fiscal effects on the national debt…and compared it to the effect of ending the Bush tax cuts…guess what? Ending the Bush tax cuts has the same effect as all of the cuts that Ryan proposes that will fall on the middle class and the poor. Is there any question the Ryan has an ulterior motive? Reward the rich Ryan….has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? geez….

Politics

Just a couple of things…

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Well…just a couple of things today…I haven’t been able to come up with a really coherent set of thoughts, so I’m just going to kind of let it loose and see what happens….first…with the anniversary of the Civil War’s start, I find it so odd that there is still an ongoing effort by some folks on the right and in the south to obscure what the war was about; they have been floating the whole states rights malarkey as a replacement for the real reason…the south wanted to keep slavery plain and simple. I wonder at the reason for these efforts, after all, it’s been 150 years. What benefit is there to be gained by trying to change the reasons? Just another episode to me where people on the right can’t accept facts and are intent on using one of their favorite tactics to change the truth; that is repeating lies until people say “oh, I’ve heard that somewhere” and then saying it must be the truth.

On other thing that I want to talk about is the lack of fight coming out of the White House in the budget battle which truly are struggles for the soul of this nation….why can’t they just stand up and compare what the US looks like now, and how it will look if the Ryan proposals are enacted…starting with the windfall the changes in Medicare would be for insurance companies…c’mon Obama, if you can’t make insurance companies look bad by just citing their actions, you’re just not paying attention..stop being so afraid of looking partisan and get to this whole tax cut nonsense for the rich…call the repub idiots out to prove that these cuts create jobs…which they don’t. How can you fumble this when all of the facts are on the side of the moderates….what does cutting funding for Planned Parenthood do to create jobs? Geez….I came up with these two by myself without much thinking, get off your butt and start working for us….and remember, crazy ideas from the right need to be called crazy…stop being so nice to these idiots and slap them with their lies, it is not partisan to call out idiots…I think you are allowing America to be hijacked by the tea partiers because you don’t have the guts to stand up and put them in their place…I for one, don’t want to have my life dictated by the 15% fringe that is the tea party…

Politics

A new vision…

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Well..one of the most striking things that I have taken away from the budget battles that have been going on for the last couple of years is the utter lack of vision that the dems have laid out to support their version of America….and I fault Obama for a large part of it…his tiptoeing around to not anger the repubs have gotten him what? Nothing but an emboldened opposition whose crazy ideas have gotten a huge voice without the counterpoint of rationality that the president could bring to the discussion, and his almost unfathomable reliance on bipartisanship, or the appearance of bipartisanship, is making him look so disengaged that those of us in the middle and on the left are sitting here shaking our heads. I hope that the budget plan that is coming out from the dem leadership later in the week will help to flesh out what they think America should look like and I think they have a golden opportunity to contrast with the Ryan proposal; one that gives more and more to the rich while taking the majority of the savings from programs that are designed to help the middle class and poor.

It was a good start when Obama said that the plan will include increased revenue from letting the bush tax cuts expire on the richest, and I think it is a reasonable request since those tax cuts never produced one new job or made America a better place to live; except for those super rich who benefited from the cuts. I also understand that there can be cuts and streamlining to major government programs to make them more efficient, but let’s make sure that the cuts are made to the inefficiencies, and maintain those few things that can help the American dream live on….

Politics

Voodoo economics is back…again…

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Well….with all of the praise that Paul Ryan is getting for his budget proposals, you would think he was on to something new, since his plan has been deified in the right wing press as the heaven sent solution to all of our problems…okay, I made that last part up but I really think that has been the gist of the reaction from even mainstream media. To get a full explanation that is done better than I could do, check out Paul Krugman’s column in the NY times this morning…yeah, I know, I have been trying to not go there but it is hard to give up something that has been a part of my life for so many years. Now, back to the Ryan proposal, the cornerstone of this monstrosity is the re-invention of the voodoo economics of the Reagan administration; that is, that as you cut taxes, revenue to the government will rise…a theory that has been proven wrong every time it has been tried since the 80’s….if this stupid theory worked, the government would be awash in money and there would be no deficit problem since overall taxes are lower now that they have been on over 50 years. The only question that comes to my mind is prove it; where are all of these dollars they talk about?

The second thing that all of us should be quite concerned about is the inclusion in Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare into a private insurance scam that would give insurance companies the ability to make trillions more profit off people that have no place else to go. How can he stand there with a straight face and say that it will save money to change a program that has a 9% overhead to one a private one whose overheard ranges from 20-30%. Just another plan to reward the rich insurance companies at the expense of you and me. Aren’t you tired of this crap yet? Geez….

Politics

I want to write about good news…

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Well….I do feel a little better so I thought I’d get this one out before I slink back to the couch to continue this slow, painful recovery. I have been having problems writing lately since it takes a lot out of me to be outraged all the time, and I do want to write about good news; there just hasn’t been any lately. That might not be completely true, there was an election in Wisconsin yesterday and the turnout by the people that want fairness restored to their political process was huge….maybe I was right that the repub thugs have overreached and misread the will of the people. No one but the rich could have voted for what gov Walker foisted on that state, or for what Paul Ryan is proposing on the federal level…that there will be no more social contract, that there will be no more shared responsibility, that the US will see the last 100 years of progress on social issues repealed. I just hope that we can keep up the outrage of the electorate now that the repubs have revealed their true selves….shame on us if we don’t…