#KXL: A Pipeline to Nowhere

-Tar sands oil is the dirtiest of a dirty industry. Extracting oil from the earth in this fashion is an environmental catastrophe for all of us.
-A foreign country taking our land by Eminent Domain to enrich a few billionaires is beyond contempt.
-If TransCanada could indemnify themselves and us from inevitable leaks, they would - but they haven't.
-TransCanada couldn't possibly indemnify themselves from the destruction a good sized earthquake on the New Madrid fault would cause to this project.
-KXL is now the poster child for a project that would privatize profits and socialize losses.
-This oil is destined for existing US refineries that will sell their product overseas. We are currently exporting more refined oil products than we import (take that, Drill Baby Drill idiots) and flooding the global will, guess what, increase domestic gasoline cost.
-Not 200,000 permanent jobs! Construction will involve a few thousand temporary construction jobs, and a few hundred permanent operational jobs. Are these worth it for a dirty business that will only enrich a few already wealthy people?

Say no the this pipe.

Ron Paul in 1998 John Birch Society Documentary on the UN Plot to take o...

Remember, Birch = Koch.

Nearly all of the predictions in this video, the horrible things the UN will impose on us, have instead been the goal, and in many cases the accomplishment, of the GOP, TeaParty, corporate-controlled media, and the billionaires that back these.

Central church with no exceptions allowed? We are now a Christian nation.

Property rights? We now can have our property taken away as long as it is for the benefit of billionaires.

Controlled elections? We've already had two completely gamed presidential elections.

Ron Paul is still an extremist, anti-American, racist, xenophobic side show.

This video shows the true nature of so much of the fringe that has overtaken too much of American political thought. Unlike them, I'm not afraid of being taken over from without, but I think it is all too clear that we are being taken over from within.

Keystone XL ≠ Payroll Tax Cut

Time and time again, our Worst Congress in History has proven its inability to govern.

One of the worst examples is the current bill to push through the extension of our current payroll tax cut only if the Keystone XL project is funded. These things have NOTHING to do with each other. If either of these is to be passed, I suggest that the leadership of the house be forced to actually read the bill, understand it, separate it into reasonable issues, and vote on each individually.

The payroll tax cut may or may not be a great thing mid- to long-term, as it may have an effect on the stability of social insurance programs upon which many of us depend It certainly is a tax cut, and one political party worships these over God and Country. It is a break for middle class workers during a time when jobs, families, and lives have been broken by legislation and policy dating back to January 20, 1980. It is a stimulus that more than pays for itself in today's rocky economic climate.

The Keystone XL project is a gift to a few billionaires which creates a few temporary jobs, encourages the rape on Canadian land, endangers the life and health of all along the length of the proposed pipeline, and will result in Canadian petrochemicals being sent to South American users. Magic benefits to America from this do not, and will not exist.

Please, stop any effort to pass this plutocratic pipeline, do what you can to extend this vital tax relief, and at any cost do not let them be tied together in a devil's bargain. Nobody benefits from deals like this - we all lose.

Real Americans redistribute: The payroll tax debate’s dirty secret - The Washington Post

Real Americans redistribute: The payroll tax debate’s dirty secret - The Washington Post:

Matt, you're forgetting the true redistribution that happens. We work for 40 years, paying taxes with few deductions. Those taxes go to help the wealthiest among us use the same roads that we do, be protected by the same army that we do, and collect the same SS that we do. We pay into social insurance programs at the top rate, and the wealthiest among us pay a tiny fraction of their incomes. The wealthiest among us pay much of their taxes as Capital Gains, forcing us who do the work to pay a much higher portion of our pay for the services that we all share.

We who work and consume pay a premium on the goods and services we buy. This premium gets spent financing elections, bribing politicians, and writing legislation, of which at least 50% is is direct opposition to the needs of most of us. This premium goes for money to bail out financial institutions who use it not to provide a better service but to bonus their C-Levels, board members, and institutional shareholders. This premium goes to finance hate. We have little or no chance to choose a proper recipient of our consumer $$ - when both Home Depot and Lowes are essentially evil and have driven out local stores, we have no option to give our $$ to a better organization.

The real redistribution is that which is UP from the combined wealth of the Middle Class to the pockets of the few already wealthy.

It's funny to read ongoing comments on NDAA news stories.

Right wingers blame it on Obama (and inevitably say "Ron Paul 2012"...), and left wingers blame it on back room laws written with John McCain.

The simple truth is that Congress does have the right and duty to pass laws to protect us, and they are attempting to do that in light of battles that our Founding Fathers couldn't have imagined. They have though, with the (un) Patriot Act and other law, stepped far over the line of law and into unConstitutional abridgments of freedom.

We have decades - in fact centuries - of experience fighting terrorists on our soil. Shay's Rebellion, Anarchists, (imagined) Commies, cross burning Klansmen, Weatherman bombings, armed hijackers in the '70s, abortion clinic bombers, etc. Existing law has kept the United States as an unlikely place to be the victim of a terrorist attack.

Every chip from our constitutional protections of rights to justice, equal treatment, etc., takes us further from the free nation we aspire to be.

Please, President Obama, Senators and Congressional Representatives, do not let the NDAA pass with provisions to declare our land as a battleground and our people as enemy combatants.

Prohibit the use of corporate funds ... for political purposes

The Other 98%: "It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1910."

'via Blog this'

"Let us not be afraid to help each other—let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and Senators and Congressmen and Government officials but the voters of this country."

Read more at the American Presidency Project:Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address at Marietta, Ohio.http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15672#ixzz1e4RqxqCp

A good day to be a Democrat?

(I'm not a Dem, but I usually vote with them)

Were Democrats having  bad day on election day in November 2010? Did they have an array of hopeless candidates, each more abusive or nuttier than the rest? Did they have unelectable candidates that were still the main attraction in the 24/7 news cycle? Were they proposing legislation in many states to disenfranchise voters? Were they proposing legislation to make women 2nd class citizens?

No.

Democrats, perhaps from some funky mix of lethargy and overconfidence, just plain did not go out and vote. For this, we got shocked toward banana republic political status, retreating on the economy when we should have been charging forward, and let union workers, teachers, firefighters, homeowners, etc., be blamed for what Wall Street did to the Global economy.

The lesson, today, whether we vote to repeal union-busting in OH or vote to declare zygotes persons, is that if we don't vote, things will change. Not for the better.

How Bank Transfer Day Will Help The Banks It’s Trying To Hurt | The New Republic

Simon Van Zuylen-Wood: How Bank Transfer Day Will Help The Banks It’s Trying To Hurt | The New Republic:

Typical of propagandists, Zuylen-Wood chooses not to mention the single-most important aspect of a story, in hopes that we will take his fractured journalism as fact.

Banks make their profit from each depositor by reinvesting their money at a profit. Some accounts are more profitable than others, but each enlarges the pool - as the saying goes "it takes money to make money" and we give them our money so they can make money with it. Traditionally, banks have not charged fees or given interest on small accounts, but the trend is obvious: to charge fees and only give interest on huge accounts.

If a bank can not turn a profit on the money I give them, they don't deserve to be in business.

Name and Shame? Obama May Go Public with Lawmakers' Funding Requests - Reid Wilson - NationalJournal.com

Name and Shame? Obama May Go Public with Lawmakers' Funding Requests - Reid Wilson - NationalJournal.com:

Go Big, President Obama.

You have much Executive Power that you have not used. We see that you came from the Senate to the White House with a sincere desire to unite and to use compromise as a way to involve all sides in solutions to our big problems. We also see that you have run into a brick wall from a united Republican front, whose only desire is to drive you out of office.

The Republican establishment is still seething from, of all things, Watergate, and they feel that Executive Power should be pumped up so presidents can operate with impunity in getting elected at any cost to our Democracy. At least use powers at-hand to right some of the abuses that have been allowed to happen in our government. At this point, every election, legislator and legislation are bought and paid for by powerful and wealthy interests - the People, and voters have been robbed of their voice.

You have the support of over half of the American People, and Congress has the support of less than 10% of us. Reflect the will of the People.