wedge issues, and the evil that is the tax-free pulpit

WEDGE ISSUES

Wedge issues are nothing new. BOTH SIDES ARE NOT EQUAL (sorry I shouted) and the #GOP has become especially adept at engaging low-information voters to vote against their own interests, mostly for things that will never become law. Starting with the Southern Strategy to capture rural, Southern Democrats, Republicans have been wanting to keep Jim Crow alive, women subjugated, and African Americans as second class citizens.

We are one nation. When we eliminate the social wedges, we mostly want the same things. There will always be a rabid right wing that flares up or is inflated by Koch-sized money, but we can mostly just get along and work on the day-to-day issues of running a government. The GOP is making it particularly hard these days...

At their 2012 convention, they are proposing a platform that is surely designed to take our country back - to 1850.

-They propose to repeal #PPACA. This would immediately put us on track to trillions more in national debt, unless we make it up in taxes or decimate our military and social investment programs.
-They would deny a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy, no matter whether it would save her life, or she was raped. This is slavery, pure and simple. I do respect their consistency - if they believe a zygote is a baby, then it still is a baby no matter how the pregnancy started and no matter what it's outcome will be - but their hatred is vile.
-They would deny contraception, in-vitro fertilization, and other common practices that don't even terminate a pregnancy. Outlawing abortion doesn't end abortion, it only denies abortion to those who don't have the money, and makes them dangerous to all. With more pregnancies, because women don't know about contraception and can't get it if they do know, we will have more abortions.
-They would voucherize Medicare, causing an immediate increase of appx. $7,000 a year to seniors, and trust me, this is the difference between security and poverty. To throw the health care of Medicare recipients to the corporate market is simply murder.
-GOP will send Social Security to Wall Street. Good luck if you plan to retire in a down period, when your Social Security is upside down.
-They will destroy Welfare as we know it. More single mothers have to work - family values at its best! Clinton folded in the face of strong opposition, he didn't need to do this, and they still impeached him. The same will happen to Barack Obama during his second term, mark my words, and it won't necessarily be about welfare, but it will be about race.
-"We don't need more fire fighters" - Mitt Romney. We don't need more teachers. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, educate your self, 2nd graders. Save your own homes - buy more hoses!

POLITICAL PREACHERS

-"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." —Matthew 7:15

I have been preached at. "There is evil in Washington" "We need to take our country back" "The president hopes to change our country to a communal, European nation"

Every week, from the pulpit, tax-free, preachers are telling their congregations how to vote, how to hate.

"I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?-Barry Goldwater knew the truth, and he lost, in part, because he didn't embrace the fringe elements of his party. There were many things I didn't like about his policies, but he seems like a moderate compared to today's GOP.

Insurrectionists like http://www.speakupmovement.org/church/LearnMore/details/4702 have events like Pulpit Freedom Sunday. They have convinced congregations that they are under assault, that some government entity wants to take away their freedoms and tax the church into submission. A big danger is that these seditionists spread hate, fear, and malaise to their congregations so their people can be controlled. This is so their vote can be controlled, not that their souls can be saved. Their votes can be channeled toward hate and repression. It's the people of these congregations that must stand up to the dangerous moneyed interests that control their church. Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit legal defense group whose founders include James Dobson, the founder of hate group Focus on the Family, collects money by passing the plate in church and funnels it toward policies that subjugate women, blacks, gays, etc.

Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor at Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., who led preachers in the battle to pass California’s Proposition 8, has subjugated our democracy. Out of state, mostly Morman money, was used to puff up hate legislation. They lied to make people believe that P8 would take away their rights, when it was only extending rights to those who have been disenfranchised.

There is some hope. Rev. Greg Boyd gets it http://astore.amazon.com/christusvicto-20/detail/0310267315 In his book Myth of a Christian Nation, he defends the strong right for religious institutions to stand outside the reach of government influence.

The GOP platform wedges sane Americans from fringe Americans. We just need more people to see clearly the importance of keeping our government outside the reach of extremist, seditious Religious Industrial Complex influence.

One Delusion to Top Them All

Of course, Cassidy's ten delusions are shared by half of America, and many of them vote.

America’s Twin Delusions and a Proposed Constitutional Amendment | TPJmagazine:

He's missing the one that unites them as one-issue voters: the delusion that life begins at or before the sperm fertilizes the egg.

There is no evidence from or agreement among scientists that this is so. Life exists just as much in the sperm or the egg, or the cells that the sperm was made from, as it does in the fertilized egg. There is no statement or agreement among religious texts that state anything other than life begins with the Breath of Life.

We are born with rights, and one of the greatest things about our country is that it was formed largely to protect these rights. We recognized that no king or country or incorporation had rights superseding those of the People. Much of the Constitution, and certainly the Bill of Rights, was to specify some of these rights we were born with, and how the Federal Government was built to protect them.

Each of these are exclusive rights. We each have a right to our thoughts, and to express them, but we can exclude expression such as shouting fire in a theater. We have a right to bear a musket in a militia (the British had outlawed that so the Colonists couldn't defend themselves), but luckily there are some modern weapons that are limited to law enforcement and military. Each of us is born with the right to our private medical decisions with our physician, including the right, as settled law with Roe v. Wade, to choose to carry a pregnancy to term or not.

This doesn't mean that we can't regulate it reasonably. I, too, think that unless it is absolutely necessary to save a woman's life that there is a stage late in a pregnancy where it is too late to terminate, for example, and we have to make sure every patient is making an informed decisions. To do less, especially with the case of a pregnant woman, is to make her a slave, a soul-less incubator, subjugated to the will of a government.

This subjugation, if carried to an extreme like outlawing abortion in any case, is an example of the Biggest of Big Government. The Tea Party types who rail against Big Government need look no further that how their government regulates what people do in their bedrooms and with their physicians as the first example of what we really need to do with government and its increasing reach into our rights.

Rape Victims' Bill of Rights - Constitutional Amendment

1. If a rape results in pregnancy, no Local, State, or Federal government will restrict the woman's right to a safe and affordable abortion.

2. If a rape results in the birth of a baby, the Rapist and his family will relinquish all visitation rights in perpetuity.

3. If a rape results in the birth of a baby, the Rapist will pay child support in the amount of $6,945/year, adjusted for inflation, until the child turns 18.

4. No state law shall undermine federal minimum standards of punishment for rape.

5. Rape is defined as a sexualized attack on any person by one or more others. Gender of the rapist or victim is irrelevant.

Rape is a crime of sexual domination. I see this in dogs all the time. We are not dogs! Humans live our lives a step above our instincts.

No female is a slave, required to incubate a fetus, give birth to, and nurture a child if she did not consent to its conception. Our nation was founded on one principle: we are born with rights, and the nation exists to ensure those rights. One of the rights is the Right to Bear Children (and not in a militia with a musket). To deny the choice to bear the child or not is subjugation, and in the United States of America, we are all equal.

No person in power is a master, decreeing what contraception can or can not be used, or whether a woman is required to carry a child to term. This is not to say that we can not agree, through our representative government, on reasonable regulation of procedures. All of our rights, including and especially ones involving weapons, are and can be regulated.

It's time to go enforce a Constitutional government and enforce the rights of women.

Love Boss, but Kelsey Grammer, you are not entitled to an Emmy

Kelsey Grammer: I was snubbed for an Emmy because I'm a Republican

Oh, come on.

Boss is one of the best shows on TV. Fearless in its storytelling, takes no political prisoners, draining each actor of the truth, in every scene. The details are as astounding as the scenery-chewing.

Grammer's acting is not a revelation. You could always see this in him - the stone professionalism, the ability to inhabit a character, the tools to show an ego without (reportedly) being consumed by one. The combination of confidence and resignation he showed in his first appearance as Frasier Crane, wooing Diane in Cheers, embodied every entitled over-educated guy-who-had-more-money-than-you who was stealing your girlfriend.

Grammer's Republicanism is no surprise. He has drifted toward patrician roles, even laughably military (was the movie Periscope Down?), and he has made sure we knew that he was one of the few conservatives in Hollywood. This is not technically true - the entertainment business is one of the most divided in the world between haves and have-nots. Many of the wealthy and powerful in this world will pay lip service to socially liberal causes while paying actual money to the Republican party - they'd like to hang on to some of their largess, and they hang around a potent world of Big Money.

Kelsey, drop the drug abuse, drive like you're one of us instead of one of them, respect your spouse and love yourself enough to be a willing participant in a marriage, hold on to whatever political views you want as long as they're based in fact, and embrace the work you are able to do and the accolades you have already received.

NPR, why do you interview idiots in your First and Main Series?

Wis. Business Owner Relates To Romney's Resume : NPR:

NPR, why do you interview idiots in your First and Main series?

This woman, running a restaurant with 46 employees, can't possibly identify with Mitt Romney if she has the slightest bit of knowledge about his resume. He wouldn't have patronized a restaurant like yours, let alone known how to run or turn a profit from it. If you would have been 10 times bigger and part of a chain of restaurants, you might have been on his radar - Bain Capital could have bought the chain, fired you and many of your employees, cut full time employees to part time, shown an improved quarterly profit, and sold their interest in the company at a profit - THIS IS HIS BUSINESS EXPERIENCE!

Come to think of it, how do you run your business? I'd assume you pay most of your employees well below minimum wage, split their tips, expect them to be taxed as if they were working for a full wage full-time, offer them no benefits...

You think Mitt Romney, who never had to run a business or work for a boss in his life, understands you better than Barack Obama, who started with nothing, worked his way through some of the best schools, worked for the common good as a Community Organizer, worked as a lawyer and a law professor in the private sector, etc?

Obama doesn't understand business? He has lowered your taxes! If Mitt Romney is elected, your taxes will go up by at least $6,000 (unless you earn more than $250,000 from your restaurant, in which case you are just a lying idiot).

Don't know what #PPACA will do for you? READ!!! http://www.healthcare.gov/law/index.html http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/healthreform/ and hundreds of other legitimate references. By 2014, all of your employees might have full medical coverage, as opposed to the un-covered employees (I assume) you have now, at no extra expense to you!

Don't feel a "connection" to Barack Obama that you did to Bill Clinton? Sucks to be you, trying to survive with a Black Man in the White House.

Religion in government? Birth Control has a place in government only if religion has taken over government. Fortunately, it's only taken over voters...in a good political environment, people will let their beliefs inform their vote, or their leadership if they are in government, but instead, we've let the most extreme of religious influences infiltrate many layers of government, and we are all suffering for this. Do you actually want more unwanted babies, venereal disease, and abortion? If not, you should be fighting for equal access to birth control for all women, not fighting to demonize birth control and those who use it.

And yes, your pitiful, limited world view comes down to one issue, and one issue alone to determine your vote: abortion. Why do you  want the biggest of Big Governments? Why do you want a government so big it can regulate the most personal and private medical decision you, as a woman can make? What is missing in you that you want to control the lives of other women? How many unwanted children have you adopted, sick children have you healed, or hungry children have you fed?

'via Blog this'

The truth is, you don't need a gun.

I grew up in a safe little neighborhood in a safe little Midwestern town.

When I was young, I shot a few small-caliber bullets at a few innocent woodland creatures, and thankfully they lived to see another day or a more worthy predator.

My immediate family didn't, but neighbors and friends hunted (and fished - Lake Michigan perch was much more tasty than pickup-truck venison). They had guns, and I had no particular fear or curiosity about them. When I was around 7 new neighbors moved in, the woman of the house was pregnant and gave birth to twins.

One of the twins was a blonde kid, the other was a slightly developmentally delayed brown haired kid. The blonde was given my name, with the parents always saying "you're such a good kid, and I hope our son turns out like you."

I grew and the kids grew, of course separated by years but united as neighbors. As I went through high school, and then went off to college, the neighbors bought a newer, nicer home at the outskirts of town in a new development.

Their dad had a nice well-locked gun cabinet. He took his sons out hunting and taught them age-appropriate gun rules. He loved them.

I got a call one day at college that the boys had somehow gotten in the cabinet and were playing with a rifle. They loaded it, and the blonde twin's life was ended with one errant pull of a trigger. The family is, by all reports, to this day decades later, devastated.

The only notable fact is they this family had a gun. Had the gun not been there, this child would have probably lived to see another day.

This family had no need to have a gun. They wanted a gun, for hunting, which was not necessary or efficient for putting food on their table, possibly for protection, even in the unlikely event of some imagined home invasion in this relatively safe community. I don't see any likelihood that this family would take one of their muskets and join a militia to take down a tyrant.

The facts in this story are just that, facts. The truth? I get from this incident that their family, and mine, were not safer with the addition of a gun.

#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.

Mr. President, I am among the lucky few.

Dear Mr. President,

I am in the lucky (and add many more luckies) position to make a home purchase today, in Southern California no less. I have been renting since 1997, hoping to buy, but watching prices bubble up while the sanity of loan offerings turn cold and my income has shrunk to 60% of what it was the last time I owned.

There are many forces at work here, and many forces that you have Executive Power to address directly, and vast influence to address otherwise.  One example is your proposed changes to HARP, which are a start but won't address the fundamental problems. The other is the failed Bowles Simpson plan and the pre-failed Supercommittee; they presume to cut our way out of a hole, which only makes a bigger hole, and they need to be told to address the debt problem by only addressing those elements in our government that caused the debt such as taxation changes and wars, not addressing it by cutting social insurance programs we already paid for or with any other cuts that only hurt those who did not cause the economic meltdown.

The fundamental reason why many of these homeowners are underwater, behind in payments, or foreclosed, is simple, and clear. They were sold mortgages, which were then resold and collateralized, and these securities tanked with small changes and cycles in the global economy taking the rest of the economy with them...our worshipped billionaires faltered, demanded bailouts from the government, fired their employees, and mortgage debt couldn't get paid.

In other words, we deregulated our way to this.

Banks shouldn't be allowed to be brokers, they shouldn't be allowed to sell short to make a profit from their own failures, they shouldn't be allowed to collaterralize debts without potential for devastating loss, they shouldn't be able to socialize the loss while we privatize the gain.

I wish everyone the opportunity to buy a house, if they want, like I can right now. I'm afraid if we let the bankers and brokers buy our elections, legislators, and legislation as they do now, my children and theirs won't have a chance for a home, a good job, and a secure future. I can see that my chances for these have required more work - I work three jobs, and my dad only worked two - than my parents, and I hope that we can move forward to a better system that allows opportunity for all, not just the few.

Debt, Defaults, and Defiance - It couldn't be simpler.

The corporate media continues to paint a picture of overspending Walmart housewives throwing our global economy into chaos. Who Do "Wal-Mart Moms" Blame for the Down Economy?

People want to buy houses. Banks lend them money. Banks sell the mortgage. Mortgages are combined into a security that is traded on the global market. The global market slips a little, jobs are lost and people can't afford the mortgage after adjustment, but the banks make money on the losses, after selling short! The mortgage owner forecloses and gets to sell again!

Do we blame the homeowner for wanting a house, taking a mortgage, or losing their job because a few Banksters, Brokers, and Billionaires bet the farm? Of course not.

Do we blame people for taking to the streets because for 30 years we have wasted the wealth of the middle class on an increasingly smaller and wealthier few? Of course not! It's not Life Liberty and Happiness for a few Oligarchs, it's Justice for All. It looks like the Occupy movement has started to give a voice where one was needed, but it's just a start.

We must first stop blaming the poor, the immigrant, LGBT, abortion, teachers nurses & firemen, liberals, those born with brown skin, the elderly, the sick, the homeless, Muslims...those not born White, Christian, and Wealthy. In fact, we must stop blaming. We have to learn from the past, look deeply at where we are today, and design our fix for tomorrow.

There is a Supercommittee in Washington preparing a fix for our global economic meltdown, and they are first and foremost planning do do this by decreasing the debt we owe by punishing those Americans least able to afford it, and those who didn't cause it. Each and every member of this Supercommittee is part of the 1%, with their elections, jobs, and daily lives bought and paid for by wealthy and powerful interests, and these legislators should be the last people to have extra power and influence over this critical Super-Issue.

We are in a Depression. With little hope for 99% of us every having hope for prosperity, health, and a secure retirement because we as a nation redistribute these to a few already-wealthy individuals, there is no other word for it.

Debt did not cause this. The poor, sick, elderly, etc. did not cause this. A few miscreants playing the rest of us like dominoes did. They deregulated banks and investing, they ran wars for profit like Bernie Madoff ran retirement accounts. They bribed seniors with Medicare Pt D, unfunded and unneeded. And now the rest, and most, and best of us will be paying for it for the rest of our lives.

Walmart mom - you may have spent too much, but they convinced you to. They run bright shiny Chinese-made objects and expect you to buy more, they run bright Kardashian shows on TV and expect you to watch more and want more, they pay for issues to be hoisted up like scarecrows during elections, issues that will never  come up for a vote, in order to get you to vote against your self interests.

Instead of wondering which of the GOP candidates in their Reality TV Debate series will be the next president, use your new voice. In body or spirit, don't join the self haters that think they caused the global economic meltdown - join the movement that has given voice to the 99%.

Pandit Says He’d Be Happy to Talk With Wall Street Protesters - Businessweek

Pandit, Dimon, Paulson, etc. are obviously in self-denial, or choosing some bizarre form of willful ignorance.

Pandit Says He’d Be Happy to Talk With Wall Street Protesters - Businessweek:

They, and the #TeaParty, #GOP, corporate media, etc. can't conceive of an organizational structure other than one that is top-down, hierarchical, and paternal. It's no surprise that their money - #Koch and other corporate supplied, which is a tax on all of us as we pay for it in our goods and services - pays for a message, which is spiced with enough religion to keep their dominionist minority alert, disseminated through their propaganda arms of #FOX, #CNN, #WSJ, and used to elect a herd of incompetent #GOP legislators to either pass law (written by the K-Street lobbyists) or block any legislation actually beneficial to most of us. And of course they have marching orders to block any legislation that might actually make us more prosperous, free, or secure, because that would serve to re-elect Barack Obama.

Their unwarranted and illogical hatred for our current President gets expressed as nonsensical non-fact, but the dog whistles come across clear: there is a black man in the white house. Obama, of course, operates in the White House as a pragmatic centrist, wanting compromise, understanding legislative and constitutional issues deeply, but gets portrayed as "other," socialist, un-American, etc. This constant portrayal, in nearly all media and through direct means with email, blogs, social networks, etc., serves to swell the minority that is always pulsating on the underside to numbers that can sway elections (and to discourage the real majority in the center not to vote, for a variety of reasons).

Obama, like all other politicians, must serve Wall Street. They produce no product, employ few, and redistribute wealth from the poor and middle class to the already wealthy few, but they fund elections. The fact that Wall Street money pays for Federal,

State, and Local elections should be screaming at us to remove money from elections, but we are either deaf to that, thinking that we, too, someday, will be one of those Masters of the Universe, or cowed by the fact that we have chosen this situation, to the point where a bought and paid for Supreme Court is allowed to operate as a Board of Directors for a few billionaires, instead of an august body of American Justice.

But, as Wall Street money buys elections, legislators, Governors, writes law, and proselytizes the will of the Billionaires to the rest of us, we suffer from economic Stockholm Syndrome, held hostage by people, like Pandit, who just don't get it. What's the Matter With Kansas, indeed, but What's the Matter with America?

The Occupy movement has a message that is clear as a (Liberty) bell. It rings to alert us to the few people in the world who control the fate of the many.

The frustration of the Occupy movement is from the same storm as the original tea partiers, but from the start they of the tea bags were incited by a broadcaster and Wall Street trader exhorting against a suggested bailout of actual people, which he implied should be met with opposition by...these same people...and substituted with a bailout of a few Billionaire Bankers. The same amount of Federal dollars spent to bailout homeowners, who largely were in trouble through forces beyond their immediate control, instead of a few banksters, could have stabilized the global economic system just as well as the subsequent bank bailout and actually saved a few jobs, families, and lives. If the tea partiers could free themselves from the yoke of #Koch funds and false #FOX news, they might see that their interests are served better by the Occupy movement.

If Pandit or any of these clueless oligarchs would listen to the voice of the Occupy movement, they would be confused and disoriented. The Billionaires wouldn't see the money in the movement. They couldn't see the true profit to be obtained by restoring some fairness to our economic system. They couldn't see that the message of the Occupy movement is the true Voice of America.

Lacey Act Myths & Gibson Guitar

Lacey Act Myths:

Trees, like other plants, and animals, can be endangered species.

Guitar makers did not use so much of these precious resources that these trees are now scarce and under threat of extinction, but other forces have. Furniture makers and the construction industry, along with an ever-expanding human population, have cut down trees at an alarming rate. Many of these trees have been cut simply for charcoal, or for more room for global agri-business billionaires to extract what profit they can from a dying land.

Yet here we are, with Gibson Guitar being raided twice for not complying with this century-old law. Competing manufacturers Martin, Fender, and Taylor have had no trouble with the federal government. Their owners say that while the paperwork is tedious, it is not incredibly expensive, and it's certainly not impossible, as Gibson seems to think.

Gibson, the ultra right wing Murdoch mouthpiece Wall Street Journal and FOX News, etc. have all pointed a finger and a toe toward Obama, the great and powerful offender against freedom who puts trees before jobs. Gibson is hosting a rally for support, in their right-to-work state of Tennessee, sponsored by, among others, the Tea Party Express which is wholly funded by Koch Industries as part of their attempt to stage a corporate coup d'état of the United States of America.

Writer Zach Plillips- "...musicians transporting said instruments across state lines will be arrested and hauled off to prison in droves; that retailers will be responsible for documenting the genus and species of wood for every guitar they stock. Folks, this just ain't gonna happen."

Yes, this just ain't gonna happen, yet willfully ignorant thousands of people have adopted this as part of their quest to make Barack Obama a one term President.

I'm not saying we should stand against Gibson - I own and love a few of their great instruments. But we have to wonder how far a once-great company has fallen that they fail to comply with paperwork vital to their organization and use this to misdirect people to new heights of division and rancor.