Be INFORMED

Friday, November 25, 2011

For Thanksgiving Fox News instructs us: "Let's Give Thanks for the One Percent"

by Lefty Coaster     Wed Nov 23, 2011           Source

Leave it to Fox News to use something like Thanksgiving to push back against the overwhelming tidal shift brought about by the Occupy Wall Street Movement but this preposterous.

WARNING This syrupy ode to the Oligarchs made me want to gag. 

Let's Give Thanks for the One Percent

By Alex Epstein
Published November 23, 2011

In a country mired in recession and unemployment, it may seem hard to find things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. But there are many. Because we live in America, even those of us who are going through hard times have access to abundant food, racks of clothing, secure shelter, heating and air-conditioning, and an amazing array of learning and leisure activities.

This is important to remember, not just to keep our spirits up, but to avoid a tragic mistake societies often make: taking the good for granted. It is all too easy to fixate on our problems without appreciating the good in our lives. Societies that make this mistake are easy prey for scapegoating charlatans--such as those who tell us that our salvation lies in redistributing the wealth of “the 1%.”

In this past year, it has become popular to collectively blame the most financially successful Americans, “the 1%,” for America's economic problems.

I'll skip over some of the Randian BS that follows.

We should not take for granted that we live in a country that fosters and rewards productivity like no other. There is a reason why we are the destination for the “brain drain” from other continents. In no other country are high achievers as free to have a vision, to act on it, to reap the rewards, and to accumulate and reinvest capital--even when they are unpopular, even when “the 99%” disagree or are resentful or envious.

We mustn't be resentful or envious of the one the percerters.

One percerters like former CEO of A.I.G. Maurice Greenberg who is suing the U.S. government for $25 billion to cover the drop of HIS A.I.G. stock during the bailout. The same bailout that cost taxpayers $182 billion, and saved Maurice Greenberg's stock from becoming completely worthless.

And lets not forget to give thanks for the futures speculators who make both the food for Thanksgiving dinner, and travel that brings us together more costly.

Yes! Lets all bow our heads and give thanks for these greedy arrogant ones who have found some way to shake down the rest of us.


Let us prey

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Bill O'Reilly’s Fictional “ War On Christmas “ Rants Getting Early Start

   Bill O'Reilly is on the prowl, seeking out those businesses who tell their employees to say “ Happy Holidays “ instead of “ Merry Christmas “ to their customers.

Then Bill got to his Christmas holiday threat: “Am I an extortionist for telling merchants and companies that if you refuse to say ‘Merry Christmas’ or tell your employees you are not allowed to that I will put you on the air and hurt your business. Am I an extortionist?”

I'd say yes. But Carlson thought not. “That’s giving your personal opinion,” she insisted.

O'Reilly warned his audience, “If any retailer tells their employees you’re not allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas’ that, that’s gonna be on The Factor and that’s gonna cost ‘em, there’s no doubt about it.”

   Mr. Bill, since more viewers are now watching something other than “ The Factor “, will anyone even care about your rants and raves over who says what in their Christmas greeting to customers or to their friends? I think not.

   Typical Republican supporter who always wishes to start some kind of war over nothing.

 

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The “ Not So Super “ Congress…

  … is basically throwing in the towel and calling it quits since none of the members can reach any type of agreement on budget cuts and spending. I’m shocked, aren’t you? Oh, I want my money back.

    Many of us who actually pay attention to our screwed-up, bought and paid for government officials from both of the parties, did not expect to much to come out from the congressional super-zeros in the first place, and we have not been disappointed.

   It has been fun over the last 2 days watching the circus on the Sunday news shows pointing their fingers at the guy across the aisle. Politicians are much like hard-core drunks and drug addicts as they never accept blame for anything, it’s always someone else’s fault. The Republicans share most of the fault with coming up with no bills because of the usual squabbling over tax increases. The Kochpublican Party is not going to allow those wealthy “ job creators “ to pay higher taxes just to help with the deficit.

Sen. John Kerry was on Sunday’s Meet the Press and had this to say:

DAVID GREGORY: In The Wall Street Journal, editorializing, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, wrote this on Friday: "How could Democratic leaders defend deep reductions in the military and cuts in the domestic programs as they are vital investments, when they block reforms that would reduce the growth rate of the major entitlements, which, even under the House GOP plan, would still grow by more than 50 percent over the next decade? Sooner or later, Democrats must confront the reality that their unwillingness to slow entitlement spending will require shrinking everything else the government spends money on." Senator, my reporting tells me that, in fact, Republicans offered Democrats to miens [sic] test Social Security and Medicare as part of this discussion, that would actually hit the rich, and Democrats said, "We don't want to do that."

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Not true. Not true. We accepted. We not only accepted that, David, we put every single sacred cow on the table. They know, they know, that they could have had many things that a lot of us, you know, hate to even talk about publicly, because we're going to get—people are going to say, "What? You guys were thinking of doing all those things?"

       The blogs are adding their 2 cents worth to the continuous smack-down of the super-congress’s failure to fix anything despite not having to put up with filibusters, added amendments, and the like.

The congressional “super committee” stumbled its way toward failure Sunday, with final staff-level discussions focusing mostly on how the panel should publicly admit that lawmakers could not meet their mandate of shaving $1.2 trillion from the federal debt.

Rather than making a final effort at compromise, members of the special deficit-reduction committee spent their final hours casting blame and pointing fingers...

David Waldman:

But one thing about this fiasco that has so far gone mostly unmentioned in the traditional media is that under the statute that created the Super Committee, missing the November 23 deadline doesn't break up the band, nor does it absolve it of its charge. It only removes their "super" powers, that is, their ability to shield their bill from amendments and the filibuster—which, we might note, they were able to magically(1) eliminate when they wanted to.

Among the many faults of the filibuster is that it distorts our ability to hold legislators accountable. If, going into a vote, everyone knows there's little or no chance of getting 60 votes in the upper chamber, the votes cast by Representatives and Senators alike are difficult to read, since they're all cast in a context in which no one really expects the bill to become law. It's an easy thing to vote to pacify certain constituencies at home by supporting a bill you're personally less than thrilled with if you know it isn't going anywhere. Similarly, it's easy to take a "bold" stance athwart history if you know "doing the right thing" won't get you anywhere, anyway.

So it's very interesting to me that even when the Very Serious People of Washington clear a pathway through the Conventional Wisdom for the Congress to take extraordinary measures to remove the menace of the filibuster, it still doesn't work. How strange that the Congress, stripped of the familiar shield of impenetrable process that usually deflects culpability in cases of failure and given the opportunity to take the tough votes openly and accountably, has opted not to produce any bill at all.

  So basically, the super congress is just one more waste of taxpayer dollars by the morons in Washington, D.C. Since we have paid for this fiasco, can we write it off on our 2011 taxes since the product was deformed and non-productive?

Monday, November 21, 2011

The Republican “ Flock Of Fools”

The Republican presidential candidates are so very inept, especially when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, that even the news agencies in France have taken notice of the GOP idiots during their debates.

The World According to the
Republican Presidential Candidates

By Laure Mandeville        Watching America
The adversaries of the current president have countered that Reagan also had simple ideas but won the Cold War. They have pointed out that Obama himself was an amateur and has had to water down his wine on counterterrorism matters.
Translated By Kathleen McClure
14 November 2011

Edited by Rica Asuncion-Reed

France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)
On China, on Iran and on aid to Israel, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain and Rick Perry compete with each other in simplicity and ignorance.
Can an America weakened by the economic crisis manage in a complex world with simple ideas and simplistic views? Listening to the Republican presidential candidates, voters might think so. For several days, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and others have increased their thunderously loud declarations and shortcuts on foreign policy matters, traditionally a Republican strong point. On China, on Iran, on aid to Israel, catchy phrases — often not backed up — have burst forth.
Mitt Romney, the best placed in the race for the nomination of the Grand Old Party threatened to drag the Chinese before the WTO and to interrogate them for being currency manipulators, a growing theme in an America exasperated by the migration of entire sections of its industry to Asia. It’s just too bad if this sets off a trade war, he said. Jon Huntsman, Obama’s ex-ambassador to China and the only candidate to have a sophisticated foreign policy vision, nearly choked, face-to-face with an attitude that “panders” to emotions. He called for muscular but constructive dialogue with Beijing (Obama’s current position). But Huntsman, who is stagnating at the bottom of the polls, remains inaudible.
Like Reagan
Similarly, Romney promised military strikes on Iran if sanctions fail to stop its nuclear program. “[I]f we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon… if you elect me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon,” he boasted. He also promised to increase military aid to Israel, and accused Obama of failing to carry out his obligations to this partner.
The entrepreneur Herman Cain, the second-placed candidate, revealed an embarrassing ignorance of the issues. Recently, he called for countering the Chinese military threat because Beijing is “trying to develop nuclear capability,” apparently ignorant of the fact that China has had atomic military power since 1964! Texan Gov. Rick Perry, who supports Israel and wants strikes against Iran, said he was ready to engage the U.S. Army in Mexico against drug cartels. The use of torture against suspected terrorists, banned by Obama in 2009, has been advocated by Cain, Perry and Michele Bachmann. We are far from 2008 Republican candidate John McCain, a heavyweight in foreign policy.
The adversaries of the current president have countered that Reagan also had simple ideas but won the Cold War. They have pointed out that Obama himself was an amateur and has had to water down his wine [by making concessions] on counterterrorism matters. They insist (with reason) on the failure of his naïve negotiations with Iran, of the precipitous departure of the “boys” from Iraq and of dilly-dallying in Libya, labeling him weak.
But the attack is not so easy. The public has a rather positive assessment of Obama’s national security [policy], which has eliminated bin Laden. Since Iraq, the public has been distrustful of military interventions that lead to stalemates. And by arguing that we need to reconstruct America economically to revive its leadership, Obama hits closer to the mark.

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