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There is now a gentleman who is a LTC. in the Army who teaches at Wet Point, USMA giving interviews on his opinion that Veterans receiving Disability Benefits from their Military service are lacking in "self worth" due to their Disability Income. He is in pictures with GW Bush on a Golf course so he may be a Republican. It has become clear that with the attack on SSDI to reduce paments by 20% this year,2015, with further cuts to Social Security to balance the budget that the Disabled both Vetrans and Civilians who did pay for their SSDI are under attack. This individual is using his USMA teaching position to advocate Political agends. He is on Active Duty so his actions are Illegal while he is in Uniform which he is. When one Political Party goes after the Disabled Americans and Disabled Veterans to pay for the War of Choice in Iraq, which has been reported to have cost over $2 Trillion in N0-Bid Contracts so far, it is very un-Patriotic. Disabled Veterans are being made every minute in War yet they will face reduced support from the Nation they Volunteered to defend. The ones who have been disabled in the past Wars of America will lose also if this reduction happens. Search for what happened to the "Bonus Marchers" from WWI in Washington, D.C. in 1933 by West Point Graduates who attacked them. Tank you for the Forum.
Lloyd Lutterman re #10 -- The capitalists clearly see the lies that they are feeding us, since they are the ones feeding the lies to us.
rocklinjohn re #1 -- As I have said before on this blog, we need global warming to educate people on what science is. "Settled science" is an oxymoron. Science deals only with probabilities. Commentators and misinformed people like you can not deal with probabilities.
Bob Scheefer, of Face the Nation, right after the election, said that the Republicans will now have to actually govern. They won't be able to just keep taking cheap potshots at Obama and the Democrats.
I don't think that's true. As long as Obama is president they can continue to plausibly absolve themselves of any responsibility, in this short concentration span, bumper sticker driven society. They can continue to pass crazy, way out bills that they know the President will veto and then accuse the President of obstruction like they did the Senate when it would kill their way out ideas before..
If the Presidency goes to the Republicans in 2016 you can bet you'll see some infrastructure bills and many other of the President's and Democrats' ideas, that the Republicans wouldn't allow a vote on in the House or that they filibustered in the Senate for six years, being introduced, passed by the Republican House and Senate and signed by the Republican President. Their objection for six years wasn't that those were bad ideas or bad bills but only that they couldn't take credit for them.
They were completely willing to sacrifice the well being of the country for their own political gain. Isn't that right, Newtie? Isn't that what Caucus Room was all about? "That's what an opposition does" he said on Thom's show in justification of it. Not a "loyal opposition", i.e., an opposition that is not in the governing majority but has the basic decency nevertheless keep a loyalty to their country - to the well being of the nation and the people.
Instead they are without any loyalty to America or the American people. As Lenin instructed communist revolutionaries, who also had no loyalty to the nation as currently constucted, that a communist revolutionary does not participate in bourgeuois democratic process unless to "infiltrate" it, as it were, and to subvert and to sabotage the society and the system from within. I guess that's what they mean by "Taliban insurgency".
That is combined with "imiseration theory", that is a common, reprehensible practice of both Left and Right, to "make the economy scream", that is, to make the people so unhappy, miserable and in pain that they would overthrow whatever system or government they have in place. The U.S. practiced that with sanctions on Iraq between the two Gulf Wars ostentsibly hoping that the Iraqui people would overthrow Saddam Hussein - but probably really hoping that, like with the Germans and the Versailles Treaty, that they would provoke them to strike back militarily and the U.S. would have an exuse to invade, conquer and take back "our" oil fields that had been nationalized by the Iraquis since 1973 as the first act initiating the general nationalization of oil production by Arab countries throughout the Arab world - and with Cuba since 1962, of course with Chile in 1973, and so on.
Yes, any attempts to cut Social Security in any form will backfire. Hopefully, however, it needs not just to backfire on Republicans but Democrats as well who are equally responsible for our current social, economic, and foreign policy quagmire we're in. The American People are more than ready to start over. The system is broken. We are beyond "reform" by either party.
Rick, what is conspicuously missing in your argument is any mention of tranquilizers. Don't you think tranquilizing someone would be better than killing him?! With a dart gun injecting a tranquilizer, you wouldn't even have to touch the suspect until after the drug has taken effect. And this could be safer than tasers, especially for someone in Mr. Garner's condition. - AIW
Reply to #15: Mark: Indeed, Catholic women might have something to say about that. But when it comes to issues critical to women's wellbeing, such as birth control and abortion, this pope is no better than any other damn pope. And many Catholic women continue breaking their patriarchal little rules each day, using birth control on the sly, having abortions on the sly. What's in it for them, adhering to that religion, is beyond me. But I'm sure some Catholic women would have plenty to say about that too. Whatever they might say, my only answer to that would be simply: To each her own. - AIW
Reply to #28: PFNELKAK, what an excellent argument for matriarchy! Men are too violent and unfit to rule. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Probably no one out there really cares what this old woman has heard, has read, and remembers from more than 40 years ago. But I'm stubborn, and I'm going to share a bit of it with you, anyway.
When I was taking adult classes at a local college in the early 1970s, one of my classes was on weather and probable changes for the next 50 years. Pollution was the primary problem at that time in L.A. We had just begun to alter the horrible inversion layer that plagued L.A. after the Red Cars were taken out and there was at least one car for every family, and predictions that families with two or more 16+ age drivers would be at least 3 cars by the end of the decade. With more wives and teens driving, I could see that by the mid-70s the middle class had already surpassed this prediction. We would need more than just higher prices for special additives during the months when the inversion layer was prevalent. We would need ride-sharing and better mass transportation.
The science books showed that pollution, whether from the clouds dropping acid rain or increased cars on the freeways, pollution could stall the jet stream which would create much hotter Summers and much colder Winters all across North America, by the end of the 20th Century. The West Coast of California could expect more heat, more humidity, more forest fires, less rain and snow fall converted to our water supplies; droughts, colder Winters, and perhaps even necessary migration of farmers and crops towards the Midwest. Mind you, this was in 1971 and 1972...
I didn't notice a huge change in L.A. County until 1987 - when the thunderstorms almost entirely went away. I can remember perhaps 7 good thunderstorms since then (more in the higher altitudes, but practically NONE close around the L.A. Basin). We on rare occasions have drenching rains, but if we see one or 2 flashes of lightning, we're doing well. Now our Summers are shorter with much more humidity when it gets truly hot; few dry, high 80 degree days. And our Winters are much colder on average, and sometimes it's near-freezing at night. That was just after the time the D.O.J. coined the word chemtrails, but none of us heard that word until the early part of the first decade of the 21st Century.
You'd think that if our government and the chemical companies actually could control weather, and if they'd been experimenting with it since the 1970s, they'd have mastered it by now. California's fruit, vegetable and breadbasket of grains would be the most important and protected areas... After all, we've worked the hardest, paid much higher taxes, and should be as protected as the ranchers and the large farmers of the Mid-West.
But that's not true. We're far more vulnerable now than ever, inspite of all the ways we've tried to clean up our air and our streams. Mom & Pop farms have been bought up and consolidated into corporate entities. Instead of rotating crops to keep the fertile land natural and healthy, Monsanto, Dow, Beir, and others whose names are involved in petroleum-based fertilizers, have romanced the corporations into using the "new and improved" methods of farming on a large scale. Hence, we have Frankenfish, Franken-fruits & veggies, Franken-eggs, cheese, milk and Franken-poultry that upsets our digestive systems, requiring us to take more pharamaceuticlas to ward off the affects of far less nuitricious and tasty food, chemtrails that cut the sunlight to our solar power endeavors, and the normal Jetstream has been corrupted, not to mention foul-smelling air that affects our lungs and sinuses, and pollutes the ocean, the forests and all the wildlife when the fall-out from the dreaded chemtrails takes away the sun, stars, and falls to the ground. Not only are we being assaulted, there is not a NATO nation that doesn't now have chemtrails.
What is the point to saying these chemtrails are blocking the dangerous UVA and UVB rays to prevent more cases of skin cancer, when (if that was every a true ambition) we're living longer but suffering far more before we finally die, from new cancers, and old-folks diseases affecting younger people, with new maladies being cited practically every month?!
Climate change is very real to those of us who are old enough to remember how food used to taste and nurture our bodies, and we miss those pristine blue skies from horizon-to-horizon we used to enjoy, between those natural fluffy clouds and beautiful thunderheads from nearly 4 decades ago. I'd wager a guess that 90% of all the clouds, now, are manufactured by the chemtrails, and the ones that still can occasionaly form naturally are corrupted by chemtrail planes flying high above them. I've seen a few of those ventures, myself... right from my deck.
But too many younger people never look up, and when they do, they have no memories of the natural skies. They have no memories of how wonderful natural food used to taste.
But the two things that gall me the most are knowing that the religious want to leave all these problems in the hands of God, and the ones elected who are still old enough to remember how the skies and foods were then - are in bed with their Masters who fund their campaigns - the chemical and pharmaceutical companies whose greed leaves no room to care about people and animals because they already have vaccines to save themselves and those they love, knowledge of other planets and far superior modes of travel that their families and the controlling elite will use to escape this beautiful world when they've sufficiently destroyed it, leaving the rest of us to suffer and die while they populate some other earth-like world - and immediately begin to destroy those new ones, too! My lingering question is, which planet has Mr. Kissinger chosen for his Kingship? (Y'all may need to think for a spell on that one, before it makes sense...)
Rant about the causes of global warming as you will, the
weather will be more violent and the seas will rise.
Rather lets focus the discussion on disaster scenarios:
--what are the logistics of moving coastal cities inland?
--is underground housing the answer to heat and high winds?
--what would it take to create floating cities?
--can NASA aeroponic gardening methods be scaled?
--how to organize communities to work with the military?
Pleading for international cooperation on CO2 treaties
has its place right beside standing in line for a lottery ticket.
ct
I will comment on the free college segment of this broadcast.
I believe Thom was on the verge of making a great point when Shelby Emmet was talking about the burden that she and many other tax payers have and to make college free would only increase taxes for everyone else. Thom started to say "well when corporations are making billions of dollars and paying nothing in taxes..." Since Tom was pressed for time I will piggyback on this comment.
In California, someone making $50,000 per year filing under the status single pays 27% in taxes after combining the state and federal tax rate. Pepco Holdings paid a -33% tax rate over five years between 08-2012. They made over 1.7 billion in profits, paid no federal taxes, and received over 575 million dollars in tax rebates.
The point I'm making here is that we, as a nation, could afford to have our government pay for our community colleges and other government programs with ease if the government actually required big corporations to pay their share. Even if we leave the tax rate at 35% for corporations, we could still afford to pay for college and all the government programs that we have today.
It's ALL a C O W S P I R A C Y !!!
Thank you Marc! Great article. No one can claim that viable -- even superior! -- alternatives don't exist.
Needs to backfire....oh, around 2016 elections. It's bad enough they don't fix things needing fixing, but all the saps, that follow them.
Actually I think it's more to the tune of topping $1 Trillion/year. What we call a "War on Terror" is actually a "War for Oil." One must remember, however, that almost all this taxpayer money is going to fund control over oil supplies. We are actually being taxed to death; paying for the demise of the human species. If we add our military spending to our health care costs and the damage done by super storms and conditions caused by climate change we can actually see the REAL cost of a gallon of gas.
One thing that would resolve the problem, reverse climate change, create millions of jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil is Hemp. It has been estimated that by growing Industrial Hemp on only 6% of our continental soil we could produce almost three times our nation's gasoline needs. The surplus could be used to generate electricity, produce plastic, paper, cloth, medicine, food, building materials, or exported. As a fringe benefit, the "War on Terror" would be over almost immediately. You heard it right--REVERSE CLIMATE CHANGE! When a plant grows it produces O2 and removes CO2 from the air. Even solar energy can't do that. Time to get started!
We in the US use about 20 million barrels of oil a day. One barrel of oil is about 42 gallons. That in turn produces 19 gallons of fuel. Therefore 20 million barrels produces 380 million gallons of gasoline per day.
6% of American land can produce 750 trillion gallons of gas per year. That is just over 2 trillion gallons of gasoline per day. Far more than enough to meet the 380 million gallon habit we have. The rest can be burned to produce electricity, used to make plastics, paper and consumer goods, or export.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/09/1014706/-Industrial-Hemp-can-save-America#
http://thehempsolution.blogspot.com/
People have no clue how the Earth is constructed or why oil, coal etc is where it is...and was never meant to be dug up until a particular dumbass species came along that destroys all it encounters! It was Earth's coolant much like the combustion engine needs a coolant so as not to burn itself up. FRaud after fraud after fraud and humans, especially the capitalist cannot see the lies we've been conned into believing all these years. We continue the destruction or our own habitat!
The snowball is already in motion...and not only are we pushing it on, we are also in the way. It will sonn become an avalanche.
When it's finally over, if we're still here, there won't be nearly as many of us as now.
Problem solved.
"Belief that we can"......return to pre-Reagan tax rates and with this increase in revenue install residential solar and community wind farms all across our country. Not only would this create vast economic growth, but citizens also gain a degree of control over the energy sector. If we can spend 700 billion this year on a Fascist war economy, we can damn well spend billions on saving the planet too. It's both social and economic justice that individuals like the Kochs and Waltons fork over revenue to fund this inevitable energy conversion.
Reply to post #6: Great suggestions, Paul, for those who have enough money to buy solar panels and new cars. I'm not one of them.
Let's not forget the role of corporate factory farms in this nightmare scenario. Eating less meat is another way to shrink that "footprint". - AIW
If anyone is concerned about climate change, and all of you should be, there are two things you can do to have a significant impact on your own contribution to the problem.
1. Change your home's electricity to renewable. If you have the roof for it, install a solar PV system. If you can't do that, switch to your utility's renewable energy program.
2. If you must drive a car, switch to one that runs on electricity.
Doing these two things reduces the average American's pollution footprint by over 90%. The other benefit is that you stop giving the oil, coal, and NG companies any of your money. This is big. We give these three industries over a trillion dollars every year. That's why they have so much money with which to fight us.
As more people do this, the money starts to make a difference. The average household will save over $2,000 per year. This money can then be spent on local goods and services creating millions of new jobs over time. And if a small percentage of this savings is given to politicians who support our causes, we can begin to counter the financial imbalance that exists today.
Not a surprise the flat earthers would chime in immediately, not in the least embarrassed by their ignorance. Conservatives already do the opposite of everything Jesus stood for when they vote republican. So its a small jump to believe talking heads like Limbaugh and Donald trump, over the consensus of 97-percent of the worlds scientists; So this is correctly compared to flat earthers; its about the same; except this time possible extinction of the human race hangs in the balance (as we humans are perched precariously on top of the food chain).
We are now--and have been for more than a decade--beyond the tipping point. An acquaintance of mine who was the Chief Ccientist (now retired) for the Core Research Center of the U S Geological Survey here in Denver told me that there is no turning back. All we can do is slow the inevitable at this point. We are told so many lies. The truths don't win elections and provide power to those who push us to our doom. One wonders how long it will take our planet to recover, if ever. As a grandfather and soon to be great-grandfather, this keeps me awake at night!
In truth, there is a not a lot we can do to prevent the following years from being even hotter than 2014. In fact, there is NOTHING we can do to prevent the following years from being even hotter than 2014.
All of it starts with the belief that we can, and must, do more to stop global warming, but we can't!!!. WAKE UP!
RIGHT! It is SETTLED! HA!
Nobody knows the trouble we'll see... Nobody but JESUS.
Very few of the 50 or so comments, so far, seem to have nothing to do with the details of voodoo economics and the propaganda to support them. I think we need that information to fight back against voodoo economics. I never know on my comments whether I am stating the obvious or being wonky and oblique. The following factual data seems very oblique. When raygun lowered the top tax rate from something like 78% to something like 35%, the revenue from the top earners increased 2 of 3 fold. However, the economy has been destroyed for the last 32 years. I think the economy should not be measured by tax revenue. I think the economy should be measured by the usual GDP, but per Larry Bienhart (one of Thom's favorites) the GDP should be augmented by number of jobs, median wage of those jobs (adjusted for inflation) and the DOW.