"Death by Ideology"

Every day in America people die because they lack health insurance and live in a society which evinces no compassion for the less fortunate among us: those who live without shelter, serve your food, market products over the phone to make minimal wages while getting cursed, and maybe even those who work at greeters at big box retail stores.

This happens because alleged humans hold to an idea that everyone has to take care of everything that happens to them, even medical conditions easily treated in other countries with health cares systems based on human decency rather than wringing every dollar possible out of people.

These people, who loudly proclaim themselves Christians, live by ideology unmoored from any bit of reality or any knowledge of how humans with marginal incomes actually live and die ignoring the very words my Jesus said while mouthing their mealy mouthed platitudes.

Fie on thee, ye who proclaim your righteousness.

I sin and sin greatly but at least admit of my mistakes, and when I see you in Hell, Willard, I will laugh.

[Mitt Romney doesn’t see dead people. But that’s only because he doesn’t want to see them; if he did, he’d have to acknowledge the ugly reality of what will happen if he and Paul Ryan get their way on health care.

Last week, speaking to The Columbus Dispatch, Mr. Romney declared that nobody in America dies because he or she is uninsured: “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” This followed on an earlier remark by Mr. Romney — echoing an infamous statement by none other than George W. Bush — in which he insisted that emergency rooms provide essential health care to the uninsured.

These are remarkable statements. They clearly demonstrate that Mr. Romney has no idea what life (and death) are like for those less fortunate than himself.

Even the idea that everyone gets urgent care when needed from emergency rooms is false. Yes, hospitals are required by law to treat people in dire need, whether or not they can pay. But that care isn’t free — on the contrary, if you go to an emergency room you will be billed, and the size of that bill can be shockingly high. Some people can’t or won’t pay, but fear of huge bills can deter the uninsured from visiting the emergency room even when they should. And sometimes they die as a result.

More important, going to the emergency room when you’re very sick is no substitute for regular care, especially if you have chronic health problems. When such problems are left untreated — as they often are among uninsured Americans — a trip to the emergency room can all too easily come too late to save a life.

So the reality, to which Mr. Romney is somehow blind, is that many people in America really do die every year because they don’t have health insurance.] emphasis added for the clueless and because I want to punch Willard in the nose, ok, strike humourosly with rubber chicken 'cause don't need Secret Service hassle and Jesus abhors violence but did do civil disobedience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/opinion/krugman-death-by-ideology.html?hp&_r=0

Willard Versus Facts

Suppose his inability to do basic arithmetic ought not surprise me as his "work" experience went thus: borrow millions to buy a company by bankrupting it with debt, make millions in management fees, sell the business before it craters, and walk away from the ruins whistling on his way to the bank.

[— One of the biggest disputes was over tax cuts. Obama argued that Romney's plan to stimulate the economy includes a tax cut totaling $5 trillion that, Obama said, isn't possible because the Republican nominee is also promising to spend money in other places.

Romney flatly disputed that number. "First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut," he said.

Who's right? The Washington Post's Fact Checker says the facts on this one are on Obama's side. The New York Times notes that Romney "has proposed cutting all marginal tax rates by 20 percent — which would in and of itself cut tax revenue by $5 trillion."

FactCheck.org has weighed in too, tweeting during the debatethat "Romney says he will pay for $5T tax cut without raising deficit or raising taxes on middle class. Experts say that's not possible."]
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/10/03/162263539/romney-goes-on-offense-pays-for-it-in-first-wave-of-fact-checks?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter


http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-fact-check-romney-healthcare-20121003,0,5148610.story

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-fact-check-debate-romney-tax-20121003,0,3813713.story

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-fact-check-romney-medicare-cut-20121003,0,3111207.story

Romney Rules

Willard's Tax Plan

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/18/an-illustrated-guide-to-the-people-mitt-romney-believes-dont-pay-enough-taxes/

Willard Lets True Feelings Show

Hey Mitt, you pustule on he body politic, I pay plenty of taxes, mainly sales taxes, which come more dearly to me than thou.

[Romney replied:
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax."

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser

World's richest woman on wages

[The world's richest woman, Australian mining tycoon Gina Rinehart, drew international scorn recently after saying that people who are jealous of the wealthy should drink less and work harder....

Speaking at the Sydney Mining Club, Rinehart said her country's mining industry couldn't compete with nations that are willing to pay workers less than $2 a day for their sweat and labor.

The implicit suggestion: Employers should be free to pay workers whatever they please.

This echoes Rinehart's earlier to-do list, in which she urged Aussie lawmakers to cut the minimum wage so that, well, she wouldn't have to spend so much money on things like workers' salaries and benefits....

Rinehart knows what it means to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. She inherited a fortune now estimated to be worth about $18 billion. That's a heavy burden to bear.]
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-pay-20120905,0,6971046.story

Poverty of the Elites: Free market famine in Ireland

The Graves are Walking: Free trade uber alles.

[....It is still an insane thought that the most successful country in the world at the time allowed millions to starve in Ireland, its’ closest colonial neighbor.

Imagine the US, the land of plenty, allowing millions of Hawaiians to starve in a Famine there and you get some sense of the absurdity....

But also documented here is O’Connell’s disastrous decision to throw in his lot with Whig leader Lord John Russell who became Prime Minister in July 1846 at the beginning of the worst period of the Famine....

But in the process he backed a man who had become a fully-fledged free trader who insisted that market prices must be received and no government intervention made – even when the result was millions of Irish starving because they could not afford to buy the imported corn.

Russell’s predecessor, the Tory leader Sir Robert Peel, as Kelly points out, had adopted a far more humane policy and had been widely praised for ordering and freeing up imported corn for starving Irish the previous year when the worst of the Famine was blunted.] emphasis added to fan spark of humanity in souls of all who read this.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/story/news/periscope/did-irish-leader-daniel-oconnell-help-make-the-famine-happen----graves-are-walking-book-tells-powerful-irish-famine-truths-169750566.html#ixzz26TJ5KH39










[Rock’n’roll great Bruce Springsteen has received a welcome bump after the Democratic National Convention when his tune ‘We Take Care of Our Own’ played right after President Barack Obama’s speech.

The Huffington Post reports that ‘We Take Care of Our Own’ jumped an astounding 409 per cent following its use at the DNC. The song was downloaded 2000 times, which Billboard reports is the most since March....

Despite the song officially being added to Obama’s political campaign playlist, Springsteen is insisting that he is not throwing his support behind any candidate for election 2012 like he did back in 2008.

“I prefer to stay on the sidelines," Springsteen told ABC News in January. "I genuinely believe an artist [is] supposed to be the canary in the coal mine, and you’re better off with a certain distance from the seat of power."

While Springsteen would have liked to have seen "more activism in job creation sooner than it came," he did say he thought Obama had done a good job thus far in his presidency.

Said Springsteen, “He kept GM alive, which was incredibly important to Detroit and Michigan, and he got the health care law passed, although I wish there had been a public option and didn’t leave the citizens victims of the insurance companies. He killed Osama bin Laden, which was extremely important. He brought some sanity to the top level of government.”] emphasis added
 http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/Bruce-Springsteens-We-Take-Care-of-Our-Own-gets-major-boost-from-Barack-Obamas-DNC-speech---VIDEO-169755396.html#ixzz26TNgoeih

Why We Progressives Fight: William Rivers Pitt on "Beneath the Bottom of the Barrel"

In case y'all have forgotten or gotten distracted by daily news coverage of the election as a horse race, we fight for dignity and decent treatment--food to eat and medical care--for the least among our brothers and sisters.

And for the middle class, too.

[Have you ever wondered what's under the bottom of the barrel? I found out on Tuesday morning, when I cracked open the fetid wasteland that used to be the Washington Post. There, in the Editorials section, was an article titled "Senior Citizens' Financial Woes Are Exaggerated," written by something called Charles Lane.

The timing was interesting. Just as I read that headline, I heard the sound of clinking and clanking coming from the front of my house. I knew what it was immediately: one of the Can People was making her daily pass through my recycling bins. Years ago, the town I live in provided every home with a pair of large blue bins for residents to properly separate and store their recyclables for collection. Every Tuesday afternoon, a big yellow truck rumbles by to empty them. All week long, my neighbors and I fill these bins with paper, plastic, cans and bottles, and every day, the Can People come by to pick the bins over and collect anything worth five cents at the redemption center in the supermarket down the hill. More often than not, they push battered shopping carts to hold what they can find, but sometimes they have only a garbage bag slung over their shoulder to carry the load.

There are no young people doing this, nor even middle-aged people. The Can People are old men and women, stooped, wearing worn-out clothes and fraying shoes as they rattle through my refuse with gnarled, arthritic hands. Some are White, some are Asian, some are Black; can-collection, like poverty, knows no ethnic boundaries. I wave to them when I see them, but they seldom respond, either because their eyesight is too poor to make me out as I stand on my porch like a lord, or because they are too ashamed to acknowledge the fact that I see them, and thus see what it is they must do to survive.

When I heard the clinking and clanking on Tuesday morning, I remembered a brace of ginger ale cans I'd neglected to bring outside. Hurriedly, I tossed them into a bag and brought them to my porch. She was bent into the blue bin to the waist, and when she reared up at the sound of me, there was fear in her eyes. Maybe she thought I was going to shoo her away. Maybe that kind of thing happens a lot. I came to the railing, extended the bag of cans to her, and she took them without a word. Her face was a delta, a map of time itself, and she could not bring herself to meet my eye. She placed the bag of cans in her shopping cart, and I watched as she clattered her way down the sidewalk to the next set of bins.

When she was out of sight, I went back inside to read what Charles Lane had to say about how easy old people have it in America. He began with this:
"Now that Paul Ryan, the author of a major proposal to overhaul Medicare, is going to be on the Republican ticket, the fall presidential campaign shapes up as a battle over the federal government's obligations to senior citizens. Before it begins, I hereby declare that I admire and like the elderly. My parents are elderly. I myself hope to be elderly someday, and to remain that way for a long time. But I do not feel sorry for the elderly as a group, and neither should you.

In particular, you should not let an exaggerated portrayal of their economic vulnerability - the "Mediscare" campaign that Democrats have run in the past and are dusting off again - unduly affect your thinking about entitlement policy."

"Entitlement," Mr. Lane? Did they not teach you the definition of words in your time at Harvard and Yale? If something has been paid for with decades of hard labor, it is not an "entitlement." It is a justly deserved return on a very long investment.

An exaggerated portrayal of their economic vulnerability? Is it even possible to exaggerate the economic vulnerability of the elderly in America? To a person, they have to deal with at least one physical ailment, if not a multitude of them, and all in a nation where health care and prescription medicines are wildly expensive
commodities. They are no longer employed, and so have no employer-provided health insurance, but only the small financial protection they paid for by investing in the social safety net with every paycheck they earned. A very large majority of America's oldest citizens are required to squeeze every penny until Abraham screams just to survive.

Fact:
Seventy-five percent of Americans nearing retirement age in 2010 had less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts. The specter of downward mobility in retirement is a looming reality for both middle- and higher-income workers. Almost half of middle-class workers, 49 percent, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about $5 a day.

The core of Mr. Lane's argument is a muddle of questionable statistics and broad assumptions, culminating in a concluding paragraph as obnoxious as it is astonishing:
"Sooner or later, politicians are going to have to treat older voters not as potential victims but as secure and fortunate citizens, who can and should contribute their fair share to resolving the country's fiscal predicament. In other words, to treat them as what they are."

Notice how Lane uses the Occupy Movement's rhetoric with that line about how elderly people "can and should contribute their fair share to resolving the country's fiscal predicament"? That's right, you ghoul...don't tax the rich. Don't tax the bankers or Wall Street. Don't touch the grotesquely bloated "defense" budget. Instead, let's tap the most vulnerable among us to be fodder for the wheat thresher of your callous, bottomless conservative greed. Yes, let's "treat them as what they are," just another juicy target....

But see, that's the thing. Once upon a time, ruthless conservative lickspittles like Lane would only whisper jokes about Gabby Giffords getting shot, and about old people being ripe plums for the picking, into their sleeves. They're not even bothering to hide their viciousness any more, and now that Paul Ryan has joined Mitt Romney on the Republican presidential ticket, this is the kind of argument we can look forward to. After all, it is Mr. Ryan who has built his career on a plan to annihilate Medicare, all the while defending the "defense" budget to the knife. All Mr. Lane has done with his pestiferous little missive is carry some water for Mr. Ryan. Welcome to Republican priorities, 21st century-style.

It is a national disgrace that any old person is forced to rummage through garbage for a few extra pennies to survive. The fact that millions of elderly people tremble on the cusp of economic calamity every single day, after they have fought our wars and served our peace and built our country in the decades they bent their backs to their work, is nothing more than simple, shameful fact. That the safety net they spent their lives paying for is under a full frontal assault from the Republican right should give anyone planning to live past the age of 65 more than a moment of pause. Mr. Lane thinks the elderly have it too good, an argument that is beyond contempt, but this is the thinking we are required to contend with in an age when people like Paul Ryan are actually taken seriously.

May you live a long, long life, Mr. Lane. May you grow very, very old...and when you are grubbing for cans in someone else's garbage, may you remember your own words, and know a moment of shame.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.]
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10933-beneath-the-bottom-of-the-barrel

Labour Day Thought:"It's the Rich Wots Gets the Gravy."

"And the poor wots gets the blame./Ain't it all a bloody shame."

[The real question is whether the working and middle classes of the United States will go on allowing themselves to be taken advantage of by our super-rich, who are gathering to themselves more and more of the national income. The top 1% owned 25% of the privately held national wealth in the United States in the 1950s, but have 38% of it today.

In contrast, real wages per hour for the average worker in the United States, adjusted for inflation, peaked in 1970. We’re now down from that, with a generation and a half blocked from meaningful economic advancement.

But, you will say, the US is a much wealthier society now than it was in 1970 or 1990. Where has all the extra money generated by American labor and investment gone?

It has gone to the rich. Yes, folks, the rich are taking home a fifth of everything we make as a country each year, up from ten percent in 1970. We are 310 million people. About 3 million get a fifth of the annual income. Those 3 million people are 3 million Mitt Romneys. They want low taxes and they want to get rid of social security, medicare and Obamacare.] emphasis added to make you mad
http://www.juancole.com/2012/09/labor-day-question-are-you-better-off-than-you-were-in-1970.html

"It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame It's the rich what gets the pleasure Ain't it all a bloomin' shame?"

Paul Ryan's Big Lie: He Will Kill Medicare and Seniors

Accidentally watched approximately 7.5 seconds of the Republican't convention trying to switch to local news at 11 pm and Paul Ryan lying on my TV, saying the test of any society remains how it treats the less fortunate.

How on Earth can savage cuts to Medicaid protect the poor?

They can't, meaning Ryan a hypocritical heartless bastard who probably sacrifices babies to Moloch as well as worshiping Mammon bestowed upon him by billionaire backers.

[Others were infuriating, like his sanctimonious declaration that “the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” This from a man proposing savage cuts in Medicaid, which would cause tens of millions of vulnerable Americans to lose health coverage.

And Mr. Ryan — who has proposed $4.3 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade, versus only about $1.7 trillion in specific spending cuts — is still posing as a deficit hawk.

But Mr. Ryan’s big lie — and, yes, it deserves that designation — was his claim that “a Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare.” Actually, it would kill the program....

But back to the big lie. The Republican Party is now firmly committed to replacing Medicare with what we might call Vouchercare. The government would no longer pay your major medical bills; instead, it would give you a voucher that could be applied to the purchase of private insurance. And, if the voucher proved insufficient to buy decent coverage, hey, that would be your problem.

Moreover, the vouchers almost certainly would be inadequate; their value would be set by a formula taking no account of likely increases in health care costs.]  emphasis added to highlight cruelty

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/opinion/Krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Willard Romney, Fortunate Zygote

Don't know what blew up on embed code but you can find it here: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/romney-human-being-who-built-narrated-leona.

Why Do Republicants Lie?

Because they have to to get votes.

They could not very well tell actual reasoning humans they oppose every single progressive social movement for the last 6 or so centuries: from the Magna Carta to Teddy's Square Deal to FDR's New Deal.  They oppose anything to help the common man carve out a decent life in the face of overwhelming money and power that seeks to impoverish the many for the benefit of the few: Medicare and Social Security to name 2 modern manifestations in the United States.

How could any human save for Fox "News" watching fools even fall for this crap?

Ach du lieber mein Gott in Himmel!

Read the Wikipedia version of Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal: "The Square Deal was President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program formed upon three basic ideas: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection.[1]"

Control of corporations and consumer protections!

Whoda thunk it?

Well, maybe someone who actually read the New Part of the Bible these Republicants claim to follow, the parts where a man called Jesus rails against the privileged of his day, the brood of vipers.

It pains to block quote the words of anther, but you gotta read this dude's screed.

My emphasis throughout.

[If I were writing a political novel about a presidential campaign, I would never dare have the government-hating, free-market, Rand-adulating vice presidential candidate of the right-wing party have inherited his fortune from a grandfather who made his money from government contracts. It's too obvious, too pat. A fiction editor would say, "Come on, Tomasky, this is just too heavy-handed."

Especially if the same candidate and his running mate were attacking the other guy with a lie that specifically distorted what he'd said about, of all things, roads and bridges! ("You didn't build that.") Grandpappy Ryan did exactly what Obama says other people did to help small businesses thrive. He built the roads. And he was paid to do so by government contracts. Forget fiction. That's even too pat for Hollywood.

Ryan tries to address this by saying there's no contradiction between the source of his wealth and his views because of course he's not anti-government, that's a caricature of his views, etc etc. This is absurd. No one who got into politics because of some arrested-development reaction to reading Ayn Rand is pro-government. He can talk pretty to Ryan Lizza, knowing that he's talking to New Yorker readers, and try to pass himself off as nuanced, but there's nothing nuanced about the numbers.

Back in 2001, Paul O'Neill wrote some talking points as debate prep for Dubya. As Jon Chait wrote in my journal, Democracy, of those talking points:

One frankly conceded, “The public prefers spending on things like health care and education over cutting taxes. It’s crucial that your remarks make clear that there is no trade-off here.”

Put more bluntly, what O'Neill was saying here is: You have to lie. By definition, you have to lie. You can't tell people that tax-cutting will result in less money for these programs, which is the truth, so you/we Republicans have to invent a fiction of no trade-offs, of a free market that can deliver everything. What Bush delivered to us was essentially no net job growth in eight years and the worst crisis in 80.

So the Ryan-Romney ticket, as it should properly be called, has to say things like "we want government to do the things it does well." Romney has to say things like he said on TV this morning, "No one is talking about deregulating Wall Street," when in fact he is talking about exactly that. Because they can't tell the truth and hope to get elected.

"What we're going to do here is make sure society's very richest people have a lot more money. Our theory is they will spend it and that will help the whole economy. History hasn't been kind to this idea, but it's our theory and we're sticking to it. These are the people who pay us to run, after all. Besides which, we really don't like poor people; we think at bottom that it's their fault they're poor, so it doesn't really matter to us whether anything trickles down to them." That's the truth. How would that sell?]
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/15/why-by-definition-republicans-have-to-lie.html

Paul Ryan, Suckled on the Teat of Big Govenment

Well golly gee whiz, Paul Ryan, Hypocrite, WI, preaches the Ayn Rand philosophy of social Darwinism ,that the poor need to suck it up, work through hunger, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Great thought except he states--and maybe even believes--government and laws played no part in creating his wealth, only his own rugged individualism made that possible.

Great story, except for the absolute falsehood.

Paul Ryan made his money the old fashioned way; he inherited it.

Hs grandfather stated  company which built things like roads and highways, things paid for by the federal government which benefited all the citizens of the United States, things which treasonous Republicants refuse to spend money on now because creating jobs might actually benefit the current administration politically.

These selfsame Republicants now weeping and wailing about federal deficits voted for stimulus bills during the Cheney administration.  Paul P90X Ryan even requested money for WI businesses from the Obama administration stimulus programs, rankest hypocrisy of the sublime order.

For Keyne's sake it ain't rocket science; when an economy disastrously slows the federal government ought to step in to provide jobs doing things we all need: fixing bridges, filling potholes, and even putting together solar panels.  People cash their paychecks to buy food and other essentials and enough buying results in an expanding economy.

[...Paul Ryan’s great-grandfather started a construction company to build railroads and, eventually, highways. According to the Web site of Ryan Incorporated Central, the company was “founded in 1884 with a single team of mules building railroad embankments in Southern Wisconsin.” And in the 1800s, railroad construction was subsidized by the federal government. Mid-century, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act into law, providing taxpayer dollars to fund the construction of a transcontinental railway. All railroads thereafter connected to, and benefited from, that public investment....

With a net worth of up to $3.2 million and ranking as the 124th richest member of Congress, Paul Ryan very directly and very significantly benefited from the federal spending he now rails against.

Or does he? What’s funny is that Mr. Anti-Spending secured millions in earmarks for his home state of Wisconsin, including, among other things, $3.3 million for highway projects. And Ryan voted to preserve $40 billion in special subsidies for big oil, an industry in which, it so happens, Ryan and his wife hold ownership stakes. Yet Ryan wants to gut financial aid for college students, food stamps for hungry families, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security — the very things that have, historically, helped poor families climb the ladder of opportunity in America.

And this is precisely the problem with the Romney-Ryan vision for America: It takes the ladder of opportunity and public infrastructure that helped the previous generation and yanks it up for the next generation.....

It’s “I Got Mine, Now Screw You!” economics.]  Emphasis added to emphasize truth.

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/14/paul_ryan_didnt_build_that/

These pictures googled come not from epic disaster film du jour but from collapse of Interstate bridge in MN.

Shorter Paul Ryan

http://www.first-draft.com/2012/08/shorter-paul-ryan.html

Tom Morello: 'Paul Ryan Is the Embodiment of the Machine Our Music Rages Against'

[Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.

Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.

You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night. So, when they look themselves in the mirror, they convince themselves that "Those people are undeserving. They're . . . lesser." Some of these guys on the extreme right are more cynical than Paul Ryan, but he seems to really believe in this stuff. This unbridled rage against those who have the least is a cornerstone of the Romney-Ryan ticket.

But Rage's music affects people in different ways. Some tune out what the band stands for and concentrate on the moshing and throwing elbows in the pit. For others, Rage has changed their minds and their lives. Many activists around the world, including organizers of the global occupy movement, were radicalized by Rage Against the Machine and work tirelessly for a more humane and just planet. Perhaps Paul Ryan was moshing when he should have been listening.

My hope is that maybe Paul Ryan is a mole. Maybe Rage did plant some sensible ideas in this extreme fringe right wing nut job. Maybe if elected, he'll pardon Leonard Peltier. Maybe he'll throw U.S. military support behind the Zapatistas. Maybe he'll fill Guantanamo Bay with the corporate criminals that are funding his campaign – and then torture them with Rage music 24/7. That's one possibility. But I'm not betting on it.]

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-morello-paul-ryan-is-the-embodiment-of-the-machine-our-music-rages-against-20120816#ixzz23olTho1Y

"Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em That's what the Statue of Bigotry says "

Quote from the inestimable Lou Reed, song "Dirty Boulevard," from the New York album.

Part of any civilization that shows ethical advancement comes from how that society treats those unable to contribute much to the general welfare: the elderly, infirm and disabled, the sick, poor, and even children deemed weak.  So although we may still celebrate the heroic sacrifice of the Spartan 300, no one would call them civilized for they threw weak babies to the wolves.

So also the Medicaid cuts proposed by Paul Ryan, Republican, state of plutocratic advantage, would harm the least available to help themselves: humans in Assisted Living Facilities, poor children, and the destitute.

In the great but penurious state of Florida, a family of 3 making less than $11,000 a year-below the federal poverty level--does not qualify for health care under Medicaid.

What do they do when their children get sick?

Hope, pray, wait for the malady to pass, and go to an Emergency Room if the sickness worsens.

The hospitals who accept poor patients--and make no mistake, some do not, which means people die every day in the US of un-Affordable health care because they lack insurance--bear the costs of treatment and pass those costs onto paying customers and insurance companies, which the Affodable Care Act will help prevent by getting people, human freakin' beings for God's sake, care before their conditions become acute.

Paul Ryan's budget, an immoral document if ever there were one, cuts $800 from Medicaid, cloaking this draconian dicing of the safety net by claiming it will give state governments more flexibility while knowing fool well--yes, I meant fool because if you believe these right wing Republican lies, you are a fool--and result in the states further cutting eligibility for Medicaid:

[By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON —
There's another Paul Ryan plan for health care, a fundamental change in caring for the poor and disabled that would affect many more people than the Medicare overhaul the GOP vice presidential candidate is best known for.

Under the Wisconsin congressman's Medicaid plan, states would take over the program. At the same time, Ryan's budget would reduce projected federal spending on Medicaid by about $800 billion over 10 years, dramatically shrinking it as a share of the national economy.

Medicaid serves about 60 million people, roughly 10 million more than Medicare. It's a diverse population brought together by need. Most Medicaid recipients are low-income children and their mothers, but the costliest cases are severely disabled people, many of them seniors in nursing homes.

Ryan would also repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, expected to add at least 11 million more people to Medicaid.

Ryan's Medicaid plan is in sync with his new boss, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.]
http://www.wftv.com/news/ap/top-news/the-other-paul-ryan-plan-800b-in-medicaid-cuts/nRBst/

Will this pass the test of helping those least able to help themselves?

Hell NO it won't!!!


Personal note #1:  Happened to work at hotel Lou stayed at when he came through the City Mean on his tour supporting this album.  Found it interesting contract called for in room refrigerator cleared of alcohol and to have no alcohol delivered to the room.
"Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
And get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard"
Read more at http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/49609/#jO30k2XiwmjF3qUj.99

Personal note 2:  As a walking ex-quadrapeligic surviving for 32 years and oddly proud of eking out an existence on disability for the second time in my life (20 years working between stints), I have entered that range of middle age where one plays wheel of monthly medical specialist visits at $40 a copay pop even with medicare Advantage: gastroenterologist, urologist, neurologist, orthopedic surgeon, nephrologist, etc.  How the hell can I see more than 1 a month making the princely sum of $968 a month?

Personal note 3:  to all the bastards who judge me and assume and dare to say, "you should get some help," judging me because they assume some magical, faerie dust social safety net exists to help but I fall into odd category of not quite old enough at age 54 nor quite disabled enough to get social services help.

Sit on it, JJ.

Romney/Ryan: The Liar Picks the Fraud

The Romney/Ryan ticket already bores me; not even the fodder they provide for satire compensates for the absolute bankruptcy in their souls and paucity of ideas, their only real one the inbred desire to cut taxes for rich people and screw the rest.

Even having reached the august and ever more cynical age of 54, it just seems to me a political race for elected office should involve some degree of facts, some sort of telling truth to gain support of voters.

Even in 1969 in a campaign to sell Richard Nixon chronicled in the book The Selling of the President, Nixon proposed a War on Crime and marketed his secret plan to end the Viet Nam War.

Now, politics has entered a fact free age without the need for the so called "liberal media" (The Selling of the President) to call a lie a lie and a spade a spade.

Great Mencken's ghost, Willard Romney couldn't even tell the truth if it walked up, slapped him in the face, and signed his tax returns for him.

How could anyone with even a functioining brain cell left even think about voting for this feckless fool?  Even Fox "News" watching zombies should feel shame if they vote for this ticket.

Lies of Willard Romney part 29, literally, twenty-freakin'-nine: [Joe Klein reflected briefly on Mitt Romney this week, noting, "I can't remember a candidate so brazenly allergic to facts. What a travesty." Kevin Drum offered some related thoughts....

Of course, if months of distortions and lies causes irreparable harm to a presidential candidate, Romney might as well pack up and go to one of his mansions now. To consider this problem in more detail, consider the 29th installment of my weekly series, chronicling Mitt's mendacity.

1. In a radio interview yesterday, Romney said of the president, "His campaign and the people working with him have focused almost exclusively on personal attacks."

That's both ironic and untrue.

2. In an attack ad launched this week, Romney said Obama "quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements."

This is as obvious a lie as any presidential candidate has ever told.]

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/10/13221172-chronicling-mitts-mendacity-vol-xxix?lite
[This morning on “This Week,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget plan a “fraud” as Romney campaign senior advisor Eric Fehrnstrom confirmed his candidate’s support for the plan that would trim trillions in federal spending over the next decade.

“The Ryan plan — and I guess this is what counts as a personal attack — but it isn’t. It’s not an attack on the person; it’s an attack on the plan. The plan’s a fraud,” said Krugman. “And so to say that — just tell the truth that there is really no plan there, neither from Ryan, nor from Governor Romney, is just the truth. That’s not — if that’s — if that’s being harsh and partisan, gosh, then I guess the truth is anti-bipartisanship. ”

Krugman, who has been critical of the Ryan, R-Wis., plan in the past, was responding to the Fehrnstrom, who confirmed Romney’s support for the plan after ABC News’ George Will asked Fehrnstrom to clarify his candidate’s stance on the Ryan proposal.

“He’s for the Ryan plan."]
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/paul-krugman-paul-ryan-budget-that-romney-supports-is-a-fraud/ 

From the Pens at Politico to God's Ear

Bowing to the tea party hot air and bent on picking an ideologue intent on destroying the social safety net for seniors and disabled Americans, Republican operatives fret "Richie Rich" Romney may have not only sunk his own candidacy like the Titanic but torpedoed other candidates down the ballot who now will have to defend their votes to starve our grandparents

[ ....Away from the cameras, and with all the usual assurances that people aren’t being quoted by name, there is an unmistakable consensus among Republican operatives in Washington: Romney has taken a risk with Ryan that has only a modest chance of going right — and a huge chance of going horribly wrong....

The most cutting criticism of Ryan, shared only by a handful of strategists, is that Ryan isn’t ready to be president — or doesn’t come across as ready. A youthful man who looks even younger than his 42 years, Ryan could end up labeled as Sarah Palin with a PowerPoint presentation, several operatives said.

“He just doesn’t seem like he can step into the job on Day One,” said the strategist, who professed himself a Ryan fan.

And that’s just what it does to the Romney-Ryan ticket. Forget how it plays in close House and Senate races....

Another strategist emailed midway through Romney and Ryan’s first joint event Saturday: “The good news is that this ticket now has a vision. The bad news is that vision is basically just a chart of numbers used to justify policies that are extremely unpopular.”]
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79697_Page2.html#ixzz23Zj8hNOR

Apologies to all for gratuitous Richie Rich reference 'cause at least that fictional kid had a conscience unlike the 2 ass clowns on Republican ticket.

Cheryl Randecker: "Now when I hear Romney speak it makes me sick to my stomach."

Now for something completely different: a lesson on pernicious effects of conscienceless capitalism currently causing heartache in Illinois.  Bain Capital, the company Willard Mitt Romney may or may not have worked at until 2002 and of which he still owns gazillions of dollars worth of shares in, bought an entirely profitable company in Freeport, IL, to close it and send the jobs to China to make MORE money.

You see, capitalism without any moral scruples requires, nay even demands, wringing every lst peenny out of a going concern no matter the human, economic, and even environmental costs.

So these lucky duckies at Sensata Co. get to train their own replacements, building their own gallows as it were:
[But for Bonnie Borman – and 170 other men and women in Freeport,Illinois – there is a brutal twist to the torture. Borman, 52, and the other workers of a soon-to-be-shuttered car parts plant are personally training the Chinese workers who will replace them.

It's a surreal experience, they say. For months they have watched their plant being dismantled and shipped to China, piece by piece, as they show teams of Chinese workers how to do the jobs they have dedicated their lives to....

But, in the midst of the 2012 presidential election, Freeport is different. For Sensata is majority-owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm once led by Mitt Romney, that has become a hugely controversial symbol of how the modern globalised American economy works. Indeed, Romney still owns millions of dollars of shares in the Bain funds that own Sensata.

So as Sensata strips out costs by sacking American workers in favour of Chinese ones, the value of Romney's own investments could rise, putting money into the pockets of a Republican challenger who has placed job creation in America at the heart of his bid for the White House.... 

"I understand business needs to make a profit. But this product has always made a ton of money. It's just that they think it is not enough money. They are greedy," said Tom Gaulraupp, who has put in 33 years at the plant and is facing the prospect of becoming jobless at the age of 54. ]http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/10/illinois-workers-bain-outsourcing?newsfeed=true

Of course, the good citizens of Freeport have petitioned Mr. Romney and Bain Capital to save their jobs, company, and city.

They got the same response Paul Ryan gave the nuns on the bus seeking common sense who tried to get the Representative to face the consequences of his budget for ordinary folks: nada, nothing, zip, zero, pinga.

Thanks, boys.

Why Paul Ryan Is a Fraud

[First, his copiously lauded budget proposal is more vague than anyone who has not read it would believe. If I told you, for example, that the basis of his entire proposal is trillions of dollars in tax cuts (almost all for the…well, go ahead and guess who) to be offset by "closing loopholes in the tax code" you would not be shocked. If I then told you that not one single specific exampleis given in the entire document, you would not believe me. You would accuse me of orchestrating a smear on his budget, because no one could possibly take it seriously if it was based on decimating tax revenue and then, uh, somehow balancing this out with, uh, something else. Yet that is exactly what is found in his Brilliant Repository of Economic Genius: nothing. It is an Underpants Gnome proposal: cut taxes + ???? = PROFITS!]
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2012/08/13/that-word-it-does-not-mean-what-you-think-it-means-2/

Found at http://eb-misfit.blogspot.com/2012/08/heh-heh-heh.html