The Rant

I have been distracted but continue to be pissed off. If anyone hasn't noticed, the recent Anti-Wall Street, 99% movement is a symptom of something similar to the tea party movement, even if the two movements wouldn't admit it. Ordinary Americans know they are being screwed by someone. Is it the liberals, the Republicans, the Democrats.....or is it the 1%?

Do Americans under the age of 55 intend to pay for all of their own retirement and health insurance? The Republicans think so. I am sure that those 55 to 65 probably recognize the limitations of their ability to fund their retirement without any help from the system that they have paid into for 30 to 40 years. But anyone between 20 and 40 better just look at what happened to the net worth of most Americans in the last 3 years. Without programs like social security or medicare, you may be forced to spend your last dime to live and pay your medical bills because you won't be able to afford your medical insurance...then you get sick, and then you are f...........

The first problem with the public sector is that there is not enough money to pay for all of them. The get retirements which are unlike anything seen in the private sector. Since there is no competition for most of the private sector, there is no economic incentive for efficiency (until the state goes broke, which is happening now). The problem is not of who to blame. The problem is budgeting. Man's desires are infinite. Our resources are finite. We cannot buy more than we have resources to buy. Reality is the problem with the public sector.

Bob: Hope you and yours had a good Xmas and New Years. My son Steve was up here last night and launched an attack on public sector employees. Steve, like most younger private sector workers has been subject to a pay freeze for more than 3 years and has a 401(k) plan rather than a pension plan. Steve launched an attack on Social Security, Medicare, and pension plans for public employees. These, he has be convinced, are the bogeymen which are dragging the economy into the hole. Lest we forget years of unending war, the Bush tax cuts and the bursting of the real estate bubble, why is it that all the aged and the public workers are lazy, union members, public employees, welfare queens, etc.; but the idea like raising taxes both income and estate taxes on those who can afford to pay them are viewed as socialist and not a legitimate area of discussion. I don't have a problem talking about raising retirement ages or the taxation of social security benefits...etc., but any discussion o...

I am way to the left of most of you. However, I welcome all points of view...provided they are willing to back up the positions they take.

Does anyone care? Can you buy a get out free card by paying $250 million to avoid prosecution by a foreign country. But wait, there is a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the US..... This is intended to prevent US businesses from bribing foreign officials to obtain business. Just because Nigeria can be bought off, where is the US Justice Department????

From a posting on Truth Out: Bush Sr., James Baker Instrumental in Getting Nigeria to Drop Bribery Charges Against Cheney Friday 17 December 2010 by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t Report Former President George H.W. Bush and ex-Secretary of State James Baker were part of a negotiating team that convinced Nigerian government officials to drop bribery charges against Dick Cheney and Halliburton, the oil services firm he led prior to becoming vice president. Representatives for Halliburton also participated in the talks. Bush and Baker participated in conference call discussions with senior Nigerian government officials, including the country's attorney general, Mohammed Adoke, last weekend on behalf of Cheney in an attempt to work out a settlement, according to Nigerian news reports. On Friday, Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the agency that filed the 16-count indictment last week, said the case against Cheney, Halliburt...

About 87 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. So the fact that most in the military are Christians is not exactly a shocker. I would be far more worried if Islam was booming in the military. Islam seems to encourage a non patriotic point of view that places loyalty to Islam over loyalty to any nation state. Furthermore, the teaching of "jihad" creates conflicts when any Moslem is required to go to war against a Moslem state. There have been several cases of Moslems turning weapons on fellow Americans because of these issues. Besides, J.D., doesn't any form of religious belief prove that one is nuts and therefore unfit for service?

Expanding upon my last post this is from a link on Mikey Weinstein's Military Religious Freedom Foundation's website. As it is Hanukkah , I thought independence of conscience is a core American value. Thus those who would impose a religious test on being a good American needs to be seen for what it is.....bigotry. Our military should be 100% secular. Religion has no place defining who should or should not be in the armed services of this country. This article suggests that the Chaplin corps are counseling injured or traumatized soldiers to accept Jesus as a solution to their problems. "Weinstein said soldiers are being told that finding Jesus is the only way to overcome the trauma. The Pentagon press office did not return calls or emails for comment. “What we’re seeing is a national disgrace that is actually increasing suicides rather than reducing them,” charged Weinstein in an interview with Antiwar.com. While that would be hard to prove, Weinstein has plenty of ...

Bob: I think Sharlet's book "C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy" should be on every liberal's must read list. I think his discussion of the penetration of the military officer corps is especially timely considering today's discussion of the repeal of don't ask, don't tell.

California is broke. In fact, they are so much in the red that they are borrowing over $40 million dollars per day just to cover mandatory unemployment payments to its citizens. In a recent article from San Francisco Gate.com, the publication outlines how much California borrows just to pay for this social program. With one in every eight workers unemployed and empty state coffers, California is borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government to pay unemployment insurance. The Los Angeles Times reports that the state owes $8.6 billion already, and will have to come up with a $362-million payment to Washington by the end of next September. The continued borrowing means federal unemployment insurance taxes are going to increase, upping the annual payroll costs $21 a year per worker. California tops the list of 32 states that have borrowed a total of $41 billion to pay claims. ____________________________ The Democrats have been in charge for years in California. Good job, g...

After the parasitical poor have devoured the productive rich, what then? Witness California. Soon the poor will begin eating one another, until there is nothing left but poverty and chaos.

Thanks for recharging the Republican base and single handedly wreaking havoc on the Democrats. Yes He Can.

Rather than raising my taxes I would suggest that we cut the size of government. A careful review of the work being done probably would uncover some unneccessary or unproductive work. That is what the private sector did when times became tough. Cut the fat in order to grow the economy. Reduce taxes and needless regulation. Encourage businessmen, instead of persecuting and reviling them. I am sure J.D. Would agree?

Bob: Taxes have not gone up for the average American. Contrary to the vile rants at the Tea Parties, taxes have gone down for Joe the Plumber since the beginning of the year. This has got to stop. I don't mean complaining about fatuous tax increases. We need to balance the budget and do it on the backs of the rich. Oh that might mean you and me....too bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, how happy is everyone with Obama after one year?

THIS IS WORTH READING Personal life Cheney is the elder of two daughters of former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Second Lady Lynne Cheney ; her younger sister is Mary Cheney . Cheney graduated from McLean High School in 1984. She received her bachelor's degree from Colorado College , where she wrote her senior thesis, "The Evolution of Presidential War Powers," in 1988. [1] She received her Juris Doctor ( J.D. ) degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1996, having also taken courses in Middle Eastern history at the Oriental Institute . [2] Cheney is married to Philip Perry , the former General Counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security . She and Perry have five children: three daughters, Kate, Elizabeth, and Grace; and two sons, Philip and Richard. [ edit ] Early career Before attending law school, Cheney worked for the State Department for five years and the U.S. Agency for International Development between 1989 and 1993. Af...

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats. By Nick Allen in Fort Hood Published: 5:00PM GMT 08 Nov 2009 Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army doctor named as a suspect in the shooting death of 13 people and the wounding of 31 others at Fort Hood, Texas Photo: GETTY He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July. Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe. So my que...

In the ultimate outrage - The Lords of Wall Street have received the swine flu vaccine before some hospitals that are trying to serve pregnant woman. There was a shortage of the vaccine in NYC hospitals, clinics and doctors but not to the the healthy white males who work at Wall Street. Goldman Sachs got 200 doses for their in-house clinic that serves the lords of Wall Street, the same number of doses as New York's Lennox Hospital, while Citibank got 1200 doses.

Bob: Go to Rachael Maddow's offical website and watch the show segments for 10/15 with Tim Phillips of "grass roots organization" Americans for Prosperity. She got pissed.