Message, song and dance for Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

Based on this news from a Kansas City Star article:

Kansas tax collections in August continue downward slide

Most of us have only one thing to say to you, Governor, one response:



Now, would you put it back the way it was?  Put the tax structure in Kansas back the way it was before you and your Right Wing, oh-so-wrong Republican pals screwed up Kansas' finances so thoroughly.

Please?

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Have a great weekend, y'all.

Terrific points/questions and food for thought about Syria and a possible attack (guest post)

From Robert Reich:

Cliff notes on a potentially disastrous decision:

 

(1) Were Syrian civilians killed by chemical weapons?

Yes.

 

(2) How many?

Estimates vary.

 

(3) Was Assad responsible?

Probably but not definitely.

 

(4) Should the world respond?

Yes.

 

 (5) What’s the best response?

Economic sanctions and a freeze on Syrian assets.

 

(6) What are the advantages of bombing Syria with missiles? (a) Highly visible response, (...b) no American troops on the ground.

 

(7) What are the disadvantages?

(a) Syrian civilians will inevitably be killed,

(b) it will fuel more anti-American, anti-Western sentiment, thereby increasing the ranks of terrorists in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East,

(c) our involvement will escalate if Assad or others use additional chemical weapons or engage in retribution against the us or Israel,

(d) we have no exit strategy,

(e) most of our allies aren’t with us, and we can’t be the world’s policeman everywhere,

(f) it will distract us from critical problems at home,

(g) the Syrian rebels are not our friends.

 

Question from me: 

 

Don't economic sanctions first, make sense?

 

 

Links:  Robert Reich | Facebook

 

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

 

 

Further proof on the good of "Obamacare"--and a great question for Kansans and Missourians

The Right Wingers are going to hate this little gem:

Kaiser study finds 'lower than expected' ObamaCare premiums

And from Forbes, the Right Wing, Conservative, business mag/rag:

Obamacare Premiums Will Be Cheaper Than Expected

And Bloomberg, also very business-friendly:

Obamacare Insurance Costs Affordable, Kaiser Survey Finds

Just some of the findings:

 

A 25-year-old New Yorker earning $25,000 a year will pay as little as $62 a month for health insurance next year, and a peer living in Vermont may pay nothing, according to a 17-state survey of premiums under the U.S. health-care overhaul.

The Kaiser Family Foundation report is the broadest look yet at what consumers will pay for health insurance when the Affordable Care Act takes full effect next year. The cost issue has been a top concern for President Barack Obama’s administration, which is trying to persuade at least 7 million Americans who now lack insurance to sign up for coverage starting Oct. 1.

California and New York are among the states that have announced rates for the plans to be sold through marketplaces called exchanges. Republican officials in states including Ohio, Indiana and Georgia have released partial information on premiums, emphasizing big increases for some customers.

“There’s obviously intense interest in what the choices are going to look like for consumers and what they’re going to have to pay in 2014,” Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at Menlo Park, California-based Kaiser, said in a phone interview. “For the most part insurers seem to find this market attractive and they’re pricing accordingly.”

The health law sets up a system of state-based online and telephone exchanges that will sell insurance from companies including UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) to people who don’t have coverage at their jobs. The law makes government subsidies in the form of a tax credit available to discount monthly premiums for people with low- to moderate-incomes.

So the question is, to all the Kansans and Missourians and all the other Right Wing, Republican, "red" states, do you really want to be left behind in all this?

Do you REALLY want to keep paying unnecessarily high--and higher--rates for health insurance, for the same coverage?

Do you?

 

A locally poignant note

Poignant since they're only a stone's throw away, in Northern Arkansas



I imagine they think of themselves as very Christian, too, don't you?

Syria, War and What Our Government Should Be Doing (guest quote)

"While all eyes are on Syria and America’s response, the real economy in which most Americans live is sputtering. More than four years after the recession officially ended, 11.5 million Americans are unemployed, many of them for years. Nearly 7 million have given up looking for work. The share of the population working or seeking a job is nearly the lowest in thirty years. The unemployment rate among high-school dropouts is 11 percent; for blacks, 12.6 percent. And the median wage keeps dropping, adjusted for inflation.

A decent society would put people to work -- even if this required more government spending on roads, bridges, ports, pipes, parks and education. And we can afford it. Deficit hawks in both parties don’t want you to know this but the deficit as a proportion of the total economy is shrinking fast: It’s on track to be only 4 percent by the end of this month, when the fiscal year ends. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts it will be only 3.4 percent in the fiscal year starting October 1. What does this mean? Consider that the average ratio of the deficit to the GDP over the past 30 years has been 3.3 percent. So the deficit is barely a problem at all. (We’re still projected to have large deficits starting 10 years from now because of all the aging boomers needing health care.) 

 A decent society would also lift the minimum wage and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (a wage subsidy) so no family with a full-time worker has to live in poverty." -- Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator.

 

A "decent society" would have leaders in government who would do the right thing for their country, their own political party be damned, so if/when the nation had the worst economy in 80 years, since the Great Depression, and also had collapsing infrastructure, literally, they'd pass a jobs/infrastructure/projects bill.

That's what a "decent society" would do.

 

Links:  Robert Reich

 

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

 

Robert Reich | Facebook

 

 

Our elections and government aren't already too flush with money

Now there's a chance the Supreme Court will make our campaign contribution extravaganzas even worse.

I just got this email this week:

In less than a month, the Supreme Court will take up a case called McCutcheon v. FEC  that would strike down some of the last remaining anti-bribery limits and usher in an era of unlimited corruption. It's Citizens United Round 2, it's a disaster, and if it stands, you can say buh-bye to whatever's left of our representative government.

Can you imagine yet MORE money flowing into our elections, buying our representatives and elections?

I didn't think I could.

Link.  Go here:  RepresentUs.org

And here's a petition you can sign:

With your help, we can stop this case. Court precedent is with us, but we need to show them that the public is too. More than 10,000 Represent.Us members have already added their names and comments. Please add yours.

Add your name to our demand, then add your own comments.

Demand that the Supreme Court — the People’s Court — represent the people. All of us. Not just the greedy moneybags trying to bleed America dry. Politicians from both sides of the aisle are on the record in agreement that The Court's Citizens United decision created nothing short of a disaster. 

This will be worse.

The Represent.Us campaign is more than just a petition, it’s a plan to take America back, and make no mistake — we are going to win. When we do, the American Anti-Corruption Act will make cases like McCutcheon irrelevant. But right now, we need you to add your name to help win the day:

www.Represent.Us/citizens-united-2/

Another link:

Shaun McCutcheon, et al. v. FEC - Federal Election Commission

Quote of the day--on more (or another) possible war

In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers. 

--Neville Chamberlain

Two thoughts on a possible Syrian war

Number one:



Number two:



Wish us luck.

We're going to need it.

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Quote of the day--on the internet, computers and us

In theory the Internet, along with its kindred advances, should expand our horizons, speeding us to aesthetic and intellectual territories we haven’t charted before. Often it does.

But at our instigation and with our assent, it also herds us into tribes of common thought and shared temperament, amplifying the timeless human tropism toward cliques. Cyberspace, like suburbia, has gated communities.

Our Web bookmarks and our chosen social-media feeds help us retreat deeper into our partisan camps. (Cable-television news lends its own mighty hand.) “It’s the great irony of the Internet era: people have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views,” Jonathan Martin wrote in Politico last year...

--Frank Bruni, New York Times columnist from his article in 

Sunday's paper, Traveling Without Seeing

On the start of a new school year

And taking it one step further, it doesn't end when formal schooling does.

Or it shouldn't, anyway.

Happy Labor Day

Labor Day, 2013

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."  --Abraham Lincoln

Link:  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/abrahamlin395631.html#KSEj1VTzE7T20o0P.99

Labor Day, 2013

click on picture for easier reading

The real question today, as we consider attacking yet another nation

"...have we learned nothing?

Time and again over the last half century American presidents have justified so-called surgical strikes because the nation's credibility is at stake, and because we have to take some action to show our strength and resolve -- only to learn years later that our credibility has suffered more from our foolish and brazen bellicosity, that the surgical strikes have only intensified hostilities and made us captive to forces beyond our control, and that our resolve eventually disappears in the face of mounting casualties of Americans and innocent civilians. We and others have paid an incalculable price.

On Labor Day weekend we should rather be testing the nation's resolve to provide good jobs at good wages to all Americans who need them, and measuring our credibility by the ideal of equal opportunity. And we should strike (and join striking workers) against big employers who won't provide their employees with minimally-decent wages. We need to commit ourselves to a living wage, and to providing more economic security to the millions of Americans now working harder but getting nowhere. Yes, Mr. President, a lot of people think something should be done -- about these mounting problems at our doorstep, within America. We can have more influence on the rest of the world by showing the rest of the world that we live by our ideals, than by using brute force to make points."

--Robert Reich,  American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator.

And the answer, I believe, a lot of us believe, is no, no we Americans have learned nothing. We haven't learned from Korea, we haven't learned from Vietnam, we haven't learned from even the still painful, actually not-ended 2nd Iraq War.

It was writer Gloria Emerson's take from the Vietnam War that a) we learned nothing from it, after the fact, and we nearly refuse to learn anything. If you haven't already, you might pick up her book:  Winners & Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses, and Ruins from ...

It was poignant then and still resonates today.

Links:

Robert Reich

Robert Reich

Robert Reich | Facebook

Gloria Emerson

Gloria Emerson, Chronicler of War's Damage

The Costs of War

 

6723 - Number of Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn casualties as confirmed by U.S. Central Command.

 

Six thousand seven hundred twenty-three American soldiers, lost to yet more pointless war.

 3 more dead this week:

 - Army Pvt. Jonathon Michael Dean Hostetter, August 23, 2013 - 20, of Humphreys, Missouri

 - Army Spc. Kenneth Clifford Alvarez, August 23, 2013 - 23, of Santa Maria, California

 - Army Sgt. 1st Class Ricardo Young, August 28, 2013 - 34, of Rosston, Arkansas

 

Another week and another $2 Billion spent in Afghanistan.

 

Total bill to U.S. Taxpayers = $1,468,604,110,382.

 

 

At what point do we raise hell, ladies and gentlemen?

 

At what point do we say "Enough!"

 

 

"Wait. Guys. That's NOT what I had in mind."

 

 

Entertainment overnight

If you don't understand French, does it really matter?

Do have a great weekend, folks.

American foreign policy, explained

And/but it's "their" fault.

With thanks to The Economist  for the cartoon.

When your only tool is a hammer...

...every problem looks like a nail:

America, the world's warmonger.


Link to watch "War Made Easy" (2007): http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/war_made_easy/

Let the second-guessing and criticism begin...

Obama Will Seek Syria Vote in Congress

As has already been said elsewhere, President Obama should come out for air and oxygen.

Republicans would suffocate.

Doesn't this seem true?

 

 

Meanwhile, out of all this?  Good news:

 

 

This, then, is nothing, if not a "win" for this President, the US, the American people, the world and peace. No, it's not a solution, by any means but it's great for nearly all concerned. Well, except the people being killed by Assad.

 

Maybe that "peace and love" thing has something to it after all.

 

The Rethuglicans are gonna' be pissed.

 

Again, some more.

 

And ain't 'dat just a dang shame?

Someone needs to point out, however, that the message, the resounding message now, since President Obama has come out for debating this strike and so many Americans are against it, rightly or wrongly (face it, if he's for something, many, many are going to be against it, just because), the message to the Syrians, being killed by their leader, is "F*CK YOU, YOU'RE SCREWED."

But have a nice weekend.
 

 

Additional link: 

 

The Familiar Beat of War Drums

 

 

Entertainment overnight

With a twist:




Have a great, long, happy, safe holiday weekend, y'all.

This got me

4 years old.  Fighting cancer.



Wow.

Freaking wow.

Entertainment overnight

Quote of the day

True then.

Still sadly, tragically true today.

After yesterday's 50 year anniversary of the March on Washington

True in the 70's when author James Baldwin first said it, still true today:



Let's stay at this work, America

Entertainment overnight

Think how antithetical this is to the way we view prisons and prisoners in this country:



And then there's the acutely appropriate lyrics:

"All I really wanna' say is they don't really care about us."

Finally, keeping in mind this is from the Phillipines, how ironic that they'd use a quote and portrait of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., from right here in our good old USA.

Oddly poignant and still effective.

On the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington

Things that need to be remembered today, on this anniversary:

The Right Wing and Republicans who wrap their arms so squarely around Martin Luther King now--or, at least, his legacy--seem to be doing so extremely conveniently given that so many of them and their political party are now fighting for voter ID laws which disenfranchise, largely, minorities, including and especially black Americans, Hispanics, the poor and elderly in this nation.

It's also so contradictory and hypocritical of them because they and their political party have come out against continuing the Voting Rights Act and because they have, time and again, come out squarely, oh-so-strongly and vehemently against affirmative action.

And now, today, on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, so many years ago, Rachel Maddow so rightly points out the following on her blog and Facebook page:

Why didn't we hear more Republican voices at today's event on civil rights?

It's because GOP leaders didn't accept the invitations to speak.

A partisan advantage at the Lincoln Memorial

Former President Bill Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama, former President Jimmy Carter, and President Barack Obama

From the article:

If you've spent any part of the afternoon watching the event honoring the 50th anniversary of the March of Washington, you may have noticed something most of the political speakers had in common. They were, well, Democrats -- and I don't just mean those who celebrate democracy.

Viewers and attendees heard from Democratic presidents, lawmakers, governors, and even mayors. So where were the Republicans? Drudge whined, for example, that the King family "blew it" by "allowing no one with different political beliefs on stage."

And while I suspect this will soon become the conventional wisdom on the right, it's worth noting that many Republicans were invited, but declined for a variety reasons.

Republican congressional leaders were absent from Wednesday's 50th anniversary event commemorating the March on Washington.

The offices of Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner both said they were invited to the event, but were unable to attend due to previous scheduling commitments.

Boehner participated in a July congressional ceremony in the Capitol to mark the anniversary and Cantor participated in a pilgrimage earlier in the year to Selma Alabama with civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis. Cantor's office says they only received an invitation 12 days ago, and his calendar was already full.

Boehner, for the record, is on a 15-state bus tour, raising money for conservative Republican lawmakers. It's not clear what Cantor had scheduled for this afternoon.

The Wall Street Journal added that both Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were invited, but both declined citing poor health. (The younger Bush, you'll recall, is recovering from a heart procedure.)

It's not that the King family "allowed no one with different political beliefs on stage"; it's that Democrats were better able to accept the invitations to participate.

____________________________________________

I say again, why any woman, black American, Hispanic, gay person or elderly in America would vote Republican--unless they're already wealthy--is beyond me.

So don't be too quick to pat yourself on your back, America. We still have a long, long way to go for anything remotely close to equality of any kind, let alone social, economic or socio-economic.

US Economy Leaving Record Numbers in Severe Poverty

Poverty in America: 4 out of 5 adults struggle

Bill Maher, President Obama, the NFL and Socialism

Yes, the NFL: