Beck SLAMS Olbermann: 'He Is Such A Joke'

Dish out but can't take it much?

Isn't this the same cult leader who regularly cries whenever someone calls him on his lies?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The Obama Disappointment and Its Cost

"Sometimes you have to sacrifice the present to better the future."



Our country requires intensive care treatment at this point after the mess left to our president, but the bailouts and taking ownership without control or accountability is really more of a "sacrifice the future to save the financial interests of the few in the present."



Yes, there has been progress, and I appreciate the student loan reforms too. However, it isn't rational to bend over backwards to try and please people who utterly hate you and, by judging some of their signs and slogans, want to hurt you as well, while ignoring the people who support you and want you to succeed. Yes, Barack Obama is everyone's president and just like a father who sometimes has to drag the kids kicking and screaming to what is right, he needs to make the hard decisions that are going to incur the whining and loud noises from fox et al. For the good of everyone, the benefits to the majority really do outweigh the slight loss of money and privilege to the few. If he can't, then we are going back to he Dark Ages when he is defeated.
About Afghanistan
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We're in a One-and-a-Half Dip Recession

Candidate bush jr. pushed his tax cut as the central theme of his campaign, the number $1.6 trillion over 10 years was used so many times you'd have to be braindead not to remember. His next round in '03 was also large and the republicans did not even hint as to cutting any spending to offset the loss of revenue, remember the rather large "transition cost" attached to SS privatization? So that is at least a trillion. As to 50% of the country not paying any taxes, how does this myth ever get traction? If you're going to make this claim at least qualify it as "Federal income taxes" because even if you have no income at all you still pay all sorts of excise and sales taxes and FICA is deducted from the first dollar of your income. Also, most of the business tax cuts you cite were actually rebates given to well-established multinationals, given even when the company weaseled out of any tax liability. The failure rate of business startups has not improved by these gifts, so how exactly do tax cuts help the rich people who "took the risk to start a business" benefit anyone?
About Financial Crisis
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Olbermann SLAMS 'Lame Duck' Campbell Brown, Includes Her In 'Worst Person' List (VIDEO)

False equivalency is at the heart of the matter. How can anyone report two or more sides of a story with equal weight? But as Keith says, conservative opinion shows toss out propaganda and lies in an attempt to mentally contort reality to fit their worldview in spite of facts, while the shows on MSNBC simply point out the silliness and ignorance in the conservative movement. It really takes discipline for the fox viewer to ignore what they see, if they see reality at all, and instead believe the bizzarro world manufactured by propaganda. This is a big country and it is impossible to experience everything firsthand, therefore we need the media to know what is going on, but the noise machine continues to distort that transmission mechanism. It is too easy for propagandists to set up caricatures that play into people's alienation and society's atomization, unfortunately there probably are many people who didn't know that Nixon resigned, or that at one time the Republican party was able to put nation first instead of the feudalist rigidity of today.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

What is so great about owning vs. renting?

Everyone's experience with the fundamental need for shelter may be different, but having heard from the elite for so many years about the virtue of owning a house I would like to apply some personal experience to this aspect of life. Individuals and groups make decisions based on the utility, value, or benefits of those choices, trying to maximize gains or minimize losses. At least that is how humans operate in the economic world of rational actor theory. Tradition, propaganda, and ignorance can influence the rationality of actions. I recall Paul Krugman writing about the particular fixation on home ownership in the Anglo-Saxon world in The Conscience of a Liberal, "an Englishman's home is his castle." 

So, it might be a question worth examining in light of the financial meltdown that was caused by too many exotic mortgages and too many buyers not ready for them. I'm not going to play the "blame the victim" card so many do, that it is the fault of people buying and not the brokers and banks. All you have to look at is who gained and who lost to tell the real story, banks bailed out and millions foreclosed on out in the street. But that really isn't the point of why I'm writing.

Maybe it is just me, but we seem to be living in a much more transient society these days, changing jobs and residences far more often than in the past. When I got out of the service I had to live with my folks for a few months while I got a job and readjusted to civilian life but rented my first apartment soon thereafter. It was a modest Cape Cod house that my stepfather was trying to sell, so I was the "caretaker" in the short term. He cut me a deal on rent so that he had someone to mow the lawn and stuff until it sold and not eat the whole mortgage payment. That arrangement only lasted a few months as well, as did the apartment after that, and the apartment after that. I even traded my compact car in on an SUV so I could pack easier and never really bought any furniture beyond the handmedown bed, couch and dresser my parents gave me since I never lived anywhere long enough to need it.

I finally said 'enough!' and bought a modest Cape Cod house just like the one I started out in, but for three times the rent (mortgage+escrow) and twice what I was paying on my last apartment. Society teaches us that, even on such a modest scale, buying and owning is superior to renting because of tax deductions and the value of property always goes up. Right? How many people have found that to be true, show of hands? I think I did get a bit of a tax advantage through the years (I actually lived in that house longer than any other place in my life) but I do not think I came out ahead of friends who rented comparable houses. How about rising value and increasing equity? Well, as most people did in those days, I refinanced to a lower rate and my payment went down but it added in fees more than what I had paid down in principle.

Then, after two layoffs and a divorce I finally said goodbye to that house. The initial sale price was 19% higher than what I paid 6 years previously, which is not out of line by any means (the previous owners doubled the price in 7 years) but that was a seller's market and I needed to move during a buyer's market. I moved in December and the house didn't sell until the next November, after paying the realtor's fee I came out $5k ahead but had to pay $7k in mortgage payments during that time. So, it was pretty lousy for me but good for the realtor and bank. I'm not saying owning=bad, renting=good. Twice before that I was kicked out of apartments because the house sold to someone new, but man, does it have to be so hard just to keep a roof over your head?

My wife and I are thinking about moving, whether in the next three months or three years, and hoping that what happened to my old place doesn't happen to us with this one. But with job changes, school changes, and a growing family, the future is pretty uncertain right now. I know I had a greater point to this post, but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. I think it was that the benefits of owning, mostly the tax deductions, have been meaningless because our standard deduction was greater than itemizing (I know that jarrs against the popular myth of how overtaxed Wisconsinites are) and units in our building are selling for less than what we owe on the mortgage, right now with the commission we'd probably lose money selling. So, I think the point was, in my family's situation, we have all the responsibility and none of the benefits for owning. It seems to all come down to luck, just like Arriana Huffington said recently. In the On-Your-Own society, there are a few winners and a lot of losers and the deck is stacked pretty far against us regular folks.

I renounce my fealty to the Federal government

Yes, you read that right. I no longer believe in a united, national government for the US. All that I believe in, fair business practices, laws that respect workers and their labor, a social safety net, progressive taxation, civil liberties, and so on are really no longer applicable to a considerable minority of people in this country. The Roman Empire split into seperate halves in a first official, under Diocletian and the Tetrarchy, and then de facto basis after the death of Theodosius. It is time for the US to admit that one American nation is no longer the case and make preparations for division. This would have been easier if Lincoln had just let the South go and try to evacuate as many slaves as possible for resettlement in the North or as a colonization system that was popular in some contemporary circles, but over half a million Americans had to die to keep the anti-democratic elements inside. Oh well, lesson learned.

What got me thinking about this was several more Liberal commentators, Michael Moore most prominent among them, saying that President Obama and the Democrats would fix the country for conservatives as well. The screeching has really reached a fervent pitch, teabaggers and their fellow travelers don't want the country fixed, they want it to fall. To be replaced with whatever libertarian theocractic fantasy they promote this week and it is time to let them. And good riddence, for about 2 generations (say, 1933-1980) we had a grown-up, middle class nation with reasonably competent government, economy, and culture but the last generation or so that has more or less fallen apart. It is no use to try and peel back the talons of propaganda and mind control to even begin the process of rebuilding that society, the minority that does not believe in America anymore just needs to go its own way.

I propose a referendum, Red or Blue. Do you want to live in a society that works together to try and address problems? Or do you want to live in a libertarian theocracy where you're free to shop, free to rent yourself to a corporation, and free to judge anyone you want as an infidel and watch their every move for sedition? Then, I can pledge alliegance to a country shorn of people who hate my guts. Some state boundaries may have to be moved to make the new countries contiguous and we on the Blue side will ensure that the Reds have access to ocean ports. New capitals can be built, the Federal debt can be allocated on a per capita basis (more than fair considering the bulk of that debt was incurred by Reagan and Bush jr.) and Federal assets can be divided in the same way.

Individuals who elect to remain in the Blue country will by definition consent to pay whatever taxes the majority votes for, whatever laws and regulations that majority feels are appropriate and be entitled to whatever services and programs the majority enacts, we will tolerate no more stubborn obstruction. Businesses that remain in the Blue country will respect those laws as well. Obviously, the Red country will encompass portions of the south and interior west. Those parasitic regions that huff and puff about being self-reliant will no longer be subsidized by the Blue country and will have to get along somehow. But think about it my tea-bagging friends, you can be free to own as many guns as you want, no taxes, no services, you can put God back into schools that are completely private and have no obligation to teach silly concepts like evolution. We in the Blue country will be free to organize whatever social contract we see fit, without the interference of lobbyists or militias.

You conservatives can then live your lives exactly how you like, free to shoot anyone who trespasses on your property, free to be poisoned by unregulated food, water, and drugs. Free to be paid whatever wage the market will bear and free to buy inelastic items like energy and healthcare for whatever the monopolies charge. There can be no constructive dialogue between us, no compromises, it is best that we go our seperate ways.

Now it's a contract from America?

The teabaggers and their corporate backers have now released an astroturf, pseudo-manifesto of their demands on a country of 304 million that was endorsed by a whopping 450,000 medievalists out there. This rehash of supposedly principled policy reforms with self-righteous "responsibility" type recommendations is incredibly vague at points, harmful to most of the people and planet should not to be taken seriously by any member of the reality-based community.

First, where was this outrage when Bush was hugely increasing the size, scope, and reach of the Federal government? Deficits did not bother the everpresent angry white people who have coalesced into the teabaggers. Doubling the national debt for the benefit of the corporate class, privatizing the military in our disasterous colonization of Iraq, and the devestation of schools across the country was shrugged off. Perhaps the results of a recent poll and analysis of tea party supporters sheds light on things. Supporters of the english only crowd (with the great mastery of the language) seem to include frustrated or cast-out members of the business class who thought if only the gravy train kept running long enough, some of those earmarks and no bid contracts might just trickle down to them. Now the biggest fear seems to be that the goodies will bypass the petty predators and go right to the poor (read: blacks).

It must take incredible discipline to not see how ridiculous it is to demand "free-market" fealty from Democrats while ignoring it from republicans. Everything they want has been tried, failed miserably and done incredible damage to real people's lives. See: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too by J.K. Galbraith or America: What Went Wrong? by Barlett and Steele for some of the grisly details.

Here's my two cents, for what it is worth. Direct action is rarely effective, take the anti-war protests. If millions of people in this country couldn't stop a war of conquest by protesting, why the hell should we take 450k whining, selfish, failed yuppies seriously? Democrats who cave to this nonsense do deserve to be voted out, this country faces too many real problems to be distracted by a statistically insignificant, if loud, opposition group. Ignore this manifesto and the its supporters, ignore the obstructionist opposition party that simply wants to seize back power by any means neccessary and remember that the majority wants government of, for, and by the people.