A letter from "your" Congressman to you.
Sucker.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Paul Krugman Again Tells the Truth--The Conservatives Lie Constantly About the Meltdown
He lays it out straight and true right here. Excerpt:
Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.
Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.
In part, the prevalence of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” As Democrats have pointed out, three days before the House vote on banking reform Republican leaders met with more than 100 financial-industry lobbyists to coordinate strategies. But it also reflects the extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology, one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy.
Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.
Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.
In part, the prevalence of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” As Democrats have pointed out, three days before the House vote on banking reform Republican leaders met with more than 100 financial-industry lobbyists to coordinate strategies. But it also reflects the extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology, one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy.
Read the whole thing. It's worth it.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Friday, December 04, 2009
On Foreign Policy, McCain Isn't an "Expert"--He's an Idiot
Take a look at the details here. And let me emphasize the central quote from the posting, from Frank Rich back in September:
To appreciate this crowd's [The Neocon War Fanatics] spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It's not just that he echoed the Bush administration's constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda's attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war "easily." Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would "probably get along" in post-Saddam Iraq because there was "not a history of clashes" between them.
What's more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.
Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could "in the long term" somehow "muddle through" in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to "muddle through" there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the "remarkable success" of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony "truce" ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb's up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn't even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site. He takes no responsibility for any of this. [...]
Along with his tribunes in Congress and the punditocracy, Wrong-Way McCain still presumes to give America its marching orders. With his Senate brethren in the Three Amigos, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, he took to The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page to assert that "we have no choice" but to go all-in on Afghanistan -- rightly or wrongly, presumably -- just as we had in Iraq. Why? "The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse," they wrote. "The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again."
This shameless argument assumes -- perhaps correctly -- that no one in this country remembers anything.
To appreciate this crowd's [The Neocon War Fanatics] spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It's not just that he echoed the Bush administration's constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda's attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war "easily." Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would "probably get along" in post-Saddam Iraq because there was "not a history of clashes" between them.
What's more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.
Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could "in the long term" somehow "muddle through" in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to "muddle through" there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the "remarkable success" of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony "truce" ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb's up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn't even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site. He takes no responsibility for any of this. [...]
Along with his tribunes in Congress and the punditocracy, Wrong-Way McCain still presumes to give America its marching orders. With his Senate brethren in the Three Amigos, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, he took to The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page to assert that "we have no choice" but to go all-in on Afghanistan -- rightly or wrongly, presumably -- just as we had in Iraq. Why? "The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse," they wrote. "The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again."
This shameless argument assumes -- perhaps correctly -- that no one in this country remembers anything.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Short Takes
*When on earth did Tiger Woods' personal problems become anyone else's business? Since when does he owe anyone an explanation for his private behavior? Why do so many people think they have the right to know intimate details of his life that are none of their concern? Celebrities are not our property; we don't own them, we don't have any right to know about their lives at home, and they owe us absolutely nothing. A lot of Americans can't seem to grasp these facts.
*And speaking of celebrities, anyone who obsesses about the weight, clothing, hairstyles, or dating lives of famous people is fit for little else intellectually than reading Us and People magazines. People who are morbidly interested in such things are wasting their lives and their minds, in my humble opinion. Then again, these people may have such humdrum and ordinary lives that they must lose themselves in the lives of others. That's even sadder.
*John McCain has been on the major Sunday talk shows repeatedly since he lost the 2008 election by 9.5 million votes and an electoral vote of 365-173. Why? He has proposed no major legislation, he isn't part of the Republican Senate leadership, and his responses to almost any question are tiresomely predictable. Why is he given a platform so often?
*For that matter, as I have said, who really gives a damn what a pathetic, know-nothing amateur like Charles Krauthammer thinks about foreign policy? That the brilliant and insightful Juan Cole, who actually speaks four different Middle Eastern/South Asian languages and is deeply knowledgeable about the Middle East, is heard far less often than a neocon fanatic like Krauthammer, is a damning indictment of our so-called "mainstream" media.
*Salon employs both the brilliant and invaluable Glenn Greenwald and the wretched, demented Camille Paglia. What kind of corporate thinking is reflected in this? I won't be giving a cent to Salon as long as they give Paglia an outlet for her Limbaugh worship, her Obama bashing, and her non-stop lies and distortions. Period.
*If I believed in karma, I would consider it karmic justice that the horrible, pathologically selfish Ayn Rand died of lung cancer because she refused to believe government-issued warnings about the danger of smoking. Gee, what a shame.
*Those who believe in the "Magic of the Free Market" should check out the story of how George Steinbrenner, perhaps the richest owner in all of sports, got the city of New York's taxpayers to finance his grotesque new stadium. Look at it here. Again, for the hundredth time: there is no free market in America. There is a rigged market in which the rich and powerful manipulate the law to benefit themselves. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to get their head out of the Dreamworld.
*President Obama said withdrawal from Afghanistan would start in July 2011 contingent on conditions on the ground at that time. The Right Wing Eternal War Machine has ignored that part and is saying that the President is "comforting" our enemies by "setting a deadline". Are the people who hurl this filth simply: A. Inattentive B. Insanely hostile to anything Barack Obama proposes C. Stupid D. Some gruesome combination of all of the above?
*For all you Democrats and Independents who lean Democratic who don't feel like voting in 2010, remember this: if you don't vote, you're handing America back to the people who wave signs with swastikas and Barack Obama's picture on them. You're handing America to the Sarah Palin fan club. You're handing our nation over to religious fanatics who hate everything our Constitution stands for and who consider you a class of anti-American subhumans. You're turning America over to the sickest, most malicious political opposition I have seen in my entire lifetime. Can you really live with that? Remember: the Perfect is the Enemy of the Good. President Obama isn't perfect by a long shot, but ask yourself this: which America do you want--Barack Obama's or Glenn Beck's?
Sunday, November 29, 2009
I Don't Hate Christmas, I Hate "Christmas Time"
It started in mid-October, a couple of weeks before Halloween: retailers in our neck of the woods started putting up "cheery" wreaths with red bows, accompanied by bells, and Santas. And my heart sank, and an involuntary scowl came across my face: it had started already--one of my least favorite times of year--Christmas Time.
Well I've had it with this. I don't hate Christmas, but by God I've had it up to here with Christmas time.
Allow me to explain.
No one really knows the true birth date of Yeshua ben-Yosef, and the date of 25 December didn't really get chosen as Jesus's birthday until the 4th century AD. Its selection was done (according to some researchers) to supersede the pagan solstice celebrations and perhaps to co-opt the commemoration of Mithra's birthday. But for whatever reason, the date of 25 December was chosen by Christians to mark Jesus's birth, and although it is almost certainly not the true date, it is the one on which they have settled. Therefore, 25 December is a sacred date on the Christian religious calendar.
Yes, the Christian calendar.
I am not a Christian; my wife is a very devout one. But we do share a similar dismay at the ugly, grasping, vulgar, greed driven flood of advertising that washes over us this time of year. Speaking for myself, I have come to hate Christmas retail commercials, with their happy little jingles and the spokespeople merrily suggesting you buy this power tool or that car or this perfume or these clothes. A sacred religious holiday has been taken over by hucksters and grifters who don't give a damn about Christmas's religious significance; they just want your money, and as much of it as they can persuade you to squander. It has become downright offensive to me, as if grasping hands were reaching out of the TV to get me to max out my VISA for the sake of their monetary gain, and to hell with anything else. (It's a great reason to shut off the television, I'll say that.)
Similarly, I hate secular "Christmas" music burbling out at me in every retail store. I don't mind religious Christmas music, because it is, for the most part, quite beautiful, but I am sick to death of tacky, ugly, banal "holiday" music like Jingle Bell Rock and Here Comes Santa Claus. After a half century of being bombarded with this crap, it has become a sort of audio torment. Enough, already!
For most adults, especially in economically tough times like this, Christmas is one of the toughest, most stressful times of the year, when already hard-pressed household budgets are strained even more. The bulk of this burden seems to fall on women, who have been made to feel guilty by countless magazine articles and TV shows if they don't provide their families with the "perfect" Christmas. Time and tempers grow short, and the effort to be "happy" and "merry" often simply results in misery.
During this "holiday season" people are forced to fight their way through crowds of other tired, stressed-out shoppers, spending money they don't have on things they wish they didn't have to buy. And are you trying to eat sensibly? Are you kidding? During this "traditional" orgy of junk food and overeating? The hangover in January is therefore twofold: credit card bills and extra pounds, part of what makes the post-Christmas period so dismal.
Is this what Christmas really should be about?
Some friendly suggestions:
1. Christmas presents should be for children only, tapering off gradually over the years until a person reaches adulthood. Yes, for young children, Christmas is magical. When my first granddaughter was 4, she saw that the cookies and milk she had left out for Santa had been consumed, along with the carrots for the reindeer, and, wide-eyed, she saw the big bunch of presents Santa had left by the tree. Seeing her astonished, joyful face was one of the high points of my life, an amazing moment, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. But as the years go on, and belief in Santa evaporates, Christmas simply becomes a time to accumulate a "haul" of gifts, and older children often become somewhat jaded by the whole thing. And while spouses might want to exchange small, symbolic presents, it seems wasteful (and strange) to me to indulge in spending money to express one's love. In my view, adults would use their money more wisely giving it to:
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
UNICEF
Your local food bank
The U.S. Marines Toys for Tots Foundation
or any other worthy charity you can think of. Help your church or your community organization organize food baskets for the poor. And warm clothing and toys for poor families with children strike me as being much more in the spirit of Christmas than buying a Lexus.
2. Start letting retail stores know that you're getting tired of seeing Christmas displays in mid-October.
3. Start letting advertisers know that their obnoxious "holiday" commercials are driving you away from them.
4. Stop trying to have a "perfect" Christmas that makes you exhausted and miserable, and rather enjoy a "less than perfect" celebration with family and friends. Martha Stewart and her ilk have tried to tell you that if your holiday decorating and food aren't "perfect", then you've failed. Screw that nonsense.
5. Remember that a lot of Christians are becoming increasingly appalled by the commercialized orgy that surrounds Christmas. While I don't subscribe to the idiotic "War on Christmas" garbage that Fox "News" puts out, it might not hurt to be sensitive to those for whom this holiday has deep meaning. (For the record, my beloved sister is a retired Methodist minister who is still close to her heathen, apostate brother, and my wife celebrates Christmas with great reverence.)
I remember a time when I still believed. It was Christmas Eve service, one that had started with the inspiring, chill-giving Angels We Have Heard on High, led by our choir as they walked in procession down the aisle. The service was punctuated by the beautiful Gospel story from Luke and countless sacred hymns, and ended with each person lighting candles in our darkened church while the congregation sang Silent Night. The feeling of closeness and kinship and love for all people I felt at that moment was overwhelming. That service struck me as more meaningful than any useless Christmas party or unneeded gift ever could be.
I no longer embrace faith, but I still embrace Christmas as a symbol of charity and remembrance of our fellow humans. I'd like to see Christmas time once again be something sacred and special, instead of a significant period of GDP growth. I still love Christmas.
Now if only we could get rid of "Christmas Time"!
Well I've had it with this. I don't hate Christmas, but by God I've had it up to here with Christmas time.
Allow me to explain.
No one really knows the true birth date of Yeshua ben-Yosef, and the date of 25 December didn't really get chosen as Jesus's birthday until the 4th century AD. Its selection was done (according to some researchers) to supersede the pagan solstice celebrations and perhaps to co-opt the commemoration of Mithra's birthday. But for whatever reason, the date of 25 December was chosen by Christians to mark Jesus's birth, and although it is almost certainly not the true date, it is the one on which they have settled. Therefore, 25 December is a sacred date on the Christian religious calendar.
Yes, the Christian calendar.
I am not a Christian; my wife is a very devout one. But we do share a similar dismay at the ugly, grasping, vulgar, greed driven flood of advertising that washes over us this time of year. Speaking for myself, I have come to hate Christmas retail commercials, with their happy little jingles and the spokespeople merrily suggesting you buy this power tool or that car or this perfume or these clothes. A sacred religious holiday has been taken over by hucksters and grifters who don't give a damn about Christmas's religious significance; they just want your money, and as much of it as they can persuade you to squander. It has become downright offensive to me, as if grasping hands were reaching out of the TV to get me to max out my VISA for the sake of their monetary gain, and to hell with anything else. (It's a great reason to shut off the television, I'll say that.)
Similarly, I hate secular "Christmas" music burbling out at me in every retail store. I don't mind religious Christmas music, because it is, for the most part, quite beautiful, but I am sick to death of tacky, ugly, banal "holiday" music like Jingle Bell Rock and Here Comes Santa Claus. After a half century of being bombarded with this crap, it has become a sort of audio torment. Enough, already!
For most adults, especially in economically tough times like this, Christmas is one of the toughest, most stressful times of the year, when already hard-pressed household budgets are strained even more. The bulk of this burden seems to fall on women, who have been made to feel guilty by countless magazine articles and TV shows if they don't provide their families with the "perfect" Christmas. Time and tempers grow short, and the effort to be "happy" and "merry" often simply results in misery.
During this "holiday season" people are forced to fight their way through crowds of other tired, stressed-out shoppers, spending money they don't have on things they wish they didn't have to buy. And are you trying to eat sensibly? Are you kidding? During this "traditional" orgy of junk food and overeating? The hangover in January is therefore twofold: credit card bills and extra pounds, part of what makes the post-Christmas period so dismal.
Is this what Christmas really should be about?
Some friendly suggestions:
1. Christmas presents should be for children only, tapering off gradually over the years until a person reaches adulthood. Yes, for young children, Christmas is magical. When my first granddaughter was 4, she saw that the cookies and milk she had left out for Santa had been consumed, along with the carrots for the reindeer, and, wide-eyed, she saw the big bunch of presents Santa had left by the tree. Seeing her astonished, joyful face was one of the high points of my life, an amazing moment, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. But as the years go on, and belief in Santa evaporates, Christmas simply becomes a time to accumulate a "haul" of gifts, and older children often become somewhat jaded by the whole thing. And while spouses might want to exchange small, symbolic presents, it seems wasteful (and strange) to me to indulge in spending money to express one's love. In my view, adults would use their money more wisely giving it to:
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
UNICEF
Your local food bank
The U.S. Marines Toys for Tots Foundation
or any other worthy charity you can think of. Help your church or your community organization organize food baskets for the poor. And warm clothing and toys for poor families with children strike me as being much more in the spirit of Christmas than buying a Lexus.
2. Start letting retail stores know that you're getting tired of seeing Christmas displays in mid-October.
3. Start letting advertisers know that their obnoxious "holiday" commercials are driving you away from them.
4. Stop trying to have a "perfect" Christmas that makes you exhausted and miserable, and rather enjoy a "less than perfect" celebration with family and friends. Martha Stewart and her ilk have tried to tell you that if your holiday decorating and food aren't "perfect", then you've failed. Screw that nonsense.
5. Remember that a lot of Christians are becoming increasingly appalled by the commercialized orgy that surrounds Christmas. While I don't subscribe to the idiotic "War on Christmas" garbage that Fox "News" puts out, it might not hurt to be sensitive to those for whom this holiday has deep meaning. (For the record, my beloved sister is a retired Methodist minister who is still close to her heathen, apostate brother, and my wife celebrates Christmas with great reverence.)
I remember a time when I still believed. It was Christmas Eve service, one that had started with the inspiring, chill-giving Angels We Have Heard on High, led by our choir as they walked in procession down the aisle. The service was punctuated by the beautiful Gospel story from Luke and countless sacred hymns, and ended with each person lighting candles in our darkened church while the congregation sang Silent Night. The feeling of closeness and kinship and love for all people I felt at that moment was overwhelming. That service struck me as more meaningful than any useless Christmas party or unneeded gift ever could be.
I no longer embrace faith, but I still embrace Christmas as a symbol of charity and remembrance of our fellow humans. I'd like to see Christmas time once again be something sacred and special, instead of a significant period of GDP growth. I still love Christmas.
Now if only we could get rid of "Christmas Time"!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
"This is the most exasperatingly stupid woman on the planet."
So vents John Cole, and he is exactly correct. His target is Palin, the lying village idiot. Read her borderline demented attempt to explain Ronald Reagan's foreign policy in regard to the Soviet Union. And then tell me that this knuckleheaded GRIFTER AND CON ARTIST is fit for any public office, much less the Presidency.
I can think of plenty of politicians who are genuinely, unambiguously dumb. I've even met a few, and marveled at how they were able to attain any kind of political responsibilities, given their limited intellectual prowess. But I don't think I've ever seen a politician as conspicuously unintelligent as Sarah Palin gain national prominence. She represents the very worst American politics has to offer, and the embarrassment she brings to the political system is severe.
BTW, I love the last paragraph of Steve Benen's post on this matter:
I can think of plenty of politicians who are genuinely, unambiguously dumb. I've even met a few, and marveled at how they were able to attain any kind of political responsibilities, given their limited intellectual prowess. But I don't think I've ever seen a politician as conspicuously unintelligent as Sarah Palin gain national prominence. She represents the very worst American politics has to offer, and the embarrassment she brings to the political system is severe.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Sarah Palin as a Fundamentalist, Theocratic Eva Peron
Frank Schaeffer has the goods here. Palin is, without doubt, the most dangerous politician in America today, the visible spearhead of the fascist, theocratic, lunatic Right, a cult that is determined to impose a Right-wing religious dictatorship on our country. Some interesting excerpts:
Here's a woman whose husband associated closely with the Alaska secessionist party, which itself associates with lunatic fringe secessionist groups and far right militias nationwide. Here's a woman who stabs John McCain in the back, the man who brought this small town mayor and one time Alaska Governor to national prominence. Here's a woman who quit the job of governor to become a full-time rabblerouser in the style of a Munich 1930s beer hall putsch.
And what's her backing? The Rupert Murdoch/Reconstructionist Empire, the marriage of hard right capitalism with harder right Old Testament would-be theocracy.
Without Fox News she'd be nothing. Without the 5 million Murdoch paid her for her book she'd be stuck scraping by on $100,000 speaking fees. Without the millions of evangelicals who are Fox News' audience Fox would not exist. And who ghosted the book for her?
Lynn Vincent, the features editor of World, a fundamentalist flagship magazine. Vincent also ghost wrote the memoir of Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the former head of the Army's Special Forces Command, who believes that his job in the U.S. military was to defeat Satan for the Christian nation of America.
Here's a woman whose husband associated closely with the Alaska secessionist party, which itself associates with lunatic fringe secessionist groups and far right militias nationwide. Here's a woman who stabs John McCain in the back, the man who brought this small town mayor and one time Alaska Governor to national prominence. Here's a woman who quit the job of governor to become a full-time rabblerouser in the style of a Munich 1930s beer hall putsch.
And what's her backing? The Rupert Murdoch/Reconstructionist Empire, the marriage of hard right capitalism with harder right Old Testament would-be theocracy.
Without Fox News she'd be nothing. Without the 5 million Murdoch paid her for her book she'd be stuck scraping by on $100,000 speaking fees. Without the millions of evangelicals who are Fox News' audience Fox would not exist. And who ghosted the book for her?
Lynn Vincent, the features editor of World, a fundamentalist flagship magazine. Vincent also ghost wrote the memoir of Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the former head of the Army's Special Forces Command, who believes that his job in the U.S. military was to defeat Satan for the Christian nation of America.
The Radical Right is determined to make Palin--a demented, lying sociopath--president of the United States. We must be vigilant and guard our republic against this terrible possibility at all costs. If the Palinites ever seize power, it will mean the death of our nation--and the end of our children's future.
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Bush Legacy: 1 in 6 Hungry in the U.S. in 2008
Another crisis caused by Bush's conservative policies. Excerpt:
The magnitude of the increase in food shortages -- and, in some cases, outright hunger -- identified in the report startled even the nation's leading anti-poverty advocates, who have grown accustomed to longer lines lately at food banks and soup kitchens. The findings also intensify pressure on the White House to fulfill a pledge to stamp out childhood hunger made by President Obama, who called the report "unsettling."
The data show that dependable access to adequate food has especially deteriorated among families with children. In 2008, nearly 17 million children, or 22.5 percent, lived in households in which food at times was scarce -- 4 million children more than the year before. And the number of youngsters who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.
Among Americans of all ages, more than 16 percent -- or 49 million people -- sometimes ran short of nutritious food, compared with about 12 percent the year before. The deterioration in access to food during 2008 among both children and adults far eclipses that of any other single year in the report's history.
The magnitude of the increase in food shortages -- and, in some cases, outright hunger -- identified in the report startled even the nation's leading anti-poverty advocates, who have grown accustomed to longer lines lately at food banks and soup kitchens. The findings also intensify pressure on the White House to fulfill a pledge to stamp out childhood hunger made by President Obama, who called the report "unsettling."
The data show that dependable access to adequate food has especially deteriorated among families with children. In 2008, nearly 17 million children, or 22.5 percent, lived in households in which food at times was scarce -- 4 million children more than the year before. And the number of youngsters who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.
Among Americans of all ages, more than 16 percent -- or 49 million people -- sometimes ran short of nutritious food, compared with about 12 percent the year before. The deterioration in access to food during 2008 among both children and adults far eclipses that of any other single year in the report's history.
Shocking and disgraceful. Another "badge of honor" for the Radical Right.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
On Veterans Day 2009
Thank you to all those who have served our nation in uniform. When the country needed you, you were there. Everyone owes you a debt of gratitude, and as President Lincoln said, our nation has an obligation to care for you and your families. For all you have done, God Bless You.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Greenwald on the Fort Hood Tragedy
As usual, Glenn Greenwald has an intelligent take on the reporting surrounding yesterday's terrible events at Fort Hood, Texas. Give it a read and tell me what you think.
I extend my condolences to all the family members of those who died.
I would also like to add:
1. That we don't know all the motivations of the murderer, but he appears to have been an Islamist fanatic.
2. The shooter's religion will be used by some as an excuse for an accelerated witch hunt against Muslims.
3. The Radical Right will tie this all to President Obama, somehow.
I extend my condolences to all the family members of those who died.
I would also like to add:
1. That we don't know all the motivations of the murderer, but he appears to have been an Islamist fanatic.
2. The shooter's religion will be used by some as an excuse for an accelerated witch hunt against Muslims.
3. The Radical Right will tie this all to President Obama, somehow.
This is So Freaking Brilliant
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The 11/3 Project | ||||
| ||||
By the way, what Democratic commentator is even in the same Universe of lying, unhinged, neo-P.T. Barnumesque lunacy as Glenn Beck?
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Right Wing Fanatics Comparing President Obama's Health Proposals to TERRORISM
The whole filthy, disgusting story is here.
They have no shame. They have no morals. They have no sense of proportion. And they have ZERO respect for the victims of genuine terrorism. But after all, these Glenn Beck-style right-wing bastards routinely defecate all over Holocaust victims and those who died in the Gulag by comparing President Obama to Hitler and Stalin, so why should anyone expect them to honor the memory of those who died on 9/11?
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