Here's the bullshit about the "cliff"

Happy 2013, Meet the new boss, all that.

Here's the thing.

When 2014 gets here and we have an election for congress. all these republican assholes will run commercial after commercial saying:

1. "I never voted to "raise" taxes"
2. "I voted for tax cuts for everyone making under $400K"

Nevermind the difference between $250K and $450K (how many people fall in that range anyway?). The real thing here is that the republicans wanted to be able to say that they did not vote to "raise" taxes on anyone (e.g., those making over $450K) because that will happen now that we are past midnight. Its a done deal, and they didn't vote to "raise" it. Now they will talk about how they are defenders of the middle class, because it is after midnight and the tax rate just went up, and they are going to vote to "bring it down" for the "middle class."

I'm sorry but we just got took.

This may make you feel better

Racist Former SCV Leader Gets 19 Years in $57 Million Ponzi Scheme

Imagine that, a right wing racist nut conning people out of their money - who'd of thunk it?
-------------

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/11/14/racist-former-scv-leader-gets-19-years-in-58-million-ponzi-scheme/

A man who was once seen as a genteel Southerner defending the “honor” of the Confederacy but who secretly lived lavishly on other people’s money now faces the next 19 years in a federal prison cell — possibly in solitary confinement.

The first jolt for 65-year-old Ron Wilson — former national leader of the southern heritage group Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) — may have come when he walked into a packed courtroom in Greenville, S.C., yesterday to be sentenced for the $57.4 million silver bullion Ponzi scheme he operated for more than a decade. There were so many victims who wanted to address the court that a lottery had to be held to determine who could speak, according to media accounts. Many of his 800 identified victims expect to get very little restitution, saying their lives are forever ruined by the swindle Wilson carried out.
-----------------
Wilson’s public life didn’t end there. In 2005, over the objections of the state’s superintendent of education, Wilson, then an Anderson County Council member, was elected to serve on the South Carolina Board of Education, weighing in on in the approval of textbooks and curriculum for the state’s public school students.

Meanwhile, at his Greenville-based business, Wilson told customers to give him their money so he could wisely invest in silver on their behalf — silver that he claimed was being held in a depository in Delaware. Charging documents say AB&C “did not purchase silver in sufficient quantities” to match his investors’ funds and “did not have silver holdings at a depository in Delaware.” As a further part of his rip-off, Wilson “created fraudulent account statements showing that [his] clients owned large quantities of silver when, in fact, no silver had been purchased” on their behalf.

Clay Bennett toon pic

my wife was removed from the roll

in tn. she went to our precinct and they told her the precincts had be redrawn so she would bhave to go to another church a few blocks away. when she went there she wasn't on that roll either but i was. they6 suggested that she was in the previous district because some streets were split. but she maintained that i was on the list from our address surely they wouldnt split a house. she insisted she was registered. had voted all last elections etc.

i think someone had her purged.

now get this. she talked her way in to voting. not provisional but regular ballot put in the same box as everyone else.

she is not on list and she voted.

white priv?

2nd Scott DesJarlais girlfriend talks

Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press

On the heels of a sex scandal involving a female patient, another woman has acknowledged having a sexual relationship with physician and U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais while she was under his medical care.

DesJarlais is a Republican seeking re-election in the 4th District. In a prepared statement Saturday, his campaign did not dispute any specific allegations by the woman, instead condemning "personal smear campaigns that hurt families" and "have no place in politics."

The newspaper's exclusive adds a second voice to a storyline that has complicated DesJarlais' bid for re-election against Democrat Eric Stewart. The ex-girlfriend's recollections come nine days before the general election and three weeks after The Huffington Post reported that the anti-abortion congressman and Jasper physician had an affair with a patient and pressured her to get an abortion.

That bombshell put what seemed like a sure Republican seat into contention. A liberal "super PAC" poured $100,000 into an attack ad against DesJarlais, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee vowed to help Stewart in what quickly became one of 55 "red to blue" districts Democrats think they can win.

Read more: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/oct/28/2nd-desjarlais-girlfriend-talks-tennessee/

3rd Graders and war

Last night after talking to a group of third grade cub scouts about "citizenship" I realized that there has never been a time in their lives that the USA has not been at war.

The things they said were so interesting - it was like they just assumed that there would always be people off fighting in war somewhere, that it was just a part of life that there would be some kids whose parents were at war, that it was a constant.

I was five when the US involvement in Viet Nam ended, and we weren't as saturated with media then, so I don't remember thinking about the world that way when I was in third grade. To me wars were things that had happened that had a beginning and end.

The thing I'm worried about

This tea party group "true the vote." They are going through voter rolls and trying to find anyone with a mis-spelled name or mismatched address. They have targeted students and poor and minorities. There are stories in the press about people being declared "dead" or challenged because their address is "commercial." Basically, they are going through databases and trying to find anything.

Now go forward to election day and this is what I'm worried about. They are looking for "volunteers" to go to mostly poor, mostly minority, mostly democratic districts to challenge voters. So the people who volunteer for that are going to be the nuttiest of the nutty. Now think about how desperate and crazy the far righters are getting. Think about how afraid they are of black people in the first place. Now think about the experiences that African-American people have had with voter suppression. Put those two together on election day. The whole purpose of these right wingers is to make the lines slow and make people give up. But I'm afraid it could get really, really ugly.

the Juan percent

whoever said that - rotfl

religion and tax exemptoins

The other day a "pastor" who is a facebook friend of someone I know posted "I can't believe that the DNC is quoting scriptures!"

It bothered me when my friend told me, because the implication was that the bible wasn't for democrats, that this preacher was saying that Democrats couldn't be Christians. It is an implied political message - if you are a Christian, you can't vote for Democrats. I wondered how that fit with church's and tax exemption- can a preacher post political messages on their facebook? I mean, isn't that a way of communicating with parishners? And where is the line with a political comment? A lot of the churches here are covered with political signs during election season, and I wonder if that is permissible?

Then today I saw this article that I thought was interesting - it is an attempt to estimate the amount that churches are subsidized through tax breaks. I think some of he assumptions were off base (for example, because the amount that church's hold in trusts isn't reported, it was estimated by taking the amount the Presbyterian church holds, but I doubt that the little church's are comparable). Anyway, I wanted to share it here because I thought it was interesting:

"Research Report: How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in the United States"

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=cragun_32_4