If you don't support same-sex marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex: http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2009/04/if-you-dont-support-samesex-marriage-dont-marry-someone-of-the-same-sex.html
But when those same supposed hawks who clutch their pearls and faint at the idea of $775 billion in stimulus turn right around and vote to hand more than half that amount in non-productive tax breaks to people inheriting more than $5 million, you know this has nothing to do with hating deficits.
Spending money on things we need tends to be a better stimulus than tax cuts. Tax cuts for the poor and middle class tend to be better stimuli than tax cuts for the rich. But if, for some unfathomable reason, we want to give tax cuts to the rich right now, why on earth do it by cutting the estate tax?There's a reasonable argument for cutting taxes on capital gains and income: namely, that they increase incentives to work and invest. I think this argument is outweighed by other considerations, but it does exist. But what, exactly, is the argument for cutting the estate tax? People who inherit money have not earned it. They are not doing something that we want to reward, like working; they just happened to be the heirs of rich people.
No surprise that every single Senate repug, including Kentucky's own men of the people Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell, voted to bust the budget to hand $446 billion of your tax dollars over to people with too much money already.
But they were jointed by ten DINOs - the same members of Evan Bayh's anti-Obama group of traitors so determined to slash the president's pro-growth budget.
Read the list of "aye" votes carefully (http://www.senate.gov/legislat...) and memorize the "Democrats" who love obscenely rich people, love deficits that arise from handing the tax dollars of working people over to obscenely rich people, and hate you and all your working-class friends who work two jobs at subhuman wages with no benefits in order to pay the taxes that these DINOs are handing over to their real friends, the obscenely wealthy.
Note that one of these Democratic traitors is Montana's Jon Tester, who won his seat by a hair in 2006 only because real progressives all over the country sent him their hard-earned money. We supported Tester because although he was a classic Western conservative, he claimed to be an economic populist. He lied.
Remember Tester, and Bayh, and former progressive darling Patty Murray of Washington, and all the rest the next time some mealy-mouthed Broderist starts bleating about how repug-fellating DINOs are still Democrats and it's so very, very tacky to attack them.
The nation can rest easier now that Republican leaders have offered their alternative budget plan.
It would cut taxes for businesses and the wealthy while having the middle and lower classes bend over for another dose of compassionate conservatism.
They didn't have to work overtime on this one. It is in perfect sync with standard conservative pablum on economic philosophy and governance.
Like the need for people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps."
And how about "trickle-down economics?" If you think you've been rained on quite enough since that mantra became vogue during the Reagan years, get ready for a deluge.
It was only a week ago that Republican congressmen were staging a pathetic press conference to unveil their "budget" proposal. Unfortunately, it was almost devoid of the one thing critical to budget plans: numbers.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) took some prime time heat for that fiasco, so he perhaps more than anyone was happy to see an actual plan with numbers being presented this week. (Boehner pronounces his name bay-ner, but All Hat No Cattle believes it should be changed to boner because that is what the esteemed congressman pulled when he rolled out that joke-of-a-budget plan last week.)
Here are some highlights of the current Republican proposal:
It would slash federal health programs for the elderly and the poor.
McConnell and Boehner claim that the government's greenhouse gas reduction strategy will "cost every American family up to $3,100 per year in higher energy prices."
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor John Reilly says the actual cost will be about 1/40th of that sum and won't be incurred until 2015.
What all this means is that Boehner is both mathematically and ethically challenged. The Republican Party of today seems to like that in its leaders.
A man who narrates Christian CDs has been arrested on suspicion of using the internet to arrange sex with a teenage girl.
Juan Alberto Ovalle, 42, thought he was corresponding with a girl under the age of 15, but instead it was undercover officers with the Jefferson County district attorney's office, according to court documents.
Ovalle works for a Spanish-speaking arm of the Colorado Springs Christian group Focus on the Family and narrates Biblical text for CDs, according to internet websites that sell the products.
"We're shocked," said Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman with Focus.
Schneeberger said the group "is beginning its own process of looking into the allegations" and that it "will work with authorities" if asked.
A former pastor in New York City is accused of $84,537 from his parish to pay for plastic surgery, Botox injections and prescription drugs.
If you only go around once, then the main thing is to have fun. If you start by admitting that from cradle to tomb it isn't that long of a stay, then life is a cabaret, old chum, and so, by the way, is Wall Street. There is a bumper sticker favored by some of the recently rich that proclaims "he who dies with the most toys wins." This is indeed the moral philosophy of those who believe that death is the final closing bell. Materialism, hedonism and Stairmasters are what people do until the clock stops ticking....
I had no idea that Wall Street was run by atheists, or that the government was run by atheists, or that Christians and Jews and Moslems were never, ever interested in material possessions.
The absence of an afterlife to an atheist means that this life is all they've got, so they have to live it well because they don't get do-overs or second chances. They can't use the excuse that "God would never allow harm to come to the planet" or "Jesus will forgive their sins and let them live in paradise". If an atheists screws up now, that's all there is. Not believing in a magical afterlife actually tends to make things like preparing for the future, being a good steward of resources, educating future generations, etc., even more important.
By the way, that phrase, "he who dies with the most toys wins", makes no sense to most atheists. He who dies is dead, full stop. Toys don't matter at that point.
President Obama speaking to the Turkish press:
I've said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is, although as I mentioned we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.
Michele Bachmann's slide into madness continues apace. This time she is fearmongering about 'reeducation camps' springing up because the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act passed and President Obama is expected to sign it into law this week.
It's under the guise of - quote - volunteerism. But it's not volunteers at all. It's paying people to do work on behalf of government. ...I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.
About those dollars: http://distributorcapny.blogspot.com/2009/04/there-is-gold-in-them-thar-hills.html
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The more details that come out about Richard Poplawski, the man that gunned down three police officers, the angrier I become, and I find myself directing no small amount of that anger at his mother: http://theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/2565/the-one-where-i-am-so-pissed-off-i-dont-care-who-gets-pissed-off-at-me-im-sayin-it-anyway
Weigel noted that all three boxes of the Hitler-Obama shirt had sold out by 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. In November, ThinkProgress went to The Nation's Gun Show in Chantilly, VA, which featured similar fear-mongering. For example, an ad in the Washington Post for the event read, "GET YOUR GUNS WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!"
Children raised in poverty suffer many ill effects: They often have health problems and tend to struggle in school, which can create a cycle of poverty across generations.
Now, research is providing what could be crucial clues to explain how childhood poverty translates into dimmer chances of success: Chronic stress from growing up poor appears to have a direct impact on the brain, leaving children with impairment in at least one key area - working memory.
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It must be spring when ....
AP
…Chimpy McStagger pokes his nose out into the warm spring air, throws a baseball, and does an Elvis dance impression.
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Frank "I'm a member of Dick Cheney's fan club" Gaffney: Obama's 'respect' for Muslims is code for submission http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/06/gaffney-fan-cheney/
Submission - as opposed to say this:
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The Pentagon says the pigs were 'treated humanely at all times' - that is, until they were dressed in body armor and strapped into Humvee simulators that were then blown up with explosives to study the link between roadside bomb blasts and brain injury: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-04-06-pigs_N.htm
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