Years from now, we'll hear about stockbrokers and investors committing suicide in this depression. Even though such cases will be few.
The murder of Marvin Schur, on the other hand, will be one of many that won't be spoken of.
There won't even be arguments about whether he died from being too old or because he was just a deadbeat.
Murdered, by policy. In supposedly the richest (most Christian) country on earth.
He didn't issue a single subprime loan. He didn't overborrow. He didn't launch a trillion dollar war or profiteer from it.
He wasn't guilty of anything except being 93 and falling behind on a bill. He was a veteran of World War II, and this is what he gets? Apparently freedom isn't free, it costs $1,000.
If you really want to be appalled, here are some comments from a wingnut site:
Why should we have to take care of old peoples power bills, their medicine, their health care, your kids education, the police department, low income housing, foodstamps, welfare, abandoned pets, and everything else that happemns to people because they don't pay their bills?
If you're broke, you die.
He obviously wasn't broke if he owned a house. He easily could have taken out a reverse mortage and received a monthly income if he wanted to.
Hard to believe, in these days of huge global warming 'proof', that anyone could actually freeze to death. My, my.
The Old Man should have moved somewhere more affordable a long time ago. Nobody else's problem but his.
Old people always die eventually anyway. What's the big deal?
A little Global Warming would have helped.
Que sera...
Before we take too seriously John Boner's whining about the stimulus plan, we should look closely at the GOP economic record. Not good…particularly if you are trying to make the case…as is House Minority Leader Boner… that the GOPers know what they are talking about.
In the beginning of VooDoo economics, The Raygunner, traitor to his nation, cut taxes… and cut taxes… and swore it would result in lower deficits and economic growth. We got some growth in the 1980s, but by the time Busch the First was done with the economy, we were in a recession. More important, we had the biggest deficit in history.
Bill Clinton came into office and insisted on fiscal discipline. He raised taxes and balanced the budget and we had the greatest economic expansion in history. The Moron Busch was elected with a budget surplus at his command …the first since Jimmy Carter left a surplus for the Raygunner to squander… and quickly set about squandering it too. Instead of using it to shore up Social Security, as his advisors suggested, he began a new round of Tax Cuts which, he assured the world, would mean prosperity for all.
After eight years of Voodoo economics under The Moron Busch (not that the return to VooDoo is the only… even the biggest blunder from the Moron's reign) the economy is in the tank.
So now comes John ("I'm concerned about the size of the package") Boner to argue that one problem with the stimulus is it needs more tax breaks. Who is he kidding? Like VooDoo Economics works? Where is the evidence that it ever worked? This is no time to give in to these monkeys. This is no time for tax breaks.
If there is a real issue with the stimulus package it's the fact that only 18 percent of the package is aimed at infrastructure. That's where the real benefits in this program are.. the repair of roads, replacement of bridges, construction of an electrical grid, rebuilding schools, greening public facilities, encouraging the public to get greener. There are a zillion jobs in those programs. Why isn't the GOP on that issue? Guess Busch is not the only moron in their ranks.
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After a tongue lashing from Obama, Citigroup decides they don't need that $50 million dollar jet afterall: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/obama-officials-tells-cit_n_161202.html
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Here it is... The Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: McCain won 46% of the vote, so the Republicans should get 46% of the package to use for tax cuts and the Dems can use their 54% for infrastructure.
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Will someone please stop this insane Merry-Go-Round?
House Republican Leader John A. Boehner and his No. 2, Whip Eric Cantor, told their rank-and-file members Tuesday morning during a closed-door meeting to oppose the bill when it comes to the floor Wednesday, according to an aide familiar with the discussion. Boehner told members that he's voting against the stimulus, and Cantor told the assembled Republicans that there wasn't any reason for them to support the measure, according to another person in the room. Cantor and his whip team are going to urge GOP members to oppose it.
No reason to support the bill, huh? Not the removal of family-planning assistance? Not tax cuts? Not getting rid of massive amounts of infrastructure spending? All of these concessions offered by President Obama and Congressional Democrats - given in direct response to GOP whining - aren't reasons to vote for it?
Excuse me, I need to find my fainting couch, I'm so surprised.
This is a good scheme. The Republicans get to eviscerate bill after bill, get rid of one good idea after another, weaken - perhaps terminally - our chances to actually jump-start our economy, and then they don't have to risk alienating their rabid base by actually voting for a Democratic bill.
This is getting far past the point where President Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt. Now that he's offered concrete concessions to the GOP only to have them publicly throw them back in his face, there simply isn't any super-secret strategy that can rescue this or make it all make sense. There isn't any Machiavellian strategy left for President Obama or the Congressional Dems to come up with that will show how they can out-maneuver the GOP. Instead, they're just doing the same thing they've always done.
The Republican party will not give Obama, Pelosi or Reid anything. They will not vote for a stimulus bill. They will not vote for it on the plain, they will not vote for it in the rain. The will not vote for it in a car, they will not vote for it from afar. They will not vote for your stimulus bill, O-P-R, they will not vote for it because they are short-sighted, amoral scumbags who care nothing about this country or its citizens and will actively work to make things worse simply because now they get to blame Democrats for it.
Excuse me, I think I lost my rhyme and meter there.
There will come a time when Obama has to tell the world that he's been making an honest effort, while the Republicans haven't been. That bipartisanship doesn't work when one side refuses to be bipartisan. That if we're going to remain partisan, it's time for the winner to act like the winner. And do the people's work, unhindered and unfettered. If he doesn't do this, it's cowardly and incompetent.
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Play The Bailout Game. I pulled a dubya and wrecked the nation.
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Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/evolutionists_flock_to_darwin
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It doesn't get any more dickheadish than this:
Merrill Lynch chiefs John Thain and Stan O'Neal are finally getting with the penny-pinching program, but once again, they're stiffing the little people along the way. Thain - who was booted last week from Merrill's new parent, Bank of America, for excesses that included spending $87,000 on an office rug - was having dinner at San Pietro last week with BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink. He loudly told the waiter, for all to hear, "under the circumstances with this tough economy, I think I'll have tap water."
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"Hey honey, I got offered a role in the remake of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest!"
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Hurry and buy your Bush commemorative coffee table book.
Kyle Queal, Head of School
Brice Helton, Athletic Director
The Covenant School of Dallas
Dear Mr. Queal and Coach Helton,
I'm very disappointed with your decision to apologize for your girls basketball victory last week. What happened to all that Christian school spirit you showed as you cheered your team to a 100-0 victory over the team from the school for kids with learning disabilities? You didn't question your coaches decisions then. You didn't ask him to pull the starters when it was a mere 58-0 or 88-0 game. No, you cheered right until the end and thanked the Lord for giving you such a clear victory.
It wasn't until the mediaslamistofascists condemned you and the defeatocrats started sending you emails that you changed your tune. Then, all of a sudden, you were apologetic about your victory.
Rush Limbaugh wouldn't have apologized. Sarah Palin wouldn't have apologized. And Lord knows, your own senators, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey-Hutchison, wouldn't have apologized. They'd have framed it as a great victory over the forces of dyslexia and painted the opposing school as a grave and vital threat to everything we hold dear. Just like they and their predecessors did when we defeated the Cuban construction worker menace in Grenada and the seemingly unstoppable superpowers of Panama and Iraq.
And they'd have found a way to associate the Dallas Academy with the most evil and vile threat of all, condoms. Just like the Apostle Paul did in his epistle about the Trojans.
So now you've learned your lesson. Victory doesn't come from simply crushing a weak opponent on the field of battle. You need to build them up first with a good PR campaign. You need to turn them into the worst thing since Satan. Only then, will your win become a victory.
Heterosexually yours,
Gen. JC Christian, patriot
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Who said we've reached post-racial status here in the U.S.? Apparently the word didn't get out to this guy in Brockton, MA. A Brockton man accused in a rape and double murder allegedly told police he intended to kill as many non-whites as possible, then kill himself, in what he called a fight "for a dying race."
Keith Luke, 22, pleaded not guilty Thursday in Brockton District Court, where he was ordered held without bail and sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for evaluation.
According to a police report, Luke told police he was "fighting extinction" of the white race and had stockpiled 200 rounds of ammunition to kill blacks, Hispanics and Jews. He told police he planned to eventually go to a synagogue or school near his home and "kill as many Jews as possible during bingo night," the report said.
...The 18-page report by Brockton and State Police described Luke an obese, white man who lived with his mother and frequently surfed through racial propaganda on the Internet.
Luke also said that he planned to shoot himself in the head after the rampage. His attorney asked that Luke undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
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Stephen McPherson, a former Regent University law school assistant dean, pleaded guilty Friday in Chesapeake Circuit Court to sexually abusing children.
McPherson, 39, of Chesapeake entered guilty pleas to two counts of forcible sodomy and two counts of object sexual penetration. He is set to be sentenced May 22.
McPherson faces five years to life on each count. Assistant Commonwealth's Attorneys Karen Brown and Minna Sandwich agreed to withdraw nine other felonies against McPherson in return for his pleas.
In the indictment he was accused of assaulting girls between May 2000 and May 2002. The judge has ordered McPherson to "undergo a psychosexual exam."
How, pray tell, will this jibe with the fundie meme that sodomy, in particular criminal acts involving sodomy, is somehow only being committed by homos?
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Alberto Gonzales recently gave an interview on NPR, in which he simply refused in any way to take responsibility for any of the screw-ups of his tenure. As the Rude Pundit points out, host Michel Martin tried to get him to see that, if everyone points at your pants and shows you the shit stains back there, then you have shit yourself. To that, Gonzales would say, "Someone else shit in these pants. I just decided not to wash them before I put them on." Which is, you know, disgusting and disturbing on a whole other level.
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The nation's current recession is likely to be the longest since World War II, and by some measures could be the worst since the Great Depression, a new CBO forecast said Tuesday. - mcclatchy
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Get ready for 2012 - you know it's coming
Tap-dancing vaudeville parasite Sarah Palin has started a political action committee on behalf of Sarah Palin, so that she may better position herself to ruin America as she has already ruined John McCain and the Republican party and many trash bags of expensive clothes. "SarahPAC believes America's best days are ahead," her new Web site reads. According to the logo, her mission will be to create an enormous Alaska-shaped lake in the Midwest, with an aqueduct to foster commerce with northern Mexico. [SarahPAC]
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In 1998, The Catholic Church excommunicated an entire parish in Rochester, NY. Now they have a new church called Spiritus Christi (you can Google it up). The reason for this drastic measure was the prominent role of women on the altar (they had women deacons, they now have a woman priest), the blessing of gay unions, and the offering of communion to those who were not Catholic. These are terrible crimes, I am sure, designed to encourage people to get along and love one another in a world where divisiveness and hatred are an every day scourge.
Last week, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications on four bishops of the traditionalist Society of St Pius X, including the English Bishop Richard Williamson, who denies that the Holocaust ever happened. Does not care much for Jews, I guess.
The four bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago because they had been consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent. Apparently the Vatican at the time believed the mass should be celebrated uniformly …in the vernacular…while these guys believed the Mass should be kept secret, in Latin. (Not that there is anything wrong with it.)
The Vatican said last week that Pope Benedict rehabilitated the four Bishops as part of his efforts to bring Lefebvre's Society of St. Pius X back into the fold and normalize relations with the Society. And the Vatican says Bishop Williamson's views on the Holocaust are despicable, but they are his personal views, and thus not a matter of concern to the Pope.
Guess not. But I have a couple of questions. Do we carry political correctness too far when we demand that a leader in the Church willingly accept basic facts on the historical record? Facts such as the existence of death camps throughout the Third Reich, a comprehensive plan to kill all Jews in Europe, the mass graves, the pits of human ashes? All of which are documented photographically and in written statements by millions of people who were there?
Are we asking too much if we demand that the Catholic Church place intellectual demands on its leaders, including acceptance of the basic facts of the historical record? Should we not demand that leaders in the church are selected for ability to not allow their personal hatreds to cloud their vision of reality? Should we be particularly concerned about the moral implications of Holocaust denial when it has become a popular a tool of antisemitism world wide? Should we be concerned that the church is willing to put the moral education of its flock in the hands of someone whose views even the Church finds repugnant?
Every church community has its own moral agenda. The Catholic Church has chosen to protect us from the influence of gays and women and non believers, but it has no problem sanctioning the moral primacy of Jew Haters. I guess that tells you something.
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PBS: NSA could have prevented 9/11 attacks http://rawstory.com/news/2008/PBS_NSA_tracked_911_hijackers_but_0127.html
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4,236 soldiers killed in Iraq; 642 in Afghanistan.
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Before George left the White House, he gave Karl Rove a letter reasserting his support for Rove to blow off Congress: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/01/27/roves-renewed-privilege-assertion-is-it-absolute-immunity-or-executive-privilege/
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The cease-fire that wasn't
The "ceasefire" in Gaza is apparently over, as Israeli tanks cross into the Strip again, airstrikes kill Palestinians and Israel closes all border crossings to humanitarian aid, in response to a bomb set off by a group "using an uncommon name not previously linked with the ruling Hamas Islamist movement". The bomb killed one IDF soldier and wounded three others. Neither side seemed ready to seek a peaceful course:
"I don't care who fired," said Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is leading the ruling party in the campaign for the February 10 ballot. "Hamas controls Gaza and is responsible for everything that happens. Whenever they fire at me from Gaza, set off a bomb or launch a missile or smuggle (weapons), Israel will respond."
...Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri did not claim responsibility but praised the bomb attack on the troops as "a natural response to the crimes of the occupier." Two Palestinians were killed last week in incidents blamed on Israeli fire.
Although that attitude seems more excusable on the part of Palestinians than Israel. While Hilary Clinton feels politically safe in announcing that "We support Israel's right to self-defense...rocket barrages ... cannot go unanswered," she was silent on whether the inhabitants of Gaza likewise have a right to self-defense against unprovoked attacks. As Siun at FDL notes, ever since the twin unilateral "ceasefires" were announced, Israel has been breaking its word. Hostile acts include naval shelling of Palestinian fishing boats and the Gazan shore, sniper fire that has critically wounded children and random artillery harassment. No wonder a Hamas spokesman reportedly recently said that they'd always understood Israel's actions as a "temporary lull" rather than a real ceasefire.
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Newest GOP complaint on stimulus: There's not enough housing aid (which we voted against last week): http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/27/housing-recovery/
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Ignoring the waves of Obama/Clinton/Dem hate eminating from rightwingnut sites, hate radio gasbags, conservatard authors and Faux Nooze commentators, the USA Toady's Ross K. Baker wistfully asks to let bygones be libs to continue to assume the position:
In this season of reconciliation and hope that we can rise above the corrosive polarization of recent years, a chorus of angry voices has pressed aggressively for criminal charges to be brought against former president George W. Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney and members of the intelligence community thought guilty of constitutional violations or of practicing or sanctioning torture.
This "movement," if one could call it that, makes a mockery of the spirit of generosity and compassion to which President Obama is dedicated.
"Thought guilty of"?? Excuse me, Ross, but there's no question about it! Shame on you for trying to pooh-pooh the past eight disastrous years of the misadministration crapping all over the Constitution and basic human rights, Bush's incompetence and the war crimes.
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