Tea-Patriot question: Cut taxes where and how much?

Seattle Times: Did voters favor 'cheap soda' over health care for poor?

Washington voters in November rejected new taxes, including one on candy and carbonated beverages.

The title of this article asks an acutely moral question with implications across the greater societal spectrum in America where civic sounding fluff against taxes comes hard against society's ability to care for it's most vulnerable members.

In the Darwinian Survival-of-the-Capitalistic-Fittest cartoon world beloved of those who profess that shallowest sort of conservative thoughts a gigantic moral question arises.

Does free market priority (of which there is nothing sacred, holy or indisputably the best economic form)  supersede  the priority of the highest good of all concerned?

Why do so many equate Christian attitudes to moral hypocrisy? Well ... sometimes it's better to resist the urge to speak.

Writing about the beliefs of Elizabeth Edwards, who passed away this week and who did not believe in the Christian version of salvation and the hereafter, Donald Douglas and his religious/political observance again demonstrates why Christians are equated with moral hypocrisy.

Clearly Elizabeth Edwards wants to put her faith in something, be it hope or strength or anything. But not God.

I wonder if it's just bitterness, that's she's been forsaken by more than just her estranged husband --- that's she's been forsaken by Him.

And imagine if she'd have become First Lady. Americans generally expect outward expressions of faith in our presidents, Christian faith especially, and thus in our First Ladies as well.

... Being anti-religion is cool, so Edwards' non-theological theology gets props from the neo-communists. Still, at her death bed and giving what most folks are calling a final goodbye, Elizabeth Edwards couldn't find it somewhere down deep to ask for His blessings as she prepares for the hereafter? I guess that nihilism I've been discussing reaches up higher into the hard-left precincts than I thought.

Douglas refers to Elizabeth Edwards' Facebook goodbye.

... they can see how pathetic a society we are ... and it amuses the rest of the world

You will not find a more accurate dependency- intervention essay this year ... blunt, crude, brutally honest and should be required reading for everyone who still lives in the "it's not too late crowd."

The rest of the crowds in mamby-pamby land and the arena of pretend patriots wouldn't understand it.

If you are insulted by the import of this essay and its title, bite your proud lip, gird up your loins and find the courage to read, ponder and start asking questions.

If you are content to have someone already giving you answers to questions you have not really asked and ignoring the ones you might ask, you just might be the dumb subject yourself. You wouldn't DARE read Joe Bageant all the way to the end now ... would you?


AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?
Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga

By Joe Bageant


Excerpts:

... digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? That wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?

... Doubting readers may consider America's health institutions, the insurance corporations, hospital chains, physicians' lobbies. Between them they have established a perfectly legal right to clip you and me for thousands of dollars at their own discretion. That we so rabidly defend their right to gouge us, given all the information available in the digital age, mystifies the world.

... Purposeful ignorance allows us to enjoy cheaper commodities produced through slave labor, both foreign, and increasingly, domestic, and yet "thank god for his bounty" in the nation's churches without a trace of guilt or irony.

... Americans fail to grasp this because the most important fact (that a helluva lot of folks can't afford to bid, and therefore get to die early) never gets equal play with capitalist political propaganda, to wit, that if we give free medical attention to low income cleft palate babies, a wave of Leninism will seize the nation. That is cultural ignorance. We breathe the stuff every day of our lives.

But when Americans too poor to buy health care nevertheless vote to retain the corporate auction process, that is cultural stupidity.

... Cultural ignorance dictates that the best way to stop foreign terrorists flying into the country is by humiliating American citizens flying out of the country. Go ahead, grope me, X-ray my dick and for god sake don't let anyone bring a large bottle of shampoo on board. In an obedient, authority worshipping police state, physical insult and surveillance are proof of safety. 

It's profitable too, and not just for scanner manufacturers. The brouhaha over body scanners and crotch groping provide media with titillating fuel for ratings, thereby driving up TV advertising rates, which is passed on in the price of products we buy.

So we pay to be insulted, have the hell scared out of us, and to unknowingly have our behavior shaped. Under American style capitalism, this mobius strip of cultural ignorance is called a win-win situation for everybody. 

This also conveniently distracts us from the everyday human insult we practice on one another, as a result of state manufactured cultural misinformation -- fear.

... Societies declining into obsolescence understandably resist looking forward, and hang onto their past mythologies. Consequently, both liberals and conservatives in America feed on myths of political action which died in Vietnam. The results are ludicrous.

Tea Partiers attempt to emulate the 1960s protest gatherings by staging rallies sponsored by the richest beneficiaries of the status quo. For the average TP participant, the goal, near as I can tell, is to "start a new American Revolution," by wearing foodstuffs, screaming, threatening, and voting for nitwits. Media pundits proclaim the Tea Party "a historic populist movement."

... Progressives also fancy a revolution, one in which they participate through the Internet petitions, and media events such as the risk free Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity, where no one risked even missing an episode of Tremaine. Seeing people like themselves on television was proof fighting the good fight.

The Stewart rally was nonetheless culturally historic; we will never see a larger public display of post modern irony congratulating itself. 

To my kids and grandkids: It's YOUR future not mine. People of my generation in charge have done nothing to disprove the dumbness. Besides, why would you take serious the opinions of past-their-prime oldisters while you are convinced that you are just now moving into yours?

It's time you stopped fiddling around in the on-deck circle while aging never-were-stars keep swinging in vain for the fences with your lives and treasures.

If it's not already too late, turn your cute little cap around, drop your cell phone, turn off your HD, forget about who can dance, who can survive and whose birth certificate is in the Smithsonian.

Come on!

Step up to the plate and take charge.

Meddling: Arrogant ignorance swabbed with naivete defines human fondness for prejudice

Reference the legal jousting around whether or not the right to marry is the property of nosy and meddling churches.

A speaker hired by a church tells a judge the intentions and reasons behind what God does, When God does it … and why.

 

The key reason that marriage has existed at all in any society and at any time is that sexual relationships between men and women naturally produce children.

Society has no particular interest in a platonic relationship between a man and a woman no matter how close, no matter how committed it may be, or emotional relationships between other people as well.

But, when a relationship between a man and woman becomes a sexual one society immediately has a vital interest in that for two reasons - one, society needs the creation of new life for the next generation.

But secondly, [society’s vital] interests are actually threatened by the possibility that unintentional and unwanted pregnancy will mean that the child is born out of wedlock and raised by, in all likelihood, its mother alone and that directly implicates society’s vital interests. – Charles Cooper, a mere lawyer pretending his is the opinion of the Law-Giver, arguing in support of Proposition 8

I agree with the judge who responded that the legal scribe’s presumptive logic about the mind of God better applies as a reason to prohibit divorce.

 

Sorry … but the notion that God loses sleep in his own bedroom because of what happens in another bedroom … and that God awakens and stirs up dull and delirious biblicists and tells them to go meddle has long ago crossed over into the venue of ridiculous.

 

I support the right of anyone to marry anyone else … nothing more, nothing less … we have no business meddling.

The most beloved conservative commentator in Republicanistan still thinks his adoring listeners are stupid.

From the hallowed 11/24/10 broadcast from Premier Radio Network's The Rush Limbaugh Show:

   How many native americans were killed by the arrival of the white man through disease and war?

   ... how many people have died since the wm arrived due to lung cancer, thanks to the Indian custom of    smoking? 

  Who are the real killers here?

Where are our reparations?

PZ Meyer gave the best response ... one I challenge any adorer of Limbaugh to refute point by point or logic of argument ... that is of course if Limbaugh is wrong about how dumb his listeners are.

The white man nearly exterminated all of the native peoples of this continent by infection and execution and confinement.

Conversely, the European invaders have thrived, have suffered no general deprivation of life or liberty at the hands of the native population (although there were transient local flareups of violence that did cause suffering in white populations, but which were always followed by imposing greater torment on the natives).

White peoples: massive net gain. Native peoples: massive net loss. Fat privileged jerks like Rush Limbaugh do not get to play the persecution card.

And don't even get me started on the smoking comment.

Watching your children die of smallpox, seeing your friends gunned down by cavalry, having your land stripped from under you, watching your way of life eradicated, and seeing your descendants condemned to a life of poverty does not quite stack up against lighting a stogie and sipping brandy with your over-privileged pale-skinned buddies.

And who, I ask, is profiting from tobacco? I don't think it's the native Americans.

Unemployed? Here's an idea.

Letter to the Duke of Milan Applying for a Position

Having, most illustrious lord, seen and considered the experiments of all those who pose as masters in the art of inventing instruments of war, and finding that their inventions differ in no way from those in common use, I am emboldened, without prejudice to anyone, to solicit an appointment of acquainting your Excellency with certain of my secrets.

1. I can construct bridges which are very light and strong and very portable, with which to pursue and defeat the enemy; and others more solid, which resist fire or assault, yet are easily removed and placed in position; and I can also burn and destroy those of the enemy.

2. In case of a siege I can cut off water from the trenches and make pontoons and scaling ladders and other similar contrivances.

3. If by reason of the elevation or the strength of its position a place cannot be bombarded, I can demolish every fortress if its foundations have not been set on stone.

4. I can also make a kind of cannon which is light and easy of transport, with which to hurl small stones like hail, and of which the smoke causes great terror to the enemy, so that they suffer heavy loss and confusion.

5. I can noiselessly construct to any prescribed point subterranean passages either straight or winding, passing if necessary underneath trenches or a river.

6. I can make armoured wagons carrying artillery, which shall break through the most serried ranks of the enemy, and so open a safe passage for his infantry.

7. If occasion should arise, I can construct cannon and mortars and light ordnance in shape both ornamental and useful and different from those in common use.

8. When it is impossible to use cannon I can supply in their stead catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other instruments of admirable efficiency not in general use—I short, as the occasion requires I can supply infinite means of attack and defense.

9. And if the fight should take place upon the sea I can construct many engines most suitable either for attack or defense and ships which can resist the fire of the heaviest cannon, and powders or weapons.

10. In time of peace, I believe that I can give you as complete satisfaction as anyone else in the construction of buildings both public and private, and in conducting water from one place to another.
I can further execute sculpture in marble, bronze or clay, also in painting I can do as much as anyone else, whoever he may be.

Moreover, I would undertake the commission of the bronze horse, which shall endue with immortal glory and eternal honour the auspicious memory of your father and of the illustrious house of Sforza.—

And if any of the aforesaid things should seem to anyone impossible or impracticable, I offer myself as ready to make trial of them in your park or in whatever place shall please your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Da Vinci got the job and kept it for sixteen years, until the French invaded the city and captured his employer. Leonardo da Vinci died in France, prematurely old, at the age of sixty-seven, in 1519. Though hailed by the later centuries as a “universal genius,” he felt that his “greatest schemes in science remained unrealized” and that “his quest for perfection in art” was unsuccessful.

What great American commercial corporate enterprises are keeping our families fed?

Tax cuts and mis-guided conservative political philosophy and values are not keeping our economic ship afloat.

Republicans know this and tea-party electeds wouldn't believe it unless one of their American idols admitted it first.

You know what sickens me? You do Ya lying namby pamby Jackwagon!

Ex-worst president hawking his "truth-telling" memoir book.

David Corn writes in Mother Jones

In discussing the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush notes, "That was a massive blow to our credibility—my credibility—that would shake the confidence of the American people." He then adds: "No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do."

It wasn't funny then and it sure as  hell hasn't gotten funny since. More from David Corn:

... Then Bush displayed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office. His narration: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." 

The audience laughed. But the joke wasn't done. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. 

"Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

Bush was actually joking about the missing weapons of mass destruction. He was making fun of the reason he had cited for sending Americans to war and to death, turning it into a running gag. His smile was wide and his eyes seemed bright, as the audience laughed.  

Say what you will according to party and philosophical political savvy (or lack of it) ... lies got us there ... as my wife Lietta published for years in her original blog , thousands of members of America's families were Dying to Preserve the Lies.

More from Corn's Mother Earth opinion:

...In yet another act reminiscent of Soviet-style revisionism, Bush in his book does not mention this dinner and his performance there. If he indeed felt ill whenever he pondered the missing WMDs—as he insists in his memoirs—how could he turn this into a crass punchline? 

Asking that question provides the answer. He is fibbing in his book. 

Moreover, this small episode is proof of a larger truth: Bush's chronicle is not a serious accounting of his years as the decider. As for the hundreds of thousands of readers who shelled out $35.00 for the book, expecting the former president to level with them, the joke is on them.

It is precisely for this reason that if we must learn from history to avoid repeating our most tragic mistakes and errors of judgement ... we need to be honest and above the political bickering of who has the cleanest bathwater ... who has the purest of hearts ... and who loves their country above consuming, money and entertainment the most.

We need to recognize this man for what he said and did ... what he was and what obviously he is today ... regardless of his flawed and plagarized  historical play of truth versus fiction.

I apologize for ever having been a Prudential Insurance Agent

Americans dying in foreign wars in order for blood suckers like Prudential and friends to make big profits holding on to death benefits, investing them and never telling the surviving family members that the sooner they take control of their money, the sooner it will actually be put into an account that they own.

There is nothing entirely laudable about this practice and no reason for Veteran Affairs to even allow an insurance or investment company a legal control that can be exploited for profit.

Prudential & Met Life making big bucks off dying soldiers - who sure as hell died for something other than this

Six months later, opening the checkbook, she tries to buy a bed. The check is dishonored. On Armed Forces Day, she tries to buy a camera. The check is dishonored.

The money isn’t sitting in a bank. It’s sitting in Prudential Financial’s investment account. Prudential handles life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The money is earning investment income for Prudential. It is paying Cindy 1% interest and other families 0.5%. It is earning Prudential 4.8 to 5.69%.

... Retained-asset accounts are standard operating procedure. Not just for Prudential: MetLife says To help you through what can be a very difficult, emotional and confusing time, we created a settlement option, the Total Control Account Money Market Option. It is guaranteed by MetLife.

It is not in a bank. It is in Metlife’s corporate investment account. All guarantees are subject to the financial strength and claims-paying ability of MetLife. 

... Gerry is former president of MetLife Marketing. He also invented retained-asset accounts back in 1984. He says that MetLife makes $100-300 million a year on death benefit investment returns. 

... Over at the Department of Veteran Affairs, Stephen thought that the money went into a bank. Maybe I didn’t ask enough questions he says. 

The little man should watch what he proudly admits to ... or never leave home again

The 43rd president is a war criminal as is his sidekick Qail-Shooter Cheney.

Prosecution of both of them is something human dignity and social justice demand. Were it in my power I'd extradite the two of them in a moment's notice. They did not serve their country well  .... nor with honor.

Unless the 43rd president of the United States has been grievously misrepresented, he has admitted to authorising and sponsoring the use of torture. Asked whether he approved of “waterboarding” in three specific cases, he told his interviewer that “damn right” he did, and that this practice had saved lives in America and Britain. It is hard to overstate the enormity of this admission.

... I can’t think of any other American president, in my lifetime, who would have spoken in this way. Mr Bush should have remembered the words of the great Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who said in 1863 that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty”. Damn right.

Were Founding Fathers deists, evangelicals or something else? Perhaps all of the above … with occult beliefs thrown in

 

Mitch Horowitz throws this monkey wrench into the discussion of how religious, how pious and how devout the original American Christians and their secular-minded co-patriots were.

Occult America is the name of his book which hits the nail on the head in terms of no absolute defining belief or morality as the original basis for founding America and authoring whatever the Dream is supposed to be.

An earlier but equally informative examination of occult and magical thinking in the early decades of America’s history was written by Michael Quinn whose honesty and quality scholarship got him booted out of the Mormon Church.

Early Mormonism and the Magic World View is an exhaustive recounting of the role of 19th-century folk magic  and lore that was part and parcel of how early Americans in general saw the world and those who united with Joseph Smith and became part of the Mormon experience. 

The obvious conclusion is that those who asserted the strongest early impact on religion in this country were not the authors of what social conservatives consider the secular society so harmful to America’s core values.

Nor were the founders the authors of the judgmental and authoritarian Christianity the most outspoken religious activists proclaim today.

The real truth lies inside the radical extreme opinions of our modern and currently popular atheist bomb throwers of the Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens ilk as the equally explosive grenades flying out of the reactionary Christian right with it’s imperialistic claims about the one truth and a born-again experience over which those particular biblical literalists claim proprietorship.

Books that survey occult and magical thinking are not mere entertainment, but necessary to understand both historical as well as contemporary religious or spiritual mindsets.

Alan Watts wrote more than 50 years ago that without mysticism Christianity would devolve into a mindless fundamentalism.

He was right.

Read both books if you date. The devil is not in the details nor will note-taking angels report you to that judgmental god that is not real.

But you might come out of the experience more the wiser.