A little political trivia for you...
Trivia Tidbit: Q: When was the last time Republicans won White House without Nixon or a Bush on ticket? A: In 1928 when Herbert Hoover was elected.
This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
Saturday, January 05, 2013
Teaching creationism
Some of you will get the sarcasm - others make like ti because it supports their beliefs. How smart ARE you?
Morality
Believing in a religion does NOT make you a better person, nor does serving as a leader within the religious cult.
Sound reasoning
It's elementary, my dear Watson. Republicans see one of the largest pools of money in the American budget and can only DROOL over the thought of getting their hands on it by privatizing it and getting it into the hands of the bankers. Pray, my dear friends, that it never happens.
More on the economy...
Conservative, wealthy economists love to discuss the dangers of the American deficit/debt, but never, ever do you hear them discuss the problems caused by the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. This redistribution of wealth in the country, from the middle class to the upper crust, has reduced demand and shrunk the economy. It is a VERY serious threat and if left undisturbed, will bring the nation down as quickly as the debt problem.
When you fall through the cracks...
When you fall all the way through the cracks to the very, very bottom of society, this is what you wind up with...
Friday, January 04, 2013
Good words
Again, I've lost the source for this quote - I've really got to get better about that. Apologies to whomever put this together.
Marco Rubio's problem with science teaching, Paul Krugman writes, is "that it might undermine children's faith in what their parents told them to believe." And right there you have the modern G.O.P.'s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence.
The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger -- and ever scarier -- the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into assertions that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts to silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts.
Republicans and unions
The GOP is probably cutting its own throat by attacking unions because, if unions are gone, middle-class prosperity will be gone, and profits will be down. There's a new adage (I'm making it up right now), "don't piss where you eat" that seems to apply.
Therein lies the problem
One of the reasons we can't have any compromise in Congress is because the Republicans don't have any ability to reason.
Quick response
How often do I have to say it? Republicans are masters of the shallow-thinking, quick-draw response to just about every issue. It is why they are so good at the one and two-word names they come up with for pet political issues (pro-life, anyone?). It is why the words "gun control" are automatically converted into the thought, "gun elimination." It's easier for them to understand. Understanding that gun control folks, like myself, just want better background checks and a little more control over who owns assault rifles - but that's a little too complicated for the right-wingers to figure out.
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Speaking of low wage businesses
Walmart is a drag on our society - it's time to regulate it so that it pays fair wages and provides its own benefits. Let it charge it's customers for the cost of doing business and stop the practice of having the rest of us pay taxes to support them.
---------- (the following is not written by me, but unfortunately it has been a while since I copied this and I've lost the source. My apologies and thanks to the author.)
A study by researchers at UC Berkeley's Labor Center has quantified what happened to retail wages when Wal-Mart set up shop, drawing on 15 years of data on actual store openings. The study found that Wal-Mart drives down wages in urban areas, with an annual loss of at least $4.7 billion dollars in earnings for retail workers.
And in 2004, a study released the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that "reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California comes at a cost to taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance. Source: Ken Jacobs and Arindrajit Dube, "Hidden Costs of Wal-Mart Jobs" [PDF file], UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Wal-Mart dismissed the findings of the UC Berkeley study, "Hidden Costs of Wal-Mart Jobs," as a "union hit piece." However, text from Wal-Mart's own internal memo substantially corroborates their findings.
An excerpt from the memo states:
"We also have a significant number of Associates and their children who receive health insurance through public-assistance programs. Five percent of our Associates are on Medicaid compared to an average for national employers of 4 percent. Twenty-seven percent of Associates' children are on such programs, compared to a national average of 22 percent. In total, 46 percent of Associates' children are either on Medicaid or are uninsured."
Source: Wal-Mart Internal Memo [PDF File], via New York Times
A few statistics on exactly how many children of Wal-Mart of employees receive state-funded health care, and the cost to those states:
- FLORIDA: 12,300 WAL-MART Workers and their Dependents on Medicaid
- GEORGIA: 10,261 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in PeachCare for Kids
- WISCONSIN: 1,252 WAL-MART Employees and Dependents on BadgerCare
Why are states subsidizing health care for Wal-Mart employees when the Walton family are all in the top ten wealthiest people in the entire nation? I'm not complaining that these families are getting health care, everyone deserves health care, but the Walton's should be ashamed that they aren't providing it.
WAL-MART Costs Taxpayers $1,557,000,000,00 to Support its Employees
"The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year - about $2,103 per employee. Specifically, the low wages result in the following additional public costs being passed along to taxpayers:
- $36,000 a year for free and reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families.
- $42,000 a year for Section 8 housing assistance, assuming 3 percent of the store employees qualify for such assistance, at $6,700 per family.
- $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming 50 employees are heads of household with a child and 50 are married with two children.
- $100,000 a year for the additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 Wal-Mart families qualify with an average of 2 children.
- $108,000 a year for the additional federal health care costs of moving into state children's health insurance programs (S-CHIP), assuming 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.
$9,750 a year for the additional costs for low income energy assistance."
The total figure is based on the average $420,750 per-store figure, multiplied by 3700 (the approximate number of stores currently in the United States).
Source: Rep. George Miller / Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, "Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart", February 16, 2004.
---------- (the following is not written by me, but unfortunately it has been a while since I copied this and I've lost the source. My apologies and thanks to the author.)
A study by researchers at UC Berkeley's Labor Center has quantified what happened to retail wages when Wal-Mart set up shop, drawing on 15 years of data on actual store openings. The study found that Wal-Mart drives down wages in urban areas, with an annual loss of at least $4.7 billion dollars in earnings for retail workers.
And in 2004, a study released the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that "reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California comes at a cost to taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance. Source: Ken Jacobs and Arindrajit Dube, "Hidden Costs of Wal-Mart Jobs" [PDF file], UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Wal-Mart dismissed the findings of the UC Berkeley study, "Hidden Costs of Wal-Mart Jobs," as a "union hit piece." However, text from Wal-Mart's own internal memo substantially corroborates their findings.
An excerpt from the memo states:
"We also have a significant number of Associates and their children who receive health insurance through public-assistance programs. Five percent of our Associates are on Medicaid compared to an average for national employers of 4 percent. Twenty-seven percent of Associates' children are on such programs, compared to a national average of 22 percent. In total, 46 percent of Associates' children are either on Medicaid or are uninsured."
Source: Wal-Mart Internal Memo [PDF File], via New York Times
A few statistics on exactly how many children of Wal-Mart of employees receive state-funded health care, and the cost to those states:
- FLORIDA: 12,300 WAL-MART Workers and their Dependents on Medicaid
- GEORGIA: 10,261 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in PeachCare for Kids
- WISCONSIN: 1,252 WAL-MART Employees and Dependents on BadgerCare
Why are states subsidizing health care for Wal-Mart employees when the Walton family are all in the top ten wealthiest people in the entire nation? I'm not complaining that these families are getting health care, everyone deserves health care, but the Walton's should be ashamed that they aren't providing it.
WAL-MART Costs Taxpayers $1,557,000,000,00 to Support its Employees
"The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year - about $2,103 per employee. Specifically, the low wages result in the following additional public costs being passed along to taxpayers:
- $36,000 a year for free and reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families.
- $42,000 a year for Section 8 housing assistance, assuming 3 percent of the store employees qualify for such assistance, at $6,700 per family.
- $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming 50 employees are heads of household with a child and 50 are married with two children.
- $100,000 a year for the additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 Wal-Mart families qualify with an average of 2 children.
- $108,000 a year for the additional federal health care costs of moving into state children's health insurance programs (S-CHIP), assuming 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.
$9,750 a year for the additional costs for low income energy assistance."
The total figure is based on the average $420,750 per-store figure, multiplied by 3700 (the approximate number of stores currently in the United States).
Source: Rep. George Miller / Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, "Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart", February 16, 2004.
Colbert makes it funny.
When you're trying to understand something that makes very little sense, it's often easiest to do it with a little bit of humor. Here Colbert pokes a little fun at a very stupid Christian ritual.
Andy Borowitz speaks
Andy makes good sense, but it doesn't fir in with the Christian rights' world domination agenda.
Just when you think...
Just when you think you've heard it all, and just when you think you can't be brought any lower by the absolute insanity that is associated with organized religion, you run across something like my post below.
So if some of you wonder why I push the anti-religion posts so hard on this blog, just remember that there are millions of Americans who would love to turn the U.S. into a theist state so that they could do to their fellow countrymen what the religious leaders have done in places like Iraq and Iran. It is terrifying.
So if some of you wonder why I push the anti-religion posts so hard on this blog, just remember that there are millions of Americans who would love to turn the U.S. into a theist state so that they could do to their fellow countrymen what the religious leaders have done in places like Iraq and Iran. It is terrifying.
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Well said...
“Including as many Americans as possible in our electoral process is the spirit of our country. It is why we have expanded rights to women and minorities but never legislated them away, and why we have lowered the voting age but never raised it. Cynical efforts at voter suppression are driven by an un-American desire to exclude as many people and silence as many voices as possible.”
~ Charlie Crist
Creationism
Creationism is having a profound effect on the content of our curriculum. And you wonder why the U.S. educational system is scoring so poorly internationally?
How it went down
Thanks to the super-duper time machine we built, we were able to go back to the early days of mankind and see how God actually got things done.
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
Interesting
This is interesting - make of it what you will...
This American Life interviewed immigrants on what surprised them when they came to the United States.
Here's what surprised them:
* Insanely well stocked supermarkets with an impossible variety of foods
* Flag obsession
* Religiosity
* No haggling over prices
* Fake food everywhere, and in huge portions
* Amazing culture of convenience
* Poverty
* People who obey traffic laws
* Young people don't get a new boyfriend/girlfriend every week like on TV
* Americans don't hate their own families like they do on TV
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/how-first-time-visitors-see-america/260541/
This American Life interviewed immigrants on what surprised them when they came to the United States.
Here's what surprised them:
* Insanely well stocked supermarkets with an impossible variety of foods
* Flag obsession
* Religiosity
* No haggling over prices
* Fake food everywhere, and in huge portions
* Amazing culture of convenience
* Poverty
* People who obey traffic laws
* Young people don't get a new boyfriend/girlfriend every week like on TV
* Americans don't hate their own families like they do on TV
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/how-first-time-visitors-see-america/260541/
Pick and choose
I've said it here before, repeatedly - Christianity is all about picking and choosing the parts of the Bible that you like and ignoring the parts you don't like. A designer religion. You can click on the image to view larger if necessary.
God's creation
If God created mankind in his own image, we need to look at what kind of Super creature he must be. Or was it the other way around?
Freedom
Barack has the point right - too bad he doesn't apply it in other areas of his administration of this country.
Post election
I read a couple of economic newsletters to keep abreast of what is going on, both in the U.S. and around the world. In one such newsletter, Things that make you go hmmm, there are some short articles attributed to other sources (authors, magazines, etc.) and one of them I read recently dealt with the U.S. election of 2012. There were several paragraphs that I found particularly interesting. This article is attributed to Andy Xie, a name I don't know.
"The role of the government was the issue during the contest. The Republicans campaigned on shrinking the government, the Democrats on a caring government...
"Romney won the traditional Republican states that are poorer than the national average and are net beneficiaries of federal tax dollars. Voting for smaller government is hardly in their best interest. Also, he won among the older population who are more dependent on Medicare and Social Security. Voting for a smaller government is hardly in their interest either.
"The election was more about race than anything else. Romney won 70 percent of the white vote. Obama won over 90 percent of the black vote and over 70 percent of the Hispanic and Asian vote. The tilt of the Asian vote toward Obama demonstrates the importance of race in this election. In 1992 Bill Clinton won only 31 percent of the Asian vote. Asian Americans have relatively high incomes and are least dependent on government help. They should be a natural constituency of small-government Republicans. That they are not shows that the raison d'etre of the Republican party is not economics anymore.
"The party is a coalition of business interests who want low taxes and fewer regulations and evangelical Christian voters. The later block delivered all states Romney won. It shows what's important in the Republican party. As demography tilts further toward the Obama coalition, the Republican party can compete by becoming more like the Democrats, or shift to extremist tactics. I'm afraid the later is more likely."
Monday, December 31, 2012
Good words
“Congresswoman Michele Bachmann wants an investigation as to whether Islamists have infiltrated the highest levels of the federal government. You know what’s really frightening? After listening to Michele Bachmann, you realize idiots have infiltrated the highest levels of the federal government.”
– Jay Leno
Christopher Hitchens meme
I'm sure this is not his quote, but it fits in with the Dos Equis beer ads...
Chaotic universe
Here's a great post about the randomness of the universe in which we reside... You can click on the image to view it larger.
Whence came Jesus?
The story of Jesus was actually a conglomeration of stories of several other Gods who came before. He wasn't even original.
Tax hikes - the evidence
Let's look at the evidence regarding tax hikes on the wealthy and it's impact on the American economy.
And the reason this works? It redistributes some of the wealth from those who have it to those who need it and will spend it.
And the reason this works? It redistributes some of the wealth from those who have it to those who need it and will spend it.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The Nameless Cynic
He calls himself The Nameless Cynic, but he does give his name and background as he launches into a great monologue about the "believers." Fun read for atheists.
Jesus Christ, they're idiots!
Smart Republicans
These highly educated, well-informed Republicans are important leaders in the United States of America. Woe is us.
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