Welfare loving Conservatives strike again! Texas has more food stamp recipients than even California or New York

I mean, I understand why California has the biggest number of food stamp recipients. Ask any Conservative - they'll tell you we're a haven for lazy brown people and illegal immigrants. No wonder we have so many food stamp recipients... that is, if you buy their racist nonsense.

But Texas, I mean, come on. Here's a state full of white upstanding cowboy Republicans who pull themselves up by their bootstraps from childhood onward. The state of guns, cowboys, cattle barons, rugged secessionists, proud church going communities, Chuck Norris, and Rick Perry...

... and 1.278 MILLION food stamp recipients, even more than California's 1.140 million. (And California's population is larger. Now consider that.)

This is even more odd when you consider that proportionally speaking, Texas has more white people and fewer minorities than California. 

Haven't Conservatives been telling us for ages that it's mostly liberal areas and lazy brown people who get food stamps? That doesn't explain Texas.

So how can it be Conservative Rick Perry-voting Texas have more food stamp recipients than left wing California?

How will Conservatives explain away this much hypocrisy?

Ladies And Your Prospective Husbands, Have You Considered Buying A Synthetic Diamond Instead?

"Diamonds are a girl’s best friend." This song, performed by Carol Channing in the 1949 production of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and made popular by Marilyn Monroe in 1953, has become a de facto motto for companies selling diamonds and for the ladies who desire them. DeBeers, the world’s largest diamond mining company, invented the phrase "Diamonds are forever." Diamond rings first became popular in the 1930s and exploded in popularity after these memes began to spread. However, diamonds - or, more explicitly, diamond mining operations - are not friends of the working class and they are certainly not popular with Mother Nature.

Diamond Mines are Dangerous for Workers

Natural diamonds are typically mined from countries where workers are exploited - paid low wages for their work, and worked to death in deadly work environments. Child labor is rampant in the diamond industry.

Conflict Diamonds

The diamond trade is also often used to fund wars. These are called blood diamonds or conflict diamonds.

Diamonds mined for war funding and with the use of exploited labor typically occurs in Africa, an area which is responsible for 2/3 of all mined diamonds in the world today.

The Environment

Even in countries where diamonds aren’t mined to fund wars or by child labor, mining is severely damaging to the environment. The carbon footprint for diamond mines is very high as they use a lot of fuel to extract diamonds from the earth, and animal habitats are also threatened in order to make and run the mines. Hazardous chemicals also leech into nearby water supplies from diamond minds, and water is used in large amounts during the extraction process. Deforestation is another occasional consequence of diamond mining.

Artificial Diamonds

Enter, synthetic or artificial diamonds. These diamonds, first invented by companies like General Electric for industrial purposes, are made by machines in a laboratory, use relatively fewer natural resources, and generate less pollution. In all, they cost around 15 percent less than mining diamonds from the earth, and offer an invaluable benefit when it comes to reducing the need for diamond mines. Synthetic diamonds are scarcely different from natural diamonds when observed by the naked eye, and thus they can be as beautiful as naturally mined diamonds.

Where to Get Synthetic Diamonds

If you have decided to make the decision to buy a diamond engagement ring that shows your love of human rights and Mother Nature as well as your love for your spouse or future spouse, there are certain hurdles to consider. For one, there aren’t a lot of companies that make synthetic diamonds for public sale as of 2013. Traditional diamond mining companies have a lock on the industry and pressure retailers into not selling these types of diamonds. Second, the technology for making synthetic diamonds is still maturing, and synthetic diamonds over a carat in size are almost never colorless. Public perception of synthetic diamonds also depresses sales, because people see them as not being as romantic as diamonds that are mined from the Earth. 

That said, there are certain companies that you can buy synthetic diamonds from. Here is a short list. Other companies include Diamond Nexus, Sona Diamond Jewelry Store, Nue Diamonds, and others.

Economic cognitive dissonance, summed up nice and easy.

The cost of living has gone up more than 100% since 1970, and corporate profits have gone up by more than 500%, while wages have stagnated, and nobody bats and eyelash, but if you start talking about wages going up to match everything else, half the country loses its fracking minds about it.

In short - everything must naturally go up except workers' wages?

Are you really willing to accept this?

Doctors are penalizing the poor in their war against Medicare... does society really need these kinds of "doctors"?

Fewer American doctors are treating patients enrolled in the Medicare health program for seniors, reflecting frustration with its payment rates and pushback against mounting rules, according to health experts.

The number of doctors who opted out of Medicare last year, while a small proportion of the nation’s health professionals, nearly tripled from three years earlier, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency that administers the program. Other doctors are limiting the number of Medicare patients they treat even if they don’t formally opt out of the system.

Even fewer doctors say they won’t accept new Medicaid patients, and the number who don’t participate in private insurance contracts, while smaller, is growing—just as millions of Americans are poised to gain access to such coverage under the new health law next year. All told, health experts say the number of doctors going “off-grid" isn’t enough to undermine the Affordable Care Act, but they say some Americans may have difficulty finding doctors who will take their new benefits or face long waits for appointments with those who do.

Meanwhile, the proportion of family doctors who accepted new Medicare patients last year, 81%, was down from 83% in 2010, according to a survey by the American Academy of Family Physicians of 800 members. The same study found that 4% of family physicians are now in cash-only or concierge practices, where patients pay a monthly or yearly fee for special access to doctors, up from 3% in 2010.

A study in the journal Health Affairs this month found that 33% of primary-care physicians didn’t accept new Medicaid patients in 2010-2011.

If you’re rich, then this system benefits you. If you’re poor or elderly, well, you’re screwed.

Do we really need doctors who create this kind of environment?

Any Effort To Reduce Inequality Would Make Us All Poorer? Nonsense.

CEO pay has gone up more than 14 fold from 1970 to now, and not because of their compensation equals their marginal output.

It's more because of rent-seeking.

The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals as Evidence of Rents in Top 1 Percent Incomes | Economic Policy Institute

Furthermore, the claim that cutting CEO compensation (and thus rent-seeking) would make the world poorer, is nonsense. For instance Harvard ivory tower-dweller Greg Mankiw states:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/man..._percent_0.pdf

Then, one day, this egalitarian utopia is disturbed by an entrepreneur with an idea for a new product. Think of the entrepreneur as Steve Jobs as he develops the iPod, J.K. Rowling as she writes her Harry Potter books, or Steven Spielberg as he directs his blockbuster movies...

There's one fatal mistake in this theory. JK Rowling chose to stay in England despite their high taxes because she had a moral obligation to their welfare system.

So the going theory that reducing wealth inequality will make the world poorer because we'll have fewer Steve Jobs and JK Rowlings, is nonsense.

I've got another example to refute that, too: Linus Torvalds, the maker of GNU/Linux. If Steve Jobns and Bill Gates were to just up and quit because they couldn't become a multi billionaire then we'd have those resources going to Linux instead. Which is distributed for free. So much for marginal compensation.

Then there's the final problem of the theory of marginal compensation and its attempts to justify income inequality: if income inequality keeps rising indefinitely, then the 1% will find that nobody else can buy their products or services anymore. Then who will compensate them at all?

Let Me Be Straight Up About This... What Is And What Is NOT Liberalism

If you believe that summary executions by bombings or drone strikes is acceptable, despite the innocent lives that such acts snuff out of existence, you are not a liberal. Liberals oppose the taking of innocent human lives. Anything else is convenient moral expediency - aka warmongering. Supporting these things is a luxury only enjoyed by those who do not live under the threat of being bombarded. Supporting the use of air strikes and bombardments to take out enemy targets with no regard to civilian casualties is what you do when you are a privileged American or Northern Hemisphere Western world citizen who, by right of technological dominance, will never be the target of such acts of mass murder. If you support summary executions and drone strikes, you do so because your child will never die for the simple crime of being an innocent bystander. You live under the safety of the protection of due process: before you or anyone you know can be put to death there must be a trial and the discovery of evidence, and a jury that convicts you and sentences you to die. For you to say that people in the rest of the world don't deserve the same exact thing, makes you no better than the so-called terrorists. You are not a liberal if you believe in summary executions or drone strikes. Period.

If you believe that America should in any way be involved in the Middle East, you are not a liberal. What we are doing out there is nothing short of the naked mass exploitation of natural resources in the name of protecting an outdated energy industry that is killing us all. So you say we need the oil? Do you also say we need the pollution and the global warming that comes with the burning of these fossil fuels? Do you believe the fossil fuel industry propaganda about how alternative fuels and energy aren't practical? Then you most certainly aren't a liberal, because you are clinging to outdated concepts that are going to lead to disaster for human civilization. Do you deny that burning fossil fuels is causing global warming and is causing the costly, outright disastrous droughts and floods that we are seeing today? Is your counter argument "but things will cost more if we don't stick with oil"? Then you are in fact a conservative, not a liberal, and moreover, you have a nasty surprise coming to you: global warming is already making things cost more... like food.

Do you say we also need to maintain a military presence in the Middle East to fight with people in the area who don't want us there? Do you argue that we have a right to be there because their governments - largely un-elected dictatorships that they are - invited us to be there? Such naked Imperialism is not liberalism - in fact it is the exact opposite, it is conservatism. You have the privilege of adopting this conservative warmongering mindset because you live in a safe Western nation where foreign troops don't routinely drive through your streets, shooting at your neighbors. If you were a liberal you would be fighting for the right of Middle Easterners to enjoy the same privileges. Oh but they're terrorists, you argue? Another bigoted conservative belief. Try having unwanted foreign troops in your city and see how fast your neighbors start taking up arms against them. If you were a liberal you'd understand the hypocrisy of this so-called "war on terror".

Does this sound like ideological purity? You betcha it does. The alternative is that liberalism will be re-defined as blind loyalty to old outdated industries with reckless disregard to the damage being done to our environment. The alternative is signing onto an ideology that saddles our children with an even more polluted world, for the sake of immediate economic gain for our generation. The alternative to the dreaded concept of ideological purity is to accept that liberalism has evolved into naked imperialism, racism and mass-murderous savagery repackaged as "bringing democracy and civilization to the East". 

If you support drone strikes, Middle East intervention and resource exploitation, and the war on terror, you are not a liberal. There is already a home for your beliefs, and it is called conservatism.

If You Want to Shut Up a Tea Partier, Ask Them 2 Basic Questions

1) Why didn't they rise up in protest when Bush proposed to bail out the banks in 2008?

2) Why didn't the Tea Party rise up in protest when the USAPATRIOT Act was passed?

"This Country In Its Present Form Is Beyond Redemption" - Quote from a Democratic Underground user who once screamed that this was not the case.

 http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2863072

we're endlessly at war and we do terrible things in the name of national security. We have a bloated secretive Defense and National Security Network that is hand in glove with the defense industry. In short, we do more harm than good on the world stage and we damage ourselves in the process. Our wars are driven, to a significant degree, by the relationship between government and industry. 

The gap between the rich and everyone else is growing at an exponential rate. 

Corporations own the government. No, they don't own each individual elected or appointed official but they own enough of them, or like Penny Pritzker, they are them. 

Electing democrats rather than republicans may stave off some horrors, but it makes little difference when it comes to corporate power, who is in the White House or who is in Congress. Maybe it's become some weird form of institutional behavior- the institutions are so mired in the corpocracy that individuals have little chance of effecting real change. 

I used to scoff at people who claimed that we're living under fascism. If not there yet, we're well on our way. 

I wonder if that poster will remember this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=882068

In short:
TO HELL with "small, incremental solutions". WE NEED MAJOR, RADICAL CHANGES to save this country! We have Stage-4 societal CANCER and we need CHEMOTHERAPY.

Welcome aboard, Cali. The first step is to realize that America is beyond redemption in its present form. The next step is to realize that you need MAJOR, RADICAL SOLUTIONS in order to save the country.

Honestly, why don't liberals show more spine?

In 2009 the Tea Party came out in droves to oppose Obamacare. Liberals, whom they always accuse of being unemployed and so on, never came out to meet them. There were tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these guys out there, and hardly any counter demonstrations.

Tea Partiers insulted Parkinson's Disease victims and even stomped on a woman's head while she was protesting Rand Paul. Tea Partiers even had the nerve to harass elderly protesters at a picnic out of a park, and then follow said liberals to their home and drive up on a private road right up to their driveway, nearly hitting someone in the process. Then there's the infamous episode of Tea Partiers openly carrying firearms at townhall meetings. Let's not forget the other instances of outright violence by conservatives.

Tea Partiers verbally attacked this woman who was relating a story of a woman who died and lost a baby because of a lack of insurance. She had no backup at her side to shout down these bullies.

Liberals let this happen, most of it went unanswered, and the results are pretty much history. The Tea Party earned the respect of America with its hard charging tactics, and swept into Congress in 2010.

Liberals need to learn the first rule of politics: that America respects an ass whupping, and does not respect people who back down and retreat. Don't get me wrong, nobody's saying that 18 old ladies should go fist to fist with 30 or more Tea Party male brutes who drove up onto their property without permission. Nobody's saying a single woman should go Wonder Woman and pound 2 or 3 guys who are stomping her at a Rand Paul rally. What we liberals should be asking is why wasn't anyone else there to kick these guys' asses when they got violent? That's legal, folks. It's called the God given, court-affirmed right to self defense. Failure to make use of that right emboldens bullies and makes your entire movement look weak in the eyes of the public.

Big protests make progress. Liberals could have avoided the jaw dropping losses of 2010 had they come out in force against the Tea Party. Look what happened when they came out in force afterwards: the Conservatives suffered huge losses in 2012. People say Occupy Wall Street didn't achieve anything but they brought the term "99%" to the country and it has yet to go away.

The problem is, the same mistakes are starting to get made again in the run-up to 2014. We're not out there. 90% of people support background checks and we're not out protesting for this. Mass protests of the sequester never happened. America is seeing this, and they're losing respect, because we can't stand up for ourselves.

It's not like liberals haven't had monstrously big protests in the past. So if the problem isn't the lack of a spine, then what's holding us back? Fear of Tea Party bullies? Apathy? What's up?

More Free Traitor Nonsense: "The Manufacturing Jobs We've Lost Weren't Good Jobs Anyway"

A popular meme put forth by people who feel America benefits by closing factories and putting Americans out of work, is that we don't need those jobs anyway. Or worse, they are bad jobs and we should get rid of them.

Case in point:


Lost Manufacturing Jobs: Good Riddance?

There is no question that the U.S. has lost an enormous number of manufacturing jobs to lower wage countries.  These countries include mega economies like China and a number of smaller countries such as Vietnam that have large numbers of workers willing to work for low wages. Given the current high unemployment rate in the United States, it is understandable that politicians point out that we need to regain manufacturing jobs and that the loss of jobs to other countries is a major problem for the U.S.

But before we accept the loss of many low skilled manufacturing jobs as a major negative for the U.S. and that it should be halted and perhaps even reversed, it is important to put it in the context of what we know about the social impact of simple, repetitive work.  The fact is that this type of work often has numerous negative impacts on both individuals and society in general. This was highlighted recently by the news about riots taking place in Foxconn’s Chinese factories.

Even in China, low wage repetitive work can create major conflicts between workers and corporations and be destructive to society. We learned this long ago in the U.S. and it resulted in major U.S. corporations offshoring repetitive, manufacturing work or upgrading it through technology to the point where it became skilled work. In terms of social sustainability, repetitive low skilled work is a major negative. It causes employee dissatisfaction and turnover, stress-related mental and physical health problems, dysfunctional union/management relationships and large social class differences in wealth.

The bottom line is that instead of complaining about offshoring manufacturing jobs, we should be focusing on keeping and creating the right kind of manufacturing jobs. What kinds of jobs are those? In essence, I am talking about the kind of knowledge work jobs that exist in the high-tech world and the advanced manufacturing plants of some major manufacturers. We can only keep these jobs in the U.S. if we have a skilled workforce who can meet the challenges that knowledge, information technology, and engineering present.

When you hear these arguments, remember there are two obvious fatal flaws in this argument that you probably already know, but haven't been able to point out clearly before:

1) The knowledge economy that these guys talk about, is inherently too small. So is advanced manufacturing. The number of jobs that these fields will produce are high-paying and we do need them as part of our economy and industrial base, but the inherent reality of both advanced knowledge-based jobs and advanced manufacturing is that they are high productivity jobs. Knowledge-based and high-tech manufacturing industries are inherently designed to employ fewer people to do the same amount of work. Take a look around you. How many innovation-based jobs and advanced manufacturing jobs are there? How many people are out of work? The enormous ratio of unemployed people to "advanced" jobs ratio is one that is not going to change by much even in the best of times. These jobs are tragically insufficient in numbers to cover even the people who were put out of work from regular manufacturing by foreign outsourcing.

Simply put there will never be as many of these knowledge based jobs or high tech manufacturing jobs to cover the number of people thrown out of work when we send the lower end manufacturing jobs overseas. Period. No economist can hope to keep a straight face and tell you otherwise. 

The other thing you will want to remind someone of when they spout these stupid arguments is that we already have tons of college graduates in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) industries out there right now, and they cannot find work in the STEM fields. Consider a man who holds a Ph D in plasma physics - not even he can get a job in this so-called knowledge based economy. 

Consider these statistics, too:

There are 101,000 U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who are unemployed.
There are an additional 244,000 U.S.-born individuals under age 65 who have a degree in engineering but who are not in the labor market. This means they are not working nor are they looking for work, and are therefore not counted as unemployed.
In addition to those unemployed and out of the labor force, there are an additional 1.47 million U.S.-born individuals who report they have an engineering degree and have a job, but do not work as engineers.
President Obama specifically used the words “highly skilled.” In 2010, there were 25,000 unemployed U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who have a Master’s or Ph.D. and another 68,000 with advanced degrees not in the labor force. There were also 489,000 U.S.-born individuals with graduate degrees who were working, but not as engineers.

If knowledge based jobs are the next big thing then why do we have so many knowledge workers who are unemployed or not even working in the STEM industry?

This is where free traitors retreat to their last resort: bigotry against American workers. "They're all incompetent!" 

2) We're already shipping knowledge work overseas. Biotech has research already moved overseas. Intel has moved a major research center to China. And let's not mention the devastation that foreign outsourcing is inflicting upon the knowledge jobs of the tech industry.

The problem with globalization is that knowledge work - innovation and research - is as easily mobile as manufacturing. It doesn't matter if you have a Ph D - someone in India could have a Ph D, too, and do the same work for pennies to your dollar. Free traitors like to avoid discussing this. Remember to hammer them about it. Mercilessly.

3) China faces unrest not because manufacturing jobs are inherently jobs where workers get abused, but because China, unlike the United States, still allows rampant abuse, overworking and underpayment of their workers. America had beaten this problem of worker abuse with workplace safety laws and wage laws, to name a few basic rights that Chinese workers don't have. In China they put you in a dorm and wake you up at random in order to fulfill a company's emergency order for a new product. They can't get away with that in America.

As for the "dissatisfaction and turnover, stress-related mental and physical health problems" - all of which are less severe in American manufacturing jobs, mind you (thank labor unions for that) - there is one other point to consider: does this genius of an author think unemployment causes less of this?

4) Knowledge based jobs and high-tech manufacturing jobs require workers with college degrees. Anyone who tells you otherwise is blowing smoke out their butts. Has this author looked outside for a second to see what the cost of such degrees are, nowadays?

So the plan here is for unemployed American manufacturing workers to run the gauntlet of high tuition costs and massive student debt to get a STEM based degree to compete with the other STEM grads out there who are unemployed and looking for work. And to compete with cheap STEM labor from other countries, too. 

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Do you feel like humiliating a FREE TRADER globalist today? Then ask them these questions

Dear Free Traders,

Riddle me this, riddle me that…

Do you think it’s better for millions of Americans to be perpetually unemployed than to bring back the factory jobs or call center jobs they used to work in?

iPads sold in America should be made in China and not America because of what now… help me out here… phobia of China, or phobia of American workers?

America is supposed to run a $500 billion trade deficit? Why doesn’t any other country want to run that kind of deficit?

Japan is negotiating a 1,000% tariff on rice for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, but you think America should not ever raise tariffs?

Which one of you foreign outsourcing advocates out there have ever had your call center or factory job shipped overseas?

What’s going to happen to those poor people in the third world when America’s economy collapses from all this unemployment and we can’t buy their stuff anymore? Any answers for that?

Have you ever told an unemployed American to their face that losing their job to China, Mexico or India was good for them, or the economy?

You say we’re ditching factory jobs in favor of knowledge jobs. Where are these knowledge jobs? How many knowledge job openings are there? How many unemployed are there? Compare the numbers and please explain how that knowledge-based economy is coming along. While you’re at it, would you care to explain why so many research and development jobs are going to India and China despite a glut of Science,  Tech, Engineering and Math graduates here in America?

So you say that opponents of foreign outsourcing are xenophobes. Considering that international trade is a mostly one-way street vacuuming jobs out of the United States, why should YOU not be called out as an America-phobe?

Please name one other nation on Earth that is foolish enough to outsource as much work as America does. Per capita, even.

Have a nice day.

The Depression, Globalization and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Myths: Something to Think About

It has been argued that the Smoot-Hawley series of tariffs did enormous damage to the economy during the Great Depression. The pro-globalist interpretation of the historical facts is that because America imposed massive tariffs, and other nations retaliated, this led to serious damage to the economy.According to the pro-globalist story, Smoot-Hawley caused, or exacerbated, the Great Depression because it severely impaired global trade.

The problem is, factually, this is simply not true.

1) The nation’s GDP fell by almost half (46%) - and this affected international trade, not the other way around. We lost jobs, people stopped producing, and what little we produced, was being consumed here. And with other nations suffering as badly or worse than we were, they were in no position to buy anything from us. Which meant that their retaliatory tariffs were redundant when it comes to their effect upon trade. International trade was hindered because whole nations’ economies took a nosedive. Not the other way around.

2) There is another factor that pro-globalists do not consider when arguing that Smoot-Hawley caused (or exacerbated) the Depression. This factor is almost never even brought up by anti-globalists. History shows that when Smoot-Hawley was passed, the United States was not running the kind of monster $250 billion annual non-oil ($500 billion with oil imports) trade deficit that we are running today. The United States, at the time, was running a slight trade surplus for most of the Depression years. Think about it. Exporting goods generates more domestic jobs, and better-paying domestic jobs, than importing goods. If you pass massive across-the-board tariffs when you are exporting more goods than you are importing, and everyone else retaliates, you stand to lose your net export activity. You stand to suffer a net loss of jobs.IN THEORY; this did not really happen in the Great Depression because the jobs had already disappeared. Now, if you are importing far more than you export, you stand to lose imports - and you also stand to end a situation where domestic factories are closing down to move overseas.

If Smoot-Hawley was ever going to do even the slightest harm to the United States economy, the only time it would ever do so is if the United States is running a trade surplus: that means, Smoot-Hawley can only ever hurt the economy if we are exporting more than we are importing. Again, that is not the case today. We are importing more than we are exporting, and we are bleeding jobs out of the country as a result.

Ever wonder why China has succeeded so well? They slapped heavy tariffs on American products, for one. They also devalued their currency, for two. South Africa is also raising other, de facto trade barriers (“buy local”), and it’s working marvelously for them. Yet globalists say that trade barriers won’t work for America?

3) Finally, there is one last factor that the pro-globalists are wrong about: none of the anti-globalists are calling for an across the board shutdown of imports that Smoot-Hawley was aiming for. What we want is to reduce the trade deficit to zero. America runs the largest trade deficit of any country in the world, and we run a net trade deficit with almost every major country in the world. We are bleeding out more jobs than any other nation in the world. A $250 billion non-oil trade deficit is deadly, and it is most certainly unsustainable. Trade deficits like what America is running, have a direct impact on the national debt - $250 billion (much less $500 billion) annual trade deficits make the national debt grow. And you cannot stop this type of debt growth by cutting domestic spending. Moreover, trade deficits of the magnitude that America is running, also devalue the United States dollar.

Here is the ultimate reality that pro-globalists do not want to discuss.These trade deficits will end. There is getting around this. They will end. The question is whether they end with laws that act to balance out trade, or they end when the deficits destroy our economy - and all the other economies (such as China) that depend on exports to America.

There’s only so far an economy can go by bleeding another nation’s working class of their jobs.

Let me explain to you what Conservatism is all about.

Conservatism is about creating a Plutonomy - an economy driven by the rich and which serves only them. It is about forging a world in which Les Miserablesis to be looked upon as not going far enough.

The Conservative dream world is one in which the poor are left to starve, quietly, and if they protest, they are to be put down, violently. The Conservative world is one in which those left who toil for the rich, are serfs in a revived feudal society.

Question for you, folks, what do you have when every plot of land is privately owned and governed? That’s called Feudalism! What do you think privatization is all about? The private ownership and administration of all public lands and services: privately owned and governed. Want to see a clear example of private ownership and government? Check out ANY homeowner’s association or charter school. It ain’t a pretty picture. In some homeowner’s associations you can’t even fly the American flag, and charter schools discriminate against students with disabilities. Now think of an America where this goes on. everywhere. Want another example? Think of toll roads. Now, think of EVERY road being a toll road. That’s feudalism, and it is being revived as we speak. By Conservatives - Conservative Republicans and even a few Conservative politicians who label themselves Democrats (see: Blue Dog Democrats). You might have also heard of the term Corporate State. Also known as Fascism. That is what Conservatives want.

The next time you see a debate about taxes, privatization of public services or lands, international trade policies, welfare “reform”, or educational policy changes, ask yourself this:

1) Does it mean higher costs for you?

2) Does it mean less services for you?

3) Does it mean less jobs? Does it mean employers can screw you over even more? Does it mean more acts of discrimination are allowed?

4) Does it mean poor people will have less to live on?

5) Does it mean closing schools or excluding groups of people from said schools?

6) Does it mean closing down a factory and sending those jobs overseas?

On any given issue, whatever solution leads to a “yes” answer to the above, is what Conservatives will fight for. It’s just that simple. If you are not rich, the Conservatives want you quietly dead, or as a serf.

Believe it. It is the truth.

So, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died on March 5th and people are out dancing on his grave...

So people say he was an evil dictator? Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. But, while history sorts that question out, let us first do some comparisons, shall we?

Between the United States and Venezuela:

• Which country has the most people per capita, in prison?
• Which country has warrantless surveillance programs?
• Which country routinely kills unarmed foreigners with drone strikes, without due process?
• Which country uses drones to watch over its own populace?
• Which country imprisons peaceful protesters?
• Which country has police gangs that run around shooting at people they THINK are suspects, without even determining that they are in fact suspects?

The answer: we've got plenty of our own problems to be calling Chavez a dictator.

#UniteBlue America Can't Survive Being United Anymore Than a Marriage Can Survive Rampant Domestic Violence.

You are GUARANTEED not to like this blog. But we have no other options left.

America is dysfunctional, and it is becoming more so because of Conservatives. It is like this song:

This song by Eminem and Rihanna is about a relationship being destroyed by a self-sustaining death spiral of strife and domestic violence. If you look at the relationship between Conservatives and anyone to the left of their ideology, it is playing out across the country just like this song. In fact, the sequester that threatens to devastate America this Friday on March 1st is clearly analogous to Eminem talking about setting the bed on fire with his girlfriend in it.

How much more of this can America take?

The truth is, if we're going to stay a united country, this political version of rampant domestic violence will continue, with Republicans tearing the walls down and setting things on fire, until finally, one time, America won't avert a total economic catastrophe. Whether it comes this Friday or it comes at some other time, this disastrous economic collapse is inevitable. The Conservative movement will drive America to collapse: in fact, it is their explicit intent to do so.

Nobody wants to talk about cutting Conservatives loose. So instead what we will eventually do is talk about America as a nation ruined by hyper-austerity and economic collapse.

The only solution for dealing with a habitual domestic abuser is to remove them from the household, or to leave. Likewise, the only way to deal with 60 million people who voted for Mitt Romney is to split the country and cut these kooks loose. If you believe that dividing America in half is a terrible option, it is. But it's even more terrible to keep these domestic abusers around when at any given time they could burn the bed with you - namely, the working class 99% - lying in it.

Split America or watch the whole country burn. There is no third option left.

In Case You Haven't Noticed, the Free Republic Conservative Website Went Down for 3 Days, and Is Now Back

The Free Republic is a Conservative website, probably the largest in terms of population online. It boasts 30 million comments with hundreds or even thousands of posts coming in practically per day. That's a lot of activity. That's a lot of people. Suffice it to say, the Free Republic website is a major haven for Conservative knuckle draggers to sit around and spew their hate.

Well, recently, the site went down for about 3 days. There have been many stated reasons, the most oft-stated one being a database crash. In any case, people on other sites have been cheering its downtime, hoping that it would not come back up. There have been other discussions, such as why it costs so much to run the site, but this is not the main issue.

The main issue is, as long as these Freeptards infest this country, they need their own website. Free Republic needs to stay up.

Why, you ask with a palm slapping your forehead?

Simple.

Because if Free Republic goes down, the threat of one of these people going on a shooting rampage, increases dramatically. The threat that they will attack, troll or even hack other websites, skyrockets. The permanent loss of Free Republic is 

Population Control Will NOT Save Our Environment - Sustainable Living Will

Overpopulation is not a new refrain; it was a subject of complaint even as far back as the Roman Empire. The problem is, you can have a small population of humans and still over-consume your way into a crisis or even ecological ruin and a catastrophic population crash. Malthusian theories can argue all day long about how much physical room the Earth has for human beings, but history shows one certainty: even 100 million is enough to ruin the ecosystem.



Take the deforestation that occurred on Rapa Nui aka Easter Island, for instance. Or better yet, look at deforestation patterns in Midieval Europe, from the 13th to 16th centuries, where the populace in the area never exceeded 150 million. There weren't a lot of humans there, at least compared to now, but they wrought much devastation on their ecosystem, with catastrophic consequences, such as famines and plagues that were fueled by the resulting waves of mass starvation and malnutrition.

Ironically, the mass deforestation was slowed down by the growing use of coal. Compared to Medieval times, coal was the first form of alternative energy, and petroleum was the alternative energy to whale oil. Alternative energy slowed the destruction of forests and saved the whales.

Of course, deforestation is still happening at a breathtaking pace, and the practice of using fossil fuels in place of trees is itself catching up with us in the form of pollution and global warming. At the same time the Malthusian crowd is again blowing the overpopulation trumpet.

Populations have swelled and declined, but regardless of the size of the world's population, or that of any one region, two things have always been constant: overconsumption and wastefulness. Malthusians incorrectly base their predictions of resource crashes on the size of the human population. The problem is not the size of our population. The problem is, at its core, all about overconsumption. No matter what size a given population is, overconsumption and wastefulness still make for an unsustainable society and will lead to the Malthusian sky falling on our heads. 

The key to protecting our environment and global habitat, therefore, is sustainability. We need a system of recycling that is as close to perfect as possible, and one in which we cut pollution to a bare minimum. We need to build consumer goods in a way that they can be recycled in an environmentally-friendly way, and build them to last. We need a society where few things go into the trash and almost nothing goes into landfills. We need a global agreement of hard and inflexible pollution REDUCTIONS, not just "cap and move pollution around to whatever nation can pay the pollution fee." We need to make use of solar energy, which can now be generated at night as well as during the day; the sun bathes the Earth in more energy PER DAY than modern society will use in centuries, and we need to harness a respectable portion of that. We must all become like Germany, who now uses more solar energy than the whole world combined. Composting must also become a religion, while research in nano-pesticides must begin so that we can ditch the use of chemicals. I could list the specifics all day long, but I think Democrats can get the picture. Waste not, want not, is an old but wise and very relevant saying. We had mass recycling programs in World War II, why not have them now? Consider it a world war in defense of our environment.

Which brings me to Stephen Hawking, who once famously said that for our survival, we need to colonize other worlds. He's correct. The truth is, Earth will be hit by a massive asteroid one day, one that will destroy human life on this planet. This is guaranteed to happen. Large asteroids have wiped out life across the Earth in the past and it will happen again. But there's another reason for space colonization: it is also a huge creator of jobs worldwide, and would result in access to more resources beyond Earth. Outer space is, potentially, the world's biggest jobs program, ever; it is likely to create an employee's market for anything from manual labor (think: asteroid miners in space suits, or people piloting mining drones) to jobs in the hard sciences and engineering. The prospect of putting factories on the moon, by itself, offers huge ecological benefits for the world. In the long term it will also solve the imaginary Malthusian problem of physical space. 

However, there is an even bigger benefit to listening to Hawking's advice. The biggest benefit of all is that when it comes to long-term existence in outer space, you are forced to research and implement a system of total sustainability. Even short term trips into orbit require some level of recycling and sustainability, but people working in offworld factories and those taking trips to places like Mars will need total sustainability. Recycling of all resources is a must, as is the use of alternative and renewable energy. The sustainability issues that must be solved to achieve long-term space travel and colonization of inhospitable worlds will be of enormous benefit for us back on Earth.

There's another reason to shoot for sustainability over population control: whenever you hear about population control, it's YOU AND YOUR FAMILY who will be controlled. The Plutocracy will have no skin in the game at all; they won't use less resources or make any sacrifices, but YOU WILL. Malthusians are quick to say that it's the poor who overpopulate the most - problem is, they're talking about MANY OF YOU, as in the many of the people who are reading this and saying to themselves, "No, that can't be right". Yeah, it is right. It's all about controlling YOU so that the Plutocrats can have mansions the size of college campuses and yachts that rival the size of aircraft carriers, along with all the resources that these luxuries use.

Who Pays Teachers The Most For Their Time?

WTF Do Gun Control Advocates Expect a Woman to Do to Defend Herself?

First of all, I'm sick and tired of the National Rifle Association. They represent gun owners like me just like the Ku Klux Klan represents white men like Veep Joe Biden: NOT AT ALL. They are opposed to the most sensible of restrictions, like universal background checks and bans on semi-auto rifles. Their response to everything is, "MORE GUNS!!!" Let's get that bullshit out of the way - the NRA has no solution to the question of how a woman can defend herself when she is cornered.

On the other side, however, is this nonsense, while not as stupid as the NRA, it is still nonsense.

I've got a question for people who push this meme.

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT A WOMAN TO DO TO PROTECT HERSELF???

Can we get an answer to that, from someone? If you don't advise her to own a gun, what should she do when she's faced with domestic violence, or some rapist breaking into her house, with kids huddling behind her?

What, no answer? Don't worry. I'll wait. I've got all the time in the world for you to figure that out. Those women out there with animals beating down their door? Not so much. Think on that. WTF is she gonna do to defend herself?

Okay Can Someone Explain This 'Nice Guy' Thing To Me?

I've been reading these long series of posts on Tumblr about the 'nice guy' thing. From all their accusations, one thing rings consistent: women absolutely hate nice guys.

I don't get it. Fortunately, being married, my love life doesn't depend on getting it. But still, it's confusing and I hate confusion.

Let me see if I get this right.... 
1) 'nice guys' is another way of saying self-proclaimed nice guys.
2) nice guys are actually deceitful men who just want to get into a woman's pants.
3) plus they get mad if a woman doesn't sleep with them
4) and they pester a woman who rejects them
5) because they feel entitled to her affections, especially if she is good looking.

HUH?!!!!!

Let me first say if there are men out there like that, they're utter dumbass wastes of oxygen. The ladies of Tumblr have spoken enough hatred of these dirtbags so I'll leave it at that.

But the nice guys I hung with, back in the day, didn't feel entitled to anything. In fact we had long talks between us men about how the only thing we were entitled to, when it came to everything from love to just putting food on the table, was to work our asses off and HOPE something came of it. In short as far as we were concerned it was all about luck. We knew men who felt they were owed sex and we avoided being seen with these dudes. Oddly enough they were the rich guys and jocks. Now, apparently, self proclaimed nice guys share this twisted sense of entitlement? 

....the fuck? Is this some kind of 20something problem where guys don't know this instinctually? I was one of those nice guys who didn't like getting friend-zoned, and I never needed to be told such basic shit as this. None of the self proclaimed nice guys I shared my woes with, needed this reminder, either. I can't help but believe that this is nonsense.

I'll tell you what really plagues the nice guys:
1) Desperation. Years of deprivation will do that to you, especially if you're a male.
2) Having mostly-indoor hobbies that women don't (or didn't used to) like, or even respect. Comic Con used to be an almost all-male thing. (Then, suddenly for some reason, it wasn't. Huh??) There also still aren't many women computer geeks. Some, but not many.
3) Awkward. Their jokes rarely ever fly. Neither did mine, but I hardly ever cared. Didn't kill me, either, I got married anyway.
4) Timidity. Guys didn't approach a woman romantically for fear of being humiliated. Not just rejected, but humiliated. Watching too much TV sitcoms will do that to you.

Timidity, now that's where I have a big problem with what I'm seeing on Tumblr. Most nice guys are too timid and afraid of crossing the jerk line to do HALF of the nutjob things I'm seeing women complain about. The problem is that they're too timid to pester a woman, or even express any sort of anger or frustration - which is part of how they earned the reputation of being so spineless!!! Oddly enough, despite all these failings, the nice guys in my age group all got married.

I can see the mythical monsters these women talk about nowadays not getting married, though. If these douchebags actually exist. Well, in this world of 6 billion people I imagine all sort of d-bags can actually exist... even someone so stupid as to not realize that being nice to a girl doesn't mean romance. And if people that dumb ever manage to breed, then this is our future:

If You Are a Republican and You're Not Rich...

Then 
THIS
IS
YOU.

The Chris Dorner Manhunt: Get to Know the Victims

With the manhunt of alleged cop-killer Chris Dorner apparently over, let's take a look at the victims of this tragedy. 

First, the people whose deaths kicked off this rampage of terror in Los Angeles: Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence. Monica Quan was the daughter of former LAPD Captain Randal Quan, the man who represented Dorner at his LAPD termination hearing. She was an assistant coach for women's basketball at Cal State Fullerton. She was apparently killed in retaliation against Randal Quan, apparently because Dorner felt he betrayed him at the hearing. Keith Lawrence was her fiance, and was apparently killed because of that. 

Then there were two police officers who died in the line of duty: Michael Crain and Jeremiah MacKay. Michael Crain was a former US Marine and an officer with the Riverside police department. He was killed in an ambush attack. Jeremiah MacKay was a sheriffs deputy for San Bernardino County. He died in a gun battle with Dorner, and another officer was seriously injured.

Now, we get to the other victims of the rampage by the police. The ones that were marked for death by summary execution by the Los Angeles and Torrance Police Department. These victims survived the murderous rampage by law enforcement officers only by the grace of God. The police did not attempt to look them in the eye or identify these innocent people, and the police did not ask them to surrender. The police just opened fire on these following people without so much as looking. This was worse than shoot-on-sight: it was shoot-before-sight. Fortunately, probably as a direct result of their recklessness, they failed.

Maggie Carranza and her mother Emma Hernandez were a mother and daughter team delivering newspapers in the morning on February 8, when officers from the Los Angeles Police Department approached their blue truck and opened fire without warning. Maggie Carranza's hand was injured while her mother Emma Hernandez took 2 bullets in the back. The police attempted to justify this shoot-before-sight attempted summary execution by saying the truck resembled the one driven by Chris Dorner. First of all, it didn't even look the same; second of all, this was a clear message being sent to all citizens: that the police are not going to ask for a surrender, and they're not even going to waste time identifying, much less verifying, their target.

Perhaps this is why, subsequently, David Perdue was shot at by Torrance police officers who rammed his car, didn't bother to get a look at him, and opened fire without so much as an order to surrender. Fortunately, they missed him.


We don't get much biographical information about these three victims... why? Because, unlike Dorner's victims, they survived. But they survived simply because the police who shot at them, didn't shoot accurately enough. Thank goodness.

But make no mistake: these three people 
were victims of attempted summary executions. 

Summary executions outside of wartime are ILLEGAL.
(And should be illegal under any circumstance.)

Chris Dorner monstrously - and I repeat, monstrously - targeted his victims. But if you weren't on his hit list and didn't engage him in battle, you were safe. The LAPD and the Torrance Police Department, on the other hand, deployed a blind, shoot-anything-that-moves "strategy" that terrorized the California Southland. Nobody was safe from the shooting rampage carried out by the police! Innocent lives were not lost ONLY BECAUSE THE POLICE WERE NOT GOOD SHOTS. Two innocent women were shot and hospitalized by the police.

Where is the Federal Bureau of Investigation? Where are the calls for these trigger happy wanna-be summary executioners to be thrown in prison for recklessly endangering the populace they're supposed to protect? Chris Dorner's actions were evil and monstrous - but the actions of those trigger happy cops were even worse.

Dorner is apparently dead. Justice served. Now it is time to deal with those shoot-before-sight cops. Identify those trigger-happy police officers NOW. Prosecute them NOW. 

Attempted summary executions of American citizens on American soil IS ILLEGAL. PROSECUTE THEM NOW!!! And may the Federal Government never, ever let those trigger-happy cops see the outside of a prison again.