What ultra-rich Americans want

In an article filled with statistics, Bernie Sanders explains that ultra-rich Americans will never be satisfied. They want "more, more, more." And they are on the verge of taking control of Congress in order to get it. Here's what about to happen: Republicans "want to add $700 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years by extending Bush's tax breaks for the top 2 percent." Here's where we are headed in the long run, unless the Democrats draw a line in the sand:

The billionaires and their supporters in Congress are hell-bent on taking us back to the 1920s, and eliminating all traces of social legislation designed to protect working families, the elderly, children and the disabled. No "social contract" for them. They want it all. They want to privatize or dismantle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and let the elderly, the sick and the poor fend for themselves. They want to expand our disastrous trade policies so that corporations can continue throwing American workers out on the street as they outsource jobs to China and other low-wage countries. Some also want to eliminate the minimum wage so that American workers can have the "freedom" to work for $3.00 an hour.

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Did Anne Frank go to hell?

Now here is a question I'd never thought to ask. Not of myself, mind you. I discarded belief in any afterlife long ago. But it is a good question to pose to fundamentalist Christians. And so Rachel Evans did. Credit where due, I found it via the Friendly Atheist. If you read her post and comments, you see a lot of hemming and hawing from Chrisitans who believe a) in a kind, loving, and just God who b) sends everyone to hell except the most extreme sycophants. They try to have it both ways. In brief, yes, all Jews go to Hell. But when considering this actual young, innocent person, who was a victim of Martin Luther's plan enacted by a Catholic leader, they sputter.

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Litmus test for hate messages

At "The Small Business Water Cooler," St. Louis attorney Rick Massey focuses on topics that can "help ordinary people in their struggle to get ahead in a world dominated and controlled by wealthy corporations." He is frustrated at the ubiquitous disorienting message of hate, and he proposes a simple litmus test:

Our greatest threat as we go forward is not the Mexicans that come across the border to work so they can feed their families; it is not the gays who would be quietly forming their own families and getting on with life but for the meddling of others that cannot rest as long as they are not telling someone else what he or she can and cannot do; it is not the Muslims that want to build a community center in New York; and it is not that vast crime-wave of people chemically altering their mood by smoking a plant that is infinitely less dangerous than its legal alternatives: alcohol, tobacco, and the abuse of prescription drugs. The greatest threat we face is that we forget that we are human beings; we will all die someday, and that in the meantime we are all pretty much in the same boat. If we don’t care for one another there will ultimately be no one to care for us. What happened to our internal system of red flags? What happened to our natural tendency to instantly question the messenger when the message is one of hate, intolerance, and blaming others for problems we can’t seem to resolve ourselves?
Rick raises a good question. Why are so many of us so willing to tolerate messages of hate, intolerance and blame? I have no definitive answer, but my prime suspect is the mass media, which seems to gather bigger audiences with us versus them conflict pornography. The rest of us watch these concocted stories and we get a warped view of the world. If everyone else is doing it, why not? Rick seems to be suggesting a litmus test that is incredibly simple: Severely question messages of hate, intolerance and blame. Really, it's that simple.

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Matt Taibbi reports from his front row seat at a foreclosure court trial docket

Matt Taibbi's newest article should be required reading for anyone who wants to support the desires of banks to expeditiously foreclose on home loans. Taibbi showed up at a Florida foreclosure docket to give an insider's view. You will be amazed at the conduct of the judge (it is described toward the end of Taibbi's article). Here's the link: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners: Retired judges are rushing through complex cases to speed foreclosures in Florida. Here's an excerpt:

At worst, these ordinary homeowners were stupid or uninformed — while the banks that lent them the money are guilty of committing a baldfaced crime on a grand scale. These banks robbed investors and conned homeowners, blew themselves up chasing the fraud, then begged the taxpayers to bail them out. And bail them out we did: We ponied up billions to help Wells Fargo buy Wachovia, paid Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, and watched as the Fed opened up special facilities to buy up the assets in defective mortgage trusts at inflated prices. And after all that effort by the state to buy back these phony assets so the thieves could all stay in business and keep their bonuses, what did the banks do? They put their foot on the foreclosure gas pedal and stepped up the effort to kick people out of their homes as fast as possible, before the world caught on to how these loans were made in the first place. . . . When you meet people who are losing their homes in this foreclosure crisis, they almost all have the same look of deep shame and anguish. Nowhere else on the planet is it such a crime to be down on your luck, even if you were put there by some of the world's richest banks, which continue to rake in record profits purely because they got a big fat handout from the government. That's why one banker CEO after another keeps going on TV to explain that despite their own deceptive loans and fraudulent paperwork, the real problem is these deadbeat homeowners who won't pay their fucking bills. And that's why most people in this country are so ready to buy that explanation. Because in America, it's far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it.

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Getting Science Under Control

After the election of 2008, we fans of the rational and provable had high hopes that government may give as much credence to the scientific process and conclusions as to the disproved aspects of philosophies promulgated by churches and industry shills. We watched with waning hope as a series of attempts to honor that ideal got watered down. But at least it was an improvement. But the 2010 election quickly reveals a backlash. Those whose cherished misunderstandings had been disrespected for the last couple of years now will have their day. As Phil Plait says, Energy and science in America are in big, big trouble. He begins,

"With the elections last week, the Republicans took over the House once again. The list of things this means is long and troubling, but the most troubling to me come in the forms of two Texas far-right Republicans: Congressmen Ralph Hall and Joe Barton."

He goes on to explain why. It comes down to them being proven representatives for Young Earth and fossil fuel interests, doing whatever they can to scuttle actual science by any means necessary. Especially where the science contradicts their pet ideas. Barton has published articles supporting climate change denialism. His main contributors are the extraction industries. Hall has used parliamentary tricks to attempt to scuttle funding for basic research. The Democrats offered to compromised by cutting funding, and he refused in hopes that the whole bill would fail. It passed. Then Hall publicly called Democrats on the carpet for using tricks to fatten the bill by the amount that they offered to cut. The Proxmire spirit lives on.

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