"We Are Answerable..."

"We are all answerable..."

The president summed up, in this one line, why I am not a conservative. We are indeed responsible for things that happen in our culture....ALL of us...especially something as horrendous as the now regular mass shootings.

Pretending that it's not our problem is incredibly adolescent.

Blaming The Black Guy

Obama as Reagan

The Christian Science Monitor's cover story this week posits that Barack Obama is the Democrat's version of Ronald Reagan, a transformative president for a generation. Given this...

Now, 6-1/2 years into Obama’s presidency, the outlines of his legacy are clear: a major health reform that has added millions to insurance rolls, a recovering economy, Wall Street reform, a national right to same-sex marriage, diplomatic relations with Cuba, a nuclear deal with Iran, enhanced workers' rights, and aggressive new rules to combat climate change.

..I agree completely. This is why I voted for him. His success and progress are also EXACTLY why conservatives hate him. He's showing them up because all they have left is hate, anger and fear.

Compare President Obama's record above to George W Bush's record...worst attack on the home soil in history...allowing a US city to fall into the sea due to piss poor disaster response...economy collapsed. At this point, if you think Bush was a better president than Obama, you have no sense of reality whatsoever.

Go, Mr. President, Go!

Obama Feeling 'Feisty,' Ready to Take on the 'Crazies'


Yeah, he's not going to go gently into that good night, is he? Hee hee...

Truly Grateful

The GOP Legacy

The New Ronald Reagan

Messina mentioned huge shifts in public opinion on major issues including LGBT rights, immigration, income inequality and climate change that make the 270 electoral votes necessary to secure the White House simply out of reach for Republicans.

What A Week!

What a fantastic week for Barack Obama, Democrats and liberals everywhere. The Affordable Care Act is solidified...gay marriage is the law of the land...the trade bill is about to be signed by the president...Confederate flags finally coming down...and this speech....





Stunning...

The reaction from conservatives has largely been the typical adolescent furor. This, however, caught my eye...

Huckabee and Santorum Sign On with Minister Who Wants To Set Himself on Fire Over LGBT Rights

...as a fantastic example of how conservatives in this country are really no different than Islamic extremists (see: American Taliban). If I were in Homeland Security, I'd keep an extra eye on the right wing groups for the next few weeks and possibly in perpetuity.

Because our country is finally moving in the right direction and the mouth foamers are likely not going to stand for it. Given that they throw a good hump into their gun collection every day, I'd wager that more than a few of them are going to act up violently, as was the case with Dylan Roof.

Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll accidentally shoot each other:)

Not The New Normal

Racism Over in Murca

Hey kids, check out what happened when President Obama joined Twitter!

I wonder what political party he belongs to...:)

Check out all the other tweets as well. Hmm...I thought racism over in Murica. Obama must have been a race baitin'!!

Somehow Racist and Sexist at the Same Time

Check out Wayne LaPierre's remarks on President Obama, starting at the 8 minute mark

 

"Eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough"

Wow.

An Apology To Readers

I'd like to apologize to my 200-300 daily readers of this site for losing the courage of my convictions. It's been something that has been sticking in my craw for a while now and I felt it necessary to get it off my chest.

About a year ago, I noticed something about Benjamin Netanyahu and how he treated President Obama. It was merely how he treated him but how he looked at him. It reminded me a lot of how white men from the South look at the president. But I didn't say anything because I had doubt. That doubt was placed there by conservatives with their continual redirect and DARVOing. Being the reflective fellow I am, I listened to them and thought twice about putting up a post about how it's incredibly fucking obvious that Bibi no likey the blackies.

Yet now that he has made his comment about Arabs voting in droves, my suspicions are confirmed. So, I apologize, dear readers, for holding back. It will NEVER happen again. Clearly, their main goal in life is to foment doubt and act like adolescents. My days of listening to their garbage are over.

Now that we have comments cleaned up and monitored more closely, I encourage you to leave feedback and start some conversations. Registration is no longer required and you can post under any name you like..even anonymous. The comments will be moderated and checked for personal remarks to posters/commenters and spam so you will not be attacked by other commenters. The issues themselves will be the foundation of the discussion.

Thanks for sticking with us for all these years!

Good Words

Good Words

We've come a long way...

What happened in Ferguson may not be unique but it’s no longer endemic. It’s no longer sanctioned by law or custom, and before the civil rights movement, it most surely was.

And we have a long way to go...

We don’t need the Ferguson report to know that’s not true. We just need to open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. We know the march is not yet over; we know the race is not yet won. We know reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much.

Understanding the nuances of this is vital if one wants to understand race in the United States today.

The 2016 Budget

President Obama released his 2016 budget yesterday and, in just about every way, it represents everything the Democrats stand for and everything the Republicans stand against. Here is a breakdown of some of the highlights. In my view, it's the best budget he has put out since he became president. This one jumped out at me right away...

-Provides Tuition-Free Community College for Responsible Students. The President's America's College Promise proposal creates new federal-state partnerships to provide two years of free community college to responsible students, while promoting key reforms to improve the quality of community college offerings to ensure that they are a gateway to a career or four-year degree. If all states participate, an estimated 9 million students could benefit from this proposal.

A big reason why our country was so successful after World War II is the GI Bill. This echoes that legislation and is a great example of middle class economics. An investment in these students now will pay dividends in our economy's future.


Other highlights...

—Spending of $4.0 trillion and receipts of $3.5 trillion would combine for a $474 trillion deficit. For the budget year that ended Sept. 30, the actual deficit was $483 billion. That was a marked improvement from the $1 trillion-plus deficits during Obama's first years in office, when the country was struggling to emerge from a deep recession. 

—A six-year, $478 billion public works program would pay for highway, bridge and transit upgrades. About $238 billion would come from a one-time, 14 percent mandatory tax on the up to $2 trillion in estimated U.S. corporate earnings that have accumulated overseas. That rate is significantly lower than the current top corporate rate of 35 percent. The top corporate rate for U.S. earnings would drop to 28 percent; foreign profits would be taxed at 19 percent, with companies getting a credit for foreign taxes paid. The remaining $240 billion would come from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is financed with a gasoline tax.

 —The capital gains rate on couples making more than $500,000 per year would increase from 24.2 percent to 28 percent. Obama wants to require estates to pay capital gains taxes on securities at the time they are inherited. He is trying to impose a 0.07 percent fee on the roughly 100 U.S. financial companies with assets of more than $50 billion. 

 —Obama would take the $320 billion that those tax increases would generate over 10 years and funnel them into low- and middle-class tax breaks. His ideas: a credit of up to $500 for two-income families, a boost in the child care tax credit to up to $3,000 for each of up to two children under age 5, and overhauling breaks that help pay for college. 

 —Painful, automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies would be eased, with a 7 percent increase in annual appropriations. For 2016, Obama wants a $38 billion increase for the Pentagon. All told, agency budgets would go up $362 billion over the next six years above caps mandated by automatic spending cuts. 
.
The one that jumps out at me here is the alteration in corporate tax code and foreign profits. Corporations that are keeping their profits abroad should be taxed more and given the incentive, through a lower overall rate, to come back home.

The president has finally gotten smarter on dealing with the GOP. Start with a proposal that is firmly on the left side of the field (at least by today's standards:)) and force the Republicans to compromise on a more moderate approach. Don't begin with a compromise that results in something in the middle on the right side of the field.

President Obama...Yesterday and Today

And the numbers have improved even more since September of 2014. One would think that people would be more grateful but when you are so immature that you can't take the success of an ideology that you despise, it follows naturally that adolescent behavior is the result.

The Week In Politics

Since the State of the Union, the political scene sure has gotten interesting. As I have previously suggested, the president's approval ratings would rise if he started to appeal more to his liberal base. The fact that he was done in the low 40s was partly due to the left (and not exclusively the right) not approving of him because he was being too moderate. Well, they have come home, folks.

The president's tone in last Tuesday's speech shows that he's finally getting it right. You start off far left and then force Republicans to meet you in the middle. You don't start off at the 40 yard line on the left side of the field. Then you end up with a policy that is on the 30 yard line on the right side of the field. Now he's more or less forced the GOP to meet the reality of governing. Yes, that's right, conservatives. Now YOU GUYS have to deal with approval ratings running 30 percentage points behind the president.

Mitt Romney decided not to run for president today. That's too bad because I would have like to see him gum up and already gummed up field. I've heard a lot of talk about the deep bench on the side of the GOP but I see it more like this.

7 right-wing demagogues that will be shoved down our throats in 2016

In many ways, this is good news, though, because Reince Preibus's dream of being able to hide the batshit will not come to pass. These guys are going to be out there with their short wave radio lunacy and wacky, ideological nonsense, straw manning their way to their next appeal to fear to old, white men who can't seem to get over their problem with their parents...I mean, authority.

I say we let them have center stage for the next few months and then President Grandma can announce her candidacy sometime later in the year. What could possibly go wrong?:)

The Brick Wall

Putin Caves

So much for for the "all-powerful" Putin whose thunder makes the earth quake.

President Vladimir V. Putin said Monday that he would scrap Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline, a grandiose project that was once intended to establish the country’s dominance in southeastern Europe but instead fell victim to Russia’s increasingly toxic relationship with the West. It was a rare diplomatic defeat for Mr. Putin, who said Russia would redirect the pipeline to Turkey. He painted the failure to build the pipeline as a loss for Europe and blamed Brussels for its intransigence.

And so much for the always weak Barack Obama...

The decision also seemed to be a rare victory for the European Union and the Obama administration, which have appeared largely impotent this year as Mr. Putin annexed Crimea and stirred rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

As I have stated previously, the long run will not be kind to Vladimir Putin. This is the first of many examples.

Good Words

From a question on Quora regarding why Republicans hate the president so much...

My list is based directly on the comments I've heard the most from dozens and dozens of republicans over the last eight years; Not just the garbage that Faux News and their pinheads broadcast, or what I read online, but stuff that I hear fall directly out of the mouths of republicans, face-to-face :

1) He's black, with an "Un-American"-sounding name. ("Black" usually isn't the word they use, either, and they HATE being reminded that they're bigots.)

2) He's not just black - He's a smart, successful - "Uppity" - black man who doesn't beg their permission before he does stuff. They resent this.

3) He's beaten them. Twice. Modern republicans value winning an election more than they value the toil and sweat and sacrifice that comes after winning an election, and Obama "took that away from them" too, that big MEANIE.

4) Republicans feel entitled to rule America, forever, and all of this "Obama" stuff goes against what they expect and demand. They resent this.

5) Obama's cleaned up most of the carnage they caused for eight years. They don't feel a shred of shame or guilt for the damage they did to the country and the world, and they resent being identified with the carnage in the first place.

6) Obama's victories and accomplishments remind republicans that they still have to live in the real world, where they don't always get their way. They resent this.

7) He doesn't conform to the stereotype of a black male being dangerous, violent, dumb, sexually irresponsible and prone to substance abuse and criminal activity.  His simple existence reminds so many republicans that, again and again, they're just plain wrong, wrong, wrong.

8) He steadfastly refuses to be a bloodthirsty muslim who mass murders white christians. He only kills muslims. And just never mind that he's mass-murdered more muslims than Bush ever DREAMED of. He's still somehow managed to hide the "undeniable fact" that he's ONE OF THEM, even though he GOT THEIR LEADER.

9) He gives "their" money away to people they don't like, and just never goddamn mind that they're almost all, to a one, better off than they were when Bush left office. He just CAN'T be given credit for any of that, he just CAN'T.

10) He's from Chicago. Whatever THAT means.

Dave echoes my answer on this question but does hit some different notes that fold in quite nicely:)