Ames: America's persistent problem is too much democracy

You may not like Ames but he is devastating. You teabaggers ignore him at your own moral peril. The GOP "braintrust" is anti-democratic at its core, just like our Founding Fathers were: Their greatest fear wasn't British tyranny, it was "mobocracy" by the unpropertied uncouth underclass. As the self-proclaimed true inheritors of our founding traditions, elitist Republicans hate democracy and majority rule.

Check it out, you beigists!

"What about the $23 trillion Republican bailouts? Well, again, we're too stupid to understand. The thing is, those bailouts had to be done their way in order to save us from the Road to Serfdom. It's hard to explain, but basically, the anti-government conservatives in the Bush Machine saved us from that Road to Serfdom by turning us into serfs. You see, all along it was the Road that they warned us about, not serfdom — that road is really treacherous, and government funded, and just a bad place to be. We weren't rational or strong enough to wean ourselves off of big government. So they saved us with their tough love, and stole the $23 trillion bailout for themselves before we could get our hands on it — which no doubt we would have done. In their hands, that $23 trillion debt makes us serfs, which is not as bad as the other alternative: we take the $23 trillion ourselves, leading us down the road to serfdom. Confused? If we were capable of studying economics, we'd understand the scientific logic of this reasoning."

And here's what Ames has to say about Tom Tancredo, keynote speaker at the Tea Party Patriots convention, who alongside Sarah Palin dvocated a return to Jim-Crow era voter literacy tests:

"*Note: In 1969, when Tancredo was finishing his four-year stint as pro-war College Republican campus activist, he received a note in the mail from the Draft Board calling him up for duty in Vietnam — so the wobbly-kneed invertebrate ran screaming and crying to the draft board appealing for an exemption from the very same war told everyone else to die in. After making a total abject ass of himself squirting into his underwear before the draft board, they finally gave in and handed Tancredo the yellow-striped coward's exemption he begged for — ruling him mentally unfit for duty due to "anxiety bouts" and "panic attacks." It was the only government job he ever turned down — he believed that "sacrifice" meant sacrificing other people's money and lives, not his own. After squirming out of the war, Tancredo spent the rest of his life sucking on the taxpayer teat, first as a junior high school teacher, then a state legislator, then a Department of Education federal employee (where he spent most of his time firing his colleagues), then Congressman, and finally, a Republican Party foundation-welfare queen."

Just like Cheney, Limbaugh, Dubya -- all of them actively avoided combat, although they're perfectly fine with "projecting American power" in every godforsaken desert and primitive sh**holte on Earth from the comfy environs of power.


Royal Tea Party Rebels: The Heroic Billionaires' Struggle To Overthrow The Tyranny Of Democracy
By Mark Ames
February 12, 2010 The Exiled

URL: http://exiledonline.com/royal-tea-partiers-the-heroic-billionaires-struggle-to-overthrow-the-tyranny-of-democracy/#more-17899

U.S. unemployment doom & gloom

It's all dooom and glooom out there, folks. The salad days are over.

The new "normal" starting in 2011 (if we're lucky) will be 6.5 to 7.5 percent unemployment.

America is not as innovative as it once was, and is less able to pull us out of this recession fast enough.

Gradudates entering the job market now will NEVER catch up income-wise to those who graduated in boom years, all else being equal.

10 percent of adults younger than 35 have moved back in with their parents.

About 1/3 of millenials/Generation Me is not even trying to find jobs; they're holding out for that dream career with flexible hours and high pay that their parents promised them if they got straight A's and packed on the extracurriculars.

More men are beating their wives and children. And, horror of horrors, soon, for the first time in U.S. history, women will hold a majority of America's jobs, since this recession is hitting men much harder. As a result, expect more divorces as soon as couples can pay for them, and fewer marriages now.

And if that doesn't scare you teabaggers: 17 percent of black men over age 20 are unemployed.

For a whole bundle of reasons, pervasive high unemployment may be the worst social and economic evil there is.


How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America
By Don Peck
February 2010 The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/jobless-america-future/

We're getting close to a flat tax already

Take a look at this graph. For those who pay tax, no matter what their income, the rates are converging on 20-25% of income.

Then check out this graph:

For once I agree with conservatives: we need to return a better, simpler time in American history, like the 1950s, when the rich were taxed at much higher rates, and there was more income equality. It's no coincidence that era is looked upon as a kind of golden age.

Tax Burden Between Wealthy And Middle Class Is Narrower Than At Any Time In Modern History
By Pat Garafalo
February 11, 2009 | Wonk Room

URL: http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/02/11/narrow-tax-burden/

Underwater mortgage? Just walk away.

If you're hopelessly underwater/upside-down on your mortgage, just send the keys to the bank and walk away. It's their house, they own it, let them deal with it!

Save your money and rent instead. Yeah, your credit rating will suck for 7 years, but is that really worse than paying more for your home than it's worth?


Home Underwater? Walk Away from Geithner's Perverse 'Homeowner Relief' Plan

The plan to supposedly aid homeowners drowning in debt adopted by Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is just a money trough for the banks.

By Zach Carter
February 10, 2010 AlterNet

URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/145551/home_underwater_walk_away_from_geithner%27s_perverse_%27homeowner_relief%27_plan

Ron Paul: Tea Party infiltrated by 'neocon influence'

The original teabagger when it wasn't cool, Ron Paul, summed up what's happened to the scatterbrained Tea Party movement: "Everybody likes to join what looks like a popular movement, then they want to come in and influence that movement."

In other words, a bunch of natural Republicans got all excited about being "activists," so they glommed onto this astroturfed movement started by FreedomWorks, Dick Armey, and the billionaire Koch brothers, which then became something like a real grassroots movement when it added thousands of natural Republicans, but in doing so became just an outlet for white Republican anger. Now it's nothing new. It's just re-branding.

Want proof? Here's the teabaggers' big effort coming down the freedom pipeline: the Contract From America. Gee, sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?

Their issue areas support Ron Paul's assertion that the Tea Party has been infiltrated by neoconservative ideology: there is not one reform initiative related to National Defense, although defense makes up 20 percent, or $738 billion, of the FY 2011 federal budget, and would seem to be a prime target for spending cuts.

Here's my analysis: the Tea Party movement is Palin's bargaining chip for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination; she'll threaten to run as a third party candidate and split the conservative vote if she doesn't get the GOP's backing.


Ron Paul: 'Neocon influence' is infiltrating tea parties
By Stephen C. Webster
February 9, 2010 Raw Story

URL: http://rawstory.com/2010/02/paul-cautions-neocon-influence-infiltrating-tea-parties/