what issues are you discussing that caused her to say that? What is she trying to prove? That she doesn't need unions or minimum wage laws?

But without unions or regulations, then what is to prevent employers from paying as little as possible and working you as hard as possible? Why not pay $1 a day for a twelve hour day, six days a week? That's the way factory work was until workers organized and fought for shorter weeks and higher pay and safety regulations.

When it comes to jobs, for most people, the choices are work, steal, or starve, and the job seeker has to take what they can get. Usually the lesser of evils rather than something they really want to do. I have two university degrees myself, and have worked the last seven years as a part-time janitor. Not because I am thrilled by the high status work of cleaning toilets, carrying tables, stacking chairs and mopping floors, but because I have been unable to find a better job. "Choices are what people must live with" but often people only have the choice between a rock and a hard place.

But if those people stand together, they can create better choices for themselves, with unions and with democracy via legislation that gives us rights like time and a half for every hour over 40 in a week.

Pets are like babies that way, you get to pet them and hold them. With older children and adults there is much less contact, unless you crash into them. Most people you cannot hug and caress the way you can a pet. With a pet you can freely share affection and contact without any of the awkwardness or potential rejection involved in most human relationships. One exception can be a significant other, but those are harder to find than pets and can more often involve conflict and uncertainty where the pet is generally 'old faithful'.

That ties into the reciprocation. The pet will generally not say "get lost, I am playing a video game/reading/watching TV/washing my hair or doing any of 101 activities that are more important than you" or "get away from me you geek" or "geez dad you are embarrassing me, what are people gonna think?". Even if you are ugly and your mother dresses you funny and your jokes are stale and poorly delivered, you generally get a good reception from a pet. They will purr or wag their tail and jump up and down (okay, cats won't (what do people see in them anyway?)) and play fetch or pretend fight or chase. Generally they give the owner/friend the message that "you are awesome. I totally love you."

It's nice to hear that every now and then, or at least fool yourself into thinking you hear it when the dog is really saying "I hope you got me some of those biscuits that I love so much" or "I know you are not gonna eat all of that pizza by yourself" or "get the keys and take me for a ride (or walk (or both))"

Third, I suppose, are opportunities to play and be entertained by antics. Whether just playing around with a string or chasing a ball or wrestling/tearing around with another animal or doing the suppertime or car-ride dance, pets provide hours of non-competetive play and entertainment. Their joy of living rubs off on their owners.

I do believe, however, in "innocent until proven guilty" and think that it does our cause harm, and is an insult to real discrimination, to fling out unsubstantiated accusations with very little to back them up. Somebody with a racist sign, is clearly racist, although it is not always clear what is a racist sign (is it really racist to call Obama a socialist?). However, a racist sign in a group of 1,000 does not prove that the entire group of 1,000 are racists.

Finally, I don't think this

Wilson: Obama is lying.
Liberal Blogosphere: Wilson is a racist.

is as relevant or effective an argument as

Wilson: Obama is lying
LB: Wilson is wrong, Obama was telling the truth.

The first tactic is just not gonna convince people who are against Obama's plan or who are not sure which side they should support. It also increases the enmity. If we have a national argument between Plan A and Plan B for health care reform it does not help if the two sides are attacking each other instead of discussing the plans on their supposed merits.

One side screams "People who support Plan A are socialists!" and the other side screams back "People who oppose Plan A are racists!" Ultimately something gets passed and it does not make for "domestic tranquility" if each side is nursing anger over the battle.

I always said that it was wrong to attack my patriotism or character just because I was against the war and just because I demonstrated against the war. I bet their side could find some nasty signs at one of our demonstrations, but there is nothing inherently dishonorable in protesting a President or his policies. I can not, or will not, defend my own right to protest and then turn around and applaud character smears against others who protest just because they are protesting something (or somebody) I support.

I expect and hope that their side will admit that there are some good people on our side and will hold to the belief that there are some good people on their side too (at least until it is proven that there are not).

Pooh, although he IS a bear of very little brain, is also quite genuinely genial and sometimes even thoughtful and profound. (See, for example "The Tao of Pooh"). It was Rabbit who concocted a plan to get Tigger lost in the Forest so he could be humbled and 'unbounced'. It was Rabbit who concocted a plan to kidnap Roo so that Kanga and Roo would leave the Thousand Acre Wood. Rabbit, in case you forgot, HAS BRAIN.

It was Pooh, on the other hand who built a "House at Pooh Corner" for the homeless EOR, and it was Pooh who took Piglet into his home when Owl's home was destroyed by a windstorm and Owl moved into Piglet's home. And, after some controversy when Tigger accidentally knocked EOR into the river, this exchange happened.

'"Tigger is all right really," said Piglet lazily.
"Of course he is," said Christopher Robin.
"Everybody is really," said Pooh. "That's what I think," said Pooh. "But I don't suppose I'm right," he said.
"Of course you are," said Christopher Robin.'


In the view of Pooh, there are NO 'others'. Not so in the world of Mr. Reyes as he looks and strains to find racism in 'others'. The others, you see, are not like us, they are not 'all right, really'. They are racists.

And how do you know they are racists? Why because these conservatives didn't mind when a conservative President spoke to school kids. Thus, the only reason they are getting upset when a non-conservative President does it is because the non-conservative President is black. Otherwise, logically, they should have objected to the conservative Presidents

"Conservatives didn't mind when President George HW Bush and President Reagan addressed our schoolchildren, but they are in a tizzy over Obama's speech to students."

Talk about lack of Brain. That line is just dumb. Who would expect them to complain when THEIR guy gives a speech? Oof-da.

So I am doing family history 'research' and I happen upon this guy

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/ig...

Franklin Delano Butler.

Since he was born in the 40s, you'd think he was named after the Greatest President Ever.

But no, this guy was born in the 1840s, so he seems to foreshadow that future President. Roosevelt was given the middle name Delano, of course, in honor of his mother Sara Delano. But why was Mr. FDB given that middle name? It is hardly a common middle name, nor is there any Delano is his family tree within four generations that I can determine.

One possibility, of course, is that the source of this name just made it up. The 1850 census just calls him Frank Butler. I have no primary record that names him Franklin Delano. The name comes from a history of the Butler family written in 1944 so the author of that family history may have seen a boy named Franklin and christened him with the middle name Delano just to be funny or as a tribute of sorts.

Even that would be oddly close to foreshadowing because the book was written in 1944.

Franklin Delano Butler's birthdate - 13 April 1846
Franklin Dealno Roosevelt's death - 12 April 1945

Coincidence?

I think not.

And on that last line we can perhaps all agree.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

I am waiting to pull it out when the M$M says "Sotomayor confirmed after contentious vote" when the vote is 72-28. Just like they turned Bush's 78-22 into "overwhelming support" I am betting that they will convert a 70-30 vote into a total squeaker, like it was a 51-50 vote.

You know what, sometimes I screw up. I forget to empty trash cans. It's kinda funny then how co-workers and customers react. "I am not gonna do that guy's job for him" (translation, he gets no help from me even when he needs it). My job, you see, is apparently beneath them. They cannot be taken upon to empty a trash can even though it is hardly rocket surgery or power-lifting. They just throw trash on the floor and complain that the trash can was not emptied like the servant was supposed to do. (Note, I was supposed to empty the trash the night before, so I am not there when said customers are dumping the trash on the floor. I even had a caterer (who I had helped with HIS work all the time), when I was working downstairs and the party got done early, when the trash cans got full, he called my supervisor at home instead of emptying a few himself (and replacement bags are right underneath the full bag at the bottom of the can. Woe be to the peon who doesn't do his job. No mercy for the bad if they want it.)

Management, however, has said that they will back me up. I do not have to take verbal abuse. I can have somebody kicked out if they are verbally abusive to me. Presumably that is true even if the paying customer is the son of the city manager. However, pragmatically, it would be kinda stupid to assert myself against somebody as powerful as the son of the city manager. You gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

Imagine if the situation was reversed racially. Suppose the high and mighty professor was white and the cop was black. Here Mr. Prof is calling the cop every name in the book, racial epithets no less, and threatening to take his job. The black cop walks out of the house and Mr. High and Mighty still follows, hurling his accusations and insults out to the whole block. He is asked to calm down, but doesn't because he is gonna show that uppity n*** who is boss. He then is arrested for disorderly conduct while he shouts 'you don't know who you are messing with'.

Are you still gonna be all righteous about 'the cop didn't do his job'? Are you still gonna refuse to even consider that there might be some fault with Mr. Harvard Bigshot Incorporated?

I have spent most of my working life in the bottom quintile and even though I sing along with Queen's 'Keep yourself alive' I pretty much take survival for granted. I think most people do. "Just been trying to survive" is nonsense for most of America, has been for about a hundred years. In 1951, a distant relative of mine wrote the 4th edition of an economics textbook (which I now own). In it, he quotes a sociologist E. A. Ross from 1905 who sums it up well.

"The master error of the social Darwinists is to see in the economic struggle a twin to the struggle for existence that plays so fateful a part in the modification of species. The fact is, the scramble for money or place, though it be as desperate as the fight of clawed beasts, has ceased to be a clear case of life or death. Only on the bottom steps of the social ladder do men compete from hunger. Above them men work themselves into the madhouse or the grave, not for bread, but for jam on the bread."

DU's Jeremiads are so determined to wear sackclothes and ashes and proclaim 'woe, misery, and doom, life in America just sucks', that even to proclaim that we have some options or it's not that bad are taken to be clear signs of trollery. Since when are progressives supposed to see only the dark side of everything? Like progressive = pessimist to the fifth power.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4

the show doesn't have to go on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtAlzo_pqys...

not even if the Queen declares it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ADh8Fs3YdU

So ya thought ya might like to goto the show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkdp9Qxxd08

and as for Reaganites. In my guts I know they're nuts.

"The biggest war on poverty was the economic boom started by Reagan"

Right. So the fact that the poverty rate was 15% in 1964 but only 9.7% in 1969 means the war on poverty was a failure. And the other fact that the poverty rate was 10.3% in 1980 when Reagan asked "are you better off than you were four years ago?" and after 8 years of Reaganomics it was reduced all the way down to, uh 10.3% in 1989, and then, as Reaganomics was continued under Bush, it, uh "fell" to 10.7% in 1990 and to 11.5% in 1991, and 11.9% in 1992 and 12.3% in 1993. That means that Reaganomics totally defeated poverty. Rrrriiiiight.

But it's not like there wasn't some prosperity under Reagan. After all the share of income going to the top 5% went from 15.6% in 1981 to 18.3% in 1989, and then to 21% by 1993. By 1993, there was an extra $359 billion going to the wealthy every year. Reaganomics certainly benefited SOME people, but it wasn't the poor.

You make is sound like somebody only gets one of those loans once every five years or something, but that's ridiculous. Many of the people I know who run behind on their money are always running behind. They get paid on Friday and have no money left by Monday, and they do that every payday.

People who get monthly checks are the worst, especially if they are on mental disability. Here we are asking somebody to plan their expenses for a whole month on a fairly small check. Not only that, but the person we are asking to do that has a mental disability. They run out of money by the 15th. Same with poor people living on social security.

You know what really contributes to their problems? Payday loans.

Here's how it works. Get a check for $600 on the 1st of the month (or the 3rd). Run out of money by the 21st. Get a payday loan on the 25th for $200 (less a $30 fee). On the next 3rd you get another check for $600. Only this time the check is only $400 because $200 of it just went to pay off the payday loan. Guess what. If you couldn't make it through the month on $600, you ain't gonna make it on $400 either. Not to worry though, because you can get another payday loan and pay another $30 fee. Ultimately that person is living on their small income minus $360 a year in payday loan fees. It's a hole they will have a very hard time getting out of.

But no worries. It's not like they are REALLY paying 390% interest? Just 180% interest on $200 borrowed 12 times.

Do you know why I know this is a likely scenario? Because I used to have friends in this exact same situation. They borrowed money from me every month (and paid it back when they got their checks, only to borrow again two weeks later when they ran out of money again). Which is how people would get by if there were no payday loan places - with a little help from their friends. The highly profitable payday loan industry - they are not one of them. They are no friend to the poor.

with Bush in charge we always knew what to do, and what to think. What to think was "Bush sucks!!!" and what to do was to rail at the M$M for enabling him and to rail at Congress for not standing up to him and to rail at the FReepers for being ignorant sheeple.

Now we do not have that kneejerk option anymore. We used to know what we were against - the Bush administration. We were never sure what we were for (except the negative of stopping the Bush administration).

Some progressives though, are still in attack mode. The Naderites still believe there is not a dime's worth of difference and are determined to expose the President's lack of clothing and lies and prevarications. So it's tough for an honest progressive. You don't want to kneejerk defend the President, right or wrong, but you don't want to get played by the RWNM either.

The Naderites have it easy though, because they can stay in attack mode and tell themselves they are superior to the PINO (progressive in name only) sheeple who blindly support their President or their party. Even if the glass is 75% full, there is always a 25% to rail about and claim it is terrible, awful, no good, very bad policy.

Probably we should all move to Australia.

in 2001 tax rates for singles were
15% on first $27,050
27.5% up to $65,550
30.5% up to $136,750
35.5% up to $297,350
39.1% for the rest

for married
15% on first $45,200
27.5% up to $109,250
30.5% up to $166,500
35.5% up to $297,350
39.1% for the rest


in 2008 tax rates for singles were
10% on first $8.025
15% up to $32,550
25% up to $78,850
28% up to $164,550
33% up to $357,700
35% for the rest

for married
10% on first $16,050
15% up to $65,100
25% up to $131,450
28% up to $200,300
33% up to $357,700
35% for the rest


So I get $2500 per $100,000 until after $357,700 when it is $4100 per $100,000. However, one of the other parts of the 2003 tax cuts was that dividends and capital gains are taxed at a 15% rate for high income people and at 5% for lower income people. To me, UNearned income should not be taxed at a lower rate than wages. Also, the difference between a 15% tax rate and a 39.1% tax rate for a member of the Walton family is $24,100 per $100,000. That's the part that really needs to expire now.

IRA contributions can be deducted from your income (with certain limitations) on line 32 of the 1040. There also is a Retirement savings contribution credit on line 51 where the government will pay 50 cents or 20 cents or 10 cents on the dollar up to $1,000 for certain income levels (for poorer people they pay 50 cents on the dollar. It is those two deductions that I use to reduce my income taxes down to zero.

But I was against the higher limits. The reason being is that they are a tax shelter for the more wealthy. Who can afford to put $5,000 in an IRA - somebody making $20,000 a year, or somebody making $60,000 a year?

You don't have to answer that. IRS figures from 2004 show that only 10.15% of eligible taxpayers contributed to an IRA account in 2004. For taxpayers with income more than $20,000 and less than $25,000 that number was 6.5% and the average amount contributed was $1,854. For tax filers with income between $500,000 and $1,000,000 28.42% contributed to an IRA account and the average contribution was $9,241.

I would be against another tax break for wealthier people.

Governor Jindal says that the Republican Party has lost the trust of the American people and is determined to regain it. That's great news, but if I might suggest a first step towards regaining that trust - STOP LYING.

In that regard, Jindal's speech is not a good first step. Let me just look at a few of Governor Jindal's lies. First, he touted the Republican alternative to Obama's stimulus. He said it was a tax cut for low income working people and that it would cost less than the Democratic plan and create more jobs. Yet there are sound economic reasons to not believe in this trickle down theory. Here's the analysis of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

http://www.cbpp.org/1-26-09tax2.htm




But there's Bobby Jindal trying to redeem the Republican Party by selling the same old magic beans of bigger tax cuts for the wealthy as something that will help everybody. Never mind that "Tax cuts must be spent quickly if they are to stimulate the economy, and research shows that people at lower income levels spend more of any tax cuts they receive than families at higher income levels do."

Research? Research? What does that mean to Republicans who make up their own facts to fit around their ideology? That's what the Bush administration did, and Governor Jindal is offering 'more of the same' while promising to 'earn our trust'.

Governor Jindal also bragged about tax cuts in Louisiana. As Governor, he cut taxes six times, including the largest income tax cut in Louisiana history. It is clear that Jindal is not saying that the Republican Party is changing its message of tax cut, tax cut, tax cut. They still believe that almost every problem can be solved with a tax cut. What he is promising is that if Republicans are given power, this time they will not spend so much money. They will spend less on welfare, on head start, on medicaid, on medicare, on veterans benefits, on SCHIP, on LIHEAP, on unemployment insurance, on food stamps, on education, on roads and bridges, on levees, on the rebuilding of New Orleans ...

Okay, he never specificed which parts of government spending he would slash, but the implication is there that lots of it needs to be slashed so that people can be 'empowered' to solve their own problems instead of being helped by government. And here's the thing about those tax cuts Jindal is so proud of. Their main beneficiaries are the wealthy. Here's the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analyzing those tax cuts and offering an alternative.

http://www.itepnet.org/la0508.pdf




"Heavily skewed towards the most affluent" Well, it's clear that Jindal offers a huge contrast from Bush in that regard. Just like a photocopy. When Republicans promise change their plan works like a photocopier. It produces a completely different piece of paper with the exact same thing printed on it. Only the paper has changed.

Here's another fact about Louisiana. Their state taxes are regressive - lower income people pay higher rates than higher income people. In Louisiana, those in the top 20 percent pay a tax rate of 7.9% while those in the bottom 20 percent pay a tax rate of 12.1%. Source: http://www.cbpp.org/5-9-08sfp.htm Jindal's tax cuts make them more regressive. Republicans continue to believe that tax cuts for the wealthy and a more regressive tax system will help the whole country.

Trust us, they say, these beans really are magic this time.