On an ABC interview

'Dick Cheney breaks silence on Gay Marriage' ... 'claims his silence was for political reasons'

In other words, he was a coward. (most bullies are) Any time someone claims that they did anything at all for 'political reasons' it is because they are a coward. And our Congress and Senate are filled with them. Cowards all!

Refining oil: Stormy petrol

from The Economist:

Interesting story because it puts lie to the usual gloom and doom if we don't hurry up and drill in ANWR or other  pristine sites. Fact is; there's a glut of oil/gasoline in the world. I had always thought that the oil tankers brought the expensive black stuff to our shores where we refined it and distributed it to all of the pumps where we waited, wallet and nozzle in hand. Not so. Gasoline itself is what's found in those tankers. And since India and China have the more modern (productive) refineries, those tankers, more often than not, are delivering gasoline to our thirsty cars...there's more to it than that of course, so read the article for yourself.

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This, just in...

from 'Blogging via Typewriter'

ABC NEWS: "Like other companies, Apple typically keeps profits on overseas sales in overseas accounts. When someone buys an iPad in Paris or Sydney, for instance, the profit stays outside the United States. Apple may pay some corporate income taxes on that profit to the country where it sells the iPad, but it minimizes these by using various accounting moves to shift profits to countries with low tax rates. For example the strategy known as 'Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,' routes profits through Irish and Dutch subsidiaries and then to the Caribbean." →

From now on  we'll just call these sort of shenanigans, 'The Mitt Maneuver'


Well said!

Wait, don't tell me.

Update! "The suspect in the shooting rampage at a Colorado movie theater that left 12 dead has been identified..."


No, don't tell me his name. I need to know what color he is. What's his religion? What about his political party affiliation? Is he a natural born American? Those are the real important things to know! Oops; almost forgot...is he a member of the NRA? Nah, I guess we don't need to know that... 

Things I read...

 “All we have to do is replace Obama. We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become President of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”
~Grover Norquist, calling for conservatives to elect a weak President they can use as a puppet, CPAC, February 2012. NOTE: While Norquist did not specifically mention Romney, other Republicans on this list have noted Romney’s weak leadership skills and his lack of spine in standing for what he believes in. Bryan Fischer stated in an earlier quote that Romney would be a pushover as President, which is exactly the kind of President that Norquist wants.

apropos of nothing at all...

'apropos of nothing at all' was my mother's remark to me on most occasions when I interrupted the adult conversation around me...which I did quite often.

Now on to another subject. I am so very tired of hearing that the wealthy create jobs. It's such a patent lie. It's the demand of the consumer that creates jobs. I want a new stove but I can't buy it because I'm making so little per hour and I have no money in my savings because I was paid so little on my last job. So the stove factory doesn't hire anyone to build that stove I wanted. Duh! The guy that owns the factory hasn't created any jobs. And the very wealthy take their money and put it into off-shore accounts. There's no job creation there!

How do the Republicans face themselves in the mirror each morning? Robert Reich, who can be read here or on his Facebook page said it all a few minutes ago. I'll paste that comment here because he has already shared it with all of his Facebook fans and asked them to share it with their friends..."Senate Republicans blocked the DISCLOSE ACT. No surprise there, but they should be held accountable. They're making a mockery of our democracy, once again. Their logic? That required disclosure of the names of wealthy or corporate political donors might cause them to be intimidated, and therefore infringe on their First Amendment rights. I don't know many billionaires who intimidate easily, especially when it comes to making large political contributions. And I've never heard of an intimidated corporation."

 In closing, let me say, apropos of nothing at all, that Mitch McConnell is a piece of dirt.

Reading

I have been reading 'That Used To Be Us', a book by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum. It's a good one. The only complaint I have is that it is taking a long time to read it because I become so outraged at what the authors reveal, that I have to put it down for awhile to calm myself. Well, that may be a little over the top. Let's use disturbed instead of outraged. I like to think that I'm too old to be outraged.
Anyway, back to the book, whose subtitle is ' How America Fell Behind In The World It Invented and How We Can Come Back'. The authors explore every facet of our society and how it relates to the jam we seem to be in these days. They use real facts to make their arguments and that's refreshing, even though I haven't always agreed with their conclusions. It is fun to read (once again) a book written by polite people. I would bet that I would enjoy sitting down with them and 'discussing' what they have written. And we would part as better friends than when we first sat down.
The reasons I'm posting here today are found in the ninth chapter, where they discuss deficits and taxes. One; Nixon scrapped the Breton Woods system that the US and Britain had forged in 1944. This system had the dollar tied to the price of gold and so gov't couldn't print and spend money that wasn't tied to this exchange rate. Nixon did this to pay for the Vietnam War. Now our currency floated free and the 'invisible hand' of the market would determine the value of the dollar. When Reagan took office he cut taxes for the wealthy and soon those deficits reduced the revenue base to a full 5% of GDP. In the meantime, government spending increased as Reagan invested in the Pentagon for a defense buildup. Reagan was soon alarmed by the figures and began replacing the tax cuts with increased taxation. He did this five times during his time in office. Reagan also shored up the Social Security system in 1983. Just as an aside; Reagan never called them taxes. They were revenue enhancements. That way he could claim to have never raised taxes. George H. W. Bush also found out that he needed to raise taxes, much to his embarrassment. Clinton was a different story, in that he raised taxes and the deficit was soon a surplus! His plan was to be ready for the 'Boomers' in the next century. Then we had eight years of disaster as Bush the Younger went to war and cut taxes. Four years ago, the estimate for the cost of the war in Iraq was $3 Trillion dollars. And that didn't include the  cost of the war in Afghanistan which is now the longest war in our history.
Bush the Younger leaves office and hands the whole mess over to Barack Obama. Disaster ensues when debt catches up to revenue and then the banks, etc, etc. Obama has made a mistake in NOT laying the blame for this mess on those that deserve it. He has been far too polite. They all should have been called out for the liars they are...
Another part of the book deals with the fact that millions of jobs will never come back. Even if you brought back those jobs that are in foreign lands, it wouldn't help. Technology has sailed into the future and left millions standing on the pier. Don't blame the President...blame our education system and that places the blame right at our own two feet. We have decided not to fund schools. We have decided to abandon our children. We can't blame anyone else.

Whew! That's enough for now...

From snopes

snopes.com: DNSChanger Virus:

Want to check if you have the DNS Malware? Check here. (I got a green light.)
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In case you hadn't noticed...

Climate Change: ‘This Is Just the Beginning’: "More than 2,000 heat records were broken last week around the U.S. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency that tracks the data, reported that the spring of 2012 “marked the largest temperature departure from average of any season on record for the contiguous United States.” These record temperatures in May, NOAA says, “have been so dramatically different that they establish a new ‘neighborhood’ apart from the historical year-to-date temperatures.”"

'via Blog this'

Republican Candidate Chris Collins says...

Chris Collins: 'People Now Don't Die From Prostate Cancer, Breast Cancer': "

"People now don't die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things," he told The Batavian in an interview that was flagged Tuesday by City & State NY. Collins was discussing his desire to repeal Obamacare."

if only.

This guy must be a Mitch McConnell disciple.

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Mitch McConnell

On 30 Million Uninsured: 'That Is Not The Issue' (VIDEO):

and our tax dollars go towards his paycheck. Can we fire him? Please?

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senility

Sen. Mitch McConnell said. “The question is how to go step by step to improve the American health care system. It is already the finest health care system in the world.” That's a lie! McConnell has dementia!