What if we all as a nation stopped selling American designed weapons, like airplanes, ships, subs, missiles, helicopters, tear gas, et cetera to foreign nations and groups?

What if we brought home all of our overseas troops, no matter where they are, discharged all of them except the ones we need to secure our own borders, and sent all of them to University or Trade School?

What if we create a new kind of entity called a Corporation that had to die after 75 years? All the corporate patented and trademarked assets would become public domain, and physical assets liquidated and distributed to shareholders.

What fs we taxed at 100% all estates above a certain threshold, and ensured that a hereditary oligarchy would be stopped in its tracks?

What if we increased the highest tax rates to 65% of income or capital gains or any kind of investment income?

What if we became a single-payer nation for health insurance, and reinvested in creating upward mobility by making our public Colleges and Universities the inexpensive wonder of the world they once were?

Just imagine if the purpose of government was to provide for the general welfare and common defense by taking care of certain things like infrastructure, environmental regulation, education, and health care so that people could focus on the more important things in life, like becoming the best, most creative, generous, kind and loving person in their work and personal lives, fully invested citizens. If we all recognized that we are all in this together, that “E pluribus unum” are words by which a great nation should live.

We can make this progressive dream happen.
Doesn’t that world, where all pursue their dreams because all the stuff that government does really well are being taken care of sound great? The only way to make it happen is to pay attention, wake up, organize, and vote!

Now, watch this video, and if you can make it all the way through, which I had a difficult time doing, ask yourself:  are these the actions of a drunk man?  Maybe he’s on opiods or other painkillers?  I dunno, but if that’s what a sober Rick Perry looks like, I would hate to see him drunk…

I cannot even begin to express how contemptuous I feel for the current batch of GOP candidates.  All except maybe Ron Paul, but he’s as anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-civil rights as the rest of them.  At least he’s consistent about his beliefs, though.

This is simply disgusting.

Bankrupt church wants donations for pastor’s sick wife ferried in limo | The Lookout – Yahoo! News.

Here’s a thought, Robert Schuller: turn yourself in to Federal authorities for the massive fraud you perpetrated on your congregation and television viewers. At least you’ll get three meals a day, which is more than some of your viewers.

On Monday night, Judge Mary Scriven issued a scathing and fiery decision against Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Pee Test law, which required that state’s applicants for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families submit to drug testing at their own expense. The contract for said drug testing, it should be noted, is held by said Governor’s wife’s company.

Rick Scott’s Pee Test Fails a Court Test | Mother Jones.

I don’t understand the “if you’re not guilty, you have nothing to worry about” mentality. It’s so un-American, and goes against the idea that one is considered innocent until proven beyond a reasonable doubt enshrined in our Constitution. It goes against the Fourth Amemdment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure. It goes against the idea of human dignity; the idea that all people have an inherent worth, and are deserving of respect.

Thanks, Tea Party Republicans, for wasting our time and money once again in one of your racist, “morality” crusades.

Photo by Pam M.

Today, hundreds of people gathered in Cesar Chavez Plaza today to protest against the excesses of the Corporations and Super-rich, and a call for reform. With various issues, but mostly a sense of serious dissatisfaction with the current state of the country and economy and society. The government has stopped working for the citizenry and instead for the corporations. The Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, and an entire series of decisions going all the way back the 19th-century Santa Clara decision have given corporations more and more “rights” previously reserved for real human beings. The idea that cash is equal to speech is abhorent to natural human rights, and to the idea that all citizens are equal. If a corporation or super-wealthy individual can drown out all other conversations and ideas, then the best idea may not get heard, and the country cannot progress.

Rick Perry can’t be bothered to put his hand over his heart during the playing of our National Anthem – clearly he hates America.

Crazy Eyes won the Iowa Straw Poll this past week. And then she appeared on Meet the Press today, and faced more questions about her bizarre and hateful anti-gay rhetoric – take a look:

Her claims to not judging clearly and in defiance of the record. So many times she has called lgbt people so many wretched names, that I don’t see how she cannot be said to be judging, bigoted, intolerant, and against civil rights.

The “unemployed” former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, in Iowa a few days ago:

Corporations are people?  It’s this kind of thinking that is causing the downfall of the middle and working classes.  Even if corporations are run by people, they don’t make the same kinds of decisions that individuals – corporations are interested in profit, and how they achieve that is amoral.  If to make more profit they eliminate thousands of good paying jobs, well too bad, so sad.  If they move jobs overseas to lower-cost labor markets?  Again, too bad, so sad.

This is exactly why we need an amendment to the US Constitution eliminating corporate personhood.

My biggest fear about this new, ridiculous debt ceiling bill is how the huge reduction in spending is going to slow the economic recovery even more than the idiotic tax cuts in the stimulus package.  What we need right now is MORE spending and HIGHER taxes on the wealthy and the end of loopholes for corporations.    We need to repair and replace aging infrastructure, pump more money into our public education system, with more money for language, arts, music programs, and less emphasis on testing.  We need to bring all of our overseas troops home, starting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Europe and Asia.  The focus of our country right now should be inward mostly, and engaging with the outside second.  I don’t mean to be isolationist, but just that we simply cannot afford to maintain such an enormous military.  Surely there are smarter ways of deploying a smaller force.