There Are Lots Of Reasons To Vote Republican

Thanks to Applesauce for this video.

Why I Don't Listen To Republicans

Republicans Protect BP...AGAIN!

Republicans have blocked a bill giving supeona power to the commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  This measure passed the House 420 to 1, yet Senate republicans are blocking even discussion of it. 

Here is a video of it that I picked up over at Scared Stiff.  Thanks, Tim.



The republicans, once again, are showing where their loyalties are.  Again, they are protecting the interests of BIG OIL over the interests of truth and the American people.

Sometimes A Picture Says It Better

From here.  Thanks pygalgia.

Money Is More Important Than Kids

From the LA Times:

Children face an unfortunate side effect of health reform

Anthem Blue Cross and Aetna have announced that they will no longer "offer individual policies in California to any children who don't already have coverage."  This is in response to the requirement that health insurance companies may not deny individual policies to children with preexisting conditions.

Rather than comply with the law, they will stop offering individual policies for children -- all children.

Money, or better yet, profits, are more important to these insurance companies that the health care of our children.  

Tell me again why we don't need health care regulations?

Tell me again why we don't need a public, government run health care option?

Tell me again why we don't need Medicare For All?

Tell me again why we allow these parasitic health insurance companies to exist?

Tell me again.

 And the LA Times calls it UNFORTUNATE.  Unfortunate my ass. I call it CRIMINAL!

The Republican National Debt

I picked this figure up over at Tim's Scared Stiff.

Over 40% of the national debt is due to Bush and over 65% due to Republicans.  Obama is doing pretty well himself, but he is coming off of Bush's extraordinary deficit spending and destruction of the economy so it will take some time to turn things around.

And the republicans want to add close to another trillion dollars to the debt by extending the tax cuts for the top 2% earners.

Crazy!

She Must Be A Republican

You who worry about Democrats versus Republicans--relax, here is our real problem:

In a Purdue University classroom, they were discussing the qualifications to be President of the United States . It was pretty simple the candidate must be a natural born citizen of at least 35 years of age. 

However, one girl in the class immediately started in on how unfair was the requirement to be a natural born citizen. In short, her opinion was that this requirement prevented many capable individuals from becoming president.

The class was taking it in and letting her rant, and not many jaws hit the floor when she wrapped up her argument by stating: 

"What makes a natural born citizen any more qualified to lead this country than one born by C-section?"

Yep, these are the same kind of 18-year-olds that just voted in our last election! 

They breed and they walk among us...how scary is that? 

 

For Your Entertainment -- Sometimes We Need To Laugh

Puns for Educated Minds: 

 1. The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. 

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
 
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
 
4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
 
5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. 

 
7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
 
8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
 
9. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

10. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
 
11. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

12. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

13. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'
 
14. A backward poet writes inverse.

15. In a democracy it's your vote that counts.  In feudalism it's your count that votes.

16. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you'd be in Seine.

17. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.'

18. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says 'Dam!'

19. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. It sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

20. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says, 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'

21. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal?  His goal: transcend dental medication.

22. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

The Economy Does Better Under Democratic Presidents

The economy does BETTER under Democratic presidents.  This is not opinion.  This is fact.  This is truth.  Here is the data covering the years 1948 to 2005.

From HERE

There are a couple of interesting aspects to this figure.

1.  All groups did BETTER under Democratic presidents than republican presidents.

2.  All groups did about equally well under Democratic presidents.

3.  The 95th percentile group did well under both groups.  Lobbying works.

4.  The 95th percentile group did about 5 times as well as the 20th percentile group under republican presidents.

5.  It is possible to have prosperity (high growth) and equality between income groups...at least with a Democratic president.

Here is Rachel Maddow discussing this figure.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In the following clip Rachel discusses the implications of this figure with Ezra Klein.  It is a little long, but very interesting.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

But let's give credit where credit is due.  The republicans are good at something.  They are good at building wealth.  Not so good at building the economy, but good at building wealth.  The rich are certainly getting richer.  But look at how they do it.  They do it by creating debt.  Lately it has been the Bush tax cuts coupled with two unending wars, all debt creators, not economy builders.  Neither the tax cuts nor the wars were paid for.  Instead, the money was given to the wealth.  Now they want to add another $700 billion in gifts to the wealthy.

It is time for the Democrats to say NO!

The Rich And Powerful Are Held To A Different Standard

I picked up this video of David Vitter over at TMP.



Just another fine "family value" republican running for reelection.

Prejudice

Here is an amazing poll from the LA Times in 1963.  It is from Lawyers, Guns & Money.  I found it via Applesauce.

For me, 1963 is not that long ago.  I graduated from high school in 1963.  I am flabbergasted that so many people had that opinion.  

But wait, we seeing the same type of thing today.  The hate and prejudice is still there.  We have just changed the targets. 

Have we grown as a people?  No, I don't think so.

CEOs Profit While Laying Off Employees

Think Progress has a good article about the just-released  annual report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) on executive compensation.  Here are some of the highlights, or maybe they should be called lowlights

CEOs of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home nearly $12 million on average in 2009....while at the same time, their companies eliminated 531,363 jobs despite reporting a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009.

After adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.

American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they too home in the 1970s.

Fred Hassan, former CEO of Schering-Plough, presided over announced layoffs affecting 16,000 workers after a 2009 merger with Merck. He resigned after the merger, receiving “golden parachute” compensation in 2009 of more than $49.6 million to rank as the highest-paid layoff leader.

The top five companies announcing the most layoffs for the study period were General Motors (75,733); Citigroup (52,175); Bank of America (35,000); Caterpillar (27,499) and Verizon (21,308). Among those top five, the biggest compensation package — nearly $17.5 million — went to Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon.

According to IPS, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s.

Here is what corporate America has been doing:

...squeezing of worker jobs, pay and benefits to boost corporate earnings and maintain corporate executive paychecks at their recent bloated levels.

And these are the very people that republicans support.  These are the very people that republicans say we must give tax breaks to, we must let them keep all their money.  After all, they "earned" it. Yeah, they "earned" it on the backs of the American worker.

The facts are that the only jobs that corporate america is interested in is their top executives jobs and that they will sacrifice worker jobs for executive pay, bonuses, and perks.