It's Robert's Fault

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Cliven Bundy is a Big Fat Million Dollar Welfare Dead Beat!

What make Cliven Bundy any different from all the guys who go out and buy Weed, Booze and Lap Dances using an EBT Card? [Never mind the fact that if you can get cash via E.B.T., you can legally spend it on anything you like!] If they should be strung up by the heels for ripping off the American Public, why shouldn't he? I mean, seriously.

The Oldest Hatred, Forever Young - NYTimes.com

In a 2013 survey of 1,200 American adults for the Anti-Defamation League, 14 percent agreed with the statement that “Jews have too much power” in our country, while 15 percent said Jews are “more willing to use shady practices” and 30 percent said that American Jews are “more loyal to Israel” than to the United States.
That’s disturbing, as is the way in which the Holocaust is minimized by its repeated invocation as an analogy. In separate comments this year, both the venture capitalist Tom Perkins and Kenneth Langone, one of the founders of Home Depot, said that the superrich in America were being vilified the way Jews in Nazi Germany had been.
It’s not just Kansas and the heartland where anti-Semitism, sometimes called the oldest hatred, stays young.

Terrorists: Rachel nails the facts.

This Is What An Unabashedly Pro-Obamacare Campaign Ad Looks Like

Exactly how much vulnerable Senate Democrats should talk about Obamacare remains an open question, but an ad released recently in support of Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) supplied a taste of what an unabashedly pro-Affordable Care Act campaign would look like.

It's time the Democrats running fofr office understand that there are no longer "swing" votes.A most popular meme on facebook is that Democrats elect Republicans by staying homed on election day. Mark Begich is on the right track. Getting Democrats to the polls by telling them that you're going to "work with" the very Republicans that would return the decisions about their hralthcare to insurance companies is not a winning strategy.

Here's the video

Fox News: Americans who receive Social Security disability are faking it - Orlando liberal | Examiner.com

Except they're not. Tell me you get your facts from Fox News at your own risk.

Despite the rhetoric from Fox News and others in the right-wing media, five times as many Americans have a disability compared to those who actually receive disability benefits. According the Social Security Administration and the United States Census Bureau, while 1 in 25 Americans currently receive disability benefits, nearly 57 million Americans, 1 in 5, have a disability. Varney described Social Security disability as an "option," as if it were another job to choose from. The majority of Americans who receive disability checks do so because they can't work, not because they choose not to.

Varney also took shots at President Obama's ability to produce an economy that is creating jobs, but he is lacking factual information. Under President Obama, the private sector has created jobs for 45 straight months, producing 8 million news jobs in the process.

This comment at the linked source receives Robert's thumbs up,

Social Security doesn't make you go through the waiting time, Bob. Congress does. The federal employees at Social Security can only work within the framework and budget given to them by Congress. How do I know? Because I worked for them for more than 20 years!

It's Congress that consistently reduces Social Security's administrative funding (the part of the federal budget that hires workers, trains, purchases equipment and provides for functioning--not the benefits which are separately funded by the recipients through their working lives), refuses to hire and train appropriate technicians to process all the applications and slows the process to a crawl by refusing to fully staff their offices. At one point in my career it took 18 months to reach the Reconsideration level and another two or three years for a claimant to come to hearing. Why? Because our office had only 12 technicians to process over 5,000 cases!

So how can you help improve the system? By voting out the people who think you are a worthless malingerer and voting in Congressional representatives who understand and will fund the departments that were created to protect and care for YOU.

As for not being able to afford a lawyer, you are misinformed. A representative before Social Security is not allowed to charge the claimant unless or until the case is won. If the case is lost the claimant owes nothing! If won, the amount owed is paid from the BACK ACCUMULATED BENEFITS DATING FROM THE DATE THE DISABILITY BEGAN. At no time is the claimant billed directly. It's all done through the fee agreement signed by the rep and the claimant. The amount is strictly governed by the amount of benefits paid and is further limited by an amount set by law.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

George Bush Attends Summit For 50th Anniversary Of The Civil Rights Act - Makes A Penis Joke -

Leave it to George W. Bush to commemorate the Civil Rights Act with a dirty joke. Seriously. In case you missed it, four of the five living presidents recently spoke at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library as part of a summit honoring the 50th anniversary of the Act. George W. Bush was the last speaker. He opened his talk with a joke about penises.

This comment at the linked source receives Robert's thumbs up,

Maybe this is not a story because we are so used to this guy behaving like that, but to say this is a non-issue is wrong. A penis joke? really? if this was Obama, or Bill Clinton, we would be hearing about this and seeing the video, for God knows how long.

Meet the Preacher Behind Moral Mondays | Mother Jones

But to Barber, the movement's success is not tied to the ballot box. Rather, it's in moments like the cold Saturday morning in February when tens of thousands of people flooded the streets of the capital. Black, white, gay, and straight, they came from churches and synagogues wearing rainbow flags for marriage equality, pink caps for Planned Parenthood, and stickers reading "North Carolina: First in Teacher Flight." When it was Barber's turn to speak, the crowd fell silent.

This comment by nelsonRobison at the linked source receives Robert's thumbs up,

I am not a theist, nor am I a churchgoer but when I see someone like this, who is out there, who is bringing their message to a larger group, someone who would not rest in the face of injustice, this is the kind of person who is to me a person to listen to. This pastor is a man to emulate, none are turned away because of a difference in faith or a lack of faith, none are turned away because of sexuality differences. This man of God, shares his wealth and knowledge without condemning and without fear of rejection by others. Here is a man, who when faced with injustice didn't stand aside and let it continue, he stands up and lets the world know that the injustice cannot and should not continue. He is a man for all seasons, one who is valuable not to some but to all.

Here's the video.

Cliven Bundy Exposes the Cravenness of the Modern Right | Mother Jones

Call it "individualism" or "libertarianism" or whatever you want, but those who declare themselves a Republic of One and raise their own flags are in a very literal sense being unpatriotic.

That's why I'm alarmed by the support in many conservative precincts for the Nevada scofflaws who have been exploiting public lands for private purposes and refuse to pay for the privilege because they choose not to "recognize" the authority of the United States. Totally aside from the double standards involved in expecting kid-glove treatment of one set of lawbreakers as opposed to poorer and perhaps darker criminal suspects, fans of the Bundys are encouraging those who claim a right to wage armed revolutionary war towards their obligations as Americans. It makes me really crazy when such people are described as "superpatriots." Nothing could be more contrary to the truth.

Robert calls them batcrap crazy because he studiously avoids tossing out the terrorist label. Well, mostly

How long is the tax code: It is far shorter than 70,000 pages.

But is it even useful to talk about a document’s length as a stand-in for its complexity? The Harry Potter series was quite long, but I’m pretty sure I caught most of the nuance (although admittedly I missed this). By comparison, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is quite compact, but to this day I have no idea what it’s about (was his mother really a fish?). And, not to put too fine a point on it, but the tax code has a table of contents, and doesn’t require you to start on Page 1. This may or may not be true for As I Lay Dying. I’m still not really sure.