Stephen Colbert was very impressed with Rick PArry's debate performance. But like most of us thinks that Rick PErry is a douche.

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I have watched  a lot of pundits address Perry's ridiculous comparison of climate science to the imprisonment of Galilei Galileo, but I really think that only Colbert has put it in the proper perspective.

Plus he made it funny.

Senator Bernie Sanders exposes the Koch brothers.

This might be the most important video you watch today.

If you are as angered as I am by what these corporate assholes are doing to our country, and the lies they are telling Americans about Social Security, please help to spread this video spread as far and wide as possible.

Don't Drink the Kool Aid!

¡Hola! Everybody…
Dang! The Neocon Zombies are back again. I swear! You can’t kill this plague of failed ideas no matter how many time they fail. Who's next? Milton Friedman making a comeback?!! LOL!

Today, perhaps emboldened by the recent elections, the goobers, with the help of some very powerful people, are spreading misinformation about one of the most successful government programs ever (and not just in the US, but globally) in order to scare people into passively accepting benefit cuts. Even so-called “liberals” such as Lawrence O'Donnell (who calls himself a socialist ::cough::) and Dylan Ratigan, are framing the social security debate in a way that makes it a foregone conclusion that cuts must be sustained. Truth be told, O'Donnell is a dyed-in-the-wool corporate democrat cut from the same Rahm Emmanuel (and now Obama) cloth.

The assumption that SS must be cut/ taken apart/ given as a gift to Wall St. to mangle is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Don't be a sheeple (<-- same as teabagger). Check out this list of Social Security myths and share it with your friends, family and coworkers.

Stop. Look. Listen...

(h/t EPI, CEPR and Moveon.org)

* * *

-=[ Top Social Security Myths ]=-

(Links are italicized)

Myth: Social Security is going broke.

Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.3 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a 'T'). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever. After 2037, it’ll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits--and again, that's without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers retirement decades ago. Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.

Myth: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.

Reality: This is a red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than did 70 years ago. What's more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly -- since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half. But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.

Myth: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.

Reality: Social Security doesn't need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here's a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income (like the rest of us), Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come. Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income. But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.

Myth: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs

Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn't full of IOUs, it's full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market -- which would have been disastrous -- but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.

Myth: Social Security adds to the deficit

Reality: It's not just wrong -- it's impossible! By law, Social Security funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can't add one penny to the deficit.

* * *

So please, the next time some goober muthafucka / teabagger/ conspiracy theorist/ looneytarian/ “independent” tries to shill some of this Kool Aid your way, put him/ her in their place with facts…

Love,

Eddie

Ramblings of a Radical Progressive

¡Hola! Everybody...
What follows is just a ramble on things that have crossed my (warped) mind recently. It is estimated that we think about 100,000 thoughts a day (!!). Here are just a few I managed to grab...

* * *

-=[ Ramblin’ Man]=-

I don’t mean to poke fun at such a serious topic, and I should add that I once seriously considered the same route, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that a NYC man yesterday jumped off his high rise building, plunged 40 stories, landed in the backseat area of a Dodge Charger after crashing through the windshield... and survived. Broken legs, critical condition.

When I made the commitment to jump, a strong wind from an early November Nor’easter knocked me on my skinny, seriously malnourished, drug addicted ass as I attempted to scale the Brooklyn Bridge’s pedestrian walkway (yes, a drama queen to the end, no regular rooftop for yours truly. I was going out in style, muthafuckas!). Some would say that the wind was a blessing or a gift from some God (who apparently had nothing better to do that day), but my state of mind was such that I considered the event the worst of insults: I was such a loser; I couldn’t even commit suicide successfully. I became convinced that with my luck, my suicide attempts would only manage to leave me crippled, so I stopped all thoughts of taking the short cut. I did try to get other people to do it for me, but that’s another story.

So today, as I reflect on this man's actions as well as my own, I have to wonder about his thoughts, his state of mind, and I have to wonder if he's regretting having survived his actions... I wish him some measure of serenity and clarity

Oh yeah, President Obama... his speech last night is now being eviscerated for not being celebratory enough by the same chickenhawk pundits and politicians who cooked the evidence in creating that led to the Mess in Mesopotamia in the first place. I’ll be honest and admit that I didn’t watch the speech, but I getting some chuckles from people like Chuckles the Clown (Charles Krauthammer), and that Wolfowitz twit (the latter stating that we should stay in Iraq, like, forever).

Well, people? How the fuck do we celebrate the cluster fuck now known as the Iraq War? It was a mistake from the get-go; incompetent men who had never fought a war bungled it from the beginning. Moreover, let’s not forget that we shouldn’t have been there to begin with. And you know what? This ain’t over yet, you bloodthirsty imbeciles. Rachel Maddow does a great job of listing the lies that took us there:

There will be more American and Iraqi lives needlessly sacrificed for a long time to come.

Speaking of evisceration and lies, Vanity Fair just published a must-read on Sarah Palin. “Erratic behavior and a pattern of lying matter little: ‘Such falsehoods never damage Palin’s credibility with her admirers, because information and ideology are incidental to this relationship.’” No surprise there (Duh!), but the article is worthwhile in that it documents beyond a shadow of a doubt that Palin and the Right are just a bunch of crazy muthafuckas with an deeply embedded aversion to reality testing.

While I’m on the reality-challenged brigade, let me mention that Beck’s Whitestock hate fest, taking place on the anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The folks of this mostly Caucasian pity party rolling on state-sponsored scooters attempted to "take back" the words and philosophy of Martin Luther King. specifically one line from one speech: “... one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” As Tim Wise points out in his excellent Op Ed, this is the line conservatives reference when attacking affirmative action. If King believed in character over color, they submit, he would have opposed such programs in employment or college admissions. Of course, if more conservative white people (and their black and brown enablers) actually read MLK’s works and the rest of his “I have a Dream Speech,” they would know that he also said:

“Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.”

DANG! Additionally, the same people who call me a “race-baiter,” “race hustler,” and “plantation overseer,” would say the same about MLK. In fact, conservatives at the height of the civil rights movement, called MLK and other civil rights leaders, guess what? Socialists and commies!!! LOL! Which lends credence to the notion that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I would add (in paraphrase) that while it is true that history does repeat itself, it does first as tragedy and then as farce.

Finally, I won’t get into it as deeply as I should (perhaps at a later date), but they’re coming after social security -- again. Social Security, people, is a manufactured crisis. There is no death knell tolling for Social Security and with minor tweaks, it could go on perpetuity. Watch out for the Goobers coming after Social Security and for their bleats around the deficit. But those thoughts are for another day.

Well, that’s it. I probably had more thoughts to share, but in the process of thinking more thoughts, I forgot the ones I wanted to post here...

BTW, don’t think so much, it makes my dick itch.

Love,

Eddie