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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Israel Fabricated A Conversation Between Obama and Netanyahu, and Had The Temerity To Post It As Fact

In response to Israel posting a fabricated transcript of what they claimed that President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke about, today:

Nice going, +Israel. It's not enough that we send you over $15M per day, but you also spy on us and now you just make up shit out of thin air?

You'd better be goddamned glad that you've already got so many on your side, because if I was President, I'd park a few guided missile ships off your coast and obliterate your military facilities. Yeah, you have Iron Dome, but we could shoot until you run out of rounds, then keep shooting until it literally would be David vs Goliath because the only damned weapon you'd have left would be a slingshot!

I know that Hebrew is your official language, but you might google the English word 'ingrate'.

Assholes!

If The Garbageman Has To Pass A Test, Why Don't Politicians?

I have an idea for what will likely be an unpopular proposal, but I believe it's time that we have a minimum intelligence or experience level to hold government office.

I propose tests that every person desiring to hold elected office must pass. Not one warped by a state like Texas or Mississippi or Idaho (Fuck Idaho!) ;), but one wherein a body of learned academics have put their minds together to figure out what a person in a particular office - from dogcatcher to President - should logically be expected to know before they can even get their name on the ballot. 

I suggest things like - the first here will be the unpopular part - economics, the US Constitution, math, science, US and world history, geography, current events, and any other area deemed important for any person holding office to know. 

No more mythology-based illogic. No more Paul Ryan whackadoodle, trickle-down economics. No more 'a woman's body has a way of shutting those things down'. 

A little learning goes a long way, as does the intelligence with which to yield it. We need to stop venerating average (George W Bush), stupid (John Boehner, 'Jersey Shore', Rick Scott), and plain evil (Ted Nugent, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Fox News), and start advocating for people, ideas, and programs that raise the bar. That doesn't mean that we should make the average person a second-class citizen; it just means that by electing those who're smarter than the rest of us, the rest of us might want to pull a little harder.

Monday, July 21, 2014

The Tip of the Shitberg

The Israelis are certainly part of the problem, but they're the tip of the shitberg. The larger, unseen bulk of the turd is the great assembly of brainwashed, propagandized deluded ones - like I and others were in the past because of our collective guilt over the historical plight of the Jews - who serve as Israel's apologists.

Israel has already done the heavy lifting to get others to do their work for them. Now, they use dog whistles to fire up the apologists into a sound-deadening wall of deaf ears who can't step back away from the trees long enough to see that there's a forest.

"I agree with you, killing children is a horrible thing, but when ________ fires rockets into our population, what are we to do?"

Sound familiar? It's one of their propagandist talking points. And they can fill in the blank with whatever group it is that opposes them.

There's plenty of blame to go around on both sides, but tracing the problem's origins back should provide clarity on who's doing what to whom...but for those who refuse to admit it, even the truth won't change their minds.

This tiny knot of religious ignorance is going to bring the world to World War III, and may be the only thing the Book of Lies might ever got right.

I'm bAAaaack!

Yep, I'll be posting again on here because I feel the need to get some thoughts on electrons.

I'm coming in right in the middle of the Ukrainian crisis, after Malaysian Airlines MH17 was shot down by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and during the current crisis in Gaza following hundreds of Gazan deaths at the hands of the Israelis.

But, here it is, for what it is. If you're in my G+ circles, I apologize if you get notifications on there for things I post in both places.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Why The Estate Tax Must Approach 100% (I'd settle for 95%) - Do The Math!

This is what I've been talking about both on my blog and on Google+ the last few years, that if we don't do something about this soon, it will be too late - permanently. Here's why:

Let's say that, as a starting point or tipping point, where we go from sustainable inheritance to unsustainable inheritance, that inherited wealth accounts for, oh, 20% of the wealth of the republic. This isn't just cash or paper investments, it's real property like homes, land, and buildings.  So, if that 20% is passed on, curated and managed, and passed on again, it should have doubled over the life of it's first heir. Now it's worth 40% of the wealth of the republic. That is to say, people who didn't work for it now own 4 out of every 10 dollars worth of anything. 

The cycle repeats, the 40% is passed on, it's curated and managed, and passed on again, having doubled over the life of the heir. Now they own 80% of everything. 

Follow me? Now, do it again. What's left for anyone else? By that point, the poor and middle-class will have had to sell everything they own just to survive. Now they're renters, probably from the same people they work for. From whom they also buy groceries - from the stores the people who essentially own them also own. 

THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT!

If you don't think so, you're delusional. 

At best, we would indeed see a landed gentry like in Europe who never work again, who outright own politicians so that laws are never considered which favor anyone but them and their ability to accumulate wealth. Old European money is so far removed from the day-to-day affairs and worries that they don't bother with whatever affects the commoners. They do as they please, the cops don't bother them because they really can't in most cases unless the person really screws up and his crime goes public, and their money pile grows larger and larger. 

When I lived in Germany, my German boyfriend and I would be out and about and I'd ask him about some place that looked very nice, expensive, and old, and he would say that it belonged to some wealthy family, but despite the fact that they'd lived in the same mansion for a couple hundred years, no one knew anything about them. Later, I found that to be true in more than just Germany. People don't know, and know that they shouldn't go around asking.

That will happen here. In fact, it already has in wealthy enclaves. It will get worse as the already-elitist monied youth grow older, feel even more entitled, buy power, get richer, and feel superior even more so than today. 

If we don't end it now, we're screwed. Do the math for yourself. It could happen still in my lifetime, much less the lifetimes of younger people like Millennials.