To Bring You Another War Politicians in Washington Suddenly Find Ways to Cooperate

As I Have Always Said... Americans Love Their Wars... War Is America's Favorite Pastime.

Have you noticed how these jackasses in Washington have suddenly found a way to work together to support war? It's as if someone lit a fire under their asses. This Congress has been one of the least productive in American history... because the divide has been too great and the House (led by the GOP) has been on a mission to block Obama's every move....no matter what he has wanted to do. It had become a reliable formula...that if Obama wanted something... Boehner and the House (and sometimes the Senate) would find a way to block it just because Obama wanted it. When it has to do with improving the lives of Americans, a jobs bill, investing in infrastructure, student loan relief, green energy, immigration reform, improving education, managing the debt, helping the poor/most vulnerable, & all of the other business that Americans need their representatives to attend to... they have never been able to find the time or the willingness to get anything done. Also... they say they couldn't come up with the money anyway. But when the issue is war (something both Parties love to support.... because it's the national fetish)...then all of a sudden these shysters are shuffling around... scrambling... making committee agreements in the Senate in record time, finding time for meetings, are cooperating & working together just fine. Furthermore.. finding the money is suddenly no problem. Unbelievable.

American citizens have made it clear that they don't want this. But they are being ignored. Yet all of a sudden members of Congress are cooperating. It just goes to show you, that when it has to do with the needs of ordinary Americans...members of Congress couldn't care less about taking care of their responsibilities. But when it's something that THEY want, they find a way to get it done (even in the face of public opposition). The U.S. is a sick, sad Country indeed.

The Politics of Stupidity...or More Accurately, The Stupidity of Our Politics

E.J. Dionne posted a great commentary today on Truthdig.

The Politics of Stupidity Strikes Again

Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid?

Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans. David Cameron, the new Conservative prime minister in Britain, is a leading example.

He recently offered a rather brutal budget that includes severe cutbacks. I have doubts about some of them, but at least Cameron cared enough about reducing his country’s deficit that alongside the cuts, he also proposed an increase in the value-added tax from 17.5 percent to 20 percent. Imagine: a fiscal conservative who really is a fiscal conservative.

That could never happen here because the fairy tale of supply-side economics insists that taxes are always too high, especially on the rich.

This is why Democrats will be fools if they don’t try to turn the Republicans’ refusal to raise taxes on families earning more than $250,000 a year into an election issue. If Democrats go into a headlong retreat on this, they will have no standing to govern.

The simple truth is that the wealthy in the United States—the people who have made almost all the income gains in recent years—are undertaxed compared with everyone else.

Consider two reports from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. One, issued last month, highlighted findings from the Congressional Budget Office showing that “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007,” the period for which figures are available.

The other, from February, used Internal Revenue Service data to show that the effective federal income tax rate for the 400 taxpayers with the very highest incomes declined by nearly half in just over a decade, even as their pre-tax incomes have grown five times larger.

The study found that the top 400 households “paid 16.6 percent of their income in federal individual income taxes in 2007, down from 30 percent in 1995.” We are talking here about truly rich people: Using 2007 dollars, it took an adjusted gross income of at least $35 million to get into the top 400 in 1992, and $139 million in 2007.

Read the Full Commentary from Truthdig.

Time to do what you can do for healthcare

Which is CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN and Senators.
Call your Congressman and tell him/her to vote for the Senate Bill.

HERE'S THE NUMBER.

from Balloon Juice:

Phone your Representative. It feels better than yelling at pseudonyms on an internetblog.

Here is how you do it.

(1) Use a phone. Email has nigh on zero impact. Trust me on this. Letter mail gets read, but you don’t have time. Reach the House switchboard at (202) 224-3121 .

(2) Remember, this person works for you. You pay his or her salary and you voted for them. You’re the boss here, or at least one of them, and it’s they who should worry about what you think of them.

(3) Identify your name and the town or neighborhood where you live zip code. If you are not a constituent don’t bother. Since you guys never listen to me, at least google a zip code in the appropriate district before you call.

(4) State the issue. This is easy: pass the Senate bill or the party gets it. We can (and certainly will) fix the shortcomings later.

(5) How strongly do you feel? Don’t apologize about feeling passionate or pissed off. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

(6) What are you going to do about it? (Updated from earlier) This part is not that relevant when they’re getting a ton of calls. Every teabagger threatens the end of the world, so they get pretty jaded about it.

Change for Washington D.C.?