You tell me....

If you would be 55 years old next year, can you discern what that would mean under Romney's redo of medicare?

"For people 55 years of age & older there is no change. "
"For people 55 and younger- thats a group that we would give more options than exist currently.
GOP speak for "you're screwed".

Well, not to be taken too seriously-- so let's go to some humor--
Mitt Romney the Musical





In closing, Mitt is a real outgoing outsourcing kind of guy

*Language Warning*

*Language Warning* NOT SAFE FOR WORK/KIDS ETC

All along the watchtower

A bit of Hendrix for your Friday pleasure.

Military Industrial Complex

The Military Industrial Complex job market, because providing jobs is so important, yet it is not considered to be official squandering of government (i.e. the people's) money.
Both presidential candidates subscribe to this mindset, but neither would admit it.
Obama quietly sending out drones to kill & Romney salivating over Iran & nukes.
I really do feel this election I have to choose between the lessor of two evils.

Heartwarming

With all the craziness & violence in the world, it does my heart good, (and hopefully yours too!), to take in these moments & take a break from all that. Just some pure sweetness-- a babygirl and a newly adopted foster rescue dog. They are both babies now- even though that puppy looks somewhat like a pony! But there they are mutual admirers, buddies, ready to share their lives with open hearts.

worth getting older for...

Is this Dr Seuss  Cat-in-the-hat cake cool or what??

Love it!

Walker can take a hike

(CNN) - "A Wisconsin judge on Friday ruled as unconstitutional major portions of the controversial state law that restricted the collective bargaining rights of many public employees.

Dane County Circuit Judge Juan B. Colas found several aspects of the law contrary to both the state and U.S. constitutions. 

A challenge to the law was brought against Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission by two labor unions representing education and municipal employees.

Passed and signed in March 2011, the law restricts the rights of public employee unions to bargain collectively.

The suit claims the law restricts employees’ free speech, due process and association rights, and violates certain labor regulations.

The law serves to "single out and encumber the rights of those employees who choose union membership and representation solely because of that association and therefore infringe upon the rights of free speech and association guaranteed by both the Wisconsin and United States Constitutions," Colas wrote.

He also found a portion of the law relating to retirement contributions exceeded the legislature's authority and was a "local affair." The Wisconsin Constitution grants broad authority over non-statewide issues to local governments."

Of course Walker will appeal, but for now the legal opinion that what he did was unconstitutional, on both State & Federal levels & violates labor laws is welcomed news. 

The thing about the Walker power play to squelch Unions most important function-- to negotiate or collectively bargain for their own wages and terms, was he had to really fight the people to do so. He had to find back door ways, and push it through under the wire. I mean when the State Capitol is taken over by the people, and the Police allowed it to go on, full well knowing that if the teachers & municipal employees union rights were being messed with, it would only be a matter of time before the police & fire union rights would be on the budget chopping block. 

Walker refused to listen to the people of Wisconsin. A major lashback  caused Wisconsinites to launch a recall vote.  Once again Walker lowlife associates played dirty-- leaving recordings reminding people to vote -- on the wrong day. 

Walker is not working for the people, but rather, forging ahead blindly, with a narrow tea party agenda, more of a bull-in-a-china shop approach. He does not care what gets broken or trampled in the means to his goal, which is not a shared goal of the people he is supposed to represent. 

The best hope is whatever higher court this decision is appealed to , simply agrees Walker's anti union law is unconstitutional & it ends there. 

Update: Upon further reading an AP article, I discovered the following:

• It is unclear if the ruling means Unions can negotiate again- Walker could seek to keep the law in effect while legal proceedings drag on. 

• The law took away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most workers, has been in effect for more than a year. 

• The Judge ruled the law is null and void, in a 27 page ruling.  The ruling applies to all local public workers affected by the law, including teachers and city & county government employees, but NOT for those who work for the state.  They were not a party to the lawsuit, which was brought by a Madison teachers union & a Milwaukee public workers union. 
This means State workers may have to duplicate the whole legal process to get their collective bargaining rights restored.

• The ruling throws into question changes that have been made in pay, benefits, and other work rules in place across the state for city, county and school district workers. 

• Walker's law, passed in March 2011, allowed for collective bargaining only on wage increases no greater than the rate of inflation. All other issues, including workplace safety, vacation and health benefits, could no longer be bargained for. Wow! A double whammy-- restricting wage increases, along with an inflation cap.  Kind of like a punch to the gut , followed by a kick to the shins.

Lots of questions in the air about how this ruing is enacted.
In the end, they may have to not only undo what was taken away financially (and potentially owe back pay & benefits), but also have to pay extra to administer the fix. His way to balance a budget at other's expense, in an unconstitutional way, may boomerang back & wind up costing him a whole lot more.  If anything, it should cost him in the next election.

It would serve Walker right, to have to have that kind of impact-- as he tried to cheat teachers & municipal workers their Union, free speech & constitutional rights. 

Not in my name

Song credits: 

Words & music by John McCutcheon

John: vocal, guitar & hammer dulcimer
Jon: harmony vocals, piano & organ
JT: harmony vocals & bass
Pete: electric guitar
Jos: drums
Maura: harmony vocals

You see the plane in the distance
You see the flame in the sky
See the young ones running for cover
See the old ones wondering why
They tell us that the world is a dangerous place
We live in a terrible time
But in Hiroshima, New York or in Baghdad
It’s the innocent who die for the crime

Chorus

Not in my name
Not in my name
Not in my name
Not in my name

The witnesses watch through the window
Their hearts locked in horror and pain
At the man lying strapped to a gurney
As the poison is pumped through his veins
And I’m wondering who are the prisoners
Who holds the lock and the key
Who holds the power over life, over death
When will we finally be free? Chorus

Bridge

We stray and we stumble in seeking the truth
And wonder why it’s so hard to find
But an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
Leaves the whole world toothless and blind

Through the ages I have watched all your holy wars
Your jihads, your Crusades
I have been used as inspiration, I’ve been used as an excuse
For the murder and the misery you’ve made
I thought I made it clear in the Bible
In the Torah and in the Koran
What is it in my teaching about loving your enemies
That you people don’t understand?

Chorus

Respect for Women

I came across this comprehensive list of "wrongs" that recently surfaced:

"Consider the proposals we’ve seen from Republican officials this year: restricting contraception; cutting off Planned Parenthood; requiring state-mandated, medically-unnecessary trans vaginal ultrasounds; forcing physicians to lie to patients about abortion and breast cancer; fighting equal-pay laws; and delaying the Violence Against Women Act. When it came time for House Republicans to pay for lower student loan interest rates, GOP officials decided to get the funding by cutting access to breast cancer and cervical cancer screenings.

The Republican Party’s 2012 platform calls for a constitution amendment that would ban all abortions. A Republican congressman recently compared access to birth control to 9/11 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee co-sponsored a bill to redefine “rape.”

The Republican Party’s U.S. Senate nominee in Missouri believes a woman's body can “shut that whole thing down” if impregnated through a “legitimate rape,” while Republican Party’s U.S. Senate nominee in Pennsylvania believes a rape pregnancy and out-of-wedlock pregnancy are “similar.”

* From the ABL blog

Besides the assault on Women's reproductive & health rights, there was also a Senate Lock Step action (amongst republicans), who voted against equal pay for equal work for Women. 

Honestly, it is hard to fathom that these issues are on the table for real in the U.S.A in the 21st Century. 

Feels like we are going backwards to the days when Women were not even allowed to vote. Equally bad is being allowed to vote, but one of the choices involves repealing women's reproductive rights, and allowing some pasty white guys in ties to decide for you- as in take away your ability to have a choice. Because you have a vagina, you do not deserve to get the same pay for doing the same job, and they will make highly personal health care & reproductive decisions for you, as well as legislate/mandate trans vaginal probes, and that your Doctor give you pro life lectures. Seriously?

There has never been a more clear choice* in terms of Women's Rights. 

* By clear choice, I mean of whom to vote against!

Don't mess with the Fallopians!

funniez

Overheard @ the DNC

"If Mitt were Santa Claus, 

he'd fire the Reindeer &

outsource the Elves"

~Ted Strickland

Equal pay wall of shame

"Maybe 23 cents doesn't sound like a lot to someone with a Swiss bank account, Cayman Island Investments and an IRA worth tens of millions of dollars. But Governor Romney, when we lose 23 cents every hour, every day, every paycheck, every job, over our entire lives, what we lose can't just be measured in dollars."

                                                           ~ Lilly Ledbetter 

                                                                                   

Labor Day

As the parent of a political science major,  I often get lectures on historical events from my son. The topic of labor day came up, and he launched into the gritty history behind the "celebration".

The Pullman Strike

The Pullman Strike was a nationwide conflict between the new American Railway Union (ARU) and railroads that occurred in the United States in summer 1894. It shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit. The conflict began in the town of Pullman, Illinois, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. Most factory workers who built Pullman cars lived in the planned worker community of Pullman, which Pullman had designed as a model community, but which he controlled. When the company laid off workers, it did not reduce rents, and the workers called for a strike; they had not formed a union. The ARU was an organization of unskilled railroad workers founded in 1893 by Eugene V. Debs. Debs brought in ARU organizers and signed up many of the disgruntled workers. When Pullman refused arbitration the ARU called a strike against his factory, but it showed no sign of success. To win the strike, Debs decided to stop the movement of Pullman cars on railroads. The over-the-rail Pullman employees (such as conductors and porters) did not go on strike. Debs and the ARU then called a massive boycott (usually called a "strike") that affected most lines west of Detroit and involved some 250,000 workers in 27 states at its peak. The Railroad brotherhoods and the AFLopposed the boycott, and the General Managers Association of the railroads coordinated the opposition. Riots and sabotage caused $80 million in damages; 30 people were killed. The federal government secured a federal court injunction against the union, Debs, and the top leaders ordering them to stop interfering with trains that carried mail cars. They refused and the Army moved in to stop the strikers from obstructing the trains. Violence broke out in many cities, and the strike collapsed. Debs went to prison for violating a court order and his ARU disappeared.

On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois. Afterward, groups within the crowd became enraged and set fire to nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive.^[8] Elsewhere in the western states sympathy strikers prevented transportation of goods by walking off the job, obstructing railroad tracks or threatening and attacking strikebreakers. This increased national attention and fueled the demand for federal action.

A national commission formed to study causes of the 1894 strike found Pullman's paternalism partly to blame and Pullman's company town to be "un-American". In 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court forced the Pullman Company to divest ownership in the town, which was annexed to Chicago.

Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 after the strike when President Grover Cleveland and Congress made conciliation of organized labor a top priority. Legislation for the holiday was pushed through Congress six days after the strike ended. Samuel Gompers, who sided with the federal government in its effort to end the strike by the American Railway Union, spoke out in favor of the holiday.

Wow! Injustice, unfair worker treatment, Blood, sweat & tears, & a massive uprising are the foundation of this "holiday".

Fast forward tot he 21st century-- where were have "At will" Employment (employers can fire you without reason). People are lucky to have jobs, and most workers have no voice, and with the "employers market" environment (plenty of unemployed workers seeking jobs)... they have the upper hand, in even overriding Unions. It is not pretty. 

Breaking it down- Willard said WHAT?

And it's ahead in the polls too!

A few bones to pick about things said @ the RNC.

In the WTF? Category:

• "But Paul, I still like the playlist on my iPod better than yours."

Mitt is human & he's "hip". Hard to believe Mitt does have an ipod, but if he does, it's probably a live feed of the Dow Jones stock market trading reports, or the Hits from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. 

• "That very optimism is uniquely American."

Really living your life, working & being confident in the future is "uniquely American"?

• "when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at $9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you’re an American and you don’t quit. You did it because it was what you had to do.

But driving home late from that second job, or standing there watching the gas pump hit $50 dollars and still going, when the realtor told you that to sell your house you’d have to take a big loss, in those moments you knew that this just wasn’t right."

Mitt Mitt Mitt. You never worked 2 jobs at damned near minimum wage in your life!
Selling off one of your houses at a loss is not the issue. It is forced foreclosure, and desperate homelessness, and bailed out banksters unwilling to rewrite loans- that seems to be  the issue. 

• "When the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American."

Big stuff, like wars, and nuclear bombs? Or big stuff like dumping oil all over the Gulf Coast?

• "My dad had been born in Mexico and his family had to leave during the Mexican revolution"

Way to gloss it over Mitt. Your grandparents moved to Mexico so they could practice polygamy.

By the way-- where all all the "birther" conspiracy theorists who might wonder if Mitt/Willard is a Mexican?

• "The President has disappointed America because he hasn’t led America in the right direction. He took office without the basic qualification that most Americans have and one that was essential to his task. He had almost no experience working in a business. Jobs to him are about government."

Yea, President Obama does not have "basic qualifications". 

Obama has advanced qualifications!

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. 

A BA Degree from Columbia University in Political Science

A law degree from Harvard- graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude - with great honor.

(Mitt graduated from Harvard cum laude, with honor)

• "In America, we celebrate success, we don’t apologize for it."

Is it just me, or does Mitt sound a bit Americcentric? Other places do not celebrate success?

• That is why every president since the Great Depression who came before the American people asking for a second term could look back at the last four years and say with satisfaction: “you are better off today than you were four years ago.”

"Except Jimmy Carter. And except this president."

Whoah! Selective memory void, Mitt?

Eisenhower & the Vietnam war

Nixon had to resign or get his ass Impeached

Reagan Deregulation- How'd that work out?

Bush #1 Turned out his thousand points of light were *dim*, but not dim enough that people could not "read his lips" (no new taxes). 

Bush #2 = *Worst*President*Ever*. Torture, Preemptive War(s), Gitmo, Rendition, 

A long list of Human Rights Violations, the so-called Patriot Act,  and he left the US economy in shambles, on the brink of collapse. 

Satisfaction? No. 

Finally~ "Mitt's Plan"

• First, by 2020, North America will be energy independent by taking full advantage of our oil and coal and gas and nuclear and renewables.

~ Don't you love these plans that come to fruition after the person would be out of office?

"Full advantage" is code for "Trash the planet." 

• Second, we will give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow. When it comes to the school your child will attend, every parent should have a choice, and every child should have a chance.

~ That's code for private school vouchers paid for by gutting the public school system. 

• Third, we will make trade work for America by forging new trade agreements. And when nations cheat in trade, there will be unmistakable consequences.

~ Trading agreements will turn around nationwide unemployment? That's gonna save America?

• Fourth, to assure every entrepreneur and every job creator that their investments in America will not vanish as have those in Greece, we will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget.

~ Pay close attention to how Mitt "fixed" Massachusett's budget deficit ;

During his term he presided over the elimination of a projected $3 billion deficit by reducing state funding for higher education, cutting state aid to cities and towns, raising various fees, and removing corporate tax loopholes; Massachusetts also benefited from unanticipated federal grants and unexpected revenue from a previously enacted capital gains tax increase. 

Romney supported raising various fees by more than $300 million, including those for driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and gun licenses. He increased a special gasoline retailer fee by two cents per gallon, generating about $60 million per year in additional revenue. (Opponents said the reliance on fees sometimes imposed a hardship on those who could least afford them.)

 cut spending by $1.6 billion, including:

Cut  $700 million in reductions in state aid to cities and towns.The cuts also included a $140 million reduction in state funding for higher education, which led state-run colleges and universities to increase tuition by 63 percent over four years. Romney sought additional cuts in his last year as governor by vetoing nearly 250 items in the state budget, but all were overridden by the heavily Democratic legislature.

Can someone please answer this: How can Romney claim to support education when in real life, he gutted funding, which cause tuition to skyrocket? Not a problem if you are a multi millionaire- but for the other 99%, his actions (speak louder than words) did serious damage. 

• "As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America’s first liberty: the freedom of religion."

~ This is code for repeal Roe V. Wade- the institution of marriage means hetero marriage only. Freedom OF religion is one thing, but what about freedom FROM religion???

• " every American is less secure today because he has failed to slow Iran’s nuclear threat."

Wow! Beating the drums of war, so soon Mitt?

• Mitt asks: "Does the America we want borrow a trillion dollars from China? No."

~ Well Mitt, that would have been a great question during the Bush 2 regime, when George was getting his wars on. 

(Show us your taxes Mitt.... got something to hide??)

Mitt is ready to fully fund the military, and although he says will support the elderly & those in need, well, unless Grandma is ready to gear up for a tour of duty in Iran, I'm thinking she will get thrown under the bus, as Mitt enacts cuts on sacrifices he is willing to let others make. 

Sticker this!

Some fun bumper stickers.....

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Hat tip to Blue Gal for coming up with this Where's Waldo parody....