Proud to be a Liberal

More tax plans to distribute the wealth-- upward.

Why are Republicans and especially those running for the presidency so determined to make the rich pay less in taxes? Is there a logic to this that I don't get?

The Mayor of Simpleton over his Tax Plan

And why are Republicans so determined to offer us idiots and trolls as their options to Obama for president? What is this about? I read that where Herman Cain is not really competent to be president many are tempted to vote for him simply because they think he's outside the Beltway-- except he was a lobbyist. How does that make him outside? And does it really not matter about competency? 

I also read that simple is supposed to be better? Seriously? As in simple minded like Perry who couldn't get higher marks in college than Cs even in PE? Are Americans really going to buy any flat tax rate that helps the rich pay less? Let's say the average American earner figures out they'd pay more and doesn't opt in as Perry says they can do. But the rich, oh hey, they are going for this in a big way-- what does that do for the deficit some claim matters so much?

They say Republican have always offered responsible options for the presidency. Okay, I buy that... but not for the Vice-presidency where they tried to palm Sarah Palin off on the country. Where McCain, whether I agreed with his political agenda or his temperament was competent to be president (as much as anybody is given the huge scope of that job), he picked someone who was not which makes you wonder about his competency.

I keep hoping we will have a real option with a different political agenda next November. It seems unlikely.

Republican candidates and their think-ahead logic

Republican candidates always amaze me. This kind of 'logic' works with your voters? Or you think it will work? This one, minor though it is, takes the cake for not thinking ahead.

NJ Candidate advice to wives

Okay here's the question-- does that mean he pays for sex? His wife might like to ask this one-- how much experience has he had with whores to know what sex is like with them?

I guess he has no chance to win but still, this has to be funny to right or left-- doesn't it?

I could list off a lot of it from this week's Republican presidential candidates but that's not so funny.

Herman Cain's tax plan

I think everybody's heard the old joke-- how can you tell when a politician is lying? He opened his mouth.

A lot of people think that's not true when it's someone who loudly proclaims their religiosity. I mean if someone believes in God and the Bible and they tell you that they follow scripture, you can trust them, right? You will know it's not automatically true if you have known and listened to many of them; but what I think religious political types do is try not to know too much. That way they can tell themselves they are not lying. They were just wrong which they also won't admit too quickly.

So I think this applies to Herman Cain and his lovely, simple little tax plan of wealth transfer-- this one transferring more of the wealth from the poor to the rich (the rich never have enough). You know the rich do believe in a kind of communism except not everybody sharing equally. They just want instead everybody beneath them sharing their wealth with them and then themselves sharing less of their own-- as little as possible. Our culture has actually redefined greed, which used to be a bad word in Scripture, as now just simple ambition and 'those who can... do'. We should thank them for the bits they deign to drop down for the rest of us. 

Cain has made it quite clear that our country's economic problem is not Wall Street. It's not the ones who trade dollars and stocks around to make money while they create no product. It's not those who cheated people by high interest or lying about who had the ability to pay back a loan. See it wasn't lying. It was they just 'didn't know.' It's not their fault that the property was not appraise accurately or that the people made payments and then lost it back to the loaner.

No, Cain lays the fault all that the feet of the White House and Congress because they... let's see what was it they did that was so bad? How about they regulated at all? No regulations would lead to more manna from uh yeah, heaven. Totally free ability to charge usury rates of interest, to lie to patrons, to not monitor their own practices, and then they'd be set loose to... help everybody. Yeah, that's it and why we can blame Congress and Clinton not for ending Glass Stegall-- not because it was wrong to end it but because they didn't end all regulation on those who push money around.

What scares me most about Cain is that a man with so little ability, who is a good motivational speaker, who ran a pizza company that sold lousy pizza that he convinced everybody was good to buy, it is not that he will be the presidential nominee. I doubt that but I watched this party put up someone totally incapable of being president once before with Sarah Palin for Veep. That's what I suspect they would try to do with Cain. He's out of his depths. He doesn't care as he knows how to talk. He doesn't care about his tax plan, doesn't want to know too much about it except to say it's simple... Yeah right. He doesn't care but Republican voters should. 

Cain's 9-9-9 Plan is (roughly) 3 VATs in 1

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 from Tax Policy Center

 Politifact-- checking Cain's math

And for heaven's sake, don't allow them to put him up as veep. How about Chris Christie for Veep with Romney on top. Or if you need a minority, Marco Rubio. They both know how to speak words to satisfy the rightie's need for red meat. Just don't put up someone totally inept to be president as we have seen too many times they end up there. The likelihood is Cain never dreamed he'd go this far and really was about selling his book and upping his figures for speaking engagements. If you didn't like Obama, felt he wasn't ready (which might be so), you really want to repeat the experience?

Cain asked for a catchy tax plan idea that revolved around the flat tax that he had liked before. He got this one which would add 18% to everything you buy. Think it wouldn't because companies already pay corporate income taxes? A lot of them don't through deductions of all sorts. Those that don't, will be adding that onto their purchase price.

And all this trouble for what? To take care of the deficit? It won't touch it as he claims it's revenue neutral-- although how a sales tax can have no administration costs attached is beyond me. No, it's all about increasing the transfer of wealth. He doesn't have to lie about what it does. He just has to stay dumb and happy as he gets out in front of people and claims he's such a wise man. And if it didn't work in terms of getting it through Congress where a lot of people (like home buyers) won't much like it, well maybe he'd have another supply side salesman in the backroom to give him something that would.

Do Republican candidates respect Republican voters?

It might not look that way, but I have tried to even keep this blog free of snark. I wanted to have real debates on issues, but it is nigh unto impossible to write about any Republican today and not find it becoming an issue of disbelief and anger that the best they can provide in terms of candidates are the trolls I saw on the debate stage in Las Vegas. Seriously, this is it, the best they have, their only real options?

Whose fault is this lack of responsible leaders for what used to be considered a conservative party? I blame the voters who elevated them to this position. These trolls represent the best they can bring forth for one reason only-- they are willing to say what their voters want to hear like that all abortion is murder, that gay marriage is evil and going to doom a culture to a Sodom and Gomorrah end.

Taking deep breaths because right about now I am already angry and I haven't even begun with what I wanted to say here.  I just read Maureen Dowd's column on what Mormons believe [Baptizing Anne Frank as a Mormon]. Actually I knew quite a lot about Mormonism having studied it early in my adult life and considered converting until I learned what that meant for what I'd have to believe.

Dowd's article was a good reminder that the most reasonable option they are offering as a presidential candidate is a Mormon in high standing. The Mormon who actually thinks for himself, Huntsman, wasn't there and doesn't stand a chance because he's not a fundamentalist; and all that better apply for being the Republican nominee must be fundamentalists. The rest all are of one religion or another.

So we have Herman Cain who says some will pay less in taxes (the rich), some will pay more (poor and middle class), but it's okay because anybody who doesn't have a lot of money has only themselves to blame for it. We have Cain who got his 9-9-9 plan from a supply side adviser where it was picked as being catchy. He does know his voter, doesn't he!

Do Republicans respect those they want to vote for them at all? I get the feeling they do not. They think they are stupid, Listening to Senator McCain attempting to smear Obama for using a tour bus, whose frame was made in Canada, as if it was a destroyer of American jobs to do so, when he had to know his own such bus was also made in Canada as was that of Bachmann. Okay he basically assumes the right winger, who hears him, is not only stupid but too lazy to do research and won't read information from any site other than the right. Is that showing respect for those to whom he is speaking? He has no more respect for their depth than I do.

It goes on and on with this business of lies. Listening to Rush Limbaugh this last week and hearing him talk about how liberals want to damage this country and then hearing Herman Cain say he believed the same thing, really? These guys believe that? Or they simply know the ones who listen to them will never stop to think about what that rhetoric means?

Limbaugh is beyond any liberal or progressive's ability to listen to him anymore. He tweaks facts, distorts consequences and unless he's stupid, which I doubt, he knows exactly what he's doing.

Okay so I give up. This will be a purely snark blog and I can't help it. I want more from Republicans. I want them to quit looking at their hate for Obama and instead think about what they are offering up. Asking too much?

Or do they assume no matter how many times they say that it's government's fault for our mess, but at the same time that they can fix it with their government ideas, and Obama should have, no matter how many times they lie about how we got to where we are, nobody will look at the facts from within their ranks?

I know there are some thinking Republicans. I'd just like to hear from them. I don't want to hear from anybody who listens to Rush Limbaugh or believes Herman Cain is the great black hope. I really see that as self-defeating for them and me. Forget that Cain is black. It should not matter. Listen to his ideas for heaven's sake. Think just a minute about the logic of any of what he says. You didn't like the idea that Obama was a powerful speaker but most of us who voted for Obama voted on his ideas (which by the way he proved to be a disappointment where it came to follow through), but it's still a better way to vote than emotions even when we get disappointed.

Incidentally for those who vote purely on abortion and gay marriage-- nobody else can hurt your marriage, just your own hate can do it.  I have become very very intolerant of anybody who doesn't support gay marriage as a human right and can't possibly think anyone who attempts to block it is a free thinker or even a thinker.

Here's something funny. Coming home, on the radio, I listened to Cain say we need to be open to new ideas when he was defending is 9-9-9 shift of the tax burden to the poor and middle from the rich. He's so open to new ideas, isn't he with his rigid fundamentalist religious creed. Oh yeah, free thinker that one!

AND if you want to ban all abortion, as Cain said he did this week-end, on an interview program, to be consistently pro-life, you better be in favor of social programs to help families, public education, and against capital punishment. If a tiny seed has value to the human race, to our culture as a whole so should a child once born; and when it needs help with health care, food, schooling. Anyone who was truly pro life would want to help that baby with all possible to help it reach its potential. IF you don't support that, you are a hypocrite and I don't have time to even read your comments, certainly not your blogs. IF you support ending all abortion as Cain does, then don't call it pro life. It's just pro meddling in someone else's business!

I can respect those who disagree with me about Obama and about good government programs but those non-thinkers, the ones who come at it purely from an antiquated religious set of values that are twisted to suit their current agendas, I am through even reading their comments. I am not speaking to those like ingineer, who come at this from a different perspective, but rather to those who claim a religion, who can read what Cain said about how Jesus was a conservative based on not taking unemployment and not throw up. For people like that they better find another place to read. You won't like this one much for the next year as it's going to be big time pro-Obama, and pushing for Americans to find candidates to run for Congress whether conservative or liberal, who can actually think and won't follow a rigid partisan platform. It will be Obama because he's the only alternative to a bunch of right wing wackos and their direction is not where I want this country going.

There are times I can be sanguine about all this but not right now when it's a battle for the soul of our nation and I see fascists, who have no compassion for anybody but themselves, being at the door. I am very disappointed there isn't a real option from the Republicans for us but the closest I can see from that stage last night was Ron Paul and he's too far out there for me to accept his solutions would really help our country. He is at least honest and sticks to his beliefs which is more than I can say for the rest of them.

Incidentally being a good debater doesn't mean someone would be a good leader! This should all be about ideas, ideas, ideas and right wing ideas right now make me sick!!!

Photo at the top and a lot of other places I was recently at are examples of government setting aside land for future generations to enjoy. That's what I call conservation. Modern Republicans do NOT have a clue what the word even means as it's all about the dollar, themselves, and their religions.

Complicating factors

One thing or maybe a group of things that I think are making our country have a serious problem right now with governing is who are we and who do we want to be? To say we are divided, is to put it  mildly. For a long time people said to have government divided was good as it kept it from doing anything and when it did anything it was bad. Wow what a great idea-- have a huge government where all you expect from them is to do nothing for what you pay them. Wonder how long a corporation would last with that viewpoint.

The thing is half of us want to go one way and the other half the other. 

You have the plan from the right that the rich are not only paying a fair rate, they should pay less and there should be no penalty if they want to send their manufacturing overseas. It is good to help the rich get richer. They see the evil here to be in the poor who, as one presidential candidate, Herman Cain said, are only poor because of their own fault. Cain is so in tune with being an average person he went further to say, as a multimillionaire, he would have died if he'd gotten cancer under Obama's health care plan. I guess he has forgotten that if he'd been among the working poor today, that's when he'd have died. Or maybe he just doesn't know. That's pretty much all the right wing candidates-- blame the poor for their state, think we had no health care problem when 50,000,000 people can't afford insurance, and if someone gets sick or has an accident, let them die.

The other half want the tax codes figured out to get the rich to pay a bigger percentage on the top part of their income. They want to balance the budget by getting in more revenue and not hurting those already hurting financially. They also want gay marriage because it's fair and they know it doesn't hurt their marriage to let two women or two men live together with full rights and status to create their own families. They don't maybe personally like abortion but they want it available and when someone does have a baby when they cannot afford it, they want government programs there to help them.

And on it goes for the divide. Many blamed Obama for not doing more his first two years in office and when he had a majority of Democrats in Congress. The thing was that was never a majority of people who thought like I just mentioned above. They were democrat in name only and they voted with Republicans.

Some say Clinton worked with a Republican controlled Congress. Too true and what did he work with them to do-- ship more manufacturing overseas and gut financial regulations like Glass Seagall. Basically they got him to do what they wanted and it made him look successful. He did nothing about gay rights and in fact began DADT which has now been ended under Obama.

To say I am not thrilled with Obama is true. He has done things or let them happen like the big pipeline through the Ogallala Aquifer which will take oil from Canada to Texas to refine it. Research it if you haven't already heard of it. What it could do to environmental damage is scary or should be and yet who did the research on its safety-- those who have as clients the builders. I am impressed-- not and there is a lot like that.

The thing is until we as Americans figure out who we are, until we define ourselves, we will pay a lot for a government that only knows how to support wars and give itself more power and money.

Herman Cain

Everything I see on Herman Cain makes me think he's naive with a very simplistic view of how he could govern if he got into the office of the President. He is running with popularity in the right because he presents simple programs like 9-9-9 which would evidently do away with all deductions, sounds like for corporations also and have a flat tax for everyone.

It's not as hard on the poor as you might imagine because the payroll tax would not be used anymore. The thing is though can that pay for all we have currently going on? I doubt Cain knows.

People like simplicity and somebody who suggests they can solve all the problems without asking the American people to dig deeply into their thinking bag is likely to be popular with a certain segment who won't bother asking if it works.

His being nominated is probably unlikely after people learn more of his ideas. Right now the one least known has the best chance of winning anything. Any generic Republican can supposedly beat Obama. This means an unknown who jumped into it at the last with no debates, no time to analyze program suggestions, maybe even a draft movement in the Convention, that is most likely going to look like a winner to Republican voters-- the old pig in a poke.

So I want this quote here and easy to find in the future in case he gets the nomination. It should be brought out again and again as I think it's where he shows his naivety as much as anywhere. Doubtless there are more money quotes and you can be sure they'll be in Democratic attack ads if he gets the nomination. For now it'll be Republican candidates bringing them out.

CAIN: "I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! [...] It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed."

How to achieve fairness

First of all there is no guarantee about how to achieve fairness. That's just a fact. If you look at history, you see fairness is not an obvious given for human interactions. But we have to try, right? And so the question in a country where there is the vote, how do we get fairness or as close as we can come to it?

Cultural issues are a big deal in our country as we are in a time of transition which threatens many while others see it as hope that we finally, as a culture, are getting it right. We see this in both economic demonstrations and gay rights. We have seen it with the tea partiers who insult anybody who doesn't see it their way. We see it with people like the right wing candidates who talk about protecting marriage by some kind of cockeyed talk about gays threatening it.

We are seeing it finally with the ending of DADT which for people like me is a healthy and logical thing to do. A few on the far right tried to paint this as sexuality run amok, but in the eyes of the majority of Americans, it wasn't about that. It was about gay couples having a right to be recognized by the military when they are gay. It was the right to come out of the closet. It was the right of people to be able to be who they are without lies. It was no more about the right of gays to openly flaunt their sexual practices than it is of straights to do the same thing-- while in the military. In other words no making out or sex in public by either.

Okay so here comes the latest gay rights topic which I admit I skimmed over when I saw it in the papers because I didn't know the truth of exactly what happened and don't like making assumptions based on what I read somewhere. Also it didn't seem like a big deal to me but that's likely because I wasn't impacted by it. Now I am seeing it as a possible issue that could impact more than it and I'll explain why I'd say that.

For anyone who hadn't read of the two lesbians who got kicked off a plane, the general gist of it is that they kissed. They said they kissed only once and not sexually. The stewardess or steward, who knows what the appropriate term is these days, came over and told them this was a family airline, other passengers had complained, and knock it off. The lesbians got angry, admit they used foul language and were kicked off the plane. The airline claims they were kicked off by their angry response, not the kiss.

Now assuming the women told the truth and their kiss was only one and not sexual (and I have never heard the airline say they are lying), the airline appeared to have been totally in the wrong to have said anything to them or to imply that it is not a family thing for couples to kiss once. Or at the least if this is not airline policy, that steward or stewardess, or whatever the right term is today, was out of line.

Now when the women began to swear, they lost the high road but gained cult following among others who sympathize and are wanting a boycott of the airline (fat people are also mad at that airline) or maybe a kissathon on another flight to express their anger and in a joining together against bigotry.

Here's the thing where I probably make gays mad at me. I agree with their anger at anybody daring to say it's not a family thing to see two women or two men kiss. I disagree with their next step to swear or now threaten to react in a way that they would not otherwise behave. I get it. They are frustrated that it's taken so long to get somewhere with this issue but will anger get them rights?

I remember when John Kerry was running for president and somehow gay marriage became an issue with demonstrations that riled up the right and evidently moderates because then state after state put forth laws to ban gay marriage and in the case of Oregon-- constitutionally-- which shocked the heck out of me as that's not Oregon's way-- or wasn't.  It may have very well also given us four more years of GW Bush. Only now is Oregon trying again to get this issue on the ballot to undo the damage done by that 2004 vote.

What has happened since that year is by showing the country that being gay is not threatening, that it's normal, that it can be part of family values, that people don't need to fear gayness taking over the schools and youth of the nation, state after state is going the other way and making gay marriage legal. I think that comes because at heart Americans are good people and really don't want to hurt others. I truly believe that. BUT they are as are most humans, easily riled and maneuvered and that's where this story comes in.

IF these women had made what happened to them an issue based purely on the kiss being nonsexual and something many straights do, then they'd have had another issue to make Americans feel to be fair there needs to be more done. That opportunity is lost. And if gays make more out of this, they could end up enraging more people to vote for their idea of protecting marriage (which is about as nuts as anything I can imagine given that what gays want is marriage). We can win a battle and lose a war if we aren't careful by our actions.

People who want to bully their way to rights better be in the majority. Whether that sounds fair or not, minorities gain their rights by convincing the majority they are in the right. That is more true today with the kind of Supreme Court we have than it possibly was in earlier times when the Court might've been more aware of the rights of minorities. What is more important, expressing anger or winning the war?

This is similar to what I am seeing with the demonstrators on Wall Street and various banks which seems to be a mixed bag of people who are there. Okay now I admit this is just me but I don't have much use for people who dress up to express their viewpoint. That was turn off to me with the tea party with their tea bags hanging from their hats and their Revolutionary War uniforms.

It'd be hypocritical to think more highly of seeing a bunch of people parading down the street with zombie make up. And what is with the bare breasted women? That's bound to get coverage on network TV, right? Well it might get on Maher, it did, but it won't even make cable news programs. So why do that? I think it discredits your position. Likewise if crowds block bridges (the demonstrators claim the police forced them onto the Brooklyn Bridge) or do anything illegal, they will be seen as the anarchists who have been trashing cities off and on whenever an economic summit is happening there.

Such behavior makes Americans ignore the real issues being raised as they are distracted by the showy stuff which has nothing to do with what is really being said. I think the cause is helped more when serious economists join the protest and explain what is happening economically to the detriment of us all. Anarchy, in any form, right cause or not, will never win sympathy and it can lead to an opposing reaction.

So I believe making viewpoints known by speaking out, by demonstrating peaceably, by pointing out wrong where it exists, by voting for candidates with a sympathetic view is a fair way to get change. Yes, I recognize in some countries, it does take violent overthrow; but here we vote and I do not want to see the left or right trying to circumvent that process and win their ways through violent responses whether as individuals or as crowds-- right or left wing.

The tea party didn't really win power by their demonstrations or the silly outfits. They won, with the backing of moneyed interests, by the candidates they have been running and who are winning. We on the left must find people like that to support. If they are not out there right now (some are like Elizabeth Warren), we need to find them, talk them into running, and support them.