Watch this clip as Mike Huckabee teaches us all how to use the verbiage of religious fanatacism in a presidential campaign.

I just changed my mind on this guy - he is completely irresponsible on his foreign policy.

To further elaborate on a comment I made on one of Butch’s earlier posts, take the time to read this article: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/melber

If you’re a Republican, pretend you’re reading about your favorite Republican instead of Obama. The point I’m making is not about the politician and his stands, but rather the idea of bringing the people into the process.

For decades we have had an ever-decreasing interest in politics which shows itself in turnout. The impression has been that the process has been controlled by the powerful interests (good and bad) and not the people. For the first time in a long time, the people are beginning to see that, indeed, they can make a difference and their voice does matter.

I think that’s a good thing.

I thought I’d post this for you guys since I’m sure you’ll get a huge laugh out of it

Happy New Year!

Like Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men”, I wonder when someone is going to use the “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” routine when referencing the White House in the future. Bush is supposed to take to the Press podium in the morning after it was disclosed that he fought the release of this report for the last YEAR as the White House attempted unsuccessfully to get the intelligence community to toe the party line.

The NIE report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold, contradicting the Bush administration’s earlier assertion that Tehran was intent on developing a bomb.

Click this link to read the whole report:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071203/ts_nm/iran_usa_dc

In Pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen. Aleve is also called Naproxen. Amoxil is also called Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.

The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra. After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin. Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.

Pfizer Corp. announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer. It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one. Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of “cocktails”, “highballs” and just a good old-fashioned “stiff drink”. Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of MOUNT & DO.

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

Apparently, in his rush to denounce “Hillarycare”, which apparently is any change to our health system that Hillary would propose, Giuliani got caught in a giant fib.

I’m referring to his presidential campaign’s recent radio ad in New Hampshire, in which Giuliani speaks of his personal experience with prostate cancer and then cites an ear-grabbing statistic: “My chances of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States: 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England: only 44 percent under socialized medicine.”

Hold it, you mean I’d be nearly twice as likely to die of prostate cancer in Liverpool as in Los Angeles? Twice as likely to succumb in Oxfordshire as in Ohio? Amazing. Also, not remotely true. Follow the link above for the facts.

My last post on this topic got some action, so let’s see how this one does ;). Tom Brokaw has come back from a visit with the 3rd Richest Man in the World: Warren Buffet. He was on Morning Joe this morning and what he had to say was truly astounding.

Buffet has done an informal survey of his employees and found out some shocking (at least to me) news. 15 of his 18 employees allowed him to look through their tax returns and he found that HE paid an aggregated 17% of his income while THEY paid a median of 32% of theirs. This makes his overall tax rate HALF of what his admin staff pays.

Buffet does not have an accountant do his taxes and does not have fancy tax shelters. He literally pays (on principle) exactly what congress tells him to pay. This inequity has prompted him to take action and begin speaking out for a revision of the tax code with some kind of progressive consumption tax.

Somehow some voters (and commenters of this Blog) have been brainwashed into thinking that we can’t touch the tax code to raise taxes on the richest Americans and lower taxes on the middle class because that would be some kind of “wealth transfer”. One reader actually asked last week, how are the middle class entitled to rich people’s money?

Obviously this isn’t the case. There is wealth transfer occurring, and it’s from the working class people to the rich - not the other way around. If Buffet can see that, maybe it’s time for the rest of us to open our eyes as well.

No one said this guy didn’t have a sense of humor. Almost makes me want to vote for him!

Mitt Romney has been (intentionally?) mispronouncing Obama’s name as “Osama” on the campaign trail.

Well, Romney was present in spirit - if not in the flesh - at Obama’s town hall in Dover, NH yesterday, NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan reports. A day after Romney confused Obama and Osama bin Laden, the Illinois senator responded to a voter’s question on what the difference was between him and the world’s most wanted terrorist. “I have a simple question. What’s the difference between you and Osama bin Laden,” the man asked.

“Well, Mitt Romney has been very confused about this. I have a lot of trouble growing a beard. I don’t have a lot of facial hair. He lives in a cave,”

My brother is a professor at Baylor University. He fits the category of “poor” because his income is below the poverty line while he is going through his PhD program. Of course, his income is only part of his compensation as his tuition is free and other things in his life are subsidized (thankfully!). He brings up an interesting question as a response to my earlier post “With Blinders On” which I’ve reposted here followed by my answer.

Q: As a member of the comfortable poor, I am very interested in this proposed pension plan. But I have a question: given that my employer has budgeted $20,000 a year for my services, who will pay for this cool pension?

1. Take it out of my earnings. I think I could probably do a better job investing my own money, so this doesn’t seem like a real benefit.

2. Force my employer to budget a larger amount for my services to cover salary and pension. Unlikely my employer would be happy to do this, given they are on a somewhat thin margin as it is. Most likely a few people in my department would lose their jobs and the rest of us would have to work longer hours for the same salary to make up for the lost productivity. Or they could raise their prices, but then competition is such that we would go out of business. Most likely they would phase out all the jobs that could be relocated offshore, leaving only a few where it is comparatively expensive to employ people.

3. Tax somebody else to pay for my pension. Which, as a poor person, sounds kinda cool to me. The problem is that I have a hard time figuring out exactly how I have a right to someone else’s earnings. Perhaps I do, but I haven’t figured out what justifies that right.

So, who pays, bro?

>> While my answer below is not really an answer but a plea for a more thoughtful discussion about possible solutions and a discourse about our responsibility for not just the poor, but our society as a whole, I’d appreciate feedback:

A: You’re right. You’re screwed

The problem as I have noticed is that the middle class in this country is an endangered species. Whereas it used to be possible for a man to join a union and go to work and support his family with his wife staying at home to raise the kids, this scenario is more and more unlikely. This same man could work for the same employer for 30 years and be assured of a nice pension with health benefits when he retired - completely alleviating society’s (read: the government’s) costs at taking care of this man or his family.

Again, this scenario is more and more unlikely.

The reality today is that this man will have more than 5 careers - not jobs; careers in his lifetime. He has no job security as in the past and rather will live in fear of losing that job to downsizing or other global forces beyond his control. His wife will be forced to work, not to save, but just to pay their monthly living expenses. Since there are no more pensions, and those companies who do have them are defaulting on their obligations and shuffling that expense onto the government reinsurance department - who will pay out roughly less than 60% of the obligation.

This scenario is not getting better - it is getting worse. This gap will continue to grow and these pressures will continue to increase.

Is the response to this just to shrug our shoulders and say “oh well”? It’s somewhat cliche, but the poor are getting poorer in this country. Unlike some of your fellow poor, you and your wife have jobs that are mentally stimulating and your life is heavily subsidized by a world-class university. You don’t have day-care expenses, because you aren’t both tied to a 8-5 existence at work. I know you wouldn’t argue against the fact that you are better off than many families in your stated income-bracket.

As the poor do get poorer and the dollars they do have buy less and less due to inflation, what is the solution? Just watch the slide and smile?

The GOP presidential candidates this year, notes Harold Meyerson in today’s Washington Post, adhere to the fundamental Republican laws handed down by Goldwater and Reagan: All government interventions on behalf of the people are inherently wrong. They erode freedom. The market can do a better job of whatever it is that needs doing.

What the Republican field fails to realize is that the America that Goldwater and Reagan defended against the presumed predations of government no longer exists. When Barry and Ronnie walked the earth, most Americans had enduring relations with their employers (ensured, in many cases, by a union contract), and their employers often provided them with health benefits and a pension. Most banks and corporations had not yet traded in their American citizenship for a new global identity that places millions of Americans’ jobs and pay levels in competition with those of billions of workers in distant climes.

Clearly, the private sector that Barry and Ron extolled while denouncing government ain’t what it used to be, and Americans know it.

By the evidence of all polls, Americans are now looking more to government to provide, at least in health care, some of the security that employers used to offer. A recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll even showed that 59 percent of Republicans believe that foreign trade is bad for the U.S. economy, vs. just 32 percent who think it’s good.

Somehow, news of this transformation has not reached the Republican candidates, who still rail against government assistance to help Americans pay for college and health care and offer glowing affirmations of free trade. Nor has it reached the Republican Party or the conservative movement more generally. The serious postmortems for President Bush’s ultra-Reaganite and uber-Goldwateristic plan to privatize Social Security — the questioning of the sanity of such a proposal at a time when employer-provided pension plans were dropping like flies — have yet to be conducted in conservative circles. Indeed, Fred Thompson is still mumbling about cutting Social Security. Ol’ Fred may have slept through 2005 — the year of privatization’s protracted stillbirth — but did the entire party?

The Republicans’ problem isn’t just the silence of their candidates. It’s the silence of their ideology, which has neglected to notice that the world has changed.