Obama, while visiting China, talks to imposter-news "reporter" Major Garrett of FOX….

Obama warned the United States' climbing national debt could drag the country into a "double-dip recession," though he said he's still considering additional tax incentives for businesses to reverse the rising unemployment rate.

"There may be some tax provisions that can encourage businesses to hire sooner rather than sitting on the sidelines. So we're taking a look at those," Obama told Fox News' Major Garrett.

"I think it is important, though, to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession."

Digby has it right, when she says that she hopes imposter-news mischaracterized what Obama was getting at….because the national debt has very little, if anything, to do with our current economic situation.

American "news" has been spinning phony yarns for so long now that I wouldn't be the least surprised to see Village Knee Pad streetwalkers successfully convince enough Americans into believing yet another lie.

Our current recession has absoluetly NOTHING to do with the national debt doubling under the last administration. While huge national debt increases under Bush, and now Obama, are, indeed, a concern…..that debt should not be blamed in any way for our current conditions. In fact, the current near-depression conditions were created ENTIRELY by the gambling-house industries of finance, insurance and real estate. Free market greed gone wild.

If Obama actually told imposter-news "reporter" Major Garrett that a "climbing national debt could drag the country into a 'double-dip recession'"…..he's being dishonest. Obama knows better. The debt and the current recession have nothing to do with one another…..and even implying otherwise in front of imposter-news representatives is a huge political mistake.

What the country needs right now, not late next year but now, is MORE government spending to directly create jobs. Another trillion dollars is needed right now, with every dollar going to job creation instead of like the watered-down-to-mollify-dumbass-conservatives-stimulus-bill provisions passed back in February. The way to pay for that trillion is blindingly clear as well…..tax Wall Street transactions.

Wall Street is where the recession began. The recession didn't begin because the dollar crashed or China quit buying our debt. The recession began because unscrupulous money scheme connivers lost their reckless and unregulated bets to such an extent……that they all ran out of money and came to tax payers for bailouts.

As a result of banksters running out of money because they lost their reckless and unregulated bets…..money, almost overnight, became unavailable for lending to Americans in order to buy stuff…like cars, houses, etc. Massive layoffs followed. The downward cycle began. To add insult to injury…now the recession-causers are punishing consumers through reduced credit and higher interest rates and fees.

If President Obama is so foolish or "centrist" to believe that he can co-opt the TeaBagger insanity over government spending, even giving one inch by agreeing that government spending is the problem right now….then he is only setting himself up for political defeat and setting Americans up for a TeaBagger-led government in the future. I shutter at the thought.

Palin, FOX, and the TeaBaggers don't have a point when it comes to government spending……and they don't even care that they don't. The year-long wingnut nonsense about government spending, socialism, 'I want my country back', yada, yada…..is not to be taken seriously. The sole purpose of the Baggers and Co. is to return bankster-favoring Republicans back into majority government power…. the very people who helped banksters bring our country to it's knees in the first place.

Obama shouldn't attempt to triangulate with incoherent economic idiots or imposter-news "reporters"…..ever.

The richest nation in world history has a problem…

About 14.6 percent of U.S. households, equal to 49.1 million people, "had difficulty obtaining food for all their members due to a lack of resources" during 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when 11.1 percent of households were classified as food insecure.

…anti-hunger groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when 36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food….

And then this adds a certain WTF quality to any discussion about Americans and food….

Depending on which study you believe, we squander between a quarter to a half of all the food we produce. Even by the conservative estimate, that adds up to more than 100 billion pounds per year.

The Department of Agriculture calculates that Americans waste 27% of their food….

96 billion pounds of food – or 27% of the 356 billion pounds of edible food available – is wasted each year in the U.S. according to the U.S, Department of Agriculture.

What's worse…..it costs us $1 billion per year to dispose of all the food we waste.

The U.S. is often referred to as the "last best hope" for the world, or something similar. If that's true, then world hope must be in decline.

A Balloon-juice blogger describes, accurately I think, how far American society has declined when it comes to our "collective" concern over issues like hunger….

It’s easy to romanticize the past, of course. But I distinctly remember that 20 years ago, things like sudden increases in the number of people going hungry were considered important issues. Nowadays to even muse about whether this is something we can do something about as a society marks you as an unserious hippie.

Briefly….over the last 30 years wealth in America has moved into the hands of fewer and fewer Americans. At the same time that more and more wealth has been accumulated by fewer and fewer Americans, taxes have been reduced to the lowest levels of my lifetime on those doing the accumulating.

Village-whore-media, since 1980, have been banging the rotted Reagan drum nightly insisting that "government is the problem." Add to that distortion the often repeated, "we just can't raise taxes on the rich, we must stay competitive" horsesh*t…..say it over and over again on national teevee…..and the results become predictable.

If all that is not bad enough….in the last 12 years or so…..conservatives in America have made a pastime out of attacking victims. Conservative coverage of Hurricane Katrina, for example, highlighted this new…"you deserve what you get", ugliness.

Most likely the significant increase in the number of Americans short on food will be used as yet another excuse to bash the poor and vulnerable and argue AGAINST any more government assistance to people in trouble. I'm sure that the argument will include variations of, "we just can't afford to spend any more money right now…..and, anyway, we're not socialists."

After all….that's what the Villagers, the Republicans and most conservatives are telling us about health care reform……aren't they?

What difference would it make to Villagers and conservatives if poor, vulnerable Americans died from malnutrition/starvation….or…lack of health insurance?

Wouldn't conservative, always-help-the-wealthiest, Americans…..and the Villagers who speak for them….tell the rest of us that if Americans aren't eating, just as they aren't buying health care insurance,…..it's their own fault because they aren't working hard enough?

Well…wouldn't they?

On June 15th, The Reverend wrote this…

"As I have blogged previously, I firmly believe that any health care reform coming out of Washington, inevitably, will exclude a public option and, most likely, will tax employer-provided health care benefits as well. Love to be wrong about that."

Two months and a hundred swastikas later….

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND)…

"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been, so to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort." said Conrad.

Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius….

"I think what's important is choice and competition and I'm convinced at the end of the day, the plan will have both of those. But [a public option] is not the essential element," said Sebelius

In other words, if you liked that donut hole gimmick from Medicare Plan D which costs seniors thousands of unnecessary dollars…..you're going to love the financial ass-kicking coming your way in the soon-to-be-passed, minority orchestrated, health care reform bill.

I try my best to be optimistic about the United States and it's future prospects…..but alas, it is to no avail. No matter how cynical I get….no matter how much hyperbole I employ…..it's never enough to match the reality of a nation hopelessly enslaved to a small group of filthy rich corporate controllers and their media and political puppets.

Consider….

We watched a Dot.com bubble inflate and deflate into the pockets of hedge funds. We watched criminal banksters gamble away America's near term economic life while those same hedge funds deflated another artificially induced bubble and put what was left into their pockets. We watched a totally corrupt non-regulated commodities "market" steal hundreds of billions of dollars from Americans and stuff all of it into the pockets of a tiny minority of sharks and con-artists with $4 per gallon gasoline. All of that within the last 10 years and absolutely nothing has changed to prevent all three of those financial catastrophes from happening again.

And now we're going to witness a further takeover of the government and America's resources by yet another tiny pocket of filthy rich insurance and pharma crooks with a health care reform plan that is anything but. The irony here is that lying propagandists have scared Americans by falsely arguing that the government would take over the health care industry if a public option passed, while the reality is that the health insurance industry will have sucessfully taken over the government without including a public option.

What will come out of a Congress that is unsalvagably corrupt, what will come out of a Congress that is sloppy drunk on the bribes from big corporations, will not only make health care in America worse and more expensive…..but it will also help to usher in a return of the treasonous GOP political party to power.

What Americans will be told is that the vile legislation Congress will pass and Obama will sign…..will reform health care nationally. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the very best, all that is going to be passed is some weak health insurance reform. Weak for average Americans hoping for lower costs and more accessible coverage, and yet extremely strong for a corrupt, gangland-style health insurance industry who will be guaranteed upwards of 50 million new customers.

Without a public option to keep private insurance crooks from perennially raising it's coverage costs to consumers, we will all be subjected to economic enslavement, to the whims of CEO's who will continue to benefit by denying treatment while continually raising prices. And I don't even want to hear any pussified talk about some non-existent co-op exchange instead of a true public option.

So, basically, we're screwed. As ever-increasing health care costs continue to take what's left of America's economy and hand it over to a handful of the country's richest people (as we witnessed in the Dot.com crime, $4 gasoline theft, and bankster caper)….Democrats will be blamed for all of it. Hey, they were in charge when health care "reform" was passed.

Despite what Big Dog Bill Clinton says about the country moving more and more towards the progressive side……what will actually happen is that spineless, "bipartisanship"-seeking, corporately-compromised, Democrats will take the blame for the abject failure of health care…..and that will pave the way for a return to power of the openly-criminal political party, the Republicans.

I want to personally thank the equally corrupt appendage of the Republican Party, corporate-whore media, for appropriately scaring enough of the American people with their exceptional coverage of every crazy wingnut m'f'er they could possibly locate and grant 24/7 looped video to.

A job well done.

No new taxes on California's richest cause for smiley faces.

Remember this?

"Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…"

California is adding a new line….

'So we can f*ck them over.'

Hard to believe….

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders announced Monday that they had reached a deal to close California's $26.3-billion deficit and begin paying all of the state's bills again, potentially ending months of partisan wrangling and a cash crisis that threatens to push California into insolvency.

Their agreement, which could go before the full Legislature within days, does not include any broad-based tax increases, relying instead on deep cuts in government services, borrowing and accounting maneuvers to wipe out the deficit.

California, self-handcuffed by it's requirement of a super majority in their state legislature to raise taxes, has decided the best way to ease their financial problems is to punish the poor and vulnerable citizens in their state. Better, I guess, to punish the many rather than ask the richest few to pay a few more percentage points in taxes on their millions. The poor and vulnerable are getting what they deserve, after all, it's obviously their fault that they are poor and vulnerable. The richest few, on the other hand, have earned their no-new-taxes, privileged treatment by government.

Keep in mind, as you read further, that California leads the nation in total number of millionaires, 662,735. That's approximately 2% of California's 36 million population.

To make sure that the top 2% isn't insulted with new tax obligations, here's who must suffer….

Tens of thousands of seniors and children would lose access to healthcare, local governments would sacrifice several billion dollars in state assistance this year and thousands of convicted criminals could serve less time in state prison. Welfare checks would go to fewer residents, state workers would be forced to continue to take unpaid days off and new drilling for oil would be permitted off the Santa Barbara coast.

Schools are expected to have to increase the number of students in classes, lay off teachers and scale back their offerings.

Fees at the state's universities were already raised in anticipation of the deal. The number of students admitted would be reduced by thousands. And university employees are facing unpaid furloughs. They would join California's 230,000-plus state workers who will continue to be forced to take off three unpaid days per month through June 2010.

Work requirements under the state's welfare program would be increased, forcing many recipients to drop out. Emergency cash grants intended for the children of families not meeting those requirements would be eliminated for the first time. Entire groups of seniors currently eligible to receive healthcare in their homes no longer would be. Those that are eligible would be fingerprinted, an effort to eliminate fraud.

Despicable is not a strong enough word to describe California's handling of their economic crisis.

Many conservatives in America, in and out of elected office, will nod their heads in complete agreement with California's choices to hurt the masses in order to protect the few from tax increases. These conservatives only hold one coin in their political pockets. One side reads, "No Taxes", and the other side reads, "Cut spending."

On the national front, conservatives and the corporate media who love them, are pulling out that coin during health care reform negotiations, flipping it over and over…..moaning and whining that the top 1 1/2%, the richest Americans, will actually have to pay a couple of percentage points more on their bloated incomes if the filthy masses are to be bequeathed with the "entitlement" of health care. The nerve of those commie health care reformers.

It's funny, in a sick, demented way, that America's conservatives claim loudly that our nation is a Christian nation. Every so often a conservative will introduce a bill in Congress asserting that America is a Christian nation or founded on Christian principles, etc, etc. What's odd is that I don't remember the words or teachings of Jesus including stuff about f*cking over the poor, weak and vulnerable so that the communities richest didn't have to endure the humiliation of sacrificing a bit of their treasures.

I suppose I could have missed that part of the New Testament, but I don't think so.

Also read this, and then this.

Marilyn Vos Savant is an extremely brilliant woman who writes answers to questions in the Sunday Parade magazine. This past Sunday, I think she flubbed one, badly. Take a look…

My wife and I have lost more than a third of our life savings in the stock we set aside for our retirement. How can our hard-earned dollars given to a company for a share of stock just disappear? Where is the money now?
—Herm Voss, Shasta Lake, Calif.

Surprise—the money doesn’t go to the company at all.

Except for initial public offerings and certain later stock issuances (neither of which are on the open market at first and account for only a small fraction of purchases anyway), the company gets nothing. You buy stock from other investors. They get your money.

So far, so good. Marilyn clears up the "investing in a company when you buy stock" part. It's simply fiction.

When a growing number of people buy stocks—and from one another, remember—prices are driven up because buyers outnumber sellers. And as brokerage statements indicate the last selling price of the stock, investor portfolios become inflated.

Yes, more buyers than sellers of a stock results in auctioning the price of the stock higher. Good up to this point….but then, Marilyn misses it…

The economy can get into big trouble this way. You can’t buy the same stock back and forth numerous times, inflating its price, and think that you’re creating real dollars. Yet that’s just how many investors behave.

When you receive your stock statement with it's "inflated" portfolio value, Marilyn says the stock isn't really worth that stated amount. She asserts that "real dollars" have not been created. I beg to differ.

If I buy 100 shares of Goodyear stock the 15th of the month….get my monthly statement on the 20th saying that Goodyear stock is worth $1 more per share than I bought it for…..and then sell the stock on the 21st for 75 cents a share more than I paid on the 15th…..THAT'S REAL MONEY, not created money.

Marilyn goes on to compound her mistake…

To illustrate, say that 10 million investors each own 100 shares of stock in a company. Then I pay $1 more than the last fellow for a share. As a result, the stock price goes up by $1, and all 10 million shareholders see their portfolios rise by $100. But did I create $1 billion of wealth, the total of that increase? Of course not.

At the close of the day Marilyn is referring to, hypothetically, you're darn tootin' $1 billion of wealth has been created. The additional wealth empirically appeared in the form of higher prices buyers were willing to pay for the stock. Banks, brokerages, and insurance companies consider that "inflated" stock value as real money, real wealth. They will loan more based on higher stock value collateralization. It's real wealth.

But then Marilyn kind of embarasses herself….

This apparent $1 billion was generated by what I call the “Cheshire multiple” (after the disappearing cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland). It exists mostly in the imagination.

Only a small percentage of investors can sell their shares at the price on their brokerage statements. As soon as sellers outnumber buyers, the price will fall and portfolios will shrink due to that same multiple. It works both ways. So most of this so-called money simply vanishes. No one gets it.

If "a small percentage of investors can sell their shares" at the price on their statement….."so-called money" isn't simply "vanishing"…..some stock sellers are putting it into their pockets. The profit placed into the accounts of sellers doesn't "exist mostly in the imagination", it's really there.

What Marilyn doesn't get is that the stock market is a zero sum game. For every winner there is an equal but opposite loser. Read any material from any knowledgable source on the market and you'll find that this is common knowledge.

When a third of your portfolio value has disappeared, sellers who purchased the same stocks you did, only at a much lower price than you originally paid….are selling and "taking" that difference in price and putting it into their accounts.

One last elementary example. At 10 AM, I purchase 100 shares of GE stock at $10 a share. At 3 PM, I sell my 100 GE shares for $10.50 a share. I produce $50 of wealth for myself. Where did that $50 come from? Was in just "so-called" wealth, was it just imaginary?

From the second I bought 100 GE shares at 10 AM, other buyers bought GE stock and they were willing to pay a bit more than me. That pattern continues all morning and into the afternoon. By 3 PM the new buyers who bought AFTER me, have driven the price to $10.50. I sell my shares and make a profit. That profit, that wealth, comes from the difference in price new buyers were willing to pay after I made my purchase. The new, higher price new buyers were willing to pay was paid with real money.

There's nothing imaginary about it.

This goes on every business day. Wealth changes hands zeroing itself out every day. For every winner there is a loser. Translate that dynamic into a monthly statement which reflects 20 such business days activity and you simply have a collective number which reflects the transfer of wealth from accounts to accounts. Real wealth that the winners don't, in the least, regard as "imaginary".

When your 401K or IRA used to be worth $10,000 and now is only worth $5000…..that lost $5000 that used to be part of your personal wealth wound up in the accounts of others who now own the $5000 of wealth that used to be yours.

The stock market is a 5 day per week, public auction Ponzi scheme which continually transfers real wealth from one person to another.

Marilyn, at whose feet I am not worthy to kneel, got this one wrong.

The Washington Post, D.C.'s premier Villager rag, gave space to Reason.com and Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch on Sunday. The resultant article is a nasty hitpiece on President Obama weaving a thread equating him with Jimmy Carter….

Like (President Jimmy) Carter, Obama is smart, moralistic and enamored of alternative energy schemes that were nonstarters back when America's best-known peanut farmer was installing solar panels at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

"nonstarters"? I mean WTF, in spades. Carter's alternatives-to-oil energy plan was the smartest energy plan ever set forth by an American president. The proof? 30 years later we're using Carter's playbook to move towards using more alternative energy sources, like solar and wind. The Reason writers, from the get-go, sacrifice their credibility for the sake of being snide assh*les.

Carter, 1979….

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

That was an accurate assessment by Carter in 1979. And by the looks of things in 2009, it is still accurate today.

But who cares about truth or accuracy or even basic fairness, when bashing former and current Democratic presidents is the only objective?

As taxpayers with children and hence some small, almost certainly unrecoverable stake in this country's future (not to mention that of General Motors, Chrysler and AIG), we write with skin in the game and the fear that our current leader will indeed start busting out the 1970s cardigans.

Haha. I always find it amusing when assh*les attempt to be humorous. It's oh-so-f*cking-funny that America has spent the last 30 years managing middle eastern affairs with the barrel of a gun because silly, silly Carter's energy programs were scapped by Warrior Ronnie and his Junior Bush ideological spawn. Funny stuff….when thousands of Americans get killed, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis butchered, at least partly because of our worsened state of oil dependency.

Yep,….funny stuff…"busting out the 1970's cardigan." Wouldn't want to have any sensible approaches to problem solving that don't include using all our latest military-industrial-complex weaponry…now, would we?

But wait….there's more…

"…there's no question that Obama's massively ambitious domestic agenda is at a fork in the road: One route leads to Plains, Ga., and early retirement, the other to Hope, Ark., a second term and the revitalization of the American economy."

Why is there, "no question?" Because assh*les say so. Conservative assh*les have only one goal in mind with every approach they take when Democrats are in the majority. Put Republicans back in the majority. And so it is with these Reason assh*les.

See?….Obama will either be a one term president, like the solar-panel installing, truth telling, cardigan sweater wearing Carter….or he will do what corporate whores want him to do, triangulate with the conservative dark-side forces, like Clinton did. To hell with what the American people want.

The Reason assh*les fail to set forward even one GOP'er name who might arguably challenge Obama in 2012. No matter…..because it's 1993 all over again….

After Bill Clinton bit off more domestic policy than even he could chew, leading to a Republican rout in the midterm elections of 1994, the 42nd president refocused his political intelligence on keeping his ambitions and, as a result, the size of government growth, limited. Though there is much to complain about in his record, the broad prosperity and mostly sound economic policy under his watch aren't included.

This shouldn't be a difficult task for Obama. As a political animal, he has always resembled Clinton more than Carter. This might help him avoid the Carteresque pileup he's driving into. Far more important, it just might help the rest of us.

Because of Ross Perot's presence in the 1992 election, Clinton won with a low 40's percentage of the vote. Obama won with 53%. Clinton had no mandate, Obama does. In addition, there's an imminent conservative problem in the Congress. Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate and will most likely add a few more in 2010. The House makeup, if it changes at all in 2010, won't give the GOP the majority.

None of that matters to assh*les. To assh*les, addressing decades-old problems with sound government solutions approved of by a majority of Americans is only driving the country into a "Cartesque pileup."

Did I mention that these writers were assh*les?

I had almost forgotten about those bizarro Tea Parties held around tax day in April……when I came across schedules for even more Tea Parties to be held this weekend. Yep, no joke.

Parties in northeast Ohio are scheduled for Cleveland, Canton and Ravenna.

Here's a message from the Canton Tea Party organizers……

Declare and Defend your Independence from the Tax and Spenders! It's time to turn up the heat on elected officials who want to impose more taxes, create more government waste, and throw the Constitution out the window. In keeping with the tone of the Tax Day Tea Parties, We the People are gathering to celebrate our independence. Let’s declare and defend the values and principles that have made our nation the greatest in the world! Limited Government Fiscal Responsibility Free Market System Holding our elected officials accountable Ladies and Gentlemen Let Freedom Ring! The Tea Party Patriots of Canton, OH are hosting a rally on the Kresge Lot located in downtown Canton on July 5th 2009. The event will run from 3:00pm to 7:00pm. Be sure to tell everyone you can and suggest this event to all your Facebook friends. The larger the crowd, the bigger the message!

The Reverend believes in liberty and justice for all. I, therefore, applaud anyone who wants to organize peacefully for political reasons. However, I also believe in literacy and empirical reality….in fact, I highly recommend both.

It seems to me…..and you can feel free to call me nutty….that being intelligently informed and recognizing objective truth, rather than just accepting what Rush and FOX are saying and living in some fifth dimension, fiction-bubble reality…..would be the more appropriate path to follow in the 21st century. Opinions vary, I guess.

Anyway….to my conservative friends who might be Tea Partying this weekend…..this is my "come to Jesus" altar call moment.

"impose more taxes"

President Obama's short 6 month leadership has resulted in a payroll tax CUT for all employees who pay the payroll tax. That was a CUT, not an INCREASE. And while it's true that Obama and the Democrats increased taxes on those nasty, nasty, cancer causing cigarettes….many more American children are now covered by health insurance with those taxes. Conservatives don't hate children, do they? Of course not.

Yes, eventually, Obama will allow those Depression contributing Bush tax cuts to expire on the richest amongst us. Those who only make the paltry sum of $200,000 and up will see their share of federal income tax increase by the astronomical figure of 3%, and only on money made above $200K. I'm not sure…..but I'm guessing that Tea Party attendees won't include too many fatcats, you know, protesting this weekend by holding a sign that reads, "Where's the Birth Certificate." Could be wrong.

So…."impose more taxes"…..is a fictitious construct not based on reality.

"create more government waste"

At first, I asked myself…..is Obama's government creating more sewage? Then, I calculated that this phrase must be referring to Obama's stimulus plan. It's still a bit early to judge the effectiveness of the stimulus, but anecdotally, I've heard many state officials state that many more layoffs would have happened without the stimulus. Is saving jobs considered "creating more governmental waste?"

Even though our national economy is far from being out of the woods, in reality world, the immediate threat of a cataclysmic disaster has been avoided through direct governmental actions, actions actually begun under a Republican president and carried forward under Obama.

"throw the Constitution out the window"

Once again, it's not clear what part of the Constitution these Tea Party organizers are referring to….but just as a kind of remedial exercise, are torture, wars of aggression, defrauding Congress, outing CIA agents, doubling the national debt, denying habeas to American citizens, secret gulags, the vice-presidency as a 4th governmental branch, the unitary executive theory, and politicizing of the Justice Department…..all in the Constitution?

I can just feel the tears welling up when this emotional cheer goes up at this weekend's Tea Parties….

Limited Government Fiscal Responsibility Free Market System Holding our elected officials accountable Ladies and Gentlemen Let Freedom Ring!

Under every conservative president in my lifetime, the federal government has expanded. Under every conservative president in my lifetime, budget deficits have been the rule and the national debt has increased. The "Free Market System", left unchecked as it has been, created the financial depression we are now experiencing. The call….."Holding our elected officials accountable"…..is simply incredulous after those who instituted lawless torture policies and transparently defrauded Congress and the American people into a war of aggression in Iraq……were and never will be, "held accountable" for their many crimes.

But hey….Party On Dudes…but a word of warning….don't let any tea bags, you know, hit you in the face.

One of the Akron Beacon Journal's favorite columnists, the Washington Post's George Will, is back in this morning's Journal, even though the Beacon has yet to tell it's readers about the blatant errors Will has made in a couple of his previous columns,….errors never retracted. It's very obvious that today's newspapers no longer feel obligated to tell their readers the truth…..as David Gregory put it recently…"it's not their job."

Will, as is to be expected, once again cheerleads for the powerful, in this case, health insurance companies. The Bowtied Bore bashes away at any health care reform plan which includes a public option. The powerful status quo of capitalism must be protected….and it's Will's job to do just that…..

Assurances that the government plan would play by the rules that private insurers play by are implausible. Government is incapable of behaving like market-disciplined private insurers…….If the public option conforms to the imperatives that regulations and competition impose on private insurers, there is no reason for it.

The Reverend, having knowledge of such things, would say in mockery of little George, that 'Satan, himself, is incapable of behaving like market-disciplined insurers.'

Here are some of those "rules" that private health insurance companies must follow….."rules" that Bowtie Bullpucky says are "implausible" for a government plan to abide by…..

If you are concerned about health coverage,….and who isn't?…take the time to review this video….

I'm not sure how many Americans realize that Big Health Insurance companies, no matter what coverage you have, no matter what your past medical history has been, no matter what co-pay or deductible you agree to…..regularly cancels coverage for paying customers….FOR ANY OR NO REASON AT ALL.

Without the slightest hesitation, those health insurance CEO's boldly and coldly told a Congressional committee that they will do with their paying customers…..as they damn well please. They will absolutely not stop their policy of dropping any customer from coverage, at any time, and for any reason, or no reason at all. Those are the "rules", by god, that they will continue to play by. That is the "imperative", that George Will claims a public option couldn't possibly compete with……and honestly, who in their right goddamn mind would want a government option to include the "imperative" of arbitrarily dropping any American, at any time, and without cause, from health coverage?

Where the big brass balls part comes in about all this is,…..at the same time these Big Health Insurance CEO's insist that they will continue dropping any customer for any or no reason, whatsoever,…..they also whine incessantly that a competitive public coverage plan will drive them all out of business overnight. And people like George Will,…..false American intellectual prophets,…..like Will, swear that the whining is actually a divine symphony sent from heaven.

Capitalism, as we've seen in the Big Banking Takeover of the Nation, continues to be one of the biggest threats facing the American people. And capitalism will always have an army of dishonest hack-cheerleader "journalists" defending them. Most of the Republicans, a handful of yellow-bellied Democrats, and propagandists like George Will stand with those capitalists who are threatening the American people.

Will anyone stand up to our nation's enemies?

The modern Republican Party's plight can be compared, I think, to the experience of American Protestantism in the last half of the 19th century. I'll explain in a minute.

Today, many moderates, Democrats, Independents, as well as liberals, have difficulty comprehending what looks like an obvious and ongoing denial of reality by the modern Republican Party. The creation of faux-narratives about virtually any event by movement conservatives, and the insistence that those faux-narratives actually define truth, a kind of twisted political post-modernism, has been the leading source of frustration for those who insist on empirical and scientific data.

This dynamic has led to even more division in the country where namecalling, mockery, and demonizing the other side has, so far, prevailed. The Reverend confesses that he has participated in this dynamic, often with vigor.

That being said…..The Renaissance, from the 14th through the 17th centuries, with it's emphasis on a humanist method of study rather than a spiritual one, presented challenges for religion. The Enlightenment period of history in the 18th century carried this challenge to religion even further with it's focus on reason, rather than faith, as the basis for establishing truth. Our American Founding Fathers, it can be said, were motivated by Enlightenment principles. The Industrial Revolution was a welcome byproduct of these two preceding "ages."

Although organized Christianity had what were called "Great Awakening" periods throughout these previously mentioned "ages", periods in which religious thinking experienced reform and change…..it is also true that many fringe Christian groups also came into existence during this time.

The Jehovah's Witnesses group was founded in the late 19th century in America. So too, the Seventh-Day Adventists and Christian Scientists. The Latter Day Saints (Mormons) sprouted during the early 19th century.

My purpose here is not to disparage any particular denomination or sect of Christianity, or any adherents to the dogma those denominations set forth. My point is that when traditional religious systems are challenged by science, education in general, and secular reasoning…..adherents to the "old way" often respond to those challenges with their own "new" interpretations.

Rather than considering or embracing new, emerging scientific and rational explanations for reality, made possible by Renaissance and Enlightenment progress, the aforementioned sects resorted to their own newfangled, and often bizarre, interpretations of reality.

Which sets up a segway to the Republican Party in America today.

I don't think there is any question, especially in light of the last 10-15 years, that modern Republican doctrine is experiencing serious challenges. While the traditional conservative values of self-determination and financial responsibility will always maintain their rightful place in our political discourse……recent conservative "values" are being rejected by mainstream Americans as misguided, contradictory, hypocritical, or in some cases, like the new Christian cults of the 19th century, radical and even bizarre.

The Republican Party's deal with the devil in hitching it's wagon to modern evangelical Christianity has given birth to today's active denial, or censoring, of scientific evidence. This odd-bedfellows combination produced the bizarre frenzy of GOP politicians and religious "right to lifers" that America witnessed in the Terri Schiavo ordeal. Newt Gingrich, in his most recent speech, said that college professors and high school teachers needed "removed." Modern conservatives want college professors actively "challenged", "alternative" religion-based concepts offered up equally with science-based ones, "secularists removed."

The GOP's embrace of discrimination in the gay rights issue, using as it's basis, "traditional moral values", or "defense of traditional marriage" is belied by a steady parade of Republican politicians (Gingrich, Livingston, Foley, Craig, Giuliani, Ensign) acting immorally and destructively in their own marriages. Pragmatic immigration reform has often been replaced with hateful screeds directed towards Hispanics, a stiff-necked approach to realism, a demonization of those who are considered in favor of "amnesty", a senseless and warped attack on a highly qualified Supreme Court nominee.

The recent blowup in the financial world, a direct result of the conservative doctrine of deregulation which relies on almost divine powers of an alleged "free market, combined with an almost crazed focus on tax cutting and benefit-giving to the most wealthy, has left conservatives reeling…..yet there is no admission by Republicans that their traditional doctrines have proven to be a total failure.

A political party once proud of their allegiance to liberty, freedom, and the rule of law….has now morphed into a party defending just the opposite. Torture, gulags, the denial of rights, the retraction of American freedoms, the promotion of lawlessness, the justification of government secrecy, pre-emptive wars, unaccountability…..are all now defended by the Republican Party.

In other words…..in the face of modern challenges to what conservatives have traditionally believed in……the Republican Party has responded with self-radicalization, a response so extreme and radical that facts and empirical evidence are now replaced daily with the most bizarre narratives imaginable. Moderate conservatives who insist on pragmatism and scientific fact are purged and demonized much like any religious cult would do.

If you are like me, and think that the Republican Party has gotten even more extreme over the last 6 months, to the point of bizarro….I suggest that the reason is that the GOP is afraid of the modern challenges which they have no answer for. The GOP either has no rational alternatives to offer to the voters who have rejected them or those new ideas can't be offered for fear they will be an acknowledgment of past errors. The GOP has been in the process of establishing a new political cult, cocooning itself as it were, in self-defense mode against a changing world it's members cannot face up to.

It's sad to witness.

Here's a link to update this post….it's a must read.
From yesterday's Face the Nation on CBS with Bob Schieffer….

Schieffer countered (Senator Mitch) McConnell's(R-KY) contention that the Obama plan would choose (or deny) which treatments a covered individual may get; the White House is not proposing any kind of rationing board, he said. He also repeated the administration's assertion that a public insurance plan would give people another option. "If they want to keep their private insurance, that's OK," Schieffer said.

"I know they say that, Bob," McConnell countered, "but if the government is in the insurance business there won't be any other insurers, it's inevitable."

As I have blogged previously, I firmly believe that any health care reform coming out of Washington, inevitably, will exclude a public option and, most likely, will tax employer-provided health care benefits as well. Love to be wrong about that.

All that campaign bribery money, you know, has a purpose.

That said, consider Mitch McConnell's statement, "if the government is in the insurance business there won't be any other insurers, it's inevitable."

Why would that be the case? Why would the inclusion of a non-profit, public option health care coverage plan be the death knell for all the private health insurers?

Is it because the public option would be cheaper than private insurance and, therefore, American consumers would flock to the cheaper product? And why would Americans flock to a cheaper product if the cheaper product was inferior in every way, as conservatives insist a public health coverage product would be? Are American consumers just stupid?

In what other product or service industry is lower pricing a problem that should be prohibited? Take one example….Has the huge purchasing power and alleged lower prices at Wal-Mart eliminated all competition for consumer goods? Why, then, would a public option eliminate all private health insurers?

Has Social Security eliminated private for-profit retirement plans. If not, why not?

Republicans and conservatives say they are advocates of unfettered free markets. Belief in economic competition is one of the hallmarks of conservative economic ideology, at least that's what we're told. Why wouldn't conservatives favor a bit of competition in health coverage?

Now for the pot stirring part.

The Reverend suggests that the conservative opposition to a public health coverage option, both from Republicans and Democrats, is based on their true ideology of a non-competitive marketplace. In other words, those who shout the loudest in defense of economic competition are, in fact, opposed to economic competition.

I can already hear the boos.

But consider…..why are there so many corporate lobbyists crawling all over Washington? What's their purpose? Is it to cultivate active free market competition in the industry that they represent? Is it? Of course not.

The very purpose of all those lobbyists and all that campaign bribery cash is to gain marketplace advantage, not to stimulate more competition, not to advance a more level playing field for consumers. The reason tele-communications corporations, for example, pour so much bribe money into politicos' coffers is to slant the marketplace in their favor. And it has worked. Do consumers have a choice in broadband providers, or have cable corporations, with their 'bought and paid for' elected officials, tilted the free-market to successfully squelch competition?

The same dynamic is at work in the energy market and banking. Is there genuine competition in the gasoline market? Other than "introductory" bait-and-switch marketing ploys, is there really any competition in CD rates or mortgages?

No, conservatives who are shouting the loudest in opposition of a public option health coverage plan being included in a package of national health care reform aren't interested in enhancing market competition at all. They are only interested in skewing the "market" in favor of big bribing health insurers while creating the illusion of choice. They are only interested in maintaining the high corporate health coverage prices and schemes which have created the unaffordable situation we're currently being crushed by.

As elected officials addicted to Big Campaign Bribes from health care providers bloviate continually over the next 10 weeks or so about "choices"……don't allow yourself to be buried under the bullsh*t. The only choices these status-quo corporate defenders are worried about are the preferred choices of those who are bribing them.