… During the special session that begins next week, Missouri lawmakers will consider a tax package that includes provisions to eliminate the circuit-breaker tax credit for renters.

Those supporting the tax package say the majority of those with a disability are living below the poverty level, making their struggle to find affordable and accessible housing all the more difficult.

This property tax credit provides an average of $495 a year to help low-income seniors and people with disabilities stay in their homes.

http://www.connectmidmissouri.com/news/story.aspx?id=659454

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Now compare that little beauty with what Michele Bachmann has recently said, that she would be open to the idea of cutting the corporate tax rate to 0%, and the conservatives are still pushing to end the minimum wage, because with immigrant labor being harder to come by, they need domestic slaves.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/04/ftn/main20101506.shtml

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So even though cutting tax rates for the wealthy and corporations did nothing to create jobs, the new plan is to cut taxes on corporations to zero, and in some places the plan seems to be to say tough sh*t to the elderly and disabled.  Amazing, the conservatives keep saying how liberals hate America, yet they seem hell-bent on just crashing the country into a dark chasm from which there is no return.

As many mistakes as the current president has made, it is sad to think that things could be just so much worse.

And while the back and forth between a comedian and an audience member is one thing, the utter lack of memory of the audience member is stunning.  Whatever land Spain (and later Mexico) had in the current U.S., was stolen from the indians, end of story.  So how anyone can possibly claim that this is still Mexico because they were in briefly in charge of the land is insane.

 
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Admittedly the map is not exact, but it does give a person at least some idea that perhaps ( just maybe) there were people here before the Spanish came along.  Of course we stole the land from the indians as well, but most Americans realize this, and do not think that they simply had the land since the beginning of time.

From The International Business Times:

… the EPA estimated the proposed regulatory change might cost up to $90bn (£55bn) a year, making it one of the costliest environmental standards in the U.S., the cost could go higher suspected the opponents. On Friday, Obama, citing the present sluggish condition of the American economy, asked the EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the draft rules until 2013. “I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover,” he said in a statement.

The EPA, however, pointed out that the smog rule could have saved as much as $100bn in health costs, and could prevent as many as 12,000 premature deaths from heart and lung complications caused by Ozone, which poses higher health risks than previously thought. Scientific reports suggest that a stringent regulation should be enforced to limit the concentration of ground-level ozone, which is the main ingredient in smog and is a lung irritant causing asthma and other respiratory conditions.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/208026/20110903/smog-standard-obama-epa-air-quality-rule-smog-rule.htm
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No matter how low the president sinks, he will still never be liked by the pro-corporate crowd so it is somewhat of a mystery why he tries to ever meet them halfway on anything.  He might as well try to make snowballs in hell.  We keep hearing how regulations are so unneccessary and that corporations will just keep an eye on things themselves out of the goodness of their hearts, but what a load of crap.  If they kill thousands of people per year through pollution, they do not care as long as their profit margin is good.

What is ALEC?

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.

Who funds ALEC?

More than 98% of ALEC’s revenues come from sources other than legislative dues, such as corporations, corporate trade groups, and corporate foundations. Each corporate member pays an annual fee of between $7,000 and $25,000 a year, and if a corporation participates in any of the nine task forces, additional fees apply, from $2,500 to $10,000 each year. ALEC also receives direct grants from corporations, such as $1.4 million from ExxonMobil from 1998-2009. It has also received grants from some of the biggest foundations funded by corporate CEOs in the country, such as: the Koch family Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Koch-managed Claude R. Lambe Foundation, the Scaife family Allegheny Foundation, the Coors family Castle Rock Foundation, to name a few. Less than 2% of ALEC’s funding comes from “Membership Dues” of $50 per year paid by state legislators, a steeply discounted price that may run afoul of state gift bans.

Is it nonpartisan as claimed?

ALEC describes itself as a non-partisan, non-profit organization. The facts show that it currently has one Democrat out of 104 legislators in leadership positions.

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How much clearer does it have to be that the wealthy will happily pay less taxes and demand less regulations because there one and only goal is profit.  They do not care about the nation, they will happily leave the nation’s corpse behind once they have taken everything that they can, leaving only the poor saps that keep fighting for the wealthy - even though they are poor are getting poorer with every step that they take to support corporate rights over their own rights, and then they cannot understand why the nation is sliding into oblivion.

http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/632/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7281

Found at The Moderate Voice, and since the link feature seems to not want to work right now -

http://themoderatevoice.com/121241/republican-party-a-disaster-when-it-comes-to-disasters-guest-voice/

I did have to laugh a bit when a republican legislator was complaining about the lack of funds in FEMA, after of course complaining that the government needed to be cut back.  It seems you just can’t please some people, especially when they are insane.  Ron Paul of course still wants to end FEMA, and he won’t be happy until we are living in caves.

So… the idiot that is against equal rights for a minority based upon the mythical teachings of his magic book (the Bible) is saying that the very minority that he is against is waging a “jihad” against him?  I mean it is no shock to anyone that Santorum is an idiot, but he must be going for some special trophy in stupidity, but with the current crop of conservative politicians all saying weird crap, that is going to be a tough trophy to win.

So the earthquakes and this latest hurricane are little helpful reminders from God to vote conservative.  Well sure, that is completely a normal way to think, providing of course you live in the 15th century.  And from the sound of her audience, it would seem a fair amount of people would fit right in to that century.  If only I could figure out a way to send these backwards f*cks back in time, we’d all be so much happier.  They could wallow in their ignorance with like-minded people from over 500 years ago, and we could move forward without the theocrats.   Sure, people can say that she was only joking, but there is a fair number of people who support Bachmann that DO believe exactly what she said.  For fux sake, we still have people that are convinced that Hurricane Katrina is the fault of all the sinning in New Orleans.

 25 or 30 years ago, we didn’t see ourselves as being so limited.  I remember when my parents finally caved in and bothered to get a push-button phone instead of the rotary phone, and for some reason it made me happy, maybe just because everyone else had one.  Devices like VCR’s, telephone answering machines, and so many other things would come out and they would be the new “in” thing to have.  Just as today the Ipad or the Iphone are the new amazing things, so too were the devices of not too long ago.  Which obviously means only one thing:  No matter how incredibly wonderful a device might seem today, there is no doubt that in just a short while, it will be seen as a primitive device lacking in so many functions that people will wonder why anyone bought them( say for example, the first Ipad).  And with the pace of technology today, devices become obsolete so fast that it is annoyingly expensive to try and keep up.

But that aside, looking back 30 or more years, the world looks savage.  With human rights not being recognized, with women and minorities struggling to just find equality, to the number of people who smoked in the U.S.  Then of course there are the wars, the cruelty, and indifference that are the hallmarks of a less-than-advanced culture.

And looking at the world today, so much of that is still here.  It is tough to think of ourselves as savages, but in truth we are.  We often operate out of fear, desperation, and essentially the baser instincts of any animal trying to survive.  We like to look at our cars and smart phones and think how advanced we are now, but in truth, we are still the savages.

Wtf is going on, is Karl Rove even a Republican anymore?  How can he possibly say such things about the Wasilla hillbilly, because lord knows if someone other than the dark lord Rove had said this, there would be hell to pay. Of course at that point Rove would just be paying himself, so that really wouldn’t be a problem.

And you have to just love the fact that the NRA is evidently now offering boilerplate condolences on school shootings.  Maybe the NRA could make a card that says:

 We’re so sorry about what happened at (insert name of school) and the regrettable death(s) of (insert victim(s) names here), but please know that all of those that die from firearms are dying to protect freedom, and that the dead would never, ever want you to enact some laws restricting gun ownership.  Or for that matter, even making gun owners get a license just because those poor saps that drive themselves in a car have to get a driver’s license.  And you can trust the NRA on this because after all, the gun manufacturers love us, and they certainly have no reason to love us other than the fact that their profits are tied directly to the amount of guns that they can sell.  So whatever you do, don’t go trusting those commie-pinko lefties, because even though they have not actually done anything to take out weapons away, that does not mean we cannot have feverish visions that they are planning to do just that.

Again, our condolences at this difficult time, from the NRA

P.S. Vote Extreme Conservative, the more extreme the better for our profits, I mean, for our freedom.

Video found at:
 Crooks and Liars