SOCIAL SECURITY - Wasn't that the POINT of the Constitution?
Bonus snowshoes, munch on Cheetos. Burrito huevos, ross perot, me ohmygodos! Conquistador pour favours.
Overheard on radio, last night, regarding some damn comet that only swings through the Solar System once, and is supposed to send us radio signals about 2012, or something...
Richard Hoagland, "It's becoming the Lady Gaga of astronomy!"
George Nori, "Uh, really - you listen to Lady Gaga?"
OK - Scientists announce that soon, people will live to be 1,000 years old. SOON?! SOON?! We have to wait almost 1,000 years to find out if this is actually TRUE. That's not SOON! And we'll all be dead by then anyway, except for the lucky human lab rat.
Speaking of which, let's do some math:
You have 100 people. Everyone lives to be 100 - except for those who die at birth. If 50 people die at birth, what is the average life-span? Right, it is 50 YEARS OLD. Even though the other 50 ACTUALLY live until 100. OK, that's kind of what it was like in the old days. People lived almost as long as people do now, but the high infant mortality rates put their average lifespan down at whut, 30-40 or something?
So, when you have less babies dying at birth, or while young, the average lifespan goes up. But not so much THE REAL lifespan. And yes, people DO actually live slightly longer, because of treatments of illnesses, etc., but a higher average lifespan does not necessarily mean, so much, that people once lived 'til they were 40, and now they live until their 75 or what have you. It's an average - it's not about the reality of individuals who survive after childhood.
THEREFORE, raising the retirement age, so you can make cuts in Social Security, based on the idea that "people are living longer," is, yet again, DISINGENUOUS - (actually, it's criminal). People are not so much living longer as babies are being kept alive, (while abortions are also partly reducing the number of ill, challenged or impoverished children).
And, as some guy mentioned on THE ED SCHULTZ SHOW today, a lot of people's bodies simply can't hold out much longer after 65 - and should actually be retiring EARLIER, not later. Firemen, construction workers, etc., they often have bad knees or legs, and other injuries, which makes them NEED to retire earlier, rather than later. So, to push back the retirement age to 67, or to 70, is also unfair for this reason. Not to mention the fact that the Social Security fund IS OUR MONEY - not the government's.
Social Security and Medicare were intended to be extended to younger and younger people every decade - pushing back the age from 65, to 55, to 45, and so on, until they covered everyone. (LBJ said this straight up). By applying these INSURANCE POLICIES to younger people, and more of the population, they become less weighted down by risk - they become more efficient and solvent. Instead, these programmes have been greatly abused since Reagan, and now they - the GOPpers - want to RAISE the age. The plan is obvious, as described by Grover Norquist, describing the government in general, "I want to shrink it down so small that I can drown it in my bathtub." That's death-panel language - and death panels were exactly what was in OUR OLD, PRIVATISED SYSTEM of health care.
Raising the retirement age is bad for the economy. It keeps older workers in the job force, keeping younger people from getting jobs. And the job market is insanely limitted as it is, already. And many of the elderly are being thrown into service-mac-jobs as it is. So, it would only INCREASE unemployment and underemployment.
On the other hand, the smart move to make would be to LOWER the retirement age down to 55. That would reduce unemployment and therefore put dollars into the economy, while also decreasing expenditure on Unemployment Comp - (as well as reducing SS risk, as mentioned above).
It's absurd and inhumane to cut Social Security - taking away THE PEOPLE'S MONEY because the BANKSTERS and "too-big-to-fail" mega-corps had to be bailed out with our WELFARE MONEY, even though most Americans opposed TARP as well as the changes made to the Stimulus Bill.
Even BEFORE these bills, those ZOMBIE corps were ALREADY getting special, unfair treatment: tax cuts, tax loopholes, free export of American jobs, government contracts, and even the backing of OUR MILITARY.
People should be absolutely outraged that Social Security was even sneaked onto the table, by Obama, in the same way that they should have been outraged when the blasphemy of "Obamacare" began with the ushering out of anyone who wanted BUT MERELY TO STUDY the Single-Payer option.
Sneaking Social Security onto the table, offering to make cuts, SETS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS PRECEDENT. When a fully GOP-controlled government comes along, what is to stop them from eliminating (privatising) Social Security entirely?
What are DISABLED people supposed to do - people who are not ABLE to work? What are the indigent and the ill elderly supposed to do, who are not ABLE to work? What are their dependent families to do?
Social Security is already a joke to begin with, designed to keep people in poverty. What is to become of those who can't work, and are presently only capable of scraping by, avoiding homelessness - already being discriminated against by potential landlords because of their low income, already being turned away by most doctors, who reject Medicare?
Are they supposed to roll over and die?
Am I supposed to roll over and die? Would you want madman to roll over and die? Well, yeah, maybe you would, but still.
As one commentator said, "You might as well send them all down to be euthenised."
Because cutting Social Security, even a little, is a DEATH SENTENCE, in a society where family and veggie gardens and community and common sense and charity and respect and forgiveness simply are not in abundance. More cost would be save by just having them exterminated.
I'm telling you, we are on a dangerous, dangerous road. First they came for me. And one day, it will be for you, because of some damn thing like you smoked pot once or you had gay sex once or you insulted a cop or you failed to pay a parking ticket or you beat up some cashier or you spit out some coffee or you are a damn Catholic or a nigger-lover or a Jew-lover.
FUCKING FUCK IT I AM TELLING YOU NOW! The banksters are in an inexorable spiral of greed, chasing after failed investments, that will only lead us into war - and with war comes a war mentality, where everybody is out for themselves, and only the strong or the lucky survive.
We are heading for a time where people will befriend and kill you just for the gold fillings in your teeth.
Progressives keep going on, hoping that Obama has been playing chess, and will ultimately pull an ace out of his sleeve, and win a big one for them, at last. Instead, he always ends up LAYING a big one - and Progressives scratch their heads in complete astonishment.
I have never seen so many people so capable of sustaining astonishment as their primary state of mind as the present Progressives, who seem also to suffer from a terminal inability to pronounce the word, "NO".
Always pushed into the corner by the Blue Dogs, next to labor, and always given a choice between worse and worser, they have become like frogs in hot water, in a practical state of insanity - always hoping things will change, when the same game is being played over and over again.
PROGRESSIVES ARE BEING PLAYED.
And, always caught up in this state of pathological naivete, they dither away their time, when they SHOULD be finding a primary challenger to Obama! Again and again, they are surprised by Obama selling them down the river, and so they "rise up" and shout, "We'll start a new party!" - which is exactly what the GOP has wanted since 1947 - but then they settle down and go along to get along. It's just disgusting.
No Democratic alternative to Obama means: Obama or a GOP president, means: further impoverishment of the middle class.
You know, revolutions only roll when the middle class feels it's privileges being taken away. That hasn't happened yet, en masse. They don't FEEL it. THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF SEEING IT AHEAD OF TIME. Ergo: we are headed into very tumultuous times, my friend. Very tumultuous times. My heart is gravely saddened by it all, I can tell you.
OK - let's put on our rose-coloured glasses, and instead imagine the GENIUS of Obama: He offered a $4 trillion dollar deal, which included cutting back SS/Medicare, KNOWING THAT THE GOP WOULD REJECT IT, because it contained taxes. The GOP DID reject it. And perhaps he did ask for the whole News. Corp scandal now, to scare the Republicans, who are now all parasites of Faux News.
So, the GOP started into negotiating on the debt ceiling, based on this fear - and the fear of Obama taking it to the American people - and the fear of Wall Street lobbyists, who fund their campaigns, and give them post-political jobs. Maybe it was genius of Obama to paint himself as weak, during the Health Care debate, so that now he could do a 180 on the GOP during THIS, more-important debate, at the last minute. But I don't think so. I'm done waiting for the last minute.
Look at what Obama has done in the past. Most of his pro-progressive policies have been NOT CENTRAL TO THE CRUCIAL ISSUES, the primary one being: The siphoning up of middle class wealth to the upper 2%. He has offered either patronising WORDS, or else victories NOT OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE. He has extended the wars, Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, non-regulation of the banksters, and so on. Perhaps he is a genius in putting SS/Medicare on the table, locking the GOP up, and ending up with NO debt-ceiling agreement, thus allowing him to raise the ceiling on his own, and gloriously salvaging all of SS/Medicare. But this, I KNOW, is absurd, wishful thinking.
In the health care debate, the first thing he did was make secret deals with Big Pharma. Where did that come from? Big Pharma contributions to his campaign!!!
Look at all the silence and lies and diversions surrounding the GULF OIL CRISIS. Where did that come from? THAT CAME FROM ALL THE MONEY WHICH BP HAD GIVEN TO HIS CAMPAIGN!
Look at all the silence surrounding Fukushima nuke radiation in this country, including shutting down government test sites, and websites, and RAISING THE OFFICIAL "SAFE" RADIATION LEVEL for humans. Where did that come from? That came from all the money that EXELON, et al, gave to his campaign.
And it's perfectly fine to continue naked body scanners and gropings at airport, cuz good old boys are making money on it, and that's what the National Security State deems best.
The wars - in Libya - in Afghanistan - in Pakistan - all from campaign contributions!
Finally, look directly at the crap way the economy is being handled, everything going to the banksters, and related. Look around - do you see any infrastructure construction and jobs rivalling FDR's WPA? Do you seeing people with illegally foreclosed mortgages being saved? Do you see unemployed 99ers being rescued? No.
Instead, one of the greatest "victories" Obama has had was in extending benefits to the less-than-99er-unemployed for a year, ALONG WITH A TWO YEAR EXTENSION OF THE BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH - setting himself to be blamed by Republicans for a CONTINUING BAD ECONOMY. What a fucking idiot.
Where has all of this come from? The fact that HE WILLINGLY STACKED HIS CABINET WITH THE VERY BANKSTERS WHO DESTROYED OUR ECONOMY, and he allows pro-NAFTA Bill Clinton to be his main adviser, and he reads a book about Reagan an switches his "Lincoln strategy" to a "Reagan strategy" - he's a damn idiot.
He's not living in the here and now. Great that he reads letters from people who are suffering. He cares.
BUT WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE SIGNIFICANT POLICY VICTORIES ON BEHALF OF THE ACTUAL AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO PROVIDED MOST OF THE FUNDING OF HIS CAMPAIGN. They aren't there. They are pathetic mockeries of progressive bills or executive orders or programmes or agency changes.
Look at the Justice Department - it is doing nothing to prosecute George Bush war crimes and cover-ups - it is not even aggressively pursuing the whole News Corp scandal. WHY?
Because, whether by design or by stupidity, Obama is nothing more than a waterboy for the rich, faking to the left.
You can say he has to face racism from the right. I say they are using his race to sneak this crap by us. I think they have their perfect storm. Whether by accident or by design.
Please see my earlier post about Social Security: http://madman101.livejournal.com/938922.html
Don't let them divide us against ourselves.
Solidarity.
Unite!
On again, my beloved Wisconsin! Rev to vote, this August!! Yay!!
Cheers before tears. - - - CONFIDENTIAL bits HERE - (must be in filter)
We desperately need to change these times.
We need a return to: FUN, NATURE, WANDERING ABOUT DRUNKENLY, SWIMMING IN A COUNTRY STREAM, SPRING BREAK WITHOUT BEING MASSACRED, AND A LIFE OF SIMPLICITY BEFORE THE ALIENS CAME. More on the last subject later.
Overheard on radio, last night, regarding some damn comet that only swings through the Solar System once, and is supposed to send us radio signals about 2012, or something...
Richard Hoagland, "It's becoming the Lady Gaga of astronomy!"
George Nori, "Uh, really - you listen to Lady Gaga?"
OK - Scientists announce that soon, people will live to be 1,000 years old. SOON?! SOON?! We have to wait almost 1,000 years to find out if this is actually TRUE. That's not SOON! And we'll all be dead by then anyway, except for the lucky human lab rat.
Speaking of which, let's do some math:
You have 100 people. Everyone lives to be 100 - except for those who die at birth. If 50 people die at birth, what is the average life-span? Right, it is 50 YEARS OLD. Even though the other 50 ACTUALLY live until 100. OK, that's kind of what it was like in the old days. People lived almost as long as people do now, but the high infant mortality rates put their average lifespan down at whut, 30-40 or something?
So, when you have less babies dying at birth, or while young, the average lifespan goes up. But not so much THE REAL lifespan. And yes, people DO actually live slightly longer, because of treatments of illnesses, etc., but a higher average lifespan does not necessarily mean, so much, that people once lived 'til they were 40, and now they live until their 75 or what have you. It's an average - it's not about the reality of individuals who survive after childhood.
THEREFORE, raising the retirement age, so you can make cuts in Social Security, based on the idea that "people are living longer," is, yet again, DISINGENUOUS - (actually, it's criminal). People are not so much living longer as babies are being kept alive, (while abortions are also partly reducing the number of ill, challenged or impoverished children).
And, as some guy mentioned on THE ED SCHULTZ SHOW today, a lot of people's bodies simply can't hold out much longer after 65 - and should actually be retiring EARLIER, not later. Firemen, construction workers, etc., they often have bad knees or legs, and other injuries, which makes them NEED to retire earlier, rather than later. So, to push back the retirement age to 67, or to 70, is also unfair for this reason. Not to mention the fact that the Social Security fund IS OUR MONEY - not the government's.
Social Security and Medicare were intended to be extended to younger and younger people every decade - pushing back the age from 65, to 55, to 45, and so on, until they covered everyone. (LBJ said this straight up). By applying these INSURANCE POLICIES to younger people, and more of the population, they become less weighted down by risk - they become more efficient and solvent. Instead, these programmes have been greatly abused since Reagan, and now they - the GOPpers - want to RAISE the age. The plan is obvious, as described by Grover Norquist, describing the government in general, "I want to shrink it down so small that I can drown it in my bathtub." That's death-panel language - and death panels were exactly what was in OUR OLD, PRIVATISED SYSTEM of health care.
Raising the retirement age is bad for the economy. It keeps older workers in the job force, keeping younger people from getting jobs. And the job market is insanely limitted as it is, already. And many of the elderly are being thrown into service-mac-jobs as it is. So, it would only INCREASE unemployment and underemployment.
On the other hand, the smart move to make would be to LOWER the retirement age down to 55. That would reduce unemployment and therefore put dollars into the economy, while also decreasing expenditure on Unemployment Comp - (as well as reducing SS risk, as mentioned above).
It's absurd and inhumane to cut Social Security - taking away THE PEOPLE'S MONEY because the BANKSTERS and "too-big-to-fail" mega-corps had to be bailed out with our WELFARE MONEY, even though most Americans opposed TARP as well as the changes made to the Stimulus Bill.
Even BEFORE these bills, those ZOMBIE corps were ALREADY getting special, unfair treatment: tax cuts, tax loopholes, free export of American jobs, government contracts, and even the backing of OUR MILITARY.
People should be absolutely outraged that Social Security was even sneaked onto the table, by Obama, in the same way that they should have been outraged when the blasphemy of "Obamacare" began with the ushering out of anyone who wanted BUT MERELY TO STUDY the Single-Payer option.
Sneaking Social Security onto the table, offering to make cuts, SETS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS PRECEDENT. When a fully GOP-controlled government comes along, what is to stop them from eliminating (privatising) Social Security entirely?
What are DISABLED people supposed to do - people who are not ABLE to work? What are the indigent and the ill elderly supposed to do, who are not ABLE to work? What are their dependent families to do?
Social Security is already a joke to begin with, designed to keep people in poverty. What is to become of those who can't work, and are presently only capable of scraping by, avoiding homelessness - already being discriminated against by potential landlords because of their low income, already being turned away by most doctors, who reject Medicare?
Are they supposed to roll over and die?
Am I supposed to roll over and die? Would you want madman to roll over and die? Well, yeah, maybe you would, but still.
As one commentator said, "You might as well send them all down to be euthenised."
Because cutting Social Security, even a little, is a DEATH SENTENCE, in a society where family and veggie gardens and community and common sense and charity and respect and forgiveness simply are not in abundance. More cost would be save by just having them exterminated.
I'm telling you, we are on a dangerous, dangerous road. First they came for me. And one day, it will be for you, because of some damn thing like you smoked pot once or you had gay sex once or you insulted a cop or you failed to pay a parking ticket or you beat up some cashier or you spit out some coffee or you are a damn Catholic or a nigger-lover or a Jew-lover.
FUCKING FUCK IT I AM TELLING YOU NOW! The banksters are in an inexorable spiral of greed, chasing after failed investments, that will only lead us into war - and with war comes a war mentality, where everybody is out for themselves, and only the strong or the lucky survive.
We are heading for a time where people will befriend and kill you just for the gold fillings in your teeth.
Progressives keep going on, hoping that Obama has been playing chess, and will ultimately pull an ace out of his sleeve, and win a big one for them, at last. Instead, he always ends up LAYING a big one - and Progressives scratch their heads in complete astonishment.
I have never seen so many people so capable of sustaining astonishment as their primary state of mind as the present Progressives, who seem also to suffer from a terminal inability to pronounce the word, "NO".
Always pushed into the corner by the Blue Dogs, next to labor, and always given a choice between worse and worser, they have become like frogs in hot water, in a practical state of insanity - always hoping things will change, when the same game is being played over and over again.
PROGRESSIVES ARE BEING PLAYED.
And, always caught up in this state of pathological naivete, they dither away their time, when they SHOULD be finding a primary challenger to Obama! Again and again, they are surprised by Obama selling them down the river, and so they "rise up" and shout, "We'll start a new party!" - which is exactly what the GOP has wanted since 1947 - but then they settle down and go along to get along. It's just disgusting.
No Democratic alternative to Obama means: Obama or a GOP president, means: further impoverishment of the middle class.
You know, revolutions only roll when the middle class feels it's privileges being taken away. That hasn't happened yet, en masse. They don't FEEL it. THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF SEEING IT AHEAD OF TIME. Ergo: we are headed into very tumultuous times, my friend. Very tumultuous times. My heart is gravely saddened by it all, I can tell you.
OK - let's put on our rose-coloured glasses, and instead imagine the GENIUS of Obama: He offered a $4 trillion dollar deal, which included cutting back SS/Medicare, KNOWING THAT THE GOP WOULD REJECT IT, because it contained taxes. The GOP DID reject it. And perhaps he did ask for the whole News. Corp scandal now, to scare the Republicans, who are now all parasites of Faux News.
So, the GOP started into negotiating on the debt ceiling, based on this fear - and the fear of Obama taking it to the American people - and the fear of Wall Street lobbyists, who fund their campaigns, and give them post-political jobs. Maybe it was genius of Obama to paint himself as weak, during the Health Care debate, so that now he could do a 180 on the GOP during THIS, more-important debate, at the last minute. But I don't think so. I'm done waiting for the last minute.
Look at what Obama has done in the past. Most of his pro-progressive policies have been NOT CENTRAL TO THE CRUCIAL ISSUES, the primary one being: The siphoning up of middle class wealth to the upper 2%. He has offered either patronising WORDS, or else victories NOT OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE. He has extended the wars, Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, non-regulation of the banksters, and so on. Perhaps he is a genius in putting SS/Medicare on the table, locking the GOP up, and ending up with NO debt-ceiling agreement, thus allowing him to raise the ceiling on his own, and gloriously salvaging all of SS/Medicare. But this, I KNOW, is absurd, wishful thinking.
In the health care debate, the first thing he did was make secret deals with Big Pharma. Where did that come from? Big Pharma contributions to his campaign!!!
Look at all the silence and lies and diversions surrounding the GULF OIL CRISIS. Where did that come from? THAT CAME FROM ALL THE MONEY WHICH BP HAD GIVEN TO HIS CAMPAIGN!
Look at all the silence surrounding Fukushima nuke radiation in this country, including shutting down government test sites, and websites, and RAISING THE OFFICIAL "SAFE" RADIATION LEVEL for humans. Where did that come from? That came from all the money that EXELON, et al, gave to his campaign.
And it's perfectly fine to continue naked body scanners and gropings at airport, cuz good old boys are making money on it, and that's what the National Security State deems best.
The wars - in Libya - in Afghanistan - in Pakistan - all from campaign contributions!
Finally, look directly at the crap way the economy is being handled, everything going to the banksters, and related. Look around - do you see any infrastructure construction and jobs rivalling FDR's WPA? Do you seeing people with illegally foreclosed mortgages being saved? Do you see unemployed 99ers being rescued? No.
Instead, one of the greatest "victories" Obama has had was in extending benefits to the less-than-99er-unemployed for a year, ALONG WITH A TWO YEAR EXTENSION OF THE BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH - setting himself to be blamed by Republicans for a CONTINUING BAD ECONOMY. What a fucking idiot.
Where has all of this come from? The fact that HE WILLINGLY STACKED HIS CABINET WITH THE VERY BANKSTERS WHO DESTROYED OUR ECONOMY, and he allows pro-NAFTA Bill Clinton to be his main adviser, and he reads a book about Reagan an switches his "Lincoln strategy" to a "Reagan strategy" - he's a damn idiot.
He's not living in the here and now. Great that he reads letters from people who are suffering. He cares.
BUT WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE SIGNIFICANT POLICY VICTORIES ON BEHALF OF THE ACTUAL AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO PROVIDED MOST OF THE FUNDING OF HIS CAMPAIGN. They aren't there. They are pathetic mockeries of progressive bills or executive orders or programmes or agency changes.
Look at the Justice Department - it is doing nothing to prosecute George Bush war crimes and cover-ups - it is not even aggressively pursuing the whole News Corp scandal. WHY?
Because, whether by design or by stupidity, Obama is nothing more than a waterboy for the rich, faking to the left.
You can say he has to face racism from the right. I say they are using his race to sneak this crap by us. I think they have their perfect storm. Whether by accident or by design.
Please see my earlier post about Social Security: http://madman101.livejournal.com/938922.html
Don't let them divide us against ourselves.
Solidarity.
Unite!
On again, my beloved Wisconsin! Rev to vote, this August!! Yay!!
Cheers before tears. - - - CONFIDENTIAL bits HERE - (must be in filter)
We desperately need to change these times.
We need a return to: FUN, NATURE, WANDERING ABOUT DRUNKENLY, SWIMMING IN A COUNTRY STREAM, SPRING BREAK WITHOUT BEING MASSACRED, AND A LIFE OF SIMPLICITY BEFORE THE ALIENS CAME. More on the last subject later.