fayfreethinkers.com

Here's Barton's description of Paine's "support" of creationism from his website:

In a speech he delivered in Paris on January 16, 1797, Thomas Paine harshly
criticized what the French were then teaching in their science classes-especially
the philosophy they were using. Interestingly, that same science philosophy of
which Thomas Paine was so critical is identical to that used in our public schools
today. Paine's indictment of that philosophy is particularly significant in light of
the fact that all historians today concede that Thomas Paine was one of the
very least religious of our Founders. Yet, even Paine could not abide teaching
science, which excluded God's work and hand in the creation of the world and of
all scientific phenomena. Below is an excerpt from that speech.

See there also the small portion of the speech that Barton and his copycats cite.

As Paine was a deist, it's clear that Paine's use of "God" is not as Barton describes it. The full text of the speech is here. All you need to know -- and no freethinkers will be surprised -- is that Paine's views were exactly what we say they are:

God is the power of first cause, nature is the law, and matter is the subject acted upon.

That's deism in a nutshell, meaning that Barton is a lying sack of crap.... and no freethinkers are surprised by that, either.

"We need to substitute the word "profitize" for privatize.
It is more accurate.
If people know you start with a government service then ADD profit you get less and pay more for it. That is how they profitize."

Handypants

"President Reagan came into power in 1981 after convincing Americans that our debt was out of control — at that time, compared to our gross national product (GNP), it was at a 50 year low. Republicans and Democrats alike voted for Reagan’s budget that lowered tax rates substantially with the bulk of the benefits going to America’s most wealthy (trickledown economics). By the end of Reagan’s 8 years, the deficit had tripled. The deficit grew by another 55% under George H.W. Bush after he saw the light of fiscal responsibility and broke his no new taxes pledge. The budget was balanced during the Clinton Administration and the debt was actually on a trajectory to decline. But the federal budget doubled under President George W. Bush after two tax cuts, again mostly to the wealthy, at the same time we were engaged in two wars.

America had its largest employment growth under President Clinton’s administration and its poorest employment growth under the second President Bush. Trickledown (supply side) economics simply does not work and most reputable economists will admit as much. It fails especially in times of globalization because tax cuts for the wealthy are often invested, not in America, but in countries where growth rates are higher because of slave labor and a lower standard of living."



Middle Class Held Hostage

David Brooks, long time republican apologist, observing something isn't right with his party:

"A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.
The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.
This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.
But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party." LINK

Nice:

The Republicans exit history

Roger Ebert

Passed along from Larry W.

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"The debt ceiling crisis is entirely artificial: a mere political ploy by the servants of the plutocracy to divert public attention from the real problem: the stumbling recovery, high unemployment, and the need for more short-term stimulus. (Yes, there’s a need for fiscal sustainability as well, and re-establishing the revenue base needed for the public services we need performed, but that’s important rather than urgent.) The United States never had a debt ceiling until 1939, and doesn’t need one now. Congress can control debt by its control over revenues and expenditures; all the debt ceiling does is create the possibility that the government will not be able to borrow the money needed to carry out the laws Congress has already passed."

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/07/debt-c ... -solution/

Darrel wrote:The United States never had a debt ceiling until 1939, and doesn’t need one now.

The US. debt ceiling began in 1917, due to concerns about debt in WWI.

DOUG
The US. debt ceiling began in 1917, due to concerns about debt in WWI.

DAR
That was on bonds. Wiki has this qualifier showing the distinction made in 1939:

"Congress modified the method by which it authorizes debt in the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917.[31] Under this act Congress established an aggregate limit, or "ceiling," on the total amount of bonds that could be issued.
The modern debt limit, in which an aggregate limit was applied to nearly all federal debt, was substantially established by Public Debt Acts[32][33] passed in 1939 and 1941."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_ceiling#Debt_ceiling

Right, but the statement "The United States never had a debt ceiling until 1939" is therefore false.

The true cost of George W. Bush's magical thinking

Gene Lyons

Excerpt:

"According to Congressional Budget Office projections, had the nation maintained the fiscal course the Clinton administration laid out, the national debt everybody rants about would have been retired by 2009.

See, that's the real cost of George W. Bush's magical thinking. By any rational accounting, Bush and the GOP Congress that gave him everything he wanted from 2001 to 2007 should be held responsible for the entire $10.6 trillion national debt -- along with the $1.3 trillion yearly deficit they handed to Obama, as well as the Wall Street crisis and bank bailouts.

It's that simple: With no Bush income tax cuts, no unfunded Medicare drug benefit, and no off-budget Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the U.S. balance sheet would have been in fine shape for his successor. Then government investment needed to rescue the economy from the doldrums wouldn't have seemed so alarming."

Salon

Dar quotes Lyons

no unfunded Medicare drug benefit

I would like to see some real figures for how much the Republican Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D are costing in excess of regular, standard
vanilla Medicare. The latter is the program I use, the same program my grandmother used and my mother.

Last I heard those two Bush-Republican additions were costing $100 billion per year.

Btw, Medicare Advantage, which adds billions to the cost of Medicare is repealed under Affordable Health Care and Patient Protection Act of 2010. That is one of the gravy trains that insurance companies are howling about losing due to AHC kicking in next year.

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Scarborough on... "Michele Bachmann, someone who is “never going to get close to winning the presidential nomination.”

“Michele Bachmann’s first answer was, I wish the federal government had defaulted,” Scarborough recalled Bachmann saying during Thursday night’s Republican debate. “Had defaulted! A week after Americans lost — some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions. Lost half of their 401ks. When trillions of dollars went down the drain with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause.”

“If anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way… they are out of their mind and they are too stupid not only to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run Slurpee machines in Des Moines… Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke… Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.”

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/dav ... hmann-joke

This is more appropriate as a blog post, but as I don't have a blog, it'll go here instead.

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I'm not a sports nut, but let's talk football for a moment.

An incomplete pass results in a loss of down but no loss of yardage.
A quarterback sack results in both a loss of down and lost yardage.

Thus, a savvy quarterback who is facing the possibility of a sack can purposely throw an incomplete pass so as not to lose yardage. But this can be done legally only with conditions: the thrown ball must either pass the line of scrimmage or be in the vicinity of an eligible receiver.

So what happens when the quarterback tries to avoid a sack by simply throwing the ball into the ground, not meeting those conditions? This is a foul, called intentional grounding, and results in a penalty: The penalty is loss of down and having the ball placed at the spot from which it was thrown -- in other words, the result is what would have happened if the quarterback had been sacked.

But do the analysis on this one: If the quarterback finds himself in this position, he has two choices:
1. Throw the ball away:
1a. legally, suffering only a loss of down.
1b. illegally, suffering a loss of down and loss of yardage.
2. Tuck the ball and take the sack, suffering a loss of down and loss of yardage.

If the quarterback, in his zeal to find an open receiver, takes so long to throw that he cannot throw a legal incomplete pass -- that is, the pass doesn't cross the line of scrimmage or land near a receiver -- the result of his foul is exactly what would have happened had he not tried to skirt the rules!

This, in my opinion, is one of the most ridiculously penalized fouls in the game. There is no effective penalty for trying to cheat: If the officials call the foul, then the quarterback has lost nothing; but if the officials fail to realize that the throw is illegal (which happens surprisingly often), then the quarterback is rewarded with avoiding loss of yardage. Why is there no penalty for trying to cheat? Why doesn't the penalty include loss of down at the spot of the foul, PLUS an additional five-yard penalty for being a cheating hack?

We now see Ohio's governor trying to pull the same type of thing. Senate Bill 5 gutted the rights of the working class, and it was pushed and passed by Republicans with Governor Kasich's proud support despite loud and widespread objection from Democrats and the *vast* majority of the Ohio people. Now that SB5 faces certain death by Ohio's referendum process, Kasich is suggesting that Ohio's legislators revisit SB5 for bipartisan debate and a way to address "the needs of our taxpayers."

This is just like the bogus unpenalized foul of intentional grounding in football. Kasich and the Republican hacks pushed through this terrible piece of legislation without paying any mind to an opposing viewpoint or the constituents -- they tried to pull a fast one without people having a chance to call them out on their actions -- but they now want Democrats to approach the compromising table as if the Republicans hadn't tried their shenanigans. "Nevermind that we tried to screw you," the Republicans are saying, "Pretend that it never happened. NOW we'll play fair, so we don't have to give up anything for our previous actions." Where is the accountability? How can this be justified?

In football, the quarterback position is a particularly vulnerable one, and there are rules in place to help protect him from being injured. I'm not one for skirting the rules, but this kind of nonsense makes me think that a big hit on the "quarterback" is well-deserved. If the Ohio Republicans get to try to screw the Ohioan people without being penalized for it, why can't I clobber the quarterback with direct contact to the head without being penalized? You know, shared sacrifice and all...


BONUS: Kasich now wants the referendum effort that will very likely kill SB5 to quietly disappear in exchange for allowing compromise on amending the bill. Apparently, the Republicans think that we're even more stupid than they are: I'm not an Ohioan, but I wouldn't for a single second believe that these Republicans would hold fast to their "agreement" to rework SB5 if I opted to stop fighting it from becoming law. Frankly, the fact that they're even asking is insane. It's like a quarterback not being penalized for intentional grounding and then expecting the defensive line to stop blitzing.

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NOW we'll play fair, so we don't have to give up anything for our previous actions."

Using the term "fair" and Republican in the same sentence or even a paragraph is not fair. It's not even sane.



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"The irresponsible actions of my party, the Republican Party over this were astounding. I'd never seen anything like this in my lifetime. I was very disappointed, I was very disgusted in how this played out in Washington, this debt-ceiling debate. It was an astounding lack of responsible leadership by many in the Republican Party, and I say that as a Republican."
--Chuck Hagel, former republican Senator from Nebraska, saying his fellow Republicans acted irresponsibly in the debt-ceiling debate.

The Zero Economy

By Robert Reich

Excerpt:

"Since this Depression began at the end of 2007, America's potential labor force - working-age people who want jobs - has grown by over 7 million. But since then the number of Americans with jobs has shrunk by more than 300,000.

If this doesn't prompt President Obama to unveil a bold jobs plan next Thursday, I don't know what will.

The problem is on the demand side. Consumers (whose spending is 70 percent of the economy) can't boost the economy on their own. They're still too burdened by debt, especially on homes that are worth less than their mortgages. Their jobs are disappearinig, their pay is dropping, their medical bills are soaring.

And businesses won't hire without more sales.

So we're in a vicous cycle...

It's demand, stupid.

So what does a sane nation do when the consumers and businesses can't boost the economy on their own?

Government becomes the purchaser of last resort. It hires directly (a new WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps, for example). It helps states and locales, so they don't have to continue to slash payrolls and public services. (The help could be structured as a loan, to be repaid when unemployment drops to, say, 6 percent.)

And it hires indirectly - contracting with companies to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, including school buildings, to take another example.

Not only does this create jobs but also puts money in the hands of all the people who get the jobs, so they can turn around and buy the goods and services they need - generating more jobs.

Get it? Not exactly rocket science.

So why don't Republicans get it? Either they're knaves - they want the economy to stay awful through next Election Day so Obama gets the boot. Or they're fools - they've bought the lie that reducing the deficit now creates more jobs.

Every time you hear anyone say we're "broke" or "can't afford to spend more," tell them we'll be in worse shape if we don't. If the economy remains dead in the water, the ratio of public debt to GDP balloons."

LINK

Mayor Michael Bloomberg on why he didn't allow religious leaders to turn the 9/11 remembrance ceremony into a religious event:

“It’s a civil ceremony. There are plenty of opportunities for people to have their religious ceremonies. Some people don’t want to go to a religious ceremony with another religion. And the number of different religions in this city are really quite amazing.”

“It isn’t that you can’t pick and choose, you shouldn’t pick and choose. If you want to have a service for your religion, you can have it in your church or in a field, or whatever.” - Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York

LINK

If Bill O'Reilly had just a little more power, perhaps he could make the tides go in and the tides go out "never a miscommunication."

"I have more power than anybody other than the president, in the sense that I can get things changed, quickly," he said. "I don't have to go through the legislative process; I don't have to do any of that. I can just bring it to the people, and say, look, this has gotta be dealt with." The incredibly powerful Bill O'Reilly