Monkeyfister

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My dear friend MadSat reminds me that K Street is every bit as big a part of the problem as Wall Street. Here are two proposals for Constitutional Amendments to STOP Corporate Influence on OUR Government:

-- Move To Amend: A Constitutional Amendment To End Corporate Personhood

-- Get Money Out: A Constitutional Amendment To Get Corporate Money Out Of Politics

Both are simple and easy to support.

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Labels: #occupyeverywhere, #occupywallstreet, Civil Disobedience, Civil Rights, Corporate Disobedience, This Is Democracy

Here's some really good Christmas Music:

DJ Riko's 10th Annual Merry Mixmas CD.
Best of the past nine years of AWESOME Christmas mixes. All there for free downloading, and NO DRM!!!

And here's the Cigar Box Nation Christmas Album Download. A whole CD's worth of awesome Christmas music played on homemade cigar box guitars.

Don't say I didn't give anything this year.



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Labels: Christmas Music, Merry Fucking Christmas

There is no question that the Teabagged Republicans are intransigent assholes, but I cannot get my head around Democrats, Liberals and Progressives rallying around the de-funding of Social Security with this Payroll Tax Holiday.

Attaching it to the very needed Unemployment Insurance extension, and Medicare re-imbursement authorization was a recipe for disaster in the first place, with this gaggle of evil clowns controlling the House.

Here is the actual House Bill: via House.gov

You'll have one hell of a time finding half of the provisions discussed anywhere in the Media or the Blogosphere. What the House Teabaggers are all het up about is the stripping out of several of their most odious demands for all of two months.

1. They inserted a proviso that greatly weakens the Affordable Care Act: CPBB, which would throw nearly 200,000 out of coverage.

The provision in question would substantially increase the repayment charges imposed at tax time on many people who, under the health reform law, will receive subsidies to help them afford coverage during months of the year when their incomes are low but whose incomes increase later in the year because they have found a job, gotten a promotion, gotten married, or for another such reason.

2. They demanded circumvention, or neutering of EPA regulations that greatly reduce emmissions, and put strict controls on mining company effluents-- specifically Mercury and Arsenic. Of course, they cynically called this, "EPA Regulatory Relief." Fortunately, the EPA just rolled those regulations out, thus making this point nearly moot. But, of course, it only made the Teabagged House all the more adamant to get their way, today: Susie Madrak has more on this.

3. The Teabaggers also were demanding drug-testing for Unemployment Insurance applicants/recipients, which is utterly ridiculous.

So, those three pieces of the Teabagger Bill were stripped out-- for all of two months-- by the Senate, and that was enough for them to go apeshit, and, once AGAIN, threaten to destroy what is left of this economy.

But, as much as I cannot understand how the horribly unnecessary XL Pipeline, or these other provisions remotely relate to Medicare or Long-Term Unemployment, I simply cannot support the HEADLINE Payroll Tax Holiday.

Even when I was making only $20K per annum, even when I was unemployed for 18 months post-9/11, $20 in my paycheck was still of nominal value to me. It meant I drank cheap beer, and rolled my own smokes, instead of buying premium. Twenty bucks per pay period is not worth what the Teabaggers are demanding as ransom, without offering a damned thing in their so-called "negotiations."

The de-funding of Social Security should be questioned by EVERY AMERICAN from age eight to eighty.

I'd prefer the Senate get their over-paid asses back in session, split the Payroll Tax Holiday nonsense out, pass the necessary Medicare and UI extensions as a "clean" Bill for the entire year, and deal with the rest of the crap Legislation at a later date.

This is no fucking way to govern a Nation in crisis, and I am shocked that Congress retains even an 11% approval rate.

Moreover-- the Left needs to stop and give some SERIOUS thought as to just what the fuck it is championing with this Payroll Tax cut.

Fuck the lot of them, I am so goddamned pissed. I'm over 40, and dammit-- I WANT Social Security to simply EXIST in twenty years.

This shit is fucked up, and BULLSHIT.

Addendum: This has never been about the Payroll Tax Holiday, it was the Teabagged GOP trying to make the simplest, but meaningless and destructive "Working/Middle-Class" Tax relief as painful as possible, while rewarding their most greedy Corporate Sponsors.

Biggest beneficiaries of this shitty Bill? TELCOs, Insurance Companies, BigEnergy.

I've already run through all the "Direct vs. Indirect" Funding of SS elsewhere. Even IF SS is being otherwise funded through the General Fund, it is at the expense of some other vital Discretionary Spending Program, and let's face it folks-- Social Security and the General Fund were NEVER, EVER intended to co-mingle. The very premise of all of this is fundamentally WRONG.


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Labels: Asshole Republicans, Fucked-up Democrats, Payroll Tax Holiday, Social Security Scandal

Well done. Keep it up, folks!





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Labels: #occupyeverywhere, #occupywallstreet

So, a bunch of 1%-er heavies are getting together to counter the Occupation... They clearly think very little of us:

via Bloomberg News

Jamie Dimon, the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks, turned a question at an investors’ conference in New York this month into an occasion to defend wealth.

“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO told an audience member who asked about hostility toward bankers. “Sometimes there’s a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole.”

Dimon, 55, whose 2010 compensation was $23 million, joined billionaires including hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Home Depot Inc. (HD) co-founder Bernard Marcus in using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves and the richest 1 percent of the population targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

If successful businesspeople don’t go public to share their stories and talk about their troubles, “they deserve what they’re going to get,” said Marcus, 82, a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at “shaping the national agenda,” according to the group’s website. He said he isn’t worried that speaking out might make him a target of protesters.

“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”

So the co-founder of Home Depot says we're imbeciles. Time to Occupy Home Depot, then?



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Labels: #occupyeverywhere, #occupywallstreet

Now HERE's a fucking wild-assed turn, unexpected before Christmas... WOW.

via Zero Hedge

North Korea says its leader Kim Jong-il has died.
N. Korean leader died of fatigue at 8:30 a.m. Dec. 17 during train ride: KCNA

From Daily Yomiuri:

Cause of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's death is said to be a stroke.

And Reuters confirms:

NORTH KOREA STATE TELEVISION SAYS KIM JONG IL HAS DIED

Great. More geopolitical uncertainty. Because as the Arab Spring has shown us there is nothing quite as stable as a transitory military government to fill a power vacuum (also see Thermidorian reaction during the French Revolution).

As expected the South Korean response is immediate.

S. Korean gov't shifts to emergency footing on news of N.K. leader's death

Elvis-lovin' Kim Jong Il is dead at age 70. He was Bugtussle crazy. His heir/son? Crazier than Daddy.

Nothing but horrible madcap will come of this new twist. And nothing good.




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Labels: Crazy North Korea, Dear Leader, Whacked Ased Geo-Politics

This was always one of my favorites from Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip.




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Labels: Christmas Spirit

Senator Seeks Answers About Phone Logging Software : The Two-Way : NPR

Those smartphones of yours, well, they're tattling on you!

via NPR.Org

"The revelation that the locations and other sensitive data of millions of Americans are being secretly recorded and possibly transmitted is deeply troubling," Franken said in a statement. "This news underscores the need for Congress to act swiftly to protect the location information and private, sensitive information of consumers. But right now, Carrier IQ has a lot of questions to answer."

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Labels: BP Security, Illegal Wiretapping, Phonelogging, Phonetapping, Privacy, Security-- Bitches, Smartphones, Spyware

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Holy shit, something I can actually agree with Rand Paul on... of course, so do many Democrats in the US Senate.

Carl Levin should have to turn in his Democratic Party membership card for this whole damned mess. I never thought I would actually say this: but "Carl Levin, you have to go! I will be doing whatever I can to help someone run against you in your next primary you fascist little Nazi bastard. Your rabbi must be ashamed of you!"

via Huffington Post

"I'm very, very, concerned about having U.S. citizens sent to Guantanamo Bay for indefinite detention," said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the Senate's most conservative members.

Paul's top complaint is that a terrorism suspect would get just one hearing where the military could assert that the person is a suspected terrorist -- and then they could be locked up for life, without ever formally being charged. The only safety valve is a waiver from the secretary of defense.

"It's not enough just to be alleged to be a terrorist," Paul said, echoing the views of the American Civil Liberties Union. "That's part of what due process is -- deciding, are you a terrorist? I think it's important that we not allow U.S. citizens to be taken."

Democrats who were also concerned about liberties compared the military policing of Americans to the detention of Americans in internment camps during World War II.

"Congress is essentially authorizing the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who offered another amendment -- which has not yet gotten a vote -- that she said would correct the problem. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."

It really makes me feel dirty to actually agree with something Rand Paul (the Teabagger Senator) has to say. But in this case, he is totally correct. And when he and Feingold both agree on something, that just kinda freaks me the hell out. Next thing you know, cats and dogs will be sleeping next to each other, cops will be joining with the 99% and Christians will be protecting Muslims as they pray... Oh wait... all that already happens!! What the heck? Is 2012 really The End? Must be if Hell is freezing over (as it seems it must be!).

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Spare links:

Google Results for Senate Bill 1867