Don Quixokie

As everyone who has been paying attention should know, the Republicans are pursuing raising the age of entitlement (Social Security, Medicare) and trying to call that entitlement reform. Brilliant, effective! A significant chunk of retirees won't won't survive long enough to collect SSI and Medicare, there by shrinking demand for these entitlements. THERE'S your savings, Nancy Pelosi! THAT'S the money! THAT'S what you were missing! There is a phrase that describes this type of policy, and it was the Republicans who were in white-knuckled terror and outrage when they accuse President Obama of it. Now the Republicans in Congress ARE the DEATH PANEL! I've a suggestion. Everyone reading this who is an American and who is likely to be impacted by this legislation, should it become law, please do this: If you you die between the age of retirement as it is NOW (12-28-2012) and the new age of entitlement eligibility - have it included in your WILL that you have...

In the 2012 election, two states voted to legalize recreational marijuana. Some things are so damn awesome and wonderful, they merit examination. What this means now and in the future is nothing short of incredible. It's the only area of the states rights' argument that I agree with. Though now legal in Colorado and Washington, pot remains illegal under federal law. Whether the Feds will violate the will of the people or allow all states to write their own marijuana laws is the question we wait to see answered. However, in those two states at least, enforcement of the drug war on pot is scaling back. They will test whether or not taxation of pot will indeed be an effective source of state revenue. I can only imagine it will be a better source than state lotteries as you won't need to face odds equivalent to be struck by lightening or eaten by a shark to get some joy. One thing NOT discussed, yet, is the implications for their respective Depts of Corrections. Those s...

[During the Obama administration] There are some things that are just so stupid and ugly that they demand examination. The escalation of the killing and threat of ground war between the Israelis and and the Palestinians in Gaza are a prime example.. Let me make this clear. I'm not a Muslim. But I really don't think that Christ would be copacetic with the actions of the Israelis either. What I am is enough of a historian to be absolutely disgusted. It was the asymmetrical and l-sided nature of the Middle East Conflict that fostered the  use of suicide bombs and terrorist attacks in the first place...a suicide car bomb being one of the few things that could be made on the cheap and nasty that could destroy a tank. Asymmetrical and lop-sided. We can talk all we want about how barbaric and fanatical the Palestinians are. But this is only one side in this conflict armed with tanks, helicopter gunships, and jets. As of this writing (11-19-12 9PM CT), the body count is ab...

Within the catastrophe of Hurricane Sandy there is a golden opportunity, if we choose to make a virtue out of necessity. The utter destruction of century old infrastructure means it must be rebuilt...and CAN be rebuilt with state of the art technology and with the eye toward survivng another Sandy. Sandy has necessitated infrastructure investment far beyond what would have been possible even with a cooperative House and Senate. History is a marvelous teacher. It was the reconstruction of the infrastructures of Japan and Germany after WW 2 which modernized them. Natural disasters destroy infrastructure as thoroughly as war. In the case of the devastation left by Sandy, armies of construction workers and engineers will be at work for years if not decades rebuilding and refitting in New York and New Jersey. What do you call that? God's own stimulus plan. We are also looking a a crash course clinic in getting and delivering aid to populous disaster ravaged areas. The lessons w...

The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare has created or uncovered a huge shortage of primary care physicians. Ominous, yes? There is a vast opportunity hidden in this crisis. Conservatives have made much about doctors claiming that they'd rather give up their practice than operate under Obamacare. If the burdens of Obamacare is so onerous to physicians, then that can be remedied with subsidies made directly to doctors who participate rather than insurance middle men. That's for the short term. The fact is that the Federal government has an unmatched ability to promote specific industries and make fertile specific fields of endeavor, witness the World War 2 and post-World War deficit promotion of manufacturing which created the greatest economic expansion the world had ever known. For the long term, America needs an investment on the scale of the GI Bill for education for future primary care physicians. The GI Bill, no less that the government's inve...

Dear Mr President and Staff You are wrong about the Green on Blue attacks being a strategy of desperation. Suicide attacks are a strategy of desperation. Green on Blue attacks are a strategy of pure genius and effectiveness. A winning strategy. If American troops cannot tell friend from foe, all that is left is either a steady march of attrition or indiscriminate bloodshed. Am I cheering for the Taliban and al Qaeda? HELL NO! But "not letting the Taliban win" is NOT a strategy. Just how much goodwill will we generate destroying villages in order to save them in the Graveyard of Empires? If a foreign power had invaded and occupied America for over ten years and taken it upon themselves to refashion our political instutitions in their image, what would brave American patriots do? Has ANYONE asked that question? Fuck timelines, we need to leave Afghanistan NOW!

We have a 2nd Amendment which protects the rights of American to carry arms. It does not protect the right to walk down the street and fire your weapon randomly. Likewise the 1st Amendment protects freedom of speech and religion. But it does not protect the right to shout Fire! in a crowded theater. NOR DOES IT PROTECT SPEECH THAT ENDANGERS AMERICAN TROOPS OR AMERICA'S DIPLOMATIC MISSION! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions Incitement The Supreme Court has held that "advocacy of the use of force" is unprotected when it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action " and is "likely to incite or produce such action". [1] [2] In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Court struck down a criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan group for "advocating ... violence ... as a means of accomplishing political reform" because their statements at a rally did not express an immediate, or imminent intent to do v...

Herein are a number of questions which weigh heavily on my mind and which, should you win the election will become important to you as well rest of America. Please answer these honestly. If deregulation and tax cuts are enough to grow the economy, why didn't it work any better for Bush? How will it work any better for you? If job creators can fatten their bottom lines off-shoring factories to third world nations, how will you stop them? If you aren't willing to punish job creators who off-shore, how are you going to raise employment by the numbers you predict here at home? You claim that you will act in the very best interests of the middle class and told the NAACP that you will be the very best candidate for them. But the policies you (Romney) and Ryan outline all look like the same European-style Austerity which has failed to produce results in Europe. Why should it work any better for us? If the jobs you predict fail to appear, how is the result any different for the...

This post is apropos observations made by Michael Eric Dyson and TJ Holmes on the Ed Show. The genesis of said observations was TJ's traffic stop for Driving while Black. Of course race relations have gotten uglier since Obama took office. The only way they wouldn't have is if he was stamped with the seal of approval from the far right. As, say, a marionette for the Koch bros who had famously observed that water from black water fountains tasted the same as water from white water fountains - Herman Cain; or a former torturer who specialized in mock executions and token black  member of a white supremacist biker gang who equates social security with slavery (I guess because the only people who are free are those who are starving to death) and accuses sitting representatives of being Communists - Allen West; or a Supreme Court Justice who has proven the old adage that there is no whore like a whore who is once bought, stays bought. In this instance by the Monsanto corporation...

7-25-2012 James Holmes. What a dork, yeah? The Joker had GREEN hair. My apologies to that fine fast food chain...but Homes is the Ronald McDonald of murder spree clowns. Not the Joker. The following was extracted and grown from comments on Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/DonQuixokie/colorado-shooting-puts-po_0_n_1697666_171243952.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/DonQuixokie/colorado-shooting-puts-po_0_n_1697666_171279672.html There is alot of noise about not rushing to politicize this tragedy, not dishonoring the slain in Aurora. Which is really hilarious given who was the very first to try to make political hay out of it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/louie-gohmert-aurora-shootings_n_1689099.html You know what dishonors the slain? The very same thing that dishonored the slain at the Gabby Gifford's assassination attempt. The same thing that dishonors the memory of those killed in the Virginia tech massacre, and those killed in th...

Romney has ALWAYS been a phenomenally weak presidential candidate. The Bush/Cheney Administration was so fantastically toxic that it could groom no heir apparents. If they did, he would have looked just like Romney...an absolute third generation Reaganite (Bush/Cheney was 2nd Gen, Reagan was the first. Multiply the number of their generation to determine the damage they will do to the nation: Bush/Cheney made Reagan look sane, though they were true disciples of his policies; Romney will make Bush/Cheney look like Reagan by comparison. Next Republican president after that will make Romney look good by comparison, and so on.) As weak as Romney is as a candidate, however, there is an excess of machinary that could get a syphilitic chupacabra into the Whitehouse against Obama even without Citizen's United. Representative democracy (small "d") is being dismantled by voter suppression, post-census gerrymandering, and even small bore Fascism as practiced by Rick Snyder of Mi...

             Here's a crazy thought. What about extending personhood under the First Amendment ONLY to tax payers in proportion to the percentage of their income that they pay in taxes? Never mind one person one vote. Try one vote per 10% of income. Under the Eisenhower tax rate, this would have given the wealthiest  9 votes, because over 90% was the tax rate. If you want tax breaks, then you pay for it in votes. You want to pay less? You get less say. Votes = 10%(income) - (tax breaks + subsidies+deductions) /Unadjusted income. Something like that This would neuter the 1% who pay no taxes and create a substantial disincentive to cut taxes and would empower those who are too poor to afford tax shelters, high power tax attorneys and accountants. Under this arrangement Romney, paying only 15% on capital gains, would get no more than 2 votes (rounding up, most generous.) Companies like GE who make billions, but pay no t...

In the milieu of Reaganite Conservative Orthodoxy  - to today's Conservative -  Reagan is the absolute final word in social and economic policy. History began with Reagan. And in the mind of Reagan, history ended with the Warren G.Harding Administration. Between the two periods, nothing happened. Nothing from which any policy lessons could be drawn. Not the Great Depression; not the struggle and value of the Labor movement; not the deficit investment in industrial expansion leading up to WW2 which was in fact the greatest economic expansion in history; not the Eisenhower tax rate, the Interstate highway System or his timely warning against the Military Industrial Complex; or LBJs War on Poverty and Great Society Programs, or the salutory effect of public education in over-coming Seperate but Equal and the enfranchisement of blacks after the abolition of Jim Crow. None of that exists, except as a horror that the Prophet Reagan saved us from. As a consequence, despite a...

When Jesus Christ comes back to Earth, I really have to doubt the reception he will receive here in America. Sure the propaganda is that America is great because God loves America...but I really have to wonder. If Christ could be said to have a social and fiscal policy, it is antipodes of that espoused by Ayn Rand and put into practice by Ronald Reagan - extending even to tax policy. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto to God what is God's," said Christ. Caesar being the government and what is being rendered is taxes. "Tax cuts" said Reagan. "Tax cuts, tax cuts, and still more tax cuts," said Bush the Younger "We need more tax cuts," says Romney. The Wealthy. Beneficiaries of the rising tide that lifts all boats, but which doesn't do anything but drown houses and pedestrians. According to Reagan, the class that needed the most money so that prosperity would trickle down to everyone else. Those euphemistic...

Dear President Obama I humbly submit the following policy recommendations for your approval End Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind. Instead return to the Great Society Initiatives of the Johnson Administration. Our present third rate educational system and third world destiny are the products of over 30 years of Reaganomic Orthodoxy. The last time the educational system was admitted to be dysfunctional was under the policy of "Separate but Equal." The Johnson initiatives worked. Invest heavily in public education. To do education on the cheap only invests in the back-door welfare state of the Prison Industrial Complex. Need proof? Four words: Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi. Invest in a Domestic Marshall Plan. The success of the original Marshall Plan is the reason that Germany remains the economically strongest nation of the European Union. Massive deficit investment in manufacturing and assembly during World War 2, along with infrastructure and works ...

Truly, America could have done worse than to elect Romney. They could have elected a know-nothing marionette of the Koch bros in Herman Cain. A tool of the evangelical and oil lobbies in Rick Perry. Returned to the Dark Ages with Ayatollah Santorum. Have the whole nation used as a mad scientist's laboratory by Gingrich, who would have colonies on the moon while school custodians are put out of work so little Johnny can bring home what had been a fraction of daddy's salary. Voters could have elected Ron Paul who would have compromised National Security with absolute abandonment of foreign policy; overturned the Civil Rights Act; and eventually overseen the dismemberment and Balkanization of the United States of America with the destruction of the Federal Government. We could have done worse than to vote for Mitt Romney. But not by much.

The killing of Trayvon Martin with impunity and the implicit blessing of the Sanford police department has brought to light some genuine ugliness in the American public in its discussion on race and justice. Apologists for George Zimmerman invariably bring up the recent St Patrick's Day killings in Chicago as an argument that black folks kill people too. No-one is disputing that. But unless the Chicago PD stood around, looked at all the dead bodies and the guilty with their smoking guns, pulled their thumbs out of their butts, sniffed them then said "Duhhh...okay. Nothing to see here. You can all go..." Then the situations are not nearly the same. The culpability for the crime is not for George Zimmerman alone, but even more for the police department for 1. Not arresting George Zimmerman. 2. Not even subjecting George Zimmerman to a background check, drug/alcohol test. Even though all of the above were preformed on the dead black kid. 3. Not even bothering to collec...

Originally posted on Newsvine http://redsfan.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/13/10670359-sarah-palin-freaks-after-obama-uses-her-racism-to-attack-the-gop?last=1331939307&threadId=3368565&sp=0&pc=25#c63433093 I Married an imperious Paleolithic Goddess! I'm with you women because my adoration for you goes WAY back! When Man was a hunter and a gatherer and even into the advent of Agriculture, Man enjoyed a special grace when he was moved to artistic and religious veneration of the corpulent female form. It was WOMAN that was the object that moved man to create the first realistic and abstracted image of art in the most durable materials he could find. That is ART and that is LOVE and that was the birth of CULTURE and Man's first step away from the world of beasts and toward Civilization. But there was a snake in the garden called Animal Husbandry. When men gave up hunting for herding they discovered that males impregnate females and that they can have chil...

excerpted from maddowblog: Jilly... the whole issue with religion and faith is that it is personal. Your relationship ( or not) with God is your own. As is mine. God is found in conciousness alone because this is a relative universe bound by space and time. An island in the eternal, infinite, and absolute that is the mind of God. The only place that those exist is in the hearts and minds of men. To go back to the cosmic watchmaker argument (for which **** is trying to find an organic analogue in the creation and structure of eyes) it doesn't matter whether or not it is found, no hand needs wind it...it just keeps ticking away. Did God create the universe, design the world? It doesn't matter. In the Bible, the Name of God is "I AM." Cogito ergo sum is only half right. Sum, what ever you cogito about it. Things ARE, life IS. Unarguable. That is the starting point. If you try to look any further back for first causes the way **** is, you might as well sit in a corner...

Don Quixokie Chi'ren chi'ren. You would think that because of Santorum's appeal to the Chistofascist segment population at the cost of demonizing the vast majority of Americans, you would THINK that he wouldn't have a snowball's chance right now. What everyone has forgotten is that the electoral, the participatory political process (oh Jesus, the alliteration!) has been chronically deformed since the Red Tide of 2010.

I dreamed that my wife and I were at a party and we were writing poems. Then we went to a park and heckled squirrels until they fell out of the trees, stunned by our taunting.

Excerpt from Newsvine thread samenslow Since I am experiencing the revolution in Egypt, I tend to follow American comments on events here. What is rather sad is the those who cry out over an Islamist takeover of Egypt are often the same people who favor America as a Christian nation. They refuse to see their reflection in the mirror of Middle East politics - just because they are using a different holy book. These religious movements, often tied to nationalism, are very dangerous to both the societies and to the religions involved. Imposes religion becomes religion of public ritual - not a matter of the heart or soul. It makes no difference if it is religious dogma or political dogma (communism) that is imposed. People adjust and learn to be great hypocrites. Human development and intellectual growth is stymied as all want to appear to fit the current orthodoxy. The major change of the 60's social revolution was not that we changed our behavior. We jus...