Watering Hole: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 – Yellow Ribbon Support

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Last week, we celebrated Veteran’s Day which is a national holiday.  But how much real support does this Congress give to our veterans?

Did you know…

  • 1/3 of the homeless population are veterans?
  • 1 million veterans rely on food stamps?

Yet, Congress is fine with cutting food stamps to our veterans along with the cuts that affect seniors and the 49% of children that rely on this program.  The House bill reduces the SNAP program (food stamps) by $40 billions dollars.  In the Senate, their bill reduces the SNAP program by $5 billions dollars.  Senators Warren and Gildebrand, introduced a bill that would reduce the insurance guarantee for crop failures by 2%.  The money saved by this change would cover the $5 billions dollars therefore no cuts to SNAP would be needed.  Of course, this idea died before any Senators had a chance to vote.

In a nation this wealthy, there is no reason for any American to go without food.  The Republicans in Congress have turned their backs on the most vulnerable Americans and that includes our veterans.

Congressional Republicans, have you no shame?

This is our Open Thread.  What are your thoughts?  Speak Up!

Here’s a link to an article in the New York Times.

Here’s a link to an NPR program regarding SNAP.

81 thoughts on “Watering Hole: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 – Yellow Ribbon Support”

  3. “In a nation this wealthy, there is no reason for any American to go without food.”

    President Franklin D. Roosevelt summed up the matter of all the things no American should ever have to go without when he said (in his 1944 State of the Union Address):

    In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

    Among these are:

    *The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
    *The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
    *The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
    *The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
    *The right of every family to a decent home;
    *The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
    *The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
    *The right to a good education.

    Roosevelt’s premises of 70 yrs ago are equally valid this day. They’re also, each and every one, still detested by the fascist right, i.e. the bulk of the Republcan Party which, for some reason, prefers to deny any “basis of security and prosperity” for all but the American criminal class of Wall Street and Washington.

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    • It’s not even about ‘enough’. The wealthy merely use an asset portfolio as their means of ‘keeping score’.

      I still believe the driving force (money), behind the attempt to repeal Obamacare is the additional taxes on high incomes in the law. It’s not about conservative principles, because they have none. The Koch brothers want it repealed because if it stands, they lose one. If they get rid of it, they get to say they won. They are so spoiled in their expectations that for them to allow the public good to get in the way of their ‘running up the score’ goes against everything their daddy taught them.

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  6. the Dow Jones closed at 16,016.86 which is a new all time record.

    1% of the population owns 42% of the country’s net worth.

    last year Washington DC area added 21,000 households to the top 1%, this reflects directly on lobbyist activities, contracts awarded and special interest served.

    the GOP still hasn’t submitted a jobs bill after running on a JOBS platform since the 2007-2008 recession.

    there are record numbers of Americans falling off unemployment and onto welfare.

    we still have no Farm Bill to address the basic food needs of veterans, the poor, children in need, the elderly, and disabled.

    these days, being “proud to be an american” is an impossibility for me….

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    • remember, Democrats in the Senate allowed food stamps to be severed from the farm bill, allowing them to pass subsidies to the rich and elimate benefits to the poor.

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        • As long as the Democrats send a career bag man like Terry McAuliffe up for the alternative to a God Bothering Teabagger…. it will continue.

          The system is broken. Take a look at WA’s GMO food-labelling initiative…. $22m poured in from Monsanto, Dupont and Big Ag….. the initiative failed depsite their being 60% support to label GMO food about 5 weeks from election day.

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  7. ……the rate of obstruction has increased considerably, and Republicans are now on pace to filibuster a full 40 nominees before the end of the Obama administration in January 2017.

    Not only do these filibusters hinder the work of a wide range of agencies and departments, they are also part of a larger Republican agenda to nullify existing laws through obstruction. Many of President Obama’s executive branch nominees have faced filibusters not because Senate Republicans objected to their personal qualifications, but because they do not wish to allow the agencies and departments to which they have been nominated to do their work.

    This nullification strategy is part of the same wrong-headed philosophy that forced the government to shut down last month, and which is currently preventing three impressively qualified nominees for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals from receiving confirmation votes.

    The ultimate victims of Republican obstruction aren’t the Senate’s Democratic leadership or even President Obama, but the individual Americans who depend on a government that operates effectively and addresses the needs of real people.

    http://www.pfaw.org/press-releases/2013/11/pfaw-memo-gop-exceeds-expectations-executive-branch-obstruction

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  8. The poor, as long as they are slowly deprived of sustanence, will bear their suffering.

    But inevitably there will be some incident, some singular outrage that will waken the beast. Each new uprising will be met with greater and greater force from the government…Americans killing Americans, as the armed forces do the bidding of the ruling class to put down civil unrest.

    In the wake of the ruins, a new messaih will arise, as if from the ashes of hell on earth. She will preach a path of peaceful protest. She will be martyred. And the world will grow silent.

    For awhile.

    Like a storm, gathering in the night.

    Then the rage pent up by generations will be unleashed. The castles of the rich and mighty will be torn down.

    This is the path we are on, unless things change. But those who must change, cannot see this path, cannot see the need to change.

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  9. The Depression of the 30s fueled Roosevelt’s argument that there is a second bill of rights, to not starve, to have a roof over one’s head, clothing on one’s person.
    But Ronnie Raygun and his successors are determined to roll that back, so that the priviledged continue to get more and more.
    It will stop at some point.
    And it won’t be pretty.

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    • “One million — or 10 — ain’t what it used to be.”

      I don’t agree. I’d be retired right now if I had one million dollars.

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      • I could do it too, if I didn’t have three kids on the ‘launch pad’ and a spouse who could get off the couch and turn the TV off.

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  11. TEPCO Risks All At Fukushima

    On Monday, by far the most dangerous nuclear operation attempted in human history was set to begin in the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, the removal of more than 1,300 spent fuel rods and some 200 unused rods from a reservoir on top of Unit 4.

    While the undertaking is necessary, the worst-case scenario would pale in comparison the triple meltdowns of 2011 and necessitate the evacuation of the capital Tokyo.

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  12. QOTD:
    Toronto Mayor Rob Ford:
    “I’m not perfect”.
    Ford has admitted to smoking crack cocaine and driving drunk in the past. The crack use, he told reporters earlier this month, was done “probably in one of my drunken stupors

    Yeah Your Mayoralness, smoking crack while driving drunk proves not only that you’re not perfect, but that you are a klueless idiot.

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  14. Beck Hops On The Bandwagon: Obama ‘Has An Issue With God’
    SUBMITTED BY Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 11/19/2013 3:12 pm
    As part of an effort aimed at honoring the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has produced a project featuring famous Americans reciting the speech. The version of the speech read by President Obama for the project did not include the phrase” under God” which, of course, has thrown the Right into a frenzy, despite the fact that Obama was asked to read the very first draft of the speech which did not include that phrase.

    Glenn Beck was among those freaking out about it, screaming that it was all intentional on the part of Obama because “the man has an issue with God” and “he is changing our history, he is changing our traditions”:

    http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beck-hops-bandwagon-obama-has-issue-god

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    • And we all know the one year anniversary is coming up and America has done precisely fook all to protect their kids from a country awash in firearms and paranoid dead-enders who will use them on you.

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  19. From Slate:

    The Washington Post has an article on Paul Ryan’s efforts to rebrand himself as an anti-poverty crusader that lands way up there on the unintentional comedy scale. All of Ryan’s ideas to help the poor seem to involve taking money away from low-income people in order to reduce taxes on the rich. But Bishop Shirley Holloway is on hand to explain why this makes sense:

    “Paul wants people to dream again,” Holloway said of Ryan. “You don’t dream when you’ve got food stamps.”

    Scott Winship, a conservative policy analyst who’s working with Ryan’s staff concede that this kind of thing “makes Republicans look like they’re just punishing poor people,” which in my experience is a common side-effect of punishing poor people.

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  22. The judge ordered on Tuesday that Zimmerman could be released on $9,000 bond. He was also barred from possessing guns or from coming within 1,500 feet of Scheibe. Zimmerman will have to wear a GPS tracking device until his next court date on Jan. 7.

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  23. QOTD:

    “The only thing I said to him is [to] make sure he could take a piss without anyone having to help him. It’s a little humiliating.” — Christian Bale advising future Batman, Ben Affleck.

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  26. In case you haven’t done so, here’s your chance to read the Gettysburg Address and think on it a bit:

    Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

    But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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    • And finally, my QOTD:

      ““Either the NSA is really trying to comply with the court’s orders and is absolutely incapable of doing so, in which case it’s terrifying that they’re performing this surveillance, or they’re not really trying to comply,” – Elizabeth Golden, New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice

      ….. that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

      Sorry Abe, we blew it.

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    • Which version is this, as there are five different ones? No YouTube then ya know. This version has “under God”, but not all have that included. Ken Burns documentary having celebrities, and the Prez, recite the address, does not include the “under God” version.

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  27. I’m getting really sick of this shit. How many people have to be threatened and/or killed by a single individual with a gun before we decide said individual should never, ever, be allowed to posses a gun? I actually like my guns. They provide sport, entertainment, and a good investment. But? I would gladly surrender my toys and the investment they represent if our society would take heroic action to take guns away from violent creeps like George Zimmerman. I have a more than passing acquaintance with the English language and I simply can not express the level of my disgust with this country and our, so-called, “debate” about guns.

    Here’s an idea. Let’s create a registry, like a bridal registry, that provides free guns to any woman stupid enough to take a chance with a violent, gun-toting, murderous freak like George Zimmerman. I have an extra ten bucks in my wallet and will gladly provide it to any charity that takes up my cause to arm women and children who are at risk. Shit! I’m going to have to drink a lot more schnapps if I want to sleep tonight and, considering how many nights I feel the same way, it would be a whole lot cheaper to just give every stupid woman, and their children, in the country a free gun.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ZIMMERMAN_ARRESTED_911_CALLS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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    • Albuquerque Voters Reject Late-Term Abortion Ban

      Voters rejected the measure 55 percent to 45 percent following an emotional and graphic campaign that brought in national groups and hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising. The campaign included protests that compared abortion to the Holocaust and displayed pictures of aborted fetuses.

      Thought you might want to know the percentages, since the ACLU couldn’t give the most important stat about the rejection, such as how wide the margin was…

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        • They decided about a week ago to have me working noon to 12:30am, so I am home on time. They wanted me to have more time with the day shift guy I’m learning the Ingersoll machine from, then changed their mind again, and I’m just running another machine for now. I may switch to day shift again either next Monday or the week after. Then, once I’m really up to speed, I’ll go back to night shift, probably 6pm to 6am until we catch up with the delivery schedule for the parts.

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  29. Based on what she’s said recently, Elizabeth Warren may not be the reincarnation of Ted Kennedy, but he’s surely whispering in her ear.

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