"Instant Karma's gonna get you, A senior US general has warned President Barack Obama's deadline to begin pulling troops out of Afghanistan is encouraging the Taliban.
US General James Conway, head of the US Marine Corps, said the deadline was "giving our enemy sustenance".
Gen Conway warned that US forces in southern Afghanistan will likely have to stay in place for several years.
His comments are likely to fuel debate over US strategy in Afghanistan and Mr Obama's July 2011 withdrawal date.
I was very encouraged to read an article last Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Voters Back Tough Steps to Reduce Budget Deficit." What is discouraging is that some people, mostly Republican politicians, are trying to convince people that tax cuts do not contribute to the deficit. This is not only misinformation, it is dangerous misinformation.
The misinformers' claim is that tax cuts pay for themselves and thus do not impact the deficit negatively. They claim that lower tax rates stimulate the economy and job growth so much that you wind up with more tax revenues at lower rates than you do at higher rates. While President Bush was telling the public that tax cuts pay for themselves, his 2003 Economic Report of the President, pages 57-58, told a very different story...
Retirement Age Raised to 100,Freedom of religion, last time I checked, was one of the freedoms that soldiers retained. Bravo to the soldiers who stood up to the religious bullying of their commander.
Alan Simpson believes that Social Security is "like a milk cow with 310 million tits," according to an email he sent to the executive director of National Older Women's League Tuesday morning. Simpson co-chairs the deficit commission, which is considering various proposals to cut Social Security benefits.Simpson was appointed by President Obama. He should resign. But, he won't. Obama needs to fire him.
Simpson's email, which OWL chief Ashley Carson released publicly, (PDF) was sent in response to an April blog post Carson wrote for the Huffington Post. Carson criticized Simpson for repeatedly describing his Social Security opponents as "Pink Panthers," arguing that the description had sexist connotations.
His email is peppered with exclamation points and condescension. At one point he urged Carson to read a certain graph, "which I hope you are able to discern if you are any good at reading graphs."
Here's the key paragraph in the email from Simpson:
Anyway, have a look at it and if you should choose, you might communicate with me. If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security instead of just babbling into the vapors, let me know. And yes, I've made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know 'em too. It's the same with any system in America. We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!Honest work. Ha.
"When you really get down to it, we Tea Partiers don't give Views differ.
###
What if members of Congress were held###
Jill: The next time we are attacked -- and we will be -- you can lay the blame at the feet of right-wing nutballs right here at home.
###
Poisoning the seas
In essence, it is what we are doing by allowing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to increase. Much of the CO2 humanity has pumped into the atmosphere has been absorbed by the oceans and, as a result the oceans are acidifying.
In case it hasn't occurred to you yet, the plankton in the oceans produce much of the oxygen in the atmosphere. If the oceans continue to acidify and the life forms in the ocean die off, the result will not be very good, to say the least.
Nothing will be done, of course. Between the "junk science" propaganda of the extraction industries, the paranoia of the conservatives ("it's all a plot to get us back to living in mud huts") and the Chinese/Indian complaints of "we didn't cause this, why do we have to suffer", nothing will be done until we are on the brink of a mass extinction event. But by then, it will be far too late.
This is a global problem and as much as individual efforts to reduce their carbon footprint may be laudable, they will have all of the effect of farting during a hurricane.
Either humanity does something with all dispatch to stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere or our civilization will die and, possibly, so will our species.[1]
Iowa, home to Senator I AM NOT A NAIL Grassley and the largest tainted egg recall in modern history has something else going on for it. Meet Wingnuttia's Kim Lehman, who is one of Iowa's two national Republican Committee members, who is saying publicly that President Carebear is a muslin.
It all started off innocently enough, as these things often do, with her twatting to her twerps on Twitter:
Oddly, it made the news that a GOP operative made the assertion, using a derivation of the magical phrase beloved of Wingnuts everywhere, Read My Lips which is usually followed by a lie or broken promise. Anyway, Lehman got some attention and instead of claiming that it was a youthful indiscretion or that she didn't know the hooker (the usual GOP excuses), she doubled-down:
He's the one that the news is about. It isn't about me. Call the president. … Say, 'Are you a Christian or not?'" Lehman said. "If I'm wrong, I'm more than happy to say, 'Oh, I'm wrong."
And then she followed it up with:
"I don't give myself an appearance to the Muslims that I am aligning myself with the Muslims. I am strictly a Christian. I believe that. I stand by that. I'll die by that."
But I suppose that wasn't enough to get her free Saint Ronnie sippy cup, so she went even farther:
"Are you a Christian? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven because that's what the Christian faith believes. It's the defining difference between Christianity and other religions."
###
The left has been begging Obama since before election to get rid of the Depression Twins. Now that Boner wants them gone, we give them until Friday. "Boehner called on Obama to fire Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council. Biden brushed aside the suggestion. Even such firings wouldn't be enough, though, Boehner said. "This is no substitute for a referendum on the president's job-killing agenda," he argued. "That question will be put before the American people in due time. But we do not have the luxury of waiting months for the president to pick scapegoats for his failing 'stimulus' policies." "
###
Repugs demand you pay $3 million to each of the nation's 120,000 richest.
###
###
You Still Have John McCain To Kick Around, Forever
