The GOP's close resemblance to a Psychrolutes marcidus

When I first read John Kass' article yesterday, I could have sworn he was describing Republicans.

He said, the cunning blobfish [Republican] is boneless [spineless], "a gelatinous orb hovering in the deep [shadows], covered in slime and mucus."

"A blobfish [Republican] looks like some fat, drunken judge [congressman] and may be highly intelligent. And therefore quite dangerous."

"It frowns. It leers. Sometimes, it even drools."

The blobfish [Republican] hovers just above the ocean [senate/house] floor without having to expend energy.

The blobfish [Republican] is becoming extinct.

As you've seen, Kass is talking about the spineless fish and not the dangerous Republicans. But you have to admit the similartities are uncanny.

A face only its mother can love.

THE RICH GET RICHER …

This article by David Cay Johnston, Tax Rates for Top 400 Earners Fall as Income Soars, is a damning indictment of economic inequities caused by Bush era tax cuts:

Since 1992, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their incomes rise by 13 percent in 2009 dollars, compared with an increase of 399 percent for the top 400.

The annual top 400 report was first made public by the Clinton administration, but the George W. Bush administration shut down access to the report.  Its release was resumed a year ago when President Obama took office.

(…)

The top 400 reports understate actual top incomes because of deferral rules. For example, managers of offshore hedge funds who deferred their gains may not be counted in the top 400 reports, which are based on the figure on the last line of the front page of Form 1040.

At least three hedge fund managers made $3 billion in 2007. It is not known how much, if any, of their income they deferred.

(…)

The biggest source of income was capital gains, which are taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent. Gains accounted for 66.3 percent of 2007 income for the top 400, up from 62.8 percent in 2006 and 36.1 percent in 1992.

(…)

The report shows that the number of the top 400 who paid an effective tax rate of 0 percent to 10 percent declined slightly, to 25 in 2007 from 31 in 2006. In 1992 only 6 of the top 400 paid an effective income tax rate of less than 10 percent.

Another 127 paid 10 percent to 15 percent in 2007, up from 113 in 2006.

Only 33 of the top 400 paid an effective tax rate of 30 percent to 35 percent, which is the maximum federal tax rate.

More tax cuts for the wealthy? Why isn't this called “socialism?”

BLACK HERITAGE TRAIL, BOSTON, MASS.

I took a nice long walk through the slushy streets of Boston today and was reminded of the Black Heritage Trail that winds around the West End and parts of Beacon Hill. 

The first Africans arrived in Boston in February of 1638, eight years after the city was founded. They were brought as slaves, purchased in Providence Isle, a Puritan colony off the coast of Central America. By 1705, there were over 400 slaves in Boston and the beginnings of a free black community in the North End.

I live in a section of the North End that is near to where the free black community was established--Copps Hill.  This part of the city was the least desireable because it was not near the docks and it was situated on a hill.

The two most famous blacks in colonial Boston were Phillis Wheatley and Crispus Attucks. Wheatley arrived in Boston as a frail, sickly slave girl, about 7 years old, directly from Africa. The family that bought her taught her to read and write. Phillis began to write poetry and for a times perhaps the most famous African born person in the world. She was set free, but never prospered from her poetry. She died in poverty.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye
"Their colour is a diabolic die.
Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

                                             --Phillis Wheatley

Attucks, who also went by the name of Michael Johnson, became famous as one of the victims of the Boston Massacre. He was described as black and American Indian.








 
 
The American Revolution was a turning point in the status of Africans in Massachusetts. At the end of the conflict, there were more free black people than slaves. When the first federal census was enumerated in 1790, Massachusetts was the only state in the Union to record no slaves.

The all-free black community in Boston was concerned with finding decent housing, establishing independent supportive institutions, educating their children, and ending slavery in the rest of the nation. All of these concerns were played out in this Beacon Hill neighborhood.

Salome Thomas-El, A Breath of Fresh Air

A breath of fresh air swept through my church on Valentine’s Day as educator Salome Thomas-El inspired the true believers at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County (UUCDC) that we could indeed make a difference in the life of a child. Thomas-El, who grew up in North Philadelphia, is next to the youngest child of a single mom. She implored his elementary teachers to help Salome be the first of her children to get to college. The teachers made their mark, and Thomas-El went on to become a teacher, principal and author. Now he inspires others to influence youth to aspire and achieve.

At a time when folks in this country are hunkering down into corners and screaming at one another, it is refreshing to participate with a group of people who want to create positive change. People who see a bright future in helping children, largely minority, largely inner city, people who want to ensure that these children do have a chance to get their fair share of the American Pie. Speaker and audience alike looked for ways to help rather than hinder the upward mobility of some of this country’s most challenged children.

The presentation was made possible through monies from the Homer Jack Fund at UUCDC. Homer Jack was an activist UU minister who spent his final years as a congregant of our church.

Here are links to some organizations striving to help young people succeed. Rather than argue, blame, divide, and scream, how about if we all pick an organization and provide support to our young people?

After School Activities Partnership

Created in 2002 in response to a civic outcry for help with activities for the city’s youth during the critical unsupervised hours after school, ASAP/After School Activities Partnerships has provided after school recreational and enrichment activities to Philadelphia kids in some of the poorest and most dangerous areas of the city.

http://www.phillyasap.org/Home.aspx

The Achievement Project

TAP is a nonprofit organization that helps young people in Chester, Pennsylvania to succeed in high school; to apply to and be admitted to college; and to arrive at college having acquired the capacity to succeed there.

420 East 9th Street
Chester, PA 19013-5941
(484) 995-0828

www.tapofchester.org

Chester Eastside Ministries
Provides afterschool programs and summer day camps to children of Chester’s East Side
9th & Potter Sts.

Chester, PA 19016

610-872-4812

RevBerniceWarren@chestereastside.org

The Be Proud Foundation

The overall mission of the Be Proud Foundation is to provide experiential learning opportunities for youth targeted at exposing their thinking errors, misconceptions and gaps in knowledge thereby increasing their chances for a successful life.

(610)891-8808
Fax (610)891-8919
email: beproud@comcast.net

Peace in the Streets/Peach on Earth

Teaches conflict resolution techniques, primarily for Chester, PA youth.Contact Wanda Moore

Pspe2002@yahoo.com

Big Brothers/Big Sisters

The Big Brothers Big Sisters Mission is to help children reach their potential through professionally supported, one-to-one relationships with mentors that have a measurable impact on youth.

1341 N. Delaware Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19125

(215) 701-8100
Bigs@bbbssepa.org
http://www.bbbssepa.org

Fresh Air Fund

Since 1877, The FreshAir Fund, a not-for-profit agency, has provided free summer experiences in the country to more than 1.7 million New York City children from disadvantaged communities. Each year, thousands of children visit volunteer host families in 13 states and Canada through the Friendly Town Program or attend Fresh Air Fund camps.

http://www.freshair.org/top-links/about-us.aspx

NAACP Scholarship Fund

The NAACP is a leading advocate of equal access to quality education. In an effort to promote and ensure higher education opportunities for minority youth, the NAACP offers the following national scholarships: Earl G. Graves Scholarship, Agnes Jones Scholarship, Historically Black College & Universities Scholarship Fund, Lillian and Samuel Sutton Scholarship, Roy Wilkins scholarship, and the Hubertus W.V. Willems Scholarship. These awards help eliminate financial difficulties that may hinder students’ higher education goals. Scholarship award amounts range from $1,000 - $5,000 and are disbursed in two installments throughout a specified school year. Each scholarship contains its own set of requirements and students are encouraged to apply for each award that aligns with their eligibility.

Contact your local NAACP

http://www.naacp.org/advocacy/education/

Nationalizing Wal-Mart

So let me get this straight, President Obama, or if you're a Republican, just plain Obama, is a dangerous leader because when someone tried to blow up a plane he took hours before mentioning the magic word "War." That was bad. Never ever talk of criminal activity when you can describe it as an act of war, unless of course it's our criminal activity. The non-sequitur correlate of this principle is that no rules apply when the words are coming from on official right wing spokesman, like Rush or Sarah. So it's OK for him to call people "retards" on the air, but just disgusting for Rahm to use it in private. Likewise it's OK for Rush to insist there's no war on while all the rest of his party continue to justify each and every contradiction. Actually no rules apply to Rush at all, since he can get away with such statements as insisting that the President has already dealt the US a more devastating blow than we suffered in World War II without being called a liar, an ignoramus or the worst enemy Truth ever had.

But let's start at the beginning, Rush claimed yesterday that Wal-mart was lobbying heavily to keep "Obama" from nationalizing the company. Lord knows they have lobbyists, but it takes a certain kind of person to broadcast that there is any likelihood of such an action and a really special kind of person to believe it. Now why would that be something awful you might ask Rush? Because there's no war on, says he, driving home the point that whether there is or isn't is situational and specific to any particular argument he's trying to make. There's a war when you can attack the President with it and there isn't when you can attack the President with it and both times Rush will be right.

"The last time this happened was World War II, but that was because there was a war on and it made sense"

The last time what happened, Rush? It may make sense to him, but not only are we losing men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, we did not nationalize Wal-Mart then or ever, nor is anyone contemplating it but Rush.

"Country is under assault, more so than we were during World War II, other than the Japanese. But the Germans never attacked us, the Japanese did."

he continued and I'll leave it to you to figure out what alternate universe these "facts" come from. I suspect there are numbers of people who will simply accept that the current administration is more dangerous to our national security than what in the late 1930's was the most powerful military on Earth, will simply nod and accept that Germany didn't declare war on us and didn't over-run Europe and attack England and that we didn't lose almost half a million troops or that untold tens of millions of people didn't die -- Obama is dangerous and has already done us more harm than the Axis powers and without a doubt is going to nationalize Wal-Mart.

Does anyone reading this believe that Rush Limbaugh isn't stark raving mad with power, thinking he can invent alternate histories, create alternate realities and use them to attack the government and the people of the United States of America? There are millions who do and it may be that one or two of them will take it upon themselves to do Rush's bidding and rid us of the man who has already ruined everything for everyone.

Of course it's a United States of America where the president's imaginary "gun grab" has already taken place, where people who just got a tax cut are protesting an imaginary increase, where people who can't afford a check-up much less treatment for a serious illness are screaming about "Obama" taking away their ideal situation and somewhere, somebody is plotting acts of violence because after all, "Obama" is not only a Nazi, but a more dangerous one than Hitler. Thus spake Limbaugh.

EXPLORER, MOUNTAIN MAN, INDIAN CHIEF

James Pierson Beckwourth (1798-1866) would be a well known figure in the history of the wild west but for the color of his skin. In this month celebrating Black History, I’d like to draw attention to this adventurer, if only to make him better known among our blog readership.

Jim Beckwourth was a character such as the kind from which legends are made like Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok.
And like those men, Jim could tell a tall tale with the best of them. It was a favorite pastime, sitting around the campfire after a tough day, having a drink and telling stories. Unfortunately, such idle pleasures would be used to discredit his true accomplishments.

Jim Beckwourth wrote about his life with the help of a writer named Thomas D Bonner, who admittedly “polished it up”. Many people in those days would dimiss his story as lies.
But contrary to those beliefs, later evidence tends to support many of his claims.

His mother was a slave and his father was an Englishman who, although prevented from raising his son as he wanted, did ensure that he would be free by providing him emancipation papers.

Jim went west to work as a trapper and guide and was captured by Crow Indians. He was eventually embraced by the Crow and stayed with them up to eight years, facilitating trade with the whites and rising in rank to War Chief. But wanderlust called and even though he married an Indian woman, he simply could not stay in one place.

Jim Beckwourth would travel the country from the Florida Everglades to the California gold mines, looking for adventure and employment and is credited with discovering the Beckwourth Pass through the Sierra Nevadas, used by countless settlers headed for California.

Beckwourth returned to the Crow village where he died on October 29, 1866 at the age of 68. Even his death is subject to various mysterous stories; one claims the Crow poisoned him, another that he committed ritual suicide. Perhaps he just died in his sleep after years of hard living.

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in this historic figure and you can read more about this man's fascinating and colorful life HERE.

James Beckwourth embodies the American spirit of adventure and deserves a prominent place in American history.

You have the right to remain silent

Why is it that when Republicans only become creative when they run out of factual support? Lies, distortions, evasions, calumnies, falsehoods, fabrications, disinformation, distortions, propaganda, tall tales and slander; defamation, deceit, prevarications and mendacity: all kinds of colors in the "conservative" crayon box.

One lie I've heard far too much of from the Fox-poisoned Right, is how that lily livered, limp wristed, far-left Liberal and soft-on-crime Obama all but let Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab off the hook with his damned un-American insistence on justice and due process because he, having been read his Miranda Rights, immediately "clammed up." As is almost invariably true, the facts say otherwise.

The administration's timeline just released shows that the would-be murderer was removed to a hospital shortly after being arrested. There, he apparently began spilling the beans like a bratty one year old in a high chair until his medical condition deteriorated sharply - undoubtedly from having his genitals nearly burned off. The Miranda litany was recited only 9 hours after capture and after his condition was stabilized by four hours of surgery and questioning resumed but without response. How can you tell when the Republicans are lying? You don't need to, they always are.

Why is it that when Republicans only become creative when they run out of factual support? Sometimes they're so hard up for things to use to undermine our government, they just make them up from scratch or expand some minute and irrelevant mote into a universe of slime. If you haven't seen the latest chapter of Teleprompter Wars in your in-box yet, I'm sure you soon will. It's the one showing the President using two teleprompters to address a group of small children under the rubric of:

"Apparently there is no venue too small to require multiple teleprompters. I saw these pictures and first thought they were photo shopped, but it ends up they are actual pictures from Obama talking to an elementary school classroom. And they made fun of Bush's communication skills."

Well, no you didn't, the picture of the kids in the classroom and the President at a subsequent news conference in a different room do not show him using a teleprompter to address them and of course you know that. He was giving a speech to reporters who would be willing to use any misplaced word to attack him.

You know that he writes well, speaks well and is very much more able to communicate than his babbling, blathering predecessor and that looks bad for you -- and so you butter it over with lies and serve it up to your dogs for breakfast.

What do they hope to accomplish with such clumsy calumnies? Why are Republicans so desperate to believe anything that will make their visceral hatred of Democracy and uppity people of African descent seem to be less than the demented evil that it is? Why are they willing to sacrifice our country on some pagan altar of some bellicose god of war and conquest? Why do we sit by and let them do it?

OKTAPODI VALENTINE (back by popular demand)

Tying Abortion to Corporate Personhood

Conservative Cal Thomas says of the Supreme Court decision Citizens United v Federal Election Commission: "What makes the ruling and the march ironic is that the 1973 court...downgraded a human fetus to the level of nonperson, while the modern court has invested "personhood" in corporations. Does anyone else see a contradiction or at least a moral inconsistency in these two rulings?"

Thomas is a rare conservative to admit a problem; most say it's the greatest blow for freedom since Plessy v Ferguson. Thomas is also correct to suggest the decision is judicial overreach every bit as awful as he holds Roe v Wade to be.

The very name Citizens United is Orwellian doublespeak. The ruling culminates a decades-long campaign by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, corporate trade associations, and assorted right-wing think tanks. It is "grounded" in the 14th Amendment, which was specifically intended to establish the rights of former slaves.

And what of these corporate "persons?" For instance, when a person sells $40 billion of toxic waste that blows up the global economy, bets on who dies first, declares an emergency to accept government help, and amasses the world's largest fortune in the process, we generally hound them to the ends of the Earth and relieve them of their accounts. Yet this comic book supervillain has a name: Goldman-Sachs. The Supreme Court has announced this psychopathic "person" has the same rights accorded to me by the Constitution. Actually, it has more rights than we do: corporations quite literally get away with murder. Blackwater, too is now a "person."

This happy state of affairs comes courtesy of a movement Thomas has abetted his entire adult life. They said, 'be afraid of Big Brother!' while endowing little brothers with unelected and unaccountable power. To this end Thomas has said much of a "right to life;" but his movement has designed a world in which that right ends at birth, leaving us all on our own against the little brothers.

I find Cal Thomas to be a contradiction, or at least a moral inconsistency.


Adding: apologies for my lack of attention here lately. I've been busy.

Decision approaches in Uganda

The Ugandan Parliament now looks likely to pass the draconian anti-homosexuality law which has recently been widely discussed around the internet. According to Avaaz.org:

The bill proposes life imprisonment for anyone convicted of having same-sex relations and imposes the death penalty for “serial offenders”. NGOs working to prevent the spread of HIV could be imprisoned for up to 7 years for “promoting homosexuality”. Even members of the public face up to three years in jail if they fail to report homosexual activity to the police within 24 hours!

It is still possible that international condemnation could deter the Ugandan government from passing this. Avaaz's petition is here.

Thanks to DemWit for the information.