Why Do Repubs Hate America?

Make millions of lower and middle class workers scramble for the money to give to your Health Insurance Masters but make sure the richest people in the country don't have to pay their fair share.

Deficits???? Where have you been the past eight years?

Why do Republicons hate America?

Tax break for employer health plans a target again - Yahoo! News

Iz Caturday!

Skeeter on the Skeeter Heater. (Heater hidden by Skeeter).

Thanks.

Just back from a lovely Thanksgiving in the Mile High City. Things I'm thankful for: a perfect drive with no weather surprises on Monument; aging parents getting around pretty well; skipping cooking the traditional meal and eating out instead; no marshmallows on the sweet potatoes as served by the restaurant. Also thankful that I could get through the two days of wingnut beliefs and Obama bashing with a minimum of eye-rolling and sighing on my part. Just let it go, just let it go....

Also thankful for the chance to load and test my remote software program to reduce the number of "I'm going to throw this computer out the window" phone calls. Calls about how nothing works and why does God hate me are likely to continue, however. My new planned response is to agree that nothing works and it's probably Obama's fault.

So Now They'll Be Hiring, Right?

Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter - Yahoo! Finance: "American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms."

Yea, Big Business! Good thing we'll keep giving them tax breaks because they create jobs, you know. Except when they don't.

Is it me or is it getting hot in here?

For all of us Denver Natives

Casa Bonita, Denver, Colorado

Casa Bonita is a sort of Mexican restaurant crossed with Disneyland, and is so well-known in Colorado that it was featured in an episode of South Park. The 52,000-square-foot restaurant that can seat more than a thousand is home to more than just all-you-can-eat beef enchiladas. Among the 22-karat gold leaf dome and pirate caverns are cowboy shootouts, escaping gorillas, cliff divers, and a mish mash of Mexican-related performances.

Cliff divers and Cheez Whiz Enchiladas

The 7 Creepiest Things About the TSA's "Porno Scanners" | Civil Liberties | AlterNet

This is not to keep us safer. Security is big business, and profitable:

The 7 Creepiest Things About the TSA's "Porno Scanners" Civil Liberties AlterNet: "The invasive scanners can see your tampons, give you cancer and make your grandmother cry -- and they're not cheap. Why do we keep using them?"

Bush League

Hammer Of The Blogs: "Ann Richards had it so right when she said that Bush was born on third base but acted like he'd hit a triple. This is a penetrating insight to the man's personality -- it really is incomprehensible to him that actual poor people, who literally cannot bootstrap out of their mess with hard work and/or gumption, because they are overworked and underpaid, and will probably work until the day they drop, that such people exist. His mother's infamous comment at the Katrina shelter in Texas illuminated that whole mentality -- she seems to regard poor people as another species -- so it would make sense that Junior, who literally has never made a fucking dime in his life without the imprimatur of his old man and Nazi-symp grandfather, would just have no clue."

Read the whole thing at the link. Hammer nails it.

Monument Mess

TRAFFIC ALERT: Pileup closes I-25 northbound near Larkspur, will cause delays for travelers northbound, colorado, pileup - Top Stories - Colorado Springs Gazette, CO

Another reminder of the many times white-knuckling the wheel over Monument.

Nicer image:

They Need a Guide?

We're famous!

THE WEEK IN REVIEW - The Pueblo Chieftain: Local: "Puebloan Phillip Ray Greaves II touched off a nationwide controversy last week when he published a guide for pedophiles, 'A Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child Lover's Code of Conduct.'
His book was for sale as a downloadable e-book on the Internet retailer Amazon's website until Thursday, when the company removed it after intense pressure to do so."

Boehnercare

Shoot - I can't remember where I found this, hope you can read the name

Hot Water, Part 35089

By Jill, emphasis mine:

Brilliant at Breakfast: "But as long as we are willing to vote for people who get out on the stump and say, 'Look! Look at that [black guy/illegal immigrant/Muslim/Indian guy/welfare mother/pick a boogeyman any boogeyman]! HE's your problem!' -- while they lift our wallets from our back pockets; as long as Americans jump at the red meat tossed at them by opportunistic hatemongers like Sarah Palin and Rand Paul; as long as we persist in this fantasy that if we just stuff enough taxpayer cash into the pockets of the wealthy they might hire a few people, we're going to continue to be like the proverbial frog in the slowly-heating water on the stove -- unable to see our participation in our own doom."

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Prairie News and Beyond

I just got back from a lovely trip to Vail. To get there, a mad dash to Denver before the snow hit on Monument and speeding to make a 5:30 P.M. deadline to get to Castle Rock with enough lights on I-25 before my night-blindness kicked in. Another trip to make me ask, if you live in Colorado, why would you park your RV on the Prairie?

Big news on our return: some First News at Five Looking out for Accurate and Balanced Coverage reports that a neighborhood in the Springs is all atwitter since cops are looking for a big meth house. Or something.

Penfield man dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in home - RocNow.com: "The teens also told authorities that the family had a fire in a fireplace the previous evening, he said. They also told deputies that two carbon monoxide detectors had sounded Monday evening, but that the family was not clear at the time why the detectors were sounding and removed them from the house, Helfer said."
h/t Balloon Juice

Hope

Wish I'd Said That

Brilliant at Breakfast: "Yet all these corporations have to do is say, 'Uh uh' and countless tens of millions will believe them when they say socialized medicine is evil and unAmerican, counter-capitalistic and Communist, that the free market always has our best interests at heart and can always be counted on to be responsible stewards of the environment."

Jurassicpork lays it out for you.

Iz Caturday!

The gray overlords take advantage of the Sun Entitlement

The Con is on

Your Orange Overlord

Or perhaps I should say the con is off. It worked. No surprise, I blame Obama for not yelling louder than the Repub party. 95% of us got a tax break last year. The stimulus worked for those who needed more time to find a job, and a 75% reduction in the cost of Cobra. A $8000 credit for first-time home buyers (gladly taken by a co-worker that year, the same woman who proclaimed to us when Obama was elected that “now our taxes are going up”). Health Insurance Reform that doesn’t do much, but does require insurers spend 80% of their income on your care, not amassing huge profits and giving more millions to the CEO’s while increasing your premiums and denying you coverage – coverage that you pay for every month. The only industry in the U.S. currently not subject to anti-trust laws. Your new overlord has promised to repeal it.

You think they’re concerned about the deficit? Where have you been for the past nine years? The Repubs in Congress continued to fund two wars while keeping the cost off the books and borrowing from China. Any objection to the cost and you were labeled as hating the troops.

And the bank bail out? TARP stalled for a day in Congress – remember, gentle reader, this was during the Bush Administration – because two Democratic members had the anti-patriotic gall to question how we were going to fund it. Luckily the Banksters went without bonuses to pay the taxpayers back…oh, wait….

They are for deregulation. My friend complained the other day that you couldn’t trust what was in your food (especially after the Repubs watered down the authority of the FDA during the Bush years) and why wasn’t somebody in government watching that for us? Who did they vote for last Tuesday?

They want to do away with ‘entitlement’ programs. One couple I know on Social Security complained that they weren’t getting a cost of living increase this year and “the government better do something”. Who did they vote for? The Repubs who have promised to privatize it. To give the funds you’ve paid into over the year to the Banksters so you can watch it dissolve like the 401K you used to live on, but isn’t enough anymore since the crash, so thank God for Social Security. Oh, wait…

They don’t believe that global warming is man-made. Cuz that would hurt poor corporations, having to be more responsible for their damage and stuff. Look at what that nasty government made B.P. do – be held responsible for their actions and all.

You can continue to vote for the biggest shouters, the loudest guys in the room because they use empty phrases and meaningless jargon to get you to vote against your own best interests. John Boehner is not for you. He is for the corporations that fund him now and he will do their bidding as their lobbyist when he’s done shedding crocodile tears and trashing your future.  It’s the American Way.

Congrats! You Did it!

h/t Pharyngula

Sanity Restored: Photos From The Stewart/Colbert Rally |

Signs from the Rally to Restore Sanityand/or Fear. Good laughs, no mispellings.

Sanity Restored: Photos From The Stewart/Colbert Rally TPM Photo Galleries