Bad Deeds for 8-14-2009

 

The Rich Have Gotten Much Richer and You Got Almost Nothing – Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen just before the Great Depression. the top .001 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000. As of 2007, the top 10% of American earners pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that’s higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the roaring 1920s.

Did you hear that? A few rich people get nearly HALF OF ALL WAGES! That doesn’t include all the money they make on their other schemes. And they want more tax breaks! And high-deductable health insurance works just fine for them too. Look at the chart below. They’ve been getting what they want and leaving everyone else behind for the past 30 years!

 

The Palin-Grassley Freedom From Information Act – Hitler, like I have to tell you, supports Medicare reimbursement for end-of-life counseling because he wants the Federal government to talk America’s old people into killing themselves. We don’t know why he wants this. Maybe he’s still bitter about the Battle of the Bulge.

And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for Sarah Palin’s Facebook page.

Sarah Palin Facebook status was: “… is fearing Death Panels.” (Thumbs down. Doesn’t like this.) And that was good enough for Chuck Grassley.

As Grassley explains: “We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”

Does Chuck Grassley mean we can only write laws that make sense to people who can’t name a newspaper?

Are we really stripping counseling from health care because of what doctors might say? (We all know, given the chance, a doctor will always talk you into suicide. That’s where the money is.) Why not forbid doctors from talking to patients at all, just to be safe? Call it the Palin-Grassley Freedom from Information Act.

 

What Kind of People Oppose Health Care Reform? – At a Hagerstown, Maryland, town hall meeting, there were signs comparing President Barack Obama to a Nazi and showing him with an Adolf Hitler-style mustache, and a sign reading “Death to Obama” and “Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids.”

 

More Conservative Fakery Planned for Town Halls on Climate Legislation – An email memo from the desk of American Petroleum Institute president Jack Gerard, asks API’s member companies to recruit employees, retirees, vendors and contractors to attend “Energy Citizen” rallies to attack climate legislation in key Congressional districts in the closing weeks of the August recess.

Taking a page from the playbook of Astroturf campaigners currently crashing health care town hall events across the country, API hopes to similarly sully productive communications between Congress members and their actual constituents at public events scheduled for the coming weeks. Gerard states that API is ready to bus in company members and provide logistical support, and reveals that API has retained “a highly experienced events management company that has produced successful rallies for presidential campaigns, corporations and interest groups.”

Gerard’s email states that API is partnering on the rally campaign with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, confirming that the groups are staging a coordinated effort to attack climate legislation despite the fact that several prominent members of these groups have stated support for strong Congressional action to combat climate change.

 

President Obama’s Bad Habit – Excerpts from this article by Bill Maher:

President Obama must give up that awful habit that sets such a bad example for young people. I’m talking, of course … about golf. …

It’s like being homeless in loud pants. Anyway, Time magazine is reporting that since he became president, Barack Obama has taken up golf with a passion, playing almost every weekend for the past few months — and I feel betrayed. He campaigned as a basketball player. It said to us, “I’m urban and athletic and hip and a team player.”

I don’t want a regular guy running the country. We tried that for eight years and New Orleans still smells like mildew. Obama was different. He wasn’t Joe Six-Pack. He had a six-pack. And when he gave a speech it didn’t make English teachers cry. …

So that’s why I’m so worried when I see my president playing golf, because golf is a slippery slope. First comes the golf attire, then the golf stories and pretty soon you’re telling black jokes. What’s worse is that you know Obama doesn’t really wanna be golfing, he’s just doing it because he thinks it will relax the white people. “How could I be a socialist, I’m putting!” …

Be who you really are – a basketball playing, Jay-Z listening, city-dwelling hipster. The only sand trap I want to see you get out of is Afghanistan. …

Regards,

Jim