"Independent" Wealth? What a Load of Crap.

Gotta love Facebook. I saw this post earlier, and it set me off:

"I think I found the solution to the US debt problem:

Salary of retired US Presidents...$180,000 for life
Salary of House/Senate...$174,000 for life
Salary of Speaker of the House...$223,500 for life
Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders...$193,400 for life
Average Salary of a teacher...$40,065 per year
Average Salary of Soldier Deployed in Afghanistan...$38,000 per year

I think we found where the cuts should be made!"

Actually, the president does get a decent percentage of his/her $400,000 salary for a pension (after running our COUNTRY, with none of the $15 million Wall Street bonuses), but most congress members don't get anywhere near their salaries for life. They DO pay into Social Security, and they ARE on the same retirement plans we were on in the postal service, except that they're required to contribute a bigger chunk of their salaries to them (per Senate website et al.).

They also have to serve at least 5 years to be eligible for a partial pension, at least 20 years to be eligible for their full pension at age 50 (same as p.o. and other fed. jobs), or they have to be at least 62 or have served at least 25 years, to collect the money they contributed from their own salaries. There are other factors, too, like military advantage and which specific plans they choose, and whether or not they invest in other savings funds. They also voted overwhelmingly in both 2010 and 2011 to not accept federally mandated cost-of-living increases.

(Lots of people continue to whine and cry for term limits, but that's just an excuse to not vote and get even lazier about it. We have always had term limits: They're called elections. If we legislate limits, even fewer people will give enough of a damn to get off their asses and vote than do now.)

Now, as far as the president's salary goes, personally, I wouldn't take less than 5x that amount for trying to guide the lazy, selfish, ignorant, hateful babies that seem to take up a greater percentage of our potentially awesome country every day. We shouldn't be at war, and teachers are dreadfully underpaid, always have been. There's no mistaking those issues. But the problem is still mostly outside of government.

Only 20% of our population make over 50% of our aggregate income, with the top 5% making over 20% of it themselves, and these aren't primarily people making a comparatively piddly $400K a year or less. These are also the people with the most tax breaks. "They made it, they should get to keep it," people like to argue. Well, who did they make it OFF of, so to speak? (Besides teachers and soldiers, for starters.) Well, if not the dime-an-hour victims of multiple American human rights violations worldwide, then likely off of the "lower" 80% of Americans who work in their factories and offices and drive their shit around the country. A whopping 80% of our people make less than half the aggregate income. 60% of our people take in around a QUARTER of our aggregate income. (This is all available on the Census site, per the 2010 census, numbers reported by people about themselves, not propagated by the mythical "liberal media.")

In other words, say you buy a car from a group of ten people for $100. Two of the people, probably the two who made the deal, take $50, half the money. Two of them take another $25 to share. The other six people have to share the last $25 of the profits, even though they're probably the ones who dragged the car home from the junk shop, fixed it up, painted it, maybe lost a couple of fingers in the whole process, inhaled some lead, that kind of thing. Well, news flash, I'm one of those six. Bigger news flash, you're probably one of those six. The other four are the ones voting consistently and the top two are the ones paying for the elections that decide your fate. They're even willing to cut your six-way-shared $25 down even further, whatever it takes to avoid parting with one more cent of their $25 apiece.

A few more numbers you need to consider... Between 1984 and 2009, the annual mean household income of the lowest-earning 20% of our good American people went from $5,436 to $11,552 (as of just 2 years ago, 20% of the people here are living - or trying to - on an average of just over $11K/year). In those same years, between 1984 and 2009, the mean income of the highest-earning 20% went from $62,121 to $170,844. The top 5% went from $93,774 to $295,388. And President Obama just wanted the top 2% to pay what they owe, without all the damn loopholes! Conservative or liberal, educated or not, it's not hard to see the formula here: the rich get richer by climbing up the backs of the poor, even while DENYING THEIR EXISTENCE and cutting the lifelines necessitated by their exploitation. And yet the ridiculously wealthy don't want to pay ALL of THEIR taxes???? OMG. I am so sick of the vitriolic rhetoric and blatant lies thrown around by that top 20% to protect their damn assets! The problem is NOT our government in practice (which is us, by the way). The problem is our GREED.

The last time the market tanked, my wife and I scraped together a little money (literally) and bought some stocks. One of the companies I bought was Williams-Sonoma. You know why? Because I was betting that the people who shop there wouldn't feel as pinched, they'd still need their supplies, and they weren't about to start slumming and buying their base-model Teflon pans at Wal-Mart. Because I was right, our 13 shares have more than tripled in value, yep, even after this week. I wish it was enough to get us health insurance, or married in our home state. We're Americans, too, and the bullshit Tea Party version of "small government" is our worst enemy. If the other 60-80% of you were paying attention instead of just constantly whipping the ass of the rhetorical dragon to get more fire, you'd know they're your worst enemy, too.

A few credits...if you want more, find them like I did.

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30631.pdf

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-press-secretary-hr-5146

http://factcheck.org/2010/05/another-zero-pay-increase-for-congress/

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/index.html

Osama bin Laden, Party Politics, and Death By HMD

There are some things that I would think can be counted on with a "covert operation." There are some odd elements to it. There are definite curiosities about some of the details. But I don't believe for a second that if the U.S. were gloating so about this and he weren't dead, that he'd miss the opportunity to tell us himself here directly. My reasons for not wanting the "death photos" released aren't limited to their gruesomeness and the fact that not only serious, rational adults would be viewing them (although that should suffice), it's that I don't want to listen to the ongoing skepticism, and it would definitely go on, and on, and on.

The bottom line is that the only way I could be "SURE" is if I'd shot him myself. Beyond that, I have to make some choices at some point, based on thoughtful consideration and critical analysis of what information I can gather as to what's plausible, and the basic gist of the story is, to me, plenty plausible. Since I'm not deep in celebration and don't have that much invested because I have not been "living under the cloud of terrorism for 10 years," another choice I made even before the 9/11/01 news had taken its first breath, I'm also not invested in knowing the finest details of the death of this one man.

All of a sudden it makes a difference if he was unarmed? I don't believe that the dancing, cheering partiers care one bit, and if the rest of us do, perhaps it's the conditions we use to ever "justify" taking a life that are the problem. I would have infinitely preferred he be taken alive, tried, questioned, held to account, made to face his countless victims and their families, maybe even learned from...but he wasn't, and here we are. Since the bulk of the photographs I've ever seen of him as an adult, even at comparative leisure, show him not only armed, but very heavily armed, I'm not too inclined to believe reports that he, this one time, was not armed at all, at any point, and I also would never seek to jeopardize the members of the SEAL team and intelligence personnel and their families by demanding their identities and eyewitness accounts. Either way, it simply doesn't change anything about the gap in this situation between my ideal and my reality, armed or unarmed.

I don't care where the intelligence came from, because it would still never make me a proponent of torture, and I would hate, hate, hate to find myself in the president's position going into this. (A) Finally apprehend the most notorious terrorist leader of our day using information built upon information that happened to have been gained years ago by waterboarding another terrorist, when torture was a method prioritized by that administration, or (B) let him walk rather than knowingly subject yourself to even more irrational criticism. And still today they call him conceited and selfish. The truth is that he didn't even have access to a selfish option.

But what about proof? "We want proof!" Ah, yes..."proof"...surprisingly slippery little concept, as it turns out, since DNA's now apparently easier to manipulate than Photoshop. The only reason I was glad that President Obama released his long-form birth certificate is that it answered, in no uncertain terms, nothing about his only foolishly-challenged citizenship, but everything about the intent of the chronic skeptics. This lesson must not be underestimated: there are no answers, not for those "skeptics" (not the rationally critical but the ones who foam at the mouth with it).

What drives the rabid should not even be called "skepticism" but just basic "true believer" bullshit efforts to get what they really want, which may not even be identifiable separate from the faces of their designated saviors. There will be no progress for them under President Barack Obama. Their leaders have very effectively made him their "devil," like Hitler made the Jews, and, again, nobody seems to have the courage to change their course, even if they have any nagging doubts. This is not just my subjective opinion, only my acceptance of their position declared and repeated by them with their behavior: if you GET something you WANT, you're satisfied; if you're NEVER satisfied with what you GET, it is clearly NOT what you WANT.

I get it; I do not need them to tell me again. There were never any "birthers." There were only opportunists and their followers, and I will regard them accordingly from here on.

Their having made that abundantly clear, I see absolutely no reason to release pictures of a bullet-riddled body, pictures that would further dehumanize not only bin Laden but us and everyone in between, pictures that could just as easily be faked as anything else, pictures that would no doubt further antagonize the enemies that are not unlikely holed up somewhere right this second plotting en masse their retaliation. The potential "benefits" don't even come close to the potential "costs" for me, especially when the majority of the complaints and demands will just immediately shape-shift into something else. This has become, at least domestically, an all-out war, being fought with HMD - [red] Herrings of Mass Destruction - and we are clearly suffocating beneath the weight of them.

What I want and need, at the end of the day, is to be compassionate, conscious, heedful, engaged, ethical, and safe. I want the same for our military and intelligence personnel, and for our governing officials, and even for the opportunists and followers. This can be accomplished as effectively with the tools I have right now as with any pictures of dead men.

God's America

Is America "Christian?" According to one woman quoted in the CNN special, "Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door," it is and was founded on the one true God our father and son the Lord Jesus Christ. (Whew...that is a mouthful.) Of course, she's wrong.

This isn't opinion; it's written all over assorted founding documents (e.g. the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution). As often as it says "In God We Trust" on anything, there seem to be an equal number of statements about escaping the religious oppression of the British, the freedom to practice as we see fit, tolerance of diverse views, etc., etc. How can that part possibly be forgotten this easily?

The arguments of the Murfreesboro mosque's opponents change with the winds, and none appear valid. First, the issue is the construction of a mosque, not the practice of Shari'a law. However, since they brought it up, every "legitimate" concern (I'm being generous) about Shari'a law is addressed in other legislation: domestic violence, kidnapping, human trafficking, terrorism, whatever. Islam IS a religion, which Joe Brandon damn well knows, despite his insistence that the negative "lawyer" stereotype is accurate. The 15,000 square feet can't be the problem when The People's Church (First Baptist, Franklin, TN) opened a campus nearly four (4) times that size in nearby Spring Hill in November.

This is nothing but hate, and it's sickening. Get out your Bill of Rights again, people. Amendment 1: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

That's what this country was founded on, not on Christianity or any other religion, and it will not serve any of us in the long-term if you get laws passed restricting this one. Get over yourselves. We are better than this crap.