BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
THIS is why I try not to spend my money at chain restaurants and why I do not shop at walmart. I accept the necessity of my tax dollars going to social safety net programs due to corporate greed, I will not increase the wealth of the greedy pigs who refuse to pay a living wage and provide benefits for their employees.
WHY deliberately lie about the unemployment rate? If (NOT MY) president drumpf/trump repeats this often enough then people will start to believe it and he will the be able to manipulate them, people of one group will see those of another group as a threat, while he takes from the 99% for the 1%. Bill Maher describes it best , it may be a bit crude but it is the truth. This from PolitiFact.....
At a town hall with CEOs, President Donald Trump revived some of his longstanding concerns about how the nation’s unemployment statistics are calculated.
Appearing to reference the number of Americans out of work, Trump said, "We have 100 million people if you look. You know, the real number's not 4.6 percent (for the unemployment rate). They told me I had 4.6 percent last month. I'm doing great. I said yeah, but what about the hundred million people? A lot of those people came out and voted for me. I call them the forgotten man, the forgotten woman. But a lot of those people -- a good percentage of them would like to have jobs and they don't. You know, one of the statistics that, to me, is just ridiculous -- so, the 4.6 sounds good. But when you look for a job, you can't find it and you give up. You are now considered statistically employed. But I don't consider those people employed."
Is Trump right that "when you look for a job, you can't find it and you give up. You are now considered statistically employed"? Not at all.
Trump seems to suggest that government statisticians are performing something like medieval alchemy, turning lead (unemployment) into gold (employment) with the flick of a wand.
That’s not the case. Broadly speaking, if someone is already considered unemployed and they give up looking for a job, they would be counted as "not in the labor force" -- not as "employed."
In fact, there is an official statistical category for a person in this situation. If someone wants and looks for a job but then gives up, they are called "discouraged workers." Specifically, these people "want and are available for a job and who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months" but are "not currently looking because they believe there are no jobs available or there are none for which they would qualify."
The problem for Trump is that "discouraged workers" are relatively rare -- in the most recent month, there were 522,000 of them. That’s just one-fourteenth the number of unemployed workers, and only about one-half of 1 percent of the "out of work" Americans Trump seems to have been referring to.
Speaking of which, as we have noted previously, Trump’s 100-million figure of "out of work" Americans is highly misleading.
This number -- in reality, a bit lower at 94 million -- includes any American age 16 and over who isn’t institutionalized and who isn’t either working or actively looking for work. This means the figure includes retirees, high school students over 16, undergraduate and graduate students, stay-at-home parents, disabled people, adults who are engaged in full-time education or training, and even trust-fund kids and those wealthy enough to be living off investments.
In other words, the figure includes a lot of people who wouldn’t be expected to be working, or who are engaged in other pursuits. We have previously estimated that no more than a quarter of the 94 million people not in the labor market are either out of work, looking for a job, or eager to get back in the job hunt if labor-market conditions were to improve.
Here's a chart from the jobs site Indeed.com showing one analysis of the reasons that prime-working-age Americans may not be working.
So suggesting that roughly 100 million Americans are out of work ropes in many people who, in fact, have no desire to find paid employment.
Our ruling
Trump said, "When you look for a job, you can't find it and you give up. You are now considered statistically employed." That’s flat wrong -- someone who stops looking for work would be shifted to the "out of the labor force" category, not the "employed category." We rate the statement False.
Can You Be a Good Person and Vote for Trump?
Real Time With Bill Maher Overtime October 14 2016 (HBO)
Bill Maher want become a good person and Bill Maher want vote for Donald Trump
In the middle of a segment shredding Donald Trump tonight, Bill Maher asked if someone can really “be a good person” and support the GOP nominee.
He wondered if the Republicans would be able to “get rid of Trumpism” if Trump loses. Rebecca Traister said that even knowing that they would be going up against Hillary Clinton, the GOP managed to nominate someone who “embodies” the sexism and racism of the past.
Maher brought up states that are clearly safe for Trump and wondered, “These are human beings. What the fuck does it take in this country to have being a human being supersede being a Republican?”
Former senator Bob Kerrey argued that there are good people who just happen to support Trump. Maher reacted, “Really?”
He wondered if you can “be a good person” if you’re supporting Trump, adding that Hillary Clinton was right on the money about the deplorables.
verse of the day Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. - Colossians 3:14
voice of the day
Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.
-Cornel West
CHRISTIANS are right to reject the beliefs of other religions, all believers of other religions reject the beliefs of Christianity and all other religions except their own. That is what makes a believer so. The problem is with those who twist and pervert their religion's tenants of faith to justify their bigotry, discrimination, abuse, neglect, and violence against those of other faiths and against those sharing the same faith but who don't believe as they do. These apostates, these hypocrites can be found in every religion, committing horrible sins in the name of their faith. True believers have the responsibility to call them out for what they are and to condemn their actions. Silence by true believers is complicity, and allows the fear of and ignorance of all other religions to grow and be manipulated, as shown in this video from +Bill Maher's Real Time. I have included the short clip from the show, a video from +The Young Turks on the Bill Maher show, a video with Sam Harris, Reza Aslan and Jonathan Kirsch from +C-SPAN and this all starts with this article from +Sojourners .....
The West is going to exhaust itself in its fight against Islamic terrorism, which Western arrogance has undeniably kindled.
That Western arrogance was on display last weekend on Real Time with Bill Maher. The tense debate
about Islam between Bill Maher, Sam Harris, and Ben Affleck has been
shared multiple times over social media and provides a case study in
Girard’s mimetic theory.
One element that mimetic theory illuminates in this discussion of Islam is the scapegoat mechanism.
Scapegoating is a non-conscious way of reinforcing a group’s
relationship by blaming another group of people for our problems. The
scapegoating mechanism is non-conscious because we always think that we
are innocent and that our scapegoats are guilty. The video below shows a
great example of the scapegoating mechanism when it comes to Islam. (Warning: It's an HBO show — there is some foul language.)
http://youtu.be/vln9D81eO60
It’s about Islamaphobia, or an irrational fear of Islam. Here’s how the debate begins:
Harris:
The crucial point of confusion is that we have been sold this meme of
Islamaphobia where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets
conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people and that is
intellectually ridiculous. Affleck: … So you are saying that Islamaphobia is not a real thing? Maher: Well, it’s not a real thing when we do it … It truly isn’t. Harris: … Ben, we have to be able to criticize bad ideas. Affleck: Of course we do! Harris: But Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas at the moment. Maher: That’s just a fact. Affleck: That’s not a fact! It’s an ugly thing to say.
This
debate about Islam is ubiquitous in the West and I think it points to
Girard’s warning against Western arrogance. Sam Harris is very careful
to say that he isn’t suffering from Islamaphobia when he critiques
Islam. Maher even states that when they critique Islam it “truly isn’t”
being Islamaphobic. But then Harris goes on to say that “Islam is the
mother lode of bad ideas at the moment” and Maher reinforces the point
by saying, “That’s just a fact.”
Personally, I agree that we need
to criticize bad ideas, but to say that “Islam is the mother lode of bad
ideas” and deny that you are Islamaphobic is, to use Harris’s own
words, intellectually ridiculous. It’s an act of scapegoating Islam and
Muslims.
And, as with all scapegoating, it is non-conscious. Maher
and Harris genuinely believe that when they criticize the totality of
Islam with a broad brushstroke that they aren’t being Islamaphobic. In
fact, they believe that they are on the side of justice and peace and
any fear of Islam is completely rational.
Maher and Harris are
involved in double speak. They claim that they are just criticizing
Islam and that they aren’t criticizing Muslims. But near the end of the debate, Harris states that the only good Muslim is one who doesn’t take Islam seriously. “ There are hundreds of millions of Muslims who are nominal Muslims, who don’t take the faith seriously,
who don’t want to kill apostates, who are horrified by ISIS and we need
to defend these people, prop them up, and let them reform their faith.”
That
statement is indicative of Western arrogance that alienates Muslims.
Those hundreds of millions of Muslims who are horrified by ISIS, who
don’t want to kill apostates, who stand up for the weak, poor, and
marginalized, don’t do those things in spite of their faith. They do
them because of their faith. But when the rhetoric of Islamaphobia tells
us that Islam is necessarily violent, the implication is that Muslims
are necessarily violent. Yet, as Ben Affleck points out, we have killed
many more Muslims than Islamic terrorists have killed Muslims. Stephen
Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, makes a
similar observation when he asked, “How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the last 30 years?”
In wars and violent conflicts during that period, Walt found that
Muslims have killed about 10,325 Americans, whereas the U.S. has killed
288,000 Muslims.
Every death due to violence is one death too
many, but the drastic disproportion of that comparison reveals an
important aspect of scapegoating. When we scapegoat Islam for being
violent, we become blind to our own violence. Despite the overwhelming
facts of our own destructive violence, the rhetoric of Islamaphobia
would have us believe that we who live in a secular society aren’t
violent. It’s those theocratic Muslims who are violent!
Now, the
fact that violence is found in any religion should not surprise us. I
appreciate that Maher and Harris are equal opportunity critics of
religious violence. There is a human element to every religion and we
humans have a tendency to be violent with one another. Whether we
justify violence in the name of God, religion, justice, peace, or power
really doesn’t matter. What matters is that, no matter how we justify
it, violence is a bad idea because it leads to a cycle of retributive
violence. The problem Maher and Harris face is that they can’t see that
their blanket critique of Islam is itself violent.
What should
surprise us is when we find a critique of violence within a religion.
And that’s what we find with Islam. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is one of
America’s most outspoken Muslims. He begins his book What’s Right with Islam
by claiming that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share the two great
commandments. These commandments are familiar enough – the first is to
love God and the second is to love our neighbors. But Imam Rauf explains
the second commandment from an Islamic perspective. He claims that one
of the core Islamic values is to “To love our neighbors—that is, our
fellow human beings—regardless of race, religion, or cultural background
as we love ourselves.”
Love runs throughout the religion of Islam
and it provides an internal critique of hatred and violence. While not a
pacifist, Imam Rauf claims that violence is not in line with the ethic
of love that undergirds Islam. He states in his book that, “To battle
the evil of others by responding in kind and exhibiting equally violent
aggressive behavior is to flout the very ethic of our religious
traditions.”
I agree with Bill Maher and Sam Harris that we have
to criticize bad ideas. But the “mother lode of bad ideas” doesn’t come
from Islam. That’s an arrogant claim that will only kindle the spirit of
violence and scapegoating in us. The “mother lode of bad ideas” is
scapegoating violence.
The best alternative to the “mother lode of
bad ideas” is not more blaming and scapegoating. Rather, it’s to follow
in the tradition laid before us by the Jewish, Christian, Islamic
religions that commands us to “To love our neighbors—that is, our fellow
human beings—regardless of race, religion, or cultural background as we
love ourselves.” Adam Ericksen
blogs at the Raven Foundation, where he uses mimetic theory to provide
social commentary on religion, politics, and pop culture. Follow Adam on
Twitter @adamericksen.
Sojourners relies on the support of readers like you to sustain our message and ministry.
Last night, Bill Maher delivered an excellent final New Rule on how some of the 1% are whining about feeling persecuted.
Did you know that during World War II, FDR actually proposed
a cap on income that in today's dollars would mean that no person could
ever take home more than about $300,000? OK, that is a little low. (audience laughter)
But wouldn't it be great if there were Democrats out there like that
now, who would say to billionaires, "Oh, you're crying? We'll give
you something to cry about. You don't want a minimum wage? How about
we not only have a minimum wage, we have a maximum wage?" (audience applause)
That is not a new idea. James Madison, who wrote our Constitution, said,
"Government should prevent an immoderate accumulation of riches."
Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, they all agreed that too much money in
the hands of too few would destroy democracy.
Video and full transcript below the fold.
And finally, New Rule: Someone must tell me what is with
this new trend of people who have all the power acting like they're the
oppressed ones? Heterosexual Christians under siege from gays. White
people complaining that reverse racists are trying to strip them of
their right to shoot unarmed black men. And most bizarre, the recent
wave of billionaires sobbing that they're being demonized and under
attack. And the thing is, it's not just having all the money in the
world that's getting them down, it's that the rest of us don't often
enough look at them and say, "You are the most brilliant industrious
person on Earth. Can you teach us how to be more like you while we buff
your cock with this fine Sham-Wow?"
You know, I used to think Hollywood egos were the neediest, but these
Masters of the Universe? More like babies on a plane. Stock trader
Steve Schwarzman — net worth $8 billion — once said that Obama raising
his taxes 3% felt like when Hitler invaded Poland. Sounds like
something Sarah Palin would tweet after huffing paint thinner. (audience laughter)
But with the super-rich it's becoming a meme. Now we have Tom Perkins
— net worth $8 billion — saying the richest 1% are so persecuted in
America, they feel like Jews in Nazi Germany. Which is why just to be
safe, last week Tom built a panic room inside his mansion that's a
full-size replica of Anne Frank's house. (groaning audience laughter)
Is it really that hard out there for a pimp with $8 billion dollars?
You know, even when your shady financial tricks tanked the economy,
nothing happened to any of you. Nobody went to jail, nobody went broke,
Justin Bieber didn't even egg your house. You just got richer while
everybody else got poorer. The Oxfam committee released a report this
year on global inequality, and the 85 richest people — 85 — owned more
than the bottom 3 1/2 billion put together, which is half the planet. This is a real problem, and not just for when they go halfsies on a wedding present.
And not that that Nazi/Jew analogy deserves to be taken seriously,
but the Jews didn't do anything to deserve the hate they got. But
America's super-rich? In the last 30 years, even though worker
productivity went up 90%, income only went up 8%. If I was working
twice as hard, and someone else was reaping almost all the reward, I'd
hate them. And I'd also want to know, how could that happen?
Well, billionaire Sam Zell knows the answer to that. He said the
rest of America should stop bitching about the 1%, and realize they are the 1% because they work harder. OK, now we do need to come after you with pitchforks. (audience laughter and applause)
Is talking on the phone in a comfortable office really more degrading
than working in a slaughterhouse, or a sweatshop, or on a reality TV
show? With just one real estate deal last year, Sam Zell made a
thousand times what this guy makes.
Did he really work a thousand times harder? By the way, that's a coal miner, not John Boehner. (audience laughter)
Did you know that during World War II, FDR actually proposed a cap on
income that in today's dollars would mean that no person could ever
take home more than about $300,000? OK, that is a little low. (audience laughter)
But wouldn't it be great if there were Democrats out there like that
now, who would say to billionaires, "Oh, you're crying? We'll give
you something to cry about. You don't want a minimum wage? How about
we not only have a minimum wage, we have a maximum wage?" (audience applause)
That is not a new idea. James Madison, who wrote our Constitution, said,
"Government should prevent an immoderate accumulation of riches."
Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, they all agreed that too much money in
the hands of too few would destroy democracy.
What can you buy with $2 billion dollars that you can't buy with one?
You couldn't spend that kind of cash if you lived forever and your
money manager was MC Hammer. (audience laughter)
And you know, there are some billionaires today who get that.
And that's why they give most of their money away. (massive audience applause)
As Warren Buffett once said, "I should write a book on how to get by
on $500 million, because apparently there's a lot of people who don't...
know how to do it."
Originally posted to BruinKid on Sat Mar 01, 2014 at 08:00 AM EST.
oath keepers.....the name sounds patriotic, in a Clockwork Orange, 1984 Orwellian kinda way, doesn't it? Defend the Republic and the Constitution, New World Order, martial law, tyranny, state of emergency, U.N., guns..., all the right words to get the voluntarily ignorant as well as the paranoids and those living on the lunatic fringe all fired up about any of the thousands of bullshit conspiracy theories out there. For a prime example check out the conspiracy theory video about the Boston Marathon bombings Stella Tremblay, New Hampshire Legislator, Says Jeff Bauman 'Was Not In Pain' After Bombing 1&2 MAI13 & A retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Army weighs in on Boston.17APR13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/stella-tremblay-new-hampshire.html If that is who jeffery earnhardt relates to how sad for him and his association with NASCAR It is also interesting to note that oath keepers wasn't started until the Republic elected an African-American as President, as Commander-in-Chief. Bill Maher has some interesting views on the not so subtle racism that is prominent in right wing extremist politics in our 'Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave', and the article on oath keepers and NASCAR follows the video. I have listed my earlier post on the oath keepers at the end of this post for those who may be interested..... Bill Maher on GOP racism towards President Obama
Jeffrey Earnhardt, a young prince of one of NASCAR’s royal families, and the Oath Keepers, a conspiracy-spinning “Constitutionalist” group, are joining forces for an upcoming race that “could help make Oath Keepers a household name.”
At least that’s the pitch – and the hope – of the Oath Keepers founder, Stewart Rhodes, as he tries to raise $30,000 in time to get a car on the track for a June 1 NASCAR-sanctioned second-tier race at Dover International Speedway in Dover, Del.
“This is the first of what we hope will be many races run with an Oath Keepers car,” Rhodes writes in an on-line money pitch. “The potential exposure is in the tens of millions.”
On its website, the far-right group says donations “will speak loudly to all the foes of our Republic, both foreign and domestic, so please be as generous as you can to help preserve the liberty we cherish.”
Rhodes, a Yale-educated lawyer and Army veteran, founded the rapidly growing organization in 2009. It is comprised mostly of active-duty police and military, as well as veterans, who worry about issues such as gun control and the much-feared “New World Order.”
Members swear (a second time) to uphold their oath to the Constitution and not to obey orders they think conflict with that. Among those orders (10 “Orders We Will Not Obey” are listed on the Oath Keepers website): Imposing martial law or a state of emergency on a state, and forcing those who resist into detention camps.
Rhodes insists his group is not antigovernment, but he and other Oath Keepers do describe the government as tyrannical and repressive.
The group hopes to raise enough money to plaster the racecar with its logo and name and the words “Defend The Constitution.”
To drive their speeding billboard around and around, the Oath Keepers have enlisted the heir to one of auto racings most accomplished families. Jeffrey Earnhardt is the 23-year-old grandson of the late Dale Earnhardt, seven-time NASCAR Cup champion. His uncle is Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“Oath Keepers are those who stepped forward, raised their hand and are willing to die to protect and defend our Constitution,” the group quotes young Earnhardt as saying. “That means everything to me and I’m honored to be a part of this.”
The group says sponsoring Earnhardt’s number 79 car is part of a “public awareness campaign” to get the message out that “our Constitution is at risk.” Oath Keepers say the television audience for the race is usually 1.5 million but should be higher with the move from being broadcast on ESPN2 to ESPN this year.
In his appeal for donations, Rhodes said he expects the Oath Keepers car will “help to spread the message about the oath to millions of Americans who may not yet be fully awake to the ongoing assault on our Bill of Rights, and the rapidly increasing destruction of our Republic.”
“You know how late the hour is,” he added. “Help us awaken the ‘Sleeping Giant.’”