The Road To The White House Is Expensive

From Most Expensive Campaign Ever: What Else Could $1.6B Have Bought? by Aaron Task:

With Election Day finally upon us, Henry and I took a step back from the horserace and political handicapping to talk about something that really matters: Money.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a record $1.6 billion was raised by all Presidential candidates during this interminably long campaign. (The New York Times says the figure could go as high as $2 billion by Election Day.)

Just for kicks, we did a little research to determine what else could $1.6 billion buy:

• Health insurance for over 130,000 families of four for one year (based on average cost of $12,000 per family per year, National Coalition on Health Care)
• Food for 145,000 families of four for one year (based on moderate cost of $9,500 per family per year, USDA)
• 8 million laptops for the One Laptop Per Child initiative (at $200 each, OLPC)
• Fill the gas tank of an average car 40 million times (based on car with a 15-gallon tank with gas at $2.60/gallon)
• Provide a great cable package for 1.3 million households for one year (Time Warner NYC cable/Internet with one premium channel)

Joe The Mid-East Studies Prof

From The McCain spokesman and the phantom antisemite by Lindsay Beyerstein:

The McCain campaign is attacking an innocent academic in a way that can only be described as racist.

If Khalidi were known as "Joe the Mid-East Studies Prof," the McCain campaign would never have slandered him. It's as if the campaign made a list of Obama's friends, picked the guy with the scariest most "Arab sounding" name, and branded him a terrorist.

The man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Yes, he's pro-Palestinian. That doesn't make him a terrorist. Yes, he has been critical of Israel's human rights record in Palestine. That doesn't make him an antisemite.

If John McCain is too ignorant or too bigoted to see the difference between an academic critic of of the Israeli occupation and a terrorist, he's even less fit to be president than I thought.

Republican Cleaners

Same As It Ever Was

Courting The Neanderthal Vote

From Palin's Rising Star? by Josh Marshall:

As I think Noam Scheiber said a week or two ago, Palin is the first Republican presidential or vice-presidential since Richard Nixon to so genuinely appeal to the politics of resentment. Sure, the Bushes and McCain have played to it. But either economically or socially or both, these men were all to-the-manor-born -- elites who've lived their whole lives on greased rails.

To use a different analogy I think Palin (and perhaps Joe the Plumber too) appeal to the brainstem of conservatism, where the most primitive and persistent impulses are registered, even as the areas of higher reasoning and cognition (frontal lobes and all that) are flat-lining or tracking into oblivion.

One Nation Under God, One Nation Under No God, One Nation Under The Flying Spaghetti Monster

In No God We Trust

From Why eventually electing an atheist would be the best idea:

OK - I know we're not ready as a Country to even consider this right now - but wouldn't it be nice if.....

Our President believed that a person gets one life - here - on Earth - and that there is no magical fairy land where you go when you die.

*That President might be a little less likely to allow the poor, the sick and the needy to suffer through the one life they were born into. They might do a little more to care for those in other areas of our World who, through no fault of their own don't have the resources to provide even basic services for their citizens. So they suffer and die in horrible conditions and death is sometimes a welcome predator. That President might be more willing to mobilize our vast potential for good and provide a better life for those people.

*That President might be a little less likely to allow our men and women bravely serving us in the military to die for needless wars, and might actually feel guilty for killing human beings (even if they are brown) because he knows that when they die, they don't get a harem full of beautiful virgins to ravage as they please. They know that a bullet or a bomb is ending forever the hopes and dreams of a human being.

*That President might be a little less likely to rape and pillage the environment, because they know this planet is the only one we have and that there is no supernatural being coming back to take us all to a better place. THIS IS OUR BETTER PLACE - and he would know that we need to protect it.

Out Of Sight

What is this election about?

Let's Make The Wealthy More Wealthy

With each passing year the wealthiest among us become even more wealthy. The rest of us are having our jobs shipped overseas, and our sons and daughters shipped to Iraq. Those of us that still have a job are not being paid a fair wage, while crooked and incompetent CEO's are being paid too much. And what little wealth we have is slowly being eroded away.

John McCain frequently says that he wants to create more wealth. That’s good. However, he doesn’t want to spread the wealth around. He wants those that are the wealthiest among us to become even more wealthy. That’s not good.

The playing field is rigged, and it benefits those who have the most money and power. McCain wants to rig the playing field to be even more in their favor. He tells us that somehow this will benefit all of us. I don’t believe him. I’m still waiting for my “trickle” from Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

Barack Obama wants to level the playing field a little bit, so that it will benefit the little guy a little more. We already have plenty of wealth in the United States. What is wrong with spreading it around a little? What Barrack Obama proposes is not socialism. It is Americanism. It is fairness and equality.

You work hard, don’t you deserve a bigger slice of the pie?

John McCain’s campaign slogan could easily be: “Let’s make the wealthy more wealthy.” Does Warren Buffett or Bill Gates or the Walton family actually need more money? Or do you?

Update:
According to my interpretation of Edward Wolff, Barack Obama’s “socialist” plans will benefit capitalism more than John McCain’s proposals (what are they?) to grow the wealth:

If that is not convincing to a person, the second reason is that inequality is actually harmful to the well-being of a society. There is now a lot of evidence, based on cross-national comparisons of inequality and economic growth, that more unequal societies actually have lower rates of economic growth. The divisiveness that comes out of large disparities in income and wealth, is actually reflected in poorer economic performance of a country.

Bible Verse For Sunday 11-02-08

Now these are they that came to David to Ziklag, while he yet kept himself close because of Saul the son of Kish: and they were among the mighty men, helpers of the war.

They were armed with bows, and could use both the right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow, even of Saul's brethren of Benjamin.

The chief was Ahi-e'zer, then Jo'ash, the sons of Shema'ah the Gib'e-athite; and Jez'i-el, and Pelet, the sons of Azma'veth; and Bera'chah, and Jehu the An'tothite, and Ismai'ah the Gib'e-onite, a mighty man among the thirty, and over the thirty; and Jeremiah, and Jaha'zi-el, and Jo'hanan, and Jos'abad the Geder'athite, Elu'zai, and Jer'imoth, and Beali'ah, and Shemari'ah, and Shephati'ah the Ha'ruphite, Elka'nah, and Jesi'ah, and Az'areel, and Jo-e'zer, and Jasho'be-am, the Korhites, and Jo-e'lah, and Zebadi'ah, the sons of Jero'ham of Gedor.

And of the Gadites there separated themselves unto David into the hold to the wilderness men of might, and men of war fit for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the mountains…

I don’t know about you, but I feel very holy now. Let’s go kick some butt. Or at least hurl a stone or two.

God Wants You To Vote For Al Franken

How do I know God wants you to vote for Al Franken? I don’t. However, I figure I know just about as much about what God is thinking as anybody else does. Sometimes I just want to be trendy. (I’m lying through my teeth here, I never like to be trendy.) Like I was saying before I interrupted myself, sometimes I just want to be trendy, and since the latest trend seems to be outrageousness, I thought I might give it a go. Hence, God wants you and everyone else to vote for Al Franken. He also tells me that it doesn’t matter what state you live in, you must vote for Al Franken or he will send you to hell. He plans on doing this on election day, even if you are still alive. So, you better vote for Al Franken. He said to ignore the fact that both Al Franken and Al Qaeda have the same first name, unless you don’t want to ignore it. It doesn’t matter, as long as you vote for Al Franken and not Al Qaeda.

What could be worse than Barack Obama in the White House? Why, Al Franken as a United States Senator! Watch out!

From St. Paul’s Going to Go for This? by Kathryn Jean Lopez:

Of course, the question of his skills as a comedian is a matter of taste — a subjective thing and irrelevant to qualifications for Congress. Presumably someone bought his books for more than utter hatred of the Right. But the author of Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot is not only a crude, mean comic, but he’s within shooting distance of possibly unseating Republican senator Norm Coleman. Yes, that’s right: While the rest of us are getting used to the possibility of an Obama-Pelosi-Reid Washington, there’s more to the worst-case scenario. There could be a Senator Al Franken in the United States Senate.

Yes, let’s piss all over Al Franken and ignore the obvious. God told me to point out that Rush Limbaugh is not only a big fat idiot, but he (not Al Franken) is crude and mean, and not at all funny.

One of Franken’s high-minded contributions to American literature begins:

God chose me to write this book.

God chose Al Franken to write it, now he wants you to buy it. Don’t forget to vote. God wants you to, and so do I.

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Those Activist Judges Have Been Active

The right-wing seem to consider the phrase “activist judge” to be a derogatory phrase. Do they feel the same way when Bush appointees are the ones being active?

From Appeals Courts Pushed to Right by Bush Choices by Charlie Savage:

Republican-appointed judges, most of them conservatives, are projected to make up about 62 percent of the bench next Inauguration Day, up from 50 percent when Mr. Bush took office. They control 10 of the 13 circuits, while judges appointed by Democrats have a dwindling majority on just one circuit.

Appeals courts tend to change the law incrementally rather than in rapid shifts. They are constrained to follow Supreme Court precedent, and most of their work consists of unanimously disposing of routine cases.

Still, every year courts encounter some controversial cases in which they have greater discretion. In such circumstances, several studies have shown that judges appointed by Republican presidents since Reagan have ruled for conservative outcomes more often than have their peers.

They have been more likely than their colleagues to favor corporations over regulators and people alleging discrimination, and to favor government over people who claim rights violations. They have also been more likely to throw out cases on technical grounds, like rejecting plaintiffs’ standing to sue.

It appears that our judicial system has become nearly as fair and balanced as Fox News.

It also seems that conservative judges have some contempt for the law. How weird is that?

The consequences of the evolving judiciary are only beginning to play out.

In the case of the 2005 South Dakota abortion law, the dissenters — including two Democratic appointees, a Reagan appointee, and a Bush appointee — portrayed the court’s decision as a sharp change in direction.

The majority, they contended, had not only bypassed “important principles of constitutional law laid down by the Supreme Court” but also violated the appeals court’s established standards for issuing preliminary injunctions.

Even though Halloween is dead and gone, at least for this year, the land of the judiciary remains a scary place. Especially if you believe in the Constitution, which apparently many conservative judges do not. How weird is that?

From Invasion Of The Constitution Snatchers: Bush Judges Scare The Halloween Out Of Me by Joseph L. Conn:

* Judge William Pryor, U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. A former Alabama attorney general, Pryor went to court to defend notorious Chief Justice Roy Moore’s 2.5-ton Commandments monument in the state judicial building, telling a rally that God had chosen Christians “to save our country and save our courts.”

* Judge Janice Rogers Brown, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Brown says the United States is in a religious battle of Civil War proportions, has questioned whether the Bill of Rights applies to the states and has criticized the Supreme Court for relying on that “rather uninformative metaphor of the ‘wall of separation of church and state.’”

* Judge Michael W. McConnell, U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Described in The New York Times after his nomination as “an important architect of a shift in American law away from strict separation of church and state,” McConnell has expressed support for tax aid to religion, bitterly opposed reproductive rights and called for more religious influence in public schools and public life.

I want my country back. I want our Constitution back. I want our collective sanity back.

Perhaps we never were truly collectively sane, but we seem to have gone further and further off the deep end with each passing day of the last eight years.

Election Information

The League of Women Voters has set up a website called VOTE411.org. It is packed with information on voting. You can learn about registering, where to vote in your area, who the candidates are, ballot measures, and much more. If you have a question about voting, this would be a good place to look for the answer.

Brand Names

From Want Fries With Your Vote? by Dennis Perrin:

Personally, I don't see the point to political yard signs. Yes, it announces your preference, but it also solidifies your spectator status. All you are doing is providing free ad space to corporate candidates and parties. If one charged a party with yard rental fees, I'd understand the allure. But instead, people willingly display brand names that have little if any real connection to their personal lives. It's analagous to wearing NFL or NBA gear -- which is fine, if you like the look. I just wonder how long it will be before we simply cut to the chase and have bar codes tattooed to our foreheads.

Stop Reading This, Go Take A Nap

From Extra sleep helps the heart, researchers say:

Turning your clock back on Sunday may be good for your heart.

Swedish researchers looked at 20 years of records and discovered that the number of heart attacks dipped on the Monday after clocks were set back an hour, possibly because people got an extra hour of sleep.

But moving clocks forward in the spring appeared to have the opposite effect. There were more heart attacks during the week after the start of daylight saving time, particularly on the first three days of the week.

"Sleep -- through a variety of mechanisms -- affects our cardiovascular health," said Dr. Lori Mosca, director of preventive cardiology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, who was not involved in the research. The findings show that "sleep not only impacts how we feel, but it may also affect whether we develop heart disease or not."

The study was described in a letter published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Imre Janszky of the Karolinska Institute and Dr. Rickard Ljung of Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare.

Read the rest here.

God Cares About How You Vote

God wants you to vote McCain/Palin. It says so in the Bible. The Bible also tells us that anyone who votes Obama/Biden is screwed. You know the routine, eternal damnation and hell fire and all of that.

In all my years of reading the Bible I wonder why I keep missing the part that says “Vote for McCain”? I’ve found lots of parts that tell me I’m screwed.

It appears that God does not believe in democracy. I’m glad that I don’t believe in God. God is unpatriotic and Un-American. God is Unconstitutional. God is an autocratic dictator.

From You cannot be a Christian and vote for Obama by Janet Porter:

To all those who name the name of Christ who plan to willfully disobey Him by voting for Obama, take warning. Not only is our nation in grave danger, according to the Word of God, so are you.

Aren’t there laws against voter intimidation in the United States? Do they pertain to God? Do they pertain to Janet Porter?

In one week, America will make a choice. And to those who call themselves "Christian" who are planning on voting for Barack Obama, put down the Obama talking points and read God's voter guide before you go to the polls:

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Somehow “choose life” becomes anti-abortion, as a political tool. Why can’t “choose life” mean a woman’s right to choose, not the government choosing for her?

It's not just about "hope" and "change." Proverbs 6:16-22 states there are some things God hates.

These six things the LORD hates,
Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
A proud look,
A lying tongue,
Hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that are swift in running to evil,
A false witness who speaks lies,
And one who sows discord among brethren.

Obama-Biden are pro-death. McCain-Palin are pro-life.

Now choose life that you and your children may live.

I wonder how many Iraqi fetuses have died because of George W. Bush? Where is the Christian outrage over their deaths? Where is Janet Porter’s outrage over this? No outrage, just the outrageous claim that God wants us to vote for someone who will carry on George’s very Un-Christian work in Iraq. What about the unborn in Iran that McCain has plans to kill? What was that talk about "hands that shed innocent blood"?

Read again those six things that God hates, I mean hates. Watch out, now they are seven abominations. (If a Christian types “Lord” instead of “LORD”, do they go to hell?) How six things that God hates become seven abominations, God only knows. The reason God does not play dice is because he doesn’t know how to count. God must not be very happy with George W. Bush right now. Isn’t Bush guilty on all seven counts?

Vote for McCain/Palin, so that if you do choose to have an abortion you will have to do it yourself with a coat-hanger. Vote for McCain/Palin, so that your children will have to go fight the 100 year war in Iraq. Vote for McCain/Palin, so that your children will grow up in a world without universal health care. (They may be sick, but god damn it, they’re alive. Unless, of course, they die because they got sick.) Vote for McCain/Palin, so that you can’t afford to buy food for your kids because the wealth should stay with the wealthy and not be spread around. (Your kids can choose life without any food.)

No, this election is not about race. It's not about the economy. It's about obeying God.

Then obey Him in the voting booth and out of it. If not, do us all a favor and quit calling yourself a Christian.

I don’t call myself a Christian. I haven’t for years. I’m voting for Obama.

Did I just hear thunder?

Up Is Down, Backwards Is Forwards

The condensed version of this post is:

Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!

Read on for the non-condensed version:

Welcome to the world of Iowa Rep. Steve King. It is a pretty crazy place. It is a world that goes beyond the craziness of labeling Barack Obama as a socialist. In King’s world a Barack Obama victory would lead to a totalitarian dictatorship. I thought we already have that now with George W. Bush.

Here are some selected Kingisms:

“When you take a lurch to the left you end up in a totalitarian dictatorship. There is no freedom to the left. It’s always to our side of the aisle.”

“Obama is ACORN… When I see Obama, I see ACORN branded on his forehead.”

"Environmental extremists want all things off the table that have anything to do with drilling and putting up wind machines. Geo-thermal is out, too, because it requires a drill rig and apparatus. The extremists are against using what the Creator placed there for us to use."

“Obama will only appoint judicial activists. We need a Supreme Court that will uphold what the majority of Americans believe in and the intentions of the Constitution."

"We put a lot of energy and resources into our children to raise them in the American way and in our Christian faith and teach them values based on these. Obama's upbringing involves his father returning to his first wife after Barrack's birth and becoming a polygamist. His step-father was also a polygamist. He eventually wound up living with his grandparents in Hawaii who were strong leftists. He also writes about his fondness for his Uncle Frank who is a Marxist intellectual. His mother went to The Little Red Church on the Hill in Seattle, a self-proclaimed atheist church where it was said, 'They raise red-diaper babies,' babies that were raised to be left wing hard core atheists."

"Obama was not raised with an intentional attitude toward Americanism. Does he have an understanding of American patriotism, respect for our nation and what it's been through, our culture or the Christian religion upon which our nation was founded? The way to look at the reasons Obama doesn't place his hand over his heart when the National Anthem is playing, or wear an American flag pin is primarily because he is not wilful or spiteful, but because it just doesn't occur to him because it's not the way he's been raised. American patriotism is not imprinted on his mind or in his heart, because he wasn't raised as an American. Is this the kind of foundation you want for your next president? The president of the strongest country in the free world. We need to elect a president that is going to protect us under our Bill of Rights."

“People out there have jobs, they’re working, the economy’s flowing.”

There is more. Things like calling Joe McCarthy “a great American hero.” But one must stop somewhere.

Barack Obama will become the first dictator of the United States.

From Dictator:

In modern usage, the term "dictator" is generally used to describe a leader who holds and/or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power, especially the power to make laws without effective restraint by a legislative assembly. Dictatorships are often characterized by some of the following traits: suspension of elections and of civil liberties; proclamation of a state of emergency; rule by decree; repression of political opponents without abiding by rule of law procedures; these include single-party state, and cult of personality.

Does that describe Barack Obama to you? Or does it sound more like George W. Bush?

Again from Dictator:

A wide variety of leaders coming to power in a number of different kinds of regimes, such as military juntas, single-party states and civilian governments under personal rule, have been described as dictators.

According to Rep. King, if Obama is elected, there will need to be some updating done over at Wikipedia, and all of our dictionaries might as well be thrown away.

“There is no freedom to the left.” How does King define freedom? How does King define left? Have we not lost a significant number of our freedoms in the last eight years under the extreme right-wing policies of George W. Bush?

Does King think we should go back to the days of slavery? Does he see brands on the foreheads of any other African-Americans? Have they been burnt into their flesh?

How many “environmental extremists” don’t want wind power or geo-thermal? One? Five? Fifty? It is not just “extremists” that believe in conservation. Also, some Americans do not believe in a creator. And some Americans believe in a different creator than the one King believes in. Some Americans believe in the separation of church and state. King gives us a good reason for why they believe this.

Activist judges? Excuse me, what could be more activist than the Supreme Court deciding, against the will of the people, who the president will be? The “intentions of the Constitution” have been run through the shredder so many times by the Bush administration that I have lost count. And King is worried about Obama?

“Left wing hard core atheists” vote. Guess who most of them will be voting for? America is not a Christian nation. Jews vote. Agnostics vote. Muslims vote. Hindus vote. Buddhists vote. Shintoists vote. Guess who most of them will be voting for? Rep. King, you should get your head out of the sand and take a look around at some of your fellow Americans. They are just as much American as you are, whether you like it or not.

“The Little Red Church on the Hill” is just a nickname. As far as I can tell “The Little Red Church on the Hill in Seattle” is officially called the East Shore Unitarian Church. Oh those crazy Unitarians, they accept everyone. Even atheists. It kind of reminds me of some country somewhere that does the same thing. It sure would sound different if King had said that Obama’s mother went to the East Shore Unitarian Church, wouldn’t it? By the way, my mother goes to a Catholic Church every Sunday. I was raised to be a good little Catholic. What does that say about my mother? What does that say about me?

Whom does one worship at “a self-proclaimed atheist church”? Praise be to ye that does not exist?

I don’t put my hand over my heart for anything. I don’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I don’t sing patriotic songs. I don’t wear flag pins. I have voted in every presidential election since I was old enough to do so. Guess who I will be voting for?

None of my grandparents were “raised as an American.” They came here from another country and became United States citizens. What’s wrong with that? Does King even pay attention to the inanities that come out of his mouth?

“We need to elect a president that is going to protect us under our Bill of Rights." What we really need is to elect a president that is going to protect the Bill of Rights. (By golly, they actually take an oath about this.) What we really need is to elect a president that is going to protect us from radical Republicans like George W. Bush… and Steve King.

“People out there have jobs, they’re working, the economy’s flowing.” Has King been holed up in Cheney’s bunker for the last year? Like I said before, Rep. King, get your head out of the sand and take a look around. It’s kinda scary out there. Not in a black man, Muslim, terrorist, socialist kind of way. It’s more like a collapse of our entire economy kind of way. What did eight years of George W. Bush do for us? Perhaps it is time for a change.

America is supposed to be the land of the free. Freedom means that one can choose to be a Non-Christian, leftist, socialist in the United States, if one wants to be. It is what our country is all about. Why is Steven King against this?

My main sources for the King quotes are here and here and here.

Religious Display

From Capitol to display Nativity scene, atheist sign:

State officials have authorized permits for two holiday-season displays this year.

One is a Nativity scene from Olympia-area realty agent Ron Wesselius, who sued last year over the issue and then won a legal settlement allowing his display.

The other is a 30-by-30 inch placard from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Coalition, which plans to offer a nonreligious perspective.

The placard will carry a message similar to one put up in the Wisconsin statehouse the past 12 years, AnnieLaurie Gaylor, co-president of the organization, said Monday

That placard said: “At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.

“There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Read the rest here.

McCain's Plan To Lower Your Taxes

John McCain has a plan to lower your taxes. It involves raising your taxes. It involves making you pay more for health care. (This does not apply to those of you who can afford your own private health insurance policy. How many of you can do that?) Oh, the logic of the Republican mind.

From McCain Health Plan Could Mean Higher Tax by Kevin Sack and Michael Cooper:

The 71 percent of insured Americans who get their health coverage through their employers now enjoy a significant advantage because the money spent by employers on their health coverage is excluded from their taxable income. If employers chose to pay that share of a worker’s compensation as wages rather than benefits, the income would be taxable.

The exclusion costs the federal government more than $212 billion a year in income and payroll taxes, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. That is more than the cost of the deductibility of home mortgage interest, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The tax treatment of health benefits has been criticized as both discriminatory and regressive, and some analysts believe it encourages workers to buy more coverage than they need, driving up health costs.

To end the disadvantage to those who do not buy insurance through employers, Mr. McCain proposes to eliminate the exclusion of health benefits from taxable income. In exchange, he would provide refundable tax credits of $2,500 to single people and of $5,000 to families, with the goal of stoking competition in the individual insurance market. The elimination of the exclusion would generate $3.6 trillion over 10 years, according to the McCain campaign, and that money would pay for the tax credits.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin calculated that workers in the top income tax bracket would have to pay more in taxes if their employers have been contributing at least $14,285 toward a family insurance premium. Nationwide, the average cost of a family policy is $12,106, with employers paying $8,824 of that amount.

While the change would primarily affect those with gold-plated insurance policies, health analysts point out that middle-income workers with conventional coverage could conceivably pay more in regions where insurance costs are high. Over time, that might depend on how the tax credits are adjusted for inflation, a detail Mr. McCain has not discussed.

Why is McCain’s mantra of “Tax cuts” not applicable here? In other words, how can a Republican get away with saying that he is going to raise taxes? Something funny is going on here. Why does he want to take the only form of health insurance that most Americans can actually afford and make it more expensive? Who will end up paying this tax? Is McCain trying to destroy the only form of health care that most Americans can afford? What will be left?

The talk of $2500 and $5000 checks strikes me as bribery. This is what some voters will hear and understand from all of this talk. The details of the plan won't matter and will take too much work to try to understand. I don't think that I really understand the details, and John (Mr. I Don't Understand The Economy) McCain probably doesn't either.

Reread this sentence: “ To end the disadvantage to those who do not buy insurance through employers, Mr. McCain proposes to eliminate the exclusion of health benefits from taxable income.” Poorer people cannot afford to buy health insurance. The only people disadvantaged by tax free health insurance through employers are rich people. What a world we live in. Rich people are now disadvantaged. I feel so sorry for them. If only the system wasn't screwing them all the time.

I agree with McCain that this system is flawed, but he is barking up the wrong tree here. The McCain rhetoric makes it sound like his plan is a good thing for middle class Americans. The reality of his plan is that it is a good thing for very rich Americans. Americans like Cindy McCain.

From Senator McCain's New Tax on Health Insurance by Jeff Liebman:

Strange winds are blowing in economic policy land. After failing to privatize social insurance, the Bush Treasury is now socializing private insurance. The Democratic presidential candidate is running on a tax reform platform that provides three times greater tax cuts for middle class families than the Republican candidate's platform. And the Republican candidate, after advocating deregulatory policies for 26 years in Congress, has now embraced the rhetoric of a populist regulatory reformer.

But the most unlikely wind of all is Senator McCain's health care proposal which by the end of his first term would increase taxes by $1362 for middle-income American families, while raising marginal tax rates on labor income by more than President Bush's tax cuts have reduced them.

Here's how the McCain plan works. Every family receives a refundable tax credit of $5000 that can be used only to purchase health insurance. Individuals receive $2500. McCain's advisers say the cost of this tax credit is $3.6 trillion dollars over ten years. They also say that their plan is revenue neutral because they introduce a new tax on employer-based health insurance that the Joint Committee on Taxation scores as raising $3.6 trillion over 10 years.

Currently, employee compensation in the form of employer-provided health insurance is exempt from both the personal income tax and FICA payroll taxes. Most employee payments for employer-based health insurance are also tax preferred. McCain's plan would eliminate these and other health-related tax expenditures.

The fact that the plan is revenue neutral means that the tax savings for families receiving tax cuts are exactly balanced by the tax increases for families whose taxes go up. But because the tax cuts are front loaded, after just a few years most American families will see their tax bills go up under the McCain plan.

Read the rest here.

Go ahead and vote for McCain if you like paying higher taxes, and getting less in return from those taxes. Unless, of course, you are incredibly wealthy. If that is the case, then McCain’s plan will give you more and make you even more wealthy.

Apple, Gays, Google, And Religion

From Apple gives $100,000 to fight California gay marriage ban by Prince McLean:

Apple has joined Google in publicly opposing California's Proposition 8, a measure intended to ban the rights of gay Californians to legally marry, and has contributed $100,000 to defeat the measure.

Both companies have a history of remaining politically neutral, but have chosen to take sides on this issue because it relates directly to the civil rights and opportunities of their employees.

The No on 8 campaign notes that "Virtually every major paper in California is against Prop 8. The L.A. Times says it is 'a drastic step to strip people of rights.' La Opinión called Prop 8 'an unnecessary initiative.' The San Diego Union Tribune wrote that Prop 8 'offends many Californians' sense of fairness.'"

Apple's $100,000 contribution to the No on 8 campaign is significant because the effort to stop the proposition has been systematically outgunned by out-of-state religious groups, who have poured cash into TV advertisements that threaten dire consequences if gays' right to marry continue in the state. Among other claims, the ads state that if the proposition isn't passed, California schools will force children to study gay marriage.

That claim prompted California Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell to announce that the proposition "has nothing to do with schools or kids. Our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage, and using kids to lie about that is shameful."

A thank you to Irate Weirdos.

Bible Verse For Sunday 10-26-08

And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:

For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

What the hell?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives the first definition of the word chastise as: “to inflict punishment on (as by whipping).” And scourge is a synonym for whip; “especially: one used to inflict pain or punishment.”

How many, if any, children deserve punishment? How many deserve painful physical punishment? At what age should this punishment begin? What must the child do to deserve such correction so that the child may then be reverent to his/her father?

Ah, the Bible, the handbook for child abusers everywhere.