The War On Idiocy

Free Speech Zones, which were a real thing and not a plot element in a particularly ham-handed dystopian novel.

The phrase “hidey hole.”

Watching a budget surplus become a massive deficit that was bigger than it even looked because the White House was just like, “Okay, we’ll just not put the wars on the books and just ask for more money for those every few months.”

The sheer number of times Alberto Gonzalez said, “I don’t recall,” to Congress regarding war crimes and human rights violations.

“…now watch this drive.”

Mission Accomplished.

“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence,” “yellowcake uranium,” Condoleeza’s “mushroom clouds” fearmongering, and all the other bullshit we were fed to get into Iraq.

“Heck of a job, Brownie.”

Faith-based initiatives that could theoretically go to any religious organization but only went to Christian ones.

Karl Rove outing an active CIA agent because her husband wrote an article that made Bush look bad.

Stalling a Middle East peace plan because he got Sweden and Switzerland mixed up.

Coalition Of The Willing.

- Bush blankly staring at elementary kids for 7 minutes after he heard about 911.

- nuke-u-lar

he was getting brushed and decided to show off the goods.

Take a facet of crime, and then look at television shows/movies that feature those criminals as protagonists.

White mobs.

White pirates.

White serial killers.

White political corruption

White drug dealers

I mostly want to talk about this as a TV phenomenon, but pick a crime, any crime, and Western media has probably made a movie/TV series/play/etc. with a white person that romanticizes the criminal activity. No matter what, a white person can do whatever terrible crimes and still have a TV/movie fanbase that loves them.

When you see black or brown people committing crimes on screen, you are to see them thugs and criminal masterminds and people to be beat down.

When you see white people committing crimes on screen, you see a three-dimensional portrait of why someone might commit that crime, how criminals are people too, and how you should even love them for the crimes that they commit because they’re just providing for their families or they’ve wronged or they’re just people and not perfect. This is particularly a luxury given to white male characters, since there few white female criminals as protagonists.

If and of the above shows were about black or brown folks, there would be a backlash of (white) people claiming that TV and movies are romanticizing criminals and are treating them too much like heroes and that it will affect viewers and encourage violence and “thuggish” behavior. And yet fictional white criminals get to have a deep fanbase who loves these white criminals, receive accolades and awards, get called amazing television that portray the complexities of human nature. Viewers of these characters see past the atrocious crimes and into their humanity, a luxury that white characters always have while characters of color rarely do. The closest that mainstream TV has come to showing black criminals as main characters is probably The Wire, and even then, the criminals share equal screen time and equal status as main characters as the police trying to stop them.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/19/bernie-sanders-unveils-plan-for-tuition-free-public-colleges.html

The federal funding for Sanders’s proposal would come from a tax on financial transactions. Stock trades, bonds, and derivative trading would be taxed at rates of 0.5 percent, 0.1 percent, and 0.005 percent, respectively. Supporters of the financial transaction tax, which they call the “Robin Hood tax,” say it is not only a progressive way to raise revenue but would also discourage dangerous levels of Wall Street speculation.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/20/news/bernie-sanders-free-college/

His bill, called The College for All Act, would lower interest rates on federal student loans, give graduates a chance to refinance existing loans at lower rates, and stop the government from making profits on student loans.

To fund the legislation by generating up to $300 billion a year, Sanders proposes instituting a 0.5% tax on trades of stocks and 0.1% tax on bonds and an even smaller fee on so-called derivatives, such as stock options and futures contracts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmkS6daFKBA

Here’s a little video with a discussion, the source they link to is the one right above this.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/cover-more-americans-for-less-cost

“It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage. It is time for the United States to provide a Medicare-for-all single-payer health coverage program,“ Sanders said.

While making the case for a single-payer system nationwide, Sanders applauded his home state of Vermont for its progress toward developing its own single-payer system which could become a model for the nation.

http://www.healthcare-now.org/index.php?s=Bernie+Sanders+S.+1782

The Program amends the tax code to create the American Health Security Trust Fund and appropriates to the Fund specified tax revenues, current health program receipts, and tax credits and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. While the final structure of the financing component is still under consideration and is subject to change, the tax revenues in the draft include a new health care income tax, an employer payroll tax, a surcharge on high income individuals, and a tax on securities transactions.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/american-health-security-act-of-2013?inline=file

A link to the actual healthcare bill.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1200

A link to a summary of the bill. You’ll notice that it says that it eliminates medicare, medicaid and several other benefits, but that doesn’t matter because it gives those benefits right back under a different name to ALL Americans. Oh, and look at that:

“Amends the Internal Revenue Code to impose on individuals: (1) a health care income tax, and (2) an income tax surcharge on amounts of modified adjusted gross income exceeding $1 million. Imposes an excise tax on securities transactions and allows an income tax credit for such taxes.”

So it pays for itself with slightly higher taxes on corporations and the very wealthy. So does the college bill. Yes, they’ll bitch and moan about how it’s going to kill the economy if rich people have to pay one cent more in taxes, but it won’t. If this bill passes they’ll make it sound like it’s the end of the world, but then they’ll be used to it in less than 10 years and it will not have affected the economy in any negative way. They do this every time there’s an increase in taxes. It fucking happened when medicare was introduced. When the minimum wage was increased. When the minimum wage was INTRODUCED. When we got rid of slavery. When we introduced child labor laws. Every restriction and new tax is the “end of business in America,” except that it never is.

So obviously, it’s not magical fairy dust free, it’s an increase in taxes free, but you know what I’m okay with? Paying higher taxes so that I don’t have to pay for college or health insurance. Because both of those cost a TON in the short and long term and financially ruin Americans who need to pay for them but can’t. You know what almost never financially ruins people as long as they actually pay them? Taxes. 

Wisconsin Children Confront Scott Walker Over Whether He’ll Deport Their Undocumented Father

A 13-year-old U.S. citizen of undocumented parents living in Wisconsin twice confronted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, in Iowa on Sunday to ask why their state was part of a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s executive action on deportation relief for upwards of five million immigrants.