Great article on Social Security

After being on the defensive for some time and trying to prevent the long-held dream of the oligarchy to either cut spending on Social Security benefits (so that they can provide more tax cuts for themselves) or to privatize the funds (so that they can loot it directly) coming true, some Democrats led by senator Elizabeth Warren have gone on the offensive by arguing, correctly, that the benefits actually need to be increased for low-income retirees, with the extra money for it coming from eliminating the cap on earned income subject to the payroll tax that currently stands at $118,500.
[Read more…]

When police act like organized crime syndicates

A Cleveland police officer named Michael Brelo is on trial for the killing of two unarmed people at the end of a crazy and dangerous chase through the city with 62 police cars and 100 officers in pursuit that ended with the victims and their car having 137 bullets pumped into them, 49 of them by Brelo, the last 15 after he jumped on the top of the car and fired straight down, as if he was the star in some action film. It later turned out that the insane chase and deaths may have been triggered by the victims’ car backfiring that some police thought was a gunshot.
[Read more…]

The song is the same, only the names change

John Oliver’s interview with Edward Snowden about the abuses by the US government has been viewed over 4.3 million times and so of course the apologists for the national security state in the media and politics have come out of the woodwork to smear him yet again because they fear that his exposure of widespread government surveillance in pursuance of ways to control the population and suppress dissent will enable those seeking to curb those excesses to gain traction. These people may say they fear terrorism but what they really fear is transparency and democracy.
[Read more…]

Should religious colleges not be accredited?

Our university is currently going through the very last stages of renewing its accreditation as an institution of higher learning. It happens every ten years and is a big deal. We have to show the accrediting body that we are meeting our mission of providing a quality education to our students and have the resources to do so, so that our degrees actually mean something. The process requires a lot of work for the university because we have to collect all the evidence to support our case.
[Read more…]

The Daily Show on the Indiana law against gays

We see in Indiana a repeat of what happened with Chik-fil-A a few years ago when that company got calls for a boycott for the anti-same sex marriage statements of the owner. People opposed to equal rights for gays rallied around the company in solidarity and there were long lines of people waiting to buy products. In Indiana, a similar thing occurred with people sending lots of money to support a pizzeria that got a lot of flak and death threats for saying they would not cater a same-sex wedding.
[Read more…]

p.s. I also need war plans for Iran by 3:00 pm today

Via Tom Levenson, I learned about the 12th anniversary of this memo from then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to then Under Secretary for Defense Donald Feith.

Unbelievable. Read it and weep.

This is how our great minds think. With such arrogance, no wonder the neoconservatives got this country in such a string of messes and caused death and mayhem and misery to millions of people. Why they are allowed anywhere near any job that requires thinking is beyond me.

Using children as a weapon of religious coercion

One of the most powerful weapons that highly controlling religious groups have to prevent defections is to threaten apostates that leaving would mean they would lose contact with family members, especially their children. We know that Scientology does this as do fundamentalist religious groups such as the Westboro Baptist Church and the Exclusive Brethren. Mormons who defect also tend to be shunned by those who remain but it is not a formal policy of the church or as severe an excommunication.
[Read more…]