So, how are you folks doing with that reduction in food stamps our venerable politicians...Eric Cantor, that four-eyed wonder, to be precise...called for?

Are you saving up (stamps) for that Thanksgiving Day dinner? Will you be able to afford a turkey? Or has the reduction precluded that kind of luxury? Well, look at it this way, our politicians will be having luxurious, scrumptious turkey feasts with all the trimmings. Doesn’t that fill your belly? Think harder.

Today’s the 13th. You have 15 days left to turkey day. Hey! Here’s a thought. Why not put your stamps together with other unfortunates and maybe, just maybe, 10 or 15 of you can nab one o’them birds.
Or is that against the rules?

*******************************************

PRETEND-TO-CARE
INSURANCE
*******************************************

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Don't Let Them Steal Our
SOCIAL SECURITY!
Social Security has not
added a red cent to the deficit.
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Is Andrea Yates Evil?

By Katherine Ramsland

Around 10:00am on June 20, 2001, Rusty Yates received a startling phone call from his wife, Andrea, whom he had left only an hour before.

"You need to come home," she said.

Puzzled, he asked, "What's going on?"

She just repeated her statement and then added, "It's time.   I did it."

Not entirely sure what she meant but in light of her recent illness, he asked her to explain and she said, "It's the children."

Now a chill shot through him.   "Which one?" he asked.

"All of them."

He dropped everything and left his job as a NASA engineer at the Johnson Space Center.

When he arrived fifteen minutes later, the police and ambulances were already at their Houston, Texas home on the corner of Beachcomber and Sea Lark in the Clear Lake area.

Rusty was told he could not go in, so he put his forehead against a brick wall, trying to process the horrifying news, and waited.

Restless for information, he went to a window and knocked on to the back door where he screamed, "How could you do this?"

According to an article in Time, at one point Rusty Yates collapsed into a fetal position on the lawn, pounding the ground as he watched his wife being led away in handcuffs.

John Cannon, the police spokesperson, described for the media what the team had found.

On a double bed in a back master bedroom, four children were laid out beneath a sheet, clothed and soaking wet. 

All of them were dead, with their eyes wide open.

In the bathtub, a young boy was submerged amid feces and vomit floating on the surface.

He looked to be the oldest and he was also dead.

In less than an hour that morning, five children had all been drowned, and the responding officers were deeply affected.

The children's thin, bespectacled mother---the woman who had called 911 seeking help---appeared able to talk coherently, but her frumpy striped shirt and stringy brown hair were soaked.

She let the officers in, told them without emotion that she had killed her children, and sat down while they checked.

Detective Ed Mehl thought she seemed focused when he asked her questions.

She told him she was a bad mother and expected to be punished.

Then she allowed the police to take her into custody while medical personnel checked the children for any sign of life.

She looked dispassionately at the gathering crowd of curious neighbors as she got into the police car.

Everyone who entered the Spanish-style home could see the little school desks in one room where the woman apparently home-schooled them. 

The house was cluttered and dirty, with used dishes sitting around in the kitchen.  The bathroom was a mess.

 This crime story would unravel in dark and strange ways, with the reasons why a loving mother of five had drowned all of her children tangled in issues of depression, religious fanaticism, and psychosis. 

The nation would watch with polarized opinions , as the State of Texas was forced into a determination about justice that was rooted in glaringly outdated ideas about mental illness.

But in the meantime, Andrea Yates sat in a jail cell and Rusty Yates had to deal with a demanding media that not only wanted a scoop but also wanted an answer. 

Why would any mother murder all of her children?

Texas again?!! Okay, you stiff-necked, red state bastards! So, here’s what we can look forward to without birth control or abortion or just plain common sense. Men don’t know how to deny themselves ANYTHING. Period!

And why should they? It feels good. Consequences? Not for them. It’s all good from their perspective. All good.  

DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER THE $8 BILL1ON THAT WENT MISSING AT THE START OF WAR #1?

DID IT ENLIST?

IT JUST WENT MISSING...PUFF! ALL GONE?


Missing Iraq money may be as much 
as $18 billion

By David Ferguson

June 19, 2011--In 2004, the Bush administration flew twenty billion dollars of shrink-wrapped cash into Iraq on pallets.

Now the bulk of that money has disappeared.

The funds flown into the war zone were made up of surplus from the UN’s oil-for-food program, as well as money from sales of Iraqi oil and seized Iraqi assets.

Recent estimates had the amount of missing money at about $6.6 billion, but according to Al Jazeera, Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi says the figure is closer to three times that amount.

Officials were supposed to distribute the money to Iraqi government ministries and U.S. contractors tasked with the reconstruction of Iraq, but it now appears that the bulk of the cash was stolen in what may be one of the largest heists in history.

The Iraqi government argues that U.S. forces were supposed to safeguard the cash under a 2004 agreement, making Washington responsible for the money’s disappearance.

Pentagon officials claim that given time to track down the records they can account for all of the money, but the U.S. has already audited the money three times and no trace of what happened to it can be found.

Al Jazeera says that it has been unable to find any documents whatsoever accounting for the money’s disappearance.

Some believe that U.S. officials absconded with the money, but it’s more likely, sources say, that corrupt Iraqi officials used the funds to line their own pockets.

To date, it’s estimated that the Iraq War has cost the United States more than a trillion dollars.

Republicans, committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, let out all the stops in the decade that followed.

Let the spending begin.

Spending INCREASED dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program—nothing too good when it was put on the credit card.

Gawd bless president whatz-his-face and his faithful companion.
  
The problem got worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts forced into every millionaire and billionaire’s pocket.

Yeah, we sat by helplessly and watched that transfer of wealth.

This, of course, took place during the presidency of George Bush, but not without a helping hand from Democrats.

Time for a THIRD PARTY, gang.

The period from 2001-2011, the biggest contributor to the disappearance of vastly estimated surpluses ($4.3 trillion), followed by incorrect revenue estimates ($3.3 trillion) by the Congressional Budget Office, brings us to where we are today.

Up the freaken creek without a freaken paddle.

The two big tax cuts during the Bush years are estimated to total about $1.5 trillion.

That's with a freaken T, folks.

Many of the tax cuts continued into the early years of the Obama presidency. In December a deal with Republicans to extend them even more, brings us to $2.8 trillion.

He was probably still in shock over the mess he inherited.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars was $1.26 trillion through 2011 and the Medicare prescription drug program totaled $272 billion.

Wait! thought Obama, "I can do better than that."

Fortunately, the actual size of the Bush tax cuts might be lower because they were based on revenue estimates that ultimately fell far short of what was predicted in 2001.

The true “cost” to the Treasury may never be known.

 Accountant speak for: we are totally out of control. 

Bush instituted the two big tax cuts, the one in 2001 and another in 2003.

I remember that! I think I got a buck fifty back!

The first was implemented amid rosy predictions of a 10-year, $5.6 trillion surplus; the second was enacted after the economy appeared to stumble after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

So, if the economy is rosy, tax cuts...but if the economy appears to stumble, more tax cuts.

Wait! Let me write that down.

When the tax cuts were passed, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated how much they might reduce revenue: the 2001 tax cuts was pegged at $1.35 trillion over 10 years; the 2003 tax cut was set at $350 billion over 10 years.

Why not a jillion? 

Those estimates have never been updated, even as the economy and the budget moved on.

Here are two ways to look at how the 2001 numbers might be different today.

ooo, ooo..I know, I know...Pick me...scrood! and phuqued!

First, although the JCT has not gone back and rescored the 2001 tax cuts, the committee recently estimated the revenue impact of virtually the same tax cut—the two-year extension negotiated by President Obama and the Congress.

For simplicity, and because some elements were changed in other parts of the tax cut, let’s focus just on the reductions in individual taxes.

In 2001, the JCT estimated that the tax-rate package would reduce revenues by $115 billion in 2010.
In December, the extension of those tax rates in 2012 was estimated to cost $105 billion.

The $10 billion difference means the cost of the tax rates rose about 5 percent each year

I'm getting delirious!

At that trend, the 2001 prediction of the 2012 tax rate package would have been about $126 billion.

In other words, the current estimate of the cost of the 2012 tax rate reductions is 17 percent lower than what would have been predicted under the 2001 methodology.

This shift, however, appears to be largely because of the impact of the recession, which devastated all government revenues.

The reduction is less dramatic if you go back all the way to 2001.

It was lower for each year, and we used the resulting ratio to adjust the size of the tax cut for each year.

Under this method, for most years, the impact was minimal, just a slight reduction.

But when the recession hit in 2008, and the GDP turned out to be 10 percent below predictions for three straight years, the cost of the tax cut was reduced by billions of dollars each year.

Over the 10-year period, the overall size of the tax cut dropped about 5 percent, or $65 billion, to $1.285 trillion.

Some people might call that a rounding error in the context of a ten-year federal budget.

The Bottom Line
There certainly might be other ways to calculate the actual impact of the tax cut, and we would welcome suggestions.

It seems clear that the impact was less during the recession—though one could argue that government’s fiscal condition would be much better if those revenues had been collected.

No matter how you count it, nearly $1.3 trillion is a lot of money.

Chris Christie--the new darling of the Right.

Did You Know??

– He REFUSED the funds to build  road/tunnel from north Jersey to New York

– He voted to  REFUSE funds to secure embassies, one of which is Benghazi

– OPPOSED funds for Planned Parenthood*

– ANTI-CHOICE for Women (Men still have choice for all the Viagra they want.)

*Although Planned Parenthood addresses all women’s health issues.