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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (717357)	5/23/2013 5:44:02 PM
From: bentway	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1584759

‘LAW ENFORCEMENT GUIDE TO SATANIC CULTS PART 2’: SATANISTS LOVE STROLLS THROUGH THE PARK dangerousminds.net You may remember our post a while back on the 1994 classic, Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults. Well, well you can praise Internet Satan, because we’ve stumbled across another clip! In this segment, our bemulleted expert guides us through what must be the most Satanic park in all the land, enlightening us as to the relationship between pagans and gay people, as well as the meaning of the “pentacle,” which I have deduced is his own portmanteau of “pentagram” and “testicle.” I remember the collective delusion that was the Satanism panic of the 1980s and 90s. Victims of the murders attributed to the West Memphis Three were exactly my age, and while that heartbreaking miscarriage of justice still confirms the dangers of reactionary superstition, I can’t help but feel a little (not so) “true crime” nostalgic watching this dumb weirdo walk us through incredibly heavy-handed “evidence” of Satanism in our very public parks (where the children play!) This was before planes hit buildings, before wealth inequality soared to record-breaking heights, and our wars weren’t yet fought by ( horrifyingly indiscriminate) flying death bots. Millennials are often accused of affecting nostalgia before acquiring the years necessary for proper wistfulness. I understand that irritation, (a lot of those clothes were horrifying the first time around), but who can blame us when we long for a simpler time, when the things we were scared of *weren’t even real?* So let’s watch the funny video below, and get a little shamelessly sentimental, shall we? Say it with me now: HAIL SATAN!

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (717357)	5/23/2013 7:27:52 PM
From: bentway	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1584759

Oklahoma needs help, not ideology, after tornado ( Who would Jesus support? ) By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: May 22 While listening to an NPR report out of Moore, Okla., this week, I was genuinely shocked. Not by the scale of the devastation or the tenacity of people who have grown stoically accustomed to the damage tornadoes can do but by a political sentiment that, in almost any other era, would not have been surprising at all. Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican who lives in the very neighborhood that was overwhelmed, was talking about a call he received from President Obama. Hearing Cole, I realized how strange it is these days for politicians to speak in human terms about someone in the other political party — especially if that someone is named Barack Obama. “He was very kind,” Cole said. The president, Cole added, “ticked off very quickly that the assets were available .?.?. and said, ‘You know, you’re going to have everything you need and if something — you have a problem, just call me directly at the White House.’ It was an exceptionally kind, thoughtful and gracious call.” Imagine: a solid conservative Republican declaring that Obama did something “kind, thoughtful and gracious.” This takes courage in the GOP these days. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie learned as much last fall. He was ostracized by large parts of the right (and pronounced unwelcome at March’s Conservative Political Action Conference) because he praised Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy. I hope Cole escapes this fate. A 64-year-old with a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma, he spent years in loyal service to the Republican Party, including a stint as state party chair in the 1980s. Back then, he was a straight-talking source for many journalists around the country (including me). He was never anything but a conservative. And except for one moment in our past, there has never been anything un-conservative or controversial about helping the victims of disasters. In fact, federal disaster relief is as old as our republic, as Brian Balogh, a University of Virginia historian, notes in his seminal book, “ A Government Out of Sight.” The practice goes back to the 1780s, Balogh wrote, and “by the mid-1820s, general relief bills were directed at entire classes of victims.” The sensible justification “was the victims’ inability to foresee or predict these sudden events, and the recipients’ innocence of any responsibility for them.” It was only between 1840 and 1860 that disaster relief from Washington became contentious as a particularly extreme brand of states’ rights politics reared its head. Southerners, Balogh notes, began fearing that “extending federal power” in this way “might establish a precedent for national intervention in the slavery question.” Although we resolved the slavery debate, our nation seems in many ways to be regressing to the politics of that era. Federal disaster relief is not a slam dunk anymore because an issue of basic decency has become entangled with a renewed assault on federal power and a belief that cutting the budget is the nation’s highest priority. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is so philosophically consistent that his office let it be known that he believed even assistance to those suffering in his home state should be offset by budget cuts. He later said he would not get in the way of relief, but it’s astonishing that emergency spending on behalf of innocent people would be used as a vehicle for more austerity. Cole, in a very different way, is also consistent when it comes to disaster relief. He was one of just 49 House Republicans who voted in January for a $50 billion Hurricane Sandy aid package; 179 voted no. “There’s clearly a federal responsibility to act in this case,” Cole said in a speech on the House floor. “We’ve always acted after disasters.” And then he offered this piece of prophesy: “It’s pretty unusual in my state to go through a year without a tornado disaster, and it’s pretty unusual to go through a year without a drought disaster. Each time, we’ve come and asked for help from the federal government; each time, we received that help. Undoubtedly, we’ll be doing that again in the near future. It would be hypocritical, in my view, to fail to do for people in the affected region what I and, I know, many others have routinely asked for our own regions.” Empathy, honesty and common sense: We could use more of all three. May the people of Oklahoma get the help they need. Rigid ideology is no substitute for generosity of spirit.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (717357)	5/25/2013 12:08:36 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1584759

The Bush Tax-Cut Failure By BRUCE BARTLETT Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He is the author of “ The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform – Why We Need It and What It Will Take.” Ten years ago this month, Congress enacted the third major tax cut of the George W. Bush administration. Its centerpiece was a huge cut in the tax rate on dividends. Historically, they had been taxed as ordinary income, but the Bush plan, enacted by a Republican Congress, cut that rate to 15 percent. The tax rate on ordinary income went as high as 35 percent. This initiative originated with the economist R. Glenn Hubbard, who had been chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers when the proposal was sent to Congress. Mr. Hubbard was a strong believer that the double taxation of corporate profits – first at the corporate level and again when paid out as dividends – was a major economic problem. During the George H.W. Bush administration, Mr. Hubbard had been deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy and wrote a Treasury report advocating full integration of the corporate and individual income taxes. Mr. Hubbard had also spearheaded enactment of big tax cuts in 2001 and 2002 that he said would jump-start the American economy. In an op-ed article in The Washington Post on Nov. 16, 2001, he predicted that the soon-to-be-enacted 2002 tax cut, which President Bush signed on March 9, 2002, would “quickly deliver a boost to move the economy back toward its long-run growth path.” Mr. Hubbard predicted that it would create 300,000 additional jobs in 2002 and add half a percentage point to the real gross domestic product growth rate. There is no evidence that the tax cut had any such effect. The unemployment rate remained above 5.7 percent all year, rising to 5.9 percent in November and 6 percent in December. The real G.D.P. growth rate fell each quarter of 2002, and by the fourth quarter growth was at a standstill. Hence the need for yet another big tax cut. The idea of the 2003 legislation was to raise dividend payouts, thereby bolstering personal income, and raise the prices of common stock, which would improve household balance sheets. As President Bush explained in his signing statement, “This will encourage more companies to pay dividends, which in itself will not only be good for investors but will be a corporate reform measure.” He also said the dividend tax cut would “increase the wealth effect around America and help our markets.” The Treasury Department issued a fact sheet on July 30 asserting that the decline in dividends had been a cause of the weak stock market and noting that dividend payouts had risen since enactment of the tax cut on May 28. Subsequent research, however, found that the increase in dividends was a short-term phenomenon and mainly at companies where stock options were a major form of executive compensation. A 2005 Federal Reserve Board studyfound that the United States stock market did not outperform European stock markets after the dividend cut. Nor did stocks qualifying for lower dividend taxes outperform those, such as real estate investment trusts, that did not qualify for lower dividend taxes. Non-dividend paying stocks slightly outperformed dividend-paying stocks, and many corporations that did pay higher dividends scaled back stock repurchases by a similar amount. Share repurchases were a common way that corporations returned profits to shareholders. They raised stock prices, which were untaxed as long as shareholders held the stock and were taxed at low capital gains tax rates when sold. A 2006 Federal Reserve study found that a third of corporations cut share repurchases by the same amount they increased dividend payouts. Hence only the form of shareholder compensation changed, not the amount. A 2010 Federal Reserve study found little change in total dividend payouts after the 2003 rate cut as a percentage of corporate earnings. It concluded that the tax cut had little, if any, effect. A 2008 study published in the National Tax Journal surveyed investment professionals to see their reaction to the dividend tax cut. It found that the tax cut was less significant than other factors, such as corporate cash flow and cash holdings that were unaffected by the tax change. A 2011 study by the Treasury Department examined household portfolios. It found no evidence that households shifted their investments from those whose return was taxed as ordinary income into dividend-paying stocks whose income was taxed less. Finally, a January 2013 study by Danny Yagan of the University of California, Berkeley, examined the impact of the 2003 tax cut on corporate investment. He found zero change. It is hard to find even a reputable conservative economist willing to say anything good these days about President Bush’s tax and economic policies. In 2009, the Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson said he saw no redeeming features in them. In 2011, the economist Alan Viard of the conservative American Enterprise Institute told Bloomberg News, “The effects of the Bush tax cuts on growth were ambiguous at best.” He added, “They were not much of a poster child for pro-growth tax policy.” Even Mr. Hubbard now seems unwilling to defend the tax cuts he shepherded into law. Earlier this year, he was asked by The New York Times what he thought about the repeal of many of the Bush-era tax cuts on Jan. 1. He said many of those tax cuts were no longer relevant to our tax and economic problems. Mr. Hubbard even suggested that higher revenues, long a Republican no-no, were not a bad thing. “We need a tax system that can promote economic growth and raise the revenue the American people want to devote to government,” he said.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (717357)	5/26/2013 1:39:39 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1584759

Faith-Healing Couple Charged in Baby's Death PENNSYLVANIA COUPLE ACCUSED OF MURDER AFTER SECOND CHILD DIES By John Johnson, Newser Staff newser.com Posted May 25, 2013 10:02 AM CDT (NEWSER) – This time, a Pennsylvania couple that embraces faith healing over medicine is facing murder charges and jail time after one of their children died. Herbert and Catherine Schaible are being held without bail on third-degree murder charges filed this week in the death of their 8-month-old son to pneumonia, reports AP. When a 2-year-old son died in 2009 under similar circumstances, the couple was convicted of involuntary manslaughter but served only probation after promising to give their kids standard medical care. "We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil's power," Herbert Schaible told detectives in April, explaining that medicine "is against our religious beliefs." The fundamentalist Christians belong to the small First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia. They each face seven to 14 years in prison if convicted, and their other seven children have been placed in foster care.