YES WE CAN...YES WE DID!

Butch and I got involved last fall when the health care reform debate started to heat up. We joined other friends in the Democratic party to show our support for affordable health care for all Americans. We stayed involved and signed petitions until it passed. We feel proud that we did our part to help make this historic change in health care.

Teabonics

Some nice person has photographed signs created by Teabaggers. I did say "created" because they have been pretty creative in their spelling and grammar usage.

You can view a slideshow here. Enjoy!

Koch Brothers Quietly Remake America

In my March 15 blog titled "How's That Trickle Down Economy Working For You?" I published a shocking graphic image that showed how the wealthiest Americans' incomes have increased over the past 15 years. Here it is again...

After looking at the graph and thinking about how this happened, I started thinking about who those 400 wealthy Americans were. Sure, I knew that Bill Gates was there, and Warren Buffet, Oprah, Steven Speilberg, Steve Jobs and those guys at Google. It didn't surprise me that four Walton siblings were in the top 15. But who were some of the others that weren't quite so famous and what had they done to amass their fortunes? Yesterday, my curiosity was rewarded when I found an article about Charles and David Koch. Have you ever heard of them? Me either.

Well, they happen to share the #19 space on the Forbes 400 richest people in the world, with each of them posting a cool $14 billion apiece. These two senior citizens got started when they inherited a successful business from their wealthy father. But more importantly they inherited his idealogy. You see Fred Koch founded the John Birch Society.

The brothers run Koch Industries, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas with over 70,000 employees in 60 countries and more than $100 billion in sales each year. Pretty impressive, right?  Then why haven't we heard about them or their company?

They prefer to operate below the radar because it allows them to spread their anti-government, corporate-controlled vision of how to reshape America. They've been at it for awhile and they are really good at it. You'll want to learn more about these brothers. Trust me.

Today, I found this article from Climate Science Watch that explains how the "brothers Grimm" influence the global warming debate while financially supporting climate change deniers.

UPDATE: And Greenpeace recently came out with this article published in Huffington Post.

Keep your eyes on the Koch brothers. They are reshaping America and it's not for our benefit.

How's That Trickle Down Economy Working For You?

On March 3, 2010 the Economic Policy Institute published this graph that shows the income growth of the top 400 American households compared to the rest of us over a 15-year period. 

What it shows is that while pre-tax income grew by a staggering 409% over that 15-year period, after tax income increased even more... by 476%. The third line shows the change in the pre-tax median household income over the same period, which grew only 13.2% (that's us).

The median pre-tax household income for a family of four in 2007 was $50,233, while the top earning 400 households earned a median income of $345 million, almost 6900 times as much income.

For the original article click on the headline. 

Is the Military Threatening To Kill Obama?

Conspiracy theories are thought provoking and down right scarey. I happened on this article last night about midnight and couldn't put it down. "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!!?" It is long. Very long. There's a lot of background information...so much that your head will spin. Keep reading. You'll find a hundred places where you will want to stop. Your head will throb. Your eyes will blur. Your acid reflux will flare up. Keep reading. Then leave a comment, please. DiAnne


Barack in the Crosshairs

By John Hankey

2-21-10

There is a financial oligarchy in this country, that tries, by every means available to it, to control all essential political activity, including the education of the citizens, their thinking, the information available to them, etc. Some politicians genuinely see themselves as public servants, and wish to serve the public good. They can give passionate and inspiring speeches, spoken truly from the heart ­ but they know good and well that if they want to get elected they must carry out the agenda of the elite.

All politicians, even those trying to make society more fair, must be brought to heel, one way or another. It is not a simple game. And the tools used to control politicians are varied: controlling the information they receive is often effective; some times bribery or a scandal is necessary. It was necessary to shoot John and Robert Kennedy in the head. The bloody deaths of the Kennedy brothers sent a message to every politician, that still echoes today. And I think the evidence shows that Obama received a reminder of this message recently.

The parallels between the administrations of Barack Obama and John Kennedy are stunning: (more)