The Day We Fight Back: NSA Stop Spying on US

When the the PATRIOT Act was first purposed, I wrote to my Congressmen and asked them to please not sign it. Sadly, they did. And the Congressman Steven Palazzo has voted to renew it. This act, along with the War on Drugs has eroded our essential liberties of unreasonable searches and seizures. A few inroads are being made regarding the War on Drugs. I still cannot fathom why a majority of US citizens thought it was a good idea for law enforcement to be able to seize a person's property with just a suspicion of drug activity with no legal proceedings to justify the seizure.

The greatest disappointment I've had with President Obama is his insistence that the PATRIOT Act is necessary in order to fight against terrorism. It is the same old canard that convinced many in the US that we needed the PATRIOT Act in the first place. We don't. We US citizens shouldn't allow are laws that protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government to continue.

Today is the day we fight back. More information is here. If we continue to allow fear to erode our Constitutional rights, soon we will have none.

Romnesia

Do you forget the specifics of your tax plan? Then you might have Romnesia. Can't remember if you support a woman's right to equal pay? Than you probably have Romnesia. Can't remember all those American companies you bought and then sent the jobs to China? You might have Romnesia.

The 47%

The Republican presidential nominee has stated the 47% of Americans who do not pay income taxes are moochers and who feel that they are entitled to food, shelter, and medical care.

Who are these "moochers"? Well, according to the The Tax Policy Center , nearly half are senior citizens. These seniors, according to Romney feel entitled to the social security they paid into all those years they were working. One third of those "moochers" are the working poor who make less than $20,000 a year.

Mitt Romney has stated that his job as president is not to worry about those people.

I can only marvel at the crassness and obliviousness of Romney. I think the image below says it all:

Romney, by his own words, considers the elderly, disabled veterans, the working poor, and children living in poverty to be "moochers".

Like many other Americans in this economy, I teeter on the edges of being part of that 47%. Many years ago, I was part of that 47%. It was the safety net of a Pell grant, subsidized housing, the earned income credit, and the child care credit that enabled me to become a income tax paying citizen.

Past presidents like FDR, JFK, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and yes, even George W. Bush did care about the 47%. President Obama likes the moniker of Obamacare, because as he said, he does care.

A nation's greatness is reflected in how its most vulnerable citizens are treated. A nation cannot progress if people are starving. A nation cannot progress if laws are unjust and onerous. A nation cannot progress if people lack shelter. A nation cannot progress if people lack education. A nation cannot progress if disabled veterans do not receive the care they need.

Romney is not a leader. He knows how to game the system and has made millions upon millions on the backs of American taxpayers while all the while outsourcing American jobs overseas. Romney and his company, Bain, are directly responsible for many of those who find themselves as part of the 47%:

Romney is—you know, the old-school industrialists, like Mitt Romney’s father, they were men and women who built communities. They had factory towns. They were very anxious to leave, you know, hard legacies that people could see: hospitals, churches, schools—you know, the Hersheys of the world, the Kelloggs. But these new owners have absolutely no allegiance to American workers, American places, American communities. Their only allegiance is to the investors and to themselves. And so, it’s not at all uncharacteristic to have these situations where people are pleading for their jobs or they’re saying, you know, "We’ll tighten our belts, if you just make this concession and keep us." That’s irrelevant to the Mitt Romney-slash-Bain Capital-slash-Carlyle Groups of the world. They’re entirely about making profits. And if that means shipping jobs to China or eliminating jobs, that’s what they’re going to do. And that’s the new generation of corporate owners in this country.

Romney has no real investment in America. His true vision is profits. He's an opportunist who doesn't create any tangible wealth. What will he do with the United States if he is elected president?

Obama is Not a Muslim

Discuss and if you really believe he is a Muslim defend yourself. Do not use links from Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Newsmax, World News Daily, and other garbage sites.

Breakdown - Fascism

In my post, Self-hating Jew, I linked to the 14 points of fascism. For the next few weeks, I'm going to show some of the concerns I have the direction the US is going.


1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. How many times have you heard Republicans say liberals are not patriotic? What of the claims of American exceptionalism? I am proud of my country but think it does our country a disservice when politicians say that because I'm a liberal, I'm not a "real" American. It has been our country's liberal ideals that make us a truly great and unique nation. There have been mis-steps. The Founding Fathers allowed slavery to continue. It took a civil war to correct that injustice. Women were long denied the right to vote. The flood of Jewish, Irish, and other immigrants in the late 1800's and early 1900's led to quotas on immigration. During World War II we locked Japanese citizens on the West coast. Our country performed medical testing on blacks in Tuskegee.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. After World War II, Japanese soldiers were executed for water-boarding US soldiers. Today, in the United States, water-boarding is called "enhanced interrogation technique". When news first came out that the US was water boarding, Shepard Smith stated We are America. We don't f**king torture. Gitmo is a festering sore. We do not need Gitmo. We do not need to torture. Our laws were sufficient to deal with terrorists.


3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. Whose the biggest bogey man in the minds of many Americans? Muslims. Do we really need to pass laws that strike at the very heart of what it means to be free? The recently passed NDAA allows any president to have the military detain and US citizen arrested on US soil detained indefinitely. This is huge, huge, huge threat to our American way of life and it was started by President George W. Bush after 9-11 and sadly and much to my dismay, was signed into law by President Obama. Oh, to be sure both President Bush and Obama stated they would never use that power. But it shouldn't be a power they had to begin with. The PATRIOT Act, passed after 9-11 is an act which needs to be abolished.

We are Americans but too many are allowing fear to jeopardize the very things that make our country great. I wrote to my congressman before the passage of the PATRIOT Act urging him to vote no its passage. I've written to my current congressmen urging them not to pass NDAA with its truly un-American detention of US citizens. I wrote to them regarding the threat to free speech that SOPA and PIPA poses. All of my congressmen let me down. President Obama let me down by signing NDAA into law. But I'm hoping more and more Americans can see the power they have. If it weren't for the internet protests last week, we would have SOPA and PIPA.

If we can stop SOPA and PIPA, we can make Congress abolish the NDAA and the PATRIOT Act.

I cannot support any of the Republican nominees for president. They are just too dangerous to our country's future. We have given up some of our freedoms out of fear. The Republican candidates message is nothing but fear and more fear. If they truly believed in American exceptionalism, why do they keep feeding us fear? Aren't we the home of the brave? It's time to give up fear.

GOP & TEA Party: Party Before Country

I watched President Obama's speech last evening. I like it a lot because it gives more tax cuts to those who need it most: The middle class. The proposal would also pay for itself by closing tax loopholes that large corporations and billionaires currently enjoy on the backs of the middle and lower and middle classes. Some of those mega-corporations enjoy tax breaks for creating jobs. Too bad those jobs were created in China!!

Even though President Obama didn't name Grover Norquist by name, I'm glad that Obama brought up the stupid pledge some members of Congress made of not raising taxes. Too bad those same members(read GOP and TEA party) seem willing to increase the tax burden of the middle class. They bulk at raising taxes on the wealthy by 3% but seem to have no problem with raising taxes on the middle class and working poor.

Analysis has shown that President Obama's job plan would add over a million jobs in 2012.

But I doubt if the Republican and TEA Party members of Congress will pass the job bill. They put their party before country. They don't to care that the middle class and the working poor are suffering. In short, they care more about their buddies like the Koch brothers, Grover Norquist, and others, than they do about our country.


GOP and TEA Party prove that you care more about our country than the party you belong to and help pass President Obama's sensible job plan.

The Beach at Gulfport

I took these photos yesterday at the beach in Gulfport. It is in the area where President Obama visited today. From news reports, he was on the east side of the pier.

The black skimmer skimmed over this dark patch and then resumed its hunting.


I cannot tell if this bird washed ashore is a black skimmer, a heron, or an egret. This is the same in which 15 dead sea turtles washed ashore last Friday.



On the west side of the pier, patches of beach are slowly being stained black.



Yesterday, protective berms were being placed.





The water in some spots had this weird stringy stuff.






Walking on the east side of the pier, I couldn't detect any smell of oil. However, walking on the west side, the closer I walked to where the Veterans home used to be, the smell of oil was strong. It made my eyes sting. As long as the oil keeps gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, I fear we can expect more turtles, birds, fish, and other marine life to be washed ashore. Time, the winds and currents we tell if and when the beaches of Mississippi will be covered with same toxic muck now trashing the shores of Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida.