Revised: Alan Simpson Condemns Disabled Vets for Breathing Agent Orange
Fri, 09/03/2010 - 09:34 — Dave Culver- Maybe if Simpson and the ruling class weren’t so damned bloodthirsty, we wouldn’t have choices like this to make.
- Veterans Group Calls for Removal of Alan Simpson
- Show Alan Simpson, Vet Hater, the Door
David Dayen, FireDogLake
Alan Simpson’s scorn for people who use federal money goes beyond… well, everyone, in the form of Social Security. He also doesn’t like it when Vietnam-era soldiers breathed Agent Orange and put their greedy little hands out to cough into them because they had respiratory trouble the rest of their lives.
The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission said Tuesday (Aug 31).
Related:
Edward E. Curtis IV: Five myths about mosques in this country
Wed, 09/01/2010 - 10:04 — Dave Culver
- Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.
- Top 10 myths about Islam
Edward E. Curtis, IV, Minneapolis Star Tribune | MN
In addition to spawning passionate debates in the public, the news media and the political class, the proposal to build a Muslim community center near ground zero in New York has revealed widespread misconceptions about the practice of Islam in this country -- and the role of mosques in particular.
1) Mosques are new to this country.
Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of Mecca; it needn't be a building. One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African-American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon would regularly steal away to the woods there for his prayers -- in spite of a white boy who threw dirt on him as he made his prostrations.
Related:
This Is Not a Recovery
Fri, 08/27/2010 - 16:18 — Dave Culver- This isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.
- GDP Revised Down: Economy Grew At A Much Slower Pace Than Previously Thought.
- Tax Jujitsu: Why Democrats Should Propose a “People’s Tax Cut”.
- Jobless? Your leaders are at ease with that.
Paul Krugman, New York Times | NY
Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Thomas Sklarski
What will Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, say in his big speech Friday (August 27) in Jackson Hole, WY? Will he hint at new steps to boost the economy? Stay tuned.
But we can safely predict what he and other officials will say about where we are right now: that the economy is continuing to recover, albeit more slowly than they would like. Unfortunately, that’s not true: this isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.
The small sliver of truth in claims of continuing recovery is the fact that G.D.P. is still rising: we’re not in a classic recession, in which everything goes down. But so what?
