Rick Santorum is the Mullah Omar of Pennsylvania!

That line was created by Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch.org. Former senator Bob Kerrey once said, "Santorum, that is Latin for asshole."

Rickie was once described as "the dumbest member of the Congress."

This pathetic and insane Christian Jihadi is the virtual first choice for GOP Iowans. Now that is incredible!

If this isn't a reason for the Occupy Movement then I surely don't know what is.

To have a nation's electorate choose a stupid, crazy fool as their pick for president, who would be worse than anyone we have ever seen in our lifetime, is a major reason to get up, go to your window and open it, and then to lean out and yell, "I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!!!"

Obama created a leadership vacuum, and now we have fools racing to fill it.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Rick Santorum is a Racist!

The fact about Iowa Rick is that there are more white people receiving welfare benefits than black people. I wonder how many people in that audience, who applauded Rickie's racist statement, have family and friends receiving some sort of welfare benefit in the great state of Iowa?

Here is more from Rickie Santorum:

This was a comment on the site called Thinkprogress, by Igor Volsky

Rick Santorum’s Top 10 Most Outrageous Campaign Statements

Rick Santorum’s surprising second-place finish in Iowa comes after months of dogged campaigning throughout the sate’s 99 counties and more than 350 town halls. ThinkProgress tracked the former Pennsylvania senator throughout this period and has compiled a list of his top 10 most outrageous claims:

1) ANNUL ALL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES: Arguing that gay relationships “destabilize” society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”

2) ‘I’M FOR INCOME INEQUALITY’: “They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality,” Santorum said during an event in Pella, Iowa in December. “I think some people should make more than other people, because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risk, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality.”

3) CONTRACEPTION IS ‘A LICENSE TO DO THINGS’: Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control, insisting that “it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

4) GAY SOLDIERS ‘CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CLOSE QUARTERS’: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.” He also suggested that “there are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore.”

5) OBAMA SHOULD OPPOSE ABORTION BECAUSE HE’S BLACK: During an appearance on Christian television in January, Santorum said he was surprised that President Obama didn’t know when life began — given his skin color. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,” he explained.

6) WE DON’T NEED FOOD STAMPS BECAUSE OBESITY RATES ARE SO HIGH: Speaking in Le Mars, Iowa in December, Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.

7) ABORTION EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECT WOMEN’S HEALTH ARE ‘PHONY’: While discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban in June, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony.” “They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exceptionwhich would make the ban ineffective,” he said.

8) HEALTH REFORM WILL KILL MY CHILD: Santorum, who claims that Obamacare motivated him to run for president, told reporters in April that his daughter Bella — who was born with a genetic abnormality — wouldn’t survive in a country with “socialized medicine.” “Children like Bella are not given the treatment that other children are given.”

9) UNINSURED AMERICANS SHOULD SPEND LESS ON CELL-PHONE BILLS: During a meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in August, Santorum said that people who can’t afford health care should stop whining about the high costs of medical treatments and medications and spend less on non essentials. Answering a question about the uninsured, Santorum explained that health care, like a car, is a luxury resource that is rationed by society and recalled the story of a woman who said she was spending $200 a month on life-saving prescriptions. Santorum told her to stop complaining and instead lower her cable and cell phone bills.

10) INSURERS SHOULD DISCRIMINATE AGAINST PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS:Santorum sounded like a representative from the health insurance industry when he addressed a small group of high school students in Merrimack, New Hampshire in December. The former Pennsylvania senator not only defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he also argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums because they cost more money to insure.

Here is more from commenters on Thinkprogress:

Santorum’s Tax Plan Would Likely Add Trillions Of Dollars To The Deficit

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 4, 2012

[From the draining brain of Mr. Sweater Vest himself]:

Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucuses last night, squeaking past the late surging Rick Santorum by just eight votes. And when it comes to tax and budget policy, the two candidates are separated by about as much as their final vote tallies.

Romney’s economic plan includes a $6.6 trillion tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the rich and corporations. As a result of this gargantuan giveaway, the plan “would yieldapproximately $6.5 trillion in deficits from 2013 through 2021.” And as the Tax Policy Center found, Santorum’s plan doesn’t fare much better:

The Tax Policy Center has not yet formally modeled the former Pennsylvania senator’s tax platform. However, because it cuts rates significantly but does not eliminate tax preferences—and even expands a few—it would very likely add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit. Looked at from that prism, it is not so different from the ideas raised by most of his GOP rivals.

Like other Republican tax planks, Santorum’s would benefit corporations and high-income individuals. No surprise there. But unlike his rivals, he’d also cut taxes for many families with children.

Santorum is no bleeding heart, however. Even as he’d cut their taxes, he’d shred direct government spending for programs aimed at assisting these same households.

When it comes to economic policy, the GOP field is largely in lockstep, supporting new, huge tax cuts for the rich and corporations and opposing efforts to ensure that millionaires can’t pay lower taxes than middle-class families. That kind of end result fits right in with the economic beliefs that Santorum holds, as he’s said that he is “for income inequality” and believes that the country’s economic woes are the result of “huge moral failings.”

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

My Year End Summary

A happy new year to you and to all of you commenters and blogwatchers. We have been here weekly for many moons now, and little has changed in the streets of Washington, DC. Instead, we see viper radicals wanting to become president lining the GOP podium. What will solidify an Obama victory would be Da'Trumpster running as a Independent, as he has recently inferred.

The world is operating on a shell game mentality. The commoner is angry but really has nowhere to go. The Occupy movement has offered a place to stand with a loud voice, a wagging finger, a carrying of signs that might read "American IS NOT A Plutocracy!!", or, "And Justice For All--So, When Does That Happen?".

The fatcat elite keep spinning the Wheel of Fortune each and everyday hoarding massive amounts of capital gains, dividends and profits from market manipulations, stashing cash at the Fed, or destroying foreign sovereign economies.

Our elected representatives, wealthy as they are, continue to gum up the system with attached bills to the major bills hoping to bring about a massively long XL Pipeline down the bowels of the nation to the anus port of Koch Bro refineries in Texas. All the while, the Canadians don't want to build the damn thing themselves.

The Golums in Congress want to strangle working people and make them even more as indentured servants by keeping the country from creating a new vision, such as localized/neighborhood/community based energy generation systems, support for an expansion of localized food sources/farms, effective mass transit systems, an economy where "job growth" is not just a talking point for the nation's bullshitters, and the political psychopathetics walking the halls of government, more affordable healthcare, a halting of all war profiteering, along with an end to wars and occupations, and a conclusion to the war stimulus packages that are an unsustainable transference of wealth from the taxpayer right into the hands of the corporate campaign donor elite, and finally, reinstating Glass-Steagall, and ending the Commodity Futures Modernization Act both of which were brought about by Mr. Humpty Dumpty Ging-grinch himself when pretending to be the Speaker of the House under the Clinton administration, and an end to the corporation as a citizen followed by an end to private funding for elections. The list is endless!

The merry-go-round of world economies are more like a cork screw slowly burying any real chance of national economic recoveries without smothering the commoners in the process.

Our only real hope is that the Occupy Movement actually holds a national general assembly meeting on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia to make a stand against the political predators that hold offices today. The 99% need to place the flag in the ground and declare a public announcement that we are not going to take this crap any longer, and if you are not on the side of the 99%, then step aside and get out of the way.

Happy New Year from us at:

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

Ron Paul and the Killing Machine

Mike Whitney asks this very interesting question in regards to Ron Paul: Is doing away with the social entitlements worth it if Ron Paul, if elected president, would do away with the U.S. killing machine around the world?

My question to Mike is, how would you feel if we saw our own people dying more rapidly through the euthanasia of the elderly, sick and disabled as a result of this choice you have hypothetically proposed? 

What would be the interesting question if Paul were to become president is: would he actually stick to his ideals or would he be read the "riot act" by the nation's most powerful corporate elite, as was Obama? Would he dismantle foreign bases, and end occupations, wars, and secret covet missions; or, would be suddenly believe in "national security" and continue to engage in the business-as-usual at the Pentagon, CIA, and the rest in order to continue the economic gravy train that many of these powerful corporate elite have benefitted from as war machine contractors?

Would he have stayed away from offering support to citizen protesters working to topple dictators? Would Paul decide to stop selling our own oil, natural gas, and coal to foreign countries in order to be less dependent on foreign producing countries which he feels hate us? Or, would he continue the selling of our own natural gas resource?

Ron Paul does not strike me as an FDR or Truman-type who would stand up against the massive push-back by the powerful corporate elite.

Mike, do actually believe that Ron Paul has the strength to actually walk the walk, or is it just talking the talk.

Of War and Social Security

by MIKE WHITNEY  12-29-11 from counterpunch.org

Ron Paul is the only antiwar candidate who has a (microscopic) chance of winning in 2012. He’s also the only candidate who will make an effort to restore the Bill of Rights and reverse Congress’s decision to allow the president to “indefinitely” imprison American citizens without due process. For these reasons alone, Paul should garner the support of leftists, liberals, and progressives. But he won’t, because liberals are convinced that Paul will try to dismantle the social programs upon which the elderly, the infirm, and the vulnerable depend.

These concerns are not without foundation. Paul opposes government meddling in the market and sees Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as steps towards socialism. That means, there’s a good chance that these programs will come under fire if Paul is elected. The question is: How should we balance our concerns about Social Security with our opposition to the war(s)?

To answer that question, we need to create a “hypothetical”.

Let’s say, Paul surprises his critics and wins the presidency in a landslide victory in November
2012. Then–in his first public appearance as president–he issues an executive order to stop all Social Security payments immediately, thus cutting off the meager revenue-stream that millions of the nation’s elderly need to scrape-by.

Isn’t this the worst-case scenario? Isn’t this what liberals are really worried about?

Okay, so let’s say it all goes-down just as we said. Let’s say Paul tries to strangle Social Security from Day 1. Isn’t that still infinitely better than another Falluja, another Haditha, another Abu Ghraib, another bombed-out wedding party?

Yes, it’s wrong to deprive the sick and elderly of some pittance so they can eek by, but is it as wrong as blowing women and children to bits in their own country, in their own cities, in their own homes?

It’s a question of priorities, right? So, what’s more important; ending the bloodletting or some potential threat to Social Security?

Paul will stop the killing. We should use our vote to do the same.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Fly Your Own Spy Drone Plane for Only $300!

In 2012, the Occupy Wall Street movement could arm themselves by flying their own drone spy planes to record the action. This is from http://washingtonsblog.com

Fly Your Own Spy Drone … For $300

Posted on December 29, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

Fly Your Own Spy Drone … Using Your iPhone

The Parrot A.R. Drone can be launched and controlled with your iPhone or iPad:

The Parrot A.R. Drone costs $299.

The Parrot A.R. Drone can maintain stable flight at an altitude of up to 20 feet, and a maximum altitude of up to 160 feet.

More sophisticated drones can fly higher and for longer, in a more stable fashion.

For example, protesters in Warsaw used a spy drone last month to see what police were doing. As diydrones.com notes:

People tend to assume that UAVs will be used by the police to keep watch on us, but as … video, taken by a RoboKopter of riots in Warsaw, shows, they can equally be used by citizens to keep tabs on the police. No need to wait for the local news to send a helicopter to get the aerial scene of a demonstration, just Do It Yourself!

Here is the video of the police shot by the Polish protesters:

 

(Here’s what the RoboKopter drone used by the Polish protesters looks like.)

Drones can range from simple:

To advanced:

For more amazing technology, see this and this.

For information on building your own drone, start here.

Disclaimer: The FAA apparently considers do-it-yourself drones to be legal. We don’t know whether there are any Department of Homeland Security or other regulations or laws prohibiting flying your own spy drone. Consult with a representative of all appropriate Federal, state, county and local agencies to determine whether or not you may fly your own drone.