Bleeding Heart Liberals - My Facebook Response

Oh. My. God. You're so right. Liberals are bleeding-heart tax-and-spend spineless proponents of a welfare state. The sick and the poor have only themselves to blame with their unhealthy lifestyles and poor career choices. Minimum wages and pensions and safety regulations are for pussies. Corporations should be able to take whatever resources they want and not have to worry about rivers catching on fire or smog or contaminated soil or complaining neighbors or products that kill people. Caveat emptor! No more regulations! Corporations should be able to impose their religious beliefs on heathen lazy workers. Deviant lifestyles should be punished. Sex is binary!

The healthcare insurance industry should stand between a patient and doctor, and be able to pick and choose healthy people to insure. Insurers should be allowed to charge unlimited premiums, co-pays, deductibles, limits. Why should insurers have to pay for people's stupidity and sinful ways? Monopolies make good business sense. Trickle down will work this time! The pay raises and benefits and new jobs will rain down on workers. Jobs will be created because corporations have more money, not because of increased demands for their products.

Gerrymandering will ensure that only the worthy will govern us. Who cares if brown people have to stand in line for five hours to vote. It's the American Way. The financial sector should be able to play with Social Security Trust Fund's $2.89 trillion in US Treasury Bonds. Teachers should be armed. Sure, some kids might get accidentally shot. That's the price of a free state.

Liberals only want health care for all, justice to be not just for the wealthy, minorities and disabled and the sick and elders to not be discriminated against, regulations for health and safety, air and water and soil protection, higher wages for workers (and more purchasing power), consumer protections, pension protections and safe retirements, fair elections, bans on weapons of mass murder, police who don't murder 911 callers, no more corporate welfare (including indirect welfare by having to provide government assistance to their employees), worker VISAs so migrants can go back home, a non-religious government, healthcare that corporations don't have to fund aside from equal taxes.

The Founding Fathers loved the Church of England and wanted to make America safe for Church rule. They wanted freedom from the tyranny of atheists and agnostics. They were not fans of the religions of Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform), Daoism, Muism, Cao Dai, Shintoism, Buddhism, and Islam (including Sunni, Shia, Ibadi, Ahmadi). They believed in The Church of England (Anglican), not in those other Christian pretenders such as Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Protestant, Episcopalian, Mennonite, and Quaker. They would not have liked modern Christianity with its strange new sects such as Pentecostal, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Apostolic, and Christian Science.

Liberals. What are people thinking? Snowflakes and libtards and namby-pamby crybabies. Give us conservatism!

Remind me when the Obama girls were adults working in government with their father. I don't remember that.

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Note: This blog posting was written in response to a comment on a post comparing Chelsea Clinton with Ivanka (Trump) Kushner.

Facebook photo posting: Chelsea vs. Ivanka

Commenter: [Name withheld to shield people from further spelling and grammar errors.] You people have become worse than conservatives. They were the bullies now you folks have taken it to their leval. I hope you know you're no different from a conservative when it comes to ignorance and being brainwashed. I remember when they were clowning on the Obama girls. Your doing the same thing hypocrit.

Supreme Court Throws Out Conviction in Sixth Trial

I'm reading the Supreme Court decision for Flowers v. Mississippi, and it is as if everyone is trying their damnedest to rule out blatant racism. But it is clear that District Attorney Doug Evans should be disbarred for that alone. How many cases were settled by guilty plea agreements simply because defendants knew there was no way to get a fair trial? How many innocent defendants were railroaded by Evans?

Additionally, there was considerable prosecutorial misconduct not related to jury selection. It's as if Evans was daring a higher court to overturn his convictions and did not care whether a trial was fair. But if he was trying to put a murderer in prison, clearly his methods were not in the public interest. The prosecutor's victories were tainted beyond redemption.

Two hung juries and four overturned verdicts. 20 years in prison for Flowers without a valid conviction of guilt. If Evans is the prosecutor for a seventh trial(!), how can a defense attorney look himself in the mirror if he does not demand a change of venue? How could a judge refuse? 

Since Evans has been allowed without restriction to continue his practice of prosecutorial misconduct as well as to continue his blatant racist behavior, clearly his nest of enablers also need to be dealt with. But it's Mississippi. That would be as likely as if the Supreme Court were to decide to reinstate the portions of the Voting Rights Act that they threw out because it was no longer needed in our "post-racial" society.

Background

Curtis Flowers was convicted primarily on the basis of one particle of gunshot residue on his right hand, along with "jailhouse confessions." One of Flowers' cellmates said he was placed with Flowers to get a confession. When he was unable to, he said that a statement was constructed by the Sheriff and by District Attorney Doug Evans. Testimonies from two of Flowers' cellmates about his confession were later recanted with claims that their testimonies in the first trial were coerced with promises of freedom and with threats. Their testimonies were not used in subsequent trials.
Other than that one particle, there was no direct evidence tying Flowers to the murders. One piece of indirect evidence was a bullet, found in a mattress, from a .380 caliber pistol. Flowers' uncle said his own .380 caliber gun was stolen the morning of the murders. The mattress bullet was visually identified (a subjective science) as being the same as bullets extracted from a post in Flowers' uncle's mother's back yard. The murder weapon was never found. There were also people claiming to have seen Flowers near the garment factory where the uncle's gun had been stolen. Some of those people were not interviewed until eight or nine months after the murders, and there were problems with other witness stories. Prosecutorial misconduct, blatant racism in jury select, two mistrials and four overturned verdicts. And one particle of gunshot residue.

Huffington Post Article: Supreme Court Overturns Murder Conviction In Curtis Flowers Case

Clarion-Ledger (Jackson Mississippi) article: Recanted testimony, subjective science helps put Curtis Flowers on death row Link to IMDB summary of an episode of Wrong Man series: "Curtis Flowers: Trial and Error"

Yet Another Rant About Social Security Reform (and AARP)

I refused to join AARP because they supported Social Security "reform". Social Security is separate from the federal budget and has its own revenue stream. (Politicians lump their budgets with Social Security figures because those decades of surpluses made their numbers look better.)

Changes to retirement ages or benefits will only change the date that the Trust Fund zeros out in 2035, after which without changes only 80% of benefits could be paid through 2094. Simple adjustments to the payroll tax rate, which used to be routine, would have ensured 75-year solvency.

The Trust Fund has $2.89 trillion in interest-bearing US Treasury Bonds--those pesky paper IOUs backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. (Grandma and the Chinese trust those bonds. Are we stealing from them?) The Trust Fund is so large because--guess what?--baby-boomer retirements were planned for! Shocking, I know.

The GOP does not make money on Social Security - that is why they are ideologically opposed and why they tell all those lies about SocSec (going broke, running deficits, in the red, insolvent, federal budget's biggest expense, etc.). The financial sector wants our retirement money to play with and to get their 20% overhead. That is what privatization is all about. But it's our money! Nope. Social Security is retirement and disability insurance; it is not a savings plan.

Sure, let's raise retirement ages and cut benefits. It won't change the federal budget or the National Debt by one dime. Self-funded. Separate by law. Reform? Oh, gosh, yes, we will start to see the effects of reform in 16 years.

Note also that a decrease in benefits would result in more senior poverty and a concomitant increase in assistance by taxpayers. And it would reduce beneficiaries' consumer spending, so our economy takes a hit. The wealthy don't care if they have to pay into Social Security; their contribution in payroll taxes for Social Security is capped at $15,921.60. Only the first $128,400 in income is subject to payroll taxes. Payroll taxes on the wealthy are not why they don't like Social Security. It's because it is non-profit.

Social Security will always be there. Unless politicians take it away from us.

Of course, people are still free to buy stocks, etc. Just beware of the Bernie Madoffs stealing your retirement savings. Or stock market crashes. Or your broker buying and selling stocks to get sales commissions until there is no money left (churning). Or your financial advisor or manager taking all your money and going to live in the Bahamas. Trump even signed an Executive Order that canceled the requirement that financial advisors act in your best interests. Enron imploded because of fraud, and employee stocks (part of their pay) suddenly became worthless.

And how about if your monthly pension benefits are cut to less than half because Romney bought the company you worked for and sold off the pension for cash. Romney also took most of the cash from companies, sold some assets, and then saddled those companies with the cost of their own purchase. All nice and legal if the company can last another two years. That is how the 2012 Republican presidential candidate made his money.