The Gospel of Selfishness in American Christianity

Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business will be happy to tell you that waiters always fight each other to avoid working Sunday lunch shift. Not because they want to sleep in, but because it’s a widespread belief that the post-church crowd is loud, demanding and unwilling to tip appropriately. In the food service industry, “Christian” is synonymous with “selfish.”

Unfair stereotype? Probably. Big groups, regardless of affiliation, tend to tip poorly. More to the point, waiters probably remember the bad Christian tippers more because the hypocrisy is so stunning. The image of a man piously preening about what a good Christian he is in church only to turn around and refuse the basic act of decency that is paying someone what you owe them perfectly symbolizes a lurking suspicion in American culture that the harder someone thumps the Bible, the more selfish and downright sadistic a person he is. And that perception—that showy piety generally goes hand in hand with very un-Christ-like behavior—is not an urban myth at all. On the contrary, it’s the daily reality of American culture and politics.

Bill Maher recently had a rant on his show that went viral addressing this very issue[3], bad tippers who leave sermons or notes scolding waiters instead of paying them what they’re owed. His larger point is a much more important one: It’s absolutely disgusting how the politicians who make the biggest show of how much they love Jesus would be the first in line to bash him if he returned with a message of clothing the naked and feeding the poor. The Jesus of the Bible multiplied the loaves and fishes. His loudest followers these day gripe about feeding people, claiming it creates a “culture of dependency.” They may even comb through the Bible to take quotes out of context to justify their selfishness toward the poor, as Rep. Steven Fincher [4] did when he claimed the Bible says, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” The fact that those jobs are unavailable didn’t give him a moment’s pause when suggesting this very un-Christ-like plan to his fellow Americans.

Moar HERE.

"This is a bleak moment for Obama, but it's not his Iraq or even his Katrina. Within a few months everything will settle down. Republicans have an obvious political motive for stoking panic, but the rest of us should be a little smarter about buying into it. Okay?" -- Kevin Drum

http://mojo.ly/18AuquC

Let's be clear. Republicans don't give two whits whether Americans lose their health insurance. After all, they're fighting for the FAILED health insurance racket that routinely kicked people off AS A MATTER OF COURSE... as well as a budget that throws millions off Medicaid and Medicare. 

Republicans are fighting for a system that is the most expensive in the industrialized world that killed thousands, bankrupted millions, left millions out and consistently ranked last in all positive measures. 

You won't hear the corporate media rail against THAT failure - but they will let you know about problems with a website.
~ RepublicanDirtyTricks.com

What'tup With Americans And Health Insurance?

Here’s 6 awful stats for your consideration:

1. 2.24 million people were injured in auto accidents in 2010.

2. 32,885 people died in auto accidents in 2010.

3. Half of all men will develop invasive cancer during their lives.

4. Heart disease is the number one killer of men in the USA.

5. 38% of all women will develop invasive cancer during their lives.

6. Heart disease is the number one killer of women in the USA.

Then there’s this:

Top 10 Killers of Men:

• Heart Disease
• Cancer
• Unintentional Injuries
• Stroke
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (LungDiseases)
• Diabetes
• Influenza and Pneumonia
• Suicide
• Kidney Disease
• Alzheimer’s Disease

http://www.idph.state.il.us/menshealth/healththreats.htm

Top 10 Killers of Women:

• Heart disease
• Cancer
• Stroke
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases
• Alzheimer's disease
• Unintentional injuries
• Diabetes
• Influenza and pneumonia
• Kidney disease
• Septicemia

http://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/2008/index.htm

Gee, it appears that we are not likely to die simply from old age. Add to the above horror stories the fact that millions of other Americans will have decreased quality of life or outright disability due to illnesses and accidents, and you have to ask yourself two questions:

1. What kind of person would chose to go without health insurance?

2. What kind of political party would fight against Americans having full health insurance?

We’ll discuss these uniquely American perplexing questions in an upcoming posting.

I'll never understand why a political party is so against something that helps people-healthcare for all.

Reinventing The Dwindling Middle Class May Take A Revolution

My parents moved away from Lincoln, Ill., two decades ago, when I was in college. I hardly ever get back there. But my mom still works in Lincoln, and it was to Lincoln I headed to meet her this fall, after returning to the U.S. from the Middle East.

I got off the train from Chicago and immediately saw that the old depot building — where we used to go for fancy dinners before prom — was boarded shut. A little monument commemorating the day Abraham Lincoln named the town in 1853 was faded and peeling. There was a man asleep on a bench at the train stop. He looked like he'd been there for days.

Driving around with my mom, I could not help but be struck by the question: What happened to Lincoln? I know this is a pretty common thought when people go back to their hometowns. But really, what happened?

I decided to find out for myself, to spend a week reporting in Lincoln.

It turns out that what's happening in Lincoln is happening in so many towns and communities across the country: As we recover from the Great Recession, jobs are coming back. But they are not middle-wage jobs — they are either high-wage jobs or low-wage jobs. The middle class is in serious decline. And that has all kinds of repercussions.

Moar here.

5 Things That Show America Is In A Cold Civil War

Opinion pieces presently abound in comparisons of today’s GOP and its tactics to the Confederacy. There is a large element of truth in these. However, at bottom, the sentiment for secession is coupled, among most of its adherents, with a realization that secession is impossible.

What is more possible and more pernicious is the potential success of a sub rosa coup, one that sabotages the rule of law and majority rule; one that renders the election of Democratic Presidents more or less irrelevant; one that succeeds in allowing the GOP to control America from a minority position. That struggle, a Cold Civil War, is very much in progress.

Let’s take five current and major examples:

HERE.

Are Ted Cruz, The Tea Party, And Their Republican Enablers In Congress Guilty Of Seditious Conspiracy? You Decide.

Why do I ask this question? Well, let's consider the following.

18 USC § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy: If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, ***or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States***, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.(1)

The Cruz/Tea Party government shutdown and threatened default were performed, according to the instigators, to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of a standing law of the United States, the ACA.

The actions of Ted Cruz, the Tea Party, and their Republican supporters in Congress have done incredible harm to this Nation: "The two-week shutdown has trimmed about 0.3 percentage point from fourth-quarter growth, or about $12 billion, the forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers, based in St. Louis, recently estimated. Standard & Poor’s is more pessimistic, estimating that the shutdown will cut about 0.6 percent off inflation-adjusted gross domestic product, equivalent to $24 billion. Most analysts are predicting that growth will remain subpar, at an annual pace of 2 percent or less."(2)

Furthermore, the actions of Ted Cruz, the Tea Party, and their Republican supporters in Congress have negatively affected economic growth: "The unusually rapid pace of deficit reduction, concentrated on goods and services the government delivers, has had a further damping effect on growth, swamping the cost of the relatively brief shutdown, economists said. Macroeconomic Advisers estimated the impact at about 0.7 percentage points of G.D.P. a year, equivalent to over $300 billion in lost output over the last three years. Additional cuts would slow the economy even more, economists say." (2)

It's about time Americans wake up to the damage a small group of radicals is doing to our country.

(1) http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384
(2) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/business/economy/high-cost-to-the-economy-from-the-fiscal-impasse.html?_r=0

House Stenographer has breakdown during "We Be Shut" vote

Read it here.

SARAH PALIN: I'll be back! The gift that keeps on giving!

Sarah Palin, who supported losing Senate candidate Steve Lonegan in New Jersey and the efforts to defund Obamacare in a government funding bill that led to the shutdown, said the focus after losing both fights should be on 2014.

“Friends, do not be discouraged by the shenanigans of D.C.’s permanent political class today. Be energized. We’re going to shake things up in 2014,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page early Thursday morning. “Rest well tonight, for soon we must focus on important House and Senate races. Let’s start with Kentucky – which happens to be awfully close to South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi – from sea to shining sea we will not give up. We’ve only just begun to fight.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/sarah-palin-obamacare-tea-party-2014-elections-98451.html#ixzz2hzVRjWsw

WEINNIEMAN: I'd be Mayor if it waren't for the interwebs

Failed New York City mayoral candidate and infamous sexter Anthony Weiner recently told GQ magazine that if the Internet did not exist, he would have been elected mayor. 

“Maybe if the Internet didn’t exist? Like, if I was running in 1955? I’d probably get elected mayor,” Weiner said in an interview published Thursday for the magazine’s November issue.

Moar here.

I Can't Hep Myself: MOAR "We Be Shut" Follies...

Bill Moyers: Tea Partiers ‘have sucked the last bit of soul’ from GOP

Bill Moyers laid into Republicans in a blistering critique on Moyers & Company on Friday, particularly former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), whom he accused of using his platform as a CNN host to egg the party on in the ongoing government shutdown in spite of its harmful effects on the U.S.

“At least let’s name this for what it is — sabotage of the democratic process. Secession by another means.” Moyers said. “And let’s be clear about where such reckless ambition leads. As surely as night must follow day, the alternative to democracy is worse.”

Meanwhile, Tea Party Republicans and their rich supporters, Moyer argued, have “sucked the last bit of soul from the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln,” turning them first delusional, then rabid, with the aid of conservative mouthpieces like Fox News and “multi-millionaire fabulist” Rush Limbaugh.

MOAR.

We're Not A Democracy, We're An Idiocracy

"Somehow we’ve gone from America the Beautiful to America the WTF. We’ve gone from the land of the free and home of the brave to the land of Honey Boo Boo, monster trucks, jingoistic patriotism, and supersized servings of stupid with the politicians to prove it."

MOAR.

Tuesday Mornin' Compendium

TGI Fridays Employees "Prank" Muslim Woman With Bacon In Her Food

What passes for "humor" in Garland, Texas really ain't funny.

A Federal Budget Crisis Months In The Planning

After O'Bama's reelection, a group of traitors in the Republican Party met to determine a new way to disrespect the office of the Presidency and undermine America. The political cretins decided on the strategery of economic terrorism we see playing out today.

Michelle "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann Goes Further Off The Deep End, Saying O'Bama Has Brought About The End Times 

This is too stupid for me to comment on. You'll have to read it for yourself.

The "Republican Revolution", or actually the revolution in the Republican Party, continues....

More details are emerging about Wednesday's closed-door meeting where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) evidently received an earful from his Republican colleagues, with one senator describing what transpired as a "lynch mob."

A report published Friday by The New York Times shed more light on the private lunch, indicating that Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Dan Coats (R-IN) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) blasted Cruz for leading the charge to block funding for the Affordable Care Act, a quixotic effort that led to the government shutdown.

Here.