TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Show Me Your Taxes.
We Built This City on Rock and Roll...and Taxpayer-Funded Bonds Despite record budget deficits, our heroic fiscal conservatives in Congress managed to find plenty of money to fund such essential projects as: $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; $2.3 million for an "animal waste management lab" in Kentucky; $50,000 to control wild hogs in Missouri; $1 million for a "Wild American Shrimp Initiative"; $4 million for a fertilizer plant in Alabama; $450,000 for researching the use of salmon as baby food in Alaska; etc. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), por ejemplo, had enough pork to write 20 press releases this weekend. Note also that the vast majority of this wasteful spending goes to Red States, the welfare queens of the USA.
Ukrainians Gone Wild Tens of thousands of Ukrainians gathered to demonstrate in Kiev as pro-Western opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko declared himself president following an election that most observers say was rigged by the pro-Russian candidate's party. Hmm...so, in that country, when someone rigs an election, the people protest? Haha! How primitive and backward! Don't they know that they're supposed to embrace fraud for the sake of national unity?
Charter Schools: Nature's Cruelest Mistake According to the US Department of Education (that's Rod Paige's Dept. of Education, remember), charter schools cannot match the performance of public schools, producing students who fail to meet state education standards 30 percent more often than their public counterparts. So let's review: We take public money and give it to any jackass who wants to open a school, and we let them manage it as if it were their money. Then, they fail. Response from the Bush administration? Charter schools need more money. Of course they do.
Red State Schadenfreude: Ohio Edition Hardy-har-har. Ohio, the state that gave the White House to Bush, now has more people out of work than any other state in the country. In October, the number of unemployed people jumped from 345,000 to 373,000, and job loss came in sectors that are gaining employees in every other part of the country, like healthcare. Okay. It's true, there are nearly 400,000 adults out of work in Ohio. That's a negative. But on the positive side: Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved the most punitive anti-gay discrimination measure in the country, which actually forbids gay people to visit each other in the hospital! That's SO much better than having a job, don't you think?
Happy Thanksgiving Through the Looking Glass Ah, the Republican Party. It stands, as we all know, for fiscal responsibility (runs up record budget deficits), low taxes (plans to raise taxes on employers who provide health insurance to workers and on people who deduct state and local taxes from their federal returns), a "stand-alone" foreign policy (embroils us in costly occupations of far-flung countries with no end in sight), libertarian values (passes legislation preventing gays from entering into civil unions or recieving partnership benefits from their employers), and, of course, a strong law and order policy (cuts the federal program that funds new police officers; passes laws to allow people who have been indicted to retain Congressional leadership positions). Now, as this article shows, the Republicans are once again flying their flag, getting the intrusive, oppressive federal goverment off our backs by writing provisions that allow Congressional committee chairmen to review the tax returns of any American they want. Let the eagle soar...
-Consider Arms, who will not be posting tomorrow, as it is a day to give thanks for our glorious leader and all that he has done for our proud nation
