Keith Olbermann: Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson’s lives not worth ‘lowest’ of victims of earthquake in Haiti

The devastating earthquake this week in Haiti likely will prove to have caused the death of hundreds or thousands of people in one of the worst natural disasters in human history. But, of course this doesn't stop the vitriol from members of the far right. They insist on taking advantage of the situation to further their beliefs and agenda. These people make me sick with their 'holier than thou' attitudes and apparently, it does other people as well. Keith Olbermann anchor of "Countdown" on MSNBC tells his feelings in the following clip:

Keith says it better than I could so I will leave it at that.

Jim Demint Member, Party of No!

Alright, we have this attempted terrorist attack on an airliner on Christmas Day and now we find out that this Senator from South Carolina is blocking the confirmation of the guy that the president has picked to be the head of the TSA (Transportation Security Administration). And, we hear his reason for doing this is that Mr. Obama's nominee may allow a union in the TSA! I am livid! Mr. Demint said on Fox News Sunday, "The attack should remind everyone that soft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo, these things are not going to appease the terrorists. They're going to keep coming after us, and we can't have politics as usual in Washington, and I'm afraid that's what we've got right now with airport security." As with most Republicans, he talks out of both sides of his mouth because he is blocking the nomination of head of the TSA, a step that would help to prevent terrorist attacks on airliners. Mr. Demint talks about the same old politics as usual in Washington while being a willing and integral part of the Party of No!

The Coming Year

Christmas has come and gone and now I look forward to celebrating a new year. My sincere hopes for a good year to come in 2010 and for peace throughout the world.

This past year has brought many a trial to this nation and the world as a whole. Terrorism continues to be a major problem. The economy is in shambles in most nations. Freedom is loosing ground in many places, especially in Africa and the Middle East. Tyranny continues to rear it's ugly head in all sorts of places. And the promise of change in the U.S. is showing itself to be slightly empty.

We all could help to make the world a better place, but it will take much more effort than is being shown at the present time. We need to learn to live together in peace and harmony or I fear we will destroy ourselves in the coming years. Please join with me in making your new years resolution to try and help at least one person in the coming year have a better life. If we all were to make and keep that resolution, the reward would be a better world and a better life for us all.

Why are we Still in Afghanistan?

Why are we still in Afghanistan? Supposedly, President Obama in his speech scheduled for next Tuesday, will tell us why, and why we need more troops deployed to the area. According to news reports the president is expected to ask for as much as a fifty percent increase over the already 68,000 troops in theater. There are other rumors floating around that Mr. Obama will tell us about his exit strategy as well. I suppose after eight years of no exit strategy this is an improvement, but I would rather we just get out.

One would think with all the history of Afghanistan telling us that no army ever does well in the country, and most end up leaving after a long time and still not accomplishing their goals we would learn from that history and pull out. 1American diplomat and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said on television that the Afghanistan experience is shaping up as startlingly similar to what happened to us in Vietnam; that it looks like a quagmire, yet he sees no way to avoid being mired yet again. Retired Army Col. Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international relations and history at Boston University, who has written widely on military power and its limitations, says it's a war we cannot win. So why are we still in Afghanistan?

1The Baltimore Sun November 27, 2009 article by Ron Smith In Afghanistan and at home, we're being driven off a cliff

80th Anniversary of the Great Depression!

Eighty years ago today the last Republican Great Depression started with “Black Tuesday” the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. Wall Street survived this calamity, but it showed in a very dramatic way how bad things could get without proper regulation. Luckily, we had a president at the time with the foresight and intelligence to understand what needed to be done. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a member of what we now call the “Investor Class.” During most of the 1930's he re-regulated the economy and raised taxes on the very rich up to 91 percent. This, along with setting up ways through government employment to get people back to work, he managed to mostly reverse the depression and get the economy back on track. However, it took a world war to get the economy back to pre-depression levels. Now, due to a systematic unraveling of all the good regulations that were setup to end the depression and to make sure it never happened again, we are back in the same place again. Beginning with the last couple of years of the Carter Administration, then to Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, and then “W”, congress, led mostly by the Republicans, managed to change all the regulations to let the Wall Street loonies do it again. Now we have an average of over half a million people losing their jobs every month with no signs of it slowing down. We have the top 1% of people in this country controlling 98% of the wealth and the rest of us are making less now than we did in 1974 in inflation adjusted dollars. In 1974 it was possible for one person in a household to have a full-time job and the other person could stay home. Now it takes two incomes to survive, unless of course you happen to be a CEO of a big corporation and make over $5000.00 an hour. The common denominator from both of the market collapses of 1929 and 2008 seems to be income concentrated to the richest people and low taxes for the same group. The middle class seems to be the stabilizing force for prosperity in the economy. When the distribution of wealth is more equal, the economy grows and all classes prosper. Why is it that we didn't learn this lesson the first time?