Obama Jobs Summit Will Include Business Leaders: Google, Disney CEOs To Attend

I'm so far to the left that people in the middle might call me a Socialist, or worse, a Communist, but I believe in free markets and small businesspeople as the best way to distribute wealth (even though they're the ones who'd probably call me a Socialist). Somewhere in the real middle of all this current economic chaos is a position which realizes that government is necessary and useful to provide certain social benefits that the private market is not suited to provide and that, yes, it may take higher taxes for all (who can afford them) in order to build the sort of safety net that makes being on the bottom less onerous. Of course we need to guard the door very carefully through which we decide to send those in need of aid so that the undeserving don't make it through, but we need to be fair... some people just can't compete in today's markets for one of many reasons. Should we let them and their children starve? Also, we ought to admit that religious charity isn't the best way to handle poverty because the religious just can't help making their charities opportunities to preach. Thus the vulnerable become the most susceptible to religious indoctrination.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Shocked--or Not? New Data Shows Abortion Quite Common on Most Red States

Well, here's another list that, as usual (if it's unfavorable traits the Southland tops it and if it's a list of favorable traits the Southland comes in toward the bottom) proves it's better to live anywhere but in the American South.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WHEN THE AMERICAN DREAM FAILS

How will we know if the American Dream has failed? I can think of two sure signs:

1) If there were only one religion and 2) if there were no atheists.

GLOOM AND DOOM...

Rainy coastal weather today and I've just come from my physical therapy for recovery from torn rotator cuff surgery. Almost done with it and will soon just have exercises at home. 

Sitting at Tulley's, having me wee bit a caffeine and thinking (always trouble) about this writing thing I'm struggling with again. Every time I approach the idea of working on my memoir, I feel conflicted (tense), then when I decide I won't write today because I don't feel like it, I feel conflicted again. I used to struggle the same way back in the drinking days, long ago. Can't win for feeling, yet I've got to get a good way of proceeding or I'll stop again, just like I've stopped so many other times on long projects. Part of my trouble is that I can't imagine this having any outcome but for myself. No realistic idea of publishing it, and without that aim, I find it hard to justify the work I'll need to put into it. Already have more than 150 pages and far enough along not to stop, but this is where I've stopped so many times in the past. If I try to tell myself I'm doing it to give to my progeny on flash drives, then I hesitate to put some of the stuff I need to put into it for the sake of honesty. 

THE REPUBLICAN HATE FRONT

Republicans love to claim that we all hate Palin, but what about the hateful things Republicans like Lynn Vincent and Sarah Palin say about other Americans? Lynn Vincent, Sarah's ghost writer, is notoriously anti-gay and wants to deny them the CIVIL right of marriage even though the Constitution says nothing about gays. Only in the Bible are gays so defamed, and the Bible is not the basis of American law, the Constitution is. If these Bible Bibbers would only put the Constitution ahead of their religious books, then America could get on with being a nation of laws rather than a medieval cesspool on the verge of another Inquisition. Read the Article at HuffingtonPost