Tom Toles for September 16, 2013

I’m suddenly motivated to get in better shape. I hope conservatives don’t rant about how liberals support government intrusion on our privacy. The NSA program, as its working, goes against liberal and conservative ideals. Let’s stick together on this one.

hah hah,,,hah

I think senators voted for civil rights laws because it was the right thing to do as a response to the obscene racism in the south at the time. No secret, undocumented conspiracy theories required.

When a small group like the Forbes 400 have as much wealth as the bottom 60% and that percentage is rapidly growing they are beginning to attract a lot of unwanted attention. They have their hands on the levers of power and a national security state is the natural outcome. Timothy Mcveigh was just a bit premature in his opinion that the government was the beast and when people see that 95% of all the post recession gains have gone to the 1% and the playing field continues to tilt in their direction there are liable to be a lot more resentful people like him in the future.

but onguard…what percentage of their actual livelihood arethose top ones paying?

Pay no attention to the man behind the red carpet…

In “1984”, George Orwell had a civilization at war with a amorphous and unidentifiable “They/Them” that these days could be any terrorist organization from the middle east to the middle of Iowa. Hate is not monotheisitic. There are plenty of people equally willing to cause havoc in the name of Jesus as there willing to do so in the name of Mohammed, and let us not forget, both men worshiped the god of Abraham.Yet both men also taught that at its most highest of ideals, the love of God was the love of our neighbors as ourselves. The examples of the value of love and kindness permeate both holy books but are too oft ignored.The gov’t has a tool that, in a perfect world and with honorable, ethical, moral people supervising, could be a life saver and of enormous value. But our nation has too many in power who believe that a desirable end, of their choice, justifies any means used. Whether or not one believes in an afterlife, there is honor in being civil and respectful while still in this life. But if one does not believe in honor, or love, then that person is a danger to himself and the community in which he lives.Please consider writing your legislators once a week with a brief but civil explanation on why you feel they should take positions you value, but more than anything, encourage them to be willing to set aside issues upon which agreement is impossible in favor of working on those issues upon which agreement can be found.Respectfully,C.

Who is paying the cost of the Free Stuff Dem Libs use to buy votes?..This chart is only Federal Income taxes. When you factor in all taxes, we get a very different picture:Are Social Security & Medicare ‘Free Stuff’? Those programs along with military spending dwarf everything else.

What SHOULD scare people is the “privatization/corporatization” of “security” and spying, intelligence gathering under Republican administrations. “Top Secret America”, Dana Priest, gives frightening insight into that. Not only were our freedoms “sold out”, literally, the profit margins for corporations soared. And that’s domestically, let alone things like Lockheed having the contract to run interrogations of POWs!

On incomes? There were 61 BILLIONAIRES in the U.S. who were still too close to poverty to make the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. BTW, on the female side of that, most all INHERITED their wealth and were NOT “self made”!

Don’t live in a Blue state, is the message from your chart.Does that mean my blue state can stop sending Federal Tax dollars to red states?I suppose you believe the chart looks that way because of state income taxes, but sales taxes, Social Security & Medicare are paid by all. Since this is nationwide data, we don’t know what it would look like if red states are taken out. I suspect it wouldn’t make the big difference you think.

Rep Maxine Waters bragging about Obama collecting Americans informationStill trying that one? She was talking about the Obama campaign’s ability to effectively use information voluntarily submitted by potential voters in their ‘get out the vote’ efforts. Romney was way behind in using data crunching in this way. I think Obama may have taken the wrong message from the effectiveness of his campaign system, though. It seems pretty obvious that he is a big believer in the idea of using data collection as a means to an end.Hey, look at that! I took your false claim & tied the actual facts to Obama’s NSA policies. On this issue, I think most of us are of like mind, regardless of political affiliation.

I agree with you. Bush and the right sold us out. You’ve nailed it. But if you think I’m going to let Obama and the democrats off the hook for doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to change this, well, you can guess where you can go. It’s time to cut the left/right BS they’re trying to distract us with and get busy!

When the income tax was introduced it was sold as a tax that would only be paid by the richest. The average American would never be affected by it. Conservatives used to complain about it because of bracket creep, because a larger and larger percentage of people were having to pay it. This, they said, was a betrayal! Income taxes should not be paid by the middle class!! That was then, this is now. Now it is all about how the poor and even the middle classes don’t pay enough, and the burden falls too heavily on richest people. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, October 18, 1785:“But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property … [ One ] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

“The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People’s Money out of their Pockets, tho’ only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors’ Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell’d to pay by some Law. “All Property, indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. “ -- Benjamin Franklin, December 25, 1783, in a letter to Robert Morris.

Ouch… the Truth hurts! And it’s COLD, too… brrr!

^ So, is Ted Cruz constitutionally eligible to be president?