Donald Trump summed up in one photo.

This picture was taken in Mumbai, where Trump was advertising the building of yet another gaudy edifice with his name attached in giant letters for all of the lesser people to admire.

The picture started to circulate early last month and in response a number of folks did not believe it to be real.

However Snopes was contacted by the photographer who confirmed its authenticity.

Shoving his immense wealth in the faces of those who are barely surviving each day.

Yeah, that's our president elect alright.

President Obama calls out Fox News for their portrayal of poor Americans as lazy undeserving leeches."

“Over the last forty years, sadly, I think there's been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top or mad at folks at the bottom. And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, you know are undeserving, got traction. And look it's still being propagated. I mean I have to say that if you watch FOX News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu. They will find folks who make ME mad. I don’t even know where they find them. They're all like, ‘I don’t want to work, I just want a free Obamaphone or whatever.' And that becomes an entire narrative that gets worked up, right? And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical who is raising a couple of kids and doing everything right, but still can’t pay the bills.”

The President, of course, is right to call out Fox News over their unfair portrayal of poor people as lazy, and as people who use food stamps and public assistance as "leeches."

Possibly the most famous case of this was the case of "food stamp surfer" who, with Fox News cameras in tow, went to the local store to purchase lobster for dinner with his food stamps.

This was literally shown on a loop at Fox News, and was referred to by Congressman seeking to cut social programs that serve the neediest people in the country.

All of this is reminiscent of the famous Welfare Queen meme that Ronald Reagan used back in 1976 to smear recipients of food stamps and other social welfare programs. (By the way there was an actual person who inspired Reagan's anti-welfare stories, but she was a criminal who did far worse than take advantage of the system, and who ultimately was jailed for her crimes.)

Since then, and actually even before, vilifying the poor as lazy and unworthy of help has been a constant theme among the conservatives and on their media outlets.

There are of course always those that take advantage, but the majority of Americans receiving public assistance are hard working people who simply cannot make ends meet. At least not yet.

But I guess reporting that would not exactly fit the conservative mythology of the haves being taken advantage of by the slothful and duplicitous have nots.

I don't think this should come as a surprise to anyone.

97 of 100 poorest counties in America are in Republican states. Conservative policies don't work. #UniteBlue pic.twitter.com/Sn3l0X5l11
— TruthtoConservatives (@ToConservatives) July 28, 2014

Just in case you think this is way off click here.

When it comes to economics the Republicans are idiots, and yet they continue to sell the meme that it is THEY who are good at managing money.

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that economies almost always grow faster under a Democratic President than  under a Republican one.

Yeah, no shit Sherlock.

In Netflix documentary "Mitt," Romney essentially admits that he too is a "taker."

This all comes from the Washington Examiner article concerning the new documentary.

Get a load of this exchange: 

As he spoke, Romney held the notes he had made during the debate (candidates are not allowed to bring any notes with them to the stage, but are allowed to make them during the debate). Romney pointed out that in every debate he began by writing "Dad" at the top of the paper. 

"That's what I start with: 'Dad,'" Romney explained. "I always think about Dad and about I am standing on his shoulders. I would not be there, there's no way I would be able to be running for president, if Dad hadn't done what Dad did. He's the real deal …" 

"You're the real deal," said one of Romney's sons. 

Romney didn't pause. "The guy was born in Mexico. He didn't have a college degree. He became head of a car company and became a governor. It would have never entered my mind to be in politics, how can you go from his beginning to think, I can be head of a car company, I can run for governor, I can run for president?" 

Romney wasn't finished. "The gap — for me, I started where he ended up. I started off with money and education, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School. For me it's moving that far" — Romney held two fingers close together — "for him, it's like that," Romney said, holding his arms wide apart.

I found that to be a VERY telling exchange, and one that came right after the first Presidential debate that many believed that Romney had won decisively.

Not only was Romney admitting that without the leg up provided by his wealthy father he would not be running, he was also admitting that he did not think he could beat the President in a second debate: 


"Sitting presidents have a very hard time in these debates," Romney told the family. "They feel like, who is this whippersnapper coming up here who knows nothing? And so they don't prepare, and they just think they can waltz through it. Then they get crushed in the first debate, and then they come back."

Of course Romney proved that he was correct in that assumption, and President Obama crushed him in the second debate and essentially sealed the deal as to who would win the election. 

However going back to the remarks at the beginning of this post, it seems to indicate that Romney understood that much of his success, if not all of it, was due to the accomplishments of his father.

This of course helps to explain gaffes like suggesting that 47% of Americans are takers and would never vote for a Republican, and that all young people have to do is ask their parents for tuition in order to attend college.

It also illustrates that Romney himself should be identified as a "taker," as he was somebody who not only allowed his father to pay for his education, and get him his first jobs, but also used his name in order to open doors and find donors when he decided to run for office.

What Romney, and many others who come from wealthy families, fail to understand is that THEY are the most egregious "takers" of all.

Without the benefits of a wealthy father, the best education that money can buy, and the influence of his father, Mitt Romney might well have ended up as the manager of a local Office Max instead of the most recently defeated Republican candidate for president.

Yet he, and others in the GOP, become indignant at the idea that those who come from more modest means might need a government that gives them a hand with their education, or helps pay the bills when they are unemployed, or subsidizes child care so that they can work.

It is this lack of compassion that turns many of us off when it comes to Republican politics, and it had much to do with why we are not today hearing what a President Romney has to say on this MLK holiday.

Home Depot billionaire warns that if new Pope does not back off criticizing the rich, charitable donations might dry up. How Christian of him.

Courtesy of TPM:  

Billionaire Home Depot founder Ken Langone has a warning for Pope Francis. 

A major Republican donor, Langone told CNBC in a story published online Monday that wealthy people such as himself might stop giving to charity if the Pope continues to make statements criticizing capitalism and income inequality. 

Langone described the Pope's comments about a "culture of prosperity" as "exclusionary" statements that may make some of the rich "incapable of feeling compassion for the poor." Langone, who is leading an effort to raise money for the restoration of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan said he relayed these concerns to Cardinal Timothy Dolan in New York. Specifically, Langone said he told the church leader he spoke to a donor who could give millions of dollars to the cathedral project but was worried about the Pope's "exclusionary" remarks. 

"I've told the cardinal, 'Your Eminence, this is one more hurdle I hope we don't have to deal with. You want to be careful about generalities. Rich people in one country don't act the same as rich people in another country,'" said Langone.

So to be clear this Langone guy is threatening the Pope to go easy on he and his buddies or they will stop donating money to the poor.

Once again I let me just mention how impressed I am with the morality of the religious.

I still find much about the Pope to be concerning, however I am always gratified when he sticks to the conservatives or exposes them for the raging hypocrites that mos of us already know them to be.

Atheist group volunteers to work in soup kitchen, executive director says she would resign before letting that happen.

Courtesy of Go Upstate:  

A group of Upstate atheists plans to hand out care packages downtown this weekend after the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen wouldn't let them volunteer. 

"I told them we wouldn't wear our T-shirts. We wouldn't tell anyone who we are with. We just want to help out," Brannon said. "And they told us that we were not allowed." 

According to the Soup Kitchen's website, the organization is dependent upon volunteers, having more than 600 community volunteers with a mission to serve the hungry in Spartanburg. 

Lou Landrum, executive director of the Soup Kitchen, told the Herald-Journal she would resign from her job before she let atheists volunteer and be a "disservice to this community." 

"This is a ministry to serve God" she said. "We stand on the principles of God. Do they (atheists) think that our guests are so ignorant that they don't know what an atheist is? Why are they targeting us? They don't give any money. I wouldn't want their money." 

Brannon said the group has worked with Christian nonprofits, such as Habitat for Humanity, in the past. 

"We can all work together to achieve something positive regardless of religion or lack thereof," she said. "We've raised money for March of Dimes, worked with the Generous Garden Project, done community park clean ups, adopted a highway, and sponsored local foster children for Christmas." 

She said the group is used to its share of animosity within the community, but the exchange with the Soup Kitchen was unlike anything she had experienced. 

"They are the only group that denied us the opportunity to volunteer," Brannon said.

Yep can't have Atheists helping out the poor and destitute, after all they might get infected with critical thinking skills. 

I wonder how the media would respond if this were how a Muslim group, or Jewish group, or Christian group were treated?

But of course it wasn't. it was just those lowlife, good for nothing, atheists.

What to expect once the Republicans finish rewriting the bible.

There will also be NO healing without comprehensive private insurance, no feeding of the parasitic multitudes, and none of that driving out the money changers. (Instead they would get tax breaks and laws written specifically to protect them.)

The Republican view of the economy in a cartoon nutshell.

Need I say more?

Another GOP talking point refuted, people in lower income brackets give MORE to charity than do the wealthy in this country.

Courtesy of the Atlantic:

One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns. 

But why? Lower-income Americans are presumably no more intrinsically generous (or “prosocial,” as the sociologists say) than anyone else. However, some experts have speculated that the wealthy may be less generous—that the personal drive to accumulate wealth may be inconsistent with the idea of communal support. Last year, Paul Piff, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, published research that correlated wealth with an increase in unethical behavior: “While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything,” Piff later told New York magazine, “the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people.” They are, he continued, “more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.” 

You know I was thinking about this back during the election when the Republicans were talking about Mitt Romney's generosity as defined by how much he donates to the Mormon Church.  I remember thinking, "That's not generosity. He is giving to his church which is self serving, and then writing it off on his taxes. That does NOT meet the definition of generosity for me."

And it stands to reason that people who accumulate great wealth place a great deal of importance in having a lot of money, and in possessing the things that money will buy for them. (I am thinking of Donald Trump here.) So I don't think I ever truly bought into the talking point that taxing these wealthier individuals would negatively impact charitable organizations.

Now only speaking for myself, and I am probably considered relatively middle class, I have NEVER written off a charitable donation on my taxes. In fact to me doing so would completely negate the idea of charity.

In my mind charity is a sacrifice of your time, resources, or money, for the good of others. If I was in some way compensated for that it would undermine the very idea of giving to others.

Well at least that is how I always looked at it.

Besides those of us living paycheck to paycheck, and who have to save up for the things we want, understand sacrifice and what it means to do without. For many of us we have undoubtedly experienced times in our lives when we needed support from our community, our friends, or our families, and understand on a visceral level how important it is to have help when you are struggling.

So of course it makes perfect sense to me that those of us who have little to give, give more of what we have. And that those who have much to give, give much less. After all that attitude probably contributes in many ways to why THEY have so much and WE often have so much less.

Wealth inequality in the United States. A video to blow your mind.

This is a very well made video, and I urge you to share it far and wide.

I don't think that most of us understand that the policies of the Republican party have ALWAYS been to make the rich folks richer and to keep the burden of supporting the government squarely on the backs of the working class.

And they have proven to be frighteningly adept at accomplishing that feat.

Today we are seeing a virtual destruction of the Middle Class and STILL the Republicans are not satisfied, and are continuing to work to strip away the government programs that keep these people from falling into abject poverty.Is it any wonder that the President wants to raise the minimum wage in this country?

Paul Ryan shows up uninvited to soup kitchen and washes clean dishes for photo-op. WTF?

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall.

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University. 

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.” 

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.” 

Ryan had stopped by the soup kitchen for about 15 minutes on his way to the airport after his Saturday morning town hall in Youngstown. By the time he arrived, the food had already been served, the patrons had left, and the hall had been cleaned. 

Upon entering the soup kitchen, Ryan, his wife and three young children greeted and thanked several volunteers, then donned white aprons and offered to clean some dishes. Photographers snapped photos and TV cameras shot footage of Ryan and his family washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty.

So let's get this straight.

In an attempt to fight the image that the Romney/Ryan ticket does not care about 47% of the population, Ryan pushed his way into a soup kitchen after all of the hard work was over, and had his picture taken washing already cleaned dishes.

Oh yeah THAT ought to help their credibility!

P.S. Here is video of the photo op. You can clearly see that the kitchen is spotless and Ryan simply says "I'm going to get them wet, and you're going to dry them" to his son.

EPIC FAIL!

Bill Moyers:"The poor haven't lost their voice--They can't afford a voice."

You know while we are all watching "The Newsroom" and lamenting the fact that our cable news stations don't display the same level of journalistic integrity, we should remember that we do have a fine representative of that very integrity in Bill Moyers.

We just need to take the time to listen to what he is reporting.

The Daily Show wonders if perhaps we should NOT do away with the Bush tax cuts to the rich, but instead just take everything away from the poor to balance the country's budget?

The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Is Fox News not even pretending they are not working for the corporations in this country anymore?  Some of that footage was absolutely brutal.

Lawrence O'Donnell makes impassioned plea on behalf of the children of Malawi.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I watched this as I ate my dinner last night, and I was riveted.

I had a bunch of things to do after I finished my meal but I was unable to walk away from the television until I saw the conclusion of O'Donnell's piece.

And yes I sent money.

Now this post is not about Sarah Palin, but I was unable to resist comparing this amazing, heartfelt request for help with the fraudulent emotionally vacant way the Palin expressed herself during her visit to Haiti.

Lawrence O'Donnell's humanity and humility came through loud and clear with every word that he spoke.  He never seemed to be bragging about his generosity, or using guilt to motivate mine, and in the end I could not get my wallet out fast enough.

If this touched you as much as it did me, you can help as well by clicking here and giving as little as $24, or more if you can,  to help these kids.