Then there is the war against public unions too. The facts aren’t correct about what man teachers get. They certainly do not get free health care or pensions after 20 years. Perhaps fire and police get these but teachers work a lifetime at lower wages and never get these perks. Now Republican and right wing groups are doing their all to stir up hate for public workers. Not all public worker contracts are the same. Some are bloated and some are NOT.

Yes, and American nuns are also stepping up for their religious freedom, after being knee-capped by the Vatican’s doctrinal office. Coinciding with the Fortnight for Freedom campaign, there is a “Nuns on the Bus”  tour which will be making its way through many states to highlight their work at homeless shelters, food pantries, healthcare facilities, etc. You go, Nuns!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/us/us-nuns-bus-tour-to-spotlight-social-issues.html?_r=1

Religious freedom isn’t threatened.  Churches are exempt.  Other organizations have to follow the same rules as everyone else. 

Exactly whom is it, that you imagine is “trying to suppress the Church”, and how are they trying to do it? (Please be specific.)

Stand for America won some important concessions from the MA Teacher’s  union this week by compromise and negotiation-not without some displeasure to be sure.
Such an approach is far preferable to the arrogant, demeaning, power mongering force of Scott Walker which underhandedly seeks to abolish unions period.
Rather than declaring all out war, it seems a given than changes are needed and to proceed in a way of inclusion rather than setting others up as enemies

I never pegged you as a Fed-worshiping lover of the British upper crust. 

 Try reading an accurate review of Krugman’s thesis, not a mocking put-down using baseless arguments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/03/paul-krugman-cassandra-economist-crisis

And watch the whole Newsnight program to understand why Andrea Leadsom showed herself to be an ideological ignorant fool (because deliberate ignorance leads to that, much as it apparently has in your case, Gregg). Ms. Leadsom’s background is in finance, which is definitely NOT the same thing as macroeconomics.

Ms. Leadsom’s argument is the one that is accurate for a COMPANY or a HOUSEHOLD, which is totally false for an ECONOMY (but is also why conservatives try to equate the two so people not willing to think about the real world will accept their arguments).

The first clip in your link, Gregg, “conveniently” leaves out Profesor Krugman’s devastating response to Ms. Leadsom:

“In an economy, my spending is your income and vice-versa; when everyone slashes spending at the same time everyone’s income is cut and everyone is worse off.” [that was a paraphrase]. He then quoted Irving Fisher, “In times like these, … the more we try to save, the more we owe.”

But the second video does have the whole interview with Ms. Leadsom and the venture capitalist Jon Moulton (but only that segment of the program, which I strongly invite everyone to watch), where they both get their comeuppance.

I really don’t think this concept is beyond you, Gregg, but as Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”Whether it is your salary or your ideology, Sinclair’s statement applies.

It’s about the gumint not tell us what do do.  Don’t like yer pay, find another job.

It’s NO to everything . . .

except for extending tax cuts for the elite.

Rest assured, nothing is getting past downtrodden American women. Every dog has its day. Right Seamus?

as a Knicks fan it pains me to agree with that but man do I despise the Heat so…go Celtics (no exclamation)

That’s right.  Everyone should have a defined benefit pension to be secure in retirement.

“Public sector workers are guaranteed money”?

Public workers have been giving back monies just about everywhere for decades. One would not know it if one just watched the Evening News or the Sunday gasbag shows.

And they’re working under contracts have been made. Now those contracts are being broken unilaterally.

The message our economic uberlords are making to anyone who “showers after work” instead of “before work”: Get your money up front. One may have signed a contract, but it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.

I am actively seeking to have a friendly judge rule my mortgage as a public union pension fund. That way I can have CNBC and the WSJ on my side when I only want to pay 30% of it.

Private sector pensions from private companies are guaranteed by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, A U.S. Government Agency. So the responsibility for the pensions of companies that default on their pensions comes, first from the fees paid by the member companies and ultimately from the U.S. Treasury should a lot of things go bad. So if you work for a company that is a member, you “pay” the pensions for people in companies that go bankrupt, etc., and as taxpayers we all may end up paying private pensions. And Mitt Romney at least once transferred pension responsibilities of a company he had taken over and from which he had siphoned off funds to the PBGC. So everyone is likely to have contributed to a once Romney company pension payment.

Also it is not as if the public unions are trying to stiff the taxpayers; the unions that Walker stiffed in Wisconsin had offered a lot of givebacks to ease the strain on taxpayers and were willing to bargain on more when Walker told them to take a flying leap: HE would TELL them how things were going to go.

 What did Gray do?  He governed at the moment when the bright boys at Enron decided to play poker with the energy grid. Rolling brownouts in CA that were instigated by false supply shortages that Enron brought about sent CA from a state with a budget surplus to one with a deficit in record time, as they used up this surplus to pay for the criminally inflated energy prices. Thus in a move too brilliant to be believed, the number one contributor to the Bush campaign got the blue state that republicans hate the most, to pay for a large part of the Bush campaign and put CA in the red in one fell swoop. The market at it’s best. (irony alert for those who need one)

It used to be 1 person, 1 vote. Is it now closer to 1 dollar, 1 vote?

The second to last thing democracy needs are mythical beings telling people how to vote.  (The last would be Mike Huckabee doing so.)

Martha Stewart did time in the “Graybar Hotel”, (as Dave Letterman liked to call it), for less. Where’s the justice? At least she got a nice poncho out of it; another silver lining.

The Brits have been manipulating the US from the moment they could no longer just dominate it by force of arms. Their manipulation of our nations is far more pervasive and effective than Israel’s, though in a sense it is part of the same influence, but I don’t have time to go into that right now. As someone else mentioned, the US was bamboozled into WW1 by the Brits and American Bankers that had heavily invested in the British war effort. The Lusitania incident was near a red flag operation as it sat loaded with eight million rounds of ammunition and in waters known to be infested with UBoats awaiting an escort that was never to appear, with the full knowledge of Churchill, who set it all up to drag America into the war.

This incredible war debt led to the privations and wholesale looting of German industry that led to it’s financial collapse and the rise of the Nazi’s that this collapse made possible.

The US is still the UK’s dupe, and you are correct in pointing out that almost every problem in the middle east and all the former colonies were the result of intentional British policies to keep these areas in internal strife when the British pulled out, so they would typically install the minority in power and support them with arms and wealth and later just have America step in to do what they would have, if they still could do it.

The contemporary view that we have a special relationship with GB is pure poppycock. We do have a special relationship — war and slaughter.
Our relationship is so special that more Continental Soldiers died in British prison ships than in all the battles in the Revolution combined.  It is also special because they are the only nation that ever invaded Washington DC and burned it to the ground. Not to mention just stopping our merchant vessels with their warships and taking slaves to work in their navy. If they could still commit acts like that, I think they would be.

I won’t even get into the disdain that the average Brit has for Americans, despite the fact that we saved their ungrateful asses twice, from the inevitable blows that should have come in the wake of their waining empire.  They never have had to reap the karma of their worldwide brutality because we stepped in to prevent it.  And we shouldn’t have, at least the first time, and it we wouldn’t have, their wouldn’t have been a second time (ww2).

The royal family is an abomination that still stinks in the same way that all psycho killers do.

It certainly should. What an extraordinary photo!

WHICH public-sector union was Mayor Daley in, as Mayor, or Assemblyman?

Incompetent and greedy management was the real culprit.