An Open Letter To America's Anti-Christ

(Warning: Although written as a Halloween rebuke to the action's of fear by a top figure in today's America, this article may offend some sensitive sensibilities. )

Hello again Anti-Christ and false prophet. I see you've been up your old tricks again. What a wonderful letter you released to millions of Americans just a day before Halloween! It's full of all of the ingredients needed for the scariest of horror movies.

Death and destruction, terrorist attacks, gay pedophiles in charge of everything and a populace that is forced to hand their children over to them. Oh, one could faint from the horrors of it all! But wait! There's more! On top of all of these future events, you have looked into the future and seen the destruction of our Constitution, the taking away of the Second Amendment, the nuking of Israel by fanatical mullahs, a Supreme Court allowing for the arrest of Christians, (forcing all American Christians to emigrate to Australia), the shutting down and banning of all conservative talk shows, radio and television, euthanasia of undesirables, children forced to watch pornography in school, and any other form of death, destruction, and mayhem that could come pouring out of your lunatic mind.

How will all of these end of the world scenarios come forth, and why will the world as we know it end by 2012? Because Barak Obama is elected president of the United States. So claims James Dobson, the son of goats and pigs, who sent out millions and millions of copies of a letter entitled " Letter From America In 2012 In Obama's America" to Christians around the country in an attempt to blunt the effects being made on Christians who see John McCain as the worst possible choice and are voting their consciences come Tuesday.

Mr. Dobson, when DID you sell your soul to the devil and why would you wait until the day that the veil between the living and the dead is said to be at it's slimmest to release a document of such vile evil? Did your true master force your hand, seeing as how your kind are about to lose your grip on power and your sway over the populace? Could it be the writing on the wall that causes the terror to strike in your own heart and forces you to strike it into the hearts of real Christian men and women?

You disgust me Mr. Dobson. You stand for all that is wrong with our country right now. It has been putrid heaps of dung such as yourself who have stood on the pulpits of churches and proclaimed and furthered the lie that only you know the heart of God. Your pitiful bleatings were believed by those who desired to follow the Path and you led them straight down the road to hell. Such a good little Anti-Christ. What better way to deceive and to turn the Word into a mockery than to claim to be a teacher of the words of Jesus? To then twist those words into something foul tasting and morally repugnant, falsely claiming that this is the new direction God wants for his people. Your chameleon like ability to slip yourself into any national public discourse and throw a 'God Hates Fags' bomb into the middle of it must make you the hero of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Your claims that New Christians who are going to the polls and voting for Obama will cause them eternal damnation are as hollow as your entire basis for continuing to vomit in America's face. We have caught onto your lies and falsehoods Pharisee, and we call you what you truly are. A demon, a monster, a phony, an anti-Christ, a fraud, and a liar. You are one of those we are warned about. One of those who will come in sheep's clothing only to devour God's people. How dare you mock those who disagree with you, claiming them to be other than God's children, and them stand on the pulpit and demand complete loyalty from those you have hoodwinked?

The United States is sick Mr. Dobson. It needs a healer right now, a person who will not kiss the ass of a lunatic whose views are so the opposite of what America stands for such as yourself. You, who claims to know what is good for all of us are the real menace, the real danger of implementation of theocratic rule and intolerance. It is you who wishes to take away the rights of your fellow citizens and drunk with power, use it to enslave an entire nation. It is you who would take the reigns of power and use them to launch nuclear weapons at your perceived enemies. And it is you who stands naked before all of Christendom as a divider of people, a snake, and a deceiver. It was you who slithered in the Garden, stood laughing at the foot of the Cross, and are known the world over as the great deceiver.

Go away Dobson. We don't need your kind fouling up our national discourse anymore. Take off your costume today, the day set aside for demons and goblins, and show the world who you really are. Because even as you post your letters to America's faithful, millions of them don't believe you any more. And even more look upon you as a creature of darkness, a greedy, power hungry whore whose only true beliefs lie in the bottomless pits of despair. You are rebuked sir.

Take that rebuke and take the dismissal of America's faithful, and go crawl back under your rock. If you'd like to read Dobson's disgusting letter, go here: http://focusfamaction.edgeboss.net/download/focusfamaction/pdfs/10-22-08_2012letter.pdf

Entire Town Outsourced To China

You know the product by sight. You know it's name, it's feel, what it's many uses are, and it's probably in almost every U.S household. It stands for Made In America, a good product, a working man's best friend since it's invention in 1918 by William Peterson. Produced in a small Nebraska town where the entire population works hard making them, the Irwin Tools company, a subsidiary of Rubbermaid, announced last month that the Vise-Grips plant is moving to China because the labor costs are so much cheaper there.

DeWitt, Nebraska lies about 35 miles southwest of the state capital of Lincoln, but couldn't be farther apart in lifestyles. With a population of 600, Dewitt epitomizes the small town values espoused by the candidates for President. Crossing the set of railroad tracks to gain entry to the town proper, it's main street consists of one small tavern, a small grocery store, a little clothing thrift operation, and the huge Vise-Grips plant.

Trees line every street here in DeWitt, a place where homes aren't packed together like sardines, and everyone knows your name. You can't pass through the little slice of apple pie without waving to virtually every person you pass, whether they're walking down the street, or sitting on their porch watching the gorgeous fall foliage. This every man and woman town is about to be completely uprooted though, due to the greed of a corporation, and the tax incentives that companies are still receiving to ship our jobs overseas.

The trade agreements with China actually provide for extra money for corporations to set up shop in China, rather than keep the plants here in America. Vise-Grips. Good Lord, one must think when they go to grab a pair of the ever handy tool from now on. Used as a portable vise, or a wrench in a pinch, Vise-Grips are in every garage, every mechanics shop, every kitchen drawer, and well, they're just everywhere. And it has been the good people of DeWitt, Nebraska that has been making them for us.

Worried now about what they're to do, the town's residents fear their home is about to go the way of many a small town in the Mid-West over the past eight arduous years. They cite the examples of towns and cities across the Heartland that depended upon Agri-Businesses for their survival and whose homes were turned into ghost towns when the business was bought up by a corporate entity and moved or it's workforce laid off to make way for immigrant labor who would do the job for pennies on the dollar.

And it always seems that they pull this crap just before or during the holiday season. It's not bad enough that the corporation could care less that they're destroying people's lives, but they rub salt in the wound by doing it in October, or November, or December. Is Vise-Grips going to send each of their ex-employees a Christmas card wishing them a jolly holiday season? Probably so, such is the heartless nature of these corporate beasts.

In times past, a plant closing wouldn't be this big of a deal. The townspeople could have probably commuted up to Lincoln and found other work. But with high fuel costs and the fact that there are not any jobs open in the tight market, that option isn't even viable. So, DeWitt will most likely go the way of other small communities. Neighbors that have known each other all of their lives will most likely move away, losing contact with their friends as usually happens despite promises to keep in touch. Houses will be foreclosed or sold, the few stores in town will shutter their doors and windows due to a lack of business, and the townspeople will move away. DeWitt will become just another victim of the Bush policies, lying silent and dusty in the vast Nebraska Plains.

This must stop. It doesn't matter who wins this election, this outsourcing and the incentives to do so must end. These are real people whose lives are being destroyed and who are going to lose everything they have worked and sweated and bled for all of their lives, going back two generations. Wiped out by the Corporate greed machine, and aided and abetted by our own government. This monstrous loss of good paying American jobs in favor of low paying ones is an insidious destruction of the American way of life, and the incoming President must end all tax breaks for those who would uproot entire towns and cities. Tax breaks must be given instead to those who would build new plants here in the United States. Make noise about this issue, because a complacent populace may just find that the next set of jobs shipped to China, or India, or Pakistan is yours.

Contact Irwin Industrial Tools, the parent company of Vise-Grips, and tell them we are no longer going to be silent about the grip that Corporate America has on the throat of the nation.

http://www.irwin.com/irwin/consumer/jhtml/contactUs.jhtml;jsessionid=1G4HKQWIUEA3YCQIUBSCF3QKBCQHQJCK

Christian Voters Going Back To Roots And Voting Obama

Why Christians Are Turning Away From The Far Right And Leaning All The Way To The Left.

read more | digg story

Christian Voters Going Back To Roots And Voting Obama

In November of 2004, George W. Bush ended up with the good fortune of being the recipient of one of the largest turnouts of Christian voters ever. Almost in lockstep, they followed the orders handed down to them by the likes of fanatics such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell. It has been discussed much by political pundits on the internet and on television, with many wondering several things, such as why they did so, and what would have happened had they voted for Kerry.

Here we find ourselves once again facing the prospect of a huge turnout by Christian voters. In one of the most important elections of our lifetimes, this particular bloc of voters is going to play a major role in the selection of our next President. But this time around, the Republican Party is about to find a shock awaiting them at the polls. Because more and more Christian voters are openly and actively promoting Barak Obama and shunning John McCain.

We're not talking about your far right wing evangelicals. Those who follow the leaders like those named above, those 'churches' that have absolutely nothing to do with the words of Our Lord, but seek political power and monetary gain at all costs. In fact, we're talking about a huge contingent of New Christians who quite possibly have grown as large as 50% or more of the Christian voting bloc according to Pegasus News and GodPoll.

These are the New Christians and they have a great message of hope and of love and of peace on the world. If that sounds like the hippies of the 1960's and 1970's, well, you wouldn't be too far off from the philosophy. Sick and tired of being lied to by the Republican Party who tells them one thing to garner their votes, but then completely ignores them once in office, millions of Christians have decided that they will no longer base their votes on issues like abortion or gay marriage. Groups such as Republican Christians for Obama say that as far as they're concerned, gay marriage is not a political issue, but a human rights one. As far as abortion, they claim that every Republican vows to end the practice, but once in office, are afraid to touch the hot button issue.

Desire for change is strong among the Christian communities. From Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, Catholics, Methodists, and non denominational churches, the cry is now returning to the words of Jesus, and the works that He commanded we do. Issues such as feeding the poor in these hard economic times, sheltering the homeless, the sick and the infirm. Tackling the issue of genocide and AIDS in Africa. And in the case of a group called the Christian Alliance For Progress, calling for the reversal of decades of right wing ideology being pounded into worshipers heads.

Speaking about instituting nationwide initiatives based on the premise of the movie Pay It Forward, they want to help their fellow Americans understand that the 'Me First' teachings of the past three decades are the teachings of evil, and that it's alright to love your neighbor, it's ok to help someone in need, and that taking the time to stop and help a stranger can be a catalyst for others to do the same. They reject the anti-Christian policies of Dobson, Hagee, and Robertson that cry out for war against Iran. They reject war in all it's forms.

Even the environment has been placed on the table by these true Christians. Saying that we are all supposed to be the stewards of the planet, they want real solutions to the climate crisis and global warming. An idea being floated by some of the groups is to lobby for laws that make the biggest polluters such as the oil companies and coal fired electric plants kick in more tax dollars to pay for programs that will slow or reverse the effects that the emissions that their products cause to the atmosphere.

Instead of the politics of exclusion practiced by the Pharisees, these New Christians call for the inclusion of all to the table of God. Bigotry of all types must be done away with they say, and no one should ever have to feel awkward because of the color of their skin.

Interestingly, it's the far right churches who have preached the politics of hatred and greed, that have led the flock astray and down the path of wars and lies who are screaming out the loudest against the true Christian movement. Almost Biblical in it's implications, as in the Jews following Jesus in the first place to the chagrin of the original Pharisees, the New Christian movement gains followers by the day. Just as in the time that Our Lord walked the earth and left us His message of peace and love, today's followers of The Path have awakened to the fact that they have been hoodwinked by a group of political operatives posing as men of God.

Says a member of the Republican Christians for Obama "God is not Republican and he doesn't expect all of his children to vote Republican as some requirement of salvation." But you wouldn't know that if you listen to the Christian Coalition. In their 'non partisan' voter guide, they make no bones about whom they believe Christians must vote for without endangering their immortal soul. Listing falsely Obama's stance on issues, on the flip side, they paint the Keating 5 candidate as a holy man of God who is the candidate who most shares Christian family values. Really? Which values are those? The ones that claim only the rich should receive tax breaks. Only corporations should have laws protecting them from the American people, and not vice-versa?

The stance that our very Constitution, that guarantees freedom and liberty for all, should be ignored when convenient, and the laws of our land don't apply to the Executive Branch of government. These are the very stances that are driving church members away in droves, and opening their eyes to just who it is they have been listening to. And it wasn't the Word of God, that's for sure.

And so, as the Christian far right loses their grip on the throats of those who desire love and peace, hey do what the Republican Party itself is doing in the last days of the campaign. They belittle those who desire to help others. They call them false Christians when it is they themselves who were spawned by Satan. They are on the attack, making up lies, and doing all that they can to stop the growth of a movement that just wishes to leave lives of peace and of service to others. It's the reason they are voting for Barak Obama, and the reason they are actively spreading the word to other Christians that it's ok to leave the fold and vote your conscience. That you don't have to vote what a pastor or a priest tells you to, but that you should vote for whom you think would lead to the healing of our people and not further the divide that being shoved down our throats these last days of the campaign by John McCain and Sarah Palin.

There's one message they do want to get across though, and it's an important one. They want you to know that as Christians, it's time to go back to the beginning and start over. That somewhere along the way, the wrong road was followed and it's time to back track and find the way back to the one true Path. Come and join us...................................

You Might Be A Terrorist.....................

If you can not walk up to the counter at the airport in order to pick up your ticket due to the fact that you still ride in a stroller, you might be a terrorist. It happened to a two year old boy at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Not once, but twice did he learn what terrorism is all about when airport security stopped his family for further 'security' checks because someone put the kid's name on the FBI's terrorist watch list.

Rising at the rate of about 20,000 names per month, the ACLU estimates that there are more than 1.4 million names on the 'list' as of today. Although Homeland Security denies that there are more than a handful of Americans who are accidentally on the list, the truth is just the opposite. If your last name, for instance, has a couple of letters that match a couple of letters in a known terrorist's last name, be prepared to be delayed when trying to board a flight.

If you are a retired Air Force National Guard Brigadier General, who flies commercial jets and is authorized to carry a gun into the cockpit in case someone tries to hijack your plane, you might be a terrorist. So goes the game for James Robinson, a commercial airline pilot, who can no longer use any of the usual fast lane amenities to get aboard the plane he is about to fly because some idiot put his name on the terror watch list.

If you are a Democratic U.S. Senator who has disagreed with the Bush Administration at every turn, you might be a terrorist. Just ask Senator Edward Kennedy. Likewise, you might talk to 11 term Democratic U.S. Representative John Lewis of Atlanta.

If you are just walking by the airport on any given day, like today for example, and as a plane comes in for a landing, you take out your trusty cam/phone and snap a picture of it to send to your kid at home, you might be a terrorist. Such is the example given by security heads at Las Vegas McCarran International where Air Marshall's are required to turn in at least one SDR ( Surveillance Detection Report) per month. Your photo has just been taken while you were snapping your own, and matched against driver's licence data bases, the State Department's passport office, police and FBI files, and when they figure out who you are, you are a newly minted member of the terrorist club. The Air Marshalls also get bonuses for all the 'extra' SDR's they turn in.

If you like to sew, as millions of Americans of both genders do, you might be a terrorist. Just ask seamstress Lana Gremerson of Portland, Oregon. Stopped while attempting to board a flight at PDX (Portland international Airport), Gremerson was pulled out of line, and told secondary security screening was needed before she could go aboard the plane. Figuring that she had no choice, (she was right about that), she went into a room, where a female guard told her to strip. Shocked, Gremerson refused and was told she would be arrested if she didn't co-operate. With a male security guard present, the woman was forced to strip down to her underwear, and then questioned about all manner of evil doings. Her crime? She forgot that she was carrying one of those travel sewing kits that contain.............well..............sewing needles! Allowed to leave after three hours, Gremerson not only missed her flight, but the next time she went to fly, she found her name had been added to the watch list.

If you are a reporter for a major television news network, you might be a terrorist. CNN reporter Drew Griffin found that out the hard way. The Transportation Safety Administration denies that Griffin's negative reporting on the terror watch list was cause for the reporter's name being placed on it. Yeah right.

If you are a middle school student, and attend classes in Georgia, you might be a terrorist. No less than the sheriff of a county went to a school in Oglethorpe County and told the students there that they would be placed on the terrorist watch list and remain there forever should they not stop leaving threatening notes to each other in the hallways of the school. An FBI spokesman said that hopefully, if a child's name was nominated for the list, cooler heads would prevail and not destroy the kid's life with list placement, but as we have already seen, that quota will take precedence all the time.

No longer constrained to just the travel sector of our society, Americans are now facing problems in other areas. Such as the 18 year old student who was starting a technology consulting business, but was denied the ability to process credit card payments due to his placement on the terror list. It turns out that his last name was similar to a Libyan government official's. I thought we were best friends with the Lockerbie murderers again?

Another man went into a Maryland Toyota dealership to buy a car, only to be told he had to be checked for tattoos that would determine if he was the person that was on the Treasury Department's list of terrorists and drug dealers.

A man who served honorably in the U.S. Navy, and whose father was killed during the Korean War, was denied access to his online PayPal account, because his name was on the list.

All of the cases above illustrate that those who were queasy at the thought of these lists being started in the first place were right all along. They may have begun with the intent of stopping terrorists, but somewhere along the way, as with everything else done by the Bush administration, has turned into a program designed to intimidate and control the American people. The old adage that some use that goes "If you've got nothing to hide, why do you care", no longer applies due to the repressive use of phony 'laws' to oppress the people. When the terrorist watch list begins to be used as a club to force people to do as they're told by their government, it's no longer a tool designed to catch anyone but those who would dissent. Because that's who is ending up on the 'list'. Those who openly disagree with a Bush policy are ten times more likely to find their names on the terror list than those who lovingly kiss up to the Glorious Leader.

After the nightmare of the last eight years, the incoming President should review Homeland Security's usefulness, and make changes accordingly. American citizens have a right to voice opposition to their government without fear of retribution. But because of the policies of Bush, and signed off on by John McCain, Americans must now fear their government, when it should be the other way around. Think about that come election day. The past eight years have happened. They don't just fade away because an election is upcoming and we've got two new candidates. John McCain will go further than Bush when it comes to this list instead of doing the right thing and tearing it up and starting over. And of course, he'll never put the name on the list that deserves to be at the very top, namely one George W. Bush.................................

Refuting McClatchy's Story On How Bush Helped End Homelessness

In today's issue of McClatchy News Online, where their motto of 'Truth To Power' appears just below their tag line, is a story entitled 'Bush administration has housed many homeless'. After reading the title and laughing out loud, I assumed that the article would be one that actually condemned the Bush policies of the past eight years of slashing the budgets for the poor and the homeless with every swipe of his line item pen.

But lo and behold, in a blatant attempt by the right wing news service to make it appear as though Bush has been some sort of liberally idealed President this past decade of hardship, the article claims that this monster in the Oval Office has been the one with the best idea for ending homelessness in America. Written in reference to one minor program called Housing First, the article gives Bush the credit for implementing the plan, which is a blatant lie. The program was started in Toronto, Canada by a coalition called The National Alliance To End Homelessness.

It was this entity that brainstormed the program and received help from the Canadian government to implement it. So wildly successful that it was picked up by cities around the United States, all Bush did was to allow for the diverting of funds for some programs that help the poor and deliver it to Housing First. Housing First now operates nation wide, doing the best they can with an ever growing homeless population.

But to hear McClatchy News tell the story, one would think that, holy crap, homelessness has been ended in our country. Using gibberish figures, they claim that the homeless numbers have fallen from 176,000 to under 124,000 under Bush's watch. They claim this number by saying it's culled from the best available data, which is another blatant lie. Try almost 4 MILLION homeless people in America Mr. Hearst Corporation, and you'll be getting a lot closer to the truth. And that number represents an increase of 30% during the Bush years, not any decrease.

Further on into the article, McClatchy News once again spouts off figures in an attempt to show how generous Bush has been towards the poor and the homeless. Telling how the authorization for Medicaid allotments have risen by almost double what they were when Bush took office, the article tries to give the impression that more and more people who need help are getting it, but that's another blatant lie. The real reason that costs for programs such as Medicaid and Food Stamps have risen so drastically under the Bush Administration was because the Republicans outright privatized the programs while the entire nation was asleep after 9/11.

Oh yes. That's right. Where Medicaid used to be a program wherein the recipient would receive a card, go to their doctor, and the doctor would bill Medicaid, you know, a direct to the provider service, now, recipients are forced to choose an insurance company HMO that runs the Medicaid program in a given area. The HMO charges the government exorbitant fees for their services as a middle man, and the government, in order to lessen the impact of those fees, gives bonuses to the HMO's for money saved. So the HMO then places higher and higher 'deductibles' on office visits, prescriptions, tests, everything, on the recipient in order to discourage them from going to the doctor at all. So while many in the country decry the 'free' medical care being received by the poor, they have absolutely no clue that the poor aren't actually getting the care they need, but the insurance companies are fattening their bank accounts at taxpayer expense. Good job there Bushie. You paid back your fat cat friends well with that ripoff scheme.

They did the same thing with Food Stamps. JPMorgan now runs the Food Stamp program. Oh? You didn't know that? Food Stamps are not even food stamps any more. What they are now is what's called an Electronic Benefit Transfer card, or EBT. It used to be that when a recipient went to the store and bought food, the store would receive an extra seven cents on the dollar for accepting the food stamps. There was the hassle of collecting all those stamps, correctly tabulating them, sending them in for redemption, and waiting thirty days for a check. But with the EBT card, all that hassle was supposed to disappear, but the stores would still get that little extra for accepting the food benefit transfer. That is until Bush gave the program to the banks who demanded a 25 cent per dollar return on top of the store's 7 cents. And so, in order to cut costs, the amount of benefits available to recipients was cut. The fat cats get paid off once again, the poor get the shaft. On 15 separate occasions, the Republicans have refused and filibustered any vote to raise the allotment for the poor. The most recent example was the bailout for Wall Street package. Pork of all kinds was tied to that bill, but yet the Republicans threatened to scuttle the entire thing if the Democrats didn't remove a ten dollar a month increase in Food Stamp benefits for the poor.

In trying to make Bush seem the hero and not the villain, McClatchy ignores the slashing of billions of dollars for Section 8 vouchers by Bush. The number of available yearly vouchers nationwide for the poor to fight over is now all the way down to 30,000. That's a decrease from 250,000 and is said by no less than 6 national organizations for the homeless to be a contributing factor in the rise of the numbers of veterans on the street. They also leave out the fact that Bush refused to fund the Bring America Home Act, which would have provided municipalities with funding for more shelters, funding for more soup kitchens, funding for medical facilities for the poor, and would have stopped cities from making homelessness a crime.

Incredibly, in this toilet paper excuse for a 'news' story, McClatchy attempts to shift the burden for America's homeless problem on the Democrats. Claiming that every time the organizations that serve the poor come knocking with their hand out, it's the Republican Party that steps up and that the Democrats will begrudgingly give a little during the snowy months, McClatchy again tries to make it appear as though the Bush years have been a boon to the poor of America. The only item missing from this fraudulent excuse for journalism was a picture of Bush in long flowing hair, white linens, and a halo circling his godlike head.

No. Nice try McClatchy. We all know that your organization has always been a front for the Republican Party, but this is just too much. I doubt that even Fox Noise would throw this garbage and vomit into people's faces and expect them to eat it. The truth is that since Republicans have controlled Congress during the Clinton years, they have forced through cut after cut after cut for the most vulnerable, not out of some sense of civic responsibility, but because of an evil desire to reroute those dollars to their corporate friends. When Bush stole the election, well, God Damn, the party was really on then as we have all been witness to. Just one month's worth of money that is being shoveled into the bottomless pit that is the Iraq War would end homelessness forever in America.

Take a look at a couple of facts, then go figure out if McClatchy is full of shoot.

Fact one: Compared to 1978, the U.S. government is now spending nearly 65 percent less on developing and maintaining affordable housing for poor people. ($83 billion was appropriated in 1978, while only $29 billion was allocated in 2005.)

Fact two: Compared to 1978, the U.S. government now spends $84 billion more on subsidies for home ownership programs. (It spent $38 billion in 1978 on these subsidies for middle-class and affluent homeowners versus $122 billion in 2005.)

Fact three: In 2004, 61 percent of all federal housing subsidies went to households earning over $54,787 per year, while only 20 percent of those subsidies went to households earning less than $18,465 annually. The 2004 federal poverty threshold for a household of four with two minor children was $19,157.

The fact is, the Bush Administration has been worse than Reagan when it comes to cuts made to programs designed to help the poor, the homeless, and especially the homeless veterans. Anything else being said to try to save the legacy of an evil monster is propaganda, pure and simple.

Corporate Welfare Forces The Poor To Starve

Over one trillion dollars is being pumped directly into the coffers of some of America's most fiscally irresponsible companies at the very same moment that the politicians who so blithely give away our money are denying an increase in food stamp allotments to the poorest of the poor in our country.

Claiming that the United States could not afford to give the poverty stricken more food purchasing power due to budget shortfalls, recent Congressional votes ran along Party lines, with Republicans threatening to filibuster the very bailout bill that would hand over to the bankers and lawyers of Wall Street the wealth of the entire nation, unless the Democrats removed an earmark to the bill that would have given a measly ten dollars per month to struggling families.

A March, 31st, 2008 article in the New York Times warns of the rising number of families with the sole provider being put out of work, being forced to turn to the food stamp and welfare programs of their respective states, only to discover the shocking truth that the system is designed to cause misery and not relief any more, thanks to the likes of the Republicans in Congress since 1994.

When Newt Gingrich and his corrupt cohorts wrestled control of the House and the Senate, one of their first actions was to enact laws that cut maximum benefit levels, and ordered a freeze in the standard deduction. Instituted in 1996, the frozen benefit levels and reduced standard deduction levels have caused such a lowering of available food purchasing power among America's poor that the Fiscal Policy Institute, an ultra conservative group, has decried the frozen benefit levels as actually hurting the economy. Twelve years of lowered benefits, and eight years of job losses has eroded the American dream into a long forgotten shadow of a whisper.

Yet another conservative group, the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities, has put forth reports showing the impact on the cuts in cash assistance, food stamp benefit allotments, and the reduction in medical care being provided due to the massive giveaway to the insurance industry in the form of privatizing Medicaid.

One of the very first sounds you'll hear from the far right is a bleating whine about government not being in the business of helping the poor and that they shouldn't be receiving benefits of any kind. But the very same heartless losers will actually sit and justify the redistribution of wealth to banks and mortgage brokers, who then take our money and go off laughing in our face on half a million dollar vacations. The whiners and begrudgers don't even know the basic fundamental fact of economics. That is, if the poor had more benefits, there would be more money flowing through the economy, more jobs would be created, thereby lowering the need for those benefits naturally, and yes, it would help spread the wealth around to taxpayers, not corporations.

With the Presidential candidates from both sides of the aisle calling for another 'vote buy' stimulus package, once again, before the bill is even put to paper, or any details worked out, the Democrats once more attempt to push for a hike in food stamp levels, pointing out the alarming rise in food prices, and the lowered ability of poor and even middle class families to feed their children due to even faster rising costs of fuel, but once more into the fray come the neo-cons, demanding no increase whatsoever for people they label as a drain on the system. Why anyone would consider hungry children a drain on anything is beyond all reason and should reveal to everyone once and for all just who the Republican Party represents. The rich and the corporate interests.

What is to be done? The answer, according to every single advocate for the poor, and across the board at conservative think tanks, is to lift the standard deduction freeze, and raise the cap on food stamp benefits. To push aside those who stand in the way of economic recovery for all, and who would allow their fellow citizens to go hungry while they gorge themselves at the Congressional cafeteria for free. Only the best for those who make it to the pinnacles of power, but a let them eat cake attitude towards the multitudes who scramble for the falling crumbs.

Other think tanks decry the cuts in funding that have been implemented at vocational rehabilitation centers for those who have lost jobs. It used to be that one could go to these places and get training for another job that paid a comparable wage. No longer. Due to more Republican budget cuts, the name of the game at these mills is to place a worker in virtually any job available, in most cases, a minimum wage, no benefits, dead end, no hope for the future job, that forces the person onto the welfare rolls any way.

It's time for this evil to end. The time has come to push aside those who have foisted misery and suffering on their fellow Americans in order to cater to the whims and desires of rich corporate fat cats. It is time to restore our nation to a place of compassionate helping hands, and do away with the mentality that says it's ok to swat away those who reach out for help. No nation's soul can survive very long under a cloud of death and treasure for the few. Congress would do well to note their suffering citizens and react accordingly. For should they not understand the growing anger and desperation that is beginning to grip this country, they may well find themselves with a conflagration on their hands that makes the Boston Tea Party look like a fireside chat. End the corporate welfare, and help starving Americans. End the corporate welfare, and bring a dying nation back to life by giving help to those who can in turn breath life back into the economy. The alternative is becoming intolerable and the consequences unthinkable.