Very unusual days we're living in. Just 9 years ago in 2004, TurdBlossom Rove headed up an election year hate-a-thon by helping state Republicans place anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot in 12 states. The goal was to re-elect Commander Guy by attracting enough extreme-right evangelicals and other conservative religious voters to the polls to vote for god and against gays ....and while they were at it, cast a vote for The Decider.

Rove's strategy worked. Just 9 years ago, an organized effort of discrimination, hate and rejection of the Other helped in re-electing the worst president in modern American history.

"Money can't buy everything is true. What it can't buy I can't use."

I think it's time we replaced the Star Spangled Banner, the great old ode to U.S militarism, with a more appropriate national anthem. One more representative of a modern America. The soul/blues tune "Money" is my recommendation. Not only is "Money" more appropriate for our New Gilded Age.....but you can dance to it as well.

Libertarian philosophy has gained in popularity within the U.S. over the last decade or so....and that's understandable given the self-absorbed, narcissistic age that we find ourselves living in.

Libertarian philosophy holds that freedom of self is the highest priority. Ayn Rand's novels are held up by libertarians as philosophical evidence that freedom of the individual, individual freedom to do whatever one chooses, is the epitome of what is virtuous, is the highest of values. That is one reason why when President Obama was asked last fall what he thought about Paul Ryan's devotion to Ayn Rand's libertarian philosophy, he said this...

Now we have our dueling budgets. Check that, dueling political documents. We have Paul Ryan's House budget resolution passing without one Democratic vote and with 10 GOP votes against. And we have the Senate budget resolution which passed late last night 50-49 without one GOP vote and with 4 Democratic senators voting against.

Ryan's political document restructures American society as we have known it....ending Medicare as a single payer, not-for-profit, insurance system for seniors, massively reducing Medicaid in a block-grant-to-states gimmick predicted to cut the service for the poor by more than 10%. Slashing billions from SNAP, unemployment, and a host of other services for the poor, the elderly, veterans and the vulnerable. But no new sources of revenue.

By now you know the story of the two Steubenville, Ohio high school football stars being convicted of raping (digitally penetrating) a passed out drunk 16 year old girl...and taking pictures.

Until yesterday, I hadn't seen this CNN video clip report from the courthouse site immediately following the announced verdict in the Steubenville high school rapists case.

Included in the RNC Autopsy Report which allegedly detailed what went wrong for Republicans in the 2012 general election....are new party guidelines for Republican presidential candidate primaries as well as the Republican Convention.

It seems that GOP leaders believe that last year's GOP presidential primaries, 23 in all, actually did damage to the party's brand. Here's a National Review Online writer stating just that....

President Obama won 71% of the Latino-American vote last November. Obama also won 95% of the black American vote. Mitt Romney won 59% of the white American vote in a 72% majority-white electorate...and lost by several million popular votes and by a blowout in the electoral college vote.

But that's not the bad news for the GOP. This is...

The Villagers love it. Rush Limbaugh hates it.

What is it? The GOP Autopsy Report.

This is a must read if you remember the names Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, J.Edgar Hoover....Vietnam and Watergate.

Shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed him of the existence of the file containing national security wiretaps documenting how Nixon’s emissaries had gone behind President Lyndon Johnson’s back to convince the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris Peace Talks, which were close to ending the Vietnam War in fall 1968. (Rev: please re-read that sentence)

Charles Krauthammer of WaPo and Fox News fame is an intelligent person. Bitter, but intelligent. He is also an aggressive spokesperson for U.S. Empire expansion, led Fox's armchair warriors, and millions of American viewers, into the national crime of Iraq....and has been a leading proponent of starting a hot war with Iran. Charles Krauthammer is a neo-conservative's, neo-conservative.

As such, Charles was upset recently by Senator Rand Paul's filibuster over presidential assassination powers. To Krauthammer, starting wars with countries we don't like is the best evidence of our nation's ongoing superiority and dominance. Krauthammer rejects Rand Paul as an "isolationist" on foreign policy....standing firmly in favor of the McCain/Huckleberry/Joementum-led GOP majority on foreign adventurism and Empire expansion. Motto: we're all neo-cons now. or should be.

If you go here, you'll find thousands of Google listings under the search phrase, 'gop senators tell obama to tone it down.'  Funny thing is....virtually every listing leads back to only one Associated Press story written by David Espos. The Beacon also ran the story in today's paper.

The column by Espos is a hoot. But before I get into the essence of the nonsense contained within...let's do a brief review.

Back in September of last year, NY City Mayor Mike Bloomberg moved to ban the sale of sugary soda fountain drinks sold in the city if they exceeded 16 ounces. At the time the ban was announced, Bloomberg made it spectacularly clear what he was attempting to do....

Bloomberg insists that his sugary-drink ban will help reduce obesity in the city. He also argues it’s really no ban at all, just a tool to help people better understand how much sugar they consume.

"More of a political document than an economic document" said Mrs. Allan Greenspan on MSNBC yesterday, describing Wunderkind Paul Ryan's release of his same-old, new budget.

"....this is more of a political document than an economic document, which these budgets usually are. They (the budgets) let Americans know where the party stands, and that's why I look forward to the Democrats putting their budget on the House floor, on the Senate floor for the first time in four years. Then, we can have the debate", said former GOP congressman, Joe Scarborough.

The seven deadly sins are pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, sloth and greed. One of those deadly sins passed through a cleansing process in America right around the 1980 mark. Guess which one.

'Greed is good, greed works'....said Michael Douglas in the 1987 movie, Wall Street. Although only a movie, it mirrored the very real era of greed then blossoming under the supply side leadership of Ronald Reagan. It was the era of Sir Goldsmith and.....Bain Capital....of leveraged buyouts, deregulation, de-unionization, low taxes and much higher individual and national debt.

The Reverend, December 15, 2012....

"....we will do nothing at all in the wake of the slaughter of 20, five-to-six year old children. Just as we did nothing after a similar slaughter in a movie theater in Colorado. Just as we did nothing after the attempted assassination of a U.S. congresswoman in Arizona. We will do absolutely nothing."

How would you classify people who advocate for cuts to safety net programs at a time in history when the income and wealth disparity gap between the top 1% and all the rest of us is at an all time high?

If you witnessed an expensively-dressed CEO taking a sandwich from a homeless man.....what would you think of that CEO? What would you label that CEO, a maker or a taker?

The one specific policy agreement liberals like me have with libertarian darling, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), is on U.S. military adventurism and U.S. Empire building for fun and profit. Paul is opposed to the United States' policing of the world and involving our military in every trouble spot in the world. I agree with Mr. Paul on this one policy.

So, yes, I applaud Paul for staging a 13 hour stand-up-and-talk filibuster in the Senate. The question he demanded an answer from the White House was the proper question at the proper time. Does the POTUS have the legal right to assassinate U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without any due process as the Constitution guarantees?

Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe called it "blatantly unconstitutional" and vetoed it......but Republican soldiers on the frontline warring against female citizens in the state overrode the governor's veto.

Called the "Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act," the bill requires testing to determine "whether the fetus that the pregnant woman is carrying possesses a detectible heartbeat."

The Republican-passed budget in 2012, authored by (Paul) Ryan, called for steep discretionary spending cuts and an overhaul of Medicare and Medicaid, but did not reach balance until close to 2040.

Just one year ago, austerity-for-thee-but-not-for-me fetishists in the GOP-controlled Tea House almost unanimously passed Paul Ryan's plan to balance the federal budget over a 28 year period. Ryan's plan reduced tax rates on millionaires or better while privatizing (cutting benefits) Medicare and block granting (reduce spending) Medicaid.

There has been a lie circulating for years now within media which portrays President Obama as the biggest government spender in the known galaxy.

Example: Forbes, June 2012....President Barack Obama is the biggest spender in the history of the world.

NBC's resident pain and austerity cheerleader, David "Fluffy" Gregory, invited former bartender and current House Speaker, John "Orange Julius" Boehner to sit down with him yesterday on Meet the Press.

Gregory managed to get off a few good questions.........

As I've mentioned here before, conservatives and Republicans who voted for Romney/Ryan last November with the full expectations that Romney would win have had a rough go of it the last few months. Disoriented.....would be a good descriptor.

Going into election day, these conservative voters had relied almost solely on Fox, Drudge, and sites like Breitbart and Redstate for their latest election and political information. So much so, that Nate Silver's bullseye-accurate, algorithmic-based predictions were openly mocked and ridiculed in the last couple weeks of the 2012 campaign.

Austerity it is then. Spending cuts all around. Celebration time, come on!

I suppose because consistent austerity measures have failed so miserably in turning England's economic situation around...actually making the situation worse there....it's time to bring those failures to the Homeland.