I've disabled that filter for the time being so you can post with your links, since they also include 'gucci'. If you see any posts selling Gucci stuff, please flag them. They may find this thread via a search engine and try to spam it.

Sorry Palindromedary. The problem is that we have a filter in for 'Gucci' as people try spamming us with real or fake Gucci items, and you happened to use a word that included it.

We actually don't have any poltical filters at the moment.

So, they no longer allow links to other web sites? The one I tried to reference a link to has nothing at all to do with commercialism but it might be a buggaboo to the fascist pigs who spy on us. Has the government gotten to thomhartmann too?

Ok, I'm trying to find out why my messages are being flagged as s p a m. I guess they don't like references to another site I've referenced c r y p t o m e period oh ar gee.

It's ok for the government to spy on any of us that they see fit (for any reason at all...they have long ago gone past requiring court orders and reasonable cause) but when the citizens spy on them they get really upset.

KW and esp Kend -- You are viewing the debt in a one-dimensional frame. No serious economist views it as you do. The debt that matters is the ratio of debt (the one you guys talk about) to the GDP. Even the extreme right wing economists Reinhart and Rogoff in their bogus report paid for Pete Peterson talks about no country can survive if that ratio exceeds 90% (they did not mention anything about how many trillions the debt would be before failure of the country). As a side note, a graduate from UMass got the R-R spreadsheets and exposed the fact they left off countries that recovered from debt far worse than 90%.

Using my grandson and the dumping of debt on him can illustrate the complexities of understanding why the ratio is the important statistic, Assuming the current per capita debt is $6000 let us see what happens between increasing the debt some more vs applying austerity, It has been shown that currently govt expenditures have a 60% return. For the state to go further into debt would involve such things as paying for his education. The first case to consider is doing nothing. In the case we can assume some nominal salary for my grandson. The number does not matter except for comparison and illustration. Let's assume he would make $70,000 annual salary if we do nothing. If the state were to go into further debt to $10,000 per capita, then with a return of 60% my grandson (he is now 3 yo and the joy of my life) would make $76,400 annual salary. If we apply austerity and reduce the debt to $2000 per capita his annual salary would become $63,600. This means that he has $12,800 more to pay off the $8000 more in debt. It seems to me having a $10,000 debt is better than having a $2000 debt.

Mark S -- I hope Thom reads your stuff

"stecoop", I agree; the SCOTUS 5 and maybe over half our senators & representatives should be impeached along with the prez. I was simply voicing my outrage at Obama's attempts to fast track the TPP, considering the awful things it would set us up for. But my suggesting impeachment for Obama was not meant to exclude all those other offenders who've been busy throwing us under the bus.

It'll be a freezing day in hell before I get one of those damn "smart phones". Yeah; "smart" phones for dummies!

If you run for office, you've got my vote. - AIW

The debt you're talking about, I think, is state employee pension debt. That, however, and many other problems of the states, I think, can be placed at the feet of people like Grover Norquist, G.W. Bush's main tax advisor, who admittedly wanted to bankrupt the states.

Thanks Alice and Kend for your supportive comments (and sorry Kend, I'm a bare knuckles debater and you really piss me off all the time with, what seems to me to be, willfull bullshitting but you're, nevertheless, not without decency). I can't call Thom now because I'm working a liittle job now in the 2-5pm CST time slot that his show is on but he reads the blog and I try to reach him that way.

If Thom was bringing up examples of schizophrenic homelessness as an issue of our society's neglect of the mentally disabled or of a denial of their basic human rights he would have something legitimate but to say that homelessness in America is predominately or largely due to schizophrenia is to say something that is simply not the fact. Nobody who works with or studies the homeless would agree with such a statement, in fact, they would think it a quite outlandish. It is, actually, a statement I heard repeated by some rather obtuse, Archie Bunker type bigots ever since H.W. Bush made it and gave them liscence to dismiss the problem of homelessness that way.

The mentally ill are actually less likely to be homeless than the rest of the population as they are of the last group that gets any benefit from our ravaged and pillaged social safety net. It ostensibly doesn't offend the ostensible work ethic of ostensible conservatives in their ostentatious moralizing. That is, they (conservatives) are (ostensibly) okay with paying benefits to the disabled (In Illinois, for example, an unemployed or low wage earning, unmarried male qualifies for Medicaid only if they are disabled). It's even become a regular practice for social workers and social service providers, in their frustration at finding their clients jobs or get them public assistance, to see if they can somehow construe a disability benefit for a nervous disorder or something.

What is true, though, is that psychiatric hospitals on the state funded level, are very unwilling to hospitalize people unless they are demonstratively immediately dangerous to themselves or others. Even then they try to see if they can somehow avoid committing them. Hospitals are required (ostensibly) by law to take someone into their psych. unit not only if they are dangerous to themselves or others but also if they are unable to provide for their basic needs but if they don't come in with a razor blade stuck in their wrist a state hospital isn't likely to take them, even then they might skirt it.

Some social service agencies have "mobile assessment units", teams of social workers who drive around looking for mentally ill homeless people to see if they can bring them into some care and get them on disability insurance but they can't do anything if people don't wanna come in which is where the paranoid schizophrenia comes into it. I'm glad anybody can refuse psychiatric care. Before, when they couldn't, political dissidents or people found inconvenient or who had a lot of money that could be gotten from them were involuntarily committed for some dubious reasons but now, though someone can be comitted for being dangerous or unable to take care of themselves, social workers often can't even get a cop to bother picking them up..

Quote ken ware:If Obama actually ignores congress and this agreement is signed into law, it is time to IMPEACH OBAMA AND SOON. K.W.

Ken Ware ~ Well said!