The Hollywood Liberal

U.S. $10 trillion in the red

Miami Herald
Excerpt
WASHINGTON — As the national debt heads toward the $10-trillion mark, generous Americans are sending checks to the federal government.

Donations to the Bureau of the Public Debt have topped $2.5 million so far this year. That’s the highest amount since at least 1996.

It’s not making much of a dent, though.

For the fifth time since 2001, Congress is raising the debt limit, increasing it by $850 billion to $9.815 trillion. The Senate approved the plan on a 53-42 vote Thursday. That’s $9,815,000,000,000.00.

The House of Representatives has already signed off on the plan, without a direct vote.

According to the folks who follow this stuff closely, the national debt has been rising by an average of $1.36 billion per day since September of last year.

And each citizen now has a share of nearly $30,000.

Parents to have money taken away from child support payments

ABC
Excerpt
CASTLE ROCK - Linda Green couldn’t believe what she found when she opened her mail this week.

She received a letter from the Colorado Department of Human Services, telling her she would soon have money taken out of the child support payments she receives from her 13-year-old son’s father.

“I was a little astounded,” she said.

The letter stated that under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law early last year, federal spending on so-called entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other social programs, would be restrained, in order to pay down the national deficit.

Arrested For Reading The Constitution

ABC
Excerpt
A common theme of the event was that U.S. troops in Iraq were there to “protect the freedom” of the Iraqi people, but this freedom didn’t seem to apply to the group of American citizens that decided to use their first amendment right of free speech to voice their dissent.

Five members of Code Pink were arrested, one for reading the Constitution, as police refused to say what the charges were and refused to answer any questions while demonstrators were hauled into paddy wagons.

by Michael O’McCarthy

At my local gas station
They sell their corporate fried chicken
Next to the beer cooler with Bar B Q,
Mashed potatoes and grits and groceries …

As you pump gas
And the dollars mount
And the petrol roars
Into your bottomless tank
There’s a CNN news TV screen …

In American y’all can
Chew on a drumstick
While innocently watching
The blood of the dead and dying
Soak into the Iraqi dirt…

But not to worry citizens
The bone and gristle
Are filtered out
By Halliburton’s oil refineries.

09-07
greenville, sc