Myopia

 

Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi BENGHAZI!!!!!

Attacks on Embassies and Consulates 

During the Presidency of George W. Bush

1st Term

22 January 2002     Calcutta, India     Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami gunmen attack Consulate     5 dead

14 June 2002     Karachi, Pakistan     al-Qaeda truck bomb detonates outside Consulate     12 dead

12 October 2002     Denpasar, Indonesia     Consular Office bombed by Jemaah Islamiyah as part of the Bali bombings     no deaths

28 February 2003     Islamabad, Pakistan     Unknown gunmen attack Embassy     2 dead

30 June 2004     Tashkent, Uzbekistan     Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan suicide bomber attacks Embassy     2 dead

6 December 2004     Jeddah, Saudi Arabia     al-Qaeda gunmen raid diplomatic compound     9 dead

2nd Bush Term

2 March 2006     Karachi, Pakistan     Car bomb explodes outside Consulate     2 dead

12 September 2006     Damascus, Syria     Gunmen raid US Embassy     4 dead

12 January 2007     Athens, Greece     RPG Fired at Embassy by Revolutionary Struggle     no deaths

18 March 2008     Sana'a, Yemen     Mortar attack against US Embassy     2 dead

9 July 2008     Istanbul, Turkey     Armed attack against Consulate    6 dead  

17 September 2008     Sana'a, Yemen     Two car bombs outside US embassy in Yemeni capital
 16 dead

Total Deaths during the Bush Years: 60 

Attacks on Embassies and Consulates during the Presidency of Barack Obama

1st Term

5 April 2010     Peshawar, Pakistan     An attack near the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, kills two consulate security guards and at least six others     8 deaths

2nd Term

11 September 2012     Cairo, Egypt, Benghazi, Libya, Sana'a     A group of terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya -- killing the U.S. Ambassador and three staff members.    4 deaths

1 February 2013     Ankara, Turkey     A suicide bomber attacked the American Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Friday, detonating himself inside a security entrance to the compound.      1 death

Total Deaths so far during the Obama Years: 13

I obtained this information from the Wikipedia article "Terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities," which informs us:  "Note: This is not a comprehensive list."  But it serves as a rough guide.

When I posted this information on Facebook a friend asked: 

 "In which of those attacks under President Bush did the state department have credible intel that an attack was coming? In which of those were they calling for help? In any that they were calling for help was there help under an hour away? This is why people are so upset. This administration knew these people were going to die yet they did nothing. To top it all off, after doing nothing they tried to sweep it under the rug like it never happened."  

This is the Republican Party line. Benghazi was somehow special and more egregious than any other attack. It's funny how that only is the case when Democrats are in the White House.  
It's also funny how they reconcile their refusal to fully fund Hilary Clinton's embassy security budget before the Benghazi attacks with the inevitable result by playing deaf, dumb, and blind about it. 

I replied:

"You will never know what the Bush Administration knew because they never told you and Democrats did not create a make-believe fuss. If anyone is responsible for Benghazi it is General Petraeus, republican golden boy, who was too busy thinking about his mistress' boobs than what intel the CIA was getting at their station in Benghazi. But republicans just have to blame Obama for everything. Michael, did you ask these questions about attacks during the Bush administration? I doubt it. Being in the diplomatic corps can be a dangerous job, especially when you represent a country that subverts governments, helps corporations screw countries, and starts wars for no good reason. That pisses people off. Maybe Congress should look at the policies they approve that make people want to kill us." 

When George W. Bush was president we all thought when these kind of disasters happened that W. was just a dope and these things are to be expected. Maybe Bush should have been put under the same kind of pressure by Democrats that Obama is getting from Republicans who see Obama as some kind of evil Muslim genius who actually knows all and is personally responsible for all misfortune including the planning of the Benghazi attack. But we do know that the Bush administration knew something was up on 9/11 and did nothing. We do know that they had FBI  reports that Arabs were taking flying lessons but dropped out during the landing lessons. Some Democrats questioned these things but most of them went meekly along with the bellicose plans of the Neocons. Why did so many republicans seem to exhilirated by 9/11 instead of outraged by the intelligence failure on a scale that makes Benghazi look like, well, little Benghazi? 

I am no fan of Obama. He is hardly a socialist or even a left leaning Democrat. He has done everything to protect the vested interests during his term. The bankers run our country's economy by any means necessary enjoying legal immunity for their crimes. The corporations guide our foreign policy. Austerity freaks control the budget and Obama enables them every step of the way. Criticize him for that if you will. 


But there are no facts behind the right wing's paranoiac attacks on Obama for Benghazi, just assertion based on speculation. Congress should be asking themselves "WHY do they attack?" Congress should reconsider the aggressive and destructive policies the USA indulges in around the world which they have encouraged and approved. 

When we are actively subverting the government of another country, people in that country are going to lash out against us, and diplomats are a handy target. Foreign governments are ultimately responsible for embassy and consulate  security by treaty. We had already destabilized and  destroyed the Libyan government by helping so-called "Arab Spring" Muslim fundamentalists rise in revolt against Qaddafi. We only have ourselves to blame that our embassy was left vulnerable as a result of that action. The guilt must be shared by all in government, including many of the Republicans crying a river of crocodile tears,  who initiated and approved these policies, not just the President or the Secretary of State.

Disturbing Bible Passages: Yummy Flatbread Edition

Ezekiel 4:9 is the name of an organic bread found in your grocer's freezer section. 

I have never been tempted to buy frozen bread  but I have no doubt it is tasty and nourishing. Looking at the "Food for Life" baking company website I note that the bread is Kosher.  Kashrut rules in the time of Ezekiel were different....

The King James Bible translates Ezekiel Chapter 4 verse 9 thusly:  "Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof."

Ezekiel 4:12 tends to raise some hackles. King James: And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.  

 The King James translation is unclear, as is often the case. One might even take it to mean that feces is in the bread. This passage is a symbolic test of Ezekiel to prepare him for hard times to come and the fact that ritually pure food will not be available. The literal translation is that the bread (which contains food items not normally found in bread, like the legumes, due to the foreseen shortage of grain) be baked "on" (as Jewish translations of the Torah give us rather than the KJB's "with") human excrement, i.e. using it as fuel, which is ritually unclean especially for a priest like Ezekiel.
 
Here is a Jewish translation of Ezekiel 4:4-17      4 Moreover lie thou upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it; according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity. 5 For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be unto thee a number of days, even three hundred and ninety days; so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6 And again, when thou hast accomplished these, thou shalt lie on thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah; forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it unto thee. 7 And thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with thine arm uncovered; and thou shalt prophesy against it. 8 And, behold, I lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast accomplished the days of thy siege. 9 Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof; according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, even three hundred and ninety days, shalt thou eat thereof. 10 And thy food which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day; from time to time shalt thou eat it. 11 Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of a hin; from time to time shalt thou drink. 12 And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it in their sight with dung that cometh out of man.'  13 And the LORD said: 'Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations whither I will drive them.' 14 Then said I: 'Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul hath not been polluted; for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn of beasts; neither came there abhorred flesh into my mouth.' 15 Then He said unto me: 'See, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread thereon.'  16 Moreover He said unto me: 'Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight, and with anxiety; and they shall drink water by measure, and in appalment; 17 that they may want bread and water, and be appalled one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.

So the bread is impure and the fuel is impure. God is saying to E. "Get used to it. Heavy shit, so to speak, is coming down." Ezekiel protests to YHVH that he has never eaten anything impure and YHVH partially relents telling him that he may use cow dung instead of human dung for fuel. The non-grain items (barley,beans, lentils, etc.) were in Zeke's bread  to stay. Barley cakes in ancient times were unleavened, and may have been a more traditional passover food. 
It is amusing that a baking company targeting Christians is making a semblance of this bread as if it was a good thing. 
I wonder if Ezekiel thought God's flatbread recipe was a good thing.
I doubt it. Many of the ingredients were not considered proper for bread during those days.
Food For Life's Ezekiel 4:9 ingredients: Organic Sprouted Wheat, Organic Sprouted Barley, Organic Sprouted Millet, Organic Malted Barley, Organic Sprouted Lentils, Organic Sprouted Soybeans, Organic Sprouted Spelt, Filtered Water, Fresh Yeast, Organic Wheat Gluten, Sea Salt. 
It's close to God's recipe given to Ezekiel. 
I doubt Ezekiel used soybeans or yeast.
I know he didn't add wheat gluten. 
Food For Life does not tell us if it is baked with a fuel of cow (or human) dung.

Bicycle Day

Hedy Lamarr celebrates Bicycle Day

April 16 is a most interesting day. 

Bicycle Day!!! Let us remember some events which have happened on this  day, April 16: (mostly taken from the Daily Bleed, but other calendars were used) 
74- Defenders of Masada commit mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans...

1452 Leonardo Da Vinci is born...
1715 US: The Wamasees & Catawbas attack Charleston, South Carolina, which leads to counter-attacks resulting in their virtual extermination....
1813 US Troops seize the Spanish fort at Mobile, thereby invading & occupying the eastern half of West Florida. ...

1834 France: The  end of the "Bloody Week" in Lyon, The Second Canut Revolts. The second great insurrection of the Silk workers is subdued in a blood bath, with several hundred victims. Those insurrectionists captured, rather than killed, will appear in a "monster trial" in Paris in April 1835...
1865 US: President Abraham Lincoln dies, 7:22 am...

1898 Bessie Smith is born... Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer

Twenty-five cents?
Ha! No! No!
I wouldn't pay twenty-five cents to go in nowhere 'cause listen here:

Up in Harlem ev'ry Saturday night when the high-browns git together it's just too tight,
They all congregates at an all night strut and what they do is tut-tut-tut
Old Hannah Brown from 'cross town gets full of corn and starts breakin' 'em down
Just at the break of day you can hear old Hannah say,
"Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer"
Send me gate

I don't care
I feel just like I wanna clown
Give the piano player a drink because he's bringin' me down
He's got rhythm, yeah!
When he stomps his feet, he sends me right off to sleep
Check all your razors and your guns
We gonna be rasslin' when the wagon comes
I wanna pigfoot and a bottle of beer
Send me 'cause I don't care
Slay me 'cause I don't care

Gimme a reefer and a gang o' gin
Slay me, 'cause I'm in my sin
Slay me 'cause I'm full of gin

Check all your razors and your guns
Do the shim-sham shimmy till the risin' sun

1912 Titanic sinks at 2:20am killing 1,502 humans. Harry Elkins Widener goes down clutching his 1598 edition of Bacon's Essays...
1919 US: Start of victorious six-day strike across New England by first women-led US union, Telephone Operators Department of IBEW....
1920 US: In South Braintree, Massachusetts, two men armed with handguns shoot & kill Frederick Parmenter & Alessandro Berardelli, employees of the Slater & Morrill Shoe Company. The thieves rob the men of the $15,776.51 payroll they were carrying. The thieves are picked up by a car carrying other men. The anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti will ultimately be blamed & railroaded to their deaths....
 

Bob gets the leg kick going in spring training 1941

1941 Bob Feller pitches an opening day no hitter for the Cleveland Indians.....
1943 "Bicycle Day" - Albert Hofmann, a research chemist at the Sandoz Laboratories (now Novartis Pharmaceuticals) in Basel, Switzerland, left work due to "a remarkable restlessness" and "dizziness." Later, he experienced a "stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes" and "intense...colors." Dermal absorption of LSD-25, a substance he was working with, was the suspected cause. Although unintentional, this was the first LSD-induced psychedelic experience......

1945 April 16 proves for a second time to be a bad day for ships. More than 7,000 die when the German refugee ship Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine torpedo. The Germans successfully evacuated 2,000,000 people from Prussia as the Red Army advanced. Three overcrowded ships were sunk by Soviet U boats which had previously been bottled up in the gulf of Finland by a German blockade. Two ships were sunk by the RAF resulting is 25,000 dead. No sinking of a ship in the history of the world has killed more human beings.  ......

The Monsanto plant at Texas City goes up in smoke.

1947 Texas City Disaster: An explosion on board freighter S.S. Grandcamp docked near the Monsanto plant, causes the city of Texas City, Texas, to catch fire, killing almost 600.....
1947 a man identified as Rudolph Hess, a leading member of the Nazi party, is hanged....

1955 US: Ray Kroc starts the McDonald's chain of fast food restaurants. ...
1961 Cuba: CIA invasion force lands at the Bay of Pigs. A fiasco, defeated within two days. .... 

1964 First Rolling Stones Album released...
1967 US: First mass burning of draft cards as 400,000 march in New York City & 80,000 in San Francisco opposing the Vietnam War...
1981 Guatemala: Security forces murder 69, Cocob, Quich (Reagan's Beloved "Freedom Fighters")...
1982 Guatemalan soldiers ( Reagan's "Freedom Fighters") murder 100 children & 73 women, Baja Verapaz...
1986 In response to a Berlin night club bombing US bombs Libya and Gaddafi's home killing at least 100 people including the adopted daughter of the Libyan leader (or was she really killed?)...
1989 England: Before a Liverpool/Nottingham Forest FA Cup semifinal soccer match, 95 fans are crushed to death against a fence surrounding the field as gatecrashers surge into Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, England....

1990 "Doctor Death", Jack Kevorkian, participates in his first assisted suicide...
2007 Virginia Tech massacre: Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 and injures 23 before committing suicide....

2010 US: Jack Herer dies, Eugene, Oregon. Wrote The Emperor Wears No Clothes ....
And last and certainly least.....Happy Birthday to deposed Pope Benedict!

What Are These?

I found these along a rail siding shallowly buried in clay soil in Portland Maine about twenty years ago. They are very hard and difficult to shatter. They do not flake well or easily although they resemble obsidian once they are broken.  I thought they might be apache tears but they look nothing like photos I have seen of other naturally occurring oval or round minerals . It looks like they might be of a volcanic substance that cooled rapidly. Perhaps they are meteorites of some kind yet they are not attracted to magnets.
I took some photographs for your perusal.

Overview of several stones. Most are smooth and have one color. I have provided close ups of the more interesting stones.

This one looks like is was broken long ago. You can see layers of color.

Most of the stones are smooth and colored in  one of various shades of black to grey and orange to buff. This one shows and interesting mix of color and texture.

This one has lovely warts.

Looks like a fruit slice.

They almost look like pictures of asteroids.

Addendum, January 10, 2013
The consensus is that they are jasper. I have read that it is possible to flake jasper to make stone tools but my efforts a few years ago to flake these things make me respect our Mousterian Neanderthal predecessors to a higher degree. These rocks are very very hard and difficult to work. Some of the stones I found might be more accurately called chert, as they are less variable and of one color. The specimens I found are almost all unbroken while most of the photographs of jasper one finds on the net are of cut specimens.

Neanderthal Jasper Flake Tool, photograph from Stone Age Artifacts.com

Twice-Named Places........
 

Sing Sing Correctional Facility

Named for Native American tribes, both Walla Walla and Sing Sing are double named places, and as such, very magickal, and homes to high security prisons which are strong attractors of dark forces. Sing Sing Correctional Facility is in what is called Ossining now, formerly known as Sing Sing or Sinck Sinck (Synch Synch) which means "stone upon stone." The Washington State Penitentiary is in Walla Walla ("the town so nice they named it twice"), which means "Place of Many Waters."

Vintage Postcard, Greeting from Walla Walla's Washington State Penitentiary

Walla Walla is famous for good wine and sweet onions. Magic, The Gathering, was invented at Whitman College in Walla Walla. In Looney Toons cartoons the Acme Corporation was located in Walla Walla.

The village of Briarcliff Manor, named by Andrew Carnegie, and located mostly in Ossining, brings to mind American Horror Story's Briarcliff Mental Institution. The term "up the river" as an expression meaning going to prison, refers to Sing Sing up the Hudson River.
Some other fun double named places: Bora Bora, Pago Pago, Baden Baden, Pukapuka, Wagga Wagga

Wikipedia notes the following famous residents of Ossining:

David T. Abercrombie, co-founder of Abercrombie & Fitch
John Barrett, entrepreneur, brew master of Up The River Brewing Co.
John Cheever, author
John Chervokas, advertising executive
Kara DioGuardi, singer-songwriter
Peter Falk, actor
Anne Francis, actress
Khalid Khannouchi, American record holder for the marathon
Sonny Sharrock, jazz guitarist
Matt Striker, WWE interviewer and commentator
Don Draper and family – Main protagonist of Mad Men


Wikipedia tells us about these famous Walla Wallians:

Lebanese poet, writer, and philosopher Mikha'il Na'ima, author of "The Book of Mirdad", began his writing career in Walla Walla in 1919.
American scholar of Islam and author - voted one of the West's most influential Muslim scholars by The Guardian - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, was born in Walla Walla.
NFL Quarterback Drew Bledsoe lived in Walla Walla while he was in high school before entering Washington State University in 1990. He was the first pick in the NFL draft in 1993, going to the New England Patriots, where he played until 2001. He later played for the Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys before retiring in 2007.
The actor Adam West, TV's Batman, grew up in Walla Walla. Then known as Bill Anderson, he attended Walla Walla High School during his freshman and sophomore years before moving with his family to Seattle. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and a minor in Psychology from Whitman College in Walla Walla.
United States Army general and World War II hero Jonathan Wainwright was born in Walla Walla.
Actor Connor Trinneer, from Star Trek: Enterprise, was born in Walla Walla.
Silent film actor and studio makeup artist, Bert Hadley, was born in Walla Walla.
Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (2007–2009), and Pakistan (2004–2007), and who also served as Ambassador to Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon, graduated from Whitman College in 1971. NFL wide receiver Charly Martin of the Carolina Panthers was born in Walla Walla in 1984.
William O. Douglas attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, graduating in 1920. He went on to become the longest-serving justice in the history of the United States Supreme Court.
The Brode triplets, Wallace, Robert, and Malcolm, all of whom became distinguished scientists, were born in Walla Walla in 1900.

Mulligan's Stew Column by by AP's Hugh Mulligan from the Nashua Telegraph, February 16, 1984, "The Postman Always Rings Twice in Bora Bora and Walla Walla"

Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson stuck in Pago Pago in the movie, Rain.

At the Kurhaus Casino and Spa at Baden Baden

Pukapuka dancers in the Cook Islands. from Glennis' Blog page.

FREELOADERS!

John Bonanno Painting, The Dive

Mitt Romney's screed on the 47% of the people who are "freeloaders" because they do not pay the income tax is most revealing about Mitt and his true constituency. His error was letting the cat out of the bag, even if it was among friends at a hoity-toity fundraiser. A more intelligent plutocrat would have been more careful with his words, even among peers. 

The income tax was presented as and sold to the people of the United States in 1910 as a tax that would ONLY affect the rich. The average pay at that time was 22 cents an hour, about $500 a year. When the income tax started, only 4% of the population was subject to it since there was a $3,000 exemption with an additional $1,000 for married couples.  So the first $4,000 for most people was not taxed.   Income over that exemption, up to  $453,292 a year, huge money back then, was taxed at only 1%.
I went to Measuringworth.com to calculate what a $4,000 income in 1913 is worth today.  

"In 2011, the relative value of $4,000.00 from 1913 ranges from $69,500.00 to $1,540,000.00.
 
A simple Purchasing Power Calculator would say the relative value is $93,700.00. This answer is obtained by multiplying $4000 by the percentage increase in the CPI from 1913 to 2011.

This may not be the best answer.

The best measure of the relative value over time depends on if you are interested in comparing the cost or value of a Commodity , Income or Wealth , or a Project . For more discussion on how to pick the best measure, read the essay "Explaining the Measures of Worth."

If you want to compare the value of a $4,000.00 Commodity in 1913 there are three choices. In 2011 the relative:
real price of that commodity is $93,700.00
labor value of that commodity is $381,000.00(using the unskilled wage) or $546,000.00(using production worker compensation)
income value of that commodity is $481,000.00
 
If you want to compare the value of a $4,000.00 Income or Wealth , in 1913 there are three choices. In 2011 the relative:
historic standard of living value of that income or wealth is $93,700.00
economic status value of that income or wealth is $481,000.00
economic power value of that income or wealth is $1,540,000.00
 
If you want to compare the value of a $4,000.00 Project in 1913 there are four choices. In 2011 the relative:
historic opportunity cost of that project is $69,500.00
labor cost of that project is $381,000.00(using the unskilled wage) or $546,000.00(using production worker compensation)
economy cost of that project is $1,540,000.00"

Any way you slice it, back in 1913, the income tax was a rich man's tax. You had to be making the equivalent in today's dollars anywhere from $70,000 to $1,500,000 a year, depending on how you look at it, to even start paying a 1% tax on everything over that. As Willie Sutton said, he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." 

You tax the rich for the same reason...and that is true now more than ever. But you have to hand it to the greedy bastards that they have been able to confound the meanings of Income and Wage and Salary. Traditionally wages were paid for labor by the hour, day, or week. Income was money received via gain, profit, or interest. Salaries were paid monthly for professional or non-manual work. Now they are all considered as equivalents by the IRS.  It was universally thought that labor or low salaries (such as those endured by women paid a "pittance" in the Chinese factories Mitt so admires) should not be taxed. And it wasn't then. But it is now. 
It was universally thought that money received by leisure class coupon clippers for bond interest and stock dividends was the fairest game for taxation. But no so much now.

This page at taxfoundation.org  has an interesting chart on tax rates through the years since the Income Tax began in 1913 after the 16th Amendment was purportedly passed in 1910, making income tax, which had been  first imposed in 1862 during the Civil War, legal. When first tried it was  soon abandoned in 1872 and then declared unconstitutional in 1894. The IRS was founded in 1862, with the income tax, but unfortunately it was not abandoned with the tax. Later on in 1913, on December 23, the Federal Reserve system was created. All in all it was a very bad year for most of the people and a wonderful year for the financiers and the war profiteers. 

So it is indisputable that the income tax was meant to only apply to the rich and it would never have passed if half the people had to pay it. It is frightfully honest of Romney to decry all the "freeloaders" who don't pay income tax as if Mitt would trade places with those lucky freeloaders who don't have to pay the income tax. This is pure projection, of course. Most of the population was supposed to be free of income tax. 

The rich have labored endlessly and successfully to get as much as possible of the income tax onto the backs of the working people and the middle class and away from the holders of true wealth. They have used pliable politicians, who are nothing but their public whores, to ensure that the income tax rates were not indexed to inflation and to create more and more esoteric deductions for the wealthy who are the only ones able to afford the accountants and bag men necessary to keep track of tax loopholes, understand enough to take advantage of them, and lobby for more. In fact, the rich are the "freeloaders" who do everything they can to avoid paying a fair price to flourish in the United States. This safe haven without peer in the world spends inordinately to protect the rich and all their possessions, property and corporate masks. If this were a poorer land we would not have to spend so many trillions fighting spurious wars, gathering intelligence on our own populace not to mention the world, and buying expensive superfluous weapons from the military industrial complex (owned by those same wealthy elites) to "defend" the country and invade countries that look at us cross-eyed while sitting on mineral wealth. The money the government spends propping up the interests of the wealthy is enormous compared to the pittance spent on welfare programs for the poor.

Beardsley Ruml

A lot of people in the lower tax brackets effectively avoided income tax before some genius (his name was  Beardsley Ruml and he was chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s board of directors) invented tax withholding on income during WWII. It was thought that 5,000,000 million people a year were avoiding taxes at that time as inflation and income tax increases for the war gently prodded the tax charts into swallowing up more and more middle income wage earners who had never paid the income tax before. The IRS had mostly gone after out of favor fat cats and criminals like Al Capone in search of tax evasion.   Federal withholding was a godsend for the IRS. It put a torrent of  money in government coffers before the workers ever saw it and the poor and middle class had to jump through hoops to get it back, much of it over a year after it was earned. At the same time,  the wealthy, who collected dividends and interest while sitting on their asses got the quarterly "pay as you go" treatment. Withholding also enabled the IRS to avoid the unpleasant publicity of bringing criminal tax evasion charges against average working and middle class Americans.

The point is, you had to be really really rich to pay income tax at the beginning. Inflation and corrupt politicians over the years gradually shifted the burden on to the middle class. The middle class noticed it at the beginning no more than a lobster tossed into a cold pot of seawater notices the moment the gas valve is opened and the flame is lit. 

Al Gore is in Favor of Abolishing the Electoral College. 
Or, Why the Electoral College Is a Wicked Institution and Always Has Been....

I agree with Al Gore.

The Electoral College gives an inordinate amount of voting power to the states with small populations. Electoral College votes are determined by congressional seats plus two. That plus two magnifies the clout of little states with only one congressman by three hundred percent (that's triple), and states with only two congressmen by 100% (that's double). 

Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming have only one congressman but three electoral votes each . California has 53 congressmen and 55 electoral votes . A vote in those states has three times the power, augmented 300%, of a vote in California.

Therefore small, rural states are very much overrepresented in the Electoral College and in the Congress.. 
People, like myself in Maine, who live in states with two congressmen, have Presidential votes that are almost double the weight of a resident of New York or California.  There are 685,000 residents per electoral vote in California. There are 626,000 residents per electoral vote in New York State. There are 325,000 residents per electoral vote in Maine.There are 228,000 residents in North Dakota per electoral vote.  

Relative power of the individual voter for the electoral college by selected states. A John Bonanno cartoon.

I have heard various arguments about why this was done. 
Usually we hear a heartfelt, tearful, defense based on the need to hear the voice of the farmer. 
The family farmer is almost as extinct as the dinosaur. But we do have a vigorous substitute in the corporate farmer, a "person" who needs no additional representation in Congress. 

This peculiar system was created to placate the South when the Republic was established. 
The South feared its "peculiar institution" of slavery would find itself in danger in a true democracy. 
They wanted to ensure that their states, with smaller populations than the free North, would be able to bottle up any attempts in Congress to free their chattels. 

Amazingly, our founders enabled slavery-loving  Southern voters, giving them additional weight in Congress and in Presidential elections beyond the "plus two" formula via the Three-Fifths Compromise inserted in Article One of our "Holy" Constitution, by allowing the South to count their disenfranchised slaves for congressional and electoral college representation purposes at 3/5 a human. This devilish solution to ensuring southern participation in the Republic also reduced slave state taxes by the same formula.   Was anyone deluded enough to believe those additional Southern congressmen diligently and forcefully protected the interests of all those Negroes in servitude?

 I doubt many reflected on the fact that the "winner take all" Electoral College and the 3/5 count of slaves  magnified the vote power of the southern white man by perhaps four times the weight of a northern abolitionist. 

That is enabling Evil.