As is my annual tradition I jumped in my car and am on my way home to CO for a few weeks. And is always the case I relish in the lower band radio offerings of rural America.

I'm sure I will have more stories next week, but as I am still only in PA I have only been exposed to the standard Jesus Quote Billboards, followed by boards espousing the importance of coal, nicely adorned with fancy green art.

One thing did jump out, while NPR was ceding the air to Christian talk radio were the friendly host spoke about how Syrian Christians are the real victims of America's inaction in said country, why, didn't we learn out lesson from Iraq? The 'genocide' of Christians in Iraq was the 'clearly foreseeable' result of that invasion, the killing of Christains the obvious result from 'destabilizing the region" (those are direct quotes).

Now, I know that Christians have suffered in both countries, often being targeted by extremist sects. But that is the case for the Suni Minority in Iraq as well, let alone the targeting of civilians by American bombs.

First, there has been no genocide (again, other than the countless civilians that have died at American hands).

And second, where the fuck was this guy 10 years ago? If genocidal targeting of Christians was the 'foreseeable' result of invading Iraq, where was the outrage then?

It is remarkable how Conservative memory works. Going after the AP's phone records without court review is now an outrage, while warrantless wiretapping was in the interest of 'protecting our women-folk from the brown-bombing Muslim-mennace." And if any left-leaning non-profits had ever been picked out by the IRS (which there were) the Right would have whole-heartedly supported such a government overstep of it's authority.

The convenience of an ever changing viewpoint must be nice. Molding one's outrage to whatever one can paint as outrageous is well, outrageous.

Hoping that works for us in coming elections. Speaking of which, GO VOTE!

Sincerely, the other Dave.

To Business! Join Drinking Liberally Center City tonight at our regular weekly get-together, starting at 6 p.m. in the upstairs bar at Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust & Spruce). Come for the Beer specials and stay for the conversation.

Drinking Liberally is a project of Living Liberally, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally has 229 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every Tuesday night since.

The week's events:

• Tuesday 5/21: Drinking Liberally Center City meets every Tuesday 6- 9 p.m. at the upstairs bar of Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust and Spruce Streets), Philadelphia, PA 19102.
• Sunday 5/26: Mt. Airy Drinking Coffee Liberally meets every Sunday 12:30-2:30 p.m. at Infusion Coffee + Tea, 7133 Germantown Ave..
• Join Our Facebook Groups: Join the Center City Drinking Liberally group, the Mt. Airy Drinking Coffee Liberally group and the Philly Shooting Liberally group. It's a good way to get to know the people you see at our events.
• Follow Us On Twitter: @LiberalPhilly

Center City Organizers:
David DiSabatino.
David Chatfield.

Not sure what to think about the recent spate of Republican attacks on the Administration. At least the most recent.

I won't even touch Benghazi. Obama called it a Terrorist Attack the day after, the CIA memos called it a Terrorist Attack, David Patreus said early on in testimony that the CIA needed to omit some info so that the terrorists wouldn't know what we knew, and White House emails were doctored to make the administration look bad http://bit.ly/16xydft.

As to the JD and AP red-herring. So the JD was trying to get phone records of the AP, trying to track down a leak. Now, from what I can tell they didn't tap any phones, just subpoenaed records from the phone company to find out who leaked info to the AP http://bit.ly/16vZRJN.

Now I'm all for journalists freedom to take a leak and run with it. And whether the JD is wasting time investigating a leak is debatable but as TPM puts it, "for the AP to write this article in this fashion would be like a politician under investigation issuing a press release about the evil investigation against him."

So the AP is rightly defending themselves against the phone company releasing phone records, but the Republicans scream FREEDOM for the first tome after YEARS of warrantless wiretaps and Patriot Act renewal.

Conservatives credibility continues to drop.

Then there is the IRS going after so-called "social impact" non-profits that raised a crap-ton of money ultimately used for political purposes, risking their tax exempt status. I'm surprised at the outrage, these groups clearly have political purposes yet claim to be following the rules, advocating for so-called "social good" http://usat.ly/166SiK4.

But the IRS fumbled the ball and came out meekly, saying 'Golly we're bad at math' rather than telling the truth, they got a "Bucket" load of applications and are doing their due-diligence to make sure that people asking to avoid taxes have legitimate need to do so.

Suck it up tea party. We all know you were started by Billionaires a decade ago to advance an uber-conservative political agenda http://huff.to/V0squx.

I'm so sorry you are the illegitimate child of the Satan's minions. Get over yourself and let's talk about some real problems.

Like how we are 50 parts-per-million past what was called the red-line for CO2 levels in our atmosphere, while the House Republicans are going to just vote Climate Change away http://bit.ly/hOWPoj

Also Austerity is killing people. How about we worry about that now http://nyti.ms/18Flerl.

Sincerely the other Dave

To Business! Join Drinking Liberally Center City tonight at our regular weekly get-together, starting at 6 p.m. in the upstairs bar at Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust & Spruce). Come for the Beer specials and stay for the conversation.

Drinking Liberally is a project of Living Liberally, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally has 229 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every Tuesday night since.

The week's events:

• Tuesday 5/14: Drinking Liberally Center City meets every Tuesday 6- 9 p.m. at the upstairs bar of Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust and Spruce Streets), Philadelphia, PA 19102.
• Sunday 5/19: Mt. Airy Drinking Coffee Liberally meets every Sunday 12:30-2:30 p.m. at Infusion Coffee + Tea, 7133 Germantown Ave..
• Join Our Facebook Groups: Join the Center City Drinking Liberally group, the Mt. Airy Drinking Coffee Liberally group and the Philly Shooting Liberally group. It's a good way to get to know the people you see at our events.
• Follow Us On Twitter: @LiberalPhilly

Center City Organizers:
David DiSabatino.
David Chatfield.

I was just passed on Broad St by a massive amount of young students protesting cuts in education. Not sure if they were protesting specific cuts being made by a school (they were by my Alma Mater UArts), or in the broad cuts being made due to the Sequester, either way it became one more thing to happen in the past week that got me thinking about Austerity.

So I'm sure we all know about that study done by Starsky and Hutch, or Bill and Opus, or Bill and Ted, or Balki and Larry, or whatever their names are, that was soundly debunked by a grad student with a passing familiarity with Excel http://huff.to/10bWlTm.

But that's complicated and scary math that now exists in some far away corner of the media landscape now mostly forgotten, leaving behind the the math-averse economists that wrote the initial study to distance themselves by saying that the new data does not change their conclusions. Because that's how science works right?

Then I saw another study that was done that said colleges have been cutting back even more on Adjuncts and blaming in on Obamacare http://on-msn.com/12bir5x. As an adjunct I said 'uh-oh, but no way my schools are that dumb."

The very next day I get a letter in my mailbox stating that the school is setting a cap on my hours due to Obamacare. They didn't go into specifics (because there aren't any) but my direct boss said it was bullshit and was just an excuse to make cuts. I barely hit the cap as it is even with the few classes I teach, as is the case with many of my fellow Juncts (that's what we call each other, there's a handshake and everything).

As an added twist this letter was accompanied by a "Adjunct Appreciation Dinner" invitation. Why thank you!

My point is the Sequester is hitting people in very real ways. And these aren't the kind of cuts we are used to. Programs like Head Start are accustomed to the annual fight to keep as many kids in their program as their budget will allow. These kind of cuts have been happening for 30 years.

But now Head Start is getting killed by the cuts. Teachers are cutting entire classes and turning kids away left and right, some being cut via lottery. One teacher took a 33% cut in pay which amounted to about $13,000. 13K!

That's not "we have to cut back on Starbucks' cash, that's "we have to go into more debt/lose the house/cash out the 401K' kind of cash. Great way to stimulate the economy I figure.

The last night, to cap it all off, Stephen Colbert interviewed Robert Caro, Pulitzer Prize winning author of lots and lots of books on LBJ. It's worth a listen, first because you learn what LBJ called his wang, but also how he fought against the opposition to create the Great Society (which included Head Start). But like a pregnant women smoking with a pack-a-day habit, LBJ stunted it's growth by escalating the war in Vietnam http://bit.ly/12abvFR.

So we've come full circle. Programs that were never given a fair shot are being killed off now because funding them properly was less important than blowing trillions on two wars and tax cuts for the wealthy who blame it all on dirty dirty Obamacare.