NewBocaGuy

Mitt Romney a job creator?

2012-01-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

GottaLaff
POLITICAL CARNIVAL
Thursday, January 5, 2012

Willard Romney is the GOP frontrunner, huh? They sure have some awesome stable of candidates. And yes, I used the word “stable” intentionally.

Mitt Romney cares about American jobs? This victim of a Bain Capital take over begs to differ.

http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/01/05/video-mitt-romney-a-job-creator-not-according-to-this-victim-of-bain-capital/

Copyright 2012 The Political Carnival

Southern Tier Flood 2011

2011-09-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

So sad......Thoughts and prayers to all who were affected....... by Pam Rappleyea Vredenburgh

The Pledge of Allegiance

2011-08-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

JM Ashby
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
08/21/2011

Artist – RJ Matson

In other news, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is planning to nearly quadruple the size of his 3,009 square foot home in San Diego, valued at $12 million, by bulldozing it and replacing it with a 11,062 square foot home.

That darn Obama sure has wrecked the economy of Mitt Romney and other wealthy businessmen who made their fortunes by firing people.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/08/the-pledge-of-allegiance.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

The Driver Seat

2011-08-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

Joy Drive

Clay Bennett - Artist

Copyright ©2011, Chattanooga Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

The GOP Is Out To Destroy Government, Not Reduce the Deficit

2011-07-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

Winning Progressive
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011

On Friday evening, the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, officially ended negotiations with President Obama over the debt ceiling by walking out of the talks and then refusing to take phone calls from the White House. In a letter released after he walked out of the talks, Boehner claimed that President Obama was refusing to agree to real spending cuts and was asking for too many tax increases. But in reality, President Obama offered more than $1 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending (including military spending), and $650 billion in reductions in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security spending, and asked for $1.2 trillion in increased revenue coming from closing loopholes and subsidies but not increasing tax rates. And this proposal followed others that were similarly tilted toward the conservative position. In fact, the offers being made by President Obama were so tilted that a number of conservative commentators thought it ridiculous that the House GOP was refusing to accept the deal.

So, what gives? Why is the GOP refusing to accept a deal that is more than favorable to their claimed interest in reducing the deficit? The answer is simple – today’s Republican Party does not actually believe in deficit reduction, but instead is holding our country’s fiscal solvency hostage in order to achieve radical ideological and political goals.

The ideological motivation for conservatives here is that they think they finally have within their grasp their dream of drowning in the bathtub any portion of government that benefits the middle class, working class, or poor. They have long wanted to destroy Medicare, Social Security, investments in infrastructure and education, and the social safety net, but they know that such steps would be politically disastrous for them. So, Republicans have spent the past 30 years driving up deficits in order to create a situation where voters feel that we “must” destroy government programs in order to restore fiscal sanity.

That is why the Republicans drove the deficits up during the Reagan and W. Bush Administrations. That is why Rep. Paul Ryan’s Path to Poverty plan devotes all of the “savings” from abolishing Medicare and cutting social programs to further reductions in taxes for the wealthy, rather than to deficit reduction. That is why the GOP opposes President Obama’s to rationalize health care spending, cutting corporate subsidies, or reining in military spending. And that is why the Republicans are opposing a balanced approach to deficit reduction that involves both spending cuts and revenue increases and, instead, pushing for a “Cut, Cap, and Balance” approach that involves $5.5 trillion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and discretionary social spending, and zero in new revenue. Their priority is destroying government, not reducing the deficit.

The GOP’s pathological intransigence is also motivated by the cold economic calculation that a bad economy bodes well for their desire to defeat President Obama in 2012. That is why from the day that President Obama took office in January 2009, the Republicans have done everything they can to prevent job creation, including weakening the stimulus bill, filibustering TANF and extended unemployment benefits, refusing to approve non-controversial appointees to important positions in the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve, and opposing tax relief to small businesses and a temporary cut in payroll taxes that they supported before Obama was President. And in 2010, the GOP campaigned on jobs, but they still have yet to propose any legislation that would create actual jobs. And now they are already rattling the economy and the markets by pushing our nation to the brink of having to default on its debt. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear, the Republicans’ number one priority is not job creation or economic recovery but, instead, is to try to ensure that President Obama is defeated in 2012. Holding the debt ceiling increase hostage in the name of dismantling our government is a critical part of the GOP’s attempt to achieve that goal.

In short, the GOP has walked away from the debt ceiling negotiations because their goals are destroying government and defeating President Obama, not because they want to reduce the deficit. It is sad that today’s GOP has put their ideological hatred of government that helps anyone but the rich, and their dislike of our President, ahead of the good of our nation. But the reality is that the GOP has, which makes it necessary for all of us to make sure those folks do not have any significant political power after the 2012 elections. Help rescue America from the Republican hostage takers by “Sharing” this post and by writing a letter to your local newspaper editor.

http://www.winningprogressive.org/the-gop-is-out-to-destroy-government-not-reduce-the-deficit

The Murdoch Zoo

2011-07-24T16:49:00.000-07:00

Artist – David Fitzsimmons

Tea Party Nation Targets John Boehner, Mitch McConnell On Debt Ceiling

2011-07-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

HUFFPOST POLITICAL
7/19/11

As contentious negotiations continue on the issue of raising the nation's debt limit in Washington, a Tea Party group is accusing House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of "betraying" the coalition of conservative activists with their actions in the ongoing debate.

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips said in astatement, “Boehner and McConnell are the predatory credit card issuers of the Entitlement State, they’re about to renew Obama’s cancelled Mastercard, and they want to saddle America’s grandchildren with all of the bills.” He warned of efforts on the right to recruit conservative challengers to take on "House GOP RINOs" in primary races in the next election cycle. According to Phillips, the issue of who will be targeted comes down to one simple question: "Did the member vote for the McConnell-Boehner cave-in or for any cheap giveaway of more national debt?”

The AP reports on the state of talks to raise the debt ceiling as of midday Tuesday:

House Republicans pushed ahead Tuesday toward a vote on legislation that would raise the nation's debt limit in exchange for trillions of dollars in federal spending cuts and congressional approval of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.
But with the measure facing a veto threat from the White House, Speaker John Boehner said he was exploring other alternatives to avoid a government default threatened for Aug. 2.
"I do think it's responsible for us to look at what Plan B would look like," he said at a news conference a few hours before the opening of debate on the legislation backed by conservative lawmakers.

Reuters reports on a contentious proposal to raise the deficit limit put forth by McConnell:

McConnell's plan to avert an imminent U.S. debt default could lead to a day of reckoning for his Republicans as they weigh the prospect of fiscal disaster against the demands of Tea Party activists.
With other efforts to raise the federal government's debt ceiling at a standstill, McConnell's "Plan B" to avoid default is increasingly seen as "Plan A" in Washington.
The proposal by the top Republican in the Senate would dump the task into the laps of President Barack Obama and his Democrats, forcing them to back a $2.4 trillion increase in borrowing before the November 2012 elections as recession-weary voters worry about the country's growing mountain of debt.

A small bipartisan group of senators is also working to advance a plan to raise the debt ceiling.According to the Treasury Department, the United States is set to begin the process of defaulting on its debts on August 2.

(Click here for the latest developments to unfold in the deficit debate. )

Below, the statement released by Tea Party Nation on Tuesday.

TEA PARTY RIPS “BOEHNER-McCONNELL RINOS” FOR DEBT CEILING CAVE-IN
TEA PARTY NATIONAL CONVENTION
TO RECRUIT HOUSE GOP PRIMARY CHALLENGERS
Candidate Scorecards: “Zero or 100%, nothing in between.”
(WASHINGTON, DC – July 19) As House Republicans prepared a Tuesday vote for $2.4 trillion in new national debt, Tea Party leaders ripped Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for betraying the movement that put Republicans in charge of the lower chamber last year.
“Boehner and McConnell are the predatory credit card issuers of the Entitlement State, they’re about to renew Obama’s cancelled Mastercard, and they want to saddle America’s grandchildren with all of the bills,” said Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation (www.teapartynation.com), the country’s oldest, largest and most active Tea Party umbrella group.
Phillips said the Tea Party National Convention he’s chairing this fall “will focus on recruiting conservative primary challengers to House GOP RINOs and frosh complicit in any giveaway of more borrowing authority to President Obama.
The Tea Party’s 2012 scorecard for this Congress will have just one issue: Did the Member vote for the McConnell-Boehner cave-in or for any cheap giveaway of more national debt?” In Tea Party parlance, “RINO” means “Republican-In-Name-Only.”
Allen Unruh, founder of Tea Party South Dakota and director of the Tea Party Founding Fathers, added that “RINOs voting wrong will win a big, fat zero on their Tea Party credit rating. Their FICO scores will crash along with their careers as we push Tea Party-backed opponents in the primary, the general election or both. Meanwhile, Members who don’t vote wrong will win a 100% score plus the fervent loyalty of our people in their district. It’s zero or 100%, nothing in between.”
Phillips announced that the 2011 Tea Party National Convention, originally scheduled for Kansas City, KS with his support, has been reset for a new state based on strategic electoral considerations and the desires of a new group of funders. Phillips said, “We and our capital sources felt that Kansas was the wrong place for our movement to gather this fall because it’s not an early primary state, not a swing state, and not blue-state territory where Tea Partiers might recapture turf from the left. Instead, the new, currently-secret location we’ll soon be announcing for our late fall event will empower our movement to slingshot into 2012 for the same kind of impact we had in 2010.”
Phillips said, “House Republicans can’t let Obama keep borrowing 40 cents on each dollar of federal spending. The ratings agencies have clearly said Congress must cut back on the federal credit card.” He said Tuesday’s planned House vote to condition a debt hike on sending a constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment to the states was good, but that “voting for the ‘Cut, Cap and Balance’ plan won’t save you from the Tea Party’s wrath if you ultimately vote for a cheap giveaway of more debt to Obama, as McConnell and Boehner are planning.
“A failed CCB bill gets you no cover. The ONLY way any Republican may get forgiveness from us is if he obtains a high price tag like $500 billion in 2012 first-year cuts, defunding of Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, sweeping reform of all health care entitlements such as Medicare, and actual Congressional passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment,” Phillips said.
Phillips founded the country’s first Tea Party umbrella group in early 2009 and hosted Sarah Palin at the original Tea Party National Convention at Nashville in February, 2010. According to web metrics from Alexa, Tea Party Nation’s website leads all other Tea Party websites for traffic. Phillips said he is inviting William Temple, chair of the Kansas-planned event, to serve as a spokesman for the 2011 Tea Party National Convention now to be held elsewhere. “Upon final approval of this strategic new location by our funders and convention board,” said Phillips, “we’ll be unveiling an amazing, technology-based strategy for hunting RINOs and defeating Democrats in 2012, starting with this fall’s Tea Party National Convention.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/19/tea-party-debt-ceiling_n_903597.html

Copyright © 2011 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Serious People Reject Unserious Eric Cantor

2011-07-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
07/14/2011

It’s about goddamn time.

Behind the scenes, leading members of both parties have concluded that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is an impediment to resolving the debt limit standoff, and should back down. Now, Democrats are publicly calling for him to get real or go home.
“House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has shown that he’s shouldn’t even be at the table,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in a blistering floor speech Thursday morning. “And Republicans agree.”

Oh yeah. Cantor belongs with the Crazy Caucus (Steve King, Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert), not in a negotiation where the entire American economy is at stake — an economy he’s personally betting against by short selling t-bills. That alone should have disqualified him from the beginning.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/07/serious-people-reject-unserious-eric-cantor.html

A Hand In The Talks

2011-07-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

“Republicans need to accept the need to raise more revenue.” Bill O’Reilly

When Republicans lose O’Reilly, they should probably begin to panic.

JM Ashby
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
July 13, 2011

Artist – Dave Granlund

In other news, Congressman Ron Paul has announced that he is retiring from congress and will not seek reelection, and a city clerk in New York decided she would rather quit her job than be forced to sign a single same-sex marriage license. Good riddance to both.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/07/a-hand-in-the-talks.html

Pathetic Republican Children

2011-07-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
07/10/2011

The other day on the podcast, I said the Republican will not compromise in any way shape or form. And two days later…

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner is rejecting President Obama’s offer to make historic cuts to the federal government and the social safety net, saying in a statement Saturday evening that he can not agree to the tax increases Democrats insisted on as part of the bargain. [...]
Obama had proposed to Republicans a “grand bargain” that accomplished a host of individual things that are unpopular on their own, but that just might pass as a huge package jammed through Congress with default looming. Obama offered to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in exchange for a tax hike of roughly $100 billion per year over 10 years.

They know the president will be a grownup and try to reach an agreement in order to avert disaster. And they’re using it against him in order to get what they want — everything. The president’s only recourse here is to stonewall and give them nothing.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/07/the-pathetic-republican-children.html

Not Even Hiding It Anymore

2011-07-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

Broadway Carl
Broadway Carl's Blog-O-Mania!
Friday, July 8, 2011

If there was any doubt that the Republican Party has no problem with sacrificing the American economy, the American people, the unemployed and underemployed in the country, and possibility of sending the world into a global recesssion, then look no further than at one of its shining stars. They're not even trying to hide the notion that they're selling America down the river solely for political gain.

“Does it strike you that as the unemployment rate goes up, your chances of winning office also go up?” host Carl Quintanilla asked. “Well, that could be. Again, I hope so,” Bachmann replied.

http://www.broadwaycarl.com/2011/07/not-even-hiding-it-anymore.html

Copyright 2011 Broadway Carl's Blog-O-Mania!

Big Oil Welfare

2011-07-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

ThinkProgress War Room
Progress Reports | ThinkProgress
July 6, 2011

GOP Tax Giveaway of the Day: Big Oil Subsidies

Oil from a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline is coursing through the picturesque Yellowstone Riveras we speak, but Big Oil’s real gusher is located on Capitol Hill. Big Oil’s best friends in Congress make sure that year after year, billions of dollars in taxpayer funds flow into the coffers of the most profitable companies the world has ever known. In return, Big Oil spends millions each year to make sure that its friends keep their seats.

Here’s why it’s time to make the easiest of all choices — the one to end taxpayer-funded giveaways to Big Oil.

WHAT: Wasteful and unnecessary taxpayer subsidies for oil companies

HOW MUCH THEY WASTE: $77 BILLION from 2011-2021

WHO BENEFITS: Oil companies large and small, including the five largest oil companies who raked in $32 BILLION in profits in just the first quarter of 2011. ExxonMobil alone made nearly $11 billion in profits during the first quarter of this year.

WHO ELSE BENEFITS: Big Oil’s friends in Congress benefit from millions in campaign cash from the oil and gas industry. During the 2010 election cycle alone, the oil and gas industry pumpedmore than $21 MILLION into congressional campaign accounts — more than three-quarters of which went to Republicans. These same Republicans have voted repeatedly — and nearly unanimously — in favor of keeping oil subsidies over the past several months. In addition to lavish spending on direct campaign contributions, the oil and gas industry also spent awhopping $145 MILLION last year to lobby Congress.

DINNER TABLE FAST FACTS:

The average American pays an effective federal income tax rate of 20.4 percent, while ExxonMobil had an effective tax rate of just 17.6 percent over the past three years. That is of course far below the statutory corporate tax rate of 35 percent.
Even Big Oil CEOs themselves admit that they don’t need the subsidies. ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva told Congress: “With respect to oil and gas exploration and production,we do not need incentives.”

IN ONE SENTENCE: Instead of ending Medicare to pay for more tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, and huge corporations, we need to end the billions in taxpayer giveaways to Big Oil.

IN ONE CHART:

NOTABLE QUOTABLE — former President George W. Bush: “I will tell you with $55 oil we don’t need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent.” (Bush said this in 2005 when oil was around $55 a barrel; oil is currently hovering around $95 a barrel.)

Evening Briefing: Important Stories That You May Have Missed

Republicans have officially unveiled a slash-and-burn budget plan for the environment, with drastic cuts to environmental agencies and numerous riders to exempt polluters from science-based regulation.

The Republicans’ proposed increase in military spending over the next six years is almost as much as their proposed transportation budget in total.

What’s wrong with the Obama administration’s Medicaid cuts.

Ten ways for the new Arab democracies to not make American mistakes.

U.S. military presence worldwide 1950-2007.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claims a U.S. presence in Iraq past 2011 wouldn’t necessarily comprise “combat troops.”

If only 25 of the nation’s top hedge fund managers lost their tax loophole, the U.S. governmentwould get $4 billion a year in extra revenue.

The only reason GOP presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann got a law degree was becauseher husband told her to do it, and because God told her to listen to her husband.

Alto, a Texas town with a rising crime rate already above the state average, laid off its entire police force due to budget cuts, leading some residents to carry guns around.

Georgtown professor Hans Noel suggests in an interview with Columbia Journalism Review that political journalists should zoom out at look at the party rather than the candidate, which Matt Yglesias thinks exposes a Michele Bachmann weakness.

Reflecting on a photography show about contemporary Vietnam he saw, Philip Weiss looks to the Middle East and hopes that U.S. and other conflicts there need not create resentment forever.

http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/big-oil-welfare/

Must Reads

2011-07-03T09:22:00.001-07:00

Pat Bagley

Clay Bennett

http://www.broadwaycarl.com/2011/07/must-reads.html

Copyright 2011 Broadway Carl's Blog-O-Mania!

Shouldn’t There Be Investigations?

2011-07-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
07/01/2011

Chuck Schumer repeats the Republican Sabotage accusation:

“Now it is becoming clear that insisting on a slash-and-burn approach may be part of this plan — and it has a double-benefit for Republicans,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “It is ideologically tidy and it undermines the economic recovery, which they think only helps them in 2012.”

It’d be nice if they weren’t talking trash and actually meant it. After all, if there’s evidence the Republicans are deliberately undermining the economy, that has to be illegal. Or at least a violation of an oath or two. For that matter, why hasn’t anyone pressed Eric Cantor about shorting the U.S. Treasury while also refusing to vote for raising the debt ceiling?

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/07/shouldnt-there-be-investigations.html

The mindless hysteria of right-wing sheep

2011-06-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

GENE LYONS
Salon.com
WEDNESDAY, JUN 29, 2011

Politics makes people stupid even in good times. Fear provokes irrationality. Given the parlous state of the U.S. economy, it's no surprise that the national conversation has grown shrill. Even so, the level of vituperation and unreason comes as a continuing revelation.

Not that I'm complaining. As a native of New Jersey, the Insult State (official motto: "Oh yeah, who says?"), there's no level of invective to which I can't sink. Anybody who writes provocatively shouldn't complain when readers are provoked. Besides, it's less the anger than the sheer, boneheaded illogic that amazes me.

One could compile a textbook on logical fallacies from my email queue. If people used reason in their daily lives as poorly as they do when their political passions are engaged, we'd be in worse shape than we are. Luckily, most don't. Or if they do, civility prevents them from the kind of heedless venting encouraged by Internet anonymity.

A recent blog post by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman set me off. A world-renowned economist by trade, Krugman had posted an item arguing that a Greek bank-debt default might not be a total disaster. He mentioned that Argentina's economy had a strong recovery after it defaulted in 2001 -- stipulating that there are big differences between the two countries.

In a subsequent post, Krugman complained that commenters had leaped, nay vaulted, to absurd conclusions: as if he'd said "everything in Argentina is wonderful to this day"; that "everyone should immediately default"; that default made Argentina's Lionel Messi the world's greatest football player; and that President Obama should force Americans into mandatory, government-paid tango lessons.

OK, so I made up the last two. In politics, many simply can't resist an alluring false dilemma. It's got to be all-A or all-B, all the time. Did I write a column pointing out that President Clinton last balanced the budget as recently as 2001, and that a return to Clinton-era tax policy -- i.e., letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule in 2012 -- would greatly improve the nation's balance sheet?

That is, I favor raising marginal income-tax rates on millionaires from 35 to 39.6 percent. Therefore, I must be a communist who advocates the abolition of private enterprise, the confiscation of private property, and the redistribution of wealth to lazy people who won't work.

"Do you get paid under the table by the Democrat Party to spew your hatred of capitalism," asks one fellow, "or is it that you have some deep-seated psychopathic (sic) scars based on the choices you made that limit your economic achievements?"

Thus are joined, in one triumphant flourish, not only the false dilemma, but the argument to (imaginary) motive, and the argumentum ad hominem: attacking the man, not the content of what he said.

Needless to say, this fellow knows nothing of my economic circumstances. He doesn't even appear to grasp that the news media are mostly privately owned, for-profit enterprises.

"Good work, comrade," I responded. "Your regurgitation of party dogma is letter-perfect. In the USSR, they actually got to the point of declaring people who failed to conform 100 percent mentally ill."

The irony was most likely lost on him.

Did I criticize Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck for disguising paid political advertising as editorial content?

Very well then, I must have an unacknowledged Sugar Daddy of my own. "At least now I've figured out who you take your marching orders from: Media Matters and George Soros," another guy wrote. "I know it, you know it, don't try to deny it."

Sorry, but I deny it. Without exception, however, every reader objecting to my criticism of talk-radio ethics mentioned Soros. It was like being scolded by parrots. Most called Soros a commie -- highly unlikely for a billionaire financier and philanthropist -- although I know very little about his views.

It's called the straw man fallacy: refuting arguments nobody's made.

Then there's the argumentum ad populum, another favorite of talk-radio fans: somebody with a big audience must be correct. Furthermore -- motive again -- I must be jealous of their success.

That's pretty much like saying Rush Limbaugh's jealous of President Obama. You buy that?

Look, these guys are playing you for suckers. They're reading scripts written to trick you into believing that the bigger Scrooge McDuck's bullion pile is, the better it is for you. Take away the call screeners and the mute buttons, and most of them wouldn't last two weeks. Talk radio is the political equivalent of wrestling.

Meanwhile, too many Democrats can't get their minds around "some versus all." I recently wasted hours on Facebook trying to persuade passionate Obama supporters that it's self-defeating to accuse everybody who differs with the White House on, say, Libya, of racist motives.

It's false, irrational and politically stupid because ordinary voters -- if not paid controversialists like me -- really resent it.

Needless to say, I got nowhere.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/rush_limbaugh/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/06/29/lyons_limbaugh
Copyright ©2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Health Care Law Ruled Constitutional (Again)

2011-06-29T17:17:00.000-07:00

ThinkProgress War Room
June 29, 2011

Decision Day: Federal Appeals Court Upholds the Affordable Care Act

In exciting (and hugely important) news that broke earlier this afternoon, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the health care law, including the key individual responsibility provision that requires everyone to purchase health insurance, as constitutional. Here’s the rundown of everything you need to know to talk about this at dinner tonight.

Who: The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The three judge panel who heard the case included two judges appointed by Republican presidents and one appointed by a Democrat.

In fact, one of the judges who upheld the law, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, is a states’ rights crusader who was appointed by President George W. Bush. Judge Sutton even once clerked for the very conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

What: The first of the circuit courts of appeals (the federal courts just below the Supreme Court) to rule on the health care law today affirmed a lower court’s decision that also found the Affordable Care Act constitutional. Judge Martin wrote, “We find that the minimum coverage provision is a valid exercise of legislative power by Congress under the Commerce Clause and therefore AFFIRM the decision of the district court.” According to Martin:

By regulating the practice of self-insuring for the cost of health care delivery, the minimum coverage provision is facially constitutional under the Commerce Clause for two independent reasons. First, the provision regulates economic activity that Congress had a rational basis to believe has substantial effects on interstate commerce. In addition, Congress had a rational basis to believe that the provision was essential to its larger economic scheme reforming the interstate markets in health care and health insurance.

This case was brought by the Thomas More Law Center, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based organization that describes itself as “a not-for-profit public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life.” In addition to its role in this case and other cases involving public displays of religion, the Thomas More Law Center also actively promotes the thoroughly-debunked conservative conspiracy theory of “creeping Sharia.” The center even recently defended hate Pastor Terry Jones, whose burning of a Koran touched off riots in Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 12 United Nations workers.

Why It Matters: ThinkProgress Justice Editor Ian Milhiser sums up why this decision is so important:

[Judge] Sutton concluded that the heart of the assault on the Affordable Care Act — the claim that a law encouraging people to buy insurance is unconstitutional because Congress cannot compel people to take this unwanted action — has no basis in the “text of the Constitution,” and it rests on a legal distinction that is utterly incoherent. And this comes from one of the most conservative members of the federal bench.
[...]
The case against the Affordable Care Act is so weak that one of the court of appeals’ most conservative judges — a judge who devoted much of his life to shrinking federal power — just rejected it. Now would be a good time for the nation to collectively stop pretending that these lawsuits have any merit whatsoever.
What’s Next: There are also decisions pending in three other federal appeals courts: the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Virgina (in a case brought by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli) the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals based in Atlanta, Georgia (in case brought by over two dozen GOP state officials), and the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals (in a case brought by several private individuals).

It is widely expected that these cases will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court sometime next year.

The Score: Today’s decision to uphold the act is the first by at the circuit court level. At the federal district court level, three judges have ruled the law to be constitutional, while two other judges have ruled against it. More than a dozen cases against the law have been thrown out on technical grounds.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed

Kansas’ abortion clinics are suing the state as state regulators prepare to “shut down all three of Kansas’ abortion clinics. The clinics are poised to be closed after they failed to meet ridiculous and overly rigorous new regulations imposed in a law that goes into effect on Friday.

Need more evidence Americans are misinformed about the importance of government? New research shows a huge percentage of Americans do not believe they are receiving any benefits from government programs, even though they really are .

Ohio’s controversial law, SB 5, that significantly weakened all of Ohio public workers rights to collectively bargain may be overturned this fall. Grassroots organizers We Are Ohio announced it has collected almost “1.3 million signatures, which was well more than the 231,000 required to have a ballot referendum.

California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act, which was the best chance to improve the lives of California’s more than 400,000 farm workers.

In 2001, Rudy Giuliani promised to officiate his gay friends’ wedding if same-sex marriage were ever legalized in New York. In 2011, Giuliani won’t return their calls.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) bought $600,000 in Goldman Sachs stock as he fought to block an SEC investigation into the investment firm last year.

New polling shows Democrats leading in two Wisconsin state Senate recall elections, trailing in a third.

Democratic senators argue that the debt ceiling is an unconstitutional violation of the 14^thAmendment.

Notable Quotable: Michele Bachmann Defends Medicaid

In April, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) voted for the GOP’s disastrous budget plan thatslashes Medicaid funding (along with ending Medicare); however, NBC News reported yesterday that a so-called Christian counseling center run by Bachmann’s husband has received $137,000 in federal Medicaid funds over the past five years. Despite voting to slash the important federal program, Bachmann’s presidential campaign issued a statement today defending the program:

Medicaid is a valuable form of insurance for many Americans and it would be discriminatory not to accept Medicaid as a form of payment. As a state-sponsored counseling service, Bachmann and Associates has a responsibility to provide Medicaid and medical assistance, regardless of a patient’s financial situation.

http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/health-care-law-ruled-constitutional-again/
© 2005-2011 Center for American Progress Action Fund

If the Democrats Lose the Senate Our Retirement Is Toast

2011-06-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

Jane White
HULLPOST POLITICS
06/28/11

A labor lawyer has a great idea for not only saving Social Security but making it so it's almost as generous as those in other first-world countries.

As Tom Geoghegan recently observed in the New York Times, Americans have two pension problems -- our Social Security System pays one of the paltriest rates in the world and most folks have hardly any money in their 401(k) accounts. The only people for whom Social Security replaces 70% of their wages are those making minimum wage at age 65, or around $15,000. Since the median wage for people in their 60s is around $65,000 and the average American only has around twice that amount in their 401(k) and rollover accounts, attention must be paid, given that you can only withdraw around $400 a month from a $120,000 nest egg without running out of money.

Geoghegan's plan is to boost Social Security payments to they replace half the average workers earnings by lifting the cap on the payroll tax (without paying more benefits to those above it) and raising the payroll tax by roughly 1 percentage point for employees and employers, among other measures.

Former SEIU President and deficit commission member Andy Stern also thinks the Social Security System would be more robust by investing at least some of its assets in stocks, as is the case in Canada. I wholeheartedly agree -- as I pointed out in my book, America, Welcome to the Poorhouse, the long-term performance of stocks is vastly superior to government bonds or Treasury Bills. But rather than "privatize" the system as proposed by Dubya in 2005, which would allow workers to attempt (and fail) to time the market with brokerage accounts, I'd have the funds managed by a government-sponsored enterprise that invests in a mix of stock and money market index funds, as is the case with the Thrift Savings Plan covering many federal workers.

While Geoghegan's proposal is a sound one, I still believe that we need mandates for more generous employer contributions to 401(k) plans, as is the case with most other countries' versions of them, so that they walk and talk like actual pensions. It's not just the middle-class who are at risk but virtually every worker in the private sector who doesn't have "chief" and "executive" in their job title. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the median 401(k) account balance for Fidelity Investments' clients between the ages of 60 and 64 who earn more than $100,000 was less than $275,000, and only 3% of Vanguard's participants have accumulated more than $250,000.

We Boomers are not only pension-poorer than our parents but we' re more likely to still have big expenses, including mortgages, which will lead to the Next Mortgage Meltdown -- somebody paying off a $100,000 mortgage who can only spend $400 a month on living expenses can't afford the $700 a month mortgage payments. More than 50% of Boomers between the ages of 55 and 65 were paying mortgages in 2007 -- on average owing more than $140,000 -- according to the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances. That amount is nearly three times what was owed by that age group in 1989, when only 34% were still making mortgage payments.

Expect any retirement reform that involves mandates and/or tax hikes to provoke hysteria from the Repubs -- including members of the Supreme Court, as was the case when Labor Secretary Frances Perkins first launched the idea of Social Security when FDR occupied the White House. As observed in the book, The Woman Behind the New Deal, a group of four justices were known as "the battalion of death" against worker-friendly legislation. The business lobby was fiercely opposed as well -- at Congressional hearings on Social Security, the National Association of Manufacturers attacked the bill as the "ultimate socialistic control of life and industry."

At least Social Security ultimately prevailed, unlike today when the Party of No controls the House of Representatives. Anything that involves a tax hike is dead in the water; as BloombergBusinessWeek observed, given that 233 of the 240 House Republicans and 40 of the 47 Republican senators have signed anti-tax activist Grover Norquist's so-called Taxpayer Protection Pledge. That's why Republicans pulled a temper tantrum and stormed out of debt-reduction talks led by VP Joe Biden last Thursday.

While a new group called Priorities USA has been formed to keep Obama in the White House, it's not clear whether their strategy includes maintaining control of the Senate. Frankly, it's not going to matter if Obama keeps his job if he can't do his job. Given that Republicans need 10 seats to win the 51-seat majority in the Senate and six Democrats are scheduled to retire next year, if you count technically Independent Joe Lieberman, things don't bode well. A total of nine seats are "vulnerable" if you include those who are unlikely to get re-elected, according to US News and World Report. If the GOP captures the Senate, they not only control the votes, they get to pick two thirds of the witnesses at any hearings. So we can assume that the likelihood of hearings on remedies to our pension shortfall would be infinitesimal.

Somebody needs to mobilize a group to reverse the bloodless coup on Capitol Hill to ensure these "vulnerable" Democrats keep their jobs and Americans keep their financial futures. With the election only 17 months away, time's a wasting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-white/social-security-retirement_b_885895.html

Waiting for The Miracle

2011-06-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

DRIFTGLASS
CHICAGOLAND, UNITED STATES
Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Baby, I've been waiting,
I've been waiting night and day.
I didn't see the time,
I waited half my life away...

-- Leonard Cohen

Buried deep inside his tragicomic Grand Guignol expose of Our Lady of the Holy Killbot, Matt Taibbi accomplishes something else: The discovery of America.

Not the pastel flyover-country American cartoon that Beltway professionals blur quickly past as they invoke the fiction of th'murricanpipple a thousand times a day, but the real America.

The real, ugly America.

The America that no longer has any functional understanding of this world. The deeply ignorant, deeply angry, deeply paranoid America that has been swallowed whole by Hate Radio. That remakes its own past, present and future into whatever suits today's batshit Two Minutes Hate Fox Special News Alert.

The America where the minds of millions of our fellow citizens have grown so pudding-soft and devolved from crouching in their spider holes and waiting for the Second Coming of The Imaginary Reaganator to save them from their Imaginary Enemies, that they can now effectively be lead any-damn-where by anybody with a Bible, a conspiracy that flatters their psychosis and a big, cheery, teevee smile.

Taibbi explains in autopsic detail why trying to reason with the Pig People is simply impossible, and, I would argue, why trying to hide inside a snuggle sack of Fake Centrism slung between Michele Bachmann and Barack Obama is insane.

Michele Bachmann's Holy War
...

In her runs for Congress, Bachmann discovered — or perhaps it is more accurate to say we all discovered — that a total absence of legislative accomplishment and a complete inability to tell the truth or even to identify objective reality are no longer hindrances to higher office.

Emboldened by the lack of consequences for her early freakouts, Bachmann's self-mythologizing became more and more overt. In October 2006, she stepped before a packed house at the Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, and told her life story. All of history's great madmen have had that one gorgeous moment where the cackling hairy hunchback that has been gestating within for years finally comes out and shows itself, strutting up and down the catwalk for the world to see. This was Michele's catwalk moment, a lengthy autobiographical speech in which she claimed "callings" from God had pushed her to every major decision in her life — from studying tax law to running for Congress. She even told the congregation that she and hubby Marcus — who by then had opened a Christian counseling center — had been united not by love but by a unique series of divine visions experienced by three people simultaneously.

Bachmann claimed that back in her college days, she was up one night praying with a female friend of hers when "the Lord gave each one of us the same, exact vision... It was a picture of me, marrying this man, in the valley where his parents have a farm in western Wisconsin." Meanwhile, miles away, Marcus "was repairing a fence on the farm where he worked, and the Lord showed him in a vision that he was supposed to marry me." According to Bachmann, Marcus initially complained to God that he wanted to see the world first, and only later relented.

Snickering readers in New York or Los Angeles might be tempted by all of this to conclude that Bachmann is uniquely crazy. But in fact, such tales by Bachmann work precisely because there are a great many people in America just like Bachmann, people who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously. When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don't learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you're a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they're even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies.
...

Michele Bachmann has found the flaw in the American Death Star.
...

There is an orc army on the move in America.

And they are coming for us.

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2011/06/waiting-for-miracle.html

© d r i f t g l a s s 2008

Re-Energizing The Progressive Movement

2011-06-20T19:16:00.000-07:00

Zaid Jilani
Progress Reports / ThinkProgress
June 20, 2011

This past Thursday, over 2,000 progressives — including the team from ThinkProgress — attended Netroots Nation 2011, where bloggers, elected officials, and activists came together to strategize about how to reinvigorate the progressive movement and more effectively battle the right. During the four-day event, conference-goers attended panels on topics ranging from the Federal Reserve to the Arab Spring, heard speeches from members of Congress, peppered a high-ranking White House official with questions, and strategized with some of the nation’s biggest names in progressive politics. Although the blogosphere has often been derided by traditional media and the political class, Netroots Nation was a clear demonstration of a simple fact: the blogs and social media outlets that make up the netroots are a pivotal part of shaping not only the progressive movement but the very future of America.

MEET THE NETROOTS: Netroots Nation began in 2006 under the label “YearlyKos,” serving as an annual get-together for members of the progressive DailyKos blogging community. Soon, the annual convention was renamed Netroots Nation to reflect the fact that it had become a gathering point for bloggers and social media activists across the nation. This year’s Netroots Nation had a record number of attendees, attracting over 2,000 bloggers and activists, including overseas bloggers from 24 countries. In addition to bloggers and other social media advocates, the conference featured representatives and sponsorships from a wide variety of organizations, ranging from labor unions like the National Education Association to political parties represented by the Democratic National Committee. The broad swath of attendees represents a new truism about American politics: To have influence and truly change the country, you need to reach out to the netroots. Polling agency Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted a straw poll among attendees, and found that 80 percent of attendees said they approved of President Obama’s performance, while two-thirds say they want him to focus on job growth.

A ROBUST AGENDA: The variety of issues represented on panels and presentations demostrated the growing prominence of the netroots in American politics. At a panel titled “Fed Up: Decoding Monetary Policy Matters,” ThinkProgress’s Matt Yglesias discussed Federal Reserve policy with the National Journal’s Tim Fernholz and the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal. At a panel about the Middle East titled “The Arab Spring: A Case Study for New Media as a Catalyst for Change,” a number of Arab bloggers explained how new media is helping them fight for liberty in their countries. Bahraini blogger Lamees Dhaif explained how her sister had been arrested by Bahraini authorities due to her activism, but that the State Department washesitant to help due to the sensitive relationship with the monarchy. During one particularly emotional moment of a panel titled “What To Do When The President Just Isn’t That Into You,” Lt. Dan Choi — who was discharged from the military for being gay — declared that he would not vote for President Obama in 2012 if he did not endorse marriage equality, ripping up campaign literature he was given by an Obama volunteer in the process. And on the topic of education, the conference also featured a speech by American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and a number of sessions about the pushback against the school voucher and school privatization movements.

BUILDING A GREATER MOVEMENT: The conference also reflected themes and tensions within the wider progressive movement, and featured speeches by many movement leaders and elected officials. Former Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold delivered the opening keynote speech, where he blasted corporate influence in both major political parties, railed against the Citizens United ruling, and decried efforts by some Democrats to raise unlimited corporate funds for the 2012 presidential election. CAP Senior Fellow and former Obama adviser Van Jones unveiled the “American Dream Movement” where he implored activists to come together and defend the American Dream and fight for the future of the country. Jones said progressives are not just fighting against conservatives like Tea Party members, but also for them because progressives want them to achieve the American Dream as well. He also implored Fox News host Glenn Beck to debate him on Beck’s TV show during his last week on air. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) delivered a rousing closing keynote, calling on the netroots to champion a progressive movement independent of public officials that moves the country forward. He told attendees that when the netroots can “walk with the President, we should walk with him, but when we can’t, we have to walk ahead of him. The movement must inspire the politicians.”

http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/re-energizing-the-progressive-movement/

Bachmann's Latest Conspiracy Theory Is a Doozy

2011-06-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

Steve Benen
Washington Monthly
18 June 11

ep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) creativity is unrivaled in contemporary politics. Consider her remarks yesterday to a gathering of the Republican Leadership Conference.

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, the latest candidate to join the Republican presidential campaign, suggested Friday that President Obama secretly wanted Medicare to go bankrupt so retirees would be forced to enroll in the new national health care law.

"This hasn't been talked about very much - the president's plan for senior citizens is Obamacare," Ms. Bachmann told party activists here. She added, "I think very likely what the president intends is that Medicare will go broke and ultimately that answer will be Obamacare for senior citizens."

Bachmann's principal problem is that she combines the worst of two important traits: she's strikingly ignorant about public policy and she's paranoid to the point of delusion.

It's these qualities that lead Bachmann to come up with such odd theories. In this case, the unhinged Minnesotan believes President Obama is secretly trying to eliminate Medicare, forcing seniors into the Affordable Care Act. Is there any evidence at all to support this? Of course not, but that's not important right now.

In practical terms, Bachmann apparently thinks the president is secretly right-wing - she believes Obama wants to end the existing system of socialized medicine for seniors, and force these millions of seniors into the private insurance market.

Of course, there is a group of people who actually support such an approach. They're called "House Republicans." Indeed, the House GOP budget plan - written by Paul Ryan and endorsed by none other than Michele Bachmann - seeks to end Medicare and convert the program into an ACA-style system. Bachmann's conspiracy theory is that Obama secretly agrees with her far-right colleagues.

This isn't just wrong; it's mad-as-a-hatter crazy.

Bachmann's ability to come up with remarkable conspiracy theories has always impressed me. Remember the time the right-wing presidential candidate argued that the U.S. Census may lead to "internment camps"? How about when she warned of a "one-world currency" because she got confused about what a global reserve currency is? Or maybe the time she thought the "Lion King" was secretly gay propaganda? How about the time she said a bipartisan national service bill could lead to "re-education camps"?

This new one, though, is probably my favorite to date. Anytime a right-wing lawmaker talks to a right-wing audience and thinks it's wise to attack President Obama as secretly on their side, it deserves some kind of award.

Steve Benen is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly, joining the publication in August, 2008 as chief blogger for the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/6313-bachmanns-latest-conspiracy-theory-is-a-doozy

© 2011 Reader Supported News

Republican Right Shows Signs of Desperation

2011-06-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

The growing desperation of the Don't-Raise-Taxes-on-the-Rich crowd.

Robert Reich
Robert Reich's Blog
June 17, 2011

he much-vaunted Republican pledge not to raise any taxes is crumbling. Today 34 Senate Republicans voted to end the special tax breaks for ethanol.

According to no-tax-increase purists like Grover Norquist, this is tantamount to a tax increase.

The truth is, Republicans are divided between those who want to bring down the budget deficit and those who want to shrink government. Ending a special tax subsidy helps reduce the deficit but doesn't necessarily shrink government. That's why Norquist and his followers have insisted any such tax increase – including even the closing of tax loopholes – be directly linked to a corresponding tax cut.

In order to save face on today's vote, Norquist says renegade Republicans will still be considered to have adhered to the pledge if they vote in favor of an amendment offered by Senator Jim DeMint to eliminate the estate tax. Talk about grasping at straws. DeMint's amendment isn't even up for a vote.

In short, the no-tax pledge is evaporating in the fresh air of reality.

What are anti-tax Republicans to do now?

For one, continue to distort the arguments of those who believe corporations and the rich should pay more taxes.

For example, in the lead op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal, Cato Institute fellow Alan Reynolds claims a higher marginal tax on the super rich will bring in less revenue.

Reynolds uses my tax proposal from last February as his red herring. "Memo to Robert Reich," he declares, "The income tax brought in less revenue when the highest rate was 70 percent to 91 percent [between 1950 and 1980] than it did when the highest rate was 28 percent."

Reynolds bends the facts to make his case, picking and choosing among years.

In truth, the most important variable explaining the rise and fall of tax revenues as percent of GDP has been the business cycle, not the effective tax rate. In periods when the economy is growing briskly, tax revenues have risen as a percent of GDP, regardless of effective rates; in downturns, revenues have fallen.

Reynolds also distorts my proposal, implying that the bracket on which I call for a 70 percent tax is the same as in today's tax code. Wrong. My proposed 70 percent rate would apply only to incomes over $15 million.

$15 million, Alan!

Under my proposal, incomes between $5 million and $15 million would be subjected to a 60 percent rate, and incomes between $500,000 and $5 million to a 50 percent rate.

Importantly, my proposal calls for a substantial rate reduction for families with incomes under $100,000. (Conveniently, Reynolds fails to mention this.)

Reynolds entirely ignores my central argument, which is that rather than depress economic growth, higher taxes on the rich correlate with higher growth. During almost three decades spanning 1951 to 1980, when the top rate was between 70 percent and 91 percent, average annual growth in the American economy was 3.7 percent.

Between 1983 and the start of the Great Recession, when the top rate dropped to between 35 percent and 39 percent, average growth was 3 percent.

How to explain this? Easy.

Since the early 1980s, a larger and larger share of total income has gone to the top (the richest 1 percent of Americans got 10 percent of total income in 1980, and get over 20 percent now). That's left the vast middle class with insufficient purchasing power to boost the economy - without going deep into debt.

Lower tax rates on the rich - including lower capital gains rates - have exacerbated this regressive trend.

Finally, having misread the facts, distorted my proposal, and ignored my argument, Reynolds fails to rebut my conclusion that raising middle class purchasing power by lowering their tax rates while raising the rates at the top will help spur growth, to the benefit of all. Top earners will do better with a smaller share of a more rapidly- growing economy a larger share of a slower-growing one.

If I were a cynic, I'd say the Republican right is showing signs of desperation.

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including "The Work of Nations," "Locked in the Cabinet," "Supercapitalism" and his latest book, "AFTERSHOCK: The Next Economy and America's Future." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/6295-republican-right-shows-signs-of-desperation

The Republican Debate and CNN Sucks

2011-06-14T07:05:00.000-07:00

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
June 14, 2011

If you missed the Republican debate last night on CNN, you essentially missed every Republican candidate telling us that the states and the private sector can do everything better than the federal government — even though the federal government landed a man on the moon, defeated the Nazis and Imperial Japan at the same time, preserved the Union, provided a safety net for senior citizens, and has a pretty solid track record of making sure a Happy Meal doesn’t contain asbestos.

The states? They can barely pave roads or avoid bankruptcy. And the private sector shoved us to the brink of the Second Great Depression and is currently responsible for nine percent unemployment. Let’s hand them the keys to the economy!

Meanwhile, the moderator, CNN’s John King, was as robotic as usual. Nothing overly challenging. No real insight into the issues. And he asked the candidates various “this or that” questions. For example, he asked Newt whether he liked American Idol or Dancing with the Stars (Newt prefers Idol). He asked Herman Cain, the founder of Godfather’s Pizza, whether he preferred thin crust or thick crust. Very serious.

We’re facing some of the most critical times in the history of the United States and the world — much of this due to the policies of the Republican Party, and we’re asking them whether they like iPhones or Blackberries? Unfeakingbelievable. They all stood up there repeating the same myopic conservative bumper sticker solutions that created the recession — Reaganomics, supply side, deregulation, tax cuts, and all the rest of it. And CNN treated it like a game show.

Now, in CNN’s defense, when Fox News Channel hosts a debate, the theatrics will be more ridiculous and the topics a thousand times more silly.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/06/the-republican-debate-and-cnn-sucks.html

Rush Limbaugh's freak out response to caller when he gets reminded about his Blue Pill adventure

2011-06-09T06:13:00.000-07:00

John Amato
Crooks and Liars
June 09, 2011

Rush Limbaugh has been on Weiner-overdrive since the chaos broke out so a caller had to remind him about his own past behavior and he went ballistic. Click here to listen to the audio exchange.

On June 7, 2011, Rush Limbaugh began his program with a series of juvenile insults, puns, and double-entendres regarding Anthony Weiner and the scandal he touched off when racy images and messages he exchanged with various women over social media were exposed by his political opponents.
Limbaugh was casting stones in his own glass house.
In 2006, Limbaugh was detained by United States Customs officers after returning from the Dominican Republic with Viagra in his possession. The prescription wasn't written in Limbaugh's name, so the authorities suspected unlawful possession of a controlled substance. Moreover, a simple google search of the terms "adult travel" (NSFW) reveals that the Dominican Republic has earned an outsized reputation as one of the world's hottest destinations for sex tourists.

I did a lot of extensive reporting when this story broke because it's illegal to have prescription drugs not in your own name.

I spoke with the Florida Medical Board and they told me that it is unethical and illegal for a doctor to write a prescription for him/her and then give it to another patient. They told me I could file a complaint and it would be investigated. I first called The Medical Board of California and found out that they have the same practice in place. As we know from yesterday:
Rush Limbaugh was detained for more than three hours at Palm Beach International Airport after authorities said they found a bottle of Viagra in his possession without a prescription. A doctor had prescribed the drug, but it was "labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh for privacy purposes," Roy Black, Limbaugh's attorney, said in a statement.
Roy Black issued a statement yesterday that said :
While going through routine Customs inspection of luggage at Palm BeachInternational Airport upon his return from an international trip, Rush Limbaugh was detained by customs agents after they noticed a non-narcotic prescription drug, which had been prescribed by Mr. Limbaugh's treating physician but labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh for privacy purposes. After a brief interview, Mr. Limbaugh was permitted to continue on his journey.
This is not consistent with medical practices in the two states that I have checked on so far. Doctors cannot engage in that type of behavior. By receiving a fake prescription that is clearly in violation of Florida's Medical Law, did Limbaugh then violate the terms of his plea deal? Roy Black's statement tries to paint this occurrence to be typical doctor behavior because of Rush Limbaugh's high profile, but that is not the case.
A Beverly Hills addiction specialist, Dr. David Kipper said that this is the number one offense a doctor can do. They are not even supposed to write prescriptions for family members.
Update: Matt found this: "Physicians generally should not treat themselves or members of their immediate families...read on
Continue on if you want to read Florida's statute 499.03 which was clearly violated.

As you would expect, Limbaugh and his doctor weren't charged. The press didn't ask Rush why he needed 29 Viagra pills in the first place. Well, he is a Republican. The Smoking Gun has a few more interesting details about Limbaugh's trip.

Rush Limbaugh's Dominican Stag Party 29 Viagra pills, two '24' producers among radio star's all-male crew...read on

Digby has the transcript of the Limbaugh freak-out call.

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/rush-limbaugh-freaks-when-he-gets-calle

Palin

2011-06-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

Ted Rudow III
writingforgodot
Monday, 06 June 2011

Well, I think it’s important to look at who the tea party is, what the tea party is. I mean, let’s remember, it’s many different organizations. They wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been for an enormous amount of money from a few ... well, Simon Johnson calls them the “13 bankers.” 13 bankers is the rise of concentrated financial power and the threat it poses to our economic well-being.

It turns out that not quite 20 percent of Americans are tea party supporters. Those who are tend to be white, Republican, male, older than 45 and wealthier than the rest of us. Fifty-seven percent hold a favorable opinion of George W. Bush. And where most Republicans describe themselves as "dissatisfied" with Washington, tea partiers are apt to use a different term.

They say they're angry. It is a telling word, especially in light of another survey, this one from the University of Washington's Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality. That poll offers strong evidence that, contrary to the denials of tea party enthusiasts, President Barack Obama's race plays a big role in their outrage.

After all, if the tea partiers were truly only concerned about so-called "tyranny," they'd have started howling when Bush claimed he need not be bound by laws with which he disagreed.

http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/6179-palin

© 2011 Reader Supported News

She’s Not Embarrassed

2011-06-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
June 3, 2011

Sarah Palin in Boston describing Paul Revere’s ride:

“He who warned, uh, the, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, makin’ sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free and we were gonna be armed.”

That’s exactly verbatim. I’m not making it up. Here’s the video evidence from CNN via Alan Colmes.

And she thinks she can be president.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/06/shes-not-embarrassed.html

Rick Scott and the “Failed Stimulus” Program

2011-06-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

( Notice the "The Villages")

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!
June 1, 2011

Governor Rick Scott just can’t quit you, Big Government Cash™

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott campaigned against President Obama’s “failed stimulus” program – yet the freshman politician kept nearly $370 million of the federal cash in the Florida budget he signed last week.
Scott’s decision to keep the stimulus money stands out in a year when the governor touted record budget vetoes of up to $615 million. He emphasized the vetoes of “wasteful” spending at a Thursday event that featured a campaign-style “Promises Made, Promises Kept” banner.
But as he ran for office last summer, Scott said he “would fight all the stimulus money.” He also told reporters “I would have figured out how to balance the budget without it.”

Well, so much for that idea. The “failed stimulus” program apparently wasn’t a big enough failure to warrant its exclusion from Florida’s budget.

When asked to explain this glaring contradiction, Scott came up empty:

According to ThinkProgress, 61 lines of the Florida budget contained stimulus money, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus program) is specifically referenced 66 times.

Keep going Republicans! All the way to 2012! You’re doing great!

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/06/rick-scott-and-the-failed-stimulus-program.html

Copyright 2011 Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

Enjoy your day off but please take a moment to reflect.

The Republican Death Wish

2011-05-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich
The Huffington Post
May 28, 2011

Forty Senate Republicans have now joined their colleagues in the House to support Paul Ryan's plan that would turn Medicare into vouchers that funnel money to private health insurers. They thumbed their nose at the special election in upstate New York earlier this week that delivered a victory to Democrat Kathy Hochul, who made the plan the focus of her upset victory.

So now it's official. The 2012 campaign will be about the future of Medicare. (Yes, it will also be about jobs, but the Republicans haven't come up with any credible ideas on that front, and the Democrats seem incapable of doing what needs to be done.)

This spells trouble for the GOP. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans -- even a majority of Republican voters -- want to preserve Medicare. They don't want to turn it over to private insurers.

It would be one thing if Republicans had consistency on their side. At least then they could take the high road and claim their plan is a principled way to achieve the aims of Medicare through market-based mechanisms. (It isn't, of course. It would end up squeezing seniors because it takes no account of the rising costs of health care.)

But they can't even claim consistency. Remember, this was the same GOP that attacked the President's health reform plan in 2010 by warning it would lead to Medicare cuts.

Former President Bill Clinton counsels Democrats not to say Medicare is fine the way it is. He's right. But instead of talking about Medicare as a problem to be fixed, Democrats should start talking about it as a potential solution to the challenge of rising health-care costs -- as well as to our long-term budget problem.

Can we be clear about that budget problem? It's not driven by Medicare. It's driven by the same relentlessly soaring health-care costs that are pushing premiums through the roof and causing middle-class families to shell out more and more money for deductibles and co-payments.

Some features of Obama's new healthcare law will slow the rise -- insurance exchanges, for example, could give consumers clearer comparative information about what they're getting for their insurance payments -- but the law doesn't go nearly far enough.

That's why Democrats should be proposing that anyone be allowed to sign up for Medicare. Medicare is cheaper than private insurance because its administrative costs are so much lower, and it has vast economies of scale.

If Medicare were allowed to use its potential bargaining leverage over America's hospitals, doctors, drug companies, and medical providers, it could drive down costs even further.

And it could force the nation's broken health-care system to do something it must do but has resisted with a vengeance: Focus on healthy outcomes rather on costly inputs. If Medicare paid for results -- not tests, procedures, drugs, and hospital stays, but results -- it could give Americans better health at lower cost.

Let the GOP go after Medicare. That will do more to elect Democrats in 2012 than anything else. But it would be wise and politically astute for Democrats to go beyond just defending Medicare. Strengthen and build upon it. Use it to reform American health care and, not incidentally, rescue the federal budget.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-republican-death-wish_b_867509.html

"I WANT A DIVORCE"

2011-05-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

So...

2011-05-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

Broadway Carl
Broadway Carl's Blog-O-Mania!
May 21.2011

... it's May 21st... 2011...

...And I'm still here...

No Jeebus......

Uh... well... this is awkward.

UPDATE: I've just been informed that the preacher fella who predicted today is expecting Jeebus at 6pm. Maybe Jeebus responded through Facebook or an Evite. So I'll reserve my ownJudgement and give JC until about 7pm to show up - that includes plenty of "fashionably late" time.

Wait - 6pm EDT or PDT?

Copyright 2011 Broadway Carl's Blog-O-Mania!

Trump officially ends fake presidential campaign

2011-05-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

JUSTIN ELLIOTT
Salon
MONDAY, MAY 16, 2011

After a months-long process that left his reputation in tatters and his brand damaged, Donald Trump officially announced today he is not running for president, declaring that "business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector."

Writes Trump in his statement:

"My gratitude for your faith and trust in me could never be expressed properly in words. So, I make you this promise: that I will continue to voice my opinions loudly and help to shape our politician's [sic]thoughts."

So why get out now? Why not follow Roger Stone's advice and declare he's still mulling an independent candidacy, thereby bypassing the GOP primary process and allowing the charade to continue well into 2012?

Well, for one thing, Trump stayed in the fake candidate game long enough that his prized personal brand seemed to finally be taking some damage. Some media outlets finally began to do real digging into his business dealings and the results were deeply unflattering. (Here are tworecent examples. My dossier on what to know about Trump for next time he tries to scam us is here.)

There were beginning to be real-world consequences. Trump's constant race-baiting prompted popular protests that led to the cancellation of his annual appearance at the Indy 500. A black group canceled its golf classic at one of Trump's clubs in protest. Meanwhile, ratings for "Celebrity Apprentice" (just signed for another season) are actuallydown.

One hopes that this is a teachable moment for the media -- the lesson being to never, ever trust Trump, and to never report his claims uncritically. There was, for example, Trump's widely-reported-as-fact claim that he sent "investigators" to Hawaii to look into President Obama's birth. Trump promised he would release the results of that investigation in due time, but that never happened.

Alex Pareene's obituary for the Trump campaign, written a few days ago but very much worth a read, is here.

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/05/16/surprise_trump_not_running

GOP chokes on own Medicare Kool-Aid

2011-05-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

Gene Lyons
Salon.com
WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2011

A funny thing happened along the Roadmap for America's Future. Ordinary citizens smoked out its actual impact on their lives while much of the Washington celebrity pundit class were still uttering hosannas to Rep. Paul Ryan's, R-Wis., alleged intellectual honesty and courage.

As a result, congressional Republicans unceremoniously abandoned their crackpot scheme to privatize Medicare within three weeks of voting almost unanimously to endorse it. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., explained that there was no point wasting time on a plan that had zero chance of passing in the Senate, and was certain to be vetoed by President Obama if it did.

Camp also acknowledged that as the same logic applies to the GOP's attempts to repeal the 2009 Affordable Care Act, aka "ObamaCare," his committee wasn't going to fool with that either.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, breathing smoke and fire two weeks ago, lamented that Republicans seeking budgetary consensus would need to look elsewhere after President Obama "excoriated us" for suggesting that Medicare health insurance be replaced by a voucher plan requiring seniors to comparison shop for private health insurance.

Poor babies. Here they've been so generous and cooperative, and Obama trashes them.

Actually, the president's exact words are worth repeating. The GOP roadmap, he said, asks Americans to accept that "even though we can't afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. Think about it ... They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that's paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay $6,000 more in health costs? That's not right, and it's not going to happen as long as I'm president."

No it's not, and it never was. The mystery is why congressional Republicans chose to cast a purely symbolic vote in favor of such a deeply unpopular idea. Every available poll shows that strong majorities oppose sharp Medicare cuts, let alone the GOP plan to ditch guaranteed health insurance for citizens over 65.

Yet House Republicans, who came to power in 2010 partly by accusing the Obama administration of trifling with Medicare, committed themselves to a deeply ideological revision of America's social contract, reducing the top marginal tax rate on multimillionaires from 35 to 25 percent and paying for it by converting seniors' medical insurance to a mandated voucher system.

And, yeah, you read that right. If enacted, Rep. Ryan's excellent plan would have required seniors either to buy private health insurance or pay a hefty tax penalty as well as forfeiting a lifetime's Medicare tax payments.

If you're thinking that mandates are precisely what GOP savants say makes "Obamacare" an unconstitutional threat to liberty, you're right.

The trick is to call it something else, in this case a "refundable tax credit" -- a distinction without a difference. You buy the private insurance or pay an extra $2,500. Exactly like Obamacare, except the penalty's much stiffer.

Have I mentioned that House Republicans supported Ryan's plan 235-4? (Democrats opposed it unanimously.) Then they went home for some very lively town hall meetings before returning to Washington with their tails tucked firmly between their legs. Several GOP congressmen virtually got driven from the room by irate constituents.

(My own GOP Rep. Tim Griffin bravely opted for the TV town hall route, taking pre-screened questions from invited callers. Even so, he reportedly assured one woman that Ryan's scheme would raise taxes on wealthy corporations and individuals, which happens to be untrue. If it did, Griffin wouldn't support it.)

Roadmap to Big Rock Candy Mountain is more like it. Ryan's scheme relies upon magic asterisks, insupportable economic projections and Orwellian euphemisms from beginning to end. When is a voucher not a voucher? When you call it "premium support," his supporters insist.

To make the numbers work, Ryan's plan relies upon the proverbial "player to be named later" -- cutting tax rates while promising to eliminate "loopholes" it fails to specify. Bruce Bartlett, the one-time GOP budget expert who clings to an unfashionable belief in arithmetic, puts it succinctly: "I learned long ago that when someone says everything is on the table that really means nothing is on the table."

Absent Medicare privatization, however, the savings from Ryan's plan add up to a big fat zero, which constitutes progress when you come to think of it. Most GOP miracle cures take years to unravel.

So why did Republicans buy into it? Some may have mistakenly believed their own propaganda about President Obama's weakness. Some in safe GOP districts may fear Tea Party primaries more than Democratic opponents. Writing in the New Republic, Jon Chait suggests that many Republicans "just got caught drinking their own Kool-Aid about how the public agrees with their vision."

To summarize, yet another Washington psuedo-event; and an episode Democrats must never let voters forget.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.
http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/05/11/gop_chokes_on_own_medicare_kool_aid

Donald Trump Admitted In Deposition That He Exaggerated His Net Worth, Stretched The Truth

2011-04-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Marcus Baram
HUFFPOST Post
04/22/11

Q: Let me just ask you first about the first sentence there: Trump relentlessly bloviating about his developments -- this is going to be the biggest, best, most amazing -- leads people to assume he exaggerates his net worth. Do you see that?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you know what bloviating means?
A: Well, I'm not sure that there's an exact definition, but I would imagine that's what it means.
Q: Exaggeration?
A: Could be, yeah.
Q: Lying?
A: No. [from a deposition given by Donald Trump in a libel lawsuit]

* * * * *

NEW YORK -- Notorious for his lack of modesty, Donald Trump has long flaunted his wealth and touted his net worth as a multibillionaire.

During his Comedy Central roast, which aired last month, the real estate developer and possible 2012 presidential candidate joked, "What's the difference between Donald Trump's hair and a wet raccoon? A wet raccoon doesn't have seven fucking billion dollars in the bank."

Now that he's considering a campaign on the Republican ticket, he's wielding his bravado as a political cudgel. He recently mocked multimillionaire Mitt Romney's reputation as a successful businessman by declaring himself "many, many, many times Mitt Romney."

Yet Trump has often been accused of exaggerating his wealth, even adding a few zeroes to the actual amount, which may undermine his credibility as a candidate with business credentials.

Despite Trump's own claims that he's worth around $7 billion, last September the most recent Forbes 400 rankings -- which many consider to have overestimated the real estate developer's wealth in the past -- estimated his net worth at $2.4 billion, putting him in a six-way tie for 153rd-richest person in America.

And a deposition in a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump provides numerous examples of him stretching the truth about his success in real estate. Former New York Times editor and reporter (and current Huffington Post national editor) Timothy L. O'Brien wrote in his 2005 book, "TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald," that the developer was probably worth $150 to $250 million, rather than the typical estimates of $2 to $3 billion. Trump sued O'Brien for libel, claiming that the book's lower figure killed some potential deals and damaged his reputation.

The case was dismissed, but Trump filed an appeal and a decision is pending. Trump's deposition, taken on Dec. 19-20, 2007, was obtained by The Huffington Post and CNN.

In 2005, Trump claimed that he was worth $3.5 billion, but a financial analysis by North Fork Bank estimated his worth at just $1.2 billion. The previous year, when he was claiming a worth in excess of $3 billion, Deutsche Bank estimated his worth much lower, at $788 million.

Asked in the deposition about his statements in 2007 that his net worth was $8 billion, Trump conceded: "I don't know. I don't think so. Well, maybe I'm adding 4 or 5 billion dollars worth, 3 billion, for the value of a brand. But I don't know."

Such comments prompted CNN contributor Jeffrey Toobin to tell "In the Arena" host Eliot Spitzer on Thursday night that the deposition could be used against Trump by his GOP opponents: "They could beat him over the head with this," Toobin said.

Among the deposition's most glaring examples of his fondness for exaggeration, Trump was asked why he claimed in several media accounts that he had a 50 percent interest in the massive Riverside South project on Manhattan's Upper West Side when he actually had a much smaller interest. "I own 30 percent," Trump replied. "But because of the fact I put no money up, that 30 percent is equated to 50 percent."

At another point, he is quizzed about his claim to CNN's Larry King that he earned over $1 milliion from a speech he gave to the Learning Annex. Trump admits that he was actually paid only $400,000 in cash, proffering the novel argument that adding in the annex's promotional expenses puts his payment in the $1 million-plus range.

In November 2007, Trump wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal to complain about a story on his net worth, explaining that a development in Hawaii was a huge success. "My tower in Waikiki was 100 percent sold out with 729 million in sales, 5 hours, a record," he wrote. Yet he admitted in the deposition that he doesn't actually own the building -- he just has a licensing agreement with the real owners.

At another moment, he is asked about $18.3 million in insurance proceeds he received due to hurricane damage to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in 2005, explaining that he never felt obligated to turn that money over to the club or to spend all the money on repairs.

And he told Crain's New York Business in 2004 and 2005 that his Trump Organization has 22,000 employees, but admitted in the deposition that some of those employees are "not directly" on the payroll. Some are "suppliers, including construction workers, people that supply items to your building."

For his part, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen told The Huffington Post that Trump is worth "a lot … substantially more than what’s recorded in Forbes."

"They don't take into account the value of the Trump brand, of the mark, one of the most valuable marks that’s ever been created," Cohen said. "He has very little debt, triple-A assets. He is going to provide audited financial disclosures when the time comes, if in fact he decides to run -- I think you’re going to be shocked by the number that’s being released." Those records have yet to be prepared, Cohen said, but Trump does obviously have audited financials year to year."

"I don’t think there’s any downside," to Trump running for president, Cohen added.

Trump has claimed it is rare for him to file a defamation lawsuit, but O'Brien's lawyers noted the number of times that he has threatened to sue, citing the following targets:

• The New York Times
• Rosie O'Donnell
• Fortune magazine
• Author Robert Slater
• George magazine
• Wall Street Journal reporters Neil Barsky and Alex Frangos (for separate stories)
• The New York Post (twice)
• Tina Brown (after Vanity Fair published a profile that described how Trump keeps a book of Hitler speeches by his bed, prompting Trump to write Brown that writer Marie Brennan "was a sick woman who couldn't see fairness if it was staring her in the face.")
• The Chicago Tribune architectural critic Paul Gapp
• The Los Angeles Times' David Lazarus

Rick Santorum has a problem

2011-04-17T05:10:00.000-07:00

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog
APRIL 16, 2011

In other news, Rick Santorum has a problem with the House approved Paul Ryan budget. His problem is that it doesn't go far enough. He believes current seniors should be thrown off the program too, not just seniors of the future. Rick Santorum is running for president, by the way.

http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/04/cartoon_open_th_11.html

Turning Back the Clock

2011-04-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

BooMan
Booman Tribune
Tue Apr 5th, 2011

The Republicans want to repeal the health care bill the Democrats passed last year. They want to repeal Medicare and Medicaid. They want to make it next to impossible for poor people to get contraceptives. They want to stop all efforts to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Basically, they want to return the country to the 1950's. They even want to restore the racial and religious demographics of 1950's America. There's only one problem. The top marginal income tax rate in the 1950's was between 91%-92% on all income over $400,000. Without question, the rich payed a higher share of their earned income under Eisenhower than any other president in our history. It was JFK who cut the top rate down to 77% in 1963.

Obviously, the 1950's cannot serve as a proper model for the Republicans. They have to go back to the mid-to-late 1920's when the top rate was 25% on all income over $100,000. And do you know what happened in the late 1920's? The stock market crashed and brought on the beginning of the Great Depression, which, in turn, brought fascism to Germany and greatly enhanced the seductive appeal of Soviet-style communism. It brought world-wide war and genocide on an unprecedented scale. It brought radiological weapons so powerful that they can still end all life on Earth. I think we ought to consider whether or not there is a correlation between the policies that ruined everything in the 1920's and the policies that ruined everything in 2008. And while we may have had the tools to turn a second Great Depression into a mere Great Recession, we only limited the damage and the risks; we didn't eliminate them.

We see new strains of xenophobia, race-consciousness, religious intolerance, and hyper-patriotism. We see major new strains of anti-intellectualism. We have a toxic brew that is being stirred up and heated up by irresponsible entertainers, demagogues, and provocateurs. It's being funded by corporate interests in a way that is eerily reminiscent of the German industrialists who lent support and encouragement to the National Socialists.

So, we can talk about numbers all we want. We can talk about what constitutes a good or bad compromise on the budget. But we're actually fighting a much larger battle, and losing isn't an option we want to contemplate.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/4/5/175537/5701

In The Bag ...

2011-04-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

Michele Bachmann and Lies About Health Care Reform

2011-04-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

Joseph O’Shaughnessy
Populist Daily
April 1, 2011

The Republicans said that they wanted to repeal the health care reform bill. Then they said that they wanted to de-fund it. In other words, if we can’t remove it altogether, they said, we will simply not let anyone participate in any kind of better health.

Why would a United States Congressman or Congresswoman want to prohibit an American citizen from receiving better health care at a lower cost?

Here is the principle we must follow on this. When a politician says something irrational we must look at first the situation and ask “why?”

Michele Bachmann, a Republican House member from Minnesota, is not stupid. So then, why would she speak out against health care reform? She clearly does not want to offer a substitute and she clearly does not want to offer amendments to improve it. She merely wants to continue the system of 15-20% increases that have made the health insurance industry rich beyond the dreams of an Arab sheik.

So she lies about the health reform bill, saying that provisions that have been in it since it was signed are “secret” and the costs involved, which have been paid for by adding taxes and shifting emphasis, were somehow not discussed or debated. [Read more →]

http://www.populistdaily.com/politics/michelle-bachmann-and-lies-about-health-care-reform.html

Indecision 2012 - Base Race - Santorum, Barbour & Trump

2011-03-31T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show - Indecision 2012 - Base Race - Santorum, Barbour & Trump
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Rick Santorum blames Social Security troubles on abortion; Haley Barbour wants to reinstate "don't ask, don't tell," and Donald Trump calls for Obama's birth certificate.