++ No, Michael Brown did not have an arrest record.
++Charles Pierce at Esquire had an excellent op-ed on The Body on the Ground. Michael Brown's corpse was allowed to stay on the road with blood coming from his head for four hours before it was removed.
++Darren Martin, the cop, was not mangled and his eye socket fractured by Michael Brown. His neighbor say him mowing his lawn short thereafter.
++Darren had worked for a Police Department that had been so corrupt and racist it had to be disbanded. I guess he picked up his habits then.
++Fund-raising for Darren has overtaken the fund-raising for Michael Brown's family. The KKK is fund-raising for him as well as conservative blogs.
++The District Attorney will not recuse himself even though he has three generations of relatives on the Ferguson police force and his father was killed by a black man.
++Missouri law gives the benefit of the doubt to police who kill unarmed citizens.
++President Obama sent three White House aides to Michael Brown's funeral.
++Eric Holder flew out to Ferguson and has had the DOJ all over the ground there. Kudos to Holder.
Showing posts with label Eric Holder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eric Holder. Show all posts
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Friday, June 6, 2014
Dinner
++Jennifer Rubin slips back into her regular disguise of hyping a GOP presidential candidate. This time she makes the case that Gov.Perry of Texas will restore America's place in the world.
++Reince Preibus has a lot of explaining to do. 500,000 signs saying Impeach Obama for not getting Sgt.Burgdahl home from captivity were found behind the RNC in dumpsters. He claims he knows nothing about them.
++Newsmax has Ronald Reagan's speech on D-Day for your enjoyment. If you want a youthful sounding President Obama speak eloquently, check out his speech today which may have surpassed the Gipper. Contrary to rightwing blogs, the President received a sustained and rousing standing ovation.
++President Obama did speak to Vladimir Putin. The French put out a Vine video, which makes Obama tower over Putin, who seemed to crawl backwards in fright. The State Department said they spoke for ten to fifteen minutes. An unhappy looking Angela Merkel also met with Putin and urged him to negotiate a ceasefire in the Ukraine. Putin also met with the new Ukrainian President and said he was sending a representative to his inauguration.
++A Cliven Bundy style sovereign citizen shot up a Georgia Courthouse and had bombs in his car before he was slain.
++The Right has gone ballistic over Eric Holder reconstituting the domestic terrorism unit. Alex Jones has camped out on RT television to talk about concentration camps being erected for dissidents. The motivation behind the DOJ decision was the mounting evidence supplied by the Southern Poverty Law Center about the rise of extreme right violent groups.
++Senator Diane Feinstein is grumpy over Obama not telling her about the release of Bergdahl so she says that the Army sergeant wasn't "close to death". A military source leaked that Bergdahl may have left his camp to search to arrange a local ceasefire with the Taliban. Interesting idea.
++Anthony Scalia was a big hit today. He was mentioned 13 times in the Federal Judge's opinion overturning Wisconsin's anti-same sex law. I guess that makes 20 states now and counting.
++Indeed,a couple filed a case against North Dakota for its prohibition of same sex marriage, leaving no state challenged.
++Paul Krugman noticed the same thing I have about the GOP's response to President Obama's epochal climate change decision on carbon emissions. Crickets. I'm sure they will recharge next week.
++The Texas GOP passed a resolution against the EPA,for therapy to change The Gay,a special prosecutor for Benghazi,and against Common Core.
++Ohio Republican legislators are trying to outlaw IUDs as a contraceptive arguing they are a form of abortion.
++If you want to know about the Senate race in Mississippi,there is no one better at analysis of the strange Southern mind than Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly. This is a beyond strange race between a tea bagger and good ole' boy Thad Cochran.
++John Podesta said that climate-deniers will be toast in 2016.
++Al Sharpton's show has a series of ads Democrats are running against Republicans early to prevent them from escaping the box of the extreme right policies they have voted for and endorsed in the past. The idea is to prevent them presenting themselves as moderate in the general election. The ads were quite effective.
++Reince Preibus has a lot of explaining to do. 500,000 signs saying Impeach Obama for not getting Sgt.Burgdahl home from captivity were found behind the RNC in dumpsters. He claims he knows nothing about them.
++Newsmax has Ronald Reagan's speech on D-Day for your enjoyment. If you want a youthful sounding President Obama speak eloquently, check out his speech today which may have surpassed the Gipper. Contrary to rightwing blogs, the President received a sustained and rousing standing ovation.
++President Obama did speak to Vladimir Putin. The French put out a Vine video, which makes Obama tower over Putin, who seemed to crawl backwards in fright. The State Department said they spoke for ten to fifteen minutes. An unhappy looking Angela Merkel also met with Putin and urged him to negotiate a ceasefire in the Ukraine. Putin also met with the new Ukrainian President and said he was sending a representative to his inauguration.
++A Cliven Bundy style sovereign citizen shot up a Georgia Courthouse and had bombs in his car before he was slain.
++The Right has gone ballistic over Eric Holder reconstituting the domestic terrorism unit. Alex Jones has camped out on RT television to talk about concentration camps being erected for dissidents. The motivation behind the DOJ decision was the mounting evidence supplied by the Southern Poverty Law Center about the rise of extreme right violent groups.
++Senator Diane Feinstein is grumpy over Obama not telling her about the release of Bergdahl so she says that the Army sergeant wasn't "close to death". A military source leaked that Bergdahl may have left his camp to search to arrange a local ceasefire with the Taliban. Interesting idea.
++Anthony Scalia was a big hit today. He was mentioned 13 times in the Federal Judge's opinion overturning Wisconsin's anti-same sex law. I guess that makes 20 states now and counting.
++Indeed,a couple filed a case against North Dakota for its prohibition of same sex marriage, leaving no state challenged.
++Paul Krugman noticed the same thing I have about the GOP's response to President Obama's epochal climate change decision on carbon emissions. Crickets. I'm sure they will recharge next week.
++The Texas GOP passed a resolution against the EPA,for therapy to change The Gay,a special prosecutor for Benghazi,and against Common Core.
++Ohio Republican legislators are trying to outlaw IUDs as a contraceptive arguing they are a form of abortion.
++If you want to know about the Senate race in Mississippi,there is no one better at analysis of the strange Southern mind than Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly. This is a beyond strange race between a tea bagger and good ole' boy Thad Cochran.
++John Podesta said that climate-deniers will be toast in 2016.
++Al Sharpton's show has a series of ads Democrats are running against Republicans early to prevent them from escaping the box of the extreme right policies they have voted for and endorsed in the past. The idea is to prevent them presenting themselves as moderate in the general election. The ads were quite effective.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Oceans of Tomorrow
++President Obama used Carl Sandburg's term in his speech in Galesburg, Illinois to outline his economic vision for America. John Boehner said it was "an empty shell of a speech" while Rep. Issa said that no Presidential speech created a job. The Washington pundit belt slammed the President for the lack of new ideas. But E.J. Dionne said that like FDR and Reagan Obama was setting down the framework which would guide future Presidents and dominate the future. Writing in Salon, Michael Lind said it was the Speech that won the Economic Debate. Throughout the speech, the President slammed trickle-down economics and refuted the economic arguments made for the past thirty years. He called for a middle out economy to stabilize the ever-shrinking middle class.He also challenged the inequality that has been growing in American society after a generation.
++We are at that stage of summer when President Obama's approval rating droops as always. He is down to 49% and oil rigs are again burning off Louisiana. Congress' approval rating is now below cockroaches, head lice and America going Communist. The House will be leaving next week for a five week vacation and 9 days scheduled in September.
++The President isn't taking August off. He has already hit the road for economic speeches in Jacksonville and next week will hit Tennessee. Most of his points we heard last year when he was campaigning for support of his Jobs Bill. In Jacksonville, he made his pitch for infrastructure spending. Currently, the Senate is grappling with the transportation and urban housing bill and a $100 billion is hung up since the House hasn't passed a budget for the past 100 days. The President made the point that all industrialized countries are investing far greater in improving their infrastructure than we are. The Society of Civil Engineers has released its report card on the U.S. and given the country a D+ in several categories. The GOP, which once boasted of infrastructure spending, has taken their ball and left the field.
++The transportation bill in the Senate has bipartisan support but the House is seeking a cut of 50% to Community Development Block grants, an idea they once supported.
++While the President had a great week with his economic speech and his comments on the Trayvon Martin case,Eric Holder stepped up to the plate to challenge the voter restriction acts they have mushroomed since the Voting Rights Act was gutted. Holder is using the remaining articles to seek pre-clearance from Texas and other states.
++Since VRA was gutted, Florida has happily begun purging voter lists again,Pennsylvania is defending their ID law and North Carolina has passed the most restrictive voting laws in the country so much so that I was surprised they didn't just outlaw voting altogether. What this will mean is open to debate but polls in North Carolina show the people are overwhelmingly opposed to such restrictions.
++We know what the general outline of the Republican plan is with voter suppression but even Ross Douhat of the New York Times is beginning to believe that such measures will spark a backlash against the party without any great compensation for the effort.
++Nancy Pelosi made a statement that the Democrats may win back the House. Tom Coburn believes that a fight over raising the debt ceiling because of demands for defunding Obamacare will trigger the loss of the House. Personally,I didn't believe the Republicans can lose the House until 2021, after the next census. However, Republicans have placed two more members on the endangered list, bringing the number up to 20.
++But this can't be true because turnout will be lower in the mid-term,minorities will vote less and the elderly will vote overwhelming for the Republicans. Not so fast,Charlie Cook has been rummaging around on the polls about the GOP base and found that , while the Democrats have lost seniors since 2008,losing them be a whopping 59-38 in 2010,there seems to be a reverse trend now where Democrats are only 5% behind on seniors. He doesn't know why that is but maybe it is that seniors realize by now that President Obama didn't cut their Medicare benefits and that the GOP are gunning for their pensions.
++Eugene Robinson has hit the summer doldrum in a column in the Washington Post. Robinson believes nothing is going to happen with Congress on the budget or immigration reform because of gridlock or Republican tantrums and the President's approval will continue to decline because nothing is getting done.
++Rep. King ,who got the House to pass a resolution for the deportation of the DREAM KIDs, blasted them again this week as being a bunch of drug smugglers. While the House leadership had to criticize him for this,the House Republicans are between a rock and a hard place on immigration reform. If Boehner caved and let the Hastert Law go by the boards, the House would pass the Senate bill with Democratic votes. But then again, he would lose his job. Paul Ryan, trying to save the party from catastrophe, claims now that the House will vote for immigration reform in October. He promises there would be a path to citizenship. Evangelicals will be meeting this week with the Republicans to explain why the immigration system needs to be fixed.
++House Republicans have been given little educational packets for their recess to argue to their constituents they are fighting Washington. They are also holding town meetings on the Emergency in Healthcare, which I guess means you might get some. The Koch brothers are handing out Obamacare cards so that college students may burn them--of course, while their parents carry them on their health insurance. Fall is looking to be quite nasty for Congress.
++Christie's Auction house has arrived in Detroit to appraise the collection at the Detroit Art Museum. New York art collectors are horrified by the prospect of over 660,000 items being sold off because they claim it will destroy the global art market.
++The privately owned Detroit Windsor tunnel has filed for bankruptcy.
++The Detroit Emergency City Manager has floated a $400 million bond so the Red Wings will have a new arena.
++Pennsylvania under its free market governor has sunk to 46th place in job creation. The state's attorney general will not enforce the law against same sex marriage and the first five licenses were issued in a town north of Philadelphia.
++Federal judges have stopped the strict anti-abortion laws throughout the country on the basis that they are so restrictive as to prohibit access in the states.
++We are at that stage of summer when President Obama's approval rating droops as always. He is down to 49% and oil rigs are again burning off Louisiana. Congress' approval rating is now below cockroaches, head lice and America going Communist. The House will be leaving next week for a five week vacation and 9 days scheduled in September.
++The President isn't taking August off. He has already hit the road for economic speeches in Jacksonville and next week will hit Tennessee. Most of his points we heard last year when he was campaigning for support of his Jobs Bill. In Jacksonville, he made his pitch for infrastructure spending. Currently, the Senate is grappling with the transportation and urban housing bill and a $100 billion is hung up since the House hasn't passed a budget for the past 100 days. The President made the point that all industrialized countries are investing far greater in improving their infrastructure than we are. The Society of Civil Engineers has released its report card on the U.S. and given the country a D+ in several categories. The GOP, which once boasted of infrastructure spending, has taken their ball and left the field.
++The transportation bill in the Senate has bipartisan support but the House is seeking a cut of 50% to Community Development Block grants, an idea they once supported.
++While the President had a great week with his economic speech and his comments on the Trayvon Martin case,Eric Holder stepped up to the plate to challenge the voter restriction acts they have mushroomed since the Voting Rights Act was gutted. Holder is using the remaining articles to seek pre-clearance from Texas and other states.
++Since VRA was gutted, Florida has happily begun purging voter lists again,Pennsylvania is defending their ID law and North Carolina has passed the most restrictive voting laws in the country so much so that I was surprised they didn't just outlaw voting altogether. What this will mean is open to debate but polls in North Carolina show the people are overwhelmingly opposed to such restrictions.
++We know what the general outline of the Republican plan is with voter suppression but even Ross Douhat of the New York Times is beginning to believe that such measures will spark a backlash against the party without any great compensation for the effort.
++Nancy Pelosi made a statement that the Democrats may win back the House. Tom Coburn believes that a fight over raising the debt ceiling because of demands for defunding Obamacare will trigger the loss of the House. Personally,I didn't believe the Republicans can lose the House until 2021, after the next census. However, Republicans have placed two more members on the endangered list, bringing the number up to 20.
++But this can't be true because turnout will be lower in the mid-term,minorities will vote less and the elderly will vote overwhelming for the Republicans. Not so fast,Charlie Cook has been rummaging around on the polls about the GOP base and found that , while the Democrats have lost seniors since 2008,losing them be a whopping 59-38 in 2010,there seems to be a reverse trend now where Democrats are only 5% behind on seniors. He doesn't know why that is but maybe it is that seniors realize by now that President Obama didn't cut their Medicare benefits and that the GOP are gunning for their pensions.
++Eugene Robinson has hit the summer doldrum in a column in the Washington Post. Robinson believes nothing is going to happen with Congress on the budget or immigration reform because of gridlock or Republican tantrums and the President's approval will continue to decline because nothing is getting done.
++Rep. King ,who got the House to pass a resolution for the deportation of the DREAM KIDs, blasted them again this week as being a bunch of drug smugglers. While the House leadership had to criticize him for this,the House Republicans are between a rock and a hard place on immigration reform. If Boehner caved and let the Hastert Law go by the boards, the House would pass the Senate bill with Democratic votes. But then again, he would lose his job. Paul Ryan, trying to save the party from catastrophe, claims now that the House will vote for immigration reform in October. He promises there would be a path to citizenship. Evangelicals will be meeting this week with the Republicans to explain why the immigration system needs to be fixed.
++House Republicans have been given little educational packets for their recess to argue to their constituents they are fighting Washington. They are also holding town meetings on the Emergency in Healthcare, which I guess means you might get some. The Koch brothers are handing out Obamacare cards so that college students may burn them--of course, while their parents carry them on their health insurance. Fall is looking to be quite nasty for Congress.
++Christie's Auction house has arrived in Detroit to appraise the collection at the Detroit Art Museum. New York art collectors are horrified by the prospect of over 660,000 items being sold off because they claim it will destroy the global art market.
++The privately owned Detroit Windsor tunnel has filed for bankruptcy.
++The Detroit Emergency City Manager has floated a $400 million bond so the Red Wings will have a new arena.
++Pennsylvania under its free market governor has sunk to 46th place in job creation. The state's attorney general will not enforce the law against same sex marriage and the first five licenses were issued in a town north of Philadelphia.
++Federal judges have stopped the strict anti-abortion laws throughout the country on the basis that they are so restrictive as to prohibit access in the states.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Deatheaters Swarm D.C.
With President Obama plunging to 50% in the polls and Congress soaring to 8%, the table is being set for the entrance of the most extreme right House in our history. The previous Republican House member had a 92% Conservative Union rating, now you must exceed 95% of be considered a RINO (Republican In Name Only). This past week teabaggers made it clear that former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen was not fit to run because he was "too moderate" at a 92% rating.
Flying back from Hawaii, President Obama displayed his remarkable cool in telling a pesky news corps that Republicans will be playing to their base for the next couple months before they settle down and actually get serious. It's a good lesson to everyone who is panicking to try and maintain some calm as the insanity hits the fan.
The Signpost Up Ahead says you are about to enter "The Twilight Zone". Just a sample of the attitudes of congresscritters awaiting the President. 53% of all Republicans believe there is no evidence the earth is warming. Over 70% of the tea party believe this. Of the 38% who still believe in global warming, only 16% believe humans have anything to do with it. In 2007 (you read that right), over 62% of Republicans said that solid evidence existed for global warming. In today's GOP, over 50% are creationists and do not believe in the science of evolution.
FYI-- Believe or not the idea of Cap and Trade was originally a Republican idea as was regulating carbon emissions. This coming House wants to neutralize the EPA's efforts to regulate carbom emissions.
The new non-rationality will be on full display this week. Incoming freshmen will be lectured about the Constitution by Fat Tony Scalia. Tony just said that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee that women have any constitutional rights against discrimination. The American Taliban will be proud. Tomorrow the House will read the full constitution, if John Boehner doesn't confuse it with the Declaration of Independence. I think it will come as a shock because it won't be the Articles of Confederation.
Just an aside--Don't you find it odd the America's leading guru on Constitutional Originalism is a member of the Catholic secret society "Opus Dei"? Do you think maybe this clouds Scalia's thinking?
If we're lucky this year, the Christian fundamentalists will turn out to be right--that the world is going to end on May 21,2011. The sad thing is that there is virtually no biblical basis for rapture--either the word or concept. All these folks will be left all alone.
Remember how Republicans spent the last two years complaining about the thousands of pages of laws the Democrats passed. They've gone to the Ernest Hemingway School of Legal Drafting. On the 12th, they will introduce two, 2-page bills to repeal all of healthcare. See if you run on dismantling all of government, you don't need alot of words.
What is fantastic about this move--not only it's direct slap at the President before his State of the Union Address--is how the new Republicans suspended all rules about accounting for the repeal's cost. According to the CBO, which was used as a hammer against the Democrats for the last two years,repeal would add $143 billion to the deficit through 2019 and over a $1 trillion during the life of the bill. The Republican leadership waived any mention of the cost.
In future discussions of any bills, they have moved to accept figures from other sources than the CBO. So be prepared to hear the authoritative numbers from the Heritage Foundation and the Petroleum Institute in the future.
The Democrats, who are more liberal now than before with the defeat of all the Blue Dogs, will be introducing amendments to the bill trying to put Republicans on record as against the most popular aspects of the reform--like insuring adult children on a parent's account until 26 , eliminating exclusion of prior conditions, and eliminating the lifetime caps for coverage. The Democrats failed the first time around to focus on these aspects of the bill and instead opposition was really based on the sausage-making process of the legislation.
Democrats are being a little smug because this repeal will not pass the Senate or the president's desk. But the Republicans want to establish the optics that government is crooked and can not work to solve problems. They do not care about governing but campaigning. There is no intention to have any Republicans do any heavy lifting. They just don't care. They are not that into you--sorry.
The new House will zero in on the money being spent to enforce the Food Safety Bill, which the last time I looked passed the Senate with 75 votes. The first reform of our food safety system since the Great Depression was thought to be way overdue.
Darrell ("Grand Theft Auto") Issa hit all the talk shows about how President Obama is the most corrupt President in history. Wow, that was quick--less than two years and he made another record. Issa, who has a record of stealing cars during his wayward youth, plans to investigate the $1 trillion "walking around money" Obama received with the TARP funds, which he forgot was passed during George W. Bush, something that ignited the Tea Party Movement. He has to keep the false narrative alive. Watch for more racial dogwhistles this year--"walking around money" being one of them.
Unfortunately,by the time Issa starts on TARP all the money will have been paid back to the Treasury. But, never fear, Issa wants to examine the vast $1 trillion waste of the stimulus package. Only it was about $800 billion--over half of it was the largest middle class tax break in history. And the Administration has a website where you can follow the stimulus money. Undoubtedly, there will be a couple of wasteful projects, which will be highlighted 24/7 on Fox News. Issa claims the stimulus did not create or save any jobs. He says that an example of waste was that it took $175,000 to create a teacher's job. So Obama's great act of corruption so far is hiring teachers--who are target number 2 this year.
Issa wants to investigate why Eric Holder ("Black man") hasn't arrested Julien Assange yet as a terrorist. What's fascinating to me is to see the conservative movement drop all pretense of law. Maybe Julien Assange hasn't been arrested yet because no one can figure out what law he broke.
Issa also wants to investigate waste in Afghanistan. One should welcome this and urge him to broaden his investigation into the years of waste in Iraq. Issa claims he wants to examine the Inspector Generals of the executive branch and claims he can save $250 billion a year in fraud alone. All he has to do is look across the Potomac at the Pentagon and he'll make his quota. But that's not going to happen.
Issa also invited all the corporate lobbyists in to list all the regulations they want eliminated. This includes the pharma companies, banks, oil and gas and banks.
The Republicans are not playing anymore. Instead of political operatives,the House leadership is hiring corporate lobbyists with financial experience as chief aides. They have also saddled the new Tea Party members with chiefs of staff who were prominent lobbyists on "K" street.
Corporate romancing is also being done at the Presidential level. President Obama is thinking of hiring MorganStanley's Vice President William Daley as his chief of staff. Before the congressional recess, President Obama met with leading CEO to try and persuade them to invest some of their $1.75 trillion in creating jobs in America. The counter offer seems to be American corporations aiming for a tax holiday for the additional $1.5 trillion in profits that they have squirreled away in tax havens.
As our corporations experience a V-shaped recovery, compared to the L-shaped recvery for the rest of us,I've noticed a new corporate refrain. We hear about "our international corporations" such as Dubai-based Halliburton and other American firms who have relocated overseas. The CEO of Chevron had the chutzpah the other day to talk about a $5 gallon of gas this year because "The Obama Administration is not fulfilling America's role to increase the global supply of oil." He was referring to the Obama Administration's ban on offshore drilling in light of the BP disaster. In other words, Drill Baby, Drill is now being couched as American doing its part for the well-being of planet earth. Quite clever, really.
Rep. Steve King, christianist from Iowa, has been made the chairman of the Immigration Committee. This is too rich since King only likes white people. King has been chatting up the possibility of investigating the payments to black farmers as "reparations", the New Panther Party, and ACORN's role in electing President Obama. Here he seems to crossing wires with other Republicans, who share his concerns and want to grill Eric Holder on these and why he's not enforcing the Voting Act for white people. I'm not making this up.
The other Rep. King from New York wants to grill Eric Holder on his trials of terrorists and why Holder is lax on terrorism or whatever crimes the attorney-general is committing.
I suggest the new House Republicans get Dan Burton back shooting at watermelons so he can prove Barack Hussein Obama really did kill Vin Foster.
Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institute scholar and black libertarian, shows how depraved people on the right--particularly once respected thinkers--have become in their thinking and writing. He claims President Obama hates America, taking his cues from Distort D'Newsa, and says that President Obama wants Sasha and Malia to grow up under Sharia Law. We are talking here about a man who has had many moments of insights and a prolific publishing career. Thomas Sowell used to be considered a nerd and a grind. Now he sounds like Glenn Beck.
Meanwhile I agree with Glenn Beck. America can not survive if it doesn't make fundamental changes. And the Pentagon budget should be cut in half. He is hyping his shows for the year, which indicate to me that he has had many GOP operatives writing his talking points to set the rhetorical tone for this year's attack on the President, his family and the rest of America. Apparently,Beck is having ratings problems with his radio show and now has been dropped from the New York market.
If you haven't see Elia Kazan "Face in the Crowd" with Andy Griffith as Lonesome Roads, make a New Year's Resolution to see it. The suggestion by Keith Olbermann that Beck is Lonesome is probably Keith's greatest contribution to our political understanding in many a year.
Elizabeth Warren is chugging along with the creation of the Consumer Protection Agency and has enlisted the help of Mrs. Petraeus, wife of General,to work on behalf of the military people who get ripped off by scam artists and car salesmen. The House is slated to go after the Consumer Protection Agency too. I perverse want to see them pull a Joe McCarthy on Elizabeth Warren, America's sweetheart. The contrast of thuggish men grilling her at a Congressional Hearing would sink the Republicans.
By the way has any one seen the hair coloring of Republicans lately. Jim DeMint has become a red-head, Darryl Issa has adopted the dark black Reagan look and then , of course Lindsey Graham wears too much make-up. But something has happened since eletion in the cosmetics department.
Flying back from Hawaii, President Obama displayed his remarkable cool in telling a pesky news corps that Republicans will be playing to their base for the next couple months before they settle down and actually get serious. It's a good lesson to everyone who is panicking to try and maintain some calm as the insanity hits the fan.
The Signpost Up Ahead says you are about to enter "The Twilight Zone". Just a sample of the attitudes of congresscritters awaiting the President. 53% of all Republicans believe there is no evidence the earth is warming. Over 70% of the tea party believe this. Of the 38% who still believe in global warming, only 16% believe humans have anything to do with it. In 2007 (you read that right), over 62% of Republicans said that solid evidence existed for global warming. In today's GOP, over 50% are creationists and do not believe in the science of evolution.
FYI-- Believe or not the idea of Cap and Trade was originally a Republican idea as was regulating carbon emissions. This coming House wants to neutralize the EPA's efforts to regulate carbom emissions.
The new non-rationality will be on full display this week. Incoming freshmen will be lectured about the Constitution by Fat Tony Scalia. Tony just said that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee that women have any constitutional rights against discrimination. The American Taliban will be proud. Tomorrow the House will read the full constitution, if John Boehner doesn't confuse it with the Declaration of Independence. I think it will come as a shock because it won't be the Articles of Confederation.
Just an aside--Don't you find it odd the America's leading guru on Constitutional Originalism is a member of the Catholic secret society "Opus Dei"? Do you think maybe this clouds Scalia's thinking?
If we're lucky this year, the Christian fundamentalists will turn out to be right--that the world is going to end on May 21,2011. The sad thing is that there is virtually no biblical basis for rapture--either the word or concept. All these folks will be left all alone.
Remember how Republicans spent the last two years complaining about the thousands of pages of laws the Democrats passed. They've gone to the Ernest Hemingway School of Legal Drafting. On the 12th, they will introduce two, 2-page bills to repeal all of healthcare. See if you run on dismantling all of government, you don't need alot of words.
What is fantastic about this move--not only it's direct slap at the President before his State of the Union Address--is how the new Republicans suspended all rules about accounting for the repeal's cost. According to the CBO, which was used as a hammer against the Democrats for the last two years,repeal would add $143 billion to the deficit through 2019 and over a $1 trillion during the life of the bill. The Republican leadership waived any mention of the cost.
In future discussions of any bills, they have moved to accept figures from other sources than the CBO. So be prepared to hear the authoritative numbers from the Heritage Foundation and the Petroleum Institute in the future.
The Democrats, who are more liberal now than before with the defeat of all the Blue Dogs, will be introducing amendments to the bill trying to put Republicans on record as against the most popular aspects of the reform--like insuring adult children on a parent's account until 26 , eliminating exclusion of prior conditions, and eliminating the lifetime caps for coverage. The Democrats failed the first time around to focus on these aspects of the bill and instead opposition was really based on the sausage-making process of the legislation.
Democrats are being a little smug because this repeal will not pass the Senate or the president's desk. But the Republicans want to establish the optics that government is crooked and can not work to solve problems. They do not care about governing but campaigning. There is no intention to have any Republicans do any heavy lifting. They just don't care. They are not that into you--sorry.
The new House will zero in on the money being spent to enforce the Food Safety Bill, which the last time I looked passed the Senate with 75 votes. The first reform of our food safety system since the Great Depression was thought to be way overdue.
Darrell ("Grand Theft Auto") Issa hit all the talk shows about how President Obama is the most corrupt President in history. Wow, that was quick--less than two years and he made another record. Issa, who has a record of stealing cars during his wayward youth, plans to investigate the $1 trillion "walking around money" Obama received with the TARP funds, which he forgot was passed during George W. Bush, something that ignited the Tea Party Movement. He has to keep the false narrative alive. Watch for more racial dogwhistles this year--"walking around money" being one of them.
Unfortunately,by the time Issa starts on TARP all the money will have been paid back to the Treasury. But, never fear, Issa wants to examine the vast $1 trillion waste of the stimulus package. Only it was about $800 billion--over half of it was the largest middle class tax break in history. And the Administration has a website where you can follow the stimulus money. Undoubtedly, there will be a couple of wasteful projects, which will be highlighted 24/7 on Fox News. Issa claims the stimulus did not create or save any jobs. He says that an example of waste was that it took $175,000 to create a teacher's job. So Obama's great act of corruption so far is hiring teachers--who are target number 2 this year.
Issa wants to investigate why Eric Holder ("Black man") hasn't arrested Julien Assange yet as a terrorist. What's fascinating to me is to see the conservative movement drop all pretense of law. Maybe Julien Assange hasn't been arrested yet because no one can figure out what law he broke.
Issa also wants to investigate waste in Afghanistan. One should welcome this and urge him to broaden his investigation into the years of waste in Iraq. Issa claims he wants to examine the Inspector Generals of the executive branch and claims he can save $250 billion a year in fraud alone. All he has to do is look across the Potomac at the Pentagon and he'll make his quota. But that's not going to happen.
Issa also invited all the corporate lobbyists in to list all the regulations they want eliminated. This includes the pharma companies, banks, oil and gas and banks.
The Republicans are not playing anymore. Instead of political operatives,the House leadership is hiring corporate lobbyists with financial experience as chief aides. They have also saddled the new Tea Party members with chiefs of staff who were prominent lobbyists on "K" street.
Corporate romancing is also being done at the Presidential level. President Obama is thinking of hiring MorganStanley's Vice President William Daley as his chief of staff. Before the congressional recess, President Obama met with leading CEO to try and persuade them to invest some of their $1.75 trillion in creating jobs in America. The counter offer seems to be American corporations aiming for a tax holiday for the additional $1.5 trillion in profits that they have squirreled away in tax havens.
As our corporations experience a V-shaped recovery, compared to the L-shaped recvery for the rest of us,I've noticed a new corporate refrain. We hear about "our international corporations" such as Dubai-based Halliburton and other American firms who have relocated overseas. The CEO of Chevron had the chutzpah the other day to talk about a $5 gallon of gas this year because "The Obama Administration is not fulfilling America's role to increase the global supply of oil." He was referring to the Obama Administration's ban on offshore drilling in light of the BP disaster. In other words, Drill Baby, Drill is now being couched as American doing its part for the well-being of planet earth. Quite clever, really.
Rep. Steve King, christianist from Iowa, has been made the chairman of the Immigration Committee. This is too rich since King only likes white people. King has been chatting up the possibility of investigating the payments to black farmers as "reparations", the New Panther Party, and ACORN's role in electing President Obama. Here he seems to crossing wires with other Republicans, who share his concerns and want to grill Eric Holder on these and why he's not enforcing the Voting Act for white people. I'm not making this up.
The other Rep. King from New York wants to grill Eric Holder on his trials of terrorists and why Holder is lax on terrorism or whatever crimes the attorney-general is committing.
I suggest the new House Republicans get Dan Burton back shooting at watermelons so he can prove Barack Hussein Obama really did kill Vin Foster.
Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institute scholar and black libertarian, shows how depraved people on the right--particularly once respected thinkers--have become in their thinking and writing. He claims President Obama hates America, taking his cues from Distort D'Newsa, and says that President Obama wants Sasha and Malia to grow up under Sharia Law. We are talking here about a man who has had many moments of insights and a prolific publishing career. Thomas Sowell used to be considered a nerd and a grind. Now he sounds like Glenn Beck.
Meanwhile I agree with Glenn Beck. America can not survive if it doesn't make fundamental changes. And the Pentagon budget should be cut in half. He is hyping his shows for the year, which indicate to me that he has had many GOP operatives writing his talking points to set the rhetorical tone for this year's attack on the President, his family and the rest of America. Apparently,Beck is having ratings problems with his radio show and now has been dropped from the New York market.
If you haven't see Elia Kazan "Face in the Crowd" with Andy Griffith as Lonesome Roads, make a New Year's Resolution to see it. The suggestion by Keith Olbermann that Beck is Lonesome is probably Keith's greatest contribution to our political understanding in many a year.
Elizabeth Warren is chugging along with the creation of the Consumer Protection Agency and has enlisted the help of Mrs. Petraeus, wife of General,to work on behalf of the military people who get ripped off by scam artists and car salesmen. The House is slated to go after the Consumer Protection Agency too. I perverse want to see them pull a Joe McCarthy on Elizabeth Warren, America's sweetheart. The contrast of thuggish men grilling her at a Congressional Hearing would sink the Republicans.
By the way has any one seen the hair coloring of Republicans lately. Jim DeMint has become a red-head, Darryl Issa has adopted the dark black Reagan look and then , of course Lindsey Graham wears too much make-up. But something has happened since eletion in the cosmetics department.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Iced Harrar at the Last Manatee Cafe
The hits keep coming. Tan Man Boehner claims his miscues with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review were really part of the strategy to win back the House. I'm sure he didn't figure on fellow Republicans accusing him of being a lazy drunk and recalling his days partying at The Tunnel in Manhattan during the Republican Convention. I think he underestimates the fact that Cantor will pull a coup de grace on him if the GOP regains the House. For some reason, Boehner actually thinks it's a great idea to pick a fight with President Obama like...say, Newt Gingrich stopping the Government during Clinton.
Miichael is the man of Steele. After calling Afghanistan "Obama's War" and saying we shouldn't be there, little Billy Kristol called for his resignation and even Liz Cheney. Having Liz Cheney call for someone's resignation is like Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan making a political statement. President Obama's favorite Republican, Lindsey Graham criticized Steele statement and John McCain openly asked Steele to consider whether he was up to leading. He's staying because Republicans can't afford mayhem four months out from the election.
Sharon Angle, the teajihadist candidate in Nevada, has sent Harry Byrd a "cease and desist" letter demanding he not refer to her past political positions because they are insane.
Meg Whitman has gone over the $100 million mark in the California election and Jerry Brown hasn't spent anything. But Democrats are worrying about Brown, who still leads by 3-4 points, because he is not mobilizing the party yet. They worry that Whitman will continue to up the ante and blow by Brown in the end. Boxer still leads Fiorina. That's generally good news because Boxer always polls lower than her eventual tally.
PPP has a poll out today that shows the Jack Conway-Rand Paul race as dead even. That's great news for Conway because over 40% of the voters don't have a clue as to who he is.
PPP has another poll that shows Elaine Marshall only 6 behind Burr in the Senate race. That's good news for her. Republicans are still wondering what Burr does for a living. Marshall is banging him for filibustering the jobs and unemployment bill. This seems to be working. Wisconsin's Senator Feingold appears to be in a tight race against teajihadist Tim Johnson, a mega-millionaire. He's running ads touting his support from right-wing Republican groups, claiming he is a fiscal conservative.
The Democratic Party seems to have adopted Nate Silver's regressive logarithms in projecting the political races this year. At this stage, they claim they will hold the House by only 6 seats and will only lose 4 in the Senate. Republicans aim to pick up considerably more Governor's seats. Why I don't discount this projection is that Mark Plotkin has reached a very similar conclusion about the House with the Democrats holding it by eight. Charlie Cook still says a Republican hurricane is coming.
No surprise, Gallup has a poll of teabaggers that showed 79% were Republicans and they represented the extremes of the party if anyone else is left.
26% of Americans can't name the country from whom we gained our independence. That's roughly the same percentage as those who have favorable opinions of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin.
Prophetess Janet Porter has been continuing the Religious Right's refrain that the BP oil disaster is the judgment of God on Obama's abandonment of Israel. I guess God is touchy. But no matter, Bibi and President Obama sat down today and said everything is hunky-dory between the United States and Israel. Pundits said that this was vital for the Democrats' chances in the mid-terms because Republicans have been making hay on Obama dissing Israel, our most dependable ally in the Middle East. Bibi has slightly adjusted the Gaza embargo and is prosecuting 3 soldiers for gunning down Palestinians.
Prior to this meeting, AIPAC flooded the town with visiting Israeli military experts, who had meetings with everyone relevant to the issues at hand. One of the themes was to trash Turkey, Israel's longest standing ally in the Middle East.
Dominionist churches are seeking financial damages from BP for loss of revenues. The Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's church, claims their collection plates are hurting because of the devastation to local Gulf families.
Eric Holder is finally suing the state of Arizona to prevent its immigration law going into effect by the end of this month. The federal government is asking for an injunction to stop it. John McCain fighting for his life in the primary there, said that he thinks all illegals should be deported to where they came from. This from the champion of immigration reform. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, weighed in with an op-ed for immigration reform, pointing out what solid citizens Latinos became. Other bloggers have noted that the United States really has never wanted to do anything about our porous borders because illegal immigrants are the source of cheaper labor for our businesses and agriculture.
Fareed Zakaria gave a devastating critique of our Afghanistan policy. He singled out Leon Panetta's opinion that there are only 50-100 Al Qaeda members left in the country. General Petraeus testified there were maybe double digits with another 300+ in Pakistan. Zakaria mentioned that over $1 billion a year is leaving the country as far as we know from their own customs declarations. So, why are we fighting a major war there?
No problem. There exists a new synergy of terrorist groups ,which have formed a "fusion" that represents a greater threat to the United States than even Al Qaeda during 9-11. I just get the feeling that we are creating an endless feedback of terrorist threats the longer we stay.
Jolting Joe Biden travelled to Iraq to say everything is on track for us to leave in August, even though they are still at a stalemate over forming a new government.
Mitt Romney appeared today to write an op-ed piece in the Washington Post condemning the New Start Treaty. While it was detailed to demonstrate his alleged knowledge, it was wildly wrong on a number of points, particularly about missile defense systems and the treaty's applicability to the situations in Iran and North Korea. Mitt is only visiting the territory of his Heritage Foundation speech where he called for an increase in the Defense Budget, which only equals the defense spending of all the entire earth combined. Mitt argued we were threatened by military buildups in China, Russia and conflict in the Middle East. The reason the Chinese budget was lower was because they don't have to pay their soldiers much. Of course, it really doesn't matter that we are in a Depression and that somehow the Republicans have become deficit hawks to stop Democratic social programs.
A point about Chinese military spending. While the G-20 believe that China can carry the global economy, it's growing clearer that they deeply fear the prospects of instability. Their military and their policies on internet censorship show there is more concern there than meets the eye. Last year, the country experienced several thousand mass rallies protesting all sorts of issues. Currently, we have been learning about labor strikes in plants of overseas companies.
Finally, China Mieville's Kraken is out and is fantastic both literally and metaphorically. London is beseiged by an "epidemic of eschatologies" and the special branch of their police that have to deal with cults must find whether the end-time is really occurring. To flush all the dissident Gods out, they stage a simultaneous apocalypse for two competing sects. Each has their apocalypse on the same date. This spells trouble. They don't want to be upstaged. We are treated to Chaos Nazis, Jesus Buddhists, who are actually a quite violent syncretistic religion, and worshippers of a Giant Squid. One of the investigators is a fundamentalist Christian who has lost his faith because of evolution. The worshippers of the Great Flood play a key role in persuading the Sea to intervene for justice. As always, Mieville creates a fantastic London as he did in City and City.
Miichael is the man of Steele. After calling Afghanistan "Obama's War" and saying we shouldn't be there, little Billy Kristol called for his resignation and even Liz Cheney. Having Liz Cheney call for someone's resignation is like Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan making a political statement. President Obama's favorite Republican, Lindsey Graham criticized Steele statement and John McCain openly asked Steele to consider whether he was up to leading. He's staying because Republicans can't afford mayhem four months out from the election.
Sharon Angle, the teajihadist candidate in Nevada, has sent Harry Byrd a "cease and desist" letter demanding he not refer to her past political positions because they are insane.
Meg Whitman has gone over the $100 million mark in the California election and Jerry Brown hasn't spent anything. But Democrats are worrying about Brown, who still leads by 3-4 points, because he is not mobilizing the party yet. They worry that Whitman will continue to up the ante and blow by Brown in the end. Boxer still leads Fiorina. That's generally good news because Boxer always polls lower than her eventual tally.
PPP has a poll out today that shows the Jack Conway-Rand Paul race as dead even. That's great news for Conway because over 40% of the voters don't have a clue as to who he is.
PPP has another poll that shows Elaine Marshall only 6 behind Burr in the Senate race. That's good news for her. Republicans are still wondering what Burr does for a living. Marshall is banging him for filibustering the jobs and unemployment bill. This seems to be working. Wisconsin's Senator Feingold appears to be in a tight race against teajihadist Tim Johnson, a mega-millionaire. He's running ads touting his support from right-wing Republican groups, claiming he is a fiscal conservative.
The Democratic Party seems to have adopted Nate Silver's regressive logarithms in projecting the political races this year. At this stage, they claim they will hold the House by only 6 seats and will only lose 4 in the Senate. Republicans aim to pick up considerably more Governor's seats. Why I don't discount this projection is that Mark Plotkin has reached a very similar conclusion about the House with the Democrats holding it by eight. Charlie Cook still says a Republican hurricane is coming.
No surprise, Gallup has a poll of teabaggers that showed 79% were Republicans and they represented the extremes of the party if anyone else is left.
26% of Americans can't name the country from whom we gained our independence. That's roughly the same percentage as those who have favorable opinions of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin.
Prophetess Janet Porter has been continuing the Religious Right's refrain that the BP oil disaster is the judgment of God on Obama's abandonment of Israel. I guess God is touchy. But no matter, Bibi and President Obama sat down today and said everything is hunky-dory between the United States and Israel. Pundits said that this was vital for the Democrats' chances in the mid-terms because Republicans have been making hay on Obama dissing Israel, our most dependable ally in the Middle East. Bibi has slightly adjusted the Gaza embargo and is prosecuting 3 soldiers for gunning down Palestinians.
Prior to this meeting, AIPAC flooded the town with visiting Israeli military experts, who had meetings with everyone relevant to the issues at hand. One of the themes was to trash Turkey, Israel's longest standing ally in the Middle East.
Dominionist churches are seeking financial damages from BP for loss of revenues. The Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's church, claims their collection plates are hurting because of the devastation to local Gulf families.
Eric Holder is finally suing the state of Arizona to prevent its immigration law going into effect by the end of this month. The federal government is asking for an injunction to stop it. John McCain fighting for his life in the primary there, said that he thinks all illegals should be deported to where they came from. This from the champion of immigration reform. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, weighed in with an op-ed for immigration reform, pointing out what solid citizens Latinos became. Other bloggers have noted that the United States really has never wanted to do anything about our porous borders because illegal immigrants are the source of cheaper labor for our businesses and agriculture.
Fareed Zakaria gave a devastating critique of our Afghanistan policy. He singled out Leon Panetta's opinion that there are only 50-100 Al Qaeda members left in the country. General Petraeus testified there were maybe double digits with another 300+ in Pakistan. Zakaria mentioned that over $1 billion a year is leaving the country as far as we know from their own customs declarations. So, why are we fighting a major war there?
No problem. There exists a new synergy of terrorist groups ,which have formed a "fusion" that represents a greater threat to the United States than even Al Qaeda during 9-11. I just get the feeling that we are creating an endless feedback of terrorist threats the longer we stay.
Jolting Joe Biden travelled to Iraq to say everything is on track for us to leave in August, even though they are still at a stalemate over forming a new government.
Mitt Romney appeared today to write an op-ed piece in the Washington Post condemning the New Start Treaty. While it was detailed to demonstrate his alleged knowledge, it was wildly wrong on a number of points, particularly about missile defense systems and the treaty's applicability to the situations in Iran and North Korea. Mitt is only visiting the territory of his Heritage Foundation speech where he called for an increase in the Defense Budget, which only equals the defense spending of all the entire earth combined. Mitt argued we were threatened by military buildups in China, Russia and conflict in the Middle East. The reason the Chinese budget was lower was because they don't have to pay their soldiers much. Of course, it really doesn't matter that we are in a Depression and that somehow the Republicans have become deficit hawks to stop Democratic social programs.
A point about Chinese military spending. While the G-20 believe that China can carry the global economy, it's growing clearer that they deeply fear the prospects of instability. Their military and their policies on internet censorship show there is more concern there than meets the eye. Last year, the country experienced several thousand mass rallies protesting all sorts of issues. Currently, we have been learning about labor strikes in plants of overseas companies.
Finally, China Mieville's Kraken is out and is fantastic both literally and metaphorically. London is beseiged by an "epidemic of eschatologies" and the special branch of their police that have to deal with cults must find whether the end-time is really occurring. To flush all the dissident Gods out, they stage a simultaneous apocalypse for two competing sects. Each has their apocalypse on the same date. This spells trouble. They don't want to be upstaged. We are treated to Chaos Nazis, Jesus Buddhists, who are actually a quite violent syncretistic religion, and worshippers of a Giant Squid. One of the investigators is a fundamentalist Christian who has lost his faith because of evolution. The worshippers of the Great Flood play a key role in persuading the Sea to intervene for justice. As always, Mieville creates a fantastic London as he did in City and City.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Under Great White Northern Lights
Wow. Halfway through The White Stripes new album--a live set of songs played during their July-August 2007 tour of Canada. I've always said Jack White is insane--and musically gifted. The first eight cuts make me think the next step for him is to have the Melvins as his backup band. A run-through of his peculiar genius--and it is peculiar--is the album Icky Thump. But this new one magnifies his sound to a nice deafening level. Probably you shouldn't tell Glenn Beck about Jack White. Let him take another ten years to catch up.
Eric Holder is fighting back against his critics. Finally, someone in officialdom said," We aren't going to capture Bin Laden." He going to be killed or killed by his colleagues to avoid capture."We'll be reading Miranda rights to a corpse." Since the Clinton Administration, there has been this very strange conceit we want to or will capture Bin Laden. Clinton spent millions on a design for an ergonomic chair that would encase Bin Laden for a flight back to the United States. The CIA used to house it. Holder further lectured the House subcommittee just how the Administration is fighting terrorism and that law enforcement is secondary to killing them. I thought he got the better of the Republicans who sounded confused by hearing about the real policy , not the one their staff imagined for them.
J Street, the organization of moderate and liberal Jews for the defense of Israel, is offering a petition to be signed and sent to Congress supporting the Obama Administration and its calls on Israel to enter into a peace process. AIPAC has virtually declared war on J Street and sought to prevent a meeting between them and the Israeli ambassador. Fights have already broken out in Jerusalem over the Levittown idea. J Street's simple point is that the security of Israel can not be secured by the endless building of settlements and ignoring the need for entering into peace negotiations with the Palestinians. As I wrote before, Bibi has lit an exploding cigar and his actions since the rebuff of Joe Biden have not soothed things.
I received a strange e-mail from Organizing for America. It asked me to contact "wavering Republicans on healthcare." Like whom? The House with the exception of Cao is a unanimous block against the bill and in the Senate, we will have to wait to see if anyone believes they are missing an historic moment. The Medicare vote in the 1960s saw a few stragglers at the end.
The White House released a powerful video from yesterday's trip to Ohio by Barack Obama urging for passage of the bill. Watching it, I realized this really is about his mother and the impact of his mother's cancer on him. Throughout the campaign, he would talk about her on the phone to the insurance company while dying of cancer. And he frequently said that his mistake was writing a book about his father and not his mother. If that is the experience that motivates him, go for it. That's why I never understand the criticism of Barack Obama that he doesn't understand the experiences of real America. On the contrary, he has lived them much more than Peggy Noonan, who is the one talking head who keeps raising this.
The Republicans held a press conference denouncing Obama for "nationalizing student loans". This is reference to the Administration's plan to give student loans through the government and not through private banks. All he is doing is cutting out the banks, who got the money from the government in the first place. The idea is to lower the interest rates and eliminate the overhead costs. I still don't get how you can make hay out of this one.
The great state of Oklahoma has decided unilaterally to ignore the new Hate Crimes Law ,which covers gays and lesbians. This is the same state who took the President's picture down from the legislature. It's also the same state which sends Jim Imhofe to the Senate so he can declare climate change a hoax.
As Bob Dylan sang, The Night is falling from the Sky and the teabaggers have wrapped it up. Just to make them feel good, two million came out in force today. Actually, it was 300ish, according to the DNC. Of that over half were staffers from the Republican congressmen, who spoke to the throng, about another half from nearby conservative think-tanks and the remaining, actual people who drove into Washington. But they did get media coverage. I never saw the coverage of Howard Dean's first rally of over 10,000 for healthcare or Dean's rally/protest last week, which had about 2,000 marching against the insurance companies.
Again we had the Death Panel lies. All the media nonsense on the procedural process and the Democrats not wanting to vote on the bill was all lies, concocted by the Republicans, who actually did this over eight years. When the dust settles and the ceiling doesn't cave in,will the people who lied about this bill be held accountable? Will people who lean Republican just shrug their shoulders and claim the GOP had to do these things to stop the bill and to get the media's attention or will some voters understand you can't trust these people with any real authority?
President Obama made it clear today that any Democrat who opposes healthcare reform will not get funding from the party and he won't campaign for them. The last time a President did this was Ronald Reagan on his tax cuts. He told Republicans the same thing. Hopefully, this time it works again.
Bart Stupak is camping out at Fox News. He's complaining that the House leadership no longer consults with him. Fox, which enables Stupak's lies about the 12 votes he controls, asked him why. He says they are waiting to the end of the process. He did admit they are getting his colleagues separately.
Besides Lawrence O'Donnell, who continues his one-man bummer campaign, I also nominate "fake progressive" Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who writes such nonsense about the bill. Today, she said she was doing whip counts with--tea party people. Both sides, luckily, concluded the house had the votes. But she is shameless. First her alliance with Grover Nordquist to kill the bill. Then her piece in Huffington Post about Obama's attacks on women who are defending "choice". Puh-Lease!
Michael Moore championed Dennis Kucinich as the only politician with courage to stand up for the right kind of health care. Terrific, that and a couple of bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Tonight, Howard Fineman claims that Dennis the Menace will vote for the bill. Dennis actually sent out a press release late this afternoon announcing he would declare his decision around 9am.
I am waiting word from Iraq about how far the fraud has gone in this election and whether the results will be honored. But Mookie Sadr is inching into third place. In some ways, that country deserves him.
General Petraeus ruined his Republican presidential prospects by testifying why it's time for openly gay people to be allowed to serve in the military.
This week there was a pretty disgusting episode where a woman Jene Newsome was thrown out of the National Guard because some cops saw her Iowa marriage license naming her female spouse through a window and contacted her base. Previously, she had been obeying the DADT policy. The ACLU is taking up her case.
NOM, the organization who campaigns against same-sex marriage, is now back in California. Their target now is the very staid, conservative Republican Tom Campbell, who is running for the GOP Senate nomination. You see Campbell is socially a libertarian and he wrote an article against Prop 8 in Reason magazine. So now he is the moral equivalent of Barbara Boxer. I always liked Campbell, even though he is ineffective and his economic philosophy is not suited to these dire times.
Yes, the Cleveland Clinic, who is treating Natoma Canfield, the heroine of Obama's speech, says she will not lose her house. So I think Tan Man Boehner should address the House that this fact alone means healthcare reform isn't necessary.
Eric Holder is fighting back against his critics. Finally, someone in officialdom said," We aren't going to capture Bin Laden." He going to be killed or killed by his colleagues to avoid capture."We'll be reading Miranda rights to a corpse." Since the Clinton Administration, there has been this very strange conceit we want to or will capture Bin Laden. Clinton spent millions on a design for an ergonomic chair that would encase Bin Laden for a flight back to the United States. The CIA used to house it. Holder further lectured the House subcommittee just how the Administration is fighting terrorism and that law enforcement is secondary to killing them. I thought he got the better of the Republicans who sounded confused by hearing about the real policy , not the one their staff imagined for them.
J Street, the organization of moderate and liberal Jews for the defense of Israel, is offering a petition to be signed and sent to Congress supporting the Obama Administration and its calls on Israel to enter into a peace process. AIPAC has virtually declared war on J Street and sought to prevent a meeting between them and the Israeli ambassador. Fights have already broken out in Jerusalem over the Levittown idea. J Street's simple point is that the security of Israel can not be secured by the endless building of settlements and ignoring the need for entering into peace negotiations with the Palestinians. As I wrote before, Bibi has lit an exploding cigar and his actions since the rebuff of Joe Biden have not soothed things.
I received a strange e-mail from Organizing for America. It asked me to contact "wavering Republicans on healthcare." Like whom? The House with the exception of Cao is a unanimous block against the bill and in the Senate, we will have to wait to see if anyone believes they are missing an historic moment. The Medicare vote in the 1960s saw a few stragglers at the end.
The White House released a powerful video from yesterday's trip to Ohio by Barack Obama urging for passage of the bill. Watching it, I realized this really is about his mother and the impact of his mother's cancer on him. Throughout the campaign, he would talk about her on the phone to the insurance company while dying of cancer. And he frequently said that his mistake was writing a book about his father and not his mother. If that is the experience that motivates him, go for it. That's why I never understand the criticism of Barack Obama that he doesn't understand the experiences of real America. On the contrary, he has lived them much more than Peggy Noonan, who is the one talking head who keeps raising this.
The Republicans held a press conference denouncing Obama for "nationalizing student loans". This is reference to the Administration's plan to give student loans through the government and not through private banks. All he is doing is cutting out the banks, who got the money from the government in the first place. The idea is to lower the interest rates and eliminate the overhead costs. I still don't get how you can make hay out of this one.
The great state of Oklahoma has decided unilaterally to ignore the new Hate Crimes Law ,which covers gays and lesbians. This is the same state who took the President's picture down from the legislature. It's also the same state which sends Jim Imhofe to the Senate so he can declare climate change a hoax.
As Bob Dylan sang, The Night is falling from the Sky and the teabaggers have wrapped it up. Just to make them feel good, two million came out in force today. Actually, it was 300ish, according to the DNC. Of that over half were staffers from the Republican congressmen, who spoke to the throng, about another half from nearby conservative think-tanks and the remaining, actual people who drove into Washington. But they did get media coverage. I never saw the coverage of Howard Dean's first rally of over 10,000 for healthcare or Dean's rally/protest last week, which had about 2,000 marching against the insurance companies.
Again we had the Death Panel lies. All the media nonsense on the procedural process and the Democrats not wanting to vote on the bill was all lies, concocted by the Republicans, who actually did this over eight years. When the dust settles and the ceiling doesn't cave in,will the people who lied about this bill be held accountable? Will people who lean Republican just shrug their shoulders and claim the GOP had to do these things to stop the bill and to get the media's attention or will some voters understand you can't trust these people with any real authority?
President Obama made it clear today that any Democrat who opposes healthcare reform will not get funding from the party and he won't campaign for them. The last time a President did this was Ronald Reagan on his tax cuts. He told Republicans the same thing. Hopefully, this time it works again.
Bart Stupak is camping out at Fox News. He's complaining that the House leadership no longer consults with him. Fox, which enables Stupak's lies about the 12 votes he controls, asked him why. He says they are waiting to the end of the process. He did admit they are getting his colleagues separately.
Besides Lawrence O'Donnell, who continues his one-man bummer campaign, I also nominate "fake progressive" Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who writes such nonsense about the bill. Today, she said she was doing whip counts with--tea party people. Both sides, luckily, concluded the house had the votes. But she is shameless. First her alliance with Grover Nordquist to kill the bill. Then her piece in Huffington Post about Obama's attacks on women who are defending "choice". Puh-Lease!
Michael Moore championed Dennis Kucinich as the only politician with courage to stand up for the right kind of health care. Terrific, that and a couple of bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Tonight, Howard Fineman claims that Dennis the Menace will vote for the bill. Dennis actually sent out a press release late this afternoon announcing he would declare his decision around 9am.
I am waiting word from Iraq about how far the fraud has gone in this election and whether the results will be honored. But Mookie Sadr is inching into third place. In some ways, that country deserves him.
General Petraeus ruined his Republican presidential prospects by testifying why it's time for openly gay people to be allowed to serve in the military.
This week there was a pretty disgusting episode where a woman Jene Newsome was thrown out of the National Guard because some cops saw her Iowa marriage license naming her female spouse through a window and contacted her base. Previously, she had been obeying the DADT policy. The ACLU is taking up her case.
NOM, the organization who campaigns against same-sex marriage, is now back in California. Their target now is the very staid, conservative Republican Tom Campbell, who is running for the GOP Senate nomination. You see Campbell is socially a libertarian and he wrote an article against Prop 8 in Reason magazine. So now he is the moral equivalent of Barbara Boxer. I always liked Campbell, even though he is ineffective and his economic philosophy is not suited to these dire times.
Yes, the Cleveland Clinic, who is treating Natoma Canfield, the heroine of Obama's speech, says she will not lose her house. So I think Tan Man Boehner should address the House that this fact alone means healthcare reform isn't necessary.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Back from Africa before Going Back
Mea culpa. Missed the New Jersey vote. Forgot the state usually voted in a governor of a party opposite that of the President. Gay marriage vote in Maine was a disappointment. Yet, 47% bodes well for the future. Underestimated the strength of the local Catholic Church and the effect of sermons on Sunday urging a yes vote. The Democrats picked up two seats in the by-election with upstate New York going Democrat for the first time since 1871. Despite closing vote margin, it's still Democratic.
New Gingrich plans a Contract with America, Part II, to nationalize the 2010 elections. Karl Rove warns Obama not to nationalize the 2010 elections as a referendum on the Addministration. Seems like the Republicans are already going down that road. Why not Democrats?
Eric Holder's announcement to try the 9-11 masterminds in New York City provoked the usual outcry from conservatives, worrying the accused might get off on a technicality. Could that technicality be torture, I wonder. Presidential aspirant Sarah Palin tweeted"Hang 'em High!" It's a little late for that. I happen to agree with the Administration's decision. It's nice to see the rule of law being asserted again after a two term hiatus. The New York federal attorneys have a 99% conviction rate on terrorism cases. I think it's worth the gamble.
While abroad the gruesome Fort Hood incident happened. The perpetrator has been indicted for over a dozen counts of homicide and is facing a death penalty. If the incident had been terrorism as conservatives maintain, he would be charged either before a military commission or be given over the federal authorities. Critics of the Administration conveniently neglected to mention that President Obama ordered an investigation into the killings once it happened and then today again ordered a further investigation. The mysterious Yemeni imam mentioned in the case turns out to be a native born American, who has the dubious distinction of being the Rush Limbaugh of jihadist internet. With the breakup of the 9/11 anniversary plot by the FBI, we may have crossed the corner into homegrown Islamic terrorists--joining our growing group of white supremacist and Christian terrorists.
While away, I missed Orly Taitz protest against Fox News. The video showed a hefty crowd of about 15 --give or take a few bystanders. The U.S. Attorney has been ordered to collect the $20,000 fine levied against Taitz. She suffered another blow when he case was turned down because the judge feared she had induced witnesses to commit perjury. An Indiana birther case was rejected and the judge went further than even I in asserting that being born on American soil you were native-born. The judge basically went so far as to dismiss the case, even if President Obama had no American parents. Pretty heavy stuff. In her television statements, Ms. Taitz reverted to the white supremacist version of the Constitution, claiming that the "original" intent of native-born was that someone must have two American parents. Not true. the Constitution left the definition up to Congress. Simply put --one of your parents had to be an American above the age of 14 and it didn't matter where you were born. Also, your parents can not sign away your citizenship as Ms. Taitz claims when Barack Obama's mother married an Indonesian. Do you believe an employee of USAID would give up her son's--let alone her own American citizenship in a country undergoing a civil war? The birthers are now suing each other over who are the most authentic.
The teabaggers are doing the same. The Tea Party Express and the Tea Party Patriots are warring against it other. I guess the are competing for the different corporate money behind each group. I got my mailing from Freedomworks, which boasted their Washington rally drew 750,000--which every reliable source has disputed. 50-75,000 if we're generous. Dick Armey in his fund-raising plea claims to be building a mass movement. How about 12 million strong for Obama's organization--that's a goal to aim at.
My 2009 Hero of Democracy award goes to David Plouffe for creating the first 21st century campaign and introducing the whole array of the digital revolution to electoral politics. His book Audacity to Win documents the whole saga of the historic Obama campaign. My question is whether such a campiagn can be waged when Obama is a sitting President. I tend to doubt it. It may well be a one off. I am convinced that Republicans have yet learned how Obama beat them in 2008. In no Republican accounts does the name Plouffe occur. It's all about Axelrod and the Chicago machine. They might want to read the book and learn something. Plouffe also restored the badly damaged reputation of campaign managers, who have been perceived as slightly lower than pond scum.
Meanwhile, John McCain's campaign manager Steven Schmidt is getting slaughtered by the rumors surrounding Sarah Palin's memoirs. Schmidt made several strategic errors in the race but he alone could not make up for McCain's inherent weakness on the economy. But that's not why he is taking heat. Sarah Palin claims he and the campaign stiffed her with the legal bills for her vetting, made her (at the point of a gun?) buy her expensive wardrobe, wanted her to go on a diet and cursed in front of her daughter. Any of this true? Who cares? It's great fodder for the tabloids.
Levi Johnston, the putative father of Bristol's baby, will appear full frontal in Playgirl, posing with a hockey stick. It seems conservatives are now getting the hang of American culture. Carrie Parjean, former Miss something and defender of family values and self-proclaimed friend of Sarah Palin, had to cave in her lawsuit against the beauty pageant organizers because it seems not only did she pose nude but she made --several--sex tapes for her then boyfriend complete with sex toys. While she claimed she did this when a teenager, her boyfriend claims she was 20. Instead of heading this off at the pass when the pageant lawyers asked her to withdraw the suit, she had to watch with her mother in the audience as the tape was shown at the trial. At this rate, she could become a full blown member of the Family, joining John Ensign and Tom Coburn.
When I decide what we should do in Afghanistan, I'll let you know. After reading every possible option, I'm convinced that Obama was right with "None of the above." Most troubling have been the investigative pieces done by the Nation and others about the level of corruption in the Afghan government and how we are paying off the Taliban not to attack our supply lines. On this Obama can't win for losing. But he is at least asking for the "off ramps".
While Obama is in Asia, I will be returning to Africa where the Chinese look like they are colonizing the place. This is going to become a social problem that will ignite local reaction like the days when Idi Amin reigned terror down on the Asian shopkeepers.
Mercenary Simon Mann was released from prison in Equatorial Guinea. On release he let loose on Mark Thatcher and Eli Kalil, the Lebanonese financier of the invasion plans. One curious question: "Why did President Obama ask for his release?" What other gems are left to be discovered from the Bush years? Stay tuned.
New Gingrich plans a Contract with America, Part II, to nationalize the 2010 elections. Karl Rove warns Obama not to nationalize the 2010 elections as a referendum on the Addministration. Seems like the Republicans are already going down that road. Why not Democrats?
Eric Holder's announcement to try the 9-11 masterminds in New York City provoked the usual outcry from conservatives, worrying the accused might get off on a technicality. Could that technicality be torture, I wonder. Presidential aspirant Sarah Palin tweeted"Hang 'em High!" It's a little late for that. I happen to agree with the Administration's decision. It's nice to see the rule of law being asserted again after a two term hiatus. The New York federal attorneys have a 99% conviction rate on terrorism cases. I think it's worth the gamble.
While abroad the gruesome Fort Hood incident happened. The perpetrator has been indicted for over a dozen counts of homicide and is facing a death penalty. If the incident had been terrorism as conservatives maintain, he would be charged either before a military commission or be given over the federal authorities. Critics of the Administration conveniently neglected to mention that President Obama ordered an investigation into the killings once it happened and then today again ordered a further investigation. The mysterious Yemeni imam mentioned in the case turns out to be a native born American, who has the dubious distinction of being the Rush Limbaugh of jihadist internet. With the breakup of the 9/11 anniversary plot by the FBI, we may have crossed the corner into homegrown Islamic terrorists--joining our growing group of white supremacist and Christian terrorists.
While away, I missed Orly Taitz protest against Fox News. The video showed a hefty crowd of about 15 --give or take a few bystanders. The U.S. Attorney has been ordered to collect the $20,000 fine levied against Taitz. She suffered another blow when he case was turned down because the judge feared she had induced witnesses to commit perjury. An Indiana birther case was rejected and the judge went further than even I in asserting that being born on American soil you were native-born. The judge basically went so far as to dismiss the case, even if President Obama had no American parents. Pretty heavy stuff. In her television statements, Ms. Taitz reverted to the white supremacist version of the Constitution, claiming that the "original" intent of native-born was that someone must have two American parents. Not true. the Constitution left the definition up to Congress. Simply put --one of your parents had to be an American above the age of 14 and it didn't matter where you were born. Also, your parents can not sign away your citizenship as Ms. Taitz claims when Barack Obama's mother married an Indonesian. Do you believe an employee of USAID would give up her son's--let alone her own American citizenship in a country undergoing a civil war? The birthers are now suing each other over who are the most authentic.
The teabaggers are doing the same. The Tea Party Express and the Tea Party Patriots are warring against it other. I guess the are competing for the different corporate money behind each group. I got my mailing from Freedomworks, which boasted their Washington rally drew 750,000--which every reliable source has disputed. 50-75,000 if we're generous. Dick Armey in his fund-raising plea claims to be building a mass movement. How about 12 million strong for Obama's organization--that's a goal to aim at.
My 2009 Hero of Democracy award goes to David Plouffe for creating the first 21st century campaign and introducing the whole array of the digital revolution to electoral politics. His book Audacity to Win documents the whole saga of the historic Obama campaign. My question is whether such a campiagn can be waged when Obama is a sitting President. I tend to doubt it. It may well be a one off. I am convinced that Republicans have yet learned how Obama beat them in 2008. In no Republican accounts does the name Plouffe occur. It's all about Axelrod and the Chicago machine. They might want to read the book and learn something. Plouffe also restored the badly damaged reputation of campaign managers, who have been perceived as slightly lower than pond scum.
Meanwhile, John McCain's campaign manager Steven Schmidt is getting slaughtered by the rumors surrounding Sarah Palin's memoirs. Schmidt made several strategic errors in the race but he alone could not make up for McCain's inherent weakness on the economy. But that's not why he is taking heat. Sarah Palin claims he and the campaign stiffed her with the legal bills for her vetting, made her (at the point of a gun?) buy her expensive wardrobe, wanted her to go on a diet and cursed in front of her daughter. Any of this true? Who cares? It's great fodder for the tabloids.
Levi Johnston, the putative father of Bristol's baby, will appear full frontal in Playgirl, posing with a hockey stick. It seems conservatives are now getting the hang of American culture. Carrie Parjean, former Miss something and defender of family values and self-proclaimed friend of Sarah Palin, had to cave in her lawsuit against the beauty pageant organizers because it seems not only did she pose nude but she made --several--sex tapes for her then boyfriend complete with sex toys. While she claimed she did this when a teenager, her boyfriend claims she was 20. Instead of heading this off at the pass when the pageant lawyers asked her to withdraw the suit, she had to watch with her mother in the audience as the tape was shown at the trial. At this rate, she could become a full blown member of the Family, joining John Ensign and Tom Coburn.
When I decide what we should do in Afghanistan, I'll let you know. After reading every possible option, I'm convinced that Obama was right with "None of the above." Most troubling have been the investigative pieces done by the Nation and others about the level of corruption in the Afghan government and how we are paying off the Taliban not to attack our supply lines. On this Obama can't win for losing. But he is at least asking for the "off ramps".
While Obama is in Asia, I will be returning to Africa where the Chinese look like they are colonizing the place. This is going to become a social problem that will ignite local reaction like the days when Idi Amin reigned terror down on the Asian shopkeepers.
Mercenary Simon Mann was released from prison in Equatorial Guinea. On release he let loose on Mark Thatcher and Eli Kalil, the Lebanonese financier of the invasion plans. One curious question: "Why did President Obama ask for his release?" What other gems are left to be discovered from the Bush years? Stay tuned.
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