Category Archives: Politics

August 9, 2011 · 9:28 pm

GOP’s Nasty ‘Tar Baby’ Politics – Leonard Pitts Jr.

Great article from Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald.  As usual, I agree with him down the line on this…

 

Ladies and gentlemen, here he is, “your boy,” that “tar baby,” the president of the United Sates, Barack Obama:

Ahem.

The first title was bestowed upon Obama by political commentator Patrick Buchanan on Tuesday, the second by U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn on the Friday before last, the third by the American electorate in November of 2008. If the first two seem to cancel out the third, well, that’s the point. One hopes they will help the president understand something he has thus far refused to grasp about his political opposition.

Namely, these people don’t want to be friends. They don’t want to compromise for the greater good. They don’t want to solve problems unless by problems you mean his continued tenancy in that mansion on Pennsylvania Ave.

They have not been coy about this. Rush Limbaugh said it (“I hope he fails”) when Mrs. Obama was still picking out a dress for the inauguration. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in November that, in a time of war and recession, his number one goal is to deny Obama a second term.

Yet somehow, the Obama brain trust, a term herein used advisedly, always seems caught off guard by the ferocity, velocity and fury of the response to him. They were surprised at the verbal and physical violence of the healthcare debate, surprised at the hardiness of the birther nonsense, surprised by the stiff defense of the Bush-era tax cuts.

Now, they are surprised the GOP would rather see the U.S. economy go off a cliff than surrender the aforementioned tax cuts for rich folks. So the debt ceiling gets raised in exchange for cuts to services for the poor, who shortsightedly failed to hire lobbyists.

It is time Obama quit being surprised by the predictable, time he understood this is not politics as usual, not Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill snarling at one another by day and having drinks by night, like that old cartoon where the sheepdog and the coyote punch a time clock to signal the beginning and end of their hostilities. It is not Bill Clinton living in a state of permanent investigation, nor even George W. Bush being called incompetent all day every day.

No, this is a new thing, repulsion at a visceral, indeed, mitochondrial, level. Obama’s denigrators are appalled by the newness of him, the liberality of him, the exoticness of him and, yes, and the blackness of him.

“Your boy?” Really?

Sure. Why not. Didn’t Rep. Lynn Westmoreland call him “uppity?” Didn’t the ex-mayor of Los Alamitos, Calif., send out an email showing the White House with a watermelon patch?

See, here’s the thing: If, as is frequently said, Obama represents America’s future, what do they represent?

You know the answer. Worse, they do, too.

Still, what matters here are neither their feelings nor his. No, what matters is homeowners dispossessed of their homes, workers who can’t find work, sick people who can’t afford health, American soldiers on patrol in hostile places.

The president is a basketball fan, so surely he knows it is sometimes necessary to throw an elbow on your way to the goal. This is one of those times. His instinct to compromise, to work with the opposition to solve problems, is admirable.

But Obama needs to understand: As far as they are concerned, they have no problem bigger than him.

via GOP’s nasty ‘tar baby’ politics – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

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August 8, 2011 · 10:49 pm

Sordid Lives: Sarah Palin and Her Family Trashed by Levi Johnston’s Sister in “Playboy”

This is just  about the trashiest, tackiest thing I’ve come across since I once stumbled across a “Jerry Springer Show” by accident…

The trash just keeps getting trashier…

These Alaska hillbillies are going to turn into the Hatfields and McCoys if this keeps up…

And this Palin person wants to be President?  And some people would actually vote for her?

From the NY Post:

Mercede Johnston, the opinionated sister of Bristol Palin’s baby daddy Levi Johnston, believes Sarah Palin would have had a “mental breakdown” if she were elected president — and says that Bristol told her brother, “I prayed you weren’t the father,” after she became pregnant.

Mercede posed nude for the September issue of Playboy and gave an equally revealing interview to George Gurley. Asked what kind of president Sarah Palin would be, she responded: “I think she’d have had a mental breakdown . . . As governor she quit on us. What does that say about her?” When Gurley asked what percentage of Wasilla residents “can’t stand Palin,” Mercede responded, “I would say 70 percent.”

Mercede also claims the Palins are so polarizing in the small Alaskan town that she can’t work. “It’s hard to get a job in this town because of the Palins,” she tells Playboy, adding, “People say, ‘Oh, Mercede Johnston, I don’t know if people are going to come in if she works here.’ ”

Regarding Bristol’s relationship with Levi, she claims Bristol sent a text message to Levi after she found out she was expecting son Tripp that read, “Ever since the moment I found out I was pregnant, I prayed to God you weren’t the father.”

Mercede — who had claimed on her blog that “Levi never liked [Bristol] to drink since it just made her more promiscuous” — also told Gurley that Bristol, who’s since become an advocate for teen abstinence, wanted to get pregnant: “Bristol’s pregnancy wasn’t . . . an accident. She and Levi planned it. They were trying to conceive for months.”

Mercede also tells Playboy that Track Palin, Sarah’s 22-year-old son who is an Army reservist, used drugs. She claims, “He did OxyContin and mostly cocaine. He didn’t choose to go into the Army; he went there because his mom made him, to get him out of the way so when she was at the convention they wouldn’t know he does drugs and would think he was a patriot.” A Palin family rep declined to comment.

via Mercede Johnston strips off, and sounds off on the Palins in Playboy interview – NYPOST.com.

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August 5, 2011 · 3:56 pm

Canadian health system more efficient than the one in the U.S

This is no surprise…

It would be hard to find a less efficient system than that of the U.S. where doctors and patients are held hostage by numerous money hungry insurance companies.  No government bureaucracy could be more complex or difficult to navigate than that of the U.S. private health insurance carriers….

I know a lot of people who have been under the Canadian Health Care system at one time or another and all uniformly praise it when comparing it to our own dismal system…

I’m still struggling with President Obama giving up on the Public Option so easily in our Health Care Reform negotiations.  But then, we all now know, negotiations aren’t the President’s strong point.  He has a tendency to give too much too early in exchange for too little.  And the GOP knows it….

From The National Post:

 

The Canadian health-care system may be plagued by countless stories of lengthy wait times and crowded emergency rooms, but a new study shows the amount of time and money spent on administrative duties is a fraction of that required by the U.S. system.

The study from the University of Toronto and New York’s Cornell University says U.S. doctors pay an average of nearly $83,000 each for administrative costs associated with insurance documents. In Canada, for doctors based in Ontario that cost is significantly less at just over $22,200.

In addition, nurses, medical assistants and other hospital staff dedicate nearly 21 hours per week to filing insurance papers and other duties required to push insurance claims through. For the same duties in Ontario, just 2.5 hours are spent each week.

The findings of the study, published in the August edition of the journal Health Affairs, show that the “single payer” health-insurance system in Canada is largely responsible for the difference between countries.

It said the need for many U.S. patients to carry coverage from multiple insurance providers leads to the more demanding time commitments to file the appropriate documents.

Dr. Dante Morra, the study’s lead author, said the time savings felt in Canada go back to help the people who need it most.

“When we look at health care in Canada … there’s a lot of areas for improvement, but at the end of the day, sometimes we have to sit back and realize there is good access to care for Canadians,” said Morra, a Toronto doctor.

“There are a lot of benefits to the way we have structured our system and one of those benefits is this almost non-existent cost associated with dealing with payment. That time is directly invested into caring for patients.”

The study, which surveyed physicians on how much time was spent by themselves and other staff on filing insurance documents, said that if U.S. doctors were able to reel in the administrative costs to a level on par with those polled in Ontario, it would result in an annual savings of more than $27 billion for the American health-care system.

via Canadian health system more efficient than the one in the U.S.: study | Posted | National Post.

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August 5, 2011 · 11:21 am

Finally a Little Good Economic News: July Jobs Report: Hiring Picks Up

Not great news, but much better than expected.  Still, we have to remember how many long-term unemployed are no longer counted in these stats.

And we have to remember no one is reporting if these are good jobs or low paying, non-benefit jobs-as has been the trend- while we see the continuing disappearance of more good, high paying jobs with benefits like Health Insurance…

From CNN:

The job market strengthened in July, a welcome piece of good news that sharply contrasted other recent readings pointing toward an economic slowdown.

Employers added 117,000 jobs last month, well above the 46,000 jobs added in June, and easily topping the 75,000 gain predicted by economists surveyed by CNNMoney.

Weak job reports for both May and June were revised higher, adding a combined 56,000 jobs for the year.

Businesses were busy hiring, adding 154,000 workers in the month, topping forecasts of 100,000 new jobs. But those gains were tempered by a loss of 37,000 government jobs, mostly from state and local governments, where budget shortfalls led to layoffs in July, especially in Minnesota where the government was briefly shut down.

The unemployment rate ticked down to 9.1%. The Labor Department said the improvement was mostly due to people leaving the labor force.

Still, 13.9 million Americans remain unemployed, 44% of which have been out of work for six months or longer.

After a shockingly weak jobs number from June and a spate of other negative economic readings that followed, many economists had been bracing for the worst from Friday’s report.

In just the last week, data on consumer spending, manufacturing, job cuts and gross domestic product have all raised concerns that the slowing economy could fall back into recession. Major stock indexes have lost 10% of their value in the last two weeks amid growing worries.

Stock futures turned significantly higher immediately following the report.

via July jobs report: Hiring picks up – Aug. 5, 2011.

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August 5, 2011 · 9:15 am

CBS/NYT Poll: Congressional Disapproval At An All-Time High

It will be interesting to see if this anger holds for the 2012 elections and how it plays out.  This type of anger lead to the election of the election of the Tea Party Republicans in 2010 who took over the House from the Democrats.  Hopefully, the anger will be channeled in a more productive, more progressive voting pattern in 2012.

Of course, first you need productive, progressive candidates willing to take positions that actually create jobs and help the average American- as opposed to just talking about it and acting in the opposite direction.

It will be interesting….

From TalkingPointsMeme:

 

Well, Congress has done it. It’s hit its highest disapproval ratings since the New York Times/CBS News poll was created in 1977. In the wake of the debt debate, a full 82% of Americans are displeased with the legislative branch, with only 14% approval.

It’s not so much the deal that was struck on the debt ceiling increase, which Americans were split on: 46% actually approved of the deal versus 45%. It was the perceived motivations that have people upset. 82% of the poll’s respondents said that disagreements between parties on the debt ceiling debate were due to “gaining political advantage,” rather than “doing what’s best for the country,” which only 14% saw as the motivator for Congress. Those numbers perfectly mirrored the general Congressional ratings.

As was the case with other polling around the debt deal, some individual political leaders have taken a hit. In this case, House Speaker John Boehner’s disapproval rating went from 42% in April of this year to 57% now, while his national approval rating only went from 32% to 30%. President Obama saw a slight increase in his disapproval rating over that time as well, from 45% to the current 47%, but his approval went from 46% to 48%.

In the end, the poll really shows that Congress, having never really been that popular individually, is reaching new lows. The percentage of respondents to the poll that thought this is either “dissatisfied” or “angry” with Washington was 84.

The NYT/CBS poll used telephone interviews with adults from August 2-3 who were among the 960 adults nationwide first interviewed in two polls: an NYT/CBS survey conducted June 24-28 and another from July 15-17. It has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.

via CBS/NYT Poll: Congressional Disapproval At An All-Time High | TPMDC.

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August 4, 2011 · 6:58 pm

Food Stamp Use Rises to Record 45.8 Million

And Congress fiddles with the made up deficit crisis while America burns- or almost starves….

This is truly shocking- almost 15% of the US population having to use Food Stamps.

And the Rich still have their Bush Tax Breaks….

And the Republicans still want to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security…

What about jobs?  Have they forgotten that’s what they were supposedly elected to do something about?

Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in May, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

The number of Americans using the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — more commonly referred to as food stamps — shot to an all-time high of 45.8 million in May, the USDA reported. That’s up 12% from a year ago, and 34% higher than two years ago.

The program provides monthly benefits to low-income individuals and families, which they can use at stores that accept SNAP benefits.

To qualify for food stamps, an individual’s income can’t exceed $1,174 a month or $14,088 a year — an amount that is 130% of the national poverty level.

The average food stamp benefit was $133.80 per person and $283.65 per household in May.

The highest concentration of food stamp users were in California, Florida, New York and Texas — where more than 3 million residents in each state received food stamps in May.

via Food stamp use rises to record 45.8 million – Aug. 4, 2011.

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August 4, 2011 · 6:08 pm

Eric Cantor Intends to Break America’s Promises

Eric Cantor is evil.  There is no other way to put it.

I’m ashamed he’s from my home state of Virginia.

Virginia used to stand for honor, gentility, manners, culture and education.

Virginians were once known for their tradition of hospitality and concern for others.

It’s the state that gave us Thomas Jefferson and George Washington….

Well, that’s all obviously gone with the wind…

So to speak….

 

U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) on Wednesday suggested that Republicans will continue a push to overhaul programs such as Medicare, saying in an interview that “promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many” and that younger Americans will have to adjust.

“What we have to be, I think, focused on is truth in budgeting here,” Cantor told The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal. He said “the better way” for Americans is to “get the fiscal house in order” and “come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many.”

He added that younger Americans will have “ample time to try and plan our lives so that we can adjust” to the post-Medicare society.

As Cantor sees it, the existing Medicare program simply must be eliminated for fiscal reasons, replaced with a privatized system. In other words, the Paul Ryan plan that was soundly rejected by voters and policy experts alike is still the preferred model for the House Republican leadership.

As a matter of policy, this is still hopelessly ridiculous, for all the reasons we talked about in the Spring. But on a political level, this is just as misguided. The more Cantor and his allies base their agenda on ending Medicare, the happier Democrats are.

Also note the rhetoric the oft-confused House Majority Leader uses: the United States has made promises to the public, and as far as Eric Cantor is concerned, “many” Americans will simply have to accept that those promises “are not going to be kept.”

Why not? Because Republicans say so. Promises to Grover Norquist are sacrosanct, but promises to senior citizens are not.

This is, to put it mildly, a gift for Democrats. I’ll look forward to the DNC running ads in, say, Florida, telling voters that the leading House Republican believes the United States committed to the Medicare program, but now believes those promises “are not going to be kept.”

And in an ideal political environment, the Republican presidential hopefuls would spend the next few weeks responding to a straightforward question: “Do you agree with Eric Cantor that America’s promises to Medicare beneficiaries should be broken?”

via Political Animal – Cantor intends to break America’s promises.

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August 3, 2011 · 6:59 pm

Do Republican Presidents Lead to Murder and Suicide?

Another reason to vote Democratic!

This is a fascinating theory put forth in this new book that is reviewed, below, in the Washington Post:

James Gilligan makes it clear where he comes down on the issue. Gilligan, a psychiatrist and professor at New York University, presents his new book, “Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others,”as a kind of murder mystery, or more precisely, a look at a mystery about murder, in which he includes self-murder, or suicide.

His inquiry explores why rates of homicide and suicide tend to increase together, and why those rates fluctuate so enormously over brief periods of time.

Gilligan tracked rates of suicide and homicide over a century, from 1900 to 2007 and was intrigued by the peaks and valleys he saw. Over that period, he writes, “I saw three large, sudden, and prolonged increases and decreases in these measures of lethal violence, which reached a peak and were then followed by equally dramatic decreases.”

He scratched his head over that until he realized that “all three of the epidemics of lethal violence corresponded with the presidential election cycle.”

Now, the next part of this item will get Republicans’ noses out of joint and will no doubt start Democrats thumping their chests. What Gilligan found was that suicides and homicides started climbing to epidemic levels following the election of a Republican president. If that isn’t annoying enough to the Grand Old Party, he also discovered that the rates remained around epidemic levels throughout the time Republicans occupied the White House. “The increase began during their first year or years in office, and peaked in their last year or years,” Gilligan writes.

And what happened when a Democratic president toodled up to the White House gate in a moving van? Those epidemic levels of violence, according to Gilligan, began to reverse direction in the first year or two of a Democratic administration and the rates reached their lowest point in the last year or years of the Democratic term.

Pure happenstance, right? Gilligan won’t hear of it — his analysis, he says, proves otherwise. The changes in the rates of violence occur “with a magnitude and consistency that could not be attributed to chance alone.”

So, what’s behind it? Gilligan uses an investigative technique that he says is similar to the one medical researchers deployed to establish a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. And he reaches a similar conclusion: “As cigarette smoking has been shown to increase the rates of lung cancer,” he writes “so the presence of a Republican in the White House increases the rates of suicide and homicide.”

The cause: policies. In Gilligan’s view, the policies of Republican administrations increase socio-economic distress which has all sorts of ramifications that lead to higher rates of murder and suicide, while Democratic administrations reduce socio-economic distress which aids the psychology of the masses and brings down the levels of violence.

Gilligan’s book, published last month by Polity Books, will, if nothing else in our summer of political discontent, get both sides howling over its conclusions.

via Beware of dangerous politicians – Political Bookworm – The Washington Post.

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August 2, 2011 · 6:15 pm

Dow Tanks Amid Economic Angst

I hate to say it, but I saw this coming…

I’m far from a financial genius, but I pulled my 401K out of the Market a few weeks ago due to all the uncertainty due to the foolishness in Washington.  I’m not risking losing what little I have saved-especially if those fools may yet gut Social Security and Medicare.

Call me stupid, but when I listened to my ex-financial advisor who told me to ride it all out a few years ago, it didn’t work out too well…

The GOP and the Tea Party has created a false debt crisis that just may destroy the fragile economic recovery.  That may have been their plan all along…

They thought if the economic recovery could be halted, people would blame Obama and the Dems, then it would benefit them in the 2012 Elections.

I hope people may be a little smarter than that….

God knows, the Dems made it easy for them by not fighting back and standing up to the bullies….

But it just may be too late to prevent more economic chaos.

When Congress should have been focused on JOBS and securing the economic recovery through smart infrastructure development, they let the Tea Party Republicans side track them into this deficit reduction foolishness…

The Markets may be starting to realize this even if the public hasn’t yet focused on this fact….

Nothing.  And I mean nothing, this Congress has done has been to benefit the Middle class, the poor, the unemployed or the economy in general.

If people don’t have jobs-or fear they will lose the ones they have- they don’t buy things.

In a consumer driven economy like ours, that’s kind of important….

Not even the passing of a debt-ceiling deal was enough to quell investor anxiety about the current state of the U.S. economy. The Dow dropped more than 100 points during the final hour of trading on Tuesday. The stock market entered its longest losing streak in almost three years, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index closed at a record low for 2011. The blue-chip index also went into its eighth consecutive decline. Low consumer-spending figures and boosts in Americans’ savings rates during the month of June are two signs that the economy is truly in a slump. To top it all off, Friday’s employment report is also expected to be gloomy.

via Dow Tanks Amid Economic Angst – The Daily Beast.

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August 1, 2011 · 10:30 pm

Robert Reich is none too happy with the President or Dems in Congress

Great article from Robert Reich.

He pretty much nails it…

I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am in the President and the Democrats for not standing up for our core values and fighting to do the right thing to restore the economy.  They are being bullied by the Tea Party minority and don’t seem to have the nerve to stand up to them….

Here is an excerpt and a link to the full article:

Many months ago, when Republicans first demanded spending cuts and no tax increases as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, the President could have blown their cover. He could have shown the American people why this demand had nothing to do with deficit reduction but everything to do with the GOP’s ideological fixation on shrinking the size of the government — thereby imperiling Medicare, Social Security, education, infrastructure, and everything else Americans depend on. But he did not.

And through it all the President could have explained to Americans that the biggest economic challenge we face is restoring jobs and wages and economic growth, that spending cuts in the next few years will slow the economy even further, and therefore that the Republicans’ demands threaten us all. Again, he did not.

The radical right has now won a huge tactical and strategic victory. Democrats and the White House have proven they have little by way of tactics or strategy.

By putting Medicare and Social Security on the block, they have made it more difficult for Democrats in the upcoming 2012 election cycle to blame Republicans for doing so.

By embracing deficit reduction as their apparent goal – claiming only that they’d seek to do it differently than the GOP – Democrats and the White House now seemingly agree with the GOP that the budget deficit is the biggest obstacle to the nation’s future prosperity.

The budget deficit is not the biggest obstacle to our prosperity. Lack of jobs and growth is. And the largest threat to our democracy is the emergence of a radical right capable of getting most of the ransom it demands.

Robert Reich is none too happy with the President or Dems in Congress.

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