Category Archives: Politics

July 24, 2011 · 11:32 am

‘Super Congress’: Debt Ceiling Negotiators Aim To Create New Legislative Body

Now this is downright scary….

It complete removes the majority of our elected officials from the deliberative process.

Congress isn’t working today, but this is not the way to go…

This is how to start a Banana Republic- which is probably what Boehner has in mind….

It also sounds like the goal is to further protect the Rich and screw the Middle Class.  Using this process they are already targeting ending the Mortage Interest Deduction and the deductions for Retirement Savings.

Could destroying Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid be far behind?

This doesn’t sound like a Super Congress;  it sounds like a Coup d’etat.

From the Huffington Post:

Debt ceiling negotiators think they’ve hit on a solution to address the debt ceiling impasse and the public’s unwillingness to let go of benefits such as Medicare and Social Security that have been earned over a lifetime of work: Create a new Congress.

This “Super Congress,” composed of members of both chambers and both parties, isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers. Under a plan put forth by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), legislation to lift the debt ceiling would be accompanied by the creation of a 12-member panel made up of 12 lawmakers — six from each chamber and six from each party.

Legislation approved by the Super Congress — which some on Capitol Hill are calling the “super committee” — would then be fast-tracked through both chambers, where it couldn’t be amended by simple, regular lawmakers, who’d have the ability only to cast an up or down vote. With the weight of both leaderships behind it, a product originated by the Super Congress would have a strong chance of moving through the little Congress and quickly becoming law. A Super Congress would be less accountable than the system that exists today, and would find it easier to strip the public of popular benefits. Negotiators are currently considering cutting the mortgage deduction and tax credits for retirement savings, for instance, extremely popular policies that would be difficult to slice up using the traditional legislative process.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has made a Super Congress a central part of his last-minute proposal, multiple news reports and people familiar with his plan say

via ‘Super Congress’: Debt Ceiling Negotiators Aim To Create New Legislative Body.

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July 24, 2011 · 10:54 am

Is a Sane President Bad for the Country?

Well, this is a new idea…

But I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand.  It kind of makes sense.

It’s certainly thought-provoking.

Of course, since I’ve just been reading a book about Germany in 1933, I would love to see how he applies this to Hitler….That was certainly not a constructive application of the theory.

Maybe his thought is a little mental illness is good, but not too much.  Moderation.  I can go along with that….

Note to Michele Bachmann:  He doesn’t say crazy is good, only slight mental illness, so don’t get too excited….

From The Washington Post:

A provocative new book argues there is a correlation between mental illness and successful leadership.

Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi sums up his thesis like this: “Mental illness enhances leadership in crisis situations.”

In “A First-Rate Madness,” he says: “Sanity is rightly seen as healthy, conducive to personal happiness and success in life. But it does not always, or even usually, produce good leadership.”

Ghaemi notes that presidents widely considered successful — such as Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy — suffered from mood disorders for most of their lives. In Ghaemi’s view, a leader who has managed a lifetime of mental highs and lows is better equipped to handle trying situations.

In times of crisis, leaders with mood disorders were at an advantage rather than impaired, he writes. They were more resilient, more creative, more thoughtful, more empathetic and better able to endure times of intense stress. Along with presidents, he profiles General William Sherman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi.

Conversely, Ghaemi believes that George W. Bush and Tony Blair were failures as leaders because they were mentally healthy.

“Mentally healthy people are insulated from some of the world’s travails by their positive illusion — they believe that they and the world are actually better than they are. Generally speaking, positive illusion is a good thing,” he says, but cautions powerful people with positive illusions can fall prey to hubris.

According to Ghaemi, these kinds of leaders fall into the hubris syndrome when they have been in power for a long time. Using Bush and Blair as two living examples, he says they exhibited signs of hubris, which include not listening to opposing views, ignoring public opinion, believing God or history is on their side and demeaning dissenters.

“People who suffer from depression also benefit from depressive realism that should protect them from the illusion-enhancing effects of power,” Ghaemi concludes.

He says the way to avoid having leaders who suffer from hubris is to elect those who are “not too mentally healthy.”

So if Ghaemi is correct, along with questioning our 2012 presidential candidates about war and the economy, should we ask: “Do you ever have persistant sad, anxious or empty feelings?”

via Is a sane president bad for the country? – Political Bookworm – The Washington Post.

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July 18, 2011 · 5:30 pm

Eric Cantor: Virginia’s Young Gun Misfires | Richmond Times-Dispatch

This is not the kind of publicity any Congressman wants in his own District.  It’s beyond hope for Cantor to lose in his heavily Republican District, but this type of publicity will have a lot of people-on both sides- re-evaluating Cantor.

Great article from Jeff Shapiro in Eric Cantor’s hometown Newspaper, “The Richmond Times Dispatch:”

Virginia’s young gun apparently shot himself in the foot.

Eric Cantor this past week had an opportunity to define himself for an audience beyond the Beltway as more than a rigid conservative with one word in his vocabulary: no. Instead, the U.S. House majority leader, seen as a deal breaker rather than a deal maker, may have only trivialized himself.

Having walked out of Joe Biden-led budget-and-deficit talks; undercut John Boehner on a big fix and engaged Barack Obama in verbal fisticuffs over the fine print of a possible deal, Cantor looked more the insipid pill than the professional politician. It was, David Weigel wrote for the online publication Slate, the “official Newt-ification of Eric Cantor.”

Cantor’s avuncular, bow-tied mentor-predecessor, Tom Bliley, isn’t sure how his protégé’s shtick is playing outside Washington, crush of crummy press notwithstanding. “He’s a hero to his conference and the right,” says Bliley. “But how far it would go with the independents — I don’t know. The jury’s still out on that.”

Events of the past week may have gone a long way toward casting Cantor the wrong way. Cantor wants to be seen as serious-minded. A trunk-load of degrees, stints in law and finance and a business-fed fundraising machine say as much. But his hissing match with Obama and spending cuts-only approach to budget-balancing strikes Republican plutocrats in his hometown as evidence that Cantor is serious all right — about politics, not governing.

That’s probably why Cantor, in a hurry-up effort at damage control, told The Associated Press, a news service with the widest possible reach, that he meant no disrespect to Obama. Cantor also attempted a show of solidarity with Boehner at a joint appearance that was more PDA — public display of affection — than news conference.

Bliley, a former Commerce Committee chairman-turned-lobbyist who has schmoozed Cantor on behalf of convenience store owners over a cap on debit card swipe fees, dismisses talk of a Cantor challenge to Boehner for the speakership. Cantor — as he did for Bliley’s seat, biding his time as a Henrico delegate in the General Assembly — will “wait his turn,” says Bliley.

But could events mean that Cantor, labeled the “shadow speaker” by New York magazine, won’t have to wait very long? “I don’t want to get into that speculation,” says Bliley. “That’s like asking me what’s going to happen in six months.”

In politics, that’s many lifetimes. And if one flashed before Cantor’s eyes as he was methodically demonized the first part of the week, another rolled out at week’s end, as he and Boehner conferred privately with the treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, and White House chief of staff Bill Daley.

The point being that Cantor — his literal Elvis-like lip curl yielding to a figurative fat lip — remains relevant if only because of his rank: second-in-command of a House Republican Conference infused by tea partiers, who, despite Cantor’s no-no-a-thousand-times-no stance on new taxes, know that his record on fiscal issues is, at best, mixed. He previously voted to raise the debt ceiling, backed the deficit-financed Medicare drug benefit for seniors, two unpaid-for wars, the bank bailout and angled for Obama stimulus bucks for high-speed rail.

Having outmaneuvered Cantor for now, the president — alternately the smooth-talking conciliator and punch-in-the-nose Chicago pol — appears to be practicing an old-school rule: after stranding your adversary on a limb, you have to help him crawl back in.

via Jeff E. Schapiro: Virginia’s young gun misfires | Richmond Times-Dispatch.

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July 18, 2011 · 10:29 am

Is This the Beginning of the End for Fox News?

I don’t want to get my hopes up, but if this continues to spread from the UK to the US, this just might be the beginning of the end for Fox News.

This story is definitely worth watching.  It’s lead to resignations at the highest levels of the Murdoch properties such as the “Wall Street Journal” and the closure of their flagship UK newspaper.  It’s also claimed the head of Scotland Yard and the London Police, as well as a top aid to the PM.

If they have hacked phone records of prominent US citizens, politicians, journalist and 9/11 Victims in the USA, as has been alleged, this just might bring down Murdoch and his entire empire-including Fox News.

From RawStory.com:

 

A former producer with Fox News claimed in a lengthy essay gaining new traction this week that the conservative television station has a “Brain Room” in its New York headquarters which enables employees to view private telephone records with ease.

Though published years ago, the allegations have returned to relevance in the wake of the phone hacking scandals that have rocked News Corporation to its very core, threatening to topple one of the world’s largest and most powerful media conglomerates.

According to former Fox News executive Dan Cooper, whose gripes with his former employer run quite deep, Fox News chief Roger Ailes allegedly had him design the so-called “Brain Room” to facilitate counter-intelligence efforts and other “black ops.”

In a lengthy 2008 diatribe said to have doubled as a book pitch, Cooper claimed his own phone records had been hacked by Fox News employees, who he says used them to pinpoint him as a source used by David Brock, who founded liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

“Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview,” he wrote. “Certainly Brock didn’t tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock’s telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation’s New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.”

That wasn’t the last time word of Ailes’s “Brain Room” surfaced: in a recent piece for Rolling Stone, journalist Tim Dickenson discusses Cooper’s allegations too, focusing on the man Ailes allegedly picked to run the secretive office.

“Befitting his siege mentality, Ailes also housed his newsroom in a bunker,” Dickenson wrote. “Reporters and producers at Fox News work in a vast, windowless expanse below street level, a gloomy space lined with video-editing suites along one wall and an endless cube farm along the other. In a separate facility on the same subterranean floor, Ailes created an in-house research unit – known at Fox News as the ‘brain room’ – that requires special security clearance to gain access. ‘The brain room is where Willie Horton comes from,’ says Cooper, who helped design its specs. ‘It’s where the evil resides.’

 

“If that sounds paranoid, consider the man Ailes brought in to run the brain room: Scott Ehrlich, a top lieutenant from his political- consulting firm. Ehrlich – referred to by some as ‘Baby Rush’ – had taken over the lead on Big Tobacco’s campaign to crush health care reform when Ailes signed on with CNBC.”

While none of these claims have been substantiated, they seem increasingly plausible given the widening coverup of Murdoch’s British hacking scandals, which have grown from the desk of just one allegedly “rogue” journalist to topple some of Murdoch’s top deputies, including the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the chief of News International, which oversees News Corp.’s British newspapers.

Cooper’s phone records as well would not be the first time Fox News or U.S. News Corp. employees have been accused of hacking. According to The New York Times, a New Jersey company called Floorgraphics accused News Corp. in 2009 of hacking into their password-protected computer systems to obtain proprietary information, then allegedly spreading “false, misleading and malicious information” about the firm, causing them to lose important contracts.

News Corp.’s response to the scandal was to buy Floorgraphics outright, after offering a $29.5 million settlement.

Cases like Floorgraphics’ are hardly unique: in recent years, the Times noted, News Corp. has paid over $655 million in settlements and hush money to keep allegations of anti-competitive and illegal behavior under the rug.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice have launched their own investigations into whether News Corp. participated in the hacking of 9/11 victims or U.S. officials.

via Former Fox News producer claimed network’s ‘Brain Room’ led to phone hacking | The Raw Story.

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July 18, 2011 · 7:53 am

Victoria Jackson Thinks Obama’s “Private Army” Might Kill Her

This is really sad….

From a successful performer to a has-been nutcase, Victoria Jackson is just out of control-and has no grasp of reality.

Before the GOP started cutting mental health funding under Reagan, there was a place to help people like this…

If it wasn’t for her right-wing benefactors, who use her fading fame to get publicity, she would probably be living under an overpass and spending her days pushing a shopping cart around town.

From Media Matters:

 

Victoria Jackson is a reliable source of unhinged claims about President Obama — for example, she has claimed that Obama “bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ” and asserted that “Obama legally kills babies and now he can legally kill Grandmas!” But she really pegged the crazy meter with her July 15 WorldNetDaily column, headlined “The 3 scariest things about Obama”:

Click here for the full article and all her craziness:

Victoria Jackson Thinks Obama’s “Private Army” Might Kill Her | Media Matters for America.

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July 16, 2011 · 9:47 am

They, Too, Sing America

There really is a total disconnect between the people in Washington and the rest of the country.  I first got that impression when I volunteered on my first political campaign more than 20 years ago. That impression has been validated countless times over the years.  Now it seems it’s not just a gap, it’s a question of the Washington folks living in an alternate Universe….

They forget everyone else isn’t sitting in a DC restaurant drinking $350 bottles of wine.  Or they assume they aren’t doing so just because they are lazy.

These DC folks are totally out of touch with what is reality for most people….

Great article, below,  from Charles M Blow in the New York Times:

Last week I spent a few days in the Deep South — a thousand miles from the moneyed canyons of Manhattan and the prattle of Washington politics — talking to everyday people, blue-collar workers, people not trying to win the future so much as survive the present.

They do hard jobs and odd jobs — any work they can find to keep the lights on and the children fed.

No one mentioned the asinine argument about the debt ceiling. No one. Life is pressing down on them so hard that they can barely breathe. They just want Washington to work, the way they do.

They are honest people who do honest work — crack-the-bones work; lift-it, chop-it, empty-it, glide-it-in-smooth work; feel-the-flames-up-close work; crawl-down-in-there work — things that no one wants to do but that someone must.

They are women whose skin glistens from steam and sweat, whose hands stay damp from being dipped in buckets and dried on aprons. They are men who work in boots with steel toes, the kind that don’t take shining, the kind that lean over and tell stories when you take them off.

They are people whose bodies melt every night in a hot bath, then stiffen by sunrise, so much so that it takes pills for them to get out of bed without pain.

They, too, sing America. But they’re the ones less talked about — either not glamorous enough or rancorous enough. They are the ones without champions, waiting for Democrats to gather the gumption to defend the working poor with the same ferocity with which Republicans protect the filthy rich, waiting for a tomorrow that never comes.

via They, Too, Sing America – NYTimes.com.

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July 13, 2011 · 10:07 pm

Obama Warns Eric Cantor ‘Don’t Call My Bluff’ As Debt Talks Stall

It’s about time someone came down on Eric Cantor…

Bravo, President Obama!

From HuffingtonPost.com.  Emphasis mine:

 

Lawmakers and the White House had what nearly every party is describing as a “tough” and “testy” meeting on the debt ceiling Wednesday afternoon, culminating in a stormy exchange between the president and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

It was the fifth straight day of talks, but the first in which attendees, speaking on background, were willing to admit that steps were taken backwards. According to multiple sources, disagreements surfaced early, in the middle and at the end of the nearly two-hour talks. At issue was Cantor’s repeated push to do a short-term resolution and Obama’s insistence that he would not accept one.

“Eric don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people on this,” the president said, according to both Cantor and another attendee. “This process is confirming what the American people think is the worst about Washington: that everyone is more interested in posturing, political positioning, and protecting their base, than in resolving real problems.”

Cantor, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said that the president “abruptly” walked off after offering his scolding.

“I know why he lost his temper. He’s frustrated. We’re all frustrated,” the Virginia Republican said.

Democratic officials had a different interpretation. “The meeting ended with Cantor being dressed down while sitting in silence,” one official said in an email. “[The president] said Cantor could not have it both ways of insisting on dollar-for-dollar and still not being open to revenues.”

via Obama Warns Cantor ‘Don’t Call My Bluff’ As Debt Talks Stall.

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July 12, 2011 · 9:25 pm

Cantor: Taxing The Rich Is Off The Table, But Making Students Pay More Immediately Is Fine

It’s Eric Cantor Day again on “Lost in the 21st Century!”

This guy is just plain evil and I’m doing my little part to be sure people know what he’s up to…

And he won’t even agree to raise taxes on Millionaire’s private planes…or any additional taxes for the rich…

BUT

This guy wants to make poor students start paying interest on their student loans the minute they get them- instead of after Graduation.

Evil.  Evil Prick.

From ThinkProgress.org (emphasis mine):

One of the major demands that almost all congressional Republicans have made about deficit reduction is that wealthier americans and large corporations shouldn’t have to pay any more in taxes. “The House has taken a firm position against anything having to do with increasing taxes or raising tax rates,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) at the onset of negotiations over the budget deficit in May.

Yet as the Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz reports, one group that Cantor is apparently fine with making pay more is American college students. Cantor, at the White House for budget negotiations, apparently proposed that students who take out student loans should immediately start paying interest, rather than getting to make payments after graduation:

As Monday’s White House budget talks got down to the nitty-gritty, Eric Cantor proposed a series of spending cuts, one of them aimed squarely at college students. The House majority leader, who did most of the talking for the Republican side, said those taking out student loans should start paying interest right away, rather than being able to defer payments until after graduation. It is a big-ticket item that would save $40 billion over 10 years.

According to Kurtz, Obama rejected Cantor’s proposal out of hand, saying that he didn’t want to “screw students.” Cantor’s proposal comes at a time when American students are already overwhelmed by student loan debt. In 2008, the average debt that a college student graduated with was a whopping $23,000. American students continue to pay more than most of their developed world neighbors for a college education, and Cantor apparently wants to make it even more difficult for them while not touching the richest Americans.

via Cantor: Taxing The Rich Is Off The Table, But Making Students Pay More Immediately Is Fine | ThinkProgress.

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July 12, 2011 · 8:57 pm

Passing the Ball to Eric Cantor

Looks like Boner (spelling intentional) may be hanging Cantor out to dry….

Good.

Eric Cantor is just about the most despicable man in Congress.  I can’t think of anything better than for him to get what’s coming to him…

He doesn’t want a deal, he wants to play games.  Let the games begin.  I somehow think President Obama just may know more about playing the game  than Cantor…

Some interesting details from Jay Newton-Small on yesterday’s debt ceiling negotiations at the White House:

“Boehner hardly said a word in the meeting. His stance seems to be: if Cantor didn’t like the grand bargain, he’s welcome to negotiate one on his own. Republicans left the meeting noticeably subdued. Few had anything they wanted to say about it. And Cantor may have just jumped from the frying pan of Biden’s debt talks and into the fire of Obama’s. He has little experience hammering out legislative deals — particularly at this level. He wanted a smaller deal, and now Boehner’s sitting back and watching silently as Cantor flounders.”

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times has more on the “long-simmering rivalry” between the top two Republicans in the House.

via Passing the Ball to Eric Cantor.

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July 12, 2011 · 8:52 am

Arizona State Senator, Pointed Loaded Gun At Reporter Richard Ruelas’s Chest

Another reason not to live in Arizona:  Gun Nuts.

These folks are even crazier than Southerners….

From the HuffingtonPost.com:

Arizona state Sen. Lori Klein (R), a gun-rights champion, keeps a loaded raspberry-pink handgun in her purse, and during an interview with Arizona Republic reporter Richard Ruelas, she took it out and pointed it at him.

“Oh, it’s so cute,” Klein said, before aiming the gun at Ruelas’s chest to show off the red beam of the laser sight. Klein’s gun, a .380 Ruger, has no safety, but the senator assured Ruelas that he wasn’t in danger.

“I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger,” she said.

Klein told the Arizona Republic that she owns a number of guns and has had “informal” training sessions on each of them, and that she was taught gun safety by her father.

Local gun activists have criticized Klein for pointing her gun at Ruelas, however.

via Lori Klein, Arizona State Senator, Pointed Loaded Gun At Reporter Richard Ruelas’s Chest.

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