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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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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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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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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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Athlete’s Naked Ambition for 2012 Olympics

Following along with Today’s Theme….

An Olympic hopeful is working as a naked butler so he can continue to fund his decathlon training.

Champion athlete Roger Skedd, 28, from Uxbridge, said the job – which takes in everything from hen nights to gay parties – helps make ends meet. Skedd has signed up to three agencies.

He said: “It’s a bit of a crazy job and it’s not the sort of thing I would choose to do, but it pays decent money and allows me to keep training.”

via Athlete’s naked ambition for 2012 Games | Olympics.

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Seeking Arrangement: College Students Using ‘Sugar Daddies’ To Pay Off Loan Debt

I wonder if this is what the GOP has in mind when they talk about small businesses and entrepreneurs?

It’s their policies that are driving this, so I hope they are willing to take ownership…

Or was this just another economic benefit for the Rich that they snuck in?

From TheHuffingtonPost.com:

 

Saddled with piles of student debt and a job-scarce, lackluster economy, current college students and recent graduates are selling themselves to pursue a diploma or pay down their loans. An increasing number, according to the the owners of websites that broker such hook-ups, have taken to the web in search of online suitors or wealthy benefactors who, in exchange for sex, companionship, or both, might help with the bills.

The past few years have taken an especially brutal toll on the plans and expectations of 20-somethings. As unemployment rates tick steadily higher, starting salaries have plummeted. Meanwhile, according to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a professor of psychology at Clark University, about 85 percent of the class of 2011 will likely move back in with their parents during some period of their post-college years, compared with 40 percent a decade ago.

Besides moving back home, many 20-somethings are beginning their adult lives shouldering substantial amounts of student loan debt. According to Mark Kantrowitz, who publishes the financial aid websites Fastweb.com and Finaid.org, while the average 2011 graduate finished school with about $27,200 in debt, many are straining to pay off significantly greater loans.

Enter the sugar daddy, sugar baby phenomenon. This particular dynamic preceded the economic meltdown, of course. Rich guys well past their prime have been plunking down money for thousands of years in search of a tryst or something more with women half their age — and women, willingly or not, have made themselves available. With the whole process going digital, women passing through a system of higher education that fosters indebtedness are using the anonymity of the web to sell their wares and pay down their college loans.

via Seeking Arrangement: College Students Using ‘Sugar Daddies’ To Pay Off Loan Debt.

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Marilyn Monroe Sculpture Drawing Controversy On Mag Mile

I’ve always loved Chicago and now there’s another reason to do so!

A 26 foot Sculpture of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt blowing up as in “The Seven Year Itch.”

And people are freaking out….

I love it!

It’s so tacky I can’t believe it’s not being displayed somewhere in the South or California…

I guess it’s too risque for the South and too tame for California…

Like I said, I love Chicago!

 

 

From Chicago local News on Yahoo.com:

The long-awaited 26-foot sculpture of Marilyn Monroe was unveiled on the Magnificent Mile Friday morning, amid controversy about its risqué appearance.

The three-part piece sculpture by artist Seward Johnson was unveiled in Pioneer Court alongside Tribune Tower at 6:15 a.m. Friday.

It depicts Monroe as she appeared in an iconic scene in the 1955 movie “The Seven Year Itch,” where her dress goes flying up as she stands over a New York subway grate, leaving her underwear exposed.

The sculpture was built in a studio in New Jersey and brought to Chicago. Pioneer Court has previously hosted sculptures depicting Shakespeare’s “King Lear” Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.”

Melissa Farrell of Zeller Realty Group told WBBM Newsradio 780 earlier this week that the 26-foot sculpture will be quite the attraction.

“We are installing a large scale public artwork. It’s very visible to the public and it becomes a tourist attraction. People come to Chicago to see it,” Farrell said.

In his Perspective Thursday night, CBS 2’s Walter Jacobson said the sculpture will be a welcome addition to the Mag Mile.

“So we did not get the Olympics, but we have Ms. Monroe, keeping us on top of the outdoor world, and just when we need it, a smile on that mile,” he said.

But Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich gave the sculpture a scathing review. She called it “as tawdry as a peep show,” and complained about the men walking by who were seen “shooting photos of her crotch while one stuck out his tongue to mime a lick.”

“The original image (from ‘The Seven Year Itch’) is coy,” Schmich wrote. “Marilyn on the Mag Mile is crude.”

CBS 2 viewers weighed in on the new sculpture on Susan Carlson’s Facebook page. Many said the problem lay not with the sculpture, but with people who chose to take prurient photos next to it.

“The statue is beautiful. Nothing like a bunch of idiots who would prefer to make it something that it’s not,” wrote Linda Findlay Love. “Too bad.”

“I think the statue of Marilyn Monroe is beautiful and is an iconic Hollywood scene that created a buzz around the world,” added Robbie Attebery. “People taking photos under the dress need to mature up. Quit being a pig.”

“That’s why it’s causing such a controversy. Men and their perverted thoughts,” wrote Joy L. Potthoff.

But fans and foes alike will have to get used to the sculpture. It will be towering over Michigan Avenue through next spring.

via Marilyn Monroe Sculpture Drawing Controversy On Mag Mile | The Chicago Local – Yahoo! News.

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Betty Ford Dies: Former First Lady Dead At Age 93

Sad news….

I always liked her-she was so real.

They don’t make Republicans like her anymore….

While her husband served as president, Ford’s comments weren’t the kind of genteel, innocuous talk expected from a first lady, and a Republican one no less. Her unscripted comments sparked tempests in the press and dismayed President Gerald Ford’s advisers, who were trying to soothe the national psyche after Watergate. But to the scandal-scarred, Vietnam-wearied, hippie-rattled nation, Mrs. Ford’s openness was refreshing.

And 1970s America loved her for it.

According to Mrs. Ford, her young adult children probably had smoked marijuana – and if she were their age, she’d try it, too. She told “60 Minutes” she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that her youngest, 18-year-old Susan, was in a sexual relationship (an embarrassed Susan issued a denial).

She mused that living together before marriage might be wise, thought women should be drafted into the military if men were, and spoke up unapologetically for abortion rights, taking a position contrary to the president’s. “Having babies is a blessing, not a duty,” Mrs. Ford said.

“Mother’s love, candor, devotion, and laughter enriched our lives and the lives of the millions she touched throughout this great nation,” her family said in a statement released late Friday. “To be in her presence was to know the warmth of a truly great lady.”

via Betty Ford Dies: Former First Lady Dead At Age 93.

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Rep. Ryan Tastes The Grapes Of Wrath

All I can think of is Marie Antoinette’s response to being told the peasants had no bread.  She allegedly said “Well, let them eat cake.”

This is the guy who wants to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while he drinks $700 worth of wine in a restaurant.

These Republicans really do live in a different world.  They can’t imagine what life is like for most people.  That’s got to be why they do the things they do…

Or, they are just evil….

Your choice….

From TalkingPointsMemo.com:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.

It was the same night reports started trickling out about President Obama pressing Congressional leaders to consider changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for GOP support for targeted tax increases.

The pomp and circumstance surrounding the waiter’s presentation, uncorking and decanting of the pricey Pinot Noir caught the attention of another diner who had already recognized Ryan sitting with two other men nearby.

Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan’s table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same pricetag.

Feinberg, an economist by training, was even more appalled when the table ordered a second bottle. She quickly did the math and figured out that the $700 in wine the trio consumed over the course of 90 minutes amounted to more than the entire weekly income of a couple making minimum wage.

“We were just stunned,” said Feinberg, who e-mailed TPM about her encounter later the same evening. “I was an economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week.”

via Rep. Ryan Tastes The Grapes Of Wrath | TPMDC.

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The Casey Anthony Verdict

James Wolcott, at the “Vanity Fair” website pretty much sums up my thoughts on this….

Great article about the collective nervous breakdown and media hysteria this case seems to be generating…

Don’t get me wrong, the murder of any child is tragic.  It’s the media firestorm and manipulation I find, frankly, disgusting.

I really haven’t paid much attention to this….mainly because I came across Nancy Grace’s coverage on TV in a hotel room when I was traveling.  During the 5 minutes or so I could tolerate watching her false anger and over-acting, I decided I just didn’t care to know about anything she was trying so hard to exploit for her own ratings.

It’s a tough title to win and the competition is intense, but Nancy Grace has to hold the title as the World’s Most Annoying Uptight White Woman.  And when she covers these things, she still manages to somehow make it all about her….

Anyway…

People need to remember a few things:

  1. In the American Judicial System, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty.  No matter what Nancy Grace thinks.
  2.  “Not Guilty” does not mean innocent.
  3. “Not Guilty”  means reasonable doubt exists
  4. Reasonable doubt means the prosecution didn’t prove the case beyond the reasonable possibility that the accused is innocent.
  5. Unlike some countries, the U.S. Justice system errs on the side of caution.  The Founders believed it was better to let a guilty person go free than make it easy to convict the innocent.  They were wise men.

But then “reasonable” is not a word anyone could apply to any aspect of this tragic mess….

I’ll let James Wolcott take it from here….

I don’t claim powers of clairvoyance or psychic reading, but the other day I was channel-hopping and paused at one of the cable channels doing a live feed from the Casey Anthony trial. I hadn’t followed the case, had only a dim awareness of the apparently endless discussion of duct tape, stench from the car, and Casey Anthony’s visit to a tattoo place that had taken place within the endless cable palaver during the trial coverage, but after a few minutes of watching I vaguely thought, I dunno, I could see her getting off.

So when the not-guilty verdicts came down within the last hour on the charges of murder and manslaughter (she was found guilty on the charges of lying to investigators), I seemed to be one of the few whose world didn’t flip sideways–I wasn’t that surprised and if anything pleased that the jury made up its own collective mind in defiance of the lynch-mob clamor on the cable channels.

It can’t be said that the know-nothing know-it-alls on Fox News and Nancy Grace’s Sweeney Todd cooking school accepted the jury’s verdict with modesty and maturity. After expressing shock and taking turns to tell us how “stunned” they were, they accused the jury of suffering from Stockholm Syndrome (staring at Casey Anthony’s face somehow melting their reason and resolve), appearing to resent that fact that the defendant might be freed soon (since she might be granted time-served on the lesser charges, having already served years behind bars), and acting peevish that they didn’t get their way, having already convicted Casey Anthony on the airwaves for years now and treating the trial as an audiovisual demonstration of what to them was self-evident.

“Appearing to resent” and “peevish” are too mild, actually–many of the instant commentators on cable were visibly, audibly angry at the AUDACITY these acquittals. (Once exception: Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News, who was calm and sensible.)

It may have annoyed Nancy Grace (everything annoys Nancy Grace), but defense attorney Casey Anthony slamdunked it afterwards when he told the press that this verdict was a rebuke to the demonization of his client and the ugly, unprofessional spectacle of lawyers going on TV to talk about a case about which they clearly didn’t know as much as they thought they did.

What little I saw of the coverage was disgusting and sob-sister, this endless fetishizing of “little Caylee,” as if these well-dressed, high-paid lawyers and media mouths had adopted her as their own little angel, and minutes after the verdict came down there was Judge Jeanine Pirro wailing, Where is the justice for this little girl? (“Justice for Caylee” was the sidebar subhead on Grace’s Headline News coverage, as if it were a personal crusade.)

Look, I don’t know if Casey Anthony is guilty or not, but neither does Nancy Grace or any of the performing seals brought in as expert commentators to bark and clap their fins, and maybe if they acknowledged they lack of godly omniscience they might be a little less “shocked” and “stunned” the next time around.

Barring exorcism, I don’t expect Nancy Grace to change, she being the only person whose nose seems tilted into a permanent sneer.

Postscript: Thanks, Florida, FOR WASTING OUR TIME YET AGAIN.

via The Casey Anthony Verdict | James Wolcott’s Blog | Vanity Fair.

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