April 28, 2011 · 9:19 pm

A Vanity Fair Challenge to Donald Trump to Prove the Authenticity of His Hair | Politics | Vanity Fair

Fair is Fair….

If he’s going to challenge President Obama’s legitimacy as an American Citizen, this seems to be the least he can do….

If Trump intends to declare his candidacy for the presidency, as he has so often threatened, the issue of his comb-over could become a constitutional matter. In the interest of putting this controversy to rest, Vanity Fair demands that Trump release a notarized certificate from a barber proving the veracity of his hair. In the event that significant members of the Balder community question the validity of the notarized certificate, we insist that Trump submit to air, wind, and Dutch rub tests to be administered by an independent board-certified hair-care expert that will debunk, once and for all, these corrosive conspiracy theories.

via A Vanity Fair Challenge to Donald Trump to Prove the Authenticity of His Hair | Politics | Vanity Fair.

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April 28, 2011 · 9:14 pm

Happy Birthday to the Kitten with a Whip

Otherwise known as Ann Margret….

I can’t believe she’s 70 today…

Here she is in “Viva Las Vegas” with some guy….

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April 28, 2011 · 8:34 pm

For Birthers, Obama’s Not Black Enough | The Nation

Fascinating article about President Obama and Racism in “The Nation”.

Here is a brief excerpt and a link to the full story:

Remember when the media regularly asked if Barack Obama was “black enough” to get the support of African-Americans? In 2007 pundits wondered if a black-identified but technically biracial candidate who came of age in the post–civil rights era, was raised far from traditional African-American communities, was educated in the Ivy League and boasted a foreign name might be more palatable to white voters than black ones. Today this query seems hopelessly naïve and endearingly optimistic about the fluidity of American racial identities. After the secret-Muslim accusations, the witch doctor posters, the “You lie!” shout-down and the chimpanzee e-mails—it is clear that President Obama is certainly “black enough” to experience both racially motivated public attacks and exceptional support among racial minorities.

But the tenacity of the birther movement has revived the issue of Obama’s blackness for me. Nearly a quarter of Americans, most of them white, believe President Obama was not born in the United States. The resilience of the birther myth—lately given air by Donald Trump—has even forced the White House to post a copy of Obama’s birth certificate online in hopes of settling the matter once and for all. Good luck—this controversy isn’t about documentation; it’s about deeply held beliefs, even faith claims, about who is and is not a legitimate citizen.

Many on the left say that birtherism is just racism, but there’s more than simple racial animus behind it. I suspect that part of the problem is that Obama is indeed not black enough; specifically, the president is not sufficiently Negro—the historical variation of blackness that is uniquely and indisputably American.

via For Birthers, Obama’s Not Black Enough | The Nation.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:43 pm

The shocking truth about the birthplace of Obama’s policies – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post

Great article from Ezra Klein in The Washington Post…

He points out that the positions President Obama and the Democrats are taking are the same positions the Republicans once had…

Shows how far to the Right everything in Washington has moved over the last couple of years…

If you put aside the emergency measures required by the financial crisis, three major policy ideas have dominated American politics in recent years: a health-care plan that uses an individual mandate and tax subsidies to achieve near-universal coverage; a cap-and-trade plan that attempts to raise the prices of environmental pollutants to better account for their costs; and bringing tax rates up from their Bush-era lows as part of a bid to reduce the deficit. In each case, the position that Obama and the Democrats have staked out is the very position that moderate Republicans staked out in the early ’90s — and often, well into the 2000s.

via The shocking truth about the birthplace of Obama’s policies – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:36 pm

Cagey Obama Sets an Election Trap for Paul Ryan and the Koch Bros. | | AlterNet

Very smart Politics….

From Alternet.com:

By baiting Ryan to present his budget plan before the administration unveiled its own, Obama deftly played Ryan’s own star-pupil, parent-pleasing nature against the eager Wisconsinite. When the president unveiled his own budget plan at a televised speech two weeks ago in Washington, he invited Ryan as his guest, and then issued a broadside against Ryan’s plan, saying it was “less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.”

“There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” Obama continued, as Ryan looked helpless on. “And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. That’s not a vision of the America I know.”

The Republican was clearly taken aback. “When the president reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch,” Ryan told McClatchy Newspapers. “Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.”

Since then, Obama has continued to hammer away at Ryan. On the campaign trail in California, Obama used the words “fairly radical” to describe the Ryan plan.  “I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous,” Obama said.

via Cagey Obama Sets an Election Trap for Paul Ryan and the Koch Bros. | | AlterNet.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:28 pm

GOP Reps Ryan, Webster face furious voters at town halls | Raw Replay

Yep, Political Suicide….

I’ve said before that over-confidence and over-reach would do them in…

I just hope this builds….

In the words of MSNBC host Rachel Madddow, House Republicans are in the midst of a “collective freakout” over the public’s reaction to Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan, which cleared the House right before Congress went on vacation.

Among other items, Ryan’s budget would significantly cut Medicare spending, eventually phasing it out in exchange for a coupon program that would only cover a small percentage of seniors’ medical bills.

Four Republicans voted against it, and not a single Democrat voted for it.

Now, Republicans are starting to catch the anger that Democrats caught in 2009 in the midst of their push for President Obama’s health care reforms. In two of the most recent examples, Reps. Ryan and Webster (R-FL) were confronted by angry crowds demanding to know why they had voted to cut Medicare.

A recent Gallup poll found that the majority of Republicans do not want Medicare to be cut.

via GOP Reps Ryan, Webster face furious voters at town halls | Raw Replay.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:24 pm

Paul Ryan’s plan puts 2012 elderly vote in play – Glenn Thrush and Abby Phillip – POLITICO.com

Like I said, I think the GOP may have just committed Political Suicide….

From Politico.com:

Obama’s 2008 campaign was fueled by youthful enthusiasm and billed as a generational upheaval. But older voters, especially white working-class conservatives, were not a natural hope-and-change crowd, and he lost among seniors by nine points to John McCain. Many of them simply stayed home.

That skepticism, bordering on hostility, has carried over to his presidency.

Over-65 voters have given Obama the lowest marks of any age cohort in every weekly Gallup presidential approval survey taken since Obama took office. Last week, only 36 percent of seniors approved of his performance, seven points less than Obama’s overall approval rating and 12 points lower than his positive rating among 18-to-24 year-olds.

But Ryan’s plan, embraced by most Republicans, gives Obama a big opportunity in 2012 to regain lost ground in key battleground states and narrow the generation gap. “It finally gives us an argument to make with seniors… It’s a godsend,” said a Democratic operative allied with Obama who sees the issue as a way to make up lost ground with seniors in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Florida.

via Paul Ryan’s plan puts 2012 elderly vote in play – Glenn Thrush and Abby Phillip – POLITICO.com.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:18 pm

Black Unemployment At Depression Level Highs In Some Cities

Another under-reported story….

From The Huffington Post:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In the decade leading up to the Great Recession, Wanda Nolan grew accustomed to steady progress.

From an entry-level job as a fill-in bank teller, she forged a career as a commercial banking assistant, earning enough to become a homeowner. She finished college and then got an MBA. Even after the recession unfolded in late 2007, her degrees and her familiarity with the business world lent her a sense of immunity to the forces ravaging much of the American economy. Nolan was an exemplar of the African American middle class and the increasingly professional ranks of the so-called New South.

But in September 2008, everything changed.

A bank human resources officer called her into a private conference room. “All I heard was, ‘Your position has been eliminated,’” says Nolan, 37, who, despite being one of the more than 13 million officially unemployed Americans, still spends most days in her self-styled banker’s uniform of pearls and pants and practical flats. “My mind started racing.”

More than two years later, Nolan is still looking for a job and feeling increasingly anxious about a future that once felt assured. Her life has devolved from a model of middle class African American upward mobility into an example of a disturbing trend: She is among the 15.5 percent of African Americans out of work and still looking for a job.

For economists, that number may sound awful, but it’s not surprising. The nation’s overall unemployment rate sits at 8.8 percent and the rate among white Americans is at 7.9 percent. For a variety of reasons — ranging from levels of education and continuing discrimination to the relatively young age of black workers — black unemployment tends to run twice the rate for whites. Yet since the Great Recession, joblessness has remained so critically elevated among African Americans that it is challenging longstanding ideas about what it takes to find work in the modern-day economy.

via Black Unemployment At Depression Level Highs In Some Cities.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:12 pm

Debt proposals: The Courageous Progressive Caucus Budget | The Economist

I’m glad to see this proposal finally getting some attention….

This is the one that makes real sense and has the right priorities….

And this is from “The Economist” which is not exactly a left-wing publication…

Mr Miller’s column notes that “the  Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far; it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts.” Which is pretty interesting. Have you ever heard of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan? Neither had I. The caucus’s co-chairs, Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, released it on April 6th. The budget savings come from defence cuts, including immediately withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, which saves $1.6 trillion over the CBO baseline from 2012-2021. The tax hikes include restoring the estate tax, ending the Bush tax cuts, and adding new tax brackets for the extremely rich, running from 45% on income over a million a year to 49% on income over a billion a year.

Mr Ryan’s plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus’s plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people. Mr Ryan has been fulsomely praised for his courage. The Progressive Caucus has not.

I’m not really sure what “courage” is supposed to mean here, but this seems precisely backwards. For 30 years, certainly since Walter Mondale got creamed by Ronald Reagan, the most dangerous thing a politician can do has been to call for tax hikes. Politicians who call for higher taxes are punished, which is why they don’t do it. I’m curious to see what adjectives people would apply to the Progressive Congressional Caucus’s budget proposal. But it’s hard for me to imagine the media calling a proposal to raise taxes “courageous” and “honest”. And my sense is that the disparate treatment here is a structural bias rooted in class.

via Debt proposals: The courageous Progressive Caucus budget | The Economist.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:23 am

China’s Economy to Surpass that of the US by 2016

And Americans- who had to buy a bunch of cheap crap at Wal Mart have no one but themselves to blame….

Ever since Americans decided it was better to have a bunch of junk than a few nice, high quality things, we’ve been headed in this direction…

When price becomes the most important thing and people elsewhere can make it cheaper, well, you do the math…

This is really as much- if not more of- a failure of the American Value system as it is of American Politics…

From  Yahoo News and MarketWatch:

The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

And it’s a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.

According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund’s website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.

Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.

via imf-bombshell-age-america-end-marketwatch: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.

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