Tag Archives: Congress

Key Dem Senator: Obama ‘snookered’ by GOP into Talking Deficit Over Jobs

I could not agree more….

This says everything I’ve been thinking….

It’s always a pleasant surprise to see some DC Democrats talking a little sense…

God knows, the GOP never will….

From RawStory.com:

Urging the administration to enact new measures to lower the unemployment rate, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) said President Barack Obama got “snookered” by Republicans into prioritizing deficits over jobs.

“I am concerned about the Obama administration’s approach on this,” Harkin, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told The Hill in an interview published Friday. “It always has been about jobs. I think the administration kind of got snookered talking about the deficit and the debt after the last election.”

Amidst growing economic anxieties, Harkin joined Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) in calling for additional stimulus spending in the form of a major infrastructure package.

“The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,” Harkin told the paper.

Job creation in May was the lowest since last September as the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent. The Obama administration has — under intense pressure from Republicans — shifted its focus from job creation to deficit reduction this year, against the vocal objections of progressive economics and polls that say the public is far more concerned about jobs than the debt.

via Key Dem Senator: Obama ‘snookered’ by GOP into talking deficit over jobs | The Raw Story.

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Elections

House Republicans Cut Food Assistance For Low-Income Families While Protecting Azaleas

I mean, I love azaleas, but really…..

From HuffingtonPost.com:

If you’re an azalea at the National Arboretum, you’re in luck — a Republican on the House Appropriations Committee is looking out for you. If you’re a woman, infant or child, however, you’re on your own.

Slipped into the FY 2012 agriculture appropriations bill that the House is expected to take up today is an unusual provision on page 13 requiring the National Arboretum to maintain a very specific portion of its azalea collection.

“The Committee directs the National Arboretum to maintain its National Boxwood Collection and the Glenn Dale Hillside portion of the Azalea Collection,” reads the bill. “The Committee encourages the National Arboretum to work collaboratively with supporters of the National Arboretum to raise additional funds to ensure the long-term viability of these and other important collections.”

While azaleas are being carefully tended to, the bill would cut $832 million from a program that provides food assistance to low-income mothers and children. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the reduction could result in as many as 475,000 people being turned away from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) if food prices continue to rise.

“Everyday people across the country leave their homes in search of work, only to return at the end of the day with more worries and less hope,” said Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), the agriculture subcommittee’s ranking member. “At a time that people continue to struggle to make ends meet, Republicans want to cut funding to food programs that are helping put food on the tables of those most in need.”

“Governing is about choices. It is clear where the House majority’s priorities lie — and it is not with those of the American people,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a strong WIC advocate, in a statement. “These cuts are unconscionable and will not only hurt families trying to survive, but also hurt our economy.”

“We understand that we have an obligation to get our fiscal house in order,” added Farr. “And Democrats are ready to work with our friends across the isle to make that happen, but not by discriminately targeting those most in need.”

Azalea upkeep isn’t the only unusual measure in the bill:

via House Republicans Cut Food Assistance For Low-Income Families While Protecting Azaleas.

Leave a comment

Filed under Politics

Daily Kos: The Politics of Personal Destruction: Anthony Weiner and Us

The best article I’ve seen yet about the Weiner Scandal…

I am thoroughly tired of all the noise about this….Let’s move on.

From DailyKos:

Anthony Weiner’s personal life is not our business. Those now feeling betrayed because “he lied to us” need ask themselves why they felt justified in wanting to know about his personal life in the first place. Certainly, Weiner handled the story as poorly as can be imagined, but there too what matters is not the facts of his personal behavior but that his personal behavior became a story. As the story continues to play out it becomes even more clear that Weiner’s best response to the initial reports would have been to tell reporters that his personal life is personal, and that other than his wife nobody has any right to ask or know anything about it. Even had the allegations been false, his best response would have been to tell reporters that his personal life is personal, and that other than his wife nobody has any right to ask or know anything about it. More than a decade after the national disgrace that was the impeachment of a president for lying about his personal behavior, the politics of personal destruction continues to thrive on both sides of the aisle, by supporters of both sides of the aisle. Indeed, even as Weiner’s stereotypical public confession was still echoing around the shrill mass media, some progressives already were excitedly promoting allegations about the personal behavior of a leading Republican, as if two wallows in the mire make one clean.

We cannot change the behavior of public officials. We cannot make any immediate impact on the behavior of the corporatist media. We cannot stop right-wing assholes from being assholes. We can change our own behavior. The mud must stop here. It seems easy to feel happy when right-wing demagogues are hoist on their own political petards, but it shouldn’t be. Every time it happens, innocent people get hurt. Relatives. Friends. Spouses. Children. Some claim that it’s the hypocrisy that matters, but it isn’t. Right-wing attempts to suppress and repress the personal behavior of all manner of innocents are not wrong because they are hypocritical, they are wrong because they are about suppression and repression, and often also about bigotry. The hypocrisy argument is a distraction. Right-wing bigots and scolds are no worse for being proved hypocrites. Right-wing bigots and scolds who are not hypocrites are no better than their hypocritical brethren. Revelations about the personal behavior of various right-wing hypocrites have had no impact on the repressive, suppressive and bigoted right-wing political agenda. Revelations about the personal behavior of various right-wing hypocrites have in no way advanced the causes of equality and justice and individual freedom. It’s better to face and take the bigotry and repression and suppression head on, for what it is, and not get side-tracked by the personal behavior of individual bigots or agents of repression and suppression. When no laws are being broken, the privacy of the personal behavior of consenting adults should be sacrosanct. Even for Republicans. Even for assholes. Even for bigots.

via Daily Kos: The politics of personal destruction: Anthony Weiner and us.

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Elections, Politics

How to Sabotage a Recovery – The Great Recession – Salon.com

I think History will identify this as the key mistake of the Obama Presidency:  Letting the GOP set the debate on cost cutting during a time we needed the government to invest to grow jobs and the economy.  It’s the same mistake FDR initially made…not to mention Herbert Hoover.  But FDR recovered and I’m still hopeful Obama will, too.

I’ve also finally decided the Republicans are nothing short of evil and are certainly unpatriotic.  They are almost reaching the point of treason in their quest to destroy the Middle Class.

Their goal really is to sabotage the Economic Recovery in order to gain Political Power- then to use that power only to serve the Rich and the Corporate Elite.  The GOP certainly isn’t focused on what is good for the Country as a whole…

And I don’t know what President Obama is thinking to let them get away with this…

I think he should start by listening less to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and more to Nobel-Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman….

Or maybe do something novel, for Washington, like listen to the people.

Polls show the people want jobs, safe Social Security and Medicare and most don’t really give a damn about the deficits right now…

Only the GOP and the Tea Party are talking deficits…

From Salon.com:

Regarding the economy, Obama has let his opponents set the terms of debate, resulting in widespread public confusion. Consider, for example, the following two paragraphs from a recent Newsweek/Daily Beast article called “America the Angry”:

“By almost 4-to-1, Americans say our economy is not delivering the jobs we need, 81 percent to 12 percent.

“And Obama isn’t helping. Fifty percent of respondents think the president has no real plan to balance the budget; 40 percent say he does.”

Balance the budget during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? Should Obama repeat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bad mistake of 1937, when “budget hawks” prevailed, very nearly stifling the New Deal?

That’s certainly what the GOP wants. Whether leading Republicans actually believe that returning to the economic practices of the 1920s would be good for the nation is hard to say. Some may be pretending.

The House’s freshman contingent appears sincerely misguided. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asks sarcastically if what Tea Partyers want is a low-tax, limited government haven of conservative religious values like … Pakistan.

Not really. What most have in mind is something more like the Deep South of the 1950s — an imagined paradise with comfortable “aristocrats,” a timid middle class, and beaten-down peasants at each other’s throats.

Many of them probably saw “The Andy Griffith Show” as a documentary.

via How to sabotage a recovery – Great Recession | Economic Recession, Economic Crisis – Salon.com.

1 Comment

Filed under Politics, The Economy, Uncategorized

The GOP’s CIA Playbook: Destabilize Country to Sweep Back Into Power

For a Party that talks incessantly about Patriotism, this is a pretty sick political philosophy.  But, most of us know by now, “Hypocrisy, they name is Republicans.”

I can’t agree with AlterNet.com more on this article:

Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using almost any means available, from challenging the legitimacy of opponents to spreading lies and disinformation to sabotaging the economy.

Over the past four decades or so, the Republicans have simply not played by the old give-and-take rules of politics. Indeed, if one were to step back and assess this Republican approach, what you would see is something akin to how the CIA has destabilized target countries, especially those that seek to organize themselves in defiance of capitalist orthodoxy.

via .AlterNet.com

1 Comment

Filed under Elections, Politics, Uncategorized

Anthony Weiner Scandal: In Congressman’s District, A Chorus Of Support

I kind of thought this would roll off his back in New York….New Yorkers aren’t easily shocked by sexual affairs without sex.

And remember, Anthony Weiner wasn’t a  Republican”Family Values”  hypocrite having an affair like Republican Senators David Vitter and John Ensign were…

Weiner just might survive this if he listens to his Constituents and not to the press and the DC insiders.

The question is:  Does he really want to?  Especially  now that his fast-track political career will be stalled for the foreseeable future.

What he really wanted was to be mayor of New York and the Democratic Establishment has lined up against him- even if his constituents haven’t.  Is he content to stay a Congressman for several terms? Or does he resign and try to change careers to the Media, like Eliot Spitzer.

Time will tell….

Thursday (and for anyone not keeping track, it’s exactly two weeks into the saga known as Weinergate), a 64-year-old woman named Ann Oniszko stood in the lobby of one of the buildings of the Queens Community House and expressed undiminished admiration for her congressman. Wearing a specially-made gold pendant, her first name molded into a Star of David, she said, “I hope this doesn’t kill his political career. People just have little bad habits.”

“They just have to use technology better,” said Steve Pullano, the director of the teen program at the center.

“I just hope he salvages and builds himself up again,” said Onizsko.

Even as Weiner’s fellow Congressional Democrats have called for his resignation, the residents of New York’s Ninth District appear to stand behind their congressman in solid formation.

According to a recent poll by Marist and NY1, 56 percent of those interviewed said that Weiner shouldn’t resign, while only 33 percent said he should (12 percent said they hadn’t made up their minds).

In the Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods that make up Weiner’s jigsaw-puzzle district, the congressman has long enjoyed the kind of poll numbers generally reserved for authoritarian rulers. He won 60 percent of votes in the last election, actually a significant drop-off from the previous election, in which his constituents chose him by a ratio of 93 votes to six.

Even now, he doesn’t seem much in danger of losing local support, and nowhere is that support more evident than at the Queens Community House, a sprawling network of project buildings and community-service centers based in the Queens neighborhood Kew Gardens.

via Anthony Weiner Scandal: In Congressman’s District, A Chorus Of Cheers.

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Elections, New York, Politics

Democratic Party Affiliation Grows

See what happens when the GOP declares War on Medicare?

If the Dems will only hold fast in defending Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while the Republicans continue to try to destroy them, they will become the majority Party for the foreseeable future…..

As long as the economy doesn’t crash…

From Taegen Goddard’s Political Wire:

A new Gallup poll finds 45% of Americans identified as Democrats last month as compared to 39% who identified as Republicans.

The six-point Democratic edge is the largest measured since October 2009, when the gap was seven points.

via Democratic Party Affiliation Grows.

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Elections, Politics

Heartless Hypocrite Eric Cantor Calls On Weiner To Resign

There are a lot of despicable politicians, but right now I can’t think of one worse than Eric Cantor, Republican Congressman of Virginia…

First he wants to destroy Medicaid and Medicare.

Then he only wants to help tornado victims in Missouri if he can cut money somewhere else in the budget.

Now, he’s jumping into the Anthony Weiner story and saying he should resign.

Funny, he didn’t say that about David Vitter or John Ensign.  But then, they were Republicans…

I don’t know how this man sleeps at night. Or how anyone sleeps with him….

He really should be left alone under a bridge like the troll he is…

From TalkingPointsMemo.com:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is now calling on Democratic New York Rep. Anthony Weiner to resign, in the wake of Weiner’s admission on Monday that he has engaged in online sexual exchanges with younger women, and that he had lied about the matter for the past week after accidentally posting a public Tweet, intended to have been a direct message to a college student, of a photo of his underwear-clad crotch.

“I don’t condone his activity. And I think he should resign,” Cantor said after a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Louisa, Virginia, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reports.

“We’ve got a lot of serious challenges in this country and a lot of work for Congress to do,” Cantor also added. “The last thing we need to do is get enmeshed in a discussion about Congressman Weiner and his Twitter activities.”

via Cantor Calls On Weiner To Resign | TPMDC.

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Elections, Politics

Weiner, Vitter, Spitzer, Ensign, Edwards, Tobias: One of These Is Not Like the Others : Ms Magazine Blog

Great article, from Jodi Jacobson at MS Magazine Blog, about the differences between Anthony Weiner and the other recent sexcapades…

I could not agree more with this article….

Weiner’s mistakes were nothing compared to the other guys.

I’m frankly tired of this story and ready to move on, but our Puritanical country and the hypocrites in Washington have to ride this a while longer…

Anthony Weiner is a very ambitious man who has taken a big hit to his career and his ego.  But he is a good Congressman.

He is going to have enough to do to save his marriage and his career.  This has hit him hard and he’s going to have to pay a lot of penance and eat a lot of crow.  Let’s leave him alone to work through this so he can get back to doing the work he was elected to do.

This is all really none of our business….

Hat tip to Pam Spaulding at Pam’s House Blend where I originally saw the link to this:

 

Is it dumb and poor personal judgment for a politician to send photos of himself in various stages of undress and arousal to women who are not his wife? In my opinion, yes. Is it my business? Not really, unless he has, for example, been railing against “sexting,” faulting women, contraception, abortion, and gay people with the downfall of America and earthquakes in far-off places, or has been seeking to restrict people’s rights based on a bastardized version of morality. Is it even dumber to go on an “I-did-not-send-pictures-to-[that]-woman” pity tour to make himself look like the victim of hacking? Oh, yeah. He may yet be forced to resign for his stupidity.

But, I don’t necessarily think he should have to do so. As I have said here before, I really do not care in what sexual practices consenting adults engage or what agreements are forged between two consenting adults, especially if the spouse of a given Twitterer knows about and lives with her or his spouse’s preferences.

What I do care about is the “holier-than-thou” moralizing in which so many of these philanderers engage, and the fact that they both pretend to be better than the rest of us, and, even worse, attempt to legislate our private lives.

Weiner did none of this.

The others did.

via Weiner, Vitter, Spitzer, Ensign, Edwards, Tobias: One of These Is Not Like the Others : Ms Magazine Blog.

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Elections

The GOP’s Dangerous Arrogance

Great article up at YahooNews…

Even I- no political innocent- am still shocked at how callous and blatantly Political the GOP is…

They really don’t seem to care about the Country, only about their political power and their wealthy campaign contributors.

Defaulting on the national debt is just unthinkable.  If they do not raise the debt ceiling, the entire economy will be thrown into chaos and Wall Street will go crazy.  I hope their Corporate owners force the Republicans to do the right thing, but I’m afraid they are too out of control right now even for the Wall Street moneymen to bring them into line.  This is scary stuff….

The Republicans have done everything they can to slow the recovery just so the economy will either collapse into crisis again or be so weak they can use it politically.

They have no interest in Statesmanship or in what is best for the Country.  All they care about is what is best for the GOP, the Rich and the Corporations who fund them…

I just hope the Rich and the Corporations still have enough control to stop the GOP from destroying the economy just for Political gain.  If they do play politics with the debt ceiling, even the Rich and the Corporations will feel the hurt.  But the Middle Class will feel it more.  As usual….

 

Nationally and globally, the economy is at a tipping point. The GOP, driven by invincible ignorance or cynical design – and perhaps both – is working overtime to trash the recovery with budget cuts that would drain demand from the economy – or a debt ceiling vote that could trigger a financial collapse equal to 2008, or perhaps unpredictably graver. For proof, all you had to do was listen to Mitt Romney’s announcement speech today. In it, he made a smarmy attempt to blame Barack Obama for the economic pain actually caused by the dereliction of duty by George W. Bush & Co., pain that was then prolonged by the obstruction of congressional Republicans. Those legislators contrived successfully to limit the stimulus package, block a second one, and forthwith blame the stimulus that saved us from another Great Depression for the slow climb out of the Great Recession. Never, of course, did they mention that the America’s deep deficits were generated by the fraudulent Bush war in Iraq and the unfair Bush tax cuts, which were founded on the false premise that they would pay for themselves.

The same tawdry spectacle has played out for two years and more in America’s capitol, a place that is still, despite recently fashionable worries about its destiny, the indispensible engine of the world economy. Indeed, the future of billions of human beings is determined by our elections, in which most of them have no vote. JFK once noted that the proudest boast of the ancient world was the boast of democratic citizenship: Civis Romanus sum: ‘I am a Roman citizen.’ The inescapable reality of the present world, for better or worse, is that people everywhere have to say, Civis Americanus sum. That’s strikingly clear here in Europe, in good times and bad. President Obama is a more popular, hope-giving figure than the leaders he recently visited; he’s the counterpoint to Bush and the redeemer of an American image carelessly disfigured during the first decade of the century.

And now the GOP that has moved decidedly to the right of Bush would compound his errors. Congressional Republicans could shatter the restored credibility of the United States by refusing to protect its full faith and credit by raising the national debt ceiling or by holding that essential measure hostage to the repeal of the New Deal – something that never even occurred to Ronald Reagan or either Bush president. In those Oval Offices, they regularly signed debt-ceiling increases.

via The GOP’s dangerous arrogance – Yahoo! News.

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Elections, Politics, Uncategorized