Tag Archives: GOP

March 31, 2011 · 6:16 pm

GOP Presidential Candidates: An American Embarrassment

From Joe Klein at Time Magazine on the 2012 Republican Presidential Candidates:

This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party’s banner. They are the most compelling argument I’ve seen against American exceptionalism. Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can’t let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain. And, as Greg Sargent makes clear, Mitt Romney has wandered a long way from courage. There are those who say, cynically, if this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012, so be it. I disagree. One of them could get elected. You never know.

via American Embarrassment – Swampland – TIME.com.

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March 30, 2011 · 7:24 pm

North Carolina bill would prohibit cities from upgrading Internet access | The Raw Story

More proof that Time-Warner is Evil…

And more proof Republicans are owned by the Corporations that fund them…

The Republican-dominated North Carolina State Assembly this week approved a bill that would prohibit communities from upgrading their internet access, forcing individual municipalities into a private monopoly of managed broadband services by companies like Time Warner and Comcast.

Both firms have been restricting the amount of bandwidth users can consume, even though bandwidth itself is not a tangible, meter-able commodity.

The bill, which was heavily supported by telecom giant Time Warner, comes on the heels of several communities successfully launching their own fiber-optic broadband programs. One program in Wilson, North Carolina, called Greenlight, even features speeds up to 100 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) at a lower price than its corporate competitors.

That’s because Greenlight is a public utility, instead of a profits-making scheme, that places access and quality of service above harvesting dollars off customers. Instead of focusing on margins or how to impose fees on metered bandwidth use, they’re able to focus on simply providing the best the Internet has to offer.

Prior to the arrival of Greenlight, most Internet users in Wilson only had access to 7 Mbps speeds, at a much higher price than the public utility’s plans. For about the same price as the slower connection, Greenlight users get access to 20 Mbps speeds, with options to upgrade to 100M for about $150 a month.

However, in a Monday night vote, North Carolina assemblymen voted 81-37 to bring that to a halt, banning any other communities from upgrading their own connections and forcing them to continue patronizing private providers.

Currently-existing community broadband services like Greenlight, which five North Carolina communities have already set up, would not be affected should the bill clear the state senate.

The cities of Asheville, Bladenboro and Momeyer have all passed resolutions condemning the statewide bill.

via North Carolina bill would prohibit cities from upgrading Internet access | The Raw Story.

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March 30, 2011 · 7:10 pm

Poll: Americans Cooling on Tea Party – POLITICO.com

I knew people would eventually get tire of these lunatics….

Now, if only the press will recognize and accurately report that they are just a fringe group of Republicans…

From Jennifer Epstein at Politico.com

 

The tea party might be running out of steam.

The approval rating for the 2-year-old movement fell to 32 percent in a CNN/Opinion Research corporation poll released Wednesday, the lowest it’s been since CNN first polled on the tea party in January 2010.

Forty-seven percent of Americans, meanwhile, said they have an unfavorable view of the movement, a higher negative percentage than ever. An additional 7 percent said they’d never heard of the movement, and 14 percent said they had no opinion.

In December, 37 percent of the sample surveyed by CNN said they view the tea party favorably, while 43 percent said they view it unfavorably. The group’s favorability rating hovered at36 percent to 38 percent throughout 2010.

The biggest drop in the tea party movement’s favorability came among people who make less than $50,000 a year. In October, 30 percent in that income group said they had unfavorable views of the tea party. Now, 45 percent say the same.

via Poll: Americans cooling on tea party – Jennifer Epstein – POLITICO.com.

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March 30, 2011 · 7:05 pm

Freshman GOP Congressman Duffy Complains About His Congressional Salary…

Poor guy…

Just can’t scrape by on $174,000 a year…

Like I’ve repeatedly said, these guys in Washington live in a different world…

Duffy was asked about his pay by a constituent who said he had taken a job as a bus driver when his work as a builder dried up, and that his wife – a schoolteacher – would be taking a pay cut under the state’s new budget plan.

“I have six children and I’ve gone for roughly seven months with six kids and no paycheck,” Duffy replied, referring to the period when he left his job as Ashland County district attorney during the 2010 election campaign. “It was worth it for me to do that. I believed in what I was doing.”

Duffy told listeners he had cut his congressional office budget and didn’t vote on his own salary — “I got there on Jan. 5” — and that his federal health care and pension benefits are not nearly as good as they were when he worked for the state of Wisconsin. He described state benefits as “gold-plated.”

“The benefits that were offered to me as a congressman don’t even compare to the benefits that you get as a state employee. I just experienced that myself. They’re not nearly as good,” said Duffy.

“But $174,000 — that’s … three times what I make,” said the constituent. Someone else at the listening session asked if Duffy would vote to cut his salary, according to a recording of the event.

“I have no problem (with that). Let’s have a movement afoot. I walked into the job six weeks ago … And I can guarantee you, or most of you — I guarantee that I have more debt than all of you. With six kids. I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I generally use a minivan … I’ve got one paycheck. So I struggle to meet my bills right now. Would it be easier for me if I get more paychecks? Maybe, but at this point I’m not living high on the hog,” said Duffy. “Can everyone do more with less? Absolutely.”

Democrats accused Duffy of griping about his salary. State Democratic chair Mike Tate said in a statement, “Poor Hollywood Sean Duffy. He only makes four times the median family income in Wisconsin.”

via House freshman Duffy tells constituents “he’s not living high on the hog” on congressional pay – JSOnline.

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March 29, 2011 · 8:09 pm

My Thoughts: Life’s Great Mysteries

Just some random wonderings….

  1. Why does Jennifer Anniston still have a career?  Or does she?  Why is she in the news constantly?  Has she ever had a hit movie?  Has she really done anything since that TV series went off the air years ago and Angelina stole her husband?
  2. Is Katherine Heigl the next Jennifer Anniston?
  3. Does anyone really think Tom Cruise and John Travolta are straight?  And who cares besides the Church of Scientology…
  4. Speaking of John Travolta, why do so many movie stars wear such obvious toupees?  Do they really think they are fooling anyone?
  5. Is Meryl Streep getting all those great roles for older women not just because she is a great actress, but because she is the only actress in Hollywood, over 30, who hasn’t had a facelift or been botoxed to death?
  6. Has anyone really ever heard  Britney Spears sing or is she just a mentally unstable dancing lip-stinker?
  7. Is there anything Anne Hathaway can’t do-besides host the Oscars?
  8. How did “Crash” beat “Brokeback Mountain” for the Best Picture Oscar?  Does anyone remember “Crash” besides the entire city of LA who was in it?  Oh, that’s how it won…
  9. Are there any young female “stars” today equal in style and mystique to Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly? Or in talent to Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep?  Why not?
  10. Who really cares about Lindsey Lohan?
  11. Does anyone really think Social Security is bad?
  12. Why don’t Democrats fight for their core beliefs and Republicans not have any?
  13. How come the Religious Right still supports Republican candidates who have had two or three marriages and cheated on their wives and husbands?
  14. Does anyone really think Corporations and the Rich should not pay taxes in proportion to their incomes?
  15. What ever happened to the social contract theory?
  16. Why do people wear flip-flops in New York City?
  17. How does Michelle Bachmann keep getting re-elected?
  18. Is watching Fox News a sign of or a cause of Alzheimer’s Disease?
  19. Why does anyone think their life is so important or interesting that they have to text their friends during a live theatrical performance?
  20. Do people really think lighted cell phones are invisible when texting in theatres and really don’t bother anyone?
  21. What makes anyone without a uterus think they have a voice in the abortion debate?
  22. Are commercials dumber and more crass now due to societal change or only because the smart people don’t watch TV anymore?
  23. Will television really be relevant in 10 years or will it be replaced by the internet.
  24. Will people give up the Internet because it has as many commercials as television?
  25. Why are pharmaceutical companies allowed to advertise controlled substances on TV?
  26. Does anyone really think, after all these years, we are winning the “war on drugs” by simply locking everyone up?
  27. Why aren’t there more white people in prison for financial crimes that wrecked the economy?
  28. If the Supreme Court thinks Corporations are people, then why aren’t they taxed at the individual tax rates and rules?
  29. Why does anyone believe anything any politician says anymore?
  30. Is Debbie Reynolds ever going to retire?

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March 29, 2011 · 7:02 pm

Democrats offer Boehner a lifeline to avoid tea party-forced shutdown

This is the most succinct summary of what’s going on regarding the budget I’ve seen…

The question is:  Is the Republican Leadership ready to act like adults and make a deal or are they going to play to their loud, angry and ignorant base…

I still fear most of these cuts are going to hurt the economy in the long run.

It can’t be said often enough:  You do not drastically cut the budget when the recovery is this fragile.  You need to focus on growing jobs…

Ask Herbert Hoover’s ghost- or FDR’s….

From DailyKos:

To recap, the issue here is that tea party Republicans in the House have made it clear they will not support any funding bill that does not include provisions such as a repeal of the health care reform law and a ban on family planning funding. Obviously, those are poison pill provisions; the Senate wouldn’t pass them, and even if it did, President Obama wouldn’t sign them into law.

Because the most recent stop-gap funding measure, which will keep government open until April 8, did not include those provisions, 54 tea-party Republicans voted against it in the House, forcing the GOP to rely on Democratic votes to prevent a government shutdown. (They needed 32, but got 85.)

Unless tea-party Republicans flip-flop, John Boehner is going to need Democratic votes to pass a funding bill that can pass the Senate and get President Obama’s signature, and Hoyer’s comments were designed to make it clear to Boehner that Democrats are ready and willing to achieve a bipartisan compromise to keep the country moving forward.

Boehner is facing enormous pressure from his party’s right-flank to refuse the Democratic offer for cooperation, even though that would force a government shutdown. Polls show that tea-party supporters are losing confidence in Congressional Republicans on budget issues and by significant margins favor a government shutdown. But while a majority of Boehner’s political base says they favor shutting down government for several weeks, nearly three-quarters of Americans say such a shutdown would be a bad thing.

So John Boehner needs to choose between satisfying his the extreme right of his party, or forging a compromise with Democrats to move forward. The choice is his. Whether or not we have a government shutdown is entirely up to him.

via Daily Kos: Democrats offer Boehner a lifeline to avoid tea party-forced shutdown.

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March 28, 2011 · 8:14 pm

Two Thirds of US Corporations Pay No Federal Income Taxes

US Uncut held a National Day of Protest over the push to cut vital government programs while major, profitable Corporation pay No Taxes…

Sorry, but this just isn’t right….

From The Nation:

“I’m tired of people calling for shared sacrifice and it’s all coming from the workers and nothing’s coming from the top,” says protester Dave Sonenberg. “I’m sick of companies like Bank of America not paying their taxes.”

Bank of America hasn’t paid a nickel in federal income taxes for the past two years, and in fact raked in an additional $1 billion in tax “benefits.” The bank is enjoying these profits after accepting $45 billion from taxpayers, which the company then got to count as a deduction when they paid back the money.

Big corporations get to play by a whole different set of rules, says tax expert Bob Willens of New York-based Robert Willens LLC:

It’s also not unusual for a company to pay no federal taxes, while still paying state and local taxes, Willens said. Items that can be deducted for federal purposes aren’t always deductible for state and local returns, he said. State taxes can also be based on the amount of capital deployed in a state, not pre-tax income.

This is why two-thirds of corporations in America pay no federal income taxes. If they were forced to, we’re told, the whole country would suffer. Jobs would be lost, salaries slashed. Thank heavens we’ve avoided such calamity by allowing corporations to shape legislation in their favor.

In 2010, Bank of America handed out $2.2 million in campaign contributions to Congressional representatives and PACs (36 percent went to Democrats, 64 percent to Republicans). By throwing around that much cash, huge companies like BoA have a big say when it comes to crafting legislation that permits them to escape paying taxes, according to US Uncut organizer J.A. Myerson.

“The reason it’s not illegal is because they have bought and paid for the people who make the laws. The laws are made to accommodate this sort of nefariousness,” he says, adding that the process is wrong, and ordinarily that would mean approaching Congress to ask them to fix it, but there’s no point in attempting that when the system is so heavily rigged in favor of the rich and well connected. “So what US Uncut is doing right now is not Capitol Hill lobbying because that doesn’t seem like it’s a fruitful avenue. It’s trying to directly undermine the ability of Bank of America to earn record windfall profits by depleting the public trust that they are an upstanding member of society.”

via When Illegal Doesn’t Matter: US Uncut’s National Day Of Protest | The Nation.

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March 28, 2011 · 8:05 pm

GOP Puts AARP in its Sights

Now the GOP is going after the AARP…

This could be fun– and it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the Republicans….

The elderly are the most dedicated voters out there and have predominately supported Republican Candidates lately…

The elderly and southern white men are about the only base the GOP has outside of Religious Conservatives and the Rich…

I truly hope the Republicans stick to their guns and go after the AARP…

Whatever issues I may have with the AARP, they will not go down without a fight and they can really rally the older Americans against the GOP if the GOP pushes them too hard…

They aren’t Acorn….

They will fight back and they have the resources to do it….

Let’s just hope the GOP thoroughly pisses off the AARP Members….

They can’t win elections without them…

The Republican chairmen of the House Ways and Means Health and Oversight subcommittees have trained their sites on AARP, the nation’s largest advocacy group for older Americans.

Health Subcommittee Chairman Wally Herger, R-Calif., and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany Jr., R-La., said they plan to press AARP over its insurance products, revenues, governance, and lobbying expenditures.

“This hearing is about getting to the bottom of how AARP’s financial interests affect their self-stated mission of enhancing seniors’ quality of life,” Herger said in a written statement. “It is important to better understand how AARP’s insurance business overlaps with its advocacy efforts and whether such overlap is appropriate.”

In 2010, AARP spent $22.05 million on lobbying efforts, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The hearing, set for April 1, comes a little more than a year after the group helped Democrats pass the expansive health care reform legislation, and just weeks before Congress is expected to begin in earnest a debate over entitlement spending.

Over the years, the group has ticked off lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. In 2003, its support of then-President George W. Bush’s effort to create a drug benefit in the Medicare program angered some Democrats who were opposed to the structure. It was the Republicans’ turn in 2005, when AARP lobbied hard against efforts to privatize Social Security.

“AARP is committed to transparency, and the hearing will provide us yet another opportunity to answer any questions as we continue to be a champion for the wants and needs of Americans” older than 50, said AARP spokesman Drew Nannis.

via NationalJournal.com – GOP Puts AARP in its Sights – Friday, March 25, 2011.

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March 26, 2011 · 10:00 am

The Biggest Threat Facing the Country Today Is Fast Creeping Ignorance | | AlterNet

More on the theme of glorifying ignorance in America…

This acceptance and glorification of willful ignorance is really the greatest threat to our country…

There was a time we wanted the “best and the brightest” to run things…

Now we glorify mediocrities and dullards…

White people complain so much about Black people glorifying the Ghetto Culture of bling, profanity and baggy pants…

How can they talk when White folks glorify the willful ignorance of Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Ann Coulter?

Both groups are glorifying the lowest common denominators of their culture.

If Whites argue ghetto culture brings down the Black race, they why can’t they accept the argument that willful ignorance does the same for the White race?

Both concepts glorify what used to be “negative” images that have become “positive” images in their societies…

Just my thoughts….

As a story from Alternet put it, “3/4ths of Senate GOP Doesn’t Believe in Science: The Tea Party and its allies had made it unacceptable to the GOP base to be anywhere except pandering to the anti-science crowd.” (Full Story)

The Right, which hated and feared commies and their (largely imaginary) infiltration into government, not only don’t seem to care about creeping ignorance in government, but have come to embrace this new breed of government infiltrators.

The explanation for this embrace is simple as the minds of the infiltrators: science, and for that matter any other factual analysis, tends to flatly contradict many of the Right’s most cherished fictions, such as:

The more you cut taxes the more tax revenue flows into federal coffers.

History proves America is a Christian nation.

Climate change is either not happening at all or, if it is happening, it has nothing to do with our use of fossil fuels. (“I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do. …” – Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin)

Slashing regulation of business and high finance is good for business, good for the nation and good for the American public.

If the rich are allowed to keep more of their earnings they will share it with everyone else, (trickle down.)

School science classes should be “fair and balanced,” like Fox News, when teaching the origins of life on earth by teaching the biblically-inspired “creationist” version alongside Darwin’s scientific theory of evolution.

President Obama “may not have been born in America” as he claims.

President Obama is “a secret Muslim.”

And the list of Creeping Ignorance goes on and on, growing longer with each passing month. Michelle Bachmann believes that the founding fathers “didn’t rest until the put an need to slavery.”  She also believes the first shot “heard around the world” that started our war of independence was fired in New Hampshire. It wasn’t. Did she care? Nope. Pointing out that it was fired in Massachusetts was, to her and her kind, just further proof of how the mainstream media picks on conservatives.

via The Biggest Threat Facing the Country Today Is Fast Creeping Ignorance | | AlterNet.

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March 25, 2011 · 10:40 pm

How television created and then killed Sarah Palin’s political prospects – The Globe and Mail

Great Article from the Globe and Mail…

I’ve been saying for weeks, the media is finally tired of Sarah Palin…

Her 15 Minutes of fame are, hopefully, finally over…

God knows, she’s milked it for every dime she could..

Now the media is already foaming at the mouth over Michelle Bachmann as her successor…

And she’ll be twice as crazy and therefore twice as much fun…

It was television that destroyed Sarah Palin, just as it made her. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again – the arrival of Palin as a major political figure in 2008 was an emanation of the reality-TV culture, anchored in the belief that ordinary or “everyday” people, inarticulate though they may be, and with all the baggage of messy personal lives, are truly compelling public figures. Palin was the political equivalent. A figure who refracts national identity as it is shaped by the culture’s most powerful medium. Authentic, populist and dismissive of sophistication in thought and action.

Then, television duly destroyed the Palin authenticity. The arc of her national political career began with a defining speech at the Republican National Convention in September, 2008, and ended in November, 2010, a few episodes into Sarah Palin’s Alaska. The show, a cringingly inevitable reality-TV series, gave her a huge platform and she blew it. If her exposure on TV in 2008 brought out the authenticity, the show brought out Palin’s inner princess. She talked about being a mom 87 times an episode (I’m exaggerating , but only a little) and made dubious attempts to make political parables linking her family, the outdoors and wildlife. It was ego unbounded. And this after quitting her job as governor of Alaska.

The series had many memorable moments and scenes, but what lingered – and obviously had an impact on Republicans – was the unsubtle undermining of Palin’s assertion that she and her family are “normal, average Americans.” A salmon-fishing trip for the kids involved using a private bush plane to fly to a remote wilderness lake. Palin asserted that such a trip is “an everyday thing” in Alaska, yet any fool watching at home knew the cost had to be in the many thousands. A mountain-climbing trip to Mount McKinley was presented as a trip in the family RV, yet viewers were gobsmacked to find that the vehicle was more like those giant, luxury tour buses used by rock bands.

Television is not kind to blatant hubris and hypocrisy and the series amounted to an epic failure to enhance Palin’s status as the genuine voice of authentic America. Television is flow, not content, and in politics, TV is not a problem to be managed but an instrument to be played. (Marshall McLuhan told us so and it is true.) The flow of Sarah Palin’s Alaska amounted to a river of platitudes and patently insincere assertions. Palin failed to play television as an instrument.

The medium that gave her exposure and heft as a figure representing everyday reality, and ordinary people’s views, finally diminished her fatally. After succumbing to the temptations of a reality-TV series, Palin was exposed as overexposed. The other week, while on Fox News attacking Kathy Griffin, she had all the political heft of some batty lady calling into the phone-in radio show from remote Alaska and braying about things that made sense only in her own head. The presence, the charisma were gone.

Palin arrived as a creature of TV and the medium has eaten her up. Never mind the primaries and U.S. presidential election in 2012. The political obituary can be written now.

via How television created and then killed Sarah Palin’s political prospects – The Globe and Mail.

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