Tag Archives: politics

June 22, 2011 · 8:17 pm

Rick Perry Gay Rumors: Governor’s Aides Prepared To Tackle Allegations

This was quite the buzz a few years ago in Texas and on the internet…

I truly hope it’s not true.  I don’t want him in my Club….

From The Huffington Post:

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s camp is prepared to tackle unfounded rumors dating back to as early as 2004 about the Lone Star State Republican’s personal life should he run for president and the allegations resurface, according to Politico.

Roughly seven years ago, Perry himself addressed the unsubstantiated buzz that he and his wife planned to divorce and that he was gay. He denied the rumors and told the Austin American-Statesman at the time that he was the victim of a “smear campaign” being conducted by his political enemies. The AP reported in March of 2004:

Perry said the rumors “are not correct in any shape, form or fashion. These are irresponsible. They’re salacious. They’re hurtful to my family.”

…

“I don’t think a rumor can just get to critical mass by itself,” Perry said. “I think you have to have a well thought-out, organized effort to disseminate that kind of information and keep it going day after day after day after day.”

According to Politico:

The crusted-over rumors were in the ether among some attendees at a dinner hosted last week by the Manhattan County GOP, where Perry gave the keynote speech.

…

But Team Perry, asked about how it’s prepared to handle them when they emerge if he runs, said it remains “false and misleading.”

It remains to be seen whether Perry will jump into the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. After previously denying he had any intention of entering the primary election contest, the Texas Governor recently signaled interest in pursuing a campaign for the White House.

via Rick Perry Gay Rumors: Governor’s Aides Prepared To Tackle Allegations Should They Resurface: Report.

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June 22, 2011 · 7:12 pm

Sarah Palin Baffles and Frustrates Fans By Quitting Bus Tour

Two Points:

1.  She never finishes anything she starts.  She reminds me of my Mother….

2.  She has no interest in doing anything unless someone is paying attention to her and will do anything to get people to pay attention to her.    Also, just like my Mother…

Oh…My….God….

It’s all coming together now….

From Salon.com:

Sarah Palin quit her cross-country bus tour (or PAC-funded family vacation) about one region into the country. Everyone is so used to her quitting things that no one really noticed. Life went on. Jon Huntsman ran for president. Rick Perry preemptively denied gay rumors.

But Scott Conroy at RealClearPolitics wondered what happened to the tour that was supposed to be heading through the Midwest and Southwest at some point in this rapidly ending month. It seems like Sarah Palin just went home to Alaska, to eat salmon or something.

“As Palin enjoys her sojourn to the 49th state, she has not reconnected with key early-state figures like Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and she may have jeopardized whatever political momentum she gained from her recent reemergence in the 2012 discussion. Her political action committee’s website still greets visitors with a stale banner, announcing the nationwide bus tour beginning “[t]his Sunday, May 29th.”

Just give it another month, and she’ll come up with some other scheme to briefly convince everyone that she’s running for president again. She feeds on the attention! (And the PAC donations.) That documentary about how she used to not be so awful before she got famous is going to show in Iowa soon. That’ll definitely mean something.

Palin is probably just putting off the decision to run for president until it’s too late for her to run for president, because, like so many of us, she is undisciplined and lazy. There’s no grand plan, here: just indecision and procrastination

via Sarah Palin baffles and frustrates fans by quitting bus tour – War Room – Salon.com.

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June 21, 2011 · 9:09 pm

CEO of Walmart Makes in One Hour What the Average Employee Makes In a Year

Lots of good articles up at Alternet.com today and this is one of them…

This just isn’t right….

Another reason for me to keep up my 12+ year boycott of Wal-Mart….

The crowd in DC seems to have forgotten you can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy middle class.  Try as they might, the Rich just can’t buy everything…

S. Robson “Rob” Walton, Walmart chairman, has a net worth of about $19.7 billion. And he’s only number 9 on the list of 2010’s top 20 richest Americans.

Walmart workers, meanwhile, make around $8.75 an hour—about $18,000 a year. They’d have to work over a million years to approach what the chairman of Walmart Stores is sitting on. Alice and Jim Walton each have about $20 billion, and Christy Walton has $24 billion.

Last year Jonathan Turley noted that the CEO of Walmart, Michael Duke, makes his average employee’s yearly salary every hour.

A new report by the Washington Post on “Breakaway Wealth” contains new research by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley T. Heim, who analyzed tax returns from the top 0.1 percent of earners in the U.S. That top percentile takes home more than 20 percent of the personal income in the country, and their average income is $5.4 million. The average income of the bottom 90 percent, according to the Post, is just $31,244.

via CEO of Walmart Makes in One Hour What the Average Employee Makes In a Year: How Skyrocketing Inequality Is Hurting America | | AlterNet.

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June 21, 2011 · 8:07 pm

John Edwards’ Life in Exile: Ex-Senator Seen as ‘Snake’ and ‘Scumbag’ in Hometown Chapel Hill

The headline pretty much sums it all up for how most of us  feel here in North Carolina…

Great article from the Daily Beast about  how Edwards is seen in Chapel Hill…

Here’s an excerpt and a link to the full article by Michelle Cottle:

The first, inescapable fact on the ground is that the folks around Raleigh and Chapel Hill are not yet in a forgiving mood. While legal experts debate the merits of the Justice Department’s case against Edwards, the hometown crowd has issued its own, more personal verdict: Depending on who you ask, the man is “a snake,” “a scumbag,” or, as Betty Henderson, receptionist at the Edwardses’ longtime church home in Raleigh, eloquently put it, “a narcissist so in love with himself that he can’t see past his own desires.”

Depending on who you ask, the man is “a snake,” “a scumbag,” or…“a narcissist so in love with himself that he can’t see past his own desires.”

Home may be the place where they always have to take you in—but that doesn’t mean they have to like it.

You can’t walk a block in these parts without running into someone who has a tale of John Edwards after the fall—often secondhand and overwhelmingly unflattering. In some instances, the anecdotes revolve around Edwards’ discomfort with his new infamy. A local ABC news cameraman, for instance, was yelled at by an irate Edwards this month when the guy took a picture of the senator at one of Jack’s little league games. “Edwards sits all by himself at the games,” observes the cameraman.

Even more common is the snickering over Edwards’ nightlife. Particularly during the period when Elizabeth kicked him out of the house and he was living in an apartment near the main drag where UNC students congregate, Edwards was a fixture at area watering holes. The hipsterish Bowbarr, right next door to the Rosemary Street highrise in which Edwards lived, was a favorite spot for him to unwind and chat up the (young, pretty) clientele. But there have been sightings of the senator exercising his legendary charm at plenty of other area bars as well. “He’s not shy,” chuckles Mike, a balding, bespectacled bartender at Crooks’ Corner, one of the Edwards clan’s favorite eateries in sunnier times.

via John Edwards’ Life in Exile: Ex-Senator Seen as ‘Snake’ and ‘Scumbag’ in Hometown Chapel Hill – The Daily Beast.

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June 21, 2011 · 5:37 pm

PIMCO Founder To Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Back To Reality

It’s probably too late to talk any sense into the GOP Congress and the Democratic enablers, but this just might make a difference…

I’ve been saying all along, they are doing exactly the opposite of what needs to be done to drive an economic recovery.  You have to spend to create jobs, which will increase purchasing power to drive demand for consumer goods and increase tax revenues.

You worry about deficits once the economy has recovered. And the deficit will be a much smaller problem as increased revenues from taxes-income and sales- will ease the burden on state, local and federal governments.

Then you repeal the Bush tax cuts, end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, remove the cap on Social Security withholding taxes and it’s all fixed.

Why don’t they just listen to me?  And Paul Krugman. And now, Bill Gross…

From TalkingPointsMemo:

 

One of the most influential investors in the world of finance has a message for lawmakers — particularly conservative lawmakers — on Capitol Hill: rejoin the real world.

In a prospectus for clients, Bill Gross, a co-founder of investment management giant PIMCO, says members’ of Congress incessant focus on deficit — and in particular, the manner in which they obsess about deficits — is foolhardy, and a recipe for disaster. What the country needs, Gross said, is real stimulus now, and a measured return toward fiscal balance in the years ahead.

More:   PIMCO Founder To Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Back To Reality | TPMDC.

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June 16, 2011 · 10:02 am

Anthony Weiner Tells Friends He Will Resign

WienerGate is about to end…

I have very mixed feelings about this tacky little episode.

First of all, Congressman Weiner broke no laws.  Unlike Republicans David Vitter and John Ensign who continued to serve in the Senate with their colleagues support.

Weiner did initially lie to the press and his constituents.  But polls show the people he represents forgave him and wanted him to remain in office.

It’s his Democratic colleagues, who unlike the GOP, did not stand by him and pushed him to resign.  They basically forced him out.

Maybe it’s for the best.  This just keeps going on and on as a distraction.

Maybe now Congress can focus on something besides penises.

Still, Weiner was a strong, Progressive voice in Congress.  Maybe too strong.  That’s why his colleagues were so fast to turn on him.  He made waves.  He kicked ass and took names.  I’ll miss him.

When this whole thing began, I still say he should have said it was no one’s business but his and his wife’s and left it at that.  He should just have refused to discuss this as it is/was a personal matter.

But the tabloid press loves a good penis story…

On with the show….

From the NY Times:

Representative Anthony D. Weiner has told friends that he plans to resign his seat after coming under growing pressure from his Democratic colleagues to leave the House, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.

His decision follows of revelations of his lewd online exchanges with women, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.

The news comes as Democratic leaders prepared to hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss whether to strip the 46-year-old Congressman of his committee assignments, a blow which would severely damage his effectiveness.

Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, came to the conclusion that he could no longer serve after having long discussions with his wife,  Huma Abedin, when she returned home on Tuesday after traveling abroad with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

via Anthony D. Weiner Tells Friends He Will Resign – NYTimes.com.

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June 15, 2011 · 10:18 pm

Michele Bachmann’s Irrational Fears: Lesbians, Her Constituents, Former Nuns and, Perhaps, Her Sister…

I really hope people realize this woman is a nut case….

But I don’t take anything for granted anymore.

I seriously have to question her mental stability if she behaves like this with her constituents…

Can you imagine if, horror of horrors, she actually was President and had to deal with difficult or complex matters on the World Stage?

In comparison, she almost makes Sarah Palin look sane.

Almost….

Sarah Palin may be a tacky, money-mad, egomaniacal opportunist, but she’s merely ignorant and power crazy, not certifiably crazy…

What is the world coming to when I have to consider the faint possibility that either of these two might be the nominee of a major political party for the job of President of the United States?

Or,  god forbid, President…

I’m glad I started drinking again….

From Michelle Goldberg at TheDailyBeast.com:

In April 2005, Pamela Arnold wanted to talk to her state senator, Michele Bachmann, who was then running for Congress. A 46-year-old who worked at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Arnold lived with her partner, the famed Arctic explorer Ann Bancroft, on a farm in Scandia, Minnesota. Bachmann was then leading the fight against gay marriage in the state. She’d recently been in the news for hiding in the bushes to observe a gay-rights rally at the Capitol. So when members of the Scandia gay community decided to attend one of Bachmann’s constituent forums, Arnold, wanting to make herself visible to her representative, joined them.

A few dozen people showed up at the town hall for the April 9 event, and Bachmann greeted them warmly. But when, during the question and answer session, the topic turned to same-sex marriage, Bachmann ended the meeting 20 minutes early and rushed to the bathroom. Hoping to speak to her, Arnold and another middle-aged woman, a former nun, followed her. As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. “Help!” she screamed. “Help! I’m being held against my will!”

Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was “absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her.” The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, “It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann.”

Lots of politicians talk about a sinister homosexual agenda. Bachmann, who has made opposition to gay rights a cornerstone of her career, seems genuinely to believe in one. Her conviction trumps even her once close relationship with her lesbian stepsister. “What an amazing imagination,” marvels Arnold. “Her ideology is so powerful that she can construct a reality just on a moment’s notice.”

via Michele Bachmann’s Unrivaled Extremism: Gay Rights to Religion – The Daily Beast.

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June 15, 2011 · 10:43 am

The G.O.P. Presidential Debate

Every time I look at the current field of Republican Presidential Candidates, all I can think about is the old Cher song “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.”

No one is really paying much attention right now, but this really is a pathetic group of candidates.

But then, the GOP has become a pretty sorry excuse for a Political Party with its focus on bigotry, ignorance and lies….

From the New York Times Editorial Page:

 

Monday’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire — full of historical error, economic obfuscation, avoidance of hard truths and even outright bigotry — was a feast for connoisseurs of political dysfunction. Desperate to avoid being outflanked on the right, the seven candidates tried so hard to outdo each other in finding fault with President Obama that they seemed to forget that they are competing for the same party nomination. By evening’s end, they had melted into an indistinguishable mass of privatizing, tax-cutting opponents of Shariah law.

For the moment, the candidates are appealing to a Republican Party whose core is so contorted in fury at Mr. Obama that it barely resembles the one that nominated George W. Bush in 2000. Mr. Bush may have prosecuted the war on terror to excess, but he always reminded the country that it was not at war with Islam. This batch of Republicans has dispensed with such niceties. Herman Cain repeated his earlier statement that he would not be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet. Some, he explained, “are trying to kill us.”

None of the other candidates took him to task for this. Mitt Romney, a Mormon who has himself been the subject of religious slurs, at least mentioned the nation’s founding principle of religious tolerance and respect but missed an opportunity to include Muslims. Newt Gingrich tumbled over the historical cliff with the idea, announcing some kind of loyalty oath to serve in his administration, similar to that used in dealing with Nazis and Communists. At least no one brandished a list of known Muslims serving in Mr. Obama’s State Department.

via The G.O.P. Presidential Debate – NYTimes.com.

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June 14, 2011 · 11:03 pm

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.

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June 14, 2011 · 1:02 pm

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.

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