In Living Color & Men on Film episodes for your comedic pleasure; enjoy! Have a great week, everyone.
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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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White House Beefs Up Online Rapid Response
First Posted: 05/23/11 01:43 PM ET Updated: 05/23/11 02:05 PM ET
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has created and staffed a new position tucked inside their communications shop for helping coordinate rapid response to unfavorable stories and fostering and improving relations with the progressive online community.
“This week, Jesse Lee will move from the new media department into a role in the communications department as Director of Progressive Media & Online Response,” read an internal memo from Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, provided to The Huffington Post. “For the last two years, Jesse has often worn two hats working in new media and serving as the White House’s liaison with the progressive media and online community. Starting this week, Jesse will take on the second role full time working on outreach, strategy and response.”
The post is a new one for this White House. Rapid response has been the purview of the Democratic National Committee (and will continue to be). Lee’s hire, however, suggests that a portion of it will now be handled from within the administration. It also signals that the White House will be adopting a more aggressive engagement in the online world in the months ahead.
Lee has played that role in the past, including writing a semi-infamous White House blog post that said Fox News’ Glenn Beck was lying about the administration on his show. His new gig comes with its own Twitter account, precisely for the purposes of disseminating push back.
An equally telling requirement of Lee’s new job, however, is that of crafting strategy for outreach to the progressive community. Lee has been tasked with that responsibility in his previous incarnations, both as a member of the DNC online team during the ’08 election and as a senior new media adviser with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
His new post may require even more delicate hand-holding. Instead of managing the administration’s web presence, he will be pressing to make the administration more popular on the web. In that respect, his Twitter account could also become an interesting window into the status of the always emotional, occasional testy dance between progressives and the president.
Lee enjoys good relationships with much of the online community, but as a member of the administration for the past two years he has also had his moments of friction.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/23/white-house-online-rapid-response_n_865652.html
Boomers, Breaking
by Anne Laurie
Didn’t get a chance to slot this in last week, but in light of the Warren/McHenry incident, it seems relevant. Mark Schmitt at The New Republic plots out the numbers behind what the subhead refers to as “The GOP’s brilliant generational weapon in the Medicare fight”:
Today’s 55-year-old was born in 1956. That’s not generally considered a major break in the generations. It’s smack in the middle of the Baby Boom (the peak of the boom, in fact), with almost a decade to go before the first Gen-Xers were born, dreaming of Winona Ryder. But the difference between early and later Boomers, especially in their experience of the economy, is dramatic.
A baby born in 1956 would have graduated from high school in about 1974, from college in 1978 or so. Look at almost any historical chart of the American economy, and you see two sharp breaks in the 1970s. First, in 1974, household incomes, which had been rising since World War II, flattened. Real wages started to stagnate. The poverty rate stopped falling. Health insurance coverage stopped rising. Those trends have continued ever since.
Second, a little later in the decade, around the time today’s 55-year-olds graduated from college (if they did—fewer than 30 percent have a four-year degree), inequality began its sharp rise, and the share of national income going to the bottom 40 percent began to fall. Productivity and wages, which had tended to keep pace, began to diverge, meaning that workers began seeing little of the benefits of their own productivity gains. The number of jobs in manufacturing peaked and began to drop sharply. Defined benefit pensions, which provide a secure base of income in retirement, began to give way to 401(k)s and similar schemes that depend on the worker to save and the stock market to perform. While the benefits of higher education rose, college tuitions started to rise even faster. Those trends, too, have continued.
If there was ever going to be a generational war in this country, that high school class of ’74 would be its Mason-Dixon line. It’s the moment when Bill Clinton’s promise—“if you work hard and play by the rules you’ll get ahead”—began to lose its value. Today’s seniors and near-seniors spent much of their working lives in that postwar world, with their incomes rising, investments gaining, their health increasingly secure, and their retirements predictable. Everyone 55 and younger spent his or her entire working life in an economy where all those trends had stalled or reversed. To borrow former White House economist Jared Bernstein’s phrase, it was the “You’re On Your Own” economy. Finally, those 55-year-olds are spending several of what should be their peak earning years, years when they should be salting away money in their 401(k)s and IRAs, in a period of deep recession and very slow recovery. […]
Heading into the 2012 election… the electorate is likely to shift back to one in which younger and middle-aged voters vote in proportion to their share of the population, so a “Mediscare” campaign won’t work. This time, the GOP hopes to play both sides of the generational war, gambling that while seniors want security, younger voters never expected the certainty of Medicare, just as they don’t expect reliable pensions or Social Security benefits, and thus will embrace a plan that sounds innovative, flexible, and market-based. Contending that the only alternative to premium support is the end of Medicare entirely, they are offering a generation that is accustomed to getting less than their parents a little bit, rather than nothing.[…]
…If Social Security is any precedent, younger voters will be indifferent, while older voters won’t believe they’re exempt. The Republicans will again walk away from the conflict, hoping to get credit for being “serious” without bearing a political price for the error.
For Democrats, the defeat of the Ryan plan, like the failed Social Security privatization before it, will be regarded as a great victory, and an opportunity to get a fresh start with worried older voters. But they should not ignore the generational divide revealed by Ryan’s cutoff. If progressive politics has nothing to offer the late Boomers and the generations that follow except the same old programs, and nothing that responds to their distinctive experience of the economy, then eventually they’ll fall for one of these gimmicks from the right.
Yes, I am one of those 55-year-olds (born in November 1955, actually). Ever since my entry into the public sphere (Bronx public kindergarten), both those in authority and my slightly older Boomer ‘cohorts’ have been telling me “You should’ve been here just a couple years ago—before it was used up / worn out / overextended.” And, too often, the Gen Xers have dutifully responded to the robber-baron misdirection of their Reagan-administration era by attacking “greedy Boomers” rather than the tiny minority of greedheads at the top of the economic pyramid that were busy looting all our public treasury and private savings. I don’t share Eventheliberal TNR’s assumption that those of us on either side of the Magic 55 Date will automatically fall for the GOP’s dishonest divide-and-conquer techniques, again, but I do think it’s important we stay aware of how it’s been used against us in the past.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/05/31/boomers-breaking/
valuing worker quality of life at zero
by Freddie deBoer
In the name of equanimity, here’s some good Conor Friedersdorf. When he’s good, he’s very good. And when he’s bad… ouch. Here he is, asking “Can Progressives Fix the US Postal Service?” I couldn’t tell you, myself. I don’t identify as a progressive; I think it’s a meaningless weasel word. But I do know that Conor’s post is a classic example of advocating other people’s sacrifice.
Conor is a bright guy who cares, so it’s extra depressing that he wrote a post that, as most conservative writing nowadays does, demonstrates total apathy towards the material well-being of broad classes of human beings, without owning up to that. The very idea that the well-being of millions of public sector employees matters—that, in fact, delivering a higher standard of living to broad classes of people is the very purpose of American society—goes unconsidered.
Conor says
An expensive but inflexible labor force is a significant drag on USPS, as on any organization. It is also another example of the public employee problem that threatens the future of the whole progressive project. A basic leftist goal is to persuade the American people that Ronald Reagan was wrong—that given the proper resources, government can bring about solutions and isn’t itself the problem. Various think tank fellows, Democratic strategists, and public employee unions are working to make that case. In the long run, however, strategic communication matters less than results. So long as public employees are highly paid, enjoy benefits more lavish than their private sector analogues, and work under contracts that hamstring the ability of their agencies to perform and adapt, Americans will eventually conclude that public sector investments are folly.
Let’s decode this, shall we? Because when Conor talks about expensive and inflexible labor force, what he’s talking about is that people in these jobs are well-paid and have job security. I know we’ve all been living through decades of plutocrat-adoring Republicans defining the political vocabulary, but you know, there was a time when workers expecting to be paid well and have some job security was considered a pretty elementary part of the social compact. In fact, you might say, in this capitalist system of ours, that delivering higher wages and better job security to large numbers of workers was a fundamental part of the American dream, back when such a thing existed. But Conor, as is typical of his writing and conservative commentary in general, doesn’t even bother to weigh the social value of the high standards of living for these public employees. He doesn’t seem to recognize that the fact that these people have a mechanism for a better life is a good at all, nor does he bother to wrestle with the consequences of firing and cutting the wages of thousands of people. At all. It’s as if the material conditions of these people’s lives—because, you understand, they are public employees, and are therefore Bad People—simply don’t matter to him at all.
It’s fair to assume, I think, that Conor thinks his own job security and wage are important. I imagine he views the ability to secure decent compensation, and with it the kind of life that he wants—that his culture has promised him, again and again—as important in and of itself. What other purpose is there for this society of ours, after all, if it doesn’t work towards improving the lives of as many people within it as possible? So if there was some sort of coordinated, partisan, politically motivated campaign to attack Conor’s standard of living and reduce his wages, I think he’d argue that his standard of living matters. I mean, surely, the Atlantic could pay him a little bit less. Right? Would he really quit that gig if they paid him, say, $1,500 a year less than he makes now? How about $3,000? Is that below the threshold where he wouldn’t work, or be able to live, at all? I’ll tell you: that’s a cruel question. I don’t want Conor’s standard of living to decline. The people in his life who care about him certainly don’t, and would (and should) defend him if people started trying to attack his quality of life. But that’s how it is when you’re going after a person, rather than going across the nameless, faceless Enemy who you have decided to focus your wrath on.
Since we’re identifying basic goals here, let me name one for the right: degrading the standard of living for the large majority of the American people. You degrade the ability of everyone to make a decent wage by destroying unions, one of the traditional models for how to improve the standard of living of broad groups of the American people. (Including, incidentally, those of non-unionized workers, whose wages were historically inflated due to the threat of unionization.) You eliminate pensions; you replace them with things like 401ks, which don’t provide enough for retirement. You oppose health care reform; in fact, you work to degrade Medicare with a voucher program that doesn’t keep up with the cost of health care. You eliminate social services and government programs everywhere. You do all of it in the name of the free market. Does that sound like a healthier alternative than the supposedly self-defeating leftist plan Conor describes?
Conor writes, “Let’s make an earnest effort to fairly compensate folks who deliver parcels, teach kids, and build public works – even as we do our damnedest to avoid public employee union labor.” OK, Conor, let me ask you one more time: how? If Conor can come up with a genuine alternative to the left-wing prescription of empowered workers and a generous safety net, I’m all ears. I have been asking him to describe one in all the years we’ve been arguing online. He’s never articulated such a plan. Instead, he calls for sacrifice for other people. We have embraced the conservative, free market vision of smashing unions, eroding the New Deal and Great Society, and letting the profits on top run wild for three decades. To show for it we have endlessly stagnated wages for those in the middle and at the bottom. Your way is not working, Conor.
Now, we might want to point out a simple fact here, which is that the right to unionize is a consequences of absolutely elementary democratic rights like free speech and free association. Conor self-identifies as a libertarian, after all. But this is an inconvenient line of questioning.
But, hey, Conor’s right. In the private sector, people are rewarded for results! After all, the banking industry destroyed the world economy through their incompetence and greed, and most of the people in the industry went to jail or got fired were remunerated beyond their wildest dreams. That invisible hand, huh? What a character. (He makes an appeal to the pragmatism of the markets! Pragmatism! They fucking drove us all to the brink of selling pencils while wearing a barrel and they made billions doing it, and this is pragmatism?)
Here’s an alternative theory for Conor: the post office provides a service that cannot be provided through markets and the profit motive. Sort of like defending the country, researching orphan drugs, and providing health care to the old and sick. It might be true both that a) we need a service in this country where you can say “hey, take this Land’s End catalog to the guy on the remote mountain in Wyoming for less than a dollar” and b) that service can’t be made profitable. Just like, say, providing health care for those with Barth’s syndrome can’t be made profitable. The public has some legitimate interests that cannot be served profitably. My ideology has a solution for this. Conor’s does not. (Conor mentions UPS and FedEx, which is always a sign of funny business when discussing USPS; neither provides anything remotely like the necessary daily, bulk, non-time dependent mail-carrying ability of the postal service.) This was Matt Yglesias’s point in the post Conor links to.
Don’t ask me, ask the Dutch. They—a much smaller nation with a much lower burden on their postal services—have waved the Libertarian Fairy’s Wand of Markety Goodness all over their mail carriers. How’s it going?
‘The TNT strategy was “We want to be one of the big players, like FedEx or UPS,” and it failed, of course,’ he said. ‘If you have to split up it means it didn’t work. In the end the shareholders were not benefiting and nor were the employees. So there were just a few managers who had a nice adventure and it didn’t work out.’ The winners from Holland’s liberalisation of the postal market, he said, were the big organisations who bulk mailed. ‘The losers? Almost everybody else. TNT, the new postal companies, the workers, the government. They liberalised the market and they’ve had a headache for five years and it’s not over yet.’
Sounds like utopia!
Conor is a bright guy, which is why I am so consistently dismayed by the most obvious attribute of his writing about unions: its utter thoughtlessness. Nothing animates his work on the subject more than the classic conservative tactic of anointing some group of undesirables responsible for all of our problems, and bitterly demonizing them. I have to laugh: we live in a country where unionism has been gradually destroyed for decades, and yet conservatives still find unions an endlessly attractive target for the politics of petty resentment. I think they need unions. I would like to see Conor experiencing an America without any unions at all, just to see puzzlement when he finds the postal service not suddenly a perfect capitalist wrecking machine, impoverished inner city children not magically turned into star pupils despite the abject degradation of their lives, and the country not one iota closer to the equitable and prosperous America of our dreams.
Instead working people would find just one more door to prosperity shut, with nothing to show for it but conservative promises about the pot of gold at the end of the free market rainbow.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/05/31/valuing-worker-quality-of-life-at-zero/
ok ladies and gentlemen…
WHAT would happen if MALIA or SASHA OBAMA DID THIS?
……………………………
VIDEO: Did Sarah Palin really let daughter Piper physically shield her from reporter?
Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2011
by GottaLaff
How dare those reporters intrude on the privacy of a fake candidate?
Hey, the Palins just wanted a nice, quiet vacation! I mean, come on,
what close-knit clan doesn’t go on their outings in a huge tour bus
emblazoned with enormous U.S. Constitution and Liberty Bell graphics,
enticing the press to hunt them down like a pack of dogs?
And it’s not as if Former Half-Gov Exploita McLovesPress is vying for
attention these days, right? Clearly, she was simply including her
daughter in an exciting, wholesome, fun-for-the-whole-family activity:
Body guarding!
What part of Family Values don’t you guys get? Besides, who says the
mother is the one who is supposed to shield the daughter, anyway?
Palin’s just bein’ mavericky, there, also, too.
We all know it was that damn “lamestream media’s” fault! What’s a prop well-trained child to do? Or was Sarah just… oblivious?
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2011/05/31/video-did-sarah-palin-really-let-daughter-piper-physically-shield-her-from-reporter/
Been working on a seperate thread about this. I didn’t want to give this bitch any attention with a thread, but you and I know that the double standard for that child’s behavior is glaring! Please feel free to post your comments over there. Thanks!
Palin is nothing but grifting trash. I can see how the kids behave as they do. They’ve never had any home training. OMG! I can’t stand to look at this grifting trash another minute!
Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin – Some Insight and an Excerpt!
By Co-Author: Ken Morris
Despite being filled with regret for his own actions while serving for nearly four years under candidate and then half-governor Sarah Palin, Frank Bailey came to fear that his former boss remained a voice in American politics. In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin, former insider and my co-author Frank Bailey said of his ideals when we first met, “I am still a Fox News Conservative.”
Frank went on to explain that Sarah Palin, despite her carefully managed image and “word salad” lip service to conservative ideals, cared little for the smaller government and social values that attracted him to her candidacy in 2005. She was (and he admits guilt in getting sucked in, and participating wholeheartedly) consumed not with governance, but with image, vindictiveness, and ultimately reaping worldly rewards. A frequently used Palin password from before her run for governor, “Jabez”, provided a subtle clue as to her ultimate goal. From Chronicles 4:10: Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, ‘Oh that Thou would bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast [territory], and that Thine hand might be with me, and that Thou would keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me!’ And God granted him that which he requested.”
From the very beginning, Sarah had a plan that God would answer her Jabez-like prayers. And while none of us (Frank, me, and third co-author Jeanne Devon) believe God played any part, amazingly her dream for riches came true; the three of us decided that she’d have been wiser to pray for happiness.
Well documented in Blind Allegiance, Sarah came to relate to yet another Biblical figure, Queen Esther, going so far as to borrow the one-time savior of the Jewish people’s most famous line on several occasions: “If I die, I die.” In our book, we document several emails where the governor (who said repeatedly, “I hate this damn job”) marveled at how God chose her, above all others, for divine purpose.
And while Frank was blindly allegiant to a woman he once truly believed was Ronald Reagan in a dress, Sarah was no less blind in her own faith in herself. She became convinced that she had Reagan’s so-called steely spine. She swore publicly that her skin was rhino thick, even to the point of lecturing Hillary Clinton to buck up and adopt Sarah’s ability to take the heat in the political kitchen. Frank and the others who knew the backbone filleted, thin-skinned truth, choked at the words despite continuing to believe in her mission. Not everyone in this world, they rationalized, is self-aware. If this were her only fault, they could live with that.
Unfortunately, this was the least of the character flaws that made her, in Frank’s words, “…not only ill-suited to head a political party or occupy national office, but would lead to a disaster of, well, biblical proportions.”
Sarah was, at best, an Old Testament Christian (an oxymoron since Christianity began with the birth of Christ and the creation of the New Testament). And she was a revisionist at that. An eye for an eye became two eyes for an eye. Eventually she translated that into the belief that any perceived slight deserved nothing less than personal destruction.
Even in the case of a man of God, who championed what Sarah claimed was her most cherished principal – the preservation of unborn life – when causing her public embarrassment suffered her wrath. After one of her famous last-minute charity event cancellations (so that she could finish her lacquered biography in time for Christmas sales) even he became a target. She ordered Frank Bailey to do opposition research on this man, searching through sex offender and criminal files, telling Frank, “Find something. He must have something on him that we can use.”
After returning to Alaska from the McCain/Palin defeat, as Blind Allegiance so shockingly documents, Sarah did virtually nothing but attack enemies and work the national media for attention. She pledged to go only on Fox News because they were the only fair and balanced network. Even this week, when Frank Bailey courageously went on Sean Hannity’s show, Fox demonstrated how “fair and balanced” they were when Hannity, in a pique of his own defensiveness, asked Frank, “Okay, what would you ask Sarah if you were me?” Frank said, “Ask her why she broke campaign finance law and illegally coordinated with the Republican Governors Association during the campaign,” an event painstakingly documented in our book. Not only did she illegally coordinate we prove, but she blatantly
misrepresented that truth in her public statements.
What did Sean Hannity do with this little exchange? He edited it out of the interview, and did not tell his viewers they were watching an edited tape he advertised on his website as “Sean battles Frank Bailey over his controversial book about Sarah Palin.” Yeah, Sean Hannity cut it clean out, but left his otherwise nonstop attacks, not allowing Frank to complete his sentences. Is this what journalism has become? Is that what Fox means when they claim to be fair and balanced? For what it is worth, Frank reported to me this morning that he may still be a Fox News conservative, but he is no longer a Sean Hannity conservative. That’s progress.
The Epilogue to Blind Allegiance, which has not been widely reported on and that we offer here with permission from Howard Books, details a small incident from 2009 that provides a summation to the book. There is much symbolism in this vignette and a fitting end to Frank’s extraordinary and painful journey from Palinbot to Palin target. Meanwhile, Palin and her current blindly allegiant inner circle are attacking even the cover of our book as deceptive for having two photographs juxtaposed to create an eye-popping image. But, they have yet to address anything between those covers. Truth is hard to refute, and truth out of the very mouths of our subjects—quoted verbatim in emails they wrote–is impossible to refute (or to even refudiate).
As for Frank, he’s willing to offer Sean Hannity the highest rated show of all time: he will sit down, next to Sarah Palin, both wired to lie detectors, and answer questions about the truths contained in our book. We ask only that he not edit out anything that doesn’t fit his world view as he did in Frank’s interview last night. How Fair and Balanced would that be?
Epilogue
I’ve gone through life never holding grudges because life is too short
and that’s why I have a good disposition. God’s blessed me with that—
in fact it’s not me but Him in me that has always allowed me
to walk in forgiveness and peace.
—Sarah Palin, email to conservative radio show host Dan Fagan, June 18, 2006
Back in May 2009, a buddy on the board of trustees for an educational foundation contacted me about a fund-raiser for college scholarships. His idea was to auction off a bottle of wine signed by Governor Palin. I wrote Sarah, “Boss, are you ok with Kris autographing a bottle of wine? My friend thinks this will fetch more than any other bottle for their cause.”
Sarah agreed.
Kris Perry, who signed most of the letters to constituents in Sarah’s name, did me the favor of signing the governor’s name. After the auction, I wrote Sarah, “Your signed bottle of wine helped raise $1,000 for scholarships for needy kids.”.
Sarah responded, “Cool! Thanks.”
Without an ounce of guilt—and now, with apologies to whoever paid a $1,000 for a fake signature—we misled the public about this simplest of matters. Why not just send the bottle to Sarah, have her actually sign, and be honest with everyone? The only explanation is that by 2009, we’d been denying truth so long on large issues that small matters didn’t seem worth the effort.
Just as Sarah really believed—beyond comprehension—that she held no grudges and walked in forgiveness and peace, we all became selectively immune to self-reflection. And in wading through this painful memoir, I realize that all of us Rag Tags had similar defects, none more so than me, the person who worked alongside her longer than any other.
The lesson learned, I guess, is that it takes an extraordinary person to deliver more than promises for a better future. We need to not only listen but also dig deeply into the character of our leaders before offering them our allegiance. And, more importantly, I will never, ever, surrender blind allegiance to anyone again, save God and family
http://www.themudflats.net/2011/05/31/blind-allegiance-to-sarah-palin-some-insight-and-an-excerpt/#comments
Treating the Economy as a Joke
by BooMan
Tue May 31st, 2011 at 12:03:23 PM EST
Sometime today, the House Republicans will hold a vote on whether or not to raise the debt limit with no strings attached, as the Obama administration has requested. The idea is to prove to the administration that the health of the global economy is now a hostage to the GOP’s extreme demands for massive, unprecedented cuts in domestic spending and entitlements. Essentially, the Republicans are saying, “Destroy your own base of political support, punish the elderly, the needy, and our veterans, or the global economy gets it.” It’s not a serious vote. It’s a joke vote.
And for all the talk of economic crisis should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling by August, the financial markets are likely to yawn at this vote — if only because Republican leaders have privately assured Wall Street executives that this is a show intended to make the point to Mr. Obama that an increase cannot pass absent his agreement to rein in domestic programs.
“Wall Street is in on the joke,” said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The stock market may yawn at today’s vote, but they’ll completely freak out if the the deadline for raising the limit gets close without some action.
This is an opportunity for you to make a lot of money. Just think back to the debate over TARP.
Mr. Josten of the Chamber of Commerce, who has met privately with Republican newcomers on fiscal matters since January, asked, “Am I the only one who remembers the split screen on TARP?”
He is not. Increasingly, worriers from Washington to Wall Street recall how House Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin first rejected the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as the bank bailout, on Sept. 29, 2008, though the financial system was near collapse and a Republican president, George W. Bush, was pleading for their support.
That afternoon, cable networks split screens to capture the stock markets going down simultaneously with the House vote; the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 777 points, its largest single-day point drop. Four days later, following the Senate’s lead, the House approved a revised bailout and Mr. Bush signed it into law.
A time will come sometime in July when the Republicans fail to raise the debt ceiling and Wall Street starts a massive sell-off. This is when you buy shares. You might want to wait until the market has lost more a third of its value, though, because it could be a very long time before the global economy recovers and stock prices reach their pre-crisis levels.
Take the time to read this account of what may happen if the government defaults (or even comes close to defaulting) on its debts.
You need to pay close attention to where you have your money parked, and seek out advice about where you can find safety.
Everyone may think the Republicans are bluffing and that this is all a joke, but there is nothing funny about what’s going on, and there doesn’t seem to be any realistic prospect of the GOP backing down prior to a major adverse event on Wall Street.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/5/31/12323/1384
Tue May 31, 2011 at 09:00 AM PDT.
House Democrats should vote ‘no’ on Republican debt limit ploy
by Jed Lewison
If it wasn’t already obvious that today’s so-called “clean” debt limit bill is a political ploy, then all you need to do is read the legislation itself, especially the first section:
H.R. 1954: A bill to implement the President’s request to increase the statutory limit on the public debt.
SECTION 1. FINDING.
The Congress finds that the President’s budget proposal, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2012, necessitates an increase in the statutory debt limit of $2,406,000,000,000.
So if you vote for this bill, you’re not just voting to raise the debt limit, you’re also going on record in support of the absurd notion that President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal is the reason why we need to increase the debt limit. In truth, we need to raise the debt limit because Congress—with Republicans in control of the House—has already passed a 2011 budget that requires an increase in the debt limit. And literally nobody has proposed a 2012 budget that wouldn’t require an increase in the debt limit, not even folks like Rand Paul.
It would be one thing if this legislation had a chance of passing, but it doesn’t—GOP leadership imposed a two-thirds vote requirement for passage, all but guaranteeing its defeat.
This is nothing more than a message bill, and as such, every single Democrat who votes today should vote against it. They can make it clear in statements for the record that they support a responsible increase in the debt limit, but they shouldn’t let Republicans define the terms of the debate or put words in their mouths.
Republicans hope today’s vote shows they have they aren’t bluffing when they threaten to throw America into default on its obligations with Democrats agreeing to spending cuts. They want this vote to show they are committed to responsible fiscal policies. But that’s bullshit. What Republicans really want—and Democrats have been doing a great job of hammering this home—is to end Medicare as we know it in order to pay for tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations. The GOP would rather cut Medicaid than end subsidies for oil companies.
The truth is that with their failed economic policies and massively expensive—and needless—wars, the Republican Party is responsible for our long-term debt problem. Now they want Democrats to go on record blaming President Obama for the problem they caused, and they want them to do it on a vote that is guaranteed to fail. That’s not a game Democrats should play. They should vote no on the GOP’s political debt limit bill.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/31/980818/-House-Democrats-should-vote-no-on-Republican-debt-limit-ploy?via=blog_1
Thanks for posting this.
Tue May 31, 2011 at 10:30 AM PDT.
All six recall petitions against Wisconsin GOP approved while three against Dems put on hold
by Chris Bowers
All six recall petitions against Republican state Senators in have now been found sufficient by the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB). In addition to the three petitions the GAB approved last week against Dan Kapanke, Randy Hopper, and Luther Olsen, this morning they approved the petitions against Sheila Harsdorf, Robert Cowles, and Alberta Darling.
Further, the GAB has delayed the determination of sufficiency or insufficiency on the three recall petitions filed against Democratic state Senators, due to the stronger challenges filed against those petitions:
In an announcement sure to shake up the drive to recall politicians from both parties, the Government Accountability Board said Friday that its members would not be able to consider the recall petitions of three Democrats when they meet on Tuesday.
This might push the recall elections against Democrats back a week to July 19, push all recall elections to that date, or possibly prevent any recall elections against Democrats from taking place. More detail on the still fluid schedule:
The board had been working under a plan to hold the recall elections on July 12. If there is more than one challenger in any race, the July 12 election would become a primary and the general recall election would be Aug. 9.
The board’s new plan, if approved by the court, would have the Democratic recall elections a week later – on July 19. If there were multiple challengers, the July 19 election would become a primary and the general recall election would be Aug. 16.
The court, however, could change the schedule, either by delaying the Republican recall elections or ordering the board to complete work on the petitions against Democrats by Friday’s deadline.
The bottom line here is that all six of the vulnerable Republicans will face recall elections, while it remains uncertain if any Democrats will face such elections. That’s a big win.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/31/980848/-All-six-recall-petitions-against-Wisconsin-GOP-approved-while-three-against-Dems-put-on-hold?via=blog_1
So much for another GREAT WHITE HOPE…
BWA HA HA HA HA HA AHA
I’m going to say it again…
YOUTUBE, BITCHES….
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA
click on the link to see the video. ….who you gonna believe Huntsman, or your lying eyes….LOL
………………………………………………..
May 31, 2011 4:10 PM
Huntsman’s mandate problem gets much worse
By Steve Benen
Jon Huntsman certainly isn’t the only Republican presidential candidate who supported an individual health care mandate. He is, apparently, the only one who persists in fudging the truth about it.
Two weeks ago, Huntsman and his team assured reporters that the former governor did not back a mandate as part of his reform package in Utah, adding that Huntsman’s record on health care reform stands in stark contrast to the measures backed by President Obama and Mitt Romney.
There’s ample evidence that Huntsman just wasn’t telling the truth, and that as governor, he threw his support to a reform package that included a mandate. Today, a conservative blog moves the ball forward with a video clip from 2007.
Asked specifically about his comfort level on a “mandate,” the then-governor replied during a televised press conference, “I’m comfortable with a requirement [to have coverage]. You can call it what you want, but at some point, we’re going to have to get serious about how we deal with this issue.” He added that there’s already a mandate in place, “It’s called the emergency room…. We’re living today in an environment, to be sure, where there’s a mandate in place. It’s really whether you want to make the system more efficient.”
Of course, I’m going to find this sort of rhetoric pretty compelling, but that’s not good news for Huntsman — I’m a lefty and not the target audience for a Republican presidential candidate hoping to impress the Republican base. I agree with what Huntsman said in 2007 because the line he took at the time is fairly progressive.
But putting that aside, the larger problem for Huntsman is that this deals with his veracity as a candidate. If the former Obama administration official simply changed his mind about a controversy, he can try to explain his shift. But Huntsman is playing a dishonest game — he endorsed a mandate, publicly and privately, and continues to deny what is plainly true, even in the face of clear evidence.
Candidates generally find it easier to change direction than to be get caught in a lie. Flip-flopping can be embarrassing for a presidential candidate, but dishonesty has the potential to be far more damaging.
Huntsman isn’t even a formal candidate yet, and he seems to already be slipping into some disturbing habits.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_05/huntsmans_mandate_problem_gets029926.php
Let’s paint the picture for these mofos
YOU TUBE, BITCHES!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86DbFEszjr0&feature=player_embedded
to be honest…youtube is like one of the best inventions for politics – EVAH.
Uh oh! Oh sh*t!
TOP OF THE BOTTOM OF THE HEAP
Giuliani Beating Romney In Poll Despite Not Running
Poor Mittens. Rudy Giuliani is edging him out in a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, and Giuliani isn’t even running! GOP voters sure are fickle. You’d think they could at least reward Romney just for politely telling everyone that he actually wants to be president. The Mayor of 9/11 hasn’t declared his candidacy and hasn’t hired any staff, because, eh, the Obama guy is still probably going to run and who wants to try to beat that dude?
From CNN:
Giuliani, who was a candidate in the last presidential cycle, is also considering another bid, but an adviser tells CNN that the former New York City mayor is not taking active steps toward getting in the race other than making recent appearances in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary on the road to the White House.
CNN probably just included Giuliani in their poll to make Mittens feel bad. Giuliani still only got 16% of the vote, and Mittens was one point behind him. Aimless field trip queen Sarah Palin was third with only 13%. It’s nice to know that you can be a cross-dressing, gay-people-loving, divorced Catholic guy who’s totally suspect when it comes to conservative social issues, have no policy platform of any kind during one of the worst jobs crises in generations and you will still beat everyone else in the GOP primary field — even when you’re not running for the nomination.
Sad spherical life-form Newt Gingrich came in with 8% of the vote, only slightly ahead of “No One,” who got 5%. [CNN]
http://wonkette.com/446655/giuliani-beating-romney-in-poll-despite-not-running
Carney: Obama is ignoring Palin
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0511/cant_really_comment_9b296173-69bb-429a-9f40-ab29206990fe.html
President Obama isn’t bothering to follow Sarah Palin’s bus tour, according to the White House.
Press secretary Jay Carney was asked Tuesday what Obama thinks of the former vice presidential candidate’s stops in Washington; he declined to weigh in on whether the trips hint at a presidential run on her part.
“I don’t think he’s paying much attention to that,” Carney said. He added that “a lot of other things that he’s been working on” are more important.
Carney noted that he hadn’t “spent a lot of time” with Obama recently, so he “can’t really comment” on what Obama thinks about her.
Politico just had to throw that last sentence in.
To all the addled brain twits for reporters: President Obama DOESN’T think about Sarah Palin. Get it through your fk heads!
President Obama: ‘I Don’t Think About Sarah Palin’
BWA HA HA HA on that video clip.GTFOH Palin
How The Ryan Plan Splits The GOP
Chait points out that an important part of the Republican base – “disaffecteds” – more fiercely oppose Medicare cuts than even hardcore liberals. Douthat digests this:
I agree with the conservatives who are arguing that Republicans need to forge ahead on Medicare reform, because they’ll be demagogued on the issue no matter what they do. But forging ahead on entitlements doesn’t require defending every detail of the Ryan budget, or fighting the next election on exactly the same lines that the NY-26 race was fought on. That’s a battle I don’t think conservatives can win
So what lines? That we need to means-test, ration, increase co-pays and premiums, and raise the retirement age? I can’t see how that wins over the disaffecteds, who will rage even more at the feckless establishment. The only hope for the GOP is a Democratic bout of bipartisan fiscal responsibility – the kind that sends Paul Krugman into a foam-speckled rage. After the GOP brutally exploited fears about healthcare last time around, I cannot imagine the Dems are that game.
Ramesh Ponnuru urges the GOP to hang in, and make the case for privatizing Medicare carefully and methodically, and contrasting the actual Democratic alternative:
When you’re talking about Medicare, at those town halls or in interviews, don’t say that the alternative is bankruptcy and that the Democrats want to do nothing. No, the alternative is heavy-handed bureaucratic cost- cutting. The Democratic plan is cutting payment rates so that Medicare becomes as lousy a program as Medicaid, with doctors refusing to participate in it. The Democratic plan is letting an unelected board decide which treatments won’t get funded.
I’d support this if there were any solid evidence that patients can act as effectively as consumers. But there isn’t. The idea of individual choice and market competition bringing costs down is very powerful. It’s just wrong.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/05/how-the-ryan-plan-splits-the-gop.html
May 31, 2011, 12:53 pm
Standing When the First Lady Pays a Call
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
On Memorial Day, Michelle Obama made an unannounced trip to visit the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Joao Silva of The New York Times was among those on whom she paid a call. “She came across as a kind and attentive person,” Mr. Silva said. She asked about the progress of his recovery and gave yo-yos, Frisbees and White House candies to his children, Isabel, 6, and Gabriel, 5.
Perhaps the most telling moment occurred before Mrs. Obama arrived. On learning of her pending visit, Mr. Silva made a point of putting on his prosthetic legs.
“I wanted to be able to greet her standing up,” he said.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/standing-when-the-first-lady-pays-a-call/
This made me cry.
May 31, 2011, 12:53 pm Standing When the First Lady Pays a Call
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Joao Silva of The New York Times was among those on whom she paid a call. “She came across as a kind and attentive person,” Mr. Silva said. She asked about the progress of his recovery and gave yo-yos, Frisbees and White House candies to his children, Isabel, 6, and Gabriel, 5.
Perhaps the most telling moment occurred before Mrs. Obama arrived. On learning of her pending visit, Mr. Silva made a point of putting on his prosthetic legs.
“I wanted to be able to greet her standing up,” he said.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/standing-when-the-first-lady-pays-a-call/
Oh, it touched my heart!!
hee hee hee
gmta
we cried at the same time…look right above.
LOL and the double post is staying right chere! I’ts articles and pics like this that make me love being AMERICAN.
May 31, 2011 1:55 PM
A ridiculous game of cat and mouse
By Steve Benen
It’s hard to believe this is actually happening.
Sarah Palin and her advisers are refusing to tell members of the media where she is going on her current bus tour — and the former Alaska governor seems to be enjoying the cat and mouse game that’s resulted.
“I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media…. I want them to have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this, and that would include not necessarily telling them beforehand where every stop’s going to be,” she told fellow Fox News employee Greta Van Susteren in an interview from the bus.
When Palin says she wants news organizations to “do a little bit of work,” what that means is she wants media outlets to simply follow her bus, wherever it might go. And wouldn’t you know it, actual news organizations are doing just that.
Right now, as Palin’s bus travels to destinations unknown, it’s being followed by an informal caravan of 15 or so vehicles — including a CNN bus — filled with reporters and producers. They don’t know where they’re going, and they don’t know what they’ll do when they get to where they’re going, but Sarah Palin is in a bus, and so they remain in pursuit.
CBS News producer Ryan Corsaro described this as potentially dangerous, since 15 vehicles are following closely behind Palin’s bus — they’re afraid they’ll lose sight of it — increasing the likelihood of a crash. Corsaro added, “It feels like she’s baiting us and treating us like paparazzi.”
I feel for the reporters who’ve been told to drop what they’re doing and stare at the back of a bus for hours on end, without so much as a hint about their destination. Some of these folks are real journalists who’ve been put in a position of playing a ridiculous game of cat and mouse with a conspicuously unintelligent Fox News personality, which can’t be fun. Making matters worse, even when the bus eventually stops, there are no actual news stories to report on.
The whole thing is just painfully stupid. The former half-term governor of Alaska has effectively told news organizations, “Catch me if you can!” To which the media responds, “We’ll be right behind you!”
This might sound crazy, but if major media outlets feel like they’re being jerked around, and don’t like being treated “like paparazzi,” they could … I don’t know … go cover something else? Maybe the news organizations could get together, agree to send an intern with a cell-phone camera to follow the bus and serve as some kind of pool reporter, and end this madness?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_05/a_ridiculous_game_of_cat_and_m029923.php
No black Sarah Palin could ever get away with what she does. The media would laugh a black Sarah Palin off the political stage. Are you kidding me? Imagine the reaction of the media to a black woman running for president who scribbles on her hand, uses run on sentences, doesn’t know Africa is a continent, can’t name a major newspaper, put crosshairs over opposing candidates name & one of the said candidates took a bullet through the head, doesn’t know the differnce between North Korea or South Korea? How long would a black Sarah Palin last on the political stage?
This is white privilege 101!
please! and if said black woman attended a gazillion colleges, quit as governor with half term lef, had a 19 year old unwed pregnant daughter… ghetto fab boyfriend with crack smoking/meth lab dealing mother…
Said black woman would not have been hitched to a presidential ticket as VP candidate with a nursing home candidate/ former POW, bitter old white man. her daughter would never have been given paid speaking engagements to advocate for teen abstinence (BIG FUCKING JOKE HERE) ghetto boy friend’s mom would be under the jail for drug dealing…JUST SAYIN
And there you have it!
Brilliant! nuff said about this bimbo trailer trash. Pray tell, you the fuck would vote for a woman for president who roams the countryside in a gas guzzling bus with the media chasing after her? WHO?!!!
….CNN! Telling, isn’t it?
CNN is PATHETIC.
@ Ametia: Haley asked if I knew how old she is? LOL
Oh God, she’s so happy to be 6! :)
Haley’s got the gift of prohecy, cause I was wondering how old she is. LOL Wow! what a CUTEY! **Big HUG* for the Princess.
:)
I’ll give her one! Thank you!
http://skreened.com/Thecreativebodega/black-girls-still-rock
SHE is such a sweetie…YES, Princess Haley…YOU ROCK!!
Haley is here with me and I asked if she can read what’s on the T-Shirt and she proceeded to read and then you should’ve seen the smile on her face. LOL! OMG! The smile is priceless!
We’ve got to get her a that T-shirt!
May 31, 2011 2:35 PM
Obama nominates new Commerce Secretary
By Steve Benen
With Gary Locke poised to replace Jon Huntsman as U.S. ambassador to China, President Obama needs a new Secretary of Commerce — a post that has, if memory serves, given him a little trouble in the past.
Today, the president nominated a California utility and energy executive, John Bryson, for the post.
Mr. Bryson was chairman and chief executive of Edison International, parent company of Southern California Edison and Edison Mission Group, for nearly two decades until 2008. […]
According to his biography released by the White House, Mr. Bryson is also a director of several major corporations, including Boeing, Walt Disney and Coda Automotive, and is a senior adviser to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. He is chairman of the board of BrightSource Energy, the Public Policy Institute of California and the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California Board of Overseers. He also serves as co-chairman of the Pacific Council on International Policy.
He is a trustee of the California Institute of Technology, a director of the California Endowment and the W. M. Keck Foundation, and serves on the advisory board of Deutsche Bank Americas. Previously Mr. Bryson served on educational, energy and environmental boards, including as a trustee of Stanford University, a member of a United Nations advisory group on energy and climate change, and head of California’s Public Utilities Commission and its State Water Resources Control Board. Early in his career, Mr. Bryson was a founder of the national environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Up until a few hours ago, I’d never heard of Bryson, so I can’t speak with any confidence to the quality of the nomination. That said, the Center for American Progress seems pleased, as do a variety of folks I’ve talked to this morning involved with climate activism, who consider Bryson one of the good guys.
What I found most interesting, though, wasn’t the White House’s announcement, but rather, the reaction from the Senate Republican leader.
Shortly before Obama announced Bryson’s nomination, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office reiterated Republicans’ threat to block all administration nominations until the president acts on pending trade deals with Panama, Colombia and South Korea.
Our entire political process has been reduced to a series of hostage stand-offs. McConnell hasn’t raised concerns about Bryson, per se — at least not yet — but he wanted to remind everyone that unless the GOP gets what it wants on some trade measures, Republicans won’t allow a vote on Bryson’s nomination anyway. It doesn’t matter if he’s qualified or not.
American governance has never worked this way; it wasn’t designed to work this way; and it can’t work this way.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_05/obama_nominates_new_commerce_s029924.php
.
Obama is no FDR…thank goodness!
In my dealings with Democrats I sometimes encounter people who are disappointed that they didn’t get an FDR style president in President Obama. I wanted to learn more about what I’ve been missing since clearly this FDR must be some kind of President. Based on what I’ve read so far, yes for his time and given all the advantages that he had such as majorities in both houses and three terms in office, he was great. But was FDR really the sort of President we need now? Were his policies so superior to those of our present Administration? Or have the policies of FDR taken on a mythology that is easier to long for than to deal with present day reality?
Even a superficial comparison shows some fundamental differences between the two men as seen in this table.
…………………
I’m no economist, still what jumps out at me is how FDR cut back on funding for research and education while President Obama increased funding for research and where possible increased, or at the very least, preserved funding for education. How many present day Democrats would argue that reducing spending for education and research is the way to grow an economy or compete in a global market?
Another chronic complaint among the FDR Democrats is that Obama’s policies haven’t brought down unemployment to acceptable levels in record time. Neither did the policies of FDR. In 8 years unemployment achieved the lowest level of 14%, but then the Conservative Coalition overturned many of the advances of the New Deal and the country was thrust into a recession in 1937 that brought unemployment back up to 19%. It was our entry into WWII that finally created the jobs that were necessary to virtually eliminate unemployment. This happened in FDR’s third term. What kind of legacy would FDR have left behind if had been limited to two terms? He would have left office with an unsustainably high unemployment rate of about 17% that could have easily triggered another recession.
When President Obama took office, the economy was still shedding jobs at an alarming rate. Many of those jobs were in the construction industry, particularly home building. Overbuilding factories was one of the causes of the Depression. The glut of housing inventory along with the collapse of the housing market brought about by bad lending policies left many in the construction industry with no work. Tight or non-existent lending by the banks and virtually no demand for new homes has prevented the construction sector from recovering at anything like a robust pace, until money becomes available in some sustainable fashion to rebuild our infrastructure. The best policies in the world won’t work if the money isn’t there. With a split government, something FDR didn’t have to contend with, the money is a problem.
The other chief grievance among Democrats longing for the repeat of the FDR administration is that the Obama Administration has done little to regulate the banking industry and Wall Street. The comparison harkens back to the many bold measures taken by Roosevelt to reign in the financial industry of his time. There is no doubt that his Administration did a much to mitigate many of the problems that caused the Depression, most were meant to avoid a repeat of the financial ruin and global economic collapse. He created the FDIC; gave the Federal Trade Commission broad new regulatory powers that provided mortgage relief to millions of farmers and homeowners and created the Securities and Exchange Commission to name a few. These institutions have performed as advertised, but have been weakened greatly by subsequent Administrations. The repeal of key components of the Glass-Steagall Act contributed to the financial problems that nearly led to a second Depression.
My sense is that those who believe Obama should be more like FDR when it comes to dealing with the banking industry and Wall Street were hoping that sweeping changes could be brought about as rapidly as before when an entirely different set of circumstances provided FDR with the political clout to make such changes. FDR had to navigate a bank panic, an outmoded gold standard, spiraling deflation and massive unemployment. He also enjoyed large majorities in both Houses, public good will (desperation) and a completely different media environment than exists today.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/05/obama-is-no-fdrthank-goodness.html
double post, but it bears repeating. thanks, rikyrah.
It’s 2011, and FDR is DEAD. OBAMA/BIDEN 2012!
From The People’s View:
Obama is no FDR…thank goodness!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 | Posted by Tien
In my dealings with Democrats I sometimes encounter people who are disappointed that they didn’t get an FDR style president in President Obama. I wanted to learn more about what I’ve been missing since clearly this FDR must be some kind of President. Based on what I’ve read so far, yes for his time and given all the advantages that he had such as majorities in both houses and three terms in office, he was great. But was FDR really the sort of President we need now? Were his policies so superior to those of our present Administration? Or have the policies of FDR taken on a mythology that is easier to long for than to deal with present day reality?
Even a superficial comparison shows some fundamental differences between the two men as seen in this table.
Read on
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/05/obama-is-no-fdrthank-goodness.html
Breaking News Alert: Cellphones are possibly carcinogenic to human’s, agency says
May 31, 2011 12:50:20 PM
—————————————-
An international panel of experts says cellphones are possibly carcinogenic to humans after reviewing details from dozens of published studies.
The statement was issued in Lyon, France, on Tuesday by the International Agency for Research on Cancer after a weeklong meeting of experts. They reviewed possible links between cancer and the type of electromagnetic radiation found in cellphones, microwaves and radar.
The agency is the cancer arm of the World Health Organization and the assessment now goes to WHO and national health agencies for possible guidance on cellphone use.
The group classified cellphones in category 2B, meaning they are possibly carcinogenic to humans. Other substances in that category include the pesticide DDT and gasoline engine exhaust.
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/SFBD1U/TPGH71/R1TWC6/CTV2YG/VYGOL/SN/h
For more information, visit washingtonpost.com
Scenes from Joplin
Obama on Page One in Missouri
By MATT NEGRIN | 05/31/11 6:49 AM Updated: 05/31/11 12:39 PM
President Obama led the news for a handful of local papers in Missouri on Monday, after he toured tornado damage in Joplin to promise the government’s help in recovering.
The Kansas City Star, the Springfield News-Leader and the St. Joseph News-Press all used the top spot on their front pages to pull a quote from Obama’s stop in Joplin, along with their biggest photo space.
“OBAMA CONSOLES JOPLIN,” read the headline in the Star, underneath a quote from Obama (“There is no doubt in my mind that Joplin will rebuild”) and above a picture of him with his hand on the shoulders of a resident, next to Gov. Jay Nixon and Sen. Claire McCaskill. The paper reports in a sub-headline that one resident said Obama’s message was “what I think the people of Joplin need to hear.”
The News-Leader used a photo of Obama speaking and another of him with his arms around residents in front of a home that was torn apart, with the headline, “ ‘Your country will be there with you,’ ” a quote from Obama’s speech. In her Page One story, Kathryn Wall wrote: “President Obama didn’t pretend to have an answer. Events like this tragedy are beyond human understanding, he said.”
The quote that the News-Press used for its headline was “ ‘Not going to stop ’til Joplin’s back on its feet,’ ” above a photo of Obama with his head bowed near residents and destroyed homes.
The paper in Joplin, The Joplin Globe, has a gallery of photos from Obama’s visit taken by one of its photographers. It also updated its Facebook page during Obama’s visit with quotes from his speech.
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0511/scenes_from_joplin_a453d239-f31b-4829-a6fd-fe1c8cd321fb.html
Bachmann: I want to become a 2012er to save America from socialism
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/31/980780/-Bachmann:-I-want-to-become-a-2012er-to-save-America-from-socialism
Asked Monday night why she’d run for president rather than challenging Democrat Al Franken for his Senate seat, the Minnesota Republican’s answer focused where she’s put much of her energy in recent months: “Because we need a person who is going to stand up to Obamacare,” she said, according to The Washington Post. … “Obama has to go and has to be replaced, but not just by anyone,” Bachmann said. “We need someone who is committed to taking that thing out,” she continued, referring to Obama’s health care law, “because it is the crown jewel of socialism, and if it’s allowed to stand we will never get our country back.”
We will never get our country back? No, Michelle Bachman. The country is not going back to the dark days…..ever! The country is moving forward. Fk clown!
So Bachman supports big pharma, private insurance companies getting top$$ & destroying medicare! Bye girl!
I’ll say it..
BITCH, PLEASE.
LMBAO And nobody, I mean NOBODY says it like you, rikyrah.
BWA HA HA HA HA
Michele Bachmann: ‘I Compare Myself To Barack Obama,’ Not Palin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/31/michele-bachmann-sarah-palin_n_868943.html#comments
WASHINGTON — Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination, said she thinks the race can accommodate both her and Sarah Palin during an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.
Both women are favorites of the Tea Party movement. But Bachmann says she doesn’t compare herself to Palin — she compares herself to President Barack Obama.
Bachmann says there’s “enough room for a lot of contenders” to challenge Obama in 2012.
The Minnesota Republican asserted that she considers Palin, the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential candidate, a “friend,” not a “competitor.” But she said that she has no problem running against a friend.
“I compare myself to Barack Obama, not any other of the Republican candidates,” she explained, according to The Hill. Later in the segment, she added, “And I think there’s no question that in 2012, the Republicans will field a wide bench of contenders against President Obama. And I think the comparisons will be very favorable.”
I compare myself to Barack Obama
Please! Next…
?????????????????????????????????????????????????? Please, if I could put this dummy back on the closet shelf, after her batteries run dead.
compare herself to Barack Obama..
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
U.S. President Barack Obama (L) arrives with Defense Secretary Robert Gates (2nd L) to name U.S. Army General Martin Dempsey (R) his pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Navy Admiral Sandy Winnefeld (2nd R) to be the new vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and General Ray Odierno (3rd R) to be the new Chief of Staff of the Army in an announcement in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington.
Presidential SWAGGER!!!!!!!
MAJOR Swagger….
Barack Obama Swagger – 3ChicsPolitico
Hot damn! President Obama is FINE! :)
Bow Chicka Bow Wow!
I never tire of watching this video.
Doocy Blames Media Being “Supportive Of This President” For The Lack Of A Major Obama Scandal
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201105310007
Just look at this! They want so bad for it to be a scandal. They’re losing their mind over the black man in the white house! Therapy beyotches! Therapy!
DRIVING THEM CRAZY
BWA HA HA HA HA AH HA
LMBAO They want to create mayhem, losers, get a life, folks!
Creolechild, where you at?
I hope Creolechild is feeling better!
Get well soon, creolechild. Here’s some chicken soup:
http://www.pharmas.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/chickensoup.jpg
May 31, 2011 8:00 AM
Competing campaign ‘secret weapons’ in Florida
By Steve Benen
President Obama narrowly won Florida in 2008, and it seems likely that the nation’s largest swing state will be another competitive battleground next year. Politico reports that the president and his team have a “secret weapon” in mind to win Florida’s 29 electoral votes in 2012.
Obama’s biggest asset in a critical swing state he won by a mere 2.8-percentage-point margin in 2008 might be Rick Scott, the wildly unpopular Republican governor Democrats are casting as Lex Luthor to Obama’s Clark Kent.
Democrats say Scott, a stern, angular, unvarnished former health insurance executive, is an easily caricatured embodiment of conservative excess and tea party overreach. […]
“The double whammy for any Republican running in Florida is Rick Scott and Medicare,” said Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the south Florida congresswoman who was chosen for her new job, in part, to be Obama’s most visible surrogate in the nation’s biggest swing state. “Rick Scott is at 29 percent — 29 percent!” she added.
But before Democrats find this too encouraging, it’s worth noting that Rick Scott has a campaign “secret weapon” of his own: he’s making it tougher for Democrats to even participate in the election in the first place. Most notably, the governor and his GOP allies are restricting groups’ abilities to launch voter registration drives.
“This law has created, really, a draconian, very broad, ambiguous bureaucracy that is going to make it impossible for volunteers to continue our voter registration work,” said Deirdre Macnab, who heads the Florida branch of the League of Women Voters, a non-partisan group that advocates for political participation.
“Something that’s as American as apple pie,” Macnab said in reference to voter registration drives, “is now going to be encumbered with so much red tape and regulation, and the potential for civil charges from the attorney general that it is going to have a really vast impact on the registration of new voters.” […]
Lee Rowland, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice who specializes in voters’ rights cases, called the law “incredibly restrictive” and noted her group has successfully sued Florida twice before to stop similar laws from going into effect.
The same law cuts the number of early-voting days nearly in half — from 14 days to eight — apparently to make it harder for more people to vote.
The Miami Herald recently characterized this as “bare-knuckle politics at its purest.”
The GOP moves are obviously thug-like tactics, hoping to rig the game so that Democrats can’t compete on a level playing field, but it’s also the kind of thing Republicans do when they’re scared.
Scott is dragging the party down in Florida, which will help Obama, but it only matters if folks are able to participate next fall.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_05/competing_campaign_secret_weap029906.php
Thu May 26, 2011 at 12:07 PM PDT.
OH-Gov: Eye-poppingly horrible numbers for Kasich+*
by David Nir
Okay, this poll made me LOL.
Public Policy Polling (PDF) (5/19-22, Ohio voters, 3/10-13 in parens):
Q: If you could do last fall’s election for Governor over again, would you vote for Democrat Ted Strickland or Republican John Kasich?
Ted Strickland (D): 59 (55)
John Kasich (R-inc): 34 (40)
Undecided: 7 (5)
(MoE: ±4.1%)
This is buyer’s remorse in the way that coming back from a weekend in Vegas with chlamydia is mere “buyer’s remorse.” I just hope that Ted Strickland, even though he’d be 73 by election day, gives some thought to coming back in 2014 and spanking the ever-loving bejesus out of John Kasich. Pretty please?
There’s other good news in this poll as well: Voters support a repeal of Ohio’s new anti-union legislation known as SB5 by a 55-35 margin. Furthermore, Democrats lead on the congressional generic ballot by a 43-34 spread. I’ll note that for the second poll in a row, PPP shows a big D-R split in their sample (45-35 this time, 45-33 last time). It may just be that at, at least for the present moment, that’s how the electoral cookie crumbles.
——————————————————————————–
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/26/979606/-OH-Gov:-Eye-poppingly-horrible-numbers-for-Kasich?via=blog_1
BWA HA HA HA Damn, comparing buyer’s remorse to clamydia! Where you at, Dannie?
The GOP’s ‘shellacking’ now behind him, Obama finds more solid political ground
By Associated Press,
Updated: Tuesday, May 31, 2:09 AM
Six months after Republicans alarmed Democrats with a midterm election wave, President Barack Obama has shaken off the jitters and found his political footing despite sluggish economic growth and deep public anxiety about the direction of the country.
The White House now displays an air of confidence, bolstered in part by achievements such as the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. commandos and the financial success of an auto industry that Obama bailed out over the objections of many.
Obama is also benefiting from the absence of negatives. The economy, while lethargic, is growing. The private sector is creating jobs. Natural disasters, while deadly and plentiful, have not developed into governmental crises. Skyrocketing gas prices, which fed the public’s economic fears, are now subsiding. And the GOP’s signature budget plan, ambitious in its spending reductions, has lost its luster with the public.
“It is likely he will be re-elected, in my opinion,” veteran Republican pollster Wes Anderson says.
What’s more, the president appears to be enjoying the still lingering but more intangible effects of his election in 2008, a watershed for the nation. Polls show Obama with strong favorability and likability ratings even as he faces ambivalence over his handling of the presidency.
Former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Fergus Cullen said the symbolic power of Obama’s election as the first black president carries enormous good will that will be difficult for Republicans to overcome.
“Centrist voters and the ones who decide elections are still fundamentally rooting for the guy,” Cullen said. “People who don’t view politics in ideological terms give him the benefit of the doubt, and that is an incredible political asset to have.”
Obama’s inner circle, always wary of sounding too self-assured, is not hiding its optimism.
“I would rather be us than them,” said one of the president’s top political advisers, David Axelrod.
Pollster Andrew Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center compared Obama’s place in 2011 to President Ronald Reagan’s at a similar point during his first term, more than a year before he won re-election in 1984.
“They both came from an ideological wing of the party and they are perceived that way. Both were hit with real bad economies and the public turned on them,” Kohut said. “Right now, Obama’s ahead of where Reagan was in ‘83.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-gops-shellacking-now-behind-him-obama-finds-more-solid-political-ground/2011/05/31/AGB3QHFH_story.html
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012 ROCK THE VOTE, MY PEEPS!
Love it; this needs maps to go >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>on our side bar!
:)
Hee hee! I see it. Thanks!
There Can Be No Savior
by BooMan
Tue May 31st, 2011 at 09:53:54 AM EST
Last week, Sarah Palin announced a bus tour of America and managed to get her name splashed all across the nation’s headlines…again. But, if the Republicans are despondent about their presidential candidates, Palin’s entrance into the race would do alleviate that feeling of gloom. Maybe someone ought to ask why the Republicans have no decent candidates. The problem is deeper than the lists of who has and has not decided to run for president. Consider the three names most often mentioned as white-horse rescuers.
First, there’s Jeb Bush, the son who ought to have been heir to his father’s failed presidency. Instead, we got the boy-king and his Rasputine/Palpatine sidekick Dick Cheney. Jeb might have been less of a catastrophe for the country than his older brother turned out to be, but the Bush brand lays in tatters.
Then there is Rep. Paul Ryan. Gifted with Eddie Muntser’s good-looks (along with accompanying widow’s peak), Ryan is the symbol of all that is rotten and unpopular with the modern Republican Party. His budget proposal is so disliked by the public that the GOP just lost a special election in New York’s most conservative district because their candidate had endorsed Ryan’s plan. It’s highly doubtful can win reelection to his own district, let alone win statewide in Wisconsin. Nationwide? Not a chance.
And, finally, there is New Jsersy Governor Chris Christie who, while doing an admirable job of representing the Garden State’s trademark attitude, is not doing a good job of representing his constituents. After pissing away federal money for education and transportation, New Jersey’s voters give Christie a thirty-eight percent approval rating, are split on whether he’d be a better president than Dubya, and by a 2:1 margin say Christie would be a worse president than Obama.
In other words, the three so-called ‘knights on white horses’ are some of the most unpopular people in politics.
This isn’t new. Republican leaders tend to wear out their welcome quite thoroughly. Remember Gingrich at the end? Remember how Tom DeLay went out? Did people feel sad to see Dennis Hastert or Bill Frist or Trent Lott go? And who can forget the spectacle of half of Washington DC serenading Bush the Younger’s presidential goodbye with their version of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”?
Even the most popular of all recent Republican politicians, Rudy Guiliani, destroyed the good will he earned by humped 9/11 until it hurt.
The problem isn’t personalities. It’s results. When given a chance, the Republicans cannot govern effectively. To listen to their rhetoric, they don’t believe effective governance is possible, and it’s certainly not preferred. The Republican candidates are not unpopular and uninspiring because of their policy differences. They basically have no policy differences of any consequence. They represent the hive-mind. And their busy bees don’t serve the country or the truth, but their little band of religious fundamentalists and tax-averse businessmen.
They’re not popular because their beliefs are not popular. And their message of doom is uninspiring.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/5/31/95354/5271
BWA HA HA HA @ Eddie Munster good looks! Pathetic list of clowns, I’d say.
under Bitch, Please News:
………………………………
Bachmann’s Prayers Answered: ‘I’ve Had That Calling’ To Run For President
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appears to be inching ever closer to a run for president — and as she has now said in her latest public statements, her prayers on the subject have now yielded a calling from God himself.
In an interview with Iowa Public Television, broadcast on Friday:
Henderson: You recently referenced your Christian faith. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, when he announced he would not run, said that he just didn’t feel called to do that. Have you had that sort of calling to run for president?
Bachmann: Well, every decision that I make I pray about as does my husband and I can tell you, yes, I’ve had that calling and that tugging on my heart that this is the right thing to do and because it’s such a momentous decision, not only for myself, my husband and our 28 children, it is a momentous decision what ideas will I bring to bear? What are the resources that I have to marshal in terms of people, assets, the message and also the finances, the amount of time this will take, what this will mean for the nation. Am I the right person for the job? Every decision and every endeavor my husband and I have made we think it through, we’re not rash people. We make a plan because we want to succeed, we don’t want to fail and so we’ve been very deliberative in this process and that’s why we’re now coming to the culmination and next month, as I announced last night, I’ll make that decision right here in Waterloo and the world will know.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/bachmanns-prayers-answered-ive-had-that-calling-to-run-for-president.php
Could it be the devil calling this nut to join him in HELL?
Ok, how was Princess Haley’s birthday :)
Yes, do tell, SG2. :-)
Haley had a huge day. She was so excited to have all her friends celebrating with her and boy was she tired out at the end of the day. She absolutely loved the princess barbie cake. Here is a larger size!
My goodness! A princess cake fitting for Princess Haley. So glad to hear she had a great birthday.
Tell Haley BLACK GIRLS ROCK! LOL
She loves hearing it! :)
And she can never hear enough. Keep telling her.
May 29, 2011
Sarah Palin’s Grand Distraction
The political press has finally noticed that Sarah Palin’s “mystery tour” has never been a mystery to those who first recalled her most fundamental personality: raging paranoia and a pathological hypersensitivity to scrutiny and legitimate criticism.
What’s she doing? Where’s she going? Is this the beginning? Is this it? — is it really it? — the grand blast-off to her much rumored, much anticipated presidential campaign? Oh, how exciting. Oh, how unorthodox. Oh, how Sarah!
Such has been the buzz.
Now before I go any farther I wish to remind you that there’s one convention of commentary that I rarely tolerate: that of the “I told you so” variety. And I have this morning plied my mental creativity to think of another way of saying this, but there just isn’t one that still conveys the essence of, quite simply, quite emphatically: I told you so.
Last Thursday I wrote:
[N]ow come flurries of anticipation, if not exactly expectations, however low, about a Palin presidential run after all. What a stunner that Palin’s political stirrings just happen to coincide with the release of a former staffer’s expose — Blind Allegiance — portraying the Harpy Queen as warm as a viper, as devout as Jimmy Swaggart, and nearly as functionally stupid as Sen. James Inhofe (politics’ gold standard of stupidity, never to be out-valued).
Once the book is no longer a political sensation and literary cause celebre, Palin’s stirrings will subside.
Today, observes Politico:
[I]n the days leading up to the bus tour, Palin’s team was focused on something completely different.
Frank Bailey, a former aide, finally got his tell-all published on Tuesday after unsuccessfully shopping it for more than a year. And though the many damaging anecdotes about Palin had already been reported months ago after a leaked manuscript reached the press, Palin’s staff made discrediting him their top priority…. [emphasis mine, see above]
And Bailey’s book? It’s barely cracked the top 100 on Amazon.
To any other politician — strike that, entertainer — not crawling with violent neuroses and severe personality disorders, another expose from a former staffer would be just another expose from a former staffer. A blip, a minor ruckus, a bit of gossipy distraction to be ignored. But for Sarah Palin, nothing short of a five-alarm counteroffensive, rolling thunder and Memorial Day fireworks could suffice.
She’s a deeply disturbed woman. True, for now she is ill in an entertaining way, but this will soon deteriorate to a kind of William Jennings Bryan pitiability — a raving, Scopes-trial kind of lunacy which even her followers will look on with sorrow and sympathy.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/05/sarah-palins-grand-distraction.html
I want this woman to descend into the dust pits of hell from wence she came.
X’s 10
May 30, 2011
Krugman’s groveling
I gather Comrade Krugman has been compelled by progressive activism’s Piety and Purity Patrol to publicly confess his accumulated transgressions of political reality-recognition. He ends his initial show trial of a column today in a fitting outburst of self-critical despair:
In pointing out that we could be doing much more about unemployment, I recognize, of course, the political obstacles to actually pursuing any of the policies that might work. In the United States, in particular, any effort to tackle unemployment will run into a stone wall of Republican opposition. Yet that’s not a reason to stop talking about the issue. In fact, looking back at my own writings over the past year or so, it’s clear that I too have sinned: political realism is all very well, but I have said far too little about what we really should be doing to deal with our most important problem.
As I see it, policy makers are sinking into a condition of learned helplessness on the jobs issue: the more they fail to do anything about the problem, the more they convince themselves that there’s nothing they could do. And those of us who know better should be doing all we can to break that vicious circle.
Dear members of the ideological court, ladies of piety, gentlemen of purity, allow me, if you will, to be brutally but counteroffensively blunt here, in Comrade Krugman’s defense.
His intentions were pure, during his recent and rather extended lapse of political realism. He meant no harm. He had only come to accept — because of immovable reactionary forces — that braying in each and every column about what should be done to reduce unemployment, when it was so thunderingly conspicuous to anyone paying any attention whatsoever that nothing would be done since it can’t be done (see hyphenated clause) was all rather pointless.
You see, ladies and gentlemen of the Progressive Purity Court, it had dawned on the Nobel mind of Brother Paul that he was beginning to sound like one of those most pitiable political beasts known to thinking man: No, it wasn’t that he was sounding like a cable-TV progressive activist, although in that there would have been tragedy enough; no, it was much worse than that; yea, he was beginning to read like a progressive blogger, always belching and bloviating that we should do this and we should do that, while never pausing, not even for a singularly sobering breath, to acknowledge that that’s not merely improbable, my friends, but unfuckingbelievably impossible. Conclusion: So what’s the point?
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/05/krugmans-groveling.html
Boy, bye!
Mitt Romney Gives Obama Presidency An ‘F’ (VIDEO)
The former governor of Massachusetts just set the bar for a Mitt Romney presidency very high. In an interview Tuesday morning on Today, Romney was asked to take a look at President Obama’s term in office so far and come up with a letter grade. He didn’t hesitate to flunk him.
Romney didn’t mention if his grading curve included winning the Nobel Peace Prize, ushering in historic health care reform, signing into law dramatic steps forward in LGBT rights or, you know, killing Osama bin Laden — but he said that taken on the whole, Obama’s term in office gets a goose egg on the Romney meter.
Some snippets of Romney making his case:
“On the president’s leadership”:
Romney: this president felt it appropriate to go around the world and apologize for America. I don’t apologize for America. I’m proud of America.
On foreign policy:
Romney: He doesn’t have a foreign policy. The president embarrassed himself there and around the world by convincing our friends that in some respects it’s better to be our foe than our friend.
On national security:
Romney: “He doesn’t have a cogent assessment of what he’s going to do regardless of the circumstances.”
Romney is expected to formally announce his second run for the White House this week. As he gears up to enter a Republican primary field in which he seems vulnerable, Romney’s clearly trying to make a strong case for himself and separate from some of his past negatives (if you’re a Republican presidential primary voter, that is.)
For example, Romney’s got a new line on his Massachusetts health insurance scheme, which many — including Obama — have likened to the Democratic health care plan signed into law in 2010. Romney’s tried a number of tactics to get out from under his past as a universal health care champion, and in the interview with Today, he appeared to settle on a new one: the Massachusetts plan was much more succinct than the national plan Democrats say they modeled on what Romney did in the Bay State.
“My bill was 70 pages,” Romney said. “His is over 2,000.”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/mitt-romney-gives-obama-presidency-an-f-video.php?ref=fpb
*facepalms* boy bye!
LOL Love it! I’ll give Mittens an “F” my middle finger
May 31, 2011
On the road with Sarah Palin
The Palin Misery Tour continues, and for sheer incoherence, personal pique and GOP exasperation it just can’t be beat, with the possible exception of Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign.
This, according to “reports,” is what the embodiment of America’s glory had to say yesterday, to no one in particular, since Palin’s press and publicity tour operation won’t speak to the press:
This isn’t a campaign bus. This is a bus to be able to express to America how much we appreciate our foundation and to invite more people to be interested in all that is good about America and to remind ourselves we don’t need to fundamentally transform America, we need to restore what’s good about America.
Are we clear? What, I ask you, could be clearer? A diesel-guzzling heap of steel has enabled itself to “appreciate our foundation” — right there, for instance; now that’s the kind of patriotic clarity that is all too lacking in American civics — and to remind us to restore the existing good. Got that?
Regrettably, Fox News may not. Greta Van Susteren, who’s trying her best to physically tail this self-absorbed travail, conceded the following to Politico, with what I can only imagine was rather extraordinary embarrassment: “We were told to check their website for any information they are releasing. [T]hey don’t want the media following them, and that includes us.”
Meanwhile, Karl Rove is fitting himself to be tied
I bet you a dime to a dollar her visits to those [Northeast] areas are not proceeded by courtesy phone calls to the local Republican Party chairman and request they generate volunteers. She will announce her schedule and show up.
Bingo, Karl. Per Politico: “The lack of a heads-up has irked many GOP leaders in the states Palin plans to visit.”
If there are any politics here, they may relate to a formal Tea Party creation down the road, certainly by 2016, perhaps by the intervening midterms. For what we’re watching now is the customary kind of sharp thinking and precise planning that precede the creation of foreordained calamities of the third-party breed.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/05/on-the-road-with-sarah-palin.html
Some Illinois public school teachers earning six-figure salaries
By ROSALIND ROSSI AND ART GOLAB Staff Reporters
May 31, 2011 04:45AM
Want to wind up making at least six figures as a public school teacher?
Send your resume to Highland Park or Deerfield High School, both in Township High School District 113.
The district — which has no teachers union — boasted the highest average teacher pay in the state last school year, at $104,737.
More than half of all District 113 full-time teachers — 55 percent to be exact — pulled down at least $100,000 in total compensation, including benefits and extra pay for extracurricular activities.
“I would love it if we weren’t number one,” said District 113 School Board President Harvey Cohen. “Our goal isn’t to say, ‘Lake Forest pays $50,000 so we’ll go $60,000.’ ”
But, Cohen said, in a consistently high-scoring, affluent district with average ACT scores of 25.7 and highly credentialed teachers, “you get what you pay for.”
As teachers’ salaries face national scrutiny and calls for pay tied to student performance, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of educator earnings, based on total compensation last school year, found that public school teachers who make at least $100,000 like those in District 113 are the exception rather than the rule in Illinois.
Statewide, 11.25 percent of high school teachers and 2.26 percent of elementary-grade teachers hit that mark. Statewide, the average elementary teacher made $61,140 — including all benefits, summer school pay, after-school stipends and retirement payouts. The average high school teacher took home $69,366.
http://www.suntimes.com/5484550-417/some-illinois-public-school-teachers-earning-six-figure-salaries.html
What it’s like to know your core
I remember back when then-Senator Hillary Clinton voted to support the Iraq War. We all knew she’d be running for President and the polls showed that voters supported Bush overwhelmingly in his plans to invade Iraq. Hillary went along.
But when it came time for the 2008 primaries, things had changed. Democrats (and some Republicans) who may have gone along with the emotionality of the moment had seen the debacle of that war unfold. And Clinton’s support for it became a liability.
You can’t help but wonder what might have happened to her presidential hopes if she’d opposed it. We’ll never know.
I thought of that when I read this about Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.
Six months ago, in the wake of the wipe-out midterm elections, moderate Florida Sen. Bill Nelson privately vented that President Barack Obama, weighed down by his health reform effort and muddled messaging, was “toxic” for Democrats back home.
Yet Obama’s approval rating has surged from 42 percent to 51 percent in the last month, and Nelson is now openly embracing the president, pronouncing himself dutifully “fired up” at an Obama-hosted Miami fundraiser this spring.
What’s changed? …Obama’s biggest asset in a critical swing state he won by a mere 2.8-percentage-point margin in 2008 might be Rick Scott, the wildly unpopular Republican governor Democrats are casting as Lex Luthor to Obama’s Clark Kent.
When you don’t have core convictions – or don’t stick to them – you wind up having to swing with the wind as Senator Nelson is doing right now.
I think many of the frustrati have/or will experience the same thing. We saw it play out with some of them on the repeal of DADT. People like Rachel Maddow were open about it. Others dug their heels in and are forced to defend more and more ridiculous positions (has Glenn Greenwald commented yet on Obama’s threat to veto the defense appropriations bill? I don’t think so.)
Anyway, when I read things like that about Senator Nelson, one of my reactions is to feel vindicated in my steadfast support for this President. I know that the “long game” will eventually demonstrate that it was a good call. But it takes patience and a commitment to your core.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-its-like-to-know-your-core.html
These Dems are so transparent. They love riding the coattails of PBO when he’s at the top of his game. Get a clue folks and start supporting this president with CONVICTION, then maybe your supporters will stick by you. I’m so done with the Dems after 2016.
Vote these coattail riding DINO Dems OUT of office. The President need Dems who are going to stand with him and support his agenda to move the country forward. VOTE these swing with the wind Dems OUT!
All The Single Ladies
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 31 2011, 9:03 AM ET
Gina Bellafonte is not a fan of VH1’s first scripted show:
Rather than soliciting your judgment of a money chaser, the show invites it for April (Charity Shea), a dimwitted white woman with no clear goals of any kind. April has a devoted black husband who offers to rent a villa for her in the Mediterranean when the inkling of a bad mood sets in. But April is also carrying on with the city’s black mayor, a hound of a guy who seems to be getting busy with half the neighborhood of Buckhead. She has no explanation for her affair other than a vague sense of boredom, and her black friends resent the lack of racial solidarity the men in her life display by having fallen for her.
Out for dinner with a handsome black guy she meets online, Val is bidden to anger when she learns that he usually goes out only with white women, whose hair and manner he tends to find less objectionable. “Single Ladies” has issues with black men, who are depicted as way too self-regarding, and blond women, who are simply taking up too much space on the planet. Not altogether predictably, the show reserves a certain kindness for that forgotten minority: the boyish white man. Apparently “Single Ladies” has yet to see “The Hangover Part II.”
Given the paucity of roles for black women, is it lame to say that I’m just glad that Lisa Raye and Stacey Dash are getting work? I don’t know, I think it’s highly likely that any show about upper class black women in Atlanta, will have it’s share of issue with black (preferably upper class) men and white (preferably blonde) women. Surely, Sex and The City had it’s issues. As does Entourage, as does, well, just about rooted in the fiscally fantastic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/05/all-the-single-ladies/239676/
Honestly, if a sister can get gainful employment in the tv/movie industry, I say more power to her. I’m fasting on tv shows except SYTYCD. Going to be reading tons this summer.
when you come upon the ‘ The President has done NOTHING FOR BLACK PEOPLE’ crowd, you can point this out.
there is absolutely NO WAY around that THIS is something that benefits Black folk.
…………………………
Salon notes DOJ’s focus on investigating police brutality
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and their focus on investigating police brutality. Because this hasn’t gotten much media attention, I was glad to see that Justin Elliot has written about it at Salon.
In a marked shift from the Bush administration, President Obama’s Justice Department is aggressively investigating several big urban police departments for systematic civil rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force.
In interviews, activists and attorneys on the ground in several cities where the DOJ has dispatched civil rights investigators welcomed the shift. To progressives disappointed by Eric Holder’s Justice Department on key issues like the failure to investigate Bush-era torture and the prosecution of whistle-blowers, recent actions by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division are a bright spot.
In just the past few months, the Civil Rights Division has announced “pattern and practice” investigations in Newark, New Jersey and Seattle. It’s also conducting a preliminary investigation of the Denver Police Department, and all this is on top of a high-profile push to reform the notorious New Orleans Police Department — as well as criminal prosecutions of several New Orleans officers…
The man who is at least partly responsible for crackdown on police misconduct is Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. In the 1990s, Perez, the son of Dominican immigrants, was a prosecutor in the division working on police misconduct cases; he later served as special counsel to Ted Kennedy on civil rights issues…
The DOJ’s investigations of troubled large departments “sends a message to the whole field,” says Sam Walker, an emeritus professor at the University of Nebraska who studies police accountability.
“The primary victims of police misconduct are African-Americans and Latinos. The Bush administration simply wasn’t interested in this,” Walker says. “The Obama-Holder DOJ puts a very high priority on this.”
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2011/05/salon-notes-dojs-police-brutality-focus.html
Thanks for posting this, rikyrah. This news is surpising to me, and though POTUS is working for ALL Americans, any good news like this, there will
the nay sayers and whiners who will find something this president isn’t doing for black people. Sad, but true.
In DC Sarah Palin Curses The Media But Demands Their Attention
May 30, 2011
By Jason Easley
While In Washington, DC, Sarah Palin curses a reporter for asking her questions, but posts pictures of all the media cameras on her blog.
According to The New York Times, Sarah Palin got a bit testy when she was asked where she was going next while leaving the National Archives today,
The visit was closed to the news media, but as the might-be presidential candidate emerged to board her “One Nation” bus, Ms. Palin shook hands with a few dozen tourists on the street.
A reporter yelled out, “Sarah, where are you going next?”
She quickly answered, “Mount Vernon.”
When the reporter asked “Now?” she answered, “Yes,” and then added, “You are a reporter, darn you!”
The blog felt compelled to include two pictures of the media cameras and Palin, because that’s what this is really about. This bus tour isn’t about the media being obsessed with Sarah. It is about Palin being obsessed with the media. 2012 is rolling around and the political Norma Desmond is ready for her close up. Just like the famed character in the film Sunset Boulevard, Palin refuses to understand that she is not a star anymore.
Barack Obama is the star, and Sarah Palin can’t stop living in 2008. Palin is stuck in a bubble where she replays all of the dialogue from those brief few weeks when she was a star back in the last presidential campaign on an endless psychological loop. For Sarah Palin, everything is about proving that she is as big or a bigger star than Obama.
http://www.politicususa.com/en/sarah-palin-media-dc
300 Bikers Foil Westboro Baptist Church’s Obama Joplin Protest
May 30, 2011
By Jason Easley
When the Westboro Baptist Church tried to roll into Joplin, Missouri to protest President Obama, they were met by hundreds of patriotic bikers.
This is a great story. Truth Wins Out has a first hand account of what happened when the Westboro Baptist Church tried to protest President Obama’s appearance in Joplin, Missouri yesterday,
We all heard the Westboro idiots were coming to protest! And so did about three hundred bikers!! The bikers all showed up and parked across the street from the University where Obama held a ceremony for the many good people, friends and family we lost!! The only report of any Westboro people actually being there was one guy strolling through all the bikers, when they found out who he was it got ugly for him real quick his shirt got torn off and he was pushed around pretty good! When the police saw what was about to happen they grabbed him and tried to push the bikers back!! Then they told the guy “run you stupid mother fucker.”
http://www.politicususa.com/en/bikers-westboro-baptist
BWA HA HA HA “Then they told the guy run you stupid mother fucker. BETTA ASK SOMEBODY
the video is even more hilarious. click on the link
I saw it; these folks where not having it. Beat those hateful mofos, they can’t understand it any other way.
Good! He needed his ass kicked to the moon. You have people grieving the lost of their family and loved ones and here comes these stupid sobs from westboro church to disrupt. Beat their ass to the ground.
Republicans brace for tough 2012 fight against Obama in unlikely place — N.C.
By Amy Gardner, Published: May 30
RALEIGH, N.C. — By any number of indicators, President Obama shouldn’t have much of a chance in North Carolina next year. In no state was Obama’s 2008 win closer — he won by just 14,177 votes, or 0.3 percent of the electorate — and he’s less popular now. The economy, now Obama’s economy, is in worse shape. And voters here have turned against many Democrats, ousting a congressman and a slew of state lawmakers last fall.
But if Republican activists are feeling confident, you wouldn’t know it by what they’re doing and saying.
Republicans are poring over the details of how Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since Jimmy Carter. They are trying to pass laws in the legislature to restrict the early-voting system that Obama used to such remarkable effect. And Republicans are preaching to anyone who will listen that those who think Obama couldn’t possibly win here again had better wake up and get to work.
They turned out voters in record numbers last time, and we need to be ready,” said Robin Hayes, chairman of the North Carolina GOP and a former congressman who was defeated in the 2008 wave that Obama led. “We expect them to be as good and probably better. We know they’ll have more money. And if you think that’s not the case, you’re making a foolish mistake.”
The dynamics in North Carolina that worry Republicans — a booming minority population, an influx of more moderate voters and a changing set of priorities — are on display across other parts of the South as well, notably in Virginia and Florida, where Obama also won in 2008.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-brace-for-tough-2012-fight-against-obama-in-unlikely-place–nc/2011/05/20/AGi7lzEH_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
I plan to go to the NC DNC next year; how about y’all?
I’m not sure yet.
The GOP’s self-destruction derby
By Eugene Robinson, Published: May 30
My advice to Sarah Palin, not that she would take it, is that she’d better be careful. If she keeps pretending to run for the presidential nomination, people might take her seriously.
The former half-term Alaska governor’s “One Nation” bus tour has made the Republican establishment nervous. If her aim is just to get back in the news, reinflate the Palin brand and boost her speaking fees, then party leaders have every reason to be pleased. In the unlikely event that she’s actually running, they have every reason to order another Scotch.
What the GOP should worry about is the intoxication that adoring crowds often induce in politicians. Palin might board the bus intending to pull a Trump and disembark convinced that now, more than ever, the nation requires her service. The hosannas ringing in her ears might deafen her to voices of reason.
Odds are it won’t happen. But the fact that Palin’s ego trip so easily stole the spotlight from the actual Republican candidates shows what a challenge the party faces in trying to deny President Obama a second term.
Poor Tim Pawlenty was trying to roll out his candidacy, and every interviewer wanted to ask what he thought of Palin. This was his introduction to the American people — those who don’t live in Minnesota, where he was governor for eight years — and he obviously wanted to come off as bold and decisive. He charged, for example, that Obama has been too timid in committing U.S. forces to military action in Libya.
Read on
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-self-destruction-derby/2011/05/27/AGKtTzEH_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Good Morning, Everyone. :-)
Good Morning everyone at 3CHICS :)
Good Morning, rikyrah. :-)
Inspiration for today…
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity
Psalm 133:1
Good morning, SG2. ;-)
coffee: http://community.cbs47.tv/blogs/files/5005/4324331/coffee-cup-01.jpg
Thank you! I appreciate your thoughtfulness! I’d be delighted to have a cup!