Funny how those who started this game of POLITICAL CHICKEN, aka, the Sequester, were the ones who demanded it the last time of a budget crisis. You know how certifiable the ReThug Teahadist Party is – they’re the only ones who continue to blame the POTUS for shyt they STARTED.
For me, the irony is going to be when Lyin’ Paul Ryan attempts to blame the POTUS for the sequester and someone plays that video of Ryan DEMANDING the sequester back in 2011.
Name what you believe is an awkward moment (and the ReThugs have PLENTY to go around….)
Hearing No Evil: The Amazing Obtuseness of Campus Conservatives
Posted on February 23, 2013
Seems like every young conservative with a phone cam thinks they’re James O’Keefe.
Sadly for them, since there’s no Andrew Breitbart left to selectively edit and post their handiwork, thereby making it seem a lot more damning than it really is, they’re reduced to making even the most obvious, historically inarguable comments by those of us on the left seem controversial.
Just such a thing happened to me this past Wednesday, during my talk at Providence College in Rhode Island. I’ll get to the supposedly “shocking” video shortly, but first let it be noted that most of the 500 or so in attendance were enthusiastically supportive of the message I delivered regarding the obligation of educational institutions to promote racial equity and representation, by way of deliberate efforts at recruiting and retaining students of color. There had been some controversy at the school recently, thanks to an article in the student paper critiquing the college’s diversity plan, and so I weighed in. My argument was really quite un-radical, in truth. I merely explained, drawing on the available evidence, that unless deliberate efforts were made to make Providence a more inclusive place, it would not simply happen on its own, and that highly capable persons of color would continue to be overlooked. And this would happen, not because they were unqualified, but because of the inertia of a K-12 education system that too often provides unequal opportunity to students, such that would allow all students to thrive and even consider Providence, let alone apply and be admitted.
Seriously, in terms of radicalness, it was like a 6.5 on my normal scale.
But in any event, during the Q&A period things got more interesting. Two conservative students asked me questions — good, tough questions (and indeed the kind I like getting at these sorts of events) — and my answers, and our interactions proved grist for the right-wing “undercover video” mill, despite how incredibly mild and obviously true my remarks were, to which they took such offense.
One of these was a young woman of color who wanted to know — given my “dislike for conservatives and Republicans” — what I would say to people of color who were also conservative, such as herself. I explained that I wouldn’t say anything different to her than any other conservative. Rather, I asked her, as I would anyone on the right, how she would explain the persistent racial disparities between whites and people of color, if she rejects (as the right does, and as she admitted she did), the notion that racism and discrimination, either past, present, or a combination of the two, were largely to blame.
At no point did she even try and answer my question, because like most conservatives, she cannot; at least not without sounding incredibly racist in the process. Because the only possible answer, if one rejects the discrimination thesis as an explanation for ongoing and glaring disparities in income, wealth, education, and elsewhere between whites and black folks, is inherently racist: namely, that those persons of color must in some way be inferior, either biologically or culturally, relative to whites. I waited with baited breath for her — a woman of color — to actually admit that was what she thought. But instead of grappling with the question honestly, she said nothing, beyond her amazing admission that she refuses to accept the simple statement that people of color had ever been disadvantaged in the U.S., or that whites had ever been advantaged, due to racism. In other words, it wasn’t just that she insisted America was an equal opportunity society now (say, because of the civil rights revolution), which is at least an understandable and honorable argument, however wrongheaded I might view it to be. Rather, she refused to so much as acknowledge that the history of racism and white supremacy had ever mattered at all. She was the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier, so fundamentally irrational and uninformed about basic social reality as to call into question how and why a school as good as Providence would have admitted her as a member of its student body. And to think that she was chagrined by affirmative action ostensibly lowering the academic standards of the school on behalf of the other black kids there? Ah, methinks the lady doth protest too much
http://www.timwise.org/2013/02/hearing-no-evil-the-amazing-obtuseness-and-ignorance-of-campus-conservatives/
Woodward Misses The Mark
Brian Beutler-February 23, 2013, 2:09 PM
For the past 18 hours Republicans have been giddily waving around a new article by Bob Woodward as a smoking gun that proves sequestration should be replaced with spending cuts and spending cuts only — and that President Obama once conceded the point.
Here’s the key section, which certainly carries that implication.
[T]he final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.
So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.
Woodward’s book about the debt limit crisis includes the fairly inconsequential detail that the idea of using sequestration (as opposed to other policy options) as an enforcement mechanism originated in the White House. Republicans, who voted for the Budget Control Act in overwhelming numbers, argue flimsily that this detail absolves them of all blame for the coming spending cuts, and have since tried to turn Woodward into a sort of grand arbiter of the debt limit fight.
But in this case Woodward is just dead wrong. Obama and Democrats have always insisted that a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher taxes replace sequestration. It’s true that John Boehner wouldn’t agree to include new taxes in the enforcement mechanism itself, and thus that the enforcement mechanism he and Obama settled upon — sequestration — is composed exclusively of spending cuts. But the entire purpose of an enforcement mechanism is to make sure that the enforcement mechanism is never triggered. The key question is what action it was designed to compel. And on that score, the Budget Control Act is unambiguous.
First: “Unless a joint committee bill achieving an amount greater than $1,200,000,000,000 in deficit reduction as provided in section 401(b)(3)(B)(i)(II) of the Budget Control Act of 2011 is enacted by January 15, 2012, the discretionary spending limits listed in section 251(c) shall be revised, and discretionary appropriations and direct spending shall be reduced.”
Key words: “deficit reduction.” Not “spending cuts.” If Republicans wanted to make sure sequestration would be replaced with spending cuts only, that would have been the place to make a stand. Some of them certainly tried. But that’s not what ultimately won the day. Instead the, law tasked the Super Committee with replacing sequestration with a different deficit reduction bill — tax increases or no.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/02/woodward_misses_the_mark.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr5XJ8dbJtg&feature=player_embedded
Saw Argo this afternoon. My hubby was living in Toronto during the Iranian Crisis. He remembers the crisis, but he didn’t know that the Canadian government was responsible for the release of the 6 Americans unitl later. Typical of America to take credit for other country’s work…
Republicans Love to Regulate When it Benefits Their Wealthy Friends
By: Dennis S
Feb. 22nd, 2013
Republicans purportedly abhor regulations. Such regulations would include reasonable guidance for Wall Street/financial, health care, small business, educational and most particularly, any regulation that has to do with the environment and guns.
The typical Republican would much rather see children die of asthma and assorted respiratory diseases, cancer or any other pollutants that corporate factories introduce into innocent kid’s systems via the atmosphere. The GOP doesn’t care about kids. That was irrefutably proven in the right-wing reaction or lack thereof to the 20 deaths of 6 and 7-year-olds at Sandy Hook Elementary. And if the wanton killing of 6 and 7-year-old children doesn’t shake loose at least a few firearms, you’re a moral zombie and that pretty well describes the current crop of Republicans.
Being totally cuckoo for 30 capacity mags, these zombies will heartily endorse gun legislation that was recently advanced in the South Carolina State Senate that would pre-empt federal gun laws and allow concealed carry in restaurants. “Will that be a table for 2 and a high chair for your .223 Bushmaster?”
So rapacious are these zombies to gun-up America that in the wake of Sandy Hook, one gun dealer after another quickly sold out of their heavy weaponry and ammo and had back-orders a mile long. That’s how much deaths of precious children mean to zombie right-wingers.
http://www.politicususa.com/republicans-regulate-watered-favor-wealthy-regulate.html
Yes; the Rehugs love regulating our vaginas too. Power & control; that’s their game.
Temptations singer Otis ‘Damon’ Harris dies
http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=792406
The Temptations singer Otis “Damon” Harris has died at the age of 62. The singer passed away at the Joseph Richey Hospice in Baltimore Monday after a 14-year battle with prostate cancer.
Harris joined the hit R&B group in 1971, aged 21, following the departure of original member Eddie Kendricks, and sang lead vocals on some of the band’s biggest tracks, including “Superstar (Remember How You Got Where You Are),” “Take a Look Around,” “Masterpiece” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” which won The Temptations three Grammy Awards.
Papa Was A Rolling Stone – Temptations
MASTERPIECE
Superstar Remember How You Got Where You Are
Thank you for the music, Mr. Harris. Well done and may God Bless.
Woodward’s Butthurt Lack of Integrity
by BooMan
Sat Feb 23rd, 2013 at 10:50:26 AM EST
Bob Woodward is so butthurt that the Obama administration limited his access and made him irrelevant that he’s no longer making any pretense about political neutrality or journalistic objectivity. He’s gone at least half-Breitbart.
When it was conceived and enacted, the Sequester had two main objectives. The first was to bail Speaker Boehner out of a jam after he discovered to his dismay that this own caucus would not accept the deal he had negotiated with the White House. That meant that he had no plan for avoiding a default on our debt. He needed some trigger that would assure his mouth-breathers that actual cuts would eventually happen.
The second objective of the Sequester was to assure Democrats that actual revenue would eventually happen, and that is the reason that the Supercommittee was created. It’s job was to come up with a mix of spending cuts and new revenues. That was the entire point.
To say that the White House created the Sequester is narrowly true, but only because they had to find a way to avoid a default, and Boehner was out of ideas. It was his caucus that was forcing the default, so it is more accurate to say that the Republicans forced the White House to improvise, and the Sequester was their solution.
To say that Jack Lew told a falsehood to the Senate Finance Committee when he explained this, is journalistic malpractice on Woodward’s part.
To accuse the president of shifting the goal posts by asking for revenue is to contradict Woodward’s own previous reporting, and even the internal logic of last night’s piece.
All this does is prove the White House prescient when they decided to treat Woodward like any other journalist rather than some kind of saint.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/2/23/105026/160
Unhinged Republicans Completely Abandon Reality With Latest Sequester Lies
By: RmuseFeb. 23rd, 2013
There are occasions that a person relates a story that is purely imaginary, or seemingly so remarkable as to elicit disbelief that one may question the person’s sanity, or if they are fabricating facts why they are averse to veracity. The problem with people who manufacture facts is that after one or two times being exposed as out-of-touch with reality, or after being caught lying repeatedly, is that even sympathetic folks tend to disbelieve anything the person says. Republicans and their punditry have finally gone so far off the rails to avoid any responsibility for the sequester that they are blatantly lying and revising the historical record of the past four years. Either conservatives have abandoned reality, or have just awoken from a four-year coma, because the statements they are making about President Obama are nothing short of insane, and thoroughly false.
Some well-known conservative pundits joined Republicans impugning the President’s handling of the GOP’s push for the sequester cuts to be implemented, and picked up where John Boehner left off in his desperation attempt to blame the sequester on the President. Yesterday, conservatives lashed out at the President and accused him of not reaching out to Republicans in a spirit of compromise, and that he has offered absolutely nothing in the way of a proposal to address the sequester problem or any issue throughout his first term.
Jennifer Rubin disparaged President Obama as being nothing like conservative god Ronald Reagan, and said, “Greatness comes not in lacerating your opponents but by enlisting them, something the president has been entirely incapable of doing. He has achieved virtually nothing on a bipartisan basis.” David Brooks, an allegedly moderate conservative said, “The president identifies a problem. Then he declines to come up with a proposal to address the problem. Then he comes up with a vague-but-politically-convenient concept that doesn’t address the problem. The president hasn’t actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration;” except that the President submitted a detailed plan that required concessions from Democrats and Republicans including spending cuts and new revenue. Ron Fournier, explained that if the President were truly interested in compromise, he would exhibit true leadership and make “tough choices that would anger his liberal base far more than the president is doing now; imposing sacrifice on all voters, including the middle class; and risking his high approval ratings. The first thing that comes to mind is that an all-spending-cuts solution is not out of the question. Indeed, it’s what Obama and the country are going to get if a deal is not reached March 1.”
http://www.politicususa.com/unhinged-republicans-completely-abandon-reality-latest-sequester-lies.html
Feminism 101: Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination
[….] White, middle-class, Eurocentric feminists can be extremely disparaging of the family and organised religion, but women of colour and poor women often find the strength to survive and fight racism and classism in their families and churches. There is a very anti-child and anti-motherhood trend within feminism which women from communities of colour in which motherhood is viewed as empowering find very painful and impossible to relate to.
Moreover, when it comes to reproductive rights, the dominant feminist discourse often tends to focus entirely on abortion because, historically, white, middle-class women are the ones most likely to be denied abortion and they tend to be the ones with the loudest voices in mainstream feminism. But women of colour, poor women and disabled women may have very different perspectives on this issue because, historically, they have been forced into abortions and sterilisations, or had their children removed by the state because they are not trusted as mothers, or because their children are not considered as desirable as the children of white, middle-class women.
[….] This totally ignores black women’s experience of racism and abrogates responsibility for the role white women have played in perpetuating racism. Why should black women necessarily trust a white woman to represent their interests?[….] Sometimes feminists from more dominant groups do have vested interests in suppressing the knowledge produced by subordinate groups. And sometimes they don’t want to listen to what women who have different experiences of oppression are saying because it might challenge their thinking or force a change in feminist priorities.[….]
http://mindthegapuk.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/feminism-101-patricia-hill-collins-black-feminist-thought-in-the-matrix-of-domination/
WHY I LOVE BEING BLACK
Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
WHY I LOVE BEING BLACK
During the sixties we used to say, “I’m Black and I’m proud,” but we never said why. I’d like to correct that
I absolutely LOVE being Black – and I’m not just saying that because it’s expected of me. While I have the ultimate respect for the unique character of every race and ethnicity, if I’m reincarnated a thousand times, I want to come back Black each and every one of them.
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Being Black in America gives one an education and perspective on life that you can’t get anywhere else. That’s not widely recognized, because public attention is often focused on the most dysfunctional in the Black community. But contrary to popular belief, that might not be an altogether bad thing, because it allows the excellence within the Black community time to incubate, untainted by the public eye. That’s what allowed Barack Obama to explode upon the world stage as a fully developed powerhouse, and there are hordes of others just like him who are currently incubating in Black cocoons in suburbs and inner cities all over America.
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Another thing that’s not widely recognized is that the “soul” of Black people extends far beyond music. What’s commonly referred to as “soul” is actually creativity, and as any cognitive scientist will attest, creativity is a primary indicator of advanced intelligence.
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Charles Darwin would call “soul” a unique adaptation to adversity, and the most insightful within the Black community recognize it as being much like a sixth sense that reaches the very depths of human understanding. When fully developed, it provides Black people with a unique grasp, empathy, and insight into the human experience. That’s why it is so effective in conveying human emotion – so effective, in fact, that “soul” has been confused with emotion itself.
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So Black people don’t just live life, we experience it. We experience life in the exact same way that we experience music. As a result, we actually feel our environment, with the exact same passion that we feel a lonely bass struttin’ through the changes of a slow and funky blues. That accounts for our swagger, but our “soul” also accounts for making us far more than swagger alone – a point we must get across to the more frivolous within our community.
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You see, the very same swagger, or soul, that goes into the making of a Ray Charles, a Miles Davis, or Areatha Franklin, under another guise, is also responsible for the power and solemnity of mind of a Colin Powell, Johnnie Cochran, or Michelle and Barack Obama. Thus, the very same soul that allows Black people to excel in music, can also be directed towards physics, politics, philosophy, or engineering. The only reason it’s been reflected primarily in music up until now is because music was one of the few activities that Black people were allowed to freely engage in. But the rise of Barack Obama has signaled a change in that regard.
So this is an exciting time for Black people, because we recognize that the world is about to discover what we already know – that there is nothing in the human experience more impressive than watching the development of a Black child, who’s been dragged through the pits of Hell and the brutal experience of “American Exceptionalism,” then emerge on the other side as a well adjusted, uniquely eclectic, resolute, and learned product of his or her environment.
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These are society’s unsung heroes, and there are many more to come. They’ve been tested by fire, and they’ve prevailed. By the time they’ve reached thirty, they’ve faced down more adversity than the average American at eighty. So simply having survived America unscathed, by definition, makes them special.
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So when I come into contact with the “strivers” in the Black community, I may not say it, but my heart whispers, “Thank you for your service.” Because, in my heart, I know that these are the people who have been selected by nature, and circumstance, to blaze the trail of a new reality and move America forward – and considering America’s history, these young people represent the very height of irony. But as the old folks used to say, “God works in mysterious ways.”
http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-i-love-being-black.html
AIG’s former chief Greenberg suing Feds for bailing out his company
Posted by Joann Weiner on February 23, 2013 at 9:48 am
A fighter never quits, and if there’s one way to describe Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg, the former head of the American International Group, it’s as a fighter.
Beginning on D-Day, when he participated in the storming of Omaha Beach as a teenager, continuing through his fight with then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer about an accounting scandal that led him to resign from AIG in 2005, and up to a series of bitter lawsuits against the company he led for nearly 40 years, Greenberg’s been a fighter.
His latest offensive is a $25 billion lawsuit filed against the federal government for, he alleges, forcing AIG to accept an $85 billion bailout at a 14.5 percent interest rate and then taking over the company without providing just compensation in September 2008. Despite having more than $120 billion in revenue in 2007, AIG’s immediate problems nine months later centered on a lack of liquidity: It didn’t have enough cash to meet $15 billion worth of collateral calls.
“AIG should never have accepted the bailout,” Greenberg said during a talk at the National Press Club in Washington on Feb. 21. Greenberg insisted that the Fed could have figured out a way to get AIG the needed funds without taking over the company. “The company had $800 billion in assets that it could have put up as collateral for the loan,” he said. Greenberg added that if the Fed had given AIG the same type of offer it had extended to other troubled financial institutions at that time, AIG wouldn’t have needed the bailout.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/02/23/aigs-ex-chief-greenberg-says-fed-bailout-was-wrong/
Musings on the future of race and national politics
Yesterday BooMan wrote an interesting piece asking whether Hillary can kill the modern GOP. I’ve said before that I’m not going to write about 2016 for another two years and what I’m about to write probably breaks that promise…again. So sue me ;-)
I agree with the concerns BooMan expressed about the Clinton machine…I don’t trust it. But there was a point in that article where I began to part ways with his analysis.
There are signs that a Clinton candidacy could be strong enough to force the Republicans to play defense in Texas. A recent Public Policy Polling survey found Clinton beating Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie in the Lone Star State. My explanation for this is that hostility to Obama’s skin color is masking the true weakness of the modern Republican Party. In a very real way, racism is propping the GOP up and giving them a false sense of confidence that they are still a force to be reckoned with in national elections.
On the one hand, he’s right. I imagine that anti-Obama racism has played a rather large role in propping up the Republican Party over these last 4 years. The trouble with that is that it only applies when you look at it from a white perspective. In other words, if you want more white people to vote for your candidate, the fact that President Obama is black is an obstacle.
The question we might want to ask is “What happens to the Obama coalition if our goal is to attract more white voters?” From the perspective of people of color, is that question not at least equally important?
I know BooMan didn’t mean it this way, but there is a suggestion in what he said that indicates our path to success as Democrats is rooted in succumbing to white people’s racism. Its almost like…we did that black man thing, now lets get back to really winning with the white folks.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2013/02/musings-on-future-of-race-and-national.html
Spot on. I read that yesterday. GTFOH
THIS: Its almost like…we did that black man thing, now lets get back to really winning with the white folks
And….
HELL NO TO HILLARY.
Earthsong
So beee uuuu teee ful.
YT does not want to confront RACISM; wonder why? Some dude on MHP saying don’t make it all about race, it’s about green$$, ummm It’s about race, when YT tries to cheat, lie, steal, and obstruct blacks and other POC from obataining the green, through sytemic racism. THE END. HAVE A SEAT!
Ryan like ther rest of the GOP are out of touch or don’t give a good damn about TECHNOLOGY. It’s called YOUTUBE, Bithces!
LiL Eddie Munster, Zombie-Eyed, Granny Killer Ryan’s been touted by his party and the media jackals as smart. Really? Ryan was done before he got started. And when Joe Chains got a hold of his ass at that VP debate…
LOL He became SIPPY Ryan, just like that other clown GULPY Rubio.
WATERBOYS
No plans to discipline D.C. firefighters
By Clarence Williams,
Published: February 22
The D.C. fire department said Friday that contrary to reports on a Washington television station, it is not considering disciplinary action against uniformed personnel who appeared recently with President Obama.
D.C. firefighters along with other first responders appeared Tuesday with the president as he warned of the possible adverse effects of budget sequestration.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/no-plans-to-discipline-dc-firefighters/2013/02/23/d2c77b48-7d72-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines
I can believe that the firefighters where threatened because of their appearing with PBO. the hate is so palpable
Denied…Denied…Denied – Zimmerman Murder Trial Wig Snatching Edition
http://dothprotesttoomuch.com/2013/02/22/denied-denied-denied-zimmerman-murder-trial-wig-snatching-edition/#comments
Well, well, well…this week was a very bad week for Team Zimmerman. Let’s go to a bullet list.
On Tuesday, Judge Avila ruled that ShelLIE’s case would not be thrown out and shall move forward to trial. Get ready ShelLIE. Maybe you should start a blog or something. Tick Tock, ShelLIE. You were caught red-handed. Buy lots of stamps so you can talk to your “cutie” mmmkay.
The Motion to Compel Attorney Crump to sit for a deposition failed miserably. After Don West argued vaguely and could not answer the simple questions – What relevance does Crump bring to the table to Witness 8? What is the need and hardship you can cite such that deposing Attorney Crump is your only source you haven’t exhausted to get the information you need? Judge Nelson was sharp and on the point. Attorney Blackwell took Don West to the woodshed pointing out that Attorney Crump as the counsel for Trayvon’s family had the absolute right to assert attorney-client privilege and work product privilege. He made mince meat out of the Nutter’s arguments. Such a pity so much time and energy is wasted on their baseless conspiracy theories but when that is all you got…I guess you roll with it. I got the feeling at some point, during West’s long pauses that he was screaming with his inside voice…”help me, Sundance CRACKER….you didn’t give me the talking points for these questions…”
LOL Where’s my snatching wig graphic?
Biden to mark Black History Month with trip to Selma
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/284497-biden-to-mark-black-history-month-with-trip-to-selma
Vice President Joe Biden will commemorate Black History Month with a trip to Selma, Ala., where he will participate in the annual ceremonial crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, The Root reported Friday.
The vice president will also attend the Martin and Coretta King Unity Brunch.
The annual bridge crossing is held the first weekend every March to commemorate “Bloody Sunday” — the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to protest the killing of civil rights protester Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper. As hundreds of protesters reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers fired tear gas into the crowd. Many protesters were badly beaten, and seventeen were hospitalized.
Rep John Lewis will be there, no doubt about it.
GOP lawmaker who received unemployment benefits until recently votes to slash benefits http://huff.to/13aX9Ye
Breaking News@BreakingNews
Person with a ‘long rifle and body armor’ reported at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, police say
http://bit.ly/YsPEUT
WUH?! MIT?
Good morning!
Good Morning, SG2 & Everyone! :-)
Good Afternoon, Everyone :)