Happy MUN-dane! 3 Chics hopes everyone’s enjoying their summer and staying cool, calm, and collected. Keep strong, courageous, and vigilant, in these trying times.
Let’s try to keep an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE.
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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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Luke Russert aint shit either. Just another GOP TOOL. BYE BOY!
Hey Guys!!
Where’s Creole? Need some music on this thread!! lol
this song is dedicated to John Boehner LMAO
Tavis Smiley and Cornel West Go On An Obama Accountability “Poverty Tour”
Author, First Officer of Accountability Tavis Smiley and Professor Cornel West are taking their Obama Doesn’t Care About (Black) People Tour on the road. (FOX News adorably called them “Black Leaders,” as if there was ever such a thing. I used to joke that if we have leaders, who elected these people? And can we hold them responsible in some kind of way because they’re doing a really shitty job.) Smiley and West will be visiting 15-cities as apart of an “anti-poverty” tour, visiting a Native American reservation, soup kitchens, shelters, housing projects and other places where the destitute reside. I hope they’ll be bringing medical services, food and some jobs with them, as the complaint regarding Obama is that he has not done enough of these things.
Or, I’m sure West and Smiley will bring speeches. Speeches are nice … if they spread awareness which leads to medical services, food and jobs. But if they’re speeches for the sake of Obama didn’t call me to say thank you, I dunno, guys. That might not be helping. But if it brings attention to how so many people are struggling in America and gets politicians to actually use the word “poor” to describe people (not just middle class or “working families”), that might be nice.
Smiley and West state their goal is to get poverty to be part of the 2012 agenda. In a story by Jesse Washington of The Associated Press, there’s a lot of chatter about the mixture of pride and frustration African Americans have when it comes to both the economy and our President. People want him to succeed, but people also want things to get better. The recession has been a depression for most African Americans, where our jobless rate has always been higher than the national average and frustratingly in double-digits.
But a quote from radio host Warren Ballentine really sums up the Obama Criticism Paradox most African Americans (myself included at times) are trapped in:
“Black folks expected him to fix the problem,” he said. “The problem is lack of jobs and opportunity in poor communities in this country. They’re blaming the president for not having jobs, but they don’t want Tavis or Cornel or anyone else to attack the president because they didn’t have jobs before the president came into office.” (Emphasis mine.)
That’s really the key here. It’s not that the President isn’t deserving of a critical eye, but to expect one man in less than three years to fix something that has been persistent and systematic in this country for centuries is a tall order. He can’t do what he never promised in the first place. “Deliverance” was not on the agenda. And compared to past presidents, both Democratic and Republican, I feel that he’s actually done quite a bit more to acknowledge and find solutions to the problems that plague our poor.
http://blacksnob.com/snob_blog/2011/7/25/tavis-smiley-and-cornel-west-go-on-an-obama-accountability-p.html
Fuck Smiley and West; really; just fuck’em!
what Ametia SAID!!
Can You See the Kabuki Now?
by BooMan
Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 05:01:44 PM EST
I’d like every liberal who has carped about the president’s approach to the debt ceiling negotiations to pause now and consider the fact that the Republicans have now revealed their bottom line. They made an offer. Their offer is nothing. We get nothing. Not one thing that we want. Nada. And that has always been their position. This was their position from the very beginning. Absolutely nothing, not bad polls, not the advice of bankers or the Chamber of Commerce or conservative economists, or the disapproval of their biggest donors, nor even ridiculous concessions, nor even offering everything they ostensibly want could change their bottom line. The president gets nothing and we get nothing.
Now, this thing is still not over, and the president is going to speak to the nation at 9pm tonight. I expect he will be extremely pissed off. I also expect the Republicans not to give a shit. They think he’s bluffing. I think he’s not bluffing. But my point for the purposes of this thread is the following. Since there was never any way to win any concessions, wasn’t the game here to make sure people see you as having been reasonable? And the other side as the economic terrorists that they are?
Was there some other objective? For example, should he have spent his time looking equally unwilling to compromise? Should he have made demands that people thought were equally unrealistic and unfair? Should he have made a strong case for Democratic values and Keynesian economics only to have his inability to move the Republicans highlighted even more?
It seems to me that this wasn’t a game about outcomes. The outcome was pretty well known in advance: the Republicans would refuse to raise the debt ceiling if it meant making a single concession on anything. Given that, the whole exercise was about political perceptions.
I don’t understand why this isn’t better understood.
http://www.boomantribune.com/
If it’s one thing we’ve seen of President Obama is that he is VERY PATIENT. The GOP are playing games, and it’s only a matter of time before PBO birngs down the HAMMER,
It may not come when we want it, but it’s ALWAYS on time. Ask OSAMA. Oh that’s right; HE’S DEAD isn’t he?
Arkansas High School Appoints Co-Valedictorian Because Top Student Was African American |
A high school student in Arkansas was blocked from receiving sole valedictorian honors this summer, despite earning the highest G.P.A. in her class and receiving only a single B in her four years at McGehee Secondary School. Kymberly Wimberly’s offense? She’s black. School administrators worried that Wimberly’s accomplishment would result in a “big mess” at the majority-white school, so Principal Darrell Thompson told the student’s mother “that he decided to name a white student as co-valedictorian,” even though the white student had a lower G.P.A. The matter is currently pending in federal court.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/07/25/278437/arkansas-valedictorian-discrimination/
Repeat post; but it will stay. Thanks, rikyrah.
OK, Chris. give it up pBO does not need Bubba Clinton in his White House cabinet. he can’t keep his dick in his pants, remember? GTFOH
Thank YOU! This is the oldest tried and true shyt white America does, when the person in power/authority is black. Call out the white hope that was last in authority and basically say, y’all don’t agree with ‘the black’ well here is our own home boy and this is what he says, so believe him.
ALWAYS undermining!
Bill Clinton ain’t shit. DOMA, DADT, prison, 3 strike crack cocaine rule, etc. these are all filthy legislation BILL CLINTON admin enacted when he was POTUS, and the same filth PBO is DISMANTLING.
President Obama does NOT, nore NEVER has needed Bill Clinton to do SHIT!
Chris and nem wants to get Clinton back into the White House so fk bad. Hell No! President Obama doesn’t need Bill Clinton to do a damn thing. Chris Matthews can go straight to fk hell!
LOL the loonies are on tee vee saying what the POTUS should say, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…..
And let’s not forget the repeal of Glass Stegall that is the core reason for all
the rapacious RAIDING that Wall Street did.
That was Clinton too!!
@opulent. Yes, let’s remember repeal of Glass Stegall= Bill Clinton
Chris has more than a crush on ole bubba.
*DEAD* Should we be looking for semen stained pants?
Black Student Can’t Be Valedictorian
By EMMALEE ABEL
PINE BLUFF, Ark. (AR) – A high school southeast of Little Rock would not let a black student be valedictorian though she had the highest grade-point average, and wouldn’t let her mom speak to the school board about it until graduation had passed, the graduate claims in Federal Court.
Kymberly Wimberly, 18, got only a single B in her 4 years at McGehee Secondary School, and loaded up on Honors and Advanced Placement classes. She had the highest G.P.A. and says the school’s refusal to let her be sole valedictorian was part of a pattern of discrimination against black students.
Wimberly says that despite earning the highest G.P.A. of the Class of 2011, and being informed of it by a school counselor, “school administrators and personnel treated two other white students as heir[s] apparent to the valedictorian and salutatorian spots.”
Wimberly’s mother is the school’s “certified media specialist.” She says in the federal discrimination complaint that after her daughter had been told she would be valedictorian, the mother heard “in the copy room that same day, other school personnel expressed concern that Wimberly’s status as valedictorian might cause a ‘big mess.'”
McGehee Secondary School is predominantly white, and 46 percent African-American, according to the complaint. Bratton says that the day after she heard the “big mess” comment, McGehee Principal Darrell Thompson, a defendant, told her “that he decided to name a white student as co-valedictorian,” although the white student had a lower G.P.A.
Bratton says she tried to protest the decision to the school board, but defendant Superintendent Thomas Gathen would not let her speak, because she allegedly had “filled out the wrong form. Instead of ‘public comments,’ Gather [sic] said Bratton should have asked for ‘public participation.'” The superintendent told her she could not appeal his decision until the June 28 school board meeting; graduation was May 13.
(The superintendent’s name is spelled Gathen in the heading of the complaint, but is spelled Gather throughout the body of it.)
The last African-American valedictorian in McGehee School District was in 1989. Wimberly says the school discourages black students from taking honors and advanced placement classes, “by telling them, among other things, that the work was too hard.”
“Because of defendants’ continuous disparate treatment of African-American students, defendants’ actions toward the plaintiff can properly be classed as intentional,” the complaint states.
“Defendants did not support African-American students, and did not want to see Wimberly, an African-American young mother as valedictorian.
“But for Wimberly’s race, defendants would not have selected a student with a lower G.P.A. than Wimberly to also be a valedictorian.”
She seeks punitive damages for constitutional violations, and an injunction declaring her sole valedictorian of the school’s Class of 2011. She is represented by John Walker of Little Rock.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/07/25/38410.htm
Fear of another FUTRUE BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE US of A!
Kymberly Wimberly, future POTUS It’s killing the crackas that they are really MEDIOCRE; just covering it up with their thin veil of whiteness.
Same ol HATE!!…no way I would not have spoke!!
She says in the federal discrimination complaint that after her daughter had been told she would be valedictorian, the mother heard “in the copy room that same day, other school personnel expressed concern that Wimberly’s status as valedictorian might cause a ‘big mess.’”
A big mess? How so? I’m so damn tired of this!
Quoted: Michelle Obama on her political future
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/post/quoted-michelle-obama-on-her-political-future/2011/07/25/gIQAhNPBZI_blog.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost&tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost
“The answer is N-O. Period, dot.”
Michelle Obama on whether she’d run for office, in an interview with AARP The Magazine. Also divulges that she didn’t know about the operation to take out Osama bin Laden until she came home from dinner that night and found her husband suited up for a press conference: “I was, like, Wow.”
she (Michelle Obama) didn’t know about the operation to take out Osama bin Laden until she came home from dinner that night and found her husband suited up for a press conference: “I was, like, Wow.”
BWA HA HA HA Killer CLASSIC, RIGHT CHERE!
LMAO!!
Like antoine dodson says ‘we gon’ find you!!
BWAHHHHAAHAHAHAHAH!1
Chris Matthews is beating the shit out of the Utah Senator Mike Lee. What a LIAR. on that crappy cut the crap and bounce plan. UUGGH!!
YUP!
I saw that. Tweety was on point.
took him DOWN!! eviscerated him on the Duck Dodge & Defeat bill!!
YES!! LOVIN Sharpton!!
President Obama will address the nation at 9 p.m. ET as top officials scramble to bridge a partisan divide and raise the federal government’s debt ceiling before an unprecedented — and potentially devastating — national default.
Watch his remarks live on CNN TV and CNN.com.
3 Chics will live blog the address.
Reid Unveils Debt Limit Proposal
Boehner, Reid Work on Separate Deficit Legislation
Washington, DC
Monday, July 25, 2011
C-SPAN
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) introduced a proposal to lift the $14.3 trillion dollar debt ceiling through 2012. It includes $2.7 trillion in budget cuts. Reid’s proposal does not include increases in revenue or cuts to entitlement programs. It “meets both sides bottom lines,” Senator Reid said. The savings include $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending and takes into account $1 trillion is savings by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would also create a committee to recommend additional spending cuts in the future.
VIDEO
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Reid-Unveils-Debt-Limit-Proposal/10737423053-4/
hahahahaah!! givin ’em what they want but not the way they want!! POTUS on it!!
Got his point guard running the play!!
hhahahahah…DUNK on their asses!!
lmao
LOL Ole Harry; I’ve never seen him like he was today with Schumer. He cracked me up.
Grover Norquist’s Office Evacuated After Bomb Threat
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/americans-for-tax-reform-norquist-bomb-threat_n_908793.html#comments
The offices of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group run by conservative activist Grover Norquist, were evacuated Monday morning after a bomb threat.
Norquist’s office contacted the Washington Metropolitan Police Department around 9 a.m. on Monday after the bomb threat was called into the ATR office, according to The Hill.
Anthony Clay, a police spokesperson, told Politico that a bomb unit searched the office and found no explosives.
“The police are conducting an investigation,” John Kartch, director of communications for Americans for Tax Reform, wrote in an email to The Hill.
The Republican Party has long been beholden to Americans for Tax Reform, which is headed by Norquist. He has loomed large on the periphery of the debt ceiling debate as members of Congress struggle to reach a deal.
Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” which nearly all Republican members of Congress have signed, says signatories will never vote to raise taxes. According to Norquist, the pledge has also ruled out voting to end certain tax breaks and subsidies without using the resulting money to lower rates elsewhere.
Last week, Norquist appeared to signal that ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy would not be considered a tax increase under the pledge — which would have given the Republican party breathing room to reach a compromise on the debt ceiling.
But Norquist quickly shut the door on such speculation in a New York Times op-ed.
I ABHOR violence. Note to Norquist. Terrorism begats terrorism.
I too abhor violence..but this shyt is so TRANSPARENTLY contrived!
ain’t believin it for 1 second
Nope! just smoke and mirrors to take the heat off Norquist complicity in the GOP’s participation in his anti- governmnet shadow group
I wouldn’t put it pass Grover “treasonous snake” Norquist to make this ish up!
Remember Eric Cantor and his fake drama during the campaign season? Same shit. LIARS
President Barack Obama endorsed a debt-ceiling proposal by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that would cut government spending by $2.7 trillion and increase the federal borrowing limit through 2012, the White House said.
Republican aides revealed details on a competing plan that House Speaker John Boehner is moving forward with separately; it would aim for roughly $3 trillion in cuts and raise the debt ceiling in two stages.
Democrats and Republicans are at an impasse on a deal to raise the nation’s debt limit. Without an agreement in place by August 2, the U.S. government risks defaulting on some of its debt obligations.
“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”
by Dennis G.
Scott Shane is one of the best journalists working today. In today’s NYTs he digs into the influence that American wingnut bloggers had on the mass murderer in Norway. It is a story well worth reading.
The quote above is from a former CIA officer who frame the link of violence to wingnut rhetoric quite nicely:
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”
That a racist mass murderer has cited the racist bile spewing from their pens as a major influence on his twisted thinking has outraged writers like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and others, but not that much—what really outrages these assholes is that anybody would dare to mention that their bile has consequences. As always, it is any effort to be held to account for their words and the influence of their propaganda that really inflames these weak-minded, fearful, racist slugs.
One of the folks pointing out this free flowing exchange of Transatlantic racist bile is Charles Johnston over at Little Green Footballs. It is interesting to watch as he documents the links of wingnut hate rhetoric to these murders and his back and forth with dim-bulbs like Geller. It is fair that he pulls this duty as the killer’s manifesto contained a link to an old post of his in a footnote. And even though he decided to get off the wingnut crazy train a couple of years ago, his old posts give him plenty of reasons to take up this fight and the tools to leave a mark when he lands a punch. His rejection of wingnut magical thinking has made him a prime target of the rage of folks like Geller who are super pissed that anybody would notice the call to violence implicit in their body of work. As a deflection Geller pretends that Johnson’s minor link as one footnote among many is far worst than the killer’s specific praise for her work, and Spencer’s and their fellow merchants of hate. It’s not, but logic and honesty have never been wingnut virtues.
Shane’s article goes on to cite the shutdown of efforts to track domestic wingnut terrorists in the US after Conservative outrage of a 2009 draft Homeland Security report on the subject. He quoted a former analyst at Homeland Security as saying:
The killings in Norway “could easily happen here,” he said. The Hutaree, an extremist Christian militia in Michigan accused last year of plotting to kill police officers and planting bombs at their funerals, had an arsenal of weapons larger than all the Muslim plotters charged in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks combined, he said.
Over at the Campaign to Stop Gun Violence they have been tracking the rise of violent rhetoric and action in Wingnutopia on their Insurrection Timelime. This is a far bigger threat to America than al Qaeda and one would hope that folks here wake up to the danger of these domestic enemies. Shane’s article ends with this kicker from a Homeland Security official:
“What happened in Norway,” Mr. Cohen said, “is a dramatic reminder that in trying to prevent attacks, we cannot focus on a single ideology.”
Word.
And we can no longer afford to let wingnut poutrage shield the violent extremists among them from scrutiny. As Breivik in Norway demonstrated, it is only a matter of time before the Right wing kills again. These are dangerous times and we are confronted with crazy people who view most of the world as sub-human—crazy people with guns and a proven willingness to use them.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/07/25/%e2%80%9cthis-rhetoric%e2%80%9d-he-added-%e2%80%9cis-not-cost-free-%e2%80%9d/
Political AnimalBlog
July 25, 2011 12:30 PM
Reid accepts ransom note’s terms, confuses GOP
By Steve Benen
At a certain level, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) more or less ended the dispute over the debt ceiling late yesterday. That is to say, congressional Republicans launched a hostage strategy several months ago — give them debt reduction or they’ll crash the economy on purpose — and as of yesterday, Reid had agreed to all of the GOP’s terms.
In fairness, the details are not yet available, and may be objectionable. But the Majority Leader’s framework would (1) include about $2.7 trillion in debt reduction, just as Republicans demanded; (2) bring in nothing in the way of new revenue just as Republicans demanded; and (3) require only one debt-ceiling increase this Congress, just as GOP leaders demanded.
And yet, there’s no deal. What’s the hold up? Brian Beutler reports that Reid seems to have caught Republicans off guard.
Republicans have been tight-lipped so far about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s surprise offer of $2.7 trillion in spending cuts — and no tax revenue — to raise the debt limit through 2012.
There are a few reasons for that. First, as Red State’s Erick Erickson subtly pointed out, Republicans were not expecting to wake up to headlines noting that Reid’s offering more immediate cuts than House Speaker John Boehner’s proposing. Second, because about a trillion of those dollars comes from the expected wind down of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — a source of savings Republicans have recently opposed but, oops, voted for in the House GOP budget.
But another reason, according to one senior GOP aide is that Reid decided to go it alone pretty abruptly, and they haven’t seen his proposal yet.
Given that the norm is immediate and categorical GOP opposition to all Democratic plans, “tight-lipped” Republicans is arguably a sign of progress. At least, it would be if House Republicans weren’t planning to move on a plan they know Senate Dems and the White House oppose, effectively preparing a game of chicken within a game of chicken.
But as the process unfolds, Matt Yglesias has a smart piece on the larger context. On the surface, GOP leaders say they have two key demands: trillions in spending cuts and no new revenue. Harry Reid’s latest offer is intended to address what Republicans claim to care about.
But as Matt explained, their stated demands are more of a smokescreen for their actual concerns: they want to cut Medicare and prevent future tax increases, especially on the wealthy. Reid’s plan does neither.
So, we appear to be stuck — again — because Republicans are unwilling to take “yes” for an answer.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/reid_accepts_ransom_notes_term031076.php
Political AnimalBlog
July 25, 2011 2:15 PM
Through the looking glass
By Steve Benen
I’m generally finding it increasingly difficult to understand what on earth congressional Republicans are thinking. Fortunately, a House GOP leadership aide presented this pitch to Mike Allen:
“President Obama blew up any chance of a bigger agreement with his insistence on tax hikes and by backing away from some of the serious structural entitlement reforms he agreed to rhetorically. He has only himself to blame. The President desperately wants a large debt limit increase that will take him past the next presidential election. Republicans will not give him a $2.4 trillion blank check he can use throughout his re-election campaign to continue the spending binge that has driven our nation to the brink of a job-destroying downgrade and default.
“He is trying to set up a no-win situation for taxpayers: either he gets his $2.4 trillion blank check, or America defaults. Republicans will put forward a responsible, common-sense proposal that reflects the principles of Cut, Cap and Balance and which can pass both chambers. As the deadline approaches it would be inexcusable and indefensible for the President to veto a plan that preserves the full faith and credit of the United States simply because it’s inconvenient to his re-election campaign.”
This is valuable for those of us eager to understand why Republicans seem determined to punish the country, but it’s also illustrative of a perspective that’s completely detached from reality. As Jon Chait noted, “Even by the standard of political spin, this is really pretty amazing,” adding that the quote includes some “Alice-in-Wonderland assertions.”
It’s generally tough to say with any confidence whether some GOP flack actually believes his/her own nonsense. Maybe this was sent to Allen as part of a larger p.r. campaign, and no one, not even congressional Republicans, actually considers this nonsense credible.
But in case GOPers actually believe this, let’s note the errors.
* Obama didn’t “blow up” a deal by insisting on additional revenue; Obama insisted on additional revenue from the outset. The public, as it turns out, agrees with him. What’s more, the president wanted a sliver of revenue accompanying massive spending cuts. So who “blew up” the deal? Republicans did.
* Obama isn’t asking for a “blank check.” The nation needs a debt-ceiling increase to pay for the things we’ve already bought. Going forward, Congress will maintain its power of the purse — the administration can’t just spend whatever it wants — so as GOP whining goes, this is just gibberish.
* Obama hasn’t presented Republicans with an either/or scenario. Democrats have made all kinds of offers, most of them extremely generous, in the hopes that Republicans migh accept one of them and choose not to crash the economy on purpose. So far, GOP officials have rejected all of them. And since this is the Republicans’ hostage strategy, the accusation itself is kind of silly.
* “Cut, Cap, and Balance” can’t “pass both chambers.” We know this because we were conscious last week when CC&B got 46 votes in the Senate. Indeed, since CC&B includes a constitutional amendment that requires a two-thirds majority, the proposal can’t pass the House, either.
* Preventing the nation from needlessly going through two debt-ceiling votes, instead of one, has nothing to do with Obama’s “re-election campaign.” Indeed, when Republican leaders themselves rejected the idea of two separate votes, it probably wasn’t because they wanted improve the odds for the president’s campaign.
Ultimately, what we’re left with here is a Republican pitch in which every claim if false.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/through_the_looking_glass031084.php
July 25, 2011
An extraordinary deceit
Yesterday, one could hear the unstrategic yelps of the activist left — Obama is selling us out again; Harry Reid is his errand boy; all is lost; the Senate majority leader’s sketchy, “unbalanced” proposal is just what they expected; and so on, and so on.
Lord, grant these morons a clue. I’m beggin’ Ya.
In consultation with President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, what Reid is formulating, based on reports so far, is but an extraordinary political deceit; i.e., he’s calling the “no-taxes” coven’s bluff. His $2.7 trillion in spending cuts are largely savings from two wars already winding down, and though no new revenue is proposed, Medicare is left untouched.
A triple and brilliant pretense: one that gives Republicans what they claim to demand — unembellished cuts consistent with the debt ceiling’s lifted height — while ripping the message-war rug of 2012 right out from under them.
And about this the left howls in disgust. Unbelievable (almost).
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/07/an-extraordinary-deceit.html
Mon Jul 25, 2011 at 07:52 AM PDT.
Just Waiting for the Great White Hope+*
No one likes to admit it, of course, but …
.
You know about the Great White Hope, don’t you?
At the turn of the 20th Century, Jack Johnson, an African American, won the boxing heavyweight championship of the world. He beat a white man. During the era of Jim Crow in the South and racial condescension in the rest of the country, it was unthinkable that a black man could ever best a white. And so the wishin’ and hopin’ and prayin’ began in earnest for a white boxer to appear who would best Johnson and effectively put paid to the fluke that a black man could ever beat anyone white.
Funny enough, at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, America went colour-blind for a moment, to rally behind athletes Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the future Congressman and co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, in opposition to an event which was presented as the Germans’ example of Aryan superiority in all things.
Two decades later, Jackie Robinson was “allowed” to integrate professional baseball. Less than half a century after pivotal civil rights’ legislation, our country elected the first African American President. Morally superior Europe looked at us in awe, because morally superior Europe brushed its own racial problems under its collective carpet, but in the week before Barack Obama’s historic achievement, the British historian Simon Schama told a transatlantic audience that a Barack Obama would never happen in the United Kingdom – not in the next decade and not in the next five decades.
This was America’s moment to put aside an element of racism which had long pervaded and defined a lot of American life. Of course, it didn’t. We knew it wouldn’t. And it was easy to surmise that most of the objection and the delegitimisation of this Presidency would come from the Right and from the South. I mean, that’s where all the racists are, aren’t they?
As the United States teeters toward defaulting on its massive debt, more and more we’ve seen, especially this year, that it isn’t just the Southern Republicans who have a problem with a black man in the White House. Many on the Left seem to have a problem dealing with a very competent and very intelligent black man who’s pretty much smarter than a lot of what you see on our side of the aisle on Capitol Hill, and who’s made it patently clear that while he’s in the White House, he’s there to work for the best interests of “the American People” and not just to kowtow to those who deem themselves to be his Progressive masters – whether they be in Congress, in the media or in the blogosphere.
There are some on the Left who call themselves pundits, who really have no idea of how politics really works, much less how government is supposed to work. Some of these people opining on what the President SHOULD say, what he SHOULD do and how he SHOULD act, almost to the point of ordering him about, have no real connection to the political world at all; but, for whatever reason, they’ve got a pulpit and a television camera, and since 2009, instead of lauding this man his achievements on our behalf, instead of encouraging us in our support for a President from our side of the political spectrum, they’ve refined nitpicking to a polished art and incessantly criticize the President as much, if not more, than Fox News.
During the healthcare debate, rife with lies and misinformation during the summer of 2009, instead of aiding the Democrats in their message about what exactly healthcare for all was supposed to achieve, MSNBC gave unbridled coverage to Tea Party assemblies. Various male pundits and comedians-cum-pundits were fascinated by Sarah Palin and now turn that fascination to Michele Bachmann.
Constant throughout this Administratoin has been the cry now and again for Progressives to unite with the Tea Party. Arianna Huffington started this meme, the same year she wanted Joe Biden to resign and “rebel” against the White House. Jane Hamsher openly sides now with conservative commentators and Republicans, deeming any Obama supporter the “dumbest motherfucker.” And even wannabe mean girl Joan Walsh, wallowing in the Puma-iest self-pity that the Democratic Party would deign to choose a black man over a “qualified white woman,” now suggests that the Democrats on the Hill combine forces with the GOP in a game of terminal chicken against the President.
These people stopped listening to the President ages ago, and along with the likes of John Boehner, Eric Cantor and various members of the White House press corps (some of whom ascended from the ranks of rank bloggers, themselves), treat him with open disrespect – reckoning him naive, incapable, incompetent, spineless and shallow, when he affects calm in a stressful situation and stoking that well-known fear of “the angry black man” when he shows passion and frustration. Some of these people, like Joan, even exhort the sheeple of Cyberland not to pay any attention to the President; instead, listen to them.
Well, just look at the number of talking heads who, in former lives not too long ago, were card-carrying Republicans. Some still are and are ratfucking the lowest common denominator of the Left:- Arianna Huffington, Cenk Uygur, Ed Schultz (puts a whole new complexion on his exhortation to Progressives not to vote in the midterms, doesn’t it?)
Others, like Michael Moore, Katrina vanden Heuvel and Bill Maher trolled the country and the airwaves in 2000, telling anyone who would listen that Bush and Gore were the same, and it was so much better and more important to vote for Ralph Nader. Consider this trio of false prophets enablers of the phenomenon that was George W Bush.
We all know that the GOP is searching frantically for its White Knight. We know that they’ll probably move heaven and earth to ensure that said Knight is not Michele Bachmann. After all, it was the Rightwing who broke the story about her incapacitating migraines.
That’s fine. We expect them to do that. They’re the opposition.
But it seems that the Left has never left off looking for their own special brand of a white political Jesus, as we constantly hear blips and grips about wanting to find someone, anyone willing to step up and primary the President. No surprise that all the names mentioned have been white.
Faux Progressive Hamsher is even offering “re-education” classes for African Americans, intent on telling them what SHE thinks Obama is really about. If that isn’t condescending racism, I don’t know what is.
With all the spin, supposition and fear-mongering innuendo the usual hacks in the media have managed to ratchet up regarding what they want the public to believe about the President’s perceived dismantling of Social Security and Medicare, it seems a lot of people are investing their hopes in Bernie Sanders.
I have great respect for Senator Sanders. I like him. But he comes from a primarily white state which is also a primarily prosperous state. His filibuster against extending the Bush tax cuts last December would have been admirable had that compromise not included vital legislation benefiting the unemployed, the poor, the working poor and students from working class backgrounds. The fact that he readily appropriated himself of the help offered by that noted Congressional “Progressive” (not) Mary Landrieu, who certainly represents a state with a huge number of poor and disadvataged people, was rankly cynical.
There’s a sad irony in all of this that Democrats and people who purport to be from the Left would think about repudiating the nation’s first African American President. It’s supremely hypocritical, and actually, it’s just what the Right want to see; because it proves to them and to any independent observer from another country, that the so-called Left is not really any different than their blood brothers on the Right.
So let them proceed with their primary fantasies. Maybe there will be someone brave or stupid enough to step forward and commit political suicide, both for themselves and for the Democratic party as a whole. Because in primarying this sitting President, they’ll attain their great white hope, although it may not be the one for whom the Left is hoping, and it might just lead to an unbroken hegemony of great white Rightwing hopes that will last a generation and firmly close the Overton window forever.
.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/25/998473/-Just-Waiting-for-the-Great-White-Hope
We don’t give a rat’s ass about what any of these folks have to say.
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012! 3 CHICS IS IN IT TO WIN IT!!!!
July 25, 2011 1:10 PM
No one except Boehner wants to go through this twice
By Steve Benen
As of yesterday, one of House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) key demands to prevent a crisis next week is two separate debt-ceiling votes. He wants one vote this week, and then wants the country to go through all of this again early next year.
Greg Sargent has tried to find someone — outside the House Republican caucus — who thinks this is a good idea. He didn’t come up with much.
With House Republicans now pushing for a temporary extension of the debt limit, which would mean another fight along these lines a few months from now, it’s worth asking: Is there anyone significant or credible out there aside from them who is willing to say this is a good idea?
Greg noted concerns from independent financial analysts, who consider this the wrong move, as well as a 1985 report showing the Reagan administration considered short-term increases evidence of Congress “shirking its responsibilities.”
So, let’s review. President Obama doesn’t want two separate votes. Senate Democrats don’t want two separate votes. As recently as last month, leading congressional Republicans didn’t want two separate votes. The financial industry doesn’t want two separate votes. Even Ronaldus Magnus didn’t like the idea of two separate votes.
As we talked about earlier, this is pretty straightforward. Forcing two votes is bad for the economy, bad for public sanity, bad for Congress as an institution, and even bad for House Republicans themselves.
And yet, at least as of today, John Boehner consider this critical. He must assume that he can’t pass a bill without this provision, but I honestly don’t know why the House GOP would consider this unnecessary and widely-loathed provision a deal-breaker, other than to make a fuss about the White House and congressional Dems rejecting one of his ideas.
The sooner the Speaker drops this one point that no one likes anyway, the sooner this Republican mess goes away.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/no_one_except_boehner_wants_to031077.php#
Republicans Rally Behind Short-Term Debt Limit Deal…After Opposing The Idea For Weeks
Dems are happily noting the irony that Republicans have united behind a short-term debt limit increase, after publicly opposing the idea for months. Two weeks ago, top Republicans began reconsidering that view, and now House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is preparing to unveil a two-step debt limit bill to his caucus. The idea is to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget in current legislation, raise the debt limit by a similar, modest, amount, but make raising the debt limit through the 2012 elections contingent on the swift adoption of entitlement and tax reform.
This is good flip-flop fodder for politicos, but it’s also a pretty dramatic substantive shift. Republicans have a significant public record of supporting a long-term solution — some have even gone so far as to rule out temporary steps.
Circumstances change, but now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is putting forward a plan that meets Republicans’ original criteria for raising the debt limit into 2013, it’s worth taking a look back at the GOP’s record on this score.
The most ardent supporter of a long-term plan was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) — also one of the first to reconsider.
In consecutive Capitol briefings with reporters on June 13, June 21, and July 6, Cantor said the following:
In chronological order: “It’s my desire to have one debt ceiling vote,” Cantor said. “Again, the Speaker, it is up to him as to where he comes down on that question. I would like to see just one debt ceiling vote. I think we can accomplish trillions of dollars in spending reductions, and then put the necessary reforms in place where you’re actually going to achieve a lot more than that outside the budget window.”
Then a week later, “I don’t see how multiple votes on a debt ceiling increase can help get us to where we want to go,” Cantor said. “[W]e want big reforms, we want big spending cuts, and big changes to how this town works….I don’t see how multiple votes are going to help us towards that end.”
Finally, just after Independence Day, when President Obama had drawn a line in the sand on short-term fixes: “I think many of you recorded way back that the President had said one time that he was going to keep looking for something that he and Eric Cantor could agree on,” Cantor said. “I think this is that.”
There was actually a brief division between House and Senate Republican leaders on this question back in June, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) opened the door to a short-term plan, but his House counterparts swiftly shut this down. And McConnell himself was long on the record before and since arguing that the best solution is a comprehensive deficit-reduction package. He once claimed he would not vote to raise the debt limit if the legislation did not also include Medicare cuts, but the plan Boehner’s proposing will likely not include Medicare cuts, at least in its first tranche.
In June, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) explained a short-term deal “doesn’t give you certainty. Ideally you’d like to get that settled and not have it continually a hanging-over issue.”
The list goes on. This is one of the many reasons why Reid’s one-shot deal proposal is wrongfooting Republicans this morning.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/republicans-rally-behind-short-term-debt-limit-dealafter-opposing-the-idea-for-weeks.php
July 25, 2011 07:00 AM
John Boehner’s Double-Dealing on the Debt Ceiling
By Jon Perr
If it appears that John Boehner is suffering from multiple personality disorder over the debt ceiling stand-off, that’s because he is. Torn between his duty to the national interest as Speaker of the House and to the Tea Party caucus that put him there, for months Boehner has ping-ponged between truth and lies on the debt ceiling. Long before he breached faith with the President on Friday, John Boehner tried to have it both ways on virtually every aspect of the debt ceiling crisis manufactured by the Republican Party he struggles to lead.
As Jed Lewison documented, Speaker Sybil couldn’t get his story straight on Friday’s walkout. While he insisted during his press conference afterward that “we had an agreement on a revenue number,” in a letter that same day to House Republicans Boehner insisted that “A deal was never reached, and was never really close.”
As it turns out, John Boehner’s duplicity started long before he picked up the Speaker’s gavel.
In the wake of the Republicans’ overwhelming triumph at the polls last fall, Speaker-to-be Boehner was his party’s voice of reason on the debt ceiling. As the Wall Street Journal reported on November 18 (“Boehner Warns GOP on Debt Ceiling”), Boehner pressed his newly enlarged Republican caucus on the need to raise the debt ceiling and so protect the full faith and credit of the United States.
“I’ve made it pretty clear to them that as we get into next year, it’s pretty clear that Congress is going to have to deal with this,” Mr. Boehner, who is slated to become House speaker in January, told reporters.
“We’re going to have to deal with it as adults,” he said, in what apparently are his most explicit comments to date. “Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part.”
If an increase in the current debt limit of $14.3 trillion does not pass, it would suggest the country may not meet its obligations and would shake the financial system. It could rock the bond market, rattle the dollar and scare away foreign buyers of U.S. debt.
In January, Boehner echoed Paul Ryan’s warning that “you can’t not raise the debt ceiling” and Lindsey Graham’s dire prediction that failure to do so would produce “collapse and calamity throughout the world.” As Speaker Boehner put it then:
“That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said, ‘we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.’ And you can’t create jobs if you default on the federal debt.”
But that same month, Boehner was also insisting President Obama would have to make concessions to Republicans on the debt ceiling that George W. Bush, needless to say, never faced:
The American people will not stand for such an increase unless it is accompanied by meaningful action by the President and Congress to cut spending and end the job-killing spending binge in Washington.
After bringing the government to the brink of a shutdown over budget cuts demanded by the GOP in April, a newly confident Speaker Boehner made abundantly clear he would join the hardliners in the House and Senate holding the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling hostage. As Politico reported, Boehner set out to prove “there’s no daylight between the Tea Party and me”:
use Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), fresh off the budget talks, told donors this weekend that if Obama wants an up or down vote on the debt ceiling he’s not going to get it.
“The president says I want you to send me a clean bill,” Boehner said. “Well guess what, Mr. President, not a chance you’re going to get a clean bill.”
“There will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it,” he continued in a clip of his remarks at a fundraiser that was played during “Face the Nation.”
That really, really big “something” turned out to be the draconian Paul Ryan budget. After refusing to endorse the Ryan Roadmap during the 2010 campaign, John Boehner joined 234 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators in voting for the Ryan plan. But Ryan’s blueprint didn’t merely privatize Medicare, slash Medicaid and deliver yet another tax cut windfall for the wealthy; it would also add another $6 trillion in debt over the next decade. As a result, the GOP’s own Ryan budget not only violates the “Cut, Cap and Balance Act” spending targets they just voted for this week. It would also require the Republicans to raise the ceiling repeatedly in the future.
In a rare moment of candor, Speaker John Boehner admitted as much.
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/john-boehners-double-dealing-on-debt-ceiling
GOP Stumbles Over Surprise Dem Debt Limit Offer
Republicans have been tight-lipped so far about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s surprise offer of $2.7 trillion in spending cuts — and no tax revenue — to raise the debt limit through 2012.
There are a few reasons for that. First, as Red State’s Erick Erickson subtly pointed out, Republicans were not expecting to wake up to headlines noting that Reid’s offering more immediate cuts than House Speaker John Boehner’s proposing. Second, because about a trillion of those dollars comes from the expected wind down of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — a source of savings Republicans have recently opposed but, oops, voted for in the House GOP budget.
But another reason, according to one senior GOP aide is that Reid decided to go it alone pretty abruptly, and they haven’t seen his proposal yet.
“The Speaker, Sen. Reid and Sen. [Mitch] McConnell all agreed on the general framework of a two-part plan,” the aide says. “A short-term increase (with cuts greater than the increase), combined with a committee to find long-term savings before the rest of the increase would be considered. Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the President said no.”
Reid’s staff disputes this version of events. In their telling Reid and his aides pursued a range of options at both the staff-level, and at a principals level, through the weekend. Reid was willing to accept budget cuts in two phases, but would not agree to a short-term debt limit extension if it just meant replaying this fight all over again several months from now. Boehner wouldn’t (or couldn’t) bite. Reid left a Saturday evening meeting angry, said no short-term deal, and began contemplating the one-step approach, which leaked Sunday afternoon, and that he ultimately settled on Sunday night.
Republican and Democratic staff continued to pursue a two-step solution to the problem on Sunday, while Dem staff began worked separately on the one-step plan on their own. By Sunday evening, the two separate debt hikes remained a sticking point, and at a White House meeting last night, Reid presented Pelosi and President Obama both frameworks. All agreed that that the single-step process was the way to go — really the only bright-line Dems have drawn in this entire debate — and that’s why things ended as they did late last night.
The conflicting narratives suggest there isn’t a whole lot of good will left between the interested parties. But whether or not they feel they got tripped up by the Dems’ decision, the big question now is whether Republicans will accept the offer on the grounds that it’s, well, pretty much everything they’ve asked for. We’ll learn more in the coming hours.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/gop-stumbles-over-surprise-dem-debt-limit-offer.php?ref=fpa
July 25, 2011 9:20 AM
The eyes of the world
By Steve Benen
About two weeks ago, Diane Swonk, chief economist for Mesirow Financial and an economic advisor to the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve Board, talked to MSNBC about the state of the debt-ceiling crisis. She noted, among other things, recently having returned from Europe.
“Coming back from Europe, the Europeans just can’t believe we’d be so foolish as to decidedly squander away our debt rating in such a frivolous manner,” she said. “This just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.”
Some observers on the other side of the Atlantic are becoming increasingly blunt in their assessment.
Right-wing “nutters” in the United States Congress holding up a deal to prevent a catastrophic debt default are a greater risk to the global financial system than problems in the euro zone, a British minister said Sunday. […]
“The irony of the situation at the moment, with markets opening tomorrow morning, is that the biggest threat to the world financial system comes from a few right-wing nutters in the American congress rather than the euro zone,” he told BBC television.
This also comes the same month as a powerful editorial in The Economist, a conservative British publication, explaining that Republicans are creating a crisis, on purpose, for no reason: “It is because the vast majority of Republicans, driven on by the wilder-eyed members of their party and the cacophony of conservative media, are clinging to the position that not a single cent of deficit reduction must come from a higher tax take. This is economically illiterate and disgracefully cynical.”
The Financial Times’ James Crabtree added this morning that Asian central bankers, watching the American fiasco, have been reduced to “resigned incredulity.”
I do wonder, from time to time, how I might explain this crisis to someone from outside the United States. Why would American officials, on purpose, choose to stop paying America’s bills? Why would these officials want to deliberately undermine the country’s credit rating? Why would elected lawmakers, who presumably like their country, risk an economic crash on purpose? Why would American voters elect such lunatics?
Alas, I’m not sure how I’d answer any of these questions from an outsider looking in. The best I can do is try to explain that there’s a deep strain of madness that’s overcome one of our major political parties, and it’s an illness that puts us all at risk.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/the_eyes_of_the_world031071.php
they long for an America that NEVER existed.
IT NEVER DID.
they long for a time when they thought they were big fish in a big pond.
in fact, the pond was big, because you excluded so many other fish (Blacks, Latinos, Asian, Woman)
so, that they still want to believe the world of Mad Men was fair and right and better.
ALL FUCKING DELUSIONS
Barbara Billingsley, “June Cleaver” Dies: The Symbology of an Era Gone By
As a child, I can’t tell you how many times my siblings and I would fight over who would control the tv channels in our home. I was born in 1955. Our household didn’t get a TV until 1959.
Our family watched Leave it to Beaver. The Cleaver’s house was nestled in white suburbia in a fictitious town called “Mayfield.” My brothers would always snicker over Wally and the Beaver’s shenanigans, because a lot of my brother’s antics mirrored the Cleaver boys. You know, boys will be boys…
It didn’t take me and my siblings long to figure out that the entire cast of characters were all white, and that their lives were not so different from our own. The Cleaver’s household showcased a mother who did not work outside the home.
Read on:
http://3chicspolitico.com/2010/10/18/barbara-billingsley-june-clever-dies-the-symbology-of-an-era-gone-by/
Christian Terror in Norway: I Predicted Terror from the Religious Right in My New Book “Sex, Mom and God”
The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a 32-year-old man, whom they identified as a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing connections, over the bombing of a government center and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together left at least 91 people dead.
In my new book “Sex, Mom and God” I predicted just such an action. I predicted that right wing Christians will unleash terror here in America too. I predict that they will copy Islamic extremists, and may eventually even make common cause with them.
http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/2011/07/christian-terror-in-norway-i-predicted.html?spref=tw
YES, Town, Barack Obama has EXPOSED America’s MEDIOCRITY, posing as EXCEPTIONALISM.
@jbendery:GOP aide confirms: Boehner will lay out debt plan to GOP members at 2pm that includes spending caps & balanced budget amendment.
Same shit; different day!
Yep! The GOP has no plan, no ideas, no solutions. They only know how to obstruct, distort, deceive, lie, suppress, race bait and steal to get their way! Thugs in Brooks Brothers suits!
Harry Reid Calls House Republicans’ Bluff
By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 25, 2011 at 9:59 am
Something you often see in negotiations is a mismatch between one side’s stated sticking points and its real sticking points. In the debate over the debt ceiling, for example, Republicans have sought to portray themselves as having two bottom lines. One is that any increase in the debt ceiling must be met dollar-for-dollar with spending cuts. The other is that no revenue increases can be part of the deal. What Harry Reid did yesterday was essentially call the GOP’s bluff by outlining a plan that raises the debt ceiling by $2.7 trillion and includes $2.7 trillion in spending cuts, a healthy share of which comes from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Republicans are rejecting this even though it nominally meets their demands. Why? Because it doesn’t achieve either of their two real objectives. In particular, the plan doesn’t cut Medicare, which means that Democratic party candidates for office in November 2012 and 2014 can accurately remind voters of the content of the Republican budget plan. In case you forgot, this plans repeals Medicare. Having repealed Medicare, it then gives seniors vouchers to purchase more expensive private health insurance. And having replaced Medicare with a voucher system, it then ensures that the vouchers will grow steadily stingier over time. It was only after voting for this plan that Republicans seem to have realized that repealing Medicare is unpopular. Since that time, they’ve been trying to entrap Democrats into reaching some kind of Medicare détente with them, which would immunize them from criticism. Reid’s plan doesn’t do that.
Second, while Reid’s plan doesn’t raise taxes, it also doesn’t take tax increases off the table. Currently, the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2012. If Reid’s all-cuts plan passes, that still leaves the door open to significant revenue increases. Now that doesn’t mean this is brilliant 11-dimensional chess. The Reid Plan is consistent with substantial revenues coming online in 2012, but that will only happen if President Obama and Senate Democrats stand firm and play hardball on the tax issue. Back in December 2010, they utterly failed to do so.
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/25/277811/harry-reid-calls-house-republicans-bluff/
White House Needs to Promise a Veto
by BooMan
Mon Jul 25th, 2011 at 10:29:43 AM EST
The game Boehner appears to be playing is to stall long enough that whatever he passes out of the House is presented as an either/or choice. Either the Senate agrees to it letter-for-letter or time runs out and we default. In recognition of this, Harry Reid is willing to pay a healthy ransom, albeit with a bit of a twist. Nearly half the cuts would be premised on the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which, you know, have not ended. If passed into law, this wouldn’t compel the end of the conflicts abroad, but it would mean that continuing to pay for them would throw our budget out of whack. Of course, that’s no change at all. At best, it might create a little resistance to further supplemental funding of the wars.
There’s a potential problem with Boehner’s strategy, however. It’s compelling because of the stark choice he presents. Both the president and all reasonable lawmakers are willing to do almost anything to avoid a default, but a short-term default is getting close to inevitable. Bills can sail through the Senate in record time if there is unanimous consent from all 100 senators. But if even one senator objects to a procedural move, it can take up to eight days to move a piece of legislation, even if it has the support of more than 60 senators. If the Senate and House bills are not identical, it can take even longer. In other words, Boehner’s dithering has already empowered any single senator to cause a short-term default.
And if there is a default of any length, suddenly Boehner’s leverage dissipates. It’s like killing the hostage. Of course, it’s not exactly the same because, in this case, the economy will still need reviving. But the Democrats will have a lot less reason to bend all the way over to accommodate the Republicans’ demands.
I think what the White House needs to do today is promise a veto of Boehner’s bill and make it very clear that proceeding in this fashion will guarantee at last a brief default. That would have been reckless last Friday but it makes sense today because there is no time left for alternatives and a default is almost assured anyway. It’s time to get out ahead of the news cycle and lay the blame where it belongs.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/7/25/102943/452
The White House knows what to do.
Political AnimalBlog
July 25, 2011 11:25 AM
Boehner’s plan to ‘stop’ Obama
By Steve Benen
What a terrific quote from House Speaker John Boehner. (via Jed Lewison)
Boehner — now liberated from the need to be sit politely across from Obama in the Cabinet Room — is framing the debt battle in the starkest anti-Obama terms to rally his troops.
“Here’s the challenge,” he told his rank-and-file on a Sunday afternoon conference call, “To stop [Obama], we need a vehicle that can pass in both houses.”
I’ve read it a few times, and I can’t stop marveling at it.
As the House Speaker sees it, the principal goal here isn’t just to prevent a crisis of his caucus’ own making; it’s also to “stop” the president. Stop the president from doing what? It’s not entirely clear, but it probably has something to do with claiming any kind of political victory.
And for Boehner, the way to prevent the White House from getting the upper hand is to have a Republican House and a Democratic Senate approve a debt-ceiling increase that enjoys some semblance of bipartisan support.
Yeah, that’ll show that rascally president.
This entire process would be significantly less ridiculous if Boehner (a) were a powerful Speaker with the respect of his caucus; and (b) weren’t panicking a little about whether this fiasco will cost him his job.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/boehners_plan_to_stop_obama031074.php
July 25, 2011 10:00 AM
Refusing to take ‘yes’ for an answer
By Steve Benen
On Friday afternoon, after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) abandoned debt-reduction talks with the White House, President Obama held a press conference and raised a compelling point:
“I think that one of the questions that the Republican Party is going to have to ask itself is, can they say yes to anything? Can they say yes to anything?”
The answer may very well be, “No, they can’t.”
I’m trying to remember all of the various offers Republicans have turned down over the last several months. They started from the sensible position that the debt ceiling must be raised, and then proceeded to turn down every viable alternative.
* Democrats asked Republicans to pass a clean bill, just as GOP leaders had supported many times in the past. Republicans said, “No.”
* Democrats invited Republicans to Biden-led bipartisan talks. Republicans quit.
* Democrats offered a $2.4 trillion debt-reduction package, 83% of which would come from spending cuts. Republicans said, “No.”
* Democrats sought a Grand Bargain, with more than $4 trillion in savings. Republicans said, “No.”
* Several Democrats offered some preliminary support for the “Gang of Six” blueprint. Republicans said, “No.”
* Many more Democrats signaled support for the McConnell/Reid “Plan B.” Republicans said, “No.”
Is it me, or is there a pattern to all of this?
Late yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced his support for a yet another approach that would meet all of the GOP demands: it would (1) include about $2.7 trillion in debt reduction; (2) bring in nothing in the way of new revenue; and (3) require only one debt-ceiling increase this Congress, just as GOP leaders requested.
By all indications, Republicans will reject Reid’s latest offer, too.
Which brings us back to the president’s question: “Can they say yes to anything?”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/refusing_to_take_yes_for_an_an031072.php
The only YES the GOP will accept
GOP to PBO: Will you get your black ass out of our WHITE HOUSE?
OBAMA to GOP: “Yes sir massa, Iz leavin.”
Dream on MOFOS, dream on
And thats the absolute truth!!! I just keep praying for President Obama. Im worried about him, worried about 2012. These racist repub mofos are going all in to stop our duly elected President.
Hi Dannie. It’s good to see you; we’ve missed you.
I’m feeling you. Our prayers will benefit PBO. I have every confidence that HOPE & SANITY will rule the day in 2012, just like it did in 2008. We need to remain vigilant.
And continue to drink our cups of love and hope, and give the side eye to the snakes in the grass, just like today’s thread photo. LOL
Cenk Uygur: Al Sharpton Is Replacing Me Because He’s Friendlier To Obama (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/cenk-uygur-al-sharpton-is_n_908385.html
Cenk Uygur continued his anti-MSNBC tour on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday–and he suggested that he was getting replaced because Al Sharpton, the man all-but-certain to succeed him as the network’s 6 PM host, is friendlier to the White House.
Uygur left MSNBC very publicly last week, claiming that the network implied to him that his anti-Washington “tone” was not in keeping with the “establishment” bent that MSNBC was trying to cultivate. MSNBC has strongly denied the claims, insisting that it was just giving Uygur television style tips.
Speaking to a slightly skeptical Howard Kurtz, Uygur repeated his charges. Kurtz said that Uygur seemed not to have any direct evidence that MSNBC was caving to political pressure by admonishing him. Uygur replied that he didn’t know who the “people in Washington” that MSNBC Phil Griffin said had a problem with him were. Then, he turned to Sharpton.
“A friend of mine just suggested that I watch the ’60 Minutes’ piece from a couple of months ago on Al Sharpton,” he said. “And I found that to be very curious because Lesley Stahl said there, and here I have the quote for you: ‘Sharpton says he has decided not to criticize the president about anything.’ So the guy who was criticizing the president is out, even though he had really good ratings, and the guy who has decided not to criticize the president about anything is in. That’s interesting.”
Sharpton has indeed been a loyal and steadfast ally of Obama’s, and has vocally defended him against criticism from other prominent black leaders. Most memorably, he had a scorching debate with Prof. Cornel West about Obama back in April. The setting for that argument? MSNBC.
Cenk, STFU and go away! Your show sucked. Accept it & move on.
Boy BYE!
LIAR!!
Clinton reassures China
John Boehner Debt Ceiling Plan To Be Unveiled Monday
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/john-boehner-debt-ceiling-plan-republicans_n_908343.html
WASHINGTON — Bickering in public yet bargaining in private, congressional leaders are struggling for a compromise debt limit deal that avoids a market-rattling default in little over a week while cutting trillions in spending.
As leaders in both houses of Congress readied competing plans to head off the crisis, world markets fell Monday and Wall Street headed for a lower open, with both the Dow and Standard & Poor’s 500 futures down ahead of the opening bell.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, planned to meet with his chamber’s Republicans on Monday to discuss the GOP’s clash with President Barack Obama over extending the government’s borrowing authority, which lapses on Aug. 2 – a week from Tuesday. There were widespread expectations on Capitol Hill that Boehner would unveil debt ceiling legislation by that session, if not earlier.
After meeting at the White House on Sunday with Obama and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said bipartisan talks on a solution had collapsed because Republicans were insisting on only extending the debt limit for a short period. He said he was crafting a $2.7 trillion package of spending cuts that would also push the government’s borrowing authority through next year, a timeline that Obama and top Democrats are demanding.
Think Progress:After terror attack by anti-Muslim extremist, Peter King will still target only Muslims in terror hearings http://thkpr.gs/qNm89N
DCCC: DCCC Targeting GOP Lawmakers On Debt – Capitol Tonight: http://dems.me/o90oVY
Ametia,
The photo is too funny!
Tee hee, hee. Don’t start none, won’t be none! LOL
Norway terror suspect Anders Breivik “acknowledges” carrying out a bombing and mass shootings that left scores dead on Friday, Judge Kim Heger said Monday, but Breivik said the attacks were necessary in light of the “treason” of the victims in promoting multiculturalism.
The judge ordered him held in custody for eight weeks until his next court appearance.
Authorities earlier said at least 93 people were killed and 96 wounded in the terror attacks, but today said there were fewer victims than previously thought.
Watch live coverage now on http://CNN.com/Live
Posted at 07:13 AM ET, 07/25/2011
Wonkbook: Republicans have won. But can they stop there?
We don’t yet know what the final deal to raise the debt ceiling will be. But now that Harry Reid is developing a proposal with $2.7 trillion in cuts and nothing in revenues, it’s a safe bet that it won’t include any tax increases. Which means that whether Republicans realize it or not, they’ve won. The question now is whether they can stop.
Originally, the Democratic position was that we should simply raise the debt ceiling. Republicans said “no.” There would have to be a deal that reduced the deficit by at least $2.4 trillion — which is the size of the debt ceiling increase needed to get us into 2013.
Then the Democratic position was that we should raise the debt ceiling through a deal that reduced the deficit by about $2.4 trillion, with $2 trillion of that coming from spending cuts and $400 billion coming from taxes. Republicans said “no.” There would have to be a deal that disavowed taxes.
Then the Democratic position was that we should raise the debt ceiling through a deal brokered by Barack Obama that reduced the deficit by $4 trillion, with about $3 trillion of that coming from spending cuts and about $1 trillion coming from tax increases. Republicans said “no.” There would have to be a deal that disavowed taxes, and it would have to be cut between the congressional leadership of the two parties. Obama couldn’t have this as a win.
That brings us to where we are now. John Boehner is proposing a deal with about $1 trillion in spending cuts and a short-term increase in the debt ceiling and a bipartisan congressional committee charged with developing a large deficit reduction package that would be immune to amendments and filibusters and would be the price of the next increase in the debt ceiling. Harry Reid is developing a package of spending cuts that Democrats could accept and would reach Boehner’s $2.4 trillion mark.
If you take the Republicans’ goals as avoiding a deal in which they have to vote for tax increases and denying Obama a political victory, it looks like they have succeeded. That success has come with costs — they’ve done themselves political damage, are risking a crisis that could do the economy tremendous harm, and have left the Bush tax cuts unresolved, which means they might end up watching taxes rise much higher than if they’d taken Obama’s offer — but it’s still been a success.
The question is, what happens if they don’t stop pushing?
Late last week, pollster Mark Blumenthal summarized the “consistent findings” from the polling on the debt ceiling. First, he said, “Americans prefer a deal featuring a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts to a deal featuring just spending cuts.” Second, “most of the surveys find strong sentiment in favor of compromise, especially among Democrats and independents.” Finally, “the surveys all show Americans expressing significantly more confidence and trust in President Obama’s handling of the issue than of either the Republican or Democratic leadership in Congress.”
Republicans have leverage because the debt ceiling needs to be raised and it can’t be raised without their support. But they don’t have popular support behind their position or their leadership. They can push this up to the brink and win, because Democrats really, really, really don’t want a debt-ceiling crisis that could set back the economy. But if they push it over the brink, they’re likely to lose, as the public really, really doesn’t want Congress to create an economic crisis that will set back the economy, and they’re primed to blame the GOP if one does in fact come to pass.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-republicans-have-won-but-can-they-stop-there/2011/07/25/gIQAFHVIYI_blog.html#pagebreak
July 24, 2011
David Gregory’s trenchant “Mm-hmm”
On today’s “Meet the Press,” host David Gregory again showcased unchallenged demagoguery and revealed his own staggering indifference to any real analysis. His opportunity to journalistically debase the airwaves presented itself in the malign form of the GOP’s Sen. Tom Coburn, a repugnant fraud who consistently receives Beltway applause for his mavericky independence, which in reality is scarcely more than customary Republican hysteria. To wit:
[The administration] said that they were going to oppose anything that would fundamentally change Medicare. Well, Medicare is belly-up. Anybody that’s on Medicare today, I want to tell you, in five years, it’s going to have to change.
What was Gregory’s concurrent retort? “Mm-hmm.”
It would be unrealistic to expect that Gregory retain in his nicely coiffed head all relevant facts and figures on all subjects, with which he could confront the Sunday morning demagogues. Yet Gregory often deploys not a shadow of pushback, or even a hint of preparation. He had to know that the odds this morning of Coburn repeating the above hysteria were rather good, so one might think he would have crammed on this specific subject before the program. A few actual facts are on occasion helpful.
There is, for instance, this report (pdf) — “A Primer on Medicare Spending and Financing” — available from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which Gregory let pass. Scattered throughout, the primer has this to say:
[O]n net, Medicare spending will be reduced by an estimated $424 billion for the 10-year period from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2019, a 6 percent reduction from spending that had been projected for that period.
Trust Fund balances are expected to be exhausted in 2029…. The 2029 date is 12 years later than projected prior to enactment of the [Affordable Care Act].
Medicare actuaries calculate the 75-year “unfunded obligation” … [at] $2.4 trillion, an amount dramatically lower than the $13.4 trillion estimated in 2009, a reduction which is due to the provisions of the ACA.
The long-run fate of Medicare depends on solving the larger problem of rising health care costs. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 takes initial steps to use Medicare’s leverage to carve a path that slows cost growth and improves quality [all italics mine].
All of which brings to mind a rather damning question, which Gregory, to his shame and our loss, failed to ask: How do you live with yourself, Senator, loutishly exaggerating Medicare’s doom when you, along with your party’s demagogic resistance, opposed President Obama’s substantial mitigations contained in the Affordable Care Act?
Instead we got, “Mm-hmm.” Riveting.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/07/david-gregorys-trenchant-.html
Cheeky Bastards
by John Cole
This made me laugh out loud:
Tea Party conservatives hope to make a push on the House floor to force President Obama to avoid a national default if Congress fails to raise the debt limit.
Members of the Senate Tea Party Caucus have met with House freshmen to discuss a plan to pressure House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to bring the Full Faith and Credit Act to the floor.
The legislation would direct Obama to prioritize federal payments to the nation’s creditors, Social Security recipients and soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The bill has been revised since it was introduced earlier this year. The previous version simply required the Treasury Department to pay the principal and interest on the debt held by the public over other obligations incurred by the federal government.
The challenge for conservatives is to persuade Boehner to bring it up for a vote in the ten days remaining before the Aug. 2 deadline.
Why not just pass a bill that says “Everything is Obama’s fault,” because that is what they are really doing with this. Really, the balls on these people. The only reason they are doing this is they are terrified of being tarred with the consequences of their behavior. So, what they want to do, after they cause a default and destroy our credit rating and we are unable to pay social security or the military, is stand up and say “Don’t blame me- I told him to pay social security first!”
With what money, you teahadist simpleton?
This is, however, a sign of good news. This is an implicit admission that they know the shit is going to hit the fan when they refuse to lift the debt ceiling. They don’t give fuck all about the economy or our credit rating or any of that, but the threat of millions of blue hairs ranting on national television about having to eat cat food scares the hell out of them. As well it should
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/07/25/cheeky-bastards/
Black Chicago Divided
Class and generational conflicts intensify, as African Americans cope with the Great Recession.
By Salim Muwakkil
Martavius (Mark) Carter is both the product and perpetrator of a growing class divide in black America. He is a resident of Chicago’s distressed North Lawndale neighborhood and a founding member of the Voice of the Ex-Offender (VOTE), a group created to empower black people who were once imprisoned. The group’s approach is based on a protest model of direct action, and they intend to be a disruptive force.
“We are living in an emergency situation and time is out for the kind of quiet diplomacy that has been so ineffective,” says Carter, as he points out the numerous signs of decay in his West Side neighborhood.
According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, North Lawndale ranks highest in the state for its number of returning prisoners. The North Lawndale Employment Network estimates that more than 70 percent of all North Lawndale men between the ages of 18 and 45 have a criminal record, a figure almost three times higher than the national average for the same demographic. Sharon Dixon, the former alderman of the 24th Ward, which includes North Lawndale, says the community has the state’s highest homicide rate and the third-highest overall crime rate.
This neighborhood, together with adjacent West Side communities like East and West Garfield Park, Humboldt Park and Austin, has a 52-percent youth unemployment rate—the highest in the entire nation.
Upon his release from prison in 1998 (he served five years for selling drugs), Carter was outraged by the deteriorating conditions in his community. Years of what he says were useless appeals to “members of the black leadership elite” convinced him these were the same people helping to accelerate the decay. In 2003, Carter, several other ex-offenders and a few community activists created VOTE.
“When we began the struggle for community development, we kept running into roadblocks set up by the very people who were supposed to be helping us,” he says. “We began to realize that the death and destruction in our community could not have happened without the black leadership elite’s cooperation.”
Old and intensifying divisions
For most of African-American history, class divisions (forged during centuries of slavery, when slaveowners were happy to divide the loyalties of their chattel) have bedeviled attempts to unify the black community around a common strategy. In black Chicago, these tensions have smoldered for many years, flaring occasionally. Out of sight of mainstream media, divergent class interests have largely prevented any unified political attempt to wrest power from the city’s entrenched ethnic fiefdoms. Though tensions exist in black neighborhoods across the city, the contrast between the poor West Side and the better-off South Side has become a crude geographical surrogate for black Chicago’s stark class divisions.
Acutely aware of disparities among the city’s African Americans, VOTE aims its protests at the city’s established black leadership. The group is best known for raucous demonstrations at construction sites and for disrupting meetings of black elected officials and leaders. For example, VOTE was a regular presence outside the headquarters of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, protesting during Saturday meetings.
Carter has become an implacable critic of the generation of leaders that holds sway over Chicago’s civil rights community. He is also a vocal opponent of most black elected officials who, he charges, make superficial efforts at community improvement in order to garner publicity that will aid their prospects for re-election. When asked why he targets black officials and civil rights leaders rather than the traditional evils of racism and official neglect, Carter insists that unmasking them as collaborators smoothes the road toward true equality. “As long as we think they have the community’s interest at heart, we’ll continue being disappointed.”
The group’s modus operandi has earned them considerable criticism from other activist groups. “I’m not sure anger and hostility is the best way to convince people,” argues Mark Allen, a former aide to the Rev. Jesse Jackson who is associate editor of the South Street Journal and spokesperson for the National Black Wall Street Movement. “Angry denunciations tend to alienate people more than bring them together in productive relationships.”
But Carter argues that he is only channeling the anger he hears in the streets of North Lawndale and other neighborhoods suffering from acute joblessness, endemic homelessness and rampant police brutality.
Only if black leaders are shocked out of their complacency will things change, Carter insists. He is convinced that churches, businesses, fraternal groups, civic and social service organizations, and other established black institutions could more effectively plan strategies and marshal their collective wherewithal and resources to better serve the community. They don’t do this, he believes, because they have their own class interest at heart.
One example of this, noted by Carter, is how Section 3 of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 is regularly violated with the complicity of black leadership. The clause was designed to ensure that “employment and other economic opportunities generated by HUD assistance or HUD assisted projects … be directed to low- and very low-income persons.” Carter says that if that law was put into practice it would go a long way toward easing unemployment in North Lawndale. “But project labor agreements, negotiated by black leaders and labor unions, allow organized labor to escape compliance with Section 3.” As a thank-you, the unions fund these civil rights organizations and black trade associations, he says.
“The black elite are playing with fire if they think they can keep fooling the masses of black people with their deceptive rhetoric,” he says. “Things are getting hot out here and pretty soon that heat is going to light some fuses.”
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/11604/black_chicago_divided
uly 25, 2011 8:00 AM
With eight days to go
By Steve Benen
The hope was, by this point in the Republican-created debt-ceiling crisis, we would see policymakers start to coalesce around some kind of compromise. That’s not happening.
As of late yesterday, there are two separate tracks, which aren’t at all compatible.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wants a two-step process. In the first phase, which would take place this week, Democrats would agree to roughly $1 trillion in cuts and Congress would in turn raise the debt ceiling by about $1 trillion. In the second, negotiations would continue on “reforming” the tax code and entitlements, seeking trillions more in savings.
The key, however, is Boehner’s demand that Congress hold two separate votes on raising the debt ceiling — one this week and another early next year. Democrats are eager to avoid forcing the nation to go through all of this twice, and late yesterday, told the Speaker this was unacceptable, calling it a “non-starter.” (There’s a possibility Boehner won’t care whether Dems like it or not.)
And then there’s the other track, unveiled yesterday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who, up until now, has maintained a relatively low profile in this process.
Reid said he would turn instead to an entirely new approach “that meets Republicans’ two major criteria,” which are spending cuts designed to meet or exceed the amount of the debt-limit increase and no new taxes. Under Boehner’s rules, Reid said, the $2.7 trillion debt-reduction package he plans to unveil Monday should buy the Treasury sufficient borrowing authority to pay the nation’s bills through the end of next year.
“We hope Speaker Boehner will abandon his ‘my way or the highway’ approach, and join us in forging a bipartisan compromise along these lines,” Reid said.
Reid offered no further details about the plan. A Senate Democratic leadership aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not been publicly released, said the package would include cuts of up to $1.2 trillion over the next decade to government agencies, including the Pentagon. Democrats had previously offered to accept those savings, as well as about $200 billion in cuts to non-health direct-payment programs, such as farm subsidies.
By all accounts, at least $1 trillion of Reid’s debt-reduction plan relies on ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Entitlements would reportedly be excluded altogether.
As we talked about briefly yesterday, Republicans tend to believe that spending cuts only count as real cuts if they force working people or seniors to suffer in some meaningful way, so it’s possible, if not likely, GOP officials will reject this as inadequate.
But the fact remains that Reid appears to meet every Republican demand on the broader ransom note. Debt reduction totaling more than $2 trillion? Check. No new revenue? Check. We’re again left to wonder whether Republicans are capable of taking “yes” for an answer.
Last night, GOP leaders offered muted reactions to Reid’s plan, which I suppose is preferable to reflexive opposition. Likewise, the White House didn’t have much to say about Reid’s approach, probably because the West Wing knows that whatever President Obama likes, Republican won’t pass. Yes, the politics of spite is that strong.
The only bright line the White House appears to be drawing is procedural: there must be one vote that extends the debt limit through the end of next year, not two votes that would tell the world that default is on the table in 2012. “You see how hard this is right now,” one administration official said last night. “Can you imagine going through this again in six months?”
The question then becomes whether House Republicans push their (and our) luck, pursue their two-vote approach despite Democratic opposition, and count on Dems to back down, or whether Reid’s exceedingly generous offer to the GOP becomes the basis for a way out of the mess Republicans have created.
In case this isn’t already obvious, there is no more time for another round of lengthy negotiations. Indeed, given Senate procedure, the process on approving a final agreement should have started over the weekend.
We can expect a flurry of activity today, and if U.S. financial markets start to tank, lawmakers will have an added incentive to wrap things up.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/with_eight_days_to_go031069.php
Living Color in Naperville
What did living in a white conservative suburb teach a progressive African woman about race in America?
By Stephanie Shonekan
Friends vigorously advised me against buying a house in Naperville, Ill. They could not understand why I, an enlightened, progressive African woman, would consider taking my family to live in a white conservative Republican suburb. After all, the Hyde Park and Bronzeville neighborhoods of Chicago, or the liberal, integrated suburbs of Evanston and Oak Park were places where we would “fit in.”
As a black studies scholar who has lived in the United States for 15 years, I am not naive about race in America. My husband and I joke that if we had been scared of white folks, we would not have moved to the United States. But our more serious response was that excellent public schools should not be out of our reach because we are black.
Six years later, we have never regretted our move. We found great neighbors and formed lifelong friendships with people whom I would never have known in my other walks of life. And the greatest lesson learned has come from the reflections on race inspired by the very acute experience of being a black person in a privileged white neighborhood.
The life of a minority is full of oppressive potholes that “majority folks” never have to think of. We constantly pull out our race lenses to study each daily encounter in this white world, to see if there is more than meets the naked eye, to see if our perceptions of race and racism are legitimate. Living in a predominantly white neighborhood, this impulse is magnified. I’ve had lots of conversations with white friends who talk about “post-racial America” and the incredible fact that the U.S. president is a black man. My response: You cannot assume to know whether racism exists if you are not a racial minority yourself.
I’ve found an analogy to explain my position: I enjoy watching soccer. When grown men fall to the ground and roll around because they’ve been kicked in the groin, I feel like telling them to suck it up and keep playing. Yet all the men in my life have sworn that such an occurrence is horribly painful. I will never know what being kicked in the groin feels like because I’m not a man. I just accept and respect their perspective because they know how it feels. In the same way, a white person will never really know what the perceptions of race are from my end of the color spectrum.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/11475/living_color_in_naperville/
A well articulated article; thanks.
Coburn Bemoans FAA Shutdown, Doesn’t Mention House GOP’s Anti-Union Demands
By Pat Garofalo on Jul 24, 2011 at 1:00 pm
As of midnight yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration shut down due to Congress’ failure to reauthorize it. (Critical functions such as air traffic control will continue.) The shutdown means that up to 4,000 federal employees will be furloughed, around $2.5 billion worth of airport construction will cease, and around $200 million a week in ticket taxes will go uncollected.
Sen. Tom Coburn bemoaned the FAA shutdown on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning, saying that the shutdown occurred because of Washington’s inability to cut government spending to rural airports:
You mentioned the FAA program with [White House Chief of Staff Bill] Daley. You know what’s holding up the FAA program? Is essential air services where the American people are paying a thousand dollar a ticket subsidy to people that are riding from airports with six passengers on a plane, when they could drive an hour and a half to get an airplane and we wouldn’t be paying the thousand dollars. So continued waste and duplication in the federal government, and they won’t approve the FAA because they continue to want to subsidize irresponsible and wasteful behavior.
But Coburn left out a key part of the story. House Republicans, in their zeal to undercut workers’ rights wherever possible, are insisting on the inclusion of an anti-union provision in the FAA bill. The provision would make it harder for workers at airlines and railway companies to unionize by counting voters who don’t vote in union elections as having voted against the union (as if non-voters in a political election were counted as voting for one party or the other).
The cuts in subsidies to rural airports that Coburn mentioned were only added to the bill by House Transportation Committee John Mica (R-FL) in retaliation for Democrats in the Senate not bowing to the GOP’s anti-union demands. Mica admitted as much, calling the cuts “just a tool to try to motivate some action.” The real issue is that the GOP wants to legislatively strip workers of their rights, and are willing to shut down the FAA in order to do it.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/24/277484/coburn-faa-anti-union/
Political AnimalBlog
July 25, 2011 8:35 AM
Cantor slams Obama for agreeing with Cantor
By Steve Benen
When it comes the Republicans’ debt-ceiling crisis, President Obama has been eager, arguably too eager, to compromise with GOP leaders. The White House has, however, been entirely consistent on one key request: whatever the final deal looks like, it has to raise the debt ceiling through the end of next year. Everything else is on the table.
The latest plan from House Republicans, however, ignores this one demand. House Speaker John Boehner wants one debt-ceiling vote this week, and then wants the country to go through all of this again early next year. President Obama, not surprisingly, has said this just won’t do.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is outraged.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor indicated in his remarks during the conference call that Republicans don’t want to give President Barack Obama a debt-ceiling deal that lasts past the 2012 elections. Mr. Cantor called the president’s insistence on a deal that carries through the election purely political and indefensible.
What’s interesting about this is that Cantor has long believed the exact opposite. Judd Legum noted that as recently as last month, the oft-confused Majority Leader insisted there should be just one vote on the debt ceiling in this Congress. He dismissed those who argued otherwise as misguided.
To review, when Cantor wants one vote, it’s sensible. When Obama wants the exact the same thing, it’s political and indefensible.”
Indeed, as it turns out, it’s not just Cantor. The lynchpin of Boehner’s new plan — one vote now, one vote early next year — is an idea several GOP leaders in both chambers have already said they oppose, at least until Boehner switched gears. Did all of these Republicans take an “indefensible” position, or does this only apply to Democrats?
This is pretty straightforward. Forcing two votes is bad for the economy, it’s bad for Congress as an institution, it’s bad for lawmakers, and it’s even bad for public sanity. Worse, it’s totally unnecessary.
So, here’s the question for Republicans: why was forcing the country to go through this twice an awful idea in June, but a great idea that Obama has to accept in July?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/cantor_slams_obama_for_agreein031070.php
Obama and the other deficit
By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: July 24
Hours before the negotiations on the debt limit between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner collapsed, political reporters received a missive from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign that served as a reminder of how irrelevant this kerfuffle might feel next year.
The headline read, “Romney for President Launches New Web Video: Obama Isn’t Working: Where are the Jobs?”
The video spoke to the difficulties that recent college graduates are having finding work in a brutal job market. This bit of campaign propaganda went straight at the core of Obama’s political base — young Americans who volunteered for him by the tens of thousands in 2008 and powered him to victory in state after state. If joblessness disillusions enough of them, the president will be in trouble.
Romney’s exercise was a passing bit of politics unlikely to make many waves in an environment obsessed with debt and fears of default. But it was hugely instructive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-and-the-other-deficit/2011/07/22/gIQAz46MXI_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Hispanic civil rights group, World Series champs on Obama’s Monday calendar
By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, July 25, 2:11 AM
WASHINGTON — Immigration issues are expected to be the top of the agenda when President Barack Obama addresses a major Hispanic civil rights organization on Monday.
The National Council of La Raza is holding its annual conference in Washington. The group’s leader, Janet Murgia, says Hispanics want to hear from Obama on a range of issues on which he has yet to take action. Obama promised in his 2008 campaign to tackle immigration reform, and some in the Latino community have criticized him for failing to do so. He’s also drawn criticism for a record number of deportations last year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hispanic-civil-rights-group-world-series-champs-on-obamas-monday-calendar/2011/07/25/gIQAzJUyXI_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Inspiration for today…
The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
Psalm 9:9
Mornin’, SG2; it’s good to see you back!
Join me? http://community.cbs47.tv/blogs/files/5005/4324331/coffee-cup-01.jpg
Morning, Ametia! Glad to be back. The devil is a liar! And I’d be delighted to have a cup of coffee. Thank you kindly! :)