Alvin Slaughter is an American gospel musician, worship leader, singer-songwriter.
Slaughter is based out of New York City, where he was a member of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir until the early 1990s,[1] when he was signed by Integrity Music and began his solo career.[2] He has been nominated for several Dove Awards and performed on the TBN television network. He is also the father of Christian rapper, Sean Slaughter.
Democratic view: We can’t just sit idly by
By Bill Burton
Republicans are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to advance a right-wing agenda, President Obama is under attack even as he tries to keep our nation out of default, and Republican presidential candidates are in a race to the bottom to be the champion of the most radical ideology. Now is not the time for Democrats to sit idly by as a conservative ideology sweeps across our airwaves.
Supreme Court decisions, including Citizens United, now allow individuals to inject unlimited sums into the political system, and Republicans have blocked every Democratic effort to reform campaign finance. To be clear, we didn’t support the Citizens United ruling; we do support campaign-finance reform. But in the face of an unprecedented onslaught of untold millions in right-wing conservative money, we’re fighting back.
Do we want the kind of government former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney wants? One that would — in the words of The Wall Street Journal— “essentially end Medicare” to give tax breaks to oil companies and Romney’s other rich supporters? Do we share Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s priorities? He thinks Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.” Or do we want Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s America, where — as her husband put it — it is acceptable to call gays “barbarians” who need to be “disciplined”?
GOP political strategist Karl Rove, the wealthy conservative Koch brothers and others have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to elect one of these candidates — and allies of all three have set up outside groups that are already raising millions.
We started Priorities USA Action and Priorities USA because we believe deeply in progressive values and the things that make this country great — and we are going to play by the rules we have, not just the rules we want, in order to protect them.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2011-08-21-campaign-finance-priorities-usa_n.htm
Come on with Mr.Burton!
whaddya know…
they finally turned off the Prison Docs on MSNBC for Libyan coverage.
LOL The president’s gravitas on foreign affairs cannot be denied. Lock that up, MSNBC.
John Baer: Maybe Hershey foreign workers are all-day suckers
August 20, 2011
Two Mongolian J-1 students protest at a Hershey Co. warehouse operated by Exel Wednesday, August, 17, 2011 in Palmyra, Pa. About 150 people picketed Wednesday outside a distribution center at a protest organized by the National Guestworker Alliance. Students who participated say their program was pitched as a way to see America. (AP Photo/The Patriot-News, John C. Whitehead)
IN HERSHEY, the American hometown of chocolate, the tops of streetlights look like Hershey Kisses. But there’s more than sweetness and light there these days.
The town, its company and its long-held image of All-American goodness are taking hits in a controversy involving hundreds of foreign-exchange students.
The students, on work, travel and cultural visas from China, Ghana and Eastern Europe, say Hershey gave them not culture but back-aching, production-line work on round-the-clock shifts at a candy-packaging warehouse.
They get about $8 an hour, minus charges for housing.
There are multiple ironies here.
Hershey’s founder, Milton Hershey, built the town, chocolate factory, park and more, and left his fortune to his school for underprivileged kids. He’s recognized among America’s great philanthropists
The kids there now protest mistreatment and say their initial complaints drew threats of deportation. The State Department is investigating and a team of academic labor lawyers showed up yesterday to talk with students. Among the lawyers, according to the Harrisburg Patriot-News, is Sarah Paoletti, director of Penn’s Transnational Legal Clinic.
Another irony? Hershey laid off 700 full-time workers over the past four years and plans to lay off another 500 next year. One might wonder if cheap-labor kids from other countries were always part of the plan.
Meanwhile, Hershey reports a profit for the quarter just ended of $130 million, up from $46 million a year ago. And sales jumped 7.5 percent to $1.3 billion.
The company is distancing itself from the student flap on grounds that vendors and other temporary-hiring companies made all the arrangements. One such company now says it won’t use exchange students again, and all of the companies involved say they’ll offer the students a free trip to U.S. landmarks.
Problem is that all news coverage includes images of Hershey products. And the coverage has been less that sweet for Hershey.
An editorial in yesterday’s New York Times – “Not the America They Expected” – says the students’ “cultural experience” in Hershey is the sort of thing that “should shame us all.”
http://articles.philly.com/2011-08-20/news/29909433_1_milton-hershey-exchange-students-hershey-kisses
August 21, 2011 10:30 AM
Frank Luntz: Chris Christie Is a ‘Blue-Collar Republican’
By David
Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Sunday that there was “no room” in the Republican presidential race for Sarah Palin, but there was space for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
“Karl Rove has said that he thinks Sarah Palin is going to run,” ABC’s Jake Tapper told Luntz. “Do you think Sarah Palin is going to run?”
“I don’t think she can,” Luntz replied. “Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin operate in the exact same space. They have similar personalities. They attract similar voters. There’s no space for her right now. There’s a space for Chris Christie, if he decided to do it, or for Paul Ryan. But I don’t see it for Sarah Palin.”
“Chris Christie has the advantage he’s basically a blue-collar Republican. He says what he means, he’s in your face and Republicans love that. They see what he’s doing in New Jersey and they want to see that happen in Washington. And Paul Ryan’s case, they regard him as one of the smartest candidates, the intellectual capacity, and he’s got a plan.”
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/frank-luntz-chris-christie-blue-collar-repub
August 21, 2011 11:00 AM
Kristol and Hayes Agree it Would be Good for GOP Presidential Candidates to Run on ‘Entitlement Reform’
By Heather
Another Sunday, another week where Bloody Bill Kristol proves himself to be wrong about everything. After some discussion on whether President Obama is going to have trouble being reelected and The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard pointing out that he might unless he ends up being fortunate enough to run against someone who voted for Paul Ryan’s budget plan, Bret Baier asks Kristol if the GOP would make make “reforming” “entitlements” into an asset. Naturally Kristol thinks that would be a winning issue for them.
Naturally he and Stephen Hayes refuse to admit that privatizing Medicare would be putting an end to the program as we know it and no one on the Fox News Sunday panel bothered to point out that Social Security is not responsible for any of the problems we have now with our deficit.
Jon Perr has been writing a lot about what was in Paul Ryan’s budget for some time now and lays out very plainly why Hayes is not telling the truth on what his plan would do to Medicare and Social Security in one of the earlier posts he wrote on it here — GOP Budget Proposes to Ration Medicare, Privatize Social Security.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/kristol-and-hayes-agree-it-would-be-good-g
August 21, 2011 12:30 PM
Harold Ford Jr: Wall Street and Main Street Are the Same
By Heather
I’m not sure what world Harold Ford Jr. (D-Wall Street) is living in, but apparently it’s not one based on reality after listening to him on this Sunday’s Meet the Press. When asked about the President’s upcoming jobs proposal after he returns from vacation, Ford rattled off enough Republican talking points to make one’s head spin. Apparently Ford thinks it’s perfectly acceptable for corporations to continue to be rewarded for their offshore tax havens after hearing this statement:
FORD: And there’s no doubt, I think a repatriation tax, lowering this tax so many can come back in the country, can go to the federal government, the tax dollars, and a lot of that money people worry it will be spent on dividends or it’ll be spent on stock buyback. Who cares? If the money comes back to the U.S., and–U.S. investments benefit, the economy benefits because the stock market goes up.
Yeah, who cares if they just put the money back into their stock portfolios instead of hiring American workers. Maybe someone can ask Ford to read Matt Taibbi’s piece at Rolling Stone — that he discussed with Keith Olbermann earlier this month — on why it’s wrong to reward this behavior, because no on the Meet the Press panel bothered.
Ford followed up by saying that “Wall Street and Main Street are the same.” I hate to break it to him but I think the huge number of unemployed or just average citizens out there who aren’t raking in billions a year after being bailed out by the taxpayers with none of them going to jail for wrecking our economy would disagree with him.
Full transcript below the fold.
GUTHRIE: And what about this jobs plan. A cartoonist, Bill Bramhall, in the Daily News, put a fine point on it. “What’s the plan?” someone asks. Obama says, “Tell you when I get back from vacation.”
I mean, Harold, was that somewhat ham-handed for the White House to announce “Oh, we’ve got a jobs plan, and we’ll tell you in a few weeks” when people are suffering now?
FORD: I would have to think if you are–we’re fortunate around this table to be dutifully employed, some people with more than one job. The reality is, if you have a jobs plan, put it out. The same as I would say for Michele Bachmann.If she has a plan to get gas prices down to $2, she ought to give it to President Obama and let him implement it now so Americans can be spared the agony. Two, I hope the president does what E.J. said. I hope he’s bold. E.J. and I may define bold differently, but he’s got to come out, I think, with a plan to create certainty around regulations.
I would all–I’d ask and encourage a moratorium on new regulations even with some parts of the healthcare bill because, if you listen to big business people in the country, they’re concerned about their costs going forward. You look at industries that are growing, the oil and gas industry, how do you get people back to work in industries where they’re ready to hire?
There are things that you can do right away. And there’s no doubt, I think a repatriation tax, lowering this tax so many can come back in the country, can go to the federal government, the tax dollars, and a lot of that money people worry it will be spent on dividends or it’ll be spent on stock buyback. Who cares? If the money comes back to the U.S., and–U.S. investments benefit, the economy benefits because the stock market goes up.
GUTHRIE: Real quick, Maria.
BARTIROMO: That’s the issue. I mean, the president needs a short-term and a long-term plan. On the short-term, a plan that the markets can believe. The markets are built on confidence. People need to have confidence that we actually see a plan that will encourage businesses to create jobs. Right now all we’re ever hearing about is, “Oh, taxes will go higher, the millionaires, the billionaires. Corporations should carry the brunt.” That’s why they’re sitting on–the corporate sector is the strongest that we’ve seen in a long time. They’ve got $2 1/2 trillion in cash. But they’re not putting the money to work because they’re anticipating costs going higher later. And on the point on regulation, Dodd-Frank is the law of the land. So why are the rules being written now? Businesses do not know what they’re business is going to look like in six months, so they’re not going to add heads to the payroll.
FORD: They need to be stopping so critical of Wall Street as well. I mean, Wall Street and Main Street are the same.
BARTIROMO: Exactly.
FORD: When Wall Street does well…
DIONNE: Can I speak for Main Street, please?
MS. GUTHRIE: Yes.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/harold-ford-jr-wall-street-and-main-street
Harold Ford & Maria Bartiromo are hacks. Ford needs his ass whupped for spewing that corporatist bullshit. Follow the nomey with this loser. Maria B’s a Wall stree whore too.
Posted on 08/18/2011 at 7:12 pm by Bob Cesca
Rick Perry is a Socialist in a Secessionist Costume
Texas governor Rick Perry will win the Republican presidential nomination. I could be very wrong about this, but the modern history of Republican presidential politics vindicates the prediction.
Republican primary voters, along with the marketing-obsessed power elite driving the clown car, have historically flocked to candidates at every level who are just like Perry. Not that Perry invented the paradigm, but he fits precisely into the well-crafted paper doll persona devised sometime around the era of Reagan’s ascension when wonky button-down conservatives began their slow extinction in favor of a new breed of crazy-eyed ideological poseurs and performers.
Republicans like dress-’em-up candidates. They like uninformed, twangy voiced, squinty, Steve Austin types who have no apprehensions about creepily dressing up in garish cowboy or fighter jock regalia. They’re the political version of Renaissance Fair performers and Civil War re-enactors — only, Republicans are more effective at the ruse because voters are actually convinced the costumes are genuine. (With sincere apologies to Ren Fair enthusiasts and re-enactors.)
But in the case of Rick Perry, his shit-kicking Texas gomer uniform is overshadowed by the fact that he’s disguising himself as a governor who hates the stimulus and government interference in state affairs, and with such vitriol that he twice endorsed secession as a means of escape.
Despite threatening secession — a move that previously claimed the lives of 600,000 combatants and the taking up of arms against the United States by its own citizens in defense of slavery — Rick Perry actually accepted billions in federal stimulus dollars for Texas. Not only does this serve to indict Perry’s fakery, but it’s also a major gateway into Republican hypocrisy. Herein lies the central attack against the Rick Perry candidacy. All of the red baiting demagoguery against the “socialists” on the left, the Republicans and their newest celebrity, Rick Perry, were among the first in line for “big government handouts.”
From the beginning, Rick Perry blasted the president’s stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
“Voting for the TARP in my opinion is even worse than voting for the stimulus; and they’re both very bad,” Perry said in February, 2009 on the Mike Gallagher radio program.
The first secession remark came in March 2009, a month after the signing of the stimulus into law, when Perry said, “When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.” Of course, the law said Texas could break into five separate states — not secede from the Union, as Perry claimed.
In April of 2009, Perry instructed “fellow patriots” to rally against the “runaway spending” in the stimulus while attending tax day tea party events. “We will not stand for our pockets being picked, our children’s future being mortgaged, our rights being taken away,” the governor said.
During a speech at one of those tax day tea party rallies, Perry pitched the idea of secession again, “There’s a lot of different scenarios. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.” The crowd erupted, chanting, “Secede! Secede!”
Perry’s 2010 book also eviscerated the stimulus, “We are fed up with bailout after bailout and stimulus plan after stimulus plan, each one of which tosses principle out the window along with taxpayer money.”
Perry’s current presidential campaign website blasts the stimulus by name: “Rick Perry believes that rising deficits, record debt and failed stimulus spending have jeopardized the future of our country, and he will take his proven budget-cutting record to Washington.”
Several days ago at a campaign rally in South Carolina, where the Perry candidacy could win its first serious primary, Perry said, “Washington’s insatiable desire to spend our children’s inheritance on failed ‘stimulus’ plans and other misguided economic theories have given us record debt and left us with far too many unemployed.”
Despite all of these remarks (and others that I don’t have room for here), Rick Perry is responsible for Texas being the second biggest state recipient of ARRA stimulus dollars — ostensibly “redistributed” from tax payers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and the president’s home state of Hawaii.
In 2010, Perry was confronting a state budget deficit of $6.6 billion. A constitutional amendment mandated that Perry balance the budget somehow, but instead of using a “rainy day” fund established with state money, Perry decided to tap a different source to fill the void. The stimulus. According to Politifact, Perry and the Republican-controlled Texas legislature requested, received and used $6.4 billion in stimulus money to help balance the budget. 97 percent of the budget shortfall was filled with stimulus money.
There’s more.
In addition to the $6.4 billion to balance Rick Perry’s budget deficits, Texas also used $5.7 billion in stimulus money in 2010 for “programs such as highway and bridge construction, child care development programs and weatherization assistance.”
That’s a total of $12,100,000,000 in total stimulus money for Rick Perry’s Texas in one year alone. Nearly seven percent of the total Texas budget in 2010 was stimulus money. That’s a lot of “principle” being “tossed out the window.” If Perry had, in fact, seceded, I wonder where that money would have come from. It stands to reason that a military confrontation with the United States would have created massive, unprecedented deficits in Texas.
As of the end of June this year, Texas asked for and accepted $17.4 billion in stimulus money with Rick Perry presiding over the state.
This is should be the argument against Rick Perry and the Republicans. They’re closeted Keynesians. Using their own vernacular, they’re socialists, and they’re lying to everyone about their hypocritical true nature almost every time they fire-eat in public against the scary “misguided” generational theft being perpetrated by the White House and the Democrats. On a personal level, Rick Perry has even accepted more than $80,000 in federal farm subsidies while positioning himself as the viable tea party candidate running to be chief executive of a nation from which he wanted to secede because of “runaway spending.” The contradictions are staggering.
Steve Benen wrote a brilliant blog post recently outlining how the administration can pass more stimulus funds as a means of creating jobs and boosting the recovery. Simply put: pass every spending request being proposed by Republicans. All of it. And there are literally hundreds of requests. Keynesian economics as endorsed by the Republican Party. Then, as they’ve done over and over again, let them continue to pose for photo ops in their phony-baloney cowboy costumes while holding gigantic stimulus checks.
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/08/new-huffington-post-column-5.html
Saif al-Islam, Moammar Gadhafi’s son, has been captured, according to the head of the Rebel National Transitional Council in an interview with Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, a Libyan government spokesman warned of humanitarian disaster and a “massacre” in Tripoli as rebel forces advanced into the capital Sunday, but said forces loyal to longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi were holding off the attacks.
Musa Ibrahim said Gadhafi’s forces were being reinforced by volunteers coming into Tripoli and “can hold for much longer.” But he acknowledged that rebel forces were pushing into the seaside capital, and told CNN that “a massacre will be committed in Tripoli if one side wins.”
He denied reports that Gadhafi’s bodyguards had surrendered, but repeated calls for a halt to NATO airstrikes and urged peace talks.
I’ve been following this on Al-J English and the Sofia News Agency site novinite.com. With cover from NATO airstrikes, rebels are attacking Tripoli by land and sea in an operation called “Mermaid Dawn” (probably sounds more fierce in their native language). Gaddafi hasn’t been heard from since this afternoon and could be gone soon, but what might disappear even faster are quotes from the GOP critical of the President’s Libya strategy. Such comments could prove embarrassing to pundits and destructive to fledgling campaigns, if the President’s strategy of tipping the scales with air power while holding back from full scale warfare with ground troops, wins out. I’m sure the RNC’s minions are already hard at work scrubbing Google and re-writing Wikipedia. Before that happens, I decided to post a few comments here with 3chics where I know they’ll be protected. :)
1) McCain criticizes the President for “making a mess” of Libya [Atlantic Sentinel, June 17] then tells the rest of GOP not to tie his hands.
2) Newt Gingrich called for a no-fly-zone and then criticized the President for helping establish one. His comment ,”You have a spectator in chief, not a commander in chief.” [Huff Post, March 26] Typical armchair chickenhawk.
3) Mitt Romney said “(Obama) has been tentative, indecisive, timid and nuanced.” [CNN, March 26] This, from the king of flip-flop? And of course, he offered no insight into what he would have done as President if faced with the same situation.
Face it GOP, while you and the corporate media were busy chasing down 50 year old birth certificates, the President was busy leading the free world. Weak on foreign policy? Let’s review: Nuclear Arms Treaty, Nobel Peace Prize, Osama Bin Laden dead, Gaddafi gone (soon). Not bad for a community organizer from Hawaii.
LOL The GOP=PARTY OF NO-THING
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Jobs schmobs
by digby
Well here’s a shock. We know that after a year of shrieking about deficits, if Democrats propose anything that might actually create jobs the Republicans will have a hissy fit They don’t care about the suffering of the people and they only believe in Keynesian economics to the extent they can use it to keep anyone from raising taxes on the filthy rich.
And it turns out that even if President Obama proposes conservative programs they won’t be the right kind of conservative:
Following a few dismal weeks on Wall Street and talk of a double-dip recession, President Obama will soon announce a new jobs plan that is expected to include an extension of payroll tax cuts, new revenue for transportation projects and an extension of emergency unemployment benefits for the 9.1 percent of Americans who still can’t find a job. Obama’s campaign advisor, David Axelrod, said on Sunday that there’s nothing in the proposal “that reasonable people shouldn’t be able to agree on” — but many fired-up Republicans are already preparing to reject whatever the President puts on the table.
“This is the seventh or eighth or ninth time we’ve heard the president talk about producing a plan,” Republican strategist Karl Rove said on Fox News Sunday. “And each time that he’s gotten around to tossing an idea out on the table, it has included only more spending, more deficit, more debt and the American people are fed up with it.”
If people still think the Republicans aren’t making the case that deficit reduction will result in more jobs, they need to listen a little bit more carefully.
The GOP is also coming out against extending the payroll tax cuts. Yes, I know that takes some special chutzpah considering that they have made the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy a sacred cause. But giving tax breaks to workers will cost
“It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) told the AP, “but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.”
Rep. David Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said he also opposed the 12-month tax cut because it would cost the government about $120 billion next year if it were renewed.
I’d laugh if I I didn’t think they will get away with it. After all, nobody’s making a coherent case for anything so why should they even try to make sense? Axelrod called them hypocrites, which I’m sure was very painful for them to hear. But in the end, we’re left with an argument between Democrats as to which tax cuts are preferable at the same time they are both saying the looming deficit is the greatest threat the world has ever known. And Democrats are complicating this even more by insisting that we also must “invest” for the future. I think they’ll have to forgive the average person for not understand what the hell they are all going on about.
And as for the inevitable critics who say that i’m being cruel and unfeeling by saying that Republicans don’t care about the pain of the average person, get a load of this:
Republicans are also pushing back on Obama’s plan to extend emergency unemployment benefits. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.) said on Sunday that, while he would “consider” supporting the payroll tax cuts, he is less enthusiastic about unemployment insurance.
“I don’t think that creates jobs,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It lessens the pain. The problem is we need to have things that create jobs, not just promote benefits for people that are not working.”
The last thing you’d want to do is “lessen the pain” of the American people. Makes ’em weak. Maybe we could institute a prospective tax for these lazy malcontents, in which we bill them later for taxes they should have been paying when they were unemployed. It’s the least they can do to repay the largesse bestowed upon them by the job producers who are being asked to pay taxes even though they feel oh so uncertain about the future.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/jobs-schmobs.html
Sloane Stephens
Will one day soon challenge Serena for supremacy
he is not ready to replace Venus and Serena yet,but Sloane Stephens may someday end up as the top American player.
The 18 year old dispatched 28 year old and no. 93 Eleni Daniilidov in the first round of the qualifiers at the New Haven Open.
Stephens is on a run. She had a huge straight set win 2 weeks ago at the Mercury Insurance Open in Carlsbad over no. 20 Julia Goerges.Stephens is ranked 110.
Sloane decided to not attend college and concentrate on professional tennis. She was considering Stanford and USC.
She has great athletic genes. her aunt,Kalen Wright was a standout basketball player at USC with Cheryl Miller from 1984-88.
Stephens really has her eyes set on the upcoming US Open. She was recently awarded a wildcard into the main draw by the USTA.
Last year Stephens won the French,Wimbledon and US Open junior doubles.
She has a top baseline game,but as the match against Daniilidov proved,she is not afraid to come to net to finish off a point. That skill was undoubtedly honed in her doubles competition.
Look for Stephens to crack the top 100 before the year is over.
http://blackathlete.net/artman2/publish/Tennis_35/Sloane_Stephens.shtml
Good luck, Sloane Stephens; she’s a beauty.I’m sure you will excel in your own right and in your own time.
In Two Sentences Team Obama Shatters The Myth Of Rick Perry’s Texas Miracle
August 21, 2011
By Jason Easley
It took Robert Gibbs two sentences to destroy the myth of Rick Perry’s Texas Miracle today. On Meet The Press Gibbs pointed out that the larger employer in Texas is Ft. Hood, which is paid for by the federal government.
Here is the video from NBC News:
‘
Transcript:
Guthrie: The president said this week he’d cut Rick Perry some slack. Will you? Was it appropriate for this candidate to suggest the president doesn’t love his country?
Gibbs: Two things come to mind. Rick Perry is the governor who two years ago openly talked about whether Texas should leave the union. I think for Rick Perry to have at one point talked about secession from the union as early as 2005. I think it’s good he’s professed his love for his country. I think the American people are tired of the politics where if you or I don’t agree on something, I question your love of country and patriotism. That’s not going to put this country back to work. It’s not going to make this country stronger. It’s quite frankly not what our country was founded on. We ought to be able to have honest political debates in this country about political divisions and ways we see the country moving without questioning people’s patriotism and love for country.
(Clip of Bachmann claiming that the White House fears her most)
Guthrie: Robert is this the candidate the white house most fears?
Gibbs: Look, I think that Republicans are going to do battle in this. We saw it last week in Iowa where — where Michele Bachmann scored an important win in the Iowa straw poll, but I think the American people are going to get a chance quite frankly to kick the tires a little bit and look under the hood. I think when it comes to somebody like Governor Rick Perry they’re going to wonder why — why a place like Texas has one of the worst education systems. They’re going to wonder why a guy who doesn’t like the government, the largest employer in Texas is Ft. Hood and the army base. $25 billion from Economic Recovery Act went to Texas and helped Rick Perry balance his budget. They’re going to wonder why, quite frankly, they’re 47th in wages just like they’re going to wonder why Mitt Romney, when he was governor of Massachusetts, was 47th in job creation.
Gibbs shredded the myth of Rick Perry’s Texas Miracle in two sentences. Rick Perry’s miracle would have never been possible without federal money. Perry is going to have a hard time in an election justifying his miracle when the largest employer in the state is the federal government, and he used federal money to balance the state’s budget. The mention of secession was a revival of the same strategy that LBJ used against Barry Goldwater in 1964. LBJ’s strategy was to contest the election on the basis of the two candidates’ personalities
http://www.politicususa.com/en/obama-perry-texas-miracle
Political Animal
Blog
August 21, 2011 9:40 AM ‘The ultimate political ad hominem’
By Steve Benen
A couple of weeks ago, in a speech that was probably bigger than was appreciated at the time, President Obama delivered a speech in Michigan that presented a new theme to his economic message: there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the nation, its institutions, or even the structure of its underperforming economy. What’s broken is American politics. The economy is a symptom of a larger disease — policymakers are fully capable of addressing this and other problems if our politics weren’t so badly broken.
As the president put it, “There are some in Congress right now who would rather see their opponents lose than see America win — and that has to stop.” Obama liked the line so much, he repeated it a few days later in his weekly address.
This appears to have outraged Charles Krauthammer.
Charging one’s opponents with bad faith is the ultimate political ad hominem. It obviates argument, fact, logic, history. Conservatives resist Obama’s social-democratic, avowedly transformational agenda not just on principle but on empirical grounds, as well — the economic and moral unraveling of Europe’s social-democratic experiment, on display today from Athens to the streets of London.
There’s a quite a bit wrong with this assessment, so let’s unpack it a bit.
First, to compare the White House’s agenda to “Europe’s social-democratic experiment” — or more to the point, comparing the administration to Greece and Britain — is just ridiculous, even for Krauthammer. It’s a lazy, reactionary argument with no basis reality. If anything, it’s backwards — has Krauthammer even heard of the European austerity agenda?
Second, it’s rather ironic that Krauthammer would complain bitterly about accusations of bad faith in the same column in which he accuses President Obama of acting in bad faith. For that matter, the far-right columnist may not have noticed, but this “ultimate political ad hominem” has been a standard Republican line against this president for years, with nary a complaint from Krauthammer.
But even putting all that aside, I’m hard pressed to imagine how any reasonable observer could question the veracity of the president’s claim. Is it really that hard for Krauthammer to believe that “some” congressional Republicans place a higher priority on undermining Obama than helping the country? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) hasn’t exactly been cagey on this point — asked about his party’s agenda, he’s argued, more than once, that his “top priority” isn’t job creation or economic growth, but rather, “denying President Obama a second term in office.” He’s all but conceded Obama’s point, on the record.
Jon Chait added in response to Krauthammer:
[T]he circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Republicans have decided they’d rather defeat Obama than agree to a compromise that might benefit him politically while advancing their agenda. The economic consensus overwhelmingly holds that looser money and fiscal stimulus are the appropriate policy response to the Great Recession. In 2001, when we had a Republican president and a much less dire economic emergency, Republicans demanded looser money and more stimulus. They have undergone an intellectual conversion at a time that makes very little sense given economic circumstances but a great deal of sense given the partisan circumstances.
This is the whole point of the “sabotage” question. Coming on the heels of the debt-ceiling standoff — Republicans have said their own plan included holding the economy “hostage” — it’s impossible to take Krauthammer’s incredulity seriously.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/the_ultimate_political_ad_homi031689.php
Political Animal
Blog
August 21, 2011 11:10 AM Businesses can’t afford to stay on the sidelines
By Steve Benen
When it comes to preventing a weak economy from sliding backwards even more, an editorial from the New York Times today summarizes the way forward: “more near-term spending to stimulate the economy, more revenue to help pay for it, and a balanced approach to the long-term deficit by reducing health care costs and strengthening the tax base.”
This isn’t exactly a secret plan. Given the larger economic circumstances, it’s the painfully obvious solution. Economists prefer this approach. The financial industry prefers this approach. The White House prefers this approach.
And as the NYT editorial noted, business leaders prefer it, too. Now would be an excellent time for them to say so.
When the federal government was on the brink of default and the economy hung in the balance, the nation’s business leaders had a chance to step forward and push for a long-term solution. They could have supported a grand bargain that cut spending and raised tax revenue. They could have warned House Republicans that it was far too risky to use the debt ceiling for political leverage.
Instead, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Financial Services Forum and other important players wrote a series of weak letters to the White House and Congress saying, in essence, “just don’t default.”
Business leaders had reason to worry. Unlike many Republican politicians who saw the standoff as political theater, or a chance to bring “big government” to its knees, they knew what default would mean for their bottom lines. But just avoiding that cataclysm is not enough. The economy is in profound trouble, and the political system is in desperate need of responsible voices promoting sound ideas for both growth and deficit reduction.
I can appreciate the alliance between Big Business and the Republican Party, and the corporate leaders’ expectation that the partnership will lead to looser regulations on everything from employee benefits to worker safety to pollution.
But that alliance is not unyielding. In 2009, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, hardly a Democratic ally, strongly endorsed President Obama’s Recovery Act. It’s not because the Chamber is led by radical socialists, hell bent on destroying American capitalism; it’s because the Chamber realized the stimulus would prevent a depression. This realization was strong enough to lead the group to ignore the near-universal opposition to the effort by the Republican Party.
The business lobby was right and the Democratic agenda stabilized the economy, produced economic growth, and started creating jobs. But as the private sector has probably noticed, the Recovery Act has run its course, and has public investments stall, so too does the national economy. This isn’t a coincidence. Government intervention has helped prop up the economy, and as public resources run dry, growth is faltering. To get back on track, we’ll need more demand, more capital injected into the system, and more investments.
Big Business knows this. If they say so, it increases the odds of the parties striking a deal — short-term investment for long-term debt reduction.
Corporate leaders may love their Republican allies, but do they love the GOP more than their own profits? Is the business community willing to gamble its earnings on the preferences of a radicalized party that nearly pushed the nation into voluntary default, even when private-sector leaders begged them not to play the game?
The NYT added, “The chamber, along with the Business Roundtable and others, has urged greater government spending on rebuilding roads, bridges and the power grid. The chamber joined with the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in supporting the creation of an infrastructure bank, one of the White House’s top priorities to help kick-start the economy. We hope they back it up with real lobbying in Republican offices.”
The recovery may depend on it.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/businesses_cant_afford_to_stay031690.php
Political Animal
Blog
August 21, 2011 12:10 PM ‘Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes’
By Steve Benen
This lede in Charles Babington’s Associated Press article today probably isn’t what congressional Republicans wanted to see. It is, however, accurate.
News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes.
Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?
Apparently not.
Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different “temporary” tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.
The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama. Unlike proposed changes in the income tax, this policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a “payroll tax” on practically every dime they earn.
The piece goes on to quote Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who said it’s more important to worry about the deficit than a popular tax-cut policy.
The politics of this, as a result, are rather bizarre. President Obama has made this tax cut one of his top priorities, stressing its importance to the middle class, while Republicans are increasingly vocal about their desire to, by their own reasoning, raise middle-class taxes.
This policy, by the way, has traditionally been a Republican idea. What’s more, GOP leaders have not emphasized tax breaks over deficit concerns in general, but they’ve specifically prioritized this tax break over deficit concerns for years.
That is, until President Obama agreed with them, at which point they decided to once again oppose their own proposal.
As Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently argued, “If they oppose even something so suited to their tastes ideologically, it shows that they’re just opposing anything that helps create jobs. It almost makes you wonder if they aren’t trying to slow down the economic recovery for political gain.”
The result is a political problem for the already chronically-unpopular Republican Party. They’re not only fighting, by their own reasoning, for a middle-class tax increase, they’ll be waging this fight while opposing job-creation measures.
If I had to guess, I’d say Republicans probably support an extension of the payroll tax cut, but just aren’t willing to say so. Why not? Because then they lose leverage — GOP officials know the White House wants this, and if they simply agree to pass the measure, they won’t get anything extra out of the deal. Hostage strategies have become an instinctual norm for Republicans.
But the more news articles tell the public, “Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes,” the more likely it is GOP officials will cave.
Update: Kevin Drum makes the case that the GOP may genuinely oppose the tax break, and either way, it’s not really a “hostage” strategy. It’s a fair point.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/congressional_republicans_want031691.php
August 21, 2011 8:00 AM
The candidate with nothing to lose
By Steve Benen
Facebook Twitter Digg Reddit StumbleUpon Delicious
When Jon Huntsman launched his Republican presidential campaign a few months ago, the former Utah governor and Obama administration ambassador emphasized his intention to run a positive campaign. Lamenting the fact that campaigns “naturally” go negative, Huntsman told reporters, “Somebody who is behind [has] the knee-jerk reaction that you’ve got to pull somebody down to catch up.”
He added, “[I]t’s going to take a bigger person basically to stay above that kind of pettiness.”
Ironically, three months later, Huntsman seems to be the only GOP candidate taking meaningful shots at his Republican rivals. We saw this last month, when Team Huntsman went after Mitt Romney’s “abysmal” record on job creation, and we see it again today with Huntsman’s interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper.
In a pre-recorded interview that will air this morning on “This Week,” Huntsman was asked, for example, about Rick Perry’s rejection of biological and climate science. Huntsman said:
I think there’s a serious problem. The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012. When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.
“The Republican Party has to remember that we’re drawing from traditions that go back as far as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, President Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush. And we’ve got a lot of traditions to draw upon. But I can’t remember a time in our history where we actually were willing to shun science and become party that was antithetical to science. I’m not sure that’s good for our future and it’s not a winning formula.”
Huntsman went on to slam the right-wing approach to the debt ceiling embraced by all of his rivals — he “wouldn’t necessarily trust any of my opponents right now” on this issue, he said — and when asked about Perry’s “treason” talk, Huntsman said, “Well, I don’t know if that’s pre-secession Texas or post-secession Texas.”
Ouch.
In the larger context, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if Jon Huntsman is trying to alienate the Republican Party’s far-right base, hoping there are just enough liberal Republicans around — presumably hiding well — to keep him competitive.
By all indications, the strategy won’t work — Huntsman and Republican primary voters just don’t have much in common anymore — but when the guy is running last in nearly every poll, what does he have to lose?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/the_candidate_with_nothing_to031687.php
Missing you, SG2, and continuing to lift you up in our prayers Love you…
The Obama Diary found this video from Hill Harper on POTUS
The Obama Diary found this video by Prof. Ogletree of Harvard on POTUS and FLOTUS
Sat Aug 20, 2011 at 11:43 PM PDT
The WSJ’s Latest Retirement Tips For The New Normal: Work ‘Til You Die+*
by bobswern
Here’s the latest spin on Main Street’s “new normal,” from the Wall Street Journal blog, earlier tonight:
For Many Seniors, There May Be No Retirement
Rachel Louise Ensign
WSJ.com
August 20, 2011
When Angela Gregor’s mother became ill and needed long-term care in the 1990s, Ms. Gregor tapped her individual retirement account for funds and stopped making contributions. Then came the tumultuous stock-market ups and downs of the past decade, dealing the IRA another blow.
To make ends meet, Ms. Gregor went back to work part time last September, as a data-entry clerk at a senior center near Chicago. The 67-year-old hopes to retire by age 70, but says she’ll have a hard time doing so if she can’t sell her home.
“Everything is more expensive. I cannot retire, I wish I could,” says Ms. Gregor. “Like most older people, my money is in my home. … I’m caught between a rock and a hard place.”
Many older people are finding themselves in a position they never expected to be in at retirement age: still working or in need of a job.
And the laundry list of reasons just keeps growing…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/21/1009089/-The-WSJ%E2%80%99s-Latest-Retirement-Tips-For-The-New-Normal:-Work-%E2%80%98Til-You-Die?via=siderec
Bobswren is a negative, rich, doofus who thrives on bad economic news and gets gleeful over predicting doom and gloom.
Republicans are on the Wrong Side of the African American Jobs Crisis
Thursday, 18 August 2011 05:55
By Dr. L. Toni Lewis, Chair of SEIU Healthcare –
This summer, millions of working families got a front-row seat to the dysfunctional leadership of Republicans in Congress who proved once again that they just don’t get it.
The national unemployment rate is 9.1%. For African Americans, the unemployment rate is hovering around 16 percent. Instead of creating solutions for the jobs crisis, Republicans are killing jobs and destroying the American Dream. Many African American families are experiencing the most dramatic blows in this economic depression. The unemployment rate is higher than any other group in the country. Incomes for African-American families plunged by more than 83 percent in the past eight years. And according to the Congressional Black Caucus, Republicans blocked more than 40 bills intended to create jobs that would help uplift African American communities. They didn’t stop there.
Republicans in Congress rewarded big corporations for shipping American jobs overseas but voted to cut Medicare and Medicaid to protect tax breaks for and billionaires and CEOs. Astonishingly, they continue to propose and pass more reckless policies and budget cuts that disproportionally impact people of color.
Thirty million Americans are still looking for work while Wall Street banks reap record profits and take home big bonuses—they’ve made over $100 billion since taxpayers bailed them out. The Republican leadership in Congress is doing nothing to help struggling families put food on the table, fill our gas tanks, save our homes from foreclosure and send our children to college.
Working families in this country are fed up with right-wing politicians coming up with new excuses to make budget cuts that kill jobs and put thousands of teachers and police officers in the unemployment line. We’re fed up with the tax giveaways to big corporations instead of investments in jobs that are the backbone of the American economy. We’re fed up with politicians constantly siding with Wall Street bankers and rich CEOs at the expense of working people.
It is clear: Republicans are on the wrong side of the jobs crisis and on the wrong side of the American Dream. As members of congress head back to their districts for August recess, working families, including African American, should hold them accountable for failing to create jobs.
http://www.blackvoicenews.com/commentary/more-commentary/46645-republicans-are-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-african-american-jobs-crisis.html
Problem is for some of us we have to pay a fee to see our Repugnant Reps. I’m looking at you Baby Quayle!
Unemployed Constituents Stage Sit-In At Paul Ryan’s Office, Ryan’s Staff Calls The Cops
By Marie Diamond on Aug 19, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Yesterday, seven unemployed constituents of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) staged a sit-in at his office in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to protest the congressman’s decision not to hold any free public town halls during the August recess. An additional 100 protesters picketed outside the office. Politico reported this week that Ryan, Chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee, will only speak to residents who are willing to pay $15 for access.
It’s customary for representatives to host free town halls open to the public so constituents can ask questions and weigh in on their elected officials’ votes. But Ryan and other conservative congressman who have been facing angry crowds recently have decided to limit their availability to only those willing to open their wallets. This didn’t sit well with many of Ryan’s constituents who are struggling just to get by and don’t think they should have to pay to get an audience with their congressman:
Ryan is currently vacationing with his family, but the seven individuals sitting in his office say they have all tried to contact Ryan, multiple times, and have received the same generic email response. Traditionally when members of Wisconsin’s Congressional Delegation break for the August recess they hold town hall meetings where they listen to concerns off constituents in their districts. Ryan, so far, has only scheduled one “public” appearance at the Whitenall Park Rotary September 6 banquet. Attendees will be required to pay a $15 fee to be one of the lucky 300 to meet with the Representative. I spoke with four of the Ryan Seven this afternoon and they all said they were planning to stay “as long as it takes.”
One of the protesters, Scott Page, says he’s been let go from two jobs in the past two years. One position was outsourced to Mexico, and for the second, he was required to train an individual in China to be his replacement. Page said he hoped Ryan would “have a heart” and “take time to listen to the unemployed in his backyard instead of only the business owners.” “I don’t have $15 to ask Rep. Ryan questions,” he added, “so I guess this is the only means I have to talk to him.” Several of the protesters have posted testimonial videos on the Wisconsin Jobs Now website. Unemployment in Ryan’s home state has been growing recently.
Instead of meeting with the protesters, Ryan’s staff called the police. The seven protesters occupying Ryan’s office left the building last night after negotiations with police to end the sit-in peacefully. The seven praised Ryan’s office staff for being “amazing” and “polite,” but had no warm words for Ryan.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/19/299791/unemployed-constituents-stage-sit-in-at-paul-ryans-office-to-protest-pay-for-access-town-halls/
Lovely! Charge your constituents fees to talk to you and if they can’t afford to pay, have them arrested. This is the world according to the Repugnants, folks. GOTV for Dems and throw these teapotty monsters out!
Former Obama aide rips Rove’s lecture on ‘good governance’
Posted on 08.21.11
By David Edwards
Former White House spokesman Bill Burton called out Karl Rove Sunday for lecturing about President Barack Obama’s economic record when former President George W. Bush squandered a record budget surplus.
“[Republicans] won the House and since that time they have done nothing to produce jobs and put nothing forward to partner with the president to create jobs and move this economy in the right direction,” Burton explained to Fox News’ Brett Baier.
“Karl, At the GOP debate in Iowa, I asked all the candidates the question, whether would accept this deal in which Democrats agreed to $10 in real spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases,” Baier told Rove. “And every single hand on the stage went up, saying they would walk away from that deal, opposing any tax increases… When Democrats complain about idealogical rigidity in the moderate republican party do they have a point? ”
“Bret, with all due respect, that was a lousy question for a debate,” Rove charged. “Let’s set the record straight. There is rigidity in the political system and it starts with the president of the United States… I love it. The Republicans passed a budget, the Democrats in the Senate haven’t. The Republicans have passed a slew of job creating measures, and the Democrats in the Senate haven’t. And the president now sits here and lectures us about how we need to take action. What is his action? He has yet to put pen to paper and issue a jobs plan or a deficit reduction plan in the last nine months. So, please don’t talk to me about ideological rigidity. It comes from the White House.”
“I appreciate that you have an opinion on this, Karl,” Burton shot back. “But as someone who was a leader in the White House that turned a record surplus into a deficit, that got us involved in a war that we never should have been in, and turned the floor of the New York stock exchange into a casino, I don’t think the American people are quite ready to hear a lecture from you on good governance.”
“What the president needs in Washington are partners who will work with him to make progress in this country, not just people like Eric Cantor and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, who would much rather see the economy do poorly so that they can score political points than see America succeed,” he added.
“Bill, with all due respect, do not question the motivations and integrity of the people on the other side,” Rove said.
“I don’t think all due respect means what you think it means,” Burton pointed out.
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/08/former-obama-aide-rips-roves-lecture-on-good-governance/
Perry criticizes government while Texas job growth benefits from it
By Michael A. Fletcher, Published: August 20
LONGVIEW, Tex. — Texas Gov. Rick Perry has leapfrogged to the top tier of Republican presidential candidates largely on the strength of one compelling fact: During more than a decade as governor, his state created more than 1 million jobs, while the nation as a whole lost 1.4 million jobs.
Perry says the “Texas miracle” rests on conservative pillars that he would bring to the White House: minimal regulation and government, low taxes and a determination to limit the reach of Uncle Sam.
What he does not say is that much of that job growth has come because of government, not in spite of it.
With a young and fast-growing population, a large and expanding military presence and an influx of federal stimulus money, the number of government jobs in Texas has grown at more than double the rate of private-sector employment during Perry’s tenure.
The disparity has grown sharper since the national recession hit. Between December 2007 and last June, private-sector employment in Texas declined by 0.6 percent while public-sector jobs increased by 6.4 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, government employees account for about one-sixth of the workforce in Texas.
The significant role of government in Texas’s relative prosperity stands in stark contrast to the “go-it-alone” image cultivated by Perry, who credits a lack of government interference for fostering a business-friendly environment in Texas.
“The fact is, government doesn’t create jobs, otherwise the last 21 / 2 years of stimulus would have worked,” Perry said this month in a speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Government can only create the environment that allows the private sector to create jobs. The single most important contributor to our jobs-friendly climate here in Texas is our low tax burden, because we know dollars do far more to create jobs and prosperity in the people’s hands than they do in the government’s.”
Perry has criticized Washington for “thumbing its nose” at the American people. In announcing his candidacy for president last weekend, Perry said he would “work every day to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.”
Mark Miner, a Perry spokesman, said the governor’s job-creation record speaks for itself. He also said the state received less per capita — about $1,000 per resident vs. more than $1,400 in New York and $1,200 in California — than most other states from the stimulus plan while still producing more jobs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/perry-criticizes-government-while-texas-job-growth-benefits-from-it/2011/08/18/gIQAPPZQSJ_story.html
Black College Student Says He Was Beaten For Talking To White Girl
A Black college student who suffered numerous injuries after an attack by 3 white men Sunday, says that he was targeted because he talked to a white girl.
Christopher Phillips, 19, says he was confronted by Thomas Randich, 19, at a late-night house party in suburban West Chicago, then attacked as he walked away from the argument.
“He was like, ‘Yeah, you’re talking to the wrong girl.’ I was like, I looked at him – I’m confused – I was like, ‘What do you mean I’m talking to the wrong girl?’” said Phillips in an interview with ABC.
VIDEO:
Phillips says he was punched from behind and hit the concrete floor with his face, then kicked and punched repeatedly. Phillips injuries included a fractured jaw, four missing teeth, and cuts and bruises on his body.
Randich, 19, his brother Jake, 18, and Michael Mungovan, 19, have all been charged with aggravated battery.
“He was talking to a white girl, and they didn’t like it. And they jumped on him,” said Phillips’s father, LaMonte Phillips.
http://newsone.com/nation/newsonestaff4/christopher-phillips-white-girl-racist-attack-video/
anyone seen Captain America?
if so, can you explain the ending to me?
I’ve never read the comics, so I don’t know the story.
Jon Huntsman Rips Rick Perry ‘Treason’ Talk By Citing Texas Gov’s Secession Talk
by Tommy Christopher | 11:07 am, August 21st, 2011
On Sunday morning, Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman continued his quest to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee on Opposite Day, swinging hard at frontrunner Rick Perry (R-TX) and the rest of the GOP field. In an interview with This Week fill-in Jake Tapper, Huntsman derided his fellow candidates’ lack of leadership, opposition to science, and even cracked wise about Perry’s history of secession talk.
Tapper followed up on Huntsman’s Twitter declaration, asking if he was serious when he said, “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy,” or was he just “being cheeky?”
Huntsman responded that he takes the problem very seriously, that becoming “the anti-science party” is a “huge problem.”
“I can’t remember a time in our history where we actually were willing to shun science and become a – a party that – that was antithetical to science,” Huntsman said.
Huntsman went on to criticize his Republican opponents over a “lack of leadership” in the debt ceiling debate, arguing that their willingness to allow a default would have been catastrophic. He also criticized President Obama, “who should have used the bully pulpit well ahead of time.”
His sharpest jab, though, was to Perry’s gut. When Tapper played him the clip of Rick Perry saying, of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, that “we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,” Huntsman quipped, “Well, I don’t know if that’s pre-secession Texas or post-secession Texas.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-huntsman-rips-rick-perry-treason-talk-by-citing-texas-govs-secession-talk/
Awhile ago, I was asking for suggestions about Black mystery writers. Someone on the boards told me about Eleanor Taylor Bland, and I’m on her 4th Marti McAllister book. thank you, I really love the character.
Thanks for the hookup. I’ll add this book to my winter reading list.
FYI: if you haven’t seen it, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and their home are the cover story for this month’s edition of Architectural Digest
Rep. Maxine Waters: ‘The tea party can go straight to hell’
August 20, 2011
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) came out swinging against Republicans in Congress on Saturday as she addressed the unemployed during a forum in Inglewood.
The event occurred a day after new statistics were released showing that California’s jobless rate last month went up to 12%, from 11.8%. California now has the second-highest rate of unemployment in the nation, trailing only Nevada at 12.9%, and its jobless rate is well above the U.S. average of 9.1%.
Waters vowed to push Congress to focus on creating more jobs. “I’m not afraid of anybody,” said Waters. “This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to hell.”
More than 1,000 people attended “Kitchen Table Summit,” which was designed to give the jobless an opportunity to vent to elected officials and share their struggles about finding a job.
KABC-TV quoted speakers talking about living without medical insurance and surviving paycheck to paycheck.
“Thank God I am healthy because a medical illness would bankrupt me,” said Regina Davis of Inglewood.
Congresswomen Laura Richardson and Karen Bass also attended. Several people urged the representatives to push for a national jobs program.
According to the Employment Development Department, California employers added just 4,500 new jobs last month, a steep drop from the revised 30,400 jobs added in June.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/tea-party-maxine-waters-hell.html
Good Morning, Everybody. Happy Sunday! :09
Good Morning, Everyone at 3CHICS!!!