The Mississippi Mass Choir is an American gospel choir based in Jackson, Mississippi.
Serving God Through Song” is the motto and the mission of The Mississippi Mass Choir. Although striving to succeed in the gospel music industry, the choir’s purpose is to help establish the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world. Since its formation in 1988, the choir has won numerous honors and awards for its contributions to gospel music. The group has traveled extensively throughout the United States, toured Japan and appeared in Nassau, the Bahamas. When you consider the level of success enjoyed by this relatively novice group of singers, it becomes evident that serving the Lord pays off.
Andy Rooney on Obama’s Election 11/9/08
[wpvideo XsVy5O1C]
OMG,
I just saw a commercial for the ‘ FOREVER LAZY’, which looks like a one piece jogging suit.
BWA HA HA HA HA H AH HA HA HA
Here’s the wordsmith, Lemon, with Where I’m From.~
creole, I have not spoken to you in months. So good to see you still workin hard tellin it like it is.
I logged back in to close out the spoken word segment with two final videos that I think you’ll like. Here’s Erykah Badu with Friends, fans, and artists.
What if…?
3 Chics…. IN!
Texans 30- Browns 12! Woot! Woot!
The Texans are the most complete team in the NFL….offensively, defensely and special teams wise. That’s what I’m talking ’bout, baybee!
I guess this means you are happy. lol.
LOL Cowboys won today too. Thangs are lookin up in TEX-AS!
John Boehner: Obama Relationship Has Become ‘Frosty’
The relationship between House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and President Barack Obama has been “frosty” over the past two weeks, the speaker said on Sunday, despite their past work together on decreasing the deficit.
“The president and I have a pretty good relationship,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “It’s been a little frosty over the last two weeks. But we’ve got a pretty good relationship. And I’ve told the president, and I’m the most straight-up transparent person in this town, that I would never mislead him, that my word is my bond.”
“Doesn’t mean that we always agree,” he added.
Boehner and the president worked together this summer on a grand compromise to cut the deficit, which would have included major spending cuts and some revenue increases. Those talks broke down, and now a congressional “super committee” is working on a plan that will likely make only a fraction of those cuts.
Boehner has said repeatedly that failing to come to an agreement with the president is one of his biggest regrets, a statement he repeated on “This Week.” He said he does not think it would be easy for the two to come together again for a major deal on the deficit, saying, “It’s hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
“I really thought the president and I could come to an agreement,” he said. “I thought that for the good of the country he and I could have solved this problem.”
Still, the speaker said he strongly supports the effort by the super committee to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the deficit, which he said “has to work.” The group — 12 members representing each party and chamber — has been tasked with finding sufficient cuts by a Nov. 23 deadline, but remains gridlocked.
He said reports of the joint committee’s lack of progress do not necessarily mean it will fail.
“I wouldn’t describe it as an impasse,” he said. “This is hard. If it was easy, the president and I could have solved it. If it was easy, congresses over the last 20 years would have solved it.”
Despite his support for compromise, Boehner doubled down on his criticism of Obama’s “class warfare” message, saying the prospects for a deal are harmed by the president’s call for additional taxes on the wealthy.
“We are not going to engage in class warfare,” he said. “The president’s out there doing it every day, and I frankly think it’s unfortunate.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/06/john-boehner-obama_n_1078461.html
Is Herman Cain Done?
RightWatch: As the allegations of sexual harassment pile up, his campaign may linger, but it’s over.
By: Jack White | Posted: November 5, 2011 at 12:58 AM
How many more cases of alleged sexual harassment have to surface before Herman Cain becomes known as the Tiger Woods of the Tea Party?
To quote the soon-to-be-former presidential candidate’s reprise of one of his father’s favorite quips, “I does not care.”
Cain never was and never will be more than a minstrel act in the Republican nominating process, an entertaining diversion for white conservatives so eager to establish their lack of bigotry through their showy (albeit transitory) support for a black man that they overlook his total lack of qualifications. Indeed, they are so hell bent on thumbing their nose at the mainstream media that they rushed to Cain’s defense, driving him even further up in the polls.
But that’s a chimera, a blip destined to disappear when the time for Republicans to select their real standard-bearer grows nigh. The white folks who are rallying around Cain right now will throw him under the bus faster than Barack Obama jettisoned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Until then he’ll loiter around, shucking and jiving his way through debates, threatening legal action against the reporters who broke the sexual harassment story and boasting about how close he is to the notorious right-wing financiers David and Charles Koch, whom he considers to be “brothers from another mother.” He may even break into song from time to time, as is his wont.
It will, to be sure, be entertaining as all get out, but it will be totally irrelevant. The issues facing this country are way too serious to waste any more time on the pretentious shenanigans of a self-serving egotist behind whose genial image may well lurk a habitual letch. The details that so far have emerged suggest that instead of turning his victims on, Cain’s vulgar come-ons gave them the creeps.
As a matter of fact, one of the women who received payments from the National Restaurant Association to settle their claims against Cain said through her lawyer on Friday that the offensive behavior occurred for more than a month and happened more than once. Married for 26 years and now a federal employee, the victim has chosen “not to relive the incident” and to remain anonymous, according to the lawyer, because the experience was “so painful.”
The interesting political question that arises is which Republican candidate will benefit most from Cain’s inevitable deflation. Or, to put it another way, once he is finally out of the way, which of the right-wing extremists who remain in the field will emerge as the principal alternative to the ever-flexible former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney?
http://www.theroot.com/views/herman-cain-done
Stick a FORK in this mofo; he’s sooooooooooooooooo DONE.
November 06, 2011 9:40 AM
Boehner’s imitation of a deficit hawk
By Steve Benen
House Speaker John Boehner was asked this morning about the perception that Republicans are “servants of the rich.” Not surprisingly, he disagrees
“That’s very unfair,” Boehner said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “Listen, I come from a family of 12. My dad owned a bar. I’ve got brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder.”
I’m tempted to respond that this argument is foolish, but in reality, it’s not even an argument. The charge, backed by years of unyielding evidence, is that he and his caucus fight for policies that almost exclusively benefit the wealthy. The Speaker’s response is, well, that he has an economically diverse immediate family. That’s about as compelling as a bigot who says some of his best friends are members of minority group.
“What our job here in Congress is to do — and the reason I came here 21 years ago — was to make sure that the American dream that was available to us is available for our kids and our grandkids. That — most people don’t believe that’s the case today. And, frankly, I’ve got concerns that it may not be the case,” the Ohio Republican went on. “We can’t have government debt that’s snuffing out the future for our kids and grandkids….”
Oh good, Boehner’s imitating a deficit hawk again.
Look, it’s a simple matter of credibility. Boehner voted for the Bush tax cuts, and added the costs to the national debt. Boehner then voted to finance the war in Afghanistan by adding the costs to the national debt. He then voted to put the costs of the war in Iraq onto the national debt. Boehner supported a massive expansion of the government’s role in health care, Medicare Part D, and voted to pile all of its costs right onto the national debt. He then backed the financial industry bailout, and added the bill to the national debt.
Last December, Boehner demanded an extension of Bush-era tax rates, didn’t even try to pay for them, and insisted the costs be added to the national debt.
This year, the Speaker has been offered a variety of Democratic debt-reduction plans, including President Obama’s Grand Bargain, and Boehner has turned them all down.
The debt is “snuffing out the future for our kids and grandkids”? Does Boehner really think anyone should take him seriously on this?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/boehners_imitation_of_a_defici033310.php
November 06, 2011 11:00 AM
Understanding the nature of ‘anonymity’
By Steve Benen
Asked about Herman Cain’s sexual-harassment controversy, congressional Republicans generally take one of two lines: (1) noting the allegations is racist; or (2) the allegations lack merit because we don’t know the accusers.
This morning, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) pushed the latter.
“I just don’t see anonymous sources as fair against a candidate,” Hutchison said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “If someone has a real concern, they should come out and say it, but nothing that I’ve heard, in the press that I’ve read, is other than off-color remarks.”
Saying she has only seen “anonymous sources” accusing the presidential hopeful of having spoken badly, the senator said she believed the allegations were simply a result of Cain’s challengers “trying to dredge things up.”
A few too many Republicans seem confused about the meaning of some basic words here.
It’s really not that complicated. In the 1990s, some women who worked for Cain believed he made inappropriate and sexually-suggestive remarks in the workplace. They didn’t hide behind anonymity; they came forward to raise their concerns. Cain’s trade organization was concerned enough about the merit of the allegations that it gave the women a fair amount of money, and as part of the payment, forced the accusers to agree not to speak about the controversy.
They’re not “anonymous sources.” Politico, which broke the story, knows their names. So does Cain and the National Restaurant Association. In one instance, last week, the Republican candidate was confronted directly with one of the accuser’s names, at which point he refused to comment.
Have Republicans forgotten what “anonymous” means?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/understanding_the_nature_of_an_1033311.php
November 06, 2011 12:00 PM
A competing set of standards
By Steve Benen
The right-wing Family Research Council this week honored Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) for his “unwavering support of the family,” despite the fact that the far-right lawmaker has refused to pay child support to his ex-wife, and appears to have lied about his personal finances.
Conservatives prefer not to notice the contradiction.
Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain faced allegations of sexual harassment in the 1990s from two of his female employees. Cain now offers contradictory explanations, and says anyone who takes note of the accusations is engaging in racism.
Conservatives seem entirely comfortable with all of this, and even started donating to Cain’s campaign in larger numbers this week.
Paul Krugman is trying to wrap his head around developments like these.
Here’s how it goes: if a liberal politician is caught behaving badly — enriching himself while preaching the need to help the poor, or just in general showing himself less than admirable by having an affair, visiting call girls, whatever — his career is over.
But if a conservative politician who preaches stern traditional morality is caught engaging in actions that are at odds with what he preaches — buying sex, taking wide stances in restrooms, or, in this case, stiffing his family even while preaching family values — he may well ride right through the scandal. Witness what’s going on now with Herman Cain.
How can this be? Here’s what I understand: on the right, “moral values” are considered to be, literally, God-given principles. And a politician is well-regarded for advocating those values, no matter what he does personally. Instead of his personal behavior devaluing his political position, his political position excuses his personal behavior; a philandering politician who preaches the sacred bond of marriage is considered a good man because of what he says, no matter what he does.
The left obviously operates very differently. A tolerance for, say, politicians guilty of infidelity is not uncommon, but once personal misconduct expands into crimes and/or serious ethical lapses — deadbeat dads and sexual harassers, for example — the tolerance generally disappears.
What explains the ideological disconnect? Some of this has to do with an appreciation for reality and facts — conservatives are convinced news they don’t like is probably the result of a media conspiracy to promote liberalism — but there’s probably more to it than this.
So I thought I’d open the floor to some discussion. What drives this competing set of standards?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/a_competing_set_of_standards033312.php
November 06, 2011 8:05 AM
Cain no longer willing to ‘go there’
By Steve Benen
There are some fairly significant unanswered questions surrounding Herman Cain and allegations of sexual harassment. For example, did he do what he’s accused of doing? Is Cain willing to let his accusers speak publicly? And why has he changed his story so many times?
Cain’s handling of the matter has offered crisis-management textbook writers a new case study on what not to do, culminating in desperate attacks accusing just about everyone of racism — because to accurately note that a Republican presidential candidate was accused of harassment is, apparently, necessarily evidence of bigotry.
As Cain’s responses swing back and forth between incoherent and offensive, yesterday the Republican presidential candidate decided he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
The issue did not come up at all during the 90-minute Saturday night debate with Newt Gingrich, sponsored by a local tea party group. But reporters after the event began asking him about the reports of his inappropriate behavior at the National Restaurant Association — and Cain initially dismissed them, saying, “Don’t even go there.” […]
When asked again why he would not answer questions on the topic, Cain still refused to answer, referring the reporters in question to his chief of staff, Mark Block.
“Where’s my chief of staff?” Cain said. “Please send him the journalistic code of ethics.”
Here’s a tip for the candidate: those accused of sexual harassment, who’ve been caught with contradictory explanations, who’ve casually thrown around accusations of bigotry without proof, and who started parsing the meaning of the word “settlement,” probably shouldn’t be lecturing others on “ethics.”
Campaign reporters, doing their job, pressed on. One asked, “Mr. Cain, do you think you can just not answer questions about the sexual harassment claims?” Another asked, “Are you never going to answer questions about this ever again, Mr. Cain?”
That appears to be the plan. It’s quite a trajectory, isn’t it? Learn that a bombshell is coming, fail to prepare, stumble with the initial response, change the story, wildly point fingers in contradictory directions, accuse everyone of racism without grounds, and then decide to take the ball and go home.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/cain_no_longer_willing_to_go_t033308.php
Wanker of the Day: Kathleen Parker
by BooMan
Sun Nov 6th, 2011 at 12:08:39 AM EST
There is so much damn talent in this country and so many really smart, incisive people that I just get incensed reading the bullshit that nitwits are getting paid six figures to write on the editorial pages of our most prestigious newspapers. Kathleen Parker is a prime example. This column is in the guise of telling hard truths to both parties, so the Republicans naturally come in for some criticism. Let’s watch her set this up with some truly breathtaking false equivalence. But first, let me ask you a question. What’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? Did you answer “Not much”? Good, you’re normal.
Republicans aren’t mistaken when they say that President Obama is declaring class warfare. He’s been working that turf with a pretty big shovel. How many times have we heard that millionaires and billionaires (as though there were no difference) refuse to pay their fair share?
But Republicans are also playing the class card when they insist with equal passion that half of all Americans pay no taxes. Missing from this statement is the word “income,” which would make the assertion truer. But it’s more effective to imply that half the country — i.e., the shiftless and dependent — only want something for nothing.
What happens when you win an argument based on half-truths? In politics, it doesn’t matter. Winning is all that matters. In real life, the people lose.
Here’s your first hint that something is wrong. The Republicans are telling a lie, but Parker suggests how they could make that lie truer. The president is stating an opinion, and her only complaint is that millionaires are getting lumped in with billionaires. This is clearly two sides of a coin, right?
First of all, lies don’t really get truer. You can stop lying and tell the truth, but you can’t tell true lies. But, second, the equivalent of lying is lying. When one side says that half the country pays no taxes and the other side says the richest people in the country should pay more in taxes, those two things are not equivalent. One is a lie and the other is a policy statement.
Now, let’s watch her contradict herself.
Obviously, those who pay no income tax earn so little that taxing their income is viewed as further hardship. But one could argue that a fair tax code would ask all Americans to pitch in at a level commensurate with their ability to ante up, thereby allowing them to be more invested in outcomes
Jesus. A progressive tax code is precisely a fair tax code that asks all Americans to pitch in at a level commensurate with their ability. That’s the whole goddamned point of a progressive tax code. A “flat tax” is an unfair tax code that makes no effort to figure out people’s ability to pay. A flat tax figures a busboy can afford to give up 15% of his income just as easily as Donald Trump can. Only a moron thinks that’s true or “fair.” But the worst part is that she acknowledges that a lot of people can’t afford to pay income taxes right before she asks them to pay income taxes.
Let’s see if she gets any smarter.
In any case, people who have worked hard and succeeded are not the enemy of those who are doing less well. They are the people we all hope to emulate.
Do you remember when rich industrialists brought the Welsh and Scottish and Irish over here and threw them in the mines and paid them nothing and took no thought for their health or even their lives. Were they not the enemy of their workers? Do we not have an entire agricultural economy today built on migrant workers who are in this country without documents and who are paid less than minimum wage? Are we not watching good paying jobs get shipped to Mexico and Indonesia and India and China where the labor is much cheaper and the working conditions are appalling? How much has really changed? Maybe we want to emulate doctors and lawyers and successful inventors or entrepreneurs, but I think Parker may be missing some keys facts about why people are taking to the streets. It’s not because they resent their dentist. It’s because a bunch of super-rich fucks are ripping us off and refusing to pay their taxes. They tanked the economy with their fancy fraudulent financial instruments and now they want to take away our pensions and health care to pay for it. Apparently, we all cost too much.
Are you ready for some more false equivalence?
http://www.boomantribune.com/hotlist/add/2011/11/6/0839/00787/displaystory//
John Boehner Responds To OWS By Claiming That The 1% Are Overtaxed
November 6, 2011
By Jason Easley
Speaker of the House John Boehner was on ABC’s This Week, and when he was asked about Occupy Wall Street, he accused them of class warfare and claimed that the 1% are overtaxed.
When asked about Occupy Wall Street, Speaker John Boehner said, “Listen, I understand people’s frustrations. I understand their concerns, and I frankly understand that we have differences in America. We are not going to engage in class warfare. The president is out there doing it every day. I frankly think it’s unfortunate, because our job is to help all Americans, not to pit one set of Americans against another. When asked if he thought that was what was happening Boehner replied, “The president‘s clearly trying to do it, and it’s wrong.”
Christiane Amanpour asked Boehner about shared sacrifice and he launched into a defense of the 1%, “C’mon. The top 1 percent pay 38 percent of income taxes in America. How much more do you want them to pay? I’ll tell you what. Let’s take all the money that the rich have, all of it. I won’t even put a dent in our current budget deficit, much less our debt.”
Boehner’s defense of the 1% contained some sleight of hand with the numbers. Millionaires were taxed at a rate of only 24% in 2009, and the top 400 wage earners paid even less in income taxes. Their percentage was only 18.1% in 2008. In contrast, the small business owners that Boehner and the GOP claim to be defending we taxed at a rate of 28%. By the way, Boehner pointed out earlier in the interview that the Republican Party considers people who are earning a million dollars a year in income small business owners.
Speaker Boehner also explained what Republicans mean when they that they are open to adding revenue to any deficit deal. Boehner’s plan to add revenue involves cutting the top income tax rate to 25%, because in his mind this will spur private sector growth, create jobs, and get the economy moving. I guess we are also supposed to forget that the United States has been cutting taxes to create growth for a decade and it hasn’t worked.
While Boehner bemoaned class warfare, he was actually engaging in it by defending the one percent and arguing that they should be given even more. Occupy Wall Street isn’t about class warfare. It is about the systematic redistribution of wealth to the top that Boehner is supporting and trying to extend. This isn’t about class warfare. It’s is about fairness, and John Boehner and the GOP are dead set against ever restoring equality and fairness back to America.
The one percent pull John Boehner’s strings and their puppet did his little dance. No one was fooled and the occupation will march on.
http://www.politicususa.com/en/john-boehner-ows
Will Cowardly Democrats Help Republicans Kill Social Security?
November 6, 2011
By Rmuse
The history of credit probably goes back to the first concept of ownership that led to the practice of borrowing and lending. In the modern era, there are few instances of people making large purchases that do not require borrowing money and making installment payments over a long period of time and without credit, purchasing a home or an automobile would be nearly impossible. America’s deficit is one area the so-called Super Committee is working to reduce and it is unfortunate that they are considering cutting Social Security and Medicare as a means of deficit reduction because their decision will impact millions of Americans.
There is one specific issue the Super Committee, and indeed, all Republicans must come to grips with and it is that Social Security does not add one penny to the nation’s deficit. It is related to the deficit, but intrinsically the benefits paid out to retirees, families, children and the disabled are paid for by faithful contributions of workers and their employers; Americans do not impact the amount of money America owes. Republicans (and many Democrats) know the Social Security Trust does not impact the national debt, but the characterization of Social Security as an entitlement by Republicans has given the illusion to brain-dead Americans that cutting or privatizing it will reduce the deficit.
Social Security’s relationship to the nation’s deficit is that the Bush Administration borrowed heavily from the Trust to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. The Bush-Republicans borrowed from the Trust to conceal the fact that federal taxes were not bringing in enough revenue to pay for the wars and the wealthy’s tax cuts. Even so, the Social Security Trust is sitting on $2.6 trillion in reserves that belong to the American people who paid into it their entire working lives. As it stands now, Social Security has enough money in surplus to pay existing and new benefits in full for another 25 years. It is also not well-known that Social Security’s administrative costs of less than one percent do not contribute to the deficit because the trust cannot borrow money from the government to fund its operations. Republicans though, have perpetuated the myth that the Social Security Trust is going broke and unless they drastically cut benefits, Americans dependent on the system will be in trouble.
There is one overriding reason Republicans want to privatize Social Security and it is to give more of American workers’ money to Wall Street so they can squander it away in the next market crash. Wall Street and corporate banks crashed the economy in the 2007-2008 that also nearly ruined the economies of every country on Earth. Bush increased the nation’s debt when he forced the American people to bail out the financial sector, and now his lackeys in Congress want to raid the Trust because the American people’s largesse was not enough to satisfy the greed inherent to investment banks and stock brokers. So, how much more money do the American people have to pay Wall Street to satisfy Republicans and their greedy corporate donors? Approximately $2.6 trillion plus all the American people’s future contributions to Social Security into perpetuity.
There is another reason Republicans want Social Security finished off once and for all, and it is their hatred for FDR’s belief that all Americans deserve security in their retirement years. Republicans detest any social program that helps hard-working Americans, but they also hate that they cannot take more money from the American people to give to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts. Willard Romney’s grand economic plan for America includes $6.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, and his first step to pay help pay for the wealthy’s entitlements is privatizing Medicare. Not only will the wealthy reap the savings of a privatization scam, but Willard can reward the insurance industry by forcing Americans to purchase expensive coverage with reduced Medicare vouchers.
http://www.politicususa.com/en/social-security-deficit
George Will On Public Sector Job Losses: ‘That’s Good’
By Ben Armbruster on Nov 6, 2011 at 12:01 pm
he Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last Friday that 80,000 jobs were added to the American economy last month, ticking the unemployment rate down slightly to 9 percent. The 80,000 added is a net gain, factoring in 104,000 private jobs added and 24,000 public sector jobs lost. Today on ABC’s This Week, conservative columnist George Will said people losing their public sector jobs is a good thing:
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Let me turn to you George and ask you about the unemployment numbers. Is that something of a trend or is that scratching the surface? What difference is that going to make?
WILL: Not much. First of all, 80,000 isn’t nearly enough to accomodate even the natural growth month by month of the workforce. There are two bits of good news in there. The 80,000 is a net number. The private sector created 104,000 jobs. The public sector happily shrank by 24,000 jobs. Both of that’s good.
Conservatives rejoice at public sector job loss because they think it will spur private job creation (and also fulfill their collective fantasy of controlling the ever encroaching tentacles of the federal government). But the reality is that public sector losses are equaling out private sector gains and thus holding back a wider recovery. And as Matt Yglesias has noted, public sector job loss over the last yeah and a half has not been “delivering any private sector magic.” Federal, state and local governments have shed hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past year alone while the percentage of millionaires grew by 20 percent. And as the AP noted, the public job “losses add strain” on the overall economic recovery.
“As we’ve seen that federal support for states diminish, you’ve seen the biggest job losses in the public sector — teachers, police officers, firefighters losing their jobs,” President Obama said this summer trying to push his jobs plan that Republicans continually object to.
But to George Will, this is all a good thing; he celebrates when Americans lose their jobs with the unemployment rate stagnant at 9 percent.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/06/362214/george-will-public-sector-job-losses-thats-good/
Why is Mitt Romney Undercutting his Allies in Congress?
Mitt Romney is rolling out his deficit agenda, GOP allies be damned.
Promoting his plan in a USA Today op-ed yesterday, Romney warned that “The irresistible mathematics of debt will soon lead to unimaginable peril.” President Obama, Romney added, “inherited a severely imbalanced budget, and he made it much worse.” Campaign spokesman Andrew Saul underscored the point in an email to ABC News: “The middle class won’t see an improvement in their situation until Barack Obama is defeated and gone.” Romney’s message: Only I can prevent fiscal Armageddon.
This may be news to the congressional Super Committee. The Committee, Romney may recall, has likewise promised to save the country from fiscal Armageddon. And this week, after months of posturing, the Committee seems suddenly open to reaching an agreement before its November 23 deadline. Now, the former Massachusetts Governor has made this outcome harder to achieve.
What happened? Only last week, prospects for a bipartisan deal seemed dire. But three days ago, forty Republican congressional representatives joined sixty Democrats to sign a letter to the Super Committee that was, in the context of this summer’s GOP hard line against taxes, nothing short of remarkable. The lawmakers’ letter urged the Committee to consider all means of deficit reduction—new revenue sources along with cuts to entitlement and discretionary programs. And with congressional approval ratings dipping into the dangerous OJ Simpson range, Committee members may be receptive to this call for compromise.
Mitt Romney will not be rooting for them to reach a “grand bargain.” Indeed, Romney’s proposals are most unlikely to encourage any bargaining at all. The candidate touts a sweeping three-pronged plan to trim spending, through 1) devolving Medicare to state control; 2) shrinking the federal workforce through attrition; and 3) eliminating federal funds for everything Republicans hate, including foreign aid, trains, fine art, planned parenthood, and Obamacare. Needless to say, there is no new revenue. This is not a negotiating posture. It is a conservative wish list. Famous compromiser and Congressman Paul Ryan confirms as much, in an interview with Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin:
“Look at what he put out! This is a great development. It shows that the elusive adult conversation is taking place, but all on one side.” He ticked off the proposals including block-granting, cutting the federal workforce and entitlement reform. He said, “This tracks perfectly with the [summer] House budget.”
Romney’s hard, Ryanesque line reduces the maneuvering room for his allies on the Hill. But this is not the first time Romney has sought to undercut congressional Republicans—China is an earlier example—and, moreover, it is the logical outcome of two groups’ fundamentally divergent strategic imperatives. Presidential challengers have every interest in promoting voter dissatisfaction with status-quo institutions. For Romney, 9% congressional approval fits the bill. For incumbent Congressmen and women? Not so much. Let’s hope that House GOP representatives discover where their self interest lies, and come to an agreement with their Democratic Party counterparts this month.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-stump/97118/why-mitt-romney-undercutting-his-allies-in-congress
Candidates the GOP Deserves
Nov 4, 2011 6:09 PM EDT
Republicans are unhappy with their options. But the lousy GOP candidates perfectly reflect the party’s absence of ideas, says Michael Tomasky.
I hope we all agree now, even those of you on the Koch brothers’ payroll, that the current crop of Republican candidates leaves a bit to be desired. This week Joe Klein came up with “the Republican Romper Room,” which is about as apt as anything I’ve seen. What I haven’t seen yet is a theory of why they’re so lame. So here it is: they’re lousy candidates with no ideas because they’re in a party that doesn’t care about ideas. Indeed, actual ideas about actually solving the country’s actual problems would constitute sedition in today’s GOP. Fortunately for the candidates, none of them are in remote danger of being hauled before the bench.
Say what you will about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and yeah, even John Edwards, before we’d grasped the full depths of his creepitude. They knew stuff. They and the other Democrats went after one another in debate after debate after debate about the arcana of questions like whether an individual mandate was the right way to go and what kind of cap-and-trade system would work best. Sure, they did their pandering, a lot of it. Newsflash: they’re politicians. But they dug into the details, and their audiences expected them to be conversant in details.
No such danger this time around. All these candidates have to do is speak in billboards. Low taxes. No regulation. Cut spending. Death to the EPA. Build a fence. Build a higher fence. Build an electric fence. Stop apologizing for America. The audiences have been, as we’ve seen, worse than the candidates, boors and jackals and garment-rending vulgarians, booing a soldier in Iraq, cheering lustily at Rick Perry’s death-row body count, shouting “let him die!” about the poor hypothetical fellow with no health coverage.
There used to be such a thing as conservative policies. They included… well, for starters, they included the individual mandate and cap-and-trade. Those were once Republican ideas. But even beyond that, conservatism used to be amenable to talking rationally about immigration, poverty programs, even taxes. Now these things cannot be spoken of. Just repeat the slogan. And if the other guy beat you to it, just repeat it again, at greater volume and with a lacerating adjective or two.
This is true not only at the presidential level. I’ve lately begun looking into the positions, although it does them far too much honor even to call them that, of some of the GOP candidates running for Senate. They are, if such is possible, stupider. Even the ones who aren’t stupid are turning somersaults to reassure voters thay can become stupid. Jeff Flake, the Arizona congressman running for Senate, used to support comprehensive immigration reform. In March, he called that a “dead end.” An adviser to a rival contender came up with a quip that pretty well sums up the level of thought that obtains in the GOP today: “Jeff Flake’s egregious election year flip-flop on amnesty signals once and for all why Arizona needs a fighter, not a flake, in the U.S. Senate.” Yuk yuk.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/04/michael-tomasky-why-the-gop-gets-the-lousy-candidates-it-deserves.html
The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Conservative Reactions to Herman Cain’s Sex Scandal
When news broke last Sunday that GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain had been accused of multiple instances of workplace sexual harassment in the 1990s, conservatives had the opportunity to reevaluate their opinion of the candidate and his fitness for the highest office. Instead, reactions broke down roughly into two camps: those who saw nothing but a racist witch-hunt from the liberal media and those who took the opportunity to dispute and belittle the existence of sexual harassment in the first place. Of course, these two diatribes aren’t mutually exclusive, and some particularly ambitious pundits took pains to voice both. But judge for yourself: Here’s a list of the worst reactions to the scandal thus far.
John Derbyshire (The National Review Online, 11/2/11):
“Is there anyone who thinks sexual harassment is a real thing? Is there anyone who doesn’t know it’s all a lawyers’ ramp, like ‘racial discrimination’? You pay a girl a compliment nowadays, she runs off and gets lawyered up. Is this any way to live?”
Ann Coulter (Fox News, “Red Eye,” 11/1/11):
“When they go after Clarence Thomas because they want to keep a pro-life justice off the Supreme Court, who happens to be black … [This is] the same thing that Democrats in the South accused blacks of for a hundred years: ‘Oh, the over-sexual black man’ and then they turned around a hundred years later and do the same thing. This is a high-tech lynching.”
(Fox News, “Hannity,” 10/31/11)
“Everyone knows that an awful lot of these sexual harassment lawsuits, the bar has been set so low by court cases, I mean, things like a man having a photo of his own wife in a bathing suit on his desk, that has been considered a hostile environment. Silly comments made at a meeting, comments overheard, not even directed at a woman in the workplace has been used as grounds as a sexual harassment.”
Rand Paul (The National Review Online, 11/1/11):
“There are people now who hesitate to tell a joke to a woman in the workplace, any kind of joke, because it could be interpreted incorrectly. I don’t. I’m very cautious.”
Donald Trump (Fox News, “On the Record,” 11/2/11):
“I think it’s a very ugly witch hunt and I think it’s very unfair. You say, ‘Oh, hello, darling, how are you?’ And you get sued because you’ve destroyed somebody’s life. It’s ridiculous. And I think it’s very unfair to him. And unless there’s something that we’re not seeing—meaning you, I, and everybody else—I think it’s a very unfair situation.”
“[The accusers] probably do love their names splashed across the front pages. And frankly, I think that’s not a good situation and I don’t think it’s a fair situation.”
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/97093/the-worst-things-conservatives-have-said-about-the-cain-scandal
In Montana Senate Race, the Wolves Come Out for Obama
November 4, 2011 at 7:01AM by Eli Sanders |
“President Obama has to run his race,” Montana Senator Jon Tester told me on Tuesday when I asked whether he’d be having the president out to his alfalfa farm in Big Sandy (population: 598) for an appearance before they both face their first re-election a year from now. “I’m gonna run my race.”
“And,” Tester added, “they’re gonna be two separate races.”
Probably wise, given that a poll released Tuesday morning by Montana State University showed Obama dragging around a dismal 32 percent approval rating in a conservative state where, in 2008, he finished just 10,000 votes behind John McCain. Wiser still for a freshman senator who is virtually tied with his opponent in a campaign that’s going to demand “all in” party spending even though fewer than 150,000 voters are expected to determine the outcome — a campaign that’s already weird by national standards, yet weirdly emblematic of the minefields faced by Democratic incumbents across the country.
If Tester wins this thing, he’ll be called downright brilliant, of course, but right now he’s just doing what many Democratic incumbents tied to unpopular Obama programs desperately want to do, as well as what any Montanan familiar with wild, dangerous territory knows you need to do when predators are circling: Get away from the thing that’s smelling like lunch, unless you wanted to be gnawed on, too. But there is always the gnawing.
“From taxes to spending to healthcare, his record is in lock step with Obama,” says Erik Iverson, campaign manager for Tester’s opponent, six-term Congressman and proud ranch owner Denny Rehberg. “Which is out of step with Montanans.”
As fundraising pours in and $2 million in negative advertising by outside groups already blares from local TVs, it’s clear that Rehberg’s plan — Liberate Main Street! Why are we spending money on AIDS? — is itself in lock-step with the machinations of his fellow Tea Party caucus members and the Republican party at large. Not only will Tester and those like him need to save face on their records — they’ll literally spend the next year saving their own faces from being eaten alive.
“They’re going to try to turn a Montana farmer, who is built like a lineman, has seven fingers, and a flat-top — they’re going to try to turn him into a caricature Barack Obama,” says Guy Cecil, Executive Director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Good luck with that.”
For all the Obama-related attacks that are now incoming, Tester seemed equally prepared for the even weirder shenanigans likely to be flung from groups like Karl Rove’s Crossraods GPS, which entered the fray in Montana this summer, almost a year and a half out. During our phone interview — which Tester, in the vernacular of the rural lands from which he comes, termed “a visit” — I noted that Tester’s opponents are already telling Montanans about his Wall Street donors and hitting him for taking “more lobbyist money than any other D.C. politician.”
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/montana-senate-race-2012-6541718#ixzz1cxa0COSd
Hello everyone!!
Hiya, Dannie!
Happy Sunday!
Obama for Senate Ad “Introducing Barack Obama”
Sweet
Aint’t that the truth, Bishop. These missionaries wer Nothing but DEVILS in disguise.
Here’s Lemon, with Poor People. Time to hit the books! Have a happy Sunday 3Chics!~
Hola, CC!
It’s a pleasure to see you. 3 Chics misses you!
Here’s the second one featuring Janette at the Driven Conference, San Diego
LiberalPhenom:
Seems @davidgregory says Pres Obama won’t be able to run on his record. Really?
***SG2 checking facts
***
David Gregory =
LOL the only thing DAvid Gregory is running on is white male privilege. Bye Boy!
Hey ‘Metia, I read your shout out. I love you back and miss y’all too! Focused on holding it down this semester, gearing up for midterms and final exams. (Failure…is…not…an option!) That said, I wanted to drop three exceptional spoken word videos, courtesy of Def Jam Poetry and YouTube.
Here’s the first one with Carlos Andres Gomez, entitled “Invisible Men.”
Hi CC; indeed 3 Chics misses you. We know you’re handling your buisness, and we’re sending you lots of love and support. Thank you for the spoken word vids; I’ll share them with hubby; he’s a poet.
BWA HA HA HA
Greek Prime Minister Reportedly To Resign
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/06/george-papandreou-resigning_n_1078444.html#comments
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou will step down a temporary new coalition government is decided, CNN reports.
This is a developing story…
Rare Earthquake Rattles Oklahoma
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/06/oklahoma-earthquake_n_1078313.html#comments
SPARKS, Okla. — Oklahomans more accustomed to tornadoes than earthquakes suffered through a weekend of temblors that cracked buildings, buckled a highway and rattled nerves. One quake late Saturday was the state’s strongest ever and jolted a college football stadium 50 miles away and was followed early Sunday by a jarring aftershock.
There were no reports in the hours after the quakes of any severe injuries or major devastation.
“That shook up the place, had a lot of people nervous,” Oklahoma State wide receiver Justin Blackmon said of the late Saturday quake, the strongest of a series of quakes. “Yeah, it was pretty strong.”
good Morning, & Happy Sunday, Everyone! :-)
Good Morning, Ametia, Rikyrah, 3 Chics, Friends & Visitors!
Happy Sunday!
Inspiration for today
Good Morning, Everyone.
hope folks enjoyed the extra hour of sleep. I know I did…LOL
When I woke up, the clock on the stove said 8:12am and the computer clock said 7:12am. Gosh darnit, I forgot to change the clock on the stove. I didn’t get my hour.
Wah!
LOL I set my clocks and watches before turning in. I was up by 7 am.