Howdy, Everyone. Happy Saturday! 3 Chics continues the week with Hall & Oates with:
YOU MAKE MY DREAMS COME TRUE
AND
SHE’S GONE
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Potus Takes Oath of Office
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My Brothers Keeper
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AFRO PUFFS
Most Adorable Shoe Stealer
Six Little Babies
Fatherhood
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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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there’s a gang rape case in OHIO.
here’s the synopsis:
dotster3
January 5, 2013 at 9:51 pm
And speaking of gang rape, we have our own gang rape case here in Steubenville, Ohio. I know it has been noted here, but this is the most unbelievable disgusting thing I have ever read——-this gang rape of this 15 yr. old honor student, knocked out with a date rape drug, carried from party to party and raped multiple times by multiple attackers, many on the beloved h.s. football team—–and the cover up by everyone in authority—-local law enforcement, school and sports officials, now state law enforcement—–all seemingly have ties to these amoral, sociopathic young guys. It is revolting, the whole thing, especially these guys laughing about it on vid afterward etc. etc. Gross beyond belief.
Here’s the link to a blogger who has laid out all the players in this sick coverup. if you have the stomach, read from top to bottom….it’s a cesspool of corruption:
http://localleaks.blogs.ru/2013/01/01/steubenvillefiles/
Gov. Deval Patrick: Rep. Barney Frank would make a ‘great interim senator’ for Massachusetts
BOSTON — Gov. Deval L. Patrick said that retired U.S. Rep. Barney Frank is a gifted legislator and would make a great interim senator.
“He is definitely on the list,” Patrick told reporters Friday. “I think he would be a great interim senator.”
SNIP
Patrick said he spoke to Frank on Thursday. Patrick said he would keep details of the conversation confidential, as he has with other possible temporary appointees. Of the possible candidates he has spoken with, Patrick said, Frank is the only one who has gone public.
NO PRESSURE HERE, EH BARNEY?
“Does it matter in the case of Congressman Frank what I would have preferred?” Patrick said, smiling.
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/01/gov_deval_patrick_rep_barney_frank_would_make_great_interim_senator.html
HOUSTON 19
BENGALS 13
GO HOUSTON
What we gone do! What we gone do!
What!
What we gone do! What we gone do!
BEAT’EM!
What we gone do! What we gone do!
What!
What we gone do! What we gone do!
BEAT’EM
Congratulations TEXANS! Let’s GO, VIKINGS!
Go, Vikings! Lets Rock and Roll!
Got this email today
Grand opening! (We’re celebrating with 10% off.)
http://action.2013pic.org/page/m/16908553/628d38f9/4d97d611/97b7793/3451213725/VEsE/
Steve Forbes Possibly Maybe Covered Up a Prep School Sex Scandal
Jan 5 2013
in Criminally Stupid, What the Crap!? by Imani Gandy (ABL)
The Brooks School in Andover, Massachusetts is the latest school to be engulfed by a sex scandal and a cover-up. Allegedly, the former headmaster of the school, Lawrence W. Becker, was involved in an “objectionable, manipulative” and potentially abusive relationship with a student. He also enjoyed the company of male escorts, which he allegedly hired while traveling alone on school business. Allegedly.
Steve Forbes of the I’m Rich as Hell And You’re Not Forbeses, who is a Brooks alumnus and served as chairman of the board during the time period that these shenanigans were going on, probably covered it all up to protect either his or Becker’s ass. Sure, Forbes claims that he investigated the relationship when he was made aware of it at the time, but he didn’t tell the school, parents, the coimmunity, or even any of the other board members, and that seems like something that any reasonable person would have done. Then again, the super rich and powerful aren’t exactly reasonable people. I know. I watch Revenge.
The Rich, Powerful, and/or Unreasonable are usually reluctant to cast out abusers, assholes, and creeps, and it’s often children who pay the price. We’ve seen this time and time again. Just this summer, horrifying allegations of sexual abuse at The Horace Mann School, a super-elite private school in New York, surfaced. Over the course of decades, multiple teachers were allowed to prey on young, mostly male, students. Also recently, abuse allegations at the Arthur G Dozier School for Boys in Florida led to discovery of all sorts of horrors, including rape, murder, and nearly 50 graves found on school grounds. Some of these crimes dated back one hundred years. And of course there’s Penn State, The Boy Scouts, ad the granddaddy of them all — The Catholic Church.
The Forbes Media PR machine is already at work, of course, and released this statement yesterday:
http://angryblackladychronicles.com/2013/01/05/steve-forbes-possibly-maybe-covered-up-a-prep-school-sex-scandal/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=steve-forbes-possibly-maybe-covered-up-a-prep-school-sex-scandal
Come on , Texans; get the ball in the INZONE!
Les Miserables; STELLAR, absolutely EPIC! The story maybe classic, but Hugh Jackman’s performance was transcendent. IMHO. And yes; I cried.
so glad you liked it!!
Go, Texans! Lets Rock & Roll!
LOL Just got back from the movies! GO TEXANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Vikings & Packers up next.
TEXANS 6- BENGALS 0
January 3, 2013
The G.O.P.’s Sandy Problem
Posted by Alex Koppelman
Lower Manhattan, and the hundreds of thousands of people who live in it, didn’t have to go without power for days after the superstorm Sandy hit. Businesses there didn’t have to close; millions of dollars didn’t have to be lost. But all of that did happen, because at some point someone decided that, on a relatively small island packed with people, a key power station should be located a couple hundred feet from a river, and until the folly of that decision was quite literally made brilliantly clear, it seemed foolish—too difficult, too expensive—to move it.
…………………………………………………………..
House Republicans didn’t simply forget about the Sandy-relief legislation in the excitement of the fiscal-cliff deal. The bill stalled and died because many of them—joined by key conservative activists and think tanks—flat out opposed the version the Senate passed. They opposed it because, they said, half—or more—of the sixty billion dollars of funding contained in the bill was what they called “pork.” A more accurate term would be “foresight.” The legislation might not have paid, specifically, for the ConEd station to be moved, or the hospitals’ backup power systems to be consolidated, but it would have paid for other kinds of forward-thinking measures, and that was the funding conservatives had a problem with.
The conservatives’ plan was to split the Senate’s legislation in two, with one half, totalling twenty-seven billion dollars, being passed by the hundred and twelfth Congress, leaving the remaining thirty-three billion to be either added on to the House bill as an amendment or to be considered and passed—perhaps in whole, perhaps in part, or perhaps not at all, by the hundred and thirteenth. (As a result of the pressure from King and others, the new House will reportedly hold a vote on Friday on a bill that includes nine billion dollars of funding, with the leftover fifty-one billion dollars coming to the floor on January 15th. These numbers weren’t arbitrary; the twenty-seven billion was, the critics of the Senate’s version have said, money that would actually be used for, generally speaking, emergency spending and immediate relief. The rest would either go toward repairing federal assets affected by the storm or to efforts aimed at preventing the kind of damage that Sandy caused from happening in the future. In an issue brief written for the Heritage Foundation, Matt A. Mayer neatly summed up the conservative position on this score:
The Obama Administration requests roughly $28 billion for future disaster-mitigation projects on the East Coast. Setting aside whether these projects have merit, a supplemental spending request to deal with a current crisis is not the appropriate vehicle to propose new spending projects. If the Obama Administration believes that these future projects should be funded, it should place those funding requests in the upcoming budget.
On the surface, this seems like a compelling argument: of course funding for the future can wait for a little bit, and it makes sense for Congress to take as much time as is necessary to get it right, to make sure that money does what it’s intended to do and that it isn’t wasted. But conservatives—like those in the House, and at Heritage—have made sure that things aren’t so simple. The funding for future disaster-mitigation projects needs to be in an immediate-relief bill because that’s the only way it’ll get passed.
Even if Congressional Republicans weren’t working to keep progress on Capitol Hill at a continual halt, even if they didn’t make passing something like a budget all but impossible, getting the funding to protect the East Coast from storms like Sandy approved would be a difficult task at best.
For one thing, they’ve put themselves in a position where they are almost forced to oppose spending on disaster mitigation. Approving funding to prevent hurricane damage means acknowledging that there is a continuing danger from hurricanes and that it is getting worse, and that means acknowledging that the funding is not just part of some liberal global-warming conspiracy. (An example, from Heritage’s Katherine Rosario: “Rather than concretely helping hurricane victims rebuild and get on their feet, which would be a more proper manifestation of the federal government’s role in our lives, they’ve taken it upon themselves to decide to spend our money to change the climate of our planet.”)
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/01/the-gop-sandy-problem.html#ixzz2H8mfwbLr
The New York Times has profiled the modest lifestyle of Uruguay’s President, Jose Mujica, who “shunned the opulent Suarez y Reyes presidential mansion, with its staff of 42, remaining instead in the home where he and his wife have lived for years, on a plot of land where they grow chrysanthemums for sale in local markets.” The Times paints Mujica’s lifestyle as sort of a humdrum radicalism: “We have done everything possible to make the presidency less venerated,” he said. A former guerrilla who spent over ten years in solitary, Mujica has overseen a government that has legalized marijuana and same-sex marriage, extended reproductive health rights and has encouraged investment in renewable energy
AS FAR AS THE NFL WILDCARD GOES:
GO HOUSTON!!!
GO MINNESOTA!!!
GO BALTIMORE!!!
GO WASHINGTON!!
VIKINGS & REDSKINS! Peterson & RG3 BAY-BEE!
Glenn Beck is Outraged That Current TV Sold to Al-Jazeera After Rejecting Him
By: Adalia Woodbury
Jan. 3rd, 2013
Conservative lunacy is rapidly accelerating after that harsh bump into the wall of reality. First conservatives take to twitter calling for Sarah Palin to replace John Boehner as Speaker as if that would be a good thing for conservatives. Then Glenn Beck reacted like a jilted lover to the news that Current TV was sold to Al Jazeera
Glenn BeckVerified @glennbeck
Before Al-Jazeera bought Current TV, TheBlaze looked into buying it but we were rejected by progressive owners.
Not to be caught crying in his tea, Beck went on to explain what he had to offer.
Glenn BeckVerified @glennbeck
Note: We would have put #TheBlazeTV in millions of homes across the country, not the existing line up.
Well, how could Al Gore possibly refuse such an appealing offer? After all, people who watch Bill Press and Stephanie Miller will happily give them up for a chance to watch Blaze TV.
http://www.politicususa.com/current-tv-sold-al-jazeera-glenn-beck-crushed.html
CHEESEHENGE
Caution: Genius at work. I love the creativity here.
mmmm…I like it.
Republican Congressman Says He’s Not Convinced Sandy Victims Need Relief
By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Jan. 4th, 2013
Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp told AFA Director of Issues Analysis Bryan Fischer Thursday that he saw no real need for disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy victims. He says FEMA “can’t spend all the [money] quick enough.” In other words, FEMA already has money it hasn’t been able to spend on the victims, so what’s the rush in sending more?
He should talk to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie about that, or New York Rep. Peter King. Both Republicans.
Huelskamp complained that the bill is “loaded up with pork” and that he is “not convinced yet” relief is even needed, leaving you to wonder just how out of touch a Republican can be. When he laments that “for some reason” people need relief from Hurricane Sandy I can only assume he is being willfully ignorant. Congenital stupidity can’t explain his comments.
Of course people in that area need some help, but again if you have 10 or 20 billion dollars cash on hand and you can’t get it spent, why exactly does the first action of this Congress have to be passing a $60 billion spending bill, which we don’t have the money for.”
Funny. You never hear Huelskamp complain about FEMA spending money when that money is going to Kansas tornado victims. This is interesting, because in 2011, Kansas was ranked in the top-9 of states receiving FEMA disaster designations:
http://www.politicususa.com/tim-huelskamp-convinced-sandy-victims-relief.html
Father, save us from this madness!
Soon and very SOON.
Out of Selfish Greed House Republicans Drag Their Feet On Sandy Relief
By: Rmuse
Jan. 4th, 2013
One of the greatest contributors to the human race’s survival is that resources, needs, risks, and other conditions are present and common affecting the participants and their degree of cohesiveness. The concept of community, or the common good, is responsible for any nation’s survival, and Americans have historically viewed their fellow citizens as partners that either succeed together or fail as one, but that notion of community is under attack from Republicans and their libertarian agenda. As the 112th Congress came to an end on Wednesday, Americans got a preview of the “you’re on your own” mindset Republicans have advocated for the past four years, and it portends America’s drift toward the distinction of a nation defined by selfish greed and complete disregard for fellow citizens, or in other words; libertarianism.
When the 112th Congress adjourned for the last time, the House abandoned relief for Hurricane Sandy victims the Senate already passed because many Republicans objected to the cost. It is a recurring theme that plays out all too often, and it drew the ire of Republican legislators representing the affected areas. It is a mystery why the anger from men like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Republican Peter King was extraordinarily personal and why so many Republicans vented their outrage at only one man, Speaker John Boehner. It is not the first time Republicans have told other Americans “you’re on your own,” or that assistance is dependent on cutting aid to another demographic (typically the poor and elderly). However, although Republicans balked at passing the Senate relief plan over alleged concerns about earmarks and non-essential assistance, the real reason was summed up in a Koch-funded think tank statement applauding the decision to ignore the plight of hurricane victims.
One of the organizations calling on legislators to reject the hurricane relief bill, New Jersey’s Americans for Prosperity, said providing aid to the affected areas was disgraceful and would burden the country’s taxpayers and be misspent leading to a spending free-for-all. The state director of the Koch-funded group identified the relief bill as an attempt to “secure funding for wasteful endeavors by appealing to emotion,” and that “tragic things happen every day” that are not the federal government’s responsibility. His advice to New Jersey residents was “suck it up and be responsible,” and it is the libertarian answer to America as a community and unfortunately, a growing sentiment in Republican politics that reared its ugly head during the healthcare reform debate.
http://www.politicususa.com/selfish-greed-house-republicans-drag-feet-sandy-relief.html
Obama Warns Republicans of ‘Catastrophic’ Consequences for Global Economy
By: Sarah Jones
Jan. 5th, 2013
President Obama used his weekly address to explain the stakes in the upcoming debt ceiling showdown. He warned the country and Republicans, “(O)ne thing I will not compromise over is whether or not Congress should pay the tab for a bill they’ve already racked up. If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic.”
Obama warned Republicans that we can’t afford to allow them to hold raising the debt ceiling hostage, “We still need to do more to put Americans back to work while also putting this country on a path to pay down its debt. And our economy can’t afford more protracted showdowns or manufactured crises along the way. Because even as our businesses created 2 million new jobs last year – including 168,000 new jobs last month – the messy brinksmanship in Congress made business owners more uncertain and consumers less confident.”
The President pointed out that he is addressing the deficit, “We know there’s a path forward. Last year, I signed into law $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction. This week’s action further reduces the deficit by $737 billion, making it one of the largest deficit reduction bills passed by Congress in over a decade. And I’m willing to do more.”
Obama isn’t done reforming the tax code either. He said, “(S)pending cuts must be balanced with more reforms to our tax code. The wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations shouldn’t be able to take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren’t available to most Americans.”
http://www.politicususa.com/obama-warns-republicans-catastrophic-consequences-global-economy.html
President Obama’s legacy: One of America’s great warriors for social justice
Political Buzz
January 4, 2013
By: Leo Kapakos
When historians look back on the presidency of Barack Obama, one would hope that they view his legacy as more then just being the first African American President who succeeded despite having to overcome some of the worst treatment a President could withstand; or as more then the President responsible for the establishment of an affordable health care act ensuring healthcare coverage for all Americans; or responsible for having saved the U.S economy from a second depression; or for killing the number one mastermind terrorist in the world.
Indeed one would hope that that historians recognize that President Obama’s legacy is that of a true warrior for social justice. A man of the people who, despite being branded a Socialist ideologue by many on the right, recognized that government has a critical role to play in protecting the most vulnerable citizens among us and assisting in developing opportunities for all Americans. A steadfast true leader, who even when faced with obstruction from hostile political extremists on the right, is still ensuring that all Americans get a fair shake at the American dream. He has already already instituted numerous policies that has opened doors of access to those Americans who didn’t have it before. The President’s endgame is a fair, just, and cohesive America where the collective body and the individual citizen have a mutually beneficial interest in working together for social progress.
Despite the obstruction he faced from an extremist fringe of Tea party Conservatives who rode into Congress in 2010 thinking they owned it, this President would not be deterred. Putting his career at risk at times, he instituted policies he believed would move the country forward and make it a better country for all citizens. The President made healthcare coverage available to all Americans; signed the Jobs Act to save millions of jobs after the economic collapse; did what was economically necessary to save millions of middle-class jobs in America’s auto industry; created collaborative relationships with businesses to provide job training – including green energy jobs; instituted a law that helped provide legal redress for women discriminated against in workforce pay; expanded Pell Grants making sure students have access to financial aid; bolstered support for public education; launched a White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans, to overcome obstacles to equal access to highly effective teachers and principals, and safe schools; continues to make a concerted effort to close the growing income gap in this country; instituted credit card reform making it more consumer friendly; brought our young men and women home from Iraq; repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell”, increased the Department of Veterans Affairs budget; lifted the shadow of deportation from young, hardworking immigrants who were brought here as children; and is committed to comprehensive immigration reform.
http://www.examiner.com/article/president-obama-s-legacy-one-of-america-s-great-warriors-for-social-justice
Sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BWA HA HA HA Bet that BITCH turned 100 shades of RED.
http://youtu.be/5W-yS6IcJO0
The White House’s six best sports photos of 2012
He’s one of the most athletic commander-in-chiefs of all time, so it’s no surprise that photographers frequently capture President Obama tossing around a football or taking in a basketball game (courtside, of course). Official White House photographer Pete Souza recently shared an album of his favorite shots of 2012, many of which showcase the POTUS and his family’s love of sports. Check out some of our favorites below:
1. POTUS and FLOTUS are caught on the Kiss Cam and forced into that dreaded public smooch, to the amusement of Malia and Joe Biden. Presidents: they’re just like us!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2013/01/03/white-house-president-obama-michelle-sports-basketball/1807417/
http://youtu.be/ihUoRD4pYzI
WE ARE BEING GOVERNED BY FOOLS
Lesson of the failed Boehner coup: We’re dealing with idiots
By Alex Pareene
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One problem was a lack of leadership. If, say, Eric Cantor had actually wanted the job, he could’ve organized the coup and succeeded. But Eric Cantor didn’t want the job. The bigger problem, then, was a lack of intelligence. The crazy caucus failed spectacularly at all aspects of the attempted conspiracy, from planning to execution. They waited until the last minute to approach potential allies, failed to count their own votes correctly, and didn’t even all figure out who they were supposed to vote for instead. Their plan was apparently to embarrass Boehner into resigning, in favor of … someone to be decided later. Candidates voted for by plotters included departing Rep. Allen West and former Comptroller David Walker, who are basically the opposites of one another.
;
;
As we race to the coming debt ceiling fiasco, please remember that while John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan know that raising the debt ceiling is a thing that just has to be done, there is no indication that the Gohmerts, Huelskamps, Steve Kings and Michele Bachmanns of their caucus agree. You can’t negotiate a compromise with people who are positive they’ll get their way if they refuse to negotiate at all. You can’t avert a catastrophe if you need the assent of people who think the catastrophe is precisely what this country needs to get back on the right track.
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/lesson_of_the_failed_boehner_coup_were_dealing_with_idiots/
Obama spending binge never happened
By Rex Nutting
—————————–
What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year. It takes time to develop a budget and steer it through Congress — especially in these days of congressional gridlock.
The 2009 fiscal year, which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House. The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress.
Like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded, Obama came in with a budget in place that called for spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars in response to the worst economic and financial calamity in generations.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22
from Lawrence O’Donnell:
” If you’ve ever actually tried to get a Republican in the House or Senate to vote on an income tax rate increase, proposed by a Democratic president–if you’ve done that–and perhaps only if you’ve done that, then you understand how hard it was for President Obama to get a tax
increase out of a Republican House of Representatives and out of a Senate where the Republicans can block anything.
Most pundits and members of Congress for that matter have never negotiated anything more complicated than a car loan or a mortgage and some of them will surely continue to criticize the President’s negotiating skills but the President was playing a very long game here.
Literally years of strategizing including allowing a two-year extension of the Bush rates in order to get strategically positioned, so that he could force Republicans to cast a vote they vowed never to cast.”
http://youtu.be/iDAaUX3kr30
http://youtu.be/4MKb2HSJ4mI
Chips at The Obama Diary has been doing monthly recap videos of 2012. This is June 2012. It’s worth watching, if only for the beginning, when Fox and CNN got the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare wrong. It’s hilarious.
http://youtu.be/thdkdZ1Jnk8
Republicans’ Debt Ceiling Threats Have No Teeth
Friday, January 04, 2013 | Posted by Deaniac83 at 12:56 PM
In the days since Congressional Republicans suffered a utter, complete, and embarrassing defeat at the hands of the president on the fiscal cliff, they have been trying to regroup. One of the ways they have tried to do so is to issue threats that they would refuse to raise the nation’s debt limit if the president does not agree to essentially end the American social compact. Like a wounded animal, they are trying to hit back, and threatening to shut down the government.
But all of that are the empty roars of a paper tiger, and they know it themselves. Of all people, it was Newt Gingrich, the architect of the last government shutdown, this morning on Morning Joe making it clear why this dog won’t hunt:
http://youtu.be/-3Quvm2-Hhk
Gingrich explained that “in the end… the whole national financial system is going to come into Washington by television and say ‘Oh, my god, this will be a gigantic heart attack. The entire economy of the world will collapse. You guys can’t be responsible,’ and they’ll cave.”
I could rest my case right there. But let’s go into this a little bit. Why would I think, for example, that anything in the Republican mindset has changed since 2011, when it did look like they would take the country into default? The answer is several things, but the most compelling of them is this date: November 6, 2012. Throughout the first four years of the president’s administration, everything within the GOP revolved around a singular theory: if they stopped the country from succeeding – better yet, if they hurt the country greatly – it would be seen as a failure of Barack Obama’s, and he would therefore be defeated. The Republicans had also won the elections of 2010, and were emboldened by that victory.
Now, the tables are turned. The Republicans overplayed their hand, and the president trounced their nominee in 2012. Democrats increased their majority in the Senate, and gained seats in the House. The Republicans are no longer in a position to threaten the president’s second term. The president, however, does not have to face an election again, and he can instead concentrate on daring the Republicans to shut down the government and melt down the economy early in the president’s new term, his strongest moment and their weakest.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/01/why-republican-threats-on-debt-ceiling.html
A Cabal of CEOs Try to Bypass the Legislative Process and Impose Their Own Debt Reduction Plan
By: Rmuse
Jan. 5th, 2013
Most parents would agree that giving spoiled, entitled teenagers unrestricted access to money, coupled with no restrictions on their behavior, does little more than produce entitled adults who expect obeisance solely because they are special. America is home to an exclusive club of entitled adults with unlimited riches and power whose life’s goal is extracting every last bit of wealth from every American until they leave the population broken and in dire poverty. Shortly after a deal to avert the Republican fiscal cliff was passed in the House, a consortium of corporate CEOs lambasted the deal as a disaster and called for a specific deficit reduction plan to address the nation’s long term debt. One brilliant suggestion that garnered agreement from the CEO cabal was for corporate CEOs to bypass the legislative process and lay out a plan for deficit reduction, and it invokes a question Americans will have to address if this country is going to survive. How long before our representatives void the Constitution and cede government control to corporate America and finish the drive toward plutocracy executed by corporate America?
The group of CEOs were furious that Congress and the White House failed to include Draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as part of fiscal cliff negotiations, and the head of George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management said executives should identify “sacred cows” that should no longer be protected, be specific about how big a deficit reduction deal they will accept, and get specific about what they want included in program cuts. It is important to note that none of the esteemed CEOs are elected representatives of government, and yet they propose circumventing the legislative process and enacting corporate-friendly cuts regardless of the consequences to the American people. Their assertion that “it doesn’t work talking to the politicians” and that a few corporate CEOs should have the final say in any fiscal decisions is the result of politicians giving credence to anything corporate leaders have to say when it comes to America’s economy.
What is immediately evident is that these men have no qualms slashing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and safety nets when their corporate welfare is part and parcel of America’s revenue problem and economic malaise. However, it is remarkable that these so-called geniuses who are wealthy beyond imagination are of the opinion that cutting Social Security will have any effect on the nation’s deficit, but that is what generally happens when entitled rich people assume special knowledge unknown to mere mortals. For the record, Social Security is forbidden, by statute, to add one stinking cent to the nation’s deficit, and yet it is the favorite “sacred cow” the wealthy and their puppets in Republican ranks put up for cuts to solve the nation’s long term debt.
http://www.politicususa.com/cabal-ceos-bypass-government-impose-debt-reduction-plan.html
Kamikaze Party
by BooMan
Fri Jan 4th, 2013 at 11:26:05 PM EST
If you look at the demographic makeup of Mitt Romney’s inadequate coalition, you’ll notice that it includes the elderly who are on Social Security and use Medicare. You’ll notice that it includes business and finance leaders. These people are not going to like the Republican Party’s coming threat to destroy the stock market if they can’t destroy people’s retirement security. Getting the Republicans to go on that kind of suicide mission should involve a lot of work, but they seem to want to do it for free.
There is an obvious cultural divide in this country that the Republicans use quite effectively. But if they want to truly minimize the effectiveness of that cultural divide, they could hardly do better than to go after white seniors’ earned benefits with a threat to wipe out white businessmen’s profits and white professionals’ 401(k)’s.
It’s easy to imagine an erosion of GOP support among the white working class when the Democrats offer a white presidential candidate in 2016. Whether it’s Biden or Clinton or Cuomo or O’Malley or Warner, or whoever it is, those candidates won’t automatically be losing in Appalachia.
I think the Republicans will have to do substantially better with white voters in 2016 if they want to compete, and I think there is almost no chance that they will. I think Wall Street will be with the Democrats, and I don’t think the GOP will retain their advantage with the elderly.
The GOP is moving to oblivion with breathtaking speed. I can easily see Hillary Clinton winning in 2016 with a very similar electoral map to LBJ’s 1964 landslide.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/1/4/23265/04701
Boehner Needs to Sober Up or Go Home
by BooMan
Sat Jan 5th, 2013 at 11:14:44 AM EST
Late on Election Night, President Obama attempted to call Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, but was told that both were asleep. During the evening of New Year’s Day, John Boehner refused to take phone calls from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Back during the negotiations over the debt ceiling in 2011, John Boehner refused to answer the president’s phone calls, leading the president to complain to Bob Woodward.
“I was pretty angry,” Obama told Woodward. “There’s no doubt I thought it was profoundly irresponsible, at that stage, not to call me back immediately and let me know what was going on.”
Alcoholism is a sickness that should warrant people’s sympathy rather than scorn. If John Boehner would ask for help or adopt a contrite attitude like Sen. Mike Crapo, it would be easy to lay off the criticism and not make such an issue of Boehner’s drinking. But he can’t do his job and his isn’t available to come to the phone in the evenings.
He was so visibly hammered during his speech at the Republican National Convention (a tradition that goes back at least as far as the 1996 convention in San Diego) that Michael Savage played his whole speech on the radio in order to mock his drunkenness. He was absolutely plastered on election night in 2010 (a year in which Joe Scarborough called him a “lazy drunk” on the air). For years people have been speculating that Boehner weeps so often in public because he is drunk so often in public.
Personally, I wouldn’t care about Boehner’s drinking if her were just a congressman. But he’s third in line to the presidency and he’s blotto half the time. He can’t answer phone calls from mayors and governors or even the president if those phone calls come late at night.
It’s ridiculous
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/1/5/111444/9941
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.@GOPBlackChick’s Struggle Plate of Lonliness
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GOPBlackChick talks negative about men, yet laments having no man. @ReignofApril and Twitter take her and @DinHouston down.
http://chirpstory.com/li/44129
GOP Congressmen Who Begged For Federal Aid In Disasters Striking Home Districts Vote Against Sandy Aid
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/01/04/gop-congressmen-who-begged-for-federal-aid-in-disasters-striking-home-districts-vote-against-sandy-aid/
The first piece of the aid bill to assist victims of Super Storm Sandy passed the House of Representatives today, providing $9.7 billion to fund the National Flood Insurance Program so that claims made by victims who purchased flood insurance from the government program can get their money.
Without the additional funding, the insurance fund was set to run out of cash next week as a result of the high volume of claims resulting from the northeastern storm.
Heading out to see Les Miz!
Governor ULTRASOUND still tihinks he’s SLICK
Virginia’s Gov. Bob McDonnell’s (R) secretive signing of new building standards for the state’s abortion clinics has been ripped by pro-choice groups, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
“After two years of shocking backroom deals and bullying public health servants, Gov. Bob McDonnell is clearly proving his disregard of Virginians’ opinions about women’s health care,” NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia Executive Director Tarina Keene said on Monday.
In a rare move, McDonnell did not announce the certification of the new rules, instead posting them online without comment on Dec. 28. They are currently subject to a 60-day public comment period, after which the state Board of Health will decide to send them to McDonnell and Republican state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for final approval
Raw Story (http://s.tt/1xSSV)
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/02/pro-choice-advocates-blast-va-gov-mcdonnells-new-rules-for-abortion-clinics/
Powerful Tea Party Group’s Internal Docs Leak—Read Them Here
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/freedomworks-rich-donors-armey-kibbe-super-pac
FreedomWorks, the national conservative group that helped launch the tea party movement, sells itself as a genuine grassroots operation, and for years it has battled accusations of “astroturfing”—posing as a populist organization while doing the bidding of big-money donors. Yet internal documents obtained by Mother Jones show that FreedomWorks has indeed become dependent on wealthy individual donors to finance its growing operation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY1i4CXKukk&feature=player_embedded
Love this comment: Quick! Get an exorcist in Washington immediately!
Saaaaaaa>>>>>>lap!
Fischer is speaking aboutt the republican party. They’re motivated by deceiving envy, deceiving jealousy, angry resentment b/c a black man is Potus!
Republican Congressman Insults Nancy Pelosi’s Appearance: ‘There’s No Facelift With John Boehner’
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/01/05/1399331/gohmert-pelosi-facelift/?mobile=nc
An outspoken Republican congressman castigated House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s looks during a radio interview Friday.
Speaking with guest host Larry O’Connor on the Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) argued that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was functionally equivalent to Pelosi because both held one-on-one backroom negotiations with the president. Gohmert then went on to deride Pelosi’s appearance: “Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner.”
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Has Louie Gohmert looked at himself in the mirror? Thug mofo!
Remember this RAT BASTARD’s call for the poor & Blacks to go back to sharecropping.
Why on earth is this Texan HILLBILLY allowed in the halls of our congressional chambers to spew this utterly shameful, disgusting, racist, bullshit? Make no mistake about it, if this hillbilly advocates this nonsense, you can bank on it that a few of his peers are on board with poor folks going back to the good old days of sharecropping. Can you say 14th Amendment shenanigans!
Call this cracker crazy all you like, but he believes every word he spews.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVCkG_bxdV0&feature=player_embedded
http://3chicspolitico.com/2010/09/29/rep-louie-gohmert-advoctes-sharecropping-as-welfare-reform/
This, right here is why GOP wants to GUT our PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Oregon charter school founders accused in $20 million racketeering lawsuit
Source: Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian
Tim King and Norm Donohoe, who ran a chain of taxpayer-funded charter schools across small-town Oregon from their headquarters in Clackamas, scammed the state out of $17 million and must repay that plus $2.7 million more, the state said in a court filing this week.
The legal claim, brought Thursday by the Oregon Department of Justice in Marion County Circuit Court, accuses the pair of racketeering, money laundering and other fraud from 2007 to 2010.
King and Donohoe, who were the director and president, respectively, of a nonprofit they named EdChoices, submitted false, incomplete and misleading records about how many students were enrolled in the schools and how they were spending the state’s money, state prosecutors say in the complaint.
Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/01/oregon_charter_school_founders.html
Tax Code May Be the Most Progressive Since 1979
By ANNIE LOWREY
Published: January 4, 2013
WASHINGTON — With 2013 bringing tax increases on the incomes of a small sliver of the richest Americans, the country’s top earners now face a heavier tax burden than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president.
The last-minute deal struck by the departing 112th Congress raised taxes on a handful of the highest-earning Americans, with about 99.3 percent of households experiencing no change in their income taxes. But the Tax Policy Center estimates that the average family in the top 1 percent will pay a federal tax rate of more than 36 percent this year, up from 28 percent in 2008. That is the highest rate since 1979, at least.
By some measures, the tax code might now be the most progressive in a generation, tax economists said, while noting that every American is paying a lower burden currently than they did then. In fact, the total federal tax rate is still vastly lower for the very rich than it was at any point in the 1940s through 1970s. It has risen from historical lows, but is still closer to those lows than where it was in the postwar decades.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/business/after-fiscal-deal-tax-code-may-be-most-progressive-since-1979.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&
Paul Ryan Is Not A Serious Person, Part The Infinity
By Charles P. Pierce-at 4:30PM
You may have missed it today, but Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin and recent runner-up for vice-president, voted against the flood relief package for the victims of superstorm Sandy. Naturally, because he is a man of Big Ideas, Ryan voted to keep people sleeping in their minivans because that is for their own good, and for the good of the country.
Among these were Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate, who said in a statement it “would be irresponsible to raise an insolvent program’s debt ceiling without making the necessary reforms.”
Of course, back in 2008, when severe flooding devastated certain portions of the Midwest, including Ryan’s own congressional district, the zombie Ayes had it, baby, and he made sure that his embattled constituents knew where they could find those sweet government checks
Read more: Paul Ryan Votes Against Sandy Relief – Paul Ryan Is Not A Serious Person, Part The Infinity – Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-votes-against-sandy-relief-010413#ixzz2H7JkR1PB
Gabrielle Giffords, Newtown leader discuss ‘desensitized’ society
NEWTOWN, Conn. — Former U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on Friday visited the town where 26 people, including 20 children, were killed at an elementary school.
The former Arizona congresswoman met for 45 minutes Friday afternoon with Newtown selectmen Pat Llodra and Jim Gaston, Rob Sibley, the town’s deputy land use director, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, said Llodra. Gifford was accompanied by her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly.
Llodra said they discussed “needed change in gun control legislation” and “greater awareness of mental health issues,” including identifying and treating people who have mental health problems.
They talked about “concerns that our society has become desensitized to acts of violence, conflict and aggression,” and the need for adults “to examine” their role “in allowing societal values to become eroded,” she said.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/04/giffords-visits-newtown-shooting-victims/1809571/
Jay-Z and Beyonce drop $1 million a year on daughter Blue Ivy’s nursery at Barclays Center: report
By Chiderah Monde / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The most buzzed about baby of the year Blue Ivy Carter gets only the best from her parents, even when her famous dad Jay-Z has to watch his Brooklyn Nets play at the Barclays Center.
“Jay rents a luxurious basement suite for $1 million a year,” a source revealed to Us Weekly. “It has an area for Blue filled with toys.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/jay-z-spends-1million-year-blue-ivy-barclays-nursery-article-1.1233243#ixzz2H6zEBKGV
This doc looks like MUST SEE TV.
‘Frontline’ raises questions about test-score tampering under Rhee
By Emma Brown,
Jan 05, 2013 04:16 AM EST
The Washington Post Published: January 4
Student standardized-test scores at an award-winning D.C. school dropped dramatically in 2011 after the principal tightened security out of concern about possible cheating, according to a new “Frontline” television documentary to be broadcast Tuesday.
The hour-long program raises questions about whether District officials have adequately investigated persistent suspicions that public school employees may have tampered with tests during the tenure of former Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/documentary-examines-michelle-rhees-legacy-in-dc/2013/01/04/ae86e8a6-55f7-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html?tid=pm_local_pop
Good Morning, 3 CHICAS & Everyone!
Look at these Pretty lil Chics! Just too cute..:-)
Good Afternoon, Everyone :)