Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Obama:"If I Said The Sky Was Blue,They Would Say No"
More of this please. If the Democrats are going to save anything from the mid-term elections they need to keep repeating this over and over.
Monday, September 6, 2010
The great jobs depression worsens
Robert Reich on target as usual.
Full article here.
The number of Americans willing and able to work but who cannot find a job hasn’t stopped growing since the start of 2008. All told, about 22 million Americans are now jobless. Add in those who are working part-time who’d rather be working full time, and we’re up to 25 million.
And because most families depend on two paychecks, the practical impact is almost double.
All this has a negative multiplier on the economy. If families can’t pay their bills, their mortgages become delinquent (that’s why mortgage delinquencies keep rising), their credit card bills go unpaid (we’re seeing a notable rise in credit card defaults), and they can’t afford to buy anything other than necessities (hence auto sales have plummeted, new homes sales are down, and retail sales are in the pits).
Full article here.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
To honor Labor Day
'Trade Union' has become a dirty expression in American politics. Unions are blamed for everything from vote rigging to ruining companies. Unionized government employees are reviled for earning a decent living with health care and a pension by those who earn far more.
America grew and prospered because trade unions fought and died for safe working conditions and decent pay so that workers could be part of the American Dream. They earned enough and were secure enough to own their own homes, to have access to health care, to send their children to college, to enjoy vacations and to retire with a pension
Today that dream is threatened as incomes for the majority of Americans have stagnated, not merely since the recent economic downturn but for the past two decades while incomes for the wealthiest have soared.
Capitalism does best when everyone has a stake. That has changed for the worse and the prospects of this trend reversing are becoming less likely.
Friday, September 3, 2010
The insanity starts
The end of the Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer and the beginning of election season. With the rise of the Tea Party and the accompanying disconnect from the real world this election season should be a doozie.
Here is short rundown of what to expect just from today.
Sharron Angle GOP candidate for Harry Reid' Senate seat in Nevada says that paying unemployment benefits help no-one. Tell that to people who have lost their jobs, another 472,000 this past week alone.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, in supporting the Arizona immigration law, claimed that headless bodies, no doubt the work of illegal immigrants had been turning up all over Arizona. Law enforcement claimed no such thing has or had happened. refusing to retract her false claim.
Dick Armey, former House Majority leader from Texas and one of the leading lights in the launching of the Tea Party claimed that 3 percent of Democrats are dead peoplewhich is why they win elections. Actually most Tea party members are brain dead but that hasn't stopped them from either expressing their opinions or voting. Watch this video from last week's 'I am Glen Beck and I am the new Messiah' rally in Washington. Notice that when presented with Beck's statement that Obama is a racist (something he has said more than once on TV) not one person believes it to be true.
GOP Senate candidate for Colorado, Ken Buck claims high school education in the 1950's was far better than it is todaybecause of the advent of the Department of Education. He should probably check his facts before proving just how dumb he is. In 1957 less than 50% of white high schoolgoers graduated and less than 20% of blacks graduated. Perhaps he has also forgotten that schools were almost totally segregated in the 1950's. By comparion, in 2002 over 90% of white and over 80% of black children graduated high school. During the same period college graduation rates have tripled for both races.
And all this on a quiet pre-long weekend Friday. It will only get worse and the mainstream media, with a few exceptions, will sit idly by, or in the case of Fox, will actively enable the dissemination of what can only be called 'bullshit'. There is no other apt description.
Here is short rundown of what to expect just from today.
Sharron Angle GOP candidate for Harry Reid' Senate seat in Nevada says that paying unemployment benefits help no-one. Tell that to people who have lost their jobs, another 472,000 this past week alone.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, in supporting the Arizona immigration law, claimed that headless bodies, no doubt the work of illegal immigrants had been turning up all over Arizona. Law enforcement claimed no such thing has or had happened. refusing to retract her false claim.
Dick Armey, former House Majority leader from Texas and one of the leading lights in the launching of the Tea Party claimed that 3 percent of Democrats are dead peoplewhich is why they win elections. Actually most Tea party members are brain dead but that hasn't stopped them from either expressing their opinions or voting. Watch this video from last week's 'I am Glen Beck and I am the new Messiah' rally in Washington. Notice that when presented with Beck's statement that Obama is a racist (something he has said more than once on TV) not one person believes it to be true.
GOP Senate candidate for Colorado, Ken Buck claims high school education in the 1950's was far better than it is todaybecause of the advent of the Department of Education. He should probably check his facts before proving just how dumb he is. In 1957 less than 50% of white high schoolgoers graduated and less than 20% of blacks graduated. Perhaps he has also forgotten that schools were almost totally segregated in the 1950's. By comparion, in 2002 over 90% of white and over 80% of black children graduated high school. During the same period college graduation rates have tripled for both races.
And all this on a quiet pre-long weekend Friday. It will only get worse and the mainstream media, with a few exceptions, will sit idly by, or in the case of Fox, will actively enable the dissemination of what can only be called 'bullshit'. There is no other apt description.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
How lies become the truth
One of the GOP strategies for the November elections is to go after Nancy Pelosi who is, after all the devil incarnate. The Wisconsin GOP has gone one better than most in the Pelosi demonization race claiming that she had a 'super secret fundraiser' for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett. They claim no cameras were allowed at the fundraiser so this is their depiction of the meeting.
Trouble is no such meeting or fundraiser ever happened. Despite that, Fox News is aleady all over the story and the rest of the media are too lazy or disinterested to report the truth and so another lie becomes 'the truth' in the eyes of those who are inclined to believe everything the right wing propoganda echo chamber tells them.
Trouble is no such meeting or fundraiser ever happened. Despite that, Fox News is aleady all over the story and the rest of the media are too lazy or disinterested to report the truth and so another lie becomes 'the truth' in the eyes of those who are inclined to believe everything the right wing propoganda echo chamber tells them.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Meanwhile in Ohio
The GOP are lucky the Tea Party candidate chose to run for the Constitution Party instead of the GOP. The Constitution Party candidate Eric W. Deaton was charged with unlawful sex with a minor on numerous occasions. Deaton, who was in charge of a childre's program at a local church is being investigated for possuble additional underage dalliances.
He claims the charges are politically based and have o merit. His fallback argument, should the evidence against him be a little more compelling that the law against sex with a minor is unconstitutional because it isn't directly mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. He will then o doubr accuse the judge as an 'activist judge' trying to subvert the origial intet of the document.
He claims the charges are politically based and have o merit. His fallback argument, should the evidence against him be a little more compelling that the law against sex with a minor is unconstitutional because it isn't directly mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. He will then o doubr accuse the judge as an 'activist judge' trying to subvert the origial intet of the document.
The Alaska Senate Race gets interesting.
Alaska was considered a safe seat for the Republicans with Sen, Lisa Murkowski the incumbent running in the Primary against Joe Miller, a Tea Partier in the Sharon Angle vein. That was until Sarah Palin weighed in and threw her support behid Miller.
Miller won the primary by the slimmest of margins and will now face Democratic nominee Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams.
Miller supports the usual Tea Party wish list. Among his views: He wants to eliminate the Department of Education, believes the government shouldn't pay for unemployment insurance and says of climate change on his campaign site that it "may not even exist." Among the more mainstream GOP positions he's taken: Miller would cut welfare; eliminate health care for the poor by scrapping Medicaid; and the Anchorage Daily News reported that he has has called for sweeping cuts to Medicare and Social Security with a goal of phasing them out entirely in favor of total privatization which would mean handing over all of Social Security to Wall Street. If the average Joe actually realized that, the idea, floated by the Bush admistration for a while might now seem like such a good idea.
Most pundits still expect Miller to win in a state that is relatively reliably Republican but in an election where Kentucky and Nevada, both seats that were expected to be easy GOP wins, tea Party candidates have caused the races to tighten considerably.
Miller won the primary by the slimmest of margins and will now face Democratic nominee Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams.
Miller supports the usual Tea Party wish list. Among his views: He wants to eliminate the Department of Education, believes the government shouldn't pay for unemployment insurance and says of climate change on his campaign site that it "may not even exist." Among the more mainstream GOP positions he's taken: Miller would cut welfare; eliminate health care for the poor by scrapping Medicaid; and the Anchorage Daily News reported that he has has called for sweeping cuts to Medicare and Social Security with a goal of phasing them out entirely in favor of total privatization which would mean handing over all of Social Security to Wall Street. If the average Joe actually realized that, the idea, floated by the Bush admistration for a while might now seem like such a good idea.
Most pundits still expect Miller to win in a state that is relatively reliably Republican but in an election where Kentucky and Nevada, both seats that were expected to be easy GOP wins, tea Party candidates have caused the races to tighten considerably.
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