Of course we evil doing liberals know for absolute certain that Republicans would never, ever, hell would have to freeze over,crack down on a scam that rips off people but is good for business.
Houston's conservative readers in Houston did not want to know about the totally screwed temporary but really permanent employees as reported by Rick Casey. With all due respect to Casey, he is not exactly a flaming liberal pinko communist progressive.
Houston area conservatives tore into Casey because they did not like his article.
In response to a comment I had posted on Mr. Casey's online article, a conservative responded with the following.
....as far as jobs and benefits, the unemployment rate has increased dramatically since the Demos took charge of both houses of Congress and Presidency. this is because evil white old white guys, the Chinese who hold our debt and many others are scared of the Demos reckless spending that will soon bankrupt the country.
Hint: This dude watches FOX and listens to Rush.
I wonder where this guy was when then Vice President Dick Cheney said deficits didn't matter and he and Bush stuck an unnecessary war and tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans at the same time, putting all on our national credit card? All of a sudden Republicans are all but hysterical over the deficit. And yet when the Senate introduced a bill proposing a deficit reduction commission 7 Republicans who supported it voted NO when the President said it was a good idea. Talk about political bi-polar disorderly dysfunction syndrome. What is wrong with them?
The truth of the matter is, Democrats are really good at cleaning up Republican made messes. We know what it takes to rebuild a devastated economy and we know how to catch terrorist leaders. The Obama Administration has caught more Taliban terrorist leaders, by the way, in one month than the Bush Administration caught in 6 years. And U.S. troops seized a Taliban headquarters in Afghanistan today. Poor Dick Cheney must have fainted when he learned about this. He is running out of stones to throw at President Obama. So much for Democrats being weak on national security.
Will the Senator from Wal-Mart please yield to the Senator from Halliburton? The Congressman from Black Water has 5 minutes remaining before the Congresswoman from United Health may speak.
Mark your calendars, folks. January 21, 2010 is the day the radical and activist Supreme Court of the United States delivered the U.S. Democracy into the hands of the corporate sector and special interests groups. According to an article in the New York Times corporations, lobbyists and unions can now legally purchase their candidates of choice.
"We have got a million we can spend advertising for you or against you - whichever one you want,' " a lobbyist can tell lawmakers, said Lawrence M. Noble, a lawyer at Skadden Arps in Washington and former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission.
The decision yesterday will usher in unimaginable numbers of Swift Boat attack ads. Corporate fat cats can now threaten and bully politicians to do their bidding or else.
"It will put on steroids the trend that outside groups are increasingly dominating campaigns," Mr. Ginsberg said. "Candidates lose control of their message. Some of these guys lose control of their whole personalities."
"Parties will sort of shrink in the relative importance of things," he added, "and outside groups will take over more of the functions - advertising support, get out the vote - that parties do now."
In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.
Many of those commenting on the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission have focused on the power-grab part. I agree with them. It was unnecessary for the court to go so far when there were several less-radical grounds available. It was audacious to seize the opportunity to overrule precedents when the parties had not pressed this issue and the lower courts had not considered it. It was the height of activism to usurp the judgments of Congress and state legislatures about how best to prevent corruption of the political process.
"If it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide more," a wise judge once wrote. That was Chief Justice John G. Roberts -- back when -- and dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens rightly turned that line against him.
Who would have thought? In its true and hypocritical form The Party of No and Obstruction opposes President Obama's proposed fees on banks.
Dick Cheney must be hard at work at that printing press in his undisclosed basement.
Prominent Republicans are coming out in opposition to President Barack Obama's proposal for a $90-billion fee on large banks that took bailout money, a move that political observers say could force the GOP to choose between their traditional anti-tax position and populist anger over the bailout.
On Thursday, GOP Chairman Michael Steele declared that the bank fee -- which would be levied only on banks that took bailout money and have more than $50 billion in assets -- is "another tax on the American public."
The GOP is standing by fat cat the banker in yet another effort to oppose President Obama. Republicans demonstrate time and time again that they are willing to put politics ahead of working on solutions to solve the daunting challenges that we face on local, state and national levels.
Gov. Rick Perry must be worried that the citizens of Texas are going to lose their minds and turn state government over to the Democrats.
This week on the campaign stump, he proposed two state constitutional amendments based on the notion that we can't afford democracy.
One is that any state tax increase would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
Functionally this is already the case in the Senate, where everything but voter ID bills needs a two-thirds majority, but apparently Perry is concerned because Texas two years ago elected an uncomfortable number of Democrats and tossed autocratic Speaker Tom Craddick in favor of a speaker who will actually work with said Democrats.
Maybe Perry has become a great admirer of California, where a two-thirds requirement for passing a budget led to the state paying its bills with IOUs while the Legislature bickered and showboated.
Casey is spot on where California's woes are concerned. The state requires a two-thirds majority in order to pass tax increases. Of course since Republicans have an unholy aversion to taxes it is all but impossible to implement tax increases. Consequently schools go without funding and teachers lose their jobs. Class sizes increase and the quality of education thereby decreases. College professors in the University of California system had to take 8% cuts in salaries. Tuition and fees have increased to the point that it is very difficult for working and middle class students to afford a four year college education. There is no money to fix roads and bridges. The state's infrastructure will take a serious nose dive.
What is it with Republican Party? Does it utterly despise hard working and desperate Americans?
Is the GOP too stubborn, lazy or too dumb to wrap its head around a very complex bill? Or maybe reading is a very tedious and beyond boring act that takes time that could be otherwise spent playing golf or sipping martinis with health insurance lobbyists.
Hundreds of Americans die every month because they lack health care insurance. Do Republicans, including the self-serving,vindictive and tool for the health insurance companies, Joe Lieberman care?
Can obese pigs fly?
I did not think so.
Everyone is entitled to one's opinion but not to making up the facts.
Whether it is health care reform or the economic meltdown, Republicans refuse to realistically acknowledge the domestic disasters that confront us whether it has to do with thousands upon thousands of Americans who die because of lack of access to health insurance. Republicans are also unmoved by the thousands upon thousands of Americans who have lost their jobs, homes and everything they have worked so hard to achieve.
Check out how the Republican tools for health insurance lobbyists operate.
Witness a work in narcissism.
Oh, so, Republicans want to improve the bill? For whom? The insurance health care industry?
You betcha.
Oh, Joe, come on, be brave and come out of your Republican closet. Admit that you are a tool for the fat cat health insurance lobbyist. And so is your wife. Come on Joe, admit this is all about you and you don't give a rat's derriere about your constituents who will die sooner than they should because you care about your ego more than you do about the people who elected you.
Of course there is not a civil war brewing in the Republican Party. Someone just made it up. But a leading conservative has recently called the non-civil non-war an impending bloodbath.
After the havoc the Republican Party and its newly formed teabagger faction have wreaked on this country from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush and culminating with the horror of George W. Bush and his neocon policies, a bloodbath sounds just fine by me. Indeed, one is long overdue.
According to yesterday's Houston Chronicle, the teabaggers in Texas are fed up and want to throw all of the bums out. In Texas, the bums happen to be Republicans.
Even Rick Perry is a target of this group because he apparently is not conservative enough.
While it's too early to determine if the Tea Party movement will prove to be a durable political force, its candidates could prove a costly and unwanted distraction for establishment Republicans who would rather be aiming their fire at Democrats. Case in point: the GOP race for governor, where Tea Party ally Debra Medina of Wharton has announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination against incumbent Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom she dismisses derisively as "get-along-style politicians."
When I learn of the appalling and pervasive corruption that has overtaken our state and U.S. government, not to mention our society, I have to admit that I feel as if I've been punched in the gut and kicked really hard in the butt.
Just when we think we've heard the absolute worst of the very worst, inevitably something even more awful will emerge.
The recent exposure of the Bush Administration's pervasive corruption, the Bush Administration's lies, the ginned up war in Iraq, Halliburton's criminal overcharges, Blackwater that prides itself on offing innocent Iraqis, and its bribes to the Iraqi government to buy silence, the deregulated banks, sub prime loans, Wall. St. and its U.S. government enabled reckless gambling casinos, at taxpayer peril, thank you, the discovery of FOX News as the undeniable propaganda arm for the GOP, the self-serving teabagging front groups that pretend to be grassroots movements that use and abuse well-meaning and misled teabaggers, and on and on...It is enough to suck all of the breath out of my lungs.
What would St. Ronnie say if he knew? Gee whiz, what happened!? Or, I know it all sounds terrible and really scary, but in the end, all of the above will be really good for the American people. Trust me folks, there will be 25 chickens in every pot next year and a pony in every back yard. Be patient. Work harder. You don't have a job? You are not working hard enough, you lazy, shiftless bum! Go to the mall. Buy a house full of garbage you don't need. Just be happy and all of of our troubles will disappear.
But the grand old actor wizard and the master of deep deception has long since departed. And there is no St. Ronnie today who can sugar coat the awful and the scary.
What truly sends chills down my spine this time is the discovery that a group of Christian Republicans and Democratic U.S. lawmakers, thank you, seem to be on a crusade to turn our U.S. government into one that is "led by God."
Why does this imperative remind me somehow of the Taliban and the so-called God run governments Iran and Saudi Arabia?
It all starts with pro-slavery driven and unfettered corporate imperatives.
Liz Cheney, whose father served as one of the architects of two wars, one of which is unnecessary and which has broken us in terms of blood and treasure, and her father, who had also received five deferments during the Vietnam War, attacked President Obama for greeting our fallen soldiers at the Dover Air Force Base.
Only a Republican could turn a respectful and well-meaning Presidential act into an inappropriate or self-serving one.
How low can they go? Apparently the pit is bottomless, as readers will see later in the post.
Veterans over at Daily Kos have much to say about Liz Cheney and her father.
This President rocks. It's daunting to think about how many warehouses of socialist mops and vats of extra strength socialist Lysol we'll need to clean up Republican Texas.
Aside from the need for socialist mops, the really good news today is that it looks like we are getting closer to HCR that includes a public option. We have the AHIP (American Health Insurance Plans) to thank for this. According to Paul Krugman of the New York Times AHIP's threat to increase rates b/c it didn't like the Baucus bill backfired.
A Hatchet Job So Bad It's Good
It seems that a bunch of selfish greed mongering fat cats had become so desperate and crazed by the mere thought of losing one penny that the fat cats blew up the very building they were protecting.
Shall we cry 'em a river folks?
I didn't think so.
Meanwhile, there were other pressing developments today in the U.N and in the U.S. Congress:
Big thanks to the 44 Diaries for sharing this with us.
LBJ would use the term "peckers in pockets" when pushing through Medicare. According to the former President, he needed "peckers in his pocket" to make sure the bill passed. I imagine few Presidents have made abundant use of such colorful language as LBJ. It sure would be nice if we had him around today. Given today's political climate of hysterical drama queens and kings, LBJ's descriptions would no doubt be brutally hilarious and priceless.
Speaking of pocketed peckers, who is running the Senate healthcare mark-up today? Are our Senators working for us or are they working for insurance?
Today, on CSPAN our very own Senator John Cornyn shows us he is a pawn for the insurance industry. Cornyn likes things the way they are, meaning he does not care that Texas has the highest number of uninsured residents. And he has no intention of lifting a finger to change the plight of the untreated. Predictably Cornyn had tried to "grandfather in" insurance companies in order to protect their profits. According to Senator Rockefeller Cornyn's amendment also favored 46% of the population while it would work against 54% of the people. Is this the best Big John could do? What a stand up dude. Texas should be so proud. Fortunately his pandering amendment promoting the status quo failed 13-10.
Reacting to an amendment proposed by Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas) during the Senate Finance Committee's markup of health care reform legislation on Thursday, committee member Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) called his colleague a pawn of the health insurance industry.
"This is a very, very important amendment and it's a very, very bad amendment," said Rockefeller. "If there's anything which is clear, it's that the insurance industry is not running this markup, but is running certain people in this markup."
Senator Cornyn, by the way, received $759,000 from health professionals, $350,000 from insurance, $222,000 from Pharma and $248,000 from lobbyists. A video clip of the exchange between Senators Cornyn and Rockefeller can be seen in the link above.
This morning on Pacifica radio a caller told her story about the plight of those without health insurance. Because of pre-existing conditions insurance for her family of 4 would cost a whopping $3200.00 per year with a $12,000. deductible, which means little very insurance coverage. She, like many folks, cannot afford it. When her 10 year old daughter badly sprained her arm, the trip to the ER and treatment came to between $1500.-$2000. This is beyond ridiculous.
This is why I have such contempt for the self-serving shills like the teabagger nut job below. They are doing all they can to make the lives of the woman who called Pacifica and others more desperate than they already are.
First of all, the really good news for Texas Democrats is, according to recent polling, the Texas GOP is shrinking. Woohoo! All of our hard work has not been in vain. Let's take a little break here for a moment of celebration.
Moving along, the Party of Abysmal Failure failed to bring President Obama down this summer. The Party of Do-Nothing, Status Quo loving and NO! NO! NO! could not make healthcare reform the President's Waterloo. Given the information above, one should not be surprised. As I mentioned earlier, all that is left in the GOP is mostly a bunch of cranky old wacko white folks (Rush, Glenn, et al.); delusional paranoids, i.e. Dick Cheney; crooks, a la Karl Rove, Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff; the ethically challenged, i.e. all Texas GOP lawmakers; and fringe elements i.e. birthers, deathers, teabaggers, assault weapon lovers, racists, xenophobes, general and variety haters of everything different, and under-educated and pliable scared people. The GOP also has more than its fair share of family values hypocrites like the dude below.
Nicholas Kristof of the The New York Times wrote an article about a friend of his who, because of the harsh economic circumstances surrounding her husband's condition, had to choose between bankruptcy and divorce.
My friend M. - you'll understand in a moment why she's terrified of my using her name - had to make a searing decision a year ago. She was married to a sweet, gentle man whom she loved, but who had become increasingly absent-minded. Finally, he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
Dementia ultimately requires long-term care, including institutionalization. In order to provide for her husband's long-term care, "M" would have been forced to sell off all of the assets meant for her and her first and late husband's children.
"M" thus had to choose between her second husband's care and her children's financial security.
Caught Red Handed. Sen. Grassley Voted for "Death Panels" in 2003
Oh those lying liars and the lies they tell.
According to Amy Sullivan at Time many of the very same death panel liars voted in favor of end-of-life counseling in 2003.
You would think that if Republicans wanted to totally mischaracterize a health care provision and demagogue it like nobody's business, they would at least pick something that the vast majority of them hadn't already voted for just a few years earlier. Because that's not just shameless, it's stupid.
Yes, that's right. Remember the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, the one that passed with the votes of 204 GOP House members and 42 GOP Senators? Anyone want to guess what it provided funding for? Did you say counseling for end-of-life issues and care? Ding ding ding!!
Ho hum. Life chugs along as usual in the Republican realm.
OK so Karl Rove lied about his involvement with the fired U.S. attorneys. Yawn. What else is new?
The New York Times revealed something that we in the internets and tubes have known for some time. I am glad that at least some journalists are emerging out of their eight year slumber.
Internal e-mail messages in the spring of 2005 at the White House showed that there was widespread unhappiness with David Iglesias, the United States attorney in New Mexico, because of the perception among top Republicans that he was dragging his feet on voter fraud and corruption investigations involving Democrats.
In a June 2005 message, Scott Jennings, a top political aide to Mr. Rove, wrote a colleague that Mr. Iglesias should be removed because Republicans in New Mexico "are really angry over his lack of action on voter fraud stuff."
"Iglesias has done nothing," it continued. "We are getting killed out there."
There are many ways in which the health care titans and their tools in the Republican Party manipulate and play upon the ignorance and fears of senior citizens and under-educated Americans. Most of its targeted base is the most vulnerable. It is older folks who are sadly, the easiest prey for utterly evil sharks and profiteers. Next up are under-educated and low information Americans. These groups provide a solid anchor in the crumbling GOP base and these supporters also happen to be Rush Limbaugh's frequent listeners.
But there is a third group and this is the one that is the most sinister and dangerous. They are not old folks who are fearful about losing their Medicare benefits. They are not the folks who are honestly confused about what health care reform will mean for them. As Paul Krugman wrote in his article The Town Hall Mob today.
Now, people who don't know that Medicare is a government program probably aren't reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they're probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they've heard about what he's doing, than to who he is.
That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that's behind the "birther" movement, which denies Mr. Obama's citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don't know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's a substantial fraction.
And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers.
Does this sound familiar? It should: it's a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.
Indeed, this is the group of folks who despise President Obama and everything he stands for. They are the ones who attended Palin's hate fests in droves. They are the ones who screamed "Kill Him!" and "Arab!" at Palin's potential lynch mob scenes. These very same sick and twisted cretins listen to every hateful word spewed from the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other hate mongers on the right.
The crazed racists made their forceful presence known at a town hall in Tampa yesterday.
The poll's findings are a monumental embarrassment for Texas and the South. It should also be extraordinarily humiliating for the Republican Party to know that it has become a regional rump Party of the South comprised largely of old folks and and a majority of the racially intolerant and xenophobes.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow recently reported on a Christian boardinghouse in Washington that serves as a dorm, meeting and praying place for conservative Christian Republican politicians. But it seems that the occupants and members of this prayer house are busy doing a lot more than praying. According to Maddow's reports, the religious boardinghouse is also a safe haven for adulterers. But this is not the only unholy activity that has pervaded this so-called Christian establishment. According to a separate report written by Gail Collins of The New York Times the founder of the religious group that owns the boardinghouse had organized a movement of those who were united against President Roosevelt's New Deal during the Great Depression.
Ok folks, I've had it. I am so over Republican double-talk, double standards and not so thinly veiled racism, sexism and anti-intellectualism. I am completely fed up with the Republican raking of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over the coals for ridiculous non-existent nonsense.
First of all I would like to point out at least one level of hypocrisy and double standard where Sotomayor's Republican naysayers are concerned.
Sonia Sotomayor's academic credentials are not only impeccable they are extraordinary. She is clearly brilliant. Her judicial record speaks for itself. Three Presidents, including George Bush, nominated Ms. Sotomayor to federal benches. All of her confirmation hearings received wide bi-partisan support. So what is the Republican's real problem with Ms. Sotomayor now?
I definitely have to stop sipping coffee when reading the Houston Chronicle in the morning. Too many times my freshly brewed favorite morning beverage is spat out because I am appalled and/or disgusted by something I read.
This morning happened to be one of those days when my morning joe ended up on the front page of the Houston Chronicle.
The headline that captured my attention:
A case of mistaken identity?
Environmentalists surprised that A&M scientist named to board has sided with industry
By MATTHEW TRESAUGUE
Apparently a Texas A&M educated scientist who holds two advanced degrees and a doctorate in agricultural engineering to boot, is skeptical of the proven science supporting the fact that human activity is largely responsible for pollution.
