November 2011
How Tea Party Could Drive GOP to Disaster
David Frum has a new item for CNN today, pondering a series of 2012 scenarios. The one he likes least is the fourth of four options: Republican voters nominate a “Tea Party Republican” who goes on to win the White House.
In which case, not only tea party Republicans but all Republicans and all Americans will confront the problem: what next?
The tea party stands for a series of propositions that...
October 2011
Will Ferrell To Make Political Comedy
“It’s basically the story of a small time congressional district in North Carolina, in the south, and I’m the incumbent candidate who’s about to run unopposed for my fifth term,” said Ferrell. “…I’m cruising along until I leave what I think is a message on my mistress’ voicemail but it’s really just a random family and it blows up in my face. I’m seen as vulnerable for the first time and...
WatchAsk Andrew Sullivan Anything: What To Make Of Herman Cain?
“…they [the media industrial complex of the Right Wing] have turned Republicanism from politics into entertainment, and has made everything about ideology and performance.”
"Inequality in America Is even Worse than You...
Justin Elliott of Salon:
“The German think tank [Bertelsmann Foundation] used a set of policy analyses to create a Social Justice Index of 31 developed nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The United States came in a dismal 27th in the rankings.”
There comes a time when exploitation and advantages will break the system. We are at...
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GOP Losing Political Narrative Over OWS
Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) speech last week at the Heritage Foundation is evidence the GOP is “worried that it is losing control of the political narrative…. Ryan offered the classic defense of inequality, arguing that what really matters is upward mobility, and that the United States has more of it than those horrible welfare states in Europe….
The only problem is...
"Weaponized Keynesians."
Paul Krugman: Republicans know government spending creates jobs; they say so every time there’s a chance military spending will be cut; they just don’t want you “to know what they know, because that would hurt their larger agenda — keeping regulation and taxes on the wealthy at bay.”
A few years back Representative Barney Frank coined an apt phrase for many of his...
“His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like...”
– Mona Simpson, sister of Steve Jobs, from her eulogy in the NYT.
The Cain Bubble: What's That Popping Sound?
“Have you ever been accused, sir, in your life of harassment by a woman?” “He breathed audibly, glared at the reporter and stayed silent for several seconds. After the question was repeated three times, he responded by asking the reporter, ‘Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?’” — Herman Cain, responding to a question by Politico, in a...
2 police turn in their badges yesterday after...
occupyallstreets:
#occupydenver confirmed report: one police officer with tears in eyes said “I can’t do this anymore” and walked away from line standoff.
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All-Time Train Wreck
“Rick Perry is going to go down in history for the all-time train wreck beginning. Because private polling in Iowa 40 days ago had him leading.” — GOP strategist Mike Murphy, on Meet the Press, commenting on the latest Iowa Poll that has Perry in 6th place.
Typical Republican campaign, the more people get to know about the candidate, the less they like them. See Rudy...
“Once you recognize that the majority of fertilized eggs don’t become people,...”
– Push for ‘Personhood’ Amendments Is New Tack in Abortion Fight (via Running Chicken)
“That’s what I find absolutely bizarre: Republicans moralizing about...”
– Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by the Orlando Sentinel, speaking to Florida Democrats.
Complexity Of #Occupy Not A Soundbyte
Dahlia Lithwick says that the media’s bafflement toward the Occupy Wall Street movement is the result of its obsession with simple storylines that can be explained in 60 seconds or less:
Mark your calendars: The corporate media died when it announced it was too sophisticated to understand simple declarative sentences. While the mainstream media expresses puzzlement and fear at these ...
Occupy Wall Street and the Redistribution of...
Occupy Wall Street is about anxiety, and the courage of young people to fly into conflict on Gandhi’s wings. This is the noble legacy of civil disobedience on display at Zuccotti Park. We are seeing that anxiety channeled by courage can transform a society.
What does anxiety look like? You can see this drama played out as the demonstrators meditate surrounded by police whose anxiety is...
Why Occupy Wall Street Has Struck A Nerve
“Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive [upward] redistribution [of wealth]. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft…. The system is rigged. Wealthy individuals and corporations have disproportionate influence over public policy because of the often decisive role that money plays in...
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#OccupyOakland Back!
“Occupy Oakland protesters moved Thursday to reclaim the battleground plaza outside City Hall, pitching two dozen tents and canopies just two days after police dismantled an elaborate encampment over sanitary and security concerns.” - San Francisco Chronicle
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Mitt Romney: "That GOP Kool-Aid Tastes Great!"
“I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse...
House GOP's "Job Creating" Spending Cuts Destroyed...
House Republicans took the government to the brink of shutdown last spring by demanding across-the-board budget cuts to many vital programs. Instead of focusing on job creation, as Americans wanted them to, the GOP turned its attention to slashing funds for programs that funded assistance for women and children, local law enforcement, the social safety...
Nearly Half of All Families Get Government Checks
Bloomberg: “A record 49% of Americans live in a household where someone receives at least one type of government benefit, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And 63% of all federal spending this year will consist of checks written to individuals for which the government receives currently no services [i.e., checks for military retirements, service connected disabilities, and social...
“The point being: if you miss a few home payments, you have a very high...”
– Wall Street Isn’t Winning It’s Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone (via robot-heart-politics)
Liberal Perfectionism
Robert Parry wrote a fantastic item about the self-defeating tendencies of the far-left, and the trendy refusal to accept the president’s successes — including the end of the Iraq war. This passage was particularly solid:
However, some on the American Left operate under what might be called “the vanity of perfectionism,” the notion that what’s most important is to have the “perfect”...
20 Billion Reasons To STFU
“I, like you, get a little incensed when you think about how much good all of you do, whether it’s volunteer hours, charitable giving we do, serving clients and customers well…. To the bank’s critics, I say, ‘You ought to think a little about that before you start yelling at us.” — Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, to BoA employees …
“Nobody...
Obama Calls Out GOP, Krugman Calls Out Paul Ryan
Here is a pretty lame quote from mental midget Paul Ryan:
“Just last week, the President told a crowd in North Carolina that Republicans are in favor of, quote, ‘dirtier air, dirtier water, and less people with health insurance.’ Can you think of a pettier way to describe sincere disagreements between the two parties on regulation and health care?”
Here is a...
“… while alarmists seem to think that the [OWS] movement is a...”
– Nicholas Kristof, NYT
Why I Think Obama Will Be A Two Term President
The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘you are on your own.’ If you get sick, you’re on your own. If you can’t afford college, you’re on your own. If you don’t like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, then...
“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair...”
– Dr. Martin Luther King, from a speech to the AFL-CIO Illinois state convention on Oct. 7, 1965
If Perry Can't Debate, How Can He Govern?
Ed Morrissey is perplexed:
“Perry needs some serious face time to re-energize his campaign, and he’s not going to get that by pulling a Jon Huntsman and staying off the stage. If he wants to make a point about protesting the number of debates that have been scheduled, that might be worth protesting — except that he’s attended fewer debates than almost everyone else on stage at this...
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"Know Before You Owe"
Obama intends to ease student-loan burdens:
“The administration’s new student loan plan, titled ‘Know Before You Owe,’ would allow college graduates to cap federal student loan repayments at 10 percent of discretionary income starting in January, two years before the cap was due to take effect under federal law. The accelerated ‘pay as you earn’ option, which Obama will authorize through...
WSJ: "Most Millionaires Support Warren Buffett’s...
A new survey from Spectrem Group found that 68% of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more) support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income. Fully 61% of those with net worths of $5 million or more support the tax on million-plus earners. […]
Explains George Walper of Spectrem: “What this tells us is that there are a number of wealthy folks who said:...
Economy Grows Faster Than Expected
The Wall Street Journal reports the U.S. economy grew at an inflation-adjusted annual rate of 2.5% last quarter, the strongest performance in a year. The report could allay at least for now concerns the the economy is slipping back into recession.
So much for the “Obama is wrecking the economy” argument from the Reactionary Party.
