April 2011
White Evangelical Christians are the group least...
changingmyperspective:
link to source
The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Tea-Party-and-Religion.aspx) reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It...
How Wall Street Made The Mortgage Crisis Worse
I’m going to cut to the chase and tell you our conclusion first.
We believe we can show that some Wall Street bankers had evidence, a year or two before the financial crisis hit, that there were serious problems with subprime mortgage investments.
Rather than wind down this business, they sped it up using financial trickery. These people earned huge bonuses for their actions. They also...
U.S. Stem-Cell Research Can Continue, Appeals...
April 29 (Bloomberg) — U.S. funding of human embryonic stem-cell studies can continue while a lower court judge decides whether the government-backed research violates the law, a federal appeals court said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington today reversed a preliminary order that would have blocked the U.S. Health and Human Services Department and the National Institutes of Health...
This Is America
In a stunning rebuke, Berkshire Hathaway has distanced itself from the onetime heir apparent and called his ethics into question.
David L. Sokol used insider trading to buy stock in a company he suggested for a takeover.
This is America in a nutshell. The rich can’t just be rich, they have to take every advantage they can, until they break the game. This guy would have succeeded Warren...
“I came to the conclusion … that No Child Left Behind has turned into a timetable...”
– Diane Ravitch, the former assistant Secretary for Education, explains why she changed her mind on No Child Left Behind. (via nprfreshair)
Policy In An Age Of "Post-Truth" Politics →
For decades Republicans have single-mindedly pursued a few core goals: reducing taxes on the wealthy, dismantling the post-war social welfare state, and freeing corporations from regulatory restraints. Sometimes that has meant short-term compromises and half-measures, sometimes it’s meant exploiting culture war resentments, sometimes it’s meant a pose of moderation (compassionate conservatism)....
WatchEpic: Lawrence O’Donnell Hammers NBC; Demands They Reveal Trump’s Future Plans
Fake reality TV stars, proper deranged egomaniacs, are the hope on the Republican Party because they live in a fake reality. It’s all about ratings, or getting elected, and not about governing and dealing with real issues. It’s all pretend.
NBC Entertainment and NBC News are a part of the ugliest campaign...
Atlas Shrugged FAIL →
Libertarians looking forward to the next two installments in the Atlas Shrugged films are likely to be disappointed. With the movie failing miserably with critics and audiences, the producer/distributor/financier no longer intends to invest in his failure.
A failure in theory, an empirical failure, as well. You can wish that Ayn Rand’s book had deeper meaning, but it’s all fiction....
“Racism in our politics is not so much a philosophy as it is a tactic. The goal?...”
– Jamil Smith - The Maddow Blog - Papers, please (via minorjive)
"Celebrity Apprentice" Slides In The Ratings →
Trump slumps.
“Religion is one lie after another: the lie of original sin, the lie of eternal...”
– Paula Kirby, “Woman, Know Thy Place” (via incaseyouwantorneedtoknow)
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Obama Says Questions About Birth a Distraction... →
April 27 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate, saying he wanted to end the “silliness” of false claims he was born outside U.S. that were distracting from urgent debates over the nation’s future.
America is all about distractions.
The GOP was all about jobs. What have they done? Absolutely nothing. Any media covering that?
Now the deficit-loving...
“Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because...”
– Arundhati Roy (via azspot)
'...Republican legislatures and governors across... →
“The internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in The...”
– NYT Editorial Board
Let us never forget how shitty a President Dick Cheney George W. Bush was and how his neo-con thugs left America in such a massive moral and financial hole.
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The Wageless Recovery
robertreich:
This week’s biggest economic show occurs tomorrow (Wednesday) when Fed chair Ben Bernanke steps in front of the cameras for the Fed’s first-ever news conference. The question on everyone’s mind: Will the Fed signal it’s now more worried about inflation than recession?
Much of Wall Street thinks inflation is now the biggest threat to the US economy. As has been the case in the past,...
Barack Obama Is Now The Biggest Tax Cutter In... →
shannonsunrise:
cognitivedissonance:
Most Americans have no idea that Barack Obama has lowered taxes. According to a 2010 CBS News/New York Times Poll, only 12% of Americans knew that Obama has lowered taxes. 53% thought that he kept taxes the same, and 24% believed that Obama has raised taxes.
Not surprisingly, only 2% of Tea Party supporters knew that Obama had lowered taxes. 44% of them...
“Did you know that corporate taxes used to account for roughly 30% of revenue...”
– Thom Hartmann (via azspot)
All we are doing is sliding the costs of running a country down the economic ladder. And once the tax base is eroded, the answer is always get rid of services.
The Conservative inspired race to the bottom continues…
“Corporations are creating an environment that is favorable to them but harmful...”
– Stephen Lerner (via azspot)
“In the last seven days the two Republicans who have garnered the most national...”
– Keli Goff (via azspot)
“There is no such thing as a pure free market. I know most of us know this, but I...”
– Peter Joseph (via zeitgeistmovement)
Capitalism tears people limb from limb, in pursuit of profit. Socialized societies allow these monopolies and cartels to flourish by maintaining the moral structure [Government, courts, police] and infrastructure [roads, schools, bridges] under the facade of...
“Especially after 2000, incomes did not much improve for middle-class Americans....”
– - David Frum, conservative pundit, making a concession to reality.
We don’t have Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid because things have always worked. The free markets have manufactured some massive financial and economic hardships for millions of Americans over the decades.
We have these...
Democrats Broaden Push for Campaign Donor...
A Democratic congressman filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the Federal Election Commission, widening efforts to expose anonymous campaign donations as the 2012 U.S. election gets under way.
Representative Chris van Hollen, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Budget Committee, filed the suit challenging FEC regulations which he said undermined the degree of campaign...
Why and How Apple Is Collecting Your iPhone... →
However, one problem here is that after this information is sent to Apple, there’s no customer benefit for that geodata to be stored on your iPhone or iPad for any longer, Navalho said.
In other words, after that data is transmitted to Apple “every 12 hours,” Apple’s database should already have the data needed to improve your location services, and there’s no reason for it to stick around...
Today Is Krauthammer Day →
Or, as most of us know, another reason you should never listen to conservatives. 8 years ago, conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer said this regarding WMD in Iraq:
“[UN Weapons Inspector] Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.”
Modern...
“I am pro choice because I have seen a 12 year old incest victim deliver a child...”
– Anonymous (via mermaidmilk)
Donald Trump’s Companies Had Four Bankruptcies →
An ABC report shows that companies bearing Donald Trump’s name have declared bankruptcy four times, in 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2009.
Sounds like the perfect resume for a Republican candidate. Matching the moral and intellectual bankruptcies of the GOP with actual financial bankruptcies.
Nevada Senator John Ensign [R] To Resign →
Republican Nevada Senator John Ensign will resign his seat May 3 as the Senate ethics committee is investigating his handling of an affair with a legislative aide.
Ensign is the son of wealthy casino magnates. His parents paid $96,000 as a “gift” to a couple with whom Ensign had an affair. That couple had been on both Ensign’s political and legislative payrolls. Ensign has...
Lessons from Bradley Manning's Transfer Out of... →
“But this episode should be a potent antidote to defeatism, as it provides a template for how issues that would be otherwise ignored can be amplified by independent voices creatively using the democratizing and organizing power of the Internet, and meaningful activism achieved.” - Glenn Greenwald
Socialist President continues his destruction of... →