Remember when we saw the compassionate conservative indifference of Paul Ryan showing up at a soup kitchen for a photo op showing him helping? Except, he wasn't helping; he was exploiting the very real pain of poverty for his own self-promotion.
From CBS news:
The head of a charity in northeastern Ohio where Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan and his family were photographed cleaning dishes over the weekend said Monday that Ryan was not authorized to be on the premises and "did nothing" while there.
Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society in Youngstown, told the Washington Post that the Romney campaign had not asked to make the Saturday visit to the soup kitchen. He said that he runs an apolitical faith-based organization which has bylaws barring it from hosting political candidates, and that the visit jeopardized donations from private individuals.
"They showed up there and they did not have permission," he said. "They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors." Antag added that Ryan and his family "did nothing" while on the premises.
"He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall," he said.
To elaborate on just how staged the exploitative and manipulative Ryan/Romney non-event was, a parallel to the later Trump event in Louisiana, demonstrating a pattern of conservatives and natural disasters:
The Vinidicator, in Youngstown, reports that according to Juanita Sherba, the coordinator who gave Ryan permission to come to the soup kitchen, Ryan did wash dirty dishes while he was there. The newspaper reports that Ryan's staff asked volunteers "to leave some pots and pans unwashed so the VP nominee and his family could do something when he arrived."
"We had to save dishes," she said. "We would have gone home by the time he arrived. We didn't need him to do the dishes. It was getting late, and I said that we were closing in five minutes. I waited longer than that, and he finally arrived."
Sherba expressed regret that she had allowed the visit to take place.
"It was the phoniest piece of baloney I've ever been associated with," she said. "In hindsight, I would have never let him in the door."
We are seeing that again from the right with the performance of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump showing up in Louisiana in spite of the expressed request of the Governor that he not do so.
What did he do? Trump passed along a few boxes of playdough for about a minute. Then he left. Where he went to after his little exploitive photo op was here in Minnesota, hitting up people here to fund that campaign he keeps claiming is self-funded. Yeah. That campaign. The one where he insists he won't lie, and the lies like a cheap rug.
Here is Trump in similar inaction, dragging along Mike Pence his Veep candidate. THIS is the level of help, the level of incompetence, that the nation can expect in the event of a national tragedy. Trump would be like Dubya, and like Ryan / Romney, only WORSE.
Mitts on our money is enough of a money guy, and has spent enough time in government while he did a poor job as Massachusett's governor, that he has to know he's telling people a crock of crap.
Experts say he can't cut rates without losing revenue or favoring the wealthy
August 3, 2012
Summary
Tax experts — including one who supports Romney’s plan — say the Republican presidential candidate’s promise to cut individual income tax rates without either favoring the wealthy or losing revenue isn’t mathematically possible.
That’s the conclusion of the Tax Policy Center in a report the Romney campaign attacked as “biased” (although the campaign previously praised the TPC as “objective,” when it issued a report critical of a rival’s tax plan).
And it’s also the conclusion of an expert from the pro-business Tax Foundation, who states that the Tax Policy Center analysis “correctly identified the Romney plan as a tax cut, at least in static terms, that accrues mainly to high-income earners.”
Romney has proposed very specific tax cuts. He would make the Bush-era income tax cuts and capital gains tax cuts permanent, then cut all income tax rates by an additional 20 percent across the board, repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (which hits primarily upper-income taxpayers), and permanently repeal the estate tax (which currently applies only to estates valued at $5 million or more).
Romney has said he would offset the loss of personal income tax revenue (estimated at $360 billion a year by the Tax Policy Center) by reducing tax deductions and credits. And he has said he would do this while making sure that those at the top keep paying the “same share of the tax burden they’re paying now.”
But he has steadfastly refused to say which tax preferences would be cut or reduced. He has pointed to the revenue-neutral proposals for rate-cutting put forth by the deficit commission as evidence that what he proposes is possible in theory, but those proposals pay for the cuts largely by taxing capital gains at the higher rates that apply to ordinary income, a measure Romney has specifically ruled out.
So Romney has failed to produce evidence that what he promises is possible. And we judge that the weight of evidence and expert opinion is clear — it’s not possible.
Romney says this criticism ignores his separate plan to cut corporate tax rates, which he says will stimulate economic growth. Indeed, there’s evidence to suggest that cutting corporate taxes can do that, and the Tax Foundation expert (who supports Romney’s plan) suggests that more jobs would be an acceptable trade-off for a less progressive personal income tax system.
But how much growth to expect is debatable, especially because Romney proposes to cut only the corporate tax rate, not corporate taxes overall. He would offset the rate cut by eliminating tax preferences resulting in no loss of revenue. During the Bush administration, Treasury Department experts concluded that the corporate rate could be dropped to 28 percent without losing revenue (Romney proposes 25 percent), but that such a trade-off “might well have little or no effect” on economic growth.
Romney’s experts predict about a 1 percent increase in growth. One of the authors of the Tax Policy Center study says that is “implausibly large” and even if it materializes it wouldn’t prevent a tax increase on middle-income taxpayers under Romney’s income tax plan.
There’s room to argue that the benefits of increased growth are a fair trade for a less progressive tax system. In fact, that’s exactly the case made by the Tax Foundation’s expert, who notes that “the currently unemployed will receive the greatest benefit in the form of a job.”
But Romney’s claim that he can somehow slash individual income tax rates without losing federal revenue or favoring the wealthy remains at best unproven, and in our judgment, based on available evidence, impossible.
(Analysis in full continues after the jump break)
Birthers are the fools, fools who make up a significant percentage of regions of the GOP.
The cliche saying used to be 'there's money in them th'ar hills";
now it should be updated to there's money in them there fools -
the fact-averse, the not-living-in-objective-reality, the climate deniers and the creationists / intelligent design followers, and the people who go to fake museums to see fiberglass dinosaurs with saddles on them ridden by Adam and Noah.
Some people in political circles are wondering why R-money is making Donald Trump his new BFF. Trump will pander to anyone; he has no shame. He gave it up years ago, if he ever had any, along with any pretense of class.
It is not affection, it is not respect or shared political views that makes R-money and Trump bedfellows. It is expediency, money, and it is the numbers of fringies on the far right, all carefully calculated. Most of all, it is a lack of ethics in politicking by candidate Mitt R-money, pandering to the low information voter, the bigot voter, the hateful and stupid voter. In too many cases that is the tea party voter and other members of the conservative fringe.
Donald Trump is a 'surrogate'; he says what Romney doesn't or can't say to certain segments of voters, giving Mitt R-money deniability. Mitt doesn't wish to court the birthers directly, so he courts them indirectly. Outside the birthers, no one really takes Donnyboy seriously; but to birthers it is red meat and free beer.
Back in March during the primaries, before Santorum dropped out, he was trumping, as it were, R-money among the avowed birthers in this Public Policy Poll:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's press conference last week put the birther issue back in the news and our polling in these states finds that the birther contingent is still pretty strong within the Republican Party:
-In Tennessee only 33% of GOP primary voters think Barack Obama was born in the United States, while 45% do not.
-In Georgia 40% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 38% do not.
-In Ohio 42% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 37% do not.
If Romney ends up coming short on his late charge in Tennessee it may be due to his inability to compete with this fringe group. Among non-Birthers he trails Santorum only 34-33. But with the birther contingent he's in a distant third at 24% to Santorum's 35% and Gingrich's 32%.
Righties embarrassed by the considerable numbers of the numb and dumb among them try to downplay their numbers, but clearly they are trying, like the 'old south', to rise again, especially in the southern tier of states according to political developments just this past week.
The issue flared this week in Iowa, a closely watched electoral battleground, where the state GOP wrote a passage into its proposed party platform calling on presidential candidates to "show proof of being a natural-born citizen," beginning with the 2012 election.
Don Racheter, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party's platform committee, told Radio Iowa that the language was intentionally crafted as a "shot" at Obama.
"There are many Republicans who feel that Barack Obama is not a 'natural-born citizen' because his father was not an American when he was born and, therefore, feel that according to the Constitution he's not qualified to be president, should not have been allowed to be elected by the Electoral College or even nominated by the Democratic Party in 2008," Racheter said defiantly, even though the language may be tweaked at next month's Iowa GOP convention.
The President had resisted before a year ago releasing his long form birth certificate, noting that those who were birthers wouldn't believe it anyway. He was right, based on this poll at the beginning of the year:
These polls demonstrate that the power of Obama’s action was short lived. Two-thirds of the initial 12-point increase in the percentage of respondents who say that Obama was born in the United States has disappeared since last April.This trend is again especially pronounced among Republicans – the percentage of respondents who accept the Birther myth is, if anything, even higher than it was before Obama released his long-form certificate.
"Barack Obama was born in the United States": Republicans Only
April 2011
January 2012
Before Release of Birth Certificate
After Release of Birth Certificate
True
30%
47%
27%
False
25%
23%
37%
Not Sure
45%
29%
35%
These results might be troubling, but they are not surprising. They are consistent with my previous work on the lasting power of rumors in the face of new information. As I, and others, have shown, rumors and innuendo are powerful forces in American politics – and they are hard to undo.
*********
The right refuses to admit that they have a significant contingent of racist among their ranks, and the tea partiers have particularly tried hard to deny the evidence of their racism, both scientific and anecdotal, but it keeps growing stronger, and clearer. The Award Winning study in Delaware released in December 2011 made the strongest argument so far between birthers, tea partiers, Republicans and racism:
The psychology student, Eric Hehman, recently received the national Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award for his paper detailing a research study he conducted on the subject. The article, “Evaluations of Presidential Performance: Race, Prejudice, and Perceptions of Americanism,” was published in the March issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
...Hehman collected responses from about 300 white and black members of the UD community, asking them to evaluate the success in office of either Obama or Biden. "Our predictions were ultimately supported," Hehman said. "Whites who were racially prejudiced against blacks saw Obama as 'less American' and subsequently rated him as performing more poorly as president.
"Non-prejudiced whites, and both prejudiced and non-prejudiced blacks, did not do so. Additionally and importantly, this relationship was only found with Obama, and not in evaluations of Biden."
Early last month the Tea Partiers held a birther event in conjunction with the GOP in New Jersey, in Governor Chris Christie's own home district, appealing to the white racist red necks there. I don't think I missed ANY prominent GOP members in that state repudiating it either:
Last Tuesday, 400 Republicans were in Morristown to listen to Jerome Corsi — author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” — revisit his race-baiting, made-for-the-internet theory that Barack Obama is ineligible for the presidency because he isn’t a natural-born U.S. citizen.
The fact that Obama released his Hawaiian birth certificate a year ago hasn’t stopped the tea party’s “birther” fringe from holding tight to its Kenyan fantasies. Tuesday’s shocker wasn’t the speaker; it was the guest list — including Morris County’s sheriff, a freeholder, a mayor and Assemblyman Anthony Bucco Jr. The shindig was sponsored by tea party groups and the Morris GOP.
The Star-Ledger asked Bucco what he thought about Corsi’s traveling sideshow. “There were interesting points I wasn’t aware of,” he said, “and it made me believe this thing wasn’t going away.” Morris Republican chairman John Sette was asked, too: “I personally have a philosophy of staying close to the tea party people. ... There’s lots of people who might have outlandish views in every spectrum in politics. We’re open to everybody and we believe in freedom of speech.”
Freedom of speech means Corsi can’t be punished for questioning Obama’s credentials. It doesn’t earn his conspiratorial nonsense an equal seat at the table. Bucco and Sette aren’t faceless internet trolls. They’re real-life decision-makers. This is an embarrassment for Morris County’s ordinarily straight-laced GOP. Bucco writes laws, remember.
* * * * * * * * * *
The thought is irresistible: is Trump set to be the Red Neck Czar of bigotry or maybe the Secretary of Republican Conspiracy Theories if R-money makes it into the White House?
He can assure R-money that 'the blacks just love him'. I'm guessing that doesn't include any of dunce Donald's close personal friends. Dunce Donald can be the chief Fool, the chief Court Jester to the red state rednecks. They're gathering now. They're old, they're white; they like funny costumes and they're on the far right. Donald Trump wants to lead their parade right into the voting booths for R-money ---- and R-money is fine with that maneuver. I hope dearly that R-money will be challenged and pressed to repudiate both Trump and the birthers along the course of his campaign. It hasn't happened so far.
The mad hatters are really angry, they are old, white, fanatically conservative, ill informed, politically naive, and they have tasted power. They are not patriots, many of them are simply racist bigots who do not want their world to change, and who blame their problems not on the actual authors of their situations, but on minorities and liberals. Donald Trump wants to head their parade, and Mitt R-money wants THEIR money - and their votes. He has no morals. He has no ethics. And he may be one of the worst liars ever to run for office. This is Memorial Day weekend. This is not the land of freedom for all that our military died to preserve, if we let the free-dumbers win. What unites us are those things we have in common, including respect and loyalty for our nation but also the common decency and morality that bridges groups of people, evangelicals and atheists, Mormons and Muslims,, protestants and pagans -- ALL. Instead of dividing us, our differences should be celebrated as part of our individuality, not the basis for fear and hatred and rivalry. What characterizes the right is not the qualities of birth or identity like gender, race or ethnicity, or sexual orientation. What characterizes them are the qualities they have chosen, and that is what makes them fair game for criticism for promoting hatred and fear of those THEY see as other. We are 'us', we are U.S., every bit as much as they are despite their attempts to wrap themselves in faux patriotism. Hatred is NOT patriotic; fear is not patriotic. Suppressing voting by as many legitimate voters as possible is NOT patriotic. Corporate welfare and eliminating help to individuals in need is not patriotic, and it is not beneficial to the nation. Moderate is not a bad word, and socialism as they use it is not really socialism and not bad either. Every nation that has a better standing economically, socially, educationally, medically is a mixed economy, and a mixed form of representative government which includes what the right wrongly identifies as socialism.
It is representative government, government for and by people not corporations, that makes us free, in this country and anywhere else in the world. We do not celebrate Memorial Day because our citizens and others who fought for this nation died for capitalism, corruption, or draconian gaps in wealth and income equality. Those people died for a way of life that treats people fairly, not inequitably; they died for opportunity, and that freedom AND opportunity is disappearing under the politics of the right.
We need to repudiate the birthers, we need to repudiate the racism of the Tea Party and the GOP. We need to repudiate their fears of gays, immigrants, women and minorities, and we need to oppose, emphatically, the right wing war on these groups.
That is honoring our war dead, that is honoring the core principles of this nation. That is not Mitt R-money, the GOP, the Tea Party, or any of the conspiracy theorists or other tea bag or tinfoil hat wearers on the right.
*********************
An unrelated afterthought - given how much lip service the right gave to the importance of Sarah Palin's few months as governor and her job as mayor of a one-horse town as legitimate credentials that made her more qualified than Obama to sit in the top job chair.......isn't it amazing that R-money is NOT in any way shape form or location touting his performance as a governor of a much larger state, for a full term? Why do you think that is? Could it be because he did a really bad job?
At least Palin and Biden's children served in our armed forces, in combat zones. Regardless of their respective politics, hats off to the members of their family who served, and for their families' sacrifice worrying for them during that period, with loud cheers.
R-money's pampered stay at home mom with four housekeepers boarding school kids? So far as I can find out, not R-money, not one son. What love of country is that again?
You have to love Jon Stewart, he fact checks, he thinks critically, and he is hilarious while he does it.
Go Jon! Mitt R-money, go home, and learn how to tell the truth. Maybe some more Mormon time would help. Do they have an in-patient program for teaching their adherents honesty? Do they have some big immersion pool for truth, where they would let you wear your change-your-spots reversible positions magic Mormon undies?
Does Mitt R-money REALLY think anyone (other than a few befuddled conservatives who will believe any and every ideology-pandering fiction over fact) is gong to believe his crap about supporting the efforts of Martin Luther King, and sway minority voters? Does R-money really believe his false claims about the auto industry will be persuasive on the economy? Does he think that pushing his wife forward is REALLY going to persuade women voters that he isn't party to the war on women by the right? Does he REALLY think that anyone with two brain cells to rub together believes he is not in this solely to rip off the 99% even more, for the benefit of his fellow 1%ers?
Mitt's full of R-money might persuade the gullible readers who ardently follow the Daily Mail, but not the rest of us.
Tell truth to Power, Go JON!
From the Daily Show May 8, 2012:
There has been a lot of sour grape griping from the right because they begrudge the triumph of President Obama in making the decisions that resulted in the end of an enemy to this country, Osama bin Laden.
They demonstrate the political right's willful ignorance of history. They routinely make botched attempts to create a revisionist history that is falsely favorable representations of their actions.
Not only did Mitt R-money state that he would NOT 'move heaven and earth' to get bin Laden, he made it clear that he did not consider bin Laden a target worth the effort and cost in resources for such a pursuit......until it became an unpopular position.
Quoting from politifact.com's analysis that looks at multiple statements made by R-money stating his position, clarifying his position and elaborating on his position, the preponderance of what he said was that he would emphatically NOT make the choice that President Obama made.
From politifact.com:
The quote comes from an Associated Press story on April 26, 2007, about a Romney interview with reporter Liz Sidoti that covered a range of topics. Here’s the related passage:
In the interview, Romney also:
Said the country would be safer by only "a small percentage" and would see "a very insignificant increase in safety" if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power. "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," Romney said. Instead, he said he supports a broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement.
...Still, Romney suggested just a few months later that he wouldn’t do what Obama ultimately did — call for a secret, unilateral Navy SEALs strike inside Pakistan. In 2007, Obama had said that if he were elected president, he would be willing to launch strikes against al-Qaida targets in Pakistan with or without Pakistan’s approval.
An Aug. 4, 2007, headline from Reuters — an article cited by Obama’s ad — says, "Romney attacks Obama over Pakistan warning."
Romney called Obama's comments ‘ill-timed’ and ‘ill-considered,’" Reuters reported, along with other news services.
"There is a war being waged by terrorists of different types and nature across the world," Romney said, according to Reuters. "We want, as a civilized world, to participate with other nations in this civilized effort to help those nations reject the extreme with them." Romney "said U.S. troops ‘shouldn't be sent all over the world.'"
Mitt Romney had made the clear statement that he would NOT have allocated the resources to pursue bin Laden. When put on the spot, he changed his......spots. (The man should be wearing reversible polka dot ties and magic Mormon polka dot underwear to facilitate those changes, since he makes them so often.)
This is a right wing pattern. President George W. Bush did not pursue bin Laden when he had an opportunity to do so in 2001. It appears that 'W' was playing politics with getting bin Laden. I would argue it is more politics than foreign policy. This seems to me to be effectively a decision about how Bush wanted our war in Afghanistan to play as PR spin, perception - similar to the efforts to distort perceptions about WMDs in Iraq. We did not have a sufficient relationship or performance basis to expect that leaving it to Afghan forces would be sufficient for success, in place of American forces. This represents a major divergence, as noted, from our usual modus operandi in supporting our own armed forces.
It is worth noting that R-money has been conspicuous in recruiting former 'W' personnel to his staff of advisers and other campaign positions, and presumably plans to do so for his administration, should he win the presidency.
Foreign policy decisions under 'W' were disastrous, and would be so under R-money. Domestic and foreign economic decisions were disastrous under 'W' and would be so under R-money. The ONLY people who have benefited under 'W' benefited dramatically, the 1%, who grossly gained in wealth, while the 99% declined in wealth and endured very real suffering. This is the path that R-money intends to pursue, and he will lie out of one or both sides of his mouth to do so, regularly and often.
In 2008, updated 2009, the CBS news program 60 Minutes
We do know now, from the material being released that was taken from the bin Laden compound that he was clearly afraid of the leadership of President Obama. President Obama, in spite of the lies from Dick Cheney and others, has been a better president in his strategic and tactical decision. He has exercised the leadership to make the correct decisions, even when he is disagreeing with his advisers - as he was in this instance, a calculated gamble on his part that was tremendously successful. He has been successful not ONLY in his removal of bin Laden as a threat, but in combating terrorism generally, and very specifically in dramatically reducing the threat of Al Qaida.
Perhaps in the revisionist history that Mitt R-money has been spouting, when he makes a snide reference to former President Jimmy Carter, he has forgotten, or wishes to ignore, the reality of Operation Eagle Claw. While it was a failed mission, unlike President George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter had the courage to make the attempt. Unlike Mitt R-money, Jimmy Carter had a distinguished military career. While an unpopular president, Carter left behind a far more distinguished list of successful foreign affairs accomplishments - notably the Camp David Accords, still holding - but many others than George W. Bush and his administration (the people R-money is recruiting). And unlike President Obama, R-money doesn't appear to be a savvy strategist or tactician.
Sadly, instead of any form of new thought or better concept on the right, we have the same old same old failures. We have the right wing blogosphere parrots blithely quoting the most disreputable of sources without either fact checking or multi-sourcing, so long as it disparages Obama and advances the right wing revisionist history effort. One of those terrible anti-Obama laments was this one, quoting the UK rag that is so poor I wouldn't use it to wipe up puppy poop, for fear it would contaminate the dog excrement.
The Daily Mail is THAT BAD as a source; if a right wing nut sees a story in the Daily Mail, and it appears NOWHERE else in reputable news sources (as distinct from the far right wing echo chamber), even the most credulous should recognize it is a HOAX, a FAKE, a FRAUD. It is a step LOWER than the National Enquirer stories or the Weekly World News, back in the day. In the 90s it was silly derogatory stories about the Clintons; now it is the same crap about Obama.
To give you a little perspective on how BAD that really is, here are a few sample covers, a blast from the REAL past, showing what sloppy news and fake derogatory anti-democratic President accusations look like -- the predecessor to what you're used to if you watch Fox News or rely on other Murdoch media. There are legitimate reasons to criticize Barak Obama's presidency; there were legitimate reasons to criticize the Clinton presidency, but nonsense like this, made up silliness claiming to represent Seal Team 6 is not among them. It is too bad it is acceptable to conservatives supporting Mitt R-money.
Bachmann's endorsement is marginal at best, and far more likely to be worthless, or even a detriment to R-money.
The hypocrisy of Bachmann on R-money, er, Romney, is on a par with Bachmann's rants on fiscal responsibility, in comparison and contrast, with her role in spending MORE than any other member of Congress from Minnesota - while providing arguably the least service, and having the worst attendance, turning in the worst performance of any legislator from Minnesota in federal government.
NONE, absolutely NONE of Michele Bachmann's factually flawed crackpot statements are any more reliable, consistent, or ethical than the one above.
No doubt this will send the extreme right wing drooling and screaming into the night in abject terror.
From --- appropriately for the author of the novel and subsequent movie, Cujo, and given Mitt's notoriously bad relationship with dogs --- the Daily Beast:
Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!
The iconic writer scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America.
(Page 1 of 3)
Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain’t Santa Claus. In fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey’s governor or its caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse that his brash rudeness is often taken for charm. In February, while discussing New Jersey’s newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about Warren Buffett’s observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his personal secretary, and that wasn’t fair. “He should just write a check and shut up,” Christie responded, with his typical verve. “I’m tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he’s got the ability to write a check—go ahead and write it.”
Heard it all before. At a rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea), I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My question was, “How come I’m not paying 50?” The governor of New Jersey did not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee’s in Jersey City, but plenty of other people of the Christie persuasion did.
Cut a check and shut up, they said.
If you want to pay more, pay more, they said.
Tired of hearing about it, they said.
Tough shit for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it. I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar. It’s true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.
What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.
Thank you Stephen King for speaking truth to power, head on. Well done, sir! It is worth noting here that Stephen King is very much a self-made man, and was NOT born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
When Mitt Romney was compared to an etch-a-sketch, it seemed to me that the Nut Gingrich was like a smooth round white yo yo.
Sure enough, I cam across just such an image. I had imagined a red outline on a white yo yo, but a white outline on a blue yo yo is almost as good:
In that same line of musings, Michele Bachmann is just like the old Chatty Cathy dolls; they are of the same approximate vintage, and neither has left the 1950's. Both have the same plastic hair, fixed plastic smile, unexpressive face, the same oddly staring eyes, the same fashion sense. Apparently Marcus Bachmann dresses her just like a doll too, picking out her little outfits. Every time someone give Bachmann money and a microphone, they get to pull the string and the same old same old pre-recorded factually inaccurate sentences come out.
Whereas I think Rick Santorum would have made either a great Mister Potato Head, or possibly a political version of the game twister. Or maybe the GOP is saving that for selecting the Vice Presidential candidate?
NEW ORLEANS – When asked today if presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s fierce right-wing rhetoric will hurt him among independent voters in the general election in November, one of the candidate’s campaign advisers responded, “No, Mr. Santorum can just turn into Mr. Potato Head,” referring to the popular children’s toy which features stylized body parts inserted at random into various orifices in a plastic potato.
In the course of coming across the Nut Gingrich yo yo, I came across a few other lighthearted takes on the political right in 2012.
I find the intensity of the last image at least slightly less creepy and a whole lot more justified than the odd and surreal and just plaing weird ads being run by Herman Cain for no apparent purpose other than to torture goldfish and simulate cruelty to rabbits.
As uncomfortable as Nut might be with the humor at his expense, it must ... pardon the pun, PALE... compared to having bounced a check for $500 to file for the Utah primary. Or to file bankruptcy, stiffing all those creditors. In that context it was not so long ago that Nut and Calista abandoned their staff and the campaign to take a luxury cruise to the Greek Islands, on top of their expensive visit to Tiffany's for all that expensive jewelry - an estimated half a million $, far more than the $500 for the primary, and well over the amount owed to an assortment, if not all, of the campaign creditors.
One has to wonder if pale and chubby faced Nut will have the yo yos to still claim he is a fiscal conservative as he soldiers delusionally forward in the race, as a running joke more than as a running candidate.
I couldn't get past all of the statements Nut made about people not liking Mitt Romney, when they clearly liked him far far less than Mitt, and not as much as Saint-orum either.
And so is the Nut Gingrich, for all intents and purposes. He's staying in, but since he keeps missing filings, has no staff, and no significant money coming in, his silly statements meant to get attention are just becoming boring, even to the right who don't seem to take him seriously either.
Santorum 'suspended' his campaign, which is politics-speak for he has a lot of debt and can't properly terminate his campaign until it's resolved. He made a graceful exit when it became a serious possibility that he would not win his own home state....well, sort of his own home state. Much like it is unlikely that Michele Bachmann could have won Minnesota in a general election, or even the primary. A controversy had it Santorum was really living in a huge house or two in Virginia instead of residing in Pennsylvania. It is a controversy much like the one surrounding Chip Cravaack.
Ron Paul is still a distant......hello? he's back there somewhere... sort of.
That leaves Ron and Romney left ...........sort of.
It was announced in the daily papers that Tim Pawlenty had finally terminated HIS presidential run, by having retired all of the debt he accumulated. That's better than the MN GOP has done, including not paying their debts for quite a while (so much for the party of fiscal responsibility). The papers noted that T-Paw had significant help from Romney; a quid pro quo that seems to coincide with Pawlenty supporting Romney when T-Paw got out of the race early on.
I wonder if Romney has learned from the mistakes made by McCain when it comes to selecting a VP? McCain would have been much better off if he had selected T-Paw for a VP than Palin the ditz with a gun. Perhaps Mittens full of Money will pick Pawlenty this time around. If Romney is considered stiff, and Pawlenty is considered boring, and no one else is really any better........what a bland ticket designed to induce raging.......raging.......what...APATHY? Even the supporters couldn't stay awake long enough to mark a ballot without falling asleep.
Romney / T-Paw 2012, the Republican alternative to health care reform; natural anesthesia. They're so boring you could have your appendix out during a debate or speech; they;d put you that deeply to sleep. Everyone else seems to have enormous negative baggage, though.
I think this is the weakest Republican election cycle I've seen in a really, really long time.........(yawn). It's just hard to care.
Where is the fiscal conservative, the responsible business acumen that the Nut Gingrich wants his base to believe he represents?
Nut himself is a multi-millionare; but will he do the responsible thing, and pay off the debts of Nut Inc., or is he going to be sticking his creditorslike so many other Republicans (notably the MN GOP for example, with the recount bills from 2010). We had our own arrogant big bag of wind who people disliked and who did a bad job of leadership - just like you except on the state level; his name was Tony Sutton. He left his organization wallowing in financial disaster just like you.
We had a big jerk who acted with the same nasty arrogance that you did too; his name was Michael Brodkorb. Just like you, his conduct is resulting in ethics violations hearings, although unlike you, he's trying to collect despite HIS wrongdoing, where you were stuck paying out a similar amount in penalties. But the similarities are greater than the differences. For example like the Nut, Brodkorb likes to play out his adulterous scandals in the public eye, playing the hypocrite about family values while committing adultery with someone else in the party, and like Brodkorb, the Nut had no sense of proportion or context to his actions apparently believing that rules and standards of decency didn't apply to someone as privileged and elite as himself. Brodkorb and the Nut are similar in their utter lack of shame or a normal sense of morality and responsiblity, and they share a ruthless desire for power by any means, at any cost to others.
And of course, they were both, for a while, accepted by Republicans no matter how heinous they were, how morally bankrupt their behavior as human beings. But then there has been a notable lack of talent on the right for the 2012 election races, and not just at the level of the office of president.
Why would anyone in their "right" mind - pun intended - listen to this guy, for even a nanosecond? Or in referencing Nut Gingrich, maybe that should be ' for a nut-o-second'.
By Domenico Montanaro, NBC Deputy Political Editor
In another black eye for Newt Gingrich, the flagship of what's known in Washington as "Newt Inc." has filed for bankruptcy.
In a Chapter 7 filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Georgia, The Gingrich Group LLC, doing business as the Center for Health Transformation, filed for bankruptcy Wednesday. (Chapter 7 is "the chapter of the Bankruptcy Code providing for 'liquidation,' that is, the sale of a debtor's nonexempt property and the distribution of the proceeds to creditors," as defined by the federal courts.)
The vast majority of Gingrich's net worth is tied up in the Gingrich Group. Gingrich is worth overall between $7.1 million and $31 million, according to his financial disclosure. He lists a promissory note from Gingrich Group as being worth between $5 million and $25 million.
Rogelio Solis / AP
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks at the Gulf Coast Energy Summit in Biloxi, Miss.
Gingrich was chairman of the group until May of last year, when he announced he was running for president. Since the candidate turned focus toward his presidential run, the Gingrich Group has struggled to raise money, leading to its eventual collapse.
The bankruptcy comes at a time when Gingrich's campaign is struggling to regain any momentum. He has won only two states during his run for president -- South Carolina and Georgia, his home state -- and he lags far behind front-runner Mitt Romney in the delegate count, in third place with just 137 out of the 1,144 needed to become the nominee.
Mitt Romney has half the delegates he'll need to secure the GOP nomination, but Newt Gingrich refuses to leave the race. The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty discusses.
Though he continues to pledge that he's "going to Tampa," the site of the Republican National Convention this summer, Gingrich is sounding increasingly like a candidate fighting for relevance rather than the presidency.
(Here are the bankruptcy filings - Part 1, Part 2.)
The news of the bankruptcy was first reported by the Atlanta Business Chronicle and confirmed by NBC News with the court in Atlanta and a federal court database search.
Gingrich pulled in $2.5 million -- the bulk of his income -- from January 2010 to August 2011 from sister organizations Gingrich Productions and Gingrich Communications.
On the campaign trail, Gingrich has touted ideas coming from his health think tank. And it has been a source of controversy, as questions were raised -- and other campaigns questioned - whether Gingrich acted as a lobbyist on behalf of the group in Georgia.
The Washington Post wrote: “[H]is time there exemplifies the former Georgia congressman’s post-legislative career as a well-paid consultant and policy guru, a role that earned him and his companies tens of millions of dollars over the past decade.” NBC's Kathy Johnson and Marcie Rickun contributed to this report.
Psssssssssssssssst! NEWT!!!!!!!!!!! Listen UP!
You're a bad manager, you are a financial disaster, and as much as you are correct about Romney as a badly flawed front runner, a leader you claim no one likes -- people like YOU a lot less!
Even if you go to the convention in Florida, you are not a king maker or a deal breaker. Your pretty much just over. If you don't have the grace to get out of the way, to get out of the race, now that you aren't spending other people's money to the extent you were earlier - pretty much just the money of two special interest big donors - you're nothing, nothing except an extreme wacko Newt-job.
Most of all Nut, you're just over - over for 2012, over for any political run for any job at all in the future. You've pooped not only in your own sadbox once to often; this time's it's stuck all over your shoes, and you're not going to get away from it. It is a permanent stink - just like the one on Michaeld Brodkorb.
These are videos from the recently held third Women in the World Summit Conference. They provide interesting insight into the middle and recent past, and present, for women. It represents the living and dying of women.
and
and in conclusion, in a speech which addresses other parts of the world as well as the EXTREMISTS on the right, the Christian would-be Taliban equivalent, THIS video is the jewel in the crown of the videos.
What Ms. Clinton addressed ranges from the trans vaginal ultrasound legislation (although not specified), and the right wing mandate to force medically inaccurate information on women, to the defunding a major source of women's health care, to THIS, where women are stoned for their choice of clothing and self-expression. Like Santorum and the other Theocracy's candidates running for representative office, they bang on the gong of SATAN, to agitate their ultraconservative base to action. Like Santorum and others, they are bigots, intolerant, controlling, coercive, and even sometimes violent. And like the right, they deny anything is wrong, when it clearly IS wrong, bad, harmful, unlawful.
At least 14 youths stoned to death in Iraq for wearing Western-style ‘emo’ clothes
Reuters Mar 12, 2012 – 9:55 AM ET
Mario Tama/Getty Images/Files
At least 14 bodies of youths have been brought to three hospitals in eastern Baghdad bearing signs of having been beaten to death with rocks or bricks, security and hospital sources told Reuters under condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
.Comments Email Twitter inShare.3.By Ahmed Rasheed and Mohammed Ameer
BAGHDAD — At least 14 youths have been stoned to death in Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shi’ite militants against youths wearing Western-style “emo” clothes and haircuts, security and hospital sources say.
Militants in Shi’ite neighborhoods where the stonings have taken place circulated lists on Saturday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress.
The killings have taken place since Iraq’s interior ministry drew attention to the “emo” subculture last month, labeling it “Satanism” and ordering a community police force to stamp it out. Related ‘Honour killing’ perpetrators deserve harsher sentences, say Iraqi women Iraqi student kills American teacher, shoots self after argument
“Emo” is a form of punk music developed in the United States. Fans are known for their distinctive dress, often including tight jeans, T-shirts with logos and distinctive long or spiky haircuts.
At least 14 bodies of youths have been brought to three hospitals in eastern Baghdad bearing signs of having been beaten to death with rocks or bricks, security and hospital sources told Reuters under condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Nine bodies were brought to hospitals in Sadr City, a vast, poor Shi’ite neighborhood, three were brought to East Baghdad’s main al-Kindi hospital and two were brought to the central morgue, medical sources said.
Six other young people, including two girls, were wounded in beatings intended as warnings, the security sources said.
“Last week I signed the death certificates of three of those young people, and the reason for death I wrote in my own hand was severe skull fractures,” a doctor at al-Kindi hospital told Reuters. “A very powerful blow to the head caused these fractures which totally smashed the skull of the victim.”
A leaflet distributed in the Shi’ite Bayaa district of east Baghdad seen by Reuters on Saturday had 24 names of youths targeted for killing.
“We strongly warn you, to all the obscene males and females, if you will not leave this filthy work within four days the punishment of God will descend upon you at the hand of the Mujahideen,” the leaflet said.
Another leaflet in Sadr City bore 20 names. “We are the Brigades of Anger. We warn you, if you do not get back to sanity and the right path, you will be killed,” it said.
In a statement last month the interior ministry said it was monitoring “the ‘emo’ phenomenon, or Satanism” which it said was spreading through schools, particularly among teenage girls.
“They wear tight clothes that bear paintings of skulls, they use school implements with skulls and wear rings in their noses and tongues as well as other weird appearances,” it said.
After reports of the stonings circulated on Iraqi media, the interior ministry said this week that no murders on its files could be blamed on the reaction to “emo”.
“Many media have reported fabricated news reports about the so-called ‘emo’ phenomenon – stories about tens of young people killed in various ways, including stoning,” the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
“No murder case has been recorded with the interior ministry on so-called ‘emo’ grounds. All cases of murder recorded were for revenge, social and common criminal reasons.”
CLERICS DENOUNCE KILLINGS
Iraq’s leading Shi’ite clerics have condemned the stonings.
Abdul-Raheem al-Rikabi, Baghdad representative for Iraq’s most influential Shi’ite cleric, Ali al-Sistani, called the killings “terrorist attacks”.
“Such a phenomenon which has spread among young people should be tackled through dialogue and peaceful means and not through physical liquidation,” Rikabi told Reuters.
In a response to questions on his website on Saturday, Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shi’ite cleric whose followers dominate Sadr City, described “emo” youths as “crazy and fools,” but said they should be dealt with only through the law.
“They are a plague on Muslim society, and those responsible should eliminate them through legal means,” he said.
Abu Ali al-Rubaie, a leading Sadr aide in Sadr City, said the cleric’s followers had nothing to do with the killings.
“In this issue and in all such problems we always use peaceful and educational methods to correct any wrongdoings. We are not connected in any way to those groups allegedly responsibility for killing those young people.”
In the years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, most of Baghdad’s neighborhoods were under the firm grip of Sunni and Shi’ite religious militias which enforced strict dress codes.
Today, the militias have largely disappeared, Baghdad is far more peaceful and many youths experiment with Western styles, although much of Iraqi society remains conservative.
On the streets of Baghdad, people said they had heard of the killings through the media. Many expressed disapproval of the “emo” style, but said murder was no way to respond.
“I saw them a couple weeks ago … a bunch of girls, high-school aged, walking together, dressed in black. They had long black eye makeup and bracelets with skulls and chains on their handbags with skulls,” said Abdullah, 31.
“If they are close friends who have something in common, that’s all right. If other things we hear about them are true, like sucking each other’s blood or worshipping the devil, that is not accepted in our society. But I think this is just a trend to imitate the West.”
Other reports put the number of people killed for their fashion choice at 90, not 14. Here is what has antagonized the conservatives into screaming Satan and killing people:
I think there is an excellent case to be made that Romney and Limbaugh are inextricably linked by money and influence. Limbaugh appears to function as both a Romney surrogate, stating the things that Romney and conservatives want said, but doesn't want to be caught saying them. It appears equally evident that Limbaugh is a hatchet man, a political enforcer, given the number of right wingers he's forced to recant and to conform.
In the following clip, I was particularly intrigued with the observations of Michelle Bernard, a woman prominent in conservative and independent politics, a woman of color, and as she notes here - a graduate of the same Georgetown University Law School attended by Ms. Fluke. Ms. Bernard has had both public and private interactions with Limbaugh which apply to this controversy. Those comments occur approximately 7 minutes into this clip, but watch the lead in as well to those 7 minutes; it is well worth it.
It is not only the conservative Ms. Bernard who makes the observations about Limbaugh as enforcer; similar observations have come from a variety of conservative pundits, like this interview with George Will:
ABC’s George Will told me Sunday on “This Week” that GOP leaders have steered clear of harshly denouncing Limbaugh’s comments because “Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”
Limbaugh doesn't appear to be the only one that Romney has on a Bain-owned leash; Hannity and the disgraced Glenn Beck are on the same radio shows roster. While Romney's holdings are operated by a blind trust, it is no secret that approx. 45% of his holdings are Bain Capital.
The latest efforts to be a surrogate, and to be an enforcer have appeared to backfire, if the intent was to create a controversy that would energize the base for Romney and the GOP. Advertisers are departing, and continuing to suspend their business, in some cases terminating business, despite the non-apology apology.
The wording between Romney and Limbaugh has been similar; that they woulda coulda shoulda used different words. It was not only the choice of words that is the problem; it was the intent, it was the concept, it was the entire position.
Sandra Fluke spoke about contraception used for non-contraceptive therapeutic use. She spoke about a woman who needed it in order to preserve her remaining ovary due to an ovarian condition, a disease. The woman in question who needed but could not afford contraceptive therapy for that condition is gay; I do not know as of this writing if she is married or not. Ms. Fluke did not assert that she was seeking contraception coverage for her own sexual activity, or indeed for any one's sexual activity specifically. She wanted an important form of medication to be available to students who needed it. What Limbaugh said was a gross misrepresentation of fact, and how he said it was an extremely offensive personal attack. That the attack came from a man who appears to have been a Dominican Republic sex tourist, stopped with an unusually large amount of Viagra by Homeland Security in 2006, which you can read about here. The Dominican Republic is notorious not only for its sexual tourism, but specifically for the availability and sexploitation of underage girls.
In that context, I found Limbaugh's observations about underage girls and sex that he made on March 1, 2012 particularly disturbing:
"Who bought your condoms in junior high? Who bought your condoms in the sixth grade? Or your contraception. Who bought your contraceptive pills in high school?"
So not only do we have a leap that a young woman who is seeking hormone therapy to help her friend save her ovaries from disease, pain, and expensive surgery; not only do we have an unfounded leap that this woman is sexually promiscuous; we have Limbaugh publicly asserting that this woman has been sexually active since she was 11 or 12 years old. But he would have us believe this is not a personal attack on her, or that it is not an attack on girls and women? He wants us to believe that this was......some kind of attempted humor, and that he is the real victim here? NO. NO WAY. HELL NO.
The right would have us believe there is no 'culture war on women'; the evidence that there is very much a war on women is to overwhelming for that denial to be credible. The right would have us believe this is a ploy by the left to shift attention away from the economy-----except that the topic has been brought up, consistently, by the right, not the left. The economic news is largely better for the policies of the left than the right; no way that the left wants to change the subject now. These are 'spaghetti' arguments; throw half-cooked ideas at the public, like a wall, and see what sticks. NOTHING ABOUT THE APOLOGY FROM LIMBAUGH HAS BEEN CREDIBLE OR PERSUASIVE. Even Limbaugh's fellow conservatives are not buying it, and his advertisers continue to leave him, one after the other, despite his crappy non-apology apology.
But there was more that was offensive, more that exceeds, by vast distances, the notion of a mere bad choice of words' line of crap from both Romney and Limbaugh. From the wikipedia article on the Limbaugh Fluke controversy - and yes, there IS one :
He continued that Fluke is "having so much sex, it's amazing she can still walk".
Seriously, THIS from the man who was engaging in apparent sexual tourism with huge quantities of Viagra, in a third world country noted for underage prostitutes?
He also said Georgetown should establish a "Wilt Chamberlain scholarship ... exclusively for women". He described Fluke as "a woman who is happily presenting herself as an immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her life woman. She wants all the sex in the world whenever she wants it, all the time, no consequences. No responsibility for her behavior."[15]
Using her name so very frequently, with the false but very explicit statements that he does, that IS a personal attack. It is the kind of attack, the specific use of sexual language that women recognize as a very specific form of intimidation, one that often goes with sexual harassment when it occurs in the work place. It is nearly always something that the abuser, the harasser tries to pass off as just a little humor, in order to excuse his conduct. Excusing one's conduct is not taking responsibility for that conduct, and in any apology, it negates that apology. Effectively it says, 'I'm sorry for what I did wrong, except that I'm not sorry, and what I did was not wrong, and you're bad for making me the victim of what I did that wasn't wrong."
Limbaugh continued with his very personal attack on Ms. Fluke with factually inaccurate and not funny comments claiming rampant promiscuity, like these (again from the wikipedia article):
On March 3, 2012, Limbaugh defended his previous comments about Fluke and complained that "not one person says that, 'Well, did you ever think about maybe backing off the amount of sex that you have?". Limbaugh said that requiring insurance companies to cover contraception is "no different than if somebody knocked on my door that I don't know and said, 'You know what? I'm out of money. I can't afford birth-control pills, and I'm supposed to have sex with three guys tonight.' "
And we are supposed to believe that Limbaugh ISN'T the person projecting HIS OWN sexual proclivities here? It is his mind, not Sandra Fluke's, that went in this direction.
As of this writing, some nine advertisers have left Limbaugh, and others are considering doing so. We can only hope all of the advertisers have the sense to do so, the decency to do so, and are more skeptical of these statements that are not political humor, and are very much an attack on an individual of the worst kind, and an attack on the residents of this country who are female as well. Limbaugh promotes the worst women-as-subordinate women-as-sexual conquest-for-exploitation view. He does so, because there is a segment of his base that thinks the same way, and there are far too many others among the Limbaugh audience who do not object, or do not object much to that world view. While Limbaugh may have miscalculated - or maybe not - he was correct that there was an audience among his listeners to whom he directed the rants, Rush fans who DID go on record in agreement with those statements, as fact, as political ideology, NOT as humor. Those were the people to whom Limbaugh was pandering, and those are the people among the conservative base to whom all of the candidates are pandering. So were these. This is the basis, the world view, the ideology for the right wing attack on women, on feminists, on gender and sexual equality. This is the pro-perversion segment of the ultra-conservative right. It is not by any stretch all conservatives; but it is an accurate characterization of many more than the ones who are open and vocal.
But it is not only Limbaugh and his radio show and his advertisers who should be held accountable; Romney and his buddies at Bain, through their ownership of Clear Channel, are the ones who have profited by this, not just Limbaugh. They have made money, and one could argue that they have made REPEATED political use - political capital - out of Limbaugh and the other extremists in their employ who are the sock puppets for their ventriloquism. This is an ideology that is reactionary, this is an ideology that is attempting to reverse the gender and racial equality of the past century, this is an ideology of hatred.
We need to call it what it is; we need to recognize it when we see it in the public square of politics, and most of all we need to identify and oppose the mechanism by which it works. We do all of those things when we make the connections between the parties involved, and the working of the money flow and the power dynamic instead of regarding these events with only superficial understanding.
It is time for Limbaugh to be as 'over' as his colleague Glenn Beck. Hannity and O'Reilly shouldn't be far behind in their departures to obscurity. The line should form, appropriately, to the right for all the other right wing media hate mongers. The exodus and the impetus needs to begin with the advertisers, continue with their audience, and end with those who made money from this ideology enforcement and surrogate speech repudiating the talking heads, emphatically, not sorta-kinda-maybe-justa-little.
Alive....for the moment
