Headlines - Monday March 7

 

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We've all heard the rhetoric on TV. Government doesn't work, government should be small and efficient, cut the spending, lower the taxes, power to the people etc.

 

The Republicans, and their Tea Party friends are constantly reminding us that the government is bad and wrong. We should hack away at the red tape, bureaucracy and waste, and create a streamlined and efficient government that spends as little as possible, lets people take personal responsibility for themselves, and allows companies to operate freely in a capitalist market place where market forces and consumer democracy will keep everyone honest and fair.

It's a wonderful vision (at least to some), much like the way they reminisce about the 'good old days' of the 1950s, where good honest hard working men would go to the factory, do an honest days work, and earn enough to support his housewife, car, two kids, dog, and home.

The problem with the small government vision, just like the idyllic and mythical 'good old days' is that it is a complete lie and fabrication, invented to invoke an emotion and to gain votes among the gullible and ill-informed

http://www.addictinginfo.org/?p=2398

 

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Afghanistan's president on Sunday rejected a U.S. apology for the mistaken killing of nine Afghan boys in a NATO air attack and said civilian casualties are no longer acceptable.

 

Since we seem to be incapable of killing civilians and inniocents and our own country is falling apaprt, can we puhlease get the f**k out of there?

 

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DKos: Wisconsin's War on Women

 

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The Republican push to keep people out of the voting booth. The good news for me; the Wisconsin Republican version of voter ID is so poorly written and thought out that it amounts to a poll tax. "The legislation, as written, appeared to have constitutional problems that would shred it in court," wrote Dave Weigel Thursday. Keep overreaching for the stars, GOP! Democrats will thank you.

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Short list of some of the bills Republicans have blocked since Obama became president.

 

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Digby:

If you read no other article on this lazy Sunday afternoon, read this one by Chris Hayes in The Nation about why Washington doesn't care about jobs. It validates something someone pointed out to me long ago about one of the reasons the Europeans have had a welfare state and the US doesn't: their parliamentary form of government and strict campaign laws make it so they draw more from the middle classes for their leadership.

There are lot's of possibilities for why this is so, and I would imagine it's a combination of the things Hayes sets forth and maybe a few more. Perhaps there's something in certain people's psyches that desire royalty and if you don't have some sort of figure heads playing those roles, people will naturally start treating those with real power as monarchs --- and they'll start acting that way in return. Or maybe it's just that American politics costs so much that only the rich or the corrupt can usually afford to participate. Certainly, our extreme income inequality is taking those who have money further and further away from the concerns of the ordinary American and since our political leaders and media stars are among them, that naturally makes them less able to relate to ordinary Americans.

Whatever the reasons, we have a ruling elite that is more and more out of touch as we can see with the fatuous blather from the celebrity Village pundits who drone on and on about "shared sacrifice" while extolling the virtues of tax cuts for themselves and cuts in Social Security for the rest of us. The dissonance is downright disorienting to those of out here in the rest of America.

 

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Is the Obama DOJ going after whistleblowers?

 

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I swear she only says this crap because she knows it will piss us off.

During an appearance on "America's Nightly Scoreboard" on Fox Business on Friday night, she said, "See because our president is so inexperienced in the private sector and in government and in actually running anything and making any kind of budget that inexperience has really made manifest in some of the statements he makes."

This from a person who clearly has very little experience speaking English.

Yeah, and that's a bigtime word salad. "making any kind of budget that inexperience has really made manifest in some of the statements he makes?!" I dare you to diagram that sentence. I'm not sure it can be done.

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Where can I donate to the cause?

Demonstration today in Austin, bunch of Texan wing-nuts want to secede from the union.  Yee-haw!  What a great idea!  Think of it – 2 fewer Repug Senators, 18 fewer Repug Congressmen (including Gold Standard Ron Paul).  Where can I contribute to the cause?  Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out!

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Jesus goes after Huckabee, for criticizing out-of-wedlock births

"I NORMALLY TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, BUT WHEN A HUCKLEHEAD LIKE THIS 'BITCH-SLAPS' MY MOMMA, I HAVE NO PROBLEM CRUCIFYING THE BASTARD."

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When Michael Moore comes to Wisconsin to speak out against the amount of income disparity we have in the United States that we've not seen since the Gilded Age, leave it to the yappers on Fox to go crazy and call him every name in the book, and to also insist that he's picking on the so called "job creators" in America. Someone tell me that these idiots weren't just reading straight off of the pages of Atlas Shrugged for Fox "news" with this breathless defense of how we're not supposed to pick on the rich by asking them to pay more in taxes.

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Hate is resourceful. 

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Tax breaks for vacation homes? WTF? And why do companies get to write off punitive damages?  What part of the word "punitive" is unclear to those douchehats in the halls of Congress?

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/tax_breaks_infographic.html

 

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Despite having two bankruptcies on his record and despite the fact that his primary qualification was his experience repairing cracked windshields in a Colorado parking lot, Alan Kirchhoff was promoted by Governor Rick Perry to head the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, which has dispensed $360 million to start-up companies.  Along the way, Mr. Kirchhoff also managed to enrich himself, becoming a millionaire in very short order.  If you see him driving around in either his Hummer or Mercedes, or see him at his East Texas lake house, just remember that Mr. Kirchhoff is a devout evangelical  and studiesthe Scriptures daily.

 

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Jill: The Koch Brothers' Dream Workplace

 

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If we had this kind of responsibility, the entire GOP House caucus would be gone. "Japan's Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara has resigned after being criticised for accepting a political donation from a foreign national. Japanese law bans the practise, if done intentionally, and the opposition had called on him to quit. The move is seen as a blow to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who has been struggling to get budget bills through parliament and keep onto his own job. Mr Maehara had been seen as a potential successor to Mr Kan. On Friday, he admitted taking a 50,000 yen ($610) political donation from a South Korean national resident in Japan."

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Bill Maher's New Rule on Newt Gingrich: http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/2011/03/06/honorary-scissorhead-speaks/

 

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Tacky hairpiece Donald Trump has a higher teevee/approval rating than Mittens, Tim Pawlenty and John Boehner, according to a new WSJ/NBC poll. Nine percent of those polled had a "very positive" opinion of The Donald, while seventeen percent were "somewhat positive" about having this reality teevee joke run for president, for a combined total of twenty-six percent. If Donald Trump and Sarah Palin run for the Republican nomination, MTV gets to televise the debates — moderated by Charlie Sheen — as specified in the U.S. Constitution. Also: Why does America hate itself? [NBC]