Headlines - Wednesday September 15

 

Margaret & Helen: God loves a good book burning.

 

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Um, what happened last night? It is almost impossible to know for sure, but here is what we think we know: Delaware jerk-off Christine O'Donnell defeated Rep. Mike Castle, racist Buffalo wing(nut) Carl Paladino won the Republican gubernatorial primary in New York, and Vincent Gray beat Adrian Fenty in the DC Mayor Primary ("nobody" should have won that one).  NYT/Fox News/WaPo

 

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While a stock pile of evidence that high fructose corn syrup is unhealthier than ordinary table sugar continues to grow, industry executives have buckled down and decided it's time for action. Honoring a longstanding American tradition, HFCS industry representatives have responded to that sprawling body of scientific research by doing what they do best -- launching a re-branding campaign. "High fructose corn syrup" may have (rightfully) acquired something of a stigma. But perhaps the public will forget all about the health ills associated with the stuff when it's called by its benign new name: "Corn Sugar".

 

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"We could get tax cuts done this week, but we're still wrestling with Boehner and McConnell about the last 2-3 percent." - Obama, Link   
 

Well then, why not save the time and cave in to their demands now?

Could somebody PLEASE tell Obama that he won and he's actually the President now? 

You'd never hear a Rethug say, "I'm still wrestling with Pelosi and Reid."

 

He seems to have "Daddy issues" with the Boner and the Bitch.  Why?

 

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I bet you can.

 

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The United States is bombing Pakistan like it's 2004. (Literally: Missile attacks have increased in Pakistan and are now as frequent as they were in 2004.) So if you thought Predator Drones were only for "vaporizing Afghan weddings," think again. Because who says we can't vaporize the brides of Pakistan? [Fox News] 

 

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Stay classy, South Carolina!

Any time your Republican contingent wants to go live somewhere else...

The National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) held its annual fall Board of Directors meeting in Charleston, S.C. last weekend – a decision the organization is likely regretting after several controversial pictures from one of the meeting's sponsored events began surfacing on the internet.

One of the pictures shows S.C. Senate President Glenn McConnell - who FITS readers will recall enjoys dressing up as a Confederate General – posing in his Rebel garb with a pair of African-Americans dressed in, um, "antebellum" attire.

Yes, that's right:

More photos at link.

No doubt that the next time the NFRW have a meeting in the Deep South, they'll mark the occasion with some traditional Southern night-time festivities.

 

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Fair Enough

Then you're not entitled to my FICA contributions to Medicare to pay for your impending heart attack.

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If you give the rich tax cuts, they'll create jobs. That's what we keep hearing. But, like all political and media debates these days, no one is required to bring any facts, no one has to demonstrate why this is so or how it supposedly happens. It's a discussion of theology, not economics, and it's only true because Republicans believe it so strongly. St. Reagan said unto the multitude that it was so and lo, it was manifest. The dogma must not be questioned. http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/09/fact-republican-economic-policies-suck.html

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"We are doing a poor job of fighting the terrorists at home if we continue to allow Muslim immigrants, especially from Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, into America. We won't win this war if we permit the uncontrolled construction of mosques, as well as Islamic schools, some of which already have sown the seeds from which future terrorists will be cultivated. We won't win this war if we continue to permit the large-scale conversion to Islam of prison inmates, many of whom become radicalized and upon release enlist in al-Qaida's army. We must purge the evil from among us, or else. " - Wingnut columnist Cal Thomas, writing for Townhall. Thomas is the former vice president of the Moral Majority.

Unbelievably, some bird cage liners still publish Cal Thomas. Think about this -- in his simple mind being Islamic is actually worse than being a christian convicted murderer, or a child molesting Catholic Priest. If that isn't bigotry I don't know what is.

 

BTW, maybe, just maybe we could stop invading other peoples countries and bombing the fuck out of their civilians.....maybe THAT would slow down the "sowing of the seeds" of terrorism....just sayin'.

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WTF? Chris Dodd is threatening to block Elizabeth Warren.

 

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Whoops! The deficit fell by 13%

Bloomberg:

The U.S. government posted a smaller budget deficit in August compared with the same month last year, helped by rising tax receipts.

The excess of spending over revenue totaled $90.5 billion last month, smaller than the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and down 13 percent from $103.6 billion in August 2009, according to a Treasury Department report issued today in Washington. The gap for the fiscal year that started in October was $1.26 trillion compared with $1.37 trillion last year at the same time.

The secret the Republicans don't mention is that the deficit in 2009 was the responsibility of George W. Bush who signed the budget for that year.

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Ben Nelson supports 'no millionaire left behind' program

Are you ready for a shocker?  Ok, brace yourself…

Ben Nelson (D-NE), the most conservative of the Senate's 59 Democrats, became the first in his party to say he might side with Republicans on the Bush tax cuts, suggesting he might filibuster a tax bill that allowed tax cuts for the rich to expire.

"It would be very hard for me to support that."

Imagine that…Ben Nelson siding with Republicans </sarcasm>.  Go ahead, sir.  Then explain to the good people of Nebraska who earn less than $250 thousand a year why you allowed their taxes to increase.

Fellow DINO, Joe Lieberman is also opposed to allowing tax cuts for the rich expire but he has a more reasonable position on the issue.

Though he insisted this morning that he would do "everything I can to make sure Congress extends the so-called Bush tax cuts for another year," Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) made clear this evening that he would not block middle-class tax cuts as leverage for passing a fuller package.

"To me there's very broad agreement on middle class tax cuts therefore we ought to get it done, and then we can argue about tax cuts for higher income people," Lieberman said.

I've come to the firm conclusion that part of the problem with U.S. style politics is the fact that there are elections every two years which makes it difficult to ever get politicians away from an 'election' mindset.  There is always someone in campaign mode with their focus on getting reelected and not on what might be best for the country. Under those conditions, smart and tough decision-making which requires looking beyond a two year time frame, does not come easy.

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Of course it's immoral, but we're talking about the Catholic Church after all. The church never seems to learn any lessons and keeps repeating the same horrible behavior. How could anyone support this institution as it stands today? The Guardian.

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Eugene Robinson asks the burning (the stoopid - it burns) question:

Is Newt Gingrich just pretending to have lost his mind, or has he actually gone around the bend?  

What in the world is "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior" supposed to mean? That Obama is waging a secret campaign to free us from the yoke of British oppression?

I always thought anti-colonialism was what got the United States started way back when, but Neut makes it sound like a bad thing. Oh wait - white colonists throwing off white oppressors is one thing, blacks doing that is uppity because white men know what's best for them and they should bow their woolly little heads at all the help they've received from superior human beings, like oppression, slavery, and poverty, not to mention christianity ("pie in the sky bye and bye when you die! On your knees and STFU!"), in the service of profit to said whites, the damn ingrates. I get it.

Mostly he's trying to scare white people into voting against their best interests. Typical, and it's worked before, but way over the top this time.

Gingrich seems to believe that our culture and values are also threatened from within -- by black and brown people who demand that they, too, be given a voice in defining that culture and those values. He really needs to get out more. But, hey, it's a free country. If he wants, Gingrich can imagine himself a retired British colonel in 1963, harrumphing in his armchair about who lost Kenya. A diverse and multicultural America has long since moved on.

Most of it has moved on. The Dead End Quarter is running along in the exhaust fumes behind the bus, brain cells dropping like flies, trying to stop it and get it to back up.

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I'm sorry, WHO's not being bipartisan?

Republicans refuse to compromise on tax cuts --

Congressional republicants have furiously backpedalled from a compromise with the Obama administration over the expiring Bush-league tax cuts for the filthy rich.

Pudfaced Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the party's conservative activists distanced themselves from comments by fellow rethug John Boehner on Sunday that he may agree to let tax relief for wealthy Americans expire if that was politically necessary to save middle-class tax cuts.

By late Monday, Boehner, weeping, issued a craven, hyper-partisan flipflop, saying he too would fight higher taxes affecting any bracket just say "no" to anything that came from a Democratic president.

In what will come as no surprise, joining the repubicunts was insufferable quisling Joe Lieberman, professional f**kwit.

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Moist, orange-hued flipflopper John Boehner "maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation's biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS," according to the New York Times:

They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.

Boehner continues to travel to golf destinations on a corporate-subsidized tab, though now it is paid for through his political action committee, the Freedom Project. In the last 18 months, it has spent at least $67,000 at the Ritz-Carlton Naples in Florida, at least $20,000 at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va., and at least $29,000 at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio for fund-raising events.