Month: June 2012

Categories
Politics

Republicans Block Transparency in Political Ads

The opponents of a new rule to post political ad information online have opened up another front in a long-running fight, inserting language into an appropriations bill that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the transparency measure.

The FCC voted in April to require television stations to put detailed data on political ad purchases online. The information, which includes who buys ads, for how much, and when they run, is currently open to the public but is available only on paper at individual stations. Media companies have lobbied hard against the rule, and the National Association of Broadcasters recently sued in federal court to stop it. The rule is currently under review by the government and will not go into effect until July at the earliest.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., chair of the financial services and general government subcommittee of the House appropriations committee, added language to an appropriations bill ordering that no funds to be used to implement the disclosure rule. The bill,which passed the subcommittee Wednesday, funds the FCC and other agencies for fiscal year 2013.

The move by Emerson adds another question mark to the process of creating an FCC website with political ad data. At a subcommittee hearing Wednesday, a Democratic amendment to remove the Emerson language was defeated on a party line vote.

[Pro Public]

Categories
Politics taxes

Grover Norquist Is Okay With Allowing The Bush Tax Cuts To Expire

WITH A HANDFUL of exceptions, every Republican member of Congress has signed a pledge against increasing taxes. Would allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled in 2012 violate this vow? We posed this question to Grover Norquist, its author and enforcer,and his answer was both surprising and encouraging: No.

In other words, according to Mr. Norquist’s interpretation of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, lawmakers have the technical leeway to bring in as much as $4 trillion in new tax revenue — the cost of extending President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for another decade — without being accused of breaking their promise. “Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase,” Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn’t violate the pledge? “We wouldn’t hold it that way,” he said.

 Of course, letting the tax cuts expire is decidedly not Mr. Norquist’s preference. Indeed, as a matter of policy, he is passionately opposed to a single dime in new tax revenue. But the fact that Mr. Norquist interprets his own pledge to permit such conduct suggests that Republican lawmakers who have been browbeaten into abjuring any tax increase, at any time, for any reason, may not be as boxed in as they believe. The official Republican line has been that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, even for those earning more than $250,000, would be a job-killing tax increase. The fact that the godfather of the pledge does not interpret the lapse as an increase is significant.

[The Washington Post]
Categories
Mitt Romney Politics rachel maddow Republican

Rachel Maddow Highlights More of Mitt Romney’s Lies – Video

We thought Mitt Romney had no convictions. We thought he was a flip-flopper whose position on any issue depends on the group of people he’s talking to at that moment. We thought Mitt Romney did not stand by anything and is capable of changing his mind on a dime. But we were wrong.

As it turns out, there is something Mitt Romney stands by. Something he is known for and he apparently will not change and that is, Mitt Romney is a liar who continues to lie even after the truth is point out to him. Fact-checking means nothing to Mr. Romney, as he just brushes off the facts and continues lying anyway.

When he lose the election in 2012, Mitt Romney will do well as a political pundit at Fox News.

Categories
democratic ad Mitt Romney Politics

Mitt Romney – Let’s Cut The Jobs of Police, Firefighters And Teachers

This is truly a tale of two very different candidates and the future of this nation has never hung in the balance as it does now. America will move forward or backward, depending on who wins the White House in November.

Take for example President Obama and his recent statement that the Private Sector is “doing fine.” Republicans and Mitt Romney zeroed in on the President’s statement and are now trying to pull the proverbial  wool over the eyes of the American people. Republicans want you to believe that the Private Sector is not doing fine. But when you take the President’s full statement in context, you’ll get the full truth of what he said.

“We’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last…27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government, oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility of the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.”

Anyone with a thread of common sense will tell you that Mr. Obama is correct. The Private Sector is doing fine – trillions in profits and millions hired since Obama took office. The problem the economy is facing now has more to do with the Public Sector and the ease with which state governors are laying off public workers like police officers, firefighters and teachers.

Mitt Romney couldn’t wait to jump on the criticize Obama bandwagon. But in his haste to take the President’s statement out of context and focus only on “…the private sector is doing fine” phrase, Romney unknowingly allowed the American people to take a ‘peek’ at his true intentions – to kill the jobs of police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public sector employees.

Said Romney;

He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.

So a President who wants to get firemen, policemen and teachers back to work and a Republican candidate who think the message of Wisconsin is to cut the jobs of firemen, policemen and teachers.

Yes, this is truly a tale of two very different candidates and the future of this nation hangs in the balance.

Categories
Religion

Right Winged Pastor Hangs Effigy Of President Obama on Church Lawn

The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., has hanged an effigy of President Barack Obama from a gallows on its front lawn, a move DWOC pastor Terry Jones said was in response to Obama’s recent endorsement of same-sex marriage, as well as his stance on abortion and what Jones called his “appeasing of radical Islam.”

According to the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, the U.S. Secret Service is currently investigating Jones in response to the display.

“The Secret Service is aware of this incident and will conduct appropriate follow-up,” Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary told the paper’s “The Pulp” blog.

The effigy is suspended from a makeshift gallows with a noose of yellow rope, has a doll in its right hand and a rainbow-colored gay pride flag in its left.

[Huffington Post]

Categories
Healthcare Repeal

Thanks ObamaCare – Over 6 Million Young Adults Insured, And Counting…

Even though much of the Affordable Care Act does not go into effect until 2014, conservatives insist the bill is making things worse for Americans. But a new study shows that one implemented provision of the ACA is already providing millions of young Americans with health insurance.

According to a study by the Commonwealth Fund, 6.6 million young adults have signed up for coverage through their parents’ health insurance plans. Under the ACA provision, young people can now stay on their parents’ plans until the age of 26. About half of the 19-to-25 year-olds interviewed for the study reported opting in to their parents’ plans between November 2010 and November 2011.

Last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote college presidents and student organizations urging them to remind students they can stay on their parents’ plans after graduation. “Now, graduating students are free to make career choices based on what they want to do, not where they can get health insurance,” they wrote.

[Think Progress]

But according to Republicans, giving Americans life saving health care is obviously not a good thing. They are in the process of Repealing the President’s Health Care Reform Law, which will result in 6.6 million young adults dropped from insurance policies all over this country. And for those seniors who are now saving money on their prescription drugs by having the donut hole closed? Republicans think you should spend more and if you can’t afford it, then just die already.

Categories
Mitt Romney Politics

Mitt Romney Is A Liar – Here’s Even More Proof

A couple weeks ago, Mitt Romney quoted Noam Scheiber’s book about the Obama administration’s economic rescue, The Escape Artists, in a highly misleading way. Yesterday he did it again, only this time Romney altered his description so that whatever shred of truth that once existed in his telling is gone, and nothing remains but a pack of lies. Here’s Romney’s incredibly false account:

A book that was written in a way that’s apparently pro-President Obama, was written by a guy named Noam Scheiber and in this book he says that there was a discussion about the fact that Obamacare would slow down the economic recovery in this country and they knew that before they passed it.  But they concluded that we would all forget how long the recovery took once it had happened, so they decided to go ahead.  The idea that they knowingly slowed down our recovery in order to put in place Obamacare, which they wanted and they considered historic but the American people did not want or consider historic, is something which I think deserves a lot of explaining …

The lies. Let us tote them up.

First, and most importantly, at no point did anybody in the Obama administration ever believe that passing the Affordable Care Act would “slow down the recovery.” Nothing close to that is ever described. Romney presents the book as revealing that Obama believed health-care reform, through its “big gummint” regulations, would harm the recovery, but cackling that he wanted to pass it out of some belief that Americans wouldn’t notice mass economic suffering. This bears no relationship to anything the book says.

In the book, Noam Scheiber asked Larry Summers if he believed that the decision to pass health-care reform cost Obama the chance to pass a second stimulus, and thus came at the cost of a faster recovery. Summers answered that he did not think the health-care law prevented a second stimulus, but that even if that were the case, he would have supported it anyway.

Not only is it false for Romney to say Obama “knowingly slowed down our recovery,” it’s not even true that Obama knowingly passed up a chance to accelerate the recovery. The notion that anybody in the administration believed that the health-care law would actually slow down the recovery is complete fiction. It does not appear in the book anywhere and it’s pretty obviously untrue.

[The New York Mag]

Categories
Featured Republican

Preacher Says People Are on Welfare Because They Don’t Read The Bible

I grew up in the Church. Before they passed, my father was a Preacher and my mom was an Evangelist. I am sure that makes me somewhat of an anomaly with Republicans, because I have a Christian background but I am a Democrat. This mixture confuses these Republicans because as far as they are concerned, you cannot be a Democrat and a believer in Christ at the same time. But I’m not here to pacify their confusion, so I’ll go on to the point of this blog.

It really irks me when I come across wolves in sheep’s clothing, that is, people who call themselves preachers but take to the pulpit and “preach” nothing but hate and ignorance. I’ve used past blog-posts to highlight some of the idiotic statements these “pastors” have made in the past and sadly, here is another.

His name is Pastor David Barton and part of his message to his congregation was that people are on welfare because they don’t read the Bible. “I really believe this,” Barton said. Here’s his full statement;

Wouldn’t it be interesting to do a study between those that are on welfare and see how much and how often they read the Bible. You know, if Booker T. Washington is right that Christianity and reading the Bible increases your desires and therefore your ability for hard work; if we take that as an axiom, does that mean that the people who are getting government assistance spend nearly no time in the Bible, therefore have no desire, and therefore no ability for hard work? I could go a lot of places with this. I would love to see this proven out in some kind of sociological study, but it makes perfect sense.

While real preachers use the Bible to get their sermons, Barton – a Conservative Republican – allows his politics to dictate what and how he preach. Too bad he hasn’t paid attention to a particular political document by one of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson – the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States – who in 1802 wrote, “… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Categories
Mitt Romney Politics

Freakshow Mitt Romney and His Uniform Fetish

When Mitt Romney was a college freshman, he told fellow residents of his Stanford University dormitory that he sometimes disguised himself as a police officer – a crime in many states, including Michigan and California, where he then lived. And he had the uniform on display as proof.

So recalls Robin Madden, who had also just arrived as a freshman, the startling incident began when Romney called him and two or three other residents into his room, saying, “Come up, I want to show you something.” When they entered Romney’s room, “and laid out on his bed was a Michigan State Trooper’s uniform.”

Madden, a native Texan who graduated from Stanford in 1970 and went on to become a successful television producer and writer, has never forgotten that strange moment, which he has recounted to friends over the years as he observed his former classmate’s political ascent. The National Memo learned of the incident from a longtime Madden friend to whom he had mentioned it years ago.

Said Madden in a recent interview, “He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”

[The National Memo]

And then this…

Categories
Mitt Romney Politics

The Money Game – Romney Raising More Cash Than President Obama

Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee raised a combined $76.8 million last month, outpacing President Obama and his Democratic allies.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee and the RNC said they have $107 million cash on hand.

Earlier today, Obama’s campaign announced it raised $60 million jointly with the Democratic National Committee. They did not report how much they have in the bank.

[USA Today]

Categories
Politics Sarah Palin Wisconsin

What Would America Do Without the “Knowledge” of the Palin?

After Scott Walker spent over $45 million dollars to win his governor’s seat in Wisconsin, Sarah Palin rushed to her friends on Fox “News” to offer her two cents (and that’s about all her opinion amounts to) on her favorite topic – President Obama. This is why a recent study regarding Fox News viewers concluded that doing absolutely nothing makes you wiser than a Fox viewer.

Back to Palin. She contributed this bit of knowledge to the political discourse:

“Obama’s goose is cooked.”

“I think that the Democrats there understand that the president’s no-show represents the fact that Obama’s goose is cooked,” Palin told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News soon after networks called Walker the projected winner of the historic recall. She was referring to President Barack Obama’s decision not to campaign for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

As she denounced Obama’s “hopey changey stuff”, the former Alaskan governor continued: “More and more Americans realize that what Wisconsin has just manifested via this vote … is the complete opposite of what President Obama and the White House represents today.”

But really though, everyone knew Walker was going to win. To now act surprised about the win, then try to call this win a referendum on President Obama, is a con that only Fox News could muster up.

Scott Walker’s bosses, the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, and other members of the top 1%, spent over $45 million dollars (the most money spent on a Wisconsin gubernatorial election) to saturate Wisconsin’s airwaves with lies and false ads against Tom Barrett. With such an arsenal aimed at the misinformed voters in the state who largely depend on Fox for news, it should come as no surprise that Walker was going to win. We hoped he would lose, but deep down we all knew what the outcome would be.

Categories
Politics

President Obama Wants to End The Bush Tax Cuts on The Wealthy This Year

President Obama wants to end the George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthy when they expire this year, aides said today.

“He will not support extension of the upper income Bush tax cuts,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney.

“He could not be more clear,” Carney added.

The comments came as former president Bill Clinton and others suggest that a temporary extension of all the Bush tax cuts may be necessary so that Congress can work out a long-term deal to reduce the federal debt.

The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, but no action is expected before the Nov. 6 election.

[USA Today]

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