Categories
Politics

Jessie Jackson Jr Starts his Prison Sentence

Jessie Jackson Jr. entered a North Carolina prison Tuesday to begin serving a 2 1/2-year term for illegally spending $750,000 in campaign money on everything from cigars to a gold watch – a day after he tried but failed to get into the federal complex.

In an odd twist to Jackson’s long-running legal saga, the 48-year-old former Illinois U.S. representative had sought to enter the Butner Correctional Center Monday but was turned away because of ‘a snafu,’ C.K. Hoffler, an Atlanta-based attorney who had accompanied the Chicago Democrat, told reporters Tuesday evening.

‘He was ready to pay his debt,’ she said during a news conference in Atlanta about why the son of civil rights leader the Reverend Jesse Jackson chose to report days earlier than required.

‘The sooner he reported, the sooner he’d be able to get back home to his children to begin the process of healing.’
Jackson bid farewell to his wife, Sandi, and two children on Sunday, in Washington, D.C., then went to the prison in a heavily wooded area 30 miles north of Raleigh Monday afternoon.

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Politics

This Republican Said If He Had To, He Would “Vote For Slavery” – Video

Another story in what is becoming the norm for Republicans – racism. Things once said behind closed doors are now proudly broadcast to the world.

In today’s episode of average Republican racism, Nevada Republican Representative Jim Wheeler is seen and heard on video telling his audience at a town hall meeting that he would “vote for slavery” if his constituents wanted him to.

“If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose, I’d have to bite my tongue and they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah, if that’s what the citizens of the, if that’s what the constituency wants that elected me, that’s what they elected me for.  That’s what a republic is about. You elected a person for your district to do your wants and wishes, not the wants and wishes of a special interest, not his own wants and wishes, yours.”

That Wheeler felt so comfortable telling his constituents he would vote for slavery shouldn’t surprise anyone. He knew the cameras were there, he knew he was being recorded and he knew that in today’s world of the YouTubes, his remarks would be immediately known worldwide. Still, with all this knowledge, this Republican representative felt comfortable saying he would vote for slavery.

Imagine what he says when the cameras and microphones are off.

Categories
Ohio Politics

Breaking News – We Found a Republican Trying to Help The Poor

The Republican Governor of Ohio, Gov. John R. Kasich, is not taking a page from his fellow Republicans.

For those paying attention, Republicans have blocked, filibustered and massacred all proposed bills whose purpose was to help the poor. So when a Republican of any stripe stand up and bucks his party’s wish to see poor Americans suffer, we will cover that… bucking.

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” Kasich said, as quoted by the New York Times.  “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

“You know what?” he said. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.”

The Republican governor last week even “circumvented his own Republican legislature and its Tea Party wing by using a little-known state board to expand Medicaid to 275,000 poor Ohioans under President Obama’s health care law.”

But don’t be fooled however. Kasich has a well documented past of falling in line with his party and their war on the poor. In 2011, he even tried to take away the people’s collective bargaining rights, a move that resulted in a nosedive for his approval ratings and an eventual loss at the polls as the good people of Ohio rejected his union busting bill.

I don’t think Kasich has fully turned away from his party’s war on the poor, but these little steps in this direction is noteworthy.

Categories
ObamaCare Politics

Talking Point for Gullible Republicans – Obamacare Causes Suicides

I’m not even sure why I’m reporting on this, but the brains over at WorldNetDaily has a new theory – Obamacare will make people commit suicide!

For those of you who don’t know, WorldNetDaily is like the cartoon stepchild of the conservative propaganda movement.

But here goes.

Gina Loudon, one of the brains at WotldNetDaily predicts that Obamacare will be so devastating, women, gun owners, veterans and gay people, will kill themselves in fear, thinking they will have to turn over personal information to the government.

As a behavioral expert, I have already heard from people that there is just certain information they don’t feel like they can discuss with a counselor any longer. From older people, I have heard that there are medical conditions they don’t feel they can discuss with their doctors for fear of it being disclosed. From constitutional experts, I have heard that Obamacare essentially leaves constitutional rights, especially the Bill of Rights, in tatters.

Liberty has eroded to such a degree that some wonder if it can ever be restored. But personal liberty, the bright light that distinguishes us as the freest nation of all time, has been permanently dimmed.

This administration has withheld health care without ever revoking a medical device. It has taken guns and lives without overturning the Second Amendment. It has caused suicides and deaths with only the weapon of Obamacare. It has made criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens, while criminals go free. It has done all of this with the silent threat of what can happen under a system that gives more power to government than it has ever had before.

If you’re a gullible Republican, then you’re probably writing all this down. You’re expected to memorize this talking point and use it every chance you get.

For the sensible ones out there, carry on! Buy your healthcare, and may you live a long and healthy life.

Categories
ObamaCare Politics

NBC Pushing Debunked Republican Talking Point on Obamacare

Have you turned on your TV today? Have you listened to a political show on the radio?

If your answer is yes, then chances are you’ve heard the “blockbuster” story from NBC News, basically claiming that President Obama lied when he promised Americans that they will not lose their present health insurance because of Obamacare. The story says that the president knew he was lying some 3 years ago.

The story goes something like this:

“Millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.”

Chances are you are probably scratching your head right now, trying to figure out why the president lied to you.

Well scratch no more friends. This so-called “blockbuster” news from NBC is nothing more than another Republican talking point.

The blockbuster breaking news say that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

ThinkProgress’s Igor Volsky provides some context that bursts NBC’s “blockbuster.”

This all sounds very ominous until you consider that the naturally high turnover rate associated with the individual market means that it’s highly unlikely that individuals would still be enrolled in plans from 2010 in 2014. In fact, the Obama administration publicly admitted this when it issued the regulations in 2010, leading Republicans like Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) to seize on the story in order to push for repeal of the grandfather regulations. Here is a story in The Hill from Sep. 22, 2010 pointing to this very same 40 to 67 percent range. […]

The debate was widely covered in the press, so it’s unclear what exactly the NBC investigation unit has uncovered.

Perhaps it’s because the NBC investigation unit is incapable of remembering back as far as three years. Or of conducting basic research. Or of taking Republican talking points with the boulder of salt required. Or of creating context, which is this: People are going to be getting more generous, more comprehensive health insurance, that won’t have lifetime caps, that they can’t be kicked out of if they get horribly ill, that won’t charge them more if they’re a woman. Some people will have to pay more for that better insurance than they did for their existing crappy plans, but many of them are going to financial assistance to pay for the better insurance.

Categories
Featured

Depressed Man Cuts Off His Penis Because He Couldn’t Find A Girlfriend

This is why we have an WTF section.

A Chinese man frustrated at being single cut off his own penis then, in agony, decided to cycle to a hospital for treatment.

When he arrived doctors told him they couldn’t help save his manhood and ordered him to cycle back home to get the penis before he could be treated.

When Yang Hu, 26, eventually arrived back at the hospital with the severed member, doctors told him that it had been without blood for too long, and it was impossible to reattach it.

Yang’s friends said that he had been increasingly depressed about the fact that since moving to the city he could not find a girlfriend.

What was worse, they said, was that he was doing such long hours in a clothing factory in Jiaxing, in Zhejiang province in east China, that he doubted he would ever have a chance to meet a woman.

His depression grew so bad that after returning home after work at 9pm on October 27 to his rented room he had suddenly decided to cut off his member as there was no use for it anyway, and believing it would stop him thinking about getting a girlfriend.

Incredibly he managed to cycle to the hospital, then cycled home again to collect the severed member and then back to the hospital.

Categories
Featured married

World’s Tallest Man Gets Married in Mardin Turkey

Ankara (AFP) – Turkey’s Sultan Kosen, at 2.51 metres (eight foot three) the world’s tallest man, has wed a Syrian woman he called the “love of my life”, though he towers over his 1.75-metre bride.

“I cannot describe my feelings in words,” the 31-year-old groom said during the wedding celebration in his hometown in the southeastern province of Mardin on Sunday.

“I am the happiest man in the world,” he was quoted as saying on the website of the state-run Anatolia news agency.

His 20-year-old bride Mervi Dibo, who hails from the Syrian town of Hasaka, added: “I hope this happiness will be long-lasting.”

The groom’s black suit was custom made, requiring six metres of fabric, Anatolia reported.

Born into a farming family in southeastern Turkey, Kosen won global fame in September 2009 when Guinness World Records declared him the tallest man in the world. He was then 2.47 meters tall.

His growth has resulted from a tumor affecting his pituitary gland.

Categories
CNN ObamaCare Politics

Marsha Blackburn, Is That Your Final Answer? – Video

If report did their basic jobs and report the facts, instead of being avenues where Republicans go to practice their talking points without being challenged, Americans would be in the much better position.

Here’s an example.  On CNN, host Carol Costello asked a very basic question to Republican Congresswoman and talking-points extraordinaire, Marsha Blackburn.

Since hundreds of thousands of Americans began signing up for healthcare at the beginning of October, Republicans have manufactured a new talking point to scare off the new enrollees. They are now claiming that people would have to turn over personal information to be federal government, before getting Obamacare.

Blackburn went on CNN expecting a microphone and a camera to push the new lie, but instead, she was met with a reporter who wasn’t afraid to ask a question.

Watch the mumbles and fumbles and the stringing together of various incoherent sentences, as Marsha tried to weasel your way out of the situation.

Categories
Benghazi Benghazi Politics

The Same Republicans Demanding Benghazi Answers, Cut Funding For Security in Benghazi

The entire media is now focused on Benghazi. Fox News must be happy that the rest of our shortsighted media is apparently jumping on this Fox created, fake conspiracy issue. And again I ask, where was all this focus, this determination to find the truth when 13 different Embassies were attacked under the Bush administration? Where was the noise makers when multiple Americans were killed?

  • 5 people were killed in a Consulate attack in India in 2002.
  • 12 more were killed in a US Consulate attack in Pakistan. That attack caused an additional 59 injuries
  • Another 2 people killed in another US Consulate attack in Pakistan in 2003
  • In Saudi Arabia, another Consulate attack killed 36 people, including 9 Americans.

Fox, where were you? No peep from the Republicans when all these Americans were being slaughtered overseas!

  • 2 more killed when an Embassy was attacked in Uzbekistan in 2004
  • 9 more killed in another attack in Saudi Arabia, still in 2004
  • Pakistan in 2006, another attack, another four people killed, including Diplomat David Foy
  • Another 2006 Embassy attack, this time in Syria. 4 more people killed, 13 injured

Crickets on Fox News. Nothing to see here in the Republican party!

  • In 2007 and 2008, Greece and Yemen joined in attacking our Embassies
  • The attack in Istanbul, Turkey took another 6 people from the land of the living.
  • Then back in Yemen on September 17th 2008, where 16 people died in yet another Embassy attack.

The Americans who died in all these attacks deserved the same questions and scrutiny, but none came because a Republican Commander in Chief ruled. All was well, except for all the attacks and the lives lost.

But now, now that there is one Embassy attack with a Democratic Commander in Chief at the helm, Fox kept pounding. They manufactured talking points for Congressional Republicans to regurgitate over and over again. And here we are, years after the unfortunate attack that took 4 lives, the rest of the so-called Media seems to be fully on-board the Fox train wreck!

One of the talking points Republicans in Congress keep pushing questions why President Obama took away Embassy security… as if that is even Constitutionally possible.

Watch and listen as the Republican in the video below proudly admitted taking away funding for Embassy security, but maintained he had nothing to do with why ample security was missing from Benghazi!

You know the drill… #BlameObama!

Categories
Politics

Juan Williams – Republicans Fail on Message of Last Election

Juan Williams is an author and political analyst for Fox News Channel writes;

Juan Williams

In Playboy magazine’s current issue, Sen. Bernie Sanders offers an “Emperor Has No Clothes” view of Washington’s current budget talks.

“Today one out of four major profitable corporations pays zero in federal income taxes,” said the independent from Vermont.

Later he added: “You would think that before you cut health care, education, nutrition or Social Security, you might want to take a hard look at that issue. I mean, am I missing something here?”
The good news as budget talks between Republicans and Democrats speed toward a Dec. 13 deadline is that both sides agree on the need to replace sequestration cuts with a more reasoned plan for deficit reduction.

The bad news is that Republicans refuse to put anything that looks like a tax increase in the deal even if it is in the form of closing tax loopholes for the richest corporations.

And Democrats are under pressure to offer cuts in entitlement spending — Social Security and Medicare are two ripe targets — without any new tax revenues in order to show a willingness to compromise and avoid one more fiscal cliff.

This is where Sanders offers his critique of both parties.

With an eye on Republicans, he notes that ExxonMobil made $19 billion in 2009 yet paid no federal income taxes, and got a $156 million tax refund from the government.

Sanders is also critical of President Obama.

“When you have a President of the United States who is talking about cuts in Social Security and veterans’ programs,” Sanders said, “who was willing earlier on to give continued tax breaks to billionaires and unwilling to go after huge corporate loopholes, people sit there and say, ‘Both parties are working for the big-money interests.’ ”

Sanders’s take on why both parties are afraid to take on big financial institutions, including those bailed out by taxpayers with government aid after the 2008 economic collapse, is that Washington politicians are afraid of the consequences of taking on Wall Street.

Next month marks one year since Obama easily won reelection, in the process becoming the first president to win more than 51 percent of the vote in two elections since President Eisenhower. The president won the 2012 election even as Wall Street’s gold poured into the campaign of the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney.

Romney criticized Obama as an opponent of big business who increased regulation on Wall Street. Romney famously identified 47 percent of Americans as people who are “dependent on government, who believe they are victims … and who pay no income taxes.”

Romney made Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), author of the House GOP budget, his vice presidential nominee. Ryan’s budget proposal called for big cuts to Medicare. His plan included making it a voucher program — a change that would, inevitably, limit its value as a guaranteed social safety net for the elderly. Ryan proposed cuts to other entitlement programs with no added taxes on corporations or the rich.

Romney and Ryan lost the election, but somehow Republicans and Democrats remain on track to cut government spending even at a time of high poverty rates and a fragile economic recovery that thirsts for a steady flow of government investment to inspire investor and consumer confidence.

Now Ryan’s strategy is to once again demand cuts in entitlement spending from the Democrats in a trade for eliminating rigid sequestration cuts that have thoughtlessly damaged spending on national security as well as Head Start programs, slowed federal criminal trials and hampered scientific research funded by the government. Sequestration cuts are on track to chop $100 billion annually from federal spending until 2021.

“It’s more appropriate to the moment we have, to focus on common ground,” Ryan said last week of the bipartisan interest in ending sequestration. “We’ve got automatic spending cuts coming. There are smarter ways of cutting spending — whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.”

How could the GOP have missed the message of the last election? Somehow they are willing to bet one more time on cutting entitlements as the way to revive their political fortunes. They see the public responding positively to their work to reduce government spending.

“The survival of the automatic spending cuts gives Republicans the upper hand in confronting the White House and congressional Democrats on budget issues and new proposals by Mr. Obama that would involve new outlays, such as his plan for universal pre-K education,” Fred Barnes, my Fox News colleague, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal. “For Republicans eager to corral federal spending — and that’s most of them — the sequester is a gift that keeps on giving.”

If the GOP thinks there is political leverage — the upper hand — to be found in going after seniors, people on food stamps and even defense spending with another round of across-the-board cuts, they might want to look at last year’s election results. And they should invite Sanders to give them his thoughts on big, profitable companies that pay no taxes.

Categories
Celebrities Halloween

For Halloween, Paris Hilton was Miley Cyrus – PIC

[Paris Hilton dressed as Miley Cyrus for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion Halloween Party on Saturday.]

Via Gawker

Categories
Nancy Pelosi Politics

Nancy Pelosi Has Big Plans for House in 2014

If Democrats are able to regain control of the House of Representatives from the failed Republicans, they have some big plans for the last years of the Obama presidency, like comprehensive childcare.

In an interview with The Hill, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explains.

Pelosi and other Democrats have emerged from the shutdown fight with new confidence, and she vowed her party would “of course” pick up seats next year. It is the first time Pelosi has guaranteed that Democrats will cut into the GOP’s majority.

Atop her priority list as Speaker, she said, would be “comprehensive affordable, quality childcare” for working mothers, which she sees as a natural extension of ObamaCare.

“That would have the biggest impact on women, families and … job creation,” Pelosi said. “That was on President Nixon’s desk … in the ’70s, and he vetoed it for cultural or whatever reasons. And now we have to do that again.”

Pelosi, the nation’s first female Speaker, has long fought for progressive legislation on women’s issues, whether at home, in the workforce or in politics.

Of a federal childcare law, she said: “This is the missing link in so many things that we’ve talked about. It is not exhaustive of all the things we want to do or have done with regard to women, but I do think it would unleash the power of women.”

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