‘Dick’… Cheney was true to name and self last night when he did a telephone interview on Fox’s Hannity Show. Asked about the news that the Obama administration is considering cutting the military, Cheney responded with the usual racist stereotypes, typical of… well… racists.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is proposing cuts to the military to meet the Pentagon’s budgeted needs. The plan would reduce the military from its all time high of 570,000 to a more feasible number, between 450,000 to 490,000.
Cheney called the plan “absolutely dangerous” and went on to say that it “does enormous long-term damage to our military.”
He then dropped this piece of racist stereotypical nugget.
“He’d much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would on a strong military or support for our troops.”
You know, the first black president and all. Despite the fact that southern whites make up a larger population of food stamp recipients than blacks, the racists would still use this argument when they have nothing else to say and when they know that their base is looking for their daily dose of hate.
A pregnant woman is just a “host” that should not have the right to end her pregnancy, Virginia State Sen. Steve Martin (R) wrote in a Facebook rant defending his anti-abortion views.
Martin, the former chairman of the Senate Education and Health Committee, wrote a lengthy post about his opinions on women’s bodies on his Facebook wall last week in response to a critical Valentine’s Day card he received from reproductive rights advocates.
“I don’t expect to be in the room or will I do anything to prevent you from obtaining a contraceptive,” Martin wrote. “However, once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child’s host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it.” Martin then changed his post on Monday afternoon to refer to the woman as the “bearer of the child” instead of the “host.”
Martin voted for Virginia’s mandatory ultrasound bill and supported a fetal personhood bill, which would ban all abortions and could affect the legality of some forms of contraception. The Virginia Pro-Choice Coalition had sent him a Valentine’s Day card asking him to protect women’s reproductive health options, “including preventing unwanted pregnancies, raising healthy children and choosing safe, legal abortion.”
Martin reacted strongly to their letter.
“If it’s your expectation that I should support such nonsense, I will be breaking your heart,” he wrote. “You can count on me to never get in the way of you ‘preventing an unintentional pregnancy.’ I’m not actually sure what that means, because if it’s ‘unintentional’ you must have been trying to prevent it.”
Fort Lee, N.J. Mayor Mark Sokolich met Friday with federal prosecutors who wanted to talk about the George Washington Bridge lane closures, Sokolich’s attorney confirmed to TPM on Monday.
The meeting, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was a voluntary one. In a statement, Sokolich’s attorney declined to discuss details of his client’s conversation with members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the district of New Jersey.
“Since there is an ongoing criminal investigation, neither Mayor Sokolich nor I will comment on the substance of those discussions,” attorney Tim Donohue wrote. “The Mayor is grateful for the efforts of the US Attorneys Office, and the Mayor and his entire administration will continue to cooperate fully with this investigation as well as the Select Committee’s investigation.”
Sokolich has been at the center of the bridge scandal from the start. The lane closures caused a massive, multi-day traffic jam in Fort Lee. The same week they began, Sokolich told a local columnist that he had begun to wonder if the closures were intended to send him “some sort of message.” Democrats in the state have since suggested that the closures were retaliation against Sokolich’s decision not to endorse Christie’s re-election last year — an allegation that has not been proven.
A pair of burglars made off with $200,000 after wearing extremely realistic-looking masks and dressing as New York City cops. Edward Byam, 24, and Akeem Monsalvatge, 37, of Queens, dressed up as NYPD officers and wore the masks, making it appear that the two – both African American – were white.
And they would have gotten away with it too… If it weren’t for the “thank you” letter they sent to the company that made the realistic latex masks.
After getting away with the robbery, Byam wrote a note to Composite Effects, in order to show his appreciation for for the “realism” of the disguise.
Thick gloves covered the skin on their hands completely, and dark glasses hid their eyes, masking the only non-realistic aspect of the mask.
“We don’t know if they are white, black or Hispanic. People in the neighborhood saw them in the van for two or three days before the robbery,” a police spokesman announced before catching the two. Witnesses, police explained then, said that “They saw three white guys.”
NYPD was tipped off to check with Composite Effects, a company that makes masks like the ones used in the heist.
The company then turned over the email from Byam, which read “I’m sending this message to say I’m extremely pleased by CFX work on the mask. The realism of the mask is unbelievable.”
As for Monsalvatge he had apparently boasted about robbing another Pay-O-Matic in Queens, back in 2010. He lists his occupation as “venture capitalist,” on his Facebook account.
After nine years of a marriage, celebrity power couple Paula Patton and Robin Thicke are separating.
“We will always love each other and be best friends, however, we have mutually decided to separate at this time,” the singer and the actress told People on Monday in an exclusive statement.
The couple first met in high school when they were both still teenagers, and have been married since 2005.
They welcomed their son Julian Fuego in April 2010.
In an August 2013 interview with theGrio, Patton opened up about having “moments of jealousy” during her marriage with Thicke.
“We’ve dreamt the same dream together, him a singer, and me an actress, since we were kids,” Patton said. “So we know that it’s part of the deal. But it would be a lie to say that we both don’t have our moments of jealousy, and I’m honestly scared of the day that he’s not a little jealous. It wouldn’t be normal for someone to see the person they love kissing someone else.”
There is no word on whether or not Patton and Thicke will move forward with an official divorce.
Nokia just did the unthinkable: The company, such a reliable Windows Phone partner that Microsoft is acquiring most of it, has unveiled an Android phone, the Nokia X. But if you look closely, you can see why.
The Nokia X, launching today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, isn’t just your run-of-the-mill Android handset. The device, the first of several Android products from Nokia, is a budget model (just 89 euros or about $120) that runs a highly modified version of Android.
SEE ALSO: 25 Best Free Android Apps
Similar to what Amazon has done with its Kindle Fire tablets, Nokia has taken out all the “Googleness” from Android and replaced it with its own services as well as Microsoft’s. It’s even designed the icons to look like what you might find on one of Nokia’s Lumia phones.
“Nokia X is a new affordable smartphone family from Nokia,” explains Jussi Nevanlinna, vice president of marketing for Nokia’s phones. “X stands for ‘crossover’ between Microsoft cloud, Android apps and Nokia. When we say family, we really mean it. During 2014 you’ll see a number of products arriving in this family.”
Nokia hopes its first Android model appeals to — shocker — feature-phone owners in developing markets looking to upgrade to a cheap smartphone. The big advantage Android gives over its home-grown Lumia phones is of course apps. The platform’s app catalog is over a million strong.
The subject of the latest debunked Obamacare horror story is finally talking, and of course it’s to Fox News.
Julie Boonstra is a Michigan resident with leukemia, and she appeared in an Americans For Prosperity ad against Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Gary Peters, saying that Obamacare made her cancer treatment unaffordable because of out of pocket spending. Subsequent fact checking, though, found that her monthly premium payments were essentially cut in half, and the limits the law imposes on out of pocket expenses means that at worse, she’d break even between those costs and her premium saving.
The ad also implied she lost access to her doctor, though fact checking determined that her doctor is included in the plan she picked on the exchange.
So with no real basis to the story she presented in the ad, how does Boonstra respond? The only way she can, the way Republicans always go, playing the victim.
“They’re not scaring me. Cancer scares me,” she said. “I battle cancer every day. They’re not going to intimidate me.” […]
“Under my old policy, I knew what I could afford every single month because I wasn’t hit with extra charges. Now I don’t know what I have to pay month to month,” she said. “Leukemia tests are extremely expensive.”
Just to set the record straight, pointing out factual inconsistencies is not intimidation. No one is saying that Boonstra isn’t experiencing real angst over having to change health insurance in the middle of her fight with cancer. No one is diminishing her fight with cancer, they’re just pointing out some basic truths which show that her story just doesn’t add up.
And as Brian Beutler points out, if the Koch brothers achieved what they’re trying to with this and other ads—repeal—then she would really become a victim. The protections she now has under this law—to never be kicked off her health insurance plan, to never have to worry about having health coverage because of her leukemia, having her annual out of pocket expenses limited, and never having to worry about reaching an annual or lifetime cap where her coverage is just cut off—would be gone if the campaign she’s participating in succeeds. Which is, yes, insane.
If Boonstra is a victim, she’s the willing victim of the Koch brothers and AFP who would ultimately throw her to the wolves. But if she hates the law that much, fine, whatever. What she’s doing, though, jeopardizes every other cancer patient in the nation.
In yet another episode of guns killing people, a man from Fort Wayne Indiana is dead after his gun discharged in his home. He was not shooting at anything, he was not being careless with his weapon, he was just trying to sell the darn thing when it went off, hitting him in the chest.
Fort Wayne Police responded to the man’s residence and first aid was administered, but it was already too late. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police spokesman Chris Felton had this say, a little warning to those who still think guns are not a problem. “Always treat the gun as if it’s loaded. Even if you’re sure it’s unloaded, still treat it as if its loaded. Never point a gun at anything or anyone you’re not willing to destroy. Treat it as loaded all the time.”
Advice I’m sure the gun owner already knew, but, he’s no longer alive.
WKRC’s Bob Herzog’s remake of ‘Let it Go,’ sung by Princess Elsa in the animated movie ‘Frozen,’ has over half a million views on Youtube. Can you say VIRAL?
Three years after taking over for Larry King, Mr. Morgan has seen the ratings for “Piers Morgan Live” hit some new lows, drawing a fraction of viewers compared with competitors at Fox News and MSNBC.
It’s been an unhappy collision between a British television personality who refuses to assimilate — the only football he cares about is round and his lectures on guns were rife with contempt — and a CNN audience that is intrinsically provincial. After all, the people who tune into a cable news network are, by their nature, deeply interested in America.
CNN’s president, Jeffrey Zucker, has other problems, but none bigger than Mr. Morgan and his plum 9 p.m. time slot. Mr. Morgan said last week that he and Mr. Zucker had been talking about the show’s failure to connect and had decided to pull the plug, probably in March.
Crossing an ocean for a replacement for Larry King, who had ratings problems of his own near the end, was probably not a great idea to begin with. For a cable news station like CNN, major stories are like oxygen. When something important or scary happens in America, many of us have an immediate reflex to turn on CNN. When I find Mr. Morgan telling me what it all means, I have a similar reflex to dismiss what he is saying. It is difficult for him to speak credibly on significant American events because, after all, he just got here.
I received a return call from Mr. Morgan and was prepared for an endless argument over my assumptions. Not so. His show, he conceded, was not performing as he had hoped and was nearing its end.
“It’s been a painful period and lately we have taken a bath in the ratings,” he said, adding that although there had been times when the show connected in terms of audience, slow news days were problematic.
In case you missed it, the anti-union movement is alive, well, and gloating over its success while working people in both the public and private sectors suffer from stagnant and negative wages, more expensive benefits and the prospect of losing what dignity they have at the altar of unfettered free enterprise and wealthy-worship.
The story of the UAW’s loss at the Volkswagon plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee last week because of scare tactics imposed by Republican national and state legislators is well-known. The surprising part is that VW seemed to be friendly to the idea of representation given that they had envisioned a workers council, which is prevalent in many other countries, that would protect worker’s rights and act as a partner in running the plant. This could still happen, despite the right’s irrational fear of unions, but it weakened the already-fragile union movement and did damage to its efforts in the south.
The picture is similarly bleak in the Midwest, as Governor Scott Walker’s Wisconsin experiment is burying public union workers. A new report in the New York Times shows that many towns and cities are finding that they have more money to spend, or at least less debt, because of the anti-union laws passed in 2011, but that workers are being devastated by the law, called Act 10. In short, public unions were stripped of their collective bargaining rights on anything except salaries, but even they were to be capped at no higher than the inflation level. The result is a one-two punch.
One:
Demoralization is the flip side of Act 10. In Oneida County in northern Wisconsin, the county supervisors jettisoned language requiring “just cause” when firing employees. Now, said Julie Allen, a computer programmer and head of the main local for Oneida County’s civil servants, morale is “pretty bad” and workers are afraid to speak out about anything, even safety issues or a revised pay scale. “We don’t have just cause,” she said. “We don’t have seniority protections. So people are pretty scared.”
Assessing Act 10, Lisa Charbarneau, Oneida County’s director of human resources, said: “It’s been a kind of double-edged sword. It’s saved some money, but it’s hurt morale. It’s put a black eye, so to speak, on being a government employee, whether management or hourly. All government employees seem to have taken a hit, there’s this image that they’re sucking all these good benefits.”
Two:
Leah Lipska, the president of Local 1, scoffs at Mr. Walker’s famous suggestion that public employees are the “haves” in society, noting that many earn less than $35,000 a year. And the law, says Ms. Lipska, an information systems technician with the state corrections system, has made things much worse.
“My family is now on food stamps,” said Ms. Lipska, a mother of three who earns $18.62 an hour. (Her husband’s computer installation business is struggling.)
This simply reinforces the idea that GOP orthodoxy on economics is dangerous. Taking money out of people’s pockets and making them afraid to speak up because they might lose their jobs will not in any way help the economy to grow. And Scott Walker wants to be president (shudder).
Meanwhile, here in New Jersey, where the governor also wants to be president but won’t be, the end of Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf’s term is proving rather dangerous for teacher rights. The Superintendent of Newark’s schools is asking Cerf for a waiver so she can ignore seniority while making massive cuts to Newark’s teaching force. Even better, or worse, is the suspicion that Anderson is doing this to protect the Teach for America teachers she’s hired at the expense of more expensive, experienced educators. Anderson was a former executive at Teach for America.
This assault on both tenure and negotiated rights would be the most serious attempt by the know-nothing corporatists on the teacher’s associations in the state. It would also be an opportunity for Cerf to make a final, lasting imprint on the state’s education system that has already seen an ineffective evaluation system and massive cuts to school programs go into effect during his and Christie’s term. My sense is that Cerf won’t do it because the governor is facing multiple investigations into questionable behavior by his aides, and Christie won’t need the added attention, but this would be an opportunity for both men to show their conservative bona-fides and take some eyeballs of the GW Bridge and Sandy affairs.
The bottom line is that the bottom line is guiding everything the GOP touches these days and public workers continue to be obstacles to knock over and criticize. Never mind that these are the same middle class workers who need to start spending if the economy is to make a broad rebound and will need to lead the country if it is to educate its next generation of citizens.
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