o8pl6.jpg (650×476) Sagan, on the ironies of war and the Apollo 11 mission. Top Presidential Contributors - Graphic of the day. The incentive behind GOP obstructionism. October 21, 2011 12:35 PMThe incentive behind GOP obstructionism By Steve Benen At first blush, it’s tempting to think congressional Republicans are simply out of their minds to kill jobs bills during a jobs crisis. It seems insane — Americans are desperate for Congress to act; Americans overwhelmingly support bills like the one considered by the Senate last night; and yet GOP officials seem wholly unconcerned. Aren’t they afraid of a backlash?
Well, no, probably not. Now, my point is not to pick on one random voter quoted in an Associated Press article. Consider, though, the significance of a quote like this one. “If Romney and Obama were going head to head at this point in time I would probably move to Romney,” said Dale Bartholomew, 58, a manufacturing equipment salesman from Marengo, Ill. Got that? It’s hard to say just how common this sentiment is, but it doesn’t seem uncommon. The challenge for the president isn’t to teach Civics 101 to the populace; that would take too long.
Dept crisis. Norway. Stock photos images. McCain erupts: Conservatives are lying to America - The Plum Line. Posted at 03:13 PM ET, 07/27/2011 Jul 27, 2011 07:13 PM EDT TheWashingtonPost So the debt limit debate has come to this: John McCain, who you may recall was the GOP’s 2008 standard bearer, is now openly accusing conservatives of actively misleading America with their completely unrealistic demands, which he labeled “deceiving” and “bizarro.” In a seminal moment in this debate, here’s some video of McCain on the Senate floor today, unleashing an angry tirade at conservatives who are still holding out for a balanced budget amendment as part of any compromise on the debt ceiling.
McCain accused them of “deceiving” America into believing such a thing can pass the Senate: There are Republicans in both the House and Senate who are still pushing for another vote on the balanced budget amendment, even though “cut cap and balance,” which contains such an amendment, has already failed in the Senate. More on the debt standoff: BlogPost: More from the McCain transcript. D1xG5.jpg (900×691)
Patriot act. Obama. Sen. Fitzgerald: Email re: Senate Democrat voting privileges in standing committees. Nation & World | By one measure, federal taxes lowest since 1950. Taxes too high? Actually, as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way. And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush, thanks to a weak economy and a growing number of tax breaks for the wealthy and poor alike. Income tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency. Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The poor economy is largely to blame, with corporate profits down and unemployment up.
"The current state of the tax code is simply indefensible," says Sen. In the next few years, many can expect to pay more in taxes. But in the third year of Obama's presidency, federal taxes are at historic lows. Income tax rates remain unchanged. Some scenarios:
Gop. Drugs. Fox. Tsa. Palin. E0ljd.jpg (512×409) Pensito Review » GOP Tax Plan Costs $36.6 Bil More Than Dems’ – Swing Voters, You’ve Been Had. Here’s more proof that this “new” crop of Republican leaders in Washington — Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, DeMint and the rest — are the same Bush rubberstampers whose stealthy war on the middle class in the 2000s transferred more of the nation’s wealth up from the nation’s entrepreneurial class to the GOP’s corporate sponsors and their friends, the idle rich, and whose policies caused the economy to crash in September 2008, barely a month before they were turned out of Congress by the voters.
Households earning more than $1 million a year would reap nearly $31 billion in tax breaks under the GOP plan in 2011. This year they managed to fool swing voters into believing they have changed — that they are against deficits, against spending, against big government — but as this chart clearly shows, their hidden agenda has not changed: Here’s a chart so simple that even a tea bagger can understand it, followed by an explainer segment on the chart from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show: Revealed: GOP senator who railed against healthcare and earmarks got $960,000 healthcare earmark | Raw Story. By John ByrneMonday, November 15, 2010 10:24 EDT A GOP senator who voted against the Democrats’ sweeping health care bill quietly got a healthcare stimulus of his own: $960,000 doled out to the University of Nevada for a Primary Care Residency Expansion program.
What’s more, the senator, Republican John Ensign of Nevada, has also joined about a dozen Republican senators in a crusade to end earmarks in the federal budget. The special dispensation for the University of Nevada was created via an earmark, a legislative maneuver that directs funds to be spent on a specific project. So not only did the anti-healthcare senator get a special healthcare program funded in his state, he also got it through an earmark, a process he himself claims to oppose. The news was first reported by the liberal blog ThinkProgress, which obtained a letter from Ensign to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius requesting funding for the residency program in his state.
With earlier reporting.
Tsa. George Bush Book 'Decision Points' Lifted From Advisers' Books. When Crown Publishing inked a deal with George W. Bush for his memoirs, the publisher knew it wasn't getting Faulkner. But the book, at least, promises "gripping, never-before-heard detail" about the former president's key decisions, offering to bring readers "aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America's most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq," and other undisclosed and weighty locations.
Crown also got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections. He took equal license in lifting from nonfiction books about his presidency or newspaper or magazine articles from the time. Many of Bush's literary misdemeanors exemplify pedestrian sloth, but others are higher crimes against the craft of memoir. Bush was not at Karzai’s Innauguration. loading...
And God said to Noah: Don't fret about global warming - How the World Works. Palin scrubs Facebook page over Wall Street Journal correction | Raw Story. By David EdwardsTuesday, November 9, 2010 15:36 EDT Sarah Palin may have finally proved that she does read newspapers. But one reporter seems to be challenging if she actually understands what she reads. In a speech to a trade-association conference in Phoenix Monday, Palin asserted that food prices “have risen significantly over the past year or so.” The next day, The Wall Street Journal‘s Sudeep Reddy pointed out that inflation of food prices had actually remained historically low. “Grocery prices haven’t risen all that significantly, in fact,” wrote Reddy. The consumer price index’s measure of food and beverages for the first nine months of this year showed average annual inflation of less than 0.6%, the slowest pace on record (since the Labor Department started keeping this measure in 1968).
Palin fired back on her Facebook page with a post titled “Do Wall Street Journal Reporters Read the Wall Street Journal?” “Really?” David Edwards. Phil Woolas will not return to Labour, Harman suggests. 7 November 2010Last updated at 12:00 Mr Woolas narrowly won his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat Ex-minister Phil Woolas will not return to Labour even if he wins his appeal against the decision to strip him of his seat, Harriet Harman has suggested. "It is not part of Labour's politics for somebody to be telling lies to get themselves elected," the party's deputy leader said.
An election court barred Mr Woolas from politics for three years for making false statements against his opponent. A successful appeal would not change those findings of fact, Ms Harman said. Mr Woolas was suspended from Labour after the first judgement of its kind by an election court for 99 years. The court was told Mr Woolas stirred up racial tensions during a campaign which saw him retain his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat by 103 from Lib Dem candidate Elwyn Watkins. Mr Woolas has said he intends to seek a judicial review of the decision, which Labour - who have suspended him - are not supporting. Phil Woolas.
Eric Cantor Opposes Compromise On Extending Bush Tax Cuts, Says Government Shutdown Will Be Obama's Fault. WASHINGTON -- Just as Senate Minority Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has attempted to lower expectations in recent days by saying that Republicans can't really accomplish anything unless President Obama is voted out of office in 2012, so too did Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) set the stage on Sunday by declaring that any lack of progress in Congress -- including a possible government shutdown -- will be Obama's fault. "I would say, Chris, it's as much his responsibility," said Cantor in response to a question from Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace about who will be to blame for a government shutdown or a default on the debt. "In fact, he is the one who sets the agenda as the chief executive and as the president of this country.
" Cantor also made clear that if there's going to be any compromise, it's going to have to come from Obama, who has said he is willing to work with Republicans. Cantor, however, said that Republicans will work with Obama only if he agrees with them 100 percent.