Obama: Progressives, "Eat Your Peas"

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 11 July 2011 11:35:09 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow GazetteCatfood is made out of peas? Who knew? lambertThis press conference tells us that the austerity crap isn't some bit of political posturing, it's a belief. We're doomed. AtriosThe right wing Republican talking[...]

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 11 July 2011 11:30:58 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Just a reminder about Michele Bachmann. Just. A. Reminder.

Video from Heather: From Hardball March 27, 2009. Chris Matthews, Matt Taibbi and Michelle Bernard discuss Michelle Bachmann's hackery.

Open Thread below....

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Open thread for night owls: Debt ceiling
discussion worse than a distraction

post from Daily Kos on 11 July 2011 11:30:01 PM. © Daily Kos

At New Deal 2.0, James K. Galbraith writes, Hawk Nation: A Guide to the Catastrophic Debt Ceiling Debate:

We?re in a summer that only Salvador Dali could paint, a reality so twisted that one almost yearns for the simple verities of the War on Terror or even the invasion of Iraq. Then as now, to be serious one must be a ?hawk.? (The dove is a weakling, a loser, and the owl for practical purposes does not exist.) So let?s review some of the strange and mysterious faces of this ugly, vicious bird.James K. GalbraithThe debt ceiling was first enacted in 1917. Why? The date tells all: we were about to enter the Great War. To fund that effort, the Wilson government needed to issue Liberty Bonds. This was controversial, and the debt ceiling was cover, passed to reassure the rubes that Congress would be ?responsible? even while the country went to war. It was, from the beginning, an exercise in bad faith and has remained so every single second to the present day.
Today this bad-faith law is pressed to its absurd extreme, to force massive cuts in public programs as the price of not-reneging on the public debts of the United States. Never mind that to force default on the public obligations of the United States is plainly unconstitutional. Section 4 of the 14th amendment says in simple language that public debts, once duly authorized by law and including pensions, by the way, ?shall not be questioned.? The purpose of this language was to foreclose, to put beyond politics, any possibility that the Union would renege on debts and pensions and bounties incurred to win the Civil War. But the application is very general and the courts have ruled that the principle extends to the present day.
What is going on in Congress at this moment already violates that mandate. It is an effort to subvert the authority of the government to meet and therefore to incur obligations of every possible stripe. It is an attack on the concept of government itself ? as the ?Tea Party? by its very name would no doubt agree. It therefore paints those deficit hawks who are using the debt ceiling to take budget hostages as enemies of the United States Constitution. ...
What fiscal crisis? The great unasked question in this summer of sound-and-fury is ?why?? The United States has many problems at the moment: a high-and-stubborn unemployment rate, a foreclosure catastrophe, a slowing economy that has not recovered and will not recover from the Great Crisis, and the ongoing challenges of infrastructure, energy and climate change. Fiscal crisis? The entire thing is a figment, made up of wise-men?s warnings repeated endlessly and linked to the projections of technicians at the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere.
The projections, as I?ve written here, are made up of two economically impossible arguments.

At Daily Kos on this date in 2004:

The Washington Post gives us the week's big scoop -- emails suggesting that DeLay personally pressured Enron lobbyists to contribute corporate funds toward winning the Texas state legislature.
In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year. DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson. The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts.
The big news is not so much the direct link between DeLay and Enron, but the efforts to infuse corporate funds into the state races. Texas law explicitly prohibits such donations, and a wide-ranging investigation by a Texas DA threatens to put many people behind bars. But is DeLay one of them?

Top Comments can be found here. High Impact Diaries can be found here.

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Aurore Press Is A Leading Forum For Dissenting
Views In CincinnatiYou Have The Ability To Communicate Your Values

post from Texas Liberal on 11 July 2011 11:21:38 PM. © Texas Liberal

This evening I worked on my entry for the Aurore Press book you see discussed below– “Living in the Lap of Labor book Release September 3 at The Comet— As many of you know already, we like to put our best foot forward by putting out a collection of writings, musings, rantings, etc. on the topic of [...]

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Transatlantic

post from Talking Points Memo on 11 July 2011 11:01:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Probably like many others I've been amazed to see the speed and scope of the scandal which has already destroyed The News of the World and threatens to engulf Rupert Murdoch's entire global News Corp. empire. Today, if you hadn't heard already, that[...]

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Dumbfounded

post from Talking Points Memo on 11 July 2011 11:01:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

There are many things I do not understand about the progress of this so-called debt negotiation. But of many here's one that perplexes me the most. If Hill Republicans will not allow the government to continue borrowing money beyond the current[...]

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Read two Playboy magazines and call me in the
morning.

post from field negro on 11 July 2011 11:00:40 PM. © field negro

I know that from time to time it might seem like I am being flip when I post. But tonight I have a serious question for some of my republiclown friends: Do you really expect me to consider voting for Michele Bachmann for president when she signed on to a pledge that said black babies were better off under slavery because they were born to a two parent household?

"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA?s first African-American President." [Source]

Ok Ok, I know that when we were slaves we at least had jobs; but we didn't even get paid minimum wage back then.

And you wingnuts wonder why my cousins can't get under your tent with you.

And, speaking of Ms. Bachmann, I see that her hubby is being called out for running a ~~scam~~ clinic where he says that he can cure Gays by praying for them. ---Because we just can't have those "Barbarians" running around with the rest of us good Christian folks. "Ex Gay Therapy" is what I think he calls it. (Hmmm, I wonder if it worked for him? )

I started this post with a question, and I will end it with one for Marcus and his crazy ass friends: Marcus, if you think that by praying you could actually change someone from being Gay to hetro, why don't you use your prayers for more important things like bringing us world peace and fixing our damn deficit problem?

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Raul Grijalvas office: "We categorically oppose
any benefit or eligibility cuts" to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

post from AMERICAblog News on 11 July 2011 11:00:38 PM. © AMERICAblog News

In response to our previous post that progressives in Congress are looking a little "wobbly," Adam Sarvana, Communications Director for Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, states the following by email:

We categorically oppose any benefit or eligibility cuts to any of those programs. Each Member has to speak for him- or herself, but as for [Rep. Grijalva] -- and this is his understanding for those others signing the letter -- he will not vote for any plan that includes any such cuts.

In clarification, Mr. Sarvana said that "we" in the first sentence meant the dozen caucus "signers of the letter" to Obama, the strongly worded one referred to in our first post.

This seems unequivocal to me, at least from Rep. Grijalva. Thanks to him for that.

Let's hope the entire caucus follows his lead. We need a firm stand from each of them, one that will not be bargained away. We've been "bargained" enough, thank you very much.

GP

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Late Night: That Empty Feeling

"Increasing building code enforcement in lower-income neighborhoods" and "fixing broken sidewalks and curbs" doesn't sound nearly as fun as "installing 60 new security cameras and putting 100 more cops on the street to catch scumbags," but it has an[...]

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