Progressive Northwest

Virginia Legislature Passes Occupy Vagina Law

2012-02-18T20:40:00.000-08:00

This is not a joke, but the most horiffic invasion of women's bodies since the Middle Ages.

New Virginia Law invades women's bodies.

The One Percent Speak

2012-02-17T07:29:00.000-08:00

Oil prices explained

More bumper stickers

2012-02-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

Enjoy!

Severe Conservative Syndrome

2012-02-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my friend, Art, for sending me this.

Couldit possibly be that Santorum, et al, believe that the American voting publiccould be that severely stupid? Or, is it that Santorum, et al, arethe severely stupid ones?

If God can work up the interest in our politics, may he, or she, intervene toprotect us from ourselves come November.
But I holdout little hope of that. After all, God did not help me win the $300million PowerBall prize day before yesterday; similarly, if theAlmighty refuses to help out and Bring Us Into The Light onElection Day over an equally vital matter, will his or herindifference truly mark the end of civilization?

Just in case, you missed it this morning, here is Krugman's latest.

Art

Severe Conservative Syndrome

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 12, 2012

Mitt Romney has a gift for words — self-destructive words.On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conferencethat he was a “severely conservative governor.”

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney “describedconservatism as if it were a disease.” Indeed. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a list of words that most commonlyfollow the adverb “severely”; the top five, in frequency of use, are disabled,depressed, ill, limited and injured.

That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yetif you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have towonder whether it was a Freudian slip. For somethinghas clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism.

Start with Rick Santorum, who, according to PublicPolicy Polling, is the clear current favorite among usual Republican primaryvoters, running 15 points ahead of Mr. Romney. Anyonewith an Internet connection is aware that Mr. Santorum is best known for 2003remarks about homosexuality, incest and bestiality. But his strangeness runsdeeper than that.

For example, last year Mr.Santorum made a point of defending the medieval Crusades against the “Americanleft who hates Christendom.” Historical issues aside (hey, what are a fewmassacres of infidels and Jews among friends?), what was this doing in a21st-century campaign?

Nor is this only about sex andreligion: he has also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a“beautifully concocted scheme” on the part of “the left” to provide “an excusefor more government control of your life.” You may say that suchconspiracy-theorizing is hardly unique to Mr. Santorum, but that’s the point:tinfoil hats have become a common, if not mandatory, G.O.P. fashion accessory.

Then there’s Ron Paul, who came in a strong second in Maine’scaucuses despite widespread publicity over such matters as the racist (andconspiracy-minded) newsletters published under his name in the 1990s and hisdeclarations that both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act were mistakes.Clearly, a large segment of his party’s base is comfortable with views onemight have thought were on the extreme fringe.

Finally, there’s Mr. Romney, who will probably get thenomination despite his evident failure to make an emotional connection with,well, anyone. The truth, of course, is that he was not a “severelyconservative” governor. His signature achievement was a health reform identicalin all important respects to the national reform signed into law by PresidentObama four years later. And in a rational political world, his campaign wouldbe centered on that achievement.

But Mr. Romney is seeking the Republican presidentialnomination, and whatever his personal beliefs may really be — if, indeed, hebelieves anything other than that he should be president — he needs to win overprimary voters who really are severely conservative in both his intended andunintended senses.

So he can’t run on his record in office. Nor was hetrying very hard to run on his business career even before people began askinghard (and appropriate) questions about the nature of that career.

Instead, his stump speeches rely almost entirely onfantasies and fabrications designed to appeal to the delusions of theconservative base. No, President Obama isn’t someone who “began his presidencyby apologizing for America,”as Mr. Romney declared, yet again, a week ago. But this “Four-PinocchioFalsehood,” as the Washington Post Fact Checker puts it, is at the heart of theRomney campaign.

How did American conservatism end up so detached from,indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. Afterall, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprintoriginally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!

My short answer is that the long-running con game ofeconomic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad.For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racialdivisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for thewealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush wonre-election by posing as America’sdefender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandateto privatize Social Security.

Over time, however, this strategy created a base thatreally believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.

The point is that today’s dismal G.O.P. field — isthere anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economicconservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, aparty that suffers from “severe” conservatism in the worst way. And the maladymay take many years to cure.

2012-02-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt from columnist Joe Klein's article in the Feb 20, 2012 issue of Time Magazine.
He defines Karl Rove spot on!

Oil or Children? Who do we love more?

2012-02-13T07:07:00.000-08:00

More bumper stickers

2012-02-13T01:00:00.000-08:00

Bumper stickers 1

2012-02-12T21:04:00.000-08:00

Reactions to some of the nutty stuff from the Far Right going around.

2012-02-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

I have hidden the email addresses of the posters to protect the innocent.

The right-wing lies just keep coming. They use unadulterated hate to recharge their batteries.
I haven't seen anything to match it since Joe McCarthy.

--- On Sat, 2/11/12, [name deleted] wrote:

Subject: Re: Medicare Premium Increase Rate for 2014 IMPORTANT

Date: Saturday, February 11, 2012, 10:45 PM

...only important if you accept lies as truth....

Steve, Bob, It's been a bad day for the truth; this morning Merrill forwarded some very clever, very false information once again challenging Obama's birth. The birthers seem unable to stop themselves. Maybe they oughta see a shrink about their compulsion.

This evening Steve, and you Bob, forwarded sinister nonsense about Obama's sly plan to raise monthly Medicare premiums in 2014 to an outrageous $247.

Makes you wanna hate the creep in the White House for things he isn't, and hasn't done. But then, the charlatans who hate him so intensely can't congenitally limit themselves to the things Obama has actually done wrong; they are compelled to manufacture the foulest kind of personal assassination in an attempt to persuade all America we mistakenly elected the biggest bum who ever lived to lead our native land. I think it's also to convince themselves they got every right to hate the man to his core by making up facts and crimes he never committed--and that, friends, is really sad.

They don't seem capable of admitting to themselves that there may really have been much more destructive bums to hold the Oval Office the past forty years, maybe because those Presidents weren't Democrats and, particularly, because they weren't black.

Please remember, no matter what you may wish to believe, Obama didn't bring on the recession or the current descent into poverty of more than a quarter of the
American population, not all by himself.

He ain't blameless but neither is he mainly to blame

Ask Merrill to forward the dissection of the latest lies from the birthers, because I am tired of repeating myself. Instead, add the following to your store of legitimate knowledge, and think twice before passing along ugly tales without checking them at least... twice.

In short, don't let the bogeymen control your minds.

Before you reread the junk about Obama's alleged Medicare trickery, please read the facts as they exist, and then have the kindness to pass them along--hopefully, with Merrill's new information about birther distortions--to the people who sent you the junk in the first place.

By now, you should have realized that you've been too often taken to la la land by some really creepy con artists. You may have the same hope for the outcome of the 2012 election, but I know you guys, and I don't believe you are willing to deliberately lie like they do, but you two seem to take
undue pleasure passing along turds.
Art

Home • Ask FactCheck • Premium Nonsense On Medicare

Premium Nonsense On Medicare

Posted on April 1, 2011

Q: Will the new health care law raise Medicare’s basic monthly premium to $247 in 2014, as a viral message claims?
A: No, Medicare officials project the basic premium will be less than half that. But the law will eventually cause 14 percent of seniors with incomes over $85,000 a year ($170,000 for couples) to pay higher "income-related" premiums, up from 5 percent currently.
FULL QUESTION
Please advise the accuracy of contents below.
Thank you,
MEDICARE PAY INCREASE
For those of you who are on Medicare (or will be soon), read the short article below.
It is about the monthly amount of money you are going to pay into Medicare in 2011, 2012 and the huge increase you will pay in 2013. You will pay it.
Social Security
Congress will not allow an increase in the social security COLA (cost of living adjustment). However, the per person monthly Medicare insurance premium will be increased from the 2009 premium of $96.40 to $104.20 in 2010, $120.20 for the year 2011, AND a yearly increase to a wonderful $247.00 in 2014. Thank You Obamacare!
In the meantime, Congress gave themselves a $3,000 a month Cost of Living Adjustment!
Send this to all seniors that you know.
REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER 2012
FULL ANSWER
This widely circulating message is similar to a falsehood-filled screed that went around last year, urging "retribution" against members of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections. This message makes somewhat different accusations — also false — and urges voters to "remember" in November 2012.

It falsely claims "Congress gave themselves a $3,000 a month Cost of Living Adjustment," when the truth is that Congress voted to deny itself any pay increase at all, both for 2010 and 2011.
It wrongly blames Congress for disallowing any cost-of-living increase for Social Security recipients. It’s true there was no COLA for Social Security recipients in 2010 or in 2011, but that was due to the workings of a long-standing formula and not the result of any vote by the current Congress or the previous one. We covered this in detail in 2009 and the Social Security Administration has an explanation posted as well.
It claims that "those of you who are on Medicare" can thank "Obamacare" for increases in the per-person monthly Medicare premium — "to a wonderful $247.00 in 2014." This is also false. The basic premium for Medicare Part B (which covers physician services) was indeed $96.40 in 2009. But the other numbers are all wrong. It was $110.50 last year, for example, and not $104.20 as claimed. And it is $115.40 this year, not $120.20 as claimed.

Actually, only 27 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are paying the basic rate. The rest — 73 percent — are paying less under a "hold harmless" provision triggered by the lack of a cost-of-living increase in Social Security this year or last year. Most are still paying $96.40.
As for the future, nobody can say with precision what the basic Part B premium will be next year or the year after, let alone in 2014. The premium is set each year at a level calculated to pay for 25 percent of the cost of the coverage. Medicare officials do keep close watch on the trends, however. And when we contacted Medicare’s Office of the Actuary, we were given these projections — the most recent available — which are current as of the president’s budget for fiscal year 2012 issued in mid-February:

Medicare Part B Standard Premium (projected, February 2011)
2012	$108.20
2013	$112.10
2014	$117.10
Source: Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of theActuary

Subject: Fw: Fwd: Medicare Premium Increase Rate for 2014 IMPORTANT

I did not check to make sure this info is correct

Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 8:40 AM

Subject: Fwd: FW: Medicare Premium Increase Rate for 2014 IMPORTANT

Medicare Premium Increase Rate

Look clearly at the 2014 rate compared to the 2013 rate.

For those of you who are on Medicare, read the following. It's short, but important and you probably haven't heard about it in the Mainstream News:

"The per person Medicare Insurance Premium will increase from the present monthly Fee of

$96.40, rising to:

$104.20 in 2012

$120.20 in 2013

And

$247.00 in 2014."

These are Provisions incorporated in the Obamacare Legislation, purposely delayed so as not to confuse the 2012 Re-Election Campaigns. Send this to all Seniors that you know, so they will know who's throwing them under the
Bus.

REMEMBER THIS IN NOVEMBER 2012 AND VOTE!!!

From now through November 2012 this should be required weekly or at least monthly, reading - BY ALL WHO VOTE!!!

Did you notice who Obama threatened when he wasn't getting his way on raising the debt ceiling?

He threatened to not pay:

Social Security Retirees, Military Retirees, Social Security disability and Federal Retirees.

Now.. Let this sink in really good -

He did not threaten to stop payments to illegal aliens, he did not threaten to take frivolous benefits such as Internet access away from violent inmates.

He did not offer to fire some of the thousands of unnecessary federal employees that he hired.

He did not offer to cut down on his or his wife's frivolous gallivanting around.They went to Hawaii for 17 days over Christmas 2011.

He did not threaten to not pay the senators and representatives or any of their staff.

He did not threaten to take benefits away from welfare recipients.

He did not threaten the food stamp programs.

He did not threaten to not pay foreign aid.

He did not threaten to cut back on anything that involves his base voters.

The list could go on and on. He is in full political re-election mode!

* Why are we allowing this person to destroy this wonderful country with his selfishness and his lies?

* His type of change is killing our country. He needs to be stopped and only our Votes can stop him.

* Do not forget about his tactics when it's election time. Vote Obama OUT of the Presidency in 2012.

LET'S MAKE 2012 - THE END OF AN ERROR!

"Democracy... Is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

Liberty ... Is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin

AMERICA ..... HOME OF THE FREE BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE

PRAY FOR OUR TROOPS

ELECTION 2012 IS COMING!!!

A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves! I'M 100% for PASSING THIS ON!!! Let's Take a Stand!!!

Obama: Gone!
Borders: Closed!
Language: English only
Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!
Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare!
NO freebies to: Non-Citizens!

We the people are coming

Inside the New Hate

2012-02-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

Inside the new hate
This is quite a link.
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/04/inside_the_new_hate/singleton/

Arizona Politics Satire

2012-02-04T06:52:00.000-08:00

Don't miss this link by the creator of the comic strip La Cucaracha!

http://pocho.com/tag/arizona/

Carlin is gone, but not forgotten

2012-02-04T06:20:00.000-08:00

GOP Assault on Workers Succeeds

2012-02-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

Indiana has just dropped a bomb on the working people of its state with the passage of a Right to Work (for less) law. The law is part of a continuing assault on working Americans.

And Romney and company speak out against class warfare? His upper class has already won!

See link to story

The oil billionaires on the block

2012-02-01T06:26:00.001-08:00

Do you mind spending a million or so a night for a hotel?

Read how the Koch Bros. used their billions this week.

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20120201/NEWS01/202010306/Koch-group-quietly-met-valley

I guess the protestors can't get to them here.

Just plain folks!

Mitt Romney Made his Money the Old-Fashioned way.

2012-01-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney Made his Money the Old-Fashioned way...
He inherited it!

the original intent of the Founding Fathers

2012-01-25T07:35:00.001-08:00

So you want to go back to the original intent of theFounding Fathers like the “Originalists” want?

Then you want to go back to a country where…

Only free white men who owned property could vote.
Slavery was legal in all states, but one
The Senate was not elected by the People.
The Electoral College was solely responsible for choosing the president.
There was no Air Force.
There was no standing army.
The Navy was made up primarily of privateers.
There were only thirteen states.
The United States ended at the Mississippi River.
Women had no rights.
The state militias (National Guard) would not cross state lines.
There was no restriction on immigration.
Spain owned Florida, Texas and much of the Gulf Coast.
New York was the capital.

Oh, I guess that’s not what you meant? Well, I hope your flintlock musket protectsyou!

Washington State Redistricting Plan

2012-01-23T07:03:00.000-08:00

Washington now has ten congressional districts!

Click on the following link to find out the details.

New Redistricting Plan http://www.redistricting.wa.gov/maps_final_2011.asp

Family Values?

2012-01-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

Future of the Court?

2012-01-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

Ponder this: if we accidentally elect Newt Gingrich president will he have Justices Roberts, Alioto, Thomas and Scalia arrested and brought before him in him in handcuffs for the crime of being judicial "activists?"

Three Supreme Court Cases That Should Worry You

Email Print Share

Posted on Dec 18, 2011

AP / J. Scott Applewhite

Justices Alito, left, and Roberts pose in front of the Supreme Court of the United States. The two men have helped engineer radical legal change in America.

By Bill Blum

At his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, John Roberts, the nominee of President George W. Bush to become the 17th chief justice of the United States, promised to serve in the neutral fashion of a baseball umpire and lead the Supreme Court away from all manner of judicial activism. “[I]t’s my job to call balls and strikes,” he testified, “and not to pitch or bat.”

Few, if any, observers took Roberts at his word, given his track record as a Republican warhorse, including stints as a clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist and as deputy solicitor general under the first President Bush. But even the skeptics were not prepared for the judicial counterrevolution that Roberts and his conservative high court brethren have engineered since.

In the space of a few short years, the Roberts court has transformed American law with its miscarriages of justice. Among its dubious lowlights, the court has invented [italics and bold-face added] a Second Amendment individual right to bear arms, erected new barriers to age and sex discrimination lawsuits, undercut environmental protection, and, in the Citizens United case—its crowning glory to date—it has recognized corporations as people under the First Amendment with the constitutional right to spend without restraint on political attack ads.

Anyone hoping the pace of the counterrevolution might slow is apt to be disappointed by the time the court completes its current term. If present trends persist, and there is little reason to believe they won’t, 2012 will be remembered as the year the court rewrote the constitutional boundaries between federal and state authority, severely curtailing federal initiatives on behalf of working people, minorities and the poor.

Here are the three pending cases that best define the agenda:

When the 2010 census revealed that the population of Texas had grown by 4.2 million, the state’s Legislature was required to redraw congressional voting districts to comply with the one-person, one-vote standards of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But in a classic “oops” moment, the Legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Perry remapped the playing field in a way that minimized the electoral clout of the 2.8 million Hispanics who had migrated to the Lone Star State in the previous decade.

Texas, like most southern states and counties with a history of using poll taxes and literacy tests to stifle minority voting, is required under the Voting Rights Act to obtain “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department or a three-judge court in Washington, D.C., before changes to electoral maps can take effect. The Perry plan was so outrageous that even before the review process was completed, civil rights groups persuaded a three-judge federal panel in San Antonio to scuttle the Republican remap and craft a redistricting plan fashioned by the judges.

With Texas gaining four new House seats in the 2012 elections, the Roberts court is poised to hand Perry an undeserved legal victory that could ensure continued Republican dominance of the lower chamber. A pro-Perry ruling could also deal a death blow to the pre-clearance mandate in general, after a 2009 decision, also from Texas, which eased the ability of municipalities to claim exemptions from the mandate (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility Dist. v. Holder).

Oral argument has been set for Jan. 9, and a decision is expected in time for the March Texas primary.

The Arizona Immigration Law: Arizona v. United States

Enacted in 2010, Arizona’s SB 1070 is the love child of former state senator and rabid immigrant-rights basher Russell Pearce and Gov. Jan Brewer. Among its several provisions, the statute requires state law enforcement officers to ascertain the immigration status of anyone they stop if they have reason to believe the detainee might be an undocumented immigrant. The statute also makes it a crime under state law for undocumented workers to seek employment if they are not registered and authorized to work by the federal government.

In April, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals enjoined the act’s offending provisions, holding that under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Arizona’s attempt to criminalize aspects of immigration were “pre-empted” by federal immigration law. The pre-emption doctrine is the long-standing principle that only Congress and the federal government have the authority to exercise certain powers, such as the right to declare war, make foreign policy or print money.

In 1956, in a case with haunting similarities to the Arizona challenge and that ought to be controlling precedent, the Supreme Court cited the pre-emption doctrine to strike down a Pennsylvania law that had made it a state crime to advocate overthrow of the federal government (Pennsylvania v. Nelson). But in May, in yet another signal that the Roberts court is intent on altering the federal-state balance, the Supreme Court brushed aside pre-emption concerns to uphold an Arizona law authorizing the state to revoke the licenses of employers who knowingly hire the undocumented (Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting).

Oral argument on the fate of SB 1070 has yet to be set. In the meantime, Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself from deliberations because of her prior involvement in the issue as solicitor general.

Copycat legislation mirroring Arizona’s has spread to South Carolina, Utah, Georgia and Alabama, whose new immigration law has been blasted in a recent Human Rights Watch report as “grounded in discrimination” and fostering “a culture of fear.”

The court’s decision on SB 1070 will likely determine the fate of these other laws as well, accelerating the transfer of powers long held by the federal government to individual states determined to scapegoat the undocumented.

Obamacare: Florida v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Baseball has its World Series, football its Super Bowl. The concerted legal attack on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is the dream moment the Roberts court has been longing for.

The immediate legal issue before the court is vitally important and by now well known: whether Congress has the constitutional power to require virtually all adult U.S. citizens and legal residents to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. But as critical as health insurance is in the everyday lives of all people, there is an underlying legal issue the case raises that is even more critical: whether Congress and the president in enacting national health care legislation have overstepped their authority under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, otherwise known as “the Commerce Clause,” which grants Congress the power to regulate “Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States. …”

Although it lacks the fanfare of the First Amendment and concepts like due process and equal protection, the Commerce Clause has been the basis for a vast panoply of progressive federal legislation, ranging from the National Labor Relations and Fair Labor Standards acts of the 1930s to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as Occupational Health and Safety, Equal Pay and Clean Air and Water acts of more recent vintage.
It took FDR’s threat to expand the Supreme Court from nine to 11 members to move the court to reconsider its once highly restrictive interpretation of the Commerce Clause that threatened to derail the New Deal. And it was not until the 1990s and 2000s that the judicial pendulum began to reverse course, as the court under Rehnquist inaugurated what some on the right have touted as an era of New Federalism, with decisions curbing federal regulation of education and invalidating portions of the Violence Against Women Act.

Since the federal circuit courts are split on the constitutionality of Obamacare, it’s understandable that the Supreme Court would step in to provide clarity. But here, as elsewhere, the trend is ominous. The challenge to Obamacare affords the Roberts court the opportunity to finish the job of New Federalism, and the implications for the country’s future could not be more profound. Would the demise of Obamacare have a legal domino effect, leading piece by piece, case by case, to future efforts to eviscerate Medicare, environmental protection and even Social Security? Oral arguments are expected late in the court’s term.

In Federalist Paper No. 78, Alexander Hamilton supported the creation of an independent court system, terming the judiciary the “least dangerous” branch of government because it lacked the capacity to “annoy or injure” what he called “the political rights of the Constitution.” But as the three cases topping its 2012 docket suggest, the Roberts court is moving to consolidate nothing less than a judicial counterrevolution.

Thanks to David Allen Tree for this post.

editor's note:
definition: Judicial Activism: a decision that you do not agree with.

The Bottom Line

2012-01-23T02:30:00.000-08:00

This election can be simplified into one choice.

Who do you trust more to make the vital decisions that affect your life?

Multinational corporations (aka "people")

or

Your fellow citizens

Come to think of this, didn't we settle the matter in 1776?

Quayle endorses Romney

2012-01-23T01:22:00.000-08:00

So Dan (the Quiz Kid) Quayle endorses Mitt Romney?
Is he really working for Gingrich's camp?
Does anyone remember Dan Quayle? Wasn't he related to Chicken Little?

Simplified Republican Paper Ballot

2012-01-10T15:26:00.000-08:00

There has been much discussion lately over the use of paper and electronic ballots. Please find the type of ballot that the Republicans find most useful. It saves the bother of registration and checking identification.

Dysfunction of America article

2012-01-07T06:33:00.000-08:00

I received this from a friend and thought you might be interested in it. -ed

I received the following article from a Canadian friend of mine. It is from the Montreal Gazette. Written by a former leader of the Progressive Conservative party in Canada. I found his analysis of the current state of the US to be very well written and thought out. Let me know what you think.
[mk]

The Dysfunction of America (1): The rule of greed

MONTREAL - The U.S. economy remains the most powerful, creative and dynamic in the world, but it faces major difficulties. No longer is it a true capitalist free-market system. It has become a gigantic welfare state whose prime beneficiaries are the rich and major corporations.

Think of the legions of millionaire lobbyists in Washington; the shuttle-bus-type ferrying of people back and forth between senior Washington positions and executive suites in the business world; the enormous subsidies paid to myriad industries, including agriculture; the complex loopholes that render the tax code incomprehensible to all but the beneficiaries; the deregulation of the financial system that led to the crisis of 2007 and 2008, followed by the trillion-dollar bailouts; and that’s to say nothing of the dramatically increasing inequality of income distribution.

Greed may be good, as Gordon Gekko famously declared in Wall Street, but it is good only for the rich.

Notwithstanding the fatuous blathering of the current Republican candidates for the presidency, to say nothing of the Tea Party movement, Americans do not really want smaller government and serious cuts to government spending. During the presidencies of those alleged fiscal conservatives Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, government and, more especially, deficits and debt grew dramatically.

Almost without exception, independent experts and analysts (a group that, sadly, excludes all active politicians), know that to put America’s financial house in order requires both tax increases and spending cuts. President Barack Obama’s proposed tax increase for Americans earning $1 million a year, which will never become law, is an almost invisible drop in the deficit bucket. The chances of anyone who advocates serious tax increases, in whatever form, being elected are not merely slim; they are zero.

The same is true for any politician advocating significant cuts to defence spending, social security, and Medicare and Medicaid.

What Americans want are more services for which they do not pay. They want the banquet table to be set, at the cost of others, for themselves alone. The most recent agreement to raise America’s debt ceiling did not actually reduce government spending; it merely slowed its rate of growth.

Tax rates in the United States – whether income, capital gains or corporate tax – are the lowest they have been in decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, the top 1 per cent of the population earned between 8 and 9 per cent of the nation’s income. Today that figure is approaching 25 per cent. Middle-class income, in real terms, has been at best stagnant for the last decade or more. Last year the average income of the top 25 hedge-fund managers in the U.S. was $1 billion. To put that figure in perspective: assuming a working year of 250 days, it represents $4 million per day, more than an overwhelming majority of people will earn in a lifetime.

How much is enough? Apparently there is no limit. Ergo, Occupy Wall Street.
The usual justification for these enormous incomes and this devastating inequality is that these high earners are the creators of jobs. With some exceptions, that is rubbish. In almost the same breath, the Republican candidates argue (correctly) that the leading creators of jobs are small businesses. The two positions are in almost complete contradiction. No economic research has ever established a direct causal link between tax rates and economic growth and job creation.

In recent years an overwhelming proportion of America’s national income has been generated by its financial industries. It was paper-shufflers (see Margin Call, the movie) – whose creations, however ingenious, were collateralized debt obligations, credit-default swaps and other forms of derivatives, and not jobs – who took home obscene amounts of money. The very highly paid CEOs of Fortune 500 companies were not only not creating jobs, they were eliminating them, and hollowing out America’s manufacturing industries by outsourcing.
Generally speaking, it is not the true entrepreneurs – those who start and build companies, thereby creating real jobs and deserving every dollar they earn – who are among the obscenely paid. Nor do true entrepreneurs earn millions while simultaneously losing their clients’ money in stock-market “corrections.” Obviously a properly functioning economy needs strong and effective financial institutions (Canada being a reasonably good example), not casinos operating giant Ponzi schemes. For true entrepreneurs, money is merely a by-product of their passion; for Wall Street, it is the only passion.

With the necessary political will, it would be relatively easy – although painful – to eliminate the U.S.’s deficit and debt problems. The Simpson-Bowles Commission – set up by President Obama and tasked with finding ways to achieve long-term fiscal sustainability for the U.S. – and many others have made practical suggestions, including closing tax loopholes, modestly increasing tax on the well-off, instituting a national sales tax and a gasoline tax, reducing defence spending, and limiting entitlements to those who really need assistance. However, as the saying goes: “It ain’t gonna happen.”

Can America recover its prominence and world leadership in areas other than military strength? Of course it can, but only if, as a nation, it ceases being in denial; only if it recovers its moral and ethical compass; only if its political leaders see their role as true service to their country; only if steps are taken to reduce the devastating inequality of income.

Peter Blaikie is a founding partner of the Montreal law firm Heenan Blaikie. He was president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1981 to 1983.

The dysfunction of America (II): Political gridlock and beyond

Leo Tolstoy famously wrote that "each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." To adapt that somewhat: it is almost certainly true that all families, in different ways and to a greater or lesser extent, are dysfunctional. The same is true of nations. The rub lies in "to a greater or lesser extent."

To the extent that Canada is dysfunctional - and it is - it matters very little, if at all, at a global level. Think about it like Greece: were that county the only one of the nations of Europe to be in so many ways chaotic, it would be material for comedians, not an item on the daily news.

But when the United States is massively dysfunctional - well, to borrow the line of Crocodile Dundee as he flashes his blade before some New York City punks: "That's a problem."
Because of the unique role that the United States plays in the world, we all, and particularly we Canadians, need it to function well, and we all share the dramatic consequences when it does not. (The same is true, to a lesser extent, of dysfunctional Europe.) The world needs America to become once again the "shining city on a hill."

At its best, whether it be in science, innovation, business, medicine, philanthropy, education or the arts, to name but a few, America's genius is unrivalled.

Furthermore, to their own and their country's credit, there are tens of millions of Americans who lament their country's failures. For evidence of that, in addition to the "Occupations" of Wall St. and beyond, one need only stay aware of commentary and analysis by independent experts, observers and, more importantly, informed U.S. citizens.

But right now there is a massive failure in America's political system - the most consequential kind of dysfunction. "Gridlock," the usual description, is inadequate, because it creates the impression of a temporary problem. The real difficulties are far more systemic.

The U.S. president is frequently described as "the most powerful individual in the world," but the actual powers constitutionally attributed to the office are remarkably limited. In the British parliamentary system, a prime minister with a majority is far more able to make his or her wishes reality. In most European systems, presidential powers are far greater than those the American head of state wields. When, in addition, the president is weak and inexperienced, as is currently the case, the impasse is exaggerated. With the art of compromise having been drowned in extremism and zealotry, the constitutionally ordered system of checks and balances in the U.S. legislative system (for example, the need for Congress and the president to approve major spending decisions, raising the national debt ceiling or changing tax rates), the goal of which has always been to prevent excessive concentration and possible abuse of power, has been derailed so as to cause a gigantic seizure in the machinery of government.

Surfers speak of the "endless summer." The United States lives the endless political campaign, especially for the presidency. From the day after inauguration, the incumbent begins the next election campaign - as do his or her opponents. Nothing could be more obvious right now than that the strategy of the Republican Party, expressed through its leaders and presidential candidates, has nothing to do with solving America's enormous economic difficulties, and everything to do with the 2012 presidential election. Obviously they see a weak economy as the yellow brick road to the White House. Obstructing every proposal of the administration, without a single positive suggestion, is the strategy.

Since too many people's political attention span is measured in nanoseconds, this is the age of pure image politics. It is also the age of unlimited spending on political campaigns, brutally negative television ads, and slogans replacing serious discussion. With the occasional exception of a televised debate, campaigns consist of highly structured appearances before committed supporters, carefully staged photo opportunities and nine-second clips on the nightly news.

Another problem: in essence, only the very rich, or those supported by the very rich, need apply for legislative positions, especially the Senate. Does anyone truly expect that a government made up of such people will actually pass laws, particularly with respect to taxation, against their apparent interests and those of their financiers (Warren Buffett excepted)? Abraham Lincoln's ringing words at the end of the Gettysburg Address, "government of the people, by the people, for the people," are being, before our eyes, transformed into "government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich." "Sir Charles" Barkley, the iconic former National Basketball Association star, put it beautifully: "I'm sad to see an America with rich people screwing poor people."

Another area of dysfunction in the U.S. is education. America's best schools and universities are without peer. That said, every independent assessment of America's overall world ranking on education illustrates enormous difficulties.

The schools are producing students whose test scores in reading, science and mathematics rank far behind those of the world's leaders. America's universities are not graduating nearly enough scientists and engineers to meet the country's needs. At all levels, and notwithstanding enormously high fees at the best schools and universities, the overall system is underfunded. Across the country, and particularly within the Democratic Party, teachers' unions wield massive power and influence, and resist all change.

And then there is health care. While their reasons may be dramatically different, even diametrically opposed, there can hardly be a single American who believes the nation's health-care system is functioning properly. Now, concerns about health care arise, for varying reasons, in almost every country in the world. But the United States spends far more of its national income on health care than does any other country, yet it has nowhere close to the best health-care results. Obesity and its attendant health consequences, while a growing problem elsewhere, are an epidemic in America. (Lands' End, a Wisconsin-based online retailer, has men's sizes up to XXXXXL!) It is hard to imagine how the system can be restored to good health when every attempt to innovate leads to ideological warfare and court challenges. Obamacare will almost certainly be a major issue in this coming year's presidential campaign.

There are many other areas of dysfunction in America: the judicial systems, both criminal (ask Conrad Black) and civil; the question of immigration, where reasonable compromise seems impossible; the glaring absence of rational gun control; the complete failure of attempts to control drug use, and the export of its attendant violence to Mexico and Central America; and last but not least, the refusal to have a reasonable debate on the issues surrounding climate change.

Perhaps this is merely the rant of a curmudgeon. If it is, it is more in sorrow than in anger.
However, as we in Canada tend to be rather smug and complacent when we compare ourselves to our American neighbours, we should keep in mind that the rant began with the expression "to a greater or lesser extent" qualifying national dysfunctionality. With exceptions - some of them admittedly important - the only real difference between the two countries is the extent of the dysfunction. Throughout history, Canada has tended to arrive in the same place as the United States, only more slowly and less dramatically. We should remember that our house is made of glass.

Subject: Obama Will Win in 2012

2011-12-12T20:06:00.000-08:00

Subject: Obama Will Win in 2012 (Interesting)

Regardless of your political leaning this is an eye opening view of our country and maybe will cause some of you to get more involved whether you agree or disagree with the author. Many of the problems identified are real and we all need to get involved by joining or at least supporting political groups that represent our views and letting our elected officials know how we feel about the issues and their responses to them.

Candidly I would like to see all of Congress replaced (or sent to Siberia) as they are largely self serving, short sighted, unimaginative, beholden to corporate influence, doomsayers, married to political idealogies and voting as sheep, leading the American public over the proverbial cliff.

Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times best selling author.
Obama Will Triumph -- So Will America
By Frank Schaeffer

Before he'd served even one year President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight, 57-year- old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our President.
Why?-- because he is succeeding.

We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.

Obama's steady supporters will be proved right. Obama's critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.

The Context of the Obama Presidency:
Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World War and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition - from both the right and left.

As the President's poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election.

The left's lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling "prophecy"-- snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn't have anything to do with it!

Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:

# An ideologically divided country to the point that America was really two countries
# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that was unnecessary and immoral
# The worst economic crisis since the depression
# America's standing in the world at the lowest point in history
# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war
# A health care system in free fall
# An educational system in free fall
# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing)
# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left
# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally irresponsible Bush administration.

And those were only some of the problems sitting on the President's desk!

"Help" from the Right?
What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office -- do to "help" our new president (and our country) succeed?

They claimed that he wasn't a real American, didn't have an American birth certificate, wasn't born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating "racist", was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted "death panels" to kill the elderly!
They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8.

They organized "tea parties" to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon.

They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) "commentators" from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.

The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: "No!"
In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right, combined with the educated but obtuse neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent "bishops", frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!

"Help" from the Left?
What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he'd inherited from the worst president in modern history!

Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President's economic policies had "failed" before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minutes of the President taking office, they'd been "betrayed"! (Never mind that Obama's vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other president's has been. Never mind that he signed a new hate crimes law!)

Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how "disappointed" they were that they'd not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the "change"? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals!

And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond. "Governing"?! What the hell does that word, uh, like mean?"

The President's critics left and right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the white, snide know-it- all commentators/talking heads who just couldn't imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren't as smart as they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn't consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!

The Obama critics' ideological ideas defined their idea of reality rather than reality defining their ideas-say, about what is possible in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush into office. Twice!

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community - in just 12 short months -- President Obama:
#Continued to draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan
#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
#Restored America 's image around the globe
#Banned torture of American prisoners
#Stopped the free fall of the American economy
#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming
#Stood up for educational reform
#Won a Nobel peace prize
#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances
#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed to even begin
#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience
#Stopped the free fall of job losses
#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the "blood of tyrants" needing to "water the tree of liberty".
#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly

Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama "failed"! Other than that he didn't "live up to expectations"!

Who actually has failed... ...are the Americans that can't see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned "news" into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country.
Here's the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty "supporters" or hate-filled Republican detractors!

The Future Looks Good
After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling.
Just because we didn't get everything we wanted in the first short and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us stayed the course. And we will be proved right.

Please pass this on and hang in there! Pass it on anyway to ensure that his "report card" gets the attention it deserves.

The Lord Wroks in Mysterious Ways

2011-12-05T19:17:00.001-08:00

I couldn't resist this news item.

No comment needed

2011-12-03T16:49:00.001-08:00

Republicans anti-science

2011-11-25T09:16:00.001-08:00

Why are so many Republicans anti-science.

See this article in the Huffington Post
Click here for link

No Newts is Good News

2011-11-25T08:03:00.001-08:00

Here are some more of the Amphibian's cartoons

Who are the One Percent?

2011-11-25T07:55:00.001-08:00

Are you part of the 99% of the American People or are you part of the 1% who really run things? Few people know who the One Percenters (or the 1% of the One Percenters) who really are pulling the strings really are.

Click here to view some of those who really own the country.

A Newt by any other name...

2011-11-24T19:45:00.001-08:00

Go Ahead... Look it up!

2011-11-24T19:37:00.001-08:00

Does Fox make you stupid?

2011-11-23T05:19:00.001-08:00

dows Fox News make you dumber than those who watch no news? Check out this link from Countdown.
Click here for video clip

Political Accountability

2011-11-22T08:31:00.001-08:00

Heaven and Hell

While walking down the street one day a Corrupt Senator (that may be redundant) was hit by a car and died. His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

"Welcome to heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you."

"No problem, just let me in," says the Senator.

"Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from the higher ups. What we'll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity."

"Really?, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven," says the Senator.

"I'm sorry, but we have our rules."

And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell.

The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course.

In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him. Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.

They played a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and the finest champagne. Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who is having a good time dancing and telling jokes.

They are all having such a good time that before the Senator realizes it, it's time to go. Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises.

The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens in heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him, "Now it's time to visit heaven...

So, 24 hours pass with the Senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing harps and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.

"Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity."

The Senator reflects for a minute, then he answers: "Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell."

So, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell...

Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage. He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls to the ground.

The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulders.

"I don't understand," stammers the Senator. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now it's just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?"

The devil smiles at him and says, "Yesterday we were campaigning, Today, you voted."

Vote wisely

Insightful comments from Robert Reich

2011-11-22T05:04:00.001-08:00

....Clinton's labor secretary:

Financial capitalism has taken over from real capitalism. Financial capitalism is taking over from product and services, from people that actually produce goods and services. And that has distorted our entire system. When so much money and so much income are at the top—and by the way, the 400 richest Americans right now have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together. When you get that much income and wealth at the top, inevitably some people at the top—not all people at the top, but some of them—are going to abuse their income and wealth and corrupt the political system. I don’t want to mention names, like Charles and David Koch; that would not be nice of me; that would not be fair. But they, each of them worth $25 billion—each of them worth $25 billion, what they are doing is using a chunk of their fortune to pollute and corrupt American democracy. And why are they doing that? Because they want to entrench themselves. They make petrochemicals, they want to stop the environmental movement; they want to create doubts about whether there is, in fact, climate change. They want to cut the budget; they don’t want taxes to be raised; they and other people at the top are using their political muscle to entrench their power and privilege, and we cannot allow that in America. [applause]

_________________________________________________

Just in case you skeptics resist the point, Reich isn't seeking that awful-sounding "redistribution of wealth" that some politicians these days like to throw around to frighten us into a renewal of anti-communist hysteria; he's talking about quite the opposite--the vast accumulation of wealth by a handful of financial privateers and corrupt businessmen at our expense.

I have difficulty accepting how some of us still don't get it, how some of us will continue to vote against our own best interests. It has more to do with the suspension of common sense than with common sense.

Blindness to reality, the result of the unwillingness to shake off entrenched loyalties, has never been more a danger to this country than it is today.

thanks to David A. Tree

A mesage for our Rebel friends..;.;

2011-11-22T04:49:00.001-08:00

Lee surrendered.

You Lost.

Get Over it!

Oh, by the way…

A black man is President...

"Who Is Against Giving Children Good Food?" Answer: Fox News

2011-11-22T04:25:00.001-08:00

MSNBC's Geist Asks: "Who Is Against Giving Children Good Food?" Answer: Fox News

November 18, 2011 12:39 pm ET by Chelsea Rudman

Today, MSNBC's Willie Geist asked what seemed like a rhetorical question during Morning Joe: "Who is against giving children good food for lunch?" While some of his co-hosts laughed at the idea that anyone could be against such a thing, there is, in fact, a major media outlet that has loudly opposed healthy food and exercise initiatives for children: Fox News.

Geist's question came during an interview with Share Our Strength (SOS) founder and CEO Bill Shore and actor Jeff Bridges, who were on Morning Joe to promote SOS's No Kid Hungry campaign. After playing a clip of Jon Stewart mocking Congress' decision to allow schools to count pizza as a vegetable, the co-hosts discussed SOS's successes and struggles in trying to get healthier food into school lunch and breakfast programs. That's when this exchange happened:

GEIST: So when you go out there, Jeff, let's say you go up to Washington, and I mean this as a serious question, who is against giving children good food for lunch? I mean that.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI (co-host): Well, the clip that we --
GEIST: We laugh at the Jon Stewart clip. But are there people, when you say, we need to get fruits and vegetables, they say, no, no, we're sticking with the frozen pizza. I'm backed by the pizza industry. How does it work? Who's against this?

Bridges responded by saying, in part, that "hunger is so connected with poverty. And ... poverty, you know, when you start to deal with that, everybody has different opinions," then concluded: "But you're right. When you talk about feeding kids ... it's a no-brainer."

Watch:

Geist and Brzezinski don't need to look as far as the pizza industry to find an outspoken opponent of SOS's work getting kids healthier food. They only need to look to neighboring cable channel Fox News.

Fox has long attacked any government initiative to promote either healthier eating or exercise for children. In May 2010, after a White House task force released a report on voluntary measures to combat childhood obesity, Fox News responded by airing a promotion for Sean Hannity's show that stated: "No soda. No snacks. No choice? How the first lady's task force on childhood obesity is cutting into our diets and our rights."

In September 2010, Fox News figures bashed Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" initiative, which aims to reduce childhood obesity through promoting healthier eating and exercise. Hannity claimed on his show that the first lady was "taking the nanny state to a new level," while Fox Business host John Stossel wrote in a blog post: "If the government is allowed to dictate our diet, what's next? Do they start deciding who we'll marry, where we'll work?" Fox Nation even linked to a CNS News article with the headline, "First Lady Targets Freedom Fries."

Fox News figures also drummed up phony outrage over a supposed government plan to "ban bake sales at schools" after the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act last December. Even though there was no such ban, Fox & Friends repeatedly claimed that the act could ban bake sales -- even after their guests corrected them.

And in March this year, Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham attacked Michelle Obama for combining the annual White House Easter Egg Roll with her "Let's Move" initiative, bizarrely suggesting that it was somehow sacrilegious for the event to have a secular theme. The event is, in fact, secular, and routinely has a secondary theme -- in 2008, the Bush administration chose "ocean conservation" -- but Ingraham chose not to mention that and instead was enraged that children would be encouraged to "Get Up and Go."

But it's not just "government overreach" that Fox News is against -- they've attacked private companies' efforts to make food healthier, too. In July, the Fox & Friends co-hosts were spitting mad over McDonald's announcement that it will shrink the Happy Meal's portion of fries and include a fruit or vegetable with every meal. The co-hosts had this actual exchange:

STEVE DOOCY (co-host): And kids, there's about to be no more happy in your Happy Meals. Starting today, they're being replaced with the healthy meal.
BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Now how are we going to sell it to the kids?
DOOCY: You can thank the fat police for that, Brian. Sorry, Mayor McCheese.

There were no "fat police" involved -- McDonald's made that decision all on its own.

And last month, when actress Josie Bissett came on Fox & Friends to promote her new children's books and mentioned an upcoming book that will teach kids to cook, Doocy bizarrely asked, "They don't have to make healthy stuff, do they?"

Fox has, on rare occasions, allowed healthy foods to be promoted in its programming, but only through celebrities who are on as paid spokesmen for corporations, as when Angie Harmon took to Fox & Friends' airwaves to promote vegetable eating -- through her advertising for Hidden Valley Ranch Adressing.

But the overwhelming majority of segments Fox runs about food and health discourage healthy behaviors and promote unhealthy ones, from encouraging viewers to eat too much salt to hyping Botox injections.

________________________________________________

Were it only Fox news, it wouldn't be so strange. A number of politicians have embraced the same view, insisting our "damned big government'' is determined to destroy our freedoms, one by one; ah, but that's another story, that thing about politicians. Or is it?

Maybe Fox and those politicians are right.

So let's start by making car insurance and public education optional, then go on and eliminate police departments and the IRS. After all, all four are designed to restrict our behavior.

We're on a roll so why stop there? Let's also get rid of the privates that interfere with our free will. Like, how dare McDonald's cut back on fats and add fruits and vegetables! I am certain Herman Cain has a better plan that has no restraints.

I see the outcome, and it's brilliant: we get to keep the kids at home, feed them a diet of pizza for lunch, dinner and breakfast too, while they sit on their arses, watching Fox tv.

And, best of all, you and I get to drive to the pickup window at Godfather Pizza without a license, thanks to Fox and Friends...who, as we all know, never overreach.

Thanks to David Allen Tree for this post.

Where do the Republican candidates for president get their money?

2011-11-22T04:21:00.001-08:00

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Republican Financial Plans
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: November 18, 2011

Our topic for today is: Where do the Republican candidates for president get their money?

Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Gail Collins

The personal finances of the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls are important for two reasons. One is that we’re talking about people who aspire to the most prestigious and important job the nation has to offer. The other is that these folks seem to have done really, really well. Perhaps, they can offer career tips.

Remember when Newt Gingrich claimed that the mortgage giant Freddie Mac paid him $300,000 for his advice “as a historian?” Thousands of young history majors who were resigned to a future in which they would pad out their $2,000-a-semester salaries as part-time adjunct lecturers with fulfilling careers in bartending suddenly were engulfed with new hope.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Newt’s income actually comes from running think tanks that help promote the corporate clients’ goals in the public sector. That may be a little harder for the youth of America to put their heads around. But, kids, if anybody asks you what you want to be when you grow up, say: policy guru.

Gingrich wants everyone to understand that he does not lobby. Really, whatever the exact legal definition of lobbying is, that is something he did not do. The Gingrich Group got what turns out to be about $1.6 million to not-lobby for Freddie Mac, one of a long, long list of clients. Let’s all pause to recall the high dudgeon with which Gingrich announced, during one of the debates, that Representative Barney Frank ought to be put in jail for being “close to” Freddie Mac lobbyists. What kind of politician demands that an elected official be incarcerated for hanging out with the same people who are paying said politician $1.6 million or so to not-lobby?

This is an unusually delusional presidential field. Mitt Romney’s greatest political asset is that he doesn’t seem to actually believe it when he says he’s been consistent on matters like health care reform or abortion. Thank God there’s at least one guy on the stage who knows he’s fibbing.

Romney is the richest person running for president, worth somewhere between $190 million and $250 million. Most of that came from his work at Bain Capital, a firm that bought up troubled companies and gave them makeovers. Although many people lost their jobs when Bain Capital reeled in their employers, Romney’s work did create a lot of new value. Which, on occasion, Bain Capital walked away with, leaving the remnants of the company flopping helplessly on the beach.

In 2010, Mitt earned somewhere between $9.6 million and $43.2 million, according to The National Journal’s calculation of his financial reports. I believe I speak for us all when I say that there seems to be a lot of room in the middle of that estimate, but you get the idea. Much of that came from investments, but Romney also gets quite a bit of cash for making speeches. He once made $68,000 for one appearance before the International Franchise Association in Las Vegas.

People, if you were raking in more than $9.6 million a year, would you waste your time talking to the International Franchise Association? Perhaps you would if international franchises were especially close to your heart. But, in that case, why charge them $68,000? There are a lot of mysteries in the Mitt saga. For instance, if you were a very wealthy father of five energetic young boys, would you choose to spend your vacation driving the whole family to Canada with the dog strapped to the roof of the car? Wouldn’t it be more fun to take a plane to Disneyland?

Some of the Republican candidates seem to have no visible means of support whatsoever — like Rick Santorum, who has seven kids. You would hate to think they were going without shoes just so Dad could continue his never-ending quest to break into the 5 percent range in the polls.

But, good news! Santorum made at least $970,000 in 2010, in all those mysterious ways unsuccessful Republican candidates for president seem to have of making money. Part of it came from being a commentator for Fox News, and part of it came from Santorum’s work at — yes! — a think tank.

Rick Perry does not have a vast fortune, although he is blessed with friends who fly him around on private jets, take him on cool vacations and, occasionally, sell him real estate at bargain-basement prices. This week, Perry laced into Barack Obama as a man who could not possibly understand what ordinary Americans were going through because he “grew up in a privileged way.” This is a strange way to describe the president’s upbringing — particularly when Romney, the guy Perry is actually supposed to be running against, was the son of the head of American Motors. Maybe he got the two mixed up.

All I can tell you is this. Rick Perry will never be paid by a tank to think.

Thanks to David Allen Tree for this post.

Why the Right works so hard to attack Obama

2011-11-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

Why the Right works so hard to attack Obama

He is intelligent.
He is articulate.
He comes from humble origins.
He is young.
He is not overtly emotional
He is a Democrat.
He doesn’t fit into their “Amos & Andy” stereotype.
They have no pictures of him eating watermelon or fried chicken..
He doesn’t speak with an “Al Sharpton” accent.
His name is Barack Hussein Obama and not Leroy Rastus Washington.

Religious affiliation map

2011-11-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

This map is quite interesting. Check it out.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/pew-religion-08/flash.htm
Oregon and Mississippi provide quite a contrast.

Attempted Coup in Arizona

2011-11-03T10:16:00.001-07:00

In an action completely without precedence anywhere in the country, Arizona Republicans have voted to unjustifiably expel the Independent member of the state’s non-partisan redistricting commission, simply because the proposed maps were insufficiently partisan for Republican tastes.

What do we mean by “insufficiently partisan?” The state’s Independent Redistricting Commission drew a map that locks in a 2-to-1 GOP advantage in the congressional delegation and the legislature, but even that wasn’t good enough for Arizona Republicans.

GOP legislators demanded nothing less than an end to all accountability to the voters, but that would never happen through a truly non-partisan redistricting process. So they voted this week to fire the Independent redistricting commissioner on a party-line vote, with almost no notice or debate.

There is only one way to fix this naked, partisan power grab and restore fair redistricting in Arizona: the Independent member of Arizona’s redistricting commission must be reinstated and allowed to finish her job.

This, and only this, will honor the intent of Arizona voters, who spoke loud and clear when they ended politicians’ ability to gerrymander their way to power – or so we all thought.

Sign our petition today demanding that Arizona’s Independent redistricting commissioner be reinstated immediately!

This is the critical moment when we can make sure Arizona Republicans won’t get away with their partisan power grab or repeat it in other states. And you can be a part of it.

Here’s how Newsweek columnist John Avlon described what’s at stake and the difference we can make by speaking out:

One gauge the Arizona politicos will be watching is the level of public outcry. Politicians try this crap because they believe they’ll get away with it. (…) If Brewer gets away with this power grab, it will suddenly appear on the menu of every other governor looking to artificially preserve his or her party’s hold on power, Republican or Democrat. It is nothing less than an attempt to hijack representative democracy. These are the stakes, and that’s why it's time to take a stand in Arizona.

Show Republicans that they won’t get away with this power grab! Help restore non-partisan redistricting in Arizona by signing our petition today!

Mr. Avlon is right - swift and fierce public outcry is the only way we can stop shameless GOP power-grabs like this one from becoming the norm.

Please take a moment and sign the petition today.

Sincerely,

John Winston
National Political Director
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

Dark Clouds from the Sunshine State

2011-11-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

Folks,

I told you the reaction my madras pants evoked last winter at Friday night Happy Hour in Central Florida, but just to emphasize the point I'm going to make, let me tell you again. As I arrived at our regular table, one of the men seated there said, "What N.....did you steal those from?" My wife, ready to fight, glared and hissed, "I can't believe you said that.” The offender shrugged, grinned and went mute.

What I didn't tell you, a week or so later, my wife was at her usual north-south table position at the weekly duplicate bridge game in a room whose walls had just been repainted the color of--as she describes it--"spicy mustard." A seventy-year-old woman sitting east-west, her mouth twisted in disgust, spoke loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear,” That’s an N....color!"

I know my Friday night table mate loathes Obama and still expresses his feelings in an unexpurgated stream of malicious anti-Obama cartoons and far-right lies, the birther canard being only one of many. He also considers himself "sympathetic to the Tea Party." So are the others at the table.

I can only guess, of course, what the bridge lady's politics are but chances are they are similar; an overwhelming number of far right-wingers live where I live in Central Florida. They outnumber Democrats and independents well in excess of a hundred-to-one. How they all migrated to the same place I cannot say with certainty, but I can be certain when I say the ones I know are enthusiastic about the Tea Party. Recently, one of them got so angry when I criticized his party that he now refuses to talk to me. You'd think I was attacking his religion, and you'd be right; religion and politics are treated on the right with similar fervor.

I did say that the Happy Hour fellow now expresses his high regard for Herman Cain.
I wasn't surprised that in this age of political correctness a guy like him would pay lip service to a Cain candidacy in an effort to convince others [and maybe himself] that he is not a bigot.

He reminds me of those anti-Semites who used to say, mostly among themselves, "He's okay for a Jew," or, worse, say to Jews, Y'know, my best friend is a Jew."

The irony is that the reactionaries who hold sway within Republican ranks consider themselves the friends of Israel. In fact, they are. That's because they and Israel share the Arabs as a common enemy. But trustworthy Jew-lovers they are not.

Today, it's popular among right-wingers to blame the media and the bankers for our ills, because "the Jews control the New York Times and Wall Street." The hate signs crop up at Tea Party rallies and on what I choose to believe are strictly the fanatical fringes of the Occupy Wall Street movement whose loose structure accommodates protesters of all stripes.

This ingrained mistrust of things they have always hated in my lifetime lies barely dormant today. Should Herman Cain become the Republican choice to face off against Barack Obama in 2012, I doubt that voters on the extreme right will remain enamored of Cain. I doubt they will vote for Obama. I doubt they'll vote at all.

It's the Republicans of the center right who will conscientiously go to the polls a year from now, but given a choice between a very black Cain and not-so-black Obama, they will opt for bitter coffee that is lightened with a teaspoon of cream.

David Allen Tree

[Thanks so much for your submission - ed]

Louis Armstrong: the Jewish Link

2011-11-02T06:25:00.000-07:00

"At the beginning of last century, inthe emotional hotbed of New
Orleans, a child slave of the ghetto was born of aprostitute mother
and "missing" father.

He somehow stumbled into the attention of a financially poor but
loving Russian Jewish immigrant family, the Karnofskys. This little
fellow, with an appreciative, magnetic personality, attached himself
to the father, to help him with his horse-and-wagon hauling business.

The Karnofskys loved the child, took him in for dinners, including
Shabbat, and provided more than bed and shelter.
They provided him with the love he needed, and his first musical
instrument that led this confused, hungry youngster onto worldwide
fame - as a jazz performer, music innovator and worldwide ambassador
for humanity.

Louis Armstrong proudly spoke fluentYiddish, from his
childhood through his whole life, and always wore a Star of David
around his neck.

[Here is the link to verify -ed]

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/20088/louis-armstrongs-first-influence-jewish-peddlers/

Occupy Seattle Photos

2011-11-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Warren "Nobody get rich on his own"

2011-10-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

This is a fantastic link from a speech by Elizabeth Warren on "The Myth of Class Warfare."
Nobody get rich on his own! Click here to view clip.

What Organized Labor Has Accomplished

2011-10-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

Let's take a look at what organized labor has accomplished.

10 hour day
8 hour day
unemployment compensation
paid vacations
sick leave
minimum wages
workmen's compensation
workplace safety
health insurance
end to child labor
right to organize
equal pay for equal work
competency standards

If you don't like these things, you are free to move to some Third World country like Botswana, Bangladesh, South Carolina, etc.

See us also on http://progressivenorthwest.blogspot.com

Any more?

Some Cartoons to think about

2011-10-12T06:02:00.000-07:00

These are just a few of my favorites.

John’s Glossary of the Far Right

2011-10-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

John’s Glossary of the Far Right

Christian Republican,conservative (no relation to Jesus’ teachings)

Communist anyonewho doesn’t agree 100% with us

Compassionate onewho replaces hanging with lethal injection.

Death panel healthinsurance company adjuster

Death tax inheritancetax, estate tax

Fair tax atax paid by low income people

Founding Fathers KingGeorge III

Free enterprise lettingthe poor die, child labor

Free trade shippingUS jobs overseas

Government regulation meatinspection, traffic lights, medical licensing, building codes

Government waste anynon-military spending that takes place outside my district

Health Care Don’tget sick

Illegal alien Mexican

Job-creators billionaires

Middle class thosewho have inherited wealth, minimum income of $250,000

Minority BlackRepublicans

Muslim terrorist

Obamacare Aplan where poor people don’t necessarily die of curable diseases

Patriot Onewho favors unlimited spending on the military

Person Corporation

Progressive Republican obs. an extinct breed who believed inhelping others (see T. Roosevelt)

Pro-life onewho favors war and execution

Republican TeaParty member, anyone who really believes “W” won the 2000 election

Socialism havingpublic roads, police, fire, schools, lighthouses, air traffic control

Socialist anyoneto the left of Mussolini; Democrat, African-American, liberal, progressive

Terrorist anyonewith dark skin

Unemployment anopportunity to hire servants on the cheap

War thereal test of a macho country

Worthy wealthywhite man, big trust fund