Anti-Freedom Wall Street Journal Recommends That Egypt Gets Itself a Pro Free Market Murderer

Anti-Freedom Wall Street Journal Recommends That Egypt Gets Itself a Pro Free Market Murderer

Wall Street Journal says Egypt needs a Pinochet
The Chilean dictator presided over the torture and murder of thousands, yet still the free-market right revers his name

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial entitled “After the Coup in Cairo”. Its final paragraph contained these words:

Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who took over power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.

Presumably, this means that those who speak for the Wall Street Journal – the editorial was unsigned – think Egypt should think itself lucky if its ruling generals now preside over a 17-year reign of terror. I also take it the WSJ means us to associate two governments removed by generals – the one led by Salvador Allende in Chile and the one led by Mohamed Morsi in Egypt. Islamist, socialist … elected, legitimate … who cares?

Presumably, the WSJ thinks the Egyptians now have 17 years in which to think themselves lucky when any who dissent are tortured with electricity, raped, thrown from planes or – if they’re really lucky – just shot. That’s what happened in Chile after 1973, causing the deaths of between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Around 30,000 were tortured.

This attitude is one of the most dangerous and anti-American ideologies of the conservative movement, that being able to do business and make a profit is a more basic right than democratic republicanism. 

Freedom Loving Americans Understand What It Is Like to Have Fracking in Your Backyard

Freedom Loving Americans Understand What It Is Like to Have Fracking in Your Backyard

Ed Wade’s property straddles the Wetzel and Marsh county lines in rural West Virginia and it has a conventional gas well on it. “You could cover the whole [well] pad with three pickups,” said Wade. And West Virginia has lots of conventional wells — more than 50,000 at last count. West Virginians are so well acquainted with gas drilling that when companies began using high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing in 2006 to access areas of the Marcellus Shale that underlie the state, most residents and regulators were unprepared for the massive footprint of the operations and the impact on their communities.

When it comes to a conventional well and a Marcellus well, “There is no comparison, none whatsoever,” said Wade, who works with the Wetzel County Action Group [4]. “You live in the country for a reason and it just takes that and turns it upside down. You know how they preach all the time that natural gas burns cleaner than coal; well, it may burn cleaner than coal, but it’s a hell of a lot dirtier to extract.”

To understand what’s at stake, you have to understand the vocabulary. Take the word “fracking” for example. When people say it’s been around since the 1950s, they are referring to vertical fracturing, but what’s causing all the contention lately is a much more destructive process known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. Or they’re using "fracking" in a very limited way. “The industry uses [fracking] to refer just to the moment when the shale is fractured using water as the sledgehammer to shatter the shale,” scientist Sandra Steingraber told AlterNet [5]. “With that as the definition they can say truthfully that there are no cases of water contamination associated with fracking. But you don’t get fracking without bringing with it all these other things — mining for the frack sand [6], depleting water, you have to add the chemicals, you have to drill, you have to dispose of the waste, you have drill cuttings. I refer to them all as fracking, as do most activists.”

The potential impacts that go well beyond the moment the well is fracked are mammoth. What has been most discussed is the concern that the chemicals used in the fracking process, as well as naturally occurring but dangerous substances underground like arsenic, heavy metals and methane, can migrate back to the surface with water through faults, fissures and abandoned mines. That’s deeply concerning, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The footprint of the well site, which now often includes freshwater or wastewater ponds and tankers full of chemicals, has grown expotentially from the size of conventional wells -- they certainly aren't the size of a few pickup trucks. Here's an aerial view of a new home, built in rural West Virginia that is now surrounded by a fracking operation after the owner's neighbor leased to a drilling company.


Fracking takes rural communities and turns them into industrial zones — and citizens have little recourse. Thanks to the so-called “Halliburton Loophole” in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, fracking is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act and there are exemptions also in the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. In West Virginia, a state with a long history of energy extraction, industry has a controlling hand in local and state politics and thus far, seems to be calling the shots. To make matters worse, many properties had their mineral rights separated over a century ago. So, people may own their homes and properties, but not the minerals underneath. Their property can be destroyed by drilling and they will have no financial gain.

Or, they can lose virtually everything, simply by living next door to someone who does lease.

Maybe some old school vertical fracturing is safe enough. Maybe. Yet it is fairly obvious that that horizontal fracking combined with the massive numbers of wells is not safe, not clean, not sustainable and not good for American families.

Lessons For Real Patriots From the Sufferin’ Suffragettes

Lessons For Real Patriots From the Sufferin’ Suffragettes

One hundred years ago today was the watershed 1913 women’s suffrage march in Washington, D.C. Plus, Friday is International Women’s Day. It’s therefore the perfect moment to reflect on the strategies and tactics of several generations of amazing women.

We all know that the suffragettes won in the end by securing the vote for U.S. women in 1920. But to stop with that fact is to miss the phenomenal, inspirational, often nail-biting and groundbreaking campaign that preceded their win, as well as the lessons they have for activists today.

Before telephones, before TV, before the web, these women mobilized masses of people in a widespread and colorful campaign. Their successful tactics continue to shape campaigns today, even if many organizers have no idea where those tactics originated. But no, this couldn’t possibly be because of the suffragettes’ gender and the utter lack of historical study on women’s issues until just a few decades ago… hmmm.

First of all, it was huge

Modern history often gives the impression that suffrage was given to women by men under pressure from some small group of marginalized female activists. Of course, there was a committed core organizing crew, but that account is far from what really went down.

In the late 1800s, moderate activists, such as those in the National American Woman Suffrage Association, chose to frame voting rights as a natural extension of what was then considered appropriate for women so as not to alienate potential supporters. Rather than diminishing men’s role, they argued that women needed the vote to fulfill their role as nurturers, holders of morality, keepers of culture, the heart of the household. As mothers and guardians who were considered to be more in touch with morality than men, women were positioned to call out corruption and hold the all-male politicians accountable. “Politics is housekeeping on a grand scale,” Jane Addams said at the time.

The mainstream nature of the wider movement is displayed in lines from a banner carried in the parade before the 1916 Republican National Convention: “For the safety of the Nation / To the Women Give the Vote / For the hand that Rocks the Cradle / Will Never Rock the Boat!” Do you think they really meant that, or was it just brilliant PR outreach? Either way, before SignOn.org, Twitter or Facebook, these women collected more than a million signatures in pen and ink, all through hand-to-hand contact, and displayed them as they marched down Fifth Avenue in New York with 20,000 supporters and an estimated half-million people in the crowd in 1917. That’s quite a petition-delivery!

....To push the vote in New York state in 1912, there was a 12-day, 170 mile “Hike to Albany”; the next year, the suffragist “Army of the Hudson” completed a 225-mile walk from New Jersey to Washington, D.C. These physical stunts were part of the ”new womanhood” that showcased active, fit women in the public sphere to undermine any thoughts of women’s inferiority, physically or politically. At the time, astute writers commented that this kind of public work generated millions of dollars in free publicity for the movement, as well as immense outreach opportunities.

The militant National Women’s Party took this another step further with the first-ever picket of the White House. The “Silent Sentinels” and their banners were present every day from Jan. 10, 1917, to June of 1919 — except on Sundays. More than a thousand women participated over this period. Many were arrested, were refused bail and served time in horrendous conditions of solitary confinement, where they experienced beatings and force-feeding when they went on hunger strikes. Outrage at the treatment of women activists in prison built sympathy for the suffragette cause. Also, the first arrests at the White House were eventually found illegal, which helped ensure the right to protest there to this day.

In the 19th century, political parades and pageants were common in U.S. communities — for local celebrations, temperance marches or presidential campaigns passing through town. Suffragists held parades as early as 1906, beginning in California. This practice reached its peak exactly a century ago with what The New York Times called “one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country.” This 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession was reported to include nine bands, four mounted brigades, three heralds, about 24 floats and more than 5,000 marchers.

The march concluded at the Department of the Treasury steps with 100 women and children staging a vision of a shining future along with Justice, Liberty, Charity, Peace and Hope personified by women in flowing classical dresses and trumpets blaring. The now-famous image from this march is of a young beautiful woman in white robes on horseback, in a not-so-closeted, militant nod to Joan of Arc. Wow.

Lawyer Inez Boissevain, wearing white cape, seated on white horse at the National American Woman Suffrage Association parade on March 3, 1913, in Washington, D.C. (Wikipedia/George Grantham Bain Collection)Their spectrum of tactics included hotter actions, too. At one point in 1919, President Wilson was burnt in effigy in front of the White House, pitting the petticoats against the bluecoats. Wildly spewing fire extinguishers were unable to prevent the burning of the four-foot-tall cardboard Wilson. (There were about 50 arrests that day.) The suffragettes used flames again when they set “watchfires” outside the New York City opera house while Wilson was speaking there. Activists transcribed his words as he spoke them and then publicly burned the paper in public fires outside — thus condemning the hypocrisy of his words about international freedom while women were denied suffrage at home. These protests kindled more support for the women, who were steadfast, innovative and organized. They left the police looking disorganized and foolish, along with anti-suffrage minions.

Many of the media stunts were timed just right — famously, President-elect Wilson arrived in Washington the day before he was to be inaugurated to empty streets, as the masses in town all were drawn to the Woman Suffrage Procession. Of course, that meant that there were many hostile observers who had come just for the next day’s inauguration — about 100 marchers landed in the hospital — but the riotous swarm and the resulting publicity led to more momentum for the campaign.

It worked on many levels

Generations of American suffragettes were brave, tenacious, dedicated and incredibly talented nonviolent warriors and leaders — from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Alice Paul. Their tactics and strategies have become such an integral part of our nation’s repertoire of civil resistance that we often take them for granted.

Not only were the events innovative, courageous and spectacular, but they were intentionally executed to get attention in the media of the day — newspaper and radio, as well as early motion pictures. Some participants in the 1917 New York march recorded one-minute speeches on early Kinetophone cylinder recordings that were then played to audiences in Vaudeville houses — an ancestor of YouTube, perhaps? Ubiquitous media coverage, whether positive or negative, succeeded in helping educate and convert the public into supporters of women’s suffrage.

This list of suffragette activities and accomplishments could go on and on. For instance, they were not afraid to lobby (which they did for decades, alongside more militant actions), and they didn’t shy from political campaigns, either. They were not only the first to picket the White House, but they were also the first to hold a funeral as both a political event and a memorial in the Capitol building — to Inez Millholland (famous for her role in leading the 1913 parade on the white horse). And, finally, they were well aware that effective activism meant making the personal political; the straw that finally broke the camel’s back and enabled the passage of the 19th Amendment, granting suffrage to America’s women, was the vote cast by a young lawmaker swayed by his mother’s note: “Hurray and vote for suffrage… don’t forget to be a good boy!”

Progress doesn't just happen because you write a blog or even have your own radio program or a propaganda channel dedicated to conservatism like Fox News and CNN. Progress can be frustratingly slow. Never give up, even if you only make a tiny step forward in a year. That is a fight won for the next American and a step further down the road to America living up to it's ideals and not down to the base malevolence of conservatism.

5 Terrifying Things about the Sequester

5 Terrifying Things about the Sequester. Just my top two, the rest are at the link.

1. The sequester will hurt job-growth

As we pointed out during the debates raging in the run-up to the “fiscal cliff," the sequester was the second-most damaging component of the austerity bundle set to take effect on January 1, 2013. The worst component was the non-renewal of the payroll tax cut, which is already dragging substantially on the economy. All told, if the sequester kicks in the economy will likely end the year with roughly 500-600,000 fewer jobs than if it were repealed. These are jobs the economy desperately needs. To be clear, the sequester alone won’t drive the U.S. economy back into outright recession, but it surely will make the agonizingly slow recovery that much slower. Further, it’s worth noting that even a full repeal of it with no offset will still result in an economy growing much too slowly to quickly return to full-employment. In a nutshell, arguments over the sequester are roughly about whether we’d like to be $900 billion or a full $1 trillion below economic potential in the coming year.

....5. Entitlement are commitment devices. That’s scary.

Given that much of the negotiation over the sequester is how to “pay for” its repeal with other spending cuts, it should be noted that legislated changes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA do not need annual appropriations, and hence are likely to be much longer-lasting than any agreed-to discretionary cuts. Replacing the sequester with cuts to these valued programs would be a disaster. We have shown, for example, that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined contributed ten times as much to income growth for middle-income households over the last generation than growth in hourly wages. These programs are, by far, the part of the U.S. economy that still manages to deliver some goods to low- and moderate-income households. Gutting them in the name of securing a better economic future is perverse indeed. Obviously, pure efficiencies that save these programs money—tougher drug bargaining for Medicare, or reforms to provider reimbursement that squeeze out economic rents and improve quality—are welcome. But simple cuts to these programs that shift costs onto households as a way to pay for the sequester is close to a worst-case outcome.

What is The Sequester

What is The Sequester

The United States is rapidly approaching March 1, the date on which the automatic spending cuts put in place by the summer 2011 debt ceiling deal will begin taking effect. There is little indication that Congress will avert the cuts as it did in January, as Republican leaders have thus far been unwilling to negotiate with President Obama and Senate Democrats.

Congress is currently on recess until next Monday, leaving just five legislative days until the automatic cuts — known as sequestration — will take effect. Here’s a breakdown of why the sequester was created and what it will mean for programs facing cuts and the nation’s overall economic recovery:

    Why the sequester was created. The sequester was a result of the GOP’s wrangling over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011, when Republican leaders — who had previously passed clean debt increases 19 times under President Bush — demanded spending cuts as the price for averting a costly default. On the brink of default, Congress passed the Budget Control Act, which enacted immediate spending cuts and created a supercommittee tasked with striking a “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit. Republicans walked away from the committee after refusing to consider tax increases on the wealthy, setting sequestration into motion. The sequester, which cuts from both domestic and defense spending, was designed to be painful enough that both sides would negotiate to avert it.

    How to avoid it. The sequester was originally supposed to take effect on January 1, but it was avoided as part of the overall “fiscal cliff” deal that maintained most of the Bush-era tax cuts and enacted spending reductions to offset the first round of automatic cuts. In the past, Republicans offered plans to offset the sequester by cutting more spending, even though deficit reduction efforts have been heavily skewed toward spending cuts to domestic programs already. Democrats have offered multiple proposals that would bring more balance to efforts to reduce the deficit. A plan from the Congressional Progressive Caucus would replace the sequester largely with new revenue, evening the balance of spending cuts and revenue increases in overall deficit reduction efforts. Senate Democrats proposed a plan that reduced the deficit by $110 billion, enough to offset the sequester until next January. Half of the reduction comes from cuts, the other half from tax increases on the wealthy. Republicans, however, have again refused to negotiate over new revenues, even from tax reform that would close corporate loopholes.

    What it will mean. Because its cuts are across-the-board, the sequester will affect most domestic programs. Jobless workers will lose access to unemployment benefits, while safety net programs for women and children and early childhood education programs will face deep cuts. The sequester will cut funding for law enforcement and border security, food safety, airline travel security, Head Start, disaster relief, and health research. Defense programs will also see reductions. These cuts will have broad ramifications for the country’s recovering economy, pushing it down the austere path Europe has followed into second recessions. Independent reports predict that sequestration would reduce economic growth by 0.6 percent over the year while also leading to the loss of 700,000 jobs. The debt limit fight that created the sequester already pummeled the recovery, and allowing these spending cuts to take effect would cause even bigger problems.

Conservatives are hoping that either most Americas are idiots or have terrible short term memories, and are trying to blame Democrats for this childishness. They voted for the sequester, End of story. Now they want a new deal that punished the working poor and middle-class.

Why Does Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) Hate American Values and Working Families

Why Does Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) Hate American Values and Working Families

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R), like Republican governors all across the country, aims to implement a regressive tax plan that involves cutting income taxes for the rich while, in his case, maintaining a sales tax hike that primarily hurts the poor. The sales tax increase was supposed to be temporary when it was adopted in 2010, but Brownback now wants to make permanent.

Sales taxes disproportionately impact the poor, who are more likely to spend all or most of their income. According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Brownback’s plan will raise taxes on the poorest Kansans, but still lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue due to huge tax cuts for the rich:

    – The poorest 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.2 percent more of their income in taxes each year, or an average increase of $22.

    – The middle 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.2 percent less of their income in taxes each year, or an average cut of $104.

    – Upper-income families, by contrast, reap the greatest benefit with the richest one percent of Kansans, those with an average income of over a million dollars, saving an average of $6,528 a year.

The plan would cost the state $340 million in revenue, despite hiking taxes the poor. And Kansas already has a regressive tax system, with the poorest residents paying a rate more than twice as high as the richest 1 percent.

 Brownback and other anti-American conservatives feel that millioanires and wealthy coporations have it real tough. So they're just asking people in the bottom 70 % percent of the income range to contribute more. If people - many of whom are making around minimum wage and barely getting by, why those wealthy people and coporations might create some more jobs that do not even pay a living wage. Conservatives in several states are finally getting what they want, America as a giant plantation, the 1950s model of America. Sense they're going to give people a few dollars an hour, you can't technically call it slavery. Since they're gutting education, degrading rivers, blowing the tops off mountains and making health care even harder to get for most Kansas residents - how can they say they believe in progress and prosperity? Prosperity for who, a few wealthy plutocrats who have never done an honest day's work in their lives, because they made their wealth on the backs of labor.

Why Does The Conservative Republican Confederate Yankee Bob Owens Hate American Values

Conservatives Who Think That Women Should Have Fewer Rights Than Men May Cost Republicans Victory, But Save America From A Radical Agenda

Conservatives Who Think That Women Should Have Fewer Rights Than Men May Cost Republicans Victory, But Save America From A Radical Agenda

What if misogyny ends up costing Republicans the Senate? Judging by the polls in the final days before the election, this is not a crazy proposition — especially if “gaffes” on abortion, rape and contraception are equated by the electorate with extremism, repelling even ideologically sympathetic voters.

Just look at Indiana, a state that is choosing between two “pro-life” candidates, one of whom is a Democrat who has voted for House Republicans’ most restrictive legislation on reproductive rights. Still, Joe Donnelly managed to avoid doing what Richard Mourdock did – getting famous for talking insensitively about rape. They’ve been tied or within inches of each other for weeks, but as of today, the first post-rape-comment poll, Mourdock is down 11 points. Meanwhile, Mourdock’s rape-talking fellow traveler in Missouri, Senate candidate Todd Akin, is locked in a race that was never supposed to be competitive, and a cash infusion may come too late to save him. And in Connecticut and Massachusetts, both abortion and contraception have been used to pummel relatively moderate Republicans with the ever-rightward agenda of the national party, and for that reason and more, it’s looking like Democrats will prevail.

This is about more than the so-called gender gap, though women do tend to vote disproportionately to our share in the population and historically favor Democrats. And it’s about more than “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” where, at least as far as those fuzzy words go, the former has a slight edge in polling. When abortion conversations turn to rape, exceptions for which are broadly, if inconsistently, supported by voters, they also suddenly become about a broader callousness and indifference to suffering, one that jibes with messaging about slashing Medicare and Medicaid. Voters drifting away from Mourdock would probably never use the word “misogyny,” but as I’ve said, as the Republican agenda on sex and reproduction gets explained in full, we’re hearing very little about compassion for fetal life and a lot about women having sex.

Pro-choice activists have been saying this for years, but didn’t get much credence until elected Republicans gave a larger platform for marginal and largely discredited views — rape victims can’t get pregnant (Akin); exceptions to save a woman’s life are never needed (Rep. Joe Walsh); consensual sex, and getting pregnant from it, is as shameful as rape (GOP Senate candidate Tom Smith, who hasn’t been able to close the deal in Pennsylvania). The same goes for defunding Planned Parenthood and repealing Obamacare, or at the very least getting rid of the birth control coverage in it — these days, virtually uncontested across Republicans in office or running for it. That may work well in a House race, but it’s proving a tougher sell statewide — and, judging by Romney’s ads soft-pedaling his stances on abortion and contraception, nationally as well.

If you want to know where this all came from or where it’s going, check out Emily Bazelon’s profile of the Americans United for Life president in the New York  Times magazine. AUL has been as influential as any group in crafting the state-level abortion restrictions and rhetoric around them, taking the murky anti-choice rhetoric and mainstreaming it in a palatable and reasonable-sounding way. Yoest “believes that embryos have legal rights and opposes birth control, like the IUD, that she thinks ‘has life-ending properties.’” (She can think that, but it doesn’t make it medically accurate.) She refuses to discuss a study showing that the abortion rate drops dramatically when you make long-acting reversible birth control — like the IUD — free to women who want it, mimicking Obamacare’s full coverage under insurance. And yet she knows that when you talk about birth control and abortion as connected to women’s reproductive and sexual autonomy, the anti-choice side loses. She said as much on PBS, Bazelon notes: ““It’s really a red herring that the abortion lobby likes to bring up by conflating abortion and birth control … Because that would be, frankly, carrying water for the other side to allow them to redefine the issue in that way.”

Instead of outright repealing the 19th Amendment( guaranteeing women the right to vote) and other progressive legislation that have leveled the playing field over the years in one fail swoop, Republicans have been pretty successful in chipping away at the rights of women to be full citizens. And Mittens is no friend to more than have the country. He thinks conservatives and big government should control women,Top 6 Lies Romney Has Told Women in an Election Season Full of Whoppers, Mitt has assembled a binder full of bs on issues that matter to more than half the population

Republicans are resorting to some weird extortion to get the vote, The GOP Will Destroy America If We Reelect Obama, So We Must Let the GOP Win

What Would a Mitt Romney Economy Look Like, Stealing From The Working Class To Give More to The Wealthy

Does Mitt Romney hate The USA. He has created more jobs in other countries than he has in America

What Would a Mitt Romney Economy Look Like, Stealing From The Working Class To Give More to The Wealthy

Mitt Romney’s best argument on the campaign trail has been simple: Under President Obama, the American economy has remained excruciatingly weak, far underperforming the White House’s own projections.

That’s a fair criticism.

But Obama’s best response could be this: If you want to see how Romney’s economic policies would work out, take a look at Europe. And weep.

In the last few years, Germany and Britain, in particular, have implemented precisely the policies that Romney favors, and they have been richly praised by Republicans here as a result. Yet these days those economies seem, to use a German technical term, kaput.

Is Europe a fair comparison? Well, Republicans seem to think so, because they came up with it. In the last few years, they’ve repeatedly cited Republican-style austerity in places like Germany and Britain as a model for America.

Let’s dial back the time machine and listen up:

“Europe is already setting an example for the U.S.,” Representative Kenny Marchant, a Texas Republican, said in 2010. (You know things are bad when a Texas Republican is calling for Americans to study at the feet of those socialist Europeans.)

The same year, Karl Rove praised European austerity as a model for America and approvingly quoted the leader of the European Central Bank as saying: “The idea that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect.”

Representative Steve King of Iowa, another Republican, praised Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for preaching austerity and said: “It ought to hit home to our president of the United States. It ought to hit all of us here in this country.”

“The president should learn a lesson from the ‘German Miracle,’ ” Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, a Republican, urged on the House floor in July 2011.

Also in 2011, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, denounced Obama’s economic management and said: “We need a budget with a bold vision — like those unveiled in Britain and New Jersey.”

O.K. Let’s see how that’s working out.

New Jersey isn’t overseas, but since Sessions and many other Republicans have hailed it as a shining model of austerity, let’s start there. New Jersey ranked 47th in economic growth last year. When Gov. Chris Christie took office in 2010 and began to impose austerity measures, New Jersey ranked 35th in its unemployment rate; now it ranks 48th.

Senator Sessions, do we really aspire for the same in America as a whole?

Something similar has happened internationally. The International Monetary Fund this month downgraded its estimates for global economic growth, with only one major bright spot in the West. That would be the United States, expected to grow a bit more than 2 percent this year and next.

In contrast, Europe’s economy is expected to shrink this year and have negligible growth next year. The I.M.F. projects that Germany will grow less than 1 percent this year and next, while Britain’s economy is contracting this year.

Karl Rove, that sounds a lot like stagnation to me.

All this is exactly what economic textbooks predicted. Since Keynes, it’s been understood that, in a downturn, governments should go into deficit to stimulate demand; that’s how we got out of the Great Depression. And recent European data and I.M.F. analyses underscore that austerity in the middle of a downturn not only doesn’t help but leads to even higher ratios of debt to economic output.

So, yes, Republicans have a legitimate point about the long-term need to curb deficits and entitlement growth. But, no, it isn’t reasonable for Republicans to advocate austerity in the middle of a downturn. On that, they’re empirically wrong.

If there were still doubt about this, we’ve had a lovely natural experiment in the last few years, as the Republicans in previous years were happy to point out. All industrialized countries experienced similar slowdowns, and the United States under Obama chose a massive stimulus while Germany and Britain chose Republican-endorsed austerity.

Neither approach worked brilliantly. Obama’s initial economic stimulus created at least 1.4 million jobs, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But that wasn’t enough, and it was partly negated by austerity in state and local governments.

Still, America’s economy is now the fastest growing among major countries in the West, and Britain’s is shrinking. Which would you prefer?

I’m not suggesting Obama distribute bumper stickers saying: “It Could Be Worse.” He might want to stick with: “Osama’s Dead and G.M. Is Alive.”

Yes, there are differences between Europe and America. But Republicans were right to call attention to this empirical experiment.

The results are in. And, as Representative King suggested, the lessons “ought to hit all of us here in this country.”

If a modern radical political movement - like modern conservatism that hates freedom, democracy, genuinely competitive markets and most of all hates American workers for having any rights at all - wanted to sell its wacky agenda to the public it would not admit it hates the USA. No, on the contrary it would wrap up its radicalism in the flag, in faux patriotism. Conservative Republicans have cleverly used the tools of democracy to destroy in little pieces at a time. You don't have to be smart to be clever. You just have to tap into some base emotions and superstitions, while cultivating contempt for reality based studies, reality based history and reality based public policy.

 Top Six Lies Romney Has Told Women in This Election Cycle an Election Season Full of Whoppers

Reality TV has-been (and congressman) Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI)  would totally love Planned Parenthood except ...

The Economist Pounds Romney on the Economy

Mitt Romney Endorsed Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock (R-IN) Who Calls Rape Pregnancies A ‘Gift From God’

Inside Bain's Chinese Sensata Factories (they used to be in Illinois), Where Workers Put in 12-Hour Days for $.99-$1.35 an hr

President Obama handled a tough situation fairly well; Romney offers no credible alternative

Mitt Romney Running Anti-China Trade Ad Against Obama Yet Has Money in China, Cayman Islands and Switzerland

Mitt Romney Running Anti-China Trade Ad Against Obama Yet Has Money in China, Cayman Islands and Switzerland

The tale of Asimco Technologies, an auto parts manufacturer whose plants dot eastern China, would seem to underscore Mitt Romney’s campaign-trail complaint that China’s manufacturing juggernaut is costing America jobs.

Nine years ago, the company bought two camshaft factories that employed about 500 people in Michigan. By 2007 both were shut down. Now Asimco manufactures the same components in China on government-donated land in a coastal region that China has designated an export base, where companies are eligible for the sort of subsidies Mr. Romney says create an unfair trade imbalance.

But there is a twist to the Asimco story that would not fit neatly into a Romney stump speech: Since 2010, it has been owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mr. Romney, who has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain funds with large stakes in Asimco and at least seven other Chinese businesses, according to his 2012 candidate financial disclosure and other documents.

That and other China-related holdings by Bain funds in which Mr. Romney has invested are a reminder of how he inhabits two worlds that at times have come into conflict during his campaign for the White House.

As a candidate, Mr. Romney uses China as a punching bag. He accuses Beijing of unfairly subsidizing Chinese exports, artificially holding down the value of its currency to keep exports cheap, stealing American technology and hacking into corporate and government computers.

“How is it China’s been so successful in taking away our jobs?” he asked recently. “Well, let me tell you how: by cheating.”

But his private equity dealings, both while he headed Bain and since, complicate that message.

Mr. Romney’s campaign insists he has no control over his investments since they are held in a blind trust. That said, a confidential prospectus for one of the Bain funds, obtained by The New York Times, promotes China as a good investment for some of the same reasons that Mr. Romney has said concern him: “Strong fundamentals” like manufacturing wages 85 percent lower than what Americans earn, vast foreign exchange reserves and the likelihood that China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.

“Accordingly, Bain Capital expects to see an increasing array of high-growth companies available for investment,” the prospectus says, noting the relative dearth of private equity in China.

Among the companies in which the Bain funds have invested is a global auto parts maker that is in the process of closing a factory in Illinois and moving most of the equipment and jobs to Jiangsu Province, where the Chinese government has built it a new plant; a Chinese electronics retailer accused by Microsoft of selling computers with pirated software; and a Hong Kong-based Chinese appliance maker that was sued for copying another company’s design for a deep-fat fryer.

Asked if Mr. Romney sees any conflict between his Bain investments in China and his policy positions, the campaign said: “Only the president has the power to level the playing field with China. No private citizen can do that alone.”

The campaign said Mr. Romney put his fortune, estimated at $250 million, in a “blind trust” when he became Massachusetts governor in 2003. “The trustee of the blind trust has said publicly that he will endeavor to make the investments in the blind trust conform to Governor Romney’s positions, and whenever it comes to his attention that there is something inconsistent, he ends the investment,” the statement said.

Should Mr. Romney become president, however, the structure of the trust would most likely not meet the federal requirements for independent management. It is managed by a Boston-based law firm, Ropes & Gray, that has a long history of doing legal work for both Mr. Romney and Bain Capital, including representing some of the same Bain funds in which it invested Mr. Romney’s money.

Mr. Romney’s trustee, R. Bradford Malt, who is chairman of Ropes & Gray, declined to comment.

Bain Capital declined to comment on specific investments, but said in a statement that its Chinese holdings “are consistent with the widely accepted principle that the private sector has a critical role to play in the continuing interdependence of the world’s economies.”

For many sophisticated and wealthy investors, as well as for ordinary workers invested in pension funds, China is a part of any diversified investment strategy. President Obama, a former Illinois state senator, has as much as $100,000 in a state retirement plan that contains shares of Sensata Technologies, the same auto parts company controlled by Bain that is closing its Illinois factory.

Last year, Mr. Romney’s trust sold its stake in an array of foreign holdings, including two Chinese state-owned companies: an oil company and a bank that have done business in Iran. But Mr. Romney continues to have money in Bain funds with sizable holdings in China.

He has as much as $250,000 in the Bain Capital Asia Fund and as much as $1 million each in Bain Capital Funds IX and X, all Cayman Islands entities used by Bain to make sizable investments in China, according to the 2012 candidate financial disclosures and confidential Bain prospectuses obtained by The Times through a public records request.

Among those funds’ holdings is $234 million that Bain invested in 2009 in Gome Electrical Appliances, a major Chinese retailer that was accused by Microsoft this year of selling computers with pirated software. In 2007, Bain’s Asia fund also invested $39 million in Feixiang Group, a Chinese producer and exporter of chemicals that is a designated “state high-tech enterprise,” making it eligible for tax breaks and other government incentives. Ropes & Gray represented Bain in the partial sale of Feixiang three years later for a 53 percent return on the fund’s investment.

The Asia fund withdrew from another deal in 2008 that could have proved politically embarrassing to Mr. Romney. After the Bush administration objected, Bain dropped plans to team up with a Chinese technology giant, Huawei, to buy 3Com, a network equipment maker that supplies software and equipment to the Pentagon and other federal agencies.

Republicans like to say that Americans are lazy and there are plenty of jobs out there. There are jobs in Asia where conservatives stash a lot of their money. What ever happened to America first. And how is it that Romney claims to be a person with values, yet has run televison ads that set a new low for lies and hypocrisy.

Koch Sends Pro-Romney Mailing to 45,000 Employees While Stifling Workplace Political Speech

The billionaire Koch brothers have found a new way to influence the 2012 election—preaching to employees.

First Romney Exploited The Deaths of U.S. Diplomats, Now He Is Exploiting Veterans: Falsely Claims Pentagon Cuts Will Impact Veterans

First Romney Exploited The Deaths of U.S. Diplomats, Now He Is Exploiting Veterans: Falsely Claims Pentagon Cuts Will Impact Veterans

In a speech to the American Legion today, Mitt Romney leveled fresh criticism against President Obama, accusing his administration of cutting the benefits of veterans who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and going so far as to call plans to cut the Veterans Affairs Department budget a “crisis.”:

    Romney charged that the defense budget cuts would affect services for veterans, including the men and women returning from conflict overseas who need psychological counseling. Romney invoked the rising number of suicides – “This is a crisis,” he declared – as he sharpened his attack on the Obama administration’s proposed spending cuts.

But Romney’s claim — that veterans’ care will be negatively impacted by sequestration — is not grounded in reality. Earlier this month, the White House announced that virtually all of the Veterans Affairs Department budget will be exempt from mandatory cuts if and when sequestration goes into effect in January 2013. The only exception, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, would be possible cuts to administrative costs. That means health care, vocational, and education services will remain fully funded while cuts are made elsewhere within the Department of Defense, despite Mitt Romney’s claims to the contrary.

Of course, if Romney were actually concerned about the possibility of losing funding for the Veterans Affairs Department, he probably wouldn’t have embraced Paul Ryan or his budget, which could lead to reductions in veterans’ benefits.

Previously the morally corrupt and defiantly unpatriotic Romney exploited the deaths of U.S. diplomats to score political points. Is there no sleazy depths to which sleazy scumbag Mitt Romney will not sink to become king of America.

Funny how lazy no good liberals have to pay to feed fake-patriot red-staters, Red States Outpace Blue States in Income Growth — Thanks to Food Stamps

Romnesia: The Ability of the Very Rich to Forget the Context in Which They Made Their Money

Mitt Romney, Who Told 533 Documented Lies in 30 Weeks Says Obama Will Lie In Debates

Mitt Romney, Who Told 533 Documented Lies in 30 Weeks Says Obama Will Lie In Debates

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Mitt Romney discussed his reaction to the Libyan attacks, his poll numbers, and how he is preparing for debates. He says he is preparing to face a liar:

“I think the challenge that I’ll have in the debate is that the president tends to, how shall I say it, to say things that aren’t true,” Romney said. “I’ve looked at prior debates.  And in that kind of case, it’s difficult to say, ‘Well, am I going to spend my time correcting things that aren’t quite accurate? Or am I going to spend my time talking about the things I want to talk about?”

Yet Mitt Romney has proven to be one of the prolific morally bankrupt liars to ever run for office, Over the past 30 weeks, Mitt Romney has told lie after lie after lie: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX. That's five hyperlinks to get anyone interested off to a good start. The rest can be found here.

Limbaugh: Al-Qaida “gave up Osama”
He says the terrorist group wanted to "mak[e] Obama look good" so he would remain in the White House VIDEO. let's say this fantastical tale is true. Then who better to have in the White House than someone who makes terrorists give up just by being president.

The Muslim Protests: Two Myths Down, Three to Go

Right-Wing Media Dubiously Accuse Hillary Clinton Of Ignoring Warnings Of Embassy Violence

7 Mitt Romney Statements As Idiotic as His Libya Response

2. Romney Insults Gay Veteran On Marriage

Last winter, before the New Hampshire primary, Romney was followed [4] by cameras into a diner where he assumed that an elderly man wearing a Vietnam Veterans hat and red wool jacket was a fellow conservative—not a gay veteran who asked whether Romney was opposed to gay marriage (he is) and then lambasted the presidential candidate. "He's not getting my vote. He just told me I'm not entitled to constitutional rights," said Bob Garon. "I think and man and a woman, and a man and a man should be treated equal. What the hell's the difference?"

3. Romney Tells Medical Pot Patient He’d Arrest Him

Romney told the Republican Convention how compassionate he was—and would be as president. But that compassion does not extend to permanently disabled people who find medical marijana’s theraputic value as a sedative helps them with their chronic illness. Here Romney is asked by a young man in a wheelchair if a Romney administration would arrest someone like him, after explaining that pharmaceutical marijuana isn’t helpful—but the plant itself it. Romney said medical use would still be a crime.

4. Romney Likes To Fire People

This clip raised eyebrows when it was first aired in the primary season, but it has new resonance now as Romney is seeking to make the economy and job creation the number one issue in the election. Taken together with the preceeding clips, it shows a man who obviously is more in touch with accounting spreadsheets than with living, breathing employees.

5. He Knows What It’s Like To Be Unemployed

There’s more to this clip than the theatre of the absurd—argably the richest man ever to run for president telling Florida voters that he knows what it’s like to be unemployed, because as a candidate he is unemployed. What’s happening here—and this is also visible in other Romney pronouncements where he obviously is following a script from his campaign’s advisors—is he is not just patronizing people, but you really don’t know what’s going on inside his mind, if it’s not just saying anything to win votes. 

6. ThinkProgress’s “Top Ten” Out of Touch Moments

This video [5] compilation quickly presents many of the most-heard sound bites: saying he knows what it is to get fired, that corporations are people, that making more that $300,000 a year as a speaker “is not very much,” that he drives a pickup while his wife has the Cadillacs, that he is not very concerned about the poor because there are government safety nets. 

7. Romney Likes Neo-Con Ideas More Than People

The ThinkProgress video [5] is one of many that show the most pointed barbs, but it’s worth looking at the entire exchange behind some of these comments—such as the questions that lead to Romney’s infamous “corporations are people, my friend” quote, as they reveal far more about his thinking and values.

Here is the full exchange that prompted the "corporations are people" quote. It starts off as a question about cutting back on future Social Security and Medicare benefits, where Romney says those entitlements must be parred back because he will not raise taxes to pay for what’s needed to sustain the system’s current barely adequate retirement programs. Romney’s comments are right from the pages of liberatian think tanks—just like his comments attacking Obama after the death of Ameican diplomats in Libya. These radical rightwingers elevate their ideology over the impact of their ideas on people—whether it is in domestic or foreign policy.

8. Romney Versus Obama on Libya—You Decide

Now contrast the comments [3] by both Romney and Obama in response to the murders of the U.S. diplomats in Libya. Romney is reciting more neo-con talking points, akin to the arguments made by George W. Bush before he launched his war of choice in Iraq. In contrast, Obama says the U.S. honors the service of the deceased, will not give up on Libya’s new democracy, notes how some Libyans tried to defend the Americans and declares that the U.S. will bring those responsible to justice.

The anti-American conservative movement keeps asking for Obama's birth certificate. America should demand to see the certification that Romney is sane enough to be walking around without being in a straightjacket with a drool cup.

UnAmerican Fox News Does Not Think Honor is a Value

15 Photos Of Moderate Libyans Apologizing To Americans

Mitt Romney rhetoric on embassy attacks is a discredit to his campaign

UnAmerican Fox News Does Not Think Honor is a Value

Fox used a dishonest comparison of two different measures of unemployment to suggest the unemployment rate has nearly doubled since President Obama took office.

During a segment criticizing the Obama administration for its messaging on the economy, a Fox & Friends graphic claimed that the "real unemployment rate" had increased from 7.8% in 2009 to 14.7% now:

But in order to make the claim that unemployment had increased from 7.8% to 14.7% during Obama's time in office, Fox had to conflate two different statistics and completely distort Obama's jobs record.

The 7.8 percent figure is the official unemployment rate from January 2009. This statistic reports on people who are unemployed and actively looking for a job. But as of the latest report, the official unemployment rate is 8.1 percent (0.3 percent higher than it was in January 2009), not 14.7 percent.

The 14.7 percent figure is a completely different measurement of the unemployed, which in addition to those who are actively looking for work, also counts people who are unemployed and discouraged from looking for a new job, part-time workers who prefer full-time employment, and more. This alternative measure of unemployment, which conservatives often call the "real" unemployment rate, was 14.2 percent in January 2009 -- 0.5 percentage points lower than it is today.

Indeed an accurate chart of this statistic would show that the rate has declined in recent years:

After being presented with the Fox graphic, Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham said: "Other than Fox News, where are you really seeing those statistics?"

Where, indeed? Fox has quite the history when it comes to presenting misleading unemployment data to its viewers...

Fox News and Mitt Romney have also taken to include people who are no longer looking for work. But in that group they are including people who have decided to retire early - aging baby boomers. In other words doing the arithmetic is just too much work for the Fox Big Lie Propaganda Channel. Why does Fox News hate America and want America to fail? Republicans have been blocking the Jobs Act - which would create as many as a million jobs for about a year.

Mitt Romney, Who Has The values of a Cockroach, Accuses Obama Of Sympathizing With Attackers Who Killed U.S. Ambassador. This comes one day after the U.S. killed another Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. Romney and conservatives are jealous that Democrats have a better national security record than Republicans.

Why Paul Ryan thought he could get away with lying: 6 theories
The VP nominee's big speech at the Republican National Convention set off alarm bells at fact-checking operations nationwide. What was he thinking?


Why do conservatives harp like shrill wackos about business regulation. Because They want to mainstream corruption, Sick Money: How Mitt Romney's Bain Investments Are Exploding the Deficit and Harming Our Health

Clueless Elitist Mitt Romney Cites Businesswoman Who Presided Over Huge Losses And Job Cuts As Model For His Cabinet

Clueless Elitist Mitt Romney Cites Businesswoman Who Presided Over Huge Losses And Job Cuts As Model For His Cabinet

During an interview published on Monday by Politico, Mitt Romney praised one of his favorite business leaders, Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman. According to Politico, Romney said that his cabinet “would be dominated by people from the private sector, citing Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard as a model for female leaders he would like to surround himself with.”

This isn’t the first time that Romney has pointed to Whitman — who is also the former CEO of Ebay and a former California gubernatorial candidate — as a leader to emulate. But at the moment, Whitman is presiding over a company in free-fall. HP just suffered its largest quarterly loss ever and is shedding tens of thousands of jobs:

    Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) posted a record (HPQ) quarterly loss and reported slumping sales for personal computers and services aimed at businesses, underscoring the turnaround challenge facing Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman.

    The fiscal third-quarter loss of $8.86 billion includes a writedown for the enterprise-services unit and reflects a 10 percent decline in PC revenue…Whitman is cutting 27,000 jobs over two years.

During her unsuccessful 2010 run for California’s governorship, Whitman released a slew of half-baked economic plans. These included a proposal to balance the Golden State’s budget that, according to a ThinkProgress analysis, wouldn’t come anywhere close to actually balancing the budget.

While at Ebay, Whitman succeeded in boosting net income, but eventually left the company crippled due to disastrous acquisitions: “A year after Whitman bailed on eBay, the stock had sunk so low that employees were left holding onto stock options that would actually cost more than than eBay’s market stock price, making them worse than worthless.” Before moving to Ebay, Whitman was CEO of FTD.com, where she oversaw a fifty percent drop in business during her two-year tenure. And evidently this is the sort of experience Romney would like to bring to the federal government.

There has always been a crazy element to American politics and elections. One of the most bizarre things about this election cycle is that a guy who has never done an honest day's work in his life, had a disastrous record of creating jobs as governor, pioneered the offshoring of American jobs to Asia, has multiple foreign bank accounts, has a budget plan that spells disaster for the middle-class is being seriously considered by the same people who would return a pair of socks for being poor quality. How is it that some Americans will not tolerate a poor quality sock, but will make a person of such poor character, with a delusional world view, president.

Add It Up: Taxes Avoided by the Rich Could Pay Off the Deficit

Remember Romney said he had no active role in Bain, Romney asserted active role in Bain to claim half-million dollar tax deduction in 2010