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. 

New York Post Columnist and Conservative Arthur Herman Hates Women and American Values

NY Post Columnist Calls Increase In Military Sexual Assaults A "Bogus Epidemic"

New York Post columnist Arthur Herman called the reported increase in military sexual assaults a "bogus epidemic" because the survey on sexual assaults included all "unwanted sexual contact." But experts have found that any sexual harassment can degrade military readiness and the survey results are consistent with widely used survey methodology.

The Department of Defense released its "Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military" which determined that up to 26,000 service members may have been the victim of some form of sexual assault. In a March 31 column published by The New York Post, columnist Herman claimed the report highlighted a "bogus epidemic." After acknowledging that sexual assault and rape are serious crimes, Herman attacked the parameters of the report, saying "no real solution to any problem can be built around flawed data":

    Yet that's precisely what's really going on here -- starting with that report. First off, it's far from comprehensive or authoritative. It's based entirely on a voluntary survey -- and it's wildly anti-scientific to extrapolate from a self-selected group. And only 22,792 service members opted to respond -- roughly 2.2 percent of a military that's 1 million strong.

    Even more amazing, the survey never actually asked about sexual assault. Its questions centered on "unwanted sexual contact" -- which can include any number of behaviors, including trying to slap someone on the buttocks, which may be vulgar or inappropriate but hardly rape.

But the survey didn't measure rape, it measured sexual assault, a term that is given a broad definition by the military. For example, the Army Sexual Assault Prevention & Response Program answers the question "What is sexual assault" by including, among other things, "unwanted and inappropriate sexual conduct or fondling":

    Sexual Assault is a crime. Sexual assault is defined as intentional sexual contact, characterized by use of force, physical threat or abuse of authority, or when the victim does not or cannot consent. Consent should not be deemed or construed to mean the failure by the victim to offer physical resistance. Additionally, consent is not given when a person uses force, threat of force, coercion or when the victim is asleep, incapacitated, or unconscious.

    Sexual assault includes rape, nonconsensual sodomy (oral or anal sex), indecent assault (e.g., unwanted and inappropriate sexual contact or fondling), or attempts to commits these acts. Sexual assault can occur without regard to gender, spousal relationship, or age of victim.

This kind of sexual assault is having a significant effect not only on the victims, but on the military as a whole. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called the assaults "a despicable crime" that is "a threat to the safety and the welfare of our people." General Martin Dempsey added that sexual assaults constitute a "crisis" in the military.  In a speech to U.S. Naval Academy graduates President Obama addressed the assaults, commenting that the "misconduct of some can have effects that ripple far and wide:

    "Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong," Obama said. "That's why we have to be determined to stop these crimes, because they've got no place in the greatest military on Earth."

Herman also criticized the survey methodology, claiming that having 22,792 service members respond was inadequate. However, the survey noted that the findings are consistent with a study prepared for the Air Force by Gallup, which had a significantly higher response rate. In fact, the report's research supervisor, Dr. David Lisak, worked with Gallup and the Air Force on the earlier study.

NOTE: Thomas Bishop is a current military officer who has served as an Equal Opportunity Leader in the Army Reserves.

Conservative Arthur Herman  must have never heard of statistical sampling. During elections pollsters do not ask every single individual who they are going to vote for, yet they are generally close ( within a few percentage points) of picking winners. So even if the survey is off by a little that still means a substantial number of sexual assaults are occurring. frequently with the perpetrator going unpunished. Herman hates women. Technically that is his right, but he is using a very large media platform to use his hate to persuade public opinion in a way that is harmful to women serving their country and a disgrace to patriotic values.

Remembering Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-NJ) Progressive Legacy

Why Does Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Hate America, Children and the Truth, But Wants Rapists To Have Assault Weapons

Why Does Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Hate America, Children and the Truth, But Wants Rapists To Have Assault Weapons

In an email sent to his supporters on Sunday night, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned that the President and his Democratic allies were planning to take Americans’ guns away.

“You and I are literally surrounded,” McConnell’s campaign manager Jesse Benton wrote. “The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out-assault on the Second Amendment.”

The email falsely claimed President Barack Obama planned to issue 23 executive orders “to get your guns.” Obama plans to nominate a director for the ATF and direct the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes of gun violence, among other executive actions. None of the executive orders he outlined last week involve anything remotely like gun confiscation.

“The gun-grabbers are in full battle mode,” Benton continued. “And they are serious. What’s at stake? There are almost too many schemes to list.”

The email notes that Obama has called on Congress to renew the assault weapons ban, restrict high-capacity magazines, and require universal background checks on gun purchases. Benton alleged the background checks were actually part of a secret plot “for full-scale confiscation.”

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) blasted McConnell for sending out the inaccurate and conspiracy-filled email.

“He’s misleading the people he sends that to, because what he’s saying is absolutely dishonest,” Yarmuth told LEO Weekly. “And it can also be dangerous, because people get that email who may not have been following the debate, and they all of a sudden get anxious and who knows what can happen from that kind of provocation.”

A complete and honest list of Democratic gun safety measures. None of which take away people's rights to buy a hand gun, a hunting rifle or anything that could be construed as an attack on the 2nd Amendment. Heck, they might even save a few lives. Mitch, as usual is looking out for the best interests of evil, making sure that rapists, murderers and the criminally insane have access to high powered weapons. Mitch has a long record of hating America and American values with a passion.

Gendercide: Over one hundred million women in the world are estimated to be “missing” from the world’s population

They are the death mongers. They don't care about the constitution. The more people that die by gun, the more guns they sell, Major Gun Company Begins Asking Customers to Fight Obama's Proposed Reforms

E-mails Reveal Walmart CEO Was Repeatedly Informed of Bribery Scandal in 2005

E-mails Reveal Walmart CEO Was Repeatedly Informed of Bribery Scandal in 2005

Two Democratic Congressmen today released internal Walmart documents which they said appear to directly contradict Walmart’s recent claims regarding alleged rampant bribery by its Mexico subsidiary. They include what appear to be seven year-old e-mails in which current Walmart CEO Mike Duke was directly informed of the scandal. At the time, Duke was serving as Walmart vice chairman, responsible for Walmart international.

“We are concerned that your company’s public statements that the company was unaware of the allegations appear to be inconsistent with documents we have obtained through our investigation,” representatives Henry Waxman and Elijah Cummings wrote in a letter to Walmart CEO Michael Duke released this morning. “Contrary to Wal-Mart’s public statements, the documents appear to show that you were personally advised of the allegations in October 2005.” Cummings are Waxman the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Education & Commerce Committee, respectively. Walmart did not immediately respond to The Nation’s request for comment.

The congressmen’s findings echo those of a separate investigation by the New York Times, the paper that first broke news of the scandal in April. In a 7,600 word expose published three weeks ago, the Times found that in 2006, Walmart headquarters shut down an internal investigation of bribery in Mexico, despite “a wealth of evidence” supporting the allegations, and thus “authorities were not notified.” Unlike today’s letter, the Times story did not mention Duke himself.

The December 17 New York Times story reported, also based on confidential documents, that Walmart de Mexico used illegal payoffs in its pursuit of at least 19 Mexico store sites. According to reporters David Barstow and Alejandra Xanic von Betrab, those included a field just outside the historic pyramids in Teotihuacan, an area where Walmart otherwise “almost surely would not have been allowed to build…”

Many Americans might be under the impression that since Republicans are constantly whining about  pro business policies, that conservatives are pro business. That is not the case. Republicans are pro organized crime. They do not want Congress to interfere with businesses like Walmart or Monsanto or BP perpetrating their crimes. It is all code words. Conservative business policies are pro organized crime policies. As simple as that. To add insult to injury - see chart above - middle-class and low wage Americans subsidize Walmart's crimes. 

Wacko Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte K & L Contractors Think Their Religious Freedom Means The Right To Tyrannize Their Employees

Wacko Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte K & L Contractors Think Their Religious Freedom Means The Right To Tyrannize Their Employees

On Friday, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an order joined by two conservative Republican appointees, temporarily immunized a company from the Obama Administration’s rules guaranteeing that employer-provided health plans cover birth control. Judge Ilana Rovner, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dissented.

The order is brief, and it mostly deals with the most significant issue in this case in just a single paragraph — holding that a for-profit corporate employer can claim that its religious liberties were somehow violated:

    [T]he government’s primary argument is that because K & L Contractors is a secular, for-profit enterprise, no rights under RFRA are implicated at all. This ignores that Cyril and Jane Korte are also plaintiffs. Together they own nearly 88% of K & L Contractors. It is a family-run business, and they manage the company in accordance with their religious beliefs. This includes the health plan that the company sponsors and funds for the benefit of its nonunion workforce. That the Kortes operate their business in the corporate form is not dispositive of their claim. See generally Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010). The contraception mandate applies to K & L Contractors as an employer of more than 50 employees, and the Kortes would have to violate their religious beliefs to operate their company in compliance with it.

As a matter of current law, this decision is wrong. As the Supreme Court explained in United States v. Lee, “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.” Lee established — with no justice in dissent — that religious liberty does not allow an employer to “impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees,” such as by forcing employees to give up their own rights because of the employer’s objections to birth control.

Nevertheless, the Seventh Circuit’s citation to Citizens United is an ominous sign. Lee was decided at a time when the Court understood that corporations should not be allowed to buy and sell elections. That time has passed, and the precedents protecting against corporate election-buying were overruled in Citizens United. It is not difficult to imagine the same five justices who tossed out longstanding precedent in Citizens United doing the same in a case involving whether employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees.

It is likely that we will know soon whether those five justices are prepared to do so. The Seventh Circuit’s decision is at odds with a decision out of the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court typically agrees to hear cases where two federal appeals courts disagree.

What is Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte of K & L Contractors religious beliefs included thinking that pants were sinful, would the male employees have to wear skirts or go pant-less. Cyril and Jane Korte, and K & L Contractors have a lot in common with the Taliban and Iranian fundamentalists who think what they believe trumps basic human rights and dignity.

10 Dumbest Things Fox Said About Climate Change In 2012 

3. Fox "Expert": Carbon Dioxide "Literally Cannot Cause Global Warming." Joe Bastardi is a meteorologist that is often presented as a climate change expert on Fox News, even though he has no climate science training. Bill O'Reilly has cited Bastardi as the reason that he is "skeptical" about global warming, but scientists have called Bastardi's statements "completely wrong," "simply ignorant," and "utter nonsense." In March, Bastardi attempted to "throw out 150 years of physics" by dismissing the greenhouse effect -- the reason there is life on Earth -- as impossible. Bastardi stated on Fox Business that carbon dioxide (CO2) "literally" -- yes, literally -- "cannot cause global warming" because it doesn't "mix well in the atmosphere." But physicist Richard Muller told Media Matters that CO2 is actually "completely mixed."

 This is the way radical anti-American Rupert Murdoch's news organizations always act - they shout falsehoods with an attitude of absolute certainty - that creates some kind of voodoo magic that makes their crazy bogus claims true. What century are we living in?

Is Romney really a job creator? Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, takes a scalpel to the claims

Is Romney really a job creator? Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, takes a scalpel to the claims

Bain Capital is a product of the Great Deformation. It has garnered fabulous winnings through leveraged speculation in financial markets that have been perverted and deformed by decades of money printing and Wall Street coddling by the Fed. So Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise.
Romney

Mitt Romney was not a businessman; He was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses.

Nevertheless, Mitt Romney claims that his essential qualification to be president is grounded in his 15 years as head of Bain Capital, from 1984 through early 1999. According to the campaign’s narrative, it was then that he became immersed in the toils of business enterprise, learning along the way the true secrets of how to grow the economy and create jobs. The fact that Bain’s returns reputedly averaged more than 50 percent annually during this period is purportedly proof of the case—real-world validation that Romney not only was a striking business success but also has been uniquely trained and seasoned for the task of restarting the nation’s sputtering engines of capitalism.

Except Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.

That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn’t be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value. But we have a rigged system—a regime of crony capitalism—where the tax code heavily favors debt and capital gains, and the central bank purposefully enables rampant speculation by propping up the price of financial assets and battering down the cost of leveraged finance.

So the vast outpouring of LBOs in recent decades has been the consequence of bad policy, not the product of capitalist enterprise. I know this from 17 years of experience doing leveraged buyouts at one of the pioneering private-equity houses, Blackstone, and then my own firm. I know the pitfalls of private equity. The whole business was about maximizing debt, extracting cash, cutting head counts, skimping on capital spending, outsourcing production, and dressing up the deal for the earliest, highest-profit exit possible. Occasionally, we did invest in genuine growth companies, but without cheap debt and deep tax subsidies, most deals would not make economic sense.

VICTORY FROM THE JAWS OF DEFEAT

The startling fact is that four of the 10 Bain Capital home runs ended up in bankruptcy, and for an obvious reason: Bain got its money out at the top of the Greenspan boom in the late 1990s and then these companies hit the wall during the 2000-02 downturn, weighed down by the massive load of debt Bain had bequeathed them. In fact, nearly $600 million, or one third of the profits earned by the home-run companies, had been extracted from the hide of these four eventual debt zombies.

The most emblematic among them was a roll-up deal focused on down-in-the-mouth department stores and apparel chains that were falling by the wayside in small-town America due to the arrival of Wal-Mart and the big-box retailers. Bain invested $10 million in 1988 and nine years later took out 18X its money—that is, a $175 million profit.

Fittingly, Stage Stores Inc. was the last deal underwritten by the Drexel-Milken junk-bond machine before its demise. And the $300 million raised for this incipient LBO was exactly the kind of slush fund that Milken’s stable of takeover artists had used to acquire corporate castoffs and other bedraggled pots and pans that got rechristened as “growth” companies.

During the next eight years, Bain slogged it out, accumulating about 300 small Main Street storefronts under such forgettable banners as Royal Palais, Bealls, and Fashion Bar. Yet the company wasn’t making much headway. By 1996, it had paid back none of the Milken debt and was only earning $14 million—exactly what it had generated back in 1992 on half the number of stores.

In the spring of 1997, when Chairman Greenspan decided that “irrational exuberance” was not such a worrisome thing, Bain Capital decided to indulge, too. It caused Stage Stores Inc.—which was already publicly traded—to raise $300 million of new junk bonds and used the proceeds to buy a faltering 250-store chain of family clothing stores called C.R. Anthony.

These 12,000-square-foot cracker-box stores sold mid-market shoes, shirts, and dresses right in Wal-Mart’s wheelhouse. In hot pursuit of “synergies,” Bain promptly rebranded these Anthony stores to the purportedly more compelling Stage and Bealls banners. While the name change did nothing to ward off the grim reaper from Bentonville, it suddenly gave Stage Stores Inc. the “growth” story that Greenspan’s bull market craved. Within five months of this ostensibly “transformative” deal and long before the results of the ritual “synergies” and “rebranding” could be determined, the company’s stock price had doubled. Bain Capital and its partner, Goldman Sachs, quickly unloaded their shares at the aforementioned 18X gain.

As a matter of plain fact, the “transformative” C.R. Anthony deal was a bull-market scam. Almost immediately, results headed south. After growing 4 percent during the year of Bain’s quick 1997 exit, same-store sales turned to a negative 3 percent in 1998 and negative 7 percent in 1999, and were still falling when Stage Stores Inc. filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter. The company hemorrhaged $150 million of negative cash flow during 1998-99—that is, during the two years after Bain and Goldman got out of Dodge City.

Bain Capital subsequently claimed the company was “a growing, successful and consistently profitable company during the nine years we owned it” but then immediately ran into “operating problems.” That was a doozy by any other name but typical of the standard private-equity narrative that confuses speculators’ timing with real value creation on the free market. The fact is, the bad inventory and vastly overstated assets that took the company down did not suddenly materialize out of the blue during the 24 months after Bain’s exit: they were actually the result of financial-engineering games from the very beginning.

Worse still, the Stage Stores deal embodied all of the hidden leverage that had become par for the course in the era of bubble finance. When the crunch came, the company had no assets to fall back on because Bain had hocked virtually everything; it sold all the company’s credit-card receivables to a third party, and among its 650 stores it owned exactly three! By my calculation, the capitalized debt embedded in its store leases was nearly $750 million and when added to its disclosed balance-sheet debt, the company’s true debt of was $1.3 billion or a devastating 25X its peak-year free cash flow.

The bankruptcy forced the closure of about 250—or 40 percent—of the company’s stores and the loss of about 5,000 jobs. Yet the moral of the Stage Stores saga is not simply that in this instance Bain Capital was a jobs destroyer, not a jobs creator. The larger point is that it is actually a tale of Wall Street speculators toying with Main Street properties in defiance of sound finance—an anti-Schumpeterian project that used state-subsidized debt to milk cash from stores that would not have otherwise survived on the free market.

Bain’s acclaimed success with another retailer—Staples—is also not what it is touted to be. Tom Stemberg was a visionary entrepreneur who got $5 million of seed money from Bain in 1986 when it was still in the venture-capital business; the Milken-style LBO schemes came later. As it happened, Bain exited the Staples deal after only a few years with a $15 million profit, a rounding error in the scheme of things.

Stemberg made Staples a free-market success, a relentless generator of efficiency in the retail distribution of office supplies. Yet this honest capitalist efficiency, which benefited millions of customers, was achieved by a rampage of job destruction among tens of thousands of Main Street stationery and office-supplies stores and other traditional distributors. These now-defunct operations could not compete with Staples due to their high labor costs per dollar of sales—including upstream labor expense in the traditional, inefficient wholesale and distribution layers that stood behind Main Street retailers.

Ironically, the businesses and jobs that Staples eliminated were the office-supply counterparts of the cracker-box stores selling shoes, shirts, and dresses that Bain kept on artificial life-support at Stage Stores Inc. At length, Wal-Mart eliminated these jobs and replaced them with back-of–the-store automation and front-end part-timers, as did Staples, which now has 40,000 part-time employees out of its approximate 90,000 total head count. The pointless exercise of counting jobs won and lost owing to these epochal shifts on the free market is obviously irrelevant to the job of being president, but the fact that Bain made $15 million from the winner and $175 million from the loser is evidence that it did not make a fortune all on its own. It had considerable help from the Easy Button at the Fed.

Romney and his crony pals have simply found a way to to use tax subsidies, leveraged buy outs and assorted financial tricks to pay themselves use fees and sell off the bones of the company they stripped apart in the name of plutocratic plundering, not capitalism. Capitalism is this great system for competing to sell the best products and services to actually create jobs and improve the quality of people's lives. Romney would probably laugh in your face if you told him that in private.

Romney and Paul Ryan are just your garden variety conservative Republican stealth candidates, hiding their real selves and real agenda behind fake patriotism and fake values, Charity president says Paul Ryan 'ramrodded' way into fake dish washing photo-op

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.

Morally Bankrupt Mitt Romney and Seven Big Hypocrisies

Morally Bankrupt Mitt Romney and Seven Big Hypocrisies

Modern Republicans give us an opportunity to peer into the soul of a party that has embraced an open aversion to the truth. Meanwhile, their hypocrisy has reached historic proportions. It’s as if they have lost the ability to recognize the obvious contradictions they put forth. Or, more likely, they just don’t care, since lies and hypocrisy are an efficient way to score political points and smear opponents.  The hyper-hypocrisy of today’s GOP has spread through the party’s bloodstream. Below is a sampling of the most recent examples of rank right-wing hypocrisy.

1. Romney has promised that his first action on day one of a Romney administration would be to repeal Obama's Affordable Care Act. Of course, he wouldn’t have any authority to do that and attempting to pass legislation in congress would get stopped short in the Democratic-controlled senate. However, he may want to have a discussion with his running mate. It was recently disclosed that Paul Ryan quietly applied for funding [3] for a Wisconsin healthcare clinic in his district. The funds would come entirely from the Affordable Care Act that Ryan and Romney now propose to repeal.

2. In an interview on the Bill Bennett radio show, Mitt Romney lashed out [4] at what he considered to be false ads by a pro-Obama super PAC. In the course of his tirade he lamented that “in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad.” Romney said this even as he refused to pull his own ads that had been rated “Pants-on-Fire” lies by PolitiFact [5]. Subsequently, the Romney campaign decided to abandon any pretense to honesty [6] and declare that fact-checkers had “jumped the shark,” and that they would no longer “let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” In other words, we will lie if we feel like it.

3. At the GOP convention in Tampa, Ann Romney gave a keynote speech in which she told women, “You are the best of America. You are the hope of America. There would not be an America without you.” It was a naked attempt to appeal to women voters the GOP is having trouble connecting with. However, beyond her flattery she never uttered a word of support for issues of importance to women. There was no mention of equal pay, gender discrimination in the workplace, parental leave, or child welfare services like healthcare or nutritional programs. The only references she made to education were how fortunate her husband and children were to have the benefit of attending first-rate institutions that most Americans will never see. And the GOP platform strikes a markedly different tone by banning access to family planning services and effectively asserting that women, “the hope of America,” are not competent to make decisions about their own bodies.

4. The comments of GOP senate candidate Todd Akin regarding “legitimate rape” caused a firestorm of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. Many on the right insisted that Akin withdraw from the Missouri senate race. However, most of the criticism was directed at the harm Akin caused to the GOP’s prospects of winning the seat, rather than to the offensive views he articulated. There was abundant gnashing of teeth over Akin’s stupidity for putting the election at risk. But when it comes to women, the right’s policies are actually a logical conclusion of Akin’s dumb outburst. In fact, Paul Ryan and Akin cosponsored a bill in the House that sought to redefine the term “rape.” Their bill would make federal funds unavailable for victims unless the crime was deemed “forcible,” which would have excluded many assaults that were statutory, incest or under duress.

5. Fox News and Romney have both recently made an issue of legislation in Ohio that would remove early voting availability for all voters except those in the military. The Obama Justice Department challenged the law arguing that every voter should have early access to the polls. Romney and Fox responded by accusing the president of wanting to make it more difficult for soldiers to vote, even though the administration’s position is to make voting easier for everyone. What Romney and Fox did not mention was that their position would have denied early voting to over 900,000 Ohio veterans (in addition to millions of other Ohio residents) who were not included in the GOP’s bill. [Note: An Ohio court just ruled in favor of the administration's position, but the Ohio Secretary of State insisted he would defy the court order to open the polls.]

6. Mitt Romney’s problems with his financial records are well known. He continues to refuse to release more than two years of his tax returns even as more evidence comes out that he has engaged in shenanigans involving off-shore banks and other tax avoidance schemes. [7] Nevertheless, Romney had the audacity to address a group of donors and complain about big businesses that “save money by putting various things in the places where there are low-tax havens around the world.” Apparently that’s only acceptable for wealthy presidential candidates.

7. Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Mitt Romney says yes. The key issue of the Romney campaign from its inception has been his contention that the economy is in dismal shape and that it’s the president’s fault. Romney has said on numerous occasions that Obama may have inherited a troubled economy, but he made it worse. However, when asked by radio host Laura Ingraham about improving economic indicators, he said, “Well, of course it’s getting better. The economy always gets better after a recession.” Ingraham was stunned and gave Romney a second shot noting that he wasn’t helping his argument. Romney held firm saying, “Have you got a better one, Laura? It just happens to be the truth.” Soon after, Romney went back to falsely accusing Obama of making things worse.

Can anyone listen to a conservative Republicans say the the word values, or morality or freedom and not start laughing. back in the 1950s one of the wacky Right's big conspiracy theories was that the government plan to fluoridate water would mess up your "precious bodily fluids". Now it seems that everything from women's health care to good schools to clean rivers to making a living wage are all conspiracies and Republicans are against them. Having a democratic republic has become a conspiracy to interfere with the right of conservatives to take away the rights of other Americans. The country is so divided because most Americans refuse to join up with some wackos that don't have a clue what reality is, much less genuine love of country.

Florida Governor Rick Scott is literally one of the biggest criminal thieves in history, so of course Republicans voted him into office. The ability to steal from working class Americans is a huge virtue to conservatives. Rick and Florida legislators go on a modern witch hunt to purge unqualified voters, that cost millions of tax dollars. here is what they have found; Unintended Results From Florida's Voter Purge: One Illegal Canadian

Paul Ryan (R-WI) & Hal Rogers (R-KY) Quietly Requested Obamacare Cash

Anti-American proto-fascist Erickson thinks he has a sense of humor. What's funny is the level of delusion.

Paul Ryan (R-WI) & Hal Rogers (R-KY) Quietly Requested Obamacare Cash

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is barnstorming the country, promising to repeal every provision of the Affordable Care Act if the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected. But a letter he wrote to the Obama administration may undermine this message.

On December 10, 2010, Ryan penned a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a grant application for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district. “The proposed new facility, the Belle City Neighborhood Health Center, will serve both the preventative and comprehensive primary healthcare needs of thousands of new patients of all ages who are currently without healthcare,” Ryan wrote.

Paul Ryan's request for Obamacare funds

The grant Ryan requested was funded directly by the Affordable Care Act, better known simply as healthcare reform or Obamacare.

The letter, among several obtained by The Nation and The Investigative Fund through a Freedom of Information Act request, is a stark reminder that even the most ardent opponents of Obamacare privately acknowledge many of the law’s benefits.

Federally funded health clinics have long provided a broad range of vital medical, dental and mental health services to underprivileged communities across the country, regardless of a persons’ ability to pay. To meet the goal of expanding coverage, the Affordable Care Act provides for a sweeping expansion of such clinics, including $9.5 billion for operating costs to existing community health centers and $1.5 billion for new construction.

In public, Ryan has cultivated a profile as one of health reform’s most outspoken critics. He savages the Affordable Care Act as an example of “Washington’s reckless spending spree,” as “irresponsible,” and has warned repeatedly that it would place the “federal government squarely in the middle of health-care decisions.”

Explaining his “philosophical difference” with Democrats, Ryan told ABC News this summer that he would seek to repeal the “entire law” because healthcare rights come from “nature and God,” not the government. He expressed dismay that the Supreme Court upheld the law during the interview.

Despite Ryan’s quiet support for an Affordable Care Act clinic grant in his district, the Wisconsin congressman’s promise to repeal Obamacare would undermine the law’s five-year plan to rapidly grow the health clinic system in America by withdrawing the necessary funds. The so-called Ryan Budget plan would also decimate other federal support for health clinics, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Before Republicans broadly agreed upon a strategy of opposing any health reform proposal embraced by President Obama, the party once supported access to healthcare using clinics. The Bush administration requested and received modest increases in federal health clinic funding over the years. Now, however, the GOP has made opposing the entire Affordable Care Act a central plank in its platform, and virtually no lawmakers have been willing to praise it while speaking to the media.

Ryan isn’t alone in shaking his fist at health reform with one hand while extending an open palm behind closed doors.

As I reported over a year ago, even Congressman Hal Rogers, a conservative Representative from Kentucky, and former Senator John Ensign, a rising star in the Republican Party before he resigned in disgrace, wrote letters asking for health reform grants while calling for absolute repeal. Rogers called health reform “socialistic” and a “monstrosity.” Nevertheless, he requested Obamacare funds for a nursing clinic in rural Clay County.

How many faces does the average conservative have? As many as it takes to get what they want, what makes them look good to their constituents at any particular moment. As children people pretend a lot. It is part of the maturing process. Republicans pretend their entire lives, living in fantasy land. They believe, in their little fantasy land that wrapping their lies, hypocrites, and anti-American policies in the flag and claiming that God approves - means their stink smell like roses. Republicans are not patriots any more than the super nationalist Imperial Japanese were during WW II. Conservatives and their wacko ideas are variants of fascism, not Americanism.

After Bucking Federal Judge On Early Voting, Ohio Secretary of State The Conservative Anti-American Radical Jon Husted Ordered To Appear In Court. Why would a self proclaimed "patriot try to prevent senior citizens, students and non-white Americans from voting. The GOP's Disgusting New Southern Strategy: Take the Vote Away from Blacks, Roll Back the Civil Rights Movement

Republican drug addict, draft dodger, serial liar, and serial monogamist Republican Rush Limbaugh: "Feminazis" Won't Like Michelle Obama's Speech Because "Loving Your Husband" Isn't In Their "Playbook" One of the most morally corrupt idiots in the USA is still on the radio giving his opinions and a few dozen anti-American wackos still listen to him.

America hating Republicans join with women hating pervert Republican to Bash Sandra Fluke’s Convention Speech, Parroting Limbaugh’s Sexist Attacks. I'm surprised Republicans took a break from polishing their jack boots and ogling the neighbors through their binoculars to even watch the speech. maybe this is some kind of progress. 

As a Consequence of His New Fame, Americans Discover Paul Ryan (R-WI) is a Pathological Liar

As a Consequence of His New Fame, Americans Discover Paul Ryan (R-WI) is a Pathological Liar

A week ago, Paul Ryan’s political assets included — alongside his chiseled torso, plainspoken Midwestern demeanor, and the unshakable loyalty of the entire Republican Party — a firm reputation for honesty among the mainstream media. That reputation has suffered a massive, swift erosion. News stories about his speech at the Republican National Convention focused on its many rhetorical sleights of hand. Over the weekend, the revelation that he dramatically misstated a marathon time added a crucial, accessible piece of evidence to the indictment. Now liberals are calling him “Lyin’ Ryan” — a nickname that, a few weeks ago, would have seemed silly, like “Wimpy Palin.” Now mainstream pundits are defending Ryan with versions of the “well, all politicians fib” defense. Given that this constituency was once portraying Ryan as unusually honest, this represents a huge retreat for his political brand.

What happened?

Here’s what has not happened: Paul Ryan did not begin telling an unprecedented series of lies that suddenly exposed a predilection for shading the truth. His marathon boast is certainly odd and may well be a deliberate lie, but it could also be a simple failure to recall. The New Yorker’s Nicholas Thompson, arguing for the prosecution, contends that “for someone who does run seriously,” missing a marathon time by as a vast a level as Ryan does is nearly impossible. On the other hand, given that the race occurred in 1990 and was Ryan’s only marathon, perhaps the explanation is that Ryan just isn’t a serious runner.

And Ryan’s Tampa speech, while pretty dishonest, was not especially so by Ryan’s standards. Here you can see why Ryan must view the sudden attack of the truth squad so bewilderingly. Ryan has been saying things like this, and worse, all along. The bit where he sadly shakes his head and blames President Obama for the failure of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that Ryan killed himself has been a staple of the Ryan shtick for two years. Reporters usually bat their eyes and coo sympathetically. Now it has become evidence of his duplicity .

Ryan seems to have fallen victim to circumstances he didn’t quite foresee. The Romney campaign has spent the last several weeks practically daring the national press corps to call out its lies. Well beyond the usual exaggerations of a national campaign, Romney has built its entire message around two accusations — “you didn’t build that” and “just send them a check” — that are obviously false. A day before Ryan’s speech, a Romney adviser told reporters, “We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” The media that had spent the last two and a half years nuzzling gently in Ryan’s lap had been prodded with sharp sticks and reacted in the predictable fashion, though probably not predictable to Ryan himself.

The thing about Ryan is that he has always resided in a counter-factual universe. He is a product of the hermetically sealed right-wing subculture. Many of the facts taken for granted by mainstream economists have never penetrated his brain. Ryan burst onto the national scene with a dense, fact-laden attack on the financing of Obama’s health-care bill that was essentially a series of hallucinations, pseudo-facts cooked up and recirculated by conservative apparatchiks who didn’t know what they were talking about or didn’t care. His big-think speeches reflect the influence of fact-free conservatives and collapse under scrutiny.

During the last couple of years, Ryan took his act to the big city, expanding beyond his Washington conservative movement base and pitching himself to a broader audience as a straight-talking avatar of fiscal responsibility. That he managed to pull off the feat was completely incredible. Ryan’s entire career had been rooted in the “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” wing of his party, and he spent the Bush administration consistently pushing for even more fiscally responsible policies than even George W. Bush could bear, and then spent the Obama administration relentlessly killing any effort to ameliorate those deficits. The genuine Paul Ryan is a man deeply devoted to reducing tax rates for Job Creators, and staunchly opposed to universal health insurance and other social spending. He is not a deficit hawk. The tension between Ryan’s policy goals and the persona he crafted was strained to the breaking point. When the press corps finally applied even the slightest pressure to it, it immediately and inevitably snapped.

The reason Republicans are not bothered by the moral implications of big lies told all the time - even about marathon times for goodness sake - is that conservatives voters encourage lies by responding so positively to them. And there is no political price to pay. In the bizarre immoral world of Republicans lies are rewarded, not punished. The conservative movement id based on THE BIG LIE. They lied us into a trillion dollar war, got 4000 Americans killed - notice no one has gone to jail for this treason. White House flak Scooter Libby committed treason, was sentenced and Bush commuted his sentience - a kind of reward for job well done. Republicans crashed the economy, told everyone is was Barney Frank's fault ( the most super powerful congressman ever) and voters rewarded them in the 2010 mid-terms. Betraying America is a time honored Republican tradition and Romney and Ryan are simply a continuation of that tradition.


The Fire Last Time

Dean Baker has exactly the right metaphor for journalists asking the really dumb “are you better off” question:

    Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the courageous news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, “is the house in better shape than when you got here?”

    Yes, that would be a really ridiculous question.

    …

    A serious reporter asks the fire chief if he had brought a large enough crew, if they enough hoses, if the water pressure was sufficient. That might require some minimal knowledge of how to put out fires.

Obama came to office in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. The question should be how well he dealt with that crisis — and in particular whether the man seeking to replace him would have done better.

And the facts of how we’ve done aren’t complicated: the economy was in free fall in January 2009; it stabilized and began growing by mid-2009; but growth has been disappointing, and employment has barely kept up with population. Here’s real GDP per capita:

And here’s the ratio of employment to population: graphs at link.

Would a Republican president have done better? If so, how? That’s the question — not the dumb “four years” trope.

Running The USA Like a Business is a Great Idea, Conservative Republican Red States Are Welfare Queens

Running The USA Like a Business is a Great Idea, Conservative Republican Red States Are Welfare Queens


At campaign stops across the country, Mitt Romney tells voters that he has the private-sector experience to turn the nation’s economy around. So, The Daily Show wondered on Friday, what would America look like if it were run more like a business? The Best F#@king News Team Ever hit the Republican National Convention floor to find out. “These are not easy conversations to have, but if it’s not working, you gotta end it. It’s gotta go,” one convention attendee told The Daily Show’s Jason Jones. It turns out a lot of states are underperforming. So the team had to let states like Mississippi, Wyoming and Minnesota go.

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