Democratic Senator Calls Out Conservative Republican's ‘Rumpelstiltskin Fairy Tale’ On Taxes

Democratic Senator Calls Out Conservative Republican's ‘Rumpelstiltskin Fairy Tale’ On Taxes

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday, in a move that many in the media deemed conciliatory, said that House Republicans are open to raising more revenue for the federal government, as long as it comes “as a byproduct of growing our economy, energized by a simpler, cleaner, fairer tax code, with fewer loopholes and lower rates for all.”

Believing that lower tax rates will magically raise revenue thanks to a growing economy is a favorite conservative fantasy. (It’s been dubbed believing in the “tax fairy.”) Today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded to Boehner’s speech by calling it “a Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale“:

    Schumer derided the theory that substantial revenues can be raised without increasing the tax burden on the wealthy.

    “Part of his speech he talked about dynamic scoring, this idea if you cut taxes you increase revenues,” Schumer said.

    “It’s about time we debunked that myth, it’s a Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, dynamic scoring. You may remember Rumpelstiltskin was the fairy tale figure who turned straw into gold,” he added, making reference to the popular German children’s tale from the 19th century.

Many studies have shown “that tax cuts do not come anywhere close to paying for themselves over the long term.” Greg Mankiw, chair of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, called those who believe that tax cuts will result in a revenue increase “charlatans and cranks.” “There is no serious research evidence to suggest that” tax cuts pay for themselves, Republican economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin agreed. But Republican leaders still claim that such a thing will happen, all evidence to the contrary.

How can anyone negotiate compromises with a political movement that is ruled by belief in magic. Math has become an enemy of conservatism in the same way that reason and the scientific method have become enemies.

The River of Denial runs deep, Defeated Once Again, Right-Wing Media Wage War...On Voters.

Conservative Republican Strategist Defends Romney’s Plan To Dismantle FEMA

Conservative Republican Strategist Defends Mitt Romney’s Plan To Dismantle FEMA

Mitt Romney’s past comments about dismantling FEMA and privatizing disaster relief have come back to haunt him as Hurricane Sandy begins to wreak havoc on the East Coast. Still, one Republican strategist, Ron Bonjean, agrees with him. On CNN Monday morning, Bonjean, a private consultant who advises GOP congressional leaders, defended Romney, suggesting that even talking about federal disaster relief is politically toxic:

    Most people don’t have a positive impression of FEMA and I think Mitt Romney was right on the button. But I don’t think anybody cares about that right now. I think people care about whether or not their power’s on, whether or not their basement’s going to be flooded. And I think that if the president gets too far in front of this and something goes wrong, people are going to remember, hey, my power’s not out, and the president’s talking about FEMA. I’m not a real big fan of FEMA. That could sway their vote.


Sandy has already caused severe flooding in the Northeast, hours before the worst of the storm is projected to hit. President Obama has declared a state of emergency in 7 states and DC after several governors’ urgent requests for federal aid to combat the storm. Though Bonjean fails to make the connection between FEMA’s services and people worrying about their power going out, the agency has already dispatched emergency power teams to try to reinforce vulnerable power grids before the storm hits and provided hundreds of generators and other back-up power sources. Americans are unfortunately well-acquainted with the agency, despite Bonjean’s insistence that they “don’t care” about it; a recent study of FEMA data found that, since 2006, 4 out of 5 Americans have been affected by weather-related disasters.

No one wants government that is too big, that is just common sense. Conservative Republicans have take that to the wacko extreme, they just plain do not want government to work. Like Exxon, BP, chemical, mining and insurance companies always do the right thing and are never unethical or inefficient. To be a conservative takes tremendous powers of denial about reality.

Morally Corrupt Romney campaign falsely training Wisc. poll watchers that IDs ‘must include photo’

Never let a tragedy go unexploited: Sleazebag Romney playing campaign videos at ‘storm relief events’

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.

Neo-Nazi Conservative Site The Daily Caller Opinion Page An Embarrassing Spectacle Of Conspiracy Theories

Neo-Nazi Conservative Site The Daily Caller Opinion Page An Embarrassing Spectacle Of Conspiracy Theories

The Associated Press and CNN recently debunked an op-ed featured at The Daily Caller that suggested a recent ammunition purchase by the Social Security Administration evidenced an Obama plot to kill American citizens en masse. The bizarre theory is hardly the first conspiratorial idea to be promoted on the opinion page of The Daily Caller.
The AP And CNN Eviscerate Op-Ed Suggesting Obama's Mass Murder Plot

Regular Contributor Jerry Curry: Each Round Of Ammo Procured By SSA "Represents A Dead American." From an August 17 op-ed published by The Daily Caller discussing the procurement of 174,000 rounds of ammunition by the Society Security Administration for its law enforcement arm:

    What would be the target of these 174,000 rounds of hollow point bullets? It can't simply be to control demonstrators or rioters. Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don't just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body's organs. Death often follows.

    Potentially each hollow nose bullet represents a dead American. If so, why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest? Or is the purpose to kill 174,000 of the nation's military and replace them with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) special security forces, forces loyal to the Administration, not to the Constitution? [The Daily Caller, 8/17/12]

Associated Press: SSA Conspiracy Theory "Illustrates What Can Happen When A Seemingly Salacious Tidbit Gets Amplified And Embellished On The Internet." From a September 4 article by AP reporter Stephen Ohlemacher:

    It didn't take long for the Internet to start buzzing with conspiracy theories after the Social Security Administration posted a notice that it was purchasing 174,000 hollow-point bullets.

    Why is the agency that provides benefits to retirees, disabled workers, widows and children stockpiling ammunition? Whom are they going to use it on?

    "It's not outlandish to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest," the website Infowars.com said.

    Another website, The Daily Caller, said the bullets must be for use against American citizens, "since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens."

    The clamor became such a distraction for the agency that it dedicated a website to explaining the purchase. The explanation, it turns out, isn't as tantalizing as an arms buildup to defend against unruly senior citizens.

    The bullets are for Social Security's office of inspector general, which has about 295 agents who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes, said Jonathan L. Lasher, the agency's assistant IG for external relations.

    [...]

    The episode illustrates what can happen when a seemingly salacious tidbit gets amplified and embellished on the Internet. [Associated Press via Huffington Post, 9/4/12]

Conservatives have such an unhinged hatred of government - when there is a Democratic president anyway - that their heads becomes so infused with hatred and paranoia they cannot even think of a conspiracy theory that is marginally plausible.

Anti-American Fanatic Dinesh D'Souza's "The Roots of Obama's Rage" rooted in lies

Anti-American Fanatic Dinesh  D'Souza's "The Roots of Obama's Rage" rooted in lies

In his new book The Roots of Obama's Rage, Dinesh D'Souza theorizes that President Obama is motivated by an "anti-colonial" ideology inherited from his father, and boasts that this theory explains Obama's actions in a way "that no rival theory can even begin to do." In reality, D'Souza's absurd "anti-colonial" theory is premised upon a series of false and misleading claims.

1. CLAIM: Obama "hadn't lifted a finger to help a destitute close relative," half-brother George

From pages 3-4 of The Roots of Obama's Rage:

    I'm a conservative, and I didn't vote for Obama. During the 2008 presidential campaign, I read an interesting article in the London Telegraph titled "Barack Obama's Lost Brother Found in Kenya." The article featured a picture of a 26-year-old man standing inside a ramshackle hut on the outskirts of Nairobi. CNN confirmed the story, reporting, "We found Barack Obama's half-brother living in a Nairobi slum." He was George Hussein Obama, the product of a liaison between Barack Obama Sr. and an African woman. "I live here on less than a dollar a month," George said. Humiliated by his poverty, he confessed he never mentioned his famous half-brother. "I say we are not related. I am ashamed." In 2006, George briefly met Barack Obama, who was then a United States senator from Illinois, but felt as though he was talking to a "total stranger." I found it remarkable that Barack Obama, who had a net worth of several million dollars and who was within striking distance of the world's highest office, hadn't lifted a finger to help a destitute close relative.

    Seeing from the article that George Obama aspired to be a mechanic, I started the "George Obama Compassion Fund." On a daily blog I wrote for AOL at the time, I invited people to make small contributions to help George move out of his hut and get some training to realize his dreams. We raised a couple of thousand dollars, and a Christian missionary promised he would deliver the money in person to George. Then I was contacted by a reporter for a large newspaper in Kenya who told me that the Obama family had refused the money. Evidently they had consulted with the Obama campaign and been told to go into hiding. My attempts to locate George proved unavailing. So I tore up the checks, figuring that perhaps I had jostled Obama into doing something for George, if only to save himself from political embarrassment.

REALITY: George Obama is a community organizer, chooses to live among poor

The Associated Press reported on June 14, 2009, that George Obama had signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to write a book detailing his "fall into crime and poverty as a teenager and his eventual embrace of community organizing -- a passion shared by the president -- and of advocacy for the poor, an identification so strong that he chooses to live among them." As Media Matters documented, after conservatives (like D'Souza) used the initial reports of George Obama's living conditions to attack President Obama, George called the reports "exaggerated" in an interview with CNN, saying: "I was brought up well. I live well even now." George added: "I think I kind of like it here. I'm Kenyan, so definitely I'd really love to live in Kenya."

2. CLAIM: Obama initiated financial, auto industry bailouts

D'Souza twice indicates that Obama initiated the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the federal bailout of the automobile industry. From page 5 (emphasis added):

    As Obama launched his spending spree -- a bailout plan followed by a stimulus plan followed by an automobile industry rescue plan followed by a national health care plan and then new environmental and financial regulations -- I became alarmed.

From pages 17-18 (emphasis added):

    At the same time, Obama has transformed the relationship between American citizens and their government. He has passed the most significant raft of laws since the Great Society: the bank rescue plan, the auto industry bailout, the stimulus package, sweeping regulation of Wall Street, a complete remaking of the health care system.

REALITY: Both programs were begun under Bush

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (commonly known as the bank bailout) was signed into law -- as its name indicates -- on October 3, 2008, by then-president George W. Bush. In December 2008, Bush announced that $13.4 billion of the funds allocated by Congress for the bank bailout would be loaned to General Motors and Chrysler to prevent the companies from collapsing. Bush said at the time: "In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action. The question is how we can best give it a chance to succeed."

3. CLAIM: Obama started going by "Barack" to adopt his father's "African identity"

On pages 26-27, D'Souza writes that Obama "is his father's son, and his dreams are derived from his father's aspirations and failures." Expanding on this claim, he writes:

    Obama even took his father's name in order to cement his explicit identification with him, and they way he did so is even more revealing. Young Obama's parents named him Barack, after his father. But from birth until his young adult years, he was known as Barry. Actually, Obama's dad was also called Barry; Barry was the name he adopted when he came as a student from Kenya to America. While the father went from Barack to Barry, however, the son went in the opposite direction. As a young man, Obama asked people to stop calling him Barry and instead to call him Barack. For Obama's father, the switch from Barack to Barry was no big deal; he was just doing what many immigrants do in order to fit in. For the son, by contrast, the move from Barry to Barack was a very big deal. He didn't just take his father's identity; he self-consciously rejected his father's American name in favor of the senior Obama's African identity.

REALITY: Obama on name switch: "It was not some assertion of my African roots"

D'Souza sourced his claim to a March 22, 2008, Newsweek article titled "When Barry Became Barack." According to that article:

    Obama wanted a clean slate. "Going to New York was really a significant break. It's when I left a lot of stuff behind," he says. "I think there was a lot of stuff going on in me. By the end of that year at Occidental, I think I was starting to work it through, and I think part of the attraction of transferring was, it's hard to remake yourself around people who have known you for a long time." It was when he got to New York that, as he recalls it, he began to ask people to call him Barack: "It was not some assertion of my African roots ... not a racial assertion. It was much more of an assertion that I was coming of age. An assertion of being comfortable with the fact that I was different and that I didn't need to try to fit in in a certain way."

4. CLAIM: Obama's push for a "nuclear-free world" is evidence of his "anti-colonialism"

D'Souza claims on page 38 that Obama "must constantly translate his ideology into terms that are accessible and palatable to the American people," adding:

    He cannot say that he hates the rich, so he has to talk about fairness and equality. He cannot say America is a nuclear menace to the world, so he has to say that he wants a nuclear-free world. He cannot say he thinks Wall Street is evil, so he must accuse the investment firms of not looking out for the interests of Main Street. Obama sometimes blows it; he doesn't always succeed with his anti-colonial marketing. Even his attempt, however, is impressive; this is a skill he has been honing for many years.

REALITY: If this is true, then Ronald Reagan was also "anti-colonial"

Obama, in his April 5, 2009, speech in Prague, called for a world free of nuclear weapons:

    OBAMA: So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly -- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change.

In his second inaugural address, Ronald Reagan also called for a world without nuclear weapons:

    REAGAN: There is only one way safely and legitimately to reduce the cost of national security, and that is to reduce the need for it. And this we are trying to do in negotiations with the Soviet Union. We are not just discussing limits on a further increase of nuclear weapons. We seek, instead, to reduce their number. We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.

Many delusional anti-American conservatives are eating this up like crack addicts given a fix of all the loony unsubstantiated urban myths they believe. hey its is a book it must be true and since they want all these falsehoods to be true, of course they do not perform any fact checking. Fact checking requires energy and integrity, something sorely lacking in the radical anti-American conservative movement. 

Congratulations To Scott Brown (R-MS) For His Great Job of Deceiving Voters While Pretending To Be a "Nice guy"

Congratulations To Scott Brown (R-MS) For His Great Job of Deceiving Voters While Pretending To Be a "Nice guy"

Scott Brown has donated thousands of dollars to fellow Republican candidates after they sponsored legislation to redefine rape as “forcible rape”

As Rep. Todd Akin’s despicable comments on “legitimate rape” rightfully provoke outrage, the Massachusetts Democratic Party reminds voters that Republican U.S. Senator Scott Brown has given thousands of dollars to other Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate who would redefine rape as “forcible rape” and threaten women’s rights if, with Brown, they gain control of the U.S. Senate.
 
Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan also supports the bill.
 
Brown’s PAC, SCOTTPAC, has made campaign contributions to four House members, including three U.S. Senate candidates, after they cosponsored the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.
 
Scott Brown is supporting a Vice Presidential nominee and three of his fellow senate candidates who want to redefine rape, excluding protections to victims of violent sexual assaults. Brown donated to current Senate candidates Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), and Rep. Rick Berg (R-ND), as well as Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA). The Republican nominee for Vice President, Paul Ryan, also cosponsored the bill.
 
“Scott Brown is supporting Republicans with a dangerous agenda for women throughout the Commonwealth and across the country,” said Massachusetts Democratic Party Executive Director Clare Kelly. “Brown is doling out his campaign cash to aid extreme conservatives who want to redefine ‘rape’ and roll back critical protections for women – and they will, if they gain control of the Senate and the White House.”
 
Scott Brown has made campaign contributions to the following supporters of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would redefine rape:
 
Scott Brown's PAC contributed $5,000 to Jeff Flake for US Senate Inc[OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]
 
Scott Brown's PAC contributed $10,000 to Montanans for Rehberg [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]
 
Scott Brown's PAC contributed $5,000 to Berg for Senate [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]
 
Scott Brown's PAC contributed $10,000 to Denham for Congress [OpenSecrets.org, Accessed 8/20/12]

Many voters are just trusting people who take crafty con-men like brown for what they appear to be on the surface  - "nice". Most of histories scoundrels, thieves and con-men have had a pleasant persona, that is in fact part of what allowed them to get away with hurting so many people. Brown seems to have studied and mastered their techniques. Good for him, not so great for normal decent Americans.

Radical Republican Medicare Voucher Plan Remains Unpopular - Plurality Views Ryan VP Choice Negatively

Paul Ryan (R-WI) is not getting high marks for running an honorable campaign

Conservative Republicans Regularly Promote Hate Speech, Then Complain That Normal Patriotic Americans Are Intolerant of Them

Conservative Republicans Regularly Promote Hate Speech, Then Complain That Normal Patriotic Americans Are Intolerant of Them

On Wednesday, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center released a study showing that guests and topics discussed during "The Rush Limbaugh Show," "The Sean Hannity Show," "The Glenn Beck Program," The Savage Nation" and "The John and Ken Show" overwhelmingly marginalized minority groups.

As the study explains:

    The findings reveal that the hosts promoted an insular discourse that focused on, for example, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, and pro-Tea Party positions and that this discourse found repetition and amplification through social media.

These viewpoints have far reaching consequences. NHMC President and CEO Alex Nogales told Fox News Latino that the social network surrounding conservative talk radio and Fox News has spread to social media websites resulting in "an echo-chamber of voices, both online and off, that promotes hatred against ethnic, racial and religious groups and the LGBT community on social media web sites."

Using hateful rhetoric, these hosts have cast immigrants as disease ridden, equated pro-immigrant organizations with neo-Nazis, called Islam an "evil religion," claimed the Obama administration is promoting "race riots" and made fun of the ethnicity of Asian-American politicians.

Yet is a descent American with a conscience objects to their fair mongering, ethnocentrism and greatly oversimplified rhetoric, that descent individual(s) is labeled intolerant. You have to hand the Anti-American Republican movement credit for their twisted logic along with their twisted values.

Romney cannot run on his record at Bail where he was a leach who exported American jobs, made a profit even when the businesses themselves went down the toilet. he can't run on his economic ideas because they are just a rehash of the Dubya Bush and Republican policies that caused the financial collapse he is trying to hold Obama responsible for. So what can he run on. The same radical right-wing crap that you hear on the proto-fascist conservative radio shows, Romney Smears Obama, Falsely Claims He Filed Lawsuit To Restrict Military Voting In Ohio

Today on Facebook, Mitt Romney claims that the Obama campaign is trying to “undermine” the ability of members of the military to vote in Ohio:

    President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage. The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote. I stand with the fifteen military groups that are defending the rights of military voters, and if I’m entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.

This certainly sounds outrageous, but it is not true. Since 2005, Ohio has had in person early-voting in the three days prior to the election. This year, however, the Republican legislature in Ohio eliminated early voting during this period, except for members of the military. The Obama lawsuit is attempting to restore voting rights for all Ohioans, not restrict them for the military or any other group. From the Obama lawsuit, filed in federal court:

    Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit to restore in-person early voting for all Ohioans during the three days prior to Election Day – a right exercised by an estimated 93,000 Ohioans in the last presidential election. Ohio election law, as currently enacted by the State of Ohio and administered by Defendant Ohio Secretary of State, arbitrarily eliminates early voting during the three days prior to Election Day for most Ohio voters, a right previously available to all Ohio voters.

The Obama campaign’s request for a preliminary injunction does not seek to restrict military voting. Rather, it simply is asking that the full early voting period be open to all citizens, as it was under the law before this year.

Even Fox News acknowledges the purpose of the suit, noting “the lawsuit does not restrict the ability of military personnel to cast their ballots early.”


The Romney campaign is totally unable to back up their candidate’s claim:

    Romney’s spokesman, Ryan Williams, in an interview Saturday could point to no place in Obama’s lawsuit that seeks to restrict the rights of military voters…

Mitt Romney has values? When can America expect to see him display some of those.
…

Known Criminal and Governor of Florida Rick Scott(R) Tries To Hide Disease Outbreak in The Name of Austerity

Known Criminal and Governor of Florida Rick Scott(R) Tries To Hide Disease Outbreak in The Name of Austerity

On March 26 this year, Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that slashed the state Department of Health’s budget and closed a state hospital where bad cases of tuberculosis were treated. Nine days later, the federal Center for Disease Control (CDC) detailed in a report that Florida was experiencing its worst TB outbreak in 20 years in Jacksonville. Since then, the governor’s office has either ignored or suppressed news of the outbreak, and it rushed ahead with plans to close the TB hospital as local officials kept information about the outbreak from the public. This, all according to an excellent investigation by the Palm Beach Post’s Stacey Singer, who was stymied by state officials at every turn when she tried to learn more about the outbreak and about why the state hadn’t responded to it in a concerted way.

While the CDC report came out after Scott had signed the law, the strain of TB responsible for the outbreak had been identified as early as 2008, and the report only existed because local officials in Duval County requested federal help in dealing with the overwhelming uptick in new TB cases. Meanwhile, the Duval Health Department is also a victim of budget cuts. In 2008, when the TB outbreak was first identified in an assisted living facility for people with schizophrenia, the department had 946 staffers and $61 million in revenue. “Now we’re down to 700 staff and revenue is down to $46 million,” Director Dr. Bob Harmon told the Post.

The fact that the outbreak began where it did and that it has so far spread mostly among homeless people, mental health patients and drug addicts who encounter each other in soup kitchens and shelters may have made the issue seem less urgent to state officials. Setting aside the dignity of all human life, there is already evidence that the disease has spread beyond the underclass and is continuing to grow, unmonitored, in the Sunshine state. The governor’s office did not comment for Singer’s story, and the state health department has stuck to its message that statewide TB cases are down over last year, suggesting the closure of the hospital was valid. (The hospital closed at the end of June.)

The case underscores the real human consequences of austerity budgeting and conservatives’ drive to slash government whenever possible. Since austerity came into vogue with the Tea Party beginning in 2009 and was then put in place nationally after the Republican wave in 2010, there have been countless examples where cuts or attempted cuts impact preparedness. After the the Japanese tsunami, it was noted that Republican budget cuts targeted the agency responsible for tsunami warnings. The same was true about earthquake monitoring after a temblor struck the eastern seaboard (though funding was restored). House Majority Leader Eric Cantor also tried to hold up disaster funding for tornado and earthquake cleanup, demanding it be offset with cuts elsewhere. Republicans’ proposed budget last year would have cut funds for the CDC and food safety monitoring. Meanwhile, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spoiled his big national debut in 2009 when he gave the GOP rebuttal to President Obama’s first state of the union address in which he attacked supposedly wasteful spending on volcano monitoring in Alaska. Just a month and a half later, a volcano erupted in Alaska that threatened Anchorage.

Scott is another corporate vulture capitalist who has a history of stealing from the public, undermining Constitutional rights, invading citizen's privacy, bring back Jim-Crow-Lite laws, lying to the public, undermining public safety and perverting democracy. Did Florida conservative Republicans punish Scott for his anti-American criminal history. No. They rewarded him with a governorship. Conservative Republicans hide their radical anti-American agenda behind the flag and god. No matter how they try to disguise it, radical UnAmerican policies like what they are.

Mitt Romney's offshore volcano lair

Elizabeth Warren on what Republicans are trying to repeal

One Thing Mitt Romney and Republicans Need to Learn; Morality is a Value

One Thing Mitt Romney and Republicans Need to Learn; Morality is a Value

The Washington Post has a blockbuster, must-read story today detailing how Mitt Romney and Bain Capital were “pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States” to countries like India, China, and elsewhere.

ThinkProgress’ Pat Garofalo gets to the heart of it:

    Bain “invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.”

    In one example, Bain was the largest shareholder in a company called Modus Media, which “specialized in helping companies outsource their manufacturing“:

        Modus Media told the SEC it was performing outsource packaging and hardware assembly for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Computer Corp. The filing disclosed that Modus had operations on four continents, including Asian facilities in Singapore, Taiwan, China and South Korea, and European facilities in Ireland and France, and a center in Australia.[...]

        According to a news release issued by Modus Media in 1997, its expansion of outsourcing services took place in close consultation with Bain. Terry Leahy, Modus’s chairman and chief executive, was quoted in the release as saying he would be “working closely with Bain on strategic expansion.”.

    Other companies that Bain invested in sent jobs all over the world, including to Ireland and Mexico, while Romney has tried to claim that Bain was all about creating jobs and turning around American companies that otherwise would have gone under.

    As one of Romney’s former partners put it,”I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation…The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.” And that’s what Bain did, even if it meant helping companies move operations to the same country Romney now blasts for stealing American jobs.

While the Romney campaign declined to comment for the article, they offered a laughable response today: outsourcing is different than offshoring. In other words, they didn’t dispute one iota of the substance of the story, but instead wanted to split hairs over semantics.

WHY IT MATTERS: While it’s troubling that Mitt Romney amassed a quarter-billion dollar fortune by bankrupting companies, laying off workers, and sending jobs overseas, where his policies would take America is of even greater concern.

Not only did Romney personally profit from the outsourcing and offshoring of American jobs, he has signed a pledge to a Washington lobbyist to protect tax breaks for companies who ship American jobs overseas. Mitt Romney also wants to encourage companies to dodge taxes by simply getting rid of taxes on foreign profits altogether. And he has also eagerly embraced the House Republican budget plan that also protects tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and also abolishes corporate taxes on foreign profits — many of which are “foreign” only because of accounting tricks and other gimmicks.

By contrast, President Obama wants to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and instead use the money to reward companies who bring jobs back to America. The president also wants to make sure that companies pay their fair share by instituting a global minimum tax to make sure they don’t use tricks and gimmicks to avoid paying what they owe.
Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed

A Romney campaign co-chair said that Romney would “rescind” the president’s new immigration policy if he’s elected.

The Montana Republican Party bankrolled an ad attacking the Republican budget because it hurts Medicare.

Why the revelations about Romney’s career as an outsourcer really matter.

Romney has been good at reaping profits for the millionaire elite who invested with Bain. If that is the end all of what constitutes values and love of country, than Mitt is your man. If making a living is a value than Mitt is working against you - and that means most Americans. he even sheltered some of his money is an offshore bank account when taxes in the USA are at their lowest since the 1950s. That is hardly the way a true patriot acts. 

New video shows Scott Brown(R-MA) spoke of meeting with ‘kings and queens’ five times. Brown denies he has said he has meet with kings and queens even though the video is clear. Perhaps brown would be better off and certainly the American people would be better off if this he retired to a sanitarium.

This is what happens when you give a moronic Anti-American lunatic a cable show, Bill O'Reilly Tries To Grasp Complex Argument From Melissa Harris-Perry, Fails

The U.S. Does Not Practice Capitalism As Much as Theft From Workers

The U.S. Does Not Practice Capitalism As Much as Theft From Workers - Capitalism and the Mad Uncle in the Attic

Listen.  Can you hear the Mad Uncle in the attic? His muffled shriekings are getting louder as the myths, deceptions and delusions we’ve been living on evaporate one by one in the face of reality.

Can you feel that sickening thrill as we poise atop this Sisyphean peak we call capitalism, right before the inevitable, nauseating plunge back down into reality?

Can you smell the stench from the soon-to-fail Rio plus 20 meeting as we con ourselves into believing we can snatch a bit more time at the peak if only we could steal yet more of our children’s children’s children’s birthright?

Ah, but we – plutocrats and people alike -- all beg, can’t we keep this damned Uncle locked up for just a little more time.  Maybe until this election is over.  Or until we’ve extracted a little more money from a fossil-fueled economy based on greed and exploitation. Or until … oh, I don’t know … until we’ve bled the last iota of money from the 99%?  Or at least until … I get mine?

Can’t we pretend for just one more generation that capitalism – pure, unconstrained capitalism, the kind Reagan promised us would bring morning to America – isn’t instead bringing mourning to America, and to the world?

Can’t we just pretend, for one more generation, that the whole infinite growth on a finite world thing isn’t just a giant, tragic Ponzi Scheme designed to sell out the future?

Can’t we pass this problem onto them?

Can’t we use buzz words and sound bites to drown out the lunatic?  Words like socialist or redistribution or – most dreaded of all – communism.  Can’t we keep pretending that capitalism is the necessary handmaiden of Democracy, the only path to prosperity, our only source of happiness?

No. We can’t.  Because deep down inside, in places we don’t like to visit, we know the Mad Uncle is right.

What we’re doing now isn’t making us all rich.  It’s impoverishing us.

Ultimately, all wealth comes from natural capital.  Things like fertile soils; viable forests; intact gene pools; abundant minerals; clean water and living oceans; sustainable fish stocks; flourishing ecosystems; a stable, life-sustaining climate.  We are liquidating these essential sources of wealth as if they were so much junk offered for pennies on the dollar at a desperate garage sale.

Our current version of capitalism is good at generating more currency, not greater wealth. And we forget that currency is merely a surrogate for things of real value, with no tangible value in and of itself.

And even the currency isn’t being distributed equally.  It’s being siphoned off by the richest and most powerful in a spiral of inequity.

It isn't making us happy, it's enslaving us to a life spent pursuing more and more stuff we don’t need for reasons we don’t understand.  Bigger; more; faster becomes biggest; most; fastest.  But easy, easier, easiest becomes fatter, sicker weaker.

It isn’t making us free, it’s creating a tyranny of the corporations and plutocrats. They weaken government in the name of freedom, only to turn us into indentured servants to a system that's designed to take from the poor and middle class and give to the uber rich, even as it liquidates Earth’s treasures.

But the real tragedy isn’t our own alienation or our economic and spiritual impoverishment.   It is the diminished legacy we leave the rest of humanity and indeed, the rest of the biosphere.

It’s our willingness to consume the future in an orgy of gluttony, drowning out the Mad Uncle’s protests with the noise of our own slurping, chewing, smacking, munching, crunching as we inhale our children’s birthright.

Hyperbole?

Not really.  Every living system is in decline, and the rate is accelerating.

In the case of climate change we are at the threshold of igniting feedbacks that will usher in an inevitable and catastrophic set of changes that will make life difficult in some areas and impossible in others.

It’s time to admit that the Mad Uncle is right.  Pure, unconstrained capitalism is the problem, not the solution.

What, then, are we to do?

There are alternatives.  We could tie currency to sustainable eco-systems.  Instead of a gold standard we could have a green standard.  Thus, destruction of a nation’s stock of natural capital would devalue its currency, and make it poorer.

We could adopt systems of production and ownership such as Co-ops that emphasized cooperation, equitable sharing of revenue and stewardship of our natural resources. It’s not pie-in-the sky, to consider this. Cooperatives already produce more than $1 trillion in assets, enough to make them equivalent to the 10th largest economy in the world.

Buying and selling stuff is part, but only one of the aspects of freedom. Conservatives seem to aim - on the surface anyway - for some pure capitalism where there are no regulations/no restraints on what has become criminal behavior. This is one they consider the 2012 elections so important. Demographics are changing - and not in favor the proto-fascism practiced by Republicans. They see this as their last chance to put on the power in the hands of the wealthy elite. It is astonishing that at least some working class Americans are happy to help them with their sick twisted agenda.

Please write to the Fox News Anti-American Propaganda channel and ask Monica Crowly to start taking her meds. She cannot tell reality from her fetid paranoia - Fox's Monica Crowley: "Kooks" In Democratic Party Have Taken U.S. "On A Socialist Joyride, Starting With" Obama. The fact is M's Crowly the object of so much Republican idol worship- Ronald Reagan - was more liberal than Obama.

Republican Congressional Candidate Wants To Impeach Obama For ‘Giving Away’ Seven Arctic Islands

Wes Riddle, a Republican tea party activist locked in a run-off with fellow GOPer Roger Williams in Texas’ 25th congressional district, is campaigning on a conspiracy theory even more bizarre than the fantasy that the United Nations and George Soros are conspiring to eliminate the game of golf.

Riddle has promised to begin the impeachment process against President Obama the day he enters Congress — seemingly implying that he believes Obama will be reelected — because of a boundary treaty that was ratified by the Senate in 1991. Obama was 30 years old at the time and just finishing up law school.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the details:

    Riddle, a retired Army officer from Gatesville, wants to impeach Obama for “giving away” seven Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea islands near Siberia to Russia.

    (Yes, even though those islands were ceded in 1991 under President George H.W. Bush.)

Riddle also wants to impeach Obama, according to the paper, because of “President Obama’s abuse of power and blatant disregard to the Constitution.”

This paranoid fantasy appears to have been spawned by Tea Party favorite Joe Miller. According to his World Net Daily piece, the Obama administration gave away “seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands.” Miller was apoplectic: “We won the Cold War and should start acting like it.”

Though FactCheck.org has thoroughly debunked this conspiracy theory, reality hasn’t stopped Riddle from using it as a rationale for his goal of impeaching Obama.

Riddle has to prove to the other anti-American conservative wackos that he is as deranged as they are so they'll vote for him. Whether what he says is true or not has nothing to do with it. Making mentally deranged claims is the way nutcan Republicans signal to each other they belong to the same tribe of knuckle dragging morons. 

If Anti-American Conservatives James Pethokoukis and Ann Coulter Used Their Math at NASA All Missions Would Crash and Burn

If Anti-American Conservatives James Pethokoukis and Ann Coulter Used Their Math at NASA All Missions Would Crash and Burn

I was late to the excellent MarketWatch story debunking the notion that President Obama’s been on a spending binge; I spent most of Tuesday traveling. But after my “Hardball” segment on it Wednesday, Ann Coulter tweeted: “Joan Walsh says that Marketwatch chart is ‘unbelievable’! Why yes it is, in the sense of being untrue.” That’s when I saw that there was shrill but lame GOP pushback on Rex Nutting’s excellent story, from both Coulter and the American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis. I don’t normally reply to Coulter’s right-wing delusions — I haven’t written a column about her in five years – but since I think Nutting’s findings are a crucial corrective to GOP lying, I wasted my Wednesday night trying to understand the GOP attempt to discredit him. You’re welcome.

Coulter admits she relies on Pethokoukis, so let’s go directly to the source. To recap, Nutting crunched Office of Management and Budget and Congressional Budget Office numbers to find that under Obama, spending has risen at an annualized rate of 1.4 percent, less than any president since Dwight Eisenhower. It jumped 8.1 percent in the last three years of the George W. Bush presidency, and in fiscal year 2009, for which Bush approved the budget, it jumped 17.9 percent. But Bush isn’t the most profligate Republican: Ronald Reagan increased spending an average of 8.7 percent in his first term.

Pethokoukis quarrels with Nutting’s assigning Bush’s budget to Bush, because “Obama chose not to reverse that elevated level of spending; thus he, along with congressional Democrats, are responsible for it.” Exactly how one president undoes the spending approved by another president under a different Congress goes unexplained. The AEI pundit also argues that we should look at federal spending as a percent of GDP, and he notes that’s gone up under Obama, attempting to prove that Nutting is mistaken – but that’s a useless metric during a recession, which by definition shrinks GDP.

Coulter goes even further (of course). “It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama’s entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.” (The italics are in the original; they’re where the good writing is supposed to be.) She continues: “That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in … Bush’s column.”

Shockingly, Coulter is … wrong. First of all, only about $120 billion of the stimulus was spent in fiscal year 2009 – and Nutting counted it in Obama’s column.

 Why do conservatives lie so often and so blatantly without the slightest regard for values like integrity. because they cannot win arguments if they have to stick to the facts. Bush 43 started his presidency with a federal surplus. he ran up the largest spending spree in US history. Conservative Republicans who ran all three branches of government for 6 of those years made no attempt to pay for their spending. Then they crashed the economy (conservatives and Wall Street  crashed the economy, not Freddie Mac or Fannie May).

Anti-American web site The Weekly Standard, Cherry-Picks BLS Data To Attack Obama's Economic Record

Typical American Worker Would Need 244 Years To Match CEO’s Annual Salary

Chart Shows President Obama Has Controlled Spending, Lowered Taxes and Deficit

Chart Shows President Obama Has Controlled Spending, Lowered Taxes and Deficit

Federal spending is lower now than it was when President Obama took office. I’ll pause to let you absorb the news.

In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP.

Here’s another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent.

One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent.

The fact is that Obama inherited a disaster of a federal budget. Eight years prior, when President George W. Bush took the oath of office, there was a $281 billion surplus. By the time Obama was sworn in, he was facing a $1.2 trillion deficit. Inconvenient though it may be for conservatives (especially those who are running for president), the truth is that spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office.

Conservative Republicans, those people who claim to have values, have spun a whole new reality when it comes to the nation's finances. They can't stick with the facts because the facts show that conservatives always sabotage America's future.

Why is Big Oil trying to defeat President Obama?

Mitt Romney Debt Speech Ignores Key Facts Romney plan would increase deficit by $5 trillion over ten years. Includes even more tax cuts for billionaires.

All Institutions Are Prone to Corruption and Conservative Republicans Like It That Way

The Cost of Anti-American Conservative Republican Ideology Is More Than America Can Afford

The Cost of Anti-American Conservative Republican Ideology Is More Than America Can Afford

For more than a year, House Republicans have energetically worked to demolish vital social programs that have made this country both stronger and fairer over the last half-century. At the same time, they have insisted on preserving bloated military spending and unjustifiably low tax rates for the rich. That effort reached a nadir on Thursday when the House voted to prevent $55 billion in automatic cuts imposed on the Pentagon as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, choosing instead to make all those cuts, and much more, from domestic programs.

If this bill were enacted, estimates suggest that nearly two million Americans would lose food stamps and 44 million others would find them reduced. The bill would eliminate a program that allows disabled older people to live at home and out of institutions. It cuts money that helps low-income families buy health insurance. At the same time, the House bill actually adds more than $8 billion to the Pentagon budget.

In all, the bill would cut $310 billion from domestic programs; a third of that comes out of programs that serve low- and moderate-income people. Other provisions would slash by half the budget of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up after the financial meltdown to protect consumers from predatory lending and other abuses, and reduce the pay of federal workers.

Fortunately, it will never be taken up in the Senate, where the majority leader, Harry Reid, has said it would “shred the social safety net in order to protect tax breaks for the rich and inflate defense spending.”

House Republicans are already claiming that this bill, along with the equally inhumane overall 2013 budget written by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, shows their seriousness in reducing the deficit and why they should keep control of the House in November. In fact, it does the opposite on both accounts — and serves as a reminder of their destructive priorities.

As a resolution to the debt-ceiling crisis, Republicans had already agreed to $109 billion a year in automatic spending cuts — half from defense, half from the domestic side — if lawmakers failed to agree to lower the deficit in more reasonable ways such as mixing targeted cuts with tax increases on the rich. Even Democrats who supported big defense cuts wanted them chosen carefully, not with the sequester’s cleaver. But Republicans refused to take that path when the supercommittee deliberated and now are trying to make all of the cuts on the domestic side.

In just one particularly destructive example, the bill would eliminate the social services block grant, a $1.7 billion fund that is given to the states to help people struggling the hardest. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the fund provides services to 23 million people, including Meals on Wheels and other programs that help older Americans. It also helps pay for child care assistance, foster care and juvenile justice at a time when states are cutting back these programs.

House Democrats offered an alternative bill that would replace the $109 billion sequester by raising taxes on the wealthy, ending oil company tax loopholes and cutting farm subsidies, but it was rejected. Republicans are determined to protect millionaires and defense contractors, no matter the costs to the country.

Conservatives said they were insulted when President Obama implied the conservative agenda was based on social-Darwinism, otherwise known as having a dog-eat-dog culture. Maybe that is because what the president said is so true. Conservatives would literally prefer that seniors and children suffer, even die, than rise taxes on the wealthy.

What Capitalists Don't Know: Without Democracy, Capitalism Dies

What You Need To Know About Anti-American Nut Ed Klein, Author Of New Book Smearing Obama

Fox filled the airwaves with a lot of economic misinformation leading up the the Great Recession. How can patriotic Americans trust Fox News and their foreign owners Rupert Murdoch and Prince Alwaleed to help America have an informed debate. Fox Forgets Its Role Downplaying Magnitude Of Recession

It Looks as Though Conservative Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio Got His Law Enforcement Training From an al Qaeda Manual

It Looks as Though Conservative Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio Got His Law Enforcement Training From an al Qaeda Manual

Earlier today, the Department of Justice filed a formal legal complaint against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) alleging widespread constitutional violations and lawless mistreatment of Latinos. According to the complaint, Arpaio and his staff engaged in widespread, violent and demeaning mistreatment of Latino residents of Maricopa County, often targeting individuals solely because of their race:

    Forcing Women To Sleep In Their Own Menstrual Blood: In Arpaio’s jails, “female Latina LEP prisoners have been denied basic sanitary items. In some instances, female Latina LEP prisoners have been forced to remain with sheets or pants soiled from menstruation because of MCSO’s failure to ensure that detention officers provide language assistance in such circumstances.”
    Assaulting Pregnant Women: “[A]n MCSO officer stopped a Latina woman – a citizen of the United States and five months pregnant at the time – as she pulled into her driveway. After she exited her car, the officer then insisted that she sit on the hood of the car. When she refused, the officer grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back, and slammed her, stomach first, into the vehicle three times. He then dragged her to the patrol car and shoved her into the backseat. He left her in the patrol car for approximately 30 minutes without air conditioning. The MCSO officer ultimately issued a citation for failure to provide identification.”
    Stalking Latina Women: “In another instance, during a crime suppression operation, two MCSO officers followed a Latina woman, a citizen of the United States, for a quarter of a mile to her home. The officers did not turn on their emergency lights, but insisted that the woman remain in her car when she attempted to exit the car and enter her home. The officers’ stated reasons for approaching the woman was a non-functioning license plate light. When the woman attempted to enter her home, the officers used force to take her to the ground, kneed her in the back, and handcuffed her. The woman was then taken to an MCSO substation, cited for ‘disorderly conduct,’ and returned home. The disorderly conduct citation was subsequently dismissed.”
    Criminalizing Being A Latino: “During raids, [Arpaio's Criminal Enforcement Squad] typically seizes all Latinos present, whether they are listed on the warrant or not. For example, in one raid CES had a search warrant for 67 people, yet 109 people were detained. Fifty-nine people were arrested and 50 held for several hours before they were released. Those detained, but not on the warrant, were seized because they were Latino and present at the time of the raid. No legal justification existed for their detention.”
    Criminalizing Living Next To The Wrong People: “[D]uring a raid of a house suspected of containing human smugglers and their victims . . . officers went to an adjacent house, which was occupied by a Latino family. The officers entered the adjacent house and searched it, without a warrant and without the residents’ knowing consent. Although they found no evidence of criminal activity, after the search was over, the officers zip-tied the residents, a Latino man, a legal permanent resident of the United States, and his 12-year-old Latino son, a citizen of the United States, and required them to sit on the sidewalk for more than one hour, along with approximately 10 persons who had been seized from the target house, before being released.”
    Ignoring Rape: Because of Arpaio’s obsessive focus on “low-level immigration offenses” his officers failed “to adequately respond to reports of sexual violence, including allegations of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse of girls.”
    Widespread Use Of Racial Slurs: “MCSO personnel responsible for prisoners held in MCSO jails routinely direct racial slurs toward Latino prisoners, including calling Latino prisoners ‘paisas,’ ‘wetbacks,’ ‘Mexican bitches,’ ‘fucking Mexicans,’ and ‘stupid Mexicans.’”
    Widespread Racial Profiling: “[I]n the southwest portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are almost four times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct. . . . In the northwest portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are over seven times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct. . . . Most strikingly, in the northeast portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are nearly nine times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct.”
    Random, Unlawful Detention Of Latinos: “MCSO officers stopped a car carrying four Latino men, although the car was not violating any traffic laws. The MCSO officers ordered the men out of the car, zip-tied them, and made them sit on the curb for an hour before releasing all of them. The only reason given for the stop was that the men’s car ‘was a little low,’ which is not a criminal or traffic violation.”
    Group Punishments For Latinos: “In some instances, when a Latino [Low English Proficiency] prisoner has been unable to understand commands given in English, MCSO detention officers have put an entire area of the jail in lockdown—effectively preventing all the prisoners in that area from accessing a number of privileges because of the Latino LEP prisoner’s inability to understand English, inciting hostility toward the LEP prisoner, and potentially placing MCSO officers and other prisoners in harm’s way.”

Has anyone seen Sheriff Joe Arpaio's birth certificate. He does not just act like a terrorist, he is a terrorist.

President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights Bill Donohue: "Nature Has Ordained" That Only Men And Women "Can Have A Family. Gay People Have Been Disqualified From Nature". Who is it exactly that appointed this conservative Republican moron to demi-god who gets to determine who is human and who is not.

Foreign interloper Rupert Murdoch owns the anti-American propaganda channel called Fox News. Steve Doocy, one of the dumbest most anti-American talking heads for Murdoch recently made this ridiculous claim, Fox's Doocy Tries To Blame Obama For JP Morgan Losses: "If He's The President, He's The President Of The Banks, Too". The President of the USA regardless of party does not run or over see the day to day operations of banks, regardless of political party. Doocy should read a newspaper not run by Anti-American propagandist like Murdoch once in a while. Even JP Morgan admits they are the ones who screwed up, JPMorgan’s Dimon: Firm suffered $2B trading loss after ‘egregious’ failure’

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said the firm suffered a $2 billion trading loss after an “egregious” failure in a unit managing risks, jeopardizing Wall Street banks’ efforts to loosen a federal ban on bets with their own money.

Big Conservative Pundit David Brooks argues there is nothing to be done to bring back lower middle-class jobs

Big Conservative Pundit David Brooks argues there is nothing to be done to bring back lower middle-class jobs

It didn’t take long to crank up the backlash against European voters. This is inevitable whenever a socialist wins a major election, but particularly now, when new French president François Hollande rode to victory shouting, "Austerity can no longer be inevitable!"A protester holds a banner that reads 'Austerity enough is enough' during a demonstration in Paris. (MEHDI FEDOUACH/AFP/Getty Images)

This sounds like the beginning of what will be a very heated debate over who has to pay for the excesses of the financial crisis. It was previously assumed that everybody but the actual financial services sector would have to pay, but voters in Europe now are refusing to go along, sparking a wave of eye-rolling editorials in the financial press. Even David Brooks got into the act today, penning a lugubrious editorial about the errant political instincts of the populist masses here and abroad.

Markets all over the world freaked out over the prospect of having ignorant European voters meddling in the recovery process the geniuses of the high finance world had already painstakingly laid out for them. The model for economic progress in the financial bubble era, after all, is supposed to go something like this:

    Let banks inflate massive asset bubbles with the aid of cheap or even free government cash, and tons of leverage;
    
    Before it all explodes, carve out gigantic sums for bonuses and compensation for the companies that inflated those bubbles;
    
    After it explodes, get the various governments to bail those companies out;
    
    Pay for it all by slashing services to what’s left of the middle class.

This is the model we used in America. We had a monster asset bubble based on phony mortgages, which Wall Street was allowed to inflate to spectacular dimensions with minimal reserve capital, huge amounts of leverage, and tons of fraud for good measure. When that bubble exploded, we first rescued the banks who inflated the thing in the first place, and then our plan for paying for it mostly revolved around folks like Paul Ryan and Chris Christie, who made great political hay by trying to take an ax to "entitlements" like health care and retirement benefits.

They're replaying the same script in Europe, sort of. The causes of crises in places like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy vary somewhat and are less simple to define, but a common denominator in all of them is weak growth mixed with giant budget deficits.

In most all of these cases, you had enormous sums of money entering these countries in the middle and late 2000s as global financiers in the midst of the bubble boom looked for higher-yield investments around the world – Spanish real estate, Greek debt, etc.

The local economies sucked up the bubble money, and in Greece's case they used it to ramp up state benefits, which they could no longer afford once the bubble burst. A lot of these countries turned to Wall Street to finance their way out of budgetary messes using swap deals and other hocus-pocus moves, kicking the can down the road as it were, and those decisions are now blowing up in their faces.

Now that it’s the next morning, and everyone has a severe hangover from the bubble, the dominant narrative is that these countries brought their troubles on themselves by being reckless spenders with unsustainable welfare states. The solution, naturally, is going to be "austerity," slashing state budgets, reining in those wasteful citizens with their unreasonable demands for returns on taxes.

Take today's Brooks column in the Times, for instance, which seems aimed at his colleague Paul Krugman (who has been arguing that cutting public spending and job stimulus in European countries will be disastrous). Brooks claims that the financial crisis was caused by "structural" problems, the first of which is that we’ve simply grown out of a need to pay low-skilled workers real wages:

    Hyperefficient globalized companies need fewer workers. As a result, unemployment rises, superstar salaries surge while lower-skilled wages stagnate, the middle gets hollowed out and inequality grows.

According to Brooks, this organic trend toward lower salaries for everyone but the "superstars"  managing those hyperefficient companies has forced politicians into the bad decision of borrowing and taxing to extend more welfare/charity to the less fortunate:

    Politicians tried to compensate by reducing the tax bill, increasing deficit spending, ensuring easy credit for homebuyers and by helping workers shift out of the hypercompetitive, globalized part of the economy and into the less productive and more sheltered parts of the economy – mostly into health care, government and education.

    But you can only mask structural problems for so long …. The current model, in which we try to compensate for structural economic weakness with tax cuts and an unsustainable welfare state, simply cannot last.

Naturally, since that welfare state is "unsustainable"” we need to be real about things and stop the deficit spending and the stimulus, etc.

This world view ignores the fact that those "superstar" leaders of "hyperefficient" companies have been sucking up a thousand times as much welfare as those low-skilled workers Brooks is talking about. Here’s how the "superstars" of the banking world sometimes earn their bonuses: they borrow trillions from the U.S. Federal Reserve at zero or near zero interest, then they turn right around and lend chunks of that free money to a place like Greece (ex-FDIC Sheila Bair, in a hilarious editorial on the subject, pegged the ten-year yield at 21%), then they pocket the proceeds and call it capitalism.

Brooks’ analysis of the financial crisis leaves out things like the $16 trillion in emergency loans the banks secretly got from the Fed in the years since the crisis. It ignores quantitative easing, bailouts, and the trillions of dollars of bets Wall Street made on the unreal economy during the bubble years that we all ended up paying for, either through taxes or reduced home values or lowered interest on our savings.

The point is, when people talk about “austerity,” they only ever talk about the pain the general population should voluntarily accept, in the form of reduced services and curtailed “stimulus.” No one ever says the financial services sector should have to cut back on its access to easy money, and there hasn’t been much in the way of serious plans to restore some sanity and prudence to the lending and investing business.

Instead, governments have stood by and allowed banks to lend thirty and forty dollars for every one on the books, they’ve watched lenders almost completely do away with underwriting standards, they’ve continually pumped the big firms full of cheap cash from the Fed and the ECB (printing new trillions when the real money runs out), and they’ve allowed Wall Street to build giant sandcastles of illusory wealth using synthetic derivatives, all with minimal reserve requirements.

The result of all of this easy money is an endless succession of speculative bubbles that simply shift from one market to another as financial companies run around the globe in search of high yields. It was Spanish real estate yesterday, and Euro sovereign debt before that, and American home mortgages at other times, and then it was wheat and corn and other food commodities last year (which led to the social unrest in the middle East), and it was oil in 2008, oil in 2011, and oil again this year, and so on. 

In addition to the direct consequence of huge stunning losses when these bubbles collapse, the insane volatility of all of these markets creates panic in the business community, and puts a brake on real lending to grow real businesses. When you don’t know if oil is going to cost $40 a barrel or $140 three months from now, it’s pretty hard to invest in a new airline, or a chain of supermarkets (as commodities, many food prices will also rise and fall with oil), or anything at all, really. It’s not surprising that no one wants to lend in this environment.

 The Founders would certainly see the irony that the conservative agenda has wrought. We now have an economy that rsembles the royal economies of 17th century Europe where royalty never loses money. No, in our economy when the very wealthy elite lose money the peasant workers pay for it. This is what an economy looks like on conservationism, the lazy, crooked and rich rake in the cash while the middle and working classes lose ground.

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