Cowards and Traitors

I got one of those crazy ass right wing emails about the Senate voting down the U.N. treaty on international gun trafficking.  As you know, it was all about the U.N. taking our guns away, under the guise of rational limitations on the sale of weapons across borders.  The email denounced the treaty and included the names of Senators who voted in favor of the treaty, and it called them "traitors" and demanded they be replaced at the next election.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the treaty specifically stated that it could not be interpreted as in any way as limiting 2nd amendment rights.  It didn't need to include that language, because any treaty cannot limit a constitutional right. 
The inclusion of the clarifying language didn't fool the gun nuts, though.  They staged an active campaign to defeat the treaty, and it worked.  By not ratifying the treaty, the U.S. joined the esteemed company of Iran, Syria and North Korea in voting it down.
Because of the strong NRA push to defeat the treaty, I think the Senators who voted for the treaty showed some backbone, something we don't see often in Washington.
Similarly, the NRA campaign to defeat the closing of the background check loopholes by falsely claiming it would create a national registry of guns and would outlaw the transfer of a gun between brothers-in-law worked.  The senate today defeated the provision which would have required a background check at gun shows, etc.  The hold of the NRA over Washington is absolutely amazing.  And the Senators who voted against the provision, parroting the NRA lies about the law, are cowards of the first order.
The fact that lies are peddled in some wholesale manner to the public, and the fact that the public cannot recognize it as such is dumbfounding.  Far too many people cannot think for themselves, instead, relying on their own paranoid fantasies and Fox news to give them the information that they are so hungry for. 
Validate me, please. 

Its Back to Hostage Taking, Again!

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) laid down a tough requirement for raising the debt ceiling Thursday, all but ensuring a reprise of the tense standoff two years ago that saw America's credit rating downgraded.
Speaking at his regular news conference, Boehner said the only way the House would go along with raising the country's borrowing cap was if President Barack Obama and the Democrats came up with an equal amount in budget cuts.
"Dollar for dollar is the plan," Boehner told reporters, adding that there have been no major talks on the debt limit at this point.
"The president has been clear that he's not going to address our entitlement crisis unless we're willing to raise taxes. I think the tax issue has been resolved," said Boehner. "So at this point then, I don't know how we're going to go forward."

Those Republicans are such fun people!  When you think about how insane this is, its almost funny.  OK, so here's the situation:  The current Repub mantra is, "we don't have an income problem, we have a spending problem."  So, in order to cut our spending, the Repubs are again planning to take the country to the brink of default to get their way.  Last time they did this, the credit rating of the US dropped, making it more expensive to borrow money and therefore causing us more to service our debt?
You see how that works?  Well, they apparently don't.

WE DEMAND SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT!!!

Signing up for Facebook has been a real eye-opener for me.  I once had no idea who it was that got their world view from Fox News, now I have a much better idea.
A high school reunion took place not long ago and I was swamped with requests from people I hadn't heard from in ages and I blindly accepted most.  Now I see some of the pay-off from the Koch brothers sponsorship of obscure net posters with slick messages with no real thought behind them.
I don't see how these right wingers can continually get their panties in a wad over any obscure idea without suffering from some kind of outrage fatigue.
A few weeks ago some law professor wrote an oped piece for the New York Times which advocated scrapping the Constitution in favor of some kind of British parliamentarian system.  Days later I heard him being interviewed on NPR.
Yesterday a couple of conservative FB friends reposted a slick "demand" that the professor be fired for suggesting the Constitution be scrapped.  THE NERVE!!!
I posted a comment under it something like, "I'm trying to figure out how the petition should be worded?  The undersigned loves the U.S. Constitution so much that we demand the firing of the man who exercised his first amendment rights under that Constitution."
The posting was removed by this morning. Piers Morgan MUST be deported because the second amendment outweighs the first!!! That's why they put it in there secon......., wait a minute............

I'm proving I'm responsible by not paying my debts!

I'm reprinting an article below by Robert Creamer from the Huffington Post.  It contains several truths about the reasons for the approaching "fiscal cliff" including how we got here and why we'll probably have to go over it.
In short, we got here because the Republican party has become great at obscuring truth and its members of Congress are more afraid of losing a primary challenge than they are of wrecking the economy.
Republicans control one of two houses of the legislative branch (and the Supreme Court).  The Democrats hold the other house and the presidency.  Republicans will hold the economy hostage by refusing to lift the debt limit without concessions and Democrats will allow it.
The debt limit is not a forward facing entity, so when Mitch (turtle-man) McConnell says "we're not giving the president a blank check" and therefore Republicans won't vote to lift the debt limit, the whole thing is a lie and a ruse.  Congress has already authorized the spending which created the debt, the ceiling reflects the fact that they have spent more money than the treasury had, and therefore the difference must be borrowed, creating the "debt."  Its like running up a tab on your credit card, and trying to act responsible by refusing to pay when Visa sends the bill.  Its crazy, its dishonest, it has already caused the credit of the U.S. to be downgraded, but for Republicans, re-election is more important than the good of the country.
It can happen because there are enough ignorant Americans who cannot think rationally enough to see through this ploy.  Cynical and dishonest, period.
Creamer argues that this condition is now acute because gerrymandering districts have created solid Republican districts where Republicans now fear being defeated in the primaries by Tea Partyists running to their right.  Its why Marco Rubio, and educated man, cannot admit the existence of evolution or the true age of the earth.  Its why climate change must be denied.  Here's the article:

Often, economic crises are caused by real physical problems - like draught, war, demography, or technological innovation that robs one economy of a competitive advantage over another.
Other times, economic crises result when asset bubbles burst, or financial markets collapse. That was the case of the Great Depression - and more recently the Great Recession.
The economic crisis of the moment - the "fiscal cliff" - does not result from any of these factors. In fact it is not a real "economic crisis" at all, except that it could inflict serious economic hardship on many Americans and could drive the economy back into recession.
The "fiscal cliff" is a politically manufactured crisis. It was original concocted by the Republican Senate Leader, Mitch McConnell as a way to get past the last crisis manufactured by the Republicans - the 2011 standoff over increasing the Federal Debt Ceiling.
Theoretically, "the cliff" - composed of increased taxes and huge, indiscriminant cuts in Federal programs - would be so frightening to policy makers that no one would ever consider allowing the nation to jump.
Now, America is on the brink of diving off the cliff for one and only one reason: many House Republicans are terrified of primary challenges from the Tea Party right.
That's right, if your tax bill goes up $2,200 a year, or you're one of the millions who would stop receiving unemployment benefits, the cause of your economic pain is not some a natural disaster, or a major structural flaw in the economy. The cause is Republican fear of being beaten in a primary by people like Sarah Palin, Sharon Angel or Richard Mourdock - funded by far Right Wing oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers. It's that simple.
Most normal Americans will have very little patience with Republicans as they begin to realize that GOP Members of Congress are willing to risk throwing the country back into a recession because they are worried about being beaten in low turn out primaries by people who do a better job than they do appealing to the extreme right fringe of the American electorate - and to the far Right plutocrats that are all too willing to stoke right wing passion and anger.
Nate Silver, of the New York Time's 538.com, argues in a recent column that one of the reasons for this phenomenon is the increasing polarization of the American electorate. That polarization translates in to fewer truly "swing" Congressional seats and an increasing number where Members are more concerned with primary challenges than they are with losing in a general election. He concludes that at this moment the number of solidly Republican seats is larger the number of solidly Democratic seats.
This, he argues is partially a result of redistricting by Republican legislatures that packed Democrats into a limited number of districts in many states. But he also contends it results from increasing polarization of the electorate in general. And it is due to the fact that solidly Democratic urban areas have very high concentrations of Democrats, where Republican performing areas tend to have relatively lower concentrations of Republicans. These reasons help explain why, even though Democrats got more votes in House races this cycle than Republicans, Republicans still have more seats in the House.
Increased political polarization in the United States is not a result of some accident or act of God. In 2006, political scientists Nolan McCarty, Kevin T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal published a study of political polarization called Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Their study found that there is a direct relationship between economic inequality and polarization in American politics.
They measured political polarization in congressional votes over the last century, and found a direct correlation with the percentage of income received by the top 1% of the electorate. It is no accident that the years following the second World War, a period of low political polarization, was also a period that economist Paul Krugman refers to as the "great compression" -- with robust economic growth for most Americans and reducing levels of economic inequality. In other words, it turns out that if you want less political polarization, the best medicine is reducing income inequality.
Of course, one of the other major factors feeding the GOP fear of primaries is that, because of the Citizens United decision, far right plutocrats can now inject virtually unlimited amounts of money into primary races. Unlimited independent expenditures have so far been much more successful in unseating incumbent Republican Members of Congress than it has been winning General Elections.
In the end, of course the relatively more diluted presence of Republicans in Republican districts - and the country's changing demographics -- may allow Democrats to win many currently Republican seats. What's more, Republican near term concern about primary challenges - and the stridency it breeds -- may alienate increasing numbers of moderate Republican leading independents. We've already seen this effect in the Presidential and Senate races and it would not be surprising that by 2014 many of the primary obsessed Republican incumbents are hoisted on their own petard in the General Election. Just ask Tea Party Members of Congress who were defeated in 2012, like Alan West and Joe Walsh. But in the near term, at least, there is also no question that many occupants of Republican seats appear far more concerned with primary challenges than they are with general elections.
If House Speaker Boehner is to be successful passing any form of compromise to avoid the "fiscal cliff" - either before the end of the year or after - he will need to convince Republican Members of the House that he is doing them a favor by bringing a bill the floor that can pass even with many Republicans voting no. That, of course requires that the deal is good enough to allow many Democrats to vote yes.
Boehner will get political cover for that kind of maneuver if a bill passes out of the Senate with bi-partisan support. But even then, he will certainly weigh whether he risks his otherwise certain re-election as Speaker on January 3rd if he acts before the country goes over the cliff at midnight, December 31.
Of course the many Republicans that will never support any form of tax compromise don't justify their position by explaining they are more concerned with primaries than they are of general elections. In fact they generally fall back on one of three myths that are themselves utter nonsense.
Myth #1 - You shouldn't tax the wealthy because they are "job creators". The plain fact is that no one invests money in any business if they do not think there are customers with money in their pockets to buy the products or services they produce.
Customers with money in their pockets are "job creators" - and the root of our current economic problems can be traced directly to the fact that everyday consumers are receiving a smaller and smaller percentage of the national economic pie and as a result have less ability to to buy the increasing number of products and services our economy can create. In fact, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government started keeping records in 1947. And corporate profits have climbed to their highest levels since the 1960's.
Over the last two decades, per capita Gross Domestic Product has gone up; productivity per hour of work has gone up; but the median income of ordinary Americans has remained stagnant. That is only possible because all of the growth in our economy has been siphoned off by the top 2% of the population.
And it has meant that everyday people haven't had the money in their pockets to buy the increased numbers of goods and services that are the consequence of that increased productivity. Stagnation and slow economic growth has been the result.
Henry Ford had this right. For the economy to grow over time, workers need to be paid enough to buy the products they produce.
If you want the economy to grow, the fruits of economic growth must be spread equally throughout the economy - if not consumers won't have the money to buy and, as a consequence, investors won't invest.
Higher taxes on the wealthy - including higher estate taxes on fortunes left to the sons and daughters of multi-millionaires - are not "bad" for the economy - just the opposite. They help address the economic inequality that is the core problem in our economy.
Myth #2 - Our biggest problem is the federal deficit. This is just flat wrong. It is the economic equivalent of the medieval view that you should "bleed" patients when they are sick.
We have learned from centuries of economic history, that when an economy is recovering from a recession, the right medicine for sluggish economic demand is more fiscal stimulus - and in the short run that does not mean lower deficits.
More economic stimulus, of the type that the President proposed in the American Jobs Act over a year ago, puts money in people's pockets who can then spend it on more products and stimulate more investment. Austerity and reducing national debt will yield the same outcome we have recently seen in Europe - another recession. And that is exactly what the deficit hawks are likely to get if America slides of the fiscal cliff and stays there.
Right Wing deficit hawks are fond of warning that if we don't cut the deficit, the country could turn into Greece - or some other European country that can't pay it's bills. They ignore the fact that right now U.S. Treasury Bonds are considered the safest investments in the world, and interest rates are at a record low. They also ignore the fact that, unlike the Europeans, the American Federal Reserve can monetize the federal debt and assure that U.S. bond holders are always paid -- unless, of course, the Republicans refuse to pay the debts that we owe, which would be like committing economic Hara-Kiri.
In fact, the quickest way for America to become like Europe is a precipitous reduction of the federal spending. Ask the Brits how that worked out.
Finally, of course, let's remember that the way to reduce the deficit is not an inscrutable mystery. When Democrat Bill Clinton was President he did it, just a few short years ago. The recipe for success involved two factors: increasing revenue, especially from the wealthy, and growing the economy.
Today we would have to add, the need to control the spiraling increase in health care costs. While ObamaCare will make big steps in that direction, much more will be needed. Shifting costs to seniors and other consumers by cutting Medicare or Medicaid benefits is not controlling health care costs - it is simply shifting them from government to individuals. And what is needed is not more de-regulation of for-profit health care companies. In fact we ultimately need to follow the model of the Canadians - and most of the other industrial nations in the world - and provide a universal Medicare coverage to all Americans. Our system of private health insurance is simply too expensive. Americans, after all, pay 40% more than any other country per capita for health care and have outcomes that rank only 37th in the world.
Myth #3 - Government is always bad and- as Grover Norquist argues - must be shrunk so it can be drowned in a bathtub.
Let's ignore for a moment the fact that while Republicans talk about small government, they inevitably expand it when they control the White House - mostly in the form of larger military budgets.
Government, as Congressman Barney Frank says, is the name we give to the things we choose to do together--and that includes many of the most important things we do in our economy. From fire and police protection to providing free public education and health care for all, to building public infrastructure, to creating the Internet - government does a better, more efficient, more equitable job in many economic arenas than the private sector.
To hear the Republicans talk you wouldn't know it, but right now taxes are at their lowest levels since 1958.
Right now in America we need more government - more education, more roads and bridges, more mass transportation, more cancer research, more health care, more nutrition programs, more drug education and treatment - not less. More government shouldn't mean more regulation of our freedom - it should mean that when we co-operate together we have the ability to achieve more than if everyone is left to sink or swim. Government action is necessary to provide the foundation from which each person can individually excel.
The question of the type of society we want in America was squarely on the ballot in the election last November, and voters overwhelming voted for a society where we have each other's back - where we're all in this together, not all in this alone.
Progressives need to make all of these arguments to win the battle for the future. But let's remember that the unwillingness of most Republicans to compromise to avoid the "fiscal cliff" - or anything else - has less to do with their commitment to their ultra right principles than to the protection of their own political hides.
That being the case, there are only two ways to convince Republicans to compromise. One is to demonstrate that their obsession with primary challenges from the right will ultimately lead them to defeat in General Elections. The second is to defeat them so badly in the next General Election that they no longer have the power to impose the will of an extremist minority on the people of the United States.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners and a Senior Strategist for Americans United for Change. Follow him on Twitter

That dang cliff

I haven't published but one short entry since my mom fell and spent 3 weeks in hospital-like places until her death on December 1st.  Partly from being drained, partly just empty.  She was a fine lady.
I do have to note that the "fiscal cliff" is approaching and Speaker Boehner can't get further concessions from the president nor can he get any cooperation from his tea party contingents.  He had to pull a bill last week that he introduced which would have increased taxes on those earning one million or more because those wacky tea partyists wouldn't go for it.
And although Obama ran his campaign on a roll-back of the Bush tax cuts for those earning $250,000 and earned a decisive victory over that Mitt-droid guy, and although democrats gained both Senate and House seats, the Republicans still control the House (even though there were more than a million more democratic votes than republican votes, the retention due to gerrymandering), the tea party still knows whats best for America: continual hostage-holding and possible down-grading of US debt and/or default.
I wonder if the Koch brothers yet realize what they have birthed in the Tea Party.  It seems as if voters have (note the losses by Allen West, Joe Walsh, Mourdock and Todd Akins) but the monster is only weakened, not dead yet.
Paul Krugman says it's better to go over the cliff than continually giving up Democratic principles.  By this time next week we may know.

How did that black guy steal another election?

The republicans are still trying to figure out what hit them.  The party which believes that pregnancies don't come from "legitimate" rape, that medical science has advanced to the point that a mother's health exception to abortion laws is now unnecessary, that global warming is a myth, the president was born in Kenya, well, you get the point, is now dealing with the sudden, wholly unexpected loss at the polls last week.
OK, you might not have been quite as shocked had you watched the polls, but, hey, who can believe that lefty stuff?  The deluded ones at the top of the ticket spoke today.  The reason for their loss?
Romney:  "Its hard to run against someone who gives people stuff." Seriously, he said that.
I used to think that the Mittster wasn't a aloof and detached as he seems.  But after a week of reflection that's the best he can do?
Ryan:  We didn't think that many people from the urban areas would be voting.
I think that the real Romney, if there is such a beast, is the one from the "47%" presentation.  His disdain, his total disgust for half of us is truly remarkable.  I think is was David Brooks that dubbed him, "Thurston Howell Romney."
The power of self-delusion is alive and well.   

Oh, hypocrisy, thy name is Mitt (or Willard, or whatever)

Now guess who's guilty of sending our good jobs to China?  you got it, its not the vulture capitalist, its that scary black president who won't show us his real birth certificate, Barrack Obama!

From the Washington Post:  But in Romney-world, this became an attack on the president auto rescue because according to the campaign, Chrysler was planning to move all of their U.S. production of Jeeps to China. Romney: "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China."

After Mitt showed the world how to save Chrysler and GM, he doesn't like Obama trying to take the credit.  I am reminded of the George Washington and the cherry tree story, and wonder if the US is really ready for a president who is so truth challenged.

At Bain Capital, he took over companies, heavily leveraged them with debt, eliminated pensions and sent jobs out of the country.  All to make obscene amounts of money for himself and his investors.  He invests his money overseas, uses the Morman church for tax credits, pays about 13% in federal taxes and  slurs those who pay even less, tho he'd like to be paying 20% less.

And after he's shown his disdain for the 47% who pay no federal taxes (tho they still are levied payroll taxes) and refuses to release more than 2 years of his returns, he still expects, and will receive, about 45% of the vote of those who show up.  What a country!