Its my Right to be Left of the Center

Buh Bye Blogger! Moving to WordPress.

2011-07-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

I am no longer posting to this damn Blogger blog. My new site can be found here, and the name is changed to Leftwing Nutjob..which is what it should be anyway, as many a rightwing nutter calls me that..along with 'You are a drooling bag of shit' in front of said moniker.

Personally, I think the same of them..so we are even..but not really as there IS NOT a Republican sitting his or her Corporate-loving Ass in the Oval Office chair as I write this.

Obama might be the worst negotiator in the history of US Presidents but at least he hasn't changed parties...yet.

I will keep this site up however..as a testament to my bitchfestry.

SO..CHANGE YOUR FRIGGIN LINK PLEASE!!!! And have a good, long weekend people.
Adios Blogger..here is what I think of you..

My opinion of Blogger

Operation Crossroads-65 years ago, another nuke event gone bad.

2011-06-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

Baker test portion of Operation Crossroads

It seems quite timely, with all the nasty nuclear accidents/problems/screw-ups in our recent national and international history, to write about this clusterfuck of a nuclear bomb test undertaken by the military minds of the United States. From Wikipedia,a general background on what was supposed to be a series of tests conducted in the waters off Bikini Atoll 65 years ago tomorrow:

Operation Crossroads was a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. Its purpose was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on naval ships. The series consisted of two detonations, each with a yield of 23 kilotons: Able was detonated at an altitude of 520 feet (158 m) on July 1, 1946; Baker was detonated 90 feet (27 m) underwater on July 25, 1946. A third burst, Charlie, planned for 1947, was canceled primarily because of the Navy’s inability to decontaminate the target ships after the Baker test. Crossroads Charlie was rescheduled as Operation Wigwam, a deep water shot conducted in 1955 off the California coast.

The Crossroads tests were the fourth and fifth nuclear explosions conducted by the United States (following the Trinity test and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). They were the first of many nuclear tests held in the Marshall Islands and the first to be publicly announced beforehand and observed by an invited audience, including a large press corps.

The test resulted in the radioactive contamination of all the target ships by the underwater Baker shot. It was the first case of immediate, concentrated local radioactive fallout from a nuclear explosion. (The fallout from an air burst is global, held in the stratosphere for days and widely dispersed.) Chemist Glenn Seaborg, the longest-serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called Baker “the world’s first nuclear disaster.”

Ah yes, the world’s first nuclear disaster. The other way to look at this disgusting, horrific fuckup is what most consider to be the first and only destruction of an entire Naval flotilla. From a book entitled The Archeology of the Atomic Bomb:

The tests involved assembling a fleet of 242 ships, 42,000 men, 156 airplanes, and tens of thousands of tons of equipment, ordnance, and material at Bikini, as well as relocating the 162 residents of the atoll–beginning an odyssey that has earned for these displaced people the sobriquet of “nuclear nomads” of the Pacific. Observers from Congress, from other nations (including the Soviet Union), and representatives of “U.S. press, radio, pictorial services, magazines, etc.” made these tests the most public and the most reported of any nuclear weapons tests.

I won’t even go into how this fuck-up literally ruined the lives of the 162 residents of Bikini Atoll. Suffice it to say, We took them from an island that they lived quite well and happily on, and dropped them on a piece of shit island/atoll where they couldn’t even fend for themselves.

Since I don’t fancy Fox News’ approach to journalism, I will give the link to the Official Report here. It’s actually a scan of the original report, in book form, written in 1947 under the watchful eye of the Commander of Joint Task Force One…bfd, if you ask me.

Video of Operation Crossroads Bomb Blast (opens a new window)

The video above is a seven second movie. Seven seconds that changed the lives of thousands of people and cost the US Military millions o’ bucks in that they had to scuttle the entire flotilla of vessels.

One must remember that the US really didn’t know squat about the power of such a blast, being rookies in the nuclear bomb arena. We had no friggin clue as to the damage, both to humans and warships, that would be caused. The event was treated as a huge party, the military invited press from around the nation to actually watch the blast, and then file reports to their respective news agencies, from Bikini Atoll. The original Time Magazine article, written by a journalist that was at the blast, can be read here.

The following video is seven minutes long and one of the old time, movie reel-type of reports filmed before, during and after one of the Operation Crossroads blasts:

One would think..at least I do, that we would of learned a few fucking things since 1946, about the power and destruction that nuclear energy wreaks upon humans, animals and the environment.

Apparently, we haven’t learned a fucking thing..except how to lie and obfuscate when it all goes to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

Rove has 20 million to swiftboat Dems..already.

2011-06-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

Let the swiftboating begin! Oh, and it will..lemme tell ya..it will m’dear reader. The King of Dirty Tricks has begun his campaign against Americans. The head Swiftboater is hitting up his billionaire buddies big time. From ThinkProgress:

Late last Friday, Karl Rove’s attack group, Crossroads GPS, announced a $20 million attack ad campaign going after President Obama. Crossroads says the ads, initially showing on cable and in 10 states, are meant to “frame the national debate” on jobs and the economy. What they really want to do, of course, is re-frame the national debate away from the GOP’s disastrous and spectacularly unpopular plan to end Medicare in order to give more tax breaks to millionaires, billionaires, and Big Oil (three groups that just so happened to fund a related Rove attack group last year).
Here’s a reminder of what’s in the GOP plan and where the 2012 candidates stand on it. (Hint: they all support it.)
What’s Included in the GOP Plan:
the end of Medicare as we know it
a massive new tax cut for Big Oil and other huge corporations
a massive, hidden tax increase on the middle class
a massive tax cut for millionaires and billionaires
huge cuts to government programs and services that millions of Americans rely on each day, including student loans, food safety, and unemployment benefits
All the 2012 Candidates Support the GOP Plan.

Of course they do. The R’s, unlike the D’s, walk in lockstep on every issue confronting America. Elected Democrats agreeing on any issue, is like herding cats..it ain’t gonna friggin happen.

Since the R’s took possession of the House of Rep’s in January of this year, they have been planning Obama’s demise. Rove will support their agenda with his heavy-hitting PAC’s, by swiftboating the fuck out of any and all Democrats running for office this election cycle..especially Obama.

Rove’s PAC, American Crossroads, and it’s affiliate, Crossroads GPS (Grassroots Policy Strategies) (link goes to FactCheck.org writeup on both groups) has a financial goal of..wait for it… $52 million dollars in donations by November of this year. Crossroads GPS does not have to disclose their donors because they registered as a 501(c)(4) a nonprofit, whereas American Crossroads does.

The Crossroads GPS PAC is for those billionaires that want to keep a low profile, but still want to swiftboat the shit out of Democratic candidates. Billionaires like Harold Simmons,who according to the FactCheck.org article is board chairman of Southwest Louisiana Land. Simmons was a major donor to two controversial groups: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which accused Democrat John Kerry of lying about his record in Vietnam during the 2004 presidential campaign, and American Issues Project, which ran attack ads tying Democrat Barack Obama to former 1960s radical William Ayers during the 2008 campaign.

Now, the Kerry campaign worked..but the Obama one did not. I am sure the rich rightwing nutters and Rove have learned a thing or two about swiftboating since their failed Obama campaign.

Salon.com has an excellent writeup about the billionaires funding Rover’s latest dirty tricks campaign’s. The amount of money they have already contributed is friggin mind-boggling. From the Salon writeup:

New FEC filings show that American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-backed group that is pouring money into attack ads targeting Democrats around the country, continues to be funded virtually entirely by billionaires.
In August, American Crossroads raised $2,639,052. Fully $2.4 million of that – or 91 percent – came in the form of gifts from just three billionaires.(emphasis mine)
We’ve previously reported that the group is getting a staggering amount of support from billionaires, several of whom made their fortune in the energy industry and live in Texas. Last month Trevor Rees-Jones, president of Dallas-based Chief Oil and Gas, contributed another $1 million to American Crossroads, on top of the $1 million he gave earlier this year. Fellow billionaire Robert Rowling, CEO of the company TRT Holdings, also gave Crossroads his second $1 million donation in August.

The article continues on, listing the new billionaire contributors and where their money was made. Now, bear in mind that the information above is what could be gleaned from the FEC filings of American Crossroads, as required by law. We will never know how much these same rightwing billionaires have given to Crossroads GPS because of their non-profit 501c4 status.

My whole point is this: Rover is once again in the game. He is BACK! This is the man that single-handidly got The Shrub elected not once..but twice. We should be worried..oh hell yes we should.
Since the D’s have managed to piss-off the liberal wing of their base, raising funds to combat these fuckwits won’t be easy for them. I hope their dumbasses realize that. People like me won’t be digging deep and contributing to Obama this time around. I live on a very small, fixed income because I am disabled, and yet I managed to give money and shoe leather to Obama in the 08 campaign.

I wonder what exactly I got for my money. I know the Lilly Ledbetter Act made me proud but there are so few other things he has done since becoming President that I am proud of. Sure, he created several watchdog agencies and strengthened existing ones but are they funded? With the R’s controlling the House of Reps..that is the important question for me.

I can tick off more things he has done that pissed me off than made me proud. His AG, Eric Holder, has continued to support most of the BushCo Policies that were under attack in the court systems..like warrantless wiretapping as an example. He promised to close Gitmo on his first day in office, but has evidently changed his mind on that one. He also hasn’t provided one iota of support for the unions currently under attack in numerous states..even though he promised them he would support them on the campaign trail..so much for his promises to the biggest group that funded his election in 2008.

My point being I will vote for Obama, I am just not going to give my blood, sweat, tears and cash to him this time around. Sadly, it’s once again a case of worse and worser for me in the voting booth next year. When I get pissed, I swear I will vote for a third party candidate..but when all is said and done I know in my heart I will vote for Obama. It will leave a very shitty taste in my mouth but I will vote for him.

But that said..I can’t promise all liberals will do as I do. Some are way more pissed off than I and will take it out on the D’s in the voting booth come Sept 2012, and in opening their wallets, which is what happened last year I think. Too many folks said fuck it and stayed home..giving the R’s a huge boost in their elected numbers.

And Karl Rove is counting on the liberals being pissed off. He is betting on it. He is ‘all in’ on that front m’dear reader. Get your helmets on people, as the ‘war’ has begun.

Firefox refuses constructive critiques of their product.

2011-06-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

I have used FF for almost a decade now and had been quite happy with this open source, free browser...had being the operative word here. Up until six months ago, I never had problems with it hanging or crashing on me. It was fast and efficient as hell.

Those days are over and I have been turning to Google's Chrome, or the other alternative Opera, more and more often the last couple of weeks. Both Chrome and Opera are lightening fast and neither has ever hung and/or crashed on me yet.Opera has been a back-up browser for me for over a decade and they are updating it again, which makes it even more desirable.

So when I happened upon this writeup over at Slate..I of course had to read it with a title like this: Shitty Firefox Browser Refuses to Let Itself Be Called "Shitty" . It was funny as hell but also spot-friggin-on. The author is using the current beta version and it's the same as the latest version, according to Mr. Scocca..as in it has the same damn problems. Scocca isn't a rookie in the Browser world, so he knows what he is talking about. From his writeup:

Because this is a beta, it has a feedback feature, which invites you to select a smiley face or a frowny face and to tell the creators of Firefox about what is or isn't working. I had already used the frowny face to send a polite notice about the no-typing problem. But when the cursor stopped responding again, while I was trying to rebuild a blog entry that I had lost in a hang-and-crash... I know they're supposed to be a nice bunch of hippies, making a free product, which is fine, but enough is enough.
And so here is what you get if you use the frowny face to ask Firefox what the fuck is wrong with their shitty fucking browser:
Your comment contains swear words (fucking, fucking, fuck, shitty). In order to help us improve our products, please use words that help us create an action or to-do from your constructive feedback. Thanks!
Here's a constructive to-do for you, FireFox: take your kindergarten-principal attitude, wrap it around your useless browser, and cram them both up your gosh-darned poop-hole.

When you just lost all your work because your browser took a shit..you are obviously not in a good mood, that should be a given. FireFox needs to fix it's problems and deal w/the reality of pissed off customers, whether it's free or not..or my happy ass will be moving over to Chrome or Opera full time. Chrome and Opera don't have as many bells and whistles as FF, but if the browser I am using crashes and hangs multiple days a day..what good are those little 'extras'? I do know that moving everything (passwords, bookmarks, etc) to a new browser is a HUGE pain in the friggin ass..but it's looking more and more like it's my only alternative. Heavy Sigh....

Bachmann's Corporate Welfare problem.

2011-06-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

The LA Times has already done two pieces (here and here) on Batshit Bachmann's love of money..federal money to be exact. Money that we call..

Corporate Welfare.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't Batshit Bachmann profess a hatred of said welfare publicly, as in every fucking chance she gets? From one of the LAT writeup's:

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota and "tea party" favorite, portrayed herself as a fiscal conservative while also benefiting from government funds and federal farm subsidies. An examination of her record and finances showed that a counseling clinic run by her husband received nearly $30,000 from the state of Minnesota in the last five years, with part of the money coming from the federal government. And a family farm in Wisconsin, where she is listed as a partner, received some $260,000 in federal subsidies.

Batshit Bachmann attempts to deflect this critical bit of information by stating it didn't go to her..it went to her family and employees.

Bachmann and her staff declined to talk to about the government assistance for the L.A. Times article. But asked about the issue on "Fox News Sunday," she insisted that she and her husband had not benefited at the expense of federal and state taxpayers.

*snip*

As the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday, however, in financial disclosure forms, Bachmann reported receiving between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the farm, at minimum, between 2006 and 2009.

Right Ms. Teabagger..you had no hand in applying for it either I bet. Why is my Bullshit Meter pegged at this point in the LAT writeup?? Probably due to the following paragraph:

Bachmann also was asked about the farm subsidies on CBS' "Face the Nation." She suggested the public instead should be more outraged about a sharp increase in government limousines in the two years since President Obama took office.

Deflect and lie. It's her stock in trade. Interestingly enough , the other LAT piece has Bachmann and her staff refusing to answer questions, on numerous occasions, about her receipt of Corporate Welfare:

As Bachmann prepares to formally launch her presidential bid Monday in Waterloo, Iowa, Republican strategists warned that she needs to square her record with her public pronouncements.

"She's kind of built an area in the field of candidates where she's the hawk on those kinds of issues, so any sort of issue that will show her record is not totally consistent will affect some of her support," said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa GOP. "I don't think it's a deal-breaker, but I think it's something she's going to have to be willing to confront head-on."

For now, Bachmann is declining to answer questions on the topic. Her congressional and campaign staff did not respond to numerous requests for comment.(emphasis mine)

We can only hope the Corporate Media will get onboard with asking her and her staff about these issues. Asking her every-single-friggin-time they see her or her staff. Inundate her and her staff with questions about it.

Because only then will it become national news that this teabagging cunt is a gigantic liar, bar none.

Ft Calhoun Nuke Plant berm fails.

2011-06-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of ABC News

The collapsing of the berm is a big fucking deal folks. This nuke plant was already in trouble and now this shit. From the Omaha World Herald link:

Floodwaters surrounded several buildings at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station early Sunday morning after a water-filled wall collapsed.

The plant, about 19 miles north of Omaha, remains safe, Omaha Public Power District officials said Sunday afternoon.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is monitoring the Missouri River at the plant, which has been shut down since early April for refueling.

The 2,000-foot berm collapsed about 1:25 a.m. Sunday due to “onsite activities,” OPPD officials said. The Aqua Dam provided supplemental flood protection and was not required under NRC regulations.

“We put up the aqua-berm as additional protection,” said OPPD spokesman Mike Jones. “(The plant) is in the same situation it would have been in if the berm had not been added. We're still within NRC regulations.”

According to the NRC, the berm was eight-feet tall and 16-feet wide at the base. It was designed to provide protection for the plant's "powerblock" for up to six feet of water. Crews will look at whether it can be patched, OPPD officials said.

On Sunday, floodwater surrounded the nuclear plant's main electrical transformers, and power was transferred to emergency diesel generators.

The local's are buying into the 'storyline' being fed them by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Hey, I am just glad my happy ass doesn't reside anywhere near that nuke plant, because I would be loading up the auto with animals and belongings.

In a bit of irony, the Ft Calhoun nuke plant waged a year long battle against the NRC, to keep from adding protection measures deemed wholly necessary by the NRC to protect the plant from....wait for it... being swamped by flooding from the Missouri river. From the NYT link:

NRC inspectors concluded that at flooding levels above 1,008 feet, the plant "would experience a loss of offsite power and loss of intake structure" and water pumps providing essential cooling water to the plant. In that case, "the plant would be incapable of reaching cold shutdown" with normal operations -- a fundamental safety requirement imposed by the NRC. The commission's Region IV office in Arlington, Texas, issued a notice of violation against the plant on Oct. 6 last year, finding that the issues were of "substantial importance" to the plant's safety.

OPPD challenged the NRC's inspectors' conclusions in a series of conferences before bowing to the commission staff's demands and agreeing to install the additional defenses this year. The AquaDam water berm was installed beginning June 4.

The berm failed because of human error: On Sunday afternoon, workers accidentally deflated an auxiliary berm at the plant, said Omaha Public Power District spokesman Jeff Hanson. Nice huh? Oh, and there is that little 'unresolved issue' too:

A still-unresolved issue in the dispute is the NRC's contention that OPPD received, but did not properly act on, a warning by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2003. It said high-water threats to the plant should be raised by 3 feet based on a new assessment following severe Missouri River floods in the mid-1990s. "The performance deficiency existed for many years," the NRC said in an Oct. 6, 2010, letter to the Omaha utility.

Jaysus...the failure of the berm forced the shutdown of all electrical power to the plant..where have we heard of a nuke plant losing it's electricity recently?

I remember...Japan..Fukushima to be exact. We know how well their backup measures worked..or more precisely...failed. We can only hope the same shit doesn't happen at Ft. Calhoun. But don't panic folks..cuz they got it ALLLLLLLLL handled.

Sure they do..of course they do..and the Japanese electric company said the same damn thing in the days following the Tsunami hitting Fukushima.

They lied..oh hell yeah they lied..like a fucking rug.

So, if the locals want to believe everything is under control and just-fucking-fine...go for it people. Because electric companies never lie about conditions at nuclear plants..right?

The latest news is that the NRC head cheese will tour the plant Monday.

From Channel7KETV in Omaha, the condition of the other plant being threatened by flood waters, The Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, NE:

The plant, run by the Nebraska Public Power District, is protected by a series of earthen berms. A KETV NewsWatch 7 crew said the river is running about 2.5 feet below the top of the river levee. NPPD officials said the additional berms will protect the plant if the water level rises and additional six feet.

The plant buildings are about 25 yards from the river.

Plant officials said the encapsulated spent fuel rods at the plant, which continues to operate, can withstand being submerged in 50 feet of water for an extended period of time.

They also said the reactor core is protected by six inches of steel-reinforced concrete. Plant officials said the reactor is designed to keep the radiation in and the water out of the vital part of the nuclear station.

Operators at the plant said they have three different back-up plans should the plant lose power.

Jaczko talked briefly to the media and said it appears the utility is doing what it can to mitigate the flooding situation, but was non-committal as to whether the plant is in the clear yet.

Jaysus friggin Christ..a situation ripe as hell for disaster, if not one..possibly two disasters.We are talking about spent fuel rods..and all that shit.

Same crap that went down at Fukushima.

Koch Bros private affair in CO goes public.

2011-06-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

I am so fucking sick of the Koch Brothers and their smarmy, corporate asses. They want to bring America, as we currently know it, down to their level..which means only classes..the upper class and the lower class. Those great folks over at CommonCause and ProgressNowColorado have made sure that the national media, like the LATimes as an example, knows about the Koch Bros rightwing nutter-fest this weekend in Vail. This is the second nutterfest the Koch's have held this year, the other was in Palm Springs. From the LAT writeup:

An invitation-only conference of wealthy conservative activists organized by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch will convene just outside Vail, Colo., this weekend.

Common Cause -- a group that describes itself as nonpartisan and headed by a former Democratic congressman -- and ProgressNow Colorado have organized a protest outside the Ritz Carlton at Bachelor Gulch, where they believe the conference will be held.

The groups have urged their followers to arrive with signs that read, "UnVail the Kochs," "Corporations are not people," and "Stop the War on the Middle Class."

This is the second Koch-organized conference this year. The previous event, held in late January in Palm Springs, drew about 800 to 1,000 protesters who rallied against the Kochs' libertarian agenda. About 25 protesters were arrested for trespassing.

The Kochs have been a target of liberal activists for their funding of research institutions and other groups that push a limited-government agenda. They control Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate that is the nation's second-largest privately held company. They are credited with helping to organize the "tea party" and allied groups that spent millions to defeat Democrats in last year's midterm elections.

Now, why does the LAT have to verbally paint the folks at CommonCause and ProgressNowCO as liberal activists targeting those fuckwads? Its a bad phrase to some folks. They couldn't say groups dedicated to protecting the rights of individuals over those of the Corporations?

Senator Bernie Sanders and the BraveNewFoundation know what's what. Their website,
KochBrothersExposed, is a good place to send folks. Their video below is worth your time.

As they say on the website..we must create an Echo Chamber of Truth to combat the millions of bucks these corporate welfare whores spend to thwart the rights of individuals, via their lobbying efforts, swiftboat-type campaigns and these types of little get-togethers. Uncloak the Koch's...NOW, before the elections take place next year. That way Joe and Jill Mainstreet know the truth about these rightwing extremists who only hold allegiance to one thing..money. Mutha Fuckas need to be brought down to our level. They want a fight, then we have to give it to them...all of us, not just the liberal activists. The people in the video are elderly American's the most vulnerable among us to the fuckery being foisted upon us by the R's and their friends in The Corporatocracy. They are willing to fight for what is right..why aren't the rest of us??

Bank screwups continue to screw with homeowners in crisis.

2011-06-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

From ProPublica more fuckery from those who are too big to fail..like Bank of America for instance:

Four years into the foreclosure crisis, banks say they've made major improvements in how they handle struggling homeowners. They've promised, for example, not to foreclose on homeowners who are being considered for mortgage modifications. But that's still happening.

Consider the cases of Laurie Pinkerton and Lisa Peterson. The two women, both Californians and Bank of America customers, had been assured by the bank that they wouldn't lose their homes before they'd been evaluated for a possible modification. Both had their homes sold last month.

Such cases are particularly senseless, because simply modifying the mortgage by reducing the monthly payment might be in the interest not only of the homeowner, but also of the investor who owns the mortgage. Both Pinkerton and Peterson said their homes were sold after foreclosure for far less than they're worth.
Regulators have done little to stop the practice, and the "problem appears to be getting worse," said Kevin Stein, associate director of the nonprofit California Reinvestment Coalition.

Last month, the coalition surveyed 55 foreclosure-avoidance counselors throughout the state. Collectively they serve thousands of borrowers every month. Almost all of the counselors, 94 percent, reported having worked with clients who'd lost their homes while under review for a modification. About half of the counselors reported this happened "often." This year's totals, which are due to be publicly released next week, are higher than those in the group's survey last year.

The article goes on to point out how little, if anything, the federal regulators are doing about this fucking mess. Wrongful foreclosures make life a living hell for the homeowner trying to keep their head above water and maintain possession of their home..as for the banks..nah..don't really harm those bastards one iota. Again from the Propublica writeup:

This past April, the federal banking regulators released "consent orders" with 14 of the largest banks requiring various improvements in their handling of mortgages and foreclosures. Prior to the orders, the regulators had not had clear rules on how the banks should handle modification applications. Among the new requirements, banks will now be forbidden from actually selling a home before a final decision is made on a modification. Also, if a homeowner is approved for a modification, the foreclosure process is supposed to stop. The new requirements will go into effect later this summer.(emphasis mine)

Why does everything take for-friggin-ever to be implemented, once the federal government figures out wtf is wrong and how the banks are playing the system?

Christ, what morons...

Batshit Bachmann - Dismiss her at your own peril..

2011-06-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

At least according to Matt Taibbi, our favorite wingtard should be taken seriously as a Presidential nominee, at least for those yahoo's that reside in rightwing nutterville. From his RS piece entitled Michele Bachmann's Holy War:

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.

It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. Fans of obscure 1970s television may remember a short-lived children's show called Far Out Space Nuts, in which a pair of dimwitted NASA repairmen, one of whom is played by Bob (Gilligan) Denver, accidentally send themselves into space by pressing "launch" instead of "lunch" inside a capsule they were fixing at Cape Canaveral. This plot device roughly approximates the political and cultural mechanism that is sending Michele Bachmann hurtling in the direction of the Oval Office.

Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. She kicked off her unofficial presidential campaign in New Hampshire, by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution. "It's your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world!" she gushed. "You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard."

I said lunch, not launch! But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.

A holy war is something terrorists wage isn't it? I thought so...

I also believe, like Taibbi, that Batshit Bachmann needs to be taken seriously..give the cunt a lot of press and cable airtime...oh please...let her spew her shit about the lunatic left and our mission to destroy America. That way, all the normal folks get a real taste of this permanent resident of nutterville.

Taibbi gives us the history of our favorite nitwit, telling us how she grew up, where, the schools she went to..its a history lesson we all need to familiarize ourselves with.

Because this woman isn't going away anytime soon. Oh hell no she ain't. So read up m'dear folks..there will be a test later. ;>P

UPDATE: Today we learn Batshit is getting most of her funding in the form of small donations. To me, this says volumes as Obama did the very same thing in his run for the Presidency.

UPDATE#2: VideoCafe has the video of Taibbi's visit to KO's new digs, wherein he discusses our Queen of the Teabaggers:

Politifact and Jon Stewart- A match made in heaven?

2011-06-23T01:56:00.000-07:00

First off m'dear reader, I consider Jon Stewart to be a comedian first and foremost. His less than stellar history of lobbing softball questions at guests whom he has previously, viciously and deliciously satirized is the reason I consider him a gifted and hysterically funny comedian/satirist, nothing more. Some folks like to consider him more than a comedian, a truth-teller of sorts or even a journalist at times..not moi.

There are three places I look when refuting rightwingers on Faux Noise, specifically Glenn Beck lies and Faux's general and usually completely untrue, bullshit rightwing nutterville, talking points: Politifact, FactCheck.org and MediaMatters. All three are quite good reference sites that back up what they say with ..well, facts.

So, when Politifact said Stewarts premise that Fox News viewers are the most consistently misinformed was a lie, I had to agree w/them..although it wasn't easy. The night after that article went up at Politifact, Stewart apologized for saying what he did about the idiots...I mean viewers that tune in regularly to Faux. He then went on to use the site to point out 21 separate, but equal lies told repeatedly on Faux and two that actually won Lie-of-the-year awards from Politifact. It's a great segment..watch it below:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Fox News False Statements

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Craig, m'dear friend and daily reader, who has become more moderate with age,(also, I hope, because you read my bitchfests daily) this post is for you. You are not a troll, you are always a gentleman, you provide links to why you believe as you do and even though I do not usually agree w/your pov..I enjoy our back and forth on issues that matter to America. Both of us need some humor in our lives..it can not be all anger, all the time..at least on my end..correct? ;>)

Van Jones sends NewsCorp & Beck a cease and desist letter.

2011-06-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

He also wants an on-air apology. With all the fuckery foisted upon us by Glenn Beck w/regard to Van Jones..all I can say is..what took you so long Mr. Jones? From HuffPo:

After challenging Glenn Beck to a debate over the weekend at Netroots Nation and in a MoveOn.org-sponsored ad Monday, Van Jones may have taken his beef with Beck a step further.

Jones, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who resigned from his job as White House “green jobs” czar following the conservative host's repeated claims that he was a subversive and a Communist, is considering legal action against Beck-employer Fox News.

Jones’ attorney sent a cease and desist letter Monday to Dianne Brandi, the network’s executive vice president for legal & business affairs, claiming that “a series of sensational and inflammatory charges” have been made against Jones on Fox News shows. The statements, his attorney Joseph Sandler argues, are “demonstrably, unequivocally and absolutely false.”

Faux Noise's only comment was that they were reviewing the letter. Van Jones' response, again from the HuffPo writeup:

"I thought that FOX TV or Beck's producers would take note of the facts and rein him in, without me having to take legal action. They didn't," he said. "Then [Rep.] Gabby Giffords was shot. I talked directly to Beck's producer for about an hour, setting the record straight. We had a friendly conversation. But rather than stopping his smear campaign, Beck chose to double down on the crazy. I was shocked. Then out of nowhere, he attacked the American Dream itself - and the growing movement of people who want to defend and rebuild it. That was the last straw. Even my patience has a limit."

Rip them apart if you are able to Mr. Jones. They deserve it and much, much more. With Glenn Becky's tenure at Fox coming to an end..I am sure that was part of the reason for the letter at this point, as Jones wants an on-air apology from the jerkwad prior to him leaving Faux Noise.

Below is a recent MoveOn ad that features Van Jones talking about Beck's bullshittery. Accompanying article here.

It's all about painting the left, or anyone that isn't an extreme right wingnut, as liars, communists and jailbirds for Beck and the fuckwads at Fox. I wish more people would take them to task for their lying and obsfucation.

The Grifter from Alaska quits bus tour.

2011-06-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

Guess the crowds weren't turning out for her as she expected and unloading all those lousy books weren't going as planned. RealClearPolitcs broke the story, however this version is from RawStory:

Amid diminishing media interest, Sarah Palin has quit her high-profile bus tour halfway through and returned to Alaska with her family, according to RealClearPolitics.

The move puts a damper on widespread speculations that Palin's "One Nation" bus tour, which launched on Memorial Day, was a potential precursor to a potential White House bid for 2012. Palin never made it to her scheduled stops in the key primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

RealClearPolitics, which originally broke the story about the bus tour, reported Wednesday on Palin's "extended hiatus." The remaining legs of her trip, according to Scott Conroy, are "in limbo" as "Palin and her family have reverted to the friendly confines of summertime Alaska."

I am so glad the press has abandoned her ass. They took up with the idiot from TX, Rick Perry and then Jon Huntsman announced yesterday. As the article points out, the Palinator was jerking out the press: But after being ignored and mislead and denied interviews or access, reporters' attention fizzled.

Head on back to your compound you worthless bag of batshit. So you can do your Faux News..cough..commentary about things you don't know and will never know anything about.

Walmart ruling favors The Corporatocracy.

2011-06-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

Once again, SCOTUS has failed the people and in this case, women specifically. From SCOTUSblog's analysis of today's opinion:

For large companies in general, the ruling in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, et al. (10-277) offered a second message: the bigger the company, the more varied and decentralized its job practices, the less likely it will have to face a class-action claim. Only workers who have a truly common legal claim may sue as a group, the Court majority made clear — and, even that claim will require rigorous proof that every single worker suffered from exactly the same sort of bias. Sample statistics and anecdotes won’t do, it said.

The Court split 5-4 in shutting down, entirely, a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart that could have affected the legal claims of perhaps as many as 1 million women. The Court’s four most liberal members, including the three women Justices, dissented. The Court also ruled — unanimously — that the women could not bring a claim for backpay, as a remedy for discrimination, under the legal theory their lawyers had used. The ruling was based primarily upon how the Court interpreted a federal court rule — Rule 23. But there were overtones of constitutional protection for companies facing money claims in a class-action case, ensuring that they must be able to mount a full defense in trying to fend off such claims.

The main opinion, controlling both the 5-4 and 9-0 results, was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court’s most dedicated skeptic about the class-action approach to litigation — a method that allows a large group of individuals, whose own claims may not be worth enough to justify a lawsuit, to join forces as “a class” to pursue grievances that all of them share. Almost certainly the most significant part of the new ruling was the stress it put on the Rule 23 demand that all of those in the class must have a “common” legal claim — in a workplace bias case, each must show, up front, that the bias they claim was targeted at each of them.

Ah yes, Justice Scalia. He got it right about the recent Westboro Baptist ruling..but not this case regarding institutionalized discrimination in the workplace.

The courts four most liberal jurists, three of whom are female, dissented against several of the key parts of the ruling. Again, from SCOTUSblog:

The part of the ruling dealing with the commonality requirement was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented on that facet of the ruling, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

The dissenters argued that the evidence the women’s lawyers had offered “suggests that gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s company culture.” Their evidence also indicated that the differences in pay and promotions between women and men workers could only be explained by bias, not “neutral variables,” the dissenters added, leaving the clear impression that the dissenters agreed with that assessment.

Repeatedly, the dissenting opinion offered positive reactions to the women’s claims of how the Wal-Mart “corporate culture” actually worked to bolster discretion at the store level, with that discretion exercised predominantly by men influenced by a culture of discrimination.

It's pathetic, to me, that the liberal judges actually found common ground, with the rightwing jurists, that provided them with an out and to rule for the 'corporate culture' of discrimination:

Because of the Court’s ruling on the “commonality” question, closing the class-action claim against Wal-Mart, this second part of the decision had little practical impact other than clarifying when a class-action lawsuit could pursue a money remedy. The dissenters said they would have left the Wal-Mart women with a further opportunity to try a different section of Rule 23 for their backpay claim, but the majority had scuttled that by ending the class-action case altogether. (emphasis mine)

Letting the rightwing protectors/judges of all things 'corporate' win on this case and at every level, is bullshit.

UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi had some..cough..harsh words for SCOTUS today, with regard to this ruling:

The Supreme Court's decision to block a class action lawsuit on gender discrimination against Wal-Mart sets back the fight for gender equality, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision sets back the cause of equality for women and for all Americans in the workplace and in our society. And it will make it more difficult for workers to come together to fight claims of gender discrimination," Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement on Monday.

Damn skippy sista woman. It's bullshit and bravado at our expense. Read her entire statement on The Hill website here.

NYT article shows SCOTUS Justice Thomas has no ethics.

2011-06-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sunday's NYT had a writeup about the most corrupt of all SCOTUS justices currently sitting on the bench.

Harlan Crow is a name that needs to be remembered as well as his ties to Thomas. He is a major player in all things/causes that are popular w/the rightwing nutter's. From the NYT article:

Clarence Thomas was here promoting his memoir a few years ago when he bumped into Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery that employed Justice Thomas’s mother as a crab picker.

Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery where Justice Clarence Thomas's mother worked, on the site of the old cannery. Mr. Varn said Justice Thomas put him in touch with a buyer to restore the property and build a museum.

Mr. Varn lived at the old cannery site, a collection of crumbling buildings on a salt marsh just down the road from a sign heralding this remote coastal community outside Savannah as Justice Thomas’s birthplace. The justice asked about plans for the property, and Mr. Varn said he hoped it could be preserved.

“And Clarence said, ‘Well, I’ve got a friend I’m going to put you in touch with,’ ” Mr. Varn recalled, adding that he was later told by others not to identify the friend.

The publicity-shy friend turned out to be Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate magnate and a major contributor to conservative causes. Mr. Crow stepped in to finance the multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of the cannery, featuring a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point that has become a pet project of Justice Thomas’s.

The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be markedly different from those of other justices on the nation’s highest court.

Thomas and his wife are up to their eyeballs in rightwing causes. Favors always get 'paid back' and to that end, Crow's association not only with Justice Thomas, but his wife, the queen of the rightwing nutters, Virginia Thomas should be challenged. Again from the NYT writeup:

The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.(emphasis mine)

There are more instances in the four page article. The light now being shed on the previously unknown cannery site project and Thomas' involvement, just adds more fuel to the fire when it comes to Clarence Thomas' glaring lack of ethics.

Both Justice Thomas and Scalia have close ties to the Koch Brothers. Very close. So close in fact that they both attended a rightwing nutterfest held by the Koch Brothers recently. After that little rightwing love-in, the article states: A month later, more than 100 law professors asked Congress to extend to Supreme Court justices the ethics code that applies to other federal judges, and a bill addressing the issue was introduced.

One glaringly obvious question: Why doesn't the ethics code apply to the highest court in the land?

It's absolutely fuckwitted that it doesn't. I couldn't believe what I read within the last few months when it comes to SCOTUS and ethics not being connected.

Back to Mr. Crow, one of the big time players in lies and obsfucations against Democratics running for office:

...Among his contributions were $100,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group formed to attack the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate....

That group did a hachet-job on John Kerry. More on Mr. Crow from the NYT writeup:

Mr. Crow has not personally been a party to Supreme Court litigation, but his companies have been involved in federal court cases, including four that went to the appellate level. And he has served on the boards of two conservative organizations involved in filing supporting briefs in cases before the Supreme Court. One of them, the American Enterprise Institute, with Mr. Crow as a trustee, gave Justice Thomas a bust of Lincoln valued at $15,000 and praised his jurisprudence at an awards gala in 2001.

The institute’s Project on Fair Representation later filed briefs in several cases, and in 2006 the project brought a lawsuit challenging federal voting rights laws, a case in which Justice Thomas filed a lone dissent, embracing the project’s arguments. The project director, an institute fellow named Edward Blum, said the institute supported his research but did not finance the brief filings or the Texas suit, which was litigated pro bono by a former clerk of Justice Thomas’s.

How does Justice Thomas keep his feelings in check when ruling on an issue his BFF Crow supports? Since Mr. Crow has given plenty of 'gifts' to Virginia and Clarence Thomas that can in no way be construed as 'cheap' or inexpensive:

There are a number of reasons Justice Thomas might be thankful to Mr. Crow. In addition to giving him the Douglass Bible, valued 10 years ago at $19,000, Mr. Crow has hosted the justice aboard his private jet and his 161-foot yacht, at the exclusive Bohemian Grove retreat in California and at his grand Adirondacks summer estate called Topridge, a 105-acre spread that once belonged to Marjorie Merriweather Post, the cereal heiress.

Christopher Shaw, a folk singer who said he had been invited several times to perform at Topridge, recalled seeing Justice Thomas and his family “on one or two occasions.” They were among about two dozen guests who included other prominent Republicans — last summer, the younger Mr. Bush stopped by.

“There would be guys puffing on cigars,” Mr. Shaw said. “Clarence just kind of melted in with everyone else. We got introduced at dinner. He sat at Harlan’s table.”

Mr. Crow’s $175,000 donation to the library in Savannah in 2001 started out anonymous, but it was eventually made public amid opposition to the project by some local black leaders who did not like Justice Thomas’s politics. Similarly, Mr. Crow sought to keep his role in the museum quiet.

Kinda makes you go..hmmm..don't it? Well, it makes 100 law professors question his ethics, so why shouldn't the President and the Congress do the same?

Or don't they give a shit about the ethics of the highest court in the land and the rightwing nutters that sit on the bench and rule in favor of The Corporatocracy over the rights of individuals in these United States.

If you wish, please sign the CREDO petition that questions Justice Thomas' ethics here. Already, they have received over 35,000 signatures...just since this morning when they sent out the email.

We know he is a crooked, unethical sumbitch. It's time for him to be publicly outed for his role in favoring rich folks over the other 98% of us.

The Seth Walsh Project. Its about friggin time.

2011-06-16T19:03:00.000-07:00

The ACLU announced the creation of the Seth Walsh Project today. Seth was an 8th grade gay student in Tehachapi, a small town in the mountains east of Bakersfield, that hung himself when the bullying finally got to him. His family alerted the school administrative staff and the school board many times, prior to Seth's suicide, of the obvious and overt bullying by other students,but to no avail. I wrote about him here, in a post entitled Bullied to Death-Seth Walsh's last words, and included the video at the end of this post.

The ACLU project's goal is to combat bullying of gay students in California schools. From their website:

All students have a right to attend school in a safe learning environment, and their parents have a right to know their children will come home unharmed. But sadly, that is not the reality in California. Far too often, teachers and administrators discount--or worse, ignore entirely--incidents of violence happening right under their noses.

Today, the ACLU of Southern California announced the launch of the Seth Walsh Students' Rights Project -- a major new initiative aimed at combating bullying and discrimination in California schools, particularly harassment directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students.

Prompted by the September 2010 suicide of Seth Walsh, a 13-year old student at Tehachapi's Jacobsen Middle School who endured years of anti-gay harassment at school, the Project will investigate incidents of harassment and discrimination; educate administrators and teachers of their responsibilities under both state and federal law to make sure all students have a safe learning environment; and work closely with LGBTQ students and their parents to ensure they have the same educational opportunities as their peers.

It's about fucking time. As the ACLU states, schools have an obligation to protect their students from bullying..of any type. They are obligated to provide a safe learning environment.

They failed Seth. The fuckers in charge failed this child miserably and to that end..my hope is that the ACLU will be a beacon in the fight for a safe learning environment for all children in California's schools.

I just wish it was a nationwide project..because we know it happens all over these United States of America, at all levels of education...and it has to stop. NOW.

Howard Stern's tool Benjy Bronk

2011-06-16T16:31:00.000-07:00

Photo of the moron from the Slate article

Bronk is the asshole that kept yelling and interrupting Anthony Weiner's resignation speech this morning. His lewd and totally fuckwitted outbursts were rude and uncalled for. The presser was held in a senior citizen center with elderly residents in attendance.

I am not someone that gets uptight w/suggestive, vulgar or lewd language, as witnessed by my heavy use of profanity here on my personal blog. What pisses me off is that Rep. Weiner, once again, tried to own his mistakes that have cost him his career and cost progressives a much-needed voice within the House of Representatives, but he was interrupted and screamed at, multiple times, by a loser, who is not a journalist, and has no business being at a presser if he doesn't know how to act like an adult.

Rep. Weiner could of mailed it in..as in releasing a statement like most elected officials do when they have been caught doing something considered wrong, immoral or criminal.

But he didn't. He took to the stage for one last mea culpa and several times he was drowned out by the idiot that works for Howard Stern. Stern himself is, in my humble yet vocal opinion, a misogynistic bag of shit..but Benjy..well he is merely a rude, ignorant bag of batshit that should keep his stupid ass in the office, as he has no clue how to act in certain situations that require an IQ above that of a dandelion.

House Progressive Caucus launches national listening tour.

2011-06-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

The mission of the CPC (Congressional Progressive Caucus) with this nationwide event is two-fold. To listen to the public and their needs AND to let them know that as far as the CPC is concerned, Jobs is the number one issue in our nation, and they plan to shift the debate in DC and specifically the House of Rep's to that important national problem and find a resolution for it in this recessive economy that affects all of us in one way or another . From TPMuckraker, the leader of the caucus, AZ Rep Raul Grijalva:

Republicans have pulled off a neat trick since taking over the House back in January -- they've repeatedly attacked President Obama on the languishing job market while shifting government focus away from job creation and toward the deficit and debt.

Now, the House Progressive Caucus is planning to turn the government's attention back toward eliminating unemployment. Starting Wednesday, caucus members will fan out across the country on a summer tour that will attempt to push the focus away from spending reduction and toward using government resources to create jobs.

"The media and the right wing and, of course, some Democrats have been talking about intangibles like the debt ceiling or the job picture," Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) told TPM in an interview previewing the announcement. "We wanted to do a tour that really talks about what matters to people."

This tour will run through the summer and hit 14 cities. The leader of the Caucus doesn't mince words when it comes to taking Obama, the House and Senate to task. Again from the TPM writeup:

To Grijalva and the CPC that means discussing a government that makes "a commitment to the middle class" and pushes for an economic package that focuses on middle and working class people -- "not just the wealthy and not just the CEOs," Grijalva said.

Earlier this year, the CPC put forward their own federal budget proposal that raises taxes on the rich and corporations (as well as ends the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and plows the increased revenues into new education, health care and other middle class-focused domestic spending.

That's the kind of government Americans want, Grijalva said. He faulted the White House and other Democrats for veering away from the kind of solutions the CPC intends to highlight on the tour and driving the national agenda headlong into the Republican-friendly territory of tax decreases and spending cuts.

"I think it comes from being timid," he said. "It really does. Part of job creation, historically how we've gotten the economy back on its feet is that the federal government stepped in and supplemented job creation...and here we're sitting around, still talking about the possibility of job creation in some amorphous way."

Timid..he hit the nail squarely on it's head with that one, although my word for their lack of action is harsher: spineless. The Democratic Party and Obama left their balls in their other suit pants when it comes to pushing their agenda the last two plus years. When they had control of both houses, they got nothing that they wanted for the most part..and spent too much time dickering over Health Care Reform..completely eliminating Universal Healthcare as an option from the get-go.

The stops will feature members of the CPC sitting down with workers to hear about the employment situation and how it can be improved. Some events will be town halls, some will be rallies, some will be hearings and all will be open to the public. The caucus has been planning the tour in secret for months, and say that it could help shift the focus back to job creation and away from the federal bottom line.

Get out there and then get back to DC and fix it..it's a goal we all want, party lines be damned.

To see if they will be in your vicinity the name of the tour is Speak Out for Good Jobs Now. Their website is here with all the info you need.

Below is Rep Keith Ellison talking to Dylan Ratigan yesterday about the national listening tour. I really admire Keith Ellison, the man isn't afraid of speaking truth to power.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

That was two hours I will never get back....

2011-06-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

Watching the R's that want to sit their asses in the Oval Office last night was an exercise in patience and laughing my brown ass off at their ignorance.

If I had to pick a winner...or loser in this case..it would be..drum roll please...

All of them. Cain sounded stupid..Eye of Newt lied his ass off, Batshit Bachmann was her usual screwed-up self but if I had a buck for every time she mentioned her 23 foster kids and the ones she 'gave birth to' I could fly to Paris for a week.

But Ricky Santorum was his usual dumb as a box of hammers. His IQ rivals that of a dandelion..seriously.

Not one of those fuckwits went into how to fix the economy. None. Nada. Zilch. They were all good at bashing Obama, Social Security and of course Medicare. None gave any indication on how they would create jobs..other than the usual GOP talking points about how tax cuts for the rich creates jobs..

Oh holy fuckamoly..I am stressing out just thinking of this fuckery all over again. MotherJones has a decent read up about the debate that wasnt' really a debate here. Down w/Tyranny has a great piece about the whole idiot bullshit they all bought into about Muslims and how dangerous they are..and how we must get rid of them, refuse to let them work in our nation and all kinds of happy horseshit. He says Joe McCarthy would of loved last nights fuckwits..they made him proud.

Sadly..he is so spot on about that.

40 years ago today. Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, today the fed govt did the same.

2011-06-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

PBS is allowing us to watch gratis online, for two days, the documentary entitled, The Most Dangerous Man in America. Ellsberg has written an OpEd for The Guardian on this historical day, which is titled: Why the Pentagon Papers matter now.

Irony Alert: Today the Federal Government formally declassified and released The Pentagon Papers. From Ellsberg's OpEd:

The declassification and online release Monday of the full original version of the Pentagon Papers – the 7,000-page top secret Pentagon study of US decision-making in Vietnam 1945-67 – comes 40 years after I gave it to 19 newspapers and to Senator Mike Gravel (minus volumes on negotiations, which I had given only to the Senate foreign relations committee). Gravel entered what I had given him in the congressional record and later published nearly all of it with Beacon Press. Together with the newspaper coverage and a government printing office (GPO) edition that was heavily redacted but overlapped the Senator Gravel edition, most of the material has been available to the public and scholars since 1971. (The negotiation volumes were declassified some years ago; the Senate, if not the Pentagon, should have released them no later than the end of the war in 1975.)

In other words, today's declassification of the whole study comes 36 to 40 years overdue. Yet, unfortunately, it happens to be peculiarly timely that this study gets attention and goes online just now. That's because we're mired again in wars – especially in Afghanistan – remarkably similar to the 30-year conflict in Vietnam, and we don't have comparable documentation and insider analysis to enlighten us on how we got here and where it's likely to go.

What we need released this month are the Pentagon Papers of Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan, Yemen and Libya). We're not likely to get them; they probably don't yet exist, at least in the useful form of the earlier ones. But the original studies on Vietnam are a surprisingly not-bad substitute, definitely worth learning from.

The Documentary is an hour and 55 minutes. I suggest watching it if you have the time, it's well worth it, especially if you are too young to remember the Vietnam War and all that went down in what became known as "The Livingroom War". Below is a 20 minute clip of the Documentary, courtesy of PBS. You remember PBS, the R's in Congress want to de-fund that institution.More from Ellsberg's OpEd:

As for Washington, the accounts of recurrent decisions to escalate in the Pentagon Papers read like an extended prequel to Bob Woodward's book last year, Obama's War, on the prolonged internal controversies that preceded the president's decisions to triple the size of our forces in Afghanistan. (Woodward's book, too, is based on top secret leaks. Unfortunately, these came out after the decisions had been made, and without accompanying documentation: which it is still not too late for Woodward or his sources to give to WikiLeaks.)

In accounts of wars 40 years and half a world apart, we read of the same irresponsible, self-serving presidential and congressional objectives in prolonging and escalating an unwinnable conflict: namely, the need not to be charged with weakness by political rivals, or with losing a war that a few feckless or ambitious generals foolishly claim can be won. Putting the policy-making and the field realities together, we see the same prospect of endless, bloody stalemate – unless and until, under public pressure, Congress threatens to cut off the money (as in 1972-73), forcing the executive into a negotiated withdrawal.

To motivate voters and Congress to extricate us from these presidential wars, we need the Pentagon Papers of the Middle East wars right now. Not 40 years in the future. Not after even two or three more years of further commitment to stalemated and unjustifiable wars.

Yet, we're not likely to get these ever within the time frame they're needed. The WikiLeaks' unauthorised disclosures of the last year are the first in 40 years to approach the scale of the Pentagon Papers (and even surpass them in quantity and timeliness). But unfortunately, the courageous source of these secret, field-level reports – Private Bradley Manning is the one accused, though that remains to be proven in court – did not have access to top secret, high-level recommendations, estimates and decisions.

Watch the 20-min clip at least...Because, for those that do not learn from history they are surely doomed to repeat it.

Watch the full episode. See more POV.

Todays number: 895

2011-06-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

Photo: International Bird Rescue

That is the number, instead of a name, for a Brown Pelican plucked from the oily waters in Louisiana after last years BP Deepwater Horizon Oil disaster. HBO has a short but worthwhile documentary, Saving Pelican 895 airing this weekend.

The workers learned quickly not to name the birds. If the bird didn't live, it made it all that much harder for the individuals working day and night to rescue and rehabilitate the thousands of birds affected by BP's negligence and subsequent offshore disaster. The International Bird Rescue's 88-member team worked 24/7 for months to save all birds captured alive. It's their story as well.

As a Southern California native, I have spent a lot of time, hours on end actually, watching and admiring the Brown Pelican that calls southern california home. I loved to watch them dive from the blue sky, straight down into the water to catch their food. Brown Pelican's are the only one of seven pelican species to do that. Cali's brown pelican is the same species as Louisana's brown pelican. But I digress.

As of April 2011, the government website, fws.gov, which tallies the total number mammals, sea turtles and birds affected by the BP Oil Disaster has some very sobering statistics. The number of dead birds collected stands at 6,147. The number of collected birds that were alive and rehabilitation attempted is currently at 3,046. Pelican #895, an adolescent bird, unable to fish or even fly at the time of rescue due to it's age, survived, learned to feed itself and was released back into the wild.

In other words, the documentary has a happy ending..at least for Pelican #895. The total number of birds released back into the wild stands at a mere 1295. Do the quick math and it tells you how many did not make it even though they were picked up alive.

It's important to remember that the Brown Pelican had totally disappeared from Louisiana's coastlines by 1963 due to pesticides and their polluting the waters and the fish of Louisiana.

Irony alert: Five months before the BP disaster, the Brown Pelican was removed from the endangered species list in that region.

When I watched the documentary entitled Saving Pelican 895, I knew it would be gut-wrenching for me. It was hard because I have loved these birds since childhood and I saw first hand what happens to the birds, mammals and sea-life when oil rigs explode and/or their safety mechanisms fail. I lived in the Santa Barbara area when that coastline was fouled by the first ever oil spill in 1969.

Below is a short trailer for the HBO Documentary Saving Pelican 895:

Trailer

The responsible parties (BP, Transocean) will end up paying for the effects the Deepwater Horizon disaster had on the bird, sea-life and mammal population in and around the gulf..at least..they are supposed to, per federal law. But I am not holding my breath as I feel quite certain they will drag it out in court until the amount of financial damage to their bottom line is as small as possible.

We can only hope the damage they did to the re-population efforts of the Brown Pelican in Louisiana will not be insurmountable.

Palin's emails to be released this morning. 10am Leftcoast time.

2011-06-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

The cost to each media group wanting them is friggin huge. Per the WSJ, The state is charging 3 cents per page for the 24,1999 pages of emails, for a total cost of $725.97, but..that doesn't include shipping and labor!

The UK's Guardian will be putting them up and they have asked their readers to troll through them looking for 'the good stuff'..whatever-the-hell that might be. Don't forget, the emails are redacted..and by the same group of individuals that worked for her, per ADN.

If I am bored, I will walk through them..not literally of course. There are 24,000 pages of the Half-Governor's musings, complaints, bitchfests and shortcomings.

So, if you wish to contribute to reading her crap, the link at the top has the info on how to alert the Guardian to something juicy in a specific email.

Added bonus: Tweety and historian Brinkley discuss the Palinator's historical fuckups.

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Eye of Newt knocks Weinergate off the front page.

2011-06-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

Wonder if Big Anthony sent him flowers as a nice thank you. Or perhaps his own photo of Little Anthony as a keepsake?

Eye of Newt was never serious..he has never been serious about a run for the Oval office. Why is it the Corporate Media is so clueless about this jerkwad?

ICC believes Gaddafi ordered mass rapes.

2011-06-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

I would not be surprised in the least, as he is the top batshit crazy, surpassing Kim Jong-Il and rivaling Sudan's Al-Bashir. From the UK's Telegraph:

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor has said that Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi ordered mass rapes and bought containers of sex drugs for troops to attack women.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he may ask for a new charge of mass rape to be made against Gaddafi following the new evidence.

The chief International Criminal Court prosecutor is expecting a decision from judges within days on his request for crimes against humanity charges against the Libyan leader.

"Now we are getting some information that Gaddafi himself decided to rape, and this is new," Mr Moreno-Ocampo said.

He said there were reports of hundreds of women attacked in some areas of Libya, which is in the grip of a months-long internal rebellion.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo said there was evidence that the Libyan authorities bought "Viagra-type" medicines and gave them to troops as part of the official rape policy.

The UN needs to shit or get off the pot when it comes to getting rid of the garbage heap called Gaddafi. But that isn't likely as they have allowed Sudan's murderer to stay in power for decades and continue his genocide, just for one example, knowing full well what he was and continues to do to the people of Darfur.

Also, check out the latest from Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs tried to sell their soul to this pond scum sucking miscreant.

T Paw, King of the GOP Clowns, has his own budget plan.

2011-06-08T05:38:00.000-07:00

Couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Timmy Paw's brilliant strategy to let the federal government default on it's financial obligations. Today's doozy is even better, which means it's worse. It is his plan for our federal budget which the jackass delivered in his speechifying in Chicago(text). If you liked Paul Ryan's budget plan, you are just gonna love the shit out of Timmy Paw's. From TheProgressReport:

Today, on the 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts no less, we have something far worse to present: former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s plan for the economy. Pawlenty’s plan wins the triple crown: it’s more radical than Ryan, costs three times more than the Bush tax cuts, and still means a tax increase on the middle class. Here are the main points of the Pawlenty plan, which he outlined in a speech this morning in Chicago:
A hidden tax increase on the middle class
A massive personal income tax cut for millionaires and billionaires; Citizens for Tax Justice estimates the plan cuts millionaires’ taxes by at least 41%
A massive tax cut for corporations — including Big Oil — that would cut the corporate rate by more than 50%
A complete elimination of the estate tax, capital gains tax, and tax on dividend income
A cap on total spending that would necessitate severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs (except for defense, which Pawlenty has taken off the table in favor of slashing Social Security instead)
The price tag for all of these tax cuts? More than triple the cost of extending just the Bush tax cuts: a whopping $7.8 TRILLION over 10 years, according to the Center for American Action Progress Fund’s director for tax and budget policy, Michael Linden. And that comes in addition to the $2.5 trillion that a full extension of the Bush tax cuts would also cost.

But wait!!!

If you haven't stroked the hell out yet.. We have reviews of this fuckwitted mess already.

Ezra Klein calls it a joke and a fantasy. I would call it a fucking joke, but Timmy Paw isn't joking. Jennifer Rubin, a conservative, states his spending plans are rather vague and gimmicky. M'dear Ms. Rubin, I would rather not even think about it. Adam Levitin, a Professor at Georgetown, has the following as his headline: Tim Pawlenty’s Plan to Destroy the World. Short and sweet Professor.

TPaw plans on gutting Social Security and Medicare. To say Social Security as we know it will disappear would be more precise. Medicare will also cease to exist..an idea who's time will never come.

But if you are a rich mutha fucka, m'dear reader..you will adore Timmy Paw's plan. I am sure the Koch Brothers are creaming themselves over this, as is anyone else in the top two percent.

As for the other 98% of us...not so much.

Steve Clemons goes over to 'the other side'.

2011-06-08T01:39:00.000-07:00

The 'other side' being The Mainstream Media. Clemons has been hired as an Editor-in-Chief, among other things, by the magazine The Atlantic, which also carries many of it's print article's online here. I have read his political blog, The Washington Note for a long time and find him interesting, intelligent and left of the center on most issues. Foreign Policy seems to be his main focus, as he once was part of the advisory board to the Center for U.S.-Japan Relations at the RAND Corporation. He also wrote a great piece on Think Tanks and Corruption, entitled Op-Eds, Articles and Think Tanks for Sale: Thoughts on the Corruption of Washington's Ideas Industry which can be read here. I highly recommend it, so check it out as I think it shows how principled he is.

Clemons worked for a democratic senator and has many inside-the-beltway connections which serves, actually now..served him well as a political blogger. Clemons is also one of the founders of The New America Foundation, which is a great reference site on many of the problems facing Americans. Their articles are in-depth and usually are a pretty heavy read.

The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute..aka a think tank. Some of their donors are, for instance, Big Pharma kingpin Blue Shield of CA. This doesn't mean they are afraid to tackle major domestic, economic or global issues. A recent writeup at New America is on poverty and why some individuals can not escape it's grasp. But I digress.

Clemons will now move his blog over to the Atlantic Media group. My hope is that he maintains his intelligent pov that doesn't always agree w/the rest of the beltway media. Or me, for that matter. I also hope he doesn't become a member of the Corporate Media which I think most of the Mainstream Media is a part of these days.

It's the coverup. It's always the friggin coverup.

2011-06-06T23:23:00.000-07:00

Melissa Harris-Perry is a good person to listen to. Her voice, logic and demeanor are a calming influence for an emotional wingtard like myself. She was on Maddow's show tonight to talk about Weinergate. Her and Maddow called it the 'ick factor'. No shit ladies, you two were spot friggin on.

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So Harris-Perry made me rethink this whole horrid hot mess that Anthony Weiner brought upon himself and then involved all of us in it by constantly lying about to every major media outlet for at least a week. He was even on tv shows considered more entertainment than news running his piehole about being hacked...etc, etc, etc.

If I or anyone else has called for a Republican to step down because of anything even remotely considered sexual, then this qualifies.

It’s morals..and although, as I said it here earlier in the day on this topic.If he had come clean at the very beginning...I know I would of considered it personal morality, not ‘work related’ in any way. I would of stuck up for him.

Gawd knows he was a brilliant voice for the progressive agenda. That is compromised now.

Plus really..after I have had time to digest it..I don’t vote in his district, so it’s up to his voters. It's well known in the DC press corp that this man's ambitions were regional. He wanted to be mayor or even governor of the state..he wants to stay local more than higher national office or he would of run for Senator long ago. If I had to place a money bet on him getting either of those two positions I wouldn't know how to place my bet.

Every thing I have to say about it means nothing but the sound of my being pissed off that we were lied to over a dozen times in the course of a week. By someone I truly trusted and backed. It so sucks pond scum.

Little Anthony and the idiot attached to him.

2011-06-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

As I watch Anthony Weiner cry at his presser on Lawrence O'Donnell's show, I feel nothing but pissed-the-hell off.I supported this man, I believed in this man. He was one of only a handful of liberals in national office that I held a high respect for.

Big Anthony is nothing more than a lying sack of shit that let his penis do the thinking for him. Resign asshole. Most liberals demand that of Rethugs caught w/their pants down..same goes for your dumb ass Anthony Weiner. That you lied about this shit for over a week shows you are not to be trusted. I might of gotten over this whole stupid mess if you hadn't lied to every media outlet imaginable..but you did.

On another note..this gives Breitbart credibility now..and that for me is almost as bad as what Big Anthony did. But for Andy B to hijack Big Anthony's presser to whine..that was total bullshit. But I expect nothing less from him. This is the man that flips off the audience when they don't like him..ala what he did on Maher's show last season. He doesn't need an apology..he needs to suck it up and deal.

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Breitbart lied about Shirley Sherrod. Plain and simple. He cost her, her job by showing a heavily edited video then trying to say she was racist. He too is a liar. Did he ever apologize to her?

Fuck no.

Noble Prize winning Economist withdraws year old nomination.

2011-06-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

Peter A. Diamond won the most recent Pulitzer for Economics. MIT thinks he is golden as does Obama. So why in the blue hell do the elected idiots in the friggin GOP refuse to approve his nomination for The Fed?

Doesn't matter anymore, really, because Mr. Diamond issued a very polite, but nonetheless, a Fuck Off and Die OpEd to the assholes with the R's behind their names when he withdrew his nomination today. From his OpEd:

LAST October, I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve — at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination. How can this be?

The easy answer is to point to shortcomings in our confirmation process and to partisan polarization in Washington. The more troubling answer, though, points to a fundamental misunderstanding: a failure to recognize that analysis of unemployment is crucial to conducting monetary policy.

The Party of No does not want to lower the unemployment rate, nor do they want anyone with actual experience and/or leadership qualities to be on a board or head a department under President Obama.

Mr. Diamond's nomination has been up for a fucking year. He got tired of waiting..can anyone blame him? Again from his scathing OpEd:

But we should all worry about how distorted the confirmation process has become, and how little understanding of monetary policy there is among some of those responsible for its Congressional oversight. We need to preserve the independence of the Fed from efforts to politicize monetary policy and to limit the Fed’s ability to regulate financial firms.

Concern about the (seemingly low) current risk of future inflation should not erase concern about the large costs of continuing high unemployment. Concern about the distant risk of a genuine inability to handle our national debt should not erase concern about the risk to the economy from too much short-run fiscal tightening.

He also uses my favorite word when describing the R's in committee..LOCKSTEP. Those fuckwads would walk in lockstep over a cliff without blinking a friggin eye if Cantor or Boehner told them to do so.

GOP idiot-emeritus Richard Shelby (asshole-Alabama) actually questioned Mr. Diamonds credentials.

You and I know what they want..a pro-business lackey that will push the interests of The Corporatocracy. The GOP could give a shit if the economy gets better..in fact they are praying for the opposite.

Two seats are still open on The Fed. It appears they will remain that way for the rest of Obama's current administration.

Meanwhile, the R's are getting a hard-on over the fact that the unemployment rate jumped up to 9.1.

Rightwing Nutter-fest: Homosexuals, abortion destroyed our economy. GOP stalwarts agree.

2011-06-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

It's a hoot to me that anyone with two braincells to rub together believes this crap, but then..if the GOP dipshits and their water carriers keep repeating this bullshit, it becomes truth doesn't it? From PoliticusUSA:

You’d think they’d quit making laws about bestiality and do something about these schmucks. I’m talking about conservative political activist Ralph Reed and his Faith and Freedom Coalition and the attendees of its 2011 conference in Washington, D.C., an abomination he originated in June of 2009. On Friday and Saturday a whole slew of what passes for luminaries in God’s Own Party got together to expound on their anti-gospel:
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann;
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour;
former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney;
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council;
Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan;
Speaker of the House John Boehner;
former Utah governor Jon Huntsman;
Donald Trump;
Glenn Beck;
former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty;
Congressman Ron Paul (Tex.);
former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum;
Presidential candidate Herman Cain;
Newt Gingrich sent a video message rather than attend in person; and,
Sarah Palin declined to attend due previous commitment to a shameless orgy of self-promotion.
In the end, Glenn Beck did not attend because his father-in-law was in the hospital.

The mere fact that the GOP leadership and all their Presidential wanna-be's attended this kind of rightwing nutter-fest and support their lies and fuckery gives credence to it with the rightwing nutters amongst us.

Ralph Reed and Tony Perkins are the biggest of the disgusting batshit-eating fools that always attempt to steer the national conversation towards their sick versions of so-called social issues, which of course have nothing to do with our economy or how people in general live. The following quote is from the same article by Hrafnkell Haraldsson, who nails it when we are talking about the extremists known as the religious right:

Who are the real enemies? Well, you have to throw the ultra rich out of contention right away. And the oil companies? Not a chance. Fat-cat CEOs on Wall Street? Are you kidding me? No, not them either. The real enemies of America are (lower your voice and whisper with me): homosexuals.

BatShit Bachmann was chosen to point out how allowing a legal medical procedure, known as abortion, has brought our nation to it's knees and on the verge of collapse. To quote that idiot from the article, abortion is: “the watershed issue of our time.”

How fucking crazy IS this dumb cunt? Of course if you buy into my premise that she is dumber than a box of hammers and/or attempting to appeal to the anti-choice rightwing nutters, the teabaggers and everyone so far right they need oxygen to survive, then you have to say most, if not all of the GOP national or state candidates elected in the last election and the GOP Governors currently in office are on her level as well.

They have done nothing to create jobs but they have been busy little batshit-beavers when it comes to outlawing or putting ridiculous laws in place that make it hard if not impossible for a woman, in most red states and what used to be moderate states, to get this legal medical procedure.

It will be interesting to see how John Huntsman, who is touted in the Corporate Media as being the most moderate and intelligent when it comes to the morons currently seeking to run for President, spins all this fuckery and still keeps his street cred as the smartest and most moderate of the GOP wanna-be's..when you consider the following comments he made at this rightwing nutter factory and Hrafnkell Haraldsson's pov on them:

Mormon John Huntsman pole-danced (metaphorically – don’t panic!) around his anti-abortion record as Utah’s governor, saying,

“I do not believe the Republican Party should focus solely on our economic life to the neglect of our human life.”

He admitted the deficit was a problem but asserted that,

“If Republicans ignore life, the deficit we will face is one that is much more destructive. It will be a deficit of the heart and of the soul.”

I don’t know about Huntsman but I had heart surgery last March and it had nothing to do with Republican morality issues, and if they had their way I wouldn’t have had either the healthcare or its scientific underpinnings to be here talking about him today (which seems to be the point, doesn’t it?).

Jaysus, he blends right in w/these fucknuts doesn't he? That is so pathetically sad..really, it is. It's sad only because I still hold out hope that the GOP will one day be returned to those with brains and logic on their side.

Since it seems we will never have a viable third party option in our nation any time soon..I guess I should just be happy that the GOP does it's best to appeal only to those who can not or will not fact check them and buy into every bullshit lie they toss out there, or their method of fixing our nation's economy which summed up in one phrase is this:

Obama bad..GOP good. We don't have any ideas of our own, that don't include fucking over everyone but the top one percent, but vote for us anyway..The Corporatocracy loves us!

sigh....

Rep Michael Grimm is a jerkwad for even proposing this legislation.

2011-06-05T08:07:00.000-07:00

From The Project On Government Oversight (POGO):

A draft bill by Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) would require whistleblowers to report knowledge of criminal activity to a company's internal investigators before going to the feds, allowing lawbreakers a chance to thwart SEC enforcement actions by intimidating witnesses and destroying or altering evidence. This bill would completely gut financial regulatory agencies' new whistleblower award programs, discourage and endanger whistleblowers, jeopardize investigations and enforcement actions, and put investors, shareholders, and taxpayers at risk.

Tell your Member of Congress to oppose Grimm's proposal today!

How fucking obvious do these assholes have to be that they serve only their corporate masters?

Joe Bonamassa- Dust Bowl

2011-06-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

Report shows Tax Cuts and Wars got us into this mess..no shit?

2011-06-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

From The Progress Report:

As we draw closer to August 2, the drop-dead date by which the nation’s debt ceiling must be raised or the U.S. will risk economic calamity by defaulting on its obligations, Republicans continue to play political games with the economy. Last night, House Republicans staged a political stunt by bringing a $2.4 trillion increase in the nation’s borrowing limit that was not paired with any spending cuts up for a vote. Republicans designed the measure to fail (as it did, with the Democratic leadership also calling for a ‘no’ vote in protest) to try and gain political leverage over President Obama and the Democrats in the ongoing budget negotiations being led by Vice President Biden. Also tucked into this measure was poison pill language blaming President Obama for the nation’s fiscal woes. Since the GOP continues to have collective amnesia about how we got into this mess in the first place, here’s a handy chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):
As our friends at CBPP note, “without the economic downturn and the fiscal policies of the [Bush] Administration, the budget would be roughly in balance over the next decade.”

This shouldn't be news to anyone that pays attention. The Federal Government can not keep giving tax cuts, tax loopholes and the like to anyone without expecting the shit to hit the fan when the bill comes due.

The fact that for eight years, The Shrub borrowed from China to finance his forever wars, which are now Obama's forever wars, plays a huge part in our federal debt..fucking huge as a matter of fact.

And yet, the R's are demanding more tax breaks for the uber-rich, continuing the subsidies for Big Oil but cutting programs that help the poor, elderly and unemployed among other things before they will allow the debt ceiling to be raised. Raising everyone's taxes by just a few percentage points, ending the AG and Big Oil subsidies and getting rid of tax loopholes for the Corporatocracy would end this fuckery...but no..that is too sensible for the R's and the Blue Dogs.

Creating jobs would help a helluva lot as well....but the R's would rather concentrate on ending the ability for women to get abortions...that has been their main fucking goal since this congress started. Fuck jobs..lets use big government tactics to get into the womb and doctor's office of every woman of conceiving age.

Isn't hostage-taking a move the terrorists use to get what they want? I thought so...

This better be worth it: AK to finally release Palin's emails..

2011-06-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

We have only been waiting two years for these suckers..so I hope to hell they are comedy gold. From Slate's John Voorhees:

Reporters staking out Sarah Palin’s “One Nation” bus may soon have some reading material to help them kill some time.

Alaska state officials are preparing to release more than 24,000 pages of Palin’s emails from her time as governor, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

But officials say they are withholding 2,415 pages that are privileged, personal or otherwise exempt from the state’s disclosure laws. As the Daily News notes, it also “remains to be seen how many of the released emails are going to be at least partially blacked out.”

A host of media organizations requested the records during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Palin was named as a the Republican VP nominee. But at the time state officials said they weren’t prepared to handle the requests for a number of reasons, including an antiquated electronic database system and the fact that Palin commonly used a personal Yahoo account to conduct official state business.

State officials say that they have now finally finished sifting through the email accounts of more than 50 state employees to round up those emails Palin sent or received from her Yahoo account. The records are now on their way to a commercial printer, and are expected to be shipped to media outlets in the coming days.

Among the news organizations that requested the emails: the Anchorage Daily News, Associated Press, MSNBC, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and CNN.

Wait, they are withholding how many? Those are the good ones..you KNOW they are! This may turn out to be nothing...damn it and I wanted some new material on this friggin moronic woman that has the ability to dupe millions of rubes.

UPDATE: Gee whiz, The Palinator's bus was vandalized with signs calling her a media whore..LOL..ya think?

2 years ago, a Dr. was murdered for performing a legal medical procedure.

2011-05-31T23:41:00.000-07:00

May 31st marks the second anniversary of the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita KS.

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Federal Judge J. Thomas Marten is a douchenozzle that thinks that Dr, Mila Means, who wanted to provide the legal procedure known as abortion in Wichita after Dr. Tiller's murder, is wrong when she says a threatening letter she rec'd was not protected political free speech, and she wanted an injunction against the wingtard that sent it to her. The extremist rightwing anti-choice nutjob is Angel Dillard. Lets look at part of that letter and you decide if it's protected free speech or a friggin threat, from The Kansas Free Press:

"They (meaning all those peaceful, culture of life, law abiding citizens like Scott Roeder) will know your habits and routine. They know where you shop, who your friends are, what you drive, where you live". And, to be even further helpful, Dillard adds in the most sweet manner, " You will be checking under your car everyday-because maybe today is the day someone (hmmm, maybe Dillard?) places an explosive under your car."

This is the way these anti-choice extremists deal with Doctors who perform legal medical procedures known as abortions...regardless of the reason for getting one...like saving the life of the mother for instance, or rape, or incest. These anti-choice assholes have done it for decades and get away with it. Angel Dillard is a piece of shit that thinks Scott Roeder is a wonderful man. Roeder is the sicko that killed Dr. Tiller with a bullet to the head at point blank range..in his church.

Dr. Means now is looking to move her practice that has been operating all along as an OBGYN clinic, without performing abortions. The reason she needs to move is her landlord has sued her. Her stupid ass landlord doesn't want abortions done on his property and his trying as hard as he can to get her the hell out. Other tenants are bitching about the daily slog of anti-choice protestors that continue to show up..pictures at the link in this paragraph, so everyone wants her out..they don't want no drama.

Fuck them all. May they all rot in the hell their god has created. To wish death upon someone is wrong in their religion and to actually kill someone, as Roeder did, is a sin..but these fuckers twist it all around so they don't have the guilt of creating such sin. It's pathetic and this shit was supposed to be made illegal by several laws created decades ago to protect abortion providers.

But we are talking about Kansas..a place where even the law enforcement fuckers don't bust their asses to get there when one of these nutjobs actually goes into a clinic and starts screaming obscenities and threats at the Doctors and their staffs.

You don't have to believe in abortion to know this kind of shit is wrong on every level. You don't have to support abortions or some one's right to get one IF they so feel they need one...to know that the tactics used by these sick fucks should be illegal and if they are federally illegal..the damn local law enforcement bastards should enforce said laws.

As someone that used to help women in San Diego get into clinics for their legal procedures that had to walk through the horrendous gauntlet of a screaming mob shoving pictures of dead fetuses in their faces and calling them murderers..I know what the hell I am speaking about. These people remind me the assholes at Westboro Baptist. They hide behind the law of free speech to pull this crap off daily.

But sending a letter like that asshole Angel Dillion did and then having a judge tell the receiver of the letter that you over reacted..it makes me physically ill. Especially after Dr. Tiller was killed in cold blood in the same fucking town.

Federal Judge J. Thomas Marten's agenda is now clear..he too supports those anti-choice assholes that use any means necessary to get their way. Again from the Kansas Free Press writeup:

History should not repeat itself in Wichita. For too many years public officials allowed threatening mailers, violent rhetoric, confrontational protests and other abuses to be hurled against Dr. George Tiller. This protected speech escalated until Dr. Tiller was murdered. One would hope that those same public officials would have learned how words can be the trigger to physical violence. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. stated: "Freedom of speech is not absolute." Dillard's irresponsible speech leaves little doubt that her words were not loaded with bad intentions.

It's wrong on every level..and a federal judge just gave his approval..disgusting fuck. For me, he is even more disgusting than that deranged idiot that wrote the threatening letter. She is just nuts..he is a sitting judge. I hope his God has mercy on his soul..because I sure as hell do not.

TrashCan Annie opens her piehole again.

2011-05-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Crooks and Liars we get the video of this nasty skank/publicity whore/wanna-be-author talking about about Olbermann. The group of rightwing nutters who go by the name of Media Research Center give out an award they call: Ode to Keith Olbermann. Their whole shtick has a name: Dishonor Awards Ceremony. They appear to be a school for rightwing lunacy...and Coulter must be one of their alums.

Evidently only they speak the truth..right..and Brad Pitt will be home shortly and I will make mad passionate love to him after we eat lunch. From Heather's piece at C&L's VideoCafe:

For anyone who's up to watching the entire thing it's posted on C-SPAN's site here -- Dishonors Awards Ceremony. Here's their description of the event:
The Media Research Center held its annual gala to roast media they feel show liberal bias with "DisHonor Awards." Ann Coulter, Neal Boortz, Andrew Klavan, and a Who's Who of national conservative leaders will participate in the 2011 Dis Honors awards roast hosted by Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center. The Outlaws will provide live entertainment and Cal Thomas will receive the William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence.
And of course what would one of these events be without giving Ann Coulter a chance to pretend she's still relevant and to spend some time trashing Keith Olbermann. Ann's criticism basically boiled down to calling Olbermann a girl, stupid, getting in a fat joke on Michael Moore and trashing his new upcoming show at Current TV. She also gave him credit for contributing to Scott Brown being elected after he did one of his special comments about him, as though the terrible campaign run by Martha Coakley had nothing to do with that. Yes folks, Keith Olbermann apparently is presonally responsible for Scott Brown being elected in Massachusetts because he did a special comment on him at MSNBC if you live in Ann Coulter and The Media Research Center's world.

Coulter of course couldn't get her stories straight has she said KO had the smallest audience on MSNBC. Right again Annie..you dipshit.

There is also a video of the elected fuckwad Steve King running his piehole, but gawd knows I won't put that one up..the man is so far to the right he is off the charts..mentally and morally-speaking of course.

Gil Scott-Heron passes...

2011-05-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

He was one of my heros, a great artist that led us as war protestor's during the Vietnam War , his music, which were poetry to me and others, said what needed to be said during the Vietnam War. His songs were our battle cries to a huge extent. I reworked his lyrics to The Revolution will not be Televised(his site) here and here during the Bush Administration to make them timely to those fuckwits and apply them to society and the present war, which was the Iraq War.

Those two post still gets hits daily from all over the world.

Scott-Heron died in a NYC hospital after touring to promote his first album in over 15 years. He is known by many as the Godfather of Rap. He never cared about the money he could make from his music, it was about the meaning of the lyrics for him, a man that truly was a poet, who shunned the 'trappings' of fame. It was about Speaking Truth to Power for him. From The Guardian:

Gil Scott-Heron: music world pays tribute to the 'Godfather of Rap'

The poet and musician, best known for The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, leaves a legacy of incisive political comment

The music world was mourning Gil Scott-Heron, the troubled poet and musician whose ground-breaking The Revolution Will Not Be Televised became a beacon for emerging rap and hip-hop culture.

Scott-Heron, who last year released his first album in 16 years to critical acclaim, died in a New York hospital after returning from a European trip. He was 62.

Richard Russell, founder of the British label XL Recordings, who produced and published Heron's final work, said: "Gil was not perfect in his own life. But neither is anyone else. And he judged no one. He had a fierce intelligence, and a way with words which was untouchable; an incredible sense of humour and a gentleness and humanity that was unique to him."

Russell added that the Chicago-born artist, who never achieved chart success in spite of a loyal global audience for songs including the dance-floor favourite The Bottle, had shunned all the trappings of fame and success.

"He could have had all those things. But he was greater than that. He seemed wholly uninterested in money. His talent was immense. He was a master lyricist, singer, orator and keyboard player. His spirit was immense. He channelled something that people derived huge benefit from."

Scott-Heron was a gifted child, raised in Tennessee by his maternal grandmother, Lillie Scott, after his parents – a Jamaican father who became the first black footballer to play for Celtic and a talented teacher mother – separated.

Rest in Peace dear man. He was not perfect by any means, but who is? His lyrics were really poetry on a society, aimed at those in power, as well as calling out everyone that put greed and/or power before people and their survival and their basic needs.

He was only 62. We are less because he is has left this world. We have lost a bonafide voice of the people.Below is his original song:

Memorial Day, The Military and Social Security

2011-05-27T05:10:00.000-07:00

This seems like a good time to remind our..cough..beloved politicians that a whole shitload of military vets and disabled/deceased soldiers's families( wives and kids) live on and depend on Social Security, Disability and that pesky government health care that all politicians get btw). Just a few facts for those dispshits in charge to ponder when taking an axe to entitlments and the like, thanks to VoteVets:

Some highlights of the report, which can be found here: http://strengthensocialsecurity.org/veterans-report

    Social Security currently pays benefits to over 9 million veterans-about 4 in 10 veterans.

Over one-third of America's 54 million Social Security beneficiaries are either veterans or family members living with them, such as their spouses.

Of the 13 to 14 million veterans-or 6 in 10-who are not Social Security beneficiaries, the vast majority will become beneficiaries in the future.

The vast majority of the Active Duty community's 1.4 million members, 700,000 spouses and 1.2 million children, and the Total Selected Reserve community's 1.1 million members, 400,000 spouses and 650,000 children, are eligible for Social Security's disability and life insurance benefits if a service member becomes severely disabled or dies.

Indeed, approximately 771,000 veterans receive Social Security disabled worker benefits, averaging $1,100-$1,200 per month.

Social Security's young survivors' benefits are particularly important to the 4 in 10 active duty members who are married with children and the 1 in 20 who are single parents.

As of January 16, 2011, the number of American servicemen and women killed on active duty in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was 5,860, leaving behind an estimated more than 4,000 children

After we help those brain-dead fucks in DC digest those facts, we can all enjoy the three day weekend we call Memorial Day Weekend.

State Judge voids WI anti-union law

2011-05-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

A republican-appointed judge has ruled Scotty Walker and his henchmen fucked up when they tried to rush through the bill containing the anti-union clauses. From Reuters:

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi said Republican lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law in rushing the legislation through during massive protests at the state Capitol earlier this year.

The Wisconsin proposal, championed by Republican Governor Scott Walker, eliminates most collective bargaining rights for public sector unions and requires them to pay more for pensions and health coverage.

The law has been on hold pending the legal challenge. Now that Sumi has ruled, the state's Supreme Court is expected to take up the issue. Although the Supreme Court judges pledge to be independent, a veteran judge backed by Republicans was just narrowly reelected to a state Supreme Court, giving Republican-leaning judges a majority on the court.

This is a procedural ruling only..it does not mean the fuckwads in the WI state legislature can't put this bill up again for a vote...after it goes through the states Supreme's.

You know they will. It's a no-brainer for these union-hating bags o' batshit.

From our Dept of WTF: Rand votes AGAINST Ryan's Budget Plan.

2011-05-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

I was sort of dozing...when I heard the talking head on tv say that the Senate voted down Paulie Ryan's heralded Budget Plan this afternoon...and five Republicans voted against it.

As in they voted w/the Dems to say no to it.

So I sat up, very gingerly, and waited to hear who the Republicans were that voted against Paulie's plan. 4 of the 5 votes I understood based on who they were...but when the talking head said Rand Paul...well...

I damn near shat myself.

How is that gonna play in KY, Senator Rand Paul, you teabagging jackhole?

As I googled the vote, I found this piece at the CSM that has a lovely quote from one of the Senate R's about the vote..please..note the asshole saying it:

“It’s a shocking display of irresponsibility,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama, after the vote. “They have said: we’re not going to produce anything. We’re just going to attack what you’ve done.”

Isn't that all the fucking R's have done for the first two years of Obama's administration?

The answer is yes.

So fuck you very much Jeffy for having a shortass memory and being a bit of a hypocrite. How did you feel when it went down today and how did you feel about those five R's that voted against it as well, but you failed to acknowledge their votes against Ryan's bullshit budget Jeffy Sessions?

I don't expect an answer from the Senator..it just felt good to ask it. ;)

Eric Cantor, our F*ckwit of the week.

2011-05-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

After this douchenozzle's comments/statements about the tornado victims needing FEMA or federal help to overcome the horrific disasters that have been happening this month..we now have this week, if not this month's fuckwit..Eric Cantor. From the ThinkProgress link above:

President Obama pledged full support to the state Monday, telling survivors, “We’re here with you. We’re going to stay by you.”House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), however, said that before Congress approved federal funds for disaster relief, it had to offset the spending with cuts to other programs. The Washington Times reports:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.
“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.
In 2005, Republicans criticized then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) for his willingness to fund relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by adding to the deficit. “It is right to borrow to pay for it,” he said at the time, explaining that cuts could “attack” the economy.

Even Hot-tub Tommy realized that help was needed when something this horrific happens to people where they live and by no fault of their own.

Why the fuck doesn't Cantor?

Because for him, these people are political pawns in his game against Obama and the deficit and/or the budget. For him it's political.

Yo..asshole..this is a moral issue. It has nothing to do with party lines or economics. These tornado's hit people from all income levels, all walks of life for christs sake.

Besides being a fuckwit, Cantor is a clown..a disgusting clown. He has no moral high ground evidently. I just can not believe he would make such insensitive comments after such a horrific disaster that has so far taken the lives of 125 people in Joplin..on one afternoon in one town.

Tornado season has just begun and so far, it's looking like the worst since they started keeping stats..in 1950. It started in the friggin winter and it's only going to get worse. Today there are MORE of them landing..just turn on the weather channel or any 24/7 news channel and you can watch it live in living color Eric!

Denise at Pass the Doucheys has a good piece up on the same topic..but she also has photos and first person videos of the tornado, which btw, I could not watch. My son, who lives in tornado alley, has told me what these places look like after the tornado has passed through, the people standing next to what used to be their homes..even he was torn up and my kid doesn't get emotional easy...unlike his mom.

Enjoy this award Eric Cantor, no one deserves it as much as you do..no one..and gawd knows there are a shitload of fuckwits lately.

AP calling NY's 26th District for Hochul...the DEM!

2011-05-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

Per Ed on his show..Associated Press is calling it for Kathy Hochul w/66% of the vote in. This district one of the most conservative in NY and has never gone Dem.

Suck on that Eric Cantor and John Boehner!

Hopefully Harold Camping sees this billboard

2011-05-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

From a news station in Greensboro NC.

MSNBC hires former GOP head Michael Steele

2011-05-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

I love Rachel Maddow, so I see Steele a lot..she evidently adores arguing w/him. She will get plenty of time for that evidently, from Time:

Fox News' Republican-professional commentator ranks have been thinning lately, with contributors Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum leaving to explore Presidential runs. So you'd think that Fox might be a promising perch for former GOP party chief Michael Steele. You would be wrong: the defenestrated RNC head is not an especially popular figure among the conservatives who make up much of Fox's viewership, and today it was announced that he will be joining MSNBC, of all networks, as a commentator. An actual human, non-puppet commentator.

Of course, it's not like MSNBC has no other Republicans in its pundit ranks, the chief example being Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough. But it will be interesting to see if Steele presents himself as a GOP analyst/loyalist, a la Fox's Karl Rove, or moves from his partisan past a la the TV version of Scarborough.

Meanwhile, a fascinating feature in New York magazine suggests that Fox News chief Roger Ailes has misgivings about some of the own political stars he's helped build.

It will be interesting. At least Steele isn't the usual walk in lock-step sort of Republican, which is why he would of never been hired by Faux News. He can hold an intelligent conversation and I actually find myself looking forward to the back and forth between him and O'Donnell and of course him and Maddow. An intelligent Republican is always welcome in my book, even though agreeing with him is a slim and none choice... for this leftwing nutjob bitch. ;)

His shit-canning reminded me of when the Red Sox canned a winning manager years back..I was like wtf? Steele won a shitload of districts for the GOP turning the House into THEIR House..what the hell else did they, the idiots who voted for Steele's replacement want..the second coming of JC himself on video exclusively on Faux News? jeez.. whatever..it's MSNBC's victory and I do look forward to what he says..and hopefully it's not just their friggin talking points..please..not those.You do well up against Maddow..so keep it up..even if I DON"T agree with you Michael.

I hate to whine..but hell... I am gonna let it rip.

2011-05-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

I knew going in that having major back surgery was gonna take a while to heal and that I would not be able to do most things that normal folks take for granted.

But...for the love of friggin christ...its a whole different world and I am not dealing with this shit very well..if at all.

The Ball n' Chain is a wonderful man, but with limits..so the fact that he has to do basically every-fucking-thing is hard not on only him...but me..because I am one impatient bitch and I scream and holler a lot when it takes forever to do regular everyday things or he can't do them properly, if at all.

So, yes I am a horrible bitch to the man that is doing his best to keep our life as normal as possible..all by HIMSELF.

So, I hate myself for being a mean nasty cunt to him. I hate myself for not being able to help him and I hate myself for just sitting around bitching and hollering about everything and anything in my personal life and our ongoing feline rescue.

But then..I see pictures and video of Joplin MO and I shut the fuck up and thank Buddha that all I have to deal with is a hosed up fucking back and have the patience level of a Diva who is used to getting everything she wants and suddenly she gets nothing she wants.

I just wanna cry all the time. So I take a couple pills and sleep a lot..is that bad? Cuz I don't know how the hell else to deal with this huge-ass change in my life and his life all our cat's lives..both the inside and the outside critters who depend on us..wait..depend on HIM to take care of them.

He is such a good man and he tries so hard. Why am I such a cunt w/eyes? Sure, I am in pain all the damn time but that ain't no excuse.

So yesterday, I did a shitload of things that I never should of done but I knew he wouldn't have the time or the ability to do them. I am paying dearly for that streak of stubbornness..lemme tell ya.

I am so damn doped up today, trying to mange the pain.. it's pathetic. I am also afraid to go to the can because I might fall and hose up all the work done to my back. The Ball n' Chain says I am slurring my words like I am drunk off my ass..and I talk really friggin slow.

At least I ain't bitching at him. I am giving him hugs and thanking him for all that he does and for putting up w/me.

I am just so tired of this whole healing process..and evidently Buddha ISN"T going to give me more patience..so..it sucks to be me..or be around me..that last part is probably worse.

Just keep those poor folks in Joplin, MO in your hearts and minds..they did not deserve the hell on earth they got..but of course its just mother nature, according to the R's and has nothing to do w/climate change. right...Worst damn tornado season ever on record this year.

And Joplin is 70 miles from my mother. My son in southern OK, thank Buddha, says the tornado's are going around where he lives..and for that I am so fucking glad and happy because he lives in a house without a friggin basement and no one close by to run to if a tornado shows up. Mom on the other hand lives on the third story of a senior complex and is walking w/a walker and of course her botle of oxygen since she refuses to quit smoking cigs. Even though she just got out of a month at the hospital and NEVER HAD A DAMN CIG that whole time.

OK, I promise..next bitchfest will be our regularly scheduled political one. I can't bare my soul publicly very often or I would stick the handgun in my piehole and pull the friggin trigger. But then..the poor Ball n' Chain would have to clean up the damn mess.

At least I ain't Harold Camping..who is now exposed for what he is..and I don't have to tell you what he is..you know it.

Pelosi has a set of balls..at least on occasion.

2011-05-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

The topic du jour was Medicare. From The Prospect:

Finally, however, Democrats look to be stepping up to the plate to match Republicans’ fury to gut Medicare with an equal fury to save it, a position likely to have far more sway with the 84 percent of voters who oppose changes to the program. This afternoon, Nancy Pelosi drew the line in the sand the left has been clamoring for, promising “no benefit cuts.” Democrats have also enlisted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to spread the message on Capitol Hill today that proposals within Ryan’s plan will cut the benefits of current seniors, despite the fact that full Medicare privatization only begins in 2022. For instance, by undoing the prescription doughnut-hole benefits of the Affordable Care Act, the plan would leave seniors to cover a huge tab on their medication. For the 150,000 seniors in Rhode Island, this would amount to an additional $9.5 million annually.

Democrats are also circulating disturbing projections from the Center for Economic and Policy Research that projects an adult currently between the ages of 45 and 55 will have to pay $182,000 extra for health insurance under Ryan’s plan, despite having paid into Medicare for a half decade or more. This extra burden won’t just stretch budgets. $180,000 is more than a minimum-wage earner would make in five years, let alone save. It shows once and for all that the Ryan plan doesn’t save Medicare, it ends it, and it doesn’t help the seniors of today or the next generation.(emphasis mine)

Anyone that thinks doing away w/traditional Medicare is a good thing must be either rich or uninformed in my humble yet vocal opinion. From the CEPR press release on their own report:

“The Ryan plan does nothing to control private-sector waste in health care costs,” said David Rosnick, an author of the report. “As a result of the waste in the private system, beneficiaries will end up paying substantially more for Medicare, in effect paying a hefty new tax on their health care.”

The report, “Representative Ryan’s $30 Trillion Medicare Waste Tax,” documents the potential effects of replacing Medicare with a system of vouchers or premium supports and raising the age of eligibility from 65 to 67 as suggested in the Ryan plan, which was passed by the House of Representatives with almost unanimous support from Republicans and no votes from Democrats. The authors note that each voucher under the plan will initially be worth $6,600, but would be frozen at this amount over the program’s 75-year planning window, paying less and less of a beneficiary’s health care costs over time.

In addition to comparing the costs of Medicare to the government under the current system and under the Ryan plan, the authors also show the effects of raising the age of Medicare eligibility. The paper also demonstrates that while Ryan shifts $4.9 trillion in health care costs from the government to Medicare beneficiaries, this number is dwarfed by a $34 trillion increase in overall costs to beneficiaries that is projected based on the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis.

More and more of the R's seem to be backing away from Paulie's Medicare Plan, so the D's need to make hay out of this boondoggle now and continue to use it as one of their main examples of how the R's want to 'do business' and cut entitlements, the EPA, Dept of Education and other federal departments so they can continue to provide tax breaks and/or lower the tax rate for the uber rich if they run thewhole show..aka the House, The Senate and the Oval Office.

Bush wants to keep a low profile? Jackass Please!

2011-05-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

I am calling bullshit on Bush and his excuse for not attending, what I consider, Obama's politically helpful appearance at Ground Zero recently (Pres.Clinton was also invited and cited conflicting events). Seems the man has been quite busy lately making some cold, hard cash (estimates are $15 million total since leaving office)..in a very public way. For starters, The Shrub made three speeches shortly following Obama's Ground Zero request. One was to his buddies at a hedge fund, another at a golf event and the third was to a Swiss bank that got slapped around for keeping secret bank accounts after that was considered a big no-no.

The DailyBeast has IWatchNews.org's Peter Stone's recent piece. A short blurb:

David Sherzer, a spokesman for the former president, told iWatch News that since Bush left office he has delivered almost 140 paid talks, at home and abroad. Those speeches have earned Bush about $15 million, a conservative estimate, following in the golden path blazed by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.

Almost all of Bush’s speeches are closed to the press. Bush uses the Washington Speakers Bureau to arrange his paid speaking gigs.

To some presidential historians, Bush’s numerous high-priced speaking engagements don’t sit well. “I find it puzzling,” said Stanford University historian Robert Dallek in an interview with iWatch News . “He says he wants to keep a low profile. What is he doing except enriching himself? It sounds like it’s self-serving. It’s following the good old American adage to make as much as you can.”

Other historians say Bush’s ride on the lecture circuit has become somewhat commonplace for former presidents, but is still troubling.

“It’s one thing to stay out of the public realm, which George Bush has said he wants to do,” Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, said. “But then he goes on the speaking circuit and makes enormous amounts of money giving lectures mostly to corporate groups and other select audiences. Some Americans can find this distasteful.”

Zelizer added, “We’re in an era where there are countless fears about money and politics. I think former presidents have to be careful about what they’re doing with their speeches. For some people it’s another version of the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street.”

I love the last quote...it's another version of the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K St. Bush43 and his cronies adored K street. Still do.

WI Rethugs ram through another winner. Voter ID bill.

2011-05-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Crooks and Liars, specifically David, we have video of this fuckery below..but first..my bitchfest on the subject.

This crap passed on a 19-5 vote. The five were of course Democrats, many of the other Dem's refused to vote for this bullshit bill that jackass extraordinaire Gov. Scott Walker says will prevent voter fraud...like they really have any cases of individuals using other individuals names to vote, because in the entire history of WI They. Do. Not. From the WI State Journal:

Amid chants of “Shame!” and “Recall!” from the gallery, the state Senate on Thursday gave final approval to a controversial bill requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. The measure now heads to Gov. Scott Walker, who said he plans to sign it next Wednesday.

“Requiring photo identification to vote will go a long way to eliminate the threat of voter fraud,” Walker said. “If you need an ID to buy cold medicine, it’s reasonable to require it to vote.”

Republicans in the state Assembly passed the bill in a late-night session last week. Debate in the GOP-controlled Senate began Tuesday, running until after 1 a.m. Wednesday, when Democrats used a procedural move to delay final passage.

On Thursday, Senate GOP leaders limited floor debate to one hour. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, defended the time limit saying the topic “has received a lot of debate,” and Democrats had had plenty of chances to speak on the floor.

These Wisconsin rightwing nutters really are disgusting fucks. And you know they are trying to prevent certain types of people from voting..its a no brainer, fer christs sake.

When do those recall votes start up? Come WI. residents..get a move on and toss these fuckwads out!

Obama wants us to cut him some slack...believe me dude..we have..until now.

2011-05-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

Filched from PulitzerPrize.org

Perhaps not as much as he would like, but I know that I have let a lot of things he hasn't done or has done just slide right out of my mind. I could sit here and name them all for you folks..but you would probably change the channel and I really don't want that.

I only got a few of you reading these bitchfests and frankly I want to keep you. It's a pain in the ass to think I am only talking/writing to myself...and all those damn cats laying on my bed at this moment.

So, lets let Cornel West and Harry Belafonte say it for me. They are far wiser and more eloquent than moi, take my word for it. Plus, they don't drop a dozen f-bombs in every paragraph like I do. That is always a plus.

Chris Hedges over at TruthDig tells us why Cornel West went ballistic. I like and trust Mr. West. I might not always agree w/thim but I do more times than naught. From the writeup, which I start mid-paragraph:

West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power.

Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obama’s heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in “King Lear.” Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates—think of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedy—take power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority.

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.” (emphasis mine)

Head of the American killing machine. Jesus H. Christ...I wonder how he feels about that title. And he might like it or plain not give a shit, who the hell knows anymore? It's not a positive statement unless you are The Shrub, aka George Bush or his BFF The Big Dick Cheney..or my personal favorite Donald Rumsfeld. I thought Obama wanted more than to kill people and continue Bush's bullshit 'War on Terror'...I thought he wanted to talk it out, to solve it w/words and good deeds not bullets and bombs..to be better than the previous man that occupied the Oval Office, his staff of warmongers and his hired henchman aka federal contractors, who btw, Obama continues to employ many of the same War Profiteers.

Because I am friggin sick and tired of dead and/or maimed soldiers, or those that will eternally suffer the mental effects, like PTSD, for the rest of their lives. I am sick and tired of American, Pakistani and Afghanistan families coping with the carnage of our forever wars. Wars that will never 'be won' in the traditional sense, just in some happy horseshit that gets spewed during a presser in DC, or a high-ranking military mind grinning, like he just won the fucking lottery, for the embedded journalists. One war has lasted us just short of TEN-FUCKING-YEARS m'dear reader.The second one not far behind in time and soon...in soldiers deaths and permanent maiming and emotional scars that will also last them forever.

I hope that you will read Hedges writeup..its great and its also sad as hell at the same time. It's about an intelligent, good, kind man, Cornel West, that believed in the change Obama talked about in all his campaigning last time around and so far, Professor West has been let down like a kid who's dad forgets his birthday and comes home drunk to boot. Many of us have been let down by Obama and those he hired to surround himself with whilst he made the hard decisions.

Now, on to Harry Belafonte. A man that has been through the civil rights and equality wars here in the good ole US of A for decades, long before many of us were born, or became politically active. A man that knows his shit, who knows what is what is not and he also knows who is full of shit. From Bruce A. Dixon @ TheBlackAgendaReport, a small blurb of Belafonte's DemocracyNow Interview, with the wonderful and talented Amy Goodman.... both pieces are well worth listening and/or reading:

Belafonte was asked by host Amy Goodman whether he'd used his occasional access to directly share his many critical and valuable public policy insights with the White House. Belafonte replied that his only access to the president has been for a few seconds at a time, not long enough for any substantive discussion. But, he said, at one such event President Obama approached him to inquire when Belafonte and Cornel West were going “to cut me some slack.”

“What makes you think we haven't?” Belafonte replied to the president? At this point the brief encounter was over.

Let's pause to think about that. When President Obama cusses out Cornel West and personally demands that historic stalwarts of the movement for peace and justice “cut him some slack” on black unemployment, on foreclosures and the prison state, on torture and the military budget, on unjust wars and corporate welfare, on fulfilling the just demands of those who elected him, our first black president is revealing his real self. Far from saying “make me do it,” President Obama is saying how dare you pressure me to do what you elected me to do.

What say you m'dear reader? Do you think we expect too much from our President? Do you think that all politicians say most anything to get elected and therefore we should take it has standard procedure that 'not everything they promise to do, will be done'? Do you think we haven't cut Obama enough slack? Tell me..tell me if I am the only one that thinks the time to cut him slack is way the hell over.

President Obama still has a lot of time left. But my pov is that most of that time will be spent squeezing money out of supporters at fancy, expensive dinners and speaking engagements for his next campaign to be our President after the 2012 elections. He will have little precious time left to do the things he promised us during his last campaign for the 2008 Presidency.

To understand the phrase "make me do it", you have to read Dixon's entire but short article. But the following paragraph really grabbed the hell out of me:

Harry Belafonte has done a great public service in helping us distinguish the imaginary Barack Obama of “make me do it” from the real Barack Obama, who demands our support, but expects us to “cut him some slack.” Rather than agitating and organizing in our communities to “make him do it” all the real President Obama wants of movement activists is for us to sit down and shut up, until it's time to help chase everybody out to vote for him in 2012.

I don't know about you all, but I have been getting daily emails about 'organizing for Obama' and how important it will be to get out the vote for him, from our President himself or his campaign people. It's almost at spam level if you want my personal opinion. I actually unsubscribed last week, but I am still getting them.

Because I won't be doing any organizing or getting out the vote for President Obama this time around. I don't feel the man has earned my vote much less my shoe leather and hours and hours of phone calls like I did for him last time, the week before the election.

When he took office and Holder continued to support many of the legal cases that were started against President Bush for spying, lying and all sorts of shit..I really went batshit crazy. Then, not only did Gitmo not close, but they seem to be keeping everyone there that was there before Obama took office, not to mention starting up those kangaroo courts known as Military Tribunals again.

Also, if you will notice on my right sidebar, I keep track of how many of our soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan under Bush and under Obama. The numbers are staggering but what really chaps my ass is that the number of dead soldiers under Obama has almost doubled, to 924..and he has only been in office a couple of years. Bush had eight years to kill 575 soldiers. Now, I know that Bush pretty much put Afghanistan on the back burner...but still..a dead soldier is a dead soldier to me. It's someone's brother, father, son, nephew or husband (or the female equivalents). My niece was there, so I can talk to this subject, I don't give a shit who it pisses off. I am just happy as hell that she got out before it got real bad over there, although I worried daily about her safety..both on the battlefield and when she was alone in her tent..but that former one is for another day and time. She was never raped or physically attacked thank goodness, and far too many of our female soldiers were..but like I said..I digress.

So now I will let Mr. Belafonte, say for me, why I believe we must now speak out about the shortcomings of the Obama Presidency. It's not to undermine him or his second run for the Office of the President..its to speak truth to power in the hope that he hears us and changes his course which looks more and more like he represents the powerful, or as I call it, The Corporatocracy:

AMY GOODMAN: And to those who say, "If you want President Obama re-elected, you will undermine him if you criticize him; and consider the alternative"?

HARRY BELAFONTE: I think we will not only undermine him, but undermine the hopes of this nation, if we don’t criticize him. Absence of protest in the times of this kind of national crisis—Theodore Roosevelt once says, "When tyranny takes over the national agenda, it is that time that the voices of protest must be awakened. And if you don’t raise your voice in protest, you are a patriotic traitor." And I believe that patriotism is betrayed by those voices that are not heard. Those who would detract you from that fact are those who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Nothing will happen but good for Barack Obama and the United States of America, and indeed the world, if everybody stepped to the table and said, "This is the course we must be on."

Thank You Mr. Belafonte. Thank You Mr. West. Thanks to both of you for speaking the truth to the most powerful man in this hemisphere, if not the world. Lets hope for change...this time...real change. Change on immigration, the forever wars, financial changes aka accountability of the greedy Wall Streeters as to how they do 'business', jobs and not bailouts for the corporations shipping their jobs outside our borders and finally... education opportunities for everyone regardless of race or station in life without the fear of being in debt for decades or even worse, not getting the loans or grants needed to better themselves and contribute to our nation and make us once again number one in all areas and issues.

GOP eats it own Presidential candidate, the one closest to the center of course.

2011-05-17T19:12:00.001-07:00

Eye of Newt was trying to be less rightwing nutter and more centrist, or even....gasp..moderate when he was on Meet the Press (transcript here) this past weekend. The money quote that is getting more press than anything else I think he said Sunday:

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering."

According to most if not all political pundits, his run for the Presidency is over, less than a week after he started. That was all that was talked about today on the MSNBC political shows and probably all other news network shows. At least it was the prime story of the day for Tweety, Cenk. O'Donnell, Maddow, Ed and all the rest of the early day/evening shows on MSNBC. The biggest video of the day was Eye of Newt doing a handshake campaign and a rightwing nutter holding on to his hand as Newt tried to escape..all the while, the guy was tearing into Newt. Of course he was an Iowa voter, the most rightwing nutter group of all Republican voters:

I actually feel sorry for the fuckwit I call Eye of Newt. He sounded like more of a centrist Republican than ANYONE else running or threatening to run for President in that party of Corporate Ass-kissers. He sounded sane and logical, for a Republican...which of course pissed off the teabaggers and anyone else that wants to take the Republican party as far right as possible...like just about everyone with an R behind their name lately or that is a mouthpiece for the extremist rightwing ideology..aka Limbaugh and the all the rightwing pundits on tv, radio and in print. Fox News went batshit over it all day I believe..since I don't watch than non-news, Republican talking points only, station I can't say for absolute certainty..ok? For a catch-all of everyone that took a shot at Eye of Newt, including the dipshit emeritus Charles Krauthammer check out this link from this morning's FirstRead or just Google Republican reaction to Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press.

His other big boo-boo? Taking Paul Ryan's bullshit idea of ending Medicare as we know it, and calling it " too big a change". All the rightwing fuckwits are of course taking this phrase as heresy. So, when he said, and I quote:

I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.

All the nutters took it personal and said he was calling Ryan's entire plan radical.

Well, it fucking IS radical and not to the good..Christ, you don't have to be a damn rocket scientist to see that in Ryan's budget 'plan' as he slashes programs that help the sick, poor, elderly, etc and then actually gives another tax break to the uber rich.

They, the rightwing elected and the rightwing pundits, were probably pissing down both legs I suspect when they either read or heard Eye of Newt say both sets of phrases above.

He called Paul Ryan and begged for forgiveness. Eye of Newt is now pulling a Palin saying it was a 'Gotcha' question and taken out of context. He is blaming those damn liberals too.

No jackass, it wasn't. Read the fucking text of your little sitdown w/ David Gregory. You couldn't shut the fuck up. You didn't answer in sentences, you answered in paragraphs you friggin moron. You have been on that show 35-fucking-times..I am quite sure you are used to how it works and how questions are framed.

You, Mr. Eye of Newt Gingrich, are a liar and a pussy. A pussy in the fact that you refuse to stand up to the racists, the Corporate ass-kissers and the haters of your own party. A pussy in the fact that you refuse to stand by Your Own Words.

And that makes you a pathetic fuck in my book.

Say Good Bye Newt, your campaign is over according to pretty much anyone that has an opinion on you and your 5th run or 10th run for President of the United States..its been so many, I forget the total number.

GOP loses a few clowns in their circus.

2011-05-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

As Lawrence O'Donnell predicted, on the exact day mind you, Trump pulled out as soon as NBC renewed his stupid show Celebrity Apprentice. O'Donnell has been saying this for months and months..giving the exact day and under the exact conditions that it would happen. The man was spot on..watch:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As an added bonus, Huckabee, the 'religious' extremist's favorite biblethumping liar, bowed out as well...although the asshole never really announced. This means the rightwing nutters that make up the majority of Iowa voters won't have Ole Huck to vote for this season..oh the agony! What the hell will they do? Santorum boys and girls..Ricky Santorum if he ever collects enough cash to actually announce his candidacy. If if Ricky doesn't announce..those rightwing nutters in Iowa are screwed..YAY!

What will the GOP do without two of their biggest male clowns running for President? I say male because Batshit Bachmann (still testing the waters) and the Palinator are the two big time female clowns and they haven't announced yet. Oh please....please..let them announce soon! Both are pure comedy gold. But i digress...

Mitch Daniels is still waiting for his first and now second wife's permission to run.She will really help him out as she walked out on his ass and left him holding the bag along with all the kids. She eventually returned after the guy she left Mitch for divorced her. Mitch remarried her. Mitch might let her wear the pants in the family but he hates unions and he really hates Planned Parenthood and will do anything to kill them both so long as the moves don't fuck up his run for President..that is if the wife lets him.

We do still have the fuckwit Rick Santorum to kick around. That dipshit actually showed up to the Faux Rethug debate.

The GOP Candidates for President

A plea to help a fellow blogger who REALLY needs it.

2011-05-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

An unusual plea for help. From the fine folks at The Greanville Post.

May 14th, 2011

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From the editors of The Greanville Post

Dear Friends:

Rowan Wolf

The reason for this most unusual appeal is a sad and compelling one. One of our closest friends and invaluable comrades in this struggle to move human society, and especially America, toward a better future, is literally dying for lack of financial resources to cover her enormous medical expenses. Probably many of you know that The Greanville Post (TGP) and Cyrano’s Journal Today (CJT) are sister sites created by a tightly-knit cooperative of committed citizens journalists and animated with the same spirit. Rowan Wolf—editor-in-chief of Cyrano’s Journal— is a critical member of this community.

Now, however, a whimsical destiny has dealt her an awful card, and she finds herself in dire straits (pulmonary heart disease), with a heart-lung transplant from Stanford as her only hope. The major hurdle is that she lacks the necessary funding, and although I know most of you—like us—have only limited resources, we are endeavoring to create a dynamic on the Internet so that an ever-growing number of people can become apprised of her desperate situation. Her prospects are brutally simple: she lives if she raises the money, and dies in two years or so if she doesn’t. In effect, the American health care system has transformed a beautiful person, a tireless, exemplary ecoanimal defense and all-round political activist and accomplished sociology professor into a “beggar” and she is forced to depend on us for a possible solution. This at a time in which just breathing is an effort for her. (Characteristically, she has refused to leave her editorial functions at CJT, and thanks to her effort that resource sails on.)

So what we are asking here is not in any way a donation to TGP or CJT, but a direct assist to a comrade whose luck is dangerously close to running out.

If you would be so kind as to spread the word to all of your colleagues and friends, we would be profoundly grateful. If they can’t contribute themselves, they can make a significant difference just by passing on the information below until the number of her supporters can grow exponentially. Any donations, by the way, are fully tax deductible, as they go through the National Transplant Assistance Fund (NTAF). Rowan is family to the entire progressive community, and I needn’t tell you the depth of her commitment to other beings.

Anyway, the details follow, expressed in her own words. We are sorry to be the bearers of such tragic news, but, as already mentioned, we are doing all we can to get the word out, and remain confident that many others will do what they can once they learn of her circumstances. Many thanks to you all for your time, and may better days finally grace our horizons.

Incidentally, do forgive us if you already received one of our appeals. Chalk it up to our sense of urgency and mounting desperation.

Please don’t fail us on this one.

PATRICE GREANVILLE, Editor in Chief & Publisher
The Greanville Post

ED DUVIN, Editor at Large & Cofounder
The Greanville Post
Cyrano’s Journal Today

GAITHER STEWART,
Senior Editor & Foreign Correspondent
The Greanville Post
Cyrano’s Journal Today

_____________________________________________________________________________

[Note: Please forgive the impersonal nature of a mass email, but I don't have the strength or energy to contact everyone separately. I have also included this as an attachment for your convenience.]

Dear Friends,

I am writing you at this time to ask for your help. Those of you who know me well, know how difficult such an appeal is.

In January 2010 I was struck down by what was thought were pulmonary emboli. This took me out of teaching for the rest of the year. My heart and lungs continued to fail, with each day leaving me weaker than the last until July. Then a new pulmonologist, Maxine Dexter, went over my case with a fine-toothed comb and determined that I actually had pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH or PH). This is a rare condition that increases the pressures in the lungs making them unable to function properly. This puts tremendous strain on the heart, and has seriously damaged mine. PH is a progressive and irreversible disease. My doctor started the long process of getting me evaluated for a heart-lung transplant, as this is the only cure for PH. Stanford Hospital has almost approved me and I will soon be on the transplant list. One of the hurdles in my path is being able to financially address the costs of transplant when I will be out of work for many months, and perhaps the rest of my life.

I have been tremendously lucky to have insurance and a job that has allowed me to continue to work part time and blessed to have my partner Kelly and a very supportive family. Transplants are tremendously expensive procedures, and the costs beyond transplant are large and some go on for the rest of one’s life. For example, I will have to go to Stanford at least once a year for follow-up care, and take anti-rejection medications costing in excess of $5000 a month for the rest of my life. Even with my health insurance coverage, it is estimated that I may have over $25,000 in transplant related costs for the first year and over $10,000 for every year thereafter.

To help alleviate the financial burden of transplantation, a fundraising campaign has been established in my honor with National Transplant Assistance Fund (NTAF) for my uninsured medical expenses. NTAF is a nonprofit organization that has been providing assistance to the transplant community for more than 25 years.

Your tax-deductible contribution is greatly appreciated.

Please make check payable to:
NTAF Northwest Heart/Lung Transplant Fund, In honor of Rowan Wolf

Send to: NTAF, 150 N. Radnor Chester Road, Suite F-120, Radnor, PA 19087

To use a credit card, please call 800-642-8399 or visit http://www.ntafund.org and enter Rowan Wolf in the “Find A Patient” box on the homepage. Or go to my tribute page if you are getting the letter by email, and select “Contribute Now.”

If you are unable to help financially but still wish to assist with my fundraising efforts, I’d be so appreciative. Please pass on my information to others or call or email me or Rebecca rcarr@ntafund.org (800.642.8399 ) to volunteer as we move forward with planning fundraising events.

It is my hope that I will receive a transplant, heal and return to teaching and activism. I have been active in the environmental, animal rights, and social justice movements for most of my life and my goal is to continue my efforts to make this world a better place for all living creatures.

Kelly, and our four-legged ones (our three dogs and two adopted feral cats), and I are tremendously grateful for your positive thoughts, prayers, contributions, and help.

With kind regards and love,

Rowan Wolf | Phone: 503.261.9488
rowanstransplant@gmail.com

Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. This campaign is administered by the National Transplant Assistance Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing fundraising assistance to transplant and catastrophic injury patients. Information: 800.642.8399

ADDENDUM

I attach below a draft outlining and clarifying in more detail what you might be able to do if monetary assistance is out of the question. Thank you so much for your patience:

Dear Friends and Friends of Friends,

As you know now from the preceding, this is an appeal for your help in meeting the uninsured medical expenses of a heart-lung transplant for me. That help can take a variety of forms.

This appeal focuses on monetary contributions and those are extremely important. If you are giving a check make sure that in the memo section you put “In honor of Rowan Wolf” otherwise the money will go as a donation to NTAF’s general operating fund and not to the regional restricted fund in my honor.I realize that many of you are financially stretched, but there are other contributions that are also important and helpful:-

Pass this appeal on to others you know and ask for their help. For example, “Rowan is my friend and needs your help.”—

Volunteering to do fundraising from a garage sale to making an appeal in your place of worship, community organization, or place of business. If you do plan to raise funds, please contact Rebecca Carr at NTAF for the information you need. Her number is 800.642.8399 and her email is

rcarr@ntafund.org

IF YOU HAVE A WEBSITE, or belong to a social networking site, put up a link to my page at

NTAF: https://www.ntafund.org/find-a-patient/profile/index.cfm/patient/E0F54FD8-C5F5-8B8D-0546303FF41A1F15

I have also started a series of sites called Rowan’s Heart. The purpose of these sites is to share the journey I am on. I am posting the story in multiple places because the network is wider that way. They are “mirrors” of each other, but different people use different services. Here are the links:

Blogspot http://rowansheart.blogspot.com/

Main Domain http://www.rowansheart.com/

Posterous http://rowansheart.posterous.com/

WordPress site http://rowansheart.wordpress.com/

As you pass this appeal along, please pass along this part as well.

Thank you for all of your care and support.

Bill Maher- extremists can not call themselves Christians.

2011-05-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher's new rules were pretty good last night. The good part on christian crazies starts at 2:42 and he also takes a potshot at Obama's 60 minutes interview about 'getting our head examined' if we don't believe Osama should of been killed on the spot. The video below is courtesy of our friend Heather at CrooksandLiars

Heather's money quote on the so-called christians of the extreme right:

I think Maher makes some great points here and on a regular basis about what has become of the Christian right these days where there are way too many of them lauding violence and with no regard for the poor and the downtrodden and that seem to love the Old Testament while ignoring pretty much all of the New Testament and the message of nonviolence and social justice.

Spot on Woman! Jesus won't be welcoming those fucks into heaven, he will have the detour sign up I am quite sure. The following graphic is from Rook.

Newt's daughter tries to clear his name w/regard to his FIRST divorce.

2011-05-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

Newt has had more than his share of divorces and philandering's for such a self-righteous prick who dreams of one day sitting his ass in the Oval Office as President. He has ridiculous reasons for both issues. But to see that his daughter is now taking to writing in defense of her fathers version of the hospital incident, well... it smacks of political timing to me. From the Salon link above:

Regular readers will remember a few months ago I researched the story of Newt and his cancer-stricken first wife, also named Jackie. The anecdote has dogged Newt ever since Mother Jones first reported it -- and extensive evidence of his philandering -- in 1984. Cushman's column is likely part of a conscious inoculation effort. Cushman writes a syndicated conservative political column and recently co-authored a book with her father.

Cushman doesn't offer much in the way of details, besides saying that she was present during that 1980 hospital visit and that the media has repeated unspecified "untruths"

*snip*

The question becomes: Should we believe Gingrich's wife from five years after the incident, or what his daughter claims 30 years later when Newt is gearing up for a presidential run?

Any way you slice or dice this issue, Eye of Newt runs on the 'Family Values Platform'. He was a philanderer and a two-faced bag of batshit as he went after Clinton for something he was far more guilty of than the President.

He now uses the extreme right's favorite line that his god will forgive him his transgressions because Newt asked him to in an interview w/religious channel CBN on March 9th of this year. The video is available on their site but I haven't the stomach to post his fuckery here.

And the reason Eye of Newt didn't attend the Faux republican debate? Well, there are most likely at least two reasons: He was busy making money speaking of course. Plus, he technically had not announced his candidacy by that date, even though Faux had marketed that Eye of Newt would be on hand for their...cough..extravaganza..

Fund chief Rajaratnam found guilty on all counts!

2011-05-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

Finally, one of these s.o.b's is found guilty. Huzzah! From MSNBC:

Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam has been found guilty on all counts in a high-profile insider trading trial. The verdict was announced Wednesday morning in New York.

A New York City jury had been considering the fate of the wealthy hedge fund boss accused of insider trading for around a week.

Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group, was on trial in federal court in Manhattan on 14 counts of conspiracy and wrongdoing. He faces up to 25 years in prison.

So far, all of these types of federal or civil cases have been either tossed or they were found not guilty.Except ole Martha Stewart of course. Raj is quite the plump person so he isn't gonna like prison at all as the food isn't what he is used to. That is IF the judge gives him a prison sentence.

Suidicial thoughts rise through the roof for military.

2011-05-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

A report by the military itself has raised my hackles. As someone who had a beloved niece serve in Afghanistan, prior to Obama's move into the Oval Office, I am appalled and quite pissed at the numbers. The following quote from page 8 of the report tells us a lot:

In contrast to recent prior years, in 2010 there were more hospitalizations for mental disorders than for any other major category of illnesses or injuries (per the ICD-9-CM).

Page 23 of the report has the following subject, or header: Hospitalizations with primary (first-listed) or non-primary diagnoses of “suicidal ideation” (ICD-9-CM: V62.84), active component, U.S.Armed Forces, 2005-2010.

Then, the accompanying text, along with the following graph that just smacks the shit right out of me:
In October 2005, a diagnostic code for “suicidal ideation” was added to the International Classifi cation of Diseases (ICD-9-CM). Since then, annual numbers of hospitalizations with primary (fi rst-listed) diagnoses of suicidal ideation at discharge have steadily and sharply increased (from 5 in 2006 to 355 in 2010). Numbers of hospitalizations with nonprimary diagnoses of suicidal ideation also have increased during this period.In 2010, 90 percent of hospitalizations with a primary diagnosis of suicidal ideation were reported with a mental health disorder-specifi c diagnosis (ICD-9-CM: 290-319) in a non-primary diagnostic position.

The results should be interpreted with consideration of several factors that may aff ect the completeness of reportingof “suicidal ideation” among active component members. For example, the results may reflect at least in part increased awareness of and concern regarding suicide prevention among unit commanders, other front line supervisors, and primary care providers; increased awareness and use of the relatively new ICD-9-CM diagnostic code that specifies “suicidal ideation”; decreased barriers to and perceived stigmas associated with care seeking for mental health concerns; and so on.

It sucks, to put it mildly..it's horrifi,c the rate of soldiers thinking about killing themselves has risen over five years. Look at it..look at it hard m'dear reader...the numbers climb out of site don't they? And these are just the soldiers that say something to someone. It doesn't include those that silently suffer and think about killing themselves before they fall asleep at night..or watch a buddy die. From a Time magazine writeup on this same report:

The experience of combat itself may also play a role. "Combat increases fearlessness about death and the capability for suicide," said Craig Bryan, a University of Texas psychologist, briefing Pentagon officials in January. The combination of combat exposure and ready access to guns can be lethal to anyone contemplating suicide. About half of soldiers who kill themselves use weapons, and the figure rises to 93% among those deployed in war zones.

Bryan, a suicide expert who recently left the Air Force, says the military finds itself in a catch-22. "We train our warriors to use controlled violence and aggression, to suppress strong emotional reactions in the face of adversity, to tolerate physical and emotional pain and to overcome the fear of injury and death," he told TIME. While required for combat, "these qualities are also associated with increased risk for suicide." Such conditioning cannot be dulled "without negatively affecting the fighting capability of our military," he adds. "Service members are, simply put, more capable of killing themselves by sheer consequence of their professional training.

It's maddening..its horribly sad and scary for me. It's something that is so hard to spot, to deal with in civilian life...in military life..on the front lines...it has to be just friggin impossible at some point, as the suicide expert states..its a friggin Catch-22.

The multiple deployments is a main culprit...it has to be. Who in the blue hell can deal with the death and destruction over there over and over and over again without going off the deep end?. I don't give a rat's ass that they get a year between deployments;...that's bullshit for me. Again from the Time article:

Chiarelli has singled out abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs by soldiers as a mental-health issue that can lead to suicide. "I think there's a link to substance abuse in some of the issues we're seeing," Chiarelli said last month. A recent Army study shows that the percentage of soldiers in Afghanistan taking antidepressants and other mental-health drugs nearly tripled — from 3.5% to 9.8% — between their first and third deployments.(emphasis mine)

The Army's corps of substance-abuse counselors is hundreds short of the number of trained personnel needed. "I have been pounding the system to say we have got to sit down and determine what we need after eight years of war," Chiarelli said. That shortage has made it tougher "to handle what I think is a higher rate of substance abuse today than eight years ago." Why is it higher? "I think it's only natural you're going to see that as soldiers come back [from war], you know, with the dwell time that they have [before returning to war], that we're going to have a higher rate." Last week, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said pressure on the Army means that for the next two years, soldiers will continue to ship off to their next combat tour without sufficient rest at home.

The friggin Army is short of counselors..wow, that's a surprise right? Of course it's not..the Army is short of personnel period...that is why so many of these men and women on the front lines are on their third fucking deployment.They drink and they take drugs to deaden the mental pain...we are not stupid and neither are they. Who could sleep at night after the shit they see and deal with daily? I sure as hell couldn't. Bet none of us could. From another Time article on the same subject:

Army leaders say that broken personal relationships seem to be the most common thread linking suicides. "The one transcendent factor that we seem to have, if there's any one that's associated with [suicide], is fractured relationships of some sort," Lieut. General Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, told a Senate panel last month. What they fail to note, however, is the corrosive effect repeated deployments can have on such relationships. Ritchie pointed out in January that there are "higher rates of mental-health problems and marital problems for multiple deployers." (emphasis mine)

So the military leaders know what causes these problems..They friggin KNOW, yet multiple deployments continue unabated.

They continue because we refuse to end these wars. They continue because we are so damn short of personnel. The military wring their hands and tell Congress and others the truth..yet these wars continue...

Obama will sacrifice them for his forever wars..and yes they are HIS WARS now. And it makes me physically sick. These soldiers are just collateral damage for Obama and his henchmen. How disgusting and maddening is that?
My old video below is from the Blogswarm in 2008 and it was specifically about Iraq..is sadly just as timely today as it was years ago when I made it. Just change out Bush's name for Obama's and insert Afghanistan now too.

When is the last time your pay went up 11 percent in a year?

2011-05-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

The answer in 99% of cases would be never or it's been years if not decades..but a helluva lot of the CEO's have hit the friggin motherload according to RawStory:

Compensation received by chief executives of the biggest US companies surged 11 percent over the past 12 months -- to $9.3 million on average, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Citing a study conducted for the newspaper by management consultancy Hay Group, The Journal said the increase was largely due to decisions by company boards to reward CEOs for strong profit and share-price growth with bigger bonuses and stock grants.

The survey covered the 350 biggest companies that filed their statement between May 1, 2010, and April 30, 2011.

On this chilly Monday morning..it really made my friggin day. Especially considering that once again the Federal Government is refusing to provide the elderly and disabled with a COLA (cost of living adjustment) for the third straight year. To be fair, the top three spots were taken by media exec's. At least it's not the jackholes that got taxpayer funded bailouts at the very top. But I will wager that a lot of them are on the friggin list. RS didn't link to the WSJ article, but I am going to look it up and post it here later. The back is really fucked up lately and that bothers me as it's been two months since the surgery and shouldn't it be getting better at this point?

Thats a rhetorical question btw..

Update: Here is the original WSJ article. Here is how the Hay Group conducts the study for the WSJ. A few interesting graphics from the original WSJ article, showing various industries and those lovely fucks in the healthcare industry (click for larger):

Happy Mutha's Day! We are all muthas ya know.

2011-05-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

If you care for a pet, if you adore a friend and you help them out by listening and giving them hugs when they need one...you are a Mutha too m'dear reader.

Because a Mutha, for me anyway, is someone that takes care of people, places or animals...makes sure everything is ok, and if it isn't, bitches her ass off until it gets fixed, or she will get it fixed and send you a friggin bill.

Bear in mind there is a huge ass difference between a Mutha and a Mutha Fucka...you do not want to be the latter, ok? Unless you are living with a Mutha and she needs a little servicing now and then...then it's ok to be a Mutha Fucka. But that's really the only time it's good to be a Mutha Fucka.

I called my Mutha this morning. The poor old dear has COPD with the added complication of end stage Emphysema. She lives in Missouri, so sadly I can't go see her and make her laugh..I can only call her and say things that crack her up.

She wanted to talk about OBL..i shit you not! So I listened as she told me that Clinton could of captured him. I asked her if the hospital only had Faux News, cuz where else would you get that bullshit. I reminded her that the Clinton administration warned The Shrub and his henchmen about OBL, but they chose to ignore it until that day in September when all hell broke loose.

To lighten up the convo..I asked her how hard would be to pick out a tall assed Muslim amongst a group of relatively short ones. She didn't get it...so I explained to her how tall OBL was and the general height of the majority of Muslim males. He would stick out like Shaq standing amongst a room full of 5'9" males. Anyway, I cracked a few jokes about OBL, The Shrub, Rumsfeld, The Big Dick Cheney and made her giggle.

I am the oldest of four female children my mutha gave birth to. My middle sister lives w/Mommy Dearest, so she was there at the hospital as well. Poor thing hangs out there more than any place else, including her humble abode or work lately.

When MommyDearest is well, how to put this... she can be a real pain in the ass. I like to refer to her as a witch (sometimes with a B instead of a W) that comes complete w/a friggin broom that she uses either as transportation or to hit you with.

But today, I finally realized that those days are over and her actual days left on this earth are numbered.

I am getting a tad weepy, so it's time to go...call yer friggin Mutha and if she has already left this planet..talk to her like she was still here..sitting with you like the old days when she made everything better..or in my case..usually made it worse..but not always on purpose of course. Because above all else..Mutha's care. It might not always seem that way..but they do. Bless them all.

We aren't sending any clear messages to the terrorists people...seriously, we aren't.

2011-05-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

If I hear that phrase (we are sending the terrorists a message...blah blah..fill in the rest yerself) one more friggin time, I am gonna lose my lunch or my head will explode, I swear to Buddha.

Its that type of skewed logic that keeps our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and our money flowing to places like Pakistan. Pakistan...don't get me started on those two-faced yahoo's. That anyone actually believes we can 'pay them off' to be our allies..well, they are either delusional or lying. Pakistan's leaders take our tax dollars (or money borrowed from China) and smile, then they go and laugh their collective asses off about how stupid we are to give them money when they hate us and work to kill us.To them, we are nothing more than Stupid Americans with bags of money.

And that makes me sad because so many Pakistani's are poor and live in squalor. So many have never been inside a classroom to learn how to raise themselves up from the bottom of the barrel.

Yet Pakistan has nukes...and that's some scary shit I know. But giving them billions isn't changing anything, no one will ever convince me that it does. How much of that money makes it down to the poor that need it the most? Corruption is rife in Afghanistan, from the head fuckwad all the way down..so why do we think it's any different in Pakistan?

The terrorists will never go away, we will never kill or jail them all..they have something that guarantee's they will fight to the death to end America as we know it..it's called hate. It's instilled in them as early in their lives as possible and hate is something that is hard to wipeout..just look at various parts of our own country that still treat people of color or anyone different as shit...as anything but equal. The ACLU has to file lawsuits to keep states like Arizona and now Utah, from instituting hosed-up, so-called immigration laws designed to make individuals second class citizens m'dear reader.

If we can't end racism and inequality in our own country, how the fuck do we think we can end global terrorism?

We need to clean our own house before we try to force others to clean theirs. Its a no-fucking-brainer.

Nothing to see here folks...so lets move on shall we?

2011-05-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

Unless of course you are Andrew Breitbart, the deather who wants proof. Thanks to DC at Pass TheDoucheys on the Right for the following graphic and her eloquent post on the topic of Andy the Asshole:

Our President made the right decisions..all the way around and including the one not to publish the gruesome photos of a dead murderer. I have thought a lot about all this fuckery in the last few days..and these are my conclusions:

Ya did good Barack! Thanks for taking the air out of the GOP's rallying cry that Dem's don't have the balls to do anything heavy duty or to protect americans. You proved them wrong and you know it's gonna pay off politically Obama...can't deny that one.

As for Andy B..and Glen Becky..you fools need to shut the fuck up and find something else to harp on. Obama has done what The Shrub couldn't or didn't feel needed to be done..President Obama, and the Navy Seals, took out the Figurehead of the biggest bunch of shitheels on the planet.

BP settles mess they made in Alaska five years ago for 25 million bucks.

2011-05-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

The fucks at BP have cut their losses and paid what many will think is a hefty fine for being cheap bastards and refusing to keep the AK pipeline in decent working order. From the WSJ:

On Tuesday, the company agreed to pay a $25 million fine and bolster its Alaska pipeline network as part of a settlement with the U.S. government over two major oil spills in 2006 in Alaska’s North Slope. The settlement is likely to end a 2009 civil lawsuit the Justice Department filed against BP’s Alaska oil-exploration. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the Bloomberg story; here for the NYT story.

The Justice Department said the penalty is the largest per-barrel penalty to date for an oil spill. The fine amounts to nearly $5,000 per barrel.

Of course the DOJ is gonna paint this as a huge deal and lots of money. But it's not. Not when you consider how much money BP saved by letting the AK pipeline rot and spew hundreds of gallons of crude on once pristine land instead of paying workers to keep it in good working condition.

As I said here and here years ago...they knew the pipes were bad and corroding, they knew they were gonna blow and what they were doing was playing the odds like they always do..and they seem to have won in my humble yet vocal pov. Lets remember what type of land this pipeline crosses, shall we, from the CSM:

"It crosses more than 800 rivers and streams, three mountain ranges, and three major active faults. Three-quarters of it traverses fragile permafrost. It is built in zigzag fashion to allow for expansion and contraction during temperature changes as well as movement from possible earthquakes."

Yes, I have a case of the ass against BP...for lots and lots of reasons..a total of 25 dead Americans for starters, and all the land, sea and animals they have fucked up over the years whilst they make billions and billions of bucks.

1st quarter lobbying: How the Corporations rank.

2011-05-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

FromThe Center for Responsive Politics CNBC has gleaned enough information so that they can provide a decent writeup about The Corporatocracy and who is spending how much in the world of lobbying our elected congress critters:

According to the Center, the US Chamber of Commerce topped the list, with spending of just over $17 million in the three-month period. Next was General Electric, a minority owner of NBC Universal and CNBC, with just over $9 million, and AT&T, with spending of just over $6.8 million.

The highest ranked non-business interest group was AARP, which placed ninth with $5 million in quarterly lobbying spending.

Ranked by sector, the pharmaceutical and health industry topped the list with spending of over $62.5 million, followed by the insurance industry with just under $40 million and the oil and gas sector with $39.4 million in spending.

Lets not forget the gun lobby! After the Tucson Massacre that lovely bunch of fools went from $40,000 during the first quarter of 2009 to $75,000 during the first quarter of 2011.” According to the CNBC report.

Don't you just love Democracy! Thank You SCOTUS for Citizens United...you fucks.

US Oil Companies now exporting more fuel than it sells here. From our Dept of WTF?

2011-05-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

A humble thank you to my bud RJ for this maddening tidbit of information. From the FinancialTimes (subscription req'd):

The US has become a net exporter of fuel for the first time for nearly 20 years as drivers struggle with high petrol prices.

Energy department data show the world’s largest oil consumer in February shipped out 54,000 barrels more petroleum products each day than it purchased on the global market.

*snip*

The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, reported US refined product exports rose 24.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2011 from a year ago, to 2.49m barrels per day. Imports declined 14.4 per cent to 2.16m b/d. The export increase is led by diesel and finished petrol, data from the Energy Information Administration show.

So why in the blue hell are we paying more each month for our gasoline and fuel oil if Big Oil has enough to sell on the open market to other countries and still fill our national needs? This my friends, is total bullshit and we are getting hosed without a doubt. If they wanna screw the consumer, let them fuck over the countries they export to, not the United States as we are still giving these mutha fuckers subsidies up the friggin wazoo, along w/tax breaks and other perks.

This should be price gouging, without a doubt. Paging Eric Holder...

Obama admin's story and reporters story don't jive...not the first time.

2011-05-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

From E&P via the SanFranChron:

The San Francisco Chronicle has accused the White House of lying about a recent spat with one of its reporters. Last week, the Chronicle reported that the White House had threatened to ban Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci from participating in the White House pool after Marinucci, a member of the print pool, used her cell phone to record a group of Bradley Manning supporters heckling Pres. Obama at a recent San Francisco fundraiser.

According to the Chronicle’s first write-up of the spat, the White House press office threatened to ban Marinucci from the print pool during San Francisco events for using her cell phone, and forbade the paper from discussing the incident. A day later, the White House told reporters that the Chronicle’s allegations were “not true.”

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee wasted no time hitting back at the White House.

“Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday,” Bushee wrote on Saturday. “It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.”

I am calling Bullshit on this one Obama...this isn't the first time you all have threatened a reporter w/cutting them off. Does the Orlando Sentinel story about reporter Scott Powers who was made to wait in a closet remind you all in the White House of anything?? Anything at all??

If you can't take the hecklers and the daily bullshit, get another job dude. It goes with the territory.

The only thing the media will report on for the next couple of days - Obama gets Osama.

2011-05-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

This is a luxurious compound? Really?

Oh goody..The Shrub and the Big Dick Cheney have offered their congrats to Obama for killing Osama...all is right with the world...a turn on words there for anyone that misses it. ;p From TPM:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney -- a vocal critic of President Obama's anti-terror policy since the end of the Bush administration -- extended his congratulations to the White House after the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. forces. Cheney called the killing of bin Laden "a tremendous achievement for the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission."

Yes, a wonderful, tremendous achievement, oh fuck yeah! The fact that Al-Qaeda has had over a decade to build their hierarchy and Osama was really nothing more than a figurehead at this point, means nothing of course.And then there is the burning question of who will succeed Osama on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. TPM does the math for us here.

And Pakistan's leadership had no clue who was living in that huge-ass compound until we told them.What exactly are we getting from those assholes for our $20 Billion Bucks since 2001?? I did relish the factoid that the compound had no internet..for some reason that made me chuckle.

Burying him at sea...how quaint! When Bush captured Saddam, we had hundreds of photos to verify that that boogey man was out of the picture. We don't get shit from Obama's administration however in the form of verification...of course we will just take their word for it as we are now told he was shot in the face...even the rightwing nutters will hail and accept the news of Osama's death..cough..yeah sure they will.

This will allow all the batshit crazies to build their conspiracy theories.

The Corporate Media will obsess on this for days..ignoring anything of real importance. Another bright shiny object to swing in front of the masses.

Meanwhile, Yemen's branch of Al-Qaeda is now considered the most powerful and feared, but don't let that stop the celebration of Osama's death. Let the parties begin!

On the menu at the WHCD tonight: Trump

2011-04-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

Both Obama and Seth Meyers ripped on Trump who was at the Washington Post table. Trump didn't seem to enjoy the show, but most of those in attendance did.

Obama also cracked some goodies about Batshit Bachmann and every other jackass thinking of running as the GOP candidate.

I loved it. Nothing makes me happier than someone bitchslapping The Donald around and he can't do a damn thing about it.

Are Rick Snyder's days numbered? We can only hope they are.

2011-04-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

Warms the cockles of my lil black heart! Reuters has the good news:

A group seeking to force new Michigan Governor Rick Snyder into a recall election cleared a first hurdle on Friday when an election panel approved the proposed wording on petitions seeking voter support.

Michigan Citizens United would have to amass more than 800,000 signatures, or 25 percent of the votes cast in Republican Snyder's election in November, within a 90 day period to put the question to a vote at the next election.

Voters in Michigan can file a recall petition six months after Snyder's term began under Michigan law, unlike Wisconsin where petitioners must wait at least a year into new Republican Governor Scott Walker's term to start a recall bid.

Nothing would scare the shit out of the GOP more than Snyder being ousted.