This Dog is Not A Fan Of Lemons
JRTs are the cutest dogs in the world! (Yes, I may be prejudiced.)
Daily Archives: October 1, 2012
Mitt Romney’s agenda is no secret: have you been paying attention to the GOP Congress?
Tim Dickinson writes that if you want to understand Romney’s game plan, you just need to look at what Republicans have been doing in Congress:
“There is no longer any ambiguity about the path that Romney would pursue as president, because it’s the same trajectory charted by Ryan, the architect of the House GOP’s reactionary agenda since the party’s takeover in 2010. “Picking Ryan as vice president outlines the future of the next four or eight years of a Romney administration,” GOP power broker Grover Norquist exulted in August.
“If the Ryan budget had come to [Romney's] desk as president, he would have signed it, of course.” – Ed Gillespie, Romney campaign senior adviser.
“Ryan has outlined a plan that has support in the Republican House and Senate. You have a real sense of where Romney’s going.” In fact, Norquist told party activists back in February, the true direction of the GOP is being mapped out by congressional hardliners. All the Republicans need to realize their vision, he said, is a president “with enough working digits to handle a pen.”
“The GOP legislation awaiting Romney’s signature isn’t simply a return to the era of George W. Bush. From abortion rights and gun laws to tax giveaways and energy policy, it’s far worse. Measures that have already sailed through the Republican House would roll back clean-air protections, gut both Medicare and Medicaid, lavish trillions in tax cuts on billionaires while raising taxes on the poor, and slash everything from college aid to veteran benefits. In fact, the tenets of Ryan Republicanism are so extreme that they even offend the pioneers of trickle-down economics. “Ryan takes out the ax and goes after programs for the poor – which is the last thing you ought to cut,” says David Stockman, who served as Ronald Reagan’s budget director. “It’s ideology run amok.”
“[...] A look at the bills that Republicans have passed since they took control of the House in 2010 offers a clear blueprint of the agenda that a Romney administration would be primed to establish…” Continue reading.
Mitt Romney’s agenda, summarized:
- Fewer jobs (austerity measures)
- God, guns and gays (keep the base rubes happy)
- Drill and pollute (deregulate, enrich the wealthy)
- Bash immigrants (keep the base rubes happy)
- Enrich billionaires (tax cuts — always tax cuts)
- Slash government (austerity measures)
- Destroy healthcare (austerity measures)
Not only does Mitt have enough working digits to handle a pen, but the next POTUS will be choosing Supreme Court justices:
The Supreme Court is not on the ballot in November, but its future direction on issues such as abortion, gay rights, gun rights, voting laws and the role of money in politics depends on who is elected president for the next four years. The justices, who open their annual term Monday, are closely split along ideological lines. The current court has four liberals appointed by Democrats, four conservatives appointed by Republicans, and a centrist Republican in 76-year-old Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The court’s makeup means that a President Mitt Romney could tip the court decisively to the right if he were to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 79, with a conservative. Similarly, a reelected President Obama could tilt the court to the left if he were to replace Kennedy or Justice Antonin Scalia, 76, with a liberal.
The Comatose Vote
via: yobaba
Paul Ryan: “It would take me too long to go through all of the math.”
From the back-half of the Ambiguously Unspecific Duo:
Huffington Post: “The Obama campaign has blasted the Romney-Ryan ticket for not providing details on how it would give Americans such large tax breaks without growing the deficit. Ryan reiterated in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” that the plan would drop taxpayers’ bills by 20 percent without costing a dime, due to closed tax loopholes, but he was short on specifics when pressed by host Chris Wallace.
“You haven’t given me the math,” Wallace said in one exchange.
“I don’t have the … It would take me too long to go through all of the math,” Ryan responded.”
Just take their word for it.
Monitoring Mitt’s mental well-being: clouds
NY Times: As Mr. Romney headed to an evening fund-raiser in West Palm Beach, Fla., a reporter asked if he would be campaigning more extensively. “Ha, ha. We’re in the stretch, aren’t we?” Mr. Romney said before promptly changing the subject and pointing to the sky. “Look at those clouds. It’s beautiful. Look at those things.”
Medicare begins fining hospitals today: Affordable Care Act
CBS News: “As of Monday, Medicare will start fining hospitals that have too many patients readmitted within 30 days of discharge due to complications. The penalties are part of a broader push under President Barack Obama’s health care law to improve quality while also trying to save taxpayers money.”
— Medicare fines over hospitals’ readmitted patients (via: sarahlee310)
The entitlements of the job “creators” (i.e. the sneering plutocrats)
Steven Pearlstein wrote an excellent “manifesto” for the entitled, the job “creators.” Here is some of it, be sure to click through and read the whole thing:
I am entitled to a healthy and well-educated workforce, a modern and efficient transportation system and protection for my person and property, just as I am entitled to demonize the government workers who provide them.
I am entitled to complain bitterly about taxes that are always too high, even when they are at record lows.
[...] I am entitled to have my earned income taxed as capital gains and my investment income taxed at the lowest rate anywhere in the world — or not at all.
I am entitled to inside information and favorable investment opportunities not available to ordinary investors. I am entitled to brag about my investment returns.
I am entitled to pass on my accumulated wealth tax-free to heirs, who in turn, are entitled to claim that they earned everything they have.
I am entitled to use unlimited amounts of my own or company funds to buy elections without disclosing such expenditures to shareholders or the public.
[...] I am entitled to fire any worker who tries to organize a union. I am entitled to break any existing union by moving, or threatening to move, operations to a union-hostile environment.
I am entitled to a duty of care and loyalty from employees and investors who are owed no such duty in return.
I am entitled to operate my business free of all government regulations other than those written or approved by my industry.
I am entitled to load companies up with debt in order to pay myself and investors big dividends — and then blame any bankruptcy on over-compensated workers.
I am entitled to contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, loans and even bailouts from government, even as I complain about job-killing government budget deficits.
I am entitled to federal entitlement reform.
I am entitled to take credit for all the jobs I create while ignoring any jobs I destroy. Continued…
Speaking of which:
image: destroythegop
Exactly, Mr. President
What if there’s a blowout on Election Day?
Although he still thinks the election will be close, and even that Romney could pull out a win, Michael Tomasky has some fun imagining what would happen IF the President wins in a landslide. Would anything actually change if Obama blew Romney out of the water on Election Day? YES:
- First, a marvelously amusing recriminations war among Republicans and conservatives about what happened, and it will result in the conservative movement marginalizing itself from mainstream America even further. It will start with arguments over political strategy…
- [The] Republicans in Congress would almost surely have to become less obstinate. Yes, there will be intense pressure from the Tea Party wing to draw an even firmer line against Obama. But I suspect there will be more pressure in the other direction, especially on senators, who represent whole states…
- [In] one recent Washington Post story that some Hill Republicans are preparing themselves now for coming to terms with the idea of giving in to Obama on upper-income tax increases. A huge victory will ratchet up such pressure. So let’s say that’s impact number three: Obama gets his grand bargain before Jan. 1. He gets his tax increase, meaning that some Republicans vote to raise a tax for the first time in 20 years. What he gives in return for that is a serious question…
- And fourth and finally, if all this happens, the political balance of the country changes. We’ll still be bitterly divided, because the people responsible for sowing most of the division will never shut up. But it won’t be a 50-50 country anymore. It’ll be a 54-46 country. That’s a country with a clear majority. Built by Obama…
In other words, there could be lot less of this malarkey:
image: truth-has-a-liberal-bias
YOU can help it to happen:
Morning bunny for your Monday
via: silas216
Nope.
Shield your mind, right wing citizen!
It’s not Orwellian (or self-serving) at all for conservative media to urge supporters to only listen to conservative media.
David Frum: “This is pretty funny. The conservative Media Research Center has posted a public letter urging supporters not to listen to non-conservative media.
“Exposure to diverging views: no telling where that might lead. The risk is high and real that listeners may well find the New York Times more credible than Fox News.
“But that’s not the funny part. The funny part is that MRC is announcing with pride that their letter urging conservatives to forswear non-conservative sources of information has been signed by Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. Of course it has! If you’re selling high-fructose soda, you hate to see your customers wasting stomach space on milk and orange juice.“
It’s no wonder that some people in America are completely insane: a steady diet from the “fever swamp of crazed conspiracy theories and shockingly offensive rhetoric…[of] obscure right-wing websites and viral e-mail chains,” supplemented daily with Fox “news” and AM hate-radio. And now self-censorship.
The base rubes on the far right are living in a kind of Twilight Zone state of pleasurable self-hypnosis. Instead of becoming even a little bit alarmed when their preferred media (propaganda outlet) tells them to censor the information they receive, they just lean back and slowly nod their heads… listening with half-closed eyes.
Can you believe it’s October?
Happy October!
via: thedailywhat via: bothsidesofthegun
Here’s a great example of the fever swamp of rightwing conspiracy theories: 2004 edition
Support the troops (except when they’re Democrats, or when it’s inconvenient, or when they serve under a Democratic president, or if the Republican a Democrat is running against has less of a military record, or… on and on and on).
Straight from Our Twitchy Lady of Interment Camps:
…
Do conservative women have the market cornered on crazy eyes?
It’s funny that the Republicans have nominated a guy who is the literal embodiment of everything they were accusing John Kerry of being in 2004.
Well, this is awkward: when rightwing Christianity devours itself
The only negative to the implosion of rightwing fundamentalism is that it’s just not happening fast enough.
via: confrontingbabble-on
Bill Keller’s website: http://www.votingforsatan.com
NOTE: Bill Keller has also claimed that President Obama is God’s enemy.
But look, I guess it’s good to know who’s been officially appointed to stand in judgement of all people and speak for GOD (when Rick Santorum is busy, of course): good ol’ Bill Keller.
Fox is only the visible part of an alternative reality, a fever swamp of crazed conspiracy theories
Ben Adler: “Liberals talk a lot about Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and other conservative media that are on the mainstream radar. But liberals and mainstream journalists tend to forget that there is a fever swamp of crazed conspiracy theories and shockingly offensive rhetoric that exists in obscure right-wing websites and viral e-mail chains. As David Frum recently noted on his Daily Beast blog, it is impossible to understand the dog whistles you hear on Fox News if you aren’t familiar with the viral e-mail smears their audience believes in. Specifically, Frum was referring to Fox host Greg Gutfield’s line that “Obama is now out of the closet.… he’s officially gay for class warfare.” That’s a reference to the conservative e-mail meme that Obama is gay. Frum writes: ‘Fox is only the most visible part of a vast alternative reality. Fox’s coverage of the news cannot be properly understood in isolation, but only in conjunction with the rest of that system—and especially the chain emails that do so much to shape the worldview of Fox viewers.’”
