If my count is right, a coalition of House members aligned with the Tea Party and Progressive caucuses could cause any bill sent to the House from the Senate to fail. Michele Bachmann came out with a statement yesterday afternoon signalling probable opposition to any deal that ties unemployment extensions to tax cut extensions. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the chairwoman of the House Tea Party Caucus, said Republicans could balk at voting to extend all the tax cuts for two years if it’s tied to a long-term extension of jobless benefits. “I don’t know that Republicans would necessarily go along with that vote. That would be a very hard vote to take,” Bachmann said on conservative talker Sean Hannity’s radio show on Monday. Assuming Bachmann has the ability to hold the caucus together, that’s 52 House members . The progressive caucus has 83 members . If both joined in opposition, that would leave any bill sent from the Senate short 8 votes in the House. That conclusion assumes such a bill ever leaves the Senate, of course. It’s possible it won’t, depending on how much power Jim DeMint wields. If DeMint, Inhofe, Barasso, Coburn, Bunning, Voinovich, Sanders and Feingold can put together 41 opposing votes between the ultra conservatives and the ultra progressives, it could get stuck there, as well. Ah, we live in interesting times. Those tax cuts may still expire December 31st, and if they do it will be because a coalition of natural enemies joined against a compromise coming from the center. This debate has been a test of everyone’s resolve. There are still lots of plays left before the clock runs out. Stay tuned.
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One would imagine that certain figures in the U.S. military and government, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates here, might not be heartbroken over the news of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest—and one would be right. Related Entries December 6, 2010 WikiLeaks Exposes Secrecy Abuse December 6, 2010 WikiLeaks
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Sad but apparently true: Europeans are gaining on Americans. According to a newly released study, more than half of the adult European population is overweight, and their kids aren’t exactly fitness champs either.
Continue reading …Pretty bizarre, huh? We’ll never really know exactly how many extremists were pushed to violence by the feds, but it’s probably a lot more than people think: The spying game wasn’t all it was cracked up to be for Craig Monteilh, a convicted criminal recruited by the FBI to investigate the march of radical Islam into Southern California. His endless talk of violent “jihad” so alarmed worshippers at the local mosque, that they took out a restraining order against him. Monteilh spent 15 months pretending to be Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian in search of his religious roots. He prayed five times a day at the Islamic Centre in Irvine, Orange County, wearing white robes with a camera hidden in one of its buttons, and carried a set of car keys that contained a secret listening device. The enthusiastic attempt to catch local Muslims discussing terror campaigns backfired, however, when community leaders went to the police with fears that the suddenly devout young man, who got up to pray at 4am, had become a radical in their midst. The terror case Monteilh had been helping build against Ahmadullah Niazi, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard, collapsed in September, when the bungling informant revealed that his FBI handlers had instructed him to entrap his potential target and told him that “Islam is a threat to our national security” . Yesterday, as details of his efforts to persuade Niazi to blow up buildings became public, leading US Muslim organisations said they have suspended all contact with the FBI in protest against the excesses of agents who are secretly, and in some cases illegally, monitoring mosques. “The community feels betrayed,” Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques, told The Washington Post. “They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques… It’s like a soap opera, for God’s sake.”
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Click here to view this media Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on the Ed Schultz Show and would not rule out a filibuster of the deal just reached between President Obama and Republicans on the extension of the Bush tax cuts. I don’t see him necessarily following through on the threat, but he may very well be able to force some more concessions from the Republicans. He manged to get some improvements made to the health care bill by holding out on his support. I imagine we might see a similar scenario take place here. SCHULTZ: Joining me now is the firebrand Independent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Senator, sketchy details on what they have agreed to. You heard what I said. Is this a deal with the devil financially? What do you think? SANDERS: I think it is an absolute disaster and an insult to the vast majority of the American people to be talking about giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country, driving up our deficit, and increasing the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else. Millionaires and billionaires do not need huge tax deductions. That`s the simple truth. And the fact of the matter is, despite Republican rhetoric, if we`re serious about creating jobs in this country, which should be our main priority, that`s one of the worst ways to do it. Much better to take that money, invest in our roads, bridges, railroad systems, infrastructure. You create jobs doing that. SCHULTZ: Senator, how do you feel about the unemployed in this country being held hostage in these negotiations? Because that`s exactly what it was. We`ve got to call it for what it is. It was a bargaining chip on the table after Americans have played into unemployment insurance. SANDERS: Ed, this is the issue — our Republican friends have got to be held accountable. This issue is the insult, the outrage that they want tax breaks for billionaires, but they can`t in their heart come up with extending unemployment compensation so that millions of families in this country will have a modicum of security. That`s an outrage. I believe politically we can rally the American people around that cause. We`re right. We`re talking about social justice. They`re talking about more tax breaks for billionaires who don`t need it. SCHULTZ: This is against the will of the American people. All the polling that`s out there, this is against the majority votes in the House, this is against the majority of votes in the Senate. There were 53 votes on the Senate floor on Saturday. Is President Obama playing with the future of his presidency, in your opinion? SANDERS: Not only is this bad public policy, driving up the deficit, increasing the growing gap between the rich and everybody else, I think it is bad politics. It`s bad politics in the sense of who is going to believe the president or anybody who votes for this in the future when you campaign for years against Bush`s economic policy and then you say, oh, by the way, that`s what I`m voting for? I`m voting for tax breaks for the rich. And, by the way, if it turns out in this deal to be two years, you can bet that that`s just the beginning. It will be extended beyond that. So I think for a Democratic president, Democratic House, Democratic Senate to be following the Bush economic philosophy of tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires is absolutely wrong public policy, absolutely wrong politically. And I have got to tell you, I will do whatever I can to see that 60 votes are not acquired to pass this piece of legislation. SCHULTZ: Will you filibuster this? SANDERS: I will do whatever I can on this. This is a very, very bad agreement. SCHULTZ: So the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, the 13 months of unemployment, that`s the reported meat of the deal. You`re telling us tonight that you will do everything you can to stop this deal? SANDERS: I will. SCHULTZ: And this, of course, would push it into the next session of the Congress and we would go back to the old right. That`s what you would take right now, Senator? SANDERS: I believe, Ed, that we have the vast majority of the American people on our side. I think we`ve got to hold tough on this, hold firm on this, and not concede to Republicans, who, as you indicated, have absolutely no inclination for compromise. They want it all for their rich friends. SCHULTZ: Senator, good to have you with us tonight. Thanks for speaking up. SANDERS: Thank you.
Continue reading …The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has surrendered to police in London on a sexual assault warrant from Sweden. Assange is scheduled to appear before a magistrate later today to face extradition, something his lawyers have vowed to fight.
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enlarge My grandparents, both sets, raised children during the Great Depression. My mother’s family were New England dairy farmers, and although they too struggled in hard economic times, they were well enough off to leave surplus milk and butter along with vegetables from their large garden on an honesty table by the road. Most of the time, the food disappeared during the night, under cover of dark when their less fortunate neighbours could avoid the shame of being seen taking what they couldn’t afford to pay for, but couldn’t afford not to take when their children were going hungry. My father’s family wasn’t as lucky. They were what is colloquially known as ‘white trash’ dirt farmers in the deep south. My father dropped out of school at the age of twelve to help on the farm, and left home at sixteen to join the service, the only route out of poverty open for a boy with no education and no skills. By the time I came along in the mid-fifties, the Great Depression had gone, even if the scars hadn’t healed. My sisters and I grew up poor. Both my parents worked; my mother was a part-time nurse, my father slowly working his way up in the then burgeoning electronics industry, a tough struggle for a man with no high school diploma, never mind a university degree. With four kids to feed, the money didn’t go far. Although we never went without food, my mum eked out tuna casseroles with more casserole than tuna, and made ‘milk’ – half non fat, half powdered – go as far as she could get it to for a family of six. I only ever had real milk in grade school, with graham crackers, supplied by the school. We had our sandwiches on the cheapest loaves of bread available, usually with a slice of ‘cheese food’ in between. My dad made coffee that added in leftover grounds, and was still as weak as ant’s piss. I worked in the high school cafeteria all through my sophomore and junior year to save my parents the cost of a lunch (which although it sucked for my ‘coolness’ factor, it more than made up for when it came to the best of the pick kept back for us student volunteers by overworked lunch ladies). Even though I was the oldest of four girls, I still got hand-me-down clothes off my mum’s younger sisters growing up, and by the time it was handed down to the fourth girl, it had a lot of patches and repairs. My mum sewed whatever else we needed, even underwear – I can remember the rare time I got a brand new store bought dress for my first real date with visceral clarity; my grandmother paid for it. If we went to the park for a picnic, us kids were sent out with plastic bags to scour all the rubbish bins for empty cans and bottles for the grocery store rebate – our car stank permanently of old beer and Coke. My parents, particularly my dad, understood the value of education. I was thirteen when he finally got his high school diploma, working full-time while going to night school, and fifteen when he got his first college degree. I have a wonderful photograph of Dad in his college graduation gown, my baby sister in his arms, reaching for the tassel on his cap. He helped me out as best he could after I graduated from high school, but in that age of Reagan’s paradise of trickle-down economics, tuition for anything more than community college was out of the question. I applied for every scholarship I could, went into deep debt with student loans and worked crappy, crappy jobs to put myself through school. I biked to work because I couldn’t afford a car, collected discarded fruit and vegetables from behind the supermarket to make canned veggies and jars of jam and fruits. I learned how to ‘accidently’ put the cheque for the telephone bill into the envelope for the electric bill, and vice versa, to buy a little more time before very meagre paydays. I paid for what I could with food stamps, knew when the free surplus butter and cheese distribution days were and, when times got very thin, accepted charity food parcels from non-denominational church organizations. I was naturally skinny as a kid, but there were times when I looked like Auschwitz, and sometimes felt like it. The awful part now is, I’m not technically poor anymore – or skinny. It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve managed to earn what neither of my parents ever did, a master’s degree from a top English university, and am now working on my doctorate. That little girl in my father’s arms is now a university professor herself. I’m living with a fantastic, wonderful man who makes good money at a secure job. I work part-time as a university tutor. We live in a nice house, in a nice city in New Zealand, where I have an office with a view of the ocean. But my partner has watched me sorting through the ‘reduced for quick sale’ bins at the market, comparing prices on cheap cuts of chicken and sausages, etc., and keeps trying to tell me I don’t have to do that anymore. We can have the good meat now. We can have steak if we want it. We can even eat out every week. Ditto buying my clothes at second-hand op shops, and bidding for what we need off TradeMe instead of new. It’s not that he’s profligate, far from it. We are just…comfortably middle class. But my stomach remembers being hungry, and my head is permanently locked into ‘poor’ mode – just as my parents were. A few months of prosperity is hardly enough time for me to adjust to being comfortable or middle class now. And I don’t trust that there’s really any such thing as a ‘secure’ job – the fear is always there. Always. It will never go away. And I know there are a hell of a lot of people just like me, who know what it’s like to be hungry and scared, to struggle, even when they don’t have to anymore. Looking back, the poverty of Reaganomics seems almost benign compared to what far too many Americans are currently having to endure. So while I watch Congress argue about preserving huge tax cuts for the wealthy ( many of whom are in government themselves ) while not only cutting back on funding for school lunches but castigating parents who are not that far removed from my own – we had our cereal with that horrible milk mix my mother made, and precious few bananas – I suspect that there aren’t too many Republicans, or Democrats for that matter, in Congress who have any clue what that fear feels like. Maybe they should .
Continue reading …Elizabeth Edwards Is Living Her Final Weeks At Home. Our Thoughts Are With Her
December 7, 2010 No CommentGod, I love Elizabeth Edwards. Like most of us here in the blogosphere, I adored her feistiness, her willingness to stand up to right-wing crap like Coulter’s from the beginning. It was always such a treat to read her online comments. And what a fundamentally decent woman, someone who always felt for other people and spoke about them in such a compelling way. (Maybe she’s the one who should have run for president.) I’m adding my own best wishes and prayers to those of the Edwards family as they accompany the talented and much-loved Elizabeth during the last weeks of her life’s journey. I’m so grateful to her for fighting our battles with us, and very glad she’s getting to have a good death at home, with the people she loves and who love her: (CNN) – Elizabeth Edwards is surrounded by family and friends in her North Carolina home after being informed by her doctors that further cancer treatment would be unproductive. “Elizabeth has been advised by her doctors that further treatment of her cancer would be unproductive,” the Edwards family said Monday in a statement. “She is resting at home with family and friends and has posted this message to friends on her Facebook page.” The message from Edwards, the wife of two-time presidential candidate John Edwards, reads: You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces – my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined. The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And, yes, there are certainly times when we aren’t able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It’s called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful. It isn’t possible to put into words the love and gratitude I feel to everyone who has and continues to support and inspire me every day. To you I simply say: you know. Edwards was told by her doctors last week that additional cancer treatments were futile, said a source close to the family. Her prognosis was described in terms of weeks, not months, the source said. She is receiving treatment and medications, however, for symptoms and side effects. “She is not in pain, Elizabeth is in good spirits,” said the source. “She has prepared for this” John Edwards and their children are at her side, along with Elizabeth’s brother and sister.
Continue reading …C-SPAN Callers and Democratic Strategist McMahon Give Us a Lesson on How to Talk to Republicans on Tax Cuts
December 7, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media Far too often I watch or listen to C-SPAN’s morning call-in show Washington Journal and just get disgusted with either how severely misinformed some of the callers are, or the guests they have on and whether they’re doing a good job of representing progressive policies and not just giving credence to Republican talking points and the lies that are being spread on Fox News and right wing hate talk every day. This was not one of those occasions. The subject was the potential extension of the Bush tax cuts. The guests were Democratic strategist Steve McMahon and Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak. There are a few thing I would have pointed out that McMahon did not during this segment, but that said, I think the response of the callers and McMahon to Mackowiak’s lies should be taken as an object lesson for anyone that wants to knock down the Republican’s ridiculous talking points on tax cuts and job creation. Sadly we can’t get anyone in our media to do as good of a job as they did here when Republicans try to lie about tax cuts creating jobs. So here’s how the first call of the segment went. DEMOCRATIC CALLER TED: Thank you. You’re not entitled to your own facts. You’re entitled to your own opinions. Republicans are wildly inaccurate. 97-98% of small businesses fall below the $250,000 tax limit. But I have two or three quick comments that I wanted to make. There’s no way Republicans are representing their constituents… not representing the people in their districts when it comes to the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. I know some of those people with the millions and billions. They’re not creating jobs. They are investing in the stock market, in properties, all over the country, mountain homes, city homes. When Bush enacted these tax cuts ten years ago it was at a time when it looked like the country would be operating and we were approaching a surplus. You know… god forbid that we have a surplus. I live my life, I operate on a surplus. I know what that is. There’s no surplus any more. The tax revenues over the ten years from millionaires and billionaires is something to the effect of $700 billion dollars and it’s been shown that, and I wish that Democrats… Republicans need to be more honest, but the Democrats should explain how one dollar nets thirty two cents of every dollar of GDP. Mackowaik responds by saying that the Democrats didn’t have the votes to get the bill passed which would have extended the tax cuts for the lower incomes. While that’s true, it doesn’t address what the caller said, which is that Republicans have been lying about how many small businesses would be affected by the tax increase if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire for anyone making over $250,000 or taxable income a year. Mackowaik said that “good policy makes for good politics” and noted that the Democrats could have brought this up before the election, which is again true. What he doesn’t bother to mention is the reason that “good policy” isn’t being pushed harder by the Democratic Party is because of the number of “conservative”, a.k.a. corporate or ought to be Republican Blue Dog Democrats. Those vulnerable Democrats he was talking about are just that. And then we got our next caller. REPUBLICAN CALLER TERRY: Yes, I understand the Republican’s stance on wanting to write tax cuts for the upper 1% because they provide jobs, but I am wondering why maybe they didn’t make sure, like include language to make sure that the tax cuts would go to businesses that actually provide jobs here in America for Americans as opposed to off shoring overseas or hiring, you know, people with VISAs over American citizens. And here was my favorite part of watching this whole exchange. Rather than answer her, Mackowaik sits there silently and rolls his eyes over to Steve McMahon as though to say… “Hey, this one’s yours buddy.” McMahon goes ahead and takes the question but doesn’t let Mackowaik off the hook for having to respond as well. He points out that Sen. Warner proposed a bill that would have done exactly that by offering a payroll holiday to small businesses that do create jobs in the United States and that Republicans voted against it. Mackowitz responds by saying that of course Republicans care about protecting American jobs and that if there “was a smart way to do that, Republicans would support that” and then goes on to say he can’t find any economists that say you should raise taxes helps to create jobs. He also goes back and attempts to rebut the previous caller by using the Republican talking point that those over the $250,000 threshold represent half of all small business income, which of course we all know means they start counting things like hedge fund managers and other really rich people that don’t employ very many Americans. McMahon responds by saying that the Democrats didn’t do a very good job of framing the debate, which I agree with completely. He also points out that the opposite of what Mackowitz said is true when it comes to taxes and job creation. MCMAHON: You know, on the small business thing, I just go back to the fact; if you’re a small business person, you pay taxes on your profits and if you create a job, job creation and every cost associated with that is deductible, which means you don’t pay any taxes on… you pay less taxes in a high tax code… in a high tax environment if you create more jobs and you spend more money on employees. So I think, you know, Matt likes to say you can’t find an economist who says cutting taxes will create jobs. I can’t find an economist who says that giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires will create any jobs and in fact the tax code suggests just the opposite. Thank you Steve McMahon and thank you Terry. If Republicans want to insist on tax cuts and that those tax cuts create jobs, we need to be holding their feet to the fire to explain how they create AMERICAN jobs. You force them to make that argument and they lose, just as Mackowaik did here. If our leadership and the talking heads on cable television aren’t going to hold our politicians responsible for asking the same questions that the callers did here, we need to be doing it. Write an op-ed. Write to your representatives in the Congress. Write to the media outlets and ask them these same questions. What are you going to do to protect American jobs and if you want tax cuts, how are you going to assure they to towards hiring Americans? I hope Chris Matthews allows McMahon to make these same points the next time he has him on Hardball but he’ll have a lot more trouble making his points with Tweety talking over him the whole time than he did here.
Continue reading …WaPo Devotes Another Supportive Article to Angry Leftist Curator and Protesters at Radical Gay Exhibit
December 7, 2010 No CommentTuesday's Washington Post Style section carried this front-page headline “Pesky ant video refuses to die.” But the only new developments on the National Portrait Gallery story were security officers removing two (left-wing) protesters on Saturday and the laments of
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