Obama’s Policies Are Working

 Politics
Feb 202012
 

Early in the Obama administration, Republicans kept blaming him for the economy.  They called the recession that their policies had caused the Obama economy.  They called the job losses they had brought about Obama’s unemployment.  They promised new ideas to fix the economy, but never came up with anything more that more and bigger tax cuts for and less regulation on millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals.  In short, they offered only more of what caused the mess.  Now they are talking less about the economy.  When they do mention it, they usually lie and say it’s getting worse.  When they cannot escape an improvement, they lie to try to take the credit for themselves.  But mostly, they are advancing their extreme social agenda out of desperation.  They will do anything keep people from realizing that Obama’s policies are working.

20bikiniPresident Obama had barely taken the oath of office when Republicans announced their highest priority was to make sure his presidency would fail. Nearly every day since, they’ve proclaimed his every policy move a failure. Whenever the news was bad, Republicans blame our president. For instance when the stock market fell below 700 points (on the S&P index), my conservative friends called it “Obama’s economy.” But now that his policies are working, and the market is flirting with 1,300 again, they ignore it.

And there are many more improvements documented at that link. The unemployment rate is dropping. Jobs are being created. The auto industry is making a comeback. Manufacturing is improving. The GDP has shown growth in numerous consecutive quarters. President Obama should be getting credit for it.

Instead, even today on the campaign trail, the Republican candidates repeat the same tired refrain. They tell the voters “Obama’s policies failed.” But is that true? The evidence suggests it is not. Despite the Republican party’s best efforts to thwart him, they were only able to slow the recovery down. So sure, the recovery is not as advanced as anyone would like, but the vast majority of economic experts agree, the Recovery Act worked… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Detroit News>

Sure, there are some things Obama had done that I have not liked, and there have been some things I consider necessary that Obama has not done. However, most fail to realize that he has done far more right than wrong, because only the problems get attention.  If it bleeds, it leads.

In January 2013 either Barack Obama or the Republican nominee will be President.  Wishing for 3rd party success will not make it happen.  No 3rd party candidate will exceed the 2.74% of Ralph Nader in 2000.  Nader had better ballot penetration then than any do today, Nader had better name recognition, and Nader was very well funded with Republican money.

But the old saw about this being a choice of the greater vs. the lesser evil is a non sequitur.  It is a choice of the greater evil vs. the imperfect but pretty good.

Share
 Posted by TomCat at 12:00 am  12 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , ,

Open Thread–2/20/2011

 Blog News, Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Feb 202012
 

Yesterday I rested as much as I could.  I’m current with replies.  I’m scheduled for a colonoscopy on Tuesday morning.  No worries.  It’s routine, because of my age.  Because of it, I’m likely to be gone for two days, so expect no more articles, until early Thursday morning.  This morning and early afternoon, I’ll sleep all I can.  This afternoon and tonight I’ll be taking the medications to purge me for the test.  I will not be able to sit on one place long enough to concentrate on anything, except for the place made of porcelain.  I’ll be up all night taking medicine.  During the test I’ll be under a twilight anesthetic, so I’m likely to he groggy afterwards, in addition to sleepy from being up all night.  By Wednesday I should be able to research again.  I am not looking forward to this at all.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:39 (average 4:23).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From CBS: Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum stood by comments he made Saturday opposing prenatal testing, saying it leads to selective abortions, and he said the president is "continuing" policies that encourage such abortions.

How much more invasive into privacy can these Republicans get?

From Minnesota Public Radio News: Mitt Romney returned to Salt Lake City on Saturday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 2002 Winter Games he helped lead, but the GOP presidential candidate has come under attack for urging the federal government to provide big bucks for Olympic expenses.

Republicans believe in limited government spending, but not on anything they want.

From Think Progress: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday this morning, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) couldn’t explain why the public rejects large parts of the Republican legislative agenda and instead blamed Democrats for opposing it.

 

Cantor is full of Santorum. This is why the public rejects their programs.  Republicans govern exclusively for the benefit of millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals. They do NOT represent YOU!

Cartoon:

20Cartoon

Share
 Posted by TomCat at 12:00 am  10 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Romney Loses a Racist Hypocrite

 Politics
Feb 192012
 

Family Values Republicans have a way of proving that they believe their family values must be imposed by force on everyone else, but do not apply to their own behavior.  In the Totalitarian Corporate Plutocracy of Brewerstan, formerly Arizona, Romney had such a man as the co-chair of his campaign there.  Even before the scandal broke, Paul Babeu was problematic due to his extreme hatred of undocumented Latinos and his association with the White Supremacy movement.

19Babeau…Babeu comes with some serious baggage. Over the last two years, the federal government and local politicians have repeatedly chided Babeu for making sensationalist, unsubstantiated allegations about border violence. Babeu has called President Obama "the enemy" and said the president has come close to committing treason through his immigration policies. He has also come under criticism by for appearing on a white nationalist talk radio program that’s been a frequent platform for white supremacists.

Babeu is best known for his public advocacy on behalf of Arizona’s controversial 2010 immigration law, SB 1070. His tough talk on border crime has made him a high-profile figure on the right. He’s dubbed himself "Sheriff Paul"—a nod to fellow Arizonan "Sheriff Joe" Arpaio—and made frequent appearances on Fox News. In July 2010, in the midst of a media blitz to promote the bill, he appeared on a Memphis-based radio program called "The Political Cesspool." [Hate Group delinked] The show’s cohost, James Edwards, has been labeled a "white nationalist" by both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Mother Jones>

You might consider a family values candidate a hypocrite, if he was also gay.  You might call a racist spokesman for the hatred of undocumented Latinos a hypocrite, if his gay boyfriend was an undocumented Latino.  And you light call a law-and-order sheriff a hypocrite, if he committed the felony of blackmail by threatening to deport his his gay, undocumented Latino boyfriend, if he did not cover up their relationship.  Ladies and gentlemen, we have a trifecta!

19Babeau2Embattled Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who is facing explosive allegations that he and his attorney tried to intimidate a former lover by threatening to have him deported, on Saturday quit his position as an Arizona co-chairman of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

“Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams told The Arizona Republic in a statement. "We support his decision."

Babeu, who also is running for the U.S. House in Arizona’s new 4th Congressional District, and his attorney, Chris DeRose, deny the accusations. But Babeu’s judgment also is coming under scrutiny for allegedly taking provocative photos of himself and sending them over the Internet. News of the accusations against Babeu first broke Friday in the Phoenix New Times, which also published the photos… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Arizona Central>

To be clear, I could not care less that Babeu is gay.  I support full equality for the LGBT community.  I object to Babeu’s hypocrisy.

We should not be surprised that Babeu is a complete hypocrite for three reasons.  First, he is a Republican politician.  Second, he was chosen by Multiple Mitt.  Third, he is a favored associate of the Brewerstan Death Angel, Jan Brewer.

Share
 Posted by TomCat at 12:03 am  19 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Open Thread–2/19/2012

 Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Feb 192012
 

Yesterday was restful.  I both slept and researched more hours than normal.  I’m current with replies.  Today I will have to make a store run.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:18 (average 4:23).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: If Mitt Romney’s Dog Could Write A Song, It Might Go Like This

 

Romney is just as oblivious to the needs of people too!

From Care2: Apparently, the Supreme Court is now in the business of forcing states to break their own laws as long as it benefits corporations and the politicians they control. On Wednesday, SCOTUS blocked a Montana court ruling that upheld the state’s century-old limit on corporate campaign spending. So much for state’s rights…

The author does not understand the ruling, which only stays the Montana court ruling until that ruling can be appealed, opening the door for a full review of Citizens United.

From Common Dreams: A clear message has been given to the United States through the tripartite summit of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan that Pakistan will support Iran in case of any possible aggression against it.

Moreover, Pakistan has clearly affirmed that the US will not be allowed to set up any airbases in Pakistan with the purpose of attacking Iran. The joint declaration says: "Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan will ensure respect of territorial sovereignty of each other and would not allow any threat emanating from their respective territories against each other".

What kind of insanity is it when our client, our so-called ally, and a state we oppose form a pact against this nation?  We need to pull the plug on funding Karzai, whose only qualification ever was his willingness to be a puppet for G.W. ChickenHawk and Big Oil, and get out troops out as soon as we can.  In addition we need to pull the plug on financing Pakistan.  With friends like that, who needs enemies.

From Washington Post: Ron Paul has gained 83 votes on Mitt Romney following a Republican presidential caucus in eastern Maine, where voting last week had been postponed due to bad weather. Romney still holds a 156-vote lead over Paul in statewide totals.

Thank goodness!  If Ron Paul had actually won one, the acolytes in his cult would be even more insufferable than they already are!

Cartoon:

19Cartoon

Share
 Posted by TomCat at 12:02 am  10 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Santorum Froths Lies Over Millionaire’s Remarks

 Politics
Feb 182012
 

Presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, has been greatly inconvenienced by the “aspirin tablet between the knees” joke by his own private millionaire, Foster Friess.  First, he assumed a victim stance.  Then, after all his rhetoric against birth control in recent weeks, Santorum actually tried to present himself as a birth control supporter.  One has to wonder if he took lessons from Romney.

18MisogynySantorumRepublican presidential candidate Rick Santorum took a page from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s playbook on Friday and lashed out at CBS News for asking him about a major supporter who dismissed the need for contraception by saying women could put an aspirin “between their knees.”

“This is someone who is a supporter of mine and I’m not responsible for every comment a supporter of mine makes,” the candidate told CBS host Charlie Rose. “It was a bad joke. It was a stupid joke. It’s not reflective of me or my record on this issue. … This is the same gotcha politics that you get from the media.”

“Nobody said you were responsible,” Rose explained. “They said, how would you characterize it and what had you said to him, not that you were responsible? It’s to understand how you differ from what this person said.”

“This is what you guys do,” Santorum charged. “You don’t do this with President Obama. In fact with President Obama, what you did was you went out and defended him against someone who he sat in a church for — for 20 years — and defended him that, ‘Oh, he can’t possibly believe what he listened to for 20 years.’”

“It’s a double standard,” he continued. “This is what you’re pulling off, and I’m going to call you on it.”

Rose noted that as late as last October, the former Pennsylvania senator had said birth control was “not OK”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Raw Story>

Here’s the video.

That’s so many lies, it proves he Republican!

That’s so many lies, it proves he Republican!

That’s so many lies, it proves he Republican!

Ed Schultz adds far more depth in interviews with Jan Shakowsky (D-IL) and Terry O’Neill, and more on the Republican War on Women.

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

I hope they keep it up, because it demonstrates just how destructive to freedom Republican big, intrusive government would be.  All support personhood, where an absolute right to life begins at conception and ends at birth.  Consider how much more Republicans will overreach if they get the White House.

Share
 Posted by TomCat at 12:01 am  17 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , ,

Romney’s Vulture Capitalist

 Politics
Feb 182012
 

We have heard quite a bit of late about Newt Gingrich’s personal billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, and Santorum’s personal millionaire, Foster Friess, but many may not be aware that Romney hasa a personal billionaire too, and like Romney, his billionaire is also a vulture capitalist.

18RomneyVanderslootFrank VanderSloot is an Idaho billionaire and the CEO of Melaleuca, Inc. [Rip-off delinked] , a controversial billion-dollar-a-year company which peddles dietary supplements and cleaning products; back in 2004, Forbes, echoing complaints to government agencies, described the company as “a pyramid selling organization, built along the lines of Herbalife and Amway.” VanderSloot has long used his wealth to advance numerous right-wing political causes. Currently, he is the national finance co-chair of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, and his company has become one of the largest donors ($1 million) to the ostensibly “independent” pro-Romney SuperPAC, Restore Our Future. Melaleuca’s get-rich pitches have in the past caused Michigan regulators to take action, resulting in the company’s entering into a voluntary agreement to “not engage in the marketing and promotion of an illegal pyramid”‘; it entered into a separate voluntary agreement with the Idaho attorney general’s office, which found that “certain independent marketing executives of Melaleuca” had violated Idaho law; and the Food and Drug Administration previously accused Melaleuca of deceiving consumers about some of its supplements.

But it is VanderSloot’s chronic bullying threats to bring patently frivolous lawsuits against his political critics — magazines, journalists, and bloggers — that makes him particularly pernicious and worthy of more attention. In the last month alone, VanderSloot, using threats of expensive defamation actions, has successfully forced Forbes, Mother Jones and at least one local gay blogger in Idaho to remove articles that critically focused on his political and business practices. He has been using this abusive tactic in Idaho for years: suppressing legitimate political speech by threatening or even commencing lawsuits against even the most obscure critics (he has even sued local bloggers for “copyright infringement” after they published a threatening letter sent by his lawyers). This tactic almost always succeeds in silencing its targets, because even journalists and their employers who have done nothing wrong are afraid of the potentially ruinous costs they will incur when sued by a litigious billionaire… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Salon>

For Mitt Romney, this is a perfect match, because both achieved great wealth from crushing other people with lies inspired by greed.  VanderSloot defines the kind of person for whom Mitt Romney will exclusively govern if elected.  He will NOT represent YOU!

Share
 Posted by TomCat at 12:01 am  10 Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,

Did the Maine GOP Fear Being Certified Insane?

 Personal
Feb 172012
 

A few days back, I criticized Ron Paul for suggesting that the Republican party of Maine had stacked the deck against him.  When I’m wrong I say so.  In my own defense, it was an easy mistake to make as it’s been hard to find a time when Paul or his acolytes were not sniveling over some perceived injustice.  It is now clear that there were enough irregularities in the Maine caucuses to bring Paul’s complaint into the realm of possibility.  Imagine, if you will the Chair of the Maine Republican Party.  Watching the returns he sees that Ron Paul might actually win the caucuses there.  Oh the shame!  Oh the humiliation they would suffer to be the only state where Ron Paul has ever, or will ever, win the caucuses or a primary!  Faced with such an anathema, I can picture the party leaders cooking the results out of fear that the entire Republican Party of Maine might be certified insane.

17RacistRonnieWashington County, Maine, is the easternmost point in the continental United States. This region of rocky shores and pinetree forests is populated by proudly independent — and defiant — citizens.

The Republicans in Washington County have supported such radical and underdog candidates as Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan in the past.

Too bad they didn’t get to participate in the Maine caucuses last weekend.

Due to a snowstorm, the Republican party in Washington County (and in various locations in neighboring Hancock County) was forced to reschedule its caucuses for this coming weekend. Yet despite not having results from these precincts, Maine Republican Chairman Charlie Webster declared Mitt Romney the victor in the Maine caucus. Romney, Webster reported, earned 2,190 votes, while Ron Paul finished second with 1,996 votes.

According to the Associated Press, the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party, Chris Gardner, a Romney supporter, called state party leaders and expressed his “complete and utter dismay.” Washington County Republican leaders, who moved their caucuses to this coming Saturday after snow made it difficult to meet last weekend, will convene these postponed caucuses this Saturday, and County Chair Gardner is hoping that state party officials will change their mind and accept the results.

He shouldn’t hold his breath.

After all, the Republican leadership in Maine refused to accept the results of other caucuses that were completed in time. Eighteen towns that held caucuses in Waldo County reported their results by the Feb. 11 deadline, yet those totals showed up nowhere in the final tally. Nor did the results from Waterville or Belfast make it into the GOP numbers even though the caucuses held in those towns were also completed by the deadline.

The one variable that links each of these cases is Ron Paul. If all of Waldo County’s caucus totals counted (including the excluded results), Paul would have won by 21 votes. Paul was the only candidate to visit Waterville, where he spoke to students at Colby College and tallied 16 more votes than Romney in the excluded Waterville caucus. When the chairman of the Belfast Caucus Committee telephoned his results showing a Paul victory to the state’s Republican headquarters, he was told they already had the numbers. Those numbers mysteriously — and inaccurately — showed a Romney victory in Belfast. When the final tally for Maine’s caucus was announced, zero votes from Belfast were included. Interestingly, not a single case of excluded caucus results supporting Romney has been publicly identified yet…

Inserted from <Reuters>

The best coverage of this issue I have seen comes from Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night, including her interview with Maine columnist Bill Nemitz.

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

She updated her coverage last night by announcing that the Republican Party of Maine is reviewing the results and might even include Washington County.  She interviewed Chris Gardner.

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

There are two possibilities.  If the original results were fraudulent, the Republican Party has demonstrated that they are too corrupt to be entrusted with running the nation.  On the other hand, if the original results were merely an example of the same level of competence evident throughout the Bush Regime, the Republican Party has demonstrated that they are too incompetent to run the country.

Share
 Posted by TomCat at 12:02 am  16 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , , ,
 Older Entries
© 2011 Politics Plus Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha