Republicans Support Tax Cuts Because They DON’T Help Most Americans
Creating jobs — especially good jobs — for the middle- and working class and providing economic relief for unemployed, debt-strapped, falling-into-poverty Americans is the last thing Republicans want to do. That’s why every single one of them voted against the House version of Pres. Obama’s economic stimulus package because only a third of it was tax cuts rather than all of it. That’s why Republicans are so gung-ho about tax cuts being the way to stimulate the economy and create jobs in the first place — because they aren’t.
When Is It Okay to Bash the Corporate Profit Model?
Answer: When it costs a wingnut his source of income.
Added: TBogg:
Nobody could have anticipated that Pajamas Media would sucker the rubes and then destroy teh intertubes[.]
[...]
The comments are like a Sam Shepard play where the repressed loathing and petty jealousies bubble to the surface for our entertainment.
Check out the rightie blogger commentary at Memeorandum. It’s amusing.
Stumped Anti-Abortionists Strike Back
Remember this quaint meme and video from sometime last week where anti-abortion protesters had no blessed clue what to do with “criminal” women who would seek and complete illegal abortions?
Well, Utah has decided to try to fill this important void in outlawing illegal abortion practices — women may become living crime scenes:
The Utah House of Representatives will hear a controversial proposal that could hold physicians responsible for homicide if they perform abortions deemed illegal by the state.
Under current state law, abortion is allowed only in cases of rape or incest, if the fetus cannot survive outside the womb or is unlikely to survive, or to save the mother’s life or preserve her health.
Abortions that don’t meet any of those standards can result in third-degree felony charges.
If you live in Utah or you want to send some strongly-worded letters to the Democrats in their House of Representatives about this bill, here’s the UT House website. Tell these representatives that doctors protecting women’s health is not an air quotation myth.
I’ll update this entry with more coverage as I find it, after the jump… Read more
I Don’t Understand People
People like Kimberley A. Strassel, anyway:
Send Bob Simon and “60 Minutes” Some Support
I just sent the following message to Bob Simon at “60 Minutes”:
I am Jewish, and from a family of Holocaust survivors, and I want you to know how deeply I appreciate your piece on “60 Minutes” about the way Palestinians are forced to live under Israeli military occupation on the West Bank.
Your report was truthful, factual, and sensitively done. I also think you showed a great deal of courage in airing it (that, of course, goes to both you and the CBS management).
My paternal grandmother died in Sobibor, as did most of my father’s extended family in the Netherlands, and it pains me beyond expression to see Jews degrading and dehumanizing and brutalizing another powerless people. Whether or not it’s exactly comparable to the Holocaust is not the point. The point is that Jews should not be doing this at all.
Again, thank you. I hope you know that, no matter how loud and vicious the voices are on the blindly pro-Israel side, there are many, many, many more of us on the side that believes human rights belong to everyone, and not just one group.
Sincerely,
Kathy Kattenburg
If anyone else wants to do the same, go here (you can edit the already-prepared message, or write your own).
About That Family Planning Provision
First, it’s not dead:
Women’s health advocates were dismayed this week to see the removal of family-planning aid from Congress’ economic recovery bill after a push by Republicans to politicize a generally cut-and-dry issue of Medicaid waivers. (Time has some good background here.)
But the dismay may not last long. A source present at today’s White House signing ceremony for the Lilly Ledbetter bill tells me that President Obama gave assurances that the family planning aid would be done soon — perhaps as soon as next week, when the House is set to take up a spending bill that would keep the government funded until October.
Is Obama playing chess with bankers, too?
And who’s winning?
Let’s get straight to the point: instead of using TARP/bailout money to make loans and get the economy humming again,
Banks are reportedly hoarding money to beef up their balance sheets, using TARP funds to pay out dividends and bonuses, or buying up smaller, sicker institutions.
This is a problem. Now let’s look at the TED spread over the past five years. The lower TED is, the easier it is for banks to make loans:
Army Suicide Rate At a New High
From the Associated Press:
Stressed by war and long overseas tours, U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year at the highest rate on record, the toll rising for a fourth straight year and even surpassing the suicide rate among comparable civilians. Army leaders said they were doing everything they could think of to curb the deaths and appealed for more mental health professionals to join and help out.
At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008, the Army said Thursday. And the final count is likely to be even higher because 15 more suspicious deaths are still being investigated.
“Why do the numbers keep going up? We cannot tell you,” said Army Secretary Pete Geren. “We can tell you that across the Army we’re committed to doing everything we can to address the problem.”
It’s all about pressure and the military approach, said Kim Ruocco, 45, whose Marine husband was an officer and Cobra helicopter pilot who hanged himself in a California hotel room in 2005. That was one month before he was to return to Iraq a second time.
She said her husband, John, had completed 75 missions in Iraq and was struggling with anxiety and depression but felt he’d be letting others down if he sought help and couldn’t return.
So?
Yank the Tax Cuts; Put Back the Family Planning
So here is the question: If an economic stimulus bill that has both tax cuts and job-creating government spending is unacceptable to the entire Republican House membership, then why keep the tax cuts in there? And if the family planning provision was pulled at the last minute because House Republicans objected to it, and then every single one of them voted against the damn bill, then why not put that provision back in?
Blagoneivich!
I just wanted to be the first to use that headline — the news itself is pretty predictable. Poor Geraldo and his enormous porn ’stache must be bummed.
Stiffing the American People and Calling It “Principle”
Toby Harnden, the U.S. correspondent for the British paper, Telegraph, calls yesterday’s 244-188 vote in the House, approving an $819 billion economic stimulus package, a “slap in the face to Barack Obama” and “a hollow victory indeed.” Why? Because House Republicans all voted against it, despite Pres. Obama’s $275 billion tax cut concession, despite his personal efforts to reach out to the GOP leadership, and despite the reality of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Next Time, Think About Baseball
I’ve been marinating over this battle for the gargantuan stimulus bill. The merits of the bill, I no longer even have a desire to argue; economists tend to think it’s a good idea, all of it is way over my head. I’ve also been trying to figure out what President Obama’s game here is as well. I mean, I know how I would have played this thing. Granted, I didn’t also just get elected President of the United States, so I’ll cede some ground there.
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Just a bit of complaining…
Let me preface this rant with yes, I know we need a bailout. But…
President Obama has promised to make government more open, a task which shouldn’t be too difficult in the computer age where information can be digitized, indexed, and searched with querying assistants like Google. So for the bailout, Obama has launch “Recovery.gov” for government openness on how the bailout money is spent.
There’s one problem, though: Recovery.gov currently contains none of that information, just a message which says “Check back after the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to see how and where your tax dollars are spent.”
How about I know what the bailout wants to do with my money beforehand?
Razing the Project to Save It
(Photo by Infrogmation, used under a GNU Free Documentation License)
With the advent of a new administration in Washington providing the long-beleaguered citizens of New Orleans, LA a new sense of hope (no doubt increased upon hearing that the President has promised to visit the region) it’s easy for us to forget (too easy to forget) that there are still thousands of residents still displaced from their homes, perhaps permanently. And, if decisions like the following continue to be made (purportedly on their behalf *cough*) many will have f0rever lost what little remains:
A [Weak?] Week’s Worth of Work
At the rate these criticisms are mounting, Obama will be lucky if he escapes impeachment in March. It’s been literally seven days since he took office, and his foreign policy and domestic policy initiatives have been roundly questioned. Remember folks: Bush fucked things up in 8 years; Obama’s barely had 8 days. We might have to be a little patient.
The statements seem to grow more ludicrous by the hour. Take the article under the foreign policy link by Rabbani and Toensing, for example. Obama has started on a strong footing with trying to mend the Grand Canyon-sized ideological rift between the Muslim world, the Middle East, and the United States from Clinton-era and Bush-era policies. He’s made calls to national leaders in the Middle East about working together to resolve conflicts, he’s selected George Mitchell as an envoy to help broker a longstanding peace between Israel and Palestine (that’ll hopefully be balanced for both sides — politically-entrenched pro-Israel rhetoric notwithstanding), and he participated a wonderful interview on Al-Arabiya TV that signals a new trend in taking the Muslim and Arab world seriously. (Video here.) You know, as opposed to calling them those folks sitting on our oil/eating American babies.
These three determined steps, done in the course of a week, would make most people optimistic, yes? NO. Read more
Post-Post-Partisanship
Well, there you have it: President Obama has bent over to kiss GOP Congressional asses on the bailout bill and in return, GOP leadership made calls for their rank and file to vote against the bailout before they even met with Obama.
Only one party is being reasonable here. If I were the President, I’d tell these spoiled conservative brats that they had a chance to take part in the bailout conversation but they refused. And I’d say that very loudly to the press and entire nation. I’m with Kos (something I don’t say everyday) on this matter: “There’s a reason Democrats won massively the last two cycles, and it wasn’t because people were desperate for ‘bipartisanship’.”
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