No “Home” For Repug Housing Calamity Help

Before I take note of a couple of votes from last week’s Area Votes in Congress writeup in the Philadelphia Inquirer, let’s “set the wayback” for January 2004 and check out this USA Today story…

In a bid to boost minority homeownership, President Bush will ask Congress for authority to eliminate the down-payment requirement for Federal Housing Administration loans.

In announcing the plan Monday at a home builders show in Las Vegas, Federal Housing Commissioner John Weicher called the proposal the "most significant FHA initiative in more than a decade." It would lead to 150,000 first-time owners annually, he said.

Nothing-down options are available on the private mortgage market, but, in general, they require the borrower to have pristine credit. Bush's proposed change would extend the nothing-down option to borrowers with blemished credit.

…

FHA loans carry higher risks of delinquency and foreclosure than do private mortgages, and the proposed change presumably will lead to greater losses to the government than the current program does.

Weicher said the added risk will be offset by higher fees charged to borrowers who opt to make no down payment.

Uh huh, sure…

And with this in mind, I present the following from the week ending 3/13…

House

FHA refinance program. Voting 256-171, the House passed a Republican bill (HR 830) to repeal a six-month-old initiative known as the FHA Refinance Program. The program is designed to help homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth, who are current in their loan payments, and whose loans are not insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: John Carney (D., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Michael Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Pat Meehan (R., Pa.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), Jon Runyan (R., N.J.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Voting no: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), and Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.).

Jobless homeowners. Voting 242-177, the House passed a bill (HR 836) to repeal the Emergency Mortgage Relief Program, which is designed to help homeowners who have lost their jobs meet mortgage obligations and keep their homes. The assistance is available for up two years to those who have fallen behind in mortgage payments due to loss of work or a serious medical condition.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Dent, Gerlach, Fitzpatrick, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, and Schwartz.

I think the following should be noted about these votes from here…

The first bill, (H.R. 830), calls for closure of the FHA’s Refinance Program, also known as the FHA “Short-Refi”. The program facilitates homeowner refinance of mortgages that are underwater, as long as lenders agree to write-off at least 10 percent of the loan’s original principle amount. Although the program received over $8 billion in financing, only 245 applications have been submitted, and only 44 loans have been approved under the program since September of 2010. The lack of participation and limited effectiveness making the program an easy target for House members eager to enact cost-cutting measures. Some House Democrats have called the move to end the program premature, saying that the program needs to be given time to prove its worth.

…

The second passed bill, (H.R. 836), seeks to cease funding for the Emergency Mortgage Relief Program (EMRP), which provided for bridge loans of up to $50,000 for unemployed homeowners who found themselves unable to make their monthly mortgage payments. Although authorized for funding of up to $1 billion, the program has yet to even begin, due (according to the FHA Commissioner) to onerous red tape required before the program could be established. With the funds as-of-yet unspent, the program has been deemed fair game for cut, particularly since it only serves to increase the debt-burden of homeowners who are already showing signs of financial difficulty.

Also, let it be recorded that “Democrat” John Carney voted for HR 830 and “Democrat” Tim Holden voted for HR 836 (and Mikey The Beloved, of course, sided with those who would throw homeowners facing difficulty into the street in the name of fiscal prudence…and by the way, assuming both of these trash bills make it out of the Senate, Obama has quite rightly said he will veto both...we should be looking at ways to modify mortgage payments for troubled borrowers, which makes better financial sense than throwing them, for the most part, out on their ear; the Repugs continue their laser-like focus on job creation…not!).

If one day it turns out that 30-year fixed-rate FHA mortgages have gone the way of Woolworth’s and Horn and Hardart in this country, it will be because of the road we started down with bills like H.R. 830 in particular, as an attempt at a remedy for a problem that never should have arisen in the first place (as I’ve said in the past, agencies of government like the FHA and GSEs like Fannie and Freddie all worked fine until the Bush crowd was installed by the Supreme Court in 2000).

This week, the GOP-run House took up repeals of Democratic-written laws on housing foreclosures and debated a war-powers resolution. Both chambers considered stopgap spending to avert a government shutdown.

Saturday Stuff

Rachel Maddow provides a great history lesson here on why Dems should support working men and women and families in this country (sad that they need to be reminded of that from time to time) considering what's going on in the Midwest (and the report also explains why the Repugs target labor and organizations like ACORN, which of course has ceased to exist because of this...and speaking of '90s "culture war" crap, I give you this, almost too despicable for words - and this is ironic at least concerning conservative "fair-haired boy" O'Keefe)...



...and yes, this video is about Dubya's Not-So-Excellent Adventure in Iraq, which began eight years ago today, but in a way, it's also about Afghanistan; even though there's an image of Obama implying that he's going to fix everything...well, he's definitely made progress for us in Iraq, but he owns the land where empires crumble now, along with Petraeus, who is making deals with criminals to concoct something approximating "victory," as far as he's concerned, in our name.

Friday Stuff

My for-profit activities impacted my posting again today, but I hope to be back at it soon.

In the meantime, it looks like those farcical hearings by Peter King, in addition to wasting taxpayer dollars, definitely missed the target, as noted here (surprised this guy didn't try to vandalize a public radio or TV station while he was at it, allegedly of course)...



...and I think this is a whompin' little number to help us kick off the weekend.

Thursday Stuff

Two things: 1) Today turned out to be a horrendous day for trying to post - maybe back tomorrow, and 2) I know I've said practically nothing about Japan, but it's not because I don't care - far from it. It's just that there's no way that I have the bandwidth to come anywhere close to posting on that calamity the way I want to. Covering what is going on, in particular with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, is a job for legitimate news professionals, and I am not professionally employed in that capacity. If anyone has the means and/or desire to help, click here.

OK, that being said, kudos to Anthony Weiner and his sarcasm (here...I still think Ron Paul is the "crazy uncle in the attic," but every once in awhile he nails it too, and he did likewise here...and for what it's worth, Mikey The Beloved voted to kill Elmo)...



(I'm still going to say something a bit sacrilegious, though, and that is - even though it would be political suicide for any politician who votes for it - that part of me wants to see this horrendous budget passed and NPR and the CPB defunded, despite the great efforts of these people; this is coming from someone who supports public programming, by the way. If that's what it will take to get it through the rock-hard skulls of many voters in this country that the Republican Party on the national level will never give a damn about them but instead will do everything they possibly can to reward their deep-pocketed puppet masters on the one hand while, on the other, crying "poor mouth" at everybody else and concocting "values" issues in lieu of practicing actual governance like adults, then so be it. If this is what it will finally take to cement that reality into the brains of everyone else but the "pay no price, bear no burden" bunch, then maybe it should come to pass...and under a Repug President and both houses of Congress, it would.)

...and here's something in honor of this day in particular, which still has about an hour left in this time zone (the kid has good pipes, as they say).

Wednesday Stuff

And oh yeah, let's not forget about Michigan either (and you'd better be paying attention, Governor Tom "Space Cadet" Corbett)...



...and geez, take it easy on the slopes, willya James? (one of my favorite songs from him, which probably isn't surprising I'm sure - sorry about the captions).

Wednesday Mashup (3/16/11)

Looks like some of our lower life forms have a new fake controversy to blame Obama for this week, as noted here, and that would be the invasion of Bahrain by the Saudis (there are actual legitimate ones such as the continued illegal detention of Pfc. Bradley Manning, but Heaven knows the wingnutosphere checked out of the real world some time ago)…

As Saudi troops swept into Bahrain on Monday, President Obama kept playing his favorite new role: the Invisible Man.

Bahrain is a key US ally and headquarters to the Navy's Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean from the Horn of Africa to Bangladesh.

In response, I give you the following (here)…

The massive protests on the tiny island of Bahrain have been met with violence before, but the level of violence is about to be taken to a whole new level amid reports that Saudi Arabian troops are going to invade the country as soon as Monday, at the invitation of the Bahraini Crown Prince.

The protests in Bahrain have broken down largely along sectarian lines, with the nation’s Shi’ite majority complaining of discrimination by the nation’s Sunni royal family, and indeed has sparked similar (albeit small) protests among the Shi’ites along neighboring Saudi Arabia’s northeast coast.

The Bahraini protesters initially wanted reforms, but after violent crackdowns, they began demanding the ouster of the royal family entirely and its replacement with a democracy. The Crown Prince, Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, insisted today that the regime could no long accept the protests continuing.

Of course, partly because of conservative caterwauling, Iran ended up blaming us anyway, for what it’s worth (here).

Next, I have a feeling the “teahadists” aren’t going to be very happy with our PA-08 U.S. House Rep Mikey the Beloved, considering that he voted for the latest U.S. House stopgap measure, as noted from here.

Of course, ever true to form, Majority Leader Eric Cantor blamed the Democrats, even though, without our support, this stupid band-aid of a spending bill would never have passed (inasmuch as I can actually trust former Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on anything, I hope that he’s not just playing us by saying that he won’t support another “stop gap” bill).

Also, this Guest Opinion appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times today about another bad Fitzpatrick vote to defund Planned Parenthood (the author, Maggie Leigh Groff, is director of Public Affairs for the Planned Parenthood Association of Bucks County...to contact Planned Parenthood, click here - I'd like to post it all here since I'm sure this link will eventually expire, but I have to be careful about that sort of thing).

In addition, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan blamed “the stim” for our “lagging economic recovery” (here)…

"What we need to do now is to calm down; let things move by themselves," he said at a forum at the Council of Foreign Relations. "And indeed the rate of activism has decreased significantly and the ratio of capital flow has inched back up."

Some economists blame Greenspan, who served as Fed chair from 1987 to 2006, for keeping interest rates too low for too long and for failing to sound the alarm that Wall Street was over-leveraged and running wild.

But with Republicans in control of the House, Greenspan's views are starting to gain an audience again. Many Republicans share his opinion that intervention has created uncertainty and deterred private sector investing.

Oh Heavens, there’s that dreaded “U” word again, even though, as noted here, U.S. businesses earned their highest profits in 60 years in the third quarter last year (of course, unemployment is another matter – curious to see the latest numbers when they’re due out tomorrow I think with the Repugs waging economic war on public employment).

This is all of course ridiculous from Greenspan, who did indeed fail to do his due diligence as noted above, once claiming here that the burst of the subprime mortgage bubble was due to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, saying that, as a result “central planning, in one form or another, was discredited and widely displaced by competitive markets.”

Uh, no.

Also, Paul Krugman pointed out that, in 2004, “the wizard” told us we needn’t worry about a national housing bubble, and Greenspan followed that up by saying in 2005 that “complex financial instruments” have created a “resilient” financial system.

I’d like to see Greenspan try to make his argument about government involvement in the economy to GM, by the way; as noted here, that basically saved an entire industry in this country. And anyone who was tricked into buying an adjustable rate mortgage should curse Greenspan’s name, he being a guy who once pimped these sleazy products, knowing full well that, as a high priest of the “pay no price, bear no burden” crowd, he would never have to face the proverbial music over it.

Finally, this Miami Herald story tells us the following (first read this today in the New York Times)…

Voters swept Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez out of office by a stunning margin Tuesday, capping a dramatic collapse for a politician who was given increased authority by voters four years ago to clean up much-maligned county government but was ushered out in the largest recall of a local politician in U.S. history.

The spectacular fall from power comes after two years of missteps, ranging from granting top staffers big pay hikes to construction of a publicly funded stadium for the Florida Marlins to implementation of a property-tax rate increase that outraged an electorate struggling through an ugly recession.

Alvarez tried to fend off ouster by twice filing suit to block a recall vote. After the lawsuits went nowhere, he defended his record in speeches, radio and television appearances and paid advertisements, arguing that he made the tough calls to preserve vital services for residents.

But voters responded by handing the mayor a humiliating defeat: Nearly nine of every 10 voted to remove Alvarez from office.

“The voters have spoken and a time of healing and reconciliation must now begin,’’ Alvarez said in a statement Tuesday night. “No matter which side of the recall issue, one thing is certain: We all care very deeply about this community… I wish the next mayor of Miami-Dade County much success.”

And you’ll never guess who led the recall to boot Alvarez – a guy named Norman Braman.

As anyone with even a passing familiarity with Philadelphia sports knows, Braman is the former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, one of the true legendary tightwads in a city that has seen a bunch of them over the years.

Now I’ll grant you that Alvarez, if nothing else, was certainly tone-deaf to his constituents in a number of ways including those cited above; the Herald story also tells us the following…

In May, Alvarez came under fire for shopping for a new BMW 550i Grand Turismo sedan subsidized by an $800-a-month car allowance. He got the new car even as he already had two Chevy Suburbans to ferry him around on official business. Alvarez — earning a $233,123 salary and $92,187 in benefits — refused to get rid of the car allowance, saying he wasn’t “going to do something that is symbolic.”

Turn over hand on desk to show open palm and smack yourself in the forehead with it, Former Mr. Mayor.

However, I refuse to cast Braman in the role of a hero; as Wikipedia tells us, he once fought a one-cent sales tax increase to benefit mass transit (God, what is it with that issue in that state between Braman and Lex Luthor? Just think of it as the Disney monorail only with graffiti and sliced-up seat cushions, if that helps). And as noted here…

Starting Oct. 17 I worked in one of the petition offices (to recall Alvarez) and I never saw Norman Braman in my office at 2020 NE 163rd Street in North Miami. This was arguably the main office out of three because it was the one that housed the petition circulation organizers. In a small space without a window and almost without air conditioning, two other people and I “proofed” these petitions. Like a sweatshop in Chinatown, we worked for Braman seven days a week and at least 12 hours per day. In America we say, “If you aren’t cheatin’, then you aren’t tryin’.” Norman Braman is trying the hardest of them all.

And as noted here from Esquire (click on Braman's pic, which is the third in the middle of the right side of the page)…

In the nascent days of free agency, the penny-pinching Braman underbid for fan favorites Reggie White, Clyde Simmons, and Keith Jackson — all of whom left for greener pastures (Veterans Stadium left little to be desired). He feuded with White, the pious Pro Bowler who rallied against the owners in the 1987 players' strike and was publicly disappointed with Braman's firing of coach Buddy Ryan in 1990. "Reggie may be devout," Braman said, "but his first love is the almighty dollar."

Takes one to know one, doesn’t it, Norm?

Tuesday Stuff

I think I saw this at Eschaton first, but then I saw it at Daily Kos (hat tips to both) - now, you're seeing it here...



...and every year I make a mental note to put up this song on this date, and every years I forget - not sure why I remembered this year, but here it is (I know everyone here is a little "long in the tooth" - hey now! - but they're having fun, so it's all good).

Tuesday Mashup (3/15/11)

The Bucks County Courier Times provided more idiocy from Simon Campbell of the Pennsbury School Board today (here)…

…teachers can't be laid off for economic reasons and tenure ensures a job for life.

Campbell is specifically referring to the teachers in the Pennsbury School District, even though, for some reason, be mentions the Neshaminy School District also (didn’t know he is on that board as well, or so he thinks – news to me). And I don’t have enough knowledge of the Pennsbury situation to assume that Campbell is lying, though it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find out that that’s the case.

However, I can most definitely tell you that tenure is under attack along with teachers’ bargaining rights across the country.

As noted here, tenure has been phased out for new teachers in Idaho, and this tells us about the effort to strip tenure in Ohio and Missouri. Also, here is more background on Wisconsin, where tenure is very much at issue (also in Indiana, Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma), including the following…

The solution, (Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, an assistant professor of English education who is a former corporate executive and former high school teacher) says, is not to eliminate tenure but to retrain and support struggling teachers, as many private sector employers do, before letting them go. But that would be a challenge, she noted, for school systems having to cut budgets. “I don’t think there’s any way around it without spending time and spending money,” she said.

Some educators say that mentoring or rehabilitating ineffective teachers – tenured or not – will not stop some principals from abusing their power. “If you get on a principal’s bad side,” said one alumnus and high school teacher, “they will write you up for things that they have minimal documentation for.”

Some (experts at TC’s Hechinger Institute) believe tenure could work better if teachers were fairly evaluated and received the support they need to improve. Even Randi Weingarten, president of the powerful American Federation of Teachers, has conceded that tenure rules need to be streamlined.

But as is the case with so many issues in this country, the politicized shouting matches have taken over the process of reasonable dialogue (just a general observation, particularly concerning Campbell's antics).

Still, though, for all of his griping about teachers, I’d like to see Campbell (who made his money as a futures trader) try and last an entire day running a classroom. It would be truly entertaining.

Also, staying with the Courier Times, J.D. Mullane tells us the following here today (in a column where he seems to compliment Japan for the lack of looting during its current misery, as compared to our country during Katrina I guess, or so he alleges…kind of hard to loot during a tragedy which Japan has called the worst they experienced since World War II – as bad as Katrina was, it just doesn’t compare to this…trying hard not to smack myself in the middle of the forehead for actually continuing to pay for this dreck).

Anyway…

Climate-change enthusiasts, in Pavlovian reaction, attributed the quake to global warming. Yes, global warming cleaved the ocean floor, leaving a fissure 150 miles long and 50 miles wide. Global warming did that. Sure.

God, what an idiot – as noted here…

So far, today’s tsunami has mainly affected Japan—there are reports of up to 300 dead in the coastal city of Sendai—but future tsunamis could strike the U.S. and virtually any other coastal area of the world with equal or greater force, say scientists. In a little-heeded warning issued at a 2009 conference on the subject, experts outlined a range of mechanisms by which climate change could already be causing more earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity, albeit of a scale and nature quite different from Friday’s tragedy.

A 2009 paper by Bill McGuire, professor at University College London, says “observations suggest that the ongoing rise in global average temperatures may already be eliciting a hazardous response from the geosphere.”

It’s important to note that this response has nothing to do with Friday’s tsunami, which is a ‘subduction zone earthquake,’ whereas the tsunamis discussed by scientists cited here would be the product of catastrophic events—collapse of methane hydrate deposits at the bottom of the ocean on the continental shelf, for example—for which a tsunami would be but one of many negative impacts.

“When the ice is lost, the earth’s crust bounces back up again and that triggers earthquakes, which trigger submarine landslides, which cause tsunamis,” McGuire told Reuters. (McGuire’s 2009 paper notes that such effects will be much more pronounced in areas with significant ice cover, in other words, at higher latitudes.)

…

Scientists have known for some time that climate change affects not just the atmosphere and the oceans but also the earth’s crust. These effects are not widely understood by the public.

“In the political community people are almost completely unaware of any geological aspects to climate change,” said McGuire.

Yes, it seems that there is no direct link between the events in Japan and the climate crisis. But only a fool (or a Bucks County Courier Times opinion columnist published three days a week, and I certainly don’t mean Kate Fratti) would dismiss climate events out of hand regarding potential future catastrophes.

Next (catching up a bit), I give you more from the New York Times and the false equivalency file (here)…

The reporter in disguise has largely faded from mainstream American journalism. But the tactic is alive and well in the hands of passionate partisans.

As their pursuit of the “gotcha” moment has become part of the cost of life in the public eye, one question is how willing politicians will be to advance their agendas on the backs of these muckrakers 2.0.

In just the last month, surreptitiously recorded conversations have embarrassed NPR and Planned Parenthood, organizations long under assault from conservatives, as well as Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican and target of the political left for his anti-union stance.

To begin, it is utterly laughable to insinuate that anything James O’Keefe and his fellow propagandists are doing is anything remotely comparable to actual journalism; as noted here, his latest hit job on NPR was heavily edited, removing six different instances where former NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller tells O’Keefe that donors cannot buy the kind of coverage they want on NPR.

By contrast, the call to Hosni Mubarak Walker came from Ian Murphy (posing as David Koch) of the “Buffalo Beast” web site originated by Matt Taibbi (noted here). Both Murphy and Taibbi are actual reporters, and I would really like someone to try and explain to me how Walker’s private words to “David Koch” are inconsistent with his public words and actions.

The Times story also tells us the following…

Political strategists express worry that this sort activity has been creeping into campaigns for some time now. But the fact that they can so often have a political benefit leaves many torn.

“I find the whole thing bordering on unsavory on both sides,” said Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. “As much as I love it when liberal hypocrisy is exposed,” he added, “do we really want to get to the point where it becomes standard fare — especially in political campaigns — for opponents to engage in sting operations?”

Such a comment is hilarious coming from a partisan as rabid as Fleischer, who was one of the first to attack Helen Thomas for claiming that the Jews should get the “hell” out of Palestine while giving Flush Limbore and “Crazy Train” Beck a pass for their own bloviations (here); Fleischer also incorrectly said that Obama had a proposal to eliminate charitable deductions, for which he was not called out by Wolf Blitzer (here, which is kind of funny when you consider the Repug budget machinations in the House), and here, he told the mother of a dead U.S. soldier that “there are going to be a lot more mothers like you” (nice, Ari).

Yeah, when it comes to “unsavory,” Ari sure is a subject matter expert, isn’t he?

And here is yet another item from the New York Times’ false equivalency file…

Critics in New York contend the new Prospect Park bike lane is badly designed, endangering pedestrians and snarling traffic. Cape Wind opponents argue the turbines will defile a pristine body of water. And in Berkeley, store owners worried that reduced traffic flow and parking could hurt their business (from the proposed full bus rapid transit system).

But some supporters of high-profile green projects like these say the problem is just plain old Nimbyism — the opposition by residents to a local development of the sort that they otherwise tend to support.

I don’t know anything about the bus system proposed for Berkeley, CA, and I’m sorry, but I think it’s stupid to complain about a traffic bike lane (and yes, I’ve driven in Philadelphia enough times to just learn to deal with them where I find them).

However, lumping the Cape Wind project with the Berkeley BRT project and the New York City bike lanes is idiotic as far as I’m concerned; as noted here, Cape Wind poses the threat of an oil spill, as well as a danger to over 7,000 gray and harbor seals and potentially six million migratory birds, among other ecological dangers.

Throw a “NIMBY” charge at me all you want, but I’m sorry – I absolutely refuse to believe that sticking a bunch of wind turbines in the middle of Nantucket Sound is the best option available for generating wind power, to say nothing of the cost.

Finally, the New York Times also tells us here that Holy Joe Lieberman will continue to whine and pontificate to his heart’s content until he is finally, dutifully, mercifully GONE AT LONG LAST! (the story has to do with him and other departing U.S. Senators)...

As he readies himself for some policy fights, Mr. Lieberman said he had already seen ads run against colleagues for daring to talk about changes to programs like Social Security and Medicare. Now, he says, he doesn’t have to sweat such possibilities even if he chooses to get out in front on the entitlement issue.

“Those are easy subjects to demagogue,” Mr. Lieberman said. “When you are not running again, you worry less about that.”

“Daring to talk about changes,” Carl Hulse of the Times? You mean about a program that will remain solvent for at least the next 30 years (here, speaking about Social Security)? Interesting bit of editorializing there.

And on the subject of Social Security (speaking of demagoguery), I give you the following (here)…

(Lieberman) defended McCain’s privatization plan: Lieberman falsely claimed that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “is not for the private accounts to take the place of social security.” “He’s for what Bill Clinton used to call Social Security plus,” said Lieberman. [3/30/08]

(Lieberman) hinted at support for “private accounts” in 2005: Although Lieberman said “it’s important Social Security remain what it is,” a social insurance program that “provides a floor of income,” he would not rule out personal accounts. Lieberman added, “if we can figure out a way to help people through private accounts or something else, great.” [1/05]

(Lieberman) said we eventually will have “individual control” of Social Security: In a May 4, 1998, interview, Lieberman said “it doesn’t make sense” not to broaden the Social Security portfolio, and added, “Same is true of this idea of privatizing.” “I think in the end that individual control of part of the retirement/Social Security funds has to happen,” he told the Copley News Service. [5/4/1998]

And on the subject of privatization, as noted here, Think Progress tells us that “under a Bush-style privatization plan, an October 2008 retiree (who had saved for 35 years) would have lost $26,000 in that year’s market turmoil.”

The Times story tells us that the group of eight (so far) Senators departing Washington is calling itself the “Bucket List Caucus,” in homage of sorts to the movie, and by that they mean that they intend to make good on their remaining days in “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

While I have great respect for the actors Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, playing two men stricken with cancer, real-life cancer survivor and esteemed film critic Roger Ebert referred to the film’s portrayal of that disease as "a laff riot followed by a dime-store epiphany" (to be fair, I saw a few minutes in the beginning which are fairly rough).

Still, I think “dime-store epiphany” aptly describes the attitude of Lieberman and his pals, trying to sound heroic for doing the business at the end of their Senate careers that they should have been doing all along anyway.

And by the way, I don't know if - speaking of U.S. Senators, or former ones - Evan Bayh is more loathesome and execrable than Lieberman, but he's right up there (here - h/t Atrios).

Monday PM Stuff

(Hopefully back to posting tomorrow...)

Sorry, Rachel, somehow I don't think it's possible for John Ensign to do anything with dignity, even leave, which he still isn't even going to do the way he should have by now (based on a comment at the very end)...



...and maybe Vitter, Ensign and any other future Repug politician caught in a scandal should learn this little number.

Monday AM Stuff

Here is what a Democratic politician is supposed to sound like (hat tip to Ministry of Truth at Daily Kos)...



...and consider this an admittedly small gesture of support on behalf of the people of Japan (to help, click here).

Sunday Stuff

Be careful turning up the volume on this to hear the awesome barnburner of a brief speech by Wisconsin farmer Tony Schultz, or else you're going to hear some really loud whooping it up by assembled crowd, which is definitely a good thing (here...the rally turned out to be bigger than any manufactured "teahadist" throng)...



...and Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine has helped out in Wisconsin also, so here's a little number from him (a bit oxymoronic that this was produced by the Murdoch Street Journal, I'll admit).

Saturday Stuff

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Koch Brothers like to keep a low profile - rest assured that those days are over (and in addition to supporting Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films, here is something else we can do - and this looks like one hell of a rally from earlier today)...



...and this is a bit of a catchy number - a little dark, though, I'll admit.

Friday Stuff

Looks like the payback has begun in Wisconsin - to help keep this ad on the air, click here...



...and good for Lawrence O'Donnell for giving Baby Newton Leroy another shot here...



...and you just knew the Repugs would find their 2012 presidential "dark horse," didn't you...


Man Becomes GOP Frontrunner After Showing No Interest In Government

...and it looks like another week is "in the books" - enjoy (let's hope this song is apropos on a couple of different levels at least).

Friday Mashup (3/11/11)

I give you Christine Flowers, who of course defends Repug U.S. House Rep Peter King and his SCARY MUSLIM! hearings here…

…the reason (King is) holding hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims is that there is no other distinct group that has been responsible for acts of terror. You can say that white males like Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber and Bill Ayers are a suspect demographic.

But they've been remarkably quiet lately. You can't say that for those screaming "Allahu Akbar" as they pull the trigger.

Two things: 1) As noted here, there have been twice as many plots from non-Muslim terrorists since 9/11 as Muslim groups, and 2), Bill Ayres was never tried and/or convicted in a court of law of killing anyone (unlike McVeigh and the Unabomber – nice straw man, Christine).

God, what a disgusting hack this woman is.

Also, I really hadn’t planned to say much over the latest supposed controversy involving NPR and James O’Keefe, who, the last time I checked, was either doing or trying to do something inside of office of Sen. Mary Landrieu without authorization (I think Jed Lewison at Daily Kos pretty much summed it up here).

However, since our corporate media insists on paying attention to this human stain, it falls upon individuals such as yours truly to respond – this New York Times story, in part, tells us the following (Betsy Liley, the individual taped by O’Keefe, is an NPR fundraiser)…

On a secretly recorded videotape that Mr. O’Keefe released on Tuesday, Ms. Liley’s then-boss, Ronald Schiller, was heard making disparaging comments about Republicans and Tea Party members. That led to the resignation of Mr. Schiller and NPR’s chief executive, Ms. Schiller (who is no relation).

NPR also released internal e-mail correspondence it said showed that it had never come close to accepting the donation because the fake group refused to provide the necessary documents.

Separately, nearly two dozen NPR on-air journalists released an “open letter” to listeners and supporters in which they condemned the “offensive comments” made by Mr. Schiller, saying they “violated the basic principles by which we live and work: accuracy and open-mindedness, fairness and respect.”

So, both Schillers ended up quitting NPR because it was thought that they didn’t show the following to the “teahadists”…

Accuracy…

Open-mindedness…

Fairness...

and Respect.

I just wanted to make sure I understood that, that’s all.

Update 3/14/11: I wonder if Chris Wallace, while fluffing this cretin, will mention this?

Next, I give you last week’s Area Votes in Congress from the Philadelphia Inquirer (here, and yes, they were actually in session for a change)…

House

Highway, mass-transit projects. Voting 421-4, the House sent the Senate a bill (HR 662) to provide billions of dollars in funding for road and bridge construction, mass transit, and highway safety from March 4 through Sept. 30. The programs are funded not by general appropriations but by the Highway Trust Fund, which gets its revenue from federal gasoline taxes.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), John Carney (D., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Michael Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Pat Meehan (R., Pa.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), Jon Runyan (R., N.J.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

"Bridge to nowhere." Voting 181-246, the House defeated a Democratic bid to strip HR 662 (above) of funds for building the Gravina Island Bridge linking Ketchikan, Alaska, with an airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island. This is the "bridge to nowhere" lampooned in recent years as an example of wasteful congressional earmarks. While notoriety has cost the Gravina Island project much of its anticipated federal funding since 2005, HR 662 contains $183 million in fiscal 2011 spending for it and the Knik Arm Crossing Bridge, another controversial project in Alaska. This motion sought to remove the $183 million.

A yes vote was to defund the "bridge to nowhere."

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Holden, and Schwartz.

Voting no: Dent, Gerlach, Fitzpatrick, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

So Mikey The Beloved and his playmates support $183 million for this stinking bridge, but they refuse to support Americorps, funding for community health centers…you know, “dumb” stuff that our glorious system of private enterprise is supposed to do instead of that mean, nasty “public sector” (here – to say nothing of this; our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan and those caught in this cataclysm).

Health-law paperwork. Voting 314-112, the House passed a Republican bill (HR 4) to strip the new health law of its rule that businesses issue an IRS Form 1099 to any vendor to whom they pay at least $600 annually. The rule would raise funds for preventive care while helping the IRS catch tax cheats. But it has come under bipartisan assault as a paperwork burden on small businesses.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Andrews, Carney, Dent, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Voting no: Brady, Fattah, and Schwartz.

Even if by some chance the Dems had been returned to power in the House last year, this measure or something like it would have eventually passed both houses of Congress anyway; I won’t budge on 90-something percent of the health care reform law, but I’ll cut some slack for this.

Stopgap 2011 budget. Voting 335-91, the House passed a stopgap measure (HJ Res 44) to keep the government in full operation between March 5 and March 18 while cutting spending by $4 billion over that period. The House and Senate will use the two weeks to negotiate a budget path for the last half of fiscal 2011, which ends Sept. 30. Among this bill's cuts are $650 million in highway spending and a $2.8 billion rescission of once-popular earmarks that have been abandoned by their congressional sponsors.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Brady, Carney, Dent, Fattah, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, Schwartz, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews.

When Rob Andrews ran against Frank Lautenberg in the Dem primary for Lautenberg’s senate seat awhile back, I thought Andrews was the lowest of the low. However, I have to tell you that I think he’s done a good job of cleaning up his act, as they say, and I think he deserves credit for this principled voted for reasons noted here.

Oil-industry taxes. Voting 176-249, the House defeated a Democratic motion to HJ Res 44 (above) to suspend the oil-depletion allowance and other oil-industry tax breaks at a time when domestic programs are being cut.

A yes vote backed the motion.

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Holden, and Schwartz.

Voting no: Dent, Gerlach, Fitzpatrick, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

The “banksters,” Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Insurance get whatever they want, and everybody else gets it in the neck. Your Republican Party on the job, people.

Senate

Patent-law dispute. Voting 87-13, the Senate retained "first to invent" as the U.S. standard for giving priority to competing patent applications. This stripped a patent-reform bill (S 23) of language to switch to the "first-inventor-to-file" standard used by most other industrialized countries to determine patent winners and losers. The bill remained in debate.

A yes vote was to retain the first-to-invent standard.

Voting yes: Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Chris Coons (D., Del.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), and Pat Toomey (R., Pa.).

I got into the messed-up situation Bushco left behind in the patent office here - third bullet; this legislation seems to be in response to that sorry situation.

Stopgap 2011 budget. Voting 91-9, the Senate joined the House in passing a temporary fiscal 2011 spending bill (HJ Res 44, above) to avert a government shutdown at week's end. President Obama then signed what is the fifth 2011 stopgap appropriations bill passed by Congress since last fall.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Carper, Casey, Coons, Lautenberg, Menendez, and Toomey.

This week, the House took up bills addressing the U.S. housing crisis, while the Senate resumed debate on reforming procedures for awarding patents.

Finally, I think it’s important to note that not everyone is Harrisburg is willing to put up with “Space Cadet” Tom Corbett’s budget, as noted here from our PA-31 Dem State House Rep Steve Santarsiero…

This week, Gov. Tom Corbett addressed the legislature with his 2011-12 budget proposal. The governor's proposed budget short changes education, the environment and urgent infrastructure needs.

Particularly troubling to me are the following:

A cut of $1.5 billion to education, K-12 plus higher education, including cuts of more than 50 percent to our colleges and universities such as Temple, Penn State and Pitt: The cuts to public schools will result either in a spike in property taxes or draconian cuts in educational programs. The cuts to our colleges and universities will result in massive tuition increases at a time when our students can least afford them. Proposed cuts to the Council Rock and Pennsbury school districts are at least $1.46 million and $1.44 million respectively.

Further cuts to environmental protection, while giving the natural gas industry a pass that it gets nowhere else in the United States by not calling for a natural gas drilling tax: We need the drilling tax because it will provide revenue to protect the environment and to fund our education and transportation needs.

No mention of our nearly $3.5 billion transportation infrastructure crisis: This is both an economic need – indeed, a dire need – as well as a public health and safety issue. Aging roads and bridges need to be rebuilt. We can no longer delay this work.

A proposal to allow teachers to be fired to cut budgets: After proposing to make deep cuts in state aid to our schools, the governor compounds the problem by proposing that schools be given the right to fire teachers to balance their budgets. It may do that, but it also will cause class sizes to grow, diminishing the quality of a public school education and, as a consequence, lowering the value of what is for most of us our greatest asset: our homes.

While I applaud the governor for his proposal to provide targeted tax cuts for research and development in the pharmaceutical and bio-tech industries and for the growing film industry in Pennsylvania, I am deeply concerned about the direction in which this budget would take our Commonwealth.

Steve has a lot of company on that score (and to contact him, click here).

Thursday PM Stuff

Nothing like speaking truth to stupid - well done, Rep. Ellison (and by the way, heckuva job, Rep. King)...



...and this song comes fairly quickly to mind when I consider the life forms who support King and the Repugs generally.

Thursday Mashup (3/10/11)

I give you more hilarity from Irrational Spew over Repug U.S. House Rep Peter King’s SCARY MUSLIM! hearings (here)…

Washington — Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) took the spotlight at the Homeland Security Committee’s hearing today, railing against Rep. Peter King, the GOP chairman, and describing his effort to investigate radical Muslims as “playing into al-Qaeda” and “going the same route as Arizona.”

In a bit of political theater, she held up a copy of the Constitution and continued to speak, even as King banged his gavel.

And Robert Costa tells us that “the ruckus (as Lee held her copy of the Constitution) caused light laughs throughout the hearing room”; well, I’ll watch the tape later and judge for myself, thank you.

But isn’t it interesting how it isn’t a “ruckus” when Orange Man and his pals do the same thing (from that little stunt where the Repugs read only excerpts of that document that they liked and not all of it at the beginning of the session…where Mikey The Beloved said there was a “President pro temporary” of the Senate).

Next, for something perhaps more amusing than that, someone at The Daily Tucker gives us the following (here, with a bit of a link to the prior item above)…

And so, let’s make The Huffington Post a “no-blog zone” and a “no-read zone” until their “demands” are met: Because, let’s face it, the miserly few, such as Arianna, are making big bucks in blogging, while throwing mere crumbs to the rest of us.

Arianna, in fact, jets around the globe — to Greece, Switzerland, Chile, Italy and elsewhere — living the high life. Yes, this is the same Arianna Huffington who recently secured a $315-million sweetheart deal with AOL!

But will the toiling bloggers at The Huffington Post see one red cent of the proceeds? Come on! Don’t be naïve! Everyone knows that Arianna and her cronies intend to pocket every last dime!

The left-wing blogging queen is utterly indifferent to the needs of her employees and contributors! She channels Marie Antoinette and says in effect: “Let them eat cake!”

Indeed, “Huffington’s awareness of the strike was confirmed by her statement at a conference [on] Thursday,” The Daily Caller notes, “when she said, ‘Go ahead, go on strike.’ She also criticized ‘the idea of going on strike when no one really notices.’”

As Bob Dole once said, “Where’s the outrage?!”

Oh, we notice, Arianna. We’ve noticed for some time. We’ve noticed your lies and your double standards. But this time you’re not going to win.

This time the left and the right blogosphere will join together to end your corrupt reign! As it says in the Constitution, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”!

Gosh, I didn’t know one of our founding fathers was Karl Marx (here).

Further, it looks like it’s time to deflate the “zombie lie” once more than public employees, in particular federal ones, make more than their private sector counterparts (here - even though Cato, Heritage and Breitbart keep peddling this crap, that doesn’t automatically make it true)…

Cost-cutting House Republicans on Wednesday made it clear that they are eyeing the salaries of federal workers.

And they don’t like what they see.

During a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing, panel Chairman Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) noted that “federal employees on average earned $101,628 in total compensation in 2010, nearly four times more than the average private-sector worker.”

He argued President Obama’s two-year pay freeze for federal workers, enacted in December, “wasn’t really a freeze” because it did not include all increases. He also decried the fact that Obama’s 2012 budget calls for hiring 15,000 more federal workers.

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry shot back that studies showing federal workers earn more than private-sector workers are misleading, and said federal workers should not be denigrated.

Indeed - and to amplify that, I give you the following from here…

…as with state and local governments, this line of attack is an apples-to-oranges comparison at best and an outright deception at worst. As FactCheck pointed out:

The analysis is based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and crudely done by dividing total compensation (salary and benefits) by the number of current federal civilian employees. Comparing such averages is quite misleading, for two reasons:

First, BEA says the figure is inflated by including compensation that is actually paid to benefit retirees, not just for current workers. The figure is at least several thousand dollars too high, by our calculations.

Second, the average federal civilian worker is better educated, more experienced and more likely to have management or professional responsibilities than the average private worker.

Over 44% of federal employees have a college degree, compared to about 19% of private sector workers. More importantly, an assessment of salaries (excluding benefits) by the Office of Personnel Management found that on average comparable federal civilian workers are paid 22 percent less than private workers.

Lather, rinse, repeat – this is a recording.

In addition, we also have this item from The Hill…

…members of the National Federation of Independent Business consistently rank government regulations and red tape as the most important problems facing businesses today. One in five business owners explain that red tape is their single biggest concern – even over taxes, inflation, and the cost of labor.

The biggest culprit is the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency is engaged in a number of new, over-reaching regulatory efforts that would cripple the ability of American businesses to compete. While the business community understands the benefits of caring for the environment, the EPA adopts new rules and guidance that create burdensome and costly obligations that provide no quantifiable benefits to human health or the environment.

I should tell you up front that trying to untangle this is going to be a bit of a chore, but I’m going to give it a shot concerning one facet of our environment. And to understand where we are at this moment, we need to go back in time to the beginning of the prior decade.

As noted here, there were three rulings by the Ninth Circuit Court (in 2001, 2002 and 2005) that, to varying degrees, ruled on the question of whether or not the remains of chemical pesticides in water bodies constituted a pollutant. Basically, the decisions trended towards ruling that the pesticides were pollutants if residue remained in the water, but were not pollutants if they didn’t (fairly logical enough). However, the Bushco EPA issued a rule in 2006 that exempted the application of aquatic pesticides in compliance with (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act) from the (Clean Water Act). As the article tells us…

(The) EPA explained that aquatic pesticides that are sprayed or otherwise applied consistent with FIFRA are not “chemical wastes” because “they are products that EPA has evaluated and registered for the purpose of controlling target organisms, and are designed, purchased, and applied to perform that purpose.”

So what happened in response?

Environmental and industry groups subsequently challenged EPA’s final rule in eleven circuit courts throughout the United States. The petitions for review were consolidated in the Sixth Circuit by an order of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. National Cotton Council v. EPA, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 45 (6th Cir. 2009).

And as a result…

..the (Sixth Circuit) Court rejected EPA’s argument that excess and residual pesticides should be exempt from NPDES permitting requirements because they do not qualify as pollutants at the time of discharge.

And further…

..the Court held that EPA’s final rule was not a reasonable interpretation of the CWA since the plain language of the terms “chemical waste” and “biological materials” unambiguously include aquatic pesticides. Accordingly, the Court vacated EPA’s final rule. The Court did not analyze arguments addressing the relationship between the CWA and FIFRA.

So basically, we have the Obama Administration trying to comply with a ruling on what constitutes chemical wastes in our water that was necessitated by a typically wrongheaded interpretation by the regime of Former President Nutball which said that aquatic pesticide residue didn’t constitute chemical waste because we say it didn’t.

And as far as U.S. House Repug Bob Gibbs’ complaint about the Army Corps of Engineers is concerned, the following should be noted from here…

During the presidency of George W. Bush, it appeared that the federal attitude toward the practice (of mountaintop removal mining) was more permissive. Anti-mining activists viewed the election of Barack Obama as producing a president more sympathetic to their cause.

Shortly after taking office, the Obama administration announced it was taking steps to reduce the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal. The Environmental Protection Agency began more rigorous reviews of the valley fill permit applications being considered by the Army Corps of Engineers and announced new guidance for agencies considering water pollution permits.

To be fair, I should point out that Gibbs is a U.S. House rep from Ohio, where (last I checked) mountaintop removal does not take place (as opposed to the Ohio Valley). However, as noted here, the mining industry was Gibbs’ biggest campaign contributor for the 2010 election cycle, so it’s fairly easy to see that they’re behind this wrongheaded attack on the Obama Administration, which is trying to comply legally with its response to yet another example of Bushco overreach (and here is another example, with repercussions for our beloved commonwealth in particular).

Finally, I really don’t have a lot to add to this New York Times story on the civil war currently raging in Libya, but I just wanted to highlight this example of a kind of courage for which mere words do not suffice…

“I never thought I would come here this way,” said Dr. Rida Mazagri, a soft-spoken volunteer neurosurgeon from Charleston, W.Va., who arrived two weeks ago. “But we have been waiting for 30 years for a spark. We’re not going to let it extinguish. Either he leaves or he finishes all of us. This land does not accept both of us here.”

Dr. Mazagri said he felt helpless as he watched the war from afar, a once-disdainful expatriate who no longer felt estranged from his native country. After days of watching television, he had had enough. “ ‘Change the call schedule,’ ” he recalled telling his colleagues at the hospital. “ ‘I’m leaving. When I’m going to come back, I have no idea.’ ”

He booked a ticket that took him to Atlanta, Rome and Cairo, then went overland across a border that had crumbled to Benghazi, the capital of opposition-held Libya.

“It’s like a member of your family is ill and they might die without you saying goodbye,” said the doctor, 50, who grew up in Tripoli but left 23 years ago.

Doctors here say 100 volunteers have joined him, from the United States, Egypt and South Africa, as well as from towns stretching from Benghazi to the Green Mountain region to Tobruk in the east. Aid organizations have sent supplies from Egypt and Qatar, and relief workers have managed to recover the dead and wounded from a mercurial battlefield where they said government troops seized two of their own this week.

The staff takes pride in an oasis of organization in a region without it.

“It functions,” said Dr. Walid Saad, a surgeon who was scheduled to begin training in the United States this summer. “It’s not like the cities, where there are no police. It’s not like the rest of the country, where there are no more structures of government.”

Dr. Mazagri works at a hospital in Ajdabiya Hospital, a place where “the wounded come first” which “bears the scars of three weeks of fighting.”

The story by Anthony Shadid of the Times has numerous anecdotes of courage by heroic souls of that country trying to free themselves from the grip of a demonic ruling nut case. We should offer our prayers and support for now, and whatever else we are able to provide with the passage of time (hopefully not too much time for those risking all).

Oh, and speaking of countries under the grip of a demonic ruling nut case, I give you this.

Update: This doesn’t have anything to do with anything else at this post, but I think it is horrific enough to rate a mention on its own.

Your Republican Party on the job, ladies and gentlemen.

What country am I living in again?

Thursday AM Stuff

Always good to see Fix Noise humanoid Megyn Kelly get a comeuppance whenever possible...



...and as long as we're on the subject, maybe we should hear from "Enema Man" (lots of bad words here, by the way - I don't completely "get" this guy and a lot of his peers, but I respect the fact that, if nothing else, they're performance artists...if our kids are listening to these people, then we'd better take them seriously - I will admit that "Lil' Wayne," or whatever, is a bridge too far).

Wednesday Stuff

(Not sure about posting for tomorrow…)

Well, Hosni Mubarak Walker finally did it (here) – shame indeed (and I'll remember this the next time I hear a conservative complaining about a "Democrat" power grab)…



…and oh God, Newt, please run for president (he said he’ll let us know in May pretty close to my ‘hood – hmm, I smell campaign kickoff)…



…also, I hope more people understand that this has a pretty witty pun based on “The Sound of Music” – well, we'll see…

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Update 3/10/11: And speaking of Peter King and his "SCARY MUSLIM! Theater," I give you this.

…and here’s a song about something I wish the Repugs had more of – to hang themselves, of course, which they’re in the process of doing (the overreach with these people is always inevitable).

Wednesday Mashup (3/9/11)

To begin, I should let you know that I checked the web site of our PA-08 U.S. House rep Mikey The Beloved to find out what progress he has made with the daunting task of trying to bring jobs to our district.

As noted here from last month, he “announc(ed) a small-business advisory panel.” And, with lightning speed and laser-like precision…we have exactly the same entry here. With no update whatsoever.

Where are the jobs, Mikey?

Next, I give you the following from Repug “young gun” Eric Cantor here…

House Republicans escalated pressure on President Obama to become directly involved in the budget debate roiling Capitol Hill, criticizing the White House for allowing a vacuum of leadership on the issue.

“Where is the president?” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) asked in a press conference Wednesday morning, repeating the refrain five times in the 10-minute briefing.

Negotiations on a spending bill to fund the government through September have hit a wall in the six days since Obama dispatched Vice President Biden to meet with congressional leaders at the Capitol. The Senate is expected to reject both the Republican and Democratic plans for spending cuts in votes Wednesday afternoon, and GOP leaders are already predicting that another short-term stopgap measure will be needed when current funding expires March 18.

“We’re saying, ‘C’mon, let’s see some leadership,’” Cantor said. “We are ready to talk. We are ready to listen.”

Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) mocked the White House for naming Biden to lead negotiations days before he departed Washington for a five-day trip to Finland, Moldova and Russia. “The vice president’s not even in the country,” McCarthy said. He noted that the White House press secretary refused to identify who was negotiating for the administration in Biden’s absence, and he gleefully recited examples of Democratic division on the proposed spending cuts.

Neither Cantor nor McCarthy indicated what the next step in the stalemate would be, but both parties are waiting for the Senate to dispense with the two proposals to clear the way for negotiations to heat up in earnest.

Well, I suspect that they’re going to keep waiting, seeing as how both proposals were “dispensed” with here.

The gall and hubris of this bunch running the House continues to both astonish and disgust me.

And that is particularly true when the following is noted (from here)…

"Under Republican leadership in the early 2000s, spending and government got out of control," McCarthy writes. "As government grew, there were scandals and political corruption. The focus became getting reelected rather than solving problems and addressing pressing issues."

The book is the latest attempt by GOP leaders to persuade voters their party has changed since it controlled Congress four years ago. Recent polls have suggested Republicans could make major gains in this fall's elections, but voters have broadly negative views of the party. According to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 24 percent of people see the party positively, Republicans' lowest rating in the poll.

Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, has been a leading figure in trying to rebrand the party, even though he was a party leader then as now.

…

In the book "Young Guns," the trio's rhetoric (including Paul Ryan) against their own party is frequent, even as it is vague on identifying the actual culprits. Former House speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.), former majority leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) and former President George W. Bush are almost never named, even as the congressmen suggest the Republican Party must be recast from the Bush era. Obama and Pelosi, meanwhile, are blamed for problems in Washington on nearly every other page.

Oh, and as noted here, Cantor and his pals have more to lose from a government shutdown than Obama does (though nobody would look too good over it).

So basically, this represents Cantor and McCarthy as far as yours truly is concerned.

(I have a feeling that I’ll get sick of looking at this pic way before this bunch can be booted out in 2012.)

In addition, I give you the following from Fix Noise (here)…

Representative Peter King’s (R-N.Y.) decision to hold hearings on American Muslim radicalization has presented an incredible opportunity to American Muslims.

The course of radicalization over the past two years makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone to assert with a straight face that America is immune to the global Muslim radicalization problem. American Muslims must take the lead in creating solutions to the radicalization of our own. These hearings will provide the long overdue platform for us to step away from the standard denials and apologetics in order to reclaim our Muslim identity from the terrorists and redefine ourselves within the framework of the American pantheon.

The author of this piece is Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, someone who puts kind of a smiling and benevolent face on anti-Muslim bigotry in this country (as noted here, he said that “most U.S. Muslim groups are soaking up the attention with civil rights issues (and) ‘victimology’”).

Sarah Posner of The Nation tells us more here…

Unlike more wild-eyed anti-Muslim agitators like Frank Gaffney (with whom Jasser has collaborated) and Pamela Geller, Jasser comes across as calm, sober and professional. He gained notoriety in 2008, with the release of the Clarion Fund film The Third Jihad, which claimed that a fifth column of Muslim extremists have infiltrated America with the intent of establishing a theocratic state. The star of the film, Jasser helped promote the claim that has ricocheted all over the right—that a single document written by a lone Muslim Brotherhood member in the early 1990s proves that American Muslim charities and advocacy groups are part of a plot to subvert the Constitution and America and install an Islamic theocracy.

More recently, Jasser made an appearance in Newt Gingrich’s 2010 documentary, America At Risk: The War With No Name, produced by Citizens United, the conservative group whose efforts to air its anti–Hillary Clinton documentary led to the Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate money in campaigns. The release of the film roughly coincided with the Geller-created hysteria over Park51, as well as with Gingrich’s own calls to ban Sharia, warning of “a comprehensive political, economic and religious movement that seeks to impose sharia—Islamic law—upon all aspects of global society.” The film is notably anti-Obama. (Just last week, Gingrich launched a presidential campaign exploratory committee.)

Jasser is undoubtedly part of a strategy to deflect widespread criticism that King’s hearings are an attempt smear all Muslims with a broad brush. That’s an accusation that Jasser and others in the anti-Muslim agitprop stable are accustomed to averting. And they do so with a sleight of hand: that it’s not individual American Muslims who are radical, it’s their leaders—Muslim charities and civil rights groups, imams and a religious leadership that is dominated by radicals, who in turn dupe the gullible masses.

…

This attack on the Obama administration may well point not only to the possible testimony at King’s hearings but to the right’s political rhetoric heading into the 2012 presidential campaign: vague, unsupported insinuation about the connectedness of Obama, radical Islam and “collectivism.” By speaking to “these groups,” Jasser charged, administration officials “put our country in peril, because they are advocating and promoting and basically apologizing for groups that have ideas that are a slippery slope toward that jihadism.”

So, as Posner says, we can rest assured that, even though the stated goal of people like Jasser is to defend King’s utterly indefensible anti-Muslim hearings, what he and his fellow travelers really hope to accomplish is to keep beating the drum of Obama supposedly being “the other,” and a closet Muslim, and all of the typical garbage accompanying that laughable claim in the hope of getting electoral mileage out of it on behalf of the Repug 2012 presidential candidate.

And as far as Jasser’s supposedly pleasant countenance, I cannot help but recall the following lyric of a John Lennon song: “first you must learn how to smile as you kill.”

Finally, in between analyzing the quotes from Wordsworth and Faulkner in proclaiming his state budget (actually, references to Charles Dickens might be more apropos since it will hasten ever greater division between the very rich and the very poor), I happen to come across this little item that didn’t seem to generate as much press as I thought it might (the text of what our “space cadet” governor told us is here)…

I have asked my very capable Lieutenant Gov. Jim Cawley to lead a Marcellus Shale Commission to oversee how we can build around this new industry and how we can make certain we do this while protecting our lands, our drinking water, our air, and our communities, all the while growing our workforce. I've directed Jim and the commission to get back to me with findings in 120 days.

There are all kinds of hosannas to the wingnuts in Corbett’s little travesty (all of which was thoroughly predictable – heckuva job, PA voters!), including singing the virtues of “tort deform,” “government can’t create jobs,” and invoking John Dickinson, a Continental Congress member who refused to sign the Declaration of Independence (as noted here…well, maybe that was politically neutral, I dunno).

However, I think putting the thoroughly disreputable Jim Cawley in a position to “oversee” Marcellus Shale development is one of the most atrocious moves of the already-noxious Corbett Administration.

Time, space and the limits of my sanity do not permit me to catalogue all of the reasons why this is a bad idea. Here is one, though – as noted here, Cawley, while running for Lt. Guv with Corbett last year, accepted campaign funds from Brian Preski, who Corbett (as former D.A.) charged on six counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest for allegedly using public resources to conduct campaign work for House Republicans.

Also, here are some lowlights from Cawley’s term as a Bucks County Commissioner:

This tells us that Cawley once said $400,000 of county dough could only be spent for recreational purposes, and that’s why it went to a golf course (another of which Bucks needs like I need a second uvula), even though residents of Bristol had hoped that some of the dough would go to a homeless shelter (and by the way, the county solicitor pointed out that Cawley was wrong).

This tells us of a tidy little quid pro quo in which former Bucks Commissioner Cawley and his pal and fellow Commish, Charley (“I Have A Semi-Open Mind”) Martin, steered $200 an hour in legal services to the Langhorne, PA firm of Begley, Carlin & Mandio (which had given $142,000 to county Republicans and commissioner campaigns in the past seven years), and on that same day, six of the firm's attorneys contributed $9,000 to the county GOP, according to an analysis by the Democrats.

This tells us of the role played by Cawley and Martin in the move of the one-time polling place at the Creekside Apartments in Bensalem, PA to a location more amenable to registered Republican voters (the population of Creekside is largely elderly and infirmed who could not make the move…two letter writers to the commissioners complained of crime at the polling location, though they could not substantiate the charge, and both letter writers “are or were GOP committee members”).

Actually, as long as Corbett chose to invoke a famous figure from our colonial past, I think he should have chosen Thomas Paine instead of Dickinson; the former famously wrote “these are the times that try men’s souls” here.

And I’m not sure if truer words were ever spoken.

Update 3/24/11: And speaking of Dickens (pertaining to the economy under the U.S. House Repugs), I give you this.

Tuesday Stuff

Well, with Corbett's horrendous budget that he announced today (no surprise, I realize), I guess the unemployed in our beloved commonwealth can look forward to even fewer jobs that are supposedly "there," but aren't of course...and probably never were...and may never be again)...



...and I can hardly wait to see what Jon Stewart does with this latest nonsense from Alan Simpson (God, just so sad, seriously - I think there may be a few politicians out there who actually represent their constituents...people like us, basically...but at this point, you can count them on two hands on the federal level if you're lucky; hey Number 44, you want to kill enthusiasm from your "base" for real? Keep giving Grampa Joe "Where's My Stinkin' Geritol?" Simpson the time of freaking day, OK?)...



...and speaking of Stewart, it's time to go "down the rabbit hole" with more phony umbrage from Fix Noise...



...and in honor of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, I give you the following from someone I consider to be a great artist regardless of gender.