Prominent Republicans respond to Mitt Romney’s “gifts” comments

shortformblog:

  • Gov. Branstand “I don’t think it’s helpful. I guess my feeling is that we need to turn the page, and we need to focus on the future and not make excuses for the past.”
  • Gov. Jindal “We need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American Dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children an opportunity to be able to get a great education. … So, I absolutely reject that notion, that description. I think that’s absolutely wrong.”
  • Gov. Scott “It’s wrong, it’s not true. What we’ve got to do is say we want every vote, we want to take care of every citizen in our state”
  • Rep. Rubio “I don’t believe that we have millions and millions of people in this country that don’t want to work. I’m not saying that’s what [Romney] said. I think we have millions of people in this country that are out of work and are dependent on the government because they can’t find a job.” 
  • Rep. Ayotte “The campaign is over and what the voters are looking for us to do is to accept their votes and go forward and we’ve got some big challenges that need to be solved. I don’t know the full context of them but I don’t agree with them.” source

Interesting… 

Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.
via cwl, It’s Global Warming, Stupid

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

Source: businessweek.com

via rollingstone.com/politics

Finally, Obama had a chance to physically reduce the size of Too-Big-To-Fail companies by supporting the Brown-Kaufman amendment to Dodd-Frank, which would have forced big banks to cap deposits and liabilities to under 10% of GDP. He didn’t support that amendment and it died.

The sum total of all of this is that Obama didn’t really do anything to alleviate the dangers of Too-Big-To-Fail. If anything, we now live in a world that is more concentrated and dangerous than it was before 2008. TBTF companies like Chase and Wells Fargo and Bank of America are even bigger and less-able-to-fail-ier than they were when he took office. This is why Obama’s answer to our interview question is so disappointing. If I’m understanding the president correctly, he basically says he doesn’t think Glass-Steagall should be re-instated, and beyond that, he just thinks Wall Street needs to self-regulate better.

That’s a pretty depressing take, at a time when even Sandy Weill – the bellicose Wall Street braggart who willed the now-infamous Citigroup merger into being and was a driving force behind Glass-Steagall – thinks that Too-Big-To-Fail companies should be broken up. The only hope we really have to fix many of these problems is to do just that, and we will need the chief executive’s help there. But President Obama apparently still isn’t willing to take that step, which is really too bad.


ikenbot:

Fact Check: What a 9,000-Year-Old Earth Really Looked Like

U.S. House Rep. Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican, doesn’t believe in evolution, the Big Bang theory, or the teachings of embryology. In fact, in a Sept. 27 talk at LibertyBaptist Church in Hartwell, Ga., the member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who is also a medical doctor, called those areas of science “lies straight from the pit of hell.”

But Broun also advanced his own theory of life on Earth.

“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”

Broun’s creationist viewpoint stands in opposition to what scientific research reveals about the age of the planet. In fact, Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago — and humanity is rather lucky not to be seeing the planet on its 9,000th birthday. Earth was formed by the colliding and coming together of massive space objects called planetesimals, said Richard Carlson, a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution who has studied some of Earth’s oldest rocks. The force of the impacts would have melted rock, leaving Earth molten for hundreds of thousands of years, Carlson told LiveScience.

Read More

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

Why Biden Won

robertreich:

I thought Biden won last night’s debate because he came off as genuine, passionate, and brimming with conviction. Ryan, by contrast, seemed like a wooden marionette, a kid out of his depth relative to someone who not only knew the facts but lived them.

On taxes, Ryan couldn’t come up with any details about what loopholes he and Romney would close, or how their magic arithmetic (giant tax cut for the wealthy plus $2 trillion more for the military than the Joint Chiefs of Staff want) can possibly be paid for without socking it to the middle class.

By contrast, Biden made the case for average working people whose wages have barely risen in thirty years but who are bearing a higher total tax burden (payroll, sales, property, income) on a higher percent of their income than high rollers like Romney — and why the well off should do more.

On Medicare, Ryan couldn’t explain why his plan wasn’t a voucher program that “saved” money only by shifting the costs on to seniors who would end up holding the bag as medical costs rose. Biden effectively defended the President’s plan to save Medicare by cutting excessive payments to providers.

Biden also pointed out that Ryan and his allies had tried to privatize Social Security. Score another one for Joe.

On abortion, Ryan had to admit he and Romney would work to prevent women from having the right to choose an abortion if they needed and wanted one. Biden made it clear his religious beliefs about when life began should not, in his view, force anyone who didn’t share them to follow them.

I thought Biden’s closing could have been tougher, drawing a sharper contrast between the Romney-Ryan “you’re on your own” worldview, and the “we’re in it all together” belief that has built America — and which Obama and Biden represent.

But overall it was Biden’s night. He not only trounced Ryan, but also, in the process, trounced Romney. Joe Biden is an average Joe solidly grounded in America’s working middle class — nothing pretentious or devious about him — in contrast to the plutocrat who heads the Republican ticket, and the billionaires who are backing him.

Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan. All of these smug little jerks look alike to me – from Ralph Reed to Eric Cantor to Jeb Hensarling to Rand Paul and now to Ryan, they all look like overgrown kids who got nipple-twisted in the halls in high school, worked as Applebee’s shift managers in college, and are now taking revenge on the world as grownups by defunding hospice care and student loans and Sesame Street.
Matt Taibbi: Tax Cuts for the Rich on the Backs of the Middle Class, via kateoplis

Today marks 11 years since the Bush tax breaks for the rich were enacted. President George W. Bush signed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act on June 7, 2001. Bush claimed (as right-wingers always do) that tax breaks for the rich would create jobs in the private sector. Well, they haven’t. There were 110 million private sector jobs in America in 2001. There are 110 million private sector jobs in America today. Despite a population increase of more than 25 million, there are no more private sector jobs today than when the Bush tax breaks for the rich became law.

In the past 11 years, the number of Americans living in poverty has increased from 33 million to 44 million. The number of Americans receiving food stamps has risen from 18 million to 46 million. “Trickle-down” has not even been a trickle.

 Alan Grayson, via ericmortensen

(via ericmortensen)

timelightbox: March 31, 2012. Children play with slingshots in Sirte, the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown. Sirte was one of the last loyalist strongholds in the nearly year-long war that ended the 42-year regime of Muammar Gaddafi, and it sustained more damage than any other Libyan city—in just a little over a month of heavy fighting. Many residents who admit to having been Gaddafi supporters now worry about what will become of them in the new Libya. Abigail Hauslohner drove across Libya with photographer Yuri Kozyrev, and found a new country along the way. See more here.
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timelightbox:

March 31, 2012. Children play with slingshots in Sirte, the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown. Sirte was one of the last loyalist strongholds in the nearly year-long war that ended the 42-year regime of Muammar Gaddafi, and it sustained more damage than any other Libyan city—in just a little over a month of heavy fighting. Many residents who admit to having been Gaddafi supporters now worry about what will become of them in the new Libya. Abigail Hauslohner drove across Libya with photographer Yuri Kozyrev, and found a new country along the way. See more here.

(via rubenfeld)

Source: ti.me

Conservatives used to like the idea of required purchases as an alternative to taxes, which is why the idea for the mandate originally came not from liberals but from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. (By the way, another pet conservative project — private accounts to replace Social Security — relies on, yes, mandatory contributions from individuals.)
Paul Krugman (via ericmortensen)

(via ericmortensen)

spotted via justin,

reblogged via bpousman, verbalresistance:

Ron Paul’s “South Was Right” Civil War Speech With Confederate Flag

20.01.2012 - Ron Paul has made no secret the fact that he thought that the South was right in the Civil War. Here he is giving a speech in front of a giant Confederate Flag about why he believes the North was wrong in the Civil War and why the South was right. […]

The country is so crazy divided along the two party lines, because honestly, we’d be much better off being two or three different autonomous countries. I’d love to have a choice to pick either a super liberal country with high taxes, but excellent social programs, or an extremely fiscally conservative country with low-to-zero taxes, and a lack of social safety net.

Instead we are trapped in this never-ending hell in which two groups of people who will never agree, keep meeting somewhere in the middle, or juggling the nation back and forth, and creating an absolute mess. 

I trimmed down this thread - if anyone is interested in reading it in its entirety, as well as the video that was attached, that I couldn’t bring myself to post on my personal blog, then please click here. 

Two quick points that made me laugh / cringe when watching this: 

1) I love that Ron Paul hypes the “pain and suffering” of solders in the Civil War, while kinda’ sort of failing to acknowledge, even briefly, the decades and decades and decades of pain and suffering of slaves. 

2) I also love that of the 11 countries he cites, as having found different ways out of slavery, he cites the buying out of slaves from slave-owners. I assume the country or countries that did this, did so via their Governments… which would be Ron Paul promoting that our Government should have used tax dollars for a large-scale Federal department tasked with the tracking down, paying for, overseeing and follow up in purchasing of the several-million slaves that lived in the United States just before the Civil War. Or maybe he just thinks that would work on a state by state level - I really don’t think he has a clear idea of what he is promoting there… seems to be just rambling, really. 

Moving on. 

And this part is more in response to Justin, who wrote, “I’d love to have a choice to pick either a super liberal country with high taxes, but excellent social programs, or an extremely fiscally conservative country with low-to-zero taxes, and a lack of social safety net.” 

This is what I found to be very, very strange… we *have* had that exact choice.

To be fair, this choice between A and B wasn’t really an option during Justin’s lifetime, or mine for that matter, since we are close in age; but the idea that our country has never existed without social safety nets, safe working conditions, safe drinking water, fair wages, public roads, advanced telephone and power grids, fire and police departments, an educated public… I could go on and on; the idea that if only people had the option of living in this would-be utopia… is stunning. I’m beside myself. 

People that lived long before myself or Justin did indeed have the choice of no social safety *anything* vs social safety something, and they fought hard for the latter, in many cases people died fighting for their Government to better protect the pursuit of happiness in future generations. 

Source: verbalresistance

Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court. That prospect underscores the vital importance of this election and the movement to preserve our values. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.

- Willard Mitt Romney (via paxamericana)

This is where I would put a comment talking about how it’s important to understand that the Constitution is really old and must be interpreted to apply to situations hundreds of years later.

Also, where is marriage in the Constitution? (via somepolitics)

If you look at the constitution closely, you can see Jefferson scribbled “no homo” in the margins on the last page. (via stfupenguins)

The “will of the people” doesn’t enter into conversations about civil rights. The majority does not get to vote to marginalize the minority and call it fair or valid. (via spytap)

(via spytap)

Source: paxamericana

When I first met him, Jez was referring to the project as the Occupy Wall Street An-Archives. He had also, of course, started a (sporadically updated) tumblr of that name. But when I asked him if he identifies an anarchist he almost laughed. “The thing is, I’m not! I never even identified as an anarchist until this thing, where I was like, oh, is this what anarchism is?” he says, his voice rising to a self-critical falsetto. “I guess, maybe I’m an anarchist?” That ambivalence about anarchist politics, let alone activist politics more broadly, was to become a general theme of the Archives project. Maybe that was inevitable. File boxes and acid-free manila folders don’t usually take center stage at a protest. Everyone’s eyes are on the political ideals, not the filing cabinets—and justifiably so, at the time. Worrying about the archives can seem strangely beside the point—until that is, you read the historian’s account, and can barely find yourself in its reflection.
Michelle Dean, The Struggle For the OWS Archives

(via melissa)

I’m not a student of politics. I played a politician. I have no interest in politics. But I have a great deal of interest in peace and human rights and civil disobedience to address grievances, to speak truth to power – I have a great interest in that, and that’s really the only way the world gets changed.
 Martin Sheen, spotted via eric mortensen

(via ericmortensen)

Our culture is marketing, this is what we do, and what is marketing? Trying to get people to do what you want them to. It’s what drives our consumer culture, it’s what drives our politics, it’s what drives our art. Music, movies, books, fine arts, it’s part of every research grant proposal. I don’t want to participate. I don’t want to tell you how to sell a screenplay or tell you how to write a hit, or tell you how to fit into the existing system. I want to tell you that I have a hope that there’s another way to be in this world, and that I believe with courage, vulnerability and honesty that the stuff we put into the world can serve a better purpose.


The way movies work now, and I’m talking about mainstream industry, the only goal is to get you to buy a product. The only goal. THE only goal. The ONLY goal. THE ONLY GOAL. And this intention creates the movies that we sit through, and the movies that we sit through create us. In government we’ve been reduced to the same game, through trickery, obfuscation, bullying, fear mongering. The goal of marketing a candidate is achieved. I don’t understand many things, I don’t know as much as I’d like about anything, but I’m a human being and I won’t be in competition for the right to be treated decently.


I won’t play that game. Nor should anybody have to. And in turn I will try not to use whatever access I have to the public sphere to sell things, including myself. The world is very scary now. It always has been. But something grotesque and specific to our time is blanketing us. We need to see that it is not reality, it is a choice we are making or allowing other people to make for us.

Charlie Kaufman during BAFTA Lecture, via sunshine makes me high

(via wreckandsalvage)

Source: sunshinemakesmehigh

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