Another day

Another dollar's worth of wtfs....

An Army of Giant Rats Unearth Landmines in Africa

People Locked in Tiny Cages, Crying in Pain: What I Saw and Heard When the LAPD Threw Me in Jail for Exercising My Right to Protest the Oligarchy Don't believe the PR. There was nothing peaceful or professional about the LAPD's attack on Occupy LA -- or the way detainees were later treated.

Pelosi Puts The Kibosh On GOP Payroll Tax Cut Strategy

Killing the Euro

The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011

Reminding people constantly

Because it's so nice to try and forget it:

Stating the obvious

Bush Policies Dominant Cause Of National Debt

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has updated and refined a widely cited chart, laying out the origins of the country's current fiscal trajectory. And as before, the lion's share of the problem comes from ongoing George W. Bush-era policies -- particularly deficit-financed tax cuts, which eliminated Clinton-era surpluses and left the Treasury poised for a huge hit when the financial crisis and economic downturn further eroded federal revenues.

By the end of the decade, CBPP projects that, on the current trajectory, the Bush tax cuts, exacerbated by the economic downturn, combined with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for the significant majority of public debt as a share of GDP.

Without those factors, and without the need for stimulus measures under President Obama, CBPP projects that the debt-to-GDP ratio would have dropped under both Presidents Bush and Obama.

Blog sprinkles

Phila of Bouphonia's Friday hope blog.

Blackwater(Xe) gets to stay in Afghanistan.

A satisfying answer to idiot racism.

New Study: The American Public Prefers LIBERAL Policies Which Would Cut Budget By $437 Billion

Excellent graphic of the tax breaks and budget cuts....

We owe our hands to rocks.

Good. Wis. Dems File Ethics Complaint Over Walker's Comments On 'Koch' Call

Krugman continues to scare me:

Yes, we need to fix American education. In particular, the inequalities Americans face at the starting line — bright children from poor families are less likely to finish college than much less able children of the affluent — aren’t just an outrage; they represent a huge waste of the nation’s human potential.

But there are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.

So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.

What we can’t do is get where we need to go just by giving workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.

The story of an abortion provider.

Governor Scott Walker's lies

20 and counting.

Republicans have no right to whine

About the deficit after they insisted upon giving billions in tax cuts to the rich. It's like shooting your parents and then asking for mercy from the court because you are an orphan.

And more by the way...

Even with all those amazing tax breaks and bailouts and golden parachutes and bonuses....

Study says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes

(Reuters) - Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.

The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.

From now on

Any Republican (or Democrat for that matter) who declares loudly that he/she cares about the deficit deserves to be clapped in the stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes.

The president should call their effing bluff

Because the Republicans are the hostage takers of Americans.

Jon Stewart and Obama

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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I hope you stick around, Rep. Grayson, sir

We need people like you.

Krugman

The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

Blog sprinkles

The Chinese just have to do everything better:

The jam on the main north-south motorway into Beijing has been blamed on a set of roadworks that is intended to alleviate congestion caused by thousands of trucks bring coal and perishable goods into the city.

At its farthest extent trucks joining the back of queue in Inner Mongolia were taking several days to reach their destination, crawling along at about 2mp/d – or miles per day, the measure of speed on the clogged section.

Fantastic ancient art work:

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

Just looking for a scapegoat to beat to death and hang in the village square:

This is teabaggery crowd in America today.

Oh happy news!! New microbe discovered eating oil spill in Gulf!!.... Wait a minute.... If you read down to the last paragraph, who is funding these marvelous scientists who have discovered this microbe? (my bold):

Scientists also had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water, creating a "dead zone" dangerous to other life. But the new study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67 percent, while within the plume it was 59 percent.

The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.

Ah. Prostituted scientists. So why on earth should I believe you guys, then? And ignore the crude dumped in the local landfills.... and ignore the guy who was telling the truth months ago:

What Steiner said to me during that first interview was blunt, depressing -- and struck me as having the ring of truth. Little did I know how true.

"Government and industry will habitually understate the volume of the spill and the impact, and they will overstate the effectiveness of the cleanup and their response," he told me at the time. "There's no such thing as an effective response. There's never been an effective response -- ever -- where more than 10 or 20 percent of the oil is ever recovered from the water.

"Most of the oil that goes into the water in a major spill stays there," he said. "And once the oil is in the water, the damage is done."

Steiner was also one of the first scientists to warn that much if not most of BP's oil was remaining underwater, forming giant and potentially deadly toxic plumes.

Credo Action: We need to cut military spending, not Social Security:

Sign our petition to the members of the deficit commission telling them to make recommendations that significantly lower military spending, allow the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% to expire, and modify health care reform to include a robust public option to lower costs.

Putting Glenn Beck into perspective using MLK.

Omg.... Sean Connery is 80.

Marcellina of The Practice Room has a link showing how far it is from Ground Zero to the 'mosque'.

You do that. I'm sure you'll learn something: Conservatives Across The U.S. Plan Parties To Read The Constitution Out Loud

Obviously because it's fun! Sloth and Gluttony Hard to Shake Even For the Healthy

If we were listening to Ray Bradbury we'd be packing our bags right now!

New solar system looks much like home

The newly discovered solar system may contain the largest number of planets ever found orbiting another star.

Although... if you look at the space junk we've left in our wake just around Earth, I'm sure the other star systems hope we won't figure out how to space travel....

Anyway... we're all gonna diiiiiieeeeeee! Or lose all our invested money which comes down to the same thing....

Obama is a islamofascistcommie socialistic nazi!

He CAN'T have given us a tax cut! And if he did, something is really nazifiedly suspicious about it!!11! From TPM:

Incoherence, thy name is teabaggery.... or the other way around.

Update: Huffington Post on The Other 95%:

"Obama passed 25 separate tax cuts," Sheryl Stein, founding member of "The Other 95%" said in a statement announcing the group's plans, "including $300 billion in middle class tax cuts -- one of the largest in history - as part of the stimulus package. Unlike President Bush's 2001 tax cuts, which went to the wealthiest 2.2%, President Obama's tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit working and middle class families -- in fact, 95% of all Americans."

Remember how Obama lowered your taxes?

Check it out, it's true:

Obama went on to describe, in some detail, all of the tax-cut measures he's approved, including the Making Work Pay tax credit that started last year, the American Opportunity Credit to help defray the costs of college tuition, new tax breaks for first-time home buyers, new tax breaks for those who invest in making their homes more energy efficient, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, allowing more families to qualify for the Child Tax Credit, and new tax credits for the unemployed.

The president may need to repeat the message a few more times as the midterm elections draw closer -- a recent NYT/CBS poll asked Americans if they think the Obama Administration increased taxes, decreased taxes, or have they kept taxes the same. Only 12% accurately noted that taxes have done down; twice as many (24%) mistakenly said the opposite.

It's hard for a president and his party to get credit for cutting taxes when so many have forgotten what's already happened.

You must remember this

A kiss is just a kiss

A lie is just a lie ... except from Karl Rove it's a great staggeringly big baldfaced fucking ultimate lie.

David Axlerod for the Washington Post: (my bold)

Of all the claims Rove made, one in particular caught my eye for its sheer audacity and shamelessness -- that congressional Democrats "will run up more debt by October than Bush did in eight years."

So, let's review a little history:

The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus -- with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. When the Bush administration left office, it handed President Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit -- and projected shortfalls of $8 trillion for the next decade. During eight years in office, the Bush administration passed two major tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest Americans, enacted a costly Medicare prescription-drug benefit and waged two wars, without paying for any of it.

To put the breathtaking scope of this irresponsibility in perspective, the Bush administration's swing from surpluses to deficits added more debt in its eight years than all the previous administrations in the history of our republic combined. And its spending spree is the unwelcome gift that keeps on giving: Going forward, these unpaid-for policies will continue to add trillions to our deficit.

Don't let them rewrite history. Remember this.

h/t to Echidne of the Snakes for the link.

When those who hate government

Try to run government:

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.

From the Census Bureau:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income in the United States fell 3.6 percent between 2007 and 2008, from $52,163 to $50,303. This breaks a string of three years of annual income increases and coincides with the recession that started in December 2007.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007. There were 39.8 million people in poverty in 2008, up from 37.3 million in 2007.

Meanwhile, the number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008, while the percentage remained unchanged at 15.4 percent.

On the Eschaton threads...

Do you hope for republicans to fail?

Republicans HAVE failed. It was Harding-Hoover that pushed tax cuts and deregulation leading to 2 stock market crashes in 1929 and 1931, collapse of the banking system, and the great depression.

It was Reagan-Bush that pushed tax cuts and deregulation that led to 2 stock market crashes in 1987 and 1989, the S&L meltdown and the ensuing recession.

It was Gramm-Bush-Cheney that pushed tax cuts and deregulation that to the stock market crash in 2008 and ????, the banking system collapse and the global depression we are now in.

An honest look at history reveals that the idiot republicans have pushed the same failed policies over and over, and have gotten the same results every time.

And now you fucking morons are pushing the exact same bullshit again, hoping the results will be different. Wishful thinking IS NOT A STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS!!! Deal with it.
left field, barack the house | 03.06.09 - 4:24 pm

Bush's Legacy: Recession

He did tell us to go shopping though, didn't he? Don't we have confidence in his leadership?

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street gave up early gains to trade mixed Friday as skittish investors, unable to hold on to much optimism about the economy, drew little comfort from President Bush's stimulus plan.

Investors pulled back from a big early advance, with the major indexes trading mixed as Bush began to speak. By the time the president finished announcing a plan for about $145 billion worth of tax relief, the indexes were well into negative territory.

But he cut taxes for the rich. What could possibly go wrong?

While Bush focused solely on taxes, Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress have been working on a broader package that also would include a temporary increase in food stamps and an extension of and perhaps increase in unemployment benefits.

The president and Congress are scrambling to take action as fears mount that a severe housing slump and painful credit crisis could cause people to close their wallets and businesses to put a lid on hiring, throwing the nation into its first recession since 2001.

I think I'll stop spending so much and stuff a bit of my money in my mattress until this is over....

When the cookie jar is empty, you look for the kid with crumbs on his face....

Social Security is not broken, it's just been robbed. And we're being told to believe the thieves who gutted the system and took the money when they tell us it's not working? Bryan of Why Now? says it best:

How many times do these people have to be told that the only problem with Social Security is that the Repubs have been raiding the trust fund to give their friends and supporters tax breaks, and now they are going to be forced to pay it back. The money has been paid by the people who will receive the benefits and Congress has to put back what they have taken. The Repubs have been looting the trust fund to drive the system under and they need to be called on it, not supported in their alibis by Dems.

The Republicans never met a savings account they didn't want to drain. The money they've partied with belongs to the millions of hard working Americans who worked 9 to 5 for fifty years and paid into the system, expecting it to be there when they retired.

We want our money back.