Lone Star Project Director Matt Angle:
"The
Senate District 10 race has boiled down to an interesting choice – It’s
Wendy Davis and a coalition of Democrats, independents and fair-minded
Republicans in SD10 versus Mark Shelton propped up by Rick Perry, Greg
Abbott, the Tea Party and other harsh Austin-based partisans."
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Why Romney’s theory of the 'taker class' matters
17 Sept 2012
Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that.
snip
So notice what happened here: Republicans have become outraged over the predictable effect of tax cuts they passed and are using that outrage as the justification for an agenda that further cuts taxes on the rich and pays for it by cutting social services for the non-rich.
Ezra Klein:
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
White House demands military prisons for Americans under NDAA
The White House has asked the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to place an emergency stay on a ruling made last week by a federal judge so that the president’s power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge is reaffirmed immediately.
On Sept. 12, US District Court Judge Katherine Forrest made permanent a temporary injunction she issued in May that bars the federal government from abiding by the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA. Judge Forrest ruled that a clause that gives the government the power to arrest US citizens suspected of maintaining alliances with terrorists and hold them without due process violated the Constitution and that the White House would be stripped of that ability immediately.
Only hours after Judge Forrest issued last week’s ruling, the Obama administration threatened to appeal the decision, and on Monday morning they followed through.
snip
Bruce Afran, who serves as co-lead counsel along with Mayer, tells Hedges that the White House could be waging a war against the injunction to ensure that the Obama administration has ample time to turn the NDAA against any protesters participating in domestic demonstrations.
“A Department of Homeland Security bulletin was issued Friday claiming that the riots [in the Middle East] are likely to come to the US and saying that DHS is looking for the Islamic leaders of these likely riots,” Afran tells Hedges. “It is my view that this is why the government wants to reopen the NDAA — so it has a tool to round up would-be Islamic protesters before they can launch any protest, violent or otherwise. Right now there are no legal tools to arrest would-be protesters. The NDAA would give the government such power. Since the request to vacate the injunction only comes about on the day of the riots, and following the DHS bulletin, it seems to me that the two are connected. The government wants to reopen the NDAA injunction so that they can use it to block protests.”
Read it all:
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Texas asks thousands of voters to verify that they aren’t dead
14 Sept 2012
AUSTIN, Texas — Two months before the presidential election, thousands of registered Texas voters are receiving letters asking them to verify they are not dead.
The nearly 77,000 letters, called notices of examination, were sent out by election officials to comply with a 2011 law passed by the Legislature requiring the secretary of state’s office to cross-reference the voter rolls with the Social Security Administration’s enormous death master file to determine if a voter could be deceased.
-snip-
Voters have 30 days to complete and return the letters, but counties are encouraging people to call and report their eligibility by phone.
In Harris County, the voter registrar sent out more than 9,000 letters, but, after receiving complaints from voters, decided to take no further action, according to the Houston Chronicle. The Secretary of State’s Office has threatened to cut voter registration funding to the county if it does not comply, the newspaper reported.
Read it all:
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Moyers & Company: Thinking outside the box
The conventions are over -- Now it’s time for some thinking outside the box. This week on Moyers & Company, Bill talks with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s been an independent on Congress longer than anyone in American history; and Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Cherie Honkala about their role in -- and what they’ve learned about -- American politics.
Moyers & Company Show 135: Challenging Power, Changing Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.
Moyers & Company Show 135: Challenging Power, Changing Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Chuck Norris' dire warning for America
It's the next best thing to watching a fist-shaking codger tell an empty chair to get off his lawn.
Worth a click
Worth a click
RNC Convention vs. DNC Convention
7 Sept 2012 | The Colbert Report
Republicans and Democrats still despise and distrust each other after two weeks of saying the same things.
Republicans and Democrats still despise and distrust each other after two weeks of saying the same things.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| RNC Convention vs. DNC Convention | ||||
| ||||
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Democrats and the vanishing American middle class
David Seaton | 7 Sept 2012 | my.firedoglake.com
The European middle class was created as a bulwark of social stability, basically to prevent the masses from taking the “winter palace” and stringing up the super rich. The American middle class as we know it really came into being when Henry Ford decided to pay his workers enough to buy the cars they made. It made Ford rich and led to turning America into a land of mass prosperity.
The American middle class is perhaps the United States’ greatest social achievement, an enormous mass of prosperous, educated and healthy citizens which has been the envy of all the world for nearly a hundred years, and the not so secret weapon that destroyed the Soviet Union and reoriented China.
Simplifying to the extreme you could say that the modern, American middle class was created by Henry Ford and literally saved from extinction, (the first time) by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The whole story is in that reductio ad absurdum.
What most Americans, except for the one-percent perhaps, don’t seem to understand is that the American middle class is in reality a totally artificial construction, which if not carefully nurtured will dry up and die like an un-watered house plant. The super-rich are quite comfortable with its disappearance, as they think that they no longer depend on its prosperity for their own prosperity or even for their own physical safety.
I would argue that if the middle class is devastated then all the problems it was created to solve, all the dangers that it was meant to allay would reappear, just like uncut grass grows on the lawn of a foreclosed house.
Read it all:
The European middle class was created as a bulwark of social stability, basically to prevent the masses from taking the “winter palace” and stringing up the super rich. The American middle class as we know it really came into being when Henry Ford decided to pay his workers enough to buy the cars they made. It made Ford rich and led to turning America into a land of mass prosperity.
The American middle class is perhaps the United States’ greatest social achievement, an enormous mass of prosperous, educated and healthy citizens which has been the envy of all the world for nearly a hundred years, and the not so secret weapon that destroyed the Soviet Union and reoriented China.
Simplifying to the extreme you could say that the modern, American middle class was created by Henry Ford and literally saved from extinction, (the first time) by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The whole story is in that reductio ad absurdum.
What most Americans, except for the one-percent perhaps, don’t seem to understand is that the American middle class is in reality a totally artificial construction, which if not carefully nurtured will dry up and die like an un-watered house plant. The super-rich are quite comfortable with its disappearance, as they think that they no longer depend on its prosperity for their own prosperity or even for their own physical safety.
I would argue that if the middle class is devastated then all the problems it was created to solve, all the dangers that it was meant to allay would reappear, just like uncut grass grows on the lawn of a foreclosed house.
Read it all:
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Bill Clinton DNC Speech COMPLETE: "We're in this together" vs. "You're on your own"
Published 5 Sept 2012 by ABCNews
Former U.S. president offers a strong endorsement of Barack Obama, Democratic economic policies.
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Five Reasons why Romney/Ryan must be defeated in 2012 - and why conservatives should hope they are
Kurt Eichenwald | kurteichenwald.com
2 Sept 2012
The GOP must be stopped in 2012. The future of America’s ideals of democracy – and of the Republican Party itself – could well be at stake.
Contrary to how it might seem, I am not a partisan bomb thrower. Throughout most of my adulthood, I have been just as likely to vote for a Republican as for a Democrat – in local, state and national contests. I have cast my ballot in presidential races for both Republicans and Democrats. But in the last four years, the GOP has transmogrified into something ugly and vicious and, more important, something wedded to the politics of fantasy and ignorance. It has rushed so far from its moorings that I cannot conceive of voting for members of this party until, hopefully, they pull themselves back from the precipice of self-destruction, paranoia and delusion.
Today, for Republicans, up is down and front is back. Lying has become so ingrained into the conservatives’ national dialogue that they are now dangerously demagogic or, worse, severely unhinged. Blind rage at the election of Barack Obama has wrecked a once great political party. Its leaders have made so many deals with the devil in their almost pathological obsession with unseating Obama that they have pushed the GOP into its own version of political hell – unable to speak truths to their now-rabid and conspiracy-addled base and unable to right the party back onto a path of responsibility.
Only through the disinfectant of defeat can the Republicans, and the two party system, be preserved. And so, the campaign of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan must be consigned to the ash heap of history. Defeat must not only be decisive, it must be crippling. Here are five reasons why:
Read it here:
2 Sept 2012
The GOP must be stopped in 2012. The future of America’s ideals of democracy – and of the Republican Party itself – could well be at stake.
Contrary to how it might seem, I am not a partisan bomb thrower. Throughout most of my adulthood, I have been just as likely to vote for a Republican as for a Democrat – in local, state and national contests. I have cast my ballot in presidential races for both Republicans and Democrats. But in the last four years, the GOP has transmogrified into something ugly and vicious and, more important, something wedded to the politics of fantasy and ignorance. It has rushed so far from its moorings that I cannot conceive of voting for members of this party until, hopefully, they pull themselves back from the precipice of self-destruction, paranoia and delusion.
Today, for Republicans, up is down and front is back. Lying has become so ingrained into the conservatives’ national dialogue that they are now dangerously demagogic or, worse, severely unhinged. Blind rage at the election of Barack Obama has wrecked a once great political party. Its leaders have made so many deals with the devil in their almost pathological obsession with unseating Obama that they have pushed the GOP into its own version of political hell – unable to speak truths to their now-rabid and conspiracy-addled base and unable to right the party back onto a path of responsibility.
Only through the disinfectant of defeat can the Republicans, and the two party system, be preserved. And so, the campaign of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan must be consigned to the ash heap of history. Defeat must not only be decisive, it must be crippling. Here are five reasons why:
Read it here:
Friday, August 31, 2012
Chris Hedges: Hear the 99% roar
Chris Hedges on what he sees as the consequences of an uneven distribution of wealth: destruction, violence and revolt. He tells Piya Chattopadhyay what the Occupy movement should be about and how best to deal with these socioeconomic issues in the public discourse.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Greed and Debt: The true story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Rolling Stone
August 29, 2012
Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.
Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation's wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He's Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up paying for the acquisition.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Mexico achieves Universal Health Coverage in less than a decade
banderasnews.com
August 17, 2012
Mexico City, Mexico - Despite periods of economic downturns and crisis, Mexico recently achieved a significant milestone – enrolling 52.6 million previously uninsured Mexicans in public medical insurance programs and thereby achieving universal health coverage in less than a decade.
This effort began in 2003 and occurred in a country of approximately 100 million people.
Read it all:
August 17, 2012
Mexico City, Mexico - Despite periods of economic downturns and crisis, Mexico recently achieved a significant milestone – enrolling 52.6 million previously uninsured Mexicans in public medical insurance programs and thereby achieving universal health coverage in less than a decade.
This effort began in 2003 and occurred in a country of approximately 100 million people.
Read it all:
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Thomas Frank: Obama’s squandered hope
In a dramatic essay, Thomas Frank blames Obama's conciliatory nature for a first term that looked like Bush's third
By David Daley | salon.com
22 August 2012
This is the point in a presidential election when people begin talking about the lesser of two evils, when the weaknesses in one’s own candidate pale in comparison to the reality of the other side taking over. But in a remarkable essay in the new issue of Harper’s magazine, the political thinker Thomas Frank levels President Obama’s first term as a dramatic failure compared to the rhetoric that landed him in office, and the potential he had to truly transform the country.
Frank, whose books include “What’s the Matter With Kansas” and “Pity the Billionaire,” makes the case that Obama’s conciliatory nature has been a tragic flaw, one exploited by conservatives in Congress again and again. But he also argues that Obama has “enthusiastically adopted” the ideas of the right when it comes to deficit spending, Wall Street regulation, torture policies, healthcare and more. And his reward for reaching for compromise and grand bargains, “for bowing to their household gods,” has been to be depicted as a socialist and a radical leftist.
The end result? Frank writes that “What Barack Obama has saved is a bankrupt elite that by all means should have met its end back in 2009. He came to the White House amid circumstances similar to 1933, but proceeded to rule like Herbert Hoover.”
Read it here:
By David Daley | salon.com
22 August 2012
This is the point in a presidential election when people begin talking about the lesser of two evils, when the weaknesses in one’s own candidate pale in comparison to the reality of the other side taking over. But in a remarkable essay in the new issue of Harper’s magazine, the political thinker Thomas Frank levels President Obama’s first term as a dramatic failure compared to the rhetoric that landed him in office, and the potential he had to truly transform the country.
Frank, whose books include “What’s the Matter With Kansas” and “Pity the Billionaire,” makes the case that Obama’s conciliatory nature has been a tragic flaw, one exploited by conservatives in Congress again and again. But he also argues that Obama has “enthusiastically adopted” the ideas of the right when it comes to deficit spending, Wall Street regulation, torture policies, healthcare and more. And his reward for reaching for compromise and grand bargains, “for bowing to their household gods,” has been to be depicted as a socialist and a radical leftist.
The end result? Frank writes that “What Barack Obama has saved is a bankrupt elite that by all means should have met its end back in 2009. He came to the White House amid circumstances similar to 1933, but proceeded to rule like Herbert Hoover.”
Read it here:
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Rmoney falls for granny hater Ryan
"So it makes sense, on the surface anyway, that Rmoney would fall for teabagger boner fuel like Ryan. The thing is, as Matt Taibbi (and anyone else actually paying attention to these dimbulbs) correctly sussed a couple years ago, while your average teabagger talks a great game about cutting spending and reducing government, blah blah blah, a great many of them were rather obvious recipients of tha...
t eeevil gubmint aid themselves. They're hypocrites -- they just don't like gubmint money that isn't thrown at them, pure and simple. How many of those Rascal-riding geezers down at the (tax-funded) public park didja see burning their Medicare or Social Security cards in protest? Yep, me neither." - Heywood J @ Hammer of The Blogs
Who Owns the News Media
Who Owns the News Media is an interactive database of companies that own news properties in the United States. Use the site to compare the companies, explore each media sector or read profiles of individual companies. Learn more about the site. For highlights of a year that included the busiest time in newspaper sales since 2007 and the single largest local TV acquisition in four years, read the summary of major ownership changes in the last year.
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Friday, August 03, 2012
Stephen Colbert interviews MSNBC's Chris Hayes, author of the new book 'Twilight of the Elites'
The host of MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes” explains America’s housing bubble, elitism and the difference between educational opportunities and outcomes.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
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