"Unappeasable right-wing radicals"

This is from a statement by Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva. I respect this man:

This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it. Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.
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A clean debt ceiling vote was the obvious way out of this, and many House Democrats have been saying so. Had that vote failed, the president should have exercised his Fourteenth Amendment responsibilities and ended this manufactured crisis.

You can read the entire statement right here.
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Some very interesting footage here:

Friday cat blogging!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Tax reality

I like this headline:

When will they learn lower taxes doesn't mean money in your pocket

Actually, "they" won't. That's the sad part.
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Yeah, we get it

She has something to hide:

I'm running for the presidency of the United States. My husband is not running for the presidency. Neither are my children. Neither is our business.

-- Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Congresswoman, who refused Thursday to answer questions about her family's business and finances

But seriously. Does she really think this will fly? People running for the presidency have been subjected (along with their families) to intense scrutiny for a long time now. That's just the way it is. Those who aren't prepared for this really ought not to run.
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Farewell

Sad:

These doors may close, the address may change, but the name, the legacy and, most important, the work and healing will endure.

-- John M. McHugh, secretary of the Army, on the closure of the historic Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington next month; the principal hospital for soldiers returning from Afghanistan will be moved to facilities in Maryland and Virginia

I lived in the Greater Washington area for many years and I'm so used to the hospital being in its historic location.

Here's a little background:

Walter Reed closing after 102 years helping troops
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Sauce for the goose and all that...

Something Bill O'Reilly said

Well! He doesn't know history --- now does he?

No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder.

-- Bill O'Reilly, talk-show host, criticizing the American and European media for labeling self-confessed Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik a Christian extremist, despite Breivik's oral and written claims to believe in Christianity

Hey, Bill! Look up the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, okay?
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"Security" atrocities

This is simply sickening:

Bladder cancer survivor has new run-in with TSA

It's a very short article. Just click through and take a look.

Why do we put up with this?
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Oh wow; what a headline:

Plutocracy: If Corporations and the Rich Paid 1960s-Level Taxes, the Debt Would Vanish

Check out this bit:

This “debt crisis” in no way had to happen. No natural disaster, no tsunami, has suddenly pounded the United States out of fiscal balance. We have simply suffered a colossal political failure. Our powers that be, by feeding the rich and their corporations one massive tax break after another, have thrown a monstrous monkey wrench into our national finances.
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So why aren't we taxing the rich? Why are we now suffering such fearsome “debt crisis” angst? Why are our politicos so intent on shoving the “fiscal discipline” of layoffs and cutbacks — austerity — down the throats of average Americans?

No mystery here. Our political system is failing to tax the rich because the rich have fortunes large enough to buy off the political system.

The whole picture is very discouraging because the voting population in this country cannot be counted on to educate themselves.
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Interesting definition of recession

Here's something I found on someone's signature over on Democratic Underground:

To a conservative, a recession is when millions of workers suddenly decide to become lazy and irresponsible.

It's unattributed.

Tragically insightful, isn't it?
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Something very important about Social Security

Right here:

The very idea that Social Security might be on the chopping block in order to pay the ransom Republicans are demanding reveals both the cravenness of their demands and the callowness of the opposition to those demands.

In a former life I was a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. So let me set the record straight. Social Security isn’t responsible for the federal deficit. Just the opposite. Until last year Social Security took in more payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits. It lent the surpluses to the rest of the government.

Now that Social Security has started to pay out more than it takes in, Social Security can simply collect what the rest of the government owes it. This will keep it fully solvent for the next 26 years.

It's from an article by Robert Reich who is currently a professor of public policy at Berkeley.
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Friday cat blogging!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

A very, very, very important question

I found this over on Fire Dog Lake:

Should it be ok for a candidate to present himself as progressive and populist when grabbing for power, only to turn around once in office and not use that power to advance a progressive agenda for the benefit of the American people?

So, what do you think?
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Union busting cruelty

You know, this is just plain sick:

Chicago Hyatt turns heat lamps on picketing workers

Here's what happened:

In winter, it can be awfully nice to walk by a luxury hotel that has heat lamps over its entryway. It would be less nice on a day with temperatures over 90 degrees and a heat index over 100 degrees, as workers picketing outside the Chicago Hyatt Thursday could now tell you in some detail after the hotel's heat lamps were turned on over their picket line.

And get this: it seems they turned the lamps off when the press arrived.
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