tagged w/ Repubes
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It passed its law and now we are very angry i would find a rock and hide under it if i was a repube or a demo-can't we are legion ...and we will conquer.It passed its law and now we are very angry i would find a rock and hide under it if i... more
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Congress Votes to End Protesters' Rights
Last week, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would severely limit the First Amendment rights of protesters.
Now known as the “anti-Occupy law,” H.R. 347 makes it a federal offense to “enter or remain” in an area designated as “restricted.”
As RT.com (via the ACLU blog) put it:
Under the act, the government is also given the power to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country. The new legislation allows prosecutors to charge anyone who enters a building without permission or with the intent to disrupt a government function with a federal offense if Secret Service is on the scene…
It also restricts access to buildings or grounds that are connected to a “special event of national significance,” or a National Special Security Event, which are so categorized by a simple stroke of the pen by the Department of Homeland Security.
The Daily Paul, a blog dedicated to Ron Paul, who was one of only THREE congressional members to vote against the measure, was so alarmed they simply asked: “Is this real?”
If President Obama signs the bill into law, it means that any person protesting a Romney or Santorum event (since they enjoy Secret Service protection) could potentially be arrested, fined, and incarcerated for a year.
It means that protest of national or global summits could be punishable under federal law. It means that government workers striking outside of government buildings or ‘special events’ could be thrown in jail. And it means that certain Occupy gatherings would be expressly forbidden.
H.R. 347 is the definition of authoritarianism. It is a serious and blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of every American citizen. And it should be repealed immediately.
Update: Conveniently, this bill would also undermine protest efforts at the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Congressmen Justin Amash (R-MI), one of the few to oppose the bill, has published this on his FB page:
Current law makes it illegal to enter or remain in an area where certain government officials (more particularly, those with Secret Service protection) will be visiting temporarily if and only if the person knows it’s illegal to enter the restricted area but does so anyway. The bill expands current law to make it a crime to enter or remain in an area where an official is visiting even if the person does not know it’s illegal to be in that area and has no reason to suspect it’s illegal. (It expands the law by changing “willfully and knowingly” to just “knowingly” with respect to the mental state required to be charged with a crime.)
http://figrd.blogspot.comCongress Votes to End Protesters' Rights
Last week, the Senate unanimously... more
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Elections Are For Suckers
by Robert Scheer
Let’s just dip our fingers in purple ink and pose for photos now that voting has the same significance for us as it had for those Iraqis who got conned into thinking they were participating in some grand democratic experiment.
Our own elections, the ones our government has modeled for the world, are a hoax. What other word should we use to describe this year’s presidential election, whose outcome will turn on which party’s super PACs gets the most generous bribes from billionaires? The Republicans, enabled by decisions of a Supreme Court they still control, were the first out of the gate and are far more culpable in destroying our system of popular governance. But the Democrats, no less committed to winning at any cost to political principle, have now jumped in.
The generally reserved New York Times editorial page responded to the Obama campaign’s decision to seek super PAC funding with a scathing editorial headlined “Another Campaign for Sale.” The Times reminded that Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech two years ago, called out the Supreme Court justices sitting before him over their decision to free special interests from campaign spending limits. “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests,” Obama said then. “They should be decided by the American people.” But sadly, as the Times editorial noted this week, “On Monday, the President abandoned that fundamental principle and gave in to the culture of the Citizens United decision that he once denounced as a ‘threat to our democracy.’ ”
Monday was the day the Obama campaign sent out an e-mail announcing that members of the president’s administration would solicit funds for Priorities USA Action, one of the super PACs that can now, thanks to the Supreme Court decisions that Obama had castigated, raise unlimited funds in an effort to sway the election.
Just as the super political action committee supporting Republican primary contender Newt Gingrich had raised $10 million from Nevada gambling kingpin Sheldon Adelson and his wife, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama campaign set its sights on media mogul Haim Saban.
A backer of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries in 2008, Saban had not subsequently supported Obama because of criticisms over the president’s actions toward Israel. Perhaps because the president has done nothing to effectively pressure the Israeli government to make any concessions toward Palestinian self-determination, Saban recently made his first contribution to Obama and in a written statement Tuesday said, “We are looking at all the Super PACs at the moment, will surely participate, but haven’t decided on the details.”
Saban may be one of the more idealistic mega-donors the pro-Obama Priorities USA Action PAC is now courting. Less savory, if one cares about the hold that Wall Street has exerted over this administration, are some of the top donors Obama aides met with Tuesday to urge that they contribute to the PAC. The list included Hamilton E. James, the president of the huge private equity firm Blackstone, and Robert Wolf, the chairman of UBS Group Americas.
Not that the Republicans should worry, since their list of super PAC supporters is far more powerful. To date, the pro-Democrat PACs have collected a paltry $19 million as compared with the $91 million raised last year by committees controlled by Karl Rove and the allies of the Republican presidential candidates. This disparity is the president’s justification for abandoning his principled opposition to such groups. “We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” said Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules. Democrats can’t be unilaterally disarmed.”Elections Are For Suckers
by Robert Scheer
Let’s just dip our fingers in... more
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The new year has just begun and we've already got our first big challenge. On New Year's Eve, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. It contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision. And it has no time or geographic limits. It can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.
Despite initial assurances that he would veto this outrageous bill, President Obama will now be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.
He signed it. Now, we have to fight it wherever we can and for as long as it takes.
Make it clear you won't rest until this outrage is reversed. Sign the ACLU's pledge to fight worldwide indefinite detention for as long as it takes.
Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA.
With your help, we will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally. If you believe that no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this President or any future president misusing this new detention authority, now is the time to act.
Commit to fighting indefinite detention for as long as it takes. Sign the ACLU pledge right now.
Now more than ever, the defense of freedom is up to us. Let's prove that we're up to the task.
For freedom,
Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director, ACLU
...Because freedom can't protect itself.
i hope you all can find time to sign thank you
G.M.FiggThe new year has just begun and we've already got our first big challenge. On New... more
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Somewhat to my surprise, the Wall Street Journal didn't merely report that "Donald Trump wants a say in who gets the nomination, so he's hosting a presidential debate, holding out the prospect of his endorsement and threatening an independent run" (i.e., behaving like a kingmaker who expects to be honored and courted by the rival candidates); it even quoted candidate Jon Huntsman's remarkably lewd comment about why he's not going to attend the Trump "debate": Huntsman said, "I'm not going to kiss his ring, and I'm not going to kiss any other part of his anatomy."
That vivid and rather gross remark reminded me of how right my extremely cool son Calvin is about the word he wants to see win the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year contest. I had been talking to Calvin one day about the ghastly crew of obnoxious multi-millionaires who dominate the newspapers, and how they keep threatening to achieve success even in the political arena. Calvin pointed out to me both that we need a new political term for the concept of being ruled by such men, and that there already is such a term. We are living, he observed, in the age of the assholocracy.
He's right, you know. This relatively new word is really useful. Even if we ignore the whole scandal of modern banking, and the rigged election in Russia, and all the scandals in Italy (by the man who The Economist dubbed "the man who screwed a whole country"), and all the disgusting behavior and political clout of of the Murdoch press empire, there is so much else. The contest for the Republican presidential nomination illustrates as well as any other arena.
Donald Trump is famous here in Scotland. Famous for his cruel treatment of the ordinary people he has tried hard to oust from their homes so he can get control of their land, which adjoins the golf resort he is trying to build north of Aberdeen. (There is an excellent documentary on his unpleasant dealings: You've Been Trumped. The capacity crowd in Edinburgh the night I saw it broke into applause, and it was not for the Donald.) To see Trump trying to play a decisive role in choosing the next Republican presidential candidate even as he threatens to split their vote by running against them as an independent really interests us over here. It should be even more interesting to those of you who are on the left hand side of the Atlantic.
The thought of Trump having political power and influence convinces me that assholocracy is going to get my vote at the American Dialect Society's voting session. It's not just to make sure we don't find some stupid compositional phrase winning (I shudder at the thought of having to battle against my good friend Ben Zimmer over such a thing, but you can already see the way he's leaning on the phrase issue), no; it's because assholocracy is a terse and valuable addition to the vocabulary.
The whole Arab Spring has been a process of bringing down assholocracies. Italy suffered under one until recently. Russia and Syria are now protesting against their own crooked assholocracies, and the only reason North Korea and Zimbabwe don't do the same is that they daren't, they could be killed. We in the West are going to need a term for being ruled by assholocrats, because they continue to threaten to exercise power over huge parts of the earth's population even if not (yet) over us.
Assholocracy needs more Google hits, though; it's a rare word thus far (105 Ghits as of right now, combining the correct spelling assholocracy and the variant spelling assholeocracy). Rare words don't win. There are several weeks to go before the ADS vote. Those of you with blogs, use the word, visibly and often. Let's get to work and make sure we at least have the appropriate vocabulary items for dealing with the situation should it arise.
Think about the phrase "President Trump". Or even just "presidential candidate hand-picked and endorsed by Trump". Doesn't it chill you to the bone? Can ridicule by Doonesbury get rid of him? You'd better be very sure. So get out there and prepare the lexicographical ground. With words, we can win. Without the words, we don't have the concepts: just as the Eskimos have many apposite words for . . . no, never mind that; bad example. Just push the word assholocracy wherever you have influence is what I'm saying.
Update, midnight EST, 13 December: The raw Google hits (Ghits) for the two spellings combined went up from 105 to 142 during the evening. That's over 35 percent. We can win this thing.
Update, 8 a.m. EST, 14 December: The combined count is now up to 421. (Of those, 374 are the pseudo-Greek spelling that I prefer, without the e. But spelling doesn't matter too much here; there are other words that are sometimes spelled with a medial e and sometimes without: judg[e]ment is an example.) The Ghits have quadrupled since yesterday.
Update, 1 p.m. EST, 16 December: The spelling assholocracy alone now gets 7,950 Ghits. Language Log (for that is surely the mighty force behind this trend) has increased the web appearances of the word by two orders of magnitude (roughly multiplying them by 100).
[Comments are closed because now is not the time for comments: now is the time for action.]
December 13, 2011 @ 5:31 pm · Filed by Geoffrey K. Pullum under Language and politics, Words words words
http://figrd.blogspot.comSomewhat to my surprise, the Wall Street Journal didn't merely report that... more
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Something I think is very important and if you could take the time to sign our petition at the end much appreciated.
In April, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to cut Medicare and Medicaid. Even Democrats on the so-called Super Committee are talking about cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
Essentially Congress is telling senior citizens and the poor that tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires are more important than providing a health care safety net for our most vulnerable.
But did you know that members of Congress get great taxpayer funded healthcare? In fact, they get one of the best health care plans in the world.
It strikes us as the height of hypocrisy to be accepting government-provided, taxpayer-subsidized health insurance while denying seniors, the disabled and the poor the basic coverage that Medicare and Medicaid provide.
That’s why we’re circulating this petition demanding that members of Congress who voted to cut Medicare and Medicaid stop accepting taxpayer-subsidized health insurance for themselves. If they beli eve our most vulnerable citizens should buy insurance on the corporate, for-profit market, shouldn’t they do the same?
Sign the petition. Tell Congress: If you don’t believe in publicly-funded health coverage, don’t accept it.
That's why I signed a petition to The United States House of Representatives, which says:
"If you voted to cut Medicare and Medicaid, you must stop accepting taxpayer-funded healthcare for yourself and your family."
Will you sign the petition too? Click here to add your name:
http://signon.org/sign/congress-if-you-voted?source=s.fwd&r_by=329768Something I think is very important and if you could take the time to sign our... more
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By Robert Lenzner |
for forbes
Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US-- and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.
Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%-- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million-- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.
It's crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.
The reduction in the tax from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth. It had first been reduced from 35% in 1978 at a time of stock market and economic stagnation to 28% . Again 1981, at the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again to 20%-- raised back to 28% in 1987, on the eve of the October 19 232% crash in the market. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%, which move was an inducement for the explosion of hedge funds and private equity firms-- the most "rapidly rising cohort within the top 1 per cent."
Make no mistake; the battle that is to be fought over the coming attempt to reverse this reduction in capital gains will be bloody and intense.
(hahahahahahaha You know this!!!!!)
The facts are clear according to the Congressional Budget Office more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains. In fact, you can go so far as to claim that "Capital Gains income is the most unevenly distributed-- and volatile-- source of household income," according to Laura D'Andrea Tyson, University of California business professor and former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.
No wonder the super wealthy plutocrats obtained the largest share of national income-- 25% of the nation's wealth- greater than any other industrial nation in the the period of 1979 to 2005. Make no mistake; after unemployment-- this disparity between the 1%-- 3 million-- or the 0.1%-- the 300,000-- and the other 312 million citizens of the U.S. has become the major theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement-- and an important national debate.
http://figrd.blogspot.comBy Robert Lenzner |
for forbes
Capital gains are the key ingredient of income... more
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Hoorah Hoorah breaking News story truth on youtube HAHAHA
The video Says All I need too.Hoorah Hoorah breaking News story truth on youtube HAHAHA
The video Says All I... more
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Paul Krugman-(Banksters added by me for clarification)
Last year the G.O.P. pulled off two spectacular examples of bait-and-switch campaigning. Medicare, where the same people who screamed about death panels are now trying to dismantle the whole program, was the most obvious. But the same thing
happened with regard to financial reform.
As you may recall, Republicans ran hard against bank(or Banksters) bailouts. Among other things, they managed to convince a plurality of voters that the deeply unpopular bailout legislation proposed and passed by the Bush administration was enacted on President Obama’s watch.
And now they’re doing everything they can to ensure that there will be even bigger bailouts in years to come.
What does it take to limit future bailouts? Declaring that we’ll never do it again is no answer: when financial turmoil strikes, standing aside while banks(banksters)... and its not!?) fall like dominoes isn’t an option. After all, that’s what policy makers did in 1931, and the resulting banking crisis turned a mere recession into the Great Depression.
And let’s not forget that markets went into free fall when the Bush administration let Lehman Brothers go into liquidation. Only quick action — including passage of the much-hated bailout — prevented a full replay of 1931.
So what’s the solution? The answer is regulation that limits the frequency and size of financial crises, combined with rules that let the government strike a good deal when bailouts become necessary.
Remember, from the 1930s until the 1980s the United States managed to avoid large bailouts of financial institutions. The modern era of bailouts only began in the Reagan years, when politicians started dismantling 1930s-vintage regulation.
Moreover, regulation wasn’t updated as the financial system evolved. The institutions that were rescued in 2008-9 weren’t old-fashioned banks; they were complex financial empires, many of whose activities were effectively unregulated — and it was these unregulated activities that brought the U.S. economy to its knees.
Worse yet, officials lacked clear authority to seize these failing empires the way the F.D.I.C. can seize a conventional bank when it goes bust. That’s one reason the bailout looked so much like a giveaway: officials felt they lacked the legal tools to save the financial system without letting the people who created the crisis off the hook.
Last year Congressional Democrats enacted a financial reform bill that sought to close these gaps. The bill extended regulation in a number of ways: consumer protection, higher capital standards for major institutions, greater transparency for complex financial instruments. And it created new powers — “resolution authority” — to help officials drive a harder bargain in future crises.
There are many criticisms one can make of this legislation, which is arguably much too weak. And the Obama administration has frustrated many people with its too-lenient attitude toward Wall Street — exemplified by last week’s decision to exempt foreign-exchange swaps, a major source of dislocation in 2008, from regulation.
But Republicans are trying to undermine the whole thing.
Back in February G.O.P. legislators admitted frankly that they were trying to cripple financial reform by cutting off funding. And the recent House budget proposal, which calls for privatizing and voucherizing Medicare, also calls for eliminating resolution authority, in effect setting things up so that the bankers will get as good a deal in the next crisis as they got in 2008.
Of course, that’s not how Republicans put it. They claim that their goal is to “end the cycle of future bailouts,” under the general rubric of “ending corporate welfare.”
But as we’ve already seen, future bailouts will happen whatever today’s politicians say — and they’ll be bigger, more frequent and more expensive without effective regulation.
To see what’s really going on, follow the money. Wall Street used to favor Democrats, perhaps because financiers tend to be liberal on social issues. But greed trumps gay rights, and financial industry contributions swung sharply toward the Republicans in the 2010 elections. Apparently Wall Street, unlike the voters, had no trouble divining the party’s real intentions. ( Bankster Love & more from the New York Times at link!)Paul Krugman-(Banksters added by me for clarification)
Last year the G.O.P. pulled... more
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More signs of the times. (End times? Or just decline and fall of the American empire?)
http://michiganmessenger.com/48487/foste...
Michigan-
Under a new budget proposal from State Sen. Bruce Casswell, children in the state’s foster care system would be allowed to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores.
Casswell, a Republican representing Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee and St. Joseph counties, made the proposal this week, reports Michigan Public Radio.
His explanation?
“I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was — and quite frankly it’s true — once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.”
Under his plan, foster children would receive gift cards that could only be used at places like the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other second hand clothing stores.
The plan was knocked by the Michigan League for Human Services. Gilda Jacobs, executive director of the group, had this to say:
“Honestly, I was flabbergasted,” Jacobs says. “I really couldn’t believe this. Because I think, gosh, is this where we’ve gone in this state? I think that there’s the whole issue of dignity. You’re saying to somebody, you don’t deserve to go in and buy a new pair of gym shoes. You know, for a lot of foster kids, they already have so much stacked against them.”
Casswell says the plan will save the state money, though it isn’t clear how much the state spends on clothing for foster children or how much could be saved this way (of coarse just more echoes in the chamber ,..right?!)(I am just more and more disgusted with the human waste in the republican party and their evil will no longer be tolerated ACTION is required save the children from these evil doers!)-figgMore signs of the times. (End times? Or just decline and fall of the American empire?)... more
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