Keeping Score

Your do-nothing Rethuglican House of Representatives score board:

Number of jobs bills passed: 0

Number of symbolic bills passed to repeal Obamacare: 33

Cost to taxpayers of Rethuglicans' symbolic Obamacare repeal bills: $50 million

Non-reaction of media: priceless

Show Us Your Papers, Mittens

Vice President Joe "Big F***ing Deal" Biden can be problematic when in an unscripted moment, but when he's on message and fired up, there's no better surrogate for the President or the Dems. Speaking yesterday to the National Council of La Raza, he came up with the tag line of the day, referring to weird Willard "Self Deportation" Romney:

"Mitt Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won't show us his."

Combined with the successful attacks on his job outsourcing record at Bain, weird Willard's refusal to disclose his financial and tax records is going to take a toll politically, at least among those paying attention to the issue. There will always be the low information voters who see Willard's "success" as a dreamy goal for themselves, as they cling precariously to their middle-class jobs, not realizing that the corporatist 1% that Willard's fighting for are the ones causing their economic hardship. The Latino voter has an additional motivation beyond the economic one, and the Vice President neatly summed it up yesterday.

Mid-Week Tamacun Song

Rodrigo y Gabriela are a duo from Mexico who amaze audiences with their virtuoso guitar playing. They use their guitars as both string instruments and drums; they play acoustic, and at times amplified acoustic; they play traditional latin guitar, and rock classics. Here's one of their best known standards, but if you have time and want to see more of their music and how they grab an audience, check out their 2008 live performance in Japan. And "shout out" to AZ Gail, clairvoyant.

Follow The Money Cartoon of the Day

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(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The 2% Solution

When the President spoke yesterday about preserving the current income tax cuts for 98% of the public, and allowing the tax rates for the top 2% to rise to the levels during the Clinton Administration, he was again drawing contrast with the Rethuglicans' mania about protecting the wealthiest Americans (i.e., contributors).
By saying that Rethugs should move ahead with him and the Dems to extend the vast majority of tax relief, but to let the decision on the top incomes to wait until after the elections, the President has set up an election issue that bodes ill for plutocrat weirdo Willard "Millionaire Mittens" Romney: it's fairness vs. feed the greed. As today's New York Times' editorial states:

"There will never be consensus for solving the nation’s budget problems without first ending the lavish tax breaks at the top. In the near term, letting the high-end tax cuts expire would raise much-needed revenue without harming the recovery because tax increases on high-income Americans do not cut into consumer spending nearly as much as middle-class taxes. The revenue that could be raised — about $850 billion over 10 years — would be a significant step toward reducing the deficit and financing programs to spur the economy."

Don't expect the Rethugs in Congress to work with the President on such a no-brainer. Their mantra of "taxing the job creators" -- false as it is -- is their only game until the election. But the public will be treated to the spectacle of a party lined up to protect the wealth of the few against the vast majority, with their standard-bearer being Mr. 1% himself: the Swiss bank / Cayman Islands / Bermuda corporation guy with the countless homes...who likes to fire people, and ship their jobs overseas.

You Are What You Eat

Wonkette has a funny piece about hate radio buffoon Rush Limpballs from the days when he was a minor figure in the Kansas City Royals baseball organization. Apparently, the Royals put out a brochure years ago of some favorite recipies of their staff, and Limpballs' contributions weren't, as they say, health conscious. Take a look:

Mmmmm, pass the Crisco fried chicken, "wolf 'em down" and stand by with the defribrillator! No wonder Limpballs grew into such a chiseled hunk.

(photo: The Crisco Kid)

Plutocrats Gather for Willard Fundraisers

It was a gathering of the mega-wealthy elites for the Secret Offshore Accounts poster boy Willard "I Like to Fire People" Romney at a series of fundraisers in the Hamptons this weekend. Mega-billionaire Kochs and Perelmans mingling with the lesser multi-millionaires (some unwilling to give their names for fear of hurting their business), all there with one purpose: to save America for them, er, from Obama! The noblesse concern for the poors was manifest:

"I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact [of Obama's policies]*.”

* Lowest tax rates in 50 years; stock market gained back much of its losses since 2009; record corporate profits 3 years running. Believe in America!

(Photo: Hampton estate of Revlon billionaire Ron Perelman, site of one weekend fundraiser for Millionaire Mitt.)

Scorned by the Right Wing Quote of the Day

"These are not adults leveling serious criticism; these are scorned right-wingers showing all the maturity of a little boy. No wonder I fit in so well when I was 13." -- former conservative child star Jonathan Krohn, writing in Salon.com about the hateful blowback he's gotten from Wingnuttia since renouncing most of his conservative beliefs. Love the last line of his quote; how true.

Cartoon of the Day -- Economic Sabotage Edition

(Click to enlarge)


With nearly 3 years of record corporate profits perhaps coming to an end, we hear Big Business mumbling about the "uncertainty in the economy" driving the decision not to hire. Yeah. We think the driver is more likely what Jim Morin is addressing: Obama-loathing Rethuglicans populating the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, Club for Growth, and other right-wing plutocrats' clubs. They'll forgo a quarter or two of non-record profits in order to sink the Obama Administration and open the door to an even greater Gilded Age of income-inequality than the one we've been living in so far.

(Jim Morin, Miami Herald)

Willard, International Man of Mystery

Today's must read is Paul Krugman's piece in the New York Times. Krugman focuses on what the Beltway media are ducking: Willard "Corporations Are People, My Friend" Romney's strange secretiveness about his personal wealth and investments. Here's a snippet:

"Put it this way: Has there ever before been a major presidential candidate who had a multimillion-dollar Swiss bank account, plus tens of millions invested in the Cayman Islands, famed as a tax haven? And then there’s his Individual Retirement Account. I.R.A.’s are supposed to be a tax-advantaged vehicle for middle-class savers, with annual contributions limited to a few thousand dollars a year. Yet somehow Mr. Romney ended up with an account worth between $20 million and $101 million."

Krugman contrasts Willard's fear of disclosure to his father's, who ran for President in 1968 and who was noted for his openness about his finances and taxes. As Krugman concludes,

"Surely a man advocating [tax cuts for the wealthy] has a special obligation to level with voters about the extent to which he would personally benefit from the policies he advocates. Yet obviously that’s something Mr. Romney doesn’t want to do. And unless he does reveal the truth about his investments, we can only assume that he’s hiding something seriously damaging."

Move Over Higgs Boson, We've Got Mitt's Boson

The recently discovered Higgs Boson may go a long way to explain how the universe is structured. Already, though, it is helping to explain another phenomenon, Mitt's Boson:

"Put another way, Mitt Romney's falsehoods occur faster than can be observed, measured, reported and, most importantly, understood by the media charged with investigating them. The result is that voters, or at least some of them, are attracted to rather than repelled by the Republican nominee. And it's that elusive force and the distortion field it produces which give Romney's presidential campaign its critical mass and threaten to turn back the hands of time.

Call it Mitt's Boson."

We ask the scientists, are the distortions producing the distortion, or is the distortion producing the distortions?

(Photo: Mendacious Mitt -- not a particle of truth anywhere)

Extreme Weather - The New Normal?

We have more indications that extreme weather in recent weeks may be another harbinger of global climate change, and force us to alter what we consider to be "normal":

-- Heavy rains caused flooding in southern Russia, where some regions got 2 to 5 months worth of rain in 24 hours, and claimed at least 150 lives.

-- Monsoon flooding in India has claimed more than 120 lives and devastated over a half million acres of crop land.

-- In Colorado and many other Western states, fires blazing in the dry, hot conditions have resulted in death and extensive property damage.

-- Across the eastern two-thirds of America, record heat is entering its 11th day, with 30 weather-related deaths in states from Illinois and Tennessee to Maryland and Pennsylvania. The heat follows recurrent, violent storms across the upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.

(Photo: Krymsky in southern Russia)

Quote of the Day II

"What's [Chief Justice Roberts] supposed to think? That he finds his allies to be a bunch of crackpots? Does that help the conservative movement? I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, 'What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?' Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position. I mean, I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy." -- 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, a conservative who was appointed to the Court by Ronnie Raygun. Here's his interview with NPR's Nina Totenberg. More evidence that today's Rethuglican / New Confederate Party has become increasingly radical and unhinged.

Quote of the Day I

"Just to be clear, outsourcing is only one source of the huge disconnect between a tiny elite and ordinary American workers, a disconnect that has been growing for more than 30 years. And Bain, in turn, was only one player in the growth of outsourcing. So Mitt Romney didn’t personally, single-handedly, destroy the middle-class society we used to have. He was, however, an enthusiastic and very well remunerated participant in the process of destruction; if Bain got involved with your company, one way or another, the odds were pretty good that even if your job survived you ended up with lower pay and diminished benefits.

"In short, what was good for Bain Capital definitely wasn’t good for America. And, as I said at the beginning, the Obama campaign has every right to point that out." -- Paul Krugman in the NY Times (our emphasis).

Voter Suppression in Pennsylvania

One of the results of electing a Rethuglican governor and legislature is that they try to alter the playing field to their advantage. That means suppressing the Democratic vote by any means necessary. Pennsylvania, a blue state with a Rethuglican governor and legislature, is in the process of potentially disenfranchising as many as 750,000 voters:

"As has been noted nationally, the estimated 750,000 voters who do not have state-issued IDs in Pennsylvania surpasses President Obama’s margin of victory in 2008. Given that many of the voters without ID are in poor and minority communities, Democrats assume the law will impact their turnout the most. And they’re not the only ones: the Republican leader of the state House, who helped shepherd the legislation onto the books, recently boasted that it will 'allow' Mitt Romney win the Keystone State."

Please remember that in the mind of the average Rethuglican, America is a "republic," not a "democracy," the distinction to them being that a republic can be a democracy, aristocracy or oligarchy (the latter being the preferred model for the Rethugs). Rethugs don't believe in "one man, one vote" democracy, but rather in a governing system that favors the "wealth/ job creators" and seeks to disenfranchise the poor or vulnerable (the Rethugs would call them "the non-producers," or "spongers"). See Citizens United. See also Rand, Ayn. That's why they exhibit no remorse or conscience in their efforts to deny the vote to their fellow citizens.