Conservative VS Liberal

[Cleo's Mom 257]

There are those still in denial about the racism in the tea party:

Today, NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.

The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of attendees of Tea Party marches using vial, antagonistic racial slurs & images. In March, respected members of the Congressional Black Caucus reported that racial epithets were hurled at them as they passed by a Washington, DC health care protest.

Billy Roper is a write-in candidate for governor of Arkansas and an unapologetic white nationalist. "

I don’t want non-whites in my country in any form or fashion or any status,

" he says.

Roper also is a tea party member

who says he has been gathering support for his cause by attending tea party rallies. "We go to these tea parties all over the country," Roper said. "We’re looking for the younger, potentially more radical people."

[andrea0121 28]

Yeah, those signs and the people holding them, disgusting. Eff the tea party.

I can't believe I share the same air as these people.

[loserbob 11]

[cleosmom quote] Most of the people in this country were dependent on the government long before Obama became president. It only became an issue when he did, however, again reflecting on the never ending hypocrisy.

No. The government has been causing dependency of the people for a very long time, this is true, but it is only recently that the people have decided that enough is enough. It mostly got them riled up when Obama began his spending sprees that far outnumbered any in history! When he campaigned on "change" and then there was just more of the same, it pissed people off. He wasn't planning to 'change' anything. He became worse than all the rest.

Im just wondering if you self-paid for your Lapband or if you got a handout, I mean had it paid for by your health insurance?

[Cleo's Mom 257]

From the great congressman, Alan Grayson, from Florida who tells it like it is:

My grandfather in the 1930s spent several years of his life, every single day, going through the dump. Looking for things there that he could sell. Looking for things that he could take to the market and sell because there was no other way for him to survive the 1930s and the Great Depression. There was no unemployment insurance back then. There was no state benefits back then. There was no help for the people who had jobs. All they could do, like my grandfather in desperate straits supporting a family of seven, was to go to the dump and desperately try to find something he could sell. And that, my friends, is the America that the Republicans are trying to revive: the America of desperate straits and, for them, cheap labor. The America where people have nothing, hope for nothing, and are desperate to live to the next day. That is what the Republicans are trying to resurrect by blocking unemployment insurance day after day, week after week, and now month after month.

I've got news for my Republican friends. Every single person who's going to receive unemployment insurance under this bill is unemployed. Every single one of them doesn't have a job. And that's why they need this money.

Now I know what the Republicans are thinking. They're thinking "Why don't they just sell some stock? If they're in really dire straits, maybe they can take some of their art collection and send it off to the auctioneer. And if they're in deep, deep trouble, maybe these unemployed can sell one of their yachts." That's what the Republicans are thinking right now. But that's not the life of ordinary people. The ninety-nine percent of America that actually has to work for a living... that doesn't just flip coupons and live off of interests and dividends like my Republican friends do. That's why we need this bill to pass. Because of the ninety-nine percent of America that deals with reality every day. The people who will lose their home if this bill doesn't pass. The people who will be living in their cars if this doesn't pass. That's why we need this to pass.

And I will say this to the Republicans who have blocked this bill now for months and kept foods out of the months of children. I will say to them now: May God have mercy on your souls.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Maybe people are finally "getting it" and realize that the November elections will be about a choice between the democrats who want to move this country forward (e.g. six months of positive job growth, financial reform) and the republicans who want to take us back to the failed policies of bush that got us in this mess to begin with:

Democrats Jump Into Six-Point Lead on Generic Ballot

At the same time, Republican enthusiasm for voting in November surges

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- In the same week the U.S. Senate passed a major financial reform bill touted as reining in Wall Street, Democrats pulled ahead of Republicans, 49% to 43%, in voters' generic ballot preferences for the 2010 congressional elections.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

We need more passionate elected democrats like Rep. Alan Grayson who isn't afraid to speak truth to the lies and tell it like it is. Some of the DINOs could take a lesson from him.

Death Threat: The Widening Gyre‏

by Alan Grayson

Thu Jul 22, 2010 at 10:51:41 AM PDT

One day, a Republican operative offers $100 to anyone who'll punch me in the nose.

The next day, I get a death threat.

After Fox News spewed its usual clownish hatred about me yesterday, my office received a call. The caller told our receptionist - a young intern - that "10 people are going to kill the Congressman within 24 hours." We gave the information to the Capitol Police; they are investigating.

Fox. You'd think that they would have learned their lesson after Dr. George Tiller was killed. And they did learn a lesson: a lesson in killing.

And why? Because I told the truth: the truth that by stalling on unemployment insurance, right-wingers revealed themselves to be heartless, selfish wretches, who have been taking food out of the mouths of children.

Am I the only one who has noticed this? Because if you're with me on this, I'd like your support. I need your support.

First threatened assault. Then threatened murder. Do you see how they ratchet up the bullying, and try to cow us?

In his poem "The Second Coming," the Irish poet William Butler Yeats described a time like ours as the "widening gyre." A time when "the centre cannot hold."

A time when "anarchy is loosed upon the world."

A time when "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Up to, and including, death threats on Members of Congress.

But we have to stand up, and we have to fight back. Because what is at stake is . . . everything.

Please, support our campaign. Stand with me. Fight back.

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Heaven helps us all if whacko Bachman's republican/tea party regains power, but at least I am encouraged by the responses that there are some, other than me, that get it:

Bachmann: 'All we should do' is issue subpoenas and hold hearings

Should Republicans take back the House in November, Rep. Michele Bachmann said she wants the GOP to focus all of its attention on issuing subpoenas and holding hearings investigating the Obama administration and Democrats.

“I think that’s all we should do,” Bachmann said at the GOP Youth Convention in Washington on Thursday. “I think all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another and expose all the nonsense that has gone on."

Bachmann said that Republicans have all their chips on the table in November. “This is the year — this is it,” she said.

Republicans need to gain 39 seats in November in order to retake the House, which even President Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has admitted is possible.

By winning the House, Republicans would be able to issue subpoenas through controlling the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has subpoena power. Currently, ranking member Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has not been granted access to subpoenas.

Bachmann is not a member of the Oversight Committee.

That's her answer to the Democrats and Obama?

Just issuing subpeonas? Then what? Put them on trial for treason? How about this, Congresswoman. Pull your own weight in Congress and actually get some work done for your district.

posted by cags777 on Jul 22, 10 at 3:37 pm | 13 of 13 people liked this comment.

So Much for New Ideas

The party of no is now the party of no ideas. We've been there and done that -- the Republican majority spent the 90s wasting our time and money investigating every hiccup out of the Clinton Administration. More political games.

posted by davemec on Jul 22, 10 at 3:40 pm | 11 of 11 people liked this comment.

All she knows how to do

Rep. Bachmann's Congressional career is all about posturing so it is not surprising that she shows no interest in legislation or in finding solutions to problems. Ms. Bachmann has attributed her lack of legislation to her status in the minority part, but there must be more to the story since she obviously intends to continue to forgo legislating if her party gains the majority.How will this help anyone in the 6th district? Seems that she cares more about her own celebrity more than the real concerns of her constituents.

posted by cheekybadger on Jul 22, 10 at 3:44 pm | 10 of 10 people liked this comment.

shelly shelly shelly

Should Republicans take back the House in November, Rep. Michele Bachmann said she wants the GOP to focus all of its attention on issuing subpoenas and holding hearings investigating the Obama administration and DemocratsThats all the repubs are doing now,they have not done jack since Obamma took office except fight every bit of legislation to try and help this country get back to work.

posted by minnowsota on Jul 22, 10 at 4:05 pm | 7 of 7 people liked this comment.

shelly

should you get reelected in november I think you should concentrate on doing what you were elected to do.

posted by minnowsota on Jul 22, 10 at 4:07 pm | 5 of 5 people liked this comment.

Isn't that what trial lawyers do? Don't Republicans hate trial lawyers?

Vote Republican if you want your country to grind to a halt. Vote Republican if you want full employment for lawyers and judges. Vote Republican if you want to kill any signs of progress or climbing out of this recession and only want to sue people and hold hearings. Maybe Bachmann can create her own Tea-Bagger Supreme Court and appoint herself Chief Justice.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Secretary LaHood: Republicans Tell Me In Private The Stimulus Is Working

• Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said on Wednesday that despite all their public criticism, Republican lawmakers tell him in private that they think the administration's stimulus package has been a success.
  

"I believe the economic recovery plan has worked," LaHood said, in an interview with the Huffington Post, "and I've had Republican members tell me that when I've gone in and done projects or been with them or visited them in their offices... They know that we have dollars that have put people to work."

Speaking days before he was set to address a conference of progressive activists, LaHood's remarks were offered as part of a broader defense of the president's economic recovery agenda. The Transportation Secretary has been one of the administration's main pitchmen and administrators for the stimulus package, overseeing the roughly $50 billion that has been set aside for infrastructure projects. But his unique expertise comes from having served -- prior to his current post -- as a Republican member of the House of Representatives.

LaHood was largely diplomatic when asked to reflect on his former colleagues' criticism. But in saying that Republicans have privately told him that the stimulus is working, he added fuel to the debate over whether the GOP has been duplicitous or unfair in their critiques. Already, there have been numerous press reports of lawmakers attending stimulus-related ribbon cutting ceremonies in their districts as well as lobbying different government agencies for stimulus funds.

"There would be thousands of people out of work if it weren't for the economic recovery program. Thousands of people," LaHood said of the Recovery Act. "We know that thousands of jobs have been created. We know that thousands of projects are underway. All you have to do is travel around American, see the orange cones, and see the men and women working on infrastructure, working on projects, resurfacing roads... there is a lot of activity in America and a lot of people working. This would not have happened if not for the economic recovery."

"So what I say to people is, 'Take a few steps in my footsteps.'" He added, "Travel the country like I have for the last 18 months and you will know that America is working and wouldn't be working if it hadn't been for this plan."

One of the more frank and affable members of the White House, LaHood's Republican roots provide him with a certain credibility in the stimulus debate. To this point, however, he's done much of his work out of the public spotlight, spending his time instead traveling to more than 80 cities and 30 states to launch and oversee various projects. His bullishness with respect to the stimulus is not shared by the public, which is largely skeptical about its reach. To which LaHood blames both the media and the country's prevailing unemployment problem.

More republican hypocrisy. Some are more public, though, opting to bash the stimulus in public and then show up in public for photo-ops holding giant stimulus checks.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Paul Krugman: Addicted to Bush

Republicans reinvent the past, promise calamity for the future

Saturday, July 24, 2010

For a couple of years, it was the love that dared not speak his name. In 2008, Republican candidates hardly ever mentioned the president still sitting in the White House. After the election, the GOP did its best to shout down all talk about how we got into the mess we're in, insisting that we needed to look forward, not back. And many in the news media played along, acting as if it was somehow uncouth for Democrats even to mention the Bush era and its legacy.

The truth, however, is that the only problem Republicans ever had with George W. Bush was his low approval rating. They always loved his policies and his governing style -- and they want them back. In recent weeks, GOP leaders have come out for a complete return to the Bush agenda, including tax breaks for the rich and financial deregulation. They've even resurrected the plan to cut future Social Security benefits.

But they have a problem: How can they embrace President Bush's policies, given his record? After all, Mr. Bush's two signature initiatives were tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq; both, in the eyes of the public, were abject failures. Tax cuts never yielded the promised prosperity, but along with other policies -- especially the unfunded war in Iraq -- they converted a budget surplus into a persistent deficit. Meanwhile, the WMD we invaded Iraq to eliminate turned out not to exist, and by 2008 a majority of the public believed not just that the invasion was a mistake but that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into war. What's a Republican to do?

You know the answer. There's now a concerted effort under way to rehabilitate Mr. Bush's image on at least three fronts: the economy, the deficit and the war.

• On the economy: Last week Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, declared that "there's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy." So now the word is that the Bush-era economy was characterized by "vibrancy."

I guess it depends on the meaning of the word "vibrant." The actual record of the Bush years was (1) two and half years of declining employment, followed by (2) four and a half years of modest job growth, at a pace significantly below the eight-year average under Bill Clinton, followed by (3) a year of economic catastrophe. In 2007, at the height of the "Bush boom," such as it was, median household income, adjusted for inflation, was still lower than it had been in 2000.

But the Bush apologists hope that you won't remember all that. And they also have a theory, which I've been hearing more and more -- namely, that President Barack Obama, though not yet in office or even elected, caused the 2008 slump.(The only ones who believe this are those who drink the kool-aid by the gallon) You see, people were worried in advance about his future policies, and that's what caused the economy to tank. Seriously.

• On the deficit: Republicans are now claiming that the Bush administration was actually a paragon of fiscal responsibility and that the deficit is Mr. Obama's fault. "The last year of the Bush administration," said Mr. McConnell recently, "the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it's almost 10 percent."

But that 3.2 percent figure, it turns out, is for fiscal 2008 -- which wasn't the last year of the Bush administration, because it ended in September of 2008. In other words, it ended just as the failure of Lehman Brothers -- on Mr. Bush's watch -- was triggering a broad financial and economic collapse. This collapse caused the deficit to soar: By the first quarter of 2009 -- with only a trickle of stimulus funds flowing -- federal borrowing had already reached almost 9 percent of GDP. To some of us, this says that the economic crisis that began under Mr. Bush is responsible for the great bulk of our current deficit. But the Republican Party is having none of it.

• Finally, on the war: For most Americans, the whole debate about the war is old if painful news -- but not for those obsessed with refurbishing the Bush image. Karl Rove now claims that his biggest mistake was letting Democrats get away with the "shameful" claim that the Bush administration hyped the case for invading Iraq. Let the whitewashing begin!

Again, Republicans aren't trying to rescue George W. Bush's reputation for sentimental reasons; they're trying to clear the way for a return to Bush policies. And this carries a message for anyone hoping that the next time Republicans are in power, they'll behave differently. If you believe that they've learned something -- say, about fiscal prudence or the importance of effective regulation -- you're kidding yourself.

You might as well face it: They're addicted to Bush.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Tea Party Caucus by Chan Lowe, Comics.com (South Florida Sun-Sentinel

I WISH!!!

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Here is what voters need to know:

1. This Democratic president and congress have made historical progress. Stimulus bill, Lilly Ledbetter, Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, Tobacco regulation, Credit Card Reform, Health Care Reform, the first latina Supreme Court Justice, and just this week Financial Reform, extension of unemployment benefits, and Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act. Watch Video of President Recapping Week
   

1. Republicans have voted against every measure to stimulate the economy, create jobs and provide a safety net. They voted against tax cuts for working families, tax cuts for small business, health care reform, deficit commission, pay go. They would rather bring down the economy in order to beat President Obama than vote for economic policies that will save this countries economies.
   

1. Republicans are hypocrites. They created the deficit but blame the President Obama. They are fighting for the deficit creating tax cuts for the rich, but fighting against extendingunemployment benefits for working families. They wave the flag but would rather see the President of the United States fail than succeed. They claim to be the party of god and church but would rather leave the most vulnerable, the children, the poor and the elderly to their own devises. dailykos
   

I just put my new bumper sticker on today. It says:

I stand with Main Street and the Middle Class.

I vote Democratic

[pattygreen 5]

Im just wondering if you self-paid for your LAP-BAND® or if you got a handout, I mean had it paid for by your health insurance?

I don't see how you can call my HI a 'handout' to me. I pay quite a pretty penny every week for my HI. Because I do, I have every right to use it.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Colorado Republican Ken Buck Caught On Tape (Again!) -- This Time Calling Birthers 'Dumbasses'

By the time his campaign's over, they're going to need the jaws of life to extract Ken Buck's foot from his mouth.

Buck is the Tea Party candidate running against establishment pick Jane Norton in Colorado's Republican Senate primary. His latest gaffe is being caught on tape by a Democratic operative saying, "Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I'm on the camera?" according to The Denver Post. Without walking it completely back, Buck has already told the Post the language was inappropriate.

I never thought I'd agree with a republican on anything but Ken Buck sure got this right in calling the tea party dumbasses. That being said, his hypocrisy is staggering, but I'll bet he's not alone in the republican party for taking what he can get from the tea party ($$$, support) while thinking they're dumbasses.

Edited July 26, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[loserbob 11]

Colorado Republican Ken Buck Caught On Tape (Again!) -- This Time Calling Birthers 'Dumbasses'

By the time his campaign's over, they're going to need the jaws of life to extract Ken Buck's foot from his mouth.

Buck is the Tea Party candidate running against establishment pick Jane Norton in Colorado's Republican Senate primary. His latest gaffe is being caught on tape by a Democratic operative saying, "Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I'm on the camera?" according to The Denver Post. Without walking it completely back, Buck has already told the Post the language was inappropriate.

I never thought I'd agree with a republican on anything but Ken Buck sure got this right in calling the tea party dumbasses. That being said, his hypocrisy is staggering, but I'll bet he's not alone in the republican party for taking what he can get from the tea party ($$$, support) while thinking they're dumbasses.

I know this point has been brought up before but I remember tea-baggers saying they werent for any party. What a joke! They claim that theyre not racist but every week theyre losing organizers because of stupid, racial comments. Theyre like the Taliban, we keep capturing the 3rd in command, how many organizers are there?

[loserbob 11]

I don't see how you can call my HI a 'handout' to me. I pay quite a pretty penny every week for my HI. Because I do, I have every right to use it.

You may as well ask for food stamps!