Sometimes A Headline Says It All: Perry concerned by plans to limit greenhouse gases

One of the biggest comebacks against the supposed free market system rhetoric shoved in our face from the conservative party may be a consumer’s complete inability to shop around for an energy provider. Utility companies always threaten to raise rates if environmental controls are forced on them, claiming the costs have to be passed on to the consumer. In most other industries, price increases would reduce their competitiveness in the market, keeping prices in check and affordable. Angry consumers in turn could shop around for better prices and service.

In most industrialized countries around the world, energy is partially or totally nationalized. Perhaps they know something we don’t. Take for example this story from Texas about controlling pollution. It’s a no brainer for most, but not Republicans. And like the auto industry that refused to change and become more fuel efficient in the face of rising costs, the energy industry refuses to budge from their use of outdated corporate models and inefficiencies. The grid breakdown was the warning shot now long forgotten.

Houston Chronicle:

Preparing for a new administration in Washington, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that regulating greenhouse gas emissions would have "devastating implications" for Texas' economy and energy industry.

President-elect Barack Obama is believed to be more receptive to clamping down on the gases that have been blamed for global warming. Perry warned the regulation of greenhouse gases, as outlined in a notice posted by the outgoing Environmental Protection Agency administrator last summer, would run Texas "right off the tracks, into the ditch." Perry said the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, posted in July, would harm the oil and natural gas production that is vital to the Texas economy and jeopardize jobs in the coal industry.

Sounds exactly like the argument given by the big three auto makers about fuel economy and pollution control doesn’t it?

He said national oil and gas supplies would be curtailed if the federal government were to impose a large tax burden on oil and gas companies. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the federal government had the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. Last May, an EPA appeals board overturned a permit for a coal plant in Utah because the application failed to require any controls on carbon dioxide pollution.

Without regulation, the coal plant in Utah would have been built without any controls on CO2 pollution.

Damn big government.

Olberman Tells the simple story of Privatization and Profits, Medicare Costs Go Up

Keith Olberman made it easy for even conservatives to understand the problem with free market private sector health care. I know, they'll say they can't believe anything from the mouth of Olberman and dismiss the facts as prejudiced.

Fundamentalist Catholic Church Bishops Right Wing Agenda Political, Republican

After watching the Republican Party marginalized by an extremist religious right agenda, noticeably devoid of public policy solutions, the bishops decided to march straight off the cliff with the loonies of that movement. This authoritarian and infallible religion has shown itself to be quite human. It all started when a Bishop sought division and confrontation against a president elect seeking peace and reconciliation. Go figure.

Faced with an incoming president who promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, an expansion of abortion rights, the nation's Catholic bishops are drawing a line in the sand. According to a list of points president Cardinal George of Chicago put together: "Aggressively pro-abortion policies and legislation will permanently alienate tens of millions of Americans and would be interpreted by many Catholics as an attack on the church."

I wrote at the time:

After so many years of legal abortions, suddenly the Catholic Church feels Democrats are about to attack their religion on the abortion issue. These elitist authoritarian crusaders of God not only look like crazy right wingers, but have decided that their religion sure would make a nice political party. I hope this whole issue of abortion finally forces its members to say enough is enough, we’re outa’ here.

Going one step further, one Catholic Bishop in Scranton, PA has decided to boot out their school districts teachers union, the sworn enemy of conservative Republicans everywhere, because he wanted to.



Bishop Joseph Martino consolidated the district into one school, and did away with the union, surprising many in the community since the Catholic Church championed workers rights and unionization. Martino's response was typical after having many question his authority, "I have made a decision...it's final." He even whined about the "rhetoric" he had to endure.

What I found just as interesting were the conditions the teachers had to endure over the many years, settling for low pay and little help in the classroom. As one person explains, after 30 years of sitting in broken chairs and spending their own money on classroom supplies, removing the union was the last straw.

I think it says an awful lot about private education based on profits. If they cut corners there, what's to prevent them from doing the same to the students?

Cars are Safer and Technology Promises More of the Same

As usual, here's another car update, this time focusing in on safety technology.

CBS/AP-The insurance industry designated dozens of new cars and trucks, led by Ford Motor Co. and its Volvo subsidiary, to its annual list of the safest vehicles Tuesday, helped by the increased use of anti-rollover technology. Seventy-two cars, trucks and SUVs received the top safety pick designation for 2009, more than double the number of vehicles in the 2008 model year and three times the number in 2007.

Things can only get better too, if only the auto makers survive the Bush economic downturn.

Colbert Christmas' War on Christmas with Toby Keith

Voucher Supporters Need Reality Check: Some Private Schools are Just not the Same.

I knew there was an answer. Those who support vouchers and are often making simplistic statements about Barack Obama’s possible choice of a private school for his kids. JOHN M. CRISP, of Scripps News, has the simple answer:

Columnist Cal Thomas commends the Obama’s for resisting potential pressure from teachers unions to place their kids in one of Washington's "miserable" public schools. But he criticizes them for exercising a choice that -- he says -- they're willing to deny to millions of Americans who don't have enough money to send their own kids to private schools … it's very likely that the private schools the Obamas are considering -- at around $28,000 per year -- are far superior to the schools that we require the children of our poorest citizens to attend.

In fact, insisting that someone who doesn't support school choice should send his own children to a public school is to employ the same petulant reasoning that condemns people who support the improvement of public transportation: "If you like buses so much, fine; ride them and leave me alone to drive my S.U.V." To extend the comparison: people who never ride public transportation could just as logically insist that any public money used to subsidize transportation should be distributed as vouchers to all citizens. Similarly, a full-blown voucher system would probably mean the end of our public schools.

But the great failure of our public schools has been our unwillingness to provide quality schools for all students, largely because of the way in which public schools are traditionally funded. To oversimplify only slightly: rich neighborhoods have good schools; poor neighborhoods get by with inadequate ones. As their funding diminishes, public schools would be superseded by a haphazard assortment of private schools arranged hierarchically according to cost and, therefore, largely by quality, race, and class, as well. And that, many still believe, would be a bad thing.

Do Liberals Prey on Weakness? Yes Says Mad Doctor and Author who says Liberals Suffer Political Madness.

Just like picking up the latest Onion newspaper, or Mad Magazine in the old days, I often times journey to dissectliberals.blogspot.com for a surreal journey into the bizarre. I liked it so much that I have included it here as a favorite link. A little while back, the blogger wrote about the craziest new book about liberals titled “Liberals clinically mad, concludes top psychiatrist.” Remember, you are not reading the Onion. This is a real story, as only Worldnetdaily can deliver it. Here are a few of the “doctors” unbiased observations:

An acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them (liberals) is actually a mental disorder. "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy." Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton can only be understood as a psychological disorder. "A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity - as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population - as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state - as liberals do."

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

* creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;

* satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;

* augmenting primitive feelings of envy;

* rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism - and its associated madness - can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

After so much analysis, I have a question. Do Republicans Prey on Helplessness?You know, a bad economy, no health care and natural disasters. Just a thought.

So ends another trip through the broken looking glass, where everything is reversed, and seven years of bad luck actually turned out to be eight.

Republicans, Conservatives Continue to Fall on Their Own Double Edged Sword

Did you know there really isn't anything wrong with the Republican Party? It’s not their policies that are unsuccessful, it’s America's policies that needs fixing. That is the opinion of rising Republican star Gov. Bobby Jindal. The party of infallibility has learned nothing from the last 8 to 10 years. For them, it just needs to be a repackaged partisan agenda based on extremist social issues like gays, guns, God and ideology.

According to 2theadvocate:

Gov. Bobby Jindal told a “family values” crowd that he came to Iowa to talk about the American culture, not politics. The governor acknowledged the criticism that the GOP is evolving into a party of big government spending and Wall Street bailouts. He said America needs to be fixed, not the Republican Party.

America needs to be fixed? Does Jindal mean to say there is something wrong with it? He wants to change this great country of ours? I thought only liberals hated America enough to want to “fix it?” Is this another case of conservative hypocrisy?

At the incredibly entertaining and seriously ridiculous blog, dissectleft, this claim is made:

“Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it."

Somebody better tell Gov. Jindal. In fact....

Jindal blamed the economic meltdown on unchecked greed. He criticized what he sees as a coarsening of culture.

Jindal doesn't love America, but clings to his ideological fantasy of what America could become if it were less greedy. We don’t need additional regulations; we just need to convince people to voluntarily give up their greed in the face of obtaining untold wealth. It’s that easy. Or as dissectleft would say:

American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.”

Fox News Beats the Drum on Fairness and "Localism" in the Media

The panicking right wingers are not so subtly admitting that their lock on the radio airwaves is real, after years of denial, and they're not about to let the liberals cut into their 80 to 90 percent market share. So what do you do? Make something up, of course.

Brit Hume is somewhat dismissive about the "fairness doctrine," but is concerned about something called "localism." Localism is nothing more than a simple federally mandated on air radio presence in a community. They are supposed to serve the people there. In return, the airwaves in those markets are free to the broadcasters to use, so they can make money, while serving the greater good. Local hurricanes, tornado's, natural disasters and amber alerts can be initiated immediately. Sounds a little like socialism, doesn't it?

To the Republicans, this public concern is overblown, and may upset the status qua dominance on the radio. Panic about fairness pretty much says it all. Remember too, it affects liberal talk as well, and that might pose the bigger threat to conservatives. Instead of being allowed to make things up without any analysis, their biggest fear are FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS. They will have to explain themselves, along with their big ideas. Talker Laura Ingraham mentions an obscure and ridiculous sounding bill called the Broadcaster Fairness Act, prohibiting the FCC from prescribing rules, regulations, or policies that would reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Are they trying to be funny?

Still, on the 45 top-rated talk radio stations, there were 310 hours of conservative talk and only five hours of talk from liberals in 2004. That sounds fair.

Fox News stirs the pot....

Heritage Foundation Advocates All Labor Worth Around $25, but CEO's Can Get What the Market Is Willing to Pay.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative fringe organization, sent out their economic hit man James Gattuso, to bash blue collar laborers and unions. With a straight face, Gattuso said;

"There's no reason that a UAW worker should get a total compensation of $70 and hour when the average American only makes $25 an hour in total compensation."

It appears the Heritage Foundation would like to see everyone of us make the same low wage, while arguing that CEO's should make as much as the free market can bear, keeping government out of the business of removing incentives for people to make higher incomes. Chris Matthews is quick to make that case: "Sir, you negotiate your salary at the Heritage Foundation and they negotiate for their own salary where they're getting $70."

I loved Pat Buchanan's response, "Heritage is completely subsidized. What do you guys produce for heavens sake...?

Damn good question.

Maddow Worries, Fears Experience in Obama Administration. Guest Gladwell Offers Encouragement and Sanity.

I really love watching and listening to Rachel Maddow, but sometimes here doom and gloom cynicism about the future raises red flags were there really aren't any to begin with. Case in point: Barack Obama's tapping into too many established politicos, especially from the Clinton administration, to bring about real change. Apparently, Maddow would prefer less experienced people in place in a time of national and international crisis.

Thank god her guest and author of the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, offered up some very encouraging insights into Obama's selections. He basically made Maddow look like she should be wearing a tin foil hat.

Another Republican Criticizes Deficits, Warns Obama Spendings Trouble. After the Last 20 Years, Zip it.

Hardball's Chris Matthews has been red hot going after the Republican ideologues and their blatant hypocrisy when it comes to deficits.

Here we have another one of the many wondering strategists, John Feehery this time , ripping into Obama's plans to invest more taxpayer money into the future economy and lift the country out of this recession.

Of course Feehery now believes that this is not the time to increase the deficit, even though I remember clearly the Bush deficit was supposedly historically small, while Congress spent like drunken sailors without a presidential veto. This is truly a pleasure to watch.



NOTE: I've edited the stories for time, so you don't have to spend a lot of time watching unrelated issues or long exchanges. I keep enough in for context purposes.

Hagel Confirms What We All Knew: GOP Should Address Problems, Held Captive of Raw Partisan Paralysis

Add this to the list of many examples posted here of the Republican admissions that their party is dead. Chuck Hagel sounds the alarm to the blind, deaf and dumb right wing extremists.



Here's the play by play from CNN:

As his Senate career nears its end, Republican Chuck Hagel isn't holding back.

"We are educated by the great entertainers like Rush Limbaugh. You know, I wish Rush Limbaugh and others like that would run for office," a sarcastic Hagel continued. "They have so much to contribute and so much leadership and they have an answer for everything. And they would be elected overwhelmingly. [The truth is] they try to rip everyone down and make fools of everybody but they don't have any answers."

Hagel also faulted Washington lawmakers for "raw, partisan, political paralysis."

"The American people don't like what is going on… they want us to start doing what leaders are expected to do, address the problems, find some consensus to governing. Get along. There will be disagreements, sure… but in the end we can't hold ourselves captives to this raw, partisan, political paralysis."

Canadian Conservatives Responsible for $4 Billion Deficit: Corporate Tax Cuts the Cuprit

Believe it or not, this is really bad news in Canada:

The report projects a deficit of $3.9 billion in 2009-10 and
$1.4 billion in 2010-11, with a return to modest surpluses of $1.6 billion in
2011-12 and $3 billion in 2012-13.

Here’s the kicker, and something Canadian conservative have in common with Republicans in the U.S., their inability to build up surplus’ for unexpected economic downturns and more corporate tax cuts. Predictable.

Though Canada's disappearing surplus is partially the result of a global financial crisis, the report says the minority Conservative government shoulders some of the responsibility because of policy decisions during Prime Minister Stephen Harper's first term in office. It pinpoints the government's second one-percentage-point reduction in the goods and services tax and reductions in corporate income taxes for causing the lowest budget balance in the first five months of the fiscal year in recent times.

Proving my point again: There is a mental disconnect in the conservative mind, whether chemical or just a chunk of brain mass missing, that fails to acknowledge anything past the next election or sound money management (just a partial list).

Newt Gingrich Example of Conservative Intellectualism: Slick Marketing and the Air of Infallible Elitism

Newt Gingrich is what the right wing would call an "intellectual." What we really have in Newt is man who has integrated what are now failed ideological theories of free markets and religious zealotry.



That's right, he actually suggested the possibility of a gay and secular fascism in this country. A "very dangerous threat to traditional religion." From this insanity, flows the rest of Gingrich's poison filled donuts of wisdom, with a cool-aid chaser.

Let’s take a look at all the places this ideologue spreads his well integrated B.S., as presented on his web site:

Newt serves as a Member of the Defense Policy Board. Newt is the longest-serving teacher of the Joint War Fighting course for Major Generals. He also teaches officers from all five services as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Professor at the National Defense University. Newt serves on the Terrorism Task Force for the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an Editorial Board Member of the Johns Hopkins University journal, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, and is an Advisory Board Member of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Recently, Newt was named co-Chair of the UN Task Force, a bi-partisan Congressional effort to reform the United Nations. As an author, Newt has published eighteen books including 10 fiction and non-fiction New York Times best-sellers. He was the architect of the “Contract with America.”

We all know how that turned out. Can you say bailout?

Recent films include Rediscovering God in America and We Have the Power. A third documentary, Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny, is currently in production.

We all know how the Reagan revolution turned out? Can you say bailout?

If Republicans Can Advocate Breaking Contracts With Auto Workers, How Good are the GOP’s Commitments on Anything?

It seems Republicans are quick to abandon contracts, agreements and good faith on a whim if they can no longer benefit from the situation. For example, let's look at their attempt to break up the auto workers unions. The AP opens with this misleading information:

The leaders of General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers union told Congress this week that a new union contract will virtually erase the labour cost gap between GM and foreign competitors with U.S. factories. That's not quite true, according to GM's own figures. Although the contract signed last year eliminates about two-thirds of the cost gap when its provisions take full effect in 2010, GM's labour costs will remain about $9 per hour, or 17 per cent, higher than Toyota's, according to GM estimates.

That $9 per hour difference is enough for Republicans to risk bankruptcy, massive job losses or a dramatic decrease in market share for U.S. auto makers. But that $9 difference is what workers earned as part of their pay package, not a handout or charity promised from GM, Ford or Chrysler. To hire someone at an agreed to wage, and then years later, pay them less is exactly what Republicans are proposing. AP continues:

The remaining difference largely is due to "legacy" costs, the cost of a 100-year-old company paying its retiree pensions … The labour costs were singled out by opponents as a reason why the Detroit Three can't be competitive with their Japanese rivals …GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said, "While legacy seems to be a dirty word of late, it also means we support hundreds of thousands of people via pensions, health care and good jobs."

While Republicans whine incessantly about being able to keep more of their hard earned money, they’re more than willing to take away that same hard earned cash from workers for the corporate good and race to the bottom.

As the AP article states:

“…that's still $9 more than the $53 per hour that GM estimated Toyota now pays in the United States.”

Could it be the Republican Party’s ultimate goal is to break up the unions?

Here's a compilation of arguments from both sides. Can you point out the vacuous, morally bankrupt Party hell bend on fulfilling one of their ideological goals?

The Conscience Clause Bush Style

Imagine a health care system where your doctor or hospital can refuse to treat you because they don’t believe it would be morally right. Sounds chaotic? This has been the dream of far right religious zealots and the more radical Republican Party leaders, like the Bush administration. In many states, it’s called the conscience clause. It may sound like a threat to the public health, but that hasn’t stopped these nut jobs from leaving the Obama administration with even more things to to “fix." The NY Times explains:

A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections.

The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The Ohio Health Department said the rule “could force family planning providers to hire employees who may refuse to do their jobs. ” Pharmacies said the rule would allow their employees to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives and could “lead to Medicaid patients being turned away.”

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But three officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including its legal counsel, whom President Bush appointed, said the proposal would overturn 40 years of civil rights law prohibiting job discrimination based on religion.

The protest from the commission comes on the heels of other objections to the rule by doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, state attorneys general and political leaders, including President-elect Barack Obama (who) said the proposal will raise new hurdles to women seeking reproductive health services, like abortion and some contraceptives. Aides and advisers to Mr. Obama said he would try to rescind it, a process that could take three to six months.

To avoid the usual rush of last-minute rules, the White House said in May that new regulations should be proposed by June 1 and issued by Nov. 1. The “provider conscience” rule missed both deadlines. Under the White House directive, the deadlines can be waived “in extraordinary circumstances.” Administration officials were unable to say immediately why an exception might be justified in this case.

It will be interesting to see what happens in this country when this new rule is put in place, even for a few months. And you thought trashing the White House by the outgoing administration was bad form (even though it really didn't happen when Clinton office).

Lame Duck Bush Concentrating on Legacy and Library of Disasters

TheDailybeasts' Tina Brown casually mentioned what President Bush is into now, and that is an unhealthy preoccupation with his legacy and library, while Rome burns.

Her vision of that library is featured here:

CNN's Magic Touch Screen Gets the Best of Daily Show's John Oliver. We'll Miss Him.

This Daily Show bit with John Oliver is so good, like an episode out of the Twilight Zone, that I had to include it here.

Republicans Won't lift a Hand to Overpayed, Benefit filled Union American Work Force

The new face of the Republican Party appears to be more mean spirited than ever, acting like an animal backed into a corner, this time in the form of Rep. Phil Gingery of Georgia.

What can you say about the party of small government and free unregulated capitalism, that turns its back on paying for the mess they created, and treating that irresponsible behavior like a badge of honor. They're quick to blame the home buyers and union auto workers for the crisis in a vain to distract attention away from their own misdeeds. It's not working though.

Gingery complains the auto workers have benefits packages and are overpaid, not seeing the irony of the cadillac benefits he receives in his cushy job as a member of our taxpayer supported government. Take a look:



Rep. Robert Wexler: "...misplaced blame if we're talking about putting this on the automobile workers."

Rep. Phil Gingery: "They have also given a great deal to the Democratic Party in the past elections... so don't ask my people to be supportive of that."

It's time to get even, isn't it Rep. Gingery? What I can't understand is this: President elect Obama wants to reach across the isle to these snakes?