Poll Reveals Public Buying Republican Fear Card: Sen. Feingold Loses To Tommy Thompson.

No matter how bad we have in now, no matter how much money we've lost on our retirement funds and investments and no matter how angry we are about all the money spent preventing a total crash of our economic system, citizens are still willing to vote for the same people and party that mismanaged everything so badly in the first place.

This isn't ancient history, it's only been a year, yet Republicans are seeing their poll numbers rising to almost even with the Democrats for the upcoming congressional elections in 2010. Oh well. Wispolitics:

WPRI: If an election for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin were held today and both Tommy Thompson and Russ Feingold were on the ballot, the former governor would defeat the incumbent by four percentage points, according to a new poll released today.

Just over 43% of respondents said they would vote for Thompson – the former Republican governor who served from 1987 to 2001 before accepting an appointment from President George W. Bush to become secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Just over 39% said they would vote for Feingold, the Democratic senator who was first elected in 1992.

The Saddest Part of David Carradine's Death.

David Carradine's mysterious death reaches a new level of bizarre and sadness, with this from Celebrity Ghost Stories, taped four months before the June 3, 2009 tragedy.

Viking's Favre Relieved He Won't be Forgotten.

For the NFL's greatest quarterback, does Brett Favre worry he might just be forgotten in time? Not anymore. Favre demolishes the typical dumb interview question with this milestone answer.

Dems Work on Health Care, Consevatives work on Re-Writing Bible.

Here's the big religious story going around today: The Wiki-style Conservative Bible Project, is not happy with a liberal Jesus and his commie friends.



Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following guidelines:

Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a ... thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias ... avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity ... not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level ... Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer";

Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story. (the argument against forgiveness and the death penalty)

Thus, a project has begun among members of Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles.

Benefits include: benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses.

Liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this, and that will open their mind.

Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians.

For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.

Health Care Mandate Constitutional. Another Red Herring?

This analysis by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, in the LA Times makes it so easy to understand. There are many duh! moments to consider.

"Are the healthcare bills pending in the House and Senate unconstitutional?
That's what some of the bills' critics have alleged. Their argument focuses on the fact that most of the major proposals would require all Americans to obtain healthcare coverage or pay a tax if they don't. Although the desirability of this approach can be debated, it unquestionably would be constitutional.

First, they say the requirement is beyond the scope of Congress' powers. And second, they say that people have a right to be uninsured and that requiring them to buy health insurance violates individual liberty. Neither argument has the slightest merit from a constitutional perspective.

Congress has broad power to tax and spend for the general welfare ... In the last 70 years, no federal taxing or spending program has been declared to exceed the scope of Congress' power ... The ability to tax people to spend money for health coverage has been long established with programs such as Medicare and Medicaid ... The reality is that virtually everyone will, at some point, need medical care ... Another basis for the power of Congress to impose a health insurance mandate is that the legislature is charged with regulating commerce among the states ... The Supreme Court has held that this means Congress has the ability to regulate activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce ... for example, the court held that Congress could prohibit individuals from cultivating and possessing small amounts of marijuana for personal medicinal use because marijuana is bought and sold in interstate commerce.

The relationship between healthcare coverage and the national economy is even clearer. In 2007, healthcare expenditures amounted to $2.2 trillion, or $7,421 a person, and accounted for 16.2% of the gross domestic product.

The claim that an insurance mandate would violate the due process clause is also specious. Most states have a requirement for mandatory car insurance, and every challenge to such mandates has been rejected.

Finally, those who object to having health coverage on freedom-of-religion grounds also have no case. The Supreme Court has expressly rejected objections to paying Social Security and other taxes on religious grounds. More generally, the Supreme Court has ruled that individuals do not have a right to an exemption from a general law on the ground that it burdens their religion."

Texas, Florida, California and N. Carolinea can tell us Why Health Care Exchanges Won't Work.

Health care exchanges don't work. It is not the answer to reform, but a way out for lawmakers. Cappy McGarr, the president of a private equity firm, who was the chairman of the Texas Insurance Purchasing Alliance from 1993 to 1995, recently wrote about one BIG failure in the BIG state of Texas in the NY Times:

Back in the 1990s, I was the founding chairman of Texas’ state-run purchasing alliance — an exchange, essentially — which ultimately failed. There are lessons to be learned from that experience, as well as the similar failures of other states to create useful exchanges.
The Texas Insurance Purchasing Alliance, created by the Texas Legislature in 1993 ... pooled small employers into purchasing groups large enough to obtain the lower wholesale insurance rates that big companies get. Initially, the alliance worked exactly as planned. Sixty-three percent of the businesses that participated were able to offer their employees health coverage for the first time. The alliance offered small businesses a low-cost, nonprofit option: our administrative arrangements did away with the high marketing costs that insurers pass on to small businesses. And we didn’t charge higher rates to firms with older or less healthy workers. This in turn led other insurers, outside the alliance, to lower their prices. We did all this not by creating a government bureaucracy, but by relying on the private sector.

Nevertheless, six years after the program got off the ground, it folded. Many factors contributed to our failure ... restriction it put on the size of eligible companies proved unpopular ... the governor who helped create the alliance, Ann Richards, was replaced in 1995 by George W. Bush, who did not consider it a priority.

Most important, though, our exchange failed ... because it never attained a large enough market share to exert significant clout in the Texas insurance market. Private insurance companies, which could offer small-business policies both inside and outside the exchange, cherry-picked relentlessly, signing up all the small businesses with generally healthy employees and offloading the bad risks — companies with older or sicker employees — onto the exchange ... as a result ... premiums we offered rose significantly. Insurance on the exchange was no longer a bargain, and employers began backing away. Insurance companies, too, began leaving the alliance.

Florida and North Carolina were also unsuccessful and California shut its doors in 2006. All these state exchanges failed for the same reason: cherry-picking by insurers outside the exchange.

If Congress now creates new exchanges it must ... accept everyone and have to charge everyone the same rates regardless of health status.

It would be smarter for Congress to revisit the idea of creating a public plan that could provide an attractive choice for consumers and real competition for private insurers, to give them the incentive to offer good coverage at affordable prices.

Krugman's Right, Republicans will "not accept anyone else’s right to govern ... they, and only they, should govern.

Don't you love it when someone comes along and reaffirms what you've been saying all along. NY Times:

Paul Krugman:

"...when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago’s bid to be host of the 2016 Summer Games ... “Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.

So what did we learn from this moment? ...we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America ... it has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.

How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern? The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern ... conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern."

Making the Rounds with Rep. Alan Grayson

"I Pledge Allegiance to America's Debt" Ad Advocates Conservative Indoctrination in Schools.

The "non-partisan" Employment Policies Institute and their Defeat the Debt website advocates against minimum wage hikes. They say they are not making the conservative case about the evils of any wage floor and massive government spending, but simply adding to the research data.

In the ad here, it's perfectly fine to suggest indoctrinating young children in a classroom with neo-liberal, perfectly "normal" conservative ideological positions. Allow me to use the language of the right wing; Trashing of the Pledge of Allegiance and blatantly advocating brainwashing children in our public schools in the ideology of the party of the Great Recession, is the fastest track to fascism. There, I said it.

Watch this heart warming pledge sweetly delivered by the innocent unsuspecting young minds in our public classrooms (or is this what they intend to teach in private voucher/charter schools?).



EPI also laments saving the country and world from a total meltdown They complain the funds used to stop the bleeding is now debt. EPI's solution would have been to introduce a second economic depression, the normal 80 year business cycle I guess, with the comforting knowledge that they didn't add to the new massive debt with Keynesian witchcraft. For them, a wage race to the bottom is the answer. Check out the Bizarro World logic on wages:

Minimum Wage/Slave Labor Argument: "No matter what your age, if you don’t have a solid work history, the minimum wage hike is going to hurt you more than it will help ... denying teens the opportunity to gain valuable on-the-job training."

This would be to easy to pick apart. Go for it.

Health Care Horror, Day after Day

I saw this and felt pretty angry with the "party of no."

From the film, Critical Condition, Bill Moyers played the segment below that not only shows how inhumane the health care system in this country is, but the dramatic emotional torture inflict on people who've played by the rules. We hear about waiting lists and lines from time to time, but the story here is never mentioned.

Would You Trust Your Country to the "Mommy Patriots?"

With a name like AS A MOM: Sisterhood of the Mommy Patriots, you've got to know these people are mindless drones, using a manipulative Frank Luntz tactic as a way to ooze sincerity.



According to the web site, they are a "Network of principled mothers, grandmothers, daughters, & guardians of our nation's children dedicated to the 9 Principles & 12 Values," referring to the 9:12 Project, the brainchild of Glenn Beck. Here's the caption beneath the video you can watch above:

On Friday September 25, 2009 Glenn Beck had a special entitled “The Mother’s Challenge: A 9.12 Project.” During the final thoughts section Dr. Frank Luntz said, “If you begin everything with ‘as a mom…‘ You win.” That thought, and a brilliant comment by Nancy, during a discussion of the feeling of being alone, referring to her friends calling themselves “Sisterhood of the mommy patriots,” were the inspirations for starting this site.

One tweet went like this: "...in the matter of two hours last night AS A MOM added 2,000 more members. In a few days they were up to 14,000. Moms/grans join non-partisan "Mom: Sisterhood of the Mommy Patriots"

Well since it is non-partisan and I hate phony, mindless sheeple groups like this, plus I'm a daddy, I should join for balance. After all, it's non-partisan, whatever that means.

Republican Candidate for Gov. Walker Proposes Reduced Wages and Increased Benefit Taxes During Recession. Bad for Business and Job Creation.

In the upside down world of Republican logic, County Executive Scott Walker presented his 2010 Budget to the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors last week. -Wispolitics.com

The proposed budget ... makes reductions in the cost of wages and benefits. Specifically, the budget is based on all employees taking a 3% wage reduction and contributing 5% for retirement and 15% for health care costs. It also reduces other forms of wage increases.

Republican Walker is hurting Wisconsin's economy by taking money out of the pockets of consumers, making it almost impossible to increase business expansions and employee hiring's.

Walker's picked the wrong time to reduce wages and increase taxes on employee benefits, especially during a recession.

What is he thinking?

Calculate Your Health Care Reform Premiums from both House & Senate Bills.

Kaiser Foundation Health Care Calculator: Both Senate and House. Click here

Treason: DeMint's Republican Party.

A de facto minority Republican government entity, shadowing the current administration, has decided to undermine U.S. foreign policy in support of forcefully ousted democratically elected leaders via military coups. Sen. Jim DeMint and Sen. Mitch McConnell have eerily blamed their support of the Honduran coups on what they perceive as a violation of the Honduran constitution, which I'm sure they know inside and out.

I say eerily because isn't it the same argument echoed in our own country by tenthers and tea party "take our government back" protesters. Coincidence? Was it a not so subtle suggestion to the fringers, the only ones left in the Republican Party today, to do whatever is necessary to stop the current administration?

Think Progress notes: The Logan Act forbids “unauthorized citizens” from negotiating with foreign governments. The video clip features Rachel Maddow clearing laying out the case.



It appears the minority Republicans disagree with our "illegitimate" presidents policy:

Time: U.S. officials called the latest sanctions "a strong signal" that Obama has reversed Washington's historic tendency to abide if not back coups carried out against its foes (the leftist Zelaya is a critic of the U.S.) and that he's defending democratic process in the hemisphere.

But Obama made a huge mistake by not challenging the Republicans, the minority bullies, over their support of the new Honduran government. It's an error that could have set in motion a wave of future Central and South American coups.

According to Time Magazine: "...it was not technically a military coup. The main reason: even though soldiers threw Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint, in his pajamas, he was not replaced with a military leader. Instead, Micheletti, a civilian who headed Honduras' Congress, was made President ... critics ... fear Obama is keeping the Honduras coup designation downgraded to mollify conservative Republicans. In the future, restless militaries in other countries may look at the U.S.'s Honduras ruling and decide coups are worth chancing as long as they don't install a guy wearing epaulettes in the president's chair. Vicki Gass, a senior associate at the independent Washington Office on Latin America ... fears the U.S. has "created risks in other countries" by not designating Honduras' putsch as military.

When the military hauls away a democratically elected president, it's a military coup, period, regardless of who takes power afterward. It's a rule that needs to apply not just in Honduras, but whenever the U.S. has to take on coupsters.


Boston Globe, on "real American" Jim DeMint:
In June, Sen. Jim DeMint published a book called “Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America’s Slide into Socialism,’’ which attacked President Obama’s federal spending. In July, he told a conference call of fellow conservatives: “If we’re able to stop Obama on [health care], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.’’

The same month, he compared the United States under Obama to Nazi Germany, telling an audience at the National Press Club: “We’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in Iran, and other places in South America, like [Hugo] Chávez is running down in Venezuela.’’

Hoping America Fails, Republicans-Fox News-Rush-Beck Notch Another Victory.

Flag this video for future use when we're told again how liberals hate and blame America first. A simple thing like hosting the Olympics and creating jobs was just too outrageous a pursuit for Republicans during a recession.

Joe Friday Lectures Barack Obama: "Don't try to build a new country, make the old one work."

I', so lucky (I think?) to have my conservative friend who continues to supply me with every distorted Obama picture and racist, anti-government web site. Below is his latest email contribution to the national discouse, showing Obama getting the much needed lecture about freedom from Dragnet's Joe Friday. This is cleverly done, which makes it a real oddity from the right wing. Having said that, Friday's partner, Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) does suggest "a man (Hitler) killed six million people, and called it social improvement."

The "2012" Five Minute Movie Clip

The film 2012 has the most incredible effects I've ever seen. John Cusack does the impossible, escaping a sinking California coast line. This is five minutes of unrelenting disaster. Click the full screen icon in the lower right corner. At the end, hit Esc on your keyboard.

Ohio School District Testing Book Censorship through Conservative PC Policy

How accountable are public schools to every squeaking wheel? All it took were two parents complaints about a few books to elicited the most amazing, and dangerous, knee jerk reactions I've seen in years by a school district. You won't believe this "down the rabbit hole" story, from Edweek Magazine:
Just in Time for Banned Books Week: After receiving complaints from (2) parents about two books assigned to students, the Wyoming school district in Ohio has decided to implement a review system to evaluate all books (other than textbooks) on teachers' reading lists, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Under the system, a panel made up of school staff will rate each book based on criteria ranging from subject-area relevance to how likely it is to generate controversy.

"When a district puts a book on its 'Not Welcome' list, it's censorship and banning," said one parent.

However, Todd Levy, the school board president, stated that the district "will not shy away from controversial books when they have educational merit." (Obvious follow-up question: Then why are you bothering to score books on whether or not they might be controversial?)

Some teachers and parents have criticized the district for caving into "intellectual bullying" and essentially overriding teachers' judgment in recommending books. They charge the district could be veering uncomfortably close to censorship.

By reports, principals would be expected to reconsider the assignment of books that receive low scores. The new policy came in response to complaints ... about a The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

Remember, conservatives still complain about the liberal politically correct agenda in schools and colleges. Are we to believe that this isn't a case of conservative political correctness? Of course we are.

Fox News Picks on Defenseless "Homeless" American Girl Doll.

Despite the positive message and lesson children could learn from the new American Girl "Homeless" doll, Fox News found something to whine and complain about, as usual. The whole network is a downer.

According to Opposing Views.com: Each American Girl comes with her own story, and the unique thing about Gwen is that she lives in a car with her mother. According to the story, Gwen's father abandoned his wife and child, forcing the mother and daughter into homelessness.

ACORN Basher Rick Berman Offers Healthful Advice to Republicans

The con man that pummeled ACORN is really the P.T. Barnum of wacky causes, Rick Berman at the Center for Consumer Freedom. They of course are anything but, still, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow offers this visual amusement...



Rick Berman's PR company, Berman & Co.. [1] As part of its operations CCF runs a series of attack websites, including "consumerfreedom.com, activistcash.com, cspiscam.com, animal-scam.com, fishscam.com, obesitymyths.com, physiciansscam.com [and] PetaKillsAnimals.com.