Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care — admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada’s [developing] single-payer system.
After fear-mongering about the health insurance legislation in 2009, going so far as to lie that the government would have “death panels”, it finally comes to light that Sarah Palin used the Canadian health care system instead of the American system available to her in Alaska. The 1960′s version of Canada’s health care system wasn’t the same as it is today – a single payer system – but it was on the path toward today’s system. It wasn’t the American system; it wasn’t the mythological “free-market” system that Palin today worships so fervently.
The northwest U.S. has had more than it’s fair share of extreme weather and its after-effects this winter. Record rains and heavy snowpack have given way to flooding rivers and avalanches as more rain has fallen during a warm spell. These kinds of events are the kind that are forecasted to occur more often as our climate changes. Climate models for years have indicated that extreme weather events of all kinds would become more prevalent: extended periods of drier conditions interspersed with events and seasons that would see record rain fall, among others. The economic impact in Washington state alone this week was millions of dollars per day in stalled transport of goods and widespread seclusion of communities by floodwaters and avalanches. It’s not just a case of a mm or two of rising sea levels (so far!). There are and will be real-world economic impacts as a result of the forcing we’ve already put into the climate system. Those impacts will grow in scope the longer the deniers/delayers hold the country back from taking action.
The preliminary unemployment numbers for December came out this morning. The narrowest reading of unemployment is reported at 7.2% now, the highest level since 1993. It is no mistake that the two highest levels of unemployment come at the end of long-term Republican control of the economy. Con economic policies have demonstrated how badly they fail time and time again. Over 3.6 million jobs have been lost since Dec. 2007, and it wasn’t like Bush was effective at creating them before then. Bush presided over the lowest rate and amount of job creation since WWII. Now, a large portion of those jobs have been lost again. I will point out that the more accurate unemployment number (U6) stands at 13.5% now.
Paul Krugman asks if we’re prepared to act decisively in the face of the 2nd Great Republican Depression.
The following is instructive on how schizophrenic the Republicans are right now. Did John McCain or Sarah Palin run for President this year? I know Republicans are desperate for any kind of a life preserver following the drubbing Democrats served up this year. But this is just silly:
NEW: DON’T BLAME ME! I VOTED FOR PALIN
Bumper Stickers!
As taxes go up and guns and freedom go away, you can let the world know that you voted Conservative and that you voted American. Get the “Don’t Blame Me! I Voted For Palin” 2-PACK of Bumper Stickers! FREE SHIPPING Included via First Class Mail!
There’s lots of crappy messaging in this advertisement. The Cons have been anti-investment for years and look where it’s gotten us: Bush more than doubled the deficit in just 8 short years. The election demonstrated that Americans are tired of failed Con economic policies. If Cons don’t want to invest in America, they should stop using the commons. Otherwise, it’s time to pay for what they use. That’s patriotic.
The Cons have been screaming about having their guns taken away for decades. Has it happened? Of course not. I will point out that it’s probably a bad idea for citizens to own assault rifles and the like. I will further point out that in most of the recent shooting rampages across the country in the past 8 years (perpetrated predominantly by white people), the weapons used included semi-automatic and full automatic weapons. After each event, when multiple people died each time, the NRA and others were quick to jump to the defense of a person’s “right to own” those kinds of weapons. It’s disgusting, but true. I don’t think U.S. citizens have a right to own AK-47s, TEC-9s and the like. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban needs to be revived, strengthened and passed. I have no problem with citizens owning handguns or rifles that are completely non-automatic.
Under Bush’s totalitarian-like government, U.S. citizens had more rights weakened or stripped than at any other time I’m aware of. Did the Cons raise their voices in anger when habeus corpus was stripped or when the 4th amendment was gutted? Of course not. Note also the ad doesn’t mention which rights might “go away” under an Obama administration. Deception and fear: two tactics that the Cons use every time they want to control their base. This is the kind of crap that they’ll hurl at Democrats every day while the Cons are in the minority, regardless of how well Democrats govern.
The cowardly ad tries to continue the Cons’ claim on patriotism. I don’t think so. Americans overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama. Democrats voted just as patriotically as Republicans and others did. The kind of language used in the ad demonstrates why Obama won.
Sarah Palin and John McCain have spent most of the past month focusing on what they like to call “terrorists” – folks like Bill Ayers. In a sit-down interview, Brian Williams asks if Sarah (with John by her side) defines people who bomb abortion clinics (and kill people as a result) as terrorists. Hold your hat, folks: she doesn’t. And John didn’t disagree, which means he also countenances terrorizing doctors and patients in America, as long as its his base that does so. On the other hand, if people lean left and bomb buildings, then they’re terrorists. That is what the extremist portion of the “pro-life” movement believes. I can appreciate people who employ lawful means to stop abortions from being performed. I don’t agree with them, but as long as they’re not advocating terrorizing other people, at least the disagreement is over policy. There is absolutely no way that extremists like Sarah Palin or John McCain should be in any kind of position of power. Their ultra-narrow definition of “terrorist” is quite frankly unready to be employed in our 21st century world. Bombing buildings and killing innocent people is a terrorist act, and that definition shouldn’t change based on the color of the bomber’s skin or their personal ideology.
Simply put – if someone asks whether abortion clinic bombers are terrorists, the correct answer is “Yes”, not “I don’t know”.
I argued against the Bush Bailout because I didn’t think the Bushies would be transparent about where the money was really going to go. I hate it when I’m right: the Bush Treasury Department decided to redact key parts of private contracts that would tell the public how much taxpayer cash various law firms, accounting companies and stock management houses are going to receive. The uber-secret Bush administration took Amerians hostage to get taxpayer money to bailout his Wall St. cronies while telling those same Americans transparency and oversight would be maintained. When Bushies say something, the exact opposite is actually true. This case is no different. Americans deserve to know where their money is going.
If Democrats win by landslides this November, a political realignment will be afoot. As Paul Waldman notes, I fully expect the corporate media to push the meme that a “right-wing nation” is still dominant, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The discussion surrounding the 2000 and 2004 elections consisted of how bankrupt liberal policies were. No such similar discussion about the failure of conservative ideology occurred after 2006, and it isn’t likely to happen after 2008 either. Progressives will continue to have a lot of work to do to demonstrate that so-called “liberal” policies are actually very mainstream. It’s the right-wing ideology that is extremist. It’s had more positive attention due to the efforts of the CONservative machine set up over 30 years ago. Americans are ready for somebody to actually govern this country again. I’m confident Democrats are more willing than CONServatives to do so.
The RNC bought Sarah Palin’s family $150,000 worth of clothing and makeup since being selected as McCain’s running mate. That’s $2,500 of clothes per day from Nieman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. The “average hockey mom” image is such b.s. Millions of Americans are shopping at discount stores as the economy collapses. Palin got more clothes in one month than the average American household buys in 80 years. The campaign’s response that there are more important issues? Give me a break. McCain has been talking about nothing but Ayers and ACORN for weeks now. And Palin will change Washington?
Should pharmacists be allowed to not sell birth control because of their personal beliefs? It’s happening more and more across the country. The pro-fetus crowd wants to tell women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. It’s all about control over women. It’s all about moving society back 150 years, when women were property of the men in their lives. It’s immoral. If a woman and her doctor agree on a prescription, no one should have the power to alter that agreement. Maybe men need to be denied prescriptions – see how they like it.
There isn’t a Scientists for Obama group. That’s kind of depressing.
As Republicans at every level across the country find themselves behind, and in some cases way behind, their Democratic opponents, they’re resorting to increasingly violent outbursts that are clearly based on their narrow worldview.
Those outbursts have unfortunately become familiar to all of us: racial tensions obviously underlie attacks against Barack Obama; ideology forms the basis of attacks on economic policies (even if R’s have become schizophrenic about them).
Races in Colorado are no different. They merely have their own unique facet of the larger worthless rock that the Republican party represents. I read an article covering Sarah “Socialism” Palin’s visit to the rabid Republican base found in Colorado Springs. One piece of language in that article caught my attention.
“This race for the presidency – and my race for the Senate – is all about one thing: It’s about whether we choose freedom and liberty or bureaucracy and bondage,” [Bob] Schaffer told a cheering Colorado Springs crowd.
Schaffer has said some incredibly stupid things this election cycle. His campaign manager (perhaps the real candidate, depending), Dick Wadhams, has a resume chock full of campaigns whose candidates all too willingly share their … fringe views with potential voters. But including the word “bondage” in a description of what the presidential race is about while one of the candidates is half-African is particularly tasteless. It was not included by accident, either.
Republicans this election season have been left to run with what remains of their base: those most prone to their fear-mongering. They have to pander hard to those who are most scared of foreigners with different skin color, to those who think they’re frightened of “socialism”, to those who are scared of anything resembling change.
Thus, we see Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s rant about pro- and anti-american members of the House, which smacks of McCarth-ism in all its depravity. Thus, we see Rep. Robin Hayes challenging Bachmann to go even further with her hate speech by saying “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God”. Thus, we see Bob Schaffer using the word bondage, pushing the buttons of racists in an effort to invoke feelings of victimization among his extremist base.
Schaffer, McCain, Palin, Bachmann, Hayes and the rest of the loonies on the right are letting voters know exactly who they really are. They’re offering up continual proof of their fringe attitudes. Unsurprisingly, they’re still bleating about the “bias in the librul media”. Despite their best efforts over the past 30 years, 50-70% of Americans aren’t as extreme as they want them to be.
Matt Stoller did an analysis of League of Conseration Voters endorsement patterns of incumbent Democrats and Republicans. The result: it looks as though Democrats must reach a higher lifetime LCV score to receive an endorsement than Republicans. Does LCV include Republicans, even though their voting patterns aren’t as strong as Democrats, just to appear bipartisan? Is there a similar trend with other single-issue advocacy groups? CONservative groups aren’t shy about discriminating against Democrats. Think of the NRA. A Democrat would have to be very conservative before the NRA endorsed them in a race. Now think of NARAL. They continually endorse Republicans that are anti-choice. The progressive movement needs to do some serious self-examination moving forward. A progressive agenda cannot be fought for and enacted when advocacy groups get behind people who don’t believe in that agenda. LCV asks activists for money. Activists would do well to keep track of how LCV operates when deciding whether or not to donate. A table of Colorado officials can be found after the fold. The LCV Scorecard can be found here.
Sarah Palin is a super-socialist. She’s touring the country trying to scare voters into believing Barack Obama is a socialist because of his tax policy. What kind of tax policy does Sarah Palin believe in? A policy that dispenses tax money from oil and gas drilling to Alaskan citizens. Is that oil and gas exclusively sold to Americans? No, it’s sold overseas. The rest of America then pays more for oil and gas that we buy from overseas. So mainland U.S. consumers are paying more at the pump to give every Alaskan a $3,200 check every year. There’s no way I’m voting for this hypocrite.
I’m voting for Barack Obama in spite of Colin Powell. Powell continues to demonstrate he’s more interested in power than standing up for what he believes. If Obama was behind in the polls, I doubt very seriously Powell would have endorsed him. Powell wants Obama’s ear. I hope Obama doesn’t give it to him.
Proponents of “drill or bust” purposefully leave out an important part of reality. In ten years time, off-shore drilling, for instance, will produce ~200,000 barrels of oil per day. OPEC is holding an emergency meeting this Friday (three days from now) and they’re proposing to cut current production by 2,000,000 barrels per day. OPEC wants oil to cost $70-$90 per barrel, which this year meant $3.00-$4.50 gas in America. Any gain in supply from the U.S. will be met with cuts in supply from OPEC. There will be no cut in oil or gas prices if we drill more.
How the Banksters Made a Complete Killing Off the Bailout is a good article. Much was made in the corporate media about how strong the oversight over the Bailout was going to be. I didn’t trust that it would be there and the details in this article validate that view. The Democratic-led Congress is going to own the fallout from the financial crisis. I really hoped they would make a hard push for tough oversight. They still can…
John McCain’s campaign continues to flail away helplessly as November 4th approaches. Republicans think they can win this year by beating on the “taxes are bad” drum. It has always been nonsensical to do so, but the way in which McCain is doing it right now is especially ridiculous. According to McCain, his own tax cuts (for the richest only) are “reform”, but Obama’s tax cuts are “welfare”. Really, John? Tax cuts for rich people and corporations aren’t “reform”: George Bush Jr., George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan implemented them for the past 28 years. It’s what’s led to the sorry state of America’s infrastructure and threatens Social Security and Medicare. Americans are obviously tired of the pro-corporate welfare Republicans have pushed for so long. They realize they’re not getting any benefit from that policy. By the way, this ridiculous claim is McCain’s 158th lie since February. Heroes don’t lie.
[Update]: The McCain campaign is trying to scare voters by accusing Barack Obama of being a socialist. They’re trying to scare voters into believing that Obama’s redistribution of wealth will be a bad thing. It will be bad … for McCain and his multi-millionaire backers. They’re the only ones who benefitted from Bush’s tax cuts. It’s the millionaires that will have to pay more taxes under an Obama administration. What McCain won’t tell the American people is that his proposal to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent will cause the collapse of Social Security and Medicare. McCain’s economic policies would mean no more funding for education and no more funding for renewable energy research. But we would keep occupying Iraq at the exorbitant cost of $10 billion per month. And millionaires would be allowed to invest even less of their money in the public’s infrastructure that they use so heavily. That’s immoral.
billmon has a post that well worth the time to read. McCain’s description of Obama as “socialist” and Palin’s description of only certain regions of America as “pro-American” is disturbing on many levels. One particularly important paragraph:
We’ve crossed some more lines, in other words — in a long series of lines that have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party and an explicitly fascist political movement. And John McCain and his political handlers appear to have no moral compunctions whatsoever about whipping this movement into a frenzy and providing it with scapegoats for all that hatred, simply to try to shave a few points off Barack Obama’s lead in the polls.
This demonstrates something I’ve been saying: Sarah Palin has nothing to offer in foreign policy discussions. She was not invited to discuss the draft Iraq security agreement with the White House. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and John McCain were. Sarah Palin doesn’t have the experience or qualifications necessary to be Vice-President.
NASA has a new spacecraft that will launch this weekend: Ibex. Ibex will investigate the region of space where our star’s influence meets the interstellar wind. Voyager 1 has already moved beyond the heliosphere. Ibex will study the heliosphere as it orbits Earth.
Jet streams above Jupiter and Saturn flow eastward. Jet streams above Uranus and Neptune flow westward. Earth’s tropical jet stream flows eastward. The subtropical jets flow westward. A reason why: the amount and location of water vapor in the respective atmospheres. Condensation of water vapor releases energy in the form of heat to the atmosphere. Eddies and vortices form from rising water vapor. As they shear apart, they transport momentum to the jet streams.
I know this is going to come up again someday, so I’m going to get ahead of it. Sarah Palin has said in the past she was responsible for bringing a pipeline to Alaska that would deliver natural gas to the lower 48. The cowardly John McCain told his Faux Noise extremist buddy Sean Hannity the same thing. The problem? Both Sarah and John are lying. Again. No part of the pipeline has been built. Federal approval is still years away and, just like the rest of the pro-drilling idiot crowd, no natural gas will make its way to the lower 48 for at least 10 years. So here’s a major difference between Obama and McCain: in 10 years, Obama’s energy policies will put us well on the way toward making renewables our primary source of energy. McCain and Palin will still be waiting for oil to be drilled off-shore, for natural gas to be sent from Alaska and for oil to be drilled out of oil shale. Obama will have taken meaningful steps towards mitigating human forced climate change. McCain and Palin will still be burning every fossil fuel they can. Obama offers change, pure and simple.
More on the last point: whoever is elected in November has the opportunity to demonstrate the U.S.’s leadership on climate change to the world. They can go to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland in December. They can commit to reducing GHG emissions. They can commit to providing assitance to developing countries. They can commit to a more prosperous 21st century.
I want to bring every reader’s attention to the comment by Marie, below. For now, I have approved it so that I can point out the lack of facts in any of the points and clips. I have also approved it to bring awareness of the larger message: when Republicans lose races across the country this year, they’re going to scream about Democrats stealing the election, with no factual basis. It is obvious that this frame is being established now by CONServative leaders and all their extremist followers are following the tune, as usual. Now, let’s get to some facts:
First, get the terminology correct. ACORN can’t commit voter fraud. Only voters can commit voter fraud. You would still be incorrect about their intent if you called it registration fraud, but at least then it would be a credible criticism.
Second, Obama did give ACORN $800K – in the primaries. He hasn’t given them anything since. It’s incredible to me that CONServatives have the worldview that working hard to register people is somehow a bad thing. Real people are being registered by ACORN and dozens of other entities. You know why? Democrats win when more people vote. Republicans win when people are not allowed to vote. That’s what this attack against ACORN is all about: preventing citizens from voting. That’s disgusting and immoral.
Third, do you really think ACORN has that much power? Seriously, CONServatives’ conspiracies would be laughable if they didn’t have so much control over the media. How could ACORN possibly force any bank to give sub-prime mortgages to unqualified borrowers? Banks were more than happy to do so – it kept their gambling habits stoked. You only undermine your own credibility when such silly things are spread.
Fourth, Obama worked for ACORN a long time ago. This is the same nonsense that McCain’s handlers want CONServatives to focus on: people that Obama had an association with that have nothing to do with his job today. Is your point that Obama forced ACORN to force banks to give people with bad credit mansions? Because that’s just ridiculous. If it’s something else, just come out and say it. And that’s what this boils down to: McCain and his CONservative supporters are all cowards. They don’t have what it takes to just come out and say what they think about Obama. They’re running around whispering rumors to each other and insinuating things about Obama. Who happens to be a freaking sitting U.S. Senator. If you really think he’s done all the bad things you’re insinuating, it should be easy to convince your DA or the DoJ that Obama should be jailed. Otherwise, you’re all just a small fringe group. Americans aren’t going to be scared by your b.s. this time around. They’re seeing through your little acts and realize their lives are better when they’re working for the future and not piddling themselves underneath their beds.
Some additional ACORN facts: they’re required by law to turn in every completed application, even if they know it to be problematic. ACORN flags incomplete or suspicious applications when they turn them in to county officials. Election officials often ignore those flags when they’re turned in, causing themselves headaches down the road. There has never been a single proven case of anyone, anywhere, casting an illegal vote as a result of a false registration. Not surprisingly, none of the corporate media reports relayed any of this information. Some investigation. Stop the fear-mongering. It’s pathetic.
