HEY DEMS. YOUR OWN GUY THINKS NOBAMA IS A D**KHEAD
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Posted:Jun 30, 2011 4:27 pm
Last Updated:Nov 29, 2011 2:34 pm 3862 Views
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Barack Obama has been called plenty of names on television, as cable fans know all too well.
But I don’t think anyone has called the president of the United States a dick—at least until now.
Mark Halperin, the Time magazine columnist and MSNBC contributor, was assessing Obama’s performance at a news conference when he delivered this opinion Thursday morning on Morning Joe:
“I thought he was a dick yesterday.”
Yup. He went there.
Host Joe Scarborough was not pleased, saying: “Delay that. Delay that. What are you doing?” But the program has a new executive producer who didn’t react by hitting the seven-second delay button.
Now I would be a dick if I didn’t point out that Halperin quickly tried to make amends: “Joking aside, this is an absolute apology. I shouldn't have said it. I apologize to the president and the viewers who heard me say that.”
But as more than one wit has pointed out, playing off the title of the best-seller co-authored by Halperin, that was a game changer. Two hours after Morning Joe went off the air, MSNBC suspended him.
Halperin and co-author John Heilemann had incredible access to most of the 2008 campaigns for their book Game Change, which is being made into a movie, but didn’t get much inside stuff from the Obama camp. With the two journalists now working on a sequel for 2012—sold for a reported $5 million—Halperin’s locker-room epithet won’t be terribly helpful in terms of his relations with the White House and Obama reelection campaign.
I know that people can blurt out stupid things on live  television; a few weeks ago a Gawker writer used the same word on my CNN program in referring to Anthony Weiner’s package, and I apologized on her behalf. But Halperin is a seasoned veteran who should know better than to use that word in front of the cameras—and I’m sure he is kicking himself as we speak.
Update: The Halperin suspension didn’t take place in a vacuum. The White House quickly complained to MSNBC.
Press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Halperin’s comment “was inappropriate. It would be inappropriate to say that about either president of either party."
Carney added that "on behalf of the White House, I expressed that sentiment to executives at the network." He declined to comment on the suspension.
Halperin is a former ABC News political director whose day job is at Time, where he writes a weekly column and a Web site called The Page. The magazine did not suspend him but issued this scolding: “Mark Halperin’s comments on air this morning were inappropriate and in no way reflective of Time’s views. We have issued a warning to him that such behavior is unacceptable. Mark has appropriately apologized on air, via Twitter and on The Page.”
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NO BUDGET, NO PAY for CALIFORNIA legislators
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Posted:Jun 26, 2011 6:13 pm
Last Updated:Jun 30, 2011 4:10 pm 3828 Views
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hey Obama congress,, read this, its going to happen nationwide!
With the national debt ceiling deadline little more than five weeks away, the House of Representatives is taking a holiday break until the sixth of July. An aide to Speaker John Boehner says house leaders can always consult by phone.
CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that, in California, voters believe they've found a better way to keep their legislators on the job.
For the past five years, California Assemblyman Tony Mendoza has been serving a district with severe unemployment. Now he too is experiencing firsthand what it's like to not get a paycheck.
"Yeah, it pains me that I'm not going to get paid and bills are going to start stacking up and mortgages are going to be put on hold, but that's like everybody else right now - we're all feeling the pinch," Mendoza says.
Mendoza is among 120 California lawmakers who are not getting paid this week because they failed to pass a balanced budget on time. So this husband and father of four will have to rely on his wife's teaching salary.
The man who cuts California's paychecks, State Controller John Chiang, decided to implement a unique measure approved by California voters last November. The law -- known as proposition 25 -- requires legislators to forfeit their own salary for each day that a budget is not passed beyond the June 15th deadline. For lawmakers making $95,291 per year, that means $261 will be withheld per day. They'll also lose a $142 daily stipend for travel and living expenses.
"We'll pay them if they complete their responsibility," Chiang says.
Unlike a similar law passed in New York, California legislators will never get that money back.
"I have no objection to paying them, but they have an obligation. They ran for office. Now they need to make sure that we have a budget in place," Chiang says.
Some politicians are outraged. Los Angeles Assemblyman Mike Gatto issued a statement saying: "I now have to explain to my wife and that we won't be able to pay the bills." Listeners of a local radio show responded by dropping off cans of spam in front of Gatto's office.
"I think this opportunity to dock their pay to get them to speed up the process is genius - money talks," says California voter Chrissy Offutt.
While state legislators and Governor Jerry Brown try to hammer out a new budget plan, you won't be hearing many complaints from taxpayers. So far, the state of California has saved more than $485,000 in salaries.
annemac,,, :cbsnews, la times, drudge report
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TIME FOR BORACK TO GO BACK TO CHICAGO
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Posted:Jun 23, 2011 6:00 pm
Last Updated:Jun 26, 2011 6:09 pm 4155 Views
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The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.
The real job losses are greater than the estimate of 7.5 million. They are closer to 10.5 million, as 3 million people have stopped looking for work. Equally troublesome is the lower labor participation rate; some 5 million jobs have vanished from manufacturing, long America's greatest strength. Just think: Total payrolls today amount to 131 million, but this figure is lower than it was at the beginning of the year 2000, even though our population has grown by nearly 30 million. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons on the economy.]
The most recent statistics are unsettling and dismaying, despite the increase of 54,000 jobs in the May numbers. Nonagricultural full-time employment actually fell by 142,000, on top of the 291,000 decline the preceding month. Half of the new jobs created are in temporary help agencies, as firms resist hiring full-time workers.
Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening. Hiring announcements have plunged to 10,248 in May, down from 59,648 in April. Hiring is now 17 percent lower than the lowest level in the 2001-02 downturn. One fifth of all men of prime working age are not getting up and going to work. Equally disturbing is that the number of people unemployed for six months or longer grew 361,000 to 6.2 million, increasing their share of the unemployed to 45.1 percent. We face the specter that long-term unemployment is becoming structural and not just cyclical, raising the risk that the jobless will lose their skills and become permanently unemployable. [See a slide show of the 10 best cities to find a job.]
Don't pay too much attention to the headline unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. It is scary enough, but it is a gloss on the reality. These numbers do not include the millions who have stopped looking for a job or who are working part time but would work full time if a position were available. And they count only those people who have actively applied for a job within the last four weeks.
Include those others and the real number is a nasty 16 percent. The 16 percent includes 8.5 million part-timers who want to work full time (which is double the historical norm) and those who have applied for a job within the last six months, including many of the long-term unemployed. And this 16 percent does not take into account the discouraged workers who have left the labor force. The fact is that the longer duration of six months is the more relevant testing period since the mean duration of unemployment is now 39.7 weeks, an increase from 37.1 weeks in February. [See a slide show of the 10 cities with highest real income.]
The inescapable bottom line is an unprecedented slack in the U.S. labor market. Labor's share of national income has fallen to the lowest level in modern history, down to 57.5 percent in the first quarter as compared to 59.8 percent when the so-called recovery began. This reflects not only the 7 million fewer workers but the fact that wages for part-time workers now average $19,000—less than half the median income.
Just to illustrate how insecure the labor movement is, there is nobody on strike in the United States today, according to David Rosenberg of wealth management firm Gluskin Sheff. Back in the 1970s, it was common in any given month to see as many as 30,000 workers on the picket line, and there were typically 300 work stoppages at any given time. Last year there were a grand total of 11. There are other indirect consequences. The number of people who have applied for permanent disability benefits has soared. Ten years ago, 5 million people were collecting federal disability payments; now 8 million are on the rolls, at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $120 billion a year. The states today owe the federal insurance fund an astonishing $90 billion to cover unemployment benefits
AND FOR ANNEMAC THIS WAS WRITTEN BY MORT ZUCKERMAN... LOOK HIM UP
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NOBAMACARE: Medicaid for the middle class? ANOTHER SNAFOOO
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Posted:Jun 21, 2011 6:03 pm
Last Updated:Jun 26, 2011 6:15 pm 4015 Views
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ROBACKS health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.
The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.
After initially downplaying any concern, the Obama administration said late Tuesday it would look for a fix.
Up to 3 million more people could qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as a result of the anomaly. That's because, in a major change from today, most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility. It might be compared to allowing middle-class people to qualify for food stamps.
Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster says the situation keeps him up at night.
"I don't generally comment on the pros or cons of policy, but that just doesn't make sense," Foster said during a question-and-answer session at a recent professional society meeting.
"This is a situation that got no attention at all," added Foster. "And even now, as I raise the issue with various policymakers, people are not rushing to say ... we need to do something about this."
Administration officials said Tuesday they now see the problem. "We are concerned that, as a matter of law, some middle-income Americans may be receiving coverage through Medicaid, which is meant to serve only the neediest Americans," said Health and Human Services spokesman Richard Sorian. "We are exploring options to address this issue."
Administration officials and senior Democratic lawmakers initially defended the change, saying it wasn't a loophole but the result of a well-meaning effort to simplify the rules for deciding who would get help under the new health care law. Instead of a hodgepodge, there would be one national policy.
But Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, called the situation "unacceptable" and said he intended to look into it.
Governors have been clamoring for relief from Medicaid costs, complaining that federal rules drive up spending and limit state options. The program is now one of the top issues in budget negotiations between the White House and Congress. Republicans want to roll back federal requirements that block states from limiting eligibility.
Medicaid is a safety net program that serves more than 50 million vulnerable Americans, from low-income and pregnant women to Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes. It's designed as a federal-state partnership, with Washington paying close to 60 percent of the total cost.
Early retirees would be a new group for Medicaid. While retirees can now start collecting Social Security at age 62, they must wait another three years to get Medicare, unless they're disabled.
Some early retirees who worked all their lives may not want to join a program for the poor, but others might see it as a relatively painless way to satisfy the new law's requirement that most Americans carry health insurance starting in 2014. It would help tide them over until they qualify for Medicare.
The actuary's office said the early retirees eligible for Medicaid would be on top of an estimated 16 million to 20 million new people that Obama's law already brings into the program, by opening it to childless adults with incomes near the poverty level.
It's unclear how much it would cost to cover the retirees. Federal taxpayers will cover the entire initial cost of the expansion.
Republicans already see a problem.
Former Utah governor Mike Leavitt said bringing early retirees in will "just add fuel to the fire," bolstering the argument from Republican governors that some of Washington's rules don't make sense.
"The fact that this is being discovered now tells you, what else is baked into this law?" said Leavitt, who served as Health and Human Services secretary under President George H.W. Bush. "It clearly begins to reveal that the nature of the law was to put more and more people under eligibility for government insurance."
The Medicare actuary's office roughed out some examples to illustrate how the provision would work. A married couple retiring at 62 in 2014 and receiving the maximum Social Security benefit of $23,500 apiece could get $17,000 from other sources and still qualify for Medicaid with a total income of $64,000.
That $64,000 would put them at about four times the federal poverty level, which for a two-person household is $14,710 this year. The Medicaid expansion in the health care law was supposed to benefit childless adults with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty level. A fudge factor built into the law bumps that up to 138 percent.
The actuary's office acknowledged its $64,000 example would represent an unusual case, but nonetheless the hypothetical couple would still qualify for Medicaid.
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THE SPERMINATOR!
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Posted:May 17, 2011 4:54 pm
Last Updated:May 18, 2011 4:02 pm 3698 Views
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AND YEAH, I COULD CARE LESS WHAT HE DOES WITH HIS PRIVATES ,BUT MY BEEF IS HOW HE AND HIS BUDS HAVE CALIFORNIA! ANDA THEN THE NERVE TO LET MURDERERS RUN LOOSE? for a man that started as a body builder and a porn star and rich and famous, yeah i credit the IMPREGNATOR...but this? IS WAAAY over the top.
The San Diego County district attorney has filed a civil suit aimed at overturning former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last-minute reduction of the prison sentence of the of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez in the slaying of a college student.
On his last day in office, the governor reduced the sentence of Esteban Nuñez from 16 years to seven years. The decision was made without consulting with prosecutors in the case -- angering Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis and the family of the victim, Luis Santos.
In the civil suit, announced Wednesday, Dumanis argues that Schwarzenegger had a legal obligation to notify prosecutors and the families of the victims. Santos was killed in a late-night street brawl outside San Diego State. Nuñez pleaded guilty in 2010 to voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon.
The suit is considered the first of its kind, Dumanis said. Santos died of a stab wound to the heart; three friends were wounded in the attack by Nuñez and three of his friends, who were angry at being turned away from a fraternity party.
In reducing the prison sentence, Schwarzenegger argued that Nuñez deserved a shorter sentence than the co-defendant who admitted delivering the fatal knife blow at Santos.
The lawsuit names the governor, Nuñez, the director of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the warden of Mule Creek State Prison, where Nuñez is serving his time.
Dumanis said Marsy’s Law, meant to protect the rights of crime victims, requires a governor to notify prosecutors and family members. The civil suit could face a difficult legal precedent: that the right of governors to grant pardons and sentence reductions has been considered unlimited and not subject to review.
The governor, Dumanis said, is given that power to help correct miscarriages of justice.
“Instead, this last-minute commutation made without all the facts or input from the parties only fueled the public mistrust of government and greatly diminished justice,” Dumanis said.
Part of the public anger has come from the fact that Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and Fabian Nuñez, a Democrat from Los Angeles, were considered political allies even though they were from different political parties.
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DEMS , NOBAMA LISTEN UP - a reasonable plan
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Posted:Apr 7, 2011 5:21 pm
Last Updated:May 9, 2024 10:52 pm 3722 Views
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House Budget Commitee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget plan,, and I LIKE IT!!
To begin with, you can download his budget here in pdf form source wahsingt post. But the best way to understand it is probably to break it down by categories. One thing that surprised me when reading through the budget was just how much Ryan was actually proposing to do here.
1) repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law should be in the budget, onto the summary:
1) Discretionary spending
a) Non-defense discretionary: Brings spending back to pre-2008 levels and freezes it there for five years.
b) Defense-related discretionary: Echoes Obama’s budget request in accepting the $78 billion in “savings” that Defense Secretary Robert Gates identified and going no further. I put “savings” in quotation marks because it’s really a reduction in the growth rate that Gates previously requested.
2) Financial system
a) Financial regulation: Repeals Dodd-Frank.
b) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: “This budget . . . proposes eventual elimination of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, winding down their government guarantee and ending taxpayer subsidies. It supports increasing the guarantee fees Fannie and Freddie charge lenders in order to bring private capital back, shrinking their retained portfolios, and enacting various measures that would bring transparency and accountability to the GSEs.”
3) Safety net
a) Medicaid: Converts federal share of Medicaid spending into a block grant that’s indexed for inflation and population growth. To offer some context, health-care costs often increase at twice the rate of inflation or more.
b) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Better known as food stamps, SNAP gets the Medicaid treatment: block grants indexed for inflation and population growth.
c) Pell Grants: Cut back to 2008 levels, wiping out recent increases.
d) Health-care reform: Repeals the Affordable Care Act.
4) Retirement security
a) Medicare: Privatizes Medicare. Future beneficiaries will choose from a menu of private options. They won’t have the choice of the standard Medicare plan. Wealthier beneficiaries will get a small voucher and poorer beneficiaries will get a larger voucher. Vouchers grow at GDP+1%, whether or not Medicare does the same.
b) Social Security: Calls for a bipartisan process to develop reforms.
5) Taxes
a) Tax reform: “Reform the tax code by consolidating the current six brackets and cutting the top individual rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.”
b) Tax revenue: Prevents the Bush tax cuts from expiring in 2013. So the revenue-neutral tax reform locks in today’s rates, which is to say it makes the Bush cuts permanent.
c) Corporate taxes: Lowers corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. “This budget would offset lower rates with a broader base, scaling back or eliminating entirely the deductions.”
6) Energy
Endorses “The American Energy Initiative”: I don’t know much about this bill, but you can find the GOP’s official case for it here.
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GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN OR PAID VACATION FOR THE CONGRESS?
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Posted:Apr 6, 2011 11:43 pm
Last Updated:Apr 7, 2011 5:00 pm 4178 Views
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DOES THIS MEAN ALL OF NOBAMAS STAFF GOES UNPAID? OR ARE THEY EXEMPT? WHAT ABOUT KADAFFI?
Around 800,000 federal employees would be affected by a government shutdown, which also would stall tax refunds and close national parks, the Obama administration warned Wednesday. An administration official also told reporters on a conference call that military personal “will continue to earn money during this period of time, but given that we don’t have any money to pay out, they will not be paid, they will not receive their paychecks, until we have money again and Congress appropriates.”
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DEAR BORACK, DO YOU MIND IF I DONT PAY MY TAXES TOO?
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Posted:Mar 26, 2011 8:21 pm
Last Updated:Apr 6, 2011 11:43 pm 3777 Views
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In January, President Obama named Jeffrey R. Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, to head the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. “He understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy,” The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
“He understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Immelt, on his appointment in January, after touring a G.E. factory in upstate New York that makes turbines and generators for sale around the world.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
Company officials say that these measures are necessary for G.E. to compete against global rivals and that they are acting as responsible citizens. “G.E. is committed to acting with integrity in relation to our tax obligations,” said Anne Eisele, a spokeswoman. “We are committed to complying with tax rules and paying all legally obliged taxes. At the same time, we have a responsibility to our shareholders to legally minimize our costs.”
G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.
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THE OBAMA DOCTRINE
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Posted:Mar 23, 2011 5:46 pm
Last Updated:Mar 24, 2011 2:42 pm 3598 Views
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how strange, couldnt fine any articles on one,,, i take that back, not strange at all.
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OBAMAS WAR, SO WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR IT?
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Posted:Mar 20, 2011 9:13 pm
Last Updated:Mar 22, 2011 2:14 pm 3734 Views
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Obama’s Libya War: Unconstitutional, Naïve, Hypocritical
PERHAPS WE SHOULD TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN AT HOME FIRST? WHERE ARE THE SAUDIS? 4 PLANES FROM THE ARABS?
Our founders would be appalled that a President of the United States could launch the country into an armed conflict half a world away without a formal declaration of war by Congress, much less barely any discussion of it by the House or by the Senate.
Article 1, Section 8, of our Constitution is unambiguous: Only Congress has the authority “to declare war.” James Madison warned that allowing the President to take the country into war would be “too much of a temptation for one man.”
At this point in the warping of our system of checks and balances, a President can wage war almost whenever he feels like it — or at least whenever he can cobble together some “broad coalition,” as Obama put it, or a “coalition of the willing,” as his predecessor put it.
Sounding just like George W. Bush when he attacked Iraq exactly eight years ago to the day, Obama said that military action against Libya was not our first resort.
Well, it may not have been the first resort, but it sure is Washington’s favorite resort.
We, as Americans, need to face facts: We have a runaway Executive Branch when it comes to warmaking.
And Obama appears naïve in the extreme on this one.
It is naïve to expect U.S. involvement in this war to be over in “days, not weeks,” as he said.
It is naïve to expect that he can carry this out without using ground troops.
It is naïve to wage war that is not in response to a direct threat to the U.S. national security.
It is naïve to expect millions of Libyans to cheer as their own country is being attacked by Western powers.
It is naïve to expect civilian casualties not to mount as a result of his actions, which he said were designed “to protect Libyan civilians.”
And it is naïve to expect the world to go along with the ruse that this is not a U.S.-led act of aggression.
Finally, Obama’s stated reasons for this war, which he refuses to call by its proper name, are hypocritical and incoherent.
He said “innocent men and women face brutality and death at the hands of their own government.”
That’s true of the people of Yemen, our ally, which just mowed down dozens of peaceful protesters.
That’s true of the people of Bahrain, our ally, which also just mowed down dozens of peaceful protesters.
Then there’s the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, our chief Arab ally and a repressive government in its own right, which just rolled its tanks into Bahrain.
In the Ivory Coast today, another country on good terms with Washington, a dictatorial government is brutalizing its people.
And a brutal junta has ruled the people of Burma for decades now.
There is no consistent humanitarian standard for Obama’s war against Libya. None whatsoever.
Obama has now pushed the United States to a place where we are now engaged in three wars simultaneously.
He’s a man, and we’re a country, that has gone crazy on war.''
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