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Archive for the 'Lying Sacks Of Shit' Category

Choose Your Own Romney Tax Return Adventure

Posted by Michelle Moquin on 20th September 2012

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Good morning!

Well, I’ve been back for a little bit but haven’t had much of a chance to connect with many of you. You know how it is when you leave town, and come back to a slew of e-mails and things that need to be handled, not to mention getting back to WORK. The work muscle was feeing a bit weak but I am pumped up now and back into it.

How is everyone doing? I see the blog comments are coming in strong. Lots to talk about these days. My thoughts keep going back to Romney’s revealing tape. It seems MSNBC is keeping it live. Not sure if any other media is even focusing on it. My guess is not so much. It also seems that Romney’s supporters are down in numbers, but again not so much. At least not as much as I thought after this illuminating tape went live, and even though republicans have shown they are distancing themselves from him.

What he said was sickening, and scary, and not the words that I would want to hear from a presidential candidate. The fact that the tape was done surreptitiously, tells you that what he was saying was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…so…help us God.  You would think that any of the 47% (Half of the country!) he speaks of would just run far away from him, but racism runs deep – the numbers speak for themselves.

My feeling is this…it really doesn’t matter what happens before the election…how much foot Romney puts in his mouth, etc., (Although I am into it, and HOPEing that he continues to reveal his true self!)  because the bottom line is, the republicans will try and steal the election. It doesn’t mean that we throw up our hands and say “Oh well, we’ve lost”, and give up.  Oh no…we have to make it as difficult as possible for them to try. If we give up then, they won’t even have to steal it, we would have given it to them. So that is not an option.  We must do our very best to get people to the polls and voting for Obama. It is the only way. As Mike, TM says, “There is nothing the Right will not try to steal this election”. We have to be just as vigilant and do everything we can possible do to prevent them.  I’m in. I HOPE you are too.

Before I post a topic, here’s a notice that we all should know about. You can’t miss this:

Tomorrow in New Orleans, President Barack Obama and GOP Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan will speak at AARP’s Life@50+ event and answer questions from AARP members across the country.

What: A conversation with President Obama and GOP VP Nominee Ryan

When: Friday, Sept. 21 (Obama at 10:45 AM CDT, Ryan at 11:30 AM CDT)

When:  Friday, Sept.21 (Obama at 8:45 AM PDT, Ryan at 9:30 AM PDT)

*******

And since I am still on the topic of Romney, and his refusal of showing his tax returns is still a hot topic, and rightly so, this is an excellent article because it reminds people that Romney must have something to hide in his taxes that is so devastating that he is willing to take the chance that he can win by not showing them, than to risk certain rejection if that information is known.


Choose Your Own Romney Tax Return Adventure

By only releasing two years of tax information (and just one tax return), Mitt Romney has done something really fun: given us a mystery to solve! Reporters are siccing tax experts on the few extant bits of documentary evidence about Romney’s taxes to extrapolate what all the returns from before 2010 might contain. Here’s what the sleuths have come up with so far.


Theory: Mitt Romney paid no taxes in 2009.

Theorist: Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Joshua Green

Evidence: The financial crisis in 2008 cost the ultra-rich (wealth above $30 million) an average of 25 percent of their net worth, Green says. Romney fits in that category, and he probably felt major losses. “And it’s possible he suffered a large enough capital loss that, carried forward and coupled with his various offshore tax havens, he wound up paying no U.S. federal taxes at all in 2009,” Green writes.

Counter-evidence: Romney’s campaign denied Wednesday that Romney has ever had a $0 tax bill, Politico’s Alexander Burns reports.


Theory: Romney had a secret Swiss bank account, and revealed it under the IRS’s amnesty program in 2009.

Theorist: Slate’s Matt YglesiasNew York University’s Daniel Shaviro (sort of)

Evidence: Romney had a Swiss bank account, which the lawyer managing his blind trust closed in late 2010. In 2008, a whistleblower at UBS, the Swiss bank where Romney had his account, told the IRS about 4,000 American account holders. The IRS offered an amnesty deal for account-holders who came forward in 2009. Yglesias speculates:

“Romney might well have thought in 2007 and 2008 that there was nothing to fear about a non-disclosed offshore account he’d set up years earlier precisely because it wasn’t disclosed. But then came the settlement and the rush of non-disclosers to apply for the amnesty. Failing to apply for the amnesty and then getting charged by the IRS would have been both financially and politically disastrous. So amnesty it was.”

Why else would Romney want a Swiss bank account, Shaviro told the Huffington Post. “It’s unclear why he would have valued the Swiss bank account secrecy, and it wouldn’t have enabled him legally to avoid U.S. tax… This is why there’s speculation that he was into the amnesty program.”

Counter-evidence: Bloomberg’s Barro explains that Romney listed a “UBS Money Market Account” in a Federal Election Commission disclosure form in 2007. It wasn’t “clearly flagged as Swiss, but it’s there,” Barro says. (Romney failed to report earned interest income on the $3 million account in a 2011 disclosure form, and had to amend it.) “It’s possible that Romney told the FEC about the account while hiding it from the IRS, but that doesn’t seem very smart.”

(Photo via T@H!R via Flickr.)


Theory: Romney might have used his Swiss bank account to hide problematic transactions, like “any politically unpopular investments, clever and complex asset sales designed to lower Romney’s tax bills.”

Theorist: The Huffington Post’s Zach Carter and Ryan Grim

Evidence: When Romney released his 2010 tax return, he did not release a separate document required by the IRS, called a Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or FBAR. Romney would have needed to file an FBAR in his foreign accounts, because not doing so would incur a big fine. Other foreign accounts that didn’t generate income, but instead just executed transactions, would not show up on the tax return, but would show up on the FBAR. “Romney may not have engaged in any of those activities” listed above, the Huffington Post says, “but his as-yet-unreleased 2010 FBAR would make it easier to determine whether or not he did.”

Counter-evidence: Just as there is no real evidence for this speculation, there is no counter-evidence yet.


Theory: Romney might have engaged in “aggressive tax planning strategies that are legally, but not politically, defensible.”

Theorist: Bloomberg’s Josh BarroNew York University School of Law tax professor Daniel ShaviroThe New Yorker‘s John CassidyThe Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent

Evidence: Barro took a look at Green’s theory, and found that though Romney’s taxes show he had no taxable capital gains in 2009, he had other income. Even with a lot of deductions, “it’s unlikely that these factors alone could have added up to a tax bill of $0. Of the 35,000 high income taxpayers with no tax due in 2009, by far the largest share achieved that feat by investing heavily in tax-exempt municipal bonds.” Romney was not heavily invested in municipal bonds. So if Romney has something politically damaging in his tax returns, it’s probably something else, like aggressive tax planning strategies. Likewise, Shaviro says:

Still, willingness to do extremely aggressive tax sheltering (such as through loss generation from circular flows of cash) in 2009 would not come as a huge surprise, even though it seems like a dumb idea if you are preparing to run for president again.

Cassidy notes that while Romney’s tax preparers might have had politics in mind in 2010 and 2011, they might not have thought about that in earlier years.

Counter-evidence: There is no counter-evidence so far, unless you count Tim Pawlenty telling CBS Wednesday that Romney’s “paid a lot of taxes.”

(Photo via Images_of_Money via Flickr.)


Theory: The taxes might just show Romney made a ton of money, had more offshore accounts, and made controversial investments.

Theorist: The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy (sort of)

Evidence: Cassidy seems to think the most likely reason Romney won’t show us the tax returns is that he paid an even lower tax rate than the 14 percent shown on the 2010 taxes. But there are other possibilities. Romney’s retirement agreement with Bain ended in 2009, and “quite probably it allowed Romney to keep pocketing a substantial portion of the firm’s profits.” Or maybe before 2010, Romney’s money managers “were even more aggressive in their use of overseas investment vehicles and tax shields.” Or maybe Bain invested in controversial firms like the medical waste company that disposes of aborted fetuses, a potential problem because ‘even after he left, kept much of his money in investment funds managed by the firm.”

Counter-evidence: Cassidy thinks these three theories are unlikely, because Romney’s name is already tied to the first two — being rich and having offshore accounts — and the controversial investments wouldn’t be worth all this tax return headache.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at ereeve@nationaljournal.com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.

*********

Readers: And no, I haven’t even begun to read the 90 something comments that came in yesterday. Buy hey, blog me anyway.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

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“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Posted in Lying Sacks Of Shit, Political Powwow | 18 Comments »

Romney Caught…Well…’Being Romney’

Posted by Michelle Moquin on 18th September 2012


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Good morning!

 

This was all over the front page of the Huff Po last night so I am sure many of your saw it. But I couldn’t resist reposting it here. The article I chose on this topic was taken from Mother Jones.

SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters

When he doesn’t know a camera’s rolling, the GOP candidate shows his disdain for half of America.

—By 

| Mon Sep. 17, 2012 1:00 PM PD

During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don’t assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Mother Jones has obtained video of Romney at this intimate fundraiser—where he candidly discussed his campaign strategy and foreign policy ideas in stark terms he does not use in public—and has confirmed its authenticity. To protect the confidential source who provided the video, we have blurred some of the image, and we will not identify the date or location of the event, which occurred after Romney had clinched the Republican presidential nomination. [UPDATE: After a restriction was lifted, Mother Jones reported that this fundraiser was held at the Boca Raton home of controversial private equity manager Marc Leder on May 17.]

Here is Romney expressing his disdain for Americans who back the president:

At the dinner, Romney often stuck to familiar talking points. But there were moments when he went beyond the familiar campaign lines. Describing his family background, he quipped about his father, “Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.” Contending that he is a self-made millionaire who earned his own fortune, Romney insisted, “I have inherited nothing.” He remarked, “There is a perception, ‘Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.’ Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America.”

Romney told the contributors that “women are open to supporting me,” but that “we are having a much harder time with Hispanic voters, and if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting block has in the past, why, we’re in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation.” When one attendee asked how this group could help Romney sell himself to others, he answered, “Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars.” He added, “The fact that I’m either tied or close to the president…that’s very interesting.”

Asked why he wouldn’t go full-throttle and assail Obama as corrupt, Romney explained the internal thinking of his campaign and revealed that he and his aides, in response to focus-group studies conducted by his consultants, were hesitant to hammer the president too hard out of fear of alienating independents who voted for Obama in 2008:

We speak with voters across the country about their perceptions. Those people I told you—the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring onto our side—they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago. So, and by the way, when you say to them, “Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?” they overwhelmingly say no. They like him. But when you say, “Are you disappointed that his policies haven’t worked?” they say yes. And because they voted for him, they don’t want to be told that they were wrong, that he’s a bad guy, that he did bad things, that he’s corrupt. Those people that we have to get, they want to believe they did the right thing, but he just wasn’t up to the task. They love the phrase that he’s “over his head.” But if we’re—but we, but you see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans. We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him and don’t agree with us. And so the things that animate us are not the things that animate them. And the best success I have at speaking with those people is saying, you know, the president has been a disappointment. He told you he’d keep unemployment below 8 percent. Hasn’t been below eight percent since. Fifty percent of kids coming out of school can’t get a job. Fifty percent. Fifty percent of the kids in high school in our 50 largest cities won’t graduate from high school. What’re they gonna do? These are the kinds of things that I can say to that audience that they nod their head and say, “Yeah, I think you’re right.” What he’s going to do, by the way, is try and vilify me as someone who’s been successful, or who’s, you know, closed businesses or laid people off, and is an evil bad guy. And that may work.

(Note: Obama did not promise his policies would keep unemployment under 8 percent, and 50 percent of college graduates are not unemployed.)

To assure the donors that he and his campaign knew what they were doing, Romney boasted about the consultants he had retained, emphasizing that several had worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn’t realize it. These guys in the US—the Karl Rove equivalents—they do races all over the world: in Armenia, in Africa, in Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I’d tell them to you, but I’d have to shoot you.

When one donor said he was disappointed that Romney wasn’t attacking Obama with sufficient intellectual firepower, Romney groused that the campaign trail was no place for high-minded and detail-oriented arguments:

Well, I wrote a book that lays out my view for what has to happen in the country, and people who are fascinated by policy will read the book. We have a website that lays out white papers on a whole series of issues that I care about. I have to tell you, I don’t think this will have a significant impact on my electability. I wish it did. I think our ads will have a much bigger impact. I think the debates will have a big impact…My dad used to say, “Being right early is not good in politics.” And in a setting like this, a highly intellectual subject—discussion on a whole series of important topics typically doesn’t win elections. And there are, there are, there are—for instance, this president won because of “hope and change.”

Romney, who spoke confidently throughout the event and seemed quite at ease with the well-heeled group, insisted that his election in and of itself would lead to economic growth and that the markets would react favorably if his chances seemed good in the fall:

They’ll probably be looking at what the polls are saying. If it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you’re talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see—without actually doing anything—we’ll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don’t know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a “Taxageddon,” as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can’t work together, it’s—it really is frightening.

At the dinner, Romney also said that the campaign purposefully was using Ann Romney “sparingly…so that people don’t get tired of her.” And he noted that he had turned down an invitation fromSaturday Night Live because such an appearance “has the potential of looking slapstick and not presidential.”

Here was Romney raw and unplugged—sort of unscripted. With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don’t contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative. Yet Romney explained to his patrons that he could not speak such harsh words about Obama in public, lest he insult those independent voters who sided with Obama in 2008 and whom he desperately needs in this election. These were sentiments not to be shared with the voters; it was inside information, available only to the select few who had paid for the privilege of experiencing the real Romney.

COMING SOON: More from the secret Romney video.

 

*******

Readers: It’s a bit quiet out there. How’s everyone doing? Blog me if you can.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Posted in Lying Sacks Of Shit, Political Powwow | 33 Comments »

The Republicans Killed Washington

Posted by Michelle Moquin on 17th September 2012

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Good morning!

I am finally posting what I was talking about over a week ago – The republican’s plan to sabotage the country:

TUE SEP 04, 2012 AT 01:45 PM PDT

Who killed Washington? Republicans caught red-handed

by Jon Perr

On the eve of Barack Obama’s address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, a media cottage industry has emerged examining why the President “failed to change the tone in Washington.” Writing in the Washington Post, Dan Balz asked, “Was there a way around united Republican opposition?” and reported that “to the partisans on both sides, the answers are simple — and fundamentally at odds.” Meanwhile, GOP propagandist Ramesh Ponnuru argued that a Romney victory is essential, precisely because Republicans will obstruct anything and everything Obama would try to accomplish in his second term. In each case, scorched-earth GOP opposition isn’t called into question, but instead taken as a given.

But for inquiring minds who want to know which party really killed Washington, the numbers don’t lie.  From its record-setting use of the filibuster and its united front against Obama’s legislative agenda to blocking judicial nominees and its unprecedented (and repeated) threats to trigger a U.S. default, the most conservative Congress in over 100 years stopped Washington dead in its tracks.  But with the presidential race tied, the public evenly split in itsCongressional preference and the media loathe to acknowledge the reality of “asymmetric polarization,” the GOP may get away with its crime.

Even before Barack Obama took the oath office, Republicans leaders, conservative think-tanks and right-wing pundits were calling for total obstruction of the new president’s agenda.Bill Kristol, who helped block Bill Clinton’s health care reform attempt in 1993, called for history to repeat on the Obama stimulus – and everything else. Pointing with pride to the Clinton economic program which received exactly zero GOP votes in either House, Kristol in January 2009 advised:

“That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it’s very important for Republicans who think they’re going to have to fight later on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues.”

On the night of Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 (a month during which we later learned America lost 820,000 jobs), 15 top Republicans including Paul Ryan schemed in private on the night of Obama’s inauguration to “challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.”

As the chart above shows, that’s exactly what came to pass.

Time after time, President Obama could count the votes he received from Congressional Republicans on the fingers (usually the middle one) of one hand. The expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) to four million more American kids earned the backing of a whopping eight GOP Senators. (One of them, Arlen Specter, later became a Democrat.) Badly needed Wall Street reform eventually overcame GOP filibusters to pass with the support of just three Republicans in the House and Senate, respectively. It took 50 days for President Obama to get past Republican filibusters of extended unemployment benefitsand the Small Business Jobs Act. As for the DISCLOSE Act, legislation designed to limit the torrent of secret campaign cash unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, in September Republican Senators prevented it from ever coming to a vote.

The one-way street that is bipartisanship in Washington was most clearly on display during each party’s attempts to pass tax cuts and economic stimulus. While some turncoat Democrats helped Reagan and Bush sell their supply-side snake oil, Republicans were determined to torpedo new Democratic presidents:

Continue reading below the fold.

 

Consider the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act credited by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office with saving over three millions jobs and preventing what McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi called “Depression 2.0.” Obama’s margins in the passage of the final $787 billion conference bill were almost unchanged from the earlier versions produced by the House and Senate. Despite then Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s earlier claim that Obama’s bipartisan outreach was a “very efficient process,” the President was shut out again by Republicans in the House. In the Senate, the stimulus actually lost ground, as Ted Kennedy’s absence and the no-vote of aborted Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg made the final tally 60-38. So much for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s January 2009 statement that the Obama stimulus proposal “could well have broad Republican appeal.”

If that all-out Republican obstructionism sounds familiar, it should. When Bill Clinton’s 1993 economic program (a bill including upper-income tax increases the GOP then as now wrongly described as “job-killing”) scraped by without capturing the support of even one GOP lawmaker, the New York Times remarked:

“Historians believe that no other important legislation, at least since World War II, has been enacted without at least one vote in either house from each major party.”

The contrast with the new Bush administration in 2001 could not have been starker.  Despite losing the popular vote, Dick Cheney announced “we have no intention at all of backing off” of Bush’s agenda, adding ” I think there’s no reason in the world why we can’t do exactly what Governor Bush campaigned on.” Ironically, President Bush was aided on passing his budget-busting tax cuts by Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who explained at the time:

“Every day it looks like a better and better decision,” Mr. Baucus said at the White House after the signing ceremony. “In many respects, I think politically I helped the party. We Democrats would have been in trouble in 2002 just saying no to every one of the president’s proposals.”

Baucus, of course, was wrong.  Apparently, that kind of obstruction only works for Republicans.

But if Barack Obama’s legislative agenda ran into endless Republican obstacles in Congress, hisjudicial nominees hit a brick wall.  The same Republicans who decried the judicial filibuster and demanded an “up or down vote” for President Bush’s selections to the federal bench have stymied Obama’s choices at a record rate.

Citing research by the Alliance for Justice, in June 2011 ThinkProgress reported:

[T]he Senate confirmed fewer of [Obama's] district and circuit nominees than every president back to Jimmy Carter, and the lowest percentage of nominees – 58% – than any president in American history at this point in a President’s first term. By comparison, Presidents George W. Bush, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Reagan and Carter had 77%, 90%, 96%, 98%, and 97% of their nominees confirmed after two years, respectively.Senate Republicans’ mass obstruction of Obama’s judges stands in stark contrast to the treatment afforded to past presidents. Indeed, the Senate confirmed fewer judges during Obama’s first two years in office than it did during the same period in the Carter Administration, even though the judiciary was 40 percent smaller while Carter was in office.

As dismal as that record is, it’s actually an improvement from a year earlier, when only 43& of President Obama’s judicial appointments had been confirmed:

Not content that federal judges are now retiring at twice the rate that replacements are being confirmed, Congressional Republicans headed off to their five-week August recesswithout taking action on 20 Obama judicial nominees (16 of them approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee).  As ThinkProgress also noted, the rapidly growing caseload for the under-sized federal judiciary means that “even if all judicial vacancies were filled, we’d still need more judges.” It’s no wonder Chief Justice John Roberts - certainly no friend of Barack Obama and the Democracy Party – urged action last year to address “the persistent problem of judicial vacancies.”

Republican obstructionism hasn’t merely destroyed the nominations of judicial standouts likeGoodwin Liu, who later assumed a position on the Supreme Court of California.  High profile Obama administration nominees like Dawn Johnson and Peter Diamond, the latter a Nobel Prize-winning economist, never saw the light of day in the Senate.  And having already dissuaded President Obama from choosing now-Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by Congress last year, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the GOP would block any and all comers put forward by the White House:

“It’s not sexist. It’s not Elizabeth Warren-specific,” McConnell spokesman Donald Stewart said. “It’s any nominee.”

(When President Obama used a recess appointment to put Richard Cordray in charge of the CFPB, McConnell and Senate Republicans filed suit.)

As Ian Millhiser reported in April 2011, Republicans blocked scores of Obama nominees over matters large and small.  Often, very small:

Following in the footsteps of Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who placed a hold on over 70 of President Obama’s nominees last year in order to extort tens of billions of dollars worth of pork for his state, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threw a similar tantrum yesterday over a mere $50,000. Graham (R-SC) promised to shut down all executive branch and judicial confirmations in the Senate until he gets $50,000 to conduct a study on deepening the Port of Charleston.

Since House Republicans assumed their new House majority in January 2011, President Obama’s agenda has been effectively shut down.  But even before their successful hostage-taking of the federal budget and U.S. debt ceiling, Senate Republicans for years had been shattering filibuster records to stop Democratic legislation dead in its tracks.

As it turns out, the Roadblock Republicans started their work when Democrats recaptured the Senate in 2007, only to redouble their efforts when Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office in 2009.  Back in 2007, former Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott explained the successful Republican strategy for derailing the new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate:

“The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it’s working for us.”

And the Republicans of the 110th Congress were just getting warmed up.  The Senate GOP hadn’t merely shattered the previous records for filibusters.  As McClatchy reported in February 2010, the Republicans of the 111th Congress vowed to block virtually everything, counting on voters to blame Democrats for the GOP’s own roadblocks.  And as McClatchy explained earlier this year, thanks to the Republicans’ record-breaking use of the filibuster, “Congress isn’t just stuck in partisan and ideological gridlock: It’s broken.”

As even Robert Samuelson (no friend of Democrats) acknowledged, “From 2003 to 2006, when Republicans controlled the Senate, they filed cloture 130 times to break Democratic filibusters. Since 2007, when Democrats took charge, they’ve filed 257 cloture motions.” The Republicans didn’t merely eviscerate the old mark for cloture motions and filibusters after their descent into the minority in 2007. As Paul Krugman detailed in late 2009, the GOP’s obstructionism has fundamentally altered how the Senate does – or more accurately, doesn’t do – business:

The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math. In the 1960s, she finds, “extended-debate-related problems” — threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent.

Now, as the Washington Post highlighted last week, total obstructionism is the new normal for Republicans.

The meaning of that shocking picture is clear.  As the Post’s Ezra Klein summed it up:

Most observers agree that its basic point is correct: We’re seeing many more filibusters today than we ever did before. But I actually think that’s the wrong way to think about it.The issue today isn’t that we see 50, or 100, or 150 filibusters. It’s that the filibuster is a constant where it used to be a rarity. Indeed, it shouldn’t even be called “the filibuster”: It has nothing to do with talking, or holding the floor. It should be called the 60-vote requirement. It applies to everything now even when the minority does not specifically choose to invoke it. There are no longer, to my knowledge, categories of bills that don’t get filibustered because such things are simply not done, though there are bills that the minority chooses not to invoke their 60-vote option on. That’s why Harry Reid says things like “60 votes are required for just about everything,” though there are a small number of bills where the majority uses the budget reconciliation process to short-circuit the 60-vote requirement.

And that, James Fallows lamented following the headline below from The Hill, represents “a conservative coup d’état.”

A conservative coup, indeed.  Studies by political science professors Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal show Republicans are responsible for the hyper-polarization of Congress.  The GOP moved so far to the right that the House is now the most conservative it has been in the last 133 years.

As It’s Even Worse Than It Looks co-author Norm Ornstein concluded:

“When you look at the data, including voting records … the Democrats have moved left, to probably their own 25 yard line. President Obama’s probably around the 40.  The Republicans have moved behind their own goal post.”

On no issue did the GOP move the goal posts further than on the debt ceiling.  During last summer’s debt ceiling crisis, one which McConnell himself acknowledged was a “hostage-taking,” the Republicans weren’t content with nearly triggering global financial Armageddon.  To do it, they pretended that history began on January 20, 2009.

While Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling claimed last year that for Republicans raising the debt ceiling is “contrary to our DNA,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor protested during his party’s debt ceiling hostage-taking, “I don’t think the White House understands is how difficult it is for fiscal conservatives to say they’re going to vote for a debt ceiling increase.” AsMcClatchy showed, Republicans are as bad at genetics and history as they are at economics:

As Donny Shaw documented in January 2010, Republican intransigence on the debt ceiling only began in earnest when Bush left the White House for good:

The Republicans haven’t always been against increasing the federal debt ceiling. This is the first time in recent history (the past decade or so) that no Republican has voted for the increase. In fact, on most of the ten other votes to increase the federal debt limit that the Senate has taken since 1997, the Republicans provided the majority of the votes in favor.

As it turns out, Republican majorities voted to raise the U.S. debt ceiling seven timeswhile George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office. (It should be noted, as Ezra Klein did, that party-line votes on debt ceiling increases tied to other legislation is not solely the province of the GOP.) As ThinkProgress pointed out, during the Bush presidency, the current GOP leadership team voted 19 times to increase debt limit. During his tenure, the U.S. national debt doubled, fueled by the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the Medicare prescription drug plan, TARP and the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor voted for all of it and the debt which ensued because, as Orrin Hatch later explained:

“It was standard practice not to pay for things.”

Or as Vice President Dick Cheney famously put it in 2002, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” Not, that is, unless a Democrat is in the White House.

The result isn’t just what Dana Milbank mocked as “our do-almost-nothing Congress.” The institution is now wildly unpopular, with approval rating consistently under 20 percent. Despite the GOP”s strangling of Capitol Hill, voters remain split on the generic Congressional ballot. As for the media standing over the still warm body of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans must be complicit. As an incredulous Greg Sargent put it in May, “Only one party’s to blame? Don’t tell the Sunday shows.”

For his part, Ornstein concluded the Republicans’ crime has gone unpunished, correctly noting that “there hasn’t been a price to pay for obstruction for obstruction’s sake.” To put it another way, the Republican Party as promised killed Washington. And yet, reporters are still asking who’s responsible.  Which means that over three years after Republicans plotted to smother the Obama presidency, they are still getting away with murder.

*********

From an article on the Huff Po back in April of this year: Robert Draper Book: GOP’s Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration

Here are “The Obstructionists”

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) — who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.

*******

Readers: Thoughts? Blog me.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

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“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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GOP Continues to Block Violence Against Women Act

Posted by Michelle Moquin on 14th September 2012

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Good morning!

Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and not deviating from their usual, the GOP continue to do what they do when it comes to controlling women,  and trying to destroy and defy anything that is in support of women.

Here is the write - Short but not so sweet.

Happy 18th Birthday, VAWA!

GOP Continues to Block Violence Against Women Act

Today is the 18th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, a law originally drafted by then-Sen. Joe Biden and signed by President Bill Clinton back in 1994.ThinkProgress’ Annie-Rose Strasser rounds up the law’s many successes:

  • Victims can call for help. The National Domestic Violence Hotline was established as part of VAWA. It currently serves over 22,000 victims a month and has taken a total of 3 million calls.
  • Law enforcement officers are trained to help victims.500,000 law enforcement officials, judges, and prosecutors a year are trained with VAWA funding to help domestic abuse victims.
  • Partner violence and homicides fell. From the year before VAWA’s passage until 2008, the number of women being killed by partners dropped 43 percent, and partner violence against women fell 53 percent.
  • Stalking became illegal. Before VAWA, stalking was not a federal crime. The law established stalking as a felony offense.
  • Rape is rape, no exceptions. Since the passage of VAWA, each state in the United States has updated its laws so that rape by a partner is treated equally to rape by a stranger.

Unfortunately, the law is a year past due for reauthorization and Republicans in the House of Representatives continue to hold it hostage. This stands in marked contrast to every single other reauthorization, each of which sailed through Congress.

The Senate passed a modernized version of the law that expanded protects for LGBT people, immigrants, and Native Americans by an overwhelming, bipartisan 68-31 margin. Rather than even take up that bill, the House instead passed a partisan bill that excludes important protections for the aforementioned groups and other improvements to landmark law.

BOTTOM LINE: There’s no excuse for House Republicans to keep holding up a law that has successfully protected women for nearly two decades.

*****

Readers: Again, no woman in her right mind would vote for this party.

Hello Anonymous: Welcome back. A similar story to yours with respect to your eating habits, was posted on my blog a few years ago. Not sure if that was your group or not. All I can say, is feel free to love every inch of my body…dine on me and lick off all of that bad bacteria. And if I’m attacked by anything worse that could harm me, go ahead and dive into that feast as well. This could be a very beneficial relationship for the both of us. Happy dining! :)

Zen Lill:  I was wondering too why you were not here lately, and now I know why. I am so sorry and sad to read your comment. I’m happy you are there to console your friend and daughter, and I HOPE that you are taking care of yourself as well, as I am sure this is quite difficult for you too.  I send love and good healing thoughts to you, Lily, your friend, and all concerned.

And yes, thanks for the holiday wishes – I am so enjoying myself. I think this picture pretty much says it all. :)


No time for more and the internet is running super slow where I am. Blog me.

 

Peace & Love… go live it and go give it.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Posted in Health & Well Being, Lying Sacks Of Shit, Political Powwow | 13 Comments »

9/11 Revisited

Posted by Michelle Moquin on 12th September 2012


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Good morning!

In light of the 11 year anniversary of 9/11 yesterday. Perhaps you have already read. If not, this is worthy of a read:

The Deafness Before the Storm

IT was perhaps the most famous presidential briefing in history.

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief  in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

On July 24, Mr. Bush was notified that the attack was still being readied, but that it had been postponed, perhaps by a few months. But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history. In response, the C.I.A. set to work on the Aug. 6 brief.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.

Kurt Eichenwald, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a former reporter for The New York Times, is the author of “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars.”

******

Mike, TM: Thanks, as always, for the detailed heads up.

Harold: Your comment piqued my interest so I looked it up. it is amazing to me that people in office can say something like this and not much is done about it, yet. The fact that governors control the voting process has been a concern of mine, especially since the last November mid term elections when we lost much of our control. Those who control governorship control the voting process. And if they aren’t successful through stealing the votes, claiming voter fraud,(as if it exists) then as Mike, TM, noted they will contest the votes via BAPF STARK.

Alycedale: A much better answer than mine. I HOPE all is good in your world.

Anonymous & Anon2: You can add me to that sentiment as well.

Juanita:  This election is much different than it was in 2008. The repubs are even more ruthless than one can imagine. Coattails are a must. I am going to do as much as I can to get Obama in; we all must do what we can, or we can kiss democracy…this country, goodbye.

Robert, RT: Thank you. As always, nice to see you here.

Time to end this post. Your turn. Blog me.

Peace & Love… 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

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“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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