ROME — A singer in an elite Vatican choir and a jailed Italian public works executive who served as a papal usher were let go by the Vatican this week amid allegations that they were involved in what prosecutors believe was an organized network of gay prostitution, Italian news media reported.
Good thing they don't have a draconian opinion on gays. This would look kind of bad if they did.
America confuses democracy with capitalism.
In his film Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore squares off with the free-market system for its role in leveraging the United States's wealth into the hands of a few.
But in one clip cut from the documentary -- which Moore provided exclusively to RAW STORY -- he interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, who explains how capitalism is actually contributing to the very downfall of the human race and the "degradation of the planet."
"All sorts of people who have spent their lives studying climate change, from Bill McKibben on down, have warned us that we don't have a lot of time left," Hedges said. "So it's not just that capitalism has destroyed our economic system and hijacked our political system, but it literally is extinguishing the system that sustains life. If that's not thwarted soon...then we will begin to see massive dislocations, environmental refugees, further depleting of natural resources. Overpopulation is also an issue. The UN estimates that by 2050 the size of the planet will double."
The backlash is growing against Liz Cheney after she demonized Department of Justice attorneys as terrorist sympathizers for their past legal work defending Gitmo detainees -- and now it's coming from within deeply conservative legal circles.
On Friday, the conservative blog Power Line put up a post titled, "An Attack That Goes Too Far." Author Paul Mirengoff, called Cheney's effort to brand DoJ officials the "Al Qaeda 7," "vicious" and "unfounded" even if it was right to criticize defense lawyers for voluntarily doing work on behalf of Gitmo detainees.
Reached on the phone, Mirengoff offered an even sharper rebuke, contrasting what Cheney is doing to the anti-communist crusades launched by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and, in some respects, finding it worse.
"It could be worse than some of the assertions made by McCarthy, depending on some of the validity of those assertions," Mirengoff said, explaining that at least McCarthy was correct in pinpointing individuals as communist sympathizers. "It is just baseless to suggest that [these DoJ officials] share al Qaeda values... they didn't actually say it but I think it was a fair implication of what they were saying."
Glad to see this happening. I am all for opposing views, just not hacks.
Why does Liz Cheney have a platform? Her points of view are totally relative to her father's crimes, her facts don't exist and her perception is beyond a debatable format. It's pure bullshit.
It's called due process. It's in the Constitution. The lawyers were most likely Bush appointees.
She argues against process as her Dad won't divulge any information on who he met with to formulate public policy on energy, refuses to submit papers to the National Archive and says he is neither part of the Executive or Legislative branch of the federal government.
"Consider, in particular, the position that Mr. Kyl has taken on a proposed bill that would extend unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless for the rest of the year. Republicans will block that bill, said Mr. Kyl, unless they get a “path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax.
Now, the House has already passed a bill that, by exempting the assets of couples up to $7 million, would leave 99.75 percent of estates tax-free. But that doesn’t seem to be enough for Mr. Kyl; he’s willing to hold up desperately needed aid to the unemployed on behalf of the remaining 0.25 percent. That’s a very clear statement of priorities."
As Republicans move farther to the Right, the use of bipartisanship is wishful thinking. No one lives in their Universe anymore. Amid these hard times, Democrats care for the unemployed, while the Republicans weep over affluent victims of the “death tax”.
The Republicans look at the poor and unemployed and say "You get too much". Then look at their rich and wealthy constituents and say, "You don't get enough".
Last night, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced legislation preventing Democrats from using reconciliation to change Medicare spending. If adopted, the amendment would prohibit lawmakers from making changes to a program that makes up some 20% of the federal budget through the reconciliation process:
SA 3427. Mr. MCCAIN (for himself and Mr. GRAHAM) proposed an amendment to amendment SA 3336 proposed by Mr. BAUCUS to the bill H.R. 4213, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend certain expiring provisions, and for other purposes; as follows:
At the appropriate place, insert the following: SEC. lll. PROTECTING MEDICARE. Section 310(g) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (2 U.S.C. 641(g)) is amended by inserting before the period the following: ‘‘or to the medicare program established by title XVIII of such Act’’.
The problem isn’t just that McCain has voted for “nine out of 13 reconciliation bills that have been offered during his time in the Senate”; it’s that he has previously supported reducing Medicare spending using the reconciliation process — some of which cut Medicare by more than what the Senate health care bill is proposing:
- Balanced Budget Act of 1995: would have cut Medicare and Medicaid by a combined $452 billion over 7 years.
- Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989: overhauled doctor payments for Medicare, included a number of other provisions designed to slow the growth in Medicare spending.
- Balanced Budget Act of 1997: cut Medicare by $115 billion over 5 years.
- Deficit Reduction Act of 2005: cut Medicare spending by $6.4 billion.
It’s difficult to see this as anything more than a message amendment designed to help McCain win a tough primary in Arizona. And it’s surprising that McCain chose to offer such a broad amendment, rather than drafting something that would have only protected the Medicare Advantage programs from reconciliation.
But, McCain can rejoice in the fact that Republicans who complain about out of control entitlement spending on one hand, but criticize Democrats for reducing wasteful Medicare spending on the other, are still taken seriously on the Sunday morning talk shows.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Grandpa flips again. Wait until the election winds blow. Good thing voting records and principles have no effect on Republican candidates.
AZ, you deserve better. J.D. Hayworth is the other choice?
Given the larger political climate, Matt Yglesias raises an important observation.
[I]t's striking how differently the country behaves when you see a non-Muslim individual attempt or succeed at killing some people based on quasi-political motivations versus when it's a Muslim who does it. And the important thing, I think, is not merely to make a pure hypocrisy argument but to point out that the country's response to non-Muslim killers ranging from Bedell to the IRS plane crasher to the Holocaust Museum shooter is much, much, much better and smarter.
In the wake of an incident involving a non-Muslim we of course look back and try to see if there's any reasonable preventive steps we could have taken to prevent the murders. But wild overreactions and wholesale reconfigurations of the constitution, of US foreign policy, or of daily life are considered off the table by definition. And rightly so!
What do fear muppets like Liz Cheney and Rudy Giuliani do when Joe Stack and John Bedell kill people? Nothing like they would if they were brown. Publicizing attacks by government-hating white men undermines their message, so they stay quiet. Fear of the white man is not the fear they need.
Right Wing violence is justified to them and their base. Anything else is an outrage. This sense of justified violence should be ringing alarm bells across the country. The Truthers, Birthers and Tea Partiers are hitting a breaking point as the real world is moving on without them. They think they have to be heard, by any means necessary.
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“No, I don’t have that stuff,” Crosby said Tuesday in Pittsburgh. “I think when they cleared the ice I never got my stick or glove. Of all things, I only got my mouth guard back. It’s one of those things where I don’t know how it got away or where it ended up, but if I get it back one day, great. If not, then someone’s got it somewhere.”
No other Canadian player’s equipment was missing after the game.
So the little guys get the "Fear Package". They even call it visceral giving, which by definition means not intellectual, instinctive.
The big guys get the "Access Package" for their ego at the country club. Their greedy vision of government exploitation stresses that "we the people" only covers their corporations and profits.
Via Washington Monthly:
"Republican officials are, not surprisingly, scrambling to downplay the significance of the fundraising presentation, and hoping to distance Steele from the humiliation. But the damage appears to have been done -- when we peak behind the curtain, the Republican National Committee has no respect for its own supporters, and fully admits that it has little more than cheap and baseless fear-mongering to offer.
DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse said in a statement, "If you had any doubt, any doubt whatsoever, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the fear-mongering lunatic fringe, those doubts were erased today.... It's no wonder the RNC reacted with alarm when they learned the American people would see this presentation. This revealing document proves what the Republican party has long denied. But now, by their own admission, the express strategy of the Republican party is not to offer new ideas, but 'fear.' Republicans can no longer deny that they are peddling fear when they are literally selling it as their path back to power."
Judge Confirmed 99-0 After 124 Day Delay
A judicial nominee was confirmed yesterday in a manner that highlights how absurd and abusive the US Senate has become:
Since her nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit 169 days ago, and 124 days after the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously reported her nomination to the floor, Justice Barbara Keenan saw the Senate unanimously end the anonymous hold on her nomination. This afternoon, the Senate voted 99-0 for cloture on Keenan’s nomination, then promptly confirmed her 99-0.
It’s a reminder, again, that the perniciousness of Senate procedure extends well beyond the 60-vote supermajority requirement. Simply the process of using 60 votes to end a filibuster is extremely time-consuming — a determined opponent can drag it out for days. For a top-priority, the majority will just get together and break the filibuster. But no one nominee is worth chewing up days worth of floor time. But in the aggregate, inability to get judges confirmed in a timely manner is a big deal.
Republicans have the right to block whoever they want, even nominees who get 99 votes. But eventually blocking for blocking's sake has to be exposed.
Dems have blocked nominees before. But there's a difference. When a Senator blocks John Bolton it is because they don’t want John Bolton to be approved. They are saying we think John Bolton will be so bad as ambassador that we are willing to put all other Senate activity on hold to prevent it.
The holds being used now are Republicans saying "we want to stop all activity in the Senate and will look for whatever pretext we can".
Dishonest hacks.
"The Archdiocese of Washington has been battling the D.C. government for the right to discriminate against gays and lesbians since D.C.’s same-sex marriage legislation got rolling last year.
One major point of contention: Once gays and lesbians are allowed to marry, the Archdiocese—which employs plenty of locals through Catholic Charities—will be required to provide health benefits to same-sex spouses, an act which it says would fly in the face of the Catholic church’s teachings on homosexuality.
The solution? No spousal benefits for anybody."
Christ would be proud. Child molestation is openly OK, predator priests can linger for decades, but not gays who are legally married?
With all their wealth, jewels, gold and priceless antiquities so nice to see the Catholic Church and the Vatican deny people some benefits.
All those effected better wise up. No Christ in Christian, just an excuse to exclude people. I'm sure all the straight couples never had pre-marital sex or used a condom, so they have so much in common with the arbitrary lifestyle of modern Catholics.
In 2009, total health care costs increased to 17.3 percent of GDP, with escalating premiums eating into both corporate profits and worker take home pay. The consensus among the usual policy experts is that there is no good solution. The march of technology and demography will just continue to raise health costs.
But you can reach that conclusion only by ignoring how the rest of the club of affluent countries manages to insure everyone for 9 or 10 percent of GDP, and have a healthier and longer-lived population, to boot. They do it, of course, through universal, socialized insurance.
"There is no single formula. The Canadians do it with a single payer system for the insurance part, but physicians are private. The Brits have an integrated National Health Service. The Germans achieve near-universal coverage through a system of nonprofit health insurance plans."
What every other nation has in common is that they have taken the commercialism out of their health systems.
The greatest profit does not give you the best health coverage.
You see, a snowy winter in the northeast United States was supposed to have proved the climate skeptics right, after all. But a funny thing happened while they were celebrating: globally, this is shaping up as the warmest winter on record:
For flat-Earther Republicans, snow in Atlanta means Al Gore is fat. Year over year satellite photography of receding glaciers means nothing.
Just like health care and immigration, the GOP refutes what is really going on to advance their selfish, broken agendas.
"At the very least, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) thinks the readers of his op-ed piece in the Washington Post that takes the Democrats to task for "misusing" the rules of the Senate don't remember that the Republicans have used reconciliation more often than the Democrats and that as far back as 1982 it was used to pass major pieces of legislation like COBRA, CHIP, and more recently, the Bush tax cuts. Or he thinks we don't understand the concept that reconciliation is not being used to pass the healthcare bills; the Senate version passed with 60 votes and the House version passed by a simple majority. Reconciliation is used to reconcile the differences between the two bills -- hence the term "reconciliation." So for him to say that the Democrats are "jamming" the bill through is disingenuous bullshit (as opposed to the genuous variety).On the other hand, this volley might be an admission on the part of earnest Mr. Hatch that the Republicans realize that their obstruction, shouting, whining, whimpering, and high dudgeon has come to naught and that the healthcare reform bill will pass. This then is their opening shot in the campaign to repeal the law. Fine; I'd love to see the Republicans go around the country and explain exactly why it would be a good thing to let the insurance companies run the show again and that you can lose your health insurance because you once had acne, got pregnant, or the medicine that might save your life costs too much; or the local ER is better suited to take care of your family's medical needs than a regular physician. How stupid is that?"
When Republicans are in the majority they want unlimited power, when out of power they complain about Democrats using the same rules.
Name me how many times the Republicans needed 60 votes in the Senate during the Bush Plunder?
"Earthquake scientists, building engineers and political scientists in Chile and the United States agreed that even though half a million homes were heavily damaged during more than 120 seconds of shaking, the fact that so many Chileans survived was a testament to the nation's enactment and enforcement of stringent building codes."
As devastating as Chile's quake was, government regulations and preparations prevented it from being even worse.
"Chile has relatively low levels of corruption, making enforcement of building codes more credible than in other Latin American countries; its rank on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index is 25, just six spots below the United States, while Haiti's is 168."
"The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril. While Washington is fixated on the natterings of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele and the presumed 2012 Republican presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, these and the other leaders of the Party of No are anathema or irrelevant to most Tea Partiers. Indeed, McConnell, Romney and company may prove largely irrelevant to the overall political dynamic taking hold in America right now. The old G.O.P. guard has no discernible national constituency beyond the scattered, often impotent remnants of aging country club Republicanism. The passion on the right has migrated almost entirely to the Tea Party’s counterconservatism."
The anti-government fringe embraced by the Right Wing government. Recipe for disaster. Without the Republicans and Fox News, this movement would not have a national voice.
Who is palling around with terrorists now?
