Thursday Mashup (10/10/13)

Cal Thomas of Fix Noise decided to weigh in recently on the supposed virtues of five different Republican governors across this country (here); I thought it best to offer excerpts of his commentary followed by my response…

(Oh, and never forget that, according to the Foxies, it’s not a “shut down,” but a “slim down” – I’m sure the parents and kids dependent on food services and immunizations, as well as low-income people who need help with their utilities, to say nothing of our veterans on active duty wondering if their spouses can obtain day care for their kids, among many others, don’t look at it that way.)

Here are the excerpts from Thomas’s column…

Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) who wants you to know that his state’s GDP has grown by $36 billion since 2008, nearly twice the national rate. That puts Louisiana eighth best in the country and third best in the South.

…Jindal (also) says his state has become a “national leader” in charter schools with 80 percent of New Orleans students enrolled in them.

Actually, as noted here, the majority of the schools cited in a report that Jindal presented on “Meet the Press” received C, D, and F grades (with many F grades showing as “No Action” instead).

Jindal also said here that racism is the fault of minorities for supposedly not being “American” enough here; also, this presents more “cold light of day” stuff in response to Jindal’s supposed successes, including his support of tax cuts for the wealthy and tax hikes for everyone else (of course) and his refusal to provide health care for his state’s poorest citizens.

Back to Thomas…

John Kasich (Ohio) closed an $8 billion shortfall without raising taxes and cut taxes by $3 billion. He eliminated the “death tax,” modernized Medicaid, eliminated the bureaucratic Department of Development and created a private, nonprofit corporation — JobsOhio — to “respond to job creators’ needs at their pace instead of at ‘the speed of statute.’”

It should also be noted from here that Kasich, along with “Goodhair” Perry of Texas, denied $731 million in unemployment funds for their states (and under Kasich’s supposed “jobs” program, unemployment actually went up; no word on whether or not these events took place “at the speed of statute”).

Oh, and did you know that, according to here, Ohio is 47th in private-sector job creation?

Back to Thomas…

Susana Martinez (New Mexico) boosted funding for education and Medicaid without raising taxes; cooperated with a Democratic legislature, passing the New Mexico Jobs Package, which reduced the tax rate on businesses from 7.6 percent to 5.9 percent; moved the state from 38th in the nation in export growth three years ago to first today; turned a structural deficit into a surplus and enacted comprehensive tax reform.

Martinez also vetoed a minimum wage increase (here) and cut in half the budget for the only agency in the entire state devoted to recruiting businesses for jobs (here).

And as noted from here, Martinez overstepped her authority when she fired two members and the executive director of Public Employee Labor Relations Board, as ruled by the state supreme court. She also vetoed a business tax increase that the state’s businesses actually lobbied for to shore up the state’s unemployment compensation fund (so much for “comprehensive tax reform”).

Back to Thomas…

Nikki Haley (South Carolina) pushed through tax reform on small businesses, which she claims, resulted in South Carolina having the fastest growing manufacturing sector on the East Coast and creating 38,000 new jobs, which have contributed $9 billion in new investment.

Of the five governors on this supposedly “got it right” list, Haley may be the most hilarious citation of them all (unintentionally so, I realize).

As noted here, South Carolina is basically #35 in job growth (they were 46th in August 2012, so I guess that’s some progress…don’t know whether they still have the third-highest youth unemployment rate of nearly 20 percent). Also, this tells us how unemployed residents of her state took to sending Haley postcards as a gesture not to forget about them while she traveled all over the country on behalf of Willard Mitt Romney.

Haley’s response (one of them, anyway)? As noted here, she ordered state workers to act “cheerful” on the phone (uh huh).

And here are some more numbers telling you the awful story of a state whose residents apparently have decided to give Not Your Father’s Republican Party every single thing they want…

Here in SC unionization is actually illegal. As you all can see, SC is a vibrant, thriving, beacon of hope for all states to look up to:

–41st in age 25 and over with High School diploma
–1st in the country in mobile homes as a % of total housing
–42nd in disposable personal income
–9th in families below poverty
–9th in individuals below poverty
–38th in median family income

And back to Thomas one last time…

Scott Walker (Wisconsin) reversed a $3.6 billion deficit he inherited and turned it into a surplus. He provided nearly $1 billion in tax relief for families and businesses that sparked a two-year job growth, which he says is the best in the state under any governor in 10 years.

Yes indeed, what would a list like this be without Hosni Mubarak Walker? For starters, this is what Politifact said about Walker’s “two-year job growth” claim (too funny – actually, as noted here, Wisconsin was 11th in job creation before Walker took over, but now they’re 38th). And if the state was really generating jobs, then why would Walker be so desperate that he’s blaming the stuff in Syria for its puny growth (here)?

Also, if Walker is supposed to be so smart with the money, how come Wisconsin keeps increasing its long-term borrowing (here – this and a lot more stuff on the guy who, more than anyone else, embodies the Koch Brothers method of “governance” can be found here).

And while we’re on the subject of Republican governors, this tells us (returning to the BLS link) that, at best, the land of “Governor Bully” is 41st in the country when it comes to unemployment (50 is the worst).

However, you wouldn’t know that from this bit of fluffery from Matt Katz of The Philadelphia Inquirer here…

WAYNE, N.J. – In the first debate between candidates who disagree on just about everything, Gov. Christie on Tuesday presented a positive view of an economically strong New Jersey recovering from Hurricane Sandy while his challenger, State Sen. Barbara Buono, described a state struggling under “Romney-style” economics and far-right social conservatism.

The one-hour debate at William Paterson University, aired live on CBS3, began with a heavy focus on gay marriage, which Buono, a Democrat, supports and the Republican governor opposes, before moving on to property taxes, the minimum wage, and the Affordable Care Act.

Buono sought to frame Christie as a governor committed to running for president – an assertion that Christie didn’t exactly deny – while Christie described Buono as a tax-and-spend partisan in the mold of former Gov. Jon S. Corzine. On that issue, Buono did not respond to Christie’s challenge to walk back one of the 154 tax and fee increases she voted for as an assemblywoman and later as a state senator.

Buono is down as much as 33 points in polls and suffering from a severe cash disadvantage, so the debate was seen as her best opportunity to introduce herself to voters and land punches on the popular incumbent. Although she dropped a few zingers, Christie didn’t commit gaffes, and the debate lacked the sound bites that can go viral via social media.

Yes, I know the odds are long here, but there’s no percentage at all if we do nothing; to do what you can to help Barbara Buono and Milly Silva, please click here.

Next, it looks like former Bushie Ari Ari Bobari is leaving CNN (awwww) to spend more time propagandizing and spewing bilious garbage with his family, or something (here – and don’t you know that “Tiger Beat on the Potomac” is ON IT, PEOPLE??!!).

Well, given this career change/detour/whatever, I thought that it was a good time to look back on some of his most notorious lowlights:

Here, he told a mother whose son died in his former boss’s Not-So-Excellent Adventure in Iraq that “there are going to be a lot more mothers” like you (nice guy – Ari being a member of “Freedom’s Watch,” a bunch of Iraq war cheerleaders including Ed Snider, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers).

He once called for the late Helen Thomas to be fired for supposedly hateful comments, though when it comes to Flush Limbore and Glenn Beck, silence is golden, as the song goes (here).

He also falsely claimed that Obama had a proposal to eliminate charitable deductions here, for which he wasn’t called out by Wolf Blitzer (shocking, I know).

And did you know that Fleischer secretly worked to undermine the relationship that the Susan G. Komen foundation once had with Planned Parenthood, as noted here?

Despite all of this, I’m sure Ari will never want for clients, as noted here when golfer Tiger Woods hired Fleischer to help “repair” his image, though they quickly parted ways because Fleischer’s reputation was so bad that it harmed Woods’ rehabilitation (here…God, worse than a philandering husband? Nice one, Ari!).

And how thoughtful of Ari to provide this bit of idiocy to make this post even more timely.

Continuing, I give you more nonsense from Tucker Carlson’s Crayon Scribble Page that appeared on 10/08 (here)…

After meeting with Wall Street executives to discuss the impending debt ceiling crisis last week, President Obama appeared on CNBC. He said that not lifting the debt ceiling would lead to catastrophic results. The White House appears determined to drum up fear to achieve their goal of increasing the limit without concessions. Inciting panic in the financial sector only benefits the White House in their apparent pursuit of general hysteria.

It seems, however, that the financial sector chose not to play along.

What appears above is a snapshot of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from last Tuesday (lather, rinse, repeat…).

Further, we have Mikey the Beloved trying to burnish his imaginary “centrist” bona fides by supporting “one-at-a-time” legislation to fund particular areas of government that he likes (here). How decent of him.

However, as noted by Kevin Strouse, running for the Dem nomination to challenge Fitzpatrick next year (from here)…

Strouse, a former Army Ranger and CIA officer, said that the bills are piecemeal solutions and that veterans in particular should not be used as leverage. He highlighted the work the Veterans Benefits Administration has done to attack the 12-month backlog of claims submitted by veteran soldiers. The continued shutdown threatens to erase the office’s efforts to process the paperwork, Strouse said.

Also, I’ll let you in on the little “con” that Mikey and his pals are trying to pull; the language they use is “well, we’ll vote for a ‘clean’ CR to fund the government when the bill is brought to the floor for a vote”…but our wet noodle PA-08 rep won’t support such a vote.

If you’re as fed up with this crap as I am, then click here to support Kevin Strouse, which would be a step in the right direction; our goal is to retire Mikey to private live once and for all in 2014 (…and getting mocked by the Taliban, as noted here – every time I think we can’t sink lower on this, we do).

Finally, I came across this item from clownhall.com and Dennis Prager…

Rejection of the old is a reason the left has contempt for the Bible. To progressives, the idea of having 2,000 and 3,000-year-old texts guide a person’s behavior today is ludicrous.

The wingnuts really do make it too easy sometimes; I give you the following verses from here (yes, the holy book of my faith does inform my opinions and, I think, provides the appropriate context for political developments – I hope that the Bible informs my actions too, but I guess that’s debatable)…

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. 4 Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked (Psalm 82:3-4).

My response is here.

Better a poor man whose walk is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse (Proverbs 19:1).

My response is here.

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern (though I guess the above quote would fit also – Proverbs 29:7).

My response is here.

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

My response is here.

And finally, from here…

For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also (James 2:26).

My response is here (and here).

Let us pray.

Wednesday Mashup (1/30/13)

I noted previously that I would give Mikey the Beloved, our wet noodle U.S. House rep from PA-08, the benefit of the doubt on the gun proposal he said he was working on because I didn’t know yet what he had in mind.

Well, now we know (here)…

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick has introduced legislation that requires states to report people with mental health problems to a national database for background checks.

Hmm, sounds promising…

The bill, H.R. 329, the Strengthening Background Checks Act, gives incentives to states to add the names of their residents involuntarily committed to mental institutions to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

The NICS checks available records on people who might be disqualified from purchasing firearms. However, it is optional for states to make their records available.

States that comply will receive part of $125 million in grants for technology upgrades to coordinate with the NICS. States that don’t will have 10 percent withheld from their Byrne JAG grants, which go to support local law enforcement.

Uh, wait a minute…

Didn’t the lede paragraph tell us that Fitzpatrick’s bill would “require” states to comply? Well, somewhere between the first and second paragraph, “requires” became “gives incentives.”

Oh, right, this is another Gary Weckselblatt special. I get it now.

And Fitzpatrick is proposing about $125 million in grant money to upgrade the NCIS database. That sounds nice until you realize that Mayors Against Illegal Guns, as noted here, claim that about three times that amount of money is really needed.

It should also be noted that our beloved commonwealth has an atrocious record of compliance when it comes to reporting individuals disqualified from owning firearms into the NCIS database (something like, out of about 51,000 names, only one was entered…sorry, lost the link on that one for now, but I know I read it).

Mikey’s proposal here is quite literally better than nothing. However, because it is so utterly toothless and underfunded, it really is hard to treat It as anything more than a publicity stunt.

Next, we learn the following from Fix Noise (here, alleging that Number 44 abused the Appointments Clause of the Constitution)…

Sometimes, Barack Obama acts like the Constitution does not apply to him and the Congress is an imaginary being. Friday, the United States Court of Appeals brought the president back to Earth and reminded him that that the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and the U.S. Senate are very much part of reality by voiding three of Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

The D.C. Circuit ruled that the president could not end-run the confirmation process merely because at the beginning of 2012 the U.S. Senate was meeting every three business days in, what lawyers call, pro forma session.

In response, I give you the reality-based (for real) community from here…

Mr. Obama had declared that Congress was not really open for business during its one-minute, lights-on-lights-off sessions intended only to thwart him, and he made recess appointments. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said his N.L.R.B. appointments were unconstitutional, buying the argument of Republicans that the Senate was really in session.

The court even broke with the presidential practice of 150 years by ruling that only vacancies arising during a narrow recess period qualify for recess appointments.

White House officials said the administration would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, but if it is upheld, it will invalidate scores of decisions made by the labor board over the last year.

Oh, and this ruling would have also applied to about 141 recess appointments made by Obama’s predecessor also (interesting stuff on pro forma decisions from fdl can be accessed here).

Also, this tells us about Teahadist Judge David Sentelle, the author of this judicial travesty along with Janice Rogers Brown, who once suggested that all labor, business or Wall Street regulation is unconstitutional (yep, we have a couple of “Tenthers” here, meaning folks who wrongly believe the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution means that state law takes precedence over the Feds). Also, this provides more background, and this tells us, among other things, that Sentelle was appointed to the bench by The Sainted Ronnie R (surprised?).

Oh, and concerning Rogers Brown, this tells us that she tried to rewrite legal protection for employees against sexual harassment under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, explicitly contradicting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and several previous court decisions (Lutkewitte v. Gonzales); she also has ruled that the EPA doesn’t have the right to regulate vehicle emissions.

Perfect for a pair of judges trying to blow smoke, I suppose.

Further, I give you “Pastor” Gerson of the WaPo, doing his best to wax propagandistic on the issue of immigration reform here (according to him, the Repugs have been out in front on this issue all along – it’s the Democrats who have been the obstacle…yeah, that’s the ticket).

See, in Gerson’s world, only Obama is guilty of polarizing words and actions on immigration, as we know (and Gerson actually writes that Obama has “the invincible assumption of his own rightness,” which is a hilarious sentence coming from the former head speechwriter for George W. Bush).

This is all an exercise to try and puff up the supposed bona fides on immigration of Sen. Marco Rubio, who took a different tack on this as opposed to working with the opposition, shall we say, here (“polariz(ing) this most polarizing of issues,” as Gerson might put it). To be fair, though, I should note that Rubio looks like a statesman compared to that moron Raul Labrador, as noted here (“A speech is not a bill?” Really? There’s a reason why the House is part of the legislative branch, numbskull. It’s because you’re supposed to legislate.)

To point out who the actual grownup is here, though, this tells us that Obama ordered a halt to the deportation of many young undocumented immigrants in June, but only 1 House rep (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a nut on just about every other issue but sensible here) supported it and 147 of her Repug brethren opposed it. More to the point, though, this tells us that, as of last June, Rubio’s party had done virtually nothing on the issue of immigration, including fighting Obama and the Democrats tooth and nail on the DREAM Act.

Of course, as noted here, Gerson is no stranger to propagandizing about Number 44 on “values” issues; not being an evangelical, I can’t imagine how Gerson rationalizes his deceit on faith issues concerning those he opposes in the political arena (and it’s probably just as well that I don’t know).

And speaking of faith, I came across the following nonsense from Dennis Prager that was too pungent to ignore (here, commenting on President Obama’s second inaugural address)…

To understand leftism, the most dynamic religion of the last 100 years, you have to understand how the Left thinks. The 2013 inaugural address of President Barack Obama provides one such opportunity. To begin:

“What makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What American does not resonate to a president’s reaffirming this magnificent statement from our Declaration of Independence?

But here’s the intellectual sleight of hand: “What makes us exceptional — what makes us American” is indeed the belief that rights come from God.

And this seminal idea is not mentioned again in the entire inaugural address.

This was most unfortunate. An inaugural address that would concentrate on the decreasing significance of God in American life — one of the Left’s proudest accomplishments — would address what may well be the single most important development in the last half-century of American life.

Oh, and by the way, on the subject of God’s decreasing significance – supposedly encouraged by Obama – I should note the following references to God in Obama’s speech after the passage Prager cited (from here)…

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.

..

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

…

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service.

As noted here, though, Prager is a serial offender on faith matters, particularly when they involve Democrats (and comparing the Qu’ran to Mein Kampf isn’t going to help the wingnuts win the day on this subject by any means).

Finally (and concluding the wingnuttery for the moment), I give you the following from here…

Individuals enlisting in the U.S. Armed Forces must swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But what happens when the only crime perpetrated by the “enemy” is supporting and defending the Constitution?

Such is the dilemma facing future military officers at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point — who are being taught to view freedom-loving Americans as violent, racist terrorists-in-waiting. As part of the federal government’s ongoing jihad against common-sense fiscal conservatism and constitutionally limited government, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) has issued a new report making some dangerously irrational generalizations about the “far-right.”

Boy, is this rich! To get an understanding of why Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government wants the report’s author, Dr. Arie Perliger, to be fired…well, read on (here)…

Until the attack in Oklahoma, very few people noticed that the previous years (1994–5)had been characterized by a striking rise in the number of violent attacks by American far-right groups. After a relatively quiet 1993 in which the American far-right was almost non-active (only nine attacks), no less than 75 attacks were perpetrated in the following year, with another 30 attacks in the first three months of 1995. What occurred in Oklahoma was not a random, isolated attack but part of a wave of far-right violence which was fueled by specific political and social conditions.

…

The consolidated dataset includes information on 4420 violent incidents that occurred between 1990 and 2012 within US borders, and which caused 670 fatalities and injured 3053 people.

Fourteen of the 21 years covered in this analysis witnessed more attacks than the previous year. Although in the 1990s the average number of attacks per year was 70.1, the average number of attacks per year in the first 11 years of the twenty-first century was 307.5, a rise of more than 400%.

There’s lots of stuff on ALG here, including the fact that, though it perhaps stops short of physical violence and a “terrorist” label, comes just about to the water’s edge, as you might say (and Mother Jones tells us here that it’s really a pretty straight line stretching from Bill Wilson and ALG right back to Charles and David Koch, which shouldn’t be surprising in the least).

So, nah, many right-wingers aren’t racists or terrorists. And they don’t traffic in violent words and/or images and racist, misogynist or anti-immigrant threats. Never forget that, all you latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, NPR-listening liberals out there.

Not much they don’t.