World News Korner

"You're welcome America."

Courtesy of Politico:

Administration officials reported on Wednesday that the deficit has fallen to half of what it was when President Barack Obama took office — touting the numbers as congressional budget negotiations begin amid Republican criticism of Democrats’ stewardship of the government’s finances.

The administration said the fiscal 2013 deficit is $680 billion, which is $409 billion less than the fiscal 2012 deficit and $293 billion less than forecast in Obama’s April budget. The fiscal year ended on Sept. 30.

As a percent of Gross Domestic Product, the preferred measurement by economists, the deficit fell to 4.1 percent, a drop of more than half from the deficit when Obama took office.

You know sometimes it must feel to Republicans as if the very planets are aligning against them, and that they have to spend all of their time trying to distract from facts, which have a liberal bias, and instead create distractions to keep the low information voters from realizing that everything they say is a steaming pile of shit.

Not that I for an instant feel sorry for them, by the way, because if they WEREN'T working so hard to argue against reality they could be working with the Democrats to make this country a better place for all of us.

I cannot even begin to imagine how low the deficit might be by now if the Republicans and Democrats, could put aside their partisan bickering, and were working together to bring it down.

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"Look at me, look at me, look at me!"

Courtesy of the Horrid Halloween Harlot's Facebook page:

President Obama flew in to Boston today to deliver another “ShamWow”-style infomercial for Obamacare, and it went about as well as his entourage’s snarled traffic debacle in Beantown. (Yes affordable health care for Americans is JUST like a product that cleans up juice spilled on your counter top. How astute of you to notice, "lady who puts words in Sarah Palin's mouth.")

As millions of Americans are being kicked off their desired insurance plans and seeing their premiums skyrocket, the President had a lot of 'splaining to do today. (Okay leave Ricky Ricardo out of this!) For starters we anticipated a Presidential apology for lying to Americans repeatedly when he promised things like, “If you like your current health care plan, you can keep it.” Make no mistake, he knew he was lying when he said that. (I don't think he did. I really believe that the President thought the insurance companies would play ball and help facilitate these new insurance changes, and it is becoming clear they are not.) And make no further mistake, after five years of false Obama claims, no one should actually expect contrition on this administration’s part. (Okay I think at this point most people's bullshit meters should be going off concerning these mass mailings of letters from insurance companies. Clearly it is a coordinated effort to undermine the Affordable Care Act and also to use that panic as an opportunity to convince their customers to buy more expensive insurance with THEIR company. Chris Hayes had a great spot on this yesterday.)

Bloomberg reports that in June of 2010, the administration knew millions would be kicked off existing healthcare plans due to Obamacare; but President Obama continued to knowingly deceive the American people with repeated claims that if we liked our current plan we could keep it.
So, finally busted, did the President apologize? Was remorse and sympathy shown for Americans who now can’t afford health insurance thanks to Obamacare? Nope. He instead informed us that Americans who receive cancellation notices have been on “substandard” plans supplied by “bad apple” insurers. (That last part is all true.) That’s right. Obama didn’t lie to you when he said, “if you like your plan, you can keep it.” Why? Because, you sillies, you DIDN’T REALLY like the plan you chose for yourselves! No arguing. Barack Obama knows best and he’ll tell you whether you actually liked your insurance plan or not. (Okay just HOW many stories have we all heard of people finally getting sick after paying their insurance premiums on time for decades only to find that it did not cover the cost of their care, or that their out of pocket expenses were bankrupting them?) If you’re an elderly bachelor, your old plan was clearly “substandard” because it didn’t offer maternity care. What’s that you say? You don’t need maternity care? Well, according to the President today, he says you do, and any insurance plan that doesn’t offer it is a “junk” plan provided by a “bad apple” insurer.

But don’t worry, the President also promised that only “rich” people making $250,000 or more will see their premium costs rise. This lie is so appalling and so easily debunked that the brazenness with which he made it is simply breathtaking. But who will hold him accountable for it? Media, you know I love you... so let me help you save your hide with the American public by suggesting you fact-check that. (Oh God, she is going to tell the media how to do their jobs again. THIS ought to be good!)


Despite the Obamacare rollout disaster and the broken government website (which HHS Secretary Sebelius admitted is a “debacle” in her testimony before Congress today), the President gleefully highlighted the few people signing up for Obamacare as indicative of his socialized medicine’s “success.” (This is NOT "socialized medicine." This is the plan that Richard Nixon dreamed up, the Heritage Foundation tweaked, and Mitt Romney implemented in Massachusetts. Now if the Democrats had gotten their way, and we had adopted single payer, perhaps THAT could be labeled "socialized medicine." However it would also be labeled a rollicking success by now.) He neglected to mention that the government is forcing Americans to sign up for his program or pay fines that will increase each year we fail to do so. (He also failed to mention how doing that will lower health care costs for everybody, convince younger people to get yearly checkups to help find problems when they are still quite treatable, and in the end prolong the health and life of our citizens.)


For sheer chutzpah, the President closed his speech by praising America’s “rugged individualism.” Because nothing says “rugged individualism” like heavy-handed big government forcing individuals to buy a product they don’t want and arrogantly telling them they didn’t really like the product they wisely chose for themselves and could afford. (You mean the product they "wisely" chose for themselves when they only had a handful of choices, and no control over whether they would get kicked off their policies or denied coverage someday?)

Thanks for the infomercial, Mr. President. I don’t know anyone who wants your “ShamWow” product, but the IRS will make sure we call that toll free number or go online to order it right now…. well, just as soon as your impossibly broken $600 million website is fixed and your phones lines aren’t busy. (Actually the cost of the website is somewhere between 70 to 150 million, NOT 600 million!)


Happy with this, America? Make your voices heard. 2014 is just around the corner. (Yes it is, and once we get these Tea party obstructionists out of the damn way we MIGHT just get this whole health care thing tweaked so that it is running smoothly. I can hardly wait.)


- Sarah Palin

You know with all of this news about the problems with the website, and so many cable news stations piling on, I am a little surprised that it took Palin's ghostwriters this long to finally sift through her late night, Red Bull fueled, rantings well enough to craft a semi-literate Facebook post.

I mean what is she paying these people with Palin-bot retirement funds for if it takes them this long to make her seem almost sane-like?

Palin then links to some bullshit article by Eric Bolling, that I refuse to link to because he reminds of of every smarmy middle aged Lothario who ever tried to grope your mother during a cocktail party in the seventies.

Look I will give Palin this, the website problems ARE indeed a target almost too tantalizing to resist for pundits, journalists, and anti-Obamacare fanatics. But keep in mind that websites DO get fixed, however stupidity for many of these asshats is a lifetime curse.

By the way, for those who missed it and may be wondering just how Palin is misrepresenting the President's words, here is a link to his speech yesterday in Boston.

You don't have to be Nostradamus to predict that by the time 2014 rolls around the website will be up and running like a well oiled machine, and that all of this overly dramatic rending of clothing will have been forgotten.

What's more the Right Wing realizes it as well and that is why they are running around building as many mountains out of available molehills as possible before they all get steamrolled by the eventual success of the ACA.

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Mom has quite a set of pipes, and the baby's roller coaster of emotions is somewhat amazing to watch.

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Courtesy of the YouTube page:


12-year-old Madison Kimrey of Burlington founded NC Youth Rocks after the North Carolina legislature passed voting restriction laws targeting young people, women, minorities, and the poor.

The law appears to be designed to create long lines at the polls — especially in more populous, urban areas — by cutting early voting and making the voting process more time consuming (this was the formula that created 8-hour waits in Florida for the 2012 election, as a FL election official testified to the House Elections Committee in March 2013). Also, the law requires voters to produce a photo ID, but student IDs are not accepted, even if issued by a state university.

The same law does away with disclosure requirements for political advertising and increases the limit on campaign contributions. Also, the law does away with same-day registration during early voting, which had been popular with African Americans and other groups who had previously not engaged in the democratic process at the same level as white voters had. The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act.

In this speech Kimrey takes exception to the end of a program by which 16 and 17-year-olds pre-registered to vote when getting their drivers license or through school programs.

Damn! That is one incredibly intelligent young lady.

Watch out North Carolina! Madison Kimrey is certainly going to be a force to be reckoned with!

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This is from the website of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders:

How did we go from healthy surpluses to terrible deficits? It's not that complicated. In 2001, President Clinton left office with a $236-billion surplus. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office foresaw a 10-year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion, enough to erase the national debt by 2011. It didn't work out that way.

Instead, under President George W. Bush, wars were launched in Afghanistan and Iraq without paying for them. The cost of those wars, estimated at up to $6 trillion, was tacked onto our national credit card. Then Congress passed and Bush signed an expensive prescription drug program. It also was not paid for. Then Bush and Congress handed out big tax breaks to the wealthy and large corporations. That drove down revenue. So did the recession in 2008, which was caused by a deregulated Wall Street. All that turned big surpluses into big deficits.

Interestingly, today's "deficit hawks" in Congress — Rep.Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and other conservative Republicans — voted for those measures that drove up deficits. Now that they're worried about deficits again, they want to dismantle virtually every social program designed to protect working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor.

In other words, it's OK to spend trillions on a war we should never have waged in Iraq and to provide huge tax breaks for billionaires and multinational corporations. But in the midst of very difficult economic times, we just can't afford to protect the most vulnerable people in our country. That's their view. I disagree.

So where do we go from here? How do we draft a federal budget that creates jobs, makes our country more productive, protects working families and lowers the deficit?

For a start, we cannot impose more austerity on people who are already suffering. When 95% of all new income between 2009 and 2012 went to the top 1%, and while tens of millions of working Americans saw a decline in their income, we cannot cut programs that working families depend on.

Instead of talking about cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, we must end the absurdity of corporations not paying a nickel in federal income taxes. A 2008 report from the Government Accountability Office found that was the case with 1 in 4 large U.S. corporations. At a time when multinational corporations and the wealthy are avoiding an estimated $100 billion a year in taxes by stashing money in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, we need to make them pay taxes just as middle-class Americans do.

You know the thing that never stops irritating the crap out of me is that we always allow the Republicans to define the debate. Even when we stand up to them we are always in a position where we have already acquiesced to most of their demands. (See Sequestration.)

I think we need to stop playing defense and start taking the fight to them. In fact I think we have to!

I do realize that Bernie Sanders is in a VERY safe district in Vermont and therefore is allowed to speak his mind with impunity, but I also know that if we were able to effectively explain to the American people what is REALLY going on these days we would start to gain ground politically and over time hopefully change the discussion to make it more factually based.

I say that after Hillary gets elected she drafts her husband, Bill Clinton to a newly formed Cabinet position, the "Czar of explaining stuff to the American people."

"Put me in Hil, I got this."

Sound good?

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Currently Rand Paul consistently polls in the top two potential candidates for the GOP nomination in 2016, so the fact that he is this incredibly lazy. and disrespectful of intellectual property, is big news.

Is it wrong that I can hardly wait for 2016 to arrive?

Because I have a feeling that if you thought the GOP lineup in 2012 was ridiculous that you haven't seen ANYTHING yet.

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