No Historical persective [There were no czars in the USSR]
One reasonable man in the crowd
Well, thank goodness for garbage cans which will be attended to by Socialist garbage pick up....
]]>TAPR is surprising some.
The profits, collected from eight of the biggest banks that have fully repaid their obligations to the government, come to about $4 billion, or the equivalent of about 15 percent annually, according to calculations compiled for The New York Times.
[...]
So far, that experiment is more than paying off. The government has taken profits of about $1.4 billion on its investment in Goldman Sachs, $1.3 billion on Morgan Stanley and $414 million on American Express. The five other banks that repaid the government — Northern Trust, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T — each brought in $100 million to $334 million in profit.
It's got a while to go but so far is looking up.
Obama has cut taxes for 98.6% of working households.
Obviously, the teabaggers do not know this.
]]>An interview today on NPR by Steve Inskeep of RNC chair Michael Steele had an entertaining exchange. Steele, was saying how bad the government runs things [10 times worse than insurance he claimed] yet he was willing to admit that regulation by the government of insurance companies would actually help.
STEELE:...Sure, there are issues in the insurance market that we can regulate a little bit better and that we can control better to maximize the benefits to the consumers. That’s something that yeah, we can rightly reform and fix.
INSKEEP: Wait, wait — You would trust the government to look into that?
STEELE: No, I’m talking about the private — I’m talking about citizens. I’m talking about — (CROSSTALK)
INSKEEP: Who is it you — You said it is something that should be looked into. Who is it that you think should look into that?
STEELE: Well, who regulates the insurance markets?
INSKEEP: That would be the government, I believe.
STEELE: Well, and so what. Now wait a minute. Hold up. You’re doing a wonderful little dance here and you’re trying to be cute. But the reality of this is very simple. I’m not saying the government doesn’t have a role to play....
Inskeep also noted that Steele's position was nuanced to which Steele took offense - as if nuanced is a bad thing. It seems he wasn't ready for a challenging interview and got tripped up on his words.
]]>Senate Confirms Sotomayor 68 - 31
Nine Republicans voted for her. Ohio's George Voinovich, Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, New Hampshire's Judd Gregg, Indiana's Richard Lugar, Missouri's Kit Bond, Florida's Mel Martinez, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham and Tennessee's Lamar Alexander.
In a telling political sign, none of the Republicans who voted for Sotomayor is seeking re-election in 2010.
That tells me that Republicans who are not up for re-election have learned to think for themselves. Good for them.
Senate votes for the last 11 Supreme Court Justices:
Sotomayor 68 to 31
Alito 54 to 42
Roberts 78 to 22
Breyer 87 to 9
Ginsburg 96 to 3
Thomas 52 to 48
Souter 90 to 9
Kennedy 97 to 0
Scalia 98 to 0 [!]
O'Connor 99 to 0
Stevens 98 to 0
Times have changed. It has been much more political since Thomas.
]]>A Conservative Fox News Legal analyst agrees that the Cambridge police officer did not act very smartly. Nice to know some Conservatives understand the law. If a person in his own home is being rude to a police officer he cannot be arrested. What's more, according to this analyst, the officer may have violated the federal Constitution.
"You can't be disorderly if you're in your house or on your property because that is not a public place. So if Professor Gates was arrested because of the words he used to the police inside his house, on the front porch, on his own lawn - it was an improper arrest....So if we just take the police report, and we just take Massachusetts law and we take Federal law the question is, 'was there a proper arrest' - in my view there was not a proper arrest."
I received this email the other day. Sounds interesting....
"We are part of the True Origins Spacer movement. We go one step further than the Birther movement in that we believe Barack 'Hussein' Obama is a space alien. And we will not be convinced otherwise until he gives a DNA test proving he is a full fledged Earthling [a member of the human species] related to real Earthlings right here on this here Earth.
We know initially he will say no. But, if after saying no, he continues to insist on not taking a DNA test we will have to conclude that he is indeed a space alien and is trying to cover-up his true origins, which we do not at this time feel compelled to disclose.
Please note that we will not accept just any old DNA test done by one of Obama's doctors or any other high falutin doctor that we do not personally know. We will only accept a DNA test done by one of our doctors. [At this time we do not actually have any doctors in our movement - but as we let the world know about our movement we are sure we will get a few].
Anyway, this test must also be done in full view of all of the people in our movement and all those Americans who care about this country of ours.
Now, we know that a DNA test can take up to 30 days to produce results and will involve moving whatever it is they take from him from one place to another in order to determine his DNA. We also know there will be times when the stuff they take from him just sits in a beeker or something. But we have figured that out. We will set up a series of cameras in the testing / lab room[s] and make sure every moment is captured for all to see - most likely to be downloaded as thousands of ten minute videos on YouTube.
An important thing to note is we will need to also do tests on everyone who claims they are related to Obama. And we will expect them to go through the same procedure just to make sure everything is completely accurate. The reason is because [we concede] Obama may actually only be half or a third space alien.
We simply want to make sure beyond a reasonable doubt that our President is not a space alien. Although we think he is 100% so and we think this test will prove it.
The next question I know you are asking is how [if he is a space alien] that would disqualify him from being President. The reason is because we will then know for certain that he wasn't, in fact, even born on Earth - let alone Hawaii or where ever he claims he was born.
Stay tuned Earthings."
Hawaii on August 4th 1961.
A few looney right wingers continue to insist that Obama was born outside of the US.
The website PolitiFact does a really terrific job of setting the record straight. One particular point really stand out.
> We talked to reporter Will Hoover, who wrote a well-researched story for the Honolulu Advertiser on Nov. 9, 2008, about Obama's childhood years in the the Aloha State. It ran under the headline "Obama Slept Here."
In researching the story, he went to the microfilm archives and found the birth announcement for Obama. Actually, he found two of them, one in his Honululu Advertiser on Aug. 13 , 1961, and in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin the next day . They both said the same thing: "Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Highway, son, Aug. 4."
But here's the thing. Newspaper officials he checked with confirmed those notices came from the state Department of Health.
"That's not the kind of stuff a family member calls in and says, 'Hey, can you put this in?'" Hoover explained.
Take a second and think about that. In order to phony those notices up, it would have required the complicity of the state Health Department and two independent newspapers " on the off chance this unnamed child might want to one day be president of the United States. [Emp added].
FactCheck also has the info.
But of course with conspiracy theorists the madness never ends. Think Progress has an update.
]]>Why Stewart is better than the news.
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