Maybe George Allen should just stay away from cameras

No macaca moments in this one, and there IS something kind of cool about seeing a politician (or a would-be one) show his true colors after he thinks the camera has been turned off. But if this goes viral, George Allen's attempted comeback could find itself in trouble:



Every time I see George Allen, I think of Bob Roberts:

Isn't it funny how the GOP candidates who have "run a business" specialize in putting Americans out of work?

Mitt Romney insists that as a "successful businessman", he knows how to create jobs, despite the fact that his company, Bain Capital, was in the business of buying up companies and cutting their costs via mass layoffs.

Now we have Herman Cain insisting that as a "successful businessman" he too knows how to create jobs. There's just one problem: During his stint on the Board of Directors at Whirlpool, that company eliminated thousands of jobs via outsourcing, while at the same time paying no taxes, instead receiving huge government refunds:

The Benton Harbor, Michigan based Whirlpool corporation, which recently received a $19 million dollar stimulus grant from the Dept. of Energy to develop smart grid capable appliances, moved forward with plans to close it’s Evansville, Indiana refrigerator plant and build a new plant in Mexico.

Whirlpool closed the plant in June, eliminating 1,100 full-time jobs. They did this all the while the company is collecting public subsidies while eliminating jobs.

After buying the Maytag brand in 2006 Whirlpool shut down the manufacturing headquarters which at its peak Maytag had 4,000 workers in Newton, Iowa a town of 16,000 people 30 miles east of Des Moines. Newton is a great case study on what happens when the company town packs up and leaves. The devastating effects are quickly dominoed throughout the town and surrounding towns. Those 4,000 plus workers were supporting the other local businesses. When Maytag left, people had to leave to find work. When people left we have ghost towns that are popping up all over the United States. Towns that used to thrive, towns that people used to be proud to call home now sit mostly vacant. Is this the ‘new modern economy’ America will build it’s future around?

Taxes? That’s for poor people…

Whirpool, the world’s largest appliance maker, has been a major tax dodger. The company had negative income tax rates over the past three years, and reported a $64 million income tax benefit last year. It expects similar results this year:

Meanwhile sales at the appliance maker rose 7 percent to $18.4 billion last year after dropping during the housing slump of the previous two years. In the year-earlier quarter, the company attributed a rise in revenue to increased productivity.

Whirlpool had negative effective income tax rates in 2010, 2009 and 2008. Last year, the company reported an income tax benefit of $64 million and an effective tax rate of negative 10.9 percent, according to company filings. The company expects a similar tax benefit in 2011.

We keep hearing about how corporate taxes have to be cut in order for companies to "create jobs." When companies pay no taxes and still get refunds, how much more government largesse do they need?

If you look at the records of "successful businessmen' who run for President on the GOP side, you'll find that all of them involve active participation in the systematic gutting of this country's middle class.

If you're going to get rid of Medicare, you're going to have to give people a way out

Forgetting for a moment about the utter ridiculousness of the right's insistence on how much they revere the sanctity of life at the same time that they want to pull the medical rug out from everyone who reaches the age of 65, the fact remains that if the elderly cannot obtain medical care, or if they WANT to leave before becoming a tremendous cost to society, we're going to have to come up with a way to do it.



Yesterday in the New York Times, we read about a couple who decided to exit peacefully and without violence -- through self-stafvation -- and got kicked out of their assisted living residence:

As it happened, the elder Rudolphs had a long and satisfying old age in Albuquerque, N.M., where they lived for 60 years; they gardened and volunteered with the Boy Scouts and served as leaders in their Presbyterian church. When their large house and gardens became difficult to maintain, they built a smaller one in a neighboring town, then moved again to a retirement community.





“At that point, some health issues began to emerge,” their son said. Mrs. Rudolph broke her hip and was in and out of rehab, suffering frightening episodes of delirium.



“Dad had a permanent catheter,” said Neil Rudolph. “Physically and mentally, they began to go downhill.” In October, they entered an assisted living facility called The Village at Alameda, thinking it would be their last home.



The Rudolphs faced increasing pain and debility. Mr. Rudolph, 92, suffered from spinal stenosis; Mrs. Rudolph, 90, had become largely immobile. Both showed symptoms of early dementia. So in January, they set in motion their plan to stop eating and drinking.



And the facility tried to evict the couple. The administrators, apparently on orders from the corporate legal department in Maryland, told the family the Rudolphs had to leave the next day.



Current management would not comment beyond an e-mailed statement saying that when a resident “requires alternate placement, medical attention, or a level of care beyond the facility’s capabilities, we have an obligation to notify a medical provider.” Fundamental Long Term Care, the firm that owns the facility and more than 100 others in 14 states, did not respond to requests for interviews.



As Neil Rudolph recalls the events, he protested that the couple — already on Day 4 of their fast — had nowhere to go. He also pointed out that their contract required 30 days’ notice of discharge. The following day, administrators called 911, reported a suicide attempt and told the paramedics to take the elder Rudolphs to a hospital.



So much for the peaceful passage.



Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking — as the Rudolphs had learned from consulting with Compassion & Choices, the largest national organization working to expand end-of-life options — is a legal way to hasten death without drugs or violence, usually in about two weeks. In a survey of hospice nurses in Oregon, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2003, respondents reported that most of their terminally ill patients who had deliberately refused food and fluids had “a good death,” with low levels of pain or suffering.



“They said, ‘That’s what we want to do,’” Neil Rudolph said, emphasizing that his parents’ decision was hardly impulsive or caused by a bout with depression. He and his sister, Elaine Spence, and their spouses had come from Colorado to be with their parents and had called in a hospice organization. “We all discussed what it meant and whether they were sure,” he said.



When his parents said they were, he helped them write a statement affirming their decision and then told the assisted living administrators about their plan.



Shortly thereafter, two emergency squads, from the Albuquerque Fire Department and Albuquerque Ambulance Services, converged on the scene. Neil Rudolph’s wife called a reporter from The Albuquerque Journal, to whom the elder Rudolphs gave outraged and lucid interviews. The emergency crews soon called a doctor at the University of New Mexico’s emergency medicine department, part of a consortium that consults when a 911 call brings a situation outside the norm — and this certainly qualified.

The Rudolphs were eventually able to check out the way they wanted to, but it was only because their children rented a house for them and, with the help of hospice and taking turns in a round-the-clock vigil, were able to provide the necessary care. What about people without the resources to rent a facility away from the medical community, or without children, or with children who are unable or unwilling to provide this kind of care and oversee this kind of exit?



We can't have it both ways as a society. We can't rail against "greedy geezers" and have politicians screaming about how much it costs to keep the sick elderly alive and at the same time put roadblock after roadblock in the way of a dignified exit. If we can't have an exit that doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and agonizing pain and indignity, and we can't obtain medical care, what are we supposed to do when our time is up?

The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get

And teabagger "family values" representative Joe Walsh (Hypocrite - IL) is quite the player...so much that he's forgotten he has kids to support:

Tea party hero Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) wants to wipe out the nation’s debt, but he’s got some major personal debt that his ex-wife is demanding he take care of — $117,437 in child support, according to a lawsuit reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The suit charges that Walsh enjoyed foreign vacations with his new girlfriend while claiming he couldn’t pay support for his three kids because he was out of work.

[snip]


Walsh’s attorney, R. Steven Polachek, told the Sun-Times the claim of unpaid child support is unfounded.

“I dispute that he owes the child support that she’s claiming or anywhere near that amount,” he said. “Joe Walsh hasn’t been a big-time wage-earner politician until recently — he’s had no more problems with child support than any other average guy.”

In other words, so-called anti-government deficit hawk Joe Walsh was just another unemployed loser until he lucked into a nice fat government-issued paycheck, augmented by nice campaign contributions from the companies at whose beck and call he serves.

And now, Joe Walsh's theme song, sung by the OTHER Joe Walsh -- you know, the one who ISN'T a useless hypocritical POS:

UPDATE: Great minds think alike.

One state's pork is another state's vital project

Does it surprise anyone that when it comes to government spending, the freshmen Republicans elected in the 2010 election-by-tantrum don't practice what they preach?

NYT:

Freshman House Republicans who rode a wave of voter discontent into office last year vowed to stop out-of-control spending, but that has not stopped several of them from quietly trying to funnel millions of federal dollars into projects back home.

They have pushed for dozens of projects in their districts, including military programs opposed by the president, replenishing beach sand lost to erosion, a $700 million bridge in Minnesota and a harbor dredging project in Charleston, S.C. Some of their projects were once earmarks, political shorthand for pet projects penciled into spending bills, which Republicans banned when they took over the House.

An examination of spending bills, news releases and communications with federal agencies obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that nearly two dozen freshmen have sought money for projects that could ultimately cost billions of dollars, while calling for less spending and banning pork projects.

Politicians have long advocated for projects on behalf of individuals and businesses back home, even without earmarks. Several lawmakers said they were merely providing a constituent service. But since many of the freshman Republicans campaigned on a pledge to cut spending and to change Washington’s time-honored ways, their support of spending projects suggests that in many cases ideology can go only so far in serving the needs of people back home.

Lawmakers like Representative Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, who advocated for the harbor dredging project with other members of the South Carolina delegation, insist their requests are neither earmarks nor wasteful. “This was a merit-based project that was open and transparent,” said Mr. Scott, who helped secure $150,000 for the first phase of a harbor-deepening project in Charleston, his hometown. The project is expected eventually to cost as much as $300 million. Mr. Scott, a favorite of the Tea Party movement, said he is opposed to earmarks and that dredging the port was in the national interest because it would accommodate bigger cargo ships and help create trade opportunities and jobs.

Any project in any district can be deemed to be in the national interest; that doesn't mean it is. But if these Republican hypocrites really believed what they said, they'd be more like Ernie Scott Garrett of the 5th congressional district of New Jersey, who refuses to bring ANYTHING back home, to the point that New Jersey is one of the biggest donor states in the country. Of course Garrett is not completely free of hypocrisy either, having taken a tax break designed for farmers on nine acres of his Sussex County estate becaues his brother sells a few shrubs out of it, but at least he doesn't do anything that might fly in the face of Grover Norquist's Rules...you know, things that might help the district he was elected to serve.

But Tea Party Congressional freshmen aren't even as ideologically pure as Garrett:

On the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, local officials and members of Congress have pushed for a new four-lane bridge over the St. Croix River that was co-sponsored by Representative Sean P. Duffy, a Wisconsin freshman Republican, and Representative Michele Bachmann, the three-term Minnesota Republican who is running for president.

Opponents labeled the bridge an earmark, but Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Bachmann said the bridge was critical to handle increased traffic that an 80-year-old bridge nearby can no longer handle alone. They defend the spending by arguing that it was not an earmark since there were no specific costs listed in the bill itself, nor is it a financing bill. The legislation calls only for a bridge to be built.

The National Park Service has opposed the project, saying it would violate the Wild and Scenic River Act by harming the river’s scenic and recreational qualities.

I wonder how those twisty Teabagger brains are going to manage this one

In recent years we've seen the political climate on the right fully embrace the Idiocy Is Great doctrine of political discourse. As Barack Obama, the thoughtful, measured former Harvard Law Review editor brought his cool, cerebral, measured, thoughtfulness to the White House, it infuriated those whose crania resemble that of the lunkhead in the much-maligned Planet Fitness commercials who repeats over and over again, "I lift things up and put them down." (By the way, this anti-PF rant is pretty hilarious with its complaints about judgmentalism of bodybuilders while it talks judgmentally about those who aren't, but the whole Planet Fitness foofarah is a topic for another day.)

The Militant Idiocy Movement reached its apex with the rise of Sarah Palin, a woman so incurious and so celebratory of willful ignorance that she can't even string together a coherent sentence. But the combination of her schoolmarm-as-dominatrix looks and reassurance of those who are gray matter-challenged that being stupid is infinitely superior to things like, well, ideas, made her the darling of the right -- at least for a while.

The stupidity-as-virtue doctrine still has a stranglehold on the right, and we see it everywhere, from Palin to Louie Gohmert to Virginia Foxx to the Doublemint Twins of stupid, the Kings Peter and Steve, and so on and so on.

Enter Newt Gingrich.

Say what you will about the Lizard King, he's many things but he's not stupid. He's as crooked as the day is long and he's elevated hypocrisy to an art form, but he's not stupid. His little lizard brain is always cooking up something that can be called "ideas" (if you want to call them that), if only because the rest of his party is obsessed with birth certificates and terror babies and Scary Brown People and evil sluts who won't keep their legs closed and must be punished with the curse of motherhood, which is also what they profess to worship above all else. His "ideas" may seem "intellectual" by comparison to, say, John Boehner, but they're mostly about getting him laid or getting more money into his own pockets. But in the Republican Party, that's enough.

And like the dutiful little puppets they are, the Usual Suspects in the punditocracy are already dusting off their Newt Gingrich Is An Intellectual talking points from those halcyon pre-1994 days.

So what will the teabaggers, who thought they'd get to drink beer with George Bush and that they'd get to fuck Sarah Palin, make of a guy who for all that he's greedy and hypocritical, likes to sell himself as an ideas guy? I mean, on the right, is there anything that shows an ability to think out of the box than to excuse his checkered marital history by saying that he was Fucking for Patriotism? Will they embrace the part of him that taps into their Inner Crazy, or will the fact that he can speak coherently make them suspicious of him?

We will soon see.

This may not be as silly as it looks on the surface

After all, Republicans have been able to claim, with some success, that the 9/11 attacks were Bill Clinton's fault, that TARP (instituted in 2008) was Barack Obama's program, that George W. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifBush'shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif presidency was a success, and that Bush deserves the credit for capturing Osama Bin Laden.

So with their ability and willingness to rewrite history, why WOULDN'T Newt Gingrich run as a devout, devoted husband to his lovely wife Callista, whom he was fucking on the side while married to his second wife, whom he was fucking while married to his first? http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Still in her 20s when they met, Ms. Bisek had been raised in a town of 1,500, the only child of a meat packer and a secretary. A churchgoing Roman Catholic, she had attended a Lutheran college where she practiced piano five hours a day. “Is this the wisest course for you to be taking?” Karen Olson, her best friend, recalled asking.

Today, Ms. Bisek is Mrs. Gingrich, married for 11 years, but perhaps best remembered for the six-year affair that contributed to her husband’s political downfall. His critics cast Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, as a hypocrite who sought to impeach a president over infidelity while engaging in it himself with Ms. Bisek, who was a Congressional aide.

Yet in a curious tale of Washington reinvention, the onetime congressman from Georgia is counting on the third Mrs. Gingrich for his political redemption.

As he prepares for a Republican presidential primary run — he said Monday that he would formally declare his intentions on Wednesday — Mr. Gingrich is presenting himself as a family man who has embraced Catholicism and found God, with his wife as a kind of character witness. Depending on one’s point of view, she is a reminder of his complicated past, or his secret political weapon.

Barely a sentence goes by without Mr. Gingrich uttering the words “Callista and I.” They are constantly together — at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, at conservative political conferences, at book signings and screenings of their documentary films. She is the voice on his audio books; her face is all over his 2012 Web site, where visitors can read “A Note from Newt & Callista.”

At Villanova University on a recent Thursday night, Mrs. Gingrich warmed up the audience for a showing of the couple’s movie about Pope John Paul II by signing books and DVDs in her left-handed curlicue. But when asked whether she is ready for the scrutiny a campaign would bring, she smiled tightly and grew silent.

Mr. Gingrich answered for her. “Seems to be,” he said, with uncharacteristic tentativeness. “We’ve talked about it for a year. It’s difficult.”

Mr. Gingrich is well aware that social conservatives are skeptical of him because he did not emphasize their issues in Congress, but also because of his two divorces and admission of infidelity. He has been meeting with religious leaders around the country to address their concerns.

What concerns could they possibly have? After all, didn't Jesus die on the cross so that Newt Gingrich could fuck whoever he wants? Isn't that what Gingrich means when he talks about his belief in a "forgiving God"? That HE's allowed to do whatever he wants to because a Jewish guy some two thousand and some-odd years ago went through unspeakable agony so he could do it?

And now we return you to our regularly scheduled programming of Republican misogyny

After two days of listening to Republicans insist that George W. Bush alone deserves the credit for the successful Bin Laden mission and wingnuts everywhere dissing Navy Seals because God forbid Obama should get credit for ANYTHING, it's almost a relief to get back to life in normal America, where the most important priority is not the economy, or even national defense, but rather punishing all those slutty American women.

First, let's go back to redefining rape. Because while the tender feelings of people like me, who have spent 40 years having MY tax dollars pay for wars and tax cuts for the wealthy and other things I don't agree with, don't matter one whit, the tender feelings of those who love the fetus but hate the baby once it's here, are paramount:

In a 251 to 175 vote this evening, 16 anti-choice Democrats joined every House Republican present in passing H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. A chief weapon in the House GOP’s “comprehensive assault” on women this bill proposes some of the most radical and draconian restrictions on women’s rights. They include:

– Redefinition Of Rape: The bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) faced serious backlash after he tried to narrow the definition rape to “forcible rape.” By narrowing the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment, Smith sought to prevent the following situations from consideration: Women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults.

Smith promised to remove the language and while it is not technically in the bill, Mother Jones reports that House Republicans used “a sly legislative maneuver” to insert a “backdoor reintroduction” of redefinition language. Essentially, if the bill is challenged in court, judges will look at the congressional committee report to determine intent. The committee report for H.R. 3 says the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape” — thus excluding statutory rape-related abortions from Medicaid coverage.

In America now, it's Republican Congressmen, not your physician, who gets to decide what constitutes health care. And so under this bill, you would no longer be able to deduct the cost of abortion as a medical expense, nor would you be able to use pre-tax dollars to pay for your insurance if that insurance even offers to cover abortions:

The bill would prevent people from deducting the cost of an abortion from their taxable income, except when the procedure is performed in cases of rape, incest or when a physician certifies that a woman's life would be in danger if she continues the pregnancy.

Current law, known as the Hyde Amendment, bars federal money for abortions, with the same exceptions as those in the bill. But the bill would make the Hyde Amendment federal law, rather than a provision added to other bills that must be voted every year.

Abortion opponents have charged that the health care overhaul contains a loophole for insurance policies. Obama's health care overhaul, passed last year, creates state marketplaces for insurance known as "exchanges." It allows participating plans to cover abortions, provided they collect a separate premium from policyholders and that money is kept apart from federal subsidies.

The bill, written by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., disallows the tax credit for the expenses of a small employer health insurance plan that includes coverage for an abortion. Democrats said that amounts to a tax increase.

"I thought my Republican friends hated taxes, but apparently they hate reproductive freedom and women's rights even more," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

Supporters of the bill passed Wednesday say the health overhaul doesn't go far enough to make sure that no tax money is used to subsidize abortions. Congressional estimates say the bill would raise only a negligible amount of tax revenue.

Opponents say the bill would make it difficult if not impossible for many women to obtain medical insurance that covers abortions — even if they pay for it themselves. They say the legislation could put the Internal Revenue Service in the position of determining whether women who get abortions were sexually assaulted, so the agency can decide whether the procedure is tax deductible.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., said the bill is really an effort to prevent insurance companies from covering abortions.

Because in these troubled days, the most important thing to Republicans is to codify into law that women who are raped are really just sluts who are asking for it and should be forced to bear the children of their rapists. After all, they'll need cannon fodder for the wars THEIR future leaders are going to start.

While he's at it, let him pray for God to rain dollar bills on his state

I'm sorry, but since wingnuts get to pound their chests and say that they don't want their tax dollars paying for abortions (and have the government do their bidding), I think I should get to say that I don't want my tax dollars paying to rebuild the homes of citizens who elect governors who talk about secession and then beg for federal help to fight wildfires in their state.

Now Texas Governor Rick Perry is hedging his bets. In case the feds say no, he's going to a higher authority:

WHEREAS, the state of Texas is in the midst of an exceptional drought, with some parts of the state receiving no significant rainfall for almost three months, matching rainfall deficit records dating back to the 1930s; and

WHEREAS, a combination of higher than normal temperatures, low precipitation and low relative humidity has caused an extreme fire danger over most of the State, sparking more than 8,000 wildfires which have cost several lives, engulfed more than 1.8 million acres of land and destroyed almost 400 homes, causing me to issue an ongoing disaster declaration since December of last year; and

WHEREAS, these dire conditions have caused agricultural crops to fail, lake and reservoir levels to fall and cattle and livestock to struggle under intense stress, imposing a tremendous financial and emotional toll on our land and our people; and

WHEREAS, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer; it seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto signed my name and have officially caused the Seal of State to be affixed at my Office in the City of Austin, Texas, this the 21st day of April, 2011.

Where's Burt Lancaster when you need him?

Does Perry ever think to ask his Great White Alpha Male in the Sky why, since Texas is such a God-fearin', gun-totin' state, wildfires and hurricanes even happen there?

And this year's winner of the Clarence Thomas I Got Mine And F*ck You Award goes to...

Current Washington press corps blowjob recipient and Eddie Munster clone Paul Ryan, whose college education you and I paid for -- a benefit he can't wait to deny others:

One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. It was Paul who told the family of his father’s death.

With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college. To make ends meet, Paul’s mother returned to school to study interior design. His siblings were off at college. Ryan remembers this difficult time bringing him and his mother closer.

(via)

Hey, don't feel so bad about it. You think you got problems? James O'Keefe went to high school on my property taxes.

Why buy the cow when you're getting the milk for free?

Those who know me are well aware that I have no great love for the Newspaper Guild. My own experience with the Guild was a right-wing dream.

In 1983, I took an administrative assistant job in the department at Standard & Poor's that publishes the Register of Corporations. S&P at that time (perhaps it still is) was a screwy amalgam of Guild and non-Guild jobs. Because the part of the company in which I worked was primarily a publisher of financial information, it was a Guild shop. By 1985, my boss wanted to promote me to a marketing manager position -- and the Guild rep blocked my promotion. Even though I would be replaced with a Guild employee, the rep refused to allow me to leave the union as long as I was working in that department. And there was no union title or level that was appropriate for me to move ahead. So no promotion. I ended up leaving the department in 1986 for the IT group, which was NOT covered by the Guild, and the rest of my career is history.

From 1998 to 2005, I wrote movie reviews online. I first wrote for a now-defunct site called Virtual Urth, that I saw was looking for reviewers. I wrote for free, because I was new to the web and wasn't ready to set up my own shop. About a year later, I went off on my own, was admitted into the Online Film Critics Society, started another site jointly with my friend Gabriel, and was a co-founder of the Cinemarati film discussion community (which has been revived, in a sense, on Facebook and as a Meetup group in London, where another co-founder, Mary Ann Johanson, is now living. Every now and then, I'd receive an e-mail from a larger site (sometimes only marginally larger), offering me a gig posting reviews there, for the "valuable exposure" I'd receive. These were all people looking to make money with advertising, and my work would presumably bring in eyeballs that would help them sell more ads. They would make the money, not me. So I invariably said, Thanks, but no thanks.

Even now, I receive e-mails like this from people trying to set up aggregation-type sites, and I always refuse. Established businesses that want to syndicate links to my posts and pay me a percentage of the click-throughs, fine. But you're not going to make a living off of my work. I don't even make a living off of my work, but then I haven't really tried to turn B@B into a significant revenue generator. I do take blog ads (that I screen for appropriateness when they come in; you won't see any of those "Like Donald Trump? Take the Poll" ads that you see on far too many progressive blogs. I make about ten bucks a year from being an Amazon affiliate. And I do take donations, which are few and far between and which these days I tend to send to jurassicpork, who does yeoman work of covering here when I'm just too busy and whose economic situation has made him the living embodiment of the casualties of the Greed Economy. But while I write for my readers, in the hope that you will either learn something, or find comfort that you're not alone, or that you'll find resources to pass on to your friends, I mostly do this because it's the one thing in my life that's MINE.

I provide all this background to give personal context to this post on the Newspaper Guild's call for Huffington Post writers to withhold their work in support of Visual Arts Source's decision to "strike" HuffPo until the site agrees to 1) initiate a compensation schedule for writers, and 2) stop posting paid promotional content alongside actual editorial content.

I'm sure that the Newspaper Guild sees the now-AOL-owned HuffPo as being ripe for the picking for members, but there's a larger issue here about Huffington Post. It was one thing when Arianna Huffington was using her fame and media access in service of progressive causes. HuffPo started out as a vanity project for Arianna's friends to blog about their pet causes. But over time, the site became less about news and more about gossip, fashion, and medical quackery -- and less valuable. But as long as Arianna's heart seemed to be in the right place, there was a sort of quid pro quo about the progressive community's relationship to the site -- we'll overlook that you don't pay anyone because you're providing a valuable service. But after pocketing $350 million of AOL money, Huffington has already become squishy in the progressive part, and having to build the business is no longer an excuse for not paying writers.

The promise of "increased exposure", as I knew back in my relative Web infancy, is as empty a promise as "I'll pull out in time." Finding an unpaid gem at HuffPo requires an investment of time that most of us don't have. But it's really about the principle: If I can throw a few bucks at JP when I can, do you mean to tell me that Arianna Huffington, with $350 million plus whatever she got in her divorce from Mike Huffington, can't afford to pay her writers even twenty-five bucks a pop?

And this is why, no matter how much I might want to link to something Sam Stein might have to say, not only do I no longer link to articles at HuffPo, I refuse to give the site my eyeballs. The Guild's support of Visual Arts Source's strike/boycott may be all about seeing potential union dues, but that doesn't in any way negate that boycotting HuffPo is the right thing to do.

And if I haven't convinced you, perhaps Huffington's own words will:

Huffington, speaking alongside AOL chief Tim Armstrong at PaidContent’s 2011 Conference in New York on Thursday, dismissed the notion that all bloggers should be paid, given the wide platform HuffPo gives them.

She argued that blogging on the Huffington Post is equivalent to going on Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart or the “Today” show to promote their ideas.

And, she said, there are plenty of people willing to take their place if they do.

“The idea of going on strike when no one really notices,” Huffington said. “Go ahead, go on strike.”

Shorter Arianna Huffington: "Let them eat cake."

What about the poor people who elected you, moron?

From ThinkProgress:

Last week, Rep. Rob Woodall held a tele-town hall meeting with his constituents, allowing them to call in and ask questions. At one point, a constituent called in and challenged Woodall’s belief that all we need is spending cuts to move towards a more balanced budget. The caller pointed out that closing corporate tax loopholes on big companies like Exxon Mobil — which paid zero federal corporate income taxes in 2009 — and Google, which only paid a 4.2 percent rate in taxes, would do a lot to help balance the budget as well.

Woodall replied by saying he’s “not a fan of class warfare” and that the only people who’ve ever employed him are rich people. He then went on to say that corporate taxes are really taxes on the customers of these companies and that we need to get “corporate taxes as low as we can in this country”:

CALLER: I have a quick comment and then a question. I certainly agree with moving towards a balanced budget, and containing costs, and cutting where we can, including the Defense Department, which I think is terribly bloated, but I just don’t think it’s feasible to balance the budget with cuts alone. I think you’ve got to also include income and place a fair tax on the wealthiest two percent and closing corporate loopholes that allow huge corporations like Exxon to pay no taxes. For example, Google earned eleven billion dollars last year overseas and paid 4.2 percent in taxes. So I think a fair tax on the wealthy and those who can chip in a little more has to be part of the bigger picture.

WOODALL: Bill, I absolutely agree with you that we can’t do it on spending cuts alone. [...] Now you talk about raising taxes. Now I’m not a fan of class warfare. Now the only people who’ve given me a job in my life is rich people. I’ve never had a poor man offer me a job. [...] At the end of the day, it’s going to be one of us, individuals, that pays every nickel in corporate taxes. I want use to get corporate taxes as low as we can in this country. Which means businesses don’t want to be here, they don’t want to provide jobs here. [...] We have to attract new businesses to our shores, the way to do that is with the lowest corporate tax rate we can get, to make sure folks want to come here.

This guy has clearly forgotten that he is supposed to now be a "public servant", which means that he is an employee of the people of his district. I'm sure some of those people are poor. Now, is he saying that rich people gave him his current job as a legislator? If so, is he saying that they bought him a Congressional seat and that he is a bought and paid for Congressman?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Time to stop giving your eyeballs to Huffington Post

I suppose we should have known, given how effortlessly Arianna Huffington went from being a right-wing conservative to being a liberal. We thought it was the persuasive powers of Al Franken, from the "Strange Bedfellows" bit that they did on the old Craig Kilborn-helmed Daily Show. But no, it was just opportunism.

From Veracity Stew:

Bloggers have been coming and going very rapidly over at Huffington Post since Arianna Huffington sold out to AOL last month. There has been mounting speculation about the death of the once liberal-leaning HuffPo in light of editorial changes. Well, we can now confirm that the old HuffPo is dead and something hideous is sprouting in its place. We know this because of the revelation today that right-wing extremist Andrew Breitbart is now blogging for Huffington.

And what has Breitbart chosen to write about in is premiere post? His friend James O’Keefe.

The latest James O’Keefe success story against NPR has taken a predictable pattern — panicked press releases and firings, followed by denunciation of O’Keefe in a belated attempt to discredit him. Naturally, conservatives are crowing about it, but I wanted to give a little perspective to those Huffington Post readers — whatever your political stripe — who share my passion for free speech, honest debate, and fairness in the media.

Yes, folks -- this is what HuffPo has come to -- giving Andrew Breitbart a podium to defend a sniveling little rat-faced git who ought to right now be a prison bitch for a 350-pound mass murderer.

I vowed to stop linking to HuffPo when it was sold to AOL. Now I refuse to even read it.

(via Melina)

I guess Jesus has forgiven him for helping to drive the U.S. economy off a cliff

When a Democrat runs for office, everything he did in his entire life is up for minute scrutiny at the hands of a voracious media and equally voracious Republicans. But when a Republican runs for office, we're supposed to forget his entire record, his entire life, and just trust him.

Last week we had the appalling spectacle of Newt Gingrich, a convert to Catholicism who seems to have forgotten the repentance part of the confession/repentance/forgiveness model, embody the worst aspects of "Clean Slate Christianity" when he was confronted by a student about his marital history. For the uninitiated, Gingrich's history consists of fucking his second wife while married to his first, presenting said first wife with divorce papers while she was recoverning from cancer surgery, then fucking his third wife while married to his second -- and working very, very hard to impeach Bill Clinton for an extramarital affair while doing so.

Gingrich's response:

"I've had a life which, on occasion, has had problems," Gingrich said. "I believe in a forgiving God, and the American people will have to decide whether that their primary concern. If the primary concern of the American people is my past, my candidacy would be irrelevant. If the primary concern of the American people is the future... that's a debate I'll be happy to have with your candidate or any other candidate if I decide to run."

If you want to know why I talk about the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, and while I knock Christianity in a way I don't knock others, it's because of people like Newt Gingrich -- arrogant, self-important assholes who think THEY know the mind of God.

Now we have another Republican asshole, who may lack the religious hubris of Newt Gingrich, but who is blatantly playing a similar game of "Don't look over there, look over HERE, where I tell you to look. It's Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who has realized that he's going to have a tough time running as a fiscally responsible conservative after having been George W. Bush's first budget director:

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-Ind.) is known as a strong fiscal conservative, a top selling point for a potential presidential run. But before he was governor, Daniels was the first budget director for President Bush during a time when the country went from a budget surplus to a budget deficit, and it's likely that he'll have to explain how that fits with the philosophy he touts should he decide to jump into the Republican field in 2012.

On "Fox News Sunday," host Chris Wallace pressed Daniels on this point. "When you came in, this country had an annual surplus for the first time in 30 years of $236 billion. When you left, two and a half years later, the deficit was $400 billion. You were also there when President Bush launched his Medicaid drug benefit plan that now cost $60 billion a year. I know there was a recession, but do you think it was wise -- at a time when we were fighting two wars -- to have two tax cuts and launch a huge new entitlement?"

Daniels said deficits during that time were inevitable. "It was a recession, two wars and a terrorist attack that led to a whole new category called homeland security," he said. "So nobody was less happy than I to see the surplus go away, but it was going away."

Click over to get to the link to the full article at the $40 Million Woman's site, including the order for diverted attention from Mr. Daniels.

Stop the presses...Glenn Beck is a hypocrite

Are you shocked and appalled? Surprised, even? I'm not

Neither is Southern Beale:

Glenn Beck and the rest of the Fox fools have been whipping up the fear, because liberal rallies are always bad things and full of terrorists and terrorist appeasers and verging on violence (as opposed to conservative rallies which are Patriotic and Free Speech and Constitutional and Freedom and Liberty and yada yada.)

Anyhoo, yesterday Beck told the protestors their unions “are anti-western way of life,” which is the kind of thing people like Beck say: it’s just an insult attached to a group they don’t like (Nazi, communist, terrorist, leech, etc. + liberals, Democrats, Muslims, the poor, etc.), then regurgitated without any thought whatsoever. It's intellectually lazy, but it gets the job done, and frankly with their audience, no more is required. “This group = bad thing.” Whatever. It’s boring.

I just want someone to ask Beck one thing: aren’t you a member of a union? AFTRA? American Federation of Television And Radio Artists? The same AFTRA campaigning to save Public Broadcasting? Beck’s name is listed on the Los Angeles chapter’s June 2010 ballot under “newsperson.” Maybe there’s another newsperson named Glenn Beck, to which I have to say: dude, I feel sorry for you.

Some fetuses have more right to life than others

There's an old, tired, and spectacularly unfunny joke, usually told by people who aren't Jewish, that the ultimate Jewish dilemma is "free ham."

I was reminded of that joke today when I read this:

Since Senator Russell Pearce became president of the Arizona Senate this year he’s ushered in a barrage of anti-immigrant legislation, most famously the assault on the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. Now the original sponsor of the infamous SB1070 has introduced a new bill that should attract even more notoriety. This one has the ominous overtones of being all but guaranteed to cause great harm and even death to some of the people in this state.

Senate Bill 1405 reads as follows:

A. BEFORE A HOSPITAL ADMITS A PERSON FOR NONEMERGENCY CARE, A HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS OFFICER MUST CONFIRM THAT THE PERSON IS A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES, A LEGAL RESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OR LAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES. THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER MAY USE ANY METHOD PRESCRIBED IN SECTION 1-501 TO VERIFY CITIZENSHIP OR LEGAL STATUS.

B. IF THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER DETERMINES THAT THE PERSON DOES NOT MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION, THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER MUST CONTACT THE LOCAL FEDERAL IMMIGRATION OFFICE.

C. IF THE HOSPITAL PROVIDES EMERGENCY MEDICAL CARE PURSUANT TO FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS TO A PERSON WHO DOES NOT MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION, ON SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT OF THE PATIENT THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER MUST CONTACT THE LOCAL FEDERAL IMMIGRATION OFFICE.

D. A HOSPITAL THAT COMPLIES WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS SECTION IS NOT SUBJECT TO CIVIL LIABILITY.

What this means is that anyone who is admitted to or receives emergency care at a hospital will have to prove that they are lawfully present in the United States. This of course presents a whole hornet’s nest of problems-- the least of which is hospitals will most likely not appreciate being saddled with the added responsibility of immigration enforcement.

Suppose a woman who's in the country illegally has a pregnancy emergency and shows up at a hospital. Does that mean that the wingnut position is to let the fetus die rather than allow a woman (vessel, in Wingnutistan) who is not in the country legally to receive treatment?

Would it be irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to

The Enquirer was right about John Edwards after all, wasn't it?

Happy Andy Harris Gets His Health Insurance Day!!

I know that you'll all sleep easier tonight knowing that the new Teabagger Congressional freshmen get their publicly-financed health insurance today. And what a lovely policy it is, too, as Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT 2nd) reveals:

Today, Republican Members of Congress who ran on a platform of repealing health care and patients' rights for millions of Americans officially began receiving their own Congressional health insurance. Just two weeks after their party voted unanimously to strip patient protections and affordable coverage for all Americans, all but 15 new Republican members of the 112th Congress are enrolled in a comprehensive insurance plan. Their plan is paid for with generous subsidies courtesy of the American taxpayer, and has no waiting period for pre-existing illness or disability.

Beginning today, a new Republican Member of Congress with high blood pressure, diabetes, or any chronic condition is immediately covered at the same premium cost as 8 million other federal employees. The same is true for his or her spouse and dependent children, regardless of age, gender or prior illness.

That would not be the case for millions of Americans if the GOP health care repeal bill becomes law. For 129 million men and women under the age of 65 who have pre-existing conditions, repeal of the Affordable Care Act would spell the end of protection from price and coverage discrimination that newly-covered Republican Members of Congress now enjoy.

If the Republican repeal bill were to become law, 1.2 million young Americans between ages 22 and 26 who just became eligible to stay on their parents' insurance plans will be cut loose again and sent back to the ranks of the uninsured.

But my new Republican colleagues would keep theirs.

If the Republican repeal bill were to become law, patients with costly chronic conditions like, cancer, hemophilia and ALS would again be subject to lifetime and yearly limits on coverage. Millions of Americans struck by catastrophic illness or injury would again find themselves exposed to loss of home or bankruptcy. For our family, friends and neighbors, peace of mind would be gone.

But again, my new Republican colleagues would keep theirs.

If the GOP repeal bill were to become law, 4 million small business owners would see their 2010 taxes increase by thousands of dollars each year. The Affordable Care Act included tax credits starting this year to provide relief to small employers who pay much higher premiums than large firms.

Despite the blatant cost increase repeal would force on job-creating small businesses across the country, my new Republican colleagues themselves would not pay a penny more.

Your tax dollars at work, folks. Does YOUR right-wing Congressman accept this insurance while voting against YOUR right to have this kind of coverage? Mine does.

Ayn Rand: Sucker at the public teat; irresponsible welfare recipient, layabout deadbeat

Well, that's what teabaggers call people who accept government "largesse" like Social Security these days, isn't it? Well, how about the fact that their Galtian heroine wasn't so Galtian that she wouldn't take Social Security and Medicare:

Noted speed freak, serial-killer fangirl, and Tea Party hero Ayn Rand was also a kleptoparasite, sneakily gobbling up taxpayer funds under an assumed name to pay for her medical treatments after she got lung cancer.

An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).

As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."

But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so.

Because as long as you espouse bootstraps for others, you can participate in government programs without guilt.

Yeah, I already know the answer: "When the Jets beat the Colts tonight"

When the hell are the Democrats going to start hammering in "Deficit-Exploding Tax Cuts" or "Budget-Busting Tax Cuts" the way the Republicans are hammering "Job-Killing Health Care Bill" (and everything else, despite the fact that however meager it is, and however low-paid, there is actually some job growth going on in the private sector, which is more than could be said about the Bush Administration, which left us this mess)?

Yes, I know, the answer is "When hell freezes over", but when the Republicans are this ripe for the picking, a party with the political savvy of your average high school student council president would know to make hay of this:

U.S. House Republicans, who swept into power promising to rein in the federal deficit, have proposed policies in their first week that would make the shortfall worse.

Moves to repeal President Barack Obama’s health-care law and promises to extend Bush-era tax cuts and offer other breaks would add more than $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, based on reports from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

In one of their first votes, Republicans changed anti- deficit rules to allow for tax cuts that aren’t paid for by savings elsewhere in the budget. New spending would have to be offset with cuts elsewhere, though tax increases to fund new programs would be prohibited.

“They are willing to increase the deficit if it comes as a result of things they want to do, specifically tax cuts,” said Stan Collender, a former congressional budget aide and now managing director of Qorvis Communications in Washington. “It’s a little disingenuous at best.”

The new Republican exemptions to the so-called pay-go budget rules will be “dead on arrival in the Senate,” Senator Charles Schumer a New York Democrat, told reporters yesterday.

Extending tax cuts for the highest-income Americans for just two years, as Congress did last month, will cost about $81.5 billion, according to a December report by the Joint Committee on Taxation. Extending lower rates on most capital gains and dividends will cost $53.1 billion over two years. A reduced estate tax rate will cost $68.1 billion. Over a period of 10 years, the cuts would add more than $1 trillion to the deficit, combined with a repeal of the health-care law.

The Republican mantle of "deficit hawks" simply does not hold up to scrutiny. Here is a chart showing the relationship of revenue to spending under administrations from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush:

(A larger version of this chart, and an analysis of the U.S. national debt over this time, can be found here.)

Republicans have succeeded in convincing Idiot America that the deficits we now face are caused solely by the stimulus and by the health care reform law, not by the fact that George W. Bush started two wars and instead of paying for them, told people to go shopping and gave huge tax cuts to "the haves and the have mores", silencing Idiot America with a few hundred extra bucks in their pockets.

The Republicans' triumphant reign over the House of Representative is off to as rocky a start as George W. Bush's was. If you recall, until the 9/11 attacks saved his bacon, the story of Bush II: Electric Bugaloo, was one of continuing controversy over the Florida recount, the U.S. spy plane that was taken in China, and when a military submarine containing moneybag Bush campaign donors, one of whom may have been at the controls, struck a Japanese fishing vessel. House Republicans may be marching in lockstep to the "job-killing' talking point, and they may believe that THEIR members don't have to adhere to House rules, but anyone who still thinks that this nation hasnt' just handed the keys to the legislative equivalent of an unrepentant angry drunk should wake the hell up.