Forbes Avenue » republicans

Good Morning Forbes

negrostotle — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:00:28 +0000

A long lost Leonardo Di Vinci painting has been discovered. Staying with the concept of boring painting names, its called: “Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress.” Cool that they found it though.

U.S. soccer forward Charlie Davies was injured in a serious (car cut in half serious) auto accident. Fortunately it looks like he will be okay. Unfortunately, one other person was not so lucky.

Remember that Lil Mama/Empire State of Mind debacle at the MTV VMA’s? Apparently, Beyonce tried to stop it…to no avail.

DJ Khaled pitching for McDonalds is so hilarious that I actually forget its a huge sellout job for a company that needs no advertising. Definitely worth a listen.

Breaking from previous administrations, President Obama is set to enter diplomatic talks with a raging wildfire.

The Nobel Prize committee breaks its traditional silence to defend their selection of Obama.

Top ten reasons why the new Republican website sucks. #7: “The ‘what’s up’ page — hip! starts with this sentence: ‘the internet has been around for a while now.’”

Tracy Morgan uses his audio book to air out his beef with Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri.

The new January Jones GQ spread is generating some buzz, but the Post-Gazette catches the real gem: She’s dressing up for Halloween as Troy Polamalu.

California first lady Maria Shriver gets caught breaking the new hands-free cell phone law. Governor Schwarzenegger promises “swift action.”

And the ten worst sexy Halloween costumes.

Good Morning Forbes

negrostotle — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:00:53 +0000

Putting signs to good use.

The audio from Miguel Cabrera’s wife’s 911 call. Kinda scary.

15 TV characters that never came out of the closet…but should have.

What Shyne’s first day out of jail might go like…

NASA is planning to bomb the moon in search of water. Click here for awesome video of the mission.

Scenes from a crackdown: How the Pittsburgh Police– some dressed in camouflage for some reason– crushed free speech at the G20 summit.

The National Republican Congressional Committee hopes Nancy Pelosi gets “put in her place.” Democrats fire back: “…not surprising, coming from a party that’s 80 percent male and 100 percent white.”

Tom DeLay performs his greatest act of public service to America ever by quitting Dancing With the Stars.

The brilliant Matt Taibbi explains why Michael Moore’s problems are all our fault.

Good Morning Forbes

negrostotle — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:00:34 +0000

They look so adorable…until you realize they can rip your face off.

The clip is called Minnesota LB gets “caught in a sensitive area”. But I will now forever know it as, the video where “that mother****** hit my p****” Awesome.

This is not a joke. Conservatives are rewriting the Bible to make it line up with Republican talking points and to remove all traces of “liberal bias.” For example: “Excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story.”

Facebook is scanning our status updates to find out how happy we are.

If you own a Hotmail account, there’s a good chance your password just got stolen.

In the most important story you won’t read this week, China, Russia, Japan, and France are working hard to stop the world’s supply of oil from being priced in American dollars.

Method Man got arrested yesterday for not paying taxes on his dollar dollar bills, ya’ll.

David Letterman uses his show again for more personal business– this time for apologies to his wife and staff. Just stick to the jokes and do a 60 Minutes interview already.

Good Morning Forbes

Money and self-interest: Why the Democrats can’t get anything done

griffn — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:26:56 +0000

Last weekend, tigger500 wrote a great post about the sorry state of our politics, specifically why the Democratic Party can’t or won’t seem to do the things we sent them to Washington to do:

It’s foolish to think we can hold onto a majority by playing it safe and not getting anything done. There is a whole lot of room to move between playing it safe and being crazy single-minded drones like Republicans. No one is saying we should copy their MO, just a little of their conviction.

When we lose seats in 2010, as is highly likely, then we’ll all take to the blogs whining about how the Republicans are ramming stuff down our throats that we don’t like. What the fuck are we doing now?

Ugh…you know, the truth is that though Democrats are supposed to be the liberal party, the party of opposition, they are not. They truly are a hodgepodge of people who don’t like the modern Republican Party. That doesn’t necessarily equal liberal or progressive.

So we have one party and a bunch of people who don’t like that party. That’s it.

There are two things this brings to mind for me. The first is the interview Bill Maher did with Bill Moyer a few weeks ago, where Moyer said that the reason Democrats can’t seem to accomplish things that have large public support (like meaningful health care reform) is because America is actually not a two-party democracy, it’s a one-party corporatocracy. While we think we’re sending our representatives to Washington with our votes, our representatives think (correctly) that they’re actually being sent to Washington by the money they’ve raised from various corporations. And because Democrats and Republicans get their money from the same corporations, they basically have the same non-progressive, status quo agenda once voted in, regardless of how they frame it in speeches.

Republicans are less hypocritical in this respect because conservatism by definition is keeping things as is, and Republicans are great at getting that done (hence their exclusion from the title of this post). Democrats, on the other hand, have the extra hurdle of keeping things as is while making it look like they’re delivering on the change they promised. Of course, there are always social issues that will genuinely get the support of one party over another; and for that reason alone our votes are still worth something. But if the issue involves some large corporation’s bottom line– even for issues as grave as war– it’s almost always going to go whichever way Wall Street pushes it.

The other thing tigger500’s post brings to mind is a post by Matthew Yglesias a few weeks ago about how the prevailing moral value in Washington is cynical self-interest. Yglesias writes:

For example, Senators who genuinely do believe that carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to a global climate crisis seem to think nothing of nevertheless taking actions that endanger the welfare of billions of people on the grounds that acting otherwise would be politically problematic in their state. In other words, they don’t want to do the right thing because their self-interest points them toward doing something bad. But it’s impossible to imagine these same Senators stabbing a homeless person in a dark DC alley to steal his shoes. And what’s more, the entire political class would be (rightly!) shocked and appalled by the specter of a Senator murdering someone for personal gain. Yet it’s actually taken for granted that “my selfish desires dictate that I do x” constitutes a legitimate reason to do the wrong thing on important legislation.

So basically you have a lot of politicians, Democrat and Republican, whose primary guiding value on every issue is whatever will help them get reelected. Voting for health care reform may be a godsend to the millions of their constituents who are uninsured and underinsured and the millions more who are vulnerable to health-care-induced bankruptcy. But if that means opening themselves up to attack in 2010 from a primary challenger who might run commercials labeling them a socialist or might put their picture up next to a potentially unpopular Obama, they won’t do it.

And if there’s any doubt that self-interest is the prevailing value in Washington, consider that 90% to 98% of House incumbents get reelected every term, which is among the highest incumbency rates in the world (over the last 20 years, the Senate has been between 75% and 96%). There simply is nothing else that gets accomplished by Congress with that kind of bipartisan consistency.

With that said, Obama will get some version of health care reform passed this year, if for no other reason than because he’s gotten the insurance companies on board. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s gotten the insurance companies on board, which no doubt means that somewhere there’s been a tradeoff where the American people are getting screwed at the expense of higher profits. If Matt Taibbi’s enlightening and devastating Rolling Stone article is any indication, our government is currently fixing our broken health care system by putting lipstick on the pig and then forcing everyone to buy into it (two things Obama vehemently opposed during the campaign).

The public option has already been watered down because Republicans argued against it, saying it would provide Americans with better coverage at lower cost and thus force insurance companies to improve their services or go out of business. Let me say that again. The argument against the public option is that it would provide Americans with better coverage at lower cost. Is there any question who our politicians really work for?

The bottom line is that there are certain very serious crises– like health care and global warming– that involve deeply entrenched corporate interests, and our government in its current state cannot fix them. The inmates will never regulate the asylum (as we saw illustrated by last year’s financial collapse), especially if it means getting back in their cells and handing the keys over to the warden.

The maddeningly simple solution to all this is two-fold: campaign finance reform and congressional term limits. Campaign finance reform, if done properly, will take the corporate money out of politics. It will ensure that our health care legislation will not be written by politicians whose campaigns are dependent upon funding from Aetna, Blue Cross, and Kaiser Permanente. It will ensure that our global warming legislation is not sponsored by the good people at Exxon Mobil. And it will ensure that our leaders in Washington don’t dedicate half their time and resources to raising money.

Congressional term limits will put a big dent in the plague of Washington self-interest. It will ensure that all 535 members of Congress aren’t at all times facing a future reelection bid. It will ensure that there are no nine-term 91-year-old U.S. Senators who are faced with the choice of getting reelected and rejoining lifelong colleagues back in Washington to work for another six years or going back home to West Virginia to die. And it will ensure that things like morality and the greater good have a bigger say in our government, and that every decision Congress makes isn’t solely dependent on the individual fortunes of those voting.

Will campaign finance reform and congressional term limits solve all our government’s problems? No. We’ll think of new ones. But the fact is, our political system is broken; it works reliably and efficiently for those in it, but not for the people it’s meant to serve. Simply put, corporate money and unlimited term limits are cancers that infect everything our government does. Unless we cut them out completely, the concerns of ordinary Americans will continue to be a distant third on Washington’s list of priorities.

POSTSCRIPT: Right now, in a case that has received very little media attention (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission), the Supreme Court is in the process of lifting the current restrictions on corporate spending in political elections. Needless to say, this would pour gasoline on every single issue our country faces. The corporate personhood argument being made by conservative justices is based on the belief that our founding fathers intended for corporations to have the same rights and privileges– including contributing to political campaigns– as individuals. First, this entire argument is based not on any prior court decision or anything our founding fathers ever said, but on an off-the-record comment made by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in 1886. Second, this is a case where legal theory pales in comparison to the stark reality of what a Biblical flood of special-interest money would do to our government. Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor– in one of her first significant actions on the Court– is challenging the entire foundation of corporate personhood law. Unfortunately, she appears to be outnumbered.

On Politics and the Sorry State of Affairs (or, you know, the Democrats)

tigger500 — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:54:41 +0000

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out what to say about politics of late.

Part of it is that life gets in the way and a brotha ain’t always got time to sit down and take stock of everything that is happening. And part of it is that I’m losing faith that we liberals always taking to the innanets is even effective.

But this was a big week, folks. Big education speech. Big health care speech. White folks still freakin’ out about the fact that the president got some melanin. And one of the tried and true liberal visionaries lost his job, leaving Obama with pretty much no one on the Left with which to work.

Time to say something.

But what do I say that I haven’t said already? I wrote a few months ago about my frustration with the Democrats? But I wanna take it a step further:

I do not believe there is a progressive movement in this country, which is why I think the Democrats are so ineffectual.

To wit: Brilliant reporting on how the Democrats fucked up health care from jump.

To wit:

I identify completely with Maher’s core message, which is that Obama and the Democrats won the last two elections and that gives them some license to do what they think is right.

Who is standing up for the millions of Americans who do want health care reform? Who is standing up for the millions of Americans who want to address global warming, mandatory minimum sentencing, our crumbling infrastructure, and the sorry state of our schools?

Or, to put it the other way, who is holding their feet to the fire so that they can do these things?

There are 59 Democrats in the Senate. There is a solid Democratic majority in the House. And the President is a Democrat.

President Barack Obama, flanked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. on Capitol Hill in Washington Jan. 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Can we get something done?

You know, I read the liberal and mainstream blogs and there is passion to spare. I just don’t know why it doesn’t seem to make it to the Halls of Congress. Maybe Democratic members of Congress really don’t give a shit about their constituents and so our passion falls on deaf ears. Maybe our passion is misdirected. We get outraged at the other side’s racism, but when it looks a bit like something we’d do or say ourselves, we are a lot less quiet.

When are we going to take the Republicans as seriously as they take us?

There is a real, palpable fear of the most powerful man in the world being a Black man and it continues to be the driving force behind the Republican party’s MO. What that means in practical terms is hard to describe. And because it is hard to describe, so many of us think that means it’s probably not a big deal, it’s probably just the (mis)perception of old school black politicians and black nationalists who hate Whitey, and it’ll die out because “the demographic trends are in our favor.”

And while we take the “wait it out” approach, The Second Reconstruction is ending.

We are gutting the Voting Rights Act, ruling that if you have to choose between discriminating against black folks or leveling the playing field for everyone (which, actually means that everyone has about the same chance of getting screwed), eh, go for the discriminating against black folks.

We haven’t given voting rights to D.C. residents, we haven’t passed a bill to keep people in their homes (which, by the by, wouldn’t cost the taxpayer anything), and we are screwing up the health care and energy bills. Oh – also we have them 59 votes in the Senate, but the Republicans are holding up many of Obama’s executive branch and judicial nominees, like Tom Perez and Dawn Johnsen.

Oh but we do something. As Bill said, the other side whines and cries or outright lies about something and Democrats capitulate. Van Jones should not have resigned. Single payer should never have been off the table. We should be investigating the extent to which torture was sanctioned and take it all the way to the top.

Why? Because we have to stand for something.

It’s foolish to think we can hold onto a majority by playing it safe and not getting anything done. There is a whole lot of room to move between playing it safe and being crazy single-minded drones like Republicans. No one is saying we should copy their MO, just a little of their conviction.

When we lose seats in 2010, as is highly likely, then we’ll all take to the blogs whining about how the Republicans are ramming stuff down our throats that we don’t like. What the fuck are we doing now?

Ugh…you know, the truth is that though Democrats are supposed to be the liberal party, the party of opposition, they are not. They truly are a hodgepodge of people who don’t like the modern Republican Party. That doesn’t necessarily equal liberal or progressive.

So we have one party and a bunch of people who don’t like that party. That’s it.

I like diversity as much as the next guy. But it seems to me that every group within the Democratic rank and file likes having different folks around, long as those folks don’t get in the way of what they want. So teachers’ unions can hold up education reform. And Blue Dogs can hold up anything that isn’t “fiscally responsible.”

But this is what you get when the only thing your party can agree on is that you don’t like the old White guys across the aisle.

It really is enough to make you want to disengage. I like to listen to the president speak. I’m even moved, mostly. But I really think the time for speeches is over.

I think its time to govern.

Good Morning Forbes

negrostotle — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:00:13 +0000

Real Music Lives…cause that Colbie Calliat is straight banging son!

Audrina Patridge. Dumb. Vapid. Half Naked…eating strawberries. All is forgiven.

“Controversial” South African runner Caster Semenya has gone all “Jenny Jones makeover” on us, in an attempt to show she’s a woman. Honestly, I think the drug test will help a lot more than some bangles and some make up…but maybe that’s just me.

The 7 greatest, most spastic Carlton dances. I just made your life. You’re welcome.

Responding to the shortage of American babies, Katherine Heigl is adopting one from Korea.

Can’t find the porn you’re looking for on Google? Microsoft wants you to take the Bing challenge.

Memo to Joe Wilson, the Republican congressman who yelled out “You lie!” in the middle of the president’s health care speech: STFU.

Republican state representative Michael Duvall– a married father of two– kills time before a legislative hearing by bragging about all the lobbyist pussy he’s pulling… not realizing that his mic is on. Oops.

Yeah, so… bad day for Republicans.

Good Morning Forbes.

How Facebook taught me to fear and loathe Sarah Palin

griffn — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:11:58 +0000

Let’s get one thing straight. If you take Sarah Palin seriously, I cannot take you seriously. This is a woman who has shown clearly and repeatedly that she has no idea what she’s talking about on virtually every subject. This is a former governor who recently gave her two weeks notice to the state of Alaska because she didn’t feel like going to work anymore. The extent to which you value her opinions is the extent to which I devalue yours.

I’ve pretty much felt this way about Palin since last fall, when America was first introduced to her. The morning that John McCain’s shocking vice presidential pick was announced, Palin– the first female VP pick since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984– gave a rousing speech to a rally in Ohio. I thought, “Wow, this move is kind of brilliant.” Five minutes later, after scanning her Wikipedia page, I thought, “Wow, this is going to backfire spectacularly.” By the weekend, the news broke that her teenage daughter was pregnant by her high school dropout boyfriend. And a fumbling response from the McCain/Palin camp promising a shotgun wedding by the spring signaled that the Palin circus was officially in town.

But two recent occurrences have led me to fear and loathe Palin even more. Oddly, both occurred on Facebook.

The first was a status update that showed up in my news feed one morning about a month ago. “Uncle So-and-So is a fan of Sarah Palin.” I wiped the sleep from my eyes and blinked in disbelief. I knew my uncle was a Republican, and I respected that. He’s also a ridiculously smart guy who works high up in corporate America. I think he’s even run for local office a few times, which makes him a better citizen than me. But seeing that status update was like receiving news that your smart, successful uncle had suddenly joined a cult.

Later that afternoon, I checked my Facebook again. “Uncle So-and-So voted ‘yes’ in the ‘Sarah Palin for President in the year 2012?’ poll.” I blinked again. It’s one thing to subscribe to her fan page, but president? Before then, I believed that the only people who still thought Sarah Palin should be in possession of our nuclear codes were knuckle-dragging ideologues who cared more about keeping their guns than they did about preventing the entire country from looking like post-Katrina New Orleans. But if someone like my uncle could support Palin, then America was in way bigger trouble than I thought.

The other recent event that shaped my opinion of Palin occurred earlier this weekend. For the first time since resigning as governor, Sarah Palin issued a policy statement. On her Facebook page. Here’s what she had to say about the current debate on health care reform:

Who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

First, note the glaring hypocrisy of her not only bringing her baby into the discussion, but her “baby with Down Syndrome.” She constantly drags her family into the spotlight and uses them for political purposes– especially that poor kid Trig– then complains when people talk about her family. Pick a side, Sarah; either they’re in the discussion or they aren’t.

Second, note her cartoonish characterization of Congress’s very serious proposals. According to her, health care reform equals an Obama “death panel” that will institute a system that’s “downright evil.” If you’re looking for a reason why we can’t have a civil debate on health care, why town hall meetings have turned into mob scenes, and why seniors enjoying all the benefits of Medicare are the ones screaming loudest about the evils of government-run health care, look no further. On one side, you’ve got Congress doing real work to improve our access to health care while still keeping the industry profitable, on the other side, you’ve got Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin telling people that we’re going to start gassing senior citizens and mentally handicapped babies.

Finally, note the fact that Palin’s “death panel” conclusion is a complete and fundamental misreading of the proposal in question. As Politico’s Ben Smith notes, either she just doesn’t understand what she’s talking about or she’s purposely misleading people. (I think it’s a little from column A and a little from column B):

The former governor is basing her claim on language in the House bill which cites “advance care planning consultation.” As non-partisan sources note, the provision deals with medical practicioners helping individuals prepare living wills, powers of attorney and the like. It’s a long ways from there to a “death panel” where bureaucrats decide who lives or dies.

So again we come back to the fact that there is a disturbingly large group of people in America who believe that Sarah Palin is the person who should be steering the ship, including my very smart, very much should-know-better uncle. Specifically, there is a disturbingly large segment of the Republican Party who believes that experience and intelligence are irrelevant, and that anyone who can parrot the right conservative talking points is capable of running the nation.

Now, I have no worries whatsoever that Sarah Palin will ever become president or even win the Republican nomination. I’m confident that no matter how large her ambition, there’s no chance she can hold up under the scrutiny of an extended nationwide campaign. My concern is that there are still people in America– a lot of people, smart people– who care what she thinks. It’s one thing to have an honest debate, it’s another thing to have to stop in the middle of an honest debate to discuss whether the moon is made of cheese.

So it’s time to draw a line. You’re either with us or you’re with Sarah Palin. If you show up to a town hall meeting shouting arguments you heard from Sarah Palin, expect to be ignored. If you exercise your right to publicly support Sarah Palin, expect your friends and neighbors to exercise their right to talk behind your back. And if I see you on Facebook subscribing to Sarah Palin’s fan page, expect to get some funny looks at the next family reunion.

Confused by the Health Care Debate?

tigger500 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:41:33 +0000

So you know how there’s all this chatter about the health care debate and you have no idea what anyone is talking about?

Curious which proposal will actually cover the 50 milllion uninsured? Which one will give White Republican men heart attacks by raising taxes? Which one might actually improve the health care you already got?

Right. Me too.

Well the Kaiser Family Foundation has created a new tool on its website that allows you to compare what the various health care proposals would actually do.

Word of warning – it’s still written in slight jargon.

Enjoy!

Compare Health Care Proposals.