Wake Up to the National Security Threat
From Our Own Domestic Extremists
“Just supposing our national government . . . had fallen into the hands of men loyal to an alien power, then would the people yank the usurpers out of office at once?”
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In 2007 we asked, “Is the U.S. an Occupied Nation?” With the country exhausted by war and the Gulf Coast still struggling ...
NObama! No Cuts to Social Security, Medicare;
WPA-, CCC-style Jobs Programs Now
“We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.” —FDR, 1941
“. . . if the tax cuts ...
“Arguing about How to Defuse a Huge Ticking Bomb”
Burn-it-Down Nihilism Spreads Among Tea-Infused House Republicans
[ cross-posted at Daily Kos ]
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“From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.” —Diderot
House Republicans laughed a former George H. W. Bush economist out of the room on Monday when he tried to warn them of the dire ...
2001 Bush Tax Cuts: Where the Deficit Began
Those intrepid researchers at Think Progress have dug up a headline from Aug. 1, 2001—almost exactly 10 years ago—that shows the long-bleeding fiscal damage done by the Bush tax cuts. Only six months into his first term, after George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Democratic president ...
“High Popalorum” and “Low Popahirum”: Huey P. Long on the Difference between Democrats and Republicans
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MKb35NK0F0&feature=related
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While we’re either gnawing our knuckles or blissfully unaware there’s a debt ceiling hostage crisis now in its —th week . . . While the putatively Democratic President again invites the Republican House leaders to the White ...
Disaster Capitalism Will Solve U.S. Budget Deficit?
Ask New Orleans and Wisconsin
David in our Berkeley bureau, whose last dispatch was about global warming and extreme weather (May 24), observes that the G.O.P. hard-liners insisting on reducing the deficit only by cutting Medicare and privatizing other “common good” safety net programs are simply employing the same old ...
On Independence Day, with Help from a Founding Mother
“In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they ...
“They Need to Do Their Job.”
Obama Bitch-Slaps G.O.P. Deficit Hardliners, Hell-Bent Extremists
“Before we ask our seniors to pay more for health care, before we cut our children’s education, before we sacrifice our commitment to the research and innovation that will help create more jobs in the economy, I think it’s only ...
Obama’s Troop Drawdown Is Little, Late, But a Start
In Announcing 15-month, 1/3 Troop Reduction, Is President Ignoring or Responding to Public Opinion and Bipartisan Congressional Trend Against War?
The announcement of a 33,000-troop drawdown is more than we would have gotten from the previous president; bu though we’re disappointed at the ...
Wrath of God? : Global Warming and Extreme Weather
In response to our recent post about Christian fundamentalists’ unconcern with the present danger of global warming, our good friend David in Berkeley, a former editor at Sierra Club Books, had this to say:
I’ve been wanting to tell the rapturists et al.: Maybe the tornadoes, hurricanes and ...
World Survives to Be Raptured by CO2 Poisoning and Believers’ Negligence
“Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also ...
To Save New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Morganza Spillway Is Opened; Only 2nd Opening Since 1954
“The President of the Mississippi River Commission Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh has directed the New Orleans District Commander Col. Ed Fleming to be prepared to operate the Morganza Floodway within 24 hours. The operation will include the deliberate and slow opening of the structure.” —U.S. ...