Category Archives: Politics

I know freedom of speech is a real democratic value, but this?

I am impressed by how much hatred can reside in a head that looks like a plastic baby doll.

From Greg on the Virginia Democrats website:

McDonnell had stated at least five times that he would not reject any stimulus money, including saying in February that “we ought to take it to the maximum degree as possible.” [Washington Post, 2/27/09]
On February 27, 55 local elected officials from across Virginia signed a letter to McDonnell asking him whether he would join Governors like Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin in rejecting portions of federal stimulus funds.
In a response letter on March 4, McDonnell responded emphatically that he would accept federal funds. “If I am Governor I am not going to deny the taxpayers of Virginia the federal funding that they and their children are paying for.”

I guess that it is now apparent that McDonnell will keep faith with his party ideologues even if it means selling out the citizens of the Commonwealth.

When you reject worker training and workforce stability for political nonsense, what do you have to be thinking?
Maybe the Obstructionists believe the working poor are part of the local color of the South, able to survive on beans and cornbread, uneducated but wise in the way of the world, happy in a rural innocent rag-tag way uncorrupted by education, money, and a desire for luxuries like clean water and Internet access.
Maybe they think that training and financial stability would corrupt the help, and workers would forget their place, even come to believe that they actually deserve health care.
Maybe they see that with education and incentives for clean energy, Virginians would not consent to have their mountaintops bulldozed, their streams polluted, and their homes blackened in coal dust when the wind and sun are free. That would cause serious problems for a very few wealthy mine owners and operators.
But maybe the obstructionists aren’t thinking at all. They gave that up during the Bush II administration, and now they can’t get it back, neither for love nor money.

Thanks to Not Larry Sabato for the link to the video of Mike Huckabee encouraging voter suppression at a Bob McDonnell rally:

Now, I suppose that since there was laughter we are supposed to think that the comments were intended to be a joke. But I grew up in a church where pastors and evangelists told and re-told a story about a church that was upset by a bar that was operating nearby. They met daily and prayed that the bar would cease operation, and after a few days it burned to the ground. The prayer group met the day after the fire to thank God for the answer to their prayers, and one elderly member was particularly joyful. She explained, “I was here every day to pray, but praise God yesterday I put some legs on my prayers.” This story was always greeted with “Amen” and appreciative chuckles, and nobody ever pointed out that arson is a crime.
So I am less inclined to laugh.

So I got e-mail today asking me to donate to AARP. It was a personal e-mail from Bill Novelli, the CEO. It said:
(No link. It’s my e-mail. But trust me, I think he sent it to more than one person…)

We want to break through partisan gridlock to create real and meaningful change. Because ensuring the health and financial security of all Americans is too big a task for one party to handle on its own ? this problem requires the ideas and support of both sides of the aisle.
The time for action is now. As health care costs continue to escalate at an alarming rate, coupled with an ailing economy, millions of Americans are facing growing holes in their retirement security.

Now during the Bush administration the AARP became a health insurance company. It supported the prescription drug plan designed by the drug manufacturers and left seniors falling into the doughnut hole and scrambling for new plans when their plan dropped their medication. Then it started a non-profit foundation so it could collect more donations.
Sure, I am going to donate now to a health insurance company. I am going to donate this:
Anybody who is a worker or an employer or a retiree or a disabled person or a parent or a child of adult parents has to be an idiot NOT to support national health care. If they donate money to a for-profit health care provider — even their non-profit advocacy arm — they are twice an idiot. Taking with your right hand and giving with your left doesn’t make you Robin Hood, and advocacy groups that expand into the arena they should be advocating against are just wrong.
And I also remember that one side of the aisle shoved us so close to the edge of the financial cliff with incompetence, cronyism, deregulation, wrong-headed flag-waving, and misguided so-called free-market ideology that a lot of people have lost their footing entirely. I am so impressed that now you see how we need a bipartisan effort to drag the survivors back before the rest of the shelf collapses.

In an entry titled “Ponzi Democracy,” Rory O’Connor, writing on his blog Media is a Plural, gives a brief history of the original Ponzi Scheme and asks ” Is it possible, I wonder, that there may be a connection between the deregulation of the media and the fact that the same media never warned us of the dangers of financial deregulation?”
If you are paying attention to the financial crisis (and who isn’t?) or to the Bernie Madoff story, this article is worth reading, as are the comments it is drawing.

It appears that the closest thing we have in the United States to a socialist state is Alaska.

And how many degrees are they from Sarah Palin?
Thanks to Glen, over at Art Machine.

I agree with Hillary about Mavericks.

And I need someone to explain to me how a maverick loner independent thinker who does his own thing has a brand new resurgence plan (unveiled at the town hall debate on Tuesday October 7) that is really an existing program of the FHA that went into effect the first of October — at least, that is what I heard on All Things Considered on October 6th. It is the Hope for Homeowners program, which “helps homeowners refinance their mortgages into more affordable, government-backed loans.” You can find the interview with Brian Montgomery, Federal Housing Administration commissioner, on the NPR website.