Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
kpete
kpete's Journal
kpete's Journal
January 7, 2013
-- House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323482504578225620234902106.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/01/06/extra_bonus_quote_of_the_day.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalWire+%28Political+Wire%29
Boehner: "I need this job like I need a hole in the head."
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
"I need this job like I need a hole in the head."
-- House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323482504578225620234902106.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/01/06/extra_bonus_quote_of_the_day.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalWire+%28Political+Wire%29
January 7, 2013
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/06/mcconnell-obama-will-be-dragged-kicking-and-screaming-to-get-spending-cuts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+(The+Raw+Story)
McConnell wishes Obama would just propose sweeping SS/Medicare cuts to use in 2014 campaign ads
McConnell:
“I wish the president would lead us on the discussion rather than putting himself in the position of having to be dragged kicking and screaming to discuss the single biggest issue facing our future. You know, until we adjust the entitlements so that they meet the demographics of our country, we can’t ever solve this problem. The time to solve it is now.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/06/mcconnell-obama-will-be-dragged-kicking-and-screaming-to-get-spending-cuts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+(The+Raw+Story)
January 7, 2013
Women around the world offered powerful memories of fear, stigma and overcoming the past. Here are their stories, and if you have one to share, please submit it here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/06/daily-beast-readers-share-their-stories-of-rape-and-sexual-assault.html
Don't Tell Your Daughter Not To Go Out-Tell You Son To Behave Properly
"I was raised as a particular kind of Christian and purity until marriage was very important. When I was 14 I went through a brief period of rebellion. During this time I met a guy named Tim. Tim was 24 and pretty much loser of the losers. But I was flattered by his attention at a bonfire and agreed to go with him for a ride the next day.
He picked me up from school and drove out into the desert near where we lived. We were joking and laughing and I didn't feel anything was wrong. Then he stopped the car. He pulled out a gun and leaned over in front of me aiming the gun out of the open window. He shot at a bird sitting in a tree. Then he pointed the gun at me and told me that if I didn't do exactly what he said he'd kill my sister. Not me—my little 11 year old sister. I did what he said and the next while is a bit of a blur. He did choke me at one point until I nearly passed out. I was 14 and a virgin. I had never even kissed anyone prior to this.
I was convinced that I was as guilty as he was due to the religious teachings of my childhood. We had been told that if you didn't fight back when being raped then you were guilty of fornication. I did not tell a soul about this event until I was 20. I told my mother who told me not to tell anyone because ‘what man would want me after that.’ She also said it would hurt my brother and my father too much if I told them. So I kept this inside for about 10 more years.
When I did finally tell a male friend what had happened he simply held me in his arms and cried with me. He was just a friend who cared so much and he encouraged me to get counseling. After years of effort I can talk about what happened and even recently posted publicly to my Facebook about what happened to me because the secrecy of rape is horrible. It makes you feel like you have done something wrong. But I did nothing wrong - I was young, impossibly young and in need of attention. The blame rests 100% with Tim. He robbed my innocence but he cannot rob who I am.
................
He picked me up from school and drove out into the desert near where we lived. We were joking and laughing and I didn't feel anything was wrong. Then he stopped the car. He pulled out a gun and leaned over in front of me aiming the gun out of the open window. He shot at a bird sitting in a tree. Then he pointed the gun at me and told me that if I didn't do exactly what he said he'd kill my sister. Not me—my little 11 year old sister. I did what he said and the next while is a bit of a blur. He did choke me at one point until I nearly passed out. I was 14 and a virgin. I had never even kissed anyone prior to this.
I was convinced that I was as guilty as he was due to the religious teachings of my childhood. We had been told that if you didn't fight back when being raped then you were guilty of fornication. I did not tell a soul about this event until I was 20. I told my mother who told me not to tell anyone because ‘what man would want me after that.’ She also said it would hurt my brother and my father too much if I told them. So I kept this inside for about 10 more years.
When I did finally tell a male friend what had happened he simply held me in his arms and cried with me. He was just a friend who cared so much and he encouraged me to get counseling. After years of effort I can talk about what happened and even recently posted publicly to my Facebook about what happened to me because the secrecy of rape is horrible. It makes you feel like you have done something wrong. But I did nothing wrong - I was young, impossibly young and in need of attention. The blame rests 100% with Tim. He robbed my innocence but he cannot rob who I am.
................
Women around the world offered powerful memories of fear, stigma and overcoming the past. Here are their stories, and if you have one to share, please submit it here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/06/daily-beast-readers-share-their-stories-of-rape-and-sexual-assault.html
January 7, 2013
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/holding_the_reins_20130106/
I really Like This Pic Of Boehner
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/holding_the_reins_20130106/
January 6, 2013
Dear Bill Kristol: More People Than You Thought Are Vulgar, Disgusting and Far-Left By Michael Moore
January 5th, 2013 5:39 PM
Dear Bill Kristol: More People Than You Thought Are Vulgar, Disgusting and Far-Left
By Michael Moore
I just sent this to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and one of the most influential advocates of our invasion of Iraq. He posted something this morning about my post where I found an old quote from Chuck Hagel about how the Iraq War is all about the oil. I'll let you know when Bill gets back to me. (If you don't know much about Bill, you can find a good introduction here about his pre-war debate with Daniel Ellsberg.)
Dear Bill,
Thanks for your post mentioning me! I didn't realize you visited my website so early on Saturday mornings. Man, I wish we had cleaned up after the party last night.
Anyway, I see you're mad that back in 2007 former Sen. Chuck Hagel said that we were obviously "fighting for oil" in Iraq. You explain this was "vulgar and disgusting" and "could be the straw that breaks the back of Hagel's chances" to be Obama's next Defense Secretary.
Since you feel so strongly about this, I wanted to make sure you heard about four other prominent people who've said the same thing. (I should have mentioned them yesterday with the Chuck Hagel stuff, I apologize.)
• "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." – Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his 2007 memoir. (Read about it here. Greenspan then lamely tried to walk this back, when he found out just how politically inconvenient it was…while admitting a Bush White House official told him "unfortunately, we can’t talk about oil."
...........
MUCH MORE:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/my-friendly-offer-bill-kristol
January 6, 2013
Via Buzzfeed, above are two of the new gay members of the U.S House being sworn in with their partners by their side. TOP PHOTO: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, right, and his partner, Randy Florke, along with their children. BOTTOM PHOTO: Rep. Mark Pocan, right, and his husband, Philip Frank.
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2013/01/photos-of-week.html#disqus_thread
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/john-boehner-meets-two-new-gay-congressional-spous
Pics - sure to make some homophobic-heads explode
Via Buzzfeed, above are two of the new gay members of the U.S House being sworn in with their partners by their side. TOP PHOTO: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, right, and his partner, Randy Florke, along with their children. BOTTOM PHOTO: Rep. Mark Pocan, right, and his husband, Philip Frank.
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2013/01/photos-of-week.html#disqus_thread
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/john-boehner-meets-two-new-gay-congressional-spous
January 6, 2013
This picture is from a Milford, Delaware playground. Milford is in Southern Delaware in the very conservative Sussex County. I originally saw this picture on Facebook, from a liberal friend downstate, who was sharing it via an original posting of the very nonliberal Dan Gaffney, a conservative talk show radio host. It is nice to know that the outrage concerning this photo is bipartisan. And what is so outrageous about it, you ask?
Well, you can read what it says in English. In Spanish it says (paraphrasing) [font color=red]"You have to have a permit to play here or you will be arrested." [/font] The english version contains no information about needing a permit or else you will be subject to police action. It is an obvious intimidation tactic and a not so subtle "Whites Only" sign.
exact translation:
So if you are a white English speaking "American," you can play here at your own risk so long as you have a parent or guardian watching. If you are brown, if you dare play here without a permit we will arrest your immigrant ass. That is the fucking height of racism, and I will see to it that who ever is responsible for this sign will have their public careers ended immediately.
Make this go viral.
UPDATED:
with MORE signs (for those who doubt this is real) PLUS:
Update 3:
WAY MORE PICS HERE!!!:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/05/1176645/-Outrage-in-Delaware
This Is TRULY Outrageous & It REALLY Pisses Me Off!
This picture is from a Milford, Delaware playground. Milford is in Southern Delaware in the very conservative Sussex County. I originally saw this picture on Facebook, from a liberal friend downstate, who was sharing it via an original posting of the very nonliberal Dan Gaffney, a conservative talk show radio host. It is nice to know that the outrage concerning this photo is bipartisan. And what is so outrageous about it, you ask?
Well, you can read what it says in English. In Spanish it says (paraphrasing) [font color=red]"You have to have a permit to play here or you will be arrested." [/font] The english version contains no information about needing a permit or else you will be subject to police action. It is an obvious intimidation tactic and a not so subtle "Whites Only" sign.
exact translation:
you must have a permit to play in this field - violators will be subject to police action
So if you are a white English speaking "American," you can play here at your own risk so long as you have a parent or guardian watching. If you are brown, if you dare play here without a permit we will arrest your immigrant ass. That is the fucking height of racism, and I will see to it that who ever is responsible for this sign will have their public careers ended immediately.
Make this go viral.
UPDATED:
with MORE signs (for those who doubt this is real) PLUS:
Update 3:
A friend of mine just toured all the schools in the City of Milford. There are three parks/playgrounds at or near the Lulu Ross Elementary School and the new Misspillion school (which are adjacent to each other), and there are multiple offending signs there. This section on the South side of town is home to many Latino families. Indeed, it can be called the Latino section of the town. At other schools and parks in Milford, in the more predominantly white part of town, there are no signs. So this just gets worse and worse, and there is no mistaking the intent. This is not a mistake in translation. This is not a photoshop. This is real.
WAY MORE PICS HERE!!!:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/05/1176645/-Outrage-in-Delaware
January 6, 2013
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
January 4th, 2013 4:25PM
It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?
Wrong.
It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.
How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform
But the most appalling part is the lying. The public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in, official feature of the financial rescue...
...
...The bailout deceptions came early, late and in between. There were lies told in the first moments of their inception, and others still being told four years later. The lies, in fact, were the most important mechanisms of the bailout…
…
…So what exactly did the bailout accomplish? It built a banking system that discriminates against community banks, makes Too Big to Fail banks even Too Bigger to Failier, increases risk, discourages sound business lending and punishes savings by making it even easier and more profitable to chase high-yield investments than to compete for small depositors. The bailout has also made lying on behalf of our biggest and most corrupt banks the official policy of the United States government. And if any one of those banks fails, it will cause another financial crisis, meaning we're essentially wedded to that policy for the rest of eternity – or at least until the markets call our bluff, which could happen any minute now.
Other than that, the bailout was a smashing success.
MORE:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104
VIA:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/05/1176631/-Matt-Taibbi-s-Stunning-New-Rolling-Stone-Article-Secret-and-Lies-of-the-Bailout
Matt Taibbi's Stunning, New Rolling Stone Article: "Secret and Lies of the Bailout"
Secret and Lies of the BailoutThe federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
January 4th, 2013 4:25PM
It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?
Wrong.
It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.
How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform
But the most appalling part is the lying. The public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in, official feature of the financial rescue...
...
...The bailout deceptions came early, late and in between. There were lies told in the first moments of their inception, and others still being told four years later. The lies, in fact, were the most important mechanisms of the bailout…
…
…So what exactly did the bailout accomplish? It built a banking system that discriminates against community banks, makes Too Big to Fail banks even Too Bigger to Failier, increases risk, discourages sound business lending and punishes savings by making it even easier and more profitable to chase high-yield investments than to compete for small depositors. The bailout has also made lying on behalf of our biggest and most corrupt banks the official policy of the United States government. And if any one of those banks fails, it will cause another financial crisis, meaning we're essentially wedded to that policy for the rest of eternity – or at least until the markets call our bluff, which could happen any minute now.
Other than that, the bailout was a smashing success.
MORE:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104
VIA:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/05/1176631/-Matt-Taibbi-s-Stunning-New-Rolling-Stone-Article-Secret-and-Lies-of-the-Bailout
