Political News Bits of the Day

[Dardedar]

Obama Delivers on Tax Cuts

This page lists the average tax cuts for the nation, and then breaks them down by state.

Excerpt:

"According to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, the vast majority of Americans do not
perceive that they have received a tax cut from President Obama. Asked if the President “has
already raised taxes this past year,” 53 percent of those polled said that the President has
“kept taxes the same,” and 24 percent think that the President has “raised taxes.” A mere 12
percent believe that the President has cut their taxes.1

This is an astonishing level of misunderstanding. The truth is that the major tax cuts enacted
in the 2009 economic stimulus bill actually reduced federal income taxes for tax year 2009
for 98 percent of all working families and individuals. These tax cuts saved working families
and individuals an average of $1,158 on the tax returns they will file by April 15. (The median
tax cut was approximately $600.)"

Link PDF

"President Obama Cut Taxes for 99% of
Working Families in Arkansas in 2009"

Crooks and Liars

[Dardedar]

Chart showing break down of our deficits:

[L.Wood]

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From the "Can't Make This Up" department:

Limbaugh says the volcanic eruption in Iceland is god's reaction for health care reform.

..see Think Progress story here.

Hey, it worked a little bit for Pat Robertson on NOLA so why shouldn't Limpballs scrape the bottom of the same barrel.

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[Dardedar]

Drill baby Drill

***
"Deepwater Horizon, the giant technically-advanced rig which exploded on April 20 and sank two days later, is leaking an estimated 42,000 gallons per day through a pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface. The spill has spread across 1,800 square miles -- an area larger than Rhode Island -- according to satellite images, oozing its way toward the Louisiana coast and posing a threat to wildlife, including a sperm whale spotted in the oil sheen...

...the spill's damage has been exacerbated by the depth of the drilling, causing the oil to spread across a wider area and impeding clean-up efforts. On Monday morning, response teams failed to seal off the wellhead with a remote vehicle about a mile under the surface of the water -- an effort akin to "putting a lid on a peanut jar from thousands of feet away," explains Charter.

That threatens to make the spill the most damaging since the Exxon Valdez accident off the coast of Alaska in 1989. It is already the worst oil rig disaster since a blowout on the Union Oil platform off the coast of California in 1969 -- the public outrage over that 11-day oil spill helped spawn the modern environmental movement."

Link



"The oil is escaping from two leaks in a drilling pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface. The leaks threaten hundreds of miles of coastline in four states, with waters that are home to dolphins, sea birds, and prime fishing and tourism areas.

As of Monday afternoon, an area 48 miles long and 39 miles wide was covered by oil that leaked from the site of the rig, which was owned by Transocean Ltd. and operated by BP PLC...

Pensacola, Fla., is probably the eastern edge of the threatened area, though no one really knows what the effects will be.

"We've never seen anything like this magnitude," he said. "The problems are going to be on the beaches themselves, that's where it will be really visible."

Aaron Viles, director for New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group, said he flew over the spill Sunday and saw what was likely a sperm whale in the oil sheen.

"There are going to be significant marine impacts," he said."

Link

[Savonarola]

Drill baby Drill

But offshore drilling is now so safe for workers and for the environment!

Gotta love Republicans. They epitomize Adam Savage's now-classic quote, "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

P.S.: The oil slick is now the size of West Virginia.

[L.Wood]

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[Betsy]

In response to the offshore oil rig explosion post above, yesterday I answered the phone at my mother's house and ended up giving my answers to a survey that I suspect was being administered by an oil and gas company or their lobbyists. The questions were rather loaded, like:

Do you think oil and gas exploration is safer now for the environment than in the past?

well, of course it is. that doesn't mean its safe.

Do you like or dislike the following: wind energy, solar energy and nuclear energy.

me: all three together or each separately?

them: all three together.

me: well, i like some more than others, but majority rule I'll say like.

them: okay, do you like or dislike water energy, coal, and gas.

so look for a poll result soon that says Americans think oil drilling is safe for the environment and like nuclear and coal energy.

[kwlyon]

In response to the offshore oil rig explosion post above, yesterday I answered the phone at my mother's house and ended up giving my answers to a survey that I suspect was being administered by an oil and gas company or their lobbyists. The questions were rather loaded, like:

Do you think oil and gas exploration is safer now for the environment than in the past?

well, of course it is. that doesn't mean its safe.

Do you like or dislike the following: wind energy, solar energy and nuclear energy.

me: all three together or each separately?

them: all three together.

me: well, i like some more than others, but majority rule I'll say like.

them: okay, do you like or dislike water energy, coal, and gas.

so look for a poll result soon that says Americans think oil drilling is safe for the environment and like nuclear and coal energy.

I just yell into the phone: "FUCK YOU FRANK!!!!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz

Kevin

[Dardedar]

I answered the phone at my mother's house and ended up giving my answers to a survey that I suspect was being administered by an oil and gas company or their lobbyists.

DAR
I don't do polls or surveys anymore. Had someone waste 1/2 an hour of my time on something with retarded, impossibly loaded and upside down questions from a guy who said it would take just a few minutes and then later said it was the first one he had done (a lie). I hung up on him.

D.

[Dardedar]

Down is bad, up is good:

The Road to Recovery.

I sent this to Mr. Radigan, (a fellow who's had some trouble, or discomfort, with these type of charts) and he passed along this cartoon:



Trouble is, the "redefined success as a slowing of failure" doesn't apply to these charts.

Bush's part of the charts clearly represent failure, Obama's does not:

Chart A: A reversal of job loss (that's a start) and then positive job growth (that's a success)

Chart B: A reversal of decline and negative GDP (that's a start) and then positive and strong (5.6%) GDP growth (that's a success)

Chart C: A reversal of decline in the DOW and return to growth, which is of course a success.

Try again Mike.

[L.Wood]

.
\
"One toke (dose) over the line."

Limbaugh blames "environmentalist whackos" for the Gulf oil spill. It's a conspiracy you see.

Media Matters here.
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[Dardedar]

A 10-year chart of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP:



LINK

[Dardedar]

Interior Department Still Filled With Anti-Science Bush-Era Managers

"Jeff Ruch, the head of the public-employee whistleblowing group, said that as in many other regulatory agencies, Obama political appointees in the Interior Department's notoriously troubled Minerals Management Service (MMS) have not taken enough steps to reverse the anti-environmental and anti-science policies of the Bush years.

"For the most part, the Obama team is still the Bush team," Ruch told HuffPost, noting that beyond a thin layer of political appointees, offices like MMS are run by managers who were "promoted during the Bush years -- In many instances, promoted for basically violating the law. And from what we can tell, their conduct hasn't changed."

Link

[Dardedar]

The "Tea Baggers" are terribly offended if you use this term now and they want it compared to the "N" word... but it's important to remember where the term Tea bagger came from:

"The origin of the term is relevant in determining the relative size of the Tea Party’s violin. What wasn’t pointed out to Tapper is the fact that the Tea Partiers not only invented the term, they did so in order to inflict a similar double entendre onto the President, the Democrats, and liberals in general. Hence, it’s a violin so small, you need an electron microscope with a zoom lens to see it.

Now, they’re trying to re-cast the term as a slur, on a par with the “n-word,” hurtful to all the Tea Party members who are just ordinary moms, dads, sons, and daughters. The latter point has some resonance, but the former is ridiculous in the extreme.

In emails, protest signs, t-shirts, and online, early Tea Party literature urged protesters to “Tea Bag the White House,” and to “Tea-bag the liberal Dems before they tea-bag you.” The suggestion is that the metaphoric “tea-bags” be shoved in the mouths of the President, Democratic members of Congress, and even ordinary citizens who identify as liberal Democrats. The idea that they just didn’t know the term’s only (at that time) meaning is belied by the fact that they obviously knew it was negative (and non-consensual), since they didn’t want it done to them, and also because it only had one meaning.

It was only after MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and David Shuster, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, turned the tables on the term that Tea Partiers objected. They were perfectly satisfied to advocate the metaphoric mouth-rape of liberal men, women, and children, but had the nerve to become indignant when the insult boomeranged on them."

More here

[Dardedar]

Lord Jesus Christ suffers minor injuries in downtown Northampton crosswalk mishap

By Patrick Johnson, The Republican
May 06, 2010, 5:07PM

"A 20-year-old Pittsfield driver was cited by police Tuesday after she ran down Lord Jesus Christ in a marked crosswalk at Main Street and Strong Avenue, police said.

Brittany E. Cantarella was cited for a crosswalk violation, said Northampton police Capt. Scott Savino.

Christ, 50, of Belchertown, was taken to Cooley Dickinson Hospital for treatment of minor injuries following the 3:30 p.m. accident. He was treated at the hospital and then released.

Cantarella was making a left turn from Strong Avenue onto Main Street when her car, a 2005 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, struck Christ.

Christ was in a marked crosswalk at the time of the accident, Savino said.

Savino said officers checked Christ’s identification at the scene and confirmed it was his legal name."

Link

[Dardedar]

No wonder the Tea Partiers are so angry!

"Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010."

"The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts," says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.

USA Today (via: crooksandliars)

[Dardedar]

The Germans and Japanese must be whiners:

Confidence in Health Care

The poll found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that people living in countries with government-run health care, such as Sweden and Canada, were generally more confident about receiving good, affordable health care than are Americans. More than 70 percent of Swedes and Canadians surveyed said it would be easy to find quality care at a reasonable price if a family member became ill, compared to just 51 percent of Americans.

And yet the survey found that not all countries in which the government plays an active role in health care reported such high levels of confidence: Germans, for example, were actually less optimistic than Americans, while Brits were only slightly more optimistic than people in the U.S. In Japan, which has universal health care, a mere 15 percent felt positive about their chances of receiving quality affordable care.



Link

[Dardedar]

Glenn Beck delivers commencement address at Liberty Univ.





Can there really be that much stupidity in one location?

[Doug]

Can there really be that much stupidity in one location?

DOUG
It's Liberty University. What else would we expect to find? The place does not have academic freedom, and no one sends their kids there to learn. They send them there to get diplomas.

[Dardedar]

Second CRU inquiry reports

14 April 2010

The Oxburgh report on the science done at the CRU [Climate Research Unit] has now been published and….. as in the first inquiry, they find no scientific misconduct, no impropriety and no tailoring of the results to a preconceived agenda, though they do suggest more statisticians should have been involved."

Link