President Obama wants to "criminalize" free speech, according to a leading GOP congressmen.
Rep.
Trent Franks (R-AZ) (Dang, I was going to guess Texas - Z) discussed the President's response after an anti-Muslim video provoked widespread riots in Libya and elsewhere, telling radio host Mike Huckabee that Obama "has a general trend of subordinating the constitutional rights." Obama had released a statement the morning after the violence that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens saying, "While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants."
Both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed the importance of free speech in their responses to the violence.
Franks went on to argue that Obama is taking aim at the First Amendment: "I really believe that this administration is moving towards being willing to criminalize certain things that we hold as free speech in America."
FRANKS: I believe that there is ubiquitous evidence that this administration has a general trend of subordinating the constitutional rights that we hold very dearly as Americans to placate sometimes our enemies who have nothing but derision toward us, and I'm convinced that it is playing out even in the events of recent days. I really believe that this administration is moving towards being willing to criminalize certain things that we hold as free speech in America. [...] When we begin to say that we're going to potentially criminalize people criticizing a religion, then we are stepping away from the First Amendment and one of the foundations that made America the greatest country in the world.
First, I don't think ubiquitous means what this guy thinks it means. Maybe he's just proud he can pronounce it. Second, criticizing Islam is okey-dokee with these guys, so there goes that point. Third, it would actually have to be the morons in congress who pass a law against free speech, and the politicians on the Supreme Court to uphold it.
Both are now firmly in the grasp of Republicans like Trent Franks.
I may have to start grading these this, this was hardly an impressive lie.
In an interview with 9News Political Reporter Brandon Rittiman, GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan replied, "Oh, heaven's no," when asked if he wants to "abolish" birth control completely.
But, as we know from our long and losing history with personhood amendments here in Colorado, the phrase "birth control" has multiple meanings, depending on where you come down on personhood, which would give legal rights to fertilized eggs and ban all abortion.
Other forms of "birth control," like some forms of the pill and IUD's, are not considered "birth control" at all by personhood supporters, but abortifacients, which are zygote killers, chemicals that cause "abortion." And these would be banned, if fertilized eggs received legal protections under personhood laws.
So, in the following exchange with Rittiman, if you want understand Ryan's real position on birth control, you have to get biological with him (as in, what about forms of birth control that threaten or kill fertilized eggs?)
Rittiman: I've got a few questions from viewers...Holly asked us on our Facebook page about women's issues, which have been in the campaign dialogue. She wants to know if you're simply opposed to public funding of things like birth control or if you want to abolish them completely?
Ryan: Oh, heaven's no. People should be free to have birth control all they want. But what we don't want to do is force taxpayers or groups, like religious charities, churches, and hospitals, to have to provide and pay for benefits that violates their religious teachings and conscience. Of course we believe people should have the freedom to use birth control. Nobody's talking about that. The question is, can the federal government require churches and charities, people of religious conviction, to violate their religious liberties, which is our First Amendment in the Constitution.
(This exchange occureed a couple weeks ago on Your Show, which airs on Channel 20 in Denver.)
I've discussed previously reporters need to beware of the "birth-control" rhetoric of politicians who want to support personhood AND support "birth control." Politicians can certainly have it both ways, because some forms of birth control would not be banned under personhood, but some common forms would be banned. So, it's important for reporters to clarify what people like Paul Ryan are talking about when they use the phrase "birth control."
As to which forms of birth control threaten fertilized eggs and which would do not, I interviewed Nanette Santoro, MD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, at the University of Colorado about this back in 2010, and, the way I interpreted her comments, a number of types of birth control, including forms of the pill will, or have the potential to, destroy fertilized eggs. And if you believe that killing a fertilized egg amounts to murder, then you wouldn't want to risk it and, I'd say, it would be illegal to do so. It would be like playing Russian roulette.
I asked Santoro if the science had changed since my 2010 interview, and she said, through a spokesperson, that it had not.
So, unless scientists tell us differently down the road, reporters will be left to sort out the linguistic gymnastics they see from evasive personhood supporters.
[W]e should increase the level of retirement benefits in the existing Social Security program.
That sounds like blasphemy because we've all been fed the myth that Social Security is bankrupt. It is almost universally accepted in policy circles and in the pundit class that strengthening Social Security involves cutting future benefits relative to what current law promises because according to current projections, Social Security only has the ability to pay promised benefits in full until 2033, and then 75% of them thereafter.
The basic thinking is that we must promise to cut benefits now so that we won't necessarily have to cut them 22 years from now. What (the F***)?
(I added that profane part. - z)
Imagine if that is how we treated defense spending.
(Anyone here thinks Udall would do that with defense, raise your hand. ... I didn't think so. - z)
...more logic and facts...
We never actually have to cut benefits if we make the policy choice to keep funding them.
And that is the "bottom line" as they say in business, or a today's kids would say, "Duh!"
But Mark Udall and Michael Bennet are afraid to make that policy choice. They are so afraid of making that choice that they lie about the true status of Social Security. They are so afraid that they don't even attempt to spell out how Social Security is in quite good shape and would take only minor adjustments to make into spectacular shape. (Way better than my 401k 201k fer sure, fer sure.)
In fact, they are so afraid of promoting the basic, common-sense, simple policies that would reinforce Social Security that they lie about it knowing that the cuts they propose will almost surely send someone to poverty or their early death. US NEWS and World Report: Medicare, Social Security Literally Extend Lives.
Talk about pulling the plug on grandma........
If our policy makers had the guts to either raise the SSI maxout of about $106,000 (hey, let's raise it all the way to the top of the middle class' $250,000) or to tax all our poor, whiny, Don't-need-no-help-from-no-one, Pulled-myself-up-by-my-own-bootstraps, Except-for-that-small-SBA-loan Millionaire types at the pre-Bush level then we wouldn't be having this conversation and Social Security would be safe until all the Conventional-Wisdomeers in DC were dead, cold, and buried in Arlington.
Except we, and economists like Atrios and Paul Krugman, keep having to say the same thing over and over to gutless and lying politicians....ones exactly like Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, who are dying to cut your Social Security.
I've never heard about these guys. Of course, if they had the free advertising for Independence Institute that Jon Caldara has provided via KOA all these years it might be a little different.
There's that so-called "liberal media bias" rearing its ugly head again......
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.
That that's an entitlement.
And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what...These are people who pay no income tax.
My job is not to worry about those people.
I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
It's actually worse when you watch it:
Wow. Just wow.
When Mitt Romney gets his ass royally kicked on election day I hope there's a mirror around when he starts looking for someone to blame.
For the record, I'm an Obama voter and I've paid approximately $100,000+ in taxes the last 5-7 years, a solid 16% rate if not more. And due to the shitty economy and the tendency of Colorado corporations to lay you off and hire Indians or Brazilians in your place, I've also had to raid my 401K - for which I've been both taxed and penalized. I question if even multi-millionaire Mitt has paid anything near that much.
Then he and the Koch Brothers and the Walton clan and Sheldon Adelson and Steve Forbes and Lawrence Kudlow and Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Clint Eastwood Mike Rosen and Jon Caldara and Pete Coors can lounge around in their cute little choo-choo train, cowboy dressup town and bitch about us lazy, leeching, good-for-nothing losers.
"Like the pro-slavery forces who invaded Kansas, the pro-abortion forces in Washington and elsewhere want us to believe that abortion is not murder -- that being born is worse than death, that the unborn baby is property, not a person.
"I am incensed that this president pays money to an entity that was created for the sole purpose of killing children that look like mine -- a racist organization, and it continues specifically to target minorities for abortion destruction. Shame on this president and shame on that party."
The number of lies in that thing is hard to count. The amount of stupidity might be able to be measured.
The source is as usual: An Elected Republican pandering to its Tea Party base.
Given the importance of Social Security to regular Americans and its partisan value to Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt, no sane Democrat should be associated with these efforts.
Captain Obvious to Sens. Udall and Bennet: Yes, there are politics involved in the job you do. You've picked a side, the one with a (D), now pick a side.
But in an age of Citizens United and unlimited corporate donations, where Obama tacks back and forth between criticizing Wall Street and soliciting Wall Street executives for campaign funds, it is all too tempting to demonstrate fiscal "soundness" by joining this parade.
This is the Bowles-Simpson B.S. parade of Conventional Wisdomeers, which includes Republican Hacks like Lawrence Kudlow, who are salivating at the thought of slashing Social Security and moving those trillions of dollars Americans have already paid into a Goldman Sachs-managed 401K....which will immediately turn into a 201K when they get their hands on it.
Kuttner continues:
Thanks to Paul Ryan, however, the president may be spared again. The association of Romney-Ryan with the gutting of Medicare and Social Security offers just too tempting a political target to throw away for the sake of impressing Simpson, Bowles, and their corporate cronies. Or so we must hope.
We still aren't sure whether, nor why, Democrats in DC will abandon their fellow citizens (not their fellow 1%-ers), longstanding Democratic principles, and publicly supported common sense programs in an effort to appease the Decifit Gods, who are malevolent apparitions devised by partisans for the benefit of a few at the top of the economic food chain.
Therefore, as Kuttner says, we must still hope these guys return to common sense and quit dallying with the light-hearted execution of The Middle Class.
PORTLAND, Maine — Energy officials in Maine say a tidal power project is delivering electricity to the U.S. power grid for the first time.
Bangor Hydro Electric Co. operates the grid where the tidal power connects. It says Portland-based Ocean Renewable Power Co.’s first underwater turbine was delivering to the grid the first commercially produced tidal power on Thursday afternoon.
(I'm a little behind on posting Jack's diaries, but I still like this one. - promoted by KathrynCWallace)
Why are some politicians and preachers boring speakers? James Iley McCord, Princeton Theological Seminary's president (1959-1983), warned students that "theology [the basis for preaching] has become largely irrelevant in many quarters and is often incredibly dull." Verbose politicians bore audiences, too.
Using stilted language, dull speakers state what's obvious. Perhaps the Apostle Paul considered these deficiencies when he coached protégé Timothy to "preach the word [of God] in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke and exhort. Be unfailing in patience and in teaching" (II Timothy 4:3).
Professor Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. tells how his grandfather, a devout farmer who loved the church, complained about an insulting sermon. The preacher assured his congregation that Jesus healed a blind man. "He was blind, beloved! He could not see. His eyes were dark. Things were hard for him to spot. His optic nerves were shot. Blind, beloved!" Too much repetition for Plantinga's grandfather to absorb.
Republicans seem to be either exposing the depths of their own stupidity or testing the limits of voters' gullibility each and every day. (Google "louie gomert" or "rand paul schooled" if you're not sure.)
Either way they just keep espousing more outrageous ideas as November's election gets nearer.
When I meet with young people, who are just out of college, attending these fairs, I always ask them what they majored in. Far too often, it is a four-year degree that doesn't give them the technical skills that directly leads them to employment.
Now, they not only can't find a job from their four-year degree, but often burdened with debt from their student loans.
I think it is time to question whether a significant number of the majors taught at undergraduate institutions are a good investment.
This relates to the taxpayers, who subsidize the cost of higher education by either bearing part of the cost at public institutions, or by subsidizing loan programs at private ones.
Graduates, with liberal arts degrees, often find entry level jobs that are little better than what they would have gotten had they never attended college in the first place.
ColoradoPols points out some truth regarding liberal arts degrees:
"There has been data to suggest that even though liberal arts graduates in an entry-level position tend to earn less than their counterparts who have very career-focused [degrees], within 10 to 20 years they tend to outpace their counterparts in terms of income," she says.
The holy grail of higher income should have been enough to shut Coffman up about the value of a well-rounded education and the critical need for a modern economy to invest in its citizens workers. Part of America's exceptionalism is the fact that educating its people was a fundamental principle held by most of our Founders. And this is a guy who complained President Obama didn't understand that very principle.
Maybe he skipped class that day.
But I don't think Coffman's goal was to question a liberal arts degree or the value of higher education. His bottom line, in line with modern Republican dogma, is that the government shouldn't educate its citizens to the highest standards of learning, even though that idea is key to our prosperity and a founding principle of our republic.
Coffman's unspoken point was that education should privatized, charterized, profitized, and left to the vagaries of the free market. If someone so happened to end up educated it was because they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps with a philisophical "huzzah" from Ayn Rand. And if they don't have an education, so be it and why should we care?
I can hardly think of a more selfish, self-centered and ignorant congressman from Colorado than Mike Coffman. It's quite obvious a liberal arts education would have done him much good. If he had one, we'd be represented by someone with a little more smarts in their head, concern for the common welfare of his fellow citizens, and committed to educating all Americans to be the best thinkers and doers in the world.
1. Violence Against Women Act re-authorization.
2. The American Jobs Act.
3. Tax cuts for working families.
4. Veterans Job Corps Act. Who could oppose hiring more veterans as cops, firefighters and national-parks workers? Who could be against helping veterans apply their military training to earn civilian occupational licenses? Republicans, that's who.
5. Sequestration. Frankly, I say let the damned Bush tax cuts expire and let the Pentagon budget be subject to cuts that are long overdue. We do not need and can't afford our current Military-Industrial complex. And let the Bowles-Simpson B.S. be banned to the ash heap of history.
6. Farm Bill.
7. Wind energy tax credit. Do we need any more proof that Republicans hate workers and hate the Middle Class? Colorado's farmers are true entrepreneurs, are the backbone of rural small business, yet are being ignored, punished, driven to destruction by continued Republican inaction.
And yes, I'm taking into account "independents" who, with just a little explanation and convincing by our "leaders", would probably finally make up their minds.
Just to remind ppl, especially the most powerful among us (who can be the most forgetful) that our last Democratic president ran budget surpluses the last few years of his presidency.
America was on track to pay the Debt down to $0.00.
Then Republicans got into office and suddenly the Fed Chairman, Republican Alan Greenspan, became worried about the negative effects of paying the debt down to zero. Other Republicans like Dick Cheney said "deficits didn't matter."
So, we did not pay the debt down, and that Republican administration commenced to running it up again and gave us most of our current debt during their time in office.
CASTLE ROCK - Deep wells are being drilled to tap 1.5 million acre-feet of water under the Greenland open space in Douglas County, a potentially game-changing project at a time when south-metro communities are scrambling to reduce their dependence on underground aquifers.
Rights to the water were acquired by billionaire Phil Anschutz last year, and one of his companies, Sun Resources, is building wells that could pump as much as 15,000 acre-feet of water per year from Denver Basin aquifers.
That's enough water to sustain 30,000 houses, though Sun Resources chief executive Gary Pierson characterized the drilling as exploratory.
"We have not made any arrangements for the water at this point," Pierson said.
On KNUS' morning talk-radio show Thursday, Steve Kelley played an audio clip of Obama criticizing Romney's response to the Libya attack, saying Romney has a "tendency to shoot first and aim later."
Steve Kelley, the host of the show, had Mitt Romney's son Josh on the phone, and, it's only natural to try to personalize things a bit. Plus, they say international relations isn't so different than what goes on within families, on the playground, between neighbors, or what have you.
So Kelley asked Josh Romney if his father shot first and aimed later, when it came to disciplining Josh!
It was a fair question to ask a grown man stumping for his father, but Josh dodged it rather ominously, saying "We don't talk about that much."
"He was tough but fair," Josh told Kelley, after some awkward banter.
I'm not saying Mitt shouldn't have spanked his kids, or Obama shouldn't have spanked Sasha and Malia, if he did. (I never spanked my kids, but I'm a deeply wimpy progressive weenie.)
But you'd think Josh would have laid it out on the table.
Why don't the Romneys talk about this much? What's the big deal? I wish Kelley would have finished the conversation.
A bipartisan group of senators is negotiating a roughly $55 billion debt "down payment" that would temporarily turn off automatic spending cuts and buy Congress at least six months to work out a bigger deal.
(That's the Grand Bargain, folks. - Z)
The down payment would be linked to a deficit-reduction framework that would bind committees with jurisdiction over spending and taxes to an action plan, say sources familiar with the negotiations.
If a deal is reached and leaders sign off on it, Congress could approve the plan in a lame-duck session.
You can totally see this happening, right? The $55 billion would be enough to stop the sequester of defense and discretionary cuts for six months. That would give the breathing space needed for a longer discussion. The calculus may change depending on the outcome of the elections. But it's clearly easier to get to $55 billion than $1.2 trillion, which is the ten-year cost of the sequester.
More troubling is that we don't know where those $55 billion in cuts will come from. Specifically, will they include any tax increases? So far, all of the deficit reduction agreed to, mainly from the spending cap and the sequester, which would drive down discretionary funding to levels so low that the federal court system would have to stop jury trials because they could not pay the jurors, has come on the spending side of the ledger. Nothing has come from the tax side. Saxby Chambliss, one of the leaders of this "Gang of 8″ effort in the Senate, said that the $55 billion down payment would "not necessarily" include revenues. (The other members of the group are Democrats Mark Warner, Kent Conrad, Dick Durbin and Michael Bennet, with Republicans Chambliss, Mike Crapo, Tom Coburn and Lamar Alexander.)
And then there's this "binding framework" for a future deficit deal. Now, nothing's really binding in Congress. But whatever gets decided would probably have to have a bipartisan backing to get through Congress. And we know the President supports a grand bargain. This punts things into the next Congress, the makeup of which is unknown.
Bennet has been one of the biggest whiners about a broken process in DC, yet he has failed to show even one, let alone any, guts in breaking that dysfunctional pattern and doing what a U.S. Senator is supposed to do.
Instead, Michael Bennet has run from the job he ran for.
He abdicated the responsibilities he promised to fulfill.
He's hidden from decision after decision by supporting unelected Commissions and unaccountable Commissioners.
And he's played into the conventional DC wisdom - and against common sense Coloradans - every time there's been a conflict between the two.
Here's the truth about Social Security that is completely at odds with what Bennet and Udall, and unfortunately President Obama, have in mind with their Grand Bargain:
It's worse that this political naif is so eagerly involved in bargaining away the basic Democratic principles enshrined in programs like Social Security.
Not sure I should limit this to Republicans, but for now it's hard to resist. First Chuck Grassley, then Rand Paul, now Senator Jon Kyl from Arizona has achieved maximum stoopidity for a U.S. Senator:
After a day of turmoil in the Middle East claimed the life of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stephens and three other staffers at a consulate in Benghazi, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) chose to weigh in on the tragedy with a rape analogy.
Kyl focused on the controversy over an initial statement released by the U.S. embassy in Egypt, which also came under siege Tuesday when protesters shredded an American flag and appeared to replace it with a pro-islam banner.
...
Kyl seems to have construed that statement as an apology to the demonstrators, and likened it to blaming a victim for her rape. Here are Kyl's comments, via Roll Call reporter Meredith Shiner:
"It's like the judge telling the woman who got raped, 'You asked for it because of the way you dressed.' OK? That's the same thing. 'Well America, you should be the ones to apologize, you should have known this would happen, you should have done -- what I don't know -- but it's your fault that it happened.' You know, for a member of our State Department to put out a statement like that, it had to be cleared by somebody. They don't just do that in the spur of the moment."
The embassy later followed up in a series of tweets both condemning the violence and standing by its general admonition against "bigotry," but conservatives such as Kyl were quick to criticize the original statement as an "apology" to the perpetrators.
Jon Kyl's been drinking way too much tea these days. His base political statement and blind ignorance of events mirror those of Mitt Romney, who's been roundly criticized and probably guaranteed his monumental loss to President Obama.
After Dems crush these Luddites and take back the Senate in November, the only reaction to their inevitable cry for bipartisanship should be that our own Senators Udall and Bennet laugh, walk away, and simply shake their heads at these hypocritical, lying, untrustworthy fools.....
Big swaths of the conservative talk-radio world are seething with anger against Muslims this morning, getting away with saying stuff that could easily get them fired if they said it about any other major religion.
But one conservative talk-radio host in Colorado Springs sees the mob, even if it's not manipulated by Islam, in a group of Americans here at home: Obama supporters.
"If Barack Obama is defeated, I fully expect for there to be riots in American cities," KVOR talk-radio host Richard Randall said Saturday on the Jeff Crank Show, substituting for regular host Jeff Crank. "I fully expect it."
As for Randall's side of the political fence:
"If [Obama] is re-elected, you're not going to see riots, but you're going to see people who are very close to their rights and hang on to them closely... I'm not big on armed revolution. I hope, in our country, there is never, ever again any form of government that would require the American public to do what many of us are prepared to do, and that is, we own guns-
I own guns. People ask me, 'why do you own guns?' Because they're cool, and I like them, Um, they're fun to shoot. And I own them primarily for protection. My number one job as a parent is to keep my family safe and that is one of the mechanisms for doing it. [...] I hope I never have to use those weapons. And some of them are military, you know. [...] I don't hope that we ever have to have armed conflict. But it's going to be dicey, no matter who wins this election.
I would hate to be in Chicago or Detroit, some of those areas when President Barak Obama is defeated, because I think there has been this mentality that they are entitled to him to be president. And somehow if he's not, it would have been rigged against him, or something.
So Obama is an entitlement? And his loss of will bring riots? Like bread riots?
Maybe Randall has said the word "entitlement" so many times, so mindlessly, that he can't keep it in his mouth. Now would be a good time for him to do so, because how much more disrespectful can you get?
Well, ask a Muslim who listened to many a conservative talk show this morning.
The Amateur Skeptics interview Garth about his latest book: Brain Trust: 93 Top Scientists Dish the Lab-Tested Secrets of Surfing, Dating, Dieting, Gambling, Growing Man-Eating Plants and More!
