(Via The Hill.)
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Republicans can’t get to the 19th century fast enough to suit them. They want to be there yesterday!
I love selling buggy whip stocks to Republicans who think it’s the next big thing!
The PIC presented it’s report to the state legislature, warning that initiative process was being “hijacked”. Originally enacted as a protection against corporate control of our state legislature, it’s now being used by corporate interests to advance their own agendas. The PIC pointed to a 6X increase in the amount of money spent on initiative campaigns, and the number of violations which can result in a maximum penalty of $1,700, which the PIC pointed out can be budgeted by the sponsors as part of the “cost of doing business”.
Of course, Pam Roach dismissed the report as “corporate bashing”. Another GOP member of the legislature claimed that corporate involvement in the initiative process was a good thing, because the corporations “represented the interests of thousands of workers”.
And in the meantime, Tom McCabe has a little time on his hands since he got ousted as leader of the BIAW. BIAW members here had enough of his using their funds to tilt at political windmills, such as using $7M of BIAW funds to try to elect Dino Rossi to governor, or pursuing and agenda to try to abolish the Dept. of Labor and Industries and Dept. of Ecology. But in the other Washington, it appears he’s quite loved by the Amererican Conservative Union, from which he received “the Gipper” award.
Which makes me wonder – is McCabe planning on going “Palin”, and try to move his agenda to the political spectrum? I’m sure there’s a very small minority in the country who like his agenda and would pour money into it, just like the Palin PAC. Of course, he’s unlikely to win any political office, especially here in Washington Statte. But if he goes national, then perhaps he can find and target a district somewhere. After all, if a district in Wisconsin can elect a crazy lady as a Congressman, there’s probably another one somewhere else that might do so as well.
The benefit to us, is that it would require him to move out of state. Good riddence, and all that.
Rightwing anti-immigration activist Shawna Forde has been convicted of murder by an Arizona jury in a home invasion robbery gone bad, and could be facing the death penalty.
Forde has connections to Everett, where she unsuccessfully ran for city council in 2007.
Hey Pacific Northwest “conservatives”, one of your very own is in the news again today.
Everett’s very own Shawna Forde convicted of plotting murder in Arizona
I won’t wait for those who praised this convicted child killer to come on and apologize profusely. That ain’t how Hispanic hating “conservatives” roll.
The “belief” seems to be that our budget is “out of control” because the Department of Agriculture, or Bureau of Mines, is spending like MAD! That of course isn’t true. Our trillions over budget isn’t because of the National Endowment for the Arts or NASA. As much fun as that would be to “believe” it’s not factual. The Department of Education can’t trim their budget enough to make up $1 trillion dollars. So why is our accumulated debt so high?
The original crazy over spending occurred during the Reagan administration. We increased our budget and tried to “spend down” the Soviet Union, while at the same time trying to cut taxes (tisk tisk, can’t do BOTH). This created an imbalance. As Dick Cheney said, “Reagan showed us that deficits don’t matter”. Except deficits become debt. But the spending & tax cuts were important and/or good!
The recent mass increase in debt was the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. We were (slightly) overspending when these started. Instead of raising taxes or selling war bonds like we did in WWII to pay for the wars, the Republican party just happily put this on our debt. But it was important and/or good!
Then George W Bush (Republican) decided to try and grab some of those elderly Democratic voters and created a Medicare drug benefit program. Did he raise taxes to support it, or trim an ‘equal’ amount of spending else where? No. Just debt. But it was important and/or good!
Then the big one…keep in mind we were ALREADY in the red (income vs spending), before the major items above added to our problems…then the Republicans again decided to cut taxes (voters LOVE that). This contributed 1/2 a trillion a year to our debt. Now some fiscal hawks at the time DID ask, “shouldn’t this be offset by spending cuts”? But the answer was of course no, because the only way to cut this much money would be to cut one or more of the “big three” (social security, Medicare, military). So no. Even Obama last year decided to go along with this Republican DEMAND for more debt and agreed to extend this another year. But it was important and/or good!
Then, the final nail in the coffin, the financial meltdown/crisis. This caused Republican George W. Bush to create a huge bailout package (TARP, etc) to keep the economy from totally collapsing. Obama of course continued (and added) to this. But it was important and/or good!
So see, it’s these odd special “lets not count these” programs like our wars, Medicare, “temporary” tax cuts, and bailouts that’s driven our debt, not “out of control” spending by the Interior Department. Having a “freeze” on spending increases by NASA or cutting the Ag Dept. by 5.8% won’t help. It’s just a fun distraction. The ONLY way to cut this much is to stop acting like f**king children. Stop saying “this one thing” won’t count…we won’t count the war, we won’t count the Medicare benefit, we won’t count the bailout, we won’t count the tax cut…those kind of things tend to add up dude.
rhp6033,
“After all, if a district in Wisconsin can elect a crazy lady as a Congressman, there’s probably another one somewhere else that might do so as well.”
Wisconsin certainly elected a crazy-ass Governor last election. But I believe the “crazy lady” to which you refer is in the neighboring state of Minnesota. And really, really crazy.
Darryl, I apologize for criticizing you. If I promise to mindlessly agree with you, like the other commenters here, will you please not delete my comments?
Troll,
“If I promise to mindlessly agree with you, like the other commenters here, will you please not delete my comments?”
No.
# 7: Yep, you are right, Michelle Bachmann is from Minnesota, not Wisconsin. I don’t know how I got that mixed up.
rhp6033,
It’s an easy mistake to make because:
(1) Rural Wisconsinites sound very similar to rural Minnesotans and (2) Garrison Keillor frequently includes Wisconsinites in his stories and jokes.
@11 I don’t know how I got that mixed up
Heh, heh . . . you got this much right!
Look for the House to turn blue, and the Senate to increase it’s D majority in 2012.
@10 Wouldn’t it be easier to ban a few of the trolls who only seem to come here to show us that they lack any redeeming quality whatsoever? Not all of them, mind you, just the worst of the lot.
The prosecutor of Shawna Forde argued that “…even though she didn’t pull the trigger, she’s responsible for these murders nonethless…”
I’ll just let that one stew for a while. Of course, the right-wing wingnuts will just have a glazed look in their eyes, until a minute or too later they will say: “….un, what?”
Cyclist Charged For Road Rage
A 42-year-old Redmond bicyclist has been charged with malicious mischief for causing $5,700 damage to a car whose driver honked at him for weaving in and out of traffic.
http://horsesass.org/?p=32637#comments
Iran Suppresses Student Protest
Authorities suspended a high school student running for student council for giving a speech that wasn’t cleared by official censors.
Instead of sticking to the pre-approved speech, the candidate told the students they shouldn’t vote in the elections because student government has no real power and the council members are just “puppets of the teachers.”
His parents have appealed the suspension.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....nsion.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Oops, that happened in Edmonds, not Iran — it’s hard to tell the difference. Anyway, his parents are crazy to appeal. They don’t know when their kid is well off! They’re lucky the administration didn’t hang ‘im!
Just read some of the back story on Shawna Forde. She’s a compulsive liar and hustling self-promoter. It’s the way she’s survived throughout her life, gaining people’s trust and then abusing that trust for her own selfish benefit.
Such people are molded into being that way at an early age. That’s how they were taught by parents or others to be in the world.
That she plied her trade among the extreme right is no coincidence. They’re easily taken for fools because most of them are fools.
The extreme right were by and large easy marks for con artist Shawna Forde.
This is what usually happens to people who protest against intransigent and humorless regimes.
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%.....cution.jpg
The Iranians have apparantly decided that Mubarak made his first mistake by allowing the crowd to accumulate at the square. They have prohibited all demonstrations, and dispersed tens of thousands of demonstrators with tear gas and security forces on motercycles chasing demonstrators down the streets.
Speaking of crazy Wisconsin Governors, Gov. Walker’s latest budget ploy is to strip all public employes of the right to collective bargaining. Rather than, you know, actually reducing the size of government like he promised, he’s trying to keep the same set of government services and solve the budget problem by shifting the burden even further onto the backs of people who provide the services instead of the people who benefit from those services.
Where are the true conservatives who are willing to denounce this cynical and cowardly ploy? Or, are you all just a bunch of blathering hypocrites?
Timmeh Eyman over at SP being a little shit in real time, apropos the topic of corrupt initiative process:
http://soundpolitics.com/archives/014593.html
Headless Lucy and Tensor having fun with poor Timmeh, and I threw in a few too!
Fun times
As for Wisconsin vs Minnesota, I used to laugh at the fact that Minnesota elected a former professional wrestler to be their governor. Now, I’m thinking that a guy who calls himself “The Body” would actually be an improvement over the current Wisconsin Governor.
@19
In discussing Republican/glibertarian operatives, eg Palin, and on a much less endowed level, Eyman, you’re being redundant in your description.
3.7 trillion dollar budget 2.17 trillion coming in…Ha ha ha ha ha can you spell BANKRUPT
What a joke. Clothing going up 10%, gas at the highest price ever for this time of the year, Home prices still falling 10%.
Get rid of this IDIOT
Did I mention the 14.150 Trillion dollar debt….rising over 100 Billion per month…..Unemployment at 10.3 according to gallup..
Keep it up and when the bottom falls out, I hope your pensions tank!
Sound Politics activist Shawna Forde to be executed in Arizona?
Everett Minuteman Shawna Forde Beaten; Husband Shot One Week Earlier
You can get the details here (graphic pictures attached). According to the web site of Minutemen American Defense (a group affiliated with the Minuteman Project), Shawna Forde, MAD’s Director, was beaten and raped in her Everett home on December 29. Just one week earlier, her husband was shot three times, also at their home.
The MAD web site seems to imply the attacks might have something to do with her work investigating drug cartel operations. So far there’s no official word on where the investigations might be headed. The Everett Police have released a sketch of the shooting suspect.
Cross-posted on .
Posted by pudge at January 02, 2009 01:26 PM
http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/012302.html
Bernanke?? Who FIRST appointed him?
When median home prices exceed what median income folks can afford to pay for houses home prices fall. It isn’t rocket science.
@28 As I recall, an awful lot of that debt was run up by free-spending Republicans who paid off their buddies at Blackwater and Halliburton with taxpayer dollars.
@28 Oh, and let’s not forget that Georgy-Porgy borrowed $1 trillion from China to give IOU-financed tax cuts to billionaires.
Hey rabbit,
I know you, being a rabbit, might have reasons to not be overly fond of wolves, but I’m hoping you could take a longer view of things, a view that says what’s good for nature in general is good for rabbits and join me in opposing HB 1109.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documen.....s/1109.pdf
In other news of bills in Oly that are shitty for the environment, SB 5575 would let burning black liquors from kraft process paper mills qualify under I-937 as clean and renewable. It’s neither.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documen.....D%2011.pdf
Id seems to want the country to go down in flames for partisan purposes. That doesn’t seem very patriotic, does it? Am I missing something here?
@36
That sounds about right. He also seems anti-free market with his wanting home prices to go up when there’s nothing (like wages in the pockets of workers) to support them going up.
DEBT now equals the entire economy. Keep piling it on and watch your prices skyrocket! Obama is FAILING to address his massive defecit idssue, ignoring his own committee on debt reduction’s recomendations…IDIOT
http://www.washingtontimes.com.....s-economy/
Net interest expense will triple to an all-time high of $554 billion in 2015 from $185 billion in 2010, according to the Obama administration’s adjusted 2011 budget.
It’s a slow train wreck coming and we all know it’s going to happen,” said Bret Barker, an interest-rate analyst at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc.
The amount of marketable U.S. government debt outstanding has risen to $8.96 trillion from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008, according to the Treasury Department. Debt-service costs will climb to 82 percent of the $757 billion shortfall projected for 2016 from about 12 percent in last year’s deficit, according to the budget projections.
That compares with 69 percent for Portugal, whose bonds have plummeted on speculation it may need to be bailed out by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
“If government debt and deficits were actually to grow at the pace envisioned, the economic and financial effects would be severe,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told the House Budget Committee Feb. 9. “Sustained high rates of government borrowing would both drain funds away from private investment and increase our debt to foreigners, with adverse long-run effects on U.S. output, incomes, and standards of living.”
Just in time for 2012!
“Just in time for 2012!”
Indeed, the best course of action would be for us to turn this mess back over to the irresponsible Republicans who played such a huge role in creating it. Yeah, that’s a great idea.
@ 39
Net interest expense will triple to an all-time high of $554 billion in 2015 from $185 billion in 2010, according to the Obama administration’s adjusted 2011 budget.
Yes, and you spoke out against extending the Bush tax cuts for the top income bracket, right?
Seriously, fuck you. You can’t bemoan reasonable tax increases in one breath and then ring the alarm bells about the effects of the deficit in another.
The (ld)iot has a Koch brothers inspired animus towards government worker pensions:
Pentagon bureaucrat pensions excluded of course.
The Iranians have apparently decided that Mubarak made his first mistake by allowing the crowd to accumulate at the square.
Why didn’t they use the US model of “Protest Zones” miles from anywhere important?
@39 Id (iot):
If you and your republican asshats were actually serious about cutting the deficit – maybe you should talk about:
1. Cutting agricultural subsidies
2. Cutting the defense budget
3. Eliminating the cap on SS
4. Eliminating th etax cuts for millionaires
5. Elimimating tax cuts for corporations that ship jobs overseas
Republicans have opposed ALL of these budget cuts – it shows me that republicans are not serious about REAL budget cuts – but they want to cut health care, research, PBS and education. They want our country to be dumb, broke, jobless, unhealthy and devoted to our low-paying Walmart jobs.
Instead, what do the hypocritical republicans want to cut:
Education, infrastructure, clean energy…all the really stoopid, short-term cuts that will cost us more later.
Republians are liars and fools who are in the pocket of coporate interests – all that talk about the constitution is a bunch of BS. Look at their actions and priorities:
Saving the tax cuts for billionaires
Making sure that women who are raped can’t get an abortion or if the life of the woman is in danger – the fetus is not harmed.
@38: Umm, where were you when Bush tuirned the largest budget surplus in history into the largest deficit in history – and plunged us into the worst recession since the great depression?
Let me guess – cheering the Iraq war?
And praising the tax cuts for the top 5% of income earners while his health insurance rates doubled twice.
The protests have spread to Kentucky.
Let’s take a couple of news items, and in the spirit of an SAT test, check the similarities between them:
A. Dateline, Feb. 15 2011 from Tehran:
Iranian lawmakers: Put opposition leaders on trial
B. Notes from CPAC:
And this one, from last week’s CPAC 2011 convention, where Anne Coulter was a featured speaker:
This came right after Coulter spent a few minutes claiming that the Democrats don’t support democracy, and criticizing them for allowing Mubarak to be overthrown.
Coulter politics 101
@38 You’re using the Washington Times as your source? The Moonie cult’s propaganda sheet? Bwaaaa-haaaaaa-haaaaaa-haaaaa … you are amusing!!!
@48 It doesn’t surprise me that Coulter is a Mubarak fan. I wonder how much they pay her to shill for them?
Looks like the gopers are trying to do away with regional education laboratories, which must spend 25% of their budget in rural areas. Yeah, the GOP just loves the rural folk.
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/
# 50: It’s pretty much established that Coulter, while intelligent, has absolutely no moral values. She willingly tells one lie after another, and advocates the establishment of a real right-wing dictatorship in the U.S. in order to destroy the “liberals”, or anyone else which might be a threat to her celebraty and financial empire.
She saw nothing wrong about registering to vote in the wrong district (not her residence) and using her contacts with the Bush administration to have the FBI to inform a Florida prosecutor to back off from any investigation that she was breaking the law.
Just another reason that the treasonous commie progressives must be dealt with accordingly….Hurry up and riot you commmie fucks so “we the people” can deal with you accrodingly ..
and you wonder why on Nov 2nd 2010 aka (America’s 2nd Revolution) The Obama(progressive) agenda was historically rejected by “We the People”….2012 can not get here fast enough let’s just hope ObaMao hasn’t totally destroyed our great REPUBLIC
# 53: That’s gotta be satire. Nobody is really that dumb, are they?
Ok right wing idiots out there. How many of you swallowed this bullshit back in the day?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....s-iraq-war
Heh. Be honest now!
# 55: I remember that many months after the invasion, and after all attempts to discover WMD’s had turned up nothing, a friend of mine (who is in the Air Force Reserve) assured me that the Iraqi WMD’s had been hidden in Syria. Of course, that wasn’t true either.
It seems that the military was passing this down the chain of command, in order to keep the troops motivated and posssibly for whatever political reasons were deemed expedient.
@54 Who knows? It must be hard work doing wingnut troll satire these days.
55% Say Obama’s Budget Doesn’t Cut Enough
http://www.rasmussenreports.co.....cut_enough
Get a clue folks, you can’t run up 20 trillion dollars worth of debt without a major default!
Time is ticking…….
Cotton went up 6% today alone, enjoy buying cloths, gas, food, anything at all…Or might I add looking for a GD JOB!
Are you liberals so damn dense, that you do not see what this pure and simple idiot, will produce in 20 trillion dollars worth of debt…
Id. I agree with you. Trillions of debt is bad, very bad.
I see some very deep spending cuts coming. But I also see a need for increases in taxes. I want to see them targeted to the people and entities that are most able to play them without as much hardship.
That is not being discussed right now.
There is not a sense of shared sacrifice, just the gutting of the poor and middle class.
I posted my debt solution. Where is yours? Or do you just want to complain, but not offer any of your solutions?
55% Say Obama’s Budget Doesn’t Cut Enough
But did they ask the question:
“Of the programs you personally benefit from, what can you do without or have curtailed?”
How about you Id? what are you willing to live without?
Get rid of the Big F’n spender, OBAMA, and we’d have it done! PERIOD!
@63 That’s not an answer and you know it.
Put up or shut up. Where are your adult answers?
What are you willing to live without?
What would you cut or tax to balance the government?
What are your priorities?
@64 “Where are your adult answers?”
You’re really not hoping that a wingnut troll will finally provide an adult answer to a reasonable question, are you?