I tweeted all day yesterday (www.twitter.com/marywallace) during the Healthcare Summit at the White House. A great website, www.sunlightfoundation.com live streamed all day, updating charts next to each speaker with a list of their top career donors! Not surprisingly, many of the Republicans who oppose healthcare reform are fully funded by insurers, banks and lobbyists.
It was shocking to hear man after man after man say, let’s get out a clean piece of paper and start over again. REALLY? After they had done so much work on their own bills? DID THEY BRING CLEAN PIECES OF PAPER TO START WORKING ON THE SPOT? No.
I noticed that the overwhelming majority of Republicans were old white men (I’m talking to you Boehner, even though you’ve got that fake tan going on). In the pockets of the insurance industry and their lobbyists.
But I woke up today to this guy’s face, it looks so shocking in its aged meanness.
Its Jim Bunning, from Kentucky, who single-handedly blocked the Senate from extending unemployment benefits for 1.2 million Americans, while complaining
‘I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00,” he said,
“and it’s the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they’re the only team that has beat Kentucky this year.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in Kentucky is 10.7 percent. With a population of 4,200,000, that’s over 420,000 unemployed. NOT GOOD.
As I said yesterday on twitter, Americans forced their government to pull out of the Vietnam war when TV images and newspaper images of dying and dead American soldiers inundated American households. We had believed the rhetoric from Washington, but when our own young men and women came home in wheelchairs and body bags, it was the power of the images that turned the tide in the US government’s ability to continue the war.
We are inundated these days with image after image of Congressmen who deny health insurance reform to working Americans (while covered under government plans themselves), who deny childcare to the working poor (while having it available themselves), who send other people’s kids to war while their own drink excessively underage in bars (I’m talking to you, George W. Bush). The images from the bargaining table yesterday were predominantly old, white men. Sure, old white men run the insurance companies and the banks and the lobbying firms. But if you walk around any city in America, you’ll see all different ages and colors and sexes. How did we whittle down our vision of who should represent us in Congress to one color, one age AND one sex? How did that one type of person end up in charge of everything?
Its time for new employment rules: in order to serve in Congress, you have to agree to take 1/2 the $170,000 salary until your state’s poor and homeless and lower class and middle class are stable. The other half? It goes into a fund to counter the lobbying of your beloved insurers and banks. You get no health insurance until all your state’s citizens are covered. Can’t make that work? Then you don’t deserve cadillac coverage yourself. And if you have a daughter or son of military recruitment age? They go to war until no citizen from your state is overseas. That would stop the illegal multiple re-ups that the military is getting away with.
Mischa Barton smoking dope at an intersection in LA? Caught by paparazzi in broad daylight?
pacificcoastnewsonline.com
When I say some Americans are above the law, you think I’m talking about this famous & rich white chick who is ending 3 years probation after a DUI for driving all over the road in 2007. She seems to still be getting away with her blatant, in public, in-your-face breaking the law.
Nope, I’m talking about this guy who broke the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal statute that makes it a federal crime for any American to violate the Geneva Convention by engaging in murder, torture or inhuman treatment. Anyone who knew about, ordered or failed to take steps to stop torture is guilty under the statute.
And if someone dies while being tortured? Then those who tortured, knew about, ordered or failed to take steps to stop torture are subject to life imprisonment and/or the death penalty…
Why isn’t he in jail? By his own words, he broke this law. He admitted telling the Justice Department to write arguments that waterboarding is legal. (Just as an FYI, remember that the Executive Branch is supposed to be SEPARATE from the Justice Branch, and the Legistlative Branch? That’s supposed to be the basis of the American governmental system, isn’t it?) Telling Justice to cover his ass means that he ordered others to commit illegality, which makes him a war criminal. AND, on TV last week, he defended CIA Operatives and Justice Department stooges who did waterboard, saying they shouldn’t be punished for doing what they were told…
I’m sorry, but the chain-of-command is always responsible for the illegalities they force their underlings to do… That was the point of the Nuremberg Trials. Cheney admits breaking the law, admits he made underlings follow his lead and yet is doing the equivalent of smoking a joint on a public street in front of tons of paparrazi; Cheney just did it on nationwide TV.
18 U.S.C. § 2441 has no statute of limitations, which means that a war crimes complaint can be filed at any time.
The penalty may be life imprisonment or — if a single prisoner dies due to torture — death. Given that there are numerous, documented cases of prisoners being tortured to death by U.S. soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan (see for example this report), that means that the death penalty would be appropriate for anyone found guilty of carrying out, ordering, or sanctioning such conduct.
That means that Cheney could be rounded up as a fugitive as long as he is alive, just like those old Nazis you see on the news.
There really should be ‘justice for all’, not just justice for the 2,300,000 Americans who aren’t either rich, famous or powerful enough to game the system…
Is it just me, or does ANYone else notice that the bosses of our Representative Leadership are all old white guys, and that they look just like the guys who got us into this recession, the old white guy bankers?
And are they hard at work, both sides of the aisle working together to pull American taxpayers out of this recession? Are they spanking the bankers? Are they creating jobs?
No, they’re involved in a political death match. WITH EACH OTHER.
First, Sen. Richard Shelby put a blanket hold on all executive branch nominees to extort the executive branch into rigging procurement to guarantee that the company he favored won a bid on a defense contract. Oh, and he wanted the FBI to build a crime lab in his state, too.
And now, Sen. Lindsey Graham is copycatting, placing a hold on the closing of Gitmo hostage to extort the Department of Justice into not having a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
What are they doing? Holding up the smooth working of the Government of the United States of America? For their own political good? We have 3 branches of Government and all three are being held up by partisan politics in Congress.
They have NO IDEA what regular Americans are going thru right now. Because they can head off to Hawaii to caucus, or dine with lobbyists at expensive restaurants. They don’t have to listen to regular Americans.
They get to play their little power trips, while utterly ignoring the people who elected them.
The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics tallied lobbying income data from tens of thousands of disclosure filings, and the data show that special interests of all stripes spent $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government in 2009, up from $3.3 billion the previous year.
How did the influence industry manage such a banner year despite a battered economy? The simple answer is that the Obama administration’s aggressive change agenda has prompted businesses to open their wallets to an unprecedented degree in the hope of preventing reform.
Washington is paralyzed by snow and partisanship. Nothing is getting done — even as the Great Recession pulls more Americans into its maw.
In the midst of this paralysis, the President was asked about the giant pay packages of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co. ($17 mullion for 2009) and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs ($9 million). “First of all, I know both those guys,” Obama said. “They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system.”
Free market system? As I remember it, American taxpayers forked out hundreds of billions to keep JPMorgan, Goldman, and other big Wall Street banks afloat through most of 2009. Had we not done so, Dimon, Blankfein, and most other top executives on Wall Street would not have earned a dime last year. In fact, some would be out on the street, reather than sitting pretty on the Street. The free market system has been unleashed instead on average Americans.
Why do 92% of Americans want to kick their Members of Congress to the curb?
If you’re part of the white privilege world, you might not notice something strange about this photo, the cover of Vanity Fair extolling HOLLYWOOD! 2010.
They’re all white! And SUPER SKINNY. Utterly lacking in diversity. They do not represent Hollywood’s future. But Vanity Fair thinks they do!
Hmmm, patrician looks? That’s code for ‘white’. ‘Button nose’? That’s what most plastic surgeries are trying to create, also code for ‘white’. ‘Ivory-soap’? Its a white bar of soap.
Totally lacking creativity, Vanity Fair has missed out on these lovely young women:
Zoe Saldana, from both blockbusters AVATAR and STAR TREK,
and they forgot Gabourey Sidibe from PRECIOUS,
and they forgot Freida Pinto from SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.
Nearly 900,000 people in Arizona sought emergency food from charities within the past year, according to a national study released Tuesday by Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization.
The study shows more than 37 million Americans — one in eight — receive emergency food each year through the nation’s network of food banks and the agencies they serve.
The findings by the Chicago-based group represent a staggering 46 percent increase since its previous study, conducted in 2006.
“Clearly, the economic recession, resulting in dramatically increasing unemployment nationwide, has driven unprecedented sharp increases in the need for emergency food assistance and enrollment in federal nutrition programs,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America.
The study shows St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance served more than 477,000 of those needing help, providing the bulk of charitable emergency food service in the Valley and throughout Arizona.
St. Mary’s helped gather local information in support of Hunger in America 2010. Among its findings:
• More than 40 percent of the households receiving emergency food assistance include at least one person who is working.
• More than 50 percent reported having to choose between buying food and paying their rent or mortgage.
• More than one-quarter reported having to choose between buying food and paying for medicine or medical care.
• More than 80 percent are U.S. citizens.
• Nearly a quarter are college-educated.
• Nearly 80 percent did not receive any form of government cash assistance, or welfare.
“This survey truly puts a human face on the issue of hunger in our community,” said Terry Shannon, president and CEO of St. Mary’s Food Bank. “We have always said that our work can only be done when neighbors help their neighbors. This shows how true that is. Hunger is an issue in every area, every city, every neighborhood the state.”
The 2010 study includes data collected from February through June 2009. Through participating food banks across the nation, Feeding America collected quantitative and qualitative feedback via 61,000 face-to-face interviews with people seeking emergency food assistance and more than 37,000 agency surveys, making this study the largest, most comprehensive ever conducted on domestic hunger.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in November that an estimated 49 million people, including 17 million children, are at risk of hunger in this country.
More than 50% had to choose between FOOD and HOUSING COSTS?
Something is fundamentally wrong with the corporate running of America… We’ve been sold the myth of ‘you can create wealth here’, but the wealth is going to the banking industry while Americans are hungry.
Seriously, he entered a Senator’s office to ‘alter’ her phones to prove that she was refusing to take calls contrary to her opinion on health care reform… He got caught dressed like a telephone repairman. One of his accomplices had a listening device. He tweeted about his case, and there’s a possible gag order. He’s up against SERIOUS Criminal Charges. At 25, he was released to LIVE WITH HIS PARENTS, which many feel is laughable, as in ‘hahaha the 25 year old boy has to live with his parents’. Then he was interviewed as an activist on FOX News. That’s ‘white’ justice. Not true justice. Did FOX interview beaten-on WTO protestors, or people stealing food in New Orleans after the levees broke and the US Government didn’t respond with food?
Now he’s on FOX News saying ‘This was all a HUGE misunderstanding’. He says its investigative journalism. Yeah right, just like David Letterman’s extortionist is saying he was simply asking for a ‘silence payment’ similar to that paid to Tiger Wood’s ho’s… We live in a world of murky interpretation of ethics and these ‘Jedi mind wipes’ provided by FOX News, ‘this wasn’t a felony trespassing, this was conservative activism’ are now considered a legal defense.
Do the crime?
Do the time, buddy.
But let’s watch what justice prevails for him, the white boy ‘conservative filmmaker’ who dressed like THIS
thinking he was a Pimp. Pimp? He looks like a drunken FRAT BOY thinking he’s all that. He’s so lucky he found ‘easy to dupe’ employees at ACORN, where he said he was bringing in underage prostitutes and wanted business advice.
He’s arrogant, has an unhealthy sense of entitlement and his own righteousness. That’s not criminal, but it is annoying. It is, however, criminal to trespass onto a Federal Building, a Senator’s office space, have listening devices and tamper with phones.
Let’s see if he does any hard time. Then let’s compare that to non-white, lesser known, low-income sentencing for similar crimes committed by less media-savvy perps, minus the felony wiretapping charges that he thinks he’ll squiggle out of. He’s the poster boy of ‘anti-corruption’ for the right wing pundits now. I bet this boy gets off, and his real brethren, other criminals, do hard time.
Looking at the cover of today’s online Huffington Post, one could wonder just how ‘asleep’ Americans really are. Is there no one in charge who can connect the dots and shout from the rooftops how unfair our systems are towards working American Taxpayers? The oligarchy continues to siphon off huge profits from the top, walk away from debts they don’t wish to pay and pay themselves billions in bonuses for their hubris.
Meanwhile, you live within your means, juggle your credit debt, try to keep your home and go to work today so these a**holes can languish in the sun somewhere.
and finally, the piece de resistance,
and this is NOT dated December 2009 or January 2010 but February 1st, 2010…
Yep, they’re gonna pay out $100 Million to the guy who bet AGAINST YOUR FINANCIAL SAFETY.
