How the GOP became the “White Man’s Party”

How the GOP became the “White Man’s Party”

JibJab 2014 Year in Review: "2014, You Are History!"

JibJab 2014 Year in Review: "2014, You Are History!"

Let's Rethink Christmas

Medicare Is Not “Bankrupt” — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Medicare Is Not “Bankrupt” — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Claims by some policymakers that the Medicare program is nearing “bankruptcy” are misleading.  Although Medicare faces financing challenges, the program is not on the verge of bankruptcy or ceasing to operate.  Such charges represent misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of Medicare’s finances.
Medicare’s financing challenges would be significantly greater without the health reform law (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA), which substantially improved the program’s financial outlook.  Repealing the Affordable Care Act, a course of action promoted by some who simultaneously claim that the program is approaching “bankruptcy,” would make Medicare’s financial situation much worse.

Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Non-Defense Discretionary Programs Have Seen Large Cuts and Face More Cuts in 2015 — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Non-Defense Discretionary Programs Have Seen Large Cuts and Face More Cuts in 2015 — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Conservatives Should Explain Exactly What Jonathan Gruber Tricked Us All Into Believing

Conservatives Should Explain Exactly What Jonathan Gruber Tricked Us All Into Believing

Because the truth is that the Affordable Care Act has ended up costing less than was originally predicted.

Supreme Court Lesson Given by Missy StuffDog #RealAnimalsFakePaws

Yoko Ono - Imagine Peacetower, Reykjavik Iceland - October 9th 2012

Missy StuffDog Chichen Itza Mexico 2014 Trip-Carnival Cruises

Why Tea Party Members of Congress Act So Darn Crazy--And Liberal Democrats Don't

Why Tea Party Members of Congress Act So Darn Crazy--And Liberal Democrats Don't

Contrary to 'Entitlement Society' Rhetoric, Over Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Disabled, or Working Households — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Contrary to 'Entitlement Society' Rhetoric, Over Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Disabled, or Working Households — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Anti-choice protests put New Orleans on alert

Anti-choice protests put New Orleans on alert

Glenn Beck Admits Liberals Were Right About Iraq War

The world has turned upside down!
Glenn Beck Admits Liberals Were Right About Iraq War

Seeing through "the banker's new clothes": Anat Admati at TEDxStanford

Tom Friedman on his new Showtime project: “Years of Living Dangerously.”

http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60404405

Who lost Iraq? The Iraqis did, with an assist from George W. Bush

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-who-lost-iraq-the-iraqis-did-with-an-assist-from-george-w-bush/2014/06/12/35c5a418-f25c-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html

Article: Whenever the United States has asked this question — as it did with China in the 1950s or Vietnam in the 1970s — the most important point to remember is: The local rulers did. The Chinese nationalists and the South Vietnamese government were corrupt, inefficient and weak, unable to be inclusive and unwilling to fight with the dedication of their opponents. The same story is true of Iraq, only much more so. The first answer to the question is: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lost Iraq. The prime minister and his ruling party have behaved like thugs, excluding the Sunnis from power, using the army, police forces and militias to terrorize their opponents. The insurgency the Maliki government faces today was utterly predictable because, in fact, it happened before. From 2003 onward, Iraq faced a Sunni insurgency that was finally tamped down by Gen. David Petraeus, who said explicitly at the time that the core element of his strategy was political, bringing Sunni tribes and militias into the fold. The surge’s success, he often noted, bought time for a real power-sharing deal in Iraq that would bring the Sunnis into the structure of the government.

 

The Miracle Of My Mothers Pudding

The Miracle Of My Mothers Pudding

The Miracle Of My Mothers Pudding

The Miracle Of My Mothers Pudding

Study Confirms US Is Ruled by Rich, Corporate News Ignores It

Study Confirms US Is Ruled by Rich, Corporate News Ignores It

American democracy is no longer very democratic, according to a new university study (4/9/14; Perspectives on Politics, Fall/14). Instead, it's dominated by moneyed elites in a process where public opinion has little to no impact on policy. Released a month ago by Princeton's Martin Gilens and Northwestern's Benjamin I. Page, the study concludes:

Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

How Jerry Brown Got Californians to Raise Their Taxes and Save Their State | The Nation

How Jerry Brown Got Californians to Raise Their Taxes and Save Their State | The Nation

Dems Should Appoint Alan Grayson To Benghazi Panel

Dems Should Appoint Alan Grayson To Benghazi Panel

Obama, the feckless tyrant

article: But the condemnation continues, unrestrained by consistency. The conservative commentariat has turned on a dime from talk of “King Obama” to worry about the “price of weakness” and the president’s missing “backbone.”
A month ago, the Heritage Foundation president, former senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), called Obama a “playground bully” and an “imperial president.” Now DeMint accuses him of making “weak statements” that will “only invite aggression.”
Six weeks ago, Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a Senate candidate, posted a photo of Obama on Facebook with the messages “Stop the imperial president” and “Stop the Obama power grab.” Now Cotton has issued a statement accusing the president of “trembling inaction.”
Grabbing power with trembling inaction? Only the most diffident of despots could pull that off.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-obama-the-feckless-tyrant/2014/03/03/73470bdc-a320-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html

Ronald Reagan’s Benghazi

There were more than enough opportunities to lay blame for the horrific losses at high U.S. officials’ feet. But unlike today’s Congress, congressmen did not talk of impeaching Ronald Reagan, who was then President, nor were any subpoenas sent to cabinet members. This was true even though then, as now, the opposition party controlled the majority in the House. Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, was no pushover. He, like today’s opposition leaders in the House, demanded an investigation—but a real one, and only one. Instead of playing it for political points, a House committee undertook a serious investigation into what went wrong at the barracks in Beirut. Two months later, it issued a report finding “very serious errors in judgment” by officers on the ground, as well as responsibility up through the military chain of command, and called for better security measures against terrorism in U.S. government installations throughout the world.

In other words, Congress actually undertook a useful investigation and made helpful recommendations. The report’s findings, by the way, were bipartisan. (The Pentagon, too, launched an investigation, issuing a report that was widely accepted by both parties.)



http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/05/ronald-reagans-benghazi.html

THE VOICE ITALY 16-4-2014 "GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN" | SUOR CRISTINA ...

Under the Influence | Boston Review

Under the Influence | Boston Review

Democracy requires that all citizens—rich and poor alike—have influence over the policies their government adopts. Of course, it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to have equal sway. Citizens differ not only in economic resources but also in time, knowledge, and interest in social and political affairs. Still, when influence becomes too skewed toward the affluent, when political power becomes too concentrated in the hands of a few, democracy itself is threatened.

Boomers and Millennials: Bridging the Generation Gap

Boomers and Millennials: Bridging the Generation Gap

What We Can Learn From FDR | Connecting the Dots | BillMoyers.com

What We Can Learn From FDR | Connecting the Dots | BillMoyers.com

Missy StuffDog Celebrates St. Patrick Day at Parade

Live chart: US federal budget

Puppy Shake, Rattle & Roll

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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2014 Theme: Inspiring Change

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2014 Theme: Inspiring Change

Misconceptions and Realities About Who Pays Taxes — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Most of the people who pay neither federal income tax nor payroll taxes are low-income people who are elderly, unable to work due to a serious disability, or students, most of whom subsequently become taxpayers.  (In years like the last few, this group also includes a significant number of people who have been unemployed the entire year and cannot find work.)

Moreover, low-income households as a group do, in fact, pay federal taxes.  Congressional Budget Office data show that the poorest fifth of households paid an average of 4.0 percent of their incomes in federal taxes in 2007, the latest year for which these data are available — not an insignificant amount given how modest these households’ incomes are; the poorest fifth of households had average income of $18,400 in 2007.[6]   The next-to-the bottom fifth — those with incomes between $20,500 and $34,300 in 2007 — paid an average of 10.6 percent of their incomes in federal taxes. 

Moreover, even these figures greatly understatelow-income households’ totaltax burden because these households also pay substantial state and local taxes.  Data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy show that the poorest fifth of households paid a stunning 12.3 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes in 2011.[7]

When all federal, state, and local taxes are taken into account, the bottom fifth of households pays about 16 percent of their incomes in taxes, on average.  The second-poorest fifth pays about 21 percent

Misconceptions and Realities About Who Pays Taxes — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Missy StuffDog takes a trip to the Renaissance Festival

Missy StuffDog Goes to the Crowley Louisiana Rice Festival

Missy StuffDog does a Oscar Selfie

Missy StuffDog does a Oscar Selfie: Missy StuffDog does a Oscar Selfie

Missy (StuffDog) at the Mardi Gras 09

A plea for Medicaid coverage for our suffering citizens: Letter

We believe the Legislature should prevail upon Gov. Bobby Jindal to reconsider his decision not to expand Medicaid and ask him to reverse the changes made to the program Jan. 1, 2014. We ask that everyone at or below the federal poverty level who has diabetes, hypertension and heart or respiratory disease receive medications to control these diseases.

This will improve the qual­ity of their lives and minimize the costs of treating the future preventable complications. The state and the city of New Orleans did a remarkable job of opening community health clinics in New Orleans after Katrina. What sense does it make for some of our patients to come to the clinics, receive high quality care, and leave without the means to treat their medical problems?

Jennifer Avegno, M.D.

Clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine Interim LSU Hospital New Orleans

Joseph Kanter, M.D.

Chief resident, emergency department, Interim LSU Hospital

New Orleans

Elmore Rigamer, M.D.

Medical director of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans

New Orleans


http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2014/03/a_plea_for_medicaid_coverage_f.html

http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2014/01/medicaid_expansion_kicks_off_b.html

Band of Blockers--Jon Stewart The Daily Show

Band of Blockers: Republicans respond to the State of the Union speech with premium, grade-A bulls**t.

A Reality Check on Executive Orders and the ‘Dictator Obama’ Myth

A Reality Check on Executive Orders and the ‘Dictator Obama’ Myth

OBAMA: December 23, 2013. Obama signed an order titled, “Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay.”
BUSH: December 18, 2008. Bush also signed an order titled, “Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay.”
OBAMA: September 20, 2013. Obama signed an order titled, “Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees.”
BUSH: September 28, 2007. Bush signed an order titled, “Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees.”
OBAMA: June 25, 2013. Obama signed an order titled, “Establishing the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans.”
BUSH: January 22, 2008. Bush signed an order titled, “Establishing the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy.”
OBAMA: December 7, 2012. Obama signed an order titled, “Establishing the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force.”
BUSH: November 1, 2005. Bush signed an order titled, “Creation of the Gulf Coast Recovery and Rebuilding Council.”
OBAMA: October 26, 2012. Obama signed an order titled, “Establishing the White House Homeland Security Partnership Council.”
BUSH: October 8, 2001. Bush signed an order titled, “Establishing Office of Homeland Security.”
OBAMA: May 21, 2013. Obama signed an order titled, “Providing an Order of Succession within the Department of Agriculture.”
BUSH: January 9, 2009. Bush signed an order titled, “Amending the Order of Succession Within the Department of Agriculture.”

Unpaid and Undervalued Care Work Keeps Women on the Brink

Unpaid and Undervalued Care Work Keeps Women on the Brink

Shame on Congress for Its Criminal Neglect of the Jobless

Shame on Congress for Its Criminal Neglect of the Jobless

US Involvement in Iraq Never Ended

US Involvement in Iraq Never Ended

Louisiana Film Tax Credit Costs More Than It Brings In | Tax Justice Blog

Louisiana Film Tax Credit Costs More Than It Brings In | Tax Justice Blog

True Aim of Deficit Scare-Mongering: To Gut Social Security and Medicare | Common Dreams

True Aim of Deficit Scare-Mongering: To Gut Social Security and Medicare | Common Dreams