July 25, 2012

Obama: Looking At You Now, Boehner

Source: Talking Points Memo

Obama: Looking At You Now, Boehner

DAVID KURTZ JULY 25, 2012, 5:59 PM 577
Statement from President Obama on the Senate vote:

With the Senate’s vote, the House Republicans are now the only people left in Washington holding hostage the middle-class tax cuts for 98% of Americans and nearly every small business owner. The last thing a typical middle class family can afford is a $2,200 tax hike at the beginning of next year. It’s time for House Republicans to drop their demand for another $1 trillion giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and give our families and small businesses the financial security and certainty that they need. Our economy isn’t built from the top-down, it’s built from a strong and growing middle class, and that’s who we should be fighting for.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/07/obama_looking_at_you_now_boehner.php?ref=fpblg

July 25, 2012

Senate Dems Jam House Republicans, Pass Bush Tax-Cut Extension For Middle Class

Source: Talking Points Memo

Senate Democrats have accomplished a feat they were unable to muster back in 2009 and 2010, when they had a much larger majority: On Wednesday, they passed a bill to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone’s first $250,000 in income.

The legislation prevailed 51-48 — a vote that signals Democrats would ultimately be willing to allow tax cuts for high-income earners to expire at the end of the year.

Republicans aided Democrats in the effort, by agreeing to drop their filibuster and allow the legislation to pass or fail on a simple majority basis. But Wednesday’s tight roll call nevertheless required Vice President Joe Biden to chair the Senate’s proceedings if, in a rare exercise of his constitutional duties as president of the Senate, his vote was needed to break a tie.

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) voted with Republicans against the measure.

Read more: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/senate-dems-jam-house-republicans-pass-bush-tax-cut-extension-for-middle-class.php

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2:08 PM PT: VP Biden announces the bill passes, 51-48. Roll call as soon as available. Harry Reid just won a big one, and all the pressure is on Boehner, now.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/25/1113610/-Senate-agrees-on-majority-votes-for-tax-cut-nbsp-extensions

July 25, 2012

Romney adviser to Britain: Obama’s black. Romney’s white. What else do you need to know?

Romney adviser to Britain: Obama’s black. Romney’s white. What else do you need to know?
Posted on July 25, 2012

— an unnamed adviser to Mitt Romney, speaking to The Daily Telegraph yesterday, ahead of Romney’s overseas tour of Britain, Israel and Poland on Wednesday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/mitt-romney/9424524/Mitt-Romney-would-restore-Anglo-Saxon-relations-between-Britain-and-America.html

?w=584

http://underthemountainbunker.com/2012/07/25/romney-adviser-to-britain-obamas-black-romneys-white-what-else-do-you-need-to-know/

July 25, 2012

THIS frightens Me...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/24/greenland-ice-melt-nasa_n_1698129.html

July 25, 2012

It's the Guns – But We All Know, It's Not Really the Guns - byMichael Moore

TUE JUL 24, 2012 AT 05:29 PM PDT
It's the Guns – But We All Know, It's Not Really the Guns
by Michael Moore

.....here's the difference between the rest of the world and us: We have TWO Auroras that take place every single day of every single year! At least 24 Americans every day (8-9,000 a year) are killed by people with guns – and that doesn't count the ones accidentally killed by guns or who commit suicide with a gun. Count them and you can triple that number to over 25,000.


................ why us?


1. We Americans are incredibly good killers. We believe in killing as a way of accomplishing our goals. Three-quarters of our states execute criminals, even though the states with the lower murder rates are generally the states with no death penalty.

Our killing is not just historical (the slaughter of Indians and slaves and each other in a "civil" war). It is our current way of resolving whatever it is we're afraid of. It's invasion as foreign policy. Sure there's Iraq and Afghanistan – but we've been invaders since we "conquered the wild west" and now we're hooked so bad we don't even know where to invade (bin Laden wasn't hiding in Afghanistan, he was in Pakistan) or what to invade for (Saddam had zero weapons of mass destruction and nothing to do with 9/11). We send our lower classes off to do the killing, and the rest of us who don't have a loved one over there don't spend a single minute of any given day thinking about the carnage. And now we send in remote pilotless planes to kill, planes that are being controlled by faceless men in a lush, air conditioned studio in suburban Las Vegas. It is madness.

2. We are an easily frightened people and it is easy to manipulate us with fear. What are we so afraid of that we need to have 300 million guns in our homes? Who do we think is going to hurt us? Why are most of these guns in white suburban and rural homes? Maybe we should fix our race problem and our poverty problem (again, #1 in the industrialized world) and then maybe there would be fewer frustrated, frightened, angry people reaching for the gun in the drawer. Maybe we would take better care of each other (here's a good example of what I mean).
http://ayoungmomsmusings.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/how-i-lost-my-fear-of-universal-health.html

.................

the rest:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/its-the-guns-_b_1700218.html?utm_hp_ref=yahoo&ir=Yahoo
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/24/1113384/-It-s-the-Guns-But-We-All-Know-It-s-Not-Really-the-Guns

July 25, 2012

If Batman Acted Like Congress - By Mike Luckovich

July 25, 2012

EXCLUSIVE: Romney Bundler A Registered Foreign Agent For Hong Kong

Source: Think Progress

EXCLUSIVE: Romney Bundler A Registered Foreign Agent For Hong Kong
By Josh Israel on Jul 25, 2012 at 9:30 am

Tom Loeffler
Newly released lobbyist bundler disclosure records filed by the Mitt Romney campaign show that Tom Loeffler raised at least $17,500 in bundled contributions for the campaign over the first six months of 2012. Loeffler, a former Republican U.S. Representative from Texas and a lobbyist at Akin Gump represents a wide array domestic clients including USAA, NextgenID, and the Texas Association for Home Care & Hospice. But a ThinkProgress review of Foreign Agent Registration Act reveals that Loeffler registered in February as a registered agent for a foreign government: the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC).

The agreement — signed by Loeffler — stipulated that, from February 13 through June 30, 2012, he would “protect, promote, assist and develop Hong King’s economic and trade interests in the United States of America” by working with Congress and the executive branch. In exchange, the HKTDC agreed to pay Akin Gum $35,775 per month. The Romney bundling all took place during the time Loeffler was under this initial contract, though it is unclear whether the contract was renewed at the end of June.

Loeffler has a long history of raising money for Republican presidential candidates. In 2008, Loeffler stepped down from his position as a national finance co-chair for John McCain’s campaign when Newsweek discovered that he had lobbied on behalf of Saudi Arabia. But Romney’s campaign has welcomed him back into the campaign fundraising fold.

Romney’s campaign, while being highly critical of China and the Obama administration’s approach to it, has organized campaign fundraising events in Hong Kong for U.S. citizens living there. He has also come under fire for apparently profiting from Bain investments in a company that provides surveillance cameras for the Chinese government to spy on its own citizens.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/07/25/578531/romney-bundler-registered-foreign-agent-hong-kong/

July 25, 2012

Sysco (the company that brings you most of the food you eat) dumps gestation crates

Source: Grist


Sysco (the company that brings you most of the food you eat) dumps gestation crates
By Twilight Greenaway

Photo by Karen 2873.
Sysco — the giant, often-invisible food distributor — offers 400,000 products to the bulk of the nation’s restaurants and other institutions. It has a 17.5 percent market share, made $37 billion in sales in 2010 alone, and dispatches a cavalcade of silver trucks daily from 180 locations across the U. S.

In other words, Sysco is wholesale food in America, the same way Cargill is farming and Walmart is, well, all of retail. Or, as Salon put it back in 2009, Sysco has “come to monopolize most of what you eat.” So when the company changes a policy — like it announced it was doing on Monday, when it pledged to do away with meat from pigs raised in gestation crates — there is bound to be a striking ripple effect.

In a statement to the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS), the company wrote: “Sysco is committed to working with its suppliers to create a gestation crate-free supply system, for the good of all. Like many of our customers, we’re going to work with our pork suppliers to develop a timeline to achieve this goal.”

Read more: http://grist.org/factory-farms/sysco-the-company-that-bring-you-most-of-the-food-you-eat-dumps-gestation-crates/

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http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2012/07/sysco_gestation_crates_072312.html

July 25, 2012

Chick-Fil-A: Chick-Fil-A: "Fear Everything & Eat Our Homophobic Chicken"

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?
fbid=438450312862499&set=a.367249613315903.85664.354522044588660&type=1&theater
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/24/1113407/-HYSTERICAL-Upworthy-Fixed-Chick-Fil-A-Sign-For-Them

July 25, 2012

Were the women saved in the Aurora shootings "Worth it"?

James Taranto, the Wall Street Journal columnist who writes for their "Best Web of the Day Today" column, posted the following tweet yesterday, referring to the women who were saved by their partners in the Colorado shootings.



more plus a response:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/25/1113463/-Were-the-women-saved-in-the-Aurora-shootings-Worth-it