You asked for it, so here you go- a fundraising page to help the Democrats take back the Senate in Wisconsin:
Archives for June 2011
Sadly, There Were No Measures Introducing Baby Kicking
The modern GOP:
House Republicans are pushing back against a series of public health measures, including school lunch standards and tobacco regulation, teeing up a confrontation with Senate Democrats and the White House over the reach of government in daily life.
The Republicans have used an agriculture appropriations bill to send several messages: They don’t want the government to require school meals that are more nutritional but also more expensive, they don’t want the government to prod food companies to restrain marketing to children, and they don’t want the Food and Drug Administration to regulate any substance based on anything but “hard science.”
They took aim at measures that are part of the Obama administration’s efforts to combat obesity among children and adults as well as some initiatives enacted by the previous Congress.
On Tuesday, the GOP majority on the House Appropriations Committee approved a 2012 spending plan that directs the Agriculture Department to ditch the first new nutritional standards in 15 years proposed for school breakfasts and lunches. The lawmakers say meals containing more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy will cost an additional $7 billion over five years — money they say the country can ill afford in difficult economic times.
The Republican party is now apparently defiantly pro-obesity and pro-cancer. If these guys were comic book villains, no one would buy it because it’s just too over the top.
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Garbage In, Garbage Out
And the DC/Wall Street revolving door for members of the money party continues:
If you missed the announcement late last week that Goldman Sachs hired former Republican Sen. Judd Gregg to be an international advisor, don’t blame yourself.
It came out Friday when most people were thinking more about the long holiday weekend ahead than the latest effort by the investment bank to add to its stable of worthies an influential former Capitol Hill lawmaker.
Anyway, the former senator from New Hampshire who, as you’ll recall, turned down President Obama’s offer of the Commerce Secretary’s job, will join Goldman’s board of international advisors, nearly 20 former corporate chief executives and government officials.
Their role is to use their smarts, experience and connections to help Goldman make as much money for its shareholders and clients as possible and to avoid situations like one The Wall Street Journal recounts in which Goldman, through bad financial bets, lost 98 percent of the value of a 2008 $1.3 billion investment by Libya then tried to make it up to the Libyans by offering them a large ownership interest in Goldman.
No shame. I guess Goldman and Gregg have decided that he has effectively avoided any charges related to the Abramoff scandal, so now his “connections” will be useful.
We Live In Hope
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), the fifth- biggest U.S. bank by assets, received a subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office seeking information on the firm’s activities leading into the credit crisis, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“We don’t comment on specific regulatory or legal issues, but subpoenas are a normal part of the information request process and, of course, when we receive them we cooperate fully,” said David Wells, a company spokesman.
It warms the cockles of my uncharitable heart that Goldman is taking at least a trivial hit where it hurts them next-to-most:
Goldman Sachs dropped 2.3 percent to $133.04 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 9:57 a.m., after falling as much as 3.4 percent following news of the subpoena.
The stock has slid 17 percent since the Senate subcommittee, led by Michigan Democrat Carl M. Levin, used the firm as a case study in a 640-page report on its findings released in April.
Alas, though, I haz a sad over this:
A subpoena is a request for information and doesn’t mean the company is a target of a criminal investigation. Analysts including Sanford C. Bernstein’s Brad Hintz have said they don’t expect the firm to be criminally prosecuted.
If they’ll nail individuals within the firm — enough of them — I’d be satisfied. I live in hope.
Image: Charles Wauters Der beim Diebstahl ertappte Hausdiener, (very loosely — the thieving servant, caught in the act), 1845
Not just Israel
Whenever Israel is discussed, here or anywhere, invariably people start calling each other anti-Semites, often wrongly. You know what is actually anti-Semitic, though? Assuming that Jewish Americans’ number one issue is US policy towards Israel.
Earlier this week, a few dozen members of Obama’s regional finance committee met with Jim Messina, the campaign manager for the Obama 2012 effort. According to one bundler present, they discussed how Obama can win, even if the economy remains in the tank, and how the campaign can attract the smaller, grass-roots donors. The topic of Israel didn’t come up once.
[….]Jewish fund-raisers say that they fear for Israel’s future too, but continue to support the president, mainly because his Middle East speech didn’t contain anything Mr. Obama hadn’t already articulated. Plus, they point out, Israel is just one issue among several, and Mr. Obama remains more palatable than any of his opponents on issues ranging from the war in Iraq to the environment and preserving what remains of the social safety net.
“I have friends who are concerned, who wish Obama hadn’t said that,” said one bundler. “But at the end of the day, are they going to support Mitt Romney? I don’t think so.”
Most of my colleagues are older Jewish Americans and some of them have horrifying attitudes about Israel, call people anti-Semitic or self-hating if they don’t support right-wing policies in Israel, etc. But almost all of them — even those with the most out there ideas about Israel — still vote Democrat. I have never heard even one of them link their beliefs on Israel with how they plan to vote in American elections.
I know where the whole myth comes from. From a few whacks on the teevee, from Howard Fineman’s stories about how his cranky uncle votes, etc. But ultimately it’s a fairly offensive caricature that people should stop using.
Going Galt (Cooking open thread edition)
There are days, kiddies, when I tire of politics and the heady whirl, and the thought of suffering through another fifteen pages of Kathryn Jean Lopez whining about young girls wearing makeup is enough to make me want to remove my own hand so I can’t operate the mouse any more.
There are days when I can’t muster the strength to tell you the story of the time when Chris Christie got stuck on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Convent of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen’s Annual Fair and ended up vomiting on Ann Coulter’s head during the ceremonial stoning of the adulteresses in the carpark out the back, despite the pleasure I know such a story would bring to you all.
Today is one such day. The final straw this morning was Jonah Goldberg offering congratulations to Ben Fucking Shapiro at the Corner on that basis that Ben has apparently:
gotten a whole bunch of liberal Hollywood muckety mucks to confess their very liberal agenda
in his new book, in addition to not soiling himself in public for five whole days. The Hollywood Reporter quotes several of the more shocking revelations from Ben’s book, including that:
MASH had a pacifist agenda, says co-creator and director Gene Reynolds. “We wanted to point out the wastefulness of war,” he says in the book.
Be still, my barely beating heart – a fine piece of investigative journalism that surely rivals the time Peggy Noonan photocopied her own vomit and sold it to the Washington Post as a hard-hitting expose of alcoholism in the news-media.
Peggy, by the way, is channelling Andrew Sullivan:
Democrats, on the other hand, should be forced to answer a question. If you oppose the highly specific Ryan plan, fine, but tell us your specific proposal. How will you save Medicare? Will you let it die?
questions to which my considered and carefully expressed response is “Screw you, you drunken asshole”.
On days like this, I like to bake, and I hope you won’t mind me sharing a recipe with you. You may need the distraction as much as I do.
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Why Is This Not Being Discussed?
And I’m seriously astonished, why is it not being discussed that the Scott plan to basically drug test everyone who moves in Florida is a blatant plant to make millions? This connection isn’t hidden behind thousands of complex shell companies and what not, it’s not even loosely hidden. It’s right god damned there.