He’s got this.
Check out this interview Obama did with Jean Enersen in Seattle.
[via The Obama Diary]
[cross-posted]Obama is not going to slash Medicare or Social Security, so CTFD alreadyPost + Comments (261)
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 261 Comments
This post is in: The Party of Fiscal Responsibility, OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT!!, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment
Check out this interview Obama did with Jean Enersen in Seattle.
[via The Obama Diary]
[cross-posted]Obama is not going to slash Medicare or Social Security, so CTFD alreadyPost + Comments (261)
by DougJ| 139 Comments
This post is in: Good News For Conservatives
I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach about the debt ceiling negotiations, that we’ll see some terrible “grand bargain” where the social safety net is gutted in return for some tiny amount of tax cuts increases. It’s not that I think Obama and his advisers are crypto-Republicans, it’s just that DC life has got them in its sway; all the Beltway institutions, all the Serious People, from the think tanks to the Post, are aligned in favor of such a “bargain”, and it’s also possible that some in the White House have come to believe the hype.
It’s times like these when I envy wingers their delusions a bit. Jimmy P thinks that Boehner is now the second coming of Ronaldus Maximus:
So in the end, it was bit of a Ronald Reagan moment for John Boehner on Saturday. Just as the U.S. president walked away from a bad arms control agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986, the House speaker passed on President Barack Obama’s mega-debt reduction deal in Washington.
In both case, the asking price was just too high. For Reagan, it was lethal limitations on his Strategic Defense Initiative. For Boehner, it was a trillion-dollar tax distraction from America’s true fiscal threat: spending run amok…
Granted Jimmy P is particularly dense, even for a winger — here he is link-failing the ICYMI that he once won on Jeopardy — but the right has an amazing ability to turn everything and anything into some kind of a heroic Reagan or Churchill moment.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 50 Comments
This post is in: Schadenfreude
DougJ has already noted that the Murdoch empire fumbled the whole hacking scandal, but I thought it was worth noting that the recent fire sale of MySpace cost News Corp a hell of a lot more:
So all things considered, MySpace has cost Murdoch’s empire something like $1.3 billion. Even if my assumptions are way off, the final cost can’t be less than $1 billion.
News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million in 2006, ran it into the ground, and sold it for $35 million last month. Let’s see what the market has to say about that (click to embiggen):
For the past few years, News Corp has underperformed Disney, Viacom and the S&P 500. Don’t get me wrong — Rupert’s company is still profitable. It just isn’t making money for its investors.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 37 Comments
This post is in: Fuck The Poor
This Times graphic and the accompanying story are an interesting contrast to the fantasy world of sacrifice and stimulus denial that characterizes a lot of Republican rhetoric. On average, $2 of every $10 of income is a government payment, and it’s more in the predominantly red states noted above. When that runs out, consumer spending will take another nose dive, since poor people actually have to spend every penny they get from the government. And, by the way, there are no jobs to be had:
In Arizona, where there are 10 job seekers for every opening, 45,000 people could lose benefits by the end of the year, according to estimates from the state Department of Economic Security. Yet employers in the state have added just 4,000 jobs over the last 12 months.
Some other states will also feel a disproportionate loss of income unless hiring revives. In Florida, where nearly 476,000 people are collecting unemployment benefits, employers have added only 11,200 jobs in the last year. In Michigan, employers have added about 40,000 jobs since May 2010, but about 267,000 people are claiming jobless benefits.
by DougJ| 33 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I am back from traveling in Europe. I don’t like to get all Tom Friedman and talk about Lithuanian cab drivers and what not, but I am always fascinated by Europeans’ love for certain parts of American culture. This is from a burger/music place in Stockholm called Cliff Barnes.
My friends were surprised I didn’t know who Cliff Barnes was. Apparently, “Dallas” was huge over there.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Food, Sweet Fancy Moses!
Hat tip to commentor dj spellchecka for the link to NPR’s interview transcript on “The Troubled History of the Supermarket Tomato“:
GUY RAZ: I’m speaking with Barry Estabrook. His new book is called “Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit.” Barry, a big part of this book is not just about the taste of tomatoes but about the process of getting them to market. And you describe this world, and I’m using your words, you describe a world where slave labor is employed.
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BARRY ESTABROOK: Let me run down a few little items here: people being bought and sold like animals, people being shackled in chains, people being beaten for either not working hard enough, fast enough or being too weak or sick to work, people actually being shot and killed for trying to escape. That sounds like 1850’s slavery to me. And that, in fact, is going on or has gone on. They were – in the last 15 years, there have been seven successful prosecutions, slavery prosecutions in the State of Florida. Even, you know, the ones that are not being held as slaves probably work at the very, very bottom of the American workforce… They’re paid basically per pound that they pick. If it rains, they don’t make a cent that day.[…] __
RAZ: A few years ago, some of these farm workers in Florida started to organize, actually. And there was a campaign backed by some labor unions and student groups and their conditions apparently improved. What happened?
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ESTABROOK: In the last seven or eight months, there’s just been a sea change in labor relations in the Florida tomato industry. What had happened was this small group of grassroots people called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers had been lobbying since the early ’90s to get a raise and to have some basic primitive workers’ rights put in place.
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What they started concentrating on was the end customers of these farmers. They started with – actually with the Taco Bell restaurant chain. And after four years, Taco Bell said, okay, we’ve had enough. I mean, four years of boycotts, demonstrations, they signed a board. And then gradually, all the other fast food chains in the country, one by one, often kicking and screaming, signed onto this agreement. The sad thing is that not a single supermarket chain in the country, with the exception of Whole Foods, has agreed.
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Canned Tomatoes Are Looking Better & BetterPost + Comments (51)
by Dennis G.| 99 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012, Glibertarianism, Post-racial America, Assholes, Good News For Conservatives, Manic Progressive, OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT!!, Our Failed Media Experiment
Whenever the village embraces a new “serious” idea to help Liberals and Democrats you can be sure that it will end up with roots in the manure generated by the concerned trolling of some denizen of Wingnutopia.
You can see how this is done with a reality-free bit of drivel from a typing monkey on Tucker Carlson’s parasitic Daily Caller. In his “How the Tea Party can win the left”, James Poulos posits that hate of government can and should be the glue that binds liberals and the Tea Party together. He further argues that only by embracing the Glibertarian unicorn can both the left and right be saved from the horror that is Barack Obama. In his regurgitation of very tired wingnut talking points, Poulas claims that Liberals are angrier at Obama than they were at LBJ back in the day–of course, no evidence or facts are offered to support this regularly debunked claim that massive swarms of Liberals hate Obama. Poulos also explains that Liberals are hopeless and will be forced to vote for Obama because they have no place to go. Then he offers up the Tea Party as the last great progressive hope in the Nation. It is complete nonsense that only a Firebagger could love. And yet, it is nonsense that Conor Friedersdorf finds “provocative”.