Paul Krugman, July 1, 2010....

"For the last few months, I and others have watched, with amazement and horror, the emergence of a consensus in policy circles in favor of immediate fiscal austerity. That is, somehow it has become conventional wisdom that now is the time to slash spending, despite the fact that the world’s major economies remain deeply depressed."

Yesterday the Senate reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act. The vote was 68-31 with 15 Republicans voting along with all the Democrats. Of course, all bets will be off in the GOP controlled House where the bill will be taken up after next week.

Both the L.A. Times and the NY Times accounts of the Senate vote explain how the 15 Republican senators who voted for the reauthorization is evidence that conservatives have taken the Democratic accusations of their party waging a war on women, to heart.

Conservative media.....which, outside of the blogs and one or two radio and teevee programs, is the entire media......realize that Americans are either uninterested in political details or are too dumb to comprehend any of it. So, conservative media don't try to fight the current, they roll with it.

Because Big Money controls our government and elections and, then, graciously writes our laws for us too....so our elected officials can busy themselves raising more money from...Big Money.....Americans are constantly being bombarded, carpet bombed actually, with lies, deception and propaganda. Politicians call it "messaging." Others, like The Reverend, call it humanoid programming.

Last Tuesday, Paul Ryan (R-WI) was interviewed by the Christian Broadcasting Network. Ryan explained that his Catholic faith helped him in assembling his harsh budget of austerity.

“A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves, in public and in private,so to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is: How do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?” he said.

The nation is being overwhelmed by liars. Not the kind of liars who lie about sexual encounters to avoid embarrassment, but instead the slimy type of liars who lie in order to feather there own nests.

Let's take yesterday's release of a new Social Security Trust Fund report. The report concluded that the Trust Fund would be depleted by 2033, some 21 years away. If nothing whatsoever is done to change Social Security by 2033, then after 2033 recipients would receive approximately 75% of promised benefits.....a monthly amount (including cost of living adjustments) which would exceed today's average monthly Social Security checks.

This is a picture test.

Who doesn't like dogs, right?

The Akron Beacon Journal began a series Sunday asking the question, "why do we sound so angry?" The series allegedly will drill down on our political discourse and how uncivil it has become, and come up with possible solutions. The pilot article began with the predictable 'search for equivalency'. In newspaper and teevee "news" land both sides are equally at fault...no matter the topic, issue, policy or event. If Mr. Conservative calls a young woman a "slut", then media is required to find something equally offensive from the left to assure their preconceived 'both sides do it' starting point still holds.

The Beacon series to find equivalency started out this way...

I often travel the Tallmadge Circle. The Circle is a roundabout without stop signs or traffic lights where 4 highways intersect. It's a busy place.

The other day I noticed that the old Lujan's restaurant building, later Bob's Big Boy, on the Circle is still shuttered. It's been shuttered for years and years. It was shuttered during the Bush presidency and it's still shuttered during the Obama administration.

High gasoline prices are good news for Republicans. Although a U.S. president, as was the case during the high gasoline price period during Bush,
has no control over the price of commodities, the president at the time of the high prices is an easy target for blame placement.

Nowhere is this blame placement seen or heard more often than on the Fox Republican Network.....where the "news" always vindicates Republicans and damns Democrats.
I watched a clip yesterday on Fox RN featuring Juan Williams and Mary Katherine Ham. The topic was oil speculators and whether oil speculators were driving oil prices
up. It seemed like a good time for Mary Katherine Ham to blast the Dodd-Frank bill for being ineffectual in driving down  the manipulation by traders of the oil market.

Now that we know what "class warfare" is.....asking 22,000 millionaires to pay a higher tax rate on their millions than their employees do on their thousands....let's examine what "class warfare" is not.

House Republicans are looking to cut food stamp allowances for 46 million Americans.....3 million more cut off the food stamp rolls entirely. That is NOT targeting a specific demographic group of Americans for economic punishment....and so....is not to be criticized as being an act of "class warfare."

Baby steps.

Maybe I'll find that the learning curve for the new blog protocol is really a cul-de-sac.

Testing again. The thing ate yet another post....that's three today...it's hungry.
May not even be doable. maybe that was the point, huh?

This is a test.

Like driving in the fog, or blinding snow......one has no idea where they are or where they are going. It's a helpless feeling and the adrenaline from the frustration and accompanying fear of not knowing where you are....puts one on edge.

Mitt Romney, on Fox (where else?), a month ago....

Here's what Democratic political consultant Hilary Rosen said concerning Mitt and Ann Romney....

Very rich entrepreneur, Nick Hanauer, writing in Bloomberg Businessweek....

March 21....

Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Wonderboy...

Women employees earn 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts in the workplace earn. Which means that women who do the same work as men are being continuously discriminated against.

Remember those great days when the ex-prisoner-of-war, John McCain, proudly proclaimed....

"...I know I speak for every American when I say to him, 'Today we are all Georgians.'"

You may recall hearing from many out on the right wing that President Obama's communist stimulus plan of 2009.....you know, the $787 billion "slush fund",.....didn't do one thing to lower high unemployment or improve a sagging economy.

Like, for example....this guy...

Did this president give proper respect to the Supreme Court?

I watched Obama's speech at an Associated Press luncheon yesterday. Not only did the president call out the phony equivalency seekers in media for their "both sides are equally at fault" style of "journalism", but Obama once again clearly and methodically detailed the utter bankruptcy of Republican economic doctrine. Transcript here. Here are a few excerpts....

I am feeling the freedom today.

So, you're riding in a car being driven by your wife. Your 4 year old son is in the back seat. The wife is driving over the speed limit and the police pull you over for speeding. When the traffic cop runs your plate number, a two year old outstanding warrant on you comes up. The warrant was over a different traffic offense you committed 2 years prior. You reach in your glove box, find the receipt from paying the two year old traffic ticket, and hand it to the police. The receipt should settle the issue. It doesn't. The trooper arrests you.

I witnessed it during George W. Bush's attempt at comprehensive immigration reform. I witnessed it during the "Muslim Americans can't build new mosques" embarrassment. I saw it during the Shirley Sherrod episode, and now again with Trayvon Martin. The most recent example has been the unexplainable attack on women, as witnessed in the extremely invasive new laws passed in numerous Republican-controlled states to inhibit a woman's free exercise to choose and as also witnessed in the incoherent "argument" over women's access to contraception. I've witnessed all these things....and yet, barring the explanation being one of a political party death wish....I don't understand it.

Political parties need voters to vote for their candidates and issues. But looking at what the Republican Party and movement conservatives have been doing for the last decade,.....and especially after Obama became president.....it's hard to believe that Republicans actually believe and understand that obvious truth. Without voters who vote for your candidates, your political party is dead in the political water. Seems simple. But it, apparently, isn't.