Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[ice grillin you]

its amazing how low the bar for impeachment falls when a black man gets in the white house.....altho to be fair the impeachment crowd has yet to actually say what he would be impeached for...but i guess thats the point

[MDS]

the impeachment crowd also doesnt know that uncle joe would become president. they probably think theres a new election or something.

[ice grillin you]

The Inquirer's Angela Couloumbis reports Pennsylvania Sen. Lisa Boscola, a Democrat from Lehigh, was asked to leave a Harrisburg bar after getting into a fight with Republican House Speaker Sam Smith. She also got into a disagreement with an unidentified woman in the bar; that woman later wrote on Facebook that Boscola struck her.

In an interview Wednesday, Boscola acknowledged she was asked to leave the bar, but said she did not strike anyone.

"When you hit somebody there is a physical act of 'stay away from me,'" she said of the woman. "Unless she was in my face. I do not know what her motivation is. I need to figure that out. Because in this business, it could be misinterpreted. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt as well. No one wants to hurt anyone in this business. Especially a woman. You know what I'm saying."

The conversation, Boscola told the Inquirer, began over a bill that would ban lawmakers from taking cash gifts. (Yes, as you probably know, that is still perfectly legal.) She accused Smith of being condescending — well, she said "Some of those leaders talk to you in ways that are sometimes condescending" — and decided to respond in kind.

Meanwhile, Smith told the Patriot-News' Jan Murphy that he "hope she gets whatever help she needs for her problems. Her statement is a clear indication of her own denial of the situation and I feel sorry for her." Boscola was convicted of a DUI in 2000.

The woman who alleges Boscola hit her has since deleted her Facebook post, but actually did a "shout out to Pennsylvania Senator Lisa Boscola" format like she's a radio DJ. She also called Boscola an "alcoholic geriatric piece of shtein." Aw, c'mon. She's only 52.

But here's my favorite part of the story: Boscola may have been looking for trouble that night. The bar she went to, the Brick Haus, is a Republican hangout. Boscola said she was "in the lion's den." Next, lawmakers will start flashing political-themed gang signs.

[ice grillin you]

http://www.eclectablog.com/2014/04/why-the-super-rich-hate-obamacare-and-will-never-let-the-debate-die.html?utm_content=buffer879e0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[ice grillin you]

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/ucrk7y/apocalypse-cow---welfare-rancher

[Rome]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/six-studies-that-show-everything-republicans-believe-is-wrong-20140423

Six Studies That Show Everything Republicans Believe is Wrong

It's time for the right wing to stop lying about the minimum wage, taxes, global warming and more

By Sean McElwee
April 23, 2014 9:00 AM ET

The great 20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes has been widely quoted as saying, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" Sadly, in their quest to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the wealthiest members of society, today's Republicans have held the opposite position – as the evidence has piled up against them, they continue spreading the same myths. Here are six simple facts about the economy that Republicans just can't seem to accept:​

1. The Minimum Wage Doesn't Kill Jobs.

The Republican story on the minimum wage takes the inordinately complex interactions of the market and makes them absurdly simple. Raise the price of labor through a minimum wage, they claim, and employers will hire fewer workers. But that's not how it works. In the early Nineties, David Card and Alan Krueger found "no evidence that the rise in New Jersey's minimum wage reduced employment at fast-food restaurants in the state." Since then, international, national and state-level studies have replicated these findings – most recently in a study by three Berkeley economists. Catherine Ruetschlin, a policy analyst at Demos, has argued that a higher minimum wage would actually "boost the national economy" by giving workers more money to spend on goods and services. The most comprehensive meta-study of the minimum wage examined 64 studies and found "little or no evidence" that a higher minimum wage reduces employment. There is however, evidence that a higher minimum wage lifts people out of poverty. Raise away!

2. The Stimulus Created Millions of Jobs.

In the aftermath of the 2007 recession, President Obama invested in a massive stimulus. The Republican belief that markets are always good and government is always bad led them to argue that diverting resources to the public sector this way would have disastrous results. They were wrong: The stimulus worked, with the most reliable studies finding that it created millions of jobs. The fact that government stimulus works – long denied by Republicans (at least, when Democrats are in office) – is a consensus among economists, with only 4 percent arguing that unemployment would have been lower without the stimulus and only 12 percent arguing that the costs outweigh the benefits.

3. Taxing The Rich Doesn't Hurt Economic Growth.

Republicans believe that the wealthy are the vehicles of economic growth. Starting with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, they tried cutting taxes on the rich in order to unleash latent economic potential. But even the relatively conservative Martin Feldstein has acknowledged that investment is driven by demand, not supply; if there are viable investments to be made, they will be made regardless of tax rates, and if there are no investments to be made, cutting taxes is merely pushing on a string. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, two of the eminent economists of inequality, find no correlation between marginal tax rates and economic growth.

In fact, what hurts economic growth most isn't high taxes – it's inequality. Two recent IMF papers confirm what Keynesian economists like Joseph Stiglitz have long argued: Inequality reduces the incomes of the middle class, and therefore demand, which in turn stunts growth. To understand why, imagine running a car dealership. Would you prefer if 1 person in your time owned 99% of the wealth and the rest of the population had nothing, or if wealth was distributed more equally, so that more people could purchase your cars?

Every other country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has far lower levels of inequality than the United States. Since there are no economic benefits of inequality, why hasn't the right conceded the argument? Because it's based on class interest, not empirical evidence.

4. Global Warming is Caused by Humans.

Even as global warming is linked to more and more extreme weather events, more than 56 percent of Republicans in the current congress deny man-made global warming. In fact, the infamous Lutz memo shows that Republicans have actually created a concerted campaign to undermine the science of global warming. In the leaked memo, Frank Lutz, a Republican consultant, argues that, "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science."

In truth, the science of global warming is not up for debate. James Powell finds that over a one year period, 2,258 articles on global warming were published by 9,136 authors. Of those, only one, from the Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, rejected man-made global warming. That one article was likely motivated by the Russian government's interest in exploiting arctic shale. Another, even more comprehensive study, examining 11,944 studies over a 10-year period, finds that 97 percent of scientists accepted the scientific consensus that man-made global warming is occurring.

This is not an abstract academic debate. The effects of climate change will be devastating, and poor countries will be hurt the worst. We've already seen the results. Studies have linked global warming to Hurricane Sandy, droughts and other extreme weather events. More importantly, doing nothing will end up being far more expensive than acting now. One study suggests it could wipe out 3.2% of global GDP annually.

5. The Affordable Care Act is Working

President Obama's centrist healthcare bill was informed by federalism (delegating power to the states) and proven technocratic reforms (like a board to help doctors discern which treatments would be most cost-effective). Republicans, undeterred, decried it as Soviet-style communism based on "death panels" – never mind the fact that the old system, which rationed care based on income, is the one that left tens of thousands of uninsured people to die.

From the beginning, Republicans have predicted disastrous consequences or Obamacare, none of which came true. They predicted that the ACA would add to the deficit; in fact, it will reduce the deficit. They claimed the exchanges would fail to attract the uninsured; they met their targets. They said only old people would sign up; the young came out in the same rates as in Massachusetts. They predicted the ACA would drive up healthcare costs; in fact it is likely holding cost inflation down, although it's still hard to discern how much of the slowdown was due to the recession. In total, the ACA will ensure that 26 million people have insurance in 2024 who would have been uninsured otherwise.

It's worth noting that every time the CBO estimates how much Obamacare will cost, the number gets lower. Odd how we've never heard Republicans say that.

6. Rich people are no better than the rest of us.

Politicians on the right like to pretend that having money is a sign of hard work and morality – and that not having money is a sign of laziness. This story is contradicted by human experience and many religious traditions (Jesus tells a graphic story about a rich man who refused to help the poor burning in hell). But it's also contradicted by the facts – more and more rich people are getting their money through inheritances, and science shows that they are no more benevolent than others.

More and more, the wealthy in America are second or third generation. For instance, the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, own more wealth than the poorest 40 million Americans. Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef have found that 30 to 50 percent of the wage difference between the financial sector and the rest of the private sector was due to unearned "rent," or money they gained through manipulating markets. Josh Bivens and Larry Mishel found the same thing for CEOs – their increased pay hasn't been correlated to performance.

If rich people haven't really earned their money, are they at least doing any good with it? Studies find that the wealthy actually give less to charity as a proportion of their income than middle-class Americans, even though they can afford more. Worse, they use their supposed philanthropy to avoid taxes and finance pet projects. Research by Paul Piff finds that the wealthy are far more likely to exhibit narcissistic tendencies. "The rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people," Piff recently told New York magazine. "It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, iceholes."

Awesome times infinity.

[PhillyPhreak54]

I'm considering printing that out and taping it to everyone's desks at work

[smeags]

i just hope this mental midget michelle bachmann doesn't disappear after she retires from politics cause she is an absolute gem.

1."I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending." –Rep. Michele Bachmann, suggesting at a presidential campaign event in Florida that the 2011 East Coast earthquake and hurricane was a message from God (Aug. 2011)

2. "Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too" -Rep. Michele Bachmann, getting her John Waynes mixed up during an interview after launching her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, where she grew up. The beloved movie star John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, three hours away. The John Wayne that Waterloo was home to is John Wayne Gacy, a notorious serial killer. (June 2011)

3. "Our movement at its core is an intellectual movement." --Rep. Michele Bachmann on the Tea Party movement, CPAC conference, March 2014

4. "Why should I go and do something like that? But the Lord says, 'Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, recalling in a 2006 speech at a Megachurch in Minneapolis that pursuing tax law wasn't her choice, but she did so at the urging of her husband because she was certain God was speaking through him

5. "If we took away the minimum wage -- if conceivably it was gone -- we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level." -Michele Bachmann, Jan. 2005

6. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?" -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling for a new McCarthyism, Oct. 2008

7. "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, on the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak that happened when Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president, April 28, 2009

8. "Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas." -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009

9. "I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter." –Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), on the HPV vaccine, Fox News interview, Sept. 12, 2011

10. "But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. ... I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, botching American history while speaking at an Iowan's for Tax Relief event in January 2011. The Founding Fathers did not work to end slavery, and John Quincy Adams was not one of the Founding Fathers.

[Seabiscuit36]

http://www.barstoolsports.com/nyc/super-page/rancher-cliven-bundy-with-an-outrageously-racist-interview-on-cnn/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3T-JWhGDIsw

[Diomedes]

Sounds like a run of the mill republican talking the same shtein they all do when the cameras aren't rolling only this time it is.

edit:  I feel a bit sorry for this poor bastich, though.  He's chum for the media sharks.  Get the guy to say "stillupfront," sell ads.  As though he could avoid saying it.  This is what passes for news.

[General_Failure]

It would be news that there are still people like that if there weren't so many of them.

[PhillyPhreak54]

His repub supporters are scurrying away from his as fast as they can.

But hey...he's a hero, right?!

[Diomedes]

Behind closed doors, amongst themselves, they want slavery back.  States Rights!

[General_Failure]

Because going to all the trouble of putting black guys in jail and paying them two cents and hour for their work is really cutting in to those profit margins.

[Diomedes]

I was trying to think of an issue that I would take the side of States Rights over Federalism the other day.

It was a long time before I came up with one.  All I could think of was things like slavery, education for minorities and the poor and women, handicap access, voting, freedom of (from) religion, etc.  On all of these, State rights basically means let the troglodytes rule as they wish.  So I'm federalist all the way.

But finally, I think I found one:  marijuana.

Any other issues I ought to add to that list?