August 10, 2012
The Free Market Recipe: Deride Government. See That It Fails. Collect Tax Payer Bailout
What we have in the United States is crony capitalism with side orders of privatized profit, and socialized risk.
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August 9, 2012
Fake Outrage over Gun Violence in Aftermath of Movie Theater, Sikh Temple Shootings
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August 9, 2012
7 “Facts” Conservatives & Republicans Repeat that Are Not True, Do Not Work, and Do Not Make Sense
There is a lot of nonsense bouncing around the conservative echo chamber. Below I present “facts” that conservatives love to repeat over and over even though they have no grounding in reality. And while this is clearly far from a complete list, it offers a glimpse into the fact-starved void that is the conservative bubble.
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August 8, 2012
Obama, Romney in rare agreement: Boy Scouts should end gay discrimination
In July the Boy Scouts of America created a stir – and prompted an Eagle Scout to return his badge – when they reaffirmed their ban on gays.
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August 8, 2012
NOAA says July 2012 was “all-time warmest month on record for the nation”
Can someone please turn off the oven!
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August 8, 2012
Harry Reid resorts to Republican-like tactics and the media loses it’s mind
I wrote last week about Senator Harry Reid’s claim that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for 10 years. In that post I agreed with Jon Stewart’s segment where he called Harry Reid “terrible,” and I still stand by that assessment mainly because Reid felt the need to say, “His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son.” That’s not only terrible, it’s awful.
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August 7, 2012
The Facts: Obama vs. Bush On Job Creation
First let’s get this out-of-the-way. Presidents are not job creators. They don’t wave a wand and poof, magically there are millions of new jobs. Presidents can set the tone for policy and they can have a major influence on congressional legislation that can lead to favorable economic conditions for job growth. But this is clearly a much more muddy process than we like to believe when we talk presidents and job creation.
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August 7, 2012
Republican ideology of less taxes and small government is just selfish
So I’m just going to come out and say it: Republicans are selfish. How else to explain their policies? They advocate lower taxes, especially for millionaires, along with spending cuts that hurt people at the bottom of the economic ladder. And here’s how this works: Republicans have to tell themselves and the rest of us that it’s tough love and that they aren’t advocating these policies because they are mean, or greedy, or selfish. No, they will say everyone can achieve the American dream if they just stop taking free handouts, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and make something of their life. OK, so add “disparaging” along with “selfish” as suitable words to describe the Republican Party and it’s policies. But I guess you have to believe they are genuine, because how could anybody live with themselves advocating such potentially destructive policies for the poor? Republicans have to believe that those who are harmed by their policies are deserving of that harm because they are freeloaders, and so the only way to solve this “problem” is to cut spending.
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August 7, 2012
VIDEO: NASA scientist James Hansen connects extreme heat to climate change
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August 7, 2012
Big government? Try again. Smallest public sector since 1968
Courtesy of Jordan Weissman at the Atlantic and the Hamilton Project (a centrist think tank), we have the following graph that shows the ratio of government employment to population since 1980:
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