Me!

Things Black Presidents (and First Ladies) Are Not Allowed to Do

The growing list – according to Republicans and Republican-leaning media – of things white Presidents and their first ladies can do, but black ones can’t:

1. Deliver State of the Union without being heckled
2. Complete Rose Garden remarks without interruption
3. Call for a joint session of Congress (the NERVE!)
4. Take a vacation (LAZY!)
5. Play golf (ELITIST!)
6. Play basketball (GHETTO!)
7. Attend Harvard (QUOTA!)
8. Have a birthday party (must instead be called “hip hop barbecue”)
9. Invite other black people to White House (THUGS!)
10. Speak to school children
11. Appoint judges
12. Serve without providing long-form birth certificate to douchebag rich guy and racist Sheriff
13. Serve without providing SAT scores (see #7)
14. Lawfully use executive authority when Congress refuses to act
15. Issue orders as Commander-in-Chief of the military
16. Take a single scintilla of credit for killing the world’s biggest terrorist
17. Run for re-election
18. Raise funds for said run
19. Go on late night TV
20. Encourage healthy eating
21. Have garden
22. Do push-ups
23. Display awesome arms
24. Be larger than size 6

And finally (for now), the big one…

25.  Use teleprompter

http://ihavethefloor.com/2012/06/18/things-black-presidents-and-first-ladies-are-not-allowed-to-do/

The Enemy of Our Enemy Is Our Friend.... Until They Aren't

I realize that not all of them insurgents became Turdiban members, however, I'ma thinking that, had we not abandoned Trashcanistan after the insurgents defeated the Rooshian Commies for us, most of them probably would not be our enemies today. A little bit of financial aid to Trashcanistan after Rooshia left would have prevented the Turdiban from becoming al Qaeda supporters, bet'cha! The aid $$ we should have spent after the insurgents did our durdy work for us pale in comparison to the vast sums we spent in anti-terrorism efforts in Trashcanistan. 

What are we left with now? A corrupt gummit there and a still-active Turdiban. 

When it comes to the Middle East, we are such fuckups.

If We Lose In November, America Will Never Forgive Us

Today's Funnies

Geographic Variation in Access to Care—The Relationship with Quality

Much research attention has focused on regional variations in health care costs and use of health care services across the United States, primarily based on Medicare experience. Less attention has focused on geographic variations in access and the implications for quality of care and health outcomes. Analyzing data from the Commonwealth Fund report, Rising to the Challenge: Results from a Scorecard on Local Health System Performance, 2012, this perspective finds widespread differences across local areas in residents’ ability to access care, with implications for receipt of preventive care and outcomes.


Here.

Doctors Admit To Unprofessional Behavior In Study At 3 Chicago Hospitals

Working in a real hospital isn’t usually as dramatic as is portrayed in TV shows likeGrey’s Anatomy or House, MD, but a new study has identified unprofessional behaviors to which hospital-based doctors most frequently admit, including badmouthing fellow doctors and finding medical excuses to get out of having to care for patients.


The study, published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, was based on the responses of 77 hospital-based doctors–known as hospitalists–from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine andNorthShore University HealthSystem.


Here.

Is The US Economic Recovery Stalling?

Here.

Americans saw wealth plummet 40 percent from 2007 to 2010, Federal Reserve says

The recent recession wiped out nearly two decades of Americans’ wealth, according togovernment data released Monday, with ­middle-class families bearing the brunt of the decline.

The Federal Reserve said the median net worth of families plunged by 39 percent in just three years, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. That puts Americans roughly on par with where they were in 1992.

The data represent one of the most detailed looks at how the economic downturn altered the landscape of family finance. Over a span of three years, Americans watched progress that took almost a generation to accumulate evaporate. The promise of retirement built on the inevitable rise of the stock market proved illusory for most. Homeownership, once heralded as a pathway to wealth, became an albatross.

Here.

Obama's expansion of the war on terror

The Washington Post reports that the United States has set up a network of air bases across Africa where unarmed spy planes diguised as private turbo-prop aircraft surveil potential terrorist hideouts across a wide swath of the continent.


Here.

al Qaeda's Best Friend

The New York Times has an extraordinary Op-Ed this morning by Ibrahim Mothana, a 23-year-old democracy activist and Al Qaeda opponent in Yemen. The headline is “How Drones Help Al Qaeda,” and it explains in compelling detail how the principal U.S. tactic ostensibly devoted to fighting Al Qaeda in his country — repeated drone attacks — is having exactly the opposite effect.


I really urge everyone to read all of it. ~ Glenn Greenwald

I'ma Feered

Yesterday's events fill me with fear. In Congress yesterday, we saw that nothing will be done to reform Wall Street behavior that led to our horrible economy, massive job loss, and at least 1.5 million foreclosures, which has put the Middle Class onto life support. The head of JP Morgan got a gentle tap on the wrist from Democrat senators and tons o' love from Republican senators at a love-fest, er, hearing today that was supposed to investigate JP Morgan's recent behavior that was shockingly similar to the aforementioned recession-causing activities. Instead, this arse was invited to help Congress 'fix' regulations on Wall Street. OMG!

Wall Street spent billion$ to persuade Congress to limit regulations on banking and Wall Street. This lax governmental regulation allowed greed to run rampant in our financial community and that greed almost took America down. So yesterday I hear Mitt Romney say he would immediately, upon becoming President, remove regulations. OMG!! 

President O'Bama sez we need more policemen, firemen, and teachers. Whether you like O'Bama or not, you gotta admit that this statement is obviously true. Mitt Romney belittles this talk, saying that it is just more 'big gummit' and that the federal gummit doesn't fund policemen, firemen, and teachers and he won't either. That's up to local gummmit. What planet has Mitt Romney inhabited for the past 20 years? Planet Richguy??? Of course the federal gummit funds many policemen, firemen, and teachers. His cutting that funding will cause the loss of tens of thousands of police, fire, and teaching jobs! Local gummits cannot afford to make up the diffy. Each and every one of us would face massive local tax bills to make up the lost federal bucks. Hell, local gummits can barely manage to keep a freekin' LIBARRY open! OMG!!!

I have heard politicians demand an end to 'big gummit' (code for federal gummit) and a return to 'small gummit' (code for local gummit). Then I hear them same politicians demand dough from 'big gummit' when faced with a natural disaster (Rick Perry comes to mind, complaining that Texas aughtta secede from the Union, um, after the Union sends million$ in aid to Texas to help recover from massive fires and drought). OMG!!!!

Man, I needa drink. I ain'ta gonna watch MSNBC and Fox News no more. I need some brain-ded TV. Is Jersey Shore still on? Or maybe Love In The Wild? Yeah, them be purdy peeps that don't think too much. Or worry.

MittWorld

Insurance industry myths about the uninsured

Insurers falsely claimed young people were uninsured by choice, don't believe it.

Read it here.

KRUGMAN: BAILOUTS FOR THE BANKS, AUSTERITY FOR THE PEOPLE

Oh, wow — another bank bailout, this time in Spain. Who could have predicted that?

The answer, of course, is everybody. In fact, the whole story is starting to feel like a comedy routine: yet again the economy slides, unemployment soars, banks get into trouble, governments rush to the rescue — but somehow it’s only the banks that get rescued, not the unemployed.

Just to be clear, Spanish banks did indeed need a bailout. Spain was clearly on the edge of a “doom loop” — a well-understood process in which concern about banks’ solvency forces the banks to sell assets, which drives down the prices of those assets, which makes people even more worried about solvency. Governments can stop such doom loops with an infusion of cash; in this case, however, the Spanish government’s own solvency is in question, so the cash had to come from a broader European fund.

So there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this latest bailout (although a lot depends on the details). What’s striking, however, is that even as European leaders were putting together this rescue, they were signaling strongly that they have no intention of changing the policies that have left almost a quarter of Spain’s workers — and more than half its young people — jobless.

We're doing some of the same idiotic stuff Europe is doing. More here.

Brown: Keep up the Bain attacks

The Ohio senator tells Salon that Obama's private-equity attacks are working in his state

Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown has some advice for the Obama campaign: Ignore Bill Clinton and Corey Booker and keep up the attacks on Romney’s record at Bain Capital. “People in Ohio understand what this means,” he told Salon this weekend at the Netroots Nation conference in Providence, Rhode Island. “Private equity can be a good thing, but I’ve seen the damage it can do in places around the state,” he explained.

As a key swing state suffering from prolonged economic decline, Brown’s Ohio, perhaps more than any other, will be the battleground of this year’s Bain wars. The state seen much of the ad spending on both sides (the first two-minute Obama commercial ran only in the state), and after the conventional wisdom in New York and Washington concluded that the Bain attacks had failed, a recent poll found the message resonating in the Rust Belt state.

By a margin of 16 percentage points, the poll found more people in Ohio agreed that private equity firms “care only about profits and short-term gains for investors. When they come in, workers get laid off, benefits disappear and pensions are cut. Investors walk off with big returns, and working folks get stuck holding the bag.” Just 33 percent in the state said they thought the firms “helped.”

More here.

Getting rolled in Wisconsin

The money that flowed into Walker’s recall fight speaks loudly to the disadvantages a Wisconsin-like movement faces within the walls of electoral politics and the need for it to resist being confined there. On the post-Citizens United playing field, the unlimited amounts of the money that rose to the top of this society in recent decades, as the 1% definitively separated itself from the 99%, can be reinvested in preserving the world as it is and electing those who will make it even more amenable. The advantage invariably goes corporate; it goes Republican.

Historically, the Republicans have long been the party of big business, of multinational corporations, of wealthy, union-hating donors like Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Amway heir Dick DeVos — and in recent decades the Democrats have followed in their wake sweeping up the crumbs (or worse). And here’s the reality of a deeply corrupt system: unless Congress and state legislators act to patch up their tattered campaign finance rulebooks, the same crew with the same money will continue to dominate the political wars. (And any movement that puts its own money on changing those rules is probably in deep trouble.)

More here.

I Seen The Light!!

I just earned my first hunnert as a new Mitt Rmoney supporter!! GO MITT RMONEY!!!!! Send the Kenyan back to Honolulu, Kenya!!!