Rick Perry

GOP, Biz Groups Can't Find a Single 'Job Creator" Who Opposes Millionaire's Tax

Yesterday, Republicans again shot down an extension of a payroll tax break for middle-class families due to their objection to a 1.9 percent tax increase on the top 0.2 percent of income earners. Naturally, Republicans are recycling their spurious claim that taxing America’s millionaires will somehow hit small businesses and stifle job creation. “It’s just intuitive that, you know, if you’re somebody who’s in business and you get hit with a tax increase, it’s going to be that much harder, I think, to make investments that are going to lead to job creation,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD).

Hoping for more than Thune’s intuition, NPR put out a request to Republican offices and the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax to find business owners who’d be affected. Unsurprisingly, Republican leadership and the business groups came up empty.

Here.

GOPers Scramble to Change Alabama's Immigration Law After White People Are Inconvenienced

Did you know that there are non-brown furriners in these here United States? True story!

Faced with backlash over the detainment of two (non-brown) foreign auto employees, two architects of Alabama’s tough immigration law say they are having second thoughts about the law.

The Republican attorney general is calling for some of the strictest parts of it to be repealed. Some Republican lawmakers say they now want to make changes in the law that was pushed quickly through the legislature.

Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed the law, said he's contacting foreign executives to tell them they and their companies are still welcome in Alabama. The moves comes following backlash from big business after the embarrassing traffic stops of two foreign employees tied to the state's prized Honda and Mercedes plants.

Here.

Rick Perry Wears Brokeback Mountain Jacket In Anti-Gay Advert

Is he coming out soon, like so many rabidly anti-gay Republicans have done?

Republican Party Is Getting The Candidates It Deserves

There are two crucial things you need to understand about the current state of American politics. First, given the still dire economic situation, 2012 should be a year of Republican triumph. Second, the G.O.P. may nonetheless snatch defeat from the jaws of victory — because Herman Cain was not an accident.

Think about what it takes to be a viable Republican candidate today. You have to denounce Big Government and high taxes without alienating the older voters who were the key to G.O.P. victories last year — and who, even as they declare their hatred of government, will balk at any hint of cuts to Social Security and Medicare (death panels!).

And you also have to denounce President Obama, who enacted a Republican-designed health reform and killed Osama bin Laden, as a radical socialist who is undermining American security.

So what kind of politician can meet these basic G.O.P. requirements? There are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or to be totally clueless.

More

Euro Crisis May Pack U.S. Banks With Deposits They Can’t Use

I got a great idea for banks to use all that money: Make some friggin' loans! Help America's economy! America certainly helped their economies!

The European debt crisis is poised to flood U.S. banks with something they don’t want and can’t use: more money.
Cash held by U.S. banks surged 8.4 percent to a record $981 billion during the week ending July 27, the Federal Reserve said in an Aug. 5 report. That’s more than triple the amount firms had in July 2008, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. almost froze bank-to-bank lending.

Even more money may be deposited with U.S. lenders if investors pull away from European banks amid concern the Greek debt crisis may spread to Italy or beyond, said Brian Smedley, a strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. Those funds may not be so welcome: With few opportunities to lend them out profitably, U.S. firms may have to slap fees on depositors to keep returns from eroding.

“It becomes a loser to hold these excess deposits,” said Bert Ely, a bank-industry consultant in Alexandria, Virginia. “At the margin they have to think, ‘What can we do with $50 million of deposits?’ The answer is not much.”

More here.

The Media Wakes Up And Realizes Obama Is The Favorite To Win In 2012

Along with a declining unemployment rate, new polling suggests that President Obama is gaining steam and the media narrative is now shifting towards Obama being favored to win reelection in 2012.


More here.

Political Funnies, 1

Amen

GOP Supercommittee Member Admits Bush Tax Cuts Didn’t Create Jobs, Can’t Explain Why

Republicans this week filibustered a Democratic plan to extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, objecting to the fact that the extension was paid for by implementing a small surtax on income in excess of $1 million. To justify their objection to taxing the wealthy, Republicans have revived their false claimthat taxing the rich amounts to taxing small business owners and job creators.

Bloomberg’s Al Hunt asked Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) — who represented the GOP on the fiscal supercommittee that failed to craft a deficit reduction package — to explain this viewpoint, considering that more jobs were created under the Clinton administration and its higher taxes on the rich than were created following the Bush tax cuts. Upton admitted that “I don’t know specifically the answer to that question,” nonsensically pointing to Friday’s jobs report instead of trying to argue the premise of Hunt’s question.

Read it here.

Just Sayin', Noot

They've done it before, they'll do it again.

Paranoia

Progressive Reading List On A Chill Night

Michele Bachmann Says A Gay Man Can Get Married, But Only To A Woman (Like Her Husband Did)

Michele Bachmann Says If You Are Unemployed, You Should Starve

The Elite are Getting Nervous... Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street

Repug Tax Plan Would Eliminate Deductions that SPECIFICALLY Target the Middle Class While Leaving their Buddies in the Top 1% Reaping their Windfall Profits

Bloomberg Evicts OWS Under Media Blackout - "For the Press' Protection" - Tyrants ALWAYS Perpetrate Their Crimes in the Name of the Security of the People

Bill O'Reilly's Lincoln Book Barred From Ford’s Theatre Bookstore for Plethora of Factual Errors - so Naturally O'Reilly Says it's All the Fault of His "Enemies"

Study Reveals Faux News Discusses - and DISMISSES - Climate Change the Most

These Guys Won't Be Voting Republican No More

Occupy vs. Tea Party

Occupy Signs....

Tea Party Signs

Advert seen on a right wing site

Ron Paul Suggests We’d Be ‘Better Off’ Without The Civil Rights Act

An old story, but worth repeating to serve as a reminder of how batschyt-crazy this guy is.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/14/166276/ron-paul-civil-rights-act/

Rep. Paul Ryan Votes Against Balanced Budget Amendment Because It Doesn’t Ruin The Constitution Enough

Earlier this afternoon, just 261 members of the House voted in favor of a balanced budget amendment — far fewer that the two-thirds majority necessary for the amendment to move forward. One somewhat surprising “no” vote was House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan is the House GOP’s chief Chicken Little on the deficit — Ryan spent the last two years of his life running around the country warning that the sky would fall unless we phase out Medicare and enact a long list of equally draconian budget reforms.

Yet, today, when Chicken Little had the opportunity to write a balanced budget amendment into the Constitution, he ran away screaming that the amendment wouldn’t do enough to transform the Constitution into a Tea Party fantasy.

More here.

Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not

An incredible story of how to do it right.

http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/728.1