Thursday, September 6, 2012
It becomes clearer and clearer every day, as the regressive party aka GOP’s message is completely lacking in ethics or logic, relying solely on emotion, and is filled with ‘dog whistle’ rhetoric, that we are dealing with a bunch bigoted adolescents, but we are reluctant to call them out as such because we know what their puerile retort would be, “He that smelt it, dealt it”! - mgk
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
WTF?!!
Wed Sep 05, 2012 at 01:08 PM PDT
Paul Ryan requested Obamacare funding for his district
That plan doesn't include the money he asked for.
Remember how a couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan had egg on his face after being forced to admit that he had indeed requested funds from the stimulus bill that he so vehemently opposed and has continued to vilify? His excuse then was that, when he wrote those letters of support for all that federal funding, he didn't know it was stimulus money he was asking for. So what's his excuse going to be this time?On December 10, 2010, Ryan penned a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a grant application for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan's district. "The proposed new facility, the Belle City Neighborhood Health Center, will serve both the preventative and comprehensive primary health care needs of thousands of new patients of all ages who are currently without health care," Ryan wrote. The grant Ryan requested was funded directly by the Affordable Care Act, better known simply as health care reform or Obamacare.Let's walk through the next steps for Ryan. First we'll have "I never did that." Then we'll get "I did it but I wouldn't have done it if I'd known what I was doing" with some of "it's really my staff's fault" thrown in for good measure. But here's the reality. The Affordable Care Act, and particularly the expansion of community health centers (the funding Ryan was requesting), was a very good thing for communities across the country that have experienced more and more people unemployed and uninsured. Just like the stimulus funding that helped create some jobs for people in Ryan's district was a very good thing.
The letter, among several obtained by The Nation and The Investigative Fund through a Freedom of Information Act request, is a stark reminder that even the most ardent opponents of Obamacare privately acknowledge many of the law’s benefits.
Paul Ryan, the congressman who represents the people of Wisconsin's 1st district, seems to understand that, seems to get that actually using government to do goods things for his constituents is both his job and how he gets reelected, but he does this quietly, secretly. The public Paul Ryan, the demagogue and the vice presidential candidate, would kill that good work. He'd not only repeal Obamacare, he'd cut out the funds for all those existing and new community health centers.
This story, along with the stimulus funding requests, will add a new dimension to our understanding of Paul Ryan. It's been well established that he's a major-league liar. Now we know that he's a major-league hypocrite, too.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Mendacity, thy name is..... well, you know!
Ryan's Marathon Time Claim Not True
Paul Ryan's campaign walked back comments the VP nominee made about running a marathon.
"I had a two hour and fifty-something" marathon, Ryan said last week an interview. "I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore."
But the Ryan campaign confirmed to Runner's World that he has only run one marathon, the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, which he finished in just over 4 hours.
"The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three," Ryan said in a prepared statement. "If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight."
The admission comes after wide speculation that Ryan had exaggerated his marathon time. Running a sub-3 hour marathon means averaging under 7 minutes per mile for the entire race, a possible but extremely impressive feat. As the New Yorker's Nicholas Thompson put it, "It’s the difference between racing and running."
This isn't the first time Ryan has come under fire this week for stretching the truth. His RNC speech was chastised for misleading claims about Medicare and the 2008 closing of a Wisconsin plant.
The running fib "sounds trivial," wrote the New York Times' Paul Krugman. "But I remember the 2000 campaign, when Al Gore was constantly hounded by claims of fibbing on trivial issues — claims that, by the way, were all, as far as I could tell, fabricated. These alleged fibs supposedly showed some deep defect in his character. So if Ryan is making false claims about his physical prowess, this is absolutely fair game."
"I had a two hour and fifty-something" marathon, Ryan said last week an interview. "I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore."
But the Ryan campaign confirmed to Runner's World that he has only run one marathon, the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, which he finished in just over 4 hours.
"The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three," Ryan said in a prepared statement. "If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight."
The admission comes after wide speculation that Ryan had exaggerated his marathon time. Running a sub-3 hour marathon means averaging under 7 minutes per mile for the entire race, a possible but extremely impressive feat. As the New Yorker's Nicholas Thompson put it, "It’s the difference between racing and running."
This isn't the first time Ryan has come under fire this week for stretching the truth. His RNC speech was chastised for misleading claims about Medicare and the 2008 closing of a Wisconsin plant.
The running fib "sounds trivial," wrote the New York Times' Paul Krugman. "But I remember the 2000 campaign, when Al Gore was constantly hounded by claims of fibbing on trivial issues — claims that, by the way, were all, as far as I could tell, fabricated. These alleged fibs supposedly showed some deep defect in his character. So if Ryan is making false claims about his physical prowess, this is absolutely fair game."
Sunday, September 2, 2012
And These People Want to Run the Country?
Peanuts Thrown at Black Camerawoman at GOP Meeting
"This is what we feed animals"
A black camerawoman who works for CNN said Thursday that she was not surprised to have two people at the Republican National Convention throw peanuts at her and say "this is what we feed animals."
The two white people were immediately removed from the Tampa, Fla., convention arena by security officials on Tuesday, and their identities weren't revealed. The camerawoman, Patricia Carroll, wasn't able to tell definitively where they were from.
"This is Florida, and I'm from the deep South," Carroll, a 34-year-old Alabama native, told Maynard Institute blogger Richard Prince on Thursday. "You come to places like this, you can count the black people on your hand. They see us doing things they don't think I should do."
She said racism is a global issue and the incident could have happened on a street corner or at the Democratic convention, scheduled for next week in Charlotte, N.C.
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign said Thursday that it has apologized to CNN for what happened.
"We find it absolutely deplorable. We condemn it in the highest possible way," said Russ Schriefer, strategist for the Romney campaign. "That behavior is just reprehensible."
CNN said Carroll was not interested in addressing the issue any further. She told Prince that she was hoping the story would go away.
"I can't change these people's hearts and minds," she said. "No, it doesn't feel good. But I know who I am. I'm a proud black woman. A lot of black people are upset. This should be a wake-up call to black people. ... People were living in euphoria for a while. People think we've gone further than we have."
———
Associated Press reporter Donna Cassata contributed to this story from Tampa, Fla.
Meg Makes Mitt Proud!
Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman told workers in India that their jobs are safe despite the company’s ongoing restructuring.In May, HP announced plans to eliminate 27,000 positions over the next two years, about 9,000 of them in the U.S. Reports at the time said the company had a goal of 5,000 people accepting its retirement offer. Now, the AP says response to that offer has been better than expected.
In an interview with Economic Times, Whitman said:
We are not reducing our workforce in India. We have announced a global work force reduction, but India will stay largely intact, because we not only have all our business units here, but also our R&D and back office. We are focused on keeping our work force here, and I think over time, probably increase the work force.About 30,000 of the company’s 349,600 workers are in India and it’s among the emerging markets on which the company is focused. Some 65 percent of its revenue is generated in emerging markets.
Meanwhile, HP’s Michigan training program, which was announced in May, still has the green light, despite the layoffs elsewhere. The program will to train more than 200 developers, testers and architects at HP Enterprise Services Pontiac.
Related Links:
- HP won’t cut jobs in India; may add to workforce in long term: Meg Whitman [Economic Times]
- HP raises outlook, replaces head of Enterprise Services [AP]
- Hewlett-Packard hires, trains after workforce cutbacks [Crain's Detroit Business]
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