kpete

kpete's Journal

October 31, 2015

THE GOP CIRCUS: "An institution built on a fabric of untruth is not a sustainable institution."

THE GOP CIRCUS: TRUTH-DEFYING FEATS
Dr. Carson's Magic Cancer-Curing Bark Elixer is only one of the GOP's sideshows

There you have it. Step right up! Be amazed, be enchanted, by the magic GOP unicorn-and-rainbow-producing tax cut machine!

By Rick Perlstein

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And when it comes to that grander narrative, the metastasizing saga of Dr. Carson and His Magic Cancer-Curing Bark Elixer is only the circus’s sideshow.

Let’s take a look inside the tent. I noted a watershed some years ago. A National Review writer named Kevin Williamson wrote a worried dispatch in 2010 called “Goodbye, Supply Side.” He quoted Rep. Louie Gohmert, boasting (he really did!) about the economic policy triumphs of George W. Bush’s administration. Williamson: “After 9/11, [Gohmert] argues, the United States was headed for a serious recession, even a depression, but tax cuts saved the day––and increased government revenues in the process. ‘With a tax cut, then another tax cut, we stimulated the economy, and record revenue like never before in American history flowed into the United States Treasury,’ he said in a speech before the House. ‘As it turned out, the tax cuts helped create more revenue for the Treasury, not destroy revenue for the Treasury.’ That last bit is fantasy. There is no evidence that the tax cuts on net produced more revenue than the Treasury would have realized without them. That claim could be true—if we were to credit most or all of the economic growth during the period in question to tax cuts, but that is an awfully big claim, one that no serious economist would be likely to entertain. It’s a just-so story, a bedtime fairy tale Republicans tell themselves to shake off fear of the deficit bogeyman. It’s whistling past the fiscal graveyard. But this kind of talk is distressingly unremarkable in Republican political circles.”

I found this conservative’s daring foray into the reality-based community exhilarating. (How did it manage to slip by the National Review editors?) Three years after he wrote it, I tracked him down and asked what happened next: what ripple effects had come from his patient proof that Republican economic dogma was based on a fantasy?

“None,” he replied. Williamson then reflected upon further questioning that, well, some: certain Republican politicians admit privately that he is correct, but “it’s hard to get them to acknowledge it in public because it’s become such a piece of dogma.”

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good stuff:
http://washingtonspectator.org/gop-circus-truth-defying-feats/?utm_content=buffer83c58&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

October 31, 2015

We've just spoken with Kerry Packer, the man stranded in tree near Onion Creek after car washed away

Published on Oct 30, 2015
We've just spoken with Kerry Packer, the man stranded in a tree near Onion Creek after his car washed away. Please join KVUE in praying for his safety until rescue arrives. #kvueweather

October 31, 2015

True-life tale of terror? Okay, here goes:

Germy Shoemangler says:
October 31, 2015 at 9:22 am

It was 1979. I was 21 years old. I was working full time in a publishing company. We were busy, but we weren’t overworked. The company regularly posted job openings on a bulletin board. That’s how I got my first promotion: I’d seen a job in a different department I was interested in and applied for it. The company offered to help pay for college tuition, so I could become even better at my job.

There was no balloon-juice back then. No crooksandliars, lawyersgunsandmoneyblog or Matt Taibbi column. But I read other progressive writers, and found out that an actor I remembered from some corny old B-movies was running for president.

I remembered him because the National Lampoon used to mock him as the worst and silliest governor of California that state had ever seen. I knew he spoke out against medicare, and was a spokesman for GE, a major polluter.

A chill ran up my spine as I opened my morning newspaper the day after election day. The hair on my neck stood up: He’d been elected president of the United States.

Soon after that, the publishing company changed. The tuition assistance disappeared. There were layoffs. We were all told to work 110%. “But that’s mathematically impossible,” I remember thinking.

Some co-workers in my department tried to form a union. Next thing I knew, the ringleaders of that movement were laid off, and the rest of our department was physically moved to a different building about 100 miles away. “They want to cut out the cancer” someone told me.

After I was finally laid off from that job, I worked in a series of other companies that treated employees the same way. Lower pay, “work 110%”, no unions, longer hours, more mean and nasty bullshit.

Sometimes on dark nights, I can see the ghostly figure of John Mitchell, climbing into a ghostly limo. Before he closes the door, he tells a ghostly reporter: “This country is going so far to the right you won’t recognize it.”

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/10/31/true-life-tales-of-terror/#comment-5539151

October 31, 2015

Kimmel's Perfect Summation Of The Republican Debate

Kimmel stated:

“At a certain point, I didn’t know if I was watching the debate or ‘The View.'”

The clip starts out with what seems to be a well-run debate, but then quickly turned into and obfuscated clusterf*ck where no one could be heard. Eventually, Donald Trump gets everyone to be quiet by unpredictably pulling out a gun and fire some shots off into the air.

All in all, it was a perfect summation of events.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/10/30/jimmy-kimmel-perfectly-summed-up-the-latest-gop-debate-clusterfck-video/

October 31, 2015