Jack & Jill Politics

Black Caucus blocks Wall St. vote
By VICTORIA MCGRANE | 11/19/09 6:37 PM EST
Updated: 11/19/09 7:47 PM EST

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus threatened to oppose a key financial regulatory reform bill Thursday over unrelated economic concerns, forcing Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank to yank his bill before a final committee vote.

The move is being interpreted as the CBC sending a message to the Obama administration that they need to be more aggressive in supporting measures to help African American communities.

Frank (D-Mass.) had intended to have his committee vote this afternoon on the bill, one of the key pieces of the administration’s plan to restructure the nation’s financial architecture. But he announced he was postponing the final vote until after Thanksgiving after CBC members on the panel told him they would vote against it due to concerns over the “lack of response to the economic situation,” Frank said according to news reports.

“They said that they weren’t going to support the bill today because of issues absolutely unrelated to the bill – larger economic issues facing the African American community – so we put off the vote to give the time for the administration, leadership and the CBC to work those issues out,” Frank spokesman Steve Adamske told POLITICO.

The effort is being led by Rep. Maxine Waters, the most senior CBC member on the Financial Services Committee, and the move was the product of numerous meetings, said a source familiar with the talks. CBC members met with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner at the beginning of the week and with Shelia Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Wednesday, the source said.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29742…

Thursday, November 19, 2009
ACORN
Losing NY-23 candidate Doug Hoffman became the latest in an increasingly long line of conservative politicians to blame his problems on ACORN yesterday despite the complete lack of evidence the organization played any role in his defeat.

The Republican base is with him though. PPP's newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately. Clearly the ACORN card really is an effective one to play with the voters who will decide whether Hoffman gets to be the Republican nominee in a possible repeat bid in 2010.

Belief in the ACORN conspiracy theory is even higher among GOP partisans than the birther one, which only 42% of Republicans expressed agreement with on our national survey in September.

Overall 62% of Americans think Obama legitimately won the election to only 26% who think ACORN stole it for him, as few Democrats or independents buy into that line of thinking.

http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2009/11…

FROM RUDE PUNDIT

1/18/2009
Fact-Checking Sarah Palin Is a Waste of Everyone's Time, But Fuck It:
Sigh. This is getting repetitive, isn't it? Yeah, it's still fun, but, Christ, there's only so many times you can do it. But let's see if we can get it up for one more sore, exhausted fuck before we have to go back to doing real work.

Here's Sarah Palin on Rush Limbaugh's House of Donuts (Glazed and Ass) yesterday: “Let's go back to what Reagan did in the early eighties and stay committed to those commonsense free market principles that worked. He faced a tougher recession than what we're facing today. He cut those taxes, ramped up industry, and we pulled out of that recession. We need to revisit that.”

Beyond the fact that this recession is worse than what Reagan faced in the early 1980s, he raised taxes multiple times. Fuck, when he was governor of California and facing the first deficit in that's state history, “Reagan ended up approving a $1-billion tax increase on a $6-billion annual budget, which was, proportionately, the biggest tax increase in state history.”

And while Reagan did slash the fuck out of taxes on the wealthy, thus ensuring our path to economic doom, he also raised taxes multiple times. In 1982, he rolled back some of the tax cuts passed in 1981, which, in today's political rhetoric, would be “Holy fuck, Ronald Reagan is gutting your incomes like a shank-carrying white supremacist in a prison race riot.” That would have been the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act. Notice that. “Fiscal responsibility” meant for the right wing's great god Gipper that one might have to raise taxes. It was “the largest peacetime tax increase in American history,” as Reagan and Bush the Smarter adviser Bruce Bartlett put it..

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

Thanks JJP for posting the pictures of FLOTUS at Hollin Meadows. I am an administrator there and had the honor of speaking at the roundtable discussion about children's nutrition and health. It was a fabulous day for our staff and students. Make no mistake, FLOTUS is the real deal. She's even more beautiful in person.
Jean

Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Jennifer Hudson is Stepping Back into Acting and Eddie Winslow’s Got a New Gig

Posted by Bossip Staff

Jennifer Hudson is slowly getting everything back on track. She just join the cast of a new movie called Winnie, a biopic on Nelsson Mandela’s wife’s life. Production for the movie will begin in May 2010 in South Africa. Let’s see if she can add another Oscar to her resume.

http://bossip.com/181355/jennifer-hudson-is-ste…

Ja, b/c those Negro…I mean ACORNS really revved up the black people in NY-23!

rikyrah: 'member – - this event? – - – SEMENYA – -S.A. RUNNER:

Here R the RESULTS:

Semenya Will Keep Medals; Gender Test Confidential
Board rules in favor of South African runner

South African runner Caster Semenya will keep her 800-meter gold medal from the world championships, and she'll keep the results of her gender tests to herself, the South African sports ministry said today. The ministry also said that the 18-year-old Semenya will be allowed to keep her prize money. “Whatever scientific tests were conducted legally within the IAAF regulations will be treated as a confidential matter between patient and doctor,” the sports ministry said.

Before the 800 final in Berlin, the IAAF said it had ordered gender tests because of Semenya's muscular build and rapid improvement in times. The case set off a storm in South Africa, and the IAAF was accused of violating her privacy. South African track officials were accused of failing to protect her.

With the dangers of swine flu, is it wise for Palin to keep exposing her baby to crowds? I would not be taking an infant cross-country around so many people. Vaccinated or not. Especially an infant with Down's Syndrome, as it may put them at further risk of infection.

I'd bring pictures or videos, or tell cute stories to the crowd about the baby, but I sure wouldn't be putting his health at risk.

Richard Trumka, Andy Stern accuse Fed of massive secret bailouts and cronyism
By: Michael Whitney Thursday November 19, 2009 11:03 am

This is what I call “solidarity.” Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Leo Gerard, President of the Steelworkers Union, all signed a letter with economists, labor leaders, and bloggers blasting Rep. Mel Watt’s amendment to gut the audit of the Federal Reserve.

Alan Grayson and Ron Paul have teamed up on a proposal calling for a full audit of the Fed, and they have the support of nearly three-quarters of Congress. But in a last minute power play by the big banks, Rep. Mel Watt will dutifully offer an amendment to not only gut the audit, but make the Fed even more secretive.

Trumka, Stern, and Gerard teamed up economists Bill Black and Jamie Galbraith and blogger Tyler Durden, among others, against Watt’s amendment and accused the Fed of “massive secret bailouts” and “cronyism and favoritism.” Their letter says:

The Federal Reserve balance sheet expanded to more than $2 trillion, along with implied and explicit backstops to Wall Street firms that could cost even more. Who received the money? Against what collateral? On what terms and conditions? The only way to find out is through a complete audit of the Federal Reserve. That’s why we support the Paul-Grayson amendment requiring a complete audit.

The Watt amendment does not repeal the existing provisions that prohibit a GAO audit of the Federal Reserve. In fact, it adds entirely new additional categories of restrictions. Instead of opening up the Fed’s secretive activities to public inspection, the Watt amendment cloaks it in further secrecy.

A vote for the Watt amendment is a vote for more secret bailouts. We urge you to support Paul-Grayson instead.

For labor leaders who don’t often see eye-to-eye, this letter (PDF) from Trumka, Stern, and Gerard is a pretty remarkable indictment of the Fed, the big banks, and their enablers in Congress. Add in the economists and bloggers and you have pretty strong opposition to the Watt amendment.

http://workinprogress.firedoglake.com/2009/11/1…

19 Nov 2009 05:11 pm
Deconstructing Sarah, Ctd

Well, as promised the Dish is back to normal. I'm not. “Going Rogue” is such a postmodern book that treating it as some kind of factual narrative to check (as I began to), or comparing its version of events with her previous versions of the same events (as I have), and comparing all those versions with what we know is empirical reality (so many lies, so little time) is just a dizzying task. The lies and truths and half-truths and the facts and non-facts are all blurred together in a pious puree of such ghastly prose that, in the end, the book can only really be read as a some kind of chapter in a cheap nineteenth century edition of “Lives of the Saints.” But as autobiography.

It is a religious book, full of myths and parables. And yet it is also crafted politically, with every single “detail” of the narrative honed carefully for specific constituencies. It is also some kind of manifesto – but not in the usual sense of a collection of policy proposals. It is a manifesto for the imagined life of an imagined Sarah Palin as a leader for all those who identify with the image and background she relentlessly claims to represent.

In this, the book is emblematic of late degenerate Republicanism, which is based not on actual policies, but on slogans now so exhausted by over-use they retain no real meaning: free enterprise is great, God loves us all, America is fabulous, foreigners are suspect, we need to be tough, we can't dither, we must always cut taxes, government is bad, liberals are socialists, the media hates you, etc etc.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily…

http://thoughtmerchant.net/2009/11/19/timothy-g…

Timothy Geithner asked to Resign in Congressional Hearing: http://thoughtmerchant.net/2009/11/19/timothy-g…

Leave Comments!!!

Paul-Grayson “Audit The Fed” Bill Passes Financial Services Committee
By: David Dayen Thursday November 19, 2009 2:36 pm

Today, the House Financial Services Committee passed an amendment to their financial regulatory reform bill that would mandate an audit of the Federal Reserve. The Paul-Grayson amendment, named for its chief sponsors, Reps. Ron Paul and Alan Grayson, passed the committee by a count of 43-26.

Supporters of the audit the Fed effort were concerned that a competing amendment by Mel Watt would gut whatever Paul-Grayson added in transparency to the Fed. After heated discussion today inside the committee, it appears that Paul and Grayson have won this round.

The bill has yet to reach the floor of the House. The Senate’s version of financial reform, written by Chris Dodd, also has a mechanism to audit the Fed, but that has not yet been marked up in the Senate Banking Committee.

…It should be noted that an overall final vote on financial regulatory reform from the Committee, expected today, was blocked, chiefly by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, panicked about having to take the vote at a time of double-digit unemployment.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2009/11/19/paul-gra…

After he won the Primaries he ran to the center which is why he flipped on those issues. To win in a general election he had to move to the center to get a majority of independents. The left or right alone can't win you a general election. McCain lost once he picked Palin because she moved the ticket too far to the right.

I have seen many people subscribe to this view but it doesn't make sense. If the economy is still really bad next year, independents especially will flee and they will lose no matter how much money they have.

Obama is a pragmatist. He knows that what he can get is what Bernie Sanders and Ben Nelson who are leftmost and rightmost in the caucus, can agree on for cloture.

MORE FROM RUDE PUNDIT

11/17/2009
What's with the New Backlash Against Women? (Part 2: Palinophilia on the Right):

Palin likes to insinuate comparisons to Clinton regularly. She empathizes and treats Clinton like a victim of the evil Obama machine, which is pretty much the polar opposite of how Clinton would want to be perceived. It’s much the same way she sees herself as a victim of those gosh-darn mollusksuckers on the the McCain team, like Fatty McShouter, Steve Schmidt.

Of course, the absurd reality is that Hillary Clinton has worked her ass off endlessly for her country; agree or disagree with her or her goals, she has sure as fuck had a lot more on her mind than how funny it would be to make reporters walk in muck (as Palin delightfully recounts). Sarah Palin wouldn't know a policy debate if it tweaked her tits and called itself Jesus. She invokes Clinton in order to try to make some of Clinton's accomplished glow rub off on her through a confusing conflation. It's sort of like when people try to say that Michael Moore is the liberal Ann Coulter. It discredits Moore while legitimizing Coulter.

And her elevation to the status of someone any women should look up to and admire for anything is pure cynical anti-feminism. The very things that Palin is celebrated for by conservative bags of fuck are what feminists have been condemned for: being outspoken, combining work and family lives (although, you know, Palin decided she couldn't have it all), standing up to even the men who have supported her. But she is a sex traitor. She uses her femininity to support policies that enslave other women. And she derides the accomplishments that allowed her to become governor in the first fucking place.

She is worse than a joke. She is a disgrace. If she is the end result of the work of Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan and so many other women, who were attacked with the language of violence and rape by politicians and the mainstream media (not from some asshole bloggers) that makes Palin's little buffeting about gentle, then that work needs to kick back into high gear. And now she's out there as if she's standing up for women's rights to…speak, one supposes, as long as the lines are the in a general framework of what the right wants her to say.

thanks for the reply. I bet the children loved the visit by the First Lady.

Sad and pathetic–70% of black households headed by a woman!

all 7% that live in NY-23. Now, think on that. only 7% of the district is BLACK..

yeah, I can see how ACORN stole it all.

rikyrah: LOVED THE PICS!!! SHE CONTINUES 2 GET HER – - HUGS ON!! :>)

LOVE – - FIRST LADY!! :>)