Bad Deeds for 11-30-2009

 

Forty Percent of Democrats Say They Probably Won’t Vote Next Year – Forty percent of self-identified Democratic voters say they are “not likely” or “definitely” won’t vote in next year’s Congressional elections, according to a little-noticed poll released over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The poll, which surveyed 2,400 Americans nationwide between Nov. 22 and Nov. 25, found that self-identified Republicans were three times more likely to say they were going to vote next year. Among self-identified Republican voters, 81% are either “definitely” voting next year or “probably” voting, while 14% are “not likely” to vote or will “definitely” not vote.

Among self-identified Independent voters, 65% are either “definitely” voting next year or “probably” voting, while 23% are “not likely” to vote or will “definitely” not vote.

And among self-identified Democratic voters, 56% are either “definitely” voting next year or “probably” voting, while 40% are “not likely” to vote or will “definitely” not vote.

 

America Today: Food Stamps and Wall St. Extravagance – With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children. At the same time, conspicuous consumption is making a comeback on Wall Street. As traders and investment bankers near the finish line of what looks like a boom year for pay, some are spending money like the financial crisis never happened. From $15,000-a-week Caribbean getaways to art auctions to $200,000 platinum wristwatches that automatically adjust for leap years, signs of the good life are returning. What we’re seeing in the last four to eight weeks is a fairly substantial uptick in demand for extravagant purchases.

 

Just Another Would-be Domestic Terrorist Found with a Bomb-Making Lab. Nothing to See Here, Just Move Along – Police found 30 completed pipe bombs in Mark Campano’s apartment along with components to make more, plus 17 guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Barbara Vachon lived next door to Campano at the Center Park Place Apartments for several years and said he was a big reason she moved.

“He was always trying to get me and another neighbor to listen to anti-government tapes and watch anti-government videos,” said Vachon. “I would never watch them. He was some kind of radical, and he didn’t believe in the government.”

She said there were other warnings. “There were a few times I heard minor explosions from outside the apartment building, and he would scream that he had hurt himself,” she said. “I never knew what he was up to.”

Of course, if this had been a Muslim extremist caught with such an arsenal, we’d be getting talk-show panels on Hannity featuring Michelle Malkin ranting at length about the threat of Islamic jihad, blah blah blah. Not to mention chatty discussion on Fox and Friends and Morning Joe.

But instead, because he’s just a white anti-government extremist, hey, let’s just give it a big shrug.

 

How Boehner Gets His Tan: His PAC Spent $83K On Golf Outings! – On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mika and Joe have a great time bashing John Boehner after finding out the House minority leader’s PAC spent almost $83K on golf outings.

Scarborough compared him to Evita Perón, who would show poor people her jewels so they would have something to aspire to. “Think about the people in his district who are out of work right,” he said. “Thirty thousand dollars on one golf outing!” He noted that was more than most of the people in Boehner’s district make in a year.

“Howard, you wouldn’t do that, would you?” Mika asked Howard Dean.

“I don’t play golf,” Dean replies. He said it was difficult for Republicans to hold themselves up as the model for fiscal responsibility when they spent money on things like this.

A viewer wrote in to say Boehner’s tan “was proof that global warming is real.”

 

Palin’s Fake Bus Tour – Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” bus has logged thousands of miles as it crosses the country, promoting her memoir. But Palin herself has been traveling by private jet, using the bus only for brief stops and media appearances.

The blog Palingates was the first to highlight the disconnect, pointing out that Palin arrived in Tri-Cities, Washington on Thanksgiving via private jet, not bus.

The flight log for the plane, a Gulfstream II, can be found here — it tracks Palin’s own movements. The Daily Beast’s Joe McGinniss reported that Palin’s staff apparently was riding the bus while their boss took to the skies:

“Last week I was in The Villages, the fantastical Back to the Future-style retirement enclave north of Orlando, when Palin popped out the front door of the bus to greet the thousand or so worshipers gathered outside Barnes & Noble. I thought she sure looked good for someone who had been riding a bus for a week, changing diapers–as she said–all the way. Publicist Andreadis, by contrast, had the worn and harried look of someone who had been earning an honest living by riding a bus for a week. […] “

What’s wrong in this instance is the apparent fakery created and sustained for the sake of building pseudo-populist appeal–and selling books. Sarah Palin and HarperCollins have consciously tried to give the impression that she is doing her book tour by bus when the evidence suggests she is not. At every stop, she’s been filmed getting off Big Blue looking rested and radiant.

 

Palin’s Latest Rogue Gaffe – There have been so many lies and distortions pointed out in Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue since it was released last week that her memoir has already become something of a gag line.

But perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her mis-attributed quote to UCLA basketball legend John Wooden.

As the epigram to Chapter Three, “Drill, Baby, Drill,” Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach:

“Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their lives.”

Only the quote wasn’t by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled “Back on the War Ponies,” which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.

Here’s the full quote:

“Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn.”

Oops! That’s not quite the sentiment that Sister Sarah was trying to convey.

 

The Wealthy in America Haven’t Been Paying Their Fair Share for More Than 30 Years – The USA leads the world in billionaires. We also have the developed world’s most skewed distribution of income. And our financial sector is much too large compared to the real economy it is supposed to serve. If we could see past our ideological blinders, we’d notice that there’s plenty of money in this country tucked away in private hands. The super-wealthy never had it so good. If they ever paid anything like their fair share, our budget deficits would soon evaporate.

The Forbes 400 alone collectively holds about $1.5 trillion in net worth. You want deficit reduction? Then how about a wealth tax of 5 percent a year until the unemployment rate drops below 5 percent? That small tax on just 400 fortunate souls would reduce the deficit by about $75 billion a year. If we broadened the tax to include all those with a net worth of $500 million or more, we might generate more than $200 billion a year in public funds for debt reduction, or better yet, for real job creation.

Regards,

Jim