Bad Deeds for 9-30-2010

Rick Perry: Odd Man Out – There’s going to be a Texas gubernatorial debate in Austin after all, but Rick Perry won’t be there. Democrat Bill White last month accepted the invitation, which was initially extended just to Perry, the Republican incumbent, and White. Perry will not be there, campaign spokesman Mark Miner said Tuesday. Libertarian Kathie Glass and Green Party nominee Deb Shafto on Tuesday accepted an invitation from the Houston Chronicle, the state’s other large newspapers and Austin television station KLRU to participate in an Oct. 19 debate at the TV station’s studios.

KLRU will broadcast the one-hour debate in Austin and make it available to stations around the state. Newspapers also will stream it live on their websites.

White and Glass have participated in forums together before. Shafto, Glass and White have all said they’ll participate in a League of Women Voters of the Houston Area debate on Sunday. (Rick Perry will be in an undisclosed location.)

La Te Da! Letter Asks Rick Perry to be Honest (About Himself)

September 21, 2010
To: Mr. Rob Johnson
Texans for Rick Perry
PMB 217, P.O. Box 2013
Austin, TX 78768

Dear Mr. Johnson,
I’m an investigative blogger and the head of Proud of Who We Are, a national organization that calls on elected officials to openly serve the public proudly and honestly as to whom they really are.
I’ve been working for the last 6 years to uncover cases of gross personal life hypocrisy on the part of closeted politicians who use gay and lesbian Americans as a rhetorical punching bag for political gain.
…
… after recently blogging about a trip to Austin, a reader alerted me to a curious expense reported on Governor Perry’s July 2009 campaign finance report.
An entry dated April 13, 2009, reports $78.26 was spent at an establishment named La Te Da, located in Key West, Florida. The explanation for the expense is simply, “Business meeting.” Please see the attached PDF copy of the page from the campaign’s expense report.
In case you are not familiar, the La Te Da is well-known destination for gay travelers with a popular cabaret that features drag show acts.
…
This campaign expense seems to clash with the Governor’s comments toward gay and lesbian Americans – including his most recent assertion that Texas has a better economy because it doesn’t grant gays and lesbians marriage equality.
…
Sincerely,
Michael A. Rogers

Conservatives Blocking Ronald Reagan’s Security Strategy – October 1st marks 18 years since the U.S. Senate approved President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. It also marks the 300th day since that treaty expired, cutting off U.S. weapons inspectors’ access to Russian nuclear sites. Conservatives in the Senate are now blocking the restart of Reagan’s inspections.

In order to get U.S. inspectors back “looking under the hood” of Russian nuclear weapons, as one military official put it, the Senate must approve the New Start treaty negotiated and signed by the U.S. and Russia. Without this treaty, Reagan’s plan for a steady decrease of nuclear arsenals verified by rigorous inspections will fade.

Much has changed in the world since Reagan was president, but nuclear threats remain. Together, the U.S. and Russia hold 96 percent of the world’s estimated 22,500 nuclear weapons. The explosion of just one in a major city — by accident, miscalculation or madness — would be a disaster.

Wall Street Bankers and Corporate CEOs are to Blame for the “Jobless” Recovery – The Wall Street banks and the multinational corporations, along with those who have done their bidding in Washington for the past few decades are responsible for our economic problems. The Republican politicians that these financial interests own — and the corporate Democrats they have “seduced” with campaign money — have been their willing instruments. While millions of ordinary Americans cannot find a decent job and our nation’s economy sputters, the Wall Street bankers still make gobs of money, the multinational corporations are as profitable as ever and their political friends in Washington sit on top of stuffed campaign coffers.

The executives who decide to take capital to remote locations suffer no personal hardship from the fact that a factory that could have been built in America won’t be — or a factory that was in America will be closed and replaced by a Third World site.

This is equally true of Wall Street bankers. It makes no difference to them if a factory in Iowa is closed and the lives of the well-paid workers there are destroyed so that their multinational corporate client can build a replacement factory in Bangladesh. The rapacious bankers pocket the same huge fees for raising the capital required to fund the replacement factory regardless of where it is built, the new workers are located or what happens to the American workers left in the dust.

Fox News Even Lies About the President’s Taste in Music – In an interview, President Obama said:

“My iPod now has about 2,000 songs, and it is a source of great pleasure to me. I am probably still more heavily weighted toward the music of my childhood than I am the new stuff. There’s still a lot of Stevie Wonder, a lot of Bob Dylan, a lot of Rolling Stones, a lot of R&B, a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Those are the old standards.

A lot of classical music. I’m not a big opera buff in terms of going to opera, but there are days where Maria Callas is exactly what I need.

Thanks to Reggie [Love, the president’s personal aide], my rap palate has greatly improved. Jay-Z used to be sort of what predominated, but now I’ve got a little Nas and a little Lil Wayne and some other stuff, but I would not claim to be an expert. Malia and Sasha are now getting old enough to where they start hipping me to things. Music is still a great source of joy and occasional solace in the midst of what can be some difficult days.”

So Fox News reports this as, “President of the United States Loves Gangsta Rap.”

U.S. Losing Control of High-Tech Due to China’s Monopoly on Rare Earth Elements – A generation after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made mastering neodymium and 16 other elements known as rare earths a priority, China dominates the market, with far-reaching effects ranging from global trade friction to U.S. job losses and threats to national security.

The U.S. handed its main economic rival power to dictate access to these building blocks of modern weapons by ceding control of prices and supply, according to dozens of interviews with industry executives, congressional leaders and policy experts. China in July reduced rare-earth export quotas for the rest of the year by 72 percent, sending prices up more than six fold for some elements.

Military officials are only now conducting an inventory of where and how U.S. suppliers use the obscure but essential substances — including those that silence the whoosh of Boeing Co. helicopter blades, direct Raytheon Co. missiles and target guns in General Dynamics Corp. tanks.

Just how far U.S. manufacturing has waned is apparent at a factory in Valparaiso, Indiana, where dogs skitter across a bare concrete shop floor, their nails clicking. This brick plant on Elm Street once made 80 percent of the rare-earth magnets in laser-guided U.S. smart bombs, according to U.S. Senator Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana. In 2003, the plant’s owner shifted work to China, costing 230 jobs. Now the plant houses Coco’s Canine Cabana, a doggy day care the current tenants started to supplement sagging income from their machine shop. On most days dogs outnumber the 15 metalworkers, said Kathy DeFries, co-owner of Excel Machine Technologies Inc.

China has the largest share of worldwide reserves of rare earth elements, about 36 percent, and the U.S. is second, with 13 percent, but China produced 97 percent of the world’s supply last year, according to the GAO.

Republican Senator Threatening to Shut Down the Federal Government Through Mis-use of Senate Rules – Jim DeMint’s is making an insane threat to shut down the federal government through mis-use of Senate rules. Senator DeMint warned his colleagues that he would place a hold on all legislation that has not been cleared by his office before the close of business Tuesday.” Any piece of legislation not personally cleared by Jim DeMint will be blocked by Jim DeMint. This could hurt a lot of Americans.

Remember when an Alabama Republican senator earlier this year put a blanket hold on all of the president‘s judicial nominees because he wanted some pork for his district? Remember when Republican Jim Bunning turned himself into a one-man roadblock as Democrats tried to pass an extension of unemployment benefits through the Senate?

Democratic Senator Blocks Obama Budget Chief Pick – President Barack Obama’s pick for budget chief has been blocked in the U.S. Senate by a member of his own party to protest the administration’s ban on offshore oil drilling. The action by Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, means the Senate will not be able to approve Jack Lew as White House budget chief until at least mid-November, when it returns from a six-week break.

Republican Admits to Employing Illegal Immigrant for 9 Years – Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor of California, looked the other way for years while employing an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper, a prominent California attorney representing the housekeeper alleged Thursday. The claim comes at an inconvenient time for Whitman, who just yesterday called for a crackdown on employers hiring illegal immigrants. (Yes, she called for a crackdown on herself.)

At a press conference in Sacramento Thursday, former Whitman housekeeper Nicky Diaz Santillan said she was treated like “garbage” during the nine years she worked in the Whitman household, from 2000 to 2009. The former housekeeper said Whitman told her, “From now on you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. You have never seen me, and I have never seen you. Do you understand me?”

Too Few Americans Bear The Burdens Of War – Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that most Americans have grown too detached from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and see military service as “something for other people to do.”

In a speech Wednesday at Duke University, Gates said this disconnect has imposed a heavy burden on a small segment of society and wildly driven up the costs of maintaining an all-volunteer force. Because fewer Americans see military service as their duty, troops today face repeated combat tours and long separations from family. The 2.4 million people serving in the armed forces today represent less than 1 percent of the country’s total population.

“Whatever their fond sentiments for men and women in uniform, for most Americans the war remains an abstraction – a distant and unpleasant series of news items that do not affect them personally,” Gates said.

The Devil Make’s ‘Em Do It – Conservatives can do without a God, but they can’t get through the day without a devil. Their entire model of reality revolves around the existence of an existential enemy who’s out to annihilate them. Take that focal point away, and their whole worldview collapses into incoherence. This need is so central to their thinking that if there are no actual enemies around, they’ll go to considerable lengths to make some (or just make some up).

Unfortunately, the past couple of decades have been rough for them on this front. Losing the Communists as the Bad Guys left a big gap in the conservative cosmology, which they’ve been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to fill ever since. This void has driven them crazy, forcing them to reveal their inner ugliness in all kinds of ways as they thrash around looking for some likely replacement. The longer this goes on, the more of that ugliness we’ve all seen — and the less coherent their politics have become.

Blacks, the French, Gays, Latinos, Liberals, Europeans, Muslims. That’s why the conservatives are still taking out after the Muslim community now — nine full years after 9/11.

The Tea Potty – The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I’d actually call the “Tea Kettle movement” (or maybe the “Tea Potty” movement) — because all it’s doing is letting off steam. Based on all I’ve heard from this movement, it feels to me like it’s all steam and no engine. It has no plan to restore America to greatness.

The Tea Kettle movement can’t have a positive impact on the country because it has both misdiagnosed America’s main problem and hasn’t even offered a credible solution for the problem it has identified.

And how can you take seriously a movement that sat largely silent while the Bush administration launched two wars and a new entitlement, Medicare prescription drugs — while cutting taxes — but is now, suddenly, mad as hell about the deficit and won’t take it anymore from President Obama? Say what? Where were you folks for eight years? (Maybe it’s really some other kind of potty movement.)

Regards,

Jim