The WAWG Blog

In my previous post, I stated:

Domestic terrorism from the evangelical, government-is-evil, right-wing authoritarians (RWA) could start a second American Civil War …

Based on the various conservative-without-conscience, authoritarian, strict-father, statements by the governor of the single-party state of Texas, I predict that if the second American Civil War materializes, Rick Perry will be the Commander-In-Chief of the Conservative States of America.

Did you know, Perry’s Texas is currently considering the issuance of a “Sons of Confederate Veterans” auto license plate?

Tea Partiers Cheer the Downgrade of America’s Credit Rating – At a tea party rally in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, the Tea Party Express rolled into that northeastern city. The most shocking moment of the event wasn’t the vitriol spouted by tea party leaders, but was the cheers that erupted when one of the Tea Party Express’ speakers described the recent downgrade as the tea party’s fault.

Midway through the Fond du Lac event, Florida talk show host Andrea Shea King took the stage. She told the audience that commentators were describing the downgrade of US debt to AA+ from AAA as the “tea party downgrade,” laying the blame squarely on Congress’ right-wing faction and its supporters. But rather than boo those who claim the tea party caused the downgrade, the 200 or so Wisconsinites in attendance cheered, sounding almost proud to be blamed for the downgrade.

Mitt Romney Says, “Corporations are People.” – Mitt Romney told an Iowa audience, “Corporations are people.” He then persisted in arguing his case that corporations ARE people because corporate profits end up “in the pockets” of people. Yes, Governor, some corporate profits end up in the pockets of an ever-shrinking number of people who control an ever-growing portion of our nation’s wealth … and some end up going to SuperPACs like the ones who are collecting massive corporate donations to support your campaign.

Now, tell Romney that he could not be more wrong. Corporations are NOT people. People are people.

Koch Brothers Influencing Local Public Education in NC – The Koch Brothers political aspirations are certainly national, but they have taken a page from the Ralph Reed playbook and have made moves to influence local school board elections, including those in Raleigh, North Carolina. There the Koch Brothers funded Americans for Prosperity allied with local advocacy groups to build a new majority on the school board in an attempt to re-segregate the Raleigh school district.

The school district had, through busing for diversity programs, made the Raleigh district a successful blend of students of all backgrounds and experiences.

In response to that success the Koch Brothers started funding school board candidates who pledged to end “forced busing” and who sought to enact a “neighborhood schools” agenda, despite the fact that the schools were already very successful. The talking points reached back to a darker day for the South when Jim Crow sympathizers promised to keep southern schools segregated always.

Thankfully there’s a push back against these nefarious campaigns, including a new video demanding the Koch Brothers stop their attack on public education.

Segregated public schools are among the most destructive social ills in our history, and if the Koch Brothers have their way, they’ll become commonplace again.

AT&T Lied About Reason for Merger with T-Mobile – In a letter that was inadvertently leaked, one of AT&T’s own lawyers has confirmed the merger has nothing to do with expanding AT&T’s coverage to 97 percent of the country – the main argument the company has made to gain Washington’s support – and everything to do with eliminating the cheaper T-Mobile option from the marketplace (and laying off half of its workforce) to pad company profits. AT&T’s plan to take over T-Mobile is about gouging consumers, destroying a competitor and firing an estimated 20,000 American workers.

Every AT&T argument about the supposed benefits of this merger has now been proven wrong. As AT&T’s case unravels, President Barack Obama must speak out against this dangerous deal.

Sign this letter to the president and let him know that we can’t afford to lose tens of thousands of American jobs just to keep AT&T happy.

Crooked Seafood Fraudsters Are Putting Your Family, the Oceans, and the Livelihood of Honest Fishermen on the Line for a Quick Buck – Recent studies have found that seafood may be mislabeled as often 70 percent of the time – which means you could be feeding your family unhealthy, illegal, unsustainable fish and not even know it.

The US Senate is currently considering two bills that would beef up inspections and prosecute illegal fishing. This is a great step in the right direction for the health of our familes, our wallets, and our oceans – and your Senators need to know where you stand.

Take action for the health of your family and the oceans. Tell your Senators to fight seafood fraud TODAY.

Shell Oil Spills 56,600 Gallons Of Oil Into North Sea – Royal Dutch Shell estimates that a leak from an offshore oil rig stationed off Scotland’s eastern coast spilled 54,600 gallons of oil into the North Sea. The leak originated from the Gannet Alpha oil rig, located 112 miles (180 kilometers) east of the city of Aberdeen. The rig is operated by Shell and co-owned by Shell and Esso, a subsidiary of the U.S. oil firm Exxon Mobil.

The British government said the leak was substantial for the U.K.’s continental shelf. Although the North Sea is small in comparison to other oceans, it contains a highly sensitive ecosystem that is teeming with life.

Regards,

Jim

In several Arab countries, citizens have been demonstrating and demanding their authoritarian governments be replaced with a democratic form of government.

In America, citizens have ceded control of their democracy to a hateful minority of right-wing authoritarians.

As democracy is taking root in the Middle East, America is returning to its pre-revolutionary roots – rule by the royal corporation and their evangelical right-wing authoritarians.

In 2006, John Dean documented the growth of these authoritarians and summarized them in this way:

“Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.” — John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience, 2006.

More recently, Frank Schaeffer, who’s father helped educate Michele Bachmann and other evangelical authoritarians, had this to say about this minority which now controls our House and Senate, and wants to assure President Obama is a one term president:

There is a growing movement in America that equates godliness with hatred of our government in fact hatred of our country as fallen and evil because we allow women choice, gays to marry, have a social safety net, and allow immigration from other cultures and non-white races.

…

There is a history to the far right, religious right extremism on the rise today, extremism so extreme that in its congressional manifestation it is risking the good faith and credit of the US in the debt calling fiasco. The Tea Party activists also want purity of doctrine.

… the terror now unleashed by the Tea Party through Congress as it holds our economy hostage to extremist “economic” theories that want to destroy our ability to function — is the sort of white, Christian; far right terror America can expect more of.

…

Foreigners, visitors from another planet and Americans living in a bubble of reasonable or educated people might not know this but the reality is that the debt ceiling confrontation is by, for and the result of America’s evangelical Christian control of the Republican Party.

…

… the Republican Party is now the party of religious fanatics and that these fanatics — people like Michele Bachmann — don’t want to work within our system, they want to bring it down along the lines of so-called Christian “Reconstruction.”

…

What the Religious Right, including the Religious Right’s Roman Catholic and Protestant enablers, did was contribute to a climate in which the very legitimacy of our government–is questioned as part of religious faith itself.

…

The Far Right intellectual enablers began by questioning abortion rights, gay rights, school prayer rulings, and so forth. What they ended up doing was to help foster a climate in which — in the eyes of a dangerous and growing … minority — the very legitimacy of the U.S. government was called into question, …

…

In other words, Dad’s followers were told that (1) force is a legitimate weapon to use against an evil government; (2) America was like Hitler’s Germany–because of legal abortion and of the forcing of “Humanism” on the population–and thus intrinsically evil; and (3) whatever would have been the “appropriate response” to stop Hitler was now appropriate to do here in America to stop our government, …

…

To the old-fashioned conservative mantra “Big government doesn’t work,” the newly radicalized Evangelicals (and their Roman Catholic and Mormon cobelligerents) added “The U.S. government is evil!”

…

It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to foresee a day when a “secessionist” group and/or members of some “militia”–let alone one lone individual–will use their U.S. passports, white skins, and solid- citizen standing as a cover for importing a weapon of mass destruction to “liberate” the rest of us from our federal government’s “tyranny” and/or to “punish” some city like New York, known as the U.S. “abortion capital” or San Francisco as the place that “those gays have taken over.” And the possibility of an assassination in the same vein is a never-ending threat.

What we fear most from Islamist terrorists will be unleashed here as it was in Norway.

Terror is on the way on the way from our very own Christian and/or Libertarian “Tea Party” type activists inspired by right wing “Christian” intellectuals and political leaders like Bachmann who – after the killing starts — will then disown them and express horror at their actions, actions that are in fact the logical extension of the anti-government rhetoric spewing from Congress and the religious right.

Domestic terrorism from the evangelical, government-is-evil, right-wing authoritarians (RWA) could start a second American Civil War, unless …

Henry Giroux, has written Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, and concludes his introduction with:

My hope is that this book will break through a diseased common sense that often masks zombie politicians, anti-public intellectuals, politics, institutions, and social relations and bring into focus the need for a new language, pedagogy, and politics in which the living dead [RWA] will be moved decisively to the margins rather than occupying the very center of politics and everyday life.

Republican-Controlled House Subcommittee Cuts NASA Funding – Last week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee cut NASA’s funding to $16.8 billion last week, which is $1.6 billion below last year’s level, and $1.9 billion below what the Obama administration requested. The kicker is that this reigns in NASA funding to pre-2008 levels. The action reduces NASA’s space exploration and science budgets, and reduces NASA’s commercial spaceflight program by 37%. This is the program that would put American astronauts back into space on American rockets, possibly by 2014 if funding was maintained.

Reason for Downgrade of U.S. Credit Rating Was Republicans Not Wanting to Increase Revenues Says S&P – On Page 4 of the official Standard & Poor’s “Research Update” — the actual report on what they did and why — published on August 5th as the explanation for why they downgraded the U.S. credit rating, it states:

Under our revised base case fiscal scenario–which we consider to be consistent with a ‘AA+’ long-term rating and a negative outlook–we now project that net general government debt would rise from an estimated 74% of GDP by the end of 2011 to 79% in 2015 and 85% by 2021. Even the projected 2015 ratio of sovereign indebtedness is high in relation to those of peer credits and, as noted, would continue to rise under the act’s revised policy settings. Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place.

We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

Texas May Put Confederate Flag on License Plates – The Sons of Confederate Veterans want to display the Confederate flag on Texas license plates. This conservative group proposed a Texas specialty license plate featuring the controversial and offensive image of the Confederate flag. They want to harken back to the days of conflict, civil war and racism that plagued America and the south. We need your help to stop this symbol of oppression from being put on cars across Texas.

The application to put this racist relic out for public consumption went before the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles board and stalled with a tied vote of 4 to 4 – the 9th board member Ramsay Gillman unexpectedly passed away before the vote. Rick Perry must now appoint a 9th member to the board who will be the deciding vote on this controversial issue. With all eyes on Perry’s political future, your voice makes a difference.

We can’t assume Rick Perry will do the right thing without your help. Gov. Rick Perry has a long history of promoting secession and pandering to the tea party. It is critical that we stand-up and demand he appoints a TXDMV board member who will not allow the Confederate flag license plate to move forward.

Don’t let Rick Perry embarrass Texas (more than he already has). Sign the petition at the above link.

Republican-Controlled House Representatives Causes 70,000 FAA Workers to Lose Their Jobs – On July 23 the FAA lost its authorization largely due to Republican House Representatives. The deauthorization resulted in 70,000 workers losing their jobs, as well as construction projects in 241 airports being halted. After much debate Democrats and Republicans have reached a compromise that with, for the time being, put people back to work.

The FAA crisis occurred when House Republicans fought to weaken the rights of transportation workers. When Democrats in the Senate opposed the change, the two parties reached a stand-still.

The shutdown has cost the government more than $300 million in lost taxes on airline tickets. Call on the Congress to prioritize American jobs, support transportation workers’ rights and end the FAA shutdown permanently.

Tea Party Blogger Supports Bullying of Gay Kids – Tea Party blogger Rich Swier recently said of anti-LGBT bullying: “it is peer pressure and it is healthy.” He went on to compare being gay to behaviors such as smoking, underage drinking, and drug abuse. Swier made these comments in response to a statement from the Florida-based Gulf Coast Gives, a group supporting civic enhancement projects in the Gulf region, which shared alarming anti-LGBT bullying statistics: “77% of all bullying victims are picked on due to sexual orientation, gender identity, or the perception of either.”

Regards,

Jim

Americans for Prosperity Sends Out Ballots With Late Return Date to Democrats – Something is rotten in the state of Wisconsin — and the Koch-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity is behind it.

The second round of state Senate recall elections is scheduled for Aug. 9 — when six Republicans will face Democratic challengers — and voters have been sent absentee ballot applications. The problem is, Democratic voters in a number of districts received mailers advising that they return absentee ballots by Aug. 11 (two days too late to be counted). The misleading notices came from AFP.

“[AFP] has displayed a continued pattern of tampering with the electoral process in Wisconsin with elaborate, illegal and fraudulent schemes designed to suppress Democratic votes,” Margaret Brick of the WDP told Politico.

The mailers specifically targeted Democratic voters in two districts where Republican incumbents face recall on Aug. 9.

AFP claims that the mailers were only sent to its members, despite the fact that those targeted with the ballot notices were nearly all self-identifying Democrats.

Furthermore, a close look at the mailer shows a continuation of irregularities that have already involved conservative groups and absentee ballots in the state. The mailing address for the applications is listed as “Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center, P.O. Box 1327, Madison WI 53701-1327.” A Google search shows that this address is not any sort of government office, but has been used by the conservative group Wisconsin Family Action. In addition, Wisconsin Right To Life previously used the same address for absentee ballot application letters and phone calls that were sent out shortly before the July 12 Democratic primaries, but after the official deadlines for the applications.

Good Job Numbers Would have Been Much Better Except for Layoff of Government Workers – The US economy added 117,000 jobs in July, the most since April. The jobless rate improved slightly, to 9.1; it was 9.2 percent in July. However, there were really 154,000 workers were hired in July. But there were also losses in state and local government jobs due to budget shortfalls leading to layoffs in July.

Rick Santorum Calls Early Education Programs an Effort ‘to Indoctrinate Your Children’ – Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum criticized early education programs on Tuesday as an effort to “indoctrinate your children,” adding that parents, not federal bureaucrats, must be responsible for the success of students.

During a town hall meeting attended by about 20 people at the Perry Public Library, the Pennsylvania Republican said Americans should demand that the educational establishment start meeting the needs of their children as individuals.

He said that if business people wanted to establish an educational system from scratch they would provide a product that was appealing to parents, and to some degree, to children, to maximize what parents wanted their children to be taught.

(Ah-ah! Business people. So Rick doesn’t want public education, and if you can’t home school, then leave it to the business people. Certainly, corporations wouldn’t indoctrinate your children, would they? – JLV)

Rick Perry Wants States Rights Except When He Doesn’t – Last week, Texas Governor Rick Perry, a likely 2012 presidential contender, claimed that Roe V Wade should be overturned so states can pass their own laws about abortion. After all, it’s important for states to make their own decisions.

This week, he’s changed his mind. A federal law should overrule the states. Assuming it’s the right law.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry now says he supports a federal amendment to the U.S. Constitution affording legal protection for unborn children. Last week, Perry gave a states’ rights answer when asked about his position on abortion, saying, “You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t. You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then [for] something that doesn’t suit you say, ‘We’d rather not have states decide that.’ … Now, according to a Houston Chronicle report, Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger says the Texas governor and potential Republican presidential candidate, backs a federal amendment.

Regards,

Jim

In my previous article, I pointed out how significant revenue helped to not only reduce our massive WWII debt, but also created jobs through building national infrastructure, providing college educations to millions of GIs, and paying for several trips to the moon and back.

History is a great tool for learning how to avoid making the same mistakes or for reapplying our past successes. For the last three decades there has been a constant drumbeat from the conservatives without conscience (CWC) which ignores our post WWII success. They insist, instead, on cutting revenue – except for maintaining and advancing our military.

However, protecting our citizens from foreign attack is only part of a working American democracy. We need protection from any source of citizen abuse, and all citizens must be empowered in order to give them an equal opportunity for success. This only happens with sufficient revenue from all who benefit from America’s democracy.

With any question or statement from a CWC, the response requires reframing the discussion and avoiding their conservative worldview and talking points. In this case, reframing the context means showing that revenue is necessary to maintain America’s democracy and all things that promote its functioning.

Begin by asking the CWC if they have children or plan to have children. Ask them if they agree that parents need to protect their children or expect protection from others like firemen, policemen, EMTs, National Guardsmen, disaster relief providers, etc. Ask them if they agree that parents need to empower their children or expect empowerment through resources beyond their ability – such as schools, qualified teachers and universities – so that kids can learn to think critically and have a decent chance of success in a competitive world.

Then ask the CWC if corporations should be provided the means to protect themselves or seek protection elsewhere as needed such as in the United States court system, at the patent office, through trade protection laws, with disaster relief, etc. Ask them if corporations should be empowered or provided the means of empowerment for things such as communication systems, the internet, the stock market for raising funds, the national banking system for low interest loans, interstate highways and bridges or air traffic control so they can deliver their products, etc.

Then ask them who provides these extended and necessary protections and empowerments which are beyond the means of parents or corporations?

Finally, ask them who benefits most from these extended and necessary protections and empowerments? Ask them if those who benefit from those extended and necessary protections and empowerments should pay for those benefits in proportion to their use of them. Shouldn’t corporations that have thousands of 18 wheelers wearing down our highways pay more to use our highways than parents with a 4 wheel vehicle? Shouldn’t corporations that use immense amounts of our natural resources and create immense amounts of waste pay for that usage and for the clean up of their waste?

Shouldn’t everyone pay for keeping our country in good working condition in proportion to their use and depletion of the country’s resources? Shouldn’t everyone pay for their police, firemen, EMTs, and others who check and balance any abuse of power or the taking of harmful shortcuts? Shouldn’t we all pay for the best possible basic education for all citizens? Shouldn’t everyone pay their national dues for all the benefits of being an American citizen or corporation?

(Relative to increased citizenship revenue requirements for corporations, the board of directors has a choice to make. Just because their citizenship dues increase doesn’t mean they must pass it on to their customers. They could just reduce their compensation or cut back on dividends for shareholders. In other words, they could just reduce their excessive profits instead of passing it on. In addition, corporations have little pricing power when unemployment is high and consumer spending is down.)

Right-Wing Groups Seeking Weapons of Mass Destruction According to Alleged Norway Mass Murderer – The man who has acknowledged carrying out last week’s mass killings in Norway claimed in his online treatise that he was allied with other right-wight militant groups, some of whom he said were pursuing acquisition of unconventional weapons, the Federation of American Scientists noted on Wednesday (see GSN, July 27).

Anders Breivik, who has claimed responsibility for the Friday bombing of an Oslo government building and the subsequent shooting rampage on a nearby island, wrote in his 1,500-page manifesto that his associates “are already in the process of attempting to acquire chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials.” His document states. “Justiciar Knights and other European Christian martyrs can avoid the scrutiny normally reserved for individuals of Arab descent and we can ensure successful deployment and detonation in the location of our choice.”

In the event the 32-year-old Norwegian was not a lone-wolf terrorist, it is plausible that his compatriots possess the same if not deeper knowledge about the equipment needed for particular types of unconventional weapons, the release states.

“They may have access to the necessary biological agents and technologies necessary to actualize Breivik’s more ambitious plans for a CBRN attack,” Virtual Biosecurity Center manager Kelsey Gregg said in released comments (Federation of American Scientists release, July 27).

Breivik claimed to be a member of a group of new Knight Templars who seek to wage strikes against “cultural Marxists” and “multiculturalists” who they blame for allowing Islam to spread throughout Europe, according to the FAS report by Blair, Gregg and Jonathan Garbose.

Pete Olson Contradicts Himself on NASA – In his official post-shuttle landing statement Pete Olson says that this is “by no means the end of human space flight” and that exciting things lie ahead. A day later, in Politico, he (and Cunningham) put forth a contradictory claim that the Obama Adminstration has “shifted NASA policy away from human spaceflight.”

Rick Perry Contradicts Himself on NASA – Rick Perry criticizes the federal government for spending too much, then he criticizes the President for not spending enough on NASA in Houston.

Fox New Host Says Stop Spending on People So We Can Pay for Wars – Nothing illustrates Republican priorities more starkly than this little piece of video, where Fox News host Martha MacCallum opines that we’d have more of a solid fiscal position to pay for wars if we didn’t have Medicare and Social Security:

MACCALLUM: But I want to ask you one more question, because when I watched the president last night he talked about the things that have driven us to this situation, and he said two wars that we couldn’t pay for, a prescription drug plan that, you know, was way too expensive to pay for, and the financial crisis that followed and that was, you know, toward the beginning of his watch and overlapping the Bush administration.

But I couldn’t help thinking, well, if we weren’t in such a precarious situation and hadn’t overextended ourselves to such an incredible extent where we are sending out 80 million checks a month – the U.S. government – wouldn’t we have been able to handle those things like the two wars in a much better, stronger fiscal position, and isn’t that where we really want to be as a country, where a war doesn’t bust us because we’ve got good fundamentals?

(Making people suffer is good fundamentals? – JLV)

Republican Leadership Shows a Clip From a Movie About a Gang of Boston Sociopaths to a Gang of Washington D.C. Sociopaths – In order to win support for Boehner’s Hit on America deficit plan, The Washington Post reported that the GOP leadership yesterday played a clip from the Ben Affleck flick The Town. Here’s the dialog from the clip:

“I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is.
You can never ask me about it later. And we’re going to hurt some people.”
“Whose car are we going to take?”

The Republican Shock Doctrine will hurt a lot of people – just not any rich ones. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said if Boehner’s scam were to be enacted, “it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.”

Bachmann Borrowed From the Same Federal Home Loan Programs She Wanted to Shut Down – Despite the fact that she has spoken against loan insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Washington Post discovered that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) took out a mortgage totaling $417,000 to help finance her golf course home — backed by Fannie or Freddie.

Weeks later, the woman who would become the voice of the tea party and a serious contender for the 2012 GOP nomination railed against the federal home loan program.

New Study Links Mountaintop Removal to 60,000 Additional Cancer Cases – Among the 1.2 million American citizens living in mountaintop removal mining counties in central Appalachia, an additional 60,000 cases of cancer are directly linked to the federally sanctioned strip-mining practice.

That is the damning conclusion in a breakthrough study, released last night in the peer-reviewed Journal of Community Health: The Publication for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Led by West Virginia University researcher Dr. Michael Hendryx, among others, the study entitled “Self-Reported Cancer Rates in Two Rural Areas of West Virginia with and Without Mountaintop Coal Mining” drew from a groundbreaking community-based participatory research survey conducted in Boone County, West Virginia in the spring of 2011, which gathered person-level health data from communities directly impacted by mountaintop mining, and compared to communities without mining.

Regards,

Jim

At the end of WWII, our national debt was almost 120 percent of our GDP, higher than today. For the 35 years after the war, we not only paid for significant infrastructure like the interstate highway system, dams for electricity, electricity distribution to rural America, we paid for millions of GIs to get college degrees, we paid workers a wage that beat inflation, we created the greatest middle class in our history, we paid for the Korean and Vietnam Wars, we paid to send several Amerians to the moon and back, AND we still managed to pay down the national debt to 40 percent of GDP.

The National Debt was being fixed with tax revenue.
Then authoritarians stepped in.

In the last 32 years, however, greedy conservatives without conscience have reversed that. One key differences was/is our income tax structure. After WWII it was as high as 91 percent and stayed high for those 35 post war years. Starting thirty-two years ago taxes have been slashed, especially for the upper income citizens.

Lower tax rates for the last 32 years
have created our revenue problem.

Republican Lawmaker Admits He’s Extorting Congress to Rewrite Constitution – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Monday that he is giving Congress ten days to pass a constitutional amendment that would make raising taxes nearly impossible. And if he doesn’t get what he wants, he will do everything in his power to force the U.S. to default on its debts.

“Okay, in ten days you want to change the United States Constitution by two-thirds vote in both houses?” Matthews asked. “That’s what you’re demanding.”

“Yes,” Lee admitted. “If possible we can’t change the Constitution just in Congress but we can submit it to the states. Let the states fight it out.”

“You want the Democratic Senate, by a two-thirds vote, to pass a constitutional amendment or you want the house to come down?” Matthews pressed.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying and I’ve been saying this for six months,” Lee said.

Fiscal Conservative Bachmann Paid Fox News Makeup Artist $4,700 – Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann likes to call herself a fiscal conservative but some voters may question that after seeing her latest campaign expenditures.

Campaign finance filings indicate that during a two-week period in the month of June, Bachmann spent nearly $4,700 with just one makeup artist.

Payments of $1,715, $250, and $2,704 were disbursed to Tamara Robertson, a Maryland-based stylist. According to her LinkedIn profile, Robertson works as a makeup artist for Fox News.

Accused Norway Mass Murder Wanted to Start a European Tea Party – Anders Behring Breivik, who has confessed to the mass murder in Norway, has called for the formation of a “cultural Euro-Tea Party” referring to the grass-roots right wing organisation in the US supported by Sarah Palin. Breivik, who police have described as a Christian Fundamentalist, also claims to have written an 1100 page book entitled “2083”, which espouses his ultra right wing political philosophy and the need to protect western Europe from the threat of Islam.

Arkansas Student With Highest GPA Won’t Be Named Validictorian Because She’s Black – Kymberly Wimberly, 18, got only a single B in her 4 years at McGehee Secondary School, and loaded up on Honors and Advanced Placement classes. She had the highest G.P.A. and says the school’s refusal to let her be sole valedictorian was part of a pattern of discrimination against black students.

Wimberly says that despite earning the highest G.P.A. of the Class of 2011, and being informed of it by a school counselor, “school administrators and personnel treated two other white students as heir[s] apparent to the valedictorian and salutatorian spots.”

Wimberly’s mother is the school’s “certified media specialist.” She says in the federal discrimination complaint that after her daughter had been told she would be valedictorian, the mother heard “in the copy room that same day, other school personnel expressed concern that Wimberly’s status as valedictorian might cause a ‘big mess.'”

McGehee Secondary School is predominantly white, and 46 percent African-American, according to the complaint. Bratton says that the day after she heard the “big mess” comment, McGehee Principal Darrell Thompson, a defendant, told her “that he decided to name a white student as co-valedictorian,” although the white student had a lower G.P.A.

4,000 Workers and Construction Projects Getting the Shaft Because of Tea Party Attacks on the FAA – The Federal Aviation Administration’s operating authority expired at midnight Friday and the agency partially shut down. While air traffic controllers are still on the job and air travel continues more or less normally, nearly 4,000 other FAA employees are currently furloughed without pay. Additionally, nearly 87,000 construction jobs are affected as FAA-funded airport construction projects are forced to shut down. This includes projects from $10,000 to tens of millions of dollars, scattered across the country.

All of which is probably fine with House Republicans, since the whole purpose of this exercise was to make things more difficult for workers, anyway. By trying to make union representation elections operate by undemocratic rules, they put people out of work instead—maybe that’s a job well done in their eyes.

The FAA is also unable to collect taxes on airline tickets bought, depriving the government of $200 million a week in revenue. But the great little coda to this story is that consumers aren’t seeing savings:

[I]nstead of passing along the savings, the airlines are pocketing the money while customers pay the same amount as before.

American, United, Continental, Delta, US Airways, Southwest, AirTran and JetBlue all raised fares, although details sometimes differed. Most of the increases were around 7.5 percent.

It’s like the Republican dream: Not only is the government not collecting revenue, that same revenue is going straight to corporations, for no reason. Why would they ever agree to end this shutdown?

Tell your members of Congress the FAA needs to get up and running immediately. Republican House leaders’ hostage-taking needs to stop.

Regards,

Jim

Fox News Host Falsely Blames Muslims for Norway Attacks – [Last] Friday night on The O’Reilly Factor, guest host Laura Ingraham did a brief report on the terrorist attacks that killed dozens of people in Norway. She began by saying, “In the ‘Back of the Book’ segment tonight, two deadly terror attacks in Norway, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists.” Several news outlets were already reporting at the time the show aired that the suspect in the attacks was not linked to any Islamist groups, Fox News viewers were left with that impression anyway.

The attacks were actually carried out by a 32-year-old conservative Christian who was strongly opposed to multiculturalism and Islam.

Fox News Uses Norway Attack To Say Islamic, Muslim, Al Qaeda 15 Times in Five Minutes – Fox News used the domestic terror attack in Oslo, Norway to say the words “Muslim,” “Islamic,” and “Al Qaeda” a total of 15 times in this five- minute news segment, which was loaded with falsehoods, including that Norway was unprepared — a rather hypocritical comment coming from the speaker, former Bush administration State Department official Christian Whiton. The Bush administration up until 9/ 11 had no interest in terrorism.

For the record, the Oslo, Norway attack was allegedly by Norwegian right- wing “Christian fundamentalist” Anders Breivik, whose actions even prior to the bombing and shooting that left over 90 people dead, could be described as similar to America’s Tea Party, even calling for the formation of a “cultural Euro- Tea Party.“

A Few Rich People Still Don’t Want to Pay Their Fair Share – President Franklin Roosevelt: “In 1776 the fight was for Democracy in Taxation. In 1936 there is still the fight. Mister Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said ‘taxes are the prices we pay for civilized society’. One sure way to determine the social conscience of a government is to examine the way taxes are collected and how they are spent. And one sure way to determine the social conscience of an individual is to get his tax reaction. Taxes, after all are the dues we pay for the privilege of membership in an organized society. And as society becomes more civilized government, national and state and local, is called on to assume more obligations to its citizens. The privileges of membership in a civilized society are vastly increased in modern times. But I am afraid we still have many who still do not recognize their advantages and want to avoid paying their dues.

To divide fairly among the people the obligation to pay for these benefits has been a major part of our struggle to maintain Democracy in America. Ever since 1776, that struggle has been between two forces; on the one hand there has been a vast majority of citizens who believe the benefits of democracy should be extended and who are willing to pay their fair share to extend them. And on the other hand, there has been a small but powerful group which has fought the extension of these benefits because they did not want to pay a fair share of their cost. That was the lineup in seventeen hundred and seventy-six and it’s the lineup today. And I am confident that once more, in nineteen thirty-six democracy in taxation will win. Here is my principle, and I think it’s yours too; Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.”

Donald Trump Reveals He’s Let America Default Just So Obama Would Not Get Re-Elected – Donald Trump told Fox News Monday that Republicans should make sure President Barack Obama isn’t re-elected by refusing any comprehensive deal to raise the debt ceiling, even going so far as to suggest that the country should be allowed to default on its debts.

“Obama doesn’t want the six-month extension because that almost ensures he doesn’t get re-elected,” Trump told Fox & Friends hosts Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson and Brian Kilmeade. “I think, frankly, the Republicans would be crazy, unless they get 100 percent of the deal that they want right now, to make any deal.”

“The fact is that unless Republicans get 100 percent of what they want — and that may include getting rid of Obamacare which is a total disaster — they should not make a deal other than a minor extension which would take you before the elections which would ensure that Obama doesn’t get elected, which would be a great thing.”

Boehner Can’t Get His Story Straight About the Debt Ceiling Negotions – It appears that John Boehner is suffering from multiple personality disorder over the debt ceiling stand-off, that’s because he is. Torn between his duty to the national interest as Speaker of the House and to the Tea Party caucus that put him there, for months Boehner has ping-ponged between truth and lies on the debt ceiling. Long before he breached faith with the President on Friday, John Boehner tried to have it both ways on virtually every aspect of the debt ceiling crisis manufactured by the Republican Party he struggles to lead.

As Jed Lewison documented, Speaker Sybil couldn’t get his story straight on Friday’s walkout. While he insisted during his press conference afterward that “we had an agreement on a revenue number,” in a letter that same day to House Republicans Boehner insisted that “A deal was never reached, and was never really close.”

Regards,

Jim