Month: May 2011
RPOF Talking Points, in Case Scott’s Budget Left You Speechless
If you weren’t among the select few invited to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R/Tea) ceremonial re-enactment of the signing of the hot mess that is this year’s state budget at a gated, tea party haven retirement community in the most land-locked part of Florida, we can help.
There is no reason for anyone to be at a loss for words when it comes to Florida’s new budget, which cuts money for fire protection in a drought-stricken region, law enforcement in the nation’s leading pill mill state, and services that keep the elderly in the community instead of much more expensive nursing homes in the state with the most older residents.
Thanks to the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), which recently got the message that Floridians care about education, you can simply refer to this handy list of talking points, conveniently located on the Rick Scott for Florida web site. At least, you can access it after you supply your name, email address, and zip code, watch a video in which Scott’s mom says she still loves him, and do a search for “budget talking points.” What could be easier?
But all that work is worth it, when you can get these gems.
Palin: ‘I Love That Smell of Emissions’
I love that smell of emissions.
– Sarah Palin at the Rolling Thunder rally in Washington, D.C.
Rush, Hannity Ratings Dive
30%
Amount by which Rush Limbaugh’s ratings have slipped since November, according to new Arbitron research. The Sean Hannity Show is also down by 28%.
You Actually Could Solve the Deficit Problem with Tax Increases
Maybe you heard this recent assertion, which swept through rightwing media outlets: Raising taxes on high income earners can’t solve the federal deficit problem because the deficit is higher than the entire taxable income of Americans who earn more than $100,000. But you likely didn’t hear that it’s not true.
Here’s what the Wall St. Journal said in an editorial, which got the ball rolling.
According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans – most of whom are far from wealthy – were taxed at 100%, it wouldn’t cover Mr. Obama’s deficit for this year.
According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans – most of whom are far from wealthy – were taxed at 100%, it wouldn’t cover Mr. Obama’s deficit for this year.
And here’s what the WSJ said when it was pointed out by FactCheck.org that they were wrong.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the total taxable income of Americans earning over $100,000 in 2008 was $1.582 trillion. The correct figure is $3.4 trillion.
The projected deficit is $1.645 trillion. You do the math.
But Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.), apparently can’t, because he repeated the false claim on a recent FOX News Sunday segment, with an added twist about the futility of including those who net between $100,00 and $250,000 after deductions. The point was to show that the deficit problem can only be solved by cutting spending, not by also increasing revenues. People who are not mathematically — or ideologically — challenged see that it will take both.
Pres. Obama is proposing $2 trillion in spending cuts and $1 trillion in additional tax revenue over 12 years. Seems reasonable to us.
You Will Know She Is Running When Fox Fires Her
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Months ago, Lawrence O’Donnell correctly predicted the day on which Donald Trump would admit he was not running for president — that day, May 16, being the deadline for NBC’s announcement that they had picked up Trump’s reality show for another year. The fact that the show is the network’s top rated primetime show (or at least it was before the Donald aligned himself with the racist birther movement) should have been made it cinch that Trump never had any intention of running — that it was all a big publicity ploy.
And, if stories that NBC upped his salary to $60 million are true, as publicity ploys go, Trump’s fake presidential aspirations were stunningly effective.
Now O’Donnell has turned his sights on Sarah Palin. He reminds us that on March 2, Fox president Roger Ailes fired all the pols on his network who were seriously considering running for president. Palin and Mike Huckabee were not among them.
Update: Scott Aide Who Barred Dems from Event Is Identified
Part of the series, Assault on Florida.
On Friday, we asked who ordered Sumter County, Fla., deputies to bar Democrats from a town square where Florida Gov. Rick Scott was holding a bill-signing event.
Now, via Jonathan Turley, we know:
Apparently, it was all the work of a poor misguided staffer, Russ Abrams, a $60,000.00 a year special assistant to the Governor who has a serious First Amendment mental block. Despite newspaper notices that the meeting in the conservative retirement community was open to the public, Abrams told Sumter County Sheriff’s deputies that the event was private and that Democrats and liberals were not required. A reluctant deputy informed the banned folks that he was instructed to remove them.
“Not so” says Scott spokesperson, Lane Wright: “This was a public event. It was brought to our attention that the local authorities had removed some. We don’t know first-hand who was removed or why.”
But wait. Was it a public event? A more reliable source said the “public square” at the Villages is private property and that it was leased for the event by the Florida Republican Party:
Your Honor, Are You Straight or Gay?
So the question is, “Should only straight judges be allowed to rule on gay rights issues?”
…ethicists disagree on whether retired federal judge Vaughn R. Walker, 67, should have disclosed his 10-year relationship with his partner before presiding over the challenge to Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot measure that reinstated a ban on same-sex marriage. Walker ruled in August that the ban was unconstitutional, and his decision is now before an appeals court…
A federal district judge in San Francisco has scheduled a June 13 hearing to decide whether Walker’s ruling should be wiped from the legal record as a result of his personal situation.
Does this mean only gay judges can preside over straight divorces in states that outlaw same-sex marriage? Read the whole mess in the L.A. Times and then discuss amongst yourselves.
Guess What Percentage of Americans Is Gay
If you guessed that 25 percent of Americans are gay, you would be wrong, but you would be in agreement with a majority of the country, according to a new poll from Gallup:
Anti-gay activists debunk assertions that 10 percent of the population is gay. They claim it’s more like 2 percent — which prompts the question: If there are so few gay people, why all the fuss?
U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian. More specifically, over half of Americans (52 percent) estimate that at least one in five Americans are gay or lesbian, including 35 percent who estimate that more than one in four are. Thirty percent put the figure at less than 15 percent.
The adult population of the United States is about 225 million. If a quarter of them were gay, that would be 56 million people — that’s a lot of gay people. That’s roughly the number of Catholics in America. No way.
The fact is, nobody really knows how many gay people there are in the United States or anywhere. The conventional wisdom used to be 10 percent, a figure that probably came from the Kinsey Report in the 1930s.
