Month: July 2014
Bill Clinton ‘Never Stopped Reaching Out’ to Congress
My husband had some really serious problems with the Congress when he was in office. They shut down the government twice. They impeached him once. So it was not the most pleasant of atmospheres. But I will say this: Bill never stopped reaching out to them.
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
Miller to GOP’s Fiorina: Your Study of Medieval History ‘Will Come in Handy Trying to Defend the Republican War on Women’
A pair of Californians squared off on CNN Sunday morning. Watch as liberal radio/TV host Stephanie Miller demonstrates how to talk to Republicans in this exchange with failed U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorini about the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision and Fiorini’s party’s war on women.
He Was Probably Hoping You’d Leave That Out
Before inheriting his family’s fortune, Scaife attended Yale University, but was expelled in his freshmen year when he rolled a beer keg down a flight of stairs and broke a classmate’s legs, according to a 1999 Washington Post article.
—CNN, in what is perhaps not the way you’d want your obituary notice to end, even if you weren’t conservative think tank money source billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.
Barely Clinging to Life, the American Republic Celebrates Its 238th Birthday
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
– A quote wrongly attributed to Sinclair Lewis
Note that this quote, which has been cited in these pages in another context, sets up the arrival of fascism as certain — not “if” but “when” fascism comes. As the United States marks its 238th birthday, that “when” appears to be imminent. The country is under assault from an enemy within, a hodgepodge insurgency of neo-Confederates, Christo-fascists and Ayn Randian anarchists funded and driven by soulless oligarchs who will not stop until the American dream is dead and this once great nation has become a Third World country.
Laying Blame for Our Do-Nothing Congress
There are three groups to blame for the gross dereliction of duty we have seen from this do-nothing Congress. The first, paradoxically, is the Federal Reserve. Its monetary policies have allowed some small measure of recovery, giving cover to Congress’s failure to manage our fiscal policies …. The second group is the Supreme Court. Its campaign of replacing our Jeffersonian democracy with a corporatocracy — sponsored by and sold to the highest bidder — continues unabated … But the group most to blame for the sad state of Congress is you, the American voter. Or, more accurately, the American non-voter.
— Barry Ritholtz, in a Bloomberg op-ed piece.
