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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (562521)	4/23/2010 11:46:38 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573682

Sales are not sluggish in NH? You REALLY are a moron... No they are not: "The rise in new home sales was seen nationwide. Sales grew a whopping 44 percent in the South and 36 percent in the Northeast. They also rose about 6 percent in the West and 3 percent in the Midwest. Stupid is as stupid does! Commercial vacancy has not even BEGUN to peak.... That's right, fool.

To: jlallen who wrote (562521)	4/23/2010 11:55:52 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573682

Are Wall Street hedge fund operators some of your favorite people, o wise one? Are Rs trying to destroy the Republic? Inquiring minds want to know. REPUBLICANS QUIETLY HUDDLE WITH BANK LOBBYISTS (AGAIN).... Senate Republicans recently struggled to explain the propriety of GOP leaders Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) huddling with hedge fund managers and Wall Street elites, strategizing on how best to kill financial regulatory reform. But as bad as that looked, yesterday was arguably even uglier. [Yesterday afternoon], President Obama traveled to New York to tell the nation's most influential bankers to call off their "battalions of financial industry lobbyists" and embrace a new regulatory structure meant to avert another economic crisis. But around the same time back in Washington, D.C., bank lobbyists hosted a fundraiser for Senate Republicans, including Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who has become the Republican liaison for Wall Street fundraising. The invitation to the fundraiser, obtained by the Party Time blog of the Sunlight Foundation, shows that the it was hosted by lobbyists Wendy Grubb, Kirsten Chadwick, Scott Reed, and a variety of corporate PACs. Grubb is a top lobbyist for Citigroup, a bank that took taxpayer TARP funds and has yet to repay them. Chadwick, a former staffer to Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), is a lobbyist for Zurich Financial Group, a financial services conglomerate. The event was held at the headquarters of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), and was ostensibly a fundraiser for Florida Sen. George LeMieux (R) -- who isn't seeking another term, and doesn't really need to be raising money. After the Sunlight Foundation obtained and posted the invitation to the gathering, a few outlets sent folks to cover the event. But senators, lobbyists, and assorted elites were not in a chatty mood -- attendees refused to answer questions, and all but one of the senators decided to not even use the front door. Evan McMorris-Santoro explained why they might have been embarrassed: "There's nothing new about politicians in Washington having closed-press meetings with lobbyists. There's not anything new about politicians fundraising at those meetings. But this event came at the exact moment Obama was taking on one of Washington's most powerful lobbies -- the financial industry -- on its home turf.... [W]hile Obama took on lobbyists, the GOP fed them." It's not exactly surprising, but there is an impressive shameless quality to the whole thing.

To: jlallen who wrote (562521)	4/23/2010 12:49:57 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573682

Puck puck puck puck.......... * A prominent conservative voice in Nevada politics is sounding the alarm about Sue "Chicken for Checkups" Lowden's future: "If the campaign doesn't get its 'stuff' together FAST, Lowden risks becoming the next Charlie Crist."

To: jlallen who wrote (562521)	4/23/2010 3:38:49 PM
From: tejek	2 Recommendations Respond to of 1573682

THE CONSEQUENCES OF INTELLECTUAL BANKRUPTCY.... Long-time readers may recall a discussion we had back in December, about the quality of the debate over health care reform. It was obvious at the time that the meaningful, interesting disputes weren't between conservatives and liberals, but between liberals and other liberals. It's not that the right remained silent; it's that they offered arguments that no serious person could find credible. Consider, just off the top of your head, the most prominent concerns raised by opponents of the Affordable Care Act. What comes to mind? "Death panels." "Socialism." "Government takeover." It was the biggest domestic policy fight in a generation, but most of the policy debate was spent debunking transparent, child-like nonsense. The left approached the debate with vibrancy, energy, and seriousness. The right thought it was fascinating to talk about the number of pages in the legislation. Making matters worse, the quality of the discourse on health care wasn't especially unusual. We endured a mind-numbing debate over economic recovery efforts because Republicans weren't prepared for a serious argument. We can't discuss Wall Street reform because Republicans keep saying "bailout" for no reason. We can't discuss a climate bill because Republicans reflexively reject the science. Every major issue has strengths and weaknesses, and every major piece of legislation is subject to legitimate criticism. In 2010, however, the right seems fundamentally unprepared to even have the conversation. Given all of this, Marc Ambinder asks today whether the right has "gone mad." Can anyone deny that the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama today comes not from the right but from the left? Rachel Maddow's grilling of administration economic officials. Keith Olbermann's hectoring Democratic leaders on the public option. Glenn Greenwald's criticisms of Elena Kagan. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn's keepin'-them-honest perspectives on health care, the civil libertarian left on detainees and Gitmo. The Huffington Post on derivatives. I want to find Republicans to take seriously, but it is hard. Not because they don't exist -- serious Republicans -- but because, as [Julian] Sanchez and others seem to recognize, they are marginalized, even self-marginalizing and the base itself seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking. Ambinder ponders various explanations -- the habit of conservatives to take entertainers seriously as political actors, the "incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance," the epistemic closure problem in which conservatives ignore news outlets that might tell them what they don't want to hear -- but doesn't draw a clear conclusion. In a way, that's a shame. I was really hoping he'd help me understand how one of the nation's dominant political parties and the ideology it embraces chose intellectual bankruptcy.