kpete
kpete's Journal"Small Business Owner" in Walker Ad Actually a Billionaire---Helped Outsource 1000s of Jobs to China
"Small Business Owner" in Walker Ad Actually a Billionaire That Helped Outsource Thousands of Jobs to China
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In the midst of this carnage, Walker has the nerve to put up an ad with "Chris" who is purportedly a small business owner that is extolling the virtues of Scott Walker's job-creatin' business utopia... that is losing more jobs than other state.
Well, it turns out that "Chris" is Chris Rebholz, aka the King of Infomercials. Chris made a name for himself, as well as a gazillion dollars, selling products almost exclusively made in China, to Americans via infomercials. Name a product you've seen sold on TV, and the odds was pretty good that it was one of Rebholz's Tristar products.
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In other words, if you were going to set up a business model with the fewest American jobs possible, it would be Chris Rebholz's business model. That's the guy... that Scott Walker chose to promote his job creation efforts.
Rebholz was able to set up such a good system for importing Chinese trinkets, selling them on TV or online, and then mailing them out to people that he's gone to other businesses and offered up his expertise of getting a product, made cheap in China, and to the hands of the American consumer with the fewest American jobs possible.
http://uppitywis.org/blogarticle/small-business-owner-walker-ad-actually-billionaire-helped-outso
You say you want a Velvet Revolution
You say you want a Velvet Revolution
by digby
This is a lovely piece by RJ Eskow about Václav Havel, a true man of the ideas:
On a warm evening in 1991, a colleague and I found an out-of-the-way café in the old part of Prague. Two men with blank expressions stood outside. The interior was dim and close, with room for only eight or nine tables. The place was almost empty. Just a sleepy waitress, a bartender polishing glasses, and a single patron who sat alone drinking wine and chain-smoking cigarettes.
The President of Czechoslovakia wasn't reviewing official papers. He was reading a book, a startlingly un-Presidential act to our American eyes. My companion, a neoconservative State Department official, already admired him for defying and defeating a Communist state. He'd impressed me by bringing a writer's sensibility and an affinity for true underground culture to his role as head of state.
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We never spoke to Havel that night. It didn't seem polite to offer anything more than the curt nod of acknowledgement any café patron gives another at that hour. But Havel spoke to us, to all of us. And on the occasion of his death, the real lessons of his life's work are in danger of being lost.
Today we're told that the Occupy movement is too idealistic, too naïve. Naïve? Try Havel's words if you want naïve: "May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred."
MORE:
http://crooksandliars.com/richard-rj-eskow/havel-dissident-legacy-worth-clai
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/you-say-you-want-velvet-revolution.html
Wisconsin Solidarity Singers Carol In Huge Numbers, Thumbing Nose At Walker's New Protest Rules
MON DEC 19, 2011 AT 05:12 PM PST
Wisconsin Solidarity Singers Carol In Huge Numbers, Thumbing Nose At Walker's New Protest Rules
bymadtowntjFollow
When the whos of whoville discovered the Grinch stole their Christmas they got together and sang. When the Badgers of Badgerland discovered Walker stole their rights they...well...got together and sang.
I would estimate about 1000 whos errr Badgers showed up at the Capitol to show Walker that he could not take our rights away.
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Oh yeah, in case you were wondering, there were no arrests. Maybe the crowd was too big. Maybe Walker is waiting to make his move at a later date. Stay tuned.
Solidarity!!
On Wisconsin!!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/19/1047014/-Wisconsin-Solidarity-Singers-Carol-In-Huge-Numbers,-Thumbing-Nose-At-Walkers-New-Protest-Rules?via=siderec
Paul leads in Iowa
Paul leads in Iowa
Newt Gingrich's campaign is rapidly imploding, and Ron Paul has now taken the lead in Iowa. He's at 23% to 20% for Mitt Romney, 14% for Gingrich, 10% each for Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, 4% for Jon Huntsman, and 2% for Gary Johnson.
Gingrich has now seen a big drop in his Iowa standing two weeks in a row. His share of the vote has gone from 27% to 22% to 14%. And there's been a large drop in his personal favorability numbers as well from +31 (62/31) to +12 (52/40) to now -1 (46/47). Negative ads over the last few weeks have really chipped away at Gingrich's image as being a strong conservative- now only 36% of voters believe that he has 'strong principles,' while 43% think he does not.
Paul's ascendancy is a sign that perhaps campaigns do matter at least a little, in a year where there has been a lot of discussion about whether they still do in Iowa. 22% of voters think he's run the best campaign in the state compared to only 8% for Gingrich and 5% for Romney. The only other candidate to hit double digits on that question is Bachmann at 19%. Paul also leads Romney 26-5 (with Gingrich at 13%) with the 22% of voters who say it's 'very important' that a candidate spends a lot of time in Iowa. Finally Paul leads Romney 29-19 among the 26% of likely voters who have seen one of the candidates in person.
Paul's base of support continues to rely on some unusual groups for a Republican contest. Among voters under 45 he's at 33% to 16% for Romney and 11% for Gingrich. He's really going to need that younger than normal electorate because with seniors Romney's blowing him out 31-15 with Gingrich coming in 2nd at 18%. Paul is also cleaning up 35-14 with the 24% of voters who identify as either Democrats or independents. Romney is actually ahead 22-19 with GOP voters. Young people and non-Republicans are an unusual coalition to hang your hat on in Iowa, and it will be interesting to see if Paul can actually pull it off.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/12/paul-leads-in-iowa.html
"like, totally awesome"
Point Of Order: If We’re Going To Declare The War In Iraq Over, Shouldn’t We Declare War On Iraq First?
Or, If We Were Going To Have The Last Person To Leave Iraq Turn Out The Lights, Shouldn’t We Have Turned On The Electricity At Some Point?
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/12/18/iraq-an-ending-of-sorts/
House GOP to REJECT payroll tax cut...Admits because it will help Obama!!
"The rank-and-file members are extremely opposed to it," said the GOP source, adding that most members were concerned with the uncertainty caused by just a two-month extension, as well as the political benefit the White House could gain in the national dialogue over taxes.http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/18/1046746/-House-GOP-to-REJECT-payroll-tax-cutAdmits-because-it-will-help-Obama!!?via=siderec
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/18/politics/congress-payroll-tax-cut-2/index.html
via:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/18/1046746/-House-GOP-to-REJECT-payroll-tax-cutAdmits-because-it-will-help-Obama!!?via=siderec
COVER OF TIME Magazine's "Person of the Year" vs. Original Photograph. Note the Glaring Difference?
The image on TIME's cover – in which the 99% is unmistakably absent – is based on a photo of Sarah Mason, a 25-year-old Occupy L.A. activist (and art gallery worker) who was photographed by LA Weekly's Ted Soqui as she stood in a line, arms linked, during a November 17 protest at Bank of America Plaza.
The original image, with a vinegar-soaked 99% bandana masking Mason's face, her eyes focused and determined as she protests corporate greed, has unmistakable intensity and meaning. However, on TIME's cover, she is reduced to a generic, hybrid graphic that fails to invoke passions precisely because it lacks the specificity of place, the specificity of time, the specificity of motivation, of a cause.
In short, it lacks the 99 percent.
the rest:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/18/1046730/-Cover-for-TIME-Magazines-Person-of-the-Year-vs-Original-Photograph-Note-the-Glaring-Difference?via=siderec
Bolt down your Christmas trees everyone. And for all the Muslims out there, get an alarm system.
If Gingrich gets the nomination, the media is going to make a huge deal of the egghead vs. egghead presidential race. That is silly. Gingrich's intellectualism is the intellectualism of a precocious 16 year old who just read the Fountainhead -- shallow, capricious and grandiose. Next year he/she will have gone goth, or something else. So it is with Gingrich, although though he probably won't go goth. I think people overstate Barack Obama's intelligence too. He is smart but not brilliant. Rather what seems him look so smart is his 'cognitive complexity,' as I wrote about in one of my first posts here, and is so rare in politicians these days. He can see multiple sides of an argument. But be warned -- this will be the narrative if he wins the nomination.
But his 'intellectualism' is not why Gingrich is so popular today. I think Gingrich is picking up the votes of the real Tea Party people -- those who resent what they imagine to be enormous sums of their tax dollars going to finance what they imagine to be the profligate lifestyles of those on Aid to Families of Dependent Children or Medicaid or both. We call this 'economic conservatism' but it is not a belief in the free market. It is a belief that we owe nothing to anyone else. In political psychology we know it has a strong association with a particular personality trait -- disagreeableness. In short, Tea Parties are meanies before they are anything else.
Social conservatives score much higher on other personality traits like conscientiousness. They are not nearly so uncaring. They might deny family planning services to unwed mothers, but this is because they think they are doing the right thing by not putting ideas into impressionable girls heads -- that it is OK to have sex. Of course this makes them likelier to get pregnant and have abortions. But it comes from a genuinely good if misguided intention. They are mean by accident, indirectly.
Newt's rise has to be attributed to his performance in debates, since, as was the case with Cain, there is nothing else to explain it -- no money, no organization, and only negative name recognition. What has he done at these debates? He has no gimmick, no 9/9/9 plan. He flips around all the time. But every time he shows up on camera, we see the same thing -- contempt, scorn, meanness. For everything. Newt is tapping into how nasty these nasty people feel. To others, and at previous times, this would have seemed unpresidential. But these are the times we live in. Newt Gingrich is an asshole, and many Republicans love him for it.
the rest:
http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2011/12/gingrinch.html
Even Fredo Thinks Gingrich Is Nuts
Former Bush Attorneys General Slam Gingrich’s ‘Ridiculous,’ ‘Irresponsible,’ ‘Outrageous,’ and ‘Dangerous’ Courts Plan
KELLY: He wants to see the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals entirely abolished, your thoughts on that?
MUKASEY: Ridiculous. . . . to say that you’re going to undo and entire court simply because you don’t like some of their decisions, when there are thousands of cases before that court, is totally irresponsible. It’s outrageous because it essentially does away with the notion that when courts decide cases the proper way to have them reviewed is to go to a higher court. It’s dangerous because, even from the standpoint of the people who put it forward, you have no guarantee that you’ll have a permanent majority. . . . It would end with having a Democratic majority that then decides to abolish the Fourth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit. And you go on and on and on. And I guess they could then reconstitute another court. It would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle.
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had a similar reaction:
GONZALES: The notion or the specter of bringing judges before the Congress, like a schoolchild being brought before the principal is, to me, a little bit troubling . . . . I cannot support and I would not support efforts that appear to be intimidation or retaliation against judges.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/12/16/391189/former-bush-attorneys-general-slam-gingrichs-ridiculous-irresponsible-outrageous-and-dangerous-courts-plan/
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