Recently in Politics Category

Bear with me as I take a shot at something new this morning--video editing. This is from KFMB in San Diego yesterday. San Diego is the first stop on the national tour for the Tea Party Express, which will be here in the Houston area on November 7th. All the usual suspects were in attendance, including the "take our country back" crowd. Billionaires for Wealthcare also made an appearance. Take a look: Roll out the...

The ODS-afflicted right is so eager to pounce on anything derogatory about President Obama, the First Lady, their children, their dog, and whoever or whatever else about which Limbaugh spews or the far-right blogosphere scribbles in crayon, that whether or not the story has any shred of truth or credibility to it makes no difference. (See birth certificate, the First Lady's purse, her staff, etc.) The latest is the "thesis hoax," which the ODSers jumped...

Have you ever heard of Brooksley Born? Neither had I until I watched the latest edition of Frontline on PBS called The Warning, which lays out the history of the collapse of the financial markets. Brooksley Born was the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in the late '90's who tried to warn the financial wizards of the day, specifically Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers about the impending disaster in the derivatives...

During the markup process of a bill before the Committee on Science and Technology, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) proposed the following amendment:"Adds a new section at the end of the billstating that "[n]one of the funds madeavailable under this Act or theamendments made by the Act" (1) may beused for lobbying the legislative orexecutive branches of the Federal, State,or local governments; or (2) may beawarded to any entity if that entity or anyemployee has been...

Will the last one to leave the Republican Party please turn out the lights? Apparently that 20% party ID number isn't low enough for the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts, as two more Republicans, Bill Frist and Bob Dole, both former Senate Majority Leaders, have been ex-communicated by Laura Ingraham and Michele Bachmann. Frist and Dole dared to say positive things about President Obama and health care reform, and have been labeled "non-pro-freedom" by Bachmann. Yes,...

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored...

As our politicians in Washington dicker and bicker over the details of health care reform--over how the CBO will score this, or how many votes can we get for that, or how can we deal the president a political blow on this, or what can we vote for and still keep the campaign contributions flowing on that--here's what happening to REAL people in the REAL world. A husband and father in Wisconsin, Bill Caudle,  has...

The AP reports that the US has agreed to deploy Patriot missiles in Poland in 2010 and is in talks with the Polish government to include them in plans to develop a ground-based variant of the successful SM-3 ship-based anti-ballistic missile.US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Alexander Vershbow seemed particularly enthusiastic about the latter."We are very interested in the possibility that Poland would be the host country for one of the two land-based...

This news is troubling, if true:"The US is expected to announce a significant surge of up to 45,000 extra troops for Afghanistan after Gordon Brown said that 500 more British troops would be sent to the country. President Barack Obama's administration is understood to have told the British government that it could announce, as early as next week, the substantial increase to its 65,000 troops already serving there... Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the...

Pardon my disillusionment this morning on the prospects for meaningful health care reform. That would be health care reform that includes a public option, a real one, not a POINO (public option in name only) and other elements upon which President Obama campaigned. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on CNN's State of the Union yesterday:"As you saw the president say in the joint session to Congress, he believes a public plan, a public...