Republican Obstructionism Leads to Doubling Student Loan Rates

Yes, actually.



Why does my kid need to pay 150% MORE than what the government pays to investors for a 10 year bond?!?!



Why do your swine buds feel that they need to pay so much more for their loans than what rich people get paid for parking money in a place for 10 years?!



How do you justify crushing kids like mine like that?



Other than that, I've had enough from you. Thanks a pile.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dear Dr. Krugman, This is Why

My Economics Hero, Paul Krugman doesn't understand what turned the public around so fast for gay marriage. I posted this comment on his blog on the subject because I think this is why:


There hasn't been any transformation, really.

There was the status quo....
Then there was a challenge to the status quo....
Discussion of the status quo and the challenge took place....

End of story. People just needed to have the discussion forced into their consciousness to realize the pettiness of the status quo.

25 years ago no one dared admit to being gay, but now it's commonplace. People used to only know gay people from pictures of flamboyant parades, but now pretty much everyone has met someone who is gay and most realize that they are just as human as anyone else.

This is what enrages me about how Obama and Dem "leaders" deal with issues social and economic. Obama, recall, was against gay marriage during his original campaign in 2008 because that was the convenient position. If you want to change our direction, you can do so with strong leadership that forces people to confront and discuss the critical issues in an open debate.

But no Dems beyond Warren, Sanders (ok, technically not a Dem), Grayson, and a few others have the courage to do so. We get a push for austerity when we desperately need stimulus. We get toothless financial regulations. We get no mortgage reform after continuous egregious abuses.

"We have to be REASONABLE - we can't achieve these things..." is the standard defense of this abject cowardice.

Well, DOMA's demise and the public polls are Exhibit A proving the fact that you can get something when you push for it in a positive way with a grounding in real human experience.

Obama To Netroots Nation: 'I Need You'

Re-read your comment and I don't see how I missed this quip about a database. It's so off the wall I had to comment on that...


Having a phone number database is a number of things:

• Useless - call an operator and ask, or get a warrant and ask for it.
• An absurd waste of time and taxpayer money - if all you want is a phone number or two, finding out every call being my to/from everyone else is the slowest and most costly way to find the numbers.
• Absurd on face - it has been made clear already that the intent was to create patterns of phone usage. If you believe that that is the same thing as building a phone number database, then you aren't just naive, you're not of sound mind.

And to answer the initial question, terrorists HAVE killed Americans with such patriot act in place. The 911 attacks could have been prevented because we had intelligence about it and the president at the time was warned 29 days prior to the attack but elected to do nothing about it.


We have thousands more traffic deaths a year than terrorist attacks. Spending money on safer roads and vehicles would be far more effective than wasting it spying on Americans.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Jim Allen, Illinois GOP Official, Resigns After Racially Charged Attack On Erika Harold

Now THAT is what I would call "astonishing."



First, I'm not sure where I stated that the republicans are the only people who have exhibited their racist bend, but just because you perceive it doesn't mean I said it.



Second, I'm not sure where my comment suggests that causality of racism is bound to one's political affiliation. Clearly it's the exact opposite. Racism is based on a combination of fear of the unknown, crippling insecurity leading to fear of discovering facts that undermine your opinions, and an ability to accept illogical and irrational concepts. People with those traits are overwhelmingly attracted to the republican party because facts and science are, as evinced in many polls and studies, not just uncomfortable things, but demonized. On the other hand, Dems believe in science and tend to demand evidence before accepting concepts - an uncomfortable environment for racists.



Third, Since the legislation under the Great Society, the racist Dems made very public moves to the republican party. The republican party has been a haven for racist candidates ever since and a simple accounting of public events like this one empirically demonstrates that fact rather conclusively.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Jim Allen, Illinois GOP Official, Resigns After Racially Charged Attack On Erika Harold

"“The astonishingly offensive views expressed by Chairman Allen have absolutely no place among the leaders of our party at any level," Priebus wrote..."



"Astonishingly"?!



This is a joke, right???



I need to be out with a group for only about 15 minutes before I hear talk like that guy's email come out of the most boisterous republican(s) in the crowd.... which is then followed immediately with nods, chuckles, and guffaws from the rest of the republicans. No need to check voter registration cards, just count the bobbing, sputtering noggins.



I think this guy meant to say, "These offensive views are wholly consistent with our 'base' and we need Mr. Allen to resign his current post so he can accept a more vital 'get out the vote' position for our state party machine."
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Bill Clinton: Obama Risks Looking Like A 'Wuss,' 'A Total Fool' If He Doesn't Act On Syria

Or maybe I misinterpreted you....



My view is that where there are CLEAR malefactors and a good chance that justice can be brought into a situation (Korea in the early 50s, WW II [ultimately], and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait for example), then intervention feels like the right thing to do. I don't know what to make of WWI because it was as choreographed as Gulf of Tonkin and at a point in history that was forever shaped by its brutality.



Blindly supporting our "ally" in South Vietnam was a complete and utter disaster - largely because the Vietnamese had no more interest to be brutalized by "our brutal dictator." As Ellsberg helped us learn, we knew we had no chance of winning, but threw tens of thousands of US lives away to purely maintain an image of combating Communism - which is now search-replaced policy-wise with "Terrorism."



Helping the Northern Alliance topple the Taliban was probably a fair meddling. But the occupations of Afghanistan in a vain attempt to 'tame the savages' and an Iraq with simmering, seething racial hatreds were lost before they began (just like Vietnam). There was simply no way to possibly bring any sort of justice (as we like to think of it).



All one needs do is float accusations of [aiding] terrorism to justify almost any unthinkable act. That has to end.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I Ask Again: Is Technology Blocking the Path to Full Employment?

One overlooked aspect of this debate is a critical one that I suppose is lost in the bowels of faceless economic models has to do with the effects of competition in an actual capitalist economy. Ours is not a capitalism in the way that Adam Smith had described it.



In his vision, and the one that I think most folks identify, competition drove up innovations and drove out inefficient, inferior, or defective products. In our economy, for example, home builders can build unsafe or generally crappy homes and sell them for a massive profit because they have more money in their coffers to buy properties and build houses. In other words, the concentration of - and restricted circulation of - wealth has contorted the mechanisms of capitalism just as it has in the gilded age.



With a system so lopsided and rigged to siphon wealth from others and to restrict competition, I'm not sure how anyone can make any categorical claims as to what technology is doing or not doing. The fact is that technology and other tools are used just as mightily to keep the pumps running that keep the flow of cash up to the 1% as they are to run an assembly line or execute precision welding.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I Ask Again: Is Technology Blocking the Path to Full Employment?

Anyone quoting ayn rand excludes themselves from any legitimate debate by definition.



Included in this rule are folks quoting Howdy-Doody and reading messages from God hidden in cow dung.
About Unemployment
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Bill Clinton: Obama Risks Looking Like A 'Wuss,' 'A Total Fool' If He Doesn't Act On Syria

99.5% of the security experts don't matter - they aren't in elected/appointed positions where they represent the people of this nation. Presidents and high-ranking members of the last few administrations (like Sec of State) - people who DO speak for the nation - all heaped praise and monetary aid on Mubarak.



The rest of your comment is baffling. It seems that you're advocating that we pick a starting line, amass all of our fighting-capable men and women, and march around the globe slaughtering everyone who gives us the hairy eyeball to make it safer for us. Just as we've seen over and over in Afghanistan, 100 acts of kindness can be overturned with 1 act of recklessness or hatred. Where there were 1,000 neutral parties, you've now created 500 who want to harm you. This makes no one safe.



I can live just fine knowing that there may be someone out there who hates me for no good reason and who may try to kill me if they had the chance. Why can't you? Why do you allow yourself to be terrified all the time?



And if the only way you can feel safe is to kill others, than you have, by definition, made many others increasingly unsafe. It's wrong at minimum, evil at its worst.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Bill Clinton: Obama Risks Looking Like A 'Wuss,' 'A Total Fool' If He Doesn't Act On Syria

Did you forget how highly praised our beloved ally in Egypt was? Of course, that was only up to a few months BEFORE it became clear that we wouldn't be able to rely on him holding people down in Egypt any longer. THEN we gleefully mocked him.



Propping that guy up beforehand with massive aid packages is part of our interventionist approach and it's humorously backfired in Egypt.



Our foreign policy is based on your premise - we should manipulate other nations to be under our control or at least not threatening to us. Once every nation is properly g3lded, then it's good because there's "peace." Never mind the abuses that our peaceful puppets inflict upon their populace - our demand for peace-of-mind and verdant fields for our international industrialists to enslave or plow trumps civil rights!



Well, you can't ignore those impacts. And tyrants suppressing the expression of ideas you find scary provide you no security nor safety whatsoever. It's not our choice to anoint rulers of other nations. Rarely does anything good come of it (if ever).



If staying out of conflicts within borders of countries where all sides represent nothing but more of the same is "isolationism," then that's exactly what we need.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Edward Snowden: "Hero or Traitor"?

Obviously, we agree on darn near everything here.



I guess my (still semantical) position is that the patriot act is inherently an abuse of power. So to me, anyone using it is exercising questionable judgment. I know warrants were obtained, but these are wide, wide, wide nets being cast (like the search of AP phone records), which is not right. If this were for phone records for me and you, it's one thing, but this is entirely different.



bush is a god-awful human being and I can see that comparisons to him/it evoke a visceral response. bush engineered the patriot act, the torture regime, and other hideous systems. But I can't get past the fact that Obama has elected to use all of those systems as a matter of course - as if they were all mundane, benign systems like inter-office mail. These are, in fact, a malignancy that should offend everyone.



Maybe I'm being unfair. BUT he could have vetoed the re-authorization of the patriot act and didn't. He could have reverted us back to FISA and he failed. So I just can't give him a pass on any of it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Edward Snowden: "Hero or Traitor"?

I think we've got some semantics issues on this.



If I'm not mistaken, the timeline was that dubya first went the illegal route. Then the patriot act was delivered to, among other things, help indemnify all those complicit with this illegal, warrantless spying (and dubya). After patriot act was adopted, the President could do pretty much any spying he wanted. So long as the President can blurt out "terrorist!," he can justify literally (?) almost any action of any kind. If you can classify enough information to make it virtually impossible for anyone to see if the President was adhering to the patriot act's meek oversight stipulations, any President can act as a good old-fashioned dictator.



Still, the President may be technically doing things that are legal to the letter of the law, which is where my semantics break is with your comment. To me, hiding behind an hideous set of tools, legal or not, like the patriot act doesn't really make the actions of the President any less immoral or unethical in my view. The patriot act is a disgrace.



If the President followed FISA laws to the letter in here, then I would walk back my disdain for the President. But I'm pretty certain this isn't the case.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Edward Snowden: "Hero or Traitor"?

Well said.



The process of totalitarianism includes this step when the Stalins and Marcos's of the world purge the government of 'untrustworthy' people and permit only friends to participate. This is indeed the sort of easy, 'logical' step that can occur fairly unnoticed by the population because so many still accept the "double standard" you so aptly noted.



I accept the fact that there are secrets that shouldn't be released because the harm it creates is more than the transparency maintains responsible governance. However, as a few commenters have noted here, the information released by Snowden is neither surprising nor new.



If, in fact, this is true (and all indications are that it is), then there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for the information to have been classified. The author bemoans that a formal declassification process doesn't really exist while demanding Snowden's head on a pike. I'd be fine with the author's opinions if they included not just a 'wish' for a declassification process but some sort of amnesty program until such a process, a process [devoid of partisan appointed hacks] is created and implemented so that our republic might be able to avoid the next step toward a closed government.



But without that, I just can't deal with the enablers of mass document classification fraud by government agents. Government can classify anything and there is no way to challenge it or bring those who improperly classify data to justice.



Double standard indeed.
About Wikileaks
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Grand Bargain Loses Center For American Progress Support In Major Blow To Austerity

This President continuously demonstrates that he is 100% committed to adopting as many republican policies as he can so that he can be remembered as the most awesomely bipartisan person in the post-partisan era of partisanship.



It doesn't matter how bad the policies are, he's going to pull all the stops in their pursuit - even if he has to starve the elderly to do it!!!



I can't figure if it's vanity, insanity, or inanity - but regardless, it's profoundly sad to behold this quixotic nose-dive day in and day out.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Mitch McConnell Charges 'Culture Of Intimidation' On Obama Nominees

Accusations unanswered are accusations agreed to. Will the President brush the footprint marks off his chest and confront this latest absurdity?!



I sure doubt it.



Obama has made it clear from day one that his intended legacy revolves entirely around the hope that he can transcend partisanship and become known as some sort of political peace-broker. The reason that the republicans get away with saying and doing the incredible things they do is because they know the President is too mortally terrified of being called an intimidating bully to call them on the carpet - it would destroy his sacred quest, even though all the rest of us can clearly see that the quest is a completely unattainable fantasy.



Until he gives up this absurd pursuit of bipartisan kumbaya, his legacy will be one of being a doormat for schoolyard thugs.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

CWA President Larry Cohen To Senate Dems: Fix The Nomination Process Or Lose Our Support

Well, I can only hope the unions will show some spine in a united front on this matter. One of the things that candidates in primaries do as a matter of course is garner endorsements from unions. If unions would be willing to DE-endorse elected candidates ti could help embolden challengers to those who've failed to get their job done. This would be especially helpful in the House.



In the Senate, the terms are a little long to help hold feet to the fire as efficiently. But I think it'd be beneficial if unions could settle on some key matters of social justice (not workplace rules - trade policy, social security preservation, tax fairness, etc.) and establish a gentlemen's agreement for all unions to follow when supporting candidates. For example, if a Congressperson votes against or contravenes these universal tenets or specific legislation, no union should cross this 'virtual picket line' and endorse or support the offending candidate(s) in any way.



But nothing like this can work if the unions won't circle the wagons and make it happen. Unions are very much taken advantage of by the DLC elite like Obama, Clinton, et. al., as categorically stated by rahm emanuel early in Obama's administration.



Unions have been a bastion of courage for a century and if they can stand up to be the first to offer a purge of the Democratic Party of servants to the aristocracy.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost