-18-Bay Area
-Sports ^
-Music (Hard Rock, Metal, Rap, Alternative Rock)
-Majoring in Exercise Biology
-I tend to post/reblog a lot of performance cars, as well as nature scenes. But most are personal posts/political rants.
(via stfuconservatives)
Kyoto Protocol Details
(via downlo)
Wal-mart keeps prices low by relying on social welfare programs funded by your tax dollars.
(via stfuconservatives)
(via stfuconservatives)
Governor Mitt Romney’s Effect on Massachusetts
Mass Job Creation under Mitt Romney
On the most basic level, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is responsible for saving and creating 2.5 million jobs. The majority of economists agree that it helped the economy grow by as much as 3.8 percent, and kept the unemployment rate from reaching 12 percent.
The stimulus is the reason, in fact, that most Americans are better off than they were four years ago, when the economy was in serious danger of shutting down.
But the stimulus did far more than stimulate: it protected the most vulnerable from the recession’s heavy winds. Of the act’s $840 billion final cost, $1.5 billion went to rent subsidies and emergency housing that kept 1.2 million people under roofs. (That’s why the recession didn’t produce rampant homelessness.) It increased spending on food stamps, unemployment benefits and Medicaid, keeping at least seven million Americans from falling below the poverty line.
… It made crucial investments in neglected economic sectors that are likely to pay off for decades. It jump-started the switch to electronic medical records, which will largely end the use of paper records by 2015. It poured more than $1 billion into comparative-effectiveness research on pharmaceuticals. It extended broadband Internet to thousands of rural communities. And it spent $90 billion on a huge variety of wind, solar and other clean energy projects that revived the industry. Republicans, of course, only want to talk about Solyndra, but most of the green investments have been quite successful, and renewable power output has doubled.
Americans don’t know most of this, and not just because Mitt Romney and his party denigrate the law as a boondoggle every five minutes. Democrats, so battered by the transformation of “stimulus” into a synonym for waste and fraud (of which there was little), have stopped using the word. Only four speakers at the Democratic convention even mentioned the recovery act, none using the word stimulus.
Mr. Obama himself didn’t bring it up at all. One of the biggest accomplishments of his first term — a clear illustration of the beneficial use of government power, in a law 50 percent larger (in constant dollars) than the original New Deal — and its author doesn’t even mention it in his most widely heard re-election speech. Such is the power of Republican misinformation, and Democratic timidity.
… Republicans learned a lesson from the stimulus that Democrats didn’t expect: unwavering opposition, distortion, deceit and ridicule actually work, especially when the opposition doesn’t put up a fight. The lesson for Democrats seems equally clear: when government actually works, let the world know about it.
—DAVID FIRESTONE, writing in the Sunday New York Times, “Don’t Tell Anyone, But The Stimulus Worked.”
Part of me wonders why it took The Secretary of Explaining Stuff to lay out all of the Obama administration’s achievements when it could have easily been detailed — and in some cases, bragged about — months, if not years, before the DNC.
The stimulus worked. Healthcare reform will bring coverage to millions more Americans and has already prompted some states to expand coverage before full implementation is set to begin in 2014.
I could go on, but I won’t. Because POTUS should.
(via election)
(via inothernews)
One man’s epic, handwritten critique of his obnoxiously loud singing neighbors in East London. (Photo and sign: Oil Beale via the Telegraph)
Tom Morello on Paul Ryan
If Cenk were President Obama, here’s how he would attack Mitt Romney’s newly announced running mate, Paul Ryan: Point out again and again that he voted for bills authorizing massive spending — including for TARP, the economic stimulus, bailouts for GM and Chrysler and $1.26 trillion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy and so much more. “Paul Ryan created the deficit,” Cenk says. “That’s not propaganda. That’s not a talking point. That’s reality.”
A spokesman for Mitt Romney says “Perhaps my boss should just go back to Europe for another shellacking.”
Cenk talks to Michael Shure about the politics behind America’s lax gun laws. “You cannot continue to allow the National Rifle Association to write the gun laws in America,” Shure says. “The Democrats need to have some balls on this issue.” Cenk says, “This isn’t about gun owners. This is about gun manufacturers. A gun is designed to kill things, and people now make profit off of that — and they go bribe politicians.”
JON STEWART, on Mitt Romney’s claim that, while he was listed as CEO, president and managing director at Bain Capital through 2002, he “did not manage Bain” and actually “retired retroactively” to 1999, on The Daily Show.
Mitt Romneycan’t even do semantics right.
(via inothernews)
“Very hurtful, very embarrassing. I actually walked out in tears.”
~Sahar SabetI find this tremendously offensive on so many levels; an American is an American regardless of their nationality. By the way “Persian” is “Iranian. There are as many as 1.5 million Iranian-Americans in this country; 50% of them have a college degree or higher as compared to the national average of 24%. There have been multiple incidents of Iranian-Americans speaking Farsi in an Apple store and when asked if they were Iranian (although most tend to prefer the term Persian) … they were told that Apple’s policy is that they would not sell Apple products to Iranians due to America’s embargo on Iran. By this standard – Apple shouldn’t allow Cubans or Koreans to buy Apple products either and IT IS in their company policy.
“Discrimination. Racially profiled. He didn’t have any business asking me what country I was from.”
~Sahar SabetSo – Apple has chosen to discriminate against Americans because of their blood line … even if they’re American. If they speak Farsi … sorry – you’re probably a terrorist. How do you tell an American who may have never even been to Iran or maybe hasn’t been there since they were kids that they’re just too ethnic to buy an Apple product. Or does being an American now only mean being WHITE or Christian? This IS what bigotry and racism looks like.
The NY Times has the story HERE:
Last month, Sahar Sabet, a 19-year-old Iranian-American woman, was improperly prevented from buying an iPad at an Apple store in Alpharetta, Ga. After she had gone over the various options with two Apple sales clerks, a third clerk, who had overheard Ms. Sabet speaking Persian to her uncle, intervened. He asked what language they were speaking and, when he found out it was the language of Iran, he said she could not buy anything because “our countries do not have good relations” — never mind that she intended to give it to her sister in North Carolina. A local news account had Ms. Sabet describing a cousin in Iran as the intended recipient, an inaccuracy that was propagated last week in a Wall Street Journal opinion article defending Apple’s discriminatory behavior.
In Santa Monica, Calif., two friends looking to buy an iPhone were asked whether they were speaking Persian and promptly informed, “I am sorry, we don’t sell to Persians.” In Sacramento, an Iranian-American man looking to buy Apple products for personal use mentioned that he was also thinking about buying an iPod for his nephew in Iran and was told he could not buy anything, even for himself. An Iranian student in Atlanta, and his Iranian-American friend, were not permitted to buy an iPhone after the friend, under questioning, mentioned that the student planned to return to Iran for the summer.
Apple’s policy states HERE:
PROHIBITED DESTINATIONS
The U.S. holds complete embargoes against Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and SyriaThe exportation, reexportation, sale or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States, or by a U.S. person wherever located, of any Apple goods, software, technology (including technical data), or services to any of these countries is strictly prohibited without prior authorization by the U.S. Government. This prohibition also applies to any Apple owned subsidiary or any subsidiary employee worldwide.
DENIED PARTIES
Apple products may not be exported or re-exported to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person’s List or Entity List.Well, as an Iranian-American, I don’t buy products from bigots.
Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims. The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.
…In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, (officials at Penn State) repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities, the board of trustees, the Penn State community and the public at large.
—From a scathing report by former FBI director LOUIS J. FREEH on child rape cases involving Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Mitt Romney addressed the national convention of the NAACP Wednesday morning, the nation’s largest civil rights organization. He was cordially received by the audience, who greeted him with a standing ovation, but the tone changed quickly after the GOP presidential candidate began his remarks.
In today’s “no shit, Sherlock” news.
(via inothernews)
