Black and White Riverbank City Skyline wallpaper

Black and White Riverbank City Skyline wallpaper

There are legitimate grieves to have with President Obama, but the abuse of signing statements doesn’t seem to be one of them, President Obama Has NOT Broken His Promise re Signing Statements. While Congressman Barney Frank took exception to one that might have been more a case of Bush signing statement fatigue having worn a sore spot with Congress. Then are fine points and Grand Canyon sized differences between the way Bush used them versus the way Obama has used them. Not exactly a hot button issue for most folks considering our currents economic hurdles and continued foreign entanglements. Over the course of a presidency the small things tend to add up as the conservative and corporate media writes its own narrative that then becomes the conventional wisdom. The way the Right plays the issue of signing statements reminds me of the way they’ve tried to distort the rendition issue. Clinton used renditions thus Bush’s were legal. Clinton used ordinary renditions in the exchange of suspected criminals, while Bush used extraordinary renditions to export suspects to outsource torture. In 2006 the ABA Blue Ribbon Task Force found that Bush did abuse the use of signing statements,

[T]he use, nature and frequency of [President Bush’s] signing statements demonstrates a “radically expansive view” of executive power which “amounts to a claim that he is impervious to the laws that Congress enacts” and represents a serious assault on the Constitutional system of checks and balances.

At no time during Bush’s reign did a tea smoking conservative organize any rallies to protest to Bush’s abuse of executive power. One of many reasons its impossible to take their corporate sponsored agenda seriously.

The Right seems to be continuing its breakdown, doubling up on the kool-aid, In Bill O’Reilly’s Sights or Bill O’Reilly and His Deranged Mob go after a journalist,

Last week I was greeted with an uncomfortable curiosity: a brace of hate mail in my inbox, received within a 20-minute span. The first came at 7:26: “You are an uneducated writer! You need to get your fact straight! You are a liberal bastard! You need to get informed!” All arguable propositions, perhaps, but that still left the question: why was this person realizing that precisely now, and why, two minutes later, did “Dr. Anthony” feel moved to inform me, “I’ve noticed a trend that left-wing extremists tend to be exceedingly ugly & perverse. Living with that ugliness & deviance seems to lead to an aberration of thought as well. I am attempting to formulate the correlation…”

And then, while he did, as if on a schedule, another deluge hit some three hours later, the messages several notches more frightening:

“Your a piece of s—. we will hunt you left wing libs down one by one. you lieing piece of trash.”

“So perlstein,whats your problem with Fox and conservatives. you jews should be dancing on the ceilings.you have control of the government,obama,congress, senate….”

Considering the influence O’Reilly has on people’s behavior, Mr. Perlstein might want to take some extra security precautions.

House Speaker Pelosi is not as out of touch with working class Americans as Sean Hannity, but her reluctance to ruffle the feathers of people that $350,000 or more a year is a little strange. Executives Receive One-Third Of All Pay In The U.S., But Congress Is Still Afraid Of A Surtax. That figure might be marginally justified if said executives did one third of the work, made one third of the products we make, provided one third of the services the nation consumes or had some really great ideas( ones that usually come from scientists and engineers), that were worth that much, but they don’t.

In the five years ending in 2007, earnings for American workers rose 24 percent, while the highest-paid saw a 48 percent increase. So as Kevin Drum noted, “in other words, the executives got a 48% increase, the rest of us got approximately nothing, and it all averaged out to 24%.”

The U.S. is supposed to be the place where being decent and hard working pays off, not where those virtues leave most Americans running in place.

Does being a Blue Dog Democrat mean doing nothing because the evil you know is better then something that causes sticker shock, Blue Dog Ross’s Conundrum: Should He Battle Health Bill That Could Benefit His Depressed Town?

Rep. Mike Ross, who grew up in this tiny town of 3,600, represents residents like 62-year-old Sandy Barham, a restaurant owner with a heart ailment who can’t afford health insurance for herself or her employees.

“I can’t tell you the stress of living on the edge, just wondering, ‘Am I going to get sick?'” she said in an interview at the Broadway Railroad Café, where fried catfish with hush puppies is a popular feature. “I feel embarrassed, almost, when I go to the doctors and tell them I don’t have insurance.”

Many people in and around this economically depressed town can’t afford insurance…

Ross admits that is our health-care system does not get a major fix it will “bankrupt” this country. The insuance industry will continue to jack up rates, more people will have no insurance and even people with insurance will be financially ruined.

The economy is taking a toll on health care on Prescott. Two in 10 residents have no health care insurance, and those who do have coverage have seen their premiums skyrocket by 80 percent since 2000, according to data compiled by Ross’ office.

Raising Deductibles

Locally owned J.D. and Billy Hines Trucking Inc. has had to raise the deductible on its family policy to $2,000 to keep premiums, now $336 a month for employees, from rising faster. At her restaurant, Barham sometimes hears patrons talking about how they’re going to afford prescriptions. “They’ll say, ‘I’m going to get half my medication,” she said.

That sounds like a basic heath policy. The kind that people do not realize is nearly no insurance when a serious heath issues arises in their family. In a year the policy holder pays that first $2000, then 20% of everything over that. many of these policies also have ceilings. If the bill goes over say $35,000 the insured is responsibility for everything over the limit. For rural working class towns that means those with insurance, folks making $18 dollars and less an hour, will be in for some hard times.