Free Speech Thread

[melissa1978]

Feb 13, 2013 20:27:42 GMT -5 SoCal said:

What is the point of the stupid "exalt" "smite" options when, apparently, mods and admins can suddenly create a total karma of 1,000,000 when they previously only had 40?

What is the freaking point?

Now you know why I don't participate in that bullshit. Because that's what it is.

I shut off my karma in my profile because I never liked that option anyway

[Mistermoonlight]

Feb 12, 2013 10:06:50 GMT -5 SoCal said:

DC Comics under fire for hiring anti-gay writer to pen SupermanEnder's Game author Orson Scott Card has called gay marriage 'the end of democracy' – and some comics fans want him fired.


Christ..........so now you have to openly support something that has never been normal or mainstream or natural or you're villified and there are open calls for you to lose your job.

Free speech? Not if you disagree with some powerful lobbying groups.

What a shame. I loved Ender's Game.

I'll have to do as I did with the anti-semitism of Ezra Pound, and consider the author and the work as two incredibly different things.

[SoCal]

Little people with little dictatorships....wow, what a combination.

There is nothing more pitiful than someone who likes to use his power to reward his toadies and punish those who diagree with him.

[SoCal]

Every poster should know that what we do in this forum isn't private.

Admins/mods have access to what we do in a so-called "security log" and are not loath to use it against you if they feel you've done/posted something they don't like.

While it's still possible to have fun here, you need to know that you are being watched.

[SoCal]

Drones are taking to the skies in the U.S.


Federal authorities step up efforts to license surveillance aircraft for law enforcement and other uses, amid growing privacy concerns.


If this was happening under GW Bush, there would be riots in the decrying the facist US government.

[Mistermoonlight]

Not saying it's right, but if it had happened during the GW Bush presidency, Fox News would be defending it.

[SoCal]

And because he's a liberal racial minority and they're in the tank for him regardless of what he does:

ABC, CBS, CNN, MS-NBC AND NBC won't even cover it.

[SoCal]

The Associated Press retracted a story Sunday after wildly misreporting a quote by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).

The article, which can still be seen on many of the sites that utilize the Associated Press, began: “WASHINGTON — A Republican senator says he sees some in his party favoring a 2016 presidential candidate with an immigration policy that would ’round people up … and send them back to Mexico.’”

The retraction notice explains:

The Associated Press has withdrawn its story about Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., saying he sees some in the his party favoring a 2016 presidential candidate with an immigration policy that would “round up people … and send them back to Mexico.” That quote was in the transcript of “Fox News Sunday” that was distributed after Paul’s interview on the show. A subsequent Associated Press review of an audio recording of the show determined that the transcript had dropped the word “don’t” from that quote, and Paul actually said, “They don’t want somebody who wants to round people up, put them in camps and send them back to Mexico.”

Shame on the Associated Press. Isn't it the duty of a news agency to check on its facts before printing them? Apparently not, when they're looking to smear certain politicians.

[AntiArbitrator]

[SoCal]

Feb 19, 2013 18:16:15 GMT -5 AntiArbitrator said:

Damn right. And the Constitution is NOT a suicide pact.

[Mistermoonlight]

Feb 18, 2013 18:46:23 GMT -5 SoCal said:

The Associated Press retracted a story Sunday after wildly misreporting a quote by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).

The article, which can still be seen on many of the sites that utilize the Associated Press, began: “WASHINGTON — A Republican senator says he sees some in his party favoring a 2016 presidential candidate with an immigration policy that would ’round people up … and send them back to Mexico.’”

The retraction notice explains:

The Associated Press has withdrawn its story about Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., saying he sees some in the his party favoring a 2016 presidential candidate with an immigration policy that would “round up people … and send them back to Mexico.” That quote was in the transcript of “Fox News Sunday” that was distributed after Paul’s interview on the show. A subsequent Associated Press review of an audio recording of the show determined that the transcript had dropped the word “don’t” from that quote, and Paul actually said, “They don’t want somebody who wants to round people up, put them in camps and send them back to Mexico.”

Shame on the Associated Press. Isn't it the duty of a news agency to check on its facts before printing them? Apparently not, when they're looking to smear certain politicians.

Since in the information given in the story says that Fox News was responsible for the erroneous transcript that other news sources later passed on to the public I'd say that primary responsibility lies with Fox News, and secondary responsibility to those who should have known better than to pass along a Fox News transcipt without double-checking it against the original broadcast.

I've worked hand in hand with the Associated Press in my 20 years as a broadcast professional, and I can tell you that there is no finer organization out there committed to journalism and the reporting of non-biased facts. They come from an era way before the notion surfaced in 1996 that news reporting could be skewered to follow a particular political agenda.

[ezpzy]

I use reusable cloth bags when I shop. I have a huge one that I purchased at a hardware store and 3 insulated ones purchased at my favorite supermarket. The supermarket credits me 5 cents for each bag when I purchase groceries even when it is not their bag. I use the hardware store bag for large bulk items.

I don't care about the 5 cents per bag rebate. It makes me feel good to reuse the bags because I know there is an environmental impact whether we use paper bags or plastic bags.

The following article discusses the environmental impact from both paper and plastic.
"Paper or Plastic? Try Neither
Andrew Tarantola

San Francisco recently instituted a citywide ban on plastic bags, then started charging a ten-cent fee for the paper bags you have to use instead. The idea is to promote reusable bags, but the law is also designed to rid the city of plastic litter—this would benefit the environment, because paper bags are considered more ecologically friendly. Right? Not quite.

The notion that paper bags are more environmentally friendly than plastic is a "popular misconception," according to a 2005 report for the Scottish government. "It depends on what environmental issues you see as being more important," Lisa Mastny, director of the Worldwatch Institute's consumption project, told the WSJ. As it turns out, paper and plastic bags both carry significant environmental costs. But the costs occur on different ends of their operational life cycles. In the eternal dilemma of paper versus plastic, there just isn't an easy answer.

Americans have been toting groceries in brown paper since 1852, when Francis Wolle patented his automated paper-bag-making machine. Then, as now, it takes a lot of resources to actually make a tree into a sheet of paper. First, you've got to cut down large swaths of trees—14,000,000 trees annually in order to produce the 10,000,000,000 bags used in the US alone—using heavy-duty gas-fed machinery. Then you have to store the cut timber for three years as it dries, then ship it to a saw mill using trucks that run on diesel. There, more heavy machinery de-barks, chips, and then cooks the logs into pulp with the help of limestone and acid. It is then spread onto a wire mesh to dry and be rolled into paper.

This process is laughably inefficient—producing a single ton of paper pulp requires three tons of wood and thousands of gallons of fresh water, in a 400:1 ratio of water to pulp. The paper bags themselves are heavy. Shipping a load of them, compared to plastic bags, can require seven times as many trucks, with all their gas and emissions. (2,000 plastic bags, for example, weigh about 30 pounds. 2,000 paper bags—280 pounds.)

It starts off well enough—most industrial timber in the US starts on a sustainable, managed tree farms. But in the end, paper products are the single largest contributor to America's municipal solid waste (MSW), constituting 29 percent of the country's annual garbage stream and half of all landfilled material.

On the other hand, paper bags are more readily recycled, reused—even composted—than their plastic counterparts. Recycling simply involves washing the bags in hydrogen peroxide, sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide to bleach and separate the fibers back into pulp for re-rolling. In addition, nearly 80 percent of Americans have access to recycling programs (either curbside or drop off). In 2010, nearly 63 percent of them participated, making paper the most recycled material as well. Paper bags will also decompose within a month when buried in an aerobic environment. They biodegrade within centuries when buried in anaerobic environments like landfills.

Plastic bags, on the other hand, are far cheaper to make and transport, but they're incredibly difficult to recycle. Plastic is composed of numerous elements—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and sulfur—derived from oil and melded into long chemical chains known as polymers. Plastic shopping bags were an instant hit with consumers and grocers alike when they debuted in 1977. The industry has grown to account for roughly four percent of the total worldwide oil use annually.

Now, plastic come in five basic types of polymers. The bags are typically made from low-density polyethylene (LDPE aka #4 plastic). Milk jugs and reusable water bottles are made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE aka #2 plastic) or polyethylene terephthalate (PET aka #1 plastic). Production of either requires 94 percent less water and 40 percent less power than paper bags do. In total terms of materials and energy, 1.75 kilograms of oil is required to produce a kilogram of #2 plastic. The significant weight and space savings reduce transportation requirements and cut the resulting air pollution in half.

That's not to say the production process is green by any stretch of the imagination—five of the six most hazardous chemicals to work with, as ranked by the EPA, are commonly used in plastic production.

The larger problem is what to do with plastic bags once they've served their purpose. Americans threw away 31 million tons of plastic in 2010, 12.4 percent of the total MSW, constituting 11 percent of landfill waste. Sure, 90 percent of Americans report that they reused their plastic bags at least once (just think of all the dog poop picked up. But they actually recycle only eight percent of them—a measly 2.4 million tons in total.

The number is so low because plastic bags don't really lend themselves to recycling in the first place. The process generally involves sorting the plastic by type (usually by hand), shredding, and then melting it down to be reformed. This is an expensive procedure, averaging $4,000 per ton recycled. Unfortunately, when the polymer chains are broken, they don't readily recombine, which results in a lower quality plastic than what you started with. In the early days of composite decking, you could actually see the scraps of old grocery bags.

Recycling also has its own shipping footprint. The Washington Post also reports that much of the plastic destined for "recycling" is actually shunted over to China and India, where it is incinerated thanks to the countries' lax environmental standards. Don't bother just throwing plastic bags away, either. When stored in anaerobic landfills, plastic bags can require thousands of years to decompose, if they ever do at all.

So the question we should be asking isn't which is better for the environment. It's more like: Which will screw the environment less in the long run? The answer is neither. If you really want to be green, bring your own reusable cloth bags the next time you head to the store."

[Aeryn]

I'm so tired of how most of America is becoming so "politically correct."

So, I'm going to smoke in public, club baby seals, wear fur, and...well, I'll think of more things another time.

[SoCal]

I'm sick of so-called environmentalists talking and acting as though human beings weren't a natural part of nature. We have every much right to live on the planet as do whales, seals, darter slugs and owls.

The day a dolphin discovers/creates something as miraculous as aspirin, I might think about giving animals a higher place on the scale. Until then, we rule.

[Mistermoonlight]

Feb 22, 2013 16:48:06 GMT -5 ezpzy said:

I use reusable cloth bags when I shop. I have a huge one that I purchased at a hardware store and 3 insulated ones purchased at my favorite supermarket. The supermarket credits me 5 cents for each bag when I purchase groceries even when it is not their bag. I use the hardware store bag for large bulk items.

I don't care about the 5 cents per bag rebate. It makes me feel good to reuse the bags because I know there is an environmental impact whether we use paper bags or plastic bags.

The following article discusses the environmental impact from both paper and plastic.
"Paper or Plastic? Try Neither
Andrew Tarantola

San Francisco recently instituted a citywide ban on plastic bags, then started charging a ten-cent fee for the paper bags you have to use instead. The idea is to promote reusable bags, but the law is also designed to rid the city of plastic litter—this would benefit the environment, because paper bags are considered more ecologically friendly. Right? Not quite.

The notion that paper bags are more environmentally friendly than plastic is a "popular misconception," according to a 2005 report for the Scottish government. "It depends on what environmental issues you see as being more important," Lisa Mastny, director of the Worldwatch Institute's consumption project, told the WSJ. As it turns out, paper and plastic bags both carry significant environmental costs. But the costs occur on different ends of their operational life cycles. In the eternal dilemma of paper versus plastic, there just isn't an easy answer.

Americans have been toting groceries in brown paper since 1852, when Francis Wolle patented his automated paper-bag-making machine. Then, as now, it takes a lot of resources to actually make a tree into a sheet of paper. First, you've got to cut down large swaths of trees—14,000,000 trees annually in order to produce the 10,000,000,000 bags used in the US alone—using heavy-duty gas-fed machinery. Then you have to store the cut timber for three years as it dries, then ship it to a saw mill using trucks that run on diesel. There, more heavy machinery de-barks, chips, and then cooks the logs into pulp with the help of limestone and acid. It is then spread onto a wire mesh to dry and be rolled into paper.

This process is laughably inefficient—producing a single ton of paper pulp requires three tons of wood and thousands of gallons of fresh water, in a 400:1 ratio of water to pulp. The paper bags themselves are heavy. Shipping a load of them, compared to plastic bags, can require seven times as many trucks, with all their gas and emissions. (2,000 plastic bags, for example, weigh about 30 pounds. 2,000 paper bags—280 pounds.)

It starts off well enough—most industrial timber in the US starts on a sustainable, managed tree farms. But in the end, paper products are the single largest contributor to America's municipal solid waste (MSW), constituting 29 percent of the country's annual garbage stream and half of all landfilled material.

On the other hand, paper bags are more readily recycled, reused—even composted—than their plastic counterparts. Recycling simply involves washing the bags in hydrogen peroxide, sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide to bleach and separate the fibers back into pulp for re-rolling. In addition, nearly 80 percent of Americans have access to recycling programs (either curbside or drop off). In 2010, nearly 63 percent of them participated, making paper the most recycled material as well. Paper bags will also decompose within a month when buried in an aerobic environment. They biodegrade within centuries when buried in anaerobic environments like landfills.

Plastic bags, on the other hand, are far cheaper to make and transport, but they're incredibly difficult to recycle. Plastic is composed of numerous elements—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and sulfur—derived from oil and melded into long chemical chains known as polymers. Plastic shopping bags were an instant hit with consumers and grocers alike when they debuted in 1977. The industry has grown to account for roughly four percent of the total worldwide oil use annually.

Now, plastic come in five basic types of polymers. The bags are typically made from low-density polyethylene (LDPE aka #4 plastic). Milk jugs and reusable water bottles are made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE aka #2 plastic) or polyethylene terephthalate (PET aka #1 plastic). Production of either requires 94 percent less water and 40 percent less power than paper bags do. In total terms of materials and energy, 1.75 kilograms of oil is required to produce a kilogram of #2 plastic. The significant weight and space savings reduce transportation requirements and cut the resulting air pollution in half.

That's not to say the production process is green by any stretch of the imagination—five of the six most hazardous chemicals to work with, as ranked by the EPA, are commonly used in plastic production.

The larger problem is what to do with plastic bags once they've served their purpose. Americans threw away 31 million tons of plastic in 2010, 12.4 percent of the total MSW, constituting 11 percent of landfill waste. Sure, 90 percent of Americans report that they reused their plastic bags at least once (just think of all the dog poop picked up. But they actually recycle only eight percent of them—a measly 2.4 million tons in total.

The number is so low because plastic bags don't really lend themselves to recycling in the first place. The process generally involves sorting the plastic by type (usually by hand), shredding, and then melting it down to be reformed. This is an expensive procedure, averaging $4,000 per ton recycled. Unfortunately, when the polymer chains are broken, they don't readily recombine, which results in a lower quality plastic than what you started with. In the early days of composite decking, you could actually see the scraps of old grocery bags.

Recycling also has its own shipping footprint. The Washington Post also reports that much of the plastic destined for "recycling" is actually shunted over to China and India, where it is incinerated thanks to the countries' lax environmental standards. Don't bother just throwing plastic bags away, either. When stored in anaerobic landfills, plastic bags can require thousands of years to decompose, if they ever do at all.

So the question we should be asking isn't which is better for the environment. It's more like: Which will screw the environment less in the long run? The answer is neither. If you really want to be green, bring your own reusable cloth bags the next time you head to the store."

Thank you so much for this article, Anti. It was incredibly interesting to me. I thought I knew a lot more about this subject than I actually do.

My father was one of those people who worked all of his life at one place--International Paper Company. He got a degree in forestry then worked for them until he retired. Started off as a forester then advanced to managing large areas of land for them.

As a result, we have always been tree farmers in our family. Following his lead, we never clear-cut on our land, but always 'thinned' instead, only taking out the biggest trees and giving the others room to grow. We replanted as well.

There were two paper company plants in Mobile, AL when I was a kid, Scott Paper and International Paper, and on some days the smell that would waft across the bay was incredibly foul. My dad always said 'Scott stinks, International smells like money.'

Until I was in my late 20s I would always make a point of asking for paper bags instead of plastic, thinking I was doing my part. Alas, I eventually realized I could carry a lot more in one trip with plastic bags and changed my ways, out of expedience.

Even as a child I knew all of the steps in converting wood to paper, but I never thought about the costs in quite the terms the article mentions--and that it might be ineffecient. I remember when paper costs really began to skyrocket in the late 70s and 80s.

I'm back in the town now where my father started his career, and where his father before him worked in the lumber business, and I still see pulpwood trucks carrying loads of logs fairly often, but it's nothing like it was before.

Even telephone poles are often made of concrete these days. I haven't had a land-line in a decade now, and it isn't hard to see the time when they won't exist any more. I'm not sad about that. Perhaps a little nostalgic.

Thanks to your article I'll look again at the re-usable grocery bags my local supermarket offers the next time I'm there.

[ezpzy]

Feb 22, 2013 18:48:41 GMT -5 Mistermoonlight said:

Thank you so much for this article, Anti. It was incredibly interesting to me. I thought I knew a lot more about this subject than I actually do.

My father was one of those people who worked all of his life at one place--International Paper Company. He got a degree in forestry then worked for them until he retired. Started off as a forester then advanced to managing large areas of land for them.

As a result, we have always been tree farmers in our family. Following his lead, we never clear-cut on our land, but always 'thinned' instead, only taking out the biggest trees and giving the others room to grow. We replanted as well.

There were two paper company plants in Mobile, AL when I was a kid, Scott Paper and International Paper, and on some days the smell that would waft across the bay was incredibly foul. My dad always said 'Scott stinks, International smells like money.'

Until I was in my late 20s I would always make a point of asking for paper bags instead of plastic, thinking I was doing my part. Alas, I eventually realized I could carry a lot more in one trip with plastic bags and changed my ways, out of expedience.

Even as a child I knew all of the steps in converting wood to paper, but I never thought about the costs in quite the terms the article mentions--and that it might be ineffecient. I remember when paper costs really began to skyrocket in the late 70s and 80s.

I'm back in the town now where my father started his career, and where his father before him worked in the lumber business, and I still see pulpwood trucks carrying loads of logs fairly often, but it's nothing like it was before.

Even telephone poles are often made of concrete these days. I haven't had a land-line in a decade now, and it isn't hard to see the time when they won't exist any more. I'm not sad about that. Perhaps a little nostalgic.

Thanks to your article I'll look again at the re-usable grocery bags my local supermarket offers the next time I'm there.

Your history with trees/lumber is very interesting. I wonder if you chose forestry or the making of paper as easy topics for yourself to write school reports.

Each generation learns more about the impact we have on nature than our ancestors realized; therefore, we cannot afford to feel guilty about what we did not know. I am trying to do better as I go forward.

I believe that if something I offer helps even one person, then I have made a difference and I thank you for your thoughtful response.

[Aeryn]

Feb 22, 2013 18:00:24 GMT -5 SoCal said:

I'm sick of so-called environmentalists talking and acting as though human beings weren't a natural part of nature. We have every much right to live on the planet as do whales, seals, darter slugs and owls.

The day a dolphin discovers/creates something as miraculous as aspirin, I might think about giving animals a higher place on the scale. Until then, we rule.

Screw nature. Screw the whales. Humans rule.

[mercurytheatre]

Here is a speech that does not cost a dime...it is free ...


"A borrowed book is like a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly, you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it familiarly. And then, some day, although this is seldom done, you really ought to return it."



-The Pleasure of Books-
William Lyon Phelps, 1933

[Mistermoonlight]

I say that a book that is not dog-eared knows it is not loved.



(I don't know about dogs that are book-eared, though.)

[mercurytheatre]

..a good point...when is the dog ear acceptable?

I guess it must depend on the mutual respect of the loaner to the loanee.

My guess is that the ear in question should be not only be acceptable...but cherished when the book or passage in question is shared between friends.

When it is offered as a matter of education...it should be considered as to what the reader's intentions are.

When the intention is to belittle or condescend a previous owners predilection of how the writings are perceived....that is never acceptable.

[Watchtower]

I have never dog-eared any of my books or books I have borrowed and I do not like people to do that to my books if I loan them out. There are a few things I am very peculiar about and that's one of them.

So, maybe it's just depends, like you said, Timmy.

[MNBird]

I use book marks or tape flags in my books. I don't usually dog-ear my books, even if I do love them.

[SoCal]

OBAMA LIES. What a non-shocker. But when Bob Woodward comes out against you, you're in trouble.

Obama’s sequester deal-changer
By Bob Woodward, Published: February 22
Bob Woodward ([e-mail]) is an associate editor of The Post. His latest book is “The Price of Politics.” Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this column.

Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday.

What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened?

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”

A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn’t even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearing on Lew’s nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: “Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lew responded, “and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States.”

“Did you make the suggestion?” Burr asked.

“Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action.”

In other words, yes.

But then Burr asked about the president’s statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it.

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: “Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment.”

That statement was not accurate.

On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a “meat-cleaver approach” that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform.

At noon that same day, White House press secretary Jay Carney shifted position and accepted sequester paternity.

“The sequester was something that was discussed,” Carney said. Walking back the earlier statements, he added carefully, “and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward.”

This was an acknowledgment that the president and Lew had been wrong.

Why does this matter?

First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans. (The Republicans are by no means blameless and have had their own episodes of denial and bald-faced message management.)

Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester. Reinforcing Lew’s point, a senior White House official said Friday, “The sequester was an option we were forced to take because the Republicans would not do tax increases.”

In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.

So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

Read more from PostOpinions: Bob Woodward: Time for our leaders to delegate on the budget Robert J. Samuelson: The lowdown on Lew Jennifer Rubin: Jack Lew’s truth problem Eugene Robinson: The sequester madness


© The Washington Post Company

[Aeryn]

Feb 22, 2013 21:35:55 GMT -5 Mistermoonlight said:

I say that a book that is not dog-eared knows it is not loved.

I absolutely agree!

[SoCal]

A book with a broken spine is a truly loved book.

[SoCal]

And, ANOTHER federal program (federal program = progams that your taxes pays for) that DOES NOT WORK:

This past week, President Obama warned Americans that, if the sequester occurs, hundreds of thousands of children will lose access to Project Head Start. A new study, however, published by the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has found that students who participate in the $8 billion Head Start program actually fare worse, in some ways, than students who do not.
The study also found that positive effects of the program are not sustained into elementary school.

According to the study, mandated by Congress and published at the end of 2012, the Head Start program “seeks to improve the educational and developmental outcomes for children from severely economically disadvantaged families.”

However, when researchers evaluated 4,667 elementary students, they concluded that the program provided no measurable benefit for children by the time they reached the third grade compared to those children who were in a similar socio-economic group but were not in the program. Of the children who were not enrolled in Head Start, about 60 percent received another form of preschool education, the quality of which was judged to be generally inferior to that provided in Head Start.

The large-scale study found that children who participated in the Head Start program actually did worse in math and had more problems with social interaction by the third grade than children who were not in the program.

While Head Start students averaged better in reading/language arts by third grade, math scores were poorer for children who participated in the program. Parents of Head Start children also reported a significantly lower child promotion rate than parents of children who did not participate in the federal program.

The study demonstrated some disparate results between parental reports of the behavior of some of the children and those of teachers. Ratings of parents of Head Start children yielded moderate evidence of less aggressive behavior in their children compared to the non-Head Start group; teacher reports, however, showed strong evidence of the program having an unfavorable impact on the incidence of children’s emotional symptoms and possible effects on both ability to have close relationships and positive relationships with teachers.

In contrast, at the end of 1st grade, teachers reported more shy behavior and more problems in their interactions with the Head Start children. At the end of 3rd grade, teachers reported more problems in their relationship with Head Start children and a lower percentage of Head Start children in the normal category for emotional symptoms. Children’s own reports showed one unfavorable impact at the end of 3rd grade (peer relations).

In general, the study concludes that even when some positive effects of participation in Head Start are found in preschool age children, those effects disappear once children enter early elementary school.

In terms of children’s well-being, there is also clear evidence that access to Head Start had an impact on children’s language and literacy development while children were in Head Start. These effects, albeit modest in magnitude, were found for both age cohorts during their first year of admission to the Head Start program. However, these early effects rapidly dissipated in elementary school, with only a single impact remaining at the end of 3rd grade for children in each age cohort.

[SoCal]

Obama sells access to himself! What a whore!


BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
February 25, 2013 10:47 am
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd criticized Monday the new fundraising efforts of President Obama’s dark money group, Organizing for Action, calling a scheme for high donors to meet regularly with Obama “the definition of selling access.”

Todd was describing the quarterly meetings that will be enjoyed by OFA’s $500,000 donors, the New York Times reported over the weekend:

But those contributions will also translate into access, according to donors courted by the president’s aides. Next month, Organizing for Action will hold a “founders summit” at a hotel near the White House, where donors paying $50,000 each will mingle with Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Mr. Carson, who previously led the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.

“This just looks bad–it looks like the White House is selling access,” Todd said Monday. “It’s the definition of selling access. If you believe money has a strangle hold over the entire political system this is ceding the moral high ground.”

The perk was first reported by the Los Angeles Times earlier in February after a meeting between OFA leadership and top Los Angeles and Bay Area fundraisers for Obama’s reelection campaign.

OFA is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) and therefore not required to disclose the identities of its donors, nor the amounts they give. In addition to major campaign donors, the organization’s leadership has been courting corporate donors.

[SoCal]

Ah, poor Barry doesn't like being called "mad"

...especially by one they thought they owned, heart and soul!


BOB WOODWARD: A 'Very Senior' White House Person Warned Me I'd 'Regret' What I'm Doing

Brett LoGiurato | Feb. 27, 2013, 6:53 PM


Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a "very senior person" at the White House warned him in an email that he would "regret doing this," the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.

CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.

"I think they're confused," Woodward said of the White House's pushback on his reporting.

Earlier today on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Woodward ripped into Obama in what has become an ongoing feud between the veteran Washington Post journalist and the White House. Woodward said Obama was showing a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.

The Defense Department said in early February that it would not deploy the U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf, citing budget concerns relating to the looming cuts known as the sequester.

"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said on MSNBC.

"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need?'" Or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' ... because of some budget document?"

Woodward began stirring controversy last weekend, when he called out Obama for what he said was "moving the goal posts" on the sequester by requesting that revenue be part of a deal to avert it.

[SoCal]

So now, Barry is having his "minions" threaten anyone who dares critisize him in print....

How NIXONIAN of him:

WMAL EXCLUSIVE: Woodward's Not Alone - Fmr. Clinton Aide Davis Says He Received White House Threat
8:39AM Thursday
February 28, 2013

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WASHINGTON -- Bob Woodward isn't the only person who's received threats for airing the Obama administration's dirty laundry. It seems anyone is a potential target of the White House these days - even former senior members of the Clinton administration.

A day after Woodward's claim that a senior White House official had told him he would "regret" writing a column criticizing President Obama's stance on the sequester, Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL's Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats for newspaper columns he had written about Obama in the Washington Times.

Davis told WMAL that his editor, John Solomon, "received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn't like some of my columns, even though I'm a supporter of Obama. I couldn't imagine why this call was made." Davis says the Obama aide told Solomon, "that if he continued to run my columns, he would lose, or his reporters would lose their White House credentials."


Davis says he does not know if the White House official involved in his case is the same one who is alleged to have threatened Woodward, but he says the language used in both cases is very similar. In any case, Davis says his editor, Solomon, was not worried by the threat.

"He didn't take it seriously, because he didn't think that could ever happen. He thought it was bluster," Davis told WMAL. "I called three senior people at the White House, and I said, 'I want this person to be told this can never happen again, and it's inappropriate.' I got a call back from someone who was in the White House saying it will never happen again."

If it did happen again, Davis believes the administration did it to the wrong person.

"Firstly, you don't threaten anyone. Secondly, you don't threaten Bob Woodward," said Davis. "He's one of the best reporters ever. He's factual. You can disagree with facts that he reports, but he's factual. Don't mess with him about his facts. You can mess with him about the interpretation of his facts, but this is not a reporter you tangle with," he added.


So, Barry......you're threatening Lanny Davis? LANNY DAVIS?
This must be part of the new"flexibility" you told a Russian diplomat you'd have after your re-election. Pussy.

[SoCal]

Joe Biden is fucking crazy............

New Biden brag: He desegregated movie theaters
February 28, 2013 | 8:11 am


Paul Bedard
Washington Secrets
The Washington Examiner


Vice President Joe Biden speaks at last year's Black History Month Reception at the Naval Observatory. Standing left is Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Jill Biden. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Vice President Joe Biden is amazed when whites try to act like they know what blacks have been through, but given a chance this week to brag on his part to end Jim Crow laws, he bit: he helped to desegregate movie theaters as a kid.

Biden, who grew up in Pennsylvania and Delaware, hosted an event at the Naval Observatory vice presidential residence Wednesday night to celebrate Black History Month.

After being introduced by Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, one of the original 13 Freedom Riders attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, the vice president told his guests, "As long as we occupy this house, it's your house."

Then he put the hammer down on his white liberal friends. "It always amazes me how my white liberal friends think they understand the black community" without having lived in a black community, he said.

He explained that the civil rights work African-American activists did over time helped to bring white Americans along. "The work you did also liberated white folks."

Himself included, apparently. Biden talked about being "a white kid living in a border state growing up in grade school and high school" and seeing the civil rights marches as things "that affected my life and so many white boys like me."

So much so that he took action. "He said he did things like trying to desegregate movie theaters," said the media pool report from the Wednesday event. Biden added: "No big deal, I want to make it clear to the press."

And on a day when the Supreme Court was reviewing the Civil Rights Era voting Rights Act of 1965, the veep suggested that the battles continue today. "I never thought we'd ever have to relive so many things," he said, referring to states he claimed are trying to limit access to the polls.

"So, look folks, we got a heck of a lot of work to do" with respect to efforts to "curtail the right to vote," he said, and "making sure the franchise is expanded and not restricted."

He concluded: "I'm tired of doing these fights. Let's get it done."


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Why isn't this guy in a mental institution? Why does he constantly get a pass from the Washington press when he just makes things up?