We all have our likes and dislikes but until such time as the Fed can be closed down or disbanded or ……well whatever….until that time we have to live with the fact that the Fed is in control of the money supply….as much as we may hate the fact….they are in control.

Every couple of weeks or months Mr. Bernanke must make the trip to Congress and do his thing….either testify or issue a report…and he recently issued such a report and what he had to say was very telling…..not that any of the clowns in the circus of Congress will heed his warnings…..but he made them the same……

(Newser) – The Federal Reserve isn’t planning to take its foot off the gas pedal anytime remotely soon, Ben Bernanke told Congress today, while rebuking legislators for not doing their own part to juice the economy. The Fed’s interest rate has been near zero since 2008, and Bernanke said he expects it to stay there for a “considerable time,” according to CNN Money. The Fed won’t ease up until unemployment drops to 6.5% or inflation passes 2.5%, and it doesn’t expect either to happen until 2015.

But he also criticized Washington’s recent economic moves, saying that the Fed didn’t “have the capacity to offset an economic headwind of this magnitude.” He cited the expiration of the payroll tax cut, other tax hikes and spending cuts (particularly defense spending), and the sequester as “a substantial drag on the economy.” Neil Irwin at the Washington Post translates the message to Congress thusly: “You’re the reason the economy isn’t taking off more.”

You may not like Bernanke but his words are accurate….Congress has done nothing to make our economy stronger….they have done nothing that would benefit the middle class……Congress wants to spend their limited time showboating at hearings that accomplish nothing but make for a spot ad in their next campaign.

Economists have been saying this same thing for 4 years….but NO one heeds the warnings or offers anything that would make our economy better…….hearings……37 votes to kill Obamacare……anything and everything except an economic solution……Repubs have spent 870 days without doing anything substantial, like offering bills, to fix the economy and create jobs…they even find bad news in the good news that the deficit will fall this year…..

You can hate the Fed but it is wasted effort…..why not hate Congress and then do something that will heal an ailing economy?  Like vote the douche bags out of office.  Or do nothing and bitch about stuff that you are too lazy to fix…..keep whining and watch the country crap out.  It is your choice.  Choose wisely.

If you recall the Repubs in Congress played a sickening game with the lives of people in New York and New Jersey……they held up disaster relief funds while playing politics……a thoroughly disgusting spectacle of partisan bullshit…….will that happen again?  Hell NO!  why?  It is different because it is the home state of the biggest douche in Congress, Inhofe…….the same person that demanded that the funds for Sandy be tied to some sort of crap legislation of partisan origins……

Inhofe railed against the relief funds……

Inhofe said the Sandy Relief bill “was supposed to be in New Jersey,” but “they were getting things … in the Virgin Islands, fixing roads there, and putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C.” Both Inhofe and Coburn voted to slash aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy, with Inhofe saying he considered the full proposed aid amount to be a “slush fund.”

While Northeastern states like New Jersey and New York suffered some of the worst damage from Hurricane Sandy, the storm affected 24 U.S. states in total during October of 2012. Sandy carved a destructive path from the Caribbean Sea to the Great Lakes, where it produced 25-foot waves in Lake Huron.

The Atlantic walks us through more of the supposed “pork” in the bill that conservatives were complaining about:

• $150 million for fisheries in Alaska damaged by the 2011 Japanese tsunami,which littered debris on Alaska’s shoreline
• $41 million to repair military bases damaged by Hurricane Sandy (including ,controversially, Guantanamo Bay)
• $13 billion for future flood preparations (that is, money that will not be spent on victims of Sandy but on preventing future, Sandy-scale disasters from occurring)

So those are all disaster relief, and disaster-related.  One, the Alaskan one, is for a past disaster that wasn’t addressed, and should have been.  So that’s not pork.  The National Review has more of the GOP argument against the bill, but to call any of what they write about “pork” is simply bs.

Inhofe has said the the tornado damage is totally different from the Sandy damage…….yes, it was…..Sandy effected blue states and the tornado effected people who vote in Oklahoma…..

I can respect Oklahoma’s Coburn who was against Sandy legislation and has said about the tornado damage….

Oklahoma’s other stingy Republican Senator, Tom Coburn, is also in a bit of a pickle over tornado relief.  Coburn has already said that any tornado relief bill must include cuts in the rest of the budget to pay for it, or he won’t support it.

Coburn may be stingy but at least he is NOT a screaming hypocrite like Inhofe……

This is all so typical of the hypocrites in Congress………those twats are a bad sitcom…..a joke around the world…..and it only gets worse year after year…….

I am waiting for my conserv readers to comment…….I want to hear the defense they will have for this douche…..I regret that I may be waiting and waiting……..it will most likely be a response written by Drudge or the like…..

Thoughts?

Think Progress has an excellent list of issues that should be a priority……

1. Carbon pollution reaches historic highs, threatening human existence. The concentration of climate warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm),” scientists estimate. “At the beginning of industrialisation the concentration of CO2 was just 280ppm,” said Prof Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We must hope that the world crossing this milestone will bring about awareness of the scientific reality of climate change and how human society should deal with the challenge.” The last time the Earth saw carbon dioxide levels that high, humans did not exist. The West Antarctic ice sheet also did not exist, and sea levels were as much as 82 feet higher than they are today. During an earlier period when CO2 levels were this high, temperatures were 5° to 10°F warmer globally.

2. The devastating impact of sequestration on kids, cancer patients and first responders. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the budget deficit will shrink to its smallest level since before the Great Recession in 2013, and it will continue to decrease through 2015. But despite the smaller deficits, Republicans remain focused on spending reductions — even as the most recent round of cuts has kicked children out of preschool, left cancer patients without needed screenings, undermined public health and fire safety, and gutted programs that help low-income Americans in a variety of ways. Those cuts have also threatened to derail the economic recovery, which has sputtered along despite the headwinds created by a consistent focus on deficit reduction.

3. Massive cuts to food stamps for the most vulnerable Americans. The House Agriculture Committee approved a farm bill late Wednesday night that would cut federal food stamps by $20.5 billion — more steeply than any legislation since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. Earlier this week, the Senate Agriculture Committee also agreed to a $4.1 billion reduction. The program keeps hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Americans out of the deepest pits of poverty, and even as the Great Recession swelled SNAP rolls, the program continued to push its erroneous payments rates to record lows.

4. 1100 workers die in garment factory collapse in Bangladesh and most American retailers plan business as usual. Since a factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1,100 clothing industry workers, American retailers have been hesitant to adopt safety plans that could prevent similar tragedies. Abercrombie & Fitch announced it would sign a safety upgrade plan that has been approved by six major European retailers and one other American company, but many other manufacturers — including Walmart and Gap — are holding out. Although some retailers fear the costs of upgrades, they could pass them on entirely to consumers and only raise prices by 10 cents per garment.

5. 4,000 gun deaths due to gun violence since Newtown. A crowdsourced effort to count every person killed by a gun in the United States since the Newtown tragedy is currently being hosted by Slate. As of this writing, the count is 4,150. The Senate rejected gun safety legislation in April and has not yet set a date for reconsidering the measure.

I realize that Righties will not agree with much on this list….but I feel that the American people see the need for actual talks, negotiations and then solutions……beyond the clowns getting up in front of a camera and call for jail time for nothing or impeachment for little……

Here is an inside tract for the GOP……Obama will survive and he will finish his term…..accept the fact you cannot find a descent candidate and get to work fixing the country…..we need leadership not some babbling buffoons that could not find their asses with both hands and a flashlight.

Anyway, how many people even know what the faux scandal is all about?  Answer–501(c)(4) or most commonly known as the social nonprofits.

I thought I would help my readers out and explain what the classification is all about……educate yourself and help defeat the misconceptions of the media and its ilk.

OpenSecrets.org’s Resources on Politically Active Tax-Exempt Groups – OpenSecrets Blog.

These days of scandals is NOTHING but theatrics….Benghazi is NOT a scandal…..IRS is not a scandal…the same thing was done by Nixon in the 70′s against anything related to the “radical Left”….if it was wring now it was wrong then but it was not as big a deal……the AP story could be a kick in the ass but I do not think it was a scandal……

But there are issues that should be more reported and then they would be scandals….I blame the media for ignoring, for the most part, stories that shed a bad light on a sector of our government…..I realize the military is scared in some circles and for that reason this will be a short lived issue….the GOP and others will find yet another issue to turn into a “scandal”…….but until then I want to stress the issue that is being largely ignored so that overpaid news anchors can ask stupid question like when did the prez know and why is why looking so uninformed?

The sad thing is this situation is under reported……

(Newser) – An AP report reveals the stunning scope of the sexual assault crisis rocking the military: Last year, more than 85,000 veterans received treatment for sex abuse, while 4,000 applied for disability benefits; 40% of those treated were men. The cases run as far back as the Vietnam War, with the most common long-term effects being post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, the AP notes based on Department of Veterans Affairs data. The VA says one in five women and one in 100 men screen positive for “military sexual trauma,” defined by the VA as “any sexual activity where you are involved against your will,” ranging from sexual harassment to rape.

When it comes to getting treatment, “a veteran can simply walk through the door, say they’ve had this experience, and we will get them hooked up with care. There’s no documentation required,” says a member of the military sexual trauma team. But those seeking disability compensation face hurdles: Vets must be diagnosed with PTSD or a similar problem, submit proof of the assault or harassment, and have a VA examiner confirm a link to their health condition. “Ninety percent of 26,000 cases last year weren’t even reported,” says an activist. “So where is that evidence supposed to come from?” Records show about half of vets seeking such compensation last year had their claim approved.

Typical American politics….if we ignore it long enough maybe it will go away…..this should NEVER go away!

Ambassador Stevens twice said no to military offers of more security, U.S. officials say | McClatchy.