Day: May 15, 2009

2009 Anal-Ocity

Is it just me or does Texas have some of the dumbest SOBs in the country.  And most of them are elected–not saying too much good about Texas voters huh?

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is concerned about the plight of marathon runners under a cap-and-trade plan.  Anal is as anal does!

Barton says the average healthy adult exhales between four-tenths of a ton and seven-tenths of a ton of CO2 a year.

“So if you put 20,000 marathoners into a confined area, you could consider that a single source of pollution, and you could regulate it,” Barton says. “The key would be whether the EPA said that 20,000 people running the same route was one source or not.”

One indication that the EPA likely would consider 20,000 runners a single source of pollution is that the agency is trying to regulate waste-water runoff and emissions of drilling rigs in oil fields by attempting to define entire areas as a single source of pollution, Barton says.

Repubs cannot move past the whole politics of fear thing.  Just sad and pathetic.

What The Hell Is A Democrat Socialist?

We have Social Democrats and Socialists and Democratic Socialists, but what the hell is a Democrat Socialist?

As reported in the Politico:

A conservative faction of the Republican National Committee is urging the GOP to take a harder line against both Democrats and wayward Republicans, drafting a resolution to rename the opposition the “Democrat Socialist Party” and moving to rebuke the three Republican senators who supported the stimulus package.

In an e-mail sent Wednesday to the 168 voting members of the committee, RNC member James Bopp, Jr. accused President Obama of wanting “to restructure American society along socialist ideals.”
“The proposed resolution acknowledges that and calls upon the Democrats to be truthful and honest with the American people by renaming themselves the Democrat Socialist Party,” wrote Bopp, the Republican committeeman from Indiana. “Just as President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ galvanized opposition to communism, we hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to their march to socialism.”

This is just an expansion of the babble put forth by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) who  said recently that there were 17 socialists in Congress.  Alabama?  Is that not in the South? (that is sarcasm in case it was missed by anyone)

Jesus, do these morons realize just how pathetic they are looking?  This branding did NOT work in the election, but the GOP cannot let it go.  This type of hype is only playing to there base–old white guys in the South.  The only region in the country that fear works on anymore.  The rest of the country is NOT listening.

Was It Blackmail?

Bloomberg had an interesting, yet disturbing story recently, written by Eliot Blair Smith.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, saying nine U.S. banks were “central to any solution” of the credit crisis, told their leaders to take government aid or be forced to by regulators, according to a memo prepared for an October meeting.

“If a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware that your regulator will require it in any circumstance,” Paulson’s one-page list of talking points for the session with the banks’ chief executives said. “We don’t believe it is tenable to opt out because doing so would leave you vulnerable and exposed.”

“Most Americans are going to be uncomfortable with the government forcing the banks into this arrangement,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a nonprofit research group in Washington that obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act request.

I agree but just how “responsible” will the media be and see that the taxpayer knows of this situation?

In his memo, Paulson said the government would buy preferred stock in the banks, which he called “a significant part of our financial system” and “central to any solution.”

Three and a half hours after the meeting was scheduled to begin, Paulson had obtained the bankers’ signatures on half-page forms along with the handwritten amount of the federal government’s investment, according to the documents. He announced the actions publicly the next day.

In releasing the documents yesterday, Judicial Watch said Treasury initially said it had no records about the meeting.

The American people should know all the conditions of the bailout or the promise of transparency was nothing more than a campaign promise that did not come true.