A Fair Trial?

Do you really believe that, if you are a Minority you could get a fair trial out of a Rethugly judge?

Sort of like this one…

Richard Cebull, Federal Judge Who Sent Racist Obama Email, Retires

U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull, the federal judge in Montana who sent an email last year suggesting that President Barack Obama’s mother had sex with a dog, has retired following an investigation into his conduct.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit announced Tuesday that Cebull had submitted his retirement letter, effective May 3. A special committee had conducted a “thorough and extensive investigation” and submitted their report to the circuit’s Judicial Council, which issued a confidential order and memorandum on March 15, according to the court.

In the email forwarded by Cebull, a young Obama asks his mother why he’s black and she is white. “Don’t even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!” his mother replies. Cebull told recipients of his email that he hoped it “touches your heart like it did mine.”

Cebull, nominated by President George W. Bush, stepped down as chief U.S. district judge in October and took a reduced caseload. He apologized for sending the letter back in the spring.

This is pretty emblematic of what the Bushit filled the courts with.

Powell Blasts Cheney for “Cheap Shots”

Fascinating.

President Obama’s first failure was not putting all the Bushit SOBs in jail for their crimes.

Who Made the Debt, Again?

At last – a clear answer to “Who made this mess.”

It was Bush, and the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans trashed America’s economy, and conservative policies have been a disaster since Raygun.

 

How the Deficit Got This Big

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

Despite what antigovernment conservatives say, non-defense discretionary spending on areas like foreign aid, education and food safety was not a driving factor in creating the deficits. In fact, such spending, accounting for only 15 percent of the budget, has been basically flat as a share of the economy for decades. Cutting it simply will not fill the deficit hole….

First, the Bush tax cuts have had a huge damaging effect. If all of them expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels. Second, a healthy budget requires a healthy economy; recessions wreak havoc by reducing tax revenue. Government has to spur demand and create jobs in a deep downturn, even though doing so worsens the deficit in the short run. Third, spending cuts alone will not close the gap. The chronic revenue shortfalls from serial tax cuts are simply too deep to fill with spending cuts alone. Taxes have to go up.

Obama and the Internets

This one is kinda fun. Very few non-techies really understand what the Internet is – and how it actually works.

President Obama in his “Twitter Town Hall” yesterday said this –

To which right wingers, searching for ANYTHING with which to criticize President Obama came up with this screed:

Obama Refers To The Internet As “The Internets”

When President Bush made the same mistake during his campaign for President in 2000, he was roundly criticized as unintelligent.

“We do have to make sure that there are computers in a computer age inside classrooms and that they work and that there’s internets that are actually — there are Internet connections that actually function. And I think that those states that are going to do well and those countries that do well are the ones that are going to continue to be committed to making education a priority.”

The problem?

What Bush actually said was this –

“I hear there’s rumors on the Internets that we’re going to have a draft.”

—second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004 (Listen to audio clip)

Which was one of a long, long list of misstatements by Bush.  Of which my favorite is -

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 (Watch video clip; listen to audio clip)

And he, and his misbegotten Administration did indeed  “harm our country”.

Now – as to the Internet/Internets thing – the Internet is actually made up of hundreds of interconnected networks belonging to and operated by different companies or governments, or “Internets”. And there are a number of Internets with varying, or no level of connectivity to the public Internet for any number of reasons, including security. There have even been proposals to build physically separate Internets for different audiences and purposes due to the damage caused by hackers and electronic terrorists on the public network.

And there is the fact that President Obama is smart enough to have “corrected” his language midstream.

Small Business Owners Leave Republican Plantation Over Tax Cuts For the Rich

It is becoming ever more painfully obvious that the Republican Tax Giveaway to the Rich is a major element in the country’s finances being in freefall. The Chamber of Commerce has increasingly become noting but a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, much like Faux News.

Small Business Owners Demand Repeal Of Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich

Michael Teahan, like his father, mother, and uncles before him, is a small business owner. The 52-year-old has spent most of his adult life running his own businesses: a restaurant, a coffee bar and various companies involved in the espresso machine business.

“I was the only person in my family to go to college, because that’s not what we did — we all opened up businesses,” Teahan says. “For some people, that’s a big hurdle … for us, it was like having lunch.”

Teahan currently operates Espresso Resource, a company that imports espresso machine parts from Europe to sell to U.S. restaurants and coffee shops. And he’s doing very well for himself: The two-man operation clears about $1 million a year in total sales, Teahan says — enough to secure himself annual income in excess of $250,000.

That makes Teahan one of the few small business owners to actually benefit from the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthy. He says the cuts save him about $12,000 a year, compared to what he paid before they were enacted. But as debates over the federal budget deficit have intensified, Teahan has found the political discussion increasingly divorced from the reality of his experience as a small business owner.

Tax cuts for the wealthy, according to Teahan, will do nothing to bolster his firm. They won’t affect his hiring decisions, they won’t encourage him to buy new equipment or help him move into a bigger warehouse. He says all of those decisions — the nuts and bolts of actually running a small company — depend on the his customers’ economic conditions, not his personal tax rate.

“What we do in business, how we spend our money, how we allocate our resources — that has very little to do with tax policy,” Teahan says. “I map my business based on my customers, and what my customers want to buy, and what they can afford to buy.”

Pink Elephants

One of the unspoken things around Washington is the number of “closet queens” in power positions or influential positions in the right wing hierarchy. What deeply angers the Gay community is that many of these folks gay bash, and support anti-gay positions such as partner rights and the Bushit Marriage Amendment…

The latest to come out of the closet is Ken Mehlman, former RNC Chairman and Bushit advisor.

Mehlman news fuels divisive reaction

Is former top Bush aid Ken Mehlman – who has told friends and family he is gay – a courageous conservative or shameful hypocrite?

That’s the debate raging through political circles and around the blogosphere a day after the former Republican National Committee chairman and 2004 Bush campaign manager told The Atlantic magazine he is gay.

In one corner are those who say Mehlman has arrived at the end of a difficult journey of self acceptance, and should be praised for coming out publicly and pledging to work with groups that advocate for same-sex marriage in the future.

In the other are those whose memory still remains fresh – of the Bush administration’s stance on gay rights in general and particularly Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, of which Mehlman was a chief architect, that repeatedly used the issue of same-sex marriage to increase conservative turnout at the polls.

R. Clark Cooper, the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans – a group that aims to work within the GOP to advance gay and lesbian rights – says Mehlman should be commended for putting himself on the line and pledging to work toward equal rights in the future.

“I am looking at it from a forward looking view, as in onward and upward,” Cooper told CNN. “Let’s take advantage of this moment. Let’s get the Republican Party back to basics, back to its core values and away from its divisive social issues.”

As for whether Mehlman deserves criticisms for steering the party down a course that embraced a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, Cooper says others should not speculate what Mehlman’s thought process was.

“There’s not an on and off switch [to being gay]. There’s a huge conflict in one’s mind…I don’t know when or where on the calendar Ken started doing the reconciliation process,” Cooper said. “But…when one starts having those conflicts and feelings, there is the immediate reaction to try to fix it.”

Christopher Barron, of the gay conservative group GOPProud also praised Mehlman’s decision to go public.

“Poll after poll shows the most powerful thing we can do to change hearts and minds about gay issues is to come out,” he told CNN, “I applaud Ken for having the courage to take this important step. I think everyone should remember that each of us has our own personal journey as it relates to coming to terms with our own sexuality and coming out.

Meanwhile the Victory Fund, a gay and lesbian political group, issued a more tepid response, saying, “We hope the fact that Ken Mehlman has reached this level of honesty will now encourage other political leaders to reject divisive anti-gay campaign tactics which, as Mr. Mehlman now admits, are purely cynical attempts to manipulate the American public.”

But some more liberal-leaning bloggers aren’t willing to shower the former Bush aide with adulation, no matter how difficult his own self acceptance may have been.

“The three people most responsible for the anti-gay actions of the Bush reelection campaign are Mehlman, Karl Rove and Bush,” wrote Mike Rogers, a liberal blogger who has long sought to out gay Republicans. “Ken Mehlman is horridly homophobic and no matter how orchestrated his coming out is, our community should hold him accountable for his past.”

The Stonewall Democrats, a group of Democratic gay and lesbian activists, expressed a similar sentiment, saying in a statement, “Mehlman presided over the Republican Party at a time when the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans were used to ill ends – marriage amendments in dozens of states, vitriolic attacks on our families, our soldiers, our very lives – all for political expediency, votes at the ballot box, and power.”

Blogger Joe Jervis added, “You don’t have be GAY or OUT to know that discrimination and bigotry is wrong. Don’t let Mehlman’s “personal journey” babble snow you.”

Obama Ranks High With Historians

Barack Obama is among best presidents ever – George W. Bush not so much, say scholars in Siena poll

George W. Bush was no FDR, but Barack Obama could be.

That’s the verdict of 238 of the nation’s leading presidential scholars, who – for a fifth time – rated Franklin Delano Roosevelt the best president ever in the latest Siena College Research Institute poll.

In office for barely two years, Obama entered the survey in the 15th position – two spots behind Bill Clinton and three spots ahead of Ronald Reagan.

Obama got high marks for intelligence, ability to communicate and imagination, but his score was dragged down by his relative lack of experience and family background.

“Most of the presidents came from elite backgrounds, and he certainly did not,” said professor Douglas Lonnstrom, who crunched the numbers. “He grew up without a father.”

By contrast, Bush’s dad was our 41st president, George H.W. Bush, who came in 22nd in the poll.

And yet, the scholars rated Dubya a dud as a president, ranking him in the bottom five at 39th place.