Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Tuesday August 4 -- Got news or an update?

If you have news or an update, leave it in comments.
.
.
.

54 comments:

Anonymous said...

Teeing Up the Middle Class (WSJ)

Few of President Obama’s 2008 campaign pledges were more definitive than his vow that anyone making less than $250,000 a year “will not see their taxes increase by a single dime” if he was elected. And he was right, very strictly speaking: It’s going to be many, many, many billions of dimes.

Asked about raising taxes on the middle class on Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” White House economist Larry Summers wouldn’t repeat Mr. Obama’s pre-election promise. “It is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out no matter what,” Mr. Summers said—except, apparently, when his boss is running for office. Meanwhile, on ABC’s “This Week,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also slid around Mr. Obama’s vow and said, “We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically. And that’s going to require some very hard choices.”

These aren’t even nondenial denials. The Obama advisers are laying the groundwork for taxing the middle class while claiming the deficit made them do it

Anonymous said...

Chavez supporters (Brown shirts) storm TV station (AFP)

Armed protestors (Who Dear Leader supports) stormed the Caracas headquarters of a television station critical of Hugo Chavez's government, one of the channel's managers said.

Globovision's Maria Fernanda Flores said around 30 people arrived at the outlet's headquarters by car and aimed guns at security staff, forcing their way into the building -- where they activated two teargas canisters.

Station manager Alberto Federico Ravell said he held Chavez responsible for the attack.

"This attack is no longer against freedom of expression, it is against the lives of the people who work here."


(Dear Leaders followers wet-dream is of doing the same to FNC.)

Anonymous said...

Obama 'Joker' Poster Causing a Stir in L.A (KTLA News)

LOS ANGELES -- A poster showing President Barack Obama as Heath Ledger's "Joker" character from "The Dark Knight" is creating a stir on the streets of Los Angeles where the image began appearing over the weekend.

The Obama-Joker poster shows President Obama with white face paint, dark eye shadow and smudged red lipstick and also has the word "socialism" printed in bold, dark letters under the image of his face.

It's unclear who created the image and who is posting it across the city. No one has taken credit so far.

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, (despite supporting eight years of President Bush bashing and hundreds of like-kind depictions that he was never asked about by the bias media interviewer) politically mean spirited and dangerous.

Anonymous said...

Guardian Media Admits The Observer May Be Closed (London Times)

Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of the company that owns The Observer, conceded yesterday that a closure of the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper was being actively considered as a solution to its mounting losses.

In a memo sent to all staff Ms McCall, who runs the Guardian Media Group, said that all options were under consideration as the company tries to cut losses that totalled just short of £90 million last year.

She said Guardian Media Group, which also owns The Guardian newspaper, was grappling with both the recession and “structural change” as advertising migrates online. Forecasting that advertising would not bounce back, she said that GMG would inevitably “be a smaller organisation”.

Anonymous said...

Like watching the Spinks and Tyson fight. You don’t care who wins as long as they’re both landing haymakers.


Rather sues to return CBS execs to $70 million suit (Reuters)

Former TV news anchor Dan Rather sued CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward on Monday in a bid to have them reinstated as defendants in his $70 million lawsuit against the network.

In a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court, Rather accused the two men of fraud relating to his claim that CBS made him a scapegoat in a scandal over a 2004 report on then-President George W. Bush's military record.

Anonymous said...

Democrats Have 'Contingencies' For Health Bill (To Ram It Through the Senate) WSJ

Democrats will not hesitate to forgo bipartisanship to pass a health overhaul bill if negotiations fail in the next month, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday.

Schumer, on a conference call with reporters, indicated that Democratic leaders are actively exploring options to pass the health bill that would not require Republican votes.

He pointed specifically to budget reconciliation, a parliamentary tactic that would allow passage of a bill with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes generally required in the Senate.

Reconciliation is "clearly one of the contingencies on the table," Schumer said. "We want to get a bipartisan agreement, but if we don't, it's not going to stop us from moving forward with health care."

Anonymous said...

Chavez (Dear Leader Hearts Commies) Takes Control of Venezuela's Largest Coffee Plants
FOX News

CARACAS, Venezuela — The government of President Hugo Chavez has seized control of two of Venezuela's largest coffee processing plants and threatens to expropriate the businesses.

Commerce Minister Eduardo Saman says officials suspect that Fama de America and Madrid might be illegally smuggling coffee out of the country to sell it at higher prices.

Coffee is subject to strict government price controls in Venezuela.

If investigations reveal violations of the law, Saman says officials will "propose the expropriation" of the plants.

Anonymous said...

Biggest revenue drop since 1932Yahoo Finance

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation's plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.

The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.

Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession's impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.

The last time the government's revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression.

Anonymous said...

Ryan O’Neal is a much better father...he got busted WITH his son.

Michael Douglas' Son Busted For Meth (nbcnewyork) AW DUDE!

Michael Douglas' son has been busted for holding a massive stash of Meth with intent to sell, police sources confirmed Monday evening.

Feds arrested 30-year-old Cameron Douglas last week after an undercover cop allegedly found half-a-pound of the toxic substance on Douglas at Manhattan's swanky Hotel Gansevoort last week, according to reports.

Police confirmed to The Associated Press that the son of Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas had been arrested for meth dealing on July 28. But there were conflicting reports on whether he also was holding $18,000 cash at the time of the sting, or if that number represented the street value of the drug he was allegedly caught with.

Anonymous said...

THE MSM IS NOT BIASED, REPEAT AFTER ME

Baskin Becomes 13th MSM Journalist to Spin Through Revolving Door for Obama (Brent Baker)

Roberta Baskin, a veteran of CBS News, ABC News, PBS and Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, with a stint at the Center for Public Integrity mixed in, “will join the Department of Health and Human Service's office of inspector general as a senior communications adviser in mid-August,” (The other 12 “Used car salesmen”

Warren Bass: Washington Post deputy editor; adviser to United Nations Ambassador Dr. Susan Rice.

Daren Briscoe: Newsweek Washington correspondent; Deputy Associate Director of Public Affairs for the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Jay Carney: Time magazine Washington bureau chief ; Assistant to the Vice President and Director of Communications for Vice President Joe Biden.

Linda Douglass: ABC News Washington correspondent (previously with CBS News) ; senior strategist and senior campaign spokesperson on the road for the Obama campaign, now Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services and leading spokesman for Obama's health reform.

Kate Albright-Hanna: CNN producer; director of “new media” (online video) for the Obama campaign, “content lead” for the Obama transition Web site.

Peter Gosselin: Los Angeles Times Washington correspondent; speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Sasha Johnson: CNN senior political producer; Press Secretary at the Department of Transportation.

Beverley Lumpkin: Justice Department correspondent for ABC News; Press Secretary at the Justice Department.

Aneesh Raman: CNN Middle East correspondent ; worked in communications for the Obama campaign.

Vijay Ravindran: Chief Technology Officer for Catalist, a voter database provider which worked for the Obama campaign; Chief Digital Officer and Senior Vice President of the Washington Post Company.

Rick Weiss: Washington Post science reporter; communications director and senior policy strategist at the White House Office of Science and Technology.

Jill Zuckman: Chicago Tribune Washington correspondent; Director of Public Affairs for the Department of Transportation.

Anonymous said...

Obama Renews Vow of No Middle-Class Tax Increase

http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/08/04/us/politics/
04obama.html?_r=1

Anonymous said...

The conventional wisdom is that August is the slowest month for news, thus it's tailor-made for the "Birther" movement -- crazies that come hand-delivered to the media in their month of need, like barrel-dwelling fish that shoot themselves. Today, they're waving around a supposed "Kenyan birth certificate" for President Barack Obama without regard to the fact that it would have to have come from an alternate reality where Kenya became Kenya before Kenya was Kenya, and on which Obama is said to have been born in a city that was actually part of Zanzibar at the time of his birth. It's all pretty awesome and fun and now everyone's getting in on the "let's all forge up some birth certificates" craze. It's August 2009, and America is precisely where our founders envisioned we would be.

On Monday, David Shuster and Tamron Hall hosted celebrated "Birther Queen" Orly Taitz, who is a walking Saturday Night Live character, possibly played by Chris Kattan, come to life. The resulting discussion was, as you might imagine, pretty special! Taitz came on, speaking as if in a panic, presaging her answers with complaints about CNN, referring to David Shuster as a "brownshirt," and making oddball claims about how "85% of Americans think Barack Obama was not properly vetted."

Anyway, this is like Shuster and Hall attempting to interview an angry Fraggle.

We remind you that the Birther Lunar Cycle of Mania may hit a peak (today), August 4, because it is President Barack Obama's birthday...IF HE WAS "BORN" AT ALL. MWAHAHAHA.
Huffington Post

Watch the video at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
2009/08/03/
orly-taitz-melts-down-on_n_250441.html

Anonymous said...

Krugman, Huffpo, Kos, all the very flower of liberalism (PUKE)

Anonymous said...

Mobs R Us?

There's a direct line connecting the khaki-wearing "citizen" mob sent from Washington by the GOP to stop the 2000 recount in Florida, to the teabaggers dispatched by the corporate front group FreedomWorks to disrupt congressional town halls.

Whether at the beginning of the decade or its end, the loudmouths have the same goal: hiding behind a grotesque version of free speech and free assembly in order to undermine civil discourse and shut down the institutions of democracy.

Here's the hard question: Are they doing anything different from what the left did in the '60s and '70s to stop the Vietnam War?

Back then, more than a few public events were thrown into confusion by agile and vocal protesters, and more than a handful of universities had sand thrown in their gears by occupiers, demonstrators and masters of agitprop.

What's the difference between what happened then, and what's happening now?

The easy answer, which also happens to be true, is that the effort to end American involvement in Vietnam was largely a moral and just deployment of civil disobedience aimed at fighting an immoral and unjust war, while today's right wingers attempting to hijack town halls are largely nutjobs who also believe that Obama is the Kenyan equivalent of the Manchurian Candidate.

But the harder question requires moving one notch upward, thinking at a higher level of abstraction. The same rule ought to apply, whether you agree or disagree with the cause being advanced. From 2001 to 2008, if grassroots Democrats had been as strategically smart, as well organized and well-funded, and as ruthless as Karl Rove's army, what would we have said about efforts to pierce the Bush bubble? "Way to go!" is one phrase that comes to mind.

I'm not talking about what the mainstream media response would have been. As usual, the right would have played the press like a piccolo, and the reporting about muscular liberal activism during the W years would likely have been as naïve and credulous as the way it treated the Swift Boaters. I'm talking instead about the principle involved here -- not how events get deformed and misframed by the media, but how to distinguish protest then from protest now.

Do you have any ideas? Here's my first stab at it: When public debate was shut down by people on my side in the '60s and '70s, I didn't like it then, either.

Huffington Post

Anonymous said...

We know we are the victims, but who are the villains of Obamacare?
The Collins Report

The way of the Left is to “struggle” against imaginary villains. Obamacare is loaded with genuine villains.

We’ll be the victims, here are the villains.

ACORN now called COI will be handed billions of our tax dollars to be the street level “Brown Shirts” charged with enforcing the government’s new rules for our lives.

Trial Lawyers will greatly benefit from this plan. A little noticed section of the House Leadership version gives them the right to sue anyone they can imagine on behalf of the government without a prior agreement with the government.

Illegal aliens will benefit because there are no provisions to ask anyone’s citizenship before providing medical services. Illegal aliens will not be forced to buy medical insurance as we will, but they will receive it anyway. If we don’t join a plan; we get fined. They just take the next available appointment.

Unions especially the Service Employees International Union and the Auto Workers Union will have their “Cadillac” healthcare specifically paid for with our tax money.

Anonymous said...

Obama's 'Advance Care Planning': code words for euthanasia
(Renew America)

President Barack Obama has proposed that every American's medical records be set before mindless bureaucrats who will determine their fate. The eyes of scrutiny have been set into motion, and the American public had best beware. This is not about healthcare, or a choice to keep your private medical plan or doctor. It is out-and-out trickery and is evil, and the effects could be devastating.

Let us not forget what happened just prior to implementation of the Nazis' "Final Solution." They established a policy of direct medical killing. They arranged the means through medical channels whereby their medical decisions were carried out by doctors and their assistants. They called their program euthanasia. The word was mere camouflage; it was the murder of innocent people.

These diabolical murderers of the Nazi era based their justification for direct medical killing on the simple concept that certain people are unworthy of life. They put together protocols by which they carried out their principle. Eventually they would kill impaired children and adults.

Anonymous said...

Yesterday Romenesko had a note on his Rosenberg article:
“The Herald has pulled the Rosenberg story” See Note- Today he removed the note. I wonder what changes the Herald made to their article?
---
-Miami Herald investigation clears Gitmo reporter-
Miami Herald

[NOTE: The Herald has pulled the story for some reason. Anyone at MiamiHerald.com have an explanation?]

Carol Rosenberg (left) will continue to cover the U.S. military following a Herald investigation into allegations by a Navy public affairs officer that she verbally abused and sexually harassed him at Guantanamo Bay. The paper told the Pentagon on Monday that its internal investigation "did not find corroboration" for the charges made by Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon.
@ Poynter Online

Anonymous said...

Carol Rosenberg (left) will continue to cover the U.S. military following a Herald investigation into allegations by a Navy public affairs officer that she verbally abused and sexually harassed him at Guantanamo Bay. The paper told the Pentagon on Monday that its internal investigation "did not find corroboration" for the charges made by Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon.

Rosenberg told Gordon:

"Have you ever had a red hot poker shoved up your ass?

Have you ever had a broomstick shoved up your ass?

How would you know how it feels if it never happened to you?

Admit it, you liked it."

Rosenberg:

"routinely labeled my colleagues in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Justice Department, as well as her peers in the press, as 'bitches,' 'stupid,' 'lazy,' 'incompetent,' 'Nazis,' 'Saddam Hussein-like,' etc."

Anonymous said...

Yep, we all have confidence in a Miami Herald internal "investigation". No problems here. I am sure they looked hard at Ms. Rosenberg's conduct and did an extensive investigation to protect both their independence and and appearance of independence.
Right.

Anonymous said...

Grandpa and Granny cartoon at Lucianne.com.- Not so humorous really. It shows grandparents on an ice floe with a sign,
“Cash for Clunkers”.

Anonymous said...

Inside The Tea Partiers Anti-Health Care Organizing Campaign

These teabaggers disrupting congressional town halls is just a spontaneous groundswell of populist opposition to health care reform, right? Riiiight.

On Friday, July 24, a representative of Conservatives for Patients Rights--the anti-health care reform group run by Swift Boat message man Rick Scott--sent an email to a list serve (called the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Reform Committee) containing a spreadsheet that lists over one hundred congressional town halls from late July into September.

The email from CPR to tea baggers suggests that, though conservatives portray the tea bagger disruptions as symptoms of a populist rebellion roiling unprompted through key districts around the country, they have to a great extent been orchestrated by anti-health care reform groups financed by industry. (CPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Talking Points Memo

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/inside-the-tea-partiers-anti-health-care-organizing-campaign.php?ref=fpblg

Anonymous said...

///Krugman, Huffpo, Kos, all the very flower of liberalism (PUKE)///


Free Republic, Renew America, Lucianne.com, all the very flower of right-wing closed-mindedness (PUKE)

Anonymous said...

Busted! Where was the outrage when President Bush was depicted as the Joker?
SEE Pics at blog site.

“Yet, when Vanity Fair's Politics & Power blog published a somewhat similar visual representation of George W. Bush last July, nobody seemed to complain. In fact, throughout the Bush years, demeaning drawings of the President and Vice President Dick Cheney were quite commonplace.”

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/08/03/obama-joker-poster-starts-outrage-bush-joker-poster-not-so-much

Anonymous said...

Personally I want to know where CODE PINK, CREW and all the rest are who got national attention for protests consisting of 12 people less. No more war protests all of sudden. Strange, very strange.

Anonymous said...

Here is a great one for you folks. Watch KRUGMAN hand himself his own ass while attempting to PIMP Canadian Health Care.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPd2i4Jshs

Anonymous said...

Obama as the ‘Joker’. It didn’t take long for the race card to get played. Even the brain-dead should see how thin-skinned Barry is. It’s a good thing the fawning press rarely even asks him a question. The Bam would be out-of-joint, all the time.
===
Selected blog comments:
“ If you think this is racist, I guess a black man can never dress up as a clown.”

Hot Air » Blog Archive » LA Weekly wets itself over Obama/Joker ...
“The poster is not racist. The poster is brilliantly using the “Joker” character to portray Obama as using chaos to advance socialism. …”

“Of course the poster is racist! It depicts a half-black man with a white face. ... ‘
===
Google:
-Obama Joker poster, racist-
for 37,500 articles, and said to be growing by the minute.

Anonymous said...

7:27 AM- You are so right, where are the kooky Code Pinkers? Also, where is the daily body count, formerly page one news? Where are the stories about the loss of our troops in Afghanistan? Where is the press fighting to take pictures of the caskets, NOW? It is strange all right! The AWOL peace protesters are back into ACORN community organizing I guess, there is bailout money in the works for them.

Anonymous said...

Barack Obama -- born in the U.S.A.

By LEONARD PITTS

My daughter was born in Los Angeles County on Sept. 4, 1990. I know this because I was there. Should that not be proof enough, I also have her birth certificate.

We requested it years ago and received a document that looks nothing like the ones I have for my folks, with names and parentage typed in tiny boxes. By contrast, this was a computer generated abstract with my daughter's data neatly printed on it. We asked why we couldn't get a ``real'' birth certificate and were told this one is real; this is how they do it now. Indeed, the inscription on the certificate proclaims: ``This certified document is a true abstract of the official record filed with the Registrar-Recorder.''

We used that document to get my daughter's Social Security card, so I figure a ``true abstract'' is good enough for the federal government. But evidently, it's not good enough for Stefan Cook, Orly Taitz, Rush Limbaugh, Philip Berg and Lou Dobbs.

Barack Obama, you see, has a birth certificate much like my daughter's, documenting his birth in Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961. He's made it available online, just a Google search away.

But that didn't satisfy Cook, a U.S. Army reservist who refused to deploy to Afghanistan because, he recently explained, his commander in chief is not qualified to be his commander in chief. Or Taitz, the Russian-born lawyer who represents him. Or Limbaugh, the radio loudmouth who tells his listeners the president has no birth certificate. Or Berg, who has made a career out of suing the president over this ``issue.'' Or Lou Dobbs who, while professing his belief that Obama was born in this country, has kept up a drumbeat demanding that he prove it.

As if he had not already. The ``birthers'' movement -- people who claim Obama cannot be president because he isn't a citizen -- has proven hardier than cockroaches in its ability to survive the passage of time and repeated collisions with reality. It is, if anything, more visible now than at any time in the year or so since first it surfaced. It even includes a handful of GOP lawmakers.

Yours truly lacks the acumen to calculate how stupid you'd have to be to believe there is a shred of a shred of a piece of a fraction of validity to their claim. With the untold fortune Hillary Clinton, John McCain and others spent researching Obama, we're supposed to believe it took Orly Taitz to dig out this bombshell? And what of the birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers, heralding Obama's arrival? Did he send somebody back to '61 in a time machine to plant them?

Unbelievable.

And yet, believed.

Last month, GOP Rep. Mike Castle was booed and shouted down at a town hall meeting because he dared vouch that the president is a citizen. If I were of that endangered species, the thoughtful conservative, I would find that deeply troubling.

And I'll save you the trouble: No, the left is not free of lunacy. Somewhere out there, somebody still thinks George W. Bush had the Pentagon bombed on Sept. 11. But the Democrats usually keep their loons off to the side where they are pandered to, yes, but not allowed to run the show. For Republicans, though, lunacy has become the show, a circus of extremism that now defines them. In it, Obama is an undocumented worker, Sonia Sotomayor is a Klanswoman, Saddam Hussein green-lighted the Sept. 11 attacks, and no one dares dissent for fear of the great and powerful Rush.

For a generation, the GOP has tolerated and encouraged this estrangement from reality because it played well at the ballot box. Rep. Castle's experience suggests the cost may now outstrip the benefits. Because the cost is the specter of a party rendered ridiculous -- and irrelevant.

You have to ask yourself: How far from reality can you wander before you can't find your way home again? If conservatives aren't careful, they may soon find out.

Anonymous said...

Leonard Pitts is an out-and-out fringe lefty. Enough said.

Anonymous said...

AMERICANS TAKING BACK AMERICA

A flag flap forces flip-flop
(The St. Petersburg Times)

The Clearwater council on Monday canceled staff plans to take down flagpoles and American flags at some parks and facilities. Clearwater won't lower flags

Stung by fierce criticism, Clearwater has canceled a plan to remove about a dozen flagpoles and American flags from city property to save money.

After the story appeared on tampabay.com on Friday, nearly 300 readers posted comments, with many calling for Clearwater officials to be summarily fired. City leaders also got what the mayor described as "an unrelenting volume of phone calls."

Anonymous said...

If the NYT starts demanding accuracy, they will be charging for a blank paper.
--------
-Does "intellectual heft" in reporting compensate for inaccurate reporting?-
Still a Newspaperman

"At what point does the editor decide that enough is enough?" asks former Spokane editor Steven A. Smith in his piece on NYTer Alessandra Stanley. "When does a reporter with consistent accuracy problems become as great a liability as the reporter who plagiarizes or takes gifts or displays inappropriate bias?"
@ Poynter Online

Anonymous said...

Do you think McClatchy will add the 'Joker' poster to their Obama trinkets for sale collection?
Bwhahahaha

Anonymous said...

Leonard Pitts was not nearly so critical with the whack jobs that said Bush planned 9/11. I would say that the Democrats lost their way home a long time ago.
Hypocrite!

Anonymous said...

//Leonard Pitts is an out-and-out fringe lefty. Enough said.//

And what exactly was incorrect in this column?

Anonymous said...

Britain rations cortisone treatments for back pain

Not too long ago, a man in the UK pulled 13 of his own teeth rather than live in agony because the National Health Service didn’t have a dentist to treat his chronic teeth problems.

His fellow Brits won’t have the option of using a pliers on their backs after the most recent rationing decision by the NHS. In order to save £33 million ($55.6 million), the British single-payer system will no longer give cortisone shots for nonspecific back pain despite the effectiveness of the treatment:

Anonymous said...

Morning radio discussion, “ The elected officials taking heat for Obamacare, are not used to be questioned by their constituents. Mainly, the people were fed selected fact by the MSM, and bloggers have changed all that. They are specifically not use to their constituents reading a bill that they have not. Get ready for pre-selected entry into townhall meetings, and meetings geared to one selected group at a time, and closed to all others.”
=
Democrats are accustomed to blind obedience, and this new brand of questioners are not to be allowed. Liberals say, “They must be those Tea Bag people, they must be! I mean really, they know more about the bill than I do.”

Anonymous said...

9:09 AM The entire pretext.

Anonymous said...

DEMS LIE McCLACTHY HIDES

It Has Begun... House Dems Introduce Bill to Tax Middle Class On Mileage (Land Line Mag)

House Democrats introduced a new tax on the middle class. This latest proposal will tax Americans for the amount of miles they travel.

A bill up for consideration in the U.S. House seeks to change the way highway users are taxed to fund transportation.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-OR, introduced a bill that would establish a federal pilot program to study vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, as a possible supplement to or possible replacement for the current per-gallon fuel tax. The bill, HR3311, does not specify what would happen to the fuel tax if a VMT program were established.

“The current system of levying federal taxes on trucks is as discriminatory as it can be to small business, and harmful, but there are lots of unanswered questions with a VMT. And those questions need to be resolved before we start launching down that path,” OOIDA Executive Vice President Todd Spencer told Land Line.

Blumenauer is calling for the establishment of working groups to study technology – possibly a GPS system – and other factors that would go along with a federal VMT program.

Blumenauer said roads and bridges need a boost, and VMT is one way to get cash flowing into the Highway Trust Fund.

“America’s infrastructure needs critical investments now, and with the Highway Trust Fund flirting with a dangerous deficit, we need innovative solutions that will create a steady source of revenue,” Blumenauer said in a statement.

Anonymous said...

Democrats are accustomed to blind obedience, and this new brand of questioners are not to be allowed.




I am really shocked that they were not making them invitation only from the beginning. After all, that is what they do in Washington DC. I am sure the Messiah as issued a directive on this.

Anonymous said...

White House: Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes & 2007 Video... Obama Wants to Keep Your Private Health Insurance.

Yesterday, the Drudge Report posted this video of Barack Obama admitting in 2007 his Health Care Plan will ELIMINATE private insurance.

Today, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White Houses Health Reform Office and former network television correspondent, addressed this story that President Obama intends to eliminate private coverage.

Possibly the weakest rebuttal to a media attack in White House history,Douglas tells you not to believe your lying eyes and his 2007 speech... Believe what Dear Leader said last month instead:

In other words, don't believe the promises Dear Leader made during the campaign, believe what he said last month while pushing DeathCare legislation.

Anonymous said...

Ken, Sweetie, out troll is back! This time insisting that we read another article he selected for our edification.

A few days ago it was Krugman, where Sweetie got down on his knees and...well... threw a girlish hissy fit until someone was kind enough to read it, and tell Sweetie how full of hot air he was.

Now, she’s back!!!

//Leonard Pitts is an out-and-out fringe lefty. Enough said.//

And what exactly was incorrect in this column?

Anonymous said...

DEATHCARE ALERT U.K. STYLE

Mom in U.K. Fined for Grieving Too Long at Baby Son's Funeral (Foxnews)

A grieving mother in Britain was fined $173 for spending too long at her son's coffin before it was taken away for cremation.

Terrie Rouse, 32, said her grief turned to shock when officials told her she had taken too long to say goodbye, The Daily Mail reported.

"The vicar had asked if I would like to spend a bit more time saying goodbye," she said. "I sat by the coffin for 10 minutes, telling my son how much we loved him and begging him not to be scared."

Officials at the crematorium, run by a local English council, impose an extra charge if any funeral runs over its 30-minute slot.

Anonymous said...

9:24: How about answering the question, Darling?

Anonymous said...

Obama’s thug gets a warning. It's about time!

**CONGRESSMAN WARNS RAHM: THIS ISN'T CHICAGO**
@ The Drudge Report

Anonymous said...

Must read from Psychology Today.

"Why Most Journalists Are Democrats"

http://tinyurl.com/ksf5ct

Anonymous said...

If you’re a journalist, want to help people and want to tell the truth, what truth are you going to tell? Why, the truth you think helps people, of course!

Technically, that’s the truth.

But it’s very different than the truth.

===================

Got to be the quote of the day!

Anonymous said...

9:24: How about answering the question, Darling?



Already answered non reader.

Anonymous said...

Read this BS and smell the stink. MSNBC acts if they didn’t know there was a conflict of interest. The MSM has hit rock bottom. They admit the error after they were caught red handed. Same-o, same-o.

MSNBC admits erring on Richard Wolffe
MSNBC will begin identifying commentator Richard Wolffe as a strategist for a top Washington public affairs firm Public Strategies Inc. after a spate of criticism alleging a conflict between his consulting and television roles.
[snip]
Liberal Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald recently summed up the situation thusly: …..[“is a conflict so severe that it's [incurable by disclosure]: who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators?”]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25760.html

Anonymous said...

GOP Upset Victory in Delaware Special Election

American Thinker ^ | Brett McCrae
GOP upset victory in Delaware special election.
Joe Booth (R) new senator. (Seat held by Dems for 40 years!)

"Nevertheless Joe Booth won, taking a seat that was held by the Democratic Party for roughly 40 years in a state where the Democrats rule the House, Senate, and the Governor's office."
---
This is just the beginning.

Anonymous said...

The liberal news media is ganging up to paint anyone questioning Obama’s birth certificate as a right fringe kook. Odd they never ganged up on the left fringe kooks that declared Algore won the 2000 election for eight long years. When you read their articles you have to laugh, it’s as though no one has a memory. Such hypocrisy, they deserve the dismal fate that awaits them, sooner or later.

Anonymous said...

Obama Admin. Withholds "Clunkers" Data (AP)

The Obama administration is refusing to release government records on its "cash-for-clunkers" rebate program that would substantiate - or undercut - White House claims of the program's success, even as the president presses the Senate for a quick vote for $2 billion to boost car sales.

Anonymous said...

I think Hillary should put on Marilyn Monroe’s dress and sing happy birthday mister president to 0bama.

ANY humor would be appreciated rather than the media getting orgasmic reporting their messiah’s birthday tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

How can an empty suit rate as best-dressed, when he wears Mom jeans

Obama debuts on Vanity Fair Best-Dressed List (MSDNC)

Make some room, Brad and Angelina —heads of state are now elbowing out Hollywood glitterati as cutting-edge fashion plates.

Barack and Michelle Obama look as good in the White House as movie stars do on the red carpet, which put them both on Vanity Fair’s coveted International Best-Dressed List, announced Tuesday on TODAY.

Anonymous said...

I think Hillary should put on Marilyn Monroe’s dress and sing happy birthday mister president to 0bama.




Wouldn't work. Remember, we've already seen the Messiah sniff the tail of 16 year old little girls. Like his hero, Mohammad.