I'm not sure how I feel about Mrs. Bachmann, but I know how I feel about Mr. Wallace after this stupid question. I actually watched the entire interview and was impressed with her cool, calm demeanor in the face of Wallace's continual interruption of her answers. And then this final one:
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
POLL: 79% Believe Jesus is Savior, 26% Beleive Obama Born in U.S.A.
Separate polls show America's Christian faith is strong, but Barack Obama has serious credibility problems – at least among Iowa Republicans. A Rasmussen survey conducted April 21-22 among 1,000 U.S. adults reveals 74 percent believe Jesus is the Son of God who came to Earth to die for sins. Only 13 percent do not share that belief, according to the poll.
Meanwhile, a Public Policy Poll conducted April 15-17 among 419 Iowa Republicans only 26 percent believe Obama was born in the U.S., with another 26 percent unsure. Overall 48 percent said they doubted his birth story.
Draw your own conclusions...
More on the results HERE
Meanwhile, a Public Policy Poll conducted April 15-17 among 419 Iowa Republicans only 26 percent believe Obama was born in the U.S., with another 26 percent unsure. Overall 48 percent said they doubted his birth story.
Draw your own conclusions...
More on the results HERE
Andy Harris Townhall Meeting Monday 3/21
Mayor Bloomberg scolds nation for not standing up to gun lobby
"This is just no courage on the part of Americans to stand up and say 'Enough,'" Bloomberg said while joining members of Congress who support closing loopholes that allow criminals, drug abusers and the mentally ill to buy guns.
Legislation they proposed would strengthen reporting requirements on the National Instant Criminal Background Check system and impose penalties on states that fail to comply.
"We're not interested in curtailing the rights of gun owners," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, but "felons should not have guns, drug abusers should not have guns."
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, whose husband was killed and son badly injured in a 1993 shooting spree on the Long Island Rail Road, said, "The American people have to back us up on this one."
McCarthy has also proposed banning high-capacity magazines, such as the one used by Jared Loughner in January to shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and kill six others.
"Unfortunately, none of my Republican colleagues has signed onto this legislation," McCarthy said.
The NRA has already blown off President Obama's offer for a White House summit to come up with a "common sense" bipartisan position on gun control.
Sharia saves the day. Or does it?
So perhaps you've heard about the US spy in Pakistan that shot and killed two Pakistani spies? But, he was standing on US Embassy property at the time so presumably he would have 'diplomatic immunity.' First let me say, if all involved were truly spies, then they knew what they signed up for. But secondly, Mr Raymond Davis gunned down two men in broad daylight in their own country and now their court system says 'let him go.' Why? Simple. Because sharia law says if you pay 'blood money' to a victim's family and they forgive you, then it's all good. That's nice in theory, and I'm sure there are many families that have forgiven a criminal his actions against them. But that doesn't mean you let the criminal go. Or does it? Just pay someone off and you're free? Raises a lot of interesting (and scary) scenarios. O in this case, pay some money to the enemy, the ones we supposedly hate, and they will be cool with you, fora while. Heck,Pakistan outlawed plastic bags, maybe they do know what's up.
Now you tell me what is right. The official decision may have made nice for political relations, but it has already ignited protests in the very streets where this law is the law of the land. If the the Pakistani's are rejecting it, who among you endorses sharia law?
Cutting Head Start is bad fiscal policy
Early childhood education is the single best investment we can make for our children. Unfortunately, the U.S. House proposed a spending bill for the remainder of 2011 calling for drastic cuts to education, including a 22.4% reduction in funding for Head Start and Early Head Start.
The Senate has rejected this particular bill, but the budget debate continues in Congress. If the House gets its way in cutting nearly a quarter of Head Start's funding, 218,000 poor children will be dropped from the program and 55,000 Head Start workers will lose their jobs. Cutting costs associated with early childhood education programs such as Head Start would be penny wise and pound foolish.
Head Start is one of the lasting legacies of President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty. In 2010, the country invested more than $7 billion to prepare poor preschoolers for school success. This is a lot of money, but there is ample evidence that early childhood education more than pays for itself.
James Heckman, a Nobel laureate economist from the University of Chicago, has shown that investments in the early years yield larger returns than at any point during childhood. "Waiting until age 5 to begin formal education is too late for disadvantaged children," he says, "as we miss the opportunity to build on success."
His analyses demonstrate convincingly that every dollar invested in early education produces a 10% per annum return. If you achieved this level of return on your stock portfolio, surely you'd invest more, not less.
Too often policy does not reflect evidence, perhaps because we do not know how to employ data in a democracy. Policy privileges values over research, especially when new funding streams are involved. So instead of investing in early education, we invest in remedial education, grade retention and the juvenile justice system -- the not-so-hidden costs of school failure.
It turns out that these interventions during the school years cost a lot more than prevention efforts during early childhood, and the return on the investments is not as great.
The budget deficit is real. Congress will have to make tough choices in the years ahead; however, the congressional budget recommendations reflect ideology more than evidence. Cutting a cost-effective education program such as Head Start is neither sound fiscal policy nor sound education policy.
The Senate has rejected this particular bill, but the budget debate continues in Congress. If the House gets its way in cutting nearly a quarter of Head Start's funding, 218,000 poor children will be dropped from the program and 55,000 Head Start workers will lose their jobs. Cutting costs associated with early childhood education programs such as Head Start would be penny wise and pound foolish.
Head Start is one of the lasting legacies of President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty. In 2010, the country invested more than $7 billion to prepare poor preschoolers for school success. This is a lot of money, but there is ample evidence that early childhood education more than pays for itself.
James Heckman, a Nobel laureate economist from the University of Chicago, has shown that investments in the early years yield larger returns than at any point during childhood. "Waiting until age 5 to begin formal education is too late for disadvantaged children," he says, "as we miss the opportunity to build on success."
His analyses demonstrate convincingly that every dollar invested in early education produces a 10% per annum return. If you achieved this level of return on your stock portfolio, surely you'd invest more, not less.
Too often policy does not reflect evidence, perhaps because we do not know how to employ data in a democracy. Policy privileges values over research, especially when new funding streams are involved. So instead of investing in early education, we invest in remedial education, grade retention and the juvenile justice system -- the not-so-hidden costs of school failure.
It turns out that these interventions during the school years cost a lot more than prevention efforts during early childhood, and the return on the investments is not as great.
The budget deficit is real. Congress will have to make tough choices in the years ahead; however, the congressional budget recommendations reflect ideology more than evidence. Cutting a cost-effective education program such as Head Start is neither sound fiscal policy nor sound education policy.
Liar's Club - The GOP
If common sense were currency Michele Bachmann would be broke, and holding a tin can by the roadside just now. Alas, because we live in an age where hyperbole is gold, Bachmann is rich. She was on CNN the other day, a rare departure from the in-house fawning of Fox “News,” expressing outrage that President Obama’s trip to India was going to cost $200 million a day and involve nearly three dozen warships.
Anderson Cooper did what no Fox host would ever do: he asked the preternaturally nutty congresswoman from Minnesota where she got her figures, suggesting that “this idea that it’s $200 million or whatever is simply made up.”
In fact, it was made up. The White House said it was preposterous, and a Pentagon spokesman called the warship claim “absolutely absurd” and “comical.”
What happened next was encouraging to everyone in the reality-based community. The emerging Republican leadership snubbed Bachmann in her attempt to join the major players who will guide G.O.P. policy in the House.
Now that they have to govern, Republicans are grappling with a tough initial challenge: how to detach themselves from an influential wing of their party that has never been interested in arguing facts. On a daily basis, these people bemoan, detest and feign outrage over utter fantasies. Some of the loudest voices are elected representatives; others are professional provocateurs interested in keeping their lecture fees high and their base in a lather.
Bachmann’s disastrous turn outside the Fox bubble was instructive, for it showed how the liars’ club works. The $200 million figure originated in India, attributed to an anonymous foreign bureaucrat, and quickly went to the Drudge Report. On Fox and Rush Limbaugh’s radio rant, the absurdity that the United States would spend more on a presidential trip than the daily cost to prosecute the Afghanistan war quickly became gospel. Did these people ever call the White House or the Pentagon to check the facts before going ballistic? Perish the thought.
Glenn Beck went nuts (a redundancy). And while acknowledging that he didn’t know if the figures were accurate, he felt comfortable enough to cite “a report that has made the rounds on the Internet.” A commentator on Fox business “news” and the Republican fundraiser and Fox host Sean Hannity followed their scripts and Beck.
At the same time, The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch’s crown jewel, went after another Murdoch employee, Sarah Palin, on one of her errors, which appear on a regular basis from her Twitter feed or in speeches. Palin attacked the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, which is about as far over her head as she ever wants to get, and showed profound ignorance on inflation. She said anyone who’d gone shopping lately would know that “grocery prices have risen significantly over the past year.” A Journal blogger then noted that food and beverage inflation was practically nonexistent for the past year — the lowest on record — and that Palin was having some trouble with reading comprehension.
Republicans caught a break when Sharron Angle lost her bid to unseat Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Angle’s most preposterous claim was that Shariah, or Islamic law, existed in the good old U.S. of A. Why, just now, two cities — Dearborn, Mich., and Frankford, Tex. — were under the dreaded jihadist rule, she said.
“I don’t know how that happened in the United States,” said Angle. Nor does anyone else, because it didn’t happen, and couldn’t under our Constitution, which separates church (and mosque) from state. Frankford no longer exists as a town, though a reporter for CNN did find a small church and a cemetery within its confines. The mayor of Dearborn, Jack O’Reilly, said Muslims and Christians have been living peacefully with each other for decades.
Would it surprise you that Palin was Angle’s most prominent supporter? And that Palin’s other big political pick in the Southwest was Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer, who famously claimed that “our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there, that have been beheaded.” Sounds like Shariah again. Except in this case the lie was used to make people afraid of Mexicans. Brewer finally backed off when she was unable to cite a single instance of a headless body in the treeless desert.
Palin no longer has to govern, since quitting halfway through her term in Alaska. Relying on her singular, God-given inability to properly digest facts, she’s free to make stuff up without consequence. She was awarded the 2009 “lie of the year” by Politifact.com for inventing “death panels” in the health care bill. That site, along with factcheck.org, attempt to referee the whoppers in public policy debates, and are worth a visit for anyone trying to follow the news. But they hardly seem to matter to Palin.
Other Republicans, as they move legislation through Congress, will be held to higher standards. Is global warming real? Will extending tax cuts on the richest two percent dramatically increase the deficit? Is the surge in Afghanistan doing any good, or just prolonging a winless war? Big questions, big issues. Keeping Bachmann isolated in the make-believe studios of Fox would be a good start.
Colorado Tea Party Candidate Loses for Being Too Honest?
I doubt it. Perhaps you lost Ken Buck, because you said voters they should vote for you because you don't "wear high heels" or the fact that you compared homosexuality to alcoholism? Could you really be that out of touch? Full Read
Coconuts removed in India ahead of Obama visit
Mahatma Gandhi has been cited by the president as an inspiration to him - he has a portrait of the independence leader in his senate office. President Obama once famously said that he would like to have had dinner with Mr Gandhi.
More from BBC
Did it really take a Dem to offer this bill?
H.R. 5146 - To provide that Members of Congress shall not receive a cost of living adjustment in pay during fiscal year 2011.
This bill was sponsored by Congressman Harry Mitchell (D-AZ) and became law May 19th. I think this is one we can all get behind. All except the 15 congressmen and women who voted against it, that is.
This bill was sponsored by Congressman Harry Mitchell (D-AZ) and became law May 19th. I think this is one we can all get behind. All except the 15 congressmen and women who voted against it, that is.
