Stewart: Tea party is the ‘violent, unstable sociopath’ from ‘The Town’

Watch this video from Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show," broadcast July 28, 2011.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart suspected Thursday that House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had not watched the end of “The Town” before trying to use it to convince tea party freshmen to vote for a plan to raise the debt ceiling.

“You went with the Boston-bank-robbers-in-nun-costumes flick?” Stewart asked.

“Let me see if I understand this metaphor. The establishment Republicans are saying to the tea party upstarts, ‘Hey, you know the violent, unstable, borderline sociopath from ‘The Town,’ who’s useful in a pinch but who’s suicidal single-minded mania will ultimately be his downfall? That’s you guys. And the guy who’s stuck in an uneasy alliance with you, but doesn’t really like you and ultimately saves himself by walking away as you are dying? That’s us. So, do we have your vote?’”

“I’m going to assume most of the tea part coalition has not seen the whole movie,” he added.

World Population to Surpass 7 Billion in 2011

Explosive Population Growth Means Challenges for Developing Nations

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — Global population is expected to hit 7 billion later this year, up from 6 billion in 1999. Between now and 2050, an estimated 2.3 billion more people will be added -- nearly as many as inhabited the planet as recently as 1950. New estimates from the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations also project that the population will reach 10.1 billion in 2100.

These sizable increases represent an unprecedented global demographic upheaval, according to David Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography at the Harvard School of Public Health, in a review article published July 29, 2011 in Science.

Over the next forty years, nearly all (97%) of the 2.3 billion projected increase will be in the less developed regions, with nearly half (49%) in Africa. By contrast, the populations of more developed countries will remain flat, but will age, with fewer working-age adults to support retirees living on social pensions.

Read the full story @ ScienceDaily

ASCE: Old Infrastructure Costs U.S. Billions

Washington Post: As Congress debates how to meet the nation’s long-term transportation needs, decaying roads, bridges, railroads and transit systems are costing the United States $129 billion a year, according to a report issued Wednesday by a professional group whose members are responsible for designing and building such infrastructure.

Complex calculations done for the American Society of Civil Engineers indicate that infrastructure deficiencies add $97  billion a year to the cost of operating vehicles and result in travel delays that cost $32 billion.

Nancy Pelosi: 'We Get The Sacrifice, They Share The Wealth'

Majority Of Americans Oppose Cuts to Medicare or Social Security

Large majorities of Americans oppose even a minor reduction in spending on Medicare or Social Security according to the newest Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Sixty-two percent of the country wants no reductions to Social Security and 59 percent wants no reductions in Medicare spending.

The American people really like their Medicare and Social Security.

They are an important part of the social safety net that prevents millions of seniors from falling into poverty.

Latest Ad by the American Future Fund group. Click this link for the Real TRUTH About Who Really Owns America's Debt.

The common conservative messaging echoed in the mainstream media and by many cable news pundits is that the American people actually want a “grand bargain” or a “super Congress” to cut our entitlement programs has absolutely no basis in reality.

It is purely a conservative messaging fantasy created with lots of billionaire conservative money.

The GOP is winning the debate because they have the know how and bucks to message. Earlier this week, Politico published a piece outlining the vast disparity in the ad war over the debt ceiling. Republican-aligned groups have run over $21.2 mil lion in attack ads highlighting Democrats as irresponsible drivers of the national debt, and elevating the debt ceiling as a top priority. Meanwhile, groups on the left have spent about $30,000 on ads calling out Republicans on the debt, with one hitting lawmakers for “recklessly risking default.” That is why it is so important for grassroots progressives to push their own messaging programs.

And, Think Progress writes about, "How Shadowy Right-Wing Front Groups Engineered Our National Embrace Of Debt Reduction Over Job Creation:"

For the entire year, as a sluggish economy sputters by and states continue to struggle with falling revenue, the conversation in Congress has centered solely on spending reduction. Earlier this year, we witnessed looming government-showdown duels between competing spending reduction plans. Now with the debt ceiling debate, the only two options are a choice between a package of painful cuts and a package of deeply draconian cuts. There has been no lively discussion of new policy ideas for job creation, foreclosure mitigation, or how to spur demand, the key driver of economic recovery.

Gallup: President Obama's Approval Rating Remains High Among Democrats

According to a new Gallup poll, President Obama's over-all approval rating has dropped one point from 44 percent to 43 percent since the previous survey was taken. However, 78 percent of Democrats approve of how the president is doing his job. According to Sam Stein of Huffington Post, President Obama's numbers are the highest any Democratic president has enjoyed at this point in their term since Harry Truman.

President Obama also scored high marks with Liberal Democrats, scoring an 81 percent approval rating, a number surpassed only by his approval among black voters, which held steady at 86 percent.

At this point in his presidency, George W. Bush had a 59 percent approval rating, which was late July of 2003, three months after the invasion of Iraq and two months after he announced"Mission Accomplished" from the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

Debt Ceiling Debate: Similarities To FDR's New Deal

As we wrote in the post, "Pres. Obama Pushes "Serious Cuts" In His Weekly Address," last Saturday, the current budget debate mirrors the New Deal budget debates through the 1930's.

FDR's The New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run because he listened too much to conservatives of his day telling him to cut New Deal stimulus spending and balance the budget. Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman says, "The New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run was the fact ... that his economic policies were initially too cautious."

FDR was swayed by the conservative argument and signed a deep budget cutting budget bill for one Congressional budget cycle during the mid part of his first term. Those cuts pushed the economy back into rapidly contraction. The double-dip recession caused by that "balanced budget" legislation almost derailed FDR's chance to be re-elected for a second term.

Fortunately, the economist John Maynard Keynes convinced FDR to renew his new deal spending push with congress in time win re-election, but it was close. FDR was quick to learn the lesson - will Pres. Obama learn that lesson soon enough to win re-election?

Milton Friedman, a revered figure in right-of-center circles, famously pinned the severity of the Great Depression on contractionary monetary policy. Scott Sumner, a professor of economics at Bentley University who identifies himself as a "neo-monetarist", has argued that Friedman would have supported monetary stimulus. And he has argued, on neo-Friedmanite grounds, that tight monetary policy both precipitated and exacerbated our recent recession. I happen to think Mr Sumner is correct, but his expansionary prescription remains anathema on the right, and now seemingly Pres. Obama.

The comparison of the 1930's economic debate with the current debate continues in a Huffington post article, "Debt Ceiling Debate: Similarities To FDR's New Deal:"

John Maynard Keynes Was Laid To Rest This Week

Whatever the outcome of Thursday's projected House vote on Speaker Boehner's debt plan, this process has already ended the political life of one prominent member of the Washington establishment: John Maynard Keynes.

True, Keynes died in 1946. But his ghost hovered over America's economic debate until pretty much Monday night. In their ostensibly dueling speeches, both President Obama and House Speaker Boehner embraced the language of "austerity" and performed an unwitting exorcism.

In brief, Keynes is the man whose ideas led to 2009's stimulus policy. Looking at the problems of the 1930s, he helped develop FDR's "New Deal" concept that you spend your way out of a recession. [see: Pres. Obama Pushes "Serious Cuts" In His Weekly Address]

The Conservative Media Deny It’s A Record-Setting Hot Summer

When the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences reviewed climate research data last year, it concluded: “A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.” The summer of 2011 heat wave is again setting new record temperatures.

Monthly ratio of daily high vs low U.S. temperature records for
June 2010 - July 23, 2011, NOAA data


Composite Graph of Data from Four Climate Research Groups prepare by Dr. Richard Muller from University of California and presented to congress during his testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

Climate change is driven by "global warming," the average recorded temperature of the earth, which has been going up for years. This warming of the globe leads to climate change, which doesn't necessarily mean all areas will become warmer.

Due to the highly variable and interdependent nature of the world's weather patterns, warming in some areas could lead to, for example, much colder winters in others.In much the same role that marriage and abortion played in previous election cycles, denial of climate change has now become a litmus test for the right.

The vast majority of Republicans elected to Congress during the midterm election say they doubt climate science, and senior congressional conservatives have vowed to fight Obama administration efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. [GOP Deny The Average Recorded Temperature Of Earth Has Been Going Up For Years]

Even as record temperatures have been set daily across the U.S. this summer the conservative media continues to deny the fact that recorded temperatures are on the increase, as Media Matters documents:

On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh declared that “almost no temperature records were broken” during the recent heat wave and that media outlets who reported on “record-breaking” heat were telling “a bunch of lies” to “advance a political agenda of liberalism.”

Call To ACTION: No Super Congress!

No Abdication Of Our Representation"

Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House John Boehner are proposing to appoint six Senators and six Representatives from the House to meet in behind-closed-doors, non-transparent sessions, to agree to budget and program cuts for the next ten years that will affect all Americans. From Sunday night through today, details have emerged for what some are dubbing the “Super Congress,” otherwise known as the “Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.”

This small, unrepresentative group will decide on these cuts, outside of the normal order of procedures of both Chambers, and the results can neither be amended nor filibustered.

This FDL post and its comments describe what Reid and Boehner propose.

This undemocratic “Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction” is deliberately designed to block the input of every Representative and Senator in Congress other than the 12 members who would be selected by Party leadership to propose changes in any and every category they choose.

We are numbed and appalled at this development. It is an abrogation of the premise of elected representation. Tell congressional leaders, "No more secret backroom deals - deficit reduction deliberation must be held in open public committee meetings!"