BS-Report.com

Texas could face a $16 billion shortfall in its next two-year budget.

www.dallasnews.com

Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

Full story at the nytimes.com

At any moment, the Supreme Court will announce whether it will allow corporations to spend unlimited funds on political campaigns.

PETITION TEXT

Unlimited corporate spending on campaigns means the government is up for sale and that the law itself will be bought and sold. It would be political bribery on the largest scale imaginable.

This issue transcends partisan political arguments. We cannot have a government that is bought and paid for by huge multinational corporations. You must stop this.

link to sign the petition – mydccc.org

Obama’s Substantive First Year I

Obama’s Substantive First Year II

Couple of good posts by Andrew Sullivan on Obama’s first year.

Dick Cheney just needs to crawl back under his rock….

Paul Eaton on Cheney via nsnetwork.org

“The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy ‘experts’ have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy. While President Obama is tasked with cleaning up the considerable mess they left behind, they continue to defend torture or rewrite a legacy of indifference on Afghanistan. Simply put, Mr. Cheney sees history throughout extremely myopic and partisan eyes.”

This is total fucking BS…. lets see lets get Human health care taken care of before we waste money on pets.  Pets are a luxury and there for you do no get a tax break for a pet, sorry.    abc.com

A bill making the rounds on Capitol Hill marries two feel-good propositions — tax cuts and pet ownership — to generate a novel idea: A tax break of up to $3,500 per person for pet care expenses.

Lesley Stahl had an interesting segment Sunday on the growing coal ash problem in the world.   The EPA and the coal industry should be working to get this Toxic waste under control.  How can they say coal is a “Clean” energy resource when it does this?    LINK

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) have all been promoting alternative “foreign policy” to other countries of the world.   TPM

What vote would you like to redo?
Rep. King: I don’t really go back and re-live that sort of thing. Some of the big votes that I’ve thought about, some of the jury’s still out. And at this point, maybe I’d answer that question another way, probably the singular vote that stands out that went against the grain, and it turns out to be the best vote that I cast, was my “no” vote to the $51.5 billion to [Hurricane] Katrina. That probably was my best vote. But as far as doing something different again, I don’t know.

The best vote you cast was to deny funding to the clean up of a natural disaster? WTF this guy needs to resign from congress and go away.              thehill.com

Andrew nailed this on the head:

One wonders where these people were when Bush was massively increasing debt, spending like LBJ, detaining citizens without charges and torturing them, and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The Daily Dish

http://cbs2.com/local/GOP.Lawmaker.Mike.2.1174445.html

A pro-family values California lawmaker, who resigned after being caught on tape boasting about his sexual conquests, denied Thursday that he had extramarital affairs, saying that “my offense was engaging in inappropriate storytelling.”

Politician = Professional Story Teller  but I call BS….

Vice Presidential Handlers Lure Cheney Into Traveling Crate | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

A team of nine specially trained handlers have successfully lured outgoing vice president Dick Cheney into a reinforced steel traveling crate in order to transport him back to his permanent enclosure in Casper, WY, official sources reported Monday. “He’s a smart one. Once he sees the crate, he gets pretty nippy, but we’ve learned a few tricks over the years,” chief VP wrangler Ted Irving breathlessly said while applying pressure to a deep gash on his forearm

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for change! The chicken wanted change!

SARAH PALIN: Where’s my shotgun?

JOHN MCCAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn’t about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don’t really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where’s my shotgun?

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken’s intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won’t realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he’s acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I’m going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he’s guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can’t you people see the plain truth? That’s why they call it the ‘other side.’ Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like ‘the other side.’ That chicken should not be crossing the road. It’s as plain and as simple as that.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

The New Shanty Towns – The Daily Beast

In the shadows of high-rise casinos, where gamblers blow millions of dollars in round-the-clock binges, a sprawling new neighborhood has sprung up in matter of weeks—a city of tents. Occupied mainly by people with homes in foreclosure, and people whose jobs have vanished leaving them with no savings, this tent city in downtown Reno is one of many makeshift homeless encampments that now dot the country. Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S., made worse by waves of new arrivals seeking work in the casinos (This week, a new Las Vegas casino received 25,000 job applications for its 1,000 available jobs.)

House Financial Services Committee

Frank Calls on Bush Administration to Delay Internet Gambling Regulations
Rules to take effect on January 19; Bush promised end to “midnight regulations”

Washington, DC – House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) today wrote to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board of Governors Chairman Ben Bernanke asking them to postpone issuing regulations pursuant to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act.

Frank wrote, “I am deeply disappointed to hear that your agency is proceeding with what I consider to be unseemly haste in issuing regulations implementing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. This midnight rulemaking will tie the hands of the new Administration, burden the financial services industry at a time of economic crisis, and contradict the stated intent of the Financial Services Committee”

Jersey City Councilman Steven Lipski (D) is No. 1 threat at Washington club

Councilman Steven Lipski was caught relieving himself onto several revelers at the 9:30 Club during a concert by a Grateful Dead tribute band Friday night, club sources said.

Just plan disgusting.  I guess they want DC to smell like New Jersey…..

President-Elect Barack Obama