It’s been a whirlwind day in many respects, but the one really firing people up the most is the DOMA ruling. SecDef Chuck Hagel says work on getting full benefits to same sex couples will begin immediately: [Read more…]
Tim Egan has a nice piece up commenting on the newest Gallup Poll on US workers. The poll found workers have accepted they won’t receive raises or promotions no matter how hard they work or how good their performance, and have settled on simply doing the minimum necessary to keep the job. But I’m not completely on board with this part of his article: [Read more…]
A report out at Boston.com claims other groups were also targeted by operational level agents. Some of those scrutinized for tax-free status abuse in the system came from progressive groups. I’m sure Daryl Issa will be all over this fascist abuse: [Read more…]
I have a friend named Pastor Dan who does progressive things, he’s sorta the unofficial pastor of the Netroots. Or he was back when there were a dozen of us. Dan once started off a sermon reading something I wrote as an atheist about the wonder and pageantry of the universe. Which was a little weird for me, made more confusing because I liked it.
The religious right helped turn me off to religion before I got into high school. One of the things that distracted me then and still does is how utterly, blatantly, happily, they use the unambiguous words and adventures of socialist hippy Jesus to justify, at one time or another, virtually every species of greed and corruption. The religious left doesn’t get the kinda big bucks righties do, but they’re there and he’s one of them. A lot of pastors are, it’s part of their job: [Read more…]
Had Republicans drafted and brought a clean farm bill to a vote in the House today it probably would have passed with flying colors. Agricultural subsidies are a form of wealth redistribution even most conservatives agree with. But they couldn’t resist a chance to punch the unemployed and working poor in the stomach along the way and the bill failed: [Read more…]
Corporate America is stuck between a rock and a hard place. More accurately, between customer and service. Ultimately, any company that has a customer is in the customer service business. But few CEOs and other big wigs like to think of themselves that way. They like to think they’re developers or accountants or what have you. Besides, delivering service and supporting a complex product costs money, and cost is a four letter word. Solution? Hire temps! [Read more…]
Via my colleague Hunter at Daily Kos — The most interesting thing about Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Forum being held this week is that it exists at all. Ralph Reed, for those precious few of you who do not remember recent political history, is a crook. He is a political scammer who worked with Jack Abramoff in a swindle of Native American tribes and conservative Christians alike, a scam that went to the heart of the conservative movement but in which every last person save Abramoff himself has undergone a magical conversion back into respectability based essentially on the same scam as they started out with, which is duping Good Christian People out of their money.
So to have Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Allen West, Ron Johnson, Rick Santorum, Gohmert-Perry-Bachman-Palin-Cain-and-everyone-else-who-is-anyone in far-right conservatism eagerly climb aboard the good ship Ralph Reed for his latest little shindig should tell you all you need to know about the sincerity of the whole movement. He’s a lobbyist who got caught in a money laundering scandal, and he was back lobbying and collecting checks in no time flat because, bluntly, all the conservatives currently surrounding him were just fine with that. Just don’t get caught again, Ralph, and everyone will go along with the political scammer running a supposed morality-based movement. Everyone involved is exactly that shallow. … Read the whole list of religious scam bullet points here.