I can’t help noting that in the Sotomayor drama, the charge of “identity politics” is leveled at relative newcomers. For that matter, identity itself seems to be exclusively a matter of race, gender and minority status.
A June 10 Washington Post article by reporter Perry Bacon Jr. about a bill to provide supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reported that “a provision to offer a $100 billion line of credit to the IMF, which the Senate added at Obama’s request, has generated nearly unanimous opposition from House Republicans.” Bacon then quoted Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) saying: “A war funding bill should be about war funding and nothing else. … It’s unconscionable Democrats are passing a global bailout on the backs of our soldiers.” But Bacon did not note that Pence previously supported supplemental war spending bills enacted when Republicans controlled the House and Senate and George W. Bush was president that contained funding for hurricanes, influenza pandemics, border security, and tsunami relief.
In May 2005, Pence voted for H.R. 1268, a defense supplemental appropriations bill that included emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as committed funding to Indian Ocean tsunami relief, the Department of Agriculture’s emergency watershed protection program, border security, as well as prohibited states from issuing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants.
Moreover, in December 2005, Pence voted for H.R. 2863, another defense appropriations bill that also provided funding “to address hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and pandemic influenza.”
From the June 10 Washington Post article:
But a provision to offer a $100 billion line of credit to the IMF, which the Senate added at Obama’s request, has generated nearly unanimous opposition from House Republicans.
“A war funding bill should be about war funding and nothing else,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.). “It’s unconscionable Democrats are passing a global bailout on the backs of our soldiers.”
The additional IMF funding, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost the U.S. government $5 billion because the loans would be repaid, has sent House Democrats scurrying for votes among their own members.
Congress To Bernanke: Hand Over Docs On BofA-Merrill Deal Congress has subpoenaed the Federal Reserve, to force it to hand over documents about its role in Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis last fall, reports Reuters. Staffers for the House Oversight committee, chaired by…
Is Israel’s Aggression a Question of Pride? Israel would rather go down fighting than survive with a damaged sense of national pride. What would happen if concessions weren't so symbolic?
Asymmetric War I was against this war, believing that it would be much more difficult than its advocates predicted and that it would take a large toll on U.S. foreign policy at a moment in history when the United States had…
ThinkFast: June 10, 2009 According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll, most people don’t know who speaks for the Republican Party. A 52% majority of those surveyed couldn’t come up with a name when asked to specify “the main person” who speaks for Republicans today. The top response was radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh (13%). The remote Pacific island nation […]
According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll, most people don’t know who speaks for the Republican Party. A 52% majority of those surveyed couldn’t come up with a name when asked to specify “the main person” who speaks for Republicans today. The top response was radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh (13%).
The remote Pacific island nation of Palau said yesterday that “it has agreed to a U.S. request to temporarily resettle up to 17 Chinese Muslims” now being held at Guantanamo Bay. Palau President Johnson Toribiong said the Obama administration “made the request last week and that his country was ‘honored and proud‘ to resettle the detainees from China’s Uighur minority as a humanitarian gesture.”
State Sen. R. Creigh Deeds won Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial election yesterday, capturing approximately 50 percent of the votes. Terry McAuliffe came in second with 26 percent, followed by Brian Moran with 24 percent. Deeds will now face off against Republican nominee Bob McDonnell in the general election.
“Forty percent of low-income Americans do not have health insurance,” says a report released yesterday by the Department of Health and Human Services. “Approximately one-third of the uninsured have a chronic disease and they are six times less likely to receive health-care services than those with insurance,” the report found. Read the full report here.
The family of the late Dr. George Tiller “announced Tuesday that it will not reopen his Kansas clinic, eliminating one of the few medical practices in the country that performed abortions late in pregnancies.”
Despite claims by critics that the TARP plan would be a money loser, when 10 banks returned $68 billion of the money yesterday, President Obama said the government had realized a small profit. According to McClatchy,”in addition to returning the $68 billion, the 10 banks paid the government $1.8 billion in dividends on the preferred shares of stock the government owned.”
The Obama administration is scrapping its plan to cap salaries at firms receiving government bailout money, “leaving them subject to congressionally imposed limits on bonuses.” Instead, the administration is planning to appoint a “pay czar” to monitor the firms receiving the most government aid.
The Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday that it is “temporarily freezing a policy of deporting widows and widowers of U.S. citizens.” Under the Bush administration’s immigration crackdown, “immigrants who had been married for less than two years or whose green-card process hadn’t been completed when their spouses died” would have faced deportation.
After reviewing Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, the New York Times has found ” two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.” First, that President Obama “is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying” and second, that Obama “does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit.”
And finally: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is still making her way around Capitol Hill, despite her fractured ankle. Senators are trying to make her meetings as comfortable as possible though. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) had “a bag of ice and a pillow on hand” when she arrived, and quipped, “I hope you all note that some Republicans are empathetic, too.” Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) both signed her cast, and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) presented the Yankees fan with a “snapshot…of himself posing outside the old Yankee Stadium.”
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O?Reilly: I never called Tiller ?Dr. Killer.? Last night, Bill O’Reilly took issue with a recent San Francisco Chronicle article that pointed out that O’Reilly had referred to the late Dr. George Tiller as ‘Dr. Killer.’ “Transcripts prove what reporter Joe wrote was false,” O’Reilly said. In fact, O’Reilly did refer to Tiller as ‘Dr. Killer’ on June 2. O’REILLY: In order […]
Last night, Bill O’Reilly took issue with a recent San Francisco Chronicle article that pointed out that O’Reilly had referred to the late Dr. George Tiller as ‘Dr. Killer.’ “Transcripts prove what reporter Joe wrote was false,” O’Reilly said. In fact, O’Reilly did refer to Tiller as ‘Dr. Killer’ on June 2.
O’REILLY: In order to terminate a life, that has to be catastrophic. And I think it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, in Dr. Killer’s case, that wasn’t what he was doing. But Ms. Ireland, we appreciate you coming him on.
IRELAND: You call him Dr. Killer, and he was murdered. And I think that that is…just outrageous.
Watch a compilation:
While his June 2 remark appears to have been inadvertent, O’Reilly often referred to Tiller as “Tiller the baby killer” prior to his murder.
The Hollywood Liberal is an anti-war, anti republican, from right here beautiful Hollywood California.
This site was originally started to help get The Worst President Ever G.W. Bush Jr. Out of office. Now that we have accomplished that
the goal is to get Obama to start acting like a Democrat, and not an butt kissing Republican Wannabee. We will continue to fight for that goal
. Thanks H.L.
