Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

You cannot make this up:

Paul Ryan’s PAC slams AARP as ‘left-leaning pressure group’

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) political group went on the attack Monday against AARP, calling one of the most powerful lobbies a “left-leaning pressure group.”

   Ryan’s Prosperity PAC sought to push back on attacks by AARP against the House Budget Committee chairman’s 2012 budget, specifically its proposed changes to Medicare.

   “Last week, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), a left-leaning pressure group with significant business interests in the insurance industry, launched a national ad campaign that intentionally misleads seniors about the Medicare debate,” wrote Pat Shortridge, a senior adviser to Ryan’s PAC, in an email to supporters.

   Ryan’s Medicare proposal has been a particular point of criticism by Democrats and groups on the left, which say that the Medicare plan would significantly revamp the entitlement program to the detriment of seniors. Democrats have homed in their attacks against that part of the Ryan budget, which has sparked some degree of heartburn among Republicans.

   AARP launched ads last week warning against “harmful cuts” to Medicare and Social Security it said Republicans favored.

History repeating itself from 2005:

Now some people on the right want you to think of gay marriage and Sunni insurgency. The New York Times this morning reported that the lobbyists who brought you the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” have been contracted to promote the agenda of USA Next, a conservative lobbying group. To build support, USA Next is portraying AARP – which opposes the White House’s pseudo-plan for privatizing Social Security – as some kind of liberal extremist group.

How’d that 2006 election turn out, Mr. Ryan?

“Boner” tells Wall St. Medicare is still on the agenda to raise the debt ceiling:

In a speech to the Economic Club of New York in Midtown Manhattan, the Ohio Republican is set to reiterate to leading financial executives that he believes that reforming Medicare should be part of negotiations in raising the debt ceiling, saying that there needs to be “an honest conversation,” because the program is on an “unsustainable path if changes are not made,” according to sources familiar with the speech. Boehner also is expected to advocate for immediate cuts rather than deficit and debt targets preferred by some Democrats.

After his talk, Boehner will take questions from two prominent Wall Street players at the intersection of Washington power: Peter G. Peterson, the private-equity giant who worked for President Richard Nixon, and Observatory Group CEO Jane Hartley, who worked for President Jimmy Carter….

Boehner’s public insistence that reforming Medicare stay a part of debt ceiling negotiations could reaffirm a concern among Wall Street types that Republicans are driving a hard bargain on the limit and will take the negotiations up to the last minute. Boehner said last week Congress must now cut trillions, not billions….

Friday evening, in a sign of unity after a disjointed week, GOP leadership, along with Ryan and Camp, released a statement saying “everything must be on the table except increasing taxes.”

Freshmen, who voted en masse for the Ryan budget, largely want entitlement reform dealt with.

President Obama needs to stand up to these threats to the social safety nets and let the GOP send itself into political oblivion. I have my doubts that Obama can do this. I will be shocked, I tell you shocked, if he calls them in this. This is no longer 11 dimensional chess. It’s now a game of straight draw poker.  

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Just few laws and proposals that really are so incredibly bad that they deserve to be buried at sea with concrete boots, except, we’d be polluting the ocean.

• TN Bill Calls Two Or More Observant Muslims A ‘Sharia Organization’

  

  After initial objections, lawmakers in Tennessee are moving a new version (pdf) of the most expansive anti-Sharia bill yet. The legislation has already been passed by committees in each chamber. The bill’s house sponsor has even cited defense against possible retaliation terror attacks for Osama bin Laden’s death to justify its breadth.

  Tennessee is one of more than fifteen states trying to push laws banning Sharia – referring to the legal code of Islam. The bill says Sharia is “inextricably linked” to its “war doctrine known as jihad.”

• Florida Bill Will Come ‘Between Doctors And Patients’ By Prohibiting Pediatricians From Asking About Guns

  Governor Rick Scott (R-FL) has been one of the country’s fiercest critics of health care reform, frequently deriding the Affordable Care Act for supposedly coming “between doctors and patients.”

  But now Scott is expected to soon sign a first-of-its-kind bill that does just that by forbidding doctors from asking their patients if they own guns. To prevent accidental injuries, pediatricians routinely ask new parents if they have guns at home and if they are stored safely. But the NRA and its allies in the Florida legislature see something more sinister at work – a radical agenda to curb the rights of gun owners.

• Florida City Paying $2,500 A Day To Radical Union-Busting Firm To Stop Workers From Organizing
  

  All over the country, right-wing lawmakers are waging a war on Main Street America’s labor rights, purporting to do so out of a desire for fiscal restraint (while also backing budget-busting tax breaks for the wealthiest among us).

  Now, the city of Winter Park, Florida, is going to new lengths to stop nearly 150 city workers from joining a union. Apparently more concerned with stopping the union than saving money, Winter Park hired consultants at Kulture LLC, “a firm specializing in labor relations” at the rate of $2,500 a day to persuade workers to vote against organizing this summer. . .

• FSU Accepts Funds From Charles Koch In Return For Control Over Its Academic Freedom
  

  Charles Koch, the billionaire libertarian who has funded front-groups and lobbying efforts to expand his anti-tax, anti-regulatory agenda under the guise of “free enterprise,” has now widened his reach into another key public policy area: academics. The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation entered into an agreement with Florida State University in 2008 in which the foundation would provide millions of dollars in funds for the school’s economics department.

• And two quickies:
  

  Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) will soon sign a bill to cut unemployment benefits to a maximum of 23 weeks. The bill is the first in the nation to tie number of weeks to the state’s unemployment rate, a move Florida lawmakers are making to “blunt the massive increase in unemployment taxes that’s looming for businesses.”

  State legislators in Maine spent more time debating whoopie pies than health reform this year. A GOP plan to overhaul the state’s health system went from public hearing to first vote in just eight days. It took 51 days for a bill to make the whoopie pie the official state treat. Alas, Gov. Paul LePage (R) never signed the whoopie pie bill.

Blessing on the writers at Think Progress for reading through this idiocy and keeping us up to speed on the stupid.

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It seems that since Osama bin Laden’s demise that the torture advocates, architects and apologists have come out of hiding and are all over the MSM touting the success of waterboarding.

Top architect and advocate, Dick Cheney, emerged from his undisclosed location to appear on Fox with Chris Wallace touting that waterboarding isn’t torture. I won’t insult our readers with the sickening video of this war criminal. You can view in the article at Think Progress.

. . . former Vice President Dick Cheney stridently defended Bush era torture programs, calling harsh interrogation tactics “the most important steps we took that kept us safe for 7 years.” He also advocated reinstating waterboarding, telling Wallace that enhanced interrogation “worked, and provided absolutely vital pieces of information.”

Cheney resurrected an old GOP talking point in insisting that waterboarding was not torture, despite testimony of people like CIA Director Leon Panetta to the contrary. “It was a good program, it was a legal program, it was not torture,” Cheney maintained.

Many former Bush administration officials have falsely credited torture tactics with leading to the raid on Osama bin Laden, but Cheney went further by insisting that torture was the key policy that has kept the country safe for a decade after the September 11th attacks.

Guest blogger Lawrence Rafferty at law professor Jonathan Turley’s site wrote that despite all the rationalization by these criminals “Torture is still Torture, and it is Still Illegal.”:

This entire week the torture enthusiasts have been back on all of the news channels exclaiming their happiness that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” worked.  Of course, they are talking about waterboarding and other methods of torture. Why are Michael Mukasey, John Yoo and other members of the George W. Bush administration once again declaring that torture is good policy and that it was successful in helping to get Osama Bin Laden?

snip

The Bush Administration officials seem to be attempting to rewrite history by claiming their illegal torture techniques aided in the search for Bin Laden.  In former Attorney Gen. Mukasey and Prof. Yoo’s cases, they are both asserting that torture is effective and that is legal.  That’s right.  According to the Torture Twins, Mukasey and Yoo, they claim that waterboarding is legal.  Although I agree that President Obama has done the country a disservice by not prosecuting the officials who authorized and carried out the torture during the Bush administration, by no means does that inaction make waterboarding legal.  I guess if the Bush apologists keep saying it enough, they hope that Americans will believe them.  Mukasey and Yoo both sold out their souls for their jobs and their President.  I hope they can sleep at night.

Not only should the Obama administration be pursuing the prosecution of CIA officers who did the torture, they should be prosecuting those who gave the orders.

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Mothers’ Day was officially established as a holiday in the United States by Pres. Woodrow Wilson on May 9, 1914.

The earliest call for the establishment of Mother’s Day in the US came in 1870 with the “The Mother’s Day Proclamation” written by Julia Howe, a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet. It was a pacifist reaction to the US Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. It was Ms. Howe’s belief that women had a responsibility to shape society at a political level.

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise all women who have hearts,

Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears

Say firmly:

“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of

charity, mercy and patience.

“We women of one country

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with

Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!

Blood does not wipe out dishonor

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace,

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality

May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient

And at the earliest period consistent with its objects

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions.

The great and general interests of peace.

Originally published as part of a series on History at Docudharma.

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