Author Archive
By Deb Cupples on Dec 31, 2008 in Banking Institutions, Bush/Cheney, Congress (House & Senate), Current Affairs, Economy, George Bush | 35 Comments
Earlier, I posted about how executive pay can drain companies and destroy jobs. Today, I cannot help thinking about how our politicians have committed to funneling billions of tax dollars to some of the same executives who managed to personally enrich themselves while driving their companies (and our economy) into a ditch. [...]
By Deb Cupples on Dec 30, 2008 in Banking Institutions, Current Affairs, Economy, Mortgage Crisis | 26 Comments
During the past three months, our nation has lost 1.2+ million jobs: 533,000 in November; 320,000 in October; and 403,000 in September (USBLS).
Two months ago, the New York Times reported that major companies were thinking about cutting jobs, including giants like Alcoa, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Merck, and Xerox. [Bank [...]
By Deb Cupples on Aug 17, 2008 in Corruption, Tax stimulus package | 15 Comments
Based on IRS records, a recent GAO report indicates that many corporations claimed to owe $0 in U.S. taxes from 1998 - 2005: roughly 28%-53% of large foreign-controlled and 23%-38% of large U.S.-controlled corporations. [The GAO considers a "large" corporation one with at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts.]
This [...]
By Deb Cupples on Aug 14, 2008 in Hillary Clinton, Media Bias | 90 Comments
Sometimes, I just don’t understand New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. She’s a successful, intelligent, gifted word smith — and gorgeous to boot. Talk about having it all. When she writes about actual issues, she often makes sense, and millions of readers praise her.
When she talks about certain politicians, however, Ms. Dowd’s logic leaves the [...]
By Deb Cupples on Aug 12, 2008 in Barack Obama, Clinton, Current Affairs, Hillary Clinton | 153 Comments
I just read an article based on some emails, memos, and notes leaked to The Atlantic by one (or more) of Hillary Clinton’s former presidential campaign staffers.
When I first read the pre-publishing-date hype about the impending article, I thought: Why does this matter? Hadn’t they heard that Hillary publicly threw her support behind Barack Obama [...]
By Deb Cupples on Aug 3, 2008 in Barack Obama, Gas Prices, Off-Shore Drilling | 45 Comments
In June, presidential candidate Barack Obama said that he opposed drilling for oil off the U.S. coastline, explaining that 1) it would take 10 years to produce any oil at all, and 2) that said oil would not do much to lower gas prices anyway because our nation consumes such a high percentage of the [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jul 18, 2008 in Bush/Cheney, Constitution, George Bush, impeachment | 106 Comments
Two days ago, the House voted to send Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s “latest impeachment effort” (H.R. 1345) to the House Judiciary Committee (CQ). Merely impeaching President Bush would not remove him from office: removal would require a conviction by two-thirds of the Senate members present. (Constitution, Article I, sections 2 & 3)
Given the Senate’s current [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jul 15, 2008 in Bush/Cheney, Foreign Affairs, Lobbyists | 42 Comments
Many people around the world suspect that the Bush Administration is excessively fond of cash, but it’s strangely comforting to find real evidence supporting that suspicion. Actually, I’m more alarmed than comforted.
Britain’s Times Online has a great article and a four-minute video clip of lobbyist and Bush Pioneer Stephen Payne — who was appointed [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jul 14, 2008 in Campaigns & Campaign Financing, Obama | 83 Comments
Campaign finance junkies tend to believe that dollars from big donors reflect favors that candidates will owe to those donors — especially money given by corporate employees or bundled by lobbyists.
Such perceptions might be why Barack Obama’s campaign staff has done numerical gymnastics trying to create the impression that the campaign is mostly funded [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jul 14, 2008 in 4th Amendment, Clinton, FISA, Obama | 28 Comments
I was in our nation’s capitol from July 3 - 10. Among the highlights of my week-long visit was coffee at the Mayflower Hotel with NQ’s Larry Johnson. It was even more fun conversing with him than reading his blog posts.
Another highlight was watching the FISA votes from the Senate visitors’ gallery at [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jul 2, 2008 in 1st Amendment, Associated Press, Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Obamatopia | 132 Comments
Some of our Founding Fathers had a colorful way of speaking. Thomas Paine, for example, said this about the separation of church and state:
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet `Common Sense’ in America I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jul 2, 2008 in 4th Amendment, Barack Obama, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC | 108 Comments
Monday, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann dropped his pompoms and attempted to re-reverse himself by doing a "special comment" about Barack Obama’s recent reversal on FISA (Crooks & Liars has the video and transcript). Mr. Olbermann made two major mistakes:
1) He said that Sen. Obama has a second chance to fight FISA
2) He indicated that he still [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jun 28, 2008 in Campaigns & Campaign Financing, Current Affairs, Obama | 88 Comments
The short answer is "very carefully." Last week, when Sen. Barack Obama decided to opt out of public financing (and bizarrely attempted to link his decision to our nation’s Declaration of Independence), he offered an odd statistic:
"The Obama campaign highlighted Thursday the fact that 93 percent of the more than three million contributions [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jun 21, 2008 in Campaigns & Campaign Financing, Current Affairs, Economy, FISA, NAFTA, Obama | 204 Comments
It’s been a painfully interesting few days for progressives who were cock positive that Barack Obama would prove to be an agent of capital-C Change –for those who truly believed that he was new and clean and would fight against corrupt, self-serving, old-style Washington politics.
The biggest clue that such capital-H Hopes were not rooted [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jun 17, 2008 in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, Economy | 129 Comments
I get nervous when politicians lead cheers for the so-called "Free Market," because the phrase is nothing more than a euphemistic slogan that actually means "government should let big corporate players do whatever they want."
That said, Naomi Klein at The Nation wrote this last week:
"Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jun 14, 2008 in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, DNC, Delegates, Florida, Superdelegates | 323 Comments
Apparently, the spirit of unity has filled Florida’s air like West-Nile-infected misquotes swarming around the swamps after dusk. Equally apparent is that some Obama campaign officials have an awfully warped sense of reality (and decency, for that matter).
Today, the Miami Herald blog Naked Politics reports:
"So much for party unity: As Florida Dems prepare [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jun 7, 2008 in Current Affairs | 69 Comments
Being consistent purely for its own sake can be a bad thing. We learned this from watching President Bush, with great regularity, stubbornly refused to alter his positions even after overwhelming evidence showed his earlier stances to be flat wrong.
On the other hand, sometimes consistency is a good thing — especially for a political campaign. [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jun 5, 2008 in Current Affairs | 117 Comments
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) needs oodles of cash to pay for TV ads, to help Barack Obama beat John McCain in November. Now, more than ever, the DNC needs a First Rate Fund Raising Plan.
This was made necessary after millions of ordinary democrats closed their wallets to the DNC. Apparently, they’re still upset [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jun 5, 2008 in Current Affairs | 260 Comments
Written on June 4, 2008 || Buck Naked Politics
I understand that Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas has been emotionally invested in Barack Obama’s campaign. It shows in what Markos writes in (and omits from) his blog posts. I understand that Markos disagrees with Hillary Clinton on some issues — though, obviously not an overwhelming number of [...]
By Deb Cupples on Jun 1, 2008 in Barack Obama, Credentials Committee, Current Affairs, Delegates, Democracy, Democratic National Convention, Democrats, Florida, Hillary Clinton, Michigan | 107 Comments
The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) decided on Saturday to count only half of Florida’s primary votes — despite the fact that all candidates’ names were on the ballot and Florida’s Democratic legislators had no power to block legislation that moved the primary election to a date that violated the DNC’s rules.
Make no mistake: [...]
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