June 2012

Tropical Storm Debby has just made landfall in Florida and while it lacks the punch of a hurricane, what Rand Paul is doing doesn't hold back:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) moved this week to hold a noncontroversial flood insurance bill hostage until the Senate agrees that life begins at fertilization.

The bill, which would financially boost the National Flood Insurance Program on the cusp of hurricane season, had been expected to pass easily in the Senate. But since Paul on Monday offered an unrelated "fetal personhood" amendment, which would give legal protections to fetuses from the moment of fertilization, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is threatening to halt progress on the legislation.

So unless you are willing to surrender your beliefs to those of a nut job Senator, you better hope your home doesn't flood. This is terrorism plain and simple and sadly it is the legal kind. One mans crazy agenda can screw with the lives of millions.

Every single American should be outraged over this:

One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules, a Washington Post analysis has found.

The lawmakers bought and sold a total of between $85 million and $218 million in 323 companies registered to lobby on legislation that appeared before them, according to an examination of all 45,000 individual congressional stock transactions contained in computerized financial disclosure data from 2007 to 2010.

Almost one in every eight trades — 5,531 — intersected with legislation. The 130 lawmakers traded stocks or bonds in companies as bills passed through their committees or while Congress was still considering the legislation. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 68 to 62.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) reported buying $25,000 in bonds in a genetic-technology company around the time that he released a hold on legislation the firm supported. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) sold between $50,000 and $100,000 in General Electric stock shortly before a Republican filibuster killed legislation sought by the company. The family of Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) bought between $286,000 and $690,000 in a high-tech company interested in a bill under his committee’s jurisdiction.

This the same as insider trading, plain and simple. Now the Stock Act was passed earlier this year, but it was highly watered down:

Bain Capital has fallen off the radar lately, but an explosive new piece in the Washington Post should put it back in the spotlight:

Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This isn't some conspiracy theory or speculation. This information comes from federal documents filed by Bain. They admitted the practice in documents that lying on is a federal offense.

Mitt Romney was the king of outsourcing American jobs! The man the GOP wants to put in the White House is a big reason that we have lost our manufacturing base and now there is proof!

Of course the GOP will probably champion him more as a hero now because what Romney did was in the interest of his own fortune and not of others. He is the greedy rich guy and that is what the GOP loves. Forget country and fellow citizens - it's the party of Gordon Gecko!

This is really interesting:

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to tone down his statements heralding improvements in the state’s economy because they clash with the presumptive Republican nominee’s message that the nation is suffering under President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Scott, a Republican, was asked to say that the state’s jobless rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency, according to the people, who asked not to be named.

Romney wants his talking points so bad that he is pushing governors in his own party to either lie or ignore their own accomplishments. This guy becomes more of a joke every single day!