AP Fact Check: More drilling has no effect on the price of gasoline

March 22, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Oil is a global commodity and its price is set by a global market — one in which supply and price are manipulated by the members of OPEC. This is simply a fact of life with which we live. The Associated Press (AP) has done a statistical analysis fact check and found … Read more

The Great Renege: Boehner Backs Out of Debt-Limit Deal

March 22, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Weeper of the House John Boehner confirmed today that he is not a man of his word and, as he has demonstrated from the day he took the gavel in the House, that he is the weakest Speaker of the House in modern American history. As the Rachel Maddow Show has documented … Read more

Willard ‘Mittens’ Romney is a pathological liar

March 22, 2012

Posted by AzBliueMeanie:

I have been making the point that Willard "Mittens" Romney is a pathological liar for many months. Everything this man says from the moment he introduces himself — his name is Willard — is a lie.

Steve Benen also has been making this point and has been "Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity" in a weekly "Top Ten" list of the lies of Willard "Mittens" Romney since January. Here is Benen's Top Ten list from last week Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. X. And here are Benen's previous editions of "Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity": Vol. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX.

Steve Benen is now a co-producer of the Rachel Maddow Show. On Wednesday's show, following Romney campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom's "Etch A Sketch" gaffe (read telling the truth), " Rachel Maddow finally did what no journalist to date has bothered to do. She enumerated the lies he tells daily, the cynicism with which those lies are told, and goes on to explain why Romney is undermining democracy and the office of President when he lies so easily just to get the job." Rachel Maddow: Romney's Lies Should Disqualify Him From High Office. Video below the fold.

CD 8 Special Election Primary voting begins today

March 22, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Early voting in the CD 8 Special Election Primary begins today. Mail-in ballots will be mailed to you today. Early voting runs from Thursday, March 22 to Friday, April 13, 2012. There will be emergency voting on Monday, April 16, 2012. Primary Election Day is Tuesday, April 17, 2012. Early Voting locations: DOWNTOWNRecorder’s Main Office115 N. Church Ave.520-724-4330Located … Read more

Frank, That’s Not Even Close!

March 21, 2012

By Michael Bryan

I don't know that this is actually Frank Antenori's truck in this video. I know he drives a truck frequently, but I'm relying on the research of the Tucson Weekly that this is actually Frank.

And if it is, Holy Crap, Frank! This violation is not someone trying to make a changing light, this is someone seeing an open intersection and just blatantly claiming it as his own. Frank appears to just roll up to the red light, take a quick look around, and decide to just blow off the traffic light as others sit patiently (and safely) at the intersection.

Seems that Frank's War on Redlight Cameras was not inspired by close calls, but by his personal impatience with having to actually follow the rules of the road.

See the video after the click… 

Paul Krugman: Paul Ryan the Flim-Flam Man

March 21, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Reprising a column he wrote back in 2010, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes at his blog, Flim-Flam Fever: Way back in 2010 I declared that Paul Ryan — who was rapidly becoming the darling of the “fiscal responsibility” crowd — was a fraud, a flim-flam man. Very Serious People were … Read more

Steve Benen: Paul Ryan is the ‘opposite of seriousness’

March 21, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Picking up where I left off in a post yesterday on the GOP Roadmap to America's Ruin Budget II, Steve Benen writes The Opposite of Seriousness:

Paul Krugman likes to joke about the phenomenon of the Very Serious Person. The VSP is one of those Washington insiders that the political establishment respects and listens to, despite the fact that the person is (a) nearly always wrong; (b) habitually dishonest; or (c) both.

House Republican Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is the quintessential Very Serious Person. But as the dust settles on the first day of his new budget plan, we're reminded once again of how fundamentally unserious the right-wing congressman really is.

Ryan's plan wants to simplify the tax code, but doesn't do any of the work necessary — eliminating unwarranted loopholes, for example — to actually achieve the purported goal. It wants to use budget assumptions for future estimates, but chose assumptions that no sane person could expect to have happen.

It intends to force down discretionary spending to 3.75% of GDP by 2050, but as Jonathan Bernstein explained, that's ridiculous.

* * *

Kevin Drum, who called the Ryan plan "nuts," fleshed this out a little more, noting CBO numbers that show the Republican budget would whack everything — prisons, border control, education, the FBI, courts, embassies, the IRS, FEMA, housing, student loans, roads, unemployment insurance … everything — by about 80% over the next generation.

* * *

I realize there's nothing I can say to convince the political establishment to stop treating Paul Ryan like a Very Serious Person and start treating him like an Ayn Rand-loving con man, but his budget plan is a bad joke.

Steve Benen continues in this post A 'Scrooge-like, Gilded-Age' budget plan:

Following up on yesterday's coverage, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has released his caucus' new budget plan, and there's no shortage of wonky analyses to check out. Ezra Klein had a good piece this morning, for example, noting that the GOP vision punishes the poor severely, while Jonathan Cohn details the brutal effect Ryan's cuts would have on Americans' health care.

But folks also shouldn't miss the analysis from the CBPP's Robert Greenstein, whose reaction to the Republican plan was simply devastating.