I'm certainly no fan of Ronald Reagan and the “Trickle-Down” economics he popularized, but even he was straightforward when it came to this.

At the first Reagan-Mondale debate in 1984, Republican Ronald Reagan set the record straight about Social Security:

"Social Security, let’s lay it to rest once in for all…Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee. If you reduce the outgo of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund to reduce the deficit. It would go into the Social Security trust fund. So Social Security has nothing to do with balancing the budget or erasing or lowering the deficit."

Are you listening, President Obama?

Let the President know that you don't want Social Security on the cutting block:

Phone Numbers

Comments: 202-456-1111

Switchboard: 202-456-1414

Email

[Warning: NSFW]

This is your Moment of Clarity #184: Obama, Akin, Warren, legitimate rape, marriage equality, marijuana, and more. By the end of this four minutes, you will know everything you need to about what happened last night in election 2012.

Keep fighting,

-Lee

The President of United Auto Workers local 5285, Ricky McDowell, said that organized labor supports President Barack Obama because he saved their jobs.

“With the help of President Obama saving the Big Three, with the stimulus money, it saved the GM and Chrysler brothers and sisters. So without the support of the international union from Detroit, and if we had let Chrysler and Chevrolet and GM go down, there wouldn’t be a Big Three, there wouldn’t be an international union,” he told PBS during a Labor Day parade in Charlotte, North Carolina. “So he did save our jobs.”

Several hundred union members, drummers and step teams marched in the parade while chanting pro-union and pro-Obama slogans, hoping to draw attention to the fact that North Carolina is the nation’s least unionized state.

The Democratic National Convention is being held in Charlotte this year, beginning Tuesday, September 4th, and UAW president Bob King and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka are both scheduled to speakers.

Mike Huckabee really turned on the old Republican charisma --*cough*-- on Wednesday evening during the RNC:

"The only hitch in an otherwise perfect week was the awful noise coming from the hotel room next door to mine. Turns out that it was just Debbie Wasserman Schultz practicing her speech for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte next week. Bless her heart!"

When a Southerner says bless your heart, or in this case her heart, that's not exactly what it means.

Southern ladies usually pull it off much better, Huckabee just sounded creepy.

H/T TalkingPointsMemo

Matt Taibbi is f*&^ing brilliant. This is today's "Must Read."

Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone:

Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

...

"But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth."

"By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions - placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place..."

"If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House."

The Obama campaign, trying to shore up the president’s support among female voters in crucial swing states, is hitting Mitt Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan in a new ad that targets their positions on a number of issues important to voters who support abortion rights.

Being broadcast in Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Ohio and Nevada, the ad, called “The Same,” tries to draw a contrast between Mr. Obama and the Republican ticket on social issues -- women’s health in particular -- which Democrats believe will be critical in November.

The ad tells how Romney promised to get rid of Planned Parenthood, a family-planning group, and of backing proposals that would take away a woman’s right to choose. It touts Obama's efforts to fight Republican attempts to defund Planned Parenthood.

It also highlights the Romney-Ryan extremist view on abortion, that opposes it even in cases of rape or incest.

The anti-abortion stance will no doubt receive extra scrutiny this week after the death of a pregnant leukemia patient who died after her chemotherapy was delayed over anti- abortion laws in the Dominican Republic. She then suffered a miscarriage early Friday, followed by cardiac arrest, and doctors were unable to revive her.

H/T DemocraticUnderground

If anyone feels like chatting, consider this an open thread.

This is your Moment of Clarity #160: It all seems to be coming together into one. 90% of our media is owned by only six corporations. We act like the President is the only lawmaker who matters. How much further can things condense?

President Obama spoke from the University of Colorado Hospital Sunday evening after meeting with the families of the victims killed in the Aurora theater shooting.

“It was an opportunity for families to describe how wonderful their brother, or their son, or daughter was, and the lives that they have touched, and the dreams that they held for the future,” Obama said in a hallway of the hospital. “I confessed to them that words are always inadequate in these kinds of situations, but that my main task was to serve as a representative of the entire country and let them know that we are thinking about them at this moment and will continue to think about them each and every day, and that the awareness that not only all of America but much of the world is thinking about them might serve as some comfort.”

Reflecting on the victims’ stories, the president said the stories of recovery are a reminder that “even in the darkest of days, life continues, and people are strong and people bounce back and people are resilient.”

Obama said he was particularly moved by the stories of Allie Young and Stephanie Davies, two survivors of the shooting and spoke at length of their experiences.

The president said Allie, 19, was saved by her friend Stephanie, 21, after being shot in the neck. Obama said Davies pulled Young out of the line of fire, staying with her and applying pressure to her wound even as the gunman continued to fire into the theater.

“I don’t know how many people at any age would have the presence of mind that Stephanie did or the courage that Allie showed and so as tragic as the circumstances of what we’ve seen today are, as heartbreaking for the families, it’s worth us spending most of our time on young Americans like Allie and Stephanie because they represent what’s best in us and they assure us that out of this darkness a brighter day is going to come,” Obama said.

Full transcript of the President's remarks after the jump.

Continue reading »

An explosive article from Salon this week highlights the attitude of corporations that profits rule, above all else.

But what if that corporation is a for-profit health care company that values profits over the health and safety of its patients? You may say that's just how corporate America rolls in these times, and I'd have to agree. But now what if the corporation that owns the for-profit health care provider is Bain capital -- founded by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney -- reportedly sees about 1 death per year on average in its facilities due to neglect, abuse or the use of under-paid staff with inadequate training? And what if Mitt Romney, a man who is running for the highest office in our nation based on his business acumen, is also profiting from that health care provider?

"Corporations are people, my friends." No, no they're not. Also, their profits are absolutely not more important than the troubled teens who were sent for "treatment" at the Bain Capital owned CRC Health centers who didn't live to return home.

Via Salon.com:

When the morning staff arrived at 7 a.m., they discovered Brendan face down on the floor of the Purple Room, his body already stiff with rigor mortis. The state’s chief medical examiner later determined that Blum had died of a twisted-bowel infarction, which requires emergency surgical intervention.
...

The failure at Youth Care was not due simply to the carelessness of a few workers — a point underscored when a Utah court found that the threshold needed to pursue criminal negligence charges against the two monitors in 2008 wasn’t met and the charges were dismissed. And it wasn’t the only example of alleged negligence or abuse at treatment centers for adult addicts and “troubled teens” that are owned by Aspen’s parent company, CRC Health Group, according to a Salon investigation based on government reports, court filings and official complaints by parents and employees, along with interviews with former clients and staff.

...

Court documents and ex-staffers also allege that such incidents reflect, in part, a broader corporate culture at Aspen’s owner, CRC Health Group, a leading national chain of treatment centers. Lawsuits and critics have claimed that CRC prizes profits, and the avoidance of outside scrutiny, over the health and safety of its clients. (We sent specific questions on these basic allegations to CRC and owner Bain Capital. CRC would answer only general questions; Bain did not reply.)

And CRC’s corporate culture, in turn, reflects the attitudes and financial imperatives of Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney. (The Romney campaign also did not reply to written questions.) Bain is known for its relentless obsession with maximizing shareholder value and revenues. Indeed, this has become a talking point of late on the Romney campaign trail; he bragged to Fox in late May that “80 percent of them grew their revenues.” CRC, a fast-growing company then in the lucrative field of drug treatment, was perhaps a natural fit when Bain acquired it for $720 million in 2006. In conversations with staff and patients who spent time at CRC facilities since the takeover, there are suggestions that the Bain approach has had its effects. “If you look at their daily profit numbers compared to what they charge,” Dana Blum said of CRC’s Aspen division in 2009, “it’s obscene.” That point, ironically enough, was underscored by the glowing reports in the trade press about its profitability.

Also noteworthy, of the three Bain managing partners who sit on CRC’s board, two, John Connaughton and Steven Barnes, along with his wife, gave a total of half a million dollars to Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney. They also each donated the $2,500 maximum directly to his campaign.

I can't imagine the pain Brendan Blum's family must feel when they hear Mitt Romney droning on about profits, stock options, and tax shelters in the Caymans as they grieve in silence. They can no longer speak publicly about Brendan’s death, according to the terms of a settlement reached last year in a wrongful death lawsuit.