Source: CBS
Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson announced he is going to retire next year.

From Big Government:

In a Christmas break message to his party, Communist Party USA vice chair Jarvis Tyner has confirmed the vital importance of the build up to the 2012 elections to “set the stage for a new progressive era and for a socialist transformation.”

Tyner draws clear right/left battle lines and the communist’s commitment to Party ‘friend’ President Barack Obama and to the Democratic Party cause…

The Christmas message is quite lengthy and lays out the Communist plan for helping their friend Barack Obama get re-elected. They plan to join with labor unions and other Progressive organizations to fight Republicans who “literally thrive on racism as a party.”

If the Republicans and Tea Party gang want people to stop accusing them of racism, there is a solution. They must end their long history of using racist scapegoating and pushing racist policies and practices. After the passage of the Civil rights and voting rights acts in the mid sixties the racist Southern white Democrats (called “Dixiecrats”) en mass joined the ranks of the Republican Party. They were warmly welcomed. Today without their racist Southern base of voters the Republicans could not win the presidency, or any national election. They literally thrive on racism as a party. And that is why there is a virulent racist component to almost every program they advance today.

It’s a well known fact that many in the Democrat party are in bed with Communists. This is not an issue that died with the Cold War. It’s still very much alive. Last year, Connecticut AFL-CIO leader John Olsen accepted an award from the Communist Party USA.

Do I think there is a Commie takeover on the horizon? No, I don’t. But it’s important to highlight these connections to show just how radical many on the far left actually are. The president’s own mother was a Communist. His entire adult life was spent advocating Marxist policies as a community organizer and agitator. The Democrat Party of today is not what it was during the Clinton years. The 1960′s radicals have had a second-coming of sorts and they are going to use every tactic both legal and illegal to get their man Obama another four years in office.

Here’s a belligerent Barney Frank denying he could have done anything better with regards to Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s an odd claim considering his role in Congress at the time was to provide oversight of the two mortgage giants. A perch from which he directed the two companies to give loans to people who could not afford them and said publicly right to the end that they were sound investments. A perch from which he decried Republican attempts at reforming the companies and accused them of manufacturing a crisis where none existed.

Barney is an asshole and a liar. Thank God he’s leaving Congress. The only bitter pill is that Marxist Maxine Waters will be taking over Barney’s committee assignments. Waters is perhaps the most radical left wing member of Congress. She has repeatedly praised Fidel Castro in the past and encouraged the federal government to seize control of the oil industry.

Source: Associated Press
Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts is expected to announce Monday that he is retiring from Congress, closing out a career of more than three decades capped by passage last year of legislation imposing new regulations on Wall Street.

Source: CBS
After reports that Republicans and Democrats haven’t met for a week or more, CBS News Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes checked in on the progress of negotiations in the “super committee” with member Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.).

Sen. Harry Reid says the private sector is doing just fine and the focus should be on creating government jobs.

“It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

What can you really say to that? His stupidity speaks for itself.

(H/T The Hill)

Larry O’Connor over at Big Government has an excellent piece about race baiting Congressman Andre Carson. He’s the Congressional Black Caucus member who warned last week that the Tea Party wanted to lynch black people. As Larry O’Connor illustrates, using racism and bigotry as a weapon is the way Andre Carson does business.

For starters he’s a Muslim who inherited his Congressional seat from his grandmother who ran around with Louis Farrakhan. During his campaign he refused to condemn Farrakhan’s history of racist remarks. Carson is also the one who lied to the media during the health care debate about being called the n-word “15 times” by Tea Party members.

Click over to Big Government to read the rest.

This article titled “Democrats fall short in heated Wisconsin recall elections” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 10th August 2011 05.42 UTC

Republicans snatched a narrow victory in the battleground of Wisconsin politics on Tuesday night, hanging onto four out of six recall elections held as Democrats fought to overturn their majority in the state senate.

Six seats were up for re-election after Democrats had successfully organised recall ballots against the group of incumbent Republican state senators, in the wake of the controversial anti-union measures supported by Republican governor Scott Walker.

Democrats needed to win at least three of the six seats held by Republicans to take control of the state senate. But after a campaign that saw an estimated $35m spent by both sides – many times above the sums usually spent on local elections – the Democrats could only take two of the seats on offer.

The campaign had energised Democrats, who went to great lengths with get-out-the-vote efforts, but the final result came down to a tight race between Republican Alberta Darling of River Hills, who held off Democratic state representative Sandy Pasch of Whitefish Bay by a 5,000 vote margin.

Republican senators Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls, Rob Cowles of Allouez and Luther Olsen of Ripon also held on to their seats.

Democrats vowed to continue their efforts next year, and launch recall efforts against Walker himself, as well other Republican state senators who may be vulnerable after Tuesday night’s results.

For Walker – talked of as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016 – the result means he can continue unimpeded, with both houses of Wisconsin’s legislature controlled by Republicans.

Wisconsin’s bitter political battle caught international attention earlier this year after Democratic senators fled the state for three weeks in an attempt to stop Walker from passing a bill to strip 175,000 government workers of almost all collective bargaining rights.

Both Democrats and Republicans regard Wisconsin as a swing state in the 2012 presidential election. Although Obama carried the state easily in 2008, the 2010 midterm elections swept the Republicans back into power and unseated Democratic US senator Russ Feingold.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Cumberland County Freeholder (and Democrat) Louis Magazzu was forced to resign after nude pictures of him surfaced online.

This article titled “US debt deal agreed but may not save AAA credit rating” was written by Ewen MacAskill and Alex Hawkes, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 1st August 2011 13.58 UTC

America has moved away from the brink of a catastrophic default after a deal was reached overnight to raise its debt ceiling.

Stock markets around the world briefly rallied on Monday, in relief that the world’s largest economy would probably avoid running out of cash this week. But the agreement, which includes around $2.5tn (£1.5tn) of spending cuts over the next decade, has been criticised on both sides of the political divide, and will probably not save America’s triple-A credit rating.

There is also concern that the deal could still fail to be approved by Congress, which is due to vote on the package on Monday night. Some liberals are angry that the plan, which has been hailed as a triumph for the Tea Party movement, relies on spending reductions rather than tax rises to reduce the US budget deficit. The Democratic leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, has already warned that some congressional members in her party may be unwilling to support the deal.

Under the plan, announced by Barack Obama late on Sunday, the US debt ceiling will be raised by about $2.4tn, in two stages. In return, the US government deficit will be reduced by a similar amount over the next decade.

“This process has been messy and taken too long,” said Obama, who also admitted that the weeks of frustratingly slow negotiations in Washington had not delivered the deal he wanted. “This compromise does make a serious downpayment on the deficit reduction we need, and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year,” Obama said.

The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, and his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, both indicated they were optimistic that Congress will approve the deal. McConnell, who will meet with Republican senators on Monday, said: “We can assure the American people … that the United States of America will not for the first time in our history default on its obligations.”

The full details of the plan have not been released. However, a fact sheet issued by the White House showed that spending would be capped by $900bn over the next 10 years. A bipartisan committee will then be established to agree a further $1.5tn of deficit-reduction measures, which could include tax rises. If this committee cannot agree a deal, then an “enforcement mechanism” will trigger around $1.3tn of spending reductions beginning in 2013.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning US economist, accused Obama of surrendering to Republican opponents.

“The deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-term deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana republic status.”

Markets volatile, and AAA rating under threat

Many economists believe that America could soon lose its triple-A credit rating, despite a deal being agreed. Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, recently said that a credible fiscal plan would need to include $4tn of deficit-reduction measures.

“Avoiding the worst case scenario of a default on US Treasury obligations will not prevent a downgrade of the triple-A sovereign rating,” said Kevin Daly, emerging market debt portfolio manager at Aberdeen Asset Management. “So it’s time for us all to figure out just what it means when the US gets downgraded.”

Stuart Gulliver, chief executive of HSBC, said the progress made over the US debt ceiling was “very welcome”, but also warned that America could have its credit rating cut.

Trading was volatile when Wall Street opened on Monday. The Dow Jones index gained 100 points, but then swiftly fell to a 100-point loss after the publication of weak US manufacturing data for July. In London, the FTSE 100 had rallied by almost 1.5%, jumping 83 points to 5898, as traders welcomed the news that the US would probably not run out of cash. But it later surrendered all its gains, as investors moved out of shares and into government bonds. This pushed the yield, or interest rate, on the UK 10-year gilt to below 2.8% – a record, according to Reuters.

Most major commodities gained ground, pushing the cost of a barrel of Brent crude oil up by $2 to $119.40. Gold, which has benefited from the crisis as investors looked for safe havens, fell by 1%.

Overnight, Asian stock markets had risen strongly on the news. The Japanese Nikkei was up more than 2% at one stage, closing up 1.34% at 9,965 having broken through the 10,000 barrier earlier.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010