Government is, at base, organic, and the first form of government anywhere is the family. When the partisanship has reached down to the level of destroying families, of denouncing science and scientists, of setting national policy based on the fever dreams spawned by the least intelligible book of the Bible, of valuing hypothetical babies over actual, living women, and, not coincidentally, hypothetical financial crises over clear and present crises, this is not merely pernicious, but actively toxic to society...

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Overlapping groups of Democratic senators have launched efforts to prevent the so-called congressional supercommittee from cutting Social Security benefits as a means to reduce the federal budget deficit. On the one hand, several Senate Democrats have gotten behind legislation to strengthen Social Security by applying the payroll tax that most Americans already pay to those with annual incomes above $250,000. On the other, Democratic senators are directly warning members of the supercommitee not to touch Social Security, Medicare or...

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The bizarre events of the past several days have been almost beyond articulation, as I watched the Orange Speaker of the House REFUSE a Presidential request for a joint session of congress -- FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC -- claiming that the House had "important legislative business" on its schedule that would make such an appearance impossible. This has moved far beyond the pale of partisan politics, or even the schoolyard. It has moved into...

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Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday advanced a key part of the jobs agenda President Obama laid out last week by introducing the Fix America’s Schools Today (FAST) Act, which would direct nearly $25 billion toward modernization, renovation, and repair of U.S. schools. Sen. Sherrod Brown introduced the FAST Act in the Senate as Obama traveled to Brown’s home state of Ohio. The FAST Act is part of the legislative package the president outlined in a campaign-style speech at a school...

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Increasing numbers of Americans have fallen into poverty, including a record number who now live in “deep poverty” — living below half of the federal poverty line, according to numbers released by the Census Bureau. The level of poverty in the United States could rise even further, which puts pressure on the so-called congressional “supercommittee” tasked with federal deficit reduction, experts say.  Nearly 46.2 million Americans now live in poverty, an increase of 2.6 million people since 2009 and the...

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No question about it that 9/11 was an atrocious horror and the first responders were heroes. But what happened after 9/11 was perhaps a greater horror. 9/11 was hijacked by a right wing cabal, worried about an Israel-Arab conflict. I thought I was alone in resisting the hyper-patriotic hoopla celebrating our so called 9/11 heros. I have been afraid to question this jingoism. But now I am glad that Paul Krugman agrees with me.  Krugman wrote in his blog “The...

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It’s going to require more than one good televised speech to pass President Obama’s American Jobs Act, and Democrats understand this. Just days after the president spelled out his $447 billion plan to put Americans back to work, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Monday announced a new comprehensive effort to engage the American people in the task of getting Congress to pass the legislation. The effort includes television ads, online ads, and a website called americanjobsact.com, the DNC...

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Via His Holiness the Dalai Lama: Today, as we mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11th 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC, let us remember all the innocent lives lost and ponder the continuing impact of that tragic day. September 11th reminds us of the horror we human beings can unleash on ourselves when we allow our human intelligence and powerful technology to be overtaken by hatred. We need to learn from our painful memories of...

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