Donald Trump rails against the kinds of FDA guidelines that might have saved the life of a customer who died after eating in one of his restaurants.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

Last Thursday, the Trump campaign issued—and then quickly deleted—a rant against the “FDA food police,” listing it as one of several “specific regulations to be eliminated” in his new economic plan. Among other things, the campaign whined about the Food and Drug Administration’s standards for “farm and food production hygiene,” safe cooking temperatures, and even “dog food.” 

But these are the exact safety measures that help prevent foodborne illness outbreaks like the one that affected the Purgatorio family in 1989. In fact, the Trump business empire has a long and illustrious history of food poisoning cases and safety violations. 

According to a 1991 Associated Press report, Kathleen and Thomas Purgatorio, then in their sixties, ate the “salmonella-tainted mousse” at a restaurant called Buffet by the Sea in Trump’s Castle Hotel and Casino on Oct. 16, 1989. Kathleen felt sick afterwards, Purgatorio-Howard recalls, but nowhere near as ill as her father who she told The Daily Beast “went from walking into the hospital to being in intensive care on a ventilator in a coma.” 

“He was in critical care from October to December,” Purgatorio-Howard recalled. “We brought him home. We kept him in the living room in a hospital bed. He was in distress the whole time and then, in January, he went back to the hospital and died.”

Purgatorio-Howard, along with others, sued Donald Trump and her case was settled for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Apparently over 100 people were sickened over a span of four days by that same mousse dish.

And this is not an isolated incident either.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Trump-owned restaurants have been cited over the years for serving month-old caviar, expired veal stock and yogurt, and eggs, cream and sausages that had been stored at unsafe temperatures. 

“The DJT restaurant in the Trump hotel (in Las Vegas) is described on its website as ‘elegant’ and ‘in a class by itself,’” reported KTNV-TV in a 2013 “dirty dining” exposé. “It is indeed in a class by itself this week, receiving the highest number of demerits of all restaurants health inspectors visited.”

Newspaper reports from 1992 show Trump’s properties had “the worst track record for food-related health problems among Atlantic City’s 12 casinos,” with five salmonella outbreaks dating back to 1984. 

“We find it highly unusual that most of our problems in Atlantic City have been associated with the Trump properties,” a health department official for the city said at the time. “The physical part of the [establishments] is top-of-the-line but it all boils down to extremely poor food handling.”

This guy cannot even serve a brunch that does not potentially place his customer's lives at risk and yet he wants to run our country?

And you know that if he were to be President that he would ABSOLUTELY attempt to water down those FDA regulations. And cut taxes for big businesses, and relax EPA restrictions, and do every other thing in his power to make it easier for his businesses to make a higher profit.

Because let's face it, EVERYTHING this guy does is to benefit himself in some way, and he cares NOTHING for the American people.

So what if his contractors don't get paid for the work they provide?

So what if the customers in his restaurants get sick and die after eating in them?

So what if the American people suffer immensely under his administration?

All that ever matters is the bottom line, and the bottom line is how much money can he funnel into his bank account?

I have no idea how people are fooled by this idiot. And the fact that he was chosen as the candidate for the Republican party is an indictment of the GOP.

If he were to win the election that would be an indictment of our whole country.

Marco Rubio just lost the youth vote.

Hey, hey, hey who really cares about faster internet anyway?

Courtesy of The Intercept:

In a rare senatorial act, full-time Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio joined with a handful of fellow legislators on Friday in an attempt to block local municipalities from undercutting big telecom companies by providing cheap, fast internet service. 

Rubio, who is raising campaign cash from the telecom industry for his presidential campaign, fired off a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to allow states to block municipal broadband services. 

The letter was the latest salvo in a long-running effort by the major telecom companies to outlaw municipal broadband programs that have taken off in cities such as Lafayette, Louisiana, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, because they pose a threat to a business model that calls for slow, expensive internet access without competition. 

In Chattanooga, for instance, city officials set up a service known as “The Gig,” a municipal broadband network that provides data transfers at one gigabit per second for less than $70 a month — a rate that is 50 times faster than the average speed American customers have available through private broadband networks.

I would say that is a fairly ridiculous position to take for a Republican who espouses the virtue of capitalism and the free market.

And it is really going to cost him the support of every young gamer, constant internet user, and, let's face it, porn watcher in the country.

By the by my daughter has visited Chattanooga and goes on and on about their high speed internet. And because of that businesses are scrambling over themselves to build there.

Clearly Rubio is big telecom's bitch, and just because he looks young does not mean that he understands what it takes to attract the youth vote. Because this ain't it.

P.S. And if this were not enough Rubio also has a plan to make gay marriage illegal again. 

It's Black Friday! Everybody take cover until it blows over!

So it is Black Friday which I will celebrate in my traditional fashion, by not buying one single damn thing today.

Nice try corporate America but if you want me to participate in the shopping equivalent of the Hunger Games you're going to have to offer something a little more tantalizing than 40% off of big screen TV's. (Besides I already have a big screen TV.)

After all I'm a guy, and as a guy this is essentially my caveman like approach to shopping:

"Ugh me need clothes."

Three months later:

"Ugh me still need clothes."

Then another six months after that:

"Ugh me all out of clothes without holes, must go shopping now."

At the store:

"Ugh these clothes next to entrance. Good enough, me buy."

Later at home:

"Ugh hate all of new clothes, me still wear old tattered clothes instead. What's on TV?"

That essentially it, only sometimes it is more primitive.

So you all enjoy your day of allowing big business to manipulate you into acting like animals. I will be right here at home, eating, sleeping, and scratching myself.

You know like an animal, but one who still has money on his credit card.

Robert Reich explains that we strengthen the middle class by strengthening unions.

Courtesy of Robert Reich.org: 

 One big reason America was far more equal in the 1950s and 1960s than now is unions were stronger then. That gave workers bargaining power to get a fair share of the economy’s gains – and unions helped improve wages and working conditions for everyone. 

But as union membership has weakened – from more than a third of all private-sector workers belonging unions in the 1950s to fewer than 7 percent today – the bargaining power of average workers has all but disappeared. 

In fact, the decline of the American middle class mirrors almost exactly the decline of American labor union membership. 

I think Professor Reich is one of my favorite sources for learning about politics and economics in this country.

And I am really jealous of his ability to illustrate his lessons while he speaks.

The conservatives in this country have been attempting to bust the unions since the first day workers organized in this country, it is shameful how successful they have been since Ronald Reagan set the standard back in the 1980's.

History professor's new book investigates how America became a "Christian nation."

Courtesy of NPR:  

Kruse's book investigates how the idea of America as a Christian nation was promoted in the 1930s and '40s when industrialists and business lobbies, chafing against the government regulations of the New Deal, recruited and funded conservative clergy to preach faith, freedom and free enterprise. He says this conflation of Christianity and capitalism moved to center stage in the '50s under Eisenhower's watch. 

"According to the conventional narrative, the Soviet Union discovered the bomb and the United States rediscovered God," Kruse says. "In order to push back against the atheistic communism of the Soviet Union, Americans re-embraced a religious identity. That plays a small role here, but ... there's actually a longer arc. That Cold War consensus actually helps to paper over a couple decades of internal political struggles in the United States. If you look at the architects of this language ... the state power that they're worried most about is not the Soviet regime in Moscow, but rather the New Deal and Fair Deal administrations in Washington, D.C." 

The New Deal had passed a large number of measures that were regulating business in some ways for the first time, and it [had] empowered labor unions and given them a voice in the affairs of business. Corporate leaders resented both of these moves and so they launched a massive campaign of public relations designed to sell the values of free enterprise. The problem was that their naked appeals to the merits of capitalism were largely dismissed by the public.

The business leaders quickly realized that their pro-capitalist message was going to sound self serving, and not terribly palatable so they needed to find the most trusted people in the country to deliver it for them.

Ministers.   

They use these ministers to make the case that Christianity and capitalism were soul mates. This case had been made before, but in the context of the New Deal it takes on a sharp new political meaning. Essentially they argue that Christianity and capitalism are both systems in which individuals rise and fall according to their own merits. So in Christianity, if you're good you go to heaven, if you're bad you go to hell. In capitalism if you're good you make a profit and you succeed, if you're bad you fail. 

The New Deal, they argue, violates this natural order. In fact, they argue that the New Deal and the regulatory state violate the Ten Commandments. It makes a false idol of the federal government and encourages Americans to worship it rather than the Almighty. It encourages Americans to covet what the wealthy have; it encourages them to steal from the wealthy in the forms of taxation; and, most importantly, it bears false witness against the wealthy by telling lies about them. So they argue that the New Deal is not a manifestation of God's will, but rather, a form of pagan stateism and is inherently sinful.

The book goes on to explain how we "In God We Trust" found its way onto our money, and how "One Nation Under God" found its way into our Pledge of Allegiance.

So ultimately the idea of America being a Christian nation is not the intention of the Founding Fathers, but rather part of a cynical advertising scheme to marry capitalism and Christianity together in order to protect big businesses and their profit margin.

Keep that in mind the next time you see a Republican attacking labor unions while in the same breath espousing Christian family values. 

This is why Right Wing talk radio is not going anywhere any time soon.

Courtesy of Politico:  

A POLITICO review of filings with the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Election Commission, as well as interviews and reviews of radio shows, found that conservative groups spent nearly $22 million to broker and pay for involved advertising relationships known as sponsorships with a handful of influential talkers including Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh between the first talk radio deals in 2008 and the end of 2012. Since then, the sponsorship deals have grown more lucrative and tea party-oriented, with legacy groups like The Heritage Foundation ending their sponsorships and groups like the Tea Party Patriots placing big ad buys. 

The power of the tea party-talk radio nexus will be tested headed into the pivotal 2014 midterm elections. It has already played a key role in boosting tea party heroes like Matt Bevin and Chris McDaniel — both of whom attended FreedomWorks’ Louisville rally and have made multiple appearances on Beck’s shows — in their increasingly bitter long-shot primary challenges to powerful incumbents Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, respectively. 

The hosts’ stances on candidates and issues usually align naturally with those of the groups. While their positioning occasionally seems to evolve with their sponsors, there is no evidence of hosts revising their views for paid advertising. 

Critics, though, say the deals mislead grass-roots conservative activists, while undermining the credibility of the hosts and the groups. 

“People like Beck and Hannity and Rush are nothing without the people who faithfully hang on their every word — I consider that a constituency trust that should be respected,” said former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. He was ousted from FreedomWorks in a bitter feud, but had been chairman when the group signed its contracts with Beck and Limbaugh. “For them to basically sell their influence and say whatever the contract asks of them, it compromises the integrity of the pundit-guru, as it were, and it’s an undignified expenditure on the part of the outfit that’s mining the attention.” 

In other words these idiots do not even really need to worry about losing advertisers so long as they have their conservative sugar daddies footing the bill. 

So long as they attack climate scientists over global warming, promote school vouchers, argue against increased taxes, and go after the Democrats at every opportunity there is no way to the money dries up anytime soon.

And the sad thing is that ordinary people do not realize that these are performance artists essentially spouting talking points from a script provided to them by their corporate overlords.

Think you live in a democratic America? Think again.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded. 

The report, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF), used extensive policy data collected between 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the U.S. political system. 

After sifting through nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile), and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the U.S. is dominated by its economic elite. 

The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence." 

Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it." 

Of course this accusation has been flying around for decades, but I think this is the first time that anybody launched a study which confirmed it.  

How to combat this is going to be incredibly challenging, and in the short run virtually impossible.

This realization does drive a number of grassroots organizations, but ultimately they have limited impact as the big money donors drive public policy in the directions that benefit them and their companies.

And of course all of this will now be exacerbated by the Citizens United and McClutchen Supreme Court decisions.

This does not bode well for the future of politics, or the future of this country, and it is definitely NOT what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

P.S. Before the Right Wing gets too excited about this, since they have been accusing President Obama of being an oligarch for years, they may want to pay attention to the fact that this study was based on data gathered from between 1981 and 2002.

You know, before the black guy made himself available to be blamed for everything.

When the Republicans talk about the good old days.

You know its true.

By the way, here are 36 ways that unions have made ALL of our lives better:

• Weekends 
• All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks 
• Paid Vacation 
• FMLA 
• Sick Leave 
• Social Security 
• Minimum Wage 
• Civil Rights 
• Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination) 
• 8-Hour Work Day 
• Overtime Pay 
• Child Labor Laws 
• Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
• 40 Hour Work Week 
• Worker's Compensation (Worker's Comp) 
• Unemployment Insurance 
• Pensions 
• Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations 
• Employer Health Care Insurance
• Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees 
• Wrongful Termination Laws 
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 
• Whistleblower Protection Laws 
• Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee) 
• Veteran's Employment and Training Services (VETS) 
• Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises) 
• Sexual Harassment Laws 
• Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) 
• Holiday Pay 
• Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance 
• Privacy Rights 
• Pregnancy and Parental Leave 
• Military Leave 
• The Right to Strike 
• Public Education for Children 
• Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work) 
• Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States

You're welcome.

And do you know which political group stood in opposition to almost all of these changes?  Of course you do.

Rather than pay their employees a living wage McDonald's suggests employees trying to stay out of debt pack a sack lunch and sell unwanted possessions on eBay. McPerfect!

Courtesy of NBC News:

McDonald’s is once again getting grilled over its employee advice, this time suggesting ways to get out of holiday debt that include returning unopened purchases and bringing a sack lunch. 

The criticism comes months after it took heat over an employee budget guide that included no money for heat and $20 a month for health care. 

The labor advocacy group Low Pay Is Not OK is lambasting McDonald’s for articles on an employee website that suggest workers visit thrift stores instead of the mall, use stale bread and bruised apples rather than throwing them out, and “quit complaining” as a way to reduce stress. And to pay off holiday debt, it suggested returning purchases. 

“On a short term basis, do whatever it takes to dig out from your holiday debt,” said one article on the McResource Line website, a screen grab of which was provided by Low Pay Is Not OK. 

“You may want to consider returning some of your unopened purchases that may not seem as appealing as they did. Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash," it continued. “Consider bringing a brown bag lunch and skipping the takeout …. You might also consider a temporary part time job to dig out of debt quickly.” 

The article appeared to have been removed from the site by midday Thursday. 

McDonald’s did not return multiple calls for comment. A company spokeswoman, in a statement emailed to CNBC, said Low Pay Is Not OK’s video about the website took the advice out of context and characterized the campaign as “an attempt by an outside organization to undermine a well-intended employee assistance resource website.”

Yes they are only trying to McHelp without having to McPay more.

After all how do you post profits of over five billion dollars annually if you are paying your workers enough to live on?

By the way I completely stopped going to McDonald's several months ago and have no intention of ever going back. Not only is their McFood poisonous, but they are also cheap bastards more interested in turning a profit than in paying their employees,

Kind of reminds me of Wal-Mart who held a food drive asking their employees to donate food to help feed their fellow employees who are not paid enough to feed themselves.

Yet another place that I refuse to shop at any more.

Robyn O'Brien on kids and food allergies from GMO's. This is one of those videos that you must see, no excuses.

I apologize ahead of time for how much this information is going to bother you today, but not for providing the information to help educate you on the fact that American food suppliers are literally poisoning us, and our children, in the name of higher profits.

My daughter only occasionally insists that I post something on this blog, but she was so adamant about this one that she badgered me for hours to make sure I watched it and then that I shared it with all of you.

I can tell you unequivocally from my experiences working with children for the last thirty years that  Robyn O'Brien's observations are dead on concerning the explosion of nut allergies that have been identified in young children. I assume that most of us grew up in this country and can remember only a handful of children with severe allergies and perhaps NONE who were deathly allergic to nuts. (At least I can remember none, but my daughter numbers among those who I know today.)

In the bigger picture this also speaks to the fact that the Republican talking point that businesses do NOT need consistent and comprehensive regulations is false. Rather than being self regulating, and keeping the best interests of their customers in the forefront of their decision making, they instead treat the consumer as collateral damage on their way to higher profits.

Palin on the attack again. This time she does not take aim at the President, or even Democrats however, THIS time she throws her rhetorical bombs at the Grand Old Party itself.

This showed up a little late last night in my e-mail inbox.

It is another Breitbart article, which purports to have interviewed Palin about an article that appeared earlier in the Daily Beast.

Here are the pertinent portions:

Palin told Breitbart News that these establishment financiers cannot relate to the average American worker and are throwing a "fit" because Wall Street knows they are in a whole new ballgame where their influence is diminishing. 

Palin was responding to an article by David Freilander in Thursday's Daily Beast in which prominent Republican establishment financiers showed disdain for the conservative grassroots while being unable to identify exactly what a "precinct captain" is. 

Palin, who started her political career on the local level as an outsider before eventually challenging the GOP establishment in Alaska to become governor, said that the "GOP high roller machine can’t win elections with their cash anymore." 

"If they could, all the money they threw at Romney would have paid off," Palin said, referring to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's inability to galvanize the blue-collar conservative base during the 2012 presidential election. "It’s the average American – the grassroots Tea Party patriot with enthusiasm and boots on the ground – who wins elections": So I say call these guys out and expose the fact that they no longer control any conservative movement because they’re not the voice of the people. See, some of these Wall Street guys basically want to use the GOP for three things: They want low taxes for themselves; they want lots of cheap foreign labor (aka blanket amnesty); and they want to be safe (though most won’t send their own kids to fight our wars, they don’t want anyone blowing up buildings in Manhattan; so they’re all for sending our sons and daughters to whatever foreign hell hole beckons to make sure the bad guys stay off our soil)." 

Palin, the avatar of the Tea Party movement whom the Republican establishment has tried to eviscerate and whose endorsement former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint (R) said had the most influence in Republican primaries, was not finished excoriating the establishment financiers who were berating the Tea Party: 

"Ask yourself if most of them really care about America’s industrial base or can even relate to the American worker and our values. The particular fat cats who are so often used as anonymous sources to trash the grassroots see this latest Tea Party effort to keep essential government open as just a distraction. They’re throwing a bit of a fit because this is a whole new, needed ballgame where their money can’t buy elections anymore."

You may have picked up on the fact that these answers seem a little too coherent for Palin, which means they undoubtedly sent her the questions, and then received a ghostwritten response by e-mail.

In the article which seems to have angered those over at the defunct Breitbart.com, and possibly Palin's ghostwriter as well, it claims that during this meeting between wealthy Republican donors and Rep. Greg Walden, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the donors did not understand what a "precinct captain" was, however it is not their lack of knowledge concerning political ground tactics that so angered the Right Wing, and the Grizzled Mama.

It is this:

It is unlikely that the gilded power brokers in the Republican Party are likely to join their local county political club any time soon, but as the stock market wobbles amid the government shutdown and the continued demand for an Obamacare delay, a number of GOP donors are wondering if it is time for a little outside counter-pressure to sap the Tea Party of some of its energy. To be clear, none are considering joining the Democrats, and they find plenty of fault with President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The deficit, taxes, and regulation remain top concerns. But several top GOP donors say figuring out a way to “break the fever”—as Obama once put it—or at least keep their fellow party members from damaging the economy any further has become Topic A in their social set.

Essentially the gist of the Daily Beast's article is that GOP donors are tiered of watching the Republican party get dragged around by their nutsack by a bunch of poorly educated idiots, who seem determined to destroy the country in the name of insane ideological viewpoints.  

And speaking of poorly educated idiots, this was the final word from Palin, or her ghostwriter, on the article: 

Palin told Breitbart News that "the day the GOP machine abandons the grassroots patriot – the heart and soul of the party who actually gets people elected – is the day the GOP elephant is extinct." 

"This keeps up and I’m not sticking around to watch it happen," Palin said. 

Yeah, well as we know "sticking around" is not exactly a Sarah Palin strong point.

However I can only imagine the huge sigh of relief that will come from the Republican party once this ill manner, out of control, parasite finally detaches from them and swims off to cause havoc under the banner of somebody elses's political organization.

If you thought John Boehner was drinking celebratory cocktails before....

P.S. Another thing about this Breitbart article which caught my eye is that they get the name of the Daily Beast's journalist completely wrong. They refer to him as " David Freilander" when in fact his name is "David Freedlander." You know when your "journalism" is this sloppy, it is a little hard to give you any credibility.

The Republican view of the economy in a cartoon nutshell.

Need I say more?

More examples of how religion is destroying our future. Believers in the Biblical "End Times" stifling climate change legislation in America.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The United States has failed to take action to mitigate climate change thanks in part to the large number of religious Americans who believe the world has a set expiration date. 

Research by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado uncovered that belief in the biblical end-times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change. 

“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in their study, which will be published in the June issue of Political Science Quarterly. 

The study, based on data from the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, uncovered that belief in the “Second Coming” of Jesus reduced the probability of strongly supporting government action on climate change by 12 percent when controlling for a number of demographic and cultural factors. When the effects of party affiliation, political ideology, and media distrust were removed from the analysis, the belief in the “Second Coming” increased this effect by almost 20 percent. 

“[I]t stands to reason that most nonbelievers would support preserving the Earth for future generations, but that end-times believers would rationally perceive such efforts to be ultimately futile, and hence ill-advised,” Barker and Bearce explained.

Over and over again we see examples of religion interfering with scientific progress and education in this country, and I for one am damn sick and tired of it!

Make no mistake the push for home school programs, charter schools programs, religious teaching in the classroom setting, and the introduction of standardized tests, are ALL a coordinated effort to keep our children believing rather than thinking, or receiving educations that do NOT encourage critical thinking skills and instead focus on memorizing test answers rather than learning.

EVERYTHING the GOP does is designed to make Americans dumber, and more easily manipulated, and religion is the very best tool they have to help them to achieve that goal.

This country was founded as a secular nations for a reason.

Do you know who is VERY excited at prospect of a Romney presidency? Lobbyists!

Courtesy of Politico:

President Barack Obama’s gone further than any president to keep lobbyists out of the White House — even signing executive orders to do it. 

But the mood on K Street is brightening. 

Industry insiders believe that Mitt Romney will unshackle the revolving door and give lobbyists a shot at the government jobs their Democratic counterparts have been denied for the past four years, a dozen Republican lobbyists said in conversations with POLITICO. 

"I've heard they are likely not to black ball anybody from any particular sector," said Republican lobbyist Sam Geduldig at Clark, Lytle & Geduldig. "I assume, everyone is welcome to apply. I'm sure they are interested in getting the best people possible." 

Allowing lobbyists back into the White House could be a PR nightmare early on in a new administration, some Republicans fear. Romney would have to toss out Obama’s orders, which shook up how President George W. Bush did business and let Obama claim his agenda wouldn’t be hijacked by special interests. 

Sources close to Romney’s campaign say there has been no official word from the campaign on what the rules about lobbyists in the administration will be. And Romney himself has said nothing definitive on the trail about the issue. 

But there are clear signs that lobbyists could be back in the executive branch. 

Come on, there is NO doubt that Romney will fill his administration with lobbyists, and big business types. Who else does he even know?

If Romney wins the American people will have virtually NO say in the policy decisions that come out of his administration, and it will be like Disneyland for the 1%.

Essentially he will be like George W. Bush on steroids, and we can kiss social policies that help everyday Americans goodbye, while watching corporate raiders ride roughshod over now impotent regulators like something out of a B movie western.

I CANNOT believe that this asshole is still polling as well as he is!

The Obama campaign is no longer bothering to play nice with Mittens. Good, it's about time!

Oooh, THAT is brutal!

And, as it turns out, completely accurate.

Let's see him use that "I was a successful businessman" talking point now!

Did you have a good weekend? Thank a liberal union member.

Lately there has been an unprecedented uptick in union bashing from the Republican side of the aisle. The most egregious is what we just watched unfold in Wisconsin, where the Democrats and their union partners were outspent 7-1.

This is constant barrage of negativism toward the unions is having a real effect, and American support for them has been waning.

 Perhaps it is time to remind ourselves of just how much good unions have done for this country. You know besides the eight hour days and five day work weeks mentioned above.

Chris Matthews slams corporations for sitting on their money to make the President look bad.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As I have mentioned in the past I don't always watch Hardball, and often disagree with Matthews on a whole slew of issues, but watching him confront former Bush official Tony Fratto, and call out big business for helping to sabotage the economy to benefit the GOP was quite satisfying because I think most of us KNOW that's what's going on here.

The action starts around the 3:40 mark.

Hey guess what conservatives? Al Gore did NOT invent global warming just to punish big business.

Gee, it appears that scientists have been discussing the dangers of global warming, and man's responsibility for it, since before I was even born.

Yet we have failed to take it seriously until today, when we have witnessed for ourselves the melting of the polar ice caps, the rise of the oceans, and some of the most dangerous weather ever witnessed by man.

And all the while that scientists were ringing the alarm, there were energy companies fighting them tooth and nail with scientists of their own bought and paid for to refute anything climatologists might say that would demand that they find alternative energy sources or reduce the chemical emissions from their manufacturing plants.

Some in the Evangelical community have even gone so far as to teach their children that climate change is false. From the movie Jesus Camp:  

The movie observes a lesson where the mother is teaching her child out right lies about evolution and global warming. There are also clips of movies and presentations presented while they are shown to children making ridiculously inaccurate statements about Abortion, Global Warming, and Evolution. Their fundamental argument seems to be, the people who disagree with them just have wrong, “Beliefs”. They fail to acknowledge or address that their own ideals are nothing more then Faith/Beliefs which are not verifiable in anyway. 

Worse, their logic behind denying global warming and a lot of other problems in the world is just that the Earth is temporary and so it doesn’t really matter. What a horrible legacy to leave to your children. Well we thought the world was going to end, so we really didn’t think destroying the climate and starting World War Three would really matter in the long term.

With that kind of aggressive blowback is it any wonder that it took so long for people to start taking climate change seriously?  And honestly, have we even started yet?