Since so many of the athletes are gay, this will be a major situation if they try:
‘Gay propaganda’ law co-sponsor says he is unconcerned about a US visa ban, saying: ‘I’ve spoken to US politicians, and they support my stance’
A Russian lawmaker has said the ‘gay propaganda’ law will remain enforced during the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in 2014. Vitaly Milonov, co-sponsor of the ‘non-traditional relationships’ bill, said the government cannot decide when to selectively enforce the law.
It comes as the International Olympic Committee said the Russian government had ‘assured’ them all athletes and spectators will be safe from arrest.
Speaking to Interfax and as translated by GSN, Milonov said: ‘I have not heard any comments from the government of the Russian Federation but I know it is acting in accordance with Russian law.
‘If a law has been approved by the federal legislature and signed by the president, then the government has no right to suspend it. It doesn’t have the authority.’
Officially, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said last year that the drinking water in Dimock, Pennsylvania, was not contaminated by natural gas extraction involving hydraulic fracturing (fracking). However, an internal EPA document obtained by the media contradicts this assertion, raising questions over why officials declared the water was safe to drink.
Residents of Dimock had complained for years that nearby gas drilling had polluted their wells. These complaints prompted the EPA’s mid-Atlantic field office to test the water for 64 homes.
Agency leaders in Washington later announced that nearly all of the samples came out clean.
But an EPA PowerPoint presentation obtained by the Tribune/Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau reveals that EPA on-site staff members informed its Washington headquarters that several wells had been contaminated with methane, manganese and arsenic, and that gas drilling was the likely culprit. The determination was based on studies conducted over the course of a four- to five-year period at the site.
The document concluded that “methane and other gases released during drilling (including air from the drilling) apparently cause significant damage to the water quality.” The presentation also stated that “methane is at significantly higher concentrations in the aquifers after gas drilling and perhaps as a result of fracking (hydraulic fracturing) and other gas well work.”
Mr. President, you don’t have to worry about how to pay your rent or where your next paycheck is coming from, so you have the luxury of thinking Larry Summers is a great guy! The rest of us don’t:
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama gave a “full-throated defense” of Larry Summers in a closed meeting with House Democrats Wednesday, according to a lawmaker in the room, but said he’s nowhere near making a decision on who will be the next Federal Reserve chairman.
Summers, along with Janet Yellen, are reportedly the top contenders for the Fed post. White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Wednesday that no decision will be made until the fall, but that hasn’t stopped people from speculating about the frontrunner.
During Wednesday’s meeting, one Democratic lawmaker, who requested anonymity, said the president became agitated and rose to Summers’ defense in response to Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) walking up to the microphone and simply saying, “Larry Summers. Bad Choice.”
In paraphrasing Obama’s response, the lawmaker said the president replied, “Hey, don’t talk sh*t about him because he’s actually a pretty good guy. And then he said, ‘If somebody talked sh*t about you like that, I’d defend you too.”‘ (The lawmaker added that Obama didn’t use the expletive.) Continue reading “More hippie punching”→
The White House essentially argues “Don’t worry, be happy. Republicans won’t accept this anyway.” The president is just showing that he is reasonable, willing to negotiate and demonstrating how extreme Republican obstruction is.
No question the Tea Party-dominated Republican Party is still in the midst of its Inquisition phase. But the White House strategy of preemptive concessions is remarkably wrong-headed.
It abandons arguments that the public should be hearing. The president is right to be arguing about jobs, even though Republicans dismiss him out of hand. And he should also be railing about global corporate tax dodges, and demanding that corporations as well as the rich pay their fair share.
Worse, eventually an agreement must be reached in the coming months to keep the government open and to lift the debt ceiling. The Republican would-be Torquemadas demand that the price of lifting the debt ceiling is repealing Obamacare. That is preposterous.
So the Republican leadership (something of an oxymoron these days) will have to cobble together an agreement that likely will depend on Democratic votes to pass the House.
They are likely to offer the president some mix of measures that he has endorsed in one negotiation or another – revenue-neutral corporate tax reform, a chained CPI that will cut Social Security benefits, raising the eligibility age on Medicare, means-testing Medicare, accepting a one-time “fee” for corporate profits stashed abroad – a massive tax break – and using the money to reduce the more ridiculous sequester cuts (particularly for the Pentagon). Then they’ll demand further concessions.
Every concession becomes the starting point for that final deal – from which Republicans then inflict further pain.
The president is right to make the case again and again for the investments we need to generate jobs now and build the foundation for a stronger economy long-term. But his call for a “grand bargain” and his pre-emptive concessions are a miserable way to set up the brutal face-off that will begin once more this fall.
“If you’re asking me if I am optimistic that he’s going to come down here and fight and give the Republicans an offer they can’t refuse — no. The president is not a fighter.”
Smart move. It drives me bonkers that so many of the New Jersey voters I know have fallen for Christie’s “I yam what I yam” schtick (despite terrible economic policies), and it’s got to help if the SEIU gets on board with the smart and progressive Barbara Buono:
For leaders of the nation’s largest union, Democrat Barbara Buono’s selection of union leader Milly Silva to run for lieutenant governor transformed New Jersey’s governor’s race into a national referendum on working class issues and the labor movement. That belief was reinforced by the Christie campaign’s dismissal of Silva yesterday as “wholly unqualified” and a “special-interest organizer.”
George Gresham, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1199 Healthcare Workers East, to which Silva belongs, pledged that the SEIU would go all out raising money and mobilizing volunteers to support Buono and Silva, the first labor leader to run for statewide office in New Jersey in 70 years.
“We see this not just as a New Jersey race, but as a national election focused directly on the needs of working people, especially now that we have a labor leader on the ticket who is a working mother and a Latina and understands the needs of working families,” Gresham said in an interview after Silva gave a rousing speech to a hotel ballroom packed mainly with union people. Continue reading “‘He’s not a leader, he’s a bully’”→
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama is extending a new proposal to Republicans that he hopes will break the political gridlock on budget negotiations, offering to cut corporate tax rates in exchange for job investments.
White House officials say just because they’re at an impasse with congressional Republicans over a grand bargain on reducing the deficit doesn’t mean they shouldn’t look for other areas of agreement. So Obama plans to use a trip to an Amazon.com distribution center in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Tuesday to propose a “grand bargain for middle-class jobs.”
