A landmark piece of legislation passed during the lame duck session that puts more regulations in place to guard our country’s food supply than any law in many decades. And the GOP is going to try to make sure the food safety law doesn’t get funded. The legislation would greatly strengthen the regulatory hand of the Food and Drug Administration, […]

Just a quick update to let you know that I have switched over from the old Blogger commenting system to Disqus. You don’t have to but you can sign up for a quick and easy (and FREE!) Disqus account. This will allow you to track your commenting on any Disqus comment-containing blog. I’m currently importing comments from the Blogger system […]

In the flurry of activity of the 111th Congress lame duck session, a nice piece of progressive legislation passed with little notice or fanfare. But it’s a BFD for renewable energy. As part of the tax cut deal negotiated by President Obama with the Republicans, a key section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Section 1603, was extended. […]

Have you heard about the Obama administration group that ended 2010 $1,600,000,000 UNDER budget? Probably not. It was the United States Census Bureau who completed their Herculean task and came in 22% under budget. The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that it is 22 percent under budget for the 2010 Census, largely thanks to the unanticipated cooperation of the American […]

I guess you can say you have “arrived” when you pick up a recurrent troll and we now have a full-fledged Eclectatroll. This person (not sure if it’s a man or a woman) has bravely adopted the very-creative nom de plume of “Anonymous” so we’ll just have to call them Eclectatroll. Here are some of their most recent comments. In […]

You know that health insurance reform bill that got passed last year? The one that so many on the right claim is a “Big Government takeover of health care” and so many on the left said was completely worthless? Below are the dozen provisions that kicked in yesterday (from the Kaiser Family Foundation). Minimum Medical Loss Ratio for InsurersRequires health […]

File this is in the “Are you fucking kidding me?” category: Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) has sponsored legislation to force the state to conduct all monetary transactions with U.S. gold or silver coins. Pre-1965 silver coins, silver eagles, and gold eagles shall be the exclusive medium which the state shall use to make any payments whatsoever to any […]

Well hallelujah: Joe Miller has given up his legal fight to wrest a U.S. Senate seat away from incumbent Lisa Murkowski, but promised local supporters and national TV audiences on Friday that he will continue the battle for conservative political values. Do you think anyone will call Joe Miller on all the precious and dear taxpayer money he wasted fighting […]

Just a reminder for all our Obama-supporter friends that today is the last day to order one of Anne’s amazing photomosaic posters of our President for only $5 (they are usually $20) plus shipping. Details are HERE. Happy New Year, everyone! I’m just sayin’…

Still wrapping my head around the fact that country music legend Merle Haggard said this It’s really almost criminal what they do with our president. There seems to be no shame or anything. They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he’s doing certain things that he’s not. It’s just a big old political game that I […]

I’m usually not one for New Year’s resolutions but a diary last week on Daily Kos got me thinking. The diarist asked us to consider our political goals for 2011 in the following categories: Personal Family Financial State Political National Political Policy So, here are mine. Feel free to share yours in the comments. Personal: Write a book (which I […]