PushBack Politics
House GOP Didn’t Get Pope’s Memo On Poor Before Slashing Food Stamps
The GOP’s war on the poor can now be seen in new and harsher light. September 20, 2013 | There’s nothing new about the House GOP’s war on America’s poor. They want people to go hungry. They want to deny people healthcare. Those were the bottom lines in votes on Thursday and Friday. The first vote cut $40 billion from food stamps over the next decade, which today assist one in seven households. The second vote cut funding for implementing the Affordable Care Act, including outreach to the poor. Now the GOP’s critics don’t just include progressives and Democrats, they include Pope Francis, who called on people to help the poor after his election in March, and in a just-published interview, decried those with “dogmatic” and “obsessed” views inside the church, especially over human sexuality. The papel interview, which surfaced within hours of the Republican-led House voting to cut billions from food stamps and then from healthcare, underscored just how extreme the GOP’s obsessions have become. There are 61 Republicans who are Catholic in the House; only 15 Republicans opposed the food stamp cuts; only one opposed cutting Obamacare. “This church with which we should be thinking is the home [...]
One Big Trader Lost Millions Betting on Romney, Study Finds
A new academic paper digging into presidential betting in the final weeks of the 2012 election finds that a single trader lost between $4 million and $7 million placing a flurry of Intrade bets on Mitt Romney—perhaps to make the Republican nominee’s chance of victory appear brighter. Two economists who studied the data offer various rationales for the trader’s aggressive wagering on Mr. Romney in the final two weeks of the campaign. The anonymous trader placed 1.2 million pro-Romney contracts, some of which were actually in the form of bets against a Barack Obama victory. The most plausible reason for the betting, the authors conclude, is that “this trader could have been attempting to manipulate beliefs about the odds of victory in an attempt to boost fundraising, campaign morale, and turnout.” The economists, Rajiv Sethi, of Barnard College and Columbia University, and David Rothschild, of Microsoft Research, also analyze the possibility that the trader, who accounted for a third of all the money wagered on Mr. Romney in the last two weeks, could have placed his bets either to hedge on wagers in other markets or simply because he thought the price was good. Source: Wall Street Journal Read more
Obama Says First Lady ‘Scared’ Him Into Kicking Smoking Habit
An open mic caught President Barack Obama candidly explaining Monday why he quit smoking cigarettes. Attending the United Nations General Assemby meeting, Obama asked U.N. Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai about his smoking habit. “I hope you quit smoking,” Obama said. Kiai said he still smokes “sometimes” and asked the president if he still indulged. “No, no, I haven’t had a cigarette in 6 years,” Obama told Kiai. “That’s because I’m scared of my wife.” Obama addressed his own struggles with the addiction in a 2011 video to urge Americans to kick the habit. Read more
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