They MADE the predatory banksters give them loans, by gawd

Bloomberg Businessweek jumped completely off of the rails with their magazine’s cover image this week. Have a look:

The title says “The Great American Housing Rebound — Flips. No-look bids. 300 percent returns. What could possibly go wrong?”

A larger image and my rant about this after the jump.

Lead on, Lon!

Dear Mr. Johnson,
First of all, sincere congratulations on your recent election to the position of Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. I was impressed that you ran a completely positive campaign that focused on your own strengths and vision and didn’t resort to tearing down your opponent. That one thing makes me confident that your stated desire to move forward with a unified party, united in our focus on winning back control of our state, is not just sincere but entirely possible.

Having spent a great deal of time speaking with people around the state, including you, and covering your rise to the chair of the Party, I want to take advantage of my cyber megaphone to share some thoughts with you. Some are from people I have talked with, most are my own, and I offer them as a perspective from “the trenches” as someone who has put considerable time and effort organizing at the local level, knocking doors, making phone calls and getting others to do the same.

Read the rest of my letter after the jump.

Aw geez…

Michigan Republican Tom Casperson opened his mouth and removed all doubt about his status as a tea party fool this week when he answered “don’t know” when asked by radio show host Michael Patrick Shiels if President Obama was born in the USA. Casperson joins the ranks of the 37% of Michigan Republican Party delegates that believe President Obama was not born a US citizen, an astonishing figure given that he has released both the long-form and the short-form versions of his birth certificate. There’s also the fact that a birth announcement appeared in a Hawaiian newspaper the day he was born.

Much more with audio after the jump.

People tend to not like being lied to, over and over On Tuesday, Politico reported what the House GOP sees as their secret weapon in winning the political battle over the sequester: Their unpopularity. “And, for once, the GOP is buffeted by its unpopularity: House Republicans kept their majority with mid-teen approval ratings after two years of political warfare,” Jake […]

At the Michigan Democratic Convention last weekend, the House and Senate Dems previewed two new videos that highlight their newest members and look forward toward the future. I was really impressed with both of them and tracked them down to show here at Eclectablog.

(By the way, my vote for the best one is Senate version. Game on, House Dems, your turn to one-up the Senate Dems! LOL.)

Enjoy (after the jump.)

What we REALLY need is an “OFM” — Organizing for Michigan A LITTLE HISTORY My involvement with Obama for America/Organizing for America/OFA goes back to the spring of 2008. From the very first meeting with local Obama fellows leading up to the house meeting we held in our living room later that month, I was fully “in”. I assumed a […]

And he accuses US of fighting amongst ourselves? Governor, please.

With all of the attention that was paid these past two weeks between the race for the Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, it was easy to miss the fact that the Michigan Republican Party had a highly-contested race themselves. When the dust had settled at their convention on Saturday, incumbent chair Bobby Schostak had won a narrow 833 to 768 vote over tea party challenger Todd Courser, a favorite of the so-called “Freedom Caucus”. Courser ran on a platform of “liberty and constitutional conservatism”.

The election was so close that Governor Snyder made a surprise appearance at Michigan GOP convention, taking time from the National Governors Association meeting in progress in Washington, D.C. to make an impassioned plea for Schostak’s candidacy. He was even seen pulling people aside to lobby for their votes.

He then accused Democrats of doing the very thing his party was engaged in as he gave his speech. Details after the jump.

This should be a non-partisan issue

As I wrote about last week, the Justice Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party held a discussion panel at the statewide convention on Saturday titled “Citizens United v. FEC – The Invisible ‘Person’ in Michigan Elections”. Organized by former Washtenaw County Democratic Party Chair and well-known Michigan attorney and activist Stu Dowty, the panel discussion was wide-ranging and covered everything from undisclosed donors in our judicial elections to the repeal of the odious Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.

My write-up after the jump.

THIS is how it SHOULD be done

It was a day that promised to be memorable and the 2013 Michigan Democratic Convention at the Cobo Center in Detroit did not disappoint. In addition to electing the Party Chair, Michigan Democrats are coming off a 2012 election where they experienced mixed results. On one hand, we elected President Barack Obama by 9 points, Senator Debbie Stabenow by more than 20 points, and picked up 5 seats in the Republican-dominated House. On the other hand, we still don’t control any major power position in Michigan whatsoever.

So Michigan Democrats are fired up. Based on the number of voting delegates, 3,677 compared with the Republicans paltry 1,500 and change, Michigan Democrats are more fired up than ever before and poised to fight back HARD in 2014.

The day ended unexpectedly when Mark Brewer withdrew his nomination for Chair of the MDP, paving the way for Lon Johnson to be voted in by unanimous consent. My report after the jump.

Racism shall not be tolerated

A second nurse has joined Tonya Battle in filing a lawsuit against Flint hospital Hurley Medical Center. Carlotta Armstrong claims that, like Battle, she was subjected to racial discrimination when administrators complied with a blatantly racist father’s demand that no African American nurses care of his baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Details on this and more after the jump.

Won’t somebody please think of the corporations???

In one of my favorite books of all time, Infinite Jest by the late David Foster Wallace, in an effort to raise money, the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.) has sold the naming rights to each year to corporations. It’s called “Subsidized Time” and, over the time frame of the book, these are the years:

CHRONOLOGY OF ORGANIZATION OF NORTH AMERICAN NATIONS’ REVENUE ENHANCING SUBSIDIZED TIME™, BY YEAR

1. Year of the Whopper
2. Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
3. Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar
4. Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken
5. Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster
6. Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office Or Mobile (sic)
7. Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland
8. Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
9. Year of Glad

It’s an hilarious bit extrapolation of today’s trend of corporate naming of stadiums and sports venues. However, one Michigan Republican seems hellbent on taking us down that slippery slope far faster than you might imagine.

Click through for details.