Author Archives: Chris Savage (aka Eclectablog)

Obama tries to end Big Oil subsidies. Will the GOP let him?

Posted on March 27, 2012 | 2 Comments

Subsidizing hugely profitable companies is a good idea why again?

President Obama is leading the charge on ending taxpayer subsidies to the massively profitable oil companies. This week, the Senate voted in a procedural vote on Senate bill 2204, the Repeal Big Oil Subsidies Act, to do just that. The vote was a lopsided 92-4 but that’s not because Senate Republicans actually want to end these subsidies. It’s because, for some reason, they think this is a winning issue for them and that it will go down in flames in the end while making the Obama administration look bad in light of rising gas prices.

The Obama administration smartly disagrees. They want to have this national conversation. Why? Because rising gas prices are tracking corporate profits quite nicely as it turns out. In other words, the only ones taking a hit on the rising cost of oil are consumers, not the oil companies.
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Posted in Do The Right Thing, Eclectablog, Read Me!

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Rush (the band) asks Rush (the human swine) to stop using their music

Posted on March 7, 2012 | 12 Comments

What a Rush

Via a Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog! Go! exclusive, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neal Peart of Rush have asked Rush Limbaugh to stop using their magnificent music on his Hate Show.

Yesterday, I contacted Anthem Entertainment and Rush (the band) about Rush Limbaugh’s airing of its music on his show, and today I was exclusively informed that the legendary Canadian rock group has formally demanded that the Rush Limbaugh Program stop using its music on the air.

For years now, Rush Limbaugh has been playing Rush music (get it?) as bumpers out of his commercial breaks, including the tracks “Bravado” and “The Spirit of Radio”. In fact, when Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke and remarked about seeing sex tapes of Fluke in exchange for birth control pills, Limbaugh was playing the popular Rush track “The Spirit of Radio” under his rant.

Thankfully, that ends today.

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Posted in Culture Critic, Do The Right Thing, Eclectablog, Now Hear This!

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Ann Arbor teen who fought "anti"-bully bill takes on another "Bully" issue

Posted on March 2, 2012 | 6 Comments

Look out world, here comes Katy Butler. Again.

Last November, I wrote about an amazing teenager from Ann Arbor named Katy Butler (HERE and HERE.) She and her friend Carson Borbely put a petition on Change.org to try to force legislative change on what became known as the “License to Bully Bill”.

Well, Katy is back at it. Because she has been such an activist on the issue of bullying, starting at the tender age of 16 and continuing now that she’s 17, she is very well-informed about the issue. She recently found out about a new documentary film called “BULLY” that follows several teens who are dealing with bullies and reveals the impact this has on them and their family and friends.

But there was a problem.
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Posted in Do The Right Thing, Eclectablog, Read Me!, Respect

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My piece in The Nation on Michigan's Emergency Manager law

Posted on February 16, 2012 | 5 Comments

Michigan’s Emergency Managers in the national spotlight

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

In the current issue The Nation magazine, I have a piece titled “The Scandal of Michigan’s Emergency Managers” which is a general overview of Public Act 4, Michigan’s Emergency Manager law. For regular Eclectablog readers, there isn’t much new there but for those who haven’t been following, it’s likely to be a bit of a bombshell.

Excerpt after the jump.
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Posted in Eclectablog, Now Hear This!, Read Me!

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Pete Hoekstra pulls racist website down, Debbie Stabenow raises over $150K from it

Posted on February 12, 2012 | 5 Comments

Debbie Stabenow: 1, Pete Hoekstra: 0

After the devastating news coverage of the past week over the racist ad and website put up by Pete Hoekstra, he has now redirected Chinese-themed www.debbiespenditnow.com to his own website www.petespenditnot.com. The YouTube video is still up, however, with over a million views. Comments and ratings are still turned off for the very obvious reasons. On his new site is a new ad without the anti-China references.

Meanwhile, a money bomb for Senator Debbie Stabenow based on reaction to Hoekestra’s odious ad and website resulted in a big haul: over $150,000.

Donors have poured more than $150,000 into Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s campaign in response to an ad run this week by GOP rival Pete Hoekstra. [...]

Stabenow’s campaign asked donors to help her raise $144,000 in response to Hoekstra’s first ad, the amount his campaign planned to spend airing it.

Stabenow campaign officials report raising more than $150,000 as of Friday morning.

I’m chalking that up as a win for Debbie Stabenow. You can contribute to her campaign HERE.

Cross-posted from Eclectablog. Photo credit: Anne C. Savage

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Posted in Criminally Stupid, Eclectablog, Now That's Some Racist Bullsh*t

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Racist Hoekstra ad reframes the conversation, but not how he wanted it to (& Dave Weigel is wrong.)

Posted on February 7, 2012 | 7 Comments

Missed it by THAT much

Pete Hoekstra is nearly giddy about all the attention his racist ad had garnered.

Hoekstra, a former Republican congressman from Holland, stood his ground Monday, saying the ad did what he wanted: It drew a clear contrast between himself and Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

[...]

“We knew we were taking an aggressive approach on this, but we’re in a time when people are fed up with the spending and we wanted to capture that frustration,” Hoekstra said. “It hits Debbie smack-dab between the eyes on the area where she is most vulnerable.”

Let’s have a look at the headlines to see if he has, indeed, reshaped the conversation to talk about Debbie Stabenow’s spendthrift ways.

(many more after the jump)
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Posted in Criminally Stupid, Eclectablog, Now That's Some Racist Bullsh*t

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More on (Moron?) Pete Hoekstra's racist Super Bowl ad

Posted on February 6, 2012 | 14 Comments

You’re in a hole, Pete. Stop digging.

The fallout from Senatorial candidate and racist Pete Hoekstra and his offensive, xenophobic political ad continued unabated today.

Another GOP consultant, Mike Murphy, tweeted that the ad was “really, really dumb”. According the Washington Post, “Foreign Policy magazine managing editor Blake Hounshell called the ad ‘despicable.’”

Ironically, the ad, which seems to blame U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow for the outsourcing that is sending jobs over seas, was not produced in Michigan. Rather, it was made by media strategist Fred Davis of California-based Strategic Perception Inc.. In other words, he outsourced it to another state.

Joan McCarter at Daily Kos reports that Hoekstra spent $150,000 on this monstrosity that, as she put it, “Offend[s] most of the state of Michigan”.

MaddowBlog linked my piece in a post titled “Pete Hoekstra’s viral bait”:

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Posted in Criminally Stupid, Eclectablog, Now That's Some Racist Bullsh*t

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Pete Hoekstra airs offensive, racist ad during Super Bowl XLVI

Posted on February 6, 2012 | 16 Comments

Who thought THAT was a good idea?

“Twitter Pete” Hoekstra, the man who wasn’t even smart enough to buy his own domain during his run for Governor of Michigan, ran an ad during this year’s Super Bowl that was so blatantly racist and offensive to Asians that even GOP consultants are flinching.

The portrayal of a young Asian woman speaking broken English in a Super Bowl ad being run by U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra against Michigan incumbent Debbie Stabenow is bringing charges of racial insensitivity.

GOP consultant Nick De Leeuw flat-out scolded the Holland Republican for the ad.

“Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement,” De Leeuw wrote on his Facebook page Sunday morning. “Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”

Here’s the ad:

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Posted in Criminally Stupid, Eclectablog, Now That's Some Racist Bullsh*t, Political Shenanigans

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Mitt Romney's "Michigan Problem"

Posted on January 24, 2012 | 5 Comments

Regrets, I’ve had a few…

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has a problem. A Michigan Problem. It’s not just that he penned an op-ed for the New York Times calling for the bankruptcy of our domestic vehicle manufacturers. It’s not just that he then doubled down on that statement in one of the presidential debates. It’s not just that, as former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm put it, if he had been president in 2009, our state would be far worse off than it is now (and it ain’t in very good shape at the moment as it is.)

No, it’s also because just last December, he mocked the technology behind latest piece of awesomeness to come out of Detroit: the Ford Fusion.

What’s the Ford Fusion? Just the car that won Autoweek’s Best in Show vehicle at the Detroit International Auto Show a couple of weeks ago. It’s a plug-in hybrid electric car and it is beautiful.

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Posted in Eclectablog, Magic Underpants

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