2011 Apr 28 - Headline News

As America polarizes between freedom and socialism, the Communist Party USA is growing fast.

Bear in mind that the C.P.U.S.A. is only one of more than a dozen significant Marxist organizations now planning chaos on American streets.

http://trevorloudon.com/2011/04/the-communist-party-bounces-back/

GREENFIELD, Wis. - At the last of four events on Rep. Paul Ryan's "listening tour" of his district Thursday, he called on a man in the front row of a high school auditorium, then instantly recognized him.

"You changed clothes!" Ryan told Steve Jozefczyk. The 54-year old salesman from Franklin, Wis., had asked Ryan several critical questions from the front row of an event six hours earlier in Waterford, when he wore a shirt and tie. In Greenfield, it was a black "Faux News" parody T-shirt.

Josefczyk admitted trying to trick Ryan into calling on him again. But Ryan listened anyway. "You have to look at the revenue side and the expense side. And you're afraid to touch revenues," he told the House Budget Committee chairman.

It's a common question, and Ryan has a common response: "Broaden the base," he says. By eliminating tax deductions and shelters for top-earners, "you can shrink or flatten the tax rates for everybody."

With Congress wrapping up a two-week Easter break, lawmakers across the country have been back home meeting with constituents.

The budget - and especially Medicare - is the hot topic everywhere, nowhere more so than in Ryan's southern Wisconsin district. Ryan is the architect of a GOP budget plan that would fundamentally remake the health care program for seniors.

In the district that has elected the 41-year-old congressman seven times, constituents - especially older ones - were largely supportive. The first comment at the first of four stops Thursday - a mostly friendly room in the basement of Waterford Village Hall - came from Ken Thiede, 68-year-old retiree from Rochester, Wis.

"Your opponents are using Scare-Care," Thiede said. "I give you an 'A' for cojones."

Ryan demurred at the word, but the audience laughed. "It's a German term," Thiede said.

[more....]
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-04-28-Paul-Ryan-Republican-town-hall-budget_n.htm

A growing number of Democrats are threatening to defy the White House over the national debt, joining Republican calls for deficit cuts as a requirement for consenting to lift the country’s borrowing limit.

The tension is the latest illustration of how the tea-party-infused GOP is driving the debate in Washington over federal spending. And it shows how the debt issue is testing the Obama administration’s clout as Democrats, particularly those from politically competitive states, resist White House arguments against setting conditions on legislation to raise the debt ceiling.

The push-back has come in recent days from Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a freshman who is running for reelection next year. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) told constituents during the Easter recess that he would not vote to lift the debt limit without a “real and meaningful commitment to debt reduction.”

Even Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), generally a stalwart White House ally, is undecided on the issue and is “hopeful” that a debt-ceiling bill can be attached to a measure to cut the federal deficit, said her spokesman, Linden Zakula. Klobuchar is also up for reelection next year.

Months ago it seemed unthinkable that Congress might refuse to raise the borrowing limit. Leaders in both parties agreed that failing to do so would risk a default by the U.S. government, which could send interest rates soaring and cut off Social Security checks, as well as salaries for combat troops.

[more...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/debt-ceiling-more-democrats-threaten-to-vote-against-raising-borrowing-limit/2011/04/28/AF5KvY8E_story.html

This DAY in History:

Apr 28, 1945:
Benito Mussolini executed

On this day in 1945, "Il Duce," Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland.

The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options. Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the communist partisans, who had been fighting the remnants of roving Italian fascist soldiers and thugs in the north, would try him as a war criminal, he settled on escape to a neutral country.

He and his mistress made it to the Swiss border, only to discover that the guards had crossed over to the partisan side. Knowing they would not let him pass, he disguised himself in a Luftwaffe coat and helmet, hoping to slip into Austria with some German soldiers. His subterfuge proved incompetent, and he and Petacci were discovered by partisans and shot, their bodies then transported by truck to Milan, where they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/benito-mussolini-executed