...will he ever win?

Something tells me "Nevermind" would be the first thing Gilda Radner (rest in peace) would tell Komen right now.

Open Thread below....

February 07, 2012 04:30 AM

Randy Travis was arrested for public intoxication early this morning in Sanger, Texas. He was in his car, wine drunk, and parked outside of a Baptist church. Sounds like a song to me.

February 07, 2012 04:00 AM

Saturday Night Live had a bit of fun giving Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich a bit of grief for his statement that a moon base could become the 51st state.

February 07, 2012 03:00 AM

Clint Eastwood responded Monday night to the debate over whether response his Super Bowl ad for Chrysler was an implicit endorsement of President Obama.

In the ad, Eastwood declares that it is “halftime in America” and that “Motor City is fighting again.”

Read full article >>

February 07, 2012 02:03 AM

February 07, 2012 02:00 AM

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Monday asserted that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was "uniquely unqualified" for the GOP nomination because of the similarities between health care laws in Massachusetts and President Barack Obama's health care reforms, including the repeatedly debunked claim that "death panels" would ration care to seniors.

Speaking at a ballroom across the street from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Santorum pointed to a report (PDF) from the the non-partisan organization Families USA that found at least 15 major similarities between Obama's Affordable Care Act and the reforms Romney enacted in Massachusetts.

"Both create government panels to dictate quality and cost containment," Santorum explained. "Some of you may be familiar with the Independent Payment Advisory Board -- which is a board separate from Congress, independent of Congress -- that President Obama created to control health care costs. How? By cutting reimbursements to doctors and hospitals under the Medicare program. Well, Gov. Romney has a similar program called the Council on Health Quality and Costs."

"Some people refer to these types of boards as death panels," he added. "Why? Because they ultimately decide to ration care to those procedures and people because they don't believe these procedures are effective in providing care, that the utilization isn't worth the costs."

"So, again, you have government making decisions and rationing and apportioning care based on research that shows what outcomes are dictated by the research that's out there."

In 2009, Politifact named "death panels," a term thought to have been first used by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), as their "Lie of the Year."

February 07, 2012 01:00 AM

February 07, 2012 12:49 AM

Seems like a good time for the citizens of Maine to march on the state capitol, doesn't it? Because these cuts aren't necessary - they're just considered desirable by the crazy Teabagger governor who managed to get himself elected:

AUGUSTA, Maine — Medicaid spending is a matter of urgency almost everywhere in the country right now, but in few places is the urgency as palpable as it is here, where the governor refers to the federal-state health insurance program for the poor as “welfare,” says it’s necessary to eliminate coverage for 65,000 adults, and wants to stop paying room and board for some 2,000 elders who live in group homes.

All these ideas are part of Republican Governor Paul LePage’s plan to close a $220 million hole in the state’s biennial Medicaid budget.

“If we are to bring our welfare system to a manageable level that Maine can afford,” LePage insists, “we must make the necessary structural changes … The state can no longer use gimmicks to fill the hole.”

The size of Maine’s Medicaid shortfall is substantial, but it pales in comparison to gaps in many other states. In fact, health experts in Maine say the program has survived far bigger shortfalls in recent years without cutting the rolls. Still, LePage argues that the program can no longer provide a “free lunch” to poor 19- and 20-year olds, or to healthy adults responsible for the care of others.

Some of LePage’s proposed Medicaid cuts, such as eliminating dental care, physical therapy and chiropractic services, are not too different from ones that governors in both parties are recommending in states across the country. Neither are his proposed reductions in payments to hospitals and doctors or limits on prescription drug coverage.

But LePage also wants to get at enrollment, and this is what makes him, at the moment, the most draconian of the governors when it comes to health policy. In his January 24 state of the state speech, LePage argued that “we have encouraged people to rely on the taxpayers, rather than rely on themselves.” The cuts to enrollment, he argues, are necessary to shore up the state’s safety net so it can continue to care for its most vulnerable residents — children, elders and the disabled.

But for many of Maine’s citizens, the enrollment cuts would be life-changing.

February 07, 2012 12:00 AM

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees launched a new campaign last week taking on Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who is pushing a new assault on the working families of her state in an attempt to take away the collective bargaining rights of state workers. Brewer is following the pattern inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and pursued by governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is about to wipe out collective bargaining rights for public service workers in Arizona with a slate of new anti-worker bills. It’s the latest orchestrated attack from extreme right-wing lawmakers, think tanks, and their corporate cronies who are hell-bent on wiping out what’s left of the middle class.

They couldn’t be more wrong. Attacking teachers, fire fighters and police and other public service workers will do nothing to create jobs or help Arizona’s budget.

AFSCME launched a petition in opposition to Brewer's assault on union rights:

To the lawmakers, governors, policy-wonks, and corporate backers who are dead set on destroying unions in America:

Your latest attempt to dismantle workers' rights in Arizona will not go unnoticed.

Firefighters, police officers, nurses, school bus drivers, home health care workers, public servants and workers of all kinds will not stand by while you scapegoat us – the people who play by the rules and do our fair share – and take away our rights by abusing your power and forcing through your extreme anti-worker laws.

No way. That’s all. NO WAY. We will fight back wherever you attack us. Because when you attack workers you also attack the work we do. Work that matters to every single person in this country – taking care of your grandparents, picking up your trash, making sure your kids are drinking clean water, putting out your fires, and so much more.

And in the end, we will win because the American people are overwhelmingly with us – they are us.

Where you see public workers and unions as a nuisance to get rid of, we see a movement. We see a movement of public and private workers, of moms and dads, of grandparents and students. We are the middle class and we will remember your abuse of power each and every time that we vote. That’s our promise.

February 06, 2012 11:00 PM

Newt Gingrich has dropped his Virginia quest, Michele Bachmann already found the perfect candidate, a House member was tricked by the Onion and Mitt Romney is changing targets.

Make sure to sign up to get “Afternoon Fix” in your e-mail inbox every day by 5 (ish) p.m!

Read full article >>

February 06, 2012 10:08 PM

As Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite correctly pointed out, emergency contraception or what is known as the "morning after pill" is not an "abortion pill" and it's not covered by the Preventive Services Mandate that has all the right wingers worked up because the Catholic Church and other religious institutions are going to have to offer contraceptive benefits to their members and employees.

That didn't stop George Will from conflating the two on This Week with host George Stephanopoulos failing to correct him after he lied.

Here's more from Christopher -- This Week Host Lets George Will Lie About Contraceptive Mandate And ‘Abortion-Inducing Drugs’.

Transcript below the fold.

WILL: This is not about women's health. This is about providing 300,000 abortions a year. They -- Planned Parenthood cleverly cast this to say we are in the mammogram business. They're not in the mammogram business. They're in the referral of mammograms.

This showed two extraordinary things, George. First, the American left cares about ending wars and they care about poverty and they care about the environment. What they really care about, when they're not perfunctory, is when you touch abortion, and historians will marvel that American liberalism in the first part of the 21st century is defined as defense of abortion. Furthermore...

(CROSSTALK)

WILL: Second -- wait just a -- just a moment. Second, all these people describing themselves as pro-choice said it is illegitimate to choose not to be involved in abortion. And a much more important decision politically that was taken this week was the Obama administration saying that Catholic institutions have no choice -- and this was applauded by pro-choice people -- have no choice but to provide contraception, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization.

February 06, 2012 10:00 PM

Somehow, that bumbling socialist usurper in the White House who has constantly apologized for America -- has the approval of half of the country.

Obama’s overall approval rating stands at 50 percent, the highest in a Post-ABC News poll since a brief run above 50 percent immediately after Osama bin Laden was killed in early May.

But what about all those Real Americans in Real America?

Overall, 55 percent of those who are closely following the campaign say they disapprove of what the GOP candidates have been saying.

But surely, a man who made his $250M outsourcing creating jobs will mop the floor with the Kenyan Marxist, right?

In a general-election test, Obama leads Romney 52 to 43 percent among all Americans; more narrowly, 51 to 45 percent, among registered voters. Among all adults, it’s Obama’s first time topping 50 percent in a head-to-head matchup with Romney since July; it’s his first time ever above that point among registered voters.

For those keeping score at home, the Black Jimmy Carter is currently outperforming the Great Leader who was supposed to usher in a permanent Republican majority. Yes, we've got a long way to go on unemployment -- but as the ad says, "pessimism never created a job."

How's that taste, GOP?

February 06, 2012 09:01 PM

Democrats have been saying for a long time that the House could be in play in 2012, and now some Republicans are starting to join them.

“For Democrats to take 25 seats, they will need a wave,” former congressman Tom Davis wrote in an op-ed in The Hill recently. “Continued polarization and obstruction could create such a wave.”

Read full article >>

February 06, 2012 08:27 PM

While Chrysler’s Super Bowl ad has become a political football, an actual campaign ad aired during the game is also causing controversy.

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra (R) aired his first campaign ad of the cycle Sunday night, and Asian-American groups are crying foul.

Read full article >>

February 06, 2012 08:26 PM

This one seems really dumb as the National Football League seems to be saying Chrysler infringed on its copyright of "Halftime." Another odd thing about this is that there are plenty of other versions still to be found at YouTube, but the official one at the YouTube Chrysler channel was taken down.

(EDIT: It's working now, probably after someone with some clout rectified the situation.)

Marketwatch has some details and reaction to the ad.

The Clint Eastwood ad during the Super Bowl — catch it here because it’s been blocked by YouTube after the NFL alleged a copyright infringement — could be viewed as a simple celebration of the recovery of bankrupt Chrysler. But the political overtones were easy to see as well: “Halftime in America” could be interpreted as a rallying call for a second term for President Barack Obama, who pushed ahead with a bailout of Chrysler and General Motors (read more on GM’s financial results on WSJ.com) despite objections from Republicans, including his likely presidential opponent, Mitt Romney.

“Saving the America Auto Industry: Something Eminem and Clint Eastwood can agree on,” tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, the White House spokesman. Added David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist: “Powerful spot.” Filmmaker Michael Moore was a bit more direct (and apologies for the Twitterese): “Your sermon seemed 2 b a call 2 give O his ‘second half.’”

The former Republican mayor of Carmel, Calif. wasn’t universally loved. “WTH? Did I just see Clint Eastwood fronting an auto bailout ad???” said Michelle Malkin, the conservative blogger. “I think Clint Eastwood’s credentials as a conservative have been overrated for some time,” added David Limbaugh, the brother of Rush and himself a conservative author.

The right-winger's unsurprisingly negative reaction is made all the more ironic considering what pains Chrysler took to make the ad as "inoffensive" as possible, even going so far as to edit out pro-union signs. Via The Nation:

At the fifty-second point in the ad, images from last year’s mass pro-union protests in Madison, Wisconsin, were featured.

But something was missing: union signs.

The images from Madison were taken from a historic video by Matt Wisniewski, a Madison photographer whose chronicling of the protests drew international attention and praise. Wisniewski’s work went viral, and was even featured in a video by rocker Tom Morello.

Chrysler used Wisniewski's award-winning video with permission. But the union presence—and some Wisconsin history—was lost in translation.

February 06, 2012 08:00 PM

Susan G. Komen for the Cure Vice President Karen Handel drove the foundation's decision to defund Planned Parenthood for purely political reasons, according to emails reviewed by The Huffington Post.

"The emails show that Karen Handel was behind the entire decision to defund Planned Parenthood," The Huffington Post's Laura Bassett told CNN's Soledad O'Brien Monday. "She was behind the strategy to develop the new criteria for who can be funded and she's been behind the PR effort to clean up what's happened since the decision was announced."

"What I understand is that Karen Handel, since she was hired back in April, has been kind of pumping up and magnifying the attacks against Komen and the anti-Planned Parenthood protests and whatnot, and trying to get the board and trying to get Komen leadership on her side as part of this decision to defund Planned Parenthood."

In a posting on her blog last year, Handel made no secret of her opposition to Planned Parenthood.

"First, let me be clear, since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood," she wrote.

In a video posted to YouTube last week, Komen’s Founder and CEO Nancy G. Brinker denied that politics played any role in the decision.

"It was a boldface lie," Bassett explained. "Karen Handel had a political agenda against Planned Parenthood. And I know that Komen founder Nancy Brinker went on Andrea Mitchell Thursday and said that Karen Handel had nothing to do with this; this was not political. That's simply not true. And if you're a cancer charity, you have no business lying to the public about what's going on behind closed doors."

While Komen reversed its decision on Friday and made Planned Parenthood eligible for future grants, many will not be satisfied until Handel is ousted from the organization.

CREDO action, a super PAC run by one San Francisco phone company, has already gathered over 24,000 signatures demanding that Komen fire Handel.

February 06, 2012 07:00 PM

NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg appeared on Meet The Press yesterday to push for gun control, pointing out, "You’d think that if a congresswoman got shot in the head, that would have changed Congress’ views."

If anything, the picture in Congress is even bleaker than Bloomberg suggests. In 2006, the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to make the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) a Senate-confirmed position. Since then, the Senate has been unable to confirm anyone to serve as the chief enforcer of firearms laws due to the combination of gun lobbying and the nearly-unbreakable filibuster. President Obama’s nominee was blocked because he opposes allowing civilians to purchase a weapon capable of punching a baseball-sized hole in 2.5 inches of bulletproof glass.

Not content simply to erect barriers to enforcing federal firearms laws, much of Congress also wants to strip states of their power to enforce reasonable gun regulations. The House recently passed the “National Right To Carry Reciprocity Act,” which forces nearly every state to honor concealed carry licenses issued by the states with the laxest licensing rules. Half of North Carolina concealed carry permit holders with felony convictions have been allowed to keep their permits, and Florida issued 1,700 concealed carry permits to people with “criminal histories, arrest warrants, domestic violence injunctions and misdemeanor convictions for gun-related crimes.” Under this NRA-sponsored bill, all of these permit holders [would] be allowed to carry concealed firearms in 49 of the 50 states.

Nor are federal lawmakers the only ones looking for new and more creative ways to arm the nation. Several states are pushing efforts to force colleges to allow concealed firearms on campus — because clearly what America needs are rooms full of fraternity members packing heat right after they each consumed a case of Milwaukee’s Best. Not to be outdone, Colorado lawmakers are pushing a bill to allow firearms in elementary schools.

As conservative Justice Antonin Scalia explained in D.C. v. Heller, respecting the Second Amendment does not mean filling every building with firearms, or eliminating concealed carry rules, or placing guns in the hands of convicted felons or the mentally ill. Sadly, far too many lawmakers have let the NRA convince them that the myth of the Second Amendment far exceeds the reality.

This "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" ad ran during last night's Super Bowl:

February 06, 2012 06:00 PM

A Chrysler ad aired during the Super Bowl Sunday night has inspired ire among some Republicans and admiration among some Democrats — with both sides seeing a political message that boosts President Obama.

Read full article >>

February 06, 2012 05:52 PM

Depending on the results of Tuesday’s contests, there may be pressure on either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum to drop out of the GOP presidential race.

At which point the other one would have a good shot at beating Mitt Romney head-to-head, right?

Read full article >>

February 06, 2012 05:03 PM

The city of Chicago, at the behest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has taken rigorous steps to ensure enforcement of laws in anticipation of protests during the G8 and NATO summits that will take place in Chicago during May. But protesters are showing little fear in response.

The Mayor now has the ability to permanently install surveillance equipment, deputize federal law enforcement officers from the FBI, ATF, DOJ, as well as state and county police, and even hire private contractors for independent security thanks to a new ordinance that passed the City Council in mid-January.

“I think the city and the mayor have created a circumstance that is unnecessary,” said Ed Yohnka, the director of communications for the Illinois ACLU on Friday.

He said it would have been a better idea for the city to converse about the notion of free expression and encourage it.

“I think what is vexing and is troubling is that there was this sort of hysteria that was built around this, that caused people to overreact and the administration contributed to that with these 'get tough' ordinances,” said Yohnka.

Emanual said in a press release after the ordinance granting him greater security powers was passed, “Working collaboratively with our federal partners, we will provide public safety services for residents and visitors while fulfilling our obligation to protect the public and enforce the laws of the city.”

Meanwhile, AdBusters, the anti-consumerist magazine that put out the call to Occupy Wall Street, has recently released a tactical briefing asking their supporters to Occupy Chicago on May 1. They’re calling it the “Showdown in Chicago” and calling for over 50,000 people to attend.

“This time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights,” States AdBusters’ “tactical briefing.”

Protesters and journalists that have been covering the movement were discussing the call to Occupy Chicago at a crowded sandwich shop in Washington DC on Wednesday.

Sam Jewler, an Occupy DC media group member, called Emanuel a fascist in the way that he’s handled Occupy Chicago. In October, police arrested over 300 protesters for attempting to establish a camp at Grant Park. Despite this, Jeweler said protesters wouldn’t be deterred.

“I think it will be bigger than Occupy Congress,” said Jewler, in reference to the DC gathering on January 17 that attracted over 1,000 Occupy protesters.

Michael Patterson, a particularly vociferous DC protester, said “This will be our Saratoga.” He emphasized the importance of protesting a gathering of the leaders of the most powerful governments and most powerful military alliance in the world.

Luke Rudkowski, a videographer that has gained a following as an activist, said he’d be heading to Chicago to film the protests. Rudkowski has covered and participated in other protests around the world. In 2009, he was in Pittsburgh for the G20 conference of finance ministers and central bank governors.

“I can’t even tell you the respect I lost for humanity there,” said Rudkowski. He said he was pepper-sprayed, beaten and held for half a day shackled in a bus with other protesters. His videos on YouTube from the event show officers using an LRAD sound cannon and him and others being quickly surrounded by police while protesting in a park.

Journalists coming to cover the protests also have to deal with an outdated Illinois law that states it’s a felony to audiotape police activity on public streets or in public parks.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote a long article about the law. She noted that Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told a panel at Loyola University that he endorses video and audio recording of police.

“There’s no arguments when you can look at a videotape and see what happened.” Said McCarthy at the panel.

Tim Pool, a livestream journalist that gained notoriety during Occupy Wall Street, said he will be streaming the protests in Chicago.

“There’s going to be cameras everywhere,” said Pool, who didn’t worry about being singled out by police.

However, Occupy Chicago livestreamer Keilah Becker said she had a run-in with police over the law on Jan. 29. She said she was streaming an arrest during a march when a female police officer came behind her and took her phone. Becker said the officer cancelled her video and didn’t save it to the UStream servers. When the officer asked her what she was doing, Becker told her she was recording what happened around her.

“[The officer] told me I was talking myself into a felony charge,” said Becker. Although eventually the officer relented and gave the phone back, said Becker.

When told of this incident, Yonkah said, “The unfortunate thing is that as of this moment the Illinois law that makes it a felony to audiotape police activity is still in place.”

Questions sent to the Chicago Police regarding the enforcement of this law and the plan for policing the protest were not returned.

However, with the city’s strong stance against Occupy Chicago in October and the new powers granted to the Mayor, it would seem that police appear ready for a showdown with protesters in May.

February 06, 2012 05:00 PM

In Denver, they call Tim Tebow the "Mile High Messiah," but could Americans one day also be calling him president?

Speaking to the Golf Channel's David Feherty on Saturday, the Denver Broncos starting quarterback said that running for office was not out of the question.

"You know for me, it could be something in my future," Tebow explained. "It's something I'll have to think about and if I pray about, you know, I have no idea right now. But possibly."

"It's just a question of names," Feherty said. "We've got Mitt and Newt."

"Do what?" Tebow replied quizzically.

"I mean, why not go with Statler and Waldorf," Feherty joked, referring to two characters from The Muppet Show. "I mean, really. President Tim, that's working for me."

"Who knows what the future holds," Tebow shrugged.

(H/T: NFL.com)

February 06, 2012 04:00 PM

(h/t Heather at VideoCafe)

Why-oh-why is Dana Loesch being invited on the Sunday news shows? The Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart's BigJournalism site deserves no such association with either honest brokers or journalism. Actually, considering the larger panel discussion on the Susan G. Komen controversy and the massive amount of misinformation muddying the issue by Matthew Dowd and George Will, honest brokers and Sunday morning news shows have very little to do with one another either, but I digress.

Loesch is particularly worthy of scorn because she uses a discredited "sting" by the discredited Live Action organization, led by the discredited Lila Rose to amplify her point:

Now, you would think at some point in the past — it's been a year to the date since Live Action called Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states to ask whether or not they had mammography machines. You would think that at that point — they'd had a year — Planned Parenthood would invest in obtaining licenses to operate and own mammography machines and give mammograms so they could have avoided this whole thing.

Yeah, about that lack of mammography machines ... turns out, the whole thing was a sham.

HOAX EXPOSED: Rose's Video Does Not Establish That Planned Parenthood Ever Discussed Mammograms Provided By The Organization

Richards Discussed "Access" To Mammograms Through Planned Parenthood - Not Mammograms Actually Provided By The Organization. In the video at the center of Rose's hoax, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards discusses access to health care - including mammograms - not actual health care services provided by Planned Parenthood. Discussing GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood during an appearance on The Joy Behar Show, Richards said:

If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning. You know, mammograms, cancer screenings, cervical cancer. [CNN, The Joy Behar Show, 2/21/11, via Nexis]

Pro-Life Activist Jill Stanek: Richards Was "Correct." From Stanek's blog:

Richards said:

If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning -- you know, mammograms, cancer screenings, cervical cancer.

The fact is not one Planned Parenthood in America performs mammograms. All PPs do are refer for mammograms.

Conservatives want to obfuscate the issue. Komen didn't retract funds because Planned Parenthood doesn't offer mammograms. It never has. I've had a wellness check-up from Planned Parenthood (I was between jobs and didn't have insurance for about a year) and it included a manual breast examination as well as instructions on the proper methods of self-examination (an important tool in early detection, which leads to higher survival rates). Had they detected anything or if I had belonged to any of the high risk groups, they would have referred me for a mammogram. That service could save potentially thousands of women's lives.

And waste-of-intelligence hack pundits like Dana Loesch want to keep that from them.

February 06, 2012 03:00 PM

Marco Rubio has said he’s not interested in being vice president. Repeatedly.

But the Florida Republican senator has thrust himself into the middle of a high-profile, hot-button controversy — a move that will likely spark more talk of his future plans.

Read full article >>

February 06, 2012 02:47 PM

As a Catholic, I'm getting a little tired of right-wingers like Newt Gingrich spewing nonsense like this.

Newt Gingrich sought to make inroads among religious voters Sunday, accusing President Obama of having “basically declared war on the Catholic Church.”

Gingrich, who converted to Catholicism himself in 2009 (his third wife, Callista, sings in a Catholic choir), was speaking about the Obama administration decision this week to require church-affiliated employers to cover birth control drugs in their health plans, regardless of religious beliefs.

Gingrich, in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, said the decision represented “a radical Obama administration imposing secular rules on religion.”

Since Newt is a new convert, he might be surprised to learn that,

Some 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used contraceptive methods banned by the church, research published on Wednesday showed.

And,

A Le Moyne College/Zogby International national poll in 2007 found 67 percent of American Catholics disagree with the church teaching that artificial birth control is wrong.

And,

In particular, Catholic voters do not approve of schools teaching abstinence-only programs in schools. Six in ten (64 percent) oppose requiring high school sex education programs to only teach abstinence. They also believe insurance companies should be required to cover and pharmacists required to sell birth control pills. Three-quarters of Catholics support requiring health insurance plans to cover birth control pills (75 percent). Nearly eight in ten (78 percent) oppose allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.

Let's get real, shall we? The U.S. government is actually on the same side of this "war" as most American Catholics. Those "secular rules" Gingrich whines about the Obama administration enforcing are already being embraced by church members, whether he knows it or not.

What really annoys me is that right-wing partisans like Gingrich side with the Vatican when it's convenient and ignore it when it's not. Want to discuss the Vatican's position on the death penalty, the Iraq War, global warming, torture or Social Security and Medicare, Newt?

Didn't think so.

February 06, 2012 02:00 PM

Hey, everyone. It's good to be back. Belatedly, I hope you all had a nice holiday season.

Anyway, I really thought that if anything could bring America together, it was Madonna's reprehensibly awful Super Bowl halftime show yesterday. It was so bad, we should get Romney to fire whomever was responsible for it. (Nothing says the American heartland, or Indiana, quite like Madonna, "Vogue," and Roman Empire kitsch. Was Mellencamp too busy?) But then I took to Twitter and Facebook and found that a lot of people just looooved it. And so we have a new divide, and this one, too, is unbridgeable. There's just no accounting for terrible taste. But... onwards!

No More Mister Nice Blog: Romney's speeches, like the man himself, are devoid of uplift, offering sourness, not hope.

The Grey Matter: Romney isn't just gaffe-prone, he's a bad politician who can't go off-script without failing.

The Impolitic: He may not have much of a hope, but there are still good reasons to root for Newt.

Beeryblog: Can progressives really like a violent, war-like sport like football? (Yes, we can!)

Round-up by Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction. I'll be here all week.

Send tips to mbru@crooksandliars.com.

February 06, 2012 01:00 PM

Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are fighting for the right to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.

But they both lost that battle in Nevada — to Ron Paul.

Entrance polls from Saturday’s Nevada caucuses show Romney racking up huge wins among the vast majority of demographics, which isn’t surprising given that he took about 50 percent of the vote.

Read full article >>

February 06, 2012 11:30 AM

Newt Gingrich predicted during a press conference following Saturday’s Nevada caucuses that he would emerge as the GOP front-runner again by the Texas primary.

The one problem with that: We have no idea when Texas will hold its primary. A spat over redistricting is likely to push it beyond its scheduled date, April 3.

Read full article >>

February 06, 2012 05:42 AM

"Putting on the Mitt" courtesy of my buddy, Kenny Pick.

Kenny can be heard every Tuesday and Friday from 7:00 to 10:00 pm Eastern on "Turn Up The Night", part of the Radio Or Not network.

Open thread below...

February 06, 2012 04:30 AM

Sorry. I kind of had to. What's your favorite Madonna song?

February 06, 2012 04:00 AM

Again, proving that the best Sunday morning news-of-the-day conversation is to be found on Up with Chris Hayes, Hayes had on four women to discuss the Komen/Planned Parenthood backlash. Imagine that! Women like Amy Goodman, Anne Marie Slaughter, Melissa Harris-Perry and Michelle Goldberg to discuss the greater political ramifications of the reproductive health argument, instead of conservative white men. Will wonders never cease?

What appeared to catch the Komen Foundation and other conservative backers off guard was the immediate and grassroots rejection of this continued politicization of women's health issues by the conservative agenda. In an earlier segment of the show, Goldberg surmised that this is has as much to do with the insularity of conservative thinking (as evidence by Komen's continued help from Ari Fleischer) as well as the class issues, as Harris-Perry suggests in this clip. When an estimated one in five Americans have sought treatment for a wide array of health issues from Planned Parenthood (and that includes men) over their lifetime, it is truly a bridge too far for conservatives to threaten the very existence of this organization.

When one in eight women will receive a diagnosis of breast cancer, but studies show that women of lower socio-economic levels and minorities have significantly less positive outcomes, it makes the services that Planned Parenthood all that more critical and the reason so many every day citizens rose up to push back against Komen.

Republican, Democrat or Independent, the truth of the matter is that we are *not* a center-right country, and when conservatives choose to push that agenda, it all of us that remind them that we will continue to fight for the rights of those who don't get a voice in the discussion.

Also worth reading: Barbara Ehrenreich--Welcome to Cancerland

February 06, 2012 03:00 AM

(Warning: Some images can be very disturbing.)

Not exactly the Occupy Wall Street movement, but certainly government forces that openly murder innocent civilians amidst open condemnation from the international community is something we can all stand united against, and in solidarity with the people of Syria.

The Syrian forces continued with one of the deadliest attacks of the 11-month uprising on Sunday, pounding parts of Homs even as residents combed through rubble looking for victims of a sustained barrage over the weekend that killed scores of people.

Again, I caution that these images are very graphic by nature and can be quite disturbing.

February 06, 2012 02:00 AM

In Catholic masses all over this country, priests are injecting politics into their sermons, condemning the Obama administration for the new Health and Human Services regulations that religious institutions must offer contraceptive benefits to its members. It doesn't require members to violate their personal beliefs by taking advantage of the benefit, mind you. But this new regulation acknowledges that there are some who may work in a Catholic hospital who may not have the same stricture against contraceptives and want it to be part of their health services. But that's perhaps a too nuanced view:

The Catholic Church reacted strongly Friday to a White House defense of new rules that will force many religious employers to provide contraception to their workers in government-mandated health insurance plans.

"The White House information about this is a combination of misleading and wrong," said Anthony Picarello, general counsel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He said the bishops would "pursue every legal mandate available to them to bring an end to this mandate. That means legislation, litigation and public advocacy. All options are on the table."

The new regulations were announced last month by the Department of Health and Human Services as part of an effort to guarantee that women receive free "preventive" healthcare services, including cervical cancer screening, breast pumps — and contraception. They require employers to include those services in their employee health insurance plans by August.

Religious institutions can qualify for an exemption if the services violate their beliefs, but not if they employ large numbers of people who do not share those beliefs. [..]

In a blog post Wednesday, the White House responded that the new rules won't force anyone to buy contraceptives. Cecilia Muñoz, director of the Domestic Policy Council, wrote: "Over half of Americans already live in the 28 states that require insurance companies [to] cover contraception." These include such large states as California and New York, she said.

The Catholic bishops shot back Friday, saying it was misleading to say that no one would be forced to "buy" contraceptives, because everyone who contributes to an insurance plan will be paying a portion of the subsidy that provides for free contraception.

Alex Castellanos and David Brooks are only too happy to pick up the bishops' mantle and further the meme that this is a solid shot across the bow of religious liberty in Obama's war on religion. How nice of them to legitimize Newt Gingrich that way. Rachel Maddow and Xavier Becerra try gamely to point out that refusing contraceptive benefits in the twenty first century is beyond ridiculous, but of course, host David Gregory gives Alex Castellanos the last word.

Out of curiosity, are the bishops equally against ED drugs like Viagra? Why do I hear no denouncing of working against "God's plan" there? The reality is that despite the church's teachings, as much as 98 percent of Catholics admit to using contraception. Would that the church elders focus their efforts on dealing honestly with issues that are in line with the priorities of their members: poverty and social justice, labor unions, climate change and dealing honestly and ethically with their own sex scandals rather than plunge into politicking within homilies on Bizarro World accusations of violations of religious freedom.

Worth reading: Bishop should not insert politics into Mass

February 06, 2012 01:00 AM

(h/t Heather)

This Week with George Stephanopoulos marks the passings of three service members, killed in Afghanistan.

US Marines Sgt William C Stacey, 23, Redding, CA
US Marines LCpl Edward J Dycus, 22, Greenville, MS
US Army BG Terence J Hildner, 49, Fairfax, VA

In addition, we note the passings of artist Mike Kelley, boxing trainer Angelo Dundee, impressario Don Cornelius, actor Ben Gazzara and businessman Steve Appleton.

According to iCasualties, the total number of allied service members killed in Afghanistan is now 2,883.

February 06, 2012 12:45 AM

While former Republican presidential nominee John McCain may be a big supporter of Mitt Romney, the Arizona senator isn't a fan when it comes to the GOP frontrunner's policy of "self-deportation" for undocumented immigrants.

During a recent NBC Republican presidential debate in Florida, Romney explained that he would make life for undocumented immigrants so uncomfortable that they would leave the country voluntarily.

"People decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here," the candidate said. "If people can’t get work here, they’re going to self-deport to a place where they can get work."

On Saturday, Univision's Jorge Ramos asked McCain if such a policy was humane.

"No," the senator admitted. "I think there are some people who want to leave this country and return to the country they came from, but obviously it requires a broader solution than that, and we all know that."

"Do you think that Republicans have lost the Hispanic vote for this election?" Ramos wondered "And, therefore, they're about to lose the White House again?"

"Well, I don't know if they're going to lose the White House again," McCain replied. "But we have to present a humane approach to a very difficult issue of illegal immigration into this country."

(H/T: Think Progress)

February 06, 2012 12:00 AM

Are you ready for some football? Live streaming here.

Amato is rooting for his beloved Giants. How about you?

February 05, 2012 11:30 PM

This Tuesday Blue America will move to a new day. We're staying at 11am (PT) but our weekly guest will drop by on Tuesdays instead of Saturdays. And this week we're starting the new schedule with an iconic progressive figure from western North Carolina, Cecil Bothwell. No doubt you saw the news at the end of the week that Cecil's opponent, Blue Dog leader Heath Shuler, has decided to turn in his cleats and go become a lobbyist or a gym teacher. Since his voting record showed him siding with Boehner and Cantor more than 60% of the time and since he worked tirelessly inside the Democratic House caucus making bills less progressive and more palatable to his friends in Big Business, his retirement announcement is worth celebrating.

Now, of course, the DCCC and local conservatives are casting around for their idea of a Heath Shuler replacement. It isn't someone progressive. It isn't someone grassroots. It isn't someone independent-minded. In other words... it isn't Cecil Bothwell. Cecil was elected to the Asheville City Council and managed to get the most votes city wide-- although pundits insisted an atheist and unabashed liberal could never win. But he won and he won so big because he stands up for working families, not special interests. Even Tea Party members have recognized him as a friend of working people. He's straightforward and very clear about who he is, why he's running and what he plans to do in Congress. Please come by and meet him Tuesday at 2pm (ET). And the fascinating video above shows Cecil last week at a Tea Party candidates session. He's serious about appealing to all the people in the 11th district.

If you're a Facebook denizen, please join and share this event with your friends. It's never been more important to get real progressives into Congress.

And if you can, please consider making a contribution to Cecil's all grassroots campaign at the Blue America ActBlue page. The three coolest contributions before the end of the Super Bowl will get signed books. Which books? Surprise!

If you're a Facebook denizen, please join and share this event with your friends. It's never been more important to get real progressives into Congress.

February 05, 2012 11:00 PM

Ah, the bold hackery of This Week's Matthew Dowd, former Democrat and born-again Bush-Cheney campaign strategist! He regurgitates the exact same argument spewed by NRO's "The Corner" earlier this week about the Komen foundation and quickly replicated throughout the right-wing and corporate media: Namely, how dare those liberals try to bully the Komen Foundation out of giving money to whoever they choose?

DOWD: I think that this demonstrates -- to me demonstrates the corrupt nature that's happened in politics has now bled into the privates, but (inaudible) view as the private sector, which is...

STEPHANOPOULOS: What do you mean by that?

DOWD: That there is now -- a private foundation can give and dispense money any way it wants. It can choose to give money -- people could have said when they first gave the money to Planned Parenthood, was that a good idea? Nobody sort of screamed and yelled. But all of a sudden they say we're going to take $700,000 back of private donations, which most people that gave money to Susan Komen Foundation had no idea they were going to go to -- be going to Planned Parenthood.

And so now what we see in Congress, this bitter response any time somebody does something, everybody screams and yell. Whether or not Congress should be investigating Planned Parenthood we can have an argument over. I don't think they should be in the middle of that. But I don't think Planned...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... who say this is democracy at work...

(CROSSTALK)

DOWD: I think this is a -- this is a corrupt, poisonous part of democracy at work. I think foundations should be able to make a decision, and if Planned Parenthood wants to go out and raise the money...

Ah, yes. The "corrupt, poisonous part of democracy." The part where the peasants finally rise up and say, "You want our money? Don't screw the organizations that do useful work." Boy, they really do hate it when the hoi polloi gets uppity, huh? The wingnuts blame the Komen backlash on "Big Abortion" because they're so very disconnected from the women who, at some point or another, know that Planned Parenthood was there for them when they needed help. I guess it's just unthinkable that a young girl needing birth control doesn't go with Mummy to Mummy's OB-GYN, and then it's off to a nice lunch where Mummy twinkles at her daughter over the quiche and salad while she hands over Nana's antique pearls: "Now that you're so grown up, it's time that you had these."

Or maybe Mummy's personal assistant drives Bitsy to the doctor because Mummy's out swilling gin with the rest of the Republican fundraisers. I'm not really sure how the upper classes live these days, but at least I know I'm just making things up. The talking heads of our corporate media? They so frequently confuse their fantasies with real life.

February 05, 2012 10:00 PM

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Sunday suggested that Susan G. Komen for the Cure shouldn't provide grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings because abortions cause breast cancer, a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

The candidate told Fox News host Chris Wallace that he didn't agree with the Komen Foundation reversing itself last week and making Planned Parenthood eligible for future grants.

"I've taken the position as a presidential candidate and someone in Congress that Planned Parenthood funds and does abortions," Santorum explained. "They're a private organization they stand up and support what ever they want."

"I don't believe that breast cancer research is advanced by funding an organization where you've seen ties to cancer and abortion," he added. "So, I don't think it's a particularly healthy way of contributing money to further cause of breast cancer, but that's for a private organization like Susan B. Komen to make that decision."

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the several small flawed studies that suggested a link between abortion and breast cancer have been disproven.

"Since then, better-designed studies have been conducted," the institute's website said. "These newer studies examined large numbers of women, collected data before breast cancer was found, and gathered medical history information from medical records rather than simply from self-reports, thereby generating more reliable findings. The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk."

In 2002, the Bush administration temporarily altered NCI's website to say that scientific evidence supported a possible link between abortion and breast cancer. After an outcry from the scientific community, NCI corrected its website with an accurate fact sheet.

A study released by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) in 2006 found that the Bush administration also used pregnancy resource centers -- commonly known as “crisis pregnancy centers” -- to falsely inform pregnant teens that the risk of breast cancer increased by 80 percent after an abortion.

"This tactic may be effective in frightening pregnant teenagers and women and discouraging abortion," the study concluded (PDF). "But it denies the teenagers and women vital health information, prevents them from making an informed decision, and is not an accepted public health practice."

Ironically, there are several substantial studies that link breast cancer to BPA, which Komen has ignored in pursuit of corporate donations (and the merchandising income of their pink ribbon water bottles). However, neither Chris Wallace nor Rick Santorum appears to be concerned with actual science over debunked politically-driven pseudo-science.

February 05, 2012 09:00 PM

Mitt Romney says so many provably false statements in his stump speeches that it's hard to know where to begin to tear them down. Apparently, for Fareed Zakaria, when you use the title of his book out of context, that gets him in fact checking mode. What is obviously intended to be a red meat, "Obama hates America", jingoistic rallying cry for Romney's followers is a matter of great discussion on Fareed Zakaria GPS weekly. Set the record straight, Fareed:

In 1990, China represented 2% of global gross domestic product. It has quadrupled, to 8%, and it's rising. By most estimates, China's economy will become the world's largest between 2016 and 2018. And this is not simply an economic story. China's military capacity and reach are also expanding. Beijing's defense spending is likely to surpass America's by 2025.

It's not just China that's rising. Emerging powers on every continent have achieved political stability and economic growth and are becoming active on the global stage. Twenty years ago Turkey was a fragile democracy, dominated by its army, constantly in need of Western economic bailouts. Today, Turkey has a trillion-dollar economy that grew 6.6% last year. Since April 2009, Turkey has created 3.4 million jobs - that's more than the entire European Union, Russia and South Africa put together.

Look in this hemisphere: In 1990, Brazil was emerging from decades of dictatorship and was wracked by inflation rates that reached 3,000 percent. Today, Brazil is a stable democracy, steadily growing with foreign-exchange reserves of $350 billion.

I could go on, Mitt.

Barack Obama has succeeded in preserving and even enhancing U.S. influence in this world precisely because he has recognized these new forces at work. He has traveled to the emerging nations and spoken admiringly of their rise. He replaced the old Western club and made the Group of 20 the central decision-making forum for global economic affairs. By emphasizing multilateral organizations, alliance structures and international legitimacy, he got results.

That's all too much fact and critical thinking for your average Republican voter. They don't want to contemplate the reality that all those "We're #1!!" chants mask a country where we're actually ranked 37th in medical outcomes, 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics, and 28th in life expectancy. They cheer on someone whose personal income lands him in the top one-tenth of one percent, ignoring that almost half of Americans are at or near the poverty level.

I'm sure that even as I type this, Zakaria's comments are filling up with outraged notes from conservatives denouncing him as anti-American for even suggesting that Mitt might want to educate himself on the realities of the world. But frankly, I think it's high time the media start doing this for all Americans.

It's a whole new world out there.

February 05, 2012 08:00 PM

So Romney and his PACmen spent over fifteen million dollars worth of smear ads against Newt Gingrich in Florida to seal the deal of beating him in the third primary. Romney was upbeat afterward, but many movement conservatives were not.

Jonah Goldberg: What is Wrong With This Guy?

Congratulations to Mitt Romney for his big win last night. It was a win that, Romney supporters hoped, would help bury concerns about his ability to seal thedeal to do what it takes. But I’m not so sure. If you’re a straight-laced grown-up with money to burn, burying Newt Gingrich shouldn’t be that hard. Romney talked about the economy, Newt about lunar statehood (which I favor!). Romney drowned Gingrich in negative ads and Gingrich supplied endless fodder for the accurate ones and plausibility for the inaccurate ones. Was that really the test of his political chops everyone is saying?As a bunch of us have been writing around here for a while, the under-emphasized dynamic in this race isn’t that Romney isn’t conservative enough (though that’s obviously a real concern out there) it’s that he’s simply not a good enough politician.

Jonah and many other conservatives are really pissed that Mitt on the next day said that he's 'not very concerned about the poor.'

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there,” Romney told CNN. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.

Oh, dear. That wasn't too bright. Bill O'Reilly was trying to downplay this flub on The Factor by saying the Democrats will seize on any single word by Mitt that they can take out of context to smear him. Nice try, Bill. It was a bonehead move.

But great politicians on the morning after a big win, don’t force their supporters to go around defending the candidate from the charge that he doesn’t care about the poor. They just don’t.

You would think after all the rigorous training Mormons are known to subject their children to when it comes to speaking to large groups of people at a young age and then sending them out on two year conversion missions to hone their craft of convincing people to like them, Mitt is one big flop in that category. Unlike his father, who was legendary for his two years in European mission work, Romney just has a problem with connecting and he's making his base nervous.

A recent Pew Poll shows Mitt's unfavorable rating is up to 47%. I believe the GOP thought that having so many debates would give them a chance to constantly bash President Obama without supplying much substance other than lunar bases, hating the gay, electrocutions and building electric fences against Latinos, but what has happened is America is watching and the GOP is being hurt by the added attention. Many republicans really dislike Romney, but view him as the only one to able challenge Obama. I still am surprised by this poll since the country is suffering from the 2008 global financial meltdown. And before Florida's results were in the GOP elites were freaking out over Gingrich's rise and then his attacks of their anointed one.

I know many progressives are feeling very antsy right now with these GOP circus debates and primary days dominating the news cycles so I did a little research into how our base felt about our candidates to contrast the GOP contest at about the same time. Democratic voters were very pleased with the field of candidates that were running for election.

via Gallup Politics on 02/03/08

The new poll indicates that whatever the outcome, Democrats nationwide will be equally satisfied with their nominee. They show equal levels of enthusiasm for the prospects of Clinton and Obama each being on the ballot in November. In addition, they are no more likely to believe one of the candidates is more electable in the fall than the other.

Specifically:

Fifty-five percent of Democrats (including independents who lean to the Democratic Party) say they would vote for Obama "enthusiastically" in November were he the Democratic nominee; 53% say the same of Clinton.

Forty-five percent of Democrats think Clinton has the better chance of beating the Republican candidate for president in November; 43% choose Obama.

By contrast, Gallup finds more lopsided attitudes among Republicans -- working strongly in McCain's favor. Republicans are less enthusiastic about voting for each of the leading potential nominees than the Democrats are about theirs; however, McCain is the clear leader on this score over Romney. McCain also beats Romney handily in perceptions of which of the two has the better chance of winning in November.

In the Florida returns there is another troubling number that was revealed about Mitt and the rest of the current field.

Another warning sign for Romney: Nearly 4 in 10 GOPers want someone else to run: And this also has to worry Romney and his team a bit, too: 38% of Florida Republican primary voters said they’d like to see someone else run for the GOP nomination, versus 58% who said they’re satisfied with the field. It’s a striking number, because these are Republicans who TURNED OUT and voted.

38% are hoping for a brokered convention I guess. Wow. Things are tough in this country and many on our side have been very disappointed, but if we elect a phony conservative like Romney at this point in time, the middle class may never, ever recover. GOP unrest is a good thing.

February 05, 2012 07:00 PM

Boy, is it getting nasty out there. And I'm not talking the ads either.

Last week, when the candidates were still in Florida, trying to drum up primary votes, there was a little...how do you say it?...incident between a Ron Paul supporter and Newt Gingrich's security detail. Things got a little heated:

Yahoo!’s Chris Moody reports that [Eddie] Dillard, decked out in a “Ron Paul Rocks America” T-shirt and wielding a “Ron Paul 2012″ sign, became a target for Gingrich’s security personnel when he refused to move from one of Gingrich’s Primary Day campaign stops.

Dillard’s opposing signage was, apparently, too close to Gingrich and his wife Callista, so security attempted to nudge Dillard out of the way. Dillard held his ground until security decided to take action. Moody writes:

Gingrich aides and security personnel swarmed Dillard, trying to intimidate him into moving. One of Gingrich’s security agents stepped in front of him. When Dillard didn’t budge, the agent lifted his heeled shoe over Dillard’s bare foot and dug the back of it into his skin, twisting it side-to-side like he was stomping out a cigarette

Dillard attempted to photograph the action but his phone was knocked out of his hand. One Gingrich campaign aide shouted, “Just block him! …Everyone step on his toes!”

You know, I find these Ron Paul supporters annoying myself, but there's no call for that kind of behavior. Maybe simple humanity is too much to expect from a Gingrich staffer. You can bet money talks to them, though. And Dillard is making sure to hit them where they hurt, having filed a lawsuit against Gingrich and his security team for assault and battery, seeking an unspecified amount of damages.

Wonder if Sheldon Adelson is willing to bankroll Newt for that too.

February 05, 2012 06:00 PM

Thankfully, it does look like we got some union solidarity from the National Football League Players Association when it comes to Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and his union busting with the recent passage another god awful right to work for less law in the state that is going to be hosting the Super Bowl this year.

The bad news is how difficult the struggle will be to overturn this union busting with the strength of unions being diminished with every law like this that passes, along with the flood of money pouring into our elections from the Citizens United debacle and the unfettered corporate influence and the ability of the richest among us to buy our elections.

Add that to voter disenfranchisement, on a scale we haven't seen in decades, electronic voting machines we should not be trusting to vote on and and compliant media that cares more about the horse races and conflict than telling anyone the truth, and we've got a long, long way to go to clean up the mess we're in right now and being able to put a stop to what just happened in Indiana and with the union busting across the country, whether our votes will be counted, and whether those who are voting are informed, and not just propagandized by right-wing media and misinformation which has filled our airways.

Here's more from Democracy Now, with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales as always, keeping up the fight on the side of the working class on the actions that are being planned for Super Bowl Sunday.

Occupy the Super Bowl: Indiana’s New Anti-Union Law Sparks Protest at Sport’s Biggest Spectacle:

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn to Super Bowl Sunday, it’s the biggest football game and biggest television show of the year. Last year, an estimated 111 million people watched it. But this year, viewers may have something more to watch than just the game. Occupy protesters in Indianapolis are gearing up to use the prime-time media spotlight to rally for union rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this week, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a so-called "right to work" measure into law, making Indiana the 23rd state to enact similar legislation. The controversial law exempts employees at unionized companies from paying union dues or fees if they so desire. Republicans claim the bill will help Indiana attract new, needed businesses and jobs. Critics say the legislation is an organized attack against labor that will result in lower wages and diminished collective bargaining rights. Following the bill’s approval Wednesday, thousands of union workers held a protest march to Lucas Oil Stadium, where the Super Bowl will be played this Sunday. The National Football League Players Association has also opposed the legislation calling right-to-work a "Political ploy designed to destroy basic workers’ rights." DeMaurice Smith recently appeared on Dave Zirin’s radio show Edge of Sports Radio. Smith is the executive director of The National Football League Players Association.

DEMAURICE SMITH: We are in lock-step with organized labor. I’m proud to sit on the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO. Why? Because we share all of the same issues that American people share. We want decent wages, you want a fair pension, you want to be taken care of when you get hurt, you want a decent and safe working environment. So when you look at proposed legislation in a place like Indiana that wants to call it something called "Right to Work", but you realize that...

DAVE ZIRIN: A tricky phrase, "right to work".

DEMAURICE SMITH: Very tricky phrase. Let’s just put the hammer on the nail. It’s untrue. This bill has nothing to do with a right to work. If folks in Indiana and that great legislation—-and they want to pass a bill that really is something called "Right to Work", have a constitutional amendment that guarantees every citizen a right to a job. That is a right to work. What this is, instead, is a right to enforce and to ensure that ordinary working people can’t get together as a team, can’t organize, can’t stand together, and can’t fight or negotiate with management on an even playing field.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was DeMaurice Smith, Executive Director of The National Football League Players Association. In related labor news, Arizona Republicans have just introduced legislation that would radically curb public employee’s unions in their state. A series of measures introduced this week would bar government agencies from collectively bargaining with public employees including firefighters and police. Unions would be prevented from collecting dues through automatic deductions. We go now to Indiana to speak with Tithi Bhattacharya. She is an Associate Professor of South Asian History at Purdue University. She is a leading member of Occupy Purdue and has written about Occupy in the Super bowl. Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you hear us professor? Tell us about the Occupy protests that are planned.

TITHI BHATTACHARYA: Well, the first thing to say is that the protest on Sunday actually is not a one-off. It stands on the shoulder of and in solidarity with the thousands of people who came to the State House over the last two weeks to protest this bill. It is also not, I think, the end—-or I hope it’s not the end of this series of protests. Why the Super Bowl? Lucas Oil Stadium was built with 100% union labor. Every single structure that is up in the city of Indianapolis today that has been built to beautify the city has been built with union labor. So, I think it is absolutely shameful that the legislature passed a law that condemns unions and is now using the city to kind of showcase Indianapolis while ordinary people in Indiana are completely opposed to this law. The protest on Sunday also stands in solidarity with the NFL Players Union, which has come out so strongly against the legislation. I think there has been some talk of how the Occupy movement may—-there has been some fear that the Occupy movement may disrupt a Super Bowl. As far as I know and as far as I’m concerned, the Occupy movement nationally has been a non-violent movement and absolutely is committed to being non-violent on Saturday. The question of disruption absolutely is not an issue because as I said before, we stand in solidarity with the Players Union. The only thing the Occupy movement, on Sunday, hopes to disrupt is the complacency of the 1% who think that they can get away with this.

AMY GOODMAN: While The Football Players Union has expressed solidarity with the workers in Indiana, Fox Business News spoke with NFL Hall of famer Fran Tarkenton about the Super Bowl protests.

FOX REPORTER: Fran, you have been an outspoken opponent of municipal unions. What’s their beef with Indianapolis, which is staging the Super Bowl?

FRAN TARKENTON: Because they’ve got it made. They work 20 years, they could retire at 90% of their salary for the rest of their life. There’s no accountability. They don’t have to work hard. They go up by seniority. If the NFL—-if their union was like a public Union, the NFL would be broke. But, the government kind of bails them out, but now that’s getting to be problematic. This was the first right-to-work state decision in 15 years. It looks like Mitch Daniels is going to sign that into law. They’re angry about being it being a right-to-work state when we need to generate 20 million jobs?

AMY GOODMAN: NFL Hall of famer, Fran Tarkenton went on to say the protesters are going to make fools of themselves.

FRAN TARKENTON: ...disrupts the biggest American even there is and you are right, the northeastern fans are the best football fans in the world. They’ll come in there and spend tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s just such a great. It really is a positive, great event, and they’re going to make fools of themselves by going out there infringing on the rights of people who want to enjoy this great event.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Bhattacharya, your response?

TITHI BHATTACHARYA: Nine out of the ten poorest states—-states with the poorest health and safety records—-are actually right-to-work states. But, most importantly, we need to keep in mind that this is actually an effort to kill unions in the Midwest. This is part of a concerted effort that is going on to strike at the heart of labor mobilizing and labor organizing it is coming in Wisconsin, it is coming in Indiana, and it is coming in Michigan. And I think...Hello?

AMY GOODMAN: Keep speaking, go ahead.

TITHI BHATTACHARYA: So, I think that is really what’s at the heart of it. On a broader basis, I think Right to Work is one of those legislations that is a concerted effort to pass off this recession on working people by trying to lower our wages. All due respect to the Hall of famer, but he did say that people are going to be bailed out. Well actually, the institutions that got bailed out are the banks. This is an effort to say that the recession is hurting the economy, so ordinary people need to tighten their belts. Well actually, ordinary people are not responsible for the recession, and this attack on ordinary people speaking out or fighting back—-which is really what the unions are—-is a naked display of union busting, which actually needs to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Professor Bhattacharya, where will you be on Sunday at the Superbowl?

TITHI BHATTACHARYA: Like the rest of the occupiers from across the state, I will be at the Indiana State House. The protest has been called at the South Lawn of the Indiana State House at 12:00 noon. That’s where I hope all people who are fighting against these kind of policies of the 1% inside the legislatures, and are fighting against the display of the power of the 1% on our streets of Indianapolis with the corporate logos, will be there to join me in a non-violent protest.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Professor Tithi Bhattacharya, Associate Professor of South Asian History at Purdue University, a leading member of the Occupy Purdue, written about Occupy Super Bowl. Speaking to us from West Lafayette, Indiana.

February 05, 2012 05:00 PM

From this Friday night's Piers Morgan on CNN. Ron Paul apparently believes that only women who have been raped should have the right to an abortion. But even worse, he qualified the term with the word "honest." Lauren Kelley over at AlterNet weighed in on a couple of the reasons that Paul's statements during this interview are extremely troubling, to put it mildly.

The 2 Most Dangerous Things Ron Paul Gets Wrong About "Honest" Rape (As in "Real" Rape?):

Last night, CNN's Piers Morgan sat down with Ron Paul for an interview leading up to this weekend's Nevada caucus. One of the topics Morgan brought up was abortion, and specifically a woman's right to choose if she has been raped. Paul's answer was at once befuddling and enraging, and it really gets to the heart of the anti-choice war on women's bodies and choices. [...]

There are many myths to debunk here, but I'll just quickly point out the two most obvious (and most dangerous) ones:

1. Women do get raped by their husbands and partners. That's not some out-there hypothetical. Intimate partner rape is a major problem -- and yes, it happens to well-to-do women like Ron Paul's daughters too.

2. Although Paul keeps going back to women seeking abortions late in their pregnancies, the reality is that 90 percent of abortions occur in the first trimester. So his focus on late-term abortions is disproportionate to the number of women actually seeking late-term abortions.

Ron Paul might have a few things in common with liberals when it comes to military interventions and starting wars, but it's his views on economics and his social issues like this that paint a pretty clear line as to why he's over with the extreme right wing of the Republican base on most everything else.

Full transcript below the fold and Paul's response to Morgan didn't get any better as he rambled on. It's pretty pathetic when even as big of a hack as Piers Morgan manages to make sure the audience realizes you're being completely inconsistent with your answers, which Paul was.

Paul claims he believes in "personal liberties" but apparently those liberties don't apply when it comes to a woman and her body and her reproductive rights.

MORGAN: You don't believe in abortion under any circumstances. That's something that's driven I think by your time as a doctor. You have delivered many, many babies. I read a heart rending thing you once said, that you once delivered I think a two and a half pound baby that -- as you said, you had to put into a bucket.

PAUL: Not me. I wasn't a participant. I was a very, very casual observer as a student.

MORGAN: But you witnessed this?

PAUL: Yes. I walk in a room and it happened. It was five minutes. It was over. I walked out of the room and thought, wow, what did I just see?

MORGAN: But that clearly scarred you.

PAUL: It was the lack of respect for life that dawned on me.

MORGAN: Here's the dilemma, and it's one I put to Rick Santorum very recently. I was surprised by his answer, although I sort of understood from his belief point of view that he would come up with this.

But it's a dilemma that I am going to put to you. You have two daughters. You have many granddaughters. If one of them was raped -- and I accept it's a very unlikely thing to happen. But if they were, would you honestly look at them in the eye and say they had to have that child if they were impregnated?

PAUL: No. If it's an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room. I would give them a shot of estrogen or give them --

MORGAN: You would allow them to abort the baby?

PAUL: It is absolutely in limbo, because an hour after intercourse or a day afterwards, there is no legal or medical problem. If you talk about somebody coming in and they say, well, I was raped and I'm seven months pregnant and I don't want to have anything to do with it, it's a little bit different story.

But somebody arriving in an emergency room saying, I have just been raped and there is no chemical -- there's no medical and there's no legal evidence of a pregnancy --

MORGAN: Life doesn't begin at conception?

PAUL: Life does begin at conception.

MORGAN: Then you would be taking a life.

PAUL: Well, you don't know if you're taking a life either, because this is an area that is -- but to decide everything about abortion and respect for life on this one very, very theoretical condition, where there may have been a life or not a life.

MORGAN: But here's the thing: although it is a hypothetical, it does happen. People do get raped and they do get impregnated. And sometimes they are so ashamed by what's happened that weeks go by before they may even discover they are pregnant.

They have to face this dilemma. And they are going to have a president who has a very, very strong view about this.

PAUL: This is like the proposal that the people who like abortion, endorse abortion because it's the woman's right to her body. You say, well, does that mean one minute before birth, you can kill the baby? I did this on one of the TV programs where some women were opposed to what I was saying.

I said, this nine-pound baby is in the woman. She has the right. She argues her case. I said you would abort this baby because the woman has had unfortunate some circumstances, so the doctor gets paid a handsome fee to kill this nine-pound baby?

Oh, that's not what we're talking about. But that is what they are talking about. They are talking about a human life. So a person immediately after rape, yes. It's a tough one. I won't satisfy everybody there.

But to tell you the truth, what I saw happening in the 1960s and the change in the law and -- no, the change in attitude, people were doing illegal abortions. To me it is a moral problem. It was to change the morality of the '60s, the lack of respect for life, leads to the lack of respect for liberty and all the things that I believe in.

So it was a change in morality that had the Supreme Court change the law. So I don't believe the change in the law is the magic cure. I do believe, though, very sincerely, if we don't have an understanding of life and have a lot of respect for life, I can't defend people on their personal liberties. I can't be as tolerant as I am on how they use liberties.

So that's why I think it's really a moral issue, rather than a legal solution to all these problems. As a physician, as a gynecologist, I have had to face some of these very, very difficult problems. I understand them. Even before Roe versus Wade, many of those problems that existed, where there is no perfect answer, they were taken care of, but it was always done -- they respected the fact that they were dealing with a life.

MORGAN: Finally on this point, do you accept there is a slight contradiction between a candidate who is pro liberty, pro personal choice, pro personal responsibility in almost every other area, but on the specific area says no, you don't have choice?

PAUL: See, I don't see the inconsistency because I see the nine- pound baby that's still within the mother as deserving some protection, too. Who deserves protection? That fetus has rights, because if I do harm to him, I get sued. If you have a car accident and kill a fetus, there are legal right there. But to say that it's only the mother, it's very, very unique.

If you carry your argument to the -- all the way through, we have a right to our homes. Shouldn't we have the privacy of our homes? Do we have a right to kill the baby one minute after birth? No. Everybody say -- as a matter of fact, this is what happens: we can kill the baby before it's born and a doctor is paid. One minute after birth, if the woman who was unfortunate enough to have this baby -- if she throws the baby away, she gets arrested for a homicide.

To me, the one minute before birth and one minute after birth isn't a whole lot different.

MORGAN: You understand that to a lot of people with serious religious conviction, it is. They say life begins at conception.

PAUL: Life does begin at conception.

MORGAN: So it's a moral maze. Let's have a break.

February 05, 2012 04:00 PM

Federal Election Commission filings released this week showed that conservatives groups are amassing an ocean of cash for the 2012 presidential campaign. Thanks to the likes of the Koch brothers, the Walton clan and other of the usual suspects on the right, in 2011 conservative SuperPAC's outraised their liberal counterparts by more than seven to one. But if they win, rich Republican donors could more than get back the millions they invested. As it turns, just one law they are trying to buy - the elimination of the estate tax - could put billions of dollars back into their families' bank accounts. Of course, that gaping hole would have to be filled by all other American taxpayers.

As Mother Jones reported, as of December 31, 2011 conservative SuperPAC's reaped $60 million of now-unlimited contributions, compared to just $8 million for liberal groups. That tidal wave of corporate cash and play money from the wealthy has filled the coffers of Karl Rove's American Crossroads, Mitt Romney's Restore the Future, Newt Gingrich's Winning the Future and a litany of other right-wing SuperPACs. And as Amanda Terkel detailed, at a secret conclave last week, the Koch brothers pledged to raise much more to defeat President Obama:

At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

But that figure is chump change compared to the eye-popping return on investment the Kochs can expect if their side wins in November. Ending the estate tax, a policy endorsed by Mitt Romney and every other Republican presidential candidate, would literally be worth billions of dollars to the heirs of Charles and David Koch. As ThinkProgress explained last year:

According to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers' heirs' would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney's plan.

Each of the Koch brothers -- Charles and David -- is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it's almost certain that the Koch's have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney's plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

Here's why. Despite Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the so-called "death tax," by 2009 only 0.24 percent of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010 compromise President Obama inked with Congressional Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts further slashed the estate tax. The reduced 35 percent tax is now applied only to couples with estates greater than $10 million, a change which will cost Uncle Sam roughly $15 billion a year. Now, the Tax Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted. Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute "less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect." Who pays the estate tax?

TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earners and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone./em>

Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.

Among that richest 1 in 1,000 are the Koch brothers and the family behind Walmart, the Walton clan.

That's one reason why Wal-Mart heirs Alice Walton and brother Jim Walton each contributed $100,000 to Mitt Romney's SuperPAC. After all, the six members of Walmart's founding family are worth an estimated $69.7 billion, a sum equal to the total wealth ofthe bottom 30 percent of Americans. As Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders explained in his now famous December 2010 filibuster, the elimination of the estate tax could save the Walton family alone $32.7 billion.

Of course, the Walton crusade to the end the estate tax didn't just start last year. As USA Today reported back in 2005:

Led by Sam Walton's only daughter, Alice, the family spent $3.2 million on lobbying, conservative causes and candidates for last year's federal elections. That's more than double what it spent in the previous two elections combined, public documents show.

The Waltons have joined a coterie of wealthy families trying to save fortunes through permanent repeal of the estate tax, government watchdogs say. The election of President Bush and more conservatives to Congress gave momentum to the long-fought effort. The Waltons add more.

As the Arkansas Times pointed out, the 2010 reduction in the estate tax, if made permanent, would ensure that Sam Walton's clan will keep billions out of the hands of Uncle Sam:

Please note that the cut in the top estate tax, from 45 to 35 percent, will be worth a cool $9 billion at current values to just the top five Walton estates. 9 BILLION. Who'll pay for that lost revenue (not just from Waltons but Kochs, etc.) over the years? The working schlubs, that's who.

Thanks in part to the efforts of the "Senator from Walmart," Blanche Lincoln, President Obama's concession in December 2010 gave the Waltons won a huge victory. If they get their way, it won't be their last.

It's worth noting that Mitt Romney, Wall Street's favorite for 2012, will also benefit from the elimination of the estate tax, just not on as grand a scale. The heirs of the 250 Million Dollar Man could reap an $84,000,000 windfall, more than enough to offset the $45 million of his own money Mitt Romney blew in his failed 2008 presidential campaign.

It's worth pointing out that America's rich and famous won't be paying the full estate tax anyway. After all, Mitt Romney has apparently succeeded in setting up a $100 million trust fund for his sons, tax-free. As President George W. Bush put it in rejecting calls to raise taxes on the wealthy duiring his 2004 reelection campaign:

"The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway."

If the Republican presidential candidates and their fabulously wealthy SuperPAC donors get their way in cutting income taxes, eliminating the capital gains taxes and ending the estate tax, Bush's really rich won't have to work very hard to dodge Uncle Sam. If the Kochs and the Waltons succeed in getting the best government money can buy, the rest us will have to pay for it.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

February 05, 2012 03:00 PM

Pandagon: Anti-choicers are modern day witch hunters.

Phoenix Justice: Who's really behind the Bible elective push in Arizona?

Comrade Physioprof: Selling libertarianism.

Clarissa's Blog: What's socialism?

Margaret and Helen: The race for respect.

TomDispatch: Confessions of a recovering weapons addict.

Guest post by Batocchio. Email tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

February 05, 2012 02:00 PM

I don't think Thom spent nearly enough time on this, but it was perhaps the most provocative thing said at the World Economic Forum. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the audience that's time for men to step aside and let women be in charge:

When we exclude women, we diminish ourselves

This shouldn’t be such a difficult topic for people of faith. It seems entirely consistent with the teachings of the world’s great religions that men and women are equal in the eyes of God. God isn’t stupid – He created Eve because Adam couldn’t make it on his own. Kofi Annan, receiving a report from the UN Alliance of Civilizations, said it is the faithful who are the problem - not the faiths.

Nevertheless, faith and gender remains a sensitive subject. My colleagues indulged me and allowed me to reflect on the apartheid era when the majority of South Africans were excluded and marginalised for something they could do nothing about: their ethnicity.

It seems to me that women are also sidelined for something they can do nothing about,their gender and humanity is the poorer for it. In my own church, which decided only in 1992 that women could be ordained as priests and bishops, it was quite a shock to realise how much we had diminished ourselves in our ministry when we saw the difference women made.

In this volatile time, when there is so much distress and dissatisfaction, we are wasting a huge source of talent and wisdom by not including women as equals in all aspects of life – whether in politics, business or religion.

Not surprisingly, this didn't go over well in the male-dominated WEF. But I think Tutu has a point. Look at this line up...it's not only pasty white, but overwhelmingly male, both hosts and guests. We women are 51 percent of the population and yet are only 17 percent of either house of Congress. Studies have shown that the more a society works towards gender equity, the higher the aggregate education of the entire population, the lower the birth rates, the lower the child mortality, the lower the incidences of domestic abuse and other forms of violent crime. All in all, by all measures, society improves when women have more of a voice in shaping their future. So maybe it is for us to work towards a more equitable society. By the way, if you want to hear more of my thoughts on this, Jacob Dean, producer of Thom Hartmann, has an internet radio show on Nicole Sandler's network every Monday evening and we talked about a women's revolution last week. Tell me if you don't agree that we need to put more gender balance in our society.

ABC's "This Week." Topic: Politics. GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul. Economic Roundtable: Glenn Hubbard, Lawrence H. Summers, Diane Swonk. Political Roundtable: George Will, Matthew Dowd, Arianna Huffington, Dana Loesch.

NBC's "Meet the Press." Topics: Politics; and the Super Bowl. GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Govs. Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., and Deval Patrick, D-Mass.; Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Richard Stengel, Andrea Mitchell, Howard Fineman, Nia-Malika Henderson. Topics: Mitt Romney's gaffe on the very poor; negative campaigning in the general election.

MSNBC's "UP with Chris Hayes" - Panel: Melissa Harris-Perry, Michelle Goldberg, Amy Goodman, Anne-Marie Slaughter. Topics: Nevada Republican Primary results; Israel; Susan G. Komen vs. Planned Parenthood; The Obama Administration’s birth control requirement for Catholic institutions

CBS' "Face the Nation." Topic: Politics. Gingrich; former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Roundtable: Michael Kranish, Norah O’Donnell, John Dickerson.

CNN's "State of the Union." Topics: Politics; the economy; and the Middle East. Govs. Martin O'Malley, D-Md., and Bob McDonnell, R-Va.; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Dick Armey, chairman of FreedomWorks; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala. Roundtable: Alice Rivlin, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Ron Brownstein.

CNN's "Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz" - Topics: Coverage of GOP; Nevada caucus coverage. Panel: Jonathan Martin, Politico; Christina Bellantoni, PBS; Michael Shear, New York Times; Michelle Cottle, Daily Beast; Matt Lewis, Daily Caller; Felix Salmon, Reuters; Mark Potts, University of Maryland.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Topics: Mitt Romney, GOP, religion, and Russia. Panel: David Brooks, New York Times; David Remnick, New Yorker; Peggy Noonan,Wall Street Journal; Chrystia Freeland, Reuters; Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore.

"Fox News Sunday." Topic: Politics. GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum; McDonnell; former Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla. Panel: Bill Kristol, Liz Marlantes, Liz Cheney, Juan Williams.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

February 05, 2012 01:00 PM

Happy Saturday night, folks! It's Blue Gal from The Professional Left Podcast, bringing you this week's podcast round up. Be aware that these podcasts are also available on i-Tunes, and may not be safe for work.

The Kojo Nnamdi Show: An End to Black History Month?

The Tim Corrimal Show: Finger Shaking at Self-Deporting

Citizen Radio: Why you should have already hated the Susan G. Komen foundation.

The Takeaway: Carl Hiaasen on What Florida Means for the Rest of the Race

Open thread (and please, let us know your podcast recommendations!) below....

February 05, 2012 04:30 AM

Saturday Nite! Here's a good one about Saturday afternoons.

February 05, 2012 04:00 AM

It's called early and surely: Mitt Romney won Nevada.

February 05, 2012 03:26 AM

Mitt Romney confirmed his status as the prohibitive front-runner in the GOP presidential race Saturday with a win in the Nevada caucuses.

But Romney’s apparently large margin of victory may say more about his opponents than his own candidacy.

Read full article >>

February 05, 2012 03:22 AM

No surprise: Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is the overwhelming victor in Nevada’s caucuses with 47.6 percent of the vote, supported by a politically-active Mormon base but dominating across demographic groups.

Read full article >>

February 05, 2012 03:12 AM

After four new murders of labor leaders in Columbia in January, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called on U.S. President Barack Obama to delay the implementation of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement indefinitely. The agreement, which was passed last year, was delayed for years because of violence against labor leaders. More than 2900 Colombians involved in the labor movement have been killed in the last 25 years. Colombia is the deadliest country for union members in the world. Killings have continued unabated in 2012:

The letter states that through January, one union member was killed by Colombian troops, a second was shot to death along with his wife, a third worker was “brutally murdered” and a fourth union member employed by the National Industry of Sodas (Coca-Cola) was “murdered by gunfire.”

When the bill passed, it included a Labor Action Plan designed to deal with the violence, but Colombian labor leaders say that has failed:

We applaud the creation of the April 7, 2011, U.S.-Colombia Labor Action Plan that intends to take important steps in addressing endemic labor issues in Colombia. However, the Plan continues to face serious challenges in its implementation. Union leaders and labor activists continue to be assassinated, threatened, and intimidated, and the perpetrators enjoy almost complete impunity.

February 05, 2012 02:30 AM

The reaction to January's jobs report shows how tragically our expectations have fallen, especially among some Democrats and their supporters. Their cheerleading isn't just bad policy or bad politics, although it is both of those things. It's also callous and insensitive to the misery of millions.

It's important to keep explaining what needs to be done to end that misery. To do otherwise is to serve, however unintentionally, an insidious agenda from the right that would lower our expectations until these tragic levels of unemployment are seen as the "new normal."

An increase in jobs is a good thing, of course, even if it's far from what's needed. Here's something else that was good about the report: Conservatives keep telling us that manufacturing jobs have moved offshore permanently, but 50,000 of them were created last month. Now we can put that argument to bed and can get to work creating more of them.

The Good, the Bad, and the Urgent

But millions of Americans - including minorities and the young - have already endured years of catastrophe, with years more to come if nothing is done. Why won't more people express support for their plight and explain what needs to be done to help them?

Here's the real story: Government intervention has created millions of jobs. But those interventions were too small, so we're still years away from fixing the problem. To claim anything else is to reinforce the delusions that created the problem in the first place.

If the president and his supporters make that case clearly and forcefully, the country will be able to choose between competing visions in November. It's more likely to choose an end to its misery. The pitch is pretty simple, really: The medicine's working, but let's not stop before the patient gets well. And despite this month's report, the patient is still very, very sick.

Help is needed urgently.

The New Abnormal

At December's rate of job growth (200,000 jobs) we won't reach an acceptable level of employment until 2024. At this month's rate of growth (243,000 jobs) it will still take us until 2019. Even if we accelerated that rate of growth to 400,000 jobs per month, it would still take us until 2015 to get back to our customary and normal rate of employment.

There would be room for celebration - cautious celebration - if we were protected from more economic shocks, which could come at any time from our under-regulated and too-big-to-fail banks. But we're not. Or if the Republicans and 'centrist' Dems (including the president) weren't pushing to cut government jobs, which will slow the rate of growth even more. But they are. Or if the president were pushing for bigger initiatives, on the scale that's really needed, while making the case for the kind of short-term help we need to get this country on its feet again.

But he isn't.

The president's current jobs proposals would help somewhat, but they're still much too small. What's more, they're filled with policies that are too easy for Republicans to poke holes in. Unless he comes up with a bolder, simpler, and stronger plan, Republican rhetoric will regain a credibility it doesn't deserve - and the government solutions that have always worked in the past will be discredited through half-measures that fail to solve the problem.

If that happens, our abnormal level of pain really will become the "new normal."

Economic Apartheid

This month's reported unemployment level dropped to 8 percent for adult males. But women gained only 89,000 jobs, which is a little more than a third of the total. (They got 42 percent of the jobs in the private sector, but were heavily affected by government cutbacks brought on by misguided austerity thinking - thinking that the president has sometimes encouraged with his rhetoric.)

The seasonally adjusted white unemployment rate for January was 7.4 percent.

For young people 16-19, it was 23.1 percent.

For African Americans, it was 13.6 percent.

For young African Americans, it was 38.5 percent.

To be clear, all of those numbers have seen some reductions. But those who say the current pace of recovery is acceptable are also saying that a devastating job situation for young people, African Americans, and those who are both, is an acceptable state of affairs for years to come. That means untold harm to human well-being, career opportunities, future health, lifetime earnings, and entire communities across the country.

It also means endorsing a state of "economic apartheid" that's unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. That's not the kind of country that the Democrats or their supporters should be tacitly endorsing, even if only by failing to consider the long-term consequences of what's being done and said today.

And in an equally devastating finding, the long-term unemployment figure was still 5.5 million. These Americans have been thrown from a life of earning and security into hopelessness and spiraling poverty - and they're being ignored.

Falling Behind

The numbers tell another story, too: People with jobs are falling behind. That's why the middle class really is in a process of slow decay. This chart tells the story:

After a period of long-term stagnation, wages only grew by 1.9 percent and there's no sign that will change. There are lots of working people who will find nothing to celebrate in this report.

Champagne Corks

Nevertheless, a number of Democrats and allies took a premature and ill-considered victory lap today. That won't help the country get the policies it needs, and it won't help them politically either. When sympathetic writers, like the one quoted by Ezra Klein, write of "champagne corks popping at the White House," the image seems inappropriate at best and Marie Antoinette-ish at worst.

The president, his party, and their allies need to send a clear message about these job numbers: that they disprove the conservative argument, but that whole segments of the population were left out of the good news and we're facing many years of pain and stagnation unless government steps up its efforts.

That means they must face facts and make the only argument that will resonate with the American people: That what the president and his party have done has helped, but not nearly enough, and that what he is proposing will also help, but not nearly enough. His job creation proposals will be blocked by the Republicans either way, so why not use them to tell the American people what needs to be done?

The president has learned a lot, politically and economically, from the pressure he's received from the left. He's getting better at making the rhetorical case for economic justice. Now he needs to get better at losing, by losing Congressional battles with a set of solutions that the public will understand and support. It's incomprehensible that Republicans would oppose a jobs bill for veterans, but they will.

But it's equally incomprehensible that a Democratic president would offer small responses to such a large disaster. (I include the Jobs Act in the category of "small responses," since such a large chunk of it is dedicated to ineffectual tax cuts for business. But it would help.)

And it's a measure of our mad times that CNN is able to call the proposal for veterans' employment "hefty" with a straight face. At these levels of unemployment, its estimated $5 billion price tag is almost homeopathically small.

Recovery Winter

Some people are talking about a "recovery winter," an ironic reference to the Administration's premature declaration of "recovery summer" in 2010. For too many Americans, "recovery winter" feels like more like nuclear winter.

The young people and minorities who weren't invited to the party last month can feel it. What's more, this good news could shift dramatically in coming months - if Europe collapses, if a major U.S. bank goes down, or if the periodic recessionary cycle that's built into our under-regulated system strikes again this year.

Nevertheless, some liberals are celebrating. Ezra Klein waxes enthusiastic at the Washington Post, writing that the January report "is pretty much all good." C'mon, Ezra. All good? Unemployment still at 23.1 percent for young people? More than 13 percent for African Americans and more than 38 percent for young African-Americans?

Klein is right when he says that revised figures for earlier periods "are positive," at least where jobless figures are concerned. But adjusted population figures added 1.7 million people to the workforce, which means we need even more growth - and quickly. It means that overall labor force participation is at the unacceptably low level of 63.1 percent.

Klein correctly cites most other areas of concern, including lost public sector jobs and the gap between needed job growth and current figures. But he writes that " this isn’t just a good jobs report. It’s a recovery jobs report." He couldn't be more wrong, in my opinion - unless he's talking about a recovery in 2019.

And I hope Democrats don't listen when he calls these results "the sort of numbers that win elections." Current projections show unemployment rising to 9 percent again before November. This lagging recovery will give credibility to the president's opponents while discouraging his opponents, especially young people and minorities.

Steve Benen of the Maddow Blog understands what's going on behind the figures, yet still says "it's hard not to feel good about the surprising strength" of this report - a sentiment that few of the long-term unemployed would share. Jamelle Bouie of the American Prospect called the report "blockbuster" and said "the economy is looking good."

All this cheerleading feels more than a little unseemly in the face of so much misery - especially when the misery's likely to continue for years if more isn't done.

Some media types might want to be more cautious, too. A headline writer for McClatchy, which has often distinguished itself with terrific financial reporting, missed the mark by writing "January jobs report sizzles ..."

The body of McClatchy's article is much more accurate and objective, correctly noting that the figures were "better than expected" and quoting everyone from a market analyst who cheerleads the numbers for different reasons, to the president and House Speaker John Boehner. But the title's pure hype - unless they meant "sizzle" as in that old expression about "separating the sizzle from the steak."

The Balance

It's time for Dems and their allies to stop partying like it's 2019.

It's not hard to strike the right balance between encouragement and admonition. Alan Krueger, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, came close. “It is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the recession that began at the end of 2007,” wrote Krueger, who called the report "an encouraging sign."

“Nonetheless," Krueger added, "we need faster growth to put more Americans back to work.”

That wasn't hard. Jared Bernstein struck the right balance, too, calling on Congress to "seal the deal" and saying "let's not screw this up." (Although I wish he had explained what a full recovery plan could do.)

The Republicans struggled to respond today."These numbers are encouraging," said Eric Cantor, "especially for those millions of Americans out of work, but we should aim even higher.”

"Great," the president should say, "I'll take you up on that."

The Message

The right message is clean and simple:

1. What we did worked. But we need to do more of it.
2. So let's stop the bleeding of public jobs. We've seen the damage that's caused in Europe and we don't want that here.
3. The deficit is a legitimate concern - after we address today's crisis with "the fierce urgency of now."
4. The best way to cut deficits in the long term is to put Americans back to work so they can pay their taxes and buy things that create even more jobs.
5. We tried to compromise with our opponents, because we thought they'd be reasonable. They weren't.
5. So here's what it takes to get that done, with no games or pretense. Let's go to work, and if the Republicans won't help, please vote for people who will.

See? The right message is simple, clean, honest, and easy to deliver. It's cheap, too: No champagne corks necessary.

February 05, 2012 01:00 AM

National Park Police invaded Occupy DC, McPherson Square in the early hours of Saturday morning with riot police, a dozen horses and a strategic plan to eliminate the encampment.

Then throughout the day, they went section by section with a fully dressed hazardous materials team, cordoning each part of the camp off with heavy wrought iron fencing and inspecting and bagging up protesters' property. Any tent with a semblance of camping materials inside was confiscated along with all belongings inside.

By the late afternoon only a few tents were left standing in the cleared sections. The small number of protesters, which never grew over 200 people, attempted to shout down and fight back police, but they were easily overwhelmed by the large police presence. Most of the time the police matched protesters in numbers.

The clearing of the camp signals a possible end for the rowdy, 128-day-old McPherson camp, which had gained notoriety after a testy protest at an Americans for Prosperity event at the DC Convention Center. The police action proved that even federal police will enforce camping bans at Occupy protests, even if there is doubt about whether it's constitutional under the First Amendment.

The police did not close down the park, or ask protesters to leave. In that way they respected the occupiers' right to a 24-hour vigil while simultaneously enforcing a camping ban, which they notified the camp they would do last Friday.

"They've met us intellectually," said Kelly Mears, a programmer who has helped out the Occupy DC tech team, "They're allowing the 24-hour vigil while enforcing camping regulations. I'm glad they didn't just come in here and beat people."

"You can't fault the cops for doing this, they can't just let them live here forever," said a bystander wearing a peacoat who had come to watch the clearing.

The only times the clearing became violent was when protesters attempted to block police from fencing off sidewalks to clear sections of the camp. Police slowly moved down the sidewalk with their riot shields forcing screaming protesters off to the side while they set up barricades. I saw one man get knocked down by a riot shield and multiple protesters struck with batons as they tried to force police back.

Other than that, it seemed as if police had learned from the clashes at other occupations around the country. They conducted their police operation in full daylight, on a Saturday. They warned protesters they were going to enforce the ban and they had a strategic plan to keep violence and arrests to a minimum. Less than 20 arrests were made by 6 p.m. on Saturday, no ambulances were called.

In many ways, the McPherson clearing symbolized the Occupy movement itself. As occupiers put a focus on camps they lost the message of income inequality and the influence of money in politics that had galvanized support. On Saturday, truckloads of trash were pulled out of a run-down McPherson Square protected by few protesters. Weary, disheveled occupiers looked on, too exhausted to think of a symbolic action to turn the media cameras away from the mess they had created.

"You create a squat and you attract squatters," said a disillusioned protester named Rob, who had helped to start Occupy DC McPherson.

He sees the clearing as a new start. A way to refocus the movement back towards the goals that it had started with. He wants to organize protesters around foreclosure defense and debt resistance in order to enter a phase two.

The problems that came along with a long-standing occupation were present all around McPherson on Saturday. Tents filled with soiled blankets and ad-hoc comfort materials like fiberglass insulation. Trash enveloping the small pockets between crates used to keep tents off the ground. Anarchists swearing and yelling loudly at police. Knee-jerk reactions to enforcement, rather than long-term planning and symbolic optics.

And it's those optics that average Americans, the 99 percent, will see in the papers. They'll see the hazmat suits, the confrontations, the disheveled protesters and the truckloads of trash.

Yes, occupying the park was a symbol in and of itself. Anytime a DC resident or worker drove past the park they may have thought about the reasons it was founded: The gross inequality in this country and the greedy bankaneers that have rigged the economic game to benefit themselves. But, if they looked closely they would have seen cigarette-smoking, mostly male, bandanna wearing protesters covered in anarchy symbols mingling with the homeless.

The protesters will still be able to occupy McPherson Square. They'll be able to hold a 24-hour vigil. But they won't be able to sleep there. Three blocks away the calm and older crowd at Freedom Plaza is still standing strong. They complied with the ban on camping materials and cleaned out their tents when they were instructed to by the police. As a result, they were not bothered on Saturday.

With McPherson's eviction, pressing questions rest on the Occupy movement. Can it succeed promoting a legitimate message targeting real problems in America without getting involved in the messy problems of sustaining an occupation in a park? Or is it time for a rebranding of a movement that will likely take years to come to an equitable solution?

February 04, 2012 11:15 PM

We are now just minutes away from getting the first results in the 2012 Nevada caucuses.

So besides listening to The Fix’s Nevada playlist, what else can you do to get ready for the big night?

Read full article >>

February 04, 2012 10:32 PM

[Warning: Graphic adult content, some viewers may find this disturbing.]

The Oakland Police Department tried their best to keep certain things from being filmed, like close-ups of them assaulting peaceful protesters, they missed this one.

As kettled activists beg the Oakland Police to please issue a dispersal order so that they can leave, batons come out swinging for no apparent reason and allegedly someone's grandmother is struck. Shocked occupiers tell police that they've hurt a grandmother, and one man is even on his knees begging for a dispersal order. Again, for no apparent reason, an officer grabs a young black man at the front of the crowd by his ears and drags him away.

February 04, 2012 10:01 PM

There's something about prostitutes and a greasy publicity-chasing pimp being registered Republicans that feels like vindication. This makes it seem like the Grand Old Party is finally being candid about what they do...and why they do it. Finally a Republican owns up to my characterizations of them! Hooray.

Happy Nevada caucus day!

Open thread below...

February 04, 2012 08:30 PM

I knew that sooner or later, it would come out that some professional wingnut was behind the little love match between the Susan G. Komen Foundation and anti-Planned Parenthood VP Karen Handel. Surprise! It's Ari Fleischer:

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood. Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” at Komen last December. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Fleischer’s relationship with Komen and the Planned Parenthood controversy was previously undisclosed. He confirmed to ThinkProgress his recent role in filling a key communication position at Komen. Fleischer stressed, however, another communications firm (Ogilvy PR) was retained by Komen to deal with crisis communications over the last few days and he has not been involved.

In November, Komen advertised for a top level communications position in Roll Call. Promising applicants received a call from Fleischer. The advertisement is no longer posted on the Roll Call website, but a portion is accessible via Google:

enlarge

According to a source, during at least one interview, Planned Parenthood was a major topic of conversation. Fleischer indicated that he had discussed the Planned Parenthood issue with Komen’s CEO, Nancy Brinker, and that she was at her wits end about how to proceed. Fleischer described himself as a longtime friend of Brinker.

Fleischer confirmed to ThinkProgress that he would receive a fee from Komen when the search is complete. Fleischer did not specify the amount of his fee but said it would be “substantially below the normal placement fee charged by executive search companies” because “they’re a charity I believe in.”

February 04, 2012 07:00 PM

Fox News and business network pundits loudly proclaim the wealthy pay all the taxes and poor people are grubbing off of them. What they're talking about are federal taxes, so that they can create their own fraudulent narrative about the federal deficit and spending. However, the working class is bludgeoned by state and local taxes, which drains them of all the resources they have to be the type of consumers this country needs in order to thrive.

Kevin Drum explains:

Still and all, it's true that the federal income tax is indeed progressive. Conservatives are right about that—though it's not as progressive as it used to be, back before top marginal rates were lowered and capital gains taxes were slashed in half. But conservatives are a little less excited to talk about other kinds of taxes. Payroll taxes aren't progressive, for example. In fact, they're actively regressive, with the poor and middle classes paying higher rates than the rich.

And then there are state taxes. Those include state income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and fees of various kinds. How progressive are state taxes?

Answer: They aren't. The Corporation for Enterprise Development recently released a scorecard for all 50 states, and it has boatloads of useful information. That includes overall tax rates, where data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that in the median state (Mississippi, as it turns out) the poorest 20 percent pay twice the tax rate of the top 1 percent. In the worst states, the poorest 20 percent pay five to six times the rate of the richest 1 percent. Lucky duckies indeed. There's not one single state with a tax system that's progressive. Check the table below to see how your state scores.

When you speak to average Americans they have no idea what real tax policy is because it's so complex, and easily repackaged into right wing talking points. I remember during the first tea party protest in Santa Monica there was a small business owner who was joining in because California raised fees on her business, so she was upset. I explained to her that THIS protest was about the federal government. She had no idea what I was talking about. She assumed Glenn Beck was right and Obama was taxing her into submission when in fact it was Arnold. The middle class is more concerned with their payroll tax—because that's what they survive on—than with the overall federal tax rates that affect the wealthy. To them, it's all the same. Many governors have been guilty of pillaging their treasuries to create tax breaks for businesses which then creates a major deficit. And guess who gets screwed? The little guy and union workers.

February 04, 2012 05:30 PM

This Wednesday on PBS, we got treated to another dose of David Brooks and his fetishism for “centrism,” with Charlie Rose leading the way, asking Brooks for “five big ideas, five big, bold ideas that you would like to see debated in the upcoming presidential election, which will have consequences for who we are.”

His answer is anything but surprising given the column he wrote earlier in the week, which has been panned from so many people out there, it's hard to keep count, but Politico gave it a shot and so did Gawker.

First out of the box: tax “reform”, which of course is nothing but Republican double-speak for lowering rates on the highest earners and making the tax code less progressive under the guise of “fairness” and pretending Republicans will ever close any of the loopholes for corporations, which they won't.

Brooks' second “big idea” is doing something to fix the costs of Medicare, which Brooks claims that no one knows how to do, and then immediately proceeds to tout Paul Ryan's “premium support” which is Republican double-speak for privatizing it. Naturally Rose didn't point out that we could do something to control the costs, like putting everyone on it instead of pushing the sickest and most expensive patients onto the tax payers while the insurance companies get to line their pockets off of the rest of us. That conversation isn't allowed in our corporate media though, so they moved on after Brooks lied about how privatizing Medicare was going to contain the costs instead of admitting that it would just push the costs onto seniors instead. Brooks also said we could “try some things that are in 'Obamacare' too,” but of course he didn't elaborate on what any of those things are.

Brilliant idea number three ... “family policy is essential.” To which even Charlie Rose had to ask, “What does that mean?” This is where Brooks blames income disparity and a lack of eduction on women having babies out of wedlock.

BROOKS: Right now, we have forty-odd percentage points of kids in this country born out of wedlock. The effects of that on average, not for every kid born out of wedlock, but for, on average, the effects of that are so powerful that it means thirty years from now inequality will be worse than it is right now. The achievement gap will be worse than it is right now. These effects are just huge and I don't care what we do with charter schools and all the other good stuff. You will not be able to counteract that effect of family breakdown. […]

It involves some conservative sounding ideas, getting people to get married before they have kids, just a social norm, some liberal policies. You've got to make men marriageable by giving them incomes, earned income tax credit, wage subsidies, or else no one's going to want to marry a guy if he has no income. And so that's a left/right thing, which I really think Obama should have done.

“Obama should have done.” I'm not quite sure how David Brooks thinks President Obama could have forced all of those people out there having premarital sex and having babies out of wedlock to get married first, but that statement just about made my jaw drop.

I guess Charlie Rose doesn't read Brooks' column, because he didn't bother to ask him about the fact that he was just citing the exact same statistics to praise the writings of Charles Murry, who as Charles Pierce pointed out this week, “has dismissed black people as fundamentally uneducable.”

I'll let Pierce take it from here with his commentary on Brooks and his column where the same topic of out of wedlock babies came up — Our Mr. Brooks Finds Another Very Important Thinker:

Worse, there are vast behavioral gaps between the educated upper tribe (20 percent of the country) and the lower tribe (30 percent of the country). This is where Murray is at his best, and he's mostly using data on white Americans, so the effects of race and other complicating factors don’t come into play.

(Of course, the author has dismissed black people as fundamentally uneducable in his previous work. So why should he — or we — care about them at all? What an important thinker.)

Roughly seven percent of the white kids in the upper tribe are born out of wedlock, compared with roughly 45 percent of the kids in the lower tribe. In the upper tribe, nearly every man aged 30 to 49 is in the labor force. In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad. People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.

(Is it possible that there might be some other factor beyond being part of a tribe that makes people fat? That makes them less likely to obtain information about birth control? That keeps them out of the labor force, "in good times and in bad"? That keeps them at home watching TV excessively rather than going out to the opera? Is it possible that money is involved in any of this?)

(Of course, not. You know what's coming.)

It's wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It's wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites. The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids. Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

(Mmm, word salad. "Postmodern neighborhoods"? Do you know what some of those elites "worked arduously" at in the first decade of the 21st century? Devising complicated financial instruments by which they could steal most of the money from the rest of the country and get away with it. They haven't "returned to 1950s' traditionalist values and practices." Too many of their wives are working and taking the pill, which is covered by the gold-plated health-care plans The Firm offers to its most valued employees. I'd like to see data on how well they're "regulating" their kids, too, and find another verb, fool. Kids are not water heaters. David Brooks is impressed that Charles Murray, career hack, has found some white people he can treat like black people, and just in time, too. Save me, Racist Data Man!)

I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.

Brooks' fourth idea: Early childhood education — which he claims that our members of Congress have no interest in tackling because "the prestige" (a.k.a. money) is in K-12 and higher ed. Rose also asks him if he's got any "bold" ideas on foreign policy, which he shrugs off because I assume our elected representatives on all sides of the aisle are sufficiently hawkish to suit him.

And last but not least, Brooks' fifth idea... "metro area clustering." Here's more with Brooks' convoluted explanation of what that means, which sounds quite similar to the clap-trap he just wrote in his column that Pierce disassembled above.

BROOKS: Why is America really rich? It's not because we have natural resources. It's because we're really good at forming networks, at forming a Silicon Valley where you get combinations of people feeding off each other. So we should have policies to create metro areas where you get that sort of (crosstalk).

Some of that is just infrastructure. And some of it comes up automatically. You're absolutely right. […]

And so there's a (inaudible) that studies this (crosstalk) and he makes a distinction between table setting policies and industrial policies. Table setting is just giving the entrepreneurs the basic groundwork, intellectual property rights, infrastructure, basic research. You're not trying to do Solyndra. I don't think government is smart enough to do that. But you can set the table, right? And you can have sort of policies for a metro area for this cross-fertilization.

ROSE: Well that's an interesting question because it also leads into this big idea about government and the role of government and where we are on that and whether that — can you define that in a way that it will appeal beyond the rhetoric of, especially Mitt Romney and the way he likes to talk? […]

BROOKS: You can't have it simply Republican policies, because they're really good at liberating the market. They're really bad at building up human skills. The Democratic policies are pretty good at building up human skills, but I think are insufficiently good at liberating the market to create more open competition.

ROSE: So “liberating the market” is less regulations around all markets?

BROOKS: Absolutely.

ROSE: And building up skills having to do with job training and things like that... that contribute to the economy?

BROOKS: Right. So I would say instead of doing column A and column B, instead of sort of triangulating the mushy middle, you take the extreme of column A, which is a very simple tax code and streamline regulation and the very best of column B, which is job training and basic research and infrastructure and stuff the President talks about and you do them both at once.

David Brooks conveniently forgets to mention that "liberating" those markets hasn't worked out all that well for us and has led to the biggest economic disaster in decades with Wall Street running amok, one of the biggest oil spills in history with those "liberated" oil companies, massive income disparity with those "liberated" companies free to send their jobs offshore, and that the have-mores aren't going to do a damn thing for the poor and the shrinking middle class in America out of the goodness of their hearts.

Finally Charlie Rose wraps things up by asking Brooks this:

ROSE: Do you think you represent — in terms of your beliefs and your writings — the common sense center?

Dear lord help me. Really Charlie? David Brooks, who's been whitewashing horrible Republican ideas and trying to dress them up as presentable for the public while he rakes in way more money than he deserves to make, represents "the common sense center"? Good grief.

Here's Brooks' response.

BROOKS: Yeah. Again, it's not the center because it's taking the best of the outsides. But I do think a... I'm one of I think a lot of people. I think thirty or forty percent of Americans. And you know, it was interesting, I saw the exit polling.

If you looked at the... they asked some very good questions in the exit polling and they asked people where you stood on abortion, where do you stand on other issues, taxes, the voters were way more diverse than the candidates. So even on pro-life I think only twenty one percent of Republican primary voters in Florida think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. And a good forty percent think it should, or sort of think it should be legal. And so that's a diversity of opinion and that is represented on the tax policies and other things that you wouldn't know if you just listened to candidates.

David Brooks ... "the common sense center"... whitewashing Republican extremism one column and interview at a time.

February 04, 2012 04:00 PM

ABOVE: Dan “Baby J-Dough Loadberg” Foster

Shorter Dan Foster, America’s Shittiest Website™

You Should Find the Anti-Komen Backlash Disgusting, Even If You’re Pro-Choice

• People who disagree with Komen cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood should exercise their free speech rights by writing a check to Planned Parenthood and then just STFU.

Dan Foster, that rakishly handsome Lothario over at America’s Shittiest Website™ obviously has a deep and abiding personal interest in women’s health issues, so, of course, he was all over the backlash to the Komen Foundation’s decision to placate right-wing religious nuts by cutting off funding to breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood clinics. (You may wonder why the Talibangelicals object to mammogram funding. Silly liberals, don’t you see? Women that survive breast cancer can live on to have more abortions and kill more babies.)

Here’s what that burning hunk-a-love had to say about that “disgusting” backlash:

Look, the beauty of free speech is that, if you’re inclined to do so, you can write a check to PP in an act of solidarity, or write a check to Komen as an expression of moral approval. That’s all fine. But there’s something quite a bit different, something creepy and not a little despicable, about the Planned Parenthood set’s besmirching Komen’s good name across a thousand platforms for having the audacity to stop giving them free money.

God forbid that anyone should exercise free speech by, um, saying something. Silly liberals. Free speech is for checkbooks and people with money.

The wags at Gawker latched onto this and beat up on our fashion plate friend pretty badly, which led sartorial Dan to have a “What Would Jesus Jonah do?” moment. So Dan decided to fight back. He’d show them, with his superior rhetorical chops, that no one messes around with Dan Foster and lives to tell the tale.  Sadly, as we say, no!

But the ‘conservatives think free speech only applies to money’ canard won’t cut it here. I never say, or imply, that anything PP or its allies have done is illegal or should be.

No, Dan, you didn’t say that free speech that wasn’t money was illegal — and Gawker didn’t say you said that — you just said that free speech with words rather than bucks was — what were the words? — “creepy” and “despicable.”

Gawker 1, Jonah Wannabe 0

In case it was unclear why I think those words apply, let me be more explicit.

We’re all ears, you handsome devil.

The amount of grants issued by the latter to the former totaled less than $700,000. Planned Parenthood successfully fundraised in excess of that amount within 24 hours on the argument that Komen was hurting women’s health …

I don’t know how anyone can step on their own 1/2″ penis, but Dan just managed it. Dan, sweetie, you don’t win an argument that the backlash was disgusting because it raised more money for breast cancer screening for poor women.

Some of the methods employed by PP supporters were downright filthy. … United States senators calling on Komen to reverse its decision on the floors of Congress? I don’t know if that’s legitimate free speech, but I know its despicable.

I don’t know how anyone can step on his own 1/2″ penis and pee on himself at the same, but Dan just managed that feat too. Even someone who has flunked high school civics class knows that statements made on the floor of Congress are at the fundamental core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.  To suggest that statements made on the floor of Congress aren’t legitimate free speech is like saying that access to the ballot box isn’t a legitimate part of the right to vote. Oh wait. . .

Gawker 3,252, Dan -2,716.

Game over.

February 04, 2012 03:52 PM

(h/t ABL WARNING: Graphic images and language)

My mother died of breast cancer. I'm sure the vast majority of people reading this can point to an aunt, a cousin, a sister, a best friend who has had the disease. So far, the estimated new cases and deaths from breast cancer in the United States in 2012 (and this is just February) is 226,870 women and 2,190 men with new cases of cancer and 39,510 women and 410 men who have died from the disease. Many of these women, and possibly even men, are poor and have little access to proper health care or support in a country where health care is still only for few who can afford it, and many of them owe their lives to finding the disease early through breast screening provided by Planned Parenthood.

But it seems the anti-abortion faction of the right wing isn't just trying to impose their moral, political and religious values on women's wombs, they don't give a damn about the health of women's breasts, either. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has found itself under fire during this past week over its decision to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood, thereby depriving thousands of women from life-saving breast screening. But one voice in the many opposed to the gutless capitulation of the Komen Foundation, and specifically Komen's CEO, Nancy Brinker, is that of Linda Burger, a 56-year-old breast cancer survivor in Las Vegas, who was so appalled she made a video. It is not for the faint hearted, for as Linda says in this video, cancer makes you frank, it makes you say what you feel. It give you the courage to face a camera and bare the scars from a mastectomy for the entire world to see. This brave, beautiful, kick-ass woman pulls no punches, she's a hero through and through.

Watch this wonderful video. Then send it to an aunt, a cousin, a sister, a best friend. Send it to your Congressman. Send the Komen Foundation the message that politics and religion have no place in providing health care for women who have nowhere else to turn. They can take their plastic pink ribbons and shove them up Ari Fleischer's nose. Then send a donation to Planned Parenthood - help keep them alive, so that they can help keep us alive.

February 04, 2012 02:30 PM

Brilliant at Breakfast: Old memes never die, they just get burned into the public consciousness.

The Political Carnival: What it’s like to be an African-American Democrat at a Republican presidential debate.

Mugsy's Rap Sheet: Moon bases for moonbats.

Straight Goods: Seven signs the corporatocracy is losing its legitimacy, and seven populist tools to help shut it down.

PR Watch: Secret e-mail system revealed in "John Doe" probe of Scott Walker staff.

Brad Blog: Virginia officials confirm criminal election fraud investigation of Gingrich campaign.

Guest post by Batocchio. Email tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

February 04, 2012 01:00 PM

Pink Ribbons, Inc. is expected to open in US theatres this Spring. Open Thread below...

February 04, 2012 04:30 AM

No disrespect to any POTUS who might cover Reverend Al Green, but Obadiah Parker isn't half bad, either.

Whatcha listening to this Friday night?

February 04, 2012 04:00 AM

David Shuster filling in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown this Wednesday evening spoke to comedian and Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead about the dust up with the Susan G. Komen foundation's decision to pull their funding from Planned Parenthood. Lizz has been out there doing terrific work trying to raise money for Planned Parenthood for some time now and she didn't mince any words when it came to her feelings on the recent assault on the group from the right.

WINSTEAD: Well, I think she said it herself when she was running for governor when she said, "I don't support the mission of Planned Parenthood." And the mission of Planned Parenthood is to provide affordable heath care for low-income women. And, if you don't support that mission, I really don't know how you can call yourself pro-life in the least.

And I think it's very suspect that, within the last year, this woman who was running for governor — who got Sarah Palin's endorsement, she was so conservative that she got the endorsement of Palin, — ran for Governor of Georgia the same year this legislation comes to be in Congress. And Susan Komen's new edict is "we can't support any organization that has legislation before Congress that's investigative."

Where are those dots? How do those connect? It does seem like — conservative person needed to put a piece of legislation in place so that Susan Komen could conveniently withhold their funding. It might sound tinfoil-hat-y. But I would like to, at least, know that there is not connection, or, if there is, I'd like to know that too.

Lizz has a new article in The Guardian with more you can read here -- By defunding Planned Parenthood, the Susan G Komen Foundation betrays women.

Full transcript below the fold.

SHUSTER: Women's health has now become the latest casualty in the right's war against Planned Parenthood.

In our number-one story in the "Countdown" — National breast-cancer organization Susan G. Komen For the Cure announced yesterday that it's breaking off its partnership with reproductive-health center Planned Parenthood. The move will eliminate financial grants for breast-cancer screenings and education programs that hundreds of thousands of low-income and uninsured women rely on at Planned Parenthood health centers around the country.

Komen insists the cut in funding is not political, saying it is merely following a new policy against funding groups under investigation. A congressional audit of Planned Parenthood was launched last September by Republican Representative Cliff Stearns of Florida, to determine whether public money was spent on abortions over the past decade.

Conveniently, the halt of grants to Planned Parenthood comes less than a year after Komen hired its new vice president, Karen Handel. In 2010, Handel launched an aggressively anti-abortion platform in her failed bid for Georgia governor, writing in a campaign blog posted at the time, "Let me be clear, since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood."

Many in the right demonize Planned Parenthood, painting it strictly as a abortion provider to incite anger among pro-life constituents and gain support for federal aid cuts, even though abortions are funded largely through the Title X and the Title 10 and Medicaid programs. Furthermore, according to independent analysis, 90 percent of the services at Planned Parenthood are unrelated to abortion.

Komen's actions spurred fierce responses from some Democrats on the Hill yesterday, with Senator Patty Murray writing in a press release, "At the heart of this issue is the shameful 'investigation' of Planned Parenthood by House Republicans trying to score political points and appease their extreme right-wing base."

Patrick Hurd, CEO of the Planned Parenthood in Southeastern Virginia that receives a Komen grant, and husband of Betsy Hurd, a breast cancer patient, told the AP, "Cancer doesn't care if you're pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative. Victims of cancer could care less about people's politics."

Let's bring in Lizz Winstead, comedienne, co-creator of "The Daly Show" and author of "Lizz Free or Die" essays. Lizz, we appreciate your time tonight.

LIZZ WINSTEAD: Thanks, David.

SHUSTER: So, many in the right wing are — in the media — the right-wing media are applauding the Komen foundation, included Erick Erickson, CNN contributor and blogger at "Red State."

He wrote yesterday, "As a result of this announcement, the left has gone on the attack," urging readers to send their donation to Komen for cutting off Planned Parenthood funding. What kind of message is the right sending with this sort of reaction?

WINSTEAD: Well, I think she said it herself when she was running for governor when she said, "I don't support the mission of Planned Parenthood." And the mission of Planned Parenthood is to provide affordable heath care for low-income women. And, if you don't support that mission, I really don't know how you can call yourself pro-life in the least.

And I think it's very suspect that, within the last year, this woman who was running for governor — who got Sarah Palin's endorsement, she was so conservative that she got the endorsement of Palin, — ran for Governor of Georgia the same year this legislation comes to be in Congress. And Susan Komen's new edict is "we can't support any organization that has legislation before Congress that's investigative."

Where are those dots? How do those connect? It does seem like — conservative person needed to put a piece of legislation in place so that Susan Komen could conveniently withhold their funding. It might sound tinfoil-hat-y. But I would like to, at least, know that there is not connection, or, if there is, I'd like to know that too.

SHUSTER: Well, and we're not talking about a Justice Department criminal investigation.

WINSTEAD: That's right.

SHUSTER: — civil investigation. It's one Republican in Congress. It's not that difficult to launch an investigation if you're a member of Congress.

WINSTEAD: Well, and the thing is, David, Planned Parenthood — we've seen the assault on Planned Parenthood. They have to submit so much stuff every year. Every year they submit their tax records.

So, basically, what this congressman is doing is forcing Planned Parenthood to re-submit this stuff at the cost of Planned Parenthood and the American taxpayer and that's what's really awful.

SHUSTER: Because of this decision by Komen, their Connecticut affiliate has withdrawn from the national organization. Obviously, yeah, Planned Parenthood is going to recoup. Will Komen recover?

WINSTEAD: I'm not so concerned about Komen. If Komen is making this decision, I really feel like — I'm for Planned Parenthood. I'm pro-Planned Parenthood and what they do. If Komen wants to shoot themselves in the foot —

As a — right before I went on, one of your producers came up to me and said, "Planned Parenthood's raised $650,000 in a 24-hour period." I believe that the Komen grant, last year, was about $680,000 — between $650,000 and $680,000 — I don't know the exact number.

What we need to do now is — I'm tired of waking up every day and having this assault on women's heath care and wondering who we're going to pull the rug out from under today. So, I think this is a wake-up call to all women that supporting women's health care, and affordable women's heath care, is something that we have to do every day. You know, like, wipe our butts and go to the gym.

SHUSTER: Planned Parenthood, as you mentioned — $680,000 last year from Komen, $580,000 the year before. As you just mentioned, they've raised, already, more than that. A lot of folks, though, don't realize that the Komen foundation, in 2010, they raised in over 400 million dollars.

WINSTEAD: $400 million.

SHUSTER: So, in other words, they're cutting off such a small — such a small part of that just to make a political point.

WINSTEAD: Well, the small part is .016, .016 is what they were giving to Planned Parenthood, they cut off to make a political point. I don't know how you can look at this as any other thing but a political point.

You know, this is about breast cancer, this is about making sure that women can be well. How do you say you're pro-life if you are taking away money to help women be well? One hundred and seventy thousand women got breast cancer exams because of the Komen money. Now more will, but it's because women have stepped up and said, "Whoa."

And what's interesting is, I don't make any bones about how I feel politically about things, and I have been very vocal on Twitter, all through the night, actually. I have not gotten one person in my twitter stream — and I always get haters — not one person came in and said, "How dare you, how dare you take on these people?" Because people know.

And, in fact, this documentary, oddly enough, launching tomorrow, that's called, "Pink Ribbon Inc." And it's about looking at corporatization of charity and they have really looked into the Komen foundation and others to see what this is about.

SHUSTER: There are so many women who participate in the Race for the Cure — the march where they put on the pink and we saw the pictures right there. Do you think, perhaps, this an opportunity for Planned Parenthood to remind everybody who participates in this race who says, "Yes, we need more screening, we need more preventative tests," that — well, that's what Planned Parenthood was doing.

WINSTEAD: That's what Planned Parenthood was doing. And they have the facilities to do it, they have the infrastructure to do it. They are already in your neighborhoods and your towns providing it in strategic locations that are accessible to people.

So, to pull it out, where is that money going to go? To more pink toasters? To more awareness campaigns? Guess what? We're aware there's breast cancer, and now we're aware that Susan Komen really doesn't care about finding a cure, they care about finding corporate sponsors to slap that stupid ribbon on.

SHUSTER: Lizz Winstead. Lizz, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

WINSTEAD: Thanks, David.

SHUSTER: Lizz's radio program can be heard on weactradio.com and NDC at 1480AM.

February 04, 2012 03:03 AM

It has been a fascinating last few weeks in the great banking/housing debates. The administration is growing less and less tentative in its rhetoric against Wall Street, and is opening up multiple new fronts to take on the black hole of the housing market that is throwing a wet blanket over the broader economy. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been pounding on the doors of the Department of Justice, demanding they work with him and give him more resources to do the aggressive prosecution he wants to do, and they have relented to an extent. But we still don’t know how aggressive the new task force they set up will be. The long rumored robo-signing settlement, which has been a few days away from being inked for about a year now, seems like it is moving toward completion, but Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto sent a letter with 38 specific questions that trouble a lot of people. And progressives who have been working on banking issues for years are debating whether to have any faith at all in the developments of the week.

I am going to focus on the settlement and Attorney General Masto’s letter, because the rumors and counter-rumors, arguments and counter-arguments, are dizzying. I should stipulate that I am not a lawyer, and have seen none of the actual language of the settlement, so all I’ve got to work with are lots of conversations, blog posts, news reports, and Masto’s letter. Since the settlement talks began more than a year ago, I have had a ton of conversations with AG Tom Miller of Iowa, Schneiderman and some of his staff, a couple of California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ staff people, and a boatload of administration people. So a lot of what I have been trying to do is combine what I am hearing from all those conversations with what I am seeing other places. My assessment of what people tell me is based partly on how much I trust them (which can admittedly be flawed; such things are highly subjective judgment calls), but mostly my read of the political dynamic, which is of course different for each of the players'.

On Jan. 27, I released a story outlining what sources high up in the settlement negotiations told me would be the nature of the legal release for the banks. Some of the phrases they gave me, such as the phrase “vast majority” (used twice) were pretty vague, and because I hadn’t seen the actual language, I was reporting only what I was told. But it sounded like we were headed toward fairly tight release language on the settlement. However, the very same day, Masto sent a letter to Shaun Donovan at HUD, Attorney General Tom Miller, and DOJ settlement chair Tom Perrelli with a list of 38 detailed questions indicating either that she had yet to see any language, or that any settlement language she had seen was so vague and poorly written as to cause big worries about the nature of the settlement. Her questions raised alarm bells with me and with writers I respect, including David Dayen and Yves Smith, because if she had seen the release language and was asking these kinds of questions, it probably meant very bad things, and certainly would have meant I had been lied to by my sources on Jan. 27.

One possibility, of course, is that Attorney General Masto doesn’t know what she is talking about, or is acting in bad faith, raising questions she already knows the answers to. I do not believe that for a minute. From everything I have heard, Masto is a very smart and capable Attorney General who is fighting hard for Nevadans who have been royally screwed over by mortgage fraud. Nevadans have been hit harder than anyone by the rampant levels of fraud in every aspect of the housing market in recent years, with a stunning 60 percent of Nevada homeowners in underwater mortgages. Masto’s letter shows that she and her staff are deep into the nitty-gritty on these issues, and that she is asking all the right questions. I have confidence that she is fighting the good fight effectively on behalf of her constituents.

But I still find it difficult to believe the administration would be so politically stupid to appoint a high-profile task force to investigate financial fraud; make a big deal about it by announcing in the State of the Union address; have Schneiderman sit in the First Lady’s box; talk about it extensively in another big speech on housing yesterday; leak something about the settlement where they claim the release will be very narrow and tight; and then have a settlement with a release that is weak, broad, and full of loopholes so that their shiny new task force is dramatically undermined and rendered toothless. Trust me, I have seen the polling: This is a President whose path to re-election could not be more clear — he needs to have credibility as a champion against the abuses of Wall Street, and he needs to have a fired-up base. The firestorm that would be created if this administration would agree to a bad settlement after all this build-up would be immense, with close allies like the AFL-CIO and MoveOn.org denouncing the administration, and Occupy and community organization demonstrators around the country protesting Obama at every campaign stop.

I also can’t imagine Attorneys General like Eric Schneiderman and Kamala Harris, who have built their political brand and base dramatically by standing up against a weak settlement, agreeing at this late date to something bad. It doesn’t make any political sense at all for them to do that. Schneiderman’s reputation will now live or die with the success of this new financial fraud task force, so why would he ever agree to a settlement that didn’t allow him full running room to thoroughly investigate financial fraud? I don’t know all the legal ins and outs of this, but I do know politics, and a weak settlement at this point doesn’t make any sense to me.

So if Masto isn’t in the wrong, and the settlement release language is relatively strong, where does that leave me? My strong hunch is that Masto, at least as of the time she sent the letter (no way to tell what she has seen since), still hadn’t seen much if any of the language being proposed in the settlement agreement. If that conclusion is correct, I think the administration has been making a serious mistake in the bargaining strategy on this settlement. I’m sure there are things I’m not understanding about all this, and I feel for the people trying to herd 51 Attorneys General, five big banks, and multiple government agencies all in the same direction. It’s got to be just a mess. But given how late in the game this is—HUD Secretary Donovan is saying there was a deadline for the Attorneys General to say yes or no by the end of this week—for an Attorney General in a state as central to the housing crisis as Nevada to not have seen the proposed settlement language by last Friday would be a travesty.

I don’t know what the answer to this mystery is. Maybe my political instincts are all wrong, or there are deep things I’m not getting about what is going on, but I think the administration needs to be talking more to Attorneys General like Masto to get this right, and to make sure her questions get answered. Most importantly of all, if there is to be a settlement, the release language needs to be as tight as a drum, or all hell will break loose.

I think we’ll know more very soon.

February 04, 2012 02:00 AM

The Susan G. Komen Foundation has absolutely no credibility left. On Thursday, this is what Nancy Brinker, Komen's CEO, told Andrea Mitchell.

BRINKER: In 2010, we set about creating excellence in our grants, not just in our community grants, but in our science grants, putting metrics, outcomes and measures to them. [...] Part of that includes taking these grants into communities and being excellent grant givers. Many of the grants we were doing with Planned Parenthood do not meet new standards of criteria for how we can measure our results and effectiveness in communities.

She went on to emphasize that this was the key reason the funding had been withdrawn -- and played down the fact that the GOP House was currently investigating Planned Parenthood.

But here's part of the statement she released Friday.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

So, what happened to those "measures" and "metrics" and "outcomes" Brinker was babbling about on Thursday?

Meanwhile, wingnuts are circulating this piece, which claims a Komen board member says they've haven't reversed themselves at all.

Following a new statement Komen for the Cure released making many observers believe the breast cancer charity reversed position on whether it would fund grants to Planned Parenthood, one Komen board member says it hasn’t caved.

Komen board member John Raffaelli talked with the Washington Post after the statement was released and said the new announcement doesn’t necessarily mean there is any reversal until and unless Planned Parenthood receives additional funding beyond what was already planned before Komen’s December decision.

Based on Komen's actions this week, does anyone have any confidence that they'll do the right thing now?

For Komen to regain any credibility at all, Brinker's got to go. And so does the other wingnut behind this.

February 04, 2012 01:00 AM

Many Americans were shocked last month to learn that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney only paid an effective tax rate of 13.8 percent in 2010, but a recent report shows that corporations are paying even less.

Corporations in the U.S. paid only an average of 12.1 percent in taxes on the profits they earned inside the U.S in fiscal 2011, according to statistics from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The Wall Street Journal reports that it's the lowest percentage corporations have paid on those profits since at least 1972, and it's less than half of the 25.6 percent they paid on average between 1987 and 2008.

Corporations saw their profits, however, reach an all-time high at the end of 2010. The $1.68 trillion in annualized profits in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 beat the previous record of $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2006.

The Journal credited the low rate to a temporary tax break, known as "bonus depreciation," which allowed companies to immediately write off certain investments instead of taking write-offs over a period of years.

In an interview with NBC earlier this year, Romney flat-out stated that President Barack Obama had raised taxes on corporations.

"If you want to get the economy going, lower corporate tax rates," he said. "He’s raised them."

Since 1993, the marginal corporate rate has been at 35 percent. Romney has proposed that it be reduced to 25 percent.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has said the he would "create a boom of new American entrepreneurship by dramatically cutting the corporate tax rate" to 12.5 percent (PDF), one of the lowest in the developed world.

During his State of the Union Address last month, the president also opened the door to lowering the corporate rate "without adding to our deficit." In their 2010 report (PDF), the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board discussed lowering the marginal rate to 28 percent.

February 04, 2012 12:00 AM

UPDATE: Anonymous’ Latest Release Includes Private Info About Sexual Assault Victims and Guantanamo Lawyers

The call begins with Stewart and Bruce of Scotland Yard and the Los Angeles office of the FBI as they tell inside jokes about McDonald's and cheese and talk shop about a hacker plot called "Project Mayhem."

They discuss strategy aimed at bringing down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, which has launched a series of embarrassing attacks across the Internet.

Unfortunately for the cyber sleuths, the hackers were listening, too, and now so is everyone else in the world.

Via:

As FBI and Scotland Yard investigators recently plotted out a strategy for tracking suspects linked to Anonymous, little did they know that members of the group were eavesdropping on their conference call and recording their plans.

The online vigilante group has released a 17-minute clip of a Jan. 17 conference call between investigators discussing evidence gathered against members of the group as well as upcoming plans for arrests. The group also released an e-mail sent out by an FBI agent to law enforcement agents around the world with a phone number and password for accessing the conference call.

The FBI has confirmed to the Associated Press that the recording is authentic.

February 03, 2012 11:00 PM

Newt Gingrich goes on the attack, Romney was once a Democrat, Santorum didn’t qualify for the ballot in Indiana and Florida Democrats seem ready to go to court.

Make sure to sign up to get “Afternoon Fix” in your e-mail inbox every day by 5 (ish) p.m!

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 10:14 PM

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is offended that President Barack Obama quoted scripture to make the case for a fairer tax policy.

Speaking to a group of mostly-conservative politicians at the annual National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, the president proved that conservatives do not have a monopoly on using religion to advocate for specific public policies.

“And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe at a time when folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone," Obama explained. "And I think to myself, if I am willing to give something up as someone who has been extraordinarily blessed, give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy — I actually think that’s going to make economic sense."

“But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,” the president added.

Only a few hours later, Hatch, who normally favors co-mingling government and religion, was on the floor of the Senate expressing outrage at the president for using the Bible to make a point.

"Just this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, the president took what has always been a non-partisan opportunity for national unity and used to promote his political agenda," Hatch complained. "He suggested to the attendees that Jesus would have supported his latest tax-the-rich schemes. With due respect to the president, he ought to stick to public policy. I think most Americans would agree that the Gospels are concerned with weightier matters than effective tax rates."

"In 2008, the president declared that his nomination was the world historical moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal," Hatch recalled.

"Someone needs to remind the president that there was only one person who walked on water, and he did not occupy the Oval Office."

Hatch, however, has made the case for religion in public policy when it suits his needs.

During a Republican presidential debate in 2000, the senator from Utah declared, "if I had my way, I'd have a silent prayer reflection constitutional amendment that would give kids a moment of silent prayer reflection at the beginning of every school day."

He has also leaned on the Bible to make the case against gay rights.

"It's a religious belief to me that homosexuality flies in the face of biblical teachings," Hatch, who is Mormon, told The Salt Lake Tribune in 1999.

(H/T: The Hill)

February 03, 2012 10:00 PM

Do you want an offiical Fix t-shirt? Of course you do! And it’s easy.

All you have to do is guess the finish order and vote share of all four GOP presidential candidates in Nevada’s Saturday caucuses. (Okay, maybe not that easy. Those shirts are highly coveted; we can’t just give them away.)

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 09:00 PM

February 03, 2012 09:00 PM

Sandy Rios is a Fox Talker and Vice President of Family PAC Federal, a PAC supporting ultra-conservative candidates like Michele Bachmann, Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn. Evidently her gifts are limited to her abilities to repeat right wing talking points with alacrity and little more.

Her "discussion" with Fox contributor Jehmu Greene about the Susan G Komen Foundation's announcement to reverse themselves on some level with regard to Planned Parenthood paints a pretty vivid image of the differences between right and left when it comes to women's health.

Rios views the backlash by men and women across the country over the Komen Foundation's decision to withdraw funding for breast cancer screening from Planned Parenthood centers across the country as a mere "shakedown" while arguing that the foundation is a private enterprise which can do what it wants.

Not so fast, there, Ms. Rios. As long as donations to the foundation are tax-deductible, it is not a private enterprise. It is a taxpayer-subsidized enterprise with a stated mission to raise money for and fund breast cancer research and health initiatives to prevent and treat breast cancer. It is not a corporation created with private dollars to pursue private objectives. Not at all.

Rios' protests might actually be interesting if the statement released this morning by the Komen Foundation weren't so full of holes and hedges that you could play croquet on it. On first blush, it appeared to be a concession to the backlash, but upon closer inspection, it appears to be mostly a public relations move to keep a terrible situation from being even more terrible.

Since President and CEO Nancy Brinker has offered two separate and contradictory reasons for the original decision, there's no reason to expect they won't withhold grants from Planned Parenthood because they decide to add requirements, like on-site mammography, which Planned Parenthood contracts with third party providers for.

And as John Aravosis points out, they could show some contrition by approving the grant application from Planned Parenthood they've turned down once already.

But let's not allow facts to distract this wild-eyed woman on Fox from just going on and on about how Senators intimidated Brinker. Here's a question for Sandy Rios: Since abortions represent 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's overall health services delivered to women, then what she is saying is that 97 percent of health services delivered to women is worthless. Did she really mean that?

The right-wing has settled on their battle cry, by the way. It's the "shakedown" theme, which was echoed by the National Review who called it "gangsterism." Seems that activism is only activism when it's on the right. When the left uses the same tools, they're gangsters. Got that?

Jehmu Greene tries hard to take the high road by simply complimenting the Komen people on their decision to place women's health above all others. It goes nowhere.

You won't find any new facts in this exchange, but it certainly highlights the state of things between right and left, which is abysmal, contentious, and exactly what Roger Ailes prays for on his knobby, bowed-right knees every night.

Meanwhile, here are some things to watch for in the days to come. Will Karen Handel, the right wing politician who was at the very least, a lightning rod for all of this, resign? She should. Actually, she should be fired. Will those who resigned over this come back? I think this would be a huge indicator of which way this will play out in the future. If these people aren't satisfied that there's a real change in the works, they won't come back.

And finally, will people "walk for the cure" as they have in the past? My sense is that without some substance behind the promise, they will run to Avon or other charities' activities to raise funds for a cause that we should all support, male and female. Breast cancer doesn't care about gender. Men can get it too. But for the Susan G Komen Foundation, women seem to be the political football of the day, unless they change their ways.

February 03, 2012 09:00 PM

February 3, 2012
Posted By - Emma Venezie
Source Credits - talent network, inc.
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February 03, 2012 08:13 PM

The Nevada caucuses are tomorrow, and that means we need music to listen to while we wait for the results.

Here’s how you can help. Tell us your favorite songs from or about the Silver State with the hashtag #fixplaylist, and we’ll add them to our primary day playlist. Deal?

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 08:00 PM

Alan Grayson as a parrot? Obama as a slave ship captain? Children as slaves? (I thought they were supposed to be janitors?) Alan Grayson always seems to end up in districts with true wingnut opponents and this cycle is no different.

Via The Church Report:

Featuring the "USS Obamaboat," the animated ad urges voters to “turn this ship around” and criticizes Obama's levels of government spending, including bank bailouts, healthcare and a loan to the failed solar company Solyndra.

Children rowing the USS Obamaboat are told to “Earn! Earn! Earn! Don’t you care about the banks? Don’t you care about the 99 percent?”

A woman in a bathtub on deck says, “This ship stimulated my husband’s solar company” and is then handed money by a man in an adjacent bathtub.

This ticked me off enough to make a donation to Alan Grayson's campaign. Join me?

February 03, 2012 08:00 PM

Presidential contests are inherently an expectations game, and because of that, the expectation is that Saturday’s contest in Nevada doesn’t mean much.

Rightly or wrongly, when a state isn’t competitive, we generally discount its broader impact on the presidential race.

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 07:30 PM

February 03, 2012 07:23 PM

President Barack Obama proved on Thursday that conservatives don't have a monopoly on using religion to advocate for specific public policies.

Speaking to a group of mostly-conservative politicians at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, the president quoted scripture in a effort to get Republicans to support a fairer tax code and caring for the poor.

"When I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on main street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren't discriminating against those who are already sick or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren't taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody," Obama explained. "But I also do it because I know far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years. And I believe in God's command to love thy neighbor as thyself."

"And when I talk about shared responsibility, it's because I genuinely believe at a time when folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it's hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I am willing to give something up as someone who has been extraordinarily blessed, give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy -- I actually think that's going to make economic sense."

He added: "But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus's teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required."

"Treating others as you want to be treated, requiring much from those who have been given so much, living by the principle that we are our brother's keeper, caring for the poor and those in need, these values are old and they can be found in many denominations and many faiths and among many believers and among many non-believers. They're values that have always made this country great when we live up to them, when we just don't just give lip service to them, and we just don't talk about them one day a year."

February 03, 2012 07:00 PM

On Friday morning, the Susan B. Komen Foundation backed down from its decision to pull grants from Planned Parenthood.

More than 10,000 people donated to the family planning group in some way, according to President Cecile Richards. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged a $250,000 matching gift to the group.

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 06:52 PM

January 18, 2012
Posted By - Emma Venezie
Source Credits - Bella Sera Pittsburgh Hearts & Jokers 2012 
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Back by popular demand, the Heart & Jokers event is once again the place to be this Valentine's Day at Bella Sera - featuring tasteful comedy, amazing food and the ultimate ambiance. On Friday, February 10th, it is Comedy Night, featuring Comedians David Michael and Shaun Blackham with Comedy Magician Lee Terbosic. There will also be a special performance by former Ray Charles drummer and Pittsburgh's own jazz legend Roger Humphries and his Big Band, along with another renowned Pittsburgh jazz artist on guitar, Eric Johnson. The Jazz Music will begin at 7:00pm; the Comedy Show will begin at 9:00pm; more Jazz will follow at 10:00pm.

Along with the entertainment, enjoy:
o Tasty Intro Signature Drink
o Elegant All-You-Can-Enjoy Food Stations Featuring Chef-Attended Carving Station
o Cocktail and Bottle Service Available During Show
o Full Bar w/ Featured Wines & Cocktails at Happy Hour Prices
o Valet Parking

Tickets are $49.50 per person. Buy your ticket for the 2nd Annual Hearts & Jokers event here.

Note: Parties of 4 or more receive a complimentary bottle of champagne. A portion of the proceeds go to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

For more information, visit Hearts & Jokers on Bella Sera Pittsburgh.

Escape for Lunch at Bistro@Bella Sera: Weekdays 11:00am-2:00pm

Bella Sera Venue | 414 Morganza Rd | Canonsburg | (724)745.5575  

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February 03, 2012 06:17 PM

If you want to know why Newt Gingrich is raising a ruckus about how Florida allocates its delegates, just take a look at the chart below.

Florida, by awarding its 50 delegates on a winner-take-all basis, provided one of the biggest delegate swings you’ll see in the presidential race, outside of Super Tuesday.

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 06:07 PM

From The Hill's "Hill Tube" -- Actor Chris Rock: 'I'll pay higher taxes' :

Actor Chris Rock doesn't mind paying more in taxes. The way he sees it — in the end he'll have to spend the money anyway.

"I'll pay higher taxes. I look at it this way I can pay higher taxes and people can have jobs or I can pay lower taxes and I have my kid's teacher asking me for a loan, which is true," said Rock to The Associated Press.

"So I'm going to lose the money no matter what."

Rock also told the AP that as president of the United States, President Obama is like a father figure to the country.

"That's your job when you run anything is to reassure, so that's all I hope for, some reassurance." Read on...

Cue the feigned outrage at Fox where they're screaming for him to mail in a check in 10... 9... 8....

February 03, 2012 06:00 PM

Despite losing the most egregious anti-union measure in the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill, the so-called 'compromise' that Congress has settled on remains staunchly anti-union and assaults the rights of workers in the airline and rail industries. Republicans had previously included a provision that would count all employees who don't vote in an election to create a union as "no" votes. That was removed from the current version of the proposal. However, a number of anti-union provisions still exist:

In a merger, unions and union contracts could simply be eliminated without cause.

The threshold for initiating a union election would rise from 35 percent to 50 percent, making it much more difficult for elections to even take place.

Threatens workers right to a secret ballot, allowing for intimidation of workers by management.

The list of employees required to meet the 50 percent threshold are controlled by management, and terminated and furloughed employees can be counted.

Employers would be able to pursue litigation related to the threshold, allowing them to continue to delay elections and results for years.

It would weaken the National Mediation Board and open them up to more intimidation and control by politicians.

Current rules allow unions to be formed by a majority of those ballots cast. This compromise does NOT include that rule, meaning it could simply be overturned by the next Republican president and his or her appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, effectively meaning that this right only exists temporarily.

Several unions have come out in opposition to the deal, noting that it is still a clear attack on the rights of workers. They are specifically angry at Democratic leaders for agreeing to the deal.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has come out against the new deal:

“For the past year, we have worked to defend the rights of hard-working Americans across the country. Republican attacks on the middle class in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana have been met with national outrage. Sadly, Washington Republicans have failed to listen to the American people. Now they have created a situation where groups of employees are pitted against each other in the FAA reauthorization bill.”

“Members of the Progressive Caucus are committed to protecting the rights of all workers – from the collective bargaining rights of air traffic controllers and the critical runway safety provisions for pilots contained in the FAA bill, to the right to fair election procedures in union organizing drives for airline and rail employees attacked in this bill.”

“Members of the Progressive Caucus will protect all workers’ rights as Republicans continue their attacks on labor throughout this Congress.”

Take action and contact your member of Congress and tell them to remove these anti-working family measures from the bill.

February 03, 2012 05:00 PM

February 3, 2012
Posted By - Emma Venezie
Source Credits - Read the Stars
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Astrologer and Read The Stars' Judi Vitale is analyzing the stars to predict this Sunday's Superbowl, and she will be appearing on Blog Talk Radio this Sunday, February 5th, along with Numerologists William Brabam and Ed Peterson, to discuss her findings. To hear what Judi has to say found before her Blog Talk Radio appearance, check out Super Bowl Prediction By The Stars.

nbclocalmedia.com

In other Read The Stars' news,
it's the beginning of a new month, which means a new batch of Monthly Horoscopes: "The month of February might seem to move slowly, thanks to the Mars retrograde, but that doesn't mean there won't be some wild planet action going on! Neptune will move into Pisces to stay on February 3rd, and the truth will be hard to define - or find…February is the month of love, but this time, thanks to Neptune, it's all about Universal Love!" Check out your Monthly Horoscopes and more on Read The Stars.

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February 03, 2012 04:56 PM

Komen for the Cure just released the following statement from Nancy Brinker and the Susan G. Komen Board of Directors:

We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives.

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics - anyone's politics.

Update: Just as this news broke, I was putting together a petition to call for Karen Handel's resignation and for Komen to publicly commit to continuing to fund Planned Parenthood and stem cell research centers. If you want to sign it as a way to affirm the call for a right-wing ideologue to leave decisions about women's health to more objective people, please feel free. Here it is.

Update 2: Planned Parenthood releases a statement, which says in part:

In recent weeks, the treasured relationship between the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation and Planned Parenthood has been challenged, and we are now heartened that we can continue to work in partnership toward our shared commitment to breast health for the most underserved women. We are enormously grateful that the Komen Foundation has clarified its grantmaking criteria, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Komen partners, leaders and volunteers. What these past few days have demonstrated is the deep resolve all Americans share in the fight against cancer, and we honor those who are at the helm of this battle.

Update #3: A Komen board member confirms that there is no guarantee future grants will be awarded to Planned Parenthood. On its face, this isn't an unusual statement for a foundation to make. After all, grants are for finite periods of time and must be renewed with new applications from time to time. However, in this case it's troubling, given the political motives for their original decision. What would stop them from finding any small excuse not to fund grants?

Nancy Brinker's remarks on Andrea Mitchell's show gave a preview of a panoply of excuses. Everything from "grant excellence" to the claim that they want to 'eliminate third parties' in the screening process. For this reason, it seems prudent to keep the pressure on NGKF to be transparent and accountable for their decisions. It's not enough to issue a statement to take the heat off. They need to back up their words with actions.

John Aravosis:

If Komen is serious, they can simply approve the application Planned Parenthood has already submitted. Yes, they turned it down once, supposedly because of the now-old rule about investigations. Fine. If the rule is gone, then approve the grant.

February 03, 2012 04:22 PM

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and his allies in the state legislature are pursuing a plan to privatize dozens of prisons in South Florida. Republicans claim that private prisons are more efficient and that the move would save the state millions of dollars. The privatization bill is facing some trouble in the state senate, including opposition from key Republicans.

Scott claims that the purpose of the privatization push is to shave 7 percent off the state budget, which perpetually comes up short since Republicans refuse to raise revenue and continue to drive the state's economy into the ground.

[State Sen. Steve] Oelrich, a long-time member of the Florida Retirement System, said he was taken aback when Scott suggested the reason the state had to save the money on its prisons was because he believes the "retirement system is broke."

"The governor's words were that we are 'lying to state employees,' '' Oelrich said. "That troubles me. I don't think that's necessarily correct."

Oelrich questioned why Scott would use that as a rationale for defending prison privatization, which is projected to save between $16 million to $30 million a year. The state's retirement fund is more than 80 percent funded, he said, a level he believes is considered high compared to other states. Bringing it up to 100 percent funding is not something advocated by actuaries, Oelrich said, and would cost billions.

"He says we're between $25 and $60 billion in unfunded liability because we've assumed a 7.5 percent accrual rate and it's only making 5 percent,'' he said. "I'm very concerned that if in fact the retirement system is broke and we can't fulfill our obligations, then the State of Florida ought to let people know that and make the decisions they ought to make."

A broad coalition of groups has come out in opposition to the plan:

No other state has initiated such an ambitious experiment as the one proposed in this legislation. Consequently, the proposal to greatly increase the number of prisons under private contract raises several issues of concern including the dubious cost saving claims, efficiency in correctional management, and the impact on public safety. Successful efforts to contain correctional costs have been achieved in a number of states in recent years through other criminal justice policy initiatives that have reduced demand for scarce correctional resources.

The groups are: ACLU of Florida, Advocare, Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE), Critical Resistance, Florida Justice Institute, Human Rights Defense Center, In the Public Interest, Justice Strategies, National African American Drug Policy Coalition, Inc., Ohio Justice Policy Center, Private Corrections Institute, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, The Sentencing Project, Southern Center for Human Rights, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, United Church of Christ/ Justice and Witness Ministries, United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society

The bill is likely to have a strong negative impact on prison workers:

Labor groups and current corrections officers have warned legislators that privatizing prisons will lead to staff cuts and public safety hazards.

Roberts says his prison is already operating with a limited number of staff: “We are already running at critical levels.”

“We have the same number of prisoners,” Roberts explains, “but we have less staff.”

There are also concerns that workers who are not laid off will face significant cuts to their salary, benefits or both.

According to information given to state Sen. Mike Fasano’s office from the Senate appropriations staff, their fears could be warranted. Comparing beginning salaries and benefit rates for someone who takes a job at a public prison and someone who takes a job at a prison run by one of the top three private companies shows that workers could make significantly less if their prisons were to be privatized.

Fasano is one of the most vocal opponents of the state’s privatization plan, and has introduced an amendment that would strike out the entire bill.

According to Fasano’s office, someone starting out at a public prison would, on average, make $30,800 plus benefits at a rate of 59.8 percent, which amounts to a total compensation package of $49,222.

Beginning compensation packages at Management Training Corporation, meanwhile, are a $25,085 salary plus a 30 percent benefit rate, which amounts to $32,610 in total. GEO Group starts workers at $30,356 with a 20 percent benefit rate, which amounts to a $36,427 compensation package. Corrections Corporation of America pays $22,000 with a 25 percent benefit rate, which adds up to $27,500.

Roberts says that people working in prisons “are already upset.” He explains that 3 percent was recently taken out of public employee checks for retirement, and most workers have not seen a raise in six or seven years. He says finances are already tight for him.

“If they take my wages down, I wouldn’t make my rent,” he says. “I would be homeless. I have three kids. … I would starve.”

Robert also says that the fears have already started to affect morale. ”We have lost our will to work,” he says.

The supposed benefits of privatization are a mirage as well.

Private prisons have a well-documented record of failing to save taxpayers money. An exhaustive 2007 study conducted by the University of Utah concluded that “the value of moving to a privately managed system is questionable,” while many services are often inferior at private facilities as compared to public ones.

If the savings Scott and his allies suggest are a sham, what's the real drive behind the privatization scheme? Money, of course:

(A) growing number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies. The companies are paid by the state, and their profit depends on spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prisons. It’s hard to imagine any greater disconnect between public good and private profit: the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.

And a lot of the profits from these for-profit companies have found their way into Republican campaign coffers:

But while the taxpayers may not see much return on their investment, others stand to reap millions of dollars. Last year, a report issued by the Justice Policy Institute found that private prisons spent millions on lobbying to help “make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” In 2010, the two largest private prison companies had a combined $2.9 billion in revenues, Think Progress reported.

The corporations that own and operate private prisons are not the only ones who benefit financially either. An examination of campaign finance records shows that GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, was one of the 15 largest contributors to the Florida Republican Party in 2010, and gave over $11,000 in contributions directly to the campaigns of 14 of the 20 members of the Budget Committee that approved the bill, by a vote of 14-4. Since 2006, GEO Group has spent a total of $1.3 million in campaign contributions in Florida alone.

The battle has been a dirty one, with Senate President Mike Haridopolos removing fellow Republican Mike Fasano from his leadership position on the Senate Subcommittee on Criminal & Civil Justice Appropriations because he wasn't in support of the privatization scheme. Experts were not allowed to testify in advance of the vote. Finally, the bill itself would prevent the collection of data about private prisons and their effectiveness. Why would you hide that info unless you knew it proved your arguments wrong?

February 03, 2012 04:00 PM

“We can do better.”

That was House Speaker John Boehner’s repeated reaction to Friday’s jobs report, which showed an encouraging surge in hiring last month.

At a press conference with Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Boehner argued that even these positive numbers would be improved if the president encouraged Senate Democrats to “get off their rear ends” and pass House Republicans’ jobs proposals.

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 03:30 PM

State Sen. Shadrack McGill (OCTET-STREAM - 13.01 KB)

I've heard a lot of insane attacks on paying teachers more money, but this one might take the cake. Shadrack McGill loves increasing legislators' salaries because somehow it'll stop corruption in politics, but you should never raise the pay of a teacher because it will interfere with their biblical calling.

Can you understand this logic from a Bible-thumping Republican?

State Sen. Shadrack McGill defended a pay raise his predecessors in the Legislature passed, but said doubling teacher pay could lead to less-qualified educators.--

Lawmakers entered the 2007 legislative session making $30,710 a year, a rate that had not been changed in 16 years. The raise increased it to $49,500 annually.

"That played into the corruption, guys, big time," he said. "You had your higher-ranking legislators that were connected with the lobbyists making up in the millions of dollars. They weren't worried about that $30,000 paid salary they were getting," McGill said, adding that lawmakers have to pay for their expenses out of pocket.

McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.

--
"He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation. ... Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you're paying education, you know what's going to happen? I've heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education's going to go up.' That's never proven to happen, guys.

"It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach.

"To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, okay?

"And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

"If you don't keep that in balance, you're going to attract people who are not called, who don't need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance."

Whenever I hear a bizarre rationale given by a card-carrying member of the religious right to defend some nutty point of view I think it can't get any more insane. And then comes McGill.

In his world shouldn't these righteous state senators be compelled on biblical principles not to take bribes because it's against the ten commandments?

February 03, 2012 03:00 PM

January’s jobs report is welcome news for the president.

The unemployment rate dropped 0.2 percentage points to 8.3 percent; 243,000 new nonfarm jobs were created in the past month.

More important than the numbers is the trend: It’s the seventh-straight month of job growth over 100,000, as well as a marked increase from December when the economy added 200,000 jobs. It’s also the fifth straight month in which the unemployment rate dropped, and the lowest rate in nearly three years.

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 02:05 PM

Yes, we're in full damage control mode now. Nancy Brinker made a very long appearance on Andrea Mitchell's show this morning to insist that this wasn't about defunding Planned Parenthood, but really it is about "grant excellence."

The clip above is toward the end of the interview and includes reaction from Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer. What's remarkable about Brinker's appearance is her pivot away from the "under investigation" reason for terminating the grants to one of "grant excellence." What, I wonder, does "grant excellence" mean? To me, it means they want a less incendiary excuse for a bad decision. She goes on about metrics but has no answer to questions about what metrics they evaluated and how Planned Parenthood failed to meet whatever expectations they had for the grant.

Brinker and the SGKF have another problem, too, which I'm sure relates to Brinker's pivot to a new reason for the Planned Parenthood decision. It seems that Penn State is the subject of an ongoing investigation too.

MoJo reports:

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which recently announced that it is ending grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening because of a controversial investigation launched by an anti-abortion Republican congressman, currently funds cancer research at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center to the tune of $7.5 million. Like Planned Parenthood, Penn State is currently the subject of a federal government investigation, and like the Planned Parenthood grant, the Penn State grant appears to violate a new internal rule at Komen that bans grants to organizations that are under investigation by federal, state, or local governments. But so far, only the Planned Parenthood grants appear to have been cancelled.

An internal Komen memo written by President Elizabeth Thompson and obtained by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic states that if "an applicant or its affiliates" is under investigation "for financial or administrative improprieties by local, state or federal authorities," then "the applicant will be ineligible to receive a grant." Penn State, the Pennsylvania university that the Hershey center is affiliated with, is currently under investigation by the federal government over the sexual assault scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who has been indicted on multiple counts of sexual abuse of children. In 2008, the Komen foundation awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant to the Hershey center to study treatments that could reduce the risk of breast cancer.

I do not believe that the cancer research at Penn State is affected by the Sandusky investigation. Similarly, I don't believe that cancer screenings conducted by Planned Parenthood are affected by the fact that they provide abortion services. I cite this article to illustrate how weak Brinker's—and by extension, the SGKF—claims that the decision to terminate Planned Parenthood's grants related to pending investigations. It's an absurd stance to take, and one that clearly comes out of pressure from the Catholic Church, the far right wing anti-abortion zealots in this country, and internal pressures by ideologues with agendas.

In less than 24 hours, a respected charity destroyed thirty years of goodwill and public relations, placed women's health in danger and chose to abandon what should be a non-partisan effort to prevent a disease that doesn't care if you've had an abortion or used birth control pills. Cancer just wants to kill you, not convert you to its politics.

February 03, 2012 02:00 PM

driftglass: How to win an argument with a liberal.

Sadly, No: You know who else liked George Bailey?

BagNewsNotes: Big Media – "terrorist" Occupy movement sets fire to America!

Downpuppy: Release the hounds.

Plus, don't forget that this weekend, it's Blogroll Amnesty Day, when bloggers link to those blogs with less traffic than they have. We do that every day here at Mike's Blog Round Up.

Guest post by Batocchio. Email tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

February 03, 2012 01:00 PM

Mitt Romney’s opponents really never had much of a chance in Nevada.

And it’s largely because of Romney’s Mormon religion.

While Romney’s faith has rightly been described as a liability in previous states — most notably Iowa and South Carolina, where evangelical Christians have balked at supporting Romney — it’s hard to call it anything but a trump card in Nevada (so to speak).

Read full article >>

February 03, 2012 11:30 AM

Rick Santorum gets the Bad Lip Reading treatment.

Open thread below....

February 03, 2012 04:30 AM

I love James Carr's version of this Brothers Gibb song. Slide guitar is provided by none other than Duane Allman.

And our sister site Newstalgia presents The Brothers from 1967. Enjoy.

February 03, 2012 04:00 AM

This is Tea Party Reporter Susie Sampson with her latest report on Mitt Romney. "Stay in the oven, Mitt!"

February 03, 2012 03:00 AM

b

In the last 90 days, 5.6 million Americans have switched banks.

Obama proposes mortgage relief plan

President Obama on Wednesday touted his mortgage-relief plan, and while he did not mention Mitt Romney by name, his comments referenced Romney’s statement a day earlier that the housing market had to bottom out before it got any better. “It is wrong for anybody to suggest that the only option for struggling, responsible homeowners is to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom,” Obama said in a speech at a community center in Virginia. The housing plan, parts of which require congressional legislation, is aimed at making it easier for homeowners to refinance. Romney has stated his opposition to this plan, saying he instead believes the answer to fixing the housing market is not in government intervention but in rolling back regulations and allowing the market to fix itself.

More here.

Bill Moyers and John Reed on Big Banks' Power and Influence

American Airlines to cut 13,000 jobs

Police evict Occupy Buffalo

At daybreak, the grassy outlines where tents stood and a cluster of flags fluttering in the wind were all that remained of the Occupy Buffalo encampment on a quadrant of Niagara Square that began October 8.

Hours earlier, a police descended, and after a brief warning, they tossed 17 tents and the contents into a top trailer and arrested 10 protesters who refused an order to cross the street.

More here.

City of Chapel Hill Apologizes, Sort of

Town council says sorry to Raleigh News & Observer for arresting, handcuffing and placing reporter Katelyn Ferral facedown on pavement; doesn't apologize for SWAT-style response to Occupy Chapel Hill's non-violent occupation of building that had been vacant for ten years.

More here.

The New York Times fired off another letter to the Police Department today on behalf of 13 New York-based news organizations about police treatment of the press over the last several months.

Occupy Tulsa protesters reject plea deal

Occupy Tulsa supporters who were arrested in November on park curfew violations appeared in court Tuesday to reject the city's plea deal and vow to fight on.

More here.

Occupy Oakland: 12 barred from City Hall

February 03, 2012 02:00 AM

If you're wondering why Komen, an organization supposedly dedicated to women's health, would withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood -- look no further than one Karen Handel.

As pro-choice supporters sound off over the decision by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to pull grants to Planned Parenthood for funding breast-cancer screening and other breast health services, some have suggested a link between Tuesday's announcement and Komen's hiring of a self-described "pro-life Christian" last year to a prominent position within the foundation.

Karen Handel, a former secretary of state in Georgia and a Republican activist, was hired in April as vice president of public policy at the Dallas-based Komen. Handel was coming off an unsuccessful run for governor of Georgia during which she frequently called for an end to abortion.

Handel ran for governor of Georgia in 2010 as a right-wing Christian -- and was endorsed by none other than The Quitter and Jan Brewer. And during the campaign, she said:

Since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.

And check out this Tweet she recently promoted on her account -- then quickly deleted.

“Just like a pro-abortion group to turn a cancer orgs decision into a political bomb to throw. Cry me a freaking river.”

You can see the screengrab of the Tweet, here.

Classy lady.

February 03, 2012 01:00 AM

Looks like there'll soon be a seventh state where equality under the law is recognized.

via KING5 and the Associated Press:

OLYMPIA, Wash.-- The Senate has voted to pass a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington state Wednesday.

The Senate passed the bill on vote of 28-21. Four Republicans crossed party lines and voted with majority Democrats for the measure. Three Democrats voted against it.

The measure now moves to the House, which also has enough votes to pass the bill. Governor Chris Gregoire has said she will sign the bill if it gets to her desk.

"People have been working on this for over a decade in Washington state," said Zach Silk of Washington United for Marriage. "It's extremely exciting that we're on the cusp of history." The coalition dropped off nearly 26,000 postcards from registered voters who support gay marriage, to each legislators' district.

Rep. Laurie Jinkins, right, D-Tacoma, waves with constituent Marcy Kulland from one Senate gallery across to the other Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

February 03, 2012 12:00 AM

Newt Gingrich makes lunar predictions, Barack Obama holds a web chat, John Oliver sings about economic inequality, and Aasif Mandvi investigates welfare drug testing laws.

February 03, 2012 12:00 AM

Mitt Romney said in an interview set to air Thursday evening that he “misspoke” when he said that he was “not concerned about the very poor.”

In an interview with Nevada’s “Face to Face with Jon Ralston,” the former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential front-runner said he merely flubbed a line that he has said before.

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 11:06 PM

This is a trailer for a documentary coming out Friday about the "pinkification" of breast cancer. Could it be any more timely, considering the exposure of the Susan G Komen Foundation as a right-wing tool? So much information has emerged, so little time. With many thanks to those who contributed links to my original post on this topic, I'd like to suggest that we support this film, and all efforts to marginalize the SGKF's hijacking of women's health for right-wing causes.

Things to Read

Via BigDaddyMalcontent, MoJo reports on founder Nancy Brinker's ties to the Republican party. BigDaddy also dropped this link to Barbara Ehrenreich's article for Harper's tracing the incestuous relationship between SGKF and AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company. Kate points us to the long list of 1 percenter corporate sponsors of the SGKF. Howard Dean puts everything in perspective.

Things to Do

• Sign the Credo Action petition to tell the SGKF not to throw women under the bus.
• Join the Facebook Group to De-Fund SGKF
• Donate to Planned Parenthood

February 02, 2012 11:00 PM

February 02, 2012 10:52 PM

Rick Santorum’s friends go on the attack, Newt Gingrich wants back on the Florida ballot, Erskine Bowles passes on the North Carolina governor’s race and Michael Bloomberg gives to Planned Parenthood.

Make sure to sign up to get “Afternoon Fix” in your e-mail inbox every day by 5 (ish) p.m!

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 10:16 PM

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart had a field day with Mitt Romney for his statement that he's “not concerned about the very poor" and that they have safety nets in place to take care of them, pointing out the obvious, which is that if you're landing in a "net", you're not okay and are in some kind of trouble and something "has gone terribly wrong."

Stewart finished up the segment with crew members John Oliver and Jason Jones representing the "very poor" and the "very rich" who did a great job of making a complete mockery of the Republicans and their "class warfare" talking points.

If only we could get this much scorn for Romney who's managed to come across as a robotic version of Gordon Gekko from the Villagers in the corporate "news" media.

February 02, 2012 10:00 PM

Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) will not run for reelection after three terms in office.

“This was not an easy decision,” Shuler said. “However, I am confident that it is the right decision. It is a decision I have weighed heavily over the past few months. I have always said family comes first, and I never intended to be a career politician.”

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 09:36 PM

February 02, 2012 09:11 PM

The Fix doesn’t like to just toss around the term “guru” — except when referring to our spiritual advisers, that is.

But when it comes to Nevada politics, there’s really no other word for Jon Ralston.

So with his home state’s caucuses two days away, The Fix is using Ralston as a guinea pig for a new Fix feature (with apologies to Craig Kilborn) called “Five questions.”

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 09:08 PM

The culture wars are ramping up hard as Republicans begin to realize the only hope they have of uniting for November is to stoke the hate fires and invite everyone to gather round. This week's target is the JC Penney Company, for daring to hire Ellen DeGeneres as their spokesman. This has Don Wildmon's American Family Association in an uproar.

Via The Wrap:

One Million Moms is asking people to call JC Penney to complain.

With this campaign, One Million Moms, which claims to be "the most powerful tool you have to stand against the immorality, violence, vulgarity and profanity the entertainment media is throwing at your children," is going after one of the country's most well-liked television hosts.

The moms want JC Penney "to replace Ellen DeGeneres as their new spokesperson immediately and remain neutral in the culture war."

Fat chance, says the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination.

"A vast majority of Americans today support Ellen as well as their LGBT friends and family members,” Herndon Graddick, a GLAAD spokesman said in a written statement. “Selecting an out performer who has inspired and entertained millions, is not only a smart business practice, but a reflection of how LGBT Americans today are an integral and valued part of the fabric of our culture.”

DeGeneres' daytime talk show has more viewers than the American Family Association has moms. Between Jan. 16 and Jan. 22, "Ellen" averaged 3.38 million viewers. That's 2.38 million more people than the AFA has moms.

Wildmon, who stepped down from his daily duties with the AFA due to health reasons last year, has endorsed Newt Gingrich. And the war rages on.

February 02, 2012 09:00 PM

February 2, 2011
Posted By - Emma Venezie
Source Credits - talent network, inc.
---

Follow talent network
talent network Twitter
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talent network YouTube Channel
Party Planning, Entertainment Ideas Contact talent network, inc.

February 02, 2012 08:49 PM

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told the mother of a child with a rare genetic disorder on Tuesday that she shouldn't have a problem paying $1 million a year for drugs because Apple's iPad can cost around $900.

Speaking to more than 400 people at Woodland Park, Colorado, the former Pennsylvania senator said that demand should set prices for drugs.

"People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad," the candidate explained. "But paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it."

The mother replied that she could not afford her son's medication, Abilify, which can cost as much as $1 million a year without health insurance.

"Look, I want your son and everybody to have the opportunity to stay alive on much-needed drugs," Santorum insisted. "But the bottom line is, we have to give companies the incentive to make those drugs. And if they don't have the incentive to make those drugs, your son won't be alive and lots of other people in this country won't be alive."

"He’s alive today because drug companies provide care," the candidate continued. "And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t."

February 02, 2012 08:00 PM

We here at The Fix love lists. For each primary (or caucus), we’re bringing you the people you need to follow to stay on top of the news.

Without further ado — because the Silver State caucuses are just two days away! — our favorite tweeps in Nevada:

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 07:41 PM

Nearly 150 truck drivers effectively shut down shipping out of the Port of Seattle when they went to the state capitol in Olympia instead of the port, to protest dangerous work conditions in the trucking industry. Drivers were so concerned about the way the industry treats them that they risked their careers to make their voices heard.

This week the truck drivers – who toil under the guise of false self-employment – are making it their job to sound the alarm on occupational hazards, overweight containers, shoddy equipment, risks to motorists, and the culprits responsible for these rampant safety violations: their employers and their giant retail shipper clients like Wal-Mart, Sears, and Target.

The trucking bosses at Pacer, Seattle Freight, Western Ports and others were stunned, but the state troopers weren’t. Washington’s top cops testified before lawmakers right alongside the workers, detailing a dizzying array of dangers associated with the drayage industry: Chronic safety violations so serious that an investigative journalist discovered late last year that officers pulled 32% of rigs they inspected outside the terminals off the road — double the rate for trucks throughout the state. When specially trained troopers conducted more thorough inspections in 2011, King 5 TV reported, 58% of Port of Seattle cargo vehicles were yanked. And according to Captain Jason Berry’s testimony, an astonishing 80% have been put out of service during certain recent time periods.

The drivers called upon legislators to support HB 2527, which would address many of the concerns they have. They called upon allies to help spread their story and make the dangers of the trucking industry more widely known:

Semere Woldu, who has been hauling cargo at the Port of Seattle for 8 years, told the panel:

“Our work is extremely dangerous. So the safety laws are very important. Unfortunately though, we drivers are forced to pay for violations that we are not responsible for. We often get tickets or are cited for faulty equipment that we don’t own. One time, my boss knew I had a heavy load. He told me to go by the scale early in the morning when it was closed to avoid having the load weighed.”

More drivers cited these illegal pressures their employers put them under, and shared their fears for their personal safety and the lives of motorists. “Every day, I haul two or three loads that are overweight, possibly putting myself and others at risk,” said Aynalem Moba, a 14-year port veteran. “The truck could tip over. I’m afraid I might kill myself or someone else. Sometimes we’re carrying hazardous materials, and we don’t know it.”

Some explained the retaliation they face for blowing the whistle. They get banned from the terminals or are denied work by their dispatchers. They also told the legislators that if they get too many safety violations they risk losing their commercial drivers’ license and their livelihoods.

“The shipping and rail lines force us to use faulty equipment. One time I got a load that was 4-5,000 pounds overweight, and it was on a chassis that was insufficient for carrying heavy loads. The company told me to take it anyway,” said 13-year driver Calvin Borders. “I was really nervous about it. All that extra weight puts a lot of wear and tear on the truck. It blew my wheel seal…It cost me $450. My truck is my livelihood. If it doesn’t work, I don’t work.”

Some of the protestors have already been suspended. That has only sparked their co-workers to walk off the job in solidarity – and disgust. On Wednesday, these non-unionized men and women who are desperately seeking the protections that collective bargaining rights would provide were leafleting the terminals and the docks, positively engaging the dockworkers brothers and sisters at the longshoremen’s union, vowing to stay united, keep fighting for their rights, and all of our safety.

Many of the complaints at the Port of Seattle echo those made by warehouse workers in Chicago, California and elsewhere, where workers are hired as 'independent' contractors so companies can exploit them and pressure them into dangerous work conditions.

February 02, 2012 07:00 PM

February 02, 2012 06:50 PM

Our long national nightmare is officially over, as Donald Trump has picked a candidate in the 2012 presidential race, thereby ending his long, long flirtation with his own presidential bid (one would assume).

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 06:17 PM

Our managing editor, Tina Dupuy, discusses the violence in Oakland this weekend and the harm it does to the Occupy movement as a whole with Thom Hartmann. As she pointed out in her column earlier this week and again on the show, the actions of a few cast a pall on the entire movement at a time where they're influencing the national dialogue and direction of our country.

What do you think? How do you think the Occupy movement should address acts by people claiming to be associated with the movement who do illegal things?

February 02, 2012 06:00 PM

February 2, 2012
Posted By - Emma Venezie
Source Credits - Marcus Corson; Miles Ahead for Marcus
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Head out to Mullen's Bar and Grill in Pittsburgh this Saturday, February 4th to watch the UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit Fight and help raise funds for Marcus Corson. The "Miles Ahead for Marcus" Fundraiser is being sponsored by Bubba from 100.7FM and will begin at 7:00pm.

Here's the story on Marcus Corson:

"For those of you that don't know, on December 3, 2011, Marcus Corson, his wife Lori and daughter Bry, were at his brother Jason's daughters', (Caileigh and Gabby), birthday party. He was on a tumble track, and when he reached the end and made that final jump. He landed on the hard bar at the end of the track and both patellar tendons were ruptured. He was brought to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital and on the 5th had to have extensive surgery. Anchors were drilled into each leg to attach the patellar tendons and bring the kneecaps (that had ridden up on his thighs) back in place. There was other considerable damage to cartilage and the sleeve.

This is a life-changing accident for Marcus and those of you who know him well, know just how life changing this will be. He will have to spend a minimum of 4 weeks in a nursing home and will have months of rehab. His walking may never be the same...he may have a permanent limp and there is a 25% chance of a re-tear.

The Past…Marcus is no stranger to adversity and he is a tough guy to hold down! As a child, he had open heart surgery at the age of 3 and was told that he would never be able to play football, basketball, wrestle or participate in anything strenuous.....but Marcus is a fighter and no one tells Marcus he can't do something! As a result of his swimming prowess and determination, he was swimming 5 miles a night, 5 nights a week with Jason, and by the time he was 12, all of those health restrictions were lifted.

The Future…All of us that believe in Marcus, believe he can pull off another miracle and will not let this get him down, but he has a lot of miles ahead of him, and he will need a little help from his friends and family!"


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February 02, 2012 05:52 PM

One day after branding President Obama "really out of touch with what's happening in America," Mitt Romney marked his Florida primary victory by declaring, "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Of course, back in December Romney announced that "I'm concerned about the poor in this country," adding, "We have to make sure the safety net is strong and able to help those who can't help themselves."

If Mitt Romney's latest statement seems like a contradiction, at least it's a more honest one. After all, his proposal to slash $700 billion in Medicaid spending and send what's left as block grants to the states would devastate the program serving nearly 60 million poor and elderly Americans. But as it turns out, his 59 point, 162 page economic plan isn't very concerned with the middle class, either. Over the next decade, that budget-busting blueprint would drain $6.6 trillion from the U.S. Treasury and divert most of it into the pockets of the richest Americans.

On Wednesday, Romney explained his devil-may-care attitude towards the 46.2 million Americans now living in poverty and the 51 million more with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line:

"I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there," Romney told CNN. "If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."

That's an odd statement for Mitt Romney to make, and not merely because he previously declared himself part of "the 80 to 90 percent of us" who are middle class. Romney's own economic plan says otherwise. Romney's isn't worried about fixing the safety net; he wants to shred it. And in December, Chris Wallace of Fox News called him on it.

WALLACE: But you don't think if you cut $700 billion dollars in aid to the states that some people are going to get hurt?

ROMNEY: In the same way that by cutting welfare spending dramatically, I don't think we hurt the poor. In the same way I think cutting Medicaid spending by having it go to the states run more efficiently with less fraud, I don't think will hurt the people that depend on that program for their healthcare.

It's not just that Romney's block grant program would lead governors to begin "capping enrollment, thinning benefits, increasing co-payments, and so on" in the future. As Ezra Klein explained, they are already doing that now:

Twenty states implemented benefit restrictions in the past year. In fiscal year 2010, 39 states implemented Medicaid provider rate cuts or freezes (up from 33 in fiscal year 2009), and 37 states have provider rate restrictions planned for the next fiscal year.

And as the Kaiser Family Foundation determined last year, the Ryan plan championed by Mitt Romney and virtually every Republican in Washington to repeal the Affordable Care Act would certainly hurt working Americans as well:

"By 2021, between 31 million and 44 million fewer people nationally would have Medicaid coverage under the House Budget Plan relative to expected enrollment under current law."

Then there's Mitt Romney's tax plan.

That's the one he claimed was focused on the middle class. It's not just that his proposal to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and eliminate the capital gains tax on the first $200,000 of investment income does not help the middle class, it's that Mitt Romney would deliver another gilded-class payday to the very rich, himself included.

Last month, McClatchy reported that the "Romney tax plan would most benefit [the] wealthy." The Center for American Progress explained just how much. While "Romney's plan also gives nearly 60 percent of its benefit to the richest 1 percent of Americans," Mitt's tax cuts for millionaires are "nearly twice the size of those from George W. Bush."

And that was before Mitt Romney's spontaneous outburst during a debate last month that he would really like a top rate of 25 and not 35 percent.

It's worth noting that Romney, the $250 Million Man, has also proposed eliminating the estate tax. Compared to the current 35 percent rate on estates larger than $10 million, Mitt's tax plan would give his heirs roughly $84 million courtesy of the U.S. Treasury and all other American taxpayers. With his plans to extend the Bush tax cuts, lower the corporate tax rate, and repeal some high-income tax increases from the Affordable Care Act; the impact of on the national debt would be staggering. As ThinkProgress detailed in September:

Romney's tax plan includes a $6.6 TRILLION giveaway to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Meanwhile, Romney's Medicaid cuts are even more draconian than the ones in Paul Ryan plan.

So much for Romney's claim that "I want to focus on where the people are hurting the most, and that's the middle class. I'm not worried about rich people. They are doing just fine." But at least Mitt Romney was telling the truth when he said, "I'm not concerned about the very poor."

Or, it turns out, the middle class, either.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

February 02, 2012 05:00 PM

This story has been updated.

Celebrity mogul Donald Trump endorsed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in Las Vegas today.

“Mitt is tough, he’s sharp, he’s smart,” said Trump from the lobby of his Las Vegas hotel. “He’s not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country that we all love.”

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 04:15 PM

February 02, 2012 04:15 PM

Ed Schultz spoke to "Gasland" director Josh Fox about his arrest this Wednesday while attempting to film a Congressional hearing on hydraulic fracturing.

'Gasland' Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans (UPDATES):

In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice. Initial reports from sources suggested that an ABC News camera was also prevented from taping the hearing; ABC has since denied that they sent a crew to the hearing.

Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland" was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing. The meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment had been taking place in room 2318 of the Rayburn building.

After showing video of his arrest, Schultz asked Fox to describe what happened.

FOX: Well, I didn't expect to be arrested for documentary film making and journalism on Capitol Hill today. I was prepared for it, but I didn't expect it. I did think they would come to their senses and just let us film the public hearing. We were there covering a very crucial hearing about a case of groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, a three and a half year investigation by the EPA where it shows subjects from the first film, Gasland, from Pavillion with groundwater contamination resulting in fifty times the level of benzine in groundwater.

And EPA has pointed in this case that hydraulic fracturing is the likely cause. And what was happening on the Hill today was Republicans have called, in the Science and Space and Technology Committee, a hearing to challenge science. Their panel was made up of gas industry lobbyists. And we were there to expose what I believe is actually a rather ugly and brazen attack on science itself, on what's happening across the country with this hydraulic fracturing and water contamination.

So we were there actually doing our jobs as journalists. I was not interested in disrupting that hearing. I was not charged with disrupting that hearing. I was simply interested in capturing on film in a broadcast quality camera what the Republicans were going to be doing right there, putting the EPA and citizens of Pavillion and everyone across the nation who is complaining of contamination due to hydraulic fracturing on trial. We wanted to make sure people knew that that was happening.

You can read more about the Pavillion case here and here.

February 02, 2012 04:00 PM

Protesters on Wednesday showered Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney with glitter -- but the shiny stuff sure didn't make his singing voice sparkle.

At a campaign event in Eagan, Minnesota, the candidate got doused with glitter just as he was taking the stage. Aides worked to quickly remove the light-reflecting particles, but the stubborn glitter just stuck to his gelled hair.

"This is confetti!" Romney exclaimed to the crowd. "We just won Florida! We're just going to win the White House next! Let me tell you, President Obama, he's not going to be seeing a lot of confetti. He's going to be seeing a job. He's going to be going down to the golf courses down in Florida."

Later in his stump speech, the former Massachusetts governor decided to make another attempt at singing "America the Beautiful."

"You want to sing that?" Romney asked the crowd before breaking into song.

But his shimmering hair did little to take attention away from the fact that his singing voice had actually gotten worse since Monday's highly-panned rendition.

"That's the second time I've done that, ya know?" Romney admitted. "If we keep that up, I'm going to have to get singing lessons because I'm not so good."

(H/T: Think Progress)

February 02, 2012 03:00 PM

A new poll from the Las Vegas Review-Journal suggests former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is headed for a blowout in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses.

A Romney victory here was never really in doubt; he took the state in the 2008 cycle with 51 percent of the vote.

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 02:54 PM

It isn't just Verizon workers who the company is harming, they are also being protested by customers who have been lied to by the profitable company.

Occupy the Boardroom has expanded their agenda to include specific Wall Street companies, most notably anti-union Verizon. Those dissatisfied with Verizon's actions can now go to a specific sub-site hosted by Occupy the Boardroom, learn more about the company, and leave their comments for the executives running the business and assaulting its workers.

Tell some of the biggest corporate tax dodgers in America exactly what you think of them! Verizon, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America have all spent billions on lobbying since they helped crash the economy – more than they paid in corporate taxes. In fact, not only have they spent billion buying access, they've all gamed the system to receive millions in TAX REFUNDS! Find that offensive? Tell the executives of these companies yourself!

Representative messages left at the site (and to be delivered to Verizon executives) are like those from Melanie and Robert Baker:

“You expect your loyal employees to give back their hard-won benefits and you still want these Americans to pay!! Mean while you and your moneyed peers continue to cop out of your financial responsibilities to this country!!! We are a capitalistic country but we are also one nation, under God and we are for the people and by the people!!! Fairness to all! Quit lining your pockets with the hard earned earnings of fellow Americans and PLAY FAIR! Time to fire the lobbyists and take care of your own! Pay your taxes and treat your workers fairly and with respect.”

Or this one from Miles White:

Sometimes it the simple things. Here I was looking to change my cell service from AT&T to Verizon, and then I find out about Verizon's underhanded dealings with their Unions, and that you are unpatriotically skipping out on paying taxes. Taxes that go to run the country that YOU live in. That would be like oh I don't know people not paying for your cell service. How would you then be able to afford to upgrade cell service, or pay for those "Can you hear me now" adds. While I don't like AT&T I will defiantly NOT switch to Verizon.

In related news, Verizon Wireless in Oregon is now offering high-speed home Internet via Comcast, another company that is notoriously anti-union and anti-working families.

February 02, 2012 02:00 PM

Ramona's Voices: Fighting the vast right-wing with pea shooters, part one – books and bookmakers.

Amadi Talks: Planned Parenthood, Komen and moving forward.

No More Mister Nice Blog: That was no gaffe – that was a brand-new talking point.

Kevin Drum: America's Benevolent Imperium.

Lance Mannion: Tinker Tailor Soldier Blog.

Guest post by Batocchio. Email tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

February 02, 2012 01:00 PM

Once thought to have a potential liability in appealing to Hispanics, Mitt Romney appears to have overcome his doubters.

One of Romney’s more remarkable turnarounds in the Florida primary between 2008 and 2012 was among the state’s many Hispanic voters. While he increased his vote share overall by 15 points, from 31 percent to 46 percent, he increased his performance among Hispanics by 40, from 14 percent in 2008 to 54 percent on Tuesday, according to exit polls.

Read full article >>

February 02, 2012 11:30 AM

A vintage Newt swinging, click image for larger if you dare. Open thread below....

February 02, 2012 04:30 AM

Let's get protesty! What's your favorite protest song?

*Language NSFW

February 02, 2012 04:00 AM

Jon Stewart did what so few in our mainstream corporate media have been willing to do with Mitt Romney's so-called record on "job creation" and his time at Bain Capital and their leveraged buyouts of many of the companies they took over.

Here's Stewart explaining the kind of business Romney practiced in, in a manner most of our Villagers in the mainstream media are apparently incapable of.

STEWART: It's like putting ten percent down on a car, then using the value of that car to get another loan and repay yourself that ten percent and and maybe a little twenty percent... on top for your troubles and then walking away, leaving the car on the hook for the payments.

But, for Bain Capital to borrow money from other people, knowing that those debts might never be repaid, while still profiting themselves, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that business practice. Does it make anyone else uneasy?

ROMNEY: I think it's simply immoral for us as a nation and as a generation, to keep spending more and more money, by borrowing money from other people knowing that those debts will never be repaid during our lifetimes.

STEWART: I don't know who that ruggedly handsome guy is but I agree one hundred percent. So there you go and his pitch to Americans seems to be, elect me as your president. I have twenty five years of business experience doing something I believe this country should never ever do.

February 02, 2012 03:00 AM

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." - Thomas Jefferson, July 4, 1776

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." - Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 19, 1863

"When was America all about everyone being equal?” - Florida contractor and Gingrich fundraiser Mary Forristall, quoted in the Washington Post on Jan. 28, 2012

There you have it: America's great political debate summarized in three quotes. Forristall is not the first conservative, and definitely won't be the last, to dislike equality. Our history is littered with a surprising number of quotes just like it. Most of us think the ideas of Jefferson and Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. firmly planted equality in American soil and made it as apple-pie all-American as you could imagine, but the debate goes on. From Alexander Hamilton to John C. Calhoun to the Social Darwinists of the 1880s to Ayn Rand, William Buckley, and Jesse Helms of the last century and the tea partiers of this, there has been a long line of conservatives who are appalled and terrified by the idea of equality. There are a lot of remarkably blunt quotes on how absurd the idea of equality is from all kinds of conservatives which I featured in my book, "The Progressive Revolution: How the Best of America Came To Be."

When conservatives want to be a little less overt about their disdain for the notion of equality, they will say that, of course they believe in equality of opportunity, they just oppose equality of results. Besides being a ridiculous straw man (no one I have ever met has argued for absolute "equality of results,” or the idea that it isn't fine for people to get rewarded when they build and sell great products), they almost always immediately undercut their own argument by proposing cuts in student grants and loans, public education, Head Start and child health programs that get kids off to a better start in life. They are all for equality, they say, but never want to extend equal protections under the law to new classes of people being discriminated against. They support equality but don’t care if people with illnesses or pre-existing conditions can’t get health care coverage. They are for equal rights under the law but support eliminating funding for legal services, and allowing bankers who commit financial fraud to skate by without ever being investigated. They think equality is wonderful, but are indignant that progressives ask that millionaires and billionaires pay at least as high a tax rate as their secretaries.

Conservatives are on the defensive on equality issues to a degree they haven’t been in at least four decades, and they are flailing around pretty badly trying to defend their patrons in the 1 percent. More straw men are being created than in the Land of Oz. The Washington Post has had two big pieces in their editorial pages the last two days with conservative writers desperately trying to defend wealthy people from having to pay a fair share of taxes.

First up, with the lead editorial on the front page of The Washington Post Sunday Outlook section, was a piece by James Q. Wilson with the monster-sized headline “Don’t Blame the Rich.” The Post’s sub-headline was “Scholar James Q. Wilson argues that taxing the wealthy won’t end poverty.” Straw man number one: I’d be hard pressed to ascertain what progressives were blaming “the rich” for. I, appropriately, blame a lot of the big Wall Street bankers for crashing the economy through financial fraud, forcing the rest of us to bail them out, and then whining because we don’t love them anymore. Likewise, I blame oil and coal companies for polluting the air and threatening the earth with catastrophic climate change. I blame health insurance companies for dropping millions of people out of coverage when they get sick. I blame big business execs who outsource jobs from America so they can pay slave wages in China and Third World countries. But I have nothing against rich people generally.

If you are a manufacturer who has created a great product and employs a lot of people to make it while paying them a decent wage and making sure they have health benefits, and gets rich as a result, I have nothing but love for you. If you are a small business owner that provides amazing service for your community and gets rich as a result, that is tremendous. If you are a community banker who gives small business and home and auto loans to the people in your community, and make great money, God bless you. If you run a website that produces great content with a huge audience, and you reap the rewards, wonderful. I blame entrepreneurs like that for nothing, and am thrilled for their success. But I still want to see them, and everyone with the ability to, pay their fair share of taxes.

Straw man number two: I have never heard anyone say that taxing the wealthy, all by itself, would end poverty. There are many different ways we can attack the poverty problem, and a lot of them do require money, some of it private and some of it public, but poverty is not going to end overnight or be solved by any one policy measure. But what could taxing the wealthy more do? Help reduce the federal deficit, pay for more schools, repair the schools we have in so many places that are falling apart, hire more and better teachers. It could rebuild our roads, highways, sewer systems, bridges, and the rest of our crumbling infrastructure. It could make sure the entire nation has access to high speed broadband internet service, pay for more research and development, invest in more prenatal care, early childhood programs, Head Start, and quality child care. There are many other needs this country has, and taxing the wealthy at a fairer rate would definitely help us pay for all those things. But you know what else? It is also a matter of simple fairness and justice: People with wealth got wealthy in part because of the blessings of this country, and they ought to pay their fair share to support it.

Straw man number three: Progressives want to tax the rich only to help the poor. Now I will admit something here: Being the lefty freak that I am, I do actually care about helping poor people. Although I don’t believe all the theological teachings of my childhood, I do still believe that the Jesus of the Gospels was right when he said we would ultimately be judged on how we treated “the least of these,” and in general those with less than us. And I think it is also just good public policy: When you help lift poor people up, give them opportunities for a better life, you make our country stronger as a whole. But the conservatives’ goal in saying the only point of taxing the rich is to help the poor is to divide poor people from the middle class. The fact is that while the safety net for the poorest among us is tattered and in need of repair, there is very little safety net at all for the middle class. It is the middle class that built this country, and when the gap between us and the wealthiest keeps growing exponentially, the middle class gets crushed. Poor people are in trouble in this country but the middle class is as hard-pressed as it has been since the 1930s.Their wages are stagnant, their homes have crashed in value, and they have groceries, energy, health care, and college tuition costs rising. Their kids’ schools have been falling apart and seeing teacher layoffs, fire and police services keep getting pared back, roads have big potholes that never seem to get fixed and bridges are in danger of collapse because the wealthiest in society aren’t paying their fair share in taxes. This issue of fundamental fairness and vast economic inequality is not just about helping the poor; it really is about helping the entire 99 percent.

Wilson’s opinion piece ignores a wide range of recent research showing social mobility slowing down dramatically in America and being far worse than most industrialized countries, and he is remarkably selective about the data he does use—using statistics more than once that mysteriously only go up to 2006, before the collapse of the last few years, and ignoring data from more recent years that shows how income inequality has gone up in most Western countries, but by far the most here. He makes a special point, of course, in noting that inequality has gone down in Greece, while never mentioning how much stronger than ours the economies have been of several European countries (including Germany, Denmark, and Sweden) who have far better income inequality numbers.

Then there is Robert Samuelson’s piece. He adds a fourth straw man to Wilson’s big three: that passing the Buffett Tax wouldn’t solve the deficit problem. Well, no, Mr. Samuelson, but it would help. No one who supports the Buffett tax has argued that if we just passed that and did nothing else, all our federal deficit problems (or the deficit in public investment for education, infrastructure, and all the rest for that matter) would magically go away. To solve all those problems, you would also need to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, close all the unproductive corporate tax loopholes, end the deduction for million dollar-plus homes, stop subsidizing oil companies and big corporate agribusiness, impose a tax on Wall Street speculation, cut wasteful defense spending, create a robust public option in health care, negotiate with drug companies on Medicare Part D, and reform federal contracting policy. Oh, and start creating economic growth and new jobs at the rate Bill Clinton did in the 1990s. You do all that stuff and the deficit gets solved pretty easily, but I’m guessing a hard-line conservative like Samuelson would oppose almost all of those policies.

Samuelson concludes his article by saying this: “But recognize that the anti-wealthy populist rhetoric is mostly political expediency. It distracts from the serious issues the country faces—creating jobs and closing long term budget deficits. The anti-rich backlash is growing; a Pew poll finds 66 percent of Americans see strong conflicts between rich and poor, up from 47 percent in 2009. Pandering to this is easier than dealing with the future.” Not seeing that the richest 400 families in America have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans is a “serious issue” and one of the most tragic flaws of conservatism. This kind of imbalance creates a country that looks far more like the Third World than like America in her mid-20th Century glory years. And you will never create big numbers of jobs or curb long-term deficits without a prosperous and expanding middle class. To suggest that those of us who care about issues of economic equity are pandering, or—another one of my all-time favorite straw men—are envious of the rich—suggests a fundamental lack of understanding about either good economic policy or our nation’s history. I’m not envious of the rich; I’d just like the rest of us not to be crushed by their greed.

The truth that we are all created equal is indeed self-evident. America was in fact conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all of us are created equal. And if a certain small sector of our economy grows so much richer and more powerful than the rest of us, it strikes at the heart of the America we used to be, and are supposed to be.

February 02, 2012 02:00 AM

You don't suppose that placing these big bets against homeowner re-fis might lead to some problems down the road, do you? I mean, it's not as if banks have ever done anything like this before:

Freddie Mac agreed last month to stop making new bets against American homeowners after its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, raised concerns, according to a statement the agency issued late Monday. Freddie, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, still retains $5 billion worth of such bets.

The agency, responding to an investigation by ProPublica and NPR, said it had "identified concerns regarding the controls, including risk management, surrounding the inverse floaters," as the investments at issue are known. The agency did not specify what it had found, but said Freddie agreed in December that "these transactions would not resume pending completion of [FHFA's] examination work."

The statement also said that Freddie had ceased making the deals earlier in 2011 but did not explain why.

Separately, the White House said the Department of the Treasury is "looking into" Freddie's investments, and at least three senators called on Freddie not to bet against struggling homeowners.The mortgage-insurance company bought billions worth of complex mortgage-backed securities that profit if borrowers stay trapped in high interest rate home loans. The $5 billion figure released Monday afternoon is more than had been reported in the ProPublica-NPR investigation.

In late 2010 and early 2011, Freddie began dramatically increasing these multibillion-dollar deals. At the same time, Freddie also made it harder for homeowners to get out of their high-interest mortgages and into more affordable loans that could save them thousands of dollars a year. No evidence has emerged that these decisions were coordinated at the company, and Freddie has denied that they were.

But the deals highlight a conflict of interest: While Freddie's charter calls for the company to make home loans more accessible, the company also has giant investment portfolios that could lose large amounts of money, at least in the short run, if too many borrowers refinance into more affordable loans.

At a press briefing today, White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked whether Freddie Mac's investment strategy contradicted President Barack Obama's stated commitment to make homeowner refinancing more affordable. In his response, Carney stressed that the president does not directly control FHFA."This is an independent institution with independent governance, so we don't make those kinds of decisions," Carney said.

February 02, 2012 01:00 AM

It’s easy to lose 8 years when you are a time traveler from the late 1800s.

Cindy Simpson, American Thought Processes Occurred Once:
Citzenship: Easy Come, Easy Go?

IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION is a truism of all wingnut writing. No matter what a wingnut tries to write about themselves or their idea of their enemies, what comes out ends up being a perverted reflection of their own crimes.

So it sadly has proven to be with the old claim to be the Party of Personal Responsibility. Whether it be denying one’s hand in the Financial Crisis, denying the creation of the modern Security State, or just denying that the Bush years ever happened like this post, wingnuts have proven again and again that what they hate more than anything else is credit for their own successes and actions.

But let’s let slippery eel Cindy Simpson demonstrate this:

Rather than engage in the politically incorrect practice of “profiling,” our government, under the guise of national security, has chosen to subject everyone who holds an airline ticket, from small children to grannies, to uncomfortable and unreasonable searches by the TSA.

But-but-but when we created the Security Theatre clusterfuck, it was only supposed to inconvenience dirty brown people and hippies, why is it being applied to everyone?

Actually having to cope with the consequences of my panicked desperate plea for non-stop security theater is like Hitler Times 50!

Likewise, rather than restrict dual citizenship or reform the controversial practice of granting U.S. citizenship to every baby born on our soil, our government leaders have chosen instead to pass legislation that endangers the rights of citizenship of all of us.

Yes, the controversial practice of actually understanding what the word citizenship means and how it is granted truly is a failure to understand what citizenship means.

Hey, wingnuts, just say “we don’t think niggers and spics should count”. It’s more honest and doesn’t constantly make you look like a complete moron when you try and talk about citizenship.

However, if these shared values of citizenship include the sacred constitutional right to due process, that fidelity appears to have been broken by Obama himself, when, on December 31, he signed into law the NDAA with its provision allowing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without a warrant or hearing.
Although Obama signed the “Martial Law Bill” with “serious reservations” and assurances that he does not intend to detain American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial, Professor Jonathan Turley explained: Obama did “not deny that he has such authority.”
On the heels of that alarming legislation is another dangerous bill introduced in the House and concurrently in the Senate that would essentially strip the citizenship from anyone who engages in or supports “hostilities” against the U.S.: the “Enemy Expatriation Act.”

Yes, how DARE Obama McHitler Mussolinipants…continue to renew the broad powers that conservatives universally supported and still support and that Bush put into play.

I mean, yes, these are bad policies and should be ended, but pretending like Sauron Obama was sitting upon his dread tower and deciding to violate civil liberties is pretty much…par for the course for you fucking lunatics in denying the Bush years ever happened.

Constitutional experts Herb Titus and William Olson thoroughly examined the bill under existing law and Supreme Court precedent, and both warn that expatriation is a serious criminal punishment that essentially sends “American citizens into exile.”
Rep. Charles Dent argues that his proposed legislation is needed to amend current expatriation law to encompass the “modern threat of global terrorism.” As Ron DeSantis noted, our enemies could “have an incentive to recruit individuals who can claim American citizenship but who have no actual loyalty to the country” since U.S. citizenship and the right of due process could “create a zone of protection around jihadists (as well as other malcontents) who take up arms against the United States.”
The problem, though, is that any measure that attempts to limit the benefits of citizenship to such enemies will likely undermine the protections guaranteed to all citizens. As Turley pointed out, the “disgraceful argument” that “we are not really losing any rights because most citizens are unlikely to be subject to these powers” is negated by the fact that “something is not a right if it is discretionary with your government to allow or to take away.”

I remember making these arguments about 10 years ago and was called, what was it again, oh yeah, a treasonous fifth column America-hater who should be thrown in Guantanamo.

See, this is the worst part of wingnuts. They are authoritarian power worshippers who still want all the cool street cred and righteous indignity of being an anti-authoritarian rabble-rouser.

So they cheer police action against hippies, endless war, and infinite illegal detention and torture and then throw on some Dockers and try and act like having their Klan rally looked at askance by pedestrians is equivalent to The Selma to Montgomery March or that by selectively criticizing indefinite detention, but only if the president is black and only if we replace it with a system that is more guaranteed to only affect brown people, they are constitutional defenders.

Sorry, Pedro, you’re kinda 8 years too late to this shit. If you didn’t like it being entrenched in our system, maybe you shouldn’t have spent 8 years entrenching it in the system and chomping at the bit to accuse any liberal who objected of treason.

In short, if you don’t like the smell of what’s being shoved in your face, maybe you shouldn’t have shit on the Constitution rug.

Yaser Hamdi and Anwar al-Awlaki are real-life, recent examples of individuals this legislation is meant to target. Both men were “presumed” citizens, for the sole reason of their birth in the U.S., even though to non-citizen parents temporarily resident here. The court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld ruled that U.S. citizens, even if they are considered “enemy combatants,” are entitled to habeas corpus. However, a drone aimed at Awlaki in Yemen eliminated forever his chance at a day in court, because, as the attorneys who authored the “secret memo” noted, Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship protected him, unless he couldn’t be seized alive.
At first glance, for terrorists like Hamdi and Awlaki, the premise of the NDAA provisions or the expatriation act may not seem like a bad idea. But the risk to the rest of us lies in the application and definition of the legislation’s nebulous terms: “belligerent acts,” “harboring,” and “hostilities.”

Ah, yes, Rumsfeld, that well known Obama Secretary of Defense. Yes, I can see how Obama is personally responsible for this sad violation of citizenship rights.

Instead of focusing on how to strip citizenship or its rights in these (fortunately) rare occasions, perhaps greater consideration should be given to the awarding of citizenship in the first place.

Or you know we could use the very well documented national and international laws against terrorism to just arrest and try them as citizenships instead of pretending that being a terrorist (but only if you are brown and muslimy) means you can bend iron bars and escape from the same maximum security prisons we use to house serial killers, cannibals, and whistle-blowers who reveal our illegal torture camps?

We could even give one a really archaic sounding name so you can still pretend that terrorists are real world Supervillains.

The Supreme Court defined citizenship in 1875 in the famous women’s suffrage case of Minor v. Happersett as membership in a political community, to which the citizen owes allegiance, and from which the citizen is owed protection. The Court further asserted that new citizens may be born or created by naturalization, and “that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
The automatic granting of citizenship at birth to non-citizen parents under the controversial “birthright” citizenship practice, no matter their status (legal or illegal, temporary or permanent), is a contentious issue that has been hotly debated for a century, heating up to a “roiling boil” as the associated economic costs of unchecked immigration have become too enormous to ignore.
The basis of birthright citizenship is found in the 1898 decision of Wong Kim Ark. The divided court, in a 55-page opinion, determined that Ark, born in the U.S. to non-U.S. citizen Chinese parents permanently and legally domiciled in the U.S., was a citizen.

Hey, you know an easier place to find the origin of “birthright citizenship”?

How about Article 2 of that stupid hippie document called the Constitution where it talks about how the president needs to be a “natural born citizen” seeing that as the highest and most uncontroversial form of citizenship to the United States? Hell, even the Confederate Constitution thought that “natural born citizens” were pretty important and they were all about making sure “certain people” couldn’t vote.

But please, do continue.

In its actual historical context, however, Ark’s situation was governed by a treaty in effect between the U.S. and China — a treaty that originally recognized the transfer of allegiance of Chinese making their permanent homes in America, but, as later amended, also prevented Ark’s parents from ever naturalizing as U.S. citizens. In fact, as Attorney Leo Donofrio explains, unlike other native-born children of alien parents of other nationalities, Ark was not born with the dual allegiance that many experts contend the amendment’s “subject to the jurisdiction” phrase was meant to prevent.
The controversial ruling has since become precedent, broadened in its popular application to guarantee the right of citizenship to every baby born here, not just to the permanently domiciled Chinese under the treaty, but even to illegal aliens and temporary visitors from every country — parents who have not transferred their allegiance to America.

Yeah, it’s almost like being born in a country means you are a citizen of that country unless you actively try and naturalize to be a citizen of another country.

Cause countries are trying to prevent the creation of “Stateless entities” and the legal problems that creates.

Law professor Lino Graglia, in his scholarly paper opposing birthright citizenship, noted that Circuit Appeals Judge Richard Posner, “the nation’s leading public intellectual,” also argued against the practice: “… one rule that Congress should rethink … is awarding citizenship to everyone born in the United States[.] … Congress would not be flouting the Constitution if it … put an end to the nonsense.” Graglia concluded that the current practice is an “absurdity.”

Lino Graglia was too insane and conservative for Ronald Reagan to nominate to the Fifth Circuit (the one for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas). This would be the same Ronald Reagan who tried to nominate Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. I’ll let that just sink in for a moment.

And indeed, if citizenship is purely based on geographical location at the moment of birth, well-timed travel planning is crucial. For the foreign relatives desiring admission to the U.S., an “anchor baby” birth in the right spot and time is cause for celebration. Mark Cromer, in his essay for CAPS titled “American Jackpot: The Remaking of America by Birthright Citizenship,” used the subheading “Run, Squat and Drop.” Perhaps an insensitive description, but such is the reality.
In fact, U.S. citizenship has become such a prized possession that an entire industry, “birth tourism,” has blossomed to meet the demand from mothers from around the world who want to ensure that their babies arrive with the status of American citizenship. These babies are also granted citizenship by their parents’ home country, making them dual citizens at birth.

Oh fuck me, the type of nutcases who freak out over the thought of “anchor babies” have discovered the concept of dual citizenship.

No good can come of this.

Foreign-born applicants for U.S. citizenship must formally reject other citizenships in their Oath of Naturalization. However, children born here as dual citizens are never formally required to make such a renouncement. The State Department rarely enforces its policies discouraging dual citizenship, and has adopted, as described by Frances Stead Sellers, a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Yeah, dual citizenship sounds all cool in theory, like some jetsetter superspy bouncing between countries, but in practice, it’s a big fancy safety net usually used for things like not having to deal with a lot of hassle for visits to family, being able to leave to a country with functional health care if you get sick, or going to a country with jobs or free education if say one country is going through the shit-hole.

Seeing as how conservatives hate anyone other than the rich and powerful to have any form of safety net, I can see why the very concept incenses them to their very souls.

The very idea of double allegiance is considered “civic bigamy” by scholars such as Dr. John Fonte, who notes the “principle that an American citizen should be loyal to the United States and to no other country or political power is a moral and constitutional issue of the highest order[.]”
Stanley Renshon, author of The 50% American, has estimated that over 40 million Americans are dual citizens. The ongoing practice of birthright citizenship continues to expand that figure.
The unavoidable fact is that both Hamdi and Awlaki were dual citizens by virtue of the birthright citizenship practice. Stripping them of their U.S. citizenship would not render them stateless. Neither had parents who held allegiance to America. Neither had parents who were permanently domiciled here. Neither had parents who intended to naturalize as U.S. citizens.
Of course, we cannot imply that dual citizenship equates with the terrorism that both men were guilty of, but in all practicality, imagine the nightmare if America became involved in a worldwide conflict while having a significant percentage of citizens claiming not just heritage, but actual citizenship in the very countries with which we might be at war.
As Ms. Sellers wrote of dual citizenship, “[w]ar is all about taking sides. Unless of course, you can’t, because you belong on both sides.”

You might be forgiven for thinking this rant began as a condemnation of Obama for allowing the continuation of the stripping of US citizenship for the purpose of bullshit “terrorists aren’t really citizens” shit.

But sadly, when a wingnut thinks about filthy brown people being in the country, it’s only a matter of seconds before any pretense towards empathy is ripped away and it’s all “no brown person should be considered a citizen ever” all the time.

And I wish that was just a snarky joke.

Our nation’s sovereignty relies on citizens who belong on its side, with sole allegiance to the political community of the United States of America, which, in turn, provides its citizens the guaranteed protection of the rule of law.
We must examine how the terms “presumed” and “dual” dilute the value of U.S. citizenship, rather than formulate laws that weaken its protections. We cannot continue to sweep the need for immigration reform under the rug, even when the race card is thrown. And any program of reform cannot ignore the inviting, gaping “hole in the fence” that birthright citizenship policies create.
Our government leaders need to focus on building fences, both physically and figuratively, that protect our nation and our rights as citizens, rather than passing ambiguous legislation that instead tears up the foundations of our Constitution.

Oh sure, every other idea we’ve had on this subject has been an embarrassing failure that even the 27% has begun to hate for its massive inconvenience, but all we need is even more oppressive bullshit. Then, no damn dirty foreigners or natives or anyone with skin darker than Edward from Twilight will want to live here.

Nor will we. But that’ll be okay, because that’ll be the fault of the liberal Lincoln Statue we elected to be president the following year.

February 02, 2012 12:13 AM

On Saturday morning Lidiane Carmo woke up in Florida, where she was attending a church conference with her father, mother, and sister. Carmo was the youngest in her family, and they had traveled to Florida with her pastor father, her aunt, uncle and cousins as well as several other other church members.

On Sunday morning, Lidiane woke up in a Florida hospital with broken bones and internal injuries after the van they were traveling in was involved in Sunday's horrendous highway pileup on I-75 near Gainesville, Florida. Her father, mother, sister, uncle, aunt and cousin were killed. She is the sole survivor in her immediate family.

Lidiane's parents came to the United States from Brazil 12 years ago, bringing five-year old Letiticia and three-year old Lidiane with them. They had legal visas which have since expired.

Lidiane is now an orphan. She has no health insurance. She has no legal status to remain in this country. And she has no family beyond those remaining members of her father's church. She is the sole survivor.

If we had a DREAM Act in place, Lidiane could petition for citizenship here since she entered the country legally. But we don't, and because of Republicans' insane need to pander to bigots and racists, we're unlikely to see it without a completely different Congress.

I'm writing about Lidiane because she puts a very human face on what they're doing when they block the DREAM Act. I wonder if any of these crazy Republican candidates could gaze into her frightened, hurting eyes, and tell her she has to go back to a country she doesn't even know. I think they could, and that should concern us all.

Congress forced a clause into the Affordable Care Act which excluded undocumented immigrants from coverage. The exclusion wasn't simply from federal funds for subsidies. They are barred from purchasing insurance on the state-based exchanges and the national exchange. Barred. Even if they pay with their own funds. Barred.

Today a 15-year old child is in a hospital in Florida, suffering from severe injuries, bereft of her family, in Rick Scott's state. What will become of her?

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

As for Lidiane's status, one expert had reassurance for her friends and surviving relatives.

Charles Kuck, an Atlanta immigration attorney, told the AJC that Lidiane would not be deported because of a federal law granting special status to juveniles. Lidiane can become a ward of the state and be issued a green card, allowing her to stay, Kuck said.

"This child will be fine," Kuck said. "She's clearly an orphan at this moment."

But the Brazilian consulate was not as reassuring:

At the church Tuesday night, a representative from the Brazilian Consulate in Atlanta addressed crash survivors and others in the congregation.

"I want to give you my love and our support," Ana Claudia Rodrigues, deputy consul general for the consulate, said through a translator.

But when crash victims asked about help, Rodrigues said she could only convey their concerns to the Brazilian government. Immigration issues are not up to the consulate, Rodrigues said, but the U.S. government.

"She didn't answer any of our questions," Weberson Barbosa, a crash survivor still on crutches, said Tuesday night. "We need someone to really view our pain and take action."

Yes, they really do. I wonder. Would Ron Paul tell this family to rely on charity? Would Mitt Romney tell this family to rely on charity? Would Newt Gingrich summon the neighborhood council to testify to Lidiane's character? Oh wait. She hasn't been here long enough.

Something is really broken in a country where a 15-year old child can suffer like this while politicians preach family values and American exceptionalism. Really broken.

February 02, 2012 12:00 AM

John Hodgman offers poor people a business opportunity, Aasif Mandvi tries to get Florida Governor Rick Scott to pee in a cup, and David Agus considers America's health.

February 02, 2012 12:00 AM

Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean gives the Indianapolis Super Bowl forecast while cheering for the New York Giants.

February 02, 2012 12:00 AM

Oncologist David Agus considers America's approach to illness and offers simple advice for reducing people's risk of cancer and heart disease.

February 02, 2012 12:00 AM

Aasif Mandvi heads to Florida to find out why Luis Lebron, a Navy veteran and public assistance recipient, won't submit to welfare drug testing.

February 02, 2012 12:00 AM

John Hodgman explains that the haves are creating an exclusive world of luxury and privilege for the soon-to-haves to have -- soon.

February 02, 2012 12:00 AM

Donald Trump endorses GOP frontrunner and presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

February 02, 2012 12:00 AM

It's infuriating. My state's been taken over by the wingnut shock troops, and the voters aren't even really paying attention yet. As difficult as it is to get a job in this economy, the same old Chamber dirtbags are insisting the unemployed just aren't trying hard enough:

HARRISBURG -- Thousands of Pennsylvanians will see their federally funded unemployment benefits expire after this week, with legislation to extend those checks lingering in the state House of Representatives.

A pending measure, which passed the state Senate last week, would offer 13 additional weeks of benefits to the state's jobless residents. The federal funding was approved by Congress in December but requires the state to tweak its unemployment compensation rules in order to receive those dollars.

That bill is awaiting consideration by a House panel, which has a vote scheduled for Monday. Legislative staffers say the belatedly approved benefits would be retroactive, but pressures to also enact broader changes to the state's unemployment compensation system could further hold up that assistance.

Approximately 17,000 residents would be affected if the benefit extension is not approved, according to the state's Department of Labor & Industry.

It's unclear whether House lawmakers will quickly vote on the bill, which would then go to Gov. Tom Corbett's desk for his signature, or insert additional changes. The General Assembly approved a sweeping overhaul of the unemployment compensation system in June, when it also extended federal benefits by 13 weeks.

Those changes, which required the unemployed to actively seek work to receive their benefit checks and froze the maximum amount of weekly benefits, should be expanded further, says the state's Chamber of Business and Industry. Those business leaders wrote to lawmakers urging them to insert provisions to help address the insolvency of Pennsylvania's unemployment compensation trust fund.

February 01, 2012 11:00 PM

Ron Paul says immigrants get scapegoated, Rick Santorum is after Missouri, Mitt Romney is getting glittered, and Michele Bachmann is not endorsing.

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February 01, 2012 10:29 PM