Happy Monday, Everyone. This week 3 Chics featured musical artist is the INCOMPARABLE Minnie Riperton. How uncanny is the photo below of Minnie and her daughter Maya Rudolph?
Minnie Julia Riperton (November 8, 1947 – July 12, 1979) was an American singer-songwriter best known for her vocal range of five-and-a-half octaves, and her 1975 single “Lovin’ You“. She was married to songwriter and music producer Richard Rudolph from 1972 until her death in the summer of 1979. They had two children – music engineer Marc Rudolph and actress/comedienne Maya Rudolph.[1]
Riperton grew up on Chicago‘s South Side. As a child, she studied music, drama, and dance at Chicago’s Lincoln Center. In her teen years, she sang lead vocals for the Chicago-based girl group, The Gems. Her early affiliation with the legendary Chicago-based Chess Records afforded her the opportunity to sing backup for various established artists such as Etta James, Fontella Bass, Ramsey Lewis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Muddy Waters. While at Chess, Riperton also sang lead for the experimental rock/soul group Rotary Connection, from 1967 to 1971. In 1969 Riperton, along with Rotary Connection, played in the first Catholic Rock Mass at the Liturgical Conference National Convention, Milwaukee Arena, Milwaukee, WI, produced by James F. Colaianni. Riperton reached the apex of her career with her number-one hit single, “Lovin’ You,” on April 4, 1975. The single was the last release from her 1974 gold album entitled Perfect Angel.
Ohio governor reverses rejection of federal storm aid: Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Monday reconsidered his r… http://usat.ly/yjZEVA #Crime
Hat tip Political Carnival
Casting for Tupac Shakur Broadway Musical Starts Saturday
The Broadway musical titled “Holler If Ya Hear Me” inspired by and featuring the music of the late Tupac Amaru Shakur is finally headed to Broadway! According to Playbill.com the show is currently in pre-production stages and holding castings.
A rep for the Shakur family told TMZ, producers personally gave Tupac’s mother Afeni Shakur a rough preview of the musical and she approves.
Mrs. Shakur was “ecstatic” and can’t wait for the show, according to reps.
The play will be directed by Kenny Leon. In the spring of 2004 Leon directed a revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” starring Sean Combs, Phylicia Rashad. At the end of that year, he directed the Broadway premiere of August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.” In spring 2007, he directed August Wilson’s “Radio Golf.” All three plays were nominated for Tony Awards.
A Broadway premiere date hasn’t been set but casting starts this Saturday.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/03/casting_for_tupac_shakur_broadway_musical_starts_saturday.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racewireblog+%28ColorLines%29
Barbara Bush: Republican Presidential Race “The Worst Campaign I’ve Seen In My Life” « Alan Colmes’ Liberaland http://www.alan.com/2012/03/05/barbara-bush-republican-presidential-race-the-worst-campaign-ive-seen-in-my-life/
LOL The Quaker Oats lady should talk about anything being “THE WORST” *looking@GWB*
Lawsuit Alleges Paula Deen Wanted Nigg*rs in Bow Ties Serving at Wedding
Cooking show host Paula Deen has been all over the news lately but this time it’s even worse than when she announced she had diabetes. A lawsuit by a former employee is accusing Deen and her brother of repeatedly using the N-word, sexual harassment, infliction of emotional distress and assault, RadarOnline.com is reporting.
Radar Online with two of lawsuit’s racist examples: > In one example, Jackson states that she was appointed by Deen to handle the catering and staff for Bubba’s wedding in 2007, and she asked Deen what the servers should wear: “Well what I would really like is a bunch of little n*ers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around,” Jackson alleges Deen told her. “Now, that would be a true Southern wedding wouldn’t it? But we can’t do that because the media would be on me about that.”
Another alleged racist incident listed in the lawsuit: “In the presence of Ms. Jackson and Uncle Bubba’s restaurant manager and a vendor, Bubba Hiers stated they should send President Obama to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico so he could n*er-rig it.”
Jackson left Deen’s company in 2010 because “management did nothing about her complaints of sexual harassment and other complaints she had,” according to Radar.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/03/lawsuit_alleges_paula_deen_wanted_nggrs_in_bow_ties_serving_at_wedding.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racewireblog+%28ColorLines%29
Fox News Latino poll has POTUS job approval at 73% and leading 70-14
ThinkProgress @thinkprogress:
Ann Romney, moments ago on Fox: “I don’t even consider myself wealthy.” VIDEO: http://thkpr.gs/zf0iMI
Hold up…what?
Ann Romney, please shut up.
Remember, Ann would like to “STRANGLE” the media.
http://3chicspolitico.com/2012/02/29/ann-romney-angry-white-woman-wants-to-strangle-the-media-for-making-mittens-look-bad-really-you-cant-make-up-this-ish/
can I say it…
I just gotta say it..
you gotta let say it…
BITCH, PLEASE!
SAY.IT.AGAIN.rikyrah!
Romney would rank among richest presidents ever
By CONNIE CASS | Associated Press – Sat, Jan 28, 2012.
—How does Romney stand next to a regular Joe?
He’s roughly 1,800 times richer.
The typical U.S. household was worth $120,300 in 2007, according to the Census Bureau’s most recent data, although that number is sure to have dropped since the recession. A typical family’s income is $50,000.
Calculations from 24/7 Wall St. of the peak lifetime wealth (or peak so far) of Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama add up to a total $128 million — while Romney reports assets of up to $250 million.
http://news.yahoo.com/romney-rank-among-richest-presidents-ever-135357128.html
You’re RICH, BITCH!
Rush’s Last-Ditch Defense: Rappers Are Worse!
Evan McMorris-Santoro-March 5, 2012, 2:29 PM
Since the controversy over Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke began, there have been whispers among Limbaugh critics that this might be his “Imus moment” — a reference to another shock jock host, Don Imus, whose 2007 insults of the Rutgers women’s basketball team led to his ouster. It’s still unlikely that Limbaugh’s comments about Fluke will leave him jobless, but that didn’t stop Rush from taking a cue from Imus Monday: Limbaugh, like Imus before him, claimed he was subjected to a double standard when stacked up against rappers.
Imus — and his defenders — pushed this line hard back in 2007 after he was called out for referring to the Rutgers players “nappy-headed hos”. His critics were undeterred, and Imus was eventually fired from MSNBC.
Nevertheless, Limbaugh picked up on this line of reasoning today as he reiterated his apology to Fluke from the weekend amid continued criticism — including from Republicans — and advertisers canceling sponsorships of his show.
“Talk about a double standard,” Limbaugh said on air Monday, according to Dylan Stableford. “Rappers can say anything they want about women [and] it’s called art. And they win awards.”
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/and-so-we-enter-the-part-of-the-rush-saga-where-he-attacks-rap-music.php?ref=fpa
Give it up DRUGSTER. You singled out Sandra Fluke, a private citizen and college student and visiously and verbally attacked her for 3 days. soliciting internet porn in the request of sex tapes. GTFOH. OWN YER SHIT, RUSH!
President Obama Speaks at AIPAC; Romney Makes False Claims
https://twitter.com/#%21/Obama2012 “I will invite Shimon Peres to the White House to present him with America’s highest civilian honor—the presidential Medal of Freedom.”
https://twitter.com/#%21/Obama2012 President Obama: “As you examine my commitment, you don’t just have to count on my words. You can look at my deeds.
https://twitter.com/#%21/Obama2012 President Obama: “Because of our efforts, Iran is under greater pressure than ever before.”
BREAKING: @Sears will also end all advertising on Rush Limbaugh. That’s #11.
Ka Pow!
BWA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Mr. President, any comments on the above?
that’s one of my favorite pics of him
tee hee hee, mine too…
The Deep Resentment of Having to Think About It: Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke
A popular exercise among High School creative writing teachers in America is to ask students to imagine they have been transformed, for a day, into someone of the opposite sex, and describe what that day might be like. The results, apparently, are uncannily uniform. The girls all write long and detailed essays that clearly show they have spent a great deal of time thinking about the subject. Half of the boys usually refuse to write the essay entirely. Those who do make it clear they have not the slightest conception what being a teenage girl might be like, and deeply resent having to think about it.”
–David Graeber, “Beyond Power/Knowledge: An Exploration of power, ignorance and stupidity”
This is a small point, but still worth making: Rush Limbaugh didn’t attack Sandra Fluke because of her or anyone else’s sexual behavior. Given his personal history — and his more general ideological proclivities — it’s fair to say that he is vigorously protective of behaviors which are, as a function of what they are, fundamentally dependent on women who behave precisely in the manner of the straw-woman he is attacking. That’s not what this is about. Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” because she asserted her right to speak publicly about and make publicly thinkable a set of experiences and problems that he has a very direct and personal interest in excluding from public space
The broader ideological question which Congress was ostensibly discussing — the question of whether a religious institution can object to covering forms of medical care on the basis of religious belief — is also a red herring. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity neither know, nor care, about the intricate and unstable conjunction of government, insurance, and medicine that might make this a tricky debate if grown-ups were ever to debate it. And the fact that Limbaugh doesn’t even understand how female contraception works doesn’t diminish his rhetorical position a whit. On the contrary, he is defending precisely his right not to know how it works (or what things like Ovarian Cysts are), and the right of those for and to whom he speaks to be similarly ignorant. He is defending his right for that to be a woman’s problem, one which he (and a “we” constituted in his image, as his public) doesn’t need to be concerned. And so he needs to attack Sandra Fluke, personally, all the more because she wasn’t even going to talk about herself. By speaking on behalf of “women,” she threatened to render “women” a member of the body politic. Slut-shaming her — making it about her, personally — changes the subject from a generalizable woman’s public concern to a specific set of personal desires (which he can then moralize about, and use to silence her).
Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, in short, because her voice threatens to reconstitute the nature of the American public: if she were heard — if the specificity of woman’s health were publicly speakable in the hallowed halls of Congress — then we could no longer pretend that this is simply an abstract and legalistic question of “religion,” “government,” and “medicine.” It would suddenly be apparent that the female public and the male public actually have different interests and concerns when it comes to issues like sex and contraception, that contraception means something different to people with different reproductive organs. The fact that (heterosexual) men’s enjoyment of consequence-free sex is dependent on the privilege of those consequences being borne by someone else might become thinkable, if those “someone else’s” had a public platform to speak about it.
http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/the-deep-resentment-of-having-to-think-about-it-rush-limbaugh-and-sandra-fluke/
Ben Adler Reminds Us: The Right-Wing Effort to Smear Obama and Liberals as Anti-Israel http://www.thenation.com/blog/166592/right-wing-effort-smear-obama-and-liberals-anti-israel
Romney Told an 11-Year That Iran Will Get a Nuke if Obama Wins: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/05/romney-to-11-year-old-iran-will-get-nuke-if-obama-re-elected/
As Ben LaBolt Put It:
Ben LaBolt @BenLaBoltLesson not learned? First Romney wanted to repeal Wall Street reform. Now he wants to go back to Enron accounting. on.wsj.com/yQHomG
Romney Pushing Economic Ideas That Would Take Us Back To The Failed Policies of the Past:
Romney Announced He Would Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/03/03/romney-toughening-stance-would-repeal-sarbanes-oxley/
The Romney Team is also Rallying Around Carried Interest: http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-stump/101381/team-romney-rallies-around-carried-interest
Our Truth Team is Busy Debunking Romney
Fact check: At Israel’s request, the Obama administration agreed to postpone joint defense exercise
Romney’s attack on President Obama omits his strong defense of Israel’s interests at the U.N.
Fact check for Romney: President Obama placed the toughest sanctions ever imposed on Iran
Romney: In the Stars, Looking at the Gutter
by Steve M.
Mon Mar 5th, 2012 at 03:21:36 PM EST
I’ve often wondered what would have happened if John McCain had ignored his advisors and gone with Joe Lieberman as his running mate. I know, I know — you’re having a hard time suppressing your gag reflex as a result of that sentence, but, alas, I’m not sure America would have felt the same way. People across the spectrum were sick of the Iraq War, but they’d also had Friedmanesque centrism propaganda pounded into them for years (and Barack Obama was reinforcing that propaganda), so the ticket might have seemed like the precise cure for America’s disease, at least to a lot of naive people who believe everything they read. I’m not sure McCain could have done worse with Joe as his running mate, and he might have done better — and most of the base probably would have come home.
So I’m looking at Mitt Romney right now and I’m thinking he’s on the verge of breaking from the pack and could theoretically tack to the center relatively soon, and, really, if you look at the polls, he wouldn’t have all that much ground to make up if he did it successfully. But I don’t think he’s going to do it successfully.
Let’s look at the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll:
… a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that the combative and heavily scrutinized primary season so far has damaged the party and its candidates.
… perhaps most significantly, the GOP primary process has taken a toll on the Republican presidential candidates, including front-runner Mitt Romney….
In January’s NBC/WSJ poll, Romney’s favorable/unfavorable rating stood at 31 percent to 36 percent among all respondents (and 22/42 percent among independents).
But in this latest survey, it’s now 28 percent favorable and 39 percent unfavorable (and 22/38 percent among independents).
… In a hypothetical general-election contest, [President Obama] leads Romney by six points, 50 to 44 percent, winning independents (46-39 percent), women (55-37 percent) and those in the Midwest (52-42 percent)….
See, Obama’s lead is still a mere 6 points — and if the primary campaign is making Romney look worse in voters’ eyes, you’d think the end of the primary campaign will make him look better.
In fact, he could break out by distinguishing himself from the clownish zealots and culture warriors he’s been running against, and from other clowns on the right — people like, oh, say, Rush Limbaugh. The press would love him for it. All would be forgiven. We’d be told that, after a season of ugly ideological squabbles, a nominee had emerged who really, really isn’t like those horrible people — thank goodness! Oh, and thankfully he’s also not like that strident liberal ideologue Barack Obama.
But I don’t think Romney’s going to do that. He’s even more of a coward than John McCain. Admittedly, he has some reason to fear that a zero-budget far-right party could go viral and hurt him in key states in a Naderesque way, and he certainly has reason to fear diminished enthusiasm from the base — but I think these folks hate Obama so much that they’ll turn out for the GOP no matter what. But Romney will keep trying to please them, out of his usual fear and timidity, and he’ll keep screwing it up, while being enough of a right-wing culture warrior (in addition to being a Thurston Howell III clone) to continue alienating the center as well.
He needs to seem like someone distinguishable from Santorum and Gingrich (and Perry and Bachmann and Cain), but he’s not going to try hard enough. He needs not to pick a Palin as a running mate, but he’ll probably pick someone who’s ideologically indistinguishable, like Bob McDonnell. He needs to seem different from people like Rush Limbaugh, but he’s too timid to go Sister Souljah on Rush, and he bet he’ll stay that way through the fall, out of a desperate wish to keep pleasing the base. (I predict he’ll be on Limbaugh’s show kissing his ring by fall, even if the damage to Limbaugh from this past week never really subsides.)
Romney could win. But I don’t think he’ll do what it would take to win.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/3/5/152136/8313
Mar 5, 10:36 AM EST
PRESIDENT Obama to hold news conference Tuesday
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will hold his first news conference of the year Tuesday, the same day his Republican rivals face off in 10 voting contests.
White House spokesman Jay Carney announced the Tuesday afternoon news conference on Twitter. Obama held his last full news conference in November during the APEC summit in Hawaii.
Tuesday’s news conference comes amid an uptick in the U.S. economy. But the Obama administration has found itself dealing with several pressing foreign policy concerns, including the violent government crackdown in Syria and rising tensions in the Middle East over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_NEWS_CONFERENCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Ben Adler Reminds Us: The Right-Wing Effort to Smear Obama and Liberals as Anti-Israel http://www.thenation.com/blog/166592/right-wing-effort-smear-obama-and-liberals-anti-israel
March 04, 2012 05:00 PM
Eric Cantor Compares Contraceptive Mandate to Kosher Food
By Nicole Belle
I think the Republicans know they overreached this time with the contraceptive debate and the Blunt Amendment. But being a Republican means never having to say you’re sorry. You obfuscate, you reframe the debate into something more favorable to you, you dismiss the concerns of the majority of Americans, but you never, ever say you’re sorry.
When David Gregory asks House Majority Leader Eric Cantor whether the Republicans were mistaken to prevent the testimony of Sandra Fluke, he tees up a nice little softball for Cantor to launch into Republican talking points. Of course it wasn’t wrong to dismiss Fluke’s testimony as irrelevant to the proceedings. Because it wasn’t about the women affected by these destructive laws, donchaknow. Who cares about them? This was all about the religious liberty of institutions. Institutions, by the way, that already comply with this mandate in 28 states, the ACA mandate only made it consistent nationally.
But naturally, those are niggly little facts that Cantor doesn’t want to address nor would David Gregory actually bring them up to refute these talking points. Moreover, Cantor pulls the “you’re part of our tribe” with Gregory and likens the mandate with the outrageous notion that Obama administration would tell Jews how to keep kosher.
Nobody’s denying access. No, it’s not about that. It is about the administration and the president saying to the Catholic Church that we know what your faith holds and you have to abide by that. It would be like saying to the–those of us in the Jewish faith that, you know, we know what the laws of Kashrut, being kosher means, and we’re going to tell you what that means.
Huh?
Here’s the logic fail on the part of the Republicans and the Blunt Amendment’s “moral objection” clause: where does it stop? Who is the ultimate decider? What if the CEO of a corporation is a Scandinavian Lutheran who does not want to include coverage for circumcision, but the Board of Directors has a minority percentage of Jews who do? What if the President of the company is a Christian Scientist and wants to eliminate coverage for blood transfusions, but the Chief Operating Officer has a son who is a hemophiliac and wants it covered? Or a head of a company is a Scientologist and believes that psychiatry and psychiatric drugs are a racket and refuses to include that despite the fact that the head of Human Resources and the person who negotiates with the insurance company has been struggling with clinical depression? Who gets the final say in what kind of coverage an employer can have a moral objection to?
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/eric-cantor-compares-contraceptive-ma
Let’s go the tape
By Steve Benen
Mon Mar 5, 2012 3:18 PM EST.
A few months ago, Mitt Romney sat down with Fox News’ Bret Baier, who asked the former governor about his support for a health care mandate. Romney, visibly agitated, repeatedly denied ever advocating a national mandate policy.
When Baier reminded Romney, “Governor you did say on camera and other places that, at times, you thought it would be a model for the nation,” the Republican presidential hopeful got even angrier, snapping back, “You’re wrong, Bret.”
Actually, you’re right, Bret.
There’s been evidence to the contrary bouncing around for a while, but Andrew Kaczynski posted three separate clips from the summer of 2009 in which Romney expressed support for President Obama modeling the Affordable Care Act on the Massachusetts reform law.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M9gGwW2gCs&feature=player_embedded
This video, in particular, was of interest, not only because it shows Romney expressing support for a national mandate, but because it also features Romney voicing approval for the Wyden-Bennett plan — which also included a national mandate.
Making matters slightly worse, Kaczynski also reports on a July 2009 op-ed Romney published in USA Today, which no longer appears on the newspaper’s website, but which also argues for a national mandate.
To be sure, there’s nothing inherently shocking about any of this. As recently as 2009, most Republicans supported a health care mandate as a standard provision in any reform package. But the GOP completed a sharp, 180-degree turn as the vote on Obama’s plan drew closer in late 2009, and Romney has spent the last two years running for president denying his support for a policy he endorsed — publicly and repeatedly — just a few years ago.
Given the Republican base’s opposition to mandates, imagine how damaging this could have been against Romney if he had even half-way serious challengers for the Republican nomination. Indeed, he’s lied consistently for years about his position on this, and none of the GOP candidates have made an issue of this.
——————————————————————————–
Incidentally, why was Romney still urging Obama to adopt a mandate as recently as 2009? Jon Chait explains:
In 2009, Mitt Romney had a problem. He was running for the Republican presidential nomination, and the towering achievement of his governorship in Massachusetts — health care reform — had been embraced by President Obama. Romneycare played almost no role in Romney’s 2008 presidential run, but the emergence of the issue onto the national agenda threatened to link Romney with a president Republicans had already come to loathe.
His solution was simple. He seized upon the one major difference between his plan and Obama’s, which was that Obama favored a public health insurance option. The public plan had commanded enormous public attention, and Romney used to it frame Masscare as a conservative reform relying on private health insurance, and against Obama’s proposal to create a government plan that, Romney claimed, would balloon into a massive entitlement.
The problem, of course, is that Joe Lieberman killed the public option, leaving two reform laws — “Obamacare” and “Romneycare” — with no meaningful differences.
That’s not what Romney bargained for. Fortunately for him, though, his competitors for the Republican nomination weren’t competent enough to take advantage of any of this
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10584717-lets-go-the-tape
His MITTNESS is a pathalogical LIAR, and tries to deny the invention of YOUTUBE.
Obama’s re-election campaign quietly organizes while Republicans fight
BEAVERCREEK, Ohio—President Barack Obama’s supporters waited all of two months after his inauguration to start laying the groundwork here for what has become a re-election machine that is bigger and tougher than his would-be Republican rivals’ nightmarish imaginings.
Oh, I’m afraid the Obama campaign will be quite operational when his Republican challenger arrives.
Powerful, the president’s re-election effort is: A new NBC News/Marist poll finds Obama trouncing his opponents in hypothetical general-election matchups in this state. He leads Mitt Romney in Ohio by 12 points among registered voters, 50 percent to 38 percent; Ron Paul by 10 points, 48 percent to 38 percent; Rick Santorum by 14 points, 50 percent to 36 percent; and Newt Gingrich by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.
While the seesaw battle for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination has grabbed the news media spotlight, the unopposed Democratic incumbent has quietly worked to enlist new supporters and woo back the armies of volunteers and small donors who powered his historic victory in 2008.
Supporters like Sarah Williams, a 24-year-old student at Ohio University in Athens, are among the campaign’s most important assets: veterans of the ’08 effort who are at least as enthusiastic now as they were four years ago.
“I’m passionate about the president,” Williams told Yahoo News as the campaign opened a field office in Athens. “He ran on change, he delivered on that change, and now we have to protect it.”
Williams calls her brief meeting with Michelle Obama on Feb. 23, 2008, “the day that changed my life,” leading her to change her major from creative writing to political science (“my concentration is ‘elections'”), to volunteer for Obama’s presidential campaign—and now, in 2012, to volunteer for his re-election effort. She views her job as “getting people excited again,” she said.
A senior official with the president’s re-election campaign in Ohio, asked by Yahoo News how the Obama campaign is reaching out to its volunteers from 2008, replied, “We never stopped talking to them.”
Organizing for America, on operation run by the Democratic National Committee that grew out of the movement that swept Obama into the White House, resumed operations in Ohio in March 2009—more than two years before the president’s re-election effort formally began on April 4, 2011.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-election-campaign-quietly-organizes-while-republicans-fight-191727365.html
Romney To College Student: If You Want Affordable College, ‘Shop Around’ Or Join The Military
By Travis Waldron on Mar 5, 2012 at 2:23 pm
The amount of student loan debt held by Americans surpassed $1 trillion last year, as the average student debt load surpassed $25,000. The race for the Republican presidential nomination, however, has been largely absent of talk about higher education policy, particularly from front-runner Mitt Romney, who doesn’t list education as one of the topics on his campaign web site’s “Issues” page.
At a town hall meeting in Ohio today, Romney was asked how he planned to help students better afford college. Instead of offering substantive policy solutions aimed at bringing down the cost of college, Romney told students that they should “shop around” for an affordable school or “think about serving the country” in order to get a free education:
ROMNEY: The legislature in my state came together and said, ‘You know what, anyone that’s willing to serve in the National Guard, we’ll provide for tuition and fees for four years of college to make sure you get that start.’ So if you’re willing to serve, then we can be of more help. But my best advice is find a great institution of higher learning, find one that has the right price, and shop around. In America, this idea of competition, it works! […] I want to make sure that every kid in this country that wants to go to college gets the chance to go to college. If you can’t afford it, scholarships are available, shop around for loans, make sure you go to a place that’s reasonably priced, and if you can, think about serving the country ’cause that’s a way to get all that education for free.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZjMhrHhMb0&feature=player_embedded
While Romney tells students not to take on too much debt, he supports the expansion of for-profit colleges, which charge exorbitant prices that often leave students buried in debt without the education they need to get a job after their degree is finished (18 state attorneys general are investigating the practices of such institutions). Just last week, Romney announced his opposition to a recently-passed law that takes large banks out of the federal student loan process, saving the government millions of dollars that can be plowed back into student aid.
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/03/05/437833/romney-to-college-student-if-you-want-affordable-college-shop-around-or-join-the-military/?mobile=nc
Yes, Mittens, I’m sure your 5 sons all served in the military and got all that FREE EDUCATION. Lord, please deliver us from this MADNESS.
Today at 12:01 PM
35Comments
How Romney Advocated Obamacare and Lied About It
By Jonathan Chait
In 2009, Mitt Romney had a problem. He was running for the Republican presidential nomination, and the towering achievement of his governorship in Massachusetts — health-care reform — had been embraced by President Obama. Romneycare played almost no role in Romney’s 2008 presidential run, but the emergence of the issue onto the national agenda threatened to link Romney with a president Republicans had already come to loathe.
His solution was simple. He seized upon the one major difference between his plan and Obama’s, which was that Obama favored a public health insurance option. The public plan had commanded enormous public attention, and Romney used to it frame Masscare as a conservative reform relying on private health insurance, and against Obama’s proposal to create a government plan that, Romney claimed, would balloon into a massive entitlement. Andrew Kaczynski collects several televised appearances and one op-ed in which Romney holds up Masscare as a national model.
This tactic backfired when Obama had to jettison the public plan, and Republicans came to focus on the individual mandate as the locus of evil in Obamacare. What was once a Republican idea in good standing was now, suddenly, unconstitutional and the greatest threat to freedom in American history.
This left Romney in an awkward spot.
It’s hard to run for president as the advocate of an idea that your party considers the greatest threat to freedom in history. His response was to simply revise the past, much as he did with abortion. Romney now claimed he had never advocated a federal version of his Masscare program. Here’s Romney at the December 11 GOP presidential debate:
Speaker Gingrich said that he was for a federal individual mandate. That’s something I’ve always opposed. What we did in our state was designed by the people in our state for the needs of our state. You believe in the 10th Amendment. I believe in the 10th Amendment. The people of Massachusetts favor our plan three to one. They don’t like it, they can get rid of it. (COUGH) That’s the great thing about (COUGH) a democracy, where individuals under the 10th Amendment have the power to craft their own solutions.
The coughs are in the original transcript, for what it’s worth. I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to say whether we ought to read anything into them.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/how-romney-advocated-obamacare-and-lied-about-it.html
I get the feeling Joey Scarborough is jealous President Obama made a phone call to Sandra Fluke. Oh, my goodness I’m catching the vapors…
[wpvideo qAzYTv4O]
I wouldn’t TRUST Mr. “Dick” Mark Halperin to clean my toilets.
Where’s that deadinternjoeyscar? This shit isn’t about Sarah Palin. It’s about Sandra Fluke and women who are being attacked by the GOP
It’s your “both sides do it” meme, and you can shove it.
Scarborough: “Let’s turn the lights off, it’s over
[wpvideo St3ISiZk]
BWA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Joe face palms, but he’ll pull the lever for Romney in November.
Posted at 01:12 PM ET, 03/05/2012
Rush Limbaugh’s `apology’ does nothing to quiet firestorm
By Greg Sargent
In a move that only ensures that this battle will get a lot worse from here on out, AOL has become the eighth advertiser to yank sponsorship from Rush Limbaugh’s show in the wake of his “slut” comments:
“We have monitored the unfolding events and have determined that Mr. Limbaugh’s comments are not in line with our values. As a result we have made the decision to suspend advertising on The Rush Limbaugh Radio show.”
Remarkably, this comes as some prominent conservatives are doubling down in their support for him. “Rally for Rush,” CNN contributor and RedState.com blogger Erick Erickson tweeted this morning, circulating a link to an American Spectator story with the same name. Rush Limbaugh has become a walking wedge issue.
Perhaps the most important thing about AOL’s decision is that it shows that Rush’s apology over the weekend has done absolutely nothing to reassure his sponsors or to quell the controversy. Public apologies of this sort are supposed to accomplish two goals. They are supposed to give people on your own side a way to say, “look, he admitted wrongdoing, it’s time to move on.” And they are supposed to get neutral arbiters — such as reporters and nonpartisan commentators — to think you sincerely regret your words, and to treat the story as resolved.
Limbaugh’s statement did acknowledge that his words towards Sandra Fluke had been “insulting,” and he said: “I sincerely apologize.” But in the same statement, he opined that “it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress.” In other words, even in his apology he kept the attack going.
It’s worth recalling how this whole fight began: It all started when House Republicans denied a little-known Georgetown student a chance to testify at a hearing they were staging on contraception and religious liberty. Since then, it has ballooned into a major national controversy that seems to be putting pressure on leading Republicans to distance themselves from one of the most prominent voices in the party and could even have ramifications in the presidential race.
Dems have done their part to strategically feed the story: House Democrats held their own hearing with Fluke, which promted the Rush diatribe that made the story go national. President Obama weighed in with a well timed phone call to Fluke that gave national reporters the hook they needed to ask the leading GOP presidential candidates whether they were prepared to distance themselves from Rush.
It’s gotten so bad that Rush felt the need to reiterate today that his weekend apology was sincere. But as Erik Wemple notes, there was nothing new in today’s apology — it just smacked of desperation and bitterness, and he even stooped to blaming the left for his troubles. Those troubles will surely continue — and the question now is how bad they will get for his party.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/rush-limbaughs-apology-does-nothing-to-quiet-firestorm/2012/03/05/gIQA6iYvsR_blog.html
When in doubt, Romney relies on fear
By Steve Benen
Mon Mar 5, 2012 12:40 PM EST.
President Obama spoke over the weekend at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, and spent a fair amount of time addressing “the issue that is such a focus for all of us today: Iran’s nuclear program.”
The relevant portion of the speech begins at about the 18:53 mark in this clip. Though Obama warned against the “loose talk of war,” which only serves to benefit the Iranian government, the president also said Israel, the U.S. and “the entire world” have an “interest in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.” Among other things, Obama warned of a regional “arms race in one of the world’s most volatile regions.”
The president added, “[T]hat is why, four years ago, I made a commitment to the American people, and said that we would use all elements of American power to pressure Iran and prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. And that is what we have done…. Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
And then Mitt Romney decided to weigh in.
Just hours after President Obama described to a group of pro-Israel activists the steps he has taken and will take to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, Mitt Romney made a dire prediction about the consequences for that effort if the president is reelected.
“If Barack Obama gets re-elected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change if that’s the case,” Romney told a crowd of more than 1,500 in this suburb east of Atlanta. […]
“This president failed to speak out when the dissidents took the streets in Tehran, he had nothing to say,” Romney said. “This is a president who has failed to put in place crippling sanctions against Iran. He’s also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand. And that it’s unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon
It’s hard to know where to start with rhetoric like this. Obama didn’t voice support for Iranian protesters because they didn’t want U.S. backing; he did impose tough sanctions on Iran; the president specifically said, “I will take no options off the table,” including military power; and Obama couldn’t have been clearer about U.S. opposition to a nuclear Iran.
It’s as if Romney heard the speech, and decided to tell voters the opposite of the truth.
But there’s even more to this than Romney’s deliberate efforts to deceive the public. Indeed, the Republican’s remarks speak to two larger themes: fear and ignorance.
——————————————————————————–
On the first point, Romney seems to be of the opinion that scaring the bejesus out of voters will translate into GOP votes. Notice the lack of ambiguity in Romney’s rhetoric: Obama’s election will practically guarantee an Iranian nuclear weapon.
And what does Romney base this categorical statement on? Nothing. He simply asserts it as true, without any facts or evidence. Romney does so because he’s hoping voters will simply be so terrified by the prospect, they’ll come rushing into the arms of an inexperienced one-term governor whose only international experience is opening Swiss bank accounts and stashing cash in the Caymans.
On the latter point, I still don’t know why, when it comes to foreign policy and national security, Romney thinks he’s ready to sit at the big kids’ table.
His bravado over the weekend notwithstanding, Romney doesn’t seem to understand U.S. policy in Iran at all. When he talked about his position at a debate in November, a bipartisan panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” literally laughed at him. BBC’s Katty Kay said at the time she was “disappointed” by Romney’s remarks on Iran, because she thought he’d have “a more sophisticated understanding” of the issue.
Remember, this is the same candidate who is under the false impression that there are “insurgents” in Iran.
And it’s not just Iran. Romney’s own advisors think he’s wrong about Afghanistan; he was recently found flip-flopping on Iraq; he couldn’t answer a question about an al Qaeda affiliate, Al Shabab, controlling significant territory in Somalia; and his call for a trade war with China is nuts.
Worse, Romney has struggled in this area for quite some time.
Remember the time Romney told ABC News he would “set a deadline for bringing the troops home” from Iraq — but only if it’s a secret deadline? How about the time Romney, more than four years into the war in Iraq, said it’s “entirely possible” that Saddam Hussein hid weapons of mass destruction in Syria prior to the 2003 invasion? Or the time Romney pretended “Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood” were all the same thing? How about my personal favorite: the time Romney made the bizarre assertion that IAEA weapons inspectors were not allowed entry into Saddam Hussein’s Iraq?
More recently, Romney tried to trash the New START nuclear treaty in an op-ed, prompting Fred Kaplan to respond, “In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and — let’s not mince words — thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney’s attack on the New START treaty.”
He’s even picked a fight over President Obama’s strike on Osama bin Laden, ignoring the fact that Romney took an entirely passive attitude towards the al Qaeda leader, saying “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth” to get the terrorist responsible for 9/11. Around the same time, Romney said he would not order a strike into Pakistan to get bin Laden, rejecting Obama’s willingness “to enter an ally of ours” to target the terrorist leader.
There have to be other issues for Romney to focus his attention on.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10583772-when-in-doubt-romney-relies-on-fear
The trust deficit
by Kay
Long, detailed poll from Kaiser on public opinion on health care (pdf). Read the whole thing, but these are the parts I found interesting:
At least at this point in the still developing general election campaign, President Barack Obama is trusted by larger shares with the future of both Medicare and the ACA than any of his Republican challengers: roughly six in ten say they trust the President, compared to roughly four in ten who say they have at least some trust in Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Rick Santorum or Rep. Ron Paul, and three in ten who have at least some trust in former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Among independents, President Obama garners trust from higher shares than any of the Republican candidates on both Medicare and the ACA, with no GOP candidate in particular standing out.
Translation: Obama has almost twenty points on any Republican re: trust on both the ACA and Medicare.
I am not surprised. How anyone trusts Mitt Romney on anything at this point is beyond me. I think every statement he makes should be recorded, so people can compare his positions from day to day.
Contraception:
Even as the debate rages, the basic policy retains majority support: six in ten (63 percent) Americans say they support the requirement that health plans include no‐cost birth control, while a third (33percent) oppose it. Although the policy is targeted at a benefit provided to women, the survey suggests there is no large gender gap on the issue. Two‐thirds of women (66 percent) back the requirement, similar to the six in ten men (60 percent) that support it
Instead, the fault lines are much wider by party identification and by age. Overall, almost twice the number of Democrats (83 percent) as Republicans (42 percent) back the no‐cost birth control requirement. The same gap appears even if you narrow the analysis to women only, with 85 percent of Democratic women backing the no‐cost contraception requirement, compared to 42 percent of Republican women. And as the debate over contraceptive coverage has become more politicized during recent months, the proportion of Republican women who oppose the requirement has risen, from 39 percent last August to 53 percent now. Meanwhile, most independent women (67 percent) are in favor of the plan
Seems like an easy political decision for Democrats. 63% overall support, with 85% of Democratic women supporting contraception coverage, and 67% of women who self-identify as independents supporting contraception coverage.
Republican women oppose contraception coverage, and they discovered they opposed it much, much more once they found out Democrats supported it, but they weren’t voting for us anyway.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/03/05/the-trust-deficit/#comment-3090100
Go jump in a lake Babs.
BWA HA HA HA GAWD! We truly are FUCKED as a nation, if this ID-GIT gets into the Oval Office. How long did it take his MITTNESS to remember the words to this song, or did he have soem one feed him the lines via earphones, teleprompter?
NBC Poll: Kaine Leads Allen in Virginia Senate Race
By Mark Murray
| Sunday, Mar 4, 2012 | Updated 9:09 AM EST
In what will surely be one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate contests of 2012, Democrat Tim Kaine leads Republican George Allen in Virginia by nearly 10 percentage points, according to a new NBC News/Marist poll.
Kaine, the former governor of the state, gets support from 48 percent of registered Virginia voters, and Allen, a former governor and U.S. senator, gets 39 percent. Fourteen percent say they’re undecided.
The poll also shows President Obama and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell with 51 percent approval ratings in the state, and it finds Obama with a substantial lead over his potential GOP rivals in this key battleground state.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/blogs/first-read-dmv/NBC-Poll-Kaine-Leads-Allen-in-Virginia-Senate-Race-141331403.html
Virginia to Geroge Allen: NO MORE MACACCA!
GOP Hopefuls Losing Ground to Obama Among Latinos, Poll Says
Written By Andrew O’Reilly
Published March 05, 2012
Fox News Latino
Despite growing disappointment in his handling of immigration issues, Latino voters favor President Barack Obama by six-to-one over any of the Republican presidential hopefuls, showed a Fox News Latino poll conducted under the direction of Latin Insights and released Monday.
The national poll of likely Latino voters indicated that 73 percent of them approved of Obama’s performance in office, with over half those questioned looking favorably upon his handling of the healthcare debate and the economy, at 66 percent and 58 percent respectively.
Released on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries in the race for the GOP nomination, the Fox News Latino poll shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 35 percent of Latino voter support, to Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s 13 percent, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s 12 percent, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s 9 percent.
But the poll shows that the overwhelming choice among likely Latino voters is President Obama. In head-to-head match-ups none of the GOP candidates would garner more than 14 percent of the Latino vote come November, the poll said.
“This is what we’re seeing across the country,” said Gabriela Domenzain, Obama campaign spokesperson. “The more Latinos learn about the candidates, the more they reject them.”
Caught-up in the throes of a bitterly contested primary season, the GOP hopefuls seem to be losing traction among Latino voters.
While the poll indicates that four of five Latinos who voted for Obama in 2008 would vote for him later this year, Latinos who voted for Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain four years ago are now divided between voting for Obama and the Republican candidates. Forty percent said that they favored Obama while 38 percent said they would vote for Romney. Obama also leads Santorum 38 percent to 34, and Gingrich 40 percent to 38.
Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/03/05/gop-hopefuls-losing-ground-to-obama-among-latinos-poll-says/#ixzz1oGQ5IngC
I’m sure Latinos would prefer Romney’s SELF DEPORTATION rhetoric… ?
Willard has cozied up to
1. Arapio
2. Pete Wilson
3. The Author of the ‘What about if you ain’t White, don’t you understand’ laws.
4. Has said he would veto the DREAM ACT
5. come up with SELF-DEPORTATION
I mean, seriously. it would be like, having a candidate cozy up to Bull Connor, and say that they were against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but thinking that somehow, Black folk would be voting FOR them.
G-T-F-O-H
Bankster Stabs Cabbie; Shouts Racial Slurs
by Steven D
Mon Mar 5th, 2012 at 11:05:48 AM EST
From Bloomberg News comes this report about a Morgan Stanley Executive who stabbed a cab driver after refusing to pay a $204 cab fare. But that’s not all …
Mohamed Ammar said the banker attacked him Dec. 22 with a 2½-inch blade and used racial slurs after a 40-mile ride from New York to the banker’s $3.4 million Darien, Connecticut home.
Jennings, who had attended a bank holiday party at a boutique hotel in Manhattan before hailing the cab, refused to pay the $204 fare upon arriving in his driveway, the driver said. When Ammar threatened to call the local police, Jennings said they wouldn’t do anything to help because he pays $10,000 in taxes, according to a report by the Darien police department.
Ammar, a native of Egypt, said he then backed out of the driveway to seek a police officer. The banker called him an expletive and said “I’m going to kill you. You should go back to your country,” according to the report, filed in state court in Stamford. A fight ensued as they drove through Darien, and Jennings, 45, allegedly cut Ammar, 44, police said.
Jennings, after returning for a 2 week vacation in Florida, turned himself in to the Darrien, CN police, and is now out of jail after paying a $9500 bond. I suspect he’ll get a plea bargain down to a misdemeanor and receive a suspended sentence with maybe some community service work added on. Mr. Amar can always file a lawsuit against Jennings, but I imagine that Jennings can afford a higher priced lawyer to stall the lawsuit well until the next decade.
Now co-head of North American fixed-income capital markets, he worked his way up from associate; vice president, and then principal, for debt capital markets; to executive director for investment banking and then managing director for fixed income capital markets. He is a graduate of Williams College and received a master’s in business from Northwestern University.
Now imagine how this story would have been reported had Jennings been a young African American male “gangster” or really anyone who didn’t work for Wall Street since 1993? Word to the wise. If you’re a cab driver in NYC, I wouldn’t pick up any well dressed white men you see hanging around Wall Street. You could be risking more than getting stiffed on your cab fare.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/3/5/11548/44718#2
another LOSE for Governor Transvaginal Probe McDonnell
…………………………..
‘Three steps backwards for Virginia women’
By Laura Conaway
Mon Mar 5, 2012 9:45 AM EST
The picture above shows how Virginia State Police greeted protesters for reproductive equality this weekend. On Saturday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports, 31 people were arrested for marching to the Capitol and sitting down on the steps, where they were faced officers in riot gear.
Blue Virginia has video, updates, etc., and posts this statement from Democratic Delegate Scott Surovell:
Women fought for decades to achieve equality with men and the right to control their personal medical decisions. My mother was legally prohibited from attending most Virginia universities or professional schools, was unable to buy a car without the signature of a man, or choose when she wanted to have a child when she reached adulthood in Virginia in 1962. Thanks to the victories won by women over the last forty years, my three daughters will have choices and opportunities in life that my mother, my grandmothers, and their predecessors could have never dreamed of founded. These opportunities are founded upon economic equality and the right to decide when to give birth to a child.
Delegate Surovell’s full statement is after the jump.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10581908-three-steps-backwards-for-virginia-women
Just posted a thread on Governor BOB MCFAIL.
Sandra Fluke is on The View this morning.
The ’96 strategy
By Steve Benen
Mon Mar 5, 2012 10:40 AM EST
Last week, Rachel talked to Salon’s Steve Kornacki about the 2012 campaign, and he noted that there may come a point at which congressional Republicans stop thinking about the presidential campaign, and start thinking about their own re-election prospects.
No one in the party would ever talk about this publicly, but there may come a point at which GOP officials believe President Obama is going to win re-election. The next question, of course, is what Republicans would do if they grudgingly accept this premise. As Kornacki put it, party leaders may very well conclude, “Let’s save the House, let’s try to win as many of these Senate seats as we can.”
If this strategy sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it before: in 1996, the GOP-led Congress concluded Bill Clinton was likely to win a second term, so Republicans began legislating — for their own benefit — in advance of the election. It mattered less whether it would help the president and more whether it would give lawmakers a record they could run on themselves.
In 1996, it worked for everyone: Clinton won easily, and Republicans kept the House and Senate. Could we see a replay in 2012?
In an important column, conservative George Will argued over the weekend that GOP officials should do exactly that, focusing on “constructive defeat” in the presidential race, because “neither” Mitt Romney nor Rick Santorum are “likely to be elected.”
If either is nominated, conservatives should vote for him. But suppose the accumulation of evidence eventually suggests that the nomination of either would subtract from the long-term project of making conservatism intellectually coherent and politically palatable. If so, there would come a point when, taking stock of reality, conservatives turn their energies to a goal much more attainable than, and not much less important than, electing Romney or Santorum president. It is the goal of retaining control of the House and winning control of the Senate.
Several possible Supreme Court nominations and the staffing of the regulatory state are among the important reasons conservatives should try to elect whomever the GOP nominates. But conservatives this year should have as their primary goal making sure Republicans wield all the gavels in Congress in 2013.
Obviously, Will isn’t making the case in support of an Obama second term, but rather, Will is working under the assumption that the Republican field just isn’t good enough, and by focusing on a Republican-led Congress, the party can mitigate the effects of another four years of a Democratic president.
George Will, it’s worth emphasizing, is not just another conservative voice — he’s the most widely syndicated columnist in the country, and an influential voice in Republican politics. If he’s already lending credence to “the ’96 strategy,” it’s likely others in the GOP will be more inclined to take it seriously.
There are no doubt many factors that contribute to this — the improving economy, the “corrosive” effect of the Republican nominating fight, Romney’s underwhelming and unimpressive candidacy — but regardless of the motivations, it’s worth watching to see if Will’s sentiment takes hold in the coming months.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10582948-the-96-strategy
That Does Not Make Sense
by BooMan
Mon Mar 5th, 2012 at 09:14:02 AM EST
What happens when you make people aggressively stupid? I think we have reached another Stupid or Evil moment. How many people really are so stupid that they don’t know how hormonal birth control works? And how many people know precisely how it works but simply don’t care about making themselves look stupid if they can call someone a slut?
Imagine if people were arguing that a man could avoid impregnating his girlfriend by getting up each morning, going into the bathroom, and putting on a condom for a minute to two. You’d need 28-31 condoms a month (depending on the month) to utilize this form of birth control. It wouldn’t matter how many times you had sex as long as you put that condom on each morning while you brushed your teeth.
Would anyone dare make this argument in public? I’m beginning to think the answer to this question is ‘yes.’ The mighty right-wing wurlitzer doesn’t care about influencing the portion of the public that is acquainted with reality. They’re after the nearly insensate.
A woman says that a friend of hers lost an ovary because she couldn’t afford to pay for the Pill. The response is that the woman telling this story is having so much sex that she can’t afford the Pill. That has so little relationship to the underlying facts that anyone paying attention is left to wonder “what the f*ck are you talking about?”
It’s kind of like invading Iraq because a bunch of non-Iraqis who were trained in Afghanistan attacked this country.
It’s kind of like if the Democrats responded to the Republicans’ tax plan by asking why Paul Ryan has sex with llamas behind the big barn.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/3/5/9142/46374
Badgering History
By Charles P. Pierce
at 10:30AM
In the most recent issue of The New Yorker, William Finnegan reports about the events leading up to, and now surrounding, the attempts to recall Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus currently serving as the assistant sales manager in the wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries that was once known as the state of Wisconsin. His well-reported piece begins with the moment that newly-elected Scott Walker, had his moment of revelation. Says Finnegan:
When Scott Walker was the governor-elect of Wisconsin, he had a vision. (Ed. Note: No jokes, please. We’re being civil today.In 1981, his childhood hero, Ronald Reagan, fired more than eleven thousand air-traffic controllers and banned them from being rehired for life. Their union was destroyed. As Walker put it later, “That was the first crack in the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism, because from that point forward the Soviets and the Communists knew that Ronald Reagan wasn’t a pushover.”
Now, I realize that “Reagan Won The Cold War” is part of the modern conservative Nicene Creed that young conservative children recite before going to bed every night, their parents in the doorway, watching proudly. It’s become so embedded in their cultural and historical DNA that nobody, living or dead, objects any more to the rote recitation of what is actually quite mendacious ahistorical twaddle:
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Scott_Walker_Fries_History#ixzz1oG7Rg4X5
Federal Bankruptcy Judge: Bailout Was Only Way to Save Chrysler
The federal judge who presided over Chrysler’s bankruptcy told ABC News in an exclusive interview that the ailing company could not have survived without taxpayer money.
“The record before the Court was clear that there were no other sources of lending,” said Arthur J. Gonzalez, who served as chief judge of the U.S. bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York.
The bailouts of G.M. and Chrysler remain a political hot potato in Midwest states such as Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, which are heavily dependent on the U.S. auto industry.
President Obama is taking credit for saving more than a million jobs because of the bailouts, while Republican candidates have voiced their opposition to the government loans. GOP front-runner Mitt Romney insists, “It was the wrong way to go,” and that General Motors and Chrysler should have gone through “a private bankruptcy process.”
But Gonzalez, who retired from the federal bench on March 1, told ABC News: “One thing is clear, without government support in one fashion or another, there were no sources of funding.”
Gonzalez, now a law professor at New York University, said Chrysler — then the weakest of the Big 3 automakers — did not have the ability to secure financing on its own and “it was not generating sufficient cash to operate without an outside source of financing.”
During the 2009 bankruptcy, Chrysler closed dealers, shut factories, and demanded pay cuts and other concessions from union autoworkers. The U.A.W’s retiree health fund took an ownership stake in return for more than $10 billion that Chrysler owed it. Fiat, the Italian automaker, also got a stake for providing technology and agreeing to run the new company. It later paid the U.S. Treasury nearly $2 billion to take majority ownership.
The former chief judge also denied that the speedy bankruptcy hearing somehow prevented private investors from stepping up, pointing out that the government and Chrysler’s creditors had been seeking a solution for 18 months, to no avail.
“The notion that the speed of the process may have missed a potential buyer has no basis in the record,” he said.
Now the new Chrysler is accelerating on the road to recovery, earning $225 million in its most profitable quarter since emerging from bankruptcy. Before the bailout, former Chrysler chairman Robert Nardelli told Congress the automaker was “in a death spiral.” Without those government loans, Gonzalez told ABC News, Chrysler “would have had to liquidate.”
And what about that taxpayer money? The company has paid back all but $1.3 billion of the $12.5 billion that Uncle Sam loaned it under Presidents Bush and Obama.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/03/federal-bankruptcy-judge-bailout-was-only-way-to-save-chrysler/
PBO= GETTIN’ SHIT DONE FOR AMERICA!
Ok, y’all gotta check out this blog OHELLNAWL
LMBAO
http://ohellnawlblog.com/newohnblog/the-staff/
Rush’s Non-Apology Apology: A Thought Experiment
By Charles P. Pierce
at 12:49PM
To begin: The Washington Post, a once-great newspaper now d/b/a a halfway house for torture apologists and retired professional liars, is, by evidence of its headlines alone, very clearly run by people who are waylaid on a daily basis by well-dressed strangers who sell them bags of magic beans. The Associated Press, which produced this barrel of bushwah, is little better. And Politico? Don’t get me started.
But here’s a thought experiment, for the editors of those publications, and for everyone, really: Rush Limbaugh unloads his weepy pilonoidal cyst of an intellect in this fashion on your daughter. Then, as his advertisers run screaming into the night, and as even his acolytes among Republican politicians can barely summon up the will to offer quarter-assed statements on the whole matter, he finally issues a statement wherein he, essentially, apologizes for:
1) Using the word “slut,” rather than, one supposes, “trollop,” “slattern,” or “lady of the town.”
2) For having far too sophisticated a sense of humor for the rest of us to comprehend.
3) For failing clearly to explain his deeply serious political philosophy regarding what is proper to discuss before Congress in these “very serious political times.” This, as the redoubtable Heather Parton points out, is a fairly recent development in his thinking.
Does any of that remotely constitute an “apology” to you for what he said about your daughter? Does any of that make you more likely to trust in the good faith of anything this Viagra-sponging pillhead says in the foreseeable future? Does any of that make you less likely to kind of wish, at least in your heart of hearts, that you could perform orthopedic surgery on this guy with a Louisville Slugger?
Thought not.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/rush-limbaugh-apology-to-sandra-fluke-7087059#ixzz1oG6Jtclr
From We are Respectable Negroes
Monday, March 5, 2012
Rush Limbaugh and the Crisis in White Conservative Masculinity
SNIP
In the Age of Obama white manhood—and a particular type of conservative white masculinity—is frightened, unsettled, and terrified of its obsolescence. White (conservative) masculinity finds itself in an existential crisis.
For outsiders looking in, the idea that white manhood is somehow imperiled, would in all likelihood, appear absurd. While non-Hispanic white men are only twenty percent of the American public, they control every major social, political, and economic institution in the United States. In addition (borrowing the language of the Occupy Wall Street movement), “the 1%” are almost exclusively white men. White people have at least twenty times the wealth of people of color: white men possess the overwhelming majority of these resources.
read on
http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-and-crisis-in-white.html
they are on spot
Tornado drops boy on highway, 350 ft. from home
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10581861-tornado-drops-boy-on-highway-350-ft-from-home
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A 7-year-old boy who was sucked from his home by a tornado on Friday and dropped 350 feet away on the side of an interstate is home from the hospital, recovering from his injuries.
Jamal Stevens suffered only minor injuries from the twister that demolished his family’s two-story home in Charlotte near Interstate 485, where Jamal was found by his family a few minutes after the twister struck his neighborhood.
[wpvideo QNvzrAce]
And you decked some fucking blackshirt
by DougJarvus Green-Ellis
My reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s apology, like my reaction to Komen’s shit-canning of Karen Handel, is two words: Uh. Winning.
Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Brinker backed down because they were scared, mostly of losing sponsors. They didn’t see the error of their ways, they saw their careers flash before their eyes.
There are those of you (though I’d like to think I’ve alienated most of the hard-core totebaggers at this point) who think that everything would be fine in American politics if Mark Shields could just make the most thoughtful, incisive possible argument to David Brooks. You know I ain’t down with that shit, Lieutenant. Human beings are greedy, fearful, irrational beings, and most (maybe all) of what makes conservativism ascendant right now is its ability to scare—xenophobes into voting against their own economic interests, “journalists” into deference, elected officials into toeing the teahad line, liberals into keeping their mouth shuts—and bribe (do I even need to give you examples?).
Andrew Breitbart’s so-called success is a testimony to the power of intimidation. Anne-Laurie’s post gives a perfect example.
Never forget that. When liberals cower in fear of the awesome moral and political power of right-wing Bishops and talk show hosts, we lose. When we say “I wish a motherfucker would try to ban contraceptives”, we win.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/03/03/and-you-decked-some-fucking-blackshirt/
” “I wish a motherfucker would try to ban contraceptives”, we win.
THERE WILL BE NO BACKING DOWN FROM THESE NUTS.
It’s Saul Over Now
by John Cole
Apparently the big expose Breitbart promised before his death has been released at one of the Big Morons sites, and the shocking revelation is… Obama attended a play 14 years ago that was about Saul Alinksy.
These people are unspoofable. And where the hell is the Whitey Tape?
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/03/05/its-saul-over-now/#comment-3089809
Disney’s Only Black Princess Hawks Watermelon Candy
Surely it’s just a coincidence that Tiana, the only black princess in the storied history of Disney animated films, is the face of Dig ‘n Dips watermelon-flavored candy? And that Cinderella Aurora of Sleeping Beauty is the vanilla-flavored dipping stick? Yeah, that’s totally a coincidence. Right, guys? Guys?
http://gawker.com/5890481/disneys-only-black-princess-hawks-watermelon-candy
Are we suprised at this. How many decades did it take DISNEY to get Tiana on the big screen? I’m sure little black girls will be clamoring for the candy. /snark.
Don’t be suprised if we find out down the road soem shockin revelations about Dr. Suess. It’s all aobut the GREENBACK, folks.
The Dublin archdiocese refused to turn over records on priests who abused children, that is until Diarmuid Martin became archbishop. Bob Simon reports.
Watch the 60 minutes segment
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7400874n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox
Live streaming of Urban Economic Forum from Birmingham, Alabama & Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass: Virtual Conversation -The White House
Watch it here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
March 05, 2012 8:59 AM
Obama Draws His Own Lines at AIPAC
By Ed Kilgore
As Adele Stan noted yesterday, the President’s speech to AIPAC was a pretty big deal: “Given tensions with Iran and the rhetoric of the Republican presidential primary campaign, the importance of this speech as both a piece of diplomacy and one of political position really can’t be overstated.”
The full import of the speech may not be apparent immediately; a lot may depend on how Bibi Netanyahu reacts during and after his private meetings with Obama. But it is clear Obama did not succumb to the pressure to close ranks with Bibi that Marc Tracy described before his remarks:
AIPAC is calling on the more than 13,000 conference attendees to ask House members and senators—many of whom will be present at tomorrow night’s “roll call” and be lobbied Tuesday on Capitol Hill—to support a bipartisan Senate resolution that would put them on the record opposing containment of an Iran with a “nuclear weapons capability.” Neither AIPAC nor the resolution allege that Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon—and available intelligence suggests that decision hasn’t been made. Instead, they argue that Iranian capability—on the model of, say, Japan, which has all the elements in place so that it could produce a nuclear bomb within a year if it wanted—is still unacceptable. “If Iran achieves the status of a ‘threshold’ nuclear state,” the talking points declare, “it will enjoy virtually the same benefits as if it actually possessed nuclear weapons.”
The cover of the brochure that is the first thing you see when you open the media kit says it all: “Iranian Nuclear Weapons Capability: Unacceptable.”
If this became U.S. policy, it would bring its position closer to Israel’s. It might constitute the new “red line” that Prime Minister Netanyahu will seek tomorrow when he meets with President Obama at the White House.
Trita Parsi succinctly explains that Obama did not cooperate with this effort:
The dispute on the nuclear issue is centered on red lines. Israel, like the Bush administration, considers a nuclear capability in Iran a red line. It argues that the only acceptable guarantee that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon is for Iran to have no enrichment program.
The Obama administration puts the red line not at enrichment — which is permitted under international law — but at nuclear weapons. This is a clearer, more enforceable red line that also has the force of international law behind it.
While expressing his sympathy and friendship with Israel, Obama did not yield his red line at AIPAC. With the backing of the U.S. military, he has stood firm behind weaponization rather than weapons capability as the red line.
This may turn out to be a more crucial distinction than the “options on the table” arguments about U.S.-Iran relations that have drawn the most media attention for years now.
More basically, at a time when the general expectation was that Obama would devote his AIPAC speech to a pander-thon, he actually didn’t. As Spencer Ackerman observed: “Obama’s speech to AIPAC threw down a gauntlet to multiple audiences, while challenging them to do things his way.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/obama_draws_lines_at_aipac035819.php
State budget cuts hit small-town Ohio
Residents in Uniopolis wanted a balanced budget, and voted in Republican Gov. John Kasich to get the job done. But now the village is facing disincorporation because it can’t stay afloat.
By Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times
March 4, 2012
Reporting from Uniopolis, Ohio—
Residents here were all for balancing Ohio’s budget. They didn’t expect that to mean their town would cease to exist.
This small village of low-slung houses and squeaky swing sets in western Ohio’s farm country has already laid off its part-time police officer and decided not to replace its maintenance worker, who recently retired. To save cash, Mayor William Rolston will propose Monday that the town turn off the street lights, and that Uniopolis disincorporate after more than a century in existence.
“We’ve decided that with the budget cuts, we just can’t do it anymore,” said Rolston, the mayor of 19 years, speaking from the town’s one-room municipal building, its wallpaper covered with heart-shaped American flags. “About the only thing that can save it now is an act of God.”
As local governments grapple with the aftermath of a brutal recession, communities across Ohio and the nation have cut back on spending. Voters elected politicians who pledged to balance budgets, but now that the effects are being felt, some are changing their minds.
They ultimately will have to answer this question: Is balancing a budget in hard times a necessity, as House SpeakerJohn A. Boehner, whose district is just down the road, has said, or is cutting to the bone right now just too much to ask of a small town?
Ohio has been a battleground for budget issues. In 2010, it elected a Republican governor, John Kasich, who pledged to balance the state budget without raising taxes, an approach echoed by GOP presidential candidates circling the state before Tuesday’s primary. In his budget, passed last summer, he eliminated the $8-billion deficit by slashing funding for local governments, among other things. In some towns, the new budget means a 25% reduction in state funding this year and a further 25% drop the year after.
“Think about this: In six months we eliminated an $8-billion budget shortfall without a tax increase,” Kasich said in his state of the state address this year.
The cuts were felt across the state: Auglaize County, where Uniopolis is located, lost $5 million in the new budget, according to Innovation Ohio, a left-leaning think tank. Cuyahoga County, the home of Cleveland, lost $230 million, and Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, lost $136 million, the think tank reported.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ohio-cuts-20120304,0,6084585.story
Profiles in courage — or lack thereof
By Steve Benen – Mon Mar 5, 2012 9:08 AM EST.
Before Rush Limbaugh apologized for his attacks on Sandra Fluke, Mitt Romney was asked on Friday for his perspective on the controversy. It didn’t go well.
Mitt Romney steered clear of the Rush Limbaugh controversy until Friday evening, even avoiding a CNN reporter earlier in the day, when he addressed the issue after an event in Cleveland.
“I’ll just say this which is it’s not the language I would have used,” Romney said.
That’s not much of an answer. Romney and his campaign team had days to come up with a compelling response, and could have even used this as a “Sister Souljah” opportunity, distancing the former governor from the extremist wing of his party, but the best he could come up with is “it’s not the language I would have used.”
The most glaring problem with this is substantive — Romney was comfortable with the attack on an innocent college student, but not the word choice? It suggests the Republican presidential candidate was comfortable with the sentiment, but not the specific language. Indeed, the follow-up question for Romney should be, “OK, what language would you have used when attacking Sandra Fluke”?
But there’s a larger context to this that’s worth keeping in mind: Mitt Romney appears to have a courage problem. When George Will criticized the candidate for lacking “the courage of his absence of convictions,” it was an entirely fair point.
Did Romney support the “Personhood” amendment in Mississippi? He didn’t want to give an opinion.
Did Romney support an extension of the payroll tax break? He preferred not to say.
Did Romney support collective bargaining rights in Ohio? He didn’t want to give an opinion on that, either.
Was Romney comfortable with Republican voters booing a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq during a Republican debate? He didn’t want to talk about it.
Does Romney support mass deportation of undocumented immigrants? He doesn’t want to give an opinion.
Is Romney comfortable with Limbaugh’s smears? He’d rather talk about something else.
There’s going to come a point later this year when the Obama campaign is likely to say, “Mitt Romney lacks the courage to be a leader.” And the criticism will sting because it’s based in fact.
Either Romney has the guts to lead or he doesn’t. He had an opportunity on Friday to step up and he blew it.
.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10582385-profiles-in-courage-or-lack-thereof
March 05, 2012 8:30 AM
Super Tuesday Benchmarks
By Ed Kilgore
The so-called Super Tuesday events are actually seven primaries and three caucuses in states with 437 delegates to the GOP National Convention. The results are likely to point in one of two directions: a near-sweep by Mitt Romney that could once again (as was the case after his Florida and Nevada wins over a month ago) bring him to the brink of nailing down the nomination, or a more mixed outcome whose significance will depend on how GOP opinion-leaders interpret it.
The biggest variable is Ohio, whch has probably received more national media attention that the other nine Super Tuesday states combined, and where Rick Santorum still has a decent chance of winning the popular vote despite a late Romney surge in the polls and some delegate-filing mistakes by Team Rick that make it unlikely his share of the delegates will match his share of the vote.
PPP released a late battery of polls last night showing Romney gaining strength not only in OH (where he now leads by one point and also seems to have built an advantage in early voting) but in TN, another state where Santorum led comfortably in earlier surveys. In GA, however, PPP showed Newt Gingrich consolidating his lead and threatening to win an actual majority, which means that Mitt won’t win a sweep.
Nate Silver posted an excellent comprehensive preview of Super Tuesday last night, showing how Romney might secure a majority of the total delegates selected on March 6. In terms of individual states, Nate figures Romney will win MA (of course), VA, VT and ID (a big LDS state), and has a decent chance in the unpolled caucus states of ND and AK (two states, along with VA, where Ron Paul is making a major effort and could pick up a significant number of delegates). He figures Santorum will win OK, and has a small advantage in TN (where, as PPP points out, Santorum is actually well ahead in early voters). He, too, assumes Newt will win GA, and is slightly less bullish than many observers about Mitt’s “surge” in OH, if only because early voting has been surprisingly light and overall turnout could be low, which presumably favors the more ideologically motivated Santorum vote.
If, to cite one plausible scenario, Santorum wins OH, TN, OK and maybe one of the caucus states (Paul could also pick off one or two of those), and Gingrich (as expected) romps in GA, we are back to that twilight situation where opinion-leader reaction becomes very important. Primaries and caucuses start stretching out for real, and even if Romney is generally conceded “inevitability” once again, he will have a slow, painful slog to a majority of delegates and the opportunity for weird stuff happening will return.
A Romney win in OH, but not in TN or OK, would change the dynamics considerably, though lingering doubts about his weakness in the South would probably prevent his complete coronation.
So the details—and perhaps last-minute developments—could matter. Stay tuned to continuing demolition derby coverage.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/super_tuesday_benchmarks035820.php
yet NOTHING ABOUT THE KOCH BROTHERS AND OIL SPECULATION..
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
I go back to 2009…..I wondered why I was paying only $2.54 for a gallon of gas. Here’s a hint…there was no credit to be found…so, there was no money for OIL SPECULATORS, and the market was about as ‘ right’ as it’s been in a long time.
OIL SPECULATORS ADD $23.00 to a barrell of oil….think on that.
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GOP sees Obama gas-price conspiracy
By Steve Benen – Mon Mar 5, 2012 8:44 AM EST.
Last summer, with gas prices rising, several leading Republicans came up with a curious accusation: President Obama was causing pain at the pump deliberately, as part of some undefined environmental agenda. This odd line was pushed by Haley Barbour and the Koch brothers, among others.
In the ensuing months, prices came back down, and the talking point went away. Apparently, it’s back.
GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich this morning chided the Obama administration, saying the president has “a goal getting us to pay European-level prices” for gas.
If it were only coming from Gingrich, this might be easier to dismiss, but it’s an increasingly common line of attack. Even Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R), allegedly one of the GOP’s grown-ups, told Fox News last week that imposing higher gas prices on American consumers is the “conscious policy of this administration.”
Much of this seems to be the result of a foolish interpretation of recent congressional testimony from Energy Secretary Steven Chu, but even putting that aside, I wonder if Republicans seriously expect anyone to believe their rhetoric on this. The argument Americans are supposed to believe is that President Obama, in an election year, not only has the power to manipulate gas prices at will, but is trying to raise them — on purpose — to the dismay of consumers.
The follow-up question is rather straightforward: why on earth would Obama want to do that? It doesn’t even take much in the way of critical thinking skills to know the answer: he wouldn’t.
Unfortunately for Republicans, the attack isn’t likely to work, not only because it’s painfully foolish, but because there’s polling data that suggests Americans aren’t inclined to blame the president for gas prices anyway.
In fact, Jared Bernstein published this chart the other day, noting that the public is increasingly less likely to blame the president for pain at the pump than it was in 2005.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10582263-gop-sees-obama-gas-price-conspiracy
Tough Reelection Fight Looms For Sherrod Brown
Eric Kleefeld March 5, 2012, 6:21 AM
All eyes are on Ohio, the one state above all others on Super Tuesday where Mitt Romney could potential nail down the nomination with a victory — or where a win by Rick Santorum could put him back into contention in the Republican race for president. But beyond tomorrow, the eyes of the country will still be on Ohio, for the general election — both for the presidential race, and for the re-election campaign of Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Brown was elected to the Senate in the 2006 Democratic wave, defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Mike DeWine by a margin of 56%-44%. Before that, he was first elected to the Ohio state Senate way back in 1974, at the age of only 22; then Ohio Secretary of State in 1982. He was defeated for re-election in 1990, then made a comeback to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992, where he served until his election to the Senate.
His opponent is state Treasurer Josh Mandel — whose political career path seems in many ways a younger, Republican version of Brown’s. He was elected to the state House in 2006, at age 29, and was then elected Treasurer in the 2010 Republican wave, defeating the appointed Democratic incumbent by 55%-41%.
So what kind of year will 2012 turn out to be? And how will these two candidates manage it?
In the latest TPM Poll Average of the race, Brown has a lead over Mandel of 46.3%-35.9%:
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/sherrod-brown-in-good-shape-but-tough-reelection-fight-looms.php?ref=skyboxes
Posted at 08:51 AM ET, 03/05/2012
The Morning Plum: Economic optimism continues to rise
By Greg Sargent
If there are reasons for President Obama to be optimistic about his reelection chances, one of them has to be this: The two key dynamics driving our politics right now are both playing in his favor. First, economic optimism continues to rise. Second, the GOP primary seems to have left likely nominee Mitt Romney with historically low standing.
The new NBC/WSJ poll finds that Obama has hit the 50 percent approval mark — his highest since Bin Laden’s death. That’s apparently driven by these findings about the economy:
Forty percent believe the economy will improve during the next year, a three-point increase from January. And looking back at the economic recession, 57 percent say that the worst is behind us, while 36 percent say the worst is still to come.
Meanwhile, Romney’s favorable rating is worse than most recent candidates who ultimately won their party’s nomination. It’s upside down at 28-39, and even worse among independents, 22-38.
Obama leads Romney by six points among overall Americans, 50-44; among independents 46-39; and among women 55-37. This gender gap may be exacerbated by the GOP’s positions and rhetoric in the birth control wars — another sign that the primary has forced Romney to embrace positions that could alienate key swing constituencies.
The two overall dynamics laid out above are related. As Dem pollster Peter Hart explained the other day, the improving economy — when combined with more information becoming known about Romney — leads swing voters to begin seeing the election as a choice between the two men, rather than a referendum on Obama’s economic performance.
Romney will have another chance to introduce himself to key constituences on more favorable terms once he’s the nominee. For this reason, the head-to-head matchups don’t necessarily mean too much at this stage. But Romney’s favorables among independents has to be worrisome to Republicans. And the two most important metrics — Obama’s approval rating and perceptions of the direction of the economy — are trending the President’s way.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-morning-plum-economic-optimism-continues-to-rise/2012/03/05/gIQAkiyUsR_blog.html
House GOP Caught In A New Budget Predicament
Sahil Kapur March 5, 2012, 6:26 AM
For most observers, the biggest question about the House Republicans’ forthcoming budget is how they’ll handle the issue of Medicare. Will they readopt the same phase-out and privatize policy that got them into political trouble last year? Or will they, at least to some extent, scale back their vision?
But the bigger question has nothing to do with Medicare. The bigger question is whether House Republicans can pass a budget at all.
The dilemma, first noted by Daniel Newhauser of Roll Call, is a straightforward outgrowth of the self-governance problem the GOP’s dealt with since it reclaimed the majority last year. A sizable faction of the party wants to make a big statement with the budget, and, perhaps, use it as a tool to cut further into domestic federal programs. But others in the party — including some in the leadership — want to avoid an election year clash that threatens a government shutdown. They want to hew to the spending levels they agreed upon with Democrats last year when they resolved the debt limit standoff.
Obviously Democrats aren’t going to help the GOP advance its vision for the country’s future. So if these two Republican factions can’t come together, they won’t be able to pass a budget.
“That’s problematic. We might not pass a budget, who knows?” said Budget and Appropriations Committee Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), as quoted by Roll Call.
That would be a huge embarrassment for GOP leaders, who frequently attack Senate Democrats, who haven’t passed their own budget resolution since 2009. (More on that here.)
There’s no easy option for the House GOP, and while some aides downplay the predicament, others privately admit it’s real. A number of them declined to comment.
As House Republicans craft a budget resolution, they’ll have to decide whether to adhere to the spending levels in the Budget Control Act — better known as the debt limit deal. But to pass a budget that reflects the BCA, they’ll have to win over dozens of conservatives, who opposed BCA, and want to cut much more deeply into domestic discretionary programs. If GOP leaders kowtow to the right, though, they risk binding their appropriators to the lower spending caps — caps Senate Democrats will almost certainly reject when it comes time to fund the government again in September.
“You’re certainly not going to get Senate concurrence for going below the caps. So Congress is not going to agree to that,” said Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “But the House might agree to a concurrent resolution with lower caps.”
If they go that route, the GOP could in effect risk reneging on the debt limit deal, and setting themselves up for another government shutdown fight at the worst possible time — two months before the presidential election.
If the GOP’s conservatives can’t be corralled, their only real option will be to not pass a budget resolution this year, and default to the BCA spending targets that Democrats will probably force them to accept anyway during the fall appropriations process. That would widen the rift between GOP leaders and the rank and file, and surrender an opportunity to energize their base ahead of the election — doing nothing is politically perilous for Republicans who have been excoriating Senate Democrats for not passing a long-term budget vision of their own.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/house-gop-caught-in-a-budget-predicament.php?ref=fpa
under YOU GET WHAT YOU VOTE FOR news…
from another poster – this county voted 68-28 FOR KASICH
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Governor John Kasich Steps on Tornado Victims
Posted on 03/04/2012 at 4:00 pm by JM Ashby
Sorry victims of the recent Tornado super-outbreak which flattened several small towns in Ohio, there will be no federal aid for you. So sayeth Governor John Kasich.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich said thanks but no thanks to immediate federal disaster relief Saturday, even as governors in Indiana and Kentucky welcomed the help.
Kasich did not rule out asking for assistance later, but his decision means tornado-ravaged towns in Ohio will not get federal aid now and are not eligible at this time for potentially millions of dollars in payments and loans.
The governor said Ohio can respond to the crisis without federal help and he would not ask federal authorities to declare the region a disaster area.
Okay. I get it. Modern conservative principles dictate that you should turn down help from the diabolical federal government when its offered to you, but this is hardly the time to be playing politics. People have lost everything.
Republican governors in battleground states continue to be the best campaigners Democrats could ever hope for.
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/03/governor-john-kasich-steps-on-tornado-victims.html
Don’t be suprised if the same id-jits vote GOP in 2012.
Morning, Rikyrah!
See, this is who the people wanted and sometimes God will give you exactly what you want. It’s a damn shame John Kasich is playing politics when so many are suffering. My heart goes out to them.
Weiner Says He Contacted FBI About Grimm
By John Stanton
Roll Call Staff
March 2, 2012, 6:04 p.m.
In the fall of 2010, then-Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) informed the FBI that now-Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) was allegedly attempting to extort campaign contributions from a politically well-connected orthodox rabbi, Weiner said today.
Grimm has previously been accused of accepting questionable donations collected by a former associate of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto. Weiner’s revelation would put Grimm, a former FBI agent himself, closer to the federal investigation surrounding Pinto’s former associates.
In an interview with Roll Call, Weiner said Pinto, who leads the popular Shuva Israel congregation, informed him in the early fall of 2010 that Grimm had attempted to extort money from him. Pinto’s ministries stretch from Israel to the United States and he splits his time between the two countries.
“I can confirm the Rabbi did bring allegations to me and I can confirm that I turned them over to the FBI immediately,” Weiner said.
He declined to comment on the specifics of his conversation with Pinto and the exact nature of Grimm’s alleged threats are unclear. However, sources familiar with the situation said it appears Grimm might have sought to use his status as a former FBI agent in pressuring Pinto.
Weiner resigned from Congress last year after it was discovered he had attempted to cover up the fact that he had sent inappropriate pictures to women using Twitter.
The FBI’s New York field office did not return a request for comment, and Pinto was unavailable for immediate comment.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/anthony_weiner_says_he_contacted_fbi_about_michael_grimm-212833-1.html
Willpower It’s Now Or Never
by mistermix
George Will made this observation yesterday on This Week with Old Conservative White Males and George Stephanopolous:
While Rick Santorum said Limbaugh’s comments were “absurd,” he said the radio host was an “entertainer” and “an entertainer can be absurd.”
“No,” Will said about Santorum’s response. “It is the responsibility of conservatives to police the right and its excesses, just as the liberals unfailingly fail to police the excesses on their own side.”
As usual, of all the candidates for President, only Ron Paul had the guts to say something that the base can’t stomach, when he stated the obvious, that Limbaugh only apologized to keep advertisers. One-trick pony Gingrich blamed the elites in their enclaves on the coast because, in Newt’s world, all bad news for Republicans is their fault. As Will noted, Santorum called him an entertainer, while Romney said it was “not the language he would have used” (meaning what—he would have called her a harlot?).
Those three seem to forget that they’re running to be the guy best suited to take Obama to the woodshed. The base driving around with their “Nobama” window decals and “Anyone Else in 2012” bumper stickers wants someone who can show the world what they believe in their hearts, that Barack Obama is the emptiest of empty suits. But if one thing has been clear from the endless debates, and now Slutgate, it’s that Newt and Mitt, and probably Rick, don’t have the sand to do that. Both Gingrich and Romney have been running scorched earth ads making charges that they don’t have the guts to repeat to when they’re standing face-to-face. Santorum is happy to attack abortionists and the gays, but I haven’t seen him go after any of his opponents.
In short, as Dick Nixon would put it, when it comes down to the nut cutting, these guys run away. If they can’t stand up to a radio host, or repeat their attack ads in person, how can they call out Obama? If you want to explain why the primary has been a see-saw ride, look no further than the constant and consistent gutlessness of the three main players.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/03/05/willpower-its-now-or-never/
Good Morning, Juesseppi. The blogosphere is indeed full of amazing trivia and facts. Have a good one!
good morning!
Good Morning, Jueseppi!
Good to see you this morning. Hope you had a great weekend too.
NBC/WSJ poll: Primary season takes ‘corrosive’ toll on GOP and its candidates
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/04/10578249-nbcwsj-poll-primary-season-takes-corrosive-toll-on-gop-and-its-candidates
As another round of voting takes place this week in the Republican presidential race – with 11 states holding Super Tuesday contests – a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that the combative and heavily scrutinized primary season so far has damaged the party and its candidates.
Four in 10 of all adults say the GOP nominating process has given them a less favorable impression of the Republican Party, versus just slightly more than one in 10 with a more favorable opinion.
Additionally, when asked to describe the GOP nominating battle in a word or phrase, nearly 70 percent of respondents – including six in 10 independents and even more than half of Republicans – answered with a negative comment.
Some examples of these negative comments from Republicans: “Unenthusiastic,” “discouraged,” “lesser of two evils,” “painful,” “disappointed,” “poor choices,” “concerned,” “underwhelmed,” “uninspiring” and “depressed.”
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)