...At the moment, News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch now looms over the Romney campaign as a Tezcatlipoca-like figure. (“He is the god of the nocturnal sky, god of the ancestral memory, god of time and the Lord of the North, the embodiment of change through conflict.”) Last week Murdoch tweetedhis displeasure with Romney’s campaign, warning that Obama would be “hard to beat unless [Romney] drops old friends from team and hires some real pros.” Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch concurred, and now lesser deities like the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Tea Party hero Allen West and talk radio host Laura Ingraham are piling on. The drums are pounding...
Friday, July 06, 2012
Mitt Must Fire Someone
Rupert Murdoch, Mitt Romney and the Aztec Sacrifice Ritual | Swampland | TIME.com
Better Slow Than Not
A slow death for No Child Left Behind? - Political Hotsheet - CBS News
The Department of Education announced Friday that two more states - Washington and Wisconsin - have been granted waivers from the No Child Left Behind education law. That brings the total number of states that have been granted waivers from the program to 26, which means more than half of states have now been freed from having to meet the law's requirements...
Thursday, July 05, 2012
A Woman For Mitt
Mitt Romney has declined to say much about his vice presidential search, but the Republican nominee's wife offered a new clue about what he might be thinking.
Ann Romney says her husband is considering a woman for the ticket—and admitted she's been playing a big role in the VP search, too, according to an interview with CBS News,..
How about a sane, sensible person of any gender? Please, no Bachmanns.
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Heroes
Cannonfire: "Of power and paranoia"
...Odd, isn't it...? Americans are trained to hate the Evil Gummint. Yet all the jobs that produce heroes -- firemen, soldiers, teachers, rescue workers, power grid repair crewmen, even cops -- are government gigs. Yes, people who toil in retail and fast food often work very hard. Yet it must be admitted that -- perhaps unfairly -- nobody has ever used the word "heroic" to describe a cashier at McDonalds. Governments have a near monopoly on the heroic. Although some have used that adjective to describe investigative journalists, it's hard to think of any other examples from the corporate world...
I remember noting during the collapse of the WTC that all the private employees were running out of the buildings, while all the public employees were running into the buildings.
GOPer Slams Vet
Walsh Slams Duckworth: ‘True Heroes’ Don’t Talk About Their Military Service | TPM2012
...“That’s what’s so noble about our heroes. Now I’m running against a woman who — I mean, my God, that’s all she talks about,” said Walsh, in video posted by Think Progress. “Our true heroes, it’s the last thing in the world they talk about. Our true heroes, the men and women who served us, it’s the last thing in the world they talk about. That’s why we are so indebted and in awe of what they have done...”
Duckworth lost her legs. Walsh needs to lose his mouth.
Whiney Scalia
Scalia critics say justice too political last term | Politics | The Seattle Times
..."Okay. Extraordinary," Scalia said.
The next day, he said the court should not have to go through each and every page of the massive law to sort out what stays and what goes should the justices invalidate the requirement that people carry insurance.
"What happened to the Eighth Amendment?" Scalia asked, referring to the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. "You really expect us to go through 2,700 pages?"
Dude, you are very well compensated for very little actual work. Do your job.
Evil Apple: Boycott Edition
I declare independence from Apple
...Circumstances since choosing to boycott make me all the more adamant. Last week, US District Judge Lucy Koh issued two preliminary injunctions against Samsung devices -- Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Nexus. Yesterday she denied Samsung's request to stay the ban pending appeal. Anticipating Nexus' similar fate, Google swiftly responded by pulling the phone from its online store and dispatching an update to existing phones. I chose to boycott being so angry by Apple's aggressive patent bullying that thwarts competition and takes away consumer choice. Today, I celebrate America's independence anniversary by gaining freedom from Apple..
The Daily Uh-Oh: Mitt Tax Shelter Edition
Axelrod Tweet Burst Hits Romney for ‘Bermuda Tax Shelter’ - ABC News
Senior Obama strategist David Axelrod today offered something of a fireworks display on Twitter, launching a barrage of messages meant to draw attention to two reports that highlight Mitt Romney’s stake in a Bermuda company that has never been listed on his state or federal financial reports...
Russians Nail Arafat?
Yasser Arafat killed by radiation poisoning? - CSMonitor.com
Was Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat murdered, poisoned with the same radioactive element that Russian agents used to kill Alexander Litvinenko in 2006? That's being suggested by a series of reports put out by Al Jazeera this week, igniting calls from his widow to exhume his body for further testing and a return to the anger over his death eight years ago...
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
About That Voter Fraud
...But the truth has never supported that theory. Election law experts almost universally say instances of voter fraud are as rare as lightning strikes, and one of the most extensive analyses ever conducted (albeit by a liberal-leaning think tank) concluded in 2003 that nationwide, actual cases of fraud are scarce and the impact on electoral outcomes immeasurable...
ACA Tax Issues
The Wall Street Journal: A Vast New Taxing Power - WSJ.com
...It's an elegant theory whose only flaw is that it is repudiated by Chief Justice Roberts's own language and logic. His gambit substitutes one unconstitutional expansion of government power for another and rearranges the constitutional architecture of the U.S. political system...
Monday, July 02, 2012
Drug Crooks Fined
GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3 billion healthcare fraud settlement, U.S. says - San Jose Mercury News
Pharmaceutical drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will pay $3 billion and plead guilty to federal charges to resolve a slew of criminal and civil issues stemming from its use of kickbacks, mis-branding and other misconduct to market drugs such as Paxil, Wellbutrin and Advair, the U.S. government announced..
How 'bout some jail?
You Can Lie About Valor
Veterans disappointed about court's ruling but say free speech takes priority - The Washington Post
Jack Jacobs can proudly — and truthfully — say he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor in Vietnam. After a recent Supreme Court ruling, anyone else is free under the First Amendment to make the same claim, whether it’s true or not...
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Like The Pieces, Not The Pie
Republicans actually like Obamacare - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
For Republicans, nothing captures what they loathe about Barack Obama's presidency more perfectly than Obamacare -- it's Big Government run amok and an existential threat to American liberty. But it turns out Republicans like what's actually in the law.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll taken June 19-23 found that Obamacare remains deeply unpopular: 56 percent of Americans oppose the law vs. only 44 percent who favor it. But the poll also found that strong majorities favor the law's individual provisions -- including solid majorities of Republicans...
Attack Of The Scorched Earth GOPers
Republicans vow to wreck Obamacare as healthcare wrangle rages on | World news | guardian.co.uk
Republican big guns took to the airwaves on Sunday, promising to shoot down healthcare reforms that have been passed by Congress and now upheld by the highest court in the land.
Following the supreme court's landmark decision this week – which ruled so-called Obamacare to be constitutional – the White House called for a line to be drawn on the issue...
Iran Rattling Sabers
Iran threatens Israel; new EU sanctions take force | Reuters
Iran announced missile tests on Sunday and threatened to wipe Israel "off the face of the earth" if the Jewish state attacked it, brandishing some of its starkest threats on the day Europe began enforcing an oil embargo and harsh new sanctions...
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Tallying O'Blunders
The Price of Health Care - NYTimes.com
...This was not a mistake the icons of the liberal past made. Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent two years defining himself as a Depression-fighter before he set out to establish Social Security; Lyndon Johnson pushed through the Great Society amid an economic boom.
Had Obama followed Roosevelt’s first-term example, the initial stimulus bill might have been broken up into smaller (and perhaps more popular) components, financial reform and perhaps tax reform would have preceded health care reform, and the kinds of jobs bills the White House demanded of a recalcitrant Republican Congress in 2011 might have been sought from a Democratic Congress in 2009 and 2010 instead. Even if this policy approach didn’t dramatically accelerate the recovery, it would have given independent voters more confidence that the president had their economic interests rather than his history-making ambitions uppermost in mind...
GOP Gets Hooker Profits
Many, many semi-witty and snarkish comments could be made. Go ahead, make my day.
I'm sure he wouldn't dream of allowing such a thing. After all, everyone knows the Republicans are the party of family values, right? But on the off chance that it's true, I'm sure the Republican leadership will be happy to return their Chinese prostitution money. (It's fungible!)...
No On Busting Holder
Holder? Prosecuted? White House says forget it | The Ticket - Yahoo! News
The Department of Justice will not prosecute Attorney General Eric Holder after the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to hold him in contempt of Congress, the White House said Friday.
"Prosecutions will not take place in this circumstance," spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama headed to wildfire-ravaged Colorado. Carney dismissed the contempt vote, which grew out of Holder's refusal to turn over Justice Department documents tied to the Fast and Furious operation, as "pure politics..."
Past As Prologue: Obamacare
Seven Consequences of the Health Care Ruling - NYTimes.com
“I have had some bitter disappointments as president,” Harry S. Truman wrote in his memoirs, “but the one that has troubled me most, in a personal way, has been the failure to defeat the organized opposition to a national compulsory health insurance program.” He was just the first in a long line of presidents stymied by health reform. Now Barack Obama has succeeded where his predecessors failed. Or has he?...
Fond Farewells For Military
Bye, bye, GI: Deep impact for many Germans as US troops downsize - World News
...But when the leaves begin to fall in the autumn of 2013, the U.S. Army is scheduled to shut down its Campbell Barracks in Gritzbach's home city.
For the 86-year-old German, an era will come to an end with the U.S. troop pullout.
"I owe a lot to the Americans. They paved the way for what I am today," the widower said in a soft, choked voice...
Friday, June 29, 2012
SOS Clinton Sets Record
Say what ye will, both Clintons know how to work.
Frequent flier Clinton hits 100-country mark - Yahoo! News
Hillary Rodham Clinton made and marked history on Thursday, setting a new frequent-flier record for American secretaries of state by touching down in her 100th country and commemorating the strong stand one of her predecessors took against Soviet expansion.
The globe-trotting Clinton hit the century mark when she stepped off her Air Force Boeing 757 plane in the Latvian capital of Riga. No previous secretary of state has visited more than 96 countries while in office, according to the State Department. The previous record-holder was Madeleine Albright, who served as secretary of state during President Bill Clinton's second term in office...
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The Dark Side Emerging Again
Mike Vanderboegh, the ex-militia blogger who calls himself one of the "midwives" of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, recently predicted that if the Supreme Court declared the health care reform bill to be constitutional, it would lead to violent insurrection against "government tyranny..."
Holder In Contempt
If hypocrisy were hydrogen, the Capitol would either float away or explode. House holds Eric Holder in contempt: What happens to him now? (+video) - CSMonitor.com
Comment Of The Day: SCOTUS Edition
SCOTUS Ruling Day: Affordable Care Act « Uppity Woman
Oh snap!
Happy Elizabeth
@happyelizabeth
Nancy Pelosi hasn't seen a court case this important since she interned for Pontius Pilate.
Syria, Turkey, And War
Carl talks chess here, though it plays like Risk. Simply Left BehindThe Non-Rapturist's Guide To The Galaxy: World War III
NC GOPers Can't Fool Mother Nature
North Carolina Sea Level Rises Despite Senators: Scientific American
Could nature be mocking North Carolina's law-makers? Less than two weeks after the state's senate passed a bill banning state agencies from reporting that sea-level rise is accelerating, research has shown that the coast between North Carolina and Massachusetts is experiencing the fastest sea-level rise in the world...
The Jersey Bully Bellows Again
Christie's insults distract from hot issues - NorthJersey.com
Governor Christie has urged reporters to “take the bat out” on a North Jersey lawmaker who’s also a widow and a grandmother, labeled a non-partisan budget analyst “Dr. Kevorkian” and called a gay lawmaker “numbnuts...”
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