Obama DOJ Protects Military Voters From Texas
Republicans

The Justice Department said in a filing on Friday that the primary schedule proposed by the Texas Republican Party wouldn't give enough time for military and overseas voters to participate in the election process in violation of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act.

Here's the kicker: conservatives -- led by Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn -- have long been on a crusade against the Justice Department for what they said was a failure to protect military voters under the MOVE Act.

Now it's Texas' Republican Party which would be violating the law. The party suggested on Jan. 23 that the court issue an order stating that ballots to voters subject to the MOVE Act should be mailed on March 9 "Notwithstanding the requirements of the MOVE Act," even thought the election is supposed to be held on April 3.

Justice Department lawyers said that the Republican Party "has proposed shortening the amount of time that military and overseas voters will have to participate in the election" and that such proposals are in "conflict with UOCAVA's explicit requirement that states transmit ballots to the voters protected under the act at least 45 days before a federal election."

The reason Texas officials are on such a tight schedule is because the redistricting maps drawn by state legislatures and signed by Gov. Rick Perry haven't been cleared under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which applies to states with a history of racial discrimination. Final arguments in the redistricting case had been scheduled in D.C. federal court on Monday, but there were increasing signs late Friday that the Texas Attorney General and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus might be able to strike some sort of deal.

DOJ's attorneys say they "understand the State of Texas and its officials have important interests in being able to administer an orderly election following the resolution of the claims before the Court and recognize the timing challenges the Court and the parties now face."

But they say it's "essential that Texas' UOCAVA voters, many of whom are deployed at home and abroad in service to our country, are provided the full opportunity to vote embodied in UOCAVA."

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itary_voters_from_texas_repu.php

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The Quest for the Mantle of Saint Ron

In the absence of a validated shroud or holy relics, who's winning the all-important ex-Reagan staffer primary? Click here to find out. [...]

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he_mantle_of_saint_ron.php

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Ron Paul's racism is the racism of the GOP

It was always obvious that Ron Paul knew the content of the newsletters that went out in his name. Like the fact that Romney pays less than 15% tax and the fact George W. Bush and his cabinet were lying about WMD in Iraq, it was one of those obvious facts that the establishment media refused to discuss while the Republican involved protested their innocence.

But don't expect the confirmation of the obvious fact that Ron Paul wrote and approved the racist bile printed under his name to hurt him in the nomination race, the reason his opponents haven't mentioned the issue is that they know their party too well: The modern GOP is built on racism. Nixon's 'Southern Strategy' was courting the votes of white supremacists upset by the end of segregation.

Like the Iraqi WMD fable, Paul's alibi is even more damning than what he is trying to cover up [Post]:

Mark Elam, a longtime Paul associate whose company printed the newsletters, said Paul ?was a busy man? at the time. ?He was in demand as a speaker; he was traveling around the country,?? Elam said in an interview coordinated by Paul?s campaign. ?I just do not believe he was either writing or regularly editing this stuff.??

So what Paul admits to is that he was lying to the people who had paid their money for a newsletter that would give them the benefit of his inside Washington knowledge. But now he claims to have defrauded them: not only wasn't he writing it, he wasn't even bothering to read it either.

The story the secretary tells is much more believable: Like every politician I have ever known, Ron Paul was deeply involved in every aspect of the communications that went out under his name. He didn't engage in casual racism; the racism was calculated to connect with his readers.

We are now down to the final four and the remaining candidates are a racist gold-bug conspiracy monger, an adulterer, a sex-freak and a 0.01%-er who pays 14% tax and mistreated his dog. In their different ways they each represent a different aspect of the GOP base. What the media has all wrong is that these are not 'weaknesses', they are the real core values of the GOP. The median GOP voter is a white male chicken hawk who pays next to nothing in taxes, hates black people, latinos and 'immigrants' and professes a deep belief in the importance of family values despite the fact he is cheating on both his wife and his mistress.

Like all the other commentators, we have it all wrong, what the GOP is looking for is not 'none of the above', it is all of the above.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/bBUPiWTT8bY/final-ron-pauls-racism-
is-racism-of-gop.html

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Diana Krall: "Fly Me To The Moon"

Shamelessly "borrowed" from Paul Krugman (but I promised to return it when you folks are done). In honor, of course, of Newt "the Moonbase" Gingrich.

This is a very good song and an excellent version. Modern, but true to its jazz-lounge roots. Perfect for singers who, like Ms. Krall, have an ear for which off-beats to come in on.

Note those big ten-finger chords at the start of her solo. Reminds me of Brubeck in his prime (Dave's solo starts at 2:42).

Enjoy!



In other words, please be true. One can only hope.

GP

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/1HtIL0qvsfo/diana-krall-fly-me-to-m
oon.html

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Why ‘Once Upon A Time’ Works Better
Than ‘Grimm’

Because I have a particular fondness for fairy tale retellings, and occasionally, a girl’s got to watch television that she doesn’t analyze to death, I’ve been keeping up with both Grimm and Once Upon a Time. Both could be loosely described as fairy tale procedurals. In Grimm, a cop finds out that he’s descended from a long line of fairy-tale creature-fighters, and begins taking out the worst of them with the help of his policing skills and a werewolf who repairs clocks for a living and does pilates in his spare time. In Once Upon a Time, Emma, a bail bondswoman who gave her son up for adoption as an infant, has her life turned upside down when the boy tracks her down and asks her to move to Storybrook. There, Emma becomes the town sheriff, working to solve a number of mysteries caused, unbeknownst to her and the rest of the town’s residents except the mayor, by the fact that all of the citizens are exiled from fairy tales by the Mayor’s ? really the Evil Queen’s ? curse.

I think there are two reasons Once Upon a Time is working better than Grimm for me. First, the serialization in Once is much stronger than it is in Grimm. In the latter show, Nick is supposed to be part of this long tradition of monster-hunters, enmeshed in a struggle with some sort of monster organization. But the show hasn’t done very much to advance or make meaningful that narrative except to give Nick a van full of evil-vanquishing goodies. Monsters show up, are defeated, and disappear without giving us a sense of the larger world around us.

In Once, by contrast, the episodes are part of a contiguous fairy tale about the rise of a great evil. Every case teaches something about what happened to the characters in the past that contributes to our understanding of where they were when we met them ? and our sense of where they’ll go. The interlocking stories feel considered, rather than slapped together. And the fairy tale characters are reconsidered in ways that feel thoughtful and intelligent: Snow White is a forest-dwelling badass after her exile from her cushy castle life; Rumplestiltskin is a grieving father; and Midas is basically a central bank, controlling the economies of entire kingdoms.

Second, I think the re-envisioning of the detective role is more interesting in Once Upon a Time than in Grimm. Nick is basically your standard white-boy detective with a black partner for balance and some extra equipment. It’s true that it’s not totally unusual for blonde white women to be cops either. But Emma’s operating in a world that feels different because it’s largely ruled by women on Once. Women hold the mayor and sheriff’s office. The most notable teacher in town is a woman, as is the proprietor of the local watering hold. There are, of course, men in Storybrook, ranging from the therapist to the newspaper editor. But Rumplestiltskin is the most powerful man in town by a good measure, and he tends to exert power outside the traditional channels rather than holding official office. The show doesn’t hammer it in obsessively, but it is nice to spend time in an environment where the normal assumptions about who controls things are flipped.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/01/27/412472/why-once-upon-a-time-works-bett
er-than-grimm/

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Lee Joins Grassley In Threatening A Scorched
Earth Revenge Campaign Against Obama’s Nominees

Following up on Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) threat to lash out at President Obama’s decision to make four necessary recess appointments by seeking revenge against Obama’s other nominees, Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) used a Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday to make a similar threat:

Given this President?s blatant and egregious disregard both for proper constitutional procedures and the Senate?s unquestioned role in such appointments, I find myself duty-bound to resist the consideration and approval of additional nominations until the President takes steps to remedy the situation. Regardless of the precise course I choose to pursue, the President certainly will not continue to enjoy my nearly complete cooperation, unless and until he rescinds his unconstitutional recess appointments.

Watch it:

At the outset, it’s important to note that there is no one in America who has less stature to claim that someone else shows “blatant and egregious disregard” for the Constitution than Mike Lee. Lee believes that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. Taking Mike Lee’s advice on constitutional law is a bit like taking John “Bluto” Blutarsky’s advice on American military history.

Moreover, Lee’s suggestion that he has shown “nearly complete cooperation” in the past is laughably false. Lee openly admits that he filibustered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray?s nomination because he wanted to sabotage that consumer protection agency, and he filibustered an exceptional nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit because she had the audacity to do her job properly when she was Solicitor General of New York.

Fortunately, the Lee/Grassley plan for scorched earth retaliation does not seem to be resonating with much of the Senate GOP. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) recently said that he “would be surprised if you see mass reprisals,? and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) — who has his own history of aggressive obstructionism — waived off Lee and Grassley’s angry tactic because he doesn’t think it will be a “particularly effective strategy.”

Nevertheless, the Senate’s broken rules enable just one senator to work a great deal of obstructionist mischief even if the other 99 vehemently disagree. Indeed, the fact that the current rules allow someone with the poor judgment of a Mike Lee to work such havoc shows why Obama was right to call for filibuster reform in his State of the Union speech this week. America can ill afford to have its ability to have a functioning government rest in the hands of the Senate’s most radical member.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/27/413151/lee-joins-grassley-in-threaten
ing-a-scorched-earth-revenge-campaign-against-obamas-nominees/

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GOP Candidates Debate, Obscure US Industrial
Policy

You might have missed the segment in last night's GOP debate where CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked carefully prepared questions about what America's industrial policy ought to be. That's because he didn't -- not that I'm criticizing Wolf, who did much better[...]

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Occupy Innovation

If the US fought for the post-carbon economy the way it fights for nebulous state-building goals in foreign wars, the future would be brighter, cleaner, safer and cheaper, with more jobs and perhaps - because it would need to secure less of that foreign[...]

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Ron Paul Rewrites the History of Healthcare

Click here to view this media

Ron Paul does a great job in these debates painting himself as the kindly old country doctor who remembers better times, when health care was available to all and didn't cost very much. Maybe costs were less because leeches were cheaper back then.

This particular spin suggests that Medicare and Medicaid were somehow birthed out of an idea and nothing more, that there was no reality at the time where people died, or couldn't get treated, where the elderly were always cared for in their old age and never had to rely on their family, or even bankrupt them, or where people simply died because there was no doctor to care for them or treat them.

It's an image that might be painted through the artists' eye, but it isn't realistic or reflective of what people endured. Neither is his answer to this woman's question, which is simple enough:

QUESTION: My name is Lynn Frazier and I live here in Jacksonville. And for the Republican presidential candidates, my question is, I'm currently unemployed and I found myself unemployed for the first time in 10 years and unable to afford health care benefits.

What type of hope can you promise me and others in my position?

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: Let's ask Congressman Paul.

Yes, let's ask Congressman Paul to give this woman a very real answer to a very real problem happening today, in this time, in this place. Look at what he says:

PAUL: Well, it's a tragedy because this is a consequence of the government being involved in medicine since 1965.

When I was growing up, we didn't have a whole lot, but my dad had a small insurance, but medical care costs weren't that much. And you should have an opportunity -- medical care insurance should be given to you as an individual, so if you're employed or not employed, you have -- you just take care of that and you keep it up. When you lose a job, sometimes you lose your insurance.

But the cost is so high. When you pump money into something, like housing, cost -- prices go up. If you pump money into education, the cost of education goes up. When the government gets involved in medicine, you don't get better care; you get -- cost goes up and it distorts the economy and leads to a crisis.

But your medical care should go with you. You should get total deduction on it. It would be so much less expensive. It doesn't solve every single problem, but you're -- you're suffering from the consequence of way too much government and the cost going up because government has inflated the cost and we have a government-created recession, and that is a consequence of the business cycle.

Basically he just shrugged. Just shrugged and patted her rhetorically on the head and said, "Gosh, isn't it a shame?"

This is what Republicans offer as solutions? Gee, isn't it a shame? This is supposed to somehow be comforting? And by the way, he's wrong about government involvement driving up costs. It's not government driving up costs, it's private insurers driving up costs and expectations by covering outrageously priced drugs and equipment and yes, provider fees. But hey, gee, isn't it a shame?

And how is it that having individual insurance untied to employment (an idea I support, by the way, but only in the context of a plan that's got a national risk pool and is non-profit) would possibly bring down the costs? Answer? It wouldn't.

But you know, Ron Paul delivers his middle-finger answer with that kindly, concerned look as if to say, I really care about you. Except I don't. Nor should you look to anything I might do as an answer.

This particular section of the debate took a natural turn toward Romney's Massachusetts plan, and the subsequent exchange between Santorum and Romney is worthy of a separate post. But Paul jumped back into the fray at Wolf Blitzer's invitation, where he once again rewrote history just like he did in the last debate.

Click here to view this media

BLITZER: Congressman Paul, who is right?

PAUL: I think they're all wrong.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

PAUL: I think this -- this is a typical result of when you get government involved, because all you are arguing about is which form of government you want. They have way too much confidence in government sorting this out.

So, I would say there's a much better way. And that is allow the people to make their decisions and not get the government involved. You know, it has only been...

(APPLAUSE)

PAUL: When I started medicine, there was no Medicare or Medicaid. And nobody was out in the streets without it. Now, now people are suffering, all the complaints going on. So the government isn't our solution.

Bull. Pure, straight bull. Any student of health policy history knows costs were rising steadily and out of reach for much of the middle class and if you were poor, forget it. People were sick. People were dying. And some people couldn't get treatment and couldn't afford treatment even if it was available.

Here's an excerpt from a speech by Morris Fishbein arguing for socialized medicine in 1928 before the American Medical Association:

For some time the statement has been made that only two groups of persons can afford to be ill, the wealthy and the very poor. The former are able to pay for what they get and the latter get a rather good type of service without charge.

The group that gives the greatest concern to students of the situation is the middle class. This group has been the victim of exploitation since the earliest times. It exists in one-room kitchenettes in the cities and must perforce go to the hospital in times of sickness. In the country and in the villages it is far removed from the available hospitals and pays mileage charges in addition to medical fees for medical attention. Because of its transient character it has fallen out of touch with the old-time family physician.

1928 is a little bit before Ron Paul's time practicing medicine, but it's not too far removed from when he was growing up. Whatever his specific experience might have been, it's not representative of the people's situation as a whole.

It would be very nice if a debate moderator or a talking head would actually stop for a minute and push him on this point. He gets away with it because no one takes him seriously, but it's a dangerous and untrue thing to be saying on the national stage.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/ron-paul-rewrites-history-healthcare-cnndeb

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‘Ethel’: How To Raise Your Kids Like
a Kennedy

There’s no question that Ethel, the documentary about Robert F. Kennedy’s wife that premiered here at Sundance, is a less-than-nuanced view of RFK’s opportunism and some of the less admirable moments in his career, ranging from his work for Sen. Joe McCarthy (who I didn’t know had dated two Kennedy girls) to his manipulativeness on civil rights. And given that Rory Kennedy is making this movie about the mother who bore her six months after her father was assassinated, the movie may be gentler than one produced by an outsider would be, though such a film would certainly have gotten less access to everything from home videos of the Kennedys to Ethel’s reflections about her life as a political wife. But Ethel is an intriguing look on a less-discussed subject: what did it mean to be married into the Kennedy family? And what lessons did one generation of Kennedys teach the next that made the family a liberal political dynasty?

Mostly, it seems, Robert and Ethel did it by treating their children as if they were old enough to understand and participate in both the issues of the day and Robert’s work. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend reflects that when her father was chief counsel for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee, “rather than take me to the playground where we could go on the see-saw, [Ethel] took me to the Senate Rackets Committee,” where she learned to refuse to give comment lest she perjure herself. Kerry recalls on a visit to the FBI that Ethel dropped a note in the agency’s suggestion box recommending that J. Edgar Hoover be replaced at the height of his power. During the height of the fight to integrate southern colleges, Kerry and the other children spent time in RFK’s office, occasionally chatting on the phone to Justice Department officials in the field, and Kennedy told them he hoped the issue would be resolved by the time they made it to college. When his brother was assassinated, Robert wrote to Kathleen that she must take responsibility for her cousins, closing his letter with the words “Be kind to others and work for your country.” Kathleen remembers him shaking on his return from his anti-poverty fact-finding trips, telling his children that he’d met families who lived in homes the size of their dining room. The children campaigned with him, including on the night of the California primary ? Kerry found out her father was dead when she turned on the cartoons in the morning, and got the news instead.

All of this may sound twee or precious, but it’s clear that Robert and Ethel were sincere in their belief that their children could understand the events unfolding around them and deserved to be shown the respect of being expected to understand and engage. After Robert’s death, Ethel sent her children to live and work in settings that let them understand more deeply the issues that informed their parents passions, whether with Cesar Chavez, on Native American reservations, or on Western ranches. “That really comes from our mother,” Kerry insists of the family’s commitment to politics after RFK’s murder. “Those are her values.” Ethel demurs, insisting “I just don’t feel I can take the credit. I just don’t feel it.” But her influence is clear.

On a more light-hearted note, it’s fun to see the Kennedys beyond the standard football-and-the-Cape playfulness, and to understand how their sense of whimsy informed the family’s politics and campaigning style. There’s no question that Ethel was genetically destined to be a cut-up. “My brothers would take the train to Boston, but they never rode on the inside of the train,” Ethel reflects of her Skakel mischievousness. In school, she bet on horses and stole and burned the demerit book so she could go to the Harvard-Yale football game. The family had a seal at the farm on Hickory Hill, established a tradition (stopped by President Kennedy) of pushing cabinet secretaries into the pool, and Ethel got busted for speeding ? and horse theft, when she discovered starving and mistreated animals on a neighbor’s farm and simply took them home, leading her to a court trial where she had to defend herself against a hanging offense. That same sense of humor made her a great campaigner, nailing it on the Jack Paar show when the host declared that “This lovely little girl, mother of seven children, has given birth to her own precinct.” There is a real strength in fun, and the ability to be self-deprecating that I think our politics loses sight of sometimes.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/01/27/412551/ethel-how-the-kennedys-built-a-
political-dynasty/

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