Midday open thread

post from Daily Kos on 28 July 2012 03:00:06 PM. © Daily Kos

While the world watches the Games in London, Romney is busy #shambling over to his next destination. At this rate, he just might wish he could forget Poland. The rest of us, meanwhile, are wondering if we can ever get some coverage that's not tape-delayed.

The head of Amazon.com is pledging a lot of money to help support marriage equality:
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com, and his wife, MacKenzie, have agreed to donate $2.5 million to help pass a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington State, instantly becoming among the largest financial backers of gay marriage rights in the country.
With the gift, the couple have doubled the money available to the proponents of Referendum 74, which would legalize same-sex marriage in the state by affirming a law that passed the Legislature this year. Courts or lawmakers have declared gay marriage legal in six other states, but backers of such measures have never succeeded at the ballot box.
It's about time we won one of these fights at the ballot box and ended that singular talking point for all time. While progressives might have a lot of disagreements with Bezos over other issues, especially sales taxes, this is a welcome development.
The FEC is going to enforce disclosure rules for so-called "non-profits" who spend money on political ads, but:
advocacy groups such as the conservative Crossroads GPS still have many ways of evading disclosure, often simply by changing the tenor or language of their advertising, experts said. The rules also only apply to ads that run close to an election.
Major advocacy groups had already stopped running issue ads close to primary elections this summer in anticipation of the FEC?s guidance. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has said it will simply alter the language of its ads to avoid reporting contributors to the FEC.
Always another loophole.
Unless your name is Stephen Colbert, why are you not watching the bear cam? Seriously. How often to you to watch live footage of bears fishing for salmon?
Hotel worker union UNITE HERE is launching a global boycott against the Hyatt hotel chain for its systematic mistreatment of workers. How bad is it? Here's an incident from last year:
On Thursday morning, hundreds of unionized hotel workers gathered outside of Chicago's Park Hyatt. After nearly two years of negotiations, they demanded a new contract, protested working conditions and decried the company's alleged plans to outsource jobs. The steamy weather did not keep workers away -- and neither did heat lamps the hotel allegedly turned on during the demonstration.
Gabriel Carrasquillo, a server at the Hyatt hotel's restaurant NoMI, told HuffPost Chicago that he arrived at 800 N. Michigan Ave. around 5:15 a.m. to start the picket line. Around 7 a.m., however, things really began to heat up. That is when Unite Here Local 1 members realized the hotel had turned on their 10 heat lamps, which are installed beneath the building's awning to keep guests warm during the cold winter months. According to the National Weather Service, the heat index in Chicago was 109.4 degrees by the early afternoon.
Hyatt hurts.
Via digby, an appalling anecdote about the voter ID law in Pennsylvania intended to win the election for Romney and nothing else: Governor Corbett isn't even sure what types of identification would work or how people would get it.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) on Wednesday couldn?t remember when asked by a reporter what forms of identification would be accepted under the voter ID law he signed earlier this year.
Corbett was asked about a new report showing that 43 percent of Philadelphia voters lack a valid form of identification issued by the state.
?We?ve been working with the nursing homes to get people new ID. It can be military ID. There?s two or three other forms right now off the top of my head I don?t have it here in front of me,? Corbett said.
Shocking, but Corbett doesn't even know the details about the legislation he signed that could prevent people in those same nursing homes from voting. It's a sad statement about our country and our media when Republicans don't even have to pretend that their objectives are anything besides partisan gain.
Despite American investigations into the LIBOR scandal, British officials aren't sure what to do:
The SFO had declined to get involved in the investigation for more than a year, despite briefings with the U.K. Financial Services Authority and a compilation of findings from U.S. enforcement agents. The U.S. evidence was provided late last year, according to a person familiar with the case who wasn?t authorized to discuss it.
?It?s partly the difference in culture,? said Andrew Haynes, a law professor at the University of Wolverhampton in England. ?In America, economic crime is something that?s regarded as desperately serious. In this country it is regarded as a problem, but there?s sometimes a slothful response.?
There's a culture that's more lax on financial crime than we are? Scary thought.
Has there ever been a Democrat whom Republicans hated more than Barack Obama? Here's Paul Waldman at The Prospect:
Liberals look at conservatives claiming that Obama is a socialist or that he doesn't really love America and think, "Those people are nuts." But there is practically consensus in the GOP that these things are true. If a Republican candidate came out today and said, "Barack Obama is a good person who loves his country, but I just think he's wrong about policy," that candidate would probably get kicked out of the party.
This antipathy has multiple sources interacting together, so it's overly simplistic to say that it's just because of Obama's race, or it's just because of heightened partisanship. But it's getting harder and harder to claim that there's ever been a Democrat Republicans hated more.
A hidden nugget in the polling numbers about the religions of the two main presidential candidates recently conducted by Pew. In July of 2008, 16% of self-identified conservative Republicans believed that Barack Obama was a Muslim. In July of 2012, that number has more than doubled, to 34%. For a significant portion of these self-identified conservative Republicans, actual facts are irrelevant: there are only conspiracy theories that fuel narratives comprising an alternate reality.
And in case you still, really, weren't sure what the voter ID laws were all about, here's the former chairman of the Republican Party, Jim Greer:
In the deposition, released to the press yesterday, Greer mentioned a December 2009 meeting with party officials. ?I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting,? he said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. He also said party officials discussed how ?minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party,? according to the AP.
The comments, if true (he is facing felony corruption charges and has an interest in scorning his party), would confirm what critics have long suspected. Florida Gov. Rick Scott is currently facing inquiries from the Justice Department and pressure from civil rights groups over his purging of voter rolls in the state, an effort that critics say has disproportionately targeted minorities and other Democratic voters.