Identity Politics

post from Daily Kos on 06 May 2012 08:30:05 AM. © Daily Kos

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Sunday Morning Bobblehead Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 06 May 2012 08:00:08 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Sara Bareilles -- King of Anything

Oh Grampa McSame, how I've missed you! The King of the Sunday shows returns to talk most earnestly with George Stephanopoulos. And the King of Also-rans Newt Gingrich comes to sulk and not one but two shows. But the segment that has my dander up? Fareed Zakaria interviews former Bain Capitalist Ed Conard on why defending the 1 percent helps the 99 percent. Who made this guy the king of anything?

ABC's "This Week" ? Jobs, Economy, Chinese dissident Chen Guancheng, Afghanistan: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; David Axelrod, adviser to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign. Round table: George Will, former Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, Romney campaign adviser Bay Buchanan, radio and television host Tavis Smiley, and Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.
NBC's "Meet the Press" ? 2012 campaign, foreign policy, jobs: Vice President Joe Biden; Round table: Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH); Chief Economist from Mesirow Financial Diane Swonk; and NBC's Chuck Todd and Tom Brokaw.
NBC's "The Chris Matthew Show" - Topics: One year later: the Osama Bin Laden raid. Is Romney the most conservative nominee since Goldwater? Obama camp says so. Panel: Katty Kay, BBC; Rick Stengel, Time; David Ignatius, Washington Post; Helene Cooper, New York Times.
MSNBC's "Up with Chris Hayes" - Chen Guancheng, Dodd Frank Act, EPA regulations and GOP obstruction with former EPA Administrator Alfredo Juan Armendariz, Panel: Eric Schneiderman, New York attorney general; Raj Date, deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Catherine Rampell, The New York Times; Alexis Goldstein, Occupy the SEC; James Fallows, The Atlantic; David Frum.
MSNBC's "Melissa Harris-Perry" - Topics: Economic recovery; Stand Your Ground in domestic violence cases; Bringing the arts to underserved communities; The demise of facts in political rhetoric. Panel: Misty Copeland, Soloist at American Ballet Theatre; Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Violinist; Alice Stewart, former Rick Santorum Press Secretary and former Michelle Bachmann Communications Director; Perry Bacon Jr., theGrio.com; Daniel Gross, ; Nona Willis Aronowitz, Good magazine; Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Annenberg Public Policy Center
CBS' "Face the Nation" ? Politics, 2012 Election: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; Jobs, 2012 Election: Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; former Gov. Howard Dean, D-Vt. US/China relations: Zbigniew Brzezinski. Round table: Peggy Noonan, WSJ; Michael Gerson, Washington Post; David Corn, Mother Jones and CBS News' John Dickerson
CNN's "State of the Union" ? 2012 Election: Newt Gingrich; Afghanistan: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.; Battleground states: former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.; former Gov. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio. Round table: National Journal?s Major Garrett, Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Alice Rivlin
CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - US jobs, European recession, global economy: The Financial Times' Martin Wolf and TIME?s Rana Foroohar. Defending the 1%: Former Bain Capital Managing Director Ed Conard. LBJ presidency: historian Robert Caro.
CNN's "Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz" - Anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death: Jonah Goldberg, Dana Milbank and Chrystia Freeland. New books by Bill Bradlee and Dan Rather on journalism: University of Maryland journalism professor Mark Feldstein and NBC News's Fred Francis. Murdoch phone hacking scandal: Columbia Journalism School?s Emily Bell.
"Fox News Sunday" ? 2012 election: Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Round table: Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard; AB Stoddard, The Hill; Liz Cheney, Keep America Safe; Juan Williams.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

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Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: The election is on

post from Daily Kos on 06 May 2012 07:42:10 AM. © Daily Kos

newspaper headline collage

_{Visual source: Newseum}

WaPo:

?I don?t care how many ways you try to explain it ? corporations aren?t people. People are people,? Obama told the crowd about halfway through his 35-minute remarks.
He also tied Romney to congressional Republicans. As he has in previous campaign-trail events, Obama argued that the congressional GOP agenda includes tax cuts for the wealthy and cuts to Medicare and education, and would ?give banks and insurance companies even more power to do as they please.?

Ross Douthat writes about The Life of Julia, and manages to channel his inner Dan Quayle. Making fun of a fictional woman (it's always a woman with conservatives) because you don't like their values? Not even original. But it does make you want to watch the slideshow.

National Journal:

?Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,? Romney said at a campaign event in Portsmouth, N.H., last week.
As a symbol of a largely unsuccessful Democratic presidency, former one-term President Jimmy Carter has been a Republican punching bag for decades. But that?s just the problem with Romney's decision to resurrect him as a rhetorical foil in 2012: It?s been over three decades since he was in office -- Carter lost his reelection bid to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The Republicans are the party of the past. They can't get out of the 80's (Reagan, the Soviet Union) and George W. Bush's era (all their policies). That's what "Forward" really means.

Frank Bruni:

[Former Iowa Justice Marsha] Ternus, who is 60, agreed to meet with me because on Monday, she, Baker and Streit are receiving Profile in Courage awards from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston. The timing, she said, felt right.

Ternus and her colleagues were tossed out for thinking gay marriage fell under the rule of law.

As for the decision itself, they learned in the first hours of discussion that none of them saw any way to square the marriage ban with equal-protection language. ?Everyone?s jaws dropped ? that we had a unanimous decision,? she recalled.

David Lampo:

The resignation of Richard Grenell, the recently appointed and openly gay foreign policy spokesman for Mitt Romney?s presidential campaign, was as sudden as it was shocking. It was also yet another disturbing sign that the Romney campaign is still in pander mode when it comes to the anti-gay right.
Which is exactly the wrong direction for the presumptive GOP nominee to be moving in. Because according to a wide variety of poll data, Republican voters, unlike most of the politicians vying for their support, largely support gay rights.

Stephen Dworkin writes about Chris Christie and the NY-NJ transportation tunnel (aka ARC) that Christie killed:

Transportation infrastructure has historically been a major source of carbon emissions and ecological destruction around the world. No matter how ?eco-friendly? a transportation project, it always comes with a high carbon and resource cost, as a result of both construction and the traffic it enables. ARC would have been no different. In parts of the country where aging roads and railways already shoulder high traffic burdens, however, and where those original projects never had any sort of environmental impact reduction in mind when they were built, it can actually be environmentally beneficial in the long-term to construct a smarter transportation grid. The area of the Hudson between Newark and Manhattan is such a place. If a responsible environmental assessment and impact mitigation initiatives were undertaken during its construction, an infrastructure project that incentivizes public transportation in this urban setting could be a great asset to reducing carbon emissions over time.

Glenn Kessler:

Our Pinocchio Tracker indicates that you have been the two major 2012 presidential candidates with the lowest average number of Pinocchios. (Your claims are rated on a scale of one to four Pinocchios: Four indicates a whopper; a Geppetto Checkmark counts as zero. The tracker produces an average rating from all of the columns. President Obama has been rated 45 times and Romney 34times as of Friday evening.) In fact, you are nearly tied, with the president at 1.91 and the former governor at 1.97. No other candidate has come close: Michele Bachmann ended up at 3.08, Ron Paul at 2.6, Rick Santorum at 2.53, Newt Gingrich at 2.44 and Rick Perry at 2.41.
Still, an average of nearly 2 is nothing to brag about. On the scale, two Pinocchios means ?significant omissions and/or exaggerations.? As you know, it does not necessarily mean factual error. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.

In other words, it's our opinion, and not the actual facts that matter. Remember that "mostly true" means "you got the facts right but we don't like the way that sounds." Note to fact checkers: Your fact checking would be much more valuable if you simply checked the facts and left your opinion by the door.

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und-up-The-election-is-on

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Six In The Morning

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 06 May 2012 07:30:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

On Sunday Hundreds of pelicans die; stay away from beaches, Peru urges ? By Reuters LIMA, Peru - Peru's government declared a health alert along its northern coastline on Saturday and urged residents and tourists alike to stay away from long stretches[...]

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The Go-Go's - We got the beat

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 06 May 2012 07:00:19 AM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

The Go-Go's were such a fun band. It's not possible to listen to them and not perk up a bit.

Since so many readers like cooking and food, a quick and easy lentil salad recipe is below. I borrowed the idea from a restaurant that we visited in Greece the other week.

Although I didn't grow up eating lentils, I eat them fairly often here in France and just love them. (And an Indian curry lentil dish is one of my favorites.) In France it's fairly typical to have lentils as a side with pork and in the summer, you will often have a simple cold lentil salad tossed with a vinaigrette and parsley and maybe some chopped tomato.

It's quite similar to the French lentil salad, but also add some chopped Greek black olives and chunks of Feta cheese and if you like, red onion. I made it the other day using the classic oil, vinegar and mustard dressing but we tried it with lemon and that would be a good replacement or even addition to the mix. It's perfect for the summer and it's the type of salad that can be a main if you like.

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Sunday Open Thread

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 06 May 2012 07:00:00 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

The flood of money that gushes into politics
today is a pollution of democracy.

Theodore H. White

Born May 6, 1915

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Romney cant help himself

post from Where Is The Outrage? on 06 May 2012 06:46:43 AM. © Where Is The Outrage?

Mitt Romney can't help himself. He can't stay on script. So, he over sold his case, again. "Just this morning there was some news that came across the wire that said that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.1% and normally that would be cause for celebration, but, in fact, anything over 8%, anything near

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Sunday Stories: How Many Do YOU Know

post from DemConWatch on 06 May 2012 06:10:17 AM. © DemConWatch

Listed below are three stories, all true. They are things that are going on in America right now, and I'm very interested in determining how many of them you know about. When I bring them up amoungst people I know who read newspapers, read news online, watch tv and are fundamentally "informed", they don't know about all (or sometimes even any) of them. I consider this a problem with the media, who aren't telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Not that they ever did, as a whole, but it seems to be getting worse. Here goes.

#1: This Tuesday, a ballot initiative called "Amendment 1" will appear on North Carolina ballots. It reads:

Constitutional amendment to provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.

The most heinous part of this proposal is not just that the rights of the minority should NEVER be a ballot issue, but that couples (same sex or male-female) lose all protections they now have. For example, an unmarried woman would lose the legal standing to get a restraining order against her live-in boyfriend.

#2: In Michigan (and to a lesser extent Indiana and New York) Emergency Managers have been put in place to run cities and towns. These folks have the right to invalidate contracts, sell city assets, fire city workers, deny elected officials the right to hold meetings, and fundamentally serve as mini-dictators over all aspects of city government. An attempt was made to put repeal of the enabling legislation on the ballot, but the Board of Canvassers (who needed to certify the petitions) disregarded the position of the Board of Elections, and on a party-line vote deadlocked, therefore denying the ballot issue. Their gripe? The petitions used the wrong font size.

The problem with Emergency Managers is that they completely usurp the democratic process of electing officials, honouring the contracts put in place by those officials, and in general, they don't work out in terms of "saving" the economies of the towns and cities they are charged with running.

#3: Tom Corbett's Pennsylvania budget cuts from schools, infrastructure improvements, Medicaid, food stamps, and everything else reasonable people believe in. Doubtless you knew that, and possibly even knew that with the latest cuts, the total cut this year and next fiscal year specifically to education is about $1 Billion dollars. You probably also knew that the reason Corbett likes cutting school budgets is because he and his friends make money on charter schools. But did you know that the state ended the 2010-2011 fiscal year with a surplus of close to $200 million dollars?

Online Surveys & Market Research

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Where Electricity Could Not Trump Ideology

By @KYYellowDog

As America prepares to finally leave Afghanistan, having broken the Soviet record for Time and Money Wasted in the Graveyard of Empires, two new books review the Soviet experience there and reveal that the bringing-the-wonders-of-modernization-to-the-primitives strategy never had a chance.

Christian Parenti in The Nation:

These days, NATO forces occupy Afghanistan, yet a few pictures of (Soviet-backed former president) Najibullah still hang in Kabul. Why? Then as now, the war in Afghanistan was not simply between invaders and Afghans. It was also a conflict between Afghans: between the populations in the cities supporting modernization, even forced modernization, and those in the countryside violently opposed to any social change. And each force has been allied with powerful outside backers. During the cold war the Soviets supported Kabul, while the United States and Pakistan supported the rebels. Today, for an array of perverse reasons, the United States supports the aspiring state builders in Kabul (many of whom are the very same people who served with Najibullah), while Pakistan, America's nominal ally and well-funded vassal, still supports the religious and traditionalist rebels.
There is a class of urban Afghans for whom the core political question has always been: Does that ideology come with electricity? These are people who have sought to extend the writ of Kabul over the countryside, and ever since the 1920s they have faced violent opposition. Once their vehicle was constitutional monarchy. Then it was a presidential republic, then Soviet-style socialism, and then Najibullah's last-ditch nationalism. Now it is the deeply flawed experiment in liberal democracy imposed by NATO. Not surprisingly, former communists are still modernizers and can be found throughout the more competent portions of what is nominally known as the Afghan government.

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