Poll: Americans overwhelmingly want limits to
cash in elections

It's unfortunate that the Republican Party is against delivering what Americans want. The numbers aren't even close yet the GOP wants to maintain the status quo.More than 8 in 10 Americans in a poll by The Associated Press and the National Constitution Center support limits on the amount of money given to groups that are trying to influence U.S. elections.But they might have to change the...

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mingly-want.html

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Midday open thread

Mitt Romney: Liar and hypocrite

• Registering to vote just got easier. With this little widget, you can fill out a registration form, print it off and mail it in ... or, if you're lucky enough to be in a state where you can register online, it will take you directly to your Secretary of State's website. Do it now! And share it with family and friends. Remember, as Rep. John Lewis said, voting is "the most powerful, nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union."
  
  
• The totally-predictable political backlash, aka conflagration, that began with the discovery by Muslims of the virulent religious hate 'film' called (depending on who you talk to), either Desert Warriors or The Innocence of Muslims is spreading. With protests now having spread from US facilities in Egypt and Libya to other countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Lebanon (complete with a fire set at the German embassy in Khartoum), you have to wonder why the anti-Muslim hate propagandists responsible for making and promoting this 'film' (starting first and foremost with that devil-may-care Muslim-hating, so-called-man-of-God named Pastor Terry Jones) haven't yet been declared Public Enemy #1 by somebody official at this point. Especially when the government itself has asked Jones to stop promoting this religious attack posing as a 'film' to try and control the international damage to US interests and he refused. I'm sure at least a few folks have been tempted at this point.
• In what can be described as very good news for voters, Florida's early voting schedule has been approved (without opposition from DoJ) for the five counties that are governed by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Voters will have the opportunity to cast ballots from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM for the 8 days prior to the November election.
• In even better news, depending on whose polling definition of 'narrow' you want to use, President Obama has a 'narrow' lead over Mitt Romney has grown to either 3% or 7% amongst likely voters. Last week, it was a 'narrow' 2%. At this rate of growth, President Obama may well have a 'narrow' lead in the double-digits by the time we get to November (but only if we do our part and (a) make sure folks are registered to vote; (b) voting ourselves, and (c) help others to exercise their franchise on or before Election Day.)
• Mitt Romney wants us all to know that he expects President Obama to 'lie' during their upcoming debates. Like never before, the right wing's reality has lapped our satire.
• It really isn't news anymore when the next story about Mitt Romney being a liar, boor or hypocrite comes out, but that's no reason to not keep hammering the point home to those who might be slow learners. The latest evidence? That Romney's VP vetters asked for (and presumably received) up to a decade of tax returns from his 'short list' of candidates ? including Paul Ryan. All while Romney steadfastly refuses to hold himself to his own standard. It's almost as if the Obama campaign is paying the Romney folks to write campaign ads for them at this point.
• 
  
• When former President Jimmy Carter, who has spent significant time since his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 serving as animpartial monitor of electoral fairness all over the world, calls your electoral process 'one of the worst in the world', you know things are very, very bad. Are you listening, America?
• Google knows what you did last summer. And given what it knows, Americans don't get out much. Paintball? Really?
• "Pink Slime" is back in the news following the filing of Beef Products, Inc.'s lawsuit against ABC News this week. The suit contends that ABC made "200 false statements" over the course of a month that resulted in an 80% drop in sales and the company's bankruptcy earlier this year, as retailers yanked from their shelves ground beef that contained what Beef Products, Inc. calls "lean finely textured beef" and the rest of humanity calls "just fuckin' gross. (Maybe it has something to do with the ammonia that is prominently NOT mentioned in the phrase "lean finely textured beef? Inquiring minds want to know.)
• Leave it to Americans to try and make an investment buck out of environmental tragedy. The latest? Folks considering investing in the use of the Asian Carp invasion of the Great Lakes as the newest economic development tool for Illinois.

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The False Framing in the Sequestration Debate

When caught up in the height of the deficit hysteria during the debt ceiling fight Congress voted for a set of very stupid across the board cuts known as sequestration. Since Democrats and Republicans couldn't reach a deal at the time, they thought a[...]

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Bill Bennett Attacks the Press For Calling Out
Romney's Lies About Libya Attacks

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At the so-called Values Voters Summit, which should have been called the lying-liars' wingnut summit, hypocrite and former gambling addict, Bill Bennett, came to Mitt Romney's defense and attempted to do some rehab for him after his disastrous response to the attacks on our embassies.

Bennett: The Press Attacked Romney on Libya and Tried to 'Kill This Truth in the Womb':

During his astonishingly smug introduction of Paul Ryan at the Values Voter Summit, self-styled "values czar" Bill Bennett blasted the Obama administration's response to the attacks in Libya and Egypt while hailing Mitt Romney's crass attempt to exploit them for political gain as a bold stand for truth.

After falsely claiming that the administration responded to the attacks "by shuddering and shaking and wondering at the consequences of our First Amendment," Bennett then declared that the fact that Romney's response was so widely pilloried as tactless and inappropriate by the media was itself proof that what he sad was true because the press sought to "kill this truth in the womb; something it is well-practiced at":

And as the Washington Post pointed out after noting this about his speech: Bill Bennett proposes new fact-checking, media-bashing formula. "Now there?s a fresh fact-checking model for you."

BENNETT: Whatever timing, wording or parsing one may want to bring up, one may want to suggest as an improvement on his remarks, his words had a shock effect, didn't they? They had a shock effect because they were true. When they are condemned so broadly, so almost universally, among the establishment press, it is likely that they are true.

Sorry Bill, but they were shocking because they were so easily disprovable, completely brazen and crass in how ill-timed they were, but hey, heaven forbid that should get in the way of your talking points here. Bennett had the feigned victimhood and the "liberal media bias" nonsense all wrapped up in one nice steaming sack of lies with this one. Nice "values" you've got there pal.

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http://crooksandliars.com/heather/bill-bennett-attacks-press-calling-out-rom

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This week in the War on Workers: After the
strike, we still need to fight for Chicago public schools

Chicago teachers have a tentative deal and may be headed back to work on Monday. But the schools they teach in still have a lot of problems, and there are still a lot of powerful people determined to blame teachers for those problems. That makes it important to keep listening to teachers and students and parents when they talk about the problems they see and the solutions they want.

(Continue reading below the fold.)

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on-Workers-After-the-strike-we-still-need-to-fight-for-Chicago-public-schools

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Norman Solomon Is Still Working Hard To Help
Elect Progressives To Congress

This week Norman sent an e-mail to his supporters asking them to contribute to two steadfast, independent-minded progressive candidates who the DCCC is-- at best-- ignoring, Rob Zerban and Lee Rogers, the challengers, local Democrats have nominated to take on, respectively, Paul Ryan and Buck McKeon. Each is a powerful committee chairmen who does far more damage than any Republican the DCCC is spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat. But Steve "Reptilian" Israel-- unlike his GOP counterpart, Pete Sessions at the NRCC-- doesn't believe in challenging GOP leaders or committee chairs. He isn't going after a single one-- despite the fact that both Ryan and McKeon are very vulnerable and each is in a district Obama won in 2008 and is likely to win again in 2010. This was Norman's original letter:

It?s hard to think of two more odious members of Congress than safety-net slasher Paul Ryan and pork-barrel militarist Buck McKeon.

I?m urging supporters of my campaign to help defeat two of the worst Republicans in the House.

You can click here to help defeat Ryan.

Or click here to help beat McKeon.

In his Wisconsin home district this fall, Ryan?s name will appear on the ballot twice. Ryan doesn't seem very confident about prospects for the Romney-Ryan ticket; he's anxious to hold onto his congressional seat.

You can help progressive Democrat Rob Zerban defeat Paul Ryan so he can lose twice in the same election!

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party national leadership continues to give a pass to Buck McKeon-- the GOP?s chair of the House Armed Services Committee who keeps exercising huge power to enrich multibillion-dollar military contractors.

McKeon is one of the Pentagon?s most generous (with our tax money) friends on Capitol Hill. In the LA area, the campaign by progressive Democrat Lee Rogers to unseat McKeon is uphill-- and deserves our support.

Rob and Lee will appreciate whatever you can do to help them rid Congress of firebrands for top-down class war and perpetual war.

So, if you want to add Paul Ryan to the ranks of the unemployed, click here.

And if you want to do the same for Buck McKeon, click here.

This fall, I?m glad to endorse candidates in congressional races with uncertain outcomes-- and with the potential to change Congress and our country for the better!

Yesterday Norman was in Wisconsin-- in fact, in Paul Ryan's district. He sent me this:

Waking up this morning in Janesville-- the Wisconsin city that Paul Ryan calls home-- I thought about people, near and far, whose lives are threatened by the policies that Ryan and the entire Republican Party are pushing with a vengeance.

Lives are on the line. Here in Janesville, for instance, a 45-year-old man named Paul Mines lives in transition housing after being homeless. He knows what's at stake-- and that's why he's so opposed to Paul Ryan's political message.

Mines told a reporter that the attack on the social safety net is "messing with my survival." His health problems include back pain, high blood pressure and a serious heart ailment. Government programs give him access to more than a dozen prescription drugs each day.

Norman, Rob and Lee are all adamantly opposed to the failed Austerity agenda Ryan and his right-wing cronies are pushing. That's why Rob and Lee are among the 16 candidates on our Prosperity Economics ActBlue page. Please consider contributing to both of them, either of them-- or any of the candidates on the page.



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http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2012/09/norman-solomon-is-still-working-hard-
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Bishop Robert Finns Next Problem Is Himself

The Roman Catholic Bishop of Kansas City - St. Joseph, Robert Finn, was convicted nine days ago of failing to report suspicions of child abuse, but the diocesan website is silent with regard to the trial, let alone the verdict. Maybe that's because of[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2012/09/15/bishop-robert-finns-next-problem-is-himself/

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Watters and O'Reilly Ask Questions They Won't
Answer Themselves

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Look, it's not as though we didn't already know that Fox News ambush specialist Jesse Watters is a major-league wanker. I mean, c'mon: Stalking bloggers on their vacations? Really?

But this takes the cake.

Priscilla at Newshounds digs up a clip from last week's O'Reilly Factor on Fox in which Watters shows off his right-wing brand of humor [hint: Mallard Fillmore is funnier] with clips he brought back from the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, where he obviously was stalking the hallways in search of liberal celebrities to harass.

But his key clip moment in Charlotte came when he decided to harass the mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, about Menino's opposition to allowing a Chick-fil-A in Boston because of its owners' anti-gay politics -- linking it, a la Tony Perkins, to the attempted shootings at the Family Research Council offices in Washington.

Here's how Watters put it:

?Do you feel bad about the fact that you've created all this controversy that this crazed gunman went up and shot up this conservative outfit.?

Just roll that one around and enjoy the delicious, though bizarre, hypocrisy of it all.

First of all, as Priscilla observes:

Mayor Menino did not engage in incendiary rhetoric which would have, in any way, motivated the shooter. He said that he would block the chicken franchise, Chick fil-A from coming to Boston because he objected to what he felt were intolerant views against gays by the president of Chick fil-A. It does not appear that Menino ever mentioned the Family Research Council.

Nor, might we add, is there even a whiff of evidence that the FRC shooter was inspired to act by anything that Mayor Menino said. Nothing, except the conjecture of right-wing jackasses like Jesse Watters and Bill O'Reilly.

Now let's compare and contrast that to a case in which someone actually was murdered: the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. And in that case, there is a mountain of evidence connecting the incendiary eliminationist rhetoric of Bill O'Reilly, fueled by the grotesquely afactual "reporting" of Jesse Watters, to that killing.

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Three years ago, O'Reilly and his ambush-crew specialist, Jesse Watters, went hard after Tiller, accusing him of wantonly murdering babies because he performs late-term abortions:

Bill summarized in a heartfelt Talking Points Memo on Friday, November 10th: "If we as a society allow an undefined mental health exception in late-term abortions, then babies can be killed for almost any reason... This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China and Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union... If we allow this, America will no longer be a noble nation... If we allow Dr. George Tiller and his acolytes to continue, we can no longer pass judgment on any behavior by anybody."

Including, evidently, murderous extremists. And, as you can see in the video above (from 2006), O'Reilly similarly accused anyone who refused to buy into his accusation of coddling killers:

I don?t care what you think. We have incontrovertible evidence that this man is executing babies about to be born because the woman is depressed?if you don?t believe me, I don?t care?You are OK with Dr. Tiller executing babies about to be born because the mother says she?s depressed.

And then there was O'Reilly's notorious radio attack on Tiller:

And if I could get my hands on Tiller -- well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech.

But despicable? Oh, my God. Oh, it doesn't get worse. Does it get worse? No.

Moreover, the killer, Scott Roeder was heavily involved in the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue (whose propaganda was promoted regularly and featured prominently as "factual" on O'Reilly's show) and avidly read its newsletters -- which featured weekly pieces from Bill O'Reilly, including several attacking Tiller as a "baby killer" -- and its website, which liked to feature O'Reilly videos attacking Dr. Tiller. Indeed, O'Reilly had indulged a high-profile and unusually obsessive (not to mention vicious) jihad against Tiller, resulting in 42 such attacks on Tiller, 24 of which referred to him generically as a "baby killer."

Even to this day, O'Reilly insists he did nothing wrong: after all, sure, it was wrong to shoot the guy, but "what Tiller was doing was murder."

And who was O'Reilly's chief facilitator in this lethal media attack? Why, Jesse Watters, of course; here's his notorious "confrontation" with Tiller's attorney.

Of course, Tiller was hardly alone. Watters has made a career out of harassing liberals. ThinkProgress has a list.

And he's obviously proud of it, too. His breathless account of his and O'Reilly's attacks on Tiller are still available at the Fox website.

A word to the wise to gross hypocrites like Jesse Watters: Karma is a bitch.

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http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/watters-and-oreilly-ask-questions-th

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Saturday hate mail-a-palooza: revisiting a
classic

Fluffy!The hate mailers must be in a funk -- it was dead last week. It really has to be difficult being a wingnut and realizing that they have another four years of Pres. Barack Obama ahead of them. What would you prefer, 2004, when we thought we would defeat George W. Bush, or 2012, when they see their defeat coming a mile away?

Still, that leaves us without a feature this week. So what to do? I decided to dig up an old classic and, well, "discuss" it. Let's have fun below the fold!

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palooza-revisiting-a-classic

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Fox Guest Pamela Geller: Obama Is "Sanctioning
These Murderous Rages That These Muslim Mobs Have Been Going On"

From the September 15 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends Saturday:

Previously:

Fox Hosts Pamela Geller To Claim Obama "Is Submitting The United States To" Sharia Blasphemy Laws

Geller: Obama's 9-11 Guidelines Are "Islamic Supremacist 'Talking Points' Disrespecting Our War Dead"

Fox News Has Mainstreamed Pam Geller's Islamophobic Hate Speech

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