Fox's Dagen McDowell: Fed Stimulus Is "A Big Fat
Campaign Contribution To Mr. Barack Obama By Ben Bernanke"

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 15 September 2012 12:03:22 PM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

From the September 15 edition of Fox News' Cavuto on Business:

Previously:

Rush Limbaugh: Fed Stimulus "Is Not Designed To Revive Economy; This Is Designed To Revive Obama's Election Chances"

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The Liberal Oasis Radio Show -He Must Be Nuts
Edition

post from LiberalOasis : The Blog on 15 September 2012 12:00:37 PM. © LiberalOasis : The Blog

Jaz Tupelo is back, joining Traci Olsen on the patio to discuss Libya, sexism, and Mitt Romney's mental state while Bill is in exile.

You can download the podcast at these links: (iTunes / XML feed / MP3).

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http://www.liberaloasis.com/2012/09/the_liberal_oasis_radio_show_h.php

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Judges knocks down Scott Walker's assault on
unions

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 15 September 2012 12:00:27 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

The Republicans are whining that this is just another activist judge, but that's only because the judge ruled against them. Good news, for now.The ruling on Friday by Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas stems from a challenge by unions representing Madison school teachers and Milwaukee city employees. It was unclear what immediate impact his ruling would have.Colas ruled that...

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t-walkers.html

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Paul Ryan at Summit that Makes Mockery of
Diplomacy and Terrorism

post from Crooks and Liars on 15 September 2012 12:00:25 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Michelle Bachmann, speaking at the Values Voter Summit Friday morning, quickly one-upped Mitt Romney in pinning blame on President Obama for the violent protests in Libya and Egypt and deaths of four Americans in Libya. She accused Obama of appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood and opening our borders to terrorists. Not long after, Paul Ryan also attacked Obama over foreign policy:

Amid all these threats and dangers, what we do not see is steady, consistent American leadership. In the days ahead, and in the years ahead, American foreign policy needs moral clarity and firmness of purpose. Only by the confident exercise of American influence are evil and violence overcome.

But here’s the thing. Ryan and Bachmann were speaking at a Religious Right conference that is making a mockery of diplomacy and even the threat of terrorism. Consider the following:

the conference features a fake terrorist, Kamal Saleem, who claims to have smuggled weapons into the U.S. and carried out “bloody terror” missions against Israel ? Saleem made a surprise appearance Friday shortly after a video message from Mitt Romney

the video that sparked the unrest in Egypt and Libya was created and promoted by anti-Muslim activists who have worked with backers of Bachmann’s effort to purge the U.S. government of Muslim Americans and key players in the effort to block the so-called Ground Zero mosque (e.g. ACT! for America and the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission)

in July, misinformation promoted by Bachmann and two upcoming speakers at the Values Voter Summit, Frank Gaffney and Jerry Boykin, sparked aggressive protests against American diplomats in Egypt, including Secretary Clinton, whose motorcade was pelted by protestors – Boykin and Gaffney have been the leading forces behind Bachmann’s witch hunt against Muslim Americans in the U.S. government

former Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, now the executive vice president of the Family Research Council, which hosts the conference, significantly set back American diplomacy in 2003, drawing a rebuke from President Bush and Pentagon investigators, when he repeatedly denounced and insulted Islam in uniform and characterized the “war on the terror” as a war in the name of Jesus

the conference panel on Israel features Saleem and Boykin, and the panel on Islam features Gaffney ? some schedule!

Taken together, this suggests more than a lack of seriousness. It suggests that many Religious Right activists are far more interested in fighting a holy war than they are with diplomacy, peace or religious freedom. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we have the live in the same world as them. The fake terrorist I referred to above is identified on the schedule as Kamal Saleem, but his real name is Khodor Shami. He claims that he was a Muslim Brotherhood operative who “came to the United States of America…to destroy this country” and crossed the Canadian border and “brought weapon caches right through cities.” He also claims to have “completed his first bloody terror mission into Israel for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) at the age of seven.” Saleem is widely known to be a fraud. Yet he’s being presented by the Family Research Council as the real deal and appears next to Ryan on the featured speakers page, with “former terrorist” under his name.

Here’s one of his promotional videos:

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http://crooksandliars.com/josh-glasstetter/paul-ryan-summit-makes-mockery-di

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Ruling Overturning Parts of Wisconsin Anti-Union
Law Likely to Be Short-Lived

post from Firedoglake on 15 September 2012 12:00:22 PM. © Firedoglake

Don't expect yesterday's Dane County court ruling overturning sections of Wisconsin's anti-union law to remain operative for long.[...]

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-union-law-likely-to-be-short-lived/

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This week in the War on Women: Lady-Americans
still totally not into Romney

post from Daily Kos on 15 September 2012 12:00:05 PM. © Daily Kos

Things just keep getting worse for Mitt Romney on the lady voters front.

As Markos wrote, that pesky gender gap just won't go away?despite the laughably sad attempt, at the Republican National Convention, to assure lady voters that Republicans totally love women. No, really, they do!

But lady voters aren't buying it:

As the ad above shows, Planned Parenthood is doing its part to spread the word on just how devastating a Romney presidency would be. This ad is the latest in a series of brutal, and highly effective, ads targeting voters in battleground states. Planned Parenthood is spending $3.2 million to run this ad in Ohio and Virginia, and if it works half as well as similar ads in Florida and Iowa, Romney may as well start working on his concession speech right now.

Romney has only himself to blame, of course. He chose to join the Republican war on women by supporting the Blunt amendment (after being really confused about it) because birth control makes Catholic bishops sad. He vowed to support a constitutional amendment defining an egg as a person. He promised to get rid of Planned Parenthood. He picked the poster boy of anti-woman extremism as his vice presidential running mate.

No matter how many times his wife says she loves women and Mitt loves women and women are stupid if they don't vote for Mitt, it's not going to work. Because Romney and the Republican Party are bad for women. And women voters know it. And in November, they're going to send that message, loud and clear.

Now let's make sure the rest of the Republican Party gets the message. It's time to end the War on Women. Donate $3 to each of our Daily Kos-endorsed women running for the House and Senate so they can go to Washington to stand up for women and end this damned war.

This week's good, bad and ugly below the fold.

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on-Women-Lady-Americans-still-totally-not-into-Romney

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Toles: GOP Mascot Should Go Back to the Future

post from TheGreenMiles.com on 15 September 2012 11:59:00 AM. © TheGreenMiles.com

With Republican Party leadership rejecting the realities of modern science, Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles suggests it's time to update the GOP mascot:

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ld-go-back-to.html

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Blinded By The Right: House GOP Deletes Climate
Change Concern From Anti-EPA Bill

It’s bad enough the House GOP keep passing legislation aimed at blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from enacting any climate change regulations. But the new version of the House anti-climate bill omits a ?sense of Congress? statement that was in the April 2011 bill the House passed: ?There is established scientific concern over warming of the climate system based [...]

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http://thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com/c/34726/f/638927/s/23751311/l/0Lthinkpro
gress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A120C0A90C150C8526510Cblinded0Eby0Ethe0Eright0Ehouse0Egop0Edeletes0Eclimate0Echange0Econcern0Efrom0Eanti0Eepa0Ebill0C/story01.htm

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PA Supreme Court Hears Case Against Voter ID Law

The ruling is expected to come down at the end of September, and if it's good news, will affect this year's presidential election. Although the PA Supreme Court is notoriously corrupt, there's also a reasonable chance that Chief Justice Ron Castille, a Republican, will side with the Democrats:

The legal team fighting Pennsylvania's restrictive new voter identification law asked the state's Supreme Court on Thursday to at least postpone until after November the measure that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters, many of them minorities.
"There's too little time, there's too many people affected and there's no place in the statute that guarantees that qualified electors can get the ID they need to vote," said David P. Gersch, representing the American Civil Liberties Union and other public interest groups.
The three Democratic justices noted the nonexistence of the voter fraud the law is ostensibly designed to prevent, and repeatedly asked lawyers representing the state's Republican-led legislature and Republican governor, "What's the rush?"
But even if the nation's top courts were once a place where partisan differences were overcome, these days they are more likely to be one more place for partisan battles. On Thursday, the three Republican Supreme Court justices gave little indication that they would overrule a district court decision last month that let the law stand. In case of a tie, the lower court ruling would remain in effect.
{...] Pennsylvania's GOP House majority leader, Mike Turzai, provided a clear view of the motivation behind the voter ID laws when he recently declared that the voter ID law "is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."
Democratic Justice Seamus McCaffery alluded to Turzai's statement at Thursday's hearing. "There's no public harm that we can see [from voter fraud]," he said. "Could it be politics, maybe?"
There are some hints that at least one Republican justice could break ranks. At the hearing, Justice Thomas Saylor, a Republican, asked the state's lawyers whether the law guarantees every registered voter can cast a vote -- a question they could only answer in the negative. The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board raised the possibility that Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ron Castille might ultimately side with the Democrats on this issue.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/pa-supreme-court-hears-case-against-v

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The week in the War on Voting: Pennsylvania
Supreme Court hears appeal in photo-ID ruling

Voter buttons As has been the case for several weeks now, this week delivered some good news and bad news and wait-and-see news in the voter suppression department.

First up was the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's hearing of oral arguments Thursday in an appeal over the state's restrictive voter-ID law. The court didn't say when a ruling will be issued, but observers expect it by the end of September.

The appeal comes from individual plaintiffs as well as the NAACP and the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. In a surprising ruling Aug. 15, Commonwealth Judge Robert Simpson upheld the voter-ID law that critics and the plaintiffs charged with being discriminatory against the elderly, young voters and minorities. His opinion on the case rested heavily on the state supreme court's 1869 ruling in favor of a law creating two classes of voters in Pennsylvania. You can read about the supporters of the plaintiffs in the voter-ID case here.

Experts have said that from 758,000 to 1.6 million Pennsylvanians might be disenfranchised because they don't have the form of ID the new law requires. Judge Simpson cast those concerns aside.

Ari Berman at The Nation reported that the Supreme Court heading played to a "standing-room-only courtroom" Thursday.

[David Gersch, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs] asked, once again, for an injunction against the law based on three major points: (a) ?the right to vote is a fundamental right? harmed by the law; (b) the voter ID law was not a mere election regulation but something far more significant and burdensome; and (c) the law was not narrowly tailored toward its legislative goal of stopping voter fraud.
Toward that end, Gersch offered three major facts that are central to the case: (1) Pennsylvania has already admitted in court filings that there is no evidence of in-person voter impersonation that a voter ID law would stop; (2) that hundreds of thousands of registered Pennsylvania voters do not have the new voter ID; and (3) that many of these registered voters without voter ID will have difficulty obtaining an ID, either because they can?t get, or afford, the underlying documents, like a birth certificate, needed to receive a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) ID or can?t easily make it to a PennDOT office, which have limited hours and locations.

Gersch said: ?The vice is not in requiring photo ID. The vice is requiring a photo ID that not everyone has and has trouble getting.?

The court is split evenly, with three Democrats and three Republicans because the fourth Republican was suspended several months ago on charges of corruption. If it were to rule the case 3-3, the Simpson decision would stand. The Democrats asked a lot of questions. With the exception of Justice Robert Saylor, the Republicans did not. Saylor questioned attorneys for the state regarding whether the law guarantees everyone will be able to get the proper ID or at least be able to cast a ballot. They said yes. But plaintiffs' attorneys disagreed.

Berman noted:

Chief Justice Ronald Castille, who overturned the GOP?s redistricting plans and is thought to be the swing justice on the court, stayed mostly silent and appeared irritated, at times, with the outspoken Democrats. ?We got three votes but that doesn?t help us,? Vic Walczak, legal director for the Pennsylvania ACLU, told me after the hearing. ?We need a fourth.?

(Continue reading about the war on voting below the fold.)