Hundreds Protest Marriage Inequality Amendment In
Raleigh

post from ThinkProgress on 16 March 2012 10:00:04 AM. © ThinkProgress

Yesterday, hundreds of LGBT activists and allies marched and rallied in Raleigh to protest Amendment One, which would ban all same-sex marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships in North Carolina’s constitution. With less than eight weeks until the May 8 vote, polls favor opposition to the discriminatory measure, but they also demonstrate that voters do not fully understand how far-reaching its impact is. Watch a local news report about the protest from NBC 17:

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http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/03/16/445895/hundreds-protest-marriage-inequal
ity-amendment-in-raleigh/

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Fox Polls On Gas Prices, And Gets Results It
Doesnt Like

post from ThinkProgress on 16 March 2012 10:00:04 AM. © ThinkProgress

Fox polled registered voters on whether they believe the claim President Obama purposely wants higher gas prices, and gets an answer it wouldn’t expect — Americans aren’t buying conservative spin. Fifty percent said that price spikes make President Barack Obama ?unhappy? ?because the American people will suffer from the high cost of filling their tank,? while only 31 percent said the prices make him ?happy.? The poll also finds that 58 percent of Americans think the economy has turned around, while 52 percent said the the Obama administration?s rejection of a Keystone XL permit is not responsible for higher prices. Polls from Bloomberg and National Journal also show the public does not blame the president for gas prices, despite what Fox News wants them to think.

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http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/03/16/445984/fox-polls-on-gas-prices-and-gets
-results-it-doesnt-like/

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Durbin: U.S. Shouldn’t Buy Weapons From
Same Arms Manufacturer That Is Arming Assad

post from ThinkProgress on 16 March 2012 10:00:04 AM. © ThinkProgress

Sen.Dick Durbin (D-IL) spoke out yesterday against the U.S. military’s plan to purchase tens of millions of dollars’ worth of helicopters for the Afghan army from a Russian state-sponsored arms manufacturer, Rosaborenexport, that also counts Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria as a client. “We are, in fact, doing business with the very same company and country that is subsidizing the massacre in Syria,” said Durbin. Durbin, who delivered the remarks on the Senate floor, urged the Department of Defense to give the helicopter contracts to an American company instead.

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http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/03/16/445898/durbin-us-shouldnt-buy-weapon
s-from-same-arms-manufacturer-that-is-arming-assad/

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Clean Start: March 16, 2012

post from ThinkProgress on 16 March 2012 10:00:04 AM. © ThinkProgress

Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green?s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we?re reading. What are you?

The National Weather Service?s outlook for spring, which arrived early with 577 warm temperature records broken Wednesday, predicts mostly warmer and drier-than-normal weather, except in the Northwest. The seemingly snowless winter ? the third least amount of snow in the US in 46 years ? means there is less snow melting and flooding rivers. [AP]

The fossil-fueled unseasonably warm weather has led plants to blossom early. What that means, on All Things Considered. [NPR]

NASA satellite maps show that snow coverage was bare in 2012, compared to the same time last year. [NASA]

Oil prices fell slightly Thursday following some early drama in the market when the White House was forced to deny a report that it is preparing to release crude from emergency reserves in coordination with Britain. [AP]

More than 100 homes were damaged when a tornado touched down in Michigan on Thursday, though there were no deaths. Forecasters at Accuweather.com said that warm air was helping to fuel Thursday’s storms. [Reuters]

Mitt Romney’s newest dirty energy addition Harold Hamm, a Forbes-ranked billionaire in shale oil, not surprisingly came to the oil industry’s defense immediately after Obama’s speech yesterday. [CNBC]

Fred Upton?s finding out just how good it is to be a powerful committee chairman. Several of the country?s biggest energy firms, including Entergy Corp., Southern Co., Chesapeake Energy, and Koch Industries, have also already outdistanced their past contributions or are close to beating their most recent totals. [Politico]

The OECD released its ?Environmental Outlook to 2050,? which contained a few spots of cheery news. But the number of deaths caused by air pollution ? which includes ground-level ozone, particulate matter, and ?indoor pollution? ? are expected to skyrocket, killing more than 6 million people per year by mid-century. [Wonkblog]

Paul Krugman writes why Republicans are still rooting for “drill, baby, drill,” which doesn’t work environmentally or economically: “Part of the answer is that the party is rewarding its benefactors: the oil and gas industry doesn?t create many jobs, but it does spend a lot of money on lobbying and campaign contributions. The rest of the answer is simply the fact that conservatives have no other job-creation ideas to offer. [NYT]

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/03/16/445838/clean-start-march-16-2012/

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American Bar Association Poll Shows Legal Experts
Overwhelmingly Believe Affordable Care Act With Survive SCOTUS

post from ThinkProgress on 16 March 2012 10:00:04 AM. © ThinkProgress

The American Bar Association polled “a select group of academics, journalists and lawyers who regularly follow and/or comment on the Supreme Court” for their predictions on how the Supreme Court will decide the Affordable Care Act lawsuit. A massive 85 percent said that the Court would uphold the law on the merits, and another 9 percent said that they believe the Court will hold that it does not have jurisdiction to hear the case — meaning that only a tiny fraction of legal experts believe that the Court will accept the utterly meritless case against the ACA.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/16/445899/american-bar-association-poll-
shows-legal-experts-overwhelmingly-believe-affordable-care-act-with-survive-scotus/

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GOP Drops 'Obama Bear Market' Talking Point as
Dow Hits 13,000

post from Crooks and Liars on 16 March 2012 10:00:01 AM. © Crooks and Liars

enlarge Credit: Bloomberg News

Despite a mountain of data and the overwhelming consensus of economists to the contrary, Republican leaders including House Speaker John Boehner and would-be President Mitt Romney continue to falsely claim "Obama made the economy worse." But another tried and untrue GOP talking point about the supposed "Obama bear market" has largely vanished. Of course, with the Dow Jones now at 13,000 and the NASDAQ at 3,000, Republicans should be silent. After all, with the indexes at four year highs, Barack Obama is just the latest to show that the stock market almost always does better under Democratic presidents.

The conservative propaganda machine began perpetuating the "Obama bear market" myth long before the 44th President even took the oath of office. The first installment of the Republicans' "previsionist" history unsurprisingly came from CNBC host and former Reagan advisor Larry Kudlow. That right-wing water carrier, who in April 2008 compared the deepening recession to an enema (calling it "an economic cleansing" and crowing that "recessions are therapeutic"), blamed a one-day 242-point drop on the Democratic Convention:

"Are the Denver Dems downing the stock market today? The Dow is off 230 points, starting right from the get-go. So-called market analysts are blaming financials and the credit crunch as they always do. But there's more.

Obama and Biden gave us plenty of class warfare in their Springfield, Ill., get together on Saturday. Tax the rich. Redistribute income and wealth. Go after all those corporate meanies. Trade protection...

...With the Denver Dems strutting their stuff, this could be a bumpy week for stocks. Did anyone say free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity?"

With Obama's election on November 4th, that warning shot turned into a barrage. Within 48 hours, the mullahs of right-wingistan didn't merely blame Obama for two days of market declines; they traveled back in time to lay the entire Bush recession at his feet.

Echoing CNBC's Kudlow, Dick Morris claimed the markets will "continue to tank...not just because he's a radical, not just because he's a Democrat, but because he's going to raise the capital gains tax. While Fox News' Gretchen Carlson announced, "there's a lot of feeling in the market not reacting very well to the election of Barack Obama," Fred Barnes proclaimed, "There is great uncertainty out there about [Obama's] policies." And that Thursday, the always execrable Rush Limbaugh on November 6, 2008 laid it all at Obama's feet:

"The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen. Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression. He hasn't done anything yet but his ideas are killing the economy. His ideas are killing Wall Street...

...The market's down today because of the jobless numbers. That's how the Drive-Bys see it. Uhhhhh, we have the largest market plunge after an election in history. Thank you, man-child Barack Obama."

As the Dow Jones continued its slide below 7,000 in March, 2009, the conservative catcalls become a chorus. CNN's Lou Dobbs, the self-proclaimed "Mr. Independent," announced on March 9, 2009, "This is now the Obama bear market." That same day, the Wall Street Journal declared, "The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem." House Minority Leader John Boehner was among the Republican leaders bemoaning "the Obama economy" and insisted that since Obama's inauguration six weeks earlier, "Certainly the stock market hasn't acted very well." Later that month, the Journal's Daniel Henninger blasted Obama's "radical presidency":

"A Democratic Party that was always anti-Wall Street is becoming anti- Main Street."

The drumbeat hardly ended there. On March 8, 2009, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked an uncomfortable John McCain, "Can this now fairly be called the Obama bear market?" That propaganda only echoed the Republican talking points regurgitated two days earlier by Bloomberg in an article titled, "'Obama Bear Market' Punishes Investors as Dow Slumps" and the Wall Street Journal rant, "Obama's Radicalism is Killing the Dow." On March 6th, Sean Hannity was nearly orgasmic as he trumpeted the declines on Wall Street:

And our headline this Friday night: Welcome to Day Number 46 of "Obama's Bear Market." Now, that's what some news organizations are calling it tonight as the Dow Jones industrial average actually finished up about 30 points today at the end of a disastrous week.

According to Bloomberg News, the Dow has now dropped faster during the first six weeks of the Obama administration than any other administration in at least 90 years. But is that a surprise after weeks of talking down the economy?

Despite a mountain of data and the overwhelming consensus of economists to the contrary, Republican leaders including House Speaker John Boehner and would-be President Mitt Romney continue to falsely claim "Obama made the economy worse." But another tried and untrue GOP talking point about the supposed "Obama bear market" has largely vanished. Of course, with the Dow Jones now at 13,000 and the NASDAQ at 3,000, Republicans should be silent. After all, with the indexes at four-year highs, Barack Obama is just the latest to show that the stock market almost always does better under Democratic presidents.

The conservative propaganda machine began perpetuating the "Obama bear market" myth long before the 44th President even took the oath of office. The first installment of the Republicans' "previsionist" history unsurprisingly came from CNBC host and former Reagan advisor Larry Kudlow. That right-wing water carrier, who in April 2008 compared the deepening recession to an enema (calling it "an economic cleansing" and crowing that "recessions are therapeutic"), blamed a one-day 242-point drop on the Democratic Convention:

"Are the Denver Dems downing the stock market today? The Dow is off 230 points, starting right from the get-go. So-called market analysts are blaming financials and the credit crunch as they always do. But there's more.

Obama and Biden gave us plenty of class warfare in their Springfield, Ill., get together on Saturday. Tax the rich. Redistribute income and wealth. Go after all those corporate meanies. Trade protection...

...With the Denver Dems strutting their stuff, this could be a bumpy week for stocks. Did anyone say free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity?"

With Obama's election on November 4th, that warning shot turned into a barrage. Within 48 hours, the mullahs of right-wingistan didn't merely blame Obama for two days of market declines; they traveled back in time to lay the entire Bush recession at his feet.

Echoing CNBC's Kudlow, Dick Morris claimed the markets will "continue to tank ... not just because he's a radical, not just because he's a Democrat, but because he's going to raise the capital gains tax. While Fox News' Gretchen Carlson announced, "there's a lot of feeling in the market not reacting very well to the election of Barack Obama," Fred Barnes proclaimed, "There is great uncertainty out there about [Obama's] policies." And that Thursday, the always execrable Rush Limbaugh on November 6, 2008 laid it all at Obama's feet:

"The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen. Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression. He hasn't done anything yet but his ideas are killing the economy. His ideas are killing Wall Street...

...The market's down today because of the jobless numbers. That's how the Drive-Bys see it. Uhhhhh, we have the largest market plunge after an election in history. Thank you, man-child Barack Obama."

As the Dow Jones continued its slide below 7,000 in March, 2009, the conservative catcalls become a chorus. CNN's Lou Dobbs, the self-proclaimed "Mr. Independent," announced on March 9, 2009, "This is now the Obama bear market." That same day, the Wall Street Journal declared, "The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem." House Minority Leader John Boehner was among the Republican leaders bemoaning "the Obama economy" and insisted that since Obama's inauguration six weeks earlier, "Certainly the stock market hasn't acted very well." Later that month, the Journal's Daniel Henninger blasted Obama's "radical presidency":

"A Democratic Party that was always anti-Wall Street is becoming anti- Main Street."

The drumbeat hardly ended there. On March 8, 2009, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked an uncomfortable John McCain, "Can this now fairly be called the Obama bear market?" That propaganda only echoed the Republican talking points regurgitated two days earlier by Bloomberg in an article titled, "'Obama Bear Market' Punishes Investors as Dow Slumps" and the Wall Street Journal rant, "Obama's Radicalism is Killing the Dow." On March 6th, Sean Hannity was nearly orgasmic as he trumpeted the declines on Wall Street:

And our headline this Friday night: Welcome to Day Number 46 of "Obama's Bear Market." Now, that's what some news organizations are calling it tonight as the Dow Jones industrial average actually finished up about 30 points today at the end of a disastrous week.

According to Bloomberg News, the Dow has now dropped faster during the first six weeks of the Obama administration than any other administration in at least 90 years. But is that a surprise after weeks of talking down the economy?

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the Obama poor house: The stock market started its steady, upward swing. But for the conservative commentariat, of course, credit for that progress did not go to President Obama.

On April 18, 2009, Fox News displayed an on-screen caption proclaiming, "Stocks Rally as 'Tea Party' Rallies Take Nation by Storm. Host Brenda Buttner described the surge on Wall Street as "a Tea Party rally." As Media Matters recounted:

Buttner later asked Bulls & Bears commentator Gary B. Smith: "[P]art of the tea party was having voices heard. For so long, all we were hearing about was nationalizing banks and socialism and all that. Just having this out there, does that help Wall Street? Does that help the bulls?" Smith responded: "Absolutely, Brenda. You know, first of all, you heard for so many weeks and months that, you know, the whole country, you know, Obama won overwhelmingly, and it looked like, you know, we were going to go lockstep down this, you know, this socialist path." He continued: "And then we started having these tea parties," which, according to Smith, "shows that ... the normal, average American is just kind of sick of all the, you know, the tax-and-spend culture." He concluded: "So, I think it's all a good thing, and I think that it's helped the rally."

But it was Neil Cavuto of the Fox Business Channel who takes the cake for trying to claim that, well, black is white. As the Dow soared past 10,000 last October, Cavuto asked:

What was once the Bush recession is now the Bush recovery?

And so it goes. On his March 18, 2010 show, Larry Kudlow asked CNBC's Jim Cramer about his belief that "Obamacare will topple the stock market." Since then, the Dow has jumped another 2.1 percent. But with George W. Bush in the White House in April 2007, Kudlow expressed a different view of what the Wall Street's performance said about presidential leadership on the economy. This morning, Paul Krugman helpfully recalled Kudlow's words:

"I have long believed that stock markets are the best barometer of the health, wealth and security of a nation. And today's stock market message is an unmistakable vote of confidence for the president."

According to Lawrence Kudlow, then, the stock market is expressing an awful lot of confidence in Democratic President Barack Obama. Then again, there's no shortage of studies to show that stock market returns are higher under Democratic leadership in the White House. As Slate in 2002 and The New York Times in 2003 found, "It's not even close. The stock market does far better under Democrats."

As the New York Times also showed in October 2008, the Democratic Party "has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole." To make its case, the New York Times asked readers to imagine having put their money where its mouth is. Contrary to Republican mythology, Americans fare better ? much, much better ? under Democratic administrations:

As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover's presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.

(For the eye-popping chart of the S&P's performance under each of the presidents from Hoover through Bush 43, visit here.)

Just last month, Bloomberg News released a similar analysis. The findings were the same. $1,000 invested in the S&P 500 during the Kennedy administration would, over the course of ensuing Democratic presidencies, have yielded a return of $10,920. On the other hand, "a $1,000 stake invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office." As Bloomberg concluded:

While Republicans promote themselves as the friendliest party for Wall Street, stock investors do better when Democrats occupy the White House. From a dollars- and-cents standpoint, it's not even close.

Of course, that historical trend which has continued during the Obama presidency hasn't stopped some Republican die-hards from pretending otherwise. In February, Arizona Congressman Trent Franks claimed that the Dow hit 13,000 in spite of President Obama, who "seems to be doing everything he can to hold it back." And on Monday, Tea Party favorite Allen West (R-FL) told Neil Cavuto of Fox News that the prospect of a Republican victory in November is driving the rise on Wall Street:

WEST: Well, I would think maybe the markets are maybe looking five to six months down the road, when we have a change in leadership in this country -

CAVUTO: Wait a minute, you think that this is built on a Republican either capturing the White House or Republicans capturing the Senate? ... That might or might not be a stretch, but it is out there as a factor. You think that's a genuine factor? You think that the markets are getting bubbly in anticipation of a Republican taking the White House?

WEST: Oh, absolutely.

As it turns out, absolutely not. Or, as Businessweek summed up the stock market's rise in putting the final nail in the coffin of the Obama bear market myth (see chart at top):

"Dow 13,000? Thank Democrats."

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/gop-drops-obama-bear-market-talking-point

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What happened in Park County, Wyoming

post from DemConWatch on 16 March 2012 10:00:00 AM. © DemConWatch

There were reports of chaos and confusion last weekend in Park County, Wyoming, where Rick Santorum won a delegate on a vote of 29-27. The Powell (WY) Tribune investigated what happened. And it's not pretty:

The Wyoming Republican Party’s Presidential delegate selection process is, when running smoothly, complex and potentially confusing. But at Park County’s Republican convention Saturday, it was much more so.
Park County Republican Party officials initially declared a Rick Santorum delegate to the Republican National Convention the winner after a poll of convention delegates, then realized he hadn’t received a majority and announced they’d made a mistake.
A second run-off vote was then held and narrowly went to a Mitt Romney delegate, but those results were then voided because of errors in the way ballots were distributed and confusing instructions that resulted in one man apparently voting twice.
The Santorum delegate then narrowly won a third vote and was declared the winner — only to have Romney’s campaign launch a legal challenge.
“It’s to be determined,” said State Republican Chairwoman Tammy Hooper of Park County’s delegate in a brief interview on Monday.
Hooper said the matter is being mulled by a committee of Republican National Committee officials who handle contested delegates and is out of her hands.

The article has all the gory details of the voting. And this the nomination goes into the summer, this won't be the only contested delegate we'll be writing about.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com/diary/5225/what-happened-in-park-county-
wyoming

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Buy this International Oil Stock While its Still
Cheap

Six months ago, I wrote an article profiling vertically integrated oiler ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP). One of Conoco's strengths is that its reserves are accessible in areas that Bill O'Grady of Confluence Asset Management refers to as "places where you'd want to raise children."

While ConocoPhillips is still one of my favorite equity ideas in the oil sector, I also see value in oil companies with reserves that lie in what O'Grady would consider "places where you wouldn't want to raise children."

A great name to look at in that space would be Total SA (NYSE: TOT).

Paris-based Total SA, formerly Total Fina Elf SA, is one of the largest publicly-traded oil companies in the world, with . . . → Read More: Buy this International Oil Stock While it’s Still Cheap

Read The Full Article:
http://jutiagroup.com/20120316-buy-this-international-oil-stock-while-its-still-c
heap/

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Newt Gingrich's accidental humblebrag

Newt Gingrich keeps on digging (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Newt Gingrich says Ronald Reagan is his only intellectual equal in the Republican Party:

"Other than Ronald Reagan, I know of no Republican in my lifetime who's been able to talk like this," Mr. Gingrich told a banquet crowd here, referring to his own policy ideas on energy, brain science and other matters. "That's why I'm still running, because the gap is so huge."

I know Newt was boasting, but when you're trying to offer yourself up as an intellectual giant, you might want to avoid comparing yourself to a guy who falsely claimed trees were a major source of pollution, who falsely claimed there was no Russian word for freedom, and who falsely denied funding death squads with illegal arms sales to Iranians.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/xD2iPQYmUXY/-Newt-Gingrich-s-accid
ental-humblebrag

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The Wall Street Journal Tells Us That We Should
Learn to Love Inequality

Allan Meltzer had a column in the WSJ telling us that we should stop complaining about inequality and start loving it. His main point is that inequality is increasing everywhere, therefore there is nothing that we can do about it.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/vNHltMI91BE/

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