Louisiana tells us what we already knew Romney
is weak

post from Where's the Outrage? on 25 March 2012 11:34:06 PM. © Where's the Outrage?

Maybe this is a test for liberals. How is it that conservatives have put together the worst field[...]

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 25 March 2012 11:30:08 PM. © Crooks and Liars

enlarge Credit: Blue Gal h/t Karoli for the screenshot

Karoli sent me this screenshot (nice church lady facial expression) of the O'Reilly show from earlier THIS WEEK. Yes, Fox News is asking if Obama can "win" the women's vote. This week. Heeyuh.

(Added: Nicole) This Tuesday, we'll have a Blue America chat (11:00 am Pacific/2:00 pm Eastern) with former congressperson Carol Shea-Porter, trying to regain her seat from tea party candidate Frank Guinta. After two years on the job, New Hampshire voters definitely have voters' remorse and we're doing all we can to escort Guinta out of office. Those of you on Facebook, please share this page with your friends. Carol's a solid progressive and key to our regaining control of the House.

Open thread below. ...

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Open Thread for Night Owls: JOBS Act and
Glass-Steagall repealbirds of a feather

post from Daily Kos on 25 March 2012 11:30:04 PM. © Daily Kos

Open Thread for Night Owls Richard (RJ) Eskow at the Campaign for America's Future fumes:

Here we go again. Once again the "bipartisan" consensus in Washington, fueled by an intoxicating brew of conventional wisdom laced with campaign cash, has repealed some of those "cumbersome regulations" that do nothing of value ? nothing, that is, except prevent catastrophes. There will be celebrating on both sides of the aisle when the President signs this bill.
And when disaster strikes a few years from now, as it inevitably will, they'll all say "Nobody could have seen it coming." Plus ça change, plus c'est la même crap. Creationism can't disprove the theory of evolution ? but a little time in Washington will make you think twice.
Here we are, surrounded by still-smoldering financial wreckage, and almost everyone in Washington is falling over themselves to repeat exactly the same kinds of actions that got us into this mess. Last time around it was the repeal of Glass-Steagall, introduced by Republican Sen. Phil Gramm and enthusiastically signed by President Clinton in the presence of Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
This time it's the deceptively named "JOBS Act," introduced by the far-right Republicans in Congress and passed overwhelmingly by members of both parties. The President indicated his eagerness to sign the bill early on. Once again basic protections for investors, including individuals and families, are being recklessly overturned in a deregulating frenzy. Some of those protections were enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal, in which sociopathically unscrupulous business people conducted a hoax that ruined thousands of families and deprived many of their life's savings.
We haven't learned a damn thing. [...]

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:

Senator Hillary Clinton has called H.R. 4437 a "mean-spirited" piece of legislation which "literally criminalizes the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself." The "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005" (H.R. 4437) is a Republican piece of legislation which would not only makes felons out of the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States, but it would also make it a crime to provide any assistance to those immigrants, if you know they are undocumented. "Mean-spirited" doesn't come close to describing this bill.
Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat from Arizona, made the following statement on H.R. 4437 in Decemeber 2005, when the bill was introduced on the House floor:
Though Americans continue to ask that Congress create orderly, legal venues for new immigrants and for safe and legal ways in which immigrants already here can declare their presence, H.R. 4437 does not even come close to fulfilling these requests. In fact, it promotes a shadow culture in which immigrants need and want to hide, which then puts our country at a greater security risk.
With one hasty line, this bill makes all immigrants criminals. It turns an immigration-law violation into an aggravated felony. Thus, legal permanent residents, who initially may have had an unlawful entry but were able to pursue a legal venue thereafter, would be categorized as felons and prevented from becoming U.S. citizens as the current law allows. [...]
The American people do not like this bill. These past few weeks have been marked with protests across the nation. In Arizona today, tens of thousands protested in front of Senator John Kyl's office.

Tweet of the Day:

You know an issue is entirely about race when white people start trotting out purple people for their thought experiments.
? @MattBors via web

High Impact Posts are here. Top Comments are here.

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-Owls-JOBS-Act-and-Glass-Steagall-repeal-birds-of-a-feather

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Sunday Late Night: Lurkers, Please De-Cloak

post from Firedoglake on 25 March 2012 11:01:57 PM. © Firedoglake

In the renewed spirit of Firedoglake community, presaged by Peterr's magnificent "Why Are You Here?" post and the forgiving commentary that followed, I'd like to set aside tonight's comment space for folks we sometimes jokingly call "the lurkers." These[...]

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Paul Ryan, Romney and GOP: Phase out Social
Security and Medicare

post from MAL Contends . . . on 25 March 2012 11:00:38 PM. © MAL Contends . . .

Money for GOP, not for thee

The 14 scariest words in American politics: 'We're from the Republican Party, and we're here to save Social Security and Medicare."

"If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be 'forced' to make 'hard choices' - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked."
- Mike Lofgren, who retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer (TruthOut, Saturday September 3, 2012)

Lofgren is brilliant, but seeing what Ryan, Romney and the GOP are up to is like wondering if we were going to war with Iraq in January 2003?the decisions were made, and ideology and propaganda led the way to disaster.

The GOP has always hated the Medicare and Social Security, and now they want the presidency to save it, not to bury the social insurance program though their asserted reason?debt is the achieved objective of the Bush-Cheney administration and unregulated Wall Street speculators.

"Romney insisted on Wisconsin radio [last[ Friday that Ryan's plan does not balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly ... It instead preserves Medicare and preserves Social Security." (The Paul Ryan Watch)

Reviews are not kind to these unpopular GOP positions, as noted by Xoff:

A Christian Science Monitor column by Howard Gleckman calls it Ryan's "mystery meat budget" saying he "airily promises both trillions of dollars in tax cuts and a nearly balanced budget within a decade, but never says how he?d get there."

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones says:

Paul Ryan has released the latest Republican budget, and it's a blizzard of numbers, gimmicks, weird comparisons, and obfuscation. It's no more serious than any of Ryan's other budget proposals, no matter how many PowerPoint slides he includes...

Dana Milbank, in the Washington Post, says Ryan's idea is to help the poor by hurting them:

Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, is on record as saying, ?I?m not concerned about the very poor.? And Ryan has just written a budget that supports Romney?s boast.

In an editorial, the Post calls Ryan's plan "dangerous and intentionally vague."

The Post also says Democrats want to know how much taxpayer money was spent to produce those slick videos with Ryan to try to sell his budget. So far, no one's saying.

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C&L's Late Night Music Club with The Killers
(Live at The Royal Albert Hall)

post from Crooks and Liars on 25 March 2012 11:00:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Genre: PopTitle: HumanArtist: The Killers
video details and more

The music starts at 1:26. Fun when the audience participation just takes over.

Whatcha listening to this evening?

Live from the Royal Albert Hall

Artist: The Killers Price: $13.13 (As of 03/25/12 07:35 pm details)

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Mug Shot

post from Kmareka.com on 25 March 2012 10:00:21 PM. © Kmareka.com

Someone mentioned that the photo of George Zimmerman– the only one shown in the news, doesn’t look like a portrait or candid shot. It looks like a mug shot. Perhaps from some prior brush with the law?

Lots of weird stuff on the net. George Zimmerman shot a teenager dead and his friends and neighbors are saying he’s not a racist. As if human nature is predictable and rational.

Mr. Green brings up the case of Cornell Young– shot and killed by his fellow Providence Police. There’s our rational selves, and under that, our non-rational selves. We act from unclear motives and rationalize after the fact.

I think it’s probable that George Zimmerman was in his non-rational space, when he pursued and murdered Trayvon Martin. He never should have been running around with a gun. That the police failed to even check if he was under the influence of alcohol or drugs is beyond negligence.

But I won’t be surprised if Zimmerman sincerely pleads his innocence. He acted like a man afraid of his own shadow, and he won’t own up to that shadow now.

That does not excuse the crime. He deserves to serve a long sentence for robbing Trayvon Martin of his life and leaving his family bereaved.

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Video: Cody the howling dog

I suspect Cody is part Coton, as they're known to howl/speak like this.

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Fmr. Bush Strategist: Conservative Christians
Passing Un-Christian Gun Laws

Fmr. Bush Strategist: Conservative Christians Passing Un-Christian Gun Laws

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Matthew Dowd, President George W. Bush's former chief strategist, on Sunday observed that the same conservative legislatures and governors who are championing so-called Christian values like prayer in schools are also pushing for dangerous gun laws that are counter to Christian teachings.

During a panel on ABC, "Nightline" anchor Terry Moran noted that Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law gave officials cover to not arrest neighborhood watch vigilante George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old African American boy.

"No other state has a law like this," Moran explained. "Not only is it a 'Stand Your Ground' law -- in the olden days under common law you had a duty to retreat. 'Stand Your Ground' says, no, you don't have to. Florida goes one step farther. 'Stand Your Ground' is self defense -- defense at trial. It would go to trial where the jury would figure out what happened."

"In Florida, the law says if you raise a claim of self defense after killing someone in public, you can't even be arrested," he added. "It's why prosecutors and police hated this law. It sabotaged our justice system. All this discussion we've heard -- What did Zimmerman do? What did Trayvon do? -- Juries are supposed to figure that out. The Florida law destroys that American system."

"There is such irony about this," Dowd agreed. "Most of the states that have passed this including Florida and the 'Stand Your Ground' laws and the expanded gun-ownership laws where you can carry a concealed weapon are also the same states and the same legislatures and the same governors who sort of pushed for prayer in the school."

Dowd continued: "To me, there is such and irony here, that we want to be a Christian nation and we want to act in a Christian manner, but oh, by the way, we don't believe in the turn your other cheek and we don't believe in love your enemy. We believe in loading citizens and basically giving them an opportunity to shoot people."

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Tomorrows Blog Cycle, Today

With The Hunger Games opening today* and expected to make $100 billion kajillion dollars, you can expect at least thirty to forty posts next week by conservative bloggers claiming the film as their own since it has been a long dry spell for them since[...]

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