Pennsylvanias Voter ID law

post from Firedoglake on 31 July 2012 10:07:06 PM. © Firedoglake

What could be the reason that Republican governors (No Democratic governors are pressing for voter ID laws) are trying to get voter ID laws into place?[...]

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Jon Stewart Rips Romney for His Disastrous Visit
to London

post from Crooks and Liars on 31 July 2012 10:00:20 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Jon Stewart Rips Romney for His Disastrous Visit to London

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Jon Stewart took his turn piling on Mitt Romney for his disastrous start to his overseas tour, where he managed to insult everyone and their grandmother from the Olympic committee to politicians on both sides of the aisle in the UK.

I'm guessing he's saving going after Mittens debut in Israel for Tuesday's show.

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Five Things Everyone Should Know About GOP Senate
Candidate Ted Cruz

post from ThinkProgress on 31 July 2012 10:00:14 PM. © ThinkProgress

Ted Cruz will protect this golf course from the United Nations and George Soros

Today, Texas Republican primary voters selected Ted Cruz as their candidate to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). Cruz, a former Solicitor General of Texas and law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, is among the nation’s most skilled Supreme Court advocates. Yet his considerable intellect is rivaled by his very poor judgment. Here are just five of the most revealing windows into Cruz’ Tea Party worldview:

1) Ted Cruz Believes George Soros Leads A United Nations Conspiracy To Eliminate Golf: In 1992, President George H.W. Bush joined the leaders of 177 other nations in endorsing a non-binding UN document known as Agenda 21. This twenty year-old document largely speaks at a very high level of generality about reducing poverty and building sustainable living environments. Nevertheless, Cruz published an article on his campaign website claiming that this non-binding document is actually a nefarious plot to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” To top it off, Cruz lays the blame for this global anti-golf conspiracy at the feet of a well-known Tea Party boogieman — “The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros.”
2) Ted Cruz Wants To Gut Social Security: In an interview with the Texas Tribune Cruz labeled Social Security a “ponzi scheme” and outlined a three-step plan to gut this essential program. Cruz would raise the Social Security retirement age, cut future benefits, and implement a George W. Bush-style plan to privatize much of the program. In other words, in addition to forcing them to work longer for fewer benefits, Cruz would place retirees at the mercy of a fickle stock market. Had Social Security been privatized during the career of a worker who retired near the end of the Bush Administration, that worker would have retired with less money in their privatized account than they would have if they’d simply kept their money between their mattress and box spring.
3) Ted Cruz Wants To Party Like It’s 1829: The Constitution provides that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land,” and thus cannot be nullified by rogue state lawmakers. Cruz, however, co-authored an unconstitutional proposal claiming two or more states could simply ignore the Constitution’s command and nullify the Affordable Care Act so long as they work together. Although the Constitution does permit states to join in “interstate compacts” that have the force of law, under the Constitution such compacts require the consent of Congress and can be vetoed by the President. Cruz falsely claimed that states do not need to meet these Constitutional requirements to undermine laws they don’t like.
4) Ted Cruz Is An Islamophobe: At a campaign event earlier this month, Cruz touted another of the Tea Party’s favorite conspiracy theories, claiming that “Sharia law is an enormous problem” in this country. Although it is common for far right politicians to claim that American law is somehow being replaced with Islamic law, these claims have absolutely no basis in reality. Few American courts have ever even mentioned Sharia or Islamic law, and those that have generally only do so in contracts or similar cases where a party before the court agreed to be bound by Sharia law.
5) Ted Cruz Campaigned On How He Helped Texas Kill A Mexican: Cruz’s very first campaign ad encouraged GOP primary voters to support him because he helped make it easier for Texas to kill an “illegal alien.” According to the ad, “Cruz fought all the way to the Supreme Court” after “the UN and World Court overruled a Texas jury?s verdict to execute an illegal alien.” In reality, the case Cruz won had nothing to do with whether Texas had the authority to kill this man. Rather, it concerned whether Texas could defy a treaty requiring it to inform foreign nationals who are arrested of their right ?to request assistance from the consul of his own state.? Even North Korea honored this treaty that Cruz fought to undermine.

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http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/31/619461/five-things-to-know-about-gop-
senate-candidate-ted-cruz/

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List of womens preventive health care benefits
that start August 1, 2012, courtesy of Obamacare.

post from AAreports on 31 July 2012 09:23:49 PM. © AAreports

List of womens preventive health care benefits that start August 1, 2012, courtesy of Obamacare. New coverage guidelines under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) require health plans to cover an expanded list of women’s preventive care services with no cost-share (copayment, coinsurance or deductible) as long as services are received in the [...]

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Deportation Reviews Mostly Didnt Happen

post from Firedoglake on 31 July 2012 09:15:45 PM. © Firedoglake

Rep. Steve King has been threatening to sue the Obama Administration over their new directive to stop deportation proceedings and instead offer work permits to DREAM-eligible undocumented immigrants. King continued that threat yesterday.[...]

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Rep. Steve King Cheers on Dogfighting

post from TaylorMarsh.com on 31 July 2012 09:00:40 PM. © TaylorMarsh.com

REPUBLICAN STEVE KING doesn’t understand the difference between humans choosing to fight one another in the sport of boxing, versus dogs forced into fighting by men who get their kicks out of what amounts to torturing animals.

From Think Progress:

KING: When the legislation that passed in the farm bill that says that it?s a federal crime to watch animals fight or to induce someone else to watch an animal fight but it?s not a federal crime to induce somebody to watch people fighting, there?s something wrong with the priorities of people that think like that.

As an animal lover, someone who has saved the lives of domestic animals, as well as wildlife around us, including a fox, civil words fail on what I’d like to write about Mr. King.

When I parked my car a few months back, the Maserati in front of where I parked had a “fox hunting” license plate. I left a note under the windshield, because it incensed me so. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being in the presence of one of these beautiful creatures, the sight of dogs ripping it to shreds for human enjoyment is revolting.

I feel the same way about hunters who don’t bag, clean and prepare their kill when hunting. Even Ted Nugent has enough respect for what he hunts and kills to do this.

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Bernard Goldberg Accuses Democrats of Being Too
Stupid to Vote

post from Crooks and Liars on 31 July 2012 09:00:36 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Bernard Goldberg Accuses Democrats of Being Too Stupid to Vote

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From this Monday evening's The O'Reilly Factor, flame thrower Bernard Goldberg apparently isn't the only one wanting to discourage people from voting: Fox's Bernard Goldberg: "If You Don't Know How Many States There Are" Or "What The Capital Of The" U.S. Is, "Don't Vote".

Goldberg was spouting similar nonsense in a column he wrote back in May: Going After the Stupid Vote:

According to a recent poll by the Gallup organization, more than six in 10 Americans (63 percent) think the United States benefits from having a class of rich people.
There may be something in this for President Obama to consider since his campaign for re-election is be based on dividing Americans based on how much money they make.
Despite all the shots he's taken at the so-called rich, despite all the times he's told us they're not paying "their fair share," most Americans not only think the country benefits from having rich people around, but a majority of Americans (another 63 percent) ? who do not consider themselves rich now ? would like to be rich if they had their choice. None of this should surprise anybody. Of course most people would like to be rich. Why wouldn't they? And what kind of dolt would think the United States does not benefit from having rich people around.

Well, I'm glad I asked that question.
According to Gallup, while 80 percent of Republicans think the country benefits from having a class of wealthy Americans, and while 59 percent of independents feel that way, a measly 52 percent of Democrats agree that the United States benefits from the rich. And here's the number that is so fascinating (and I mean that word in the worst possible sense): 46 percent of Democrats ? no doubt the most liberal in the party ? say the country does not benefit from having wealthy people around.
Let's remember that the top 1 percent of working Americans pay about 40 percent of all federal income taxes, and the top 5 percent pay about 60 percent. So, without a class of rich folks, who would finance construction of interstate highways and pay for the military and help seniors with retirement income and the poor with medical care?
Not the bottom half of wage earners, since they pay only about 3 percent of all federal income tax.
So, what should we conclude from all of this? I think it's fair to surmise based on the Gallup numbers that Republicans are the smartest Americans, that independents come in second, and that 46 percent of Democrats are too stupid to vote.
The bad news is a lot of them do. In fact, without the "stupid vote" Mitt Romney would win in a landslide.

I think watching Fox ought to be a disqualifier if Goldberg is worried about stupid people voting. I think watching too much of that network literally lowers your IQ if you take anything they say seriously. You've got real voter suppression going on and Republicans bringing poll taxes back and these two clowns are making jokes about it.

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Not Just a Figurehead

post from Kmareka.com on 31 July 2012 09:00:31 PM. © Kmareka.com

If President Obama took the huge gamble of raiding Osama bin Laden in his hideout for the sake of justice, it would be hard to argue against it. The question was asked whether this was a mostly symbolic act, or a response to a still-active threat.

Maybe taking out a leader and planner has made the world a little safer…

The number of worldwide terror attacks fell to 10,283 last year, down from 11,641 in 2010 and the lowest since 2005, the State Department reported today.
What?s made the difference? The State Department cites the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda members killed last year including Atiyah Abd al-Rahman and Anwar al-Awlaki, who was the head of Yemen?s Al Qaeda affiliate and had ties to the underwear bomber plot in 2010.
?The loss of bin Laden and these other key operatives puts the network on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse,? the report stated.

It only takes one, and everything could change tomorrow. The real answer is to build alliances and discredit the gangs who turn mother’s sons into suicide bombers. You can’t kill an idea, but killing a man who devoted his life to making war can buy time for better ideas to replace an ideology of despair.

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The EPA was right, meat'll murder you

Not that I don't eat meat. I love meat. But with all the recent (and not so recent) news about how red meat can help lead you to an earlier death, I've been trying to cut back on it myself. I like the idea of living longer. Not so sold on the idea of dying earlier.So, the Republicans flipped out at the USDA for urging its employees to celebrate Meatless Mondays.I'm...

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Re. the "'you don't build that' fight," Richard
Cohen says: "The president has nothing but truth and history on his side"

"Romney's embrace of tea-party thinking is just ideological womanizing. (He won't call in the morning.)"
-- Richard Cohen, in his latest WaPo column,
"The gap in the ?you didn't build that' fight"
by Ken

I've just done a quick to check on stuff I've written about Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, and I've turned up such nooks of memory as "It feels creepy agreeing with Richard Cohen, but I agree with him about 'The missing Obama'," from November 2009, but also the less snarky October 2010 "Richard Cohen gets it seriously right about right-wing hate speech."

Now I'm nonplussed to say that his latest column seems to me both seriously right and seriously needed, in an election season that's going to be dominated by nonsensical lies from the Rampaging Right. (Links onsite.)

The gap in the ?you didn't build that' fight

By Richard Cohen

My boyhood friend Jack became a doctor -- and a conservative. He had gone to public schools, attended college with the help of a government scholarship, went to medical school on the Army's dime, and learned his specialty in military hospitals. He insisted that the government had done nothing for him. In that way, he is both the soul and the wit of the Republican Party.

It was in rebuttal to the Jacks of this world that Barack Obama earlier this month updated John Donne's "No man is an island" by knocking the idea that individual success is always the product of individual qualities, such as industriousness: "Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."

This observation, so obvious you'd think it didn't have to be stated, was then followed by what became a gotcha sound bite: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

The entire GOP, including its claque in the press, pounced. You would have thought Obama had just belittled self-discipline and other virtues and quoted from "Das Kapital" or, even worse, a ditty by Pete Seeger. To his critics, Obama's version of It Takes a Village was further proof of his commie creds, possibly Islamic as well. Mitt Romney found the line totally -- and I mean like totally -- "disconcerting." As to the charge that Obama was being quoted out of context, Romney declared that "the context is worse than the quote." OMG!

Of course, the president has nothing but truth and history on his side. Every schoolchild in my neck of the woods learned that the Erie Canal, which made New York truly the Empire State, was government-funded -- $7 million appropriated at the insistence of Gov. DeWitt Clinton. The railroads did not come from nowhere and neither did the ports or the highway system. Government played a role. Government has always played a role. If it just got out of the way, the mindless mantra of the tea party's heavy thinkers, we would all be in deep trouble.

Across the mighty ocean, the Economist magazine has taken note of this debate over the role of government and pronounced it healthy in principle but pathetic in execution. Both the right and the left have trivialized this important issue, but conservatives have gone from simplistic formulas to bravely idiotic ones. "American conservatism has grown so angry that it has become a parody of its former self," the magazine says. "Tax cuts are always right (even if they inflate the deficit); government activism is always wrong (even if stimulus helped avert a depression). And the right's hypocrisy when it comes to spending on conservative projects (prisons, the armed forces, subsidies to big business) is breathtaking. George W. Bush presided over a huge growth in government." The Economist, a right-of-center publication, has it nailed.

Romney's embrace of tea-party thinking is just ideological womanizing. (He won't call in the morning.) While in Israel, he mentioned that one of the books that influenced his thinking on foreign affairs is "Start-Up Nation" by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. (Senor is one of Romney's important foreign policy advisers.) It is a good book, mentioned favorably by me in a recent column, and it accounts for why little Israel has become such a high-tech giant. As always, there is no single answer. Large-scale immigration (mostly from Russia) contributed, and certainly the conversion from an essentially socialist economy to a capitalist one has made a huge difference.

But so has the government -- in particular, the army with its own culture of innovation and intellectually elite units devoted to high-tech training and warfare. Graduates of these programs, having satisfied their military obligation, populate Israel's high-tech sector -- and, to Israel's chagrin, America's as well. Israel is the start-up nation because the government helped start it up.

As the Economist notes, this is not a trivial debate. The refusal of the contemporary Republican Party to acknowledge a role for government is linked to an illogical determination never to raise taxes. Obama may be too liberal for some, but the alternative that Romney offers by parroting the conservative GOP line is simply not credible. Prosperity may not always take a village, but it sure doesn't take the village idiot.