Category: Politics

Yes, Republicans are Classy People

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In a meeting with between Mitch McConnell and campaign aides, they talked about using her religion, and her depression in 6th grade against her in the campaign:

On February 2, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, opened up his 2014 reelection campaign headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, and in front of several dozen supporters vowed to “point out” the weaknesses of any opponent fielded by the Democrats. “They want to fight? We’re ready,” he declared. McConnell was serious: Later that day, he was huddling with aides in a private meeting to discuss how to attack his possible Democratic foes, including actor/activist Ashley Judd, who was then contemplating challenging the minority leader. During this strategy session—a recording of which was obtained by Mother Jones—McConnell and his aides considered assaulting Judd for her past struggles with depression and for her religious views.

Read the whole thing, and you will find a fairly repugnant bit of immature locker room talk that sounds like your worst stereotypes of drunk College Republicans.

It gets even better, because McConnell called in the FBI, and accused people of bugging his office, though he has walked it back a bit.

Originally, he accused ProgressKY, and now it’s the nebulous “political left” that he is accusing of wiretapping him.

In any case, calling in the FBI has turned this from being a minor embarrassment into a case of his being a whiny bitch.  Heh.

Here’s a hint mother f%$#er, there is something called a cell phone, and many of them can make audio and video recordings.

Just ask Mitt Rmoney about the 47% video.

Here is hoping that whoever runs against you kicks your butt.

What is Wrong With Democratic Political Class in One Phrase

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It appears that they think that the biggest strength that a candidate can have is he or she, “doesn’t have particularly strong views.”

Because, I guess, nothing always beats something:

Democratic Party officials believe that Kevin Strouse is exactly the kind of candidate who can help them retake the House next year.

 He’s a smart, young former Army Ranger — good qualities for any aspiring politician. But what party leaders really like is that Strouse doesn’t have particularly strong views on the country’s hottest issues.

 Immigration? Tax policy? “Certainly I have a lot of research to do,” Strouse acknowledged in an interview Thursday as he announced his candidacy in a suburban Philadelphia House district.

 Strouse’s candidacy reflects an emerging Democratic strategy for taking back the House from Republicans after the tea party takeover of 2010.

 The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological “problem solvers” who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.

 “You pick your strategic high ground and force them to fight on it,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has begun a particularly early effort at traveling the country and working the phones to lure Strouse and others like him into races.

(emphasis mine)

Steve Israel was, until he wanted a leadership position, he was a one of the Quisling Blue Dog Caucus, and his goal is to restore the decimated Benedict Arnold Blue Dog Caucus, because the f%$#ing Blue Dogs were so good for the party in the past.

In any case, be aware that this sort of mind bogglingly stupidity is from the person trying to pick and choose Democratic Party nominees for the US House of Representatives, and he is bragging about this bit of lunacy.

Choose your own candidates.  Don’t give to the DCCC, because they will waste your money on bullsh%$ like this.

Just In Case You Wondered if Obama Didn’t Want to Gut Social Security

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Notice his shout out to Bob (Rubin) who wants to privatize Social Security

This is Obama at the opening meeting for the Wall Street driven “Hamilton Project”, and when he says, “too many of us have been interested in defending programs the way they were written in 1938, believing that if we admit the need to modernize these programs to fit changing times.”

Notice how he is enthusiastic about the idea of cutting Social Security.

He knows that it involves “throwing momma from the train,” so when he says, “This is not a bloodless process,” (7:56 in the vid) it ain’t his blood, or Bob Rubin’s blood that he is talking about.

This is not eleventy dimensional chess.  Obama sees gutting cutting Social Security as a potential bipartisan legacy.

This is what he wants.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Margaret Thatcher, Dead at 87

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She was 87.

There is an argument that one should not speak ill of the dead, but Margaret Thatcher was a public figure, and her supporters are using this as an opportunity to shape her legacy, so I feel that speaking the truth is essential at this juncture in any public forum except for her funeral or wake.

In my case, I will start with a list of positive things about her:
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That is all.

Judge Overturns Craven Obama Administration Morning After Pill Policy

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A while back, in yet another attempt to appease right wing Neanderthals who will never support him, the Obama Administration overruled its experts at the FDA, and limited access to the morning after pill.

Well, a Federal Judge just called the decision, arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable:

A federal judge on Friday ordered that the most common morning-after pill be made available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and younger. But his acidly worded decision raises a broader question about whether a cabinet secretary can decide on a drug’s availability for reasons other than its safety and effectiveness.

In his ruling, Judge Edward R. Korman of the Eastern District of New York accused the Obama administration of putting politics ahead of science. He concluded that the administration had not made its decisions based on scientific guidelines, and that its refusal to lift restrictions on access to the pill, Plan B One-Step, was “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.”

He said that when the Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, countermanded a move by the Food and Drug Administration in 2011 to make the pill, which helps prevent pregnancy after sexual intercourse, universally available, “the secretary’s action was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent.”

This is a very well deserved smack down.

Of all the bits of cowardice to come out of the Obama administration over the past few years, this was arguably the most heinous.

Because the So Called Pro-Life Movement is an Oxymoron

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Yes, the folks who want to criminalize abortion have threatened the life of a Nevada state legislator for saying that she had an abortion:

The life of a Latina assemblywoman in Nevada has been threatened after she used a story about her own personal abortion experience at age 16 to make a point about the importance of sex education.

“I’m going to say something I’ve never said publicly before, because — Why not? I’ve been open about everything else?” Democratic Assemblywoman Lucy Flores reportedly told the state Assembly Education Committee on Monday. “I had six other sisters, all of them became pregnant in their teens — all of them. One was 14 years old when she got pregnant with twins. That is what I had to learn from.”

“I had an abortion because I didn’t have access to birth control, or even an understanding of what that meant,” she explained. “I didn’t even understand that my worth did not come from men, or sex with men, trying to fill up a hole in me from so much pain.”


………

After several Nevada news sites published accounts of Flores’ emotional testimony, conservative websites like Life News got the message out to anti-abortion activists with headlines like: “Democratic Legislator: I Don’t Regret Killing My Baby in Abortion.”

“Unlike Flores, most women regret their abortions and tell painful stories of how they are often unable to come to grips with taking the life of their child,” Life News’ Steven Ertelt wrote.

Flores was scheduled to explain her support for Assembly Bill 230 to reporter John Ralston on the Thursday edition of Ralston Reports, but canceled before the show aired.

Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who testified at sex ed hearing re abortion as a teen, recipient of threatening messages. Cancels Ralston Thur.
— Dana Gentry (@DanaGentryLV) April 3, 2013



“Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who testified at sex ed hearing re abortion as a teen, recipient of threatening messages,” television producer Dana Gentry wrote on Twitter. “Cancels Ralston Thur.”

On Thursday, feminist blogger and activist Emmily Bristol, who wrote about Flores’ testimony, wondered if she had “indirect culpability in giving greater exposure to the kind of information that has been shown to incite anti-choice news outlets and organizations.”

“Those opposed to reproductive health care — lest I remind you that abortion is a legal form of health care — and those opposed to comprehensive sex education share the same goal: To silence and shame women,” Bristol wrote. “They seek to demonize human sexuality.”

This is what the whole abortion criminalization movement is all about: Punishing women for having sex.

It’s why they threaten lives, and why, over the past few election cycles, they have talked about banning birth control, and keeping birth control coverage out of Obamacare.

They hate the idea of women having power over their bodies.

This is why compromise with those ratf%$#s is a losing proposition.

Obama is Not On Our Side

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After increasing signs that even rank and file Republicans oppose to cutting Social Security, but Barack Obama is determined to throw mama from the train:

President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say.

In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president’s demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations.

 Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in Republicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1.

 Mr. Obama’s proposed deficit reduction would replace those cuts. And if Republicans continue to resist the president, the White House believes that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis.

Yeah, and who is going to take the blame for gutting Social Security?

Seriously, when I have referred to him as the Manchurian Democrat, I was being prophetic.

He just flushed Democratic protection of Social Security down the f%$#ing toilet.

This is so contemptible MoveOn has gotten its hipster head out of its hipster ass and condemned his move without taking the time to set it up as a lame video contest:

“President Obama’s plan to cut Social Security would harm seniors who worked hard all their lives. Under this plan, a typical 80-year-old woman would lose the equivalent of three months worth of food every year. That’s unconscionable.

 It’s even more outrageous given that Republicans in Congress aren’t even asking for this Social Security cut. This time, the drive to cut Social Security is being led by President Obama and Democrats.

 Millions of MoveOn members did not work night and day to put President Obama into office so that he could propose policies that would hurt some of our most vulnerable people. Just as we fought and defeated President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, we will mobilize and stop this attempt to diminish the vital guarantee of Social Security. MoveOn’s 8 million members will not stand by and watch a Democratic President chip away at one of the most successful government programs of all time. Every member of Congress — Democrat or Republican — who votes for this proposal should expect to be held accountable.”

Call your Congresscritter, and tell them that you will do your best to have them primaried if they vote to support this.

As if the Obama Administration Revolving Door Could not Spin Any Faster………

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Promontory Financial Group has hired Former SEC Chief Shapiro:

As regular readers may recall, Promontory Financial Group was one of the huge winners from the joke on the public otherwise known as the Independent Foreclosure Review. The only accurate word in that label, it turns out, was “foreclosure”.

As part of a series of consent orders issued to servicers in 2011, the OCC mandated that borrowers who had a foreclosure underway or completed in 2009 and 2010 could receive a review to determine if their foreclosure was handled improperly and caused financial harm. If so, they could receive as much as $125,000 in compensation.

Many observers, including yours truly, could see as soon as the reviews were announced that they were destined to be a sham, since the consultants hired to perform these assessments would be selected and pad by the banks, who would also be their immediate client. And after the reviews were hastily shut down, the revelations were even worse than even the cynics had predicted. Consultants like Promontory, who worked for three servicers, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, ran up enormous tabs via being utterly incapable of organizing a process of this scale and complexity. Not that the bank cared, since they didn’t really want the work completed. Promontory racked up an estimated $1 billion in fees. Our whistleblowers say they completed only 4,800 borrower letters at Bank of America and may not have gotten through any at its smallest IFR client, PNC (in October of 2012, after over a year of work at PNC, Promontory said the work to dat needed to be scuttled since questions had been raised about the independence of the process. The reviews were shut down two months later).

So how is Promontory using all this lucre? Buying up even more former regulators to further its reputation as a connected insider. Mary Shapiro had barely left the SEC when she was nominated for a board seat at General Electric, which despite its image as a manufacturer, has for over two decades had nearly half its revenues coming from financial services. And now Shapiro has been signed by Promontory to help arm-twist regulators not to do their job.

This sort of incestuous corruption is a feature, not a bug.

This is Not a Surprise

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What a surprise, New York State Senator Malcom Smith was caught bribing Republican officials in an attempt to secure the GOP nomination for New York City mayor:

The two men sat in the state senator’s parked car in suburban Rockland County, but New York City was at the front of their minds and the focus of their conversation.

What the senator, Malcolm A. Smith, wanted to do, the other man explained, was going to cost “a pretty penny.”

“But it’s worth it,” replied Senator Smith, a Democrat, according to a transcript of the January meeting. “Because you know how big a deal it is.”

His plan, described by federal prosecutors in a criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday, was as ambitious as it was audacious. Mr. Smith was going to bribe his way onto the ballot to run for mayor of New York.

But he needed help, from a disparate cast of characters, including a Republican City Council member from Queens, Daniel J. Halloran III, and two Republican leaders from Queens and the Bronx, Vincent Tabone and Joseph J. Savino. And he needed the help of the other man in the car, who, unbeknown to Mr. Smith, was a cooperating witness for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was recording the whole conversation.

Instead of appearing on the ballot, Mr. Smith’s name has landed in a marquee spot on the criminal complaint. On Tuesday, he, Councilman Halloran and the Republican Party leaders were charged with wire fraud and bribery. The senator was also charged with extortion.

This is not surprising, because he is also one of the Benedict Arnold Democrats who colluded with Republicans in the state to wrest control from the Democrats who actually won most of the seats:

New York Republicans joined forces with a group of dissident Democrats on Tuesday to form what they called a “bipartisan governing coalition” to run the State Senate, preventing the Democratic Party from taking control even after it appeared to have won a majority of Senate seats in elections last month.

The announcement was the latest twist in a state capital that has had more than its share in recent years, with a string of leadership squabbles, corruption investigations and sex scandals that at times crippled the government and made Albany a laughingstock.

The power-sharing deal announced Tuesday was a victory for New York Republicans, who are outnumbered 2-to-1 in the state’s electorate and who fared unexpectedly poorly in a series of Senate races last month. The exact outcome of the election remains unclear, because ballots in two close races are still being counted, but the consensus in Albany is that the Democrats won more seats than the Republicans.

But shortly after the elections, one Democrat said he would align himself with the Republicans, and on Tuesday five others said they would join with the Republicans to control the Senate. Many of the remaining Senate Democrats were furious, accusing the Republicans and the breakaway Democrats of orchestrating a coup to steal control.

As part of the deal, the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, agreed to share authority over the chamber with Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, a Bronx Democrat who was the No. 2 official in his caucus before defecting nearly two years ago to form the Independent Democratic Conference.

The obvious question here is, “Why did he think that he could bribe Republicans into nominating him for Mayor?”

The simplest answer (see Occam’s Razor) as to why he might believe this is is pretty clear here:  The Republicans bribed him to jump over the aisle, and so Senator Smith expected them to be similarly receptive to bribes.

I have no evidence of this, but it seems to me that some sort of payoff had to be involved in the “Independent Democratic Conference” knifing their fellow Dems in the back.

The only question is whether it was limited to legal things, like committee chairmanships, or there was something more remunerative involved.

Considering the fact that this is Albany, I’ll take the door behind the piles of unmarked bills.

H/t Ed Kilgore.

A Solution to Our Energy Needs Forever

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Just attach generators to the Obama administration’s revolving door. Problem solved:

Coming off a grueling four-year stint at the Justice Department, Lanny A. Breuer is poised to make a soft landing in the private sector.

Covington & Burling, a prominent law firm, plans to announce on Thursday that Mr. Breuer will be its vice chairman. The firm created the role especially for Mr. Breuer, a Washington insider who most recently led the Justice Department’s investigation into the financial crisis.

For Mr. Breuer, who will now shift to defending large corporations, Covington is familiar turf. He previously spent nearly two decades there.

………

“We’re proud to welcome him home,” said Timothy C. Hester, Covington’s chairman.

FWIW, I think that “welcome” is spelled “Ka-Ching.”

He did his job, and now Mr. Breuer is going to be paid for, “not bringing cases against the banks and executives at the center of the crisis.”

There is No Medicine for Stupidity

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Click for full size


Much better than the Euro Zone

Because their currency floated

Paul Krugman has noted that Poland has done remarkably well by retaining its own currency and allowing it to float, (see chart pr0n).

Of course, the response of the Polish leaders is to try to join the Euro:

Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, took a big political gamble on Tuesday when he opened the door to a referendum on joining the euro, in the face of strong public opposition to the common currency.

The move is part of a campaign to prepared Poland to begin the final stages of accession to the single currency by 2015. Mr Tusk had previously opposed a public vote, arguing that Poles had already bound themselves to the euro when they voted in 2003 to join the EU.

The crisis in the eurozone has hit support for the euro – the latest opinion survey shows 62 per cent of Poles are opposed to joining, with scepticism increasing markedly since the financial and debt crises hit Europe five years ago.

But now Mr Tusk has publicly raised the possibility of allowing a referendum – demanded by rightwing opposition parties opposed to euro membership – in return for an agreement with the opposition to push through the necessary constitutional changes.

Seriously, they want a piece of this?

You see, what happened was that instead of creating inflation, the wild capital flows caused the Zloty to appreciate, and when those flows reversed, the currency depreciated.

In the Euro zone, what happens is inflation, and then the need for depression to contract the economy. Wanting to be a part of this is stupid and insane.

Seriously, we need higher quality elites running the world.

Wimp Out

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Obama has withdrawn Caitlin Halligan’s nomination To D.C. Circuit Court:

President Obama has withdrawn the nomination of Caitlin J. Halligan, a prominent New York lawyer, to serve on an important federal appeals court in Washington, blaming Republicans for blocking her confirmation twice.

The president formally notified the Senate of his decision on Friday, after Ms. Halligan requested that her name be withdrawn from consideration. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is widely viewed as the most important federal appellate court because it reviews many cases on the government’s authority.

“I am deeply disappointed that even after nearly two and a half years, a minority of senators continued to block a simple up-or-down vote on her nomination,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “This unjustified filibuster obstructed the majority of senators from expressing their support. I am confident that with Caitlin’s impressive qualifications and reputation, she would have served with distinction.”

First, to Harry Reid: It was such a good idea to soft pedal filibuster reform.  Here’s hoping that the Senate Democrats will choose a new leader in 2014.

Obama needs to show some guts.

The DC Court of Appeals is effectively the 2nd highest court in the land, and it is the one that is shortest staffed, because the ‘Phants are filibustering any appointment to the court.

Rolling over and playing dead is not a winning proposition.

Oh Ho!

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The lawyer at the core of the whole “bribing prostitutes to lie about f%$#ing Senator Bob Menendez” is now saying that the Daily Caller was the one paying him to do this:

A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

The lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as “Carlos,” had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.

The Daily Caller issued a statement Friday saying that the information allegedly provided by the Dominican lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, was false.

The videotaped claims of two women, made with their faces obscured, were posted in the fall on the Daily Caller. The site reported that “the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. . . . They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.”

In its statement Friday, the Daily Caller said: “At no point did any money change hands between The Daily Caller and any sources or individuals connected with this investigation, nor did anyone named Carlos travel to the Dominican Republic on behalf of The Daily Caller. As recently as two weeks ago, Figueroa was on record with another news outlet as saying the women he represented were telling the truth about their initial allegations against Senator Menendez.”

Tucker Carlson, who runs the Web site, said in a statement provided through his spokesman that the Daily Caller “never paid anyone, was never asked to pay anyone and of course never would pay anyone for this story.”

Yeah, sure. They somehow just got prostitutes to talk, on camera, ratting out an (as we now know falsely) alleged John out of the goodness of their hearts.

Please, don’t insult our intelligence, Tucker.

Signs of the Apocalypse

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Too true

Michael Steel just said something that was:

  • Provocative, and
  • Not blindingly stupid.

What he said was that, if Republicans want to get minorities to vote for them they have to stop trying to trying to suppress their votes:

Steele said the RNC’s autopsy of the 2012 election does nothing to address the substantive reasons why the party fails to connect with minorities, highlighting voter identification laws championed by many Republicans, including Priebus, that disproportionately affect black voters.

“How does Reince Priebus reconcile his approach and his agreement with voter registration policies that many in the black community view as anti-black, racist, whatever the term happens to be,” Steele said. “You’ve got to reconcile how people feel about your policies, not just the fact that you’re going to show up. You can show up any time. It’s what you say and what you do when you get there that matters most to people.”

He’s right, of course, and he did not put his foot in his mouth in the progress.

I’m pleasantly surprised.

Dick Durbin Wants to F%$3 Us Like a Steubinville Football Player Would

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He is proposing a Social Security to “fix” the program:

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin announced Wednesday morning that he will introduce a bipartisan bill to create a Social Security commission tasked with making the program solvent for the next 75 years.

………

Durbin says the bill would require votes in the House and Senate on whatever the commission proposes.

With no possibility of filibuster, or amendment.

It’s another way to accommodate Obama’s, and the other Washington, DC “very serious people’s”, burning need to gut security.

The solution is straightforward. If you lift the cap. It’s solvent for at least 75 years.

If you extend the tax to things like capital gains, or at least carried interest, it’s solvent basically forever.

I am sick to death of people trying to create yet another cat food commission.*

*In the interest of health, I would suggest that people eat dog food, and not cat food. Cats because they are one of the few true carnivores, do not need the complex carbohydrates and fats that people, and dogs do. As such, dog food is better for you than cat food because it provides carbs and essential fatty acids. A dog can go blind if it is fed on cat food, but a cat lives just fine on dog food. The phenomenon is known as rabbit starvation.

What Gaius Said

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Donating to the DCCC means helping Dems who vote like Republicans:

The DCCC is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the group of congresspeople and staff supposedly responsible for electing House Democrats. It’s led by “ex”–Blue Dog and New Dem Steve Israel, Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked choice for the job.

 We’ve written about Israel before. To the world his job is simply to elect Democrats, but to the moneymen and -women behind the corporate wing of the party, his job is to:

  • Elect corporate Democrats to the House
  • Keep progressives out of office
  • Make sure pro-corporate Republican leaders like Cantor and Paul Ryan never face credible challenges

Seriously.  So long as the national Democratic Congressional election infrastructure, and Congressional election fundraising is dominated by corporatocrats, don’t give to them.

Pick and choose your candidates. Don’t let these corporate ratf%$3s make that choice for you.

FWIW,  I would give similar advice to Republicans too. 

It’s really pretty basic, do your homework, and chose whom you support, don’t let the Beltway crowd make your choice.

Still Looking for Senator Menendez’ Birth Certificate

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Yes, the folks at the clown show known as The Daily Caller have decided, notwithstanding sworn statements from prostitutes that they were paid to lie, their fearless journamalists, they are still looking for the real killer:

Responding to reports that Dominican Republic police have concluded that three women were paid to make false claims that they had sex with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) for money, The Daily Caller, which published a report in November 2012 detailing similar allegations, says it is still investigating the story.

Seriously, the first rule here is that when you are in a hole, stop digging.

Priceless

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The Michigan state legislature, chock full of wingnuts, after losing an initiative on creating emergency managers for localities, promptly repassed the law with an attached appropriation to make it unchallengable.

And now they have appointed an emergency manager for Detroit, who has tax liens on his home in Maryland:

The man charged with fixing Detroit’s faltering finances has been hit with four liens in four years from the state of Maryland for unpaid taxes, records show.

 State records show Kevyn D. Orr, who was appointed emergency manager on Thursday, has two outstanding liens on his $1 million home in Chevy Chase, Md., for $16,000 in unemployment taxes in 2010 and 2011. Two other liens of more than $16,000 in unemployment and income taxes were satisfied in 2010 and 2011, records show.

 Orr said he didn’t know anything about the liens when shown records of them Friday morning by The Detroit News.

 “I don’t know what they are,” Orr said, as his new boss, Gov. Rick Snyder, sat next to him in The News’ offices. “That’s surprising to me, to be honest.”

 Late afternoon, a spokeswoman for Snyder — who appointed Orr to the $275,000 per year post Thursday — said Orr spent the day researching the issue and would pay “in full ASAP.” The Washington, D.C., bankruptcy attorney blamed the problems on an outside accountant hired to file his tax returns, said Sara Wurfel, a Snyder spokeswoman.

He had 4 liens filed on his home, and did not know about it. Yeah ……… right.

The emergency management process is a clown show for a reason, and it’s no accident that over half of the black voters in Michigan will be under emergency managers.

First they cut state aid to troubled municipalities, and then effectively abolish .

The motivation for this is two fold:

  • Modern movement (teabagger) conservatives visceral opposition to majority minority communities having meaningful self rule.
  • By eliminating self rule, they eliminate electoral possibilities for less senior politicians.
    • Basically, they are hoping to eliminate the “farm system” for a generation of politicians for political advantage.

That is why we are seeing this clown show.

They don’t care about governance, they just care about power. Everything is subverted to to that.

Solipsistic Narcissists

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Now that his son has come out, Senator Rob Portman becomes a supporter of gay marriage:

Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman on Thursday announced he has reversed his longtime opposition to same-sex marriage after reconsidering the issue because his 21-year-old son, Will, is gay.

 Portman said his son, a junior at Yale University, told him and his wife, Jane, that he’s gay and “it was not a choice, it was who he is and that he had been that way since he could remember.”

 “It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that’s of a Dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have — to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years,” Portman told reporters in an interview at his office.

 The conversation the Portmans had with their son two years ago led to him to evolve on the issue after he consulted clergy members, friends — including former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose daughter is gay — and the Bible.

 “The overriding message of love and compassion that I take from the Bible, and certainly the Golden Rule, and the fact that I believe we are all created by our maker, that has all influenced me in terms of my change on this issue,” Portman said, adding that he feels that “in a way, this strengthens the institution of marriage.”

 Portman said his son didn’t push him to make his announcement, though he “encouraged me.”

 Portman, who backed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court, said he now thinks parts of that bill should be repealed, though he hasn’t considered introducing such legislation himself because economic policy issues are his specialty.

So, how do we make legislators have children who grow up in poverty?

Seriously, if it doesn’t happen to them and theirs, it does not exist.

The Maryland Lege Gets One Right

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The death penalty is no more in Maryland:

The General Assembly voted to repeal the death penalty Friday, calling for an end to Maryland’s 375-year history of capital punishment and joining a growing number of states outlawing the practice.

 After nearly two hours of impassioned debate, the House of Delegates approved Gov. Martin O’Malley’s repeal legislation, 82-56, sending the measure to the governor for his signature. The state Senate voted 27-20 for repeal last week.

 “We’re a better state for ending it,” said Del. Sandy Rosenberg, a Democrat from Baltimore who has long pushed for repeal.

Absolutely.