Category: Politics

My Heart Bleeds Borscht

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TV stations are required under federal law to provide their lowest rates to candidates, but this does not apply to Super PACs:

To make his closing argument to Iowa voters on the day of the Jan. 3 caucuses, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spent $1,000 to air a minute- long television ad during one of the Des Moines market’s top- rated morning news programs.

That same airtime on CBS affiliate KCCI-TV was in demand by a super-political action committee helping Romney, and Restore Our Future paid a 50 percent premium to place its commercial.

Come September and October, when Romney and President Barack Obama, House and Senate candidates and dozens of outside political groups will be demanding ad space, super-PACs can expect stations to begin charging what Democratic media consultant Peter Fenn calls “super-gouge rates” of as much as four times what candidates pay.

“Stations are rabid for this money,” said Kip Cassino, research director of Borrell Associates, which tracks the television industry and is based in Williamsburg, Virginia. “The super-PACs are like a kid with money burning a hole in their pocket.”

While I am not a fan of the TV industry, I am still amused gouging the Super PACS and their rich pig backers.

Yes, This Both Cowardice and Hypocrisy

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Roger Simon (not the Pajamas Media Guy) notes that both Presidential candidates are full of it in their expressions of sympathy for the victims of the Batman shootings.

The issue here is that both candidates, while expressing sympathy, are refusing to do anything, even the most basic stuff, like keeping records of gun purchases, as they do with explosives (and many types of fertilizer), so when someone purchases 6000 rounds and multiple weapons, someone might flag this as being a matter of concern.
Here is the money quote from the OP/EE:

What was baloney is that he intends to do nothing about preventing it in the future.

His White House press secretary had announced as much to reporters on Air Force One on the flight to Colorado. Jay Carney said Obama “believes we need to take steps that protect Second Amendment rights of the American people but that ensure that we are not allowing weapons into the hands of individuals who should not, by existing law, obtain those weapons.”

That “existing law” was painfully inadequate to protect the 70 people who had been shot in a movie theater was obvious to all. All except for politicians running for reelection, that is.

Mitt Romney is no better. Having opposed “deadly assault weapons” as governor of Massachusetts in 2004, he now does “not support any new legislation of an assault weapon-ban nature.”

But he, too, said he was “deeply saddened” by the Aurora shootings. Just not deeply saddened enough to promise to do anything about future shootings.

I think that every player in American politics is Wayne LaPierre’s bitch.

Wanker of the Decade

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Wisconsin State Senator Tim Cullen, who left the Democratic Caucus over a hissy fit about committee assignments.

While he’s not joined the Republican caucus, which would flip the Senate.

All reports are that he was Republican Governor Scott Walker’s favorite Democrat in the Senate, so I peg this as a case of Joe Lieberman syndrome, where they act like a complete prat if they feel that they have not received the requisite obsequious adulation.

It Appears that McClatchy Employes the Only People Who Practice Journalism in Washington, DC

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Because it appears that the rest of the Washington press corps(e) allow administration officials to dictate and re-edit their quotes:

To our staff and to our readers:

As you are aware, reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg and others are agreeing to give government sources the right to clear and alter quotes as a prerequisite to granting an interview.

To be clear, it is the bureau’s policy that we do not alter accurate quotes from any source. And to the fullest extent possible, we do not make deals that we will clear quotes as a condition of interviews.

With the government trying to do more of the public’s business in secret, the demands that interviews be conducted off the record is growing. While it puts us at a disadvantage, we should argue strenuously for on-the-record interviews with government officials.

When they absolutely refuse, we have only two options. First, halt the interview and attempt to find the information elsewhere. In those cases, our stories should say the official declined comment. Second, we can go ahead with the interview with the straightforward response that whatever ultimately is used will be published without change in tone, emphasis or exact language.

The fact that McClatchy is alone in taking such a position is troubling, to say the least..

H/t Taylor Marsh

Racist Diatribes from SB 1070 Sponsor

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In the challenges to Arizona’s immigration law, one of the claims made is that it was motivated by bigotry.

Well, the plaintiffs now have sponsor’s, former state senate majority leader Russell Pearce’s, emails, and we have the smoking gun:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona has released thousands of e-mails that it says proves Arizona’s controversial immigration law was racially motivated.

The e-mails, acquired through a public records request to the state Legislature, are to and from former senator Russell Pearce, who authored Senate Bill 1070.

The ACLU included dozens of those e-mails as part of a legal filing this week, asking U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton to prevent a key part of SB 1070 from going into effect.

The e-mails from Pearce in the court documents include statements like, “Can we maintain our social fabric as a nation with Spanish fighting English for dominance … It’s like importing leper colonies and hope we don’t catch leprosy. It’s like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American Dream.”

They include statistics such as “9,000 people killed every year by illegal aliens,” and “the illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two-and-a-half times that of non-illegal aliens.”

Some quotes:

“Battles commence as Mexican nationalists struggle to infuse their men into American government and strengthen control over their strongholds. One look at Los Angeles with its Mexican-American mayor shows you Vincente Fox’s general Varigossa commanding an American city.”

“They create enclaves of separate groups that shall balkanize our nation into fractured nightmares of social unrest and poverty.”

I am not surprised at all that this guy is a bigoted ratf%$#, though I am surprised that he was stupid enough to reveal it on email.

Crap

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Benjamin Netanyahu sandbagged his coalition partners on plans to make all Israelis serve in the military, and they have left the coalition, which effectively ends the best chance in Israel’s history to stop coddling the Heredi schnorrers (ultra orthodox moochers):

The broadest unity coalition Israel has seen in many years broke apart Tuesday evening, rent by irreconcilable differences over how to integrate ultra-Orthodox men and Arab citizens into the military and civilian service, a fundamental question for the future of the Jewish democracy.

After stunning the political establishment with a secret, late-night deal in May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the centrist Kadima Party, failed to achieve their top priority and agreed to part ways. While Mr. Netanyahu retains power with his original, narrower majority in Parliament, analysts said the split weakened both leaders and was likely to hasten elections.

The coalition had given Mr. Netanyahu a supermajority of 94 of the Parliament’s 120 members and a new nickname, “King of Israel,” and with that unprecedented authority to take on complex issues like the stalemated peace process with the Palestinians and the national responsibilities of Israel’s growing minorities. Instead, when it came to the draft and expanding settlements in the West Bank, he chose to solidify his alliance with right-wing and religious factions.“I don’t think there are any winners, except maybe the Orthodox parties — they’re off the hook for the foreseeable future,” said Yossi Verter, political correspondent for the newspaper Haaretz. “The losers are, of course, Netanyahu and Mofaz. When the leaders of the two big parties in Israel sit and decide to form a unity government and after 70 days it collapses, they don’t look like serious men. It’s like a joke.”

The surprise partnership between the prime minister and the former leader of the opposition had come a day after Mr. Netanyahu called for early elections because of cracks in his original coalition. The two men vowed to leverage the huge new majority to enact legislation ensuring that all citizens share the burden of military and civilian service, in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling invalidating a law that granted draft exemptions to thousands of yeshiva students.

The issue had broad resonance in a society increasingly torn between secular and religious Jews: some 20,000 people took to the Tel Aviv street this month to demand a broader draft and the ouster of politicians who opposed it.

But talks broke down over the details. Kadima set a goal of enlisting 80 percent of the ultra-Orthodox within four years, with stiff financial penalties for dodgers. Under pressure from religious parties long aligned with his Likud faction, Mr. Netanyahu proffered a more incremental solution, which Mr. Mofaz rejected as a cop-out.

It was a cop-out, and as long as these mendicants are allowed to shirk their duty, it will remain a cancer on Israeli governance.

Republican Family Values

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It appears that a Utah Republican activist, Greg Peterson dabbles in serial date rape as a hobby:

News that a Utah Republican activist is accused of raping four women — two of whom say they were taken to the Heber cabin where the man hosted major political events — caused ripples of unease Thursday throughout the GOP.

Gregory Nathan Peterson has hobnobbed with the likes of Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, Gov. Gary Herbert, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, and candidates such as 4th District congressional contender Mia Love. [Ed Note: 

But for the past 14 months, the 37-year-old Orem man allegedly has led a double life as a serial date-rapist.

Peterson was charged Wednesday in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City with 23 felony counts, including rape and kidnapping, and two misdemeanors. A jail log indicates U.S. marshals arrested Peterson in his home in Heber and booked him into the Salt Lake County jail. He remained there Thursday in lieu of $750,000 bail.

Charging documents allege sexual assaults against four women Peterson met in Salt Lake County beginning March 26, 2011. In the first case, the documents allege, he met a woman at a church function and she agreed to go to a movie with him.

But instead of going to a theater, the documents allege, Peterson told the woman he had a gun and took her to his five-bedroom, five-bathroom, 3,000-square-foot cabin in Heber. The documents allege he sexually assaulted the woman and hit her when she did not do as he wished. Peterson drove the woman back to her vehicle the next morning.

Peterson’s Heber cabin is where he has held annual Republican barbecues and gatherings.

The charges allege Peterson met another woman online and she agreed to go to a movie with him July 2, 2011. But this time Peterson threatened to expose the woman’s expired immigration visa and drove her to the Heber cabin, documents allege. Peterson raped and assaulted the woman there, court papers say, then drove her to his mother’s Lewiston residence in Cache County. Peterson and the woman stayed there until July 5. The documents say Peterson took the woman to her home July 8.

On Dec. 11, 2011, Peterson met a West Jordan woman for a lunch date, the documents allege, and at her home he pushed her on a couch and sexually assaulted her.

It’s amazing how fast his former BFFs are falling all over themselves pretending not to know him.

When Ed F%$#ing Rollins Finds a Republican’s Political Statement Beyond the Pale…

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Click for full size


C. Megalodon*

You have not just jumped the shark, you have jumped C. Megalodon, on a unicycle, while wear nothing but piercings and a rose between your teeth.

It appears that Michelle Bachmann has managed to cross this event horizon:

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s former campaign manager has joined the bipartisan chorus criticizing the Minnesota Republican for questioning the loyalty of State Department aide Huma Abedin and alleging she has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I have been a practitioner of tough politics for many decades,” Ed Rollins wrote in an op-ed for FOX News. “There is little that amazes me and even less that shocks me. I have to say that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s outrageous and false charges against a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin reaches that threshold.
………
“Having worked for Congressman Bachman’s campaign for president, I am fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level,” he wrote.

Generally, Republicans are busy saying that Joe McCarthy has been given an unfair rap by pinko historians, so this boggles the mind.

The real question is whether the Beltway gasbags  will start treating her like that crazy guy in a bath robe on the soapbox in the park.

*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.

The Stoopid, It Burns US!!!!

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This is a week for the stupid.

Case in point, this exchange between award winning journalist and columnist Connie Schultz and an unnamed conservative blogger:

Email from conservative blogger, dated July 9, 2012:

Dear Ms. Shultz,
We are doing an expose on journalists in the elite media who socialize with elected officials they are assigned to cover. We have found numerous photos of you with Sen. Sherrod Brown. In one of them, you appear to be hugging him.
Care to comment?

———————–

Response, dated July 10, 2012:

Dear Mr. [Name Deleted]:

I am surprised you did not find a photo of me kissing U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown so hard he passes out from lack of oxygen. He’s really cute.

He’s also my husband.

You know that, right?

Connie Schultz.

————————
July 17: Waiting, I’m waiting….

(emphasis mine)

Great googly moogly.

I guess Republicans live by the old Dave Sim adage,  “I firmly believe that if you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, you should start breeding them for stupidity.”

More Bad Economic News

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June retail sales fell:

U.S. retail sales fell in June for the third straight month, the longest run of consecutive drops since 2008 when the country was mired in recession.

Sales slipped 0.5 percent, with declines across a wide swath of industries from electronics and cars to building supplies, the Commerce Department said on Monday. Analysts had expected a small increase.

“Evidence is increasingly clear that the U.S. economy is slowing,” said Jim Baird, an investment strategist at Plante Moran Financial Advisors in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The report adds to a spate of soft economic data that is raising pressure on President Barack Obama ahead of his November re-election bid. Republican challenger Mitt Romney is focusing his campaign on the weak economy, which has plagued Obama’s presidency.

Obama should have asked for about ½ trillion more for his stimulus.

The Good Guys Beat the Borg (For Once)

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Specifically, Wikileaks has won a case against Visa for cutting off their credit card donations:

The Reykjavík District Court has ruled that Valitor, formerly known as VISA Iceland, violated contract laws by blocking credit card donations to Wikileaks, according to a press release posted on the whistleblowers’ Twitter account.

The court also ordered that the donation gateway should be reopened within 14 days otherwise Valitor will be forced to pay a fine of $6,200 daily. Valitor CEO Vidar Thorkellsson told Bloomberg, however, that the company would appeal the ruling. He declined to comment further.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said “This is a significant victory against Washington’s attempt to silence WikiLeaks. We will not be silenced. Economic censorship is censorship. It is wrong. When it’s done outside of the rule of law its doubly wrong. One by one those involved in the attempted censorship of WikiLeaks will find themselves on the wrong side of history.”

Least surprising News of the Day

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It turns out that his syndicate, Premeir Radio Networks, hires ringers to call into his show:

One of the common refrains in the media world is that Rush Limbaugh has the largest audience in talk radio. He is eager to capitalize on this, multiple times per episode in fact. But how true is this claim?

Limbaugh is one of several radio hosts syndicated through Premiere Radio Networks, including right-wing darlings such as Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck as well as known liberal voices such as Randi Rhodes and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. One of the features for Premiere syndicated shows is a service Premiere On Call, a phone banking service for voice talent. What this means is, they hire people to call in. If you ever listened to one of the shows distributed by Premiere, you may find yourself impressed at how a caller would bring up a subject which then the host would have a perfect response to, like a perfect pitch in a baseball game to allow the home run hit. Premiere On Call’s hiring standards appear to be focused on hiring people able to generate accents, vocal inflections, or other ways to enable re-use of the same voice actor multiple times without being identified as such.

Limbaugh obtained the largest audience during an era when audience count was made by manually filled out diaries, a practice which has been slowly phased out over the past few years, as detailed electronic tracking became available. Once the detailed tracking was available, Rush’s ratings dropped significantly, by over a third. With an estimated weekly audience of 15 million users now, that comes to an average of less than 3,000 listeners per station, not very good ratings at all. For comparison, left-wing giant Ed Schultz on Jones Radio Network sports an estimated 8,000 listeners per station. To get these numbers, we took the totals given from Talkers Magazine and cross-referenced with the number of stations that carry each show. Rush is carried on over 10x as many stations as Big Eddie. Even though Rush’s overall listenership is high, the number per station is low.

………He gained these stations originally due to an arrangement system whereby these stations were given his show, for free, in exchange for 15 minutes of advertising space. It was a win-win for these small stations, effectively adding filler to the stations airwaves in a non-prime spot.

What a surprise, the nation’s leading spokesman for recreational Oxycontin use appears to be running a pump and dump ratings scheme.

What, You Mean the Money Won’t Only Go to Jeebus?

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Legislators in Louisiana have just realized that when they voted for Governor Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program, that they voted to fund Muslim schools as well:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.

“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.”

So I guess that she opposes giving vouchers to Yeshivas as well.

Also, this is a very, VERY stupid person.

H/T Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??!!??!!??

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Wingnut Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, he of the “emergency manager” law intended to make sure that Black votes don’t count, has just vetoed the latest voter suppression bill to come out of the Michigan lege:

Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed election reform bills that sparked angry protests and cries of voter suppression during committee hearings.

Snyder, in one day doubling the number of bills vetoed during his tenure, nixed bills that aimed to prevent voting fraud by requiring a voter to reaffirm U.S. citizenship before receiving a ballot and requiring photo ID when picking up an absentee ballot from a city office.

He also rejected a bill that would have required training for people, companies and organizations participating in voter registration drives.

Snyder in a release said he appreciates the issue of ensuring voters are eligible and U.S. citizens, but believes the bills would have created voter confusion among absentee voters.

Snyder also said he supports the concept of training individuals involved in voter registration, but said the changes with the registration of third party voter registration organizations, and the timing and training of those entities, may cause confusion with ongoing voter registration efforts.

I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this.

He’s arguably one of the three biggest Teabagger governors in the country, and he just vetoed a Republican voter suppression effort.

This Is The World’s Violin, and It’s Playing Just For You

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Yes, the rat F%$# made this Ad

Republican political adman Fred Davis, the man who created Carly Fiorina’s infamous “Demon Sheep” ad, is sad because he’s caught flak for the fact that he’s a contemptible human being:

He’s not a witch.

Nor, Fred Davis wants the world to know, is he a racist.

Humbled, humiliated, saddened and chagrined, the Republican ad maker recently sagged into a chair in a noisy Las Vegas restaurant and for more than an hour talked about May 17, a date that will forever be ringed in red as one of personal infamy.

That day the New York Times published on its front page details of a proposed Davis-run campaign against President Obama, focusing on the incendiary Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the president’s former pastor, “in a big, attention-arresting way.”

The intent, a do-over of sorts, was to “inflame … questions” about Obama’s character and competence. A 54-page outline, leaked to the newspaper by someone apprehensive of the plan, was very much like Davis himself: jokey, irreverent and a bit out there.

Obama was described, and demeaned, as a “metrosexual black Abraham Lincoln.” Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee for whom Davis worked, was derided as “a crusty old politician who often seemed confused” and failed to exploit the target-rich opportunity presented by the venomous Wright.

………

Two of his commercials were among the most widely noticed of the 2010 campaign: the infamous “demon sheep” ad for California’s Carly Fiorina and his meet-the-candidate spot for Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, with its indelible opening, “I’m not a witch.” Both U.S. Senate hopefuls lost their elections, though Fiorina made it through a combative primary and, hey, Davis made you look, didn’t he?

………

But when it comes to the proposed super PAC campaign, Davis insisted, it was never his intention to use race as an incitement. “I am maybe the only person in America who didn’t see that as racist,” he said of juxtaposing the president with the fiery rants of his longtime pastor, who Obama disavowed in the heat of the 2008 primary. “I saw it as an interesting fact in a guy’s upbringing and the way he’s formed his opinions.”

No, you’re not a racist, and you’re not an asshole, because your previous oeuvre has been so uniformly positive and nice.

Listen while I say this slowly: If you did not see that as racist, it is because you are not only racist, but because you are a stupid racist.

Your presentation was too racist for a Republican billionaire, OK?

You f%$# with the bull, you get the horns.

Perhaps you want some cheese with your whine?

Here’s a Meme to Run On

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This is a rebate check from an insurance company because of Obamacare:


Click for full size.

The short version (more at link) is that insurance companies have to spend 80% of premiums on healthcare, as opposed to paying obscene bonuses to its executives.

Any excess has to be returned to the ratepayers.

I’m no political consultant, but I think that video of people holding up checks that they got back from insurance companies might play well on Youtube.

I’m just sayin’.

Republicans Cheat Again

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Faced with the prospect of the receipt of many more signatures than is required to reverse Michigan’s emergency manager law, and to enshrine labor rights in the constitution, Republican members of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers have resigned to prevent a meeting by denying quorum:

The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has cancelled a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday, June 26th. I confirmed this with a phone call to the Elections Bureau this afternoon. Additionally, Republican Board member Jeff Timmer is rumored to have resigned and it is believed that the other Republican, Norm Shinkle, will resign as well, leaving the Board without a quorum. I have been unable to confirm Timmer’s resignation but I have heard about it from multiple sources.

Without a quorum, the Board will be unable to certify ANY of the referendums headed for the ballot in November. They will need to wait until Governor Rick Snyder appoints replacements, a process that could take … oh, I don’t know … some time. Wouldn’t want to rush into it or anything, make a hasty decision and such.

Despicable.

Let’s be clear here, anyone who thinks that you can negotiate in good faith with folks like this is delusional.