Headlines For Today

Headlines - Monday January 30

2012-01-30T11:22:00.001-06:00

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Our allies: Pakistan is trying the doctor who helped catch Osama bin Laden for treason.

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Callista must need a new Tiffany diamond-studded pressure gauge.

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Sarah Palin continues to be the dumbest person in national politics. Here's why Republicans should support Newt Gingrich (warning — link points to Brietbart's site):

"So, if for no other reason to rage against the machine vote for Newt, annoy a liberal."

No, see, Newt Gingrich has absolutely no chance of winning the general election. This delights and comforts liberals. We want Gingrich to win the nomination because he will crash and burn far worse than Goldwater, McCain or anyone else the modern Republican Party has elevated to prominence.

Also, supporting someone just because they annoy someone else? It's this kind of childish nonsense that's dooming the Republican Party to second-rate status.

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Oddly named head of the RNC Reince Priebus has compared President Carebear to the Italian cruise ship captain who took off in a lifeboat after his ship ran aground at Isola del Giglio killing 17 people:

"In a few months, this is all going to be ancient history, and we are going to talk about our own little Captain Schettino, which is President Obama who is abandoning the ship here in the United States and is more interested in campaigning than doing his job as president."

(Think Progress)

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If Boehner was a Democrat, he would be run out of office on a rail over this. "It is an ethics violation for elected officials to use their political office to perform official acts on behalf of special interests, and particularly when special interests are campaign donors. There is also a serious problem when a sitting congressional representative performs official acts for personal financial profit by promoting a project the representative has a financial stake in. The problem becomes egregious when the elected official lies about a project to profit himself and campaign donors and our current Speaker of the House has taken those issues a step farther. On Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received a complaint from an environmental group with accusations that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline's owners (TransCanada) are in violation of SEC Rule 10b(5) - Employment of Manipulative and Deceptive Practices to bolster stock prices. ... The complaint sent to the SEC said TransCanada is using "false or misleading statements about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline" and that they "consistently used public statements and information it knows are false in a concerted effort to secure permitting approval of Keystone XL from the U.S. government." The complaint continues that the fallacious information misleads investors, U.S. and Canadian officials, the media, and the public "in order to bolster its balance sheets and share price," and who is the point-man pushing the Keystone XL pipeline with lies and misinformation? Speaker of the House John Boehner."

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Today, the National Park Service will crack down on "sleeping activity" at the two Occupy DC camps at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza, which some say is an effective eviction. Park Service officials told protesters on Friday that they "may be subject to arrest and their property subject to seizure as evidence" if there are evident "camping violations" by noon today.

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We've been asking about this since David Petraeus was the Mayor of Mosul -- The money went missing on his watch. "The U.S. Defense Department cannot account for about $2 billion it was given to cover Iraq-related expenses and is not providing Iraq with a complete list of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, according to two new government audits. ... The reports come from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. ... The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that, the inspector general says in an audit published Friday. ... Although the Department of Defense (DoD) had "internal processes and controls" to track payments, the "bulk of the records are missing," the report says, adding that the department is searching for them. ... Other documents are missing as well, including monthly reports documenting expenses, the audit says. ... "From July 2004 through December 2007, DoD should have provided 42 monthly reports. However, it can locate only the first four reports.""

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Keeping a campaign promise, the Obama campaign is refunding money donated by federal lobbyists. "When we catch [a contribution] from a federal lobbyist that slips through the cracks, we immediately return the contribution," said a campaign spokesman. "Unlike our opponents, our campaign does not accept contributions from Washington lobbyists."

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Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R) will face seven felony voting fraud charges at a trial beginning this morning. White, who maintains his innocence, allegedly registered to vote at a home that was not his residence and served as a councilman in a district where he did not live.

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NEW YORK—We left you on Friday with some rather unsettling developments in the coming War Against the Machines, and we're afraid to report there's more bad news on that front today: the US military apparently left behind some drones during its "withdrawal" from Iraq last December—and the Iraqi people are not happy about this! (something something nobody could have predicted.) The State Department has contracted a "small fleet" of drones to serve as part of a security detail for the various American diplomats still remaining in Iraq. "The State Department drones," reports the Times, "carry no weapons and… are much smaller than armed drones, with wingspans as short as 18 inches, compared with 55 feet for the Predators." Catch that? "Much much smaller than armed drones"—as if this is supposed to comfort us! No, sorry, this is even more terrifying. Because, seriously, think about it: if those 55-foot Predators are basically like the Decepticons of the War Against the Machines, then these little foot-and-a-half long guys are like that one miniature Transformer jobber that turned himself into a boombox and hacked Air Force One. Well! Happy Monday, everyone: we all live in a Michael Bay movie now. READ MORE »

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SOUTH DAKOTA: House Votes To Include Bible Study In Public Schools

Tax payer money should not have to pay for this. That's what tax free churches are for.

Headlines - Sunday January 29

2012-01-29T10:31:00.001-06:00

Slow news day....

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The Arizona Brewers

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Earlier today, Scotland Yard arrested five more individuals, including a police officer, in the ever-growing News Corporation phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom. While previous arrests focused on phone hacking at the now-closed News of the World tabloid, today's arrests are related to allegations of phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's flagship tabloid, the Sun. According to the BBC, those arrested today include: "Graham Dudman, a former managing editor; Fergus Shanahan, a former deputy editor; Mike Sullivan, the paper's crime editor; and Chris Pharo, the paper's head of news." With today's arrests, 13 total people have been arrested in the course of the investigation into News Corporation's alleged bribery of police officers. If News Corporation is found to have bribed police officers or other public officials, the company could also face serious legal consequences in the United States under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

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Herman Cain has endorsed Newt Gingrich. That seems about right.

The former pizza executive, who left the race before the first nominating contests after facing accusations of unwanted sexual advances, suggested the two have both undergone intense scrutiny. "I know that Speaker Gingrich is running for president and going through this sausage grinder," Cain said. "I know what this sausage grinder is all about." Cain is set to campaign with Gingrich on Monday in an 11th hour push for support. Gingrich is in a fierce fight for Tuesday's Florida's GOP primary with Mitt Romney.

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The Freedom From Religion Foundation is pissed off about PA declaring the "year of the bible":

Our constitution grants sovereignty not to a deity or a 'holy book,' but to 'We, the People.' There is no reference to God, the bible, the Ten Commandments or Jesus in the U.S. Constitution, just as there are no references to 'consent of the governed,' 'civil liberties' or 'democracy' in the bible. Those who have truly studied the bible realize that it is a moral quagmire, a behavioral grab bag, which has been used to justify automatic rule, tyranny, slavery, the degradation of women and gays, child abuse, war, atrocity and mayhem.

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According to the Department of Justice, the primary schedule recently proposed by the Texas Republican Party would violate the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act because it would not provide enough time for military voters to participate.

I thought the Republicans love the military?

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Quotes don't get much better than this one by Bob Dole.

"Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?" asked a perplexed Gingrich, to whom Dole bluntly explained: "Because it saves them time."

That one's a keeper.

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Mario: Republicans preach a "keep 'em stupid" policy

President Obama at the SOTU.

"Higher education can't be a luxury — it is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford," Obama said in his speech.

An obvious enough statement, right? Well, not for the buffoons performing in the Republican clown show.

"It's no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go college," Santorum said Wednesday in Florida, according to CBS News. "The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure there wasn't one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?"

It's getting too stupid for words. It doesn't matter what this President says, the wingnuts will find fault with it and turn it into an us-against-them issue. Only a paranoid group of psychopaths obsessed with turning their country into a land of God-fearing, Christian Luddites hoping to go back to a make-believe time when milk and honey flowed from the ground would find fault with a president seeking higher education for all.

But there is a method to their madness. Keeping 'em stupid is just about the only way the right can cling on to a base who has been spoon fed lies and propaganda for the last four decades. If they could find a way to keep these people away from universities of supposed liberal propaganda and instead keep them focused on fair and balanced news sources like Fox, they might just be able to get a bigoted, delusional prick like Rick Santorum elected President some day.

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NBC/WSJ poll: Majority would vote out every member of Congress

Headlines - Saturday January 28

2012-01-28T10:17:00.001-06:00

Andy Borowitz: For those who missed the Republican debate, there's a great piece about it in the Book of Revelation.

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I Hope They Don't Remove the Bleeding Crucifixes from Their Restrooms

Sarah Palin spoke out on Thursday against Alaska Airlines' decision to stop including prayer cards with its meal trays. The airline announced the move a day earlier, ending the tradition that lasted for 30 years.

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Apple has created 700,000 jobs - in Asia.

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Second Mayor calls @GovBrewer ~~Otis the Drunk~~ a prevaricator. "Out of the three officials who met President Obama on an airport tarmac near Phoenix earlier this week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is now the only one who has characterized the president as anything other than cordial. ... In numerous TV and radio interviews since the meeting, Brewer has said the president was "tense to say the least" and took issue with a book she wrote last year. She said Obama walked away from her while she was in mid-sentence and even told one Phoenix television station she felt "a little bit threatened" by the encounter. ... But Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, who was standing just feet away from the president and the governor on Wednesday during their now-infamous encounter, told TPM that Obama seemed calm the whole time. ... "He wasn't tense at all," Stanton said on Friday. "The guy's a pro." ... Though Stanton declined to discuss exactly what the governor and president said to each other, he said Obama's classic coolness was evident. ... "He doesn't get animated, but he looks you in the eye and tells you what he thinks," Stanton said. "And I think that's honestly what he did is he looked the governor in the eye and spoke and told her what he was really feeling." ... Stanton, a Democrat, is now the second elected Arizona official whose account of the incident contradicts the way Brewer has described it."

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Republican Representative Larry Pittman of Cabarrus County, NC thinks, sort of like Newt Gingrich did back in the '90s, that capital punishment is the only way to scare people like "abortionists, rapists and kidnappers" (what, no murderers?) into being better citizens (and more conservative). But Pittman goes a step further than Newt: he thinks we should bring back public hanging. It's the only way, etc. Well, about every 36 seconds a Republican calls for the return of some barbaric practice or another, so big deal. But Pittman had a funny way of expressing his views: not boldly or proudly, in front of his fellow lawmakers or at the very least, atop a milk crate in some park, but in an e-mail that he accidentally sent to every member of the General Assembly of North Carolina. Ah, well.

Pittman, like Taco Man before him, is using the excuse that he was just in a bad mood. Apparently Pittman's lightbulb of an idea was generated by the pompous e-mail that murderer inmate Danny Robbie Hembree Jr. recently sent to North Carolina's Gaston Gazette bragging about how wonderful life in prison is and how he'll never be executed thanks to endless appeals.

Pittman apparently thinks that if we could just hang Hembree, everything would be fine. So presumably just get rid of the court system as well. Have angry mobs vote over whether someone committed a crime and then have them gather in the town courtyard to watch the suckers die. Pittman's e-mail:

We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner," Pittman wrote in the email. "If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.

And then, somewhat swiftly, the apology:

I was filled with anger, disgust, and frustration, as well as a profound sense of grief for the family of the young woman he killed. I felt a need to 'vent' some of these feelings and intended to do so to him alone. In the process, I got a bit carried away and overstated my case. I am sure I am not the only one who has ever done that.

No, sir, you are not even the only person (Republican) to have done it this week. Get in line! [WRAL]

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Let the under-oath finger-pointing begin! "A former aide to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) will testify against her former colleagues after officials filed charges of illegal campaign activity while working on taxpayer time, local media has learned. ... Darlene Wink, a 61-year-old former public employee charged on Thursday with two misdemeanor counts of political solicitation by a public employee, could be the weak link that spills yet another major scandal over the embattled governor, even as he appears likely to face a recall election later this year. ... Prosecutors on Thursday announced four felony charges for another Walker insider, 43-year-old Kelly Rindfleisch, who worked with Wink as one of Walker's aides. ... That brings the total number of Walker insiders facing criminal charges to six, according to The Wisconsin State Journal, which concluded the ongoing investigation had turned up a "pattern of illegal fundraising" and confirmed that Wink was working on a plea bargain that would include testimony."

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A recent history of the GOP's dehumanizing and divisive language that threatens to plague the primary process for weeks to come.

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Arizona cop not sure what big deal is over his bullet-riddled Obama photo

What had we gone, a whole week or so without a news story about a public official cracking jokes online about murdering Barack Obama? That's kind of a long time! Don't "worry," however, Mexico still does not want Arizona back, so we will never go too long without one of these kinds of things while a black guy is president: the Secret Service is investigating Sgt. Pat Shearer, a Peoria, Arizona police officer, after he posted a Facebook picture of a group of assault rifle-wielding teenagers holding up a bullet-riddled t-shirt with Barack Obama's face on it during one of their Future Gas Station Attendants of America meetings. Shearer has taken the photo down, but come on, he just wants to know, what is everyone's problem? Since when did everyone start taking assassination so seriously? READ MORE »

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Pennsylvania House votes to declare bible most awesomest book of 2012

Oh thank goodness, IT WAS ABOUT TIME: Pennsylvania lawmakers unanimously approved a resolution declaring 2012 the "Year of the Bible" in their state, to publicly recognize some of the important famous people in American history who have owned Bibles and talked about Bibles — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and of course possibly most famously and importantly of all, Ronald Reagan. OH and, also, to recognize "our national need to study and apply the teachings of the holy scriptures," AHEM AHEM. No mention of which teachings, though. Maybe some of the fun ones about the rules for public stonings in Deutoronomy or something? READ MORE »

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Internet mean girl Sarah Palin is forgoing her usual illiterate tweeting in order to defend, on teevee, Newt Gingrich, a multimedia huckster who may or may not have illegally promised Palin a cabinet position in his fantasy moon presidency. The former governor must have really pissed someone off at Fox because she's been relegated to commentating on some closed-circuit feed called Fox Business News, where she told John Stossel that the establishment (BOO!) is "trying to crucify this man and rewrite history and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years." Never change, Sarah. Never change! READ MORE »

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Oh look, Romney attacked Kennedy's blind trust during 1994 Senate race.

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The newly-released GDP numbers fell a little short of expectations, but given the larger trajectory, it was at least encouraging to see the domestic economy moving in the right direction in the final three months of 2011.

The American economy picked up a little steam last quarter, with output growing at an annualized rate of 2.8 percent, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The pace of growth was faster than in the third quarter, when gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 1.8 percent.

The fourth quarter was easily the best three-month period of 2011, and the strongest the U.S. economy has seen since the spring and early summer of 2010.

It's important to realize, though, that 2.8% growth is hardly a breakthrough or evidence of a robust recovery. Under normal conditions, a figure like this would suggest the economy was fairly healthy and growing at a steady pace, but therein lies the point: these are not normal conditions. Given the severity of the Great Recession, and how much ground there is to make up, we'd much prefer to see a significantly higher number.

This should be of particular interest to policymakers, who may be tempted to see stronger growth as an excuse for inaction -- or worse, austerity measures intended to slow the economy down on purpose. The fact remains that we're slowly crawling out of a ditch -- taking money out of the economy and ignoring high unemployment may very well push us backwards. This is especially true in light of the ongoing risks posed by outside economic forces beyond the nation's control.

With that, here's a chart showing GDP numbers by quarter since the Great Recession began. The red columns show the economy under the Bush administration; the blue columns show the economy under the Obama administration.

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The least shocking news of the day is that Ron Paul was both fully aware of the contents of the Ron Paul Survival Report, his racist newsletter, and that he personally reviewed each issue.

Oh, but, he's against drones!

These latest revelations do not conclusively demonstrate that Paul is a racist scumbag, who just happens to apologize for the South while speaking in front of Confederate flags, but they do show he knew full-well what was contained in the newsletters.

It's unfortunate some fellow liberals wasted their time pretending Ron Paul was a secret-progressive hero.

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Headlines - Friday January 27

2012-01-27T09:21:00.001-06:00

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It's a real shocker, but Newt Gingrich's campaign has conceded to ABC News that witnesses supposedly ready to testify he was not unfaithful to his second wife were, in fact, imaginary.

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Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

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Mother Jones: Mitt Romney's Kids Pay an Even Lower Tax Rate Than He Does

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Longstanding tension between Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Democratic President Barack Obama flared into the public spotlight Wednesday just after Air Force One touched down in Phoenix.

Brewer, who was on the tarmac to greet Obama, hand-delivered a letter before engaging the president "intensely" for several minutes, including pointing her finger directly at him, according to Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown, acting as a pool reporter for other media…

Fun facts about Jan Brewer: One of her sons died in 2007 from cancer and AIDS - the rumor in Arizona was that she had disowned him for being gay and had not spoken to him in years. Another son was declared criminally insane for the kidnapping and rape of a Phoenix woman - he spent 20 years in a mental institution. Although Brewer may or may not bear any responsibility for her son's serious mental illness, she is totally responsible: for having his criminal record sealed while running for governor, aka Abuse of Power, and for collecting approximately $75,000 in Social Security benefits for him WHILE his care was being provided for by the taxpayers of Arizona."

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Laura Flanders: Not A Peep About President's Praise for War

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Pot calls kettle black - Notable dancing felon and former House Majority Leader Tom Delay says that staff-banging serial adulterer Newt Gingrich was erratic and unprincipled. (Think Progress)

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Nancy Pelosi is holding an anvil over Gingrich's bulbous head:

A little while ago, Pelosi said in an interview that she was familiar with "a thousand pages" of documents related to the ethics probe of Gingrich that got him bounced from Congress. That triggered the first round of right-wing consipracy-mongering; her office quickly cleared up that all those documents are already public. They're online right here.

Undaunted, Romney picked up this line the other day, calling on Gingrich to "release" the probe. Many news outlets pointed it out again: The probe is already public.

Yesterday, Pelosi told CNN in an offhand comment that Gingrich will never be president, because "there's something that I know." Drudge madly flacked this "revelation" with a massive headline claiming: "PELOSI THREAT: NEWT WON'T BE PRESIDENT."

Who knows how something like this could work. The Marianne revelations actually helped Gingrich in South Carolina where "hike the Appalachian Trail" is commonplace by now.

Unless there are photos of Gingrich performing abortions, I can't imagine what could possibly harm Gingrich beyond the litany of other scandals and skeletons. This is guy who survived "right wing social engineering", the Pelosi global warming video, Marianne, Tiffany's, etc, etc.

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Corporations are good people (according to Romney)

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Endorsements - Hey guys, remember that time when dancing felon Tom Delay destroyed Newticles' chances of winning the felon vote? Me Neither, but anyway all is not lost! Our favorite (GOP) staff-banging serial adulterer is winning 80% of the felons in Duke Cunningham's cell block! (Voice of San Diego)

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The Republicans in the Colorado state legislature are making another run at expanding gun rights, reintroducing legislation that would allow concealed weapons in schools and expand the "castle doctrine" to businesses. Republicans say they are just defending the Second Amendment while Democrats accuse them of grandstanding and straying from the job-creation agenda that both parties promised would be their legislative focus this year.

A proposal running simultaneously in the House and Senate would allow concealed weapons on school grounds and college campuses if a person has a permit and another bill would let business owners and employees use deadly force against intruders. Both proposals have previously failed, including last year when Senate Democrats rejected the concealed weapons bill.
Another proposal would prevent state officials from restricting the use of firearms during a declared state of emergency. Another bill would eliminate background checks done by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for firearm purchases. Republican Rep. Mark Waller, the legislation's sponsor, said the state is spending unnecessarily on its background check program because it duplicates checks already done federally.
CBI spokesman Lance Clem said the agency opposes Waller's bill because the federal checks are not as fast or thorough as the state checks.
Republican Rep. Kevin Priola, a sponsor of the concealed weapon legislation, said the goal is to improve public safety by allowing people to protect themselves.

Just what the state that gave us the Columbine massacre needs! Guns on every campus!

The presence of guns in schoos does not make anyone safer. In fact, the presence of guns on campus creates a negative learning environment and increases the level of inherent danger by increasing the odds of a tragic accident occurring, as well as increasing the odds of a gun falling into the wrong hands via theft, a more common occurrence in communal settings than private residences.

But they aren't stopping there. Oh heavens no! They are also considering legislation that would eliminate background checks for firearms purchases, which would make it even easier for people who shouldn't have guns to get their hands on one -- and that's a problem that is already manifesting itself in tragic ways. It certainly doesn't need to be helped along and made worse, which is exactly the results that would be realized if the GOP legislators in Colorado get their way.

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On the day Gabrielle Giffords resigned from Congress to continue to recover from being shot in the head, it looks like someone in Missouri has decided that the way to get rid of Democratic lawmakers is via a gun barrel.

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It's not just about abortion...OR birth control. They just hate women and want a legally-enforced patriarchy. Period.

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Buddhists have a saying; money is suffering. Mitt Romney is about to live those words. The twitter tells me the Romney camp optimistically predicted earlier that Willard's tax returns would cease making news after tomorrow. I assume that was before Romney's inconsistent financial filings hit the news wires.

Some investments listed in Mitt and Ann Romney's 2010 tax returns – including a now-closed Swiss bank account and other funds located overseas – were not explicitly disclosed in the personal financial statement the GOP presidential hopeful filed in August as part of his White House bid. [...]

A review by the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau found that at least 23 funds and partnerships listed in the couple's 2010 tax returns did not show up or were not listed in the same fashion on Romney's most recent financial disclosure, including 11 based in low-tax foreign countries such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg.

The Romney campaign described the discrepancies as "trivial." Of course they are. What's a few foreign tax shelters, more or less, among friends?

Paraphrasing a bit, a campaign spokesmouth pointed out Romney released 600 pages of tax returns for Pete's sake so why is anyone surprised that it's hard to keep track of that much money? Also they would like to point out they will have to pay an army of accountants overtime to straighten the filings out, thus Willard's personal contribution to the job creation just doubled.

Also, too, Romney may have paid zero taxes in 2009.

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From the Herald:

A Senate committee approved two bills on Thursday that would place more restrictions on women seeking abortions.
Republican Sen. Jack Westwood of Erlanger, who is chairman of the Senate Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee, said he hopes the bills will reduce the number of abortions in Kentucky.
One bill would require women to have ultrasounds prior to abortion. The other would clarify existing law by requiring women to have a face-to-face consultation with a physician, licensed nurse, physician's assistant or physician-delegated social worker prior to having an abortion.
Sen. Perry Clark, a Louisville Democrat, said that similar proposals have been included in a single bill in years past, but the sponsors are politicizing the issue by dividing them into separate measures this year.

Don't be fooled. The "ultrasound" is not an external ultrasound with a goop-covered computer mouse rubbed on the belly. The "ultrasound" this bill requires is internal and beyond merely "invasive:" it's a camera on a probe shoved up the vagina and deep into the uterus. It's painful and horrifically traumatic. It is against her will. It's rape.

(And no, morons, you don't have to use a penis to rape. Anything that forcibly penetrates is an instrument of rape.)

Your tax dollars at work. Forcing doctors to rape their patients. For the sole purpose of shaming women into back-alley, illegal abortions.

Because making abortion illegal - or just expensive, inconvenient, difficult and/or humiliating - doesn't reduce the number of abortions. It only reduces the number of women who survive them.

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According to the latest data from the Commerce Department, the economy expanded by 2.8 percent last quarter, coming in a bit below expectations. Analysts had expected about 3 percent growth.

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Ford Motor Company announced record annual profits of over $20 billion after announcing a net income of $13.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011. This marks the third consecutive year of profitability for the American automaker after nearly falling into bankruptcy in 2008.

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After resisting for months, Mitt Romney finally released one year of his tax returns this week. Here's what we learned:

Mitt Romney's father George released 12 years of his taxes when he ran for president in 1968, stating, "One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show."

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Thrice-married Newt Gingrich, who has previously described same-sex marriage as "a temporary aberration that will dissipate," told a right-wing radio show this afternoon that gay and lesbian unions are akin to "pagan" behaviors:

GINGRICH: It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

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Did Romney Secretly Baptize Holocaust Victims To Make Them Mormon?

Here's a wacky fun-time ritual thing the Mormons do that you may or may not have heard about: they love to baptize dead people and thus declare them members of their magic moon faith, mostly so that the Mormons can claim a 7 billion person membership similar to the way that those McDonald's signs claim "50 billion anusburgers served since 1940″ to reassure you that it's, like, really popular. This has, throughout history, not always pleased the relatives of the dead people who were baptized — say for instance, the relatives of Jewish Holocaust victims who found their family members' names among those who had been posthumously converted to Mormonism. And so hey, know where there are lots of Jewish people these days? Florida. What's happening in Florida next week? A Republican presidential primary. Who's leading the polls in that primary right now? A Mormon. Has Mormon Mitt Romney been secretly baptizing Holocaust victims in his spare time?

Headlines - Thursday January 26

2012-01-26T09:24:00.000-06:00

"Newt Gingrich's ex-wife went on nightline and said that he wanted to have an open marriage. This is the second wife, talking about him when he was fooling around with what became the third wife. Newt wanted apparently to have his wife and his marriage and also women on the side giving him oral sex. This way he could be nice and relaxed when he went to work and accused blacks of feeling entitled." –Bill Maher

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Romney gave $100 million to his sons and paid zero gift tax.

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Buffett just seems like such a good guy:

Buffett, a Democrat and Obama-supporter, had one question for Mitt Romney: "Do you think the tax system should be perpetuated?"

He doesn't blame the former Massachusetts governor or any of the ultra-rich for paying lower tax rates than most Americans and challenged Congress to make a change.

"I don't pay hardly any payroll taxes," Buffett said. "Gov. Romney hardly pays any payroll taxes, Newt Gingrich hardly pays any payroll taxes. Debbie pays lots of payroll taxes."

He lashed out at assertions from many Republican leaders that the "Buffett rule" is class warfare.

"If this is a war, my side has the nuclear bomb," Buffett said. "We have K Street. … We have Wall Street. Debbie doesn't have anybody. I want a government that is responsive to the people who got the short straw in life."

Of course he is 100% accurate.

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It's hard to believe (no, actually it isn't), but Willard and his number 1 wife own or owned millions of dollars worth of a Goldman Sachs investment fund invested heavily in mortgage-backed obligations. And the current owners of those mortgage debts began foreclosure proceedings against thousands of Floridians. Whoopsie!

Bob Cesca:

I'm not going to shame Mitt Romney for doing business with Goldman since the bank is so large, however not everyone can say they are invested in an "elite division" — gasp! Elite! — only open to those who have $10 million in their pocket to invest. And given that $10 million is only half of Romney's yearly income, it's another sign that he has absolutely nothing in common with average Americans. It's also why he struggles to appear as though he does.

Aside from being invested in an "elite" division of Goldman Sachs, a new report from ThinkProgress also indicates his investments in Goldman may have benefited from the foreclosure crisis and bailout funds.

Along with his investments in Bain Capital funds linked to offshore tax havens, the Romneys have large investments in the Goldman Sachs Strategic Income Fund (institutional class). The firm's March 2011 annual report for the fund notes that about 8 percent of the fund is invested in banks and 24.5 percent is invested in mortgage-backed obligations. Romney's form says he has invested between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000 in the fund and his wife Ann has invested an additional $1 million-plus. Since the 2008 economic meltdown and the enactment of the Troubled Asset Relief Fund, this fund has done quite well, growing 7.88 percent between April 2010 and March 2011.

Woops! It just so happens that Florida was hit particularly hard by the recession, however this could also be very damaging to Romney heading into Nevada where the wrath of the foreclosure crisis was greatest.

Question: Why should we Let Detroit Go Bankrupt while investments made by Mitt Romney are rescued? Does Mitt Romney secretly love bail outs?

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Newt Gingrich, pandering in Florida: "By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," Gingrich said to applause. He said the development would include commercial and private efforts, and will make apparent, "we clearly have the capacity that Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to us." Gingrich also said he would push to develop propulsion technology that would get man to Mars. He emphasized that it doesn't have to be expensive, exploration in partnership with private companies can lower the cost.

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Today former Cuban president Fidel Castro weighed in on the GOP field of candidates.

Castro said he always assumed the candidates would try to outdo each other on the issue of Cuba, but that he was nonetheless appalled by the level of debate. "The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been," said the retired Cuban leader, who has dueled with 11 U.S. administrations since his 1959 revolution.

What could you possibly add to that?

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Westboro Endorses Obama

Timothy Phelps tells HuffPo:

"He's a liar, thief, and adulterer... that's Newt Gingrich, the so-called "champion" of the conservative party. These people claim to be Christian, New Gingrich and Mitt Romney and some of them others. They aren't pure followers of Jesus Christ. I wouldn't trust [any] of them with a handful of change to go get me some bubble gum. There's nothing of any value in [any] of those human beings. I would rather have Obama."

Wow. And they think THEY are followers of christ?

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"You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and making $20 million for no work, to have some fantasy this far from reality." -Newt Gingrich on Mitt Romney's immigration policy

Keep going GOP candidates! You're doing great!

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Krugman: Finding the truth

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So what do you say to a news reporter when asked how you'll improve relations with the Latino community after four of your police officers were just busted by the FBI for racial profiling? Well, you probably wouldn't say this.

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Former Bushie, Mitch Daniels Attacks Obama for Not Fixing the Mess He Helped Make

And here's Charles Pierce on his "fuzzy-wuzzy math"

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"Lemon tree very pretty and

the lemon flower is sweet

But the fruit of the poor lemon

is impossible to eat."

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Niger, El Salvador Beat United States in Press Freedom Last Year

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Wonkette:

Were you, like us, very ultra super secretly sighing to yourself — under your breath when you were absolutely sure no one could hear you — hasn't this campaign season gotten sorta boring since Michele Bachmann dropped out? WELL SIGH NO MORE: her surrealist sideshow is coming BACK following Michele's announcement today that she will run for re-election to Congress! Will the voters of Minnesota's 6th District once again choose to be represented by a whacked out, pill-snarfing lunatic screamer over any other available adult human? True, it's not like America will be in any DANGER if she wins again — she never actually does anything in Congress, ever. She is more like very expensive, taxpayer-funded entertainment. But hey, maybe Minnesota's 6th District is feeling flush again this year? UPDATE: HAHA oh god we love it, Michele Bachmann has no idea what words mean in English and went on Fox News to qualify her initial statement of "yes" with more of a "maybe definitely yes" declaration of non-candidacy candidacy. Who knows!

The AP reports:

"I'm looking forward to coming back and bringing a strong, powerful voice to Washington, D.C.," Bachmann said.

Bachmann will be a formidable candidate in Minnesota's 6th District, where other Republican hopefuls had stood aside until she made a decision on running for re-election. Some experts had speculated that Bachmann might instead turn to a career in talk media.

TALK MEDIA!!!! No, that is only for second-tier entertainers that the public doesn't want to pay for with taxpayer money, like Sarah Palin. [AP]

Headlines- Wednesday January 25

2012-01-25T10:32:00.000-06:00

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Magic panties enthusiast Willard Romney released his taxes last night: his effective tax rate is 13.9% and he made $42M+ over the last two years. Oh, yeah: he created zero jobs. (Think Progress)

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Romney advisers stressed that the holdings in the Caymans — along with those in a Swiss bank account that was closed in 2010 after an investment adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney — were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes. Uh-huh. So when Willard ran in 2008, they thought it was no big deal? (NYTimes)

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Gingrich won't 'allow' moderators to silence crowd at future debates.

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In Texas, investigators are demanding answers from Dallas meat-packing company Columbia Packing Company after photos appeared to show the company dumping pig blood into the Trinity River. The case raises some interesting legal questions. Keep reading here.

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Mitt Romney's just-released tax records reveals donations to viciously anti-gay hate groups. The Human Right Campaign reports via press release:

The tax returns for Mitt Romney's charitable foundation reveal that the GOP presidential hopeful has given at least $35,000 in recent years to groups actively working to halt the spread of LGBT equality and, in some cases, intentionally demonize LGBT people. The revelation comes two weeks after Romney said in New Hampshire that he opposed discrimination against LGBT Americans. But according to CNN, Romney donated to the extremist group Massachusetts Family Institute, as well as the Becket Fund. The Massachusetts Family Institute received $10,000 from Romney in 2006, while the Beckett Fund received $25,000 in 2009. The donations came from the Tyler Charitable Foundation, set up and funded by the Romneys.

"This is just another example of Mitt Romney saying one thing while doing the complete opposite. It's crystal clear that while Governor Romney claims to oppose discrimination, he is beholden to groups who make it their mission to vilify LGBT people," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. "Romney's financial support of extremist groups is indicative of a politician with rising national ambitions who knew he had to cozy up to those on the far-right in order to secure his party's nomination."

Among their many anti-gay agenda items, the Massachusetts Family Institute, you may recall, opposes efforts to reduce anti-gay bullying. They also advocate for destructive "reparative therapy."

RELATED: Romney also donated millions to the Mormon Church, which was one of the two primary institutional backers of Proposition 8. We've not yet learned how much, if any, of Romney's money was meant to support Prop 8.

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Looks like the clowns at Politifact are following DougJ's advice and just going full wingnut:

Politifact—the self-anointed fact checkers—grade this statement from the President speech tonight as "half-true:"

"In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005."

This is not half true or two-thirds true. It is just true.

So why, I ask you, why do they go where they go? Because of this:

In his remarks, Obama described the damage to the economy, including losing millions of jobs "before our policies were in full effect." Then he describe [sic!] the subsequent job increases, essentially taking credit for the job growth. But labor economists tell us that no mayor or governor or president deserves all the claim or all the credit for changes in employment.

Really? That's it? That makes the fact not a fact? I've seen some very useful work by these folks, but between this and this, Politifact just can't be trusted. Full stop.

Three million jobs were created, but according to the "fact-checkers," they don't exist because… Well, I have no idea.

Straight up pathetic. Those jobs were created, they were created under Obama's time in office. It's that simple. It's 100% true. Nothing about the statement that three million jobs being created in 22 months is inaccurate- he never even claimed he created them.

Just fucking worthless.

*** Update ***

From the comments:

Christ, he didn't even say he created 3 million jobs. He said "businesses" have.

Tom Brady: The Patriots won last week to go to the Super Bowl.

Politifact: Half-true. Tom Brady shouldn't get all the credit for the Patriots win.

They are just clowns. They aren't concerned with facts at all- they are concerned with their own relevance and status as fact-checkers.

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Remember when ol' Willard said that he was "unemployed"? Well, it seems that unemployment isn't too harsh for Mittens, since his investments pay him over twenty million dollars a year.

That's four hundred thousand dollars a week. No wonder he thought that his speaking fees weren't "much money". In comparison, if you made thirty grand a year and you had a side job where you took in an extra six hundred dollars: That would be comparable to the scale of Romney's little side work.

Remember Romney's offer to bet ten grand with Baby Dubya? That'd be like most people offering to bet fifteen or twenty bucks.

I suspect that anyone who believes that Mitt the Ripper cares about middle class Americans, let alone the working poor, probably needs to have their head examined.

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Dinosaur News of the Week "A nesting site for dinosaur eggs found in South Africa is 100 million years older than the previous oldest site. Palaeontologists found 10 separate nests, each containing clutches of up to 34 eggs measuring 6-7cm. The fossils are of the prosauropod Massospondylus, a relative of the long-necked sauropods such as Diplodocus. They suggest that Massospondylus returned to the site repeatedly, laying their eggs in groups in the earliest-known case of "colonial nesting". The 190-million-year-old finds also included embryonic dinosaur skeletons, and are described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They were found in a 25m stretch of rock in South Africa's Golden Gate Highlands National Park. The researchers suggest that many more sites remain embedded in the rock, which will be exposed as natural weathering processes continue. But the current find already vastly extends what is known about dinosaurs in their earliest days on Earth. "Even though the fossil record of dinosaurs is extensive, we actually have very little fossil information about their reproductive biology, particularly for early dinosaurs," said David Evans, associate curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum. "This amazing series of 190-million-year-old nests gives us the first detailed look at dinosaur reproduction early in their evolutionary history, and documents the antiquity of nesting strategies that are only known much later in the dinosaur record." "

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A terrible documentary film called "The Third Jihad," allegedly bestowed upon the New York Police Department by someone at the Department of Homeland Security, was used to "train" new policepersons, was apparently put "on a continuous loop" at NYPD HQ, and was viewed by nearly 1,500 officers in total during its run, which began in 2010. The film was created by the Clarion Fund, which put out another awful anti-Muslim film called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" prior to the 2008 election. The new one is filled with similarly violent imagery like deadly shootings and car bombs, and depicts an Islamic flag flying at the White House. "This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America," a voiceover says. "A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America." READ MORE »

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Headlines - Tuesday January 24

2012-01-24T10:43:00.001-06:00

F**k Joe Paterno

I wholeheartedly agree.

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Who would ever guess that someone working for Rupert Murdoch was against law and order? In this case, the police report details how the Murdoch reporters lied to police during an investigation of a murdered girl. The reporters seemed to have a strange fascination with delaying and confusing the investigation. Imagine how any of Murdoch's news outlets would report on such a scandal if it was a competitor. How twisted does someone have to be to drag a family through such an ordeal when the police were trying to solve a murder? As someone who lived through the untimely death of a brother, I can say that dragging out the conclusion is very painful. Murdoch owes that family a personal apology followed by a lot of money for such cruelty. When it's so obvious that the sleaze was so widespread within the newspaper, you have to look at the top management and put the blame there. They created the environment which made this all possible. Murdoch and his team are as slimy as they come.

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It's people like this who love Romney and who are backing him. Of course, this is also the type of work Romney did himself while at Bain. To them, buying another 15,000 sq. foot mansion or renting out another yacht is normal. They hide their money in offshore accounts and dump companies and employees to help fund their next party. Great people, really. They're a real credit to society and add so many minimum wage jobs while they skim off millions. Take away the parties and this is Romney's life except instead of wanting to buy a sports team, he wants to buy the Oval Office. This is one time where I'm going to agree with Rick Perry when he referred to private equity types like Romney and his type as "vulture capitalists."

So is chewing through companies, skimming fees and handing out minimum wage jobs really the best capitalism can offer? If that's the case it's no wonder so many people question the system. We have to do a lot more than this if we're going to save the middle class. It's wonderful for the playboy class but not so much for everyone else.

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Who knew being unemployed was so profitable:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released tax records on Tuesday indicating he will pay $6.2 million in taxes on a total of $45.2 million in income over the years 2010 and 2011.

Bowing to increasing political pressure to provide more detail about his vast wealth, the former private equity executive released tax returns indicating he and his wife, Ann, paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010. They expect to pay a 15.4 percent rate when they file their returns for 2011.

Romney's tax rate is below that of most wage-earning Americans because most of his income, as outlined in more than 500 pages of tax documents, flows from capital gains on investments.

Under the U.S. tax code, capital gains are taxed at 15 percent, compared with a top tax rate of 35 percent for wage earners.

He closed his Swiss bank account shortly after UBS named names, in case you were wondering.

How many of you lucky duckies paid 13% on your income last year? Ahh, patriotism.

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Remember, they hate us for our freedom

A little more than three days time served for each victim:

A Marine sergeant who told his troops to "shoot first, ask questions later" in a raid that killed unarmed Iraqi women, children and elderly pleaded guilty Monday in a deal that will carry no more than three months confinement and end the largest and longest-running criminal case against U.S. troops from the Iraq War.

The agreement marked a stunning and muted end to the case once described as the Iraq War's version of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The government failed to get one manslaughter conviction in the case that implicated eight Marines in the deaths of 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha in 2005.

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 31, of Meriden, Conn., who was originally accused of unpremeditated murder, pleaded guilty to negligent dereliction of duty for leading his troops to disregard rules of combat when they raided homes after a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy, killing one Marine and wounding two others.

Amazing.

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At long last, someone will face a waterboarding related prosecution

So much fail:

The Justice Department on Monday charged a former Central Intelligence Agency officer with disclosing classified information to journalists about the capture and brutal interrogation of a suspected member of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah — adding another chapter to the Obama administration's unprecedented crackdown on leaks.

In a criminal complaint filed on Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation accused John Kiriakou, the former C.I.A. agent, of disclosing to several journalists the identity of a C.I.A. analyst who worked on a 2002 operation that seized and interrogated Abu Zubaydah, including using the suffocation technique known as waterboarding. The journalists included one at The New York Times, the complaint charged.

"Safeguarding classified information, including the identities of C.I.A. officers involved in sensitive operations, is critical to keeping our intelligence officers safe and protecting our national security," said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., in a statement. "Today's charges reinforce the Justice Department's commitment to hold accountable anyone who would violate the solemn duty not to disclose such sensitive information."

Mr. Kiriakou, 47, played an important role in the fight against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks. He is the sixth person to be charged in connection with accusations of leaking classified information by the Obama administration, more than under any previous president.

At the same time, the Justice Department cleared the American Civil Liberties Union of wrongdoing for its efforts, on behalf of defense attorneys representing Abu Zubaydah and other "high value" Qaeda suspects, to identify officials involved in their clients' interrogations. The attorneys were hoping to call such officials to testify in eventual trials to make the case that their clients should not be executed because they had been tortured while in the custody of the United States government.

Among other things, the F.B.I. complaint accuses Mr. Kiriakou of being a source for a June 2008 front-page Times article, written by reporter Scott Shane, that identified a C.I.A. employee who played a major role in the capture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and another high-level Qaeda figure, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Robert Christie, a spokesman for The Times declined to discuss the matter. "We're not commenting at all," he said.

Remember, folks, in the national security state, the real criminals are not the torturers, but those who talk about the torturers. All the criminals who did this shit? We need to keep on walking, not look backwards, yadda yadda yadda. The people who talked about the criminals? Lock those fuckers up.

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Rick Santorum suggests that when life gives you rape, you should make rapeanade

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Just another isolated incident:

Ken Aden's Campaign Manager Comes Home To Find Cat Killed; "LIBERAL" Written On Its Corpse

Here's what happened: Jake Burris, campaign manager for Ken Aden, who is a Democrat running for Congress from Arkansas 3rd district, came home last night with his four kids. One of the children got to the front porch first, and found the family cat dead, its head bashed in, and the word "Liberal" scrawled on its side.

And no, my wingnut friends, this is not one of those "both sides do it," moments.

I could go on and do some windy speculating about the nature of right wing politics as a traditionalist reflex in the face of implacable and (life-by-life) incomprehensible technological, economic and social change.

But really, all I can think is that these folks are sick, and dangerous, and need to be out of politics as fast as we can get them gone.

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This is great news, and completely shocking:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that law enforcement authorities need a probable-cause warrant from a judge to affix a GPS device to a vehicle and monitor its every move.

The decision (.pdf) in what is arguably the biggest Fourth Amendment case in the computer age, rejected the Obama administration's position. The government had told the high court that it could even affix GPS devices on the vehicles of all members of the Supreme Court, without a warrant.

"We hold that the government's installation of a GPS device on a target's vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a 'search,'" Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

In a footnote, Scalia added that, "Whatever new methods of investigation may be devised, our task, at a minimum, is to decide whether the action in question would have constituted a 'search' within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Where, as here, the government obtains information by physically intruding on a constitutionally protected area, such a search has undoubtedly occurred."

In all, five justices said physically attaching the GPS device to the underside of a car amounted to trespassing and was a search requiring a warrant. The majority said "the present case does not require us to answer" whether police may employ GPS monitoring of a vehicle via an already onboard navigation system "without an accompanying trespass."

Props to whoever can come up with the best excuse for the Obama admin coming out on the appallingly wrong side of this.

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OWS protesters. We should now by now that the people we're dealing with simply don't care what you have to go through to keep their trough full just as long as you make damned sure you do keep it full and other than that, here's what they think of you courtesy of Julianne Escobedo Shepherd @ Alternet: Disgusting: Wall Streeters Mock Occupy and Poor People at Fancy Frat Party.

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United Nations: U.S. Operation Of Gitmo Is 'Clear Breach Of International Law' | The United States' continued operation of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba is a "clear breach of international law," United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay said today, Reuters reports. Only six trials have been completed in 10 years, while eight detainees have died at the prison. "While fully recognizing the right and duty of states to protect their people and territory from terrorist acts, I remind all branches of the U.S. government of their obligation under international human rights law to ensure that individuals deprived of their liberty can have the lawfulness of their detention reviewed before a court," Pillay said. "Where credible evidence exists against Guantanamo detainees, they should be charged and prosecuted. Otherwise, they must be released."

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Colorado Republicans push bill to allow guns in elementary schools

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Buffett On Why Romney Should Pay Higher Taxes: He's Just 'Shoving Around Money,' Not 'Straining His Back'

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SOPA author breaks copyright law

Rep. Lamar Smith has unauthorized photo on his website Link

"I'm a pirate who belongs in prison."

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The Onion for the win!

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Blast from the 2008 Past: An Avowed Muslim

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Bad news for Willard:

Mitt Romney's shady financial train-wreck just became an international train-wreck with a member of British parliament proposing legislation to close the Cayman Islands as a tax haven.

Can you imagine electing a president that is internationally well-known to be sheltering vast amounts of wealth in an off-shore territory?

Headlines - Monday January 23

2012-01-23T09:06:00.001-06:00

Borowitz: In Confident Sign, Gingrich Changes Facebook Status to 'In an Open Relationship'

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TurleyBlog: who could have predicted that the GOP would lie, cheat, and steal to prevent people from voting for Democrats?

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An Afghan soldier who shot dead four French troops has said he did it because of a recent video showing US Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban insurgents. Read More

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President Obama released a statement today regarding the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision.

As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman's health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman's right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right. While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue- no matter what our views, we must stay united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant woman and mothers, reduce the need for abortion, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption. And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.

Issuing a statement on Roe vs. Wade may seem like a no-brainer, but this is a particular well crafted statement which stresses the need to promote and support the institutions that actually reduce the need for abortions, such as proper reproductive healthcare, rather than focus entirely on abortion itself. Recent data shows abortion rates are actually higher in countries with stricter laws.

Every GOP candidate for president has conveyed their wish to overturn Roe vs. Wade, including the pot-for-everyone-and-no-drones candidate Ron Paul. And if a Republican were to win the election, it's entirely possible that they would be granted their wish because the next president, whether it's President Obama or Mitt Romney, will be nominating future Supreme Court justices.

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Mike Huckabee offers advice to Mitt Romney concerning his unreleased tax returns.

Let him [Romney] make this challenge: "I'll release my tax returns when Barack Obama releases his college transcripts and the copy of his admission records to show whether he got any loans as a foreign student. When he releases that, talk to me about my tax returns."

A foreign student? For all his supposed good ol' boy charm and much-touted Christian values, Huckabee is just another run-of-the-mill, right-wing, lying jackass spewing the same birther-crap that's been refuted time and time again.

And what exactly does the President's college transcripts have to do with Romney releasing his tax returns? Nothing.

Bill Maher had a great comment last night about how Romney and his cohorts on the right have created a fictional person to do battle with. They refer to this opponent as Barack Obama but, in truth, bears no resemblance to the actual person. Their President Obama is a Marxist who cannot put two thoughts together without the help of a teleprompter. Their Obama is a tax-raising, money-spending, freedom-hating, Constitution-abusing, power-hungry simpleton who goes around the world apologizing for the U.S.

Any resemblance between the right's Obama and the one who sits in the White House is nonexistent.

And the further to the right one goes on the political spectrum, the more bizarre the accusations. Obama is then attributed with siding with the terrorists, is of the Muslim religion and in all likelihood was born in Kenya. Hello, Orly Taitz and Mike Huckabee.

The right has gone completely mad. There's no other rational explanation.

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H/t Dick: Everything You Need to Know About Wall Street, in One Brief Tale

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NYT: Chefs, Butlers, Marble Baths: Hospitals Vie for the Affluent

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Whether you believe that the Republicans will self-destruct in November or not, the Birther component of the anti-Obama campaign will never, never end unless the people who continue to spew this nonsense are actually made to pay a price.

A judge has ordered President Barack Obama to appear in court in Atlanta for a hearing on a complaint that says Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and can't be president.

It's one of many such lawsuits that have been filed across the country, so far without success. A Georgia resident made the complaint, which is intended to keep Obama's name off the state's ballot in the March presidential primary.

An Obama campaign aide says any attempt to involve the president personally will fail and such complaints around the country have no merit.

The hearing is set for Thursday before an administrative judge. Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi on Friday denied a motion by the president's lawyer to quash a subpoena that requires Obama to show up.

If the President shows up, every other state GOP machine will file similar complaints with friendly judges and he'll have to show up there as well. If the President ignores the complaints, it will "prove he has something to hide" and feed the nasty e-mail whisper campaign that basically hasn't stopped since early 2008. The sinister point of all this is not to prove or disprove anything, but to so demoralize voters that they'll entertain the notion that if the Republicans win, all this idiocy will go away and that the GOP will behave themselves again.

It's complete bullshit, of course. All of it. The idiocy was always there and surrender by the electorate is the only way the GOP wins with their current field of cartoon villain mouth-breathing doucheknockers. But that's the point: no matter how many times the President personally staples his birth certificate to people's foreheads, they'll never believe him. Jesus Christ could descend from the sky with John Wayne's pet T-Rex that's piloting the Millennium Falcon, during halftime at the Super Bowl, grab the mic while Sam Elliott hands him his own mustache and say "You guys, he was born in Hawaii, knock this crap off already" and they would wonder how POTUS managed to brainwash America and the world into seeing such a perfect simultaneous mass hallucination. They would in fact blame fluoridated water. I shit you not.

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A Message from Gabby :'(

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The embattled Gov. Scott Walker's (R-WI) former county staffers are facing a fresh round of criminal charges in the next week or two, as part of the "John Doe investigation" into Walker's aides and associates during his time as Milwaukee County executive. Two of his ex-staffers have already been arrested, and now, at least a couple of Walker's staffers will be charged with "doing extensive campaign activity while on the taxpayers' dime." At least eight of Walker's former aides and associates have hired criminal defense lawyers and the upcoming charges "will not mark the end of the 20-month criminal investigation."

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After a swift decline in his health, former Penn State coach Joe Paterno passed away this morning at 85. I'll be thinking of his family, but his death is a tragedy in that it cuts short what could have been a process of education and seeking forgiveness. If Paterno had lived, and had been lucid enough to come to terms with his abdication of responsibility; if he had sought forgiveness for it and worked to help other programs become safer, more responsible and responsive organizations, he could have made a contribution to coaching far beyond his work elevating the Nittany Lions into a nationally competitive program.

Maybe he would have done none of those things had he lived, out of denial or a lack of capability. But his death forecloses an opportunity, however slight, to make recompense, and to remind the students who still saw him as a deity that there are more important things than football.

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Wonkette: Mitt Romney Believes in an American America Full of American Americans

Headlines - Sunday January 22

2012-01-22T09:45:00.001-06:00

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Oklahoma Republicans Introduce Bill That Prohibits The Consumption Of Human Fetuses, Would Ban Stem Cell Research

".... if Democrats vote in favor of the bill, Republicans will have succeeded in banning embryonic stem cell research and treatments. On the other hand, if Democrats vote against it, Republicans will accuse Democrats of wanting to eat fetuses.

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Will there be a Prop 8 bombshell hidden in Romney's tax returns?

Newly uncovered stock contributions made during Romney's Bain days suggest there is another dimension to Romney's support for the church -- one that could involve millions more than has been previously disclosed.
As part of just one Bain transaction in 2008, involving its investment in Burger King Holdings, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that an unnamed Bain partner donated 65,326 shares of Burger King stock to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, holdings then worth nearly $1.9 million. And there were numerous others, giving the church a stake in other Bain properties, such as Domino's Pizza, the electronics manufacturer DDi, the phosphates company Innophos Holdings, and Marquee Holdings, the parent to AMC Theaters.

Good thing they're tax free!

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In a recent full-page paid advertisement in the Washington Post, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and dozens of leaders of Catholic organizations voiced their opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule which they describe as forcing private health providers to provide "preventive services." The HHS plan mandates, without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or a deductible, the provision of FDA-approved contraception methods. The advertisement claims these drugs may cause abortions which, by their definition, includes any single-celled fertilized egg that doesn't implant.

The ad claims that following the HHS rule would violate their religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

Continue reading 'Framing Discrimination As Religious Freedom'

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Andy Borowitz: "Callista" would be an awesome name for an antidepressant prescribed for people married to Newt Gingrich.

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Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who was recently presented with over 1 million signatures to recall him from office, which is almost as many votes as he received in the 2012 election, announced this week that he plans to reject money set aside under the Affordable Care Act to aide states in implementing healthcare exchanges.

The real devastating economic impact will come when the Affordable Care Act is ruled constitutional and buffoons like Scott Walker are left scrambling at the last minute to abide by the law. Because rejecting a federal grant to create an exchange, money for which has already been set aside, means Scott Walker will leave the cost of implementing the exchange up to Wisconsin taxpayers.

In the end, the result will be similar to when Walker rejected money set aside for high-speed rail. The state lost jobs and prior commitments ended up costing the state more money than it would have had he not rejected the funds. And the reality is that he didn't achieve some great ideological victory by his actions, because the money afforded to Wisconsin will simply be granted to another state instead.

But, what does he care? He'll probably be recalled from office before he is forced to explain that to his constituents.

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Very Serious Chuck Todd is criticizing Stephen Colbert for mocking the political system again.

"He is making a mockery of the system," Todd said. "…Is it fair to the process? Yes, the process is a mess, but he's doing it in a way that feels like he's trying to influence it with his own agenda and that may be anti-Republican."

So the guy who never talks about policy and only treats politics like a horse-race, while routinely euphemistically discussing it like a sports match-up, is criticizing a satirist for mocking the system.

This is the second time Todd has done this, by the way. Previously, when Colbert testified to Congress in character, Todd did the same snooty song and dance about Colbert.

First of all, Colbert is absolutely mocking the system. That's what he does and it's brilliant. But Todd thinks that's a bad thing. Probably because Colbert is reporting on the flaws in our system in a significantly more profound way — from the studios of Comedy Central where he only gets 30 minutes of airtime compared with Todd's 24/7 appearances.

Second, Colbert's agenda isn't necessarily anti-Republican as much as it is anti-lies, anti-bullshit and pro-reality. And, as he's said before, reality has a well-known liberal bias. But mainly, Colbert is a satirist taking aim at politics, yes, but more than anything else the type of cable news punditry that Chuck Todd is a part of.

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Hitler reacts to SOPA

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Now Romney's bragging that he's the only candidate who spent his entire life in the 'real world.' Yes, that's because for twenty some years now Romney has been trying, and failing, to win elected office. From The State:

"If we think we need a Washington insider to run Washington there are a lot of people to choose from, but I'm the only guy whose spent his life in the real world — I'm going to fight to put America back to work," he said

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Tweets from Borowitz last night:

Gingrich leading Romney by 16%, which is more than Romney pays in taxes.
BREAKING: Stung By Defeat, Romney Considers Adultery

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Don't think there aren't school officials in your state who are quietly - or not so quietly - applauding this abomination and plotting to how implement something similar.

Now that it's popular.

In a page right out of Newt Gingrich's alternate-history science-fiction wingnut-polygamy utopian epic Candyland Space Land, the school district in Tucson has completely banned Mexican-American studies, seized all the textbooks and even wall posters from the classrooms, and punished the students who protested by sentencing them to janitorial duty. The self-hating Latina lady who oversees the now-illegal ethnic studies program even comically told the kids, "Mexico is where Mexican studies is taught, not America!" Why oh why does the Newt have to be in stinky old South Carolina during such a historical moment in stomping the Mexican, for freedom?
The insanely racist Arizona law, HB 2281, specifically targets ethnic studies in the public schools. Tucson's Mexican-American Studies program was specifically shut down to meet the law's requirements, although administrator Lupita Garcia - who sure sounds like a Mexican to us - seemed utterly delighted to shut down the district's program and shout racist idiocy at the students.
The students bravely marched five miles from Cholla High School (better change that name!) to the Mexican-American Studies headquarters ... and as punishment for this crime against white society, they were all put on janitorial slave duty. Sounds like Tucson needs to be occupied! (Weather is very nice this time of year. It's a good season for a Mexican-sounding revolution.)

Somebody give each and every one of those kids a full Mario Savio Free Speech scholarship to Berkeley right now.

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Forecast The Facts Exposes America's Climate-Denier TV Weathermen

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Bill Maher New Rules - Romney is Like A Rapper

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How to drive in the snow Utah-style.

Headlines - Saturday January 21

2012-01-21T07:58:00.000-06:00

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Video: Newt Gingrich: Serial Adultery

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Borowitz: I worry that the focus on Gingrich's adultery will distract us from the fact that he's also a racist asshole.

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Good news — the Department of Health and Human Services under the direction of Kathleen Sebelius has announced nearly universal coverage of contraception in employer healthcare plans.

Today, in a huge victory for women's health, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that most employers will be required to cover contraception in their health plans, along with other preventive services, with no cost-sharing such as co-pays or deductibles. This means that after years of trying to get birth control covered to the same extent that health plans cover Viagra, our country will finally have nearly universal coverage of contraception. [...]

Twenty-eight states already require employers, including most religiously affiliated institutions, to cover contraception in their health plans. The only change is that now they must cover the full cost.

The right wing outrage will be palpable, but the joke is on them because this will undoubtedly lead to fewer abortions and fewer unwanted pregnancies. The connection between readily accessible reproductive healthcare and lower abortion rates is something they always neglect to mention while sermonizing the War on Women.

Employers have one year to comply with the new rules.

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The Rude Pundit: Moments in the life of Newt Gingrich from the 1990s

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Fox News: Gingrich's multiple marriage infidelities mean he'll be a great president

Seriously. It's pretty sick.

I want to be coldly analytical, not moralize, here. I want to tell you what Mr. Gingrich's behavior could mean for the country, not for the future of his current marriage. So, here's what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich's behavior during his three marriages:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we'll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we'll want to let him go after one.

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich's first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.

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Tough day in court for Rupert Murdoch.

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Who would have guessed that top Justice Department honchos would show such little interest in prosecuting Wall Street after working for them for years? It's a lot easier to chase side shows like insider trading cases or chasing file sharing sites. Sure they don't address the real problems of the day, but Washington insiders are too concerned with their own future career paths to really care.

The never-ending, cross-party revolving door in Washington has to stop. They're fleecing America, and care more about themselves than they do the country. Reuters

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Super PAC spending has now surpassed the $30 million mark (full breakdown from the Center for Responsive Politics here). Paul Blumenthal explains the shift depicted in the above chart:

Super PACs supporting the remaining four Republican candidates have spent $7.1 million in South Carolina. Nearly all of that money comes from [Gingrich's PAC] Winning Our Future and the pro-Romney Restore Our Future, which have spent $2.93 million and $2.84 million, respectively, to launch attacks against each other's candidate. That's a dramatic departure from the terms of battle in Iowa, where Gingrich had promised to run a positive campaign, only to watch his campaign and super PAC being woefully outspent by the Romney machine. After going down in flames at the hands of Restore Our Future, Gingrich pledged to turn his campaign to the dark side and, voila, negative ads were unleashed by the pro-Gingrich super PAC.

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It looks like Chris Dodd, who yesterday was launching threats at the President, may have overstepped his bounds just a tad:

The White House appeared to brush back a suggestion from the Motion Picture Association of America on Friday that the president step in on negotiations over controversial online piracy legislation.

MPAA Chairman and former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) suggested Thursday that the White House would be the perfect place to convene a summit between Hollywood and the tech industry, which are at odds over a pair of online piracy bills that were shelved by congressional leadership Friday morning following massive protests earlier in the week.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration has made its position clear on the issue and appeared to dismiss the suggestion in a press briefing on Friday. The White House expressed concern about the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act last week, adding fuel to the growing opposition.

Obama rode into the White House on the backs of a tech savvy operation made up of people, who, unlike Chris Dodd and too many congresscritters to count, actually understand the internet. It's not surprising that the Obama admin understands why these bills suck and opposed them. That Dodd was just trying to throw his weight around yesterday just makes this all the sweeter.

BTW, via the always excellent Jon Rogers, here is a great rundown of why the bills were so bad, from a tv writer's perspective.

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Jurassicpork: What's Mitt Fudging?

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Romney: We need someone who's lived in the real streets of America as president

I'm not sure which one of Mitt Romney's mansions he considers to be on the "real streets" of America, but here he was attempting to paint himself as some Washington outsider, everyday businessman during the CNN Republican primary debate.

Think Progress summed this up pretty nicely:

It's unclear whether those "real streets" are the ones by Romney's beach house in California, his mansion in New Hampshire, or his multi-million dollar "colonial" in Massachusetts. Of course, Romney has attempted to paint himself as an everyday, middle-class guy before. But as a Wall Street millionaire who keeps money in offshore accounts and is comfortable making $10,000 bets, it's seems like most streets Romney spends time on are the ones paved in gold.

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On Thursday, Willard got very testy with an Occupy protestor who dared to ask him what he was going to do for the 99 percent. Check out this response.

Let me tell you something. America is a great nation, because we're a united nation. And those who are trying to divide the nation, as you're trying to do here, and as our president is doing, are hurting this country seriously. The right course for America is not to try to divide America, and try and divid us between one and another. it's to come together as a nation.

And if you've got a better model — if you think China's better, or Russia's better, or Cuba's better, or North Korea's better — I'm glad to hear all about it.

First of all, since when are Republicans opposed to dividing Americans? These people invented division as a tactic to win elections.

Nixon's Southern Strategy and "Silent Majority." Reagan's "Welfare Queens." Bush/Cheney's "With Us or Against Us." Palin's "Real America."

Not to mention the constant demonizing of immigrants, homosexuals, teachers, union members, Occupy Wall Streeters, Democrats, "elites," academics, Hollywood, Muslims, scientists, progressives, anti-war protestors, attorneys, environmentalists, the media, California -- and on and on.

Also, someone might want to point out to Willard that Russia hasn't been a communist country since he was making millions by raiding corporations and firing workers.

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Charles Pierce: Our Mr. Brooks Climbs the Romney Family Tree

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You don't even have to read past the headline to know that Thomas and Scalia were the two nutcases who dissented. "An Alabama death row prisoner should not be prevented from appealing because he missed a deadline after his lawyers dropped his case and failed to tell him, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 7-2 vote Wednesday. ... The two lawyers at the New York office of Sullivan and Cromwell did not alert Alabama court authorities that they were withdrawing, so that when a court clerk sent papers to the lawyers, the firm's mailroom sent them back unopened and marked, "Return to Sender -- Left Firm" and "Returned to Sender -- Attempted, Unknown." ... "Abandoned by counsel, (Cory) Maples was left unrepresented at a critical time ... and he lacked any clue of any need to protect himself," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. "In these circumstances, no just system would lay the default (arising from a missed deadline) at Maples' death-cell door." ... The justices reversed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit against Maples, who was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1995 killings of two companions after a night of heavy drinking. ... Only Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. They insisted that a state can enforce its deadlines and other procedures related to death penalty appeals even when lawyers are to blame."

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Swingrich says 'work is a strange, distant concept' to Juan Williams.

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That god he worships can't really exist, otherwise his tongue would have flipped off its rollers. "The Family Research Council's Tony Perkins appeared on MSNBC this morning to discuss last night's GOP presidential debate and the recent revelations that Newt Gingrich allegedly asked his second wife for an open marriage. ... The conservative leader -- who regularly condemns gay people, "churns out brochures that compare same-sex marriages to those bonds which might exist between a man and a horse," likens gays to terrorists, calls LGBT rights a battle of "good versus evil," and claims gay teens kill themselves because they know that they're "abnormal" -- expressed concern about Gingrich's personal past, but also raised questions about the wisdom of asking about his marriage during the debate. Ultimately, he suggested that Evangelical Christians are "not judgmental" and understanding, and could embrace a candidate who has sinned."

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How a modern democracy regresses to the Dark Ages

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Kentucky Gov. Cuts Education Funding While Preserving Tax Breaks For Biblically-Themed Amusement Park

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Wonkette: Wingnuts 'uniting behind Santorum', obviously

What are the Christian wingnut conservative Republicans doing about 2012 now? Uniting behind Santorum, of course! Because when you're stuck with a slate of candidates including a liberal billionaire foreigner who loves the wrong Jesus and a repulsive kidney-shaped punching bag who is so venal and amoral he makes Bill Clinton look like a family man, what are you going to do, support the principled libertarian Texan family man with three decades of campaign success? No, of course not. You're going to support the corrupt airhead dipshit who believes abortions are okay for his wife but a FELONY for everyone else in America. Rick Santorum, truly the conservative wingnut base is uniting behind you!

How much do GOP primary voters hate themselves, these days? A lot, we bet! Now that their front-runner can't even claim an Iowa victory and the "oh I guess we'll support him" sleazeball Newt has again exploded in a frothy ejaculate of Tiffany whore diamonds and bile, full-time loser Rick Santorum is getting another round of desperate attention.

We just want to remind everyone, again, that beyond all the Santorum fecal spooge jokes and his creepy/convenient abortion policies and his stupid sweater vest and his insane obsession with gay men having gay sex, Rick Santorum was a two-term senator who got his frothy ass handed to him in 2006 and hasn't won anything but scorn since that day — he can't even claim a real Iowa victory, because who knows where the votes from those eight missing precincts went, maybe Romney's god is God after all, right? Maybe Ron Paul won, in space. Maybe, in this idiotic alternate universe, Rick Perry's endorsement of Gingrich means something.

HAHAHA, and in the time it took to prepare this frothy little post, the ConservativeHQ.com website realized they handed us a very easy joke, and have now corrected the headline to something less obviously homosexual.

Santorum is never going to be president of anything, except the gay sex resort he operates 24/7 in his fevered, shrunken brain.

Headlines - Friday January 20

2012-01-20T09:08:00.001-06:00

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US Thirst for Fossil Fuels is Decimating Nature's Wildlife

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Jerry Springer—yes, that Jerry Springer—schools the Fox "News" bobbleheads:

SPRINGER: If the point of this discussion is to be upset with a magazine that — even if it took the position that they're pro-Obama — again, everybody in the media is doing things like that. We're here on Fox News. Every single day, in fairness, you guys, every single day, bash President Obama.
CARLSON: I'm going to take you to task on that because on this panel right here, we have a fair and balanced panel right here. And I'm the independent.

SPRINGER: But, what's the rest of the show? The rest of the show, every single morning, you guys are slamming Obama. You know you are. I'm not saying you don't have a right to. But every single conversation is something bad about Obama.

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American Family Association: The False Faith Of Mormons Threatens America

"[Mormonism] is not a Christian faith. It is, as Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas says, a false religion. So it's kind of a striking things and I know it concerns a number of spiritual leaders, and I count myself among them, is what this would mean for the spiritual health of the United States of America is a worshiper of a false god occupied the White House. You know, what that would mean for the spiritual future of America and what it might reveal about the spiritual weakness of America if the American people, particularly the so-called conservatives, the people of faith in America, would promote someone to the highest office in the land who is a follower of a counterfeit faith, a false religion." - American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer, who will be eating his words before too long.

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It's official, ~~Government~~ General Motors is once again the world's largest automaker, topping the global sales charts in 2011 with sales in 2012 projected to increase by another million

General Motors surpassed Toyota and Volkswagen to reclaim the crown of world's largest automaker with global sales of 9.03 million vehicles in 2011.

That was 11% higher than Volkswagen, which last week reported 2011 global sales of 8.16 million. Toyota has not yet reported its final 2011 sales, but last month the Japanese automaker estimated it sold 7.9 million vehicles globally last year. [...]

GM's 2011 sales rose 7.6% from [2010]. Sales in the U.S. led the way for Chevrolet with total vehicle sales of 1,775,812, up more than 13%. China posted record sales of 595,068, up 9.5% from the previous year. Other markets that posted significant year-over-year increases include Vietnam (79%), Russia (49%), Turkey (30%) and Germany (21%).

Of course Mitt Romney's solution for the American auto-industry was to let them go bankrupt.

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Good job, Mitt.

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Sign this petition to reverse Citizens United.

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A fascinating new analysis from RAND Research Highlights, via The Conversable Economist. Health care costs have increased over the past decade about as much as your pay raises, pretty much eating any increase in income you've had over the years.

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Newt Gingrich Attacks John King for Asking About Ex-Wife Saying He Wanted an Open Marriage in the 90's

"Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question for a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine."

Oh, I can think of something closer — dumping the second of two chronically ill wives because you were banging a staffer for six years and then, while you're running for president, making a talking point out of your pain.

Wonkette: Cheating, Serial-Divorcing Pig Upset By Adultery Question

Was there a highlight to tonight's GOP debate? No. There is a GOP debate every four or five hours, constantly, forever, and there cannot be a highlight to something that is ongoing and eternal, like CNN Headline News or the Lake of Fire, in Hell. But CNN number-reader John King did manage to really get the amoral jewelry-debt piglet Newt Gingrich in full squeaking rage because, boo hoo, somebody asked Newt about his endless adultery and divorcing and banging other ladies while he's married, etc.

So did the multimillionaire academic-politician-author Newt come clean and apologize to America for being such a disgusting sleazebag who always buys new whores with his $500,000 Tiffany line of credit? Haha, of course not. Instead, he said this:

"I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans."

The elite! Barack Obama!

Nothing else happened in this stupid debate.

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Suicides among active-duty soldiers hit a record high in 2011. According to a report released Thursday, 164 active-duty Army, National Guard, and Reserve soldiers took their own lives, compared to 159 in 2010 and 162 in 2009. When non-mobilized National Guard and Reserve troops are included, suicides dropped to 278 in 2011, from 305 in 2010.

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President Obama sings at the Apollo - Al Green - Let's stay together

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Scarah Palin Says Interview With Ex-Wife Will Help Gingrich 'Soar'

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North Koreans React to Newt Gingrich's Mistreatment of John King

Headlines - Thursday January 19

2012-01-19T10:10:00.001-06:00

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Wonkette: Santorum Calls Romney 'Just a Paler Shade of What We Have'

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Chomsky - Who are the Unpeople?

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It's good to be da' king. Thank goodness the Feds are going after something valued at $62 million rather than the billions and trillions associated with the Wall Street crash of 2008. Distractions appear to be the preferred choice rather than the more serious problems. It hasn't gone unnoticed that the small houses are the ones who get hit rather than the household names that the country knows from the bailouts.

A press conference will be held Wednesday to announce charges against seven investment professionals who participated in an insider trading scheme that allegedly netted more than $61.8 million in illegal profits based on trades of a single stock. Some arrests have already taken place. Todd Newman, who once headed technology trading for Diamondback Capital Management was arrested in Boston this morning. Newman was placed on a leave of absence in 2010 and subsequently let go by that firm.

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In an example of just how terribly corrupt Republican party officials are, the official, certified results of the Iowa caucus are finally in and Rick Santorum actually won by 23 votes. The Iowa GOP has decided to call it a tie instead.

In other words, the call in Iowa then made Mitt all but inevitable now. It'll be interesting to see how the Republicans react to this on the road. If Mitt wins Saturday, it's over. But would he have done worse if Santorum had been rightfully declared the winner in Iowa? The Iowa GOP is saying that several precincts lost their votes so there's no way to know if Santorum's 23 vote lead is really true:

Results from eight precincts are missing — any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney — and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday.

We'll never know. Republicans aren't terribly interested in facts, just results. Remember that the next time they play the ACORN/UNION THUGS/BLACK PANTHERS card and say Democrats are cheaters.

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Example #9 billion how the media are failing us

Drudge:

Marianne Gingrich has said she could end her ex-husband's career with a single interview.

Earlier this week, she sat before ABCNEWS cameras, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

She spoke to ABCNEWS reporter Brian Ross for two hours, and her explosive revelations are set to rock the trail.

But now a "civil war" has erupted inside of the network, an insider claims, on exactly when the confession will air!

ABCNEWS suits determined it would be "unethical" to run the Marianne Gingrich interview so close to the South Carolina Primary, a curious decision, one insider argued, since the network has aggressively been reporting on other candidates.

A decision was tentatively made to air the interview next Monday, after all votes have been counted.

Got that? The ethical thing for a news organization to do is sit on information about a candidate, because god forbid voters go to the poll informed. It's mind-numbing that there was even a debate about this within ABC News. Of course you air the god damned thing. The only reason not to is you are afraid of being called biased. There is no other job for a news organization that to provide news and allow readers to inform themselves, yet here we have ABC "debating" whether or not they should do that job. This is almost as bad as the NY Times debating whether they should correct lies and dispute falsehoods.

WTF do these people think their job is? Why do they get up and go to work? What is going on in their heads?

"You just wait, you sanctimonious bastard!" thought Marianne. "One of these days I'm going to crush your nuts on national TV!"

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Gawker is reporting on explosive speculation from the Miami Herald that has apparently been a decade-long rumor in the DC press corps, even though it's not seen much print.

The rumor, in brief, is as follows: In the summer of 1997, the Hill's Sandy Hume—the then-28-year-old son of Fox News' Brit Hume—broke a blockbuster story about four GOP congressman who plotted, and failed, to overthrow Newt Gingrich as Speaker. One of those men was Bill Paxon, a New York Republican who was married to fellow Congresswoman Susan Molinari. Another of the plotters, Majority Leader Dick Armey, scuttled the coup when he learned that Paxon, and not he, would replace Gingrich. Armey later disavowed the whole attempt and claimed not to have been involved.

A few months later, in February 1998, Paxon launched an attempt to unseat Armey from his leadership position. Just days later, Sandy Hume killed himself with a gunshot to the head. Just days after that, Paxon suddenly and inexplicably resigned and never returned to public life. Almost immediately, rumors began flying that Hume and Paxon had been having an affair, and that Armey had threatened to out them. Hence the suicide and the sudden resignation.

Further down in the Gawker piece is what's new in the Herald story: "But Caputo adds a new wrinkle to the tale: 'Some' blame Gingrich, and not just Armey, he says, for the threat to go public with information about Hume and Paxon's alleged relationship."

Wow. Definitely hit both links for more.

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According to a new report from ABC News, Mitt Romney's admission that he is paying an effective tax rate of 15 percent or less is only half the story. The other half is the off-shoring of significant portions of Romney's wealth in tax havens, and analysis of securities filing reveals at least some of what's being hidden.

[...] tax experts tell ABC News there are other reasons Romney may not want the public viewing his returns. As one of the wealthiest candidates to run for president in recent times, Romney has used a variety of techniques to help minimize the taxes on his estimated $250 million fortune. In addition to paying the lower tax rate on his investment income, Romney has as much as $8 million invested in at least 12 funds listed on a Cayman Islands registry. Another investment, which Romney reports as being worth between $5 million and $25 million, shows up on securities records as having been domiciled in the Caymans.

Official documents reviewed by ABC News show that Bain Capital, the private equity partnership Romney once ran, has set up some 138 secretive offshore funds in the Caymans. [...]

Tax experts agree that Romney remains subject to American taxes. But they say the offshore accounts have provided him — and Bain — with other potential financial benefits, such as higher management fees and greater foreign interest, all at the expense of the U.S. Treasury. Rebecca J. Wilkins, a tax policy expert with Citizens for Tax Justice, said the federal government loses an estimated $100 billion a year because of tax havens.

Mitt Romney's financial dealings may be shady and morally deplorable, but it's unlikely any of it is explicitly illegal. Unlike the average American, Romney and others with vast wealth can afford to hire experts in the field of tax-dodging that will reduce your liability to the lowest possible level while still remaining within legal limits.

With that said, Romney's financial trainwreck, from Bain's vulture capitalism to the off-shoring of wealth, will seriously hamper his efforts to present himself as the right man to fix the economy. Because aside from representing everything that is wrong with the structure of our economy, everyone reading this has also probably had a boss at some point in their life who looked just like him.

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As predicted, the Keystone XL pipeline has now been officially rejected by the Obama Administration after the Republicans chose to hasten the timeline for approval with a rider inserted into legislation that extended payroll tax-cuts and unemployment benefits for 2 months.

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Hey guys, have you met The Purity Bear? He's a plush toy who appears to tempted teens and warns them without moving his mouth that going inside a girl's house will inevitably lead to sex having, and sex having before marriage is literally the worst decision you could possibly make.

In spite of the fact that this could easily be parody, this video is a very real effort to promote the very real Day of Purity. On that Pure of Days, everyone focuses on their genitals for awhile, and somehow that makes them better people. Pure people.

This Purity Bear video also teaches us an important lesson about women, namely that they're usually the ones responsible for tricking men into getting turned on, and they're always demanding sex from poor, defenseless, virtuous, chaste dudes. It happened in Twilight when Bella spent like 3 books humping Edward's leg before he agreed to put out, it happened to Sir Galahad, the Chaste in that castle full of horny virgins, and it's happening here, right on this now besotted doorstep. For shame, woman. For shame, women.

Visibly absent from this scenario was the Artie The Angry Trouser Python, who appears to men and tells them to never turn down a handjob.

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Survey: Republicans Trust Fox News And Nothing Else

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Well this is downright screwy:

Rival presidential candidate Rick Santorum's Iowa coalitions director, Jamie Johnson, sent out an email saying that children's lives would be harmed if the nation had a female president. [...]

"The question then comes, 'Is it God's highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?'" Johnson's email said.

And men have been totally awesome ruling the world for the last several thousand years. We're real pips. Wouldn't want a series of women leaders mucking up our record of success.

I guess they've been watching this.

Headlines - Wednesday January 18

2012-01-18T09:28:00.001-06:00

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Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

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Robert Reich: Free Enterprise on Trial

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It was a big day in Wisconsin. Recall petitions were delivered to the capital -- a literal ton of them and accounting for more than one million signatures. A reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal says that the head of the Government Accountability Board (GAB) is having trouble finding workers to check the signatures, because one of the requirements is that the temps can't have signed the petition. That's how successful this petition drive has been. There are more such nuggets of info at WSJ's live blog of the filing, as well as a photo gallery here.

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The AFA is outraged that cops told people to stop reciting from the Bible to a captive audience at the DMV:

The two men were arrested for reading from the Bible to roughly 50 individuals waiting in line outside the DMV. A security guard told Mackey to stop, and when Mackey refused, a police officer was called and Mackey was arrested. Coronado and another church elder then asked the police officer what law Mackey broke, but instead of an answer, they were arrested as well. Lenny Esposito, president of Come Reason Ministries, argues that there was no legitimate cause for the arrest. Lenny Esposito "From a legal perspective, I think the officer mishandled the situation, and I don't know that he had grounds for arresting these individuals," he says. Officials say Coronado and Mackey could not preach on state property without a permit. But attorneys for the two men say the First Amendment rights of their clients were violated.

The men were charged with one misdemeanor count of creating a disturbance.

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Borowitz: "Say what you will about Newt Gingrich, it takes a lot of guts to say the things he does without his white sheet on."

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The latest ABC/Washington Post poll shows that only 13% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 84% disapprove. Keep in mind that 468 members of this Congress---all 435 in the House and 33 in the Senate---were elected in 2010, when only 41% of eligible voters approved of Congress enough to even cast a ballot. In other words, 59% of eligible voters disapproved of this Congress from the get-go. And it has been all downhill from there.

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88,071 children were reportedly cut from the Medicaid rolls in Pennsylvania since August of 2011 because of stricter eligibility reviews. Also — if you have more than $2,000 in total assets, you're no longer eligible to receive food stamps. Really.

WTF is going on in Pennsylvania?

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Via Greg Sargent, The Washington Post released the results of their latest poll today and found that, by a wide margin, more people now consider inequality to be a bigger economic problem than big government regulation.

What do you think is the bigger problem in this country — unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy, or over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity?

Economic unfairness : 55
Market overregulation: 35

Is this a sign that President Obama and the Democratic Party is winning the message war as a whole? Possibly. I think it is.

The idea that regulations are the ultimate job killers in this country is a well-entrenched idea which has faced little to no challenge from the corporate media and has only been challenged on a regular basis by the Democratic party in more recent years. President Obama is also the first president in modern history to regularly reject the idea that government is the problem in nearly every speech he makes.

If the trend continues, and the economy continues to improve as all indicators seem to suggest it will, the Republicans won't even have their used ideology of unchecked markets to run on.

That's not to say they won't run on it anyway, but it's going to afford them less and less traction going forward.

###

During yesterday's press conference wherein Mitt Romney admitted to paying a tax rate of only 15 percent, he also alluded to his other sources of income as "not very much."

According to a USAToday report published before the GOP primaries began, "not very much" actually comes out to be roughly $362,000 in speaking fees.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a multimillionaire who recently joked about being unemployed, earned more than $362,000 in speaking fees over a year, financial disclosure forms released this afternoon show.

Romney, a former Massachussets governor, reported earnings from nine speeches between Feb. 26, 2010 and Feb. 20 of this year, when he collected a $42,500 check from Barclays Bank for an appearance in Washington, D.C. Barclays received $8.5 billion from the government's bailout of insurance giant AIG during the 2008 economic crisis, records show.

Mitt Romney earns more for one speaking appearance than the average American earns in an entire year, and today he said it was "not very much."

For an added dose of embarrassment, "not much" has been earned, in part, by speaking at banks that received federal bailout funds.

Why should Detroit go bankrupt but not Barclays? Does Mitt Romney secretly love bailouts?

Tune in next time for another episode of the Mitt Romney train-wreck.

###

Wikipedia has shut down all English language sites to protest SOPA and PIPA, the Senate version of the SOPA act. Though SOPA has been withdrawn, PIPA could still get a floor vote in the Senate on the 24th. And even though the DNS blacklist provision has been removed from both bills, there are still a number of ugly remnants, as explained by the EFF.

If you want a concrete example of why Wikipedia is reacting so forcefully to this legislation, which would essentially shut down a site if it hosted content that the rights holder asserted violated copyright, look at this picture I used in a post on Sunday. It's a scan from a 1944 issue of Life Magazine that is still under copyright. As you can see if you follow the link, Wikipedia has an elaborate rationale explaining why the use of that picture is fair use, and those reasons sound compelling to me. If they weren't compelling to Time/Warner, the copyright holder, Time/Warner could issue a DMCA takedown notice and Wikipedia would have to remove the offending content. As long as Wikipedia isn't making money from the use of the copyrighted material, is unaware of the infringement, and responds to the takedown notice, they can't be held liable for the infringement. In other words, sites like Wikipedia have "safe harbor" under current copyright law, but they face the threat of complete shutdown under the proposed new law, if they're a foreign site. That's what's so radical about this change, and why it's provoked this response by Wikipedia.

By the way, thanks to the 1998 extension of the length of copyright, Time/Warner will be able to have rights to that image until at least 2039. Copyright extension plus SOPA/PIPA shows how far we've come from the original purpose of copyright, which was to give authors rights over their creations during their lifetime to spur creativity.

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"Hi, I'm Paula Deen! I used to make you salivate for Confederate Comfort Food. But now that those recipes have given me diabetes, God has opened the door for me to shill for Victoza, the diabetes medication I'm now taking, miraculously brought to Earth by Nova Nordisk!"

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Jill: The Myth of Hard Work

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Brad Blog: Gingrich's Religious Backers Accuse Santorum's Religious Backers of Voter Fraud and Rigging the Election at Weekend's Anti-Romney Pow-Wow in TX!

Headlines - Tuesday January 17

2012-01-17T08:25:00.000-06:00

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"I have nothing to do with the TV ads that call Mitt Romney a serial killer." - Stephen Colbert, after his PAC ran ads calling Romney a serial killer, Link

###

Money makes the world go 'round - Notable criminal enterprise Goldman Sach's reveals their bonuses:

The bank – which will report its final results for 2011 on Wednesday – has already set aside 44 per cent of the $22.76bn (£14.89bn) of revenues it generated during the first nine months of the year to pay staff. The lion's share will be shared by a small number of elite level "partners".

If pay remains at that level in the fourth quarter, the final compensation ratio will show a significant rise over the 39.3 per cent of revenues handed out by Goldman in 2010, when the total pay out was $15.38bn.

Analysts expect Goldman's

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Florida policymakers trying to privatize entire state public school system.

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Do-nothing Congress

Even the conservative Washington Times agrees:

It's official: Congress ended its least-productive year in modern history after passing 80 bills — fewer than during any other session since year-end records began being kept in 1947.

Furthermore, an analysis by The Washington Times of the scope of such activities as time spent in debate, number of conference reports produced and votes taken on the House and Senate floors found that Congress set a record for legislative futility by accomplishing less in 2011 than any other year in history.

When you're the worst in modern history, the campaign ads write themselves.

###

Last night during debate #962, the bloodthirsty warmongers in the audience booed Ron Paul when he said maybe we should use the Golden Rule as our foreign policy.

These people are frightening.

###

Karen Santorum doesn't understand why gays hate Frothy:

"As Rick's wife, I have known him and loved him for 23 years," she said. "I think it's very sad what the gay activists have done out there. They vilify him. It is so wrong. He loves them. What he has simply said is marriage shouldn't happen."

"As far as hating, it's very unfortunate that has happened," Karen Santorum added. "A lot of it is backyard bullying, where people will come up to us and they'll say something. And we'll ask them to give us an example, and they can't even provide one example as to why they took the position they took."

I guess all that free-love and abortions in her past has deranged Karen and she has forgotten all the overturning DADT, man-on-dog, and pedophilia, and various other less-than-human comments. (Raw Story)

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The Queen should be given a new royal yacht – likely to cost at least £60m ($86 million US) – as a way to help overturn Britain's mood of austerity, according to Cabinet minister Michael Gove.

This is why we cannot have nice things anymore.

(Independent UK)

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We have long wondered about this very thing ourselves. "Talk show host David Pakman questioned Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association on his program Monday over his opposition to non-heterosexual behavior and same sex relationships. ... About halfway through the interview, Pakman asked why those opposed to same sex relationships seemed to focus on anal sex between gay men and ignore lesbian women. ... "Many people on your side -- I guess, if we are to call it a side -- seem so fixated on the minutia of what two men do with each other, when they claim that they're focus is really the broader morality of homosexuality," Pakman said. "But you seem completely unconcerned with lesbians, which seems to be very common among anti-gay folk. Why is the obsession with gay male sex as opposed to lesbians? Do you care about lesbians at all?""

Headlines - Monday January 16

2012-01-16T09:23:00.001-06:00

Al Jazeera: Iran says it has evidence the US was behind the killing of one of its nuclear scientists, according to Iranian state television. US officials last week denied any role in the killing of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, and condemned the bomb attack which claimed his life in Tehran on Wednesday. However, Iran's state TV reported that the Iranian foreign ministry had, in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, said : "We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA."

###

Here comes the Jesus brigade

All around scumbag Tony Perkins and his assorted "Christian" organizations are now going all in for little Ricky:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council says conservatives are looking for a candidate who will repeal the nation's health care law, fight for pro family values and address the national debt.

"Not a lot of time was spent talking about Mitt Romney" Perkins says. He added, "it's not news" that there's not a lot of support among conservatives for Romney. Perkins says Romney's Mormon religion was not discussed among those participating in the meeting.

So what does this mean? Expect conservative groups to start individually motivating their constituents to work for Santorum. Also look for more money and resources to start pouring into Santorum's campaign. No question about it, this is excellent news for Santorum's camp and a major blow to the Gingrich and Perry camps.

Who knew God was all worked up about the healthcare bill and the national debt. And when they say "pro family," they mean gay bashing.

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The company that Mitt Romney ran for so long is one of the "big bosses" over virtually all conservative talk radio in America.

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In honor of MLK Day, Lyndon B. Johnson's speech to Congress urging—almost ordering—the legislators before him to pass the Voting Rights Act.

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A Georgia Republican who wants all welfare reciepients subject to drug tests failed one himself after he ran a red light on Friday morning. The Atlanta Journal Constiution has the story on State Rep. Kip Smith (R):

Smith, whose given name is John Andrew Smith, first told the officer he had not consumed any alcoholic beverages.

"I asked him again, and he stated he had consumed a single beer at Hal's. …"

Smith is a sponsor of Georgia House Bill 464, which would "require random drug testing" for citizens on public assistance. In response to Smith's legislation, State Rep. Scott Holcomb introduced a bill last month that would require all state lawmakers to be subject to random drug testing.

Random drug tests for reciepents of public assistance are very likely to be found unconsitutional.

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'Anonymous' posts media moguls' information online

Fantastic news!

The White House on Saturday officially responded to two online petitions, "Stop the E-PARASITE Act" and "Veto the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information," urging the President to reject SOPA and PIPA.

The statement was drawn up by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff. They made clear that the White House will not support legislation that disrupts the open standards of the Internet.

"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," the statement read in part.

Yeah. The best news of the week.

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Every time voter-suppression enthusiasts shriek about dead people voting, their examples turn out to be very much alive. "Robert William Beaulieu is 23-years-old, lives in Nashua, New Hampshire, and is a registered Democrat. He's also very much not dead. ... But you wouldn't have known that if you watched the lastest undercover sting video from James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, which featured a man with an Irish accent attempting to obtain a ballot on behalf of a Robert Beaulieu who lives on Cassandra Lane. ... That's the home University of New Hampshire graduate Robert W. Beaulieu, pictured above, shares with his parents. Robert P. Beaulieu, unrelated, died a few months back at the age of 84, and is apparently the man Project Vertitas' investigator intended to impersonate. By all appearances, they got the wrong guy. ... "I found out they were actually talking about me and not the man who passed away in October," Robert W. Beaulieu told TPM. "The funny thing is, if they'd done any research, they would have found out the guy's middle name is Paul and the guy specifically goes looking for William.""

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Huntsman is out

And he's made an endorsement.

"The governor and his family, at this point in the race, decided it was time for Republicans to rally around a candidate who could beat Barack Obama and turn around the economy," Huntsman adviser Matt David said in a statement. "That candidate is Gov. Mitt Romney."

ThinkProgress notes that Huntsman once said Romney was "unelectable."

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That's a lot of spare change. "Airline passengers left more than $400,000 at airport security checkpoints operated by the Transportation Security Administration in 2011. ... TSA found $409,085.56 in spare change last year that was unclaimed by passengers, according to figures released by the agency. Historically, if no one comes back to get the leftover money, it stays with the TSA. ... A Florida lawmaker is trying to change that, however: Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) filed a bill in April of 2009 that would require TSA to transfer money that is not claimed by passengers when they leave airport security checkpoints to United Service Organizations. ... Miller said Thursday in a statement provided to The Hill that the amount of change left at airport security checkpoints in 2011 could be put to better uses than the TSA's operating budget."

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Heartwarming. "Last week, a man threw a 20-pound rock through a window of an Iraqi restaurant in Lowell, Massachussetts -- with the motivation behind the act of vandalism still remaining unclear. The Lowell Sun reports that the owner of the restaurant, Leyla Al-Zubaydi, was driven "to tears, and [it] prompted her to question whether the family should close the restaurant." ... But this week, a group of military veterans changed her mind with an act of solidarity. Patrick Scanlon, a Vietnam veteran and a coordinator for Veterans for Peace, organized so many veterans and other supporters to come and patronize the restaurant that they ended up filling every seat -- twice. "For someone to come and throw a rock through this window, in what we consider a hate crime, is totally unacceptable," said veteran Pat Scanlon."

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At the behest of Florida Governor Rick Scott, the Republican-controlled state legislature will soon be considering a bill to mandate the privatization of all correctional facilities in 18 counties even though their last attempt to do so was ruled unconstitutional.

The Florida Senate Rules Committee has proposed a bill that would require the state's Department of Corrections to privatize all prisons and other correctional facilities in 18 counties, according to the News Service of Florida.

The state legislature passed nearly the same measure last year, but the law was ruled unconstitutional in court because it didn't go through the committee process, violating the Florida Constitution.

The second largest private prison company in the world, GEO Group, has donated $822,000 to political campaigns in Florida, according to the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in Politics. The company also spent $25,000 for Florida Gov. Rick Scott's (R) inauguration party.

This has nothing to do with saving the state or the taxpayer money and everything to do with further enriching the already rich.

Privatizing prisons does nothing to lower costs because of corporate overhead, and incarceration rates increase in the presence of private prisons because there is a financial incentive to fill them up. Anyone who has been in a private prison, known someone locked up in one, or worked at one can tell you that.

This would also mean replacing the employees at each correctional facility in each of the 18 counties with cheaper, non-union, unsympathetic zombies.

Rick Scott's secret plan to personally deliver Florida to President Obama in November is going well.

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How's that fallout bunker coming? Via Reuters:

Russia would regard any military intervention linked to Iran's nuclear programme as a threat to its own security, Moscow's departing ambassador to NATO warned on Friday. "Iran is our neighbour," Dmitry Rogozin told reporters in Brussels. "And if Iran is involved in any military action, it's a direct threat to our security." Rogozin was speaking two days after the killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran by a hitman on a motorcycle. Kremlin Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev, who is close to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said Israel was pushing the United States towards war with Iran, according to the Interfax news agency. Russia, however, opposes a boycott of Iranian oil. "We are definitely interested in the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Rogozin said on Friday. "But at the same time, we believe that any country has the right to have what it needs to feel comfortable, including Iran."

That Doomsday Clock is ticking forward...

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They should repeat this poll in light of last night's result.

The Jan. 8 survey involved 756 people who were up to date on Tebow. The youthful 18-to-29-year-old demographic was the one most apt to believe that it isn't just the football gods who are smiling on Tebow, with 52.3% saying yes to the Divine Intervention theory. Among ethnic groups, the Hispanic/Latino demographic was the biggest believer, with 81.3% saying yes. Among African-Americans, 59.5% said yes, and for whites it was 38.3%. Politcally speaking, 54.2% of Republicans said yes, as did 38.2% of Democrats and 35.1% of independent voters.

God cares about football but doesn't care, apparently, about disease, starvation, war, murder, etc etc etc. Praise! Glory! Donate!

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Tony Soprano endorses "Rick Sanitorium"

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Rep. Allen West (R-Crazy Caucus) has something to say about critics of the Marines who pissed on the corpses of Taliban soldiers.

"As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell."

These idiots gave the Taliban a free and valuable propaganda tool for activating other extremists to kill people, including Americans. And Allen West is defending them. Good job.

Also, we should be forever diligent about calling out members of Congress who tell us to "shut our mouths." There's a constitutional amendment that allows us to not shut our mouths, and it specifically prevents wackaloons like Allen West from making us do so.

Headlines - Saturday January 14

2012-01-14T10:40:00.001-06:00

A third of Mormons say Mitt Romney's religion will count against him - almost half of Mormons believe they are more discriminated against than African Americans (that they wouldn't let in the priesthood until 1978), poll reveals

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There's nothing like just saying what you think. The Professor

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As much as Romney plays the "Europe" card by suggesting that A) all of Europe is socialist (especially France, of course), and that b) Obama wants to make America just like Europe, then Romney deserves the attack. You just can't play the "the other guy is too close to those 'crazy' Europeans" while you speak fluent French. Read the rest of this post...

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Mormons feel misunderstood? Then maybe they should stop the gay-bashing.

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Every time I listen to wingnuts talk about family values, I wonder just what kind of fucked up family they come from. We're used to hearing conservatives talk about the corruption of the American soul, and usually the corruption they are talking about is stuff they just don't like- women controlling their own bodies, someone saying fuck on a tv show, gay people and brown people breathing, etc. I really did think, though, that at one point, there were a few things we all, from every political persuasion, agreed on. Torture got tossed off that list during the Bush years, and now it appears that conservatives have decided that desecrating corpses (heckuva job, CNN) and urinating on the dead should also be yanked off the list of things we all abhor. I wish I was surprised, but I'm really not. Fortunately, the military still at least is pretending to take this seriously.

And remember- the people defending this are the EXACT same people who wanted you to believe soldiers never told an off color joke in a cafeteria, or ran over a dog, or the other stuff they furiously attacked Beauchamp for a couple years ago.

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Kansas GOP House Speaker 'Prays' That Obama's 'Children Be Fatherless And His Wife A Widow'

Fuck these people.

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TENNESSEE: State GOP Rep Pushes Bill To Ban Trans People From Restrooms

"I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don't care if he thinks he's a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I'd just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry. Don't ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk," he said. "We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts.

Headlines - Friday January 13

2012-01-13T09:44:00.000-06:00

Newt's going for the jugular with this one.

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Fox Shut Out of Canada Because of a Law Against Lying During Newscasts

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Loggers 'burned Amazon tribe girl alive'

Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon's last uncontacted tribes and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its land, reports claimed on Tuesday night.

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And now I must burn my copy of "Blade Runner: The Director's Cut".

Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly's latest book Killing Lincoln has been optioned by producer/directors Ridley Scott and Tony Scott. The Scotts will produce a two-hour documentary for National Geographic Channel based on the book, which O'Reilly co-wrote with Martin Dugard. O'Reilly will also serve as an executive producer of the documentary.

Via

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

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The insanely stupid, it burns!

That the New York Times public editor even has to ASK the question is a fucking sad commentary on the state of affairs in journamalism today:

I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge "facts" that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

HOLY SHIT, ARE YOU SERIOUS? What the hell do you think journalists are SUPPOSED to do?

This comment sums it up for me:

On a related note, withholding information about potential misdeeds of an Administration because reporting on such might influence the outcome of an election is getting the whole point of having a free press exactly backwards. Congratulations, New York Times, on contributing to the dysfunctional politics of the last 20 years.

When a powerful person lies in public or directly to a journalist's face, that is a noteworthy event. Also known as news. It might be worth writing about.

Not enough facepalm in the world for this.

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The Kenyan Usurper Hawaiian Devil Baby Barack Obama is proposing a tax break for American companies who hire actual Americans! In America! And he's proposing ending the tax break for off-shoring manufacturing. (And yes, there is one.) Now let's see him fight for that. Hahaha. Sigh. (NYTimes)

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Turley: Justice According To Thomas: Dissent in Case Overturning Murder Conviction Highlights The Twisted Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas

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A survey by the Southern Baptist Convention shows that 73% of Protestant pastors reject the concept of evolution — even when asked if they believe God used evolution to create humans. Forty-six percent maintained that the Earth is only roughly 6000 years old despite tests showing rocks that are millions of years old.
Continue reading 'Two-Thirds of Polled Pastors Reject Evolution'

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Indiana Republicans Introduce Bill To Allow 'The Lord's Prayer' To Be Required By Schools

And this: Indiana Senate Bill Would Give School Boards The Power To Force Teachers To Teach Creationism As Science

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The Pope's hate speech

In case you missed the story, Pope Benedict made headlines this week by doing what it is popes do best – putting the irrational fear of God into his followers.

The pope made some of his strongest comments against gay marriage in a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican in which he touched on some economic and social issues facing the world today.

He told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of children needed proper "settings" and that "pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman."

"This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself," he said.

Of all the things which could actually bring an end to human existence (e.g. nuclear war, global warming, a Rick Perry presidency), the Pope picks on same-sex marriage. It's right out of a Rick Santorum stump speech. Scary stuff but how exactly would same-sex marriage end life as we know it?

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Wash Post: The Obama administration has decided to remove two of the four U.S. Army brigades remaining in Europe as part of a broader effort to cut $487 billion from the Pentagon's budget over the next decade, said senior U.S. officials.

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Planting of GM alfalfa approved, again

About this decision, Grayson adds:

Translation? GM alfalfa is free to blow around and contaminate ("cross-pollinate") the fields of organic alfalfa ("other commercial crops") that feed our nation's organic dairy cows. USDA doesn't have to worry about it. But you do[.]

Not to mention that Monsanto will then attempt to sue the non-Monsanto farmers for "using" Monsanto seed.

And not to mention that these GM crops are losing their pest resistance.

Which makes you wonder what these farmers are paying Monsanto to do. Sorry, I forget myself — The farmers are paying Monsanto for the right to make Monsanto rich. Monsanto loots the farmers; Monsanto CEOs loot Monsanto. Can't be Top 0.1% without the money.

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Yes, I'm bringing it up again - this is your tax dollars at work, people....

US soldiers changing hearts and minds by urinating on dead Muslims

Everybody supporting the troops a lot? Here they are "finishing the job," with the primary job being "killing Muslims everywhere" and the finish being "ritually urinating on the bloodied bodies." Afghanistan, the war that keeps on giving!

These soldiers are apparently part of a Marine assassination/sniper unit, but it's okay because they are "a small group of U.S. individuals." Look, it's only four Marines in uniform pissing on the corpses of the people they just killed. Simmer down! It's not like there are five U.S. Marines pictured in this particular video doing what is surely a normal, everyday American thing of urinating on dead victims of our Imperial Wars.

Let's see, any other important excuses from the U.S. occupation army in Kabul? Yes, this: The Marines in the video "apparently are no longer serving in Afghanistan."

So, hooray! They're probably back in the United States shooting national park rangers and murder-suiciding their entire families — just normal American stuff, for freedom.

The next terrorism attack is going to be spectacular, isn't it? Might want to avoid cities or towns or being American for the next couple of decades. [CNN/Guardian]

Gawker's take on this:

A video emerges showing US Marines pissing on three Taliban corpses in Afghanistan. The outrage machine grinds into motion. The media bestirs itself from its slumber. Americans momentarily pay attention to the war in Afghanistan again. Politicians rush to add their names to the chorus of identical statements. All inflamed over the least bad thing that soldiers do in war.

Do you know what is worse than having your dead body urinated upon? Being killed. Being shot. Being bombed. Having your limbs blown off. Having your house incinerated by a drone-fired missile that you don't see until it explodes. Having your children blown up in their beds. Having your spouse killed. Having your hometown destroyed. Being displaced. Becoming a refugee. Having your entire life destroyed as a consequence of political forces far, far beyond your control.

And we as a nation could not be more bored by the unceasing industrial strength violence being carried out in our names in nations where none of us will travel, or vacation, or think about much at all as long as sports and American Idol and Downton Abbey are on TV. We skim past those stories of the latest bombing or drone strike or gunfight or civilian massacre. We joke about the personal foibles or funny accents or minor gaffes of the politicians who hold it in their power to stop war, but won't. We're bored and petulant and self-absorbed until that video of some soldier pissing on dead bodies comes along, at which point we can have an outrage contest and feel good about ourselves for being more outraged than the next completely uninvolved person, for a day or two, until the big game comes on.

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Hate is not a family value

And those of us who understand that now have an excuse to buy more Girl Scout cookies.

On the one hand: Yes, this is a blatant attempt at attention-grabbing by a handful of sad authoritarians using children as puppets for their twisted agenda. On the other hand: Generally, I feel about GS cookies the way Homer Simpson feels about beer. And besides, congratulations to the Girl Scouts for not folding to the whims of these nasty little people!

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GOP War on the IRS Costs U.S. Billions

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Frothy was for it before he was against it

We've discussed this before: Rick Santorum is a fraud on nearly all of his major issues:

The Santorums had a life-saving abortion that he would deny others.
Frothy warned big-haired, Jeebus-loving adulterer and all around GOP sex-lizard, the sheep with a secret sorrow, Senator John Ensign that the cuckolded husband of his mistress was about to go public, thus allowing Ensign to get a jump on damage control. So family values are a joke.
Terri Schiavo — Frothy notably flew to Florida in a Walmart corporate jet to do some grandstanding, and oh, while he was there did some fundraising. So much for dignity of life.

Anyway, given Frothy's absolute moral failings and ethical lapses (he was on the top ten list of most corrupt politicians at the time of his 16 point loss in his re-election campaign), Frothy has managed to control his brand to be the squeaky clean Xristian in the room.

But going back to the first point, on the sanctity of life crap, Frothy and Karen used to be pro-choice once upon a time. Like when she was shacking up with her 40-plus-years-her-senior lover before meeting the scold she would end up marrying. (Dr. Allen actually delivered Karen, which is kinda creepy when you think about it.) Oh, yeah: he also operated Pittsburg's first Abortion Clinic, and presumably he and Karen practiced contraception.

Says the good doctor:

"When she moved out to go be with Rick, she told me I'd like him, that he was pro-choice and a humanist," said Allen, an elderly but vibrant man, during a brief conversation on the porch of his Pittsburgh row home. "But I don't think there's a humanist bone in that man's body."

Anyway, the article is full of stuff that needs to be broadcast more widely and has citations to original source material. It's a great read.

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OK, it's official: Israel has a death wish. It's Suicide by Political Stupidity. "Israel's Supreme Court has upheld a controversial law that bans most Palestinians who marry Israelis from obtaining either citizenship or residency in the country. In a six-five ruling, the court agreed that Palestinians who gain Israeli citizenship through marriage pose a security threat. Parliament passed the law in 2003, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, a time when fighters from the West Bank frequently entered Israel to carry out deadly attacks. The law is believed to have prevented thousands of Palestinians from living with their spouses. Civil rights groups had argued that Israel's Basic Laws, the country's de facto constitution, grant all citizens the right to family life. They also say that few Palestinian spouses of Israelis have ever been involved in violence. "It is a dark day for the protection of human rights and for the Israeli Supreme Court," lawyers Dan Yakir and Oded Feller, from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in a statement. ACRI was one of three rights groups that had appealed to the Supreme Court over the law."

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Missouri republicans contiue their hateful assault on poor people. "The ATM-like cards used for food stamps would have to include a photo identifying the cardholder under a bill proposed by a Lee's Summit Republican. ... State Sen. Will Kraus defended the bill in committee, arguing it is an attempt to prevent fraud. Last year, as part of a bill mandating that federal welfare recipients be subject to drug testing in order to keep their benefits, lawmakers included a provision requiring a photo on the cards used to access payments. ... Kraus said his bill is the next logical step. The bill would mandate a card with a photo be issued to everyone in a household older than 16 who is receiving the benefits. ... "Without a photo ID, recipients can sell their food stamp card to someone else, who can then turn around and use the benefits for their personal use," Kraus said. ... There also would be costs associated with training, notification and acquiring new equipment. ... Democratic Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal of University City questioned the need for such a bill and asked for figures about just how frequent cases of fraud occur that might be prevented by a photo ID. ... Kraus said that figure would be difficult to determine, but pointed to his own experience where he said he witnessed someone committing this type of fraud. ... "It's just hard for me to consider voting for this bill based solely on your one experience," Chappelle-Nadal said. "If we're going to do this, we need to get empirical evidence.""

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The housing crisis is the first item on the agenda of new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head Richard Cordray as the agency released guidelines for how it will regulate the mortgage lending industry this week. It also launched its first investigation, a probe into kickbacks paid to a private mortgage lender.

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Nearly 40 people were arrested protesting the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and indefinite detention outside the gates of the White House yesterday. The protesters were from the grassroots group Witness Against Torture, which is calling for the closure of the prison camp.

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Republicans mad about debt ceiling increase they already agreed to

Here's an amusing tale of woe from the dysfunctional family of mutants running the federal government: Barack Obama mentioned in the waning days of 2011 that he needed permission to raise the debt ceiling once again, as outlined and wholly foreseen by the debt agreement reached after a lot of tearful hate sex with Congress in August, but congressional leaders asked him to wait to make the request since HELLO, ON VACATION and wanted a chance to formally vote on it instead of just letting the request receive a standard automatic approval after fifteen days without a response. Obama agreed to wait to prove that he unlike everyone else in America has decided to Respect Congress or whatever, mostly we are guessing because of all the Republican sobbing over his recess appointments, and so now John Boehner's thank-you-for-waiting greeting card for Obama has arrived in the form of a whiny statement scolding the President for asking for a thing both parties agreed to months ago. READ MORE »

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Survey: Illegal Corporate Campaign Contributions Up 400%

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Mario: What do North Korea and Indiana have in common?

Headlines - Thursday January 12

2012-01-12T10:09:00.001-06:00

James O'Keefe commits voter fraud in order to commit voter fraud.

These guys are so god damned stupid we're getting to the point they will be featured on one of those cable shows featuring America's dumbest criminals. "Hey guys, let's go break multiple laws, film it, and then show everyone. I see no flaws with this plan!"

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Class warfare - not just for Republicans anymore

Interesting:

The Occupy Wall Street movement no longer occupies Wall Street, but the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness. A new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults finds that about two-thirds of the public (66%) believes there are "very strong" or "strong" conflicts between the rich and the poor—an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.

Not only have perceptions of class conflict grown more prevalent; so, too, has the belief that these disputes are intense. According to the new survey, three-in-ten Americans (30%) say there are "very strong conflicts" between poor people and rich people. That is double the proportion that offered a similar view in July 2009 and the largest share expressing this opinion since the question was first asked in 1987.

That's enough to make Mittens cry.

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has committed 1,115 violations of campaign finance law, totaling more than $500,000 worth of fines, since 2009. This includes 456 violations in the last 72 hours, worth nearly $284,000. Under Wisconsin statute, each violation invites a fine of $500:

"Scott Walker has improperly reported well over $500,000 in contributions from inside and outside of Wisconsin," said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. "Scott Walker has absolutely no interest in following the campaign finance rules of the state of Wisconsin and we again call for state regulators to address his serial violation of our laws."

A breakdown of the violations:

Fall Pre-Election 2010: 428 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $245,276.10

Report of Late Contributions: 28 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $37,900

Pre-primary 2010 Report: 214 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $79,464.68

July 2010 Report: 204 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $68,575.38

Jan 2010 Report: 35 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $10,710

July 2009 Report: 206 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $76,170

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You want to know who I feel really sorry for? Andy Borowitz, John Fugelsang and all the staff writers at The Onion.

How the hell are they supposed to write satire when republicans are out there stealing their thunder with unintentional self-parody like this?

Rep. Diane Black (Tenn.) and 71 other House Republicans introduced a nonbinding resolution today voicing concern over President Barack Obama's recess appointment of four administration nominees last week.
"It's astounding to me that the president is claiming these are recess appointments and within his authority, when Congress was not in fact in recess," Black said. "These appointments are an affront to the Constitution. No matter how you look at this, it doesn't pass the smell test. I hope the House considers my resolution as soon as we return to Washington so we can send a message to President Obama." [emphasis added]

Seriously -- how the hell are they supposed to compete with that?

But wait! It gets better...Just days before, several members of the House had kicked up a fuss over the extension of the debt limit, whining that they were on recess. Obama agreed and announced that he would be magnanimous and wait until they returned. From recess. They said they were glad he saw it their way and was going to be reasonable about it and wait until they returned in January. From recess.

There was quite a bit of whining from the left about "caving in to rethugs again" when he did that. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time; I tend to ignore purists in practically all situations, but I kind-of wish I hadn't now. Now I see that he was setting a trap for them when he gave them that. Now it's obvious what he was doing, and he probably anticipated the self-parody that would ensue as the chuckleheads and nitwits on the right managed to truss themselves up good and proper trying to have it both ways. Checkmate, bitches.

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Five U.S. Senators Are Perfect Koch Servants, Americans For Prosperity Reports

My senator made the list!

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Hey guys, remember that time a nutty Xristian Xrazy Lady (redundant? Yes.) in Ohio, Janet Folger-Porter, tried to get a fetus to testify to the state legislature, but it embryo'ed the Fifth Amendment and didn't let them listen to its heartbeat? Me Neither!, but anyway she's at it again. She rounded up scads of children to pass out Teddy Bears with heartbeats to the legislators. Now maybe they will outlaw aborting plush toys. (WTAM)

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Buh bye, Brisket!

Aw, so sorry your mother's coattails weren't quite long enough.

Bristol Palin had an amazing, life-changing experience on Dancing With the Stars, but not long after the show ended, she realized life in the spotlight wasn't all glitz and glamour, landing her back behind the reception desk at a dermatologist's office in Anchorage, which can be a three-hour commute in bad weather. The turning point, Bristol tells In Touch in an exclusive interview, came last September, when — in a much-reported episode — she was accosted at the Saddle Ranch in LA by a man who hurled nasty insults at her about her famous family. After footage of the altercation went viral, Bristol, 21, realized she was done with showbiz — and that she'd never felt totally at home in the Lower 48. "I wasn't really into the Hollywood thing," she says. "After that, I just realized that I was over it. I was ready to come home."

In other words, nobody was interested in a reality show about her life cohabitating with two black men. I mean, can you IMAGINE? Also.

This snippet in the article was too good not to post:

"It's great having Bristol here," Sarah tells In Touch. "She makes good decisions, and she's always thinking long-term about her and Tripp's future."

I suppose deciding to have unprotected sex and getting knocked up while still in high school made her more money than opting to graduate and getting a job at the local Dairy Queen would have...

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Wisco: The Bain of the GOP's Existence

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Winning hearts and minds

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has issued a strong denouncement of the video which appears to depict U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of killed Taliban fighters.

In a statement, President Karzai's office said: "The government of Afghanistan is deeply disturbed by a video that shows American soldiers desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans. "This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms. We expressly ask the US government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime." Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told the BBC that this was not the first time Americans had carried out such a "wild action" and that Taliban attacks on the Americans would continue.

The story dominated international news programs last night as the Pentagon scrambled to identify and punish the involved service members.

VIDEO: The Afghan public reacts.

UPDATE: UK tabloid The Daily Mail has more.

At one point one of the men can be heard saying: 'Have a great day, buddy' to laughter from his colleagues. Another of them jokes: 'Golden like a shower' and 'Yeahhhh!' as they groan with relief whilst urinating. It is not clear if the corpses belong to civilians or insurgents engaged in combat, although the film does appear to have been shot in Afghanistan. The anonymous person who posted it included the caption: 'Scout sniper team 4 with 3rd battalion 2nd marines out of camp lejeune peeing on dead talibans.' The film is likely to spark a huge diplomatic row between Washington and Kabul and rekindle memories of the abuse meted out by American troops at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The three corpses are all male and are wearing civilian clothes. The youngest lies on his front with an overturned wheelbarrow dumped by his side. The other two are on their backs and one has a large blood stain on his chest.

The Marine Corps Times reports that an investigation to identify the soldiers has been launched. Sure it has.

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Ministers sue feds (with tax free dollars) - Hate Crime Laws Oppress Our Religious Liberties

The Sixth Court of Appeals in Cincinnati is hearing the case of two Michigan ministers who say that hate crime laws oppress their freedom of speech and are unconstitutional. Joining the suit is Gary Glenn (left), the head of the American Family Association's Michigan chapter.

The suit, of course, is exploding with batshittery as hate crime laws only apply to actions, not speech. Despite that inconvenient fact, the ministers claim that they fear that their anti-gay sermons will bring their arrests. A lower court rightfully shitcanned the suit last year.

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Cookie Boycott Launched Over Girl Scouts' Inclusion Of Transgender Members

World Nut Daily is promoting a boycott of Girl Scout cookies over the organization's policy of allowing transgender girls to join.

After controversy arose over the potential admission of Colorado 7-year-old Bobby Montoya last month, The Girl Scouts of Colorado released a statement explaining, "We accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout." Rachelle Trujillo, vice president for communications of the Colorado Girl Scouts, added, "If a child is living as a girl, that's good enough for us. We don't require any proof of gender." According to a report in the Baptist Press, Trujillo also affirmed transgendered children are currently serving in Girl Scout troops across the U.S., though she declined to give details.

The boycott is being spearheaded by a 14-year old Girl Scouts member who last week posted this video.

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In 2004 the state legislature of Massachusetts, which was governed by Mitt Romney at the time, passed a budget which included a provision that would prohibit the use of outsourced labor for the purposes of privatization.

SECTION 21. The first paragraph of section 54 of said chapter 7, as appearing in the 2002 Official Edition, is herby amended by inserting after paragraph (1) the following paragraph:–
(1A) The agency shall prepare a written statement that the services proposed to be the subject of the privatization contract shall not be provided by labor based or employed outside the United States. No agency shall make a privatization contract and no such contract shall be valid if the services provided are from labor based or employed outside the United States.

Mitt Romney feigned concern about the consequences of outsourcing yet, despite his phony reservations, he used his authority as governor to issue a line-item veto of this provision contained in the state budget.

"Offshore Outsourcing
Section 21
I am vetoing this section because it could hurt taxpayers by increasing costs for future or existing administrative operations and make Massachusetts a less business-friendly environment.
–Governor Mitt Romney, June 25, 2004

Of course he would veto a provision that blocks the outsourcing of jobs because outsourcing was his specialty at Bain Capital. He had to look out for the wealth of his old buddies.

Not coincidentally, Massachusetts was 47th in the nation in job creation, with a growth rate of 0.9 percent, during Romney's tenure as governor.

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Disgusting:

Anti-abortion ads showing graphic images of aborted fetuses covered in blood and surrounded by religious icons will air during the Super Bowl in February, courtesy of Democratic Presidential candidate Randall Terry.

Terry, who has spent a year in jail and been arrested 50 times for his anti-abortion efforts, is using a Federal Election Commission loophole that ensures ads for political candidates cannot be prohibited within 45 days of an election. Apparently, primaries count, so Terry will be running ads on local stations during Super Bowl XLVI February 5.

Randall Terry is a terrorist. I don't exactly know why he's not in prison, much less allowed anywhere near a television.

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Headlines - Monday January 9

2012-01-09T08:28:00.000-06:00

Republicans: The Single Greatest Threat to America

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Margaret and Helen: Three Wise Men With Extra Cheese Please

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Note to corporate psychopaths: Bloomberg: Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of "people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry" lack a "conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people." As a result, Boddy argues in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, such people are "extraordinarily cold, much more calculating and ruthless towards others than most people are and therefore a menace to the companies they work for and to society." How do people with such obvious personality flaws make it to the top of seemingly successful corporations? Boddy says psychopaths take advantage of the "relative chaotic nature of the modern corporation," including "rapid change, constant renewal" and high turnover of "key personnel." Such circumstances allow them to ascend through a combination of "charm" and "charisma," which makes "their behaviour invisible" and "makes them appear normal and even to be ideal leaders."

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Of course @MittRomney was pro-draft. He was a chickenhawk coward who knew damn good and well he would never be drafted because he was rich and that he had a religious petticoat to hide behind. "A newly-unearthed photograph showing Mitt Romney demonstrating in favour of the Vietnam War draft might leave the presidential candidate feeling somewhat embarrassed. ... The veteran Republican, then 19, can be seen picketing an anti-war sit-in at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in 1966. ... Mr Romney will no doubt be proud of his younger self taking what was at the time a very unpopular stance. ... Taken at the height of the swinging Sixties, Mr Romney holds a sign declaring 'Speak Out, Don't Sit In' as, alongside like-minded individuals, he proclaims his support for Lyndon Johnson's ever-expanding draft. ... But, in a marked contrast to the relaxed dress sense associated with that decade's youth movement, he is wearing smart white slacks, a white buttoned-up shirt and a dark blazer. ... A newspaper clipping headlined 'Governor's son pickets the pickets' states: 'Mitt Romney, son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, was one of the pickets who supported the Stanford University administration in opposition to sit-in demonstrators.'"

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Did you hear the one about the republican presidential candidate who wants to put troops back in Iraq?

It's true. Rick Perry isn't just pissed off that the war in Iraq is over, he wants to gin it back up.

"I would send troops back into Iraq," Rick Perry told a New Hampshire audience at Saturday night's GOP debate, warning that without yet another military operation in Iraq it would fall under the influence of neighboring Iran.
"I think it's a huge error for us," he said. "We're going to see Iran in my opinion, move back in at literally the speed of light. They're going to move back in. And all of the work we've done -- every young man that has lost his life in that country will have been for nothing. Because we've got a president that does not understand what's going on in that region."

First off, someone should gently remind him that the withdrawal of troops was part of the Status of Forces Agreement that was negotiated, agreed to and signed by the previous occupant of the White House, not the current one. I wish people would get that right, but I really wish that the presstitutes (looking at you, George Stephanopolous) would call out the deliberate misinformation and alternate realities as they happen.

But let's consider what he said about Iran being the real winner of the United States and our misadventure in Mesopotamia. That part happens to not only be true, but it happens to be the outcome that was warned about beforehand by everyone who knows anything at all about the region and the political dynamics at work there, and staying for a hundred years like McCain said we should wouldn't change the ethnic makeup of the region.

The fact remains that Iran won that war the instant the first troop carrier rolled into Iraq in March of 2003. That is the reality that the Mayberry Machiavellis created when they invaded a sovereign nation based on lies and sexed-up intel.

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The police don't serve and protect us, they exist solely to act as paid thugs in service of the 1%. "Police officers knocked down and clubbed a young woman during an anti-police march in Oakland late Saturday night, and arrested six people. ... Video of the incident uploaded to YouTube showed the young woman riding her bicycle towards a small group of officers. As she approached, officers shoved her to the ground and at least one clubs her with his baton. ... Protesters quickly rushed to her aid, and dragged her away from police. ... An "Occupy Oakland" press release said the "Fuck the Police" march was held to protest the "brutal campaign of repression" conducted by Oakland police to prevent protesters from re-establishing their camp in Frank Ogawa Plaza. It describes the City of Oakland as a "war zone.""

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If running for office is only for the rich, can the right to vote be far behind?

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It's about effing time MSNBC kicked his racist ass to the curb. We never understood why he was ever hired by that network to begin with. "Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan has been suspended indefinitely from MSNBC, according to a statement from that network's President Phil Griffin. An Associated Press article on CBSNews.com blames reaction to Buchanan's latest book Suicide of a Superpower for his ouster from the cable network, as well as a campaign by the advocacy group, Color of Change. ... The former Nixon aide has long courted controversy. In April of this year he said that President Obama's path to the White House was the result of "Affirmative Action all the way." In 2009, he asserted that the U.S. "has been a country built, basically, by white folks." ... MSNBC's Griffin apparently believes, however, that Buchanan's newest work has crossed a line. Suicide of a Superpower came out in October and features chapters with titles like "The End of White America" and "The Death of Christian America." ... The AP quotes Griffin as saying, "Because of the content of the book, I didn't think it should be part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC.""

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Repeat after us...Iran is not a threat. Not to the US, not to Europe, not to anyone. "There's not much foreign policy talk on the campaign trail except for one issue - Iran. Everyone is talking about Iran's new strength and assertiveness - its missile tests, its progress on the nuclear program, its moves in Iraq. Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, describes Iran as "the greatest threat that the world faces over the next decade." Newt Gingrich has compared the Iranian challenge to the rise of Hitler's Germany. More measured commentators also see Iran's rising influence and power across the Middle East. ... In fact, the real story on the ground is that Iran is weak and getting weaker. Sanctions have pushed the economy into a nose-dive. The political system is fractured and fragmenting. Abroad, its closest ally and the regime of which it is almost the sole supporter - Syria - is itself crumbling. The Persian Gulf monarchies have banded together against Iran and shored up their relations with Washington. Last week, Saudi Arabia closed its largest-ever purchase of U.S. weaponry. ... The simplest measure of Iran's strength is its currency. When Barack Obama became president, you could buy 9,700 rials with one dollar. Since then, the dollar has appreciated 60 percent against the rial, meaning you can buy 15,600 rials. ... Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told parliament recently that the latest sanctions were "the most extensive . . . sanctions ever" and that "this is the heaviest economic onslaught on a nation in history . . . every day, all our banking and trade activities and our agreements are being monitored and blocked." The price of food staples has soared 40 percent the past few months."

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Pipeline Inspector-Turned Whistleblower Calls Keystone XL a Potential "Disaster"

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The GOP speaker of the Kansas House has sent out an email prayer for the death of President Obama. Such "imprecatory prayers" are usually seen from far-right preachers, not politicians.

The Journal-World also revealed that O'Neal had forward another email which referenced the Bible verse Psalm 109:8, which reads: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." The very next verse adds: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." The verse became a conservative meme in 2009 after it began appearing on bumper stickers, t-shirts and even toys. The most common slogan was, "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8." "At last — I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president!" O'Neal wrote. "Look it up — it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!"

Another email from O'Neal referred to the First Lady as "Mrs. YoMama" and compared her appearance to Dr. Suess' Grinch.

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Rat bastards

The citizens of Wichita, Kansas are about to learn what it feels like to be trickled down on.

This week, defense and aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing announced that it will be closing the Boeing Defense, Space & Security facility in Wichita by the end of 2013, which "means the loss of 2,100 well-paying jobs at its Kansas facility, which was once considered the centerpiece of Wichita's claim as the air capital of the world." Boeing will instead be performing the operations that were scheduled for Wichita in San Antonio and Oklahoma City.

Boeing's decision — which it blames on possible defense cuts that may take place in the future — is devastating to Wichita community, which also includes more than four hundred Boeing suppliers. [...]

The announcement is particularly shocking given the fact that Boeing had repeatedly promised to keep jobs in Kansas and add many more if it were able to land a $35 billion contract for an aerial tanker. Kansas lawmakers went to bat for the company in early 2011, with Sen. Pat Roberts (R) even calling on "everybody who's out there tweeting, chirping and Facebooking" to push for the Air Force to grant the tanker contract to Boeing rather than European rival EADS.

I'm sure everyone recalls the shitstorm that was the fuel tanker contract which saw Republicans losing their minds and whispering impeachment over the Pentagon offering the contract to a European company rather than to Boeing.

Ultimately, Boeing did land the $35 billion dollar fuel tanker contract, and the state of Kansas offered them millions of dollars in tax breaks to keep them in the state where Boeing promised to remain if awarded the contract.

Despite recieving both the $35 billion contract and the tax incentives, Boeing is closing its Wichita plant because of "possible defense cuts that may take place in the future."

Possibly. Maybe. Who knows?

I'm sure the 2,100 local employees and over 400 local suppliers and their employees would like a better explanation than that.

It's true that there will be considerable defense cuts over the next decade, however Boeing is not a company that is hurting financially or anywhere even close to it. According to Bloomberg, Boeing saw roughly $68.6 billion in revenue in 2011 and is projected to see $78.7 billion in revenue in 2012. Boeing is also among the 30 corporations that paid no federal taxes between 2008 and 2010.

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The Rude Pundit: A Scene from Radical Christianity's Ongoing War on Women

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Headlines - Saturday January 7

2012-01-07T09:34:00.001-06:00

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Borowitz: Boehner on improving employment numbers: "This is a wakeup call. We've got to work harder to fuck this up."

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Judging from the recent Gingrich and Santorum statements about the blahs, race-baiting is alive and well in the Republican Party. But, unlike the golden age of strapping young bucks with their welfare-financed t-bones, one of the key ingredients of Nixon-era racial fear mongering is absent:

Twenty years ago, a reporter tallying crime stats for our newspaper's weekly blotter might sift through dozens of killings on a single weekend. There were more than 1,000 homicides a year. Last year, there were fewer than 300 homicides — and many weekends with no killings.

Ten years ago, reporters working the streets kept mental lists of neighborhoods considered too dangerous to visit alone. Now, no neighborhood is off-limits. That sense of ambient criminal menace is gone.

Los Angeles —- like other big cities around the country — is in the midst of a crime drop so steep and profound, it has experts scratching their heads. Crime fell in 2011 for the ninth year in a row, to levels not seen in Los Angeles since half a century ago.

Whether its because of more prisons and police, or less lead, there's a hell of a lot less crime, so the danger to the Republican voters from scary minorities is mostly limited to their pocketbooks.

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The unemployment rate continues to edge downward, falling to 8.5% as the private sector continues to add jobs. It was the sixth consecutive month in which the economy added at least 100,000 jobs.

The economy's payrolls increased by 200,000 in December, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday. The data surpassed economists' expectations and mark a six-month stretch in which the economy generated 100,000 jobs or more in each month.
The nation's jobless rate slipped to 8.5 percent, its lowest level since February 2009 and down from a revised 8.7 percent reading for the previous month, adding to the upbeat tone of the monthly report.
[ ... ]
The closely watched employment report will likely cement views that economic growth accelerated in the fourth quarter after a tepid performance in the first nine months of 2011. However, the pace of job creation remains too slow to signal a robust economic recovery is finally under way.
The economy would need even faster job growth over a sustained period to make a noticeable dent in the pool of 24.4 million Americans who remain either out of work or underemployed 2-1/2 years after the end of the 2007-09 recession.
An improvement in the U.S. labor market is crucial for global markets because American consumer spending accounts for a fifth of the world's economic activity. A recovery in the U.S. would also mitigate the impact of the sharp slowdown in Europe.

Place your bets now on which way the GOP will choose to spin this news...will they try to take credit for the development, or will they try to dismiss it as irrelevant?

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Jill: If it turns out that the GOP fixed the Iowa Caucus for Romney, imagine what they'll do on a national level

And this: Another Republican sociopath

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Protest Wall Street, Go to Jail for the Rest of Your Life

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This is so fucking cool.

Phoenix Woman at Firedoglake:

While tooling around on the Internet, I ran across the story of Todmorden, the market town in Yorkshire in the UK that, from a modest guerrilla-gardening start less than four years ago is now well on its way to self-sufficiency in foodstuffs. They've set a goal of self-sufficiency by 2018, and they're already well on their way to that goal.
How do they do it? The ringleaders convinced the city authorities to let them set up community gardens anywhere and everywhere in town - abandoned lots, highway medians, ditches, you name it - and encourage the townsfolk to come and take as much as they wanted. For free. Even in front of the police station:

Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds.
If you'd visited a few months ago, you'd have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions - all manner of vegetables and salad leaves.
Today the beds are bare. Why? Because people have been wandering up to the police station forecourt in broad daylight and digging up the vegetables. And what are the cops doing about this brazen theft from right under their noses? Nothing.
Well, that's not quite correct.
'I watch 'em on camera as they come up and pick them,' says desk officer Janet Scott, with a huge grin. It's the smile that explains everything.
For the vegetable-swipers are not thieves. The police station carrots - and thousands of vegetables in 70 large beds around the town - are there for the taking. Locals are encouraged to help themselves. A few tomatoes here, a handful of broccoli there. If they're in season, they're yours. Free.
So there are (or were) raspberries, apricots and apples on the canal towpath; blackcurrants, redcurrants and strawberries beside the doctor's surgery; beans and peas outside the college; cherries in the supermarket car park; and mint, rosemary, thyme and fennel by the health centre.

It's not just veggies and fruits the Tods are raising: They've got an egg campaign, other sorts of local livestock, an aquaponic fish-and-veg farm under development, and have inspired several other UK cities and towns to see how much of their own food they can produce.

Kentucky prides itself on broad swaths of green grass beside the highways and in the medians. Not only is this vast public acreage unproductive, it wastes millions of tax dollars in mowing and other maintenance. Why not turn it over to local gardeners to plant in food?

Occupy the medians!

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Record Heat Floods America With Temperatures 40 Degrees Above Normal

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Santorum's Obsession: As Senator, He Mentioned Abortion 1,014 Times | According to the Sunlight Foundation, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum uttered the word "abortion" 1,014 times during his Senate terms between 1996 and 2007, accounting for 12.2 percent of all Senate mentions. Some of his other favorite words included partial-birth, fetus, and womb. During his Senate tenure, Santorum advocated for a number of bills restricting women's health rights, including sponsoring an act that criminalized late-term or "partial-birth" abortions (even though his wife had one).

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House Democrats Rush Floor Demanding Republicans Come Back To Work, GOP Cuts Off C-SPAN

Worst reality show ever.

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Santorum's Exorcist problem Link

Rick Santorum (R-Frothy) appeals to evangelical voters as a man steeped in family values and
his Christian faith. From 2007 to 2011, however, Santorum served on the board of directors of
Universal Health Services Inc., a large hospital chain which racked up dozens of allegations of abuse
during that time -- including everything from rape to suicide attempts allowed by neglect to murder.

Over the years, states have barred children from attending UHS facilities over safety concerns and
the feds have put UHS on their radar. Department of Justice lawyers have filed two lawsuits accusing
the chain of fraud. One lawsuit settled for $27.5 million. Another suit still pending in federal court in
Virginia centers on a facility called Keystone Marion Youth Center.

The facility, in Marion, Va., treats troubled boys with mental-health issues. The majority of patients
come from states' child-welfare and juvenile-justice systems. The center promises stability, schooling,
and clinically-approved therapies. It was also approved to accept Medicaid patients.

It did not have approval to perform an "exorcism."

Can you believe the nightmare some boys are stuck in?

They have no family so the state takes them in.

Then some GOP whack job suspects some boy might be gay, so they send him to Rick Santorum's
right-wing hospital so they can give him electric-shocks or a lobotomy to attempt to get that "gay devil"
driven out of the poor bastard - and he's got no way to resist.

Religious insanity is the biggest problem in America.

Bigger than the debt, bigger than the economy, bigger than sexism, bigger than racism.

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Judy Miller Alert! The New York Times is Lying About Iran's Nuclear Program

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Robert Reich: Get Ready For A Obama-Clinton Presidential Ticket

Headlines - Friday January 6

2012-01-06T08:53:00.001-06:00

Youngstown, Ohio mayor buys earthquake insurance for city over for doubts over fracking. Bloomberg

Teabagging governor Kasich believes that the earthquakes are isolated incidents. Uh huh. They are isolated to fracking, so he's sort of right.

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Is the US really in hock to China?

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And today's most blatantly racist GOP statement of the day

Comes from Newt:

"I will go to the NAACP convention, and explain to the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps," said Gingrich.

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Jill: Dear Keith

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Wholesale Approval of Genetically Engineered Foods -- Obama Administration Disappoints/Angers Public

Please comment on this at the link.

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Michael Hayden: Partisan Troll or Idiot?

You decide:

Very little in life is truly inevitable. When briefing policy makers, I would try to point out that a lot of it wasn't even predictable (at least in any scientific sense). But surely what is happening in Iraq, the increasingly darkening clouds of sectarian division, can hardly be described as unexpected.

No shit. Someone who was paying attention could have predicted as much before the fucking war started. But no, it was the Bush Administration, populated with tools like Hayden, who thought that if we invaded Iraq, that we could transform a secular dictatorship into a secular democracy. Sort of like the way that Iran transformed itself from a secular dictatorship into a secular democracy.

Oh, wait. That never frakking happened!

Hayden also neglected to point out a couple of facts. The "out by the end of `11" was negotiated by President Bush. Second, the Iraqis were willing to let combat troops stay, but only if they were subject to Iraqi law. The Iraqi legal system is about as independent as the Russian legal system, the insistence of the Iraqi government that our combat troops be subject to their law was a dealbreaker for both sides. If President Obama had agreed to that, the very same chorus of putzim who are now criticizing the withdrawal would have been screaming blue bloody murder.

Why CNN agreed to publish Hayden's little screed, given that he is on Mitten's payroll, is another question entirely.

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Mother Jones: Ethanol Subsidies: Not Gone, Just Hidden a Little Better

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Sigh...Well, the day ends in "y" doesn't it? "A Catholic priest already charged in state court with possessing thousands of pornographic images of young boys is due in a Pittsburgh courtroom on Friday on new federal charges, authorities said. ... A federal grand jury, in an indictment unsealed late on Wednesday, charged the Rev. Bartley Sorensen, 62, former pastor of St. John Fisher Church in Churchill near Pittsburgh, with one count each of receiving and possessing pictures of minors engaged in sex acts. ... If convicted of the federal charges, Sorensen faces up to 20 years in prison for receiving child pornography on a computer and up to 10 years behind bars for possession of child pornography. ... U.S. Attorney David Hickton said an investigation will continue jointly between the FBI and Allegheny County Police after Sorensen appears before a federal magistrate on Friday. ... A parish employee who had undergone training to identify sexual predators allegedly saw Sorensen viewing child pornography on his computer and called the church child abuse hotline."

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Pentagon Plan: More Drones, Increased Presence in Asia

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We're #1! We're #1! We're #1!

WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. "Movin' on up," George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

Let them eat cake. Also, file under "DUH!"

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The 1% thinks you're stupid. In fact, they think you're very stupid.

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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray -- an Obama recess appointment -- is not letting the grass grow under his feet.

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Nigerian "witch hunter" and Holy Appointee of Jesus is coming to Houston for a "12 day marathon of deliverance" where she'll cure you of mermaids, voodoo, spells, and ALL those chronic and incurable diseases. Praise! Glory! Donate!

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According to a new report released by the Wall Street Journal, newly revised data from just before Christmas shows corporate profits reaching a new record of nearly $2 trillion in profits during the third quarter of the year. However, as ThinkProgress points out, corporate tax revenue is still lackluster.

After plummeting from 2007 through 2009, U.S. corporate profits regained their precrisis peak in early 2010, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The latest, revised data released just before Christmas showed corporate profits before tax rose to a record $1.97 trillion in the third quarter of 2011.

But corporate tax receipts, as reported by the Treasury Department, remain lackluster, even as the economy has gained some ground of late.

Although they have trended higher in recent months, corporate taxes measured on a 12-month basis were still under $200 billion in November. That is well below a precrisis peak of about $380 billion and still far below the government's fiscal 2012 target of $332 billion.

To be clear — corporate profits are higher now than they have ever been, but corporate tax revenue is still far below levels seen before the 2008 financial crisis.

The Obama Administration is clearly strangling them to death with taxes and regulations. Or something.

I think they're running out of excuses.

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Utah Doctors Join "Occupy" Movement

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The Romney Unit has been going around saying he created 100,000 jobs at Bain Capital. However…

[Romney spokesman Eric] Fehrnstrom says the 100,000 figure stems from the growth in jobs from three companies that Romney helped to start or grow while at Bain Capital: Staples (a gain of 89,000 jobs), The Sports Authority (15,000 jobs), and Domino's (7,900 jobs).

This tally obviously does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved — and are based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain. (Indeed, Romney made his comments in response to a former employee of American Pad & Paper Co. who says he lost his job after Bain Capital took it private.)

At least they're admitting to it. ThinkProgress adds:

Bain Capital has been responsible for thousands of layoffs at companies it bankrupted, such as American Pad & Paper, Dade International, and LIVE Entertainment, which Romney's stat completely leaves out. He's also taking credit for jobs created long after he left the firm to launch his political career.

Bain's entire thing was to take over companies and fire workers. Yesterday, Kevin Drum analyzed how President Obama might attack Mitt Romney. I believe this job-creation Bain lie will be a central attack.

Oh, and Krugman:

By that standard, everyone who's spent a lot of time with slot machines is a big winner, since only the pluses count.

Headlines - Thursday January 5

2012-01-05T10:40:00.001-06:00

Republicans Outraged that Obama is Obstructing their Obstruction

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Tennessee wingers move to protect bullying if it's biblically-based. "The Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) is using the suicide of Jacob Rogers -- who was bullied relentlessly for being gay -- to promote state legislation that would protect bullies who harass other students for their sexual orientation. The "license to bully" bill, HB 1153, was actually introduced last year, but FACT is hoping it will make headway in this new legislative session. Mirroring similar language that was recently proposed in Michigan, the bill creates specific protections for students who share any "religious, philosophical, or political views" that are "unpopular," regardless of their consequences to the learning environment. ... The bill is unabashedly designed to ensure that anti-LGBT bullying persists in the school system, as it specifically eliminates any protections or education that might help curb such harassment."

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Florida Bill Would Make Abortion A Felony With A Maximum Sentence Of Life In Prison

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New Hampshire GOP Bill Mandates That New Laws Find Their Origin In 1215 English Magna Carta

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Famous head case Michele Bachmann held an unprecedented meeting with "reality," which has sadly and inevitably led to the announcement that she is dropping out of the presidential campaign. Poor Marcus Bachmann will never get to be First Lady, after all! READ MORE »

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New Obama Administration Rules Require Airlines To Disclose Full Ticket Prices Upfront

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Catholic Church to gays: "No kids and definitely no fucking for you. As for ourselves, well that's a different story...."

An assistant bishop of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles has resigned because he has a secret family, including two teenage children. The Vatican said on Wednesday that Pope Benedict had accepted the resignation of Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop of the diocese which has been plagued by sexual scandals. A brief Vatican announcement did not give the reason for Zavala's resignation, saying only that the pope had accepted it under the norm in canon (Church law) that says a bishop who is ill or otherwise unfit to carry out his duties should resign.

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This entire race so far has been a cruel and stupid joke.
"Big money" spent millions so unelectable Santorum could win?

Nobody ever said one bad thing about Man-on-Dog, so he's the (barely) victor.

I can't wait until somebody tells the he-took-the-dead-baby-home-so-the-kids
could-pass-it-around-to-each-other stories. Middle America will LOVE that one.

Think how badly the religio-baggers handled this.

They got 49% of the vote, but it was split between Man-on-Dog, Perry and Bachmann.
If two of them had gotten out, the headline would be "Baggers crush everyone."

Obama couldn't lose this race if they caught him with a dead white boy.

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When Obama gets it right, I give him the credit

GM sales up 20% in world's biggest market Link

Chrysler Sales up 26% Link

Ford sells 2M vehicles, sales up 17% Link

Remember when the GOP said, "Fuck Detriot, let the US car companies die?"

Obama said "No" to that and saved 200,000 jobs, not to mention Delco, GMAC,
the leather companies, the plastic companies, the electronic companies, the glass
companies, the steel companies. satellite radio, etc etc etc.

Think Obama will mention that in his ads this summer?

He damn sure would if *I* was running his 2012 campaign,
but it might not be considered "nice" to list the damn facts.

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What's Happening In Virginia? Republicans Require Voters To Sign Loyalty Oath To Vote And So Much More

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The Iron Lady movie trailer.

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Romney's home in Utah

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"The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the Supreme Court, they are creating rights, and they should be left up to the people to decide. You shouldn't create constitutional rights when states do dumb things. Let the people decide if the states are doing dumb things get rid of the legislature and replace them as opposed to creating constitutional laws that have consequences that were before them." - Rick Santorum, saying that individual states should be allowed to ban contraception.

Headlines - Tuesday December 27

2011-12-27T08:24:00.000-06:00

Headed out of town to work until around January 5th. Enjoy a peaceful start of the New Year!

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Borowitz: ‎"2011 in Review: After nine years of war in Afghanistan, US succeeds in killing bin Laden. In Pakistan."

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Remember the Alamo! - Serial adulterer and self-proclaimed smartest blow job aficionado in the room Newt Gingrich didn't know how to file to run for Virginia's Goat Rodeo. Then Newticles compared his failure to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Then Newticles declared that his campaign will hold the mother of all write-in campaigns. Then Newticles learned that write-in campaigns are against the law in Virginia. Then Newticles learned that dimwit theocrat secessionist Rick Perry had the same problem. (Think Progress, TPM)

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One of the most difficult problems faced by Newt Gingrich in appealing to religious voters is his record of adultery and three marriages. His campaign insists that it was his first wife, Jackie, not Gingrich, who wanted the first divorce. However, recently released papers contradict that claim and indicate it was Newt Gingrich who wanted the divorce.

Continue reading 'Court Papers Reportedly Contradict Gingrich On First Divorce'

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Montana Voters Move To Recall Senators Over Votes Allowing Indefinite Detention of Citizens

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Rick Perry is the only sitting governor in the race and says that it's only fitting for his state's taxpayers to pay for his "extravagant" security detail. Because anytime he mentions Texas, they win. Or something.

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We're #1!

Good news everyone, one of the fastest trains in the world was launched today. Unfortunately, it wasn't in America.

Despite experiencing a number of issues earlier this year, China launched a new super-rapid test train this past weekend.

The new high-speed train can travel as fast as 500 km/h (about 310 mph), and was made by a subsidiary China's largest train provider CSR Corp Ltd. It launched over the weekend and was created to resemble an ancient Chinese sword. [...]

China's $1T USD high-speed rail bid hopes to build 13,000 km (8,078 miles) of high-speed rail network by 2012, and about 20,000 km (12,427 miles) by 2020.

While China's primary motives for developing high-speed rail include energy-efficiency, economic growth, and convenience, George Will reminds us that the primary motive for promoting high speed rail developement in America is the liberal agenda to collectivize and brain-wash everyone.

Governors John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and Rick Scott of Florida have all rejected federal funds for high speed rail projects, costing their states thousands of jobs in the process.

Drill baby drill.

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TIME's "Person of the Year" Cover: The Photo You Didn't See

TIME magazine has used a photo of Sarah Mason, a 25-year-old Occupy L.A. activist, photographed by LA Weekly's Ted Soqui as she stood in a line, arms linked, during a November 17 protest at Bank of America Plaza, for its cover. The TIME image - created by Shepard Fairey, the L.A. artist also known for his Obama "Hope" poster is a sanitized version of the original photograph. The 99% insignia on the bandana masking Mason's face has been removed. CW/RSN

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The Confederacy's War On Christmas

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Heaven forbid Congress does anything to stop handouts for the 1% bankers or Big Oil, but you can always count on them to throw the poor under the bus. How very moral and decent of them. The Hill:

Just days before the holiday season, the Obama administration released more than $800 million to states as part of a program to help low-income people pay their heating bills during the winter months. But the move comes as the program, known as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), faces major funding cuts. A year-end spending bill approved by Congress in recent days slashes funding for LIHEAP. The legislation funds the program at $3.48 billion, down from about $4.7 billion last year. That's about a 25 percent reduction

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Taibbi: A Christmas Message From America's Rich

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Touched by a Wild Mountain Gorilla

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Here is Governor Haley's response to the DOJ, on Facebook:

"The President and his bullish administration are fighting us every step of the way," Haley wrote. "It is outrageous, and we plan to look at every possible option to get this clearly political decision overturned so we can protect the integrity of our electoral process and our 10th amendment rights."

Wow. "Our Tenth Amendment rights"?

Can someone ask Governor Haley why she believes "our Tenth Amendment rights" trump federal civil rights legislation that was reauthorized by a huge Congressional majority as recently as 2006? Can someone ask Governor Haley if she knows that former President Reagan said this when he signed the 1982 reauthorization of the portions of the Voting Rights Act that she objects to on "states' rights" grounds?

On signing the 1982 extension of the Act, which passed the House by a vote of 389 to 24 and the Senate by a vote of 95-9, President Reagan called the right to vote the 'crown jewel of American liberties.'

What happened? We went from the "crown jewel of American liberties" when Reagan was smiling for the cameras to a Facebook post babbling something about the Tenth Amendment?

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I'm Not Homophobic, I Just Don't Like Being Around Gays and Their Bathrooms Scare Me

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Because those fuckers are not only rich, but while most of the rest of us have lost ground, those asswipes have only gotten richer. It will probably be no shock that some of that increased wealth comes from borderline corruption and insider trading.

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If we've told you once, we've told you a dozen times -- It's China's turn at bat. Believe us yet? "Afghanistan has agreed to sign a deal with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for oil exploration and extraction, the president's office said in a statement Monday. ... The state-owned Chinese oil giant will develop three oil fields, along with Afghan company Watan Group, located in the Amu river zone in Sar-e Pol and Faryab provinces in northern Afghanistan, the statement said. ... "This is the first big contract for exploration and extraction of oil in Afghanistan," the statement said. ... "There are 87 million barrels of oil in the area." ... Six oil deposits have been discovered in Afghanistan, including in Herat, in the west, Helmand in the south and Paktia in the southeast. ... Afghanistan's natural resources could theoretically generate billions of dollars in tax revenue. But exploitation of these resources faces massive hurdles due to ongoing instability, woeful infrastructure and endemic corruption."

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Another tale of outrage from the war on voting. "A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor's office, says she won't be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations. ... Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn't produce a birth certificate: Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers' license clerk, he suggested she might be an illegal immigrant. ... Thelma Mitchell told WSMV-TV that she went to a state drivers' license center last week after being told that her old state ID from her cleaning job would not meet new regulations for voter identification. A spokesman for the House Republican Caucus insisted that Mitchell was given bad information and should've been allowed to vote, even with an expired state ID. But even if that's the case, her ordeal illustrates the inevitable disenfranchisements that result when confusing voting laws enable state officials to apply the law inconsistently. ... The incident is the just latest in a series of reports of senior citizens being denied their constitutional right to vote under restrictive new voter ID laws pushed by Republican governors and legislatures. These laws are a transparent attempt to target Democrat constituencies who are less likely to have photo ID's, and disproportionately affect seniors, college students, the poor and minorities."

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Seriously, anyone who denies global warming is too stupid and/or evil to be allowed to drive, much less vote. "The Nepalese Himalayas have been warming significantly more than the global mean temperature in recent decades. Glaciers in much of the region are showing signs of shrinking, thinning, and retreating; and this is producing a lot of melt water. On Ngozumpa, some of this water is seen to pool on the surface and then drain away via a series of streams and caverns to the snout of the glacier. There, some 25km from the mountain, an enormous lake is growing behind a mound of dumped rock fragments. This lake, called Spillway, has the potential to be about 6km long, 1km wide and 100m deep. The concern is that this great mass of water could eventually breach the debris dam and hurtle down the valley, sweeping away the Sherpa villages in its path. The threat is not immediate, but it's a situation that needs monitoring, say scientists."

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Police Block Protesters From Bringing Food To Zuccotti Park For Christmas Celebration | Occupy Wall Street protesters convened for a Christmas celebration at their old campsite in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan yesterday, but when volunteers showed up with bags of cookies and food for a planned afternoon potluck, New York Police Dept. officers prevented them from entering the square, Manhattan news site DNAinfo.com reports. An NYPD spokesperson offered no comment on why the volunteers, who instead distributed the food along the sidewalk outside the park, were not allowed in. The protesters, meanwhile, celebrated the holiday by taking communion and singing Christmas carols. Here's a picture of five-year-old Aidan Ortiz playing his plastic trumpet to celebrate the holidays in Zuccotti, courtesy of DNAinfo.com: