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Politics & Money

Super Tuesday: “Baby, I got a plan. runaway fast as you can”

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Shouldn’t Kanye West’s Runaway be the Republican primary theme song?

“I heard a lot [from my constituents] because it was in the news this weekend,” Murkowski told TPM Tuesday afternoon after attending a weekly GOP policy lunch. “I will tell you, it’s not so much just the discussion about contraception that the Blunt amendment precipitated. There’s just an awful lot that’s been going on. There have been some comments made by some of our presidential candidates. There was the incendiary comments made by Rush Limbaugh.”

[…]

Murkowski, a high-ranked senator and former leadership member herself, worries that the sequence of events since GOP leaders twisted arms for Thursday’s losing vote has left her party on the wrong side of the issue, and that the public is taking note.

Murkowski: GOP Has Spun Out Of Control On Contraception | TPMDC.

Yes, they are. More and More every day.

Search Integration War

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Apple’s been putting the squeeze on Google

Twitter and Yelp have something in common with some other companies, too, like Wolfram Alpha and Vimeo. Between Yelp and Wolfram Alpha, Siri tries pretty hard not to search Google for things. And people testing the new OS X Mountain Lion beta have noticed that the new sharing options include Vimeo for videos and not YouTube. Curious, huh?

via Yelp, Twitter & Apple’s Anti-Google Coalition.

Isn’t this the definition of anti-competitive business practices?

Props to Sandra Fluke

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Big ups to Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke for testifying for the Dem’s mock hearing and standing tall throughout being defamed by Rush Limbaugh.

Props to the President for calling Sandra Fluke after getting bullied and victimized by Rush Limbaugh.

Fluke told Mitchell that during the call, President Obama “encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women. And what was really personal for me was that he said to tell my parents that they should be proud, and that meant a lot because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether or not my family would be proud of me. So I just appreciated that very much.”

via Msnbc Info – Andrea Mitchell interviews Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke moments after speaking with President Obama

Note: It’s really telling that Mitt Romney is so scared of Limbaugh that he can’t call Sandra Fluke up and say: I disagree with your politics, but you shouldn’t be called “a slut” for any reason. Romney is so scared of Limbaugh because Limbaugh leads the Republican base and the base is not enamored of Mitt Romney’s style or his substance.

Former Obama Administration “Car Czar” Rattner asks Romney to prove it

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The person picked to orchestrate the US Auto Bailout for the Obama Administration, former Car Czar Steve Rattner, rebuts Romney’s awful justifications for continuing to oppose the Obama Administrations strategy during the bailouts of GM and Chrysler and largest suppliers.

The auto czar who led the bailout, Steve Rattner, has a simple challenge to Mitt Romney’s claim that private investors could have rescued Detroit: find me one.

Rattner, writing in the New York Times, wrote on Friday that Romney’s contention that American automakers didn’t need federal loans to move them through a managed bankruptcy intact is ludicrous given that the only financiers big enough to step in were barely hanging on for dear lives themselves.

“I know this because the administration’s auto task force, for which I was the lead adviser, spoke diligently to all conceivable providers of funds, and not one had the slightest interest in financing those companies on any terms,” he wrote. “If Mr. Romney disagrees, he should come forward with specific names of willing investors in place of empty rhetoric. I predict that he won’t be able to, because there aren’t any.”

Car Czar To Romney: Find Me Someone Who’d Have Saved Detroit | TPM2012

Unlike the 2008 federal bank bailout, which provided emergency funds to banks without reorganization or reporting requirements, the auto bailout did force the companies to restructure and report progress. The loss borne by US taxpayers is still in the billions, but it’s far less injurious to the US taxpayer than the massive unemployment benefits and unfunded pension liabilities that would have been sent to 10s of thousands of former employees of bankrupt GM and Chrysler .

The federally funded auto-bailout kept many large US companies open and tons of people employed. Those people collect checks today and probably remember thinking they were going to lose that check forever almost 3 years ago. It was an emergency intervention that did it’s job. If your neighbor Bob’s house is burning down, the fire department shows up, just in time to pull the kids and the dog out and save the fire from spreading to the rest of the neighborhood, you don’t walk over to what’s left of Bob’s house the next morning and say: “Well, if they couldn’t save your new sun room they may as well have waited for the house to burn down before showing up.”

Is it a beautiful day?

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I hate winter. I hate the cold, I don’t ski or snowboard and I’m to old and too city bound for sledding and snowball fights. I hate the fact that my hands become useless in even moderate cold. I hate winter, but I am worried it never really came this year.

This past weekend, a local tv station meteorologist came on my TV and told me it was to be a beautiful day because we could expect a another 50 plus degree farenheit high day. Philadelphia…in mid February…50+ degrees…beautiful.

Plants, wildlife and climate impacted environmental factors (flood levels etc) are adapted to expect steady permafrost, snowy days, below freezing weeks to properly cycle their routines. Warming is happening, but thanks to a lazy press, an ill informed and educated public and a scientific community largely content with Al Gore and over educated weather readers being their PR advance team too many of us think there is a “debate” about whether or climate problems are real.

TCU Horned Frogs “make the trap aye”

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Apparently, their little drug ring had Fort Worth “jumpin'”:

FORT WORTH — Nineteen TCU students, including two starting football players, sold illegal and prescription drugs at the Sigmi Chi house, a Hooters restaurant, a Kroger parking lot and a 7-11 near campus, among other Fort Worth sites, affidavits released Wednesday show.

One of those arrested, Katherine Ann Petrie, 20, sold marijuana to an undercover officer from a house on ritzy Bellaire Drive South with her Lexus SUV parked out front, the documents say.

Four football players were among those arrested, accused of selling marijuana to other students and football players.

The players are linebacker Tanner Brock; defensive lineman D.J. Yendry; offensive tackle Tyler Horn; and cornerback Devin Johnson, according to documents released Wednesday morning.

via Police: TCU students’ drug-dealing occurred all over Fort Worth | Crime and Safety | New…

Not gaffes: Romney’s plans for the poor

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Romney in January:

Asked about his economic plan, Romney said repeatedly that he was not concerned with very poor Americans, but was focused instead on helping the middle class. Romney explained that he was confident that food stamps, housing vouchers, Medicaid and other assistance would keep the poor afloat — he pledged to fix holes in that safety net ‘if it needs repair.’

Here is Romney saying the same about not worrying about the poor in October (h/t Andrew Sullivan from Business Insider’s Michael Brendan Dougherty). I guess not that many folks were paying that much attention then. But Romney has continued to expose himself as someone who doesn’t have a regard for addressing issues that affect the poor.

How does he reconcile not worrying about the poor with his religious beliefs?

He can’t.

The basic contradiction of Romney being a Mormon and saying this is that it is a severely un-Christian statement. The standard Christian position on the poor is that you must regard the poor and that heaven doesn’t favor human beings for their worldly wealth. In Bible verses Mark 10:21 – 24, Jesus counsels a wealthy man who leads a good life and wants to know how he can get to heaven:

21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

24 The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is[e] [sometimes: “is for those who trust in riches”] to enter the kingdom of God!

25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

I don’t know about what the Angel Moroni tells Romney and his fellow Mormon’s, but I will leave that to the evangelical voter to reconcile.

What about the working poor?

For more secular issue voters like me, it is the thoughts of a rich man who has consistently shown that he doesn’t value hard work, he values hard currency.

He is the face and feeling of trickle down. It’s not “inartful” it’s not a “gaffe”, it’s his ideology. The Working Poor is a real thing. Almost 10% of Americans are Working Poor. They exist, They are real, and they matter. Their work should be respected by the people that govern them. Romney is simply promising to be a President that doesn’t enact policies for the poor and the working poor will be profoundly neglected by a Romney administration.

Thinking about every time you may have been out to eat. That goes from Applebee’s to Capital Grille..there are dishwashers in that kitchen and bus boys cleaning your table and bar backs hauling around our garbage. Here is the median salary of a full time dishwasher/food prep:

We do not have salary data for this specific career but we can provide average wages for all careers in the category of Combined Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Including Fast Food MEDIAN ANNUAL WAGE: $18,610
MEDIAN HOURLY WAGE: $8.95*

TOTAL EMPLOYEED NATIONALLY: 2,692,170

What’s Romney’s plan for these Dishwashers? A slate of service cuts and tax credit reductions. Less is more for the least of those.

Romney’s tax policy, described simply, is to extend the Bush tax cuts and, then on top of that, sharply cut taxes on corporations, the wealthy, and upper-middle class investors, while letting a set of tax breaks that help the poor expire.

Let them eat gratuity!

Reasons Clint Eastwood did the Chrysler Commercial

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1. He believes in the American working class. (See Gran Torino, it actually is a tribute to the American working class family as the true value of America).
2. He got paid to do a commercial by a corporation.

Note…none of those is “he supports President Obama” because he doesn’t. In fact, Eastwood has been on record being pretty much against the Presidents reelection.

Karl Rove needs to relax.

Christie’s Culdesac Cred

Water cannon attack on black Civil Rights demonstrators in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. The water was propelled at 100 lbs/sq inch. (Charlie Moore)
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Water cannon attack on black Civil Rights demonstrators in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. The water was propelled at 100 lbs/sq inch. (Charlie Moore)

Water cannon attack on black Civil Rights demonstrators in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. The water was propelled at 100 lbs/sq inch. (Charlie Moore)

“Culdesac Cred”. or maybe even Exurb cred. Really I have to believe Republican politicians say this stuff to get credibility among the hardcore party base. The base acknowledges either their denial of liberal activism’s key role in the construction and growth of this country or squeals with glee at the outbursts of rage from elected Democrats and liberal activists. Or maybe they just want to keep us liberals in condemnation mode instead of organize and act mode.

I’d rather think the Governor of New Jersey is that cynical rather than so insane that he needs to mark down American history on the fly. Either way, it has to be rebutted because it’s all from “there was an easier way to get voters rights rather than create so much trouble” right wing “libertarian intellectual” revisionist line used by guys like Ron Paul.

“I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights, rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South,” Christie said after an event in Central Jersey.

via NJ gov strikes with a zinger after segregationist comparison during heated gay marriage debate – The Washington Post.

Yes they would have been happy for a referendum on their Civil Rights, except for the fact that the people who were dying in the streets of the South who couldn’t vote would have had to depend on the votes of people who were fighting to keep them from voting.

“To the left of” Obama

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For Villagers, Republicans are “moderates” if they’re reasonable dinner party guests.

via Eschaton: It’s Just Tone.

Yes, and this revisionist policy position syndrome affects more people than you think. See one Bill Maher.

I’ve heard him say quite often that former Vice President Dick Cheney is to the left of President Obama on marriage equality. President Obama has successfully led the repeal of DADT, extended benefits to domestic partners of executive branch employees, supports Civil Unions, stopped the DOJ from defending DOMA in court. Prior to that, Obama as US Senator and US Representative had a record of supporting Civil Rights for LGBT Americans including supporting hate crimes legislation that includes LGBT as a protected class. The sticking point here is that Obama supports civil unions (short of gay marriage), while Dick Cheney supports marriage equality although like Obama he says (marriage is the province of the states). But Cheney’s strong personal support of LGBT rights amounted when hedged against the Bush/Cheney’s platform resulted in substantial setbacks to marriage equality and civil rights for LGBT Americans.

Cheney was a long serving US Representative, a Secretary of Defense, director of the Council of Foreign Relations and a very powerful vice president for the bulk of George W. Bush’s 8 years in office. It’s true, as Secretary of Defense he was first quoted on the record as referring to the policy of banning gays in the military as “an old chestnut”. But not that old of a chestnut:

Increasingly, toward the end of his tenure, Cheney had to consider social issues affecting the military forces, particularly the status of homosexuals in the military and the role of women in combat. In the face of pressure from some members of Congress and the public at large, Cheney reviewed standing DoD policy on these matters. He decided that the existing policies–a ban on homosexuals serving in the military and the exclusion of women from combat positions–were correct and did not need to be changed.

During and after his tenure as VP, Cheney also professed his belief in full marriage equality, but he did little beyond these proclamations of personal belief to advance the rights of LGBT Americans with regards to these issues. Cheney picked himself for the number two job in the Bush administration as head of Bush 2000 VP search committee and it was evident then that a Bush/Cheney administration would never support repeal of DADT or marriage equality and in fact would push for less civil rights for LGBT groups. During the 2000 and 04 elections Bush/Cheney, ran on a platform that made them the bulwark protecting real ‘murkins and their children from teh ghey marriages.

This was a big motivator for evangelicals, the group that when energized supercharges the ground game for Republicans. To tweak the issue prior to the US Presidential Election in 2004 and Mid Term elections in 2006, the Bush Administration introduced legislation for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and woman. These “sanctity of marriage” amendments failed, but showed that no federal action was possible. “The Sanctity of Marriage” was up to social conservative evangelical voters. With this demagoguery as a motivator, from 2002 to 2008, social conservatives proposed and passed anti-marriage equality ballot measures in 29 states that amended their constitutions to be anti-gay marriage.

Degree, magnitude, process and consequence of political actions matter. Cheney was vocal or personally adamant in his support for marriage equality and civil rights but this was largely absent from Cheney’s legislative, cabinet and vice presidential agendas. These same issues have been political priorities in President Obama’s considerably shorter political career. Cheney squandered his opportunity to be politically “on the left” of Obama on these issues in any substantial way.

With Ron Paul’s newsletters, It’s bad either way

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Look, it’s simple with Ron Paul. after his explanations for the newsletters and interviews with those who had knowledge of his newsletter business, there’s two options:

  • Ron Paul is a plain and simple bigot who fully agreed with the content of his newsletters
  • Ron Paul is a plain and simple charlatan who cranked up the bigotry in his newsletters to grow his audience
It looks like those associated with the newsletter believe it was the latter:

“A person involved in Paul’s businesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid criticizing a former employer, said Paul and his associates decided in the late 1980s to try to increase sales by making the newsletters more provocative,” the paper reports. “They discussed adding controversial material, including racial statements, to help the business, the person said.”

(from Ron Paul-Supporting Former Ron Paul Secretary: He Knew All About Those Newsletters | TPM)

Either option disqualifies him as a serious candidate for President or a serious movement politician. I wonder if this meeting in the late 1980’s went something like…

DOJ anti-trust unit targets Intel, Apple, Google, Adobe and others for skilled labor wage fixing

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Tech Crunch has the story:

The evidence states that the defendants agreed not to poach employees from each other or give them offers if they voluntarily applied, and to notify the current employers of any employees trying to switch been. They also agreed not to enter into bidding wars and to limit the potential for employees to negotiate for higher salaries.

In one particularly juicy piece of evidence from May 2005, Adobe’s CEO Bruce Chizen emailed Steve Jobs regarding “Recruitment of Apple Employees”. In the message, Adobe’s SVP for human resources writes “Bruce and Steve Jobs have an agreement that we are not to solicit ANY Apple employees, and vice versa.”

Additionally, documents state that there is “strong evidence that the companies knew about the other express agreements, patterned their own agreements off of them, and operated them concurrently with the others to accomplish the same objective.”

For example, Lori McAdams of Pixar wrote an internal email to others at Pixar in April 2007 stating, “I just got off the phone with Danielle Lambert [of Apple], and we agreed that effective now, we’ll follow a Gentleman’s agreement with Apple that is similar to our Lucasfilm agreement.”

In business a “Gentleman’s agreement” is usually an agreement to screw everyone not considered a gentleman.

John King: “…this story did not come from our network…”

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John King. Never been a fan, and his debate moderation left a lot to be desired. The way King approached Marianne Gingrich’s interview with ABC discussing Gingrich’s infidelities showed what’s wrong with our media. King opens the debate by basically turning to Gingrich and saying: tell me all about your marital troubles. Watch the video below

King knew he was marginalized as a referee of the proceedings after that moment. I don’t know if King knows why. King basically asks Gingrich if he wants to comment on a wreck that was a previous marriage. He doesn’t even bother to challenge Newt in the context of his views on marriage equality or his crusade against Bill Clinton. He just basically asks him if he wants to share some anecdotes regarding his 2nd marriage/divorce.

A divorce that I or any other voter could give two shits about. He could have discussed: The recession. The Iraq war. The mortgage crisis. Fannie/Freddie. The national budget. Reproductive rights. Global warming. No. He wants to know what Gingrich has to say about his 2nd ex wife.

When Gingrich dings him, King then tries to beg Gingrich off with the punk move of saying “this story did not come from our network”. It came from your network the minute you brought up at the Republican debate. If you can’t stand for the value of the question when challenged you shouldn’t ask it.