Josh Marshall links to TPM’s article Dems Solidifying Hispanic Vote. The details:

Obama’s approval ratings among Hispanic voters — and the broader electorate — have been relatively weak at times this year, but as the Republican primary campaign hits the home stretch he’s showing no signs of trouble in matchups with any of his potential opponents. An extensive survey of Latino voters by Univision this week showed Obama racking up similarly high margins against Mitt Romney (67-24), Rick Perry (68-21), and Herman Cain (65-22). The 2-1 ratio is roughly in line with Obama’s margin against John McCain in 2008.

via Democrats Consolidating Hispanic Vote Early | TPM 2012

The current front runner Newt Gingrich, he believes we should turn the public school into work houses for children and also fire the janitors:

Newt Gingrich proposed a plan Friday that would allow poor children to clean their schools for money, saying such a setup would both allow students to earn income and endow them with a strong work ethic.

via Gingrich: Laws preventing child labor are ‘truly stupid’ – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs.

Instead of releasing detailed platforms, they like signing pledges authored by lobbyists in exchange for their blessing. The worst, the pledge to outlaw any same sex marriage rights:

The pledge by the National Organization for Marriage states that, if elected, Perry will send a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification, and appoint U.S. Supreme Court and federal judges who will “reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution.”

Others vying for the Republican presidential nomination, including Michelle Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, have also signed it, according to Brian Brown, president of Washington-based National Organization for Marriage, which campaigns against same-sex marriage.

via Perry signs pledge on anti-gay marriage amendment – Yahoo! News.

Herman Cain alledges black people are brain washed into voting Democratic. That we couldn’t be looking at policies that benefit us and our community.

“African Americans have been brainwashed into not being open minded, not even considering a conservative point of view,” Cain says, according to quotes posted on CNN’s PoliticalTicker blog.

via Herman Cain: Blacks ‘brainwashed’ to vote for liberals.

This ridiculous line of thinking that basically intimates blacks are too stupid to know what’s good for themselves is not new…the black mother’s wombs ads on billboards also peddle in this black people are too silly to know what’s going on mythology. Ron Paul? This guy wants biblical/feudal justice to rule the day. Seriously:

I don’t want to go that way, I want to go back down… all the way to the family and the Church — believe me it would be a happier and more peaceful world if we went in that direction, rather than asking the government and asking the King to solve all these problems… we need the family to deal with it.

And we can take our message and learn something from the Old Testament, how there was such a strong emphasis on the Patriarchal society and the disputes settled by judges rather than looking for Big Government.”

Hullabaloo.

Ron Paul sounds like he wants to introduce house bill to make Leviticus the law of the land, and women second class citizens who are second or third wives, child brides as well who are to be considered chattel to settle disputes.

To win the Republican nomination, “those people” (Poor, Latinos, People of color, Women, LGBT, Muslims) must be reckoned with and talked about. Not reasoned with and talked to. And the nominee for the GOP will be bound by this rhetoric in the general election.

The budget deal was all cuts if this committee failed so there was no reason for a Republican on this committee to compromise.

The Republican debates continue to expose not to re

Pew’s numbers shows that the President’s approval rating, which has been consistently underwater during a difficult summer in Washington, is now even at 46 percent. It also shows that his favorability rating, a point of particular strength for him, continues to be positive. 52 percent of those Americans polled holds him in a positive light, versus 45 percent who see him unfavorably.

Pew: Obama Approval Ticks Up, Bests All Challengers Nationally | TPM2012

And, yes, Romney should not be even in New Hampshire vs anyone else in the GOP field, but he is. If you can’t win where you’re from, you may as well stay there.

Can you really bother to begin to trust his journalistic opinions and critiques of the banking industry after this? He’s basically a public lobbyist for BOfA. I don’t agree with Taibbi, but I can trust that his opinions of banks and the credit crisis are honestly held and favor a journalistic standard rather than a weird mix between that and a corporate standard.

 

Sullivan is a great blogger, who attempts to have actual discussions regarding his conservative opinions, (e.g. his realizing that successful is not the same as wealthy or correctly valuing Obama’s pragmatism that is lost to many liberals), but this type of “he ain’t that bad” shit about Andrew Breitbart is too annoying. It’s like when Bill Maher would swear Coulter is really awesome when no one is looking, except worse than that.

Shirley Sherrod really lost her job, and Breitbart was intent on declaring her a vile white people hating racists. As far as I am concerned, Breitbart can kick rocks. If Sully is ok with that, then fine, but someone who can be so horrible publicly but is delightful privately shouldn’t really be trusted.

 

On thing to remember about the President, is him just being in this White House is a big deal, in a negative way, to a lot of people. It’s the average loonies plus ones that don’t like how he looks: Secret Service says bullet hit White House | AP | 11/16/2011.

New York City Police officers were mad they couldn’t fix tickets with impunity and the Mayor, who has turned NY into his fiefdom, believes that Wall Street was just following government’s lead during the crash. (Update: I did say previously that Bloomberg was socially liberal, I have to amend that and say that he supports liberal policies most coveted by the affluent).

The blog post Scripting News: Mike I thought I knew yuz illustrates how character narrative becomes a misleading shorthand for some political truths. Winer is suprised by Bloomberg’s defense of Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis triggered by his distaste for Occupy Wall Street:

Finally we had an adult in there, someone who is smart, and because he’s super-rich, didn’t have to sell out to win his office. He could stay grounded in the truth. Sure, he made mistakes. Everyone does. But for the most he was doing a good job of running a very complicated place.

But now this OWS thing has really sent him for a loop. He’s lying. I gotta believe that’s what it is. Because I just can’t accept that he is so stupid that he actually believes the Republican bullshit he’s saying.

Winer discount’s Bloomberg’s business and political practices prior to OWS.

Bloomberg thrives on Wall Street even as he holds office. It wouldn’t be good business for Mayor Bloomberg to criticize his clients. He moved from the 142nd richest person in the world to the 17th in the end of the aughts and 12th by 2011. This is due to Bloomberg LP the financial media & news firm which he owns 82% of and is a vendor delivering 300,000+ terminals to financial professionals through the flagship terminal product alone. You see, before and during his tenure as a Mayor, he was a vendor to most of Wall Street. I imagine he will be one after. On top of that, any New York mayor enjoys a tax base inflated by Wall Street and doesn’t want to push those dollars away.

I would guess Bloomberg became a Republican in 2001 because he was fine with the social landscape on a state and national level (the sum total of his left leanings) and felt a need to implement more Republican policy. The move was as politically prudent as it was electorally convenient. I think Bloomberg loves to cultivate this political image of “independence”, especially with recent criticism of GOP candidates:

“We have presidential candidates who don’t believe in science,” Bloomberg said, without singling out dubious Republican candidates directly.

“I mean, just think about it, can you imagine a company of any size in the world where the CEO said ‘oh I don’t believe in science’ and that person surviving to the end of that day? Are you kidding me? It’s mind-boggling!”

Bloomberg grew coy when asked which candidate he was talking about.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You can check the presidential candidates’ speeches… I don’t have time to go do it but all their speeches, everything they said.”

via Mayor Bloomberg says White House candidates must believe in evolution, global warming – NY Daily News.

It’s mind boggling that Bloomberg can say that with a straight face when the candidate he endorsed and supported in 2004 believed the “jury was out” on evolution, put addressing climate change well on the back burner and was entrenching the US into a fools war in Iraq.

Couple that with NYPD’s treatment of protesters under Bloomberg during the 2004 Republican convention in New York, well prior to Occupy Wall Street and the fact of the matter is you shouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t see Wall Street as run amok and OWS as useful. If you are forced to govern, especially for three terms, you become a partisan on every issue.

WaPo Op-Ed (props to Atrios):

From CNN:

A related Senate location privacy proposal, introduced in June by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), was slightly weakened to attract Republican support. (Wyden’s proposal addresses only location-tracking, including warrantless cell phone tracking, not cloud computing and the other principles embraced by the coalitionn.)

The final version of Wyden’s bill deleted about nine pages of text that would have curbed foreign intelligence location collection. But it also gained a conservative Republican supporter in the form of Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah.

This week, Sen. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, announced he was signing on to Wyden’s bill.

“The technological advancements we’ve seen in the past 25 years have revolutionized the way we live our lives, but unfortunately surveillance protections have not kept pace,” Kirk said. “It’s time our digital privacy laws go Back to the Future for a sorely needed update

via Google, Facebook go retro in push to update 1986 privacy law | Privacy Inc. – CNET News.

Barack Obama didn’t nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Scarborough is honest about that. After that he is dishonest about the reason why. Scarborough says that Obama is such a Wall Street chum that when the bankers said: don’t, Obama would have said: o.k. If Wall Street did control Obama, the CFPB never would have been implemented in Dodd-Frank and/or Obama would have vetoed it.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who pushed for Warren to be named the agency’s director, said she was not interested in the long-term appointment. Obama said Warren would “play a pivotal role” in helping him choose the agency’s director.

But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would not rule Warren out as a potential nominee for the position. He said Obama would nominate a director in the next several months.

Obama’s appointment of Warren was cheered by her supporters in Congress and at consumer and liberal groups that had pushed strongly for her to be the agency’s first director.

“This is the boldest step Obama’s taken so far to rein in the big Wall Street banks. And it’s a major victory for grass-roots progressives who rallied for Warren,” the liberal group MoveOn.org said in an e-mail to members titled “Victory!”

But some Republicans in Congress and business groups criticized Obama’s move. They said that the agency, with an annual budget of about $500 million, had broad power, and the confirmation process for the director is one of the only congressional checks.

via Elizabeth Warren | Obama puts Elizabeth Warren in charge of consumer bureau launch – Los Angeles Times.

Warren and the Obama administration were aware her appointment would be blocked by Senate GOP. I am sure she would have liked to have the job, but the point here is that she was able to start the CFPB as a special adviser to the president. Scarborough isn’t hearing any of these facts (start right before the 10m mark):

Obama didn’t nominate Warren because if she had been officially nominated, her nomination would have been blocked by 44 Republicans and 3 to 5 Wall Street friendly, Blue Dog Democrats also known by the title US Senator. . A recess appointment was in order? Well the Senate GOP blocked that too by staying in touch:

The Senate is technically staying in session – even though senators won’t be doing any business – over next week’s Memorial Day recess because Republicans want to prevent President Obama from making recess appointments, including the possible appointment of Elizabeth Warren to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Congressional Republicans, with the backing of Wall Street, have fiercely opposed the appointment of consumer advocate and Harvard professor Warren to head the commission she helped create. GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) accused Warren of lying this week in one example of the aggressive criticism of Warren from the right.

via Senate GOP blocks possible Elizabeth Warren recess appointment – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.

Senator Chuck Schumer laid out the simple math:

“Well, the White House dropped consideration of Elizabeth Warren because the Republicans in the Senate said they will not let her pass. Period,” Schumer said. “Even were the President to try a recess appointment, they wouldn’t allow the Senate to recess. So the President was just facing reality when he said that he couldn’t nominate her because she never would have been approved. Forty-four senators I believe signed the letter; 44 Republican senators that wouldn’t allow her to come.”

via Schumer Says Obama ‘Just Facing Reality’ on Warren Nomination | PolitickerNY.

Warren would have been in a holding pattern and all of her work done while interim admin of the CFPB would have not been done. Later, as it was clear Senate conservatives would block Warren’s nomination no matter what, Obama did nominate a good candidate who was elected state wide in a swing state. Ohio AG Rich Cordray was supported by Republican lawmakers from his state. Which means he should be confirmed regardless of the senate’s make up, right? of course not:

Attorneys general from 37 states and U.S. territories urged senators to confirm the nomination of their former colleague, Richard Cordray, to be the first director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The nomination of Cordray, Ohio’s attorney general from 2009 to 2011, has been stalled in the Senate because of Republican demands for major changes in the structure of the agency. But the attorneys general — including eight Republicans — urged senators to vote for Cordray because he is “both brilliant and balanced.”

“Some of us may disagree with aspects of the Dodd-Frank legislation,” they wrote in a letter Tuesday on the letterhead of the National Assn. of Attorneys General. “But we are united in our belief that Mr. Cordray is very well qualified to carry out the responsibilities of this position.”

One of the Republicans who signed the letter, Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff, said it was important to get a director confirmed who could start working with states on mortgages and other key issues.

“We need Rich Cordray in there,” Shurtleff told reporters on a conference call organized by the White House. “He knows us, knows how to work with us.”

The Senate Banking Committee approved Cordray’s nomination this month on a 12-10 party line vote. This spring, nearly all Senate Republicans — enough to keep the nomination from moving forward — publicly vowed to block any nominee to head the agency unless the Obama administration agreed to water down its power by making some key changes.

via Consumer bureau nominee Richard Cordray backed by 37 state AGs – latimes.com.

Congressional Republicans don’t want the Obama Administration to have success. Period. Whether or not Obama’s policies are liberal or not is not the case. He literally has a congress that won’t allow him to fully staff the federal government. The failure of the American people to understand this falls upon media talking heads like Scarborough who drag exposition of their own ideological views in front of the political truth. In this case Scarborough confuses donations with prerogative : Obama has tried to staff the government to execute his strategy. The Republicans won’t let him staff the executive branch as a craven political tactic.

From Gawker: Oakland Police Fire Tear Gas on Protesters:

The Occupy Oakland encampment in Frank Ogawa Plaza—renamed Oscar Grant Plaza by its new residents—was kicked out by Oakland police using smoke grenades on Tuesday morning over what authorities claimed were “sanitary and public safety concerns.” At least 75 people were arrested in the process, and protesters say three were hurt. “I think we allowed people to exercise their rights to free speech and free assembly,” OPD Chief Howard Jordan told reporters.

Protests bring out the best and worst of Police executives and our big city governments. They really do.