Phyllis Schlafly, who has obviously never known a hungry day in her life, says that besides "the Blacks" (yeah) Obama voters are single women who have "kicked out their husbands." Audio at Mock, Paper Scissors.
Open thread below...
One of the saddest songs in the Great American Songbook, by a torch singer who nails it.
What are you listening to tonight? Share what you got in comments....
Joe Scarborough had Rep. Peter King on the set of Morning Joe to respond to Anthony Weiner's interview the previous morning and took up for King and the Republicans while going into full hissy fit mode. Did we expect anything different out of him? He claimed he's going to have Anthony Weiner back on again because he's "got some questions for him". We'll see about that.
Karoli explained very well what game the Republicans were playing here. In Joe Scarborough's world, this is "changing the rules" and the Democrats playing politics rather than the Republicans hoping to insert a poison pill into the legislation so they can run attack ads against the Democrats. Note to Joe Scarborough, you're not "changing the rules" just by deciding to use a different procedure in the House to prevent the Republicans from playing politics. I'm not sure what the definition of "playing politics" is if it doesn't include inserting provisions into a bill purely to attack your opponents in the next election cycle. Scarborough thinks it's just terrible that the Democrats don't want to allow the Republicans to have something to attack the House Hispanic Caucus with in November.
As Karoli already noted here's the game the Republicans are playing:
So to review, the Democrats bring a bill to the floor to pay the debt this country has to 9/11 responders. It doesn't have any poison pills, but the Republicans want to add something that involves illegal immigration, so that Democrats will look like they voted against illegal immigration when they were voting on a bill to take care of 9/11 responders.
And according to Peter King, it's all the Democrats' fault. Got it. (Note: Peter King voted for the bill...)
I will add though that I'd be just as happy to see the Democrats take some advice from Jon Stewart on how to handle the Republicans "poison pill". More from The Daily Show below the fold.
Rand Paul is at it again. Sam Stein:
Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul was caught in a now-familiar campaign mishap on Thursday when it was revealed that he has failed to correct mistaken assumptions about his educational achievement.
Contrary to popular belief, the Tea Party favorite never received a bachelor's degree from Baylor University, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. Paul attended the school but left for Duke University after being accepted into its School of Medicine.
The mistake, the campaign insisted, was made by the press. "I guess many people and some in the media have assumed Dr. Paul had a bachelor's degree, but he has never said that," Doug Stafford, a consultant for Paul's Senate campaign said.
As for why the Paul campaign never asked publications to run a correction, Stafford insisted that the candidate and his aides were not aware that the erroneous assertion had ever been made.
Naturally, video was bound to surface testing that claim. And by Thursday afternoon, Paul's opponent Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway had unearthed footage of Paul sitting through an interview with the Louisville Courier Journal editorial board in which his bio was read to him as follows:
"Dr. Paul is the chairman and founder of Kentucky Taxpayers United. A native of Pennsylvania he is a graduate of Baylor University and the Duke University School of Medicine."
I'm shocked that Rand even went to Duke. Why didn't he start his own medical school to get his degree just like he did when he started his ophthalmologist certification group?
Instead he starts his own rival group "National Board of Ophthalmology."
He is listed as the group's president; his wife, Kelley, is listed as vice president; and his father-in-law is listed as secretary. Paul and his relatives receive no salaries from the organization, his campaign said.
Maybe his father could have been the principal of his new medical school...
And the only reason he's running is because of his father.
If you support a woman's right to choose then you're out of luck with Rand. Do we really need another Ben Nelson on this issue? The only thing he really has going for him is his father's name. I've heard many bloggers complain about nepotism being used to get elected to Congress and to acquire very sweet jobs on TV. As Scott Horton and Digby point out--rightfully so--that Paul's beliefs fall in line with your basic country club conservative republican, except he'll be more extreme. "Baby" Paul is nothing without Poppa Bear.
This man is unqualified to hold a position in Congress.
It's silly season, and Republican consultants are leaving no stone unturned in their effort to confuse, conflate, attack and stir up anger and fear. But Dick Morris' latest may possibly be one of the most evil.
It seems that the Senate's passage of the aid to states package has thrown a monkey wrench into Morris' strategy for bringing the country to its knees. Here are some quotes from his website (which I will not link...Google it if you want them):
The opening salvo: Frame aid to states as a "bailout".
As long as the Democrats control Congress, they will continue to rubber-stamp Obama’s requests for bailouts of profligate states. But when the Republicans take control, they will be less than forthcoming. Republicans will ask the central question: Why should taxpayers from states that have cut their budgets and observed spending restraint, pay for the extravagances of the other states? Why should forty-seven states have to pay for California, New York, and Michigan?
Hmmmm. Will those 47 states refuse to accept the federal dollars which kept their states' budgets balanced last year? Why did Rick Perry accept the federal aid for Texas? So he could campaign on a balanced budget, of course.
But really, this is just the foundation. Morris' plan is much more evil than simply electing enough representatives to Congress to block federal aid to states.
The Republican solution to state financial distress should be simple: The Party should insist on a change in the federal bankruptcy law providing for a procedure for state bankruptcy (none now exists). This process must call for abrogation of all state and local public employee union contracts as is usually done in private sector bankruptcies. By freeing states and local governments (including school boards) of their union obligations on wages, work rules, staffing, and pensions, they have a chance to survive and, indeed, to prosper. But merely subsidizing these massive expenditures just prolongs the misery of the states in question.
Simply put: Bankrupt the states to break union contracts, then step in with federal dollars to rehabilitate states after they've stripped state employees of their pensions.
That Dick Morris is a real prince. There are also some serious flaws in his argument, beginning with his attack on state pensions.
Let's have a look at the city of Bell as a case study. The corrupt Bell City Council, City Manager and other overpaid officials all accrued pensions based upon salaries greater than what the President of the United States earns. Have a look around at other cities and you'll discover that pension obligations for true rank and file employees aren't the problem.
The real problem is with those overpaid ELECTED city officials who make far too much and end up sucking reserves out of municipal pension funds for employees. Non-union CalPERS officials approved pension benefits based on those high salaries so that Bell city officials could accrue a full pension without the required number of years of service to do so.
Did I mention those Bell crooks aren't union? Just in case I didn't, they're not.
In light of that, Dick Morris' closer is particularly insidious:
The collapse of overspending state governments must trigger the diminution of the power unions hold over their budgets and their politics. Their coming bankruptcies offer an opportunity for reform and the Republican Congress – backed by newly elected Republican state governments – give us precisely the opportunity we need to effectuate it.
In relative terms, this is a far more "revolutionary" and "tyrannical" proposal than anything I've heard from the Democrats. It's mind-numbingly evil, in fact. Bankrupt states, break unions, then bring in a rush of new "Republicans" to break the backbone of this country.
I don't think so.
(h/t Greg Jones)
Good grief this man has some anger management problems.
From The Senate Democrats:
Senator Carl Levin attempted to set a time to bring up the Defense Authorization bill post-August recess today. Senator John McCain, however, had other plans. He objected to setting a time for floor debate for the bill, citing his displeasure with the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy being a part of the legislation.
Joe at Americablog has more:
And, he's wrong about hate crimes. There was no secrecy around it. In fact, there were two recent Senate votes amending hate crimes to the Defense Authorization bill. In 2007, the hate crimes amendment broke the filibuster by vote of 60 - 39 (McCain was absent.) In 2009, the hate crimes amendment broke the filibuster by a vote of 63 - 28. McCain was there. The debate lasted a couple hours, not weeks. Clearly, McCain is easily confused, especially when he's being homophobic.
This is just an early indicator of what the battle will be like in the Senate to pass the compromise DADT repeal bill. It's going to get ugly.
Big Ed loved our Beat Boehner Billboard yesterday and gave it a nice shout out.
Ed Schultz: And check out this billboard, no wonder the tan man is crying about going back to work.
--
I want to show this billboard near Dayton, Ohio and it's pretty aggressive and I think it's funny as could be. It shows John Boehner with a golf club, Beat Boehner.com. When was the last time you golfed 119 times in one year? Bob, that's a classic, isn't it?
We used Politico, Golf Digest and The Dayton Daily News for source material. Howie has been writing a lot about Boehner's golfing and fundraising outings for years now.
As I wrote the other day, along with Tiger and Tony Romo, Boehner just loves his golf.
But few take their golf as serious as Boehner, who carries a 7.5 handicap. And, his favorite method of fundraising is taking it to the links -- and he's pretty good at it.
We want to keep running billboards and maybe hit some new candidates so if you can, please donate to Blue America Beat Boehner Billboard page.
(h/t Heather for the video)
It boggles my mind that the spouse of a Supreme Court justice can appear on Fox to opine on a decision that her husband will likely be hearing in the Supreme Court.
But no worries, because Thomas confidently declares toward the end of this clip that she "sees a different line between law and policy and knows other people in her house [do] too." She earnestly reassures Cavuto not once, but TWICE on this with regard to Proposition 8 and AB 1070.
I don't have the full transcript, but I did manage to catch some clips as they flew by while I was listening. The exchange about Proposition 8 and Arizona's AB 1070 begins at about 2:30, with Cavuto concern-trolling, but here's the lead-in to that exchange:
CAVUTO: Voters are angry...There is a disconnect between judges and politicians and the will of the people...
THOMAS: It's stunning, actually. I've never seen anything like the times that we're living in. It feels almost revolutionary, I'd say. So I'm glad Congress is going home, and LibertyCentral.org has the spot light (brandishes large flashlight) out for town halls. People want to talk to them about the votes they've had and LibertyCentral.org is showing them how to do that.
Let's have a bit of a history lesson. When FDR took office in 1932 and New Deal legislation was passed in his first 100 days, the only folks upset about it were the 1940s equivalent to teabaggers: The American Liberty League, funded and founded by members of the DuPont family and other wealthy elites who saw their power slipping away. With great fanfare they set out to challenge each and every initiative in the Supreme Court, and succeeded on enough significant initiatives that FDR considered the possibility of packing the Supreme Court. Ultimately, he did not do so, but there was enormous tension between the Court and the Executive, and also the people, who were jobless with no safety nets whatsoever.
Revolutionary, Ginni Thomas? Revolutionary in what way, exactly? Why didn't Neil Cavuto ask Ginni Thomas whether she believes slavery should have been subject to popular vote? After all, perhaps the Civil War could have been avoided that way and we could be a country of slaves and slave-owners. (Please note the deep sarcasm in that question).
Ginni Thomas herself is a beneficiary of court decisions with regard to discrimination, and of course, there's no way her husband would be a Supreme Court justice right now without those same court rulings. Yet, they were most assuredly NOT the will of the people.
Undeterred, Thomas rambles right on through those facts into her own reality:
CAVUTO: There's so many of these issues where either a judge or a politician overrides the will of the people or at least sentiment, you know, be it gay marriage in California, you know, the illegal immigration issue in Arizona. It's kicked to a court and a lot of these are heading to your husband's court.
From your vantage point -- nothing to say about the Supreme Court -- shouldn't they be resolved on a people level and the people themselves have kind of spoken on all of them?
THOMAS: Amen, Neil. Come to LibertyCentral.org and join us. We are all about policy and what people can do in the public square. Once it hits a legal test it is a whole different thing. I see a different line between the law and policy and I know other people in my house do too.
Now the interesting thing about this discussion and Thomas' framing is that a similar discussion would have taken place in 1934, but it would have been between FDR and members of the press. FDR would have been frustrated by the American Liberty League's efforts to overturn things like minimum wage laws that gave people a decent working wage. And yet, he never would have called it revolutionary.
If there is one thing that stands out for me in this clip, it is hearing the wife of a Supreme Court justice speak with such disdain for the judiciary branch. In my opinion, it's unpatriotic, inflammatory, inappropriate, and just wrong.
Bill O'Reilly's opening "Talking Points Memo" last night was an almost crystalline exhibition of the reason the "post racial politics" now popular with American liberals -- including President Obama -- is an abject failure: because it utterly fails to take into account the intransigence and base irrationality of the American Right.
Naturally, when one of his guests -- Caroline Heldman of Occidental College -- had the audacity to point out the right's "racial fearmongering machine", he went ballistic on her in an overt attempt to deny the existence of the very tactics he was indulging.
See, according to BillO, President Obama is losing popularity with white Americans because they perceive his insistently non-racial economic-uplift program in insistently racial terms -- and he's popular with blacks because they do too.
He tried to describe this in terms that absolves whites of racializing the issues, and blames blacks and minorities for it instead:
Let's take the white situation first. According to the polls, most white Americans don't like the huge expansion of the federal government. They also oppose the big spending increases that the president has imposed. It's simple. White Americans fear government control. They don't want the feds telling them what to do, and they don't want a bankrupt nation.
... But black America has a totally different view. For decades, African-Americans have supported a bigger federal government so it can impose social justice. A vast majority of blacks want money spent to level the playing field, to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts, and to provide better education and health care at government expense. So the African-American voter generally loves what President Obama is doing.
As for Hispanic-Americans, 54 percent now support Mr. Obama, but that is down nine points since April. The social justice component is there as well.
There's no question that there are now two Americas. The minority community continues to believe that society is not completely fair to them, and they want a huge government apparatus to change that. And while the white community may sympathize with the minority situation, they apparently believe that more harm than good is being done to the country with the cost of social justice programs.
My own belief is that President Obama is well-intentioned, but if the wild spending continues, this country will be gravely damaged. As far as social justice is concerned, strict oversight on fair rules, but not the imposition of expensive entitlements, is the answer.
The USA is the strongest country on Earth because of self-reliance and the industry of honest, hardworking people who don't want to be told how to live. Independence and self-reliance is what has made this country great, powerful and generous.
O'Reilly tries to claim here that white Americans' rationale for turning against Obama is purely a policy-based one -- but it also hinges on a rationale that is almost purely racial, namely, that Obama's "social justice" programs such as health care reform, are perceived as handouts to minorities. Indeed, O'Reilly's rationale for the steady black support for Obama is that minorities must perceive them as that too.
Nevermind, of course, that health-care reform not only is utterly color-blind in nature, it also was designed not to cost taxpayers. Nevermind that the only "spending" programs Obama has embarked upon have been either bailouts for the financial and auto sectors or a stimulus package that likewise was specifically colorblind in nature.
Nonetheless, this is the self-serving racial narrative that the Right has constructed about Obama: He is secretly a black Marxist/Muslim radical whose every social initiative is dedicated to creating "social justice" handouts for minorities at the expense of white people -- but whites' resistance to his programs is purely a matter of their opposition to big government and taxes that pay for these handouts (to people who of course do not deserve it). If anybody's being racist, it's those parasitic black people who want the handouts to keep flowing out of white people's pockets.
What's clear is that even though Obama has explicitly eschewed pursuing race-conscious policies -- promoting, instead, the "universal uplift"/rising-tide-lifts-all-boats thinking popular with "post-racial" liberals -- those policies are regardless perceived in racial terms by white conservatives.
As Tim Wise puts it in has incredible new book, Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity:
I read a couple of dozen articles about the Google-Verizon deal, and this one from Gigom seems to have the most detailed version of events:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just called off the “closed door” network neutrality negotiations it was conducting between major ISPs, Google, Skype and the Open Internet Coalition, after news broke Wednesday afternoon that Google and Verizon had reached an independent deal on the issue outside of the FCC negotiations. The end of these talks, which had been roundly criticized because they were being held in secret, may be a sign of hope for the FCC to push ahead with the public debate. However, it’s more likely another example of how powerless the agency has become.
The FCC released a statement today from Edward Lazarus, FCC chief of staff, saying:
“We have called off this round of stakeholder discussions. It has been productive on several fronts, but has not generated a robust framework to preserve the openness and freedom of the Internet – one that drives innovation, investment, free speech, and consumer choice. All options remain on the table as we continue to seek broad input on this vital issue.”
The FCC decision comes less than 24 hours after hysterical and confused reports of a Google and Verizon deal on net neutrality began circulating around media outlets and Washington.
I wish I could tell you what’s going on behind the scenes and how exactly Google and Verizon plan to compromise, but the general framework seems to abandon the idea of network neutrality for wireless networks and may involve some pay for prioritization.
So far, Google and Verizon have reportedly come to an agreement that discriminating against some traffic will be permitted on wireless networks, but not wireline networks (which we should have realized already given how closely the success of Google’s Android platform is tied to Verizon’s wireless business). The deal may or may not involve paying for prioritization of content. (For a closer look of the issues they’re likely discussing check out this filing from January when Google and Verizon laid out their points of agreement and disagreement.)
Aside from the details, the bigger issue is that the FCC has been neutered, and Silicon Valley had a small part to play in the operation. Technology companies didn’t hold the knife, but they’re not protesting either, at least not in an effective way that Washington understands. All the net neutrality videos hosted on YouTube aren’t going to change things; votes and lobbying will.
So, if in the not-too-distant future, Google and the big ISPs are the gatekeepers to the Internet for media, video and applications, here’s how it all went down.
Sounds like the new FCC head completely lost control of the situation. Go read the rest.
