Brilliant at Breakfast: Old memes never die, they just get burned into the public consciousness.

The Political Carnival: What it’s like to be an African-American Democrat at a Republican presidential debate.

Mugsy's Rap Sheet: Moon bases for moonbats.

Straight Goods: Seven signs the corporatocracy is losing its legitimacy, and seven populist tools to help shut it down.

PR Watch: Secret e-mail system revealed in "John Doe" probe of Scott Walker staff.

Brad Blog: Virginia officials confirm criminal election fraud investigation of Gingrich campaign.

Guest post by Batocchio. Email tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

Pink Ribbons, Inc. is expected to open in US theatres this Spring. Open Thread below...

No disrespect to any POTUS who might cover Reverend Al Green, but Obadiah Parker isn't half bad, either.

Whatcha listening to this Friday night?

Obadiah Parker

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David Shuster filling in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown this Wednesday evening spoke to comedian and Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead about the dust up with the Susan G. Komen foundation's decision to pull their funding from Planned Parenthood. Lizz has been out there doing terrific work trying to raise money for Planned Parenthood for some time now and she didn't mince any words when it came to her feelings on the recent assault on the group from the right.

WINSTEAD: Well, I think she said it herself when she was running for governor when she said, "I don't support the mission of Planned Parenthood." And the mission of Planned Parenthood is to provide affordable heath care for low-income women. And, if you don't support that mission, I really don't know how you can call yourself pro-life in the least.

And I think it's very suspect that, within the last year, this woman who was running for governor — who got Sarah Palin's endorsement, she was so conservative that she got the endorsement of Palin, — ran for Governor of Georgia the same year this legislation comes to be in Congress. And Susan Komen's new edict is "we can't support any organization that has legislation before Congress that's investigative."

Where are those dots? How do those connect? It does seem like — conservative person needed to put a piece of legislation in place so that Susan Komen could conveniently withhold their funding. It might sound tinfoil-hat-y. But I would like to, at least, know that there is not connection, or, if there is, I'd like to know that too.

Lizz has a new article in The Guardian with more you can read here -- By defunding Planned Parenthood, the Susan G Komen Foundation betrays women.

Full transcript below the fold.

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It has been a fascinating last few weeks in the great banking/housing debates. The administration is growing less and less tentative in its rhetoric against Wall Street, and is opening up multiple new fronts to take on the black hole of the housing market that is throwing a wet blanket over the broader economy. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been pounding on the doors of the Department of Justice, demanding they work with him and give him more resources to do the aggressive prosecution he wants to do, and they have relented to an extent. But we still don’t know how aggressive the new task force they set up will be. The long rumored robo-signing settlement, which has been a few days away from being inked for about a year now, seems like it is moving toward completion, but Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto sent a letter with 38 specific questions that trouble a lot of people. And progressives who have been working on banking issues for years are debating whether to have any faith at all in the developments of the week.

I am going to focus on the settlement and Attorney General Masto’s letter, because the rumors and counter-rumors, arguments and counter-arguments, are dizzying. I should stipulate that I am not a lawyer, and have seen none of the actual language of the settlement, so all I’ve got to work with are lots of conversations, blog posts, news reports, and Masto’s letter. Since the settlement talks began more than a year ago, I have had a ton of conversations with AG Tom Miller of Iowa, Schneiderman and some of his staff, a couple of California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ staff people, and a boatload of administration people. So a lot of what I have been trying to do is combine what I am hearing from all those conversations with what I am seeing other places. My assessment of what people tell me is based partly on how much I trust them (which can admittedly be flawed; such things are highly subjective judgment calls), but mostly my read of the political dynamic, which is of course different for each of the players'.

On Jan. 27, I released a story outlining what sources high up in the settlement negotiations told me would be the nature of the legal release for the banks. Some of the phrases they gave me, such as the phrase “vast majority” (used twice) were pretty vague, and because I hadn’t seen the actual language, I was reporting only what I was told. But it sounded like we were headed toward fairly tight release language on the settlement. However, the very same day, Masto sent a letter to Shaun Donovan at HUD, Attorney General Tom Miller, and DOJ settlement chair Tom Perrelli with a list of 38 detailed questions indicating either that she had yet to see any language, or that any settlement language she had seen was so vague and poorly written as to cause big worries about the nature of the settlement. Her questions raised alarm bells with me and with writers I respect, including David Dayen and Yves Smith, because if she had seen the release language and was asking these kinds of questions, it probably meant very bad things, and certainly would have meant I had been lied to by my sources on Jan. 27.

One possibility, of course, is that Attorney General Masto doesn’t know what she is talking about, or is acting in bad faith, raising questions she already knows the answers to. I do not believe that for a minute. From everything I have heard, Masto is a very smart and capable Attorney General who is fighting hard for Nevadans who have been royally screwed over by mortgage fraud. Nevadans have been hit harder than anyone by the rampant levels of fraud in every aspect of the housing market in recent years, with a stunning 60 percent of Nevada homeowners in underwater mortgages. Masto’s letter shows that she and her staff are deep into the nitty-gritty on these issues, and that she is asking all the right questions. I have confidence that she is fighting the good fight effectively on behalf of her constituents.

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The Susan G. Komen Foundation has absolutely no credibility left. On Thursday, this is what Nancy Brinker, Komen's CEO, told Andrea Mitchell.

BRINKER: In 2010, we set about creating excellence in our grants, not just in our community grants, but in our science grants, putting metrics, outcomes and measures to them. [...] Part of that includes taking these grants into communities and being excellent grant givers. Many of the grants we were doing with Planned Parenthood do not meet new standards of criteria for how we can measure our results and effectiveness in communities.

She went on to emphasize that this was the key reason the funding had been withdrawn -- and played down the fact that the GOP House was currently investigating Planned Parenthood.

But here's part of the statement she released Friday.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

So, what happened to those "measures" and "metrics" and "outcomes" Brinker was babbling about on Thursday?

Meanwhile, wingnuts are circulating this piece, which claims a Komen board member says they've haven't reversed themselves at all.

Following a new statement Komen for the Cure released making many observers believe the breast cancer charity reversed position on whether it would fund grants to Planned Parenthood, one Komen board member says it hasn’t caved.

Komen board member John Raffaelli talked with the Washington Post after the statement was released and said the new announcement doesn’t necessarily mean there is any reversal until and unless Planned Parenthood receives additional funding beyond what was already planned before Komen’s December decision.

Based on Komen's actions this week, does anyone have any confidence that they'll do the right thing now?

For Komen to regain any credibility at all, Brinker's got to go. And so does the other wingnut behind this.

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Many Americans were shocked last month to learn that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney only paid an effective tax rate of 13.8 percent in 2010, but a recent report shows that corporations are paying even less.

Corporations in the U.S. paid only an average of 12.1 percent in taxes on the profits they earned inside the U.S in fiscal 2011, according to statistics from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The Wall Street Journal reports that it's the lowest percentage corporations have paid on those profits since at least 1972, and it's less than half of the 25.6 percent they paid on average between 1987 and 2008.

Corporations saw their profits, however, reach an all-time high at the end of 2010. The $1.68 trillion in annualized profits in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 beat the previous record of $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2006.

The Journal credited the low rate to a temporary tax break, known as "bonus depreciation," which allowed companies to immediately write off certain investments instead of taking write-offs over a period of years.

In an interview with NBC earlier this year, Romney flat-out stated that President Barack Obama had raised taxes on corporations.

"If you want to get the economy going, lower corporate tax rates," he said. "He’s raised them."

Since 1993, the marginal corporate rate has been at 35 percent. Romney has proposed that it be reduced to 25 percent.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has said the he would "create a boom of new American entrepreneurship by dramatically cutting the corporate tax rate" to 12.5 percent (PDF), one of the lowest in the developed world.

During his State of the Union Address last month, the president also opened the door to lowering the corporate rate "without adding to our deficit." In their 2010 report (PDF), the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board discussed lowering the marginal rate to 28 percent.

UPDATE: Anonymous’ Latest Release Includes Private Info About Sexual Assault Victims and Guantanamo Lawyers

The call begins with Stewart and Bruce of Scotland Yard and the Los Angeles office of the FBI as they tell inside jokes about McDonald's and cheese and talk shop about a hacker plot called "Project Mayhem."

They discuss strategy aimed at bringing down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, which has launched a series of embarrassing attacks across the Internet.

Unfortunately for the cyber sleuths, the hackers were listening, too, and now so is everyone else in the world.

Via:

As FBI and Scotland Yard investigators recently plotted out a strategy for tracking suspects linked to Anonymous, little did they know that members of the group were eavesdropping on their conference call and recording their plans.

The online vigilante group has released a 17-minute clip of a Jan. 17 conference call between investigators discussing evidence gathered against members of the group as well as upcoming plans for arrests. The group also released an e-mail sent out by an FBI agent to law enforcement agents around the world with a phone number and password for accessing the conference call.

The FBI has confirmed to the Associated Press that the recording is authentic.

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Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is offended that President Barack Obama quoted scripture to make the case for a fairer tax policy.

Speaking to a group of mostly-conservative politicians at the annual National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, the president proved that conservatives do not have a monopoly on using religion to advocate for specific public policies.

“And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe at a time when folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone," Obama explained. "And I think to myself, if I am willing to give something up as someone who has been extraordinarily blessed, give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy — I actually think that’s going to make economic sense."

“But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,” the president added.

Only a few hours later, Hatch, who normally favors co-mingling government and religion, was on the floor of the Senate expressing outrage at the president for using the Bible to make a point.

"Just this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, the president took what has always been a non-partisan opportunity for national unity and used to promote his political agenda," Hatch complained. "He suggested to the attendees that Jesus would have supported his latest tax-the-rich schemes. With due respect to the president, he ought to stick to public policy. I think most Americans would agree that the Gospels are concerned with weightier matters than effective tax rates."

"In 2008, the president declared that his nomination was the world historical moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal," Hatch recalled.

"Someone needs to remind the president that there was only one person who walked on water, and he did not occupy the Oval Office."

Hatch, however, has made the case for religion in public policy when it suits his needs.

During a Republican presidential debate in 2000, the senator from Utah declared, "if I had my way, I'd have a silent prayer reflection constitutional amendment that would give kids a moment of silent prayer reflection at the beginning of every school day."

He has also leaned on the Bible to make the case against gay rights.

"It's a religious belief to me that homosexuality flies in the face of biblical teachings," Hatch, who is Mormon, told The Salt Lake Tribune in 1999.

(H/T: The Hill)

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Sandy Rios is a Fox Talker and Vice President of Family PAC Federal, a PAC supporting ultra-conservative candidates like Michele Bachmann, Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn. Evidently her gifts are limited to her abilities to repeat right wing talking points with alacrity and little more.

Her "discussion" with Fox contributor Jehmu Greene about the Susan G Komen Foundation's announcement to reverse themselves on some level with regard to Planned Parenthood paints a pretty vivid image of the differences between right and left when it comes to women's health.

Rios views the backlash by men and women across the country over the Komen Foundation's decision to withdraw funding for breast cancer screening from Planned Parenthood centers across the country as a mere "shakedown" while arguing that the foundation is a private enterprise which can do what it wants.

Not so fast, there, Ms. Rios. As long as donations to the foundation are tax-deductible, it is not a private enterprise. It is a taxpayer-subsidized enterprise with a stated mission to raise money for and fund breast cancer research and health initiatives to prevent and treat breast cancer. It is not a corporation created with private dollars to pursue private objectives. Not at all.

Rios' protests might actually be interesting if the statement released this morning by the Komen Foundation weren't so full of holes and hedges that you could play croquet on it. On first blush, it appeared to be a concession to the backlash, but upon closer inspection, it appears to be mostly a public relations move to keep a terrible situation from being even more terrible.

Since President and CEO Nancy Brinker has offered two separate and contradictory reasons for the original decision, there's no reason to expect they won't withhold grants from Planned Parenthood because they decide to add requirements, like on-site mammography, which Planned Parenthood contracts with third party providers for.

And as John Aravosis points out, they could show some contrition by approving the grant application from Planned Parenthood they've turned down once already.

But let's not allow facts to distract this wild-eyed woman on Fox from just going on and on about how Senators intimidated Brinker. Here's a question for Sandy Rios: Since abortions represent 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's overall health services delivered to women, then what she is saying is that 97 percent of health services delivered to women is worthless. Did she really mean that?

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