In Afghanistan, Obama Looks Toward End Of War
Krugman: Obama May Lose Re-Election
Lugar Fights For His Political Life In Indiana
TPM Editors’ Blog Opinions, Context & Ideas from TPM Editors
One Last Chance To Kick Newt Around
Video lowlights of the strange phenomenon that was the Newt 2012 campaign.
Not Your Usual Status Update
Facebook has a new feature that lets you indicate in your profile if you’re a registered organ donor and will connect you to your local registry.
But here’s the cool part.
The California chapter of the registry that Facebook teamed up with reported an 800 percent increase in donor registrations yesterday, the first day the feature was live.
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The Great Decoupling
This chart shows in striking fashion when the productivity gains of the U.S. economy split off from the growth in pay. Brian Beutler talked to various economists about why it happened. There’s no simple answer – and there’s no prospect of the systematic causes of the great decoupling being corrected in this political climate any time soon. But beneath all the noise and nonsense of this campaign season, that split between productivity and wages is a fault line between the two parties. Mitt Romney and Republicans in general don’t consider that decoupling to be a problem. Barack Obama and Democrats will acknowledge it’s a problem, although there’s considerable disagreement over whether the fixes are politically possible.
‘Windsailing To Pussy Island’
The Daily Show imagines the George W. Bush “I killed bin Laden” TV ad.
Ain’t Gonna Be Easy
Paul Krugman talks to TPM on Obama’s re-election prospects: “We could have morning in America still. But probably not in 2012. So I don’t think there’s going to be a strong enough recovery to make it easy …”
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‘Snitches Get … Dumped In Ditches’
How closely affiliated were those alleged bridge bombers in Ohio with the Occupy Cleveland movement?
Lugar On The Ropes
There’s a lot of big money coming into Indiana’s senate race from outside the state – most of it aimed at ending Dick Lugar’s career.
Stagecraft Only Goes So Far
Explosions heard in Kabul.
Man Down in Power City
Why is the snap resignation of Mitt Romney’s openly gay foreign policy spokesman so damaging?
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Rupert Murdoch … Through The Years
The man himself in 1969 … and other great shots of Rupert Murdoch.
Lipstick On A Pig
That was as pretty a picture as the President could paint of Afghanistan, where the situation remains very tenuous and there is no real long-term political solution in sight.
Read It
Watch Live
The President’s address from Bagram Air Base.
‘Simply Not Credible’
The 8 most damning conclusions of the British Parliament report on the News Corp. hacking scandal.
Obama In Afghanistan
After a day of rumors and a White House furiously trying to quash reports, it has now been confirmed that President Obama is in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit on the anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Obama will address the nation live this evening at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Today In Fun Timelines
How the right-wing noise machine led to the resignation of EPA regional administrator Al Armendariz.
The Closing Of Act II In A Five-Act Play
As David Taintor reports, those following the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal closely don’t think today’s report from Parliament gets us even to the halfway point of the still-unfolding saga.
‘Hard Truths Have Emerged’
The full News Corp. statement on today’s report from Parliament.
Circus Act
The Fox News morning show Fox and Friends is a bottomless well of cable news ridiculousness. But on the morning a committee of the British Parliament released a report finding that Rupert Murdoch is not fit to lead a major international corporation, the disconnect from reality was particularly amusing. Watch.
Mitt with Rudy
Mitt Romney just did a brief press availability with Rudy Giuliani in downtown New York to commemorate the death of Osama bin Laden and by reference the 9/11 attacks. It gave Romney an opportunity to answer questions on the topic of the day – would he have whacked bin Laden just like Obama did.
Watch the video.
Occupy Cleveland Distances Self From ‘Bridge Bombers’
Some of the men arrested this week for allegedly attempting to blow up an Ohio bridge were close to the movement.
Openly Gay Romney Staffer Resigns Under Pressure
Just one week ago his hiring was heralded as “a breakthrough in the world of Republican presidential campaigns.”
Most Recent Latest news stories from TPM reporters
Colbert Mocks Paul Ryan’s Budget Cuts To The Poor
Stephen Colbert on Tuesday turned from politics to policy, focusing on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has criticized Ryan’s budget for cutting deeply into programs that help the needy. And President Obama called the budget “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” “How dare you, sir, these are Republicans, it is thinly veiled social creationism,” Colbert said on Tuesday. Ryan took his message to Georgetown University in…
The Daily Show Imagines Bush’s “I Killed Bin Laden” Ad
Jon Stewart has a message for Republicans railing against President Obama’s campaign ad touting the killing of Osama bin Laden: “Wah.”
Yeah, the ad is kind of “shitty,” Stewart said on Tuesday. “A bit of a cheap shot. The only reason you’re pissed is you didn’t get to run it. Let’s face it: if Bin Laden had been killed on Bush’s watch, this would have been the ad you’re running with.”
PA Voter ID Law Would Keep 93-Year-Old Who Marched With Martin Luther King From Voting
If there’s a contest for most sympathetic plaintiff in a lawsuit opposing a state voter ID law, Pennsylvania’s Viviette Applewhite wins. The 93-year-old has voted in almost every election since 1960. Her daughter was a public servant. She has five grandchildren, nine great grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren. She’s a widow. She marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Macon, Georgia during the civil rights movement and traveled to Atlanta to hear him preach. Under…
Microsoft Tries To Use Google Drive Furor To Promote Its Own SkyDrive Product
In the wake of the launch and subsequent user privacy furor over Google’s new cloud file storage service, Google Drive, competitor Microsoft has embarked on a new promotional blitz extolling the features of its own cloud-based storage system, SkyDrive, over Google’s solution. “People want a cloud that seamlessly connects their files to the apps and devices they use every day,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to TPM, “Over a billion people rely on Office apps and their…
Today On The Trail: May 2, 2012
Here are ten things you need to know today. Portman uses celebrity attack on Obama, defends himself: Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), a top contender for Romney’s VP pick, defended himself against critics that say he’s boring. “Well I like to think I am a serious legislator and trying to get things done. That’s my goal in life, to get things done. It’s not about sizzle for me,” Portman said on Fox News Tuesday. He then pivoted into the well-worn “celebrity” attack on President Obama: “I…
Lugar Fights For His Political Life In Indiana
The Indiana primary is quickly approaching on Tuesday of next week, with longtime Sen. Dick Lugar fighting for his political life against state Treasurer Richard Mourdock. And it’s not just the first serious political fight that Lugar has had in decades – it’s also a serious fight for the credibility of outside groups and endorsements. A poll released last week by the conservative group Citizens United, which is backing Mourdock, gave him a lead of 44%-39% over the incumbent. And…
Occupy Cleveland Distances Itself From May Day Bridge Bomb Plot
The five alleged anarchists arrested by the FBI Monday night after allegedly plotting to blow up a bridge in the suburbs of Cleveland to send a message to the corporations, the government and the one-percenters were confused. Accompanied by a source cooperating with the FBI they allegedly drove to Cuyahoga National Park and placed two IEDs at the base of one of the columns of the Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge. They’d known the informant who’d help bring them there since…
Krugman: Obama May Lose Re-Election
There may not be much President Obama can do to improve the economy between now and the election, but telling a clear story about why it remains weak could mean the difference between victory and defeat this November. Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman fears the Obama team is getting that critical narrative wrong. “They’ve tied themselves up in knots because they’ve bought into this notion that it would sound wrong to admit that they haven’t been …
40 Years Of Workers Left Behind (CHART)
Economic fairness is one of the persistent themes of the 2012 election, and in that spirit the liberal Economic Policy Institute is revisiting the plight of the U.S. worker over the last several decades. Many of the institute’s findings, which will be presented in greater detail in the forthcoming edition of “The State of Working America,” will be familiar to economists who study income inequality. But they provide a stark illustration of the fact that the vast majority of workers…
Occupy Movement Stirs Across The Country
The Occupy Wall Street movement marked May 1, International Workers Day, with demonstrations and gatherings across the country. It was the movement’s most visible day since last year, when encampments in major cities were forcibly dismantled. Crowds of varying sizes manifested in a number of cities, while reports of scuffles with police, arrests, and vandalism came in throughout the day. In New York, protesters gathered at various places across the city, from Midtown to UnionTimes. …
Obama: ‘Tide Has Turned’ In Afghanistan
President Obama addressed the American public on national television from Kabul, Afghanistan Tuesday on the one-year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, describing a plan to “finish the job we started in Afghanistan, and end this war responsibly.” His remarks pointed to a near future in which the two generation-defining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan launched in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were finally over. “My fellow Americans, we have traveled…
George Zimmerman Hires Ex-IRS Agent To Watch His Money
The lawyer for the man accused of killing unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin announced on Tuesday a former IRS agent has been hired to oversee his client’s defense fund.
Last week, attorney Mark O’Mara revealed that his client, George Zimmerman, managed to raise more than $200,000 in just a few weeks using a crudely built website and a PayPal account to take donations for his defense in a case that has drawn international attention.
Gay Republicans Dismayed As Openly Gay Romney Staffer Resigns
Just one week ago, The Atlantic heralded Mitt Romney’s hiring of an openly gay spokesman for foreign policy issues as “a breakthrough in the world of Republican presidential campaigns.” Seven days later, that spokesman had already stepped down, citing conservatives whose outrage over his spot in the campaign made it impossible to do his job. “While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to…
Eight “Scathing” Passages From The News Corp. Report
In the world of the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal, “scathing” is the word of the day. It’s the word that has been widely used to describe the report released today by the UK Parliament’s select committee on culture, media and sport – though harsh, severe, berating, or critical would also serve. Even observers in the UK were surprised at the 100+ page report’s language. “Everyone was kind of astonished,” Steve Hewlett, a columnist at The Guardian and host of the BBC Radio 4 Media …
DuckDuckGo Wants Developers To ‘Hack’ Its Search Results
The small upstart search engine known as DuckDuckGo has developed a new weapon in its quest to challenge Google’s dominance of the Web: Users. More specifically, DuckDuckGo is turning to users who also know how to code, namely software developers, inviting them to write plug-ins for the the search engine that display “instant answers.” Instant answers refer to information related to a search engine user’s query that is presented at the top of the search results themselves, before…
Mitt Romney: Obama’s Wrong About My Old Pakistan Quote
Mitt Romney says he did not rule out going into Pakistan to take out Osama bin Laden back in 2007, clarifying a quote that President Obama recently alluded to in raising doubts about whether the presumptive Republican nominee would have killed the terror mastermind. “We always reserve the right to go anywhere to get Osama bin Laden,” Romney told reporters at a joint appearance with Rudy Giuliani in New York Tuesday, the anniversary of the raid that killed bin Laden. “I said that…
Behind Closed Doors, Republicans Arm Women For The Fight
At a downtown D.C. hotel this week, Republicans are training a volunteer force of women to run grassroots operations this fall. The training session, known as Blackboard 2 Blacktop, was in the works months before a public fight for the women’s vote had both sides arguing over contraception and motherhood, organizers say. But a visit to the closed-door meeting Monday found Republican women in the crowd eager to push back against Democratic suggestions that the GOP is anti-woman. The…
May Day, Occupy Movements Converge For Day Of Protests
In Washington and on cable news, Tuesday is the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden. But elsewhere around the country, protests are raging over issues closer to home. International Workers Day or May Day generally draws protests from workers rights activists, immigration reform activists and other progressive groups. This year, the Occupy movement has also joined the fray, calling for a “general strike,” which a Facebook page describes as “NO WORK - NO SCHOOL - NO SHOPPING -…
Virginia Poll: Obama Opens An 8-Point Lead
From swing state to firewall?
A new poll of Virginia shows President Obama opening up an 8-point lead in the state, after two polls earlier in April showed likely Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with small leads. Now the Democratic-leaning firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows Obama with a 51 percent to 43 percent lead over Romney, as the numbers reveal a large gender gap among women and a GOP base not yet rallying behind the presumptive nominee.
Top GOPer: Ban On Pre-Existing Conditions Discrimination ‘A Terrible Idea’
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the No. 5 House Republican, says he opposes one of the Affordable Care Act’s most popular provisions – a ban on the insurance company practice of discriminating against people with pre-existing medical conditions.
“It’s a terrible idea,” he told Politico.
The remarks reflect a major conundrum for Republicans who, a year and a half after winning back the House, still have no idea how to replace “Obamacare” and are divided over how best to repeal it.