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Happy Saturday night, folks! It's Blue Gal from The Professional Left Podcast, bringing you this week's podcast round up. Be aware that these podcasts are also available on i-Tunes, and may not be safe for work.

Momocrats: Interview from May, with Aryanna Strader, progressive challenger to Joe Pitts, mom, veteran, and businesswoman. She's our newest Blue America candidate.

The Bugle - News and Comedy podcast from The Daily Show's John Oliver and political comedian Andy Zaltzman.

Here's the Thing: Alec Baldwin interviews David Letterman

The LEFT Show (Utah): I know Romney?

Open thread and share your favorite podcasts in comments.

Music to chill by. What music makes you wanna just chill, and slip into the chill groove?

Fresh Goods
	Artist: Tao of Groove Price: $0.95 (As of 06/23/12 07:52 pm details)

It's always intrigued me that people who are very successful in one area believe that particular success validates their judgment in every other area. Classic case in point: Curt Schilling. From what I read from insiders in the video game industry, he pretty much did everything wrong.

And now, of course, he blames the government for his own lack of business sense:

Curt Schilling told the Providence Journal today that he stands to lose all of his savings on a failing video game company called 38 Studios.

The company — which Schilling founded and moved to Rhode Island in 2010 because of a $75 million loan guarantee — fired its entire staff last week.It's effectively out of business, and now RI taxpayers are on the hook for $112 million, according to CNN.

Today, Schilling spoke publicly about the failing business for the first time — blaming the government for refusing to give the company tax credits, claiming a video-game maker backed out of a deal with 38 Studios after public comments made by Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, and saying that he put everything he's ever saved into the company.

[...] But here's an excerpt that the AP pulled out:Schilling, 45, told the newspaper he stands to lose all the money he saved while playing baseball, and rejects criticism that he is seeking a public handout.

"I have done whatever I can do to create jobs and create a successful business, with my own income. Fifty million dollars, everything I've ever saved, has been put back into the economy. The $49 million from Rhode Island has been put back in the economy. I've never taken a penny and I've done nothing but create jobs and create economy. And so how does that translate into welfare baby? I've tried to do right by people."

Minneapolis - Around 6:30am Thursday morning a large balloon banner reading "Evictions Stop Here" was deployed above the embattled home of the Cruz family as 15 supporters of the Cruz family began an occupation of the rooftop in protest of the family's unjust foreclosure. By 8:30am two were cut out of a lockbox device with an electric saw, handcuffed, taken down a ladder and arrested for trespassing. The action kicks off a national day of action in 18 cities demanding PNC Bank negotiate with the family to allow them to return to their home.

Alejandra and David Cruz went to the bank's headquarters in Pittsburgh around 1pm with over 40,000 petition signatures and their loan modification documents demanding a meeting with CEO Jim Rohr to renegotiate their mortgage.

The Cruzes' battle against an unjust foreclosure has become a focal point for the Occupy movement and garnered media attention from around the country. In the past month, 24 community supporters with Occupy Homes MN have been arrested defending the south Minneapolis home. The campaign has become a sticky political situation for local elected officials, PNC Bank, and Freddie Mac, the current owner of the property.

Although PNC has acknowledged the foreclosure was due to a bank error, executives have repeatedly said they are working "behind the scenes" to fix the situation, and Executive Vice President Dan Taylor said that he would look into the Cruzes' case, the bank has not offered a negotiation. "We feel like PNC and Freddie Mac have forgotten us," said David Cruz. "So we're going to remind them."

On their way to Pittsburgh, the Cruzes stopped in Chicago to visit Freddie Mac, the current owner of the home, at their regional office, where 40 supporters rallied with the Cruzes' battered front door. Supporters then marched to a local PNC branch where they were denied entrance by Chicago police officers and the branch refused to accept the Cruzes' loan documents.

Thursday evening in Minneapolis, community members and neighbors rallied to sending a clear message to PNC Bank that if a negotiation has not been offered, supporters will continue to return to the home even if it means risking arrest. "This home belongs to the Cruz family," said Occupy Homes MN organizer Nick Espinosa. "We won't rest until they're back in it."

A group of nuns led by Sister Simone Campbell is driving from the small towns of the Midwest to the urban centers of the East to protest the House Republican budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Yesterday, they brought their message to Ryan’s door, visiting the congressman’s office in his home town of Janesville, Wisconsin. There, Sister Simone spoke with members of Ryan’s staff and greeted supporters gathered outside.

Ryan was in Washington at the time, but issued this statement defending his budget plan: “Economic stagnation, and a growing dependency on government assistance, continues to push this country toward a debt crisis, in which those who get hurt the first and the worst are the poor, the sick and the elderly, the people who need government the most.”

To find out where the nuns are heading next and see how the Ryan budget would affect constituents in each state they pass through, check out the interactive map of their trip.

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Credit: Bruce Chambers / The Orange County Register via AP

Yay socialized fire department!

Open thread below...

Isn't that nice. The single most influential man in Republican politics sits down with his minions, gives them their marching orders (which of course supersede their oath of office) and then says, "Gridlock? Who, me?" No, threatening anyone who deviates from your orders with a million-dollar primary challenge is just good government!

WASHINGTON — All but 13 of the 289 Republicans in the House and Senate have signed a pledge vowing to oppose tax increases. On Thursday, the author of that pledge met with some of them to help them understand exactly what it is they signed.

In the process, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist sparked a fresh barrage of criticism from Democrats who accuse him and his pledge of being one of the major impediments to a bipartisan debt-cutting deal. Norquist and Republicans defended the pledge, denied that he is hurting his party because he has become a political target, and said that Washington's gridlock on the issue is not his fault. ...

Thursday's session came at a time when some Republicans in Congress and elsewhere have been distancing themselves from Norquist's pledge, saying all options need to be available if the two parties are to concoct a debt-reduction agreement. It also comes during an election-year fight over whether to extend expiring tax cuts for the rich at the end of this year, as Republicans want and President Barack Obama and Democrats oppose, and whether to overhaul the entire tax code. ...

With some in Congress beginning to concentrate on how the two parties might reach a budget agreement later this year, some Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have expressed a willingness to eliminate tax breaks and use some of the money that would produce to reduce deficits. That would violate a tenet of Norquist's pledge, which says any money raised that way must be used to lower tax rates. ...

"They ought to be sitting down and working things out instead of holding court for him," said Rep. Sander Levin, top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, as he wandered past the committee hearing room where the meeting was being held. "Norquist is here to hold feet to the fire when what we need are open minds."

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Credit: Public Campaign Action Fund

"It is more blessed," Jesus said, "to give than to receive." That may be, but the billionaire backers of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and Super PAC plan to do both. As they gather this weekend for a three-day Romney conclave in Park City, Utah and a secret Koch brothers summit in San Diego, the deep-pocketed donors and bullish bundlers ultimately hope to shower $1 billion on the Republican nominee. If the captains of industry and finance succeed, they can expect a golden shower of their own in return. After all, Romney has not merely promised to roll back environmental regulations, open federal lands to energy exploration and undo the Dodd-Frank reforms of Wall Street. Just by eliminating the estate tax, President Romney would divert tens of billions of dollars currently destined for the United States Treasury into the bank accounts of the richest families in America.

Despite record high corporate profits, historically low effective upper income tax rates and a stock market which has risen by over half since January 2009, Barack Obama is not enjoying the usual fundraising advantage of incumbency. Nowhere is this more true than on Wall Street. As Politico documented:

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it are outraising Obama among financial-sector donors $37.1 million to $4.8 million.

Near the front of the pack are 19 Obama donors from 2008 who are giving big to Romney. The 19 have already given $4.8 million to Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it through the end of April, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Four years ago, they gave Obama $213,700. None of them has given a penny to the president's reelection campaign or the super PAC supporting it.

(As the New York Times reported this week, Robert Wolf, one of the few high-profile financiers publicly supporting President Obama, has been "muzzled" by his bosses at UBS.)

The energy industry, too, is proving a gusher for Mitt Romney and his Restore Our Future Super PAC. Hours after being named an oil adviser to the Romney campaign, Harold Hamm of Continental Resources contributed $1 million of his $11 billion net worth to Restore Our Future. Charles and David Koch have pledged $395 million for the 2012 election cycle, which combined with Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Tom Donohue's U.S. Chamber of Commerce could produce a billion-dollar tidal wave of cash to wash Barack Obama out of the White House. (As one Democratic consultant described the operation, "It's just like the Cold War. They're going to force Obama to spend himself into oblivion.")

Others among the usual suspects on the right are opening their vaults as well. Former Newt Gingrich sugar daddy and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has said his donations could be "limitless" and will likely top $100 million. While billionaire investor and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts may have abandoned his Jeremiah Wright smear campaign, his is bankrolling other projects including the ersatz documentary based on Dinesh D'Souza's book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Meanwhile, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons has already delivered $18.7 million to Republican political organizations, a sum which will likely double by November.

(It is worth noting, as the New Republic and Huffington Post did recently, that many of Mitt Romney's Super PAC donors are embroiled in corporate bribery scandals. Adelson's casinos, the Walton family's Walmart operation in Mexico, Koch Brothers businesses in the Middle East and Meg Whitman's Hewlett Packard are all entangled with alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)

But Mitt Romney's gilded-class allies won't merely win if he slashes taxes and regulations for their businesses. They will reap a huge return on their multi-million dollar investments from the massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy would-be President Romney has in mind for them.

Continue reading »

It was highly unlikely that he was going to be acquitted, but it's a relief that it's over. (It was a little weird for me to watch the news coverage - the last time I saw top prosecutor Joe McGettigan, I was in high school and he was the surfer-dude big brother of my best friend. Now he looks exactly like his father did then, and that means I must be old. But I digress.) I hope that Penn State's administrators have enough conscience to revamp their system to prevent such institutional blindness again. But weighing the well-being of children against a powerhouse football team that was a money magnet? They didn't have a chance until this story finally broke out into the open:

(Reuters) - A jury found former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky guilty on 45 out of 48 counts in his child sex abuse trial on Friday.

Sandusky was seen escorted out of the courthouse in handcuffs. He could be sentenced to hundreds of years in prison.

The decision came after about 21 hours of deliberation over two days by a jury of seven women and five men. Nine of the 16 jurors and alternates had ties to Pennsylvania State University, and the final days of the trial drew large crowds to the Centre County Courthouse.

A large crowd gathered outside the Centre County Courthouse in central Pennsylvania to learn news of the decision. A cheer went up outside as the news was released.

The white-haired former coach faced 48 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys over a 15-year period, sometimes at Penn State facilities.

My heart leaps up
When I behold
A blog post in the sky...

PoliticusUSA: Right-wing values mean sponsoring tycoons while slashing jobs and food stamps.

Ramona's Voices: What is a Contract if it's not a contract?

Vox Verax: It's tough to stop voter fraud when there is so little.

The Consumerist Manifesto: Jamie Dimon's "remote event" defense.

Brad DeLong: Lord, enlighten thou our enemies.

Whiskey Fire: And now, the conservative response.

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