Video: Father interrogates one year old over who’s her favorite parent (funny)

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Why Romney is winning in South Carolina

From HuffPost Hill:

If just one of Mitt Romney's main opponents stopped running for the VP spot/a cabinet job/the 2016 nomination/glory, one of them could maybe beat Mitt Romney. Sam Stein and Amanda Terkel: "Despite more than four years spent campaigning for the presidency, Romney remains an untrusted commodity in conservative circles. What's propelling the former Massachusetts governor's candidacy this time around are competitors who are, at once, ineffectual as politicians and unwilling to quit. The anyone-but-Mitt vote remains fairly divided, with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) firmly winning over a solid chunk of New Hampshire voters Tuesday. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman spent time in the spotlight in the lead-up to Tuesday's vote as well, while former Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have all, at times, been the non-Romney flavor of the moment. Were one of the candidates to quit, it could potentially boost one or more that remained. But in the wake of the New Hampshire primary -- in which Jon Huntsman finished third, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were battling for fourth as results were still rolling in and Rick Perry came in sixth -- not one hinted that he would even consider blinking."

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Facebook shuts down page of lead gay active-duty military group, refuses to restore it

Dumb move. Read the rest of this post...

Will James O’Keefe face election fraud charges?

Looks like he might.  There is also the question of whether he just violated his three year federal probation. Think Progress:

James O’Keefe’s latest video features surrogates appearing to commit voter fraud in yesterday’s New Hampshire primary election, all in an attempt to highlight voter fraud, a problem which is by-and-large nonexistent in the Granite State. 

The undercover video shows unnamed individuals working at O’Keefe’s behest approaching polling stations throughout New Hampshire. After poll workers asked for the person’s name, O’Keefe’s agents gave the name of a voter who died within the past few weeks, before then receiving a ballot to vote. The individuals asked the poll workers if they needed ID to prove their identity, and when poll workers confirmed that they did not, O’Keefe’s men insisted on returning to their car to retrieve their ID and returned the ballot.

O'Keefe is like a compulsive gambler who remembers hitting the jackpot on their first spin of the wheel and spend the rest of their lives trying to repeat the high. It won't surprise anyone to hear that O'Keefe didn't report that one of his accomplices did get caught in the act.

Election fraud is controlled by giving stiff sentences to people who get caught in the attempt. If people want to brake-test the election security system they should expect to go to jail when they get caught. Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry has done so badly he reportedly doesn’t qualify for CNN’s South Carolina debate

Ouch. From Business Insider:

CNN announced Tuesday that a candidate will only receive an invite for the debate if he matches at least one of the four criteria:

A person must place in one of the top four slots in the final results of the Iowa Caucus.

A person must place in one of the top four slots in the final results of the New Hampshire Primary.

A person must receive an average of at least 7.00 percent in at least three national polls released between January 1 and January 18 that were conducted by major polling organizations.

A person must receive an average of at least 7.00 percent in at least three South Carolina polls released between January 1 and January 18 that were conducted by major polling organizations.

Apparently, wearing a really gay jacket doesn't qualify. Read the rest of this post...

MF Global update: Bankruptcy trustee (& ex-FBI dir) Louis Freeh protecting investors over customers

An update on the ongoing MF Global story.

MF Global is the brokerage firm that Top 0.01% poster boy Jon Corzine tried to turn into a junior Goldman Sachs (with its own proprietary trading and investment operation).

Using MF Global's own money, he ran the company into the ground (actually crashed it against the reef of the EU sovereign debt crisis by betting the wrong way). Then he and his friends appear to have covered the company's bets with customer cash.

Then they voted themselves bonuses. Then they went bankrupt. Then ex-Senator ex-Governor ex–Goldman CEO Corzine totally failed to get arrested. It's the old old story.

So, the latest:

■ The various forensics accounting operations are still looking for the money, specifically about $1.2 billion in unfound customer funds.

The investigation into MF Global is intensifying as federal authorities unearth new details and confront potential obstacles in their hunt for roughly $1.2 billion in customer money that disappeared from the brokerage firm.

While prosecutors and regulators have jointly conducted dozens of depositions with former and current employees, a senior official in the Chicago office of MF Global recently declined to meet with the federal authorities, people briefed on the investigation said.

That official, Edith O’Brien, a treasurer at MF Global, is considered a “person of interest” in the investigation, the people said. Federal authorities suspect that she transferred about $200 million to JPMorgan Chase in London on the eve of the bankruptcy of MF Global, money that turned out to be customer cash.

That "person of interest" item doesn't mean they think Ms. O'Brien did anything wrong, but they need her testimony. She "balked at meeting voluntarily, asking first to strike a deal with criminal authorities that would excuse her from prosecution." Maybe suspicious, maybe just careful. Either way, they need to find the MF Global money sent to JPMorgan Chase.

Be sure to notice JPM Chase's fingerprints on the cash. There's some indication that Jamie Dimon's bank is using the MF Global money they're holding to pay off MF Global debts to themselves first, without involving that pesky court.

■ Ex–FBI director Louis Freeh, who was appointed "bankruptcy trustee" has refused to release some MF Global documents, claiming "attorney-client privilege":

MF Global's bankruptcy trustee, Louis Freeh, has refused to turn over some documents to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which is investigating what happened to an estimated $1.2 billion (774.6 million pounds) in missing customer funds, the Wall Street Journal said.

Freeh, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and who represents MF Global's parent company, has asserted attorney-client privilege in deciding not to release certain documents to the CFTC, according to his office and people familiar with the matter, the Journal said.

The dispute is complicating efforts to learn how the firm lost the customer funds and to return the money to its owners and could slow the investigation, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the investigation.

"Bankruptcy trustee" has a nice, innocent, even-handed sound. In fact, Freeh's job is to protect the company (what's left of it) and its investors.

Experts say it is common for trustees to assert attorney-client privilege in such cases to protect the interest of the company’s creditors and shareholders, whom the trustee represents.

As Atrios says:

The way the carcass of MF Global, led by Louis Freeh, is going to deal with the people it stole from should be a warning to everyone. Your money is not safe with these firms.

You can see why I use the term "retainer" for guys like Freeh, can't you? He's literally doing the bidding of some banks & investors, duking it out with other banks & creditors, against the interests of the 99%, in this case, actual customers whose property the dueling 1% organizations are trying to steal.

Freeh is a well-paid messenger boy, a hired gun. His ex-FBI past, in their minds, gives him cred, as does that bland "bankruptcy trustee" title. In fact, his role in all this reduces the cred of the FBI.

After all, if Freeh is a retainer now, to what extent was he a retainer before? Are they all "hired guns" — even the big guy? After all, he won't get really rich until he's out of office; and Thank You Street wants its hamburger today.

Will Jon Corzine ever be indicted? (Dumb question, I guess; is the Pope Catholic running a pedophile protection operation?)

More as it develops.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Nasty new Newt-approved video takes down Romney

Ouch, this is really good.  I suspect that Gingrich isn't just doing this out of pique (Gingrich was pretty ticked about some Romney ads), but that this also has to do with the new religious right effort to stop Romney from being the GOP nominee.  Were such an effort able to take Romney down at some point, Gingrich wants to be ready to step in his shoes.

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Limbaugh appears to agree with caller that health care reform is a "kinder, gentler Auschwitz"

Yes, demanding that insurance companies not turn away people with asthma and high cholesterol is just like genocide, except one is about saving lives and the other is about exterminating them.

Note that as Rush Limbaugh's caller compares health care reform to Auschwitz, Limbaugh barely blinks other than to clarify what the caller is saying. He never disagrees with the comparison, and more often than not, responds "right" to what the caller is saying.

Remember, the "death panel" thing was a Sarah Palin creation, and it was a lie. In fact, "death panels" won the "lie of the year" in 2009 by an independent fact-checker. Health care reform had nothing to do with government bodies deciding who gets to live and who gets to die. It was a brilliant lie, really, since the Republicans are the ones proposing "solutions" that leave a good number of Americans without coverage, and those of us with coverage unprotected in the case of a health catastrophe. But the GOP always was good at blaming us for what they were really thinking.

But you have to marvel at Limbaugh, or any of the far-right Republicans who control the GOP, pretending they care about anyone other than the rich. They don't. Here's a partial transcript of Limbaugh's show:

SH: Hazel in Brooklyn, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Hi, Rush.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: Okay, the reason that I'm calling is I think that it plays too much into Obama's hands to equate Romneycare with Obamacare. I think it's Obama's way of depressing Republican turnout if Romney's the nominee, that Republicans think it's the same thing. But Romneycare was never about death panels or bureaucrats in Washington making decisions or saying, "Well, I'm not gonna give your mother any treatment, she's just gonna get a pain pill." To me, Obamacare is like a kinder, gentler Auschwitz. It selects people who are useless mouths and then just lets them die on the vine.

RUSH: What did you say, a kinder gentler what?

CALLER: Auschwitz. Yeah, we're Auschwitz --

RUSH: Yeah, I wasn't quite sure that's what you actually said, that Obamacare is a kinder, gentler Auschwitz.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: That was a death camp.

CALLER: Right. Because I think Obamacare uses rationing --

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: -- and the people who are deemed, quote, useless mouths, as the Nazis deemed people who could not work for the German greater good, will be gently allowed to die rather than --

RUSH: Wait. There was nothing gentle about it.

CALLER: No, the people who Obama selects.

RUSH: Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

CALLER: -- will be gently allowed to die through palliative care and hospice and pain meds. But we won't expend the resources to treat them.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: Well, I think basically people are looking for solutions to health insurance issues, and the problem is that nobody wants to look at the real solution, which is the government is the problem.

RUSH: More people than you realize look at it that way.

CALLER: And hopefully one of them will be president and we can end this atrocity before too many of us are put to our kinder and gentler death.

RUSH: That of course is the bottom line.

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Is a Bayer pesticide responsible for mass bee die-offs?

A Purdue research report suggests that might be the case [Mother Jones].

Now a study from Purdue researchers casts further suspicion on Bayer's money-minting concoctions. To understand the new paper—published in the peer-reviewed journal Plos One—it's important to know how seed treatments work, which is like this: The pesticides are applied directly to seeds before planting, and then get absorbed by the plant's vascular system. They are "expressed" in the pollen and nectar, where they attack the nervous systems of insects. Bayer targeted its treatments at the most prolific US crop—corn—and since 2003, corn farmers have been blanketing millions of acres of farmland with neonic-treated seeds. 

No one disputes that neonics are highly toxic to bees. But Bayer insists—and so far, the EPA concurs—that little if any neonic-laced pollen actually makes it into bee hives; and that exposure to tiny amounts has no discernible effect on hive health. Bayer also claims that bees don't forage much on corn pollen.

As every farmer knows, plants don't produce seeds unless fertilized, bees are responsible for most crop fertilization. The mysterious colony collapse disorder that has been affecting bees in the US has been worrying food scientists and farmers for several years.

[BTW: If you are wondering why I didn't quote Einstein, I check Snopes.] Read the rest of this post...

NH results: Ron Paul is the real Anti-Romney

Cross-posted from AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field

NH Results:

Mitt Romney 39.4% (94,255)
Ron Paul: 22.8% (54,513)
Jon Huntsman: 16.9% (40,388)
Newt Gingrich: 9.4% (22,518)
Rick Santorum: 9.3% (22,293)
Rick Perry: 0.7% (1,688)

A few thoughts...

Attention reporters: Mitt Romney is not the first Republican non-incumbent to win Iowa and New Hampshire, as Romney neither got the most votes in Iowa (Rick Santorum did) nor did he get the most delegates (Ron Paul did). Please stop saying Romney won Iowa! Of course, part of the reason this is happening is Rick Santorum waited way to long to give his victory speech and this allowed what would have been the story of the Santorum upset become a story of Romney eeking it out.

The Santorum Surge is over. Santorum made a huge mistake trying to compete in New Hampshire, where a Romney victory was always clear and where Huntsman had already taken up residence. Now Santorum is in the tough spot of trying to ride momentum that no longer exists into a state where all the Anti-Romney's will be fighting for survival.

As Ari Melber notes, Ron Paul is showing to be incredibly strong across a wide range of Republican and independent constituencies. Noting Paul outperformed the field with lower-income voters and McCain voters, Melber writes:

Yet Paul's opponents are strong opponents, the thinking goes, so he would not be accepted by the rest of Republicans. But is that true? You'd have to ask them. The exit pollsters did, and overall, regardless of personal preference, more voters said they would be "satisfied" with a Paul nomination than Gingrich or Santorum. Now, that could reflect some ignorance about Paul's record and ideas, but if the press is going to cover the strength of Paul's campaign on earth, and not its hypothetical vulnerabilities, then it's time to report the reality of his wide appeal in this race so far.

This raises the fundamental dynamic of the race at this point. Clearly Mitt Romney is the front-runner. There has been a lot of competition for the spot of Anti-Romney, but no clear winner. Perry, Gingrich, Santorum, Bachmann, and Cain have all been competing for the job of Anti-Romney, under the presumption that if there was conservative unification around an Anti-Romney, that person could defeat Romney for the nomination.

To this point, it's looked like Ron Paul existed as someone outside of the Anti-Romney race as his own creature without strong overlap into more traditional parts of the Republican base. But the results of Iowa and New Hampshire belie this. Ron Paul is showing strong and he could actually coalesce support as the Anti-Romney, at least if politicians and pundits look at what voters are saying. Paul would have to start getting support from people like Gingrich, Santorum and Perry for him to have a shot at this. Frankly I don't see that happening.

South Carolina will be interesting in that it could be the last chance for an Anti-Romney to emerge. That should lead Gingrich, Santorum and Perry to go hard after Mitt. But if Ron Paul performs another strong second, it's hard to not see the writing on the wall of him as the real Anti-Romney in the race.

In the end it looks most likely that Romney will be the Republican nominee not because it was his turn or because he was the most popular candidate, but that the conservative base was fractured across multiple Anti-Romneys who couldn't get it together to unite behind one person to defeat Romney.

Cross-posted from AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field

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Catholic Church child safety coordinator jailed for trading in child rape pornography

What was that the Pope was saying yesterday about the threat to the family? I believe he hinted that it was "teh gay marriage" that was one of the biggest threats to the future of humanity. (Then there was the Catholic cardinal in Chicago comparing a gay Pride parade to the KKK.)  In fact, it seems a more quantifiable threat to humanity's future, to its children, is coming from the Catholic Church itself. From the Daily Mail:

A Catholic Church child safety co-ordinator who was in charge of investigating sexual abuse allegations was jailed for 12 months today for internet peadophile offences....

He was arrested after uploading images of pre-pubescent boys on to the Ning social networking website.

Police officers who traced him to his home in Plymouth, Devon, found more than 4,000 child porn images, mainly of boys aged 10 to 12, on his church-supplied computer and a memory stick when they raided the house in Penrose Road....

[T]here were 120 at Level Four, which includes scenes of child rape, and 12 at Level Five, which can include scenes of torture and sadism.

The Daily Mail reports that at the time of his arrest the perv was "leading an investigation into a historic sex abuse allegation."

Wouldn't it be neat if the Catholic Church hated pedophilia as much as it hates the rest of us? Read the rest of this post...

The six lessons of New Hampshire

Maggie Haberman of Politico has a long story detailing the six big lessons from New Hampshire. It's good and worth a read. Here's the quick synopsis.

1. Romney did well, and having won both Iowa and NH becomes all the more likely to be the GOP nominee.
2. Huntsman had a real surge in NH that justifies him staying in the race.
3. "The GOP cannot ignore Ron Paul."
4. Both Santorum and Gingrich are losing their status as the "anti-Romney."
5. The SuperPACs are having a huge influence, and may mean that Gingrich, Santorum and Huntsman will stay in the race until Super Tuesday.
6. Rick Perry is toast, with just 0.73 percent of the vote. Read the rest of this post...

Korean students do adorable Daft Punk video

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