Gingrich thinks child labor laws should be repealed

AFSCME has a spot-on response. Read the rest of this post...

Pope Benedict: AIDS an ethical issue

It's always hard to stomach the pope or anyone in a senior position in the catholic church talking about ethics or morals. They have none of either, so perhaps it's best that they work on cleaning up their own house before smearing everyone else. How about for starters, the pope get on board with condoms and remove one more obstacle to addressing this very serious problem.

It calls for good governance, the abolition of the death penalty and denounces abuses, particularly against women and children, while describing AIDS as a mainly ethical problem that requires a medical response.

Changes in behaviour are needed to combat the disease, including sexual abstinence and rejection of promiscuity, it adds.

"The problem of AIDS in particular clearly calls for a medical and a pharmaceutical response," it says. "This is not enough however. The problem goes deeper. Above all, it is an ethical problem."

Yeah, well someone clearly has a problem with ethics, but it's not people with AIDS. Read the rest of this post...

Crazy Christian TV: "If you look at the face of Papa Smurf you’ll see Stalin"

I'll have what he's drinking.  It goes on for about 12 minutes.  Worth a listen if you need a good laugh.

Smurf photo (BigKnell) & Stalin / Shutterstock.com

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Study: If you watch Fox News you’re less informed than not watching any news at all

Ha.

Quick, were Egyptian protesters successful in their bid to overthrow longtime president Hosni Mubarak earlier this year?

According to a new poll (PDF) from Fairleigh Dickinson University, if you watch Fox News you are significantly less likely to know the correct answer to that question than if you mostly avoid news shows and newspapers all together.

After controlling for factors like partisanship, education, and other demographic factors, the pollsters found that Fox New viewers were 18 points less likely to know that the revolt was successful than their non-active news consuming counterparts. Fox News viewers were also 6 points less likely to know that the Syrian uprising has yet to succeed.

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Obama gets mic-check'd by OWS protesters at speech

From CBS News, which has the video:

A group of protesters seemingly affiliated with the "Occupy" movement interrupted President Obama's speech in Manchester, New Hampshire on Tuesday, engaging in a call-and-response protest for about 20 seconds before being drowned out by Mr. Obama's supporters.

"Mr. President, over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested while bankers continue to destroy the American economy," it said. "You must stop the assault on our 1st Amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out."

Read the rest of this post...

Imperial storm troopers guarding a bank. Imagine if they protected family planning clinics like this.

Sorry, I meant Portland police. Disseminated by Occupy Richmond, shot in Portland Oregon. Click the pic to see its full glory.


Hey, banks are people too. (Not imperial storm troopers? You decide.)

GP

P.S. Reader Nat weighs in:

As a long-time pro-choice activist who has done much clinic escorting over the years, I've always thought, "What if this clinic was a bank, and these protesters were barricading themselves in front of it and in it to stop people from entering and exercising their rights?" I thought then, and it is obvious now with the pics we've seen, including the one posted at the top of AMERICAblog, that when it's women's rights, police will stand idly by as religious fanatics barricade a clinic, as was the case throughout the 1970s-1990s with Operation Rescue and others until the 1994 FACE law, but if it's Wall Street, you get pepper sprayed, beaten, or otherwise molested even if you aren't near a bank and are just peacefully protesting. The pro-choice movement, and others, should figure out how to use this police response as precedent regarding the ongoing harassment, intimidation, and murder of abortion providers and those women who seek their care, so when current abortion providers such as Jen Boulanger in Allentown, PA and Mila Means in Wichita, KS (google for more info), both have been featured on the Rachel Maddow show) are threatened with murder, or when transgendered people are targeted for hate crimes repeatedly in the same areas, and on and on, we must demand the same expenditure of law enforcement resources for our side.

Read the rest of this post...

Fox News on UC Davis: Pepper spray nothing more than 'a food product'

And of course, UC Davis has liberals, so that makes it okay to abuse students in the eyes of Fox News. Click through for the sickening video. Gawker:

"I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," O'Reilly says, "particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus." God forbid! We'd never want to question Lt. John Pike's decision to generously and indifferently dust peacefully sitting protesters with pepper spray from only a few feet away. Especially given that Davis is, you know, a liberal campus! And, gosh, even if we were going to Monday-morning quarterback the police, shouldn't we remember, as Megyn Kelly tells O'Reilly, that pepper spray is "a food product, essentially"?

Since it's only a food product, maybe Megyn Kelly or O'Reilly want to volunteer to be pepper sprayed in the face -- I hear it's just like ketchup. Then again, Sean Hannity volunteered to be water boarded and like all chicken hawks, he chickened out.

More from Joe Coscarelli at NYMag (he has the video too):

"First of all, pepper spray — that just burns your eyes, right?" O'Reilly asks Kelly, the legal (and apparently chemical) expert. "It's like a derivative of actual pepper," she responds. "It's a food product, essentially."

According to Kelly, some people are wondering if the UC officers' spray had been "diluted."

O'Reilly concurred: "They should have had more of a reaction than that." In actuality, the spray appears to be of the MK-9 stream canister variety, at 0.7 percent strength, with a possible range of 18–20 feet and a minimum recommended distance of six feet.

Read the rest of this post...

Romney says "there’s nothing unique about the United States... America is just another nation with a flag"

Ouch. Our earlier story that explains what this video is about.

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Give thanks for the Super Committee fail

We should all breathe a sigh of relief that the Super Committee seems to have avoided doing further damage to the economy by doing nothing at all.

The economy needs action to stimulate demand and create jobs, but instead we are treated to a spectacle of intransigence on how best to depress the economy even further (the committee's mandate was to cut spending by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years). Give thanks that they couldn't agree to how this should be done because they should be doing the opposite, spend more money not less.

The $1.2 trillion in ‘automatic’ cuts to spending that are triggered by the failure of the Super Committee to reach an agreement are less damaging than what was on the table – if the automatic curs are even allowed to take effect at all, which is debatable (a number of GOP Senators and House members are already working to stop the defense side of the automatic cuts). Military spending is among the least stimulative of expenditures, and the social expenditure cuts that are triggered along with it are less than what was likely to come out any agreement from Super Committee.

Nevertheless, there IS a long term deficit problem, but the route to fixing it is economically simple even while politically difficult. The major drivers of the deficit are the Bush tax cuts, the ongoing wars and the recession. The first could be eliminated simply by doing nothing and letting them expire; the second is half done with the departure from Iraq; and the recession could be eliminated any time we choose by passing a second stimulus big enough to do the job.

Here is a quick prescription for what Congress should do, though in an election year it is probably too much to hope that they will do anything worthwhile:

- We have a long term deficit problem. So stop talking about tax cuts, and let the Bush tax cuts expire as scheduled. If taxes MUST be raised, then raise them on millionaires since that will have the smallest negative effect on current spending. Those millionaires are already buying whatever they want, and raising their personal income taxes from 35% to 39.6% won't change their personal spending habits by any measurable amount.

- We are in a recession which is in danger of double dipping.  We need to increase temporary spending on infrastructure projects which need to be done anyway, and which are best done when we need the jobs and can borrow the money at near zero percent (which is now). Add to that some extended unemployment benefits and aid to states to avoid firing cops, teachers and firemen, because we know that all of that money will be pumped directly back into the economy.

- Ignore the fantasies of those who think cutting spending in a recession can boost confidence, or even that it can cut the deficit. Deepening a recession with spending cuts will just reduce tax revenues further and leave us no better off, and possible worse off in terms of both the deficit and growth. It bears repeating that we have a direct measure of investor confidence in the interest rates on government bonds. With those rates below 3% for 30 year bonds, below 2% on 10 year bonds, and below 1% on 5 year it is probable that the real interest rate will turn out to be negative if there is much inflation at all.  There will never be a better time to borrow money to rebuild roads and schools. The banks are literally PAYING us to take the money.

But will Congress and the President do it? I doubt it. Mr. Obama is threating to veto any attempt to reverse the negative stimulus that the automatic cuts will impose. In economic policy terms, the President is acting more like a moderate Republican than a Democrat. And the Republicans' economic ideas are just plain nuts. Split that difference and you don't end up anywhere good. Read the rest of this post...

Former head of AIG sues govt for taking it over and not bailing it out

In my opinion, this man is a prime example of what is wrong with our country. From CNN Money:

The former head of the American International Group sued the U.S. government for $25 billion on Monday, claiming officials should have bailed out AIG instead of taking it over.

Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and his Starr International Company accused officials of discriminating against AIG.

I guess now that "corporations are people too" they can be discriminated against. Treasury's response is spot-on:

"It is important to remember that the government provided assistance to AIG -- and stopped it from collapsing -- in order to prevent a meltdown of the entire global financial system," Tim Massad, assistant secretary for financial stability, said in a statement.

Yes, but he didn't make as much money on the deal as he thought he could. And that's what matters. Read the rest of this post...

Pepper-spray cop becomes a meme

What would happen if you took the cop from this now iconic image and placed him in other famous images?  Many are funny, but also oddly poignant.

I like this one. My favorite. Another. And this.  Really like this one.  And this one gave me pause. Read the rest of this post...

Mitt Romney already "lying for the lord" on the campaign trail

Despicable.  But not unexpected.  Romney has been lying about his own record for years.  So it's no surprise that he'd blame President Obama for something that John McCain's campaign said.  Typical.  Desperate.  And despicable. Read the rest of this post...

Former GOP Senator, and Defense Secretary, says Republicans to blame for Super Committee failure

Former Republican Senator, and Defense Secretary, William Cohen writing in the NYT:

It was good news two weeks ago that Republican leaders had finally crossed the antitax line they had drawn in the sand, by offering $300 billion in net tax increases as part of a debt-reduction deal. But the news was not good enough. The amount offered did not approach bridging the gap with Democrats, and Republicans needed to go much farther to avert the possibility of disastrous cuts to our military strength.

Their failure to do so is directly responsible for Monday’s failure of the “supercommittee,” created by Congress as part of the debt-limit deal.

I have long been concerned that my party’s rigid antitax ideology is harming the fiscal health of our nation. Now it is harming our national security as well, as cuts in defense spending on a calamitous scale are about to be triggered. Congressional Republicans need to look back at this sad episode and decide: Do they care more about keeping “a no tax pledge” or giving our troops the tools they need to protect the nation?

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UK discussing transparency with boardroom pay

It's not a policy that the would normally be promoted by the Tories (in this case, it's done by the Lib Dems) but these are not normal times. The rosy promises of prosperity through austerity are falling apart so this might even have a chance. A small chance, but still a chance. More transparency is not a bad thing for the 99%. The Guardian:

Government action to curb boardroom pay becomes more likely as an influential group with the ear of the business secretary, Vince Cable, publishes proposals to reduce the pay gap.

Warning high pay is "corrosive" to the UK economy, the High Pay Commission calls for greater transparency in the setting of executive pay and says employees should sit on remuneration committees. Its recommendations come in the most comprehensive report yet on the need for action on top salaries.

The report shows executive pay has risen sharply – the pay of the head of Barclays is up nearly 5,000% in 30 years – while average wages have increased just threefold.

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Egyptians calling for million man rally in Cairo

Following another bloody round of clashes with the military, they certainly need to do something big to change the direction of events. Al Jazeera:

Activists in Egypt are calling for a mass demonstration in Cairo against the country's ruling military council after three days of clashes between protesters and government forces left at least 33 people dead and hundreds injured.

Groups including the Coalition of Revolution Youth and the April 6 movement, which spearheaded the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in February, called for a "million-man march" on Tuesday afternoon in Tahrir Square to put pressure on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to cede power to civilian leaders.

Egypt's cabinet, headed by Essam Sharaf, the interim prime minister, offered its resignation late on Monday but a military official said the council was seeking agreement on a new prime minister before it would accept the resignation.

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GOP congressman says veterans protesting Wall Street are socialists

You can always tell when a Republican is desperate - they call you a socialist, without having any ideawhat the word really means.

I wonder what the term is for a guy who owes over $100,000 in child support?  Oh wait, I know.  Joe Walsh. Read the rest of this post...