Stephen Colbert on Romney and Mormon secret baptism of Holocaust victims

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The Google definition of "Santorum" just got messier

Dan Savage reports that something happened over at Google, and spreadingsantorum.com is no longer the first result that comes up when you Google the name/word "Santorum."  Of course, what now does come up near the top of the list is a definition that's actually worse than what was there before.

What did Aesop say, watch what you wish for? Read the rest of this post...

One in seven Americans pursued by 3rd-party debt collectors, double the percent in 2000

This is a great catch by Matt Stoller writing at Naked Capitalism. I'll keep this short and send you to the original post.

The bottom line is that the percentage of people pursued by third-party debt collectors has doubled in 10 years. Stoller (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

I went through the Federal Reserve’s Quarterly Release on Household Debt and Credit released today, and there were two notable trends.

One is that the amount of consumer debt is declining, but that delinquency rates are stabilizing above what they were before the crisis.

And the second is in this graph, which is that the number of people subject to third party collections has doubled since 2000, from a little less than 7% to a little over 14% of consumers. Ten years ago, one in fourteen American consumers were pursued by debt collectors. Today it’s one in seven.

Here's the graph he mentioned; click to open in a new tab. When you do, note that the big jumps in the blue line — the line showing debtors — occurred during the early and mid Bush II years, well before the banking crisis.

People are simply getting poorer. Stoller calls this the "new social contract," fingers both Bush II and Obama for the change, and says it "suggests we live in a different country than we did just ten years ago." He's right; this is not your daddy's U.S. of A.

There's more at the link, including some information on the re-emergence of debtor's prisons, if you can believe. Be sure to click through on that one. It's not an overstatement.

As for you, Mr. Who Else You Gonna Vote For? — look to your legacy. Word.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Life is really hard for Wall Street after bonus cuts

How does one scrape by when the payout is only $350,000 per year? Like others, I've always been impressed with the compassion and humility on Wall Street. This article doesn't get into it, but deep down we all know how appreciative Wall Street is for being saving from crashing on the rocks. They all are thankful for having their lifestyle saved, even if they now have to clip coupons and send their kids to public schools. A few great excerpts by The Atlantic from the Bloomberg article about lifestyles of the down and out on Wall Street.

“I feel stuck,” [director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc. Andrew] Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.” How so? "Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex." “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?” “It’s a disaster,” said Ilana Weinstein, chief executive officer of New York-based search firm IDW Group LLC. “The entire construct of compensation has changed.”

Poor little lambs. Read the rest of this post...

Santorum gets as many MI delegates as Romney

This is considered a "home state" for Romney. He and Santorum are splitting the state's 30 delegates, each getting 15.

This is far worse than Romney did in 2008 in the state, when he won 24 Michigan delegates. Read the rest of this post...

Davy Jones' Monkees audition

Davy Jones passed away today.

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Wall Street blocks efforts to shut down energy speculation trading

To be fair to Wall Street, the lifestyle-saving bailout was so 2008. Who could remember so far back? Today is a new day and there is money to be made off the backs of middle class, taxpayer schmucks. Fortunately Wall Street knows that they completely own Washington and can dictate the terms of how they will screw the country on issue after issue. With political campaigns costing as much as they do today, who is going to do anything to stop Wall Street if it might mean losing out on an opportunity to raise cash? Washington remains the best government money can buy. CNNMoney:

Even if Wall Street loses in court, the new position limit rules can't take full effect until two months after the agency has issued a definition of what qualifies as a swap, which is due out in April. Gasoline prices have risen in recent years as global demand grew. But the biggest factor for the recent price boost, according to analysts, is fear that tensions with Iran will lead to an all-out war that causes a disruption in oil supplies. Last week, traders set a record for the amount of money they bet on higher gasoline prices, according to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.

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US economy grew 3% in the 4th quarter last year

This is the type of surprise that everyone wants to see except the Republicans, who want failure for the country. It doesn't mean that we're out of the woods and that the economy is in great shape, but it is still a positive development. The GOP has talked down any good news, so let's see how they react to this. Bloomberg:

The U.S. economy expanded more than forecast in the fourth quarter as companies rebuilt inventories in anticipation of growing demand. Gross domestic product climbed at a revised 3 percent annual rate, the most since the second quarter of 2010, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for no change from the previously reported 2.8 percent gain, according to the median forecast in the Bloomberg News survey. The revision reflected fewer imports and a smaller drop in non-residential investment. Income gains in the second half of 2011 were stronger than previously reported as employment growth accelerated, which may set the stage for a pickup in consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. At the same time, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who testifies before Congress today, said earlier this month that bigger reductions in unemployment depend on faster growth.

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Maine presents real opportunity for progressive Democratic Senate pick up

GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe's retirement in Maine clears the way for a Democrat to pick up the Senate seat held for so long by the GOP. There are currently several declared candidates, but now speculation centers on whether the heavyweights will get in. At Dirigo Blue, Gerald Weinand outlines the challenges for candidates who want to run, given the March 15th filing deadline.

The Portland Press Herald is reporting that both Democratic House members are thinking about the Senate:

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st Congressional District, thanked Snowe for her service and said she is considering a run for the seat.

Pingree's husband, S. Donald Sussman, is a financier, philanthropist and frequent Democratic donor who recently purchased a 5 percent equity stake in MaineToday Media through Maine Values LLC.

MaineToday Media owns and operates The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and other media outlets in Maine.

Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud, who represents Maine's 2nd Congressional District, also praised Snowe and said he, too, is considering a run.

A decision by Michaud or Pingree – or both – to run for Senate would create a scramble for one or both House seats.

I know and like both Mike and Chellie. Both have strong track records of fighting for fairness and putting working families first. They are both solid people. But, they differ on support for social issues. So, my preference is Pingree.

From the perspective of the LGBT community, it's a clear choice. Chellie is a strong advocate for marriage equality. She helped us during the "No on 1" campaign back in 2009 while Mike was silent. Earlier this month, she gave a speech on the House floor about marriage equality. She's an outspoken ally. Michaud, not so much. He isn't even a co-sponsor of DOMA repeal. With marriage on the ballot in Maine this year, it's hard to see how this issue wouldn't come up in a primary race if Michaud chooses to get in. And, clearly, he would be at a disadvantage on that topic.

There's more. According to NARAL Pro Choice America, Michaud "is mixed-choice." He supported the Stupak amendment to the health care bill back in 2009. And, he's a Blue Dog.

Fortuitously, Chellie recently hired Jesse Connolly, one of the smartest and savviest politicos in the state, to be her Chief of Staff. She's well positioned to win the primary -- and win in November. And, she'll be a real progressive voice in the Senate.

UPDATE: Portland Press Herald reports that Michaud has taken the first step to run:

Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, has become the first of what is expected to be a flood of candidates rushing to get into the race for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe.

A Michaud representative took out nominating petitions for the Democratic primary at the Maine Secretary of State's office this morning, said Megan Sanborn, a spokeswoman for the office.

Michaud represents the second congressional district in Maine, which encompasses most of the central and northern part of the state. He was first elected in 2002 and is now in his fifth term in Congress.

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Democratic party identification is falling fast among young progressive voters

I've written in a number of places (links below) about how criminal it was that Obama, having created as candidate an army of newly invigorated voters, then dashed their hopes as president, repeatedly and relentlessly.

After the election, OFA (his youth-organizing and mobilizing entity) was folded into the Democratic party, and became a party tool, not at all a force for hopeful change. His "base" was repeatedly ignored, or worse.

The sense of betrayal in some quarters has been monumental. Paul Krugman, Cornel West, James Galbraith and a host of others among the bigs — and about a million of us smalls — were left crying in our beer watching cave after cave after cave. It's been an endless parade of miserable. Only progressive gays, who actually fought back, achieved a genuine victory.

How could this not affect the youth, so hopeful (yes, not sarcasm), so motivated? Not since John Kennedy launched the 1960s, and everything that meant to the country, have the nation's youth been so mobilized.

Not any more. Rick Perlstein (my emphasis):

You could call [my friend] a progressive. Just don't call him a Democrat. As intense as his alienation from the Republican Party is his disinclination to state any party identity at all. He says, "I feel more attached to a politics of hope and optimism than I do to the Democratic Party".

He's not alone. It's more and more the case that young people who identify with Democrats on the issues shy from labeling themselves Democrats. In 2008, members of the "Millennial" generation — demographers' term for kids born between 1981 and 1993 — identified as Democrats rather than Republicans by 60 to 32 percent. Now, those figures are 47 and 43 percent.

The turn away from party identification has been a long-term American trend: According to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans don't consider themselves members of a political party, compared to 36 percent in 2002 and 33 percent in 1988. But that trend has been all the more accelerated among young people — and even more so among young progressives. ... It's especially interesting that the démarche of Democratic identity seem[s] most pronounced among the kids most committed to the values of equality and justice that some consider the Democratic Party's historic calling card.

He lost them the minute he made them, Mr. Chill, I Got This did — by throwing them away the second his "hamburger today" showed up. (Yes, children of 2008; it will never be Tuesday for you.)

And what was his "hamburger today"? His personal ambition, his family's entrance into the privileged class, and his "legacy." The ambition is obvious. About the entrance into privileges, I wrote last year:

I think it's under-estimated how much it matters to men like Obama that they get their families to the next level of society — how much it matters that they enter the aristocratic elite and bring their children with them.

Think of Bill Clinton — he comes from a back-water town, and through really hard work (and exceptional talent) gets his daughter into Sidwell Friends School, where the elite are prepared to be the elite. Next thing he knows, she marries well and works at a big-time hedge fund and venture capitalism shop. The family is secure; they'll be yachting with princes (so to speak) for a long time to come.

Obama's on that path. ... But will he be loved himself in his retirement? ... [Not by] anyone with half a mind who knows what an FDR-opportunity, in a world-historical JFK-moment, was thrown away ... Will the youth who were shagged in 2008 ever vote again in such numbers, with such enthusiasm and (yes) hopefulness?

About that legacy, here's Galbraith:

[When Obama's] term ends he won't be able simply to go home. He'll need a big house in a gated suburb, with high walls and rich friends. ... [But] it won't save him. For if and when he ventures out, for the rest of his life, the eyes of all those, whose hopes he once raised will follow him. The old, the poor, the jobless, the homeless: their eyes will follow him wherever he goes.

About the nation's youth, Perlstein closes:

I can't really blame someone born in 1991 for not buying the idea that the Democrats were once a party that often took political risks for social justice and can be again. Why should they believe me? They've never seen it in their lifetimes.

Perlstein recognizes the horns of the dilemma for Dems — to fight or not to fight; to be civil, or to win.

About the last, regular readers know where I stand — play to win or find a different game.

And do it now, while the multiple crisis clocks — the wealth transfer, the death of U.S. manufacturing, the poisoning of food and environment, the loss of liberty to the National Spook State, and this one — are actually still ticking.

Tea-Party the Democrats. You heard it here, folks. The only other choice is the street, and that gets messy.

GP Read the rest of this post...

The growing intolerance of Mormon intolerance

Some folks are beating up on Salon's Joan Walsh for tweeting a comment about Romney having said that this election was about "saving the soul of America." Joan noted that the Mormons are already trying to convert everyone's soul through their secret posthumous baptisms.  Some felt that was anti-religious bigotry (of course, Joan was making a crack about a despicable practice).  Joan noted that she wasn't the only person to tie Romney to this practice - Eli Wiesel asked Romney to speak up about the Mormon practice of secretly baptizing the dead of other religions without the permission of their immediate living relatives, with a special focus on converting Jewish Holocaust victims, but still, she admitted she was conflicted about the comment in thinking about it again. Romney refused to say a thing in response to Wiesel.

Is it anti-religious bigotry? It's an interesting question. Are jokes about Scientologists anti-religious bigotry? I don't know anyone who considers them a real faith rather than a cult. Why is it ok to have doubts about Scientologists, who very much consider themselves a religion, but not doubts about Mormons?

Another critic said this was like mocking Islam. Is it the same thing? Republicans seem to dislike Muslims because to Republicans all Muslims are terrorists.  The concerns people have about Mormons include the effort to secretly convert people of other faiths without their families' permissions, and, for example, the Mormon's multi-million dollar two-decade-long effort to take away the civil rights of gays here in America.  Is that not something that we're permitted to be angry about, to speak out about, to oppose?

Does it make you an anti-Mormon bigot if you're anti Mormon bigotry?  Is it really a bad thing to be intolerant of intolerance?  And in any case, the Mormon church is happy to enter the political realm, but it's somehow not right to treat them as we would any other player in politics.  Why?

And Mitt Romney was happy take a pot shot at candidate Obama over Rev. Wright a few years back, but now Romney thinks religion is off limits?  Not to mention, when in a GOP primary is religion ever off limits?  Republicans wear their religion on their shoulder, and are happy to question the President's faith, or yours or mine.  But no one can even mention their faith in return, even when they are basing their policies, and political prejudice, on their faith?  Let's take a historical example.  Would it have been bigoted to speak out 150 years ago against those who used the Bible to justify slavery or 40 years ago against those who used the Bible to justify laws against inter-racial marriage?  Or, it's okay for us to be offended that a plurality of Mississippi Republicans still oppose inter-racial marriage (they really do), but if the reason they don't like black people is religious-based, does that mean we have no right to criticize, or dare I say mock, them for their beliefs?

Getting back to Muslims, if the Muslims were trying to steal the souls of Christians in secret ceremonies after our deaths, do you really think people would treat the news more kindly than what the Mormons are doing to Jews and others - really?  There's been no reticence on the left to criticize radical Islam, for example, and its involvement in terrorism (maybe that's intolerant of us too).  My point is not to equate radical Islam with Mormons, but to suggest that what people on the left don't like is when folks on the right assume that all people of one faith are the same, that all are per se equally bad.  In fact, some Muslims are good and some Muslims are bad.

So are the folks that criticized Joan Walsh saying that the same rule should apply to Romney and Mormons, that some are good and some are bad?  If so, then which one is Romney?  Eli Wiesel asked Romney to clarify just that question, and Romney refused to answer.  Does Romney not agree with the more extreme higher reaches of his church that still refuse to clamp down on these posthumous baptisms, the ones who actively try to take away the rights of gay people, the ones who were racist towards blacks, who still treat women as second class citizens?  Again, Eli Wiesel asked Romney to clarify his position, is he or isn't he in agreement with the more extreme elements of his faith (actually, they ARE the core elements of his faith, rather than a wing of it) -  again, the man is a bishop in his church - yet Romney has clarified no such thing.

Speaking of leaving the Mormons alone, there's news that last year the Mormons secretly baptized Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was decapitated by Islamist terrorists shortly after 9/11. Pearl's parents were shocked to find out the news about their son.  Here's the Boston Globe:

Pearl’s parents, Judea and Ruth, said it was “disturbing news” to learn that Mormons had baptized their son, in a rite that they understand was meant to offer him salvation.

“To them we say: We appreciate your good intentions but rest assured that Danny’s soul was redeemed through the life that he lived and the values that he upheld,” Judea and Ruth Pearl said in an email. “He lived as a proud Jew, died as a proud Jew and is currently facing his creator as a Jew, blessed, accepted and redeemed. For the record, let it be clear: Danny did not choose to be baptized, nor did his family consent to this un-called-for ritual.”

How intolerant of Pearls' parents. Read the rest of this post...