The Decider's picture

    Fox News reports on the Gulf of America!

    That's right!  A Missisiippit democrat (we may have to let him in to our party!) has proposed to rename the Gulf of Mexico to be the Gulf of America! I think this is a grand idea and I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. There is no need to stop there. We can call the Atlantic and Pacific the East American Ocean and the West American Ocean. It will remind Frenchies and Japanese who they are dealing with across that water.

    Republicans revert to the withdrawal method.

    Republicans seem only half there. In the three states where Santorum finally pierced the winner's circle, the overall effect was marred by low levels of participation. Rather than engage in a caucus with such a lackluster slate of candidates, Republican voters preferred to stay home and simply withdraw from the process. Republicans are making a classic mistake in military tactics which may result in further low turnout and other problems.  They are fighting the last war. The public has moved beyond many of the culture wars which Republicans have been able to exploit to their advantage for the last several decades.

    Anti-gay rhetoric is back firing. "Personhood" amendments have failed in several states, including the most conservative one, Mississippi. And Santorum's penchant for out-of-touch sexual mores is as removed from the common place as a Medieval Knight fitting out his wife with a chastity belt before galloping off to the Crusades. 

    Richard Day's picture

    POST PARTISAN!

    La Vérité "Truth" by
    tmccarthy0's picture

    Today in Outrage: Old Male Pundits Unite to Exclaim Dismay About Stuff that Already Happens

    Oh geez. Really? I didn't really pay attention to this so-called outrageous action by HHS's new regulation mandating the coverage of contraception for women without a co-pay. Those bastards, I didn't know I should be outraged about something that already happens.

    Elusive Trope's picture

    Obama, Catholics and The New Old War

    Here we go again.

    As a New York Times blog puts it:

    When President Obama‘s administration last month unveiled rules that would require some religious hospitals, colleges and other institutions to provide free contraception to their employees under the new health care law, it might have seemed to be a political winner.

    The idea of birth control being covered by insurance companies is popular across the political spectrum, even among Catholics. The new policy will exempt churches themselves and will have no effect on doctors who object to prescribing contraception. And the decision means the president’s health care law will help make birth control cheaper for millions of women.

    So life should be good, right? Wrong.

    The year of no Mormon president

    A New Hampshire poll gives Obama a 51% approval rating and a 10 point lead over Romney in the general election. The last poll gave Romney a 3 point lead, so to be fair I call Obama's lead at about 6 points. The state's 4 electoral votes could be pivotal in the 2012 election. For example if Obama won several of the upper Midwest states plus NM, CO, and NV he could lose OH, VA, NC, SC, & Florida and be at 268 electoral votes, with a NH win putting him over the magic number of 270 electoral votes. 

    Obviously, the reverse would hand the election to Romney. Wouldn't it be a uniquely American story if two hundred years after a man left hard-scrabble Vermont, discovered a religion in New York, the religion so flourished out in the new West that the spirit of the man, Joseph Smith, would now return to New England to claim the U.S. Presidency? Perhaps we should detach ourselves from the raucous political process and look at both stories, Obama's and Romney's. Is there someone claiming that freedom in America has declined?

    acanuck's picture

    DEMONIZING IRAN: THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

    In 2006, I witnessed close-up one of the most shameful events in Canadian journalism. The conservative National Post had received a column by Iranian-born writer Amir Taheri stating that Iran’s parliament had passed a law requiring distinctive clothing (possibly colored badges or stripes) for each of the country’s religious minorities. The Post ran the story, along with its own incendiary commentary, atop Page 1. And illustrated it with photos of Jews wearing stars of David in Nazi death camps.

    The story went viral; other right-wing rags and blogs elaborated on it. The next day, the Post retracted and apologized, after receiving a point-by-point rebuttal from Iran’s lone Jewish legislator (the community has been guaranteed one constitutionally for more than a century). No such law had been proposed, much less passed. And it turned out one of the sources Taheri cited didn’t exist. He claimed his words had been taken out of context. They hadn’t. Taheri’s credibility was ruined, or so I assumed.

    We Were Wrong About Obamacare

    Many of us.  

    It's commonplace to read here that Obamacare is flawed, could have been better, and we might be better off without it.

    What Bernard Avishai says, correctly, is:

    “If Obamacare is killed it will....cast doubt on whether Americans will ever be able to hold  their fears in check and summon the elementary decency toward the sick that characterizes other democracies.”

    tmccarthy0's picture

    The Komen Memos and the War on Reproductive Health

    Today Jeffrey Goldberg exposes the Komen Memos, prepared early in January to obfuscate the firestorm they knew would occur when they made moves to target Planned Parenthood in a larger war that the ultra right is waging to curb no vanquish complete access to health care for women.

    Whiner Jamie Dimon gets a summons.

    News: JPM sued by AG Schneiderman, New York

    If you don't fix a problem , the problem doesn't get fixed

     

    Dean Baker , Beat the Press Tuesday

                       The piece (in the Washington Post-Flavius) also includes a number of assertions that are unsupported by anything. For example, it tells readers:

    Elusive Trope's picture

    The Fallacy of Mark Levin's Ameritopia: What on Earth Can I Do?

    The environmental activist Hazel Wolf once wrote that if one wanted to convince an economist, one had to talk to them like an economist.  In the contentious atmosphere of socio-political discourse, this is often easier said than done. The principles and fundamental assumptions of the economist are in the grand scheme of things are relatively easy to grasp.  The challenge becomes how to translate one's stance through the prism of those principles and assumptions.

    When we confront, however, the vast scope of socio-political ideologies the situation gets a whole lot messier. 

    Black Ribbon Campaign against Susan G. Komen Foundation

    Well, I did it--I updated my Facebook status with the following: 

    tmccarthy0's picture

    Washington State Senate Approves Gay Marriage Bill

    It was just a few years ago, 2006 to be exact that the Washington State Supreme Court upheld a 1998 law that banned gay marriage. Our state Supreme Court refused to overturn the ban:

    "The Legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to the survival of the human race and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by children's biological parents," wrote supreme court justice Barbara Madsen.

    Wednesday evening the Washington State Senate moved to turn that around. The vote was 28-21 in favor of making Washington State the the 7th state in the Union to codify marriage as a legal right for all citizens of the state of Washington.  So in the end, the vote wasn't close, a clear majority in our state senate has voted in favor of equality for all, which is deeply embedded in our state constitution, and this time.

    Richard Day's picture

    GROUNDHOG DAY

    Groundhog Day Groundhog Day
    Groundhog Day 2005 in Punxsutawney

    Main Stream Media just reported (6:30 AM CT) that the Groundhog saw his shadow today and that means that there will be at least five more weeks of winter (it used to be six weeks, but with global warming and all!) and billionaires will continue to fund people like Newton Gingrich.

    So the more things do not change, the more things stay the same (what?).

    Elusive Trope's picture

    The Fall of the Alpha Male

    The alpha males still control the top of the hill.  For now. Their time, however, may be coming to an end, a victim of necessity, of survival.  In their place will not be a replacement, a mere shifting of their hierarchical ranking from them to their conquerors.  There will be no conquering. Rather, there will be a truce of sorts, an agreement, a reconciliation. Who will be there on the top of hill will shift in a collaborative act of play and thought.

    Black Ribbon Campaign in Honor (?) of the Komen Foundation

    I am thinking of doing a FB status update to start this off. I think it might have broad appeal. Thoughts?

    ***

     

    Please update your status and/or wear a black ribbon if you agree....

    Dear Komen Foundation,

    Breast cancer doesn't care about a woman's religious or political beliefs, and neither should you. Hopping into the political arena by pulling money for cancer screening from Planned Parenthood goes way beyond your mission. Plus, it sends a message that it doesn't matter to you if SOME women get breast cancer or not. That is just low.

    tmccarthy0's picture

    Susan G. Komen Foundation's Epic Fail

    The Susan G. Komen foundation hours ago pulled the money they grant to Planned Parenthood to provide mammograms citing a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood. I predict this is going to turn into an epic failure on the part of the Foundation.

    What do you think will happen? Deciding to pull funding for a program that helps low income women receive mammograms, seems like you might be penalizing the people who most need these services . Women are going to be completely outraged at your actions, as once again our health care needs are subject to politicization, and now an organization that once helped is assisting those who would hold our needs hostage.   I am dumbfounded at your reprehensible decision that jeopardizes the health of poor women.  You know you going to have to reverse this horrendous decision, right, you have to know this, because the announcement has caused what now appears to be a mini-firestorm, but by tomorrow will be totally out of control. The longer this goes on the worse your publicity, and the more money the Foundation loses. But it isn't just money that the Foundation is set to lose here, it has also suddenly lost the air of non-partisanship, and the appearance of a willingness to participate in the politicization of reproductive health, and in doing so, you were willing to sacrifice those who can't fight back.

    Mitt's image morphing?

    Warning: superficial post!

    I've commented in the past that as a personality, Mitt reminded me a lot of the Arrow Shirt Guy of advertising days of yore. Who was just a cypher of all-American clean-cut tall healthy white maleness and quiet strength.

    But watching his speech tonight when he was in a jovial mood, I began to see much more of this guy, especially in the facial expressions:

    Saving yourself into depression

    Here's an excerpt from Brad Delong, yesterday, writing something that stands common sense on its head: that cutting the deficit doesn't .... well cut the deficit :

    Indeed, in less than a year, if current forecasts are correct, Britain’s Cameron-Osborne Depression will not merely be the worst depression in Britain since the Great Depression, but probably the worst depression in Britain…ever.

    Elusive Trope's picture

    Stockholm (Resilience) Syndrome

    I was nine years old in April 1974 when the images of  Patty Hearst -- newspaper heiress and Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) kidnapping victim -- wielding an M1 carbine while robbing a San Francisco bank with the SLA splashed over the news.  Because I was nine, I wasn't aware of the whole back story or who the SLA or Randolph Hearst were.  I knew Ms. Hearst was some kind of an "important person" who normally doesn't go around robbing banks.  I was aware of the debate as to whether she had voluntarily joined in the SLA or whether she had been somehow brainwashed into doing so.  And somewhere along the line, I became aware that Ms. Hearst's apparent new revolutionary tangent was purported by some to be a consequence of the Stockholm Syndrome.

    Romneyville and the confederation of financiocrats.

    Before the process of deconstructing Willard Romney began in earnest a month ago it was difficult to objectify that special world of Finance which exists as a form of supra-capitalism I choose to call Financiocracy---a Confederation of institutions and individuals who in a multi-national context make money with money. 

    The Confederation exists in an ethos which is literally not anchored to our traditional form of locale-specific capitalism. One of the most vivid examples of such un-connectedness is when, in the invention of Mortgage Backed Securities, sold and traded world wide, home mortgages in the U.S.were severed from the established grounding of actual paperwork and signatures, and the physical recording of mortgages in the municipalities where the asset resides, a centuries-old practice, was violated. 

    Romneyville crystalizes one aspect of this brave new world of finance so discreetly and clearly that it is likely to remain as Exhibit A of a practice known as Private Equity for a generation to come. Romneyville rests on several important privileges extracted from the government and populace of the U.S (see below).

    Richard Day's picture

    INSIDER TRADING AND CONGRESS

    Detail from Corrupt Legislation (1896) by Elihu Vedder. Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C

    We need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, (audience boos) and my dear friend the chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain't on the table," West said. "Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America...

    Following cheers, West added, "Yeah I said 'hell.'"

    Moments after the quote was mentioned on Twitter, former Reid spokesman Jim Manley responded via his own Twitter feed: "Me to allen west. You first asshole.

    How did we reach such a level of discussion that there is no agreement as to the starting point of discussion between the red and the white, the conservative and the liberal, the republican and the democrat?

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