Roger Nicholson's Confrontation with Info Wars Conspiracy Reporter Dan Bidondi. #BostonStrong

I'm not a fan of Alex Jones, so...of course...I found this video endlessly entertaining:



Once again, the people are left in the position of standing up to the charlatans in media.

@RuthMarcus, Villagers and the evolution of media bull@#$%...

My distaste for Ruth Marcus goes back a while. So I guess I shouldn't have been completely surprised when yet again decided to act as the Chief Villager for a Newspaper run by nothing but Villagers when she wrote her latest (cough-cough) column.

After listing through some of the nasty comments House GOPers were tweeting as the President was speaking to them about reaching a Budget Deal, she quoted the President calmly assessing the situation with George Stephanopoulos:

Obama: “You know — I think whatever I’m for, it’s very hard for a Republican to also be for. I think they always have to be a little bit — you know, maintain some distance.”

One would think after all the Filibustering and insults (some of them actually racist) that have been hurled at this President from the start of his administration, a columnist might react with shock and surprise that the sitting President managed to keep his cool.

Instead, Ruth Marcus offered this:

The president has made this point before, and maybe he’s right. Yet this analysis leaves him in a distinctly unpresidential posture — not leaning in, but holding back.

Excuse me, but...I did not think it was anatomically possible for one's head to get that far up one's...--never mind.

I don't know how to tell Journalists this, because...I really thought they would have covered it in Journalism school, but...it's not your job to balance the argument.

I know you think that's your job. But let's be clear about what your job really is.

Your job is to present both sides of a story...

Your job is not necessarily to lend them equal weight, particularly when they don't deserve it.

Again, you don't elevate both sides into equality.  We don't need you to do that.  In fact, it's a really bad idea if you do do that.

If you're a columnist, as Ruth Marcus is, this is even more tricky.  Why?  Because, a columnist offers nothing but opinion.  They don't do any actual reporting.  They don't go digging around for facts anymore...they've been excused from that particular activity.  In fact, they are paid a substantial salary to say only what they think.  Even if what they think has no basis in reality, as Ruth Marcus clearly demonstrated today.

One would think that some measure of journalistic integrity would matter in a circumstance like this, but again...you'd be wrong.  The Washington Post is more than capable of publishing utter complete bull@#$% so long as it fills column inches.  After all they employ Jennifer Rubin, Marc Thiessen, Robert Samuelson, Richard Cohen...and Ruth Marcus.

(Hey, at least Ezra Klein -- and I know me some Liberals who hate him for some reason -- no idea why -- does actual work to preparing his pieces.)

One would think it would matter to the folks at the Washington Post that their own readers can smell this line of crap a mile off, but we don't matter of the folks at the Washington Post.  Ruth Marcus has proved...once again...that the Villagers are talking only to other Villagers.

Which could explain why most newspapers are in trouble.

We need Newspapers and Magazines and Media in general, advocating for their audience, and not entertaining their damn selves.

For example...if someone...say like the President...presents something that is backed in fact, and his opposition presents something that is cloaked in bull@#$%...we kinda need Media to call out the bull@#$%.

But they're not.

They used to.  But they're not.

I mean it happens...sometimes, but it sure as hell didn't happen today with Ruth Marcus.

Let me quote something a columnist said not too long ago:

Excuse me, but can these people not count to 60? Have they somehow failed to notice that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have not exactly been playing nice? That while the left laments Obama's minor deviations from party orthodoxy, the right has been portraying him, with some success, as an out-of-control socialist?

That was from August 10, 2010. My goodness who wrote such a prescient piece?

C'mon, this is easy. This was Ruth Marcus...in a piece backing Robert Gibbs when he called out the Professional Left.

So what happened?

Apparently, Ruth Marcus...still employed by the Washington Post...has lost the ability...to count.

Ruth Marcus got lazy.  She and the paper needed column inches to fill, and bull@#$% magically transpired.

When you say the President isn't showing leadership after showing in just a few short paragraphs that there's no one who's willing to be lead, we do wonder why the President is to blame, and not the Congress.  And if you can't make that elementary of a call, it calls into question your ability to observe things...or any thing, for that matter.

I mean, I don't meant to tell Ruth Marcus in particular how to do her job, but I figured someone ought to.

You just can't fix this level of stupid...

Okay, the Republicans are having their retreat today in Williamsburg, Virginia.  They're had a discussion on how to have successful communications with Minorities and Women today at 10:15am.

And...where did they have this discussion??

Gawker?  You tell 'em.  I just can't...

[W]hat better place to talk about making inroads with oppressed groups than in a room named after a famous Williamsburg plantation, located in the tony Kingsmill Resort, which itself is on the site of another plantation? The GOP has heard your complaints, blacks and Latinos and women, and they're going to try to suss it out while sitting atop dead slave bones.

Mitt Romney talking out of both sides of this mouth...again (VIDEO)

Paul Ryan showing he's a champion at one thing, lying through his teeth. (VIDEO)

Mitt Romney of 2004 thinks Mitt Romney of 2012 is full of @#$% (VIDEO)

The Story behind the Bain Story...or how depending on @factcheckdotorg or @GlennKesslerWP for facts can burn you.

Okay, so it turns out Mitt Romney lied (to a possibly criminal degree) about when he left Bain. No surprise there, these are his core ethics at work: do whatever you have to do, say whatever you have to say to close the deal, i.e: win the Presidency.

But the story behind the story is equally as interesting, if not more disturbing, and continues to call into question the quality of so-called "Factchecker" websites like Factcheck.org and Glenn Kessler's column at the Washington Post.

Okay, basically the story is this. The President's Campaign team put out an ad saying that Mitt Romney was responsible for the layoffs perpetrated by Bain Capital. The Annenberg Center's Factcheck.org labeled the attack unfair. The President's team pushed back, putting out a six page letter doubling down on the claim. Factcheck remained unconvinced.

Then, David Corn, he of Mother Jones and MSNBC (soon to be NBC News), picked up the ball and ripped out a really strong piece on his investment in Stericycle, a company that made money disposing of medical waste and aborted fetuses. Here's the key bit from that piece:

In 2001 and 2002, Romney filed Massachusetts state disclosure forms noting he was the 100 percent owner of Bain Capital NY, Inc.—a Bain outfit that was incorporated in Delaware on April 13, 1999—two months after Romney's supposed retirement from the firm. A May 2001 filing with the SEC identified Romney as "a member of the Management Committee" of two Bain entities. And in 2007, the Washington Post reported that R. Bradford Malt, a Bain lawyer, said Romney took a "leave of absence" when he assumed the Olympics post and retained sole ownership of the firm for two more years.

Okay, do we get that? Even though Romney has been saying over and over again that he left Bain in 1999, and has nothing to do, whatsoever with whatever bad stuff they did after that...a Massachusetts state disclosure form and a SEC Filing say otherwise.

And Factcheck and Glenn Kessler's reaction? To stand by their previous, lazy ass reporting.

Thus, David Corn decided to punch back...again:

Romney's actual departure date is significant. If he did fully leave Bain in February 1999, he is better able to argue that he cannot be held responsible for the firm's actions afterward—though he maintained his ownership interest in Bain and its various entities for years and, consequently, benefited from these deals. This past week, the Obama campaign has been tussling over this issue with FactCheck.org, the independent fact-checking organization created by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. After the Obama campaign launched an ad blasting Romney as a "corporate raider" who "shipped jobs to China and Mexico," FactCheck.org called the ad false, partly because Romney had exited Bain in February 1999, prior to the deals in question. In reply, the Obama campaign sent a six-page letter to the group, challenging its determination regarding Romney's departure. But FactCheck.org reaffirmed its initial conclusion and told the Obama-ites their complaint was "all wet." Meanwhile, Dan Primack, a senior editor at Fortune, took issue with my article for noting that the SEC documents undercut the claim that Romney had no participation in any Bain decisions after February 1999.

Both Primack and FactCheck.org were unimpressed by the fact that the Boston Herald reported on February 12, 1999, that Romney was not resigning but taking a leave, during which he would provide Bain "input on investment and key personnel decisions." FactCheck.org pointed out that this story also noted Romney would "leave running day-to-day operations to Bain's executive committee," and the group cited an April 4, 1999, Associated Press story reporting that Romney was overwhelmed by his Olympian task and had no time for Bain. Primack insisted that the Herald story and a July 19, 1999, Bain press release referring to Romney as "currently on a part-time leave of absence" and quoting him speaking for Bain Capital were not all that telling, because when Romney left for Salt Lake City he probably "assumed that he'd still be involved in [Bain] decision-making, albeit from a distance," but ended up not doing that, due to his workload in Utah. Primack said he has "numerous sources," including many who were with Bain, who have told him that Romney did not make any investment-related decisions after February 1999.

What about the various SEC documents—some of which Romney signed—that identify him as controlling assorted Bain entities and large blocs of shares in firms in which Bain invested after February 1999? The Obama campaign letter cited at least 63 SEC filings after March 1, 1999, that describe Bain entities as "wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney." Both Primack and FactCheck.org contended that these documents prove only that Romney continued on as an owner of Bain, not as a decision maker.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo also jumped on the bandwagon.

The gist of the disagreement comes down to this: There’s no question that numerous public filings and some contemporaneous press references say Romney was still running things at Bain after 1999. But his campaign insists that whatever securities filings may have said, in practice, he was so busy running the 2002 Winter Olympics that he actually had no role at Bain after early 1999. That’s possible in theory. But there’s no evidence for it besides self-interested claims by Romney. And there’s plenty of documentary evidence to the contrary. After all, what you tell the SEC is really supposed to be true.

But here’s the thing. I’ve found yet more instances where Romney made declarations to the SEC that he was still involved in running Bain after February 1999. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet noted these.

The documents go into different aspects of Romney’s ownership of various Bain and Bain related assets. But in both Romney had to say what he currently did for a living.

And finally, one of my faves, Steve Benen worked it (providing, by the way, a lot of the timeline for this piece):

What Josh highlighted were two SEC filings from July 2000 and February 2001 in which Romney listed his "principal occupation" as "Managing Director of Bain Capital, Inc." At the risk of putting too fine a point on this, one cannot be gone from Bain in February 1999 and also be the managing director of Bain in February 2001.

Now, you might be thinking, "Does this really matter? What difference does it make exactly when Romney left Bain?" It matters quite a bit, actually.

For one thing, call me old fashioned, but Romney is supposed to tell the truth, both to the public and to the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this point, Romney's claims don't add up, and it's not unreasonable to ask for an explanation.

On a related note, it also matters whether or not Romney told the truth on his official financial disclosure forms.

And then, of course, there's the whole point of why Romney wants people to believe he left Bain earlier than the apparent date. The Republican candidate probably doesn't want to be on the hook for a series of controversial Bain investments -- again, see Corn's reporting -- and layoffs, which would help explain his competing explanations.

FactCheck.org's editors appear to have accepted Romney's claims at face value, but the documentary evidence now appears to point in the opposite direction. Here's hoping they, and others in media, give this another look.

I guess its easy for Factcheck.org and Glenn Kessler to take on Liberal Writers for a Liberal Magazine and Blogs. After all, let's call this game what it is: Factcheck and Kessler are more interested in their reputations as "impartial artibers of truth" rather than doing...you know...their job in getting the truth out there.

So what do they got to say now that the Boston Globe has gotten involved?

Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time.

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.

Contradictions concerning the length of Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital add to the uncertainty and questions about his finances. Bain is the primary source of Romney’s wealth, which is estimated to be more than $250 million. But how his wealth has been invested, especially in a variety of Bain partnerships and other investment vehicles, remains difficult to decipher because of a lack of transparency.

Whoops.

Also, it should be noted (as it was by Talking Point Memo's Josh Marshall), that The Boston Globe totally skunked David Corn and didn't mention his work at all the story. Stay classy, Boston Globe!

Meanwhile, Kessler and Factcheck.org? Staying with their original line.

Josh Marshall's reaction? (just as a highlight):

Meanwhile, Glenn Kessler seems to be sticking with his earlier claims that Romney actually did end his roll at Bain in 1999, hanging his hat on the fact that the former SEC official the Globe asked about documents had given money to Democrats. This strikes me as the feeblest crutch of contemporary journalism. The issue is the filings — not the person you found to give a quote about them.

Yeah, no hope of them staying classy there.

Folks, putting your total trust in any single one of these yahoos is asking for trouble. You cannot rely on a single arbiter to be your judge and jury over what is and isn't the truth. If you want to get the facts, then like Democracy itself, it's going to make you work at it. You've got to read multiple stories, and you've got to form that picture for yourself. Don't let the folks who claim to have "Fact" in their name do that work for you. As this an other instances have proven, you can't trust 'em.

What proof? Here's another instance.  (Granted this one's about Politifact, but the the claim remains the same):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Meanwhile, what has David Corn done now? He's done what a good Reporter should do. He's moved on:

EXCLUSIVE: Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing

The GOP candidate decries China poaching US jobs. But at Bain he held a large stake in a Chinese company that did just that. 

Last month, Mitt Romney's campaign got into a dustup with the Washington Post after the newspaper reported that Bain Capital, the private equity firm the GOP presidential candidate founded, invested in several US companies that outsourced jobs to China and India. The campaign indignantly demanded a retraction, claiming that these businesses did not send jobs overseas while Romney was running Bain, and the Post stood by its investigation. Yet there is another aspect to the Romney-as-outsourcer controversy. According to government documents reviewed by Mother Jones, Romney, when he was in charge of Bain, invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits—and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.

Lemme quote Josh one more time:

Read [David's new story] now before it appears as someone else’s exclusive.

Seriously, Mitt? Seriously??

From TPM:

Mitt Romney told Fox News Wednesday that black leaders support him, but are afraid to say so publicly.

After his speech to the NAACP national convention Wednesday, Romney said he connected with black leaders in private and was assured that the loud and sustained booing he got for promising to repeal the health care reform law didn’t represent the feelings of all African American voters, even if they can’t say so in public.

“I spoke with a number of African-American leaders after the event and they said, you know, a lot of folks do not want to say they will not vote for President Obama but they are disappointed in his lack of policies to improve the schools,” Romney told Fox, according to a rush transcript. “The president has not been able to get the job done and people want to see someone would can get the economy going so I expect to get the African American votes, and at the end of my speech having a standing ovation was generous and hospitable and I believe we disagree on some issues like ‘Obamacare’ on a lot of issues people see eye to eye, they want someone getting the economy going.”

Polls show Romney has made no inroads with the African American electorate. He’s pulling single-digit support among black voters in the PollTracker Average. But by Romney’s account, it’s possible black voters are simply afraid to tell pollsters their real feelings.

Mitt Romney's Career of Shipping American Jobs All Over the World (VIDEO)

Your everything-you-need-to-know-complete guide to Fast & Furious...

Lordy, this is gonna be a long one.

I’m getting a little tired of supposedly smart people like Jon Stewart screwing up the Fast and Furious story, so I decided to do a little research on my own. My starting point was the rather well-laid out timeline Randi Rhodes started with on her June 20, 2012 Broadcast. She used the Wikipedia listing for ATF Gun Walking which itself used a Washington Post Story from July 25, 2011 about Fast and Furious to get its facts. But even she missed some things that need to be highlighted. Lord knows, Stewart screwed this thing up in his last two appearances with an appalling Fox News level of accuracy.

So, after the jump, I’m going to open with the Wikipedia page before some NRA doucebag steps in and makes bullshit changes to it. It also happens to be the piece Randi Rhodes read pretty much word for word opening up her June 20, 2012 Broadcast.

Click here to see the whole thing.

How Jon Stewart and the fine folks at @TheDailyShow @#$%ed up Fast and Furious (VIDEO)

It started on June 20th:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Again, Jon's version of events demands you being stupid enough to believe Darrell Issa's version of events. Up until now, I never thought Jon was that stupid, but stranger things have happened.

Here's the thing, to believe Issa's version of events, you have to believe that the Acting Head of the ATF, by his own admission, knew nothing about what the ATF Phoenix Field Office was doing, but somehow the U.S. Attorney General did.

Oh, and did I mention that the Acting Head of the ATF is Issa's Star Witness, and thought he was going to get fired by the Administration, which is why he went running to Issa in the first place? Purely a coincidence, I'm sure.

And then, Jon doubled-down the next day, June 21st:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

First off, it actually began with an Operation called Wide Receiver in the Bush Administration before being killed and record as Fast and Furious, and the stated purpose actually made some sense. The ATF wanted to allow these purchases to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, in theory leading to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels.

Problem was, ATF let the purchases happen, they tracked the guns to the people who were using them, who were hired thugs, not the major players in the Cartel.  Since the purchases didn't go high enough up the chain of command, ATF let the purchases keep happening, hoping they'd get someone better so they could make an arrest. In fact, indictments didn't start happening until Obama became President.

And, to be clear, we lost 1400 guns, still an appalling figure, but...c'mon, Jon, that's the kind of Bullshit Fox News engages in.

Then there's the letter. That was my major problem with the bit. Jon kinda left out the part where the Head of the Phoenix Field Office, may have...you know...lied to the Justice Department about the existence of the program.  That could be because Justice told him in 2009 not to engage in Gunwalking (but didn't do it clearly enough), and he went ahead and engaged in it anyway.

I know, details, details.

I would like to know why the hell did Stephen Colbert have a better grip on the damn story than Stewart did?

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

A complete, unadulterated guide to my problems with what Jon Stewart said will be published in about 30 minutes.

The President's Barnburner of a speech in front of the Associated Press Editors (VIDEO)

Too bad the Associated Press, apparently, declined to listen to any part of it (via TPM):

One of the key moments of President Obama’s Tuesday speech before an Associated Press luncheon came at the end, when he urged reporters not to cast partisan disagreements about the key issues of the day — health care, the environment, the role of the federal government — as a product of equal intransigence on both sides. Republicans, he noted, have abandoned their previous support for Obama initiatives — from transportation funding, to cap and trade, to the health care reforms that comprise ‘Obamacare’ — many of which emerged as conservative alternatives to more liberal policies.

His hosts weren’t listening — and as a result they’ve made Obama’s points about Republicans and the media for him.

“[I]f Republicans have moved to the right on health care, it’s also true that Obama has moved to the left,” reads an AP wrap on the Obama speech. “He strenuously opposed a mandate forcing people to obtain health insurance until he won office and changed his mind.”

It’s true that Obama campaigned against an individual mandate in 2008, only to embrace it — however reluctantly — after he became president. But to say that constitutes a move to the left betrays a lack of understanding about the origins and purpose of the individual mandate, and of Obama’s broader evolution on health care reform.

In the early aughts, as a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama strongly supported a single-payer health care system.

Over the years, that position became more tempered by political realities, and by the 2008 Democratic primary, he had embraced the basic framework of what eventually became “Obamacare,” with two glaring exceptions: He supported a public option, and he opposed an individual mandate — the latter of which was crucial to the success of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts.

Obama was criticized by a mix of liberal and conservative technocrats and industry stakeholders for opposing the mandate. By embracing it as president, while dropping the public option, he was arguably moving further right still from his past support for single-payer. As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — then the top Republican on the committee that drafted the health care law — said before health care reform turned toxic on the right, “I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.”

As Obama lurched toward Massachusetts’ plan as a potential framework for bipartisan consensus, Republicans quickly abandoned the pretense of supporting the principle of universal health care of any kind.

Steve Pearlstein: Why we should tell Corporate America to drop dead...

From Eat your broccoli, Justice Scalia, published on March 31st:

My first thought on perusing the briefs filed in the combined cases was to notice what wasn’t there: any involvement on the part of Corporate America.

For the past 20 years, big business has complained endlessly about escalating health-care premiums, which they correctly blamed on “cost-shifting,” including paying indirectly for the free care provided to the workers at firms that did not provide health benefits. They wanted an end to fee-for-service medicine that rewarded doctors for providing more care than necessary. Some even talked of reforms that would begin to move the country away from an employer-based insurance system.

Yet despite the fact that “Obamacare” did all of those things and more, there was not a single brief in support of the law from an organization representing big business.

Small businesses have spent the past two decades complaining that the reason they don’t offer coverage is that it’s too expensive because they don’t get the large-group and community rating advantage. So how did the National Federation of Independent Businesses respond to a law that assured small businesses the benefits of large-group purchasing and community rating and threw in billions of dollars in subsidies to boot? It signed up as one of the named plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of the new law.

It’s hard to know what the business community will demand if the Supreme Court overturns the health-care law. At that point, however, it will hardly matter, since they will have lost all political credibility on the issue, particularly with the Obama White House and anyone who happens to be a Democrat.

How Marcel Guanizo and @SenBobCasey embarrassed me to be a Catholic...this week (VIDEO)

Okay, so 1) The Bishops decide to dictate to Non-Catholics whether or not they get access to Birth Control, under the guise of "protecting Religious Freedom".  That was sooo last week...

Oh, wait...maybe it's not.

2) Then, Rev. Marcel Guanizo decided to deny Barbara Johnson (no relation) communion at her Mother's Funeral Mass, because Ms. Johnson is a Lesbian.

Rev. Guanizo also got up and left as she gave her Eulogy...again, at her Mother's Funeral Mass. He also refused to attend or say prayer for the funeral for Ms. Johnson's Mother...who, it needs to be repeated, was not Gay.

Fortunately, the Funeral Home Director really stepped up, found a retired Priest to perform the last of the rites that needed to be performed,

Lawrence O'Donnell had her on last night:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And to repeat what Lawrence read in the video the D.C. archdiocese also stepped up and came correct:

Late Tuesday, Johnson received a letter of apology from the Rev. Barry Knestout, one of the archdiocese’s highest-ranking administrators, who said the lack of “kindness” she and her family received “is a cause of great concern and personal regret to me.”

“I am sorry that what should have been a celebration of your mother’s life, in light of her faith in Jesus Christ, was overshadowed by a lack of pastoral sensitivity,” Knestout wrote. “I hope that healing and reconciliation with the Church might be possible for you and any others who were affected by this experience. In the meantime, I will offer Mass for the happy repose of your mother’s soul. May God bring you and your family comfort in your grief and hope in the Resurrection.”

Johnson called the letter “comforting” and said she greatly appreciates the apology. But, she added, “I will not be satisfied” until Guarnizo is removed.

Amen, Sister.

But let's be clear, that was full-on, full-throated apology from Rev. Knestout.  No "I'm sorry if you were offended".  No, this was a "we did wrong, and we will make amends."

Rev. Barry Knestout and the unnamed Funeral Director who came through for Ms. Johnson? You both made me proud to be a Catholic, but that's been tough sledding in 2012.

And now 3) Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania decided to vote for the Blunt Amendment, which thankfully failed.

But I want to remind the Senator that then-Senator Barack Obama took a LOT of grief from Pro-Choice  Activists in the Party for giving him a prime speaking slot at the 2008 Convention in Denver.

And this is how he sees fit to repay the President.

More to the point, this is how he sees fit to "protect" religious freedom, which I'm sure is his argument.  He wants to protect his religious freedom, by screwing you out of yours.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, don't even bother calling me.  Ben Nelson, Bob Manchin and now Ben Casey are today's reasons I don't give a dime to that organization. I will give money to Democratic Senators directly.  I will give money to Senators who represent my interests, and not try to impose their Religious views on Non-Catholics.

Okay, Mother Church. It's only Thursday.  What else have you got for me??

As the Catholic Church continues to embarrass itself on Birth Control...

Sarah Kliff, working for Ezra Klein's Wonkbook, published this handy-dandy fact check on the President's new regulations regarding Health Insurance Companies...note: Health Insurance Companies...having to cover contraception under the Affordable Care act.

Religious Institutions who employ people in their religion have an exemption.

Naturally, Religious Institutions who employ people outside their religion are in a snit over the fact that they won't be able to impose their religious values over their employees. (Catholic Hospitals of America...Chris Matthews of Hardall...I'm talkin' to you!)

From today's Washington Post:

How did this all start?

The health reform law requires that insurance companies cover preventive services for women without any co-pay beginning this summer. It did not, however, specify what services to cover — that was left to the Obama administration. With guidance from the Institute of Medicine on the issue, Health and Human Services published a regulation on Aug. 1, 2011 that included birth control as part of the preventive package. That regulation also had a conscience clause, which allows religious employers who object to birth control — and also primarily employ those of their own religion — to be exempt from the requirement. That would allow churches to opt out of the new requirement.

What’s the fight about now?

Some religious leaders say that the exemption wasn’t wide enough: That the Obama administration should allow all faith-based employers regardless of who they employ, to opt out of the new requirement if they object to contraceptives. This wider definition would exempt, among others, Catholic hospitals. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has lobbied aggressively for this wider conscience clause, as have a number of prominent Catholics who supported the health reform law. But in final regulations last month, the Obama administration did not expand the exemption.

Let’s say the Obama administration had expanded the conscience clause. Would that allow Catholic hospitals not to provide birth control to their patients?

No, it would not. This regulation only applies to the health insurance that a hospital, charity or other employer provides for its employees. It does not regulate the care that a Catholic charity provides to its patients. As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote recently in a USA Today op-ed, “our rule has no effect on the long-standing conscience clause protections for providers, which allow a Catholic doctor, for example, to refuse to write a prescription for contraception.”

What happens next?

Two Catholic universities have already filed lawsuits challenging the mandated coverage of contraceptives as a violation of religious freedoms protected under the First Amendment. The Catholic bishops are also looking to file a similar challenge, and some observers expect these challenges could wind their way up to the Supreme Court.

The new rule is starting to play a political role, too, in the 2012 election. Republican candidates have come out against the contraceptive requirement. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted it as “a direct assault of freedom of religion.” The Obama campaign and its allies have repeatedly defended the new requirement, attacking the Republican field as anti-contraceptives.

How have contraceptive mandates been handled previously?

Twenty-eight states currently require insurance plans to cover contraceptives, although two exclude emergency contraceptives from that mandate.

Nine states do not have conscience clause. Four states have what the Guttmacher Institute describes as “narrow” exemptions, similar to the federal one, which allows churches and other institutions that primarily employ those of their own religion to opt out. Seven states have “broader” exemptions that cover other religious institutions, but not hospitals. Then eight states have “expansive” conscience clauses that allow at least some hospitals not to provide contraceptive coverage.

What about if you get health care through your employer?

Approximately 90 percent of employer-based insurance plans cover contraceptives, according to the Guttmacher Institute, although many may charge co-pays for birth control, which the health reform law will eliminate.

Sen. Lautenberg and Rep. McCarthy write a really dumb-ass column together...

Here is the actual headline in the piece o' crap Huffington Post today. Mind you, not the headline that makes you click on the story, but the actual headline:

Tell President Obama: Stop the NRA From Making Our Laws.

And the gist of the piece is?

The National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 822) would allow gun owners to carry a concealed firearm across state lines even if they weren't issued a permit by that state. That means Texas Governor Rick Perry could decide who can carry a concealed weapon in your state -- even if they have a criminal record that your state would consider a barrier to owning a gun.

This gun industry bill recently passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, with a little bit of Democratic help as well.

Americans of conscience who believe in protecting public safety should join us in asking President Obama to issue a veto threat to this ridiculous bill now, before it goes even further in Congress.

We have a petition, at www.StopHR822.com, to send President Obama a strong message from regular Americans across the nation that we will not let the gun manufacturers make laws that benefit them at the risk of public safety.

Click here immediately to call on President Obama to veto H.R. 822 -- we can't let this bill go any further.

Uhhh, excuse me Senator Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey...and Congresswoman McCarthy, Democrat of New York.

It strikes me you really should be going after to the people who would actually helped pass (and thus stop) said legislation.

Oh yeah...THEY WOULD BE CALLED SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES!!!

Look, these are two of the good guys when it comes to Gun Control. But it strikes me that people who are in a position to actually do something about bad legislation in its tracks have real nerve demanding President Obama do their damn job for them.


McCarthy is outnumbered.  She's got an excuse.  But in case you've forgotten, Senator...this hasn't passed the Senate yet, and there are things you yourself can do to stop this thing from happening.  You work within the single most dysfunctional branch of Government.  A Single Senator has the ability to grind any piece of legislation to a halt.  So how about putting a hold on the legislation?  How about organizing a filibuster?


How about you do your damn job before you go bitching to President Obama.

Never get into a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrell... (VIDEO)

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Why Sen. Marco Rubio is finished (as a potential Vice Presidential Candidate)

Remember, Marco Rubio did not lie. He took advantage of a lie to promote his Political biography. And when caught, he has waffled between doubling-down on the lie he took advantage of, and well...waffling even more.

As Chris Matthews explains in the clip below, in Politics you are either attacking or explaining.

Rubio is now into week two of explaining.


This here's coming out an inch at a time...and there's at least a few more feet to go.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From the St. Petersburg Times:

On May 18, 1956, Mario and Oriales Rubio walked into the American Consulate in Havana and applied for immigrant visas. The form asked how long they intended to stay in the United States.

"Permanently," Mr. Rubio answered.

Nine days later, the couple boarded a National Airlines flight to Miami, where a relative awaited.

So began a journey that seems as ordinary as any immigrant story, but decades later served as the foundation of an extraordinary and moving narrative told repeatedly by their third child as he became one of the most powerful politicians in Florida and then a national figure.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio has come under fire for incorrectly linking his parents to the Cubans who fled Fidel Castro beginning in 1959. He insists they are exiles nonetheless and angrily denounced the suggestion he misled for political gain.

"My upbringing taught me that America was special and different from the rest of the world, and also a real sense that you can lose your country," Rubio said in an interview this week.

But the visa documents cast clearer divisions between his parents, who came for economic reasons, and the Cubans who scrambled to leave their homeland but thought they could soon return. And the documents come to light amid new discrepancies since Rubio's time line came under scrutiny last week.

From Politico (and mind you, these are the stories from today):

In Miami’s Little Havana, the Cuban exile community has rallied to the defense of its favorite son, Sen. Marco Rubio, as he fights off allegations he embellished his family history to boost his meteoric political career.

But well beyond Calle Ocho, the freshman Florida Republican still faces a bigger challenge selling himself to the broader Hispanic electorate. Rubio is expected to encounter tough questions from voters and activists over his hard-line stance on immigration as he heads to Texas and possibly Arizona next week to court Hispanic voters and high-dollar donors. As his personal history morphs into a national political story, it’s clear Rubio still has plenty of skeptics in the Latino political community.

“He is a laughing stock in the Southwest … because people discovered he wasn’t telling the truth about his political Cuban exile history,” said DeeDee Garcia Blase, founder of Somos Republicans, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based GOP group that backs a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. “They are saying, at the end of the day, ‘He is just like us. His mom and dad came here; they migrated because of economic reasons, just like the rest of us.’”

The controversy about when — and under what circumstances — his family arrived in the U.S. has proved to be the first major test for the rising GOP star as he transitions from Sunshine State politics to the national stage, where the exile experience that he’s embraced doesn’t resonate among non-Cuban Hispanics as much as it does in the quaint cafes and bustling streets of Little Havana.

That cultural divide between his home crowd and the larger Latino electorate could pose a problem for Republicans who have billed Rubio, a favorite for the vice presidential spot in 2012, as their party’s great Hispanic hope.

And the Washington Post:

Republicans who are eager to repair the party’s battered image among Hispanic voters and unseat President Obama next year have long promoted a single-barrel solution to their two-pronged problem: putting Sen. Marco Rubio on the national ticket.

The charismatic Cuban American lawmaker from Florida, the theory goes, could prompt Hispanics to consider supporting the GOP ticket — even after a primary contest in which dust-ups over illegal immigration have left some conservative Hispanics uneasy.

But Rubio’s role in recent controversies, including a dispute with the country’s biggest Spanish-language television network and new revelations that he had mischaracterized his family’s immigrant story, shows that any GOP bet on his national appeal could be risky.

Democrats had already questioned whether a Cuban American who has voiced conservative views on immigration and opposed the historic Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina justice, could appeal to a national Hispanic electorate of which Cubans are just a tiny fraction but have special immigration status. And Rubio’s support in Florida among non-Cuban Hispanics has been far less pronounced than among his fellow Cubans.

That ethnic calculus was further complicated by records, reported by The Washington Post last week, showing that Rubio had incorrectly portrayed his parents as exiles who fled Cuba after the rise of Fidel Castro. In fact, their experience more closely resembles that of millions of non-Cuban immigrants: They entered the United States 2 1 / 2 years before Castro’s ascent for apparent economic reasons.

Rubio made the exile story a central theme of his political biography, telling one audience during his Senate campaign, “Nothing against immigrants, but my parents are exiles.” A video, apparently produced for the conservative site RedState.com, shows black-and-white footage of Castro as Rubio speaks.

Even after the new reports of his parents’ entry, Rubio has said he remains the “son of exiles,” saying his parents had hoped to return to the island but did not because of the rise of a Communist state.

But in elevating exile roots over the apparent reality of his parents’ more conventional exodus, Rubio risks setting up a tension point with the country’s Hispanic voters — most of whom are Mexican American and have immigrant friends or ancestors who did not have access to the virtually instant legal status now granted to Cubans who make it into the United States.

“If he does take that mantle, there’ll be a lot of clarification that he’ll have to make on a whole lot of issues,” said Lionel Sosa, a longtime GOP strategist.

999: A vicious assault on the working poor, and a lavish giveaway to the rich (VIDEO)

"The most vicious assault on the middle class and the working poor, and the most lavish giveaway to the rich, that has ever been proposed by a presidential campaign frontrunner."
-Lawrence O'Donnell
October 13, 2011

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From Ezra Klein:

Herman Cain has not proposed three entirely separate taxes -- one a 9 percent corporate income tax, another a 9 percent consumption tax, and then a final 9 percent personal income tax. Rather, he has proposed an 18-9 plan: an 18 percent consumption tax and a 9 percent personal income tax. Or maybe he has proposed a 27 plan: a straight 27 percent payroll tax on wage income. Depends on which tax professor you ask and how deep into the details you want to go.

As Daniel Shaviro, a tax professor at New York University, notes, “a key part of 9-9-9’s intuitive appeal is the idea that, not only is 9 a low number, but the plan’s three 9’s appear to be spread out.” The only problem? The business tax and the sales tax are “effectively the same tax.”

The business tax is not a corporate income tax. It’s essentially a value-added tax. And a value-added tax is simply a form of a consumption tax. To tax wonks, this is comedy gold. Here they have spent years arguing whether a sales tax or a VAT tax is the better way to tax consumption, and Cain just went ahead and put both taxes in his plan. “So two of the 9’s in the Cain plan are simply redundant versions of almost the same thing,” writes Shaviro. That’s how you get to an 18 percent consumption tax.

From Glenn Kessler (whom I'm not quite as fond of, but always worth monitoring):

Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan administration official who now calls himself an independent, also offered a critical examination this week on the New York Times Economix blog. He (as did Kleinbard) noted that the business tax allows for no deduction for wages, which he said “is likely to raise the cost of employing workers, even with abolition of the employers’ share of the payroll tax.”

Cain, in his television appearances, glosses over such details. “The fact that we are taking out embedded taxes that are built into all of the goods and services in this country, prices will not go up,” he asserted on MSNBC. “They will not go up.” He then gave an example of a family of four earning $50,000.

“Today, under the current system, they will pay over $10,000 in taxes assuming standard deductions and standard exemptions. I've gone through the math, $10,000. Now, with 9-9-9, they're going to pay that 9 percent personal — that 9 percent tax on their income. So that's only $4,500. They still have $5,500 left over to apply to this sales tax piece. …They are still going to have money left over.” 

We’re not sure how Cain calculates that this family now pays $10,000 in taxes, but the reliable Tax Foundation calculator comes up with a much more reasonable figure: a total tax bill of $3,515 — $690 in federal income taxes and $2,825 in payroll taxes. (The family gets a big income-tax savings from the child tax credit, which Cain would eliminate.)

So, in other words, under Cain’s plan, this family would instantly pay $1,000 more in income taxes. They would also pay additional sales taxes, probably more than $3,000, on their purchases. It’s unclear how the business tax would affect the family’s tax bill but it appears this theoretical family would get no tax cut but instead a 100 percent tax increase.

(The picture changes somewhat if you assume that all the employer-paid payroll taxes automatically would revert to the employee. We’re not sure that’s a good bet given the design of Cain’s business tax, but pro-Cain advocates make that assumption with their own tax calculator. But even under this scenario, the family appears stuck with at least a $2,000 tax increase.)

We take no position on whether it is good or bad to make the tax code less progressive. Perhaps in response to questions, Cain appears to still be tinkering with the plan. In Concord, N.H., he said on Wednesday that, among other changes, he would preserve the deduction for charitable donations and would exempt any used goods, including previously owned homes and cars, from the new 9 percent sales tax.

The Pinocchio Test 

We can excuse Cain inflating his adviser’s resume, but his campaign needs to do more to address the fuzzy math behind his tax plan. (We asked the campaign for a copy of Lowrie’s analysis but did not receive a response. UPDATE: The documents are posted below.)

Give Cain credit for thinking boldly, but he’s not talking clearly. As far as we can tell from the limited information Cain has provided, the plan he touts as a big tax cut would actually increase taxes on most Americans. Just like it would be wrong to claim pizza is a low-calorie meal, Cain’s description of the plan’s impact on working Americans is highly misleading.

Three Pinocchios

Oh, and in case you missed it, Glenn's definition of what Three Pinocchios means?

Significant factual error[s] and/or obvious contradictions.

Bruce Bartlett took a moment to note its effect on business...well, certain businesses:

Little detail has been released by the Cain campaign, so it’s impossible to do a thorough analysis. But using what is available on Mr. Cain’s Web site, I’m taking a stab at estimating its effects.

First, the 9-9-9 plan is actually an intermediate step in Mr. Cain’s plan to overhaul the tax system and jump-start growth. Phase 1 would reduce individual and business taxes to a maximum of 25 percent, which I assume means reducing the top statutory tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent.

No mention is made on the site of a tax cut for those now in the 10 percent, 15 percent or 25 percent brackets. This means that the only people who would get a tax rate cut are those now in the 28 percent, 33 percent or 35 percent brackets. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, only 4 percent of taxpayers pay any taxes at those rates.

As for corporations, Mr. Cain’s proposal is primarily going to benefit those with revenues of more than $1 million a year, because they account for 98.7 percent of all receipts by C corporations. (A C corporation is a legal entity separate and distinct from its owners that is taxed as a corporation; its shareholders pay taxes individually on their gains.) Those companies with receipts over $50 million account for 88.8 percent of total receipts.

Other business entities — sole proprietorships, S corporations (which have between 1 and 100 shareholders and pass through net income or losses to shareholders) and partnerships — would not benefit because they are not taxed on the corporate schedule. But they represent 92 percent of all businesses.

At the heart of #OWS is a Civil War between Main St. and Wall St. with both sides shooting at Obama...

Ezra Klein recently went to he Cleveland Clinic’s annual innovation summit where Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric and chairman of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, delivered the keynote and sat for a Q&A.

It was a Q & A that if you were inclined to dislike or distrust Immelt, what he said there was hardly going to change your mind about him. (My own view got dramatically worse):

Business types really hate Barack Obama. Everybody sort of knows that, but it’s hard to get a sense of it if you’re not in the room listening to them laugh bitterly at questions like, “Does Obama understand the damage regulations are doing to business?”

In fact, this audience is so down on Obama that Immelt, who you have to assume is one of the more pro-Obama CEOs out there, is not willing to defend him or his policies before this audience. At all. Even a little. His only comment is that people need to roll up their sleeves and help rather than complain. And his answers to Maria Bartiromo’s questioning slyly suggest sympathy with the audience. Asked by Bartiromo how he’ll make the White House listen to him and the business community, his answer, with a smile, is “repetition.” Everyone laughs. “Our job is to make our ideas his ideas,” Immelt says.

This is the sort of audience that makes you think the White House is going to have a lot of trouble meeting its fundraising goals next year.

“When you criticize Wall Street, they don’t care. You’re hurting the guy in Illinois who wants to build a factory.”

I should say that this is more a comment on the conference and some of the other panels than on Immelt himself, but these folks really, really feel persecuted and unappreciated. The common response to this, of course, is that corporate profits have hit record levels in recent years and the top 1 percent has never been richer. But if you need more evidence that money doesn’t buy happiness, you should sit with some CEOs for an hour.

The President has reached out to these people, and this is the thanks he gets from them.

My own first reaction is say "@#$^ you" to Wall Street.  (You can now see what side I'm on).

The President steps up, defends the Wall Street Protesters, telling the world he understands why they're pissed, and a lot of reaction from the Professional Left, as well as from some of the Wall Street Protesters has been to say "@#$% you, Mr. President.  You've sold us out to the Banks."

I'm left wondering why the hell President Obama wants to bother.  Why not just let the Professional Left run their dream candidate; let the Wall Streeters run Mitt Romney, and watch America pay the price.

Meanwhile, this second part from Ezra highlights what's really going on here, a Civil War between Wall Street and Main Street, with both sides feeling they're the most important thing in America, and both sides pissed off that the other side doesn't get it.

The Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is the Obama administration’s answer to the charge that it doesn’t listen to the business community. It includes not just Immelt but executives from Xerox, DuPont, American Express, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &; Byers, TIAA-CREF, Southwest Airlines, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, Intel, Citigroup, Eastman Kodak, Facebook, Comcast, BNSF Railway and UBS Investment Bank. And today it released its interim report (PDF).

This is, in other words, the big moment: This is the business community trying to make its ideas President Obama’s ideas. But here’s the thing: Its ideas don’t seem to differ much from Obama’s ideas.

The report proposes “five common-sense initiatives to boost jobs and competitiveness.” Initiative No. 1 is more infrastructure and energy investment. The White House would happily check that box. Initiative No. 2 is a grab bag of proposals to help “high-growth enterprises,” ranging from more visas for skilled immigrants to patent reform, to amending Sarbanes-Oxley to make it easier to go public, to tax changes to make it more appealing to invest in start-ups. Then there’s the “National Investment Initiative,” which might as well be called “winning the future.” Fourth on the list is streamlining regulations. And then there’s worker retraining, educating more engineers and a second high-five for high-skills immigration.

I’m sure if you dug into the details of the policies on this list, you would find items the administration doesn’t support. Perhaps the business community would deregulate beyond White House regulatory chief Cass Sunstein’s comfort level, for instance. But all in all, you could lift most of these items out of Obama’s speeches. Judging from this report, business leaders’ thinking is substantially his thinking already. Which makes sense: Like many of them, Obama is an Ivy-educated datahead who likes reading boring reports. But sitting with a group of CEOs, you would never know that. In those gatherings, he’s often presented as a naive Marxist who is one bad day away from trying to throw everyone with a corner office into jail.

Perhaps the distance is greater than this report suggests. Perhaps the CEOs have a much more dramatic agenda than they were willing to put on paper. But I haven’t seen much evidence for that view. Most business leaders I talk to would love to see something along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles deficit plan pass, and at this point, so too would the White House.

Another possibility is that the gulf between the business community and the White House is more cultural and personal than it is substantive. Matt Yglesias had an interesting take on this last week. “A lot of what you have is . . . a kind of bitter feud between businessmen and the kids they went to college with who didn’t go on to become businessmen. What did they do instead? They became teachers or doctors or nurses or professors or lawyers or scientists or nonprofit workers. . . . The business coalition sees the service coalition as composed of useless moochers, and the service coalition sees the business coalition as greedy bastards.”

“If it were merely a clash of objective interests, it really wouldn’t be much of a clash,” Yglesias wrote. “A healthy business environment needs schools and hospitals and public infrastructure to backstop it, and nobody is made happy by a business cycle downturn. There’s tension at the margin, but it’s not a zero-sum world. Layered on top is, I think, a raw level of gut-level dislike — both kinds of people think the other kind of people are clueless about what really matters in life.”

Increasingly, I’m coming to agree with that analysis.