IMPALIN’ — Stop Sarah Palin for President in 2012

Some New Year’s thoughts from Andy Borowitz: MMXI is also how Sarah Palin spells “America.” Read More… More on Republicans

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Andy Borowitz: My New Year’s Thoughts

True to form, the current crop of potential GOP presidential candidates for president have figured out how to get around complying with campaign finance law . WASHINGTON — Six prominent Republicans considering challenging President Obama in 2012 have raised millions in campaign accounts that allow them to get around federal campaign laws that limit presidential fundraising. By law, presidential contenders cannot collect money for the race until they establish an exploratory or a presidential fundraising committee. They, as plenty of candidates before them, have established PACs that can solicit funds and pay for the not-yet-really-a-campaign campaigns. The six have used their PACS to pay for activities such as political consulting and travel that can advance their White House ambitions. They are Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Campaign-finance watchdogs, such as Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, say the activity skirts the intent of presidential fundraising accounts, which have stricter contribution limits. Individuals can donate up to $10,000 over a two-year election cycle to a federal PAC, but no more than $4,800 to a presidential campaign…. “Contribution limits exist to reduce the threat of corruption,” Ryan said. “These slush funds that potential presidential candidates are setting up violate at the very least the spirit of those … limits.” Two of them, Barbour and Romney, set up accounts in states that allow corporate donations to their PACs, again skirting the federal laws that prohibit corporate donations directly to candidates. Ostensibly, PACs are set up to help fund other candidates, but apparently not with this crop. They’ve used a very small portion, about 10% in total, of the PAC money to donate to federal candidates this cycle. (H/T Think Progress )

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2012 GOP presidential hopefuls using PACs to get around campaign finance laws

Some Republicans watching the cluttered 2012 presidential field may have found an unlikely point of disagreement: the first lady and flab. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Michelle Obama Finds Some Big Republican Names Defending Anti-Obesity Campaign From Sarah Palin

It’s the end of year so we took a look at the most viewed content for 2010. While we don’t produce too many top ten lists here at Daily Kos, I did one last year on the most viewed diaries of 2009 . One thing I found surprising again is that one of the diaries this year only received 38 comments and didn’t even make the recommended list. The same thing happened last year with this diary. To compile the list we used Google Analytics with the only stipulations being that it had to be a diary that was published in 2010 and no front page writers or posts were eligible. You might be surprised to read that if we dropped the 2010 requirement three of these diaries would have been bumped for those published before the year began. Without further ado: Top ten most viewed diaries in 2010 The Surprising Relevance of Facts aka Anderson Cooper showed up for work by DiegoUK Fishgrease: DKos Booming School by Fishgrease The day the Klan messed with the wrong people by gjohnsit Anonymous 1, Oregon Tea Party 0 by Neon Vincent What Happens When A Liberal Black Man Goes To Glenn Beck’s “I Have A Dream, Too” Speech?!? by AverageBro Want a raise? Wash your vagina. by dhonig Actor with Down Syndrome Puts Palin in Her Place by CatM Westboro Baptist Church Pwned! by jetskreemr ‘So how’s that hopey, changey thing workin’ out for ya?’ by wikoogle We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, Now you get mad!? by Nica24 Here are the three diaries that would have made the list if we included those published before 2010: Photo Tour of The Solar System (Part 1) by Troubadour America Before Pearl Harbor - Early Kodachrome Images by johnnygunn The 25 BEST things ever said, by anyone by plf515

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Top ten most viewed diaries of 2010

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger A proposed program to cover counseling sessions for seniors on end-of-life care has risen from the ashes of health care reform and found a new life in Medicare regulations , Jason Hancock of the American Independent reports. In August, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin started a rumor via her Facebook page that the the Obama administration was backing “death panels” that would vote on whether the elderly and infirm had a right to live. In reality, the goal was to have Medicare reimburse doctors for teaching patients how to set up their own advance directives that reflect their wishes on end-of-life care. Patients can use their advance directives to stipulate their wishes for treatment in the event that they are too sick to make decisions for themselves. They can also use those directives to demand the most aggressive lifesaving interventions. Waste not, want not Though end-of-life counseling was ultimately gutted from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the legislation will eventually ensure health coverage for 32 million more Americans. However, Joanne Kenen in The American Prospect argues it will do comparatively less to curb the high costs of health care . The architects of the ACA had an opportunity to include serious cost-containment measures like a robust public health insurance option to compete with private insurers, but they declined to do so. Kenen argues that the government should more aggressively target waste within the health care delivery system, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Unchecked and rising health care costs through Medicare and Medicaid are a significantly greater driver of the deficit than Social Security or discretionary spending: “The waste is enormous,” says Harvard health care economist David Cutler. “You can easily convince yourself that there is 40 to 50 percent to be saved.” Squeezing out every single bit of that inefficient or unnecessary care may not be realistic. But it also isn’t necessary; eliminating even a small fraction of the current waste each year over the next decade would make a huge difference, he added. Health care would finally start acting like “a normal industry.” Productivity would grow, in the one area of the economy where it has not, and with productivity gains, prices could be expected to fall. The new end-of-life counseling program will help reduce waste in the system, not by pressuring people to forgo treatments they want, but by giving them the tools to refuse treatments they don’t want. Teen births down, but why? The teen birth rate has dropped again, according to the latest CDC statistics. Births to women under the age of 20 declined by 6% in 2009 compared to 2008. One hypothesis is that the reduction is an unexpected consequence of the recession, an argument we pointed to in last week’s edition of the Pulse. John Tomasic of the Colorado Independent is skeptical of the recession hypothesis . He writes: Emily Bridges, director of public information services at Advocates for Youth , agrees with other observers in pointing out that teens aren’t likely to include national economics as a significant factor in pondering whether or not to have unprotected sex. Peer pressure, badly mixed booze, general awkwardness, for example, are much more likely than the jobless recovery to play on the minds of horny high schoolers. Some states with weak economies actually saw a rise in teen birth rates, Tomasic notes. However, this year’s sharp downturn in teen births parallels a drop in fertility for U.S. women of all ages, which seems best explained by economic uncertainty. It’s true that prospective teen moms are less likely to have jobs in the first place, and so a bad job market might be less likely to sway their decisions. However, young women who aren’t working are unlikely to have significant resources of their own to draw on, which means that they are heavily dependent upon others for support. If their families and partners are already struggling to make ends meet, then the prospect of another mouth to feed may seem even less appealing than usual. Abortion is the elephant in the room in this discussion. The CDC numbers only count live births. Logically, fewer live births must be the result of fewer conceptions and/or more terminations. Some skeptics doubt that economic factors have much to do with teens’ decisions about contraception. However, it seems plausible that decisions about abortion would be heavily influenced by the economic health of the whole extended family. Last year’s decrease was notably sharp, but teen birth rates have been declining steadily for the last 20 years. The Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based non-profit that specializes in research on reproductive choice and health, suggests that successive generations of teens are simply getting savvier about contraception. Births to mothers between the ages of 15 and 17 are down 48% from 1991 levels, and births to mothers ages 18 to 19 are down 30%. Stupid drug dealer tricks Martha Rosenberg of AlterNet describes 15 classic dirty tricks deployed by Big Pharma to push drugs. These include phony grassroots patient groups organized by the drug companies to lobby for approval of dubious remedies. Another favorite money-making strategy is to overcharge Medicare and Medicaid. Pharmaceutical companies have paid nearly $15 billion in wrongdoing settlements related to Medicare and Medicaid chicanery over the last five years. This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium . It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter . And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit , The Mulch , and The Diaspora . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Read More… More on Health Care

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The Media Consortium: Weekly Pulse: End-of-Life Counseling Returns, But Death Panels Still Nonsense

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) recently perpetuated comparisons between Sarah Palin and the Gipper, announcing that the former Alaska governor has “done more for the Republican Party than anyone since Ronald Reagan.” In an interview with Politico about potential 2012 contenders positioning themselves to lock up key endorsements from politicians in presidential primary locations, it almost appeared that DeMint was the one looking for a nod from the former vice presidential candidate. “We’ve never spoken, but she left me a nice message, and I believe she’s done more for the Republican Party than anyone since Ronald Reagan,” DeMint told Politico. Read More… More on Jim DeMint

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Jim DeMint: Sarah Palin Has ‘Done More For The Republican Party Than Anyone Since Ronald Reagan’

“To be honest, it’s something I’ve always kind of wondered about,” Gov. Palin said. “Hawaii just isn’t an American-sounding name, like Alaska.” Read More… More on Republicans

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Andy Borowitz: Birthers Challenge Hawaii to Produce Statehood Certificate

She’s a warrior for transparency …except when it comes to herself: Alaska state regulations require public officials to make public records available to the public within 10 days in most cases. On Monday evening, Sarah Palin’s former staff in the Alaska governor’s office requested another delay in making public 25,000 e-mails exchanged by Palin, her husband and her senior aides. The governor’s office is asking the state’s attorney general to approve a delay of five more months, until May 30, 2011. At that point, the request filed by msnbc.com and other news organizations will have been pending for 986 days. Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska for 966 days. In other words, if the delay is granted, the wait for the e-mails will have lasted longer than the Palin administration. David Corn adds : Last June, the state did release to MSNBC.com and NBC News nearly 3,000 pages of emails Todd Palin had exchanged with state officials. (The documents showed how deeply involved the “First Dude” was in official affairs.) But Sarah Palin’s emails remained behind a bureaucratic firewall. The governor’s office—after consolidating various media requests—did start working on the case in the fall of 2008. And it also began requesting extensions from the state attorney general. Over the past two years, the office has asked for over a dozen extensions, and the state AG always said yes. By early December 2008, the governor’s office had collected 25,700 emails it deemed responsive to the assorted requests. It told the state attorney general that it would require at least 33 working days to print them (using one or more interns to print 100 emails an hour). Only after the emails are in hard-copy form, the governor’s office said, could the state Department of Law review each one “to ensure that protected interests of private or government persons or entities are not infringed.” The governor’s office did try a faster alternative. It provided the emails to the Department of Law in electronic form, hoping that office could use software it had recently obtained to review the emails electronically. This would cut out the long printing process. But, according to a January 28, 2009, memo from the Department of Law, the lawyers “found no way to convert the e-mail records from the format provided to the portable document format (pdf) necessary to use the new software, without opening each individual message to convert it.” The memo also noted, “We were unable to batch-print the e-mail records in the format provided.” Though the governor’s office had indicated nearly two months earlier that the printing process was underway, it appeared that the records were still not printed and, thus, not available for review by the state’s lawyers. The Department of Law noted, “we can only guess how long it will take to review the records.” I can see a slight delay, but nearly three years without results? You’ve got to be kidding me. And the claim that there does not exist a software program to batch-convert email to PDF is blatantly false, an obvious attempt to delay progress in complying with the law. The only real question is what is Palin so eager to hide?

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Delay in release of official Palin emails to exceed her time in office

The crazies are restless, sowing the seeds of Republican accidental Sen. Scott Brown’s inevitable primary defeat. How Scott Brown caved in on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” — ten-month campaign by homosexual lobby! Scott Brown’s radical change of position on homosexuality in the military did not happen by accident. It was a coordinated campaign by the homosexual movement in Massachusetts. We (pro-traditional family group MassResistance) first got wind of it at the GLSEN conference held in Somerville this past March, where we had a person in attendance. (We are preparing a full report on that conference.) There was a workshop on repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. One homosexual serviceman talked about men having sex with each other in the barracks, and the officers looking the other way (a positive step, they indicated). They said they will be targeting Scott Brown in every way possible to get him to change his mind on the ban. “We will bombard Scott Brown’s office,” he told the group. In addition, the national homosexual organization Human Rights Campaign appears to have been coordinating things in Washington and helped arrange for Brown to meet with “gay” servicemen. The ACLU was also involved, from at least one email of theirs we’ve seen. But the real grunt work was done by in Massachusetts by MassEquality, which even organized phone banks out of their offices to coordinate calls from across the state . [Emphasis in the original] That’s it, Scott Brown must go ! “I think that there will be a primary challenge,’’ said Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party. “There’s enough of an underground movement in the Tea Party movement as seeing him as not being conservative enough. There probably will be multiple people who attempt to run against him.’’ Varley said it is too early to name a possible opponent, and she acknowledged that Brown’s campaign war chest and statewide organization would probably be enough to fend off an opponent. But if Brown has to devote energy and resources to a primary campaign, it could put him at a greater disadvantage in a general election in which Democrats will be fighting hard to reclaim a seat they consider theirs. The teabaggers are also restless in Virginia. Jamie Radtke, head of the Virginia Federation of Tea Party Patriots, has filed federal papers to run for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat now held by Virginia Democrat James Webb. The race is expected to be a crowded one. Former Sen. George Allen, who lost to Mr. Webb in 2006, looks increasingly likely to jump into the fray, as does Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County board of supervisors. Mr. Webb hasn’t made it clear whether he will run for re-election. In an interview, Ms. Radtke said she decided to run after watching Congress pass legislation during this month’s lame duck session, including a package of tax cuts, that added to the national debt. It does promise to be crowded, with at least four teabaggers threatening to run. Indeed, nothing would be better for Allen than a crowded field, as the former senator and governor would have the clear financial and name-recognition advantage. But assuming the teabaggers can sort themselves out and settle on a single candidate, Allen would certainly face serious trouble. One big caveat, however — the Tea Party chances in 2012 will depend in large part on whether national groups and figures get involved. Will renegade Republicans like Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint will continue undermining their party’s electoral chances by backing the crazies over establishment-backed candidates? Because I can’t think of a single big tea party primary victory in 2010 that wasn’t fueled by either their big national groups or their biggest personalities. Yet those efforts also cost Republicans the Senate, which should’ve swung GOP this year. Teabagger efforts in Delaware, Colorado, and Nevada cost them seats outright. Kentucky cost them millions they could’ve spent in Washington and other tighter Democratic holds. Alaska cost them Senate votes as Sen. Lisa Murkowski now pulls a reverse Lieberman on the GOP. So will the teabaggers continue sabotaging their own Senate chances on 2012. The local crazies obviously don’t care, but they’re stupid and really not that influential. What remains to be seen is whether Palin, DeMint, et al decide they want the majority more than they want to continue sabotaging their party’s efforts to score cheap purity points.

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Teabaggers still restless, target Scott Brown and George Allen

Opinion Research Corporation for CNN. 12/17-19. 470 Republicans. MoE 4.5%. I’m going to read you the names of a few people who might run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.  For each one, please tell me whether you would be very likely, somewhat likely, not very likely, or not likely at all to support them if they decided to run for the Republican nomination in 2012. Mike Huckabee: 67% likely, 31% not likely. Mitt Romney: 59% likely, 40% not likely. Newt Gingrich: 54% likely, 44% not likely. Sarah Palin: 49% likely, 51% not likely. (Likely includes “very likely ” and “somewhat likely.” Not likely includes “not very likely” and “not at all likely.”) In light of PPP’s polling on Palin, it seems like Sarah may have one unsurmountable problem when it comes to running for President: people either don’t like her (independents and Democrats) or don’t want her to represent their party because other people don’t like her (Republicans). Huckabee, on the other hand, is emerging as a formidable threat to win the GOP nomination. I suspect the big question with him is whether he’ll be able to overcome the institutional Republican support for Romney’s campaign. If he’s willing to work hard, that should be doable, and given Romney’s big problem — that he supported not just RomneyCare but also individual mandates — my end of year prediction for 2010 is that in 2012, Mike Huckabee will be the GOP’s nominee. To be fair to Romney, Huckabee also has some baggage that Republican primary voters might not like: he opposes a government shutdown,  he supported cap and trade and believes climate change is caused by man, he supported tax increases to improve education in Arkansas, and he supports the basic ideas behind the DREAM Act. But taken together, those challenges don’t amount to this :

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CNN: Republicans most likely to support Huckabee

PPP’s Tom Jensen: It’s a well known fact that Sarah Palin is the most unpopular major political figure in the country…one thing that may be less well known is that one of the states where voters have the dimmest view of her is her own home state of Alaska. We’ve polled Palin’s favorability in ten states over the last couple months. In Alaska just 33% of voters have a favorable opinion of her to 58% with a negative one. The only place where fewer voters see her positively than her own home state is dark blue Massachusetts. Numbers this bad are almost heartbreaking because it brings home the reality that she very well might not run for president — and that would be a crying shame. As Jensen points out, it’s not just that Palin is unpopular in Alaska — it’s that she’s unpopular everywhere. What’s more relevant is that a majority of voters in every single state we have polled so far on the 2012 race has an unfavorable opinion of her. And her average favorability in the Bush/Obama states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia that are most likely essential to Republican chances of retaking the White House is 36/56. Democrats can only hope… As for the Republicans who would be the key to winning her nomination? Well, the good news for her is that she’s still fairly popular with Republicans. The bad news is that the Republicans who know her best like her least: in Alaska, her fav/unfav with GOPers is just 60/30. While that is a net positive rating, it’s abysmally low given that it should be her base — she should have a 9:1 ratio of favorable to unfavorable 2:1 is an utter fail.

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Alaskans sour on Palin: 33% favorable, 58% unfavorable

This past election day, two new Republicans who happen to be black were elected to serve in the 112th Congress: Allen West from Florida’s 22nd district and Tim Scott from South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District . Both West and Scott’s districts are overwhelmingly white, with West’s district coming in at just 3.8 percent black and Scott’s district coming in a much more respectable 21.1 percent black. Both men were endorsed by Sarah Palin and numerous other national and local conservatives, but not the Congressional Black Caucus. However, both men were invited to join the CBC, although Scott has declined membership. Needless to say, according to exit polls neither man received any significant share of the black vote in their respective districts. Meanwhile, as I pointed out earlier this year , Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis has still received no invite from the CBC, even though he represents a district that is 60 percent black and where he routinely receives the lion’s share of the black vote even when he has black primary challengers. Even though he was endorsed by Obama. Even though he was endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus ! Does this make any sense at all? The real question here is who, exactly, does the Congressional Black Caucus represent? Do they represent themselves as members of Congress who happen to be black, or do they represent black voters? Because if it is the latter, it is pretty hard to argue that Allen West is the voice of Black America because of all three black voters in West Palm Beach. He probably only got one of those votes anyway. Similarly, it would be pretty far off to insist that Steve Cohen has no idea of what is going on in Black America when his district is the home of the Blues. So, is the Congressional Black Caucus an advocacy group for Black Americans in the halls of Congress, or is it a blacks-only private Congressional social club? The CBC website says their vision and goal is: to promote the public welfare through legislation designed to meet the needs of millions of neglected citizens. I’d say the black folks of western Tennessee have a pretty long history of being neglected. They didn’t sing the Blues because life was gravy. Frankly, there is no reason at all for the CBC to keep Steve Cohen out but invite Allen West in. It simply makes no sense. The caucus isn’t supposed to be about black legislators , but black constituents .

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Why did Congressional Black Caucus invite Scott and West?

Greta Van Susteren took to her blog to question whether Juan Williams could back up his claim that Sarah Palin is not on the same “intellectual stage” as President Obama. Williams made the comment when he was on a “Fox News Sunday” panel this past weekend. His statement was widely circulated on the Internet. Writing on Monday, Van Susteren asked, “has Juan interviewed either so as to have any knowledge about which he speaks? or is he just talking? Knowing if he interviewed (first hand knowledge) either and to what depth can help guide you as to whether you should credit his opinion or not. (Incidentally, I don’t know if he has….maybe he has.)” Read More… More on Fox News

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Greta Van Susteren Questions Juan Williams’ Palin Intellect Claim

Not many Alaskans, Democrat or Republican, are fond of Sarah Palin, a recent Public Policy Polling survey finds. According to the poll, Palin has a dismal 33 percent favorability rating in her home state. That’s a 12-point drop from last winter, a similar poll finds. The origins of her current ratings stretch beyond party lines, with the predictable chilliness of Democrats toward their former half-term governor matching the sentiments of both Republicans and Independents. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Alaska Icy On Sarah Palin: Poll

WASHINGTON — For the third straight year, President Barack Obama ranks as the man most admired by people living in the U.S., according to an annual USA Today-Gallup poll. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most-admired woman for the ninth year in a row, edging out former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and TV host Oprah Winfrey, as she did last year. Read More… More on Barack Obama

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Obama Secures ‘Man Most Admired’ Honor For Third Straight Year: Poll

…while an October story in Politico made a splash (and drew Palin’s wrath) by quoting anonymous Republican “insiders” attacking Palin, we’ve noticed a different, striking pattern in recent weeks: More and more prominent Republicans are publicly voicing doubts about Palin. Read More… More on Elections 2012

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Sarah Palin Faces Emerging Chorus Of Criticism From Unlikely Source

Contrary to claims that Sarah Palin thinks college is “too elitist” for her kids , her daughter Bristol may be headed to campus soon. TMZ reports that the young mom just purchased a $172,000 house near Phoenix and is telling friends that she plans to attend the nearby Arizona State University. Previously, Palin filled her days with speaking gigs and televised sexy rumbas. Read More… More on Bristol Palin

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Are Bristol Palin’s College Sights Set On Arizona State University?

They both said: “Let them eat cake!” Somewhere in the Constitution, Sarah Palin has found the “God-given” right to be obese. Michelle Obama’s initiative to improve children’s health by encouraging better diets and sufficient exercise is mocked by Sarah Palin as just another intrusion by government into the daily lives of our citizens, and this effort apparently is especially abhorrent by depriving children of their just desserts. Although Ms. Palin claims to read “all” of the newspapers, she apparently missed the one (or many) that reported that one out of three children are obese increasing the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other illnesses. Rejecting the threat of being forced to follow “some politician’s wife’s priorities”, she triumphantly visited a school in Pennsylvania holding cookies high in an act of brave defiance by a Grizzly Mom against Big Brother. No government was going to tell her children what they could and could not eat, (forgetting entirely that a recommendation from the First Lady is not necessarily a Presidential executive order.) But she does speak the truth in one respect. This is ground breaking. No other President’s wife has ever dared to engage in this socialist activity of suggesting to America’s citizens that they should take or refrain from some particular action. According to Half/Governor Palin such suggestions violate the word of God and our rights under the Constitution. Michelle Obama is clearly the first and only, that is, of course, if one ignores, Laura Bush for encouraging reading and literacy; Hillary Clinton for encouraging mammography to prevent breast cancer; Lady Bird Johnson for encouraging protection and beautification of the environment; and Nancy Reagan for urging the fight against drug and alcohol abuse among young people; and Pat Nixon who encouraged the performance of volunteer services to benefit others. Even as far back as Dolly Madison, she was urging aid to orphan children. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Judge H. Lee Sarokin: What Do Sarah Palin and Marie Antoinette Have in Common?

Editor’s Note: Due to the holidays, the Weekly Mulch will appear on Thursday afternoon both this week and next week. We’ll resume regular Friday morning posts in 2011. by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger It’s the naughty children who get coal in their stockings, and it seems like Americans must have been naughty this year. Because across the country, we’re awash with coal, carcinogens, and other toxins. And our government is not doing to much to change that. Waste not After the massive coal ash spill in Tennessee two years ago, the EPA began working on more stringent regulation of the waste, a byproduct of coal mining. But, as Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones , the industry has been pressuring the administration to adopts weaker regulations than it could. “Two years after the largest toxic spill in the nation’s history, there is still no regulation of deadly coal ash dumps–nor is there clear direction from EPA on the timing or content of a final rule,” Lisa Evans, senior administrative counsel for Earthjustice, told Sheppard . “For the communities enduring damage from aging ponds and leaking landfills, time has run out. There is no reason on earth that their health should be compromised by such an easily avoidable harm.” What’s in the water? Coal ash is one of those pollutants that clearly poses a problem. It looks dangerous. But not all pollutants are so obviously dangerous. This week, for instance, the Environmental Working Group, an environmental health non-profit group, released a report showing that much of the country’s tap water is contaminated with the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, with levels high enough to pose a risk to human health. “Exposure in tap water has been linked to cancers of the stomach and gastrointestinal tract in both animals and people,” Rebecca Sutton, a scientist for the Environmental Working Group, wrote at AlterNet . Thirty-one of the 35 cities that the group examined had dangerously high levels of the contaminants in the tap water. How did this happen? As Sarah Parsons explains at Change.org , “The reason so much chromium-6 winds up in tap water is that industries spew it into waterways, utilities fail to test for the substance, and the EPA doesn’t regulate it in drinking water.” What the EPA does do, Parsons reports, is limit the total chromium in drinking water, “the combined amount of hexavalent chromium and trivalent chromium.” She explains, “The problem is that trivalent chromium is actually good for you–in fact, it’s necessary for metabolism. Hexavalent chromium, on the other hand, is a noxious carcinogen.” Moving forward These prevalent toxins are just two reminders that, for all their successes in recent decades, environmentalists still have much work ahead of them. How should they approach that work? Earth Island Journal ’s Jason Mark , considering lessons from the 1980s-era environmental leaders, who focused on moving toward the center and working within the confines of D.C. politics, offers this thought: “The new leaders of 2010 say what we need is less focused group messaging and inside-the-Beltway maneuverings, and more heartfelt spirit and energy directed encouraged at the grassroots. I hope their instincts are right. Because at this point I don’t think we can wait another 25 years to figure this stuff out.” This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium . It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter . And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit , The Pulse , and The Diaspora . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Read More… More on West Virginia Mine Disaster

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The Media Consortium: Weekly Mulch: Coal Ash in Our Stockings

Bristol Palin, 20-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, has bought a home in Maricopa, an outlying Valley suburb in Pinal County. Read More… More on Bristol Palin

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Bristol Palin Buys House In Maricopa, Arizona For $172k Cash

Steve Benen notes that Sarah Palin cites “leaked diplomatic cables” in her anti-Obama screed on USA Today’s op-ed page in which she endorses a more bellicose policy towards Iran. Why is this interesting? Because those “leaked diplomatic cables” that Palin’s ghost-writer referenced are, of course, the materials published through Wikileaks. I’m not suggesting for a moment that the media steer clear of such revelations, but the former half-term governor’s reliance on the documents is, to put it mildly, unexpected. After all, Palin has referred to the leaks as “treasonous.” She’s even equated Julian Assange and Wikileaks with al Qaeda. So I’m afraid I’m left bemused by all of this. Palin is comfortable using secret information procured by terrorists in the hopes of making the American president look bad? She thinks the leaks are an outrageous, criminal offense, but she’s happy to exploit the leaks anyway for her partisan agenda? Well, Steve, I hate to say it, but if you’re waiting for Sarah Palin to be intellectually consistent you’ve got a long wait ahead of you. She’s not waging a campaign in the public interest. She’s waging a campaign in her own.

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Palin then: Wikileak cables threaten national security. Now: They prove I’m right about Iran.

In an emergency Christmas eve memo, FOXNews executive producer Bill Sammon instructed his anchors not to include “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” among the victims in the war on Christmas. “Let’s face it”, said Glen Beck, “Rudolf doesn’t have a blue, green, or purple nose, does he? It is red, and it glows, without burning any oil. That’s not a coincidence, folks. If that isn’t Communism trying to insinuate itself into children’s minds,” said Beck with tears streaming down his face, “I don’t know what is”. “The Rudolf mantra is a liberal conspiracy,” chimed in Sean Hannity. “The only fog on Christmas is created by liberals to get misfits like Rudolf a job,” said Hannity. “Everything I see is clear and black-and-white”. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Paul Abrams: FOX Slams "Rudolf/Reindeer" Song for Promoting Social Justice

Conan issued a special online apology to Jimmy Kimmel Wednesday evening after airing a segment that showed Sarah Palin shooting Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer–the same clip Team Kimmel played on their show two weeks earlier. “The staff member responsible for the piece has been fired,” Conan quipped, “and we hear he’s been immediately rehired at Jimmy Kimmel. So it all worked out.” In an effort to “clear the palate,” he went on to play a commercial for mistletoe that, he assured viewers, “I promise I don’t think anybody’s ever done anything like this, and probably for good reason.” Check out the apology and the hilarious skit that follows below. Read More… More on Conan O’Brien

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Conan Apologizes To Jimmy Kimmel For Sarah Palin ‘Rudolph’ Segment

Sarah Palin, the neoconservatives and their approach to American foreign policy in the Middle East are back in force, and the current focus of their advocacy and activism is pushing the United States into a military confrontation with Iran. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett: Palin Beats War Drums, But Other Tea Partiers May Argue Against Obama’s Slippery Slope to War With Iran

Go figure : It was billed, in part, as a forum for the 2012 Republican presidential field to speak directly to Hispanics — a replica of the vaunted Conservative Political Action Conference, but tailored to the fastest-growing slice of the electorate. … the only potential presidential candidate confirmed to attend — so far — is Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney declined the invite. So did South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Texas Gov Rick Perry. Among those who haven’t sent in their RSVP’s are Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Haley “Watermelon” Barbour, and Newt Gingrich (although Newt is “amenable”). This news comes fresh off the Republican crushing of the DREAM Act, their recent wholesale support of racial profiling in Arizona, and of course their demonization of brown people over the years, so their lack of interest in addressing this “fastest-growing slice of the electorate” isn’t a surprise. In fact, the only surprising thing in this article is that the writer included this line: A poor showing could raise doubts about the commitment of Republicans to court Hispanics, one of the open-ended questions of the 2012 presidential cycle. Well, sure. Because that’s what will raise those doubts.

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Republican presidential hopefuls skipping Hispanic forum

Victoria Beckham has grown into quite the fashion powerhouse in the last year, showing a vibrant Spring 2011 collection , dressing what seemed like every big-name celebrity and holding her own on “The View” during a discussion about size 0 models . And now she might be the queen of 2011’s It Bag. A pair of her purses hit NET-A-PORTER on Wednesday and created a total “fashion frenzy” ( NET-A-PORTER’s words , not ours). One of the styles sold out in 60 seconds, and the other was gone in several hours, Elle UK reports . And did we mention they’re priced from $1,800 to $13,950 ? If you missed them this week, those purses and more will be on sale at Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and on NET-A-PORTER later in the month. Read More… More on Designers

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Victoria Beckham Creates Total ‘Fashion Frenzy’ With New Purses (PHOTOS, POLL)

Somebody needs to tell Joe Miller that the election is over. It’s not just his pathetic legal challenge — it’s that his campaign is still on the warpath, attacking Murkowski for voting for the DREAM Act, for DADT repeal, and for START during the lame duck. Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto : “In supposedly voting ‘for Alaska,’ Lisa Murkowski must make the case why the Bush tax cuts shouldn’t be permanent, why we’re rewarding people for breaking our immigration laws, why DADT was not working, and why the Senate should not take further time to review START Treaty,” DeSoto said. It’s time for Joe to give it up already. Alaskans had the chance to put him in the Senate and they said no. And it’s time for conservative extremists to come to grips with the fact that if they couldn’t put a DeMint-Palin disciple over the top in Alaska, they’re never going to be anything more than a bunch of loud voices on Fox News.

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Miller whines about Murkowski’s lame duck voting record

Oprah spoke to Parade magazine for its latest issue, and one of the subjects that came up was a potential run by Sarah Palin for the presidency. Oprah has dodged the question about her thoughts on Palin before, most notably in an interview with Barbara Walters, where she pointedly refused to answer whether she thought Palin was qualified. This time, she said the public would “fall in love” with Palin if they watched her reality show. The interviewer then asked if the thought of a Palin run scared her. Oprah’s response? “It does not scare me because I believe in the intelligence of the American public.” Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Oprah On Palin Run: ‘I Believe In The Intellligence Of The American People’

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger It’s a Christmas-week miracle! The Senate, in a vote that astonished everyone, brought the Food Safety and Modernization Act back from the dead on Monday, as Siddhartha Mahanta reports in Mother Jones . The bill, which will enact tougher consumer protections against E. coli and other deadly contaminants in staples like eggs and peanut butter, died in the Senate last week when the omnibus spending bill it had been folded into kicked the bucket . At Grist , Tom Philpott explains the initial demise , and the basis for the ultimate resurrection of the bill. The House passed the bill on Tuesday, having already passed it twice before. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law , which will usher in the first major overhaul of the country’s food safety system in more than 70 years. Food poisoning strikes 48 million Americans (1 in 6), lands 128,000 in the hospital, and kills 3,000 ever year, according to CDC figures released last week. Now that’s something to talk about with your relatives around the holiday dinner table. Wisconsin clinic backs off 2nd trimester abortion care A clinic in Wisconsin has reneged on its commitment to provide second trimester abortion care , as Judy Shackelford reports in The Progressive . Shackelford is outraged that the Madison Surgery Center walked back on its promise to patients. She knows first hand how important later term abortion access can be. Shackelford found herself in need of a second trimester abortion when she developed a blood clot in her arm during her second, much-wanted pregnancy. She decided to terminate rather than risk leaving her 7-year-old son motherless. It was hard enough to find an abortion provider when she needed one, but if she needed the procedure today, she would have nowhere to turn. Teen birth rate at record low The birth rate for women ages 15-19 fell to 39.1 per 1000 between 2008 and 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics announced Tuesday. Many commentators, including Goddessjaz of feministing attribute the drop to the recession . The economy seems to be an important factor because birth rates dropped in all age groups, not just among teens. Predictably, proponents of abstinence-only-until-hetero-marriage are trying to take credit for the falling birth rate. It’s not clear why they think ab-only is finally starting to work after years of unrelenting failure . Perhaps it was Bristol Palin’s electrifying performance on “Dancing With the Stars”? Get the government out of my Medicare We’ve become accustomed to the ironic spectacle of senior citizens on Medicare-funded scooters decrying the “government takeover of health care.” Medicare is wildly popular, even among those who decry “socialized medicine.” When the Affordable Care Act is finally implemented, it won’t feel like a government program, either. Paul Waldman of The American Prospect wonders if this “private sector” feel will undermine support for the program: The Republican officials challenging the ACA in court have characterized its individual insurance mandate as an act of tyranny ranking somewhere between the Stalinist purges and Mao’s Cultural Revolution. But in the “government takeover” of health care (recently declared the 2010 “Lie of the Year” by the fact-checking site PolitiFact), Americans will continue to visit their private doctors to receive care paid for by their private insurance companies. The irony is that if the ACA actually were a “government takeover,” people would end up feeling much better about government’s involvement in health care. But since it maintains the private system, conservatives can continue to decry government health care safe in the knowledge that most people under 65 won’t know what they’re missing, or in another sense, what they’re getting. If people don’t realize that they’re benefiting from government programs, they are less likely to support those programs. In an attempt to deflect Republican criticism, the Democrats assiduously scrubbed as much of the aura of government off of health reform as they could. This could prove to be a disastrously short-sighted strategy. If health reform works, the government won’t get the credit, but rest assured that if it fails, it will take the full measure of blame. Funding for community health centers at risk One of the lesser-known provisions of the Affordable Care Act was to expand the capacity of community health centers (CHCs) from 20 million to 40 million patients by 2015. This extra capacity will be key for absorbing the millions of previously uninsured Americans who are slated to get health insurance under the ACA. CHCs have been praised by Democrats and Republicans as an affordable way to provide quality health care. However, state budget crises are threatening to derail the plan, as Dan Peterson reports for Change.org. States must contribute to the program in order to qualify for federal funding. However, state funding for CHCs has plummeted by 42% since 2007. So far this year, 23 states have cut funding for CHCs and eight have slashed their budgets by 20% or more. This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium . It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter . And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit , The Mulch , and The Diaspora . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Read More… More on Health Care

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The Media Consortium: Weekly Pulse: Egg Salad Surprise! Congress Votes to Clean Up Food Supply

Remember Joe Miller?  Bearded guy, said funny things about the Constitution, somehow managed to become the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from Alaska?  And then he lost by over 10,000 votes to someone running as a write-in who had to hand out Livestrong-esque rubber bracelets to make sure everyone remembered out to spell her name? Yeah, it seems like ages ago to me too. Today, the Alaska Supreme Court concluded its review of the election , turning aside Miller’s remaining challenge and unanimously holding that there was no reason for the result not to be certified in Lisa Murkowski’s favor. Why?  Because voter intent is paramount, and quibbling over handwriting and spelling is not how we honor each citizen’s right to participate in the process: Joe Miller seeks an interpretation of election statute AS 15.15.360 that would disqualify any write-in votes that misspell the candidate’s name. We do not  interpret the statute to require perfection  in the manner that the candidate’s name is written on the ballot. Our prior decisions clearly hold that a voter’s intention is paramount.  In light of our strong and consistently applied policy of construing statutes in order to effectuate voter intent, we hold that abbreviations, misspellings, or other minor variations in the form of the name of a candidate will be disregarded in determining the validity of the ballot, so long as the intention of the voter can be ascertained….. As we have recognized, “a true democracy must seek to make each citizen’s vote as meaningful as every other vote to ensure the equality of all people under the law.” In order to ensure that each citizen’s vote is as meaningful as every other vote, we must interpret the election statute to preserve a voter’s clear choice rather than to disenfranchise that voter.  The State characterizes the standard urged by Miller as the “perfection standard,” and we agree that such a standard would tend to disenfranchise many Alaskans on the basis of “technical errors.” Alaskan voters arrive at their polling places with a vast array of backgrounds and capabilities. Some Alaskans were not raised with English as their first language. Some Alaskans who speak English do not write it as well.  Some Alaskans have physical or learning disabilities that hinder their ability to write clearly or spell correctly. Yet none of these issues should take away a voter’s right to decide which candidate to elect to govern. The Court further found that the manual recount method did not violate the Equal Protection Clause and waved away Miller’s claims of voter fraud as being “pure speculation [in search of] a fishing expedition.”  At the same time, the Court also denied Murkowski’s efforts to have counted ballots which wrote in her name but without a filled-in oval next to it. Miller now has 48 hours to raise any remaining constitutional issues in federal court but his campaign is, as the article puts it, “on life support” right now. In the meantime, Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican Senator to vote for DADT repeal, for cloture on the DREAM Act and for the START Treaty, for which I can only say (and may never be able to say again) thank you, Sarah Palin.  You have no idea what you’ve unleashed.

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Alaska Supreme Court says "It’s not so, Joe"

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has a strategy for beating Sarah Palin to the teabaggers’ support in the 2012 primaries. Digby calls it his “Southern Strategy,” consisting of a the dogwhistle message that “racism in America was always overblown with the implication being that those who complain about it have always been whiners.” That includes telling The Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson that the White Supremacist Citizens’ Council was actually a force for good in the Civil Rights fight. Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why he thought that was so. “Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.” That would be news to the African American citizens of Yazoo City. Via Atrios , here’s a 1956 article from David Halberstam. “Look,” said Nick Roberts of the Yazoo City Citizens Council, explaining why 51 of 53 Negroes who had signed an integration petition withdrew their names, “if a man works for you, and you believe in something, and that man is working against it and undermining it, why you don’t want him working for you—of course you don’t.” In Yazoo City, in August 1955, the Council members fired signers of the integration petition, or prevailed upon other white employers to get them fired. But the WCC continues to deny that it uses economic force: all the Council did in Yazoo City was to provide information (a full-page ad in the local weekly listing the “offenders”); spontaneous public feeling did the rest. Intimidating blacks and their white employers and supporters seems to have been the real business of the Yazoo City Citizens’ Council. Yglesias has more , from a history of the era . Predictably, the boycott as an instrument of repression found most effective employment in a cotton center such as Yazoo City, Mississippi, the self-styled “Gateway to the Delta.” The local Citizens’ Council there was one of the state’s oldest and largest, and as the Yazoo City Herald boasted, “from the very first this community’s outstanding citizens have been members.” In a town of only 11,000 people the organization had grown from only 16 to nearly 1,500 by September, 1955. With such numbers, it was well prepared to meet the challenge of fifty-three signatures on a desegregation petition. In a  full-page advertisement in the Herald , the Council published “an authentic list of the purported signers” of an NAACP petition. This list was also printed on large cardboard placards which were displayed in many of the community’s stores, the bank, and even in cotton fields surrounding the city. As had happened elsewhere, economic sanctions followed and within a matter of weeks the petitioners’ ranks were reduced to half a dozen. Again local Council leaders attributed the rash of reprisals to the “spontaneous reaction of public opinion.” Whatever the reason, a disapproving northern newspaper could observe with little exaggeration that, “with the awful spectre of Yazoo City before them, few Mississippi Negroes would sign a desegregation petition today.” The Southern Strategy lives.

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Haley Barbour’s racist civil rights era revisionism

Sitting in for Arianna, Joan Walsh and Mary Matalin buoyantly clash about the tax ‘compromise’ vote, whether filibusters sabotage democracy and is Palin for real or just a reality show? They agree NYC should get over losing LeBron and Lee. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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HuffPost Radio: Both Sides Now: Taxes again? Filibusters forever? Is Palin a "Reverse Sexist"?

While she always ranks in the top tier of potential candidates in polls looking ahead to the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, surveys of the overall public have not been kind to Sarah Palin’s chances of winning the general election, and a new ABC News/Washington Post poll is no exception. Read More… More on Elections 2012

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Sarah Palin For President? Poll Shows Six In 10 Americans Say They Would Not Support Her Running

Between Christine O’Donnell and Julian Assange, this season of “Saturday Night Live” has had more than enough material for its political cold openings. On the last episode of the season this weekend, the show opened with a whimsical, Christmas-inspired montage where it’s revealed what Washington Democrats are dreaming about in the coming new year. So what do the Dems hope to see in 2011 headlines? President Obama is hoping 2011 brings a presidential bid from Sarah Palin, while Hilary Clinton awaits the pantsuit to be declared fashion trend of the year. We also see what Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are hoping 2011 brings, including some changes to the Chicago senate race and a live gorilla escaping from the zoo (we’ll let you guess which wish is Biden’s). WATCH : Read More… More on SNL

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‘SNL’: Washington Democrats Dream Of Merrier Headlines In 2011 (VIDEO)

There’s been a lot of talk about manly balls in Washington. In January, Kevin Drum instructed President Obama and the Democrats to “grow a pair.” He’s not alone; “growing a pair” and “manning up” have become common refrains throughout the year, from the left, the right, and the foaming-at-the-mouth fringe, over and over and over and over again. Sarah Palin, apparently attempting to woo the Latino vote with her impressive bilingual skills, said the president doesn’t have ” cojones .” The question of whether President Obama is a man with balls is, of course, ridiculous. He has fathered two children; that ought to be sufficiently irrefutable proof to put that question to rest for ever. It hasn’t though. In July, the columnist Kathleen Parker, who claims to be “a big fan of Barack Obama,” called him ” our first female president ,” and said “he may be suffering a rhetorical-testosterone deficit when it comes to dealing with crises.” The incessantly insipid Maureen Dowd said the president has “female management traits,” unlike Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, who “have traditional male traits.” Apparently, both columnists believe Obama’s a girlie president because he doesn’t swagger around in a codpiece, calling himself the Commander Guy. His lack of swagger doesn’t make him a woman, though; it makes him a grown up.   Questioning the president’s gender and genitalia isn’t really about anatomy, of course. It’s a sloppy substitution for saying the president is weak. Or, as the New York Times asked in January, “Is Obama a Wimp or a Warrior?” The point, obviously, is this: warriors are manly men with manly balls; wimps are, well, women. With female traits. Who can’t be strong and courageous leaders because they suffer from, as Obama’s “big fan” Parker so delicately put it, a testosterone deficit. Uglier still, the suggestion that this president isn’t a real man is no different from calling a grown black man “boy” or “son.” While this may not be the intent of those who question the president’s manhood, it ultimately has the same ugly result of perpetuating the centuries-long racist practice of emasculating, humiliating, and dehumanizing black men. It has no place in our public discourse, regardless of how some may feel about the president’s leadership. The manly ball talk is not, however, limited to Obama and the Democrats. Recently, Joe Scarborough implored Republicans to “man up” and start attacking Sarah Palin for the vapid ignoramus she is. Note to Joe: you don’t have to be a man to call out Sarah Palin for the idiot she is. Hell, my ovaries and I have been doing it for two years. It’s especially odd to hear Republicans whine about testicular fortitude, even as some of them are quite prone to crying. Crying, after all, is one of those “female traits,” isn’t it? When Hillary Clinton welled up before the New Hampshire primary in 2008, she was both mocked and praised for finally showing her feminine side — as if her gender had, until then, been in question. Just the other day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wept on the Senate floor about the departure of his colleague, Judd Gregg. Incoming House Speaker John Boehner sheds tears at the drop of a hat — for tax cuts, for military spending, for Henry Hyde, for the school children he now refuses to visit because it’s just too painful for him to see the consequences of the harmful policies he supports. Some even suggest he suffers from ” emotional incontinence ,” which evokes the sort of mental imagery that might lead others to weep. Even Sarah Palin recently commented that there was a double standard in how Boehner is praised for his tears, while she, certainly, would not be. This observation came after giving Boehner a “pass” for wearing “his feelings on his sleeve on things that are so important to him.” And it’s not hard to imagine that if she thought for one moment that crying would help her promote Sarah Palin TM in any way, we would no doubt be subjected to a Palin crying jag that would put even Boehner’s tears to shame. The point, though, is that being strong, courageous, powerful, forceful — whatever adjective you want to insert — has nothing to do with gender. The president hasn’t been railroaded by Republicans because of insufficient masculinity. The possession or size of his balls are not the issue. History is rife with tough, ball-less leaders, and it is equally rife with XY wimps and weaklings. The truth is that no gender in Washington has a monopoly on weakness. You want to know what’s weak? Taking the American people hostage in a closed-door meeting with the president because you know you can’t make a persuasive argument to the American people that the very richest Americans and their kids deserve tax cuts while the unemployed are left to fend for themselves. That’s weak. You want to know what’s weak? Sen. Mary Landrieu calling an extension of the Bush tax cuts “morally bankrupt” to score points with her anti-Obama constituency, even though she voted for the “morally bankrupt” tax cuts in 2001. That’s weak — and morally bankrupt. You want to know what’s weak? Saying , “I’m going to do everything I can to support the men and women of the military,” while threatening to block funding bills in order to keep the gays out and calling it a “sad day” when the majority of the Senate — and the country and the military — disagrees with you. Oh yeah, and voting against funding bills for veterans. That’s weak, wimpy, and morally bankrupt. I’m looking at you , Sen. John McCain. You want to know what’s weak? Republicans talking, non-stop, for nine years about 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 to justify wire tapping, racial profiling, torture, and two wars — and then then voting against the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act that would provide health care to the sick and dying first responders of 9-fucking-11. For that, there are no words. We can, and should , criticize our leaders when we think they are wrong. We can, and should , encourage our leaders to fight for principled issues that matter to us. What we can’t, and shouldn’t , do is use sloppy and inaccurate euphemisms that perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes about strength and weakness. Challenging the president on his policies and political tactics is acceptable, important, and patriotic. Challenging his manhood? Now that’s weak.

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The real weakness in Washington

Short and Tweet, our weekly series, brings you the newsiest, most buzzworthy tweets of the past seven days. What’s in store this week? Michael Moore offers to post bail money for Julian Assange, Greg Walden tweets in Morse code, and more. Sarah Palin corrects Julia Assange, Twitter suspends “Operation Payback’s” account, and more. About Short And Tweet : Some tweets make news, and some of those tweets break news. HuffPost Tech’s new weekly feature of the top newsmaking tweets of the week will showcase both. Read More…

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SHORT AND TWEET: The Top 8 Tweets Of The Week From The Fringe And Famous (PICTURES)

Future Speaker of the House John Boehner offered a rebuttal to Sarah Palin’s earlier condemnation of the $858 billion tax cut legislation on Friday. The agreement is a “worthy” deal based on the balance of power, Boehner said, and one that accomplished the primary goal of preventing an expiration of the Bush tax cuts early next year. “There are some of our colleagues last night and others who didn’t think that the agreement on the tax bill was a good one. But I’ve got to tell you, from where I stand, our first goal was to stop the big tax hike that was coming on January the 1st,” Boehner said, responding to a question about Palin’s criticism. “I’ve made it clear going back over the summer that stopping all of the tax hikes was one of our main priorities for this lame-duck session. And while there was an agreement, considering that, you know, Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House, I thought on balance it was worthy of my vote, and I voted for it.” During a taped interview with Sarah Palin on ABC News’s “Good Morning America” Friday, the former Alaska Governor called the package a “lousy deal” that provided only a “temporary” fix in its two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthy. It also failed to permanently eliminate the estate cuts, she complained. Her preference, Palin explained, would have been to let the GOP-controlled House draft a tax plan after the Bush tax cuts expire next year. She said that their plan could have been formulated to be applied retroactively to the beginning of the year. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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John Boehner Defends Tax Cut Deal From Sarah Palin’s Criticism

You might have seen Brad Johnson’s hilarious story about how earlier this week Mike Huckabee angrily denied ever having supported cap and trade legislation despite clear video evidence to the contrary. As funny as his false denial of the flip-flop is, when you watch the video, there’s something at least as notable: Huckabee broke with conservative orthodoxy and admitted the climate change is real. One thing that all of us have a responsibility to do is recognize that climate change is here, it’s real. That what we have to do is quit pointing fingers as to who’s at fault and recognize that it’s all our fault and it’s all our responsibility to fix it. I also support cap and trade of carbon emissions. And I was disappointed that the Senate rejected a carbon counting system to measure the sources of emissions, because that would have been the first and the most important step toward implementing true cap and trade. In fact, Huckabee didn’t just admit that climate change is here. He urged people to accept the responsibility of acknowledging its reality, and as far as conservatives go, that’s a far bigger problem than what he said about cap and trade. On his cap and trade flip-flop, Huckabee could probably convince a conservative audience that when he said cap and trade, he meant something different than what Democrats mean why they say cap and trade. But when he says that climate change is here, and climate change is real, that it’s all our fault, and that we have to do something about it — there’s no spinning that, no parsing, no nuance. He said he believes in climate change and that he believes humans are to blame and there’s no way for him to deny that. Now, it’s pathetic that something like this would be a big deal in conservative politics, but as you know, virtually no conservatives are willing to actually admit that climate change is real. Almost all of them believe it’s a hoax. After all, who needs scientists when you have Sarah Palin, right? And crazy as it might sound, the fact that Mike Huckabee actually accepts the science behind global warming opens up a potent line of attack against him from his friends on the right.

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Huckabee flashback: "Climate change is here, it’s real"

As the 2012 Republican pre­sidential race begins to coalesce, the field is dividing between populists and managers. The most prominent populists are former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. The leading manager is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, although he could face competition from such current governors as Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, and, conceivably, New Jersey’s Chris Christie. Onetime House Speaker Newt Gingrich straddles both camps but leans toward the populist side. Outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a self-described “Sam’s Club” Republican with an equable manner, also straddles the line but probably tilts toward the manager camp, as would Sen. John Thune of South Dakota if he ran. Conversely, if Texas Gov. Rick Perry reverses his decision and joins the race, he would enter as a full-throated populist. Read More… More on Elections 2012

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GOP 2012 Primary: Populists vs. Managers

My apologies to anyone tuning in who was expecting to see the 150th “Friday Talking Points” column, since it will be pre-empted for two weeks here. But the good news is we’re doing so to bring you our annual “McLaughlin Awards,” which are even more fun! I admit we’re jumping the gun a bit on the whole “year-end wrapup season,” but this is due to the vagaries of the calendar. This is the first of a two-part article, and last year I published these on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day — which interfered with my holiday enjoyment too much. This year, the columns normally would have fallen on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, so the decision was made to bump them both up a week. So welcome to our review of 2010, via our annual homage to the McLaughlin Group television show’s award categories. “Homage” sounds ever so much nicer than “blatant ripoff,” don’t you think? Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Chris Weigant: My 2010 "McLaughlin Awards" [Part 1]

It was a crowded field this year, but PolitiFact has named their Lie of the Year: In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama’s ambitious plan to overhaul America’s health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a “government takeover.”   PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections. So kudos to the Republican Party for successfully parlaying a blatant lie into significant electoral gains last month. But of course they can’t take all of the credit: But as Republicans smelled serious opportunity in the midterm elections, they didn’t let facts get in the way of a great punchline. And few in the press challenged their frequent assertion that under Obama, the government was going to take over the health care industry. But don’t be too hard on the traditional media … after all, Sarah Palin tweeted it so it must have been true.

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PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: ‘A government takeover of health care’

Sarah Palin to ABC News: Sarah Palin is surveying the lay of the land to consider whether to make a presidential run in 2012, she told “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts in an exclusive interview, but she added that her decision is still “months down the road.” ” It’s a prayerful consideration because, obviously, the sacrifices that have to be made in order to put yourself forward in the name of public service is, it’s brutal,” she said in the interview at her home in Wasilla, Alaska. ABC News poll to Sarah Palin: Caribou may worry when they see Sarah Palin coming. Barack Obama, not so much. The reason: 59 percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll flatly rule out voting for Palin for president — substantially more than say there’s no way they’d vote for Obama, or, for that matter, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. And Obama leads Palin by a wide margin in current vote preferences, factoring Bloomberg in or out. According to ABC’s poll, President Obama leads Palin by a whopping 54 margin. She’s barely even got a prayer.

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Palin: Presidential bid "a prayerful consideration." Poll: She’s right.

On one hand, there are those like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, who are in favor of the tax deal currently on the table. This seems to be where most of the Republican mainstream is. On the other hand, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney have come out strongly against the proposal. Read More… More on Republicans

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Republican Split Over Tax Deal Means Democratic Opportunity

His party got hammered in the midterm election, he’s taking heat from fellow Democrays for compromising with Republicans on taxes, and his job approval levels are hovering around 45 percent, but a new survey concludes President Obama’s prospects for re-election in 2012 are fairly strong. Conversely, Sarah Palin’s numbers continue to be weak. Read More… More on Barack Obama

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Obama In Good Shape For 2012, Poll Finds

On paper, Mitt Romney might be the GOP’s best candidate for the 2012 general election, but he’s got a problem: the party’s conservative base just doesn’t trust him. The latest example: GOP Rep. Paul Ryan, the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, who yesterday accused Romney of political gamesmanship when it comes to Romney’s opposition to the tax cut deal. From The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel : Soon-to-be House budget chair Paul Ryan said Tuesday that some of the shots that fellow conservatives are taking at the bipartisan tax deal are motivated by politics, not policy. “A lot of people are making these political arguments, which are, ‘What is the proper political chess move against Obama?’ And that is not the way we should be thinking right now when it comes to jobs and economy,” Ryan said in an interview Tuesday. Ryan, the Janesville congressman, supports the tax deal, saying that without it, the Bush tax cuts would lapse, taxes would go up, and “that’s going to harm the people I represent.”   The package has come under fire from the left for including GOP priorities such as an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and favorable treatment of the tax on large estates. But it has also come under fire from the right for generating more borrowing and for extending unemployment benefits without paying for them. Some Republicans have complained that the plan is a re-election aid for Obama because it borrows money to provide short-term stimulus to the economy. Likely GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney came out against the tax deal in an op-ed for USA Today. Asked about Romney’s opposition, Ryan said: “I think presidential aspirants will try to out-conservative each other for their own purposes.” You don’t hear conservatives arguing that Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich or Mike Huckabee are positioning themselves, because conservatives basically trust those candidates. But Mitt Romney they don’t trust. They just don’t think he’s authentic. And they’ve got a point: Romney didn’t support the Bush tax cuts to begin with.

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Paul Ryan accuses Romney of playing politics on tax cut deal

There should be a survival kit for people just splitting up, one made especially for divorce. It should arrive immediately and should be overstuffed with dating books, romantic comedies, alcohol, every season of Sex and The City and, most importantly, a playlist. There’s no one who loves a Sex and The City marathon with girlfriends more than me, but sometimes you need to press mute on Sarah Jessica Parker and pump up the Beyonce. Certain songs unleash and process those strong emotions that you just gotta get out. I remember watching the actress Juliette Lewis perform the song, “I Will Survive,” on a late night talk show years ago after going through a break up. It was hysterical—and very helpful. Read More…

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Susan Campos: Singing Through The Pain

Last week Senate Republicans — refusing to work on any legislation until tax cuts for millionaires was secured — blocked a bill that would have provided health care for 9/11 workers. And almost without exception, the media shrugged. In fact, as noted by Media Matters, … none of the evening news telecasts on ABC, CBS or NBC covered the news about the 9/11 first responders bill. And the rest of the mainstream media didn’t show much interest either. In the 48 hours following the vote, according to TVeyes.com, the phrase “first responder” was mentioned 10 times on CNN,  nine on MSNBC and just one time on Fox News. So perhaps, if those guardians of journalistic integrity could manage to tear themselves away from Sarah Palin’s twitter feed for a few minutes, they could take a few moments to watch Jon Stewart’s coverage: … because apparently only a comedian saw a story in the appalling spectacle of Senate Republicans, who have shamelessly suckled at the tit of 9/11 for more than nine years, refusing to provide health coverage for the people they used to call American heroes.

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Republicans block funding for 9/11 responders — media shrugs

Forgetting, as usual, who started class warfare, former Bush speechwriter and Newscorp executive William McGurn lays on the supply-side schtick thick and deep in his “The GOP needs to address the class-warfare argument in moral terms”: The object of Mr. Sanders’s ire was the deal between the White House and Republicans that will keep the Bush tax cuts in place. “The billionaires of America are on the warpath,” was his explanation. “They want more and more and more.” In his nearly nine-hour remarks, excerpts of which are now going viral on the Internet, he framed the lack of a tax hike for the rich as a surrender to greed. In so doing, he inadvertently raised another question: How come Republicans have such a hard time speaking just as forthrightly about the moral underpinnings of their side of this argument? In supporting the DREAM Act, Bobby Ray Sanders wonders how many native-born Americans can pass the test that immigrants must take to obtain their naturalization papers. Caille Millner : But it’s far more interesting to look at the WikiLeaks case by looking at the culture of the Internet, which is changing rapidly from a free-wheeling, anything-goes space into a place that’s more reflective of society as a whole - society with all of its rigidities, indignities, inequalities, and yes, securities. The fight over WikiLeaks - a fight with hackers and computers activists on one side and governments, established companies, and everyday computer users on another - is really a culture war. As with all culture wars, there’s unlikely to be a clear winner - just a long, exhausting series of skirmishes and retrenchments. I’m guessing that the ultimate outcome will be a draw. Mary Sanchez : Inequality is America’s Achilles heel. Class level still matters greatly when it comes to student achievement. No Child Left Behind has made that infinitely clear. I realize this is hardly rocket science. Turning it around will be. … So skip Sputnik. Here is a reference point more likely to resonate with the Twitterbrains of our Facebook nation. Oprah. Oprah is fond of using the imagery of pebbles and rocks. She invokes the idea that when God (substitute your own supernatural power, if necessary) needs to get your attention to a situation, he first throws little pebbles. “Hello, anyone home?” The small stones are annoying, but easily brushed away reminders to change course. The longer a person doesn’t pay attention, the bigger the rocks become. Finally, the genuinely clueless get a brick upside the head. Whap! Steve Coll remembers Richard Holbrooke. As does Nicholas Kristoff . Richard Cohen , too. At least somebody is saying “Ho, ho, ho.” Kari Lydersen : The average mall Santa sees more than 10,000 kids each season, working long hours with few breaks. While some trained, long-time Santas make $5,000 up to $20,000 for a six-week stint, the majority make around minimum wage, according to “Confessions of a Mall Santa.” … Santa impersonators are among the thousands of workers hired for temporary positions during the holiday season, when employers including retail stores, warehouses, delivery companies and many other related industries take on seasonal hires to facilitate the rush of gift-shopping that is a mainstay of the country’s entire economy—representing a quarter to half of all retail sales. Though the season is supposed to be about generosity and cheer, workers rights groups warn that it is a high-risk time for wage theft, which is especially prevalent among though by no means limited to temporary jobs of the type that proliferate during the holidays. The entering wedge? The slippery slope? The Los Angeles Times reluctantly and foolishly goes for a plan to let corporations sponsor certain athletic and education programs to help rescue the deficit-plagued local school district. Just a few logos plastered here and there. But no worries. Rules will keep it from getting out of hand. Uh-huh. A century and a half ago, before the first state had seceded, Abraham Lincoln intentionally sabotaged a compromise that would have saved the Union, according to Richard Striner . The view that Lincoln was more interested in keeping the country united than in abolishing slavery is mistake, he writes: Marked “Private & confidential,” the letter instructed Kellogg to “entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over. … Have none of it. The tug has to come & better now than later.” Lincoln was not speaking abstractly. The Capitol was buzzing with talk of a Union-saving deal. Indeed, on Dec. 18, Sen. John J. Crittenden of Kentucky proposed a plan to preserve the Union through a series of actions to protect the institution of slavery. In other words, at the precise moment that a compromise to rescue the country seemed at hand, the incoming president worked aggressively to block it. Lincoln, whom historians often portray as being more interested in saving the Union than opposing slavery, chose to do the opposite.

 Crittenden’s plan consisted of a package of constitutional amendments and congressional resolutions, all of which would be “unamendable.” Among their provisions, these amendments would have protected slavery in all of the slave states from future actions by Congress; permitted slavery to spread in all federal territories and future territories below the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude (which runs roughly along the northern border of North Carolina, Tennesee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona); forbidden Congress from abolishing slavery on federal property within a slave state; prevented Congress from interfering with the interstate slave trade; and indemnified owners whose runaway slaves could not be recovered under the Fugitive Slave Law. Fred Barnes tries to make a silk purse out of the GOP’s hog’s ear in California. Lewis Lapham : The fallen idol sells as many papers as the rising star, but God forbid that the product should lack the ingredients listed on the label. Were Sarah Palin to suffer a change of heart — maybe read a history book, possibly take instruction from a dictionary or an atlas — her image would lose its currency, risk being shelved in a supermarket aisle with the soda water and the bathroom fragrance…. On the national cultural circuits, as among the political camp followers feeding on the spectacle of a presidential election campaign, the mere mention of money in sufficient quantity (a $100 million divorce settlement, a $787 billion federal stimulus) excites the same response as a sighting of George Clooney. Eventually the society chokes itself to death on rancid hype. Which probably is why on passing a newsstand these days I think of funeral parlors and Tutankhamen’s tomb. The celebrities pictured on the covers of the magazines line up as if in a row of ceremonial grave goods, exquisitely prepared for burial within the tomb of a democratic republic that died of eating disco balls. George Monbiot says that, to him, the online sabotaging of intelligent debate seems organized.

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Abbreviated pundits round-up

Short of talking about this photo of Kent Conrad and his dog , a picture clogging the newswires as a distraction from any clearer look on “the great tax compromise” going down on Capitol Hill, nothing and nobody owns the attention of the visual media right now like Sarah does, for better or worse. The latest image to surface is this one, a posed portrait of SP for a TIME slideshow labeled ” Best Portraits of 2010. ” Read More…

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Michael Shaw: Reading the Pictures: Palin: The Presidential Study

There are four key points in the first chapter of Sarah Palin’s new book, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag , so let’s  jump right in. 1. Sarah Palin loves Mr. Smith Goes to Washington . Sarah really, really loves this movie. She devotes the first five pages to her in-depth analysis of it, in fact. And it turns out, the fictional character Jefferson Smith was something of a precursor to the teabaggers: Americans love Mr. Smith Goes to Washington because it’s about an ordinary man who stands up to power and says, We’re taking our country back . Ah, yes. The old “take our country back” meme, which, as Sarah explained in her Introduction, is why teabaggers aren’t “racists” and “haters” for opposing the president; they just want their country back. Right. Sarah’s favorite scene in the movie is, well, I’ll just let her explain it: One of our favorite scenes comes in the middle of Senator Smith’s famous filibuster. It is a scene that has not only inspired a love of democratic ideals in generations of Americans but also provided them a basic education in the nature of congressional debate. Smith is trying to get a loan from the federal government to build a boys’ camp on some land where the corrupt political machine in his state, headed by a Mr. James Taylor, is eyeing to build a dam. Yes, you read that right. Sarah’s favorite scene in her favorite movie is when her hero, Senator Smith, tries to get money from the federal government. Which seems awfully socialistic, when you think about it. It’s not even for something useful, like a bridge to nowhere. It’s for a boys’ camp. Rest assured, though, the purpose of the boys’ camp isn’t for any nefarious purposes. Senator Smith doesn’t want to build a camp so that boys can discovery their inner selves or learn to worsip Mother Earth. Whew. We certainly wouldn’t want them to, like, appreciate nature and stuff. Because we know what Sarah thinks about nature : You’ll also see us hunting at the edge of ANWR, where you can see the uninhabited lands that warehouse billions of barrels of American energy supplies underground just waiting for the political will to allow responsible resource development. 2. The Founders were right about everything. Oh, well, okay, except about that slavery stuff. This is where Sarah really shows off her knowledge of the history of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, unlike the “so-called academic and cultural elite [who] talk out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to the founding.” They think the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are just documents written by old white men to benefit other old white men. To really have a just and equal society, they ague, we have to change these documents, update them for the times, and make them no longer mean what the Americans who wrote them intended them to mean. In her extensive study of American history, Sarah did not uncover the little known fact that the founding documents were written by white men for, well, white men. But then, Sarah thinks women played a role in the creation of the founding documents. No, really, she thinks this. These skeptics think we have outgrown our founding principles, that even the wisest men and women in 1776 and 1787 couldn’t possibly have been wise enough to create an effective government for America in the twenty-first century. So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Sarah thinks the founding documents “assert the moral and political equality of all men and women, no matter who their parents are or how much money they have.” A critic, or perhaps a member of the “so-called academic and cultural elite,” might think Sarah does not understand that all the feel-good political equality stuff was not included in the original founding documents, but in fact came later. But that critic would be wrong, because Sarah has totally heard of the “so-called three-fifths clause in the original Constitution.” It sometimes seems like slavery is all that liberal academics and the mainstream media want to talk about when the topic is America’s birth, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge the contradiction that slavery represented to American principles. Those would be the principles of all men and women being equal under the law, as enshrined in the Constitution by the wise men and women of 1776 and 1787, of course. However, Sarah instructs us to instead focus on “great human achievements” like the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, instead of “dwelling obsessively on the problems” of institutionalized racism.  ”Dwelling obseessively on the problems,” as liberals and academics do, is not “constructive.” Still no mention of sexism or the denial of women’s rights at the time of the nation’s founding. I’m sure she’ll get to that, though. She’s a Mama Grizzly conservative feminist, after all. 3.  Accusing teabaggers of racism is, like, so wrong. The worst thing you can say about a fellow american in politics today is that he is a racist. It just doesn’t get any more damning than this accusation. That’s why so many of us were horrified to hear news reports that people protesting the passage of the health care bill had shouted racial epithets at an African American congressman as he walked to the Capitol to case his vote. She’s talking, of course, about this event, as described by CNN: Three Democratic African-American lawmakers - including civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis of Georgia - said demonstrators against the health care bill yelled racist epithets at them as they walked past. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri said a protester spit at him. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, an openly gay Democrat, said protesters yelled anti-gay comments at him. It was a reprehensible moment when the screaming teabaggers who had descended upon the nation’s capital to demand that the government keeps its hands off their Medicare could not resist the temptation to yell bigoted epithets at members of Congress. It was so reprehensible, in fact, that even some House Republicans kind of, sort of, denounced it. But, according to Sarah’s investigative digging, the incident never happened. Because no one caught it on video, and no one ever took up Andrew Breitbart’s offer of “huge cash rewards” to anyone who had proof of the incident. However, even though the incident obviously never happened, according to Sarah: But a lack of evidence hasn’t stopped liberal activists and their allies in the media from repeatedly accusing patriotic Americans at Tea Party rallies and elsewhere of being racists. Those accusations of racism, of course, have nothing at all to do with videos of people at Tea Party rallies complaining that Obama is “too black.” Or with the chairman of the Tea Party Express mocking the NAACP : Last night, the proud Tea Partier wrote a blog post mocking NAACP president Benjamin Jealous.  The post takes the form of a fake letter to Abraham Lincoln, in which Jealous asks the former president to repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments (and to reinstate slavery) because the “coloreds” don’t agree with the Tea Party’s version of “freedom.” Oh, and then there was that one time that screaming teabaggers who had descended upon the nation’s capital to demand that the government keeps its hands off their Medicare could not resist the temptation to yell bigoted epithets at members of Congress. It was so reprehensible, in fact, that even some House Republicans kind of, sort of, denounced it. But no one caught in on their phone, so that doesn’t count, and liberals should just shut up and stop calling the teabaggers names. After all, they just want their country back. 4. Martin Luther King, Jr. was her kind of black guy. Barack Obama is not Sarah’s kind of black guy. He has called for a “fundamental transformation” of the country — which is absurd, of course, because why would we need a fundamental transformation of a country that is already perfect? Besides, not only did the president and his wife attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church, which is indisputable proof that they do not love America, but the president appointed Eric Holder to be Attorney General. Mr. Holder is one of those liberals who dwells obsessively on America’s problems instead of trying to be constructive by thinking about how great the 1964 Civil Rights Act was. Such an America-hater. As Sarah explains, it’s a real shame that the president doesn’t understand that loving America “does not mean a rejection of our founding or a ‘fundamental transformation’ of who we are.” Fortunately, Sarah is here to educate the president by invoking someone he might not have heard of. Instead it means following, in part, the wisdom of the most powerful American voice for civil rights of the twentieth century, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Famously, Dr. King called not for a rejection of America’s founding principles, but for America to “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” Sarah well remembers being a student at Iditarod Elementary School, watching a film of Dr. King’s speech at the Washington Monument. It made her feel like a patriot. The conclusion she takes from her deep reflections on Dr. King’s true patriotism is: It’s a shame that not everyone wants to quote Dr. King these days. The shame isn’t that Dr. King’s dreams have yet to be fully realized. The shame isn’t that more people don’t try to live up to the ideals he espoused. The shame isn’t even that Sarah’s running mate in 2008, John McCain, voted against creating a Martin Luther King holiday . No, the shame is that more people don’t exploit Dr. King’s quotes, out of context, to make political points that completely contradict everything Dr. King fought and died for. Like Sarah. Sarah obviously got her Google on to prove that Dr. King, unlike Obama, actually loved America and thought it was just fine the way it was and needed no “fundamental transformations.” But apparently, her search didn’t turn up Dr. King’s address to the Southern Christian Leadership in 1967: So, I conclude by saying again today that we have a task and let us go out with a “divine dissatisfaction.” Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in adecent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality,integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied. Funny. It sure sounds like Sarah’s great hero spent a little time “dwelling obsessively” on America’s imperfections after all. If only he’d had Sarah around back then to tell him how unconstructive it was, imagine what he could have accomplished! Total Ronald Reagan references: 6

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Reading Palin so you don’t have to: The race ‘n stuff chapter

Selzer & Company for Bloomberg, 12/4-7, 1,000 adults. MoE 3.1%. Note that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama crush the two top GOP figures, George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, each of whom have net negative favorability ratings in the double digits, Bush by 18 and Palin by 24. The Democratic Party as a whole is +5 while the GOP is -5. The only matchup where the GOP does better on net favorables is Nancy Pelosi vs. John Boehner, but that’s just because most Americans have no idea who John Boehner is. Pelosi’s positive rating is actually a tiny bit higher than Boehner’s. And last but not least, notice that the tea party basically looks like a slightly less popular version of the Republican Party. It’s obviously become an extremely important force within GOP politics, but barely more than a third of the country views it favorably and it’s net rating is -4, virtually identical to that of the GOP. Bottom line? Americans still like Democrats and the Democratic Party more than Republicans and the Republican Party.

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Bloomberg poll: Dems viewed more favorably than GOP

Since Patrick Ewing’s retirement, the Knicks have gone from bad to comically absurd. It’s time for some competence in New York basketball — as opposed to another train wreck. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Thomas Alter: Knicks No Longer a Laughingstock

Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and wife Sarah, were in Washington this weekend to launch his U.S. book tour. The Browns were greeted by top politicos, global financial leaders and media types at a stately affair held at the Jefferson Hotel. The party was co-hosted by long-time friends Connie Milstein, owner of the Jefferson Hotel and her husband, J.C. de La Haye St. Hilaire, and Ted Greenberg & Tammy Haddad. Brown charmed the A-plus crowd, including the Obama Administration’s David and Susan Axelrod, Austan and Robin Goolsbee, Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley, Bill Burton and Laura Burton Capps, Stephanie Cutter, Bruce Reed, Eric Lesser and Katie McCormick Lelyveld, as he had a little fun describing his post PM life as well as giving his assessment of the global economy. Read More… More on Financial Crisis

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Gordon Brown’s D.C. Book Bash

Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R) said Sunday that Sarah Palin can’t win a nationwide run for the White House, and pointed to the fact that the former Alaska governor left mid-term as an impediment to her support. Read More… More on Elections 2012

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Sarah Palin Slammed By Former GOP Governor Christie Whitman As Not Presidential Material

The past five weeks have afforded us an avalanche of post-mortems for the recently completed election cycle. Today, let me add mine. It won’t sound like many you’ve read. Certainly, it won’t echo a lot of the “ascendant Republicans” or “center-right nation” bellowing being parroted by traditional media outlets. Both exit polling and conventional polling shows that the Republican brand name is still pretty damaged. Indeed, the most shocking exit poll finding , given the final results, was that the electorate had a lower opinion of Republicans (41/53) than Democrats (44/52). The guy that had the best read on the electorate, in that respect, was our polling partner Tom Jensen. Jensen, noted, in November of 2009 , that he was seeing Republicans dominating among voters who disapproved of both parties. His analysis, which seems to have fit well with what happened: voters who disliked both parties went Republican, on the prospect that a GOP candidate would be more likely to “shake things up” and provide changes. So, no, this won’t be a “woe are the Democrats” piece. But nor will it be a Kevin Bacon in Animal House -esque piece exhorting you to “remain calm…All is well!” Getting 63 House seats and a half-dozen Senate seats shot out from under you is nothing that can be minimized, especially when those losses are married with literally hundreds of state legislative seats that also switched hands. The election has to be humbling for Democrats, and requires some serious debate about where to go from here. But that, too, is not the subject matter for this piece. Today, in the name of going against the grain, let us celebrate three things about the just-completed elections. While the losses were both staggering and sobering, there are a few glimmers of silver lining that emerged from this cycle, believe it or not. 1. Stock up on popcorn–the GOP is still on track for a train wreck In the wake of November 2nd, the thing that surprised me was the relatively light amount of intraparty recriminations in the GOP. If that seems counterintuitive, given their huge gains, consider: the “establishment v. teabagger” civil war in the GOP might have cost the Republicans FOUR Senate seats. Three of them are fairly obvious: polling during the cycle confirmed that the GOP nominated three less-electable candidates in Ken Buck (CO), Sharron Angle (NV), and Christine O’Donnell (DE). So, instead of incoming GOP Senators Jane Norton, Danny Tarkanian, and Mike Castle, we get instead a trio of Democrats: Michael Bennet, Harry Reid, and Chris Coons. But there was a potential fourth casualty of the GOP civil war: Dino Rossi. Remember that the mid-August GOP primary in Washington State, turned fairly acrimonious at the last. You might recall, for example, that the tea party favorite that Rossi vanquished, Clint Didier, did not handle defeat well , pointedly and vocally refusing to endorse the victor. It is worth noting that nationally, the electorate skewed Republican. While Barack Obama won in 2008 by more than seven points, the 2010 exit polls showed an electorate that split evenly between Obama and McCain. But exit polls also show that such was not the case in Washington, where the margin was only a few points different between the 2010 exit polls and the actual results from 2008. Furthermore, while the conservative/liberal gap nationally exploded (from C+12 in 2008 to C+22 in 2010), it barely moved in Washington State (from C+5 in 2008 to C+6 in 2010). In a race as close as this one proved to be (52-48), it is possible that Didier’s contentious challenge was a difference-maker? Quite possibly. And, for Democrats, the good news is that there little to suggest that the GOP has set aside their self-destructive ways in advance of 2012. The confetti had barely been swept up from the 2010 midterms before a state senator began openly contemplating a primary challenge to the right of longtime Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN). Meanwhile, in Maine, Olympia Snowe has tacked to the right in an effort to avoid being Mike Castle’d, as well. But it might be for naught, apparently the Maine Tea Party is already crowing about having a conservative candidate waiting in the wings to offer a primary challenge to Snowe. And, friends, that isn’t even taking into account the pending presidential primary on the Republican side. Given the propensity for some of the biggest potential players in that particular contest for throwing elbows (Palin? Gingrich ?), the entertainment factor could be sky high. 2. Money matters, but it is not a guarantee of victory. On a number of levels, the most satisfying result on Election Night, for me, was the defeat of Republican Meg Whitman here in California. Aside from the obvious (she wouldn’t be my governor, nor would I have to see another damned TV ad for her campaign), there was a bigger factor. California seemed to be one of the few states impervious to the Republican wave, and Whitman may well have been the primary reason why. Make no mistake: her defeat was a resounding one. Her percentage of the vote (a tick under 41%) is the worst performance for a Republican in a gubernatorial election since 1998, and the second-worst since Jerry Brown’s last gubernatorial win…in 1978. Whitman’s campaign was an interesting case study. Historically, the presumption has been that if you win the money game, and you win the air war, you would win the election. Whitman’s historic act of self-promotion (which shattered…perhaps forever…every record for campaign spending in a statewide campaign) would seem to be tailored for victory, according to the classic presumptions about politics. ESPECIALLY in a year which seemed to favor the GOP on a macro-level. Instead, the opposite happened. The more Whitman saturated the airwaves, the worse she performed. She went from even money to a slight underdog by Labor Day. By October, she was a decided underdog. By November, she was left resorting to that classic rallying cry of the about-to-be-defeated: “the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day.” There were examples of this nationwide, although many of them did not necessarily favor the Democrats. There were multiple examples of this phenomenon in House races where comparably lightly-funded Republicans defeated Democratic incumbents. This is not unusual in wave elections, a fact I noted in July , when I warned that money alone does not hold back the tide of a typical wave election. But it is heartening to think that Whitman’s high-profile drubbing might dissuade future generations of gazillionaire dilettantes from trying to buy political office, seeing how her $160 million investment came up so memorably short. 3. Some of the most painful Dem defeats can pay dividends down the line This is arguably the most tarnished silver lining, but when you lose a few hundred seats, you take ‘em where you can get ‘em. When life gives you lemons, and all that… The size and nature of the Republican wave did usher in some GOP victors who would have been totally unelectable in a typical election cycle. The job for the Democrats now is to take those souls and make them the public face of the GOP from this point forward. And there are some great prospects. Sure, incoming Senator Rand Paul gets most of the attention, but what about someone like Ron Johnson, whose business career embodies the “smaller government, unless it is enriching me” philosophy? And sure, the GOP turnout surge in Florida to elect Marco Rubio got him elected, but that’s no reason not to make Medicare fraudster Rick Scott the face of the Florida GOP. And we won’t even delve into the peanut gallery that is the GOP’s freshman class in the House. Sure, it might not matter if Democratic enthusiasm continues to be suppressed. But one thing that can often resurrect enthusiasm is creating great villains. Therein lies one lesson of 2010 that the Democrats would do very well to learn.

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The (few) silver linings of Election 2010

The United States is a story we tell ourselves. When we salute the flag, or say we love “our country,” or proclaim that something can happen “only in America,” we’re not declaring our infatuation with some obscure bit of regulation or the synergistic effects of our economy. It’s the story we like. Our lives are made up of such stories. There are few children so underwhelming that their parents don’t think them extraordinary, few parents so abusive as to go unloved, few nations so corrupt that their citizens don’t view them as the jewel in the world’s crown. We’re not all brought up on the same version of the land of opportunity / light of the world / home of rugged individuals / city on the hill / hard working / pioneer story. Some come flavored with more Pilgrims, less melting pot. Others have more than a dash of how they are ruining our country, right from the opening lines. A little more Fistful of Dollars , a little less Dances with Wolves . Whatever our idea of the story, when someone ventures an opinion — or worse yet, waves a fact — that damages the core of that story, we get angry. After all, we’re the good guys. It’s not surprising then that for many people, and many media outlets, the story of WikiLeaks is a simple one. In this tale, a secretive, malicious, foreign organization fronted by a sex-fiend egomaniac has released — “dumped” is the preferred term — massive amounts of information that have put soldiers and agents at risk, while harming our relations to other nations. So it’s land of the free and home of the brave on one side, anonymous cowards fronted by malicious ass on the other. It’s no wonder then that some — mostly, but not exclusively conservatives — have demanded that WikiLeaks be labeled a terrorist organization. Commentary from supposedly responsible parties has compared Julian Assange with Osama bin Laden and calls have gone out for his extradition, persecution, or even assassination. The most commonly provided reason for all this animosity is that WikiLeaks’ massive data distribution represents a serious threat to both our military and diplomatic missions. These releases have tended to show the United States not so much as tough-yet-huggable force of unflinching good, but as a pragmatic, blunt, often tactless force for it’s own good, even when that meant that other peoples were left with the short end of the stick. In other words, the United States was caught acting in the interest of the United States and showing not a lot of concern or respect for others. Does this damage our ability to conduct diplomacy with the nations involved? Not according to Robert Gates. I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think — I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. If Gates is not put off by either the contents or the volume of the WikiLeaks releases, others surely are. After all, we’re talking more than 250,000 diplomatic cables thrown out without context, without a chance for review, and without concern for who could be hurt. This isn’t journalism, it’s sabotage! And if any of that was true, some of those fulminating against WikiLeaks might have a case. As it is, the total number of cables released is actually a bit over 1,000. Julian Assange may not be a journalist, but nearly all of the released documents first appeared in newspapers that are working with WikiLeaks, and many of these documents were redacted expressly to protect the identity of individuals not already in the public eye. In fact, as Director Gates has acknowledged, much of the information involved in the released documents was already available to the public. So if documents released do not damage our diplomatic positions, if they tell us nothing we didn’t already know about way the United States shoves around other players at the world table, if the documents themselves are nothing special — if the story isn’t threatened — why has there been such an outcry? Why have both governments and corporations been pressured to pull WikiLeaks access to the Internet, to close down their servers, block government workers from reading the documents, hound journalists who publish the information, and arrest those involved? To see why, let’s look at another story from the other side of the world. On October 16, a man named Li Qiming drove a luxury car across a college campus in the Chinese city of Baoding. In the process, he struck two female students, one of whom died. Qiming did not stop. When complaints were made, he warned his accusers that he was the son of an official — and complained about how the two girls he had run over had scratched his paint. He fully expected his father’s connections with the government to protect him. However, despite the restrictions China places on the Internet, locals were able to direct so much attention to the story that Qiming was prosecuted. Soon more information appeared on the Internet showing how both father and son had become wealthy abusing their positions. That action has spread, and what’s being called “Li Gang Gate” (yes, even in China they apparently use “gate” as a substitute for “scandal”) has spread nationwide and focused attention on a growing number of abusive officials and their families. What does this have to do with WikiLeaks? It’s not the same story at all. But then, WikiLeaks isn’t about the details of the story. It’s about who gets to be the storyteller. In the traditional view (as outline by Dick Cheney), nations are sovereigns. And as sovereigns they’re subject to the control of… well, nothing and nobody. At least nothing short of the forceful action of another sovereign. Think of them as a race of giants, stomping around the world, swinging swords and clubs. That they occasionalyl stomp across individuals isn’t just forgivable, it’s inconsequential. Like Li Qiming, they’re more concerned about the damage to their paint jobs than the effects on the little people they run over. The government, and conservatives in particular, are concerned about WikiLeaks because you believe them . In an age where you know for certain that the view of the world you get from the government is not just filled with, but utterly dependent on “spin” (in other words, narrative) you can’t be allowed to see the story without it. It’s perfectly fine for the sovereigns to feed their citizens a story filled with invisible weapons as a justification for war, torture, the murder of millions and and the expenditure of trillions. It’s not fine for you to call them on it. Just as with the story out of China, WikiLeaks shows how the ability to disseminate information broadly and quickly threatens not the details of the story, but the overall plot. It’s not that the contents of the WikiLeaks documents threatens US diplomatic efforts, it’s that the existence of organizations like WikiLeaks and the increasing ability of individuals to counter “official” information threatens the ability of sovereigns to continue defining the core of their own story. The giants have discovered that the individuals underfoot have created grappling hooks and lines. Worse, they have their own pens and paper. The sovereigns are very, very concerned about that. And what they’ll do to make sure the pen stays in their over-sized hands is… anything at all. References Letter from Peter King to Eric Holder Sarah Palin on WikiLeaks Robert Gates full interview Li Gang Gate

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WikiLeaks information isn’t important, but WikiLeaks is

What do the following have in common? “Death panels”, “The Party of No!”, “Save Social Security,” government bail outs, Sarah Palin’s latest gaffe, the Birther Movement, WikiLeaks, earmarks, “Death Taxes”, opinion polls, “Don’t Touch My Junk!”, “dropping babies”, Wall Street bonuses, “socialism,” and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. Despite their seeming diversity, they all share one thing: these topics and the seemingly endless coverage they get in the media distract us from things that matter much more to the long-term strength of our society. Some of the distractions have no or very little basis in truth - the health care reform package never proposed or included panels that would decide if you got life-saving medical care. Some of them are factually grounded - Wall Street bonuses are real and can be counted. Many of the distractions raise truly legitimate concerns - WikiLeaks may well do damage to our foreign affairs. But they are distractions nonetheless in that they are blips on the public policy screen which stir the emotions but do little to help us deal with more substantive, underlying problems. None of them will come close to addressing our budget deficit, long-term debt, unemployment, economic growth, educational challenges, environmental degradation, infrastructure needs and the threat of terrorism or war. Distractions in our private lives can be useful things. NCAA football, Dancing with the Stars, Harry Potter, the lottery - they all amuse, engage, and offer relief from the stress of daily life. Political distractions in our public lives can be fun, of course, as they merge entertainment with politics. But attending a Glenn Beck or Jon Stewart rally, while not a bad way to spend an afternoon, should not be confused with meaningful work on public issues. Read More…

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Terry Newell: Distractions

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press. The 2008 vice presidential candidate was a guest of Rev. Franklin Graham, whose aid group works in the impoverished country. Haiti is facing a brutal cholera epidemic while struggling with an electoral crisis and reconstruction from the January earthquake. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Sarah Palin Visits Haiti: Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Attends Franklin Graham Meeting

Leahy’s statement comes as the streets of Haiti are in chaos over a disputed election plagued by fraud, voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and violence. Read More…

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Georgianne Nienaber: Senator Leahy Calls for Freeze on Haiti Aid, Clinton Silent, Palin Visits Camps

Sarah Palin sees “death panels” — this time in the recommendations of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform for reducing the debt. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal , Palin rails against the commission’s findings , particularly because they bother to consider the current health care law in its analysis. The report even paves a way for the possible future implementation of the public option, Palin says, of which she is not a fan. Particularly worrisome for Palin is the possibility of the creation of the Independent Payments Advisory Board, a potential “death panel,” she writes: Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Sarah Palin Conjures ‘Death Panels’ — Again

Sen. John Thune is not the first Republican to say it, just the most recent–the tax cuts for the wealthy don’t have to be paid for or offset. Aid to the millions of American workers who’ve lost their jobs through no fault of their own, however, well, we just can’t afford to help them . [O]n Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show last night, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) joined DeMint and Palin, saying “we need” to pay for unemployment benefits, while completely ignoring the cost of the Bush tax cuts: HANNITY: What do you think of what Jim DeMint and Governor Palin had said about this that, you know, we need to extend unemployment. We can’t do it without funding it. Number two, we don’t need temporary economy. We don’t need temporary tax rates, businesses need to look five, 10 years down the road. What do you think of that criticism? THUNE: I don’t disagree with any of that. … But I do agree with what Senator DeMint is saying and that is we need to try and come up with a way to pay for this $55 billion extension of unemployment benefits. We will be offering amendments in the Senate to do just that . Unemployment benefits have never, in the history of the program, been paid for out of other general funds. Like war funding, they fall into emergency funding–the price of keeping money flowing to the unemployed in a down economy. No other Congress has refused to do extend these benefits. As TP notes in this story, Thune won’t be offering up any amendments to pay for the $700 billion in tax cut extensions. That’s “fiscal conservatism” in GOP speak.

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Thune: Unemployment benefits have to be paid for, tax cuts don’t

President Obama, who has been called “the most tech-savvy president,” has over six million Twitter followers and more than 17 million people are “fans” of the president’s Facebook page . However, a large audience is not necessarily an active audience. Though fewer than 640,000 Facebook users have “Liked” former President George W. Bush’s Facebook page , these users tend to interact more with posts than fans of Obama’s page do, according to a new report. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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George W. Bush’s Facebook Fans More Engaged Than Obama’s (REPORT)

So Sarah Palin shot a caribou on her lousy reality show. Killed it, butchered it, and stuck in her freezer. This is one of the least offensive things that Palin has done in the course of her political career. And yet it has Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin up in arms. In a hilarious and widely read rant on our beloved Huffington Post , he tears into Palin for making a critter snuff film: Like 95% of the people I know, I don’t have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don’t relish the idea of torturing animals. I don’t enjoy the fact that they’re dead and I certainly don’t want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn’t do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart. Well, bully for you, Mr. Sorkin. But it doesn’t much matter to a dead animal how you felt about butchering it. It’s just as dead. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Pandora Young: Aaron Sorkin Misses The Mark On Animal Rights

South Dakota Senator and potential presidential candidate John Thune suggested Wednesday that his fellow conservative heavyweights Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Sarah Palin shouldn’t expect to be able to craft better tax cut bargain for the GOP considering the current makeup of Congress and the White House. DeMint and Palin have both announced their opposition to the current deal as drawn out by Obama this week, because they believe the minimal increases to the death tax and the two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthy are not sufficient concessions to justify the reauthorization of unemployment benefits for 13 months. Asked about their opposition on Fox News Wednesday night, Thune said he understood their apprehension, but that they should accept the current structure of the plan because it’s as good as they’re going to get. Read More… More on Fox News

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John Thune: Better Tax Cut Deal For Republicans ‘Not Likely To Happen’ (VIDEO)

From bones in burgers to beef french fries , McDonalds has faced its fair share of product-related lawsuits over the years. But a recent case brought by a Chicago customer suggests that some of the company’s employees may have an attitude problem, as well. In a suit filed Wednesday in Cook County Circuit Court, Sarah Thienes alleges that, while ordering from the drive-thru early one morning, a Golden Arches worker denied her a cheeseburger in an “aggressive and unfriendly tone” because only the breakfast menu was available. She changed her request to a bagel sandwich with ham, and said staffer replied in an equally hostile manner that she could only have bacon. Thienes was then greeted by a nasty surprise when she pulled up to the drive-thru window: The disgruntled employee stuck his head outside, screamed, and spat right in her face. Read More… More on Fast Food

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McDonalds Sued After Worker Spits On Customer

Maybe it was the spirit of Christmas Future that this week spurred former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to unload on potential “insolvent states.” Because those like California failed to heed her warnings that President Obama’s economic stimulus “was equivalent to a federal bribe with fat strings attached,” she posted on Facebook, there is now talk of failing states and bailouts from Washington, D.C. — something that hasn’t happened since the Great Depression. If only the other states had followed Alaska’s lead — added Palin or her ghostwriter. There is really no way to know who exactly wrote what — Palin or her staff — on Palin’s Facebook page, which the half-term, ex-governor uses to push her public policy agenda to millions. Alaska, it was posted on Facebook, knew how to manage a budget back when Palin was governor and “ran a surplus because we incentivized [sic] businesses, I didn’t spend it on fun and glamorous pet projects for lawmakers — though that would have made me quite popular with the earmark crowd. In fact, I vetoed more excessive spending than any governor in our state’s history, and I used the state’s surplus to bring our financial house in order… ” Earmarks are government expenditures dictated by the legislative branch of government instead of the executive branch. Alaska’s legislature doesn’t do earmarks, which left some legislators wondering about Palin’s earmarks comment. More baffling, though, was the reference to “incentivized businesses.” As governor, Palin did start in motion a reduction in the business license fee from $100 to $50, but the old $100 fee wasn’t exactly hampering commerce. And besides, everyone in Alaska knows precisely where Palin’s huge budgetary surplus came from. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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AlaskaDispatch.com: Palin’s Record vs. Palin’s Facebook

JUNEAU, Alaska — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin plans to visit Haiti amid a period of political upheaval this weekend to aid humanitarian efforts in the Caribbean country. A Palin staffer confirmed Thursday that Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee and a potential 2012 presidential contender, planned to travel to Haiti with the Rev. Franklin Graham as part of the outreach of his Samaritan’s Purse relief organization. Read More… More on Haiti Earthquake

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Sarah Palin Headed To Haiti

The pro-WikiLeaks hacker group Anonymous has launched a cyber-attack that successfully disabled PayPal’s API, taking down the website api.paypal.com . Anonymous launched a campaign, Operation Payback, targeting “major anti-piracy & anti-freedom entities.” MasterCard, Visa, Amazon, Joe Lieberman, and Sarah Palin are among those who have been victim to cyberattacks launched by the activist hacker group. “Target is: api.paypal.com _Status: seems to be down Instructions: http://pastehtml.com/view/1c8i33u.html #ddos #payback #wikileaks,” Anonymous’ Operation Payback Twitter account, @Op_Payback , tweeted at around 1PM ET. Read More… More on Wikileaks

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Pro-WikiLeaks Hackers’ Latest Target: PayPal Goes Down

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger Dr. Kenneth Katz recently published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Health Hazards of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” This week, he penned an op/ed for RH Reality Check about his experiences treating U.S. military at an STD clinic in San Diego. Dr. Katz sees the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” rule for LGB members of the military as a huge roadblock to good medical care. He’s pretty confident that his military patients feel safe divulging their sexual histories to a civilian doctor like himself. But when those troops go overseas, they are cared for by military doctors. Technically, doctor-patient communication is exempt from DADT, but many patients don’t realize that they can tell their military doctors about gay sex without fear of reprisals (at least in theory). Dr. Katz’s patients have told him that they won’t go for recommended follow-up STD screening after they ship out because they’re afraid to be honest with their doctors. He worries about how many troops are suffering from treatable infections in war zones because they aren’t allowed to serve openly. Food stamp use skyrockets, swordfish sales unaccountably flat Monica Potts of TAPPED points to the alarming statistic that in the last month alone an additional 500,000 Americans went on food stamps. She notes that the right wing website Daily Caller is alarmed not by the fact that fellow citizens can’t afford food, but rather that there’s no gruel-only foodstamp program available: Meanwhile, the conservative news site The Daily Caller is shocked , shocked , to learn that you can use food stamps to buy all manner of food . The government, apparently, doesn’t restrict you from purchasing an $18-per-pound swordfish steak from Whole Foods. But that kind of discovery, like almost everything else in the “debate” over food stamp use, is the sort of ridiculous one that comes from a person who’s never been hungry. The Hyde Amendment In Campus Progress, Jessica Arons and Madina Agénor call for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment for being an assault on the reproductive rights of poor women and women of color. The Supreme Court declared abortion to be a constitutional right in 1973, yet nearly 40 years later, the Hyde Amendment still prohibits nearly all federal funding for abortions. In practice, the women most affected by the Hyde Amendment are those who depend on government health care programs like Medicaid and the Indian Health Service: Former U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), the law’s sponsor, admitted during debate of his proposal that he was targeting poor women because they were the only ones vulnerable enough for him to reach. “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman,” he said. “Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the … Medicaid bill.” Meanwhile, ultra-conservative Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is calling on Congress to de-fund the reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood , Andy Birkey reports in the Minnesota Independent. In an interview with a conservative news site, Bachmann doubled down on that idea, suggesting that all of health care reform be de-funded because it funds abortions. This is not true. The aforementioned Hyde Amendment guarantees as much. Furthermore, even though health reform never would have funded abortions, President Obama signed an eleventh-hour executive order guaranteeing that health care reform would not fund abortions. Brooklyn bees gorge on maraschino cherry run-off Home beekeeping is the hottest new trend for health-conscious locavores. New York City recently changed the law to accommodate beekeepers in the five boroughs. Just because you live in an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn is no reason to miss out on this sweet action, right? Well, actually, there is a catch. That nice honey at the farmers’ market tastes like lavender because that’s what those rural bees ate. What do bees in Red Hook, Brooklyn eat? Run-off from a maraschino cherry factory. The overindulgent bees ” look like vampires ” according to one local keeper and their honey runs bright red. Maraschino honey sounds like a delicious mash-up of high and low culture. Unfortunately, Sarah Goodyear reports in Grist that the end product doesn’t taste nearly as good as it looks. Arthur Mondella, the owner of Dell’s Maraschino Cherries , wants to do right by the beekeepers. He initially suggested putting out vats of different colored syrup to “help” the bees make rainbow honey. His proposal was not well-received by the crunchy set. Instead, he has agreed to work with the beekeepers to keep the bees out of the vats next year. Read More… More on Health Care Reform

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The Media Consortium: Weekly Pulse: DADT, Vampire Bees, and Other Hazards to Your Health

You weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun … I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Aaron Sorkin: Sarah Palin, The Phony Pioneer Girl, Killing Animals For Fun

Sarah Palin’s shot at Let’s Move! , First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign, during a recent talk radio appearance came off as another example of the Alaskan’s instinct for the controversial. She’s against discouraging kids from over-indulging in unhealthy foods and vegetating in front of the screen? What’s up with that? Palin’s attack on government for encouraging kids to eat and live more healthily is not about whether junior should polish off another sack of fries. It is about whether Mrs. Obama, in Palin’s words, “…cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children.” Palin tells the First Lady to “leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions….” Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Rob Shepardson: Does It Take a Village To Overcome Obesity?

Failed Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell reeled in an impressive $7.3 million in her insurgent campaign that brought her past establishment favorite Rep. Mike Castle, only to fall to Democrat Chris Coons in November. According to a report from Roll Call , however, the Tea Party favorite saved lots of money to fend off lawsuits. The paper reports that O’Donnell was preparing for “the same type of campaign-related suits that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) often complained of.” O’Donnell certainly managed to run an effective campaign in terms of fundraising, a recent report by the Associated Press also found: Read More… More on Tea Party

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Christine O’Donnell Saved Big Money To Prepare For Lawsuits

She might run for president. She says she could beat Obama. And now Sarah Palin’s obligatory I-might-run-for-president book, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag , has finally been released, so the world can better understand what a Palin presidency would mean. Let’s dive in, shall we? In her Introduction, Sarah explains “central political struggle facing America today.” It’s not about tax cuts. It’s not about energy independence (she’s an expert, you know). It’s not about whether we should stand with ” our North Korean allies .” No, the central political struggle is the war between the “hand-painted, homemade signs” of the teabaggers versus the “professionally printed signs” expressing the “gripes of Washington special interest groups” held by “hired stooges.” In short, the people holding the uniformly printed signs have their hands out; Washington is spending away our kids’ future and they still want more. But the people holding the handmade signs are the ones paying the bills. If the mainstream media wasn’t busy insinuating that they’re all racists and haters, it would have to ackknowledge this fact. So the media keeps the coverage based on these patriots’ motives. But what these good, honest Americans are asking for isn’t ugly and dangerous. It’s right there, on their signs and their flags and their faces, young and old and black and white: They want their country back. Implicitly, then, a top priority for President Palin would be setting the record straight that the people who wave their signs at teabagger rallies are not “racists and haters”; they’re just regular people who want their country back from the Kenyan-born Muslim socialist terrorist who stole the election with the help of ACORN and George Soros so that he and his America-hating wife could implement their wicked socialist scheme to destroy America by making kids eat healthy food and get some exercise once in a while. What’s wrong with that? You’ll also learn, in the first pages of Sarah’s book, that: The best way to prove you “love your freedom” is to wave an American flag and chant “USA! USA!” Her Uncle Ron and Aunt Kate represent “normal Americans” who love America because of their involvement with the Tea Party. Calvin Coolidge was one of the best — or at least most quotable — presidents. Ronald Reagan was awesome. So awesome that she mentions him three times in her Introduction. We also learn that the Constitution, as originally written, is perfect. America is perfect. The only problem that people like her normal, America-loving aunt and uncle face is the destructive policies of the current administration. For example: When times are uncertain–when we’re worried about the direction our country is headed in, as we are today–we can always turn to these fundamental principles. Truth be told, they’re old ideas, not just the notion that our government should be limited, but also that all men and women are equal before the law; that life is sacred; and that God is the source of our rights, not government. Of course, Sarah conveniently skips over the fact that the Constitution, as originally written, did not state that “men and women are equal before the law.” You’d think a woman who has spent the better part of the year claiming to lead a new feminist movement might point out that women were quite explicitly un equal before the law. But then, Sarah’s “feminism” only emerges when it’s convenient for her. Like, say, when the media challenges her mistruths, misstatements, flip-flopping, or straight up incoherence. Then, she’s a warrior against sexism. When a woman is physically assaulted at a Rand Paul rally? Crickets. When it comes to ensuring equal pay for equal work? She’s more concerned with protecting businesses from lawsuits. When it comes to healthcare for women and children? She’s virulently opposed. Maybe that’s why when it comes to women’s health, the overwhelming majority of American women don’t trust Sarah Palin . But maybe she’ll get to that in Chapter One.

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Reading Palin so you don’t have to: Introduction

Kathy Griffin showed off her starvation body in a bikini at the VH1 Divas Salute the Troops concert Friday night, and during her opening monologue she called Bristol Palin fat. “She’s the only contestant in the history of the show to actually gain weight,” Kathy said of Bristol’s long run on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ as the troops loudly booed. “No, come on, come on,” she continued. “She gained like 30 pounds a week, I swear to God, it was fantastic. She’s like the white Precious.” Read More… More on Bristol Palin

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Kathy Griffin On Bristol Palin’s Weight: ‘She’s Like The White Precious’ (VIDEO)

Big names in comedy and music hit the red carpet and took the stage over the weekend: on Saturday, comedians like Russell Brand came out to celebrate Variety’s “Power of Comedy” at Club Nokia, and on Sunday celebrities like James Marsden, Jessica Alba and Emma Stone made appearances at the Trevor Project’s annual “Trevor LIVE” show at the Hollywood Palladium. Also on Sunday, radio station KIIS FM held its annual Jingle Ball, where artists like B.o.B., Enrique Iglesias, and Selena Gomez performed for a festive crowd. A few stars like Katy Perry, Sarah Silverman, and Justin Long even made multiple appearances during this weekend’s events, so check out the slideshow to see who was where. Read More…

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Out And About This Weekend: ‘Power Of Comedy,’ ‘Trevor LIVE,’ And KIIS FM’s Jingle Ball

Newly-uncovered information from WikiLeaks seems to provide irrefutable proof of what many have long suspected: that nobody in the U.S. government gives two royal craps about anyone. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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James Napoli: WikiLeaks: U.S. Government More Distraught About Netflix Restructuring Than Plight of Working Poor

Dial down the deafening Sarah Palin buzz for just a moment: The most consequential decision in the 2012 Republican presidential sweepstakes could be whether Mike Huckabee decides to run again - and associates say the former Arkansas governor may well take the plunge. Read More… More on Elections 2012

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Mike Huckabee Could Be A Force In 2012, But Wants Some Respect In Pervading Presidential Buzz

In his book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness , Mitt Romney proclaims his fealty to American Exceptionalism, an idea quickly becoming an article of faith among the right. For Romney, this idea is not about American values but about maintaining a large, lethal, and expansive American military and foreign policy. Sarah Palin also displayed her faith in American Exceptionalism in recent days, pointing to it as the basic rationale for her political beliefs. She even gives it a chapter in her new book, America By Heart . From the chapter entitled “America the Exceptional,” she says of her opponents: They don’t believe we have a special message for the world or a special mission to preserve our greatness for the betterment of not just ourselves but all of humanity. Astonishingly, President Obama even said that he believes in American exceptionalism in the same way “the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Which is to say, he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism at all. He seems to think it is just a kind of irrational prejudice in favor of our way of life. To me, that is appalling. What is “American Exceptionalism” and why is it so important to those on the right that American presidents believe in it? A perusal of various writings on the subject leads in various directions, but essentially it comes down to a belief that we Americans are better than everyone else. Perhaps the best description is from this Wiki on the matter: A key theme is the claim that the United States and its people differ from other nations, at least on a historical basis, as an association of people who came from numerous places throughout the world but who hold a common bond in standing for certain self-evident truths, like freedom, inalienable natural and human rights, democracy, republicanism, the rule of law, civil liberty, civic virtue, the common good, fair play, private property, and Constitutional government. Any American willing to take an honest look at America of 2010 would have hard time reconciling American Exceptionalism with reality. For while we should certainly take pride in our centuries-old experiment in representative democracy, one cannot deny that we have managed to make those virtues not so exceptional. We have largely succeeded in exporting them around the world. In 1900, not even the United States would have been considered a democracy by today’s standards. There was not a single sovereign democracy in the entire world. But by 2000, there were more than 100. That meant over 63 percent of the world’s population lived in a society where belief in American civic values was common. How can one be exceptional in a world where such beliefs are so widely held? Every major nation that has contributed to the vast majority of America’s population is now a democracy except China. Britain. Ireland. Italy. Germany. France. Holland. Nigeria. Ghana. Mexico. Japan. Poland. The nations of Scandinavia. One could go on and on. Clearly, America is not special in this regard because far too many countries have the same things we do. In fact, there is a good argument that some of the older European nations have become even more free than we are due to our ever-expanding national security/police state apparatus. One need only look at our prison statistics as evidence. If we aren’t special because we are one of many democracies, is there anything about the results of our civic values that makes us more special or better than everyone else? A handy little tool to investigate this matter is nationmaster.com which maintains a huge database of country statistics. If we are special and better, it should be that case that statistical evidence should back up this view. But, sadly, on a number of fronts we are clearly not exceptional. We are #8 in per capita GDP. We are #17 in lowest political corruption. We’re not even #1 in “freedom of decision making.” That honor goes to Finland. Nationmaster.com lists a litany of national statistics that are much worse for us, some better. Insisting, however, that we are somehow running the table on being special or unique isn’t backed up by the facts. Notably, if we strictly measure our greatness in terms of military lethality, we are certainly the most powerful and capable nation in the world. What “American Exceptionalism” means for Sarah Palin is, essentially, robust flag waving. It does not involve taking steps to see to it that American become #1 in this or that particular statistic. Those facts are not used in factoring America’s greatness by her reckoning. Does it matter much that America go around the world telling everyone else to be like us, since we’ve largely won that argument? We won it even though the current results are not exactly compelling. No president, Palin or otherwise, can make a compelling case for American education, financial regulation, or the quality of the free press. In fact, Palin would probably be the last person to advocate for the exceptional state of America’s press. What matters, appropriately for Palin , is spirited cheerleading. Essentially, she wants Barack Obama, or any other president, to spend a lot of time saying, “We’re awesome!” And he or she had better believe it, too! Palin’s problem is that she doesn’t want America to actually be #1. Rather, her problem is that she thinks it is sufficient to merely believe it and cheer it. We just had a cheerleader as president and it didn’t work out so well. When you get down to it, what we really need to be talking about isn’t America’s greatness, but America’s spirit. People feel down about the country and uncertain about the future. A substantial majority of the country feels we are on the wrong track . We could use a national pep talk. If not that, perhaps a friendly, reassuring fireside chat . There is something to be said for a president who inspires confidence and optimism in the midst of tough times. But to make America number one again, to be able to wave the flag with pride and facts, we don’t need cheerleading. We need action.

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We don’t need more cheerleading in America

In his book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness , Mitt Romney proclaims his fealty to American Exceptionalism, an idea quickly becoming an article of faith among the right. For Romney, this idea is not about American values but about maintaining a large, lethal, and expansive American military and foreign policy. Sarah Palin also displayed her faith in American Exceptionalism in recent days, pointing to it as the basic rationale for her political beliefs. She even gives it a chapter in her new book, America By Heart . From the chapter entitled “America the Exceptional,” she says of her opponents: They don’t believe we have a special message for the world or a special mission to preserve our greatness for the betterment of not just ourselves but all of humanity. Astonishingly, President Obama even said that he believes in American exceptionalism in the same way “the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Which is to say, he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism at all. He seems to think it is just a kind of irrational prejudice in favor of our way of life. To me, that is appalling. What is “American Exceptionalism” and why is it so important to those on the right that American presidents believe in it? A perusal of various writings on the subject leads in various directions, but essentially it comes down to a belief that we Americans are better than everyone else. Perhaps the best description is from this Wiki on the matter: A key theme is the claim that the United States and its people differ from other nations, at least on a historical basis, as an association of people who came from numerous places throughout the world but who hold a common bond in standing for certain self-evident truths, like freedom, inalienable natural and human rights, democracy, republicanism, the rule of law, civil liberty, civic virtue, the common good, fair play, private property, and Constitutional government. Any American willing to take an honest look at America of 2010 would have hard time reconciling American Exceptionalism with reality. For while we should certainly take pride in our centuries-old experiment in representative democracy, one cannot deny that we have managed to make those virtues not so exceptional. We have largely succeeded in exporting them around the world. In 1900, not even the United States would have been considered a democracy by today’s standards. There was not a single sovereign democracy in the entire world. But by 2000, there were more than 100. That meant over 63 percent of the world’s population lived in a society where belief in American civic values was common. How can one be exceptional in a world where such beliefs are so widely held? Every major nation that has contributed to the vast majority of America’s population is now a democracy except China. Britain. Ireland. Italy. Germany. France. Holland. Nigeria. Ghana. Mexico. Japan. Poland. The nations of Scandinavia. One could go on and on. Clearly, America is not special in this regard because far too many countries have the same things we do. In fact, there is a good argument that some of the older European nations have become even more free than we are due to our ever-expanding national security/police state apparatus. One need only look at our prison statistics as evidence. If we aren’t special because we are one of many democracies, is there anything about the results of our civic values that makes us more special or better than everyone else? A handy little tool to investigate this matter is nationmaster.com which maintains a huge database of country statistics. If we are special and better, it should be that case that statistical evidence should back up this view. But, sadly, on a number of fronts we are clearly not exceptional. We are #8 in per capita GDP. We are #17 in lowest political corruption. We’re not even #1 in “freedom of decision making.” That honor goes to Finland. Nationmaster.com lists a litany of national statistics that are much worse for us, some better. Insisting, however, that we are somehow running the table on being special or unique isn’t backed up by the facts. Notably, if we strictly measure our greatness in terms of military lethality, we are certainly the most powerful and capable nation in the world. What “American Exceptionalism” means for Sarah Palin is, essentially, robust flag waving. It does not involve taking steps to see to it that American become #1 in this or that particular statistic. Those facts are not used in factoring America’s greatness by her reckoning. Does it matter much that America go around the world telling everyone else to be like us, since we’ve largely won that argument? We won it even though the current results are not exactly compelling. No president, Palin or otherwise, can make a compelling case for American education, financial regulation, or the quality of the free press. In fact, Palin would probably be the last person to advocate for the exceptional state of America’s press. What matters, appropriately for Palin , is spirited cheerleading. Essentially, she wants Barack Obama, or any other president, to spend a lot of time saying, “We’re awesome!” And he or she had better believe it, too! Palin’s problem is that she doesn’t want America to actually be #1. Rather, her problem is that she thinks it is sufficient to merely believe it and cheer it. We just had a cheerleader as president and it didn’t work out so well. When you get down to it, what we really need to be talking about isn’t America’s greatness, but America’s spirit. People feel down about the country and uncertain about the future. A substantial majority of the country feels we are on the wrong track . We could use a national pep talk. If not that, perhaps a friendly, reassuring fireside chat . There is something to be said for a president who inspires confidence and optimism in the midst of tough times. But to make America number one again, to be able to wave the flag with pride and facts, we don’t need cheerleading. We need action.

Go here to see the original: 
We don’t need more cheerleading in America

Disappointments. Failures. Lost opportunities, and lost elections. None of it mattered. For whatever reason–call it relentless optimism, perhaps–I half-expected that even after the midterms, things would be better, from the point of view of political strategy. I half-expected the cadre of people in the White House and the lame ducks in Congress to realize that they had preemptively conceded, negotiated and triangulated themselves all the way to some staggering midterm losses, and that maybe a change of pace was in order. I half expected those same people to realize that if we are to avoid President Palin, or Romney, or Huckabee, or even Pence or Thune, that the process or re-engaging allies who had grown somewhat less than enthusiastic ought to be on the agenda. We didn’t get that. We got the opposite instead. We got a so-called Deficit Reduction Commission that adjourned without even proposing a recommendation because its slavish devotion to cutting Social Security benefits and shifting the tax burden even further onto the middle class was too much for the liberals to take. And the President did come out aggressively pushing for something. Unfortunately, that something just happened to be an anti-growth, anti-middle class freeze in cost of living adjustments for federal employees, all in the name of deficit reduction. Now, it’s not my typical style to be this blunt, especially regarding a sitting Democratic President–but the proposed COLA freeze, along with the attempted mobilization of Organizing For America to promote it, has to count among the most tone-deaf moves this Administration has made heretofore. But it, as well as the nonbinding proposals of the Deficit Commission, indicate quite clearly that the era of shared sacrifice is at an end, and that we are beginning to enter an era of corporate-based plutocratic neofeudalism. After all, if a Democratic administration with a sweeping mandate and a huge organizing base, combined with Democratic Congressional majorities the likes of which will not be seen again in some time, cannot slow–much less reverse–the gradual shifting of the burden of taxation onto an ever-shrinking middle class, then who can? I don’t relish coming to this conclusion. I try not to be a nattering nabob of negativity. But facts have to be submitted to a candid world. 8ackgr0und N015e recently recently posted a diary with a startling graphic and a shocking conclusion: The figure running down the page shows the 50 largest American corporations (based on market capitalization).  The green bars show the cash on hand.  The red bars show the debt.  The companies are sorted based on the amount of cash they have on hand, in descending order. Scroll down the page and you will see virtually all of the names are ones you recognize.  That makes sense.  These are huge corporations that dominate the global economy.  That’s why they are household names.   Added together, these companies hold about $3.7 TRILLION dollars in cash.  That is a little more than the entire United States government spent last year.  In other words, these 50 companies have enough cash to do everything the federal government did last year, and still have $500 Billion left over.  That includes fighting two wars. Included in that total is the largest corporate cash hoard of any US company: $800 billion for Goldman Sachs. Just to put $800 billion in perspective: in $100 bills, that amount of money would form a stack nearly 543 miles high. If accumulation of even more wealth in the hands of the wealthy truly did create jobs, then Goldman Sachs would be restoring prosperity to the American economy on its lonesome by now. Corporate profits are growing at a record pace , and the stock market is in fine shape as well these days. And despite that, the only fiscal remedies deemed acceptable by the DC village include cutting social security benefits, raising the retirement age, instituting the aforementioned pay freeze, or the findings of the supposedly bipartisan Deficit Reduction Commission whose key recommendations, as mentioned, are primarily based on shifting the responsibility of paying for America further down onto the middle class. There is no more notion of shared responsibility among many of our nation’s elites. They have successfully managed not only to purchase policies that enhance their ability to accumulate an even higher percentage of the nation’s wealth; they have also managed to create a political environment where one party (and a significant portion of another) is so dedicated to preserving that accumulation that they will sacrifice everything else–including nuclear security–to continue it. In the previous incarnation of feudalism, at least the lords had an obligation to be the military protectors of the land. These days, they don’t even have to do that–they just profit from the wars that lesser mortals fight. In previous societies, stark degrees of wealth inequality result in social unrest and even revolution. But I suppose that like George W. Bush, our current crop of elites is counting on being dead by the time history–or the masses–comes to judge them.

Go here to read the rest:
The era of shared sacrifice is over

Disappointments. Failures. Lost opportunities, and lost elections. None of it mattered. For whatever reason–call it relentless optimism, perhaps–I half-expected that even after the midterms, things would be better, from the point of view of political strategy. I half-expected the cadre of people in the White House and the lame ducks in Congress to realize that they had preemptively conceded, negotiated and triangulated themselves all the way to some staggering midterm losses, and that maybe a change of pace was in order. I half expected those same people to realize that if we are to avoid President Palin, or Romney, or Huckabee, or even Pence or Thune, that the process or re-engaging allies who had grown somewhat less than enthusiastic ought to be on the agenda. We didn’t get that. We got the opposite instead. We got a so-called Deficit Reduction Commission that adjourned without even proposing a recommendation because its slavish devotion to cutting Social Security benefits and shifting the tax burden even further onto the middle class was too much for the liberals to take. And the President did come out aggressively pushing for something. Unfortunately, that something just happened to be an anti-growth, anti-middle class freeze in cost of living adjustments for federal employees, all in the name of deficit reduction. Now, it’s not my typical style to be this blunt, especially regarding a sitting Democratic President–but the proposed COLA freeze, along with the attempted mobilization of Organizing For America to promote it, has to count among the most tone-deaf moves this Administration has made heretofore. But it, as well as the nonbinding proposals of the Deficit Commission, indicate quite clearly that the era of shared sacrifice is at an end, and that we are beginning to enter an era of corporate-based plutocratic neofeudalism. After all, if a Democratic administration with a sweeping mandate and a huge organizing base, combined with Democratic Congressional majorities the likes of which will not be seen again in some time, cannot slow–much less reverse–the gradual shifting of the burden of taxation onto an ever-shrinking middle class, then who can? I don’t relish coming to this conclusion. I try not to be a nattering nabob of negativity. But facts have to be submitted to a candid world. 8ackgr0und N015e recently recently posted a diary with a startling graphic and a shocking conclusion: The figure running down the page shows the 50 largest American corporations (based on market capitalization).  The green bars show the cash on hand.  The red bars show the debt.  The companies are sorted based on the amount of cash they have on hand, in descending order. Scroll down the page and you will see virtually all of the names are ones you recognize.  That makes sense.  These are huge corporations that dominate the global economy.  That’s why they are household names.   Added together, these companies hold about $3.7 TRILLION dollars in cash.  That is a little more than the entire United States government spent last year.  In other words, these 50 companies have enough cash to do everything the federal government did last year, and still have $500 Billion left over.  That includes fighting two wars. Included in that total is the largest corporate cash hoard of any US company: $800 billion for Goldman Sachs. Just to put $800 billion in perspective: in $100 bills, that amount of money would form a stack nearly 543 miles high. If accumulation of even more wealth in the hands of the wealthy truly did create jobs, then Goldman Sachs would be restoring prosperity to the American economy on its lonesome by now. Corporate profits are growing at a record pace , and the stock market is in fine shape as well these days. And despite that, the only fiscal remedies deemed acceptable by the DC village include cutting social security benefits, raising the retirement age, instituting the aforementioned pay freeze, or the findings of the supposedly bipartisan Deficit Reduction Commission whose key recommendations, as mentioned, are primarily based on shifting the responsibility of paying for America further down onto the middle class. There is no more notion of shared responsibility among many of our nation’s elites. They have successfully managed not only to purchase policies that enhance their ability to accumulate an even higher percentage of the nation’s wealth; they have also managed to create a political environment where one party (and a significant portion of another) is so dedicated to preserving that accumulation that they will sacrifice everything else–including nuclear security–to continue it. In the previous incarnation of feudalism, at least the lords had an obligation to be the military protectors of the land. These days, they don’t even have to do that–they just profit from the wars that lesser mortals fight. In previous societies, stark degrees of wealth inequality result in social unrest and even revolution. But I suppose that like George W. Bush, our current crop of elites is counting on being dead by the time history–or the masses–comes to judge them.

Here is the original post: 
The era of shared sacrifice is over

“I challenge the best hackers in the business to have a look inside,” Julian Assange said, speaking from an undisclosed location. “There’s nothing there.” Read More… More on Sarah Palin

Continued here:
Andy Borowitz: WikiLeaks Attempts to Expose Palin’s Thoughts, Finds Nothing

Here’s a welcome development: in the face of GOP obstruction , Democratic Senators are holding their ground on middle-class tax cuts. Following several hours of floor speeches hammering the GOP, a handful of Democrats including Sens. Bob Menendez (N.J.), Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Jack Reed (R.I.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) attacked Republicans in a press conference, repeatedly using the word “hostage” to characterize the status of middle-class tax cuts. “Do you allow yourself to be held hostage and get something done for the sake of getting something done, when in fact it might be perverse in its ultimate results? It’s almost like the question of do you negotiate with terrorists,” Menendez said when asked whether he and other Democrats would accept a compromise with Republicans. “The majority has a responsibility to get something done, but [also] to get something done that is good for the country,” he added. McCaskill likewise lambasted Republicans, accusing them of putting the wealthy ahead of the middle class and warning that if Republicans win the debate over tax cuts “it really is time to take up pitchforks.” Both Menendez and McCaskill are up for re-election in 2012. To win this battle, Senate Democrats are going to need the active support of the White House, which today took a baby step in that direction when Joe Biden backed the House tax cut plan. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin said the stakes for the White House were enormous: “I just think, if [Obama] caves on this, then I think that he’s gonna have a lot of swimming upstream [to do],” said the Iowa Democrat, a unabashed progressive who has been less reticent than most in criticizing the White House. “He campaigned on [allowing the rates for the rich to expire], was very strong on that, and sometimes there are things that are just worth fighting for.” And if he decided to compromise away from that, a reporter asked the senator. “He would then just be hoping and praying that Sarah Palin gets the nomination,” Harkin replied, insinuating that there would be few other Republicans that Obama could assuredly beat in 2012. As everybody knows, the only way middle-class tax cuts can pass the Senate is by getting Senate Republicans to back down from their filibuster threat. At least thus far, the Obama administration’s position has been that the best way of getting Senate Republicans to back down is by caving into their demand that we extend Bush tax policy in exactly the same form as it is today. But what we’re seing is that Menendez is right when hey says negotiating with the GOP is like negotiating with a terrorist — even when President Obama says he’s willing to cave to their demands, the GOP takes a step back and says “that’s not enough.” But as these Democrats are saying, there’s another way to get Republicans to back down, and that’s by taking the fight to them. If Republicans feel so strongly about tax cuts for millionaires that they’ll block tax cuts for the middle-class, then make them do it — and make them do it every day if necessary. Unless Republicans fear that they will pay a political price by refusing to compromise, then they’ll never compromise. Right now, the White House has made it clear to the GOP that it doesn’t believe that it has an acceptable BATNA — a best alternative to a negotiated agreement.  Meanwhile, the GOP thinks it has a perfectly acceptable BATNA — sitting back and obstructing while Democrats fight amongst themselves and take the blame for tax cuts expiring. Obviously, when one side doesn’t believe that it has a BATNA and the other side is just fine with it’s BATNA, you’re never going to get a deal. What needs to happen is the White House must realize that it actually does have an acceptable BATNA — that if the tax cuts aren’t extended, at least it will be Republicans who are to blame. That will require them to show more support for House and Senate Democrats who are pushing to extend the tax cuts — and it will require them to hold Republicans accountable when they block the tax cut plan from coming to a vote. The net result of that will be to make it clear to Republicans that they are in fact overestimating the value of their BATNA because they actually will be forced to pay a political price for obstruction. Then — and only then — will a genuine agreement be possible.

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Dem Senators push middle-class tax cut plan

Sorry, Ladies. Atlanta Falcons third-year quarterback Matt Ryan is officially off the market. Apparently, Ryan and longtime girlfriend Sarah Marshall were engaged weeks ago, but he made the announcement last Saturday on WXIA-TV in Atlanta. Read More… More on NFL

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Matt Ryan Engaged To Sarah Marshall

When Sarah Palin returned to Iowa on Thursday to to promote her new book, America By Heart , the former Alaska governor and possible 2012 presidential hopeful found herself caught off guard when confronted by reporters about whether she plans to mount a bid for the White House in the next election cycle. The unanticipated run-in between Palin and the press went down at a local Walmart in the Hawkeye State. With supporters of the conservative star on the scene, a crew from CNN cut straight to the chase and asked if she was any further along in her decision-making process about a presidential run. Jim Acosta and Bonney Kapp report : The country music that Palin’s handlers had blaring at the signing station presumably to drown out such questions suddenly stopped. We asked the question again. Read More… More on Elections 2012

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Sarah Palin Blindsided By Mainstream Press & Mitt Romney’s Jab

CNN contributor and former Reagan campaign director Ed Rollins has a clear message to Sarah Palin: “You’re no Reagan.” Rollins wrote in a Wednesday op-ed for CNN that the former Alaska governor is seriously overstepping her bounds by attempting to draw comparisons between her and the one-time California governor-turned-president. “I know you were only two when Ronald Reagan was elected by a landslide to the first of two terms as governor of California in 1966, but I would have hoped somewhere along the way through the five colleges you attended that you would have learned a little history,” Rollins writes. “And I can tell you being governor of the most populous state is a lot tougher than being governor of one of the least populous ones.” Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Ed Rollins To Sarah Palin: ‘You’re No Reagan’

Christine O’Donnell fans rejoice, haters lament — the failed Delaware Senate candidate will soon be back on the media circuit with a new book about her experience during the 2010 election cycle. (Sorry DWTS fans, no big announcement about a possible “Dancing With The Stars” role here). Perhaps seeking to rise from the ashes like Sarah Palin — her key endorser in the 2010 GOP primary — did after her failed vice presidential bid (and subsequent departure from the Alaska governor’s post), the book’s publisher, St. Martin’s Press, has announced that O’Donnell’s memoir will include political commentary on the state of affairs in the nation. She’ll “take the reader behind the scenes of her race for the Senate and embody O’Donnell’s identification with America’s frustrations and concerns with the current political climate,” the publisher said in a news release. Read More… More on Christine O’Donnell

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Christine O’Donnell Book: Delaware Sensation Will ‘Set The Record Straight’

So ABC-TV casting executives are wracking out their brains as to who they can cast for the next season of Dancing With Has-Beens … I mean… Dancing With The Stars . They are wigging as to how to top the Bristol Palin coup d’états. Word is that DWTS was originally after Todd Palin for this past season and that Sarah Palin , in her unyielding control freak way, offered up Bristol Palin as a peace offering with the intention to bring grace back to the out of wedlock teenage mom. Let’s face it, Bristol, left to her own devices would just as quickly cast herself on that MTV Sixteen and Pregnant reality show. So who would be a good topper to Bristol? You know that David Hasselhoff ’s ( The Hoff ) daughter, Hayley will be cast… but she will NOT cause as much of a stir and the Republican Party will not obsessively vote for her like they did Bristol. So who else? Naturally, ABC is running to their piggy bank to see if they can scrape up enough dough to entice Kim Kardashian … but… hopefully she will have enough sense to pass on this. Though I bet her mother, Kris, is going to offer herself up. Again, she ain’t no Bristol… and will provide no Republican sweeps. Susan Boyle might be a good one… but is so koo-koo that she would be more trouble than it’s worth. I guess they should start pawing through the American Idol alum because they could surely use a boost and Lord knows their middle American fans have nothing else to do but eat and call 800 numbers incessantly. So we are talking Rubin Studdard , or Clay Aiken . Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Abe Gurko: Dancing With Clay Aiken?

The bigger concern to those of you who fear a Palin presidency should be who would actually end up serving out most of her term, and the fact that the copilot she selects could do more to position her than anything else. Read More… More on Marco Rubio

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Keli Goff: 5 VP Picks Who Can Make Palin a Credible Presidential Candidate

The Interpol chief said that Mr. Assange’s inclusion on Interpol’s “Most Wanted” list was an understatement: “We don’t just want him — we need him. Badly. Merde!” Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Andy Borowitz: Interpol: We Will Find Julian Assange, and Then We Will Hire Him

NEW ORLEANS — Michael Hunter stood quietly as a judge sentenced the former New Orleans Police officer Wednesday to eight years in federal prison for his role in the coverup and deadly shooting of unarmed civilians after Hurricane Katrina. The sentence by U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance was the maximum allowed plus nine months. Read More… More on Extreme Weather

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Ex-New Orleans Cop Michael Hunter Sentenced In Coverup Of Danziger Bridge Shootings

The Daily Beast’s Benjamin Sarlin quotes a series of GOP consultants claiming the party’s presidential candidates are “weak”: Call it the resurgent Republicans’ Achilles Heel. The GOP may have taken the House, closed in on the Senate, and made dramatic gains at the state level. But the party’s 2012 presidential field is weak–and a lot of Republicans know it. “The Republican field is wide open with no clear frontrunner because they are all, in some respects, flawed,” Mark McKinnon, a Republican strategist and Daily Beast contributor, said in an email. Read More… More on Pollster

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Brendan Nyhan: Presidential challengers usually seem flawed

Former Bush communications adviser Nicolle Wallace took to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday, the home of recently announced Sarah Palin pessimist Joe Scarborough, and argued that the worry about the former Alaska governor’s 2012 ambitions were unfounded. The GOP’s supposed “President Palin” dilemma would work itself out, she said. Still, Wallace said that Palin displays “incredible cynicism” and is “very prickly.” “I believe that if she were on the cusp of becoming the nominee for the Republican party a whole lot of people… would talk about some of her more troubling deficiencies,” Wallace said. “Her incredible cynicism, her bitterness, her aggressive attempts to claw anyone that points out an area for her to work on, I think these things will continue to reveal herself and the people that love her will continue to love her, but the people who are not so sure about her will, I think, formulate harder opinions and more clarity about her.” But when it comes to Republicans taking the initiative and aggressively mounting a campaign to eliminate Palin from the pre-2012 presidential proceedings, as Scarborough urged Tuesday, Wallace argued that this was unnecessary, and perhaps even impossible. Read More… More on Sarah Palin

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Former Bush Official Nicolle Wallace: Sarah Palin ‘Very Prickly, Very Cynical’ (VIDEO)