IMPALIN’ — Stop Sarah Palin for President in 2012

The SPM takes a broader, far more illuminating view of poverty than the traditional poverty measure does. But at the end of the day, a broader definition of poverty is still needed. bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-burdsharps/supplemental-poverty-measure_b_1119260.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/health-care/”More on Health Care/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/egyyVa6bIW1GsDhcNsDxMN1Irdw/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/egyyVa6bIW1GsDhcNsDxMN1Irdw/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/egyyVa6bIW1GsDhcNsDxMN1Irdw/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/egyyVa6bIW1GsDhcNsDxMN1Irdw/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=J3nMDw0vKjw:xBBp4yJj4Yc:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=J3nMDw0vKjw:xBBp4yJj4Yc:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=J3nMDw0vKjw:xBBp4yJj4Yc:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=J3nMDw0vKjw:xBBp4yJj4Yc:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=J3nMDw0vKjw:xBBp4yJj4Yc:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/J3nMDw0vKjw” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Burd-Sharps: The Supplemental Poverty Measure: A (Small) Step in the Right Direction

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/goposaurinheels.jpg” alt=”" height=”184″ width=”275″ //div You can tell a Republican woman running for office is getting desperate when she plays the sexism card. pSee, while she’s doing well in the polls, raising plenty of money, and even convincing her party to take her seriously, there’s no such thing as sexism. Nope. There’s no such thing as sexual harassment, there’s no such thing as a wage gap and there’s no emway/em a woman running for president might be subjected to unfair bias, by her opponents or the media. Leave the complaints of sexism to Democratic women, because you won’t find a tough-as-acrylic-nails Mama Grizzly a href=”http://wonkette.com/409665/sarah-palins-advice-for-lady-politicians-ignore-mean-old-media”whining/a about that stuff. And god forbid any women’s advocacy organizations a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/27/960371/-Why-we-must-defend-Sarah-Palin?detail=hide”point out and criticize sexism on their behalf/a; they need that kind of support “like a fish needs a bicycle.”/p pAnd of course Michele Bachmann is no different. In July, during an a href=”http://www.more.com/michele-bachmann-exclusive-interview”interview/a with Christina Bellantoni, Michele insisted all that sexism stuff was a thing of the past:/p blockquotebI have not seen gender as a barrier to being in the race. That’s I think very positive. I don’t see any barrier from people on that score and I think that it seems very normalized for people to see a woman who is running./b pI have to say that it hasn’t made any difference whether it’s been South Carolina or Iowa or New Hampshire or Texas or Florida or California or Utah or Nevada, it doesn’t matter which state I’ve been in, I have never detected a barrier./p /blockquote pNope. Nothing to see here. It’s so danged normal for women to run for president these days that really, it’s a non-issue./p pMichele a href=”http://carolineheldman.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/election-2012-sexism-watch-5-bachmann-denies-sexism/”expanded/a on her insistence that sexism simply doesn’t exist in this presidential race when when she went on emThe O’Reilly Factor/em in September:/p blockquoteO’Reilly: “Do you think you’re being treated differently because you’re the only woman in the race? nbsp;Here you’ve got eight sweaty guys – they’re all sweaty – and then you’re there. nbsp;Are you being treated differently because you’re the only woman in the race, do you think?” pBachmann: “You know I don’t think so. I’ve never felt that way. I grew up with three brother and no sisters.”/p pbO’Reilly: “So there’s no gender bias, anything like that?”/b/p pbBachmann: “No, I grew up with three brothers and no sisters. That’s the best preparation for politics that any girl can have. nbsp;I don’t feel in any way that I’m discriminated against./b I’m just grateful to be able to be in the race. I think it’s wonderful…”/p pO’Reilly: That’s refreshing to hear. nbsp;Remember Hillary Clinton when she ran last time [scoffs], ‘you know, I’m getting hammered because I’m a woman….’ You don’t see it that way.”/p pBachmann: “I don’t think so. All of us have to go through this.”/p /blockquote pBut that was back in September. But since then, Michele’s poll numbers have plummeted, she no longer takes center stage in the debates, a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/24/1029546/-Michele-Bachmanns-former-staff:-We-still-like-Michele,-but-we-like-getting-paid-more?detail=hide”her entire New Hampshire campaign staff quit/a, and even her own former campaign adviser, Ed Rollins, can’t seem to stop a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/31/ed-rollins-michele-bachmann-iowa_n_1068671.html”trash talking her/a. So she’s a href=”http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/21/bachmann-its-time-to-let-a-woman-speak/”humming a different tune/a:/p blockquoteMichele Bachmann, the only woman running for the Republican presidential nomination, questioned Monday whether sexism was a factor in her treatment at the debates and falling poll numbers. p”Sometimes you wonder about that,” Bachmann said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. “I have no way of knowing.”/p /blockquote pOf course Michele isn’t actually condemning sexism within her party, the media or American society at large. She’s merely “wondering” about it, backtracking from her flat-out denial of its existence only a few months ago. Who knows? Maybe some really tall, HPV-immunized doctor suggested it to her. But she does know:/p blockquote”It’s unusual to have a woman candidate. We’ve never had a woman on the Republican ticket running for president at this level before,” Bachmann said. “So I think it’s time to let a woman speak.”/blockquote pIt’s funny that a candidate a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/14/1036354/-Michele-Bachmann-assures-Republican-base-that-she-is-alwayscrazy?detail=hide”who prides herself on her “consistency”/a would go from assuring us that it’s “normalized” to see a woman running for office to declaring it “unusual” and to even claim it’s never been done before. (I wonder what Elizabeth Dole, Republican presidential candidate in 2000, would have to say about that.)/p pThis was to be expected, of course. It was easy to rise above it when things were going well for Michele Bachmann. It was easy to say that she a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/michele-bachmann-womens-rights-gender-politics-feminists_n_954139.html”wasn’t running as the “woman” candidate/a. Now that her numbers have continued their downward spiral into Rick Santorum territory, well, Michele needs a convenient explanation for why the Republican Party has recoiled in horror. It couldn’t possibly be her jaw-dropping stupidity. Or that even her own party has grown tired of her one-tracked campaign pitch: blah blah blah, Obamacare, socialism, abortion, Jesus, blah blah. That she’s no longer front and center in the Republican debates couldn’t possibly have anything to do with those paltry numbers; no, it must be a liberal media conspiracy against her. Also, the fact that she’s a woman—which only a few months ago was most definitely emnot/em a barrier for her—just might have something to do with it after all. Maybe./p pIt’s desperate and transparent. Michele Bachmann is one of the most anti-women members of Congress. She wanted to a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/05/952109/-Michele-Bachmann:-Shut-down-government-until-PlannedA0Parenthood-isA0defunded?detail=hide”shut down the entire government/a just to defund women’s health care. She believes wives a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/michele-bachmann-submissive-wife-belief-matter-interpretation/story?id=14292494#.TsqMPnMbVlM”should be submissive to their husbands/a. If there’s one thing Michele Bachmann has proven time and again that she emdoesn’t/em care about, it’s women and how they’re treated in this society. But now that she’s watching her presidential hopes disappear into the ether, well, hell. Why not go for broke and whip out the only Hail Mary left to her?/p pIt won’t work. Even Democratic women who emdon’t/em have a problem denying the existence of sexism aren’t going to suddenly flock to Michele just because she’s willing to admit what they’ve always known. And as for Republicans, well, Michele’s about to learn one hell of a lesson: When you run for office on an anti-woman platform, in the anti-woman party, appealing to anti-woman voters, you really shouldn’t be surprised when it turns out they don’t like voting for women.br //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FTnhzPe7qyKq0O-bEUveAc9G_ds/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FTnhzPe7qyKq0O-bEUveAc9G_ds/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FTnhzPe7qyKq0O-bEUveAc9G_ds/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FTnhzPe7qyKq0O-bEUveAc9G_ds/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=gTDQEYTOXHI:KdLXlNE4OoI:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/gTDQEYTOXHI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Michele Bachmann thinks there may be sexism at work after all

One of the three spaces on the prestigious emNew York Times/em op-ed page in the November 23rd edition was given to a rather odd piece.bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-harris/ny-times-sarah-schulman_b_1112171.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/israel/”More on Israel/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RlDr63cPrKlhYgOhnyxvxS-68CI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RlDr63cPrKlhYgOhnyxvxS-68CI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RlDr63cPrKlhYgOhnyxvxS-68CI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RlDr63cPrKlhYgOhnyxvxS-68CI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=KzCCzKsxnIs:nuSvdV0T3P8:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=KzCCzKsxnIs:nuSvdV0T3P8:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=KzCCzKsxnIs:nuSvdV0T3P8:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=KzCCzKsxnIs:nuSvdV0T3P8:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=KzCCzKsxnIs:nuSvdV0T3P8:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/KzCCzKsxnIs” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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David Harris: "Israel and ‘Pinkwashing’": What Was the New York Times Thinking?

It’s not really the makeup or the hair style or the book tours or the late night comedy show appearances that are irritating about Bachmann, but the fact that she’s as narcissistic and as self-promoting as Palin with the exception that she has a constituency she ignores. bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-axelrod/michele-bachmann-makeup-style_b_1112122.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/elections-2012/”More on Elections 2012/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RcXvXfEkCJmwTnXR7-ssKSJOJCA/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RcXvXfEkCJmwTnXR7-ssKSJOJCA/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RcXvXfEkCJmwTnXR7-ssKSJOJCA/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RcXvXfEkCJmwTnXR7-ssKSJOJCA/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=m7fj4oP7oWI:e4i3VkQsC-k:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=m7fj4oP7oWI:e4i3VkQsC-k:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=m7fj4oP7oWI:e4i3VkQsC-k:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=m7fj4oP7oWI:e4i3VkQsC-k:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=m7fj4oP7oWI:e4i3VkQsC-k:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/m7fj4oP7oWI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Mark Axelrod: Michele’s Makeup; or, What’s Political Representation Got to Do With It?

div id=”uimg_right”img src=”http://www.dailykos.com/i/user/59419/Penn_Flag_275.png” / div id=”uimg_caption”Pennsylvania is quickly becoming a must-watch state/div /div pLooking ahead to the 2012 elections, one of the burning questions has been what will become of the key large states of the industrial Midwest. Ohio and Pennsylvania were central not only to the Obama election in 2008, but the Democratic surge to control of Congress in 2006 and 2008. Conversely, the states were an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats in 2010, with the Democrats losing both gubernatorial elections, both Senate seats and nearly a dozen House seats between the two states./p pNew data out this week from our polling partners at a href=”http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/obama-romney-tied-in-pennsylvania.html”PPP/a suggested that Pennsylvania is not as red as it appeared one year ago, but is a far cry from the blue-tinted swing state that it was in the two cycles prior to that./p pa href=”http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_PA_11221023.pdf”Public Policy Polling/a. 11/17-20. Pennsylvania voters. MoE 4.4% (July numbers in parentheses)/p blockquotebBarack Obama (D)/b 45 (44)br / bMitt Romney (R)/b 45 (44) pbBarack Obama (D)/b 46 (–)br / bRon Paul (R)/b 42 (–)/p pbBarack Obama (D)/b 47 (50)br / bRick Santorum (R)/b 42 (40)/p pbBarack Obama (D)/b 49 (–)br / bNewt Gingrich (R)/b 43 (–)/p pbBarack Obama (D)/b 51 (–)br / bRick Perry (R)/b 38 (–)/p pbBarack Obama (D)/b 53 (49)br / bHerman Cain (R)/b 35 (37)br //p /blockquote pThe numbers were little changed from the summer, though the cast of characters on the GOP side sure has. It is amusing to note that Perry, Paul and Gingrich were not tested in PPP’s July polling in Pennsylvania. It is more amusing to note that the three that iwere tested/i then were Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin. My, how times change./p pWhat has not changed, however, is the coinflip outcome when Barack Obama is paired with Mitt Romney. It is as true in Pennsylvania as it is across America. And, as PPP’s Tom Jensen a href=”http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/obama-struggling-in-pennsylvania.html”pointed out/a, this particular coinflip might be with a coin that is weighted for the Republicans:/p blockquoteObama and Romney are tied at 45% each but if you dig in on the undecided voters only 24% of them approve of Obama’s job performance to 70% who disapprove. They may not be completely sold on Romney yet but for the most part if you don’t approve of the incumbent President, you’re not going to vote for him. If those folks really had to make a decision today it’s likely they’d move in Romney’s direction and hand him the state.br //blockquote pFortunately for the president and Democratic supporters, the GOP seems extraordinarily intent on nominating someone … ianyone/i … other than Mitt Romney. The latest data point to buttress that argument came from PPP’s primary polling in the Keystone State, which showed Mitt Romney in a very distant tie for third place./p pa href=”http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/gingrich-winning-in-both-arizona-and-pennsylvania.html”Public Policy Polling/a. 11/17-20. Republican voters. MoE 4.9% (July numbers in parentheses)/p blockquotebNewt Gingrich:/b 32 (6)br / bHerman Cain:/b 15 (10)br / bRick Santorum:/b 12 (14)br / bMitt Romney:/b 12 (17)br / bRon Paul:/b 9 (9)br / bMichele Bachmann:/b 5 (24)br / bRick Perry:/b 3 (8)br / bJon Huntsman:/b 3 (3)br / bGary Johnson:/b 0 (-)br //blockquote pDespite still holding his own in a general election setting, and despite every presumptive conservative “anti-Mitt” having at least one awe-inspiring campaign implosion, Romney actually performed worse in the most recent PPP poll here than he did over the summer. Note that while Herman Cain has become the least electable Republican in a general election trial heat, he still fared reasonably well in the primary setting. If he has raised a fraction of the cash that he claims to have raised since his scandals have come to light, he may not be politically dead yet on the GOP side./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/maeJpqYp-R18jb4lN3p5oQiS-RE/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/maeJpqYp-R18jb4lN3p5oQiS-RE/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/maeJpqYp-R18jb4lN3p5oQiS-RE/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/maeJpqYp-R18jb4lN3p5oQiS-RE/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=4J4hL5rd1Vc:7izc7jrfPXI:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/4J4hL5rd1Vc” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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PA-Pres: President Obama vulnerable, Newt Gingrich ascendant on GOP side

pWithout question, Kermit and his felt friends are the true stars of “The Muppets,” and the world is super geared up to see all their singing, dancing and laugh-a-minute antics when the film hits theaters this week. But human celebrities have always been an important part of the Muppets’ performances, from the first episode of “The Muppet Show” up through all of their previous films, and this new flick is no different./ppThis time around, Jason Segel, who co-wrote the film, and Amy Adams will be the featured human stars, but there are plenty of more big Hollywood names that will grace the screen in smaller roles. Rashida Jones plays a begrudging TV network executive, while Neil Patrick Harris, Sarah Silverman and many others have cameos. /ppJust like all of us, they couldn’t help but get swept up in the Muppet madness, and this musical montage is great, fun proof./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/22/mahna-mahna-the-muppets-celebs_n_1108782.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/muppets/”More on Muppets/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/OLjNSkG4rhFWaDpHLvJ8b8zBGQU/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/OLjNSkG4rhFWaDpHLvJ8b8zBGQU/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/OLjNSkG4rhFWaDpHLvJ8b8zBGQU/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/OLjNSkG4rhFWaDpHLvJ8b8zBGQU/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=vbFHPygYZCM:SN2HSWWvOCs:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=vbFHPygYZCM:SN2HSWWvOCs:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=vbFHPygYZCM:SN2HSWWvOCs:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=vbFHPygYZCM:SN2HSWWvOCs:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=vbFHPygYZCM:SN2HSWWvOCs:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/vbFHPygYZCM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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‘Mahna Mahna’: The Muppets Celebs Sing Along (VIDEO)

Sarah’s story doesn’t need embellishment or a funny line to draw you in, just the facts. Sarah is an elephant with a chronic infection and symptoms of arthritis and she’s being forced to travel and perform with the Ringling Bros.bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivia-munn/ringling-bros-animal-abuse-elephants_b_1106802.htmlRead More…/abr pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Mx-yYVjfBlaZVVhMeSGZoRx2ENw/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Mx-yYVjfBlaZVVhMeSGZoRx2ENw/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Mx-yYVjfBlaZVVhMeSGZoRx2ENw/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Mx-yYVjfBlaZVVhMeSGZoRx2ENw/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=pn1N5KdkHAI:0-JEiRPm9SU:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=pn1N5KdkHAI:0-JEiRPm9SU:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=pn1N5KdkHAI:0-JEiRPm9SU:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=pn1N5KdkHAI:0-JEiRPm9SU:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=pn1N5KdkHAI:0-JEiRPm9SU:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/pn1N5KdkHAI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Olivia Munn: Sarah Cannot Wait Another Day

pSarah Palin’s announcement that she wouldn’t run for president disappointed her legions of admirers — but it infuriated Roger Ailes. The Fox News chief wasn’t angry about the decision itself. Rather, he was livid that Palin made the October 5 announcement on Mark Levin’s conservative talk-radio program, robbing Fox News of an exclusive and a possible ratings bonanza. Fox was relegated to getting a follow-up interview with Palin on Greta Van Susteren’s 10 p.m. show, after the news of Palin’s decision had been drowned out by Steve Jobs’s death. Ailes was so mad, he considered pulling her off the air entirely until her $1 million annual contract expires in 2013./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/sarah-palin-roger-ailes-non-candidacy-fox-news_n_1106482.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/fox-news/”More on Fox News/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/yx0jaUa-ROcNQHL0LYHGTaoG56w/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/yx0jaUa-ROcNQHL0LYHGTaoG56w/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/yx0jaUa-ROcNQHL0LYHGTaoG56w/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/yx0jaUa-ROcNQHL0LYHGTaoG56w/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=pfgOhzznEhs:G3mQcU1Ovfs:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=pfgOhzznEhs:G3mQcU1Ovfs:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=pfgOhzznEhs:G3mQcU1Ovfs:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=pfgOhzznEhs:G3mQcU1Ovfs:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=pfgOhzznEhs:G3mQcU1Ovfs:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/pfgOhzznEhs” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Palin Got Scolded By Roger Ailes For Not Announcing Her Non-Candidacy On Fox News

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/Chris_Piascik_Millionaires.jpg” alt=”" width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Illustrator a href=”http://chrispiascik.com/daily-drawings/millionaires/”Chris Piascik/a paints a picture of a massive disconnect in our political system/div /div Most people in Congress are very, very wealthy. It’s the natural by-product of a campaign system engineered by and for the benefit of the richest Americans. Campaigning after all is a 24/7 job, and few members of the 99% can afford to balance the time constraints of fundraising and campaigning without quitting their normal income-producing job. It’s why running for Congress is a rich person’s game. It’s why we end up with charts like the one above. pWhen rich people run for office, they typically spend their campaign time doing two distinct things: (1) they spend upwards of five or six hours a day a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/01/09/934645/-Call-Time”calling the wealthy and the super-wealthy for money/a; and (2) they spend the rest of their time at “grassroots” events, parades, or debates trying pretend that they didn’t just spend the bulk of their day courting max out checks and listening to the needs of the 1%./p pThe ritual is the same regardless of the “grassroots” event. The sleeves get rolled up. The blazer comes off. Occasionally, a corn dog is thrust into a candidates hand to really up the “common man” factor. If you can get a photo op with your candidate at a factory or a plant, even better./p pSome wealthy politicos play the game exceptionally well. Celebrity Sarah Palin is the Queen of Commonness to her supporters, a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/18/1037690/-Sarah-Palin-wonders-how-politicians-get-sorich”despite the fact that she’s worth some $12 million/a. Other D.C. types? They lack the finesse to pull of faux authenticity so emauthentically/em. The cloak of commonness is perhaps never as ill-fitting as it when it is donned by Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich./p pEarlier this year, Gingrich caused a scandal when he ditched his campaigning to go on a luxury Greek cruise. Staffers quit over the incident, while Gingrich defended the vacation as much-needed “me” time. Now, however, with his poll numbers rising, Gingrich is trying to put a different shade of lipstick on the succulent pig roasting over a crackling fire. nbsp;Gingrich now claims his fancy vacay was a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/newt-gingrich-greek-debt-crisis_n_1093410.html?ref=travelamp;ir=Travel”part fact-finding mission/a:/p blockquoteRepublican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said his luxury cruise vacation through the Greek Isles in June gave him a better understanding of Greece’s debt crisis. pWhile speaking at an event in Iowa, Gingrich said he was heavily influenced while visiting Greece with his wife Callista, according to MSNBC./p p”An observation strategically about where we are … was very much influenced when I visited Greece in June and talked to people what they were faced with in Greece,” Gingrich said. “And I listened to them.”/p /blockquote pI’m sure the conversations with the white-gloved waiters about living in a bankrupt nation was fascinating, and Gingrich probably furrowed his brow in feigned support as he lifted his bubbling champagne glass up to his common man lips./p pBeyond being absurd on its face, the Gingrich spin is a perfect example of “class-washing.” A candidate’s luxe life is put through the wringer and voila, a crisp, cuff-linked white collar shirt is miraculously transformed into a blue collar workshirt with grease stains on it. It’s why some candidates make sure that fancy foreign cars are placed in family members’ names while a good ol’ American Ford Focus or Chevy truck is used to trek across the state. It’s why they schedule a “roundtable” at a diner with ordinary folks in Peoria while making sure to not bring the cameras to the $2,500 a plate fundraiser afterwards./p pThey shake hands with the masses. emDouble-clasped handshakes/em, for added “empathy.” They kiss babies. They listen intently to a supporter’s story (and wonder how they can include it in their next speech). They show sympathy with a hand on the shoulder of an out-of-work mom. They show empathy by hugging the student saddled with student loan debt./p pThey campaign. Then they move on./p pThe fleeting sympathy exhibited at campaign events can often be genuine. But it emis/em often fleeting. One need only look at our federal politics to see that too many members on both sides of the aisle choose to cater to their wealthy call time donors than to the throngs they meet on the trail./p pCan wealthy politicians empathize with the plight of the American working class? Of course they can. Not all politicians grew up in privilege. Vice President Joe Biden is a classic example of an elected official whose working class roots guide him today. And even among those who were lucky enough to be born into the 1%, wealth and a just heart are not mutually exclusive by any measure./p pBut there is no escaping the fact that far too often, our millionaire representatives preach sympathy on the campaign trail and commit legislative sins against the working class once elected./p pFive years ago, then-Senator Barack Obama spoke about the massive a href=”http://obamaspeeches.com/087-Xavier-University-Commencement-Address-Obama-Speech.htm”empathy deficit/a:/p blockquote“I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us — the child who’s hungry, the steelworker who’s been laid-off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you think like this — when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers — it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help.” - Barack Obama, 2006/blockquote pIt’s proven remarkably difficult for the Newt Gingriches of the world, the Darrel Issas, and the Michelle Bachmanns to step out of their comfortable shoes and into the worn shoes of those who journeyed through this troubled economy for far too long. Those in Congress who do sympathize or empathize with the 99% are often drowned out by crystal-clinking chatter of the D.C. cocktail fundraising circuit./p div class=”dkimg-c”iframe width=”225″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/1y6lra63kc4″ frameborder=”0″ align=”left” defang_hspace=”10″ defang_allowfullscreen=”"/iframe div class=”dkimg-cap”(Left) Michelle Obama elaborates on the “empathy deficit” in 2008/div /div So what are we to do about that empathy deficit? How do we fix the chart to better reflect the makeup of the electorate as a whole? pAs a threshold matter, we need to make it easier for non-millionaires to run for and compete for public office. Yes, prickly issue of campaign finance reform, I’m looking at emyou/em./p pIn the meantime, while juicing out empathy from the dry lemon that is a cold-hearted Congress is likely a futile task, even feigned sympathy is valuable if it leads to emsome/em legislative action./p pAnd that’s why Occupy Wall Street is so important./p pBecause while it’s easy to shake the hand of a supporter at a county fair and move on, it’s not easy to shake off the narrative-changing protests that are still taking place across the country. Whatever the end result of the protests, they can and have caused members of Congress to perk up their ears and, at the very least, emlisten/em. Some members of Congress will give OWS protestors the same amount of attention Gingrich gave to the Greek workers during that luxury cruise. Others, however, will afford the movement and its growing voice a longer listen. Perhaps that sliver of sympathy is all we can expect out of this Congress. Perhaps that’s the best of a bad situation — until we get OWS to occupy seats in Congress and bring true representation to the 99%.br //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vcJ2MHZE6sZhSigFh1tam5kKJKI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vcJ2MHZE6sZhSigFh1tam5kKJKI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vcJ2MHZE6sZhSigFh1tam5kKJKI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vcJ2MHZE6sZhSigFh1tam5kKJKI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=brAbp9JdYD8:1-gcfcj1a9o:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/brAbp9JdYD8″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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The Empathy Deficit

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/PalinPAC.jpg” alt=”" width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”The front page of Sarah Palin’s site urges citizen action against government corruption. Wait. Maybe it’s on a different page. A different site? On her Twitter account? … Maybe it’s on her Facebook?/div /div Wide-eyed, innocent half-term governor and self-made celebrity a href=”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577040373463191222.html”Sarah Palin/a asks in today’s emWall Street Journal/em (emphasis added throughout): blockquoteMark Twain famously wrote, “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Peter Schweizer’s new book, “Throw Them All Out,” reveals this permanent political class in all its arrogant glory. (Full disclosure: Mr. Schweizer is employed by my political action committee as a foreign-policy adviser.) pMr. Schweizer answers the questions so many of us have asked. I addressed this in a speech in Iowa last Labor Day weekend. strongHow do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us?/strong How do politicians’ stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers’? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves./p /blockquote pAll valid and excellent questions posed by Mrs. Palin. Now if only she could be a little more credible on the issue. a href=”http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081002/NEWS03/810020315/1002/LOCAL”From when she was a governor/a:/p blockquoteSarah Palin and her husband have pieced together a uniquely Alaskan income that reached comfortably into six figures even before she became governor, capitalizing on valuable fishing rights, a series of land deals and a patchwork of other ventures to build an above-average lifestyle. Add up the couple’s 2007 income and the estimated value of their property and investments, and they appear to be worth at least $1.2 million. Palin this week characterized herself as “an everyday, working-class American” who knows how it feels when the stock market takes a hit. pThe Palins’ total income last year was split almost evenly between Sarah Palin’s white-collar job and her husband’s blue-collar work. strongThese figures do not include nearly $17,000 in per diem payments Palin received for 312 nights spent in her own home since she was elected governor; she also has received $43,490 to cover travel costs for her husband and children./strong/p pIn addition, each member of the Palin family received $1,654 in state oil royalties paid to all Alaskans. The Palins’ assets seem enviable: a half-million-dollar home on a lake with a float-plane at the dock, two vacation retreats, commercial-fishing rights worth an estimated $50,000 or more and an income last year of at least $230,000./p /blockquote pIt’s okay. I’ll take pro-reform and pro-transparecy rhetoric anywhere I can get it these days. And I must say, this sudden burst of interest by Mrs. Palin in taking up the torch of reform and lighting a fire under government corruption is a welcomed event. A long-awaited event, really. A emreally, really, really/em a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072403889.html”long-awaited event/a:/p blockquotestrongAs She Steps Down, Palin Promises She’ll Reclaim Ethics Crusade/strongbr / Saturday, July 25, 2009 pANCHORAGE — Sarah Palin, who rose from obscurity to become Alaska’s governor three years ago, began her career as a combative whistleblower crusading against state political corruption. She accused GOP leaders of violating ethics laws, then publicized details of the confidential investigations./p pNow, as Palin prepares to step down Sunday, 18 months before the end of her term, she vows to resurrect her early crusader image on a national stage, even as she complains that she has been saddled with what she calls “frivolous” ethics complaints and legal bills./p p”I’m not leaving the governorship because of any particular ethics complaint. Rather, I have explained that the millions of dollars spent by the state and the diversion of resources to address politically inspired records requests, personnel board costs and wasting staff time is unnecessary and harmful to the state,” Palin said in written comments to The Washington Post. “I will take the battle nationally and I won’t shy away from challenging the powerful, the entrenched, the corrupt and anyone standing in the way of getting our country back on the right track.”/p /blockquote pWhat has Sarah Palin done in the two years plus she left office? Did she indeed become a warrior for transparency and a crusader against corruption, as she promised? From a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/sarah-palin-earned-estimated-12-million-july/story?id=10352437#.TsZQCWDwOWQ”2010/a:/p blockquotePundits can debate the political costs and benefits of Sarah Palin’s decision to step down as Alaska governor, but the monetary advantages of leaving her $125,000-a-year public service post are beyond dispute. pstrongSince leaving office at the end of July 2009, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee has brought in at least 100 times her old salary – a haul now estimated at more than $12 million — through television and book deals and a heavy schedule of speaking appearances worth five and six figures.br //strongbr / That conservative estimate is based on publicly available records and news accounts. The actual number is probably much higher, but is hard to quantify because Palin does not publicize her earnings./p /blockquote pa href=”http://juneauempire.com/opinion/2011-10-12/palin-pulls-palin#.TsZRX2DwOWQ”From 2012/a:/p blockquoteSo why did Palin really quit? Levi Johnston, the Wasilla homeboy impregnator of Bristol Palin, who thanks to her appearance on “Dancing With the Stars” is now almost as famous for being famous as Paris Hilton is, lived for a while with the Palins after the 2008 election. In his book, Johnston remembered what he thought after Palin’s news conference: “I wasn’t surprised. I hate this job, she used to say. I could be making money instead.” pJohnston’s recollection has the ring of verisimilitude because two months before she quit, uber-agent Robert Barnett negotiated a deal for Palin’s ghostwritten hagiography that may have been worth as much as $11 million. Then as soon as she quit, Palin signed with the Washington Speakers Bureau, which quickly got her more than $100,000 for a 90-minute speech. Four months later she signed a seven-figure contract to be a commentator on Fox News. And two months after that, she signed another seven-figure contract with Mark Burnett, who created “Survivor” and “The Apprentice,” to star in her own reality show./p pstrongFor the past two years that’s how Palin has spent most of her time: promoting books, making paid television appearances, giving paid speeches./strong/p /blockquote pOh, but making tons of money while pretending to run for public office over the last two years doesn’t count. No, transparency warrior Sarah Palin has her fuming pen set on those darn politicians who use their offices for political gain. a href=”http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/24/nation/na-palinrecords24″Kind of like this/a:/p blockquote[A] Los Angeles Times examination of state records shows, her approach to government was business as usual. Take, for example, the tradition of patronage. Some of Palin’s most controversial appointments involved donors, records show. Among The Times’ findings: pMore than 100 appointments to state posts — nearly 1 in 4 — went to campaign contributors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications./p pPalin filled 16 state offices with appointees from families that donated $2,000 to $5,600 and were among her top political patrons./p pSeveral of Palin’s leading campaign donors received state-subsidized industrial development loans of up to $3.6 million for business ventures of questionable public value./p /blockquote pBut her history of using her own office and political experience for personal gain doesn’t stop Palin from continuing her righteous indignation:/p blockquoteThe money-making opportunities for politicians are myriad, and Mr. Schweizer details the most lucrative methods: accepting sweetheart gifts of IPO stock from companies seeking to influence legislation, practicing insider trading with nonpublic government information, earmarking projects that benefit personal real estate holdings, and even subtly extorting campaign donations through the threat of legislation unfavorable to an industry. The list goes on and on, and it’s sickening. pAstonishingly, none of this is technically illegal, at least not for Congress. We need equality under the law. From now on, laws that apply to the private sector must apply to Congress, including whistleblower, conflict-of-interest and insider-trading laws. Trading on nonpublic government information should be illegal both for those who pass on the information and those who trade on it. (This should close the loophole of the blind trusts that aren’t really blind because they’re managed by family members or friends.)/p pNo more sweetheart land deals with campaign contributors. No gifts of IPO shares. No trading of stocks related to committee assignments. No earmarks where the congressman receives a direct benefit. No accepting campaign contributions while Congress is in session. No lobbyists as family members, and no transitioning into a lobbying career after leaving office. No more revolving door, ever./p /blockquote pKudos to the staffer that penned Mrs. Palin’s WSJ piece. Regardless of the messenger, the message is true. I’m sure Mrs. Palin will have a blast on the talk show circuit expanding on the ideas. And I can’t wait to get a fundraising email from SarahPAC about donating to help her take up the cause./p pWho knows, maybe in another two years, she can update us on her efforts to “take the battle nationally” and “challeng[e] the powerful, the entrenched, the corrupt and anyone standing in the way of getting our country back on the right track.” Maybe she’ll even write a emNew York Times/em best-seller about it./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/LRxi7whTACLrlN3vvL_HgwM8ITA/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/LRxi7whTACLrlN3vvL_HgwM8ITA/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/LRxi7whTACLrlN3vvL_HgwM8ITA/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/LRxi7whTACLrlN3vvL_HgwM8ITA/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=S0In8mMu1×4:3UbPMNu6Cac:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/S0In8mMu1×4″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Palin wonders how politicians get so rich

pimg src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/APR_11_18.jpg” width=”550″ height=”325″ //p pVisual source: a href=”http://newseum.org”Newseum/a/p pa href=”http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-17/a-decade-of-missed-chances-is-dragging-down-prospects-in-u-s-ezra-klein.html”Ezra Klein/a:/p blockquoteEven the opportunities we have seized are mostly coming undone. In one of his presidency’s more bipartisan moments, George W. Bush joined with Senator Ted Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind. The law, though flawed, made some important strides in education reform. Today, Congress is too distracted to pass needed fixes, and so the Obama administration is preparing to grant states waivers from the bill so they do not need to take over thousands of schools that haven’t met the law’s overly stringent requirements. pSimilarly, the Obama administration was able to use the aftermath of the financial crisis to pass health-care reform, which made a good start on both covering the uninsured and controlling costs. It also secured a package of financial- regulation reforms to limit the risks of another catastrophic meltdown. Today, Republicans want to repeal both laws, and if they win the next election, they might just get their wish. In the meantime, they’re defunding the implementation of the two laws, and bogging them down in the courts./p pIt’s entirely possible that we could wake in 2013 only to realize that we have made no durable progress on any of our pressing national problems over the course of the Bush and Obama presidencies, and have, in fact, made some problems worse. That would mean a loss of 12 years during which we could have been moving forward as a country. And we won’t be able to blame it on a lack of opportunities./p /blockquote pa href=”http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/disenfranchise-no-more/?ref=opinion”Richard L. Hasen/a:/p blockquoteMississippi voters just approved a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. But that law will not go into effect immediately, thanks to the Voting Rights Act. Instead Mississippi will get in line behind Texas and South Carolina as the Department of Justice examines each state’s voter ID laws, in a process known as “preclearance.” The Justice Department will allow each law to go into effect only if the state can show its law will not have a racially discriminatory purpose or effect. Such proof may be hard to come by: a recent study by The Associated Press found that African-American voters in South Carolina would be much harder hit by that state’s ID law than white voters because they often don’t have the right kind of identification. pBut this important preclearance procedure may not be around much longer. Before the next election season rolls around, the Supreme Court could well strike down this provision of the law as an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights, leaving minority voters essentially unprotected from efforts to diminish their voting power. Congress needs to act before then to protect voting rights everywhere./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/opinion/presidential-politics-and-clean-air.html?ref=opinion”The New York Times/a:/p blockquotePresident Obama’s decision in September to scuttle stricter national standards for smog may well go down as the worst environmental decision of his administration — unless, of course, even more damaging retreats lie ahead. The decision was a setback for public health, a victory for industry, which had lobbied strongly against the standards, and a public embarrassment for the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, who had proposed them. pThis page was not impressed by [administration] arguments then and is no less skeptical of them now in light of John M. Broder’s exhaustive account in The Times on Thursday of the steps that led up to the decision. The article paints a picture of an aggressive campaign by industry lobbyists and heavyweight trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute that began soon after it became clear that Ms. Jackson was determined to tighten the rules governing allowable ozone levels across the country./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/opinion/krugman-failure-is-good.html?ref=opinion”Paul Krugman/a:/p blockquoteIt’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a complete turkey! It’s the super committee! By next Wednesday, the so-called supercommittee, a bipartisan group of legislators, is supposed to reach an agreement on how to reduce future deficits. Barring an evil miracle — I’ll explain the evil part later — the committee will fail to meet that deadline. pIf this news surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention. If it depresses you, cheer up: In this case, failure is good./p pWhy was the supercommittee doomed to fail? Mainly because the gulf between our two major political parties is so wide. Republicans and Democrats don’t just have different priorities; they live in different intellectual and moral universes./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/17/should-candidates-have-to-pass-a-civics-test/?ref=opinion”The New York Times/a presents this question in their “Room for Debate” section:/p blockquoteRick Perry, Michele Bachmann and now Herman Cain — all caught in an embarrassing moment when their memory failed them or their knowledge was limited. pThe federal government requires applicants for certain civil service jobs to take a written exam. The same holds true for the foreign service. And to become a U.S. citizen you have to pass a civics test. Why do we not require a similar exam for individuals who seek election to office?/p /blockquote pa href=”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577040373463191222.html”Sarah Palin/a (writing without a shred of irony):/p blockquoteMark Twain famously wrote, “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Peter Schweizer’s new book, “Throw Them All Out,” reveals this permanent political class in all its arrogant glory. (Full disclosure: Mr. Schweizer is employed by my political action committee as a foreign-policy adviser.) pMr. Schweizer answers the questions so many of us have asked. I addressed this in a speech in Iowa last Labor Day weekend. How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians’ stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers’? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves./p /blockquote br / pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/STJZsBONE7TY7UAdENNAFMCe5sU/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/STJZsBONE7TY7UAdENNAFMCe5sU/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/STJZsBONE7TY7UAdENNAFMCe5sU/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/STJZsBONE7TY7UAdENNAFMCe5sU/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=QdAS4-jekOY:yEyT-G4yIiw:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/QdAS4-jekOY” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Epic Fail Edition

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/426/APR_1116.jpg” alt=”" height=”460″ width=”550″ //div smallVisual source: a href=”http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/”Newseum/a/small pa href=”http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/occupy-wall-st-spreads-united-states-gallery-1.978026″Daily News/a:/p blockquoteThey’ve outlasted snow storms, pepper spray and even evictions. So it looks like the Occupy Wall St. movement isn’t going anywhere. Check out the protest that has spread to all 50 states. Where are people occupying in your state? –/blockquote a href=”http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-15/u-s-mayors-crack-down-on-occupy-wall-street.html”Bloomberg/a: blockquoteThe demonstrators refer to themselves on signs and in slogans as “the 99 percent,” a reference to Nobel Prize- winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s study showing the richest 1 percent control 40 percent of U.S. wealth./blockquote a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/opinion/mayor-bloomberg-confronts-occupy-wall-street.html?_r=1amp;ref=opinion”NY Times/a editorial: blockquoteThe Occupy Wall Street protesters had achieved a great deal before they were rousted from Zuccotti Park by New York City police on Tuesday morning. This ragged group, living in tents and tarps for two months in the financial district in Lower Manhattan, helped focus everyone’s attention on the growing income inequality in this country. They made “99 percent” into popular language for the have-nots. They spawned protests against further enriching the already rich 1 percent, like those in Chicago, Boston, Oakland, Calif., New Haven, and even London… pNow that Mayor Bloomberg has dismantled the anti-Wall Street group, he must keep his promise to support the protesters’ right to speak up about income inequality, especially in the city’s financial district./p /blockquote a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-occupy-movement-more-trouble-or-change/2011/11/15/gIQAu9dVPN_story.html”WaPo/a: blockquoteThe movement began as a protest of major economic and political issues, but as concerns about crime and sanitation mount, cities have a decision to make: Adapt or take action?/blockquote a href=”http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/the-second-coming-of-gingrich/?ref=opinion”Ross Douthat/a on Newt: blockquote pBut who’s laughing now? Michele Bachmann has faded, Rick Perry has flopped, and the Herman Cain phenomenon is on life support. And out of the billowing smoke and dust of debates and gaffes and brain freezes, Gingrich has re-emerged, once again ready to lead those who want their politicians to be able a href=”http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/14/brutal-cain-blanks-on-libya-supports-collective-bargaining-for-public-employee-union/”to remember the details of recent American military interventions/a and the names of the cabinet agencies they want to abolish./p br //blockquote a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-newt-gingrich-wont-last/2011/11/15/gIQAmTNcPN_story.html”Dana Milbank/a: blockquoteIt’s not Gingrich’s disparaging of President Obama’s “Kenyan, neo-colonial” worldview. Or the six-figure bills he and his third wife ran up at Tiffany’s. Or the cruise of the Greek islands that led much of his staff to quit in frustration. pGaffes and missteps may dislodge Perry and Cain from their top-tier status by making them appear unqualified to be president, but there’s no question the former speaker of the House is qualified./p pHis problem, rather, is that he is entirely too moderate in this field — and, therefore, in no position to establish himself as the conservative anti-Mitt Romney. The ideas that made him a conservative revolutionary in 1994 make him squishy in 2012./p /blockquote a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/perry-cain-and-a-parade-of-painful-moments/2011/11/15/gIQA2NjFPN_story.html”Kathleen Parker/a: blockquoteAdmit it. You miss Sarah Palin just a little: The wink, the red shoes, the pointing finger, the heck-with-ya attitude and, given the performance of some of her Republican colleagues, her Taser-like intelligence./blockquote Um, no. The only part of Sarah Palin we miss is Tina Fey. pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/TCsN6R3NZ5AE1BFpo3tIVz3LQwo/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/TCsN6R3NZ5AE1BFpo3tIVz3LQwo/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/TCsN6R3NZ5AE1BFpo3tIVz3LQwo/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/TCsN6R3NZ5AE1BFpo3tIVz3LQwo/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=ZfAQ8fIetWc:hYG13HVTWnY:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/ZfAQ8fIetWc” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: We are everywhere

pOn Nov. 14, we brought you a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/here-come-the-brides-kristen-henderson-sarah-ellis_n_1091355.html?1321258945ref=women” target=”_hplink”strongPart 1/strong/a of “Here Come The Brides”–a three-part original video series telling the story of lesbian couple’s difficult journey to the wedding they looked forward to for so long. /ppIn strongPart 2/strong (strongabove/strong), Kristen and Sarah recall two of the major milestones on their path to the altar — domestic partnership, the value of which they question, and motherhood, which brought them as close as possible to the family they envisioned for themselves. Sarah and Kristen first chronicled how they became parents — – in vitro for Sarah, artificial insemination for Kristen, same donor — in their book “a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Times-Two-Women-Happy-Family/dp/143917640X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0″ target=”_hplink”Times Two: Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made/a,” but here they talk about how their dreams of motherhood actually delayed their pursuit of marriage./ppOnce the couple’s children, Thomas and Kate, were born, the only thing missing in their lives was the right to marry in their home state of New York./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/here-come-the-brides-kristen-henderson-sarah-ellis-part-2_n_1093580.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/gay-marriage/”More on Gay Marriage/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Ve7ibJD-XYWk748rAP3JMI9M_sk/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Ve7ibJD-XYWk748rAP3JMI9M_sk/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Ve7ibJD-XYWk748rAP3JMI9M_sk/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Ve7ibJD-XYWk748rAP3JMI9M_sk/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=XTXQvXqbVDM:yb5Z3MxoxSQ:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=XTXQvXqbVDM:yb5Z3MxoxSQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=XTXQvXqbVDM:yb5Z3MxoxSQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=XTXQvXqbVDM:yb5Z3MxoxSQ:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=XTXQvXqbVDM:yb5Z3MxoxSQ:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/XTXQvXqbVDM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Here Come The Brides: Kristen Henderson And Sarah Ellis Marry — Part 2 (VIDEO)

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Herman_Cain_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg” alt=”" height=”343″ width=”275″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Does Herman Cain really want to be president?br / (Gage Skidmore)/div /div As a href=”http://www.thenation.com/blog/164575/four-signs-herman-cain-isnt-really-running-president”Ari Melber/a has pointed out, there are several indications that Herman Cain isn’t particularly interested in moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He’s not bothering to build the kind of organizations that are needed to get people to the polls. He’s not bothering to campaign in early states. He’s not bothering to do any of the things that turn buzz into votes. pBut then, why should he? Being president is a thankless job. Running for president as a GOP candidate? Just about the best paying job you can get with no experience, no knowledge and nothing but an overweight ego./p pWhy shouldn’t Cain “run for president” as a profile-elevating exercise? Sarah Palin earned an estimated $12 million in 2010 as a celebrity Republican woman. How many of last cycle’s candidates for the GOP nod went on to television shows, radio platforms and big book contracts? Just about all of them—except the guy who “won.”/p pWhere being a Democratic candidate can leave you working for years to fill in the financial hole, being a GOP candidate has proven to be an extremely lucrative profession. GOP voters have an insatiable appetite for being told what they already believe, with bonus points for covering it with a heap of psuedo-evangelicalese rhetoric./p pHerman Cain isn’t running for president. He’s running to be the next Sarah Palin. He’s not competing with Barack Obama; he’s battling for bandwidth against the Kardashians. Charges that he has engaged in outrageous behavior? If Rick Perry wasn’t passing out the info, Cain would have to do it himself. Would you bet against some cable network tossing a few million to the Hermanator for a series focusing on his invaluable business insight as he tours around his pizza empire, croons the occasional tune (with celebrity guests) and gets down with The Little People? Would you bet that the negotiations aren’t underway right now?/p pHerman Cain doesn’t have to worry about the general election, or his harassment coming back on him, or learning the president of Uz becky becky stan stan. The only thing he’s worried about is that he might accidentally win the nomination. That would really hurt his plans./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/jXSflLfwaoLX-DU-acT1EG-GmIY/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/jXSflLfwaoLX-DU-acT1EG-GmIY/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/jXSflLfwaoLX-DU-acT1EG-GmIY/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/jXSflLfwaoLX-DU-acT1EG-GmIY/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=X36zwM20lds:MZ2t6uK1LOk:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/X36zwM20lds” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Winning is the last thing on Herman Cain’s mind

pMINNEAPOLIS — Two American hikers accused of spying and imprisoned in Iran are planning to get married in the spring./ppCindy Hickey, the mother of Minnesota native Shane Bauer, says her son will marry Californian Sarah Shourd on May 5 in the San Francisco area./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/hikers-released-by-iran-s_0_n_1093290.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/iran/”More on Iran/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/JvxATV8Cggsbb4VE5fAZfxj2Hc8/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/JvxATV8Cggsbb4VE5fAZfxj2Hc8/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/JvxATV8Cggsbb4VE5fAZfxj2Hc8/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/JvxATV8Cggsbb4VE5fAZfxj2Hc8/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=kzfx8BrGnpA:VrlBirJjfQU:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=kzfx8BrGnpA:VrlBirJjfQU:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=kzfx8BrGnpA:VrlBirJjfQU:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=kzfx8BrGnpA:VrlBirJjfQU:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=kzfx8BrGnpA:VrlBirJjfQU:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/kzfx8BrGnpA” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Hikers Released By Iran Set May Date For Wedding

pRocker a href=”http://kristenhendersonofantigonerising.blogspot.com/” target=”_hplink”Kristen Henderson/a and magazine executive Sarah Ellis had started to think marriage just wasn’t in their future. That’s because the couple, who met in Manhattan in 2005, live in a state where same sex marriage wasn’t legal. Or at least it wasn’t until last June./ppThe two women watched in frustration in 2009 as the state a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/nyregion/03marriage.html” target=”_hplink”senate voted down a bill/a that would give LGBT citizens the right to marry. /ppBy the time the senate had another opportunity to legalize gay marriage, in June 2011, Sarah and Kristen had two more reasons to hope the bill passed: their two-year-old children, Thomas and Kate. In a June 15th blog post on The Huffington Post, Sarah wrote that the thought of the Marriage Equality Act not passing left her “a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-kate-ellis/marriage-equality-act-ny_b_877602.html” target=”_hplink”heartbroken, for my children/a. With all of the countless precautions I take to nurture and protect my children, I cannot guard them against the deep ramifications the non-passage of this bill would have on them.”/pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/here-come-the-brides-kristen-henderson-sarah-ellis_n_1091355.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/gay-marriage/”More on Gay Marriage/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/-s05wPgYcy0V70T4m-wlSEKHaAA/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/-s05wPgYcy0V70T4m-wlSEKHaAA/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/-s05wPgYcy0V70T4m-wlSEKHaAA/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/-s05wPgYcy0V70T4m-wlSEKHaAA/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=6y2hS5E7Ia8:He61XvTovp8:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=6y2hS5E7Ia8:He61XvTovp8:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=6y2hS5E7Ia8:He61XvTovp8:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=6y2hS5E7Ia8:He61XvTovp8:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=6y2hS5E7Ia8:He61XvTovp8:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/6y2hS5E7Ia8″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Here Come The Brides: Kristen Henderson And Sarah Ellis Marry — Part 1 (VIDEO)

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/30549/night_owls1.jpg” alt=”night owls” height=”98″ width=”550″ //div Justin Elliott, at a href=”http://www.salon.com/2011/11/12/fords_theatre_flunks_oreillys_lincoln_book/singleton/”Salon/a: blockquoteA reviewer for the official National Park Service bookstore at Ford’s Theatre has recommended that Bill O’Reilly’s bestselling new book about the Lincoln assassination not be sold at the historic site “because of the lack of documentation and the factual errors within the publication.” pRae Emerson, deputy superintendent at Ford’s Theatre, which is a national historic site under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, has penned a scathing appraisal of O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever.” In Emerson’s official review, which I’ve pasted below, she spends four pages correcting passages from O’Reilly’s book before recommending that it not be offered for sale at Ford’s Theatre because it is not up to quality standards./p pFor example, “Killing Lincoln” makes multiple references to the Oval Office; in fact, Emerson points out, the office was not built until 1909./p /blockquote pI think the only appropriate response to this is hysterical laughter. I admit I never figured Bill O’Reilly to be the type to pen an attempted “history” book, primarily because of the general conservative loathing of (1) historians and (2) looking stuff up, but I suppose it saves a step. Glenn Beck had to look far and wide (well, under the floorboards, but the same principle) for a right-wing historian willing to make history sound like a good conservative thinks it should sound, then promoted that historian: Bill here is just cutting out the middleman, and producing the stuff directly. A history book from Bill O’Reilly emis/em considerably less terrifying-sounding than a children’s book from Bill O’Reilly (also done), so maybe we should take that as comfort. The “bestselling” part is less comforting./p pO’Reilly is going to react to this review of his book the only way he reacts to anything: he’s going to declare it a conspiracy against him. Just watch. The National Park Service is trying to dodge selling a book from a brilliant conservative mind, and so are “making excuses” for not wanting Bill’s history-bending, make-crap-up tome on their shelves. Because they’re emliberals/em, damn it. This proves we shouldn’t have a National Park Service at all!/p pConservatives have an odd relationship with intellectualism. By “odd” I mean overtly hostile, mostly, but they also take stabs at intellectual endeavors themselves, such has “historian” or “economist” or “climate scientist” or “biologist” or what have you. Because they inherently distrust people with too much knowledge, however, the conservative version is to learn a little and then make the rest up. History is told with an eye for ideological storytelling, but the details of actual history are unimportant, and boring. DNA exists, and evolution exists to a limited extent, but then comes the part that’s too hard to understand so it all gets crossed out and replaced with “and then God did some magic that completely ignored all the rest of it because he got bored.” Economic expertise is by far the most easily faked; assert whatever ideologically-based plan you want, make up numbers wholesale, and if someone actually follows your advice and it turns out to, say, destroy entire economies, just say they didn’t implement it right (that damn George W. Bush. If only he was legitimately conservative, none of this would have happened!)/p pIf the Oval Office didn’t exist when Lincoln was president, then emshut up you damn hippie/em. If you think it’s important to point it out, then it rises to the level of conspiracy: you are trying to discredit the author by pointing out, well, that stuff that ought to discredit them./p pFrankly, however, I don’t care that much, because this new half-hearted endumbening of history is precisely what I need to launch my new conservative bestseller. In it, Abe Lincoln teams up with Jesus, who was sent via time-travel device invented by Sarah Palin to free the slaves. Lincoln, Jesus, and Paul Revere singlehandedly turned the tide at Gettysburg, where North and South combined their armies to hand a devastating defeat to Stalin and his communist forces. Then the South freed the slaves even though those assholes in the North really didn’t want them to, because in reality the war wasn’t about slavery, it was about States’ Rights. Then a bunch of other stuff happened, and Narnia was saved forever./p pMark my words, though: conspiracy. It’s a conspiracy against Bill O’Reilly. It’s emalways/em a conspiracy against Bill O’Reilly./p pbr / Top Comments for today are a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/13/1036204/-Top-Comments:-All-Power-Corrupts,-But-We-Need-Electricity?via=nightowls”here/a.br //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/hUgWtknYR5JkQlSa6r8aoh7fL_M/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/hUgWtknYR5JkQlSa6r8aoh7fL_M/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/hUgWtknYR5JkQlSa6r8aoh7fL_M/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/hUgWtknYR5JkQlSa6r8aoh7fL_M/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=XweWdnEhp8w:0E_vziObrQU:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/XweWdnEhp8w” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Open thread for night owls: The conspiracy against Bill O’Reilly

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/1054/Goposaur_xlg.gif” alt=”GOPosaur” height=”174″ width=”282″ //div bR/bepublicans: We need to talk. pI know you and I don’t see eye to eye on many things. We hang out with different crowds, we listen to different music, we have different interpretations of pretty much every event that has ever happened from the Big Bang onwards—but I’m worried about you. We, the whole of non-Republican America, are worried about you. Heck, I even know people in other emcountries/em that are worried about you./p pYou can be forgiven for Sarah Palin. I know that was mostly McCain’s fault, and you didn’t have a lot of say in that. His staff looked around for someone who they thought could better appeal to the base, and that’s who they came up with. You should have been insulted by that, but I’ll at least grant that it wasn’t your decision to make, it was his./p pBut that was 2008, and this is 2012. And the decisions you’ve been making this time around are entirely up to you, and, well … let’s just say that most of the rest of us are pretty disappointed in you right now./p pbr / bY/bour first serious non-Palin flirtation of this election cycle was with Michele Bachmann. emReally?/em You could choose from among the ranks of the entire conservative movement, and you said “yeah, Michele Bachmann, I guess.” I don’t mean to be cruel, but that’s when most of us realized that this little ideological obsession of yours had turned into a full-fledged, self-destructive addiction. You’d gone and cracked, right then and there. I realize that you have to work with the candidates that present themselves, and not the ones you’d actually choose on your own, but Michele Bachmann was already known far and wide as, well, a crazy person. She’s Palin, after Palin drank an entire bottle of whiskey and drove her car into the side of a DMV office. She doesn’t have political embeliefs/em so much as she has emspasms/em; everything she disagrees with is elevated to the level of America-killing communist apocalypse. There’s no volume control on that knob. Her sole area of expertise is in the area of hand-waving panic over things she knows nothing about: Ask her for the barest details and she’s dumb as a post./p pSo fine, that was the first one. First loves are often not well-planned things, though; there’s some leeway there. Let’s look at the rest of your candidates./p pRick Perry./p pNo, let’s just pause there for a moment. Rick. Effing. Perry./p pYou’re pulling our legs, right?/p pLet’s all remember that it was your punditry, your own establishment figures, that pushed emhard/em to get Rick Perry in the race. This wasn’t a case of a candidate foisting themselves upon you, this is a guy you actually empicked/em to represent conservatism. Holy Freaking Hell, Republicans, what is emthat/em about? Let’s look at the attributes he brings to the campaign trail. First: dumb as a post. I know I just said that about Bachmann, but Perry forced us all to reconsider that, because compared to Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann looks like the freaking Einstein of conservatism. You know, if you folks believed in atoms and such. If Bachmann is as dumb as a post, then Rick Perry is as dumb as the dirt you dug out of the ground to make the hole to put the post in. He has an I.Q. 10 points lower than composted leaves. We’re talking about a guy whose convictions run so very deep that, on a good day, emhe’s lucky if he even remembers what they are./em/p pOh yeah, I’m going there. I don’t care how bad a debater you are, if you say that as president the first thing you’ll do is abolish these three federal agencies that are wrecking the country, but you can’t actually remember what the hell they are, emyou are stone-cold stupid./em/p pWhich brings up the second possibility: That if you can’t remember these three things you earnestly believe in, perhaps you don’t actually believe anything at all, and are just saying whatever your handlers told you to say. I have to admit, that might make for a better representative of conservatism: It worked out just fine for George W. Bush. Bush never cared about a damn thing, he just left everything to Cheney, or Rumsfeld, or Rove. Economy? Yeah, whatever. War with who? Sure, let’s go for it. Freedomz and stuff./p pMake no mistake here, I haven’t ever forgiven you for Bush. Listening to that dimwit speak for five minutes should have convinced you what a mistake it would be to let that barely functioning manchild play with the entire free world like it was his personal Jenga game, and his first few public appearances were when you and I parted ways for-freaking-ever. But Perry, now? Rick Perry, who is the emdumber/em version of George Bush? The emless/em principled version? The emless/em eloquent version? If that’s who your leading pundits emwanted/em in the race, if that’s the be-all, end-all conservative savior (emphasis on the end-all, I guess), then who is it going to be after eight more years? A goddamn vase full of geraniums?/p pIt makes you look embad/em. It makes you look dumb. It makes you look like, well, like a party so thoroughly detached from their mental capacities that they would actually look up to a guy like Rick Perry as being their brain trust.br //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cE_Y6Uk5FVOVqOvFDS9lEat4xUE/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cE_Y6Uk5FVOVqOvFDS9lEat4xUE/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cE_Y6Uk5FVOVqOvFDS9lEat4xUE/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cE_Y6Uk5FVOVqOvFDS9lEat4xUE/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=0EC0JybNgw0:yxijD91jv9E:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/0EC0JybNgw0″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Dear Republican Party

Distressing signals from Egypt indicate it has veered off course from the freedom and democracy goals of Tahrir Square. bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-leah-whitson/egypt-government_b_1084176.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/egypt-news/”More on Egypt News/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/P27XWtJVP7mowYYmYrBkqAgx-cw/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/P27XWtJVP7mowYYmYrBkqAgx-cw/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/P27XWtJVP7mowYYmYrBkqAgx-cw/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/P27XWtJVP7mowYYmYrBkqAgx-cw/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=joah404LAdM:sRGxiV3SbG0:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=joah404LAdM:sRGxiV3SbG0:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=joah404LAdM:sRGxiV3SbG0:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=joah404LAdM:sRGxiV3SbG0:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=joah404LAdM:sRGxiV3SbG0:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/joah404LAdM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Leah Whitson: Time for Tahrir 2.0

Imagine if we could look at all of the citizens of the planet with kind-ness. If we looked at how alike we are, rather than how different. bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-oleary/meaning-of-kindness_b_1077836.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/happiness/”More on Happiness/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/UxnIIVk7DsmFCSN93HxaiwDq4j0/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/UxnIIVk7DsmFCSN93HxaiwDq4j0/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/UxnIIVk7DsmFCSN93HxaiwDq4j0/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/UxnIIVk7DsmFCSN93HxaiwDq4j0/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=Ote3sHUo4rI:96VAq0iJ3J4:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=Ote3sHUo4rI:96VAq0iJ3J4:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=Ote3sHUo4rI:96VAq0iJ3J4:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=Ote3sHUo4rI:96VAq0iJ3J4:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=Ote3sHUo4rI:96VAq0iJ3J4:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/Ote3sHUo4rI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah O’Leary: Kind-ness

pTo illustrate Mitt Romney’s Iowa strategy, some numbers are helpful: Counting today’s visit, he has made four visits to Iowa all year. That’s two fewer than Sarah Palin, who’s not running for the GOP presidential nomination./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/08/mitt-romney-seen-as-downp_n_1081925.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/rick-perry/”More on Rick Perry/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IsK6_J2bf3ijPgHAa0_0IFyLJLU/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IsK6_J2bf3ijPgHAa0_0IFyLJLU/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IsK6_J2bf3ijPgHAa0_0IFyLJLU/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IsK6_J2bf3ijPgHAa0_0IFyLJLU/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=F5wWtpALZVo:8tQT_8qJ4eI:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=F5wWtpALZVo:8tQT_8qJ4eI:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=F5wWtpALZVo:8tQT_8qJ4eI:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=F5wWtpALZVo:8tQT_8qJ4eI:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=F5wWtpALZVo:8tQT_8qJ4eI:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/F5wWtpALZVo” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Mitt Romney Seen As Downplaying Iowa Campaign

pimg src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/APR_11_8.jpg” //p pVisual source: a href=”http://newseum.org”Newseum/a/p pa href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/cain-on-new-allegations-we-are-taking-this-head-on/2011/11/07/gIQAA9PkyM_blog.html”Nia-Malika Henderson/a:/p blockquote[Sharon] Bialek, a Chicago homemaker and single mother, laid out in graphic detail an alleged encounter with Cain more than a dozen years ago, and her words effectively changed Cain’s strategy. The Republican nominee said he watched the press conference with his staff in San Francisco. p“We watched it because we didn’t even know that this whole thing about woman number 4 was going to even come out, so that was a surprise,” he said, in an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live that aired early Tuesday morning. “At least it wasn’t one of the many that have the first name anonymous. This one actually had a name and face. We are dealing with it. We are taking this head-on.”/p /blockquote p”It.” “This one.” Nice way to refer to your female accusers, Mr. Cain (they number a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/08/1034196/-Fifth-woman-comes-forward-with-story-of-unwanted-advance-from-Herman-Cain?via=blog_1″five/a now, for the record). I don’t know if “head on” is the right phrase to use when a woman is accusing you of a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/woman-cain-reached-under-skirt-for-her-genitals-pulled-her-head-toward-his-crotch/2011/11/07/gIQA2sflvM_story.html”this/a:/p blockquoteA woman says Republican presidential contender Herman Cain reached under her skirt for her genitals and pushed her head toward his crotch in July 1997./blockquote pOn to the punditry!/p pa href=”http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-cain-20111108,0,1804021.story”The Los Angeles Times/a:/p blockquoteHerman Cain and Arnold Schwarzenegger don’t have a lot in common, but there is this: Both were hit with allegations of serious sexual impropriety in the midst of their campaigns for high office. Voters forgave Schwarzenegger, who was easily elected governor in 2003. The same could still happen to Cain, but that might be more likely if the GOP presidential contender borrowed a page from Schwarzenegger’s crisis-PR script. pThe charges against Cain aren’t as well documented as those against Schwarzenegger, but they may be uglier because he is accused of making unwanted advances toward women who worked for him at the National Restaurant Assn., which if true would be a gross abuse of power. Of course, only the participants know whether the claims are true, and if they aren’t, Cain has nothing to apologize for./p pFor the sake of his own campaign, and because Americans deserve better than the race-baiting, blame-shifting, conflicting explanations Cain has offered to date, he should stop stonewalling, answer hard questions and seek to release his accusers from their promises of silence. Candidates’ consensual sex lives are nobody’s business but their own, but when there are harassment or assault victims involved, it’s everybody’s business./p /blockquote pa href=”http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/11/bye-bye-herman-1.html”Tod Robberson/a:/p blockquoteTo Cain and other Bialek doubters: What woman would go before a national audience like this and publicly lie about such humiliating details unless it was to serve a greater good? This helps explain why the three other women accusing Cain of sexual harassment are not coming forward: It’s humiliating. pThis is another case where Cain doesn’t appear to understand the difference between right and wrong. He doesn’t seem to understand what is appropriate or inappropriate. All he seems to understand is that Herman Cain is a dynamic, forceful, charismatic person, therefore, Herman Cain not only deserves to be president but deserves to treat women, power, the truth and basic morality as his playthings to do as he pleases./p pAm I convicting him in the media? Perhaps. I’ve now heard enough to declare my personal verdict as a member of the thinking public: Herman Cain must end his presidential campaign and, for his own good, seek treatment. His presidential campaign is a sham because this man does not belong anywhere close to the levers of power in any government./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bs-ed-witcover-cain-20111108,0,2599673.story”Jules Witcover/a:/p blockquoteIn more recent years, the political problem with such “scandals” has not been so much a question of morality as it has been of willful deception. What has harmed politicians caught up in allegations of sexual harassment or abuse has been the attempted cover-up, when candor at the outset may have taken much of the sting out of the accusations. pTell the truth was advice that Nixon rejected, had he ever heard it at all. Mr. Clinton received the same advice as well, but he lived up to his reputation as “Slick Willie” and was saved only by fellow Democrats in the Senate who, holding their noses, voted for his acquittal./p pMr. Cain faces the same challenge now, to get the full story out and live up to his reputation for candor whatever the consequences. Vindication could keep his political fortunes alive if indeed his side of the story is told and holds up in the light of day./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.dennews.com/opinion/columns/column-herman-cain-truly-a-self-made-punch-line/article_b674ce76-09b2-11e1-9ab7-001a4bcf6878.html”Sarah Bigler/a:/p blockquoteBialek is the first to put a face to the allegations. All four women are under confidentiality agreements that they signed when Cain financially settled their cases more than a decade ago. Not only is this is a quintessential accusation of sexual harassment; it’s a legal accusation of sexual assault. pHere’s where Cain’s intelligence really shines. According to some Harvard experts, as reported by ABC News, Bialek was only able to step forward because Cain commented on the specifics of some of the cases in interviews early last week. He broke the confidentiality agreement, not Bialek, leaving her legally able to publicly comment without repercussions from Cain or his legal team./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2011/11/the_beginning_of_the_end_for_c.html”The Star-Ledger Editorial Board/a:/p blockquoteRepublican presidential candidate Herman Cain won’t admit it yet, and maybe he can’t even see it, but his 15 minutes are up. This accuser will be hard to dismiss. She told her boyfriend, a doctor, about the incident immediately after it occurred. And she told a businessman who was a mentor. Both of them have signed statements verifying that. pCain can dismiss one or two women as liars, but not a chorus. And if this is a pattern of behavior for Cain, as it is starting to appear, then No. 5 will step up to the microphone soon./p pCain is refusing to discuss the issue. But if he thinks he can become president without answering these charges, he is more nuts than he seems./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/todaysbuzz/tuesday/sfl-should-herman-cain-drop-out-of-the-gop-race-20111108,0,2970585.story”Gary Stein/a:/p blockquoteNot surprisingly, conservatives and my good buddies in the tea party remain on Cain’s side. Cain has raised $2 million in campaign contributions in the past week since the allegations surfaced. I guess sexual harassment allegations and avoiding answering questions nbsp;means nothing to some people. And Cain does have virulent right-wing firestarter Ann Coulter on his side. That really tells you all you need to know. pIf Cain wants to maintain any shred of dignity, he’ll drop out now./p /blockquote pI’m pretty sure any “shred” of dignity was left in the sscene of the crime/s car back in 1997./p pa href=”http://www.americanindependent.com/203199/women-would-be-disproportionately-affected-by-tax-plans-proposed-by-cain-perry-experts-say”Sofia Resnick/a:/p blockquoteWith the nation’s attention focused on Cain’s old sexual harassment charges, scrutiny of Cain’s infamous “9-9-9″ Plan is stalled for the moment. pJoan Entmacher, vice president for Family Economic Security at the National Women’s Law Center, where she works at promoting policies aimed at improving the economic security of low-income women and their families, told TAI that Cain’s tax proposal appears to affect women worse than the other candidates because his plan is “much harder on lower-income Americans” in the way it would raise taxes on low- and middle-income earners./p pUnder Cain’s plan, millionaires would get a 17.9-percent tax rate, or a 22-percent boost after taxes. But a single mother earning between $20,000 and $30,000? Her tax rate would be 24.9 percent. In other words, a single mom making $25,000 a year will have to give 25 percent of her income, or $6,250, to taxes./p /blockquote pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/eh_BiGkG0iKnheoSljHccO9P-WI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/eh_BiGkG0iKnheoSljHccO9P-WI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/eh_BiGkG0iKnheoSljHccO9P-WI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/eh_BiGkG0iKnheoSljHccO9P-WI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=9L_BNml8-5w:bYdm_ba1yjU:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/9L_BNml8-5w” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: What happens when you let Herman be Herman

pbr /emIf a Mississippi “personhood” amendment passes and that state begins appropriating tax dollars to the unborn, don’t be surprised if Matthew “question mark jacket” Lesko starts telling blastocysts about government largess. We feel bad for the desperate comedy writer whom Gloria “his idea of a stimulus package” Allred cruelly has on retainer. And there’s a happy-go-lucky tear-gassed dog in Greece that all those dour OWS police brutality victims could learn a thing or two from. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Monday, November 7th, 2011/em:/ppStrongWHERE REPUBLICANS GO TO BANK/strong - And, sadly, it doesn’t contain a mile-deep, steel-reinforced safe, access to which is granted only after Mitt Romney passes a retinal scan, a hand print verifier, a voice identification test and then traverses a narrow pedestrian bridge that — thanks to an electromagnetic system imuch too/i complicated to explain here — extends itself across uas/u Romney walks it. Sadly. iRoll Call/i’s Ambreen Ali: “StrongWith just one branch and a small staff, Chain Bridge Bank has the unassuming feel of a local business. But the $230 million Beltway depository is fast becoming the preferred bank of the Republican Party/strong. Mitt Romney’s and Rick Perry’s presidential campaigns have accounts there, as do dozens of PACs run by such Republican heavy hitters as Sen. John McCain, Speaker John Boehner and Sarah Palin. Though the bank is nonpartisan, many of its founders and leaders move in Republican fundraising circles and draw political clients from them. It’s a business model that has worked: Chain Bridge’s earnings were up 48 percent last year from the year prior, according to Marketwire.”/pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/huffpost-hill—where-rep_n_1080822.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/video/”More on Video/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/_fmk1aZFDx49Y4T5AoK1V_kHwTk/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/_fmk1aZFDx49Y4T5AoK1V_kHwTk/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/_fmk1aZFDx49Y4T5AoK1V_kHwTk/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/_fmk1aZFDx49Y4T5AoK1V_kHwTk/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=XUVJ8ls7uAk:fDKBJeyfWp4:yIl2AUoC8zA”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=XUVJ8ls7uAk:fDKBJeyfWp4:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=XUVJ8ls7uAk:fDKBJeyfWp4:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=XUVJ8ls7uAk:fDKBJeyfWp4:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=XUVJ8ls7uAk:fDKBJeyfWp4:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/XUVJ8ls7uAk” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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HUFFPOST HILL - Where Republicans Move Their Money

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/romneyandcain_550wide_ScottAudette_reuters.jpg” alt=”2011 Gallup” height=”273″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Herman Cain and Mitt Romney are in a three-way tie with undecided (Scott Audette/Reuters)br //div /div a href=”http://www.gallup.com/poll/150617/Cain-Ties-Romney-Atop-GOP-Field.aspx?utm_source=alertamp;utm_medium=emailamp;utm_campaign=syndicationamp;utm_content=morelinkamp;utm_term=All20Headlines20Politics”Gallup./a 11/2-6. Republicans. MoE ±4 (10/7, 9/18, 8/21, 7/24): div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/gallup2011_julytonovember.png” alt=”2011 Gallup” height=”90″ width=”545″ //div Despite three separate allegations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain (remember this poll was taken before Sharon Bialek went public), Mitt Romney still isn’t the GOP’s clearcut first choice. It could be worse for Romney, however: At least he’s tied for the lead with Cain and “undecided.” And he’s surely pleased that Rick Perry has seemingly joined the ranks of Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie as would-be conservative standard bearers. pBut even as Cain’s troubles mount, Romney has to be worried about the fact that Newt Gingrich’s steady rebound continues. Despite resigning his speakership in disgrace over an ethics scandal and going on to marry a staffer with whom he was having an affair while in office, Gingrich is now within shouting distance of the top spot. In fact, he is polling just two points lower than John McCain was at this point in 2007—and he’s trending up, instead of down. Check out where things were back then:/p div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/gallup2007_julytonovember.png” alt=”2007 Gallup” height=”90″ width=”545″ //div So, does Newt have a shot? Dare we dream the impossible dream? I mean, just based on these numbers, it doesn’t seem like an outrageous idea. Purely looking at the numbers, you have both John McCain and Newt Gingrich trailing two flawed frontrunners (though Newt must also battle undecided), both of them barely entering into double-digit territory, both of their campaigns nearly penniless, and both of them all but written off (including by yours truly). pNow, just to be clear, I’m not predicting Gingrich as the next front-runner … but that’s only because I have no idea what the hell is going on inside the collective mind of the Republican primary electorate. Then again, with less than two months to go before voting begins, neither do they./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/mEwuq6JOZdrBfTjOO2Mys5YQmVQ/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/mEwuq6JOZdrBfTjOO2Mys5YQmVQ/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/mEwuq6JOZdrBfTjOO2Mys5YQmVQ/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/mEwuq6JOZdrBfTjOO2Mys5YQmVQ/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=DWo2GDUJySE:T8yhx2VIgOc:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/DWo2GDUJySE” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Gallup: Cain, Romney tied with ‘undecided’ in poll taken after sexual harassment story broke

pimg src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/APR_11_4.jpg” border=”3″ //p pVisual source: a href=”http://newseum.org”Newseum/a/p pThe a href=”http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501707_162-57317722/boehner-calls-anti-tax-activist-random-person/”Associated Press/a brings us this bit of Boehner hilarity:/p blockquoteTo many members of Congress, Grover Norquist is a force to be reckoned with. Yet House Speaker John Boehner referred to the anti-tax activist on Thursday as a “random person” and sidestepped a reporter’s questions about whether Norquist is a positive influence on GOP lawmakers. p”Our focus here is on jobs,” said Boehner, R-Ohio. “We’re doing everything we can to get our economy moving again and to get people back to work./p p”It’s not often I’m asked about some random person in America,” he added, drawing reporters’ laughter./p /blockquote pThe a href=”http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-norquist-20111104,0,4186364.story”Los Angeles Times/a takes a closer look at how much influence this “random person” holds on Congress:/p blockquoteAs head of Americans for Tax Reform, he pressures lawmakers — overwhelmingly Republicans — into signing his organization’s pledge not to raise taxes, and then threatens the political careers of those who deviate. This is destroying hopes that the bipartisan congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which is charged with recommending at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over 10 years, will succeed, or that Democrats and Republicans can agree on any kind of plan to create jobs and boost the economy. Former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson, co-chairman of President Obama’s fiscal commission, told the deficit panel Tuesday that Republicans were “in thrall” to Norquist, taking consideration of revenue increases to balance the budget off the table. pRep. Steven C. LaTourette (R-Ohio), who has signed the no-tax pledge, told the Washington Post that if he had a nickel for every Republican who said he supported the letter’s goal but didn’t dare cross Norquist by signing it, he’d be “rich and retired.br //p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.salon.com/2011/11/03/could_the_gop_actually_be_turning_on_grover_norquist/singleton/”Steve Kornacki/a adds:/p blockquoteIn the 112th Congress, the GOP’s positions has mirrored Norquist’s: No net tax increases, ever. Which is why President Obama’s efforts to strike a “grand bargain” during this summer’s debt ceiling drama failed so miserably. [N]ow comes news that 40 House Republicans have joined with 60 Democrats to sign a letter to the supercommittee arguing that “all options for mandatory and discretionary spending and revenues must be on the table” and urging the panel to craft a plan for $4 trillion in debt reduction. Some of the Republican signatories aren’t big surprises; Virginia’s Frank Wolf, for instance, has been one of the few congressional Republicans to publicly challenge Norquist and his anti-tax adamance. But others, like Marlin Stutzman, a Tea Party favorite from Indiana who was elected last year, are. pThere are two ways to read this development. One is that a significant number of congressional Republicans may finally be waking up to the fundamental incompatibility of Norquist’s pledge with the sort of deficit reduction that they believe is essential. This could ultimately give Boehner the cover that he lacked during the summer and allow him to sign off on the kind of deal that Obama was offering./p pBut it’s easy to get carried away. Saying that all options should be on the table during supercommittee discussions isn’t that hard. Even Norquist says he’s fine with the letter. “Consider anything,” he told the Washington Post. “Just don’t vote for a tax increase.”/p /blockquote pa href=”http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/11/eerie-influence-grover-norquist”Kevin Drum/a’s take:/p blockquoteEven after all these years, I continue to marvel at the bizarre stranglehold that Norquist has on the Republican Party. Sure, LaTourette is exaggerating for effect, but if there are even a hundred Republicans who are tired of Norquist’s schtick, why don’t they band together to tell him to go to hell? His power depends on being able to pick off individual congressmen who stray from the oath, but he can’t pick off a hundred at a time. One small show of collective action and they’d be free of him./blockquote pSpeaking of people, random or not, the GOP has been working overtime trying to stop emsome/em people from voting. a href=”http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67555.html#ixzz1cjCizXfi”Herman Schwartz/a:/p blockquoteA massive Republican campaign likely to suppress minority and low-income voting is under way. If it works, the GOP may be able to prevent many millions of Americans, largely Democrats, from voting — potentially affecting 171 electoral votes. pTo counteract these new state restrictions, President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign has announced wide-ranging “voter protection” efforts./p pThough right-wing efforts to suppress low-income and minority voting have a long history, the current GOP campaign seems unprecedented in scope, organization and ambition./p /blockquote pa href=”http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/millionaire-for-a-day/”Paul Krugman/a on wealthy people — specifically, millionaires:/p blockquoteI see from comments here and elsewhere that the usual obfuscators are rolling out the old income mobility defense: sure, a few people get a lot of the income, but it’s different people every year, so no harm. I think it’s coming from the Tax Foundation this time. p[S]ure, many people who have incomes greater than $1 million one year fall out of the category the next year — but that’s typically because their income fell from, say, 1.05 million to 0.95 million, not because they went back to being middle class. And the new millionaires are typically people who were making just shy of a million the year before, not Horatio Alger stories./p pLook, let me make a public service announcement: if you rely on bought and paid for sources on income inequality, you’re going to embarrass yourself again and again. These people never get it right, because their whole reason for being is to obfuscate. You should never, ever, trust what they say on this issue./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/03/opinion/fleischer-cain-scandal-industrial-complex/index.html?hpt=op_t1″Ari Fleischer/a defends the person of the moment, Herman Cain:/p blockquoteIf Herman Cain committed sexual harassment and is now lying about it, his goose is cooked and it should be. But if he is telling the truth, there is something terribly disconcerting about the way the Washington “scandal industrial complex” — full of reporters, former campaign workers and pundits — has reacted to this sad story./blockquote pa href=”http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/last-man-standing–20111103″Beth Reinhard and Alex Roarty/a argue that Newt Gingrich may be the next person to rise to the top of the GOP field:/p blockquoteThe question of which Republican candidate would emerge as the more conservative, more preferable alternative to Mitt Romney has loomed over the 2012 primary campaign for months. A passel of potential rivals have either taken a pass (Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin) or self-destructed (Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry). Now, Herman Cain’s spectacularly bungled response to accusations of sexual harassment threatens to torpedo his recent surge, too. pAnd so, it may come to this: anticipating the rise of Newt Gingrich/p /blockquote pUNICEF good will ambassador a href=”http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/03/opinion/martin-child-exploitation/index.html?hpt=op_t1″Ricky Martin/a sheds light on the nbsp;27 million people who are victims of human trafficking:/p blockquoteThis unscrupulous market — which consists of 27 million victims worldwide, according to the 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report — generates up to $32 billion annually, an amount rivaling that of the trafficking of arms and drugs. Of the 27 million, UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million are children who are trafficked every year to work as forced labor, in the commercial sex industry, in prostitution and in other forms of slavery The statistics are staggering. Many contest them because the crimes are hidden. But numbers don’t matter: Preventing one or 200 children from traffickers validates our mission. No one should be exploited and deprived of his or her freedom./blockquote pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/naIAIFp8319kNCiKPEl-a0vaOyw/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/naIAIFp8319kNCiKPEl-a0vaOyw/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/naIAIFp8319kNCiKPEl-a0vaOyw/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/naIAIFp8319kNCiKPEl-a0vaOyw/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=1VETJySoF8I:3ilx0snW8Cg:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/1VETJySoF8I” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Boehner claims Norquist is just a "random person"

pimg src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/APR_11_3.jpg” border=”3″ //p pVisual source: a href=”http://newseum.org”Newseum/a/p pPoor Herman Cain. As if the every-growing scandal involving claims he sexual harassed female employees at the National Restaurant Association wasn’t enough. Now the hydra of a story has grown another head: the press is eviscerating Cain’s campaign tactics and exposing it for the amateur hour it’s been all along./p pa href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/opinion/the-stumbling-campaign-of-herman-cain.html?ref=opinion”The New York Times/a leads the pack with a blistering editorial:/p blockquoteMr. Cain knew the harassment charges would become public 10 days ahead of time, but still he stumbled for three days. First he said he knew of no settlement between his accusers and the National Restaurant Association — rather implausible, considering he was its chief executive. Then he said he was aware of it but didn’t know the details. Then he put out the details. pNone of this should be surprising. From the start, Mr. Cain has made outrageous statements, then taken them back, then modified them. He said he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet, then apologized, then railed about Shariah law creeping into the courts. He said he wanted a border fence that would electrocute illegal crossers, then said it was a joke, then he still wanted one./p pMr. Cain’s core supporters don’t seem to care about such minor details any more than he does. But, eventually, a campaign run solely on charm and hokum tends to wind up in a ditch. The question now is how much of the Republican Party will follow him there/p /blockquote pa href=”http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/is-herman-cain-finished/?ref=opinion”David Brooks and Gail Collins/a chat about whether the Herman Cain bubble has burst:/p blockquoteDavid Brooks: Do you think Cain can be excluded from the presidency based on what we know so far, given the Clinton standard? My impression, for what it’s worth is that no, he can’t. Even if everything that is alleged is true, this is less egregious than Clinton. pGail Collins: Go back to the congressmen with the bare-chested cellphone pictures or the lewd tweets. Why did they have to go away? Because the one thing voters will not abide is behavior that suggests the pol in question is a whack job./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-herman-cain-crack-up/2011/11/02/gIQAfyuAgM_story.html”Dana Milbank/a gives us a revealing anecdote about Cain under pressure:/p blockquoteAt his next stop, a Hilton hotel in Alexandria, the amiable candidate finally blew his stack – and the scene quickly escalated into violence. It began when a reporter asked Cain if he would release his accusers from their confidentiality agreements. p“I’m not going to talk about it,” Cain snapped, “so don’t even bother asking me all of these other questions that y’all are curious about. Okay? Don’t even bother.”/p p“It’s a good question,” the reporter pointed out. “Are you concerned?” asked another. Evidently, Cain was. “What did I say?” he hissed at the reporters, then attempted to break through the pack, shouting: “Excuse me. Excuse me! EXCUSE ME!” At that, his bodyguards began throwing elbows and shoving the reporters and photographers. “Stand back! . . . Do not push me! . . . Pushing is against the law!. . . Watch out!. . . Get a grip on yourself!” In the melee, a young boy and his father were shoved up against a wall./p pHis campaign’s fisticuffs with Washington journalists probably won’t do Cain any harm among his supporters in Iowa; in fact, it will probably help. But Cain’s loss of control is a reminder of why he’s never going to be president, no matter how high he rises in GOP primary polls./p /blockquote pa href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/herman-cain-campaign-is-an-insult-to-my-mother/2011/03/04/gIQAvbYEgM_blog.html”Jonathan Capehart/a tears into Cain wearing ignorance like a badge of honor:/p blockquoteOn my first day at an all-white school in North Plainfield, N.J., and then again in Hazlet, N.J. and then again before I took off for college in Northfield, Minn., my mother delivered a lecture not unfamiliar to other kids of color (and women, for that matter). You have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to not be seen as inferior, deficient and not as up to the task (whatever the task might be) as your white classmates. It ain’t right. It ain’t fair. But that’s the way it is. pOn a near-daily basis, Herman Cain, the front runner for the Republican nomination for president of the United States, denigrates the high level of expectation and preparation demanded by my mother and mothers everywhere. Sarah Palin was rightly eviscerated for her lack of knowledge on just about everything when she was the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee. She didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was. Even though she’s pro-life, she told Katie Couric that she believed there was a right to privacy in the Constitution, which is a cornerstone of Roe. v. Wade. And she tried to claim foreign policy experience because “as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s right over the border.”/p pThat Cain can’t even rise above this decidedly low bar set by Palin is an insult to my mother, who demands excellence of “us,” and to every American who believes his or her nation deserves better from those who would lead it.br //p /blockquote pa href=”http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/191455-cain-talks-policy-as-harassment-charges-envelope-campaign”Justin Sink/a points out a silver lining for Cain, if it could be called that. The firestorm of a sexual harassment scandal has eclipsed other major policy gaffes made this week:/p blockquoteLost in the calls throughout the past 24 hours for Herman Cain to respond to new details surrounding allegations that he sexually harassed employees during his time as president of the National Restaurant Association were a number of policy statements that in an ordinary week would have raised eyebrows among political watchers. pPerhaps most significant was Cain’s suggestion in an interview Monday that China was a threat to American interests because of its attempts to develop nuclear weapons, despite the nation having been a nuclear power since the 1960s.Cain also suggested deploying a fleet of naval warships armed with defensive ballistic missile technology around the globe to project American power. Cain also argued for tort reform and “loser-pay” laws that would punish those found to have filed frivolous lawsuits./p /blockquote pa href=”http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/conservative-bloggers-cool-to-cain/”Ashely Southall/a rounds out our roundup with a look at disappointed conservative bloggers:/p blockquoteAs reports surfaced of a third woman accusing Herman Cain of sexual harassment while he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, the bloggers expressed frustration about the way the campaign has handled the claims. p“Herman Cain has said, over and over, that we should support him because he is a problem-solver,” [one blogger] said. “If he can’t solve the problems in his own campaign, how can we believe he’ll solve the far larger problems of Obama-sized government? Regrettably, I can’t.”/p pStill, Pamela Geller said on her blog, Atlas Shrugs, that she did not believe the Perry campaign’s denials. “I endorse Herman Cain,” she said. “What he doesn’t know, we’ll teach him.”/p /blockquote pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/g2xLjJvxnGAzfD2JyozSoRpl9qQ/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/g2xLjJvxnGAzfD2JyozSoRpl9qQ/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/g2xLjJvxnGAzfD2JyozSoRpl9qQ/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/g2xLjJvxnGAzfD2JyozSoRpl9qQ/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=zsRJSr4sbjM:kWBpfDV93lU:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/zsRJSr4sbjM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The absolute, total and complete incompetence of Herman Cain’s campaign

pOn Sunday, Fox’s Chris Wallace read Mitt Romney his version of the riot act for being the only Republican candidate not to have gone on his show during the 2012 campaign:/p div class=”dkimg-c”object width=”550″ height=”341″param name=”movie” value=”http://www.dailykostv.com/flv/player.swf” / param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” / param name=”flashvars” value=”config=http://www.dailykostv.com/w/002910/vxml.php?550″ / embed src=”http://www.dailykostv.com/flv/player.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”550″ height=”341″ flashvars=”config=http://www.dailykostv.com/w/002910/vxml.php?550″ //object/div blockquoteWith Governor Perry’s appearance, we have now interviewed all the major Republican candidates in our 2012 one-on-one series except Mitt Romney. He has not appeared on this program or any Sunday talk show since March of 2010. We invited Governor Romney again this week, but his campaign says he’s still not ready./blockquote pRomney’s last appearance was March 8, 2010 on Fox. That means as of today it’s been 633 days since Mitt Romney subjected himself to questions from a Sunday talk show host./p pAs Kaili a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/31/1031837/-Mitt-Romneys-new-strategy:-Go-into-hiding-while-opponents-implode?via=blog_604733″pointed out/a yesterday, the Mittness Protection Program isn’t a bad strategy for Romney—stay quiet while BachmannPerryCain mumble and bumble and stumble around like headless idiots. The last thing he wants to do is take questions that are subject to a follow-up, because the odds are pretty high that with anything Mitt Romney says, he’s either flip-flopping from a previous statement, or saying something that he’ll flip-flop on tomorrow or the next day. And as long as he isn’t making news, Romney figures he can stay in his 25% holding pattern and emerge as the only candidate standing with the resources to win the nomination./p pBut at some point, the fact that Mitt Romney is refusing to take questions from reporters—even friendly ones like Chris Wallace—becomes a news story in itself. Sarah Palin’s refusal to do big interviews in 2008 became a big deal, and her utter inability to carry her own crushed her reputation. Romney is much more verbally adept than Palin, so he won’t flail in the same sort of way that she did. But given his record of unprincipled inconsistency, interviews could be as disastrous for him as for her—and he can’t keep dodging them forever./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/BoxN4NAA_mTRO7ped7un2Gb2FDA/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/BoxN4NAA_mTRO7ped7un2Gb2FDA/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/BoxN4NAA_mTRO7ped7un2Gb2FDA/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/BoxN4NAA_mTRO7ped7un2Gb2FDA/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=g6Ggf-uDtyM:wxPKAnTFBZs:H0mrP-F8Qgo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/dailykos/index?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/g6Ggf-uDtyM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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It’s been 633 days since Mitt Romney’s last Sunday show appearance