IMPALIN’ — Stop Sarah Palin for President in 2012

Imagine our more perfect union if we didn’t try to control things that had absolutely no affect on our lives. There would be no need to use God or political right, center or left wings to lord over fellow Americans with our own personal agendas!bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-oleary/americans-with-boundaries_b_1301981.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/religion-and-politics/”More on Religion and Politics/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zw8Mk0Gqc3gAuEU-XSIF5sjqIa4/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zw8Mk0Gqc3gAuEU-XSIF5sjqIa4/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zw8Mk0Gqc3gAuEU-XSIF5sjqIa4/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zw8Mk0Gqc3gAuEU-XSIF5sjqIa4/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=Jk1U3FbDzDI:QznaHivI8AQ: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=Jk1U3FbDzDI:QznaHivI8AQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=Jk1U3FbDzDI:QznaHivI8AQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=Jk1U3FbDzDI:QznaHivI8AQ:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=Jk1U3FbDzDI:QznaHivI8AQ:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/Jk1U3FbDzDI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah O’Leary: Americans With Boundaries: The Super Group for the Self-Aware

Making the Oscars better, or at least watchable, isn’t that complicated. We think that with three adjustments, the Academy could make 2013 a better award show place for all of us. bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-hall/watching-oscars-2012_b_1304071.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/oscars/”More on The Oscars/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PhEC7pY0yLL9QojPdbjBLfDZuk0/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PhEC7pY0yLL9QojPdbjBLfDZuk0/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PhEC7pY0yLL9QojPdbjBLfDZuk0/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PhEC7pY0yLL9QojPdbjBLfDZuk0/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=1IWAfpjPIzc:YKfc9826eMQ: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=1IWAfpjPIzc:YKfc9826eMQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=1IWAfpjPIzc:YKfc9826eMQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=1IWAfpjPIzc:YKfc9826eMQ:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=1IWAfpjPIzc:YKfc9826eMQ:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/1IWAfpjPIzc” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Hall: Mouth to Mouth Resuscitation Needed: Watching the Oscars 2012

div defang_xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” class=”dkimg-c” defang_xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”img width=”550″ height=”351″ src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Santorum_-_Sarah_Conard-_Reuters.jpg” alt=”Rick Santorum” / div class=”dkimg-cap”American Taliban (Sarah Conard/Reuters)/div /div This is yet another one of the things Rick Santorum says that he says often enough that it counts as an actual talking point, as opposed to the deranged ramblings of a tattered mind. Well, a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/rick-santorum-obama-college-plan-indoctrination-_n_1299403.html”I suppose it could be both/a:br / blockquote“I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.”/blockquote Santorum’s point, as near as can be discerned, is that getting an education is bad. It’s bad because “62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it,” which sounds like one of the 82.7 percent of statistics that were simply pulled out of someone’s posterior. It’s bad because college emindoctrinates/em people, presumably to believe in math and literature and the tensile strength of various metals, and we can’t have that. No, really. He’s genuinely a href=”http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/rick-santorum-obama-wants-to-send-your-kids”put out about it/a:br / blockquotePresident Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob,” Santorum said as the crowd howled with laughter and applause. p”That’s why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image,” Santorum said to more applause. “I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.”/p /blockquote Seldom has the conservative hostility to general book-learning been rendered so tersely. In addition to the apparent conviction that faith and knowing stuff cannot possibly coexist, there is also the general presumption of children as empty objects. They emshould/em be indoctrinated, and “remade”; the only question in Santorum’s mind is who should do it. The beliefs Rick Santorum intends to pour into his children are apparently so fragile that they cannot survive exposure to literally emany other contrary knowledge/em. He will homeschool his children; they will grow up to have random “jobs” that reflect the jobs their parents wish them to have; they will correctly fear and despise the suspicious black president, because their parents tell them to. pThe forms of “indoctrination” students are exposed to in American colleges are never clear. I have at this point heard countless conservatives rant about it, but never with any explanation attached to it that made a lick of sense. Something about secularism (apparently Jesus would solve math problems differently), or liberal professors (scores of liberal professors, doing liberal things like … what? Citing statistics that make people feel bad? Giving interpretations of history that clash with the preferred One True Narratives of the parents?) or college-aged students, gone away from their parents, who suddenly engage in terrible, contrary-to-parental-advice behavior the moment they leave home./p pWhatever it is, Rick Santorum is, as usual, up to his eyeballs in it. It almost impresses me how uncannily Santorum reflects all the worst aspects of modern Republican conservatism. From the theocracy-as-freedom pronouncements to his own religious hypocrisies (don’t ask him about any Catholic social doctrines not revolving around sex, because he couldn’t tell you them), to tax cuts as regimentally required magic fairy dust, to the evils of social programs, and the scandalous doings of women nowadays, and outright hostility toward scientists and teachers and pretty much every other post-Dark-Ages invention of society. He is the perfect social conservative candidate. And that scares everyone except his base.br //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/CBYGbM_134bM5nliARC-lXyV_Is/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/CBYGbM_134bM5nliARC-lXyV_Is/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/CBYGbM_134bM5nliARC-lXyV_Is/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/CBYGbM_134bM5nliARC-lXyV_Is/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=11_7NFxkBmk:8EXOHBheECE: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/~4/11_7NFxkBmk” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Rick Santorum calls Obama ‘a snob’ for wanting people to attend college

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/romneyflipperomney.png” alt=”Mitt Romney” height=”330″ width=”275″ //div Mitt Romney a href=”http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday/2012/02/26/mitt-romney-defending-home-turf-gov-mitch-daniels-talks-presidential-politics/print”finally answers/a the question that—Palin-like—he was unable to answer during Wednesday’s debate:br / blockquoteWell, I think the biggest misconception would be that I’m a guy that comes from Massachusetts and therefore I can’t be conservative./blockquote Gee, where might they have gotten that idea? Perhaps a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/13/1044868/-Mitt-Romney,-2002:-Im-not-a-partisan-Republican–my-views-are-progressive”this/a from his 2002 gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts:br / blockquoteI think the old standby definitions of who votes for which party have been blown away in this campaign. I think people recognize that I’m not a partisan Republican, that I’m someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive./blockquote And there’s always a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pVqZzHm3Z4″this/a from 1994:br / blockquoteI was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush./blockquote But now:br / blockquoteI think the biggest misconception would be that I’m a guy that comes from Massachusetts and therefore I can’t be conservative./blockquote So how does he explain a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/03/1051168/-Mitt-Romney:-Im-more-conservative-than-I-was-ten-years-ago”what he said/a in 2002?br / blockquoteWell, that was ten years ago, and I’m more conservative than I was ten years ago./blockquote Except a href=”http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/02/10/severely_conservative.html”he also says/a:br / blockquoteI was a severely conservative governor. I fought against long odds in a deep blue state. I understand the battles that we, as conservatives, must fight because I have been on the front lines./blockquote So he’s even more conservative now then he was then … even though he was a severely conservative governor? Does that mean he’s now even more conservative than he was when he was severely conservative? (Forget about the fact that he also had “progressive views” and was a “moderate.”) pWhat I think all this shows is that the biggest misconception about Mitt Romney is that you can believe anything he says./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KPhJa2SSqqMrZ8V07xKlrUtsRdc/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KPhJa2SSqqMrZ8V07xKlrUtsRdc/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KPhJa2SSqqMrZ8V07xKlrUtsRdc/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KPhJa2SSqqMrZ8V07xKlrUtsRdc/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=Q0sa8XgdT-4:Qn7kg8apXjs: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/Q0sa8XgdT-4″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Mitt Romney: Biggest misconception about me is that I’m not conservative

pNumbers have never been Samuel Wurzelbacher’s strong suit. Sam—aka Joe the Plumber—spun a tale when he first sprang on to the political scene in his 2008 encounter with Barack Obama, claiming he planned to “buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year.” That, of course, never happened—or he just didn’t know what he was talking about. Then, when he finally decided to run for Congress this election cycle, he picked a district that his fellow Republicans made deliberately unwinnable for their own team—a Democratic vote sink that likely gave President Obama north of 60% of the vote in 2008. Well, Joe’s never been the sharpest wrench in the toolbox./p pHis hopes of grifting like his role model, Sarah Palin, haven’t really panned out, though. In his first fundraising quarter, he pulled in a href=”http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00503433/762363/#SUMMARY”just $50,728/a—certainly not serious money for a congressional bid (especially in a district as hostile to Republicans as Ohio’s 9th). But he did manage to a href=”http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/01/joe_the_plumber_pays_himself_a.html”pay himself a salary/a of almost $9000 out of his campaign’s coffers—legal but pretty rare, given how obviously dodgy it looks./p pBut now Joe’s created a new problem for himself. You see, when you run for Congress, you have to ikeep filing/i fundraising reports with the FEC on a regular basis. You can’t just file one! But I’m not sure Joe realizes that. Because Ohio’s primary is coming up soon (on March 6), the FEC requires special pre-primary reports to be filed. Those were due by midnight Eastern on Thursday, March 23. But when I click over to the webpage for Joe’s campaign committee a href=”http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00503433/”at the FEC/a, this is all I see:br //p div class=”dkimg-c”img border=”1″ src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/73/Screen_shot_2012-02-25_at_12.10.41_PM.png” alt=”FEC screenshot” height=”370″ width=”550″ //div Unlike dozens of other Ohio candidates who filed their pre-primary reports on time, Joe’s is nowhere to be found. I mean, hard as it may be to believe, you’d almost think he isn’t running a serious campaign operation! Oh, poor Joe. Maybe it’s time to reconsider your plans to purchase that company making “250 to 280 thousand dollars a year.” But you might need to raise some more money first. pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gs6rV4QICjEelCoqleFIY3_Fn1g/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gs6rV4QICjEelCoqleFIY3_Fn1g/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gs6rV4QICjEelCoqleFIY3_Fn1g/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gs6rV4QICjEelCoqleFIY3_Fn1g/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=jS88emOO9N8:3TFt0zdaIGc: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/jS88emOO9N8″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Did Joe the Plumber forget he’s running for Congress? Because he forgot to file his FEC report

div defang_xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” class=”dkimg-c”img width=”550″ height=”256″ alt=”Rick Santorum” src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/ricksantorumsatanwarning.jpg” //div Apparently Rick Santorum is going to be countering a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/24/1067937/-Mitt-Romney-speech-to-nearly-empty-Ford-Field-roundly-mocked-on-Twitter?detail=hide”Mitt Romney’s rip-roaring bout of nothingness/a with a speech of his own, tonight. The topic will ostensibly be a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/santorum-romney_n_1299334.html”what a President Santorum would do during his first 100 days in office/a, which sounds like the plot of any number of bad movies, all of which end with somebody or multiple somebodies getting nuked. (Given that it’s going to be given at 8 o’clock on a Friday night, it also has all the hallmarks of a weekend news dump.) pWe’ve settled on “100 days” as being a nice, pointless measurement of presidential accomplishments. I assume this is because after that point, most of the staff is moved in, you’ve learned where the bathrooms are, and if you haven’t fixed the economy or achieved world peace yet it’s your own damn fault for being lazy. But Rick Santorum’s first 100 days? One shudders to imagine. So let’s imagine!/p pstrongDay 1:/strong Announces the Presidential Morality Corps, a group of bitter old cranks who will scour the countryside looking for people holding hands out of wedlock, beating offenders with rulers./p pstrongDay 2:/strong Bombs Google headquarters./p pstrongDay 4:/strong FDA rescinds approval of all forms of birth control, including the rhythm method./p pstrongDay 7:/strong nbsp;Proposes the Inefficient Lightbulbs for Jesus Act./p pstrongDay 9:/strong nbsp;Explains why God wants us to bomb Iran. Explains that if God didn’t want us to bomb Iran, he would have given them nuclear weapons to defend themselves with./p pstrongDay 10:/strong Bombs Iran./p pstrongDay 14:/strong nbsp;Announces new dress code for federal employees. Men: sweatervests. Women: full-length knitted burkas./p pstrongDay 22:/strong FBI announces sweeping new anti-sodomy investigations. The President informs Congress that as a result of the War on Sodomy, constitutional protections against domestic espionage no longer apply./p pstrongDay 45:/strong Secretary of State Sarah Palin causes minor scandal when she confuses Iran with San Francisco. To avoid admitting error, Republicans cede California to Iran./p pi(Continue reading below the fold)/ibr //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/QZ60×1znUH56keyyp-UgEhyowK0/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/QZ60×1znUH56keyyp-UgEhyowK0/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/QZ60×1znUH56keyyp-UgEhyowK0/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/QZ60×1znUH56keyyp-UgEhyowK0/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=kknXIpk0as0:MJe9mTIKzPg: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/kknXIpk0as0″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Tracking President Rick Santorum’s first 100 days

pA newly a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/sarah-palin-emails-alaska-governor-divorce-todd-palin_n_1298780.html?ref=politics” target=”_hplink”released email reveals/a that former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin may have been contemplating a divorce in 2007./ppIn a Sept. 26, 2007 email, a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/sarah-palin-emails-alaska-governor-divorce-todd-palin_n_1298780.html?ref=politics” target=”_hplink”one of 17,000 records released Thursday/a by Alaska officials as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, Palin, then governor of Alaska, writes to an aide and husband Todd Palin: “So speaking of… If we, er, when we get a divorce, does that quell ‘conflict of interest’ accusations about BP?” (At the time, Todd Palin was a href=”http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/02/todd-palin-resigns-oil-job-spend-time-family/” target=”_hplink”working for BP on the North Slope pipeline/a, though the couple was not under formal investigation.) /ppThe private email reportedly bears the subject line “a href=”http://news.yahoo.com/palin-resignation-cant-anymore-015601847.html” target=”_hplink”Marital Problems/a.”/pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/sarah-palin-divorce_n_1299798.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/sarah-palin/”More on Sarah Palin/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/SiahOqpxwFliPTiVEozYfgJksjU/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/SiahOqpxwFliPTiVEozYfgJksjU/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/SiahOqpxwFliPTiVEozYfgJksjU/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/SiahOqpxwFliPTiVEozYfgJksjU/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=wjcBArICGvw:30vhPf4H2uY: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=wjcBArICGvw:30vhPf4H2uY:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=wjcBArICGvw:30vhPf4H2uY:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=wjcBArICGvw:30vhPf4H2uY:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=wjcBArICGvw:30vhPf4H2uY:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/wjcBArICGvw” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Palin Divorce: New E-Mails Reveal Marital Discord

pAn Indiana woman is now facing animal cruelty charges stemming from an apology letter she wrote to the dog she allegedly threw to its death from a second floor balcony./ppAccording to a press release from the Fishers Police Department, 28-year-old Sarah Rust tossed her boyfriend’s dog, Raider, from the elevated porch during a heated argument on Jan. 24./ppThe boyfriend, Shawn Davidson, initially told veterinary clinic employees as well as his ex-girlfriend — with whom he once shared the dog — that Rust killed Raider during the altercation. Later, when police questioned Davidson, he said that he did not see Rust throw the dog and that he blamed the woman while he was angry about the dog’s death./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/threw-dog-off-balcony-sarah-rust-indiana_n_1298838.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/video/”More on Video/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/oHtaUh1EmM3KKwo33HyThylijo8/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/oHtaUh1EmM3KKwo33HyThylijo8/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/oHtaUh1EmM3KKwo33HyThylijo8/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/oHtaUh1EmM3KKwo33HyThylijo8/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=G1LwHMVN44w:UiOzgn-t3NM: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=G1LwHMVN44w:UiOzgn-t3NM:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=G1LwHMVN44w:UiOzgn-t3NM:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=G1LwHMVN44w:UiOzgn-t3NM:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=G1LwHMVN44w:UiOzgn-t3NM:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/G1LwHMVN44w” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Woman Allegedly Threw Boyfriend’s Dog Off Balcony: Indiana Police Arrest Sarah Rust

pPsst. Hey, Senator! Just wanted to say thanks for all the free publicity! It’s getting even better now that your pal - what’s her name, the Half-Governor? - is talking about me too. You know what they say: It’s not bad press if they spell your name right! /ppBut listen - and I really shouldn’t do this - I’m not sure you realize where you’re headed. Put it this way: When the a href=”http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/15/megadeth-frontman-dave-mustaine-endorses-rick-santorum.html”lead singer from Megadeth/a says he’ll vote for you, take it as a sign. I mean, c’mon man! They sang “Prince of Darkness”! /ppYou already talk about me like you know me. Have we met? You ido/i look familiar, but I meet so many guys in your line of work - a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/23/rick-santorum-lobbying-firm_n_1297417.html?ref=politics”lobbying/a, that is. Oh, right, you’re a politician too. When it comes to politicians, let’s just say we’ve always got a quorum down here! Talk about your “smoke-filled rooms” …/pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/satan-speaks-to-santorum_b_1298498.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/sarah-palin/”More on Sarah Palin/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/mBcMSjtyC_AvnjqzSjQQG3WZJNc/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/mBcMSjtyC_AvnjqzSjQQG3WZJNc/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/mBcMSjtyC_AvnjqzSjQQG3WZJNc/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/mBcMSjtyC_AvnjqzSjQQG3WZJNc/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=vMeNKMVHr5c:J6Q4nsVKgl8: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=vMeNKMVHr5c:J6Q4nsVKgl8:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=vMeNKMVHr5c:J6Q4nsVKgl8:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=vMeNKMVHr5c:J6Q4nsVKgl8:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=vMeNKMVHr5c:J6Q4nsVKgl8:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/vMeNKMVHr5c” height=”1″ width=”1″/

Original post:
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Satan Speaks to Santorum - and Has Some Words For Sarah Palin Too

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Santorum_-_Sarah_Conard-_Reuters.jpg” alt=”Rick Santorum” height=”351″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Sorry, GOP. This is the face of the GOP. (Sarah Conard/Reuters)/div /div Now that the extreme agenda of the Republican party is under real media scrutiny because of the presidential race, GOP establishment types are starting to express some concern about it, a href=”http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=792E37CC-84F3-4206-9251-99DC07770F08″says Politico/a.br / blockquoteIn 2008, after Republicans were routed in the presidential and congressional elections, there was widespread consensus within elite GOP circles about the party’s structural problems: The Republican voter base was too old, too white, too male and too strident for the party to prosper long term in a country growing ever more diverse. pFour years later, many of the same GOP leaders are watching with rising dismay as the 2012 presidential campaign has featured excursions into social issues like contraception and a sprint by the candidates to strike the toughest stance against illegal immigration, issues they say are far removed from the workaday concerns of the independent voters Republicans need to evict Barack Obama from the White House./p /blockquote They apparently haven’t been paying attention to what the Republican House has been doing since January 2011, when they regained control. Because it hasn’t had a lot to do with the “workaday concerns” of American voters from day one. It’s all been about trying to repeal the health care law, defund Planned Parenthood, gutting the EPA, a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/04/941040/-HR-3:-GOP-drops-shiny-object;-rape-redefinition-out”redifining rape/a, pretty much everything but creating jobs and boosting the economy. Which makes this bit particularly ironic:br / blockquote“It’s important that voters see a Republican Party that is inclusive and is not exclusive,” agreed House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). pCantor said the right approach is not to avoid social issues or immigration but to recognize that, for many of the voters the GOP needs most, “jobs and the economy” are preoccupying concerns. “Independent voters,” he added, “will give you credit” when addressing divisive issues “by trying to find a way to bridge differences.”/p /blockquote The problem for the GOP goes far, far beyond the tone of the presidential primary. It’s only shining a brighter light on exactly what the Republican party has become since it let the tea party and the American Taliban take over. And no, a href=”http://www.pollingreport.com/cong_rep.htm”it’s not popular/a. pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9zLyntN24thpWnIqigVc88mIaPA/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9zLyntN24thpWnIqigVc88mIaPA/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9zLyntN24thpWnIqigVc88mIaPA/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9zLyntN24thpWnIqigVc88mIaPA/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=CZ2lptvw_P8:KfB1urGKRbk: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/CZ2lptvw_P8″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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GOP establishment starting to worry about the GOP agenda

pemSend all your eco-inquiries to Jennifer Grayson at a href=”mailto:eco.etiquette@gmail.com”eco.etiquette@gmail.com/a. Questions may be edited for length and clarity./em/ppstrongI went to an elegant dinner party a few weeks ago where the hostess had thought through every detail of the menu: The place settings were just so, the wine was delicious… Between the main course and dessert I offered to help clear plates in the kitchen. I was horrified to see every bit of trash — paper cocktail napkins, uneaten food, glass bottles — all thrown into enormous black plastic bags. Even worse, I joined in! I almost said, emWhat, you don’t recycle? You don’t compost? /emBut I didn’t think that would have been very polite. What could I have said or done to educate this woman without offending her? /pp-Sarah/strong/pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-grayson/eco-etiquette-how-to-be-a_b_1295543.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/green-living/”More on Green Living/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ovWvPtV83bs7Kr_nalVAFXyn09A/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ovWvPtV83bs7Kr_nalVAFXyn09A/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ovWvPtV83bs7Kr_nalVAFXyn09A/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ovWvPtV83bs7Kr_nalVAFXyn09A/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=-QmBkRlHFu0:4×8c8GwZqr4: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=-QmBkRlHFu0:4×8c8GwZqr4:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=-QmBkRlHFu0:4×8c8GwZqr4:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=-QmBkRlHFu0:4×8c8GwZqr4:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=-QmBkRlHFu0:4×8c8GwZqr4:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/-QmBkRlHFu0″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

Originally posted here: 
Jennifer Grayson: Eco Etiquette: How To Be A Gracious Green Guest (And Proselytizer At The Same Time)

div class=”dkimg-c” defang_xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”img width=”282″ height=”174″ src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/1054/Goposaur.jpg” alt=”GOPosaur” / div class=”dkimg-cap”The symbol of a wacko core that wants to impose their wacko views on the country/div /div The Republicans have a a href=”http://www.politico.com/playbook/0212/playbook1699.html”problem/a. blockquote“The senator believes Romney will ultimately win in Michigan but says he will publicly call for the party to find a new candidate if he does not. ‘We’d get killed,’ the senator said if Romney manages to win the nomination after he failed to win the state in which he grew up. ‘He’d be too damaged’ … Santorum? ‘He’d lose 35 states,’ the senator said, predicting the same fate for Newt Gingrich. It would have to be somebody else, the senator said. nbsp;Who? ‘Jeb Bush.’”/blockquote No, it’s not that Rick Santorum might beat Mitt Romney in the primary and get clobbered in the general election, or that Romney might lose Michigan in the primary, get nominated and then get clobbered in the general election (both are plausible but less likely than Romney winning Michigan, then the primary, and then losing in the fall). The Republican problem, which the media has to dance around in order to sell their product, is the Republican primary voter. div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/426/santorum.jpg” alt=”" height=”164″ width=”350″ //div pRepublican primary voters are the ones pushing Romney, Huntsman, Pawlenty, et. al. into acting like lunatics chasing after positions they don’t believe in. They’re the ones that elevated Donald Trump and Herman Cain to serious contenders and made Sarah Palin a household name. And they’re the ones that would have to buy into a Jeb Bush or a Mitch Daniels or a Chris Christie as a viable substitute foisted on them by a well heeled Republican elite in a smoke filled back room, undoubtedly well upholstered and well stocked with people who think they know better than the poor schlubs who actually caucus and vote from January through June./p pi(Continue reading below the fold)/i/p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/p_peeXYMNGVurKskXYDlS8gOkCk/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/p_peeXYMNGVurKskXYDlS8gOkCk/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/p_peeXYMNGVurKskXYDlS8gOkCk/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/p_peeXYMNGVurKskXYDlS8gOkCk/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=xRyN2skpZXU:_Uvgs9c5lnk: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/xRyN2skpZXU” height=”1″ width=”1″/

Original post: 
The elephant in the (bed)room

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/ricksantorumsatanwarning.jpg” alt=”Rick Santorum” height=”256″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Rick Santorum says he’s anti-Satanbr / nbsp;/div /div I just heard a new joke about Rick Santorum, and it goes like this:br / blockquoteA professor, a liberal, and a mainline Protestant walk into a bar … and Rick Santorum says “Hi Satan!”/blockquote The basis of the joke: Santorum’s 2008 speech a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/21/1067046/-Rick-Santorum-is-out-to-defeat-French-nobility-Hitler-and-Satan-?via=blog_577382″warning/a that Satan was attacking the United States of America—and had already established a foothold in the academic, political, and religious worlds. pThat’s not the kind of thing you typically (well, ever) hear from presidential candidates, and Mitt Romney’s a href=”http://www.politico.com//blogs/burns-haberman/2012/02/raising-satan-against-santorum-115112.html”allies/a in the conservative media are hoping it convinces Republicans that Santorum is unelectable. Even Santorum-friendly Rush Limbaugh thinks Santorum a href=”http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73137.html”has a problem/a. It will certainly be a topic during tonight’s debate, and how Santorum addresses it will go a long way to determining the fate of his candidacy. Last night, he offered a a href=”http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73149.html”preview/a:br //p blockquote“You know … I’m a person of faith. I believe in good and evil. I think if somehow or another because you’re a person of faith you believe in good and evil is a disqualifier for president, we’re going to have a very small pool of candidates who can run for president,” Santorum said. pSantorum said questioning whether he believed Satan was attacking America was “not relevant.”/p p“Look, guys, these are questions that are not relevant to what’s — what’s being discussed in America today. What we’re talking about in America today is trying to get America growing. That’s what my speeches are about, that’s what we’re going to talk about in this campaign,” Santorum said./p /blockquote The first part of that seems like the kind of answer that would be very effective in the context of tonight’s debate, but the second part—when he says the questions are not relevant—could get him in trouble. Perhaps Santorum can make the case that emwhat he said/em isn’t central to his campaign, but if he follows Newt Gingrich’s model of suggesting that questions themselves are out of bounds, it’s going to blow up in his face—these aren’t questions about his personal sex life, these are questions about what he believes in, and that makes them entirely legitimate. pWe’ll see how he handles it tonight at 8 PM ET when Republicans begin their 20th debate of the 2012 campaign. Whatever he ends up saying, it will probably a href=”http://jed-lewison.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/21/1067032/-Easy-prediction-Rick-Santorum-s-answer-to-the-religion-question-will-define-Wednesday-s-debate?via=blog_589703″define the debate/a./p pspan class=”update”a name=”20120222070739″ href=”/story/2012/02/22/1067225/-Rick-Santorum-responds-to-questions-about-Satan-warning-speech#20120222070739″b7:07 AM PT/b/a:/span Sarah Palin weighs in to a href=”http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/02/21/palin_media_getting_wee-weed_up_over_santorums_satan_remark.html”defend/a Rick Santorum. If Republicans embrace her reaction, this whole thing could turn into a big boost for Santorum heading into Michigan and Arizona./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pLBb5OIYkuYE1HIkFDd-enoAlz0/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pLBb5OIYkuYE1HIkFDd-enoAlz0/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pLBb5OIYkuYE1HIkFDd-enoAlz0/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pLBb5OIYkuYE1HIkFDd-enoAlz0/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=EEORnWOnX5w:3hHheotGQuY: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/EEORnWOnX5w” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Rick Santorum responds to questions about Satan warning speech

div defang_xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” class=”dkimg-c”img width=”550″ height=”351″ alt=”Rick Santorum” src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Santorum_-_Sarah_Conard-_Reuters.jpg” / div class=”dkimg-cap”(Sarah Conard/Reuters)/div /div When last we checked up on GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, the semi-popular Sinclair Lewis character was threatening to upset Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary, primarily on the strength of his spectacular Dana Carveyesque Church Lady impressions. He has compared the Obama presidency to a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/21/1066637/-Animation-Santorum-vs-the-French-Revolution-actual-audio-?detail=hide”the conditions of the French Revolution/a, and compared the current GOP attempts to unseat Obama to a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/20/1066753/-/?detail=hide”the Allies’ battle to defeat Hitler/a. Rick Santorum is not, in other words, a subtle guy. All those sweatervests he wears? They used to be sweaters, but his sleeves couldn’t take his crap anymore. pYou might think that Rick Santorum couldn’t possibly top that sort of rhetoric. It turns out, of course, that he has, and right now official GOP establishment leak-outlet Drudge and others are making particular note of Rick’s 2008 speech in which he said America was under attack from, I don’t know, who could it be … a href=”http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-satan-systematically-destroying-america”SATAN/a???br //p blockquoteThis is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America’s preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers. pHe didn’t have much success in the early days. Our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition./p /blockquote Well, I guess in the hierarchy of scary threats to America, Satan trumps Hitler any day of the week. pAs Santorum repeats endlessly, now, he’s a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/14/1064819/-Santorum-doesn-t-want-to-be-typecast-as-a-social-conservative?detail=hide”very put out/a with the media trying to paint him as a one-trick pony of religious social conservatism. He often points this out before or after his incessant speeches to churches and other religious institutions (a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/20/1066742/-Rick-Santorum-doesn-t-want-to-be-typecast-as-a-one-trick-pony-?detail=hide”go figure/a), so we can count “irony” as yet another one of the words Rick Santorum does not understand./p pIt turns out 2008 was a banner year for asinine Rick Santorum quotes. During the constant battles on whether or not Barack Obama was a “true Christian,” an ongoing discussion that tells you all you need to know about the wasteland of modern conservatism, Santorum wasn’t content with just debating Obama’s own faith. No, according to Rick Santorum, emany/em expression of faith that isn’t his own isn’t “true” Christianity. Via a href=”http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/rick-santorum-in-2008-theres-no-such-thing-as-a”BuzzFeed/a:br //p blockquoteAgain, yes, it goes to the larger question of whether I could buy that overall from that point of view. But is there such thing as a sincere liberal Christian, which says that we basically take this document and re-write it ourselves? Is that really Christian? That’s a bigger question for me. And the answer is, no, it’s not. I don’t think there is such a thing. To take what is plainly written and say that I don’t agree with that, therefore, I don’t have to pay attention to it, means you’re not what you say you are. You’re a liberal something, but you’re not a Christian. That’s sort of how I look at it./blockquote Not paying attention to things you don’t agree with, eh? Hmm, I wonder how Rick Santorum’s stance on climate change, immigration, the death penalty and other issues square with those of his church. pFor that matter, it’d be interesting to hear what opinions Rick Santorum has that he holds nearly as dear as his opinions on what other people’s theology should entail. But if he has any, his campaign hasn’t done much to elucidate them yet./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/V4niFH2rWDJ1V3Mqfe7lPGBEkdM/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/V4niFH2rWDJ1V3Mqfe7lPGBEkdM/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/V4niFH2rWDJ1V3Mqfe7lPGBEkdM/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/V4niFH2rWDJ1V3Mqfe7lPGBEkdM/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=qCv_wPREPAw:nCJEKqyier4: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/qCv_wPREPAw” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Rick Santorum is out to defeat French nobility, Hitler and … Satan?

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/3/Obama_2-21-12.jpg” alt=”" height=”367″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Pres. Barack Obama: Not as scary as wingnuts wish he was. (Pete Souza/White House)/div /div Admit it. Just like the wingnuts claimed, you really wanted Obama to confiscate all guns (a href=”http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/02/website-obama-is-greatest-gun-salesman-in-us/1″fail/a!), destroy capitalism (a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/09/1063278/-Undisputable-evidence-of-Obama-s-socialism”fail/a and a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/feb/21/dow-jones-13000-barrier-2008″fail/a!), you wanted him to raise taxes to record highs (a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/us/politics/19taxes.html”fail/a!), and you thought his Detroit bailout would guarantee the demise of the American auto industry (a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/14/1064633/-Romney-op-ed-I-m-a-Detroiter-”fail/a!). pAnd that wasn’t all! You expected Obama to surrender to the terrorists (a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-laden-killed/story?id=13505703″fail/a!), stuff conservatives into FEMA concentration camps (a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/03/15/708765/-Glenn-Beck-Recycles-X-Files-Plot-to-Spread-Fear-of-Obama”fail/a!), create death panels (a href=”http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/”fail/a!) and impose Sharia law on all Americans (a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/the-first-family-goes-to-church/”fail/a!)./p pThis is truly an administration that has failed …/p p… to live up to every right-wing paranoid fantasy./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/k9sHxUxiLxzSLHsGG4cBtXKvC_U/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/k9sHxUxiLxzSLHsGG4cBtXKvC_U/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/k9sHxUxiLxzSLHsGG4cBtXKvC_U/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/k9sHxUxiLxzSLHsGG4cBtXKvC_U/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=77_Ygm71WKo:c-dgw5KaUtA: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/~4/77_Ygm71WKo” height=”1″ width=”1″/

Original post: 
Obama fails at creating Kenyan socialist caliphate

pWASHINGTON — Three weeks ago, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/santorum-cancels-florida-events-to-spend-time-with-hospitalized-daughter/” target=”_hplink”canceled campaign events/a in Florida on the eve of the state’s primary to be with his ailing daughter in a Philadelphia hospital. His three-year-old, Bella, has a genetic condition that can be fatal and had contracted pneumonia. On the phone from his daughter’s hospital room, the presidential candidatea href=”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46184295/ns/health/t/santorum-daughter-pneumonia-recovering/#.Tzqg5YWA5FY” target=”_hplink” told reporters/a, “It’s been a very hectic 36 hours.”/ppBella recovered, but Santorum rejoined the campaign with his daughter’s health still on his mind. Stumping in Minnesota, he a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/sweater-vests-and-death-panels-rick-santorum-makes-his-pitch-to-minnesotans/” target=”_hplink”insisted/a that children like his daughter who are on the “margins of life” would not get adequate medical attention under President Barack Obama’s health care reform law. He went so far as to invoke former Alaska Gov. a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health/policy/14panel.html” target=”_hplink”Sarah Palin’s infamous charge/a that the federal law would create bureaucratic “death panels.”/pp”In top-down, government run systems, patients become commodities, and their value is based on their usefulness to society,” Santorum elaborated to The Huffington Post. “Often times, those with special needs are not viewed as ‘useful’ by society’s standards — and far too many like our little girl have been forced to receive inadequate care and in many instances no care at all.”/pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/21/rick-santorum-uhs-hospitals-patient-rights_n_1276403.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/obama-health-care/”More on Obama Health Care/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vfh5uXB0bodm5vnTGqeEtvG0rfw/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vfh5uXB0bodm5vnTGqeEtvG0rfw/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vfh5uXB0bodm5vnTGqeEtvG0rfw/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vfh5uXB0bodm5vnTGqeEtvG0rfw/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=0pZwESmfQA0:RIdYYrbB2MM: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=0pZwESmfQA0:RIdYYrbB2MM:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=0pZwESmfQA0:RIdYYrbB2MM:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=0pZwESmfQA0:RIdYYrbB2MM:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=0pZwESmfQA0:RIdYYrbB2MM:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/0pZwESmfQA0″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Rick Santorum-Linked Hospital Chain Saw Suicide Attempts, Abuse, And Parents’ Rights Left At The Door

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Santorum_-_Sarah_Conard-_Reuters.jpg” alt=”Rick Santorum” height=”351″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Rick Santorum, typecasting himself (Sarah Conard/Reuters)/div /div So Rick Santorum a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/14/1064819/-Santorum-doesn-t-want-to-be-typecast-as-a-social-conservative?via=blog_612492″doesn’t want to be typecast/a as a one-trick social conservative pony? Well, he might want to have a word with his scheduler:br / blockquotea href=”http://www.politico.com/2012-election/calendar/rick-santorum/?date=2012-02-20″Monday, 2/20:/a Rally at Hope College, a Catholic institutionbr / a href=”http://www.politico.com/2012-election/calendar/rick-santorum/?date=2012-02-19″Sunday, 2/19:/a Rally at First Redeemer Church in Georgia.br / a href=”http://www.politico.com/2012-election/calendar/rick-santorum/?date=2012-02-18″Saturday, 2/18:/a Speaking at Ohio Christian Alliance Freedom Lunchbr / a href=”http://www.politico.com/2012-election/calendar/rick-santorum/?date=2012-02-17″Friday, 2/17:/a Speaking at Faith amp; Freedom Coalition rally/blockquote And while he’s at it, maybe he could stop a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/20/1066624/-Rick-Santorum-Obama-s-agenda-is-based-on-phony-theology-?detail=hide”questioning/a the President’s faith? pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cQavfAR-_y7SUQzBVAOMpFnDtio/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cQavfAR-_y7SUQzBVAOMpFnDtio/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cQavfAR-_y7SUQzBVAOMpFnDtio/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cQavfAR-_y7SUQzBVAOMpFnDtio/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=6rhfWxSrXKk:f7_oIiLGlqo: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/~4/6rhfWxSrXKk” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Rick Santorum doesn’t want to be typecast as a one-trick pony?

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/2563/President_Reagan_during_a_meeting_with_members_of_Congress_1983.jpg” alt=”Ronald Reagan” title=”Ronald Reagan” height=”410″ width=”275″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”At least one person out there wants Ronald Reaganbr / for vice president. (Executive Office of the President)/div /div A a href=”http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/vpnominee/”Fairleigh Dickinson PublicMind poll/a asking Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who they wanted to see as the Republican vice presidential nominee turned up an … interesting set of responses. Because the poll question was open-ended, 355 out of 799 respondents answered with “don’t know,” and there were dozens of answers given by only one or two people. pThe top eight names mentioned are a collection of this year’s presidential candidates and a three others often mentioned as vice presidential possibilities. Starting with number nine, it gets entertaining. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio came in first, with 66 mentions, followed by Rick Santorum, with 59. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is third, with 47 mentions, coming in ahead of Sarah Palin, at 35. Palin is followed closely by Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul./p pMitt Romney garnered 16 mentions, the same number as Michele Bachmann. The question is whether Romney trails because respondents assumed he would be the Republican nominee, or whether Santorum’s lead in the veepstakes is a reflection of greater enthusiasm for him; most likely, though, it’s a combination of the two and couldn’t be unraveled./p pThat brings us to the poll’s ninth most frequently mentioned Republican vice presidential choice: Hillary Clinton, with 10 mentions (a precipitous drop-off from two months ago, when she was named 16 times). She is followed by a four-way tie consisting of Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and “a conservative.” That’s a former Democratic presidential front-runner coming in ahead of at least two former Republican presidential front-runners (Perry and Herman Cain, who’s another step down the list)—three if you count Donald Trump./p pAs you work your way down the list, though, you’re reminded that open-ended questions produce some goofy responses:br //p blockquote”Ronald Reagan was summoned from the grave by one respondent,” said Woolley “Clearly, that person has watched too many Republican debates.”/blockquote By having one mention, the ghost of Reagan ties with other luminaries such as David Duke and Joe Lieberman. Sounds about right to me—but other one-mention names such as Jeb Bush and Nikki Haley might not be too thrilled to be keeping that company. pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/yo5bYK-XLmZk8whJgBmiA1gu9_U/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/yo5bYK-XLmZk8whJgBmiA1gu9_U/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/yo5bYK-XLmZk8whJgBmiA1gu9_U/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/yo5bYK-XLmZk8whJgBmiA1gu9_U/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=bozRYQrMUaE:LAshmVj1PJk: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/bozRYQrMUaE” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Republican voters have no consensus on vice presidential pick, but they do have some funny ideas

div class=”dkimg-r”img width=”275″ height=”294″ alt=”" src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Palin_pointing_finger_-_vertical.jpg” / div class=”dkimg-cap”Can’t miss her, because she won’t go away.br / (a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/77197860@N00/2945571940/”Roger H. Goun/a/Wikimedia Commons)/div /div We’ve mentioned the pining for a brokered convention a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/15/1064884/-A-Sarah-Palin-vs-Jeb-Bush-brokered-convention-Be-still-my-heart-?detail=hide”coming from dissatisfied Republicans before/a, but at this point I think they’re just trying to get our hopes up. From a href=”http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72962.html#ixzz1maPigV8n”a Fox Business interview with Sarah Palin/a:br / blockquote“If one of the nominees, one of the GOPers, doesn’t get enough delegates, it could go to a brokered convention,” said Fox Business Network’s Eric Bolling in an interview. “If it does get to that, and someone said, ‘Governor, would you be interested,’ would you be interested?” p“For one, I think that it could get to that. … If it had to be closed up today, the whole nominating process, then we could be looking at a brokered convention. … Nobody is quite there yet, so I think that months from now, if that is the case, all bets are off as to who it will be, willing to offer up themselves up in their name in service to their country.”/p p“I would do whatever I could to help,” she added, her voice rising./p /blockquote All right, what do we have to do to make this happen? I want this. No—I emdemand/em it. A brokered convention, mass chaos, but then America’s Favorite Quitter leaps into the spotlight, ready to do her civic duty, ringin’ those bells and warning, um, whoever needs warning. We’ve had Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain, and Rick Perry (Lord, that was a fun one), and professional historian Newt Three-Wives, and now even poor Rick Santorum is getting a turn in the spotlight, but none of them can hold a candle to Palin. She combines Bachmann’s conspiracy-theorizing, Cain’s penchant for the bizarre, Rick Perry’s eloquence and Newt’s oblivious sense of personal entitlement. pThe only possibility for a “brokered” convention is if the not-Romney’s hang on. Specifically, Rick Santorum, at this point. The odds are still pretty remote that it’d really come to that. The odds are even more remote that some new GOP savior (like Palin! Sarah Palin!) would waltz in and be officially appointed Republican Savior in Chief, but hey—stranger things have happened. Dare we dream?br //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ywEzRL-cQfhmeNw3xo6AGYmXlnQ/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ywEzRL-cQfhmeNw3xo6AGYmXlnQ/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ywEzRL-cQfhmeNw3xo6AGYmXlnQ/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ywEzRL-cQfhmeNw3xo6AGYmXlnQ/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=4Wevfgn3QtM:ZZzdcdRCGPE: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/~4/4Wevfgn3QtM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Palin eager to ‘help’ if her party can’t find another nominee

Toxic chemicals, oil, and waste contaminate our beaches and coastal waters, hurting the tourism industry and creating dead zones like that in the Gulf of Mexico, which covered an area the size of New Jersey in 2010. bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-chasis/white-house-budget-propos_b_1282610.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/obama-administration/”More on Obama Administration/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/scnuGutmM2gt92qYmHvwEcljHrQ/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/scnuGutmM2gt92qYmHvwEcljHrQ/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/scnuGutmM2gt92qYmHvwEcljHrQ/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/scnuGutmM2gt92qYmHvwEcljHrQ/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=_5HnoqR7zYM:HJcfHOHyvvk: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=_5HnoqR7zYM:HJcfHOHyvvk:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=_5HnoqR7zYM:HJcfHOHyvvk:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=_5HnoqR7zYM:HJcfHOHyvvk:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=_5HnoqR7zYM:HJcfHOHyvvk:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/_5HnoqR7zYM” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Chasis: White House Budget Proposal Threatens Cuts to Critical Coastal and Marine Programs

pThe action shifted from Texas to Whistler, British Columbia as the “a href=”http://www.aoltv.com/show/top-chef-5/187626″ target=”_hplink”Top Chef: Texas/a” (Wed., 10 p.m. EST on Bravo) Final Four battled for a place in the Grand Finale in Vancouver./ppAdded to the immense pressures of getting their dishes right, the finalists also had the stress of competing in a culinary Olympiad, which saw Beverly and Sarah going head-to-head in a Winter Olympics biathlon./ppThat’s right. The cheftestants had to cross-country ski and shoot at targets in order to obtain the ingredients they needed for the dish they had to cook at the end of the snowy ordeal./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/top-chef-texas-culinary-olympics-video_n_1281137.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/top-chef/”More on Top Chef/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sugcNdK9lW1p9xUEsLDZMusbRRI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sugcNdK9lW1p9xUEsLDZMusbRRI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sugcNdK9lW1p9xUEsLDZMusbRRI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sugcNdK9lW1p9xUEsLDZMusbRRI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=-_i2w08VH9c:Wae3kcshqNs: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=-_i2w08VH9c:Wae3kcshqNs:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=-_i2w08VH9c:Wae3kcshqNs:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=-_i2w08VH9c:Wae3kcshqNs:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=-_i2w08VH9c:Wae3kcshqNs:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/-_i2w08VH9c” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Cheftestants Have To Ski And Shoot In The ‘Top Chef: Texas’ Culinary Olympics (VIDEO)

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Palin_-_Brendan_McDermid_-_Reuters_2.jpg” alt=”Sarah Palin” height=”382″ width=”255″ title=”Sarah Palin” / div class=”dkimg-cap”Yes, I’m still here serving up the crazybr / (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)/div /div Have you been jonesing for some good old fashioned Sarah Palin stupid? Of course you have! And you’re in luck. a href=”http://wonkette.com/463813/sarah-palin-has-put-in-the-final-word-on-evil-contraceptives”Via/a Wonkette:br / blockquote[Obama is] underestimating the wisdom of women. Because women understand there is access to preventative care and contraception out there, and we don’t need government to tell our employers that they must provide that for us./blockquote Oh, sure. It’s President Obama who thinks women are stupid. Not Sarah Palin—who trusts the “wisdom of women” so much she thinks the government should make health care decisions for women who are too dumb to understand things like “pregnancy means you’re pregnant.” pAnd isn’t just too cute for words that all of a sudden, Palin and her fellow Republicans are claiming women—wise women, anyway—are perfectly capable of obtaining birth control “out there”? The part they’re conveniently emnot/em mentioning is that “out there” usually means Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest provider of women’s health care, including contraception. The very same Planned Parenthood that Palin and her fellow Republicans have been trying so hard to shut down so that women no longer can obtain contraception “out there.”/p pBut never mind all that; Sarah says contraception isn’t even the real issue:br //p blockquoteTruly, it is a war on our religious liberties and that violation of conscience that he would mandate that is un-American because it violates our First Amendment in our Constitution.”/blockquote What does that mean? No clue. Typical Sarah Palin gobbledygook. Giving women access to birth control violates our freedomz or something, I guess. Not that it’s surprising that Palin is confused about contraception. Forty percent of her children are pretty confused about it too. pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9Y0BKvwQ0iqGqXbgiiAiAA2jPIE/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9Y0BKvwQ0iqGqXbgiiAiAA2jPIE/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9Y0BKvwQ0iqGqXbgiiAiAA2jPIE/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9Y0BKvwQ0iqGqXbgiiAiAA2jPIE/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=n9X8Qd9dOPc:AwoyBSrhVZQ: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/n9X8Qd9dOPc” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Grandma Sarah Palin tosses word salad on Obama and birth control

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Newt_Gingrich_-_Matt_Sullivan_-_Reuters.jpg” alt=”Newt Gingrich” height=”372″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”The number of people who don’t hate Newt Gingrich is a very, very small number (Matt Sullivan/Reuters)/div /div a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/newt-gingrich-the-most-disliked-politician-in-america/2012/02/15/gIQAloLoFR_blog.html?wprss=rss_politics”Via/a the emWashington Post/em, new polls from CNN/Opinion Research and CBS News/emNew York Times/em show that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of Newt Gingrich. In fact:br / blockquoteThose 38-point spreads between his favorable and unfavorable ratings are a new high for Gingrich in the 2012 campaign and tie his worst numbers from 1997, when he faced ethics troubles and a GOP revolt during his time as speaker of the House. pAnd in fact, the numbers are worse than any national political figure The Fix could find in recent years — even, arguably, George W. Bush./p pSarah Palin, even at her most divisive, never saw her unfavorable rating rise above 60 percent in the CNN poll. And even when Republicans were demonizing Nancy Pelosi in the runup to the 2010 election, her unfavorable rating never climbed beyond the high-50s./p /blockquote More unpopular than Sarah Palin, America’s sleast popular/s second least popular idiot? Ouch.br / pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/djuSqtOmfp3Kusuorjn-sea4pDw/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/djuSqtOmfp3Kusuorjn-sea4pDw/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/djuSqtOmfp3Kusuorjn-sea4pDw/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/djuSqtOmfp3Kusuorjn-sea4pDw/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=HNQsuj7SNfY:WXrfuI56gWc: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/HNQsuj7SNfY” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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New polls show everyone hates Newt Gingrich

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/issalibertydefender.jpeg” alt=”Darrell Issa” height=”548″ width=”275″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vatican)/div /div Republican Rep. Darrell Issa never met a waste of taxpayer time and dollars he didn’t like, as long as he thinks it will “a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/28/999967/-Darrell-Issa-wants-to-investigate-President-Obama-because-it-ll-be-good-theater-?detail=hide”be good theater/a.” pIssa’s latest way-off-Broadway show, opening tomorrow, is called “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” As Sarah Posner a href=”http://www.salon.com/2012/02/15/rep_issa_to_air_bishops_complaints/”reports/a:br //p blockquoteThe lead witness is the Most Reverend William E. Lori, Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty. Judging from Lori and the rest of the witness list, it’s obvious that Issa has posed what he considers to be a rhetorical question and lined up nine like-minded rhetoricians to answer it anyway. None of the religious groups supportive of the Obama administration will be heard from. pEight out of nine of Issa’s witnesses are Orthodox Christian, Catholic, and evangelical, and represent Christian institutions, one of which, Belmont Abbey College, has sued HHS over the contraception requirement./p /blockquote Golly, isn’t that convenient? In order to prove that President Obama is trampling on religious freedom, Issa will only speak to people who agree with Issa that President Obama is trampling on religious freedom. Issa won’t be hearing from any of the a href=”http://www.religiousinstitute.org/news/major-mainstream-religious-leaders-support-white-house-on-contraceptive-coverage-in-health-care”nearly two dozen/a religious groups who have no problem with the Obama administration’s new health care policy to require insurance coverage of birth control. And apparently, he hasn’t read the latest a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/14/1064876/-CBS-NY-Times-poll-Yup-people-like-their-birth-control-?via=user”poll/a that confirms, once again, that the majority of the American public, including the a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/15/1065024/-Poll-Even-church-going-Catholics-reject-Republican-jihad-against-birth-control?detail=hideamp;via=blog_1″church-going public/a, doesn’t agree likes their birth control and likes the president’s new policy. pIssa only wants to hear from people who think that women’s health care oppresses their religious freedom to … um … something. It doesn’t make sense, but then again, when it comes to Issa, it doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to be good theater./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zymx5y7QR8m26PkpLLWrd6zJb_g/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zymx5y7QR8m26PkpLLWrd6zJb_g/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zymx5y7QR8m26PkpLLWrd6zJb_g/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zymx5y7QR8m26PkpLLWrd6zJb_g/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=VwbqWOb7K6s:ehUqbYiDbZA: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/VwbqWOb7K6s” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Darrell Issa to hold Congressional hearing on how birth control makes religious zealots sad

div class=”dkimg-c” defang_xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”img width=”282″ height=”174″ src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/1054/Goposaur.jpg” alt=”GOPosaur” / div class=”dkimg-cap”Oh, GOP. Do you do this only to entertain the rest of us?/div /div From The Hill’s pundit columns, I’ve read this four or five times now, and I still can’t figure out if it’s satire. a href=”http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/210237-a-brokered-convention-jeb-bush-vs-sarah-palin”I don’t think it is/a.br / blockquoteThis race could well go to a brokered convention. If Jeb Bush is proposed, so Sarah Palin should be minutes later. She is now and always has been the singular Jacksonian voice in the original Tea Party phenomenon; the only one who can bring it to the mainstream. Her absence from the primary race has left a vacuum and no substitute has been found. Every other possible or potential leadership hopeful has risen and receded in this long Republican primary season./blockquote That’s some premium, high-octane nuttiness, right there. We’ve watched conservative savior after conservative savior be elevated in rapid succession, only to have each knocked down again when people actually heard them, you know … talk, but the conservative Palin fetish is something that I don’t think I’ll ever understand. She was a disaster the first time around, every interview and press availability a train wreck, but conservatives still praise her apparently invisible intellectualism. When she quit as Alaskan governor, the rest of us saw it as the actions of a flighty persona more interested in television time than government, but true believers embraced it as an act of rebellion (against what, God only knows.) pHow you get from there to being a emJacksonian voice/em is beyond me, unless it involves opium.br //p blockquoteThe Bush secret agenda has been a subliminal theme for months with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as the favored proxy and pitchman. At CPAC it broke through to the surface: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, says that Republican turmoil might lead to a brokered convention in which Jeb Bush would emerge as a “possible alternative” party nominee. It made Drudge this weekend./blockquote Oh, well if it made emDrudge./em pi(Continue reading below the fold)/i/p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cK1KYGgciMSdJMqcK_hYVGOCmQI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cK1KYGgciMSdJMqcK_hYVGOCmQI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cK1KYGgciMSdJMqcK_hYVGOCmQI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cK1KYGgciMSdJMqcK_hYVGOCmQI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=LkTvuqKI9oE:j2KCgVjIL6o: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/LkTvuqKI9oE” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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A Sarah Palin vs. Jeb Bush brokered convention? Be still, my heart.

After countless shows, parties and events that we didn’t understand, but went to anyway, we started to realize that we were stuck in an adolescent time warp.bra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-hall/nyc-fashion-week-is-like-high-school_b_1273434.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/new-york-fashion-week/”More on New York Fashion Week /a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sjigMIOSKra8EVcd8lLWB_SJczI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sjigMIOSKra8EVcd8lLWB_SJczI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sjigMIOSKra8EVcd8lLWB_SJczI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sjigMIOSKra8EVcd8lLWB_SJczI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=evFcKtkjb58:mj9mYZGOcEc: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=evFcKtkjb58:mj9mYZGOcEc:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=evFcKtkjb58:mj9mYZGOcEc:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=evFcKtkjb58:mj9mYZGOcEc:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=evFcKtkjb58:mj9mYZGOcEc:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/evFcKtkjb58″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Hall: Why NYC Fashion Week Is Just Like Your High School Cafeteria

pimg src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/APR_2_14.jpg” //p pa href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/opinion/a-responsible-2013-budget.html?_r=1amp;ref=opinion”The New York Times/a looks at President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget:br //p blockquotePresident Obama’s 2013 budget was greeted on Monday with Republican catcalls that it is simply a campaign document, but election-year budgets are supposed to explain priorities to voters. This one offers a clear and welcome contrast to the slashing austerity — and protect-the-wealthy priorities — favored by Republican Congressional leaders and the party’s presidential candidates. pThe president’s budget calls for long-term deficit reduction, but its immediate priority is to encourage the fledgling economic recovery. Instead of trying to stabilize the budget on the backs of the poor, it would raise taxes on the wealthy and on big banks and eliminate many corporate tax loopholes./p /blockquote a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-insiders/post/things-are-turning-obamas-way/2012/02/13/gIQAEEp1AR_blog.html”Carter Eskew/a surveys the current political landscape for emThe Washington Post/em:br / blockquoteThe Republicans are not having a good year so far. nbsp;The worm seems to be turning for the president. The economy has five straight months of job growth, the stock market is up, there is a mortgage deal and a sense that Europe may muddle through. The president won on the payroll tax, looks reasonable on contraception — if Republicans thought social security was a third rail, contraception is the fourth — and has a budget that calls for sacrifice from the richest Americans, cuts to many government programs and investments in education and research. Sounds fairly reasonable, especially in contrast to the Republicans’ carping and extremism. pHow are the Republicans countering? With year-old jokes and digs against Obama that have lost a bit of their punch. With snarls from Sen. Mitch McConnell on contraception that scare women and sneers from Rick Santorum. Newt Gingrich has lost his giddy-up, and the curtain is up on Romney’s advisers as they furiously adjust the dials and levers to get their man right. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is about to have her star turn in the movie “Game Change” Very scary./p /blockquote a href=”http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bs-ed-witcover-gop-20120214,0,1267096.story”Jules Witcover/a in the emBaltimore Sun/em writes about buyer’s remorse in the GOP:br / blockquoteBuyer’s remorse usually sets in after the nomination is nailed down. But this time around, the early aura of inevitability that Mr. Romney and his money would sew it up has already been shaken by the first caucus and primary results. A substantial segment of the party seems to be saying: Save us somehow from the fate in store for us if Mitt Romney is our nominee. pWith Mr. Gingrich and his characteristic bravado continuing to self-destruct, Mr. Santorum seems an unlikely savior, but his record certainly qualifies as a pure conservative of the sort the party has become across the board. As the GOP lurches ever rightward, the ultimate remorse may be about lurching too far, and alienating the moderate center where elections usually are decided./p /blockquote emCBS’/ems a href=”http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57376862-503544/rick-santorum-no-longer-such-a-long-shot/”Brian Montopoli/a on Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum:br / blockquoteLet’s say this all goes as well as it possibly could for Santorum: He wins Michigan, Ohio and the Southern states, prompting Gingrich to leave the race. Santorum would then have a clear shot at the nomination - he might even be the favorite - but the race would be far from over. Only 755 pledged delegates are at stake through Super Tuesday, and most come in contests where delegates are awarded proportionately; even under the best possible scenario for Santorum, he won’t be close to the 1,144 delegates he needs to win the nomination. pMeanwhile, Paul is widely expected to stay in the race over the long haul, and to keep winning delegates in low-turnout states where his passionate supporters can make a big impact. The possibility of a drawn-out battle between Romney and Santorum (and/or, potentially, Gingrich) - combined with the continued presence of Paul in the race - has many political watchers raising the possibility of no candidate having enough delegates to claim the nomination by the time the convention comes in August./p pIn the modern era, a contested convention is relatively uncharted territory, and it’s far from likely to take place this time around. /p /blockquote emThe Boston Globe/em’s Farah Stockman on a href=”http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/02/14/vampire-bats-and-american-politics/BfUlneh2XAprFm4jQkwa5L/story.html”politics and the vampire bats’ safety net/a:br / blockquoteIN 1983, a biologist studying vampire bats in the forests of Costa Rica made a remarkable discovery: Bats that spent the night gorging on blood returned to their caves and routinely fed fellow bats that didn’t find enough to eat. pLately, I have been wondering what these bats mean for American politics, at a time when the very idea of helping needy fellow Americans has come under assault. Newt Gingrich routinely attacks President Obama as a “food stamp president.’’ Rush Limbaugh calls the safety net for the poor “one of the biggest cultural problems we have got.’’ A Tea Party Express audience yells “yeah!’’ when Wolf Blitzer asks if an uninsured man in a hospital should just be left to die. As I watch all this, I can’t help but wonder: Are we are really less generous than bats that suck blood?/p pSo I call up Gerald Wilkinson, the biologist who discovered bat altruism./p pI ask: “Are vampire bats all bleeding-heart liberals? Are they socialists?’’/p pWilkinson’s answer: “Not exactly. If they were not helping each other, they would not live very long.’’/p /blockquote Also at emThe Boston Globe/em, a href=”http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/02/14/path-blocked-lego-toys/9B2ZzjvDu8K0zuVkCh3uKP/story.html”Joanna Weiss/a on a new study about girls and STEM subjects:br / blockquoteTHIS WINTER, Lego, the toy company that has inspired many an engineer, unveiled a line of blocks called Lego Friends, aimed specifically at girls. The bricks come in pastel colors, the figurines go to beauty shops, and the concept is straight out of market research. Lego executives say girls play differently from boys. They don’t want to build complex fighter jets like the ones on the cover of the Lego Star Wars boxes. They want to tell stories, instead. pI have no doubt that girls in focus groups were interested in putting little Lego flowers on little Lego treehouses. But that’s not the whole story; figuring out what girls want is a matter of asking the right questions. A year ago, when the Girl Scout Research Institute embarked on a study of girls, math, and science, researchers expected to find a Lego Friends sort of world: girls drawn to cute and pretty stuff, who didn’t aspire to careers in science. Instead, the study’s results, which are being released today, upend those old assumptions./p pIt turns out, fully 74 percent of girls — and even higher percentages of African-American and Hispanic girls — say they’re interested in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, math, and engineering. The trick is to break professions into their component parts. Girls who are interested in STEM want to know how things work. They like solving puzzles and problems. They want to understand the natural world./p /blockquote Speaking of females, in light of the new Pentagon announcement that it will be opening up more combat positions to women, a href=”http://www.npr.org/2012/02/13/146802589/foreign-policy-women-on-the-front-lines”Joshua E. Keating/a looks at how other countries have a long have handled women in the military:br / blockquoteThe change doesn’t go far enough for some, like California Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who called it “ridiculous” to “open a few positions at the battalion level to basically create a pilot program.” But it goes too far for others like presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who worries that having women in combat could compromise operations since “men have emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way.” pIn a policy debate like this, it might be useful to study the experience of countries where women are already allowed to fight. But finding just how many of these countries there are can be surprisingly difficult. Some countries have no formal restrictions on women joining combat units but rarely allow it in practice. Others, like Japan and Switzerland, allow women in some combat positions, but have not engaged in combat in recent history./p pThen there’s the issue of what constitutes “combat.” There are rarely defined front lines in a war such as Afghanistan or Iraq, so driving a support truck or working in a medical facility can quickly put rear-echelon troops in a battlezone (remember Jessica Lynch?). This week’s rule change in the United States was largely a reflection of the fact that women are, to a large extent, already participating in combat. Despite the restrictions in place, 144 American women have been killed and 865 wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, according to the Defense Department./p /blockquote Finally, I present to you Rick Santorum, a href=”http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57377121-503544/santorum-calls-occupy-movement-intolerant-as-protestors-interrupt-him/”without a shred of irony/a:br / blockquoteTACOMA, Wash. - Rick Santorum said on Monday that the Occupy movement represents “true intolerance” after he was faced with a handful of angry protestors who shouted through his entire event, ultimately resulting in the arrest of three of them. p”I think it’s really important for you to understand what this radical element represents. Because what they represent is true intolerance,” the former Pennsylvania senator said after two protestors were handcuffed and dragged away./p /blockquote pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/AJ5c1hTYXJt45wGHCRNu9o5L6cQ/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/AJ5c1hTYXJt45wGHCRNu9o5L6cQ/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/AJ5c1hTYXJt45wGHCRNu9o5L6cQ/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/AJ5c1hTYXJt45wGHCRNu9o5L6cQ/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=EsPC0hI6rdA:EpGeQ5_H3Pw: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/EsPC0hI6rdA” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Challenging perceptions, changing the status quo

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Santorum_-_Sarah_Conard-_Reuters.jpg” alt=”Rick Santorum” height=”351″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”"I will stand up for what I believe in—unless it gets me in trouble. Then I’ll just blame my wife.”br / (Sarah Conard/Reuters)/div /div Gee, that Rick Santorum sure is a gentleman, isn’t he? pOn Sunday, he a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-jack-lew-paul-ryan-rick-santorum/story?id=15555812amp;page=3#.TzlJm0yXRHA”appeared/a on iThis Week/i with George Stephanopoulos to defend the rancid misogyny that is the central plank of his presidential campaign platform. It did not go well.br //p blockquoteSTEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve raised a lot of eyebrows with some of your comments about women, those comments the other day about women in combat, where you suggested that shouldn’t happen because of the types of emotions involved. I know you were talking about the emotions of men who are — who are alongside the women, but also in your book, “It Takes a Family,” where you seem to suggest that a lot of women feel pressure to work outside the home because of radical feminism. pAnd what do you say to those who worry — believe that those kind of comments are going to alienate women, make you an easier candidate to beat in a general election?/p pSANTORUM: Well, that section of the book was co-written, if you want to be honest about it, by my wife, who is a nurse and a lawyer./p /blockquote Ohhhhhhh. So the part of your book where you blame “radical feminism” for forcing women to work against their will was written by your emwife/em, eh, Rick? You shouldn’t be held accountable for the words in your book because your emwife/em wrote the nasty parts? pThat’s funny because, as many, including the ia href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/us/politics/santorum-faces-questions-on-women-in-work-force.html”New York Times/a/i, have noted:br //p blockquote[O]nly his name is on the cover and he does not list her, in his acknowledgements, among those “who assisted me in the writing of this book.”/blockquote Now that Rick’s catching the tiniest bit of heat for his archaic views of, well, everything, he’s trying to defend himself and make his Christian sharia views more palatable to the general public. Thus, he tossed in this disingenuous platitude:br / blockquoteBut I think it’s important that women both outside the home and inside the home are affirmed for their choices they make, that they are, in fact, choices, and society, you know, treats them in a sense equally for whatever decision they make that’s best for them./blockquote Yeah, that sounds nice and 21st century, doesn’t it? Very modern and egalitarian of him, isn’t it?br / blockquoteSTEPHANOPOULOS: You say that now, but you also wrote in the book that radical feminists have been making the pitch that justice demands that men and women be given an equal opportunity to make it to the top in the workplace. Isn’t that something that everyone should value? pSANTORUM: Yeah, I have no problem — I don’t know — that’s a new quote for me. I don’t know what context that was given./p /blockquote Um, Rick? That quote? It was in emyour/em book. So, not only did you apparently emnot/em write the book yourself; you didn’t even emread/em it? pYou have to love that Rick Santorum standing up for his bold convictions and his wife. Santorum, who dreams of a simpler time when a href=”http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/06/419834/santorum-longs-back-alley-abortion/”women died in back alley abortions/a, and an a href=”http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/rick-santorum-the-crusades-get-a-bad-rap.php?m=1″even simpler time/a when Christian crusaders slaughtered non-believers, sure thinks things were better for everyone back in the good ol’ days when men were men and women knew their place. And he’s emsuch/em a chivalrous gentleman that when backed into a corner, he’ll gladly blame his wife for it./p pWhat a stand-up guy./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/G3xgV-UpsQs23HO4_ImKrRTUcIY/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/G3xgV-UpsQs23HO4_ImKrRTUcIY/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/G3xgV-UpsQs23HO4_ImKrRTUcIY/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/G3xgV-UpsQs23HO4_ImKrRTUcIY/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=1EmgAbQiCjU:x8KKpFHqT_Q: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/~4/1EmgAbQiCjU” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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In bold and chivalrous move, Rick Santorum blames his wife for his own words

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/191280/8_1594.jpg” alt=”Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney” height=”309″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”More of this, please!/div /div a href=”http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290895/santorum-s-turn-editors”Santorumentum!/abr / blockquoteAt the moment Rick Santorum appears to be overtaking Newt Gingrich as the principal challenger to Mitt Romney. Santorum has won more contests than Gingrich (who has won only one), has more delegates, and leads him in the polls. In at least one poll, he also leads Romney. It isn’t yet a Romney–Santorum contest, but it could be headed that way. pWe hope so./p /blockquote Yeah, and we hope so too. Can you imagine the hilarity of a Santorum vs. Romney clown show showdown? I’m already drooling! And it could happen. Newt could easily quit the race on the morning of the final debate before Super Tuesday, simultaneously endorsing Santorum. It would be a face-saving and attention-getting way for him to quit the race, and if there’s one thing that Newt Gingrich seems to really care about, it’s saving face and getting attention. pThe best thing about the editorial is that it even though it endorses a Romney vs. Santorum contest, it mostly focuses on why Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney all suck. (A sampling: Gingrich has “poor judgment and persistent unpopularity,” Santorum’s “proposed [economic] solutions are poorly designed,” and Romney “is trying to win the nomination by pulverizing his rivals.”)/p pRepublicans and conservatives seem to be surprised that their presidential field has turned out to be such a disaster, but nobody should be surprised. This is, after all, the party that invaded Iraq after 9/11, presided over the financial deregulation that led to the the Bush Depression, thought that Sarah Palin was a smart choice to be John McCain’s backup, and created the debt limit hostage crisis. With that kind of a track record, the only thing that would have been shocking is if Republicans had been able to find a decent, credible presidential candidate./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RjWVCKcqfXnDrUg3IVfeUGFvvU0/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RjWVCKcqfXnDrUg3IVfeUGFvvU0/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RjWVCKcqfXnDrUg3IVfeUGFvvU0/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RjWVCKcqfXnDrUg3IVfeUGFvvU0/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=jKWew0K-etE:EN5LX1FiW3w: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/jKWew0K-etE” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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National Review editorial: Newt Gingrich should make way for a Rick Santorum-Mitt Romney contest

pSarah Palin says she is not worried about ‘Game Change,’ the upcoming movie in which Julianne Moore portrays her unraveling in her 2008 vice presidential bid. /pp”Goodness gracious,” she said on FOX News Sunday. “I’m really not concerned about an HBO movie based on a false narrative when there are so many other things to be concerned about… I’m sorry that millions of people are going to waste their time. I’m sure they have more productive things to do.”/ppChris Wallace asked if there was any truth to the script, which shows Palin descending into a “funk” as the McCain campaign tried to prepare her for debates./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/12/sarah-palin-game-change-_n_1271625.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/video/”More on Video/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Prk6FKzkYK1SZDW25yxu6hNNLyM/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Prk6FKzkYK1SZDW25yxu6hNNLyM/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Prk6FKzkYK1SZDW25yxu6hNNLyM/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Prk6FKzkYK1SZDW25yxu6hNNLyM/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=WG44GrPCFmI:GfqdGyRXV68: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=WG44GrPCFmI:GfqdGyRXV68:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=WG44GrPCFmI:GfqdGyRXV68:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=WG44GrPCFmI:GfqdGyRXV68:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=WG44GrPCFmI:GfqdGyRXV68:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/WG44GrPCFmI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Palin Reacts To ‘Game Change’ Portrayal (VIDEO)

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/426/bagley_2-4_11rS.jpg” alt=”" height=”383″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Pat Bagley via politicalcartoons.com/div /div So, let’s talk about women’s health and health care today. It’s a great topic, and doesn’t get enough coverage (and only children’s health means more to me, being a pediatrician). But while we’re at it, let’s also talk about precedent, federalism and equal protection under the law. pWe know, on the one hand, that the sensible contraception rule from the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) led to plenty of controversy and discussion this week. But, in fact, what’s being offered is not new. From a href=”http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/02/10/146662285/rules-requiring-contraceptive-coverage-have-been-in-force-for-years”NPR/a:/p blockquotestrongRules Requiring Contraceptive Coverage Have Been In Force For Years/strong pHere’s the rub: The only truly novel part of the plan is the “no cost” bit./p pThe rule would mean, for the first time, that women won’t have to pay a deductible or copayment to get prescription contraceptives./p p”Now millions more women and families are going to have access to essential health care coverage at a cost that they can afford,” says Sarah Lipton-Lubet, policy counsel with the ACLU. “But as a legal matter, a constitutional matter, it’s completely unremarkable.”/p pIn fact, employers have pretty much been required to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their health plans since December 2000. That’s when the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that failure to provide such coverage violates the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. That law is, in turn, an amendment to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlaws, among other things, discrimination based on gender./p /blockquote You can’t get a more clear difference in world view and approach to governance between the two parties. pstrongThe Democratic position on this:/strong/p pnbsp;Figure out how to apply it. a href=”http://www.usatoday.com/news/story/2012-02-10/obama-birth-control/53036006/1″USA Today/a:/p blockquoteThe measure also sparked an internal debate at the White House. Vice President Joe Biden, then-chief of staff Bill Daley and deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough, all Catholics, raised concerns about how the administration proceeded on the policy. On the other side, senior White House advisers Nancy-Ann DeParle, Pete Rouse and David Plouffe argued for the need to ensure coverage for all without exception, as a matter of women’s health and fairness./blockquote strongbr / The Republican position on this:/strong pChange the law, this one and many others. See a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/10/1063632/-Rick-Santorum-says-birth-control-shouldn-t-be-covered-by-insurance-at-nbsp-all?via=blog_1″Rick Santorum says birth control shouldn’t be covered by insurance at all/a and the even more broad a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/10/1063691/-GOP-Sen-Roy-Blunt-to-introduce-bill-allowing-employers-to-deny-coverage-for-any-health-service?via=blog_1″GOP Sen. Roy Blunt to introduce bill allowing employers to deny coverage for any health service/a. As bizarre and radical as those actions may seem, it’s what they have to do to make sure everyone is provided equal protection under the law, and rather than cover women, or only secularly employed women, best (in their view) not to cover anyone./p pBut all of this political jockeying fits into a much broader framework: the national approach to health reform, which sets minimum standards for the states (all states) and expects the states to comply, and a federalist one, which devolves some of the choices to the states. This important framework is a source of many (but by no means all!) of the political arguments we hear about how to proceed./p pem(Continue reading below the fold)/embr //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wOwUTUxggq_af_qzxowArYx03gU/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wOwUTUxggq_af_qzxowArYx03gU/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wOwUTUxggq_af_qzxowArYx03gU/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wOwUTUxggq_af_qzxowArYx03gU/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=CycUXFYduVc:e2_WcPJDoFE: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/CycUXFYduVc” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Federalism, the Affordable Care Act … and contraception

pA convincing Sarah Palin impersonator, sitting in the Woodley Park Noodes Co. near the hotel hosting the Conservative Political Action Conference, said she will not endorse Newt Gingrich during Sarah Palin’s speech at a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/cpac-2012-live-updates-_n_1265184.html” target=”_hplink”CPAC/a on Saturday — because, in fact, she is not (as reporters learned afterward) Sarah Palin./ppThe woman, who calls herself “the world’s premier Sarah Palin impressionist,” winked and used a folksy voice while discussing the need for the political process to work its course before she endorsed. “It’s cold here in Washington!” she said, then stammering, “And Alaska.”/ppa href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/cpac-2012-live-updates-_n_1265184.html” target=”_hplink”Click here/a for HuffPost’s CPAC live blog. Below, a photo of the woman impersonating Palin. /pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/11/sarah-palin-impersonator-_n_1270480.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/sarah-palin/”More on Sarah Palin/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zwB5ujqRPh4MkMmyzZ8cDh3bjHA/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zwB5ujqRPh4MkMmyzZ8cDh3bjHA/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zwB5ujqRPh4MkMmyzZ8cDh3bjHA/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zwB5ujqRPh4MkMmyzZ8cDh3bjHA/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=tEc5XdOYsDQ:HcMdc7aQxUI: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=tEc5XdOYsDQ:HcMdc7aQxUI:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=tEc5XdOYsDQ:HcMdc7aQxUI:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=tEc5XdOYsDQ:HcMdc7aQxUI:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=tEc5XdOYsDQ:HcMdc7aQxUI:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/tEc5XdOYsDQ” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Palin Impersonator Crashes 2012 CPAC (PHOTO)

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/bishop275.jpg” alt=”" height=”275″ width=”275″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”Actually, the Bible doesn’t say anythingbr / about clergy writing health care policy./div /div br / pEver since the Obama administration announced that the Affordable Care Act will require health insurers to cover contraception without co-pays, a tiny handful of very angry men have been shrieking that Obama is waging a war on religion, and especially the Catholic Church, and it will be the end of freedom and democracy as we know it./p pThese very angry men claim to speak on behalf of God. And all God-fearing Americans. The reality, however, is quite different. Today, for example, leaders from 23 different religious organizations a href=”http://www.religiousinstitute.org/news/major-mainstream-religious-leaders-support-white-house-on-contraceptive-coverage-in-health-care”released a letter of support/a for the new policy. a href=”http://www.americanindependent.com/191754/poll-66-percent-of-americans-agree-with-hhs-birth-control-decision”Polling/a has a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/07/1062505/-Sorry-GOP-Poll-of-Catholics-finds-majority-supports-birth-control-coverage-?detail=hideamp;via=blog_1″repeatedly shown/a not only that a majority of Americans support the new policy, but that a majority of emCatholics/em support it as well. So while the church clergy may rail against the use of contraception, their congregants in the pews clearly do not agree./p pWhile the administration has repeatedly stated its commitment to implementing this new policy, it also continues to state its desire to work with Catholic leaders to allay their unfounded fears (see above re: end of democracy and civilization). Today, during a White House press briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney said:br //p blockquoteThe commitment to make sure that all American women no matter where they work have access to the same health care coverage and same preventive care services, including contraception, is absolutely firm. That’s the President’s commitment, that’s explicit in the policy proposal. The discussion, and it’s an important one, but the discussion is how can we, in implementing this policy, try to allay some of the concerns that have been expressed? And the President is very sensitive to that. As is Secretary Sebelius and others. But that’s the issue. So, describe that as you will but there is no change in the commitment to ensuring that women have access to these important services./blockquote br / This is on the heels of Obama adviser David Axelrod’s appearance a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/07/1062511/-Obama-administration-needs-to-stand-with-women-not-Catholic-bishops-on-health-care?detail=hideamp;via=blog_604733″yesterday/a on MSNBC’s emMorning Joe/em, where a href=”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/vp/46294134#46294134″he said/a that the administration is still trying “to find a resolution that makes sense” to these Church leaders, that it wants to “resolve it in an appropriate way,” and that it wants to “work through these issues in a thoughtful way.” pThe administration’s commitment to this policy is to be applauded. But—and yes, there is a but—it is time for the administration to stop wasting its time trying to “allay concerns” and “find a resolution.” This is a popular and sound emhealth care/em policy, and there is absolutely no reason why church leaders should be writing health care policy. Further, given their ultimate goal of banning all contraception and reproductive health care, there is no reason to think any “resolution” or compromise will allay their unfounded conspiracy theories that the president is waging a war on religion./p pToday, for example, Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches a href=”http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/5664/”reports/a that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has already preemptively rejected a possible “compromise” that has been floated. And because their hysterical hyperbole has no basis in reality to begin with, it’s no less ridiculous for the administration to invest any time or energy assuring them that this health care policy will not, in fact, destroy the Catholic Church than it was for the administration to spend any time assuring birthers that he was not, in fact, at the center of a decades-long plot by the Kenyan government./p pThe president has the support of the American public on this policy. He has the support of American Catholics on this policy. He has the support of dozens of other religious organizations in this country./p pIt is time to stop “discussing” the Catholic leaders’ paranoid delusions and focus on real problems facing this country. And reproductive health care for women leading to the end of civilization as we know it is emnot/em one of them./p pa href=”http://campaigns.dailykos.com/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=66″Send an email to the White House and tell President Obama to stand firm on requiring all health insurers to cover contraception without co-pays./a/p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/myRPcm4uRGrtiJf2SAifzD0ozNo/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/myRPcm4uRGrtiJf2SAifzD0ozNo/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/myRPcm4uRGrtiJf2SAifzD0ozNo/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/myRPcm4uRGrtiJf2SAifzD0ozNo/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=Sb1oAVjOzh4:KcrFW8CUT08: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/Sb1oAVjOzh4″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Time for the White House to end the contraception conversation with Catholic leaders

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Santorum_-_Sarah_Conard-_Reuters.jpg” alt=”Rick Santorum” height=”351″ width=”550″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”"I will always take a strong stand for bigotry in the name of the big guy upstairs!” (Sarah Conard/Reuters)/div /div Won’t someone emplease/em think of the a href=”http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-presidential-primary/209435-in-wake-of-prop-8-ruling-santorum-attacks-obama-”bigots/a?br / blockquoteGOP presidential candidate and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) said the Obama administration’s view of proponents of the California’s “Proposition 8″ amounted to bigotry. pAccording to Santorum, speaking at a campaign stop in Texas Wednesday, the administration’s view of advocates of Proposition 8 is that their “‘belief of marriage between a man and a woman is purely irrational based on irrational hatred and bigotry. Where’s the tolerance in that?”/p /blockquote Of course, the Obama administration hasn’t actually said anything about the recent ruling on Proposition 8. But no matter—poor Rick Santorum is feeling awfully oppressed by the president’s intolerance of Santorum’s intolerance. Why, it’s getting so a proud bigot like Santorum can’t even express his hatred openly without imagining that the president doesn’t agree with him! pPoor guy./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/090wcMvGB2BF7s_hhZWyWmaQtvM/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/090wcMvGB2BF7s_hhZWyWmaQtvM/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/090wcMvGB2BF7s_hhZWyWmaQtvM/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/090wcMvGB2BF7s_hhZWyWmaQtvM/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=i4pgIruMfos:CdsqICqR5Qs: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/i4pgIruMfos” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Rick Santorum accuses Obama of being intolerant of hateful bigots

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Pink_ribbon.png” alt=”Pink ribbon” height=”407″ width=”275″ //div Things are looking so bad for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, leadership there is probably looking back at last week as the good ol’ salad days, when the biggest problem was national outrage at a new policy to defund Planned Parenthood. pIn the past week, though, things have gone from bad to so, so, emso/em much worse. Lena H. Sun and Sarah Kliff at the emWashington Post/em a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/komen-vice-president-resigns-as-details-emerge-on-planned-parenthood-debate/2012/02/07/gIQAMxPXxQ_story.html?hpid=z5″report/a:br //p blockquoteBefore the Komen board unanimously agreed to pull funding for Planned Parenthood last year, an internal staff review and a board subcommittee had concluded the opposite, that funding should be maintained, according to a former Komen employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. [Karen] Handel, who was senior vice president for public policy, objected to those decisions./blockquote And why did this subcommittee conclude that it should continue to fund Planned Parenthood?br / blockquoteParticipants concluded that cutting off all funds would endanger low-income women who depended on the service. A partial cutoff would only compromise the integrity of the grants process and not be enough to satisfy critics, participants said. Staff members decided to recommend continued funding for Planned Parenthood. p“It was our recommendation that we stay the course,” [former senior communications advisor John] Hammerly said. “We thought there could also be significant concern, both from a public standpoint and an affiliate standpoint, if we ceased support.”/p /blockquote Ah, the obvious reasons. Cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood’s cancer screening and prevention programs would be bad for both low-income women and Komen’s sterling reputation. Therefore, the subcommittee advised against it. pAnd yet, somehow—and emtotally/em unrelated to Karen Handel’s aggressive campaign within the organization—the full board unanimously overruled the subcommittee’s recommendations and decided to screw over low-income women emand/em the Komen brand. Why, it’s almost as if Komen cared more about political ideology than women’s health!/p pa href=”https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/kosforplannedparenthood?refcode=Monday”img align=”right” src=”http://i.actblue.com/page/kosforplannedparenthood/thermometer/dark.png” alt=”Goal Thermometer” //a/p pMake no mistake: Handel emdid/em launch an aggressive campaign when she joined Komen last year. She “significantly ramped up” questions about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood, which is hardly a surprise, given that she’d run for governor of Georgia the previous year on a “staunchly pro-life” platform, promising to defund Planned Parenthood if elected. When the voters told her no, she just took those promises to the Komen foundation and tried to find another way./p pAnd somehow, despite the understanding that defunding Planned Parenthood would be bad for women (and Komen), the board went along with Handel’s agenda./p pKomen has offered several explanations for its decision, none of which are credible. One fact, though, has become increasingly clear: there emwas/em a push within the organization to defund Planned Parenthood for political and ideological reasons. And, sadly, the board knowingly sided with politics instead of with women./p pa href=”https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/kosforplannedparenthood”Click here to contribute $5 to Planned Parenthood./abr //p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/fS-sJgfuaLsq_yklxgQt9xyue54/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/fS-sJgfuaLsq_yklxgQt9xyue54/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/fS-sJgfuaLsq_yklxgQt9xyue54/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/fS-sJgfuaLsq_yklxgQt9xyue54/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=kdW-rJLIErI:v_QVXljhen4: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/kdW-rJLIErI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Shocker! Komen for the Cure knew defunding Planned Parenthood was a bad idea

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/1054/Ga_Hoole_Owl_550px_TEXT-1.jpg” alt=”Open Thread for Night Owls” height=”100″ width=”550″ //div embr / br //em pemScience Daily/em a href=”The20Carsey20report20this20is20at%20http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/CarseySearch/search.php?id=183.”reports/a:br //p blockquote”People’s knowledge of polar regions and issues improved from 2006 to 2010, consistent with hopes that the International Polar Year in 2007 would boost public awareness. Unfortunately, we did not see a companion increase in concern about the environmental changes in these regions, due, in part, to ideological and political divisions,” said Lawrence Hamilton, professor of sociology at UNH and a senior fellow at the Carsey Institute. pCarsey Institute researchers, with support from the National Science Foundation, conducted the first comparative analysis of queries about the polar regions, which were included on the General Social Survey in 2006 and 2010. The polar questions covered topics such as climate change, melting ice, rising sea levels, and human or ecological impacts from environmental change. The surveys formed bookends to the International Polar Year in 2007-2008, which focused on scientific research along with outreach and education efforts to raise awareness of polar science./p pThe researchers found that the public’s knowledge about the north and south polar regions showed modest gains between 2006 and 2010. The average “polar knowledge score” improved from 53 to 59 percent./p pThe surveys also carried an 11-question “science literacy” quiz, testing background knowledge about science. Science literacy did not improve from 2006 to 2010, but people with higher science literacy tend to care more about polar environmental change. /p /blockquote The complete Carsey Institute report about this research is available a href=”http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/CarseySearch/search.php?id=183″here/a.br / br / hr width=”75%” color=”#000099″ size=”2″ / pa href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/02/07/834612/-Reading-The-Movement-?via=blog_1″Blast from the Past/a. At Daily Kos on this date in b2010/b:br //p blockquoteThe Tea Party movement is given far too much attention. The traditional media, always drawn to a spectacle, has flocked to the many spectacles provided by this movement far out of proportion with their import. Sarah Palin speaking to 600 people who’ve paid inflated ticket prices to cover her huge fee is treated as major news and given blanket coverage. That’s absurd. The screamers bussed in to town halls in August were covered when the many calm, thoughtful participants were not. That’s irresponsible. pAt the same time, the Tea Party movement should be taken seriously, investigated and understood rather than treated as spectacle. That being the case, Ben McGrath’s recent New Yorker article The Movement seemed promising going in. It’s unfortunate that that promise was so wasted./p pMcGrath has clearly made a journalistic decision to take the tea partiers or 9/12ers on their own terms, to explain how they see what they’re doing. It’s worthwhile to go a ways with that. But at some point you have to step back and consider what you’ve just reported, or you’re a stenographer. /p /blockquote hr width=”75%” color=”#000099″ size=”2″ / pa href=”https://twitter.com/#!/AKaczynski1″Tweet of the Day/a:/p pa align=”center” href=”http://s887.photobucket.com/albums/ac74/JacksonBrown/?action=viewA4t=Andy2-12.png” target=”_blank”img src=”http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac74/JacksonBrown/Andy2-12.png” border=”0″ alt=”Photobucket” //a/p hr width=”75%” color=”#000099″ size=”2″ / pHigh Impact Posts are a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/07/1062469/-High-Impact-Posts-February-6-2012?via=search”here/a. Top Comments are a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/07/1062652/-Top-Comments-Citizens-United-Edition?via=search”here/a./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7QwOacfjvOBZMQ6o8nuKFdVwGAA/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7QwOacfjvOBZMQ6o8nuKFdVwGAA/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7QwOacfjvOBZMQ6o8nuKFdVwGAA/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7QwOacfjvOBZMQ6o8nuKFdVwGAA/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=Rhf3dXzUN6k:WPo_3rRPK3s: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/Rhf3dXzUN6k” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Open Thread for Night Owls: Science literacy stays flat as does understanding of polar changes

div class=”dkimg-c”a href=”http://campaigns.dailykos.com/signup_page/electionsdigest”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/73/Daily_Kos_Elections_Liveblog_Banner.jpg” alt=”Daily Kos Elections Liveblog Banner” height=”100″ width=”550″ //a div class=”dkimg-cap”a href=”http://campaigns.dailykos.com/signup_page/electionsdigest”Sign up here/a to have the Daily Kos Elections Digest emailed to you every weekday morning/div /div pTonight is the first multi-state night in the clown race we call the GOP nomination contest, with caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota, and a non-binding beauty contest in Missouri./p pstrongResults/strong: CNN (a href=”http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/state/co”CO/a, a href=”http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/state/mo”MO/a, a href=”http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/state/mn”MN/a) | Google (a href=”http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results/2012/gop-primary/co”CO/a, a href=”http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results/2012/gop-primary/mo”MO/a, a href=”http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results/2012/gop-primary/mn”MN/a)/p pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207212615″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207212615″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:26 PM PT/b/a (Steve Singiser):/span Two big counties just reported, and made a big shift in the tally. Boulder County went modestly for Mitt Romney (38-31), and exurban Douglas County went big for Mitt Romney (47-33). The net result is that Romney and Santorum are now essentially tied, with Romney ahead by 16 votes out of 16,453 cast./p pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207212915″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207212915″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:29 PM PT/b/a (Steve Singiser):/span The Colorado GOP reports counties as they complete their counts. Therefore, some county numbers are flying around Twitter, but aren’t on the site yet. Expectations are that Romney will pick up quite a bit in Jefferson County (suburban Denver) and Denver County, but Santorum should push back in Larimer County (Fort Collins) and El Paso County (Colorado Springs)./p span class=”update”a name=”20120207213252″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207213252″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:32 PM PT/b/a (Kaili Joy Gray):/span div style=”margin:4px auto 4px auto; width:400px; font-size:12px;background-color: #eeeeee; border: 1px solid #999999;padding:5px;”a href=”https://twitter.com/#!/jedlewison/status/167118222452195329″img src=”http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/113987634/twitterjed_normal.jpeg” style=”float:left;padding:0px;margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; width:48px; height:48px;” //aHow could you possibly project a CO winner when the party apparatus hasn’t figured out yet how to throw the election Romney’s way? #IA2012br / span style=”color:#555555;font-style:italic;”mdash; a href=”https://twitter.com/#!/jedlewison/status/167118222452195329″@jedlewison/a via a href=”http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id409789998?mt=12″ rel=”nofollow”Twitter for Mac/a/span div style=”clear:both;”/div /div pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207213710″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207213710″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:37 PM PT/b/a (Laura Clawson):/span One of the big counties to come in strong for Romney so far is Douglas County, where he has 46.7 percent to Santorum’s 32.8 percent. The problem for Romney is that in 2008, he got 72 percent in Douglas County./p pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207213957″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207213957″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:39 PM PT/b/a (Steve Singiser):/span iBig/i jump in precincts reporting on the Colorado GOP site, probably because they now have Denver reporting. Not a lot of votes added, though, because Denver is (of course) Dem-heavy. Romney won Denver County, but more than offset with Pueblo County and Mesa County (Grand Junction). The net result? A very narrow Santorum lead./p span class=”update”a name=”20120207214052″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207214052″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:40 PM PT/b/a (Kaili Joy Gray):/span div style=”margin:4px auto 4px auto; width:400px; font-size:12px;background-color: #eeeeee; border: 1px solid #999999;padding:5px;”a href=”https://twitter.com/#!/LOLGOP/status/167118480183791616″img src=”http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1765066897/elephant_normal.jpg” style=”float:left;padding:0px;margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; width:48px; height:48px;” //aThe only way Mitt Romney could be more hated by the Tea Party is if his dad were born in Kenya.br / span style=”color:#555555;font-style:italic;”mdash; a href=”https://twitter.com/#!/LOLGOP/status/167118480183791616″@LOLGOP/a via a href=”http://timely.is” rel=”nofollow”Timely by Demandforce/a/span div style=”clear:both;”/div /div pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207214118″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207214118″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:41 PM PT/b/a:/span Remember when Sarah Palin endorsed Newt Gingrich? Yeah, chalk her up as another loser tonight./p pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207214344″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207214344″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:43 PM PT/b/a (Steve Singiser):/span A quick note about Mesa County. The county, which borders Utah, should be prime territory for Mitt Romney. He won 67 percent there in 2008. Tonight, he lost it by eleven points. A microcosm of a horrible night for Mittens./p pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207214416″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207214416″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:44 PM PT/b/a:/span So let’s see … so far, the GOP base has given hearty “fuck you’s” to Nikki Haley, Tim Pawlenty, Donald Trump, and Sarah Palin./p pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207214530″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207214530″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:45 PM PT/b/a (David Nir):/span With the new CO GOP results, turnout looking more like 66K./p span class=”update”a name=”20120207214612″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207214612″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:46 PM PT/b/a:/span div style=”margin:4px auto 4px auto; width:400px; font-size:12px;background-color: #eeeeee; border: 1px solid #999999;padding:5px;”a href=”https://twitter.com/#!/ppppolls/status/167121787153432577″img src=”http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/1284292958/Picture1_normal.gif” style=”float:left;padding:0px;margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; width:48px; height:48px;” //aOver the last 6 months % of Dems ‘very excited’ to vote this fall has risen from 48% to 58%: a href=”http://t.co/1cyLh5Kp”http://t.co/…/abr / span style=”color:#555555;font-style:italic;”mdash; a href=”https://twitter.com/#!/ppppolls/status/167121787153432577″@ppppolls/a via web/span div style=”clear:both;”/div /div pspan class=”update”a name=”20120207214842″ href=”/story/2012/02/08/1062638/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-11#20120207214842″bTue Feb 07, 2012 at 9:48 PM PT/b/a (Kaili Joy Gray):/span The liveblogging continues in a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/08/1062728/-Daily-Kos-Elections-liveblog-thread-12?detail=hideamp;via=blog_1″the next thread/a./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vb1kSRjIboHHzox58y6oQzUj5oI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vb1kSRjIboHHzox58y6oQzUj5oI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vb1kSRjIboHHzox58y6oQzUj5oI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/vb1kSRjIboHHzox58y6oQzUj5oI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=BAfxx9M24HQ:w9DAnKBbpwk: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/BAfxx9M24HQ” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Daily Kos Elections liveblog thread #11

pToday are some caucuses and beauty contests in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota.br //p div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/426/images.jpg” alt=”" height=”139″ width=”225″ //div We will, of course, be covering it here, and let’s talk about some things to watch: pstrong1. Will Rick Santorum finally surge (and can headline writers avoid saying he did)?/strong/p pSantorum’s doing well in the polls: a href=”http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/what-we-learned-from-nevada/#more-25509″He leads/a in Minnesota and Missouri in some polls and trails in Colorado, where Romney is seemingly ahead./p pRomney is very much the front runner, but what will it mean for Romney if Santorum is yet another rallying point for “not Romney” conservatives not thrilled with the Romney candidacy? Will there be more attacks on Romney that can be used in the fall? Will his elitist, unpopular persona be cemented in people’s minds? Inquiring minds want to know./p pstrong2. Will turnout lag/strong?/p pTurnout has been unimpressive in Florida and Nevada; how excited can you get about voting for someone who you’re not that into? From a href=”http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/what-we-learned-from-nevada/#more-25509″fivethirtyeight.com/a:/p blockquoteThis a href=”http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/romney-wins-but-turnout-lags/”dynamic/a, which we highlighted after Florida, was in full effect in Nevada. Turnout there declined to 32,963 voters this year from 44,324 voters in 2008 — a 26 percent drop. And the decline was slightly larger, 29 percent, among voters who identified as Republican in the entrance poll./blockquote As Kos has pointed out, take atypical Ron Paul voters out of the equation, and it looks even worse. So what’s the trend going to be after today? pstrong3. Will Newt finish last anywhere?/strong/p pa href=”http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72528.html”Politico/a claims that Newt is back on stage for good. That’s nonsense, as much nonsense as claiming washed up Sarah Palin is a political powerhouse. Here’s a clue: People who are in it for themselves generally do not have staying power. Newt’s at the top of the list, and just because he has delusions of grandeur doesn’t mean that the myriads who dislike him agree he’s grand—and there are more of those every day. Interestingly, I’m talking about Republicans./p pstrong4. Will GOP caucuses survive this primary?/strong/p pIf the caucuses are unpredictable and hurt turnout, what’s the point?/p pstrong5. Will the polls be right?/strong/p pThey usually are./p pFor these and other points of interest, join us this evening at 8 PM ET for some liveblogging!/p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/5zu26PSdIK0S5bwkN-52IQtuAsc/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/5zu26PSdIK0S5bwkN-52IQtuAsc/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/5zu26PSdIK0S5bwkN-52IQtuAsc/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/5zu26PSdIK0S5bwkN-52IQtuAsc/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=obYeinKOSIg:zDj4g-xw60c: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/obYeinKOSIg” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Five things to watch on primary day

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/liar_stamp.jpg” alt=”Liar stamp” height=”206″ width=”275″ / div class=”dkimg-cap”/div /div This morning, when Karen Handel, senior vice president of public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/07/1062468/-Karen-Handel-resigns-from-Susan-G-Komen-for-the-Cure?detail=hide”resigned/a—a resignation that founder and CEO Nancy Brinker has a href=”http://www.marketwatch.com/story/statement-from-susan-g-komen-founder-and-ceo-nancy-g-brinker-2012-02-07″officially accepted/a—Handel included, in her letter, a rather curious admission:br / blockquoteI openly acknowledge my role in the matter …/blockquote Why, it seems like only last week, founder and CEO Karen Brinker was insisting that Handel did not have anything to do with this decision. pOh, right. That’s because it a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/06/1062078/-Komen-can-t-keep-its-story-straight-about-defunding-Planned-Parenthood?detail=hide”was last week/a:br //p blockquoteWell, let me just for the record tell you, Karen did not have anything to do with this decision./blockquote Of course, we already knew that wasn’t true. As Laura Bassett at Huffington Post a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/05/karen-handel-susan-g-komen-decision-defund-planned-parenthood_n_1255948.html”reported/a:br / blockquoteKaren Handel was the prime instigator of this effort, and she herself personally came up with investigation criteria,” the source, who requested anonymity for professional reasons, told HuffPost. “She said, ‘If we just say it’s about investigations, we can defund Planned Parenthood and no one can blame us for being political.’”/blockquote In her resignation letter, Handel insists that “the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization.” But as Bassett also reported, according to a source at Komen:br / blockquoteKomen’s been dealing with the Planned Parenthood issue for years, and you know, some right-wing groups would organize a protest or send out a mailing every now and then, but it was on a low simmer […[ bWhat Karen’s been doing for the past six months is ratcheting up the issue with leadership. Every time someone would even mention a protest, she would magnify it, pump it up, exaggerate it. She’s the one that kept driving this issue./b/blockquote There really is no question that Karen Handel joined Komen last year with an agenda to defund Planned Parenthood. That was part of her platform during her failed, Sarah Palin-endorsed run for governor in Georgia; it was clearly part of her mission at Komen too. pFor the past week, Brinker has insisted that Handel had nothing to do with the decision, and that the decision had nothing to do with politics. But it has become increasingly clear that Nancy Brinker is lying. And now Handel has confirmed it./p pa href=”https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/kosforplannedparenthood”Click here to contribute $5 to Planned Parenthood./a/p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Zb8m7Kt16z61bkSeJ_n8AZquDsI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Zb8m7Kt16z61bkSeJ_n8AZquDsI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Zb8m7Kt16z61bkSeJ_n8AZquDsI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Zb8m7Kt16z61bkSeJ_n8AZquDsI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=qBBFhkCT5iI:bNOnqO_kQY0: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/qBBFhkCT5iI” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Someone from Susan G. Komen for the Cure is lying. And her name is Nancy Brinker.

pimg src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/APR_2_7_12.jpg” //p pVisual source: a href=”http://newseum.org”Newseum/a/p pa href=”http://thehill.com/homenews/news/209033-its-super-pac-v-super-pac”Amie Parnes:/abr //p blockquoteIn a clear signal that the 2012 presidential election is gearing up to be a monumental slug fest, the Obama campaign told big-money donors late Monday evening to begin writing their checks to Priorities USA, a top Democratic “super PAC” and make the president’s reelection effort competitive with its deep-pocketed GOP opponents. pThe president’s blessing of the super PAC comes nine months before Election Day and gives Obama’s top bundlers the opportunity to help jump-start the outside group, which donors had previously avoided./p pObama — who has kept a distance from the outside group which supports his re-election bid — plans to send campaign officials, cabinet officers and senior aides to super PAC events on his behalf. Campaign officials said Obama himself, Vice President Joe Biden and their spouses would not be appearing at the group’s fundraising events/p /blockquote a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/is-the-republican-party-facing-an-enthusiasm-gap/”Huma Khan:/abr / blockquoteAs the caucuses and primaries pick up pace, with Colorado and Minnesota taking center stage today, many are wondering whether the initial enthusiasm surrounding the Republican race is waning, given the remarkably low turnout in the Nevada caucuses, which came and went with little fanfare. In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, turnout surged, compared to four years ago and each state went to a different candidate. pBut that trend appears to be on the decline. In both Florida and Nevada, turnout dropped sharply from 2008. Florida saw nearly 280,000 fewer voters in its primary last week, while more than 11,000 fewer voters turned out to vote in Nevada on Saturday compared to four years ago. Mitt Romney won both states by a landslide./p pSome observers say the declining interest is a reflection of the lack of enthusiasm for the former Massachusetts governor./p /blockquote a href=”http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/02/chrysler-hopeful-ad-vs-gops-disaster-movie/48351/”Elspeth Reeve:/abr / blockquoteChrysler’s campaign to convince Americans how great it was that automaker got bailed out has the side effect of helping the man who did the bailing: President Obama. Republicans’ gloomy message — that the U.S.A. is toast if we don’t stop Obama’s socialist economic policies, like bailouts — only works if the economic news stays gloomy. The president’s campaign is clearly enjoying what is essentially a trailer for the economic recovery in which Republican manly man Clint Eastwood echoes themes Obama has talked about for years. It’s fitting that the ad would air hours before posting of the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, in which Bill Kristol, in a mild panic, writes that Bill Clinton’s slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” has lulled certain presidential candidates into thinking the economy’s the only thing worth talking about. pThe economic disaster movie image the Republican presidential candidates have painted all year (see: Mitt Romney’s photo ops in abandoned factories) was captured in the beginning of a Saturday Night Live sketch from this weekend that imagines Newt Gingrich’s as President of the Moon. In a Star Wars-style intro to the 2014-set scene, we learn: “Obama no longer hides his socialist agenda. The unemployment rate skyrockets and foreign armies gather their forces for an attack. Chaos reigns. But from the darkness, a visionary emerges…”/p /blockquote a href=”http://thehill.com/capital-living/cover-stories/208997-the-evolution-of-sarah-palin-”Kris Kitto:/abr / blockquote[E]ver since she ended her flirtation with a presidential bid last October, signs have pointed to a long, slow descent into the political has-beens basement for Palin. Perhaps the most telling detail is her political action committee’s most recent fundraising numbers. pSarahPAC raised roughly $756,000 in the second half of 2011, down from the consistent seven-figure reporting periods it had before then./p pIt looks as though Palin might be morphing into less a political powerhouse and more a reality-television star./p /blockquote a href=”http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/27576307-47/transportation-bill-federal-funding-transit.html.csp”The Register Guard:/a blockquoteHouse Republican leaders last week took the wraps off a federal transportation bill that should be called the “Drive and Drill Act.” The measure has no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate, but it should be preserved in the Smithsonian as an example of what can happen when partisan politics run amok in an election year — and when oil industry lobbyists get everything they ask for except, perhaps, a derrick on the White House lawn./blockquote pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Ps3t6N4Z-Z5VaIF7VNP8×7BXipg/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Ps3t6N4Z-Z5VaIF7VNP8×7BXipg/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Ps3t6N4Z-Z5VaIF7VNP8×7BXipg/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Ps3t6N4Z-Z5VaIF7VNP8×7BXipg/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=pLp0d3DSYXA:r9ZbkHsWk6E: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/pLp0d3DSYXA” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Evolution of politics, brands and perception

pa href=”http://www.aoltv.com/celebs/sarah-michelle-gellar/1795611/main” target=”_hplink”Sarah Michelle Gellar/a and a href=”http://www.aoltv.com/celebs/ryan-murphy/523975/main” target=”_hplink”Ryan Murphy/a stopped by the Bravo clubhouse Monday night and played Plead the Fifth on “a href=”http://www.aoltv.com/show/watch-what-happens-live/3592417″ target=”_hplink”Watch What Happens Live/a” (Weeknights, 11 p.m. EST on Bravo)./ppHost a href=”http://www.aoltv.com/celebs/andy-cohen/549946/main” target=”_hplink”Andy Cohen/a couldn’t resist asking Gellar about her allegedly ongoing feud with her former “a href=”http://www.aoltv.com/show/all-my-children/184013″ target=”_hplink”All My Children/a” co-star a href=”http://www.aoltv.com/celebs/susan-lucci/1810862/main?flv=1″ target=”_hplink”Susan Lucci/a. When asked to characterize their on-set relationship, Gellar laughed and said “Probably not the most ideal but, you know … better thana href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/lisa-vanderpump-real-housewives-reunion_n_1258441.html?ref=tv” target=”_hplink” the ‘Housewives’ reunion/a!”/ppHoping for some juicy “a href=”http://www.aoltv.com/show/glee/3496658″ target=”_hplink”Glee/a” scoop, Cohen dipped his toe in some other troubled waters and asked about the future of Rachel, Finn, Quinn and Puck. /pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/sarah-michelle-gellar-ryan-murphy-wwhl-video_n_1259257.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/reality-free/”More on Reality-Free/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/CCPuyWBak_AKrwq_sIc2HlT0tZk/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/CCPuyWBak_AKrwq_sIc2HlT0tZk/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/CCPuyWBak_AKrwq_sIc2HlT0tZk/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/CCPuyWBak_AKrwq_sIc2HlT0tZk/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=Gh4NvwUJX3A:eZNNHxh88BI: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=Gh4NvwUJX3A:eZNNHxh88BI:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=Gh4NvwUJX3A:eZNNHxh88BI:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=Gh4NvwUJX3A:eZNNHxh88BI:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=Gh4NvwUJX3A:eZNNHxh88BI:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/Gh4NvwUJX3A” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Sarah Michelle Gellar And Ryan Murphy Play Plead The Fifth On ‘WWHL’ (VIDEO)

pKansas lawmakers have been given six days to consider one of the most sweeping state anti-abortion bills to be introduced./ppA Kansas House committee is scheduled to take up a bill Wednesday that would exempt doctors from malpractice suits if they withheld medical information to prevent an abortion. The measure would also take away tax credits for abortion providers, remove tax deductions for the purchase of abortion-related insurance coverage and require women to hear the fetal heartbeat. The bill includes several provisions, which passed in other states and now face federal lawsuits. The bill would also require women be told about potential breast cancer risks from abortions, even though medical experts discount such a connection./pp”This is the largest and most sweeping overhaul we’ve seen to date,” said Sarah Gillooly, public affairs manager for Planned Parenthood of Kansas, a women’s health care provider that provides abortion services in some clinics./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/kansas-anti-abortion-bill_n_1258185.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/abortion/”More on Abortion/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/XFFNMO029JHwhRvI6R8NsHNmEac/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/XFFNMO029JHwhRvI6R8NsHNmEac/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/XFFNMO029JHwhRvI6R8NsHNmEac/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/XFFNMO029JHwhRvI6R8NsHNmEac/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=V-q-UVwOLgk:6BogdaeNI-w: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=V-q-UVwOLgk:6BogdaeNI-w:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=V-q-UVwOLgk:6BogdaeNI-w:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=V-q-UVwOLgk:6BogdaeNI-w:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=V-q-UVwOLgk:6BogdaeNI-w:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/V-q-UVwOLgk” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Kansas Abortion Bill Would Impose Sweeping Restrictions

div class=”dkimg-r”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/151025/Pink_ribbon.png” alt=”Pink ribbon” height=”407″ width=”275″ //div Unless you were living under a rock this week, you’re probably aware of the clusterfuck the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation created for itself when it a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/31/1060414/-Susan-G-Komen-for-the-Cure-caves-to-anti-choicers,-stops-funding-PlannedParenthood?via=history”decided to stop funding/a Planned Parenthood’s cancer screening and prevention programs. pWhat followed was nothing short of spectacular. The foundation’s leadership seemed completely unprepared for the national outrage at the blatantly obvious politicization of breast cancer and women’s health. Karen Handel, the foundation’s senior vice president of public policy and failed Republican candidate for governor of Georgia (endorsed by Sarah Palin), echoed the a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/02/1061064/-Komen-Foundation-official-deletes-evidence-of-anti-choice-biasfromTwitter?detail=hide”"cry me a river”/a response from fervent anti-choicers on Twitter—a tweet that was deleted, but not before an image was taken and spread far and wide across the Internet./p pKomen founder and CEO Nancy Brinker a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/02/1061140/-Komen-Foundation-in-damage-control-mode-over-its-decision-to-defund-Planned-Parenthood?detail=hide”then took to the airwaves/a to offer a whole new excuse for cutting the funding, insisting that the decision was emnot/em political, and emtsk-tsking/em critics, whom she insisted didn’t know what they were talking about and needed to “pause” and “slow down.” Translation: Stop criticizing us for siding with an anti-woman agenda instead of with women. And keep buying our pink crap!/p pThat did not go over too well either./p pNext, the Komen Foundation released an a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/03/1061413/-Komen-Foundation-apologizes-for-defunding-Planned-Parenthood,-but-isnt-backing-down?detail=hide”apology/a for its decision, which the traditional media (and, sadly, even many alternative media sources, including feminist writers) a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/03/1061413/-Komen-Foundation-apologizes-for-defunding-Planned-Parenthood,-but-isnt-backing-down?detail=hide”inaccurately reported/a as a reversal of the foundation’s new policy. Additional conversations with members of the foundation’s board confirmed that it had emnot/em reversed its policy; rather, the apology was a further attempt to salvage its a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/02/1061265/-Susan-G-Komen-for-the-Cure:-More-brand-destruction?detail=hideamp;via=blog_1″all-but-destroyed brand/a, chastise critics, and make the whole PR disaster go away./p pWhat we’ve learned this week is that even if Komen were to continue funding Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer exams and education programs, it’s most likely too late for the foundation to undo the damage it has done to its reputation and credibility as an organization that cares about women’s health. With its new policy, its anti-choice extremist leadership, and its long history of questionable practices, including a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/komen-foundation-charities-cure_n_793176.html”suing the hell out of smaller charities/a that dare to use the word “cure,” not to mention the number of articles, new and old, exposing how little of the money the foundation raises actually goes toward cancer research, Komen deserves no second chances. Those who care about fighting cancer have promised to send their money elsewhere, and forced to choose between the pink ribbon and Planned Parenthood, Americans—even self-identified “pro-life” Americans—are standing with Planned Parenthood. a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/02/1060949/-You-bet-your-pink-ribbon-I-stand-with-Planned-Parenthood?detail=hideamp;via=blog_604733″I am one of them/a./p pIn this a href=”http://www.dailykos.com/news/this20in20war20women”weekly series/a, we usually document and discuss any number of stories that demonstrate the many fronts of the War on Women, and how extremist activists work with extremist lawmakers to roll back legal protections for women and to further enforce anti-woman ideology that impacts women’s lives and livelihood./p pSo this week, let’s connect the dots to see how a relentless push by activists to destroy the nation’s largest provider of women’s health care led to congressional action, which led to the political decision of a private, supposedly inon/i-political, organization joining in that battle—on the wrong side, emagainst/em women./p pThere’s more below the fold./p pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PxVf3etVptKuRyqcmXEJSMjs_14/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PxVf3etVptKuRyqcmXEJSMjs_14/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PxVf3etVptKuRyqcmXEJSMjs_14/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PxVf3etVptKuRyqcmXEJSMjs_14/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.dailykos.com/~ff/dailykos/index?a=VenC1VoQ_so:v7SNDVd3c5Q: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/VenC1VoQ_so” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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This week in the War on Women: How the pink ribbon catastrophe is all part of the war

pALEXANDRIA, Va. — You may have noticed that some of us at HuffPost DC are a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/31/aaron-denu-potomac-phil-groundhog-day_n_1242335.html?ref=dc” target=”_hplink”crazy/a a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/pit-bull-adoption-funding_n_1236790.html” target=”_hplink”about/a a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/maryland-dc-rats_n_1215951.html” target=”_hplink”animals/a. /ppSo it was no small joy to meet Harold, a friendly black and white cat whose owners take him for walks around Old Town, a place so dog-centric that it has not one but two stores specializing in home-made dog treats./ppHarold’s owners are 26-year-old Sarah Howell, a massage therapist at Old Town’s a href=”http://sugarhousedayspa.com/” target=”_hplink”Sugar House Day Spa/a, and her husband, 31-year-old Jeff Jones. Harold will be two on Feb. 22 — “On George Washington’s Birthday,” notes Jones, who works for the National Park Service./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/harold-the-cat-walks-old-town_n_1234216.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/animals/”More on Animals/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gpd_ac9KcG0XQ0gzLP5SU95khCc/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gpd_ac9KcG0XQ0gzLP5SU95khCc/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gpd_ac9KcG0XQ0gzLP5SU95khCc/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/gpd_ac9KcG0XQ0gzLP5SU95khCc/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=PROg7SUxTEw:69uJXl5zdUg: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=PROg7SUxTEw:69uJXl5zdUg:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=PROg7SUxTEw:69uJXl5zdUg:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=PROg7SUxTEw:69uJXl5zdUg:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=PROg7SUxTEw:69uJXl5zdUg:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/PROg7SUxTEw” height=”1″ width=”1″/

Continued here: 
Meet Harold The Cat, Who Walks Around Old Town Alexandria On A Leash (PHOTOS)

pTAMPA, Fla. — Is Newt Gingrich the Tea Party candidate? /ppThe former House Speaker (R-Ga.) won 45 percent of the vote from Florida voters who “strongly support” the Tea Party, compared to Mitt Romney’s 33 percent and former Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-Pa.) 17 percent, a href=”http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012/florida-primary-jan-31/exit-polls” target=”_hplink”according to Florida primary exit polls/a. /ppFormer Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former presidential candidate Herman Cain rallied to Gingrich’s side over the past week, and the Gingrich campaign boasted they have the backing of 300 Tea Party groups in 36 states across the country, including 47 in Florida./pbra href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/newt-gingrich-tea-party_n_1244564.htmlRead More…/abr a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/tea-party/”More on Tea Party/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/HzGJFftqdEAcK3hVEokr5J-0XXU/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/HzGJFftqdEAcK3hVEokr5J-0XXU/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/HzGJFftqdEAcK3hVEokr5J-0XXU/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/HzGJFftqdEAcK3hVEokr5J-0XXU/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare” a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=BzSD41v7D_c:7mZ160OVwWI: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=BzSD41v7D_c:7mZ160OVwWI:F7zBnMyn0Lo”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=BzSD41v7D_c:7mZ160OVwWI:F7zBnMyn0Lo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?a=BzSD41v7D_c:7mZ160OVwWI:V_sGLiPBpWU”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/huffingtonpost/raw_feed?i=BzSD41v7D_c:7mZ160OVwWI:V_sGLiPBpWU” border=”0″/img/a /divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/huffingtonpost/raw_feed/~4/BzSD41v7D_c” height=”1″ width=”1″/

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Newt Gingrich Not Quite The Life Of The Tea Party