Sigh. Why is it that in the US, the authorities keep handing out immunity and sweetheart deals that neither accept or deny guilt? As it relates to this Swiss investigation, UBS did receive conditional immunity last summer from the US Justice Department. It remains unfair that despite the complete disaster left behind by the big banks, they continue to find life easy compared to everyone else. The SEC and Justice Department are seemingly much too concerned about campaign contributions from the big spenders or job futures to care about tackling the problem. There will always be talk of action in the US about the banking abuses but it's doubtful that will ever translate into actual action. Bloomberg:UBS AG (UBSN) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) are among 12 banks facing a Swiss inquest into possible manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, the latest probe into how the ...

It took courage to join the initial anti-protests and now it takes courage to get out there on the streets during the Russian winter. The Guardian:
Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators are marching through Moscow and other Russian cities in protest at Vladimir Putin's grip on power. Thousands of Putin supporters are also staging a rally in the capital a month before the presidential election that the prime minister is expected to win, putting him in power for six more years. The rival demonstrators were undeterred by the freezing temperatures, which have plunged as low as -20C, with opposition leaders saying that up to 100,000 people had joined the protest in Moscow on Saturday.

Bill Maher unbaptized Mitt Romney's dead father-in-law this week.

He did this because the Mormons have a long track record of baptizing the dead without their consent (i.e., without anything in their will or dying wishes), and even without the consent of their immediate families. For example, the Mormons secretly baptized President Obama's late mother right before the 2008 election, and the President and his family had no idea (John got the scoop on that story). There's a very real chance that you, or a loved one, could become Mormon after you cease to exist.

I credit the unnamed writers who wrote this piece. Do enjoy.



First-class comedy-writing genius, say I.

GP

Ya think? The NewsHouse delves into the points I made yesterday.  Namely, that Komen didn't "fix" all the reasons it said it wasn't going to fund Planned Parenthood breast exams in the future.  And in fact, on Friday night, after Komen had already "apologized" for the brouhaha, Komen again left the door open to shutting down Planned Parenthood grants, according to the NewsHour.

Komen is still playing games.  Which makes sense, since who do they have on their payroll as a media consultant, none of than Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer.  Fleischer and Komen CEO Nancy Brinker go way back in GOP politics, since Komen is a multi-hundred thousand dollar donor to the GOP and a former Bush political appointee.  So it's no wonder that Komen issues an "apology" that seems to be no apology at all.

Note this paragraph buried in their "apology," that I didn't ...

And we're putting our trust in the FBI to keep the country safe? It should make many wonder about the quality of their work, not to mention the amount of leeway they are given to make decisions on about our personal freedoms.
Trading jokes and swapping leads, investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard spent the conference call strategizing about how to bring down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, responsible for a string of embarrassing attacks across the Internet. Unfortunately for the cyber sleuths, the hackers were in on the call too — and now so is the rest of the world. Anonymous published the roughly 15-minute-long recording of the call on the Internet on Friday, gloating in a Twitter message that "the FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now."

Credit Rick Perlstein (via Twitter) for this great find.

In Harper's Magazine, November 2001, the great Barbara Ehrenreich writes (my emphasis and paragraphing):
Today [breast cancer is] the biggest disease on the cultural map, bigger than AIDS, cystic fibrosis, or spinal injury, bigger even than those more prolific killers of women -- heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke. There are roughly hundreds of websites devoted to it, not to mention newsletters, support groups, a whole genre of first-person breast-cancer books; even a glossy, upper-middle-brow, monthly magazine, Mamm.

There are four major national breast-cancer organizations, of which the mightiest, in financial terms, is The Susan G. Komen Foundation, headed by breast-cancer veteran and Bush's nominee for ambassador to Hungary Nancy Brinker. Komen organizes the annual Race for the Cure©, which attracts about a million people -- mostly survivors, friends, and family members. Its website provides a microcosm of the new breast-cancer ...

The tranquility of my Saturday morning was disrupted -- and that's putting it mildly -- when I read on Glenn Reynolds' popular right-wing "Instapundit" blog that we can learn important "Lessons About Iran From Hitler." To know that we have yet another New Hitler in our midst is alarming indeed. Reynolds' link takes one to an even more jarring warning about the Persian menace, by David Goldman, that extensively compares the fallen Nazi leader to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and argues that because both figures are maniacal monsters presiding over a dying nation, only a full-scale military attack can stop them. "However much it costs in Iranian blood and well-being, it’s still worth it," Goldman casually decrees.

Continue Reading...

(updated below)

The Washington Post's David Ignatius yesterday reported that Leon Pantta believes there is "a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June," while the Face of American Meritocracy, NBC News' Luke Russert, today said that "NBC can report Sec of Defense Panetta says there's a greater than 50% chance Israel will attack Iran in the coming months." If that does happen, many Americans will undoubtedly be entirely supportive because they know (at least the ones who read American newspapers and listen to their government officials) that Iran is the Evil-est since Saddam's Iraq:

Wall Street Journal, today:

Continue Reading...

(updated below)

The ACLU yesterday filed a lawsuit against various agencies of the Obama administration -- the Justice and Defense Departments and the CIA -- over their refusal to disclose any information about the assassination of American citizens. In October, the ACLU filed a FOIA request demanding disclosure of the most basic information about the CIA's killing of 3 American citizens in Yemen: Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan, killed by missiles fired by a U.S. drone in September, and Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, killed by another drone attack two weeks later.

Continue Reading...

(updated below - Update II)

One of the most significant foreign policy controversies of the 2008 presidential election centered around Barack Obama's pledge "to meet separately, without precondition" with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. That seemingly off-the-cuff vow in response to a questioner at a July, 2007, Democratic primary debate was used first by Hillary Clinton, and then by John McCain, to depict Obama as naive, irresponsible, radical and -- most ominously -- overly sympathetic to America's enemies (some liberal pundits echoed some of the same criticisms, while Mitt Romney is still trying to exploit that statement for those ends).

Continue Reading...

CBS News' Scott Pelley appears to be one of the very few American journalists bothered by, or even interested in, the fact that President Obama has asserted and exercised the power to target U.S. citizens for execution-by-CIA without a shred of due process and far from any battlefield. It was Pelley who deftly interrogated the GOP presidential candidates at a November debate about the propriety of due-process-free assassinations, prompting Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Michele Bachmann to applaud President Obama for assassinating U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki (just as Rick Perry, Dick and Liz Cheney, and Bill Kristol had done). Last night, Pelley did the same when he interviewed Defense Secretary and former CIA chief Leon Panetta on 60 Minutes. It's well worth watching this three-minute clip because, although Panetta doesn't say much that is new (he simply asserts the standard slogans and unproven assertions that Obama ...

The U.S. is continuing to fly surveillance drone aircraft over Iraq, prompting what The New York Times this morning describes as "outrage" among senior Iraqi officials and the Iraqi public. There are several revealing points from this account, beginning with this description of the ongoing American presence in that country now that "the war is over":

Continue Reading...

Right-wing media are rushing to put a negative spin on newly released jobs numbers showing a drop in the unemployment rate and a net increase in jobs by parroting the discredited claim that government data show that "1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force" last month. In fact, as economic experts have explained, that number reflected an increase in population from 2010 Census figures and is not the result of how many people "dropped out" of the labor force last month.

After The Labor Department Reported January Employment Growth

Labor Department: Employment Rose By 243,000 Jobs In January And Unemployment Dropped To 8.3 Percent. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job growth was widespread in the private ...

Following the controversy surrounding Susan G. Komen for the Cure's initial announcement that it would end its relationship with Planned Parenthood, right-wing media have tried to downplay Planned Parenthood's efforts to fight cancer, claiming that Planned Parenthood doesn't provide mammograms and does "nothing to prevent breast cancer." But this ignores the numerous cancer-related services Planned Parenthood annually provides to women -- including more than 1.5 million cancer screenings and preventative services in 2010 -- such as breast exams, mammogram referrals, and screenings for other types of cancer; moreover, contrary to right-wing claims, some Planned Parenthood clinics do indeed provide mammograms.

"They Don't Even Do Mammograms": Right-Wing Media Downplay Planned Parenthood's Efforts To Fight Cancer

Fox's Sandy Rios: Planned Parenthood Does "Nothing To Prevent Breast Cancer. They Don't Even Do Mammograms." On the February 2 edition of Fox News' America Live, host Megyn Kelly discussed ...

President Obama recently outlined his proposal that would give millions of homeowners a chance to save thousands of dollars annually by refinancing their mortgages at a lower interest rate even if their homes are currently underwater. The right-wing media immediately went on the attack, claiming that Obama's mortgage relief plan is a political stunt being used to "pander" to voters during an election year.

Obama Announces Mortgage Relief Plan To Deal With "Massive" Housing Problem

AP: Obama Proposal Would Create "An Annual Savings Of About $3,000 For The Average Borrower." From a February 1 Associated Press article:

President Barack Obama called on Congress Wednesday to make it easier for millions of additional homeowners to refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates even if they owe more than their homes are worth. He conceded that his administration's housing plans so far have not lived up to their promise ...

Sean Hannity pushed the myth that President Obama has made the economy worse, arguing that you could not "make the case" that it has improved during Obama's watch. In fact, when Obama took office, he inherited an economy that was shrinking faster than it had in 50 years and that had lost 2 million jobs in 3 months; by contrast, the economy is now growing and added 1.9 million private sector jobs last year.

Hannity's Challenge: "How Do You Make The Case" That The Economy Has Improved

Hannity: "You Cannot Make The Case With A Straight Face That This Economy Has Gotten Better Under This President." Discussing the 2012 presidential election, Fox News' Sean Hannity claimed, "You cannot make the case with a straight face that this economy has gotten better under this president. You can't make it anymore." [Fox News, Hannity, 2/1/12]

This ...

After the British tabloid Daily Mail published a flawed article that distorted climate research to claim we could be "heading for a mini ice age," conservative media followed suit. In fact, the study did not project a decline in global temperatures.

Scientists: Solar Fluctuations Won't Offset Global Warming

Met Office: Reduction In Solar Output "Insufficient To Offset" Global Warming. Announcing the new research, the Met Office stated that a reduction in solar output "will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases":

New research has found that solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years but that will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.

Carried out by the Met Office and the University of Reading, the study establishes the most likely changes in the Sun's activity and looks at how this could affect near-surface temperatures ...

Right-wing media have applauded Susan G. Komen for the Cure's decision to stop providing funds to Planned Parenthood. But Komen's decision could affect access to breast cancer screenings and other cancer-related services for thousands of women, as the Komen funds have allowed Planned Parenthood to provide 170,000 breast exams and 6,400 mammogram referrals in the past five years.

Komen Announces It Is Ending Partnership With Planned Parenthood

LA Times: Komen "Said Tuesday That It Was Halting All Partnerships With Planned Parenthood Affiliates." From a February 1 Los Angeles Times article:

In what looks to be a break between two organizations dedicated to women's health, a national breast cancer awareness group said it would stop providing funds to Planned Parenthood centers for breast cancer examinations and other breast health services.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a leader in fundraising for breast cancer research and famous ...

Watch live as the remaining candidates in the GOP primary react to former Governor Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) decisive Nevada caucus win, courtesy of MSNBC: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Former governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) scored his most decisive win to date in the Nevada Republican caucus tonight, winning the race by more than 15 percent and leaving former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) to battle for second place again with former Sen. Rick Santorum...

Today in Manhattan’s Times Square pedestrians became dancers as a “flash mob” convened to honor Don Cornelius, the host of the popular TV show “Soul Train.” Cornelius passed away earlier this week in Los Angeles of an apparent suicide. Participants formed a...

Hundreds of protesters demonstrated Saturday in New York and pacifist groups took to the streets in dozens of other US and Canadian cities in a “Day of Mass Action” against a possible war with Iran. About 500 protesters gathered in Manhattan’s Times Square and marched to the...

Police swept through the Washington offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, arresting eight people in a day-long raid that virtually shut down the tent colony a stone’s throw from the White House. Some scuffles broke out, but stunned members of Occupy DC otherwise put up little resistance as National...

A Los Angeles Times reporter was covering a caucus event in southern Nevada when things suddenly got ugly on Saturday. The Associated Press says that reporter Ashley Powers was booed by a group of elderly Republican voters and accused of being a spy before being asked to leave. Powers was at a...

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Happy Saturday night, folks! It's Blue Gal from The Professional Left Podcast, bringing you this week's podcast round up. Be aware that these podcasts are also available on i-Tunes, and may not be safe for work.

The Kojo Nnamdi Show: An End to Black History Month?

The Tim Corrimal Show: Finger Shaking at Self-Deporting

Citizen Radio: Why you should have already hated the Susan G. Komen foundation.

The Takeaway: Carl Hiaasen on What Florida Means for the Rest of the Race

Open thread (and please, let us know your podcast recommendations!) below....

Title: On Saturday Afternoons In 1963Artist: Rickie Lee Jones

Saturday Nite! Here's a good one about Saturday afternoons.

The Duchess Of Coolsville (US Release) Price: $24.99 (As of 02/04/12 05:12 pm details)

It's called early and surely: Mitt Romney won Nevada.

After four new murders of labor leaders in Columbia in January, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called on U.S. President Barack Obama to delay the implementation of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement indefinitely. The agreement, which was passed last year, was delayed for years because of violence against labor leaders. More than 2900 Colombians involved in the labor movement have been killed in the last 25 years. Colombia is the deadliest country for union members in the world. Killings have continued unabated in 2012:

The letter states that through January, one union member was killed by Colombian troops, a second was shot to death along with his wife, a third worker was “brutally murdered” and a fourth union member employed by the National Industry of Sodas (Coca-Cola) was “murdered by gunfire.”

When the bill passed, it included a Labor Action Plan designed to deal with the violence, but Colombian labor ...

The reaction to January's jobs report shows how tragically our expectations have fallen, especially among some Democrats and their supporters. Their cheerleading isn't just bad policy or bad politics, although it is both of those things. It's also callous and insensitive to the misery of millions.

It's important to keep explaining what needs to be done to end that misery. To do otherwise is to serve, however unintentionally, an insidious agenda from the right that would lower our expectations until these tragic levels of unemployment are seen as the "new normal."

An increase in jobs is a good thing, of course, even if it's far from what's needed. Here's something else that was good about the report: Conservatives keep telling us that manufacturing jobs have moved offshore permanently, but 50,000 of them were created last month. Now we can put that argument ...

National Park Police invaded Occupy DC, McPherson Square in the early hours of Saturday morning with riot police, a dozen horses and a strategic plan to eliminate the encampment.

Then throughout the day, they went section by section with a fully dressed hazardous materials team, cordoning each part of the camp off with heavy wrought iron fencing and inspecting and bagging up protesters' property. Any tent with a semblance of camping materials inside was confiscated along with all belongings inside.

By the late afternoon only a few tents were left standing in the cleared sections. The small number of protesters, which never grew over 200 people, attempted to shout down and fight back police, but they were easily overwhelmed by the large police presence. Most of the time the police matched protesters in numbers.

The clearing of the camp signals a possible end for the rowdy, 128-day-old McPherson camp, which ...

Oh noes, National Review Online editors are feeling a touch put out that they went to all the “trouble” of holding a group fap session righteously congratulating the Susan G. Komen foundation for cutting off grants to Planned Parenthood and then posted the account of it online only for the charity to admit shortly thereafter [...]

Attention, President Obama! Mousy Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch would like to have a word with you in the undersea Holocaust-victim baptizing chamber. Hatch will be doing that thing he always does, that raisin-mouthed, monotonous, mild-mannered smug thing he uses to cloak all manner of backwards beliefs and statements. The decrepit senator from Utah is currently [...]

The Internet is chock full of dumb two-day fads, but there might be some real staying power in the concept of “Tea Party Jesus,” a Tumblr site that combines images of the Loving Jesus with cartoon speech bubbles full of 100% real quotes from leading right-wing Republicans who self-identify as “family values Christians.” You click [...]

Have you heard about the strangest new craze in breast cancer charities, the kind that doesn’t actually want to fight breast cancer? This for a brief period was the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the behemoth breast cancer research charity always running around madly putting pink ribbon stickers on everything from yogurt cups to professional football [...]

Mittens-hating muffin is noooot too psyched about what happened in Florida on Tuesday. HE LOST. GOODBYE. Oh, you’re still here. Instead of accepting that no one south of the very Southern north of Florida likes him at all, Gingrich has suddenly decided that the winner-takes-all ruling on the Florida primary is about as fair as [...]

12) That time Michele Bachmann compared herself to a serial killer. 11) Stress-eating at the mere sight of Chuck Todd’s facial hair. 10) Donald Trump’s very good relationship with “the blacks.” 9) Jon Huntsman speaking Mandarin. 8) “The Original, Famous Ron Paul Survival Kit.” 7) Tim Pawlenty. (He was so benign!) 6) “Life can be [...]

NEW YORK -- Instead of complaining about clean air rules, maybe utilities should cheer them.

Sometimes, the rules lead to big gains.

Read More...
More on Video

WASHINGTON — The United States’ plan to wind down its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected relies on shifting responsibility to Special Operations forces that hunt insurgent leaders and train local troops, according to senior Pentagon officials and military officers. These forces could remain in the country well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014.

Read More...
More on Afghanistan

Going into the 2012 Nevada caucus, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is favored to come out on top of the results. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum are nevertheless looking to make a splash with their respective performances.

(Click here to check out HuffPost's Nevada caucus results map, which will update with real-time data as the numbers come in.)

HuffPost's Ryan Grim and Sam Stein report:

Read More...
More on Newt Gingrich

By OurAmazingPlanet Staff:

Hundreds of species never before seen in a Peruvian national park have been found during an inventory of the Amazonian forests there, according to a conservation group.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today the discovery of 365 species previously undocumented in Bahuaja Sonene National Park in southeastern Peru. More than a dozen researchers inventoried the park's plant life, insects, birds, mammals and reptiles. The species found are known to exist elsewhere, but have never been seen inside Bahuaja Sonene.

Read More...
More on Animals

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A central Florida man is suing Newt Gingrich, claiming a security officer for the Republican presidential candidate stomped on his foot "like he was stomping out a cigarette."

Edward Dillard claims his foot was fractured by the security team after voting Tuesday in the Orlando suburb of Windermere.

Read More...
More on Newt Gingrich

INDIANAPOLIS -- So close to the Super Bowl, yet so far.

Wide receiver Tiquan Underwood has been cut by the Patriots less than 24 hours before the big game – bad news for him, of course, but a move that increases the likelihood Chad Ochocinco will be active against the Giants on Sunday.

Read More...
More on Super Bowl

A little while ago I mentioned that we were thinking about requiring registration for commenters and asked for feedback. Some was positive and some was negative, but most of the negative feedback related to (a) having to use your real name or (b) being required to use a Facebook account.

The whole trolling situation has since gotten pretty far out of hand, so we've decided to go ahead with registration. However, you won't be required to use your real name and you won't be reguired to use a Facebook account.

Note that this only affects you if you have been posting as a "guest"; if you normally sign in with Disqus (which powers our commenting system) or your Mother Jones ID, nothing changes. If you were using the "guest" feature, you can now sign in via Disqus, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID. You can also create ...

Normally, drinking out of human glasses is Not Allowed. But last night I mentioned that I still needed photos for Friday Catblogging, so this morning An Exception Was Made as Marian urged me to get my camera and come record the moment. So I did. The camera captured some excellent tongue action from Domino, who is, I'm sure, obeying the universal law of cat lapping:

That comes to 3.43 laps per second for a an 11-pound (5-kilogram) cat. Inkblot, who has a more mathematical bent, keeps his weight at precisely 18.12572 pounds, thus clocking in at a more leisurely 3.14159 laps per second. And that, my friends, is science.

    

One of the things that's been niggling away at the back of mind lately is the (seemingly) increasing sameness of the blogs I read. More and more, as I plow through them in the morning, they're all filled with posts on the exact same four or five topics. I used to call them the "outrages of the day," though of course they're not all outrages. Some of them are just the ordinary news of the day.

This popped into my mind in a slightly different context today as I made my way through my RSS feeds and found post after post after post about the January jobs report. Some feeds had two or three or even four or five separate posts on the subject. It's gotten crazy.

Back in the day, blogs posted a bit here and there about monthly economic news, and of course specialty ...

Greg Sargent points us to Mitt Romney's latest statement on the economy:

We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery. We can do better. Last week, we learned that the economy grew only 1.7% in 2011, the slowest growth in a non-recession year since the end of World War II. As a result.....blah blah blah.

Alas, poor Mitt. Now he knows what it feels like to be Barack Obama. For the past two years Obama has basically been forced to say that, sure, the economy is bad, but it would have been even worse without his policies in place. That might be true or it might not, but it's sure not a vote getter.

Now Romney's on the other end of that argument. Sure ...

When the Komen Foundation cut off its breast cancer screening grants to Planned Parenthood a few days ago, they said it was because of a new policy that bars grants to organizations under investigation. Then they backtracked, and said that it was actually because Planned Parenthood doesn't perform mammograms itself, but only provides referrals. Today, I guess we're back to excuse #1:

The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation Friday announced it would revise a controversial new policy that barred the organization from funding Planned Parenthood....“Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation,” a Friday statement said. “We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”

Okey dokey. I guess the next ...

With 1.8 seconds to go in Wednesday's Kings-Blue Jackets game, the clock mysteriously stopped for about a second, giving the Kings just enough time to score a last minute goal and win the game. The Blue Jackets are understandably suspicious, but Kings General Manager Dean Lombardi explains it all here:

Those clocks are sophisticated instruments that calculate time by measuring electrical charges called coulombs.

Coulombs! Please go on, Mr. Science:

Given the rapidity and volume of electrons that move through the measuring device the calibrator must adjust at certain points, which was the delay you see. The delay is just recalibrating for the clock moving too quickly during the 10-10ths of a second before the delay. This ensures that the actual playing time during a period is exactly 20 minutes. That is not an opinion. That is science. Amazing device, quite frankly.

It's amazing, all right.

    

TPM's Benjy Sarlin was in full-on Alexis de Tocqueville mode today. Check him out....

Things are picking up in Nevada. Stay with TPM's Livewire for all the latest updates....

Christine O'Donnell's bookselling magic....

Newt announces he won't deliver a post-caucus speech, but will hold a presser instead....

Indiana's Secretary of State has been convicted on multiple vote fraud related felony counts....

Any good news anywhere? Keynesianism is wrong!

Follow the actual policy agenda.

Purify my mind, again.

Some light at the end of the jobs tunnel?

Not dead yet, though feeling not so great.

A few graphs for basic information.

Why Romney's dismissal of the poor is a talking point, not a misstatement. Why Susan G. Komen may not recover. How President Obama is mixing faith and politics, and respecting separation of church and state. With Traci Olsen and the...

The latest Bloggingheads.tv show featuring Matt Lewis and me is up, with discussing how next week's CPAC crowd will respond to the presidential candidates, will Romney run right or run center in the general and why are Ann Coulter, Matt...

Why it's OK President Obama didn't talk about your pet issue during the SOTU. How he found a way to talk about the Bin Laden without wearing a codpiece on an aircraft carrier. And how Newt blew it. With Traci...

The latest Bloggingheads.tv show featuring Matt Lewis and I is up, with us talking GOP debate and Obama's SOTU. Plus, we announce our plans to change the name of the show from "The Week In Blog" to something else, and...

What is the one and only thing Newt is doing right to consolidate the conservative base now, and how it would lead to a '64-style liberal landslide if he became the nominee. You can download the podcast at these links:...

We express our envy of Mitt Romney's enormous wealth and fluidity with the French language, remind Chris Christie where all those new Jersey jobs came from, and have a very easy time choosing between Barack Obama and Ron Paul. You...

Well, all the goodbye posts have been made, so this is really it.

Comments on articles will continue to work for seven days after the articles were posted. After that point, Open Left will become frozen in time.

This is, both ironically and fittingly, an open thread.

March 19, 2009. Gchat:

Stoller: Does Forrest Brown work for you?
Me: ??? who?
Stoller: Someone at PCCC.

New GChat window with my Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Stephanie Taylor:

Me: Do we have someone named Forrest working with us?
Stephanie: Yes! He just volunteered to do a research project about how various congressional campaigns spent their money in 2008. He's researching Grayson first.
Me: ah!

I relayed the news to Stoller, who had recently left OpenLeft to work for Rep. Alan Grayson -- letting him know that this guy poking around asking probing questions was legit.

Subequent Gchat conversation with Forrest:

Me: how'd you join the PCCC list?
Forrest: i think i read a post by Bowers about it
Me: he wrote some nice stuff 
Forrest: i read almost everything on openleft

Forrest (who makes a cameo at the front of this recent PCCC video) was a 17 year ...

Thanks for being part of this community, and thank you for letting me develop my voice and ideas in concert with your voice and your ideas.  In 2007, Chris, Mike, and I started OpenLeft based on the idea that there was a new ideologically left-wing yet open set of actors on stage.  I still think this is true, and perhaps, there's some of that going on right now in the uprisings in the Middle East.  Though it's in fashion, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Egypt, except to note that Facebook will totally set everyone free.  Thanks, Zuck!

The signs of a world undergoing profound change are everywhere.  Wikileaks is a genuine social innovation, a new form of collaborative media that scales what Daniel Ellsberg did.  The political blogosphere, and then the financial blogs, have sketched an open counter-elite that can truly challenge ...

This has been a wonderful community to be a very small part of. When Matt and Chris said they were leaving MyDD, I knew I would be following them to wherever they were going. I thought they were full of wild and crazy ideas, but ones that could be implemented.

They knew that principles mattered because they set the course of events.  Principles told you when you were veering off course.  

My identifier on this site was this quote from a Matt Stoller piece during the 2008 election cycle

"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"

I have been doing politics in different ways at different levels for many years. From being one of the founders of the first women's "liberation" group in Boston, to marching in the streets against war and for equality, to helping ...

Please see the end for my thanks yous and where to find me after today. I have opted to close with an attempt to describe the field of play -D

Shortly after Kerry's loss in 2004, at MyDD, Chris wrote "Conservatism is our enemy" which I think is the first time I ever encountered a direct ideological assault on conservatism itself.  Along with Phil Agre's rightly famous essay on the subject, it began me on a road and mission to better understanding this beast.  Everything I have learned to date from then continues to bolster Chris' original thesis.  Conservativism is still the primary enemy of progress, justice, fairness and widespread happiness for humanity.  It remains a destructive and corrosive force on the institutions of democracy and the single biggest obstacle to world peace.

If I have had a broad meta thesis here at Open Left, it is that ...

How about, "See you around"?  I don't know where, exactly, though I do have some good ideas.  More on that at the end.

While that may suffice for us individually, though, it certainly can't for us as a community. And that's what I will miss most of all about Open Left.  Of course I'm grateful to Chris, Matt & Mike for creating this place, and then giving me the opportunity to write here.  But I've always craved online writing because of the immediacy of hearing what people think of what you've written, because there is so much to be learned.  It's axiomatic, really, that the group mind is orders of magnitude smarter than the individual mind, so the smartest thing the individual mind can do is find the best way to benefit from the group mind.

It's not just about intelligence, of course.  It's also about wisdom, compassion, humor, patience, forgiveness, forbearance, resilience... and on, and ...

The U.S. military has dismissed a murder charge against Army Specialist Michael Wagnon, the remaining member of the 5th Stryker Brigade charged with pre-meditated murder in the 2010 "Thrill Kill" spree of killings and corpse mutilation of unarmed Afghan civilians.

The dismissal of the case against Wagnon, 31, brought to an abrupt end the Army's prosecution of the most egregious atrocities that U.S. military personnel have been convicted of committing during a decade of war in Afghanistan.

Five members of the infantry unit formerly known as the 5th Stryker Brigade were charged with killing Afghan civilians in cold blood in random attacks staged to look like legitimate combat engagements. Seven other GIs were charged with lesser offenses in a case that began as an investigation into rampant hashish abuse within the unit.

[More..]

Some of the soldiers were also charged with mutilation of the corpses -- they removed ...

Part 2 on the flip.

Open Thread.

Total TD Passes – Eli Manning Under 2½ (-190)

Longest Completion – Eli Manning Over 45½ (-125)

Player to score the first TD in the game? Aaron Hernandez (NE) TE 7/1

First Pass will be – Eli Manning ((NYG) Incomplete +145

Will Brandon Jacobs (NYG) score a TD in the game? Yes +180

Total Completions - Eli Manning ((NYG) Under 24½ (-105)

Total Passing Attempts – Eli Manning Under 39½ (-105)

Total Passing Yards – Eli Manning ((NYG) Under 315½ (EVEN)

Total Passing Yards – Tom Brady (NE) Over 320½ (-125)

Will Tom Brady throw a 1st Quarter TD Pass? Yes +140

Total Passing Attempts - Tom Brady (NE) Over 39½ (-115)

Total Receiving Yards on First Reception – Aaron Hernandez (NE) Over 8½ (-115)

Total Receptions – Victor Cruz (NYG)Over 6 (-125)

Longest Rush - Brandon Jacobs (NYG) Over 10½ (-105)

Total Rushing Yards – Ahmad Bradshaw (NYG)Over 62½ (-115)

Total ...

Megaupload's Kim DotCom may be in jail, but he's not giving up. The New Zealand Herald reports he has filed papers in the New Zealand High Court seeking the return of his seized funds and assets.

Papers have been filed with the High Court at Auckland which claim freezing orders used to seize his fortune have gone too far and money should be returned.

There are also more details of the commando-style arrest raid which according to past statements of New Zealand police, involved 76 officers.

Detective Inspector Grant Wormald [Organised & Financial Crime Agency} would not reveal why police carried out the surprise assault. However, he confirmed the Special Tactics Group - the most highly trained armed officers in the force - were involved. [More...]

The Herald was taken for a tour of the mansion, and has photos, including the panic room, the weapons vault, a wall the police busted ...

Looks like Newt Gingrich fizzled in Nevada and Mitt Romney will win the state's Republican caucusesby double digits.

Here's the makeup of voters: 4 of 5 are Conservative, 3 out of 4 said they were tea partiers, and 1 of 4 are Mormons.

Where's Romney today? In Colorado Springs, campaigning for Coloradans' votes in the caucuses which will be held Tuesday.

Yes, it's still snowing here.

In other news, Lance Armstrong dodged a bullet. The U.S. Attorneys Office in Los Angeles announced the doping investigation is finally done, and no more charges will be brought.

The U.S. Army made it official today that Bradley Manning will face a full courts-martial. the announcement, which I haven't found, came from Maj Gen Michael S. Linnington of the Military District of Washington.

An inmate in Vermont is going to be in hot water for making decals for police patrol cars that had a picture of pig in it. (It's one of the spots on the cow.)

As BTD noted, Komen restores funding to Planned Parenthood.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

There are a ton of them and I'm on them. Here's part 1 of my Super Bowl props:

From first note starts until she completes saying "Brave". All wagers have action, if she restarts for any reason, wager will start from restart. How long will it take Kelly Clarkson to sing the National Anthem? Under 1 minute 34 Seconds

What will Kelly Clarkson wear to sing the National Anthem? Anything else [besides NFL gear] -300

Will Madonna wear an NFL Jersey or shirt at any point during the Super Bowl Halftime show? Yes +250

Will Madonna be wearing fishnet stockings at any point during the Super Bowl Halftime show? No -110

Will Madonna wear a hat at any point during the Super Bowl Halftime show? Yes -140

From kick off until final whistle. Half-time does not count towards wager. Book manager's decision is final. How many times ...

I’m still kind of chuckling that as my father was lying, possibly dying, in a hospital emergency room, his primary focus was not seeing his firstborn son one last time, but making sure his dogs were walked, put to bed, and doted on. It really is crazy how much we love our animals. I’ve always [...]

In the wake of the Komen debacle and back-pedal, Kathleen Parker is talking about “conscience” and Ross Douthat is talking about “media bias”. I’ll put it plainly: that’s how people talk when they’ve just lost a political battle. The Chunky one cites some poll numbers about how many Americans identify as pro-life, but that’s neither [...]

Medicare and scientific research, two things Republicans want to cut to give Donald Trump another tax break or corporations another handout, are right this very moment saving my father’s life. There is a reason we fund these things. Anyone who wants to argue with me about the validity and necessity of funding both of these [...]

Fox News contributor Charles Payne proves that just when you think Fox News has gone as low as they can go, they find a hidden basement and tumble ass-over-elbow downstairs: Fox News contributor Charles Payne defended Mitt Romney’s lack of concern for the poor by saying, “To supposedly alleviate the very poor, and Mitt was [...]

I have a sneaking suspicion that I am about to shortly begin a strict low-fat, low-salt, heart healthy diet and exercise regimen, so I am making tacos tonight. Devon visited dad, and reports that he was complaining about visible dust in the vents (“It’s just disgusting, why doesn’t someone clean it?”), so it looks like [...]

I’ve read about a million things the past few days about how it’s so sad that the Komen dust-up means that nowadays liberals will give to one charity and conservatives to another. Can’t everyone on both sides agree that breast cancer is bad and get together to fight it blah blah blah? Fuck that. Don’t [...]

Saturday Night At The Movies

Pre-game movie marathon

By Dennis Hartley

This being Super Bowl weekend and all, I figured this would be as good a time as any to trot out my Top 10 Favorite Sports Films (and some alternatives). As per usual, my list is arranged alphabetically, not in ranking order. So, ladies and gentlemen-start your DVDs!

Bend It Like Beckham – Director/co-writer Gurinder Chadha whips up a cross-cultural masala that mixes the time-tested “cheering the underdog” sports film formula with Bollywood-style flourishes. Her story centers around a headstrong young woman (Parminder Nagra) who is upsetting her traditional Sikh parents by pursuing her “silly” dream to follow in the footsteps of her idol, David Beckham and become an English soccer star. Chadha also weaves in a subtle subtext on the difficulties that South Asian immigrants face assimilating into British culture. Great support is on hand from Juliet Stevenson ...

Mitt Romney is an egomaniac
by digby
I don't know that I've ever seen a campaign this thin skinned, in quite this way, before:

A GOP operative who won plaudits for bolstering Mitt Romney’s recent debate performances is not being retained by the front-runner’s campaign, an apparent victim of internal tensions over staff receiving too much credit for the candidate’s comeback, POLITICO has learned.

Brett O’Donnell, a former top aide to Michele Bachmann, has been paid for his work assisting Romney in the crucial Florida debates but was not offered a formal role with the campaign as he expected, according to Republican sources familiar with the situation.

After O’Donnell was identified last week as advising Romney and then highlighted in subsequent news accounts as being one of the reasons behind the former Massachusetts governor’s improved debate performances, Romney campaign officials grew uneasy ...

Saturday fun with Bach and Beethoven

David Atkins

Classical music fans who haven't seen this yet should get a kick out of it:



This one is the famous Allegretto from Beethoven's 7th (played a little fast for my taste, but it's still gorgeous.) There are many like it, allowing the viewer to follow along all the complexities happening above and below the melody line. Watching these videos is a great way to introduce a loved one to the beautiful complexities of classical music in an accessible way, even if they can't read a note of actual music.

Even experienced fans of these works will likely notice nuances they never paid attention to before while watching the notes play out in real time.

Here's one of my personal and less trite favorites, Bach's extroardinary Passacaglia in C Minor (listen and watch for the endlessly repeatedly ...

The dark underbelly
by digby
It's always there:

It’s easy to interpret the verbal bile of recent American politics as a new height in prejudiced and conspiracist thinking: a new hate. In the last few years, Sarah Palin has created the concept of Obama’s “death panels,” Glenn Beck has argued that George Soros was a collaborator with the Nazis during WWII — even though Soros is Jewish — and Donald Trump staked his presidential campaign on the idea that our president, black as he is and Muslim as his name seems to be, had not sufficiently proven his rights to citizenship in our country. More recently, Newt has taken to calling Obama the “food stamp president,” a title that is as racially charged as it is inaccurate.

But Arthur Goldwag, author of the new book “The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right,” argues ...

QOTD: Krugman
by digby



"We are already in new great depression"



It's a short interview, well worth watching.

.

The Conscience of an Institution

by digby

So last night Mark Shields and David Brooks clucked and sobbed and rended their garments over the Obama administration's decision to require most Catholic institutions to offer health care coverage that includes birth control. According to them, this is going to cost the Democrats the election as Catholics around the country will now vote for the Republicans --- even though 98% of Catholic women have used birth control and 70% use the highly effective methods of sterilization, the pill and the IUD. Evidently, it's some sort of hypocritical pride thing (or it's just something made up in the heads of some male elites who are invested in the idea of the "Catholic vote" being contingent on birth control for some reason.)

Here's Mark Shields, very confused and depressed about the whole thing:

MARK SHIELDS: I honestly don't know. I ...

The Wall Street Journal carried a plaintive piece about how the poor far right wing oil billionaires David and Charles Koch (who bring you everything from science denial, to the Keystone XL pipeline– which is not as dead as you might like it to be– to secret funding of most of the “Tea Party”) are [...]

Where’s the smoke from my fire around here? Where’s the profit on my investment around here? As for the guy who called me a bar fly, now really, where’s the bar around here? trans. Juan Cole from Whinfield 13

Friday saw another day of big protests and police repression in Egypt’s major cities. The protesters, who want the military to withdraw from politics and go back to the barracks, were galvanized by the soccer tragedy at Port Said on Wednesday, where some 74 persons were crushed in a stampede after local ultras (soccer hoodlums) [...]

If you are looking for love, try to attract every heart. On the path of the Presence, try to entice every seeker. A hundred holy shrines made of water and clay are not worth a single heart. Why make pilgrimage to a shrine when you can attract a heart? Trans. Juan Cole From Whinfield 18 [...]

It has leaked that US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen. Martin Dempsey warned the Israelis that if they launched a strike on Iran that spiralled into a war, they would be on their own. Gareth Porter’s report, based on conversations with former officers in the administration of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [...]

Barin Kayaoğlu writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: AKP and “Back to the Future” Turkish-Style BARIN KAYAOĞLU [For the Turkish version of this post, click here.] The NGO Reporters Without Borders has demoted Turkey by 10 places in its World Press Freedom Index rankings for 2011-2012. The report’s statement that “the judicial system [...]

Written by Will Neville for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post. Cross-posted with permission from Amplify Your Voice. See all our coverage of the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s break with Planned Parenthood here. Earlier today, the Susan G. Komen Foundation issued a [...]

Related Stories

Susan G. Komen: Can You Trust a Breast Cancer Organization Whose Staff and Board Members Lie About Breast Cancer?The Cancerous Politics and Ideology of the Susan G. Komen FoundationRepublicans Try to Convert America into Pottersville

One of the most heartening moments of solidarity in the Tar Sands Action movement took place last summer: A contingent of Appalachian coalfield residents, whose homes are literally under siege from daily blasting and stripmining fallout, took their place at a White House sit-in and went to jail in an appeal to President Obama to [...]

Low level marijuana arrests in New York City rose for the seventh straight year in 2011 to 50,680. The arrest total is the highest total on record since former pot smoker Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office and it is the second highest total of pot arrests ever recorded in the history of the city (just [...]

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Do The Math: The ‘War’ On Pot Is Largely A War Upon Young PeopleMarijuana Arrests Driving America’s ‘Drug War,’ Latest FBI Report Shows2011: The Year In Review – NORML’s Top 10 Events That Shaped Marijuana Policy

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post. Can you trust a breast cancer organization whose staff and board lie about medical science, including breast cancer? Today, amidst the outcry surrounding the decision by the Susan G. Komen [...]

Related Stories

In Bad Faith: New Study Further Underscores Lack of Truth in Anti-Choice ClaimsThe Sound of Silence: Where Is the Anti-Choice Outcry Over North Carolina’s Forced Sterilization of Women of Color?An Apology, But Not A Reversal, From the Susan G. Komen Foundation

From the high plains of Wyoming to the urban centers of Atlanta, Chicago and New York City, hundreds of schools launched a historic teach-in movement today to incorporate lesson plans from the banished Mexican American Studies program in Tucson in their own classrooms. Organized by the Teacher Activist Groups and joined by Rethinking Schools and other [...]

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post. This week it became clear there are things more important to the Susan G. Komen Foundation–the fundraising giant that each year during breast cancer awareness month virtually [...]

Related Stories

An Apology, But Not A Reversal, From the Susan G. Komen FoundationSusan G. Komen: Can You Trust a Breast Cancer Organization Whose Staff and Board Members Lie About Breast Cancer?For Latinas, The IOM Recommendations on Women’s Health Represent a Big Win

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, 2011-05-19, Issue 530

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73422

cc TheStirrer‘How can you speak of human rights and the dignity of peoples when you perpetually violate them and block those who don’t share your ideology and must endure your abuses?’, asks 1980 Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel in an open letter to US President Barack Obama.

Dear Barack,

In addressing you I do so fraternally, and at the same time, to express my concern and indignation after seeing the destruction and death caused in several nations in the name of ‘freedom and democracy’, two words which have been twisted and stripped of meaning. They end up justifying murder, and is cheered on as if it were a sports event.

Indignation at the attitude of some parts of the US population, of heads of state in Europe and other countries who came out in ...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106652 

Analysis by Gareth Porter*


The leak by Panetta (above) appears to confirm fears that efforts to distance the U.S. from an Israeli attack are undermined by competing interests. 

Credit:U.S. Navy

WASHINGTON, Feb 4, 2012 (IPS) - When Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius this week that he believes Israel was likely to attack Iran between April and June, it was ostensibly yet another expression of alarm at the Israeli government's threats of military action.

But even though the administration is undoubtedly concerned about that Israeli threat, the Panetta leak had a different objective. The White House was taking advantage of the current crisis atmosphere over that Israeli threat and even seeking to make it more urgent in order to put pressure on Iran to make diplomatic concessions to the United States and its allies on ...

read more

Well almost standing together.  The Worcester Telegram and Gazette reported that Occupy Wall Streeters in Worcester "mostly occupied the north end of the small Federal Plaza Park and Tea Partiers mostly the south" on Friday Feb. 3, Nationwide NDAA 2012 Congressional Protest Day, which has now been expanded to the first Friday and Saturday of every month at local congressional offices across the country (main Facebook here.) They gathered to protest the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 which strips US citizens of their right to a jury trial in cases in which the government asserts that they are suspected of "support" for "forces" which are "associated" with Al Qaeda.  

read more

https://www.facebook.com/events/302074323174775/?context=create

We will gather together on Freedom Plaza in DC tonight 8:30 p.m. and leave at 9:15 pm to walk to Luther Place Church at 14th and Vermont NW.

These excerpts from the Arab League observers' report on Syria make it clear that there is widespread violence on both sides, but that the opposition and the Western media have exaggerated the violence and casualties inflicted by government forces.  The UN has stopped accepting casualty figures claimed by the opposition, and has frozen its "official" estimate of civilian deaths at 5,400, without acknowledging that this may already be highly exaggerated.  This is not yet a bloodbath on the scale of Libya, where even the new government admits that at least 25,000 people died in the NATO-led war.  Syria could follow the Libya model though, if NATO and the GCC keep providing weapons and military training to the Free Syrian Army and are prepared to beef it up with special forces on the ground, and as long as the UN approves a no-fly zone to provide cover for another ...

Around 7 a.m. on Friday, a woman in Laura Farmer Sherman’s office started screaming.

“Oh my God,” Farmer Sherman heard from the next office over. “They’ve changed their mind.”

Farmer Sherman is the executive director of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure San Diego. And she knew immediately what the screaming was about: The national Komen Foundation’s new policy that would bar funding Planned Parenthood had been reversed. That would be the policy that San Diego and the six other California Komen affiliates came out in opposition to just 12 hours earlier.

Farmer Sherman did not believe the news. She had gotten up that morning with “no idea what to expect.” “When I got up and put on my suit, it was like putting on armor and war paint,” she told me Friday afternoon. “It’s a little scary when you come out in ...

A new study finds that countries with more income inequality tend to have more people who believe that they are better than average — a psychological phenomenon known as “self-enhancement.” The study, published in Psychological Science, hypothesizes that societies with high levels of inequality are more likely to encourage competition over scarce rewards, and outsized perceptions of the self is simply an outgrowth of that environment.

Income inequality may foster greater self-enhancement through increased competition. Takata (2003) found that when Japanese participants were asked to compete over a limited resource under zero-sum conditions (i.e., the winner receives everything, the loser nothing), they displayed levels of self-enhancement similar to the levels displayed by Americans. That is, when people compete over concentrated rewards, they have a tendency to self-enhance ... In societies with more income equality, people may not only have more equal incomes, but they may also feel a pressure to seem ...

—A note to readers: Full-text RSS has returned to Wonkblog. Huzzah!

—Meet the man who has a 102 percent effective tax rate.

—Animal poaching is on the rise, so zoos are tightening security.

—Wanted: a singer who can sing a note so low that it may have never been sung before.

—Potato-chip cookies: they’re real, and here’s a recipe.

Charlotte Allen says it’s misleading:

One way Planned Parenthood massages the numbers to make its abortion business look trivial is to unbundle its services for purposes of counting. Those 10.1 million different medical procedures in the last fiscal year, for instance, were administered to only 3 million clients. An abortion is invariably preceded by a pregnancy test — a separate service in Planned Parenthood’s reckoning — and is almost always followed at the organization’s clinics by a “going home” packet of contraceptives, which counts as another separate service. Throw in a pelvic exam and a lab test for STDs — you get the picture. In terms of absolute numbers of clients, one in three visited Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test, and of those, a little under one in three had a Planned Parenthood abortion.

I’ve asked Planned Parenthood if they have any disagreement with Allen’s analysis ...

I’ve been meaning to write a longer post disagreeing with some of Matt Yglesias’s calls for a total “regime change” in how we think about monetary policy, but he’s right about this: The incipient strength in the economy strengthens the case for a surprise round of QE3, just as it does for extending the payroll tax cut and the expanded unemployment insurance benefits. This is the time for our fiscal and monetary authorities to show that they’re fully committed to making sure the recovery continues.

There are two reasons for that: One is that it will help the recovery, both by supporting it directly and by persuading businesses that a continued recovery is likely, and they should start investing and hiring in preparation for it.

The second reason is that it’s cheaper to support a recovery then fight another downturn, and so even if your ...

It will be years until we know how the Komen/Planned Parenthood fight really ended. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has apologized, and promised to allow Planned Parenthood to apply for grants in the future, but they haven’t said whether they will fund them.

That’s really what matters here, and it’s entirely possible that, two years from now, when the cameras are off, almost every Planned Parenthood grant request will be denied. Which gets to one of the weirder wrinkles in this debate: The argument, made by Komen, that mammography counts as a cancer prevention service, but clinical breast exams don’t. If Komen sticks to that position, it could be a reason for them to refuse future grant applications from Planned Parenthood. But it would be a strange reason, given that Komen’s Web site currently recommends clinical breast exams for all women over 20.

Originally ...

Commentary By Ron Beasley How Europe Has Evolved From A Democracy To A Bankocracy And Why Austerity Will Lead To Chaos Via Zerohedge

By Steve Hynd As expected by many, Russia and China have refused to back even a watered-down UNSC resolution on Syria, the only two of 15 member states on the council to vote against the resolution. Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said after the vote that the United States was “disgusted” by the Russian and...

Commentary By Ron Beasley Yes, the George W. Bush people are still screwing up everything they touch.

By Steve Hynd The aftermath is never as full of rose petals and candy as neo-whatever advocates of the intervention told us it would be. (Tripoli) - A Libyan diplomat who served as ambassador to France died less than 24 hours after he was detained by a Tripoli-based militia from the town of Zintan, Human Rights Watch said today. Dr....

By Steve Hynd I've a longish post up at The Agonist today in the light of the current "shill-swarm" calling for (or promising) kinetic action against Iran. I think it's worth examining our basic assumptions again. Does Iran want a nuke in the first place, is there the political backing for a strike to prevent it doing so, how easy...

By John Ballard This is old news because it happened in December, but I'm posting it in case anybody forgot. I'm amazed the video is only listed as having been viewed a few thousand times. It illustrates the larger point about religious extremism. One might think that being Mormon would sensitize someone to the quagmire of ugliness that bubbles up...

With the closing of the final votes in the Nevada caucuses at 7 p.m. Pacific, NBC News has called Mitt Romney the winner by a significant margin. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are battling for second place and Rick Santorum is bringing up the rear. TalkingPointsMemo has the current results.

The House of Representatives will take up a Senate-passed bill to curb insider trading by members of Congress next week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said said Friday. The bill has bipartisan support in both houses. Cantor said the House would "get a bill to the president's desk as quickly as possible so that there is no misunderstanding on the part of the people that send us here that they can have trust in this institution and the members."

Bonnie Ware, an Australian nurse who provides palliative care for dying patients, has recorded their most common regrets. One of the top ones is "I wish I hadn't worked so hard." What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?

Mexico's drug cartels have diversified beyond their traditional business peddling cocaine, heroin and marijuana with methamphetamine "super labs," MSNBC reports. Methamphetamine prices are falling and the purity level of seizures is rising, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency. Meth lab seizures have increased from 22 in 2006 to 206 last year. "All of these drug trafficking groups, they are not in the business of drugs, they are in the business of making money," said DEA Special Agent Gary Boggs. "So regardless of what the drug is, if there is a market for it they are going to try ways of making money out of it."

Despite having three degrees -- a B.A. in political science from Penn State, an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and a J.D. from Dickinson School of Law -- Rick Santorum told a Florida audience last week that colleges indoctrinate students for the left and he discouraged them from donating to higher education. "I'll bet you there are people in this room who give money to colleges and universities who are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology," he said. "And you continue to give to these colleges and universities. Let me have a suggestion: Stop it."

Martin Klingst: Lately it seems that not a day goes by without a Republican presidential candidate portraying Europe as a socialist nightmare. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum paint a picture of the Old World as unfree, strangulated by bureaucratic and inefficient welfare systems, and unable to reform and modernize. To these Republicans, Europe seems to be the antipode to everything America is meant to be. ... But when Romney, Gingrich and Santorum warn about "socialist Europe," they sound as though they are talking about the Soviet empire, which vanished long ago.

Gene Lyons catches Willard Romney giving a great example of the level to which today's Republican Party has sunk in Obama's "post-partisan" strategy Salon 02/01/2012:

Mitt Romney has this passage in his stump speech where he all but accuses the president of being a communist.

"President Obama," Romney insists, "believes that government should create equal outcomes. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government."

This when the multimillionaire Wall Street investment banker isn't accusing hecklers of envying his wealth — rarely a successful political tactic, in my experience.This is one reason I have a hard time thinking of "moderate" and "conservative" wings in today ...

With all the triumphalist symbolism around the Second World War that is common in US culture, and with all the attention the Holocaust receives as a moral cautionary tale, it's striking how little the once-common truism that economic depression create political instability and provide a breeding grounds for anti-democracy mass movements like Mussolini's and Hitler's gets these days.

Because what's going on in Europe, we're seeing a live reminder. Yet the general awareness of it in the US is even worse than "it can't happen here." (It can, of course.) It's also, "It can't happen in Europe", too. Yet Hungary has just morphed its government into an authoritarian form. And the euro crisis has disturbing political dimensions, too.

Ed Harrison of Credit Writedowns gives a good summary of what's going on with the euro crisis, which is part of the larger ...

This is encouraging news. The Obama Administration is announcing that the US combat role in Afghanistan will be ending in 2013, earlier than previously projected. It's not a complete withdrawal. And, of course, the decision can be reversed. But this is still real progress, and a result in significant part of public opposition to the war and the peace movement, to which the Occupy movement also contributed in an important way.

This is a report from Alyona Minkovski of The Alyona Show, MSM: US Wars go Off the Record YouTube date 02/02/2012:



David Cloud's report, U.S. and allies plan to give Afghanistan forces lead role in 2013 Los Angeles Times 02/01/2012, suggests that pressure from NATO allies also played a significant role:

By announcing a specific timetable, U.S. officials are hoping to head off a push by allies to pull out their ...

One challenging aspect of politics is that sometimes you find yourself agreeing with a particular position taken by someone is really really coming at the issue from a whole different angle. Progressives have found themselves having moments like that in connection with the Ron "Papa Doc" Paul Presidential campaign.

I encounter that in the current crisis of the euro and the European Union. In general, I've thought the EU has mostly played a very constructive role until these last couple of years. I had very much hoped that the EU "project", as it's often called, would continue to move forward toward a more united Europe.

The politics of the EU generally had the parties of the left and centers and many conservatives supporting it. Even Basque regionalist groups in Spain tended to think that the EU offered them advantages. In the EU member countries, major business interests tended ...

The conventional wisdom, in this case one with some firm base in reality, is that Willard "Mitt" Romney will win the Republican nomination for the Presidency.

The general election will almost certainly be a tough, competitive one. This is the first Presidential election in the "Citizen's United" era. That disgraceful Supreme Court decision vastly increases the means for the wealthy to buy control of the political process, even as democratic forms are maintained. Not that Republicans are sticking with strict democratic forms. The various voter-suppression laws and tactics that have become standard operating procedure for the Republicans will also be widespread. The Southern segregation system was heavily based on voter-suppression tactics. This stuff is straight out of the segregationist playbook. The segregated South maintained democratic forms, as well, though the substance was very different.

Charlie Pierce reminds us how much Newt Gingrich has influenced the Republican Part of today ...

News is quickly emerging about how negative a reaction Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel provoked with her proposal to appoint a financial dictator to run Greece. Die Welt reports (Merkel macht kehrt im Griechenland-Fiasko 30.01.2012) of Angie's proposal for putting Greece under a Gauleiter: "Das Land hätte damit endgültig seine Unabhängigkeit verloren – und vor allem: nicht de facto, sondern für alle erkennbar." ("The country {Greece} would have then finally lost its independence - and above all, not de facto, but obvious to everyone.") The accurate implication of that, of course, is that the current bankers' collection-agent government in Greece isn't really a democratic national government. But at least it maintains the formal conventions of an independent national government. Angie wanted to take even that away.

As I've said before, Angie seems to have been very impressed with Dick Cheney's foreign policy.

Martin Schulz: President of ...

If there’s ever been one surefire topic to get Fox News’ panties in a twist over, it’s abortion. No excuse to whine about it is too trivial. So when the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s Planned Parenthood flap became a major story, I figured it was only a matter of time before the True Christians of the House of Murdoch began pouring in their support. After all… what’s the lives of a few women with cancer in light of stopping the evils of free choice? Komen has since then reversed its stance. But one thing is certain: It was not for lack of an effort to promote its defunding decision by Gretchen Carlson and Peter Johnson, Jr.

In the pre-reversal segment,  titled “Is Komen Playing Politics With People’s Lives?” Carlson opened disingenuously by saying that Komen is accused of caving to political pressure ...

No, you're not having visual hallucinations. Bryan Fisher, of the "family values" hate group, the American Family Association, actually said this about Roger Ailes. In an article about the success of Fox News, the radical homophobic, Islamophobic, theocracy supporting, and all around bigot Fischer said that Ailes' leadership is "exactly the style that Jesus taught." Fischer claims that Ailes is the embodiment of Mark 10:45 in that, like "the son of man," Ailes "did not come to be served but to serve." I guess my understanding of Jesus, despite my 12 years of Catholic school, is limited. I wouldn't think that Jesus would approve of the kind of partisan lies, personal attacks, and race baiting that are a specialty of Ailes' Fox News. Right Wing Watch also points out that some of Ailes' own past history doesn't exactly seem very Christ like. Go figure! Dave Briggs ...

Perhaps the biggest bogus meme of the Christian right is that their religious freedom is under attack by forces of evil, secular "political correctness." As their mouthpiece, Fox News is doing all they can to aid and abet. Earlier this week, uber Christian warrior Gretchen Carlson presented the sixth in a string of Fox & Friends attacks on Vanderbilt which focused on what is seen as an "assault on religious liberty by - you guessed it - "political correctness." The policy was put in place after a gay student was ousted from a Christian group's leadership because he was gay. So far, that hasn't been mentioned on Fox & Friends who, today, had their sixth installment in their Vanderbilt hates Christians series during which a Christian Republican student got to whine about the policy. However, unlike anything done by Gretchen Carlson, atheists weren't mentioned.

Alysin Camerota framed the message with a ...

Newt Gingrich visited the Hannity show last night where he predictably spewed venom against President Obama. But Gingrich outdid himself when he repeatedly suggested that Obama is a traitor who “appeases” our enemies - such as Iran and the Taliban - and double-crosses our allies and troops.

Both Hannity and Gingrich have been lusting for war against Iran for years – though neither has ever suited up in a military uniform. But each not only seems downright eager for a new war, they’re ready to smear anyone less eager – especially if that person is a Democrat in the White House.

Hannity cited Leon Panetta’s recently-stated concern that Israel may attack Iran – almost certainly knowing that Gingrich would launch his own chickenhawk attack on Obama.

“It tells you a lot about what’s wrong with this administration. Instead of worrying about the Iranians getting a nuclear weapon, they’re worried about our ...

Donald Trump revived his birther talk last night – egged on by Sean Hannity. On a Hannity show that was supposedly a forum for each of the Republican presidential candidates, Trump got the first half hour - while each of the participating candidates got just a few minutes in the second half of the show. It was as if even Hannity was acknowledging his lack of enthusiasm for the roster. And he made up for that with racially-tinged smears.

Leave it to white-rights enthusiast Hannity to nudge Trump into racial innuendo. Hannity gushed, “I think the most perceptive thing you ever said, and were willing to step out on a limb about, is when I last interviewed you and you said, ‘America does not know this man.’ The person that is presenting himself as this nice guy, if they knew the real Obama, what would America think?”

Trump took the cue and ...

Your World joined the Fox News Trumpeters yesterday as it breathlessly discussed Donald Trump’s endorsement of Mitt Romney and pretended this was the big news that Trump pretended it was. Neil Cavuto interviewed Trump yesterday and called the endorsement, “a stunning, surprise announcement.” Cavuto asked, “Why Mitt Romney?”

Trump answered, “Miit has really stepped up more than anybody else.”

Cavuto asked, “Have you ruled out then a presidential run for yourself?”

”Certainly, if Mitt gets the nomination and he runs, I wouldn’t be running,” Trump said. But, “If for some reason something happens, then it’s open season after the show (Celebrity Apprentice) is finished… We had an amazing day today. There was amazing turnout, and I represent millions of people that are tired of seeing this country ripped off.”

Really, Donald? How do you “represent” those people? By shooting your mouth off in front of every camera ...