Joe the Plumber won the GOP nod for the House yesterday in a newly drawn district in Ohio as did Marcy Kaptur who beat Dennis Kucinich. Their campaign will be fun to watch.
Despite the ball and chain Republicans/conservatives have around our legs and arms as they try to drag us back into the good ol’ days of the 18th century, progressives (as in moving ahead, progressing — hello!) have prevailed in Maryland:
Maryland Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
Maryland became the eighth state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage on Thursday, just as opponents [conservatives] were ramping up efforts to repeal the new law at the ballot box.
At a ceremony in the state capitol building attended by a cheering crowd of gay-marriage supporters, Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law the measure he has hailed as a sign of “equal respect for the freedom of all.”
Equal respect for the freedom of all? What?
Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York and the District of Columbia currently allow gay and lesbian nuptials.
Washington will join the list in June unless opponents [conservatives] stop it ahead of a possible ballot initiative, and Maryland will be added in January 2013 unless its law, too, is overturned by a threatened referendum in November [orchestrated by conservatives].
The issue of fracking is super-hot here in Colorado along the Eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Communities all around the area have instituted moratoriums on fracking or they are considering banning it altogether (here, here and here). People are concerned about things like the potential for groundwater contamination and even earthquakes.
Bearing that in mind, the people of Colorado learned recently that our governor, John Hickenlooper (D)
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
just cut a commercial for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. That’s right, our governor is now an official spokesman for the oil and gas industry.
Hi. This is Governor John Hickenlooper. In 2008 Colorado passed tough oil and gas rules. Since then we have not had one instance of groundwater contamination associated with drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and we plan to keep it that way. That’s why Colorado recently passed the toughest, and fairest, hydraulic fracturing disclosure rules in the nation. In Colorado, we’ve proven that industry and the conservation community can come together to solve problems. We can create jobs, promote energy security and protect our environment.
Then a woman’s voice cuts in and says:
Brought to you by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.
Not only has an elected official become a spokesman for an industry, he lies doing it. Per the Denver Post: “Oil and gas companies have reported 343 new spills this year, bringing the total since August 2009 to more than 1,000 spills, state data show.”
So, the bottom line here is that the oil and gas industry has been officially welcomed into the Colorado Governor’s Mansion, and a man charged with representing We the People represents it. And he’s Democrat! With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans, huh?
We thought Citizens United — declaring corporations “people” and giving them the ability to contribute unlimited amounts of money to campaigns — was bad. This is even worse. This isn’t about Hickenlooper taking money from the oil and gas industry, it’s about him becoming their spokesman!
This is an amazing headline when you recall that Bill Clinton was in the White House in 2000 and now, of course, there’s another Democrat in the White House. But wait! Democrats are supposed to be bad for business, right?
This is what the Republicans want for our country:
Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won’t respond, then watches it burn. That’s exactly what happened to a local family tonight.
A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.
The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning.
Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.
The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.
[...]
It was only when a neighbor’s field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded.
Meanwhile, on the same planet: This happened today in my “liberal” community:
Photo: Via Daily Camera
Longmont firefighters on Thursday afternoon pulled a dog out of the Oligarchy Ditch near 21st Avenue and Main Street after a passerby noticed the dog in the water.
“It seemed like he couldn’t get out,” said James Sheriff. “It looked like he kept falling over into the water. He almost fell totally under a couple of times.”
Sheriff said that about 1:30 p.m., he was walking back to his job at BC Services on 21st Avenue after eating lunch at Burger King, when he noticed the dog.
[...]
“It looked like he was too tired to get out,” Sheriff said. “He was shivering like crazy.”
Shannon Owen, vet tech at The Animal Hospital, said that the dog is OK and was returned to its owner.
A group of 32 senators from both parties unveiled a new Senate resolution Thursday that would establish the sense of the Congress that containing a nuclear Iran is not an option.
The resolution, which will be formally introduced later today, “strongly supports U.S. policy to prevent the Iranian government from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and rejects any policy that would rely on efforts to ‘contain’ a nuclear weapons capable Iran,” and “urges the president to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and oppose any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Lieberman emphasized that he doesn’t want to foreclose diplomatic options, but said that if Obama decided to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, he would have strong bipartisan support in Congress.
I hear the Israeli lobby and the military industrial complex speaking through these Senators. Never mind what the American people want. Just yesterday CNN released a poll showing that 82% of Americans think diplomacy or “no action” is the way to go:
Americans Favor Diplomacy Against Iran
CNN/ORC International poll released Wednesday indicates that only 17% of the public wants the U.S. to use force, with 60% saying diplomatic or economic action against Iran is the right response, and 22% saying no action should be taken at this time.
Debbie Stabenow’s taken her biggest lead yet in 4 polls of the Michigan Senate race PPP has conducted dating back to December of 2010. She now leads Pete Hoekstra by 14 points, 51-37, and has an even wider 17 point advantage over Clark Durant at 50-33. In 3 previous polls Stabenow led Hoekstra by an average of just 7 points and on the most recent one, in July, her lead was 9.
What’s interesting is that Stabenow’s approval numbers have barely budged at all over the last 6 months.
Hoekstra appears to have been damaged by his controversial Super Bowl ad. 54% of voters in the state were familiar with it, and within that group 45% said it made them less likely to vote for him compared to only 16% who considered it a positive and 37% who said it didn’t make a difference to them either way. Independents said they were turned off by it and he’s gone from leading with them by 6 points in July to now trailing by 4 points.
This would be our Tweet of the Day, which pretty much sums up what Republicans are saying today about President Obama’s decision to take super PAC money:
I’m glad to see at least some Democrats making noise about the Komen Foundation’s hit job on Planned Parenthood. Maybe they learned something after having gone along with Republicans, like spineless sheep, in destroying ACORN.
Raising the stakes, the letter explicitly raises the possibility of “thousands” of women losing access to “potentially life-saving screenings because of a politically motivated attack.”
The pressure on the Susan G. Komen For The Cure Foundation to reverse its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings for poor people — a decision which has caused an uproar among women’s groups and on social media — is about to get significantly more intense. Nearly two dozen Senators are set to enter the fray.
I’m told that some 22 Dem Senators have signed on to a very toughly worded letter urging Komen to reverse its decision, which Komen has justified by citing a new rule prohibiting it from funding any group under investigation by the government. (This has conferred legitimacy and signficance [sic] on the probe into Planned Parenthood that has been launched by anti-abortion GOP Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida.)
This is horrifying. Welcome to police state USA folks:
In a stunning break with First Amendment policy on Capitol Hill, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice. Republicans also denied the entrance of a credentialed ABC News news team that was attempting to film the event.
Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary “Gasland” was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing.
[...]
“Gasland” received strong critical acclaim and takes a critical eye toward the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a process in which several tons of highly pressurized water and chemicals are injected into the ground, allowing valuable natural gas to escape.
[...]
Fox had hoped to film Wednesday’s hearing for a follow-up to “Gasland.”
Fox did not have formal Capitol Hill credentials, but such formalities are rarely enforced against high-profile journalists. … The right to a free press is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Documentary crews are almost never denied access to public meetings of elected government officials.
A separate ABC News crew, which did have official Capitol Hill credentials, was also denied access to the publichearing.
Republicans to all journalists and to America: Fuck the First Amendment. I mean seriously. This was a public hearing being held in the United States Capitol, a building owned by We the People, and the hearing was being conducted by people who We the People elected and who work for us! What the hell is going on around here?
If this isn’t a form of terrorism I don’t know what is.
Remember George W? Remember those eight years during which the righties told us it verged on treason to show anything but undying reverence and respect for the office of the president?
Below is a graph reflecting the state of job growth/loss in the State of Wisconsin last year (2011). For the first half of the year, former Democratic Governor Jim Doyle’s budget was in effect. Beginning in July, Republican Governor Scott Walker’s budget kicked in. “[S]ince the Walker budget passed in June, Wisconsin has lost more than 35,000 jobs.”
Last week, when Mitt Romney announced he would release his 2010 tax return and a “summary” of his 2011 tax return on January 24 (as in today), I read a tweet (for the life of me, I wish I could remember who it was from) saying something like: Romney wants to upstage Obama’s State of the Union address.
For a second I thought, yeah, he does. Then I realized that no, the media will chew on the State of the Union address on Tuesday night and Wednesday (and Thursday and Friday), not so much during the day today.
So, again, I wish I could remember who sent that tweet. In retrospect, I think it might have been from a Romney supporter; a Romney supporter who was drinking his or her own Kool-Aid.
Because as it turns out, nothing could be more perfect for President Obama than to have had those returns released today — that 13%-something income tax rate fresh in the mind of those of us who pay at least twice as much.
We were surprised and disappointed by the laconic press release that Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn sent out Monday announcing that he “will not attend today’s State of the Union Address” because “Congressman Lamborn does not support the policies of Barack Obama.”
We hadn’t noticed that the Colorado Springs Republican was particularly supportive of the president’s policies in 2009, 2010 or 2011, either, yet that didn’t stop him from attending those State of the Union speeches. What would propel him into a one-man boycott this time?
After all, if every Republican who “does not support the policies of Barack Obama” decided to stay home, the chamber would end up half empty and the address would amount to a partisan Democratic rally. Surely basic professional courtesy, not policy consensus, induces most Republicans to pencil in attendance, whatever their personal opinion of the comander in chief.
The same of course holds true when a Republican resides in the White House. President George W. Bush was reviled by many Democrats, yet by and large they were willing every January to accord him the formal respect that Americans expect from the opposition on such occasions.
Note that Mr. Lamborn was awarded an A+ by the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity because, like a marionette, he votes exactly the way the richest brothers in the world tell him to. Maybe by boycotting the State of the Union, he’s hoping for an A++, and who knows how many more thousands in campaign contributions.
On January 20, the New York Times Magazine published an interview with the retiring Senator Barney Frank (D-MA) titled: The Not So Retiring Barney Frank.
This quintessential Barney Frank quote is my favorite part:
Interviewer: You’ve long argued for the decriminalization of marijuana. Do you smoke weed?
Barney Frank: No.
Interviewer: Why not?
Barney Frank: Why do you ask a question, then act surprised when I give an answer? Do you think I lie to people?
Interviewer: I thought you might explain why you support decriminalizing it but don’t smoke it.
Barney Frank: Do you think I’ve ever had an abortion?
Go get ‘em Barney!
Oh, and memo to the “interviewer:” Really? REALLY?
Democrats needed to collect 540,208 signatures to trigger a gubernatorial recall election against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R). On Tuesday, they announced they had far exceeded that number, collecting more than one million signatures.
Tuesday was the deadline for recall organizers, led by the group United Wisconsin, to turn in their petitions. The number collected is 185 percent of the signatures required to force a recall election. Organizers also collected enough to trigger a recalls of the lieutenant governor and four Republican state senators.
[...]
While Democrats were announcing the results of their efforts in Wisconsin, Walker was on the East Coast. He has a New York City fundraiser scheduled that costs at least $2,500 per person to attend.
Here’s more on that fundraiser Walker attended today:
Tuesday’s Walker fundraiser, first reported by the New York Daily News, is hosted by no less than Hank Greenberg, the former CEO of American International Group, the global insurance corporation that needed $150 billion in bailout funds in 2008 and 2009 from the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve.
Here’s a copy of the invitation:
And this is how Fox is portraying the whole thing — from a Walker-as-victim perspective, of course:
Walker is owned by the Koch Brothers (and now, apparently, by I-love-Socialism-as-long-as-it-means-bailouts-for-the-rich-Maurice Greenberg (as in the above)) so this is going to be a vicious battle between the 1%ers who pay to put stooges in office who will do their bidding, and the rest of us.
Bear this in mind as you listen to the Republicans screaming about the recess appointments President Obama made today (here):
Overall, Obama has been significantly less aggressive in recess appointments than his predecessors — to date, he’s made just 29 such appointments, compared with 171 for George W. Bush and 139 for Bill Clinton.
The outrage is an act. The Republicans think we’re so dumb we’ll fall for it and of course, the “liberal media” doesn’t fill in the blanks with the simple facts above, so we do.
Here’s yet another act on President Obama’s part that (don’t forget, he’s a “Constitutional lawyer”) is making me think twice about how I’ll vote in November:
Despite having once threatened to veto the bill due to controversial language about the treatment of suspected terrorists, the president signed the controversial National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law on Saturday. Barack Obama did not keep his lingering concerns about aspects of the bill law a secret, however. In justifying his decision to sign NDAA into law, Obama said in a statement, “I have signed the Act chiefly because it authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, crucial services for service members and their families, and vital national security programs that must be renewed.” He continued, “The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”
Obama: If you have “serious reservations” about a bill, you veto it. Period.
And bear in mind — nut cases could become president who could abuse this new law to no end.
More on how you and I might land in indefinite detention as a result of this bill here and here.
Oh, and talk about Friday afternoon DC “document dumps.” This is even worse. It’s Saturday and it’s New Year’s Eve. The White House is clearly worried about this yet hey, they think we’re idiots and we won’t notice.
Earlier this month, the Maine-based grocery chain Hannaford issued a ground beef recall after at least 14 people were infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain of salmonella. Chances are this is the first you’ve heard of it. After all, it’s not much compared to the 76 illnesses and one death back in August that led Cargill to recall almost 36 million pounds of ground turkey products potentially contaminated with drug-resistant salmonella. The particulars get confusing, but the trend is unmistakable: our meat supply is frequently contaminated with bacteria that can’t readily be treated by antibiotics.
[...]
It’s not like this is happening without a reason; the little germs have plenty of practice fighting the drugs designed to kill them in the industrially raised animals to which antibiotics are routinely fed. And although it’s economical for producers to drug animals prophylactically[1], there are many strong arguments against the use of those drugs, including their declining efficacy in humans.
Probably you’d agree with the couple of people I described this situation to earlier this week, one of whom said something like, “Ugh, that’s crazy,” and the other simply, “They gotta do something about that!”
The thing is, “they” did. In 1977.
That’s when the Food and Drug Administration, aware of the health risks of administering antibiotics to healthy farm animals, proposed to withdraw its prior approval of putting penicillin and tetracycline in animal feed. Per their procedure, the F.D.A. then issued two “notices of opportunity for a hearing,” which were put on hold by Congress until further research could be conducted. On hold is exactly where the F.D.A.’s requests have been since your dad had sideburns.
Until last week, when the agency decided to withdraw them.
That would be the change-we-can-believe-in Obama administration’s FDA, bowing to corporate pressure. It’s disgusting.
Read more gory details here. I’m a meat eater but what’s going on behind the scenes in the American meat industry is horrifying. It’s enough to make me think about becoming a vegetarian.
Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska will announce today that he is retiring after two terms, a serious blow to Democratic efforts to hold onto their majority in the chamber next November.
Nelson is scheduled to hold a press conference back home in Nebraska as early as today to make his decision official, said several Democratic insiders close to the leadership.
The 70-year-old Nelson was considered one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents this cycle. GOP-affiliated outside groups have already dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into TV ads bashing Nelson, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent over $1 million on their own ad blitz to bolster his image.
Nelson is a Democrat in name only. It’s a symptom of what’s wrong with the DSCC that they plowed $1 million into “their own ad blitz to bolster his image.” They wouldn’t have to “bolster his image” if he acted like a real Democrat. The DSCC should find a real Democrat to run for his seat, instead of paying to retain someone who is essentially a Republican.
House Speaker John Boehner announced Thursday that he had agreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a two-month extension of a package including a payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits.
Boehner said in statement he and Reid “reached an agreement that will ensure taxes do not increase for working families on January 1 while ensuring that a complex new reporting burden is not unintentionally imposed on small business job creators.”
He said the Senate “will join the House in immediately appointing conferees, with instructions to reach agreement in the weeks ahead on a full-year payroll tax extension. We will ask the House and Senate to approve this agreement by unanimous consent before Christmas.”
[...]
This news of the accord came after two of Boehner’s GOP members called on him to allow the two-month extension to proceed.
This is a horrific story and it occurred under George W. Bush’s watch. You know, when the American flag was ubiquitous and politicians were criticized for not wearing a flag pin on their lapel. When we were continuously reminded how much conservatives respected the troops (as opposed to liberals who allegedly didn’t).
Yeah, that’s right. That’s when this sickening thing happened:
“The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill, far more than the military had acknowledged, before halting the secretive practice three years ago, records show.
“The landfill dumping was concealed from families who had authorized the military to dispose of the remains in a dignified and respectful manner, Air Force officials said. There are no plans, they said, to alert those families now.
[...]
The landfill disposals were never formally authorized under military policies or regulations. They also were not disclosed to senior Pentagon officials who conducted a high-level review of cremation policies at the Dover mortuary in 2008, records show.
[...]
“This week, after The Post pressed for information contained in the Dover mortuary’s electronic database, the Air Force produced a tally based on those records. It showed that 976 fragments from 274 military personnel were cremated, incinerated and taken to the landfill between 2004 and 2008.”
