Screw the Judaean People’s Front. Splitters.
If Mitt Romney runs the country like he ran Bain Capital, the IRS would rake in trillions from clever tax gimmicks*, government officials would make eight figures for a three-day work week and the unemployment rate would be forty percent.
(*) Plus selling off our pensions, which is to say Social Security and Medicare. Thanks to Moses for the tip.
Kentucky’s primaries are today and the big story is here in my home district of KY-4, where GOP Rep. Geoff Davis is retiring. Sen. Rand Paul has stepped into the race, backing the Tea Party nutjob du jour around here, Thomas Massie, in the last several weeks. The entrance of Paul’s influence into the race all but assures Massie will win in a landslide out of the pack of seven Republicans running. Joe Sonka:
Either Thomas Massie now wins the race easily, or he loses and shows that support for the rEVOLution among the Kentucky GOP is starting to vanish. We’re betting on the former.Here’s the question I’m more intrigued by: Did Master McConnell give Paul permission to make this ad (granting an exemption due to Old Man Bunning calling out Rand Paul as a failure), or is he going rogue? And if he’s going rogue, will McConnell retaliate, and how? And will there be woodchippers involved?
Bill Adkins, the Democratic favorite in his head-to-head primary versus Greg Frank, has raised…about $14,000. It’s a shame too, because Bill Adkins is that rarest of breeds: A Kentucky Democrat who isn’t running screaming from President Obama.
Bill Adkins, one of two Democrats running in the 4th Congressional District, said he believes government-payer health care system can best tackle the inefficiencies and problems and that’s the way to preserve Medicare.“Single payer is my preference. I think that the compromise that is the buy-the-insurance mandate is an incremental move,” Adkins said (7:00).
He also said he would consider one of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul’s proposals — to decrease the level of benefits for seniors with the highest incomes, known as means testing.
Adkins, a Williamstown lawyer and the Grant County Democratic Party Chairman, said he decided to get into the 4th District race because he said he wanted to make sure there was a full discussion of the issues.
“We needed a Democratic presence in this race,” he said.
Not completely giving up on Adkins either. He’s definitely one of the folks we need in Congress.
I got a couple of interesting emails in the last couple of days.
First, Jerry sent me this gem:
Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words.
And, for those of you who want to get into the details of why West Virginia was buying $22,500 routers to bring Internet service to rural libraries with two PCs, Brian sends this deeper dive into the issue. It turns out that West Virginia has paid almost $1.2 million for maintenance on routers that have been in boxes for two years.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Here’s Cory Booker on the Maddow Show for those who missed it. Rachel’s intro is actually better than the Booker interview, especially the part where she lists the off-message gaffes made by Romney endorsers.
I don’t think Booker did himself any favors. First, I don’t know who he thinks will be inspired by the “independent Democrat” label that he’s given himself, since the Democratic base sees that as code for “I’ll shit on any Democrat if it helps me” and most everyone else sees it as a weak inability to pick a side. I also don’t see it as an excuse here, because he chose to be Obama’s surrogate, and if he was too “independent” to stick to the talking points, maybe he should have just stayed off of MTP.
His attempt to turn his criticism of the Obama campaign into a more general criticism of negative campaigning is also pretty weak. It’s pretty obvious that this never works—it just leads to reporters to ask you if you’re engaging in “negative campaigning” the next time you criticize someone, because there’s nothing the DC media loves more than a Democrat fighting with one hand tied behind his back.
If you’re a politician from the New York metro area, you need to be palatable to Wall Street without appearing to be a total money whore sellout. Booker didn’t get the job done, and it’s not that hard a job to do. One way to do it is to say that being part of Bain doesn’t make you a job creator without saying that private equity is bad (Obama showed how that’s done)
Another way to handle it is to point out that Romney is talking about Bain because he can’t talk about his real political experience as Governor of Massachusetts. Even Chris Wallace gets this, in a Fox News Sunday question that might be in the news if Booker hadn’t pooped himself:
Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts for four years, Congressman Ryan. And during that time, Massachusetts ranked 47th of the 50 states in job creation. The only reason the unemployment rate went down [was] because so many people left the work force—more than any other state in the country except Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Is that a record to be proud of?”
Romney’s success in Massachusetts, Romneycare, is another thing he’s running away from. Both of those topics would have been a nice pivot to get Booker out of talking about his private equity contributors. Instead, here he his, trying to unfuck what shouldn’t have been fucked in the first place.
(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
From the Boston Globe’s Political Intelligence blog:
Embracing perhaps the most polarizing figure in the Bush administration, Mitt Romney will hold a fund-raiser at the Jackson Hole, Wyo. home of former Vice President Dick Cheney this summer.The Romney campaign confirmed Monday that it sent a save-the-date e-mail to supporters advertising the “memorable event” in a “beautiful summer destination” on July 12…
Romney has praised what he characterizes as the business-friendly climate of the Bush years. Republican National Committee spokeswoman Alexandra Franceschi said last month that the GOP’s 2012 economic platform would be virtually identical to Bush’s, “just updated.”
And Romney has expressed a favorable view of Cheney, in particular, saying the former vice president possesses the qualities he will look for in a running mate.
“Whether you agree or disagree with him, this is a man of wisdom and judgment, and he could have been president of the United States,” Romney said of Cheney at a campaign event in September. “That’s the kind of person I’d like to have—a person of wisdom and judgment.”
A person of wisdom and judgement. With bait like that, I’ve gotta assume our friends in Homeland Security are just hoping to honeytrap another handful of wishful anarchists for a special media-friendly extra-patriotic Independence Day “bust”. Darth Cheney and the RomneyTerminator, together at last… that’s a scarier scenario than any of the big-budget Hollywood releases scheduled for this summer.
The collected works of George Tierney, Jr., from Greenville, SC:
I blame google for making him say that shit. Also, too, why do the vowels change in “relavant” and “irrelevant?”
BTW- Sue me you misogynist, semi-literate douchebag. For the crime of repeating what you said. Would love to see that go to court.
*** Update ***
In gambling terminology, what Mr. George Tierney, Jr, from Greenville, SC, is doing is what is known as “I’VE HAD A HANDLE OF OLD GRANDDAD, SO DOUBLE DOWN AND DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE THE KEYS TO MY PICK-EM-UP TRUCK WITH THE CONFEDERATE FLAG ARE?” going all in:
Everyone who thinks racism will die when the McCain blue hair crowd dies out needs to remember there is a new breed right behind them.
I honestly keep hoping this is a spoof account and George Tierney, Jr., from Greenville, SC, is just a hoax and not an actual human being.
Kay can not make it this year, so DougJ and Mistermix will be the Balloon Juice reps at Netroots Nation this year. I’ve instructed them they need to wear Tunch t-shirts at any Balloon Juice meet-ups (and if any of you are going, you need to, as well!), and I also think they need to have substantive reviews of the panels they attend, complete with pictures and maybe, GASP, live blogging that people can follow with the NRN live feed.
Having said that, the website ads will be paying for their registration and gas (thank the pig picture you all are bitching about), but we need to raise a little scratch ($1300.00) to pay for hotels. If you are so inclined, please hit the paypal link up above to the left. I’d also like to get a roll call of readers who will be going, and if enough of you are interested maybe we can splurge and rent a room and cater an official Balloon Juice official meet-up. Otherwise, I predict it will just be DougJ coordinating “WE WILL BE AT BAR X at THIS TIME. COME!”
And no, I will not be in attendance. I am still an agoraphobic misanthrope who loves you all at a distance who would rather shower in prison than go subject myself to a conference full of thousands of people when I could just stay at home and love on my dogs and prune and water plants and maybe, just maybe, see one or two people a day walk by my house. But points for me loving you, right?
Basically, I’ve realized I’m the uni-bomber, but I adore technology and I only drop F-bombs. And I fucking love my dogs and my very secluded life.
But if you are so inclined and have some spare cash, help send our correspondents to NRN. This is kind of an important one, what with the election and all that.
Thanks in advance!
Sometimes our political discourse is so god damned stupid it just pains me some days to browse websites (since I have basically quit watching cable news except for a brief Maddow or Larry O’Donnell show), and this past two days has been one of those time periods. I simply have no idea what Booker is thinking, although since he is clearly paid in full, he’s just doing what he needs to service his paymasters. I don’t know if he is done politically, but I do know if he ever runs for anything nationally, he’ll not see one god damned penny from me. He’s proven he can’t be trusted.
But what bothers me the most is how the media idiots have all attached themselves to Booker’s POV. Look, if Team Obama were focusing on Romney’s Mormonism or other stuff, I could understand it. But this is where we are with Bain. Romney has spent the last couple years running away from his only record of governance and his horrid job creation record as Governor as well as Romneycare, and has focused entirely on his record as a “job creator.” He talks about it over and over and over again:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign misses few opportunities to promote his record creating jobs, including his role in taking Staples Inc. (SPLS) from a start-up to the world’s largest office-supply retailer.“You’d have a president who has spent his life in business—small business, big business—and who knows something about how jobs are created and how we compete around the world,” he said at a campaign stop last month at Buddy Brew Coffee in Tampa, Florida.
You’d think, if someone is running on their record as a job creator at Bain, the opposition would be allowed to discuss that, right? But, no. This is Idiot America
Mitt Romney- I’m a job creator and I should be President for my record of creating jobs at Bain.Obama 2012 campaign- O…k…, then… Let’s look at that record of yours at Bain and all the jobs you “created.”
Cory Booker, our media whores, and assorted useful idiots (I’m now officially tired of waiting for Mataconis to pull his head out of his ass. He could be anal raped by Reince Priebus at the GOP convention, and the whole time he’d be biting a pillow whimpering “BOTH SIDES DO IT. BOTH SIDES DO IT.” Moron.)- NAUSEATING DISTRACTIONS. DIRTY POLITICS. SAME OLD SAME OLD. POLITICS AS USUAL.
It’s really insane. Romney wants to run on his record, but WE’RE NOT ALLOWED TO FUCKING TALK ABOUT IT, or David Broder’s maggot infested corpse will have a sad.
We’re really the stupidest country ever, and it’s just depressing watching David Gregory and the rest of the hacks blow wet kisses at Republicans as they drive us off a cliff.
I’m not so interested in that “Girls” show that John wrote about a few weeks ago. I don’t like tv verité, other than “The Wire” (personality goes a long way). I’d rather watch a beautifully back-lit, coiffed, coutured Christina Hendricks and Jon Hamm sip cocktails over Sinatra, the way Jah intended. If I wanted real life, I’d leave my house. But I was struck by this:
The actresses playing these true-to-life Gen Y losers are unusually privileged in real life. Ms. Williams is the daughter of the NBC anchor Brian Williams; Ms. Mamet’s father is the playwright David Mamet; Ms. Kirke’s father plays drums in the rock band Bad Company;
It’s bad enough that Official Discourse revolves around the fee-fees of the rich and famous, now we unwind by watching their loser kids whine about their fee-fees. I’m sure William Saletan and Sully are ready to convince us that being the offspring of cue-card readers/mediocre rock-drumbers/shtick-heavy winger playwrights makes you a member of the deserving cognitive elite.
No one could have predicted:
A ThinkProgress examination of New Jersey campaign finance records for Booker’s first run for Mayor — back in 2002 — suggests a possible reason for his unease with attacks on Bain Capital and venture capital. They were among his earliest and most generous backers.Contributions to his 2002 campaign from venture capitalists, investors, and big Wall Street bankers brought him more than $115,000 for his 2002 campaign. Among those contributing to his campaign were John Connaughton ($2,000), Steve Pagliuca ($2,200), Jonathan Lavine ($1,000) — all of Bain Capital. While the forms are not totally clear, it appears the campaign raised less than $800,000 total, making this a significant percentage.
He and his slate also jointly raised funds for the “Booker Team for Newark” joint committee. They received more than $450,000 for the 2002 campaign from the sector — including a pair of $15,400 contributions from Bain Capital Managing Directors Joshua Bekenstein and Mark Nunnelly. It appears that for the initial campaign and runoff, the slate raised less than $4 million — again making this a sizable chunk.
Money well spent by Bain, it seems.
(Ben Sargent via GoComics.com)
Steve Kornacki at Salon reminds us about Cory Booker’s political history:
It’s easy to forget, but before the world met Barack Obama in 2004, many believed that the first black president would be Booker. Armed with Stanford, Yale and Oxford degrees and all of the invaluable personal connections he forged at those institutions, he set out in the mid-1990s to craft a uniquely appealing political biography, swearing off lucrative job offers to move to Newark’s Central Ward and take up residence in public housing. Within a few years, he won a seat on the City Council, where he showed an early and consistent knack for self-generated publicity, most notably with a ten-day hunger strike in the summer of 1999.That set the stage for Booker’s 2002 race for mayor, an ugly contest against incumbent Sharpe James, an entrenched icon of the city’s civil rights generation of black politicians. James, as any self-respecting Newark mayor would do, leveraged his clout for campaign contributions from city workers, vendors and those who aspired to be city workers and vendors.
Booker, meanwhile, had hardly lost touch with his old classmates, keeping one foot in Newark and the other in Manhattan, where he built on the connections to elite donors that he already had. He called the millions of dollars he raised for the race “love money.” The press – and James’ campaign – took note that almost all of it was from outside Newark, nearly half of it was from outside New Jersey, and a quarter of it came directly from Wall Street.
This helped bolster James’ claim that Booker, who grew up in an affluent suburb, was not an authentic Newarker. That attack resonated just enough to save James, who won in a squeaker. It was a pyrrhic victory, though: Booker had captured national interest – there was a Time profile during the campaign, and an Academy Award-nominated documentary followed – and immediately started campaigning for the next race, while a federal investigation soon swallowed up James. In 2006, Booker was elected with ease, while James was on his way to jail.
Since then, the only question in New Jersey has been when – and not if – Booker will seek to run for statewide office. In 2009, the beleaguered Jon Corzine begged him to run for lieutenant governor on his ticket, an offer that Booker wisely refused. He’s often touted as a potential gubernatorial candidate for 2013, but those who know him say his eye is more on the Senate seat now held by 88-year-old Frank Lautenberg, which will be up in 2014….
Dave Weigel at Slate makes a contrarian argument about the ‘distration’:
The Romney campaign is spending all day “messaging” Cory Booker’s Meet the Press comments, raising the stakes with a profoundly dramatic video ad that’s intended to further the “Booker SLAMS Obama” story. Did you know that former congressman and frequent Morning Joe guest Harold Ford is a “key Obama supporter,” and not just a has-been now working for Merrill Lynch?It’s nice, hot gruel for political reporters/readers, but… isn’t it also a distraction? Ideally, yes, the Obama campaign would be talking about Bain Capital with no strong response from the Romney camapign. But would the media cover the re-heated, microwaved Bain stories the same way? No—you need some sort of fight to make them worth covering. And here we are, talking about Bain, instead of talking about the economy, or Israel, or one of the things the Romney campaign enjoys discussing.
Besides shiny distractions, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Why did Cory Booker come out against criticizing Bain? Because he’s a corporatist whore. Why did the Times go all in on taking Booker’s side? Because they’re errand boys, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
Once people took up arms for the right to live like humans, now we’re told that saying something mean about vulture capitalists is beyond the pale.
Via Dan Savage, the NYTimes reports:
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A judge here sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail on Monday for using a webcam to spy on his Rutgers University roommate having sex with a man, in a case that galvanized concern about suicide among gay teenagers but also prompted debate about the use of laws against hate crimes…“You lied to your roommate who placed his trust in you without any conditions, and you violated it,” the judge, Glenn Berman of State Superior Court, said. “I haven’t heard you apologize once.”
In addition to jail, Judge Berman sentenced Mr. Ravi to three years’ probation, 300 hours of community service, counseling about cyberbullying and alternate lifestyles, and a $10,000 probation fee, to be used to help victims of bias crimes.
Prosecutors appeared angry — they and the Clementi family canceled a planned post-sentencing news conference — and said they would appeal…
Mr. Ravi, who is a legal resident of the United States but a citizen of India, could face deportation, but the judge said he would add a letter to the record encouraging the immigration authorities not to deport him.
Mr. Ravi had rejected three offers for a plea bargain that called for no jail time but a long period of community service, along with sensitivity training. That sentence resembled what many of those rallying to his defense were calling for. But the plea would have required him to admit to hate crimes, and his lawyers said he refused to say he had acted out of bigotry.
Savage, who is on the record as believing that ten years and deportation would have been too harsh, says “a 30 day sentence is far, far too lenient—a slap on the wrist.”
I agree with Savage. Truthfully, I’m not sure deportation wouldn’t have been the “best” solution, but that may be just that I’m expecting the Wingnut Welfare Wurlitzer to offer Ravi a highly-paid national speaking tour of college campuses timed to coincide with this year’s campus get-out-the-vote efforts. Oh, well, at least his novelty value may nudge James O’Keefe and Project Inveritas a little bit further out of the limelight…
But the Borgias is just redundant when you have these guys:
So much for compromise.A total of 43 Catholic educational, charitable and other entities filed a dozen lawsuits in federal court around the nation Monday, charging that the Obama Administration’s rule requiring coverage of birth control in most health insurance plans violates their religious freedom.
Among the plaintiffs in the suits are the University of Notre Dame and the Catholic University of America, as well as the Archdioceses of New York, Washington, Dallas, St. Louis and Pittsburgh.
***The president’s Catholic allies were pleased, as were some of those who had been complaining. Even the president of Notre Dame, Father John Jenkins, called the announcement “a welcome step toward recognizing the freedom of religious institutions to abide by the principles that define their respective missions.”
But over time, discussions over how to make it work appear to have broken down.
Even taking the actual benefits out of the hands of the religious organization “does not solve our moral dilemma,” said Catholic University President John Garvey in a statement. Garvey noted that, “The only change the ‘accommodation’ offers is that the insurance company, rather than the University, would notify subscribers that the policy covers the mandated services.” But the students and employees would still have to pay for “objectionable” prescriptions and services.
The Obama Administration declined comment on the suits, citing a policy of silence with regard to ongoing litigation.
But Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, which is among the groups most strongly backing the requirement for contraceptive coverage, said, “It is unbelievable that in the year 2012 we have to fight for access to birth control.”
I must admit I prefer the T&A of the tv series over the pederasty of the real thing.
***I know Cole covered this already, but bear with me.
TBogg has a post up over at Firedoglake that is balls-to-the-wall hilarious. You see, George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina doesn’t quite understand how teh Google works, and has threatened to sue TBogg over a post that Teh Boggs wrote about how George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina is a colossal douchebag.
In short, George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina likes to tweet about how Sandra Fluke is a slut and a cunt and all of the stuff that assholes like George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina routinely call women like Fluke who dare speak out for themselves.
While reading TBogg’s post about George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina, I read the following comment, the subject of which is George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina, and which was written by internet sage and purveyor of hilarity, Betty Cracker (of Rumproast and Balloon Juice):
Boy, that George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina sure doesn’t understand how the Google works, does George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina? I hear there are online rep management organizations that could help George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina if George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina were willing to pay them thousands and thousands of dollars.But I’m not even sure that would help George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina since the name, “George Tierney,” and the location, “Greenville, South Carolina,” appear on high traffic blogs and popular Twitter streams. And people keep saying “George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina.”
I think George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina is shit out of luck. Unless he wants to change his name to something other than “George Tierney” and perhaps move away from Greenville, South Carolina. Maybe George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina shouldn’t have been such a giant dick. Lesson learned, George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina?
