Tuesday Open Thread

6 Mar 2012 Author: rikyrah

hat tip-The Obama Diary:

Sandra Fluke on The View

Good Morning.

As you go through your day, don’t forget JJP.

Drop those links. Engage in debate. Give us trivia and gossip too.

And always, have a peaceful day.

…………………………………………..

Rachel Maddow discusses Limbaugh’s non-apology, and how Willard failed to step up to the plate.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Lawrence O’Donnell discusses Limbaugh’s non-apology.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Anonymous
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Anonymous
Female Veterans Demand Rush Limbaugh’s Show Be Pulled From American Forces Network
By Faiz Shakir on Mar 5, 2012 at 12:30 pm
VoteVets, a coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, released a letter today from a group of female veterans calling on the American Forces Network to drop Rush Limbaugh from its programming.
Miranda Norman (who is a VoteVets.org Senior Advisor), Kayla Williams, and Robin Eckstein, all Iraq War Veterans, and Katherine Scheirman, former chief of medical operations in the U.S. Air Forces, released the following statement:
Rush Limbaugh has a freedom of speech and can say what he wants, but in light of his horribly misogynistic comments, American Forces Radio should no longer give him a platform. Our entire military depends on troops respecting each other – women and men. There simply can be no place on military airwaves for sentiments that would undermine that respect. When many of our female troops use birth control, for Limbaugh to say they are “sluts” and “prostitutes” is beyond the pale. It isn’t just disrespectful to our women serving our country, but it’s language that goes against everything that makes our military work. Again, we swore to uphold our Constitution, including the freedom of speech, and would not take that away from anyone – even Limbaugh. But that does not mean AFN should broadcast him. In fact, it shouldn’t.
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2012/03/05/437800/female-veterans-demand-rush-limbaughs-show-be-pulled-from-american-forces-network/
Anonymous
March 05, 2012
The GOP’s spiritual emptiness
From a rather unsatisfying, which is to say, purely strategic point of view, what many of us in the provincial, unBelted backwaters have been writing for years has finally made its way to the eye-opening Conventional Wisdom of WaPo’s “The Fix:”
[S]ome within the [Republican Party] have begun to believe that the only way for the GOP to truly heal is to first bottom out.

By “bottom out,” Chris Cillizza of course means electorally. The party stands in desperate need of a transcendent repudiation by voters; only then will its authentic Eureka moment come. How this grotesquely belated development could still be essential — considering that the party’s presidential candidates are a national laughingstock and its congressional wing is scarcely more popular than herpes — is, I suppose, mostly a testament to Newtonian physics, i.e., bodies in motion tend to stay in motion.
But, as I noted in the opening of this post, this is, principally, a strategic consideration, whereas what the Republican Party needs most is a fundamentally spiritual reconsideration. And that is to say, Republicans, by and large, have been on the wrong side of history since the New Deal — American political history’s tipping point at which the GOP began to lose its inner soul. I quote at some length from the late but still-reigning king of American historians, Richard Hofstadter:
Classically … it has been the strength of conservatives that their appeal to institutional continuities, hard facts, and the limits of possibility is better founded; while it has usually been the strength of reformers that they arouse moral sentiments, denounce injustices, and rally the indignation of the community against intolerable abuses. Such had been the alignment of arguments during the Progressive era. During the New Deal, however, it was the reformers whose appeal to the urgent practical realities was most impressive…. It was the conservatives, on the other hand, who represented the greater moral indignation and rallied behind themselves the inspirational literature of American life; and this not merely because the conservatives were now the party of the opposition, but because things were being done of such drastic novelty that they seemed to breach all the inherited rules, not merely of practicality but of morality itself.
In sum, and very loosely, since the New Deal Democrats have embodied the experimental, can-do, pragmatic spirit of the American people, while Republicans — at one time, conservatives — have wandered about in the ideological wilderness but mostly away from their “institutional continuities, hard facts, and the limits of possibility”; they’ve become merely scolds — cranky, nagging scolds who possess little but a profound spiritual emptiness and reams of increasingly attenuated platitudes.
Were they ever to rediscover their genuinely conservative, Burkean roots — again, see Hofstadter — Republicans would quickly re-form into a strategically, but more importantly spiritually, formidable party.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/03/the-gops-spiritual-emptiness.html
Anonymous
Posted at 08:51 AM ET, 03/06/2012
The Morning Plum: Axelrod tattoos Romney with Rush `slut’ comment
By Greg Sargent
It’s hard to overstate what a huge gift Rush Limbaugh handed Democrats when he labeled Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and Dems will do all they can to ensure that Limbaugh continues to loom large over the presidential race. Case in point: David Axelrod, in a new CNN interview, has considerably raised the stakes in this fight, slamming Mitt Romney for his “timid” and “cowardly” response to Limbaugh’s diatribes. Video here :
“I was kind of shocked when Governor Romney, all he had to say was, `Well that isn’t language I would have used.’ What about the spirit of what was said? I thought that was a cowardly answer and it was a test of leadership, and one that he failed…
“There are very few entertainers who swing the weight that Rush Limbaugh does in the Republican Party. I think one of the reasons why Governor Romney and others were so timid in speaking out is because Rush is the defacto leader of the Republican Party. So to take him on would be to risk your own standing within the party.”

Dems clearly see an opportunity to exacerbate the gender gap that is already widening, perhaps due to the substance of the dispute over birth control. Yesterday’s NBC/WSJ poll found that Obama is now leading Romney by 55-37 among women. A recent poll by Dem Stan Greenberg found that unmarried women — a key Dem constituency that Obama must win back in 2008 numbers — now back Obama by 65-30.
Even Alex Castellanos a former Romney adviser, says that Romney “didn’t help himself” with his tepid response to Rush: “He had an opportunity to demonstrate strength. He left the bat on his shoulders.”
The interesting dynamic here is that it’s become harder and harder for Republicans to fully repudiate Rush, simply because Dems and liberals are pressuring them to do so. No matter how reprehensible Rush’s comments, Republicans who decisively distance themselves from Rush will in effect be surrendering to the liberal media, which in the right wing mythology is doing Obama’s bidding by devoting so much attention to the controversy.
That’s why Rush continues to blame liberals for his own outbursts, in order to keep his supporters in his camp. Of course, Rush’s continuing bluster is only causing both sides to dig in harder, making this still worse for the GOP.
* Mitt Romney’s white working class problem, ctd: Ron Brownstein digs into this week’s NBC/WSJ polling and finds this:
In the NBC/WSJ surveys through the second half of 2011, Romney led Obama among those working-class white voters by a commanding 52 percent to 38 percent…But in latest survey, Romney’s advantage with those voters had shriveled to just five percentage points — 48 percent to 43 percent
To win the presidency, the GOP candidate has to beat Obama by a far larger margin among this key swing constituency — yet another sign, as observers in both parties have noted, of how badly the primary has damaged Romney.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Anonymous
Posted at 05:05 PM ET, 03/05/2012
The coming GOP spin on social issues
By Jonathan Bernstein
Sometime soon — perhaps as early as tomorrow night, possibly in a couple of weeks, but at any rate by the end of spring — Mitt Romney is almost certainly going to be properly recognized as the Republican nominee for president. And be ready: you’re going to hear some hard spinning about how Romney’s nomination proves that Republicans are really moderate on social issues. It doesn’t.
For a preview, see Republican operative Ed Rogers over at “The Insiders” today arguing that if Romney is the winner on Super Tuesday it will show that Republicans don’t care about social issues:
Tomorrow’s Super Tuesday primaries will offer a good reality check of where the Republican Party really stands on social issues vs. economic issues in 2012 … Whether or not the GOP gets it and how badly we want to win in 2012 will be clearer on Wednesday morning after the votes are counted.
The problem with this theory is that all that’s really at stake is how, and how frequently, Republican candidates talked about abortion, birth control, and other such issues. In their actual positions on these issues, none of the candidates who ran this year (other than libertarian Gary Johnson and, in some cases, libertarian Ron Paul) differed at all. As far as I can tell, Mitt Romney has the exact same position on gay and lesbian rights, on church/state issues, on abortion, and, yes, on contraception as Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, or even Michele Bachmann.
What’s really been at issue in the nomination contest isn’t which positions that the party would take, but whether Republicans could trust Romney to support the party platform once elected president.
The entire nomination process has been about shrinking the gap between movement conservative positions and what Mitt Romney says he’ll do in office. Don’t believe any spin to the contrary.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-coming-gop-spin-on-social-issues/2012/03/05/gIQAFT7ItR_blog.html
Anonymous
The Problem with OHio
By Charles P. Pierce at 12:44PM
I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to understand Republicans these days. Truly, I have. But what John Kasich did yesterday in Ohio with regards to federal disaster aid defies so much common sense that I’ve decided to give up figuring them out for a while. Remember now, for a long time, Kasich was the very beau ideal of the hip new conservative brand. He listened to the Dead. He could speak to the young. He was often the Republican half of the phony Clinton-era bipartisanship for which people seem now to be so nostalgic. At the same time, he was the Paul Ryan of his day, the GOP’s designated photogenic granny-starver, albeit a lot less zombie-eyed than the current model. In 2000, he even briefly concocted an entire presidential campaign out of all of this.
Then he went on to have his own show on the Fox News Channel, and all I can conclude is that, once he got elected governor of Ohio in 2010, whatever microchip the scientists at Ailes Research Laboratories implanted in him began to malfunction, because it soon became plain that Kasich was planning to govern Ohio by pissing off as many Ohioans as he could — an innovative, if unpromising, political strategy. He rammed through a union-busting bill that was eviscerated by referendum almost immediately. By all accounts, his influence, and that of his plummeting approval ratings, on tomorrow’s critical Ohio Republican primary has been negligable at best. And now, in the face of an incredibly destructive tornado outbreak, Kasich has decided to turn down federal disaster relief, while the Republican governor of Indiana, Mitch (10th Amendment) Daniels, is welcoming the feds in with everything except cigarettes and whiskey.
(Clermont) county’s Democratic Party chairman, Dave Lane, said there is no reason to wait to ask for help. He said Kasich, a Republican who has been critical of the federal government in the past, may be trying to score political points at the expense of residents.
My question is, what possible political points can Kasich score at this point in his career by turning down federal disaster relief money? Is there really a danger that his approval ratings in the state will drop if he accepts the money? Is he actually fretting that, given what he’s previously said about the relationship between the federal government and the states, there is a danger to him politically if he takes money to help his constituents who are currently wandering, blank-staring, through the ruins of their lives? And, anyway, surely John Kasich can’t still believe he has a national political career to worry about. Hell, if you listen to what the smart people are saying, Mitch Daniels actually does have a national political career to worry about, and he doesn’t seem too concerned about taking the money. This stopped making sense to me long ago.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/john-kasich-ohio-disaster-aid-7111778#ixzz1oLVMpccc
Anonymous
In Bob McDonnell’s Virginia
By Laura Conaway - Tue Mar 6, 2012 8:58 AM EST.
t’s not entirely clear who’s running the majority Republican Party in Virginia, the Richmond Style Weekly writes this week. Basic tasks like passing a budget are now in some jeopardy, state Senator John Watkins tells the paper. “Some of us warned about this very thing: social issues overcoming the practical aspects of governing,” he says.
Whoever’s running Virginia, they’re delivering it to new, uncomfortable places. On Saturday, Style Weekly photographer Scott Elmquist took the picture above, of a four-year-old girl on the Capitol steps where police in riot gear stand guard. Officers arrested 31 activists for reproductive rights that day after they sat on the steps without a permit. Scott says the girl spent the time happily running back and forth to her mother’s arms. A spokesperson for Governor Bob McDonnell, who initially supported the forced vaginal ultrasound bill that sparked the protest, says McDonnell was at a basketball game and doesn’t direct security policy, so don’t blame him for what happened.
As for the iconic image of the little girl and the riot police: Though the mom had been on the steps earlier, she was not arrested nor did she come close to being arrested. The photo is jarring, the mom says, but the scene wasn’t frightening:
“It wasn’t a scary situation at all, for anyone, even the people being arrested. There was never any hint of violence. It was a jubilant crowd of people who wanted to make our voices heard.”
And now, in these photos, they’ve made themselves seen in a way that’s hard to forget.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/06/10586415-in-bob-mcdonnells-virginia
Anonymous
The Secret Plan to Screw Us All
By Charles P. Pierce
at 1:49PM For the love of Mary, stop them now, please?
The idea — and here it comes again — that there are Democratic legislators still willing to work with anyone from the House Republican side on any issue of great national import is proof positive that P.T. Barnum’s calculations were sadly awry on the relationship of suckers born per minute. The idea that we are still seriously talking about deficit reduction as the first issue among the many makes me wonder if anyone will take seriously this blog’s basic economic philosophy: Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money. And the idea that people are talking about cutting entitlements now, given the catastrophe that austerity regimes are visiting upon people all over Europe, and given what’s happening out in the states, makes me wonder if our governing elites are in conspiracy to drive Paul Krugman completely insane.
More immediately, what in hell is goddamn Heath Shuler even doing in the room, let alone driving the Democratic side of the “secret” negotiations? The man is a career incompetent. In two careers. He’s the Bluest — and the Doggiest — of Blue Dogs. And, on top of everything else, he’s a lame duck. What possibly qualifies him as a Democratic leader on anything except the proper way to pack up your office and move along to the no-show lobbying job that awaits you on K. Street?
Oh, I see, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer wants Shuler in there, leading the Democratic negotiating team.
So, if you’re keeping score at home, the Republicans in this catastrophe-in-waiting are being led by Mike Simpson of Idaho, a guy who’s made a career out of concocting monster-stories about the tyrannical EPA while the putative Democratic leader is a guy who, in the two very public jobs he’s held since leaving the University of Tennessee as The Quarterback Peyton Manning Helped Us Forget, has had a disconcerting tendency to throw the ball to the other team. Because that’s the way the second-leading Democrat in the House wants it to be.
at 1:49PM
For the love of Mary, stop them now, please?
The idea — and here it comes again — that there are Democratic legislators still willing to work with anyone from the House Republican side on any issue of great national import is proof positive that P.T. Barnum’s calculations were sadly awry on the relationship of suckers born per minute. The idea that we are still seriously talking about deficit reduction as the first issue among the many makes me wonder if anyone will take seriously this blog’s basic economic philosophy: Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money. And the idea that people are talking about cutting entitlements now, given the catastrophe that austerity regimes are visiting upon people all over Europe, and given what’s happening out in the states, makes me wonder if our governing elites are in conspiracy to drive Paul Krugman completely insane.
More immediately, what in hell is goddamn Heath Shuler even doing in the room, let alone driving the Democratic side of the “secret” negotiations? The man is a career incompetent. In two careers. He’s the Bluest — and the Doggiest — of Blue Dogs. And, on top of everything else, he’s a lame duck. What possibly qualifies him as a Democratic leader on anything except the proper way to pack up your office and move along to the no-show lobbying job that awaits you on K. Street?
Oh, I see, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer wants Shuler in there, leading the Democratic negotiating team.
So, if you’re keeping score at home, the Republicans in this catastrophe-in-waiting are being led by Mike Simpson of Idaho, a guy who’s made a career out of concocting monster-stories about the tyrannical EPA while the putative Democratic leader is a guy who, in the two very public jobs he’s held since leaving the University of Tennessee as The Quarterback Peyton Manning Helped Us Forget, has had a disconcerting tendency to throw the ball to the other team. Because that’s the way the second-leading Democrat in the House wants it to be.Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/bipartisan-deficit-deal-7111842#ixzz1oLWDLv1h
Anonymous
Limbaugh loses favor with those who pay his bills
By Steve Benen - Tue Mar 6, 2012 8:00 AM EST
During his lengthy career in broadcasting, Rush Limbaugh has ignored the boundaries of decency on countless occasions, but he’s never lost so many sponsors, so quickly, as he has over the last week.
Six days after the right-wing host’s verbal assault on Sandra Fluke, Limbaugh no doubt enjoys the condemnations and attention, but can’t be pleased with the reactions from those who pay his bills.

Many thought Limbaugh’s initial apology was inadequate, and their outrage helped compel advertisers to pull their commercials from Limbaugh’s program.
Two more national advertisers — online giant AOL and tax service Tax Resolution — said Monday that they were suspending their sponsorship of Limbaugh, bringing the total number of companies fleeing Limbaugh to nine. [...]
Whether Limbaugh’s on-air apology will stanch further losses remains unclear. A boycott campaign on Twitter and online petitions urging sponsors to remove their ads continued to draw supporters Monday.
If one includes local advertisers in the overall count, Limbaugh has lost 11 sponsors. ThinkProgress’ running count reached 12 late yesterday after Allstate Insurance pulled its ads, too.
Making matters slightly worse, two stations that have aired Limbaugh’s radio show — WBEC in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and KPUA in Hilo, Hawaii — dropped the program yesterday. WBEC’s general manager said yesterday, “This time he’s taken it too far.”
I guess the half-hearted, not-exactly-sincere “apology” didn’t persuade the Republican’s detractors that he felt genuine regret.
Of course, the news for Limbaugh wasn’t all bad — the Missouri Legislature will apparently still honor the right-wing broadcaster with a statue at the state capitol, giving him a place in the Hall of Famous Missourians. Limbaugh’s bust will sit alongside the likes of Mark Twain, Harry Truman, and Walt Disney..
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/06/10590862-limbaugh-loses-favor-with-those-who-pay-his-bills
Anonymous
Blog
March 05, 2012 5:15 PM
Jim Wallis’ “Startling Statements”
By Ed Kilgore
The Blaze is Glenn Beck’s website so I’m not too surprised at anything that appears there. Still, there’s a leading article up (which has drawn well over 500 comments) by Billy Hallowell that’s rather a sad reflection of how the contemporary Right has lost all sense of history or perspective. It’s about some relatively banal comments by the Rev. Jim Wallis—an exceptionally well-known religio-political figure who is simultaneously a symbol of the “Christian Left” and a source of chronic irritation to religious liberals who don’t share his conservative leanings on cultural issues like abortion and same-sex marriage or much appreciate his constant efforts to encourage the president to compromise on them.
But here’s what upsets Halloway and his readers:

In an interview that will air nationwide at Lifetree CafÃ© locations in the coming days, Wallis made some startling statements about America’s history and heritage….
“It’s not a Christian nation. It’s never been a Christian nation,” Wallis boldly proclaimed while speaking about America. “We set this up so that it would not be a Christian nation for any religious framework.”
But Wallis wasn’t done there. In a preview clip, he goes on to claim that America isn’t mentioned in the Bible as having a “special” or unique place.
“Where in the Bible is there a special place for America?,” he asks. “Where do we get that that’s bad theology…just bad theology.”

For Wallis, who considers himself part of the Anabaptist tradition which has for five centures rejected any contamination of Christianity by official sanction, this is about as predictable a comment as he could make. But beyond Wallis himself, it’s just bizarre that anyone, whether or not they agree with strict church-state separation, would find advocacy of this position by an evangelical minister “startling.” In the days of the Founders, it was evangelicals who most strongly urged Jefferson and Madison to take a hard line against any religious establishment, and indeed, it was in a letter to a group of Connecticut Baptists that Jefferson coined the phrase “wall of separation” to describe the ideal relationship of church and state.
One can only speculate why Halloway or anyone else would be shocked by Wallis’ truism—relevant or not—that there is no biblical sanction for “American exceptionalism.”
Sure, many Americans over the decades, believers or not, have thought of the country as a “Christian nation” in the common-sense meaning of that term—as a nation in which professed Christians were an overwhelming majority of the population. Its polemical use as a term promoting government sanction of Christian observances or tenets is a lot more recent, and its retroactive projection into American history by ideological warriors like David Barton is what I personally find most “startling.”
Any time the “Christian nation” dispute is raised, I think of a moment (unfortunately not linkable) back in the late 1980s, when the U.S. House was in one of those silly end-of-year around the clock sessions and a nearly empty chamber was being addressed by some conservative Member who was making a paen to America as a “Christian nation.” The junior House member forced to sit in the Chair at this ungodly hour happened to be Barney Frank, who interrupted the speaker to say: “If this is a Christian nation, how come some poor Jew has to get up in the middle of the night to preside over the House of Representatives?”
I’m sure Frank’s target was “startled,” but he shouldn’t have been, and nor should anyone be when this strongly traditional notion of church-state separation is articulated.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/jim_wallis_startling_statement035837.php
Anonymous
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Pinhead Wizards
Posted by Zandar
Well, if Tom Jensen’s poll numbers are to be believed (and PPP has been pretty much spot on in the past with a good track record) then Stupor Tuesday it could be a long, long day for the forces of Romnevibility(tm).

The news is good for Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich and bad for Rick Santorum in PPP’s final polls of the three biggest Super Tuesday states. In Ohio Romney leads with 37% to 36% for Santorum, 15% for Gingrich, and 11% for Ron Paul.
In Tennessee Santorum leads with 34% to 29% for Romney, 27% for Gingrich, and 8% for Paul.
In Georgia Gingrich leads with 47% to 24% for Romney, 19% for Santorum, and 8% for Paul.
A week ago Santorum had a huge lead in Tennessee, a decent sized one in Ohio, and seemed like he had a good chance for second in Georgia. Now he’s barely holding on in Tennessee, ever so slightly behind in Ohio, and seems doomed for third in Georgia.
Romney’s fortunes have swung the other direction. What was looking like a runner up finish in Ohio is looking more like a win with each passing day. He has an outside chance at pulling off an upset win in Tennessee. And it looks like he’ll finish a solid second in Georgia.
The news for Gingrich is good too. It’s been expected he would win Georgia, but it looks now like he could even hit the 50% mark. And he’s pulled within striking distance of Santorum and Romney in Tennessee.
We’re at a tipping point. A Gingrich win in Georgia with him getting over 50% keeps him in the game, as does a Santorum win in Tennessee (especially if Romney slips into 3rd there.) Should Slick Rick pull off a win in Ohio to boot, all balls will be locked for multiball and the chaos will truly begin, as Tuesday will only make the national GOP picture even more messy.
If on the other hand Romney can win Ohio and surprise in the Volunteer State, Romnevitability(tm) will rise. It could go either way at this point. Me, I’m rooting for multiball, then for the table to break and the balls to go flying everywhere. Maybe knock over a few bystanders, roll out into the street, cause hipsters to ironically fall.
Yeah, the kind of multiball that makes the local news and forces some local reporter to schlep out to where they still have pinball machines and pizza by the slice with “cheese” and do a report with a straight face with the chyron underneath reading “BIZARRE PINBALL ACCIDENT DOWNTOWN INJURES FOUR.”. I’m all for that. Let’s go with that. Yeah.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2012/03/pinhead-wizards.html
Anonymous
What to Look for Tonight
by BooMan
Tue Mar 6th, 2012 at 09:04:16 AM EST
I’m as guilty as anyone of placing the most importance on Ohio among today’s primaries, but it should be remembered that, from a delegate point of view, Ohio doesn’t really matter. Today’s contests are all proportional to some degree. A handful of states (Ohio, Vermont, and Virginia) are winner-take-all by congressional district, with some at-large delegates doled out proportionately. Santorum didn’t qualify for delegates in all of Ohio’s congressional districts, so he’s likely to lose the delegate battle even if he wins the popular vote. Romney and Ron Paul are the only candidates on the ballot in Virginia and write-in votes are not allowed, so Romney will win almost all the delegates there because he will win in every congressional district. Vermont only has one congressional district, and Romney will win the popular vote and therefore all the CD delegates.
In the states Romney is likely to lose, he will still win a fraction of the delegates. The real question is whether Romney will win more than 50% of the delegates today or he won’t. My guess is that he will. So, from a technical standpoint, Romney will probably improve his position tonight even if he loses Ohio’s popular vote.
So, why is Ohio so important? Mainly because it’s the best chance for Santorum to prove that he can actually beat Romney. It’s also Romney’s best chance to exceed expectations. No one is going to give Romney credit for winning his home state of Massachusetts or for winning in tiny Vermont or for winning in Virginia in a one-on-one contest with Ron Paul. He needs to win somewhere else to impress. If Santorum can carry Tennessee and Oklahoma, that will be nice and provide him with an excuse to keep going, but blowing a big lead in Ohio will be the main message people take away.
A good night for Romney will be if he can win Ohio, Virginian, Massachusetts, and Vermont. A great night will be if he can also win in Tennessee and come in second behind Gingrich in Georgia. A bad night will be if he comes in third in Georgia and loses in Ohio and Tennessee.
If Romney has a good or great night, we’ll probably see the electorate start to rally around him. But if he has a bad night, the contest will continue in its present form, and move to Alabama and Mississippi and Missouri with Romney looking to take a beating.
Ohio and, to a lesser degree, Tennessee are the keys tonight. If Romney falls short, the Republicans may simply give up on the idea of winning the presidency.
http://www.boomantribune.com/
Anonymous
for those of you who have always had the side eye to AMERICANS ELECT..
this is just more for you.
…………………………….
How many ways can you say Republican?
by Kay
Because I believe Americans Elect is made up of a few wealthy Republicans, I’m not really surprised that they may be having trouble attracting small donors:
One of the most salient criticisms of Americans Elect —a group that bills itself as seeking to “open up the political process” and “change politics as usual” — is its dogged refusal, using the legal shield of its status as a 501c4 corporation, to disclose the names of its financial backers.
Americans Elect got off the ground with $20 million of seed money given by only 50-some anonymous donors. That’s 50 nameless investors ponying up an average of $400,000 apiece, although, in one rare case in which the name is known, Americans Elect founder and CEO Peter Ackerman has given at least $1.55 million and, according to Bloomberg — the news organization, not the draft Americans Elect presidential candidate — more than $5 million.
Americans Elect has sought to rationalize its financial secrecy, by assuring the public that all of its early high-dollar contributions are structured as loans that will be repaid, and that, when all is said and done, no single donor will have contributed more than $10,000.
Americans Elect says it “is funded by individual contributions, and intends to pay back the bulk of our initial financing as more delegates join, so that no single individual will have contributed more than $10K.”
Underscoring the point, Americans Elect last October published an open letter, signed by Americans Elect CEO Kahlil Byrd, saying that “every donation above $10,000 is structured as a loan. We aspire for these loans to be paid back by the time this organization completes its core mission in 2012. If the American people embrace the Americans Elect mission as their own, then no one will have given more than $10,000. Growing evidence suggests that this will happen.”
And, just last week (video above), Americans Elect COO Eliot Ackerman, appearing with Americans Elect Advisory Board member Mark McKinnon on MSNBC, told Chuck Todd — who had asked Ackerman (starting at 6:14) when and if Americans Elect was going to disclose its funders — that “all of [the funders’] donations have been given as loans.”
Ultimately, in other words, “the people” will be the ones to reimburse the hedge funders and private-equity types who seeded the initial $20 million. Thus will the role of Americans Elect as a catalyst of democratic renewal be authenticated in financial terms.
That’s been the story — and Americans Elect has been sticking to it.
SO IT WAS jarring to read the following new ruling of the Americans Elect Board of Directors, posted this morning to the Americans Elect Web site:
The Americans Elect Board unanimously voted to ensure that no supporter would cover more than 20% of AE’s budget. In the event that any one supporter exceeds that percentage, there are provisions created to expedite repayments to that supporter.
What this Board decision basically says is that as few as five people can fund the whole damned thing.It also strongly suggests that Americans Elect is not getting — and does not expect to get — significant financial support at the grassroots level of delegates, Web site registrants and Facebook “like”-ers. At least, not significant enough — and not quick enough — to make good on all of the promises that it may have made to all of the seed investors from whom Americans Elect has taken high-dollar loans.
Indeed, the counter-scenario that this new ruling opens up is that it will not be the grassroots, “the people,” who repay these seed investors in Americans Elect — but, rather, that wealthy donors who have not yet topped out the new 20% maximum (or maybe even some who have) are being asked to increase their donations by way of reimbursing investors who are having second thoughts.
Is Americans Elect like the Tea Party? Just a new label and new branding for a certain group of Republicans who no longer want to call themselves Republicans? A very select group, sure, but just Republicans by (yet) another name?
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/03/05/how-many-ways-can-you-say-republican/
Anonymous
The Law of Unintended Consequences revisited: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/business/digital-records-may-not-cut-health-costs-study-cautions.html?_r=1&hp
Remember how electronic medical records were going to save upto $80 billion a year in medical costs? That was after the tens of billions spent to set up and maintain the systems. Well, the above study shows that they might just increase medical costs over and above the costs of maintaining the E-systems.
“The study showed, however, that doctors with computerized access to a patient’s previous image results ordered tests on 18 percent of the visits, while those without the tracking technology ordered tests on 12.9 percent of visits. That is a 40 percent higher rate of image testing by doctors using electronic technology instead of paper records.
The gap, according to the study, was even greater — a 70 percent higher rate — for more advanced and expensive image tests, including M.R.I. tests and CT, or computerized tomography, scans.”
RobM
If you have money in the big banks you mat want to pull it. Despite 3+ yrs of improved earnings banks still hold billion in mark to make believe assets. In a down turn this means they will once again socializing losses.
” As a result, it seems surprising that banks still have hundreds of
billions of dollars of assets that they say they can’t find prices for.
All told, the hard-to-value assets represent an average of 4% of the
assets a the nation’s six largest banks. That’s down from 7% at the
height of the financial crisis, when those assets totaled nearly $600
billion. But the drop in hard-to-value assets has been bigger at some
banks than at others.”
Stress tests may shed light on Wall Street’s ‘mark-to-make-believe’ accounting
RobM
If you’ve ever been in Indiana you keep thinking flyover country. Given that cigarettes and whisky used to be the cross border smuggling scene between IL and IN I’d get the cigarettes out.
Anonymous
Yesterday at 4:53 PM
Why Rush Limbaugh Is Facing a Perfect Storm of Outrage
By Joe Coscarelli
Rush Limbaugh is a storied shock artist not inclined to apologize or suffer for his blunt, often offensive language. This is the man who has suggested that parents would abort their pregnancies if they knew their kid would be gay and quipped that the NFL “all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.” And yet his verbal assault on Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke is still dominating the news, with real financial consequences: nine companies have pulled their advertising from Limbaugh’s show so far. (Update: Make that 12.)
Why now? There comes a time when every blowhard, charged with talking for hours each day and constantly under scrutiny from ideologically opposed enemies, finally crosses the line in a way that allows critics to exact their vengeance. For Limbaugh, in this case, social media and the current political climate have concocted the perfect opportunity for disaster.
1. Contraception is having a moment
A war over birth control has been brewing at least since December, when the Obama administration reversed its planned support of over-the-counter Plan B, angering women’s rights proponents and calling increased attention to culture war battles that also included anti-abortion “personhood” amendments in states like Mississippi, Florida, and Ohio.
Komen’s political decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood, only to reverse the move after an uproar, followed soon after. Just days later, the Obama administration compromised on a health insurance mandate that would have required religious organizations to cover birth control for employees. Foster Friess, a billionaire donor to Rick Santorum, recommended that women just use aspirin between the knees to not get pregnant, which, while comically offensive, isn’t far off from the temporary front-runner’s actual position on birth control.
After some high-profile setbacks and invigorating victories, the majority of average Americans that support access to contraception were fired up and ready to fight.
2. The power and speed of social media
As soon as Limbaugh opened his big mouth, his opponents wasted no time in rushing to the giant social networks filled with like-minded advocates. U.S. Army officer Jessica Scott’s #iamnotaslut hashtag quickly went viral, while retailers advertising with Limbaugh had their official accounts flooded on Twitter and Facebook.
The CEO of Tax Resolution, who suspended his group’s ads today, said he was “inundated” by messages online urging a Limbaugh boycott. He compared the experience to working with controversial radio host Howard Stern, but said “social media was nowhere where it is today.” (Limbaugh’s supporters have enacted their own social media push.)
Joining companies like Quicken Loans and Pro Flowers, AOL said today that they too would pull advertising. Tellingly, they made the announcement on their Facebook page.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-perfect-storm-of-outrage.html
Anonymous
I liked your link so much that I am posting another article from Fortune: http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/15/keystone-alberta-canada/
The Keystone debacle as seen through Canadian eyes
*******************
They seem to think Mr Obama killed the project to keep the Enviro-Left vote. And to me it looks like he wanted to f*ck over republican western states at the same time.
Oh, and PetroChina has purchased part of the Alberta oil sands.
Anonymous
The Obama Budget is Nonsense per CNN Money: http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/21/unrealistic-budget-assumptions/
“The Obama budget attempts to balance conflicting goals: Advocating major spending initiatives at the same time it attempts to curb dangerous deficits. On paper, it gets there by assuming revenues that are unlikely to materialize and cuts that won’t happen. It wouldn’t be such a problem if the blueprint left plenty of room for error by projecting balanced budgets or surpluses. But it’s flirting with danger even if its numbers play out. And it’s non-partisan to predict that they won’t.”
*******************
more election year BS.
Anonymous
AFTERNOON OPEN THREAD IS UP!!
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John Lumea
rikyrah,
Many thanks for posting Kay Williams’s excerpt of my piece, “In New Board Decision, An Early Sign of Financial Trouble at Americans Elect.”
For the benefit of your readers, the full piece is here.
JOHN LUMEA
Anonymous
thank you for writing it. there are more than few people who have suspicious eyes towards Americans Elect – particularly because of their refusal for full disclosure.
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