THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

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// posted by montag @ 7:26 PM 0 Comments

A redistricting plan signed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) intentionally discriminated against Hispanic voters, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled Tuesday. The judges found that seats belonging to white incumbent members of Congress were protected under the plan while districts belonging to incumbent minorities were targeted for changes.

The court was “persuaded by the totality of the evidence that the plan was enacted with discriminatory intent,” according to the ruling. There was “sufficient evidence to conclude that the Congressional Plan was motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent,” the court found.

The three judges said they were overwhelmed with the amount of evidence showing the congressional redistricting plan was intentionally discriminatory, writing in a footnote that parties “have provided more evidence of discriminatory intent than we have space, or need, to address here.”

// posted by montag @ 5:05 PM 0 Comments

The President has done things, Issa later continued, “like invite Paul Ryan to the White House by trickery and embarrass himself by ridiculing Ryan’s program in front of him.”

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“Yes, we were in fact told that the Romney event was mandatory and would be without pay, that the hours spent there would need to be made up my non-salaried employees outside of regular working hours, with the only other option being to take a pay cut for the equivalent time,” the employees told Blomquist. “Yes, letters have gone around with lists of names of employees who have not attended or donated to political events.”

“I realize that many people in this area and elsewhere would love to have my job or my benefits,” one worker explained. “And our bosses do not hesitate in reminding us of this. However, I can not agree with these callers and my supervisors, who are saying that just because you have a good job, that you should have to work any day for free on almost no notice without your consent.”

“We do not appreciate being intimidated into exchanging our time for nothing. I heard one of your callers saying that Murray employees are well aware of what they are getting into upon hire, or that they are informed that a percentage of their income will go to political donations. I can not speak for that caller, but this is news for me. We merely find out how things work by experience.”

// posted by montag @ 12:45 PM 0 Comments

Like something straight out of TheOnion.com, Arizona recently passed a new law titled the Women’s Health and Safety Act that deems a woman pregnant 2 weeks before conception. Only this is not fiction, it’s Arizona...

Steinberg explained the law by saying, “The law defines pregnancy in a way that bans abortion two weeks before the other seven states who have similar laws. It calculates gestational age starting with the first day of the last menstrual period rather than the date of conception.”

// posted by montag @ 12:22 PM 1 Comments

Mitt Romney's campaign said on Tuesday that its ads attacking President Obama's waiver policy on welfare have been its most effective to date. And while the spots have been roundly criticized as lacking any factual basis, the campaign said it didn't really care.

"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said at a panel organized by ABC News. This is a different standard than the one Romney himself has held up for the election-season ad wars. Reacting to attacks by a pro-Obama super PAC, Romney recently told a radio station that "in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad."

// posted by montag @ 11:52 AM 0 Comments

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// posted by montag @ 7:07 PM 0 Comments

Two American soldiers were shot and killed by a member of the Afghan Army in eastern Afghanistan on Monday when a dispute broke out during a joint American and Afghan patrol, Afghan officials said.

There were unconfirmed reports that the dispute erupted after the convoy was hit by a roadside bomb. NATO confirmed that two of its soldiers had been killed by a member of the Afghan Army.

In a separate episode in the southeast, attackers killed 10 Afghan soldiers at a checkpoint in Helmand Province early on Monday, in what a provincial spokesman described as the latest attack by insurgents who had infiltrated the Afghan military.

The Taliban, meanwhile, cut the throats of 17 civilians — including two women — in a rural, Taliban-controlled district of Helmand on Sunday, Afghan officials said.

The killing of American soldiers in the east, in Laghman Province, brought the number of coalition soldiers shot by Afghan police and military forces so far this year to 42, 12 of them this month alone.

// posted by montag @ 4:49 PM 0 Comments

while Mr. Christie has made a lot of noise about his tough budget choices, other governors have done much the same. Nor has he eschewed budget gimmicks: like earlier New Jersey governors, Mr. Christie has closed budget gaps in part by deferring required contributions to state pension funds, which is in effect a form of borrowing against the future, and he has also sought to paper over budget gaps by diverting money from places like the Transportation Trust Fund.

If there is a distinctive feature to New Jersey’s belt-tightening under Mr. Christie, it is its curiously selective nature. The governor was willing to cancel the desperately needed project to build another rail tunnel linking the state to Manhattan, but has invested state funds in a megamall in the Meadowlands and a casino in Atlantic City.

Also, while much of his program involves spending cuts, he has effectively raised taxes on low-income workers and homeowners by slashing tax credits. But he vetoed a temporary surcharge on millionaires while refusing to raise the state’s gasoline tax, which is the third-lowest in America and far below tax rates in neighboring states. Only some people, it seems, are expected to make sacrifices.

But as I said, Mr. Christie talks a good (and very loud) game about his willingness to make tough choices, making big claims about spending cuts — claims, by the way, that PolitiFact has unequivocally declared false. And for the past year he has been touting what he claims is the result of those tough choices: the “Jersey comeback,” the supposed recovery of his state’s economy.

Strange to say, however, Mr. Christie has told reporters that he won’t use the term “Jersey comeback” in his keynote address. And it’s not hard to see why: the comeback, such as it was, has hit the skids. Indeed, the latest figures show his state with the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the nation. Strikingly, New Jersey’s 9.8 percent unemployment rate is now significantly higher than the unemployment rate in long-suffering Michigan, which has had a true comeback thanks to the G.O.P.-opposed auto bailout.

// posted by montag @ 4:38 PM 0 Comments

Evangelist Pat Robertson weighed in the issue of Social Security’s long-term feasibility on The 700 Club Monday, advocating for the mandatory retirement age to be raised past 65 years of age, citing extended lifespans and advances in medicine.

“Consequently [people] should be working longer and they should not begin retirement at age 65 or 66,” Robertson said. “We should be pushing that retirement age up to 70 or 72 and it’s not gonna hurt anybody because people really like to work. There’s nothing worse than sitting in a rocking chair rusting out. Who needs that?”

Robertson’s remarks came after a story by anchor Lee Webb citing a recent Associated Press-GfK poll in which 53 percent of respondents said they would raise taxes to ensure the system can continue, while 36 percent preferred to cut benefits.

// posted by montag @ 4:23 PM 0 Comments

Throughout the Republican primaries, Mitt Romney struggled to distance himself from the health care overhaul he put in place as governor of Massachusetts, which served as a blueprint for President Obama’s health care law Romney has pledged to repeal.

But in the last week, Romney has reversed course and is now touting ‘Romneycare’ in interviews leading up to the Republican National Convention.

“With regards to women’s health care, look, I’m the guy that was able to get health care for all the women and men in my state,” Mitt Romney said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” before making sure to attack Obama’s law. “There’s talking about it at the federal level, we actually did something. And we did it without cutting Medicare and without raising taxes.”

“So you’re saying, look at Romneycare?” host Chris Wallace responded.

“Absolutely. I’m very proud of what we did. And the fact that we helped women and men and children in our state,” Romney said.

// posted by montag @ 5:05 PM 0 Comments

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday said he supported presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s joke about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate because the race needs “levity.”

“And you know what? Have we really gotten to the point we can’t have any levity at all in politics? I mean, we’ve gotten to a place in politics that is just ridiculous. No one can say anything that’s remotely humorous. You know, the president makes jokes about this all the time.”

// posted by montag @ 1:14 PM 0 Comments

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney insists that he didn’t shut down his tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland because it would “avoid the truth” and he wasn’t going to “manipulate my life” just to become president.

Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Romney in an interview that aired on Sunday why he didn’t close the Swiss bank accounts and get out of the investments in the Cayman Islands before he spent the last eight years running for president...

“But, I mean, I did live my life,” he continued. “And I expect by virtue of disclosing all these things, people can take a look at it and see whether that’s something they’re comfortable with or not. I’m not going to try and hide who I am and try and manipulate my life to try and avoid the truth.”

// posted by montag @ 1:02 PM 0 Comments

When thousands of delegates, elected officials and party leaders begin arriving in Tampa, Fla., for the Republican National Convention, hundreds of lobbyists, corporate executives, trade associations and donors will be waiting for them, exploiting legal loopholes — and the fun-house atmosphere — that make each party’s quadrennial conventions a gathering of money and influence unrivaled in politics.

In many ways, their activities amount to a parallel convention, one in which access to elected officials, party leaders and delegates provides corporations, interest groups and lobbyists a chance to advance their causes as the party goes about its official business nearby.

Lobbyists and trade groups, virtually all with business before Congress and federal agencies, are paying for a nonstop schedule of beach parties, concerts and cocktail hours.

// posted by montag @ 12:53 PM 0 Comments

Sometimes pols pander so much they never find their way back to their core, or try to find their way back too late.

Romney seems to be forever on a journey out of vagueness, an endless search for identity.

Even teaming up with the most policy-specific Republican House member in a bid for reflected ideological clarity has not worked. Rather than Mitt’s gaining focus, Paul Ryan is losing it...

“Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” [Eric Fehrnstrom] said. “Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Already suspicious conservatives pounced on the remark as proof that Mitt would say anything to get elected.

But Romney never did shake up the Etch A Sketch. He remains too insecure about his base.

// posted by montag @ 12:31 PM 0 Comments

In small mountain villages on Taliban turf in eastern Afghanistan, Pashtun tribesmen took up arms to fight the insurgents this summer, fed up with their heavy-handed tactics of closing schools and threatening families whose sons had joined the Afghan Army.

“They wanted to make our children illiterate and miserable,” Malik Ghulam Rusal, a district elder, said about the Taliban. “We told them that if you want to wage jihad, go and fight the foreigners, not ordinary people. But they did not listen.”

What began as a ragtag uprising by rural woodcutters and shopkeepers in a few villages in Laghman Province expanded into something extraordinary: in just the past two months, the Taliban presence in the entire district, and then in a neighboring one, has been largely silenced. And in another eastern province, Ghazni, villagers ignited a similar movement to drive the Taliban away.

// posted by montag @ 1:08 PM 0 Comments

The United Nations, aid agencies and the British Government have lined up to attack the world's largest commodities trading company, Glencore, after it described the current global food crisis and soaring world prices as a "good" business opportunity.

With the US experiencing a rerun of the drought "Dust Bowl" days of the 1930s and Russia suffering a similar food crisis that could see Vladimir Putin's government banning grain exports, the senior economist of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, Concepcion Calpe, told The Independent: "Private companies like Glencore are playing a game that will make them enormous profits."

Ms Calpe said leading international politicians and banks expecting Glencore to back away from trading in potential starvation and hunger in developing nations for "ethical reasons" would be disappointed.

"This won't happen," she said.

// posted by montag @ 12:13 PM 0 Comments

The findings were breathtaking:

• Half of U.S. children get no early childhood education, and we have no national strategy to increase enrollment.

• More than a quarter of U.S. children have a chronic health condition, such as obesity or asthma, threatening their capacity to learn.

• More than 22 percent of U.S. children lived in poverty in 2010, up from about 17 percent in 2007.

• More than half of U.S. postsecondary students drop out without receiving a degree.

Now compare that with the report’s findings on China. It estimates that “by 2030, China will have 200 million college graduates — more than the entire U.S. work force,” and points out that by 2020 China plans to:

• Enroll 40 million children in preschool, a 50 percent increase from today.

• Provide 70 percent of children in China with three years of preschool.

• Graduate 95 percent of Chinese youths through nine years of compulsory education (that’s 165 million students, more than the U.S. labor force).

• Ensure that no child drops out of school for financial reasons.

• More than double enrollment in higher education.

// posted by montag @ 12:01 PM 0 Comments

On the first day of school last year, Kerry Bentivolio told students in his English class at Fowlerville High School that he had one goal: to make each one of them cry at least once.

Bentivolio, now the Republican candidate in Michigan's 11th Congressional District -- which includes western Wayne and Oakland counties -- also told the students that they were "just a paycheck to me," according to a description of incidents in his personnel file.

The Free Press obtained his records under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act. Bentivolio didn't return calls Tuesday.

Bentivolio's declarations earned him a verbal reprimand from his assistant principal and a formal letter demanding that he correct his behavior.

Nine months later, school administrators reprimanded him for intimidating and threatening students by grabbing their desks and yelling in their faces or for slamming his fists on their desks.

Similar incidents occurred throughout the school year,

// posted by montag @ 1:47 PM 0 Comments

If any question why we died

Tell them, because our fathers lied.

The untruths have been almost too numerous to chronicle, beginning with the great untruth that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that justified the war in Iraq (where more than 4,480 U.S. service members died); and sliding into the smaller, no less lethal untruths about how Pakistan was an ally in the Afghan struggle, and global terrorism beatable on the battle field, and nation-building feasible in Afghanistan, and sacrifice in the cause reasonable when half of the United States was off at the mall shopping, and victory always — always — within reach.

Afghanistan is a country where President Obama appointed an able envoy, the late Richard Holbrooke, only to emasculate him; where the president, Hamid Karzai, has long manipulated Western succor to his private ends; and where the greatest emergent threat comes from Afghans in the uniforms of the security forces America and its allies are training to take over from them in 2014. The country is a bottomless pit of hypocrisies.

As James Dao and Andrew W. Lehren wrote in a devastating New York Times article, “In just the past two weeks, at least 9 Americans have been killed in such insider attacks. For the year to date, at least 40 NATO service members, most of them American, have been killed by either active members of the Afghan forces or attackers dressed in their uniforms — already outstripping the toll from all last year. ”

Marina Buckley is the mother of Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr., a Marine who was the 1,990th service member to die in the Afghan war, apparently killed by Afghan security force members. She said this: “Our forces shouldn’t be there. It should be over. It’s done. No more.”

Yes, after almost 11 years, it’s done, no more.

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Speaking to Parade Magazine, Ann Romney said their tithing to the Mormon Church is so meaningful and personal, she cries every time they sign over a check. “So do I,” Mitt added, “but for a different reason.”

“Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given,” he’s quoted saying. “This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.”

The statement opens a fresh front in the rhetorical war on Romney’s campaign over the candidate’s refusal to detail more than two years of his financial history, and represents yet another significant reversal for Romney, who bragged to Parade Magazine and Fox News just earlier this year that he’s given millions to the church and regularly tithes 10 percent of his pre-tax income.

But even that claim was problematic for Romney, who was dinged by conservatives after the two years of tax returns he released showed he only donated 7 percent to the church in 2010. The same year, Romney gave an additional 7 percent of his income to charitable groups like the Friends of the George W. Bush Library, Harvard Business School and the U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation.

// posted by montag @ 1:09 PM 0 Comments

Update (11:45 a.m. ET): In a press conference on Friday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commission Ray Kelly said that the gunman was 53-year-old Jeffrey Johnson. He had targeted a formal co-worker with .45 caliber pistol. The former co-worker was killed after being shot three times. Nine other bystanders were also shot, including an unspecified number of victims who were accidentally shot by police as they tried to take down the gunman.

// posted by montag @ 12:53 PM 0 Comments

The Romney team appears to have adopted a strategy of throwing so much dishonest spin around that the fact-checkers just throw their hands up in frustration. Along with his bald-faced lie that Obama “raided” Medicare , this week the campaign tripled-down on its universally debunked claim that the Obama administration had killed the welfare “reforms” passed by Bill Clinton. In fact, they defended that ad by citing a fact-free column by Mickey Kaus published on Tucker Carlson's always-wrong right-wing blog, the Daily Caller .

They hope to make inroads attacking welfare because, like the infamous "Southern strategy," it stokes racial animus. Political scientist Michael Tesler studied voters' reactions to seeing Romney's first welfare ad, and found that, “among those who saw it, racial resentment affected whether people thought Romney will help the poor, the middle-class, and African-Americans.”

// posted by montag @ 12:26 PM 0 Comments

2 new Announcements:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
UPDATE: TRIBES OF THE GREAT SIOUX NATION AND LASTREALINDIANS, INC. WILL CONTINUE EFFORT TO SECURE PE’ SLA
Pe Sla has been taken off the auction block. However, the property is publicly listed. The Tribes of the Great Sioux Nation are moving forward on their own behalf with Lastrealindians, Inc. in continuing to raise money to ensure Pe’ Sla will be protected as a sacred site, forever.
Updates will continue as more information becomes available.

Pilamaye, Lastrealindians

For Immediate Release: Update: Pe’ Sla Auction Cancelled on Direction of Owners’ Representative

The auction scheduled on August 25, 2012 for the acreage called Reynold’s Prairie, also known as Pe’ Sla to the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation), has been cancelled on direction of the owners representative, according to Brock Auction, Co., Inc: http://www.brockauction.com/upcoming.htm

The owners are not commenting as to why the auction has been cancelled. At this time, Lastrealindians, Inc. is consulting with Oceti Sakowin Tribes and attempting to find out more information. Updates forthcoming.

// posted by montag @ 11:55 AM 0 Comments

In pushing for draconian cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and other programs that aid the needy, Mr. Ryan isn’t just looking for ways to save money. He’s also, quite explicitly, trying to make life harder for the poor — for their own good.

// posted by montag @ 11:00 PM 0 Comments

The senior commander in Afghanistan made new allowances on Thursday that Taliban influence could play a large role in attacks by Afghan security forces on Americans, saying that up to one-quarter of the killings could be caused by Taliban infiltration or coercion. But he reiterated that most of such insider attacks have still been attributed to personal grievances and animosities.

The commander, Gen. John R. Allen of the Marine Corps, addressed the subject in a video news conference on Thursday, a day after Afghan officials blamed foreign intelligence services for being behind most of the insider killings. He said he had not seen the information that prompted that claim, but sought to clarify what NATO commanders knew about why Afghan forces have taken to killing their American colleagues in increasing numbers.

Previously, NATO military officials had said that only about 10 percent of the insider attacks could be attributed to Taliban infiltration or impersonation of Afghan security units. But on Thursday, General Allen said that in addition to that infiltration figure, another roughly 15 percent of the attacks could be caused by Taliban coercion of soldiers or police officers, either directly or through family members.

Because most of the attackers had been killed or had escaped, and not captured alive for interrogation, it was difficult to provide firm statistics, he said. He also noted that more Afghans than Western troops had been killed by such insider attacks.

// posted by montag @ 1:37 PM 0 Comments

2. Ryan keeps attacking Prsident Obama’s stimulus program now . But in 2002 when then President George W. Bush proposed stimulus spending, Ryan supported it. “What we’re trying to accomplish today with the passage of this third stimulus package is to create jobs and help the unemployed,” Ryan told MSNBC in 2002.

3. Even more embarrassing, in 2010, Ryan asked for $20 million in stimulus money from Obama for companies in his district, then repeatedly denied requesting stimulus funds. He finally admitted he had done so, but continues to slam the stimulus program as a failure (even though the economy pulled out of a Depression as a result of it).

// posted by montag @ 12:20 PM 0 Comments

Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war, maybe. And we’re not talking just a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.

Under Head’s theory, the United Nations would then send in peacekeeping troops to try to quell the violence and that’s where he would draw the line. He vowed to stand in front of the county’s armored vehicle and stare down the U.N. troops if that happens.

“And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him, I said, ‘You gonna back me?’” the judge said. “He said, ‘Yeah, I’ll back you.’ Well, I don’t want a bunch of rookies back there. I want trained, equipped, seasoned veteran officers to back me.”

// posted by montag @ 5:10 PM 1 Comments

There’s something trying about an unforgiving man suddenly in need of forgiveness.

Yet Todd Akin is right. He shouldn’t have to get out of the United States Senate race in Missouri simply for saying what he believes. He reflects a severe stance on abortion that many in his party embrace, including the new vice presidential candidate.

“I talk about one word, one sentence, one day out of place, and, all of a sudden, the entire establishment turns on you,” Representative Akin complained to the conservative radio talk-show host Dana Loesch on Tuesday as he spurned pleas from Mitt Romney and other G.O.P. big shots to abort his bid. He continued: “They just ran for cover at the first sign of any gunfire, and I think we need to rush to the gunfire.”

He’s right again. Other Republicans are trying to cover up their true identity to get elected. Even as party leaders attempted to lock the crazy uncle in the attic in Missouri, they were doing their own crazy thing down in Tampa, Fla., by reiterating language in their platform calling for a no-exceptions Constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother.

Akin is right in saying this race should be about “who we are as a people.”

It should also be about who they are. They are people who want to be in your life, deep in your life, even when they say they don’t.

// posted by montag @ 1:26 PM 0 Comments

A deputy editor for the conservative National Review magazine has come to the sexist conclusion that “Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote” because his wealth makes him superior to Barack Obama, “[f]rom an evolutionary point of view.”

“The conventional biological wisdom is that men select mates for fertility, while women select for status — thus the commonness of younger women’s pairing with well-established older men but the rarity of the converse,” Kevin Williamson wrote in the Aug. 27 issue of the magazine. “Age is cruel to women, and subordination is cruel to men.”

“You want off-the-charts status? Check out the curriculum vitae of one Willard M. Romney: $200 million in the bank (and a hell of a lot more if he didn’t give so much away), apex alpha executive, CEO, chairman of the board, governor, bishop, boss of everything he’s ever touched,” he continued, noting that “high-status animals” like Romney tend to have more male offspring.

“Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes,” Williamson asserted.

“From an evolutionary point of view, Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote. All of it. He should get Michelle Obama’s vote,” the deputy editor opined. “Romney’s net worth is more than that of the last eight U.S. presidents combined.”

// posted by montag @ 12:49 PM 0 Comments

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// posted by montag @ 7:13 PM 0 Comments

Rep. Steve King, one of the most staunchly conservative members of the House, was one of the few Republicans who did not strongly condemn Rep. Todd Akin Monday for his remarks regarding pregnancy and rape. King also signaled why — he might agree with parts of Akin’s assertion.

King told an Iowa reporter he’s never heard of a child getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest.

“Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way,” King told KMEG-TV Monday, “and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter.”

A Democratic source flagged King’s praise of Akin in the KMEG interview to TPM. But potentially more controversial for King is his suggestion that pregnancies from statutory rape or incest don’t exist or happen rarely. A 1996 review by the Guttmacher Institute found “at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men.”

// posted by montag @ 5:12 PM 0 Comments

The Republican Party is set to adopt an official platform that calls for “a human life amendment” to the Constitution that would not allow abortion even in cases of rape.

As Republicans were calling for Todd Akin to quit his senate bid after he told KTVI that women could not get pregnant from “legitimate” rape, CNN obtained draft language of the Republican platform that includes a constitutional abortion ban without any exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother.

“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,” the draft says. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

// posted by montag @ 12:02 PM 0 Comments

1. Other absurd Republican contributions to the “rape doesn’t lead to babies” myth. As Anna North reported earlier this year, other Republicans paved the way for Akin’s recent statements. In 1995, Republican Henry Aldridge stated that when a woman is raped, “the juices don’t flow,” and in 1988 another Republican congressman stated that women emit “a certain secretion” that stops pregnancy when they are raped. (Which has led many of us to wonder, which is it, guys? Do these mythical juices flow, or do they stop flowing, when a woman is raped?)

// posted by montag @ 11:24 AM 0 Comments

• Return the Black Hills!
  (Video attached: James Anaya, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples)
• Anpetu Waste! Good Day! Many people have asked us, “Well if you don’t raise enough funds to buy the land at Pe’ Sla? What will you do with the money?” This is an excellent question. Our main focus continues to be purchasing the Pe’ Sla land that is being auctioned off on August 25, 2012. Our contingency plan at this time, is to put the funds towards purchasing and protecting other lands that may also become available at Pe’ Sla or in the sacred Black Hills, such as near Bear Butte, another sacred site that is threatened by ongoing development.
  When someone asked me today, how would I feel if Pe’ Sla were to be bought by a developer, and destroyed, or paved with a road…. I couldn’t talk for awhile – I couldn’t speak – there was a pain in my chest, and I cried….the person on the phone thought I had hung up “Hello, Hello”. “Yes, I am here.” How I would feel? How would you feel if your whole way of life was threatened? If a place that was holy and mysterious was covered up by a parking lot? Bethlehem was an amusement park?
  How would I feel if Pe’ Sla was destroyed? It would be a pain that it is difficult to describe..I suppose because I have not felt it before….. It would only be comparable to another Wounded Knee Massacre… or to having one of my relatives killed in front of me… When we say Mitakuye Oyasin..It is a prayer…it is a way of life. It is not something we just say. We are all related, and Pe’ Sla is our relative and should be treated as such! Hecetu Ye! Sara Jumping Eagle
  
• The Turns Around Wacipi (Pow-Wow) Blanket Dance held this weekend at the home of the Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux Tribes in Poplar, Montana, raised $150 towards the Fight for Pe’ Sla, sacred site fundraising efforts! Pilamaye! Thank you! Mitakuye Oyasin – We are All Related!
  Keep our Oyate (people) in your thoughts and prayers!
  

// posted by montag @ 10:51 AM 0 Comments

Instead of glossing over Mr. Romney’s career as a private equity executive, they will highlight it in convention videos and speeches as the kind of experience that has prepared him to be the economic steward the country needs.

And rather than shy away from Mr. Romney’s faith, as some campaign aides have argued he should, they have decided to embrace it. On the night Mr. Romney will address the convention, a member of the Mormon Church will deliver the invocation. On Sunday, this new approach was apparent as Mr. Romney invited reporters to join him at church services.

The campaign aides are determined to overcome perceptions that Mr. Romney is stiff, aloof and distant.

// posted by montag @ 1:26 PM 0 Comments

So if we add up Mr. Ryan’s specific proposals, we have $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, partially offset by around $1.7 trillion in spending cuts — with the tax cuts, surprise, disproportionately benefiting the top 1 percent, while the spending cuts would primarily come at the expense of low-income families. Over all, the effect would be to increase the deficit by around two and a half trillion dollars.

Yet Mr. Ryan claims to be a deficit hawk. What’s the basis for that claim?

Well, he says that he would offset his tax cuts by “base broadening,” eliminating enough tax deductions to make up the lost revenue. Which deductions would he eliminate? He refuses to say — and realistically, revenue gain on the scale he claims would be virtually impossible.

At the same time, he asserts that he would make huge further cuts in spending. What would he cut? He refuses to say.

What Mr. Ryan actually offers, then, are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us, but which will turn his overall plan into deficit reduction.

If this sounds like a joke, that’s because it is. Yet Mr. Ryan’s “plan” has been treated with great respect in Washington. He even received an award for fiscal responsibility from three of the leading deficit-scold pressure groups. What’s going on?

// posted by montag @ 1:17 PM 0 Comments

First, it is important to put Jefferson’s statement that “a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing” in its proper context. Jefferson was showing support for the French who were rebelling against the wealthy elite and church that was keeping the population poor and hungry. In fact, Jefferson hated the wealthy and their banks, and in the same letter to James Madison wrote that “man is the only animal which devours his own kind, and I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”

In the Virginia Republican Committee newsletter, there is nothing to imply that protecting Americans from the “prey of the rich on the poor” is the reason for calling for armed rebellion. According to the newsletter, President Obama, is a “political socialist ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized,” and that the only option is “armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November:” If one is confused as to what Republicans consider is a “political socialist ideologue,” the newsletter claims President Obama “shuns biblical praise, handicaps economic ability, disrespects the honor of earned military might,” and that under Obama, “the government is out of control, and this opportunity, must not be forsaken for we shall not have any coarse (sic) but armed revolution.”

// posted by montag @ 12:33 PM 0 Comments

Some months ago, I moved to Kansas. As is required, I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to exchange my driver’s license for a Kansas license, to make record of my new address and to register to vote. In order to make certain I would cover every possibility, I simply grabbed what I call “my identity packet” which contains the following:

My birth certificate
My social security card and my last social security statement that projects my benefits
A passport
Current 1099’s
My current tax return
My insurance policy
My Dependent Care Packet (a notarized, exhaustive packet issued by the military to anyone who will be responsible for the care of military children in the event of disability or death of a soldier)

I have credit cards and debit cards
A current driver’s license and automobile registration
A picture ID issued by the United States Armed Forces

To verify my new address I took mail I had received, since my relocation from:

The utility company
The Telephone company
My rental lease
A registered letter from the Internal Revenue Service

I COULD NOT REGISTER TO VOTE!

// posted by montag @ 12:20 PM 0 Comments

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who decided to prohibit early voting on nights and weekends, is questioning whether or not hours should be adjusted to accommodate lower income and minority counties.

“We shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine”

At the center of the debate is restricting voting hours in heavily Democratic-leaning counties while having a different standard for Republican-leaning counties.

// posted by montag @ 12:07 PM 0 Comments

Ryan turns out, upon closer inspection, not to be a purifying ideologue, but rather a young, power-hungry, ladder-climbing trimmer.

// posted by montag @ 5:45 PM 1 Comments

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

// posted by montag @ 5:00 PM 1 Comments

Goldman had executed and cleared trades for Bayou, and there were questions about how well Goldman supervised the account. On July 30, Goldman paid $20.7 million to roughly 200 Bayou investors in the United States. Those investors, unsecured creditors in a separate Bayou bankruptcy case, were awarded that amount by a securities arbitration panel in June 2010.

It was one of the few bright spots of the Bayou story, but it didn’t last. The same day Goldman paid the investors, the firm filed its own creditor’s claim for the same amount — $20.7 million — in the Bayou bankruptcy. Goldman contended that paying the award had made it, too, a Bayou creditor. If the court agrees, the investors who won their arbitration case — also unsecured creditors of Bayou — will be out of luck.

// posted by montag @ 1:40 PM 0 Comments

Even Catholic bishops, who had to be dragged toward compassion in the pedophilia scandal, were dismayed at how uncompassionate Ryan’s budget was.

Mitt Romney expects his running mate to help deliver the Catholic vote and smooth over any discomfort among Catholics about Mormonism. (This is the first major-party ticket to go Protestant-less.) Yet after Ryan claimed his budget was shaped by his faith, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops deemed it immoral.

“A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons,” the bishops wrote in a letter to Congress.

The Jesuits were even more tart, with one group writing to Ryan that “Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

// posted by montag @ 1:15 PM 0 Comments

The Romney campaign has turned to a strategy of swamping the public with flat-out, blatant lies, one after another, again and again, endlessly and lavishly repeated. They do this because they are making a calculation that it will work! So what is going on? And can democracy survive this assault?...

Here is how it works. Each lie is developed in the right's machine, using something currently in the news to reinforce an ongoing narrative about "liberals." The lie percolates up through a well-worn process where the germ of the story is planted in smaller outlets, and variations of it are tried out until one seems to resonate. Next, larger right-wing media operations pick up the developed "story" and drive it further. It gets amplified on the radio, FOX News and the right's newspapers. Finally the corporate media takes it out to more and more people, covering themselves with the claim they are just "reporting" on a "story" that is "already out there."

One way or another the lie is repeated and repeated and repeated (and repeated) in various forms through various channels that reach various target groups, until it becomes a "truth." Once it has become a "truth" the Romney campaign uses this "truth" to claim Democrats and President Obama are harming the country.

// posted by montag @ 12:20 PM 0 Comments

Drive-ins remain an extremely fragile business. Only 368 remain in the United States, and their numbers are dwindling by two or three a year, according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association. But some survivors, like Mission Tiki, appear to be chugging along just fine — a few are even gaining steam — as a more affordable option to the multiplex, where ticket prices in a big city can run $12.50 or more for adults and $9.50 or more for children (not to mention an extra $3 or so for 3-D films that the drive-ins can’t show).

Mission Tiki, reflecting prices at drive-ins nationwide, charges $7 for adults and $1 for children ages 5 to 9. Younger children are admitted free.

“Don’t forget that you can also bring your own food to a drive-in, which is what we did,” said Kristy Dahlstrom, 23, a marketing assistant, as she sat in her Ford Focus with a friend at Mission Tiki awaiting the comedy “Magic Mike.” Picking up dinner at a McDonald’s drive-through on their way “got us an entire dinner for the price of a single popcorn at the regular theaters,” she said.

// posted by montag @ 1:19 PM 0 Comments

Ryan is the one who likes to catch catfish by sticking his fist into their burrows and dragging them out by the throat. Romney is the one who drove to Canada with his dog strapped to the car roof.

When it comes to the issues, both men are on the same page. Although the page does keep turning and you have to wonder how average voters can cope with all of the confusion.

Fortunately, polls suggest average voters have already decided who they’re going to support and, therefore, have no need whatsoever to try to figure out which page the Romney-Ryan campaign is on.

Practically the only person in America who claims to have no idea who he’s going to vote for is Senator Joseph Lieberman, who recently declared himself absolutely and totally undecided. People, do you think it’s possible that the entire presidential campaign is now being waged just for the benefit of Joseph Lieberman? On the one hand, that’s a real waste of about $1 billion. On the other, it’s exactly what Joseph Lieberman has been waiting for all his life.

// posted by montag @ 1:07 PM 0 Comments

Canadian police on Friday discovered a pair of severed hands, after earlier this week finding a head and foot from what is believed to be a woman’s dismembered body in a Toronto area river.

“We believe they all belong to the same person,” a police spokesman told AFP, adding the remains were several weeks old.

Hikers stumbled upon the foot floating in the Credit River west of Toronto on Wednesday. The nails of the cut-off foot were painted with yellow polish, suggesting the foot belonged to a woman.

Police combed the area and located the head the following day.

Divers and sniffer dogs helped investigators search through Hewick Meadows Park in the suburb of Mississauga, and located a hand on Friday on the banks of the river not far from where the foot had been discovered. The other hand was found downstream.

// posted by montag @ 12:54 PM 0 Comments

One characteristic of being a human is making mistakes whether they are from bad judgment, forgetfulness, or misunderstanding, and only the Christian bible’s Jesus Christ was a perfect man if one subscribes to that ideology. Most Americans would not hold it against a politician if they made mistakes or bad decisions, but when a pattern develops over time, voters should be suspicious. A candidate for the nation’s highest office should be above suspicion if they expect to win the trust and confidence of the people, but as Americans are learning more about Willard Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan, it appears there is a pattern of malfeasance and possible illegal activities that should be a warning that both men are not trustworthy and certainly not suited for the highest offices in the land.

It was less than a week ago that Romney named Paul Ryan as his running mate, and already there are questions about insider trading and omitting information on financial disclosures. Now, Ryan might be excused for inadvertently omitting assets on one year’s disclosure, but apparently he failed to list “between $15,001 and $50,000 in 2010, and between $100,001 and $1 million last year.” Ryan used Romney’s “retroactive” excuse and only included the trust he and his wife inherited from her mother while being vetted by the Romney campaign, and it leaves a suspicious person wondering; if he was not chosen as a running mate, would he have ever listed such a large amount of money of his disclosures?...

It is a stretch to believe anything coming out of the Romney campaign because Willard has lied about his alleged departure date from Bain Capital, and based on SEC filings, he did not leave until well after February 1999. When the SEC filings were exposed, Romney conveniently came up with the “retroactive retirement” story to cover his lies and filings that clearly show he was still in charge at Bain Capital till at least August 2001 and possibly longer.

There were questions this week about whether or not the Romney campaign received donations from foreign sources during his campaign tour adding fuel to questions of his adherence to the law. It is against campaign finance law to accept donations from foreign sources, but without disclosure laws for contributions to super-pacs, it is a difficult crime to prove. In January 2012, the Supreme Court issued an order upholding prohibitions against foreigners making contributions to influence American elections. However, hundreds of foreign corporations already play an integral and legal role by donating to super-pacs and influencing American elections through their subsidiaries. If Romney were not prone to lying, he may not come under suspicion and scrutiny, but like a common criminal, secrecy and deceit are Willard’s modus operandi.

// posted by montag @ 12:34 PM 0 Comments