March 2012
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McConnell to skip healthcare reform repeal votes... →
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) told his colleagues this week that he does not want to vote again on repealing President Obama’s healthcare reform law until after the November elections.
The GOP’s game plan on healthcare is politically sensitive because influential conservative activists have called for repeated votes on repeal. But many Republicans on Capitol Hill want to...
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Shirley Sherrod's lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart... →
shihtzuman:
A defamation lawsuit a former Agriculture Department employee filed against conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart is likely to continue despite Breitbart’s unexpected death on Wednesday night at age 43.
Reblog if you're 20 or older, I feel so old around...
abaldwin360:
loser-guy:
bacon-beer-and-boobs:
invisiblelad:
fantasticdoctorwho:
badwolfonbakerstreet:
aligningplanets:
pushingcrazies:
consulting-anglophile:
britishrandominsanity:
saraheatsgreen:
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20, over here.
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18. But I’m not a weight loss blog!
33. Holy crap this is depressing.
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I win so far! 34
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60 I win!
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Second set of released Palin emails →
February 23, 2012 - 5:10 pm
The state of Alaska on Thursday released more than 17,000 state e-mails of former Gov. Sarah Palin, covering her final months in office. In an effort to make them available as quickly as possible, we’re posting them via DocumentCloud as they were released on disc by the state, with identifying numbers for each document, rather than titles. They were...
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Catholic Monti moves to end Italy Church tax... →
Prime Minister Mario Monti, a Catholic crusading to put Italy’s economy in order by ending entrenched privileges such as tax breaks, is striking against an unlikely target - his own Church.
Monti’s government issued a statement on Wednesday night saying it had informed the European Commission that it would pass a law ending the Church’s exemption from local property taxes on...
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Watchsoupsoup:
I’ve been talking bout decentralized social networks for awhile, here’s a documentary about exactly that.
Free The Network, coming soon to Motherboard on Vice
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jpegartifacts:
My friend, who is an environmental analyst, visited the tar sands of Canada, which would be the source of the Keystone Pipeline, and he remarked on two things:
the pyramids of sulfur made out of the post-extraction refuse
the area of forest which has been clearcut, which equals the area of Florida
Makes me sick to think about this destruction….
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USA.gov: Participate in the National Consumer... →
usagov:
We will host a National Consumer Protection Week question and answer session on Tuesday, March 6 at 2pm EST.
Experts from USA.gov and the Federal Trade Commission will be on hand to answer your consumer-related questions and and provide government resources that can help. So whether you have questions about how to file a complaint with a company or how to learn about the latest...
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Ten Commandments: Georgia bill would allow display... →
Rather predictably, the group Americans United For Separation of Church and State is raising red flags about the bill, and sending a pretty clear message to Georgia lawmakers:
Thou shalt not feign surprise when thou art served with a lawsuit.
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The Republicans War Against Women →
In November 2010, angry conservatives went to the polls, while angry Democrats stayed at home. And the end result was that the Republican Party (and their Tea Party cohorts) took control of the House of Representatives.
Giving the Republicans the keys to the House, was like giving your teenage son the keys to your sports car!
Instead of putting America back to work (like they promised),...
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Birth control exemption bill, the ‘Blunt... →
By a largely party-line vote, the Senate on Thursday blocked a move to exempt virtually any employer with moral objections from the Obama administration’s controversial birth control health coverage rule.
The measure, an amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to a highway funding bill, was tabled—and therefore effectively killed—by a vote of 51 to 48.
One step in a sane direction. ...
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“No, you can’t deny women their basic rights and pretend it’s about your...”
– President Barack Obama (via destroythegop)
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Up to 1.5 million people owe their jobs to the... →
jonathan-cunningham:
A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimates that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) increased the number of people employed by between 300,000 and 2 million jobs in December.[1] In other words, between 300,000 and 2 million people employed in December owed their jobs to the Recovery Act. This estimate, by Congress’ non-partisan economic and...
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Wisconsin Republicans Propose Bill to Identify... →
vinegarwilliams:
wisconsinforward:
A new bill proposed by Republican would require the Wisconsin Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to “emphasize that non-marital parenthood is a contributing factor to child abuse.”
The entire bill can be found here.
Nope. Fuck that rule. Let’s take it down.
No birth control
No abortion
Criminalize single parenthood
More kids in Fostercare...
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Barack Obama Just Went After The Wealthy... →
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Chief U.S. District Judge sends racially charged... →
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Wednesday admitted to sending a racially charged email about President Barack Obama from his courthouse chambers.
Cebull, of Billings, was nominated by former President George W. Bush and received his commission in 2001 and has served as chief judge for the District of Montana since 2008.
[…]
The subject line of the email, which Cebull...
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Blunt 'conscience' amendment dominating U.S.... →
The politically explosive legislation engineered by U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt has halted progress on the nation’s multi-billion highway bill, galvanized many religious groups and provided fodder for Democrats seeking campaign cash from women.
“It’s time to end Republicans’ unrelenting war on women,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a fundraising...
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Blunt Amendment “Restores” Something – Just Not... →
One of the claims that supporters of the Blunt Amendment have been making is that it would “restore conscience rights” that existed before the health care reform law. Let’s apply some of what I learned in law school about legislative language and take a look at the dictionary definition meaning of “restore.” “Restore” means “to give something back” or “to return something to previous...
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“One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is likely a clinical psychopath,...”
– One Out Of Every Ten Wall Street Employees Is A Psychopath, Say Researchers (via ronmarks)
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GOP divided on birth control? →
So Senate Dems are set to force a high-profile vote tomorrow on the controversial Blunt amendment, which would allow employers and insurers to deny coverage for health care services they deem morally objectionable. Dems have been hammering GOPers on it for weeks, and hope to use it against them in this year’s Senate races, to peel off independents and win over women, both key swing...
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Jim Messina Pushes Koch Brothers to Disclose... →
Mr. Messina challenged Philip Ellender, Koch’s president for government and public affairs, to see to it that the conservative anti-Obama group Americans for Prosperity discloses its donors — to prove Koch’s contention that it is financed by tens of thousands of grass-roots Americans, not a few oilmen and special interests, as the Obama campaign has suggested.
“It is a cynical stretch to...
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Women’s PAC formed following abortion legislation →
keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:
A group of women has formed a new political action committee to recruit and support candidates to defeat elected officials who back the ultrasound and so-called personhood bills.
Women’s Strike Force, which boasts several former elected officials, formed after Virginia spent last week in national headlines for its attempt to require women to undergo mandatory...
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Activate the Mechanism!: Texas TBagger Doctor... →
abaldwin360:
Daily Kos - A Texas doctor was accused Tuesday in the largest Medicare fraud case in US history, with federal prosecutors charging him with scamming the government with $375 million in phony billings.
Justice Department officials announced that Dr. Jacques Roy was arrested in Texas and faces life in prison as well as fines of more than $250,000 if convicted.
The Los Angeles...
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“Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans...”
–
Sherman Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and filmmaker. His book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fist Fight in Heaven,” was on the banned curriculum of the Mexican American Studies Program.
http://progressive.org/sherman-alexie
(via chicanainchoos)
Sherman Alexie is one of my...
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South Dakota House passes bill revising legal... →
The South Dakota House has approved a bill that would revise the state’s legal definition of domestic abuse.
By revising the definition to include violence between family members or partners of the opposite sex in an intimate relationship, prosecutors can’t press charges against college roommates who fight in their shared living space, lawmakers say.
Sen. Peggy Gibson says the...
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Looking Back With Shrillness - NYTimes.com →
silas216:
Brad DeLong notes that the GOP we now see in the primaries has been building for a couple of decades; I can’t help thinking of my own decade-plus in the journalistic trenches.
Early on in my tenure at the Times, I felt I had no choice but to point out the inconvenient truth that the official line of the commentariat was all wrong. George W. Bush was not a nice, blunt, honest guy who...
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and another thing ...: How Republicans Move the... →
liberalsarecool:
Rick Pearlstein:
Republicans “plant their flag in an uncompromising position, and wait for the world to come around - which, quite often, it eventually does. This is because in a media environment based on the ideology of ‘balance,’ in which anything one of the parties insists upon must be given equal weight to whatever the other party says back, the party that...
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source2012:
Pro-Gingrich #superPAC reports spending $1.9M in four Super Tuesday states: OH, TN, OK and GA. bit.ly/AeRDQP #source2012
— iWatch News (@iWatch) February 29, 2012
Looks like that anticipated donation from Sheldon Adelson came through for Winning Our Future: The group has just reported spending a whopping $1.9 million supporting Gingrich. The Los Angeles Times’ Matea Gold and...
February 2012
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“Our system, as any historian will tell you, was built by men who hated parties...”
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Ezra Klein, discussing Olympia Snowe and Ben Nelson’s retirement. Read it.
I’ve never discussed this much here, but I am actually a big believer in the Parliamentary system of representative democracy. I think our Constitutional Republic has certain fatal flaws that either must be reformed to...
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University of Virginia Football Player Goes On... →
cognitivedissonance:
Joseph Williams moved more than 30 times as a child, living in homeless shelters, church basements, and the homes of family friends. Now Williams, a junior safety on the University of Virginia football team, is taking up a cause supporting university workers who are barely making enough to get by.
Williams is one of 18 Virginia students participating in a hunger strike —...
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Organization Moves Conference Because of Georgia’s... →
The American Educational Research Association has moved its 2013 annual meeting from Atlanta to San Francisco because of HB 87, Georgia’s harmful immigration law, which is modeled after Arizona’s SB 1070.
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“When you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore...”
– Jamie Raskin - who is now a senator in Maryland and served as floor manager of the recently passed bill allowing same sex marriage. (via abaldwin360)
BOOM.
(via tehblackbirdisincognito)
EFFING A, MAN. THIS. (via spastasmagoria)
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“I’ll get us that oil from Canada that we deserve.”
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Mitt Romney, during his victory speech Tuesday night. WTF? (via politicalcanuck)
Welp, we’re apparently getting invaded.
(via jakke)
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The American Bear: On Beltway Disdain for... →
theamericanbear:
From Michael Hastings (writing at Rolling Stone):
Predictably, it’s not just intel and government officials (both current and former) that have displayed their distaste for Assange. After WikiLeaks announced on Sunday that they would begin publishing the Stratfor emails, the derision rained down from the usual suspects in the Beltway media. A typical response: one editor...
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Wyoming narrowly defeats measure to prepare for... →
silas216:
Aww, man.
I really wanted to see where they were going to park that brand new aircraft carrier.
I think we were all looking forward to that.
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“I don’t think young people are leaving the church in record numbers just because...”
– Don’t Blame College for Young People Leaving the Church - Tim King | God’s Politics Blog | Sojourners (via apsies)
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Anti-Personhood bill rally coverage from OU Daily... →
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Activate the Mechanism!: The Five Best Quotes in... →
abaldwin360:
Bloomberg’s Max Abelson, who’s carved out a fantastic beat providing Wall Street types with lengths of hangman’s rope, has anotherfantastic story today, this time about the tragic lives of bankers dealing with smaller bonus checks. (Spoiler alert: some of them have to do their dishes by hand.)
It’s a harrowing tale of discounted salmon and supermarket circulars, and you can and...