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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Floppy fists of justice


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Madison, Wisconsin's tradition of protest continues. This time, citizens have constructed a 25-foot tall inflatable balloon of Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, using what the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel describes as $10 worth of drop cloths and duct tape.
They are protesting over allegations made by fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who says Justice Prosser attacked her and put her in a chokehold. Authorities are investigating.
UPDATE: Here are the apparent protesters, building it in their yard.

Bachmann: God - Be Submissive To Husband

Uploaded by  on Jul 7, 2011
2012 Republican presidential hopeful and Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann says she went to law school because her husband gave her permission to. Ana Kasparian and Michael Shure discuss.

Exxon Montana Oil Spill Lies

Uploaded by  on Jul 7, 2011
Exxon Mobil told several lies regarding their oil leak in the Yellowstone River in Montana. Michael Shure explains.

Balloon Launch FAIL - Funny & Original Balloon Release Goes Wrong.



Uploaded by  on Feb 14, 2007
The original Balloon Release Fail video. As seen on TV: Richard & Judy (UK), CNN's News to Me (US) and is about to be shown on Australia TV too.

This is the original video, though it's been copied by various other websites and users. Some websites amusingly but misleadingly say that we were raising money for orphans and that each balloon represents an orphan. The story is not true but kinda funny.

Thanks to Chris Anthony & Alex Davis.

TX Mayor: Buy A Gun (Police Force Laid Off)


Uploaded by  on Jul 7, 2011
The mayor in Alto Texas suggested citizens purchase guns to defend themselves in light of that fact that the town was forced to lay off the entire police force due to budget problems. Ana Kasparian and Michael Shure discuss.

Answer this: Dylan Ratigan



Dylan Ratigan, host of 'The Dylan Ratigan Show' is pictured. | Photo courtesy of MSNBC
Ratigan says he would restructure the national debt if he were president. | CourtesyClose
Each afternoon on “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” its eponymous host brings forth an hourlong, passionate manifesto on the interplay of private and public interests in the United States, be it the global economy, Wall Street or just the political news of the day.
A self-described “advocate for truth-telling” (another Ratigan mantra: “The truth will set you free; but first, it will piss you off”), Ratigan earned his television chops at Bloomberg News and then, in 2003, joined CNBC as its “Fast Money” host. He jumped over to sister network MSNBC in 2008 and is currently at work on a book, set to publish this fall, with a title as blunt as its author: “Greedy Bastards: Corporate Communists, Banksters and the Other Vampires Who Suck America Dry.”



We’re putting his “truth-telling” to the test in POLITICO’s latest “Answer This” interview:
Tell us your favorite joke.
Two cannibals ate a clown; one says to the other, “This taste funny to you?”
When’s the last time you used profanity?
My last commercial break.
How many hours of sleep do you get on average?
Seven to eight. I was an honorary member of Arianna’s 2010 Women’s Sleep Challenge.
Describe your level of ambition.
I believe life’s possibilities are infinite.
You’re president of the United States for enough time to make only one executive decision. What is it?
Global debt restructuring, 50-year bonds for all nations, half a percent interest globally. (Bumper sticker: “50 Years at 50 Basis Points”) Great for everyone except China and the Big Banks.
Since people are living longer and we have to raise the Social Security age, shouldn’t the national debt be paid over a longer life span as well? This would reduce everyone’s monthly costs and free up huge amounts of cash for investment. I’d also end the wars in the Middle East.
What’s a common and accepted practice for Americans nowadays that you think we’ll look back on with regret?
Allowing a small group of giant businesses to finance American politicians, “think tank” academics and government.
What is your favorite body part (on yourself) and why?
My left thumb; it’s double jointed and, as such, unbeatable in thumb wrestling.
What would you attempt to do if you knew that you could not fail?
Jet-pack across the Grand Canyon.
What type of products do you never go cheap on?
Blankets and pillows. I believe if you had nothing else, with a good blanket and pillow, you can live almost anywhere, indoors or out.
Describe a few pet peeves of yours.
Pro-wrestling-style partisan politics.
How often do you Google yourself?
I have a Google alert set up for my name, so I think that means I am technically Googling myself thousands of times a second.
What do you know now that you wish someone had told you 10 years ago?
Buy oil and sell your house.
What childhood event shaped or scarred you the most?
When I was home alone in the Adirondacks when I was 12, a bear came to the house and started going through the garbage cans. The chief of police came and told me to get the fireworks he knew I had been illegally shooting off in the neighborhood. Between risking arrest and getting rid of the bear, I picked the police-authorized fireworks display.
Would you rather … live without music or live without TV?
Live without TV.
…be gossiped about or never talked about at all?
Never talked about at all.
Think of one of your least favorite people in Washington and, without naming him or her, describe what makes that person so unappealing.
People who function in denial and refuse to address the existence of any of the base structural problems in our political system. They and their dependence on money from a few vested interests prevent real debate on energy, health care, education, banking, war, etc.
Let your mother know how much she means to you, in the form of a haiku.
Mom, you’re the greatest.
A lover not a fighter.
A gift to us all.

Poison, meet antidote


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Right Wing Watch posted this bit of anti-gayness today (h/t @ImTheQ). The clip is not supposed to be pro-bullying campaign, maybe, but it sure comes off like one. A room full of kids deciding it's weird to have two dads, and then the teacher throws the storybook about two days away? Ugly.
Much more fun is this kid from the Netherlands singing about his two dads. It's a bigot's worst nightmare.






Chase Gets Man Thrown In Jail For Fraudulent Check. Except The Check Is Legit.

 Banks who needs them, they have given us the shaft at every turn.  Charging for every little item. And the interest rate is bull shit.

Ikenna, a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier's check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery, KING5 reports. The next day, a Friday the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.
By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn't afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier's check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.
All this while the cashier's check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at.
Chase didn't even apologize, not even after a year. A lawyer volunteered to help write a strongly-worded letter requesting damages. After trying hard to get a response, they sent KING 5 a two-sentence reply: "We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We'll be reaching out to the customer."

                                    

cashing Chase check at Chase bank

An Auburn man tries to cash a check at his own bank and winds up in jail. Yet, the KING 5 Investigators have learned the check in question was issued by the very bank that claimed it was a forgery

Why the Republicans Resist Compromise

July 7, 2011, 10:17 AM


The chart that I’m going to show you is one of the more important ones that we’ve presented at FiveThirtyEight in some time. It helps explain a lot of what’s going on in American politics today, from the negotiations over the federal debt ceiling to the Republican presidential primaries. And it’s pretty simple, really, although it took me some time to track down the data.
Here’s what the chart will show: The Republican Party is dependent, to an extent unprecedented in recent political history, on a single ideological group. That group, of course, is conservatives. It isn’t a bad thing to be in favor with conservatives: by some definitions they make up about 40 percent of voters. But the terms ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ are growing closer and closer to being synonyms; fewer and fewer nonconservatives vote Republican, and fewer and fewer Republican voters are not conservative.
The chart, culled from exit poll data, shows the ideological disposition of those people who voted Republican for the House of Representatives in the elections of 1984 through 2010. Until fairly recently, about half of the people who voted Republican for Congress (not all of whom are registered Republicans) identified themselves as conservative, and the other half as moderate or, less commonly, liberal. But lately the ratio has been skewing: in last year’s elections, 67 percent of those who voted Republican said they were conservative, up from 58 percent two years earlier and 48 percent ten years ago.
This might seem counterintuitive. Didn’t the Republicans win a sweeping victory last year? They did, but it had mostly to do with changes in turnout. Whereas in 2008, conservatives made up 34 percent of those who cast ballots, that number shot up to 42 percent last year. Moderates, on the other hand, made up just 38 percent of those who voted in 2010, down from 44 percent in 2008 (the percentage of liberals was barely changed). The 2010 election was the first since exit polls began in 1976 in which a plurality of the voters said they were conservatives rather than moderates.
This was fortunate for Republicans, because they lost moderate voters to Democrats by 13 percentage points (and liberals by 82 percentage points). Had the ideological composition of the electorate been the same in 2010 as in 2008 or 2006, the Republicans and Democrats would have split the popular vote for the House about evenly — but as it was, Republicans won the popular vote for the House by about 7 percentage points and gained 63 seats.
Many of the G.O.P. victories last year were extremely close. I calculate that, had the national popular vote been divided evenly, Democrats would have lost just 27 seats instead of 63. Put differently, the majority of Republican gains last year were probably due to changes in relative turnout rather than people changing their minds about which party’s approach they preferred.
Some care is called for here: Political ideology is not an immutable characteristic, and some people who called themselves conservative in 2010 might have called themselves moderate in 2008. Most polls have found a modest increase in the number of people in the broader electorate (not just those who voted) who say they are conservative.
But this only explains a small part of the difference in 2010. For the rest, we need to look toward the so-called enthusiasm gap.
That gap is commonly understood as the average Republican having been more likely to cast a vote in 2010 than the average Democrat. That’s true as far as it goes. But on top of the gap between Democrats and Republicans, there was a another enthusiasm gap within the Republican party, cleaving conservatives, who were very likely to turn out, from moderate Republicans, who were no more likely to vote than Democrats were.
The data for this assertion comes from a Pew Research poll conducted just a few days before the election. The poll was quite accurate — it predicted a 6-point Republican margin in the popular vote for the House, almost exactly in line with what actually happened.
Pew is among the most transparent polling organizations, and their entire data set for this particular poll is available for public consumption. I looked at the percentage of people from various groups who were given at least 6 points on Pew’s 7-point scale of voting propensity — who I defined as “likely voters.”
Among conservatives who are either registered as Republicans or who lean toward the Republican party, about 3 out of 4 were likely to have voted in 2010, the Pew data indicated. The fraction of likely voters was even higher among those who called themselves “very conservative:” 79 percent.
By contrast, only about half of moderate or liberal Republicans were likely voters, according to Pew’s model. That is about the same as the figure for Democrats generally: — about half of them were likely voters, with little difference among conservative, moderate and liberal Democrats.
So the enthusiasm gap did not so much divide Republicans from Democrats; rather, it divided conservative Republicans from everyone else. According to the Pew data, while 64 percent of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents identify as conservative, the figure rises to 73 percent for those who actually voted in 2010.
This is why Republican politicians find it difficult to compromise on something like the debt ceiling, even when it might seem they havesubstantial incentive to do so. Republicans are still fairly unpopular — only about 40 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the party, which is barely better than their standing in 2006 or 2008 (although Democrats have become significantly less popular since then). As long as conservative Republicans are much more likely to vote than anyone else, the party can fare well despite that unpopularity, as it obviously did in 2010. But it means that Republican members of Congress have a mandate to remain steadfast to the conservatives who are responsible for electing them.
Presidential elections are different: they tend to have a more equivocal turnout. The G.O.P. can turn out its base but it has not converted many other voters to its cause, and President Obama’s approval ratings remain passable although not good. The Republicans will need all their voters to turn out — including their moderates — to be an even-money bet to defeat him.
If a relatively moderate candidate like Mitt Romney is nominated, that probably won’t be a major problem. But there is a significant chance that the party will nominate a someone like Michele Bachmann instead.
Imagine that Ms. Bachmann has won the Iowa caucuses while Mr. Romney has taken the New Hampshire primary, and the nomination is essentially up for grabs between them. As the contest shifts to a key state like Ohio or Pennsylvania, suppose that conservative Republicans split 60-30 in Ms. Bachmann’s favor (with a few voters opting for a hanger-on like Ron Paul), while moderate Republicans go 80-15 for Mr. Romney. Who is going to win?
Turnout would be decisive. If two conservative Republicans cast ballots for every moderate Republican — roughly the ratio in 2008 — Mr. Romney would prevail by a couple of points. But if the turnout looks more like 2010, and there are three conservative Republicans at the polls for every moderate Republican, Ms. Bachmann would win by about six percentage points:
So the presidential race gives Republicans some incentive to engage their moderate voters sooner rather than later — but at the same time, moderate voters are not who elected them to Congress. The poor economy has bought the party some slack, but there is still potential for disaster: Either the nomination goes to someone like Ms. Bachmann, who would have a difficult time winning over moderates and independents, or someone like Mr. Romney wins the nomination but alienates the conservatives along the way.
Is the same kind of phenomenon occurring on the Democratic side? To some extent, yes: Back in 1984, just 26 percent of the people voting Democratic for Congress said they were liberals, but that fraction has now risen to 41 percent.
Nevertheless, moderate Democrats are still the plurality of the party. And there are even a fair number of conservative Democrats — certainly more than there are liberal Republicans — despite the geographical realignment of the parties in the early 1990s, in which many conservative southerners switched allegiance. The Democratic Party is intrinsically more pluralistic than the G.O.P. — a characteristic that may be disadvantageous when it comes to governing, but can give the party an edge in elections.

Liberal Democrats Have Leverage on Debt Deal

JULY 7, 2011, 5:46 PM


Nancy Pelosi hasn’t had very many opportunities to influence policy in the 112th Congress. Republicans have too large a majority, and vote too uniformly on most issues, for Democratic votes in the House to make much difference. Instead, the Democrats’ veto points are in the Senate and in the White House.
But the vote to raise the federal debt limit, which now seems tied inexorably to efforts to reduce the national debt, is one exception. We’ve run through these numbers before, but they’re worth revisiting now that we may be getting closer to a deal.
A vote on a deal is a potential triple whammy for members of Congress. Raising the debt limit, in and of itself, is unpopular. So is cutting or amending popular entitlement programs. The cherry on top are potential tax increases — although since some of the revenue raisers on the table poll reasonably well, that is likely to be more of a problem for Republicans than Democrats.
Perhaps the whole is greater than the sum of the parts for the White House (or perhaps not), which if nothing else would get good press coverage if a grand compromise were struck. But that’s less likely to be true for individual members of Congress.
So rustling up the votes is likely to be challenging — especially for Republicans. I calculate that there are only 106 Republicans, out of 240 total, who reside in safe seats and who are not members of the Tea Party. (The latter group is likely to vote against any compromise on principle.)
After I posted the original analysis, some people objected that it is implausible that John A. Boehner, the speaker of the House, would bring a bill to the floor that a majority of his party’s members were likely to vote against. Maybe so, although Mr. Boehner has a number of unusual or unpalatable options, so I don’t think it can be ruled out.
Suppose, however, that Mr. Boehner were able to get the slimmest possible majority of his conference to vote for the bill. That would require 121 votes. Assuming that members of the Tea Party would not budge, that would require his tapping roughly 15 Republicans whose districts might be vulnerable.
Ah, but there is a potential saving grace: redistricting. It’s unclear whether redistricting will benefit Democrats or Republicans overall. But one thing it almost certainly will do is take some of the Republicans in relatively vulnerable seats and put them in relatively safe ones. My original analysis had not accounted for that. This gets a little tricky, because some of the members who might benefit from redistricting may not know it yet, and since a few will move in the opposite direction.
But this does give Mr. Boehner some extra wiggle room. He might also be able to pick up a few votes from members who are planning to retire but have not announced it yet, or those like Representative Peter T. King of Long Island who come from districts where the financial sector is a major employer and thus would have a special incentive to keep the markets happy.
Still, even if Mr. Boehner gets his 121 votes, he’d still need help from 96 Democrats for the bill to pass. Almost certain to be off the table are the votes of the 26 Democrats who I calculate are still in vulnerable districts: having weathered 2010’s perfect storm, why would they rock the boat now? That leaves 166 Democrats to pick from.
But many of those Democrats are liberals. About 80 of them, in fact, are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the most liberal caucus in the Congress. At a bare minimum, about a dozen of those Democrats would have to come along. And potentially quite a few more if the deal also lost some votes among moderate Democrats or if Mr. Boehner proceeded despite not having a majority of his own caucus.
Hence Ms. Pelosi, a former member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and its current co-chairs, Representatives Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, are big players in the negotiation. If they were to whip votes against a deal, it would have a lot of trouble passing.
True, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is not known to be as disciplined as other constituencies in the Congress. And the White House would be working the other end of the phones, trying to cajole or threaten them into a yea vote.
Nevertheless, as you read accounts of the various proposals that are being floated, keep in mind that the views of liberal Democrats are far more than a token issue. That is why, for instance, I thought yesterday’s rumor — tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy would be closed in exchange for temporary cuts to the payroll tax — was more plausible than today’s, which is of a bigger deal that would include changes to programs like Social Security.
The payroll tax cut could be a winner all-around. It’s something most liberal Democrats would like, particularly if it comes on the employee side rather than the employer side or if it isspecifically tied to job creation. It is one of the few vehicles available to Mr. Obama to provide for economic stimulus. And, given that the accounting in any deal is likely to be fuzzy, it might give Republicans some cover to say they had voted for tax reform rather than a net tax increase.
It would also mean less deficit reduction than there otherwise would be. But given the diverse constituencies that need to come together to get a deal done, perhaps a smaller deal is more likely than a bigger one.