February 2012
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Conservatives Create White Victimhood
“Despite the fact that white people control almost every major social, financial, economic, and political institution in the United States, the theme of white oppression by minorities is popular in the age of Obama. And while reasonable conservatives may not believe they will literally be made slaves like the children on the ship, there does appear to be a sense on the Right that...
“Santorum doesn’t even need to run negatives against Romney, which is...”
– GOP strategist Alex Castellanos, quoted by The Hill.
The GOP primary is the “flavor of the week” and when Santorum is the flavor, watch out!
Mortgage Settlement Reached: A Beginning, Not an...
It’s finally here: a massive settlement, worth $25 billion, with five major banks over mortgage fraud abuses. The federal government and forty-nine state attorneys general—Oklahoma’s Scott Pruitt wouldn’t sign on because he doesn’t think banks should see any penalty—reached the agreement with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Ally Financial and Citigroup last night, and the deal...
“The financial services industry went from having a 19 percent share of America’s...”
– Matt Taibbi (via azspot)
“One Planned Parenthood clinic does more in a day to prevent abortions than the...”
– Helen Philpot (via feminishblog)
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“There is not exactly Romney-mania right now.”
– Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), quoted by Politico, point out that Romney must shore up his weaknesses with the GOP base.
The more people know about Romney, the less they like him.
Obama's "Controversial" Birth Control Rule On...
President Barack Obama’s decision to require most employers to cover birth control and insurers to offer it at no cost has created a firestorm of controversy. But the central mandate—that most employers have to cover preventative care for women—has been law for over a decade. This point has been completely lost in the current controversy, as Republican presidential candidates and...
NEW STUDY: "Birth and abortion rates among U.S....
think-progress:
The teen abortion rate in 2008 dropped to the lowest rate seen since 1972 at 17.8 per 1,000 teen girls and women, the analysis found, and was down 59 percent from 1988 when the abortion rate peaked at 43.5 per 1,000 teen women. — The Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit sexual health research group
“Is this hypocritical of Obama? For the thousandth time, no, no, no. The playing...”
– Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, on SuperPACs post-Citizens United.
The Incredibly Shrinking Tim Pawlenty
His endorsement delivered nothing. Romney finished third in Minnesota — a distant third, no less. So if Romney wins the nomination, will anybody say that choosing Pawlenty for veep will turn Minnesota from Democratic blue to Republican red? Not after what just happened.
T-Paw is yet another GOP candidate with diminishing talents.
“I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will...”
– Adlai Stevenson, 1952 campaign speech. He lost to Eisenhower, twice.
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Ninth Circuit to 7 Million California Voters: You...
“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California,” the court said.
“Whatever your perspective on how likely Mitt Romney was to lose the Republican...”
– Nate Silver
The GOP Will Cling To Their Culture Wars
First Read:
“You know the economy must be improving when cultural and social issues come roaring back into the national spotlight. Just days after the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3%, we’ve seen a raging debate over funding to Planned Parenthood, a skirmish between the Obama administration and Catholic Church over contraception, and now the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals...
“The central lesson of the last 30 years is that a widening income gap and a more...”
– Stewart Lansley, Why economic inequality leads to collapse
(via solitaryforager)
Rove Forgets His Boss, Bush, Started $4 Billion...
Karl Rove’s credibility left the building a long, long time ago. Amid his attacks on the “Halftime In America” Chrysler ad, here is some context:
“Chrysler nearly collapsed in late 2008 under private equity ownership. Bush agreed to a $4 billion bailout of the company. …
Trying to eschew Bush’s role in order to tarnish Obama’s results is fundamentally...
Do We Discriminate Against Single People?
Some argue the system is stacked against them:
[Unmarried people] pay more for health and car insurance than married people do. They don’t get the same kind of tax breaks. Co-op boards, mortgage brokers, and landlords often pass them over. So do the employers with the power to promote them. …
“Married people had a supermajority of political power at the time the [current tax] rules were...
Matthew Yglesias: Europe's Elites Haven't Saved... →
theworldisconfused:
Money quote: While Europe’s leaders haven’t hit upon a way to forestall a years-long span of catastrophically high unemployment and falling living standards, they do appear to be really really really really committed to saving banks. This kind of ‘bankers and rich people first’ approach to coping with an emergency is terrible for the average European, but it does take care of...
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For a guy who hasn’t voted Democrat in his life...
[Clint] Eastwood admits that the only time he ever considered breaking his streak of Republican votes was for independent Ross Perot in 1992.
The Right Wing is upset about a lifelong Republican making a car commercial.
"Finance became a self-justification"
Paul Woolley, who founded a center at the London School of Economics that studies “capital market dysfunctionality,” put it even more bluntly to the New Yorker in 2010.
“Why on earth should finance be the biggest and most highly paid industry when it’s just a utility, like sewage or gas?” he said.
“There’s no other industry where you could get paid so much for doing so...”
– An ex-trader for Lehman Brothers told New York Magazine as part of a piece about the changing dynamics of Wall Street.
“I’m going to just keep on doing is plodding away, very persistent. And you...”
– President Obama, in a pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer.
tmad40blue asked: Is there LAC merch? :D
“… the left and right aren’t symmetric. People of all persuasions lie; but...”
– Paul Krugman, NYT, Lies, Damned Lies, And Politics
The “both sides do it” fallacy of equivalences has to end.
The GOP response to facts regarding a better-than-expected jobs report; a renewed focus on inequality, driven both by CBO research and by the gift of Mitt Romney’s...
For the first time, smart phone sales trump PC...
bitshare:
An interesting statistic came up with the Canalys Quarter 4 - 2011 report on smart phone and PC sales. Canalys reports that for the first time, smart phone sales have overtaken PC sales.
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“I don’t even think Newt knows what he’s talking about at this point. His...”
– Gibberish Man (via ryking)
“It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more...”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Although Gingrich attacks Romney for what he’s done to US workers, there’s an...”
– Mitt Romney, ‘welfare queen’ - Opinion - Al Jazeera English (via progressivefriends)