Headline/ Story of the Day

"Hungry Jack syrup truck spills onto Buttermilk Pike"

Oh, the viscosity!

Good Time Picture of the Day

Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Norichika Aoki heads home after hitting the game winning homer in the 10th inning -- and his second of the day -- to give the Brewers a 4 - 3 win over the Chicago Cubs yesterday. He needs to cheer up a little.
(AP photo/Tom Lynn)

150 Days From Today

Charles P. Pierce reminds us:

"It is not much of a landmark, but, in 150 days, we’re going to be electing ourselves a president again. We will do so in a political world made wholly different by the power of anonymous corporate money and by the ongoing descent of the Republican party into the kind of madness from which there seems to be no real escape. The airwaves are going to be full of slander and calumny. Imaginary, but profitable, hobgoblins will stalk the land, howling through 10,000 thirty-second spots. The whole event will take place within the sprawling corporate Id of the country. In 150 days, we’ll be electing ourselves a president again, and the story this year is the money, and the money is the only story, and everything else is a puppet show."

Rethuglican sociopaths, plutocrat money flooding campaigns, corporate Dems (yo, Mayor Booker) backstabbing Obama, all played out in front of an audience of low-information, easily-swayed voters with 5-second attention spans. We can hardly wait as the depressing spectacle unfolds.

Mittens' Mendacity, Cont'd.

It's Friday, so it's time for the Maddow Blog's Steve Benen to chronicle the fibs, half-truths and outright lies of Rethuglican nominee-to-be Willard "Mall Cop" Romney. Here's a sampling:

4. In the same speech, Romney said the Affordable Care Act includes a "job-killing mandate."
The individual mandate in the law does not undermine job creation, and more importantly, Romney championed the same mandate policy for years....

12. In St. Louis, Romney claimed the Recovery Act "left us with record unemployment." Actually, millions of Americans owe their jobs to the Recovery Act, and the unemployment rate isn't at a "record" high -- it's lower now than when Obama took office, and it didn't get as high as it did in Reagan's first term....

15. Romney went on to say, "For a family watching their house being sold at foreclosure ... the results are just as devastating." Romney has no intention of intervening to stop foreclosures.

The lies keep coming.

Weekend Song

With our minds still somewhat on Wisconsin, we thought we'd offer a song by a band that hails from those parts, Bon Iver. Have a great weekend.

Teabagger Cartoon of the Day

(click to enlarge)


(Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Attacking Mittens' "Job Creator" Record

We've noted before that most of the Beltway media is running with Rethuglican talking points that the attacks on weird Willard "Mendacious Mittens" Romney's claim to have created jobs in his private equity days is somehow an attack on (pick one) private equity / Bain Capital / free enterprise. Moreover, the Rethugs and their media allies would have us believe that the attacks are not working. The problem is, much to their chagrin, they are working.

The Los Angeles Times has an article that points out that in Ohio, for example, 47% of likely voters believe that private equity firms are after profits for their investors, usually at the cost of employee pensions and jobs. A somewhat similar result occurred with voters in Florida.

So while the Rethugs and the Beltway media want the Dems to fight with one arm behind their back, the Dems should stay on the offensive and continue to demonstrate the essential dishonesty in Mendacious Mittens' central campaign claim to have been a "job creator."

Quote of the Day

"[Billionaires] Bob Perry, Foster Friess, David Koch. . .got what they paid for, a big defeat for organized labor, a symbolic defeat for Democrats, and a victory for a world view in which unions, government regulation, and taxation are all nuisances that should be stamped out so that Ayn Rand vulture capitalism can triumph unimpeded." -- Frank Rich in his on-line column in New York Magazine.

Let's be clear: when Koch Industries manager / Wisconsin Gov. Scott "Divide and Conquer" Walker attacked state employee unions, he wasn't just after their pensions or the amounts they pay for their health care to balance the state budget. He was going after a main source of Dem financial support and volunteers. They want a one-party state and Nation ultimately, one in which they rule like the robber barons of the 1800s.

Uniformly Weird

Much has been made of the underlying weirdness of bully barber and android Willard "Corporations Are People" Romney: the family dog on the car roof, the "trees are the right height" - type comments, the examples go on. But this story is particularly unsettling: as a Stanford college freshman, weird Willard liked to dress up in a Michigan State Trooper uniform and impersonate a police officer in public. Robin Madden, a classmate of the Weird One, gave this account:

"Said Madden in a recent interview, 'He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,' George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. 'He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.' In Madden’s recollection, confirmed by his wife Susan, who also attended Stanford during those years, 'we thought it was all pretty weird. We all thought, Wow, that’s pretty creepy. And after that, we didn’t have much interaction with him.'”

We'll leave it to the psychologists to analyze Willard's dress up habit and posing as a power figure. As the article points out, impersonating a police officer carries criminal penalties, depending on the State and on the number of violations. It's also noteworthy that Willard was a vocal supporter of the Vietnam War at the time, but decided that he preferred police uniforms to military ones, and that someone else should fight for him.

(photo: A young Willard places a toy gun under his chin. People want this guy for President?)

They're Just Not That Into You, Willard

Billboard placed by the Clark County, Nev., Republican Party. (The Bush comparison isn't meant to be a compliment, of course.)

(via Daily Kos)

Mid-Week Tico Song

To continue our eclectic music trend of late, here's renowned Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia playing the familiar Tico-Tico. The finger style (picados) never ceases to amaze for its intricacy and precision. Hat tip to AZ Gail for introducing us to Senor de Lucia.

Shame

Wisconsin voters missed an opportunity to tell the nation that "my way or the highway" politics, fueled by massive amounts of money from out-of-state interests, won't work. Instead, the failed recall of Koch puppet and teabagger poster boy Scott "Divide and Conquer" Walker will embolden the wingnuts to go all out in shifting more power from the middle class to the plutocrats that manipulate them. (The only bright spot? Dems retook control of the State Senate with a win by Racine Dem John Lehman over a Rethug incumbent). So, here's our "Hall of Shame" for the recall:

1. Dirty money. Scottie outspent his Dem opponent, Tom Barrett, by a 10 to 1 margin. The Democratic National Committee largely declined to open its purse to help unseat Scottie, and Dems don't have big industrialist polluters like the Koch brothers backing them.

2. Dem incompetence. Instead of quickly uniting behind a credible candidate (say retiring Sen. Herb Kohl, or former Sen. Russ Feingold) the Dems waged a costly primary, with the unions supporting one candidate and the national party supporting another. Then they allowed themselves a mere 30 days to turn their attention to Scottie. Can these people even run a two-car funeral?

3. The Obama campaign. You would think that a Dem victory in the recall would give the President's reelection campaign momentum in a key battleground state. But timidity won out, and neither the President nor the Vice President showed up to support Barrett. (Props, however, to Bill Clinton, who did show up on behalf of Barrett). It's OK to lose as long as you put up a good fight, but when you lose after running away, that's pathetic.

Speaking of pathetic:

It's Why We Call Them Rethugs - Base Edition

From Pew Research Center, for anyone who doesn't think the Ayn Rand objectivist philosophy lies firmly at the core of the Rethuglican/ New Confederate Party "thinking," here's what the sociopathic Rethug base has to say:

"Just 40% of Republicans agree that 'It is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves,' down 18 points since 2007. In three surveys during the George W. Bush administration, no fewer than half of Republicans said the government had a responsibility to care for those unable to care for themselves. In 1987, during the Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62% expressed this view."

Forty years of Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist, forty years of "The government takes your hard-earned money and wastes it on people who don't produce" and "Shrink government so that you can drown it in a bathtub" -- all have taken their toll. Remember the Rethug crowd that cheered when Ron Paul basically said at a candidates debate this year that if someone can't pay for hospitalization, let 'em die?

You can be sure these are the same nihilist dimbulbs who scream "Get your government hands off my Medicare!"

Al Qaeda #2 Killed?

U.S. officials are trying to confirm whether a Predator drone attack on a compound in North Waziristan killed al Qaeda's second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi. If so, it would be a severe blow to the terrorist organization, which has lost dozens of its leaders since President Obama focused U.S. resources on eliminating al Qaeda.

UPDATE: They got him.

It's in light of stories like this that we had to laugh when we saw foreign policy genius Willard "Russians Are The #1 Enemy" Romney give a grade of "F" to President Obama's foreign policy achievements. Must stand for "Fine."

Recall Walker Cartoon of the Day

(click to enlarge)

(Stuart Carlson, via gocomics.com)

It's Recall Walker day in Wisconsin. Show them that out-of-state money from wealthy wingnuts can't buy your State, and that you won't elect someone under criminal investigation.