destroythegop: Full Context: “The reason why this is relevant to the campaign is that my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. He’s not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He’s saying, I’m a business guy, and I know how to fix it, and this is his business. But when you’re President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who get laid off, and how are we paying for their retraining. Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so they can attract new businesses. Your job as President is to think about how do we set up an equitable tax system so that everybody’s paying their fair share, that allows us then to invest in science, and technology, and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.” — President Barack Obama, in response to a question about whether Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital is relevant to the 2012 campaign video The real tell? The President also said this about Romney’s Vulture Capitalist record: “This is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about.” You bet your ass it will be about Romney’s record at Bain — and his 47th-in-the-nation job creation record while Massachusetts Governor — no matter how much his paid propagandists shriek, “Distraction!”

destroythegop:

Full Context:

“The reason why this is relevant to the campaign is that my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. He’s not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He’s saying, I’m a business guy, and I know how to fix it, and this is his business.

But when you’re President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who get laid off, and how are we paying for their retraining. Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so they can attract new businesses. Your job as President is to think about how do we set up an equitable tax system so that everybody’s paying their fair share, that allows us then to invest in science, and technology, and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.”

— President Barack Obama, in response to a question about whether Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital is relevant to the 2012 campaign

video

The real tell? The President also said this about Romney’s Vulture Capitalist record:

“This is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about.”

You bet your ass it will be about Romney’s record at Bain — and his 47th-in-the-nation job creation record while Massachusetts Governor — no matter how much his paid propagandists shriek, “Distraction!”

phroyd

I figured a way out — a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers. But I couldn’t get it passed through Congress. Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 miles long. Put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. Have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed ‘em, and– And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce.
North Carolina pastor Charles Worley (via think-progress)

thinkprogress.org

Meet Your Hedge Fund Landlord How subprime player Carrington Investments is milking a housing crisis it helped create. Back before the housing bubble burst, sending America’s economy into a tailspin, hedge fund manager and former CitiGroup banker Bruce Rose was marketing himself as the guy who single-handedly invented subprime mortgage-backed securities. Indeed, Carrington Investment Partners, part of a cluster of related companies founded by Rose, competed with the big investment banks to package and sell mortgage debt to investors. Now Rose and his companies are positioning themselves to feed off the tail end of the meltdown their business practices helped create, joining a foreclosure-to-rental trend that experts say could hurt homeowners even more.

Meet Your Hedge Fund Landlord

How subprime player Carrington Investments is milking a housing crisis it helped create.

Back before the housing bubble burst, sending America’s economy into a tailspin, hedge fund manager and former CitiGroup banker Bruce Rose was marketing himself as the guy who single-handedly invented subprime mortgage-backed securities. Indeed, Carrington Investment Partners, part of a cluster of related companies founded by Rose, competed with the big investment banks to package and sell mortgage debt to investors. Now Rose and his companies are positioning themselves to feed off the tail end of the meltdown their business practices helped create, joining a foreclosure-to-rental trend that experts say could hurt homeowners even more.

Mother Jones

Romney stands by himself, re: Reverend Wright attacks. Sometimes RMoney makes such little sense that, out of compassion, you hope he’s lying.

Romney stands by himself, re: Reverend Wright attacks.

Sometimes RMoney makes such little sense that, out of compassion, you hope he’s lying.

thinkprogress.org

The video on how the middle class, not the rich, create jobs that TED Talks didn’t want you to see.

thinkprogress.org

Here’s the proof that conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe’s latest video on “voter fraud” is a fraud itself. This is the naturalization certificate of one of two men he accused of voting as a “non citizen,” who are actually citizens.

Here’s the proof that conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe’s latest video on “voter fraud” is a fraud itself.

This is the naturalization certificate of one of two men he accused of voting as a “non citizen,” who are actually citizens.

thinkprogress.org

Is the Filibuster Unconstitutional? The Constitution prescribed six instances in which Congress would require more than a majority vote: impeaching the president, expelling members, overriding a presidential veto of a bill or order, ratifying treaties and amending the Constitution. And as Bondurant writes, “The Framers were aware of the established rule of construction, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, and that by adopting these six exceptions to the principle of majority rule, they were excluding all other exceptions.” By contrast, in the Bill of Rights, the Founders were careful to state that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” That majority vote played into another principle, as well: the “finely wrought” compromise over proper representation. At the time of the country’s founding, seven of the 13 states, representing 27 percent of the population, could command a majority in the Senate. Today, with the filibuster, 21 of the 50 states, representing 11 percent of the population, can muster the 41 votes to stop a majority in the Senate. “The supermajority vote requirement,” Bondurant argues, thus “upsets the Great Compromise’s carefully crafted balance between the large states and the small states.” In 1892, in United States v. Ballin, the Court held that while “the Constitution empowers each house to determine its rules of proceedings,” it “may not by its rules ignore constitutional restraints or violate fundamental rights.” And while some may argue that the filibuster has, at this point, been around for well over a century, the Supreme Court has previously held that the fact that “an unconstitutional action has been taken before surely does not render that same action any less unconstitutional at a later date.”

Is the Filibuster Unconstitutional?

The Constitution prescribed six instances in which Congress would require more than a majority vote: impeaching the president, expelling members, overriding a presidential veto of a bill or order, ratifying treaties and amending the Constitution. And as Bondurant writes, “The Framers were aware of the established rule of construction, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, and that by adopting these six exceptions to the principle of majority rule, they were excluding all other exceptions.” By contrast, in the Bill of Rights, the Founders were careful to state that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

That majority vote played into another principle, as well: the “finely wrought” compromise over proper representation. At the time of the country’s founding, seven of the 13 states, representing 27 percent of the population, could command a majority in the Senate. Today, with the filibuster, 21 of the 50 states, representing 11 percent of the population, can muster the 41 votes to stop a majority in the Senate. “The supermajority vote requirement,” Bondurant argues, thus “upsets the Great Compromise’s carefully crafted balance between the large states and the small states.”

In 1892, in United States v. Ballin, the Court held that while “the Constitution empowers each house to determine its rules of proceedings,” it “may not by its rules ignore constitutional restraints or violate fundamental rights.” And while some may argue that the filibuster has, at this point, been around for well over a century, the Supreme Court has previously held that the fact that “an unconstitutional action has been taken before surely does not render that same action any less unconstitutional at a later date.”

flowingdata.com

azspot: Clay Bennett: Deregulation Deregulation? Nonesense. That’s the Freedom Man in his Freedom Truck. That stop sign isn’t the boss of me. I don’t need some bureaucrat deciding for me whether the bridge is out. I make my own choices.

azspot:

Clay Bennett: Deregulation

Deregulation? Nonesense. That’s the Freedom Man in his Freedom Truck. That stop sign isn’t the boss of me. I don’t need some bureaucrat deciding for me whether the bridge is out. I make my own choices.

truthdig.com

barackobama: All the cool kids are doing it. 

barackobama:

All the cool kids are doing it. 

barackobama

The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, who turns 80 next week, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him.

He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark. His desk seemed impossibly far away; Dr. Spitzer suffers from Parkinson’s disease and has trouble walking, sitting, even holding his head upright.

The word he sometimes uses to describe these limitations — pathetic — is the same one that for decades he wielded like an ax to strike down dumb ideas, empty theorizing, and junk studies.

Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.

What to say? The issue of gay marriage was rocking national politics yet again. The California State Legislature was debating a bill to ban the therapy outright as being dangerous. A magazine writer who had been through the therapy as a teenager recently visited his house, to explain how miserably disorienting the experience was.

And he would learn later that a World Health Organization report, released on Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”

Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared.

“I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”

The New York Times, “Leading Psychiatrist Apologizes for Study Supporting Gay ‘Cure’” (via inothernews)

inothernews

One Chart That Shows How the Great Recession Totally Whacked the Young The economy is missing between 5 million and 6 million workers. That’s how much bigger our labor force would be if there had been no Great Recession, per the Congressional Budget Office.  So, who are the missing five million? That’s the question Greg Ip of The Economist recently asked. The above chart from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) gives us a hint of at least part of the answer: the young. Read more. [Image: Economic Policy Institute]

One Chart That Shows How the Great Recession Totally Whacked the Young

The economy is missing between 5 million and 6 million workers. That’s how much bigger our labor force would be if there had been no Great Recession, per the Congressional Budget Office. 

So, who are the missing five million? That’s the question Greg Ip of The Economist recently asked. The above chart from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) gives us a hint of at least part of the answer: the young.

Read more. [Image: Economic Policy Institute]

The Atlantic

I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado), speaking to supporters. Coffman later said he “misspoke.”  (via officialssay)

officialssay

This was not a loss to the taxpayers of America; this was a loss to shareholders and owners of JPMorgan and that’s the way America works. The $2 billion JPMorgan lost, someone else gained.
Mitt Romney defends JP Morgan’s $3 billion loss (number revised from $2 billion). (via think-progress)

thinkprogress.org

shits-and-giggles1

Taking credit for what RMoney said NOT to do.

Taking credit for what RMoney said NOT to do.

azspot