Daily Kos

Abreviated Pundit Round-up

rss@dailykos.com (Mark Sumner) — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:11:58 UTC

The New York Times adds its voice to the chorus crying out for action on climate change.

The news that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most important global warming gas, have hit 400 parts per million for the first time in millions of years increases the pressure on President Obama to deliver on his pledges to limit this country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
America cannot solve a global problem by itself. But as Mr. Obama rightly observed in his inaugural address, the United States, as both major polluter and world leader, has a deep obligation to help shield the international community from rising sea levels, floods, droughts and other devastating consequences of a warming planet. In his State of the Union speech, he promised to take executive action if Congress failed to pass climate legislation. ...

Mr. Obama has a firm grasp of the climate issue, and no one doubts that he cares about it. But as is often the case with this president, the question is whether he will exhibit a sense of urgency to match his intellectual understanding.

Unfortunately, instead of taking immediate and necessary action on an issue that threatens our economy, our security and the lives of millions in America and around the world, the administration is much more concentrated on addressing all the little nonsense items that have been declared "scandals". So when you're watching that next superstorm closing on an American city, remember that we did manage to fire an IRS administrator who had done nothing wrong. That'll be comforting, I'm sure.

Come on in. Let's see what the rest of the punditry made a priority.

Sunday Talk: You read it here first

rss@dailykos.com (Silly Rabbit) — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:00:09 UTC

When Bob Woodward publishes the definitive history of Barack Obama's second term (maybe sooner rather than later), this will be presented as the week that Politico pwned the news cycle—and the president lost the village.

I mean that both literally and literarily.

A reliable source of mine deep inside the industry (codename: Imaginary Friend) leaked me the outline of a book proposal that Woodward is shopping around.

Below are Bob's unedited notes (talking points, if you will) covering this week:

First They Came for the "Patriots" Utilizing research conducted by Harvard Ph.D. candidates, in this chapter I will compare the IRS' scrutiny of "non-profit" Tea Party groups (among others) to the Nazis' persecution of Jews and homosexuals. SPOILER: This doesn't end well, but it isn't Watergate.

Then They Came for Me This chapter will focus on the DOJ's decision to secretly subpoena the AP's phone records. For context, I will again recount the harrowing details of the time that White House economic adviser Gene Sperling threatened to kill me. SPOILER: I'm still alive; just like Watergate.

Watergate 2: Electric Benghaziloo These chapters (plural) will consist of nothing but the redacted transcript of a conversation between myself, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Alberto Gonzales. The four of us will meet at an undisclosed location for a freewheeling discussion about the numerous crimes that President Obama committed in Benghazi, and where in the world he should be tried for them. I will be played by Matthew McConaughey, or a Matthew McConaughey type. SPOILER: ██████ █████████, █████'█ ███████ ██ ███ ████.

Watergate 3: Watergate Harder In what is certain to be the final chapter of Barack Obama's presidency, I will reveal the sinister connection between "Umbrella-gate" and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. SPOILER: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the brain.

Developing...

The one real reason behind the Benghazi obsession

rss@dailykos.com (Laurence Lewis) — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:35:25 UTC

2016:

GOP nightmare

Astronaut Chris Hadfield covers Bowie's 'Space Oddity' in space (VIDEO)

rss@dailykos.com (Jen Hayden) — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:41:20 UTC

Fulfilling a request from users at Reddit.com, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield records and releases his own version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on his last day onboard the International Space Station.

The result is out of this world!

Republican obstruction cost this man his job and house

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:15:03 UTC

Senate Republicans continue on the road to intentionally shutting down the National Labor Relations Board this summer. The labor board, which protects workers' right to organize or not as they choose, can't function without a three-member quorum, which it won't have once a current member's term expires. The board is in legal limbo, in any case, with two appeals courts having overturned recess appointments President Obama made to allow it to function despite Republicans blocking his nominations. Obama has renominated the NLRB's current members, including recess appointees Richard Griffin and Sharon Block, and has nominated two Republicans. Mitch McConnell is having none of it:

Michael Brumas, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said the president should replace nominees Griffin and Block.
"The White House has been told by Leader McConnell's office that it needs to nominate two new Democrat nominees in place of the two unlawfully appointed individuals," Brumas said.

The implication is that Senate Republicans are objecting to Block and Griffin because of the legal questions surrounding the recess appointments. In reality, the recess appointments were made because Senate Republicans blocked the nominations, and confirming them would end the question of their legitimacy going forward. Neither would Republicans be likely to confirm Obama's next Democratic NLRB nominees. Because Republicans don't want to confirm anyone Obama nominates for anything, they certainly don't want to confirm anyone nominated to safeguard workers' rights, and in fact, they don't want the NLRB functioning at all. So the idea that Obama should just nominate two other Democrats is nothing but a delaying tactic—and delay will shut down the NLRB in a matter of months.

Meanwhile, the uncertainty and inability to function properly at the NLRB is destroying people's lives:

Which I'm guessing Mitch McConnell does not care about one bit.

Animal Nuz #149

rss@dailykos.com (ericlewis0) — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:00:22 UTC

New York City fast food restaurants find a lot of ways to steal from their workers

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:46:09 UTC

A staggering 84 percent of New York City fast food workers reports having been a victim of wage theft, a new survey finds. Things are even worse for fast food delivery workers—100 percent of them report wage theft. The New York State attorney general is reportedly investigating pay practices in New York City fast food, and the new survey and report from Fast Food Forward offer a detailed picture of what that investigation might find.

Employers cheat workers out of wages in a number of ways, forcing them to work off the clock before or after their shifts or during break times, not paying overtime when workers work more than 40 hours a week, making delivery workers pay for equipment they're required to have to do their jobs, or just plain not paying the minimum wage. For instance, Shaquenna Davis, who works at a Wendy's in Brooklyn, is quoted in the report saying:

"My manager clocks me out early at 1:15 am every day. I have to keep cleaning after I'm clocked out to close the store. Five of us work for about a half hour every night that we aren't paid for, which adds up to about $80 a month for me since I make $7.25 per hour. It would mean a whole lot to me to have that $80 that Wendy's doesn't pay me. I could use that money to pay for school, food, or my metrocard."

Some workers put in 60 or 80 hours a week, but are scheduled to work at different restaurants owned by the same franchisee and paid separately for each restaurant to avoid overtime. Some workers are told to arrive at one time, then made to sit and wait until the restaurant gets busy before they're allowed to clock in. Paychecks are often late or bounce. These things are illegal.

Delivery workers, who are typically paid the New York tipped worker minimum wage of $5.65 an hour, face another set of common cheats. They're made to work non-delivery tasks so that they don't have the chance to earn tips, or not reimbursed for the cell phone minutes they use in the course of deliveries or for gas or bike helmets required to do their jobs. If they're robbed, they're forced to pay the amount stolen. These things are also illegal.

When wage theft surfaces as a problem, the corporate management of the chains—McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Papa John's, Domino's—almost inevitably claim the brand isn't responsible for the actions of franchise owners. The brand controls how the food is made, what the ingredients are, what uniforms the workers wear, basically everything top to bottom. But when it comes to workers being made to work off the clock or forced to pay for necessary work equipment or denied overtime pay, suddenly McDonald's or Wendy's just has no control over what goes on in those franchises. Yeah, right. If Domino's or Papa John's cared about obeying wage and hour laws remotely as much as they cared about the right number of pieces of pepperoni going on each pizza, things would be fixed. Not perfect, but the percent of workers not being paid for the work they did would would be a fraction of 84. And mind you, wage and hour laws are laws. The number of pieces of pepperoni on a pizza are corporate standards.

Hope for Medicaid expansion in Michigan fades

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:50:16 UTC

Gov. Rick Snyder

Michigan's Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, like his counterpart in Florida, Rick Scott, wants Medicaid expansion for his state. For these Republican governors, whose primary job is to create a balanced budget for the state, the Medicaid money available under Obamcare is a gift. For Republican legislators, it's all about tea party politics. In Michigan, politics is winning.

The state Senate passed the Department of Community Health budget on a 20-18 vote without the Medicaid expansion. It also killed an amendment offered by Sen. Vincent Gregory, D-Southfield, that would have added the expansion back into the budget. [...]
Snyder had proposed expanding the Medicaid program to residents who fall within 133% of the federal poverty level. The program would be paid for 100% by the federal government through 2017, and then begin to ratchet down until it hits 90% federal contribution in 2020.

Republicans have resisted the expansion, wary of the Affordable Care Act and the federal government’s promise to fund the expansion.

The state House is working on a budget that would take the expansion, but would cap benefits after four years, which would require a waiver from the federal government. If the House were to pass their budget, there are two hurdles for the expansion: reconciling the bill with the Senate, which doesn't want it, and getting the federal waiver. In the meantime, the 470,000 low-income Michigan residents who could qualify for Medicaid under the expansion are left in limbo.

Donald Rumsfeld has written an advice book. Oh, yay.

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:30:09 UTC

Winning.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has published a new book. It's a book of advice. You too can get advice from The Man Who Screwed Up The War. You can give it as a gift to someone you want to catastrophically fail at life.

Fine, let's take a look. Marketplace highlights three of "Rumsfeld's Rules":

It’s easier to get into something than it is to get out.
“I thought of that when I was President Reagan’s Middle East envoy and we had 241 Marines killed at Beirut, at the airport. And I concluded then that the United States has to be careful about putting ground forces in because we’re such a big target. And I also over the years came to the conclusion over the years that the United States really was organized, trained and equipped to do nation-building.”

Those are two odd lessons to put together. Luckily, he forgot the first just in time to personally disprove the second.

“I’ve been mistaken so many times I don’t even blush for it anymore.” – Napoleon
“You see things that don’t turn out the way you hoped.”

Oh my God. What is this, life lessons for fifth graders?

Sometimes you goof up, kids. Sometimes you have to send a few thousand "sorry for your dead child" Hallmark cards when you goof up. Best you can hope for is that you get a motivational book out of it someday.

Monitor progress through metrics.
“I think that history over time will probably be a better judge than you or I, but I’ve been struck by the amount of criticism that the Bush administration has received and President Bush personally and the attempts to assign blame to him and I think it’s probably not going to sort out that way.”

Monitor progress through metrics, but if the metrics say you're a goddamn screw-up, tell people they're wrong and that they need to wait until new metrics appear that will make you look better. Repeat as necessary, possibly forever.

Yeah, we're done here.

Open thread: Cato, outreach and shame

rss@dailykos.com (Barbara Morrill) — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:00:08 UTC

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...

Big-thinking Cato Institute: 400ppm haz got what plants crave, by Hunter
The next biggest scandal ever, until the next one, by Hunter
Republican outreach report card: graded "F" for Fail, by Denise Oliver Velez
Climate change isn't AN issue, it's THE issue, by Laurence Lewis
Welcome to the Darrell Issa Hall of Shame, by Jon Perr
The Hard Lessons of the Post Partisan Unity Schtick, by Armando
The most vulnerable House members in 2014, in two charts, by David Jarman
Life back in the canopy, by DarkSyde

Monthlong investigation into cause of Texas fertilizer explosion leaves three possibilities

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:52:16 UTC

After a massive monthlong investigation, the cause of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion is still a mystery, authorities announced Thursday. They've narrowed it down to three possibilities: a golf cart, electrical problems and arson. Unless arson is ultimately found to have been the cause of the fire that led to the explosion, the answer may never be known despite investigators having sifted through 300,000 pounds of corn looking for evidence.

The fire started at 7:29 in the "seed room," and firefighters arrived at 7:38.

At 7:41 p.m., firefighters called for assistance. Ten minutes later, two explosions erupted milliseconds apart—one small and the other large. The plant was enveloped in a ball of fire and black smoke.
As fire had engulfed the plant, ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored in wooden bins had heated up and become less stable. Falling debris had hit the chemical, by then sensitive to shock, and caused the first blast, said Assistant State Fire Marshal Kelly Kistner.

Investigators said the 28 to 34 tons of ammonium nitrate that blew up was equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of TNT.

About 120 additional tons of the chemical did not explode.

Even if the cause of the fire is never known, we can know this: If you're storing hundreds of tons of explosive chemicals, safety precautions are important. Government inspections of facilities storing hundreds of tons of explosive chemicals are important. Not locating facilities storing hundreds of tons of explosive chemicals near schools and homes is important. Having more than $1 million in liability insurance at facilities storing hundreds of tons of explosive chemicals is important. The West Fertilizer Co. and the state of Texas ignored all that, and instead of a fire, there was a fire followed by a massive explosion.

Don't buy an electric car because some dude likes something else

rss@dailykos.com (kos) — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:09:03 UTC

Chevy Volt

Conservatives are incredibly vested in seeing electric cars fail. Obviously, they oppose anything that cleans up the environment. But they have a special place of hatred for electric vehicles, a feeling that Fox Business was happy to promote with this "Don't buy an electric car" laugher. Ready for this tour de force of an argument?

It’s not a piece of fruit. My wife buys organic chicken, eggs, vegetables, and fruit even though they’re way more expensive. It’s better for our health and the animals and farmers. I get that. But a car is the most expensive thing you own that depreciates – a lot.

If it was a piece of fruit ... then you could eat it. So don't buy it! With that kind of kickoff, you just know the rest of his arguments are going to be full of awesome, all of them below the fold!

GunFAIL XVIII

rss@dailykos.com (David Waldman) — Sat, 18 May 2013 02:03:55 UTC

We're back, once again. The kids once again dominated the week, with seven kids under 16 years of age who either shot themselves or were shot by other kids under 16. The youngest victim of GunFAIL this week was just 13 months old, shot by her dad while cleaning his guns. A shocker, to be sure, but then again it was the second time in the space of as many months that a dad had done the same, in Tennessee alone.

Three concealed carry ninjas had accidental discharges this week, as did five cops. Two accidental discharges were in school settings, with one student injured. The first involved a cop on a school bus, whose weapon was discharged into the floor of the bus when a student grabbed at the trigger while his gun was still in his holster. But of course, that will never happen once we quadruple the number of officers in our schools, or whatever it is people are proposing these days. The other incident involved a school employee who's apparently not a teacher, but who holds a second job as a security guard elsewhere, and who gave a student a ride home after school, but accidentally shot him trying (unsuccessfully, evidently) to put the gun in the glove compartment. I never imagined that would prove so difficult a task, and very likely, neither did he. But life—and especially life around firearms—is always full of surprises. Though sometimes those lives are a little shorter than usual.

We also recorded two folks (the 109th and 110th of 2013) shot while cleaning loaded weapons, plus three more home invasion shootings. You're still not allowed to make a list of your neighbors who own guns, out of an abundance of concern for their privacy and liberty and such. But sometimes, they just can't help but make a public declaration of it, such is their pride.

Florida continues its dominance of the Derp Crown Sweepstakes this week, thanks to the woman in St. Petersburg who accidentally shot her friend while on a Starbucks run, with a gun she had forgotten was in her purse and which went off when she dropped her bag. The state's top run status was cemented when another concealed carry ninja in Jupiter shot himself in the leg while bowling with a loaded pistol in his pocket.

Finally, we note the passing of a young and relatively new gun enthusiast from Colorado, a 22-year-old woman killed this week with a newly purchased AK-47 style assault rifle that she apparently fumbled after sharing a few beers with friends. The very young kids are of course a special kind of tragedy, but it seems particularly sad when the victims are of an age when they're likely to have left behind Facebook photos of themselves posing with their guns, as was the case here.

Below the fold, you'll find this week's list.

Green diary rescue: Pedal power, electric cars, OFA on climate change

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Sat, 18 May 2013 20:00:15 UTC

Every week Daily Kos diarists write dozens of environmentally related posts. Many don't get the readership they deserve. Helping improve the odds is the motivation behind the Green Diary Rescue. In the past seven years, there have been 226 of these spotlighting more than 12,645 eco-diaries. Below are categorized links and excerpts to 64 more that appeared in the past seven days. That makes for lots of good reading during the spare moments of your weekend. [Disclaimer: Inclusion of a diary in the rescue does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.]

Green Diary of the Week

Mr. President, Arctic Ice Loss Portends a Climate Tsunami: The National Arctic Strategy is Suicidal—by FishOutofWater: "President Obama, your advisers just don't get it. We should be running as fast as we can from fossil fuels, not going out to sea to get more of them. The loss of summer sea ice portends a climate tsunami. The ice is keeping the Arctic cold, even in summer. Retreat of the ice is accelerating the rate of warming of the Arctic by a feedback loop. Ice reflects light and heat back to space. Open water, which is far darker than sea ice, adsorbs the solar energy and stores the heat rapidly warming the Arctic in the summer and fall. Once the ice is gone in summer the whole Arctic is prone to warm much faster just like a drink warms much faster after the ice melts."

••• ••• •••

Important New Legislation Which Can Mitigate Worst Effects of Climate Change—by beach babe in fl: "Rep. Scott Peters, D-CA has introduced smart new legislation which can help to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. His new bill entitled "Super Pollutant Emissions Reduction Act of 2013", is aimed at combating some of the most significant drivers of global climate change; the short lived climate pollutants (SLCP's).

Minimizing methane from livestock is
one element of new legislation.

The SLCP's are greenhouse gases that produce much more warming, molecule-for-molecule, than carbon dioxide. However, unlike CO2, they have a short atmospheric lifecycle. When emitted, they hang out in atmosphere for anywhere from a few days to a few years and then drop back to earth. They include: black carbon, tropospheric ozone, methane, and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Reducing them now is the only chance we have of avoiding rapidly rising seas and of slowing the loss of biodiversity."

••• ••• •••

Don't just count the carbon, BIKE THE MATH!—by citisven: "If you're in the Bay Area and want to do something exciting, fun, and meaningful to voice your concerns about climate change and the fossil fuel industry's long-term business plan, here it is... (and if not, please help spread the word) Bike the Math to Chevron's shareholders at their Annual General Meeting in San Ramon. Let's tell Chevron to stop fueling climate chaos and become a renewable energy company! When: Wednesday, May 29th."

••• ••• •••

Sierra Club & Solar Crowdfunding For the World's Poor—by Jguay: "I personally am putting my money where my mouth is starting with a new project SunFunder is financing near Kampala, Uganda. SunFunder has already provided clean energy to over 22,757 people by sourcing $75,000 from the 'crowd.' Now they're looking to raise another $15,000 to provide 375 people with solar power via Fenix Ready sets to help power off-grid wireless communications for nearly 4,000 people. Deploying this clean energy will generate over $100,000 in village income over the next three years, increasing poor household income by 36.4% while eliminating 15,000 liters of kerosene and 37 tons of CO2. As you can see, a little finance can go a long way."

You can find many more rescued green diaries below the fold.

This week in the war on voting: North Carolina 'ground zero' in voter suppression fight

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:30:09 UTC

This week in the war on voting is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades.

• North Carolina 'ground zero' in fight against voter suppression:

• Democrats introduce bill to reform and reauthorize the Election Assistance Commission:

The EAC was created in the aftermath of the disastrous elections of 2000 as part of the Help America Vote Act. The agency is designed to assist state and local election officials to ensure smooth, accurate, and fair elections. Congressional Republicans have undermined the agency by holding up nominations and attempting to abolish the agency. The result of their assault on the EAC was seen in the unreasonably long lines, confusion, and disenfranchisement of thousands in the 2012 election.
“There’s no magic solution when it comes to fixing how our elections are run,” said [Pennsylvania Rep. Robert] Brady. “Improving election administration has to be an ongoing effort, and the EAC is the only Federal agency equipped to assist our overworked and under-appreciated local election officials. We saw what happens when the EAC’s assistance is pulled in the last election. We owe it to the American people to not let that happen again.”

• Black voting power grew between 2008 and 2012 and keeps rising:

Not only did 2012 Black voters make the difference in several key swing states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the biggest prize of all, Ohio, but Black voter turnout surpassed the White vote for the first time in history. The Census Bureau found that “About two in three eligible blacks (66.2 percent) voted in the 2012 presidential election, higher than the 64.1 percent of non–Hispanic whites who did so. This marks the first time that blacks have voted at a higher rate than whites since the Census Bureau started publishing statistics on voting by the eligible citizen population in 1996.”
This is how the Associated Press puts it: “The findings represent a tipping point for blacks, who for much of American history were disenfranchised and then effectively barred from voting until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.”   Since 1996 Black voter turnout rates have risen 13 percentage points, and the number of Blacks who voted in 2012 rose by about 1.7 million over 2008. [...]

In North Carolina, a state the President lost this time around, African American registration increased from 71% in 2008 to 85% in 2012 with 80.2% of eligible Black voters going to the polls, up from 68.1% four years ago.  

• No photo ID needed for Pennsylvania primary Tuesday: Pennsylvanians fought in and out of the courts in 2012 to keep a photo ID law from being implemented. They succeeded partially when a judge ruled that the state hadn't provided enough warning about the change and delayed implementation of the law on the grounds that it might otherwise keep some eligible voters from casting ballots in the November election.

[L]itigants in the lawsuit agreed in February to extend that postponement beyond the May 21 primary election, meaning voters will be asked to show photographic identification, but will not be turned away from the polls if they do not produce an ID.
“It's a continuation of the soft rollout,” said Pennsylvania Department of State spokesman Matthew Keeler. “We're also reminding voters who don't have a form of ID that PennDOT is still giving out free IDs for people who need one.”

• Ohio Republicans seek to punish colleges that help students vote:

Republicans in the Ohio Legislature are pushing a plan that could cost the state’s public universities millions of dollars if they provide students with documents to help them register to vote. Backers of the bill describe it as intended to resolve discrepancies between residency requirements for tuition and voter registration, while Democrats and other opponents argue it is a blatant attempt at voter suppression in a crucial swing state.
“What the bill would do is penalize public universities for providing their students with the documents they need to vote,” Daniel Tokaji, a professor and election law expert at Ohio State University told TPM. “It’s a transparent effort at vote suppression—about the most blatant and shameful we’ve seen in this state, which is saying quite a lot.”

• Implications of racial polarization in 2012 elections and the Voting Rights Act: Stephen Ansolabehere, Nathaniel Persily and Charles Stewart III have written an article for the Harvard Law Review exploring regional differences in racial polarization and what these should mean for the Voting Rights Act. Section 5, the main enforcement mechanism of the 1965 law, is under review by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Shelby County v. Holder. The bulk of legal observers think the court will rule the law is no longer necessary.

But the authors of the article conclude otherwise.

Indeed, we view our findings more as a response to the notion that the election and reelection of an African American President settles the constitutional question in favor of the VRA’s detractors. If anything, the opposite is true. To be sure, the coverage formula does not capture every racially polarized jurisdiction, nor does every county covered by section 5 outrank every noncovered county on this score. However, the stark race-based differences in voting patterns between the covered and noncovered jurisdictions taken as a whole demonstrate the coverage formula’s continuing relevance.

• Indiana will spend $2 million to clean up voter roles

The Indiana Secretary of State’s office will spend more than $2 million to purge the voter registration rolls in each of Indiana’s 92 counties, removing the names of voters who are dead, in prison, or have moved away.
County election officials are responsible for keeping the voter rolls current, but the lack of money has caused some of them to fall behind. The result: In some counties, the number of people listed on the active voter rolls is higher than the number of voting-age people who live there.

“Every duplicate name and every bad address is just an opportunity for vote fraud,” said Secretary of State Connie Lawson [...]

Midday open thread

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:00:10 UTC

You people...rock! Since Markos announced our endorsement of Virginia state senate candidate Evandra Thompson over Liebermanesque turn-coat Rosalyn Dance, more than three hundred of you have donated more than $8,000 (quadrupling her cash on hand). More and better Democrats, at every level of government! Want to pitch in? You can do that here.
You want scandal? Here's some real, potential scandal.
IT IS a lesson of the past five years that benchmarks in unregulated markets can fall victim to the incentives they create. Subprime mortgages bundled into securities often won high scores from ratings agencies that stood to profit in a busy market. The London Interbank Offered Rate, LIBOR, was sometimes underestimated by banks which were cast in a healthier light by lower interest rates. Has something similar been going on in energy?
That is the suspicion after a series of raids on May 14th by the European Commission’s competition authorities. The commission declared that it feared oil companies had “colluded” to distort benchmark prices for crude, oil products and biofuels. Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Norway’s Statoil and Italy’s ENI (which was not raided) all said that they were co-operating with the commission. The competition authorities also called on the London offices of Platts, a subsidiary of McGraw Hill, an American publisher and business-information firm, which sets reference prices for these commodities.
Despite the obstructionist GOP's best efforts, we've still got mostly functioning judiciary. Here's why that's so important.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An Arkansas law banning most abortions 12 weeks into a woman's pregnancy won't take effect while a legal challenge is pending, a federal judge ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright granted a request for a preliminary injunction against the ban, which was set to take effect in August.
Today in "Sen. Chuck Grassley Tweets!"
US has no foreign policy. We shld remember what happened th last time we had no foreign policy. It was Sept 1939 Hitler started WWII Poland
— @ChuckGrassley via Twitter for iPhone

Okay, then. Thanks for playing!
How the IRS "scandal" will get increasingly crazy-pants spun out for the next two-and-a-half years. You know who else got audited?
Daily Kos was audited by the IRS earlier this year, because we're so conservative, obviously.
— @markos via web
Still haven't made your National Park summer camping plans? It's not too late. Here are some helpful tips for some of the most popular parks.
Sometimes, science is unexpectedly and incredibly beautiful.
And sometimes just mind-boggling cool.
[C]icadas with a prime-numbered life cycle had the most successful evolutionary strategy. If we discount those cicadas with life cycles of ten years or fewer (as being too close to predator life cycles), we find that the most successful emergence rates for cyber cicadas are thirteen and seventeen years—precisely what we find in the wild.
Thank you, Seattle:
Over the next two weeks, 133 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students and allies—many of them rejected by their families after coming out—will be awarded more than $600,000 in scholarships from two Seattle organizations.
The scholarships are a twenty-year collaboration of the Greater Seattle Business Association, "the largest LGBT chamber of commerce in the nation, with membership ranging from restaurants to Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft and Boeing," and Seattle-based Pride Foundation. In those two decades, they've awarded almost $5 million in scholarships.

This week in the War on Workers: California hospital workers to strike

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:55:09 UTC

Workers at the University of California hospital system are planning a two-day strike to protest inadequate staffing levels, increased use of temp workers, and changes to their pension plan, though the university announced Friday that the California Public Employment Relations Board would seek a temporary restraining order limiting the strike. Already, 13 were arrested as they protested at a UC regents meeting this week. The arrests weren't the only way the workers made themselves felt at the meeting, with one state senator tweeting:

I have cancelled my dinner w/ UC Regents tonight b/c #AFSCME informed us they would picket the dinner. I don't cross picket lines.
— @tedlieu via Twitter for BlackBerryÂ®

The hospitals are already canceling elective surgeries during the planned strike, but:

The union representing the 13,000 nursing assistants, scanning techs, operating room scrubs, respiratory experts and others threatening the strike said it will keep weekend-level staffing in critical areas such as respiratory therapy for intensive care, neonatal and burn units during a walkout.
In case of medical emergencies, some strikers will go back to work and then return to picket lines after the patients are treated, said Todd Stenhouse, spokesman for Local 3299 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "The most important thing here is that patient safety be preserved," he said.

Nurses at California's East Bay Sutter hospitals are also beginning a seven-day strike against pay and benefit cuts.

Continue reading for more of the week's labor and education news.

Saturday morning nutpick: if this is post-racial America...

rss@dailykos.com (kos) — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:00:11 UTC

Today's source material:

I guess that Benghazi thing isn't panning out, Republicans don't care about spying on the AP, and the IRS scandal is losing steam. So on to the next one! But ... is there anything more stupid than this?

As you'll see below the fold, this was worse than Hitler, because it always is.

Low-income parents forced to skip work in order to be able to work at all

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:33:16 UTC

What happens to low-income parents.

If you have young children and you can't find someone to take care of them, you can't work. If you don't have a job, how can you pay someone to take care of your children? That's a double bind faced by many low-income parents, thanks to America's lousy childcare funding and policies. Childcare subsidies are supposed to help. They do help, if you can get them. But getting them is not so easy. In Washington, D.C., where the subsidy is so low that only half of childcare providers even accept them, one parent told the Washington Post the process of getting a subsidy is "like having a full-time job." Here's what it looks like for one woman who has, in the past, lost a job because of the amount of time she spent in that process:

Swanson said she had six days to renew her subsidy before it expired and her children lost their spots at Happy Faces child-care center. She’d called the Congress Heights Service Center in April to make an appointment, but she couldn’t get one before June, long after the expiration date. So she found herself in the walk-in line.
Under the subsidy system’s rules, she must “recertify” in person every time something in her life changes — a new baby, a new job, a lost job, different hours on the job, a raise, a new child-care provider. She must recertify now because the semester at UDC, where she is taking classes in child development, is ending and she won’t be back in class until the fall. She’ll need to recertify again in September and bring an official transcript of her new classes.

“They will terminate you like that,” said Swanson, snapping her fingers. She has been terminated twice without warning in the past.

Each time, Swanson must prove that she is poor enough to receive the subsidy and that she is in school, in a training program or working at least 20 hours a week.

This time around, she was rejected because even though a letter from her boss listed her working 30 hours a week, the letter also said she was working "no more than" 30 hours a week, and no more than 30 could in some cases mean less than 20 although it doesn't mean that in this case. Make sense?

The Post's Brigid Schulte reports that, although subsidies are particularly low in Washington, studies have found that the difficulty of getting and keeping them is similar in most states. Nationwide, just one in six eligible children is covered by the subsidy program, leaving an awful lot of parents with that impossible predicament of needing a job to get childcare but needing childcare to get a job. Then of course there's the kicker—poor women who don't work are stigmatized as mooches or leeches, and poor women who are forced to leave their kids in bad situations while they go to work are stigmatized as bad mothers. America's rotten childcare system is a sign of a nation whose policymakers don't care much about either children's safety or women's ability to make a decent living.

Senate filibuster showdown will take time, says Reid's office

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:52:25 UTC

Does he mean it this time?

The threats from Harry Reid to go nuclear on Senate rules reform have coalesced behind three nominations that he plans to bring to the floor next week, all of which will almost certainly be filibustered by Republicans: Richard Cordray at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth McCarthy at the Environmental Protection Agency, and Thomas Perez at Labor. A senior aide to Reid tells Greg Sargent that "that he’s all but certain to take action if the Senate GOP blocks three upcoming key nominations," but not until July.

Reid has privately consulted with President Obama on the need to revisit filibuster reform, and the President has told the Majority Leader that he will support the exercising of the nuclear option if Reid opts for it, the aide says, adding that senior Democrats expect the President to publicly push for it as well. “If Senator Reid decides to do something on nominations, the president has said he’ll be there to support him,” the aide says. [...]
If Republicans block those three nominees, the aide tells me, “then our position will be very easy.”

[I]mmigration reform is looming as a wild card in Reid’s internal thinking about whether to revisit the filibuster. The aide says senior Democratic Senators have privately expressed worry to the Majority Leader that revisiting the rules could imperil the immigration push, and have asked him to delay it until after immigration reform is done (or is killed).

This is why July has emerged as the rough target date, the aide says. “The fear is that if he does this before immigration reform is done, then all of the Republicans are going to walk,” the aide tells me.

Because the Republican House hasn't already doomed immigration reform already? Reid apparently feels like he needs to have these three derailed votes to really convince those senior Democratic senators that there really is a problem. Or perhaps he's putting this story out there as a warning shot to Republicans to play nice on these nominees. As if warning that filibuster reform might really happen this time has ever stopped the Republicans from keeping the Senate from functioning before. The Republicans undoubtedly see Reid's threats as empty as the liberal base does.

Delaying this until July in the hopes that Republicans mean it when they say they'll cooperate in creating substantive immigration reform seems to be a fool's errand. But what the hell. If Reid needs support from Democratic senators to do this, and thinks he can't do it until July, let's get him those Democratic senators.

Use this link to send an email to your Democratic senators telling them to re-open filibuster reform and make the Senate function again.

This week in the world of progressive state blogs: No epidurals in Alabama, expanding Medicaid

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:00:19 UTC

Each Saturday, this feature links and excerpts commentary and reporting from a dozen progressive state blogs in the past seven days around the nation. The idea is not only to spotlight specific issues but to give readers who may not know their state has a progressive blog or two a place to become regularly informed about doings in their back yard. Just as states with progressive lawmakers and activists have themselves initiated innovative programs over a wide range of issues, state-based progressive blogs have helped provide us with a point of view and inside information we don't get from the traditional media. Those blogs deserve a larger audience. Let me know via comments or Kosmail if you have a favorite you think I should know about. Standard disclaimer: Inclusion of a diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement or endorsement of its contents.

At Left in Alabama, DrAbston writes Your Epidural is Against the Law: What Alabama Women and Doctors Need to Know:

[O]ur beloved state Supreme Court has brought pregnancy and childbirth back to what they think God meant it to be—drug free. No epidurals. That can work well, especially if you have a midwife or a doctor skilled in normal unmedicated birth, but do women want to give up that option? How about no spinal blocks for c-sections? Girlfriends, better practice your breathing! Obstetricians, addiction specialists and anesthesiologists, do I have your attention?
Our story begins back in 2006, when Alabama passed a Chemical Endangerment statute meant to protect children from harm in meth houses. Although it said nothing whatsoever about pregnant women and was never intended to apply to women who become pregnant while addicted or who use a drug during pregnancy, that didn’t stop prosecutors from jumping right in.

At Rural and Progressive of Georgia Katherine Helms Cummings writes Disenchantment spreads to conservatives:

Governor Nathan Deal took his head out of the sand long enough to tell the Statesboro paper that, “We know that we don’t want anything that’s going to pollute our waterways. We don’t want anything that’s going to make our state a worse place from the standpoint of environmental degradation.”
Make our state worse from the standpoint of environmental degradation? We are competing for the bottom of the list.

At SquareState of Colorado, Zappatero gives a senator the eye-roll in the direction ofSen. Michael Bennet [who was] lionized by Maureen Dowd/NYT for wanting even more Cuts than the Sequester:

How could I have missed this?
Oh, wait, Maureen Dowd is irrelevant here in the heartland, but highly influential on the DC Cocktail Cicuit. And Michael Bennet's desire to impose Austerity at all costs caught her attention early this year:

Voting to let the country fall off the cliff was an audacious, even precocious, move by the Democratic golden boy and presidential pet—one that, oddly, put him on the side of Marco Rubio and Rand Paul rather than Obama and Joe Biden. "It is an interesting group," he deadpanned about the naysayers.
Rubio and Paul didn't have the chance to stake their careers on the Public Option. Bennet said he would, but demurred then, too, and let the Public Option die an unnatural, quiet death.

Obama focuses on middle-class concerns in weekly address

rss@dailykos.com (Susan Gardner) — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:00:18 UTC

Coming off a week of media-fed outrage over several "scandals" (IRS, Benghazi, AP), President Obama focused this morning's weekly address back on jobs, progress and the middle class—just as he did when he spoke yesterday in Baltimore. His focus:

There are three areas where we need to focus. One: making America a magnet for good jobs. Two: making sure our workers have the education and skills they need to do those jobs. And three: making sure your hard work leads to a decent living.

The president talked of his recent trips to get out of Washington, D.C., and talk to people in cities across the nation like Austin and Baltimore. It is, he made clear, an effort to get out of the D.C. bubble and experience what ordinary Americans care about.

That’s why I like getting out of the Washington echo chamber whenever I can – because too often, our politics aren’t focused on the same things you are. Working hard. Supporting your family and your community. Making sure your kids have every chance in life.

And as is almost always the message in his weekly addresses, there's been improvement, but there needs to be more—improvement in the housing market, job creation, income growth and deficit reduction. We must continue these positive trends, he said, even as the auto industry is recovering, and tech and energy sectors are booming. He's going to continue, he said, to hit the road, and to work in the capital for bipartisan solutions to ongoing problems:

In the coming weeks, I’m going to visit more cities like Baltimore, and Austin, Texas – where I was two weeks ago; places where Americans are coming together to strengthen their own communities and economies – and in the process, making this country better for all of us.
And I’m going to keep trying to work with both parties in Washington to make progress on your priorities. Because I know that if we come together around creating more jobs, educating more of our kids, and building new ladders of opportunity for everyone who’s willing to climb them – we’ll all prosper, together.

To read the transcript in full, check below the fold or visit the White House website.

This week in science: Common census

rss@dailykos.com (DarkSyde) — Sat, 18 May 2013 13:00:10 UTC

Climate Consensus image via Skeptical Science, click image for more data and details.

If you're old enough, you remember hearing about missile gaps that reportedly posed danger. Here's another perilous chasm: the Consensus Gap. There is virtually no scientific controversy over climate change anymore, but a lot of non-scientists think there is huge controversy in the climate research community itself. Greg Laden explains:

The point is, the gap between scientific consensus and public opinion is real, and very important. The consensus gap causes bad things to happen. ... Editorials in Main Stream Media that exploit the consensus gap could be compared to editorials at the New York Times or in the Scientific American or your local newspaper that demand more attention be given to the plight of Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster. The degree of scientific consensus that those creatures do not exist is about the same as the degree of consensus that AGW is real, though the public “belief” in crypto-critters is less than the public “belief” that AGW is not real. Why? Because Main Stream Media has not taken Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster seriously in quite some time.
Ten years from now it will be interesting to look back and see how Main Stream Media’s editorial writers who today are sticking with “the jury is still out” on AGW managed their reputations as they looked more and more like they belonged at the National Enquirer rather than a respected news outlet.

Tanzania offers another clue in the fascinating story of primate evolution.
Holy smokes, look at the line up of crazy to replace Saxby I-aint-gay Chambliss; no matter who wins, it will bear much science-blogging fruit in the years to come.
Via the Stephanie Miller Show, I posted a few hilarious excepts from Housekeeping Monthly 1955 AKA ~~The Good Wife's Guide~~ How to Lose a Woman in Five Minutes. Snopes says likely fabricated but still expresses many such sentiments common at that time.
What could go wrong with mind reading or thought control?
Sometimes knowing too much science can detract from a sci-fi movie ...
The sequester kills.
NASA plans to return a sample of an Apollo class asteroid called 101955 Bennu. The object is about half a km in diameter so no need for record-breaking rovers. One of the strange forces at work this mission will check out is called Yarkovsky Effect: a miniscule quantum force which orbital mechanics must take into account as, over time, it can change change the orbit of a small body enough that it misses the earth ... or hits us.

Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: New IRS charges by conservatives don't measure up

rss@dailykos.com (Greg Dworkin) — Sat, 18 May 2013 11:30:08 UTC

Peggy Noonan:

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.

Um, no we are not. It's not even a scandal. It's a controversy. And, by the way, Benghazi isn't even that. But don't worry. That won't stop Republicans from overreaching.

Nate Silver:

“The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration,” the Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote on Thursday, describing the I.R.S.’s actions as the “worst Washington scandal since Watergate.”
What evidence does Ms. Noonan present for this second allegation?

She cites four conservatives who were audited. Four cases out of 1.5 million. Please. This is "anything for a scandal" garbage and should be treated as such.

NY Times (news section, mind you):

Republican charges range from the clearly questionable to the seemingly specious, and they grow by the day. On Friday, lawmakers sought to tie the I.R.S. matter to the carrying out of President Obama’s health care law, which will rely heavily on the agency. Whether they succeed holds significant ramifications for Mr. Obama, who will soon know if he is dealing with a late spring thunderstorm that may soon blow over or a consuming squall that will leave lasting damage.

Watch over the next few weeks as Republican glee turns to frustration as the voters decidedly ignore the trumped-up charges.

More politics and policy below the fold.

Open thread for night owls: Stephen Lerner on breaking Wall Street's grip

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Sat, 18 May 2013 03:30:10 UTC

Greg Kauffman has, for a long time, been focused on poverty issues, a subject that rarely arouses much concern in the stenographic media but matters a great deal to tens of millions of Americans directly affected by it. What follows is the introduction and first question of an interview at The Nation with a long-time organizer whose activism is worth emulating and who ideas are worth spreading. You can read the other eight questions at the link. There is also an action you may wish to participate in here:

[T]o build a new anti-poverty movement will require the kind of organizing and actions that are as creative, visible and gripping as the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Enter Stephen Lerner.

Lerner is a labor and community organizer who has spent more than three decades organizing hundreds of thousands of janitors, farm workers, garment workers and other low-wage workers into unions. These efforts resulted in increased wages, first-time health benefits, paid sick days and other improvements on the job. The architect of the historic Justice for Janitors campaign, he is currently working with unions and community groups across the country to break Wall Street’s anti-democratic grip on our politics and our economy.

Lerner lays out a powerful case about the intersection between poverty and Wall Street accountability—and how a Wall Street accountability movement can transform an economy that offers so few pathways out of poverty, and so many ways to keep people impoverished.

Here is our conversation:

Greg Kaufmann: Why is the Wall Street accountability movement now the focus of your work, and what is the potential you see there?

Stephen Lerner: One of the challenges is that there are so many things wrong right now—that you can be involved in any of a thousand causes. The problem is if they are disconnected it doesn’t add up to anything. So, people who are opposed to poverty have a dozen different things they’d like to move on the Hill, none of which are likely to pass at this time.

Stephen Lerner

So the focus on Wall Street is: How do you connect all of these different battles? And, in fact, are there core things in common that drive them together?

If you look at some of the biggest issues of the day—whether it’s the loss of wealth in communities of color, the housing crisis, the student debt crisis, local and state governments cutting jobs and services because of debt—you can connect all of these issues to the original economic crisis of 2008, and the growing and continued dominance of the Wall Street big banks.

The majority of people in this country are either impacted by student debt, the ongoing housing crisis or the crisis of the public sector. And you can trace so much of it to Wall Street. This means instead of having twenty separate campaigns, you can have one campaign, that says how do we rebalance and reorganize the economy so that it benefits everybody—not just a teeny elite at the top.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—Mitt, you dunce, you have to remember your lies:

We all know that Romney is a major liar. We've seen it over and over during this campaign. The pile of his lies already has grown enormously and the general election campaign is barely under way.

For someone with his assets, you would think he would have hired himself a better coach of effective lying. He can certainly afford it given the gobs of cash he's sucked up by destroying jobs and being rewarded for it. But apparently he's been a cheapskate on that front. Because he just isn't very good at it despite all the practice.

Tweet of the Day:

GOP thought they could lie & lie about the Benghazi emails because they didn't think press/public would ever see them. WH said, Here. #oops
— @steveweinstein via web

On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin on the dying embers of the "scandal" fires. Kevin Drum reports that news outlets got burned by Republican sources on those Benghazi emails, and Armando calls for Jonathan Karl's head. The bizarre story of a holocaust denier reinvented as a Hollywood conservative player. A brief #GunFAIL update. Doctor Who asks about Joan McCarter's post on Reid's plan to call for a vote on the Cordray nomination. Our thanks to show sponsor Audible! Be sure to get your free audio book, download here.

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

Economics Daily Digest: It's Gatsby's world, they're just working in it

rss@dailykos.com (Roosevelt Institute) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:08:28 UTC

By Tim Price, originally published on Next New Deal

Click here to receive the Daily Digest via e-mail.

Gatsby and the McJobs Rebellion (KC Star)

Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren notes that the new adaptation of The Great Gatsby is timed nicely with fast food and retail workers' push for fairer wages. The story of unbridled greed keeps being retold, but this time they plan to write their own ending.

Millennials reject 'lazy, entitled' label: 'Who are they talking about?' (Today)

Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline Fellow Nona Willis Aronowitz writes that while pundits sneer at Millennials, members of the generation that came of age during the Great Recession are too busy working to improve the bad hand they've been dealt to have time for haters.

84 Percent of NYC Fast Food Workers Report Wage Theft in a New Survey (The Nation)

Josh Eidelson highlights a new report that finds many fast food restaurants are pulling a fast one on their workers, who are forced to work without pay or denied breaks and overtime. Even the Hamburglar himself would never have stooped to this kind of petty thievery.

That's a 'Depression': Europe's Double-Dip Is Officially Longer Than Its Great Recession (The Atlantic)

Matthew O'Brien notes that GDP data prove Europe's response to the recession has been worse than the recession itself, but polls still show widespread support for the euro and austerity, so the continent may just have an unusually large population of masochists.

Surprise! Inflation is too low almost everywhere on earth (WaPo)

Neil Irwin writes that in contrast to inflationistas' repeated warnings that quantitative easing would lead to a grim, dark future in which there is only Bitcoin, none of the leading central banks have even been able to hit the 2 percent inflation rate they were aiming for.

Foreclosure Crisis Cost U.S. $192.6 Billion in Lost Wealth Last Year, Study Finds (HuffPo)

Jillian Berman writes that even as the housing market rebounds, millions continue to lose their homes or struggle in vain to save them, with minority borrowers hit particularly hard. Is there no "moral hazard" in leaving enough people underwater to re-settle Atlantis?

The real IRS scandal: Targeting by class (Salon)

David Dayen points out that unfairly scrutinizing one group over another isn't new behavior for the IRS. That's why the working poor get audited while big corporations get away with just about anything as long as they employ a sufficiently intimidating number of lawyers.

Billionaires Unchained (TomDispatch)

Andy Kroll argues that you can't measure the impact of money in politics by simply chalking up big donors' wins and losses and calculating the score. The point is that something's off when one person can spend more in one election than most voters will ever make.

Tim Price is Editor of Next New Deal. Follow him on Twitter @txprice.

Conservative Monkey Seance Theater Roundup

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Sat, 18 May 2013 02:20:09 UTC

Winning!

Oh, sure: Everybody else gets to write about the deep, substantive stuff that happened this week—like Benghazi!!!, and how many exclamation points Benghazi!!! requires on any given day. I get stuck with the crackpots. Welcome, then, to a brief roundup of the week's crackpots.

The Heritage Foundation co-author of their study deeming certain immigrants to be an irredeemable drain on society resigned this week, but still insisted his past arguments about the lower IQ of Hispanics and other non-whites were misunderstood.
We are governed by morons.
Pat Buchanan, who is apparently still alive, resurfaced to demand the Republican Party execute a new "Southern Strategy" to protect themselves against the electoral difficulties posed by "people of color." Nobody ever accused Pat of being subtle.
The American Family Association says that the AARP is turning our old people gay.
There's no limit to how badly you can screw up and still find success in the Republican Party. First Mark Sanford wanders back from the Appalachian Trail, now the person who came close to destroying the Komen Foundation in her anti-Planned Parenthood crusade is running for the Senate in Georgia. The only question is whether she can beat out equally far-far-right GOP Reps. Paul Broun, Jack Kingston and Phil Gingrey, or as Georgia calls it, the "batshit sampler."
Another case in point: Allen West is headed to Fox News. That is, if Florida Gov. Rick Scott passes up on appointing him Lt. Governor of Florida.
The right is still convinced that Planned Parenthood is one big abortionplex. That it might not be doesn't even enter their minds.
Peggy Noonan uses the IRS scandal as springboard for her new conspiracy that the administration is targeting conservatives for IRS audits as punishment for supporting Romney or saying bad things about ObamaCare. She bases this on a handful of conservatives who have said they've gotten audited in the last few years, and that couldn't possibly just be a coincidence that only a completely addled person could work themselves into a lather over. Everybody knows non-conservatives never get audited by the IRS, right?

These are the people who rule us. In the realm of people who don't rule us and never will, resident Fox "and Friend" Steve Doocy theorizes that the IRS is going to use ObamaCare to deny hip replacements to known conservatives. As a connoisseur of all things tin foil, even I'm impressed with that one. And talk about catering to the Fox News audience!

Republican efforts to skewer Obama and Holder over IRS and AP are blunted

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:43:22 UTC

Republicans came out losers this week in efforts to undermine the Obama administration over the latest ginned-up scandals.

Not only did they lose the momentum of their eight-month-long Benghazi® caterwauling, the White House also weakened any leverage they might have gained by taking decisive action over the IRS's using of "inappropriate criteria" in reviewing organizations' applications for tax-exempt status. The president fired the IRS acting director and promised quick action on a report by the Treasury's inspector general for tax administration.

More than a few Democrats viewed the entire matter as less than a tempest in a teapot.

While IRS bureaucrats did use inappropriate criteria when choosing to go after "tea party" groups seeking tax exempt status, Republican outrage over the revelations was marked with the usual hypocrisy. It wasn't as if this was the first time the IRS had used its powers politically, having previously focused on the NAACP, just to note one example. And liberal groups received the same IRS letter asking questions as conservative groups received. Three of them had their applications denied.

At the root of the problem is the murkiness of IRS parameters for judging when a "social welfare" organization engages in too much political activity. The muddiness of the rules allowed, even encouraged, IRS employees well down the chain of command to exercise judgment that they shouldn't. In place of the murkiness ought to be very specific rules barring all political activity or defining it very narrowly. Everybody would be clear on what qualifies and disqualifies groups for tax-exempt status, and we could bring an end to exempting political groups masquerading as social welfare groups. More truthfulness and less hyperventilation would result.

The potshots taken over the IRS affair had their humorous, if predictable, moments. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida demanded to know why President Obama wasn't calling for an investigation of the matter by the Department of Justice. Apparently in his efforts to needle the president for not getting a probe started, Rubio didn't notice that Attorney General Eric Holder had already launched one.

Meanwhile, Holder was summoned to Capitol Hill for a sworn tête-à-tête with 37 members of the House Judiciary Committee, where he was asked a vast array of questions that included a few on Benghazi, the IRS affair and the revelation that the Justice Department had obtained two months' worth of phone records of editors and reporters from the Associated Press in an effort to track down a leak from within the administration about anti-terrorist action in Yemen. The 20 phone lines that were affected included work, home and cell phones. Holder couldn't answer most questions on that matter because he has recused himself from the DOJ's investigation into it.

Unlike Benghazi and the IRS affair, the AP matter has received little attention from Republicans and generally subdued wait-and-see objections from Democrats. The AP itself called the seizure of the records a "massive and unprecedented intrusion." The ACLU called it "press intimidation" and an "unacceptable abuse of power." The Electronic Freedom Foundation said the taking of the records by the "DOJ has struck a terrible blow against the freedom of the press and the ability of reporters to investigate and report the news."

Executives at The New York Times and the Washington Post condemned the government's action. There was also some rumbling from a few Democrats, such as Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Some leftist critics had to suppress their general distaste for the stenographic media, which the Associated Press has come to epitomize, in raising their objections to government overreach and failure to follow its own guidelines in acquiring the AP phone records.

The best news to emerge so far in the AP matter is the administration's call for a federal shield law that would give reporters more protection in keeping the identity of confidential sources secret and quashing the subpoenaing of their phone records. Republicans killed such proposals in 2008 and 2010. The Obama administration backed a shield law in 2010, but attached numerous national security exemptions to it. The White House has asked Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York to introduce a new shield law. Any Republicans who have expressed reservations about the taking of the AP phone records will thus get a chance to put up or shut up.

Republicans keep making unreasonable demands of EPA nominee McCarthy

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:10:20 UTC

Republicans will support Gina McCarthy if she changes
her middle name to "Yes, anything you say."

Last Thursday, all eight Republicans on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee threw a tantrum and refused to show up to vote on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency. This Thursday, they showed up so they could vote against her. Along partisan lines, the committee cleared her 10-to-8 for consideration by the full Senate. Despite her bipartisan credentials, she could face trouble when the debate begins there. There's slim-to-nil chance she could get the needed 60 votes if Republicans try to filibuster her nomination.

That won't happen, according to the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana—who has been leading the charge against her—if she answers a few more questions satisfactorily. It's not a stretch to say she's been pummeled with questions, 1,079 of them altogether, and she's has answered them all.

But there remain three sticking points. Which is no surprise given that many Republicans would like to see the EPA dealt with the way the Romans dealt with Carthage, leaving not one of its bricks atop another and then salting the ground they stood on. If they can get her and the agency to say no on any of those questions, they'll have what they consider justification for blocking her confirmation.

Vitter and other Senate Republicans claim their remaining concerns about McCarthy have nothing to do with decisions she has made in her post as EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation but rather with agency transparency. Malarkey. The crux of the matter is ideology centered on what the likes of Mitch McConnell call "job-killing regulations." You can find out what the Republicans' ridiculous, industry-pushed complaints are below the fold.

This week in Benghazi

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Sat, 18 May 2013 00:20:08 UTC

According to a PPP survey released Monday, 39 percent of people who think Benghazi is the biggest scandal ever don't even know that it is in Libya, including 6 percent who think it's in Cuba.

We began Monday reeling from the news that the Benghazi talking points had been edited. Well, maybe not reeling, but Republicans assumed that we were, because they had finally gotten a reporter to print their fantasy of what the Benghazi talking points emails had been. We also learned that John Boehner was using Benghazi for political purposes, that Republicans were using it for fundraising, and that 39 percent of people who think Benghazi was the biggest scandal since ever don't even know it was in Libya (6 percent think it's in Cuba).
On Tuesday, Republicans launched their first anti-Hillary ad of 2016 campaign, focused on Benghazi. And we thus learned the definitive timeline of the whole mess. We also got the first glimpse of the real Benghazi talking point emails.
On Wednesday, the White House released the real Benghazi talking point emails, showing that Jon Karl had merely acted as a stenographer for someone feeding him a false account of the messages.
On Thursday, Fox News called out Obama's transparency with the email release for what it really was: a diabolical ploy to confuse Americans. Meanwhile, former Fox reporter Major Garrett, now with CBS and therefore legally allowed to speak his mind, reported what we all suspected but didn't explicitly know: Republicans were behind the false emails. Also on Thursday, the independent co-chairman of the State Department's Benghazi review blew the whistle on Darrell Issa for refusing to let them testify in public before his committee. Issa responded on Friday by issuing a subpoena to "participate in a voluntary transcribed interview prior to testifying publicly." What's he afraid of?
Also on Friday, Reince Priebus counseled Republicans to take their time before impeaching Obama: "Don't call for impeachment until you have evidence," he said. Not unless, but until. Because Reince knows the evidence is there. Somewhere, Anywhere. Just ask Bob Woodward, who on Friday said Benghazi was like Watergate—a perfectly stupid way to wrap up a perfectly stupid week in Washington.

This week in austerity: Furloughing defense workers and making unemployment harsher

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:11:12 UTC

Cutcutcutcutcut

The effects of austerity are all around us—at this point, it's defining and dragging down our economy—but a lot of the time, the news doesn't report on austerity's effects on working people. Pundits and politicians scream most loudly about the deficit, not about the need to invest in jobs and infrastructure. And with sequestration being the major austerity policy debate happening now, we still hear most about how it's affecting those at the top. This week was a case in point.

Defense furloughs were the week's big sequester story, as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the furloughs, which were initially expected to be for as much as 22 days and then had been cut to 14 days, would be cut again, to 11 days, with more civilian defense workers exempted than had been expected. The good news in this story is that that means a lot of civilian defense workers won't be taking as big a hit to their pay. The bad news is that 11 days without pay is still a big hit, and the defense furloughs bring the number of federal workers losing days of pay to 820,000. And the fact that the DoD got the opportunity to make changes and reduce planned furloughs, while many other agencies hit by the sequester didn't, points out how unevenly applied austerity is.
The uneven application of austerity came even more into focus with this round of whining from the CEO of Lockheed Martin about how she doesn't know how much of a hit her company's billions of dollars in profits will take because of sequestration. To be fair, lower profits for defense contractors could mean layoffs—but that does not exactly come across as the CEO's chief concern. Surprising, I know.
Speaking of layoffs, unemployed people keep facing bad news above and beyond the simple fact of being jobless. Nationally, Meteor Blades tells us, less than 40 percent of unemployed people are getting benefits, and federal benefits have been hit by cuts thanks to sequestration. Republican state legislators seem never to stop looking for ways to make joblessness more miserable, too. Mark E Andersen highlights a proposal in Wisconsin to double the job searching people have to do to qualify for unemployment benefits, as if looking harder will help when the jobs aren't being created.
Unemployment also isn't helped by situations like this: Only one in six kids eligible for childcare subsidies actually get those subsidies, thanks to chronic underfunding of the program. With so many more people trying to get into the program than are covered, the low-income, unemployed, or student parents whose kids should qualify for subsidized childcare have to jump through endless hoops to get and keep the aid, often being forced to miss work in order to get the childcare support that makes it possible for them to go to work at all. Republicans say they want people to work, but when it comes to making it possible for them to do so, somehow the response is always more austerity. And, yes, the sequester has cut Head Start programs as well.
Since these cuts and underfunded programs come because Republicans refuse to raise revenue, let's close with a little reframing of the whole tax vs. spending debate:

Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!

rss@dailykos.com (Bill in Portland Maine) — Fri, 17 May 2013 23:15:20 UTC

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

All I Need to Know About Life I learned from Star Trek

With the new Trek flick out today in the U.S. (it's getting boffo reviews and you can count mine among them), it seems like a good time to review:

And when driving the Enterprise, remember
Rule #1: Grind it 'til ya find it.

• Seek out new life and civilizations.
• Non-interference is the Prime Directive.
• Keep your phaser set on stun.
• Humans are highly illogical.
• There's no such thing as a Vulcan death grip.
• Live long and prosper.
• Having is not so pleasing as wanting; it is not logical but it is often true.
• Infinite diversity in infinite combinations (IDIC).
• Tribbles hate Klingons (and Klingons hate Tribbles).
• Enemies are often invisible -- like Romulans, they can be cloaked.
• Don't put all your ranking officers in one shuttlecraft.
• When your logic fails, trust a hunch.
• Insufficient data does not compute.
• If it can't be fixed, just ask Scotty.
• Even in our own world, sometimes we are aliens.
• When going out into the Universe, remember, "Boldly go where no one has gone before!"

Also: don’t fuck around with the transporter---it's not a toy.

Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Gabriel Gomez's bad week

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:25:27 UTC

Why is this man still smiling?

Massachusetts Senate candidate and political neophyte Gabriel Gomez is learning the hard way that politics ain't beanbag, proving himself not ready for a run for U.S. Senate.

Last week's tax scam scandal continued to dog Gomez. As a refresher, back in 2005, Gomez granted an easement on his $2+ million home, agreeing to not make changes to the facade of the historic house and getting an income tax deduction of more than $280,000 for the "donation." But local bylaws prevent him from making those changes anyway—he got a very hefty deduction for giving up absolutely nothing. He's steadfastly refused to answer any questions about this deduction, which has just led to more questions, and the news that he stiffed a guy he hired to do an appraisal on the house in order to obtain that deduction. The guy's appraisal wasn't rich enough for Gomez, so he refused to accept it, and refused to pay the $1,000 fee for the appraisal. All of which makes it very hard for this private-equity millionaire guy to assume the aw-shucks Scott Brown regular-guy mantle he's going to need to win over independents.
Gomez isn't going to be making any political gains with women voters, after his disastrous interview this week with the Boston Globe. The Globe asked for the interview, which was specifically about women's issues, because Gomez had been so vague on the campaign trail on where he stood on women's health issues and on the War on Women in general. In the interview, Gomez proved himself to be uninterested, uneducated, and uninformed on every issue. He seemingly didn't even bother to prepare for the interview, and told the Globe that "he hardly expects such issues to consume him at a time when he is focused on jobs, the economy, education, and veterans." Got that, women? He doesn't have time to worry about you. He's got manly things to focus on.
Then there was this, Gomez's histrionic meltdown over a Markey ad that used video of Gomez himself declaring his opposition to an assault weapons ban or a ban on high-capacity magazines. In a combination of misplaced grandiosity and desperation, Gomez tried to say that Markey was blaming Gomez for the Newtown shootings. As if an as-of-yet political nobody's (albeit a really rich one) views on gun safety had anything to do with Newtown, and as if Markey's ad said that at all. Which it didn't.
His really big problem, though, after some polls had shown him closing in on Markey, is that he's now becoming better known to Massachusetts voters. And they're liking him less.

Gomez's net favorability has dropped 6 points in last 2 weeks from +14 to now +8 at 42/34. From 33/32 to 20/52 w/D's: http://t.co/...
— @ppppolls via web

Let's keep Gomez's week a bad one. Please pitch in $3 to Ed Markey.

4:22 PM PT: Here's one I missed before, another person he hired to do a job at his house getting stiffed: in 2008, his plumber had to take him to small claims court to get his bill for fixing a toilet the year before paid. Yeah, Gomez is a real man of the people.

Open thread: Jeff Flake and keeping your word

rss@dailykos.com (Barbara Morrill) — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:00:08 UTC

Peggy Noonan takes a turn in the conspiracy theory funhouse

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:28:24 UTC

Leave it to Peggy Noonan to chew the scenery on this one. She'd like you to know that the president is "not unconnected" to IRS mismanagement and the FBI fetching AP phone records because of leadership osmosis. She also is fairly certain that the IRS business is some sort of Orwellian scheme to oppress conservatives, which would be fine and all if that's what happened. This is how desperately old-time Republican hands are aching for a good old fashioned White House scandal:

The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you. […]
A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.

It was the third guy in the last row of the sleepy agency across town that did it, though. Nobody is seriously suggesting the White House had anything to do with it—and even firing the acting agency head is a bit scapegoatish, since it's not clear he had any awareness of the process either, until the IRS investigated itself and figured out what was going on. It requires quite the rhetorical bank shot to presume the president sets the "tone" for what civil servants he's never even heard of before have done wrong, while dismissing the "tone" set by the president specifically denouncing it and canning people.

The real problem, though, arises when Peggy Noonan adopts the now-stereotypical pose of the conspiracy theorist. It's all a plot, you see. It's intended to "suppress" the administration's opponents. Not the AP business, because even Peggy Noonan can't get worked up about that, she just had to toss it in there because that's what expected. No, what the IRS scandal shows is that from now on, all conservatives who get in trouble with the IRS for dodgy dealings will have done so because the mean president and his cruel government functionaries are have it in for them. That not-even-remotely-original conspiracy theory is exactly what Peggy Noonan is going with, below the fold:

Elizabeth Warren wants answers on bank settlements

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:49:36 UTC

Warren grills regulators, with a smile.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not letting up in her efforts to find justice for American families who have been victimized by banks who have essentially stolen their homes through foreclosure fraud. Back in February, at her first Banking Committee hearing, Warren demanded of federal regulators: "What I'd like to know is, tell me a little bit about the last few times you've taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to a trial."

She didn't get a good answer then, and hasn't gotten an answer since. Instead, the government has continued to accept financial settlements from criminal bankers. So she's ratcheting up the pressure. In a letter sent to Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission Mary Jo White, Warren is asking for any evidence they might have to explain why these settlements, a slap on the wrist to the huge financial institutions, is better policy than prosecuting them. From her letter [pdf]:

There is no question that settlements, fines, consent orders, and cease and desist orders are important enforcement tools, and that trials are expensive. [...] But I believe strongly that if a regulator reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way to trial—either because it is too timid or because it lacks resources the regulator has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations and will be forced to settle on terms that are much more favorable to the wrongdoer. [...] If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate million in profits, and if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law.

Those government agencies have now been put on notice: There's a real watchdog out there now, and one who can get a lot of attention. The big banks aren't changing their practices, and maybe it's about time the regulators start taking their jobs more seriously.

House Republicans prepare plan to raise debt ceiling

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:47:04 UTC

They'll demand a ransom, but the mere fact that they are already talking
about the need to raise the debt limit just proves that they are bluffing.

Jake Sherman:

The House Republican leadership is considering releasing its debt ceiling plan before the August recess so lawmakers can actively sell it to their constituents.
The idea gained traction in a closed meeting of the House Republican Conference this week, where the main topic was how the party should craft a plan to raise the nation’s debt cap.

As you might expect, the preliminary outlines of the GOP debt limit plan still contains ransom demands, but the focus of the effort appears to be around building support on the right for raising the debt limit—not for creating another hostage crisis.

In that sense, it's a tacit admission that the "Pay China First" that Republicans passed earlier in the month is a political loser. The idea behind that legislation was to make not raising the debt limit a palatable scenario, but if they had any confidence it would work, Republicans wouldn't be trying to figure out how to sell a debt limit hike months before they need to raise it. (According to the latest Congressional Budget Office estimates, November or December is the likely timeframe.)

I'm sure Republicans will spend a good chunk of the rest of the year pretending that they are serious about their ransom demands, but the fact that they are dropping "Pay China First" as the centerpiece of their strategy effectively calls their own bluff. In order to sell their ransom demands, they also need to sell their base on the need to raise the debt limit—and once they take the position that the debt limit must be raised, it means they can't hold it hostage without committing political suicide, because doing so would be a self-admitted act of economic terrorism.

In 2011, Republicans got away with holding the debt limit hostage because President Obama didn't adopt a clean "no negotiations" position. Republicans were definitely the prime driver behind the hostage crisis, but Obama tried to use the debt limit as leverage as well. Everybody had dirty hands. But now that the president has said he won't negotiate, the only way Republicans could survive blocking a debt limit increase is if they were to convince the public that blocking a debt limit increase was a good idea. And they aren't trying to do that.

Sure, they'll spend months pretending that their serious about their ransom demands, but there's no reason to take them seriously. At the end of the day, Republicans will support a clean debt limit increase—or at the very least, they'll allow Boehner to break the Hastert rule so that Democrats can carry out the responsibilities that the GOP was unwilling to perform.

Senate filibuster showdown brewing

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:12:34 UTC

Earlier this week, Harry Reid hinted that he might use the Richard Cordray nomination to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a nomination over which Republicans have maintained a filibuster spanning two Congresses, to test his caucus's appetite for real reform. Now two more nominations have made it out of committee and the tipping point might just be in reach. In addition to Cordray, EPA nominee Gina McCarthy and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez are ready for floor votes.

Democrats say that Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, in recent days has been trying to gauge whether there is sufficient support among Democrats to force a rule change that would limit the filibuster on presidential nominees. [...]
“The showdown is coming,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, who has been working with Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico on efforts to overhaul filibuster rules.

“And the leadership is very engaged in preparing how to deal with this and how to change this so advise and consent does not become an instrument of destruction.”

To implement a rule change with a simple majority, Democrats like Mr. Merkley and Mr. Reid would have to overcome deep skepticism from many within their own ranks, particularly more senior senators who worry about the precedent such a move would set.

“You think you’ve got gridlock now?” said Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan. “You think you’ve got problems now? You will have a huge, huge outpouring of real anger.”

The question for Sen. Levin is what could possibly be worse if the Republicans are angry? They'll be angry obstructionists instead of just obstructionists? Levin was among those standing in the way of real rules reform at the beginning of this session, and his balking was one of the reasons why the reform that was enacted has been so toothless. If anything, Republicans have ratcheted up their obstruction, with stunts like boycotting committee votes on nominees. (They successfully blocked the McCarthy committee vote last week by not showing up, knowing that with an ailing Sen. Frank Lautenberg absent, the committee couldn't proceed because it didn't have quorum. The vote passed this week because the ill Lautenberg was forced to attend and vote.) Compromising with the Republicans on "reforms" in January only seems to have emboldened them to escalate their stalling tactics.

Democrats have a responsibility in this mess, too, a responsibility to their constituents to make the Senate work again. It's time to move beyond the finger-pointing and blaming Republicans for gridlock. It's time to move beyond the threats. It's time for Democrats to do what's in their power to do.

Please use this link to send an email to your Democratic senators telling them to re-open filibuster reform and make the Senate function again.

Midday open thread

rss@dailykos.com (Barbara Morrill) — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:10 UTC

Today's comic by Mark Fiore is Freedom of Snuggly:
What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...
- Big-thinking Cato Institute: 400ppm haz got what plants crave, by Hunter
- The next biggest scandal ever, until the next one, by Hunter
- Republican outreach report card: graded "F" for Fail, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Climate change isn't AN issue, it's THE issue, by Laurence Lewis
- Welcome to the Darrell Issa Hall of Shame, by Jon Perr
- The Hard Lessons of the Post Partisan Unity Schtick, by Armando
- The most vulnerable House members in 2014, in two charts, by David Jarman
- An array of present day activities to an ancient life in the canopy, by DarkSyde
Boy, never saw this one coming:

Allen West is joining @FoxNews. Thanks, Fox. That was really a voice that was missing from the national conversation.
— @WillMcAvoyACN via web
I suppose this could be called the lamest excuse ever:

A South Carolina state representative's lawyer said a rock in his shoe explains why Rep. Ted Vick was walking funny, catching the attention of an officer who eventually arrested him for DUI, his second such charge in less than a year. [...]
A Bureau of Protective Services officer saw Vick stumbling as he walked into a parking garage on the State House grounds in Columbia. Vick got into his car and hit a cone before the officer could catch up and ask him to stop.

Vick smelled like alcohol and refused field sobriety tests, according to an incident report. The officer called for backup, and Vick was eventually placed into handcuffs and taken to the Richland County jail, authorities said.

But Vick's lawyer, fellow Rep. Todd Rutherford, said Vick was not impaired. Vick was walking funny because he had a rock in his shoe, said Rutherford, D-Columbia.
Just admit it: You've always wanted to do this:

A frustrated New York theater critic smashed up a woman's cellphone because she kept surfing the web during a musical.
Water, water, everywhere:

Scientists have discovered water that has been trapped in rock for more than a billion years. The water might contain microbes that evolved independently from the surface world, and it's a finding that gives new hope to the search for life on other planets.
The water samples came from holes drilled by gold miners near the small town of Timmins, Ontario, about 350 miles north of Toronto. Deep in the Canadian bedrock, miners drill holes and collect samples. Sometimes they hit pay dirt; sometimes they hit water, which seeps out from tiny crevices in the rock. [...]

As Holland announced this week in the journal Nature, this is the oldest cache of water ever found.
On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin on the dying embers of the "scandal" fires. Kevin Drum reports that news outlets got burned by Republican sources on those Benghazi emails, and Armando calls for Jonathan Karl's head. The bizarre story of a holocaust denier reinvented as a Hollywood conservative player. A brief #GunFAIL update. Doctor Who asks about Joan McCarter's post on Reid's plan to call for a vote on the Cordray nomination. Our thanks to show sponsor Audible! Be sure to get your free audio book download at audiblepodcast.com/kagro.

Gomez has a gun problem

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:09:40 UTC

Massachusetts Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez is in full freakout mode.

BOSTON, MA. – Gabriel Gomez, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in the Massachusetts open seat special election, today issued the following statement on Congressman Ed Markey’s latest attacks:
“First, Congressman Markey slandered me by comparing me to Osama bin Laden. Now in his most recent TV ad, Markey blames me for the horrific Newtown shooting,” Gomez said.

“I guess after 37 years in Congress you lose your sense of decency. Exploiting a tragedy for political gain is sick.”

Wow, that would be a really low blow, saying that Gabriel Gomez was responsible for Newtown. If that's what Ed Markey's ad really says. Which, of course, it doesn't.

Narrator: "Gomez is against banning assault weapons."
Gomez: "I don't believe we need to do an assault weapon ban."
Narrator: "Gomez is against banning high-capacity magazines, like the ones used in the Newtown school shooting."
Gomez: "I don't believe you should have a limit on the high-capacity magazines."

Pathetic, Mr. Gomez. Just pathetic. You're on the wrong side of this debate for your state, and you know it. It might have worked to win a Republican primary, but now that you're in the general election, you're trying to run away from your opposition to common sense gun regulations. And it's not going to work.

Here's your first lesson in how running for election works. You say something on camera, it's there forever. False outrage won't make it go away.

Please donate $3 to Ed Markey.

And in other news, Bob Woodward compares Benghazi to Watergate

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:48:23 UTC

Oh, Bob:

If you read through all these emails, you see that everyone in the government is saying "Oh, let's not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to al Qaeda. Let's not tell the public that there were warnings." And I hate to show [holds up document] — this is one of the documents with the editing that one of the people in the State Department said oh let's not let these things out — and I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts of the conversations. And he personally went through them and said "Let's not tell this, let's not show this." I would not dismiss Benghazi. It's a very serious issue.

When I saw the headline, I thought maybe Woodward was making an interesting point about how Republicans planting stories based on false email quotes shows that the era of GOP dirty tricks isn't over. But then I watched the video and realized he was actually talking about the emails that had been released in full by the Obama administration.

To compare transcripts of secret tape recordings personally edited by the president in middle of a scandal to the editing process for talking points being written for a Democratic congressman and a cabinet official about to go on a Sunday talk show is just completely insane. There is no comparison. It's not even close.

Woodward's comparison is even loopier when you consider the fact that his whole argument depends on the claim that the government was trying to hide the potential involvement of al Qaeda or terrorists from the public. Remember, these talking points weren't what went those Sunday talk shows—Susan Rice was. And while Rice did inaccurately repeat the claim that the attack began as a spontaneous reaction to the video, she also said extremists—potentially including al Qaeda militants—were responsible for escalating the violence.

I think it's clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we'll have to determine.

If you want to criticize Rice—and the administration—for incorrectly linking the video that had sparked protests in Egypt to Benghazi, that's fair. If you're upset she called the attackers "extremists" instead of "terrorists," then have a blast. But if you say the Benghazi talking points are like Watergate because it proved the government was trying to cover up the involvement of terrorists or al Qaeda in the attack, you're living in a fantasy and ignoring the facts sitting right under your nose.

Rosalyn Dance has to pledge to stop taking GOP money, otherwise she would

rss@dailykos.com (kos) — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:12:28 UTC

Evandra Thompson

Yesterday I introduced Air Force vet Evandra Thompson, who is challenging Liebermanesque Virginia state delegate Rosalyn Dance in their Richmond-area district. Despite her youth (30 years old) and political inexperience, Thompson is busy consolidating local establishment support, a rare occurrence in electoral politics. Incumbents always stick together. So why the defections?

Perhaps it's headlines like these:

In Democratic primary feud, Dance pledges to reject Republican campaign donations

Huh, what? In the 11 years I've been doing this, I don't recall ever seeing a Democratic primary candidate have to promise to stop taking Republican money. But she didn't take just any Republican's money:

In 2001, then-Del. Bob McDonnell contributed $500 to her unsuccessful House bid as an independent.

This is the same Bob McDonnell who is now governor, who signed the forced ultrasound bill among other atrocities. And of course, she was running as an independent, before deciding she had better odds of victory pretending to be a Democrat.

Thompson has put Dance on the spot:

“My question to you is: Will you pledge not to accept Republican money, directly or indirectly, during the primary campaign? I hope that you agree to make this simple pledge because I believe that this primary should be decided only by real Democrats,” Thompson wrote.

Dance's colleagues in the state house of delegates are certainly sick and tired of her party disloyalty.

Led by Del. Joseph D. Morrissey, D-Henrico, Dance’s opponents have accused her of voting against her own party line too many times. “For eight years, Rosalyn has masqueraded as a Democrat who then turned around and voted Republican,” Morrissey said in an interview.

Yesterday, over 250 of you gave over $6,500 to a previously unknown candidate for a state House seat, far exceeding any expectations I or anyone on the Daily Kos elections team had. For a candidate that had about $2,000 cash on hand, this is game changing. Just like in the IL-02 special election, the Daily Kos community has reshaped a race.

So let's keep the momentum going by chipping in $3. Let's get rid of a Lieberdem, let's build our bench in a state that is trending our way, and let's make sure we help our Virginia friends have a legislature that can stop the worst abuses of their crazed governor and his House majority.

American Family Association accuses AARP of promoting 'homosexual agenda.' Wait, what?

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:10:09 UTC

Absolute. Loons.

The American Family Association has accused the American Association of Retired Persons of being a fringe organization that promotes a “homosexual agenda” that does not represent older American’s “values and standards.”
Why? Because, in addition to coupons for Outback Steakhouse and discounts on prescription refills, the retiree organization’s website has a page to provide “resources, news, and other topics of interest to older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, their family and friends.”

Being pro-family means you're not even allowed to acknowledge the presence of gay people? Really, do we think the AARP is engaging in some big conspiracy here, a plot to turn senior citizens gay? What, for the valuable coupons?

I remember back when these people were actually taken seriously—or, at least, more seriously than they're treated now. I remember the whole "moral majority" nonsense, for that matter, an entire movement built around a new implied segregation, right-wing Christianity versus everyone else, with the demands that the right-wing position be enshrined into all the laws and everyone else was supposed to shut up and wait patiently to be converted. What I can't decide is whether or not it's actually worse now than it was then or if it just seems that way. Has the movement gotten actively dumber? Surely, I think, it must have—but then we have to remember that back then, we had Dan Quayle, an actual sitting Vice President, locked in battle with a goddamn fictional television character about her abominable single-motherhood. That wasn't exactly a shining moment of glory for conservative familah-values Republicanism either, that one.

It feels like there's a doctoral thesis to be had in all this, some hypothesis to be looked into as to whether the rise of Fox News has made abject stupidity more popular than ever, or whether the unwillingness of society to keep discriminated-against groups discriminated-against has sent the whole subculture of far-right conservatism into a mental woodchopper, or whether there's been no actual increase in the American Family Association stupidity index at all, we just think there has been because we've blocked all the earlier crap these groups have worked themselves into a frothy mixture over in past decades. I wonder.

Anti-Planned Parenthood crusader Karen Handel enters Georgia Senate race

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:56:04 UTC

Karen Handel

The already crowded Republican primary to replace retiring Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss just got a little more crowded and ... well, maybe it couldn't get much more crazy, but the newest addition didn't make it any less crazy. That new addition is Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state and, most notoriously, senior vice president of public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure at the time Komen defunded cancer screening and prevention programs at Planned Parenthood.

Komen officially insisted the defunding decision wasn't political even as Handel was running around retweeting things that made it clear she saw Planned Parenthood in terms of abortion and only abortion; it turned out that Handel had pushed Komen to defund Planned Parenthood against the recommendation of the foundation's staff and a board subcommittee. After leaving Komen, she made it her mission to whine about and smear Planned Parenthood at every opportunity. She's also on the record opposing gay adoption and saying "I do not think that gay relationships are—they are not what God intended."

Handel is the only woman and the only person not already in Congress thus far in a Senate primary that includes Rep. Paul Broun, who thinks Paul Ryan's budget isn't harsh enough and voted against not only the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act but against the crappy Republican version as well; Rep. Jack Kingston, who thought the National Guard should "take a pass" on guarding events like the Boston Marathon; and Rep. Phil Gingrey, an OB/GYN who, until he was running for Senate, thought Todd Akin was "partially right" about his "legitimate rape" comments. So Handel's in good company there.

The Georgia Senate race is a serious long shot for Democrats, but not a total impossibility if Democrats land a good candidate and Republican primary voters choose someone whose extremism is a little too close to the surface.

Reince Priebus to GOP: 'Don't call for impeachment until you have evidence'

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:46:45 UTC

According to Politico's Mike Allen and Jim VanDehei, senior Republicans are worried that their party is in the cusp of blowing the "political gift" they've been given of an Obama administration swirling in controversy:

Why the GOP thinks it could blow it
Republicans are worried one thing could screw up the political gift of three Obama administration controversies at once: fellow Republicans.

Top GOP leaders are privately warning members to put a sock in it when it comes to silly calls for impeachment or over-the-top comparisons to Watergate. They want members to focus on months of fact-finding investigations — not rhetorical fury.

First of all, note that the underlying assumption here is that Republicans are on the cusp of some sort of major victory thanks to Benghazi, IRS, and AP—as long as they don't screw it up. The reality, however, is that it's May of 2013, the next election isn't for 18 months, and none of these are turning out to be nearly as big as Republicans may have hoped.

The only thing new about Benghazi is that Republicans made up some emails to push their coverup narrative. Unless the IRS probe turns up something to link it to the White House (which does not appear likely), it's going to turn out to be a nothingburger. And while the AP phone records subpoena is a big deal, it's something that Republicans really don't care that much about anyway.

The point is, I'm not convinced that there is anything there for Republicans to blow. But let's assume for the sake of argument that VandeHei and Allen are right, and that there is something to blow. Here's their prime piece of evidence (my emphasis):

“We have to be persistent but patient,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told us. “I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If we present ourselves to the American people as intelligent, we’re going to be in a great place as far as showing that this administration is not transparent, is obsessed with power and hates dissent. But you don’t call for impeachment until you have evidence.”

Uh, those aren't the words of a guy whose worried about the GOP going too far—those are the words of a guy who wants the GOP to take their time before they impeach the president. Reince didn't say "you don't call for impeachment unless you have evidence" he said "until you have evidence."

Reince was counseling patience, not skepticism. He didn't express the slightest hint of a doubt that the evidence exists for impeachment—he just said Republicans need to wait until they get it. But he made it clear that he thinks the evidence is out there to be gotten. In his words: "Where there's smoke, there's fire." The GOP debate isn't about whether to impeach Obama: It's about when to do it—and for what reason.

Freedom of Snuggly

rss@dailykos.com (Mark Fiore) — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:50:08 UTC

Remember to follow @DailyKosComics !

CBS: Republicans were source of inaccurate Benghazi emails

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:35:04 UTC

From a logical standpoint, it was pretty obvious that Republicans were the source of the inaccurate Benghazi talking point emails reported last Friday by ABC News White House correspondent Jon Karl, but when the actual emails surfaced, Karl did not acknowledge who his sources were.

Now, thanks to Major Garrett of CBS News, we have explicit confirmation that Republicans were behind the false leaks. Garrett reports (my emphasis):

Republicans have charged that the State Department under Hillary Clinton was trying to protect itself from criticism. The White House released the real emails late Wednesday. Here's what we found when we compared them to the quotes that had been provided by Republicans.

Garrett highlights emails by White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. According to Republicans, the emails showed that the White House had executed a coverup not just of the fact that terrorists had conducted the Benghazi attack, but also that the CIA had warned the State Department that al Qaeda was planning the attack.

The reality is that even if the Republicans transcript of the emails had been accurate, it wouldn't have been a smoking gun to prove their claim that Benghazi is a bona fide scandal. Ironically, now that we know Republicans fabricated the emails, there actually is a scandal worth pursuing: the story of how Republicans dishonestly exploited a national security tragedy to score political points.

Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Markey's lead grows, per PPP, and Gomez goes on the air

rss@dailykos.com (David Nir) — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:13 UTC

Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here.

Leading Off:

• MA-Sen: PPP's new Massachusetts Senate poll (commissioned by the League of Conservation Voters) shows Dem Rep. Ed Markey improving his position over Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez. There was some consternation a couple of weeks ago, when PPP's initial survey put Markey up just 44-40, but now he's legged out to a wider 48-41 lead—and, importantly, is a lot closer to 50 percent. Markey's favorability has improved a touch, from 44-41 to 48-40, and as PPP's polling memo notes, he's doing much better with self-identified Democrats (77-12 versus 68-21 initially). That suggests that slightly miffed Stephen Lynch supporters are coming home after the primary.

Gomez, meanwhile, has seen his favorables move down, from 41-27 to 42-34, probably as people learn that yeah, he really is a Republican. He's taken a nosedive with Democrats in particular, though independents seem to like him more now. But as long as Markey consolidates Democratic support and keeps Gomez from getting much in the way of crossover voters, then the math simply isn't there for Gomez.

Meanwhile, Gomez is going up with his first TV ad of the special election, for a buy of "at least $200,000," according to the National Journal. That's a pretty limp sum for a state that includes the expensive Boston media market, and the spot itself isn't exactly awesome. Gomez tries to emphasize both his family's immigrant roots (he himself was born in Los Angeles) by speaking a bit of Spanish, as well as his military background. In the second half, he insists that "if you come to America, you should commit to the idea of America"—and then awkwardly recites a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Daily Kos Radio is LIVE at 9am ET!

rss@dailykos.com (David Waldman) — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:30:09 UTC

Daily Kos Radio's Kagro in the Morning show podcasts are now available through iTunes.

Oh, we'll have plenty to talk about, for sure. Greg will come by, and so will Armando. The so-called "scandals" are still brewing, sort of, though they're beginning to fall apart. And it's the end of another spectacular week of #GunFAIL. So we'll be busy.

Looks like I'm pushing the big news for the show until next Friday. But hey, now it's a cliffhanger!

UPDATE: Ah, screw it! Let's go today!

The big news for fans of the show today, and for those who haven't yet found the time to become fans of the show, but who generally approve of the concept, I have this:

Daily Kos Radio has its first advertising sponsor: Audible!

It ain't gonna make anybody a millionaire, but it's nice to know that maybe we've got something here, and we can keep the lights on for a while longer.

And if you want to help convince them to keep doing it, download today's show when the podcast goes up this afternoon at the Daily Kos Radio page, and be sure to visit audiblepodcast.com/kagro, where you can sign up for Audible and get a free audio book download for your troubles!

We're LIVE at 9 a.m. ET with Kagro in the Morning, thanks to NetrootsRadio.com.

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Need more info on how to listen? Find it below the fold.

Abbreviated pundit roundup: The GOP's scandal machine

rss@dailykos.com (Georgia Logothetis) — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:39:51 UTC

The Los Angeles Times editorial board:

On Monday, an exasperated Obama, referring to the emails, said: "There's no 'there' there." The same is true of the allegation of a broader Benghazi coverup. And now that we know, let's move on.

The New York Times editorial board looks at how each day reveals facts that deflate the GOP's wild conspiracy and cover-up theories:

[T]he details of the troubles swirling around the White House this week are bluntly contradicting Republicans who want to combine them into a seamless narrative of tyrannical government on the rampage. [...]
Whatever cranky point Republicans had been making against President Obama for the last five years — dishonesty, socialism, jackbooted tyranny — they somehow found that these incidents were exactly the proof they had been seeking, no matter how inflated or distorted. [...] when bound together and loudly denounced on cable television and in hearings, they serve to obscure the real damage that Republicans continue to do to the economy and the workings of government. [...]

For those who are wondering whether this week’s political windstorms will hinder Mr. Obama’s second-term agenda, here’s a bulletin: That agenda was long ago imperiled by the obstruction of Republicans. (See Guns. Jobs. Education. And, very possibly, Immigration.)

Scot Lehigh at The Boston Globe:

Watergate? Nixonian? Impeachment?
Please. Someone get the smelling salts. [...]

[C]harges of a Benghazi coverup don’t pass the evidence test. Comparisons to Nixon are idiotic. And it’s the height of partisan absurdity to suggest that anything we’ve seen in these so-called scandals could justify impeachment.

Head below the fold for more debunking of the GOP's spin machine.